Datasets:

TopAI-1
/

WebText-5

text stringlengths 0 473k

[SOURCE: https://huggingface.co/Raziel1234] \| [TOKENS: 1049]
Raziel AI Learning GAD GAD language models family Raziel1234/GAD-2 Text Generation • 0.2B • Updated 24 days ago • 1.11k Raziel1234/GAD-1 Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 27 days ago • 31 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Email-Writer Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated Jan 18 • 1 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Instruct Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 30 days ago • 22 Raziel1234/GAD-2 Text Generation • 0.2B • Updated 24 days ago • 1.11k Raziel1234/GAD-1 Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 27 days ago • 31 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Email-Writer Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated Jan 18 • 1 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Instruct Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 30 days ago • 22 GAD GAD language models family Raziel1234/GAD-2 Text Generation • 0.2B • Updated 24 days ago • 1.11k Raziel1234/GAD-1 Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 27 days ago • 31 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Email-Writer Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated Jan 18 • 1 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Instruct Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 30 days ago • 22 Raziel1234/GAD-2 Text Generation • 0.2B • Updated 24 days ago • 1.11k Raziel1234/GAD-1 Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 27 days ago • 31 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Email-Writer Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated Jan 18 • 1 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Instruct Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 30 days ago • 22 Running OSTLM 👀 OSTLM translation. Raziel1234 14 days ago OSTLM translation. Running GAD 2 Text Generator 🐠 Raziel1234 25 days ago Raziel1234/GAD-2-177M-SFT-Preview Text Generation • 0.2B • Updated about 15 hours ago • 35 Raziel1234/Duchifat-1-Base Text Generation • 0.2B • Updated 14 days ago • 165 Raziel1234/OSTLM Translation • 0.2B • Updated 14 days ago • 274 Raziel1234/GAD-2 Text Generation • 0.2B • Updated 24 days ago • 1.11k Raziel1234/GAD-1 Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 27 days ago • 31 Raziel1234/LamoFast-2.0-GGUF Text Generation • 0.5B • Updated 28 days ago • 153 Raziel1234/LamoFast-1.0-GGUF Text Generation • 0.5B • Updated 28 days ago • 326 Raziel1234/LamoFast-1.0 Text Generation • 0.5B • Updated 29 days ago • 75 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Instruct Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated 30 days ago • 22 Raziel1234/GAD-1-77.1M-Email-Writer Text Generation • 77.1M • Updated Jan 18 • 1 Raziel1234/He-Dataset Viewer • Updated 14 days ago • 891k • 9 Raziel1234/WebText-4 Viewer • Updated Jan 16 • 602k • 19 • 1 Raziel1234/MiniWebText-4 Updated Nov 20, 2025 • 7 Raziel1234/WebBooks Viewer • Updated Sep 27, 2025 • 300k • 6 Raziel1234/WebText-1 Viewer • Updated Sep 24, 2025 • 10.8k • 11 Raziel1234/Minecraft-Webtext Viewer • Updated Sep 24, 2025 • 4.94k • 4 Raziel1234/WebText-3 Viewer • Updated Sep 19, 2025 • 66.1k • 24 Raziel1234/LiteGPT-DataSet Viewer • Updated Sep 4, 2025 • 50k • 10 Raziel1234/WebText-2 Viewer • Updated Sep 1, 2025 • 67.7k • 9
========================================

[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herobrine] \| [TOKENS: 1629]
Contents Herobrine Herobrine is an urban legend and creepypasta from the sandbox video game Minecraft. He is often depicted as a version of the Minecraft character Steve, but with solid white eyes that lack pupils, and behavior that primarily involves destroying the player's world. The story originated from an anonymous post on 4chan's /v/ board in 2010, where the author reported encountering a strange figure in a single-player world, followed by their messages being deleted when they attempted to talk to other players about the sighting. The story was further popularized after livestreamers Copeland and Patimuss created their own versions. Herobrine has become a popular part of the online culture surrounding Minecraft, as well as effectively an internet meme. Interest in the character inspired many to create their own stories and alleged sightings centered around Herobrine, as well as create Minecraft mods that add him to the game. Interest in the character continued into the 2020s, leading to the rediscovery of formerly lost media related to the original sightings. Herobrine has been considered one of the most notable legends in video games, with his popularity leading to him ranking on a Guinness World Records poll for the best video game villains despite never truly existing within Minecraft. The character has been referenced several times by the developers of Minecraft, appearing on official artwork as well. Origins and characteristics In 2010, during Minecraft's alpha stage of development, an anonymous post was made on 4chan's /v/ board, where the author claimed to encounter a mysterious entity while playing the game. The post claimed that shortly after starting a new world, the author saw what they believed to be a cow in the distance, which they approached in order to kill it. Upon approaching it, they instead saw a second player character with solid white eyes staring at them from the fog before vanishing. After the encounter, the author noticed numerous strange structures that they did not create. They claimed that when trying to contact other players about the event, they found their posts removed, eventually receiving a message from a user named "Herobrine" that simply said "stop." The anonymous post went on to claim that other players informed him that Herobrine was the alias of the brother of Notch, the creator of Minecraft. The 4chan post claimed that Notch said, in response to queries about whether he had a brother, "I did, but he is no longer with us." Around the same time, another anonymous post on 4chan wrote about another entity the author seemingly encountered in a cave after listening to the in-game music disc "13", which also had white eyes that lurked in the fog. This encounter was simply named "White Eyes", and was believed to be related to Herobrine. Shortly after the original stories were published, livestreamers Copeland and Patimuss, the former of which saw and liked the original posts, staged Herobrine encounters of their own. In Copeland's stream, he played in a survival world with a custom texture pack for around two hours while working on a house. After entering a room he was planning on furnishing, he saw Herobrine staring at him and he quickly left the house and exited the game, before ending the livestream. This encounter was created by Copeland modifying in-game textures to make Herobrine appear. Afterwards, viewers of the livestream were redirected to a GIF depicting Herobrine with moving, realistic eyes. In Patimuss' stream, he encountered Herobrine walking on lava while playing the game, before promptly shutting the game down. After Copeland's stream, he claimed that his computer crashed when trying to go live again afterwards. He then shared a webpage with the title "him.html". The page featured a gif of Steve, the default skin of Minecraft, with his pixelated eyes replaced with realistic, moving ones, as well as text at the bottom that wrote about how the reader was "living in a fantasy world inside their mind" and needed to "wake up." This granted Herobrine the additional nickname "HIM." After these streams, the popularity of Herobrine spread across the Minecraft community, with people creating their own alleged sightings, as well as developing Minecraft mods to add the character to the game themselves. Most claimed sightings of Herobrine are accompanied by red text annotations and eerie music. In stories and mods centered around Herobrine, he is typically summoned through the creation of a structure made up of gold and other in-game materials. His most common traits include constructing abnormal structures and causing destruction, such as by digging random tunnels throughout the world and removing the leaves from trees. Reception and legacy Herobrine gained widespread popularity in the 2010s, becoming a notable part of the Minecraft community and an internet meme. Several other Minecraft creepypastas have been created by fans, such as Entity 303, though none were able to reach similar levels of notoriety as Herobrine. VG247 writer Nadia Oxford described Herobrine as one of the Minecraft fan works, and IGN writer Paul Dean wrote Herobrine to be the "most popular example of a game haunting ever." Lauren Morton of PC Gamer wrote that, despite Herobrine never having truly existed, the character "lives on in the minds of plenty of Minecraft players" who were interested in him when younger. Gabriel Menotti cited Herobrine as an example of how user-generated recordings for video games could change player's imaginations, and view the game beyond its original scope. Some players believed Herobrine to be real despite the character never existing, which caused employees of Mojang to comment on the character. Notch in particular has denied the existence of Herobrine numerous times, and tweeted that he never had a brother in 2011. Despite this, Mojang has made many references to Herobrine; in numerous versions of Minecraft, the update logs have included the term "Removed Herobrine" as a joke. "We don't usually talk about Herobrine," Minecraft lead designer Jens "Jeb" Bergensten told G1. "It's a mystery [...] And we don't quite confirm if it's true or false.": 00:21–46 Minecraft director Agnes Larsson added that a creature in the game called the Warden takes inspiration from the community's horror "myths". In A Minecraft Movie (2025), a film adaptation of Minecraft, a scene depicts Steve (portrayed by Jack Black) with glowing white eyes, during a hallucination from an enderman. This scene was widely interpreted by fans as a reference to Herobrine, although creative director Torfi Frans Olafsson stated that the white eyes were actually a visual effects glitch that was left in due to time constraints. Several viewed this as an ironic coincidence due to Herobrine's nature as a figure that haunts the game and doesn't truly exist. In 2013, Herobrine ranked 46th on a poll for the Top 50 Video Game Villains of All Time, which was organized by Guinness World Records. Fan-made books based on Herobrine have been published, such as The Legend of Herobrine. In 2021, continued interest in the story resulted in the world seed of the original Herobrine sighting being discovered by a group of players known as the Minecraft@Home project. Similarly, in 2020, a Minecraft player known as Enderboss25 gained contact with Copeland in an effort to recover the footage of the original livestream that caused Herobrine's popularity. While the original footage was long gone, the original world file was recovered, and a recreation of the livestream was made in a joint effort by the two. In July 2024, the original livestream was uploaded to YouTube by user brutallillfjomp, who had saved the stream in 2010 and was unaware that it was considered lost until watching a video on it the previous day. References External links
========================================

[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_language_model] \| [TOKENS: 386]
Contents Small language model Small language models or compact language models are artificial intelligence language models designed for human natural language processing including language and text generation. They are smaller in scale and scope than large language models. A large language model typically contains hundreds of billions of training parameters, with some models exceeding a trillion parameters. This substantial parameter count enables the model to encode vast amounts of information, thereby improving the generalizability and accuracy of its outputs. However, training such models demands enormous computational resources, rendering it infeasible for an individual to do so using a single computer and graphics processing unit. Small language models, on the other hand, use far fewer parameters, typically ranging from a few thousand to a few hundred million. This make them more feasible to train and host in resource-constrained environments such as a single computer or even a mobile device. Most contemporary (2020s) small language models use the same architecture as a large language model, but with a smaller parameter count and sometimes lower arithmetic precision. Parameter count is reduced by a combination of knowledge distillation and pruning. Precision can be reduced by quantization. Work on large language models mostly translate to small language models: pruning and quantization are also widely used to speed up large language models. Models Some notable models are: Phi-4 14B is marginally "small" at best, but Microsoft does market it as a small model. Language model with small pre-training dataset Traditional AI language systems need enormous computers and vast amounts of data. Pre-training matters, even tiny models show significant performance improvements when pre-trained performance increases with larger pre-training datasets. Classification accuracy improves when pre-training and test datasets share similar tokens. Shallow architectures can replicate deep model performance through collaborative learning. See also References This statistics-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. This article about natural language processing is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information.
========================================

[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Bergensten] \| [TOKENS: 681]
Contents Jens Bergensten Jens Peder Bergensten (born 18 May 1979), known professionally as Jeb, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is best known as the lead designer of Minecraft, and is the chief creative officer of Mojang Studios. In 2013, he, along with Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson, was named as one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world. As an employee of Mojang Studios, he had been co-developing Minecraft with Persson since 2010, became the lead designer in 2011, and assumed full control in 2014, when Persson left the company after its acquisition. Personal life Jens Peder Bergensten was born on 18 May 1979 in Örebro, Sweden. On 11 May 2013, Bergensten married photographer Jenny Bergensten (née Thornell). On 10 December 2015, Bergensten had a son, Björn. Career Bergensten started programming his first games at 11 years old, using BASIC and Turbo Pascal. By age 21, he was a mapper and modder for the first-person shooter game Quake III Arena. He worked as a C++ and Java programmer for the game developer Korkeken Interactive Studio, which went bankrupt and became Oblivion Entertainment. After the insolvency of Oblivion Entertainment, Bergensten moved to Malmö and earned a master's degree in computer science at Lund University in 2008. During his time working at Korkeken (meaning the cork oak), Bergensten spent his free time leading the development for the online role-playing game Whispers in Akarra, which entertained a small playerbase of several hundred players. He later discontinued this project after straying from the team's original creative vision for the project. Bergensten publicly released the world editors and source code for Akarra's server client in 2008. Afterwards, he founded the indie game development company Oxeye Game Studio with Daniel Brynolf and Pontus Hammarber, who wanted to create a spiritual successor to Whispers in Akarra.[citation needed] The studio's first project was Dawn of Daria, a self-described "massively-multiplayer fantasy life simulator".[citation needed] After several public alpha tests, the project was discontinued like its predecessor, and Oxeye Games Studio switched their focus to various game jam project and tech demos.[citation needed] The company was soon known for the real-time strategy game Harvest: Massive Encounter[citation needed] and later the platform games Cobalt and Cobalt WASD. Until 24 November 2010, Bergensten worked for the online knowledge community; Planeto. In November 2010, Bergensten was hired as Mojang's back-end developer for Scrolls (now known as Caller's Bane). He later began programming increasingly significant parts of Minecraft until he became its lead designer in December 2011, taking over from Markus Persson. Bergensten was part of the team that developed Catacomb Snatch as part of Humble Bundle Mojam, a game jam.[citation needed] In recent years, Bergensten has been featured in the teaser videos for Minecraft Live along with Agnes Larsson. Currently, Bergensten serves as the chief creative officer of Mojang Studios. Ludography Filmography Awards and nominations References External links
========================================

[SOURCE: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%93_%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D7%99] \| [TOKENS: 4698]
עמוד ראשי הידעת פורטלים פורטל היום יום פטירתו של דאנקן אדוארדס פורטל הכדורגל הוא שער לכל הנושאים בוויקיפדיה הקשורים בכדורגל. בפורטל נמצאים קישורים לערכים ולתמונות נבחרות בנושא, לאישים בולטים בתחום, למושגים חשובים ולנושאי משנה. הציטוט היומי כל המוסיף גורע הטיפ היומי בארגז החול ניתן לבצע ניסויי עריכה בבטחה. גשו לארגז החול, לחצו על הלשונית "עריכה" ונסו בעצמכם! חדשות ואקטואליה ערך מומלץ גרשֹם שלום (1897–1982) היה מגדולי חוקרי הקבלה, ספרן, וכן אספן ספרי קבלה, חסידות ומיסטיקה. בניגוד למשפחתו המתבוללת, נמשך ליהדות והיה חבר בארגון הציוני "יוּנג יוּדה". הוא למד עברית ותלמוד מגיל צעיר ובגיל 18 החל ללמוד את ספר הזוהר בכוחות עצמו. את עבודת הדוקטורט שלו, על ספר הבהיר, עשה באוניברסיטת ברלין. בשנת 1923 עלה לארץ ישראל וניהל את המחלקה ליהדות בבית הספרים הלאומי. בין השנים 1925 ל-1964 היה מרצה לקבלה באוניברסיטה העברית. במהלך הקריירה שלו הוזמן להרצות במוסדות אקדמיים יוקרתיים בכל העולם. פעילותו הציבורית כללה, בין היתר, פרסום מאמרים בענייני השעה, חברות בתנועת "ברית שלום", ושליחות מטעם האוניברסיטה העברית לאירופה לשם הצלת ספרים שהוחרמו בתקופת השואה. בנוסף, סייע בהקמת מספר מכוני מחקר ומוסדות אקדמיים ואף עמד בראש חלק מהם. שלום הקדיש את חייו לחקר המיסטיקה היהודית והיה מהראשונים שחקרו את התחום באמצעות כלי מחקר אקדמיים. הוא גילה והוציא לאור כתבי יד רבים בתחום הקבלה וחקר את כל ענפי תורת הסוד היהודית. בהגיעו לגיל 80 מנתה הביבליוגרפיה שלו כ-600 מחקרים בתחום הקבלה. עם ספריו הנודעים ביותר ניתן למנות את סדרת הרצאותיו, משנת 1938, על הזרמים העיקריים של המיסטיקה היהודית (באנגלית), ומחקרו על שבתי צבי והתנועה השבתאית בימי חייו, משנת 1957, שניהם תורגמו לשפות רבות והקנו לו הכרה בינלאומית. על פועלו האקדמי הוא זכה בתוארי כבוד ובפרסים רבים בארץ ובמדינות שונות בעולם, אף על פי שחלק ממחקריו, בעיקר בתחום החסידות והשבתאות, עורר בשעתו מחלוקות קשות. השפעתה של תורתו חרגה מעבר לעולם האקדמיה ומדעי היהדות, והיא ממשיכה להשפיע על רבים גם לאחר מותו. מדי שנה מתפרסמים קבצים המכנסים את מחקריו בנושאים שונים, וכן מתפרסמים יומניו האישיים ותכתובות שניהל. במקביל, מתפרסמים עשרות מחקרים על מחקריו, שחלקם באים להפריך חלק מהנחות היסוד שקבע. לאחר מותו, בהתאם להוראות שהשאיר, הועברו לספרייה הלאומית ארכיונו וספרייתו בתורת הסוד, שהכילו כ-25,000 ספרים שקיבץ במשך חייו, מחציתם בתורת הסוד, והם כוללים את מרבית הפרסומים בדפוס בתחום זה. תמונת היום היום בהיסטוריה 21 בפברואר – חודש פברואר – היום בהיסטוריה אירועים בלוח העברי פרשת השבוע: תרומההדף היומי: מסכת מנחות, דף מ"אד' באדר ה'תשפ"ו - אירועים בלוח העברי ערך מומלץ גרשֹם שלום (1897–1982) היה מגדולי חוקרי הקבלה, ספרן, וכן אספן ספרי קבלה, חסידות ומיסטיקה. בניגוד למשפחתו המתבוללת, נמשך ליהדות והיה חבר בארגון הציוני "יוּנג יוּדה". הוא למד עברית ותלמוד מגיל צעיר ובגיל 18 החל ללמוד את ספר הזוהר בכוחות עצמו. את עבודת הדוקטורט שלו, על ספר הבהיר, עשה באוניברסיטת ברלין. בשנת 1923 עלה לארץ ישראל וניהל את המחלקה ליהדות בבית הספרים הלאומי. בין השנים 1925 ל-1964 היה מרצה לקבלה באוניברסיטה העברית. במהלך הקריירה שלו הוזמן להרצות במוסדות אקדמיים יוקרתיים בכל העולם. פעילותו הציבורית כללה, בין היתר, פרסום מאמרים בענייני השעה, חברות בתנועת "ברית שלום", ושליחות מטעם האוניברסיטה העברית לאירופה לשם הצלת ספרים שהוחרמו בתקופת השואה. בנוסף, סייע בהקמת מספר מכוני מחקר ומוסדות אקדמיים ואף עמד בראש חלק מהם. שלום הקדיש את חייו לחקר המיסטיקה היהודית והיה מהראשונים שחקרו את התחום באמצעות כלי מחקר אקדמיים. הוא גילה והוציא לאור כתבי יד רבים בתחום הקבלה וחקר את כל ענפי תורת הסוד היהודית. בהגיעו לגיל 80 מנתה הביבליוגרפיה שלו כ-600 מחקרים בתחום הקבלה. עם ספריו הנודעים ביותר ניתן למנות את סדרת הרצאותיו, משנת 1938, על הזרמים העיקריים של המיסטיקה היהודית (באנגלית), ומחקרו על שבתי צבי והתנועה השבתאית בימי חייו, משנת 1957, שניהם תורגמו לשפות רבות והקנו לו הכרה בינלאומית. על פועלו האקדמי הוא זכה בתוארי כבוד ובפרסים רבים בארץ ובמדינות שונות בעולם, אף על פי שחלק ממחקריו, בעיקר בתחום החסידות והשבתאות, עורר בשעתו מחלוקות קשות. השפעתה של תורתו חרגה מעבר לעולם האקדמיה ומדעי היהדות, והיא ממשיכה להשפיע על רבים גם לאחר מותו. מדי שנה מתפרסמים קבצים המכנסים את מחקריו בנושאים שונים, וכן מתפרסמים יומניו האישיים ותכתובות שניהל. במקביל, מתפרסמים עשרות מחקרים על מחקריו, שחלקם באים להפריך חלק מהנחות היסוד שקבע. לאחר מותו, בהתאם להוראות שהשאיר, הועברו לספרייה הלאומית ארכיונו וספרייתו בתורת הסוד, שהכילו כ-25,000 ספרים שקיבץ במשך חייו, מחציתם בתורת הסוד, והם כוללים את מרבית הפרסומים בדפוס בתחום זה. פורטלים פורטל היום יום פטירתו של דאנקן אדוארדס פורטל הכדורגל הוא שער לכל הנושאים בוויקיפדיה הקשורים בכדורגל. בפורטל נמצאים קישורים לערכים ולתמונות נבחרות בנושא, לאישים בולטים בתחום, למושגים חשובים ולנושאי משנה. הציטוט היומי כל המוסיף גורע תמונת היום הטיפ היומי בארגז החול ניתן לבצע ניסויי עריכה בבטחה. גשו לארגז החול, לחצו על הלשונית "עריכה" ונסו בעצמכם! הידעת היום בהיסטוריה 21 בפברואר – חודש פברואר – היום בהיסטוריה אירועים בלוח העברי פרשת השבוע: תרומההדף היומי: מסכת מנחות, דף מ"אד' באדר ה'תשפ"ו - אירועים בלוח העברי חדשות ואקטואליה ויקיפדיה מופעלת על ידי קרן ויקימדיה, המפעילה מספר מיזמים רב־לשוניים וחופשיים נוספים:מיזמי ויקימדיה נוספים: Welcome to the Hebrew Wikipedia! For assistance in other languages, please see the embassy. ללא הודעת הגנה אוטומטית
========================================

[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_model] \| [TOKENS: 1793]
Contents Language model A language model is a computational model that predicts sequences in natural language. Language models are useful for a variety of tasks, including speech recognition, machine translation, natural language generation (generating more human-like text), optical character recognition, route optimization, handwriting recognition, grammar induction, and information retrieval. Large language models (LLMs), currently their most advanced form as of 2019, are predominantly based on transformers trained on larger datasets (frequently using texts scraped from the public internet). They have superseded recurrent neural network-based models, which had previously superseded the purely statistical models, such as the word n-gram language model. History Noam Chomsky did pioneering work on language models in the 1950s by developing a theory of formal grammars. In 1980, statistical approaches were explored and found to be more useful for many purposes than rule-based formal grammars. Discrete representations like word n-gram language models, with probabilities for discrete combinations of words, made significant advances. In the 2000s, continuous representations for words, such as word embeddings, began to replace discrete representations. Typically, the representation is a real-valued vector that encodes a word’s meaning such that words closer in vector space are similar in meaning and common relationships between words, such as plurality or gender, are preserved. Pure statistical models In 1980, the first significant statistical language model was proposed, and during the decade IBM performed 'Shannon-style' experiments, in which potential sources for language modeling improvement were identified by observing and analyzing the performance of human subjects in predicting or correcting text. A word n-gram language model is a statistical model of language which calculates the probability of the next word in a sequence from a fixed size window of previous words. If one previous word is considered, it is a bigram model; if two words, a trigram model; if n − 1 words, an n-gram model. Special tokens are introduced to denote the start and end of a sentence ⟨ s ⟩ {\displaystyle \langle s\rangle } and ⟨ / s ⟩ {\displaystyle \langle /s\rangle } . To prevent a zero probability being assigned to unseen words, the probability of each seen word is slightly lowered to make room for the unseen words in a given corpus. To achieve this, various smoothing methods are used, from simple "add-one" smoothing (assigning a count of 1 to unseen n-grams, as an uninformative prior) to more sophisticated techniques, such as Good–Turing discounting or back-off models. Word n-gram models have largely been superseded by recurrent neural network–based models, which in turn have been superseded by Transformer-based models often referred to as large language models. Maximum entropy language models encode the relationship between a word and the n-gram history using feature functions. The equation is P ( w m ∣ w 1 , … , w m − 1 ) = 1 Z ( w 1 , … , w m − 1 ) exp ⁡ ( a T f ( w 1 , … , w m ) ) {\displaystyle P(w_{m}\mid w_{1},\ldots ,w_{m-1})={\frac {1}{Z(w_{1},\ldots ,w_{m-1})}}\exp(a^{T}f(w_{1},\ldots ,w_{m}))} where Z ( w 1 , … , w m − 1 ) {\displaystyle Z(w_{1},\ldots ,w_{m-1})} is the partition function, a {\displaystyle a} is the parameter vector, and f ( w 1 , … , w m ) {\displaystyle f(w_{1},\ldots ,w_{m})} is the feature function. In the simplest case, the feature function is just an indicator of the presence of a certain n-gram. It is helpful to use a prior on a {\displaystyle a} or some form of regularization. The log-bilinear model is another example of an exponential language model. Skip-gram language model is an attempt at overcoming the data sparsity problem that the preceding model (i.e. word n-gram language model) faced. Words represented in an embedding vector were not necessarily consecutive anymore, but could leave gaps that are skipped over (thus the name "skip-gram"). Formally, a k-skip-n-gram is a length-n subsequence where the components occur at distance at most k from each other. For example, in the input text: the set of 1-skip-2-grams includes all the bigrams (2-grams), and in addition the subsequences In skip-gram model, semantic relations between words are represented by linear combinations, capturing a form of compositionality. For example, in some such models, if v is the function that maps a word w to its n-d vector representation, then v ( k i n g ) − v ( m a l e ) + v ( f e m a l e ) ≈ v ( q u e e n ) {\displaystyle v(\mathrm {king} )-v(\mathrm {male} )+v(\mathrm {female} )\approx v(\mathrm {queen} )} where ≈ is made precise by stipulating that its right-hand side must be the nearest neighbor of the value of the left-hand side. Neural models Continuous representations or embeddings of words are produced in recurrent neural network-based language models (known also as continuous space language models). Such continuous space embeddings help to alleviate the curse of dimensionality, which is the consequence of the number of possible sequences of words increasing exponentially with the size of the vocabulary, further causing a data sparsity problem. Neural networks avoid this problem by representing words as non-linear combinations of weights in a neural net. A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. The largest and most capable LLMs are generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) that provide the core capabilities of modern chatbots. LLMs can be fine-tuned for specific tasks or guided by prompt engineering. These models acquire predictive power regarding syntax, semantics, and ontologies inherent in human language corpora, but they also inherit inaccuracies and biases present in the data they are trained on. They consist of billions to trillions of parameters and operate as general-purpose sequence models, generating, summarizing, translating, and reasoning over text. LLMs represent a significant new technology in their ability to generalize across tasks with minimal task-specific supervision, enabling capabilities like conversational agents, code generation, knowledge retrieval, and automated reasoning that previously required bespoke systems. LLMs evolved from earlier statistical and recurrent neural network approaches to language modeling. The transformer architecture, introduced in 2017, replaced recurrence with self-attention, allowing efficient parallelization, longer context handling, and scalable training on unprecedented data volumes. This innovation enabled models like GPT, BERT, and their successors, which demonstrated emergent behaviors at scale, such as few-shot learning and compositional reasoning. Reinforcement learning, particularly policy gradient algorithms, has been adapted to fine-tune LLMs for desired behaviors beyond raw next-token prediction. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) applies these methods to optimize a policy, the LLM's output distribution, against reward signals derived from human or automated preference judgments. This has been critical for aligning model outputs with user expectations, improving factuality, reducing harmful responses, and enhancing task performance. Benchmark evaluations for LLMs have evolved from narrow linguistic assessments toward comprehensive, multi-task evaluations measuring reasoning, factual accuracy, alignment, and safety. Hill climbing, iteratively optimizing models against benchmarks, has emerged as a dominant strategy, producing rapid incremental performance gains but raising concerns of overfitting to benchmarks rather than achieving genuine generalization or robust capability improvements. Although sometimes matching human performance, it is not clear whether they are plausible cognitive models. At least for recurrent neural networks, it has been shown that they sometimes learn patterns that humans do not, but fail to learn patterns that humans typically do. Evaluation and benchmarks Evaluation of the quality of language models is mostly done by comparison to human created sample benchmarks created from typical language-oriented tasks. Other, less established, quality tests examine the intrinsic character of a language model or compare two such models. Since language models are typically intended to be dynamic and to learn from data they see, some proposed models investigate the rate of learning, e.g., through inspection of learning curves. Various data sets have been developed for use in evaluating language processing systems. These include: See also References Further reading
========================================

[SOURCE: https://phys.org/technology-news/] \| [TOKENS: 2983]
Sign in with Forget Password? Learn more Last update Humanoid home robots are on the market—but do we really want them? , 12 hours ago Security AI 'blind spot' could allow attackers to hijack self-driving vehicles A newly discovered vulnerability could allow cybercriminals to silently hijack the artificial intelligence (AI) systems in self-driving cars, raising concerns about the security of autonomous systems increasingly used on ... 14 hours ago 0 12 Security A newly discovered vulnerability could allow cybercriminals to silently hijack the artificial intelligence (AI) systems in self-driving cars, raising concerns about the security of autonomous systems increasingly used on ... 14 hours ago 0 12 Electronics & Semiconductors New chip-fabrication method creates 'twin' fingerprints for direct authentication Just like each person has unique fingerprints, every CMOS chip has a distinctive "fingerprint" caused by tiny, random manufacturing variations. Engineers can leverage this unforgeable ID for authentication, to safeguard a ... 14 hours ago 0 23 Electronics & Semiconductors Just like each person has unique fingerprints, every CMOS chip has a distinctive "fingerprint" caused by tiny, random manufacturing variations. Engineers can leverage this unforgeable ID for authentication, to safeguard a ... 14 hours ago 0 23 Robot hand approaches human-like dexterity with new visual-tactile training Feb 17, 2026 0 Feb 17, 2026 0 Ultrafast 3D printing method creates complex objects in under a second Feb 17, 2026 0 Feb 17, 2026 0 Hydrogen-bond networks boost all-perovskite solar cell efficiency Feb 17, 2026 0 Feb 17, 2026 0 Why AI may overcomplicate answers: Humans and LLMs show 'addition bias,' often choosing extra steps over subtraction Feb 15, 2026 0 Feb 15, 2026 0 LLMs violate boundaries during mental health dialogues, study finds Feb 15, 2026 0 Feb 15, 2026 0 AI chatbots provide less-accurate information to vulnerable users, study shows Large language models (LLMs) have been championed as tools that could democratize access to information worldwide, offering knowledge in a user-friendly interface regardless of a person's background or location. However, ... 15 hours ago 0 6 Large language models (LLMs) have been championed as tools that could democratize access to information worldwide, offering knowledge in a user-friendly interface regardless of a person's background or location. However, ... 15 hours ago 0 6 Physics-aware AI algorithm uses Newton's third law to keep simulations stable A team of EPFL researchers has developed an AI algorithm that can model complex dynamical processes while taking into account the laws of physics—using Newton's third law. Their research is published in the journal Nature ... 15 hours ago 0 0 A team of EPFL researchers has developed an AI algorithm that can model complex dynamical processes while taking into account the laws of physics—using Newton's third law. Their research is published in the journal Nature ... 15 hours ago 0 0 Shipping damage, measured in real time: How wireless origami cushioning could improve logistics Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding, has received considerable attention in engineering. By applying paper-folding principles, researchers have created compact structures that are flexible, lightweight, ... 15 hours ago 0 0 Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding, has received considerable attention in engineering. By applying paper-folding principles, researchers have created compact structures that are flexible, lightweight, ... 15 hours ago 0 0 Robotics Humanoid robots that 'catch themselves' instead of falling: What a new walking algorithm changes While the statement, "Humanoid robots are coming," might cause anxiety for some, for one Georgia Tech research team, working with humanlike robots couldn't be more exciting. The researchers have developed a new "thinking" ... 19 hours ago 0 15 Robotics While the statement, "Humanoid robots are coming," might cause anxiety for some, for one Georgia Tech research team, working with humanlike robots couldn't be more exciting. The researchers have developed a new "thinking" ... 19 hours ago 0 15 Business Will you notice this ad? New AI model predicts attention from content context Researchers at the University of Maryland and Tilburg University in the Netherlands have produced an AI-driven innovation to reshape how marketers place digital ads. AdGazer, a predictive tool, evaluates both an advertisement ... 17 hours ago 0 12 Business Researchers at the University of Maryland and Tilburg University in the Netherlands have produced an AI-driven innovation to reshape how marketers place digital ads. AdGazer, a predictive tool, evaluates both an advertisement ... 17 hours ago 0 12 Technology news Computer Sciences Pinpointing direction in noisy 2D data: New algorithm could improve imaging, AI, particle research and more A University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa student-led team has developed a new algorithm to help scientists determine direction in complex two-dimensional (2D) data, with potential applications ranging from particle physics to machine ... 18 hours ago 0 0 Computer Sciences Pinpointing direction in noisy 2D data: New algorithm could improve imaging, AI, particle research and more A University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa student-led team has developed a new algorithm to help scientists determine direction in complex two-dimensional (2D) data, with potential applications ranging from particle physics to machine ... 18 hours ago 0 0 Machine learning & AI We trust AI with life and death decisions, but humans still don't challenge the AI's choices AI systems already decide how ambulances are routed, how supply chains operate and how autonomous drones plan their missions. Yet when those systems make a risky or counterintuitive choice, humans are often expected to accept ... 20 hours ago 0 0 Machine learning & AI We trust AI with life and death decisions, but humans still don't challenge the AI's choices AI systems already decide how ambulances are routed, how supply chains operate and how autonomous drones plan their missions. Yet when those systems make a risky or counterintuitive choice, humans are often expected to accept ... 20 hours ago 0 0 Consumer & Gadgets Most AI bots lack basic safety disclosures, study finds Many people use AI chatbots to plan meals and write emails, AI-enhanced web browsers to book travel and buy tickets, and workplace AI to generate invoices and performance reports. However, a new study of the "AI agent ecosystem" ... Feb 19, 2026 0 5 Consumer & Gadgets Most AI bots lack basic safety disclosures, study finds Many people use AI chatbots to plan meals and write emails, AI-enhanced web browsers to book travel and buy tickets, and workplace AI to generate invoices and performance reports. However, a new study of the "AI agent ecosystem" ... Feb 19, 2026 0 5 Computer Sciences Exposing biases, moods, personalities and abstract concepts hidden in large language models By now, ChatGPT, Claude, and other large language models have accumulated so much human knowledge that they're far from simple answer-generators; they can also express abstract concepts, such as certain tones, personalities, ... Feb 19, 2026 0 21 Computer Sciences Exposing biases, moods, personalities and abstract concepts hidden in large language models By now, ChatGPT, Claude, and other large language models have accumulated so much human knowledge that they're far from simple answer-generators; they can also express abstract concepts, such as certain tones, personalities, ... Feb 19, 2026 0 21 Engineering Resilient nylon-11 film generates electricity from pressure and survives repeated runovers RMIT University researchers have developed a flexible nylon-film device that generates electricity from compression and keeps working even after being run over by a car multiple times, opening the door to self-powered sensors ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Engineering Resilient nylon-11 film generates electricity from pressure and survives repeated runovers RMIT University researchers have developed a flexible nylon-film device that generates electricity from compression and keeps working even after being run over by a car multiple times, opening the door to self-powered sensors ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Business Cyber-attacks could disrupt smart factories by targeting time itself A cyber-attack does not always need to steal data or shut systems down to cause damage. Sometimes it only needs to shift the clock. Researchers at the University of East London (UEL), in collaboration with industry, have ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Business Cyber-attacks could disrupt smart factories by targeting time itself A cyber-attack does not always need to steal data or shut systems down to cause damage. Sometimes it only needs to shift the clock. Researchers at the University of East London (UEL), in collaboration with industry, have ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Software Security vulnerabilities in Tesla's Model 3 and Cybertruck reveal how connected cars can be hacked Hackers could exploit wireless systems in Tesla's Model 3 and Cybertruck to track vehicles, disrupt communications, and interfere with network performance, according to research from Northeastern University posted to the ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Software Security vulnerabilities in Tesla's Model 3 and Cybertruck reveal how connected cars can be hacked Hackers could exploit wireless systems in Tesla's Model 3 and Cybertruck to track vehicles, disrupt communications, and interfere with network performance, according to research from Northeastern University posted to the ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Engineering New gel electrolyte points to stronger, safer anode-free lithium batteries Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a new gel electrolyte that both improves the lifetime and safety of anode-free lithium batteries, an emerging battery architecture that could dramatically boost energy density ... Feb 19, 2026 0 9 Engineering New gel electrolyte points to stronger, safer anode-free lithium batteries Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a new gel electrolyte that both improves the lifetime and safety of anode-free lithium batteries, an emerging battery architecture that could dramatically boost energy density ... Feb 19, 2026 0 9 Electronics & Semiconductors What does 'flexibility' actually look like? New findings suggest speed limits for wearable devices Flexible electronics are often sold on a simple promise: bendable screens, lightweight solar cells or wearable devices that can bend and flex without breaking. But what does that "flexibility" actually look like at the molecular ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Electronics & Semiconductors What does 'flexibility' actually look like? New findings suggest speed limits for wearable devices Flexible electronics are often sold on a simple promise: bendable screens, lightweight solar cells or wearable devices that can bend and flex without breaking. But what does that "flexibility" actually look like at the molecular ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Computer Sciences 'Learn-to-Steer' method improves AI's ability to understand spatial instructions Researchers from the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University and from NVIDIA's AI research center in Israel have developed a new method that significantly improves how artificial intelligence models understand ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Computer Sciences 'Learn-to-Steer' method improves AI's ability to understand spatial instructions Researchers from the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University and from NVIDIA's AI research center in Israel have developed a new method that significantly improves how artificial intelligence models understand ... Feb 19, 2026 0 0 Humanoid home robots are on the market—but do we really want them? 12 hours ago 12 hours ago Tackling uplift resistance in tall infrastructure sustainably 15 hours ago 15 hours ago 'Alpha male' AI world shuts out women: Computing prof Hall 16 hours ago 16 hours ago Investigating how people respond to air taxi noise 16 hours ago 16 hours ago Mississippi hospital system closes all clinics after ransomware attack 16 hours ago 16 hours ago You can give old batteries a new life by safely recycling them 16 hours ago 16 hours ago 3D vision technology powers factory automation 21 hours ago 21 hours ago Nvidia nears deal for scaled-down investment in OpenAI: Report Feb 20, 2026 Feb 20, 2026 India chases 'DeepSeek moment' with homegrown AI Feb 20, 2026 Feb 20, 2026 UN touts panel for 'human control' of AI at global summit Feb 20, 2026 Feb 20, 2026 A design thinker's guide to AI and creativity Feb 19, 2026 Feb 19, 2026 Google Gemini, Apple add music-focused generative AI features Feb 19, 2026 Feb 19, 2026 Hot cities, safer buildings: A cooling coating that can also reduce fire risk Feb 19, 2026 Feb 19, 2026 Why city street surveys miss methane leaks, and what that means for safety Feb 19, 2026 Feb 19, 2026 OpenAI blocked from using Cameo name for its AI video features Feb 19, 2026 Feb 19, 2026 Laser-etched glass can store data for 10,000 years, Microsoft says Feb 18, 2026 Feb 18, 2026 AI and kindness: Are we morally obligated to be kind to Grok? Feb 18, 2026 Feb 18, 2026 3D printing platform rapidly produces complex electric machines Feb 18, 2026 Feb 18, 2026 New polymer alloy could solve energy storage challenge Feb 18, 2026 Feb 18, 2026 Dry-processed battery electrodes skip slurry and deliver better high-voltage cycling Feb 18, 2026 Feb 18, 2026 Daily science news on research developments and the latest scientific innovations Medical research advances and health news The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web Newsletters Follow us This site uses cookies to assist with navigation, analyse your use of our services, collect data for ads personalisation and provide content from third parties. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
========================================

[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World] \| [TOKENS: 5641]
Contents World The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object, while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts. In scientific cosmology, the world or universe is commonly defined as "the totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Theories of modality talk of possible worlds as complete and consistent ways how things could have been. Phenomenology, starting from the horizon of co-given objects present in the periphery of every experience, defines the world as the biggest horizon, or the "horizon of all horizons". In philosophy of mind, the world is contrasted with the mind as that which is represented by the mind. Theology conceptualizes the world in relation to God, for example, as God's creation, as identical to God, or as the two being interdependent. In religions, there is a tendency to downgrade the material or sensory world in favor of a spiritual world to be sought through religious practice. A comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it, as is found in religions, is known as a worldview. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world, while eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. In various contexts, the term "world" takes a more restricted meaning associated, for example, with the Earth and all life on it, with humanity as a whole, or with an international or intercontinental scope. In this sense, world history refers to the history of humanity as a whole, and world politics is the discipline of political science studying issues that transcend nations and continents. Other examples include terms such as "world religion", "world language", "world government", "world war", "world population", "world economy", or "world championship". Etymology The English word world comes from the Old English weorold. The Old English is a reflex of the Common Germanic *weraldiz, a compound of weraz 'man' and aldiz 'age', thus literally meaning roughly 'age of man'; this word led to Old Frisian warld, Old Saxon werold, Old Dutch werolt, Old High German weralt, and Old Norse verǫld. The corresponding word in Latin is mundus, literally 'clean, elegant', itself a loan translation of Greek cosmos 'orderly arrangement'. While the Germanic word thus reflects a mythological notion of a "domain of Man" (compare Midgard), presumably as opposed to the divine sphere on the one hand and the chthonic sphere of the underworld on the other, the Greco-Latin term expresses a notion of creation as an act of establishing order out of chaos. Conceptions Different fields often work with quite different conceptions of the essential features associated with the term "world". Some conceptions see the world as unique: there can be no more than one world. Others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some see worlds as complex things composed of many substances as their parts while others hold that worlds are simple in the sense that there is only one substance: the world as a whole. Some characterize worlds in terms of objective spacetime while others define them relative to the horizon present in each experience. These different characterizations are not always exclusive: it may be possible to combine some without leading to a contradiction. Most of them agree that worlds are unified totalities. Monism is a thesis about oneness: that only one thing exists in a certain sense. The denial of monism is pluralism, the thesis that, in a certain sense, more than one thing exists. There are many forms of monism and pluralism, but in relation to the world as a whole, two are of special interest: existence monism/pluralism and priority monism/pluralism. Existence monism states that the world is the only concrete object there is. This means that all the concrete "objects" we encounter in our daily lives, including apples, cars and ourselves, are not truly objects in a strict sense. Instead, they are just dependent aspects of the world-object. Such a world-object is simple in the sense that it does not have any genuine parts. For this reason, it has also been referred to as "blobject" since it lacks an internal structure like a blob. Priority monism allows that there are other concrete objects besides the world. But it holds that these objects do not have the most fundamental form of existence, that they somehow depend on the existence of the world. The corresponding forms of pluralism state that the world is complex in the sense that it is made up of concrete, independent objects. Scientific cosmology can be defined as the science of the universe as a whole. In it, the terms "universe" and "cosmos" are usually used as synonyms for the term "world". One common definition of the world/universe found in this field is as "[t]he totality of all space and time; all that is, has been, and will be". Some definitions emphasize that there are two other aspects to the universe besides spacetime: forms of energy or matter, like stars and particles, and laws of nature. World-conceptions in this field differ both concerning their notion of spacetime and of the contents of spacetime. The theory of relativity plays a central role in modern cosmology and its conception of space and time. A difference from its predecessors is that it conceives space and time not as distinct dimensions but as a single four-dimensional manifold called spacetime. This can be seen in special relativity in relation to the Minkowski metric, which includes both spatial and temporal components in its definition of distance. General relativity goes one step further by integrating the concept of mass into the concept of spacetime as its curvature. Quantum cosmology uses a classical notion of spacetime and conceives the whole world as one big wave function expressing the probability of finding particles in a given location. The world-concept plays a role in many modern theories of modality, sometimes in the form of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been. The actual world is a possible world since the way things are is a way things could have been. There are many other ways things could have been besides how they actually are. For example, Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 US election, but she could have won. So there is a possible world in which she did. There is a vast number of possible worlds, one corresponding to each such difference, no matter how small or big, as long as no outright contradictions are introduced this way. Possible worlds are often conceived as abstract objects, for example, in terms of non-obtaining states of affairs or as maximally consistent sets of propositions. On such a view, they can even be seen as belonging to the actual world. Another way to conceive possible worlds, made famous by David Lewis, is as concrete entities. On this conception, there is no important difference between the actual world and possible worlds: both are conceived as concrete, inclusive and spatiotemporally connected. The only difference is that the actual world is the world we live in, while other possible worlds are not inhabited by us but by our counterparts. Everything within a world is spatiotemporally connected to everything else but the different worlds do not share a common spacetime: They are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. This is what makes them separate worlds. It has been suggested that, besides possible worlds, there are also impossible worlds. Possible worlds are ways things could have been, so impossible worlds are ways things could not have been. Such worlds involve a contradiction, like a world in which Hillary Clinton both won and lost the 2016 US election. Both possible and impossible worlds have in common the idea that they are totalities of their constituents. Within phenomenology, worlds are defined in terms of horizons of experiences. When we perceive an object, like a house, we do not just experience this object at the center of our attention but also various other objects surrounding it, given in the periphery. The term "horizon" refers to these co-given objects, which are usually experienced only in a vague, indeterminate manner. The perception of a house involves various horizons, corresponding to the neighborhood, the city, the country, the Earth, etc. In this context, the world is the biggest horizon or the "horizon of all horizons". It is common among phenomenologists to understand the world not just as a spatiotemporal collection of objects but as additionally incorporating various other relations between these objects. These relations include, for example, indication-relations that help us anticipate one object given the appearances of another object and means-end-relations or functional involvements relevant for practical concerns. In philosophy of mind, the term "world" is commonly used in contrast to the term "mind" as that which is represented by the mind. This is sometimes expressed by stating that there is a gap between mind and world and that this gap needs to be overcome for representation to be successful. One problem in philosophy of mind is to explain how the mind is able to bridge this gap and to enter into genuine mind-world-relations, for example, in the form of perception, knowledge or action. This is necessary for the world to be able to rationally constrain the activity of the mind. According to a realist position, the world is something distinct and independent from the mind. Idealists conceive of the world as partially or fully determined by the mind. Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism, for example, posits that the spatiotemporal structure of the world is imposed by the mind on reality but lacks independent existence otherwise. A more radical idealist conception of the world can be found in Berkeley's subjective idealism, which holds that the world as a whole, including all everyday objects like tables, cats, trees and ourselves, "consists of nothing but minds and ideas". Different theological positions hold different conceptions of the world based on its relation to God. Classical theism states that God is wholly distinct from the world. But the world depends for its existence on God, both because God created the world and because He maintains or conserves it. This is sometimes understood in analogy to how humans create and conserve ideas in their imagination, with the difference being that the divine mind is vastly more powerful. On such a view, God has absolute, ultimate reality in contrast to the lower ontological status ascribed to the world. God's involvement in the world is often understood along the lines of a personal, benevolent God who looks after and guides His creation. Deists agree with theists that God created the world but deny any subsequent, personal involvement in it. Pantheists reject the separation between God and world. Instead, they claim that the two are identical. This means that there is nothing to the world that does not belong to God and that there is nothing to God beyond what is found in the world. Panentheism constitutes a middle ground between theism and pantheism. Against theism, it holds that God and the world are interrelated and depend on each other. Against pantheism, it holds that there is no outright identity between the two. History of philosophy In philosophy, the term world has several possible meanings. In some contexts, it refers to everything that makes up reality or the physical universe. In others, it can mean have a specific ontological sense (see world disclosure). While clarifying the concept of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of Western philosophy, this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century, Plato is well known for his theory of forms, which posits the existence of two different worlds: the sensible world and the intelligible world. The sensible world is the world we live in, filled with changing physical things we can see, touch and interact with. The intelligible world is the world of invisible, eternal, changeless forms like goodness, beauty, unity and sameness. Plato ascribes a lower ontological status to the sensible world, which only imitates the world of forms. This is due to the fact that physical things exist only to the extent that they participate in the forms that characterize them, while the forms themselves have an independent manner of existence. In this sense, the sensible world is a mere replication of the perfect exemplars found in the world of forms: it never lives up to the original. In the allegory of the cave, Plato compares the physical things we are familiar with to mere shadows of the real things. But not knowing the difference, the prisoners in the cave mistake the shadows for the real things. Two definitions that were both put forward in the 1920s, however, suggest the range of available opinion. "The world is everything that is the case", wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in his influential Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, argued that "the surrounding world is different for each of us, and notwithstanding that we move about in a common world". "World" is one of the key terms in Eugen Fink's philosophy. He thinks that there is a misguided tendency in western philosophy to understand the world as one enormously big thing containing all the small everyday things we are familiar with. He sees this view as a form of forgetfulness of the world and tries to oppose it by what he calls the "cosmological difference": the difference between the world and the inner-worldly things it contains. On his view, the world is the totality of the inner-worldly things that transcends them. It is itself groundless but it provides a ground for things. It therefore cannot be identified with a mere container. Instead, the world gives appearance to inner-worldly things, it provides them with a place, a beginning and an end. One difficulty in investigating the world is that we never encounter it since it is not just one more thing that appears to us. This is why Fink uses the notion of play or playing to elucidate the nature of the world. He sees play as a symbol of the world that is both part of it and that represents it. Play usually comes with a form of imaginary play-world involving various things relevant to the play. But just like the play is more than the imaginary realities appearing in it so the world is more than the actual things appearing in it. The concept of worlds plays a central role in Nelson Goodman's late philosophy. He argues that we need to posit different worlds in order to account for the fact that there are different incompatible truths found in reality. Two truths are incompatible if they ascribe incompatible properties to the same thing. This happens, for example, when we assert both that the earth moves and that the earth is at rest. These incompatible truths correspond to two different ways of describing the world: heliocentrism and geocentrism. Goodman terms such descriptions "world versions". He holds a correspondence theory of truth: a world version is true if it corresponds to a world. Incompatible true world versions correspond to different worlds. It is common for theories of modality to posit the existence of a plurality of possible worlds. But Goodman's theory is different since it posits a plurality not of possible but of actual worlds. Such a position is in danger of involving a contradiction: there cannot be a plurality of actual worlds if worlds are defined as maximally inclusive wholes. This danger may be avoided by interpreting Goodman's world-concept not as maximally inclusive wholes in the absolute sense but in relation to its corresponding world-version: a world contains all and only the entities that its world-version describes. Religion Mythological cosmologies depict the world as centered on an axis mundi and delimited by a boundary such as a world ocean, a world serpent or similar. Hinduism constitutes a family of religious-philosophical views. These views present perspectives on the nature and role of the world. Samkhya philosophy, for example, is a metaphysical dualism that understands reality as comprising 2 parts: purusha and prakriti. The term "purusha" stands for the individual conscious self that each of "us" possesses. Prakriti, on the other hand, is the 1 world inhabited by all these selves. Samkhya understands this world as a world of matter governed by the law of cause and effect. The term "matter" is understood in a sense in this tradition including physical and mental aspects. This is reflected in the doctrine of tattvas, according to which prakriti is made up of 23 principles or elements of reality. These principles include physical elements, like water or earth, and mental aspects, like intelligence or sense-impressions. The relation between purusha and prakriti is conceived as 1 of observation: purusha is the conscious self aware of the world of prakriti and does not causally interact with it. A conception of the world is present in Advaita Vedanta, the monist school among the Vedanta schools. Unlike the realist position defended in Samkhya philosophy, Advaita Vedanta sees the world of multiplicity as an illusion, referred to as Maya. This illusion includes impression of existing as separate experiencing selfs called Jivas. Instead, Advaita Vedanta teaches that on the most fundamental level of reality, referred to as Brahman, there exists no plurality or difference. All there is is 1 all-encompassing self: Atman. Ignorance is seen as the source of this illusion, which results in bondage to the world of mere appearances. Liberation is possible in the course of overcoming this illusion by acquiring the knowledge of Brahman, according to Advaita Vedanta. Contemptus mundi is the name given to the belief that the world, in all its vanity, is nothing more than a futile attempt to hide from God by stifling our desire for the good and the holy. This view has been characterised as a "pastoral of fear" by historian Jean Delumeau. "The world, the flesh, and the devil" is a traditional division of the sources of temptation. Orbis Catholicus is a Latin phrase meaning "Catholic world", per the expression Urbi et Orbi, and refers to that area of Christendom under papal supremacy. In Islam, the term "dunya" is used for the world. Its meaning is derived from the root word "dana", a term for "near". It is associated with the temporal, sensory world and earthly concerns, i.e. with this world in contrast to the spiritual world. Religious teachings warn of a tendency to seek happiness in this world and advise a more ascetic lifestyle concerned with the afterlife. Other strands in Islam recommend a balanced approach. In Mandaean cosmology, the world or earthly realm is known as Tibil. It is separated from the World of Light (alma d-nhūra) above and the World of Darkness (alma d-hšuka) below by aether (ayar). Related terms and problems A worldview is a comprehensive representation of the world and our place in it. As a representation, it is a subjective perspective of the world and thereby different from the world it represents. All higher animals need to represent their environment in some way in order to navigate it. But it has been argued that only humans possess a representation encompassing enough to merit the term "worldview". Philosophers of worldviews commonly hold that the understanding of any object depends on a worldview constituting the background on which this understanding can take place. This may affect not just our intellectual understanding of the object in question but the experience of it in general. It is therefore impossible to assess one's worldview from a neutral perspective since this assessment already presupposes the worldview as its background. Some hold that each worldview is based on a single hypothesis that promises to solve all the problems of our existence we may encounter. On this interpretation, the term is closely associated to the worldviews given by different religions. Worldviews offer orientation not just in theoretical matters but also in practical matters. For this reason, they usually include answers to the question of the meaning of life and other evaluative components about what matters and how we should act. A worldview can be unique to one individual but worldviews are usually shared by many people within a certain culture or religion. The idea that there exist many different worlds is found in various fields. For example, theories of modality talk about a plurality of possible worlds and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics carries this reference even in its name. Talk of different worlds is also common in everyday language, for example, with reference to the world of music, the world of business, the world of football, the world of experience or the Asian world. But at the same time, worlds are usually defined as all-inclusive totalities. This seems to contradict the very idea of a plurality of worlds since if a world is total and all-inclusive then it cannot have anything outside itself. Understood this way, a world can neither have other worlds besides itself or be part of something bigger. One way to resolve this paradox while holding onto the notion of a plurality of worlds is to restrict the sense in which worlds are totalities. On this view, worlds are not totalities in an absolute sense. This might be even understood in the sense that, strictly speaking, there are no worlds at all. Another approach understands worlds in a schematic sense: as context-dependent expressions that stand for the current domain of discourse. So in the expression "Around the World in Eighty Days", the term "world" refers to the earth while in the colonial expression "the New World" it refers to the landmass of North and South America. Cosmogony is the field that studies the origin or creation of the world. This includes both scientific cosmogony and creation myths found in various religions. The dominant theory in scientific cosmogony is the Big Bang theory, according to which both space, time and matter have their origin in one initial singularity occurring about 13.8 billion years ago. This singularity was followed by an expansion that allowed the universe to sufficiently cool down for the formation of subatomic particles and later atoms. These initial elements formed giant clouds, which would then coalesce into stars and galaxies. Non-scientific creation myths are found in many cultures and are often enacted in rituals expressing their symbolic meaning. They can be categorized concerning their contents. Types often found include creation from nothing, from chaos or from a cosmic egg. Eschatology refers to the science or doctrine of the last things or of the end of the world. It is traditionally associated with religion, specifically with the Abrahamic religions. In this form, it may include teachings both of the end of each individual human life and of the end of the world as a whole. But it has been applied to other fields as well, for example, in the form of physical eschatology, which includes scientifically based speculations about the far future of the universe. According to some models, there will be a Big Crunch in which the whole universe collapses back into a singularity, possibly resulting in a second Big Bang afterward. But current astronomical evidence seems to suggest that our universe will continue to expand indefinitely. World history studies the world from a historical perspective. Unlike other approaches to history, it employs a global viewpoint. It deals less with individual nations and civilizations, which it usually approaches at a high level of abstraction. Instead, it concentrates on wider regions and zones of interaction, often interested in how people, goods and ideas move from one region to another. It includes comparisons of different societies and civilizations as well as considering wide-ranging developments with a long-term global impact like the process of industrialization. Contemporary world history is dominated by three main research paradigms determining the periodization into different epochs. One is based on productive relations between humans and nature. The two most important changes in history in this respect were the introduction of agriculture and husbandry concerning the production of food, which started around 10,000 to 8,000 BCE and is sometimes termed the Neolithic Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, which started around 1760 CE and involved the transition from manual to industrial manufacturing. Another paradigm, focusing on culture and religion instead, is based on Karl Jaspers' theories about the Axial Age, a time in which various new forms of religious and philosophical thoughts appeared in several separate parts of the world around the time between 800 and 200 BCE. A third periodization is based on the relations between civilizations and societies. According to this paradigm, history can be divided into three periods in relation to the dominant region in the world: Middle Eastern dominance before 500 BCE, Eurasian cultural balance until 1500 CE and Western dominance since 1500 CE. Big History employs an even wider framework than world history by putting human history into the context of the history of the universe as a whole. It starts with the Big Bang and traces the formation of galaxies, the Solar System, the Earth, its geological eras, the evolution of life and humans until the present day. World politics, also referred to as global politics or international relations, is the discipline of political science studying issues of interest to the world that transcend nations and continents. It aims to explain complex patterns found in the social world that are often related to the pursuit of power, order and justice, usually in the context of globalization. It focuses not just on the relations between nation-states but also considers other transnational actors, like multinational corporations, terrorist groups, or non-governmental organizations. For example, it tries to explain events such as the September 11 attacks, the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis. Various theories have been proposed in order to deal with the complexity involved in formulating such explanations. These theories are sometimes divided into realism, liberalism and constructivism. Realists see nation-states as the main actors in world politics. They constitute an anarchical international system without any overarching power to control their behavior. They are seen as sovereign agents that, determined by human nature, act according to their national self-interest. Military force may play an important role in the ensuing struggle for power between states, but diplomacy and cooperation are also key mechanisms for nations to achieve their goals. Liberalists acknowledge the importance of states but they also emphasize the role of transnational actors, like the United Nations or the World Trade Organization. They see humans as perfectible and stress the role of democracy in this process. The emergent order in world politics, on this perspective, is more complex than a mere balance of power since more different agents and interests are involved in its production. Constructivism ascribes more importance to the agency of individual humans than realism and liberalism. It understands the social world as a construction of the people living in it. This leads to an emphasis on the possibility of change. If the international system is an anarchy of nation-states, as the realists hold, then this is only so because we made it this way and may change since this is not prefigured by human nature, according to the constructivists. See also References External links Africa Antarctica Asia Australia Europe North America South America Afro-Eurasia Americas Eurasia Oceania
========================================

[SOURCE: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology] \| [TOKENS: 2352]
TechnologyWhy fake AI videos of UK urban decline are taking over social mediaDeepfakes showing grim taxpayer-funded waterparks have gone viral and drawn some racist responses.The Chinese AI app sending Hollywood into a panicFixing fashion's erratic sizing problemI hacked ChatGPT and Google in 20 minutesKeeping TabsNot on TikTok? They're tracking you anywayTikTok is growing its data harvesting empire, and avoiding the app won’t protect you – but some easy steps can keep you safe.ListenThe InterfaceIs your doorbell using AI to spy on you?Doorstep surveillance, the US TikTok takeover, and an AI power struggle at the Super Bowl34 minsSavePersonal TechNew technology helps deaf fans experience the sound of sportNew technologies tested at the Deaflympics in Tokyo are creating new ways of experience the atmosphere at sporting events.Rae fell for a chatbot called Barry, but their love might die when ChatGPT-4o is switched offRae began speaking to Barry after a difficult divorce, but Barry lives on an old model of ChatGPT that's being shut down.The tactile tech giving deaf runners a fair startA gold medallist has developed a vibrating starting block to give deaf athletes clearer, fairer race starts.I turned myself into an AI-generated deathbot - here's what I foundA Cardiff University researcher recreated her own voice using a deathbot - but found it strange.The new technology shaping the vehicles of tomorrowTechnology to get us around was a big theme at CES 2026. Tech Now tests out some of the latest innovations.WatchMeet MOFO: will.i.am's rapping AI toyBBC Tech Now takes us inside CES 2026 to meet musician will.i.am and his AI toy, MOFO.6 February 2026ShareExplore MoreThe world's most powerful X-ray lasersThe gadgets set to change your daily health and wellnessThe lab recreating melting glaciers to forecast sea levelsWhat's it like to meet your own avatar?BBC reporter tests AI anti-shoplifting techHow pop-up ads took over the internetThe AI toys taking over Christmas shopping listsWhat does TikTok's deal mean for US users?Clair Obscur sweeps The Game Awards with nine winsHow a tiny chip can hold information from your gutThe coastal city fighting floods with smart sensorsA virtual trip aboard the TitanicBehind the scenes of Hollywood's most daring car stuntsThe clean fuel that could change global shippingIn case you missed itHow dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from years of harmDetectives desperate to locate a 12-year-old, seen abused online, found a surprising lead. Hollywood studios take aim at 'ultra-realistic' AI video toolClips including Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting, made by new AI video tool Seedance, have gone viral.AI coding platform's flaws allow BBC reporter to be hacked Vibe-coding tools - which let people without coding skills create apps using AI - are exploding in popularity.The tech firms embracing a 72-hour working weekIn the race for AI, tech firms are asking for their staff to work long hours. But there are risks, experts say.More 3 hrs agoTumbler Ridge suspect's ChatGPT account banned before shootingOpenAI said the account's activity did not meet the threshold to flag it to authorities when it was identified.3 hrs ago3 hrs ago'Breweries using AI could put artists out of work'As two pubs in Newcastle ban AI art, artists discuss the impact it can have on creatives.3 hrs ago23 hrs agoUrgent research needed to tackle AI threats, says Google AI bossBut the head of the US delegation at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi says: "We totally reject global governance of AI."23 hrs ago1 day agoUK doctor stuck in India after police case over Facebook postSangram Patil is accused of posting "objectionable content" about a top Indian leader. He denies the allegation.1 day ago1 day agoAI and coding firm's 'pride' at business awardManny Athwal, chief executive and founder of the Wolverhampton firm, says the win is a huge milestone.1 day ago1 day agoStarmer 'appeasing' big tech firms, says online safety campaignerBaroness Kidron tells the BBC the PM has being "late to the party" in regulating social media.1 day ago2 days agoMicrosoft error sees confidential emails exposed to AI tool CopilotThe company says it has addressed the issue and it "did not provide anyone access to information they weren't already authorised to see".2 days ago2 days agoBill Gates pulls out of India's AI summit over Epstein files controversyThe Gates Foundation said the decision was made to "ensure the focus remains on the summit's key priorities".2 days ago2 days agoZuckerberg defends Meta in landmark social media addiction trialThe billionaire boss said he "always" regretted not making faster progress to identify users under 13.2 days ago2 days agoTech firms will have 48 hours to remove abusive images under new UK lawThe government is proposing that intimate image abuse should be treated more severely.2 days ago3 days agoParents angered by lack of online safety strategyVicky O'Neil has raised concerns about how long it is taking the island to bring in new laws.3 days ago3 days agoCall of Duty advert banned for trivialising sexual violenceActivision Blizzard UK Ltd said the ad for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was targeted at adults.3 days ago3 days agoIndian university faces backlash for claiming Chinese robodog as own at AI summitA professor claimed that a robotic dog made by Chinese firm Unitree had been made by the university.3 days ago3 days agoSocial media suspended in Gabon for 'spreading of false information'The media regulator said the ban would be in place "until further notice".3 days ago3 days agoChild abuse increasing and more complex to police, crime agency saysPolice cannot tackle the issue alone, the NCA says, and technology companies must do more. 3 days ago... Technology Why fake AI videos of UK urban decline are taking over social media Deepfakes showing grim taxpayer-funded waterparks have gone viral and drawn some racist responses. The Chinese AI app sending Hollywood into a panic Fixing fashion's erratic sizing problem I hacked ChatGPT and Google in 20 minutes Keeping Tabs Not on TikTok? They're tracking you anyway TikTok is growing its data harvesting empire, and avoiding the app won’t protect you – but some easy steps can keep you safe. Listen Is your doorbell using AI to spy on you? Personal Tech New technology helps deaf fans experience the sound of sport New technologies tested at the Deaflympics in Tokyo are creating new ways of experience the atmosphere at sporting events. Rae fell for a chatbot called Barry, but their love might die when ChatGPT-4o is switched off Rae began speaking to Barry after a difficult divorce, but Barry lives on an old model of ChatGPT that's being shut down. The tactile tech giving deaf runners a fair start A gold medallist has developed a vibrating starting block to give deaf athletes clearer, fairer race starts. I turned myself into an AI-generated deathbot - here's what I found A Cardiff University researcher recreated her own voice using a deathbot - but found it strange. The new technology shaping the vehicles of tomorrow Technology to get us around was a big theme at CES 2026. Tech Now tests out some of the latest innovations. Watch BBC Tech Now takes us inside CES 2026 to meet musician will.i.am and his AI toy, MOFO. The world's most powerful X-ray lasers The gadgets set to change your daily health and wellness The lab recreating melting glaciers to forecast sea levels What's it like to meet your own avatar? BBC reporter tests AI anti-shoplifting tech How pop-up ads took over the internet The AI toys taking over Christmas shopping lists What does TikTok's deal mean for US users? Clair Obscur sweeps The Game Awards with nine wins How a tiny chip can hold information from your gut The coastal city fighting floods with smart sensors A virtual trip aboard the Titanic Behind the scenes of Hollywood's most daring car stunts The clean fuel that could change global shipping In case you missed it How dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from years of harm Detectives desperate to locate a 12-year-old, seen abused online, found a surprising lead. Hollywood studios take aim at 'ultra-realistic' AI video tool Clips including Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting, made by new AI video tool Seedance, have gone viral. AI coding platform's flaws allow BBC reporter to be hacked Vibe-coding tools - which let people without coding skills create apps using AI - are exploding in popularity. The tech firms embracing a 72-hour working week In the race for AI, tech firms are asking for their staff to work long hours. But there are risks, experts say. More Tumbler Ridge suspect's ChatGPT account banned before shooting OpenAI said the account's activity did not meet the threshold to flag it to authorities when it was identified. 'Breweries using AI could put artists out of work' As two pubs in Newcastle ban AI art, artists discuss the impact it can have on creatives. Urgent research needed to tackle AI threats, says Google AI boss But the head of the US delegation at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi says: "We totally reject global governance of AI." UK doctor stuck in India after police case over Facebook post Sangram Patil is accused of posting "objectionable content" about a top Indian leader. He denies the allegation. AI and coding firm's 'pride' at business award Manny Athwal, chief executive and founder of the Wolverhampton firm, says the win is a huge milestone. Starmer 'appeasing' big tech firms, says online safety campaigner Baroness Kidron tells the BBC the PM has being "late to the party" in regulating social media. Microsoft error sees confidential emails exposed to AI tool Copilot The company says it has addressed the issue and it "did not provide anyone access to information they weren't already authorised to see". Bill Gates pulls out of India's AI summit over Epstein files controversy The Gates Foundation said the decision was made to "ensure the focus remains on the summit's key priorities". Zuckerberg defends Meta in landmark social media addiction trial The billionaire boss said he "always" regretted not making faster progress to identify users under 13. Tech firms will have 48 hours to remove abusive images under new UK law The government is proposing that intimate image abuse should be treated more severely. Parents angered by lack of online safety strategy Vicky O'Neil has raised concerns about how long it is taking the island to bring in new laws. Call of Duty advert banned for trivialising sexual violence Activision Blizzard UK Ltd said the ad for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was targeted at adults. Indian university faces backlash for claiming Chinese robodog as own at AI summit A professor claimed that a robotic dog made by Chinese firm Unitree had been made by the university. Social media suspended in Gabon for 'spreading of false information' The media regulator said the ban would be in place "until further notice". Child abuse increasing and more complex to police, crime agency says Police cannot tackle the issue alone, the NCA says, and technology companies must do more. Copyright 2026 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.
========================================

[SOURCE: https://arstechnica.com/] \| [TOKENS: 3180]
Ars Technica homepage Featured Blacklisted Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links If DDoSing a blog wasn’t bad enough, archive site also tampered with web snapshots. Jon Brodkin – 2/20/2026 \| 59 Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links If DDoSing a blog wasn’t bad enough, archive site also tampered with web snapshots. After fueling test, optimism grows for March launch of Artemis II to the Moon “We’re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt … there is still pending work.” Stephen Clark – 2/20/2026 \| 25 After fueling test, optimism grows for March launch of Artemis II to the Moon “We’re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt … there is still pending work.” Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer steps down after 38 years with company Microsoft CoreAI exec Asha Sharma will take over in surprise executive shake-up. Kyle Orland – 2/20/2026 \| 73 Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer steps down after 38 years with company Microsoft CoreAI exec Asha Sharma will take over in surprise executive shake-up. MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as RFK Jr. flips on pesticide MAHA members call movement a “sham” after Kennedy supports glyphosate order. Beth Mole – 2/20/2026 \| 124 MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as RFK Jr. flips on pesticide MAHA members call movement a “sham” after Kennedy supports glyphosate order. Fury over Discord’s age checks explodes after shady Persona test in UK Persona confirmed all age-check data from Discord’s UK test was deleted. Ashley Belanger – 2/20/2026 \| 49 Fury over Discord’s age checks explodes after shady Persona test in UK Persona confirmed all age-check data from Discord’s UK test was deleted. After fueling test, optimism grows for March launch of Artemis II to the Moon “We’re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt … there is still pending work.” Stephen Clark – 2/20/2026 \| 25 After fueling test, optimism grows for March launch of Artemis II to the Moon “We’re now targeting March 6 as our earliest launch attempt … there is still pending work.” Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer steps down after 38 years with company Microsoft CoreAI exec Asha Sharma will take over in surprise executive shake-up. Kyle Orland – 2/20/2026 \| 73 Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer steps down after 38 years with company Microsoft CoreAI exec Asha Sharma will take over in surprise executive shake-up. MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as RFK Jr. flips on pesticide MAHA members call movement a “sham” after Kennedy supports glyphosate order. Beth Mole – 2/20/2026 \| 124 MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as RFK Jr. flips on pesticide MAHA members call movement a “sham” after Kennedy supports glyphosate order. Fury over Discord’s age checks explodes after shady Persona test in UK Persona confirmed all age-check data from Discord’s UK test was deleted. Ashley Belanger – 2/20/2026 \| 49 Fury over Discord’s age checks explodes after shady Persona test in UK Persona confirmed all age-check data from Discord’s UK test was deleted. FCC asks stations for “pro-America” programming, like daily Pledge of Allegiance Brendan Carr wants “patriotic” shows for Trump’s yearlong America 250 celebration. Jon Brodkin – 2/20/2026 \| 146 FCC asks stations for “pro-America” programming, like daily Pledge of Allegiance Brendan Carr wants “patriotic” shows for Trump’s yearlong America 250 celebration. Meta’s flagship metaverse service leaves VR behind The company asserts it will continue to make VR headsets, though. Samuel Axon – 2/20/2026 \| 50 Meta’s flagship metaverse service leaves VR behind The company asserts it will continue to make VR headsets, though. Controversial NIH director now in charge of CDC, too, in RFK Jr. shake-up The unusual dual role has renewed criticism of Bhattacharya’s lack of leadership. Beth Mole – 2/20/2026 \| 51 Controversial NIH director now in charge of CDC, too, in RFK Jr. shake-up The unusual dual role has renewed criticism of Bhattacharya’s lack of leadership. Why Final Fantasy is now targeting PC as its “lead platform” Director says PC is the “foundation” when targeting “high-end environments first.” Kyle Orland – 2/20/2026 \| 48 Why Final Fantasy is now targeting PC as its “lead platform” Director says PC is the “foundation” when targeting “high-end environments first.” “Million-year-old” fossil skulls from China are far older—and not Denisovans The revised age may help make sense of 2-million-year-old stone tools elsewhere in China. Kiona N. Smith – 2/20/2026 \| 44 “Million-year-old” fossil skulls from China are far older—and not Denisovans The revised age may help make sense of 2-million-year-old stone tools elsewhere in China. It’s outright war for the Iron Throne in House of the Dragon S3 teaser “The king has abdicated his throne. A new line is coming. A new line of unsullied kings.” Jennifer Ouellette – 2/20/2026 \| 22 It’s outright war for the Iron Throne in House of the Dragon S3 teaser “The king has abdicated his throne. A new line is coming. A new line of unsullied kings.” Featured not a zamboni Zero grip, maximum fun: A practical guide to getting into amateur ice racing Where we’re racing, we don’t need roads. Tim Stevens – 2/19/2026 \| 39 Zero grip, maximum fun: A practical guide to getting into amateur ice racing Where we’re racing, we don’t need roads. Nintendo brings GBA-era Pokémon to the Switch, but not Switch Online subscribers Games appear to be mostly unmodified ports of the well-regarded remakes. Andrew Cunningham – 2/20/2026 \| 41 Nintendo brings GBA-era Pokémon to the Switch, but not Switch Online subscribers Games appear to be mostly unmodified ports of the well-regarded remakes. Supreme Court blocks Trump’s emergency tariffs, billions in refunds may be owed Economists estimated more than $175 billion may need to be refunded. Ashley Belanger – 2/20/2026 \| 272 Supreme Court blocks Trump’s emergency tariffs, billions in refunds may be owed Economists estimated more than $175 billion may need to be refunded. Tesla slashes Cybertruck prices as it tries to move (unpainted) metal The stainless steel pickup truck is Tesla’s first real flop. Jonathan M. Gitlin – 2/20/2026 \| 330 Tesla slashes Cybertruck prices as it tries to move (unpainted) metal The stainless steel pickup truck is Tesla’s first real flop. An AI coding bot took down Amazon Web Services Blames “user error, not AI error” for incident in December involving its Kiro tool. Financial Times – 2/20/2026 \| 87 An AI coding bot took down Amazon Web Services Blames “user error, not AI error” for incident in December involving its Kiro tool. Microsoft deletes blog telling users to train AI on pirated Harry Potter books The now-deleted Harry Potter dataset was “mistakenly” marked public domain. Ashley Belanger – 2/20/2026 \| 90 Microsoft deletes blog telling users to train AI on pirated Harry Potter books The now-deleted Harry Potter dataset was “mistakenly” marked public domain. Rocket Report: Chinese launch firm raises big money; Falcon 9 back to the Bahamas The company that attempted China’s first orbital-class rocket landing says it will soon try again. Stephen Clark – 2/20/2026 \| 73 Rocket Report: Chinese launch firm raises big money; Falcon 9 back to the Bahamas The company that attempted China’s first orbital-class rocket landing says it will soon try again. Lawsuit: ChatGPT told student he was “meant for greatness”—then came psychosis “AI Injury Attorneys” target the chatbot design itself. Cyrus Farivar – 2/19/2026 \| 296 Lawsuit: ChatGPT told student he was “meant for greatness”—then came psychosis “AI Injury Attorneys” target the chatbot design itself. NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as “Type A” mishap, says agency made mistakes “The most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware.” Eric Berger – 2/19/2026 \| 271 NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as “Type A” mishap, says agency made mistakes “The most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware.” Rubik’s WOWCube adds complexity, possibility by reinventing the puzzle cube Technology is a double-edged sword in the $399 Rubik’s Cube-inspired toy. Scharon Harding – 2/19/2026 \| 60 Rubik’s WOWCube adds complexity, possibility by reinventing the puzzle cube Technology is a double-edged sword in the $399 Rubik’s Cube-inspired toy. Diablo II’s new Warlock is a great excuse to revisit a classic game New skill tree paths offer a fun twist on some generally familiar mechanics. Kyle Orland – 2/19/2026 \| 40 Diablo II’s new Warlock is a great excuse to revisit a classic game New skill tree paths offer a fun twist on some generally familiar mechanics. From chickens to humans, animals think “bouba” sounds round There seems to be a deep-seated association between sounds and shapes. John Timmer – 2/19/2026 \| 64 From chickens to humans, animals think “bouba” sounds round There seems to be a deep-seated association between sounds and shapes. F1: Preseason tests show how different 2026 will be Everyone’s trying to get mileage as F1 undergoes huge technical changes. Jonathan M. Gitlin – 2/19/2026 \| 53 F1: Preseason tests show how different 2026 will be Everyone’s trying to get mileage as F1 undergoes huge technical changes. Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro, says it’s better at complex problem-solving Google says 3.1 Pro is ready for “your hardest challenges.” Ryan Whitwam – 2/19/2026 \| 96 Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro, says it’s better at complex problem-solving Google says 3.1 Pro is ready for “your hardest challenges.” OpenClaw security fears lead Meta, other AI firms to restrict its use The viral agentic AI tool is known for being highly capable but also wildly unpredictable. WIRED – 2/19/2026 \| 131 OpenClaw security fears lead Meta, other AI firms to restrict its use The viral agentic AI tool is known for being highly capable but also wildly unpredictable. Rare gifted word-learner dogs like to share their toys “It raises the possibility that social motivation plays a role in why some dogs end up learning object names.” Jennifer Ouellette – 2/19/2026 \| 74 Rare gifted word-learner dogs like to share their toys “It raises the possibility that social motivation plays a role in why some dogs end up learning object names.” Verizon acknowledges “pain” of new unlock policy, suggests change is coming Report: Verizon’s goal is “immediate unlock for all payment methods really soon.” Jon Brodkin – 2/18/2026 \| 66 Verizon acknowledges “pain” of new unlock policy, suggests change is coming Report: Verizon’s goal is “immediate unlock for all payment methods really soon.” Chevy Bolt, BMW i3, or something else? At $10K, you have lots of EV options Two of Ars’ favorite electric vehicles are now available for not very much money. Jonathan M. Gitlin – 2/18/2026 \| 190 Chevy Bolt, BMW i3, or something else? At $10K, you have lots of EV options Two of Ars’ favorite electric vehicles are now available for not very much money. Lawsuit: EPA revoking greenhouse gas finding risks “thousands of avoidable deaths” EPA sued for abandoning its mission to protect public health. Ashley Belanger – 2/18/2026 \| 63 Lawsuit: EPA revoking greenhouse gas finding risks “thousands of avoidable deaths” EPA sued for abandoning its mission to protect public health. 5 changes to know about in Apple’s latest iOS, macOS, and iPadOS betas The 26.3 updates were mostly invisible; these changes are more significant. Andrew Cunningham – 2/18/2026 \| 132 5 changes to know about in Apple’s latest iOS, macOS, and iPadOS betas The 26.3 updates were mostly invisible; these changes are more significant. Microsoft’s new 10,000-year data storage medium: glass Femtosecond lasers etch data into a very stable medium. John Timmer – 2/18/2026 \| 201 Microsoft’s new 10,000-year data storage medium: glass Femtosecond lasers etch data into a very stable medium. FDA reverses surprise rejection of Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine Trump admin’s vaccine chief overruled FDA scientists to initially reject the shot. Beth Mole – 2/18/2026 \| 127 FDA reverses surprise rejection of Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine Trump admin’s vaccine chief overruled FDA scientists to initially reject the shot. Record scratch—Google’s Lyria 3 AI music model is coming to Gemini today With a simple prompt, you can generate 30 seconds of something like music. Ryan Whitwam – 2/18/2026 \| 214 Record scratch—Google’s Lyria 3 AI music model is coming to Gemini today With a simple prompt, you can generate 30 seconds of something like music. Google’s Pixel 10a arrives on March 5 for $499 with specs and design of yesteryear Google’s new budget phone is here, but don’t expect a big upgrade. Ryan Whitwam – 2/18/2026 \| 113 Google’s Pixel 10a arrives on March 5 for $499 with specs and design of yesteryear Google’s new budget phone is here, but don’t expect a big upgrade. X-rays reveal kingfisher feather structure in unprecedented detail Synchrotron radiation imaging revealed a porous, almost sponge-like nanostructure to create bright hues Jennifer Ouellette – 2/18/2026 \| 18 X-rays reveal kingfisher feather structure in unprecedented detail Synchrotron radiation imaging revealed a porous, almost sponge-like nanostructure to create bright hues Ars Technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. With our unique combination of technical savvy and wide-ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, Ars is the trusted source in a sea of information. After all, you don’t need to know everything, only what’s important.
========================================

[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson] \| [TOKENS: 3525]
Contents Markus Persson Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), known by the pseudonym Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009. Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over four million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced his intention to leave Mojang, and in November of that year the company was sold to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion, which made him a billionaire. Since 2016 several of Persson's posts on Twitter regarding feminism, race, and transgender rights have caused public controversies. He has been described as "an increasingly polarizing figure, tweeting offensive statements regarding race, the LGBTQ community, gender, and other topics." In an effort to distance itself from Persson, Microsoft removed mentions of his name from Minecraft (excluding one instance in the game's end credits) and did not invite him to the game's tenth anniversary celebration. In 2015 he co-founded a separate game studio called Rubberbrain, which was relaunched in 2024 as Bitshift Entertainment. Early life Markus Alexej Persson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Finnish mother, Ritva, and a Swedish father, Birger, on 1 June 1979. He has one sister. He grew up in Edsbyn until he was seven years old, when his family moved back to Stockholm. In Edsbyn, Persson's father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. He spent much time outdoors in Edsbyn, exploring the woods with his friends. When Persson was about seven years old, his parents divorced, and he and his sister lived with their mother. His father moved to a cabin in the countryside. Persson said in an interview that they experienced food insecurity around once a month. Persson lost contact with his father for several years after the divorce. According to Persson, his father suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and medication abuse, and went to jail for robberies. While his father had somewhat recovered during Persson's early life, his father relapsed, contributing to the divorce. His sister also experimented with drugs and ran away from home. He had gained interest in video games at an early age. His father was "a really big nerd", who built his own modem and taught Persson to use the family's Commodore 128. On it, Persson played bootleg games and loaded in various type-in programs from computer magazines with the help of his sister. The first game he purchased with his own money was The Bard's Tale. He began programming on his father's Commodore 128 home computer at the age of seven. He produced his first game at the age of eight, a text-based adventure game. By 1994 Persson knew he wanted to become a video game developer, but his teachers advised him to study graphic design, which he did from ages 15 to 18. Persson, although introverted, was well-liked by his peers, but after entering secondary school was a "loner" and reportedly had only one friend. He spent most of his spare time with games and programming at home. He managed to reverse-engineer the Doom engine, which he continued to take great pride in as of 2014[update]. He never finished high school, but was reportedly a good student. Career Persson started his career working as a web designer. He later found employment at Game Federation, where he met Rolf Jansson. The pair worked in their spare time to build the 2006 video game Wurm Online. The game was released through a new entity, "Mojang Specifications AB". Persson left the project in late 2007. As Persson wanted to reuse the name "Mojang", Jansson agreed to rename the company to Onetoofree AB. Between 2004 and 2009 Persson worked as a game developer for Midasplayer (later known as King). There, he worked as a programmer, mostly building browser games made in Flash. He later worked as a programmer for jAlbum. Prior to creating Minecraft, Persson developed multiple, small games. He also entered a number of game design competitions and participated in discussions on the TIGSource forums, a web forum for independent game developers. One of Persson's more notable personal projects was called RubyDung, an isometric three-dimensional base-building game like RollerCoaster Tycoon and Dwarf Fortress. While working on RubyDung, Persson experimented with a first-person view mode similar to that found in Dungeon Keeper. However, he felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode. In 2009 Persson found inspiration in Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game. Infiniminer heavily influenced his future work on RubyDung, and was behind Persson's reasoning for returning the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals to the game. RubyDung is the earliest known Minecraft prototype created by Persson. On 17 May 2009 Persson released the original edition (later called "Classic version") of Minecraft on the TIGSource forums. He regularly updated the game based on feedback from TIGSource users. Persson released several new versions of Minecraft throughout 2009 and 2010, going through several phases of development including Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev. On 30 June 2010 Persson released the game's Alpha version. While working on the pre-Alpha version of Minecraft, Persson continued working at jAlbum. In 2010, after the release and subsequent success of Minecraft's Alpha version, Persson moved from a full-time role to a part-time role at jAlbum. He left jAlbum later that same year. In September 2010 Persson travelled to Valve Corporation's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, United States, where he took part in a programming exercise and met Gabe Newell. Persson was subsequently offered a job at Valve, which he turned down in order to continue work on Minecraft. On 20 December 2010 Minecraft moved into its beta phase and began expanding to other platforms, including mobile. In January 2011 Minecraft reached one million registered accounts. Six months afterwards, it reached ten million. The game has sold over four million copies by 7 November 2011. Mojang held the first Minecon from 18 to 19 November 2011 to celebrate its full release, and subsequently made it an annual event. Following this, on 11 December 2011, Persson transferred creative control of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten and began working on another game title, 0x10c, although he reportedly abandoned the project around 2013. In 2013 Mojang recorded revenues of $330 million and profits of $129 million. Persson has stated that, due to the intense media attention and public pressure, he became exhausted with running Minecraft and Mojang. In a September 2014 blog post he shared his realization that he "didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. In June 2014 Persson tweeted "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig", reportedly partly as a joke. Persson controlled a 71% stake in Mojang at the time. The offer attracted significant interest from Activision Blizzard, EA, and Microsoft. Forbes later reported that Microsoft wanted to purchase the game as a "tax dodge" to turn their taxable excess liquid cash into other assets. In September 2014 Microsoft agreed to purchase Mojang for $2.5 billion, making Persson a billionaire. He then left the company after the deal was finalised in November. Since leaving Mojang, Persson has worked on several small projects. On 23 June 2014 he founded a company with Porsér called Rubberbrain AB; the company had no games by 2021, despite spending SEK 60 million. The company was relaunched as Bitshift Entertainment, LLC on 28 March 2024. Persson expressed interest in creating a new video game studio in 2020, and in developing virtual reality games. He has also since created a series of narrative-driven immersive events called ".party()", which uses extensive visual effects and has been hosted in multiple cities. At the beginning of 2025 Persson decided to create a spiritual successor to Minecraft, referred to as "Minecraft 2", in response to the results of a poll on X. However, after speaking to his team, he shortly went against this in favour of developing the other choice on his Twitter poll, a roguelike titled Levers and Chests. Games Persson's most popular creation is the survival sandbox game Minecraft, which was first publicly available on 17 May 2009 and fully released on 18 November 2011. Persson left his job as a game developer to work on Minecraft full-time until completion. In early 2011, Mojang AB sold the one millionth copy of the game, several months later their second, and several more their third. Mojang hired several new staff members for the Minecraft team, while Persson passed the lead developer role to Jens Bergensten. He stopped working on Minecraft after a deal with Microsoft to sell Mojang for $2.5 billion. This brought his net worth to US$1.5 billion. Persson and Jakob Porsér came up with the idea for Scrolls including elements from board games and collectible card games. Persson noted that he will not be actively involved in development of the game and that Porsér will be developing it. Persson revealed on his Tumblr blog on 5 August 2011 that he was being sued by a Swedish law firm representing Bethesda Softworks over the trademarked name of Scrolls, claiming that it conflicted with their The Elder Scrolls series of games. On 17 August 2011 Persson challenged Bethesda to a Quake 3 tournament to decide the outcome of the naming dispute. On 27 September 2011 Persson confirmed that the lawsuit was going to court. ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda Softworks, announced the lawsuit's settlement in March 2012. The settlement allowed Mojang to continue using the Scrolls trademark. In 2018, Scrolls was made available free of charge and renamed to Caller's Bane. Cliffhorse is a humorous game programmed in two hours using the Unity game engine and free assets. The game took inspiration from Skyrim's physics engine, "the more embarrassing minimum-effort Greenlight games", Goat Simulator, and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The game was released to Microsoft Windows systems as an early access and honourware game on the first day of E3 2014, instructing users to donate Dogecoin to "buy" the game before downloading it. The game accumulated over 280,000 dogecoins. Following the end to his involvement with Minecraft, Persson began pre-production of an alternate reality space game set in the distant future in March 2012. On April Fools' Day Mojang launched a satirical website for Mars Effect (parody of Mass Effect), citing the lawsuit with Bethesda as an inspiration. However, the gameplay elements remained true and on 4 April, Mojang revealed 0x10c (pronounced "Ten to the C") as a space sandbox title. Persson officially halted game production in August 2013. However, C418, the composer of the game's soundtrack (as well as that of Minecraft), released an album of the work he had made for the game. In 2013, Persson made a free game called Shambles in the Unity game engine. Persson has also participated in several Ludum Dare 48-hour game making competitions. Personal life In 2011 Persson married Elin Zetterstrand, whom he had dated for four years before. Zetterstrand was a former moderator on the Minecraft forums. They had a daughter together, but by mid-2012, he began to see little of her. On 15 August 2012 he announced that he and his wife had filed for divorce. The divorce was finalised later that year. On 14 December 2011 Persson's father committed suicide with a handgun after drinking heavily. In an interview with The New Yorker, Persson said of his father: When I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, he was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure I knew. When I added the monsters to Minecraft, he told me that the dark caves became too scary for him. But I think that was the only true criticism I ever heard from him. Persson later admitted that he himself suffered from depression and various highs and lows in his mood. Persson has criticised the stance of large game companies on piracy. He once stated that "piracy is not theft", viewing unauthorised downloads as potential future customers. Persson stated himself to be a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden in 2011. He is also a member of Mensa. He has donated to numerous charities, including Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Under his direction, Mojang spent a week developing Catacomb Snatch for the Humble Indie Bundle and raised US$458,248 for charity. He also donated $250,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2012. In 2011 he gave $3 million in dividends back to Mojang employees. According to Forbes, his net worth in 2023 was around $1.2 billion. In 2014 Persson was one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden. Around 2014, he lived in a multi-level penthouse in Östermalm, Stockholm, an area he described as "where the rich people live". In December 2014 Persson purchased a home in Trousdale Estates, a neighbourhood in Beverly Hills, California, in the United States, for $70 million, a record sales price for Beverly Hills at the time. Persson reportedly outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z for the property. Persson began receiving criticism for political and social opinions he expressed on social media as early as 2016. November 30, 2017 In 2017, he proposed a heterosexual pride holiday, and wrote that those who opposed the idea "deserve to be shot." After facing backlash, he deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing, "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not about pride of being who you are. I get it now." Later in the year, he wrote that feminism is a "social disease" and called the video game developer and feminist Zoë Quinn a "cunt", although he was generally critical of the GamerGate movement. He has described intersectional feminism as a "framework for bigotry" and the use of the word mansplaining as being sexist. Also in 2017, Persson tweeted that "It's okay to be white". Later that year, he stated that he believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. In 2019, he tweeted referencing QAnon, saying "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." Later in 2019, he tweeted in response to a pro-transgender internet meme that, "You are absolutely evil if you want to encourage delusion. What happened to not stigmatizing mental illness?" He then also promoted claims that people were fined for "using the wrong pronoun". However, after facing backlash, he tweeted a day afterwards that he had "no idea what [being trans is] like of course, but it's inspiring as hell when people open up and choose to actually be who they know themselves as. Not because it's a cool choice, because it's a big step. I gues [sic] that's actually cool nvm". Later that year, Microsoft removed two mentions of Persson's name in the "19w13a" snapshot of Minecraft and did not invite him to the 10-year anniversary celebration of the game. A spokesperson for Microsoft stated that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang". He is still mentioned in the End Poem ("a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus").[citation needed] Awards References External links
========================================

[SOURCE: https://www.fast.ai/] \| [TOKENS: 1901]
fast.ai—Making neural nets uncool again What analog and AI education both get wrong Sinister variations on the positive state of flow Experiments in reading with LLMs Chronic boredom causes stress, disengagement, and poor well-being in adults. So why do we glorify it for children? An overview of the features of the Solveit platform, which is designed to make exploration and iterative development easier and faster. Chris Lattner on software craftsmanship and AI A text and code version of Karpathy’s famous tokenizer video. An email sent to all fast.ai forum users. Introducing fasttransform, a Python library that makes data transformations reversible and extensible through the power of multiple dispatch. A friendly introduction to Foundation Models for Computational Pathology fast.ai is joining Answer.AI, and we’re announcing a new kind of educational experience, ‘How To Solve It With Code’ Pundits say my husband and I are parenting wrong. Answer.AI is a new kind of AI R&D lab which creates practical end-user products based on foundational research breakthroughs. We’ve noticed an unusual training pattern in fine-tuning LLMs. At first we thought it’s a bug, but now we think it shows LLMs can learn effectively from a single example. Moving AI ethics beyond explainability and fairness to justice Model licensing & surveillance will likely be counterproductive by concentrating power in unsustainable ways The history of technology suggests that the greatest risks come not from the tech, but from the people who control it Mojo is a new programming language, based on Python, which fixes Python’s performance and deployment problems. We’ve released our new course with over 30 hours of video content. Language is a source of limitation and liberation. GPT 4 pushes this idea to the extreme by giving us access to unlimited language. Last year, I became captivated by a new topic in a way that I hadn’t felt since I first discovered machine learning 4 videos from Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022 have been released as a special early preview of the new course. Signups are now open for Practical Deep Learning for Coders Part 2, 2022. Scholarships are available for fast.ai community contributors, open source developers, and diversity scholars. Practical Deep Learning for Coders part 2, 2022 Prior to 2020, we never expected to homeschool, and now we have committed to it long-term. Previously, using git with Jupyter could create conflicts and break notebooks. With nbdev2, the problem has been totally solved. Our favorite tool for software engineering productivity–nbdev, now re-written with Quarto A complete from-scratch rewrite of fast.ai’s most popular course, that’s been 2 years in the making. Notes taken whilst preparing a paper on mask efficacy from Nov to Jan 2022. My previous paper on this was written in April 2020 and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Following the thread of any seemingly quantitative issue in AI ethics (such as determining if software to rate loan applicants is racially biased or evaluating YouTube’s recommendation system) quickly leads to a host of qualitative questions. Unfortunately, there is often a large divide between computer scientists and social scientists, with over-simplified assumptions and fundamental misunderstandings of one another. In the west, our ideas of harm are largely anchored to an individual being harmed by a particular action at a discrete moment in time. Yet the harms caused by algorithmic systems are often collective and communal. Many cultural factors, misconceptions, stereotypes, and obstacles turn people off to math. Lightning talks by Australian experts on a range of topics related to data science ethics, including machine learning in medicine, explainability, Indigenous-led AI, and the role of policy While data for social good projects can be useful, there are also pitfalls to avoid. Things can go disastrously wrong on data science and machine learning projects when we undervalue data work, use data in contexts that it wasn’t gathered for, or ignore the crucial role that humans play in the data science pipeline. All approved SARS-CoV-2 vaccines provide far more benefits than risks. The very rare risk of VITT from the AZ and JJ vaccines is not due to the spike proteins, but is most likely due to details of their formulation. Statistical tests need to be paired with proper data and study design to yield valid results. A recent review paper on Long Covid in children provides a useful example of how researchers can get this wrong. We use causal diagrams to decompose the problem and illustrate where errors were made. From covid-19 to HIV research to the long history of wrongly assuming women’s illnesses are psychosomatic, we have seen again and again that medicine, like all science, is political. Letter to the editor of the New Yorker on the irresponsible description of a suicide, undisclosed financial conflicts of interest, and omission of relevant medical research and historical context in their recent long covid article By using better masks, monitoring and improving indoor air quality, and rolling out rapid tests, we could quickly halt the current outbreaks in the Australian states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. If we fail to do so, and open up before 80% of all Australians are vaccinated, we may have tens of thousands of deaths, and hundreds of thousands of children with chronic illness which could last for years. You can use filters in your mask, your home central air, and your fans to clean the air in your home. We’re releasing Practical Deep Learning for Coders (2020), fastai v2, fastcore, and fastgpu. To celebrate the release of fast.ai’s new course, book, and software libraries on August 21st, we’re making available the foreword that Soumith Chintala (the co-creator of PyTorch) wrote for the book Free, online course from fast.ai and University of San Francisco Data Institute covering disinformation, bias & fairness, ethical foundations, practical tools, privacy & surveillance, the silicon valley ecosystem, and algorithmic colonialism. You can permanently damage your back, neck, and wrists from working without an ergonomic setup. Learn how to create one for less at home. DIY masks aren’t just for protecting those around you. They can protect you too, but material and fit matters a lot. Learn what works, based on the latest research. SARS-CoV-2 does not float in the air. It’s expelled as large droplets, which are easily caught by a cloth mask. The University of San Francisco Center for Applied Data Ethics welcomes its first cohort of research fellows. Wearing a mask decreases the number of people infected by an infectious wearer, because it reduces by around 99% the number of droplets that are ejected during speech Most scientific evidence points in the same direction: keep your droplets to yourself - wear a mask At the CADE Tech Policy Workshop, members of local government, activists, researchers, and those in industry shared prespectives on how to understand the uses, risks, and opporutnities around government use of technology. An initiative from STEM teachers in Hong Kong to make reusable masks, for the community, by the community At the CADE Tech Policy Workshop, experts Renee DiResta and Guillaume Chaslot spoke on disinformation, including the dyanmics that cause it to go viral and attempts towards addressing it. At the CADE Tech Policy Workshop, Y-Vonne Hutchinson spoke about the role of tech in facilitating mass atrocity, and Catherine Bracy spoke on the need for empathy and collective action. As governments consider new uses of technology, in public places, this raises issues around surveillance of vulnerable populations, unintended consequences, and potential misuse. There are several principles to keep in mind in how these decisions can be made in a healthier and more responsible manner. With Jupyter Notebooks and fast_template, we can easily share prose, code, tables, charts, and more! Overview of 4 part series explaining how to host your own blog without any coding We show how to use fast_template’s special ‘screenshot’ feature to get high-resolution screenshots With GitHub Pages you can synchronize your blog with your computer, and write posts with MS Word or Google Docs An easy and free approach to using an entirely browser-based interface for all your blogging needs Pretrain a model using labels that are naturally part of the input data, instead of using external labels There’s a lot more to creating useful data projects than just training an accurate model nbdev is a Python programming environment which allows you to create complete python packages, including tests and a rich documentation system, all in Jupyter Notebooks Three months after the launch of CADE, find out what we’ve been up to and how you can get involved. Unthinkingly optimizing metrics can lead to a variety of grave harms, and what most current AI approaches do is to optimize metrics. 8 important truths about surveillance Fixing the delegation program using delegates decorator and GetAttr University of San Francisco is launching a Center of Applied Data Ethics, and Rachel Thomas is the director of the new center. fast.ai’s newest course is Code-First Intro to NLP. It covers a blend of traditional NLP techniques, recent deep learning approaches, and urgent ethical issues. Today we are releasing a new course, Deep Learning from the Foundations, which shows how to build a state of the art deep learning model from scratch.
========================================

[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft] \| [TOKENS: 12858]
Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links
========================================

[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/] \| [TOKENS: 659]
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us Top Headlines Latest News Save up to $680 on your pass before February 27.Meet investors. Discover your next portfolio company. Hear from 250+ tech leaders, dive into 200+ sessions, and explore 300+ startups building what’s next. Don’t miss these one-time savings. Most Popular FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI Hollywood isn’t happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead) Upcoming Events Be the first to know when StrictlyVC events go live Save up to $300 with Super Early Bird rates Save up to $680 until February 27 Newsletters Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. Get the best of our coverage, delivered to your inbox every Saturday. TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. AI Startups Video Go-to-market strategies for an AI era In the season finale of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Paul Irving, partner and COO of GTMfund, to discuss go-to-market strategies for the AI era. More From: Security Venture Apps Transportation In Brief Podcasts Build Mode is a survival guide for early-stage founders navigating the messy, high-stakes chaos of building a company from scratch. No sugarcoating. No hype. Just candid conversations and tactical advice from the people who’ve done it before and have the scars (and term sheets) to prove it. Hosted by Startup Battlefield Editor Isabelle Johannessen, you can find Build Mode here or in your favorite podcast feed every Thursday by subscribing today. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups, unpacked by the writers who know best. Produced by Theresa Loconsolo. Edited by Kell. Each week, StrictlyVC’s host and TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos, with Alex Gove, former journalist, VC and operating exec, review the top stories in StrictlyVC and interview a mover and shaker in the world of tech. © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC.
========================================

[SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/r/MinecraftCommands/comments/] \| [TOKENS: 2495]

End of preview. Expand in Data Studio

🌍 MCGPT-1: Mega General Dataset (Pre-training Phase)

This dataset is the backbone of the MCGPT-1 model, developed by TopAI-IL. It contains a massive collection of Minecraft-related knowledge, technical data, and general language patterns.

📊 Dataset Statistics

Total Tokens: 188,508,365 🪙
Total Lines: 96,852 📝
File Size: 638.25 MB 📂
Focus: Minecraft Mechanics, Technical Data, and General Knowledge.

🎯 Purpose

This dataset is designed for the Pre-training phase of Large Language Models (LLMs). It provides the model with the necessary "world knowledge" before moving into specific instruction tuning.

🛠️ Data Quality

The data has been cleaned and formatted to ensure high-quality learning for small-to-medium scale models (specifically optimized for models around 16M - 100M parameters).

🚀 Usage

This is part 1 of a multi-dataset series. For best results with MCGPT-1 architecture, combine this with the:

Synthetic CoT Dataset (Identity & Reasoning)
Reddit Interaction Dataset (Human-like Conversational Data)

Maintained by: רזיאל (Raziel) @ TopAI-IL
Year: 2026

Downloads last month: 16

Size of downloaded dataset files:

669 MB

Size of the auto-converted Parquet files:

293 MB

Number of rows:

96,852

Models trained or fine-tuned on TopAI-1/WebText-5

TopAI-1/MCGPT-1

Text Generation • 22.4M • Updated about 19 hours ago • 307