A.M. Edition for Aug 28. Nvidia posts another record quarter, but Journal Heard on the Street columnist Dan Gallagher says its $4 trillion-plus valuation sets an awfully high bar that even strong numbers don’t always meet. Plus, The White House says it has fired the director of the Centers for Disease Control, following clashes with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the agency’s guidance on vaccines. And WSJ economics reporter Justin Lahart unpacks new research that shows AI’s effect on job prospects for young Americans. Azhar Sukri hosts.
Alex Kihm just turned 40, and has been into computers for 36 years. He was given his first hand me down computer at the age of 4 by his parents, and also grew up with lego bricks and building things. He is an engineer by training, but eventually switched to econometrics on the big data side. Outside of his professional life, he is married and describes himself as water affectionate. He enjoys swimming, diving - and free diving. In fact, he studied diving during his semester abroad. His free diving is mainly a hobby, but he has deep respect for the professional free divers of the world.
At his original startup, Alex started to dive into LLMs and immediately ran into RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). When he observed the wrong information being returned, along with a ton of resource consumption in the process - IE cost - he set out to solve the problem, and figured out the solution was in the chunks.
Summer is coming to an end, so we're taking a journey back in time to remember two amusement parks that have etched themselves into the imaginations of generations of Bay Area residents: Idora Park in Oakland and San Francisco's Playland at the Beach. This story originally aired in September of 2022, but we're bringing it back to celebrate the end of summer.
This story was reported by Christopher Beale. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED.
President Trump is asserting greater federal power in Washington, D.C., seizing control of Union Station and pledging billions to remake the city. In South Asia, devastating floods in India and Pakistan have killed more than 800 people since June, displacing hundreds of thousands. In Minnesota, a gunman opened fire at a Catholic school, killing two students and injuring 17 others before taking his own life. Meanwhile, Florida’s controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center could be empty within days after a federal judge ordered its closure. In business, State Farm faces fire-claim rebukes while California unions hold steady.
The story of Pigasus, who unknowingly accepted the Youth International Party (Yippie) nomination for president in Daley Plaza in 1968, shows that sometimes pigs need rescuing.
“My heart hurt for the pig,” said April Noga, executive director of Chicagoland Pig Rescue, of Pigasus’s run for president. “Because I put myself in the pig’s shoes of being pulled around a rally and then detained and not knowing what's going on. And used as, not entertainment but used as a prop. Because the pig is a sentient being.”
In our last episode, we dispelled a rumor that Pigasus was barbecued. Reporter Andrew Meriwether searched Grayslake and Libertyville for the farm where she lived out her days following the ‘68 campaign. In today’s episode, Noga tells us why pigs still need rescuing. She explains that Chicagoland Pig Rescue gets as many as 20 calls a month, from overwhelmed people in need of rehoming a small-breed pet pig, to concerned citizens who have spotted an injured, large-breed pig on the side of the road.
“Every case is a little different,” Noga said.
Noga explains how she started Chicagoland Pig Rescue and how pig rescuing and fostering works. She also introduces us to Ramona, a three-year old potbelly mix who was rescued from a home where she was neglected. Noga described Ramona — who is one of six pigs in Noga’s “house herd” — as an "automatic foster fail."
A curious news story emerged in New York last week. It involved the mayor’s race, a reporter from the news outlet The City and a bag of chips.
Michael Forsythe, a reporter on the investigations team at The New York Times, explains how the episode fits into a larger story about how China has been attempting to influence American politics.
Guest: Michael Forsythe, a reporter on the investigations team at The New York Times.
Background reading:
In the past few years, community organizations have quietly foiled the careers of politicians who opposed China’s authoritarian government.
Times reporters witnessed supporters of the New York mayor, Eric Adams, handing out cash-filled envelopes. Sometimes, that money went to reporters from Chinese-language outlets.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Photo: Shuran Huang for The New York Times
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
A shooting at a Catholic school Mass kills two students and injures several more. Public health officials erupt as the White House announces the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez. And experts home in on the perpetrators of a series of swatting incidents.
Yesterday Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Indian imports to America, among the highest in the world. How will Narendra Modi respond? Why Palantir could be the most overvalued firm of all time. And film, vinyl and print media make a comeback.
Satsie from PayJoin Foundation explains why Bitcoin isn't anonymous, covers essential privacy tools like address management, VPNs, and running nodes, plus discusses PayJoin batching and silent payments for better on-chain privacy.
Satsie, board member of PayJoin Foundation joins us to talk about Bitcoin privacy fundamentals. We cover why Bitcoin isn't anonymous, essential privacy practices like avoiding address reuse and hardware wallet shipping risks, the importance of running your own node, and advanced tools like PayJoin transaction batching and silent payments for enhanced on-chain privacy.
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**Notes:**
• Bitcoin requires KYC through exchanges
• Address reuse is "really, really bad"
• Hardware wallets shipped to homes create risk
• PayJoin needs 5% network adoption minimum
• Node sync takes "couple days" currently
• Silent payments require blockchain scanning
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
01:24 Who is Satsie?
04:24 How private is Bitcoin?
06:06 Privacy is hard
07:58 Basic BTC privacy techniques
10:50 VPNs
11:57 Running a node
15:13 You are using somebody's node
17:28 What is Payjoin?
19:59 When would we use Payjoin?
21:10 Payjoin adoption
22:45 Multi-party Payjoin
23:54 Silent Payments
27:16 Current US privacy regulations
29:00 Soft forks
31:06 Resources
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