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Recent Articles
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How OC Innovators Are Winning the Last Mile of Artificial Intelligence
For years, the artificial intelligence conversation was dominated by a handful of technology giants investing billions into massive data centers, specialized chips and large language models. But a different story is unfolding in Orange County, where a growing wave of “AI-native” startups is proving that innovation doesn’t always require building the foundation models themselves. Instead, local entrepreneurs are focusing on what many industry observers call the “last mile” of AI: applying increasingly accessible open-source and commercial AI models to solve highly specific business problems. The result is a surge in enterprise workflow automation and industry-specific AI applications that are… |
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A series of mistakes caused a tragic fire in Hong Kong
An independent committee looking into the origin of Hong Kong's worst fire in decades heard testimony on Thursday about how a number of mistakes led to the 2025 inferno that destroyed seven buildings and killed 168 people. The hearings in the case began. Since the fire destroyed the close-knit neighborhood of Wang Fuk Court in November 2025, former inhabitants and family members of the dead have been waiting for answers. The community was home to thousands of individuals in the suburban area of Tai Po. Victor Dawes, the chief lawyer for the committee, stated in his opening remarks that the most likely cause of the fire was cigarettes that ignited other things on fire on a platform in an air … |
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Two more people die while skiing in the Lake Tahoe region
There have been two additional fatalities in the Sierra Nevada, adding to the total number of fatalities that have occurred throughout the winter season. The avalanche that occurred on Castle Peak last week killed nine lives. According to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, which arrived just before noon, the most recent deaths occurred on Friday in two "fatal ski incidents" that were unrelated to each other at the Boulder Lodge of Heavenly resort. In a press statement, the Sheriff's Office stated that paramedics from the Ski Patrol and the Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District attempted to save the life of the subject. On the other hand, both persons were pronounced dead at the site of th… |
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The Epstein Files and the Machinery of Forgetting
Editorial The first instinct of power, when threatened, is not denial but delay. Delay until outrage exhausts itself, until headlines thin, until the public grows bored or distracted or numb. The newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein-related documents land in public view with the weight of something both familiar and unfinished, a reminder not merely of a disgraced financier and the crimes that orbited him, but of how expertly the machinery of forgetting has been engineered. These files do not arrive as a revelation in the cinematic sense. There is no single smoking gun, no neat moral closure. Instead, they arrive like sediment, layer upon layer of testimony, allegation, recollection, and evasion. … |
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World faces food catastrophe if Strait of Hormuz disruption persists
A prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could result in a global food “catastrophe”, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned, as shipments of critical agricultural inputs remain blocked in the key waterway due to the US-Israel war on Iran. Food prices have not risen yet because existing stocks are absorbing the shock, the United Nations body’s chief economist, Maximo Torero, said in an interview on Monday, alongside David Laborde, director of FAO’s agrifood economics division. But if traffic through the strait does not resume, the shocks to energy and fertiliser markets will translate into higher commodity and retail prices later this year and into 2027, Laborde added. … |
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Lost in the Flood they Found Each Other Years Later
Human Interest They met the way people used to meet before algorithms pretended to know our hearts better than we did—by proximity and boredom and youth. Two teenagers in New Orleans, same neighborhood, different schools, running into each other at a corner store that smelled like dust and sugar and summer. There was nothing cinematic about it at first. He made her laugh. She remembered what he ordered every time. They walked streets that would later be mapped by disaster, unaware they were standing on a fault line between before and after. They dated for a year. Long enough to feel permanent. Short enough to believe permanence was guaranteed. Then, in August 2005, the city broke open. When … |
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Legal Pricing Tricks Are Making Everyday Purchases More Deceptive Than Ever
Consumer Investigative The number on the shelf is not the number you pay, and somewhere along the way, everyone agreed to pretend that was normal. It starts small enough to feel like coincidence. A flight listed at one price becomes something else entirely after seat selection, baggage, and a fee that appears without explanation. A concert ticket doubles between the first click and the final screen. A meal arrives with a “service charge” that isn’t quite a tip and isn’t quite optional. Each moment is minor, explainable, defensible. Together, they form a system that depends on you being too tired to fight it. This is not chaos. It is design. Pricing used to be a statement. A tag meant somethi… |
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Rebecca Grossman murdered 2 boys when she sped through a crosswalk
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Rebecca Grossman murdered two young brothers when she sped through a Westlake Village crosswalk, a jury found two years ago. Now, a state appeals court has upheld that verdict. Grossman, the co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation, is serving 15 years to life in state prison for the second-degree murders of 11-year-old Mark Iskander and 8-year-old Jacob Iskander. On Tuesday, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the Feb. 23, 2024, conviction of the wife of renowned surgeon Peter Grossman. Rebecca Grossman’s six-week trial was filled with dramatic testimony and evidence that she struck the bo… |
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Trump says US will not allow Iran to reach enriched uranium
In an interview with the syndicated TV show Full Measure that aired on Sunday, Trump appeared to play down the significance of the uranium, which is believed to be buried under the rubble of nuclear facilities, remaining in Iran for now. “We’ll get that at some point, whenever we want. We have it surveilled,” Trump said. “I did a thing called Space Force, and they are watching. If somebody walked in, he could tell you his name, his address, the number of his badge … If anybody got near the place, we will know about it, and we’ll blow them up.” Iran’s highly enriched uranium is one of the major sticking points between Washington and Tehran in ceasefire negotiations to end the 10-week US-Israe… |
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Karaoke And The Death Of Public Shame
Opinion There are few sounds more spiritually exhausting than a drunk man discovering a microphone near water. The river carries everything. That is the problem. A terrible singer inside a small bar is survivable. The walls absorb part of the damage. Alcohol softens the rest. But once speakers are dragged outdoors and pointed broadly at civilization itself, the laws of acoustics become instruments of psychological warfare. Somewhere across the dark water, usually male, usually already shouting before the music even begins, a man decides that what the entire neighborhood needs at 11:47 p.m. is his interpretation of “Sweet Caroline.” Interpretation is perhaps too generous a word. What follows … |
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The Hidden Secret of AI Intelligence
Feature Editorial We have been sold a ghost in a machine, but what we actually bought was a warehouse full of heaters. When you ask an AI to read an 80,000-word manuscript in two seconds, you aren't witnessing a "mind" at work. You are witnessing a feat of industrial plumbing. There is no quiet contemplation happening in the cloud; there is only a violent, high-voltage surge of electricity through millions of silicon gates. It is a process so hot and so demanding that it requires literal tons of circulating water just to keep the hardware from melting into a puddle of useless metal. To understand why your AI assistant is brilliant one moment and a total idiot the next, you have to stop think… |
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A Big Win For A Lonely Woman
Human Interest Opinion / Perspective For forty years, a stoneware crock sat on a porch in New York, a silent sentry against the biting winters and the humid, heavy summers of the Northeast. It was, for all intents and purposes, a piece of lawn debris. It held no flowers; it served no function. To the woman who lived behind the screen door, it was simply "there"—a familiar shape in a life that had slowly become a series of familiar, quiet shapes. When her birthday approached, she looked at the heavy salt-glazed vessel and allowed herself a modest, almost apologetic hope: perhaps it was worth a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars for a birthday treat, or perhaps a utility bill, or just the smal… |
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Why AI firm is taking on Trump administration
A row is simmering between the United States government and Anthropic, one of the tech companies that develops artificial intelligence (AI) tools for defence and civilian uses. According to recent reports, Anthropic’s Claude software was used in a US military operation, which resulted in the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro in January this year. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given the company until Friday to loosen its rules about how its AI tools can be used by the Pentagon, or risk losing its government contract, The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies reported on Tuesday, quoting unnamed sources. But Anthropic is refusing to back down over safeguards which … |
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Oscars security tighter than ever with 1 mile police buffer amid Iran war
It’s been more than two decades since the Oscars were celebrated as the United States was launching a war in the Middle East. In 2003, the Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre occurred just days after U.S. troops invaded Iraq, elevating security concerns surrounding Hollywood’s biggest night so much that they tightened security like never before. This time around — with concerns heightened not only because of a war with Iran, but also a recent shooting at a university in Virginia and an attack on a synagogue in Michigan — security is going to be even more ironclad, authorities said. The dialed-up security, law enforcement and Oscars officials emphasize, is precautionary and there are… |
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The Assassination of Malcolm X
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X woke up alone in a suite at the Hilton Hotel in New York City.He was, in the most literal sense, a guy without a home. The week before, someone had set fire to his house in the East Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens in the middle of the night. His wife, Betty Shabazz, and his four small children were all well, but for their own protection, they were currently residing with friends in a secret location.Malcolm was sure that his old coworkers from the Nation of Islam (NOI), led by Elijah Muhammad, were responsible for the firebombing. He used to be the second most influential person in the religious and political movement, but now he had to watch out for the milit… |
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Young man killed in the front yard of his home
In June 2017, twenty-two-year-old Pedro Ruiz III was killed in the front yard of his home in Halstad, Minnesota, during a botched YouTube stunt. His pregnant girlfriend, Monalisa Perez, fired a .50-caliber Desert Eagle handgun at a hardcover encyclopedia Ruiz was holding against his chest, believing the book would act as a shield. Despite Ruiz’s claims that he had tested the idea on other volumes, the high-velocity round punched through the paper instantly while their three-year-old daughter and nearly thirty neighbors watched. Ruiz was pronounced dead at the scene, ending a planned "viral video" with a fatal ballistic failure. The event, meticulously planned and filmed, was intended to be t… |
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US Olympic medalist Jenny Simpson rushed to hospital after collapsing during North Carolina race
Jenny Simpson collapsed at an event in North Carolina on Tuesday night Removed from bookmarks I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Olympic bronze medalist and world champion runner Jenny Simpson suffered a medical episode and collapsed while pacing a mile group at a community event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Tuesday night. The 39-year-old 1,500-meter specialist received CPR and an automated external defibrillator (AED) was used at the track before she was transported to a hospital. The incident was first reported by LetsRun. Simpson was participating in a Sir Walter Running event, which encourages runners of all levels … |
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MSN Deteriorates Into A Pool Of Garbage
Editorial / Consumer Investigative Let’s be honest: MSN isn’t a news site anymore. It’s a digital dumpster fire where the "editors" have been replaced by a script that has the IQ of a doorstop and the ethics of a looter. It used to be a gateway to the world; now, it’s just a gateway to a 40-slide gallery about what some C-list reality star’s knees look like today. Microsoft decided that human editors—people who actually know how to spot a lie or a hack—were too expensive. So, they pushed them out the window of the Empire State Building and replaced them with an algorithm that would sell its own mother for a $0.02 ad impression. The result? A "click-and-fuck" ecosystem where the reader is the… |
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18-year-old girl killed in fiery crash
A a teenage girl was among the teens killed in a violent incident that occurred early Sunday morning. Near Farley, Missouri, on State Highway 45, an overturned automobile carrying 18-year-old Tessa Walker caught fire and killed her. The accident injured four other teenagers. Tessa Walker, a Park Hill School senior, was preparing to start her college career in the autumn at Northwest Missouri State. Besides being an accomplished athlete, Tessa was a hard worker in the classroom. She participated in track, girls' flag football, and volleyball. She participated in the AVID college-readiness program for all four years, and her dedication paid off with many awards, including academic scholarships… |
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Nvidia CEO Huang denies he is unhappy with OpenAI says 'huge' investment planned
Business TAIPEI, Jan 31 : Nvidia plans to make a "huge" investment into OpenAI, probably its largest ever, CEO Jensen Huang said on Saturday, denying he was unhappy with the ChatGPT maker. The chipmaker in September announced plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, a deal that would give OpenAI the cash and access it needs to buy advanced chips that are key to maintaining its dominance in an increasingly competitive landscape. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the plan had stalled after some inside the chip giant expressed doubts about the deal. The report said Huang had privately underlined to industry associates in recent months that the original $100 billion agreement … |