Older voters prioritized personal economic issues on Election Day: AARP
Older voters prioritized personal economic issues on Election Day: AARP
Voters line up to cast their ballots at a voting location in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 5, 2024.
Samuel Corum | Afp | Getty Images
When asked, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” the answer for many older voters ages 50 and over was “no,” according to a new post-election poll released by the AARP.
Almost half — 47% — of voters ages 50 and over said they are “worse off now,” the research found, while more than half — 55% — of swing voters in that age cohort said the same.
In competitive Congressional districts, President-elect Donald Trump won the 50 and over vote by two percentage points — the same margin by which he carried the country, AARP found.
Among voters 50 to 64, Trump won by seven points. With voters ages 65 and over, Vice President Kamala Harris won by two points.
More from Personal Finance: What Trump’s presidency could mean for the housing market Trump’s win may put popular student loan forgiveness program at risk What the Fed’s latest interest rate cut means for your money
The AARP commissioned Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research, a bipartisan team of *********** and Democrat firms providing public opinion research and consulting, to conduct the survey. Interviews were conducted with 2,348 “likely voters” in targeted congressional districts following Election Day between Nov. 6 and 10.
Older voters, who make up an outsized share of the vote and tend to lean ***********, made a difference in a lot of key congressional races, according to Bob Ward, a *********** pollster and partner at Fabrizio Ward.
“Overall, 50-plus voters really are what delivered Republicans their majority,” Ward said.
Older swing voters focused on pocketbook issues
When asked “How worried are you about your personal financial situation?” in a June AARP survey, 62% of voters ages 50 and over checked the worry box, while 63% of voters overall did the same.
Voters continued to place an emphasis on their money concerns on Election Day, the latest AARP poll found.
“All these surveys that we conducted for AARP spoke to a lack of economic security for people,” said Jeff Liszt, partner at Impact Research.
“The shock of inflation had left them without a feeling of security,” he said.
For voters ages 50 and over, food ranked as the top cost concern, with 39%, the poll found. That was followed by health care and prescription drugs, with 20%; housing, 14%; gasoline, 10%; and electricity, 6%.
More than half — 55% — of voters ages 50 and up said they prioritized personal economic issues, including inflation, the economy and jobs, and Social Security when determining their vote.
Older swing voters were more likely to turn out at the polls due to those pocketbook issues than any other priorities, the poll found.
Republicans won older voters on most personal economic issues, though voters ages 50 and up still favored Democrats on Social Security by two points.
Democrats have traditionally had a stronger lead on Social Security, Ward said, while the poll results show it is now “completely up for grabs.”
“Looking at the midterms, whether I’m *********** or Democrat … this is going to be an issue I want to win on,” Ward said.
Voters 50 and over broadly support Medicare negotiating prescription ***** prices, as well as policies to help the older population age at home. Non-financial issues such as immigration and border security and threats to democracy were also among top concerns for some older voters.
Social Security reform may be ******* focus
While both presidential candidates promised to protect Social Security on the campaign trail, they did not provide plans to restore the program’s solvency.
The trust fund Social Security relies on to pay benefits is projected to run dry in 2033, at which point 79% of those benefits will be payable.
“What’s absolutely clear is that there’s an action-forcing event that we’re getting closer to, and that at some point Congress is going to have to act,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group focused on expanding the program.
While Trump has touted plans to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, research has found that would worsen the program’s insolvency. The House voted this week to eliminate rules that reduce Social Security benefits for certain people who have pension income, which would also add to the program’s costs.
For most Americans, Social Security is the primary source of retirement income, according to the AARP. About 42% of people ages 65 and over rely on the program for at least 50% of their incomes; about 20% rely on it for at least 90% of their incomes.
Like Social Security, Medicare also faces a looming trust fund depletion for the Part A program that covers hospital insurance.
“We want to ensure that we’re protecting Medicare, Social Security and that it’s done in a fiscally responsible way,” AARP CEO Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan told CNBC in a recent interview.
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Elon Musk’s xAI raising up to $6 billion to purchase 100,000 Nvidia chips for Memphis data center
Elon Musk’s xAI raising up to $6 billion to purchase 100,000 Nvidia chips for Memphis data center
Elon Musk listens as US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Allison Robbert | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is raising up to $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation, according to CNBC’s David Faber.
Sources told Faber that the funding, which should close early next week, is a combination of $5 billion expected from sovereign funds in the Middle East and $1 billion from other investors, some of whom may want to re-up their investments.
The money will be used to acquire 100,000 Nvidia chips, per sources familiar with the situation. Tesla’s Full Self Driving is expected to rely on the new Memphis supercomputer.
Musk’s AI startup, which he announced in July 2023, seeks to “understand the true nature of the universe,” according to its website. Last November, xAI released a chatbot called Grok, which the company said was modeled after “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The chatbot debuted with two months of training and had real-time knowledge of the internet, the company claimed at the time.
With Grok, xAI aims to directly compete with companies including ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which Musk helped start before a conflict with co-founder Sam Altman led him to depart the project in 2018. It will also be vying with Google’s Bard technology and Anthropic’s Claude chatbot.
Now that Donald Trump is president-elect, Musk is beginning to actively work with the new administration on its approach to AI and tech more broadly, as part of Trump’s inner circle in recent weeks.
Trump plans to repeal President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, according to his campaign platform, stating that it “hinders AI Innovation, and imposes ******** Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology” and that “in its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”
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****** Ops 6 Can’t Compete With Battlefield V in 1 Area Despite 6 Year Release Date Difference
****** Ops 6 Can’t Compete With Battlefield V in 1 Area Despite 6 Year Release Date Difference
Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6 has finally been released, and it has proven to be a massive success for Treyarch and Activision. Within just a couple of weeks, the game has amassed some record-breaking player counts for the entire franchise.
****** Ops 6 is making waves in the gaming community. (Image via Microsoft)
With the game’s wide range of launch content and the availability of an Xbox Game Pass service, it’s pretty clear why the game is still popular. Despite all that, it’s quite disappointing to see that it still can’t compete against EA’s Battlefield when it comes to in-game audio systems.
****** Ops 6 Fails Against Battlefield V‘s Audio System
Battlefield V was a worthy entry in the franchise. (Image via EA)
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been six years since the release of EA’s Battlefield V. Just like Battlefield 1, which revolves around the events of World War 1, Battlefield V is based on World War 2.
Although it didn’t reach the same heights as its predecessor, the core gameplay is generally considered to be the best in the entire franchise, the maps are quite incredible for the most part, and everything else in the package delivers. However, what really stands out are the sounds of the game, which EA Boss Daniel Berlin recognizes as what sets the game apart from the competition.
This is one of the reasons that we have probably the best audio in the game industry with Battlefield
According to Berlin, the audio for Battlefield V was crafted with absolute perfection as EA and DICE wanted to bring an immersive experience. To do this, the audio team captured audio from real-life weapons and explosives during the development *******.
The team took absolutely no shortcuts and placed microphones at distances to replicate the unique sounds and effects of **** fights and explosions. This is why when you play Battlefield V, you can immediately notice the realism in every *******’s sound,
EA’s commitment to pioneering audio systems in Battlefield V allowed it to be the leader of the genre, and still, six years later, not a single game can compete against it.
Seriously, the audio is so terrible in ****** Ops 6 that it’s a nightmare to pinpoint gunfire and locate your ******; forget anything about ******* realism. It’s high time for Treyarch to learn from EA on how to implement an outstanding audio system.
Rumors Suggest ****** Ops 6 x Halo Crossover
Master Chief might be coming to the latest Call of Duty game. (Image via Microsoft)
While Treyarch might’ve not given us an up-to-the-mark audio system in ****** Ops 6, it seems to be going high with its crossovers. The first season of the game has already brought a wide range of new things into the core multiplayer. Rumors are starting to surface that ****** Ops 6 will now use other franchises, as we saw in Modern Warfare 3.
One of the possible crossovers for the game that has picked up steam is with Halo. As the face of the series, Master Chief would definitely appear in the game as an operator, with ******* blueprints mimicking the franchise’s iconic weapons, such as the futuristic ******** rifle, Needler, Plasma *******, and much more.
We could also see the inclusion of the Energy Sword as a brand-new melee *******. The Halo crossover would probably also come with its own limited-time mode, something like Grifball or Capture the Flag, alongside community-wide challenges.
With that said, do you think ****** Ops 6‘s audio system isn’t up to the mark? Let us know in the comments below.
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RealWear looks to reshape industrial AR with Almer acquisition
RealWear looks to reshape industrial AR with Almer acquisition
In a move that the interested parties said would supercharge the industrial adoption of wearable computer technology, and also redefine the industrial augmented reality (AR) market, provider of wearable computing for industrial applications RealWear has swooped to buy ultra-compact, user-friendly AR headsets manufacturer Almer Technologies.
Headquartered in Bern, Switzerland, Almer Technologies was founded in 2021 following a research project at the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH). The company is led by CEO Sebastian Beetschen and chief technology officer Timon Binder, and currently employs 35 people. With the development of the Almer Arc AR glasses range, the company said it was responding to an increasing demand for augmented reality technology in the industrial landscape.
The acquisition – uniting two complementary portfolios, and strategically and financially backed by enterprise AR software developer TeamViewer – is described by the parties as marking a “significant leap” forward in the mission to empower frontline workers worldwide with “cutting-edge” AR technology. It brings together RealWear’s market presence and voice-operated services with Almer’s subscription-based AR headsets. The firm’s subscription-based hardware model also opens new avenues for customer engagement, brining AR technology to a broader range of businesses.
The companies said that as the industrial sector increasingly turns to digital services to enhance productivity and safety, the demand for intuitive, wearable AR devices has surged. By incorporating Almer’s AR headsets into its lineup, RealWear said it can now offer a comprehensive range of wearable offerings for diverse industrial environments.
As part of the acquisition, Almer’s co-founders will join RealWear’s executive team, creating a unified leadership focused on accelerating global AR adoption. The integration of Almer’s team is also set to accelerate RealWear’s product development cycle, and when combined with TeamViewer’s software capabilities, is said to create a “powerful” ecosystem for delivering end-to-end AR offerings tailored to the specific needs of industrial customers.
“[Almer’s] successes in Europe are paralleled with a vision to drive AR adoption worldwide,” said RealWear CEO Chris Parkinson. “This impact can now be brought to the global market as part of the RealWear ecosystem.”
“Almer’s innovative, subscription-based hardware renting model will enhance our existing portfolio to offer more flexible and scalable solutions for our partners and customers. And we have secured TeamViewer’s renewed commitment and backing, strengthening our longstanding collaboration with the leading software company in the enterprise AR industry.
TeamViewer has been a key partner and a strategic ********* investor to both RealWear and Almer prior to the acquisition, and will maintain this role moving forward. TeamViewer’s software, RealWear’s and Almer’s have already been combined to see use at firms such as Coca-Cola HBC, Ford and Samsung SDS.
“RealWear and Almer together unite the brightest minds in wearable computing to shape the future of the industry,” said TeamViewer CEO Oliver Steil, who has joined RealWear’s board of directors.
“Investing in RealWear and supporting their growth is a strategic move for us and a stride into the future of industrial digital transformation. Our shared vision is to continue to integrate software and hardware innovatively, delivering world-class industrial productivity solutions for maximum customer value.”
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Value investor Einhorn’s latest moves: Gold, Peloton and agriculture
Value investor Einhorn’s latest moves: Gold, Peloton and agriculture
David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital this week revealed a fresh stake in agriculture equipment maker CNH Industrial , and increased its bets on Peloton Interactive and gold in the third quarter. The hedge fund, which Einhorn founded in 1996, disclosed in its latest regulatory filing that it took a roughly $79 million stake in CNH during the latest quarter. On Wednesday, Einhorn told CNBC that the maker of tractors and harvesting equipment is an overlooked value play as the agricutural investment cycle nears a bottom. ***-based CNH, parent of the Case and New Holland farm businesses, also pays a 4.4% yield. “It’s exactly the kind of situation that absolutely nobody cares about right now because it’s cheap, and the news over the next ******* of time isn’t going to be very good,” Einhorn said at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference in New York City earlier this week. “This year, the ag equipment universe is probably 20% below its average … And sometime three or four years from now, it’ll probably be 20% above.” Einhorn also increased his holding in Peloton by roughly 40%, bringing his stake in the company to about $45 million. Einhorn made a pitch on Peloton at the Robin Hood Investors Conference in October, saying shares of the exercise equipment company that thrived during the pandemic are significantly undervalued now. Peloton is up more than 29% year to date, but fell nearly 13% this week. The 55-year-old Cornell grad has been cautious on the market this year, saying it is the most expensive he’s seen since the start of his career. That led him to buy medium-sized stakes in a few value companies and take a larger position in gold. Einhorn added 3.1% to his holding in SPDR Gold Trust in the most recent quarter, bringing it to $51 million. Einhorn also increased his stake in Capri Holdings , Penn Entertainment , HP and Roivant Sciences in the third quarter, while lowering his holdings in Graphic Packaging , Tenet Healthcare and Viatris . He sold his entire positions in healthcare companies Sotera and Talis Biomedical . Greenlight’s hedge fund returned just 9% in 2024 through the end of the third quarter, net of fees and expenses, significantly underperforming the S & P 500 , given its limited exposure to the ‘ Magnificent 7 ‘ tech stocks that have helped drive sky-high returns this year.
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What Donald Trump’s Team Picks Say About His Foreign Policy
What Donald Trump’s Team Picks Say About His Foreign Policy
The world has changed since Donald J. Trump’s last term as president. Mark Landler, the London bureau chief of The New York Times, describes what Mr. Trump’s choices so far say about his foreign policy ambitions.
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Linxura Smart Controller review: a unique e-paper smart switch limited by the state of the smart home
Linxura Smart Controller review: a unique e-paper smart switch limited by the state of the smart home
Linxura Smart Controller: one-minute review
Smart switches are still a fairly burgeoning smart home technology, meaning it’s a rife space for creativity; enter the Linxura smart controller, a unique smart switch featuring an e-ink display and four-button clickable dial controls.
Slightly reminiscent of Apple’s iPod, the Linxura smart controller has a lot going for it, from its portability to its display and the small fact that it can be programmed with a whopping 52 individual devices across a range of smart home ecosystems and manufacturers. While these qualities do set it apart from many of the best smart switches available today, they aren’t without their drawbacks.
It works over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, meaning there’s no added cost nor hassle from installing proprietary bridge or hub devices, and is compatible with Philips Hue, Alexa, Google Home, IFTTT, Sonos, SmartThings and more, though there’s no HomeKit availability. However, not all pairings are made equal with Linxura; I had real difficulty setting up some, and others offer restricted toolsets.
It’s unique, and definitely useful for those who need a device that’s fairly ambivalent and offers a multitude of configurable commands, but ultimately it’s not possible to recommend the device unreservedly when the performance is so mixed depending on the ecosystem it’s paired with and the overall product quality when compared to its price.
(Image credit: Future)
Linxura Smart Controller: price and availability
List price: $99 / £80 (about AU$150)
The Linxura Smart Controller is fairly pricey for a smart switch at $99 / £80 (about AU$150) versus the average $50 / £40 / AU$80 price tag of its competition, though given that you can program so many devices you might be able to get by with just one Linxura device rather than four or five simpler smart switches.
It’s available in three different colorways; Snow Pearl (white), Midnight Onyx (******) and Sterling Moon (greige). There’s one accessory sold for the Linxura smart switch: a magnetic base plate, which costs $14.99 / £16 (about AU$25) and comes in the same colors.
Linxura Smart Controller: design
Linxura’s smart controller is shaped like a rounded disc which can be attached to a wall-mounted magnetic base plate (sold separately) or carried around the home for easy access, making it a great option if you don’t want to use one of the best smart speakers to control your home but still want the semi-hands free smart home benefits.
The palm-sized dial is great for versatility and portability, but ultimately it looks slightly 80s sci-fi-inspired, which may or may not be the vibe you’re going for at home. Clad in all-plastic, the outer ring of the device is a clickable dial used to control the circular e-paper display it surrounds. It charges through a USB-C port placed on its bottom side, and attaches magnetically to the base plate.
(Image credit: Future)
The wheel isn’t quite as satisfying as Apple’s iPod despite their passing similarities, though I did delight in the little clicky sound as the wheel spins. To operate the dials, you need to press and hold and then turn the wheel, which led to some confusion when I first tried it. Otherwise, your options are to click and double click the wheel.
Because of the puck’s size, it’s not exactly discrete, and protrudes quite noticeably from the wall. Granted, in my home I affixed it with double-sided renter-friendly tape rather than the included screws, but even without the 2mm added by my tape, Linxura’s smart controller could do with being at least a little slimmer for a more contemporary, less obtrusive look.
(Image credit: Future)
The display shows four devices at once, and has thirteen pages you can flick through using the wheel – for all my criticisms of this smart switch, this is a huge boon, with many smart switches relying on stickers or tactile labelling to distinguish between buttons. In dim environments, a backlight will kick in, triggered by the in-built light and capacitive sensors; however, it’s uneven and cheapens the device further.
Linxura Smart Controller: performance
To set up the Linxura smart controller, you’ll need to download the app and follow the instructions to pair; a fairly painless process to begin with. However, once paired, the switch is a bit of a hassle to set up.
It’s worth noting right off the bat that your Linxura experience will at least to some extent be characterized by the ecosystem you set it up in. For instance, on Alexa, it’s a bit of a nightmare, because the way it works is to register each combination of icon and action in the Alexa app as a unique ‘switch’ in your smart home.
That means for each of the 52 devices you can control with the Linxura smart controller, you’ll have to program the single click, double click, anti-clockwise wheel and clockwise wheel controls as separate triggers. If you’ve used Alexa-based automations before, you’ll know the suffering proposed by the necessity to manually configure over 200 triggers.
(Image credit: Future)
First-party software like the Philips Hue app work a lot more effectively, because once you’ve paired the two platforms you can configure everything directly in the Linxura app.
Furthermore, you get a very different experience in terms of the level of control between different platforms. When paired with Philips Hue’s platform directly, I could use the clockwise and anticlockwise dial spin to increase and reduce the brightness and ****** temperature by a set parameter; on Alexa, it just tuned the light to a set level.
Lag proved to be an issue, too, though during my testing seemed to fix itself. Using the Linxura to turn on my fan when I first began testing took anything from five to twenty seconds to trigger the response, though when I retested just before writing up my review it seemed to consistently change its settings within a few seconds.
(Image credit: Future)
However, I must say its portability did come in extremely useful, and I was impressed with its battery life. The advertised three months battery isn’t quite the case if it’s in regular use, but I found that with moderate use it lasted almost two months, and with frequent use just over a month. There are thoughtful inclusions like the ‘find my controller’ beeper in the app, and compared to display-less smart switches I’ve used in the past, the Linxura was far easier to use and remember which controls were bound to which action.
Conceptually, it’s a fantastic idea, and had it come out just a few years earlier I’m sure it would have scored more favorably. As it is, however, the Linxura feels too limited and too overpriced to compete with the best smart speakers and mobile apps it’s up against.
Performance score: 3.5 out of 5
Should you buy the Linxura Smart Controller?
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Linxura Smart Controller score card
Attribute
Notes
Rating
Value
With tacky build materials, limited performance and a lofty price tag, Linxura smart controller isn’t winning many points here.
2/5
Design
It’s not exactly a thing of beauty, but Linxura earns some kudos for its innovative ideas and thoughtful inclusions like the built-in sensors.
4/5
Performance
When it works, it really works. When it doesn’t, it’s a huge pain.
3.5/5
Buy it if
Don’t buy it if
First tested November 2024
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Malpractice if Trump undoes climate-geared Biden projects: Granholm
Malpractice if Trump undoes climate-geared Biden projects: Granholm
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm speaks to the media on day five at the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference on November 15, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
A potential decision by Donald Trump to walk back the Biden administration’s climate-geared projects would impact jobs in areas governed by the President-elect’s own party, outgoing U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told CNBC, urging consistency in Washington’s green transition policies.
Referencing the White House’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement — a 2015 treaty in which nearly 200 governments made non-binding pledges to reduce greenhouse emissions — during Trump’s first mandate, Granholm said the U.S. pressed ahead with projects linked to the green transition that members of Congress wanted to undertake in their districts.
“We are now building all of these projects. We’re building batteries for electric vehicles, we’re building the vehicles, we’re building the offshore wind turbines, we’re building the solar panels. And all of those are factories. And those factories are in districts of members of Congress,” she told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Friday at the COP29 U.N. climate conference held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
She estimated that 80% of the funding from U.S. President Joe Biden’s legacy bills — the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — went to U.S. districts represented by *********** leadership.
“It would be political malpractice to undo those opportunities when people are just now getting hired,” she said, stressing benefits to the manufacturing sector and noting that the business community of the world’s largest economy and oil producer now wants a clear course from Washington on its climate policy.
“This isn’t about in [the Paris Agreement], out, shifting back and forth. Let’s have a consistent practice,” she said.
When asked for a response on Granholm’s comments, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, said the president-elect will “deliver” on the promises he made on the campaign trail.
International focus has now shifted on the shape of the U.S.’ future role in global climate policy, as Trump prepares to take the helm at the White House for a second mandate in January, following a sweeping victory against Democrat candidate Kamala Harris. Trump — who has yet to announce his own pick to lead the U.S. Department of Energy — put hydrocarbons at the front and center of his campaigning agenda, pledging to “end Biden’s delays in federal drilling permits and leases that are needed to unleash ********* oil and natural gas production.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in March said that the country already “produced more crude oil than any nation at any time” for the past six years to 2023, averaging a crude oil and condensate production of 12.9 million barrels per day that year — breaking the previous U.S. and global record of 12.3 million barrels per day recorded in 2019, during Trump’s first mandate.
Yet Granholm on Friday stressed that the clean transition is also “unleashed” and will take place regardless of who is leading the White House — and that ignoring climate change risks sacrificing Washington’s position as a frontrunner in the blooming decarbonization industry.
“Why would we take a second, a ********* to an economic competitor like China?” she asked. “They have an economic strategy, they want to be number one. So if we get out of the game, we’re just going to cede that territory all over again. It’s bad strategy for the ******* States and for workers and for communities across the country.”
As the world braces for the possibility of a second U.S. exit from the Paris Agreement, some climate activists note that the green transition has now gained a different global momentum than during Trump’s first turn at the White House:
“There is no denying that another Trump presidency will stall national efforts to tackle the climate crisis and protect the environment, but most U.S. state, local, and private sector leaders are committed to charging ahead,” Dan Lashof, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, said in a Nov. 6 statement.
“Donald Trump heading back to the White House won’t be a ****** knell to the clean energy transition that has rapidly picked up pace these last four years.”
Granholm also identified potential support in Trump’s current entourage, which this week welcomed business tycoon Elon Musk as the president-elect’s choice to head a new Department of Government Efficiency, alongside ************* activist Vivek Ramaswamy:
“His right-hand man, Elon Musk, is somebody who has been strongly in favor of products that … address climate change. Obviously, he’s the founder of Tesla,” Granholm pointed out.
Musk’s environmental stance has come under question over the years, shifting from telling Rolling Stone magazine that “climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI” and backing carbon taxes to holding that the world needs hydrocarbon supplies as a bridge to renewable energy.
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The best Xbox games for 2024
The best Xbox games for 2024
This is private eye Takayuki Yagami’s second adventure; a spin-off of *****’s popular, pulpy and convoluted Yakuza saga. He lives in the same Kamurocho area, the same yakuza gangs roam the streets, and there’s the very occasional crossover of side-story characters and, well, weirdos. But instead of punching punks in the face in the name of justice or honor, which was the style of Yakuza protagonist Kazuya Kiryu, Yagami fights with the power of his lawyer badge, drone evidence and… sometimes (read: often) he kicks the bad guys in the face.
The sequel skates even closer to some sort of serialized TV drama, punctuated by fights, chases and melodrama. For anyone that’s played the series before, it treads familiar ground, but with a more serious (realistic) story that centers on bullying and ******** problems in ********* high schools, which is tied into myriad plots encompassing the legal system, politics and organized ******.
Yagami has multiple fighting styles to master, while there are love interests, batting cages, mahjong, skate parks and more activities to sink even more hours into. On the PS5, Lost Judgment looks great. Fights are fluid and the recreated areas in Tokyo and Yokohama are usually full of pedestrians, stores and points of interest. While Yakuza: Like a Dragon took the franchise in a new (turn-based, more ridiculous) direction, Lost Judgment retains the brawling playstyle of the Yakuza series, with a new hero who has, eventually, charmed us.
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I don’t believe it, the Meta Quest 3S got a ****** Friday price cut
I don’t believe it, the Meta Quest 3S got a ****** Friday price cut
Despite only launching in October, the Meta Quest 3S already got a price drop as part of this year’s ****** Friday deals – making Meta’s best cheap VR headset a little more affordable.
Before you get too excited, the price cuts are small ones; specifically, the Meta Quest 3S (256GB) is now £359 – saving you just £20.99 – while the Meta Quest 3S (128GB) is £275 – saving you only £14.99. That said, the savings are a little ******* when you consider that the Meta Quest 3S also comes with a free copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow, one of the best VR games ever.
I’m shocked the Meta Quest 3S got a price drop even if it isn’t massive so this is a deal you’ll probably want to take advantage of while you can. However, I still think the suped-up Meta Quest 3 is the one to choose.
As a quick aside, Amazon says the Meta Quest 3 is 24% off right now. That’s true if you’re looking at the £619.99 price tag it had earlier this year, but it actually got discounted to £469.99 when the Quest 3S launched so Amazon’s ‘deal’ is just the RRP ****** 99p.
(Not in the ***? Scroll down for the best deals in your region)
This deal, even as a small discount, is a big surprise given the freshness of the Meta Quest 3S. I had expected we wouldn’t get any discounts, and while I’m now hesitating in my belief we won’t see more, it’d be seriously strange for the Meta headset to get a further cost reduction.
I don’t want to say that for certain, but honestly if I didn’t have a Quest 3S already and wanted one I’d be jumping on this saving while I can. The only better deal you might see is a bundle with an accessory or two. However, if you weren’t planning to buy those accessories then that kind of bundle might not be a good deal for you after all.
More of today’s ****** Friday sales in the US
Amazon: TVs, smart home & air fryers from $12.99
Apple: AirPods, iPads, MacBooks from $89.99
Best Buy: $1,000 off 4K TVs, laptops & headphones
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Christmas trees: top-rated trees from $54.99
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Holiday: decor, lights, Christmas trees & PJs from $10.99
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Nordstrom: 46% off boots, coats, jeans & jewelry
Samsung: $1,500+ off TVs, phones, watches & appliances
Target: save on furniture, tech & clothing
Walmart: cheap TVs, ****** vacs, furniture & appliances
More of today’s ****** Friday sales in the ***
Amazon: up to 68% off toothbrushes and TVs
AO: savings on games consoles and appliances
Argos: up to 50% off toys, Lego, TVs and gifts
Boots: up to 50% off Dyson, *****-B and Philips
Currys: early deals on TVs, appliances, laptops
Dell: laptops, desktops, monitors from £299
Dyson: up to £150 off
Ebay: up to 50% off refurbished tech
EE: up to £600 off Samsung and Apple
John Lewis: up to £300 off appliances and TVs
LG: £1,000 or more off TVs and appliances
Samsung: up to £600 off TVs, phones and tablets
Very: up to 30% off phones, appliances & clothing
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Health stocks hit after Trump taps RFK Jr for top regulator post
Health stocks hit after Trump taps RFK Jr for top regulator post
Shares in vaccine makers and healthcare firms around the world slid sharply on Friday, as investors warned that Donald Trump’s choice of Robert F Kennedy Jr as US Health Secretary could pose new challenges to the sector.
Kennedy is known as a vaccine sceptic and, if confirmed in the post, has vowed to use it to ****** down on “Big Pharma”.
The news prompted a sell-off across the industry. In the US, shares in Pfizer and Moderna sank more than 5% in early trading, while ***-listed firms AstraZeneca and GSK dropped 2% or more.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said the pick had “spooked” shareholders, despite questions about how the new administration might pursue its threats.
“The impact on the sector is hard to judge fully at this stage but, at the very least, it will cause a good deal of uncertainty,” he said.
The US health secretary leads a huge agency overseeing everything from food safety to medical research and ******** programmes.
Critics of Kennedy, commonly known by his initials RFK Jr, include many public health officials, who have denounced his record of spreading health information that scientists say is false.
But the former environmental lawyer has gained a following by tapping into mistrust of those who see US regulators as too deferential to big food and medical companies.
Before endorsing Trump, Kennedy had mounted a ******* bid for the presidency himself as a third party candidate. That campaign spotlighted calls for increased restrictions on food chemicals and dyes, cutting ultra-processed foods from school lunches and forcing ***** companies to share more information about vaccines.
If his nomination is ratified by the Senate and he is empowered to act on his pledges, it would mark a change in approach, not only from the Biden administration but from Trump’s first term, which saw the government pour money into helping firms develop Covid vaccines, while taking a hands-off approach to regulation.
However, Trump also drew alarm in the industry with efforts to lower ***** prices, including by making it easier to import medicine from Canada.
In opening trade on Friday, shares in Pfizer and Moderna tumbled more than 5%, accelerating their slide after dropping about 2% on Thursday.
In Europe, Danish-listed shares of Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk were on track to close more than 4% lower, while France’s Sanofi, a leader in flu vaccines, saw its shares in Paris slide more than 3%.
In London, shares in GSK slid about 4% and AstraZeneca fell roughly 2.6%.
Asked for comment about the pick, Steve Ubl, head of the US trade association for pharmaceutical manufacturers, defended the industry, noting its success fighting ******** such as polio and smallpox and its major role in the economy.
“We want to work with the Trump administration to further strengthen our innovation ecosystem and improve healthcare for patients,” he said in a statement, without mentioning Kennedy by name.
He called on policymakers to focus on addressing chronic ******** with prevention and reforming America’s complicated health system to make medicine more affordable.
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Giants letting Saquon go, Bears keeping Eberflus and more bad decisions costing NFL teams in 2024
Giants letting Saquon go, Bears keeping Eberflus and more bad decisions costing NFL teams in 2024
Just eight weeks remain in the NFL regular season, and while some teams find themselves in the thick of playoff races, hope has begun to fade or has completely faded for others.
A whopping 16 teams have losing records, and many of them seem headed for double-digit losses. Plenty of owners, general managers and head coaches are paying the price now for poor decisions during the offseason. Some of those gambles have led to lost seasons and either have or will lead to lost jobs in the near future.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest blunders and most regrettable decisions of the 2024 NFL season.
Bears keeping Matt Eberflus and hiring Shane Waldron
Offensive coordinator Shane Waldron this week became the sacrificial lamb after Chicago dropped its third straight game, mustering a combined 27 points and only one touchdown during this losing streak. Waldron never seemed to have a strong understanding of how to develop and call plays for a rookie quarterback. Aside from a three-game bright spot against the injury-riddled Los Angeles Rams and the atrocious defenses of the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars, No. 1 pick Caleb Williams has struggled. He ranks 32nd in completion percentage (60.5) and 28th in passer rating (81.0) while handling a far heavier workload than he should.
GO DEEPER
What the Bears’ switch at play caller means for Caleb Williams with season at crossroads
But Waldron’s hiring wasn’t the most costly mistake of the Bears’ offseason. Keeping his boss was. Despite double-digit losses in each of his first two seasons, Matt Eberflus was retained as head coach. Eberflus had already displayed an inability to hire a quality offensive coordinator: Luke Getsy preceded Waldron. Adding insult to injury, Eberflus selected Waldron after interviewing Kliff Kingsbury, Liam Coen and Zac Robinson, who are now directing successful units in Washington, Tampa Bay and Atlanta, respectively. Eberflus also ******* to develop a talented quarterback prospect in Justin Fields. So why would the Bears, with the top pick in the draft, gamble at head coach?
General manager Ryan Poles defended the decision to stick with Eberflus this past offseason, saying he valued continuity, stability and Eberflus’ attention to detail and leadership. None of those perceived strengths has translated into a revival for Chicago, which has regressed despite having a more talented roster this season. The Bears are at risk of wasting Williams’ first NFL season and causing real long-term damage to the quarterback. They can only hope that pass-game coordinator Thomas Brown can modify the offense and position Williams for growth in this second half of the season. But chances are, Chicago will find itself in the market for a new coach again this winter.
Saints sticking with Dennis Allen
New Orleans brass allowed a 4-1 finish last season to influence its decision to stick with Dennis Allen as head coach. This was despite it being clear he had his limitations, and that the Saints had just as many under his direction. After a thunderous 2-0 start to 2024, New Orleans quickly spiraled out of control, losing seven straight, and Allen got the ax last week.
Allen left New Orleans with a 18-25 record and an overall head coaching record of 26-53 after a ******* run with the Raiders. He got the Saints’ head coaching job after a successful stint as their defensive coordinator from 2015 to 2021. But that success didn’t translate to head coaching. Allen drew criticism for a lack of intensity, poor attention to detail and poor preparation. An embarrassing loss to the inept Carolina Panthers finally did Allen in. In their first game after his *******, the Saints upset the Falcons. New Orleans ultimately needs a full-on rebuild. That rebuild could have begun this past offseason, but complacency has led to another wasted year.
Raiders hiring Luke Getsy as offensive coordinator
After replacing the fired Josh McDaniels as interim coach midway through last season, Antonio Pierce ignited a turnaround in Las Vegas and was promoted to the full-time job. This offseason, Pierce and the Raiders needed a new offensive coordinator and pursued Kingsbury, the former Arizona Cardinals head coach. But negotiations broke down and Kingsbury wound up taking Washington’s offensive coordinator job. Pierce, meanwhile, made the curious decision to hire Getsy, even though he had ******* as OC in Chicago.
The Raiders opted against trading up to draft a top quarterback this spring, and instead rolled with free-agent addition Gardner Minshew and holdover Aidan O’Connell. Minshew isn’t elite, but he played well enough in Indianapolis last season to go 7-6 and help the Colts nearly make the playoffs. Yet neither Minshew nor O’Connell succeeded under Getsy. (O’Connell suffered a broken thumb in Week 7 and went on injured reserve Oct. 21.)
Las Vegas’ offense is one of the NFL’s worst in most major statistical categories, and after a fifth straight loss, Pierce fired Getsy and two other assistants. Meanwhile, Kingsbury is directing one of the NFL’s most prolific offenses this season and has quarterback Jayden Daniels looking like the Rookie of the Year favorite while Washington contends for an NFC East division title.
Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins have a lot of ground to make up if they are to make the playoffs. (Jasen Vinlove / Imagn Images)
Dolphins failing to sign a proven backup QB
After an 11-6 campaign in which it made the playoffs for a second straight season and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa led the NFL in passing, Miami aimed for more in 2024. Coach Mike McDaniel changed defensive coordinators, and general manager Chris Grier added pieces intended to upgrade the defense and offensive line, hoping that Miami could once again contend in the AFC East and finally get over the wild-card hump.
However, Miami made a huge miscalculation that has largely derailed its season. Grier ******* to secure a competent insurance policy at backup quarterback despite Tagovailoa’s extensive injury history. The Dolphins actually entered the season with the unproven Skylar Thompson (57.1 completion percentage, one touchdown and three interceptions in 2022) as their backup quarterback even though Joe Flacco, Jameis Winston, Ryan Tannehill and Fields, to name a few, were available. The Dolphins paid the price after Tagovailoa suffered his third diagnosed concussion in Week 2 and then spent the next five weeks on injured reserve.
Thompson and in-season addition Tyler Huntley both proved largely ineffective. Miami went 1-3 without Tagovailoa, as its once high-powered offense averaged just 10 points and 136.5 passing yards per game. By the time Tagovailoa returned in Week 8, the Dolphins were 2-4. Narrow losses in Weeks 8 and 9 (to Arizona and Buffalo) dropped the Dolphins to 2-6 and a mile behind the Bills (now 8-2) for the AFC East lead.
Miami beat the Rams on Monday, but at 3-6, it needs a miraculous finish to return to the postseason. The decision to pass on a proven backup who could have potentially helped the Dolphins split those four games without Tagovailoa will likely haunt them for the rest of the season and into the offseason.
Everybody and their brother knew the Dallas Cowboys needed a running back after Tony Pollard left in free agency. They had a chance to land Derrick Henry, one of this generation’s most dominant backs. But Jerry Jones opted against signing the 30-year-old Henry, who had recorded 1,000-yard campaigns in five of the six previous seasons. Jones’ reasoning: “We couldn’t afford Derrick Henry.” He could have if he wanted to. Henry wound up signing a two-year, $16 million deal with Baltimore. It featured a $1.2 million base salary for 2024 and a potential out after this season.
Henry has been worth every penny, as the Ravens, who average a league-best 31.8 points and 440.2 yards per game, can attest. He leads the NFL with 1,120 yards and 12 rushing touchdowns. Henry’s presence in Dallas would have done wonders for an offense that ranks 31st with 83.7 rushing yards per game, 29th in time of possession (27:42) and ***** last with just three rushing touchdowns all year. Perhaps Dallas would be contending for an NFC East title instead of a top pick in the draft had it made a different decision with Henry.
Saquon Barkley is starring for the Eagles while his former team struggles. (Eric Hartline / Imagn Images)
The recipe was simple: A heavy dose of Saquon Barkley with a manageable load for Daniel Jones, and the New York Giants had just enough to ****** their way to a winning record and first postseason berth in six seasons. That was 2022, and those results sparked optimism in East Rutherford. But when it came time to make decisions on those two key players, the Giants gave Jones a four-year, $160 million deal he didn’t deserve and made Barkley play 2023 on a one-year, prove-it contract. Barkley cranked out another 962 yards in 14 games last season, but the contract hesitancy remained for the Giants. And so they let the most important player on their team walk — just down the road to the Philadelphia Eagles, who were thrilled to give him a three-year, $37.75 million contract.
GO DEEPER
Return of the veteran RB? Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley and early glimmers of a revival
Halfway through the season, not only has Barkley been a difference-maker for the Eagles, but also his absence in New York has triggered continued regression for Jones and the Giants offense. Barkley had rushed for 1,137 yards and eight touchdowns, with 23 catches for 210 yards and two touchdowns through Thursday night’s victory over the Commanders. The Giants, meanwhile, rank last in the NFL in scoring (15.6 points per game) and red-zone efficiency (39.29 percent). At 2-8, they again find themselves headed for a top-10 draft pick while general manager Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll face uncertain futures. Barkley and the Eagles, in comparison, are hoping for a deep postseason run.
It’s the nightmare Giants owner John Mara greatly feared but ultimately did nothing to stop.
Panthers limiting Bryce Young in preseason
After a disastrous first season under Frank Reich and his diverse cast of quarterback-focused offensive assistants, Bryce Young was supposed to receive a career reset this year guided by new head coach Dave Canales. The former Seahawks quarterbacks coach and Buccaneers offensive coordinator was supposed to help Young rebound, similar to how he helped Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield.
But Canales and the Panthers took a curious approach to preparing Young for his second NFL season. Rather than give him as many reps as possible as he learned a new offense and new terminology, they restricted his preseason action. Young played in just one preseason game, completing six of eight passes for 70 yards and a touchdown.
Should it really have come as a surprise when Young struggled to start the regular season? Canales benched Young after just two games in which the quarterback threw for a combined 245 yards, no touchdowns and three interceptions. Canales believed Young could learn by watching veteran Andy Dalton, who the coach said gave the team the best chance to win. But that only further magnifies the illogical decision to rob Young of valuable preseason reps. It also raises the question as to why Young was starting in the first place if the coach didn’t believe he gave the team the best shot at winning.
After a 1-4 stretch with Dalton as starter, the Panthers went back to Young, who is showing gradual improvement and just won back-to-back games for the first time in his young career. Maybe, just maybe, more reps and more patience was all the 2023 No. 1 pick needed.
The Jets have not gotten a boost with Jeff Ulbrich as interim coach. (Lucas Boland / Imagn Images)
The Jets … oh, where to begin?
Blunders and regrettable decisions are the annual theme of the New York Jets, the kings of disappointment. Rather than contend for a Super Bowl, the Jets have continued to cripple themselves with poor decisions.
Their handling of Robert Saleh, fired after just five weeks this season, ranks high on the list of those blunders. If confidence in him was that low, why did Woody Johnson even bring him back? And given that the Jets did decide to give Saleh a fourth season, why pull the plug with a 2-3 record when all of the team’s goals remained within reach? Why wasn’t relieving Nathaniel Hackett of play-calling duties the first move to see if another offensive mind could spark change while Saleh remained as head coach? That would have allowed Jeff Ulbrich to continue to focus exclusively on the defense. Instead, he’s seemingly in over his head as interim head coach, and the coordinator’s once formidable defense has dramatically regressed.
GO DEEPER
After blowout loss in Arizona, Jets are out of time and Aaron Rodgers is out of answers
The trade for Haason Reddick also looks like a regrettable move. The Jets clearly underestimated how strongly Reddick wanted a contract extension and how intent he was on waging a lengthy holdout to obtain it. Had they fully understood the intentions of the pass rusher, who missed all of training camp, the preseason and seven regular-season games, would they have made the trade?
Meanwhile, barring a dramatic turnaround, the trade for Davante Adams also seems deserving of a place on this list. The Jets seemed to think Adams was the missing piece, even though he doesn’t play defense or offensive line. The chemistry between Adams and Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers teammates from 2014 to 2021, has proved difficult to rekindle. Through four games with the Jets, Adams has as many touchdown catches as his team does victories (one). If Rodgers opts against returning in 2025, Adams is expected to orchestrate an exit as well, meaning the Jets will have wasted a third-round pick in their trade for the wide receiver.
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(Top photos of Matt Eberflus, Derrick Henry and Bryce Young: Kara Durrette, Greg Fiume and Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
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Nintendo Had To Play Detective To Find An Alleged Switch Pirate
Nintendo Had To Play Detective To Find An Alleged Switch Pirate
The anonymity of the internet seems to make some people believe that they can get away with almost anything online. But Nintendo may have just given future Switch pirates some reasons to reconsider their actions after tracking down a man by playing detective online.
Earlier this year, Nintendo sued James Williams, a moderator for a Switch pirates page on Reddit who posted under the name Archbox. At the time, it wasn’t clear how Nintendo had determined that Williams was the man behind Archbox, but Game File‘s new report details some of Williams’ alleged missteps along the way.
Williams’ first apparent mistake was that he posted some genuinely personal intel on Reddit that indicated he had previously attended Midwestern University and currently lived near Phoenix, Arizona. Nintendo didn’t elaborate on how it used that info to narrow down Williams’ identity, but it did note his second mistake: He sent in his Switch to Nintendo for repairs.
Once Nintendo identified Williams, the company’s lawyers sent him a cease-and-desist letter directly to his address. According to the report, Williams replied that he would comply with their demand, but denied that he violated Nintendo’s IP. Subsequently, Nintendo notes that Williams stopped replying to the company and didn’t plead his case in court before the scheduled deadlines. Therefore Nintendo has been given a default judgment against Williams.
Since Nintendo has accused Williams of selling hardware hacks and offering modified Switch consoles with pirated games, he could be facing a substantial financial penalty. And if Nintendo’s sleuthing activities are any indication, he won’t be the only pirate that the company goes after.
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AI isn’t about unleashing our imaginations, it’s about outsourcing them. The real purpose is profit | James Bradley
AI isn’t about unleashing our imaginations, it’s about outsourcing them. The real purpose is profit | James Bradley
Back in 2022, when ChatGPT arrived, I was part of the first wave of users. Delighted but also a little uncertain what to do with it, I asked the system to generate all kinds of random things. A song about George Floyd in the style of Bob Dylan. A menu for a vegetarian dinner party. A briefing paper about alternative shipping technologies.
The quality of what it produced was variable, but it made clear something that is even more apparent now than it was then. That this technology wasn’t just a toy. Instead its arrival is an inflection point in human history. Over coming years and decades, AI will transform every aspect of our lives.
But we are also at an inflection point for those of us who make our living with words, and indeed anybody in the creative arts. Whether you’re a writer, an actor, a singer, a film-maker, a painter or a photographer, a machine can now do what you do, instantly and for a fraction of the cost. Perhaps it can’t do it quite as well as you can just yet, but like the Tyrannosaurus rex in the rear vision mirror in the original Jurassic Park, it’s gaining on you, and fast.
Faced with the idea of machines that can do everything that human beings can do, some have just given up. Lee Sedol, the Go Grandmaster who was defeated by DeepMind’s AlphaGo system in 2016 retired on the spot, declaring AlphaGo was “an entity that couldn’t be beaten”, and that his “entire world was collapsing”.
Others have asserted the innate superiority of art made by humans, effectively circling the wagons around the idea that there is something in the things we make that cannot be replicated by technology. In the words of Nick *****:
Songs arise out of suffering … the complex, internal human struggle of creation … [but] algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer … What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognisable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-******* that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past.
It’s an appealing position, and one I’d like to believe – but sadly, I don’t. Because not only does it commit us to a hopelessly simplistic – and, frankly, reactionary – binary, in which the human is intrinsically good, and the artificial is intrinsically bad, it also means the category of creation we’re defending is extremely small. Do we really want to limit the work that we value to those towering works of art wrought out of profound feeling? What about costume design and illustration and book reviews and all the other things people make? Don’t they matter?
Perhaps a better place to begin a defence of human creativity might be in the process of creation itself. Because when we make something, the end product isn’t the only thing that matters. In fact it may not even be the thing that matters most. There is also value in the act of making, in the craft and care of it. This value doesn’t inhere in the things we make, but in the creative labour of making them. The interplay between our minds and our bodies and the thing we are making is what brings something new – some understanding or presence – into the world. But the act of making changes us as well. That can be joyous, and at other times it can be frustrating or even painful. Nonetheless it enriches us in ways that simply prompting a machine to generate something for us never will.
What’s happening here isn’t about unleashing our imaginations, it’s about outsourcing them. Generative AI strips out part of what makes us human and hands it over to a company so they can sell us a product that claims to do the same thing. In other words the real purpose of these systems isn’t liberation, but profit. Forget the glib marketing slogans about increasing productivity or unleashing our potential. These systems aren’t designed to benefit us as individuals or a society. They’re designed to maximise the ability of tech corporations to extract value by strip-mining the industries they disrupt.
This reality is particularly stark in the creative industries. Because the ability of AI systems to magic up stories and images and videos didn’t come out of nowhere. In order to be able to make these things, AIs have to be trained on massive amounts of data. These datasets are generated from publicly available information: books, articles, Wikipedia entries and so on in the case of text; videos and images in the case of visual data.
Exactly what these works are is already highly contentious. Some, such as Wikipedia and out-of-copyright books, are in the public domain. But much – and possibly most – of it is not. How could ChatGPT write a song about George Floyd in the style of Bob Dylan without access to Dylan’s songs? The answer is it couldn’t. It could only imitate Dylan because his lyrics formed part of the dataset that was used to train it.
AI-generated artworks by Mario Klingemann that were auctioned at Sotheby’s. Photograph: Malcolm Park/Alamy
Between the secretiveness of these companies and the fact the systems themselves are effectively ****** boxes, the inner processes of which are opaque even to their creators, it’s difficult to know exactly what has been ingested by any individual AI. What we do know for sure is that vast amounts of copyright material has already been fed into these systems, and is still being fed into them as we speak, all without permission or payment.
But AI doesn’t just incrementally erode the rights of authors and other creators. These technologies are designed to replace creative workers altogether. The writer and artist James Bridle has compared this process to the enclosure of the commons, but whichever way you cut it, what we are witnessing isn’t just “systematic theft on a mass scale”, it’s the wilful and deliberate destruction of entire industries and the transfer of their value to shareholders in Silicon Valley.
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This unconstrained rapaciousness isn’t new. Despite ad campaigns promising care and connection, the tech industry’s entire model depends upon extraction and exploitation. From publishing to transport, tech companies have employed a model that depends upon inserting themselves into traditional industries and “disrupting” them by sidestepping regulation and riding roughshod over hard-won rights or simply fencing off things that were formerly part of the public sphere. In the same way Google hoovered up creative works to make its libraries, filesharing technologies devastated the music industry, and Uber’s model depends on paying its drivers less than taxi companies, AI maximises its profit by refusing to pay the creators of the material it relies on.
Meanwhile the human, environmental and social costs of these technologies are kept carefully out of sight.
Interestingly the sense of powerlessness and paralysis many of us feel in the face of the social and cultural transformation unleashed by AI resembles our ******** to respond to climate change. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. With both there is a profound mismatch between the scale of what is taking place and our capacity to conceptualise it. We find it difficult to imagine fundamental change, and when faced with it, tend to either panic or just shut down.
But it’s also because, as with climate change, we have been tricked into thinking there are no alternatives, and that the economic systems we inhabit are natural, and arguing with them makes about as much sense as arguing with the wind.
In fact the opposite is true. Companies like Meta and Alphabet and, more recently, OpenAI, have only achieved their extraordinary wealth and power because of very specific regulatory and economic conditions. These arrangements can be altered. That is within the power of government, and we should be insisting upon it. There are currently cases before the courts in a number of jurisdictions that seek to frame the massive expropriation of the work of artists and writers by AI companies as a breach of copyright. The outcome of these cases isn’t yet clear, but even if creators lose, that ****** isn’t over. The use of our work to train AIs must be brought under the protection of the copyright system.
And we shouldn’t stop there. We should insist upon payment for the work that has been used, payment for all future use and an end to the tech industry practice of taking first and seeking forgiveness later. Their use of copyright material without permission wasn’t accidental. They did it on purpose because they thought they could get away with it. The time has come for them to stop getting away with it.
For that to happen we need regulatory structures that ensure transparency about what datasets are being used to train these systems and what is contained in those datasets. And systems of audits to ensure copyright and other forms of intellectual property are not being violated, and that enforce meaningful sanctions if they are. And we need to insist upon international agreements that protect the rights of artists and other creators instead of facilitating the profits of corporations.
But most of all, we need to be thinking hard about why what we do as human beings, and as creators and artists in particular, matters. Because it isn’t enough to fret about what is being lost, or to ****** a rearguard action against these technologies. We have to begin to articulate positive arguments for the value of what we do, and of creativity more broadly, and to think about what form that might take in a world where AI is a pervasive reality.
This is an edited version of the *********** Society of Authors 2024 Colin Simpson Memorial Keynote lecture, titled ‘Creative Futures: Imagining a place for creativity in a world of artificial intelligence’
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Germany’s Scholz urges ****** in phone call to open talks with Ukraine
Germany’s Scholz urges ****** in phone call to open talks with Ukraine
******* Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD, r) and Russian President Vladimir ****** look up after several hours of one-on-one talks at a ****** press conference. Scholz met the Russian president for talks on the situation on the Ukrainian-Russian border.
Kay Nietfeld | picture alliance | Getty Images
******* Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Russian President Vladimir ****** in a rare phone call on Friday to begin talks with Ukraine that would open the way for a “just and lasting peace.”
In a one-hour phone conversation, their first in almost two years, Scholz also demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and reaffirmed Germany’s continued support for Ukraine, a ******* government spokesman said.
The call comes as Ukraine faces increasingly difficult conditions on the battlefield amid shortages of arms and personnel while Russian forces make steady advances.
“The Chancellor urged Russia to show willingness to enter talks with Ukraine with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“He stressed Germany’s unbroken determination to back Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression for as long as necessary,” the spokesperson added.
Scholz spoke with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ahead of his call with ****** and would brief the Ukrainian leader on the outcome afterwards, the spokesperson said.
Germany is Ukraine’s largest financial backer and its largest provider of weapons after the ******* States, whose future support for Kyiv appears uncertain following Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the scale of Western financial and military aid to Ukraine and has suggested he can put a swift end to the war, without explaining how.
Scholz and ****** last spoke in December 2022, 10 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, plunging relations with the West into their deepest freeze since the Cold War.
Scholz, the most unpopular ******* chancellor on record, is preparing for a national election on Feb. 23 in which his Social Democrats face stiff competition from left-wing and far-right parties that are critical of Germany’s backing for Ukraine.
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Lizzie Deignan to retire from cycling after 2025
Lizzie Deignan to retire from cycling after 2025
Deignan has shared the stage with several riders who have set the highest standards on the road, including the Dutch legends Marianne Vos, Annemiek van Vleuten and Anna van der Breggen.
But off the bike women have fought in recent years to achieve parity with the men’s side of the sport when it comes to sponsorship deals, salaries and media exposure.
At 500,000 euros, the winner of the men’s Tour de France earns 10 times that of the winner of the women’s event.
Deignan considers herself fortunate to have the support of her Lidl-Trek team, who embraced her decision to start a family in her prime.
“I’m really proud that I was able to prove that becoming a mother isn’t necessarily the end of an athlete’s career – that you are able to come back successfully and as strong as I’ve ever been after having children.
“There was an absolute mutual respect [between myself and the team] from the very beginning and because of that I felt very safe and secure in my return.
“Our contracts have maternity clauses which they never had before I was pregnant.”
Deignan came back from her first maternity leave and won more of the sport’s biggest races, including the 2019 Women’s Tour of Britain, the 2020 La Course by the Tour de France and Liege-Bastogne-Liege the same year.
And Deignan acknowledges that her efforts have helped push women’s cycling forward, including a 2012 media conference where she let it be known to cycling’s governing body the UCI that not enough was being done for women in the sport.
“Looking back, I think: ‘Wow, that was a bit of a bold move. Could you not have gone a bit easier on yourself, Lizzie?’ But because of my upbringing, because of my family, it never occurred to me that inequality was a thing until I was outside my family, and I wasn’t getting the same opportunities as the men who I had grown up cycling with.
“[Women’s cycling] is unrecognisable compared to when I first started. I turned professional 18 seasons ago earning 200 euros a month – there’s now a minimum wage. There are so many different things in our contracts in our World Tour in terms race organizers needing a certain amount of TV coverage, minimum safety guidelines. All these things that we never had – I feel like our sport is at the forefront of equality. I’m really pleased that I’ve been a part of that.
“Doing things like having children in the middle of my career, at the height of my career, I think contribute to the fact that women are being taken seriously in the sport. But there is still work to be done.”
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Saquon Barkley, crucial fourth down stop power Eagles to win vs. Commanders: Key takeaways
Saquon Barkley, crucial fourth down stop power Eagles to win vs. Commanders: Key takeaways
By Ben Standig, Brooks Kubena and Amos Morale III
The Philadelphia Eagles picked up their sixth straight victory with a 26-18 win over the Washington Commanders on “Thursday Night Football.”
The Eagles trailed 10-6 heading into the fourth quarter but scored three touchdowns in the final frame to secure their eighth win of the season and improve their lead in the NFC East.
Running back Saquon Barkley finished with 146 rushing yards and 52 receiving yards to go along with two fourth-quarter touchdown runs of 23 and 39 yards.
This is a scheduled Saquon Barkley TD tweet actually @saquon | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/zDRIu7hXsv
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) November 15, 2024
Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts had the other score, which came via Philadelphia’s signature “tush push.”
Baun, Eagles defense step up
Linebacker Zack Baun made the play of the game. On fourth-and-2 at the Eagles 26 in a two-point game, Baun stopped Commanders QB Jayden Daniels for no gain. The turnover on downs launched a major swing. The Eagles quickly scored on the following drive on a 23-yard run by Barkley.
Philadelphia’s defense played stout all game. Entering that fateful fourth down, the Eagles had held the Commanders to -1 yard on seven short-yardage rush attempts (three yards to go or fewer). Commanders coach Dan Quinn will have to answer for his aggressiveness when the lead was available with a field goal. The Eagles held Daniels to 191 yards passing and 18 yards rushing. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio fielded yet another game plan that limited an opponent to fewer than 20 points. — Brooks Kubena, Eagles beat writer
Kicking a concern?
The fourth-down stop covered up an off night for Jake Elliott. The eighth-year veteran and reliable placekicker who signed a four-year, $24 million extension in the offseason, missed a 44-yard field goal, a 51-yard field goal and an extra point — all wide left. The point-after attempt was most egregious. It left the window open for the Commanders to take the lead in a 12-10 game with 12:04 left in the fourth quarter. Elliott has been a safeguard for the Eagles for his entire career. Tonight, the Eagles defense saved him. Elliott has never missed more than five field goals in his career. He’s now missed five through 10 games. — Kubena
Barkley covers for sputtering offense
The box score will show another mammoth game for Barkley. But the Eagles had a difficult time scoring for most of the game. The Commanders locked down their downfield options in the passing game. Barkley was averaging fewer than four yards per carry entering the fourth quarter. They twice ******* to score touchdowns in the red zone — even when Hurts had A.J. Brown in one-on-one coverage with cornerback Mike Sainristil, who stopped Brown’s route in the end zone on an incomplete pass.
Nick Sirianni and Kellen Moore will face questions for a curious trick play call in the first half that lost significant yardage and squandered great field position. But, in the end, the Eagles flexed their star power, and they fielded explosive plays when momentum mattered most. — Kubena
Like this if you love Saquon Barkley. RT this if you love Saquon Barkley. Reply that you love Saquon Barkley.@saquon | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/e4TKKo3rSN
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) November 15, 2024
Quinn’s gamble busts
Washington’s offense labored throughout against Philadelphia and yet had the opportunity for a go-ahead field goal from the Eagles’ 26 with roughly eight minutes remaining. Quinn chose the aggressive route and kept his offense on the field. Maybe the sight of the home team delivering scoring drives of 82 and 74 yards on its two previous possessions spooked the head coach. Then again, the Commanders offensive line wasn’t controlling the line of scrimmage.
We’ll never know what happens if Daniels doesn’t bobble the snap. Once he did, the Eagles defenders cut off the quarterback’s outside running lane. The zero-yard carry ended that drive. When they regained possession after Barkley’s first touchdown, the hope of winning was on life support.
Letting kicker Zane Gonzalez attempt a go-ahead field goal seemed like the prudent move in a low-scoring game. Instead, Quinn went for the big play on a night Daniels and the line weren’t sharp, and the offense came up small. — Ben Standig, Commanders beat writer
Defense falls in final round
Don’t put this loss on Washington’s defense, even if the group went from bending to cracking to breaking in the second half. Frankie Luvu (two sacks), Jeremy Chinn and Sainristil were among the players flying around the field in the first half. They hit hard and covered well while holding the Eagles to three points before halftime.
But as the game progressed, Philadelphia’s offense began delivering jabs and haymakers. The Commanders stood tall, but eventually, the blows were too much for a unit tasked with being on the field for far too long since the offense finished 3 of 12 on third downs. Instead of keeping Philly’s playmakers mostly in check, Barkley hurt them late. The defenders won’t use tired as an excuse, but the game evolved like a team gasping for breath. — Standig
Required reading
(Photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
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Remedy’s Sam Lake set to receive New York awards show’s top honour
Remedy’s Sam Lake set to receive New York awards show’s top honour
Remedy creative director Sam Lake has been named the recipient of the 2025 New York Videogame Critics Circle Andrew Yoon Legend Award.
The New York Videogame Critics Circle presents the Andrew Yoon Legend Award to “recognize people and organizations that exhibited a significant, sustained body of work that shows exceptional artistic achievement and innovation.”
The award is named for Andrew Yoon, a founding member of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. Past award recipients include Neil Druckmann, Reggie Fils-Aimé, Phil Spencer, Tim Schafer, Jerry Lawson, ***** Raymond, Hideo Kojima, and other industry veterans.
Lake is best known for his over two-decade career at Remedy Entertainment, where he served as creative director on the Control and Alan Wake franchises.
“What an honor it is to celebrate someone of Sam Lake’s caliber during the 14th annual New York Game Awards,” said Harold Goldberg, president and co-founder, NYVGCC.
“You know a Remedy game when you see it, largely due to Sam Lake’s impact on the worlds he creates. It’s really cool to see how his 20-year career at Remedy has touched so many of our members and interns at the Circle, and we are thrilled to have him join the roster of esteemed game changers previously recognized with the Andrew Yoon Legend Award.”
The 2025 New York Game Awards will take place on January 21 at the SVA Theatre in Manhattan, New York.
Ryan O’Callaghan, executive director, NYVGCC said, “It’s not often that you see a video game studio deliver a superb sequel to a title a decade later, but it’s even rarer to see how it resonates with fans and spawns a whole connected universe comprised of its past franchises.
“I don’t think anyone expects anything less from someone like Sam Lake. He spoke with some of our students and interns a few weeks ago, and it was insightful to see where he draws his inspiration and the care that goes into crafting a video game. This will be a year to remember at the New York Game Awards.”
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‘We don’t go to Ravenholm’: the story behind Half-Life 2’s most iconic level | Games
‘We don’t go to Ravenholm’: the story behind Half-Life 2’s most iconic level | Games
At the start of Valve’s Half-Life 2, the seminal first-person shooter game that turns 20 this month, taciturn scientist Gordon Freeman is trapped within a dystopian cityscape. Armed soldiers patrol the streets, and innocent citizens wander around in a daze, bereft of purpose and future. Dr Wallace Breen, Freeman’s former boss at the scientific “research centre” ****** Mesa, looks down from giant video screens, espousing the virtues of humankind’s benefactors, an alien race known as The Combine.
As Freeman stumbles through these first few levels of Half-Life 2, the player acclimatises to the horrible future ***** out before them. It’s hardly the most cheerful setting, but there are some friendly faces (security guard Barney, Alyx and Eli Vance) and even moments of humour, as Dr Isaac Kleiner’s ****, a debeaked face-eating alien called Lamarr, runs amok in his laboratory. It feels safe. It feels fun. It feels familiar. There’s even a crowbar! And then, the foreshadowing. “That’s the old passage to Ravenholm,” mutters Alyx Vance during Freeman’s chapter five tour of the ****** Mesa East facility. “We don’t go there any more.” You feel a shiver down your spine; you know you will end up going there.
“[Ravenholm] was a totally different environment from what the player had been in until that point,” says Dario Casali, level designer and member of the informal City 17 Cabal, a group within Valve that worked on Half-Life 2’s most famous level. “It was an outlier of a map set that survived from a pretty early build of the game, borne from a need to give the newly introduced Gravity **** a place to shine.”
‘Ravenholm was a totally different environment from what the player had been in until that point.’ Photograph: Valve
The absence of ammunition for Freeman’s traditional weapons is the impetus that drives Ravenholm and Half-Life 2 into horror game territory. An old mining town, previously hidden away from the Combine, Ravenholm is now a desolate place, plunged into darkness, its citizens corrupted by an intense bombardment of headcrabs (those face-eating aliens). “We made use of confined spaces so that slow zombies [headcrab-afflicted people] could actually get near you,” reveals Casali. And the player can no longer blast them away with a machine **** or *******; you need to resort to the hefty Gravity ****, picking up whatever you can find around you and flinging it at the monsters bearing down on Freeman. Pots of paint, bits of wood, even ***** bodies became the player’s ammo.
Like most of Half-Life 2, Ravenholm is a cinematic experience, taking its cue from horror movies such as Saw and 28 Days Later. When Combine forces ******* ****** Mesa East, Freeman escapes through the dark tunnel that leads to Ravenholm. Instantly, a sharp change of atmosphere descends like a chill upon the player: a grim set of dark buildings, wispy, almost nonexistent music, two crashed headcrab rockets, and something swinging from a barren tree. Closer inspection reveals the lower half of a corpse, pecked at by crows.
Headcrab zombies appear out of nowhere, moaning their pained exhortations; but soon these are the least of Freeman’s worries. Designed to fit around the map, Ravenholm’s “fast” zombies climb up drainpipes and scurry across rooftops, leaving little safe haven for the adventurous scientist. Freeman must also contend with hunched creatures that hurl poisonous headcrabs.
‘A desolate place.’ Photograph: EA
Fortunately, Freeman is not without help; soon, he encounters Father Grigori, who is responsible for Ravenholm’s Saw-like traps and passionately redeems his “flock” with a shotgun. Casali says: “My take on it was that this guy had slowly lost his mind because of the headcrabs and the conversion of his congregation into zombies. Because Ravenholm was so isolated, I imagined he didn’t even know about the Combine invasion and thought that the ****** had come to town. Father Grigori and his flock of zombies was the perfect excuse to double down on the creepiness.”
Freeman follows Grigori throughout Ravenholm until a final climactic battle in (appropriately) a *********. “I thought Ravenholm really needed a fittingly action-packed ending worthy of a horror film,” says Casali, “and what better place to do that than in a graveyard!”
While that closing encounter, with Freeman and Grigori besieged by an army of zombies and headcrabs, releases some of the tension built up while exploring the creepy streets of Ravenholm, the level still leaves a lasting impression on anyone who played it, such is the abrupt change of tone and style. The segment endured practically from the start of Half-Life 2’s long development – a version appeared in Valve’s renowned 2003 E3 demo – evolving into the ammo-scarce spook-fest of the final game.
As one of the outstanding games of the last 20 years, Half-Life 2 defined the future of video games with its innovative visuals and remarkable physics engine. As a part of the City 17 Cabal, Casali and his colleagues’ work was instrumental. “The ******* to outdo the original Half-Life was so strong, and we were constantly motivated by the quality of work the other teams were doing,” he remembers. “It was magic.”
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Top 3 R&D-Driven Stocks Showing Strong Profit and Momentum
Top 3 R&D-Driven Stocks Showing Strong Profit and Momentum
When thinking about innovative companies that are trying fervently to stay ahead of the competition, research and development (R&D) spending is a key indicator of this ethos. Often quoted as a percentage of revenue, R&D spending is a driving force for many companies, especially those in the technology sector. Without it, businesses will eventually render their products inadequate as the competition provides greater value to their customers.
Strong R&D spending looks even better when combined with a company that is already profitable. It shows that they’re able to make money and invest back into the business at the same time. Together, these two factors have a big influence on the long-term success of a business. Below, I’ll share three companies that are achieving both goals. Also, these stocks have seen recent price upticks, showing some momentum at the companies.
1. Cadence: A Leader in Chip-Making Software (ETR:)
Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ: NASDAQ:) is a maker of electronic design automation (EDA) software. EDA software is one of the most important tools needed to design advanced semiconductors. Without it, making the best chips is essentially impossible. It is a reason why the ******* States has banned U.S. companies from selling EDA software to ******** firms.
As the world demands more and more advanced chips to run AI workloads and all the rest, Cadence must continue to make its software better as well. That’s why over the last 12 months, Cadence has spent 35% of its revenue on R&D. However, the company’s margins are also astounding. The company’s ****** margin sits at nearly 88%, higher than 90% of companies in the ******* States. Its operating margin is also massive, coming in at just over 29%. That is higher than 93% of companies in the ******* States technology sector. Shares are on the rise as of late, up 11% over the last three months.
2. Electronic Sports: Outpacing Take-Two With Superior Margins
Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: NASDAQ:) is a video game publishing, distribution, and development company. It has become widely known for some of its biggest game releases, including Madden NFL and The Sims. It is the largest video game company in the ******* States when leaving out the broadly diversified Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:). The company dedicates a very large percentage of its revenue to R&D spending at 34%.
Customers continually expect better content in video games, especially the graphics. Creating better graphics requires investments in cutting-edge technology and skilled labor. EA’s R&D costs get driven further higher due to the nature of the games it makes. Significant amounts of the company’s revenue come from sports games like Madden EA College Football. Developers must release a new version of these games every year so they can update them with the real-life changes in teams.
Luckily for EA, it can support this spending due to its very high margins. Its 79% ****** margin and 21% operating margin put it in an enviable position compared to most stocks in the U.S. communications sector. It is also handily beating out one of its main competitors, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc (NASDAQ:), on both those metrics. Take-Two has seen its operating margin drop to negative over the last few years. Shares of Electronic Arts are up 9% in the past three months.
3. Synopsys (NASDAQ:): Investing 32% in R&D
Synopsys (NASDAQ: SNPS), like Cadence, is a maker of EDA software. Together, these companies control around 60% – 70% of the EDA market. Although the competition is much more even than between the two beverage businesses, the duopoly of Synopsys and Cadence pushes both of them to keep innovation at the forefront. The intense competition between these firms is shown in their R&D spending. Synopsys spends 32% of its revenue on R&D.
The company’s ****** and operating margins are 81% and 23% over the last 12 months. They’re not as good as Cadence’s, but they are still impressive. This difference is somewhat reflected in the gap between the two firms’ forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios. The number is at 45x for Cadence, compared to 40x for Synopsys. This signals that investors view Cadence’s earnings as less risky than Synopsys’s, so they are willing to pay more for them. Shares of Synopsys have been up a solid 6% over the past three months. Wall Street sees a decent upside in the stock over the next 12 months. The average price target implies shares could rise 14%.
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Wall St drops after Powell urges rate cut caution
Wall St drops after Powell urges rate cut caution
Wall Street’s main indexes have tumbled after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said there was no need to rush interest-rate cuts, pushing up US Treasury yields and pressuring equities.
In a speech on Thursday, Powell pointed to ongoing economic growth, a solid job market, and inflation above the Fed’s two per cent target as reasons the central bank can afford to be careful as they determine the pace and scope of rate cuts going forward.
Powell’s comments came after both consumer and producer prices data this week pointed to persistent inflation. On Friday, data showed US retail sales increased slightly more than expected in October, but underlying momentum in consumer spending appeared to slow at the start of the fourth quarter.
Traders increased bets that the Fed will keep rates on hold at its December meeting – pricing in a 41.3 per cent chance, compared with 14 per cent a month ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
“The retail sales number was overall pretty good. That’s exactly what Powell was talking about yesterday, where if the economy continues to be reasonably strong and inflation is approaching our target, they can afford to be patient and go slower with rate cuts than previously thought,” said Mike Dickson, head of research and quantitative strategies at Horizon Investments.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 149.62 points, or 0.34 per cent, to 43,601.24, the S&P 500 lost 40.21 points, or 0.68 per cent, to 5,908.96 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 237.47 points, or 1.24 per cent, to 18,870.18.
The small-cap Russell 2000 index was down 0.2 per cent.
Higher Treasury yields pressured megacap stocks. Nvidia edged 1.8 per cent lower, Apple dropped one per cent and Microsoft was down 1.7 per cent.
The losses pulled down the information technology index by 1.5 per cent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq led declines among the major indexes with an over one per cent loss.
The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index slipped 2.2 per cent, bogged down by a 8.8 per cent decline in Applied Materials after it forecast first-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates on Thursday.
All three major US stock indexes were headed for weekly losses as a sharp post-election rally fizzled out and market focus shifted to the state of the economy and potential inflation risks under a new administration.
Stocks of vaccine makers dipped after the President-elect selected Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has spread misinformation on vaccines, to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
BioNTech dropped five per cent, while Moderna and Novavax fell more than four per cent. Pfizer dipped 4.9 per cent.
“We are getting more visibility into who’s going to be surrounding Trump and what their policies represent. And that’s caused a little bit of the pause lately,” said Dickson of Horizon Investments.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway said on Thursday it made new investments in Domino’s Pizza and sold its entire stake in Ulta Beauty.
Domino’s shares were up two per cent, while Ulta was down 2.5 per cent.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.06-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.5-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 3 new 52-week highs and 8 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 14 new highs and 91 new lows.
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Billie Jean King took tennis equity to the top of sport. She never got comfortable there
Billie Jean King took tennis equity to the top of sport. She never got comfortable there
Billie Jean King is losing patience.
Maybe that’s what happens when you’re 80 years old and the actuarial tables say time is running short. King has been advocating for equality for women for more than a half-century now. There has been progress, but not nearly enough, she believes — in life as in tennis.
King has pushed into every room she could and tried to work all of them. She has tried to build all kinds of bridges, believing that if she could just talk to people, one-on-one, she could bend their world view a little closer to hers. Sometimes they bend. Others can break. Yet she’s still at it, trying to check the emotions and frustrations that simmer just beneath. The impatience that reveals itself once she gets through some of the happy and vacant baseline exchanges that go with living inside the sport’s establishment as she tries to disrupt it, little by little, again and again.
Long ago, King made a cold calculation. She didn’t want to be someone who was “just going out talking, standing on a soapbox,” as she said during an interview last week, conducted over video since she and her partner, Ilana Kloss, have been nursing a respiratory illness.
“It’s what you do that matters.”
That, she said, required practicality. Practicality comes with a price — but seriously, what the ***** is taking so long?
“I have this saying that when you read history, it goes fast, but when you live in it, it goes slowly,” she said.
GO DEEPER
‘I think we deserve better’: How and why tennis lets women down
King, the 12-time Grand Slam singles champion, a founding leader of the WTA Tour, the slayer of Bobby Riggs in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes showdown, is tennis royalty 365 days a year. That is especially true in late summer, when the U.S. Open happens at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y..
Another reminder comes in the fall, when the finals of the Billie Jean King Cup, the national team competition that bears her name, bring together some of the best women’s players in the world. This year they have come to Malaga, Spain.
King has played many roles in the event since winning its first edition as part of Team USA in 1963, when it was known as the Federation Cup. Participant, champion, team captain, namesake, marketing partner, cheerleader in chief. She got annoyed last year that dining for staff and media at the event was slow, getting in the way of their work. She got on those responsible and told them to fix it.
In one way, this year’s edition is a breakthrough moment for her. The BJK finals will overlap with the finals of the Davis Cup, the men’s team competition. For some time, she’s been telling anyone who will listen how much better the two events would be together — a kind of tennis world cup.
She has similar ideas about the WTA and ATP Tour Finals, presently held thousands of miles apart in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Turin, Italy, respectively.
“You have your two big season-ending events for individuals and teams. To really showcase the sport, just like the majors, right? It becomes just like a fifth major.”
She says all this with a combination of satisfaction and those why-does-it-take-so-long-for-people-to listen-to-me shakes of the head that punctuate her sentences. She’s got the record to justify them. She convinced the U.S. Open to give equal prize money to men and women in 1973; Wimbledon waited another 34 years. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka still had to speak on being paid half as much as men’s world No. 1 Jannik Sinner for winning the Cincinnati Open this summer. It is not time to get comfortable. There is more to do.
Billie Jean King dances with Arthur Ashe at the Wimbledon Champions’ Ball in 1975. (Smith / Associated Press)
At this point, there is no doubt that King has had as much impact on modern sports as anyone during her lifetime. How she accomplished it all provides another object lesson on how to gain influence.
As edgy, rebellious and disruptive as she was in her early years, someone who used to rib her good friend Arthur Ashe for not being ******** enough, she decided that the only way she could force change and begin to bend tennis to her will was to do it from the inside. She needed to work her way into the corridors of the rich and powerful and act like she belonged, even if it meant a life lived in discomfort. Now, she regrets not working with Ashe from inside the tennis clubs that were so exclusionary when they were both around.
In the 1970s, doing something meant rubbing shoulders with tobacco executives at Philip Morris, who bankrolled women’s tennis. To this day she hobnobs with billionaire corporate leaders despite seriously disagreeing with their politics. She has urged engagement and dealmaking with the rulers of countries that criminalize homosexuality and curtail women’s rights. Nearly every year, she and Kloss sit in Wimbledon’s Royal Box. It doesn’t get much more establishment than that.
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“I don’t think I was ever comfortable,” she said. “I was never really just like, ‘Ohhhh, relax.’ No, I’m always pretty alert, I think.”
Kloss, King’s partner in business and in life, said that they have learned to treat these rooms as opportunities: to learn and build relationships with people who can help them get where they want to go, and where they want sport to go, too. They have invested in baseball through the LA Dodgers and in women’s ice hockey, the Angel City women’s soccer team and media startups. King created the Women’s Sports Foundation in 1974, two years after Title IX banned **** discrimination in schools.
“You might not get everything but I think if you know somebody, you feel like there’s a connection,” Kloss said. “In person, building those relationships has served us both incredibly well.”
King has caught her share of flak for this approach. At an event celebrating the creation of the WTA on the eve of Wimbledon 2023, she voiced her support for a deal in the tens of millions of dollars to bring the WTA Tour Finals to Saudi Arabia, a country which human rights groups have criticized for its record on freedom of expression, criminalization of same-**** relationships and women’s rights.
“I think I would take the money,” she said at the time, reiterating her long-held support of engagement as a vehicle for change. Her fellow figureheads of women’s tennis, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, wrote in the Washington Post that engaging as a vehicle for change would mean awarding a marquee event and all its cachet to a kingdom yet to earn it.
Chris Evert and Billie Jean King have taken opposing views on staging the WTA Tour Finals in Saudi Arabia. (Ulises Ruiz / AFP via Getty Images)
The WTA took the money. Last weekend, Coco Gauff won $4.8 million (£3.8 million) for winning the championship, the biggest check in women’s tennis history.
GO DEEPER
‘The same people who allow women to play tennis are also torturing the activists’
Any conversation with King delivers surprises. Recalling the early days of the second-wave feminism movement in the 1970s, she says she felt somewhat shunned by its leaders. She wished those women, including her longtime friend Gloria Steinem, had used her and the other players more.
“Jocks were thought of as not too bright, that we didn’t know what we were doing. I used to tell Gloria that we’re not just from the head up. But I think we had a platform,” King said.
King is not bitter. She and Steinem had tea recently; they’re fine. Steinem declined to comment.
She believes her match with Riggs launched the tennis ***** in the ******* States, especially among women, not some Grand Slam final nor Rod Laver’s famous duel with Ken Rosewall in Texas in 1972, which drew more than 21 million viewers as it stretched into the evening programming hours.
Friends have told her that the next day, you couldn’t get on a tennis court.
“Everybody was wearing their tennis gear to the grocery store,” she said.
Despite her pride at surpassing limits, she’s fully aware she hasn’t done it all. While King was playing — and winning 39 Grand Slam titles (12 singles, 16 women’s doubles, 11 mixed doubles) — and for years after, gay and ********* women in tennis felt they had to hide their sexuality. Now, statistics would suggest that men do, since tennis has yet to have an openly gay male player come out during his career. Brian Vahaly, the ********* former world No. 63, came out after retiring in 2007.
Billie Jean King beat retired pro Bobby Riggs 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 in their ‘Battle of the Sexes’ in 1973. (Hutton Archive / Getty Images)
Her main hope of the moment is that the competition that bears her name can have some impact beyond the players who play it on and off the court. This year, the event will host a summit on women’s leadership in business and sports on the morning of the final. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education advocate who was shot by the Taliban when she was 15, is among the featured guests.
Leadership is another current frustration. Each entity with a seat at the table where tennis decisions are made — the tournaments, the tour officials, the leaders of the Grand Slams, the International Tennis Federation, which controls the Billie Jean King Cup — have interests to protect. The net result, she feels, is currently a schedule that burns some players out before the end of the season. That hurts her directly when some of the best players, including Gauff, opt out of the Billie Jean King Cup because they are simply out of gas by mid-November.
Instead of shortening the schedule, the ATP and WTA Tours have extended the lengths of their biggest tournaments, the 1,000s — one rung below the Grand Slams.
Instead of spacing out the team competitions that many players say give them a break from the eat-what-you-***** nature of the rest of the year, they stick those events at the end of the year.
GO DEEPER
How the ****** to improve the tennis calendar risks destroying its soul
The biased King and Kloss — and plenty of players — would prefer the season ended shortly after the U.S. Open, before pivoting to team competitions and a longer off-season.
“It’s really maddening, you know, generation after generation,” she said. “If you don’t put the game first, you’re gonna ****** it up in the end for yourself. It’s so obvious.”
This year’s event also has a small circle of life moment for King. She captained for many years a U.S. team that often featured Lindsay Davenport, the former world No. 1. Now Davenport is the U.S. captain.
In an interview in Turin on Wednesday, Davenport said King came into her life at a key moment, in 1995. She was 19, floating around the top 20, and unsure of how much further her tennis could take her.
King told her she had no limits. The next year, King was coaching Davenport on the U.S. Olympic team in 1996 when she won the gold medal in Atlanta, Ga..
“When you hear it from someone like that, it goes a lot further than just hearing it from, you know, a local pro or your parents,” Davenport said.
Billie Jean King (center) with Lindsay Davenport (second from left) after Team USA won the 2000 Federation Cup. (Mike Fiala / AFP via Getty Images)
As a captain, King didn’t follow any particular formula. Sometimes she talked a lot, sometimes she was silent. Sometimes the U.S. had four women in the top 10, and King had to manage egos, spread out the playing time, and, as Davenport put it, “teach us that these few weeks out of the year, it was going to be ******* than just yourself.
“How can you get your teammate to play better? How can we all work together to have the best end result possible?”
Sometimes it would get uncomfortable. That was fine then and it’s fine now. King, who turns 81 on November 22, is not about to change the habit of a lifetime.
(Top photos: Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb)
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Not The Illuminate No-Show, Latest Helldivers 2 Controversy That Has Divided us All Needs to Stop
Not The Illuminate No-Show, Latest Helldivers 2 Controversy That Has Divided us All Needs to Stop
The Helldivers 2 community has always been passionate about their beloved game, sometimes to a fault. While this dedication has helped create one of gaming’s most engaged playerbases, it has also led to a pattern of speculation and expectations that can spiral out of control faster than a misplaced orbital strike.
It is “under-construction” no more. | Image Credit: Arrowhead Game Studios
With Arrowhead’s latest addition to the game finally going live after months of anticipation, we’re seeing a familiar pattern emerge. The community is once again divided, with some celebrating the new feature while others claim it doesn’t live up to their expectations—expectations that, interestingly enough, were largely self-created.
As we dig deeper into this latest controversy, it’s worth examining how we got here, and more importantly, whether all this drama is really necessary.
When Speculation Meets Reality in Helldivers 2
The Democracy Space Station (DSS) “gigastructure,” Helldivers 2‘s latest feature, has finally become operational after several Major Orders spanning two months. This massive orbital platform allows players to vote on planetary targets and fund various tactical actions using their accumulated resources. It’s an impressive addition that adds a new layer of strategy to the ongoing galactic war.
However, as one frustrated player points out, the community’s reaction hasn’t been entirely positive:
The post raises some valid points about how the community often builds up expectations based on speculation rather than official announcements. Arrowhead, known for their measured approach to communication, barely hinted at what the DSS would actually do. Yet somehow, parts of the community had convinced themselves it would be everything from a fully explorable space station to a complete clan system.
This disconnect between expectation and reality has led to some rather heated discussions:
Comment byu/Fluffy-Ingenuity2536 from discussion inhelldivers2
It’s a fair point—most Helldivers were simply doing what they always do: spreading managed democracy across the galaxy and having fun while doing it. The idea that completing the DSS-related Major Orders was some kind of herculean effort rather than business as usual shows just how far some expectations have drifted from reality.
The Pattern of Self-Made Disappointment
Many are disappointed that they cannot “walk” inside their new space station. | Image Credit: Arrowhead
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this pattern in the Helldivers 2 community, and it likely won’t be the last. As another player succinctly puts it:
Comment byu/Fluffy-Ingenuity2536 from discussion inhelldivers2
The truth is, the DSS is exactly what Arrowhead designed it to be: a strategic tool that gives high-level players something to do with their excess resources while adding a new layer of tactical options to the ongoing war effort. It allows for planetary bombardments, provides passive stratagem support, and even affects liberation rates. These are all meaningful additions to the game’s mechanics.
But when players build up elaborate theories and treat them as foregone conclusions, disappointment is almost inevitable. It’s a cycle we’ve seen before, and one that risks overshadowing the actual improvements being made to the game.
We’ve seen this same pattern with the long-rumored arrival of the Illuminate. Despite leaked models and endless speculation, the third faction ******** conspicuously absent—and when they do eventually arrive, will they live up to the months of community theorizing and hype? History suggests we might be setting ourselves up for disappointment once again.
Perhaps it’s time for us as a community to take a step back and appreciate what we have rather than lamenting what we imagined we might get. After all, Arrowhead has consistently shown they know what they’re doing with Helldivers 2—even if their vision doesn’t always match our speculations.
What do you think about the DSS and the community’s reaction to it? Have we become too quick to complain about new features? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Intel doesn’t plan to bring 3D V-Cache-like tech to consumer CPUs for now — next-gen Clearwater Forest Xeon CPUs will feature “Local Cache” in the base tile akin to AMD’s 3D V-Cache
Intel doesn’t plan to bring 3D V-Cache-like tech to consumer CPUs for now — next-gen Clearwater Forest Xeon CPUs will feature “Local Cache” in the base tile akin to AMD’s 3D V-Cache
Clearwater Forest is turning out to be an entirely different ****** – incorporating not only the latest goods from Intel Foundry – like Foveros Direct 3D, RibbonFET, PowerVia, and EMIB 3.5D – but also 3D cache, which Intel terms as “Local Cache,” per an interview with Intel’s Florian Maislinger conducted by der8auer and Bens Hardware. Furthermore and sadly, Team Blue also says it has no plans to introduce AMD 3D V-cache-esque capabilities in its desktop CPUs.
Intel’s next-generation E-Core, only Xeon series codenamed “Clearwater Forest,” will leverage its flagship 18A node—on which Pat Gelsinger has staked the entire company’s future. Clearwater Forest is expected to use Atom Darkmont cores, succeeding the already-fast Skymont featured in Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs.
From an architectural and packaging standpoint, Clearwater Forest uses three “active” Base tiles – each hosting four CPU chiplets or tiles for 12 CPU tiles connected via Hybrid Bonding (Foveros 3D Direct). On the outskirts lie two I/O chiplets – connected to the CPU tiles through EMIB 3.5D. The entire package is expected to feature almost 300 billion transistors.
(Image credit: Intel via SemiWiki)
Maislinger stated, “But for us, this (gaming) is not an extremely large mass market. You still have to see that we sell a lot of CPUs that are not necessarily used for gaming. We still have it (3D Stacked Cache) technologically. This means that next year there will be a CPU (Clearwater Forest) for the first time that has a cache tile, but not on desktop.”
The interview confirms something we’ve missed: how the cache is structured. A quick look at Intel’s white paper clarifies that the SRAM is packaged into the Base tile, which Intel calls “Local Cache.” Until now, even with a disaggregated design, Intel has employed “Compute Tiles” featuring all cores alongside their respective caches linked via the Ring Bus. Clearwater Forest shifts the cache to the Base tile beneath the CPU chiplets, which now only hosts the CPU cores – and the entire assembly acts as a “Compute Module.” However, this is unlike AMD’s X3D approach since the CPU chiplets are mutually dependent on the Base tile.
Afterward, Florian Maislinger asserted that Intel’s gaming market is relatively small, and designing an X3D competitor would be pointless if it could not be reused for servers. On a side note, AMD is also looking to introduce 3D V-Cache in Threadrippers. It shows that Intel (or rather Intel Foundry) does have the technology to combat AMD’s 3D V-Cache, Clearwater Forest, but it is not planning to make it mainstream anytime soon.
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