Pics du jour

🤳🌎 The Pikachu you caught in Pokémon Go is helping to improve AI systems. Niantic, the creator of Pokémon Go, recently announced a new “Large Geospatial Model” (LGM) that will be trained on millions of scans taken from the smartphones of Niantic product users. The LGM will draw from the company’s massive collection of location data – 10+ million scanned locations globally, and 1 million new scans/week – to help AI models understand and navigate the physical world. Niantic’s project has a wide range of potential applications for developers of AR wearables, as well as machines utilizing autonomous navigation (robotaxis, delivery bots, drones, etc.).

🎾 Farewell to a tennis legend. Rafael Nadal’s remarkable 23-year career officially came to an end late Tuesday night, when Spain lost to the Netherlands in the quarterfinals of the Davis Cup. Nadal, who’s widely regarded as the best clay player of all time (with a record 14 French Open titles), has competed infrequently due to injuries ever since winning two Grand Slams in 2022. Rafa ranks second all-time among men’s players in Grand Slams (22) and winning percentage (82.6%), while his 209 weeks spent atop the world rankings is the sixth most of all time.

⚖️ Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest people, was charged in New York with fraud. Adani, the chair of India’s Adani Group conglomerate, and other defendants are accused of paying $250+ million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain solar energy supply contracts, which were projected to generate $2+ billion in profits over 20 years. Adani and co. are also charged with lying to US and international investors about their compliance with anti-bribery and anti-corruption practices while the company was raising $3+ billion to fund the aforementioned energy contracts.