As Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign gets underway, Democrats and Republicans are rushing to define her. And Democrats are shifting the way they talk about the GOP. WSJ’s Molly Ball explores the strategies behind how both sides are framing each other.
Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta are all spending a ton of money to build out cloud capabilities to fuel the next phase of AI growth. But the market isn’t sold on that spend yet.
(00:21) Ron Gross and Matt Argersinger discuss:
- Why recent job numbers dramatically boosted the likelihood of a rate cut in 2024.
- Intel’s dividend cut, and what history has to say about companies that stop payments to shareholders.
- Why Apple and Meta are holding up well during a tough earnings season for big tech.
- Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s combined $45B in capital expenditures this quarter, and how investors should be thinking about this investment phase in AI.
(31:41) Ron and Matt break down two stocks on their radar: Designer Brands and MercadoLibre.
CrowdScience listener Azeddine from Algeria has had bad handwriting since he was a child. In fact, it was so untidy that, when he later became a chemistry lecturer, his university students complained that they could not read his lecture notes. That was when he decided he had to do something about it.
And it got him wondering… why do some of us have very neat handwriting while other people’s is almost unreadable? Why do his sisters all write beautifully when his natural style is quite the opposite?
Presenter Alex Lathbridge sets out to answer Azeddine’s question. He explores the different factors which determine how well we write. How much of it is inherited? What part does family and education play? And what is actually going on in our brains when we apply pen to paper?
Alex talks to anthropologist Monika Saini of the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, Delhi, who has analysed writing styles within families and in different regions across India. She tells him about the genetic and cultural factors which seem to influence our handwriting.
We also hear from neuroscientist Marieke Longcamp of Aix Marseille Université, France, who uses MRI scanning to find out which parts of our brains are involved when we write by hand. She has looked at what is happening in the brains of people who write in more than one script – for example in French and Arabic, like Azeddine.
Another neuroscientist, Karin Harman James, from Indiana University, USA ,has been looking at the link between learning something by writing it down compared to typing it on a tablet or laptop.
And Alex meets handwriting tutor Cherrell Avery to find out if it’s possible to improve your writing – even as an adult.
Presenter: Alex Lathbridge
Producer: Jeremy Grange
Editor: Cathy Edwards
Production Co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano
Studio Manager: Emma Harth
Elon Musk is CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, and CTO of X. DJ Seo is COO & President of Neuralink. Matthew MacDougall is Head Neurosurgeon at Neuralink. Bliss Chapman is Brain Interface Software Lead at Neuralink. Noland Arbaugh is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain.
OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(09:26) – Elon Musk
(12:42) – Telepathy
(19:22) – Power of human mind
(23:49) – Future of Neuralink
(29:04) – Ayahuasca
(38:33) – Merging with AI
(43:21) – xAI
(45:34) – Optimus
(52:24) – Elon’s approach to problem-solving
(1:09:59) – History and geopolitics
(1:14:30) – Lessons of history
(1:18:49) – Collapse of empires
(1:26:32) – Time
(1:29:14) – Aliens and curiosity
(1:36:48) – DJ Seo
(1:44:57) – Neural dust
(1:51:40) – History of brain–computer interface
(1:59:44) – Biophysics of neural interfaces
(2:10:12) – How Neuralink works
(2:16:03) – Lex with Neuralink implant
(2:36:01) – Digital telepathy
(2:47:03) – Retracted threads
(2:52:38) – Vertical integration
(2:59:32) – Safety
(3:09:27) – Upgrades
(3:18:30) – Future capabilities
(3:47:46) – Matthew MacDougall
(3:53:35) – Neuroscience
(4:00:44) – Neurosurgery
(4:11:48) – Neuralink surgery
(4:30:57) – Brain surgery details
(4:46:40) – Implanting Neuralink on self
(5:02:34) – Life and death
(5:11:54) – Consciousness
(5:14:48) – Bliss Chapman
(5:28:04) – Neural signal
(5:34:56) – Latency
(5:39:36) – Neuralink app
(5:44:17) – Intention vs action
(5:55:31) – Calibration
(6:05:03) – Webgrid
(6:28:05) – Neural decoder
(6:48:40) – Future improvements
(6:57:36) – Noland Arbaugh
(6:57:45) – Becoming paralyzed
(7:11:20) – First Neuralink human participant
(7:15:21) – Day of surgery
(7:33:08) – Moving mouse with brain
(7:58:27) – Webgrid
(8:06:28) – Retracted threads
(8:14:53) – App improvements
(8:21:38) – Gaming
(8:32:36) – Future Neuralink capabilities
(8:35:31) – Controlling Optimus robot
(8:39:53) – God
(8:41:58) – Hope
Maybe you got a boring slip of paper in the mail. Maybe you got a spammy-looking email promising you money. Surprise! You're in a class action. If you've done any commerce in the last decade, there's a good chance that someone somewhere was suing on your behalf and you have real money coming your way... if you know what to do.
Class action settlements are on the rise. And, on today's show, we're helping decipher the class action from the perspective of the average class member. How do class actions work? Why are these notices sometimes undecipherable? And, what do you stand to gain (or lose) by responding?
This episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and Nick Fountain. It was produced by James Sneed with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) The week's market selloff 2) Consumer spending declines and other negative economic factors 3) Starbucks as a economic barometer 4) Favorite boba 5) AI spending comes under scrutiny 6) Big Tech earnings performance 7) NVIDIA's resilience 8) Apple Intelligence beta arrives 9) Siri is still bad 10) Ranjan depressed about Siri being bad 11) Review of OpenAI's ChatGPT 4o voice edition 12) Friend dot com launch 13) Olympics recap 14) The case of Gianmarco's lost wedding ring
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Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice.
Donald Trump checks all the boxes of a person with narcissistic personality disorder, but the mainstream press goes out of its way not to cover his apparent pathologies—and ends up normalizing them.
George Conway wants to change the media narrative to stop the guy who only cares about himself from getting back in the Oval Office. Conway joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.
Project 2025 has effectively become an epithet for many Democrats. The project was aimed at providing the next administration with a roadmap for reform in a wide variety of areas, some more controversial than others. Neal McCluskey offers a couple cheers aimed at the education portion of the document.
On this special episode, Mary Katharine sits down with Daily Mail political reporter and author Charlie Spiering to discuss his new book, Amateur Hour: Kamala Harris in the White House.
Presidential candidates Donald Trump and RFK Jr., as well as Senator Cynthia Lummis, have proposed the U.S. establish a strategic bitcoin reserve. George Selgin of the Cato Institute unpacks their various proposals.
In this episode, George Selgin, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, discusses the recent proposals by Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Senator Cynthia Lummis for the U.S. government to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve. George provides his insights into the differences between these proposals, their potential implications, and why he believes the government should not be investing in bitcoin or other assets.
Show highlights:
How the Bitcoin proposals by Trump, RFK Jr., and Lummis differ
Why George believes that Trump’s proposal to not sell the government’s bitcoin is just symbolic
What the purpose of acquiring BTC is in the Lummis and RFK proposals
Whether the government should even be investing in bitcoin or other assets
How would the government buy BTC as per the Lummis bill
How likely is it that the bill passes through Congress
Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com