All posts tagged: Legacy

OpenAI, Anthropic boost lobbying as legacy tech, defense spending slips

OpenAI, Anthropic boost lobbying as legacy tech, defense spending slips

Published by Sam Flores

A visitor watches an AI sign on an animated screen at the Mobile World Congress, the telecom industry’s biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona. Josep Lago | Afp | Getty Images OpenAI and Anthropic increased their federal lobbying spending to record levels in the second quarter of 2026 as the artificial intelligence industry poured millions into influencing Washington ahead of the midterm elections and ahead of their highly anticipated IPOs. Together, the two leading AI developers spent $3.17 million during the quarter, up 23% from the first three months of the year, according to federal lobbying disclosures. Anthropic spent $1.97 million from April through June, up 26% from the first quarter. OpenAI spent $1.2 million, an increase of nearly 18%. The companies reported lobbying on issues including cybersecurity, copyright, cloud computing and defense procurement. Monitoring lobbying spending, which companies must report quarterly to Congress, is a way to gauge which companies and industries are most active in influencing the federal government. Companies with interests in shaping legislation or regulation often ramp up their spending. Established technology …

50 years later, Viking 1’s legacy is powering NASA’s next giant leap on Mars

50 years later, Viking 1’s legacy is powering NASA’s next giant leap on Mars

Published by Jenni Sidey

Half a century after NASA first placed working hardware on Mars, the agency is preparing to explore not only the planet’s surface, but its skies. The story began on July 20, 1976, when Viking 1 touched down in the western reaches of Chryse Planitia, a broad plain north of the Martian equator. It was NASA’s first successful landing on Mars. Viking 2 followed on Sept. 3, 1976, landing in another region of the Red Planet. A Soviet probe, Mars 3, had reached the ground in 1971, but stopped transmitting less than two minutes later. The Viking spacecraft arrived as paired landers and orbiters. They returned more than 52,000 images. The landers added over 4,500 more, giving humanity its first sustained view from the ground. Viking 1. (CREDIT: NASA) Mars comes into focus Mars still appeared through Earthbound telescopes as a mottled orange sphere with few recognizable features. NASA flybys in the 1960s captured grainy images of small portions of the planet. Then Mariner 9 entered orbit in 1971 and photographed about 85 percent of the …

Celebrating the Life and Legacy of John Lewis

Celebrating the Life and Legacy of John Lewis

Published by Sam Flores

 This weekend, July 17-19th, people across this country are carrying on the legacy of the late civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, who famously called the work of justice “making good trouble.” It’s the “Good Trouble Lives On” Weekend of Action, and historian David Greenberg, author of the authoritative biography John Lewis: A Life, joins Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush on The State of Belief. Challenges that Rep. Lewis faced as a civil rights activist are reemerging like never before – and the lessons of his activism can help guide us forward today. On Thursday, July 16th, Senator Alex Padilla, along with the coalition Faithful Democracy, convened an interfaith roundtable discussion on protecting elections and voting rights to commemorate the legacy of Congressman John Lewis, six years after his passing.   We start the show with just a few minutes from this historic event, which brought together diverse leaders and a total of ten sitting members of the US Senate. Source link

Trump Shifts His Tone on Jimmy Carter While Grappling With Iran, Inflation and His Own Legacy

Trump Shifts His Tone on Jimmy Carter While Grappling With Iran, Inflation and His Own Legacy

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jimmy Carter used to be one of President Donald Trump ’s favorite political targets, a catchall foil for feckless Democrats that he could jeer at to make himself look strong and decisive. But lately, Trump’s sentiments on the 39th president have become more wistful as he faces some of the same challenges the late Carter did. Those include the war in Iran with no end in sight — and now escalating as the U.S. moves to control the Strait of Hormuz — and inflation, a drag on the economy Trump hasn’t tamed despite long insisting that his business background would wipe it out. The comparison seems to be on Trump’s mind, too. Asked last month why he didn’t dispatch U.S. Special Forces into Iran to forcibly remove its enriched uranium, he responded, “I didn’t feel like being Jimmy Carter.” That recalled the failed 1980 raid to free U.S. hostages that killed eight American servicemen. Trump also said in March that the unsuccessful mission “cost them the election” against Ronald Reagan in 1980, …

Agents think in milliseconds, legacy infrastructure doesn’t. LinkedIn, Walmart and Zendesk shared how they closed the gap at VB Transform 2026

Agents think in milliseconds, legacy infrastructure doesn’t. LinkedIn, Walmart and Zendesk shared how they closed the gap at VB Transform 2026

Published by skeptic

Legacy infrastructure, not the models themselves, is what’s actually slowing AI agents down. That was the shared conclusion of three infrastructure leaders — from LinkedIn, Walmart, and Zendesk — at VB Transform 2026. The panel brought together Animesh Singh, senior director of AI platform and infrastructure at LinkedIn, Desiree Gosby, SVP of corporate technology services and technology strategy at Walmart, and Sami Ghoche, VP of applied AI at Zendesk, each describing what actually broke when they moved agents from pilot to production. Each arrived at the same conclusion from a different starting point: None of the bottlenecks they hit were model problems. What tied their answers together was a shared premise: most enterprise infrastructure was built for how humans work, not for how agents work. The gap between those two speeds is where the real engineering happened. Gosby put it plainly when asked what she’d learned scaling agents inside Walmart’s own workforce. The goal, she said, is to make sure “engineering doesn’t once again become the bottleneck for what it is we’re trying to do.” …

Is ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ still cool? 6 writers reflect on its legacy at 75

Is ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ still cool? 6 writers reflect on its legacy at 75

Published by Sam Flores

Books that end up on high school English syllabi are meant to signal to young people their cultural importance, but only one book has been routinely positioned as simply “cool.” Since its publication 75 years ago on July 16, 1951, “The Catcher in the Rye” has been heralded as a literary baddie. With its starkly rendered themes of alienation and apathy, and a CV of influence on murderers, rock bands and a generation of ultracool writers, it adds up to a literary legacy unlike any other assigned reading. On the Shelf If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. But as each new generation gets further away from the novel’s original milieu and the image of Holden Caulfield has become shorthand for privileged disaffection, its necessity in curricula has been questioned. What was once revolutionary for its language and perspective now can scan as retrograde to some contemporary audiences as books become less and less connective for modern teens. (Little, Brown and …

Expert Says Trump Will Have To Negotiate With Iran For The Sake Of His Legacy

Expert Says Trump Will Have To Negotiate With Iran For The Sake Of His Legacy

Published by Sam Flores

President Donald Trump speaks at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., during the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, Wednesday, July 15, 2026.  Donald Trump will have to negotiate with Iran for the sake of the global economy and his own legacy, according to an expert. The US president has been attacking Iran for five days, hoping to erode the country’s ability to target vessels in the major shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz. Trump is also threatening to blow up Iran’s power plants and bridges next week unless they come to a deal, but Tehran has warned the war will spread if US attacks continue. Dr Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a lecturer in international politics at the University of Cambridge, said the White House will have to negotiate soon – especially as the US mid-term elections loom. “Iran is certainly very anxious to negotiate and I think its door is open,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, pointing out that its economy was already in a “dire” position before the conflict began. She continued: “But …

Scheffler and McIlroy Shrug off Legacy Talk as They Chase a 2nd British Open Titles

Scheffler and McIlroy Shrug off Legacy Talk as They Chase a 2nd British Open Titles

Published by Sam Flores

SOUTHPORT, England (AP) — Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are both chasing a second claret jug at the British Open this week. The world’s top two golfers are unmoved about what that would mean for their legacies. “I’ll be long gone. I’ll be dead,” McIlroy said Tuesday when asked if winning more trophies and breaking more records would shape how he’ll be viewed in a hundred years. “I don’t think I’ll be seeing what people say about me. I’ll be six feet under. I don’t think I’ll be a ghost.” Seems Scheffler’s goal isn’t about chasing a place in history, either. “This is going to sound a little morbid,” the top-ranked American said. “At the end of the day, I’m going to live my life and it’s going to end. When it ends, I’m going somewhere else, and I’m not going to be here anymore.” Coming over to play the Open Championship seems to bring the philosophical side out of Scheffler. It was around this time last year, speaking days before winning golf’s oldest championship …

Lindsey Graham’s legacy: Israel advocate, Trump ally, Iran war supporter | Politics News

Lindsey Graham’s legacy: Israel advocate, Trump ally, Iran war supporter | Politics News

Published by Sam Flores

Washington, DC – When the devastating Hurricane Helene hit the southeastern shores of the United States in 2024, the late Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News to discuss the aftermath of the natural disaster in South Carolina. For five minutes, he expressed anger and frustration at what he presented as failures by the administration of then-Democratic President Joe Biden in responding to the hurricane. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Then, unprompted, he abruptly shifted the conversation from the woes of his home state to his concern about Israel amid its genocidal war on Gaza. “I’ve been going all over South Carolina. Like most people, I haven’t slept much. But look what’s going on in Israel,” Graham said. “Our friends in Israel, surrounded by people that want to kill them, destroy them, a second Holocaust in the making, and Biden says, ‘Be proportional.’ What is the proportional response to people who want to kill you and your family? They’re running out of ammunition in Israel. We have to help our friends.” The …