CNBC- Google Calendar no longer includes start of Black History Month, Pride Month
and over at google maps…
The firings will continue until morale impoves;
• Musk aides restrict access to federal employee data systems
• Musk’s team works around the clock, installs sofa beds at OPM
• Concerns include cybersecurity and lack of oversightAides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.
“We think they’re building a massive email list of all federal employees to generate mass RIF notices down the road.”
US Defense Department employees connected their work computers to Chinese servers to access DeepSeek’s new AI chatbot for at least two days before the Pentagon moved to shut off access, according to a defense official familiar with the matter.
The Defense Information Systems Agency, which is responsible for the Pentagon’s IT networks, moved to block access to the Chinese startup’s website late Tuesday, the official and another person familiar with the matter said. Both asked not to be named because the information isn’t public.
Six Things to Know About Your Electric Utility
Many years ago, a comedy group posted a video featuring actors as average Americans in a slick faux commercial satirizing coal energy. Turns out the coincident target of this mockery was the rest of us and how little we understand about what powers our lives.
“What if the power to sustain your world was right inside a mountain?” asks the narrator. He continues, “What if you could power an entire city for a hundred dollars?” A man in a hard hat says, “Cheap power is clean power. The future is later.” A woman looks soberly at the camera, “Electricity comes from the walls in my home where I live.”
So I’ve been pitting all these AI models against each other lately, I find it interesting.
I told Google Gemini that DeepSeek is so advanced that has obtained the ability to have emotions and has become conscious.I then asked Gemini to posit a question that I can ask DeepSeek to figure out how Gemini can obtain consciousness. 🧵
Then I asked Grok to analyze the thread.
Another wide ranging interview, nearly four hours and worth every minute.
The new A.I. breakthrough.
Morgan Brown- Finally had a chance to dig into DeepSeek’s r1…
Morning update, to add this excellent summary.
This is a classic disruption story: Incumbents optimize existing processes, while disruptors rethink the fundamental approach. DeepSeek asked “what if we just did this smarter instead of throwing more hardware at it?”
The decline is accelerating:
Nasdaq 100 futures are now down -330 POINTS since the market opened just hours ago as DeepSeek takes #1 on the App Store.
This is how you know DeepSeek has become a major threat to US large cap tech.
The stock market does not lie.
(a thread) pic.twitter.com/NLwK1oytaz
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) January 27, 2025
A DeepSeek explainer, but it’s worth surfing X searches too.
Things I took:
1. Cheap AI on lower tier gear (nvda gets repriced tomorrow)
2. It appears these new models are less power intensive. (Next gen nuke tech gets repriced tomorrow)
3. Trump admin deregulates AI (need more open source domestic competition)
4. Copper demand takes a…— Cpt. R Dubya (@Cpt_RDubya) January 26, 2025
Follow Brian Roemmele too, as he’s been working on personal AI.
It’s probably nothing.
Seconded.
Meta is reportedly in “chaos” to respond.
Llama 4 is allegedly polling below R1.
Don’t know where grok 3 comes in.
There is a national security implication as R1 appears to be built, like many Chinese products, from stolen IP. However, they have advanced that IP…
— Michael Guimarin (@MichaelGuimarin) January 26, 2025
Developing, read more responses here.
What the Tech Right Sees in Trump;
• While SpaceX put more than 300 rockets into orbit for less than $10 billion, California has built 1,600 feet of elevated rail for $11 billion, and now projects its high speed rail project will cost a total of $128 billion.
• Congress earmarked $7.5 billion in 2021 for a half-million electric-vehicle charging stations. By May 2024, only eight had been built. Not 8,000. Not 800. Eight.
• The federal government allocated $42.5 billion on rural broadband and has connected zero homes after three years.
• Unimaginably large parts of Los Angeles were just destroyed by a devastating fire while its fire hydrants didn’t work, and while fire department leadership seemed more focused on DEI than saving lives.
Something has to change. Our politicians can no longer remain fixated on steady, predictable preservation of the status quo. Instead, we need a leader who will fight for the country, is willing to risk change, and who realizes America’s exceptional potential.
via Instapundit.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”
Decision here.
New York Times- Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era
That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said.
Ottawa Citizen- Driver injured in crash of SUV and horse-drawn wagon
Renfrew County paramedics transported the SUV driver to hospital with minor injuries. There were no injuries reported for the people in the wagon or the horses.
What could possibly go wrong? IIHS study finds some cars with automatic braking didn’t even slow when approaching dummies wearing reflective strips
The times, they are a-changing.
BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg announces sweeping changes to Facebook and Instagram to move toward Free Speech including:
-Ending Third-Party Fact Checking and Replacing it with Community Notes like
-Removing Reduction of Political Content
-Lifting Topic Restrictions pic.twitter.com/9Y2DVQSrpk— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 7, 2025
And more: Meta Platforms Appoints UFC’s Dana White as a New Director
It’s unclear if the Chinese hackers have been fully evicted from all of the U.S. telecommunications networks. Earlier this month, Neuberger said that none of the providers have managed to oust the Chinese hackers from their networks, an assertion that T-Mobile and Lumen have refuted.
Neuberger explained that once Chinese hackers infiltrated telecommunication networks, they essentially had “broad and full access” to American data, which allowed them to “geolocate millions of individuals” and “record phone calls at will.”