DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

She was arrested at the same place in Montgomery County that suspected gunman Francisco Oropesa was arrested Tuesday night, case records show. Law enforcement also tracked Oropesa’s wife to the home, which is associated with one of the suspect’s family members, a law enforcement source told CNN. Courtesy Eva GutierrezAuthorities now have 90 days to indict Oropesa, a law enforcement source involved said. Due to his status as a Mexican national, the Mexican consulate will be formally notified of his circumstances on Wednesday, the law enforcement source said. Officials’ efforts may have been stymied by a lack of trust in law enforcement.

☆ Tori Bowie, World Champion Sprinter, Is Dead at 32
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Daniel E. Slotnik | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Bowie’s world championship title came the next year in London in a dramatic 100-meter race. Ivory Coast’s Marie-Josée Ta Lou sprung into the lead and seemed well ahead of the rest of the pack. But near the end of the race, Bowie accelerated, caught up to Ta Lou and leaned through the finish line ahead of her, then tumbled to the ground. Bowie won another gold at that world championship, in the 4x100 relay. Bowie went to the University of Southern Mississippi, where she became the national champion in the long jump in 2011.

☆ The creator of a viral AI-generated Drake song says it's scary how easy it was to make the music sound real
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A student behind some popular AI-generated music says it was easy to make the songs sound real. A student behind some of the popular AI-generated music on TikTok discussed how easy it was to make the songs sound real. Chavez has been going viral on TikTok for his AI-generated music over the last few months. Chavez runs acapella versions of songs through AI models that are trained to sound like famous musicians, The Verge reported. Another viral AI-generated song, "Heart on My Sleeve," which mimicked Drake and The Weeknd, went viral last month.

Cleveland, Texas CNN —The man accused of fatally shooting five neighbors, including a mother and her 9-year-old son, in a Texas home has been taken into custody after a dayslong manhunt, two law enforcement sources told CNN. The arrest was made in the town of Cut and Shoot, Texas, according to a federal law enforcement source. “One of the people who died saw when my wife fell to the ground,” Garcia told CNN. Family Photograph“Two people who died were protecting my 2 1/2-year-old daughter and my 1-month-old son,” Garcia said, sobbing. Sonia Argentina Guzman and her son, Daniel Enrique Laso-Guzman, were shot and killed by a neighbor Friday in Cleveland, Texas, officials said.

☆ Keshub Mahindra, Billionaire Indian Industrialist, Dies at 99
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Daniel E. Slotnik | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Keshub Mahindra, an Indian industrialist who built a family steel and automotive business into a vast multinational conglomerate, but whose reputation was marred by his conviction for negligence in a poison gas leak that killed thousands of people in Bhopal in 1984, died on April 12. His company, Mahindra Group, confirmed his death in a statement but did not specify where he died. Under Mr. Mahindra’s leadership, the company expanded rapidly from its core businesses of steel trading and building Willys jeeps to become a conglomerate with businesses in more than 20 industries, including cloud and network technology, hospitality, renewable energy, logistics, financial services and real estate. He made international partnerships with companies like Peugeot, British Telecom and Mitsubishi, helping those companies build businesses in India while taking Mahindra global. He did not neglect Mahindra’s core business as he expanded, and in time the company became a leading automobile manufacturer in India, known for SUVs, and a global purveyor of tractors.

☆ Gov. Greg Abbott prompts swift rebukes after calling Texas mass shooting victims 'illegal immigrants' in a statement offering condolences to their loved ones
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Lloyd Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Greg Abbott announced a reward for information and offered condolences to the victims. But the governor is getting criticized for identifying the victims as "illegal immigrants." Greg Abbott is getting criticized for identifying the victims of a Friday mass shooting in Cleveland, Texas, as "illegal immigrants" in the same statement in which he offered condolences to their loved ones. The governor also offered condolences to the families, but not before the statement identified the victims as "illegal immigrants." "Five human beings lost their lives and Greg Abbott insists on labeling them 'illegal immigrants,'" Julián Castro, the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, said.

☆ Cleveland, Texas shooting: Suspect in massacre had been deported 4 times after entering US illegally, ICE source says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Ed Lavandera Holly Yan Elizabeth Wolfe Rosa Flores | Ed Lavandera | Holly Yan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

The suspect, identified as Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres by ICE, was first removed by an immigration judge in March 2009, the ICE source said. The suspect was convicted of driving while intoxicated in 2012 in Montgomery County, Texas, and was sentenced to jail time, the ICE official said. Family photo“One of the people who died saw when my wife fell to the ground,” Garcia told CNN. Go Nakamura/Getty ImagesThere had been 15 people in the house at the time of the shooting, Garcia told CNN. He was in my county,” Capers said.

May 1 (Reuters) - A Texas man accused of killing five neighbors after being asked to stop shooting his assault-style rifle because of the noise had been deported from the U.S. four times since 2009, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said on Monday. He was apprehended and deported again in September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016, ICE said. Oropesa was convicted of driving while intoxicated in January 2012 in Montgomery County, Texas, and sentenced to jail, ICE added. "We do not know where he is," FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge James Smith told reporters on Sunday. Capers said police have recovered the weapon used in the shooting, but the suspect might be armed with a pistol.

☆ Cleveland, Texas, shooting: Search continues for man suspected of killing his neighbors after being asked to stop firing his rifle outdoors
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Nouran Salahieh | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —The FBI is helping in the manhunt for a gunman accused of shooting and killing five people – including a child – at a Cleveland, Texas, home after neighbors asked him to stop firing his rifle outdoors, officials said. After declining their request, the suspect at some point was seen in footage from a doorbell camera approaching the neighbors’ front door with a rifle, according to Capers. Exterior of a crime scene where five people, including an 8-year-old child, were killed after a shooting inside a home on Friday in Cleveland, Texas. The suspect was known to shoot a .223 rifle, according to Capers. “The tracking dogs from Texas Department of Corrections picked up the scent, and then they lost that scent,” the sheriff said.

☆ Police still searching for Texas man accused of killing five neighbors
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

April 30 (Reuters) - Over 200 law enforcement officers in Texas searched on Sunday for a man accused of shooting to death five neighbors after being asked to stop firing a semiautomatic rifle in Cleveland, Texas. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said over 200 law enforcement personnel were going door-to-door looking for the suspect or any tips on how to find him. Oropesa's name had been spelled "Oropeza" in early communications from law enforcement but was changed "to better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems," the FBI said on Sunday. Oropesa "topped off his magazine and walked down his driveway" onto the street then "into the people's house and started shooting," Capers said. Police had been called to the suspect's house on a couple of previous occasions over complaints about noise from gunfire in his yard, Capers said.

☆ Charles Hull, Who Brought Theater to Young Audiences, Dies at 92
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Daniel E. Slotnik | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Charles Hull, who co-founded Theaterworks USA, a touring theater company that has brought professional performances to tens of millions of young people across the country, died on April 14 at his home in Manhattan. Hull, who had been an Off Broadway, summer stock and commercial actor, founded the company that became Theaterworks in 1961 with the director Jay Harnick. Hull was the company’s managing director and Mr. Harnick its artistic director. Hull and Mr. Harnick were staging as many as 20 made-to-move productions in nearly 500 cities a year without the fuss, or expense, of a Broadway effort. “The term we use is cafegymatorium,” Michael Harrington, Theaterworks’ current executive director, said in a phone interview.

☆ Microsoft made a big bet with ChatGPT. Months later, it’s already paying off.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Microsoft bet billions on OpenAI — its gamble is already paying off. Some analysts said Microsoft's successful integration of AI signals that it has already pulled ahead of Google. They even projected that Microsoft's cloud service Azure could be on track to surpass long-dominant Amazon Web Services. My teammate Paayal Zaveri highlights how Microsoft's AI wager has made it a surprising leader in tech's hottest field. He hit $2 million by the end of 2020, and in 2022 alone, he sold $4 million worth of products.

☆ April Stevens Dies at 93; Her ‘Deep Purple’ Became a Surprise Hit
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Daniel E. Slotnik | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

April Stevens, whose rushed recording of “Deep Purple” with her brother, Nino Tempo, became a chart-topping single in 1963 and won a Grammy Award, died on April 17 at her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 93. The Stevens-Tempo version of “Deep Purple” — a jazz standard that had been a hit for Bing Crosby — featured the siblings harmonizing over a mellow arrangement accented with a harmonica. In one section, Ms. Stevens recited the lyrics and Mr. Tempo sang them back in falsetto. Ms. Stevens then fed them to him during that session. A friend loved the effect, Mr. Tempo said in a phone interview, and “we knew we had backed into something magical.”

☆ The Pentagon treats top secret information 'like toilet paper,' says the Vietnam War whistleblower
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

There's no reason to think the Discord leak has damaged US national security, Daniel Ellsberg said. "Top secret is like toilet paper" at the Pentagon, said Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg told The Washington Post that the US government tends to keep a "mystique of secrecy." "At the Pentagon, top secret is like toilet paper, it's nothing," the former military analyst told the outlet. Like Teixeira, Ellsberg was charged by the US government in January 1973 for revealing classified information.

☆ Spotify's CEO says the music industry has 'legitimate concerns' about AI-generated songs
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said concerns from labels and music companies about AI are "legitimate." His comments come after AI-generated songs that sound like popular artists went viral this month. The music industry has "legitimate concerns" about songs generated by AI, the CEO of Spotify said. Daniel Ek addressed the industry's growing unease about AI music in Spotify's first quarter earnings call Tuesday and said it's working with partners to come up with solutions. Grimes, the former partner of Elon Musk and mother to two of his children, tweeted Monday that she'd share half the royalties from any AI-generated song using her voice.

☆ Spotify's monthly active users top 500 million, beat estimate
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Supantha Mukherjee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The number of monthly active users rose to 515 million in the first quarter, beating Spotify's guidance and analysts' forecast of 500 million, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Premium subscribers, who account for most of its revenue, rose 15% to 210 million, topping estimates of 206 million. The company forecast monthly active users of 530 million. Spotify last year laid out plans to get one billion users by 2030 and reach $100 billion in annual revenue. Spotify's current-quarter revenue forecast of 3.2 billion euros also missed expectations of 3.26 billion euros.

☆ Alcaraz beats Evans to set up Barcelona final with Tsitsipas
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BARCELONA, Spain, April 22 (Reuters) - World number two Carlos Alcaraz reached the final of the Barcelona Open after beating Briton Daniel Evans 6-2 6-2 on Saturday to set up a showdown with fellow top seed Stefanos Tsitsipas who defeated Italian Lorenzo Musetti 6-4 5-7 6-3. The 19-year-old Alcaraz broke early in the first set and closed it 6-2 in 38 minutes. He raced to 4-1 in the second and beat Evans in 80 minutes to reach the final in Barcelona for the second consecutive year. Tsitsipas will try to claim his first ever win against Alcaraz, who in December became the youngest year-end No. Alcaraz defeated Tsitsipas in the 2021 US Open and in last year's Miami Masters and Barcelona Open.

Kaari Pitkin , Stephanie Joyce and Isaac Jones , Sonia Herrero , Pat McCusker andDaniel Ellsberg fully expected to spend the rest of his life in prison after he leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1971. The documents revealed decades of government lies and mistakes in about the war in Vietnam, and eventually, they helped end it. The charges against Ellsberg were ultimately dismissed but, he had a secret: The Pentagon Papers were only supposed to be the beginning. Alongside the documents about Vietnam, he’d copied thousands of pages of other documents about America’s nuclear war planning that he believed would shock the public conscience. Now, after revealing a terminal cancer diagnosis in March, Ellsberg is reflecting on his life, the secrets he wasn’t able to reveal and threats to the world he’s leaving behind.

☆ How TikTok is trying to become the music industry's everything app, even if it risks 'pissing off' record labels
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Dan Whateley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Its music ambitions could ruffle feathers at record labels and publishers — unless it pays out. TikTok's app regularly sparks trends that help songs go viral, making it a favorite of marketers at major labels and independents. TikTok works closely with record labels and artists on promotional efforts like livestreamed concerts, in-person performances, and private listening parties with TikTok stars. Spotify has maintained a tenuous relationship with the labels over the years as it's sought to balance profit margins while splitting revenue with artists, labels, and publishers. Still, even as record labels and publishers push TikTok to pay more to music rights holders, they're investing more in the app.

German specialised property lenders such as Aareal Bank (ARLG.DE), Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (PBBG.DE) and Berlin Hyp, have a bigger concentration of real estate exposure, analysts added. Blackstone (BX.N) recently blocked withdrawals from its $70 billion real estate income trust after facing a flurry of redemption requests. Open-ended real estate funds in Britain have also battled to meet strong demand for redemptions. In Europe, CRE exposure for smaller banks, more at risk of deposit flight, is estimated at under 30% of all loans, Capital Economics said. "On the other, real estate owners themselves are going to face quite material increase in costs."

☆ Jack Teixeira's alleged Discord leaks show why the US should not give Top Secret clearances to 21-year-olds
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Nevertheless, that looks to be the US intelligence community's approach to handling classified information. The tangled views of Jack Teixeira, who was indicted Friday in connection with leaking hundreds of classified documents to a private Discord server, are still coming into focus. There are classified phone systems, email systems, fiber optic cables, and a Wikipedia clone. Aside from the question of how many people have access to secrets, it's also worth considering how many of those supposed secrets belong on classified systems at all. Who was tracking the whereabouts of the volume of secret files he appears to have sent to the printer?

☆ Northvolt, a $12 billion startup founded by an ex-Tesla VP, thinks crushing and shredding old batteries is the way to make electric vehicles truly sustainable
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

NorthvoltHow Northvolt's process worksNorthvolt's recycling process, which was dreamed up in 2018 and planned and tested in the following years, involves crushing, shredding, and filtering dismantled batteries. Northvolt is left with a black powder called black mass, which contains nickel, manganese, cobalt, and lithium. Once Northvolt's latest venture, Revolt Ett, is up and running at full capacity, it's expected to recycle 125,000 tons of battery materials each year. Cylindrical cells; shredded pieces of steel, copper, aluminium, plastic, and black mass from mechanical recycling; black mass; and a mix of nickel, manganese, and cobalt sulfates. The Hydrovolt pilot runs Northvolt's recycling process up to the black-mass stage.

☆ Daniel Ellsberg, the Man Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers, Is Scared - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Alex Kingsbury | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The media as a whole has never really investigated the secrecy system and what it’s for and what its effects are. Q. What’s it like to live surrounded by thoughts of nuclear war and unaccountable government? I think about nuclear war not because I find it fascinating but because I want to prevent it, to make it unthinkable, because I care about the world that it would destroy. Q. Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense during the Cuban missile crisis, once said, “The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.” Why haven’t we seen nuclear weapons used since 1945? We have seen nuclear weapons used many times.

Persons: John Podesta’s, Snowden, Steven Aftergood, Steve, ”, Robert McNamara, They’re Organizations: Federation of American Scientists, WikiLeaks, National Security, RAND Corporation, Cuban Locations: Russian, California, Berkeley, Ukraine

The draft needs to be thrashed out between EU countries and EU lawmakers, called a trilogue, before the rules can become law. This led to different AI tools being classified according to their perceived risk level: from minimal through to limited, high, and unacceptable. Almost all of the big tech players have stakes in the sector, including Microsoft (MSFT.O), Alphabet (GOOGL.O) and Meta (META.O). BIG TECH, BIG PROBLEMSThe EU discussions have raised concerns for companies -- from small startups to Big Tech -- on how regulations might affect their business and whether they would be at a competitive disadvantage against rivals from other continents. A recent survey by industry body appliedAI showed that 51% of the respondents expect a slowdown of AI development activities as a result of the AI Act.

☆ Ex-Amazon consumer chief Jeff Wilke backed a $4 million round in preventative healthcare startup AERA Health after seeing this 12-slide pitch deck
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A Swiss-German startup has raised $4.25 million for its preventative healthcare platform. AERA Health will offer consumers a mix of digital and in-person treatments and personalized health plans. A startup that aims to bring preventative and personalized healthcare plans to individuals has just secured $4.25 million in funding. Swiss-German startup AERA Health is tapping into the burgeoning field of preventative medicine and longevity — tailing Spotify founder Daniel Ek's recent foray into the sector. This holistic data gives the startup — and any clinicians working collaboratively with it — a starting point to guide their patients through their personalized health plans.

Search resuls for: "Daniel E"

25 mentions found