Dr. John Campbell’s Interview with UK MP Andrew Bridgen
May 8th, 2023Via: Dr. John Campbell:
Here’s Campbell on YouTube’s censorship of the above video:
Monetizing Poverty: Meet Airbnb Rooms
May 8th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
Is This Dystopia?
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That line’s been bouncing around my head since I saw Silicon Valley’s latest innovation, Airbnb, Inc.’s (ABNB) “Rooms”. Instead of renting out a vacant apartment for a night, you sleep in a guest bedroom (or, in some cases, the living room) of strangers’ homes.
Flashback: L.A. Coliving: PodShare
The Coronation of King Charles
May 7th, 2023Worth a repost.
Via: Truthstream Media:
Where Did All The “Trust the Science” People Go?
May 7th, 2023Via: AwakenWithJP:
University Slammed For Erasing The Word ‘Woman’ From It’s Maternity And Menopause Policies
May 5th, 2023Via: Summit News:
A London University has been criticised for removing the word ‘woman’ from it’s maternity policy and declaring that maternity, as well as the menopause, applies to “all genders”.
World On Cusp Of Woke Totalitarianism As Governments Act To End Freedom Of Speech
May 5th, 2023Via: Public:
The Twitter Files gave us a window into how government agencies, civil society, and tech companies work together to censor social media users. Now, key nations are attempting to enshrine this coordination into law explicitly.
Around the world, politicians have either just passed or are on the cusp of passing sweeping new laws, which would allow governments to censor ordinary citizens on social media and other Internet platforms.
Under the guise of preventing “harm” and holding large tech companies accountable, several countries are establishing a vast and interlinked censorship apparatus, a new investigation by Public finds.
Politicians, NGOs, and their enablers in the news media claim that their goal is merely to protect the public from “disinformation.” But vague definitions and loopholes in new laws will create avenues for broad application, overreach, and abuse.
In Ireland, for example, the government may soon be able to imprison citizens simply for possessing material that officials decide is “hateful.” Under the RESTRICT Act in the US, the government may soon have the authority to monitor the Internet activity of any American deemed a security risk.
Governments aim for total control. In Canada, a state agency can filter and manipulate what Canadians see online. In Australia, a single government official can compel social media companies to remove posts.
Governments and allied NGOs intend to force tech companies to comply with their rules. UK lawmakers have threatened to imprison social media managers who don’t censor enough content. And Brazil has introduced severe penalties for platforms that fail to remove “fake news.”
WHO Declares End to Covid-19 Global Public Health Emergency
May 5th, 2023Mmm hmm.
Via: CNBC:
The spread of Covid-19 is no longer a global public health emergency, the World Health Organization declared Friday.
“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing, and the pressure on health systems easing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Geneva.
“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before Covid-19,” Tedros said. “It’s therefore with great hope that I declared Covid-19 over as a global health emergency.”
Two Mile Long Favela North of San Francisco
May 5th, 2023Via: Daily Mail:
Hundreds of locals in one of San Francisco’s wealthiest counties have been forced to pack up their lives into RVs and trailers after being pushed out of the housing market.
Shocking photos show the ever-growing line of trucks and other vehicles along 101 Highway – which now stretches over two miles in one of the largest encampments in the country.
Cities in Marin County, where on average homes cost $1.4million, are pushing for the line along the highway to end after the number of residents living in their cars ballooned during the pandemic.
Photos and video taken by DailyMail.com show families living in tents and using portable barbeques as their belongings spill out of the RV’s and trucks.
Some appear to have used flags to mark the area of road that they use for their home, with many pulling tarpaulin over their cars to protect their possessions.
Supposedly Leaked Internal Google Document Claims Open Source AI Will Outcompete Google and OpenAI
May 5th, 2023There will be closed and open source alternatives that will allow users to customize the models’ worldviews.
That didn’t take long. I thought it would take at least several months for them to attain something GPT3.5-like.
Nope.
I don’t know if this is real or not, but it makes for interesting reading.
Via: SemiAnalysis:
Open-source models are faster, more customizable, more private, and pound-for-pound more capable. They are doing things with $100 and 13B params that we struggle with at $10M and 540B. And they are doing so in weeks, not months.
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People will not pay for a restricted model when free, unrestricted alternatives are comparable in quality. We should consider where our value add really is.
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The more tightly we control our models, the more attractive we make open alternatives. Google and OpenAI have both gravitated defensively toward release patterns that allow them to retain tight control over how their models are used. But this control is a fiction. Anyone seeking to use LLMs for unsanctioned purposes can simply take their pick of the freely available models.
PacWest Bancorp Shares Crash
May 4th, 2023Via: AFP:
Shares of PacWest Bancorp were in free fall Thursday after the bank’s attempt to reassure investors fell flat amid another pummeling of US regional bank stocks.
Near 1600 GMT, shares of PacWest were down more than 50 percent.
Other leading banks were also on the back foot, including Western Alliance (-43 percent), Zions (-8.4 percent) and Comerica (-12 percent).
Large banks such as Citigroup and Bank of America had lost about three percent.
The rout comes after Monday’s sale of the embattled First Republic Bank to JPMorgan Chase under a process orchestrated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
There had been hopes that the transaction would mark an end to the panic, but that did not materialize.
