Jul 23
“you ever bring ur pet up to a mirror and ur like ‘that’s you’”
Jul 23
Biden tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday.
Jul 23
Twitter Users Respond Fittingly To Melania Trump Saying She Was Clueless On Jan. 6
Posted in: Today's ChiliCritics just aren’t buying her claim that she was too busy taking White House inventory to notice her husband’s supporters were storming the Capitol.
Jul 23
Johnny Depp Attorneys File Notice To Appeal Jury’s $2 Million Award To Amber Heard
Posted in: Today's ChiliThe stars are still battling over a defamation case that went largely Depp’s way.
Jul 23
Today’s Wordle word may sneak up on you, and prove to be a bit of pesky pest, if you get the drift.
Jul 23
Blake Lemoine, an engineer who’s spent the last seven years with Google, has been fired, reports Alex Kantrowitz of the Big Technology newsletter. The news was allegedly broken by Lemoine himself during a taping of the podcast of the same name, though the episode is not yet public. Google confirmed the firing to Engadget.
Lemoine, who most recently was part of Google’s Responsible AI project, went to the Washington Post last month with claims that one of company’s AI projects had allegedly gained sentience. The AI in question, LaMDA — short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications — was publicly unveiled by Google last year as a means for computers to better mimic open-ended conversation. Lemoine seems not only to have believed LaMDA attained sentience, but was openly questioning whether it possessed a soul. And in case there’s any doubt words his views are being expressed without hyperbole, he went on to tell Wired, “I legitimately believe that LaMDA is a person.”
After making these statements to the press, seemingly without authorization from his employer, Lemoine was put on paid administrative leave. Google, both in statements to the Washington Post then and since, has steadfastly asserted its AI is in no way sentient.
Several members of the AI research community spoke up against Lemoine’s claims as well. Margaret Mitchell, who was fired from Google after calling out the lack of diversity within the organization, wrote on Twitter that systems like LaMDA don’t develop intent, they instead are “modeling how people express communicative intent in the form of text strings.” Less tactfully, Gary Marcus referred to Lemoine’s assertions as “nonsense on stilts.”
Reached for comment, Google shared the following statement with Engadget:
As we share in our AI Principles, we take the development of AI very seriously and remain committed to responsible innovation. LaMDA has been through 11 distinct reviews, and we published a research paper earlier this year detailing the work that goes into its responsible development. If an employee shares concerns about our work, as Blake did, we review them extensively. We found Blake’s claims that LaMDA is sentient to be wholly unfounded and worked to clarify that with him for many months. These discussions were part of the open culture that helps us innovate responsibly. So, it’s regrettable that despite lengthy engagement on this topic, Blake still chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information. We will continue our careful development of language models, and we wish Blake well.
Jul 23
Welcome back to io9’s Toy Aisle: our regular weekly round up of the toys and collectibles worthy of a spot on your shelves. San Diego Comic-Con is in full swing this week, and even with all of the convention’s exclusive toys and collectibles already revealed, we’ve still got Hasbro debuting its new Dungeons & Dragons…
Jul 23
Tammy Baldwin Confronts Marco Rubio For Calling Same-Sex Marriage Bill ‘Stupid’
Posted in: Today's ChiliThe Wisconsin Democrat, the first openly gay person elected to the Senate, gave her colleague a much-deserved earful about the constitutional right to privacy.
Jul 23
Twitter has today announced its results for the second-quarter of 2022, saying that it has seen a sharp rise in the number of regular users. In the last three months, Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAU) climbed from 39.6 million to 41.5 million, while global reach leapt from 189.4 million in April to 196.3 million today. Unfortunately, those increasing user figures did not see a boost in the company’s bottom line, and revenue was $1.18 billion, which is slightly down both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter.
Worse still for a company bringing in that much revenue is that costs and expenses for the period equalled $1.52 billion, with extra pain coming from both the costs of dealing with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and paying severance for all of the workers it’s been laying off as part of its cost-cutting drive. All in all, the company posted a net loss of $270 million, much of which it attributes to both the looming recession and the uncertainty around the proposed takeover.
Back in April, as part of its first quarter financial release, Twitter revealed that it had historically miscounted its user figures. Between 2019 and 2021, the company had counted users with multiple accounts as multiple people, adding up to two million users to the figures. This, while not a catastrophic admission, did serve to highlight that Twitter’s slow growth was even slower than people believed. At the time, the company also said that it had earned $1.20 billion in revenue, $1.11 billion of which was produced through advertising, while the average monetizable daily user figures hit 39.6 million in the US and 189.4 million in the rest of the world.
While this was going on, Twitter had also been targeted as an acquisition vehicle for Elon Musk, and the deal has dominated much of the news cycle ever since. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO pledged to buy the company at a very high valuation, and signed a binding agreement that opted to waive much of the due diligence often necessary in deals like this. Not long after, however, Musk decided — either on his own, or influenced by Tesla’s dwindling stock price — to try and pull out of the deal, claiming that Twitter had misrepresented how many automated accounts were on the platform.
Unfortunately for Musk, contract law is often funny about letting people walk away from deals they signed promising to waive the necessary due diligence. Twitter has since sued the figure in order to either force him to buy, or to pay a significant sum to make the whole thing go away. The Delaware Court of Chancery rejected Musk’s request to hold a trial in 2023, and accepted Twitter’s plea to expedite the matter. Consequently, the pair will square off for a five-day courtroom showdown in October.
Twitter has said, once again, that it believes Musk’s “purported termination is invalid and wrongful,” and that the proposed merger deal “remains in effect.”
Jul 23
Is the Pixel 6a the best Android phone under $500? Tune in for Cherlynn’s review! This week, Devindra and Cherlynn also discuss why losing almost a million subscribers was actually a good thing fo Netflix. And they dive into Qualcomm’s latest hardware for smartwatches, as well as the latest updates from Twitter’s ongoing fight with Elon Musk.
Listen above, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
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Say hello to “Cherlon Musk.” (Listen to the Musk/Twitter discussion for context!
via Mark Dell
The Pixel 6a is the best midrange Android phone on the market now – 1:53
Netflix lost a million subscribers, and that’s a good thing? – 17:11
Delaware judge allows faster trial for Twitter v. Elon Musk – 29:56
Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked is happening on August 10 – 32:42
Leaked files show that Uber was shady from early in its life – 37:41
Qualcomm unveils wearable-focused Snapdragon W5 chips – 42:21
Alienware’s m17 R5 gaming laptop is a beast that few people need – 46:25
The new Instagram Map is like Google Maps, but with more selfies – 48:16
OnePlus 10T launch set for August 3 – 52:19
Working on – 53:06
Pop culture picks – 58:01
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Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Sam Rutherford
Guest: Lisa Song from ProPublica
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos
Graphic artists: Luke Brooks and Brian Oh
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