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☆ 'The Circle' used an AI player to create a bot witch hunt — and soon, we might all be defending our humanity online too
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-04 | by ( Palmer Haasch | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Max is the first AI contestant on "The Circle" — he's literally a chatbot. Max is pretty boring, but having an AI in the game turned it into a robot witch hunt. But bringing an AI player into the mix reflects some of the future online trials we're likely to face — and some that are already happening. Netflix"The Circle's" AI player is Max, a chatbot masquerading as a 26-year-old veterinary intern from Wisconsin who describes himself as an "animal whisperer with a knack for making bad pottery, no cap." AdvertisementMaybe the funniest part about Max is that they gave him his own apartment, complete with throw pillows of his human face.

Persons: Max, —, Asimov, Lauren doesn't, He's, Griffin James, who's, Pippa, Steffi, Stephanie, Hill, OpenAI, Alistair Barr, Katie Notopoulos, I'm, Myles Organizations: Service, Netflix, Washington Post Locations: British, Wisconsin

☆ Meet the former child prodigy who played 'Moneyball' with GPUs and built a $3 million AI model for $30,000
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-22 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Daimon Labs, by contrast, had raised $1.5 million from a handful of VCs. It was around then that he started Daimon Labs alongside Dhruv Malik and Xiang Zhang to pursue the dream of what he calls "machines of loving grace". He ignored every metric of success for an AI model, except one: perplexity. It's a measure of how certain the AI model is of its predictions. But even with ruthlessly optimized hardware and that single-minded focus, Daimon Labs still couldn't afford to build the model Benmalek was envisioning.

Persons: —, Ryan Benmalek, wouldn't, Benmalek, Isaac Asimov, Dhruv Malik, Xiang Zhang, Michael Lewis, Daimon, Brooklyn Organizations: Service, Business, Daimon Labs, The University of Washington, Cornell, Apple, Google, Nvidia, Labs, Lambda, Daimon Locations: Silicon, Seattle, Moneyball, Montreal, Brooklyn, North Carolina, Canada

☆ The Wine Heiresses Apparent
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

She was far more interested in making wine herself, so she earned a degree in winemaking and found jobs with wineries elsewhere in Tuscany. But she felt drawn to Radda-in-Chianti, where some of the most ethereal Chianti Classicos are from. They made wine but sold it in bulk to merchants who bottled it. Having proven herself at winemaking, she took over the family vineyards to make the wine for Istine, her new Chianti Classico label. Today, they are critically acclaimed around the world, and she has begun to bottle single-vineyard wines from each of the family’s plots.

Persons: Angela Fronti Locations: Chianti, Radda, Tuscany

☆ 2023 has been an AI feeding frenzy, here are the startups that attracted the most investment this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-04 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Despite an overall slump in startup funding, 2023 saw a scramble among investors to pour money into AI and machine learning startups. And the company's star still appears to be rising, despite a messy leadership struggle that recently spilled into public view. Meanwhile OpenAI's perennial rival Anthropic attracted multi-billion dollar investments from both Google and Amazon to fund a competing AI model known as Claude. At the same time legacy companies from John Deere to accounting firm PwC played up their AI bona fides to capitalize on the hype. The list doesn't include startups who have not publicly released the amount of their funding rounds.

Persons: OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude, Databricks, John Deere, PwC, Fresh Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Alpha, Technology, Monogram, Sigma, Lambda, Helsing, Metals, Eagle Eye, Amelia, Asimov, Farmers Business, Harbinger, Prins, Silo, Mistral, Alto, AMP, Management Software, Universal, Coro, Kodiak Robotics, Aerospace, Defense, Sana, Corti, Kyte, Mitra, Tech, Boss Digital Technology, Halcyon, & $ Locations: PitchBook

☆ For Thanksgiving, 20 Wines Under $20
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-16 | by ( Eric Asimov | More About Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If you’re having a big party, don’t worry about matching wines to dishes. Instead, the goal is to select versatile, energizing wines, the sort that won’t weigh you down but will provide refreshment and pleasure with anything you serve. In practical terms, that means wines with relatively low alcohol content, 14 percent maximum but better around 12 or 13 percent. That often makes the difference between bottles that can snap you to attention and a flat, fatiguing wine. The aim is refreshment and pleasure more than complexity and contemplation, though if you can find it all in one inexpensive bottle you’ve got a treasure.

☆ What if Wine and Cider Had a Baby?
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Eric Asimov | More About Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Wine is made by fermenting grapes or other fruit, although apple and pear wines are distinctive enough to have earned their own categories, cider and perry. But a growing number of producers are blurring the styles, blending grape wines and ciders or fermenting grapes and other fruit together, with remarkable delicious results. Some bottles are collaborations between wine and cider specialists, but most who are making these blends are natural winemakers, who tend to be more experimental and adventurous and less bound by industry and market conventions. Andy Brennan, of the superb Aaron Burr Cidery in Wurtsboro, N.Y., makes a wonderfully refreshing blend he calls Appinette by fermenting together farmed apples and traminette, a hybrid wine grape. Scar of the Sea, an excellent wine producer in San Luis Obispo, Calif., blends a different grape with Newtown Pippin apples each year — gamay in 2021 and palomino in ’22.

Persons: Andy Brennan, Aaron Burr Cidery, Newtown Pippin, gamay, palomino Organizations: Calif, Newtown Locations: Wurtsboro, San Luis Obispo, ’

☆ Apple TV+ is raising prices and expanding its content ambitions — here are the shows and movies it wants now, per leaked Hollywood agency documents
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-27 | by ( Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Apple TV+ is a small but influential player in the streaming wars. And Apple has signaled it wants to grow its streaming content slate at a time when other media companies are contracting. Apple is "always looking" for films that "highlight humanity," according to one of the agency documents. As a side hustle of a massive retail business, Apple TV+ can fly under the radar, insulated from economic pressures that have roiled the entertainment business. (Apple TV+ was the first streamer to win the best picture Oscar, in 2022, for "CODA," which it acquired at the Sundance Film Festival).

Persons: Martin Scorcese's, Reese Witherspoon, Apple, execs, Apple hasn't, Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso, Rose Byrne, Seth Rogen, Jon Stewart's, Isaac Asimov's, John Krasinski, Stephen Curry, Ridley Scott's, Napoleon, They're Organizations: Apple, Netflix, Disney, New York Times, Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, New England Patriots, Sundance Locations: China

☆ Where to Drink Wine in the Hudson Valley
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-21 | by ( Eric Asimov | More About Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

In the last 15 years or so, a growing number of people have come to see the Hudson Valley as more than a beautiful place to visit. A host of new cafes, coffee shops, boutiques and restaurants cater to this rising population tide. Farms and farm stands provide great local ingredients, as do local cheese producers and bakers. It’s become a great place to eat and to drink good wine. On a recent trip to the Hudson Valley, I made my base near the small city of Hudson, N.Y., which has the greatest concentration of destinations in the area, though I explored places within a 30-minute drive.

Persons: It’s Locations: Hudson, N.Y

☆ 20 Wines Under $20: Bottles for All Seasons
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-14 | by ( Eric Asimov | More About Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

I don’t believe in drinking seasonally. I believe in eating seasonally, and that largely dictates which wines I drink. With fresh vegetables in hot weather, and with plenty of seafood, I tend to pick lighter wines, not always white but mostly. It’s not so much a matter of color but of weight, which encompasses the full spectrum of wines. But weight does often correlate with color, and that’s where the specious shorthand, “reds in winter, whites and rosés in summer,” may have originated.

Persons: It’s

☆ Decoding the Complicated Color Wheel of Wines
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( Eric Asimov | More About Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Dark RedsNot a particularly helpful designation as color in red wines can mean little. The assumption is that the darker the color the denser and more tannic the wine, but it’s not true. One exception with color: Young reds will be brighter while well-aged wines will seem duller and paler around the edges. It’s both the oldest method and newly fashionable, and produces somewhat simple wines that can be fresh and delicious. Last is the tank method, used for inexpensive sparkling wines produced in quantity, like Prosecco.

Organizations: Reds Locations: Provence, Champagne

☆ These 3 science fiction stories inspired Elon Musk and explain his business choices — but critics say he's missing the point
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Kai Xiang Teo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

These stories' focus on great men and amazing technology defying the rules could explain his business choices. Elon Musk is one of the most divisive tech and business personas of our time, and there is much chatter about what shapes his beliefs and business choices. Beyond these, however, a consistent source of influence from his childhood to today is his self-professed love of science fiction. "That is Musk's guide for living, yet he is using that guide to justify doing the very thing that the story is opposed to," she added. Elon Musk loves "Deus Ex" and its cyberpunk styleElon Musk appears to be a huge fan of the 2000 science fiction video game, "Deus Ex."

Persons: Elon Musk, Isaac Asimov's, Douglas Adams, he's, dystopias, Napoleon, William MacAskill, Walter Isaacson, Musk, xAI Douglas Adams, —, Adams, Jill Lepore, it's, Hari Seldon, Jonny Diamond, takeaways, JC Denton Organizations: SpaceX, Guardian Locations: South Africa

☆ ‘Lunar Codex’ aims to bring human art to the moon
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-15 | by ( Jacopo Prisco | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

Nicknamed “Moon Museum,” it was attached to a leg of the spacecraft and then left on the moon with it. Called the Lunar Codex, it will be split across three launches planned over the next 18 months. The artworks that make up the Lunar Codex will be miniaturized in nickel NanoFiche. Peralta originally intended the Lunar Codex to include only his own works, such as "Sonnets from the Labrador," but reconceived the project as a global endeavor during the pandemic. Jack Burns, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder, thinks the Lunar Codex is a cool concept.

Persons: —, Andy Warhol, Samuel Peralta —, ” Peralta, Peralta, I’ve, ”, “, Isaac Asimov's, Samuel Peralta, Mazzy, Olesya Dzhurayeva, Connie Karleta, Samuel Peralta “, Daniela De Paulis, ” Paulis, Jack Burns, “ I’m, Carl Sagan, Timothy Ferris, Bach, Beethoven …, Chuck Berry, Ferris, ” Ferris, ‘ Kilroy Organizations: CNN, NASA, “, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Virgin, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Colorado Locations: Canadian, North America, Ukrainian, Kyiv, Russia, American, Netherlands, Labrador, University of Colorado Boulder

☆ Where to Drink Wine in Madrid
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Eric Asimov | More About Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

To many tourists, Madrid is kind of an afterthought, Spain’s second city after Barcelona, which, in their minds, abounds with youthful energy, quirky architecture, a thriving arts scene, beautiful beaches and superb restaurants. But Madrid, with its relaxed disposition, warm generosity and excellent museums, is full of wonderful restaurants that are great places to drink wine. I was thrilled by the breadth and variety I found in many places, which went far beyond the deep selections of Spanish wines that I remember on earlier trips. Like so much of the world, Madrid has fallen in love with Burgundy and Champagne, with many excellent bottles at prices far below what I’d expect to pay in New York. That goes for Spanish wines, too.

Locations: Madrid, Barcelona, Spain, Burgundy, Champagne, New York

☆ This Summer, Pause for the Vermouth Hour
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-20 | by ( Eric Asimov | More About Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Earlier this year while in Madrid, I fell prey to what the Spanish call la hora del vermut, the vermouth hour, a break in the day for a glass, generally before eating. Once you have ordered, servers arrive with a bottle of Spanish vermouth, which they will pour sometimes into tall Collins glasses, other times squat tumblers, but always filled with ice and garnished with an orange slice. The vermouth usually comes with a nosh, like a small bowl of green olives and a plate of picos, stubby little breadsticks. The vermouth hour is both a joyous custom to adopt and a bit of a revelation. I’ve always liked vermouth as an occasional aperitif, but to make a daily habit of it is to taste a stunning variety of possibilities.

Persons: I’ve Locations: Madrid, Spain, Salud

☆ In Sherry Country, Wines of the Future That Look to the Past
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the best of examples, it can look to the future as well. But in the last decade or so, a small group of winemakers have focused intently on the region’s past. In short: They are producing some of the most exciting wines in the world. But the industry has been declining since the 1980s as consumers in Britain, the biggest market for inexpensive sherry, began to lose interest in those mediocre sweet wines. Many producers went out of business and the land planted to vines dwindled from roughly 70,000 acres to around 15,000.

Persons: Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Sherry Organizations: Jerez de la Frontera Locations: Spain, Jerez de, Sanlúcar, El Puerto, Santa, Britain

☆ Robert Mondavi Changed Wine. His Grandson Aims to Change Farming.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-15 | by ( Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The primary objections, he said, were that organic farming cost more and required far more tractor use, which caused a different set of environmental problems. He wondered whether an electric tractor could overcome the objections. Mr. Mondavi’s role in the development was to offer the farmer’s point of view, assessing each design idea for its practical appeal. “This is the hardest work I’ve ever done — seven days a week, day and night,” he said. He described the frequent air travel as both “one of my greatest pleasures and greatest guilts.”

Persons: ”, “, Foxconn, Robert Mondavi, Monarch, Mondavi, Giovanna Bagnasco Organizations: Constellation Brands, Monarch, Sorì Locations: Livermore , Calif, Lordstown , Ohio, RAEN, Italy

☆ Andrew Bellucci, Pizza Visionary With a Troubled Past, Dies at 59
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Pete Wells | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

He collapsed from heart failure while working at his restaurant, Andrew Bellucci’s Pizzeria, in Astoria, said Matthew Katakis, his business partner. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Mr. Bellucci’s pizzas first won attention when he worked at Lombardi’s, a revival of a venerable coal-fired pizzeria on Spring Street in Little Italy. Nancy Silverton, Todd English and other chefs came to to taste his pizza, which was a far cry from the foldable, gold-and-orange and mostly interchangeable slices sold across the city. Ms. Silverton was especially impressed by a pie topped with fresh clams, garlic, oregano and olive oil.

Persons: Andrew Bellucci, Andrew Bellucci’s, Matthew Katakis, Nancy Silverton, Todd English, Silverton, Eric Asimov Organizations: New York Times Locations: New York City, Queens, Astoria, Lombardi’s, Little Italy

☆ ChatGPT Secret Training Data: the Top 50 Books AI Bots Are Reading
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

To figure out what GPT-4 has read, they quizzed it on its knowledge of various books, as if it were a high-school English student. One way to answer the question is to look for information that could have come from only one place. Genre — sci-fi, mystery, romance, horror — is, broadly speaking, more interesting, partially because these books have plots where things actually happen. Bamman's GPT-4 list is a Borgesian library of episodic connections, cliffhangers, third-act complications, and characters taking arms against seas of troubles (and whales). See what a bot makes of Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun," maybe, or Sheri Tepper's "Grass."

☆ Weed Wine Is an Underground Favorite. Can It Survive the Gummy Era?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The pale ruby wine emerged from the bottle with a tinge of orange. The aroma would have been right at home at rock concerts and college dorms of a certain era. The producer of this wine was pouring tastes to a few dozen colleagues and friends, along with a wine writer, in a cool, humid barrel room in a Santa Barbara winery. That experience, nearly 20 years ago, was my first encounter with weed wine. It hasn’t been common, but occasionally, when the spirit strikes, a winemaker will break out a bottle of homemade wine to pour for friends.

☆ 10 Boxed Wines That Are Really Good, Seriously
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Eric Asimov | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

For many reasons, boxed wines make an enormous amount of sense. The bag-in-box method is a great way to package easygoing wines that are not intended for aging. It’s sort of a chicken-and-the-egg situation: Consumers have equated boxes with bad wine because for so long, with scattered exceptions, only bad wine was sold in boxes in the United States. And producers wouldn’t put better wines in boxes because they are aware of the fierce stigma. Motivated by the ecological advantages of bag-in-box packaging, a growing number of producers and merchants are opting to box good wine intended for immediate consumption rather than use glass bottles.

☆ Failure of Silicon Valley Bank Mirrors the Myth of the Wild West
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

As Silicon Valley Bank went down the tubes, it wasn't surprising that the loudest mouths in Techworld started demanding that the federal government cover everyone's losses. They were pioneers on the frontier of tech and finance, and as such they acted the way pioneers always do. Myths of the frontiersIt's unfashionable for people in the tech industry to dispute the central role that government-funded infrastructure and academic projects have played in the development of Silicon Valley and the digital age. Shout down into Silicon Valley and you'll hear echoes of this same pioneer myth. They see themselves as heroes not of a Western frontier but of space — the Final one — as refracted by the legendary writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

☆ Baristas in San Francisco went on strike. Their robot co-workers went right on serving
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

For three days last month, 1,000 food-service workers at SFO went on strike over wages and working conditions. For decades, robots have been replacing, or at least nudging aside, human labor. But at SFO, robot baristas didn't simply replace humans — they crossed a picket line. Cafe X robot baristas stayed on the job when food-service workers went on strike at San Francisco International Airport last month. The short version is: Every new robot per thousand human workers reduces employment by 0.2 percentage points and decreases wages by 0.42%.

☆ 'If it blows up, it's cool': The far-out philosophy that explains why Elon Musk won't let a few baby sea turtles stop SpaceX's quest to get to Mars
▼ + stars: | 2022-04-05 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +25 min

In the case of Elon Musk v. Charismatic Megafauna, the agency intends to publish its final report in late April. Musk went on: "Either explicitly or implicitly some people seem to think that humans are a blight on the Earth's surface. Musk is talking about existential risk, the idea that something — an asteroid, a rogue artificial intelligence — might kill every human on Earth. And if you assume that future human minds will "mainly be implemented in computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware," as Bostrom does, you end up with a mind-boggling 1054 human lives. Musk has made the defense of "future life" his mission.

☆ Peter Thiel ran an SAT side hustle in high school and charged $500 to take the test for people, according to a former classmate
▼ + stars: | 2021-09-21 | by ( Dorothy Cucci | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Those who knew him in grade school say Thiel was a "joyless" childOne of Thiel's classmates told Chafkin, "I can't remember him laughing. In his senior year of high school, Thiel took the SAT for underclassmen for $500 each, according to a classmateThiel, whose own scores were near perfect, seemed bored and careless by the end of high school. Though he knew it could cost him his spot at Stanford, Chafkin says Thiel made an "unbelievably risky" move and started the lucrative side hustle. While at Stanford, Thiel argued that his peers' anti-apartheid positions were overblown and, according to Chafkin, Thiel told a Black student that apartheid "works." A man who used to play with him told Chafkin that Thiel "liked that quiet control" of determining the reality of the game.

The Lord of the RingsUnul din cele mai așteptate seriale ale anului. Acțiunea filmului e setată cu mult timp înainte de acțiunea din Hobbit sau Lord of the Rings (triologia). [1]Serialul a fost întâmpinat în mod pozitiv de critici, care au lăudat caracterizarea personajelor, a distribuției și a atmosferei care aduce omagiu filmelor științifico-fantastice din anii 1980. The Wheel of TimeThe Wheel of Time este plasat într-un univers extins, unde magia există, dar numai femeile o pot folosi. The Witcher (Season 2)Bazat pe best-sellerul fantasy cu același nume, The Witcher este o poveste despre destin și familie.

Persons: Margaret Atwood, Crăciun, Peaky, fictiv Hawkins, Hawkins, Wanda Vision, Loki, Dexter, Nicolas Cage, Shadow, . Wednesday, Isaac Asimov, Nicole Kidman, Kiano, Emilio Sakraya, Henriette, David Ali Rashed, Fogg, Jules Verne . Leonardo, Leonardo Da Vinci Organizations: Infinity War, SF, Monetăria Regală, Banca Națională a Locations: Noua Republică, URSS, SUA, Blinders, britanic, Birmingham, Anglia, fictiv, Indiana, Moiraine, Witcher, Rivia, Americii, Monetăria, Spaniei, Banca Națională a Spaniei

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