Mistral Finally Learns to Read:
And NASA Unplugs the Office Fridge

The New Temp Can Read Handwriting

Mistral AI released a new OCR model designed to process documents with actual competence. Usually, asking a computer to read a PDF is like asking a golden retriever to do your taxes—it tries very hard, but mostly just chews up the paper. Mistral claims this new model can handle global languages and complex formatting, which is tech-speak for "it can finally read the whiteboard photos you took during the sprint retrospective."

The ability to parse text from images is not new, but Mistral is positioning this as a "state-of-the-art" breakthrough. In the corporate world, this means we are one step closer to an AI that can automatically digitize the handwritten "Out of Order" sign taped to the breakroom printer. It is a massive leap forward for bureaucracy automation.

NASA Implements Extreme Power Saving Mode

In a move that resonates with anyone who has been told to turn off the lights to save three cents, NASA shut off a science instrument on the Voyager probe to conserve power. Voyager has been running on a nuclear battery since the disco era, and apparently, the juice is finally running low. NASA is now essentially playing a cosmic game of "which appliance do we really need?"

The engineering team is sacrificing data collection to keep the spacecraft alive for a few more years. It is the ultimate version of closing background apps on your phone when you are at 1% battery and 40 minutes from a charger, except the charger does not exist and the phone is 15 billion miles away in the interstellar void.

Productivity Monitoring for Politicians

An artist has created software that automatically tags politicians on social media whenever AI detects them looking at their phones during livestreams of parliamentary sessions. This is the exact same technology your boss wants to install to make sure you aren't playing Solitaire, but deployed against people who write the laws.

The system uses facial recognition to name and shame distracted officials. It turns the legislative floor into a high-stakes open-plan office where "doomscrolling" is a matter of public record. One can assume the politicians are simply checking important emails, or perhaps they are just trying to beat level 45 on Candy Crush while the budget is being debated.

Briefs

• We Have Discord at Home: An open-source project called Revolt is positioning itself as an alternative to Discord. It is perfect for users who want the chat experience without the sensation that a large corporation is reading their DMs to sell them targeted ads for gamer chairs.
• Anime Saves Math: It turns out that anime fans helped solve a complex mathematical proof regarding permutations. This confirms the suspicion that the most powerful computing cluster in the world is just a bunch of people trying to figure out the optimal watch order for "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya."
• Ignorance is Bliss: The US government stopped sharing air quality data from its embassies. Apparently, if you stop measuring the pollution, the air becomes clean by administrative decree.