Globe: B.C.’s Site C dam comes on stream as new cabinet looks to secure power for AI, critical minerals
He will be the first cabinet minister to visit the massive construction site in the province’s Peace River region in almost three years. The NDP government approved the project only because it was already partly constructed when it first formed government in 2017, and even today, the government’s website on the project references that the New Democrats believed the project should never have been built.
The completion of the province’s first major dam in 40 years, however, is timely. The NDP government was reluctant to build Site C seven years ago, but the first of six generating units in the $16-billion project is coming on stream just as the province has set its sights on the economic opportunities in critical minerals and the artificial intelligence sector. Both are energy-intensive enterprises that would create significant new demands on the province’s electricity grid and Mr. Dix has a mandate to deliver that power.
Slashdot: Thomas E. Kurtz, Co-Inventor of BASIC, Dies At 96
Slashdot readers damn_registrars and GFS666 share the news of the passing of Thomas E. Kurtz, co-inventor of the BASIC programming language back in the 1960s. He was 96.
CBC: Rogers Sports & Media lays off dozens of workers in audio business
Rogers Sports & Media says it has laid off a few dozen employees in its audio business, citing uncertainty in the advertising market.
“With the radio industry continuing to feel the pressure of an uncertain advertising market, we made some difficult but necessary changes in our audio business impacting roles in several markets,” a spokesperson for Rogers Sports & Media said in an email on Tuesday.
There will be no station closures and the company has no plans to curtail programming or podcasts, which will continue to serve their audiences, the spokesperson said.
MacRumors: Apple Announces Shazam Has Identified More Than 100 Billion Songs
Apple today announced that music recognition tool Shazam has identified more than 100 billion songs since it launched. Shazam started as an SMS service in the U.K. in 2002, and it became one of the first iPhone apps available on the App Store in 2008.
⋮
Apple acquired Shazam in 2018, and it now powers the Music Recognition feature built into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. Shazam is deeply integrated across Apple’s software platforms, including in Control Center, Siri, as an Action button option on iPhone 15 Pro models and all iPhone 16 models, as a Smart Stack widget on the Apple Watch, and more.
SMH: US to provide anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine as it battles Russia
US President Joe Biden approves supply of landmines to Ukraine in bid to halt Russian gains.
iOS 18.2 Introduces ‘All Rings Closed’ Activity Awards for Apple Watch
Apple Watch users can earn these awards for closing all three Move, Exercise, and Stand/Roll rings for 100 days, 365 days, 500 days, and 1,000 days, and at every 250-day interval above 1,000 days. One person showed off an impressive 3,250-day award, and tomorrow will be the 3,500-day mark since the Apple Watch launched in 2015, so anyone with a perfect track record of closing their rings should unlock that one very shortly.
The awards are applied retroactively as necessary, with past dates of completion shown in the Awards section of the Fitness app on the iPhone.
PBS: Australia’s plan to ban children from social media popular but problematic
But a vocal assortment of experts in the fields of technology and child welfare have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”
Details of what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scant. More will be known when legislation is introduced into the Parliament next week.
Electrek: Nuro expands L4 autonomous vehicle operations in three cities
Autonomous vehicle developer Nuro has announced it is significantly expanding the capabilities of its zero-occupant vehicles. Powered by the company’s AI-enabled Nuro Driver system, these Level 4 autonomous vehicles are now operational in two states, expanding in both deployment and capabilities on the road.
Nuro is a robotics company founded by two engineers who were former employees of Google’s Waymo project. Since 2016, Nuro has developed and publicly tested its three generations of autonomous last-mile delivery vehicles, the most recent of which debuted in January 2022.
With autonomous operations in Palo Alto, Nuro has expanded its business model, signing long-term partnerships with companies like Uber Eats to deliver autonomous food orders.
The Hill: Musk, Ramaswamy lay out plans for ‘mass’ federal layoffs, rule rollbacks under Trump
Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said Wednesday that their brand-new government efficiency panel will identify “thousands” of regulations for President-elect Trump to eliminate, which they argue will justify “mass head-count reductions” across government.
The pair, who were named co-chairs of the panel last week, laid out their plans for the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings,” they wrote. “We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.”
WashPo: Mandate? Fuller election results increasingly show GOP gains were small.
And a more holistic look — at races not just for president and the Senate but also for the House and state legislatures — reinforces the reality that voters actually didn’t shift toward Republicans that much.
We learned a while back that Republicans lost most of the swing-state Senate races – four of five. They flipped the chamber because they won in three red states that Trump carried by double digits.
Then we learned that Trump didn’t even win a majority of the popular vote, and his popular-vote margin over Vice President Kamala Harris(currently at 1.7 points and falling) ranks on the low side for recent history. He still won — and swept the swing states in a surprisingly decisive electoral-college result — but a majority of voters didn’t support him.
And now it’s increasingly evident that Republicans could actually lose ground in the House. Democrats' gains in California’s razor-thin 13th District race suggest they could flip that seat and actually wind up with a net gain of one seat. If they did, the likely result (a 220-215 GOP majority) would be the second-smallest House majority in history — not exactly the stuff of overwhelming mandates.
Last Updated: 20.Nov.2024 23:58 EST
