All posts tagged: Klein

Black Forest Labs launches open source Flux.2 [klein] to generate AI images in less than a second

Black Forest Labs launches open source Flux.2 [klein] to generate AI images in less than a second

The German AI startup Black Forest Labs (BFL), founded by former Stability AI engineers, is continuing to build out its suite of open source AI image generators with the release of FLUX.2 [klein], a new pair of small models — one open and one non-commercial — that emphasizes speed and lower compute requirements, with the models generating images in less than a second on a Nvidia GB200. The [klein] series, released yesterday, includes two primary parameter counts: 4 billion (4B) and 9 billion (9B). The model weights are available on Hugging Face and code on Github. While the larger models in the FLUX.2 family ([max] and [pro]), released in November of 2025, chase the limits of photorealism and “grounding search” capabilities, [klein] is designed specifically for consumer hardware and latency-critical workflows. In great news for enterprises, the 4B version is available under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning they — or any organization or developer — can use the [klein] models for their commercial purposes without paying BFL or any intermediaries a dime. However, a number …

The best new popular science books of 2026, including new books by Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit and Xand Van Tulleken

The best new popular science books of 2026, including new books by Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit and Xand Van Tulleken

plainpicture/Michiru Nakayama Lots of science books will be published over the course of the coming year – tonnes, in fact. After spending last month wading through the books and publisher catalogues that came into our offices, I have decided on the science books that I am most excited about, arranged in categories so it is easy to find what you love throughout the year. Of course, if you are a bit of an omnivore like me, you could end the year an expert in everything from spotting psychopaths to very, very huge numbers. Space Let’s start at a grand scale, with environmental historian Dagomar Degroot’s Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean. He considers how the solar system shaped humanity, whether that’s Martian dust storms sparking stories about aliens, or comet impacts on Jupiter inspiring the first planetary defence strategy. Degroot also looks at human impact on the cosmos, calling for “interplanetary environmentalism” (lovely phrase). We go from grand to even grander, as astrophysicist Emma Chapman’s Radio Universe reveals how we use radio waves to explore the …