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HPE partners with AMD to use its chips in HPE's $600M US DOE supercomputer contract announced last August to optimize AI and ML for nuclear weapons support (Stephanie Condon/ZDNet)
HPE partners with AMD to use its chips in HPE's $600M US DOE supercomputer contract announced last August to optimize AI and ML for nuclear weapons support — The system, which will help protect the US nuclear stockpile, will deliver performance greater than two exaflops, HPE now says …
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Neil Gaiman narrates teaser for forthcoming Sandman audio drama
Neil Gaiman narrates the teaser for The Sandman audio drama coming this summer from Audible and DC Comics.
Last summer, we reported that a TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's seminal graphic novel series, The Sandman, was in development at Netflix. Now comes news that we'll be getting a multi-part audio drama adaptation of the series in the interim, via Audible Original. Audio adaptations of beloved properties used to be a rare occurrence—NPR's 1981 radio drama of the original Star Wars trilogy springs to mind. But in an era where we're all plugging into podcasts on a regular basis, such adaptations make a new kind of sense.
The audio drama is being directed by Dirk Maggs, who also directed the audio drama adaptations of Good Omens—which Gaiman co-authored with the late Terry Pratchett, and Amazon adapted into a miniseries last year—and Gaiman's novel, Anansi Boys. The author himself will narrate, as well as serving as creative director and executive producer. No voice cast has been announced yet, but given Gaiman's bona fides, expect to see (erm, hear) a lot of big names in the mix. Here's Gaiman's official statement (via Nerdist) about the project:
“Almost 30 years ago, Dirk Maggs approached DC about adapting The Sandman into audio form. It didn’t happen (although it was how Dirk and I first crossed paths) and I’m glad it didn’t happen, because we are in a Golden Age of audio drama right now, and Dirk and I are much better at what we are doing.
This is a rich audio adaptation of The Sandman graphic novels, brilliantly crafted by Dirk Maggs, with an all-star cast. I’ve loved being there to talk casting, there to read the scripts and offer occasional advice, and there in the studios, watching magic get made and recording the narration. I can’t wait until the world hears what we’ve done.”
For the uninitiated, the titular "sandman" is Dream, also called Morpheus, among other names. He is one of seven entities known as the Endless, and he is seeking to set right his past mistakes. The other Endless are Destiny, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium, and Death, portrayed as a perky punk/goth young woman—they became almost as popular as Dream himself and were featured in several spinoff comics.
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HPE partners with AMD to use its chips in HPE's $600M US DOE supercomputer contract announced last August to optimize AI and ML for nuclear weapons support (Natalie Gagliordi/ZDNet)
HPE partners with AMD to use its chips in HPE's $600M US DOE supercomputer contract announced last August to optimize AI and ML for nuclear weapons support — This is the third US exascale win for Cray, which was recently acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $1.3 billion.
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Facebook says it is testing its Messenger app for macOS, which was first announced last April, in several non-US markets, including France, Mexico, and Poland (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
Facebook says it is testing its Messenger app for macOS, which was first announced last April, in several non-US markets, including France, Mexico, and Poland — At Facebook's 2019 F8 developer conference, the company announced plans to introduce desktop apps for its popular communications app Messenger.
Former Uber self-driving unit head Anthony Levandowski, a key figure in the Uber-Waymo trade secrets trial, ordered to pay $179M to Google over contract breach (Paresh Dave/Reuters)
Former Uber self-driving unit head Anthony Levandowski, a key figure in the Uber-Waymo trade secrets trial, ordered to pay $179M to Google over contract breach — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The former head of Uber Technologies Inc's self-driving technology unit must pay $179 million to Google …
Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179 million to Google
Anthony Levandowski, the engineer and autonomous vehicle startup founder who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been ordered to pay $179 million to end a contract dispute over his departure from Google.
Reuters was the first to report the court order.
An arbitration panel ruled in December that Levandowski and Lior Ron had engaged in unfair competition and breached their contract with Google when they left the company to start a rival autonomous vehicle company focused on trucking, called Otto. Uber acquired Otto in 2017. A San Francisco County court confirmed Wednesday the panel’s decision.
Ron settled last month with Google for $9.7 million. However, Levandowski, had disputed the ruling. The San Francisco County Superior Court denied his petition today, granting Google’s petition to hold Levandowski to the arbitration agreement under which he was liable.
Levandowski himself may not have to pay the money personally; Uber, like other large companies, indemnifies its employees against certain types of fines and damages. But this may also be disputed. For now, however, it does seem as though the $179 million will eventually find its way out of somebody’s pockets into Google’s.
This story is developing pending comment from Levandowski and Google, and the release of further documentation from the court.
Devin Coldewey contributed to this story.
Judge rejects Tulsi Gabbard’s ‘free speech’ lawsuit against Google
Last July, Hawaii representative and longshot Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of violating her First Amendment rights to free speech when it briefly suspended her campaign’s ad account. On Wednesday, California’s Central District Court rejected the suit outright.
Gabbard’s campaign, Tulsi Now, Inc., asked for $50 million in damages from Google for “serious and continuing violations of Tulsi’s right to free speech.” In the suit, her campaign claimed that Google “helps to run elections” through political advertising and search results — an argument District Judge Stephen Wilson firmly rejected.
In dismissing the case, Wilson writes that what Gabbard “fails to establish is how Google’s regulation of its own platform is in any way equivalent to a governmental regulation of an election.” When it comes to Google, “an undisputedly private company,” the First Amendment’s free speech protections do not apply. A week ago, another California court reached the same conclusion in a case that right-wing group PragerU brought against YouTube.
In a case of poor timing, Gabbard’s account was suspended for an interval of time following the first presidential debate as viewers sought information about the unfamiliar candidate. In the lawsuit, Gabbard noted that Google took her advertising account offline “in the thick of the critical post-debate period.”
TULSI2020: In the hours following the 1st debate, while millions of Americans searched for info about Tulsi, Google suspended her search ad account w/o explanation. It is vital to our democracy that big tech companies can’t affect the outcome of elections https://t.co/n7Y7y2dQZ9
— Tulsi Gabbard
(@TulsiGabbard) July 25, 2019
“Since at least June 2019, Google has used its control over online political speech to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate millions of Americans want to hear from,” the suit stated.
Echoing unfounded conservative complaints of tech censorship, Gabbard characterized paid political advertising as free speech, language that Facebook itself would later adopt in defending its lax position on policing political ads.
“This is a threat to free speech, fair elections, and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans,” Gabbard said in a statement at the time.
Gabbard also decried Google’s dominance of the search business, echoing the anti-monopolist tech sentiments expressed by other Democratic candidates. Political figures in both parties have seized on anti-tech sentiment in recent years, and the Hawaii representative’s lawsuit is just one example of politically expedient posturing against major tech platforms.
After the incident, a Google representative explained that the platform automatically flagged Gabbard’s account for unusual activity, a mistake it corrected a short time later.
Federal judge rejects Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's suit against Google that claimed the brief suspension of her Ads account last summer violated her free speech rights (Steven Overly/Politico)
Federal judge rejects Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's suit against Google that claimed the brief suspension of her Ads account last summer violated her free speech rights — A federal judge has rejected a lawsuit in which Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard accused Google of temporarily suspending …
Anthropic cuts its list of unauthorized secondary market sellers from eight to four after the initial notice caused panic and pushback from investors (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg)
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
