The Independent Variable

The Independent Variable

Kevin Humdrum

Welcome to The Independent Variable, the official linkblog of the interwebs covering culture, politics, sports, and tech since 2012.

Latest Posts

MediumLeCun thinks we need completely different approaches, including what he calls ā€œworld models,ā€ before we can talk seriously about AGI. His timeline? At least a decade, probably much longer.I’m obviously no expert, but I’ve been...
Manu MorealeNew newsletter that I’m excited for from Manu kicking off in the new year.
FuturismCoca-Cola is back with another series of AI-generated ads to herald the holidays — and they look just as bad as they did last year.What an expensive and ugly ad. People keep saying ā€œThIs iS ThE WoRsT AI WiLl EvEr bE,ā€ and sure,...
Apple MusicDidn’t catch this yesterday, but what a great three song set from White with Eminem joining for the second, rapping ā€˜Till I Collapse over Hello Operator.
*FTBased on a total cumulative deal value of up to $1.8tn, OpenAI is heading for a data centre rental bill of about $620bn a year — though only a third of the contracted power is expected to be online by the end of this decade.The charts...
SF StandardWhen I pressed Foody on his utopian vision, and why he thinks tech companies won’t hoard the spoils of the AI boom, he waved his hand and described a future in which everyone has $10 million in purchasing power, lives in a...
DefectorThe people who own and populate the sports discourse have every professional incentive not to ā€œfreak out about sports betting,ā€ because the vast majority of them are for all practical purposes employees of sports betting...
BandcampI featured this on yesterday’s media guide on Foofaraw, but wanted to give it another shout-out here. It’s fantastic and every penny goes to Defending our Neighbors.
annie’s blogDon’t forget to like, subscribe, share, burn it all down, etc.I personally can’t wait for episode two! šŸ˜
THRUnited Talent Agency has signed the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, the governing body for ā€œthe king of cheesesā€ Parmigiano Reggiano, to get the supermarket staple placement in films, TV shows and streaming projects around the...
PoliticoAbigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat...
Roc CameraAI has blurred the line. Now, how we take, share, and create images has changed. Social media has made sharing images easy. Generative AI now creates any image we can imagine…By combining attested sensor data, zero-knowledge...
ESPNThere are still a lot of unknowns about this, and I’ve seen passing mention that the FBI might be overstating how big of a bust this is and maybe conflating a few different things to make it look bigger to put a black eye on the NBA,
TheWrapI typically reserve this kind of link for Foofaraw, but the idea of Steven Soderbergh doing a Star Wars movie is just too fascinating. I feel like you could add up the budget of his last ten movies and they still wouldn’t equal a...
TechCrunchSky is a product I actually thought could have some real utility. Security was always the issue though, and now that OpenAI controls them, I’m not sure I’d want OpenAI to be able to essentially see everything I do on my computer.
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