Le Monde: In the age of AI, Chinese universities overhaul their curricula Le Monde describes how Chinese universities are overhauling their degree programmes to align with artificial intelligence, which has been made the top priority of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) — the government wants to embed the technology in as many sectors of the real economy as […]
links: 22.06.2026
The New York Times: The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week Researchers at the Wharton School spent six years finding that the only personality trait that consistently predicts a leader’s objection to remote and hybrid work isn’t distrust of employees or a love of being around people — it’s narcissism. […]
links: 21.06.2026
LSM: Turning all of Pārdaugava into one big Victory Square? An interview with researcher Skaidrīte Lasmane Skaidrīte Lasmane — an emeritus professor, philosopher and historian at the University of Latvia — discusses the history of Riga’s Victory Square (Uzvaras laukums) and the grandiose construction planned under Kārlis Ulmanis, which was deliberately turned into a nationwide volunteer effort, a […]
links: 18.06.2026
Wired: Silicon Valley’s Elite Financial Advisers Say This Era of Wealth Is Different WIRED talks to two wealth advisers serving Silicon Valley’s high-net-worth tech clients about how the new generation of tech millionaires handles its sudden fortune as SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic head toward liquidity events. The very scale of wealth has shifted — the average client is […]
links: 17.06.2026
NYT: The Cloud Has Sound: The Unrelenting and Unseen Cost of A.I. Data Centers The “heartbeat” of the AI economy is a low-frequency vibration produced by the giant cooling fans and diesel generators of data centers. The US already has more than 3,000 of them; some residents living nearby, whose health and homes are being wrecked by the […]
links: 16.06.2026
WIRED: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth Admits the Company’s AI Reorg Was ‘Atrocious’ Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, in an internal memo to staff, admitted the company did an “atrocious” job rolling out its new artificial-intelligence division — after WIRED revealed widespread discontent inside the roughly 6,500-strong “Applied AI” unit (one worker called it “a gulag”). Bosworth promised more stability, […]
links: 14.06.2026
LSM: President Čakste’s daughter who feigned insanity in Siberia for her children’s sake. The story of Maiga Šīrone’s self-sacrifice Pianist Maiga Šīrone, a daughter of Latvia’s first president Jānis Čakste, was deported to Siberia with her two children in 1941. Realising that her children could only be sent home if she herself were declared legally incapacitated, she deliberately […]
links: 13.06.2026
TechCrunch: Meta’s months-old AI unit is a soul-crushing gulag, say the engineers stuck inside it Meta’s newly formed Applied AI unit — roughly 6,500 employees “drafted” with no real choice — generates puzzles and coding problems to train models, and many call the work a “gulag” and soul-crushing. Wired reports simmering rage, including a livestreamed meltdown at a […]
links: 11.06.2026
Le Monde: ‘The egalitarianism of hunter-gatherer societies has often been exaggerated’ An opinion piece on new anthropology research suggesting the egalitarianism of hunter-gatherer societies has often been exaggerated: resource sharing in them is driven not by innate altruism but by social pressure and the preservation of status, and human nature aspires more to autonomy and respect than to […]
links 5: 10.02.2024
Meduza: Roskomnadzor has begun investigating Duolingo for “LGBT propaganda” The Kyiv Independent: Russian military increasingly using Starlink terminals on battlefield LSM: “The corncrake has no tractor to drive to the Saeima.” An interview with ornithologist Ķerus @vkerus@mastodon.online NPR: Cheap, plentiful and devastating: The synthetic drug kush is walloping Sierra Leone The Verge: Apple argues against right-to-repair bill that […]