The San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic is in talks to raise a new round of funding that could value the company at $60 billion, up from about $16 billion less than a year ago, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.Led by the venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, the new round could pump an additional $2 billion into the company, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Since its founding in 2021, Anthropic has raised more than $11.3 billion from venture firms like Menlo Park Ventures and tech giants like Amazon, Google and…
Author: Team_NationalNewsBrief
Psychological warfare is far more powerful than bullets. The government has been studying methods of brainwashing for decades. Perhaps the most infamous studies fall under the MKUltra program that the CIA conducted from 1953 to 1964 on unsuspecting victims who did not know they were participating in a brutal study. The MKUltra experiments have been shrouded in mystery after CIA director Richard Helms and longtime MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb destroyed the majority of the evidence. However, newly declassified documents shed light on the extreme human rights abuses carried out by the US government. MKULTRA began in 1953 amid the Cold…
Evacuations were underway as a massive wildfire raged out of control and engulfed homes in Pacific Palisades, California, on Tuesday. Several massive fires are currently burning in Los Angeles County: Pacific Palisades, Eaton, Bert, Sylmar, Tamarack, King. Thousands have evacuated and the fire has grown to more than 2,900 acres, according to The Los Angeles Times. Gusty Santa Ana winds sent embers flying everywhere making it nearly impossible for firefighters to contain the blaze. According to Accuweather, wind gusts will exceed 85 miles per hour overnight. Nursing home patients in Pasadena were being raced across roadways as the fire quickly spread due to…
The controversial host of “The Breakfast Club” took to the air Tuesday morning to share his take on the 60-year-old’s frame of mind following troubling claims made in November via a court filing from Williams’ court-appointed guardian.Article continues below advertisementCharlamagne Tha God Says ‘Ain’t Nothing Incapacitated’ About Wendy WilliamsSpeaking to his co-hosts Jess Hilarious and DJ Envy Tuesday morning, Charlamagne claimed that he and Williams caught up with one another during a phone call over the holiday break.“She was… [she] seemed perfectly fine to me,” he stated, adding, “Wendy [sounds] like she can do radio tomorrow if she wanted to.”Charlamagne’s…
Wild elephants have killed 227 people, including tourists, in the past 12 years, according to the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. An elephant killed a 49-year-old woman at a national park in Loei province in northern Thailand last month. While encounters between villagers and wild elephants are common, attacks at sanctuaries remain rare. Bathing elephants is a popular activity among visitors in Thailand, where about 2,800 elephants are held for tourism purposes across the country, according to World Animal Protection. However, animal rights groups argue that bathing elephants can cause them distress and some sanctuaries in the country do…
Some frightened residents were forced to abandon their cars and flee on foot from rapidly growing conflagration.Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee parts of Los Angeles as strong winds drove the rapid growth of wildfires around the western United States city. More than 30,000 people were evacuated on Tuesday as high winds helped a brush fire surge into the coastal Pacific Palisades neighbourhood. Further blazes later saw other areas around southern California come under threat. Frightened residents abandoned their cars on one of the only roads in and out of the upscale Pacific Palisades area, fleeing…
Speaking to reporters after the game, Beal said he doesn’t consider himself a bench player, but made it clear he doesn’t intend to make waves by pushing back against head coach Mike Budenholzer‘s decision to make lineup changes.“I’m a starter in the league. I firmly believe that,” Beal said, per Duane Rankin of The Arizona Republic. “No disrespect to anybody, but I’m a starter and that’s what I firmly believe, but Coach made his decision. I’m not going to sit there and argue with him. I’m not going to sit here and be a distraction. I’m not going to sit…
Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists David French, Lydia Polgreen and Bret Stephens about the biggest risks and challenges facing America in the world today and the leadership of President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump.Patrick Healy: President Biden is about to hand back national security and foreign policy to Donald Trump, and the president-elect is already musing about taking Greenland and the Panama Canal by military force. Trump has big notions about America’s place in the world, and that’s where I want to start.We started the new year with the truck…
Mike Johns works as an AI consultant, so he knows technology and everything it can do to improve our lives — or make you so dizzy you might get sick.The Los Angeles resident was trying to get back to California from Scottsdale, Arizona, last week and took a Waymo driverless taxi to the airport. However, he barely made it because the self-driving car wouldn’t stop driving in circles.Related: ‘Not Necessarily Super Excited About This’: Klarna’s CEO Says AI Can Take Over All Jobs, Including His Own “Ok, why is this happening to me on a Monday,” Johns’s viral video begins…
A redox flow battery at a power plant in Japan. A new process could replace rare metals in these batteries with an industrial byproductAlessandro Gandolfi/Panos Pictures An industrial waste product has been converted into a component for batteries that can stably store large amounts of charge. Such batteries could perform a vital function for power grids by smoothing out the peaks and troughs of renewable energy. Redox flow batteries (RFBs) store energy as two liquids called an anolyte and a catholyte in a pair of tanks. When these fluids are pumped into a central chamber, separated by a thin membrane,…