Insurer Blue Shield of California's new parent company alarms consumer advocates
Blue Shield of California accrued a surplus of more than $4 billion over the decades as it benefited from its former tax-exempt status, according to a regulatory filing.
Last year, regulators approved a request by đź’ĄBlue Shield of California,
the state's third-largest health insurer, to restructure and establish a new parent corporation in Delaware.
The Oakland-based nonprofit go…
Even if “AI” worked (it doesn’t), there’s many reasons why you shouldn’t use it:
1. It’s destroying Internet sites that you love as you use chat bots instead of actually going to sources of information—this will cause them to be less active and eventually shut down.
2. Pollution and water use from server farms cause immediate harm; often—just like other heavy industry—these are built in underprivileged communities and harming poor people. Without any benefits as the big tech companies get tax breaks and don’t pay for power, while workers aren’t from the community but commute in.
3. The basic underlying models of any LLM rely on stolen data, even when specific extra data is obtained legally. Chatbots can’t learn to speak English just by reading open source code.
4. You’re fueling a speculation bubble that is costing many people their jobs—because the illusion of “efficiency” is kept up by firing people and counting that as profit.
5. Whenever you use the great cheat machine in the cloud you’re robbing yourself from doing real research, writing or coding—literally atrophying your brain and making you stupider.
It’s a grift, through and through.
Series B, Episode 13 - Star One
DURKIM: Not computers. Computer. Singular. Very singular indeed. Our unbeatable control and coordination centre.
SERVALAN: No!
DURKIM: Servalan, by design or accident Star One is failing.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/213/29 B7B5
Mattel combines its film and television production units into a single unit under the direction of Mattel Films president and Barbie producer Robbie Brenner (Jeremy Fuster/The Wrap)
https://www.thewrap.com/mattel-combines-film-tv-units-under-robbie-bren…
Nintendo launches the Switch 2 globally, with long queues outside stores and midnight openings; analysts expect Nintendo to sell 15M to 20M Switch 2 units (David Keohane/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/f63cfbcc-9d0e-440e-ad9a-02d01d328f93
The unexplained death of a top Russian oilexecutive on July 4 is fueling renewed scrutiny over the rising number of high-profile Russian officials and businessmen who have died under mysterious circumstances -- specifically, have fallen out of windows.
Andrei Badalov, vice president of Transneft, Russia's largest state-controlled pipeline transport company, died after falling from the window of his apartment in Moscow.
Russian state news agency TASS, citing law enforcement sour…
This https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.00325 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@a…
Filing: neobank Chime plans to sell 26M shares in its IPO at $24 to $26, giving it a valuation between $10.3B and $11.1B; its two co-founders own 4% to 5% each (Cory Weinberg/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/chime-sets-ipo-…
NYSE Arca files with the SEC to list a Bitcoin ETF linked to Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social and Truth.fi (Vildana Hajric/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…
Court filing: Deel alleges Rippling's "competitive intelligence manager" Brett Alexander Johnson posed as a customer to access Deel's product and business info (George Hammond/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/abd988f6-e524-48d9-8433-27c…