A new super PAC tied to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and billionaire Bill Ackman is backing Democratic challenger Dean Phillips. Stopping New Hampshire voters on the sidewalk, refilling their coffee mugs at diners and repeating his stump speech, long-shot presidential candidate Dean Phillips — the real one — explains why he thinks Democrats shouldn’t renominate President Biden: The leader of his party has lost the confidence of a majority of the electorate. A just-released artificial intelligence bot version of Phillips offers a similar answer: “While I respect President Biden, the data and conversations with Americans across the country indicates a strong desire for change.” A new super PAC backed by Silicon Valley insiders is mobilizing to spread Phillips’s ideas in an unusual way. This week, they launched Dean.Bot after weighing the implications of using a sophisticated AI tool that can chat like a real person — one of the first known uses of artificial intelligence in a political campaign.

The transport sector still leads the nation in greenhouse gas emissions — but that's not all. Emissions by drivers and auto manufacturers are undermining promising gains on other fronts in America's fight against climate change, new estimates suggest — but many policymakers are still unwilling take action to reduce how much we drive cars. According to preliminary estimates released last week from the Rhodium Group, transportation was, once again, the single biggest contributor to America's total emissions in 2023, rising 1.6 percent from 2022 even as overall emissions fell 1.9 percent nationwide over the same period. Much of that increase has to do with growing demand for air travel, but advocates point out that the drivers of light-duty vehicles collectively produce around 14 times more annual pollution than passengers on planes.

As police and families search for six people missing from the St. Louis area, rumors and half-truths swirl around their involvement with Rashad Jamal, a spiritual influencer now in prison for child abuse.

Whose responsibility is it to protect unhoused when it's freezing outside? An Ohio pastor opened his church to the homeless and was charged by city.

Those in power, promoting austerity and war, no longer want us to fear them. They demand something much more sinister: that we feel sorry for them.

The replacement for the ground-based U.S. nuclear arsenal anchored by the Minuteman III has officially busted through its $95.8 billion budget due to the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation, the Air Force said on Thursday. The Air Force is notifying Congress that the program, being designed and managed by Northrop Grumman Corp is now at least 37% over a pre-pandemic cost estimate finalized in September 2020, Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, told Reuters in an interview. Program changes, such as making bigger silos and switching to more durable materials, have also raised costs. The total program cost, now estimated above $131 billion, could grow further as the U.S. Secretary of Defense concludes a review by the summer.

Newly unsealed documents reveal that Meta not only knew about the child safety risks on its messaging platforms, but also blocked or failed to prioritize implementing safeguards.

This court's hubris is fueling a reckless race to snatch ever more power away from what remains of our democracy.

“The alligator can tune their hearing to land or water by adjusting how tight the tympanic membrane is stretched. Moreover, they believe that this is part of an alligator’s submergence reflex and that it occurs automatically when an alligator goes underwater.”

404 Media reviewed multiple examples of AI rip-offs making their way into Google News. Google said it doesn't focus on how an article was produced—by an AI or human—opening the way for more AI-generated articles.

Rochester police racked up more than $16 million in overtime during the city’s last budget year – setting a record for total payouts with three officers topping $300,000 in earnings. Police say they are on track to dramatically cut overtime in the current budget year, which began July 1. But the numbers from last year show: On average, Rochester police officers received $25,969.88 in overtime pay, more than double the average from two years ago. Total overtime spending is nearly twice what it was five years ago. The outlay dwarfs overtime costs of nearby Buffalo and exceeds the city’s entire library budget by $3 million.

Republican lawmakers in Kentucky introduced a bill last Tuesday that would criminalize homeless encampments and expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow property owners to confront unhoused people with a gun. The bill, dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act,” already has received more than 45 Republican co-sponsors and the Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police has committed to testify in support of the legislation when it has a committee hearing. “I’m just ashamed that this bill even came into fruition and I’m asking people to call their legislators and say no,” Lexington council member Tayna Fogle of District 1 said. The proposed legislation grants cities the authority to designate specific areas for unhoused individuals. If individuals are found outside of the designated area, residing in a tent, hut, temporary shelter, or vehicle with the intention to sleep, they may face misdemeanor charges, leading to a fine of $5,000 and a potential imprisonment of up to 90 days.

As investors worldwide drop cash on Israeli start-ups for 'battle-tested' weapons, defense tech CEOs are poised to be the war’s only victors.

“This investigation did not find Sgt. Mustard’s account as to these issues credible,” the report states.

Last week, when she got a hunch that she was about to be let go from her job at Cloudflare on a video call, account executive Brittany Pietsch did what seemed natural to her: She turned on her camera and pressed record. Pietsch’s hunch was correct. In the ensuing call, she refused to let the two other people on the call dryly read from a script about “next steps.” When a male director on the call said she had not met the company’s expectations, she pushed for specifics, noting she had received positive feedback from her manager and only been with the company since August. “I’m definitely confused and would love an explanation that makes sense,” she said. When the director was unable to provide specifics on her situation, it made sense to her, as it was the first time she had ever met him or the HR representative on the call. “Do you guys even know who you’re talking to?” she asked.

Total is 20% higher than thought and may have implications for collapse of globally important north Atlantic ocean currents Personal note: Greenland was my favorite place to visit in the whole world, but when I went to Greenland natives were told me we have ice for 10,000 years and I said bullshit then and showed them their own measurements showed unbelievably high losses in less than 10 years like 1000 years of ice melted in 10 years and the heat rate increase is going up

“To those who think that if President Trump wins, which I hope he does, that we can get a better deal — you won’t,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters Wednesday. “To my Republican friends: To get this kind of border security without granting a pathway to citizenship is really unheard of. So if you think you’re going to get a better deal next time, in ’25, if President Trump’s president, Democrats will be expecting a pathway to citizenship for that,” he said. “So to my Republican colleagues, this is a historic moment to reform the border.” Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., echoed Graham's view. “The Democrats will not give us anything close to this if we have to get 60 votes in the United States Senate in a Republican majority,” Thune said. “We have a unique opportunity here. And the timing is right to do this.” The pleas from the Republicans come as senators are expressing growing optimism that they’re on the brink of securing a bipartisan deal on tougher asylum and border laws that they have been negotiating for months, with uncertainty looming as to whether the GOP-controlled House would accept it.

In recent weeks, the media have been abuzz with speculation about what a second Trump term might look like. Much of this genre of reporting amounts to psychoanalysis about an aging Trump’s desire to establish authoritarian rule, his penchant for revenge, and his employment of the national security state, even the military, to achieve all of this. Instead of speculating, they could simply read what the national security people closest to Trump are saying. In a little-noticed interview with the Nevada Globe, Kash Patel, a former high-level national security appointee in the Trump administration who still has the former president’s ear, was pretty frank about their plans. And unlike the bombast about a “day-one dictatorship,” the plans are far more policy-focused — namely, on immigration. Citing four specific policies in the interview, Patel says of President Trump: *“He’s going to implement the largest deportation in US history.” *“He’s going to empower DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and law enforcement to go out to the communities and track down these criminals and terrorists and remove them from the United States of America.” *“He’s going to force the Mexican government to hold the drug cartels at bay and stop the human trafficking.” *“He’s going to complete the border wall.”

When Zela and her husband needed to move back into the home in Toronto's east end, she says the tenant told them he would not leave even though his lease was up, stopped paying rent and soon tried to "make a deal" with them, asking for $50,000 to vacate the property.

Ontario's highest court has rejected an attempt by controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson to challenge a regulatory body's order that he undergo social media training or potentially lose his licence to practise.