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What’s Next for OpenAI, Binance Is Binanceled and A.I. Is Eating the Internet

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Technology

What’s Next for OpenAI, Binance Is Binanceled and A.I. Is Eating the Internet

Listen and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeThe drama at OpenAI is not over. Kevin and Casey take stock of new information they’ve gathered since last week, and look at how other artificial intelligence companies are trying to capitalize on the debacle. Then, why people are still buying cryptocurrency even after Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and its founder pleaded guilty to money laundering violations. And finally, three ways A.I. is ruining web search. Or is it?Today’s guest: David Yaffe-Bellany covers crypto for The New York Times.Additional Reading:Casey has new details from the OpenAI board fight.Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder, agreed to pay a $50 million fine and step down from his role as chief executive.Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin R...

Katie Grimes, a two-time Olympian at 17, is U.S. swimming’s rising new star

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Sports

Katie Grimes, a two-time Olympian at 17, is U.S. swimming’s rising new star

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — With their 12-year-old daughter, Katie, swimming nearby, Shari and Christian Grimes stood on the pool deck talking to Sandpipers of Nevada coach Chris Barber. Christian had just been offered the deputy fire chief job in Logan, Utah, and the family was considering moving there from their home in Las Vegas.Barber is a good listener with a calm head, Shari says, and the Grimes family trusts him. So she didn’t take his words that day lightly. Barber started by saying that Katie could move anywhere and earn a college swimming scholarship.“But I’m telling you right now,” he continued, “there is something different about her. And if you leave her here, she will be an Olympian.”Shortly after, Ron Aitken, the Sandpipers CEO who coaches the team’s top swimmers, heard what t...

Corporate America Has Dodged the Damage of High Rates. For Now.

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Economy

Corporate America Has Dodged the Damage of High Rates. For Now.

The prediction was straightforward: A rapid rise in interest rates orchestrated by the Federal Reserve would confine consumer spending and corporate profits, sharply reducing hiring and cooling a red-hot economy.But it hasn’t worked out quite the way forecasters expected. Inflation has eased, but the biggest companies in the country have avoided the damage of higher interest rates. With earnings picking up again, companies continue to hire, giving the economy and the stock market a boost that few predicted when the Fed began raising interest rates nearly two years ago.There are two key reasons that big business has avoided the hammer of higher rates. In the same way that the average rate on existing household mortgages is still only 3.6 percent — reflecting the millions of owners who bough...

U.S. Rate of Suicide by Firearm Reaches Record Level

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Health

U.S. Rate of Suicide by Firearm Reaches Record Level

The rate of suicides involving guns in the United States has reached the highest level since officials began tracking it more than 50 years ago, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The rate increased by more than 10 percent in 2022 compared with 2019, and in some racial and ethnic groups, the rise was significantly steeper, especially among Native Americans. Overall, about 27,000 of 50,000 suicides were carried out by gun in 2022.Federal researchers involved in the analysis suggested that the coronavirus pandemic might have exacerbated many of the known risk factors for suicide generally, which include social isolation, strained relationships, and drug and alcohol disorders. At the same time, outside experts noted, the increased rates also correlat...

Diplomat Who Long Held the Global Stage Was Both Celebrated and Reviled

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

News

Diplomat Who Long Held the Global Stage Was Both Celebrated and Reviled

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.“David,” Henry Kissinger said to me one day in the summer of 2017, after a lengthy interview for the obituary that appeared Wednesday evening in The New York Times. “Are you writing one of those articles that will appear when I can no longer argue with its premise?”He said it with a mischievous sparkle in his eye. In a series of running conversations stretched over roughly seven years, I had told Mr. Kissinger, when he asked, that I was “writing about your life.”The master of diplomatic nuance knew exactly what that meant. Few who are being interviewed for their own obituary want to be reminded, too explicitly, about their mortality. But Henry Kissinger didn’t bec...

Advertisers Say They Do Not Plan to Return to X After Musk’s Comments

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Technology

Advertisers Say They Do Not Plan to Return to X After Musk’s Comments

Advertisers said on Thursday that they did not plan to reopen their wallets anytime soon with X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, after its owner, Elon Musk, insulted brands using an expletive and told them not to spend on the platform.At least half a dozen marketing agencies said the brands they represent were standing firm against advertising on X, while others said they had advised advertisers to stop posting anything on the platform. Some temporary spending pauses that advertisers have enacted in recent weeks against X are likely to turn into permanent freezes, they added, with Mr. Musk’s comments giving them no incentive to return.Advertisers are “not coming back” to X, said Lou Paskalis, the founder and chief executive of AJL Advisory, a marketing consultancy. “The...

Tiger Woods hopes to play 1 tournament per month in 2024, weighs in on PGA, PIF deadline

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Sports

Tiger Woods hopes to play 1 tournament per month in 2024, weighs in on PGA, PIF deadline

Tiger Woods laid out a plan for the 2024 season, saying the best scenario for his return to golf is to potentially play one tournament per month.Woods suggested a scenario of playing the Genesis Invitational in February and then finding a tournament for March before the majors begin in April.“I need to get myself ready for all that. I think this week is a step in that direction,” he said at a Tuesday news conference at the Hero World Challenge, the golf tournament he hosts annually in the Bahamas. “I’m just as curious as all of you are to see what happens. … I don’t have any of the pain that I had at Augusta or pre that in my ankle.”Woods withdrew from the Masters on April 9 due to plantar fasciitis and underwent a subsequent ankle surgery that month. The foot condition also caused him to ...

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Economy

Judge Halts TikTok Ban in Montana

A federal judge in Montana on Thursday blocked a statewide ban of TikTok from taking effect next year, at least temporarily preventing the nation’s first such prohibition on the popular video app.The judge, Donald W. Molloy, said Montana could act as a leader in protecting its residents from harm but must “act within the constitutional legal context,” and he granted a preliminary injunction to stop the TikTok ban. He said a ban of the Chinese-owned app most likely violated the First Amendment and a clause that gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.“The current record leaves little doubt that Montana’s Legislature and attorney general were more interested in targeting China’s ostensible role in TikTok than with protecting Montana consumers,” Judge Molloy wrote i...

Abraham Bergman, Doctor Who Sought Answers on SIDS, Dies at 91

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

Health

Abraham Bergman, Doctor Who Sought Answers on SIDS, Dies at 91

Dr. Abraham B. Bergman, a pediatrician who was instrumental in passing a federal law to combat sudden infant death syndrome, a once misunderstood loss that caused not just parental heartbreak but guilt and blame, and who put his stamp on other enduring public health laws, died on Nov. 10 in Seattle. He was 91.The cause of his death, on a family member’s boat, was amyloid heart disease, his son Ben Bergman said.In the 1960s and early ’70s, Dr. Bergman was president of the National Foundation for Sudden Infant Death, a grass-roots group that supported parents who had lost children to what once was commonly called crib death. Although SIDS, as the syndrome became known, was the leading killer of infants less than a year old, its cause was unknown. Parents often blamed themselves, marriages br...

Hunter College Reschedules Screening of Film Critical of Israel

1Dec

By Alexander W. FergusonNo Comments

News

Hunter College Reschedules Screening of Film Critical of Israel

Hunter College has agreed to reschedule a screening of a documentary critical of Israel, following an outcry from faculty members and students who claimed that the administration’s earlier decision to cancel it violated academic freedom.A screening of the documentary, “Israelism,” had been scheduled for Nov. 14 as part of a film series organized by a professor in the New York school’s film and media department. It would have been followed by a discussion with one of the directors and one of the film’s protagonists, a young American Jew who travels to Israel and the West Bank and discovers a reality very different from the story she was raised with.But that morning, Hunter’s interim president, Ann Kirschner, announced that the screening would be canceled because of safety concerns.“In the c...