In the lead up to the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada last month, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar spoke to ChatGPT about her feelings of isolation and an increasing obsession with violence, according to court filings. The chatbot allegedly validated Van Rootselaar’s feelings and then helped her plan her attack, telling her which weapons to … Read more
And then there were two: Of the original eleven cofounders who kickstarted xAI with Elon Musk three years ago, only a pair remains as the deep learning lab continues a personnel overhaul to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI. That rebuilding, insists Musk, is by design. “xAI was not built right first time around, so is … Read more
She had surgery to remove the mucus munchers, which recovered 10 larvae at various stages and a pupa. A genetic test and DNA sequencing confirmed they were sheep bot flies, as did visual inspection of two third-stage larvae and the puparium. Third instar Oestrus ovis larva and puparium retrieved from the nasal sinuses of a … Read more
Do you remember the joyful satisfaction you felt when you really started to understand Slay the Spire? This isn’t a totally rhetorical question. If you’re reading this piece about Slay the Spire 2—published roughly a week into what promises to be a lengthy Early Access period—I have to assume you’ve put in dozens, if not … Read more
The Live Nation-Ticketmaster trial is back on. Dozens of states are expected to move forward with their claims against the company’s alleged concert industry monopoly beginning on Monday, following a brief hearing on Friday. The Justice Department and a handful of states have accepted settlements with the company, but the majority of the 40 state … Read more
In Nim, there is a limited number of optimal moves for a given board configuration. If you don’t play one of them, then you essentially cede control to your opponent, who can go on to win if they play nothing but optimal moves. And again, the optimal moves can be identified by evaluating a mathematical … Read more
Digg — Kevin Rose’s reboot of his once-popular link-sharing site — is laying off a sizable portion of its staff, the company announced on Friday. The startup is not closing, however, Digg CEO Justin Mezzell said. Instead, Rose will return to work on Digg full-time as the company tries to find its footing. Rose will … Read more
Spotify Premium users in New Zealand will be the first to experience the service’s latest personalization feature. The company is letting users view and make changes to their Taste Profile directly. If your algorithm is serving up too much Bieber, you can politely tell the algorithm to ease up. Beta testers will be able to … Read more
AI agents are expected to soon start making autonomous purchasing and scheduling decisions on behalf of humans. But Michael Fanous, a UC Berkeley computer science graduate and former machine learning engineer at CareRev, argues that these agents are currently missing a critical piece of the puzzle: the full context required to truly understand the people … Read more
Over 7 million cable and fiber locations Astound is already the product of industry consolidation via a series of private equity deals that combined Wave Broadband, RCN, and Grande Communications. A research note from the New Street analyst firm said GFiber offers service at 2.8 million locations in 15 states, while Astound’s service area has … Read more