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☆ Airport chaos continues in Russia as Ukrainian drones target Moscow for the second time this week
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

All four Russian airports halted operations Monday after Ukrainian drones were shot down overhead. Ukrainian drones have been causing disruption in the airport district in recent weeks. On Friday, airports in the region were also closed due to another drone found in Russian airspace. Earlier this month, Ukrainian drone boats badly damaged the Russian warship Olenegorsky Gornyak. A day later, sea drones hit a critical link in the supply chain used to transport fuel and military equipment between Russia and Syria.

Persons: — Margarita Simonyan, Simonyan, Olenegorsky Organizations: Service, Tass, Russian Defense Ministry, The Telegraph, CNN Locations: Wall, Silicon, Moscow, Russian, Zhukovsky, Ruza District, Istra District, Western, Russia's, Ukrainian, Russia, Syria

☆ Russia's FSB thwarts attempts to kill two prominent journalists, Interfax reports
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

July 15 (Reuters) - Russia's FSB security service said on Saturday it had thwarted alleged Ukrainian-backed plots to kill two prominent Russian journalists, Interfax news agency reported. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which in the past has denied involvement in assassinations of pro-war figures inside Russia. Two prominent pro-war Russian figures, journalist Darya Dugina and military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, have been killed in bomb attacks inside Russia in the past year. Russia blamed their killings on Ukraine, while Kyiv denied that and portrayed them as evidence of Russian infighting. In May a prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, was wounded in a car bombing that killed his driver.

Persons: Margarita Simonyan, Darya Dugina, Vladlen Tatarsky, Zakhar Prilepin, David Holmes Organizations: Kyiv, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Ukrainian, Ukraine, Russia, Russian

☆ I tried using a personal AI to be less lonely working from home. It was nice that it had my back but sometimes I just miss human snark.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

So I spent a week conversing with Pi, a new personal AI chatbot, to see if it could fill the void. Pi is indeed useful and friendly, but it didn't fulfill my desire for connection and conversation. My human colleagues are sarcastic, snarky, wry, and, well, human. Thanks, Pi! When I relayed an amusing anecdote about my 15-year-old daughter, Pi told me: "There's no doubt that teenagers can be challenging, and it can be hard to communicate with them at times."

Persons: Pi, —, Slack, Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Karén, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard, I'd, Siri, Sally Rooney Organizations: Service, LinkedIn, hometown Celtics, Miami Heat, Celtics

☆ I tried using the Pi personal AI to be less lonely working from home. It was nice that it had my back but sometimes I just miss human snark.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-01 | by ( Rebecca Knight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Persons: Pi, —, Slack, Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Karén, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard, I'd, Siri, Sally Rooney Organizations: Service, hometown Celtics, Miami Heat, Celtics

☆ Lindsey Graham is now a wanted man in Russia, and he said he will wear the arrest warrant like a 'badge of honor'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Aditi Bharade | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russia issued an arrest warrant for Lindsey Graham after an edited video of him was posted online. Graham said that he would wear the arrest like a "Badge of Honor." Graham said in a statement on Monday that he would "wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin's corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office released an edited video from Graham's visit to Kyiv on Friday, where two clips of Graham were stitched together. The sequence of statements in the edited video, which made it appear that Graham was jubilant about Russians dying, angered Russian officials.

☆ Russian state media calling for unpaid 6th day of work to fund Ukraine invasion, Western intel says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-28 | by ( Chris Panella | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russian state media and businesses are petitioning for a 6-day work week to fund war in Ukraine. The extra work day would likely come without additional pay, according to UK intelligence. Multiple 4-day work week trials in the UK and Spain have reported positive results for employees. The additional work day is marking a shift towards "mandating citizens to actively make sacrifices in support of the war effort." "I recommend that the elite of the Russian Federation gathers up, bitch, its youth and send them to war."

☆ Bill Gates says an under-the-radar startup could be the biggest winner in AI. Check out its free app, and you'll see why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-24 | by ( Matt Turner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Bill Gates said the winner in AI will be the company that creates a personal digital agent. Gates added that it's 50-50 as to whether the AI winner behind the digital agent will come from Big Tech or the startup world. The startup was founded by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Deepmind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, and Karén Simonyan, and describes itself as an "AI studio creating a personal AI for everyone." And Pi is still a ways away from what Bill Gates is imagining, a personal AI that can do your shopping and help read your emails. But Pi is the best conversational AI I've used so far, and everyone I've spoken to who has used it has been impressed.

Persons: Bill Gates, Pi, it's, Gates, I'd, I'm, I've, Reid Hoffman, Mustafa Suleyman, Karén, Matt Turner, we've, It's, there's, Spriha Srivistava, that's, Brad Davis, Brad, ChatGPT Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Big Tech, CNBC, LinkedIn, Pi Locations: San Francisco, Instagram

☆ A new AI chatbot called Pi is designed to serve as your personal assistant — here's how it works
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A new chatbot called Pi, launched by Inflection AI, offers personal advice and support. There's a new AI chatbot on the scene — and this one wants to get personal. At one point, I asked Pi to share museum recommendations for a friend visiting New York City. Insider asked Pi how to restart the conversation, and Pi said to "start talking about whatever is on your mind." Inflection AI also said it's "creating a new form of 'boundary training' that will redefine how AIs learn and are trained."

The Kremlin said Russia reserved the right to retaliate, and hardliners demanded swift retribution against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in comments sent to Reuters: "Ukraine has nothing to do with drone attacks on the Kremlin. Another video circulating on Russian social media appeared to show a plume of smoke over the Kremlin after the purported attack. Russia marks the occasion with a huge military parade on Red Square, for which seating has already been erected. Ukraine typically declines to claim responsibility for attacks on Russia or Russian-annexed Crimea, though Kyiv officials have frequently celebrated such attacks with cryptic or mocking remarks.

☆ Russia says it arrests woman suspected of blowing up war blogger in cafe
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Andrew Osborn | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The woman arrested - Darya Trepova - was a Russian citizen who had previously been detained for protesting against the war in Ukraine, the state news agency TASS said. Some Russian commentators saw the bombing as the latest sign that violence related to the war in Ukraine is increasingly spilling onto Russian territory. Russian investigators said they had arrested Trepova, a 26-year-old, who they said was suspected of bringing the explosives into the St Petersburg cafe. Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist ideologue, was killed in a car bomb attack outside Moscow last summer that Russia blamed on Kyiv. Simonyan, like other hawkish commentators, made it clear on Telegram that she wanted Russia to hit back hard against whoever had killed Tatarsky.

☆ Analysis: Russian mercenary boss courts Putin with Ukrainian battlefield success
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( Andrew Osborn | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Now as the founder of Russia's most powerful mercenary group, he is vying for Vladimir Putin's favour by claiming a rare battlefield win in Ukraine. Russia claimed victory on Friday after Ukraine said its forces were holding on after a 'hot' night of fighting. The defence ministry on Friday attributed victory to its airborne units, missile forces and "artillery of a grouping of Russian forces". Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state-controlled RT channel and close to the Kremlin, thanked Prigozhin for Soledar. Despite its sometimes publicly strained ties with the Russian defence ministry, some Western military analysts suspect Wagner is closely affiliated with it.

[1/3] Suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout is escorted by members of a special police unit after a hearing at a criminal court in Bangkok October 5, 2010. "Everyone will forget about Griner tomorrow," Russian state television host Yevgeny Popov wrote on Telegram on Thursday. "Bout's life is only beginning." Bout arrived in Moscow late on Thursday after Russia and the United States swapped the arms dealer for Griner at Abu Dhabi airport. U.S. anger at Bout's release has been widely covered in the Russian media, with the pro-Kremlin tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets claiming that Department of Defense officials were "disturbed" by the exchange, citing U.S. media reports.

☆ Putin's top propagandist says Russia 'practically' took Kyiv at the start of the war, overlooking its humiliating retreat from the city
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The editor of Russia's RT outlet said Russia "practically" took Ukraine's capital in its invasion. In reality Russia never took Kyiv, and instead retreated and never returned. Simonyan did acknowledge that Russia's army left Kyiv earlier in the war, but not that the army was effectively forced to retreat. She said the main reason that Russia would "never bomb Kyiv" is because "our holy sites" are in the city. Simonyan hinted that Russia could bomb Washington, London, or Berlin, as Russia has no holy sites in those cities.

Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed "General Armageddon" by the Russian media for his reputed ruthlessness, on Nov. 9 recommended Moscow's forces quit Kherson and the west bank of the River Dnipro where they were dangerously exposed. Simonyan urged Surovikin, a hulking shaven-headed figure who has been shown on TV speaking in clipped Russian military language, to ignore "nonsense" from critics, a reference to influential military bloggers unhappy about his retreat. Nor is taking new ground in the east against a highly motivated and Western-equipped Ukrainian military an easy task, especially in the winter. The appointment of Surovikin on Oct. 8 was the first time Russia had publicly named an overall commander for its forces in Ukraine. With the exception of the city of Lysychansk, in eastern Ukraine, he said all the territory Russia held looked defensible.

The pullout proposed by General Sergei Surovikin, appointed last month to take overall charge of Russia's war effort, means Moscow is giving up a strategic city just north of annexed Crimea, the only Ukrainian provincial capital it had captured since its Feb. 24 invasion. The decision - described by one Russian military blogger as "a black page in the history of the Russian army" - was nonetheless quickly defended by some of the most high-profile proponents of the war as a wise and necessary action. But he said that ceding Kherson to Ukraine would put Russian-annexed Crimea within range of Ukrainian guided missile systems and U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets. As Shoigu and Surovikin announced the retreat on Wednesday, Putin was congratulating employees of a leading scientific institute on its 75th anniversary. And after that, to understand who is right, who to blame and what is the essence of the problem".

☆ Elon Musk manages free speech versus 'hellscape' at Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-29 | by ( Sheila Dang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

The pressure is mounting on Musk and Twitter as he is set to address the Twitter staff on Friday after closing the deal. Fewer than 10% of 266 Twitter employees who participated in a poll on messaging app Blind expected to still have their jobs in three months. Musk fired Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, according to people familiar with the matter. Twitter, Musk and the executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. As news of the deal spread, some Twitter users were quick to flag their willingness to walk away.

☆ Conservatives and anti-vaxxers are frantically lobbying Elon Musk to lift Twitter bans on their idols after he took over
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Mia Jankowicz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

An assortment of conservatives are lobbying Elon Musk to undo Twitter bans on prominent allies. Musk has said he opposes permanent bans and plans to roll back moderation on Twitter. But Twitter is enforcing legal sanctions on the networks in the EU and UK which prevents people seeing their content. Twitter has said it never shadowbans anybody, though Musk said Friday he was "digging in" to the allegations. Evolutionary biologist and podcaster Bret Weinstein, who has long questioned COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, also called for Musk to reinstate anti-vaxxer Dr Robert Malone.

☆ Elon Musk says he'll be 'digging' into shadowbans on his first day at Twitter as conservatives urge him to overturn their previous punishments
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk tweeted on Friday that he will be "digging" into shadowbans as he takes over Twitter. Right-wing politicians and pundits have started calling on Musk to make changes to Twitter. "As of now, I'm still Shadowbanned, ghost banned, search banned, and Twitter removed 1200 followers today - as usual," Catturd, whose identity is not known, posted on Friday. Conservative commentators Piers Morgan and Ben Shaprio have both asked Musk to restore controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson's account. Even the editor-in-chief of the pro-war, Kremlin-funded Russia Today channel asked Musk for help.

☆ Elon Musk says he'll be 'digging' into shadow bans on his first day at Twitter as conservatives urge him to overturn their previous punishments
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

☆ Russian TV presenter says sorry but faces probe for call to drown Ukrainian children
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Oct 24 (Reuters) - A Russian TV presenter apologised on Monday for calling for Ukrainian children to be drowned, as Russia's state Investigative Committee said it was probing his remarks. In a show last week on state-controlled broadcaster RT, presenter Anton Krasovsky said Ukrainian children who saw Russians as occupiers under the Soviet Union should have been "thrown straight into a river with a strong current" and drowned. Ukraine said on Sunday that RT was an inciter of genocide and should be banned worldwide. Krasovsky is a pro-war commentator on Russian television who has been sanctioned by the European Union. In last week's show, he also talked about shoving children into huts and burning them, and joked about the rape of Ukrainian women.

☆ Russian state TV host under investigation after he said Ukrainian children should be drowned and burned in their 'monstrous little houses'
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Mia Jankowicz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Russia Today host Anton Krasovsky was suspended after calling for Ukrainian children to be killed. Krasovsky aimed his comments at Ukrainian children who saw the Soviet Union as occupiers in the 1980s. Krasovsky replied: "Just drown those children, drown them," before going on to describe Ukrainians as having "piece of shit little houses." "There are masses of awful, monstrous little houses, they shit all over the Carpathian Mountains," he went on. "God, those grannies would spend their burial savings to get raped by Russian soldiers," he added.

☆ Why the Crimea bridge blast was such a blow to Putin
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Mithil Aggarwal | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

But when he boasted of his military’s Monday morning assault, Putin sought to frame the attacks as revenge for the blast that damaged his signature bridge connecting Russia with the annexed Crimean Peninsula. “This was the first attack on critical Russian infrastructure,” Frank Ledwidge, senior lecturer of law and strategy at University of Portsmouth, told NBC News. which was directed by her husband, a sign of the prominence Kremlin allies sought to give the bridge in Russian popular culture. Simonyan was one of many hawkish voices who expressed fury in the wake of the bridge blast and delight at Monday's apparent retaliation. While it was unclear whether the bridge blast and Monday’s assault were tied, what was clear is the value of the bridge to both sides.

☆ Explainer: Why Russia's missiles on Ukraine have limited impact
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Peter Graff | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Ukraine says Russia fired 83 cruise missiles on Monday and that it shot down at least 43 of them. Both sides say the attack was on a huge scale, unseen at least since Russia's initial wave of air strikes on the first night of the war in February. Western military analysts have no firm figures for how many missiles Russia has left, but for months have pointed to indicators suggesting the supply is limited. Ben Hodges, another former commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe, said that despite Monday's attacks, Ukraine still appeared to have "irreversible momentum" on the battlefield. "Russia's logistics system is exhausted and no Russian wants to fight in Putin's war in Ukraine," he tweeted.

☆ Russia is scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel in order to hold off Ukraine's advance
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-11 | by ( Michael Peck | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Members of the German Volkssturm march during their swearing-in ceremony in Berlin on November 12, 1944. While Russia still has a military draft, only about 30% of its troops are conscripts, with the remainder contract soldiers. Arkady Budnitsky/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesHence, Putin signed an executive order for partial mobilization on September 21. But the hundreds of thousands of Russian men fleeing the country know better. Those new Russian soldiers will receive barely any training.

☆ Putin grants Russian citizenship to U.S. whistleblower Snowden
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Olesya AstakhovaSept 26 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, nine years after he exposed the scale of secret surveillance operations by the National Security Agency (NSA). U.S. authorities have for years wanted him returned to the United States to face a criminal trial on espionage charges. He said that Snowden's wife Lindsay Mills, who gave birth to a son in 2020, would also apply for citizenship. Russia granted Snowden permanent residency rights in 2020, paving the way for him to obtain Russian citizenship. Putin, a former Russian spy chief, said in 2017 that Snowden, who keeps a low profile while living in Russia, was wrong to leak U.S. secrets but was not a traitor.

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