Leben (Life aka misc) The Planet (on, and off)
UK To Tax Electric Cars by the Mile Starting 2028
The UK government will levy a pay-per-mile tax on electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles starting April 2028, UK’s finance minister Rachel Reeves announced, a measure designed to offset some of the fuel duty revenue that will disappear as drivers shift away from petrol and diesel cars. Electric vehicles will be Read more…
Leben (Life aka misc)
Chinese Pharma is On the Cusp of Going Global
China’s pharmaceutical industry has quietly evolved from a hub for generics and clinical trials into something more ambitious — a genuine competitor in drug discovery that Western giants are now courting to fill gaps left by looming patent expirations worth over $300 billion by 2030. In the first half of Read more…
Leben (Life aka misc) Technology
OpenAI Says Dead Teen Violated TOS When He Used ChatGPT To Plan Suicide
Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen’s suicide and instead arguing the teen violated terms that prohibit discussing suicide or self-harm with the chatbot. The earliest look at OpenAI’s strategy to overcome the string of Read more…
Leben (Life aka misc)
AI Can Technically Perform 12% of US Labor Market’s Wage Value, MIT Simulation Finds
Researchers at MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have built a simulation that models all 151 million American workers and their skills, then maps those skills against the capabilities of over 13,000 AI tools currently in production to see where the two overlap. The answer, according to their analysis: 11.7% Read more…
Crypto Leben (Life aka misc) The Planet (on, and off)
Texas Buys $5 Million In BTC ETF As States Edge Toward First Government Crypto Reserves
Texas has purchased $5 million worth of BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF as an initial step toward creating the first state-level bitcoin reserve in the U.S. “[O]ther states having previously invested in such funds with public-employee retirement money,” notes CoinDesk. “Michigan has been building such an investment, and Wisconsin sold its $350 Read more…
Leben (Life aka misc)
The Underwater Cables That Carry the Internet Are in Trouble
The roughly 500 fiber-optic cables lying on the ocean floor carry more than 95% of all internet data — not satellites, as many might assume — and they face growing threats from natural disasters, terrorists and nation-states capable of disrupting global communications by dragging anchors or deploying submarines against the Read more…