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Alexa explodes after Canadian replies to query with, “Oh, yeah, no, for sure.”
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2025/10/alexa-explodes-after-canadian-replies-to-query-with-oh-yeah-no-for-sure/

Alexa explodes after Canadian replies to query with, “Oh, yeah, no, for sure.”
OROMOCTO, NB - A local man almost lost his home yesterday after his Amazon Alexa smart home device burst into flames. Lloyd Wentworth, 38, says the fire started as he was preparing dinner in his bungalow on Waasis Road. 

A profile of Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban, who brokered the EA takeover with Jared Kushner, following the PE firm's high-stakes deals from TikTok to Altera (Financial Times)

Primer to get you started with Optimization and Mathematical Programming in R #rstats

CRAN Task View: Optimization and Mathematical Programming
This CRAN Task View contains a list of packages that offer facilities for solving optimization problems. Although every regression model in statistics solves an optimization problem, they are not part of this view. If you are looking for regression methods, the following views will also contain useful starting points: MachineLearning, Econometrics, Robust Packages are categorized according to the following sections. See also the “Related Links” and “Other Resources” sections at the end.

Before we walked over to the bar to ring in the new year last night, I polished off MASTERS OF ATLANTIS as my last book of 2025. I'd put it on my to-read list after this review ... whew, back in 2020?
https://slate.com/culture/2020/12/master…

Agriculture Secretary Brooke
Rollins gave a candid message to Americans about the continued impasse and concerns that millions of people could soon miss out on food benefits.
“My message to America is, first, the fact that your government is failing you, right now,”
said Rollins, whose department oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Mike Johnson Steps In After Trump Official Tells Americans: 'We Have Failed You'
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins gave a candid message to Americans about the shutdown – a little too candid for the House speaker.

Q&A with ex-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on the "decay" at Intel, the Chip Act's terrible execution, the irony of Lip-Bu Tan broadly following his strategy, and more (Michael Acton/Financial Times)

Former Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: ‘I’ve been called here for a purpose’
The executive on the ‘hideous’ implementation of the 2022 Chips Act, his new role heading up a Christian AI platform — and why quantum could upend computing

Darkness draped Crans-Montana,
a ski resort in the Swiss Alps with a reputation for posh luxury.
Le Constellation, however, had few pretensions:
a cavernous venue with TV screens on the top floor to watch sport,
and a basement with low lighting, loud music and a dancefloor.
It attracted a young crowd, including under-18s, mainly from Switzerland and continental Europe,
and early on Thursday morning hundreds thronged the venue to see in 2026.
Many wo…

Filings: business services giant Conduent, which was spun off from Xerox in 2017, confirms that a 2024 data breach has impacted over 10.5M people (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/b…

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis on Oct. 9 ordered “visible identification” that is “prominently displayed.”
But dozens of photographs of uniformed immigration agents shot by Chicago Sun-Times photojournalists in four separate locations since the court order show how the feds have fallen short.
The 80-plus photos show that not all officers are displaying a visible identification code that mixes numbers and letters during some of the most contentious recent immigration actions that…

IDs are mismatched, illegible — or still missing three weeks after judge’s order to immigration officers
In dozens of photographs at four locations, Chicago Sun-Times photojournalists documented federal officers failing to wear the “visible identification” needed to hold individuals accountable during the ongoing immigration “blitz.”