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Elon Musk is attempting to expand Tesla into Sweden and circumvent its unions — but Swedish labor has a long history of taking on big US firms. If they can bring Tesla to heel, it will mark a major victory for organized labor across the globe. https://jacobin.com/2023/12/tesla-swedish-unions-nordic-elon-musk-labor-green-transition/
Narrated by Björk, and produced by K2 Studios, the movie follows Sheldrake—who has devoted his career to the remarkable and mysterious world of mycelium and mushrooms—as he embarks on a journey through the ancient Tarkine rainforest of Tasmania. Timelapse cinematography reveals up-close details of rarely seen fungal phenomena, from the dispersion of spores to vast subterranean…
The consensual fever-dream that Austin is a nice place to live and work has finally broken.
Had JSON been around when I was born in the 1970’s Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie may very well have embraced it as a recommended output format to help programs “do one thing well” in a pipeline. To that end, I argue that linux and all of its supporting GNU and non-GNU utilities should offer…
Matt Stoller breaks down the hidden lawyers behind major corporations.
This is fossil fuel key jangling … Machines to magic carbon out of the air, artificial intelligence, indoor vertical farms to grow food for our escape to Mars, and even solar-powered “responsible” yachts: the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai has been festooned with the promise of technological fixes for worsening global heating and ecological breakdown. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/10/climate-experts-warn-against-focus-technological-solutions-cop28
The granting of a licence to cultivate indigenous fungi containing psilocybin, the active compound found in psychedelic mushrooms, is the first of its kind in New Zealand and a major milestone in a Māori health science collaboration led by Rangiwaho Marae, based south of Gisborne. The licence was granted to Rua Bioscience, a biopharmaceutical business…
Tesla’s Autopilot technology has been involved in about 40 fatal and serious car crashes — including at least eight that occurred on roads with cross traffic, where the driver-assistance feature was not designed to be used, according to a Washington Post analysis. More than 800,000 vehicles have Autopilot, and federal officials have asked Tesla to limit its use…
While my Acorn Archimedes was a vastly superior computer to the Amiga, I was always very jealous about the demos that my Amiga using friends had access to. This essay investigates the gestation of the demoscene, the Amiga platform’s revolutionary beginnings, its emotional resonance within a dedicated community, and its broader influence on the field…
Transparent wood windows would therefore be stronger and aid in temperature control better than traditional glass, but the view through them would be hazy, more similar to frosted glass than a regular window. However, the haziness could be an advantage if users want diffuse light: Since thicker wood is strong, it could be a partially…
Guidance from NZ Courts on Generative AI. The provide guidelines for Judges, Lawyers and non-lawyers. Impressed they are as proactive about this as they are. https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/going-to-court/practice-directions/practice-guidelines/all-benches/guidelines-for-use-of-generative-artificial-intelligence-in-courts-and-tribunals/
A few weeks ago I made the comment: The OAI soap opera marks the point where Silicon Valley disappeared up it’s own bum. Which, I guess, is a singularity of sorts. I was not the only one to see the parallels… The consequences are what you might expect when a crowd of bright but rather…
Let’s start looking at this as the speed run for first-contact… our assumptions and values are never going to be universal and here is the perfect practice run. AI safety, originally “friendly AI,” was conceived as the problem of how to create an agent that would be benevolent towards humanity in general, on the assumption…
Instead of immediately leaping in with speculation, I decided to take a few days to do some reading. OpenAI hasn’t published details on its supposed Q* breakthrough, but it has published two papers about its efforts to solve grade-school math problems. And a number of researchers outside of OpenAI—including at Google’s DeepMind—have been doing important work in…
I really like this framework. It’s AI focused, but I think you could apply it to many big tech changes. The BMJ publishes the British Medical Journal and 60+ other scientific journals, together with a number of technology products in the health sector. As an organisation, they’re a few hundred people. So this is a…
Dark bloody cycles on dark bloody cycles… By shattering a status quo that Palestinians find intolerable, Hamas has put politics back on the agenda. Israel has significant military power, but it is politically weak. Much of the US establishment supporting Israel’s war assumes that violence emanating from an oppressed community can be stamped out by…
A super important read. Cuts thru the BS and asks the big “is it an intelligence” questions. Get a coffee, do the mahi for 10 mins.
If you ever work with me, at some point “togs, togs, undies” will come up… Up there with “ghost chips”, “bugger” and “good on ya mate”, “togs, togs, undies” has become one of the most enduring advertising phrases to enter our cultural lexicon since it was first uttered in a 2006 ad for Trumpet ice…
Ignoring the fact that Norway is now regretting a car-centric move to electrification… this is an interesting example of how action can happen (and it involves A-ha) Suitably impressed, they set about importing a similar specimen into Norway. They exploited every photo opportunity, and campaigned to make EVs the cheapest, most convenient option by abolishing…
Dave5 