1619: Flash to Bang

Hi Adam,

I thought I’d send you this brief video I took of one of the Chicago Migrant camps in Humboldt Park. I was VanLifing in Chicago this year July-November, and I stealth camped in Humboldt Park fairly frequently. Last week I had to zip back up to Chicago from East Tennessee to tie up some loose ends, so I thought I’d check in on the Humboldt Camp.

Two things I noticed: first, the camps look pretty much the same as they did in July, aside from the addition of tarps draped over the tent roofs. It’s unlikely these tarps are for water- or snow-proofing, as they’re in constant contact with the tent roof and so would have no effect on condensation and very little on permeability. I think the tarps are a dead giveaway that these are not four season tents, or are very shitty four season tents, and require an additional convection layer to keep heat from escaping.

Second, I’m pretty well-versed in tents, and these are some odd tents indeed. They seem to be based on the Bereg Cuboid Pentagon design, which is a four season tent retailing at around $2k, a price point at which one assumes a tarp draped over the top should not be necessary for survival. I’ve only been able to find these tents being manufactured and sold by a Russian company; I’m very curious where these knockoff cuboid tents are coming from.

I’ve accidentally done a shoulder season blizzard in the North Cascades camping in an open air A-frame tarp, but looking at those tents makes me shiver. And these are the most impressive tents in camp; the rest look like dinky coleman three season backpacker tents.

The morning of the first snow, I woke up cold as hell with a dusting of snowflakes on the driver seat of my little van and thought I’d had a rough night. I looked out the window at the tents and decided I was doing just fine. Later that day I drove by one of the camps in front of a local precinct, probably thirty smaller tents, and saw that most of the tents had been wrapped in pallet plastic, which is typically used in warehouses to prep loose boxes on a pallet for loading on the truck. I hope they left a hole in the plastic somewhere.

Humboldt Park remains one of my favorite spots in the city, but god it must be an increasingly brutal campsite, even without mentioning the squirrel-sized rats and the screaming matches at 1 am. Though at least the cold should take a bite out of those particular challenges.

Merry Christmas, etc.!

Tim, currently in Knoxville, generally on the road

Meet the UP Phone

In their discussion, Erik said it is not made in China (although he didn’t say where it was made) it’s Android, and the software was designed by the man that created Pegasus (can’t remember his name). It has its own firewall, a VPN that will work anywhere in the world, an off switch that physically disconnects the battery and the camera can be turned off.

OpenAI has also held discussions to raise funding for a new chip venture with Abu Dhabi-based G42, according to the report.

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Makes sense. They've been asking for my # for a couple years.

That's a bummer about Williams. I bet he hasn't been to the dentist in a long time. Some people don't realize that a tooth infection can kill you. In residency, I'd see many people hospitalized due to a tooth

abscess, sometimes with swelling in the lower jaw that closed off the airway.

I had a patient in Kerrville whose knee replacement surgery failed due to bacteria from a tooth abscess. I pulled the tooth, cleaned him up, and they redid the knee.

The mouth is the dirtiest place in the body and is the gateway for all kinds of bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc.

The UK is LOST!

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 18:14

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 18:14

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) '-- Former NFL player Mike Williams died from a rare form of sepsis related to dental health problems, according to a medical examiner's report released Friday.

Williams, 36, died Sept. 12 after being hospitalized following a construction accident while working as an electrician.

The wide receiver played four seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after he was drafted out of Syracuse in 2010. His best season was as a rookie when he led the team with 11 touchdowns and had 964 receiving yards. He also played for the Buffalo Bills and was on the Kansas City Chiefs' roster before leaving the NFL in 2016.

The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's report says the cause of Williams' death was bacterial sepsis traced to a dental infection and ''retained tooth roots.'' The report is preliminary. A full autopsy will be released later and include toxicology and other information, officials said Friday.

The initial report also cites cardiovascular disease as a contributing factor in his death, which is listed as natural.

This is the first time in Hillsborough County that a death has been attributed to this specific type of dental sepsis, according to the medical examiner's office.

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 17:47

Snow in Braemar helped classify 2021 as a white ChristmasA white Christmas is still likely in parts of northern Scotland despite mild temperatures further south and elsewhere in the UK.

Forecasters say snow could fall on higher ground in areas such as Caithness and Sutherland.

Most parts of Scotland, however, will a see rain showers and relatively warm highs of 8C or 9C.

Temperatures are set to drop on Boxing Day and a weather warning is in place for Wednesday.

Meanwhile parts of England are set to reach temperatures of 13C and 14C on Monday.

The warmest 25 December on record was 15.6C in 1920 in Devon.

The record for the warmest Christmas day in Scotland is 15.1C which was reached in Dyce in 2011 as well as in Urquhart, Ross and Cromarty, in 2016.

Will Scotland see a white Christmas this year?Met Office confirms it's a white ChristmasThe record UK Christmas eve record temperature of 15.5C was set in Aberdeen and Banff in 1931.

Christopher Blanchett, BBC Scotland's senior weather presenter said: "Christmas Day looks cloudy, damp and mild for most. However, a technical white Christmas is likely across northern Scotland where it will be colder.

"Imagine a line from Aberdeen to Inverness, and all areas from here into the far north. In this part of Scotland, the air should be cold enough for any showers to be wintry - however, you will still most likely need to be on high ground to see any snow.

"The forecast is for the snow showers down to around 200 to 300 metres elevation, but lower than this and it will be mostly rain or sleet."

'Official' white ChristmasFor Christmas day to be classed as an "official" white Christmas, just one snowflake has to be observed within the 24 hour period.

Since 1960, more than 50% of Christmases have been classified as white.

Last year was one of them. While no weather stations recorded any lying snow, 9% recorded falling snow.

2021 was also classified as a white Christmas with snow in Braemar and Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, Strathallan in Perthshire and across Shetland.

There has only been a widespread covering - where more than 40% of weather stations in the UK reported snow on the ground at 09:00 - four times since 1960, in 1981, 1995, 2009 and 2010, according to the Met Office.

Boxing day is expected to be colder, but some winter sun is possible in many areas.

The Met office has issued a yellow weather warning for snow and rain on Wednesday, covering Aberdeen, Perth and parts of Edinburgh.

There is also the risk of snow for all inland areas to the north and south of the central Belt.

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 17:12

Effective date: December 04, 2023

Contents 1. Introduction; Scope of this Policy. 2. Where We Are a Service Provider. 3. Personal Data We Collect About You and Why. 4. Cookies and Similar Tracking Technologies. 5. Online Analytics and Advertising. 6. Information We Disclose. 7. International Users. 8. Your Data Rights and Choices. 9. Notice to California Residents. 10. Your Rights and Control under EU GDPR. 11. Data Security and Integrity. 12. Retention and Removal. 13. Right to Revise. 14. Contact Details. 15. Privacy Contacts. Introduction; Scope of this Policy.The purpose of this Privacy Policy (the ''Policy'') is to describe how we collect, use, store, protect, and disclose personal data online and offline either via our websites or related applications. This Policy applies to personal data we collect or use, and applications owned or controlled by Govermentjobs.com, Inc. (DBA ''NEOGOV''), including our related brands NEOGOV.com, NEOED.com, PowerDMS.com, Governmentjobs.com, Schooljobs.com, and our mobile app(s) (collectively referred to as the ''Services''), or affiliated companies (collectively referred to herein as ''Governmentjobs'', "Schooljobs", ''NEOGOV'', ''NEOED'', ''PowerDMS'', ''we'', ''us'', or ''our'').

By using any part of the Services you agree that you have read this Policy, your personal data will be processed as described herein, and you agree to be bound by this Policy. This Policy is incorporated into our Terms of Use. Definitions not explicitly defined herein shall retain the meaning as prescribed in the Terms of Use. Any dispute related to privacy is subject to the Terms of Use and this Policy, including limitations on liability.

This Policy does not apply to (1) personal data controlled by our Customers (employers that utilize our Services, described further below), which is governed by our separate agreements and related data processing agreements with such Customers; (2) personal data collected by unaffiliated sites that link to or are accessible from our Services; (3) personal data our partners may collect directly from you and control; (4) personal data collected and processed by us about our employees or job applicants responding to our job offers; and, (5) non-personal data derived from personal data, including any data that is aggregated, de-identified, or anonymized, statistical data, insights, or other predictive data that is sufficiently different from your personal data that it cannot be reversed engineered through reasonable means, or otherwise identified from analysis or further processing of the derived data (collectively referred to as the ''De-Identified Platform Data''). We use De-Identified Platform Data to provide Customers with useful and relevant insights, build features and data services, and improve our Services. Because De-Identified Platform Data does not identify you personally, we can use and disclose it in our discretion.

We are the controller for the personal data discussed in this Policy, except as noted in the ''Where We Are a Service Provider'' section below.

Where We Are a Service ProviderOur Customers are organizations such as federal, state, local, tribal, or other municipal government agencies (including administrative agencies, departments, and offices thereof), private businesses, and educational institutions (including without limitation K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and vocational schools), who use our Services to evaluate job applicants and/or manage their relationship with their personnel. When we provide our Services to our Customers, the Customer generally controls and manages the personal data (which may include sensitive personal data such as biometric information for timeclock tracking, your precise geolocation information, health information, and demographic information like race and ethnicity related to the employment relationship), and we process personal data as a "data processor" or "service provider" (as these terms are defined in applicable data protection laws). Our legal obligations as a processor and service provider are set out in our Customer contracts and policies. Our Customers, and not us, decide what types of personal data to collect to manage their relationships with you.

For instance, if you apply to a job or your employer utilizes our Services to manage their relationship with you, the personal data collected about you is generally controlled by the employer (our Customer). This Policy does not describe the processing of your personal data by our Customers, and we encourage you to visit the Customer's privacy policy for information about their privacy practices. For example, if you applied to a job at a local state agency, you should contact that agency with any questions you may have relating to the personal data processing by that state agency within our Services.

Where we serve as a data processor or service provider, our Customer contracts and policies require us to either instruct you to contact our Customer, or redirect your inquiry to our Customer.

Personal Data We Collect About You and Why.In this Section we set out general categories of personal data we may collect and the purpose for using your personal data, including the personal data collected and processed over the past year. We collect and process personal data to provide you the Services, fulfill our contractual responsibility to deliver the Services to our Customers, fulfill your requests, and pursue our legitimate interests and our business and commercial purposes. We also automatically collect data during your usage of the Services and collect other personal data about you from other sources. Your personal data will only be collected and used for purposes stated herein, where you provide additional consent, or as required by law or regulation - including national security or law enforcement requirements.

We collect personal data from you directly when you visit our Services from either your computer, mobile phone, or other device, attend one our events, or communicate with our personnel. The categories of personal data we collect from you, involve the following:

Types of Personal Data Why the Personal Data is collected Identification, account, and contact data, including your name, username and password, professional or personal email address, professional or personal telephone phone number, and account preferences. Create your account, perform and manage our relationship with you and our Customers, and facilitate the relationship between you and our Customers for their hiring and employment purposes. Communicate with you and send you information as part of the Services regarding your questions, comments, requests for information, contests you entered into, upcoming events, newsletters and surveys, technical notices, security alerts, statements and invoices, support and administrative messages, significant updates to the Services or policies, as well as relevant notifications regarding your account. Notify you about our Services and events that we believe will interest you, for our legitimate interests in conducting direct marketing, or to the extent you've provided your consent. If you purchased or sent us an inquiry regarding our Services, we may send you information about similar Service you may be interested in. To learn how to manage these communications, see the ''Your Data Rights and Choices'' section of this Policy. Provide support services, answer your requests, comments, and questions, troubleshoot, and diagnose problems with our Services. Verify your identity, respond to legal requests, enforce our legal agreements where applicable, prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities, maintain security, and screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity. Profile and employment data including your name, professional or personal postal address, professional or personal e-mail or telephone number, employer name and general location, job title or area of expertise, work experience and performance data, search history, job interest cards, education history, skills, certificates, and licenses.

Perform and manage our relationship with you and our Customers, and facilitate the relationship between you and our Customers for their hiring and employment purposes. Provide you personalized recommendations of content, features, and Services, including to enable you to search and apply for jobs, match you with employers and job listings, help our Customers find and contact you, and display targeted notices and messages from our Customers. Make improvements, enhancements, or modifications to the Services through data analysis and research of usage trends, and feedback sessions. Conduct research on social, economic, and sectoral employment and hiring trends. Provide support services, answer your requests, comments, and questions, troubleshoot, and diagnose problems with our Services. Verify your identity, respond to legal requests, enforce our legal agreements where applicable, prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities, maintain security, and screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity. Communications and publication data including communication content within emails, phone and other voice recordings, online forms, chats, forums including our Customer Community, date and time of the communication, and the communication method. Make improvements, enhancements, or modifications to the Services based on your feedback collected through feedback sessions or content you post within our Services or the Customer Community about your experience using our Services. Determine Services, events, newsletters, or contests that we believe will interest you and notify you. Provide support services, answer your requests, comments, and questions, troubleshoot, and diagnose problems with our Services. Verify your identity, respond to legal requests, enforce our legal agreements where applicable, prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities, maintain security, and screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity. Contact preferences data including marketing content preferences, and the status of whether you opted-out of our marketing notices. Manage and track your preferences for communications you receive from us, identify trends in the interactions with our Services, and measure the performance of our communications. Make your profile viewable to employers, depending on your settings. Transaction and billing data including the Service purchased, billing details, financial data corresponding to your selected method of payment (e.g. a credit card or a bank account number), which is collected by third-party payment processors on our or our customer's behalf. To facilitate your payment and billing for Services, facilitate payroll and tax Services for our Customers, and detect and prevent fraud. You may voluntarily submit other personal data to us through our Services that we do not request and are not required for the relevant data processing activity.

With the help of our Service Providers, we may also automatically collect personal data about you and your device and how you interact with our Services. Categories of personal data collected automatically include the following:

Types of Personal Data Why the Personal Data is collected Usage data including Services you purchase, IP address, webpages visited, what you click on, features you use, how often and when you use the Services (including the date and time of your access or use), general location of usage, jobs performed, Service configurations, browser type and version, browser language, internet service provider, domain name, error logs, e-mails you view, and the subject of the ads you click or scroll over; and,

Device data including device address or other unique device identifying numbers, type of device, software and hardware attributes, your operating system, system and performance data, and mobile application permissions including cellular data, general geolocation, access to photos, camera, calendars, and reminders.

Perform and manage our relationship with you and our Customers, and facilitate the relationship between you and our Customers for their hiring and employment purposes. Track your preferences and provide you personalized recommendations of content, features, and Services. Make improvements, enhancements, or modifications to the Services. Produce De-Identified Platform Data and conduct research on social, economic, and sectoral employment and hiring trends. If our Customer utilizes our mobile application or our time and attendance services where you clock in and out of your job, we may collect data based off your fingerprint or facial ID. For more information regarding our use of Biometric data, please see our Biometric Data Notice. Verify your identity, respond to legal requests, enforce our legal agreements where applicable, prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities, maintain security, and screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity. General Location data including your device's location through data that indicates a country, state, city or postal code, and in certain instances, by tracking the latitude and longitude of your IP address, Wi-Fi address, or device. Where one of our Customers utilizes our time clock features and you use it to punch in and out of your work shifts. Verify your identity, respond to legal requests, enforce our legal agreements where applicable, prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities, maintain security, and screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity. Log and other automatic data collection including data about the nature of each access, IP address, ISP, files viewed, content changes in certain cases, operating systems, device type and timestamps, pages you view, links you click, touch stream data, movement, scroll, keystroke activity, browser type, access times, and third-party sites and services you were using before and after interacting with our Services. Track your preferences and provide you personalized recommendations of content, features, and Services. Make improvements, enhancements, or modifications to the Services. Ensure you can use our Services in conjunction with other services and facilitate your use of integrations. Produce De-Identified Platform Data and conduct research on social, economic, and sectoral employment and hiring trends. Verify your identity, respond to legal requests, enforce our legal agreements where applicable, prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities, maintain security, and screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity. Cookies, pixel tags (''web beacons''), HTML Storage Objects, web tags, and embedded scripts within our communications and on our Services to collect data related to usage, location, device and logs. Among other reasons, we use various cookies and other tracking technologies to provide our Services, authenticate users when visiting our Services, for security purposes (e.g., to prevent fraudulent use of the Services and protect our Services generally), track your preferences, provide personalized recommendations of content, features, and Services, deliver more relevant ads to you as you browse the web, including ads on websites and applications other than on our Services, and help us understand how our websites and communications are being used. For more information on Cookies see the ''Cookies and similar Tracking Technologies; ''Do Not Track'' section immediately below. We and our service providers may use a variety of technologies to collect information about your device and use of our Services as discussed immediately above. Most web browsers can be programmed to accept or reject the use of some or all of these technologies, although you must take additional steps to disable or control other technologies. Among these technologies include:

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser and device you use to access our Services. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either ''persistent'' cookies or ''session'' cookies. A persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. A web beacon (also called a web bug or clear GIF) is a graphic on a webpage or in an email message that is designed to monitor who is reading the page or message. Web beacons are often invisible because they are typically only 1-by-1 pixel in size. Web beacons are often used alongside cookies to track activity. Web beacons may be used to add data to a profile about a site visited, provide an independent accounting of how many people have visited a website, gather statistics about usage, among other things. HTML Storage Objects are program code that collects data about your activity on our Services. The HTML is temporarily downloaded onto your device while you are connected to our Services. Please note that you can change your settings to notify you when a cookie is being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether. Please consult the "Help" section of your browser for more information (e.g., Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari). By blocking any or all cookies, you may not have access to certain features or offerings of the Services.

We may use third-party web analytics services on our Services, such as those of Google Analytics, Hubspot, LinkedIn, Hotjar, and others. These service providers use the sort of technology previously described in the ''Personal Data We Collect About You and Why'' section to help us analyze how users use the Services, including by noting the third-party website from which you arrive. The information collected by the technology will be disclosed to or collected directly by these service providers, who use the information to evaluate your use of the Services. We also use Google Analytics for certain purposes related to advertising, as described in the following section. To prevent Google Analytics from using your information for analytics, you may install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on by clicking here.

We may personalize the content and advertising that you see when using the Services through the use of third-party advertising technologies that allow for the delivery of relevant content and advertising on the Services, as well as other websites you visit and other applications you use. These third-party advertising technologies may include Google Ads, DoubleClick, Twitter, AddThis, ShareThis, and others. The ads may be based on various factors such as the content of the page you are visiting, information you provide such as your age and gender, your searches, demographic data, and other information we collect from you. These ads may be based on your current activity or your activity over time and may be tailored to your interests.

We neither have access to, nor does this Policy govern, the use of cookies or other tracking technologies that may be placed on your computer, mobile phone, or other device you use to access the Services by non-affiliated, third-party ad technology, ad servers, ad networks or any other non-affiliated third parties. Those parties that use these technologies may offer you a way to opt out of ad targeting as described below. If you are interested in more information about tailored browser advertising and how you can generally control cookies from being put on your computer to deliver tailored advertising, you may visit the Network Advertising Initiative's Consumer Opt-Out link or the Digital Advertising Alliance's Consumer Opt-Out link to opt-out of receiving tailored advertising from companies that participate in those programs. You can also use the options below in the "Rights Regarding Your Information" section below.

Please note that you may still receive advertisements even if you opt out of tailored advertising. In that case, the ads will just not be tailored. Also, we do not control any of the above opt-out links and are not responsible for any choices you make using these mechanisms or the continued availability or accuracy of these mechanisms.

We also receive your personal data described in this Policy from third party sources, including from your employer (our Customer), third party companies from which we purchase personal data, partners (including but not limited to partners listed on our Marketplace), accreditation agencies, and co-organizers and sponsors for our events and webinars.

Partners. We collect and use personal data originally collected by partners for joint product and marketing opportunities. For example, we receive profile data about the status of background checks and assessments you participate in, updates from payment processors regarding your purchases, receipts and analytics for text communications and emails you send and receive, or other profile data from integrated systems employers choose to connect with our Services. If you sign into our Services with Facebook or other single sign on services, we import the requested data from your account.

Data brokers. We purchase additional contact data to supplement and correct the contact and employment data we collect, including your name, professional or personal email address, professional or personal telephone phone number, employer name and location, job title or area of expertise.

Public sources. We collect personal data from publicly accessible websites and government sources, including your name, email address, and other profile data such as job title, employer name, and professional expertise.

We combine personal data about you from your use of the Services with other personal data we obtain about you from third parties and use such information in accordance with this Policy.

If you believe that your personal data was improperly collected or provided to use by one of the sources described above, please contact us at privacy@neogov.com.

The PowerLine Application (''App'') is an app designed to help maximize your mental wellbeing by providing information and connecting you with others that have had similar life experiences. If your employer has sponsored your access to our App, we will collect the minimum personal information necessary to set up your access to the App (name, email address). Your interactions on the App will be anonymous with respect to other users, as other users will only know you by an anonymous identifier. Be careful what you share with others through the App, especially regarding your personal data. As you use the App, we collect information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of your interaction with the App. We may collect the following types of usage data when you use the App:

Measurement data produced by the Apps. We may collect the Apps version, device hardware model, device operating system (OS) version, language and region settings, or timestamp. Apps crash reports. When the App crashes, we may collect information relating to the crash including device state, device hardware model, device OS version, and software processes that triggered the crash. Apps usage and interactions. We may collect statistics about the behavior of users of the App to understand how they interact with the App and for error reporting. Information We Disclose.We disclose personal data with other parties for the purposes stated herein or as required by law. The following lists the categories of entities we've disclosed personal data with, including over the past year.

We disclose personal data to our Customers (your current or potential employer) that utilize our services. For instance, if you are a job applicant and you respond to a job posting, we will disclose your personal data to the employer in order to facilitate the job search and hiring process. If your current or former employer uses one of our Services, personal data you input into those Services is accessible by that employer's end users - subject to the security and access controls set up by the employer. In addition, if you sign up for an Access membership, we may disclose your personal data with Customers and their designated agents for recruitment purposes. You may cancel your Access membership at any time.

We disclose personal data to services providers to provide services on our behalf. For instance, we use service providers to facilitate our support services, data security, email, web hosting, research and analytics, data enrichment services, deliver and help us track our marketing and advertising content, process credit card payments, deliver payroll processing and disbursements, coordinate our customer conferences, and manage our sales and customer relations.

We work with other entities to perform research, under controls that are designed to protect your privacy. We publish or allow others to publish insights, presented as either aggregated, anonymized, de-identified, or non-personal data.

If you download or access content on our Services or attend an event or webinar we host or co-host, we may disclose your personal data to sponsors of the event or webinar. The sponsor may also be a controller of your personal data in this instance, and processing of your personal data will be subject to the sponsors' privacy statements as well.

As explained in detail above in the "Online Analytics and Advertising" section, we may disclose your information to third parties that assist in tailoring and serving advertisements that are relevant to you. We may also allow third-party advertising technologies (e.g., ad networks and ad servers) to use cookies and similar technologies on the Services to deliver relevant and targeted content and advertising to you on the Services and other websites you visit and applications you use.

We may also disclose personal data where you provide your consent or post your personal data publicly. Where required by law, additional consent is obtained before personal data is transferred to us or forwarded to other parties. For example, we disclose personal data with background check providers if a job applicant consents and we are instructed to do so by our Customers.

During your use of the Services, you may have the opportunity to visit or link to other websites, including websites by third parties unaffiliated with us. We have no relationship or control over unaffiliated websites. These websites might collect personal data about you, and you should review the privacy policies of such other websites to see how they treat your personal data.

We also disclose personal data or data in order to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, investigate violations and enforce policies (including our Terms of Service, this Policy and other contracts with you), detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of our users or the public, protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person; and where disclosure is necessary for establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims or where there is reasonable belief that disclosure is required by law or regulations

We may transfer or disclose personal data to another entity who acquires or may acquire any or all of our business units, whether such acquisition is by way of merger, consolidation or purchase of all or a substantial portion of our assets, or bankruptcy. We disclose personal data to our affiliates with our Customers' consent in order to facilitate any Service transition or implementation services.

International UsersPlease be aware that we are based in the United States and the information we collect will be transferred to, processed, and stored on our servers in the United States in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable laws. The data protection laws and regulations applicable to your information transferred to the United States may be different from the laws in your country of residence. We take appropriate steps to protect, process, and transfer your information only in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law, which may include using standard contractual clauses or other transfer mechanisms.

Your Data Rights and ChoicesIn accordance with applicable law, we may send you marketing and promotional emails. If you would like to opt out of email marketing, notify us at privacy@neogov.com or follow the unsubscribe instructions in the email. Please note that even though you may opt-out of receiving marketing-related communications from us, we may still send you important administrative and transactional messages (e.g., notifications regarding updates to our legal terms).

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right, in accordance with applicable data protection laws, to make requests related to your ''personal information'' or ''personal data'' (as such terms are defined under applicable law, and collectively referred to herein as ''personal information''). Specifically, you may have the right to ask us to:

Inform you about the categories of personal information we collect or disclose about you; the categories of sources of such information; the business or commercial purpose for collecting your personal information; and the categories of third parties with whom we disclose personal information. Provide you access to and/or a copy of certain personal information we hold about you. Correct or update personal information we hold about you. Delete certain personal information we have about you. Provide you with information about the financial incentives that we offer to you, if any. Restrict or object to certain uses of your information. Opt you out of the processing of your personal information for purposes of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects, if applicable. Please note that certain information may be exempt from such requests under applicable law. For example, we need certain information in order to provide the Services to you.

You may also have the right to opt out of ''sales'' of your information and ''sharing/processing of your information for targeted advertising'' as described below. If you are a California resident, please see the ''Notice to California Residents'' section below for more information about our privacy practices and your rights.

As provided in applicable law, you also have the right to not be discriminated against for exercising your rights. Please note that certain information may be exempt from such requests under applicable law. For example, we need to retain certain information in order to provide our services to you. We also need to take reasonable steps to verify your identity before responding to a request, which may include, at a minimum, depending on the sensitivity of the information you are requesting and the type of request you are making, verifying your name and email address. If we are unable to verify your identity, we may be unable to respond to your requests.

To exercise any of these rights, you can contact us at privacy@neogov.com with your name and type of request you are making, you can also send your request by clicking here:

You may be able to designate an authorized agent to make requests on your behalf. In order for an authorized agent to be verified, you must provide the authorized agent with signed, written permission to make such requests or a power of attorney. We may also follow up with you to verify your identity before processing the authorized agent's request as permitted by applicable law.

Depending on applicable law, you may have the right to appeal our decision to deny your request, if applicable. We will provide information about how to exercise that right in our response denying the request. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Notice of Right to Opt Out of Sales of Personal Information and Processing/Sharing of Personal Information for Targeted Advertising PurposesIf you are a resident of certain U.S. states, you may also have the right to opt out of ''sales'' of your information and ''sharing/processing of your information for targeted advertising.''

As explained in the ''When We Disclose Your Information'' and "Online Analytics and Advertising" sections above, we sometimes disclose information to third-party advertising providers for targeted advertising purposes or use advertising analytics partners to assist us in analyzing use of our services and our user/customer base. Under applicable law, the disclosure of your personal information to these third parties to assist us in providing these services may be considered a ''sale'' of personal information or the processing/sharing of personal information for targeted advertising purposes.

If you would like to opt out of the disclosure of your personal information for purposes that could be considered ''sales'' for those third parties' own commercial purposes, or ''sharing'' or processing for purposes of targeted advertising, please visit "Your Privacy Choices" which is available in the footer of our Services. Note that you will need to opt out on each device you use to access the Services.

Please note that we do not knowingly sell the personal information of minors under 16 years of age.

Notice to California ResidentsIf you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended (''CCPA''), requires us to provide you with the following additional information about: (1) the purpose for which we use each category of ''personal information'' (as defined in the CCPA) we collect; and (2) the categories of third parties to which we (a) disclose such personal information for a business purpose, (b) ''share'' personal information for ''cross-context behavioral advertising,'' and/or (c) ''sell'' such personal information.

Under the CCPA, ''sharing'' is defined as the targeting of advertising to a consumer based on that consumer's personal information obtained from the consumer's activity across websites, and ''selling'' is defined as the disclosure of personal information to third parties in exchange for monetary or other valuable consideration. Our use of third-party analytics services and online advertising services as discussed in detail in our Privacy Policy may result in the sharing of online identifiers (e.g., cookie data, IP addresses, device identifiers, and usage information) in a way that may be considered a ''sale'' under the CCPA. The following chart details our practices in this regard.

Category of Personal Information Purposes of Use Categories of Third Parties to Which It was Disclosed Categories of Third Parties to Which NeoGov ''Shares'' and ''Sells'' this Personal Information for Advertising/Analytics Purposes Identifiers (e.g., name, User ID, mailing address, email address, phone number, IP address, device information) Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Marketing and advertising; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; online advertising and analytics partners; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. Online advertising and analytics partners. Profile data (including employment and education history) Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Marketing and advertising; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; online advertising and analytics partners; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. Online advertising and analytics partners. Sensitive personal information (e.g., bank account numbers, insurance policy numbers, credit card numbers, race/ethnicity, payment information, account log-in credentials) Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. We do not share/sell. Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information (e.g., recordings of calls or meetings) Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. We do not share/sell. Commercial information (e.g., records of transactions and purchases) Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Marketing and advertising; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; online advertising and analytics partners; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. Online advertising and analytics partners. Internet or other electronic network activity (e.g., information about your interaction with the Services) Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Marketing and advertising; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; online advertising and analytics partners; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. Online advertising and analytics partners. General Geolocation data (inferred from IP address) Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. We do not share/sell. User-generated content or feedback that you provide Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. We do not share/sell. Inferences drawn from any of the information identified herein Provide and maintain our Services; Provide goods and services; Communicate with you; Analytics and improvements; Marketing and advertising; Legal purposes; With your consent. Affiliates; service providers; online advertising and analytics partners; entities for legal purposes; entities for organizational transfers; with your consent. Online advertising and analytics partners. For more information about each category, purpose of use, and the third parties to which we disclose or share information, please see the ''Personal Data We Collect About You and Why'' and ''Information We Disclose'' sections above.

You have the right to opt out of our sale/sharing of your personal information for purposes of certain online analytics and advertising by visiting "Your Privacy Choices'' which is available in the footer of our Services. Note that you will need to opt out on each device you use to access the Services.

If you have a legally-recognized browser-based opt out preference signal turned on via your device browser, we recognize such preference in accordance with applicable law.

In addition to the rights set forth in the section above on ''Your Choices Regarding 'Sharing' and 'Selling,''' California residents may make certain requests about their personal information under the CCPA as set forth in the section above in our Privacy Policy on ''Rights Regarding Your Information.''

The CCPA also allows you to limit the use or disclosure of your ''sensitive personal information'' (as defined in the CCPA) if your sensitive personal information is used for certain purposes. Please note, in the limited circumstances that we process sensitive personal information (such as health information, ethnicity, and biometric information) as defined in the CCPA, we do not use or disclose it other than for disclosed and permitted business purposes for which there is not a right to limit under the CCPA.

California Law permits customers who are California residents to request certain information once per year regarding our disclosure of ''personal information'' (as that term is defined under applicable California law) to third parties for such third parties' direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please email us at privacy@neogov.com.

Do Not Track (''DNT'') is a privacy preference that users can set in certain web browsers. DNT is a way for users to inform websites and services that they do not want certain information about their webpage visits collected over time and across websites or online services. Except as otherwise described herein with respect to legally required browser based opt outs, we do not recognize or respond to browser-initiated DNT signals, as there is no industry-wide framework for DNT signals. To learn more about Do Not Track, you can do so here.

Your Rights and Control under EU GDPR.Our Customers use our Services to post job opportunities, evaluate job applicants, manage their human resource activities, and train their workforce. In conducting these activities, the Customer maintains control over what personal data is collected, how it is used, how long it is retained, and who it is disclosed to. For purposes of the EU GDPR, the Customer is considered a data controller in these respects and we are a data processor. In other instances, such as when we use cookies or contact you about our Services, we will determine the means and purpose of processing.

For personal data subject to the European Union General Data Protection Regulation and ePrivacy Directive, we rely on multiple legal bases for processing, including:

Consent. In certain cases, we ask you for your consent to process your personal data, for instance, for certain marketing purposes. You can withdraw your consent at any time; however, this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before your consent was withdrawn. You can withdraw your consent by using the prompts within the messages you receive, the settings within your account, or by contacting our support using any of the privacy support emails listed at the end of this Policy.

Legitimate Interest. We process certain personal data for our legitimate interests. These legitimate interests include contacting you to provide support or sending you marketing information (subject to applicable law); detecting, preventing, and investigating illegal activities and potential security issues; and maintaining and improving our Services. We will balance our interests, the purpose and necessity of processing, and the rights and risks to you before we process for legitimate interests.

Performance of a Contract We process personal data to perform our obligations under an agreement with you or our Customers. For example, we use payment information you provide when you purchase a Service.

Other Legal Bases. In some cases, we may have a legal obligation to process your personal data, such as in response to a court or regulator order. We also may need to process your personal data to protect vital interests, or to exercise, establish, or defend legal claims.

We use an automated chat bot within some of our Services to screen your requests and questions. The purpose of the automated chat bot is to fulfill frequently asked questions provided by our users, tag the requests and questions to route to our most appropriate contact, and improve our responses and Services. The chat bot is not fully automated and will not have a legal or significant impact on you.

Data Security and Integrity.We implement physical, technical, and administrative safeguards designed to maintain data accuracy, integrity, and security, prevent unauthorized access, and facilitate correct use of personal data. Our security measures take into account the risk of harm to you and Customers, as well as the availability of technology, industry common practices, effectiveness of mitigation controls, and the sustainability of those controls by us.

Although we maintain the controls listed herein, transmission of data is not without risk and the complete security of your personal data cannot be guaranteed. Please note, you are responsible for keeping your login credentials secret at all times, including your username and password.

Retention and Removal.For personal data we determine the purposes for and means by which it is processed, such personal data will not be kept for longer than necessary for the original purpose of collection, when no longer relevant, or upon permissible request. When the original purpose no longer exists, we will either delete or de-identify it (subject to applicable law) or, if this is not possible, we will securely store your personal data until deletion is possible. Your personal data will be appropriately disposed in a manner designed to ensure it cannot be reconstructed or read. If you are a job applicant, after your account has been closed, we may retain De-Identified Platform Data as permitted by law.

Where our Customer is the controller of your personal data, our retention policies and procedures are designed to allow Customers to comply with their own record retention requirements. If you are a job applicant that deletes your profile with us, your personal data will be removed or de-identified with our job applicant database; however, your data may persist within the applications you previously submit to our Customers until Customer disposal. Job applicants should contact the Customer they sent the application to if they seek enforcement of eligible data rights in that application.

Right to Revise.We reserve the right to revise our Policy to reflect changes in our online information practices or to comply with the law by publishing a new version on our website. In circumstances where we materially change this Policy, we will provide you with appropriate notice in accordance with legal requirements. By continuing to access and use the Services, you are confirming that you have read and understood the latest version of this Policy.

Contact Details.This website is owned and operated by Governmentjobs.com, Inc. (DBA ''NEOGOV''). Our principal place of business is at 2120 Park Place, Suite 100, El Segundo, CA 90245, United States. You can contact us by email, telephone, or regular mail using the contact information listed herein.

Privacy Contacts. If at any time you have questions or concerns about this Policy, please feel free to call us at (877) 204-4442 or e-mail us at privacy@neogov.com. You can also contact our data protection manager at dpo@neogov.com.

Users who have a visual disability may be able to use a screen reader or other text-to-speech tool to review the contents of this Policy. If you experience any difficulties assessing the information here or you wish to obtain a copy of this Policy, please contact us using the details above.

Effective date: December 04, 2023

Governmentjobs.com, Inc. D/B/A NEOGOV on behalf of itself and its subsidiaries PowerDMS, Inc., Cuehit, Inc., Ragnasoft LLC (D/B/A/ PlanIT Schedule), and Design PD, LLC (D/B/A Agency360) (referred to as ''NEOGOV'', ''Company,'' ''we'', ''our'', or ''us'') offers proprietary web-based software-as-a-service applications, including via mobile applications (collectively, the ''SaaS Applications''), and maintains various websites under its control, including www.neogov.com, www.neoed.com, www.powerdms.com, www.governmentjobs.com and www.schooljobs.com and the subdomains and subdirectories of each as well as any website applications, content or functionality offered on or through the foregoing (collectively, the ''Websites'' and together with the SaaS Applications, the ''Services'').

By using the Services, you accept and agree to be bound and abide by the following terms and conditions (the ''Terms of Use''), together with our Privacy Policy, found at https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/greenbaywi/privacypolicy, incorporated herein by reference (the ''Privacy Policy''), regardless of whether you registered as a user or you are a job seeker or employer (''you'' or ''your''). If you do not want to agree to these Terms of Use or the Privacy Policy, you must not access or use the Services. Also, by agreeing to this Terms of Use you waive, to the extent permitted under applicable law, any rights or legal requirements that require an original (non-electronic) signature or the delivery or retention of non-electronic records in order for a contract to be legally binding.

If you use the Services as part of a paid subscription, the Service features and functionalities available to you are determined by the specific terms agreed to between NEOGOV and the organization (e.g., your employer or another entity or person, called the ''Customer'') that entered into a separate agreement that governs delivery, access, and use of the Service (the ''Customer Contract''). The terms and conditions within such Customer Contract shall control to the extent of any direct conflict with these Terms of Use.

If you are using a SaaS Application on behalf of a Customer, by accessing or using the SaaS Application, you acknowledge and agree to be bound by these Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and you shall be responsible for (and must have sufficient authority to take) all actions that are performed on or through your registered account, including any procurement or use of third party products or services (and associated disclosure of data) in connection with the SaaS Application. If you have been added or invited to the SaaS Application, the party that administers such SaaS Application (and not you) controls your use of that SaaS Application, including but not limited to adding or removing you from that SaaS Application, enabling or disabling third-party integrations, and managing permissions. Any content that you submit or upload to the SaaS Application may be retained, accessed, used, modified, shared, or removed by the party that administers such SaaS Application. You acknowledge that your account can become managed by the entity that owns or controls the email address domain with which your account was created or registered.

Please read the Terms of Use carefully before you start to use the Services.We may revise and update these Terms of Use from time to time in our sole discretion. All changes are effective immediately when we post them and apply to all access to and use of the Services thereafter. Your continued use of the Services following the posting of revised Terms of Use means that you accept and agree to the changes. You are expected to check this page from time to time so you are aware of any changes, as they are binding on you.

Eligibility. These Services are offered and available to users who are 18 years of age or older. By using the Services, you represent and warrant that you are of legal age to form a binding contract with us. Otherwise, you must not access or use the Services. In addition, we are based in the state of California in the United States. The Services can be accessed from certain countries around the world. Access to the Services may not be legal by certain persons or in certain countries. If you access the Services from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local laws. Access to the Services from territories where the Services are illegal is prohibited. You acknowledge that you remain responsible at all times for your compliance with U.S. and all applicable export and related statutes and regulations.

Accessing Services and Account Security. Subject to your compliance with these Terms of Use, we grant you a non-exclusive, limited, revocable, personal, non-transferable license to use the applicable Services. Unless NEOGOV has entered into a Customer Contract permitting you to use the Services for transactions on the Customer's behalf, you may only use the Services for transactions on your own behalf. If you use the Services on behalf of a Customer or other entity or natural person, you represent and warrant that you are authorized to do so. To access the Services or some of the resources offered through the Services, you may be asked to provide certain registration details or other information. It is a condition of your use of the Services that all the information you provide on the Services is correct, current, and complete. You agree that all information you provide to register with the Services or otherwise, including but not limited to through the use of any interactive features on the Services, is governed by the Privacy Policy and you consent to all actions we take with respect to your information consistent with our Privacy Policy. Terms not defined herein shall retain their meaning as set forth in the Privacy Policy.

If you choose, or are provided with, a user name, password, or any other piece of information, as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any other person or entity. You also acknowledge that your account is personal to you and agree not to provide any other person with access to the Services or portions of it using your user name, password, or other security information.

As between you and others (including Customers), your account belongs to you. However, if the Services were purchased by a Customer for you to use, the Customer has the right to control access to and get reports on your use of such paid Service.

You agree to (i) notify us immediately of any unauthorized access to or use of your user name or password or any other breach of security of which you become aware, (ii) assist us using commercially reasonable efforts in maintaining confidentiality, and (iii) assist us as reasonably necessary to enforce our rights and to enable us to comply with any state or federal law requiring the provision of notice of any security breach with respect to any personally identifiable information of the affected or impacted data subjects. You should use particular caution when accessing your account from a public or shared computer so that others are not able to view or record your password or other personal information. We have the right to disable any user name, password, or other identifier, whether chosen by you or provided by us, at any time if, in our opinion, you have violated any provision of these Terms of Use.

Term and Termination. If you use the Services as part of a paid subscription (e.g. you are an employer and purchase Services directly through this site), you understand and agree that the Services you purchase are offered on an annual basis and will automatically renew each year unless either party gives the other party notice (email is sufficient) of non-renewal at least ten (10) days before the end of the relevant subscription term. If you are using the Services as a user or a job seeker, you may terminate your account at any time. If you violate any provision of these Terms of Use, your permission from NEOGOV to use the Services will terminate automatically. In addition, NEOGOV may in its sole discretion terminate your account on the Services or suspend or terminate your access to the Services at any time for any reason, with or without notice. NEOGOV may alter, suspend or discontinue the Services or any portion of the Services without notice. NEOGOV will not be liable whatsoever for any change to the Services or any suspension or termination of your access to or use of the Services.

Our rights to use and disclose your feedback shall survive termination.

Intellectual Property Rights. The Services and its entire contents, features, and functionality (including but not limited to all information, software, specifications, text, displays, images, video, and audio, code that NEOGOV creates or displays to generate or display content, and the design, design marks, trademarks, service names, slogans, selection, and arrangement thereof)(the ''NEOGOV Content'') are owned by NEOGOV and are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, and other intellectual property or proprietary rights laws. These Terms of Use permit you to use the Services for your personal, non-commercial use only, and in the case of Customers, for internal business use only, subject to the license rights specified in these Terms of Use. Nothing in these Terms of Use shall be construed as granting to you a license to NEOGOV Content under any copyright, trademark, patent, or other intellectual property right except as follows:

'— Your computer may temporarily store copies of such materials in RAM incidental to your accessing and viewing those materials.

'— You may store files that are automatically cached by your Web browser for display enhancement purposes.

'— If we provide desktop, mobile, or other applications for download, you may download a single copy to your computer or mobile device solely for your own personal, non-commercial use, provided you agree to be bound by our end user license agreement for such applications.

No right, title, or interest in or to the Services or any content on the Services is transferred to you, and all rights not expressly granted are reserved by us. Any use of the Services not expressly permitted by these Terms of Use is a breach of these Terms of Use and may violate copyright, trademark, and other laws.

Trademarks. ''NEOGOV,'' ''NEOED'', ''Governmentjobs.com,'' ''Schooljobs.com,'' ''PowerDMS,'' and certain other names or logos are our trademarks, and all related product and service names, design marks, and slogans are our trademarks or service marks, excluding the marks of our partners. You must not use such marks without our prior written permission. We also retain the rights in the designated color schemes and column names provided within the Services. The ''look'' and ''feel'' of the Services (including color combinations, button shapes, layout, design, and all other graphical elements not uploaded or implemented by Customers) are also our trademarks or copyrights. Prohibited Uses. You may use the Services only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms of Use. You must not:

Submit or post anything to the Services that contains software viruses, worms, or any other harmful code. Create a false identity as a user of the Services, misrepresent your identity, create a profile for anyone other than yourself (a real person), post any incomplete, false, or inaccurate r(C)sum(C) information or information which is not your own accurate r(C)sum(C), or use or attempt to use another's account. Disclose information that you do not have the consent to disclose (such as confidential information of a Customer); Reproduce, distribute, modify, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, republish, download, store, license, transfer, sell or transmit or make copies of any NEOGOV Content or materials from the Services or modify, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or sublicense the Services. Delete or alter any legal notices, copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices from copies of materials from this site. Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to discover or directly access the source code or any underlying ideas or algorithms of any portions of the Services or any underlying software or component thereof Access or use for any commercial purposes any part of the Services or any services or materials available through the Services (except on behalf of a Customer for internal business use). Reproduce, display, publicly perform, distribute, or otherwise use the Services or the NEOGOV Content in any manner that is likely to cause confusion among consumers, that disparages or discredits NEOGOV, or that interferes or attempts to interfere with the proper working of the Services or any transaction being conducted on the Services, or with any other person's use of the Services. Violate the intellectual property rights of NEOGOV or of others, including copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets or other proprietary rights. For example, copying or distributing (except through the available sharing functionality) the posts or other content of others without their permission. Further, you agree not to use the Services:

In any way that violates any applicable federal, state, local, or international law or regulation (including, without limitation, any laws regarding the export of data or software to and from the U.S. or other countries). For the purpose of exploiting, harming, or attempting to exploit or harm minors in any way by exposing them to inappropriate content, asking for personally identifiable information, or otherwise. For the unlawful use of any personally identifiable information of other users of which you may be exposed to. To transmit, or procure the sending of, any advertising or promotional material without our prior written consent, including any ''junk mail'', ''chain letter'', ''spam'', or any other similar solicitation. To send unsolicited mail or email, make unsolicited phone calls or send unsolicited texts, tweets or faxes promoting and/or advertising products or services to any user, or contact any users that have specifically requested not to be contacted by you. To respond to any employment opportunity for any reason other than to apply for the job. To engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits anyone's use or enjoyment of the Services, or which, as determined by us, may harm NEOGOV or users of the Services or expose them to liability. To use any ''page-scrape'', ''robot'', ''spider'' or other automatic device, program, algorithm or methodology, or any similar process, to access, acquire, copy or monitor any portion of the Services or any NEOGOV Content, or to obtain or attempt to obtain any materials, documents or information through any means not purposely made available through the Services. To attempt to gain unauthorized access to any portion or feature of the Service, or any other systems or networks connected to the Services or to any NEOGOV server, or to any of the services offered on or through the Services, by hacking or any other illegitimate means. To scan or test the vulnerability of the Services or any network connected to the Services, nor breach the security or authentication measures on the Services or any network connected to the Services. To take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the infrastructure of the Services or NEOGOV's systems or networks, or any systems or networks connected to the Services, or to NEOGOV or interferes with the proper working of the Services. To attack the Services via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack including via means of overloading, ''flooding,'' ''mailbombing,'' or ''crashing,''. To access the Services in order to build, assist, or facilitate the assembly of a competitive product or service, to build a product using similar ideas, features, functions, or graphics of the System, or to copy any ideas, features, functions, or graphics of the Services If your use of the Services requires you to comply with industry-specific regulations applicable to such use, you will be solely responsible for such compliance. You may not use the Services in a way that would subject NEOGOV to those industry-specific regulations without obtaining NEOGOV's prior written agreement, such as using the Services to collect, protect, or otherwise handle ''protected health information'' (as defined in 45 C.F.R. §160.103 under United States federal regulations).

Your level of access should be limited to ensure your access is no more than necessary to perform your legitimate tasks or assigned duties. If you believe you are being granted access that you should not have, you must immediately notify NEOGOV.

Monitoring and Enforcement; Termination. You agree that we may monitor the Services to (1) comply with any applicable laws, regulations, or other government requests, (2) operate the Services or to protect our interests and those of our users and members, and (3) for such other purposes as we may deem reasonably necessary or appropriate from time to time. More specifically, we have the right to:

Remove or refuse to post any User Contributions (as defined below) for any or no reason in our sole discretion. Take any action with respect to any User Contribution that we deem necessary or appropriate in our sole discretion, including if we believe that such User Contribution violates the Terms of Use, including the Content Standards set forth below, if we believe that such information could create liability for us, damage our brand or public image, cause us to lose users (in whole or in part), or interfere with the services of our ISPs or other suppliers, or if we believe the User Contribution is abusive, disruptive, offensive, illegal, violates the rights of, or harms or threatens the safety of users or public, infringes any intellectual property right, or violates the law. Disclose your identity or other information about you to any third party who claims that material posted by you violates their rights, including their intellectual property rights or their right to privacy. Take appropriate legal action, including without limitation, referral to law enforcement, for any illegal or unauthorized use of the Services. Terminate or suspend your access to all or part of the Services for any or no reason, including without limitation, any violation of these Terms of Use. We have the right to cooperate fully with any law enforcement authorities or court order requesting or directing us to disclose the identity or other information of anyone posting any materials on or through the Services. YOU WAIVE AND HOLD HARMLESS GOVERNMENTJOBS.COM, INC. AND ITS AFFILIATES, LICENSEES, AND SERVICE PROVIDERS FROM ANY CLAIMS RESULTING FROM ANY ACTION TAKEN BY ANY OF THE FOREGOING PARTIES DURING, OR TAKEN AS A CONSEQUENCE OF, INVESTIGATIONS BY EITHER GOVERNMENTJOBS.COM, INC. OR LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES. Notwithstanding the foregoing, we are not responsible for screening, policing, editing, or monitoring postings and encourage all users to use reasonable discretion and caution in evaluating or reviewing any post. We assume no liability for any action or inaction regarding transmissions, communications, or content provided by any user or third party. We have no liability or responsibility to anyone for performance or nonperformance of the activities described in this section. Content Standards. These Content Standards apply to any and all User Contributions and use of the Services. User Contributions must in their entirety comply with all applicable federal, state, local, and international laws and regulations. Without limiting the foregoing, User Contributions must not:

Contain any material that is defamatory, obscene, indecent, abusive, offensive, harassing, violent, hateful, inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable. Promote sexually explicit or pornographic material, violence, or discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age. Infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other intellectual property or other rights of any other person. Violate the legal rights (including the rights of publicity and privacy) of others or contain any material that could give rise to any civil or criminal liability under applicable laws or regulations or that otherwise may be in conflict with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. Be likely to deceive any person. Promote any illegal activity or advocate, promote, or assist any unlawful act. Cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety or be likely to upset, embarrass, alarm, or annoy any other person. Impersonate any person or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or organization. Involve commercial activities or sales, such as contests, sweepstakes, and other sales promotions, barter, or advertising. Give the impression that they emanate from or are endorsed by us or any other person or entity, if this is not the case. In addition, you shall be solely responsible for the legality, accuracy and completeness of all records, data, and information provided, submitted, or uploaded by you in connection with this Terms of Use or use of the Services.

User Contributions. The Services may contain message boards, forums, bulletin boards, and job boards, (collectively, ''Interactive Services'') that allow users to post, submit, publish, display, or transmit to other users or other persons (hereinafter, ''post'') materials or content, including feedback (collectively, ''User Contributions'') on or through the Services. All User Contributions must comply with the Content Standards set out in these Terms of Use. Any User Contribution you post to the site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You represent that you have all necessary rights to make a post, and you also acknowledge that we have no control over the extent to which any idea or information may be used by any party or person once it is posted or displayed. By providing any User Contribution on the Services, you grant us and our affiliates a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, non-exclusive right and license for us to adopt, publish, reproduce, disseminate, transmit, distribute, copy, use, create derivative works, and display (in whole or in part) worldwide, or act on such feedback without additional approval or consideration, in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in such content, and you hereby waive any claim to the contrary. Notwithstanding this right and license, it is understood that by merely permitting your information, content, and materials to appear on the Services, we do not become a publisher of such information, content, and materials and is merely functioning as an intermediary to enable you to provide and display a posting. Moreover, we assume no responsibility for the deletion of or failure to store any posting and recommends that you do not post, display, or transmit any confidential or sensitive information.

We are under no obligation to edit or control User Contributions and will not be in any way responsible or liable for any User Contributions. You understand that when using the Services, you may be exposed to User Contributions of other users and acknowledge that User Contributions may be inaccurate, offensive, indecent, or objectionable. You agree to waive, and do waive, any legal or equitable right or remedy you may have against NEOGOV with respect to User Contributions. NEOGOV expressly disclaims any and all liability in connection with User Contributions. If notified by a user or content owner that User Contributions allegedly do not conform with these Terms of Use, NEOGOV may investigate the allegation and determine in NEOGOV's sole discretion whether to remove the User Contributions, which NEOGOV reserves the right to do at any time and without notice.

You understand and acknowledge that you are responsible for any User Contributions you submit or contribute, and you, not NEOGOV, have full responsibility for such content, including its legality, reliability, accuracy, and appropriateness. We are not responsible or liable to any third party for the content or accuracy of any User Contributions posted by you or any other user of the Services.

Text Message and Email Communications. We may offer you the opportunity to receive text message and email notifications regarding notices, reminders, status updates, support, administrative message and disclosures, or other related human resource related notices from us or our Customers. Communications through these methods may be routed through a third-party service.

SMS messages will be sent to you strictly in accordance with your preferences, and only after you have explicitly opted in. If you change your mind at any time, and no longer wish to receive SMS messages, reply to a message with the word ''OPTOUT'' in all capital letters. Afterwards, should you choose to begin receiving messages again, reply with the word ''OPTIN'' in all capital letters.

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E-Signature Provisioning & Consent. NEOGOV E-Forms and other electronically signed services (''E-Signatures'') are provided by NEOGOV for two counterparties (generally a government employer (the ''sending party'') subscribing to NEOGOV Services and personnel or job seekers) to electronically sign documents. If you use E-Signatures offered by NEOGOV, you agree to the statements set forth in this Section. Whenever you sign a document using E-Signatures you affirmatively consent to using electronic signatures via the E-Signatures and consent to conducting electronic business transactions. You also confirm that you are able to access the E-Signatures and the document you are signing electronically. When using E-Signatures for a document, your consent applies only to the matter(s) covered by that particular document. Right to Opt-Out of E-Signatures. You are not required to use E-Signatures or accept electronic documents provided thereby. If you are a job seeker or personnel and you choose to not use E-Signatures, you may still sign the document manually by notifying the sending party that you are choosing to do so and by obtaining a non-electronic copy of the document. NEOGOV assumes no responsibility for providing you with a non-electronic version of the document. In the event you are choosing to sign the document manually, do not use E-Signatures to sign the document or to return the document to the sending party. Electronic Download. If you have signed a document electronically using E-Signatures and transmitted it back to the sending party, NEOGOV provides the opportunity to download and print a paper copy of the document at no charge. If you later withdraw your consent to using E-Signatures, please notify the sending party and stop using E-Signatures. Note that the decision to stop using E-Signatures after you have already used it does not change the legality of the documents you have previously signed using an electronic signature. E-Signature Validity. PLEASE NOTE THAT NEOGOV'S STATEMENTS CONTAINED HEREIN OR ELSEWHERE CONCERNING THE VALIDITY OF ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS AND/OR THE SIGNATURE LINES OF DOCUMENTS THAT ARE ELECTRONICALLY SIGNED ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY; THEY SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS LEGAL ADVICE. UNDER FEDERAL AND STATE LAWS GOVERNING ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES, ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES ON CERTAIN TYPES OF AGREEMENTS ARE NOT ENFORCEABLE. NEOGOV HEREBY DISCLAIMS ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ENSURING THAT DOCUMENTS ELECTRONICALLY SIGNED THROUGH E-SIGNATURES ARE VALID OR ENFORCEABLE UNDER THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ANY PARTICULAR STATE, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL JURISDICTION. YOU SHOULD CONSULT WITH LEGAL COUNSEL CONCERNING THE VALIDITY OR ENFORCEABILITY OF ANY DOCUMENT YOU MAY SIGN ELECTRONICALLY USING NEOGOV'S E-SIGNATURES. Your Comments and Concerns.

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 17:07

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Raytheon a $10 million contract to create a ''wireless internet for energy.'' The Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) will deliver energy to US military equipment. As a result, it could remove or reduce the military's dependence on fossil fuel delivery and storage.

The most exciting possibility for this technology is mainstream adoption. After all, many of the devices and substances we enjoy today were once exclusive to the military. Soon, wireless energy webs could remove the need to recharge our devices by linking them to power outlets. Instead, the ''cloud'' could refill our batteries!

This article will discuss how such a ''wireless internet for energy'' would work. Later, I will share other recent energy innovations.

How would an energy web work?Photo Credit: darpa.milNew Atlas reports the POWER system will consist of unmanned aerial vehicles with laser-power receiving and transmitting capabilities. It starts by beaming energy from a ground power source to a POWER drone.

Then, the drone will relay the energy beam to its intended destination, such as a military vehicle or facility. If the target is far away, the POWER system will pass that energy to other drones closer to it.

As a result, the POWER system is an ''energy web'' that lets military tacticians route energy whenever and wherever it's needed immediately. It will enable the US military's land, sea, and sky-based units to operate indefinitely.

''This is the internet for energy, harnessing resilient, multipath networks to flow energy from abundant sources to energy-starved consumers,'' said Col. Paul Calhoun, POWER program manager in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office.

''The military faces particularly acute energy challenges, which are driving this innovation. We often must operate far from established energy infrastructure and rely on liquid fuels that require precarious supply lines.'' Nowadays, militaries rely on supply lines to provide their vehicles and facilities with enough fuel.

However, those delivery systems could become a major weakness. For example, armed forces may target supply lines to stop an enemy from deploying tanks.

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Weather conditions like storms and snow could delay deliveries, too. In contrast, an energy web could mitigate those risks. However, New Atlas warns it has a few drawbacks.

Turning electricity into laser beams consumes 20% of the energy sent. Then, energy consumption increases to 50% when turning that light into electricity.

Nevertheless, DARPA is optimistic about this technology for military and civilian purposes. ''It will dramatically compress transport timelines and resiliently provide distributed energy to consumers in air, on land, on the sea, undersea, and in space,'' said Calhoun.

Other recent energy technologiesTheir device "is the size of a thumbnail, one-fifth the width of a human hair, and capable of generating roughly one microwatt '...in principle, we can stack multiple layers in vertical space to increase the power.''https://t.co/BAxIjQWqRw

'-- Maurice J. White (@WhiteMaurice) July 3, 2023University of Massachusetts researchers created another ''wireless'' source of renewable energy. Professor Jun Yao said he and his team stumbled upon the technology when they were making a ''simple sensor for humidity in the air.''

They made it with an array of microscopic tubes or nanowires. Each was less than one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, wide enough for airborne water molecules to pass through.

''But for whatever reason, the student who was working on that forgot to plug in the power,'' the professor added. The UMass Amherst team felt surprised when they saw water molecules generating electricity.

You may also like: Israel uses AI to facilitate military operations

They bumped inside the tube, producing a small charge. Moreover, both ends of the tube gained positive and negative charges as the molecules bumped further. ''So it's really like a battery,'' says Yao. ''The beauty is that the air is everywhere'.... in principle, we can stack multiple layers in vertical space to increase the power.''

Also, a team of Scottish engineers created a new tidal turbine blade that could make energy from tidal waves more efficient. It is a project from the FastBlade company as part of the European Tidal Stream Industry Energizer Project or TIGER. Dr. Eddie McCarthy, FastBlade's leader, said in a statement:

''We have found a faster, cheaper route to manufacture than the usual tidal blade fabrication process, based on an altered design '' we hope the combination of improved design and optimized manufacturing process will contribute to reducing the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of tidal stream energy, with the long term goal of matching LCOE of offshore wind.''

ConclusionRaytheon and DARPA are creating a wireless energy web for the US military. The project will beam energy to an unmanned drone system to relay it to military installations.

As a result, tacticians could provide energy to critical areas whenever and wherever. Moreover, Raytheon said it would likely have civilian applications.

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 13:05

By James Landale Diplomatic correspondent

HMS Trent, an offshore patrol vessel, will take part in exercises off the coast of GuyanaThe UK is preparing to send a warship to Guyana in a show of diplomatic and military support for the former British colony, the BBC has learned.

It comes after neighbouring Venezuela renewed its claim for a disputed part of Guyanese territory that is rich in oil and minerals.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed HMS Trent would take part in joint exercises after Christmas.

Guyana, a Commonwealth member, is South America's only English-speaking nation.

HMS Trent - an offshore patrol vessel - had been deployed to the Caribbean to search for drug smugglers but was re-tasked after Venezuela's government threatened to annex the Essequibo region of Guyana earlier this month.

This raised fears that Venezuela might invade and spark the first interstate war in South America since the Falklands Conflict in 1982.

Venezuela has long claimed ownership of Essequibo, a 61,000 square mile region which comprises about two-thirds of Guyana.

Its hills and jungles are rich in gold, diamonds and bauxite, while huge oil deposits have been found off its coast.

While Guyana's economy is growing fast, Venezuela's is suffering.

Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, staged a referendum on 3 December to assert popular support for his country's claim to Essequibo.

The result was widely challenged and disputed but he nonetheless published new maps and legislation showing Essequibo as part of Venezuela, named a new governor and offered identity cards to those living in the sparsely populated region.

He has also ordered the state oil company to issue extraction licences.

Mr Maduro has subsequently met Guyana's President, Irfaan Ali, and agreed not to use force, but he has maintained his territorial claim and both sides are still at odds over how the border dispute could be settled legally.

This week the Lloyd's insurance market in London added Guyana to its list of riskiest shipping zones.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told the BBC: "HMS Trent will visit regional ally and Commonwealth partner Guyana later this month as part of a series of engagements in the region during her Atlantic Patrol Task deployment."

Brazil deploys troops to Venezuela borderVenezuela accuses opposition politicians of treason over EssequiboEssequibo dispute: Venezuela and Guyana agree not to use forceHMS Trent has a crew of 65, a top speed of 24 knots and a range of 5,000 nautical miles.

It is armed with 30mm cannon and a contingent of Royal Marines. It can also deploy Merlin helicopters and unmanned aircraft.

HMS Trent left its home port of Gibraltar in early December and is currently alongside in Bridgetown, Barbados for Christmas.

The warship is expected to anchor off the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, and conduct visits, joint activities and training with the country's navy and other allies. It cannot go alongside because the port is too shallow.

The vessel is mainly used for tackling piracy and smuggling, protecting fisheries, counterterrorism, providing humanitarian aid, and search and rescue operations, but the Royal Navy says it is also designed for border patrols and defence diplomacy.

The decision to send HMS Trent to Guyana is part of a growing UK effort to show international diplomatic support for Guyana.

Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana (left), and Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro have agreed not to use force but tensions remainThis week the Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the UK would "continue to work with partners in the region to ensure the territorial integrity of Guyana is upheld and prevent escalation".

David Rutley, the Foreign Office Minister for the Americas, visited Georgetown on 18 December, the first G7 representative to do so since Venezuela renewed its claim.

He promised Guyana the UK's "unequivocal backing" and welcomed Venezuela's promise to avoid using force.

Mr Rutley continued: "The border issue has been settled for over 120 years. Sovereign borders must be respected wherever they are in the world.

"The UK will continue to work with partners in the region, as well as through international bodies, to ensure the territorial integrity of Guyana is upheld."

Venezuela's Foreign Minister, Yvan Gil, criticised the visit, accusing the UK of destabilising the region.

In a post on X - formerly Twitter - he said: "The former invading and enslaving empire, which illegally occupied the territory of Guayana Esequiba and acted in a skilful and sneaky manner against the interests of Venezuela, insists on intervening in a territorial controversy that they themselves generated."

Venezuela disputes the border which was established under an international agreement in 1899.

Guyana was formerly known as British Guiana before it secured its independence in 1966.

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 12:35

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Archived Version

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 12:25

"Pseudo-legitimate" travel agencies are emerging in Senegal and offering migrants a "complete package" to get to the United States' southern border, where millions have tried to get into the U.S. illegally, officials said this week.

A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official told Fox News that the agencies are emerging in cities like Dakar, Senegal's capital, and offer free travel to Europe to Senegalese nationals.

Those agencies offer visa-free travel to Europe, which then allows them to move from there to the Western Hemisphere, where they can travel to the U.S. and either try to get in at a port of entry using the CBP One app '' where 1,600 are let in each day '' or enter illegally between ports of entry in hope of being released into the U.S. with a court date in the distant future.

MIGRANT CRISIS INCREASING STRAIN ON BORDER OFFICIALS, IMMIGRATION COURTS WITH MASSIVE NUMBERS

In an aerial view, thousands of immigrants, most wearing thermal blankets, await processing at a U.S. Border Patrol transit center on December 19, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. ((Photo by John Moore/Getty Images))

"They sell complete packages to connect them to a smuggling organization that will then facilitate their movement up to the border," the official said.

CBP said it is working with partners throughout the hemisphere and across the globe to make sure they are encouraging people's ability to access protections, while also taking action to prevent those seeking to exploit different travel mechanisms.

The Senegalese travel agencies offer a glimpse of the global nature of the migrant crisis and how migrants from across the globe are being pulled to the U.S.-Mexico border. Beyond countries in the Western Hemisphere, U.S authorities have encountered migrants from over 150 countries coming to the border hoping to be processed and released into the interior.

Meanwhile, the traffic at the border is not slowing down. On Friday CBP announced that there were 242,418 migrant encounters at the southern border in November, including migrant encounters at ports of entry and illegal immigrant encounters by Border Patrol between ports of entry. That is the highest November on record and the third-highest month of the crisis so far.

NOVEMBER SAW NEARLY QUARTER OF A MILLION MIGRANT ENCOUNTERS AMID NEW BORDER SURGE

Announcing the November numbers, acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said that the agency is facing a "serious challenge" and that it and federal partners need more resources from Congress as requested in the supplemental funding request.

Meanwhile, new data released this week from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University showed that the immigration court backlog now stands at over three million.

Sources have also told Fox News that Border Patrol has released more than 386,000 illegal immigrants into the U.S. with Notices to Appear since October.

MIGRANT ENCOUNTERS AT BORDER SOAR PAST THE 200K MARK IN DECEMBER, WITH OVER A WEEK STILL TO GO

Republicans have criticized the administration for releasing migrants into the interior and have called for greater restrictions on asylum and the use of humanitarian parole by the administration. The administration has said it is dealing with a hemisphere-wide crisis and needs more funding and comprehensive immigration reform to reduce backlogs and fix a "broken" system.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

There are ongoing negotiations in Washington about the Biden administration's request for supplemental funding '' including $14 billion for border funding. But Republicans have demanded more asylum restrictions, something that some Democrats have called on the Biden administration to reject.

While there had been hope of securing a deal before the end of the year, lawmakers have said this week that there won't be a deal until January at the earliest.

Fox News' Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.

Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, primarily covering immigration and border security.

He can be reached at adam.shaw2@fox.com or on Twitter.

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Sat, 23 Dec 2023 18:51

How Russia Flouts Tech Bans Attacks on Ships in Red Sea The Enormous Debt Problem A Warning From the World Bank U.S. World Business Arts Lifestyle Opinion Audio Games Cooking Wirecutter The Athletic How Russia Flouts Tech Bans Attacks on Ships in Red Sea The Enormous Debt Problem A Warning From the World Bank Javier Milei warned that things would get worse before they got better. Now Argentines are living it.

Protesters at Plaza de Mayo Square on Wednesday in Buenos Aires during the first demonstration against the new government of President Javier Milei. Credit... Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images By Daniel Politi and Luc­a Cholakian Herrera

Reporting from Buenos Aires

Dec. 23, 2023, 5:04 a.m. ET

Over the past two weeks, the owner of a hip wine bar in Buenos Aires saw the price of beef soar 73 percent, while the zucchini he puts in salads rose 140 percent. An Uber driver paid 60 percent more to fill her tank. And a father said he spent twice as much on diapers for his toddler than he did last month.

In Argentina, a country synonymous with galloping inflation, people are used to paying more for just about everything. But under the country's new president, life is quickly becoming even more painful.

When Javier Milei was elected president on Nov. 19, the country was already suffering under the world's third-highest rate of inflation, with prices up 160 percent from a year before.

But since Mr. Milei took office on Dec. 10 and quickly devalued the Argentine currency, prices have soared at such a dizzying pace that many in this South American country of 46 million are running new calculations on how their businesses or households can survive the far deeper economic crunch the country is already enduring.

''Since Milei won, we've been worried all the time,'' said Fernando Gonzlez Galli, 36, a high school philosophy teacher in Buenos Aires.

Mr. Galli has been trying to cut back without making life worse for his two daughters, who are 6 years and 18 months old, including switching to a cheaper brand of diapers and racing to spend his Argentine pesos before their value disintegrates even further. ''As soon as I get my paycheck, I go buy everything I can,'' he said.

Image Since Javier Milei took office on Dec. 10 and quickly devalued the Argentine currency, prices have risen at a dizzying pace. Credit... Emiliano Lasalvia/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images Nahuel Carbajo, 37, an owner of Naranjo Bar, a trendy Buenos Aires wine bar, said that like most Argentines, he had become accustomed to regular price increases, but this past week went far beyond what even he was used to.

Since Mr. Milei won, the price for the premium steak that Mr. Carbajo serves soared 73 percent, to 14,580 pesos, or roughly $18, per kilogram, about 2.2 pounds; a five-kilogram box of zucchinis rose to 15,600 pesos from 6,500; and avocados cost 51 percent more than the beginning of this month.

''There's no way for salaries or people's incomes to adapt at that speed,'' Mr. Carbajo said.

Mr. Milei's spokesman, Manuel Adorni, said accelerating inflation was the inevitable consequence of finally fixing Argentina's distorted economy.

''We've been left with a multitude of problems and unresolved issues that we have to start addressing,'' he said. ''Inevitably, we will go through months of high inflation.''

Mr. Milei has warned Argentines that his plans to shrink the government and remake the economy would hurt at first. ''I prefer to tell you the uncomfortable truth rather than a comfortable lie,'' he said in his inaugural address, adding this past week that he wanted to end the country's ''model of decline.''

Argentina's economy has been mired in crisis for years, with chronic inflation, rising poverty and a currency that has plunged in value. The economic turmoil paved the way to the presidency for Mr. Milei, a political outsider who had spent years as an economist and television pundit railing against what he called corrupt politicians who had destroyed the economy, often for personal gain.

During the campaign, he vowed to take a chain saw to public spending and regulations, even wielding an actual chain saw at rallies.

After Mr. Milei's victory, price increases began accelerating in expectation of his new policies.

Image Buying fruit and vegetables in Buenos Aires. Argentines suffer under the world's third highest rate of inflation. Credit... Tomas Cuesta/Reuters The previous leftist government had used complicated currency controls, consumer subsidies and other measures to inflate the peso's official value and keep several key prices artificially low, including gas, transportation and electricity.

Mr. Milei vowed to undo all that, and he has wasted little time.

Two days after taking office, Mr. Milei began cutting government spending, including consumer subsidies. He also devalued the peso by 54 percent, putting the government's exchange rate much closer to the market's valuation of the peso.

Economists said such measures were necessary to fix Argentina's long-term financial problems. But they also brought short-term pain in the form of even faster inflation. Some analysts questioned the lack of adequate safety nets for the poorest Argentines.

In November, prices rose 13 percent from October, according to government data. Analysts predict prices will increase another 25 percent to 30 percent this month. And from now until February, some economists are forecasting an 80 percent jump, according to Santiago Manoukian, the chief economist at Ecolatina, an economics consulting firm.

The forecasts are partly caused by soaring gas prices, which increased 60 percent from Dec. 7 to Dec. 13, and have a trickle-down effect on the economy.

The currency devaluation made imported products like coffee, electronic devices and gas immediately more expensive because they are priced in U.S. dollars. A monthly Netflix subscription in Argentina jumped 60 percent to 6,676 pesos, or $8.30, the day after the devaluation, for example. It also prompted some domestic producers, including farmers and cattle ranchers, to increase prices to align them with their own rising costs.

With the chronic high inflation, labor unions often negotiate large raises to try to keep up, yet those wage increases are quickly eaten up by sharp price hikes. Informal workers, a list that includes nannies and street vendors, and who make up nearly half of the economy, also do not get such raises.

Image Outside a clothing store this month in Buenos Aires. In November, prices rose 13 percent from October, and analysts predict that prices will increase another 25 percent to 30 percent this month. Credit... Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images On Wednesday, Mr. Milei launched his next big steps to remake the government and economy with an emergency decree that significantly reduces the state's role in the economy and eliminates a raft of regulations.

The measure prohibits the state from regulating the rental real estate market and setting limits on fees that banks and health insurers can charge customers; changes labor laws to make it easier to fire workers while also placing limits on strikes; and turns state companies into corporations so they can be privatized.

Many legal analysts immediately questioned the decree's constitutionality, saying that Mr. Milei was trying to subvert Congress.

After the speech, people across Buenos Aires, like Jesusa Orfelia Peralta, 73, a retiree, took to the streets banging on pots to show their displeasure.

She worried that price increases would make proper health care too expensive for her and her husband. Despite severe spinal problems, she said she did not hesitate to head out, using a walker, and vent her anger in public. ''Where else would I be?'' she said.

Image A protest on Wednesday in Buenos Aires against Mr. Milei's austerity measures. Credit... Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images Mr. Milei has sought to discourage protests by threatening to cancel welfare plans and fine anyone involved in demonstrations that block roads. Human rights groups have widely criticized such policies as restricting the right to peacefully protest.

For now, most Argentines are trying to figure out how to make ends meet in what often feels like both a complicated course in economics and a frenzied sprint to buy before prices rise again.

''I always say that we are at university, and every day we sit for a difficult exam, every five minutes,'' Roberto Nicols Orme±o, an owner of El Gauchito, a small empanada shop in downtown Buenos Aires.

Mr. Orme±o said he had been scouring the market for his ingredients and changing suppliers almost every week, either because they increase prices too much or provide poorer quality products.

He is trying to avoid passing along too much of his price increases to customers, though he is unsure how long he can sustain that. ''I see my frequent customers buying one dozen instead of two'' dozen empanadas, he said.

Marisol del Valle Cardozo, who has a 3-year-old daughter, has been cutting back in a bid to make ends meet, turning to cheaper brands and going out less. ''We don't turn the air-conditioning on as much,'' she said. ''We decreased our plans on weekends from four times a month to just once.''

Ms. Cardozo, who works for a police department outside Buenos Aires, said that she got a raise this year, but that it is already not enough. She also drives an Uber, but said that fare increases had not kept up with the soaring gas prices.

Despite the challenges, Ms. Cardozo said she remained a Milei supporter and was hoping his policies work.

''We were living under a fantasy,'' she said, referring to gas prices before the recent hike. ''If these adjustments are necessary to thrive in the end, they're worth it.''

Image Protesters in front of the National Congress on Thursday in Buenos Aires. Credit... Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images Jack Nicas contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

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Sat, 23 Dec 2023 18:46

Photos Maps Crossing the Dnipro River Russia's Convict Soldiers How China is Profiting U.S. World Business Arts Lifestyle Opinion Audio Games Cooking Wirecutter The Athletic Photos Maps Crossing the Dnipro River Russia's Convict Soldiers How China is Profiting The Ukrainian authorities said they had uncovered a scheme for the purchase of artillery shells at inflated prices, amid a wider effort to tackle wartime corruption.

Ukrainian soldiers targeting Russian positions this month across the Dnipro River, in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine. Credit... Mauricio Lima for The New York Times Dec. 23, 2023, 7:55 a.m. ET

The Ukrainian police have arrested a senior Defense Ministry official on suspicions that he embezzled nearly $40 million as part of a fraudulent purchase of artillery shells for Ukraine's military.

The Ukrainian authorities have been working to clean up the ministry since reports of graft and financial mismanagement led to the removal in September of the minister at the time. Ukraine's security service announced the arrest of the senior official, whose name was not released, on Friday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has also made tackling corruption one of his key wartime goals, not only to reassure Ukraine's Western allies that their billions of dollars in aid are not being siphoned off, but also to ensure an efficient allocation of resources as the country's military runs short on weapons and ammunition in its fight to fend off Russia's forces.

Ukrainian soldiers and commanders have said in recent days that their dearth of artillery shells has led them to scale back some military operations and has weakened Ukraine's ability to withstand relentless Russian attacks.

''We can no longer move forward when we have nothing left to shoot,'' Yehor Chernev, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament's committee on national security, defense and intelligence, said in an interview on Friday.

In the case announced on Friday, Ukrainian prosecutors said in a statement that the Defense Ministry official had developed a system to buy artillery shells at inflated prices.

In December 2022, they said, the official signed an agreement with a manufacturer for the purchase of a batch of artillery shells. The contract was later abandoned when a procurement agency recently created by the ministry struck a new deal with the same manufacturer that reduced costs by 30 percent and significantly shortened delivery time by eliminating a foreign intermediary.

But prosecutors say that the official nonetheless extended the previous contract and transferred nearly 1.5 billion Ukrainian hryvnias, about $40 million, to the foreign intermediary company. The Ukrainian authorities said that the shells had not yet been delivered and that the ministry was working to recover the money.

A pretrial investigation has been opened against the official, who has been removed from his duties, according to Ukraine's security service. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.

This is not the first corruption scandal to affect Ukraine during the war. Last winter, two Defense Ministry officials were arrested over reports of the purchase of overpriced eggs for the army.

Faced with mounting pressure to deal with the misspending, Mr. Zelensky replaced his defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, in September, although Mr. Reznikov was not personally implicated in the accusations of mismanaged contracts. The Ukrainian president also fired the heads of military recruitment offices in August amid accusations that some had taken bribes from people seeking to avoid military service.

So far, the revelations of mismanagement have not directly affected the foreign military and financial aid sent to Ukraine. But they have fueled arguments of some American lawmakers who have balked at sustaining assistance for Ukraine and demanded tight accountability for every delivery. Congress declined again this past week to pass a $50 billion security package for Ukraine, pushing back negotiations to next year.

Ukrainian officials maintain that their persistence in pursuing investigations into accusations of mismanagement and embezzlement shows their willingness to tackle corruption, even in the difficult circumstances of war.

''This is an extremely important case where anticorruption mechanisms, the Ministry of Defense, worked,'' Illarion Pavliuk, a ministry spokesman, said on national television.

Tackling corruption has also become a crucial issue as Ukraine moves forward with its application to join the European Union. The bloc's leaders officially opened accession negotiations this month, and they have stressed the need to pursue efforts to strengthen anticorruption mechanisms.

Fighting corruption was one of seven criteria that the European Commission outlined last year as a prerequisite to opening accession negotiations, which could last a decade or more. In its latest assessment of Ukraine's progress, the commission said that Kyiv should ''continue building a credible track record of investigations, prosecutions and final court decisions in high-level corruption cases.''

On taking office in September, Ukraine's new defense minister, Rustem Umerov, told the country's Parliament that there would be ''zero tolerance for corruption'' in his administration.

''Every stolen hryvnia costs the life and safety of our soldiers,'' he said.

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Sat, 23 Dec 2023 18:39

Investing in everything from speakeasys to nuclear fusion, the Silicon Valley wunderkind, dealing-making prodigy is full of contradictions

December 23, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

(Washington Post illustration; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) (Washington Post illustration; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Several weeks before he was ousted as CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman called up his longtime mentor, billionaire Peter Thiel, to talk about how to overcome one of the biggest challenges for his company. To meet soaring demand for ChatGPT's ever-expanding capabilities and make the huge profits Altman envisioned, OpenAI needed massive computer firepower.

Altman confided to Thiel that he was looking to create a chips company, a massively expensive undertaking due to the cost of manufacturing. To raise the capital, he would travel to the Middle East, including Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia and possibly tap his powerful Silicon Valley network, including Thiel's Founders Fund and Vinod Khosla, both backers of OpenAI.

Altman had spent much of 2023 wooing Congress and the tech media, seeking to show how careful his company was being about protecting against the risks of AI. He'd told them about how he held almost no stock in OpenAI, how he wanted to make the process of regulating AI more democratic, and how his company's unique structure secured AI systems in the hands of nonprofit directors. But now, here he was chatting up investors in the Middle East with ties to authoritarian regimes, spinning up a deal with the same boundary-pushing ambition that Altman had perfected in a career brimming with contradictions.

From his teens into his 30s, Altman, the college dropout, dealmaking prodigy and investing wiz behind ChatGPT, has seemed to leap from one success to another. He won the attention and dollars of Silicon Valley's elites, who were impressed by the ambitious and savvy Stanford sophomore's likely ascent to greater things. He rose to the top of the Valley's most influential incubator of start-ups at age 26. Industry stars such as Thiel, Khosla, and Paul Graham saw in Altman a magnetic figure who could expand the tech sector's approach across the world.

His ouster from the AI start-up, the groundswell of support for his restoration, and his quick return to his perch as CEO lifted him to a new level of fame, cementing his place in the small canon of the tech world's household names.

''We believe Sam is the best leader for OpenAI,'' said OpenAI spokeswoman Hannah Wong. ''The strong support from his team underscores that he is an effective CEO who is open to different points of view, willing to tackle complex challenges, and who demonstrates care for his team.'' Through a spokeswoman, Altman declined to be interviewed.

Yet Altman's tumble last month over his leadership of OpenAI, coming on the heels of the global surge of fear and excitement over the powers and pitfalls of the company's ChatGPT chatbot, did not come out of nowhere. Altman's critics have long harbored questions about his management style and motives.

OpenAI's board was briefed on Altman's efforts to raise funds for a chips venture in the Middle East, according to four people familiar with the fundraising drive. It was unrelated to the decision to fire Altman, two of the people said. Still, it was hard to figure out ''what angle he's working in a given situation,'' one of the people said.

OpenAI leaders warned of abusive behavior before Sam Altman's ouster

In a Silicon Valley milieu in which shooting star companies often give birth to cults of personality around firms' founders, Altman has stood out. An investor with a dizzying array of interests, Altman might lack the singular focus of a Steve Jobs '-- or the sophisticated technical skills to create the products he sells '-- but according to fans and rivals, he has had since an early age an uncanny entrepreneurial energy and a force of will that inspires others to do their creative best.

This article is based on more than two dozen interviews with current and former colleagues, competitors, friends of Altman and others in the industry, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personal relationships or business dealings conducted in confidence.

To some, Altman could be awkward and even antisocial. Even when he throws a party, ''he retreats into his room pretty quickly. He has a timer or social clock where he needs to stop socializing,'' said investor Lachy Groom, a close friend. ''He's not a schmoozer.''

Another close friend, investor Keith Rabois, recalled how when he first met Altman, he spent their first hangout glued to two different phones.

Yet last spring, at a closed dinner with about 60 members of Congress, Altman alternately wowed the politicians with talk about the potential of AI, captivating them with a demonstration of how quickly ChatGPT could spin up a floor speech, and implored them to impose guardrails on the technology he himself had unleashed. AI, Altman revealed, was a supremely useful tool, not a creepy creature of science fiction.

CEO behind ChatGPT warns Congress AI could cause 'harm to the world'

Altman was, the members of Congress later said, unflappable, confident, comforting.

''I've never met anyone as smart as Sam,'' said Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who spent extensive time with Altman in Sun Valley, Idaho, last summer. ''He's an introvert and shy and humble, and all of those are things that are not normal for people on the Hill. But he's very good at forming relationships with people on the Hill and he can help folks in government understand AI.''

Around the world, Altman's manner seemed to assure everyone from national leaders to a 15-year-old high school student in Toronto who had been diagnosed with cancer and asked Altman for help with his research in 2021. ''It's very scary when a new, ambitious tech company comes out and says, 'We're going to build God, and we're going make sure that it benefits all of humanity,''' said Arnav Shah, who become pen-pals with the mogul. ''But I'm 100 percent certain that if anyone is going to build this thing..., it should be him. I literally cannot think of someone that I would trust more that has more pure intentions.''

His uncanny sense of the next big thing has led him to back hundreds of start-ups including a new utopian city, longevity and nuclear fusion ventures and Vita Brevis, a San Francisco speakeasy focused on art. He meshed with a brand of Silicon Valley investor who some see as proto-philosopher-kings, influential figures expected to have a take on the economy, world politics, and the shape of the future. Altman is given to grand statements about politics (''Democracy only works in a growing economy'') and even considered a run for California governor after Donald Trump was elected president.

Altman has courted these comparisons. ''You also want to be an exponential curve yourself '-- you should aim for your life to follow an ever-increasing up-and-to-the-right trajectory,'' he wrote in a blog post titled ''How to Be Successful'' in 2019.

But in recent weeks, following the internal drama at OpenAI, friends say Altman's unusual ability to tolerate extraordinary doses of stress seemed to waver.

Altman has presented himself as an avatar of altruism, but his AI venture has run into crosscurrents of concern about the technology's potential impact on the world's economy and human lives.

The larger-than-life characters who become celebrity CEOs in Silicon Valley are sometimes tech wizards and sometimes hard-driving business builders, but always the focus of intense debates about their goals, motives and methods. In Altman's case, his employees, competitors, admirers and critics argue over his sometimes-cavalier attitude toward others (he says he's not interested in ''most people'') and his contradictory positions on AI (he warned against the technology's role in fueling disinformation and erasing jobs, then pushed out ChatGPT knowing it was not protected against errors and offensive statements.)

''Sam is the only person I've ever known who, where there's a one-percent chance of a trillion dollar outcome, that's something to be leaned into,'' said a person who worked closely with Altman.

''The entire venture industry would run to the hills if you told them you should invest in this thing that is going to cost a ton of money and only has a one-percent chance of succeeding. But Sam would be like, 'Interesting '-- how big can it be?'''

For almost a decade, Altman, 38, has been one of the tech world's foremost fireballs of investment energy. He won devotion '-- and dollars '-- from prominent investors, including his key early mentors, Thiel and Paul Graham, a founder of Y-Combinator, the tech start-up incubator that Altman would come to run.

''You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in five years and he'd be the king,'' Graham wrote in 2008. ''Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising start-ups. On questions of design, I ask 'What would Steve do?' but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask, 'What would Sama do?''' He referred to Altman by his nickname, which is also his handle on Twitter and the tech forum Hacker News.

When Altman was in college, Graham said, within three minutes of meeting him, ''I remember thinking 'Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.'' What Graham saw was not a deep knowledge of technology but rather ''toughness, adaptability, determination.'... Those are the qualities you need to win.''

Altman first came to the attention of the Valley's most prominent investors when his start-up, Loopt, won support from Y-Combinator. Loopt, which he developed with his boyfriend, Nick Sivo, at Stanford, let smartphone users find and meet nearby people and preceded a booming market for using phones' location data.

Getting funded by Y-Combinator '-- in a first batch of investments that included the social media giant Reddit '-- ended up being more important than Loopt's own future. The company was never particularly successful, though Rabois noted that Altman successfully brokered deals for Loopt with all the major telecom companies '-- an early sign of his knack for selling ideas to powerful people.

At 19, Altman ''seemed like he had a 40-year-old inside him,'' wrote Graham, a founder of the incubator. ''There are other 19-year-olds who are 12 inside.'' Altman would never resort to an ''I'm just a kid'' defense when challenged by his elders, Graham said; rather, his response to ''That's a stupid idea'' was ''simply to look the other person in the eye and say 'Really? Why do you think so?'''

His most vital supporter was Thiel, the most high-profile gay man in Silicon Valley and Altman's adviser and friend at least since he sold Loopt to the prepaid card company Green Dot for $43 million in 2012.

Soon after the sale, which Altman has described as disappointing (his take was $5 million). He raised $21 million '-- mostly from Thiel '-- to start his own venture capital fund, called Hydrazine Capital, with his brother Jack, who lived with Sam in his four-bedroom house on Dorland Street in San Francisco's Mission District.

He became a part-time partner at Y-Combinator and then, in 2014, its president, shocking some of his peers.

Altman's bond with Thiel blossomed: He helped Thiel's venture firm, Founder's Fund, get access to hot start-ups, and the men sometimes traveled together to speak at events.

''It's not just a friendship, like going around playing golf,'' said a person familiar with the relationship. ''It's something much deeper than that. Sam has to be one of the two or three people closest to Peter.'' The person said the Thiel-Altman tie had only one parallel: Thiel's close bond with another young man whose star quickly ascended in Silicon Valley: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Thiel declined to comment.

People who know the men say Thiel's style and approach to business appears to have shaped Altman. For example, Altman has been criticized for running OpenAI like a monopoly, undermining open source technology and pushing smaller companies to launch products through its platform '-- a strategy Thiel outlined in his book ''Zero to One.''

Thiel has long seeded up-and-coming mentees with capital and access to his powerful network. Altman has adopted the same tactic: He'd connect people for future jobs and deals with one-line emails that say simply, ''Meet,'' according to another person who has worked with him.

Both men are private but consummate networkers, known for opening their many homes and throwing parties. Thiel's holiday parties in Los Angeles and Miami are top-shelf events for Silicon Valley's elite. Guests who have attended gatherings at Altman's San Francisco house '-- he also owns homes in Hawaii and Napa Valley '-- described it as warm, with candles and friends offering blankets to curl up in, a welcome contrast with Altman's sometimes awkward manner.

People who know Altman from his Y-Combinator days say that while some start-ups felt ignored by him, the young investor paid attention to the people and companies who mattered most: ''His greatest gift was making the two most important people in his life happy: Paul Graham and Peter Thiel,'' said one of the people.

''I've had this conversation about what makes Sama special a hundred times,'' said a venture-backed start-up founder who travels in similar circles. ''He's really good at the whole mafia thing. It's almost like a secret society. There's a reason why so many presidents come from Yale's Skull and Bones.''

The close friend agreed that Altman's ability to convene useful people is key to his success. ''He's just cultivated such good, candid relationships that he can use them to make magic,'' the friend said. ''People have been real advocates for him when he was unproven, and to some degree he is paying that forward.''

Altman is renowned for his loyalty to those he cares about. A janitor from his time at Loopt still works for Altman. Altman does not have regularly scheduled meetings, but responds to messages instantly, according to his personal coach, Matt Mochary. ''People inside the company get unblocked instantly and people outside the company feel totally loved'' he said on a podcast. ''He does this to people who are in his circle of 'I want you to feel loved.'''

At Y-Combinator, Altman went virtually overnight from a well-connected wunderkind to one of the best-known figures in Silicon Valley. As he transformed the incubator from scrappy start-up bootcamp into an investment powerhouse with tentacles in distant places and fields, it in turn made him a star.

''Once he took over YC,'' a colleague said, ''he felt like he could get a meeting with anyone.''

Altman started putting his own spin on things immediately. Less than a month after Graham named him successor, Altman put out the call for wildly ambitious founders building start-ups around breakthrough technologies, invoking Musk's SpaceX and Tesla as examples. He listed areas like energy, AI, transportation and housing, internet infrastructure and education as of interest. ''Now small start-ups can do what used to take the resources of nations,'' Altman enthused on his personal blog.

''There was a profound change in the companies YC admitted after Sam became leader,'' one of the people who worked with Altman said. ''He used Y-Combinator as a platform to do other things, and the seeds of his demise were also there.''

Multiple people described Altman as a hands-off manager who picked potential winners and gave those people great autonomy so he could move on to his other interests. Even at OpenAI, Altman ''sees himself more like an investor than a typical CEO,'' said another close friend.

This style led Altman being asked to leave his role at Y-Combinator, according to four people familiar with Altman's work there. Some perceived him as aloof and absent. He told people what they wanted to hear, said three of the people. Other leaders resented Altman ''hogging credit'' for building successful start-ups, the colleagues said.

Colleagues came to see Altman as off doing his own thing at OpenAI and investing in Y-Combinator companies with his own personal fund, Hydrazine. Grumbling emerged that he was reaping enormous personal profits without building and advising those companies. (Other partners also invested in YC companies on the side, according to two of the people.)

In 2019, that sentiment led to Graham flying into San Francisco from Britain, where he was living in semi-retirement after having children. People at Y-Combinator hadn't seen Graham in years. Graham convened a short meeting with company leaders. Then Altman was asked to leave the room. Graham explained that Altman would not be returning to YC as president.

Five years after Altman took over the influential incubator, Graham said he had had no idea that Altman had been spending so little time nurturing start-ups at the organization and so much energy tending to his own projects, the people said.

Graham and his wife were ''his biggest fans and his enablers,'' said one of the people describing their relationship at the time. Then ''they flipped.''

In an email to The Post, Graham said his wife, Jessica Livingston, a Y-Combinator founding partner, had encouraged Altman to step aside before his own visit to San Francisco, after the couple learned that he was going to be CEO of OpenAI's new for-profit arm.

''Since he agreed immediately, it would be misleading to use the word ''fired'' to describe this,'' he wrote. He did not respond to follow-up questions.

Altman's polarizing past hints at OpenAI board's reason for firing him

A story Altman told about himself at a Y-Combinator event symbolized his bold style: Trying to win a big client, Altman flew to the company's headquarters and sat in their lobby all day until they agreed to see him, according to someone who heard Altman tell the story. After several meetings, the leaders said they wanted to visit Altman's offices. At the time, Altman's firm consisted of only five people, so he hired some college friends to make his business look bigger. He said the scheme worked and he got the contract.

Altman's tactics generate plenty of debate in the Valley. Friends say he seems to work without stress, ever busy, ever on the phone. Yet others point to the same personality traits and see a salesman who knew few limits.

''Ambition isn't quite the right word to describe Sam,'' said Groom, the close friend. ''It's something more like an inclination to say 'Why not think bigger?' AI companies might say, let's try to raise 10 billion. Sam says, let's do 100 billion '-- and there's kind of a casualness about it. He has sort of an unbounded way of thinking.''

He learned to program when he was 8. He told his brother when they played board games as children that ''I have to win and I'm in charge of everything.''

Son of a real estate developer and a dermatologist, he dropped out of college to start a business. He grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis and inherited an outsider sensibility that Thiel attributed to his Jewish identity, describing Altman's belief system to The New Yorker as ''things can always go deeply wrong and that there's no single place in the world where you're deeply at home.''

He drives himself hard, accumulating roughly 18 pounds of muscle mass in a single year.

''I started off my career in life as a very anxious, high-strung person,'' Altman told the Art of Accomplishment podcast last year. It left him, he said, ''somewhat miserable..., tremendously less effective and a much worse leader.'' Then he discovered meditation '-- his younger sister Annie, who has since cut off contact with her family, said she told Sam and her other brothers about the practice and they teased her about it, so years later, she said she was startled to find Sam had taken it on. More recently, though, Sam said on the podcast, he has mostly stopped meditating, partly because he doesn't want to lose his motivation to work.

He and Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and owner of what used to be Twitter, created OpenAI as a nonprofit with the aim of warning and protecting the world against a technology Musk believed could wipe out humanity by accident. Altman appeared to agree: ''Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity,'' he wrote on his personal blog before the company's launch in 2015, adding that it ''does not have to be the inherently evil sci-fi version to kill us all.'' But the technology's promise was too brilliant to pass up. It just needed the right regulation, and he wanted to set up a global governing board to erect boundaries for the tool's use.

His sister Annie said around that time her brother was more fixated on human threats, like famine or riots that could trigger violence. ''People have small motivation to steal when they have housing and food,'' she recalled telling him after he'd made a big purchase of guns and gold.

By the time the company launched, Altman's rhetoric on AI risk seemed to become more modulated.

Some of Altman's other political initiatives have remained stuck at the experimental stage. Sometimes described as a centrist Democrat, Altman from early on took public stands against Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid, calling Trump ''abusive, erratic, and prone to fits of rage,'' as well as ''unfit to be president.'' But Altman also credited Trump with being ''right about some big things'' and rebuffed calls from some tech workers for him to spurn his friend Thiel, who had become an outspoken advocate for Trump.

Why Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel turned against Trump

Some tech workers accused Altman of trying to co-opt their political movement rather than mounting any enduring effort to push back against Trump. Early in his presidency, when Trump threatened to create a registry of Muslims in the United States, many liberal tech workers signed a ''Never Again'' pledge, vowing not to build such a directory. Altman responded by calling an off-the-record meeting in which employees were asked to write down ideas for ''Tech Worker Values,'' but the initiative faded away.

That same year, Altman launched an experiment to provide a Universal Basic Income '-- enough money to live on, he said '-- to a sample group in Oakland, Calif., to see if a cash giveaway might substitute for the traditional work that AI could eliminate. ''As technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we're going to see some version of this at a national scale,'' Altman wrote. ''So it would be good to answer some of the theoretical questions now. Do people sit around and play video games, or do they create new things? Are people happy and fulfilled?''

Altman increasingly argued that ''AI could lead to resource abundance,'' meaning it could eliminate massive numbers of jobs and concentrate resources in the hands of a few, said Matt Krisiloff, a friend and former colleague of Altman's who spearheaded the universal income project and now heads a fertility start-up that Altman invested in. ''He has a belief that if one day an AI can really operate as a human '-- and you have factories producing robots that can do infrastructure work or farming...,'' it will be ''very important to figure out how those resources get distributed fairly for everyone to benefit.''

Altman said a guaranteed income would ''make real progress towards eliminating poverty.'' He proposed to give 100 families in Oakland $1,500 a month. When the experiment began in 2020, the terms had changed: 1,000 people were to get $1,000 a month, and a control group of 2,000 people would get $50 a month and the location had moved.

The experiment, which Altman started with $10 million, is ongoing with results expected in 2024, said Elizabeth Rhodes, research director of OpenResearch, an Altman-funded operation. Altman has not given up on the idea and has agreed not to talk about it while the experiment is ongoing.

''I would bet anything he had no idea what he was getting himself into,'' Rhodes said. ''He was probably thinking of self-funding a smaller thing.'... In Silicon Valley there are a lot of short attention spans, but he's stayed consistent.''

A founder 'who can bend reality'

The consistency broke, according to some friends and critics of Altman, when he released ChatGPT, triggering the kind of corporate arms race OpenAI was founded to prevent.

Still, the controversy at OpenAI that led to Altman's firing and rehiring last month turned not so much on the existential question of how dangerous artificial intelligence will be, but on who would control the path forward for the world's leading AI company '-- a battle that has caused schisms inside the start-up for years.

Big Tech was moving cautiously on AI. Then came ChatGPT.

Altman and Musk founded OpenAI in 2015 in part because they were worried that Google had acquired DeepMind, an AI pioneer, and seemed to be hurtling towards dominance. OpenAI recruited some of DeepMind's talent, setting the company up as a nonprofit that they said would work for humanity's benefit rather than financial returns.

Altman eventually took control of OpenAI after a dramatic upheaval triggered by Musk. Musk, according to two people familiar with the internal discussions, was frustrated by the lack of progress and proposed to cut half of OpenAI's staff '-- a move Altman rejected. Altman, by contrast, believed OpenAI desperately needed more money to amp up its computer power and compete for talent with tech giants. Altman's solution was to transform the company into a for-profit enterprise, though it would still be governed by a nonprofit board. The shift helped Altman secure a $1 billion investment from Microsoft.

Altman played a central role in selecting board members, said a person familiar with the board's dealings. ''Either they were his friends or they were people who can never go up against Sam without being destroyed,'' the person said.

The transition to a for-profit masked internal tensions. Executives complained, to one another and openly, about Altman's management style, calling it manipulative. ''He will figure out what you want to hear,'' one said. ''It gets rid of the problem, but turns out to not be lasting in any way.''

Seeking to ease the friction, Altman brought in his coach, Mochary, in 2018, but employees worried he was reporting private conversations back to the CEO, according to two people familiar with the environment

Similar concerns led to the board's decision in 2023, according to three people familiar with the proceedings. The Washington Post reported that a board review of Altman's behavior was triggered by complaints of senior leaders alleging manipulative behavior and retaliation.

In the end, Altman's reputation has only been burnished by his temporary downfall.

''I don't think he is a bully,'' said Khosla, who declined to comment on the chip venture. ''He just asks hard questions, and sometimes people are threatened by it.''

''He's the kind of founder that can bend reality,'' said Hemant Taneja, a friend of Altman and managing director of the venture capital firm General Catalyst, adding that Altman had invited him to invest in OpenAI but that he declined because he couldn't understand the company's complex structure. ''By creating the fastest and most popular consumer application of generative AI, he showed us the art of the possible'.... This is the first technology where every CEO of every company in every industry is now thinking about how to do AI in their business. He made that happen.''

Gerrit de Vynck and Cat Zakrzewski contributed reporting.

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Sat, 23 Dec 2023 18:29

Two lawmakers filed a bill requiring creators of foundation models to disclose sources of training data so copyright holders know their information was taken. The AI Foundation Model Transparency Act '-- filed by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Don Beyer (D-VA) '-- would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish rules for reporting training data transparency.

Companies that make foundation models will be required to report sources of training data and how the data is retained during the inference process, describe the limitations or risks of the model, how the model aligns with NIST's planned AI Risk Management Framework and any other federal standards might be established, and provide information on the computational power used to train and run the model. The bill also says AI developers must report efforts to ''red team'' the model to prevent it from providing ''inaccurate or harmful information'' around medical or health-related questions, biological synthesis, cybersecurity, elections, policing, financial loan decisions, education, employment decisions, public services, and vulnerable populations such as children.

The bill calls out the importance of training data transparency around copyright as several lawsuits have come out against AI companies alleging copyright infringement. It specifically mentions the case of artists against Stability AI, Midjourney, and Deviant Art, (which was largely dismissed in October, according to VentureBeat), and Getty Images' complaint against Stability AI.

''With the increase in public access to artificial intelligence, there has been an increase in lawsuits and public concerns about copyright infringement,'' the bill states. ''Public use of foundation models has led to countless instances of the public being presented with inaccurate, imprecise, or biased information.''

The bill still needs to be assigned to a committee and discussed, and it's unclear if that will happen before the busy election campaign season starts.

Eshoo and Beyer's bill complements the Biden administration's AI executive order, which helps establish reporting standards for AI models. The executive order, however, is not law, so if the AI Foundation Model Transparency Act passes, it will make transparency requirements for training data a federal rule.

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Sat, 23 Dec 2023 18:25

The quantum computer revolution may be further off and more limited than many have been led to believe. That's the message coming from a small but vocal set of prominent skeptics in and around the emerging quantum computing industry.

Quantum computers have been touted as a solution to a wide range of problems, including financial modeling, optimizing logistics, and accelerating machine learning. Some of the more ambitious timelines proposed by quantum computing companies have suggested these machines could be impacting real-world problems in just a handful of years. But there's growing pushback against what many see as unrealistic expectations for the technology.

Meta's LeCun'--Not so fast, qubit Meta's head of AI research Yann LeCun recently made headlines after pouring cold water on the prospect of quantum computers making a meaningful contribution in the near future. Speaking at a media event celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Meta's Fundamental AI Research team he said the technology is ''a fascinating scientific topic,'' but that he was less convinced of ''the possibility of actually fabricating quantum computers that are actually useful.''

While LeCun is not an expert in quantum computing, leading figures in the field are also sounding a note of caution. Oskar Painter, head of quantum hardware for Amazon Web Services, says there is a ''tremendous amount of hype'' in the industry at the minute and ''it can be difficult to filter the optimistic from the completely unrealistic.''

A fundamental challenge for today's quantum computers is that they are very prone to errors. Some have suggested that these so-called ''noisy intermediate-scale quantum'' (NISQ) processors could still be put to useful work. But Painter says there's growing recognition that this is unlikely and quantum error-correction schemes will be key to achieving practical quantum computers.

''We found out over the last 10 years that many things that people have proposed don't work. And then we found some very simple reasons for that.'''--Matthias Troyer, Microsoft

The leading proposal involves spreading information over many physical qubits to create ''logical qubits'' that are more robust, but this could require as many as 1,000 physical qubits for each logical one. Some have suggested that quantum error correction could even be fundamentally impossible, though that is not a mainstream view. Either way, realizing these schemes at the scale and speeds required remains a distant goal, Painter says.

''Given the remaining technical challenges in realizing a fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of running billions of gates over thousands of qubits, it is difficult to put a timeline on it, but I would estimate at least a decade out,'' he says.

Microsoft'--Clarity, please The problem isn't just one of timescales. In May, Matthias Troyer, a technical fellow at Microsoft who leads the company's quantum computing efforts, co-authored a paper in Communications of the ACM suggesting that the number of applications where quantum computers could provide a meaningful advantage was more limited than some might have you believe.

''We found out over the last 10 years that many things that people have proposed don't work,'' he says. ''And then we found some very simple reasons for that.''

The main promise of quantum computing is the ability to solve problems far faster than classical computers, but exactly how much faster varies. There are two applications where quantum algorithms appear to provide an exponential speed up, says Troyer. One is factoring large numbers, which could make it possible to break the public key encryption the internet is built on. The other is simulating quantum systems, which could have applications in chemistry and materials science.

Quantum algorithms have been proposed for a range of other problems including optimization, drug design, and fluid dynamics. But touted speedups don't always pan out'--sometimes amounting to a quadratic gain, meaning the time it takes the quantum algorithm to solve a problem is the square root of the time taken by its classical counterpart.

Troyer says these gains can quickly be wiped out by the massive computational overhead incurred by quantum computers. Operating a qubit is far more complicated than switching a transistor and is therefore orders of magnitude slower. This means that for smaller problems, a classical computer will always be faster, and the point at which the quantum computer gains a lead depends on how quickly the complexity of the classical algorithm scales.

Operating a qubit is far more complicated than switching a transistor and is therefore orders of magnitude slower.

Troyer and his colleagues compared a single Nvidia A100 GPU against a fictional future fault-tolerant quantum computer with 10,000 ''logical qubits'' and gates times much faster than today's devices. Troyer says they found that a quantum algorithm with a quadratic speed up would have to run for centuries, or even millenia, before it could outperform a classical one on problems big enough to be useful.

Another significant barrier is data bandwidth. Qubits' slow operating speeds fundamentally limit the rate at which you can get classical data in and out of a quantum computer. Even in optimistic future scenarios this is likely to be thousands or millions of times slower than classical computers, says Troyer. That means data-intensive applications like machine learning or searching databases are almost certainly out of reach for the foreseeable future.

The conclusion, says Troyer, was that quantum computers will only really shine on small-data problems with exponential speed ups. ''All the rest is beautiful theory, but will not be practical,'' he adds.

The paper didn't make much of an impact in the quantum community, says Troyer, but many of Microsoft customers were grateful to get some clarity on realistic applications for quantum computing. He says they've seen a number of companies downsize or even shutdown their quantum computing teams, including in the finance and life sciences sectors.

Aaronson'--Welcome, skeptics These limitations shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone who has been paying close attention to quantum computing research, says Scott Aaronson, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. ''There are these claims about how quantum computing will revolutionize machine learning and optimization and finance and all these industries, where I think skepticism was always warranted,'' he says. ''If people are just now coming around to that, well then, welcome.''

While he also thinks practical applications are still a long way off, recent progress in the field has actually given him cause for optimism. Earlier this month researchers from quantum computing startup QuEra and Harvard demonstrated that they could use a 280 qubit processor to generate 48 logical qubits''far more than previous experiments have managed. ''This was definitely the biggest experimental advance maybe for several years,'' says Aaronson.

''When you say quantum is going to solve all the world's problems, and then it doesn't, or it doesn't right now, that creates a little bit of a letdown.'''--Yuval Boger, QuEra

Yuval Boger, chief marketing officer at QuEra, is keen to stress that the experiment was a lab demonstration, but he thinks the results have caused some to reassess their timescales for fault-tolerant quantum computing. At the same time though, he says they have also noticed a trend of companies quietly shifting resources away from quantum computing.

This has been driven, in part, by growing interest in AI since the advent of large language models, he says. But he agrees that some in the industry have exaggerated the near-term potential of the technology, and says the hype has been a double-edged sword. ''It helps get investments and get talented people excited to get into the field,'' he says. ''But on the other hand, when you say quantum is going to solve all the world's problems, and then it doesn't, or it doesn't right now, that creates a little bit of a letdown.''

Even in the areas where quantum computers look most promising, the applications could be narrower than initially hoped. In recent years, papers from researchers at scientific software company Schr¶dinger and a multi-institutional team have suggested that only a limited number of problems in quantum chemistry are likely to benefit from quantum speedups.

Merck KGaA'--Lovely accelerator, sometimes It's also important to remember that many companies already have mature and productive quantum chemistry workflows that operate on classical hardware, says Philipp Harbach, global head of group digital innovation at German pharma giant Merck KGaA, in Darmstadt, Germany (not to be confused with the American company Merck).

''In the public, the quantum computer was portrayed as if it would enable something not currently achievable, which is inaccurate,'' he says. ''Primarily, it will accelerate existing processes rather than introducing a completely disruptive new application area. So we are evaluating a difference here.''

Harbach's group has been investigating the relevance of quantum computing to Merck's work for about six years. While NISQ devices may potentially have uses for some certain highly specialized problems, they've concluded that quantum computing will not have a significant impact on industry until fault-tolerance is achieved. Even then, how transformative that impact could be really depends on the specific use case and products a company is working on, says Harbach.

Quantum computers shine at providing accurate solutions to problems that become intractable at larger scales for classical computers. That could be very useful for some applications, such as designing new catalysts, says Harbach. But most of the chemistry problems Merck is interested in involve screening large numbers of candidate molecules very quickly.

''Most problems in quantum chemistry do not scale exponentially, and approximations are sufficient,'' he says. ''They are well behaved problems, you just need to make them faster with increased system size.''

Nonetheless, there can still be cause for optimism, says Microsoft's Troyer. Even if quantum computers can only tackle a limited palette of problems in areas like chemistry and materials science, the impact could still be game-changing. ''We talk about the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, and the Silicon Age, so materials have a huge impact on mankind,'' he says.

The goal of airing some skepticism, Troyer says, is not to diminish interest in the field, but to ensure that researchers are focused on the most promising applications of quantum computing with the greatest chance of impact.

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Fri, 22 Dec 2023 23:02

At the turn of the millennium, when Microsoft still owned 50 percent of MSNBC, and before Fox News cemented itself as ratings leader post-9/11, CNN was cable news king.

Sure, the broadcast networks still had vast audiences, but the economics of CNN were vastly superior, with its lucrative and enduring cable carriage fees (it turns out that 2000 was just about the peak of pay TV, with around 100 million homes paying for cable or satellite), and its robust advertising business.

CNN's unparalleled strengths: Its vast newsgathering resources, its ubiquity on TV sets in the U.S. and around the world, and its sterling reputation among consumers, led to an idea at the time that intrigued executives at Viacom, which had acquired CBS in 1999: A merger of CNN and CBS News.

The idea, according to an executive involved in the talks at the time, would have seen CNN effectively take over CBS News. Sure, CBS News programs like 60 Minutes and the CBS Evening News would still air, but the expensive newsgathering and behind-the-scenes operations could be handled by CNN, which was already operating around the world.

That plan did not go over well inside CBS News, as then-marquee anchor Dan Rather once remarked to The Hollywood Reporter back in 2001 when the notion was bandied about. But the cost synergies were real: three years earlier, when a CBS-CNN tie-up was earlier reported in 1998, Wall Street analysts suggested that $200 million in savings a year could be realized from a pact.

Or, as then-Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told investors in 2010, when rumors of yet another CNN-CBS News tie-up were swirling: ''There is a lot of fiscal strength at CNN that puts us in a pretty good position offering a solution to the cost problems and profit squeeze that go on in network news.''

Bewkes added that it was ''no secret'' that CNN had held talks with broadcast news divisions in the past '-- the cable news network also held talks with ABC News in the early 2000s about a newsgathering pact '-- and that it was still open to doing so.

Neither the 2000 talks nor the 2010 rumblings led to a deal, but a decade or two can make all the difference, accelerated by the erosion of a linear TV landscape scarred from years of cord-cutting.

Whereas before CNN had vast financial resources and an unparalleled brand, it is now tied to a cable business in secular decline. It is still profitable, reportedly to the tune of hundreds of millions, but there is no more growth to be had. Its ratings are at record lows, and its current owner Warner Bros. Discovery is looking for a lifeboat from pay TV, creating CNN Max, which is part of the larger Max content offering.

And CBS News finds itself a constant third in the network news wars in the mornings and evenings, though the venerable newsmagazine 60 Minutes remains the most-watched news program in all of TV (thanks in no small part to its Sunday NFL lead-in).

A Paramount-WBD merger '-- should it actually come to fruition '-- would bring the two news organizations together at last, even as both are far weaker in terms of finances and viewership than they were when the discussions first heated up two decades ago.

As it happens, CNN and CBS News already share talent in a way that other news organizations do not. Longtime CNN anchor Anderson Cooper works as a correspondent on 60 Minutes, while CBS Mornings co-anchor Gayle King also co-hosts the CNN primetime series King Charles.

Nonetheless, any deal would dramatically alter the TV news landscape, further shrinking a business that is in terminal decline. Already network news chiefs '-- who were once among the most powerful executives in broadcasting '-- are being layered a rung or two below the network CEO, a sign of diminishing influence.

And layoffs have impacted nearly every TV news division, from CNN and Fox News to ABC News, CBS News and NBC News.

One source speculated that if the two news divisions were merged as part of a larger Paramount-WBD play, the companies would likely pursue a similar playbook to what was discussed years ago.

A merged CNN and CBS News would save millions by combining behind-the-scenes departments like legal, human resources, technology and operations. In addition, the two disparate newsgathering divisions would be merged into one, with another veteran TV news executive speculating that ''dozens, if not hundreds'' of on-air correspondents and producers would be losing their jobs in the process.

After all, there's no need for two bureaus in London or Tel Aviv, and crews could be consolidated to meet the slimmer structure.

CNN and CBS News programs would continue as is, and star anchors would still be necessary, but the journalism and newsgathering used to fill those hours would come from the new consolidated news team.

While 20 years ago the expectation was that CBS News would bear the brunt of the cuts, essentially handing over editorial control to CNN, it is not quite as obvious how things would be broken up this time around.

One thing is all but assured, both sources agreed: 60 Minutes would be left largely alone (the newsmagazine has infamously operated as its own separate unit within CBS News, and has its own office, staff and studio in a building across the street from the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th St), after all, if it's worked half a century, why mess with it now?

Dan Rather on CBS Evening News in the 1990s. There are significant hurdles that would need to be overcome, and for which there aren't obvious answers. One sticking point last time that would come up in a new merger: CBS News is a union shop, while CNN is not.

CBS News staffers in its New York headquarters are covered by the Writers Guild of America East (for writers, editors and researchers), the IBEW for camera and sound technicians, and on-air anchors and correspondents are covered by SAG-AFTRA.

Merging the heavily-unionized CBS News and the mostly union-free CNN would be challenging, and could spur more layoffs on the CNN side of the business.

And such a merger would upend the streaming strategies of each company, with CBS leaning into its broadcast roots by offering a free ad-supported streaming network, and CNN leveraging Max. In a world where CBS News and CNN share corespondents and news resources, having two streaming news services may not make sense. It's a lesson that NBCUniversal has learned, as it has cut back on its MSNBC programming on Peacock in recent months, while leaning into the free NBC News Now offering.

To be sure, a Paramount-WBD merger would be a megadeal in and of itself, but if it happens, it would also mark a new era for TV news, one that acknowledges the problems facing the once-mighty cable business model, and adjusts accordingly.

In a sense, it's back to the future for CNN, which arrived as an upstart in 1980 with uncertain financial prospects. Founder Ted Turner said at launch that $3 million a month would be invested in CNN with the expectation that he'd lose lose $2 million per month for a year and a half.

Then, in 1988, Turner came up with a crazy idea to merge CNN and Discovery Channel. Three years later, as THR reported in 1991, CBS Broadcast Group president Howard Stringer batted away speculation about a CNN tie-up, but conceded talks with ''a number of outside organizations, CNN just one among them.''

No Discovery-CNN deal materialized in the '80s, but 35 years later it came to fruition when WarnerMedia and Discovery merged amid today's challenging environment.

While CNN and CBS News have talked many times before, now it could actually happen.

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Fri, 22 Dec 2023 19:43

Aviation is a significant contributor to climate change, with emissions from airplanes responsible for about 3.5% of human-caused global warming . It's not simply the byproducts of burning jet fuel, however. Just look up: Airliners can leave behind contrails'--condensation trails'--of ice crystals that form artificial clouds around particles in the planes' exhaust.

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These clouds trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, and if we could reduce them, scientists believe that it could slow global warming. And good news, according to researchers at Breakthrough Energy and Google: This is low-hanging fruit.

Marc Shapiro, the head of contrails at Breakthrough Energy, calls reducing contrails the ''highest-leverage climate opportunity that we know of,'' the equivalent of removing carbon from the atmosphere at a cost of 10 dollars per ton or less.

The science of contrail control began in the 1940s, with efforts to build stealthier military aircraft, but by the 1990s scientists had realized that cirrus clouds play a heating role in the atmosphere'--and cirrus clouds are similar to (and indeed can be seeded by ) aircraft contrails. Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that contrails represent about 35% of the aviation industry's contribution to global warming.

But with know-how from satellite observation, greased by machine learning, airlines can fly their aircraft to avoid creating contrails. The key is avoiding humid ''ice supersaturated regions'' of the atmosphere where long-lasting contrails can form. Typically, this requires changes in altitude similar to those pilots already perform to avoid regions of turbulence.

Breakthrough Energy, an organization founded by Bill Gates to pursue climate solutions, and Google's Research division separately developed models to predict where contrails will form, and in 2022 they began collaborating to develop one solution. ''Relative humidity predictions are notoriously inaccurate,'' explains Juliet Rothenburg, who leads Google's work at the intersection of climate change and ''artificial intelligence.''

Their approach uses data from the US government's GOES-16 weather satellite, along with other weather indicators. The developers had to train machine-learning software to recognize contrails in their data set, and then train it to predict where contrail-conducive regions would occur in the future.

A visualization of contrails detected in the atmosphere using satellite data and machine learning. Gif: Google

To test the product in the wild, the two organizations brought in American Airlines. The predictions were integrated into the pilots' flight planning software, and over the course of 70 flights between January and March of 2023, pilots would fly both modified and standard routes to create useful comparisons. By examining satellite data after the flights took place, the researchers were able to conclude that their software reduced contrail creation by 54%.

''All airlines are going to have to do this eventually'--[in] years, not decades,'' Jill Blickstein, American's VP of sustainability says.

Still, there are wrinkles to iron out. Notably, the additional maneuvering increased American's fuel usage by about 2%, which Blickstein calls a ''meaningful number. We don't take additional expense lightly.'' Beyond buying more fuel, it's important to make sure the climate benefits of avoiding contrails also outweigh the additional emissions.

The three organizations are planning to expand these experiments and involve other airlines and air traffic control organizations, in particular with night flights in low-density airspace, like transatlantic routes. (Nighttime contrails have a much bigger warming effect.)

While deploying this technology across airlines is fairly straightforward'--it's another ''weather data layer'' to add to existing flight planning software, Shapiro says'--the impact of those new maneuvers on air traffic would need to be reckoned with. Plans to use satellite data to optimize flight paths to burn less fuel, for example , have run into challenges coordinating with air traffic controllers.

It's not yet clear how this service will be deployed commercially. Google and Breakthrough view it as research underlying their commitments to reducing carbon footprints. Blickstein says American is pleased to contribute to this research, but that any reduction in climate impact wouldn't affect the airline's pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050 because the data is not granular enough to precisely calculate a single airline's contrail contributions. Higher resolution satellites being launched in the years ahead could change that, Rothenburg says.

Breakthrough's hope is to develop an independent organization that can collect this contrail data and provide verification. Eventually, the vision is that the organization becomes an airline-supported clearinghouse for this data, like the International Airline Trade Association, a venue for global coordination in the air travel business.

Still, ''we can do a lot with a coarse estimate,'' Blickstein says. The potential is there to reduce about 1% of human contribution to global warming, if we can just fly the planes in the right places.

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Fri, 22 Dec 2023 19:07

Buccal fat removal has become one of the most popular and talked-about plastic surgery trends of 2023.

The Facts

Buccal fat Removal or buccal fat pad extraction is a cosmetic procedure that involves removing small pads of fat from the lower part of a person's cheeks. It makes a person's face appear slimmer, more sculpted, and gaunt.The procedure involves a surgeon making a small incision in the patient's cheeks from the inside of their mouth and then removing their buccal fat pads. Buccal fat removal costs between $5,000 to $20,000. There are no visible scars but risks include nerve damage and infection.The face-slimming procedure takes only 20 to 30 minutes and the results are permanent. Once a person's buccal fat is removed, it does not replenish again. Buccal fat removal costs between $5,000 to $20,000. The procedure leaves no visible scars but risks include nerve damage and infection.In October 2021, model Chrissy Teigen revealed that she had undergone buccal fat removal on Instagram.In December, the debate around buccal fat removal took off when actress Lea Michele posted a selfie with more caved-in cheekbones, which led social media users to believe that she had the cosmetic procedure done. In the same month, Twitter users speculated that supermodel Bella Hadid and singer Miley Cyrus also had the procedure. Plastic surgeons and social media users have also speculated that buccal fat removal is behind the facial transformations of actresses Anya Taylor-Joy, Khloe Kardashian, singer Liam Payne, Sophie Turner, Zoe Kravitz, and supermodel Amelia Gray Hamlin. Why it matters: Buccal fat removal's boom in popularity is another indicator that ''thin'' aesthetic is firmly back ''in'' again.

Beauty influencer Matthew James tells The Cut: ''Everyone wanted to look like Kylie Jenner. Now they want to look like Bella Hadid.'' Previously, consumers wanted cosmetic fillers to emulate Kylie Jenner's plumped-up, pillowy face. Now Hadid's more gaunt, chiseled look is more popular and people are racing to get buccal fat removal done. Beauty trends have shifted and consumers are looking to cosmetic procedures with permanent results to emulate this temporary ideal.What's next:

While the hashtag #buccalfatremoval may be trending on TikTok, some social media users are pushing back against the cosmetic trend. TikTokers have shared videos celebrating female celebrities with fuller cheeks and make-up artist Rachel OCool posted a viral video on how to accentuate a round face.The boom of buccal fat removal could also be a sign of ''filler fatigue.'' People are recognizing celebrities with lots of fillers can look strange and plastic surgeons are predicting that eyelid and brow lifts could become more popular as a result.What's next: A TikTok account imagines what celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Gigi Hadid would look like with buccal fat removal.

Update 03/13/2023 by Pesala Bandara: Information on TikTok account added.

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Fri, 22 Dec 2023 18:55

by Captain John Konrad (gCaptain) In a dramatic turn of events, Operation Prosperity Guardian, the pivotal US-led mission to secure vital merchant shipping lanes through the Red Sea, is facing another critical setback. gCaptain's recent reports highlight a troubling trend: a glaring absence of key allies, notably including AUKUS member Australia, in this international initiative. Compounding the situation, the French Navy, a cornerstone of the coalition, has withdrawn support. This decisive move comes as US leadership faces mounting criticism among US shipowners for leaving American sailors dangerously exposed within range of Houthi forces, without adequate protection.

To be clear it is uncertain if the French withdrawal from Operation Prosperity Guardian is permanent or just a temporary shift of priorities to national interests.gCaptain has received reports, confirmed by Dr. Sal Mercogliano, that the French Navy has shifted their focus away from US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian after a representative allegedly stormed out of the operation's first meeting with US officials. The French have begun escorting their own cargo ships, including the containerships CMA CGM Pegasus, CMA CGM George Washington and APL Salalah, through the Red Sea. At the heart of this unfolding drama is a critical question: which ships deserve protection? While the French have shown a clear intent to prioritize their own shipping interests, the US approach has left its own American-flagged ships stranded in the region, that have been '' some for a full week '' waiting for escort.

The French-owned CMA CGM Pegasus is outbound the Gulf of Aden, while APL Salalah and CMA CGM George Washington are heading to the Bab el-Mandeb.In the meantime, Maersk Kensington remains in the Red Sea, with US-flagged Green Bay and Maersk Seletar possibly following. https://t.co/A3dPPAdzxE pic.twitter.com/DSiBRtiXNq

'-- Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) ???????? (@mercoglianos) December 22, 2023It remains uncertain if France will quit the coalition entirely or if they will continue to help after prioritizing their ships but remain an operation member. One source close to the French Navy said that other European ship owners might get secondary priority after French-owned (but mostly foreign-flagged) ships.

This development marks a significant shift in the geopolitical dynamics of maritime security in one of the world's most vital shipping lanes. The French decision underscores a growing crisis in shipping that puts national and regional priority ahead of global needs, while the US focuses on protecting all shipping '' including ships owned by rivals like China '' at the expense of the dwindling fleet of US-flagged merchant ships.

Operation Prosperity Guardian Trips On Day OneDefense Secretary Lloyd Austin's announcement of Operation Prosperity Guardian, aimed at safeguarding the strategic Red Sea corridor under the Combined Maritime Forces in Bahrain, initially signaled a unifying effort. Led by the US Fifth Fleet and Task Force 153, the operation sought widespread participation. However, only ten nations joined, with allies like Canada and The Netherlands contributing merely a few staff officers. More notably, key naval allies such as Australia, Japan and South Korea abstained. Despite the Pentagon's claims of ten additional silent partners, shipping experts remained skeptical about the efficacy of these covert contributors, particularly in actively protecting ships in such a high-stakes environment.

The strong announcement was, however, followed by confusion as shipping companies felt left in the dark saying that few practical details are known about the initiative launched on Tuesday by Washington or whether it will directly engage in the event of further armed attacks at sea.

gCaptain's sources have revealed a pervasive sense of confusion, affecting not only European shipping executives but also US shipowners who have access to classified Pentagon briefings. In interviews conducted by gCaptain, sources within the US military highlighted a disjointed response to the crisis. While certain military elements, such as the US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) and the Navy's Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS), have been actively engaging with ship owners, other segments of the military appear uncertain about the command structure of the operation. This lack of clarity over leadership roles is contributing to the overall confusion surrounding the initiative.

Other allies, focused on threats growing threats in the Pacific and South China Sea, fear Operation Prosperity Guardian, is a distraction from acute regional priorities. Japan and South Korea, regular contributors to previous counter-piracy U.S.-led forces in the region, are also notable by their absence from the current mission, despite the disruption to shipping also affecting Asian import-export routes.

US Flagged Ships Left UnprotectedThe precarious situation of US-flagged ships stranded with military cargo near the Red Sea is at the center of this coalition angst. The French want to prioritize their ships while US Flagged ships '' which the US Navy is obligated to defend '' are inexplicably a lower priority for the US.This urgent matter, highlighted by the recent rocket attack on a US-flagged tanker in Israel, starkly exposes the vulnerability of these vessels due to the alarming absence of adequate military protection. This critical situation not only threatens the safety of these ships but also raises profound questions about the United States' resolve to safeguard its maritime assets, a commitment that seems to be wavering dangerously.

2/In 1987, when Kuwait reflagged their tankers to the US registry, they were provided with American escorts '' Operation Ernest Will.The operation was meant to defend ships against Iran & Iraq air, naval, and mine attacks. pic.twitter.com/V1DZx1zaf4

'-- Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) ???????? (@mercoglianos) December 19, 2023According to MarineTraffic.com, US flag ships await escorts through the Red Sea right now. This is shocking considering that over 3,000 Marine Corps and Navy sailors were dispatched to defend foreign flag ships in the Persian Gulf early this year but no security detachments have been provided US flag ships stuck within Houthi missile range today.

The current scenario is exacerbated by a lack of attention from our leaders, especially Cabinet Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has made no statement in support of US Merchant Mariners in his charge and appears to be fully detached from the Red Sea situation. It is a matter of utmost urgency that this situation is addressed with the seriousness it warrants.

White House FailuresIt is clear from our sources that the US Navy, the naval experts, and the Department Of Transportation's US Maritime Administration (MARAD), the shipping experts, are not running point on this operation, which is confusing. The question is, who is? None of our sources can answer this question for certain. The Secretary of Defense's office has been the most vocal and certainly plays a part, but two top naval experts gCaptain interviewed believe the White House is possibly running point.This is concerning because the handling of maritime affairs, particularly under Jake Sullivan's team, lacks the shipping expertise needed to solve this problem. This stems from a strategic shift where the White House, with minimal involvement from specialized maritime bodies like the US Navy or MARAD, and international bodies like the International Maritime Organization, has taken a direct role in coalition-building efforts.

From the outset, the Biden administration's approach to maritime affairs signaled a shift. The closure of the National Security Council's maritime desk on day one left a noticeable gap in maritime expertise within the White House. Secretary Pete Buttigieg's appointment to the Department of Transportation, perceived by some as a political move, and the assignment of a long-retired Admiral with a pre-appointment focus on climate resiliency and no shipping industry experience at MARAD, indicated a new direction in maritime policy.

This transition contrasts with the previous administration's approach. Under Trump, there was a notable presence of maritime and naval experts in key positions with three former shipowners appointed to his cabinet. Despite many of their maritime initiatives faltering or being reversed as the administration began unraveling, they achieved notable successes, including the revitalization of the Philadelphia shipyard and the building of new training ships for maritime colleges.

Under President Biden, there appears to be a lack of maritime-specific knowledge among staff. Additionally, the appointment of an army general as Secretary of Defense, coupled with what some view as limited actions to bolster the Navy, points to a broader trend of maritime issues receiving less focus in the current administration's defense and national security strategy.

Chaos And ConfusionIt has been very difficult to get to the heart of this story because of the leadership failures, the classified nature of the naval discussion, and widespread confusion among allies and shipping industry leaders regarding Operation Prosperity Guardian.

Will France officially pull out and organize its own operation? Will Secretary Pete Buttigieg wake up and take charge? Will the White House reopen the National Security Council's maritime desk? Will the US Navy fulfill promises to put marines aboard US-flagged ships and give them destroyer escorts? How long will it take to work out all these problems?Many questions linger about the operation's future. What stands out is the pressing need for a single, seasoned leader to oversee communication and coordination effectively. This role calls for a strong figure known to the shipping industry like to Admiral James Stavridis, who adeptly managed the response to Somali piracy, or Admiral Thad Allen, known for his coordination efforts during the Deepwater Horizon crisis. Exemplary leadership like theirs in would instill confidence and the importance of experienced guidance in resolving the current challenges effectively.

The leadership vacuum needs to be filled across the pond as well. If the operation continues under American leadership, it's crucial for top executives of major shipping companies, such as Vincent Clerc of Maersk, to engage directly with key U.S. officials. Meetings in Washington D.C. with the Navy and Transportation Secretaries would be a pivotal move. Such collaboration would send a resounding message to mariners navigating the precarious waters under threat from Houthi drones. It would demonstrate a united front where the shipping industry, government authorities, and naval leadership are synchronizing their efforts to ensure safer seas. This is more than a strategic decision; it's a necessary step to bolster confidence and security in these high-risk areas.

The ongoing chaos and confusion will persist until two critical steps are taken. Firstly, the current leadership void must be effectively addressed. Secondly, it is essential for the White House and Pentagon to stop micromanaging efforts without shipping industry expertise in-house. The expertise and insights of these professionals are indispensable for navigating the situation's complexities. This collaborative approach '' with one strong leader in charge whom both sides trust '' will not only bring much-needed stability but could also pave the way for future collaboration.

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Fri, 22 Dec 2023 18:53

The officers were charged over the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, who pleaded ''I can't breathe'' after police punched and restrained him.

Manuel Ellis's mother, Marcia Carter-Patterson, was escorted out of court by the family's attorney, James Bible, and other family members after three Tacoma police officers were found not guilty. Credit... Pool photo by Ellen M. Banner A jury found three Tacoma police officers not guilty on Thursday of all criminal charges in the death of Manuel ''Manny'' Ellis, a Black man who died in police custody in 2020 after pleading that he could not breathe.

One officer, Timothy Rankine, was acquitted of first-degree manslaughter. The other two officers, Christopher Burbank, and Matthew Collins, were acquitted of charges of second-degree murder. All three had pleaded not guilty and had faced up to life in prison. Officers Burbank, 38, and Collins, 40, are white. Office Rankine, 35, is Asian.

The prosecutors accused the three police officers of using deadly force on Mr. Ellis, 33, while arresting him on Mar. 3, 2020, when they punched him, squeezed his neck, pressed on his back and placed a hood over his head. Prosecutors said that audio footage captured Ellis saying he could not breathe.

His death occurred just three months before George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. Mr. Floyd, who is also Black, had also pleaded ''I can't breathe'' as a police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Bob Ferguson, the Washington attorney general, said in a statement on X, ''I know the Ellis family is hurting, and my heart goes out to them.''

Family members said Mr. Ellis was the father of an 11-year-old son and an 18-month-old daughter. A musician at his church, he had played drums with the worship band earlier on the night he was killed, the attorney general's office said.

Later, Mr. Ellis was walking home after getting a late-night snack at a 7-Eleven when he came upon Officers Burbank and Collins sitting in their police car, prosecutors said. Mr. Ellis stopped and spoke briefly to the officers in an encounter that witnesses described as peaceful and respectful, prosecutors said. Mr. Ellis then began to walk away, prosecutors said.

According to witnesses, Officer Burbank swung open the passenger door, hitting Mr. Ellis from behind and knocking him to his knees.

Officer Burbank then got on top of Mr. Ellis, prosecutors said. Bystander videos, a doorbell camera with audio and video, and dispatch radio traffic captured what happened next, prosecutors said.

Officer Burbank wrapped his arms around Mr. Ellis, lifted him into the air and drove him down onto the pavement, hitting him with one of his fists, prosecutors said. Officer Collins then moved toward Mr. Ellis and brought his weight down on him, prosecutors said.

Office Burbank fired a Taser at Mr. Ellis, prosecutors said, and he with Officer Collins held Mr. Ellis' arms behind his back and pressed down on his body as Mr. Ellis began to scream and writhe. On a nearby doorbell camera, Mr. Ellis is heard saying ''Can't breathe, sir. Can't breathe!''

Office Rankine, who was among a group of officers who responded as backup, got on top of Mr. Ellis almost as if in a ''seated position,'' prosecutors said, as Mr. Ellis repeated ''I can't breathe.''

Prosecutors said that Officer Rankine later said that he heard Mr. Ellis say ''in a very calm, normal voice'' that he could not breathe, to which he responded ''if you're talking to me, you can breathe just fine.''

An officer put a spit hood on Mr. Ellis' head, while he was hogtied on his stomach and Officer Rankine was applying pressure to his back, prosecutors said. He remained in that position for six to nine minutes until the Fire Department arrived, and was pronounced dead at the scene, prosecutors said.

The Pierce County medical examiner ruled Ellis' death a homicide, caused by oxygen starvation due to physical restraint, with methamphetamine intoxication and a heart condition contributing factors.

Lawyers for the defense argued that it was the latter two factors that caused Mr. Ellis' death, and said that Mr. Ellis fought the officers with extraordinary strength, which justified the aggressive tactics they used to subdue him, the Seattle Times reported.

That account, however, was contradicted by two witnesses, who prosecutors said described what appeared to be a calm conversation between Mr. Ellis and the officers. The witnesses said Mr. Ellis seemed to begin walking away when Officer Burbank swung open the passenger door, knocking him down, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said the audio and video evidence from several sources showed Officer Collins punching Mr. Ellis' head and wrapping his arm around the front of Mr. Ellis' neck and locked his hands together while squeezing, applying a ''lateral vascular neck restraint.''

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Fri, 22 Dec 2023 16:15

Outside influences, this time war, threaten to disrupt the supply chain once again, with the Red Sea and Suez Canal seeing drone and missile attacks.

The Israel and Hamas war is reportedly to blame, initially affecting ships bound for Israel which were targeted by drone and missile attacks from militants. However, ships with no connection to Israel are also being targeted. In response, oil giant BP has paused shipments of oil through the Red Sea (with probable consequences for the price of fuel and therefore local distribution).

The Red Sea and Suez Canal are crucial links in the global supply chain. The canal was hit by the more benign but still significant disruption when the container ship Ever Given got stuck and blocked the canal for a period of days in 2021.

It's a moot point whether the disruption will greatly affect the cycling industry. How long the militancy lasts is clearly a factor. The bike market is currently over stocked too, so arguably a lack of supply won't necessarily be hugely disruptive. However, with much of the cycle industry manufacturing in the Far East, the potential for another significant period of supply chain upset seems to be upon us again.

Of course, it's hardly the biggest concern in relation to the awful human cost of this war, but nevertheless one that can affect livelihoods and businesses in the cycling industry. During the period of container pricing inflation in the earlier months of this decade, product costs increased as well as related pressures on distributors, importers and retailers.

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