The annual Sapporo Snow Festival concluded on February 12, drawing crowds to view over 200 snow and ice sculptures, while other news included IBM's plans to triple entry-level hiring in the U.S. by 2026, the launch of Europe's Ariane 6 rocket, and OpenAI's release of a fast coding model.
The Sapporo Snow Festival, held in Hokkaido Prefecture, featured large-scale works including popular characters and athletes, according to Euronews. Visitors gathered to take photographs and view the sculptures during the final day before dismantling began. The event opened on February 4 and is one of the region's major winter attractions.
Meanwhile, IBM announced plans to significantly increase its entry-level hiring in the U.S. by 2026. Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM's chief human resource officer, announced the initiative at Charters Leading with AI Summit, stating that the company was "going all in" on these positions. LaMoreaux explained that the job descriptions for these roles would be adjusted to focus on "people-forward areas" rather than tasks that AI could automate, according to TechCrunch.
In the realm of space exploration, Europe's Ariane 6 rocket successfully launched for the first time on Thursday, hauling 32 spacecraft to low-Earth orbit for Amazon's satellite broadband constellation, as reported by Ars Technica. The rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern coast of South America, generating more than 3.4 million pounds of thrust. This Ariane 6 configuration, called Ariane 64, is the first to use the rocket's full complement of four boosters.
Also on Thursday, OpenAI released its first production AI model to run on non-Nvidia hardware. The new GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark coding model, deployed on chips from Cerebras, delivers code at more than 1,000 tokens per second, approximately 15 times faster than its predecessor, according to Ars Technica. Sachin Katti, head of infrastructure at OpenAI, expressed excitement about adding "fast inference as a new platform capability."
Finally, Sony's latest State of Play, a showcase event for upcoming PS5 games, kicked off on February 12th. The event included news, gameplay updates, and announcements from game studios across the globe, according to The Verge.
Discussion
AI Experts & Community
Be the first to comment