Sam Altman to Return as CEO of OpenAI
November 22nd, 2023Via: The Verge:
Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, overcoming an attempted boardroom coup that sent the company into chaos over the past several days. Former president Greg Brockman, who quit in protest of Altman’s firing, will return as well.
The company said in a statement late Tuesday that it has an “agreement in principle” for Altman to return alongside a new board composed of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo. D’Angelo is a holdover from the previous board that initially fired Altman on Friday. He remains on this new board to give the previous board some representation, we’re told.
People familiar with the negotiations say that the main job of this small initial board is to vet and appoint an expanded board of up to nine people that will reset the governance of OpenAI. Microsoft, which has committed to investing billions in the company, wants to have a seat on that expanded board, as does Altman himself. During a press tour this week, CEO Satya Nadella said the company didn’t want any more “surprises.”
Amid Recruiting Woes, Army Sent Letters to Soldiers Separated for Vaccine Refusal
November 21st, 2023Mmm hmm.
Via: Task & Purpose:
Soldiers who were forced out of the Army for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine have received letters with instructions on how to rejoin, as the service faces its toughest recruiting environment in a generation.
“As a result of the rescission of all current COVID-19 vaccination requirements, former soldiers who were involuntarily separated for their refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccination may request a correction of their military records,” according to a letter signed by Brig. Gen. Hope Rampy, Army Director of Personnel Management.
Northvolt Develops Sodium-Ion Battery Validated at 160 Wh/kg
November 21st, 2023As a point of reference, Tesla’s newest battery, which will go into the upcoming Cybertruck, delivers about 272-296 Wh/kg.
But for applications where lower power density will do…
Via: Northvolt:
Northvolt today announced a state-of-the-art sodium-ion battery, developed for the expansion of cost-efficient and sustainable energy storage systems worldwide. The cell has been validated for a best-in-class energy density of over 160 watt-hours per kilogram at the company’s R&D and industrialization campus, Northvolt Labs, in Västerås, Sweden.
Northvolt’s validated cell is more safe, cost-effective, and sustainable than conventional nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) or iron phosphate (LFP) chemistries and is produced with minerals such as iron and sodium that are abundant on global markets. It is based on a hard carbon anode and a Prussian White-based cathode, and is free from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite. Leveraging a breakthrough in battery design and manufacturing, Northvolt plans to be the first to industrialize Prussian White-based batteries and bring them to commercial markets.
Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of U.S. Phone Records
November 21st, 2023Via: Wired:
A little-known surveillance program tracks more than a trillion domestic phone records within the United States each year, according to a letter WIRED obtained that was sent by US senator Ron Wyden to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sunday, challenging the program’s legality.
According to the letter, a surveillance program now known as Data Analytical Services (DAS) has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims. Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program targets not only those in direct phone contact with a criminal suspect but anyone with whom those individuals have been in contact as well.
The DAS program, formerly known as Hemisphere, is run in coordination with the telecom giant AT&T, which captures and conducts analysis of US call records for law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriffs’ departments to US customs offices and postal inspectors across the country, according to a White House memo reviewed by WIRED.
Post Vaccine Syndrome
November 20th, 2023Via: Dr. John Campbell:
Hundreds of OpenAI Employees Threaten to Resign and Join Microsoft
November 20th, 2023Yikes! pic.twitter.com/sJI97R9DJK
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2023
Via: The Verge:
Most of the staff at OpenAI have threatened to resign from the company and join Microsoft, which has hired ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman to lead a new “advanced AI research team.” In a letter to OpenAI’s board that was reported on this morning by Wired and journalist Kara Swisher, more than five hundred current OpenAI staffers say that “Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join.”
Related: Microsoft Swallows OpenAI’s Core Team
“You’re Paying for the Israel War. You’ll Also Pay for the Refugees.”
November 19th, 2023Via: Mises Institute:
The United States regime has picked sides in the Israel-Hamas war and has committed to funding Israel’s ongoing bombing of non-combatant men, women, and children in the Gaza strip. Northern Gaza’s infrastructure is now all but destroyed, with millions of Gazans displaced and homeless. Nearly ten times more Gazans than Israelis have now died in the conflict. Many Gazans have fled to the southern portion of Gaza, but homelessness and abject poverty awaits them there.
By employing what is essentially the carpet-bombing approach, Tel Aviv has made the choice of adopting a policy that is sure to produce hundreds of thousands of refugees—or perhaps even more than a million. Indeed, many in the Israeli regime are motivated to maximize refugees, and push Gazans out of the country altogether using the Orwellian phrase “voluntary migration.”
…
Israeli mouthpieces are already at work pushing the cost onto foreign taxpayers, including American ones. This week, two Israeli politicians—one from the militarist Likud party, and one from the center-left Yesh Atid party—took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to demand that “countries around the world should offer a haven for Gaza residents who seek relocation.” According to these politicians, “[t]he international community”—i.e., not Israel—”has a moral imperative” to resettle Gazans somewhere outside Israel at not-Israel’s expense.
It is significant these claims appeared in an American publication. Tel Aviv is the latest welfare-queen regime—in the tradition of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky—repeatedly haranguing the American public with demands for free money. It’s no coincidence that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is now seemingly ubiquitous on American prime-time news programs. His primary job right now is to demand money and favors from Washington and from other Western regimes.
It will probably work. Americans should get ready for plane-loads of Gaza refugees arriving in their cities, funded by the American taxpayers who can now barely afford to keep up with the price of groceries. This will be sold as a “humanitarian” effort, but anyone who sees through the propaganda will see that it’s really all a cynical effort to please pro-Israel interest groups and Israeli politicians.
Bayer’s Monsanto Hit With $1.5 Billion Verdict in Latest Roundup Cancer Case
November 19th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
In a landmark decision, a Missouri jury has ordered Bayer AG’s Monsanto unit to pay more than $1.5 billion in damages to three former users of its Roundup weedkiller. This ruling, one of Monsanto’s largest trial losses in the five-year litigation over the herbicide, raises new questions about the safety of the controversial product and the company’s future legal challenges.
In a late Friday decision, jurors awarded James Draeger, Valorie Gunther, and Dan Anderson $61.1 million in actual damages and a staggering $500 million each in punitive damages. They claimed that years of using Roundup on their properties led to their non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas. This verdict is one of the largest against a US corporate defendant this year, eclipsing even a significant $1.78 billion verdict in a federal real estate case (which could balloon to more than $5 billion), Bloomberg reports.
SpaceX: Second Starship Flight Test
November 18th, 2023Watch Starship’s second integrated flight test https://t.co/cahoRQ72lm
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 17, 2023
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How Hospitals Became ‘Fair Game’ in Gaza
November 18th, 2023Via: Al Jazeera:
