"X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, has been sold. Elon Musk said Friday that xAI, his artificial intelligence company, had acquired X in an all-stock transaction that values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion, his original take-private price, minus $12 billion in debt)."
"As part of its 2024 centenary celebrations, FIDE has unveiled an online museum tracing chess history from ancient times to modern tournaments. The Open Chess Museum endorsed by FIDE aims to become the world’s largest repository of chess artifacts, showcasing valuable items from every corner of the world and every era of chess history."
If I got a fancy gym membership and went on an inclined treadmill for 40 minutes every morning, I'd be pleased with myself.
But because I'm walking up and down hills all over the neighborhood for the same length of time I'm mad at myself for not exercising enough and telling myself it's "just a walk."
I feel bad for all the small and local businesses who have to manage their Google Business listings. It is INSANE that something so critical for a business is THIS damn janky. @ai6yr
"The president of the brokerage firm, The Furman Company, was Alester G. Furman Jr., a long-time trustee of Furman University and the great-grandson of the university’s first president.... The analysis is part of a research project by Ken Kolb... and other faculty and student researchers. Their project, 'Placing Furman,' includes hundreds of photos, interactive data maps illustrating the scope of the project...'
'Careless People has debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s also spent much of the week in the number three position on Amazon’s bestseller list. That’s despite the fact that Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former policy director at Facebook, has been barred from promoting or publicly discussing the book following legal action by Meta.'
'Compare Tesla’s capital expenditure in the last six months of 2024 to its valuation of the assets that money was spent on, and $1.4bn appears to have gone astray.
... A closer look at Tesla’s cash flow statement may also prompt investors to ask other questions, such as why a business with a $37bn cash pile raised $6bn of new debt last year?
'The new resource will log cocktail menus from bars around the world which can be browsed by country, bar name, year and key words and is accessible to hospitality professionals.
With more than 100 so far, the Cocktail Menu Collection aims to provide an outlook on ingredients and recipes used in bars globally, while offering inspiration for menu concepts, drinks and design.'
'Scientists at NTU Singapore, have developed an innovative solar-powered method to transform sewage sludge - a by-product of wastewater treatment - into green hydrogen for clean energy and single-cell protein for animal feed.
Published in Nature Water, the sludge-to-food-and-fuel method tackles two pressing global challenges: managing waste and generating sustainable resources.'
"The Getty has acquired the archive of renowned American artist Raymond Pettibon, who first gained recognition in the 1980s Southern California punk rock scene before establishing himself in the fine art world, officials announced Tuesday."
'This weekend, protests escalated at Tesla showrooms across the nation. Hundreds of people gathered to boycott Elon Musk and his involvement in the Trump administration as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is overseeing a massively disruptive effort to fire thousands of federal workers to slash government spending.'
'Google’s featured snippet is pulling in an Amazon AI summary of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf that calls it “a true work of art” in the latest AI-related fuckup affecting top search results.'
'The University of California, Davis, has launched a website and video series titled, “From Labs to Lives,” to highlight federally funded research, describe how the research benefits the public, and share the consequences to the public if funding is reduced or eliminated. '
'It turns out that virtually every Warner Bros DVD disc manufactured between 2006 and 2008 has succumbed to the dreaded laser rot, where discs simply stop working due to a rotting of the layers. Once it happens, it can’t be undone. This was a frequent problem with laserdiscs back in the 80s and 90s, but it wasn’t a huge problem with DVDs. The issue comes down to the way the discs were authored.'
I made sure to take my exercise early this morning because I wanted to spend the day getting SearchTweaks updated.
First order of business: add autocomplete to Wiki-Guided Google Search, which uses related concepts extracted from Wikipedia to build Google searches. The autocomplete will make it much easier to just punch in Wikipedia topics and get right to searching.
Obsessed with search engines, databases, and online information collections forever. Writing books & such since 1996 (OFFICIAL NETSCAPE GUIDE TO INTERNET RESEARCH, GOOGLE HACKS, INFORMATION TRAPPING, WEB SEARCH GARAGE, etc) and ResearchBuzz since 1998. Autistic and too tired to hide it. (My special interest? Everything, only organized.) Snarks (as opposed to jokes), doom, and reply guys are blocked without warning.I post a loooooooot, mostly hashtagged resources.