California’s Budget Deficit Swells to Record $68B as Tax Revenue Falls
December 8th, 2023Via: AP:
California is facing a record $68 billion budget deficit, state officials announced Thursday, forcing hard choices for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in his final term as he works to build his national profile.
The nation’s most populous state — with an economy that is the fifth largest in the world — has been struggling since last year because of the rising prices of most goods and services and how the U.S. government has been trying to control it.
It is now much more expensive for people and businesses to borrow money, meaning fewer people are buying homes and fewer businesses are hiring workers. That is leading to fewer tax collections for the state.
Google Faked Gemini AI Demo Video
December 8th, 2023
Via: Ars Technica:
Google is facing controversy among AI experts for a deceptive Gemini promotional video released Wednesday that appears to show its new AI model recognizing visual cues and interacting vocally with a person in real time. As reported by Parmy Olson for Bloomberg, Google has admitted that was not the case. Instead, the researchers fed still images to the model and edited together successful responses, partially misrepresenting the model’s capabilities.
Hunter Biden Indicted On Multiple Felony Tax Charges
December 8th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
On the same day as House Republicans formalize the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden charged the president’s son late Thursday on nine counts stemming from his failure to pay his federal taxes on time on millions in income from foreign businesses.
U.S. Holds Military Exercises In Guyana As Border Tensions Soar
December 7th, 2023Wait for it… Erl!
Via: AFP:
The United States said it will carry out military flights in Guyana on Thursday in a joint operation as the South American country faces soaring tensions with neighboring Venezuela over a contested oil-rich region.
“In collaboration with the Guyana Defence Force, the U.S. Southern Command will conduct flight operations within Guyana on December 7,” the American embassy in Guyana said in a statement, noting the flights are part of “routine engagement” to enhance a security partnership between the two countries.
A border feud has recently spiraled over the oil-rich Essequibo region, controlled by Guyana for more than a century but which Venezuela also claims and has voiced intent to take over.
The long-running dispute over Essequibo, which comprises some two-thirds of Guyanese territory, has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered oil there in 2015.
Dr. Michael Nehls: The Indoctrinated Brain
December 7th, 2023When you talk to normal people nowadays, do you notice that something has gone very wrong?
Dr. Michael Nehls argues that the Covid operation is actually a mind control program that involves the coordinated use of media and neurotoxic substances against billions of people.
I’ve struggled for years to determine the real motivations behind the Covid operation.
Profits, kill off and power… These are all obvious. Of course, it’s all of those, but they seem insufficient when considering the audacity and scale of Covid.
Covid is much bigger than all of these things, which have been going on, quietly, mentioned on little Internet backwaters like Cryptogon for decades.
With Covid, they came for billions of us all at once.
This is planned. This is on purpose. This is not a coincidence.
Via: The Mel K Show:
Research Credit: CB
Florida Surgeon General to FDA: “I am writing to you to address the recent discovery of host cell DNA fragments within Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines”
December 7th, 2023Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD posted his letter to the FDA:
On today's episode of: What the FDA… I asked @DrCaliff_FDA to address the DNA fragments detected in mRNA COVID shots & how they are hitchhiking into human cells. DNA integration into the human genome & oncogenesis are known risks, even acknowledged by @US_FDA in '07. pic.twitter.com/V7TBaeM1WN
— Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD (@FLSurgeonGen) December 6, 2023
I read through the comments. Check this out:
The SV40 promoter in the Pfizer vaccine is known to bind to the Tumor Suppressor Gene p53.
Drayman et al.This was the sequence Pfizer hid from the FDA.
They have since acquired blood cancer companies.https://t.co/gVSjqLMe9w pic.twitter.com/370BjM9Gs2
— Kevin McKernan (@Kevin_McKernan) December 6, 2023
EU Automakers Have Secured Less Than a Fifth of the Battery Metals They’ll Need by 2030
December 6th, 2023Via: Electrek:
European automakers have secured less than a fifth of the cobalt, lithium, and nickel they’ll need to meet targets by 2030, according to a new analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E). Exceptions are Tesla and China’s BYD, but Tesla and certainly BYD fall a bit short on responsible practices compared to other automakers.
In the race to procure key battery metals, European automakers have secured only 16% of the key metals they’ll need to meet their sales goals by 2030, according to T&E, a campaign organization based in Brussels. Volkswagen and Stellantis are making some headway in this regard, but the rest of the lot is “far behind,” according to a press announcement. The European Union is set to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles in 2035.
Related: California Lake Is Sitting on Top of the Largest Lithium Reservoir on the Globe
Gemini: Google Launches New AI Model
December 6th, 2023Via: Forbes:
Google’s most anticipated large language model, Gemini, has been officially announced today. During a virtual press conference, the leaders from Google DeepMind and Google Cloud showcased the capabilities of the new LLM while also sharing the roadmap.
Initially announced at Google I/O 2023 by Sundar Pichai, Gemini is the most capable LLM that succeeds PaLM 2, the current foundation model from Google. It is one of the first language models to score over 90% on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding, or MMLU benchmark, which covers 57 subjects across STEM, the humanities, the social sciences, and more.
Gemini is one of the most adaptable models, capable of running on both the cloud and mobile devices. It is multimodal in the sense that it can understand input in the form of a text prompt, an image, audio or even video. It has unrivaled reasoning capabilities and is capable of producing sophisticated programs and code. For instance, Gemini can look for errors in a student’s written response to a challenging mathematical problem.
More: “Welcome to the Gemini era”
Governments Spying on Apple, Google Users Through Push Notifications
December 6th, 2023
What can I say? If you’re even mildly surprised by this, you haven’t been paying attention for the past couple of decades.
Via: Reuters:
Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps’ push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on Wednesday.
In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple (AAPL.O). Although details were sparse, the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can track smartphones.
Apps of all kinds rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. These are the audible “dings” or visual indicators users get when they receive an email or their sports team wins a game. What users often do not realize is that almost all such notifications travel over Google and Apple’s servers.
That gives the two companies unique insight into the traffic flowing from those apps to their users, and in turn puts them “in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps,” Wyden said. He asked the Department of Justice to “repeal or modify any policies” that hindered public discussions of push notification spying.
In a statement, Apple said that Wyden’s letter gave them the opening they needed to share more details with the public about how governments monitored push notifications.
Billionaire Palmer Luckey Unveils Jet-Powered VTOL Kamikaze Drone
December 6th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
Introducing:
Roadrunner, a compact VTOL drone powered by twin thrust-vectored turbojet engines with extraordinary speed, range, and payload capacity.
&
Roadrunner-M, a radical new low-cost weapon that allows for unprecedented tactics against powerful threats. pic.twitter.com/2C7Ga0h1Hf
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) December 1, 2023
Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, is positioning Anduril Industries, his Southern California startup defense firm, to challenge military-industrial complex giants such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics.
Luckey revealed on X that Anduril Industries has developed an affordable vertical takeoff and landing drone that can be reused on surveillance or kamikaze missions.
