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☆ Don't worry pizza-heads, NYC is still safe for pizza
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( Danielle Wiener-Bronner | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

New York CNN —Lawmakers and prominent social media personalities have in recent days rallied against a proposed New York City rule that some say would crack down on the city’s beloved pizzerias. New York City is famously and deservedly known for its pizza. I hear New York City is trying to ban delicious pizza. New York City Mayor Eric Adams made a similar point during a press conference on Monday. So wait, did someone really throw a pizza at City Hall in protest of the proposed rule?

Persons: pizzerias, Sen, Marsha Blackburn, ” Dave Portnoy, Elon Musk, Michael Berman, Photodisc, “, Edward “ Ted ”, Michael Seilback, Pizza's, Artem Vorobiev, ”, Garima, Seilback, Eric Adams, wouldn’t, Adams Organizations: New, New York CNN — Lawmakers, Tennessee, Barstool Sports, Twitter, City Hall, City, city’s Department of Environmental, CNN, New York City Department of Environmental, Edward “ Ted ” Timbers, NYC Department of Environmental, American Lung Association, Getty, Columbia University, New York City Locations: New York, New York City, York City

☆ Uber and DoorDash warn of huge changes when New York City adopts its new $18 minimum wage for delivery workers
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Gloria Dawson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

New York City announced a new law making $18 the minimum wage for delivery workers. "New York City is setting the tone for across America," Adams said during a press conference announcing the new minimum wage. Currently, most apps pay delivery workers, who are contractors and not employees, per order. DoorDash's spokesperson said many of its delivery workers are casual users who are supplementing income at their full- or part-time jobs. Grubhub, for its part, said the pay structure had "good intentions" but would have "serious adverse consequences for delivery workers in New York City."

Persons: Uber, —, Eric Adams, Adams, Josh Gold, Gold, DoorDash's, Gloria Dawson Organizations: York City, Service, New York City Department of Consumer, New Locations: York, York City, America, New York City, New York

☆ There's a mysterious, abandoned island less than a mile from Manhattan and almost no one is allowed to visit — here's what it's like
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Dave Mosher | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

North Brother Island is a 22-acre piece of land in New York City that has been abandoned since 1963. Less than a mile from Manhattan — one of the priciest and most densely populated places in the world — sits North Brother Island, a mysterious island that people abandoned more than half a century ago. New York City owns the 22-acre plot, which pokes out of the East River between the South Bronx's industrial coast and a notorious prison: Rikers Island Correctional Center. It's illegal for the public to set foot on North Brother Island and its smaller companion, South Brother Island, without permission from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. In 2017, producers for the Science Channel obtained the city's permission to visit North Brother Island, and the crew invited Business Insider to tag along.

Organizations: Morning, New York City, Correctional, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Science Channel, North Locations: Brother, New York City, Manhattan, New, North Brother

☆ New York City teachers say students are increasingly coming to school high: report
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-28 | by ( John L. Dorman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

New York City teachers say children are increasingly coming to school high, per The New York Times. But the proliferation of unlicensed smoke shops has become a major issue among city officials. Gale Brewer, a New York City council member, pointed to the growing number of unregulated vape shops in the city — using her own Upper West Side district as a barometer. New York City Eric Adams has pledged to go after unlicensed smoke shops, but he has not yet taken broad steps do so, per The Times. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. has also taken a firm stance against unlicensed shops by floating evictions, but his office has not yet gone through with such actions.

☆ Fact Check-New York prison barge not being transported to Guam or ‘Gitmo’
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

A New York City prison barge is not being moved to Guam or the Guantanamo Bay detention center known as “Gitmo,” according to officials in the New York City Department of Corrections and the U.S. Southern Command. The base includes a military prison, known colloquially as Gitmo. A New York City Department of Corrections spokesperson also said in an email that the photograph shows the Vernon C. Bain Center located in the Bronx borough of New York City. The Vernon C. Bain Center is an 800-bed prison that houses inmates for the New York City Department of Corrections. The prison barge was set up in 1992, intended as a temporary facility to accommodate New York’s growing inmate population, the New York Times reported in 2019 (here).

☆ Google zeroed in on these 3 categories of climate companies to boost
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +12 min

This year, the 12 companies mostly fell into three broad categories: Artificial intelligence, electric vehicle infrastructure, and providing companies with better data to decarbonize their operations. When I read the headlines about the dangers of the climate crisis, I feel a personal obligation to be a part of supporting innovative climate solutions to scale," Ridenour told CNBC. Google has hosted three climate change startup accelerators for North American companies in the last three years, and all 33 of the participants are all still operating, a spokesperson for Google told CNBC. "Teams are leaning deeper into developing AI and ML models to address climate change," Ridenour told CNBC. Cleartrace is particularly focused on measurement techniques for Scope 3 emissions -- emissions associated with a company's entire supply chain or value chain, which can be fiendishly difficult to track.

☆ AI is going to offer every student a personalized tutor, founder of Khan Academy says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Will Gendron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, recently gave a TED Talk on AI's potential impact on education. The technology could offer personalized tutors to every student at a large scale, he said. Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, an educational nonprofit that aims to provide free learning resources, is not necessarily fearful of the technology. In a TED Talk that was released this week, Khan explained the potential benefits of AI across the field of education, likening the possibilities to a personalized tutor for every student. Khan said AI could also offer personalized assistance to teachers, by helping with pre-class work like lesson planning, filling out report cards, and general administrative tasks.

☆ Meet a teacher who quit her job to avoid returning in person — and found a position at a remote-only public school
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A New York City teacher quit her job in March after 12 years at the school. She teaches music and describes the shift to remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic as one that triggered a professional change, too. Parkis is one of many Americans who prefer remote working, even as companies have attempted to entice — and in some cases, strong-arm — employees back to the office. She was teaching full time at a Brooklyn, New York, middle school for 12 years and said her school ended remote learning last year. When she did, she quit right away and began her post at a fully online public school.

☆ Ex-Trump Organization CFO Weisselberg released from jail
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg was released from jail on Wednesday, according to New York City Department of Correction records. Weisselberg was sent to New York's Rikers Island jail on Jan. 10 for helping engineer a wide-ranging 15-year tax fraud scheme at former President Donald Trump's family business. Weisselberg, 75, pleaded guilty last year in connection with the long-running scheme. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to all 15 charges he faced, including grand larceny and falsifying business records, and paid some $2 million in taxes, penalties and interest. As a co-trustee of Trump's trust that owns Trump's businesses, Weisselberg co-signed a check to Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer.

☆ Why Paris is one of the few cities in the world banning rental e-scooters
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-09 | by ( Eliza Relman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Transportation experts say the Paris ban doesn't necessarily mean much for the growth of micromobility. The diverging approaches to rental e-scooters by major cities around the world reflects the technology's chaotic rollout over the last few years and an inability for cities to keep up with sufficient regulations, experts say. Either way, experts say the regulatory environment in Paris and many other places just hasn't been able to keep up. Transportation experts say Paris' ban isn't necessarily reflective of how the public in that city — or any — feels about e-scooters. Despite the setback in Paris, transportation experts say electric vehicles of all sorts, from e-scooters, to e-bikes, to electric buses, are the future of transport in cities around the world.

☆ Scared to Bike in the City? Here’s the Gear You Need to Stay Safe—Plus 10 Smart Tips from Skilled Cyclists
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-01 | by ( Daniel Varghese | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE with city cycling wasn’t promising. The suburban rides of my childhood hadn’t prepared me for crumbling concrete, hulking cargo trucks and hostile drivers. By the time I moved to New York City six years ago, biking seemed absurd. The New York City Department of Transportation reported it tracked 33% more bike trips year-over-year between May and December of 2020. Recently, I realized I was tired of being too scared to join the new wave of cyclists.

☆ Students can quote ChatGPT in essays as long as they do not pass the work off as their own, international qualification body says
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Students taking the International Baccalaureate will be allowed to use ChatGPT, per The Times. The students can quote from the chatbot as long as they don't pass the work off as their own. One writer who produces assignments for students previously told Insider: "I think ChatGPT has the potential to completely disrupt what I do," Austin said. The IB said it would work with schools to help students use AI ethically, per The Times. However, Glanville said trying to pass off AI-generated content as original work was an act of academic misconduct.

☆ Bill Gates and professors at top universities agree: The future belongs to those who master AI like ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Even though some school districts banned ChatGPT, educators encourage students to play with AI. But some in the education sector see the intrinsic value of ChatGPT, believing that a familiarity with AI will be an essential skill in the future. The students began to ask ChatGPT more complicated questions that showed they were using AI not to do the work for them, but rather to generate and explore different ideas. The potential for ChatGPT in education is thereNew York City and Los Angeles were two of the largest public school systems that banned ChatGPT. Ultimately, ChatGPT and AI will not go away, so you might as well learn how to use it to get a head start on others.

☆ A 4-foot-long alligator that was pulled from a lake in Brooklyn's Prospect Park may have been an unwanted pet, officials say
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

An alligator was spotted floating in Brooklyn's Prospect Park Lake in New York City on Sunday. The 4-foot-long alligator was pulled out by park officials and is being evaluated in the Bronx Zoo. It might have been an unwanted pet that was released into the lake, a park spokesperson said. The alligator was spotted floating in Brooklyn's Prospect Park Lake in New York City early on Sunday morning, Dan Kastanis, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation told Insider. Puelo said that when park officials arrived at the lake, the reptile "wasn't moving really at all."

☆ Generative AI is coming for the classroom, whether teachers like it or not. Here's why many in education think it should be embraced rather than shunned.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Fears of generative AI helping students cheat are rampant, and some school districts are banning it. Instead, educators should think about how generative AI can be used as a classroom learning tool. Insider spoke with multiple AI researchers and academics, startup founders, and education-nonprofit leaders to learn how they're approaching generative AI in the classroom. If used effectively, generative AI tools like ChatGPT can help students develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are crucial learning outcomes for most teachers. That way, students are actively engaged and wouldn't be able to use generative AI to complete a full assignment, he said.

☆ Here are the schools and colleges that have banned the use of ChatGPT over plagiarism and misinformation fears
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Education officials are trying to stop students from using OpenAI's ChatGPT. Seattle Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District put similar limits on the use of the bot in December. Seattle Public Schools also cited cheating concerns for the ban, per GeekWire. A spokesperson told the publication that "Seattle Public Schools does not allow cheating and requires original thought and work from students." In India, Bangalore's RV University banned students from using ChatGPT.

☆ A ChatGPT bot passed a Wharton business school exam, but a professor says he would've only graded the effort a B or B-minus
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch tested ChatGPT with questions from his final exam. Terwiesch found that ChatGPT could answer basic questions well but sometimes made "surprising mistakes" in simple calculations. Terwiesch concluded that ChatGPT might earn a B or B- on his final exam. Based on an analysis of similar retailers, the founders expect to turn their inventory 1.5 times per year. To achieve an annual revenue of $3,000,000, how much inventory expressed in $'s should the founders expect their operation to require?

☆ The Princeton student who built an app to detect ChatGPT plagiarism opposes banning the chatbot in schools
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The founder of an AI-plagiarism tool told NPR he opposes the ban of ChatGPT in schools. But that doesn't mean he supports banning ChatGPT in schools, he told NPR in an interview. The 22-year-old computer science and journalism student told NPR that it's impossible to prevent students from using ChatGPT. "It doesn't make sense that we go into that future blindly," Tian told NPR. "We're losing that individuality if we stop teaching writing at schools," Tian told NPR.

☆ CEO of ChatGPT maker responds to schools' plagiarism concerns: 'We adapted to calculators and changed what we tested in math class'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

CEO Sam Altman said in an interview that OpenAI will devise ways to identity chatGPT plagiarism. But creating tools that perfectly detect AI plagiarism is fundamentally impossible, he said. Altman warns schools and policy makers to avoid relying on plagiarism detection tools. "There may be ways we can help teachers be a little more likely to detect output of a GPT-like system. "We adapted to calculators and changed what we tested for in math class, I imagine.

☆ Trump's top money man, Allen Weisselberg, is braced to begin time at NYC's notorious Rikers jail on Tuesday
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Laura Italiano | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

A judge will likely order he immediately begin serving 5 months in NYC's notorious Rikers Island. Himself a veteran of Rikers, Rothfeld did say this — it won't be easy. A board containing confiscated shanks from Rikers Island is displayed during a press conference with Mayor Eric Adams on Rikers Island on June 22, 2022. The Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, with the Manhattan skyline in the background. The Trump Organization now faces up to $1.6 million in fines; Merchan is scheduled to set the amount at a January 13 sentencing.

☆ New York City schools ban use of ChatGPT — becoming first US district to block AI technology as concern over cheating and plagiarism mounts
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Bethany Biron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The NYC Department of Education is banning the use of ChatGPT on its networks and devices. Educators around the country have raised concern over the use of ChatGPT to cheat and plagiarize essays. The ban, in the nation's largest school district, could help set precedent around the US. Educators across the country have said the technology has the potential to "blow up" entire writing curriculums and lead to "the end of high school English." "Are high school teachers going to want students using ChatGPT to write their history essays?

New York City's Department of Education announced a ban on the wildly popular chatbot ChatGPT — which some have warned could inspire more student cheating — from its schools’ devices and networks. It was not immediately clear if the ban applied to the City University of New York system. In New York public schools, ChatGPT can still be made available upon request to classes studying artificial intelligence. In an email statement responding to the New York City public schools ban, a spokesperson for OpenAI said the company "doesn't want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else." We’ve always called for transparency around the use of AI-generated text," the spokesperson said.

☆ New York and L.A. meet CDC criteria for masking in public. How much will masks help this winter?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Aria-Bendix-Byline-Jm.Jpg | Aria Bendix | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

The Philadelphia school district announced Wednesday that students and staff will be required to wear masks indoors for two weeks in January in an effort to slow transmission after the holidays. The New York City Department of Education issued a letter this week strongly encouraging students and staff to wear a well-fitting mask indoors. After three years of Covid, however, experts recognized that few people are inclined to wear masks as often as they had previously while in public spaces. But Luby said he still wears a mask in public, even when others around him do not. “I find myself in that situation a lot — I’m the only person in the room wearing a mask," he said.

"And I feel like us being mostly Hispanic, mostly African American students, mostly Caribbean students, we don't get to learn a lot about our cultures and the ways that we were thriving. Shannah Henderson speaks to a student during Brooklyn Preparatory High School's AP African American studies course in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Wednesday. Henderson said Trevor Packer, the senior vice president and the head of the AP Program and the instruction division, responded. She said that because she doesn't have a degree in African American studies, she was also required to take online courses at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. AP African American Studies is multidisciplinary, drawing from literature, the arts and humanities, political science, geography and science.

CNN —Six people who tested positive for monkeypox – two in New York City, two in Chicago, one in Nevada and one in Maryland – have died, local health departments have confirmed. The two Chicagoans who died after testing positive for monkeypox had multiple other health conditions, including weakened immune systems, according to the Chicago Department of Health (CDPH). A person with monkeypox in Houston died in August, but officials have not determined whether the virus caused the death. In late September, Ohio reported its first death of a person with monkeypox but noted that “the individual also had other health conditions.”It can be difficult to determine if someone has died of monkeypox. There were 27,884 probable or confirmed monkeypox cases reported in the US as of Friday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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