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☆ Ball Doctoring: A History of Excuses, Denials and Knowing Winks
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Benjamin Hoffman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For nearly as long as baseball has existed, pitchers have been using various methods, legal and otherwise, to doctor the ball. Some want the ball to spin more, some want it to spin less. Some are looking for more movement, and others are looking for more control. In this case, Scherzer, who was ejected from Wednesday’s win over the Los Angeles Dodgers, insists he was using rosin — which is legal — and nothing more. Scherzer made little in the way of excuses or denials about the stickiness of his hands when asked about his decision to drop his appeal and serve a 10-game suspension.

☆ Twitter users including Justin Bieber, Bill Gates, and Kim Kardashian are seeing their blue checkmarks disappear as Elon Musk charges $8 a month for verified accounts
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Kate Duffy | Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Twitter appeared to start removing legacy blue checkmarks from many accounts on Thursday. Some Twitter users are watching their legacy blue checkmarks disappear from their accounts as Elon Musk implements an $8 monthly subscription program. Notable business figures including Bill Gates, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and "Shark Tank" star Barbara Corcoran no longer showed blue checkmarks on their Twitter accounts Thursday afternoon. The only way users can keep their blue checkmarks is to sign up to Twitter Blue, a subscription program that costs $8 a month. Twitter Blue has sparked controversy since it was rolled out.

☆ The Fight Over a Drug That Is Great for Horses but Horrific for Humans
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Jan Hoffman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, where the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington is ground zero for tranq dope, announced that his administration was doing so. Since then, it has been used for procedures on sheep, deer, elk and even cats and dogs, as well as on horses and cattle. Earlier trials in humans had been shut down because the drug led to respiratory depression, so manufacturers never sought approval for human use. And unlike the protocols for opioids, those for reversing tranq dope withdrawal or managing rehabilitation have not been standardized. Schedule III includes buprenorphine and the anticonvulsant drug gabapentin.

☆ Oakland Athletics Say They Will Move to Las Vegas by 2027
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Benjamin Hoffman | Andrew Das | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Oakland Athletics have reached an agreement to acquire land near the Las Vegas Strip and said Wednesday that they hoped to be playing games in a new, billion-dollar retractable roof stadium on the site by 2027. The agreement on the 49-acre site in Nevada, which the team’s president, Dave Kaval, confirmed to The Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday night, will seemingly end years of tense negotiations for a new stadium in the Bay Area, an investment the team said it needed to remain financially viable and competitive with its peers in Major League Baseball. “It’s obviously a very big milestone for us,” Kaval said of the potential move to Las Vegas, which would be the first relocation of a major league franchise in two decades. “We spent almost two years working in Las Vegas to try to determine a location that works for a long-term home. To identify a site and have a purchase agreement is a big step.”

CompaniesCompanies Law Firms Grail Inc FollowIllumina Inc Follow(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday said it will accelerate reviewing Illumina Inc's challenge to a federal agency order requiring the biotechnology company to divest cancer diagnostic test maker Grail LLC. The agency said Illumina had not shown why the appeals court needed to speed up its consideration of the antitrust dispute. San Diego-based Illumina, which specializes in gene sequencing, is appealing an April 3 FTC order that said the company's $7.1 billion acquisition of Grail will curb competition in the cancer-testing market. The FTC in 2021 sued Illumina over its bid for Grail, a former subsidiary of the company. The case is Illumina Inc and Grail Inc v. Federal Trade Commission, 5th U.S.

☆ A judge blamed Trump for the 'media frenzy' he used as an excuse to try to delay his rape trial
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Ashley Collman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A judge denied Donald Trump's bid to delay E. Jean Carroll's rape trial because of his indictment. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan expressed concern the request was "another delay tactic" by the former president. US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said some of the so-called media frenzy had been caused by Trump himself. The judge allowed a brief reopening of discovery but denied Trump's request to delay the trial. Carroll "is now over 79 years of age and is entitled to her day in court just as both parties are entitled to a fair trial," Kaplan wrote.

As a result, farmers in Poland, Hungary and other nations have seen their incomes plummet. measures,” his country would follow Poland in restricting Ukrainian grain imports until the end of June, according to Hungarian news reports. The announcement came after Warsaw reached a deal with Kyiv on Friday to strictly limit and, for a time, halt Ukrainian grain deliveries to Poland. Image Ukrainian grain being loaded onto a cargo ship near Odesa, Ukraine, in August. Image A Ukrainian soldier loading shells inside an American-made M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer to be fired toward Russian positions in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Friday.

☆ I've been building popular tech products like Tome since I became my family's breadwinner at 15 years old. I've learned you never know how people are going to use your creation.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Keith Peiris is the co-founder of Tome, a storytelling tool that uses generative AI models like GPT-4 and Dall-E-2. At the same time, I also learned that no one uses your tools the way you envisioned. The truth is that everyone uses tools differently, so you need to build them in a permissive way. When we started building Tome in the early days of the pandemic, my cofounder, Henri Liriani, and I thought we were building for someone we knew. Now, they're using Tome, which is a use case I had never even thought about.

They said the involvement of Hoffman, a prominent Democratic donor, raised the question of whether Carroll sued Trump, a Republican, to advance a political agenda. They had called Trump's request irrelevant to the defamation claim, and said Trump waived the argument by earlier raising and then dropping a similar request. She also has a still-pending defamation lawsuit filed in November 2019 against Trump over his denial five months earlier that the rape took place. The case is Carroll v Trump, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York Editing by Chris ReeseOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: Letter from Elon Musk, others calling for AI development pause 'lacked technical nuance'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Aaron Mcdade | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the open letter calling for a pause on AI for one of the first times Thursday. Speaking at MIT, Altman said safety is important to OpenAI, and the letter "lacked technical nuance." The letter called for a six-month pause on AI development, and was signed by tech leaders like Elon Musk. In one of his only public responses to the open letter signed by Elon Musk and hundreds of others in the tech industry about concerns over AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it "lacked technical nuance about where we need the pause." The OpenAI CEO also said his company will continue to be as honest as possible about its developments with AI.

[1/3] Former U.S. President Donald Trump departs from Trump Tower to give a deposition to New York Attorney General Letitia James who sued Trump and his Trump Organization, in New York City, U.S., April 13, 2023. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which had last September asked the Washington court for guidance on local law. Alina Habba, a lawyer for Trump, said in an email: "We are confident that the Second Circuit will rule in President Trump's favor and dismiss Ms. Carroll's case." Carroll, 79, has long accused Trump of stalling to keep jurors from ever hearing her case. The case is Trump et al v. Carroll, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, No.

☆ Some new offices are mini towns with their own restaurants, doctor offices, and hotels. Workers actually want to go.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The idea is getting replicated from the Bell Labs location, or Bell Works New Jersey, Keating said. The spaces run by Bell Works' own coworking brand, CoLab, are nearly 100% occupied. At Bell Works New Jersey, Zucker partnered with Toll Brothers to build a 185-home 55-and-over community. At BRIC, tenants can take advantage of a dozen art galleries, some of which show the work of building tenants. A lobby area near offices at Bell Works Chicagoland.

☆ Trump lawyers say accuser in E. Jean Carroll rape-defamation case got funding from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Kevin Breuninger | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Attorneys for Donald Trump on Thursday accused writer E. Jean Carroll's lawyers of deliberately failing for months to disclose that LinkedIn co-founder and major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman helped fund her rape-defamation case against the former president. Trump's lawyers said that on Wednesday, Carroll's attorneys disclosed that Hoffman was the "primary backer" of that nonprofit group, American Future Republic. In her deposition, Carroll noted that her suit was a contingency case, meaning her attorneys only get paid if she wins the case. That funding came in September 2020, nearly a year after Carroll filed a complaint against Trump in state court, her lawyer noted. Carroll's team also challenged Trump's lawyers' requests for last-minute changes to the trial schedule.

☆ Trump again asks to delay the E. Jean Carroll rape case — this time to probe billionaire Reid Hoffman's support for the litigation
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Ashley Collman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Trump's lawyers asked to delay the E. Jean Carroll battery and defamation trial a month on Thursday. It is unclear how much of Reid's money granted through his nonprofit was used by Kaplan Hecker & Fink for the Carroll case. Seth Wenig/APOn Tuesday, Trump's lawyers asked the judge for a one-month delay to allow the "media frenzy" around his arrest to die down. Judge Kaplan has also complained about numerous attempts to delay the case in the past. But that litigation has been in limbo while appeals courts weigh in on whether Trump can even be sued in that case.

☆ Elon Musk says he gets 'swarmed' at parties by people wanting to discuss work, and struggles to trust people, reporter who secured rare interview says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk gave an unexpected interview to the BBC late Tuesday. According to James Clayton, the reporter who spoke to Musk, the billionaire opened up about his personal life. Musk said he's often "swarmed" by people at parties wanting to discuss work, Clayton wrote. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops — delivered daily to your inbox. Musk spoke with BBC correspondent James Clayton about his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in October and the six months that have followed including the layoffs.

☆ LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Helped Fund the Suit Accusing Trump of Rape
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Benjamin Weiser | Charlie Savage | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a harsh critic of former President Donald J. Trump, has helped pay for a lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll, the New York magazine writer who sued Mr. Trump for rape and defamation, according to newly filed court papers in the case. Mr. Hoffman’s support for Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit, which was first disclosed in a letter to a judge on Thursday by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, has sparked a sharp dispute in the case, which is scheduled for trial in federal court in Manhattan on April 25. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, writing to the judge, accused Ms. Carroll of concealing Mr. Hoffman’s role, which they said they only learned of this week from her lawyers. They said the disclosure raised “significant questions” about Ms. Carroll’s credibility and whether her allegations against Mr. Trump were, as he has claimed, a “hoax” brought “to advance a political agenda.”They asked for a one-month postponement so they could investigate the funding issue. The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, on Thursday evening said he would allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers the opportunity to conduct a narrow inquiry into the funding issue, but he declined to delay the case.

Reuters has reviewed more than 50 of the documents, labeled "Secret" and "Top Secret" but has not independently verified their authenticity. This could help investigators focus their effort, though many people could have had access to these documents. Some images also depict printouts of documents with time stamps at the top right corners showing when they were printed. One of the leaked documents rests on a table and in the right corner of the picture is what appears to be a bottle of Gorilla super glue. U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday that they have not ruled out the possibility that the documents may have been doctored.

☆ Elon Musk's AI ambitions for Twitter show that some of the people calling for the tech to 'pause' seem to be acting out of their own self-interest
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk-owned Twitter purchased 10,000 GPUs, apparently to get into the generative AI boom. This move goes against Musk's open-letter plea for companies to slow down AI development. It also backs up Reid Hoffman's claim that some like Musk wanted the pause so they could catch up. In December, a few months after taking full ownership of Twitter, Musk went so far as to tweet about how he cut OpenAI's access to Twitter, which was used to train OpenAI's language models. For someone who says he wants to pause AI development, Musk seems to be doing the very opposite of that.

☆ Flight to 'what are perceived to be safer assets' could cost in the long term, Citi says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailFlight to 'what are perceived to be safer assets' could cost in the long term, Citi saysRobert Hoffman of Citi Private Bank says what might be a short-term haven for people, such as short-term Treasurys and high-grade investment bonds of short duration, is "likely going to cost you quite a bit in long-term return and long-term performance."

U.S. officials have said some giving battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine appeared to have been altered to understate Russian losses. Ukraine said its president and top security officials met on Friday to discuss ways to prevent leaks. The Pentagon said that over the weekend, U.S. officials spoke with allies and had notified the relevant congressional committee about the leak. Some of the most sensitive information is purportedly related to Ukraine's military capabilities and shortcomings. Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, played down the lasting impact of the leak.

☆ Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025. The company is considering increasing the cash portion of compensation to help cushion employees against its stock price going down in the future. In other news:The late Cash App founder Bob Lee. Cash App creator Bob Lee died after a reported stabbing in San Francisco Tuesday. Silicon Valley is grieving the loss of the founder of Cash App and the former chief technology officer at Square.

☆ Gary Vaynerchuk to managers: Forget a 4-day workweek. If you want to make your people happy, fire the jerks.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Gary Vaynerchuk said companies should fire the "assholes" creating "toxic" work environments. He has also said recently that companies need to appeal to Gen Z better, given their many work options. In TikToks posted this week, Vaynerchuk railed against "toxic work environments," slamming companies for retaining employees and management that compromise the "joy" of their staff members. "Joy doesn't come from four-hour workweeks," Vaynerchuk said in one video, seeming to reference the current movement for a four-day workweek. And Vaynerchuk is betting that people also want to be treated right while on the clock.

☆ LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman credits Buddha as his biggest influence
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

In an interview with The Generalist, Hoffman said he's been most influenced by Buddha. Hoffman also said in the interview that Aristotle initially inspired him to study philosophy. Hoffman, who cofounded LinkedIn, announced he was stepping down from the board of OpenAI last month. Hoffman holds a master's in philosophy from Oxford and even planned to go into academia at one point. Hoffman, who calls himself an "accidental technologist," credits his philosophical instincts as the reason he is in the industry.

☆ Slowing down A.I. advances looks like 'mistaken effort,' says LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailSlowing down A.I. advances looks like 'mistaken effort,' says LinkedIn co-founder Reid HoffmanReid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the calls for a pause in the development of artificial intelligence, the rift between Elon Musk and Sam Altman and more.

☆ LinkedIn cofounder says Elon Musk has an 'it's only great if I do it' mentality when it comes to ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman told CNBC the call for an AI slow down is a "mistaken effort." He said Elon Musk has an "it's only great if I do it" mentality when it comes to ChatGPT. Both Musk and Hoffman helped found OpenAI in 2015, but Musk left the company's board of directors in 2018 and has been critical of the company ever since. Despite his longtime friendship with Musk, Hoffman said he's "much more on the path that OpenAI has gone" when it comes to developing the technology. Spokespeople for Musk, Hoffman, and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.

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