All posts tagged: paying

Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are being bankrolled by King Charles – is it time they start paying rent?

Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are being bankrolled by King Charles – is it time they start paying rent?

Published by Daniella Wilson

Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie have found themselves unwillingly in the spotlight again, following the release of a new report by the National Audit Office into the royal family’s residential property arrangements. The report uncovered the shocking detail that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the King’s disgraced brother, was subletting his properties at Royal Lodge and gaining an undisclosed private income. It’s understood the rent Andrew received was to cover the maintenance and running costs of the sublets, and he did not make a profit; as the leaseholder, he was allowed to do that. But the revelation has prompted fresh outcry over the benefits Andrew had, while only paying peppercorn rent on his 30-room Windsor mansion. WATCH: Has the King been bankrolling Beatrice and Eugenie? The King’s rental agreement with Beatrice and Eugenie What was also laid bare in the report, however, was that Andrew’s daughters, Beatrice, 37, and Eugenie, 36 – two non-working members of the royal family who have their own careers, second homes in the Cotswolds and Portugal respectively, and are married to wealthy husbands …

AT&T Shook Up Its Unlimited Phone Plans. Here’s What You’re Paying For

AT&T Shook Up Its Unlimited Phone Plans. Here’s What You’re Paying For

Published by skeptic

In just the past few months, AT&T has overhauled its unlimited phone plans with 2.0 versions, added a new top-tier option and introduced a modular option for new customers who want only the basics. The 150-year-old company also hiked the prices of some now-retired plans in what appears to be a move to encourage customers to jump to the latest options, and changed the prices of some plans even since their introduction. If you’re an AT&T customer suddenly bombarded by notifications about upgrading, or you’re looking to switch from another carrier, here’s a breakdown of the new offerings. These plans replace the AT&T Value Plus VL, Unlimited Extra EL and Unlimited Premium PL plans. The carrier also removed its Unlimited Starter SL plan, which served as the entry-level plan (you had to know where to look to find the limited, but cheaper, Value Plus VL plan). Keep in mind that AT&T plans let each person on an account have their own plan. So you might set up a package where one person has the Premium 2.0 plan for unthrottled 5G speeds and …

Dennis Quaid files to stop paying k a month in child support to ex-wife as twins graduate high school

Dennis Quaid files to stop paying $13k a month in child support to ex-wife as twins graduate high school

Published by Daniella Wilson

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 Dennis Quaid has filed a petition to cease all future child support payments to his ex-wife, Kimberly Buffington, following the high school graduation of their 18-year-old twins, Zoe and Thomas. In recent court documents obtained by USA Today, The Substance star, 72, cited the terms of their 2018 divorce agreement, which state that he may stop paying $13,750 per month in child support “when a child completes 12th grade.” His two youngest are set to graduate from high school June 3, according to the outlet. Additionally, Quaid requested that the bonus amount he is supposed to send to Buffington if his annual income exceeds $1,314,000 be prorated to “each child’s graduation date rather than using Dennis’ full-year 2026 income.” A representative for Quaid declined …

California teeters on healthcare cliff, but no one is paying attention

California teeters on healthcare cliff, but no one is paying attention

Published by Sam Flores

When Congress passed the big, ugly bill known as HR 1 last year, most Americans understood it meant cuts to Medicaid, the safety net program millions rely on for medical insurance. But few Californians realized just how much it will affect the Golden State when its provisions really kick in, starting after the midterms (the Republicans aren’t that dumb) and continuing on in cascading cuts for the next few years. Millions of Californians — not just low-income folks — are going to feel the effects, whether through a loss of insurance, fewer providers able to keep their doors open, or rising premiums and costs. “This problem trickles up,” state Senate leader Monique Limón (D-Goleta) told me. “This is not just going to impact the people that have a public healthcare plan. When you see a hospital close, when you see medical providers no longer being able to practice, it is absolutely going to impact everybody, the middle class included.” Added to the loss of federal funds, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s most recent budget plan (which the …

SpaceX IPO Filing Reveals Anthropic Is Paying Billion a Year to Access Its Data Centers

SpaceX IPO Filing Reveals Anthropic Is Paying $15 Billion a Year to Access Its Data Centers

Published by skeptic

Anthropic has agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May of 2029 for access to cloud computing infrastructure, a long-awaited US regulatory filing revealed on Wednesday. In other words, Anthropic will be sending a rival artificial intelligence lab roughly $15 billion a year, an extraordinary sum that demonstrates how access to compute has become one of the defining bottlenecks in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence. Anthropic and SpaceX announced a deal earlier this month that gives the Claude developer access to GPUs at Colossus and Colossus II, a pair of data centers straddling Tennessee and Mississippi with more than one gigawatt of computing power. SpaceX had rushed to build the facilities for its xAI unit, which develops the Grok AI chatbot, but Musk said his company didn’t need all of their computing capacity in the end. Terms of the deal had not been previously disclosed. Anthropic is paying an unspecified reduced fee for May and June before the $1.25 billion per month rate takes effect, SpaceX said in its S-1 regulatory …

Stop paying for Claude Code — this tool does the same thing for free

Stop paying for Claude Code — this tool does the same thing for free

Published by skeptic

Claude Code is really good. If you have been using it, you already know that. But the one complaint that keeps coming up, every single time, is the cost. While there is a free way to use Claude Code, the Sonnet and Opus models are what people mainly pay for. Claude Code sits behind Claude’s Pro or Max plan, and at $20 a month, that is a real ask for a tool you might not be using every single day. There is a better way, and it has been sitting right there the whole time. Related I replaced Cursor with a free IDE that does everything Cursor does Cursor has a worthy free rival—and it’s surprisingly good. OpenCode is what Claude Code could have been Free and open-source OpenCode is an open-source AI coding agent built for the terminal that does almost everything Claude Code does (file reading, editing, running commands, managing context across your whole project), but it is not locked to one model or one subscription. The tool itself is completely free. You …

We traded church for wellness. Now, we’re paying for it.

We traded church for wellness. Now, we’re paying for it.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 37% of Americans now say religion is gaining influence in public life, the highest percentage since 2002, up 19 points in just two years. And no group is more alarmed than the spiritual-but-not-religious. Among the religiously unaffiliated, 46% view religion’s growing influence negatively, the survey found. That’s more than double the rate of the general public. Here’s the thing, though. I think we are partly to blame. We helped create a void in public life that is now being filled in ways we didn’t anticipate and frankly don’t like. I know because I’m one of the spiritual-but-not-religious Americans who have been trying to find alternatives to organized religion. I’m also a religion scholar and I study this stuff for a living: yoga studios, mindfulness apps, sound baths, ayahuasca retreats and the vague but sincere conviction that you can be deeply spiritual without identifying with any particular tradition. We’re not cynics. We’re seekers. We just decided to seek on our own terms. The spiritual-but-not-religious crowd has …

I stopped paying for ChatGPT and switched to a local LLM that runs on my laptop

I stopped paying for ChatGPT and switched to a local LLM that runs on my laptop

Published by skeptic

I’ve been really getting into local LLMs lately, to the point where I’ve even tried running them on my phone. My AI subscriptions are only going to get more expensive over time, and if they don’t raise prices, they’ll probably just nerf the token limits instead. So I figured it was time to actually commit to local inference and build a setup that works, rather than waiting until I’m forced to, and I think I’ve got my laptop setup in place now. Related I tried running a chatbot on my old computer hardware and it actually worked You don’t need to fork out for expensive hardware to run an AI on your PC. LM Studio runs my models faster than Ollama Faster is better, duh I already have Ollama set up and working, and I’m keeping it that way. When I need a local model connected to something external, like Claude Code, Ollama is what I use. It just integrates better with other tools and services in my experience, and I don’t see a reason …

Apple was sued for overpromising on AI. Now it’s paying 0 million to iPhone users.

Apple was sued for overpromising on AI. Now it’s paying $250 million to iPhone users.

Published by skeptic

Apple has reached a $250 million settlement in a lawsuit that accused the company of exaggerating Apple Intelligence’s intelligence. The suit claimed that Apple misled iPhone users about Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of AI tools, before and after the launch of the iPhone 16 in Sep. 2024. The settlement filing states that U.S. shoppers who bought certain iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025 may qualify to receive a portion of the $250 million settlement. Multiple class-action suits were filed over Apple Intelligence marketing before being combined into a single action. According to the May 5 filing with a U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, both parties in the case have now agreed to settle. Once a judge approves the agreement, qualifying Apple customers will be able to receive payments between $25 to $95. As is typical in class-action settlements, Apple has not admitted any wrongdoing. The company defended itself in a statement sent to the New York Times: “We resolved this matter to …