> > > The FTC ruled to ban virtually all non-competes nationwide in April 2024.[16] The agency estimates 30 million workers are bound by these clauses and only excludes senior executives from the ban on enforcing non-competes.[16] The agency believes that this will allow workers to find better working conditions and pay, since switching companies, on average, provides the biggest pay raises.[17] It also allows workers to leave abusive work environments and can prevent some doctors from having to leave medicine once they leave a practice.[17] The ban was put on hold by U.S. District Judge Ada Brown on July 3, 2024, but then upheld on appeal by U.S. District Judge Kelley B. Hodge on July 23, 2024.[18][19] On August 20, 2024, a federal court in Texas overturned the FTC's ban on non-compete agreements, which was originally scheduled to take effect on September 4, 2024.[20] U.S. District Judge Ada Brown said the FTC did not have the authority to issue the ban, which she said was "unreasonably overbroad without a reasonable explanation."[21] Victoria Graham, an FTC spokeswoman responded to the ruling by stating "We are seriously considering a potential appeal..."[22] > >

> > > More generally, this kind of task is called "Knowledge Base Question Answering" (KBQA). The authors observe that many benchmarks have been published for it over the last decade, and that recently, the KBQA community has shifted toward using Wikidata as the underlying knowledge base for KBQA datasets. However, they criticize those existing benchmarks as either contain[ing] only simple questions [...] or synthetically generated complex logical forms that are not representative enough of real-world queries. To remedy this, they "introduce the SPINACH dataset, an expert-annotated KBQA dataset collected from forum discussions on Wikidata's 'Request a Query' forum with 320 decontextualized question-SPARQL pairs. Much more complex than existing datasets, SPINACH calls for strong KBQA systems that do not rely on training data to learn the KB schema, but can dynamically explore large and often incomplete schemas and reason about them." > >

> > > The paper's second contribution is an LLM-based system, also called "SPINACH", that on the authors' own dataset outperforms all baselines, including the best GPT-4-based KBQA agent by a large margin, and also achiev[es] a new state of the art on several existing KBQA benchmarks, although on it narrowly remains behind the aforementioned WikiSP model on the WikiWebQuestions dataset (both also out of Lam's lab). > >

> > > More generally, this kind of task is called "Knowledge Base Question Answering" (KBQA). The authors observe that many benchmarks have been published for it over the last decade, and that recently, the KBQA community has shifted toward using Wikidata as the underlying knowledge base for KBQA datasets. However, they criticize those existing benchmarks as either contain[ing] only simple questions [...] or synthetically generated complex logical forms that are not representative enough of real-world queries. To remedy this, they "introduce the SPINACH dataset, an expert-annotated KBQA dataset collected from forum discussions on Wikidata's 'Request a Query' forum with 320 decontextualized question-SPARQL pairs. Much more complex than existing datasets, SPINACH calls for strong KBQA systems that do not rely on training data to learn the KB schema, but can dynamically explore large and often incomplete schemas and reason about them." > >

> > > The paper's second contribution is an LLM-based system, also called "SPINACH", that on the authors' own dataset outperforms all baselines, including the best GPT-4-based KBQA agent by a large margin, and also achiev[es] a new state of the art on several existing KBQA benchmarks, although on it narrowly remains behind the aforementioned WikiSP model on the WikiWebQuestions dataset (both also out of Lam's lab). > >

For context, the Pamela Jones (PJ) mentioned is the sole operator of Groklaw, then a popular blog about legal cases related to FOSS. And a Sys-Con columnist pretty much doxxed her.

> > > "Testing out my new star filter on my parents' Christmas tree" > >

The Heinz dilemma is a frequently used example in many ethics and morality classes. One well-known version of the dilemma, used in Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development, is stated as follows: A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors said would save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's laboratory...

The Apotheosis of Washington is the fresco painted by Greek-Italian artist Constantino Brumidi in 1865 and visible through the oculus of the dome in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The fresco is suspended 180 feet (55 m) above the rotunda floor and covers an area of 4,664 square feet (433.3 m2). The figures painted are up to 15 feet (4.6 m) tall and are visible from the floor below. The dome was completed in 1863, and Brumidi painted it over the course of eleven months at the end of the American Civil War. He was paid $40,000 ($796,174 in today's funds) for the fresco. Brumidi had worked for three years in the Vatican under Pope Gregory XVI, and served several aristocrats as an artist for palaces and villas, including the prince Torlonia. He immigrated to the United States in 1852, and spent much of the last 25 years of his life working in the Capitol. In addition to The Apotheosis...

> > > Why is he [jumping] like that? > >

(headline is original headline found in the tab's name)

> > > "Mit diesem Sprung werde ich weltweit auf politischen Bühnen auftreten und Parteien wie die AfD oder Reform UK zum Endsieg führen", so Musk. "Genau wie bei Trump in den USA. Make UK Great Again! Germany Over Everything!" > >

> > > NewsNation's Alex Caprariello and Ashleigh Banfield spoke exclusively with prison inmates live through the fence at the State Correctional Institution Huntingdon in Pennsylvania who expressed their desire for UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione to be transferred to New York City's Rikers Island. "Luigi's conditions suck!" > >

Start the video around 1:55. Interview questions start around 3:10. After a few questions, they go into a bit of reporting, and then continue the questions starting 8:28.

generating this link to share the quantum gravity brian thompson opinion

Athletes did the awkward little shimmy to troll an imagined establishment. No one’s taking the bait.

> > > Last month, in a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the San Francisco 49ers’ star defensive end, Nick Bosa, celebrated a routine sack with a cheerful and ungainly series of hip-swivels and fist-pumps, not unlike the movements of an automaton gaining sentience. > >

> > > This time, though, the scolding, humorless masses don’t seem to mind. So accustomed are we to a politics of mischief and defiance that there has been little of the liberal pearl-clutching that serves as lifeblood for the right-wing commentariat. It feels especially pointless to note how many of the talking heads who are now gloating once groaned over athletes daring to oppose the former president. Not even the N.F.L., which takes a perverse pleasure in doling out fines for celebrations it deems political, violent or sexually suggestive, could be bothered to feed the outrage machine. The league, its spokesman stated last month, takes “no issue” with the dance. If anything, the move’s popularity marks a new frontier: Trump as the mainstream, no longer an outsider but a figure so banal and impervious to scandal that people can muster no more than a sigh — or, perhaps, a little wiggle — when they encounter him, suddenly, on the field. > >

> > > “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added. > >

> > > “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added. > >

> > > After confirming the authenticity of the Bigo livestreamer with the authorities, The Times searched the Apple and Google app stores for other video chat apps. Reporters identified a sample of more than 80 apps that advertised children before stopping the search. They later contacted Homeland Security Investigations, the government’s main law enforcement group for international exploitation, for comment. > >

> > > “The number one customer base paying for this abuse is in the United States,” the agent said. “It’s not like they are abused once a day. It’s 50 men getting 50 separate shows. They’ll wake up these kids in the middle of the night to be abused.” > >

> > > Asked about The Times’s sample of offending apps, Mr. Sainz said a majority had been detected during the company’s standard review process, with an additional 20 taken down after an internal investigation in response to The Times’s findings. > >

Smartphone apps downloaded from Apple and Google can allow parents and other abusers to connect with pedophiles who pay to watch — and direct — criminal behavior.

Netizens aren’t taking High’s predictions [of an alien invasion on December 3] seriously