Saturday, January 13, 2024
Apple to Shutter 121-Person San Diego AI Team in Reorganization
Apple Inc. is shutting a 121-person team related to artificial intelligence operations in San Diego, leaving many employees at risk of termination, according to people familiar with the matter.
The group, known as Data Operations Annotations, was told Wednesday that they would be relocating to Austin to merge with the Texas portion of the same team, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been announced.
Apple told employees that they have until the end of February to decide if they will relocate, according to the people. If they don’t, the workers will be terminated on April 26.
The group, which also has offices in China, India, Ireland and Spain, is responsible for improving Siri by listening to queries to the voice service and determining if it heard and handled questions accurately. The announcement to close the San Diego group was made by Christine DeFilippo, a top deputy to Apple AI chief John Giannandrea, the people said.
An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the relocation decision, saying the company is bringing its “Data Operations Annotations teams in the US together at our campus in Austin, where a majority of the team is already based.” She added that “everyone currently employed will have the opportunity to continue their role with Apple in Austin.”
The company also said it’s “deeply committed to San Diego,” where it has “grown significantly,” and that it is continuing to hire as Apple expands its engineering teams. In other countries where the affected team operates, Apple keeps all the employees in one office.
For the San Diego staff, the move came as a surprise. The AI team had been working from an office that Apple is renting, according to the people. But the company had told staff recently that they would be relocated to a new Apple campus in the area at the end of January. Earlier this month, Apple distributed packing boxes to employees to prepare for a relocation within the city.
China opposes Japan's congratulatory message to Taiwan president-elect
The Chinese embassy in Japan said on Sunday that it "resolutely opposed" Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa's statement congratulating Taiwan's new president-elect Lai Ching-te.
In a statement published on the Japanese foreign ministry's website on Saturday, after the results of the Taiwan presidential election were announced, Kamikawa congratulated Lai on his victory, calling the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing "an extremely crucial partner and an important friend."
In response, the Chinese embassy in Japan, without mentioning Lai or acknowledging his victory, described Kamikawa's comments as "a serious interference in China's internal affairs", according to a statement published on Sunday on the embassy's official WeChat account.
"We express strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to this, and have lodged solemn representations with the Japanese side," the embassy said.
Japan, like most countries, does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, a precondition for establishing diplomatic ties with China.
But Japan's alliance with the United States, Taiwan's most important backer, and its proximity to the island, along with recent tensions in its ties with China, have prompted Tokyo to pursue
closer ties with Taipei.
"The Government of Japan will work toward further deepening cooperation and exchanges between Japan and Taiwan," Kamikawa said in her statement.
The Chinese embassy also said that Japan should refrain from sending any "wrong signals" to "Taiwan independence" forces, a label Beijing uses to describe Lai and his political party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which champions Taiwan's separate identity and rejects China's territorial claims.
Lai said he would maintain the status quo in relations across the Taiwan Strait, but that he was "determined to safeguard Taiwan from threats and intimidation from China".
5 new drug shortages in 2024
As the FDA imports a syphilis drug from France that's been in short supply since spring 2023, the FDA and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists have reported five new drug supply issues in 2024.
Here are the new shortages, according to drug supply databases from the FDA and ASHP.
Editor's note: The drugs are listed in alphabetical order.
1. Diazepam injection is used for anxiety, muscle spasms, seizures and alcohol withdrawal. Three solutions are on back order without resupply dates and two are available.
2. Lenalidomide capsule: As of Jan. 11, 23 solutions of the drug for myelodysplastic syndrome patients are in shortage and 23 are available. Most pharmaceutical companies did not share an estimated release date, but Sun Pharma said its six solutions should be available in mid-March.
3. Lisdexamfetamine dimesylate capsule: The attention-deficit/hyperactivity drug is in short supply among 10 manufacturers because of regulatory delays, demand increases and an ingredient shortage. A majority of solutions are on allocation or in limited supply, according to the FDA.
4. Mercaptopurine tablet: Four solutions of the chemotherapy drug are in shortage, one was discontinued and another is available. The drug is used with other cancer therapies for acute lymphoblastic leukemia and acute lymphatic leukemia, and Mylan discontinued its 50 milligram solution in December. Two drugmakers now report four 50 milligram solutions are on back order.
5. Rho(D) immune globulin: One of the makers of the antibody, Kedrion Biopharma, has three solutions in shortage. The company said the supply issues are because of a "shortage of an active ingredient[,] manufacturing issues and plant maintenance requirements." Four other solutions are available.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/5-new-drug-shortages-in-2024.html
We Are in an Abusive Relationship with Our Government
By J.B. Shurk
California is now covering the costs of genital-mutilating surgeries for illegal aliens. Leftism’s slippery slope invariably leads to depraved absurdity. Consider how Governor (receding) Hairdo and the Pyrite State’s other communist saboteurs have greased the shifting ground under Californians’ feet:
(1) There is no illegal immigration crisis.
(2) There may be a crisis, but California taxpayers won’t be paying for it.
(3) Taxpayers may have to foot the bill for the illegal immigration crisis, but California will do nothing to incentivize illegal immigration.
(4) After further review, these aliens aren’t “illegal,” but rather “undocumented.”
(5) Health care is a human right.
(6) California must provide “undocumented” aliens healthcare.
(7) Mutilating the genitals to make them look like the opposite sex is health care.
(8) California taxpayers must pay for “undocumented” aliens’ genital surgery.
(9) Californians who object to paying for undocumented aliens’ genital surgery may be guilty of “hate” crimes and will be prosecuted.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Why punish the people who illegally enter the United States when you can punish the people who do not want to subsidize immigration crimes while canceling their votes with the votes of those here illegally? Why should “health care” stop with free genital mutilation for the whole planet? Why not label spacious split-level homes with at least one electric vehicle in each garage “health care” as well? Why shouldn’t California taxpayers be on the hook for each new illegal alien’s “green energy” lifestyle? The absurdity will never end.
As Sundance frequently reminds readers over at The Conservative Treehouse, “We are in an abusive relationship with our government.” And in California, where the Marxist globalists rule with absolute power, the government never gets tired of slapping American citizens around and telling them it’s for their own good.
California’s decision to become a Mecca for foreign men who want to chop off their willies and hang out in women’s restrooms is just the latest example of government insanity promoted as “progress.” While foreign nationals are invading the United States in unprecedented numbers, Department of Homeland (in)Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas continues to claim that (1) there is no crisis of any kind, and (2) if there is a crisis, Congress should just allocate more money for DHS to quickly bus the invaders into small towns throughout the country. Hear that, American citizens? The problem isn’t that tens of millions of foreigners are illegally entering the country; the problem is that people are noticing the problem — which would quickly disappear if DHS had the funds to hide the invaders more effectively and seed them into the counties where illegal votes from illegal aliens will do Democrats the most good. Canceling American votes one invader at a time — yet none dare call it election-rigging on a massive scale!
Mayorkas’s admission that his plan to tackle illegal immigration consists of (1) making it worse but (2) hiding it more effectively is another infuriating example of why governments (of any kind!) can never, ever be trusted. The best that any civilized society can do is shackle government power so severely that its agents feel as if they are rotting away in a dark dungeon without any prospect of public glory. That’s why our Founders worked so hard to write a Constitution that limits the powers of all the miscreants who inevitably end up running things. After all, at its core, government is nothing more than a collection of unethical people given legal immunity for performing otherwise criminal acts.
In exchange for a little law and order, prosperity, and peace, the people look the other way while government bureaucrats steal their property (taxes), intimidate them with threats of force (FBI-Gestapo), and occasionally sacrifice their children for the greater good (war). As soon as government is celebrated as something wonderful (instead of something that should always be dreaded and despised), those same bureaucrats break free from their dungeons, anoint themselves as unaccountable kings, and devise the most elaborate schemes to pillage, plunder, and endanger the citizenry without remorse. No tax is too high! No government mandate or regulatory fiat is too grotesque! No life is too precious for the spoils of endless, needless war! In Mayorkas’s world, bureaucrats bark orders, citizens comply, the government tells you what you may own, and armed IRS agents confiscate the rest!
How has the freest nation on Earth been reduced to a population of citizen-slaves begging for government scraps? America’s tyrants use the same two-pronged approach that all totalitarian regimes do: the U.S. government (1) lies about everything, while (2) intentionally inflicting emotional harm on its citizens. Everything that unscrupulous government agents such as Mayorkas shove down Americans’ throats is part of a psychological war meant to enfeeble, confuse, dispirit, and infantilize the adult population while indoctrinating younger generations to accept absurdities, surrender to “woke” ideology, and refrain from ever questioning authoritarian “elites.”
That’s why popular actors, musicians, and athletes must all believe the same thing — lest they be summarily “canceled.” It is absolutely essential that young minds see intellectual conformity as something to celebrate and dissent as something to abhor. It is why presidential puppet Joe Biden likes to say, “We’re all in this together,” while simultaneously stigmatizing half the electorate as “domestic terrorists” who “threaten democracy.” Critical thinking, artistic individualism, philosophical disagreement, and public debate are not tolerated in totalitarian regimes.
In an essay for the Brownstone Institute, Jeffrey Tucker describes his experience at a train station where prominent warning signs still command travelers to obey COVID’s strict social distancing requirements. For the most part, people just ignored the government’s orders and went about their lives. After pondering the “enormous disjunction ... between what we are told to do and what we actually do,” Tucker concludes that the “edicts to which no one complies serve a certain purpose. They are a visual reminder of who is in charge, what those people believe, and the presence of a Sword of Damocles hanging above the whole population: at any point, anyone can be snatched away from normal life, made a criminal, and be forced to pay a price.” In a psychological war meant to obtain total control over citizen behavior, “the nuttier the edicts, the more effective the message.”
Writer Kit Knightly aptly describes these nutty edicts as part of the government’s broader propaganda campaign to “cultivate” a “perfidious unreality,” where our “authoritarian ruling elite” promulgate “insane narratives” that “serve as both loyalty test and humiliation ritual.” When government agents say something that is “impossible to believe” and people accept it as true nonetheless, then citizens demonstrate “greater loyalty” to the government’s absurd fabrications than to reality. “Humiliation is the ultimate demonstration of control” because under a system “where nothing is true, anything could be.” Knightly concludes that the government engages in psychopathic behavior meant to do one thing: break every citizen’s spirit and mind.
What this means is that fighting for human liberty against the government’s encroaching totalitarianism requires more than civil disobedience; it requires an acceptance that everything our government says is a lie and everything our government does is destructive. The U.S. government — along with most Western governments that have been captured by central banks, spy agencies, and an international cabal of Marxist “elites” — is dedicated to destroying any notion of “objective truth.” That is why we are told that biological sex is a social construct, that private property causes “climate change,” and that popular political movements are “undemocratic.” To free our bodies, we must free our minds. And to free our countries, we must work to free the minds of as many of our fellow citizens as we can.
When the battlefield is the human brain, revolutionary ideas are more important than bullets.
'New German leftist party could take up to 14% of vote - poll'
A leftist politician who quit Germany's Left party and this week set up her own could win as much as 14% of the vote in national elections, dealing heavy blows to both conservatives and the far right, a new poll has found.
Sahra Wagenknecht, born in East Germany in 1969 to Iranian and German parents, launched her party "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance - Reason and Justice" (BSW), promising to "save democracy" from the far right with a mix of paternalistic economic, conservative social and nationalistic foreign policy.
The backdrop - of an electorate made sullen by the economic shock from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the costs of the green transition, and stretched public services - is propitious for new parties: on the right, former spy chief Hans-Georg Maassen is also considering a new anti-immigration venture.
According to an Insa poll published in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Saturday evening, Wagenknecht's party could take 4 percentage points from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), reducing it to 18%, and 3% from the opposition conservatives, putting them on 27%.
The three governing parties would be less affected: Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats would be 1 percentage point down on 14%, the Greens unscathed on 12%, and the pro-business Free Democrats on 4% would also lose a point.
Alarm is growing in Germany and the European Union at the AfD's strong performance ahead of EU and regional elections in the final quarter of this year: a shift in Europe's largest economy and the EU's most populous country towards the AfD could upend the West's fragile consensus on issues such as arming Ukraine against Russia's invasion.
In this respect, the BSW, which calls for negotiations with Russia on ending the war, would be little different from the AfD, but, unlike the avowedly nationalistic AfD, it could be more palatable as a coalition partner to the centrist parties.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/german-leftist-party-could-14-205659457.html
US congressional leaders agree on stopgap funding bill
U.S. congressional leaders have agreed on a two-tranche stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government funded into March and avert a partial government shutdown starting late next week, a source familiar with the measure told Reuters on Saturday.
Politico, CNN and Punchbowl first reported that congressional leaders had agreed on what is called a "continuing resolution" or "CR," that would fund the government - extending two deadlines through March 1 and March 8.
A spokesperson for the Senate's Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said a text of the spending deal is expected to be posted online on Sunday. A second source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the earlier reports were accurate.
Funding expires on Jan. 19 for some federal agencies, including the Department of Transportation, while others like the Defense Department face a Feb. 2 deadline.
The top Democrat and Republican in Congress reached a $1.59 trillion deal on Jan. 7 to fund the government through the current fiscal year, but if they fail to pass it by Jan. 19, parts of the federal government would begin to shut down.
Some lawmakers have said a short-term funding bill was needed to allow bipartisan negotiators from the House and Senate time to agree on full-year fiscal 2024 spending bills and for Congress to enact the legislation.
On Thursday, Schumer took the first procedural step to pass a stopgap funding bill through the Senate early next week to give lawmakers more time to pass the full-year bill.
The U.S. came close to a partial government shutdown last autumn amid opposition by the hardline House Republicans who ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy over reaching a bipartisan stopgap spending deal with Schumer.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-us-congressional-leaders-agree-231914782.html
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