All posts tagged: Cutting

Associated Press cutting dozens of staffers

Associated Press cutting dozens of staffers

The Associated Press is planning to cut dozens of positions as part of a broader restructuring of the media company, The Hill confirmed Monday. “Even though we’ve evolved in the U.S. over the past few years, too much of our operations are still tied to large U.S. newspaper groups, who make up less than 10%… Source link

After Cutting Down on ‘Side Quests,’ OpenAI Bought a Talk Show

After Cutting Down on ‘Side Quests,’ OpenAI Bought a Talk Show

OpenAI has spent the last few weeks seemingly trying to refocus on using AI for business instead of what execs dubbed “side quests,” dumping its AI video generator and its plans for an adult-themed chatbot. So this week, of course, the company announced it’s jumping into the media business. OpenAI said it was acquiring Technology Business Programming Network, better known as TBPN, which runs a 3-hour show streamed on weekdays that delves into the biggest topics — and brings in the biggest names — in tech business. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) OpenAI said it added TBPN to “help create a space for a real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates,” Fidji Simo, CEO of AGI deployment at OpenAI, wrote in a message to employees shared by OpenAI. Simo said the company also wanted to take advantage of TBPN’s marketing prowess. “They have a strong pulse on where the industry is going, their …

Stark photos show quest for profit cutting swathes through the Amazon

Stark photos show quest for profit cutting swathes through the Amazon

Some of the thousands of trucks that transport soya beans down a road in the Amazon Lalo de Almeida/Folhapress/Panos​ The myriad ways in which deforestation in the Amazon could deleteriously impact the climate aren’t a new revelation. In fact, climate scientists and activists have long been sounding alarms about protecting the rainforest. Yet the Brazilian government has recently relaxed environmental controls on several large industrial developments in the region, opening the door to even more harmful changes. Photographer Lalo de Almeida has been documenting the rainforest, focusing on areas where new projects are already taking place as well as those where the life of the rainforest is about to change. In the main image, above, he has photographed some of the thousands of trucks that transport soya beans down an Amazonian road near Miritituba, which will be the final stop of a new railway that will be used to carry the beans to the Tapajos river. Below, three men collect soya beans from a truck in the aftermath of a traffic accident, a common enough …

Micro Softy 72: Necklace Cutting

Micro Softy 72: Necklace Cutting

At their most primitive level, computer programs can be reduced to a sequence of binary numbers.  Keep this in mind to solve this week’s Micro Softy.  Sally owes rent on her apartment but doesn’t get her paycheck for a month. But Sally owns a necklace with 31 gold beads. She tells her landlord she will give him one gold bead every day during the 30-day month. At the end of the month, she can pay the landlord her rent in cash and get her necklace back.  But there is a problem. Every time she cuts her necklace, she needs to pay a jeweler a dollar for the jeweler to reconnect the break in the necklace. So, Sally must figure out a way to minimize her payment to the jeweler by minimizing the number of cuts to her necklace.   For the first day, she cuts off one bead and gives it to the landlord.  The second day, she cut off two beads. Sally gives the landlord the two beads and the landlord returns the single bead he collected the previous day. Now the landlord has two beads.  On the third day, she gives the landlord the single bead he returned the previous day. Now the landlord has three beads.  So, Sally has …

Google’s new TurboQuant algorithm speeds up AI memory 8x, cutting costs by 50% or more

Google’s new TurboQuant algorithm speeds up AI memory 8x, cutting costs by 50% or more

As Large Language Models (LLMs) expand their context windows to process massive documents and intricate conversations, they encounter a brutal hardware reality known as the “Key-Value (KV) cache bottleneck.” Every word a model processes must be stored as a high-dimensional vector in high-speed memory. For long-form tasks, this “digital cheat sheet” swells rapidly, devouring the graphics processing unit (GPU) video random access memory (VRAM) system used during inference, and slowing the model performance down rapidly over time. But have no fear, Google Research is here: yesterday, the unit within the search giant released its TurboQuant algorithm suite — a software-only breakthrough that provides the mathematical blueprint for extreme KV cache compression, enabling a 6x reduction on average in the amount of KV memory a given model uses, and 8x performance increase in computing attention logits, which could reduce costs for enterprises that implement it on their models by more than 50%. The theoretically grounded algorithms and associated research papers are available now publicly for free, including for enterprise usage, offering a training-free solution to reduce …

Most ACA enrollees cutting back on food, household needs to pay for health care: Poll

Most ACA enrollees cutting back on food, household needs to pay for health care: Poll

A little more than half of Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace enrollees reported cutting back on spending for food, clothing and other basic household items to afford health care, which has become more expensive. In a new KFF poll released Thursday, 55 percent of returning ACA marketplace enrollees said they are already or are planning… Source link

Panicked OpenAI Execs Cutting Projects as Walls Close In

Panicked OpenAI Execs Cutting Projects as Walls Close In

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In 2025 alone, OpenAI released a controversial text-to-video generator, dubbed Sora, and an abysmally slow web browser called Atlas. It also announced top-secret hardware alongside former Apple exec Jony Ive, and signed a $200 million contract with the US Department of Defense. Meanwhile, the company continues to burn through billions of dollars a month, astronomical losses that have executives there feeling agitated. The company recently announced that it’s planning to spend a whopping $600 billion on AI infrastructure by 2030, an ungodly sum only beaten out by its original promise: $1.4 trillion, more than twice the revised figure. Now, the company is coming to terms that it may have spread itself too thin, and is now looking to refocus its resources on its coding and enterprise users. As the Wall Street Journal reports, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, told employees that the company is “actively looking at which areas to deprioritize.” “We cannot miss this moment because …

The best flowers to grow for cutting

The best flowers to grow for cutting

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more If you love cut flowers, you could be sowing seeds now for a riot of colour in your home later on in the year. But what might you choose? How much time and space do you have and how long are the blooms likely to last? You may find that while favourites like peonies are beautiful, they won’t flower for long in the garden, as opposed to cosmos and dahlias, for instance. Or you might be happy picking fragrant sweet peas all summer for heady but short-lived indoor flower displays which you’ll need to replace regularly. There are so many plants, it’s difficult to know where to start, but award-winning broadcaster, author and cook Sarah Raven, who runs a gardening mail-order business and holds …

‘Cutting Through Rocks’ Among Athena Film Festival 2026 Award Winners

‘Cutting Through Rocks’ Among Athena Film Festival 2026 Award Winners

The 2026 Athena Film Festival has selected this year’s honorees. Oscar-nominated documentary Cutting Through Rocks, directed by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni, received the Jaya Award in partnership with the Illumine Service Foundation, a $10,000 prize given to a film focused on women’s leadership. Happy Birthday director Sarah Goher is being honored with the $25,000 Breakthrough Award in partnership with Netflix, given to a feature-length film directed by a first- or second-time filmmaker without a U.S. theatrical distribution deal. The Syndrome writer Tamar Feinkind will receive the Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award in partnership with Christine A. Schantz, a $10,000 prize given to a feature-length writer who previously participated in an Athena Film Festival Writers Lab. Additionally, Aquanauts writer Rachel Caccese received the $20,000 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Athena List Development Grant, given to an Athena List finalist or winner for a script focused on a woman in a STEM-themed project. The festival will feature actors performing a live reading of Caccese’s script. And the festival is continuing its partnership with AMC Networks as part …