Now Uncle Fed is suing Adobe…but not over that issue.
The United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission today levied a lawsuit against Adobe [PDF] for imposing a hidden termination fee on subscribers who want to cancel their Adobe plans. Adobe is accused of forcing subscribers to “navigate a complex and challenging cancellation process designed to deter them from cancelling subscriptions they no longer wanted.”
Adobe offers its Creative Cloud products on a subscription basis, with fees that are paid monthly. A monthly payment suggests that it’s possible to cancel anytime, but that’s not how Adobe works because most customers are actually locked into a hidden annual agreement.
Customers who sign up for a free trial and are then charged and signed up to the default Creative Cloud plan, which is actually an annual contract. Canceling the annual contract requires customers to pay a lump sum of 50 percent of the “remaining contractual obligation” to cancel, despite the fact that service ends that month.
Adobe does let customers sign up for a month-to-month subscription plan, but at a higher cost than the annual contract that’s paid monthly, and the difference is not always clear to new or existing customers. Adobe even has a whole help page because of the confusing nature of its subscription. If you look at the Adobe website, for example, Adobe lists a $60/month fee for accessing its full suite of apps, but that’s only if you agree to the annual contract. A true month-to-month plan that you can cancel anytime is $90/month, and if you pay for a year upfront, you get no money back when you cancel after a 14-day period.
If memory serves, back in the dim mists of time, $75 was around what I paid to upgrade from PageMaker 3.0 to 4.0. And that wasn’t a month, that was “Pay this fee once and use this software forever.” None of this pay $60 a month BS. Of course, I was running it on a Mac Plus running System 6.0.8 (which some still insist was the last truly stable Mac operating system), so that was four CPU architectures and innumerable OS versions ago. Now get the hell off my lawn before I hit you with my cane.
According to the DoJ, Adobe’s setup violates the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) through the use of fine print and inconspicuous hyperlinks to hide information about the Early Termination Fee.
According to Kneon and Geeky Sparkles at ClownfishTV, Adobe’s own staff is none too happy about the draconian terms of service.
Geeky Sparkles: So Adobe will get punished, but Google can do all kinds of crap and take down all kinds of websites, and the Department of Justice doesn’t do anything about that.
Kneon: Yes.
GS: I’m just pointing that out.
K: A lot of companies are doing this, I’ve noticed this. They make it very, very hard to cancel, which is illegal.
K: Every time we’ve tried to cancel like Direct TV or something, you have to call them. You can’t just like do it on the website, and they always do that, and then they want to get you on the phone. They want to actually try to upsell you.
K: Comcast does that especially with their Internet. Oh yeah, it’s only going to be like you know 100 bucks a month or whatever, $200 a month. And then then after your trial is over whatever…they’re like. “Oh now it’s like $350 a month. You wanted usable Internet? Wow, that’s an up charge.”
K: The Justice Department alleges that Adobe hid early cancellation fees and trapped consumers in pricey subscriptions, so you have to pay a fee if you cancel. A lot of times they’re like “Oh yeah, it’s whatever a month,” but then you read the fine prints, you have to commit to two years.
K: The Department of Justice claims Adobe has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms and this is on top of them being allowed to snoop in your files.
K: The lawsuit alleges Adobe hides the terms of its annual paid monthly plan in the fine print and behind optional text boxes and hyperlinks, and, in doing so, the company fails to properly disclose the early termination fees incurred upon cancellation that can amount to hundreds of dollars.
K: When the customers do attempt to cancel, the Department of Justice alleges Adobe requires them to go through an onerous and complicated cancellation process that involves navigating through multiple web pages and popups. It then allegedly ambushes customers with an early termination fee which may discourage them from canceling.
Try to cancel via livechat or over the phone? Expect your call to be mysteriously dropped.
K: They want you to get frustrated and just give up.
K: These practices break federal laws designed to protect consumers.
The lawsuit also targets “two Adobe executives, Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, for alleged violations of the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA).”
K: Up until 2012, Adobe, you bought the software, you got it on a disc, you put it on your computer.
K: Though Adobe is doing some scummy stuff, it almost feels like somebody’s gunning for Adobe. Like this lawsuit drops a week or two after they get backlashed.
GS: It is weird, especially when you have Google out there doing all the weird stuff that’s been going on, with their websites and things. And a lot of sites are losing all their ad revenue because they’re not being found, or they’re shutting down because they they they just completely sunk in both traffic and revenue. And they’re allowed to tank thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of sites and that’s OK, and put up when they put up AI information that comes above everything else a lot of times it’s wrong.
One possible reason for the difference in treatment is that Adobe is screwing actual paying customers, while Google, in screwing random websites, may only be screwing people and companies with whom they have no actual contractual obligation to. Which is a big difference between software you pay for and software you use for free.
K: It does seem weird that it’s like “boom boom,” like this is a kill shot to take Adobe out of play.
GS: Two things can be correct at the same time. It does feel like they’re being targeted, but I also think that they kind of have it coming.
K: Apparently the community dissatisfaction with the company grew so intense that even Adobe’s own staff started expressing unhappiness about the whole ordeal.
To the point that someone in Adobe is evidently leaking internal slack threads to Business Insider.
K: The company’s workers appear to be siding with regular users voicing complaints about the terms of service updates and the resulting backlash, as well as Adobe’s poor communication and apparent mishandling of the situation.
K: “The general perception is Adobe is is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to fuck its users. Let’s avoid becoming IBM, which seems to be surviving primarily due to its entrenched market position and legacy systems.”
K: This is not the right time to be pushing your your AI stuff when creatives are worried about losing their jobs as it is.
Aside: I sort of hate that the word “Creatives” has become a thing, since it aggregates too many diverse sets of people (writers, artists, movie makers, graphic designers, etc.) into an amorphous class. It’s a fairly recent coinage, but I wonder if it’s already too late to stamp out that particular linguistic “innovation.”
K: They’re trying to say they never trained their AI on customer data, we never trained generative AI on customer content, taken ownership of a customer’s work or allowed access to customer content beyond legal requirements. People aren’t going to believe you.
GS: Then why word it the way you did? That doesn’t make any sense.
Indeed.
Adobe does indeed a lot of splainin to do, and those heinous terms should be revised before anyone gives Adobe another dime, since there are cheaper alternatives to just about everything they offer. But that’s not to say that there aren’t other tech giants out there with even more heinous policies (Google and Microsoft are two that immediately come to mind), with or without AI, and it is curious that Adobe, a relatively new and smaller player in the AI space, has suddenly been subjected to so much official heat.
A kangaroo trial reaches its kangaroo conclusion, Biden’s ludicrous Gaza pier floats away and sinks, ESG lawsuits get the green light, the Libertarians nominate a hard left social justice warrior, and the NRA picks up a Supreme Court win. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The kangaroo trial where they tried Trump on supposed violation of a federal offense in a state courtroom and the judge decreed that the jury didn’t need to come to a unanimous opinion to find Trump guilty found Trump guilty. I expect this to result in expedited appeal and equally expedited overturning.
Result? “Today, the Trump campaign announced a record-shattering small-dollar fundraising haul following the sham Biden Trial verdict totaling $34.8 million – nearly double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign on the WinRed platform.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public (subscribers can check out the extensive 6,800 word report here).
According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.
According to the report, the effort also involved;
a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;
the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;
Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.
Furthermore, companies like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy were mentioned as part of a concerted effort to de-platform and financially de-incentivize individuals and organizations deemed threats by the IC. This approach represents a significant escalation in the use of corporate cooperation to achieve what might essentially be considered censorship under the guise of national security.
Nina Jankowicz And The Alethea Group
Remember Nina? A huge fan of Christopher Steele – architect of the infamous Clinton-funded Dossier which underpinned the Trump-Russia hoax, and who joined the chorus of disinformation agents that downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, Jankowicz previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.
Jankowicz compares the lack of regulation of speech on social media to the lack of government regulation of automobiles in the 1960s. She calls for a “cross-platform” and public-private approach, so whatever actions are taken are taken by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, simultaneously.
Jankowicz points to Europe as the model for regulating speech. “Germany’s NetzDG law requires social media companies and other content hosts to remove ‘obviously illegal’ speech within twenty-four hours,” she says, “or face a fine of up to $50 million.”
By contrast, in the US, she laments, “Congress has yet to pass a bill imposing even the most basic of regulations related to social media and election advertising.” -Public
In a 2020 book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, Jankowicz praises a NATO cyber security expert for having created a “Center of Excellence,” a concept promoted by Renée Diresta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, in which she made the case for the (now failed) Disinformation Governance Board that Jankowicz would briefly head up.
One year later, Jankowicz began working with ‘anti-disinformation’ consulting firm, Althea Group, staffed by “former” IC analysts.
Lots more at the link.
Remember when fast food was cheap food you bought to treat kids or didn’t feel like cooking? Now 78% of Americans surveyed think it’s a luxury good they can’t afford. Thanks, Joe Biden!
Also, one of Putin’s dachas burned down, though it’s so far from the theater of operations that it may be unrelated.
“Biden’s Gaza ‘Pier to Nowhere’ a Disaster and National Embarrassment, Breaks Apart.” Evidently the pier can only work in seas with waves smaller than three feet, and 4.5′ chop and 20 MPH gusts KO’d it. Also, no less than four U.S. vessels have run aground in the process of trying to build and move this thing. That’s some mighty fine pier-building, Lou.
The Supreme Court unanimously handed the National Rifle Association a win Thursday in the gun rights group’s effort to revive a 2018 First Amendment lawsuit accusing a New York official of causing damage to the NRA’s relationships with banks and insurers.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a unanimous opinion that found the NRA “plausibly alleged” that Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York‘s Department of Financial Services, illegally retaliated against the pro-Second Amendment group after the Parkland, Florida, high school mass shooting that left 17 people dead.
The question before the justices was whether Vullo used her regulatory power to force state financial institutions to cut off ties with the NRA in violation of constitutional First Amendment protections.
Vullo, who worked in former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, said her regulations targeted an insurance product that is illegal in New York, which is dubbed by critics as “murder insurance.” In essence, such insurances are third-party policies sold via the NRA that cover personal injury and criminal defense costs after the use of a firearm.
“Here, the NRA plausibly alleged that Vullo violated the First Amendment by coercing DFS-regulated entities into disassociating with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy,” Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote in her decision.
A mysterious shooting in North Carolina north of Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, not far from where some of America’s most elite U.S. Special Operations forces live and train is under investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division as well as local police. The shooting in Carthage, North Carolina occurred May 3 at 8:15 p.m. following a phone call about a suspected trespasser near a Special Forces soldier’s property.
Two Chechen men who spoke broken English were found near the soldier’s home. The family alleges the suspected intruder, 35-year-old Ramzan Daraev of Chicago was taking photos of their children. When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued and Daraev was shot several times at close range. A second man, Dzhankutov Adsalan, was in a vehicle some distance from the incident and was questioned by authorities and then released. The Moore County Sheriff’s office is leading the investigation.
The FBI told Fox News, “Our law enforcement partners at the Moore County Sheriff’s Office contacted the FBI after a shooting death in Carthage. A special agent met with investigators and provided a linguist to assist with a language barrier for interviews.”
A district judge has granted a pilot’s request for a class-action lawsuit against American Airlines for allegedly investing pension funds into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds.
The case revolves around the allegation that American Airlines—headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas—violated its fiduciary obligation to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) “by investing millions of dollars of American Airlines employees’ retirement savings with investment managers and investment funds that pursue political agendas” through ESG initiatives.
“By pursuing ESG goals, Defendants gave Plan assets to fund managers, such as BlackRock, who allegedly ignored financial returns as the exclusive purpose and lowered the value of Plan participants’ investments,” the order states.
In addition to being disloyal to the employees, the plaintiff, Bryan Spence, argues that American Airlines’ investments were “imprudent because it is well known that ESG funds are associated with poor performance given the detrimental effects of such activism on stock prices.”
“To remedy these alleged ERISA violations, Plaintiff filed this lawsuit individually and on behalf of a proposed class of Plan participants and beneficiaries,” the order says. “ERISA authorized participants in a qualifying plan to bring an action on behalf of other participants to enforce the statute’s fiduciary obligations and remedial provisions, as well as recover all losses to a plan caused by a breach of a fiduciary duty.”
Two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a large, mysterious new Internet hosting firm called Stark Industries Solutions materialized and quickly became the epicenter of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government and commercial targets in Ukraine and Europe. An investigation into Stark Industries reveals it is being used as a global proxy network that conceals the true source of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against enemies of Russia.
At least a dozen patriotic Russian hacking groups have been launching DDoS attacks since the start of the war at a variety of targets seen as opposed to Moscow. But by all accounts, few attacks from those gangs have come close to the amount of firepower wielded by a pro-Russia group calling itself “NoName057(16).”
As detailed by researchers at Radware, NoName has effectively gamified DDoS attacks, recruiting hacktivists via its Telegram channel and offering to pay people who agree to install a piece of software called DDoSia. That program allows NoName to commandeer the host computers and their Internet connections in coordinated DDoS campaigns, and DDoSia users with the most attacks can win cash prizes.
Microsoft’s announcement of the new AI-powered Windows 11 Recall feature has sparked a lot of concern, with many thinking that it has created massive privacy risks and a new attack vector that threat actors can exploit to steal data.
Revealed during a Monday AI event, the feature is designed to help “recall” information you have looked at in the past, making it easily accessible via a simple search.
While it’s currently only available on Copilot+ PCs running Snapdragon X ARM processors, Microsoft says they are working with Intel and AMD to create compatible CPUs.
Recall works by taking a screenshot of your active window every few seconds, recording everything you do in Windows for up to three months by default.
These snapshots will be analyzed by the on-device Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and an AI model to extract data from the screenshot. The data will be saved in a semantic index, allowing Windows users to browse through the snapshot history or search using human language queries.
Who wouldn’t want AI recording and monitoring their every move? Yet another reason never to turn on Windows Copilot+…or use a Windows machine at all.
Time for an update to this old classic
Though Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan survived by the skin of his teeth, a majority of Republican Texas House members say they won’t vote for him for speaker.
A majority of the 2025 Republican House caucus opposes Democratic committee chairs, and effectively will not support another term for Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), the group said in a letter released on Friday.
“In a collective effort to respond to Republican voters and reform the Texas House, we will only vote for a candidate for speaker pursuant to the Platform and the Caucus By-Laws who will only appoint Republicans as committee chairs,” the brief letter and joint statement reads.
It adds, “The absence of a member’s or nominee’s name from this statement does not necessarily mean the individual is opposed to this statement. All members and nominees are invited to sign on to this statement.”
Forty six current or presumptive members signed the letter, including 23 members who voted for Phelan’s speakership last year.
One of those signatories, GOP nominee in House District 70 Steve Kinard, has a difficult general election fight against state Rep. Mihaela Plesa (D-Dallas) in a D-52% district.
The letter includes signatures from each of the 21 “Contract with Texas” signatories, most of whom campaigned specifically against Phelan’s speakership. That contract also includes a ban on Democratic committee chairs, though has 11 other planks to its demands as well.
Last session, a parliamentary maneuver precluded a vote on the question of banning Democratic chair appointments, though the idea had gained steam among GOP House members and was included in the party’s list of legislative priorities. It is likely to be featured again.
In a March interview after being pushed to a runoff and state Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) announcing his challenge for the gavel, Phelan said he would not back down on the appointment of Democrats as committee chairs.
Snip.
This release makes Phelan’s path toward a third term as speaker much more difficult. Should this group hold, ostensibly opposed to Phelan, it will be impossible for him to win the Texas House Republican Caucus endorsement. However, the speaker could give in on some concessions, such as Democratic chair appointments, and win back this group’s support.
GOP caucus rules require members to vote for the body’s nominee, presumably enforced by the bylaws, though no section exists in that portion of the document laying out penalties for voting differently than the caucus has chosen. It’s happened before, for example last year when three members — state Reps. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) and Nate Schatzline (R-Fort Worth), and now-former member Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City) — voted against the caucus nominee, Phelan, and for Tinderholt.
Article IX of the Texas Republican House Caucus bylaws lays out the procedure for selecting a speaker candidate. It requires the selection process to be conducted by secret ballot until a member receives two-thirds support from the body, currently 58 votes; if no candidate reaches that line, the last-placed candidate will be eliminated from the contest and that will be repeated until one candidate reaches 58.
Should the vote reach a third round, the threshold needed will drop to three-fifths support — currently at 52 votes. Should nobody reach that line, after a fourth round of voting, all nominations will be withdrawn and the floor reopened.
Depending on what happens in November with potential flips, those 58- and 52-lines may shift.
This intra-caucus vote will occur in early December, per the rules.
Libertarians nominate a social justice warrior Chase Oliver for their Presidential candidate. A fair number of Libertarians are saying they’ll vote for Trump now…
“I believe this is one of the most important elections of my lifetime, and I’m supporting Trump. I know that I’ll lose friends for this. Some will refuse to do business with me. The media will probably demonize me, as they have so many others before me. But despite this, I still believe it’s the right thing to do.”
The physics PhD said that he refuses to live in a society where people are afraid to speak their minds.
Red Lobster followup: Turns out Red Lobster is privately owned by seafood supplier Thai Union. And just who did Red Lobster buy all that “endless shrimp” from? No prizes for guessing…
“George Miller’s Furiosa is projected to take in only $31 million at the box office. When adjusted for inflation, that’s the worst Memorial Day box-office haul in 43 years.”
Will wokeness and the Biden recession kill off comic shops? Also, is Disney looking to outsource comics from Marvel?
World’s largest Buc-ee’s to open. “The new center is located in Luling, Texas, and will open its doors to the public the morning of June 10, according to a news release from the company. The new 75,000-square-foot center is symbolic for the Luling community, as it will replace the city’s current Buc-ee’s store, which was the first Buc-ee’s travel center built in 2003.” (Hat tip: Dave.)
“Donald Trump Found Guilty Of Being Donald Trump.” “‘It was an open and shut case,’ said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass. ‘There wasn’t any way he could sit there being Donald Trump and just get away with it. We were given strict orders to hold him accountable for being Donald Trump, and that’s what we’ve done.'”
More Biden corruption unearthed, the Biden Recession has canaries dying left and right, yet another Katy ISD teacher involved in child sex crimes, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is being given another tomb raider to destroy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday as part of a probe into whether the Biden DOJ coordinated with Trump prosecutors.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday as part of a probe into whether the Biden DOJ coordinated with Trump prosecutors.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer dropped a bombshell on Thursday, revealing that his panel had unearthed new financial accounts tied to the Biden family investigation. Adding to the drama, Comer announced a fresh subpoena aimed at an undisclosed bank, ramping up the pressure in this ongoing probe.
“This morning, I issued a subpoena for targeted financial information from a certain financial institution related to Jim Biden, Sarah Biden and Hunter Biden. This is a result of many of the documents that Devon Archer turned over,” Comer told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business.
The Oversight Committee began investigating the Biden family’s alleged shady business dealings over two years ago. In March, they called for Biden to testify before Congress, stating that “the committee has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family, and their business associates.”
“It is unbelievable,” Comer continued. “I don’t think you would find very many people that have a billion-dollar net worth that have as many different bank accounts as this Biden family had. Many of these were shell companies.”
Those were “companies [whose] sole purpose was to launder the money that the Bidens were receiving from China, from Romania, from Russia,” Comer added. “And never one time through the course of this entire investigation, even during the depositions with Hunter Biden and the transcribed interview with Jim Biden, were they able to answer exactly what the family did to receive this money.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has pardoned U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry following a recommendation of pardon and restoration of his firearm rights by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
The board voted unanimously on the recommendation.
Shortly after the recommendation was made, Abbott officially pardoned Perry.
“The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles conducted an exhaustive review of U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry’s personal history and the facts surrounding the July 2020 incident and recommended a Full Pardon and Restoration of Full Civil Rights of Citizenship,” Abbott wrote in a press release.
“Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial. Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws on self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation.”
Perry was convicted of murdering Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster in 2023. A Travis County jury deliberated for 17 hours before finding Perry guilty of murder but not aggravated assault of Foster at the intersection of 4th Street and Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, as well as threatening a crowd with his car during the 2020 protest.
Perry, who was working as an Uber driver, shot and killed Foster with a .357 Magnum revolver after Foster approached the driver door of his Hyundai Ioniq.
This dispassionate description hides the fact that Perry’s car was surrounded by a crowd of rioters, including the one who aimed a gun at Perry. This was a clear case of self defense that never would have gone to trial if Travis County’s far left Soros backed DA Jose Garza weren’t so in favor of radical left wing rioters and hostile the right of self defense.
The Department of Justice recently argued that a whistleblower lawsuit against Pfizer, filed by Brook Jackson, should be dismissed.
Jackson, a 20-year veteran in clinical trial administration employed by a third-party vendor (Ventavia Research Group), worked on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trials in 2020. Alarmed by what she witnessed, Jackson raised concerns to her superiors, Pfizer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2020.
She claimed the trial was being run, documented, and reported in a manner that violated Federal law and was potentially dangerous.
Hours after contacting the FDA on September 25, 2020, Jackson was fired. Her sealed whistleblower complaint seemed to stall, with the FDA not investigating her claims. Faced with inaction, Jackson filed a lawsuit.
As the case progressed towards discovery, the DOJ intervened, asking the judge to dismiss the case. Jackson argues that the government failed to articulate a legitimate reason for dismissal and did not demonstrate why the burdens of continued litigation outweigh its benefits.
Disturbingly, a former FDA lawyer who worked at the agency when Jackson’s complaint was filed has moved to the DOJ and is now representing the government in its attempt to shut down the suit, raising concerns about regulatory capture and the use of government to shield companies from accountability.
In 2021, the British Medical Journal published an article investigating Jackson’s claims and found them credible. The journal’s investigation concluded that Jackson’s account was supported by documentation and raised serious questions about the integrity of Pfizer’s vaccine trials and the FDA’s oversight.
Other former Ventavia employees vouched for Jackson’s complaint, describing a “helter-skelter” work environment and lack of oversight.
Despite evidence and corroboration, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia after Jackson’s complaint, and Pfizer did not mention any problems at Ventavia in its FDA submission for emergency use authorization.
BMJ’s findings lend significant credibility to Jackson’s claims and raise serious questions about the integrity of Pfizer’s vaccine trial data, the adequacy of regulatory oversight, and, ultimately, the approved emergency use authorization.
Follow the money…
Court throws DEI amendment to NY constitution, off November’s ballot. “The NY State Supreme Court (trial court) in Livingston County (near Rochester), granted summary judgment throwing the ERA off the November ballot, on the ground that the proponents of the legislation did not follow the constitutionally required procedure for advancing a ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment.”
A Tompkins High School teacher has been arrested on nine counts of possession of child pornography.
James Paul Stone was booked into the Fort Bend County Jail Monday.
According to the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s office, thousands of images of child pornography were recovered from Stone’s residence, including several images that Stone admitted to producing himself.
Ah, not this crap again. “Venezuela Moves ‘Substantial Quantities’ Of Troops To Guyana Border.”
Congratulations on surviving the first 1/6th of 2024! The Big Guy is exactly who we knew he was all along, Houston police screw up, some big crime stories, Wayne LaPierre is found guilty, and the world’s saddest Oompa Loompa. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make money in China?” asked Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a video posted to X. ““Well, not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check.”
Today, a U.S. District Court issued its final judgment in Texas v. Garland, which was a challenge to the U.S. House’s proxy voting rule under the Quorum Clause of the Constitution. In its final judgment, the Court concluded that U.S. House members must be physically present for their vote to comply with the Constitution’s Quorum Clause. Attorneys from the Texas Public Policy Foundation argued the merits at trial in January of this year.
The lawsuit was originally filed with the State of Texas in response to Congress’ unlawful passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December 2022. The U.S. Constitution requires a quorum, or a majority, of House members to be physically present for the U.S. House of Representatives to conduct business. As less than half of the members were present when the legislation was passed, with the rest voting by proxy, this legislation never should have passed, and the president should not have signed it.
“This meticulous, 120-page opinion was written after a full trial on the merits,” said TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller. “The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional.”
This basically says that every bit of that $1.7 trillion spending was unconstitutional, along with any laws, etc. passed in that omnibus. Just how do you back out all that money that’s been spent, assuming this is upheld?
Record meth bust in Eagle Pass. “The U.S. Customs and Border Protections (CBP) have seized six and a half tons of methamphetamine, over 13,000 pounds, at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry, making it the largest ever seizure in a single enforcement action.”
Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November, ending his tenure as the longest-serving Senate leader in history.
“This will be my last term as Republican Leader of the Senate,” the 82-year-old veteran of the chamber said to his colleagues on the Senate floor. “I’m not going anywhere… It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”
He’ll leave the senate when his term ends in 2027. You can condemn him as the ultimate swamp creature, or praise him for his effectiveness at things like getting Trump’s Supreme Court picks confirmed. It’s two sides of the same coin. I’m not sure he was as effective as Trent Lott or Howard Baker.
Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner called it a “dark day” at a press conference for the Houston Police Department, announcing that 4,107 adult sexual assault cases were wrongly closed without investigation.
A case management code “suspended for lack of personnel” was used, which led to closing the cases without actually investigating them.
Finner said he was first made aware the code even existed in 2021 and instructed HPD’s special victims division to stop using the code; however, he found out on February 7, 2024 that it continued. HPD first began using the code in 2016.
He said he immediately ordered a review of all cases suspended using this code dating back to 2016, which will take at least 30 days to complete. While the number of cases they have today is 4,017, he says it is “fluid and subject to change.”
60 Minutes gets to enjoy some of that vibrant Muslim diversity in Sweden to the sides of their faces.
60 Minutes goes to Sweden to make a heart warming special about diversity, but see a different situation, then this happens. pic.twitter.com/oUd2ZuJ0RV
“After five days of deliberations, a jury in New York on Friday held the National Rifle Association liable for financial mismanagement and found that Wayne LaPierre, the group’s former CEO, corruptly ran the nation’s most prominent gun rights group. The jury determined that LaPierre’s violation of his duties cost the NRA $5,400,000, though he already repaid roughly $1.5 million to the organization.” Here’s the thing: While they prosecution was unquestionably politically motivated, LaPierre did run a crooked ship. In the long run, forcing Wayne and his corrupt cronies from office has done the NRA a huge favor.
Argentine President Javier Milei just ended his country’s budget deficit in nine weeks. If Trump and the Republicans manage to control both houses of congress next year, there’s no reason they can’t balance the budget…assuming they have the will.
“Austin Fire Department Chaplain Dismissed for Comments on Transgender Athletes Sues for Free Speech Violation. A chaplain for the Austin Fire Department was dismissed from his position after expressing beliefs on his personal blog about protecting women’s sports.”
After a volunteer chaplain of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) was fired for posting on his personal blog that men and women are biologically different and should not compete against each other in sports, a lawsuit was filed in an effort to protect his rights to free speech and religious freedom.
The Alliance Defending Freedom said in a press release that it filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Dr. Andrew Fox, who served in a voluntary capacity as chaplain for AFD before he was dismissed in 2021.
Unlike APD, AFD public and union leadership has been infected by social justice. Dr. Fox appears to have a very strong case on viewpoint discrimination grounds.
White TV host tries to race-bait Jerry Seinfeld for hosting “mostly” white male comedians on his show. It doesn’t go well for him.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bipartisan bill into law authorizing the release of grand jury transcripts from an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The new legislation, signed by the Florida governor on Thursday, will allow a public release of the jury’s transcripts from the 2006 probe into Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The new measure goes into effect July 1.”
Weird Austin crime story: “Prominent local businessman arrested in Austin, accused of arson.”
A prominent Austin businessman and founder of Continental Automotive Group, or CAG, was arrested Thursday on charges of Felony Arson and a State Jail Felony offense of Burglary.
Dorsey Bryan Hardeman, 75, is accused of starting a fire at a downtown Austin building on Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.
According to Travis County court records, Trey Collins with the Minton, Bassett, Flores & Carsey firm has been retained as the attorney representing Hardeman. Sam Bassett told KXAN the office has just begun its work and “it is premature to comment. However, we will provide Mr. Hardeman an appropriate and vigorous defense.”
The affidavit said the Austin Fire Department responded to a building fire at the former Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop on 400 Nueces St. on Feb. 25.
Once the fire was contained, fire investigators determined the incident to be incendiary and found metal shavings on the ground below the door suggesting the door lock had been drilled out, records state.
The affidavit states fire investigators watched video surveillance from the building, which showed an older man entering the building with a red container consistent with a plastic gas tank.
Multiple cameras inside the building show a man pouring liquid from the red container and dropping multiple matches on the ground, the affidavit said.
Records show the man arrived at the location in a white 4-door Mercedez SUV.
Investigators interviewed the owner of Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop who told AFD Hardeman was the owner of the property next door and had previously asked about purchasing the property at 400 Nueces St.
This is not what people refer to as “the perfect crime.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me? It turns out McDonalds didn’t destroy his liver, a decade of alcoholism did.
The Biden recession and other trends made 2023 a horrible year for startups.
“Big startups are shutting down. According to PitchBook, more than 3,000 private venture backed startups failed in the last year.”
“Of the startups raising money, 19% were funded at a lower valuation than in prior funding rounds.”
“38% of VCs disappeared from dealmaking last year and more than a quarter of a million workers at tech companies were laid off over the same period.”
“US corporate bankruptcy filings closed out 2023 with the most filings since 2010. The year has been described as a mass extinction event for startups in the press.”
Some of the startup failures Boyle namechecks (Hyperloop, Bird) seemed like stupid ideas from the git-go. “Bird the electric scooter rental company—which was also supposed to reinvent public transportation—filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was the fastest startup to ever land a billion-dollar valuation, and at its peak was worth two and a half billion dollars. It was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in September after failing to maintain a market cap of above $15 million dollars for 30 consecutive days.”
“Who would have thought that renting scooters to drunk people for a dollar (who would then throw them in a canal on their way home) would be a money losing business? Bird ran up more than $1.6bn in net losses since 2018 before finally running out of money.”
Smile Direct Club: $8.9 billion valuation at 2019 IPO. “The stock fell in value over time as the company proved to be unprofitable year after year. The company shut down last month $900 million dollars in debt.”
One I never heard of: “The health tech startup Olive AI which reached a peak valuation of $4 billion dollars in 2020 driven by the need for automation in healthcare during the pandemic. The company raised over 900 million dollars from investors. In 2022 the company began laying off staff citing ‘tough economic conditions.’ The company was allegedly trying to raise money when it abruptly shut down in November. Going out of business in 2023 was particularly surprising for a company with AI in its name.” Indeed, AI seems to be the current space where stupid money goes to die.
Another one I never heard of: Zume.
No.
“Zume – the robot pizza delivery company which had raised $445 million dollars in VC funding, the majority of which came from SoftBank in 2018 at a two and a quarter billion-dollar valuation, shut down this summer.” Stupid, but at least I can see why California companies would invest heavily in food automation with that $16 (and rising) minimum wage.
WeWork “set out to revolutionize office real estate – by having an app – which I’m told didn’t work very well, and free beer on tap filed for bankruptcy in November.” I’ve covered WeWork previously.
“WeWork and its founder Adam Neumann were the poster boys of how a blitzscaled business model led by a charismatic founder could apply a veneer of technology to an old business idea and attract venture capital funding to achieve a multibillion dollar valuation.”
“At its peak, WeWork was valued in private markets at $47 billion dollars. Softbank alone invested 16 billion dollars into the company. Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s founder, allegedly invested his first $4.4 billion dollars in the shared office space company after Neumann gave him a 12-minute tour of a WeWork in 2016. With such a short tour, it’s unlikely that the free beer even had an impact.”
“Softbank – run by Masayoshi Son (Japan’s Cathie Wood) was one of the biggest startup investors in the last decade. They invested in all sorts of non tech companies that were made to look like tech in order to attain a sky-high valuation. According to Bloomberg, the SoftBank Vision Fund alone lost $53 billion dollars over the last two years on startup investments.”
“We have seen a very difficult period for startups over the last year or two, but it comes in the wake of probably the best period for VC backed startups in decades. During the decade from 2011 to 2021 VC investment in private start-ups grew more than sevenfold, from 46 billion dollars in 2011 to $345 billion dollars in 2021.”
“In 2022 when the federal reserve began hiking interest rates, this money began drying up as investors lost their taste for unprofitable, but high growth, investments.”
That investment boom was driven by two things: Low interest rates and “a recent history of profitable exits from VC funded startups like Facebook, Google, Whatsapp and Snap meant that investors were suddenly paying a lot of attention to tech startups – hoping to repeat those successes.”
“Venture capital went from being a small asset class run out of offices on Sand Hill Road that had burned investors in the dot com bubble to a massive global asset class like hedge funds or private equity.”
The Flu Manchu lockdowns brought investment from “‘working from home’ companies like Zoom and Peloton.” I always thought of Peloton as a lifestyle luxury brand.
“People were using apps like Uber and DoorDash for food delivery, and booking rentals on Airbnb to get out of big cities now that they no longer had to turn up in the office.”
“While the prior wave of profitable high growth tech stocks had been (one way or another) in the advertising space, or in businesses like cloud computing, the new wave of startups had untested business models—gig economy businesses which attracted a lot of competition and might never flip to profitability—or robot-made pizza which would be cooked on route to a customer’s home.”
“A lot of the VC’s possibly believed in many of the questionable investments that have since gone bust, but a venture capital fund isn’t really there to hold on to these investments until the underlying business flips to profitability. They invest at the idea stage with the goal of selling these businesses on to the public when the hype is at its peak.”
“They did manage to unload a number of the biggest flops like WeWork – but not at the valuations they were hoping for, and have found themselves holding the bag on a lot of investments that they bought into at peak valuation.”
“The huge valuations many of these companies were attaining in the private market may have been more of a function of how much money had flowed into the private tech startup market since 2011 rather than necessarily reflecting the quality of these companies and their business models.”
“According to Erin Griffith at The New York Times, $27.2 billion dollars in VC funding had gone into the 3,200 venture-backed companies that went out of business in the first 11 months of 2023.” And that’s just the firms trackable on PitchBook. The true total is almost certainly higher.
“That 27.2 billion dollar number excluded many of the largest startup failures that went public, like WeWork, or that found buyers at much lower prices than VC investors had invested at.”
“The hype around AI that we have seen in the last year has masked a lot of the losses in the tech space.”
“Meta was up 178 percent last year due to a combination of AI hype and cost cutting within their core business. This covers up the 46.5 billion dollars lost on the Metaverse – which no one will venture into, for fear that they run into Mark Zuckerberg.” I strongly suspect that a lot of those VR losses are actually money siphoned off for something else.
Despite this, stocks like Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia have hit all-time highs.
“One of the negative economic effects of startup shutdowns is that in such an environment it becomes harder for founders with good business ideas to get funding.”
“According to PitchBook, the number of active investors in US Venture Capital, which was defined as firms that made two or more deals in the last year, plummeted by 38% in the first three quarters of 2023 compared to the same period the prior year.”
Many of the startup failures were zombie companies, those that should have failed earlier but were kept alive by VC money and low interest rates.
“No one wants to see firms going out of business, especially startups which are often the most exciting and innovative firms, but if a business model makes no sense, or only works in a zero-interest rate environment, then its disappearance means that capital can again flow in the direction of the best businesses.”
The startup bust has direct negative effects on me personally, as I’m still between technical writing positions, and a lot of the jobs I’ve gotten over the past two decades have been with startups.
Lockheed Martin just assembled the 1,000th F-35, making it one of the most widely produced and successful modern fighters ever. Here’s a pretty good video busting various myths about the F-35.
“There are more F-35s in the world today than there are all other stealth aircraft ever built by all nations combined.”
“There are more F-35s on the deck of the USS Tripoli in this single picture than there are stealth fighters in all of Russia.” Eh, supposedly Russia has managed to finally get 20 Su-57s into service, which matches the 20 plane test deployment of the F-35Bs to the Tripoli. But it’s Russia, so several shakers of salt are in order.
“The F-35 lightning II is the seventh most widely operated fighter on the planet. This program began with nine nations involved in its development, but today its list of buyers has stretched all the way to 17.”
“In the past last few years, F-35s have accumulated some 773,000 hours in the sky spread out across 469,000 sorties.”
The F-35 had a troubled development cycle, but pilots love the finished product.
They “make older fourth generation fighters significantly more capable just by flying nearby, thanks to their incredible degree of sensor fusion and the data they can securely transmit to other aircraft flying in the vicinity.”
Myth #1: “All they do is crash.” “This is an excellent example of a combination of recency and availability biases. F-35s seem as though they crash often because there are so many of them in the sky on on any given day.”
“The truth is, the F-35 is actually the safest modern fighter ever developed. If you go back and look at the crash data of the F-35 during its first 12 years of service, as compared to the A-10, F-15, F-16 or F-22, you’ll find that the F-35 has a significantly better track record.”
“By this point in the A-10 service life, 9% of its airframes had already been lost in accidents. By this point in the F-16’s, that number was 13%. But today, the F-35’s loss rate is about 1%.”
Myth #2: “The F-35 is too expensive top operate.” “There really used to be something to this. As recently as 2016, it was reported that F-35s cost an average average of about $67,000 per hour to operate.”
The Air Force and Lockheed Martin have been driving this number down. By “2023, that operating cost had been reduced by more than 80%, down to right around $28,000 per hour. That’s only a little bit more than an F-15.”
Myth #3: “The F-35 can’t dogfight.” “First of all it probably shouldn’t. It was designed to operate like a sniper.”
“Most of the claims that say it can’t dogfight stem from a 2015 report published by War is Boring about an F-35a squaring off in a duel against a block 40 F-16d, and in that fight the F-16 definitely came out on top.” The problem is, the F-35 in that match was literally the second F-35 ever built.
“It didn’t have the vast majority of combat systems F-35s fly with today, including the helmet and electro-optical targeting system that allows F-35 pilots to target enemy aircraft without having to point the nose of the jet directly at them, as well as the F-35’s radar absorbance skin that would limit the F-16’s ability to get a radar lock on its opponent.”
“And to make matters even worse, that particular F-35 was flying with software restrictions on board that prevented the pilot from pushing the airframe too hard, limiting it to under 7g maneuvers, a restriction the F-16 obviously didn’t have.”
“The F-35 was forced to fly with both wings tied behind its back and it ended up losing against one of the most prolific dogfighters in history.”
“Most pilots say they’d still rather avoid that by taking out the enemy before they ever even know it’s there.”
Myth #4: “The U.S. has already spent more than $1.7 trillion on the F-35.” That’s only the projected cost over the entire lifetime of the program.
Myth #5: “The F-35 has abysmal readiness rates.” There’s some truth to this, as readiness rates sit at 55%. But a big reason is the F-35 repair depot infrastructure hasn’t been fully built out yet. That’s supposed to be finished in 2027. “At which point the F-35’s readiness rates are expected to jump across the force to just about comparable with the F-15 and F-16.”
It’s not all roses: The F-35 has significant delays and cost overruns for the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade. “That will provide a 37-fold increase in onboard computing power 20 times the onboard data storage, and new double redundant display processors with five times the power to give the pilots far more situational awareness than ever before.”
“And Tech Refresh 3 is really just an appetizer that will lead to the Block 4 upgrade, which will be such a massive massive increase in capability that I have long argued the Block 4 F-35 deserves its own designation.”
“This new version of the F-35 will have a newer, even more advanced onboard radar that’s rumored to use Gallium Nitride transmit and receive modules that will dethrone the F-35’s current AN/AGP-81 radar as the most advanced and powerful radar ever affixed to a fighter.”
Plus new weapons and a bump from four to six internal weapons slots.
“Air Force secretary Frank Kendall has already stated plainly that in the future Block 4 F-35s will be flying with their own AI enabled drone wingmen, just like the sixth generation fighters in development today, Meaning the F-35 really will be a bridge to the sixth generation of fighter.” As in everything related to AI, the devil is in the details.
Like other modern fighter development programs, the F-35 has had its teething problems, but there’s no nation in the world that wants to face one in combat…
Hey, remember that whole “Sam Altman fired as CEO/reinstated as CEO of OpenAI” thing a couple of weeks ago? Here’s the archive story.
Sam Altman was reinstated late Tuesday as OpenAI’s chief executive, successfully reversing his ouster by the company’s board last week after a campaign waged by his allies, employees and investors, the company said.
The board would be remade without several members who had opposed Mr. Altman.
“We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo,” OpenAI said in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter. “We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.”
The return of Mr. Altmanand the potential remaking of the board, capped a frenetic five days that upended OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot and one of the world’s highest-profile artificial intelligence companies.
“i love openai, and everything i’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together,” Mr. Altman said in a post to X. “with the new board and w satya’s support, i’m looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft.”
OpenAI’s board surprised Mr. Altman and the company’s employees on Friday afternoon when it told him he was being pushed out. Greg Brockman, the company’s president who co-founded the company with Mr. Altman and others, resigned in protest.
The ouster kicked off efforts by Mr. Altman, 38, his allies in the tech industry and OpenAI’s employees to force the company’s board to bring him back. On Sunday evening, after a weekend of negotiations, the board said it was going to stick with its decision.
But in a head-spinning development just hours later, Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, said that Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman and others would be joining the company to start a new advanced artificial intelligence lab.
Nearly all of OpenAI’s more than 700 employees signed a letter telling the board they would walk out and follow Mr. Altman to Microsoft if he wasn’t reinstated, throwing the future of the start-up into jeopardy.
Four board members — Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI founder; Adam D’Angelo, the chief executive of Quora; Helen Toner, a director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology; and Tasha McCauley, an entrepreneur and computer scientist — had initially decided to push Mr. Altman out.
Well, here’s Patrick Boyle to provide some context:
A few takeaways:
There are two OpenAIs: “The non-profit OpenAI, Inc. registered in Delaware, and its for-profit subsidiary OpenAI Global, LLC.”
Musk was an early, and big, investor in the non-profit. “The founders pledged over one billion dollars to the venture, but actually only contributed around $130 million dollars- the majority of which came from Elon Musk.”
When he felt OpenAI was falling behind in 2018, he wanted to take over OpenAI himself. When the board rejected that, he resigned and took future pledged money with him, which blew a huge hole in their budget. (Whatever you think of Musk, I don’t think not being busy enough is his problem.)
Then came the for-profit doppelganger.
“The profits being capped at 100 times any investment.”
“The company explained this decision saying, ‘We need to invest billions of dollars in the coming years into large-scale cloud compute, attracting and retaining talented people, and building AI supercomputers.’ This transition from nonprofit to for-profit required OpenAI to balance its desire to make money with its stated commitment to ethical AI development.”
“This unconventional structure meant that Open AI had a board of directors, which in theory controls the entire corporate structure (which includes the charity and the capped profit company) – but which unlike other boards is not accountable to shareholders. The directors are in fact not allowed to own any stock to prevent a conflict of interest, because they are specifically not supposed to be aligned with shareholders.”
“The companies operating agreement – to investors – says – in writing: ‘It would be wise to view any investment in OpenAI in the spirit of a donation, with the understanding that it may be difficult to know what role money will play in a post-AGI world.’ Documents like this – that were written by an actual lawyer – highlight the problems we are starting to see from the combined popularity of science fiction in Silicon Valley and widespread microdosing of hallucinogens.”
“In the real world, where the role of money is reasonably well defined, Open AI is an unprofitable company and is expected to need to raise a lot more money over time from investors like Microsoft, to keep up with the high costs of building more sophisticated chatbots.”
“Despite this lack of profitability, the company is valued by investors at 86 billion dollars, and Bloomberg reported last weekend that ‘some investors were considering writing down the entire value of their OpenAI holdings to zero.'”
“Former colleagues would have an open door to follow and join a new AI unit, according to Microsoft chief Satya Nadella. As much of a win as this might have appeared for Microsoft (people were saying that they had managed to buy the hottest AI firm for zero), this might not have been the optimal outcome for them, as they would likely have had to deal with antitrust regulators and lawsuits from other Open AI investors.”
“The majority of Open AI’s 700 or so employees signed an open letter to the board demanding that the board resign and that they rehire Altman. The letter stated that the board had told the employee leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed ‘would be consistent with the mission.’ The employees said that unless their demands were met, they would resign from Open AI and join the new subsidiary of Microsoft being headed up by Altman and Brockman.”
“You have to wonder what the employee contracts at Open AI look like that the entire staff could leave to work for a major investor in the company leaving Open Ai as an empty shell.”
“Typically, executives like Altman would have contracts that prevent them from hiring away key staff once they are no longer at the firm, and staff would have signed NDA’s preventing them from taking any technology with them.”
“The OpenAI story is a bit of a crazy one, where Microsoft and a number of other sophisticated investors agreed to put billions of dollars in, and employees got stock grants, all at an $86 billion valuation, without the contractual or fiduciary rights that investors might normally expect.”
Rival Anthropic has a similar structure.
“Bad corporate governance has been a growing issue particularly in Silicon Valley where companies like Google, Facebook and Snap structured their IPO’s such that founders were left with unchallenged power to do almost anything that they want.” Google and Facebook are garbage companies, but there are some scenarios where only founders can keep the company on a long-term vision rather than goosing quarterly profits (Jobs at Apple comes to mind).
Warren Buffet has a similar mechanism (A shares of stock only he controls) to keep control of Berkshire Hatheway.
“Since you are buying shares of companies in perpetuity, leadership who are not accountable to shareholders can take value destructive paths without answering to anyone. Meta’s Reality Labs division, which houses its efforts to build the metaverse, has lost around $46.5 billion dollars since 2019. Would Mark Zuckerberg have been able to waste this much money if he was accountable to investors?” I have a fairly strong suspicion that division is being used to hide all sorts of shenanigans.
Boyle is deeply suspicious of “stakeholder capitalism” as opposed to the old-fashioned, profit-maximizing kind.”
The thing missing from this summary, and all the coverage of the story I’ve seen, is why Altman was originally let go, and none of the principals involved seem to be talking about it…
Congratulations! You’ve successfully made it to the last month of 2023! Give yourself a cookie!
I’ve spent most of today getting my latest book catalog ready to send out, so I’m probably going to have to break this LinkSwarm into two parts. This part: More Biden corrupton evidence, Big Brother wants all your tweets, Jihadi gets stabby in Ireland, and a couple of fairly notable political deaths.
A bank money-laundering investigator expressed serious concerns about a transfer of funds from China that ultimately trickled down to President Biden in the form of a $40,000 check from his brother, James Biden, according to an email obtained by the House
Biden received a $40,000 personal check from an account shared by his brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law, Sara Biden, in September 2017 — money that was marked as a “loan repayment.” The alleged repayment was sent after funds were filtered from Northern International Capital, a Chinese company affiliated with the Chinese energy firm CEFC, through several accounts related to Hunter Biden and eventually down to the personal account shared by James and Sara Biden.
Northern International Capital sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture established by Hunter Biden and CEFC associate Gongwen Dong on August 8.
On the same day, Hudson West III then sent $400,000 to Owasco, P.C., an entity owned and controlled by Hunter Biden. Six days later, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, a company owned by James and Sara Biden. Sara Biden withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group on August 28 and then deposited the funds into her and her husband’s personal checking account later that day.
On September 3, 2017, Sara Biden wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000.
We all know that if Trump did something remotely close to this, he’d already be in prison.
Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted former President Donald Trump’s tweets leading up to the January 6 riot, according to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released Monday.
Smith’s comprehensive search warrant sought the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner’s search history, direct messages, and “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by his account from October 2020 to January 2021.
The special counsel also demanded a list of all devices used to log into Trump’s then-Twitter, now X account, as well as information on users who interacted with the then-president in the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the court filings show.
Among the information Smith sought were lists of all Twitter users who “favorited or retweeted” Trump’s tweets, “as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account” in “mentions” or “replies.”
The special counsel also requested a list of every user Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” and a list of users who took any of the same actions with Trump’s account during the aforementioned timeframe.
“There is no benign or reasonable justification for that demand,” wrote former FBI agent/whistleblower Steve Friend on X.
Henry Kissinger, the legendary diplomat who played a central role in advising Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford on foreign policy, died at his home in Connecticut late Wednesday at age 100.
Kissinger was the only person to simultaneously be secretary of state and hold the position of White House national-security adviser. In 1973, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho for their work in brokering the 1973 Paris Agreement ending America’s involvement in Vietnam.
Kissinger was born in Germany in 1923. Three months before Kristallnacht, his family fled, bound for New York City. Kissinger served in the Army during World War II and was assigned to the 84 Infantry Division, voluntarily staying behind at the Battle of the Bulge to reportedly conduct “hazardous counter-intelligence duties” while also “making good use of his German.”
Kissinger was a key Cold War figure as Secretary of State, and one who doesn’t deserve all of the extensive condemnation he receives (for different reasons) from left and right, nor the hosannas of praise he received from the mainstream media during is heyday. The instantly betrayed peace treaty with North Vietnam (the won he won the Nobel Peace Prize for) was shameful, but LBJ’s incompetence and Washington elite failure of nerve probably doomed South Vietnam before Kissinger even got to the negotiating table. The opening to China was a brilliant move to counter the Soviet Union at the time, and helped usher in a brief period of economic and political liberalization that has now been almost completely undone. SALT1 and the ABM treaties were violated by the Soviet Union before the ink was even dry.
Kissinger was at his best down deep in the intricacies of face-to-face diplomacy, and played a key role in negotiating details after the Yom Kippur War. Indeed, Kissinger’s goal of stabilizing the Middle East (at least as far as preventing another major Arab-Israeli War) was met.
Kissinger was ultimately wrong for favoring detente over rollback, but that preference was also emblematic of the Washington foreign policy establishment of the time, and it would take Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 to set America on the right course (and the Soviet Union to the dust-heap of history).
Sandra Day O’Connor dead at 93. Eh, she wasn’t the worst Republican appointee to the Supreme Court.
Irish riot over illegal alien stabbing spree against children. Rioting is bad, mmkay, but Irish citizens, like those across the rest of the EU, are tired of the enforced consensus for allowing unassimilable Islamic immigrants to cross the border and immediately apply for the welfare rolls.
Not just Ireland. “‘We are here to stab white people’: Teen killed, 16 others wounded in French village after migrant gang reportedly descends on winter ball.”
High prices and “lot rot” are doing CarMax in. Not to mention the Biden recession…
There’s already been a lawsuit filed against Meta by Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman and Christopher Golden over using their material for training AIs, but there seems to be no mention of pirated books or book3.
The fact that Meta is not only training AI on author’s works without their permission, but using pirated copies to do so adds insult to injury.
And probably additional monetary damages from the resulting lawsuits.
I expect the latest piracy revelations to lead to whole host of new lawsuits…
If you were worried that the United States military hadn’t picked up on the importance of drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War, it appears that someone in the Pentagon was indeed paying attention.
The Pentagon committed on Monday to fielding thousands of attritable, autonomous systems across multiple domains within the next two years as part of a new initiative to better compete with China.
The program, dubbed Replicator, was announced by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies conference here.
“Replicator will galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap and many,” Hicks said.
Hicks and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady will oversee the program, with support from Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit. Further details, Hicks said, will be released in the coming weeks.
Replicator rests on two assumptions. The first is that China’s core advantage is mass — “more ships, more missiles, more people,” as Hicks said — and that the United States’ best response is to innovate, rather than match that pound for pound.
The second is that attritable, autonomous systems are the right form of innovation. Hicks pointed to the war in Ukraine, in which cheap, often commercial drones have proven indispensable on the battlefield for reconaissance, targeting, and attacks. Russia too, she said, appeared to have a similar mass before launching its invasion last February.
However, this program is squarely focused on China. Hicks called this moment a “generational challenge to American society.”
”We’ll counter the [People’s Liberation Army’s] mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat,” she said.
Even so, Hicks noted the Pentagon will remain focused on its core systems. “America still benefits from platforms that are large, exquisite, expensive, and few,” she said. Instead, she said, Replicator is particularly focused on accelerating DoD’s recent investments in autonomous systems.
Replicator’s goal of fielding small drones in high numbers and on a rapid timeline echoes calls from former DIU director Mike Brown for the Pentagon to better leverage commercial innovation to deliver capability at scale — an approach he called a “hedge strategy.”
House appropriators have backed that idea in their fiscal 2025 defense spending bill. The legislation would allocate $1 billion toward establishing a DIU-managed hedge portfolio made up of low-cost drones, agile communication and computing modes and AI capabilities.
The Department of Defense requested $1.8 billion for artificial intelligence for fiscal 2024 and was overseeing more than 685 related projects as of 2021. Replicator is intended to pull those investments together and further scale production, Hicks said.
Insert your own hedge funds and Skynet jokes here.
The strategy makes a good deal of sense…up to a point. The fast and cheap portion makes a lot of sense, given Ukraine’s use of dirt cheap flatpack cardboard drones we talked about earlier this week.
It’s the out of control/autonomous portion of description, combined with the aggressive timeline, that I question. As far as I can tell, all of Ukraine’s drones have been human guided rather than autonomous.
Lots of work on AI has been done over the last few years, and its entirely possible that AI drone tech is farther along than we know, but having been involved in numerous large software projects for multiple companies, I can tell you things always seem to take longer than they should even when the federal government isn’t involved. Long term, having autonomous or semi-autonomous drone will give you a lot of extra capabilities, but I’m very skeptical about that two year timeline.
Also, unless we plan to launch those drones from Taiwan itself, I’m skeptical that we’ll have suitable naval launch platforms ready. Flying a few drones off the deck of destroyer is easy, flying thousands for a real drone swarm is probably impossible. You don’t want to try running drone and manned planes off fleet carriers at the same time.
Can you run them off an amphibious assault ship? Probably, as a temporary expedient, but that’s going to limit your helicopter and F-35B takeoff and landing windows. Longer term, you’re probably going to need to construct ships designed with specialized launchers to send a whole lot of drones in a short space of time.
