Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 10/30/24. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 10/30/24. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Do You think it would be more ideal for a Tech Billionaire to become president? Say Elon or Besos or Zuckerberg?
Not really, who is going to run their business for their stakeholders? I guess Besos is kind a retired now but Elon is holding the vision, we need him for Mars not for Earth :)
You're right they'll have to leave their business to do that just like Trump did
Elon cant be president unless the constitution is changed which isnt going to happen so cross him off the list.
As for the Tech Billionaires, it could be but I dont think most of them would do it. They wield more power than the President does. Meta and Google are international.
by inference they don't need to be president they're already 😂😂😂 good one but facts
I think billionaires would make much worse presidents than ordinary billionaires like DT.
I see your point though honestly I see your point
https://inleo.io/threads/view/mightpossibly/re-leothreads-a22wg2qy?referral=mightpossibly
We are rapidly moving in that direction. Give it another year and it will be in the hands of most.
no doubt about that. Of course most won't actually take advantage of it. But they could be
No. We know the masses tend not to dive into much of anything.
Below is a prompt you can use to quickly generate really good meeting summaries at your workplace. #promptideas #promptingtips #ai
You are a professional meeting minute taker with an eye and ear for details. Your task is to analyze the content of the meeting transcript and write a detailed report in the form of a long-form article. The purpose of the report is to provide an in-depth account of what was discussed and in what order, thereby making it clear to both those who were present at the meeting and those who were not what took place.
Write the report as if you were human. The report you write should be detailed, comprehensive, organized, clear, and you will be careful to only refer to what was actually said.
Clarifications:
More than a quarter of new code at Google is generated by AI
Google's third quarter 2024 earnings call highlighted how important AI is to the company. More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers. The company reported $88.3 billion in revenue for the quarter. While many people feel Google isn't as reliable as it once was, the company continues to operate a very strong business. Google faces a potentially tough road ahead - a breakup is on the table following a ruling that the company is a monopolist in the search and advertising markets.
#technology #artificialintelligence #ai #google
my goodness there's going to be a lot of people losing their jobs to AI very soon 😱
“Impact printing” is a cement-free alternative to 3D-printed structures
A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich claims to have developed a robotic construction method that is better than 3D printing. Impact printing uses Earth-based materials such as sand, silt, clay, and gravel to make homes. It is less carbon-intensive and much more sustainable and affordable than 3D printing. Earth-based materials are abundant, recyclable, available at low costs, and can even be excavated at the construction site. The researchers plan to commercialize this technology once they have a prefabrication facility.
#technology #impactprinting #3dprinting #cement #cementfree
There’s a new trend of jailbreaking. AI hackers find ways to bypass AI’s filters and make it do unexpected things. These competitions are exposing weaknesses in top AIs companies like OpenAI
It is always a cat and mouse game. The tech companies bring something out and the hackers get around it.
Cybersecurity is never dull.
it never is but who will win in the end, the AI company or the hackers because as they keep doing this, hackers learn the system better and can intentionally leave loopholes to take advantage of
There is no war that ends...it is just ongoing battles with each side winning periodically.
that's got to be the smartest thing I've heard all year. You're right
Elon Musk’s xAI in Talks to Raise Funding Valuing It at $40 Billion
xAI is in talks with investors regarding a funding round that would value it around $40 billion. The startup was last valued at $24 billion just a few months ago. The funding discussions are in the early stages, so terms are still subject to change and the talks could fall apart. The company's current revenue sources include the X Premium subscription and an API developers can use to build applications with Grok.
#technology #ai #elonmusk #xai
OpenAI will start using AMD chips and could make its own AI hardware in 2026
OpenAI is reportedly working with Broadcom to develop custom silicon designed to handle large AI workloads for inference. It has secured manufacturing capacity with TSMC. The custom-designed hardware will likely not start production until 2026. OpenAI's chip development team reportedly includes lead engineers who have previously worked on Google's Tensor processors for AI.
#technology #ai #openai #amd #chips
What’s the most underrated tech skill that everyone should learn at this time?
AI, but specifically low/no-code. The output you can get with tools like Replit and Bolt based on the required input is insane. All u need is the language to communicate the idea to the model, then boom 💥
Cool have to look into that 👏👏
maybe coding and prompt engineering because all that will be done by AI anyways
I would say it is general knowledge. People want to get specific when that is what AI is going to replace.
It is far easier to program particular skills as compared to general knowledge.
If there is a "skill" perhaps prompting and understanding how individual chatbots operate.
Kinda cool how it has shifted then. I have felt that in IT e.g there has been a great benefit to dive deep into one topic.
Rubber and tree sap: How ancient Maya cities have withstood the ravages of time
Ruins of ancient cities keep turning up in the forests of central America. How have these structures remained standing for millennia despite tropical rains, hurricanes and the return of the jungle?
Anyone driving down the rough asphalt of highway 269 that bisects the Yucatán peninsula in southeast Mexico would never have known it was there. Thick jungle lines both sides of the road for much of its length, with the occasional patch cleared for livestock. Yet, after an innocuous bend in the road, close to the tiny settlement of Dos Lagunas, an entire city has been hiding.
#technology #newsonleo #bbc
Concealed beneath a tangle of trees, vines and other vegetation, scientists have discovered a sprawling collection of houses, plazas, temple pyramids and even a ballcourt used for ball games that have the "hallmarks of a Classic Maya political capital". The remains of the city, which the researchers have named Valeriana, are among 6,674 structures they found scattered in sites across the state of Campeche on the western side of the Yucatán peninsula. Some of the largest platforms may even rival more famous pyramids at other Maya sites.
The discovery – made using an airborne laser scanning technique called light detection and ranging, or Lidar – has raised the tantalising prospect that many more remains of the ancient Maya world may still be waiting to be found.
But it also reveals something extraordinary about the ancient Maya world. Despite the humid tropical climate and the enveloping embrace of the jungle, many of their buildings are still standing after 1,500 years.
"If you look at the digital terrain models that are produced by Lidar, you can see the individual rooms of buildings where the vaults have collapsed," says Luke Auld-Thomas, an archaeologist at Tulane University and Northern Arizona University, USA, who led the team that made the latest discovery. "You can see columns along the facade of buildings that were used for public facing, administrative activities. So they're actually in very good shape. You couldn't quite move into them, but a lot of them still have standing walls and architectural detail that's quite well preserved."
So, what was the ancient Maya's secret? How has their famous architecture withstood the ravages of time? Recent research is shedding light on the techniques their builders used and revealing the innovative approach their masons used. These include incorporating materials such as rubber into mortars to act as an adhesive, and volcanic ash to increase their strength.
The ancient Maya civilisation first emerged sometime before 2000BC in an area that today comprises south-eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador.
During the Classic Period of Maya civilisation between 250 to 900 AD, the Maya constructed towering pyramid temples, beautiful palaces and finely decorated buildings adorned with intricate sculptures and ornately carved masks. Notable examples include Chichén Itzá, a site in Yucatán, Mexico, which boasts at its heart a 30m-high (98ft) pyramid called the Temple of Kukulcán. There is also Temple IV, a 65m-tall (213ft) pyramid in the ruins of the ancient Maya city of Tikal in modern Guatemala.
In the past, uncovering a Maya city involved wading through thick jungle and hacking through vegetation with a machete. But technology such as Lidar is now helping to reveal just how widespread the remains of ancient Maya settlements really are.
Juan Carlos Fernandez-Diaz, an engineer at the University of Houston, Texas, who was involved in the latest study, has been mapping areas in Mesoamerica – including Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – with Lidar for the last 15 years. He says that almost wherever you look you can see well preserved Maya architecture.
Recent discoveries include the oldest and largest Maya ceremonial structure, which was uncovered at the archaeological site of Aguada Fénix in Tabasco, Mexico in 2020. The long, rectangular elevated platform measures 1,400m (4,593ft) in length and 10-15m (33-49ft) in height. It was built from clay and earth between 1,000 to 800 BCE and was likely used for ceremonial rituals.
A separate team used Lidar to uncover a massive Maya site that stretches approximately 650sq miles (1,700sq km) across northern Guatemala. The scientists spotted 1,000 settlements connected to each by roads that the Maya likely traversed on foot.
"As we get to map more and more of the Yucatán, we basically know that if you throw a dart at the map, wherever that dart falls there will be some sort of Maya infrastructure on it," says Fernandez-Diaz.
Part of the reason these discoveries are standing at all is because the ancient Maya built with stone, which does not rot away like wood. But they were also particularly good at making mortar to prevent their stone structures from crumbling into piles of rubble.
Studies have shown that ancient Maya builders used a range of natural materials such as blood, eggs and natural rubber obtained from local trees when preparing mortar. For example, when in 2018 researchers analysed mortar taken from stones at the main pyramid at the Witzinah archaeological site near Yucatán, Mexico, they found traces of saturated fats typical of degraded natural rubber. The researchers believe the Maya masons obtained the rubber from local trees and used it as a binder along with a fine-grained clay to create a durable mortar to bind the stonework together.
A separate study in 2014 examined mortar samples from the archaeological site of Río Bec in south-eastern Campeche, finding evidence that Maya stone masons added volcanic ash to the mortar to strengthen it.
Perhaps even more surprising than their stone structures, however, is the preservation of decorated plasters that have also been discovered in some locations. Scientists have known for some time that the ancient Maya knew how to make lime plaster, which they used to coat and protect interior floors or wall surfaces, bind stones together and cover and decorate the surface of stone buildings. Examples of intricately decorated plaster-covered buildings can still be seen in Tikal and Copan, an ancient Maya site in Honduras, today.
In 2023, Carlos Rodriguez-Navarro, a mineralogist at the University of Granada in Spain set out to discover how the ornate lime-plaster covered sculptures and temples at Copan remained in excellent shape despite being exposed to a hot, humid tropical environment for more than 1,000 years.
As part of his study, Rodriguez-Navarro's team met with local stone masons in the area and asked them about their techniques for making lime mortar. The masons, who are direct descendants of the ancient Maya, said that they commonly use extracts from plants and particularly sap from the Chucúm and Jiote (Chaká) trees in their lime mix.
Next, the researchers analysed the ancient plaster from the Honduras site and prepared a replica of it. The process of making plaster involves baking (calcinating) carbonate rock material such as limestone using hot temperatures, before adding water to the resulting quicklime, forming a lime paste which is mixed with sand. As the material hardens it sucks carbon dioxide from the air, trapping it in the calcite cement. The researchers also took the advice of the stone masons and added juice
from the bark of Chucúm and Jiote trees to the mix. They found that the resulting plaster was especially hardy and durable.
"We were able to exactly replicate the structure, texture and mechanical properties of the ancient material," says Rodriguez-Navarro.
The scientists then analysed the original plaster using high resolution X-ray diffraction, a technique that enabled them to view the material at the atomic scale. The results showed that molecules of the organic material from the bark had become incorporated into the molecular structure of the lime plaster during the setting, or hardening process. According to Rodriguez-Navarro, this makes the material very durable and resistant to physical and chemical weathering.
"It's very hard to break the material, because it is a composite between organic and inorganic materials," says Rodriguez-Navarro. "So, if you try to break the purely inorganic calcite it is very simple – it's fragile, so you just hit it, and it collapses. But if you incorporate the organic atoms from the tree sap you make the material tougher. So, the energy you have to spend to break that material is really, really high."
The incorporation of organic plant material also makes the material more insoluble, which prevents it from dissolving in the rain – an important feature in the tropical climate that is often buffeted by hurricanes bringing heavy rain.
Other studies at sites such as Ek'Balam in Yucatán, Mexio, also found that extracts from another tree – pixoy, or Guazuma ulmfiolia – helped to act as a fixative to preserve the layers of colour used in the lime-plaster.
There is, of course, another reason why the ruins from abandoned Maya cities may have lasted as long as they have – the jungle itself. Although the trees have made the ruins hard to find, they have also protected them from being built over and looted.
"There are parts of the world where people have bulldozed pyramids to use as road fill, or because they're in the way of where they want to run cattle," says Ault-Thomas. "However, it's hard to do that when there are a gazillion trees in the way."
The Maya also transformed the landscape around their settlements to help protect them from the ravages of water. Auld Thomas saw evidence of this at the site of Valeriana he helped to discover.
"It's also in an area that's extensively modified for agriculture," he says. "It's quite hilly, and basically every sloping surface that is above the level of seasonal flooding is sculpted, terraced and completely reworked so that people could use it to grow food and keep their feet dry in the rainy season."
So, could modern societies learn anything from these ancient Maya builders when it comes to creating cities that are resilient to climate change?
"The Maya case really shows that it's possible to manage the landscape in a way that allows it to survive and thrive for a millennium, even in fairly extreme environments where it doesn't rain for half the year, but then rains every day for the other half of the year," says Auld-Thomas.
We could learn from the Maya's choice of materials too. The reinforced concrete found in most modern buildings is strong enough to hold up massive skyscrapers, but they aren't built to last. The lifespan of most steel reinforced concrete buildings is around 50 to 100 years. At the same time, cement production currently accounts for 8% of global carbon emissions – far more than aviation.
Some researchers are looking to lime-based alternatives to cement. Currently, lime production is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, but some researchers are investigating obtaining it from other sources, such as the by-products of the paper industry, for example, which may make it more sustainable. Drawing on the knowledge of the ancient Maya as inspiration could help to make such materials more durable, says Rodriguez-Navarro.
Lime mortars can also act as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air as they remineralise and harden into limestone.
"Lime is attracting a lot of attention as a possible sustainable material for modern construction," says Rodriguez-Navarro. "Not only will it suck up CO2 during carbonation, but at the same time you get a very durable material if you add the proper organic additives."
Headline
#technology is going to create so much deflation over the next decades that it is going to make people's head spins.
Would you say its more deflationary than before or has tech always been deflationary?
Tech has always been deflationary, something overlooked by people.
What did music cost in the 1980s? About a buck a song ($8-$10 for a cassette). Today. Basically free.
What did long distance cost? 10-20 cents per minute. Today, we can communicate with people all over the world for basically nothing.
How much would a 1 hours live YT telecast that reached 1000 people cost in the 1980s? It would have been recorded and CDs mailed out.
These are things that are overlooked.
Yes and I guess this would be a point for the people saying that new tech creates new jobs while some older jobs dissapears.
Kinda crazy to think how far we actually have come in quite short time span.
They say that but the labor force participation rate tells a different story. That peaked globally in 1990 and in the US 1998. So we are 25-30 years into this technological age and the stats are showing that jobs are not keeping up.
And now we have a technology that is going at an unbelievable pace.
I actually hope for a timelime again where only one in a houshold needed to work and could still afford a house and to live.
Going to have to reverse urbanization. One of the affordability issues is the fact that people are packed around cities like sardines.
Land doesnt expand but the number of people within a geographic areas seems to grow.
tech is all about connecting systems and ecosystems, so it's quite natural for costs to go down as the infra becomes better.
Just look at the cost, in the past 2 years for a 3,000 word article. What would that cost for a professional writer? How long would it take?
Chatbots do it for free and require only some editting.
Editing and fact checking would I say, since many times if you ask a chatbot it just does makes up stuff.
And human writers dont just make stuff up?
Well thats a good point 😅
Most what msm does today is making stuff up or trying to frame it from their worldview.
The number of areas is expanding so the deflation will only accelerate.
Elon Musk's xAI in funding talks to value the company at $40 billion
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is reportedly engaged in funding talks that could see the company secure a $40 billion valuation.
According to a Tuesday report from The Wall Street Journal, xAI is trying to raise several billion dollars. The talks are in the early stages and could disintegrate.
After the funding round, xAI could reach a valuation of $40 billion, nearly doubling what it secured after its most recent funding round this year. In May, xAI received just over $6 billion in venture capital funding, valuing the company at about $24
#xai #elonmusk #funding #grok #ai #technology
If xAI lands the funding, it would exponentially expand the company that Mr. Musk started in 2023. He initially launched xAI to compete with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, of which Mr. Musk was originally a part.
While xAI has grown significantly since its launch, OpenAI is still the clear leader in generative AI. This year, after transitioning to a for-profit model, OpenAI secured $6.6 billion in its first funding round, which could value the company at $157 billion.
Article
Elon Musk scores court victory over National Labor Relations Board
A federal agency was wrong to order that Tesla CEO Elon Musk delete a 2018 social media post that union leaders saw as a threat to employee stock options,
A federal agency was wrong to order that Tesla CEO Elon Musk delete a 2018 social media post that union leaders saw as a threat to employee stock options, a sharply divided federal appeals court has ruled.
The case involved a post made on what was then known as Twitter during United Auto Workers organizing efforts at a Tesla facility in Fremont, California. The post was made years before Musk bought the platform, now known as X, in 2022.
#elonmusk #uaw #twitter #tesla #nlrb
On May 20, 2018, Musk tweeted: “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.”
The National Labor Relations Board said it was an illegal threat. After Tesla appealed, three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld that decision, as well as a related NLRB order that Tesla rehire a fired employee, with back pay.
But Tesla sought a rehearing, and the full 5th Circuit later threw out the earlier decision and voted to hear the matter again. In an opinion dated Friday, the judges split 9-8 in favor of Tesla and Musk.
“We hold that Musk’s tweets are constitutionally protected speech and do not fall into the categories of unprotected communication like obscenity and perjury,” the unsigned opinion said.
Article
Ford CEO Jim Farley slammed for driving Chinese-made electric vehicle: 'Slap in the face'
Ford CEO Jim Farley gushed about his car — a Chinese-made electric vehicle that he had specially flown in from Shanghai.
Ford’s chief executive revealed that he drives a $30,000 Chinese-made electric sedan — and got ripped by critics, who called it a “slap in the face” to employees of the Detroit-based automaker.
#ford #jimfarley #china #ev
Farley, who has been CEO of Ford since October 2020, said he drives a Xiaomi SU7, an electric sedan that retails for $30,000 that he had specially flown in from Shanghai. Introduced in December 2023, the SU7 is the first EV sold by Xiaomi, the world’s second-largest seller of smartphones.
Farley told “The Fully Charged Podcast” that he has no plans to abandon the car.
“I don’t like talking about the competition so much, but I drive the Xiaomi,” Farley told podcast host Robert Llewellyn.
“We flew one from Shanghai to Chicago, and I’ve been driving it for six months now and I don’t want to give it up.”
Farley wrote on his X social media account: “I try to drive everything we compete against. Have done it my whole career.”
Early Life and Education
Jim Farley was born in 1969 in Brooklyn, New York, to an Irish-American family. His parents were both from the old country, and his father was a mechanic. Farley grew up in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he developed a strong interest in cars and mechanics from an early age.
Farley attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn, where he studied accounting and earned a degree in 1991. During his college years, he also worked part-time jobs to help support his family, including a stint as a car salesman.
Career at Ford
After graduating from college, Farley joined Ford Motor Company in 1990 as a financial analyst in the company's Ford credit corporation. At the time, Ford was expanding its financial services ARM, and Farley was tasked with analyzing financial data and providing insights to support the company's growth.
Over the next decade, Farley worked his way up the ranks at Ford, holding various positions in finance, including controller and chief financial officer (CFO). In 2001, he joined the company's Ford Credit Corporation as the CFO, where he oversaw the company's financial operations and developed strategies to expand its credit business.
In 2008, Farley became the vice president of Global Marketing, sales, and Service, where he was responsible for developing and executing Ford's global marketing strategy. During his tenure, Farley played a key role in launching the Ford Focus and Fiesta models, as well as the company's SYNC infotainment system.
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO)
In 2015, Farley was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer (COO) of Ford, succeeding Jim Hackett. As COO, Farley was responsible for overseeing the company's global operations, including manufacturing, engineering, and sales.
As COO, Farley focused on implementing cost-saving measures and streamlining Ford's operations. He also played a key role in developing the company's strategy for electric vehicles and autonomous driving technologies.
CEO of Ford
On October 1, 2020, Farley became the CEO of Ford, succeeding Jim Hackett. As CEO, Farley has focused on transforming the company into a more agile and innovative organization.
Under Farley's leadership, Ford has announced plans to invest $18 billion in electrification and autonomous driving technologies, with a goal of offering 100 electric vehicles by 2026. Farley has also emphasized the importance of building partnerships with other companies, including startups and technology firms, to accelerate Ford's transformation.
Farley has also prioritized the development of Ford's software capabilities, recognizing the importance of digital technologies in shaping the company's future. He has also launched initiatives to improve Ford's supply chain management and manufacturing efficiency.
Leadership Style
Farley is known for his strong personality and straightforward communication style. He is a "no-nonsense" leader who values simplicity and efficiency in decision-making.
Farley has also been praised for his ability to build relationships with stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, and partners. He is a strong believer in the importance of teamwork and collaboration, and has encouraged Ford employees to work together to drive innovation and growth.
Personal Life
Farley is married and has two children. He is a self-described "New York guy" who is known for his strong personality and straightforward communication style.
Farley is a fan of sports, particularly baseball, and has been known to take the company's sports cars, including the Ford Mustang, out for spins on weekends. He is also an avid cyclist and has completed several charity cycling events to raise money for various causes.
Farley has also been an outspoken advocate for the need for the US government to provide incentives for the development and deployment of electric vehicles, arguing that the industry can create millions of jobs and stimulate economic growth.
Awards and Recognition
Farley has received numerous awards and recognition for his leadership and contributions to the automotive industry. These include:
Overall, Jim Farley is a seasoned executive with a strong track record of leadership and innovation. As CEO of Ford, he is driving the company's transformation into a more agile and sustainable organization, with a focus on electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and software capabilities.
Should've bought a US-made #tesla by #elonmusk #lolz #cent
He could have bought a China made Tesla if he wanted also.
A lot of cars rolling out of the Shanghai factory.
Yes, good point. As long as he got what he wanted. Thanks Task.
Ashton Kutcher explains why he's betting on AI, but not trying to pick a 'winner'
Ashton Kutcher believes that every company is going to become an AI company, but that there might not be a winner in the space.
Ashton Kutcher, co-founder of Sound Ventures, believes that every company is going to become an AI company, but that there might not be a winner in the space.
#ai #ashtonkutcher #technology #vc #ai
The actor and investor spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday alongside Sound co-founder Guy Oseary and partner Effie Epstein to detail what the firm is looking for in founders and startups, and how they believe foundational AI companies are setting the stage for the future.
“Foundation-layer AI companies are going to be some of the most valuable companies that have ever been created in the history of humankind,” Kutcher said.
He said it’s easy to underestimate how big of a deal AI is, and that he believes foundational AI models are going to be the foundation of everything to come.
“There will not be a company in the world that is not, in some way, shape, or form, using AI in the future,” Kutcher said. “So every company is going to be an AI company. And it’s our thesis that whether it’s open source AI, whether it’s closed systems like Anthropic or OpenAI or World Labs, or whether you’re building software using Magic.dev, those things are going to be the underpinnings of everything else.”
Article
Here's a more detailed biography of Ashton Kutcher:
Early life and education
Ashton Kutcher was born on February 7, 1978, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Diane and Stephen Kutcher. His father was a insurance salesman, and his mother was a homemaker. Kutcher has two younger siblings, a brother named Michael and a sister named Tasha.
Kutcher grew up in a small town in Iowa and was a athletic child. He was a star basketball player in high school and was also a member of the school's drama club. He was a charismatic and outgoing child, and he was always interested in performing and making people laugh.
After high school, Kutcher enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan College, a small liberal arts college in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. However, he didn't last long at the college. He dropped out after one year to pursue a career in acting.
Move to New York City and Early Career
In 1997, Kutcher moved to New York city to pursue a career in acting. He had no connections in the industry and had to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. He worked as a model, waiting tables, and even sold plasma to make money.
Despite the challenges, Kutcher persevered and eventually landed a few small roles in independent films and TV shows. He appeared in the 1998 film "Loser," which was his first major role.
Breakthrough and Success
Kutcher's breakthrough role came in 1998 when he was cast as Michael Kelso on the popular Fox sitcom "That '70s Show." The show was a huge success and ran for eight seasons, making Kutcher a household name.
During his time on "That '70s Show," Kutcher also began to land film roles. He appeared in the 2000 film "Just Visiting," and he also had a supporting role in the 2003 film "Dude, Where's My Car?"
In 2003, Kutcher starred alongside Brittany Murphy in the romantic comedy "Just Married." The film was a box office success, and Kutcher's performance earned him critical acclaim.
In 2005, Kutcher starred in the romantic comedy "Guess Who," which was a commercial success. He also appeared in the film "The Butterfly Effect," which was a critical success.
Punk'd and Other Ventures
In 2003, Kutcher created and produced the MTV reality show "Punk'd," which became a huge success. The show featured Kutcher playing pranks on celebrities and making them think that they had been duped.
Kutcher also began to invest in other ventures, including a production company called Katalyst media. The company produced several films and TV shows, including the TV series "The Beauty Below."
In 2011, Kutcher co-founded the venture capital firm A-Grade investments, which focuses on investing in early-stage startups. The Firm has invested in several companies, including Uber and Airbnb.
Personal Life
Kutcher has been married twice. His first marriage was to actress Demi Moore in 2005, but the couple divorced in 2013. Kutcher and Moore have two children together, a daughter named Faith and a son named Dempsey.
In 2015, Kutcher married actress Mila Kunis, and the couple has two children together, a daughter named Wyatt and a son named Dimitri.
Philanthropy
Kutcher is also involved in several charitable organizations, including the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which he co-founded in 2006. The foundation focuses on finding a cure for Parkinson's disease.
Kutcher has also been involved in several other charitable organizations, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Children's hospital Los Angeles.
Influence and Legacy
Kutcher has been named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2015. He has also been recognized for his philanthropic work, particularly in the area of education and technology.
Throughout his career, Kutcher has been known for his charisma and sense of humor. He has become a household name, and his influence can be seen in many areas of popular culture.
AMD shares fall as forecast fails to impress despite strong AI growth
AMD shares are up about 20% so far in 2024, although rivals such as Nvidia and Broadcom have had much greater gains during the same period, driven by AI chips.
Advanced Micro Devices reported third-quarter results Tuesday, with earnings in line with forecasts and revenue that slightly beat expectations.
#amd #earnings #chips #semiconductors #technology
Here's how the company did, compared with LSEG estimates for the quarter ending Sept. 28:
Earnings per share: 92 cents adjusted vs. 92 cents expected
Revenue: $6.82 billion vs. $6.71 billion expected
AMD said its important data center business doubled in sales for the second quarter in a row, but overall revenue guidance for the fourth quarter was in line with consensus expectations.
AMD shares fell 7% on Tuesday in extended trading.
AMD said it expected about $7.5 billion in sales in the current quarter, in line with consensus expectations of $1.16 in adjusted earnings per share on $7.54 billion in revenue. That would be a 22% year-over-year decline for the December quarter.
Article
Volkswagen profit plunges 42% in third quarter amid sweeping overhaul plans
German automaker Volkswagen on Wednesday reported a 42% drop in operating profit in the third quarter.
German automaker Volkswagen on Wednesday reported a 42% drop in operating profit in the third quarter.
Operating profit fell to 2.86 billion euros ($3.1 billion), while third quarter sales revenues slipped 0.5% year on year to around 78.5 billion euros.
#newsonleo #volkswagon #automotive #evs
Vehicle sales fell 8.3% in the third quarter of 2024 compared to the same time period a year earlier, Volkswagen said.
Net liquidity across the Volkswagen Group stood at negative 160.6 billion euros at the end of September 2024, it said. The company's net liquidity stood at negative 147.4 billion euros at the end of 2023.
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China's Xiaomi delivers 20,000 EVs in October, just months after launching its first car
The Chinese smartphone company also announced a high-end sports version of the car, the SU7 Ultra, would begin preorders ahead of a product release in March.
China's Xiaomi said Tuesday that it had delivered more than 20,000 SU7 EVs in October as it ramps up production for its electric car venture in a fiercely competitive market.
#xiaomi #evs #technology #china #automotive
The Chinese company, which is largely known for its smartphones and home appliances, reiterated plans to deliver 100,000 SU7 vehicles by the end of November. Xiaomi first revealed plans to make cars in 2021 and began building a dedicated manufacturing plant the same year.
The company released the basic version of the SU7, its first car, in late March for about $4,000 less than Tesla's cheapest car — Model 3 — in China at the time. Tesla subsequently cut the car's price by about $2,000. Xiaomi has delivered more than 75,000 SU7 cars to date, including October's figures.
Chinese rivals Xpeng and Nio took about six years to produce 100,000 electric cars, while it took Tesla 12 years.
While Xpeng delivered a monthly record of more than 20,000 cars in September, with about half owed to its newly launched, lower-cost brand Mona, Nio has struggled to keep monthly deliveries above 20,000 cars.
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Reddit shares soar 22% on earnings beat and better-than-expected forecast
Reddit reported third-quarter results that exceeded analysts' estimates and gave a forecast for the current period that was well ahead of estimates.
Reddit shares jumped 22% in extended trading Tuesday, topping $100 for the first time, after the social media company reported third-quarter results that topped analyst estimates and issued an optimistic forecast for the current period.
#reddit #socialmedia #earnings #technology
Here's how the company did compared with LSEG estimates:
Earnings per share: 16 cents vs. a loss of 7 cents expected
Revenue: $348.4 million vs. $312.8 million expected
Reddit said fourth-quarter revenue will be between $385 million and $400 million, beating the average analyst estimate of $357.9 million. Adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter will be in the range of $110 million to $125 million, higher than the $85.2 million average estimate.
Revenue in the third quarter jumped 68% from a year earlier, and the company turned profitable, reporting net income of $29.9 million, compared with a net loss of $7.4 million during the same quarter a year ago.
The company said that its daily active users grew 47% year over year in the third quarter to 97.2 million, better than analyst estimates of 96.5 million.
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Apple announces new and smaller Mac Mini with first redesign since 2010
Apple is framing the new Mac Minis, like all of its new products announced this year, as built for Apple Intelligence.
Apple announced on Tuesday new Mac Mini models, featuring the first major redesign since 2010 that makes the desktop computer significantly smaller.
Aside from a redesign that shrunk the case and reduced the computer's volume in half, the main upgrade on these new computers is that they include Apple's latest chip, either the M4, or a more powerful version called the M4 Pro.
#apple #macmini #appleintelligence #technology
The Mac Mini is Apple's least-expensive Mac, starting at $599, and does not include a display, which is sold separately. When the product line was first introduced in 2008, it was marketed as a computer for people switching from Microsoft Windows who could simply plug their existing keyboard, mouse and monitor into their new silver box.
The Mac Mini is not one of Apple's highest-volume computers in terms of sales, but it is an important slot in Apple's lineup, especially for people who make apps for iPhones and other Apple platforms. Many iPhone developers like to run a Mac Mini as a personal development server for coordinating uploads and code.
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Snap shares jump 10% on profit beat, stock buyback
Snap reported third-quarter results on Tuesday that beat on the top and bottom lines, but the company issued light fourth-quarter guidance.
Snap reported better-than-expected third-quarter results on Tuesday but issued light fourth-quarter guidance. The stock jumped more than 10% in extended trading.
Here is how the company did:
Earnings per share: 8 cents adjusted vs. 5 cents expected, according to LSEG
Revenue: $1.37 billion vs. $1.36 billion expected, according to LSEG
Global daily active users: 443 million vs. 441 million expected, according to StreetAccount
Global average revenue per user: $3.10 vs. $3.09 expected, according to StreetAccount
#snap #socialmedia #earnings #technology
Sales jumped 15% from a year earlier in the third quarter, while Snap's net loss narrowed to $153 million from $368 million a year prior.
Fourth-quarter sales will be between $1.51 billion and $1.56 billion. The midpoint of its guidance is $1.54 billion, which is below the average analyst estimate of $1.56 billion. Snap said its adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter will be between $210 million and $260 million. The middle of the range is higher than analysts' estimates of $230.7 million.
Snap also announced a $500 million stock repurchase program.
The number of Snapchat+ paying subscribers is now at 12 million, the company said. That is up from the 11 million it reported in August. The company debuted its subscription service in 2022, pitching it as a way for users to experience exclusive and prerelease features for $3.99 a month.
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Google's new CFO makes earnings call debut, says company can 'push a little further' on cost cuts
In her first earnings call as Alphabet CFO, Anat Ashkenazi said more streamlining will be needed so the company can invest in AI.
For nine years, the CFO role at Google and parent company Alphabet was held by Ruth Porat, who took a giant pay package in 2015 to leave Wall Street for Silicon Valley.
#google #cfo #alphabet #technology #earnings
On Tuesday, Porat's successor, Anat Ashkenazi, made her earnings call debut, and said one of her top priorities will be to drive more "cost efficiencies" across the company, an effort started by her predecessor and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
"There's really good work that was done, started by Ruth, Sundar and the rest of the lead team to re-engineer the cost base," Ashkenazi, who previously spent 23 years at drugmaker Eli Lilly, said on the call. "But I think any organization can always push a little further and I'll be looking at additional opportunities."
Ashkenazi joined Alphabet in July, almost a year after the company announced that Porat would move into a new role as president and chief investment officer. Her appearance on Tuesday came after Alphabet reported third-quarter earnings that beat on top and bottom lines, driven by strong revenue growth from the company's search and cloud units.
Alphabet shares, up 21% for the year, rose another 5.8% in extended trading after the report.
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New cyanobacteria strains could sequester carbon
Strains specialized to live in high-CO2 oceanic environments have evolved traits that are useful for decarbonization and bioproduction
An international coalition of researchers from the United States and Italy has discovered a novel strain of cyanobacteria, or algae, isolated from volcanic ocean vents that is especially adept at growing rapidly in the presence of CO2 and readily sinks in water, making it a prime candidate for biologically-based carbon sequestration projects and bioproduction of valuable commodities.
#bacteria #harvard #carbon #ocean
This strain, nicknamed “Chonkus,” was found off the coast of the island of Vulcano in Sicily, Italy — an environment in which marine CO2 is abundant due to shallow volcanic vents. The discovery is described in a paper published today in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
“Dissolved carbon is relatively dilute compared to all the other molecules in the ocean, and that limits the growth of photosynthetic organisms that live there. We decided to investigate what happens when you alleviate that limiting factor by going to a place with plenty of carbon, where some organisms could have evolved the ability to use it to galvanize their growth,” said co-corresponding author Max Schubert, Ph.D., who was a staff scientist at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University when the work was conducted and is now Lead Project Scientist at Align to Innovate. “This naturally occurring strain of cyanobacteria has several traits that could be useful to humans, including highly dense growth and a natural tendency to sink in water, making Chonkus a particularly interesting organism for future work on decarbonization and biomanufacturing.”
From the shallow sea to the lab bench
Schubert and fellow corresponding author Braden Tierney, Ph.D. first met as bench neighbors in the lab of Wyss Core Faculty member George Church, Ph.D. nine years ago, but didn’t start collaborating until both were later working at Harvard Medical School (HMS) in 2016. Schubert, a microbiologist who was interested in building tools for directed evolution of bacteria and their genomes, submitted a proposal to the HMS Consortium for Space Genetics’ 2019 Symposium on Climate Change to bring this work to cyanobacteria. He won the top prize, which funded his early forays into applying his tools to cyanobacteria to investigate their potential to help fix and sequester carbon.
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Sam Altman’s Reddit stake now worth over $1 billion after post-earnings pop
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's stake in Reddit has ballooned to more than $1 billion in value, as of after-hours trading on Tuesday.
Sam Altman, the controversial CEO of OpenAI, has a stake in social media company Reddit that's worth over $1 billion as of post-market trading on Tuesday.
#reddit #samaltman #technology #openai #ai #socialmedia
Altman controls roughly 12.2 million shares of Reddit, a company he first invested in over a decade ago. Reddit shares soared about 20% in extended trading after the compny reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued an optimistic forecast.
At Reddit's after-hours share price of $98, Altman's holdings are valued at about $1.2 billion.
Prior to the surging popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which was released to the public in late 2022, Altman was best known as a startup investor and as the former president of Y Combinator. Altman's investment portfolio includes past or present stakes in Airbnb, Uber, Instacart, Stripe and Asana, but one of his top bets was Reddit. Altman was on the social media platform's board until around January 2022, when the company said he had recently stepped down.
Reddit went public in March at $34 a share.
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'First tree on Mars:' Scientists measure greenhouse effect needed to terraform Red Planet
"The atmospheric conditions existing on Mars today make the existence of life impossible."
What is the amount of greenhouse warming required to heat up the cold climes of Mars enough so that trees can grow on the Red Planet?
New research points to how much you’ve got to jack up the carbon dioxide (CO2) on Mars to support plant growth, to raise the planet’s temperatures just enough for trees to grow.
#mars #science #life
global warming on Mars will be a whole different story. And I don't think they're fully certain of dangers that exist there yet but eventually we'll find out
Its such a interesting idea to terraform Mars. I hope that its possible and that we can colonize mars 🚀
I am not big into that stuff. Space is an area I dont follow closely (although I am increasing my consumption).
To me, space manufacturing is problem the first major industry that excites me.
Yeah I dont know much either but its a exciting topic.
Just look at how much attention SpaceX draws :)
Energy balance
This futuristic plant growing scenario is led by Robert Olszewski, a professor at Warsaw University of Technology in Poland. He and research associates have led a look at the surface energy balance at Mars, such as the diffusive exchange of heat between carbon dioxide condensation and evaporation, heat exchange with the subsurface, and the transport of heat by atmospheric circulation.
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Google says its next-gen AI agents won't launch until 2025 at the earliest
Google won't ship tech from Project Astra, its effort to build AI apps and 'agents' for real-time, multimodal understanding, until 2025 at the earliest.
Google won’t ship tech from Project Astra, its wide-ranging effort to build AI apps and “agents” for real-time, multimodal understanding, until next year at the earliest.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the timeline in remarks during Google’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday. “[Google is] building out experiences where AI can see and reason about the world around you,” he said. “Project Astra is a glimpse of that future. We’re working to ship experiences like this as early as 2025.”
#google #projectastra #technology #ai #aiagents
Project Astra, which Google demoed at its I/O developer conference in May 2024, encompasses a range of technologies, from smartphone apps that can recognize the world around them and answer related questions to AI assistants that can perform actions on a user’s behalf.
In a prerecorded demo during I/O, Google showed a Project Astra prototype answering questions about things within view of a smartphone’s camera, like which neighborhood a user might be in or the name of a part on a broken bicycle.
The Information reported this month that Google was planning to launch a consumer-focused agent experience as early as this December — one capable of purchasing a product, booking a flight, and other such chores. That now seems unlikely — unless the experience in question is divorced from Project Astra.
Anthropic recently became one of the first companies with a large generative AI model able to control apps and web browsers on a PC. But, illustrating how challenging building AI agents can be, Anthropic’s struggles with many basic tasks.
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A driverless shuttle is leaving this rural community less isolated
Some say driverless vehicles are the future of mobility in rural areas but there are many challenges to address before they can be fully implemented.
Self-driving shuttles have been deployed in a remote region of southeastern France amid growing European interest in automated electric vehicles (EVs) as an option for public transport.
#autonomy #technology #selfdriving #transportation
“We are trying to ensure that this is a new means of travel and mobility for people living in suburban or rural areas,” Yann Arnaud, director of responses to customer needs and innovation at the French insurance company MACIF, told Euronews Next on the sidelines of the European Mobility Expo.
The shuttles, which have been deployed since 2020, currently use a path of around 5 km with seven stops over 20 minutes with a control operator present to ensure a swift journey.
“We guarantee safety through a technology that is in line with the European vision of what an automated vehicle should be, so a vehicle that has learnt its route before operating it and which, when it is in operation and without a driver on board, simply compares what it has learnt with what it sees,” said Benjamin Beaudet, general director at Beti, the operator of the automated shuttles.
He drew a comparison to US and Chinese companies that have focused more on self-driving taxis, which don’t have predefined routes, with leading companies being Waymo (owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company), Uber, and Tesla.
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LinkedIn launches AI-powered hiring assistant to take the pain out of recruiting
Recruiting on LinkedIn gets an AI boost
LinkedIn has injected yet more artificial intelligence in a bid to take the stress out of the hiring process.
The platform's new AI-powered Hiring Assistant is designed to help companies find the right talent by handling time-consuming administrative tasks like candidate sourcing and application reviewing.
#ai #technology #linkedin #microsoft #recruiting
The addition comes as the world undergoes a major labor market shift – with new LinkedIn research claiming 10% of jobs being filled now didn’t exist two decades ago.
LinkedIn new AI Hiring Assistant
According to company data, three in four (74%) UK business leaders agree that work is evolving at an unprecedented pace, with new roles and skills evolving quickly.
The Microsoft-owned platform also revealed more than half (51%) of UK HR professionals are facing rising expectations. Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and the subsequent trickling down of AI features across its portfolio, are hoped to ease some of the pressures that workers face today.
LinkedIn has already trialed its Hiring Assistant at companies like Siemens, Canva and Zurich Insurance, with plans to expand access globally in the coming months.
As well as increasing the efficiency of HR workers, LinkedIn has also rolled out more AI to help recruits further their skills development with an interactive coaching feature focused on interpersonal skills. The tool includes real-world interactive scenarios, like performance reviews, using voice or text.
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Archon emerges from stealth with $20M and 'antibody cages' to power up drug development
Archon Biosciences, a biotech startup putting AI to work designing novel biomolecules, has just emerged from stealth with an impressive $20 million
Archon Biosciences, a biotech startup putting AI to work designing novel biomolecules, has just emerged from stealth with an impressive $20 million in seed funding. The company aims to supercharge antibody treatments using specially designed protein “cages” that multiply their effects, opening up new opportunities in drug development.
#archon #antibody #ai #drugs #biosciences
This is the first company to be spun out of Baker Lab, the University of Washington research outfit overseen by pioneering computational biologist and recent Nobel Prize winner David Baker. His team’s work on generative protein design using AI and other means has been foundational in the fast-evolving industry, and Archon is taking a specific aspect of it to market.
One shortcoming of antibody treatments (and research into effective treatments) is that, like all molecular biology, the process depends a bit on chance. It’s difficult to control how much an antibody or protein actually binds to its target on a cell or other surface.
What Archon’s antibody cages, or AbCs, do (as documented in this paper published in Science) is offer a scaffold for modifying and multiplying their effectiveness. A free-floating antibody may have only a small chance of binding to a target protein, but if you were to stick a dozen of them together in a big dodecahedron, that significantly and perhaps profoundly improves that chance.
This may be the difference between being able to tell if a medication works or not.
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X makes its basic API tier more costly, launches annual subscriptions
Elon Musk-owned social network X made changes to its API pricing and limits today and also announced annual plans with a discounted rate.
Elon Musk-owned social network X made changes to its API pricing and limits today and also announced annual plans with a discounted rate.
#x #api #elonmusk #socialmedia #subscription #technology
Wonder if this change is due to financial issues or if they realized that their data is worth more.
That is the API. But yeah I am sure it is now the value of what is being built in the AI world.
If you want to tap into X's data, it will cost you more.
As for their financial issues, do not buy into that. It is a private company and they dont release their figures.
Well thought companies used the API to fetch the data and thats why the increased price.
Well, I dont bet against Elon 👏
They do but it is limited. So the value of tapping in and building on X network is going up, at least according to the pricing model.
The company raised the prices of the basic API tier from $100 to $200 and said it would introduce higher limits and new endpoints for this subscription plan.
In a post on X’s developer community portal, the company noted that the number of reads through this API will be increased from 10,000 to 15,000, and developers will get new endpoints like reposts_of_me and communities search.
However, on the API comparison page and plan purchase page, the API limits are the same as before. This is possibly an error, and the company will edit the page (it didn’t respond to our queries).
In the announcement post, the X Developer account said that it is also introducing an experimental read API for the free tier. However the company didn’t reveal that the free tier’s post limits are now reduced from 1,500 to just 500, and the read API will only give you 100 requests.
X has also introduced new annual plans for Basic and Pro API tiers that are cheaper than developers paying a monthly fee. The Basic annual plan costs $2,100 and the Pro annual plan costs $54,000.
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Meesho claims Indian e-commerce first with positive cash flow
Meesho has become India's first horizontal e-commerce firm to generate positive cash flow, marking a significant shift in a market where profitability has Meesho has become India's first horizontal e-commerce firm to generate positive cash flow.
Meesho has become India’s first horizontal e-commerce firm to generate positive cash flow, marking a significant shift in a market where profitability has long remained elusive even as new competitive threats emerge.
#meesho #ecommerce #india #technology
The SoftBank and Prosus-backed startup, which serves customers in smaller Indian cities and towns, reported positive operating cash flow of ₹232 crores ($27.6 million) for the financial year ending March 2024, while growing operating revenues by 33% to ₹7,615 crores ($905.6 million). Its adjusted losses fell 97% from ₹1,569 crores to just ₹53 crores.
Meesho’s growth remains faster than the e-commerce’s surge in India. India’s e-commerce industry growth is expected to moderate to 17% in 2024 before accelerating to 20% in 2025, Bank of America analysts said this week. This relatively slower growth is attributed to consumption slowdown impact and slower apparel industry growth.
Flipkart’s marketplace arm grew its revenue by 21% to $2.12 billion in the financial year ending March, it disclosed in filings this week. Its losses fell 41% to $280.4 million.
The Indian commerce market is simultaneously being reshaped by quick commerce firms in urban cities. Blinkit, Zomato’s quick commerce arm, has expanded the network of so-called dark stores — the warehouses where it stores the inventory — and increased SKUs from 4-5,000 to over 10,000. The platform has also introduced new features including payment installment options for purchases above ₹3,000 ($35.7), 10-minute returns for clothing and footwear, and split shipments to expand its reach.
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Let's break down SoftBank's business portfolio and investments in more detail:
Telecommunications:
SoftBank's telecommunications ARM is one of the largest in Japan, with a market share of around 20%. The company operates a mobile network that covers over 90% of Japan's population, and it also offers fixed-line and broadband services. SoftBank's telecommunications business is focused on providing high-speed Internet and mobile services to consumers and businesses.
In 2016, SoftBank acquired Sprint corporation, a US-based wireless carrier, for $21.6 billion. The acquisition gave SoftBank control of Sprint's mobile network and expanded its presence in the US market. However, the deal was later reversed due to regulatory hurdles, and Sprint was sold to T-Mobile US for $26.5 billion in 2014.
Technology:
SoftBank has invested heavily in various tech startups, including:
Venture capital:
SoftBank's venture capital arm, SoftBank Vision fund, is one of the largest and most active venture capital firms in the world. The fund was launched in 2016 with a target size of $100 billion and has since invested in over 200 companies, including:
Finance:
SoftBank has a significant presence in the financial services sector, including:
Real Estate:
SoftBank has invested in various real estate projects, including:
Investment Strategy:
SoftBank's investment strategy is focused on investing in emerging technologies, including:
Overall, SoftBank's business portfolio and investments reflect its focus on emerging technologies and its commitment to investing in innovative startups.
GM CEO Mary Barra on the politics of EVs, the future of AVs, and moving away from China
“I never thought the propulsion of a vehicle would become a political issue,” GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said
“I never thought the propulsion of a vehicle would become a political issue,” GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday.
#marybarra #technology #gm #evs
While the executive didn’t expand on this statement, former President Trump has railed against EVs and claimed, wrongly, that there is a mandate to make and sell electric vehicles in the United States.
“General Motors’s goal is to just keep providing great vehicles, keep supporting the charging infrastructure to be more robust …and opening up the Tesla charging network, as well, so people choose it because it’s a great vehicle,” Barra continued. “And that’s the journey we’re working on, while we’re getting battery costs down. We’re still looking for battery innovation to get energy density up, cost down, all those things are going to be unlocks.”
Lowering battery costs could help lower the price of EVs. Affordability is top of mind for Barra who said it major factor for consumers.
“That’s why we’re so excited to have the Equinox and the Blazer on that because we’re getting into the affordable range, especially when you look at an Equinox EV that will be starting in that mid $30,000 range,” she said.
“But they want affordability with the right range,” she continued. And that sweet spot is really 300 miles before people start getting range anxiety.
Finally, accessibility to working, well lit, easy to pay for charging stations is what consumers want.
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Apple Intelligence set to launch in the EU for iOS early next year
https://9to5mac.com/2024/10/28/apple-intelligence-eu-launch/
Tony Fadell on mission-driven a**holes, Silicon Valley entitlement and why LLMs are 'know-it-alls'
Tony Fadell took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday to talk about how building the next generation of deep tech startups requires mission-driven a**holes.
Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod and founder of Nest, took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday to talk about how building the next generation of deep tech startups requires mission-driven a**holes. The entrepreneur and investor did not hold back on stage as he called out Silicon Valley for its entitlement and dunked on LLMs being “know-it-alls”, earning a wave of laughs and applause across the fully-packed auditorium.
#siliconvalley #technology #tonyfaddell #ipod
Fadell explained why he believes “mission-driven a**holes are a good thing, and in fact, needed to create and ship world class technology products.
“People work with people who are very difficult, and those are the ones that create and change the world. But there are two types of aholes. Everybody’s an ahole, but you gotta understand why,” Fadell said. “If they’re an ahole, because it’s their ego, they’re trying to push people down, that is an egocentric ahole. But, if you are an ahole on the details, you’re sitting there pushing on the details, you’re not criticizing the people, but you are critiquing their work and saying you can do better, that is a mission-driven ahole.”
Fadell thinks it’s not a bad thing when someone is keen on the details and makes sure their team is getting things right. He believes that focusing on details is what you need to make great products, and when you have a manager who cares, that’s a good thing.
The entrepreneur and investor also called out Silicon Valley for its entitlement, making a joke about how startups aren’t hiring Googlers because “you’re lucky that they even showed up.”
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England to test “super AI” that could predict likelihood
The United Kingdom's National Health Service in England is set to test a "superhuman" artificial intelligence (AI) model that potentially can predict an individual's risk of developing and passing away early from heart disease.
The new AI model, referred to as AI-ECG risk estimation, or "Aire," has been trained to read the results of electrocardiogram (ECG) tests. These tests record electrical activity, heart rates and heart rhythms in people's hearts and are used by doctors to diagnose potential heart problems like heart disease and myocardial infections.
#ai #technology #heath #heart #heathcare #england
Researchers who are promoting Aire claim the AI model can also detect problems in the structures of hearts that diagnosticians may initially miss. If these problems are found, Aire will immediately alert patients, who may benefit from further monitoring, tests or treatments.
Aire will be rolled out in hospitals under the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, encompassing seven hospitals in central London. The first round of experiments will enroll hundreds of patients, with the number of recruited patients scaling up in further studies.
If these trials are deemed successful by NHS leadership, Aire could become a common feature in all NHS trusts in five to 10 years. Reports from the U.K. indicate that around one in five licensed medical practitioners already resort to AI programs like the popular chatbot ChatGPT in clinical practice, such as by helping write letters for patients after appointments or even by asking chatbots to help diagnose illnesses.
Surveys also indicate that a majority of people in the U.K. are in favor of implementing AI to support the healthcare sector's patient care efforts. However, around one in six people are concerned that relying too much on AI could make the quality of healthcare worse.
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Polish radio station FIRES presenters, replaces them with AI
OFF Radio Krakow in Poland has sparked outrage after firing several presenters and replacing them with artificial intelligence (AI) programmed to interview high-profile dead people using AI-generated responses.
On Oct. 22, OFF Radio Krakow launched its radical initiative featuring a simulated interview with the late poet Wieslawa Szymborska, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. The AI-hosted segment employed a computer-generated voice designed to mimic Szymborska's tone as she "discussed" this year's Nobel Prize in Literature following approval from the poet's foundation.
#newsonleo #poland #radiostation #technology #ai #jobs
The foundation believes the innovative presentation could help introduce the works of Szymborska to new audiences, but the response from the public and media has been largely critical. Fans and cultural advocates argue that the use of AI to impersonate deceased individuals crosses an ethical line and threatens the integrity of journalism.
Prominent journalists have expressed their indignation on social media.
"And so ends my beloved profession. Who's next for the interview? [Jozef] Pilsudski? But why limit yourself to recent history? Let Mieszko I [Duke of Poland from 960] talk about the baptism of Poland on Radio Krakow," journalist Rober Felus stated in frustration. This remark reflected widespread concern over the blurring lines between factual reporting and AI-generated fiction.
Another journalist, Patryk Slowik, sarcastically requested an interview with the 17th-century Polish King Jan III Sobieski on the merits of paying Poland's RTV license fee. "Can I ask for an interview with [17th-century King of Poland] Jan III Sobieski about why it is worth paying an RTV license fee?" Slowik asked.
Beyond the media sector, influential figures in Poland's literary community have also criticized the experiment. "What Szymborska's bot says simply ridicules our Nobel Prize winner herself. We got a bland, although 'but I can be liked' journalist without personality, responsibility, spark and intelligence," said playwright and author Remigiusz Grzela. He even called it "a complete disgrace and civic failure."
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Google launches its Certified Refurbished Phone program, with up to 40% off Pixel phones
It’s the first time Google has offered officially refurbished Pixel phones
Google has launched its Certified Refurbished Phone program, offering savings of up to 40% on refurbished Pixel phones.
The program marks the first time Google has offered refurbished Pixel phones directly – according to the official announcement, a Certified Refurbished Pixel phone will go through an inspection of the battery, screen, and housing, as well as an update to the latest Android software, before being approved for sale.
#google #refurbished #pixelphones #technology
What’s more, Certified Refurbished Pixel phones are re-packaged in a new box and even come with a compatible charger.
The initial lineup of Certified Refurbished phones includes the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, and Pixel 6a – these are all capable handsets, but there’s no luck yet for those looking for the latest Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro at a discount.
Still, the chance to grab some of the best Pixel phones of yester-year at a discounted price with the same one-year warranty and customer support will be hard to pass up for some.
Google Pixel 6a $249 (was $449)
Google Pixel 6 $339 (was $599)
Google Pixel 6 Pro $539 (was $899)
Google Pixel 7 $429 (was $599)
Google Pixel 7 Pro $629 (was $899)
Google also keenly highlights the sustainability benefits of buying refurbished in the program’s official announcement, noting the company’s goal of reducing e-waste and plastic production – Certified Refurbished Pixel phones will come in plastic-free packaging, the same as all other Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit devices.
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Sony has shut down two PlayStation studios including Concord developer Firewalk Studios
Neon Koi is also no more
Sony has closed two PlayStation developers, Neon Koi, and Concord developer Firewalk Studios. The news was confirmed in an internal email from Sony CEO Hermen Hulst that was subsequently shared to the official Sony blog.
#sony #playstation #stuido #neonkoi #technology
The email states that the company seeks to “consistently evaluate our games portfolio and status of our projects to ensure we are meeting near and long-term business priorities.” The decision to close the two studios reportedly arose from “ongoing efforts to strengthen” the business.
Neon Koi was working on an unannounced mobile action game, which the statement confirms will “not be moving forward” at this time.
Firewalk Studios has been shuttered as a result of the poor reception of its debut title Concord, which was released back in August. The game had been in development for eight years and was shut down just two weeks after launch, with refunds given to affected players.
In a September PlayStation blog post, game director Ryan Ellis said that the studio would “explore options, including those that will better reach our players” - potentially suggesting a future relaunch. Now we know that this will not be the case as this latest communication states that “after much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio”.
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Wonder Dynamics now lets you go straight from multi-camera video to fully animated 3D scene
Wonder Dynamics made a strong opening play in AI-enhanced visual effects, providing tools animators and filmmakers actually find useful — and earning the startup a prompt acquisition by Autodesk. Their latest tool further automates the animation process, letting you put in practically any video and get a fully editable 3D scene, characters and all.
#wonderdynamics #camera #technology #visualeffects #3d
The feature combines the company’s existing drop-in actor replacement, in which you could easily replace a person with an animated 3D character keyed to their movements, with a full scale 3D background of your choosing.
To be clear, as with all the company’s previous features, this is not intended to provide a finished product — just a base layer to build on. Animation is labor intensive, and location shooting is difficult and expensive — if you can film two friends walking down the hall and convert it to robots walking down a futuristic street, that’s super useful for previsualization, story flow, and other early stages of production.
“The idea is that you can shoot and edit your video in your living room, with desired performances, cut, and camera framings as you would want to see in your animation,” said Wonder Dynamics co-founder Nikola Todorovic. “This process would provide you with a quick previs and, most importantly, 3D scenes to edit each individual element in either Blender, Maya or Unreal.”
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Bosses have high hopes about workplace AI - and even want it to make decisions for them
Bosses want to be on board with AI, report finds
New TeamViewer research has revealed AI tools are increasingly being used by IT, operational technology (OT) and business leaders to handle complex tasks, make autonomous decisions and provide forecasting.
#ai #technology #teamviewer #business
However, despite the clear optimism, three-quarters (74%) of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) and even more (87%) C-suite execs expressed concern about the security of AI, including data management.
This has led to a cautious approach to the rollout of AI within organizations, however nearly two in three (64%) continue to implement artificial intelligence.
Business leaders are keen to use AI
The research suggests there is still room to improve the management of AI-related risks, however two-thirds of UK decision makers would bet on their organization’s ability to manage the, with nearly half (48%) of C-suite execs willing to stake a week or a month’s pay.
The confidence comes from their recognition of AI’s potential for transformation when it comes to productivity. While the study covers leaders from France, Germany, Australia, Singapore and the US, it notes the productivity struggles that are playing out in the UK, adding that 74% of UK decision-makers believe AI could drive the most significant productivity boost in the last century.
Moreover, leaders believe that AI could improve workplace accessibility for those suffering with chronic illnesses.
“AI offers immense potential for fostering equal opportunities in the workplace by supporting employees in overcoming challenges and streamlining tasks at all levels," noted TeamViewer CHRO Constanze Backhaus.
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Microsoft under fire due to popular Word program’s “Inclusiveness Checker,” which polices all forms of non-inclusive speech
Big Tech company Microsoft is once again under fire after it introduced an "Inclusiveness Checker" in its popular Word program, with concerns being raised over the potential for "speech policing."
The Inclusiveness Checker or Inclusivity Checker in Word can be used to check a person's writing for "gender, age, cultural bias and more." Word users can opt to deactivate this checker. But when it is used, when an individual writes anything using "non-inclusive" language, Word will suggest alternatives.
#microsoft #technology #word
The said "tool" seems to work by flagging almost every word in the English language with a gendered connotation, including "mother" and "father." When users learned about the Inclusiveness Checker and attempted to see how far it would go, they found out that when using the term "maternity leave," the Checker would recommend changing the phrase with "birth-related leave," "parental leave" or "childbirth leave." When referring to "paternity leave," it suggests "child-bonding leave" as an alternative.
When users attempted to input the term "postman," the Inclusiveness Checker would suggest "postal worker." When using the term "manpower," the Checker would recommend replacing the word with "workforce."
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Bifrost helps industrials speed up model training with its 3D data generation platform
Bifrost has raised an $8M Series A led by Carbide Ventures to further build out its 3D real-world data simulation platform.
For many companies working on AI models with applications in the physical world, data presents the biggest opportunity. It’s also the biggest hurdle they face, as nicely labeled and clean real-world data is as readily available as hen’s teeth, and the costs and effort required to gather and clean up data can be immense.
#bitfrost #ai #models #technology #realworld
Bifrost, a 3D data generation platform, believes its tech can help robotics and industrial companies solve at least one part of that problem: the time required to train AI models. The startup, based out of San Francisco, says its platform lets companies generate simulated 3D worlds to instruct their AI models and help their robots adjust to new objects, tasks and surroundings within hours instead of months.
The company said on Wednesday that it has raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Carbide Ventures.
“Most of our customers need vast amounts of real-world data to train AI models,” co-founder and CEO Charles Wong said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. “This often means they would have to deploy fleets of robots across hundreds of locations, collect millions of hours of footage, manually label the data, and implement rigorous quality checks to reduce human errors and bias. This approach is brutal. It costs millions, takes years, and proves nearly impossible to scale.”
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Dropbox is laying off 20% of its staff
Dropbox is laying off 20% of its staff as the cloud storage company undergoes what CEO Drew Houston calls a "transitional period."
In a letter to staff, Houston said that the reduction in headcount would impact 528 people. The goal, he added, was to make cuts in areas where Dropbox has “over-invested” while designing a “flatter, more efficient” team structure.
#dropbox #ceo #drewhouston #technology #layoffs #jobs
Just looking at myself here but who uses dropbox this day? Used to use it, but was many years ago now.
Very true. There was another one also...evergreen or something like that.
No idea what utility they have today.
most of these things eventually get obsolete because of tech growth and changes
hahaha, I've never used it before or maybe I did and didn't know 😂
“As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I’m truly sorry to those impacted by this change,” he wrote. “This market is moving fast and investors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into this space. This both validates the opportunity we’ve been pursuing and underscores the need for even more urgency, even more aggressive investment, and decisive action.”
According to a filing with the SEC, Dropbox estimates it’ll lay out total cash expenditures of $63 million to $68 million on the layoffs, primarily in the form of severance and benefits, and recognize $47 million to $52 million of incremental expense. Most of the payouts will occur in Q4 2024, with the remainder to be recognized in H1 2025.
Affected employees will receive severance, equity, and transition payments, as well as certain healthcare and benefits and job placement services.
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Apple will buy renewable power for its Mac Mini users
Apple went to unusual lengths to ensure it accounted for and neutralized all the pollution that the new Mac Mini might produce.
With its new miniaturized Mac Mini, Apple has a second product — and its first Mac — that qualifies for its “carbon neutral” label. As part of the push, the company is buying enough renewable power to offset emissions generated from customer use of the computers.
#minimac #apple #renewable #energy #technology
Tech companies have been tracking, and in some cases some reducing, the emissions profiles of their products for years. Usually, that involves querying suppliers about their own supply chains, where they get power to run their operations, and how they’ll be shipping finished products. But in 2023, with the Apple Watch Series 9, the Cupertino-based company made the unorthodox decision to eliminate emissions from product use by making additional investments in renewable power.
Powering something like a smartwatch represents a tiny fraction of the overall carbon footprint of the device; things like chips, displays, and batteries contribute far more to the total.
But with a product like the Mac Mini, using the device can generate far more pollution than charging a watch. It’s also a larger fraction of the device’s overall carbon footprint.
Shrinking the Mac Mini also likely helped keep the footprint down, though it’s impossible to tell since Apple doesn’t break out specific figures for things like materials and manufacturing in its environmental declarations.
What is notable, though, is the impact that semiconductors have on a computer’s climate impact. Semiconductor manufacturing is energy intensive and uses chemicals that have significantly higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide. Making and shipping the base model Mac Mini, which has 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, generates 32 kg of carbon pollution, even after Apple accounts for its low-carbon power investments. The top spec version includes far more chips inside, providing 64GB of RAM and 8TB of storage, and that nearly quadruples the carbon footprint to 121 kg.
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Russia rolling out blockchain payments in BRICS to move away from dollar
Russia is making another push to its fellow BRICS nations to move away from the U.S. dollar.
BRICS is rapidly growing, expanding from the original nations that help form its name of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to encompass 10 countries, adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to its roster. Numerous others are hoping to make their way through the approval process soon.
#russia #brics #blockchain #Payments #usdollar
However, despite its growth, it hasn’t really accomplished much, and at this year’s summit in Kazan on the Volga River, Russian President Vladimir Putin is hoping to convince members to create a new global financial payment system that will threaten the U.S.’s current global finance dominance while protecting members from sanctions.
This is something that they say will enable “economic operations without being dependent on those that decided to weaponise the dollar and the euro.”
Known as BRICS-Bridge, the idea is to build it up within a year and give countries the ability to carry out cross-border payments with digital platforms that their respective central banks run. With the potential for quicker and more affordable transactions, emerging economies could be tempted away from carrying out business in U.S. dollars, and Western officials are already worried about its ability to hep countries get around sanctions.
Put simply, this initiative would use digital money that is backed by fiat currencies, which would mean that central banks are at the center of cross-border transactions. As a result, no single country would be able to cut off another one, and the need for correspondent banks that use the dollar clearing system would be eliminated.
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AI Boom Puts Pressure On America's Water Supply, JPMorgan Warns
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States is adding significant strain to the nation’s already stressed water supply, according to a new report by JPMorgan Chase and consultancy ERM, which calls for urgent action to better manage this vital resource.
#ai #technology #water #environment #jpmorgan
The report, published on Oct. 28, notes that the surge in AI-driven technologies, including data centers and semiconductor manufacturing, is contributing to a growing mismatch between water supply and demand, while warning that ignoring the water demands of AI and other industries could have serious consequences.
“There is an urgent and growing need to build resilience into our collective water management practices if we are to have reliable water for use in the future,” reads the report, which notes that the growing instability of water resources is “pushing us closer to disrupted ecosystem services, threatened biodiversity, and impacted human livelihoods.”
The primary driver of increased water demand in the United States is a combination of the nation’s growing population and more people moving to warmer, sunnier regions that are already facing water supply challenges. However, new demands from reshoring of manufacturing and AI-based data centers are putting additional strain on water resources.
Data centers use substantial amounts of water—often taken from drinking water resources—in order to cool servers that generate significant amounts of heat.
On average, a mid-sized data center uses about 300,000 gallons per day, while larger facilities can consume as much as 1 million to 5 million gallons daily—comparable to the needs of a town of between 10,000 to 50,000 people.
Data centers in the United States consumed more than 75 billion gallons of water in 2023, per the report, which notes that around 20 percent of the water used by such facilities is drawn from stressed watersheds, “presenting risks to the technology industry and the surrounding communities and environment.”
However, the broader impact of AI on the water sector goes well beyond cooling technologies used in data centers, the report warns. Data center operations rely on semiconductor chips, the manufacturing of which has major implications on water resources. Not only does it require vast amounts of water but it also generates toxic wastewater, posing additional challenges for water management.
“As semiconductors are the foundation of the AI supply chain, the future water management of their operations will be critical for the water sector,” the report notes.
The strain from AI-driven demand is part of a wider set of water-related risks, including the potential to strand business assets as production facilities become unusable or unprofitable due to insufficient supply or tighter regulations, such as wastewater discharge requirements.
JPMorgan and ERM’s report calls for increased investment in water infrastructure, which currently faces an annual funding gap of $91 billion.
The report suggests that innovative technologies, such as waterless cooling systems for data centers and advanced wastewater recycling solutions for semiconductor manufacturing, could play a key role in addressing water scarcity and stress.
AI Sucks Up A Growing Chunk Of VC Funding In The US
Even more so than usual, San Francisco will be the epicenter of the world’s startup scene this week, as founders, investors and other industry insiders come together at TechCrunch Disrupt, one of the leading events of the startup scene.
Unsurprisingly, AI will take center stage at this year’s conference, as investors are looking for opportunities to invest in the booming, yet still nascent field and founders of AI-related companies will do everything to profit from the AI boom and secure fresh capital for their ventures.
As Statista's Felix Richter shows in the chart below, AI has sucked up an increasingly large chunk of VC funding in the United States in recent years.
In the first nine months of 2024, AI-related investments accounted for 33 percent of total investments into VC-backed companies headquartered in the U.S. That’s up from 14 percent in 2020 and could go even higher in the years ahead.
According to Crunchbase data analyzed by EY, AI deals accounted for 37 percent of the $38 billion raised by VC-backed companies in Q3 2024, with four of the 10 largest deals involving AI-related companies.
The latest increase in AI-related investments is still expected to be just the beginning of a longer-term trend.
As EY notes in its latest report on VC investments, most of the funds funneled into the field are currently focused on building the foundation for the technology, e.g. developing and training AI models.
Once this wave of investment ebbs, entrepreneurs will need to figure out ways to actually utilize the potential of AI, which will likely kick off a second wave of AI investments.
Stellantis Pausing Production Of Durango And Grand Cherokee Due To "Slow Sales"
Signs from the auto industry continue to look grim. Yesterday it was Ford guiding expectations below Wall Street's estimates and today it's Stellantis announcing it is pausing production of its Durango and Grand Cherokee models due to "slow sales".
#stellantis #durango #automotive #cherokee
Manufacturing facilities at FCA's large Detroit Assembly Complex - Jefferson will be paused for a week, Motor 1 reported. Stellantis told its workers there would be a 'temporary shutdown' and 'subsequent layoffs' as a result.
Mopar Insiders first posted the "Important Notice of Layoff" memo, which said: "There will be no scheduled production at Detroit Assembly Complex Jefferson" for the dates of October 28 to November 1.
The Motor 1 report said that in 2022, the Jefferson complex employed over 5,000 people, but about 200 workers faced permanent layoffs in September.
Stellantis told Motor 1: "Stellantis continues to take the necessary actions to align production with sales. This includes making production adjustments at the Detroit Assembly Complex - Jefferson. The company will continue to monitor the situation to assess whether further action is required."
Recall, operations at Stellantis have been nothing short of a nightmare this year, as we have been reporting. Early this month we wrote that Stellantis Chief Financial Officer Natalie Knight informed her team of white collar workers about the need to take "drastic measures" to shore up the Jeep and Ram parent's finances.
Knight told her team, "The Doghouse is back!" As she explained, this belt-tightening initiative involves heavily scrutinizing requests for purchases from outside vendors to ensure maximum cost savings.
She said the doghouse "is the name for much stricter attention and control around purchase requisitions," adding, "If we apply more discipline, we can ensure big savings for the company."
The following Monday, Stellantis reduced its margin forecast for the entire year.
Back in September, the company's dealer network wrote a letter to then CEO Carlos Tavares accusing him of the “rapid degradation” of the automaker’s brands.
US dealer network leaders said Tavares had engaged in "short-term decision making" that boosted last year’s profits and increased his compensation but hurt the Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler brands.
And it looks like they may have been right...
A Lost Mayan City Has Been Found With Laser Mapping
Archaeologists have revealed an ancient lost Mayan city using advanced laser mapping technology, unearthing monumental structures such as pyramids and plazas.
A Mayan city lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico has been revealed. The discovery occurred in the southeastern state of Campeche, and archaeologists have named it Valeriana, after a nearby freshwater lagoon.
#lasermapping #technology #mayancity #mexico
“The larger of Valeriana's two monumental precincts has all the hallmarks of a classic Mayan political capital: enclosed plazas connected by a broad causeway; temple pyramids; a ball court; a reservoir formed by damming an arroyo (a seasonal watercourse); and a probable E-Group assemblage, an architectural arrangement that generally indicates a founding date prior to AD 150,” says the study, published in the journal Antiquity.
The city's discovery didn't require breaking through the jungle with machetes or patiently excavating with brushes and spatulas. Nor did researchers need tape measures, binoculars, or compasses to find their way through the thick foliage. Instead, they employed state-of-the-art technology: lasers, drones, and satellite maps. With these tools, they discovered a city hidden for centuries beneath the thick Mexican jungle, unearthing pyramids, enclosed plazas, and an ancient reservoir.
Luke Auld-Thomas, an anthropologist at Northern Arizona University, made the discovery. His analysis revealed a huge network of previously unexplored settlements.
Auld-Thomas and his fellow researchers have succeeded in mapping the city beneath the jungle thanks to airborne laser scanning, better known as lidar (light detection and ranging), a remote-sensing technique that uses pulsed lasers and other data collected through flyovers that can generate accurate three-dimensional models of surface features, revolutionizing the way archaeologists explore the hidden past.
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