👩‍💻 Linus Torvalds says 'Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects'

"I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I'm willing to absolutely put my foot down [...] Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it's clearly a useful one. It may not have been that "clearly" even just a year ago, but it's no longer in question today."

Torvalds' comments follow recent recommendations from the Software Freedom Conservancy around AI/LLMs and Linux kernel developers discussing the Sashiko AI code review that has become more prolific in the kernel development community these past few months.

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⚔️ Xi pitches China as leader of new global AI order, challenging US dominance

Chinese President ​Xi Jinping cast Beijing as the champion of a new global AI order. Xi urged countries to seize the "historic opportunity" of open-source AI, and pledged to help developing nations build AI capabilities, warning against the emergence of "new historical injustices" from unequal access to the technology.

"AI development and its application should not erode or undermine the diversity of world civilizations or the uniqueness of cultures of different countries.

We must shape the values of AI with humanity's common values and make good use of AI technologies to increase understanding, tolerance, exchanges, and sharing among all civilizations.

We should tend to the garden of civilizations with great care to ensure that the beauty of each civilization is appreciated and shared."

#BRICS

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🤑 DenelleDixon lays out the stakes of getting the x402 protocol right, and what the x402 Foundation will help steward

The x402 protocol is a payments enabler for internet-based transacting, developed by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and now stewarded by its eponymous foundation. The goal is to enable payments between AI agents, machines and users through the standard internet language Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), without requiring subscriptions or manual entry of credit card details and the like.

🔜 Denelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation, one of the premier members of the x402 Foundation, helped engineer open-source browsers during the first iteration of the internet. She witnessed firsthand when walled gardens were erected, and “five companies basically took over content on the web,” leading to the advertising-driven attention economy that exists today.

“You don't want to be in a walled garden when you're dealing with money,” Dixon said.

❗️The stakes are high because AI agents, which will likely account for a large share of internet commerce, including some in the form of tiny micropayments, could completely reshape the web.

“It may seem nerdy to care about standards so much, but we have the opportunity to create this truly open public global financial system that everyone can have access to,” Dixon added.

🟠Other premier members of the x402 Foundation include Ripple, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, Adyen, Fiserv, Shopify, Google, Amazon Web Services and Cloudflare, alongside Circle, MoonPay and the Solana Foundation.

“Blockchain has already solved the issue of the underlying payment infrastructure of the web, but now it's actually really working because of this agentic piece. It’s being used, perhaps not at scale yet. But it will,” Dixon added.

#Stellar

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🇺🇸 Congressman William Timmons on the importance of passing the CLARITY Act:

“Well, I think that it's hard to even imagine what the world's going to look like in 20 years, but in order for us to continue to be the center of the global economy and to continue to provide the American dream that people have enjoyed for 250 years, we've got to get this right.

And that's the importance of passing the CLARITY Act. And we gotta then build on it. And there's other pieces of legislation that will continue to give the rules of the road to the free market to continue to innovate.”

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🇮🇳 Prime Minister Narendra Modi flags off India's first hydrogen-powered train between Jind and Sonipat

India Becomes the 6th Country to Launch a Hydrogen-Powered Train.

#BRICS

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🛰 Starlink Mini Lasers will deliver high-bandwidth connectivity to NASA’s Orion Spacecraft during Artemis III

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🏦 Bank of America taps new leaders to bridge crypto, AI and traditional finance

Bank of America has appointed new leaders to spearhead the firm's digital assets and AI strategies, following a trend of traditional financial institutions building specialized teams around the technologies.

🟠Sonali Theisen was named head of BofA's global digital assets platform, while Kevin Milsom was tapped to serve as head of AI transformation.

Theisen will "oversee design, development, scaling and governance of the bank’s digital-assets platform" on top of her current role leading electronic trading and strategic investments across the bank’s fixed income, currencies and commodities division.

🔜 Her responsibilities will focus on bringing blockchain-based products into BofA's existing markets infrastructure, working alongside digital asset transformation chief Adam Dixon, who oversees "tokenized deposits and stablecoins, digital collateral mobility, cryptocurrency trading settlement and custody."

Milsom, meanwhile, is tasked with implementing AI across the bank's global markets platforms.

This follows similar efforts seen across many other Wall Street-native banks and institutions. 🚀

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🤖 Neuralink's UK brain-implant trial is now running with seven patients

Elon Musk's brain-chip company has seven people in its UK study, called GB-PRIME, run with University College London Hospitals and Newcastle Hospitals. The patients all live with severe paralysis, from spinal cord injuries or motor neurone disease, that makes using a phone or computer by hand impossible.

The implant reads brain signals through more than 1,000 electrodes on threads finer than a human hair, placed by a surgical robot. It lets a person move a cursor and type using only their thoughts. The first UK patient controlled a computer within hours of surgery last year. The study is now expanding.

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🤖 China hosts the world’s first humanoid robot MMA event

#BRICS

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🇱🇻 Tesla is officially coming to Latvia

Tesla announced the market entry, with an event page now live. The company registered its local company, Tesla Latvia SIA, last November, and already runs Superchargers in Riga and Rezekne. It completes Tesla's expansion across all three Baltic countries: Lithuania launched in 2024, and Estonia and Latvia followed.

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🤖 Los Alamos tests NVIDIA Vera CPUs for supercomputers targeting 12x faster performance

Los Alamos National Laboratory has taken another step toward its next generation of supercomputing after receiving the first NVIDIA Vera CPU server for an early test deployment, giving researchers their first opportunity to evaluate hardware that will eventually power the Mission and Vision systems.

The delivery marks the beginning of a broader testing phase before the two flagship supercomputers enter service later this decade. Engineers at Los Alamos will use the test platform to validate software, optimize scientific codes, and measure performance on real laboratory workloads before full-scale deployment.

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🇮🇳 India’s first privately developed orbital rocket, Vikram-1 Test Flight-1 has successfully reached orbit after completing its final burn and injecting payloads into a 450 km orbit.

India is the third country in the world to achieve private orbital launch capability.

#BRICS

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🤖 Google, Cypress Creek launch construction for US’ largest solar, battery storage venture

US firm Cypress Creek Energy and Google have launched construction on the Steel River Energy Center in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Once fully completed by 2029, the three-phase project will be the nation’s largest solar and battery storage project to date. It is expected to deliver 2.5 GWdc of solar energy and 2.9 GWh of battery storage (enough to power over 315,000 Arkansas homes annually).

“This collaboration with Cypress Creek Energy will strengthen the grid and help ensure more reliable, affordable, and clean energy is available for businesses and communities throughout the state,” said Will Conkling, Head of Data Center Energy, Google.

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🤑 BitGo to Offer Institutional Custody and Off-Exchange Settlement of USDM1, the World’s First Natively Issued Onchain Sovereign Bond

BitGo Bank & Trust, National Association, an OCC-regulated digital asset trust bank and subsidiary of BitGo Holdings, Inc., announced that it will provide institutional-grade qualified custody and off-exchange settlement services for USDM1, the world's first natively issued onchain secured sovereign bond. 🎉

➡️ Institutional clients will be able to hold a dual-recourse, dollar-denominated sovereign bond, backed 1:1 by US Treasuries, in segregated, regulated custody on the BitGo platform and utilize it for collateral and settlement on connected venues through BitGo's Go Network Off-Exchange Settlement (“OES”) solution.

➡️Issued natively onchain by the Republic of the Marshall Islands, USDM1 is a USD-denominated secured sovereign bond structured in the style of a fully collateralized Brady bond under NY law. It is designed to accrue value daily, and mint and redemption activity is executed against live signed price quotes that reflect the instrument’s accrued value.

❗️Available to institutions on Stellar, Ethereum and Solana, USDM1 can be held through BitGo's qualified custody platform in regulated cold storage with segregated accounts, institutional controls, and offline key management.

🔜 Through the Go Network, eligible clients can deploy USDM1 to connected venues 24/7 with T+0 settlement, without transferring assets on-exchange. This model is designed to minimize intraday exposure and settlement risk, reduce pre-funding requirements, and improve capital efficiency across institutional trading and financing workflows.

"USDM1 is a different kind of asset - sovereign collateral with Treasury backing, built to fit how institutions already operate," said Mike Belshe, CEO and Co-founder of BitGo. "Making it available for custody at BitGo means institutions will be able to access USDM1 within the same custody and settlement infrastructure they already rely on."

The Republic of the Marshall Islands has deployed USDM1 in the world's first nationwide Universal Basic Income program, which distributes funds quarterly across more than 1,200 islands for the next 20 years. Additionally, USDM1 is in active use with financial institutions as a treasury instrument. 🚀

#Stellar

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