Does sci-fi shape the future? Tech billionaires from Bill Gates to Elon Musk have often talked about the impact of novels they read as teens, from Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" to Iain M. Banks' "Culture" series. Big Think's Namir Khaliq spoke to authors including Andy Weir, Lois McMaster Bujold and @pluralistic about how much impact they think science fiction has had, or can have.
Oxford shuts down institute run by Elon Musk-backed philosopher
"The center was run by Nick Bostrom, a Swedish-born philosopher whose writings about the long-term threat of AI replacing humanity turned him into a celebrity figure among the tech elite and routinely landed him on lists of top global thinkers. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Tesla chief Musk all wrote blurbs for his 2014 bestselling book Superintelligence."
Whoopsies! "Free speech absolutist" "accidentally" suspends the accounts of journalists who are critical of him, and people whose political views he disagrees with.
He seems to have quite the habit of firing or banning people he disagrees with, doesn't he?
Via Gizmodo:
"X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, purged an unknown number of prominent accounts over the last 24 hours with little to no explanation, and then restored the accounts minutes after this article was published.
"The list includes popular accounts belonging to journalists, writers, and podcasters. Among them are Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept, writer and podcaster Rob Rousseau, Texas Observer correspondent Steven Monacelli, the account for TrueAnon, a left-wing politics and news podcast, and a number of others.
"One thing the accounts have in common is recent criticisms of the Israeli government.
...
"Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist” has previously said no one should be banned from X unless they break the law.
"Update, 1:12 p.m.: Shortly after this article was published, Musk responded to a question about the issue from far-right influencer Jackson Hinkle. Musk promised to investigate, and the accounts went back up soon after. Musk later blamed the “mistake” on X’s spam algorithms. The Hamas account is still suspended."
"Free speech absolutist" allegedly fires employee for raising security concerns.
Apparently Elon's version of free speech doesn't extend to employees who raise concerns about information security:
"Alan Rosa, who was Twitter’s global head of information security, filed the lawsuit late on Tuesday in New Jersey federal court, alleging breach of contract, wrongful termination and retaliation, among other claims. X Corp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"Rosa claims that late last year, after Musk acquired the company, he was told to cut his department’s budget for physical security by 50%...
"Rosa says he objected because the cuts would put Twitter at risk of violating a $150m settlement it entered into earlier in 2022 with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which claimed Twitter had misused users’ personal information. The agreement required Twitter to implement privacy and information security controls to protect confidential data.
"He was fired days after raising those concerns, according to the lawsuit. Rosa is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, and legal fees."
Elon's "extremely hardcore" toxic work culture means people are forced to take Adderall without a prescription to meet their workload. Just ask SpaceX employees.
"Some SpaceX workers resorted to taking Adderall to keep up with the pace of work at the company's launch facility, and others found themselves falling asleep in the bathroom during long workweeks, a recent Reuters investigation found.
"Travis Carson, a former SpaceX worker at the company's facility in Brownsville, Texas, told Reuters some workers took Adderall — a stimulant designed to help people with ADHD improve their focus and concentration levels — without a prescription to keep up with the pace of work."
BREAKING TWITTER takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time—Elon Musk—and the company that represents our culture’s dearest hope for a shared global conversation. (sic!)
So I just listened to Kara Swisher's interview of Ben Mezrich, author of "Breaking Twitter" which is out now I believe. Mr. Mezrich does not believe that tolerating racist people, turning Twitter into a firehose of racist conspiracy theories, and grandstanding for the worst white supremacists on the planet makes a person racist. "It's so complicated," he said to excuse leaving most of Elon's racist tweets and bigoted antics out of his semi-satirical book.
But it's not. As Kara points out, racist posturing by insincere people who should theoretically know better is, in some ways, worse than sincere outright racism. Either way, it's definitively racist behavior.
Elon lied about the monkeys — and he shouldn't be trusted to put his Neuralink chips in human brains.
"They are claiming they are going to put a safe device on the market, and that's why you should invest," Ryan Merkley at the Physicians Committee, told Wired. "And we see his lie as a way to whitewash what happened in these exploratory studies."
Really heartbreaking reading what happened to the monkeys.
People quite rightly think of Elizabeth Holmes as a fraud for making false medical claims about what the Theranos machines could do. So why aren't Elon's claims at Neuralink being held to the same level of scrutiny?
Prominent "free-speech absolutist" threatens to sue Jewish anti-hate group because it engaged in free speech he didn't like.
"Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing the civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.
"The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company by 'falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic'."
If your list of enemies includes the ADL, then there's a more-than-reasonable chance that you're an anti-semite.
Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying...
Brands that don't buy enough Twitter ads will lose verification (www.theverge.com)
Starting August 7th, advertisers that haven’t reached certain spending thresholds will lose their official brand account verification. According to emails obtained by the WSJ, brands need to have spent at least $1,000 on ads within the prior 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days to retain the gold checkmark identifying...