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Elon Musk reveals why physical robots matter a lot more than digital AI
MUSK: "I sometimes think about dolphins and whales because they can't manipulate things. They don't have hands and fingers and thumbs and stuff. There's a limit to how far, you know, how much intelligence can you actually bring to bear?"
"Dolphins and whales are actually very intelligent, but because they can't manipulate complex objects, I think that actually made the value of intelligence much less. To your point, once you have a robot that can manipulate atoms, can shape objects, the value of the intelligence becomes exponentially greater."
"Because it can do things. You know, it could have a science lab and run experiments and try to understand the nature of the universe."
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Austin promised to "reset" its social-services spending, found tons of compliance problems in their review, and recommended zero cuts.
A Catholic Charities contract to pay immigrants' federal filing fees, even though half its cases don't have a fee. It kept the full $126,720.
A $71,376 mental health contract that served about 4% of the clients it promised. Recommendation was to keep funding it.
A health bus that, two years in, still isn't running. The City has moved its target date six times.
A $349,710 contract with Sickle Cell Texas Marc Thomas Foundation, which the city says inflated its numbers, billed for costs it wasn't allowed to charge, and served people who didn't qualify. Staff proposed cutting it in July but the city extended it at full price anyway.
How did NOTHING get cut? Because every evaluator got the same instruction: if a contractor is underperforming but the "need" is still a real one theoretically, don't recommend a reduction.
In August, the city restored $4.7 million to social services and declared preserving that funding a “policy priority.”
And the city still hasn't released the names of the 26 flagged contracts.
The Audit and Finance Committee gets a briefing on it Wednesday, but nothing is actually up for a vote.
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Prop I will provide more information to the public about the operation and spending of the City than they have ever seen before. That information forms the foundation for holding the City Council accountable for fixing the systemic problems the City continues to have. That is also why Prop I scares the Hell out of the special interest groups who have been ripping off taxpayers for so long, they couldn’t imagine it ending.
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French journalist Paul Amar:
“They came prepared. They had the addresses of town halls. They had addresses of Jewish shop owners.
In a street in Marseille, all businesses owned by Jews were set on fire. Businesses run by Muslims weren’t”
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SENATOR JOHN KENNEDY: "It strikes me as breathtakingly ironic that that the people who are screaming so loudly about President Trump's decision to audit federal spending, are the very same people who wanted to hire 80,000 new IRS agents with guns to audit the American people."
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Funny how the people who want government to run everything get nervous when the other party wins.
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Today we're standing up XBOX LABS (labs.xbox.com). Here is the note that I sent to the team:
Team,
The first video games emerged some 75 years ago. In the time since, there have been booms and busts, but every year there are more great games to play, more devices to play them, and best of all, more people than ever playing. That growth helped make XBOX what it is today, and we've helped shape the industry in return, from bringing hard drives to consoles and online gaming through Xbox Live to Game Pass and cloud gaming, alongside franchises that have brought millions of people together.
In recent weeks, we've seen games rapidly decompiled and rebuilt to run on hardware they were never originally designed to support. Windows PC builds have been translated to run on Apple Silicon or ported to run inside a browser through WebAssembly and WebGPU, the latter now approaching 90% global browser support. Perhaps more surprisingly, we've seen many of the biggest games in the world have been remixed into the source code of another.
These experiments challenge long-held assumptions about our industry: the tether between software and hardware, the boundary between creation and play, and how people discover and experience games. While it is hard to predict the future of gaming, it is easy to see the possibilities in making great games easier to access, giving old games new life and allowing more players to become creators and co-creators. These are unmistakably good outcomes for players, even when (and sometimes because) they challenge our existing business models.
To explore these possibilities, I’ve asked Scott to stand-up XBOX LABS, a small group of game makers, engineers and scientists whose job is to turn emerging ideas into things our players and developers can experience. We'll build in the open, learn from what people do, and measure success by whether more people are playing and creating.
I think XBOX has an important role to play here. Coding became the first major workload for agents because they can write, run, and test software. Games share many of those same properties, and people spend more than 72 billion hours a year playing XBOX games, roughly five times the estimated time spent writing code worldwide. We've spent 25 years learning how to make great games, and I want our game makers to help shape what these new technologies make possible. As we learn, we’ll share the tools we build with developers across the industry, just as we always have.
Our priorities aren't changing. We remain committed to the 4Cs, to making great games, to our hardware and to being responsible stewards of IP and the communities built around it. LABS gives us a way to explore new technology that is game design led without abandoning the work already underway.
Asha
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On September 30, Rep. Mitch Little (@realmitchlittle) asked Travis County prosecutor Stephanie Gharakhanian a yes or no question: does the Wren Collective provide policy consultation to Jose Garza’s office?
Her answer, to the House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight: “Not that I am aware of.”
Rep. Brooks Landgraf (@BrooksLandgraf) asked what communication the office has had with Wren. Gharakhanian said she was hesitant to speak on “a topic that I don’t know anything about.”
Now read the emails Chris Harris (@chrisharris904) posted yesterday.
November 16, 2022. The first assistant’s scheduler writes to “Jess,” copying Gharakhanian: “Trudy and Steph also wanted to use this time to consult with you” on prosecutorial discretion bills coming in the next legislative session.
December 9, 2022. First Assistant Trudy Strassburger thanks a group for that day’s media training for reporters. Gharakhanian is on the list. So is Jessica Brand of the Wren Collective. Jose Garza is copied.
Gharakhanian is the office’s legislative liaison. She told Rep. Shelby Slawson (@ShelbySlawson) she took that role in the 2023 session, the same session those bills were headed to.
The committee should bring her back, with the documents on the table.
The November 16, 2022 email
1. You are “Steph” in the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, correct?
2. Henry Kellison handles scheduling for First Assistant Trudy Strassburger?
3. On November 16, 2022, Mr. Kellison sent an email copying you, addressed “Hi Jess.” Who is Jess?
4. That email says you and Ms. Strassburger “wanted to use this time to consult with” her on prosecutorial discretion bills. Did you ask Mr. Kellison to set that up?
5. Did that consultation take place? Who attended, and how long did it last?
6. Which bills did you discuss?
7. What did Ms. Brand advise, and what did the office do with that advice?
Her role and her September 30 answers
8. You told Representative Slawson you became legislative liaison in the 2023 session. That is the “next session” the email refers to?
9. So the person consulting "Jess" on legislation was the office’s legislative point of contact?
10. Representative Little asked whether Wren provides policy consultation to your office. You answered, “Not that I am aware of.” Do you stand by that answer today?
11. You told Chairman Landgraf you were hesitant to speak on “a topic that I don’t know anything about.” You had asked to consult "Jess" yourself. How do you reconcile those?
12. You told him you did not know enough about Wren’s work to say whether it is a community partner. What did you understand Wren’s work to be when you sought its advice on legislation?
13. Is consulting on prosecutorial discretion bills policy consultation? If not, what is it?
The December 9, 2022 media training
14. You received Ms. Strassburger’s thank you email after the December 9 training, as did Ms. Brand and Mr. Garza?
15. What was Ms. Brand’s role in that training? Did she design it, present at it, or both? Is it recorded?
16. Which reporters and outlets attended?
17. The email says reporters left with a better understanding of “our role in the process.” Whose role does “our” include?
18. Who paid for Ms. Brand’s time?
Frequency and channels
19. You said your communication with Ms. Brand was not frequent. How many emails, calls, texts and meetings have you had with her since 2021?
20. Have you communicated with her or anyone at Wren by personal email, text, Signal or any account other than your county address?
21. Have you communicated with her about any bill in the 88th or 89th Legislature, or about this committee’s interim charge?
22. Did anyone at Wren review, edit or comment on the written testimony you read on September 30?
The NDA and the documents
23. You testified you have no personal knowledge of the Wren nondisclosure agreement. Were you ever told your communications with Ms. Brand were confidential?
24. Before September 30, did you search your own email for “Brand” or “Wren”? Have you since?
25. Will you produce every communication between you and Ms. Brand or Wren, from every account and device, within 14 days?
26. Has anyone instructed you not to produce them?
27. Do you wish to correct any part of your September 30 testimony?
Preservation
28. On September 30 the chairman asked that communications with the Wren Collective be preserved. What did you do in response, and when?
29. Has the office issued a written litigation hold or preservation notice covering Wren, Jessica Brand and this committee’s inquiry? On what date, and to whom?
30. Does it cover Mr. Garza, Ms. Strassburger, Mr. Kellison, Mr. Martinez and you by name?
31. Does it cover personal email accounts, personal phones, text messages and messaging applications such as Signal and WhatsApp?
32. Has anyone in the office used a messaging application with disappearing or auto-delete settings to communicate with Ms. Brand or Wren? Have those settings been turned off?
33. Has any automatic deletion of county email, Teams or other chat been suspended?
34. What is the office’s retention period for email and for text messages? Has anything from 2021 or 2022 involving Wren already been deleted under it?
35. Has any employee who communicated with Wren left the office since 2021? What happened to that person’s email account and county phone?
36. Has anyone deleted, or been asked to delete, a communication with Ms. Brand or Wren since January 2021?
Searches
37. Before you testified on September 30, did anyone search the office’s records for communications with Wren or Ms. Brand? Who, and when?
38. What search terms were used? Did they include “Wren,” “Brand,” “Jess,” “Justice Collaborative” and Ms. Brand’s email addresses?
39. Whose accounts were searched, and for what date range?
40. Was the search run by county information technology staff across the server, or did each employee search his or her own mailbox?
41. Were personal accounts and personal devices searched? Who asked each employee, and how did each answer?
42. Sean Kennedy testified that your office resisted his records requests and went to the Attorney General three times. What searches were run for those requests, and were the two emails posted by Mr. Harris among the results?
43. If they were found, on what basis were they withheld? If they were not found, why not?
44. Did the nondisclosure agreement with Wren play any part in deciding what to search for, withhold or produce?
45. Who in the office is the custodian responsible for this committee’s request, and will that person certify in writing that the search is complete?
cc: @Burrows4TX @cvasut @EllenTroxclair
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Bernie is a parasite…
Who pays income taxes?
Top 1% pays 40%
Top 10% pays 72%
Top 25% pays 87%
Top 50% pays 97%
Bottom 50% pays only 3%
Commies like Bernie know this.
He’s a scam artist. He’s a lifelong leach.
It’s not about “defeating the Oligarchy”.
It’s a grift.
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The top 1% earned 21% of the income and paid 38% of the income tax.
The bottom half earned 12% and paid 3%.
The top 10% carried 70% of the entire federal income tax. It can’t get any more progressive than this.
“Tax the rich” already happened. The rich are the tax base, and they still get told they don’t pay their fair share.
Which is why they’re now moving to expropriating wealth.
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If the communists simply practiced what they preached...it would fix everything. They'd be stuck on the commune, shoveling chicken shit...no phones, no internet, none of the privileges that Capitalism created...and we'd never have to hear their shrieking bullshit ever again.
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The only citizen led item on the ballot is Prop I, backed by a petition signed by over 20k voters.
Everything else on the city ballot was proposed by City Council.
Vote Aye on Prop I.
Vote No on the rest.
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Things you learn in Texas:
1. The guy in the F-150 is worth a lot more than the dude in a Mercedes.
2. The small business owner from a state school is smarter than the majority of Ivy League grads.
3. There’s more racism in Connecticut country clubs than in rural honky-tonks.
4. Rednecks are more honorable than investment bankers.
5. The man who looks like he can’t afford the tab could buy the building.
6. They don’t ask for a deck before the meeting.
7. Prep school is where they send the problem kids.
8. If he’s wearing dusty boots, a 2XL Magellan shirt, a gold Rolex, and has a bulletproof case on his iPhone 12, you’ve already lost the negotiation.
9. “How’s business?” is a real question. “What do you do?” is a New York question.
10. Tips are bigger and egos are smaller.
11. A handshake still closes deals that a term sheet would kill.
12. The wealth is in real estate, oil, or a company nobody in Manhattan has ever heard of.
13. Your wife or daughter will never struggle finding help to change a tire.
14. Nobody asks where you went to college.
15. A weekend invitation to their ranch makes you part of the family.
