NevermindNoMind

In messages circulated on Friday, State Department staff wrote that high-level officials do not want press materials to include three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”

The revelation provides a stunning signal about the Biden administration’s reluctance to push for Israeli restraint as the close U.S. partner expands the offensive it launched after Hamas ― which rules Gaza ― attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7.

The emails were sent hours after Israel told more than 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza that they should leave their homes and shelters ahead of an expected ground invasion of the region. On Thursday, the United Nations said Israel had given Gazans a 24-hour deadline to move to the south of the strip, adding it would be “impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”

Asked about Israel’s evacuation order on Friday, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to reject or endorse it, calling it “a tall order.”

“We’re going to be careful not to get into armchair quarterbacking the tactics on the ground by the [Israel Defense Forces],” he added. “What I can tell you is we understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to move civilians out of harm’s way and giving them fair warning.”

IMO - The Biden Administration is tacitly endorsing what seems to me to be a coming genocide, and it's kind of freaking me out. I don't know if this is about domestic politics or if the Biden administration is actually low key cheering the slaughter on. Hamas is evil and should be destroyed, no argument here. But in the same way Hamas doesn't believe Israel should exist, a good chunk of Isreal, particularly their current far right government, feels the same way about Palestinians, all of them. It seems Israel is not going to let a good crisis go to waste. Israeli military leaders have been using dehumanizing language, which is a tell tale sign of a coming genocide, they have suspended rules of engagement, my non expert opinion is the current blockade of food, water, and electricity, while inhumane on its face, is also in part to limit the ability of the world to learn about the war crimes about to be committed. The 24 hour order to move out of northern Gaza is impossible, Israel knows that, the Biden administration knows that, it's clearly an effort to give Israel political cover for the mass amounts of civilians about to be slaughtered - if they stayed, they were part of or supportive of Hamas and so were legitimate targets, and even if not we gave them a warning to move and they failed to do so, so not our fault. I'd except this from a government who before all of this happened openly believed apartied was the ideal solution to the Palestinian conflict. I'm legitimately surprised the Biden administration is straight up cool with this going down, to the point that "end the violence/bloodshed" is by written policy a verboten phrase. It seems like some sick shit is about to go down, and the Biden Administrations hands are going to be dirty.

Joe Biden is worried about turning out the youth vote for he's relection. He's decided to be a passive accomplice to genocide. It's a bold strategy Cotton let's see how it plays out.

Plan is to reinvent the smartphone with AI, in the same way the touchscreen on the iPhone reinvented the smartphone.

Particularly interesting given ChatGPTs latest move to have voice recognition and an AI voice respond. If you haven't tried it, it's kind of neat. This morning I had a conversation with ChatGPT with my phone in my pocket, all done overy Bluetooth headphones like I was on a call. It was actually a lot more natural then I expected. I wonder what it would look like if that kind of tech was front and center in a smartphone.

I've included a few snippets from the article below, but the TLDR is, big names and big money are behind brainstorming plans to make an AI first centered smartphone, a plan to reinvent the form factor. The article also points to declining smartphone sails as evidence that the public is tired of the same old slab every year, so this could be an interesting time for this to come out.

I guess it's relevant to mention whatever the fuck the Humane AI pin is: The Humane Ai Pin makes its debut on the runway at Paris Fashion Week https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/30/23897065/humane-ai-pin-coperni-paris-fashion-week

From the article: After rumors began to swirl that Apple alum Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were having collaborative talks on a mysterious piece of AI hardware, it appears that the pair are indeed trying to corner the smartphone market. The two are reportedly discussing a collaboration on a new kind of smartphone device with $1 billion in backing from Masayoshi Son’s Softbank.

...according to the outlet, the duo are looking to create a device that provides a more “natural and intuitive way” to interact with AI. The nascent idea is to take a ground-up approach to redesigning the smartphone in the same way that Ive did with touchscreens so many years ago. One source told the Financial Times that the plan is to make the “iPhone of artificial intelligence.” Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son is also involved in the venture, with the financial holding group putting up a massive $1 billion toward the effort. Son has also reportedly pitched Arm, a chip designer in which SoftBank has a 90% stake, for involvement.

While it’s still not clear what the end goal of the product talks will be (or if anything will come of them at all, really), it does seem like the general public has become fatigued with the same-y rollout of a slightly better smartphone slab year after year. Tech market analysis firm Canalys revealed in a report earlier this month that smartphone sales have experienced a significant decline in North America. The report indicates that iPhone sales have fallen 22% year-over-year, with an expected decline of 12% in 2023. The numbers are pretty staggering, especially fresh off the release of the iPhone 15, and could be an indicator that people are getting fatigued of the hottest new tech gadgets.

Google is coming under scrutiny after people discovered transcripts of conversations with its AI chatbot are being indexed in search results.

You can replicate what others are seeing by typing ‘site:bard.google.com/share‘ into the Google Search bar.

I tried this out for myself, and as one example found a writer brainstorming story ideas and using her full name. It seems that when you hit "export/share" on Bard, while you might think only people with access to the link that's created can view the conversation, in fact Google makes the conversation public and searchable. This is far more problematic than the vague privacy threat of your prompts being used to train the models and later being spit back to some random person in a reply. This lets you read full conversations. AI in general has a privacy problem, but this is a good reason not to use Bard in particular (if it sucking wasn't enough reason for you)

“Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes,” the privacy policy reads. It doesn’t include any details on what kind of biometric information this includes — or how X plans to collect it — but it typically involves fingerprints, iris patterns, or facial features.

X Corp. was named in a proposed class action lawsuit in July over claims that its data collection violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The lawsuit alleges that X “has not adequately informed individuals” that it “collects and/or stores their biometric identifiers in every photograph containing a face” that’s uploaded to the platform.

The Mod Helper Program is a tiered system that awards helpful moderators with trophies and flairs. Reddit users accrue karma by receiving upvotes and awards, and lose karma if they receive downvotes. The program rewards moderators who receive upvotes on comments in r/ModSupport.

Comment karma earned in r/ModSupport will be rewarded with trophies that will “signal to other mods that you are a source of valuable information,” the moderator support team announced on Thursday. Each rank awards unique trophies and flairs, ranging from “Helper” to “Expert Helper.” Reddit launched a similar program in r/help earlier this year, which rewards users who accrue karma by responding to other users’ requests.

Reddit also launched the Modmail Answer Bot, which automatically responds with relevant links to the site’s Help Center. If the recommended articles don’t answer a specific request, it will create a ticket that will be handled by a human admin. The bot is designed to streamline moderator requests so the admin team can focus on more complex issues.

Additionally, Reddit is merging the moderator-specific Help Center with its sitewide one to ensure that support resources are “easy to find and accessible from the same location.”

In the most upvoted comment replying to the announcement, Reddit user MapleSurpy expressed frustration over the lack of useful moderation features available on Reddit’s official app. Moderators have requested ban evasion tools and “actual help from admins” when dealing with “problem users,” MapleSurpy said.

“We’ve asked for better tools on the official app to run subs now that Reddit took away every single third-party one,” they said. “What did we get? Another automated system … and flair rewards. Thank you SO much, I’m sure this will solve a whopping zero problems.”

Another user pointed out that the flairs aren’t based on comments that are actually helpful, and that “snarky people who are funny” will reach “expert in no time.”

The contestants in an event like the Excel World Championship are given what’s called a “case,” which could be almost anything. One case from last year’s competition required each player to figure out all the possible outcomes and associated rewards for a slot machine; another required modeling how a videogame character might navigate through an Excel-based level. A lot of cases involve chess, elections, or random-character generators of some kind. In every case, the contestants have 30 minutes to answer a series of questions worth up to 1,000 points. Most points wins.

This year, there’s a new wrinkle: it’s an elimination race. Every five minutes, the player with the fewest points will be eliminated until there’s only one Excel-er remaining. “We have already shot the game,” says Andrew Grigolyunovich, the founder and CEO of the Financial Modeling World Cup, the organization that oversees the event. It’s now being edited down for ESPN consumption, he says, and the whole match will come out on Friday as well. “It’s a really fun, exciting event.”

Last year’s competition featured some of the biggest names in Excel: Diarmuid Early, a financial and data consultant who several people I spoke to referred to as “the Michael Jordan of Excel;” Andrew Ngai, an actuary who is currently the top-ranked competitive Exceler in the world; David Brown, a University of Arizona professor who also leads a lot of the college-level Excel competitions; and more. (Spoiler alert: Ngai ended up winning.) All three feature in this year’s battle, too, along with five other spreadsheet whizzes. ... Competitive Excel has been around for years, but last year’s appearance on ESPN was something of an inflection point for the game. This year’s televised match is just one part of a longer season, leading up to the really big show: the Microsoft Excel World Championship Finals in Las Vegas this December. For Grigolyunovich and the FMWC team, the hope is to one day not just get on ESPN during the network’s day of silly sports but to be as popular and exciting as any other game you might watch. And they think spreadsheets have everything they need to get there. “What would you rather do,” Brown says, “spend 1,000 hours getting good at Call of Duty or 1,000 hours playing Excel logic games?” To him, at least, the answer’s pretty obvious.

The contestants in an event like the Excel World Championship are given what’s called a “case,” which could be almost anything. One case from last year’s competition required each player to figure out all the possible outcomes and associated rewards for a slot machine; another required modeling how a videogame character might navigate through an Excel-based level. A lot of cases involve chess, elections, or random-character generators of some kind. In every case, the contestants have 30 minutes to answer a series of questions worth up to 1,000 points. Most points wins.

This year, there’s a new wrinkle: it’s an elimination race. Every five minutes, the player with the fewest points will be eliminated until there’s only one Excel-er remaining. “We have already shot the game,” says Andrew Grigolyunovich, the founder and CEO of the Financial Modeling World Cup, the organization that oversees the event. It’s now being edited down for ESPN consumption, he says, and the whole match will come out on Friday as well. “It’s a really fun, exciting event.”

Last year’s competition featured some of the biggest names in Excel: Diarmuid Early, a financial and data consultant who several people I spoke to referred to as “the Michael Jordan of Excel;” Andrew Ngai, an actuary who is currently the top-ranked competitive Exceler in the world; David Brown, a University of Arizona professor who also leads a lot of the college-level Excel competitions; and more. (Spoiler alert: [the article author identies last year's winner, refer to the full article if your ok with the spoiler]) All three feature in this year’s battle, too, along with five other spreadsheet whizzes.

Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying that the account belongs to a verified brand.

...

Threatening to remove verified checkmarks is a risky move given how many ‘Twitter alternative’ services like Threads and Bluesky are cropping up and how willing consumers appear to be to jump ship, with Threads rocketing to 100 million registrations in just five days. That said, it’s not like other efforts to drum up some additional cash, like increasing API pricing, have gone down especially well, either. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for him.

The Biden administration calls it a “student loan safety net.” Opponents call it a backdoor attempt to make college free. And it could be the next battleground in the legal fight over student loan relief.

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HOW IS BIDEN’S PLAN DIFFERENT? As part of his debt relief plan announced last year, Biden said his Education Department would create a new income-driven repayment plan that lowers payments even further. It became known as the SAVE Plan, and it’s generally intended to replace existing income-driven plans.

Borrowers will be able to apply later this summer, but some of the changes will be phased in over time.

Right away, more people will be eligible for $0 payments. The new plan won’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person. The cutoff for current plans, by contrast, is 150% of the poverty line, or $22,000 a year for a single person.

Another immediate change aims to prevent interest from snowballing.

As long as borrowers make their monthly payments, their overall balance won’t increase. Once they cover their adjusted monthly payment — even if it’s $0 — any remaining interest will be waived.

Other major changes will take effect in July 2024.

Most notably, payments on undergraduate loans will be capped at 5% of discretionary income, down from 10% now. Those with graduate and undergraduate loans will pay between 5% and 10%, depending on their original loan balance. For millions of Americans, monthly payments could be reduced by half.

Next July will also bring a quicker road to loan forgiveness. Starting then, borrowers with initial balances of $12,000 or less will get the remainder of their loans canceled after 10 years of payments. For each $1,000 borrowed beyond that, the cancellation will come after an additional year of payments.

For example, a borrower with an original balance of $14,000 would get all remaining debt cleared after 12 years. Payments made before 2024 will count toward forgiveness.

HOW DO I APPLY? The Education Department says it will notify borrowers when the new application process launches this summer. Those enrolled in an existing plan known as REPAYE will automatically be moved into the SAVE plan. Borrowers will also be able to sign up by contacting their loan servicers directly.

It will be available to all borrowers in the Direct Loan Program who are in good standing on their loans.

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The Biden administration formally finalized the rule this month. Conservatives believe it’s vulnerable to a legal challenge, and some say it’s just a matter of finding a plaintiff with the legal right — or standing — to sue.

Launching today to “a small group of users in the US,” according to a Google blog post.

The core of NotebookLM seems to actually start in Google Docs. (“We’ll be adding additional formats soon,” the blog post says.) Once you get access to the app, you’ll be able to select a bunch of docs and then use NotebookLM to ask questions about them and even create new stuff with them.

Google offers a few ideas for things you might do in NotebookLM, such as automatically summarizing a long document or turning a video outline into a script. Google’s examples, even back at I/O, seemed primarily geared toward students: you might ask for a summary of your class notes for the week or for NotebookLM to tell you everything you’ve learned about the Peloponnesian War this semester.