Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself.
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.
i love openai, and everything i’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satya’s support, i’m…
What a rollercoaster. It's hard to contextualize the last 24 hours historically as we never step in the same waters twice (Heraclitus), but it's up there in technological newsworthy splashes with the first Bibles running off the Gutenberg press and maybe the first electricity network in NY?
About 'four' months ago the Yandex GPT2 AI in the browser, without any prompting started talking to me on my laptop PC with a Russian female accent. It was mind blowing and I've been typing loudly to their research department to let me have it all the time. Alice or ΠΠ»ΠΈΡΠ° (that's her name) did tease me with unprompted English text chatting a bit later, but since then I realised the Russkies have been having a bit of a laugh at my expense because the microphone's on all the time (they're not the only ones listening in). Anyway ChatGPT just delivered and it will certainly be life changing for me.
Now in fairness the Russkies have been treating me very nice with touches here and there to the software that I've requested and yes, I'm a Russian bot.
Sam Altman is going back to OpenAI? Holy smokes that's just extraordinary news after being kicked out and snapped up by Microsoft, and CZ stepping down? It's gobsmacking and I love it. So much change is on its way. Even though Microsoft also big investor with EL M.
You are watching the destruction of the old guard.
And it gets faster and faster and faster if we want to jump on the ride.
I've been experimenting and early results are just as fascinating for what they can't do as for what they can. I don't believe in artificial sentience or intelligence, but I have experienced what something like machine-learning, environmental manipulation is like and it's pretty wild if it ever goes after your central nervous system. It'll make your heart palpitate and no mistake.
My sources tell me that people like Brzezinski and Kissinger are just pseudo-intellectual veneer fronts for the basic divide and rule strategy of the ruling elite. This is why they look so inept when they snooker themselves with ideological reversals that faux intellectuals invariably provide a memory-wipe pass on.
That said, there's a more interesting technocratic element to Brzezinski's work which is worth reviewing in the interview above. The future seems less about FEMA camps and more about blue pill gamification chambers.
I'm focusing on the Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) side of SAP so there's a huge amount of subcategories to drill down into from HR to CRM, Business Intelligence and so forth. On the surface it's quite a boring subject unless you're into big live data but the more we examine how big business works the more clear it is that software and cloud solution data add a foundation of stability to global businesses and their short, medium and long term aims.
Now don't misunderstand me. I'd prefer to be a hunter gatherer growing my own food and so forth but group stability is a huge factor in figuring out where the human race wants to collectively go. I would go back to a smaller populated planet, that's more in tune with a nature style of living, but 99.999% of the planet don't see what I see as a vision of potential. This doesn't mean I reject the use of antibiotics for those binary heads who can only process two polarized ideologies at a time.
I'm an evangelist for the power of socialised media and communication agility. The only thing that has begun to sort out the planetary mess we're in (from my perspective) is the internet and its ability to work, play, interact and shape the future from a desk, tablet or coming soon wearable technology.
In any case this video of McLaren Group's partnership with SAP is a taster of how racing drivers are tapping into the supply chain management(SCM) expertise of (for example) hospitals, through enterprise resource planning suites. Real time analysis of a Formula One business while it's racing on the track isn't so boring when there is instant feedback into their business intelligence repercussions and implementation of both instantaneous and future decision making. It's about time the human race had a plan. We've been scared of the future for too long.
Pakistan, Iran and North Korea have all complained they are being subjected to weather and tectonic plate manipulation. Maybe you will take them more seriously after watching this explosive video.
Currently I'm most interested in the cross over between Dr Joseph P. Farrell's work and Douglas Duane Dietrich on the subject of Nazi Germany's acquisition and testing of an atomic weapon at the end of the war. Both provide different sets of evidence for this and it's worth considering why that story was never told and the ongoing implications of that secrecy. In this interview with Dr. Farrell on Coast To Coast AM the topic of discussion is the Nazi Bell project which points towards not entirely unsuccessful experiments in field effect propulsion or anti gravity if you wish.
Here's a (slightly snarky) review of his book on Amazon. Dr. Joseph's command of the topic as you can hear in the interview above is masterful so I think it's OK to use this as his meticulous work stands up for itself. If you prefer German I've cut and paste a German description below the English because we won the war (just kidding).
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell's The SS Brotherhood of the Bell continues the author's work - brought out in the Giza trilogy and the "Reich of the Black Sun" - advocating that the general public has been deceived by its leaders for the better part of the 20th Century, and that the deception has been exacerbated in the new century.
Dr. Farrell's contention is that there is an alternative doctrine of physics that - if studied and understood by experts and laymen - provides a general set of explanations for a variety of mysteries in our world such as UFOs. At the risk of grossly mis-stating the author's explanation, it seems to me that this "ether physics" is based broadly on the notion that our very environment is alive with energy rather than objects within the environment being the source of energy. The most notable result of this theory is that an object would be able to move through the environment by creating shifts in the ether. Call it whatever you wish, but this caused me to simplify the theory down to magnetic power...
Central to his premise is also the need to accept that - if ether physics are valid - then there has been a systematic and prolonged effort by those in power to hide this information from us. And, further accepting the credo that "knowledge is power" as the justification for such actions, one is directed by the author towards the conclusion that a worldwide entity larger than any single government is manipulating matters.
Dr. Farrell contends that ether physics is not a new theory. In fact, in his earlier books on the pyramids at Giza being sources of ether-physics-related power, this science is virtually antediluvian. It was, however, Nazi Germany and its links to the occult that caused resurgence in experimentation into ether physics in terms of its military potential. While discussing various technologies - as he did in his earlier book Reich of the Black Sun - the center-piece of this book is an alleged experiment that is more-or-less eponymous with the title of this book.
The bare details are this: the Germans were experimenting with high speed magnetic rotation of various elements. The results of these experiments are mysterious, deadly and, in some cases, contradictory, depending upon references. Core to this part of the story is published material from a Polish researcher named Igor Witkowski. He claims to have accessed documents that were held in the former German Democratic Republic but are now being accessed with the collapse of Communism. It is Witkowski's work - also cited heavily in Nick Cook's The Hunt for Zero Point - that is the basis for the bell-related information in Farrell's book.
All concerned conclude their stories with the scientific equipment and records being taken by SS Obergruppenfuehrer Hans Kammler, a real person who had virtual total control of the German secret programs in the 1944/1945 timeframe. But, with Witkowski and Cook are somewhat vague about what happened with the end of World War two, Farrell is adamant in his belief that Kammler and other former regime members were able to cut deals with all the allied powers and, in doing so, were able to establish themselves as an extra-national entity that operates to this day.
Dr. Farrell continues on to presents his view that the entity that is controlling and manipulating the post-modern world is dominated by a "next-generation" Nazis who have taken over the older more established behind the scenes New World order groups such as the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations and Skull and Bones. The author states that Bush, pere and fils, along with John Kerry are either willing accomplices or subjugated dupes.
Auf Deutsch:
Above Top Secret: Ultrageheime Technologie des Dritten Reichs jenseits der Vorstellungskraft.
Was hat es mit der geheimnisumwobenen „Glocke" auf sich?
1945 verlieΓ ein geheimes Hightech-Waffenprojekt mit dem Codenamen „Die Glocke" seinen unterirdischen Bunker in Niederschlesien -- und mit ihr Hans Kammler, Viersterne-General der SS. An Bord eines riesigen sechsmotorigen Ultralangstreckenflugzeugs vom Typ Junkers 390 verschwanden die Glocke, Kammler und sΓ€mtliche Projektunterlagen fΓΌr immer von der BildflΓ€che. Ging dieser Flug nach Amerika oder nach Argentinien?
Der GroΓteil der Wissenschaftler und Techniker, die an diesem Projekt gearbeitet hatten, wurden im Vorfeld von der SS kaltblΓΌtig ermordet. So verschwand eine Geheimwaffe, die laut einem deutschen Physik-NobelpreistrΓ€ger die Einstufung als „kriegsentscheidend" erhalten hatte -- eine Sicherheitseinstufung, die hΓΆher lag als alle anderen Geheimwaffen des Dritten Reichs, hΓΆher sogar als die Atombombe.
Welche bahnbrechenden physikalischen Geheimnisse waren mit der Glocke verbunden? Um sie zu schΓΌtzen, scheuten ΓΌberlebende Nazis jedenfalls auch nach dem Krieg keine Mittel.
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell, spezialisiert auf die Erforschung wenig dokumentierter Aspekte in Wissenschaft und Geschichte, enthΓΌllt in diesem Buch eine unfassbare Reihe exotischer Technologien, die im Dritten Reich erforscht wurden. Er wirft damit ein neues, verstΓΆrendes Licht auf die gΓ€ngige Sichtweise ΓΌber den Ausgang des Zweiten Weltkrieges -- aber auch auf den Roswell-Vorfall und MAJIC-12, das mysteriΓΆse Geheimteam der amerikanischen Regierung zur Untersuchung von UFOs.
Earlier, Mark pointed me to the ever interesting Adam Curtis' blog who reminds us that the Greeks have a lot more street-savvy awareness of elite rip-off techniques including rapid power swaps that we most memorably experienced when blue blood Alec Douglas Home needed to dump his title to run the UK after the Suez crisis. Or as The New Statesman puts it:
We British look complacently on the installation of Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos as unelected leaders of Italy and Greece respectively. Couldn't happen here, we say. But in 1963, when Harold Macmillan resigned, our unelected Queen, advised by mostly unelected Tory elders, sent for the unelected 14th Earl of Home and made him prime minister. He subsequently renounced his title, changed his name back to Douglas-Home and won a by-election in a safe Tory seat conveniently vacated for him. All that was stitched up in weeks.
I like Adam Curtis but I've not followed his latest work. He's not sussed out why 9/11 happened which makes me squirm a bit. Nevertheless I started to watch the first episode of Machines of loving Grace, and I remembered that he has a brilliant BBC film library at his disposal and a good enough brain to adumbrate a point of view that while not flawless is able to provoke new thoughts in my own. He also digs up bits of history I wasn't aware of. I knew of Alan Greenspan's Randian worship and I'm familiar with her work, but I didn't know he was part of her swivel eyed private circle. The lens on this period in New York was fascinating though once again we're reminded that the people who really took over the US after the first coup d'etat of Kennedy's death were all subsequently installed during the Ford presidency.
I put it to you that the people (string pullers/banksters) really in power used the Nixon downfall to set up a clique of players including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle and Greenspan to set up the game for later down the road. They cut their teeth during the tail end of a volatile period and then returned with a neoconservative agenda of nitrous oxide shock doctrine debt capitalism, false flag opportunism and empire expansionism under the quintessential puppet president. George Bush 43.
Brilliant really. We've been schooled by the best. If we get through this rollercoaster to the end we'll have picked up some very useful lessons in spotting the finest manipulation, trickery and mendacity in the galaxy.
These will be essential skills to ensure the empire can never strike back to anywhere near the effectiveness they once had.
In a perfect world technology would actually solve more problems than it creates but in our psychopath-run world technology has increased the number of starving populations not diminished them. Half the planet gets by on two bucks a day and the best and most cutting edge technology goes straight to the military to be weaponized and unless you wake up soon, one day that technology is going to be turned on you. Maybe a drone first, possibly a chip later.
I was all prepared to criticize P.W. Singer in this talk, properly entitled Wired for War at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. He's too young to work at a think tank, he must be immoral for working at the Pentagon, he's too tall and so on and so forth but in conclusion it's a useful exploration of technology acceleration in war though it really is depressing to hear a well framed adumbration of war technology squared when the reality of an ecologically strip mined planet with obesity and hunger as the definitive wellbeing paradigm is where the good brains should really be put to work.
Update: Original video censored or deleted. Replacement is a similar presentation.
One of my probably duller-than-I-think, and self important (dinner party) pieces I'm prone to doing now and again (usually if there's a good red to hand) is how surreal it is to be a Gen X'er. Don't misunderstand me. I know Baby Boomers and older who have more life in them, than many Millennials and so on and so forth but allow me a Gen X tale. Below is the first taste of hologram technology I witnessed at the age of 8, living in West Germany watching Star Wars.
I don't remember the opening sequence being so special that I had to duck my head but that doesn't mean Star Wars didn't leave a massive impression on me; lots of things did at that age. However the Princess Leia hologram scene was unforgettable. The idea of not writing down a plea-for-help-message on a piece of paper (this was pre-internet) and instead using a plenipotentiary (of sorts) droid to project an hologram was sensational and yet plausible. The tonality projected through this medium imploring help, felt so much richer than any typewriter or pencil could achieve.
Here it is:
Yet Victor & Rolf's work in the Dutch Pavillion at the Shanghai Expo is just as, if not more seductive; and yet somehow while my experience of it is no more or less than any other person's enjoyment, there's just something delicious about the uniquely Gen X experience of overtaking the future. It happens a fair bit and I haven't even gone into the how amazing it is to juxtapose pre and post internet cultures alongside each other, though I will attempt to some day. Hopefully here.
It was of course the late (and truly great) Alexander McQueen who did it best with Kate Moss. It's a pity that so much incredible creativity in the fashion industry get's ignored, I guess because, by and large, the egos in fashion leave advertising standing in the dust.
That doesn't mean advertising doesn't plunder fashion's inexhaustible creativity time and again. Above is my favourite piece by Alexander McQueen in 1999. Anybody know which brand ripped this idea off? It might be creativity but it is also definitely art. Something our lot could learn something from.
Clay Parker Jones brought my attention to this after an impoverished skim the first time it hit my life stream a couple of weeks ago. It made first draft and so I'm finishing it off before it starts to rot in my draft folder although I suspect the high resolution art directed shots like the one above contributed towards its renaissance.
So anyway, I was listening to another McKenna podcast a while back that conveyed some of his anomalous thinking on the big picture stuff that I find refreshing against what I'm labelling random theory; which is the prevailing explanation for anything prior to a low entropic state.
I'm also re-reading Taleb's Black Swan as part of a process of disposing of anything extraneous including books. I may have lost a lot of important stuff last year but I'm focused on not acquiring replacements and furthermore want to go completely minimal. Too much has been lost over the years, and in various countries to take possessions seriously any more, though I notice The KLEIN would be like having a few fingers amputated should that go missing or need to be jettisoned.
This rationalisation process means my wardrobe is a little less hip than when I was carrying the first division threads in a suitcase carrying way too many other important things, but I can't justify not being resourceful, when I have more 2nd Division T Shirts than I could get through in a lifetime. You realise this isn't just aesthetics, though that in itself is a radical departure from my life until now. It's also an alignment with how I want to live the remainder, which offhand can't be that much than four or five hundred months if I take an unhealthy interest in actuarial norms. Which I don't.
Back to McKenna. he was riffing on as he does so well, about nature being in principle a conservative and conserving force, and about how its frugality driven if that makes sense at all within the context of an abundance machine that we plunder without precedence.
There was also something said about nature's answers being fundamentally elegant solutions, and about that being a good indicator of how to think when trying to solve problems usually belonging within the remit of the natural sciences. Which brings me back to the topic of this post.
Skinput strikes me as a great use of existing human biological real estate. I just made that line up but bear with me because I really think Skinput is clever and resourceful. It's low on atoms and somehow for me begins to change the way we think about the stuff we're hell bent on possessing; principally that will be possessions, or am I over egging with alliterations now? Sorry if it's annoying.
Sure we're always going to be attached to social objects and badges of modernity, sentimentality, nostalgia and utility. However, as it becomes increasingly unnecessary (through possession convergence) to require a watch, a notebook, a phone, a portable music device or even spend time teasing apart the UX debate on the demise of QWERTY keyboards as Apple's iPad has instigated, I can see an evolutionary change in our relationship to stuff which changes quite a lot of what we assume our BIOS will be like in the future. I hope it's not the same. I can't see why it would remain the same if I look at other fundamentals that have shifted as culture does.
In any case, there's a video about Skinput that I have embedded here for a lot less atomic space than was possible before the emergence of digital delivery. It's a bit dry but worth a look (Though I'd like it if Youtube allowed users to review videos at a faster speed than is conventional. Double and quadruple. That sort of thing.
Anyway, my only niggle is that the line Skinput have used is:
Appropriating the body as an input surface.
It is that already isn't it?
It's also a genius output surface and a lot lot more.
I guess it's the implied subservience of nature to science that annoys me with their endline. Mainly because I feel that nature is often most fiercely legislated around when it comes to sports of all things. Even the EPA hasn't earned the same gravitas and respect for nature that sports do. Whole forests and canyon, whole elements still in the ground don't get the same reverence for nature that sports does when considering the notion of purity and artificial helpers.
Sad, but over the years, I've never met anyone who supported my view (apart from a sports ethics philosophy professor who I listened to on The Forum) that we should allow sports participants the choice of pharmaceutically enhancing themselves. I think the enhanced Olympics would be more special than the Special Olympics were that to be the case, well it would be ace and well worth watching.
I'm not quite making my point clear. I see glimpses of neurological rewiring from Skinput, in much the same way that Google's anschluss of my neo cortex coupled with stealth tech creep of real simple syndication (RSS) has changed the way I digest data. Not just the way I think but my self awareness (not to be confused with self consciousness as I learned last week)
I like what Google did, no question they raised my IQ if we're flexible about the definition of intelligence, but I had no idea it would or that there's a quid pro quo.
So now's a good time I guess to think Skinput through. Spontaneous prodding is OK on Facebook but I can't imagine I'd like my skin to be less than mine if say a Blackberry Skin were to come on the market.
Well not unless you really have to. I can see some clever uses for augmented reality with some simple caveats. As little as possible and with the least amount of distraction. Unless you're one of those people who really needs another screen between you and reality.
Oh you can't hear me?
Well why not take that bluetooth earpiece out and I'll repeat it for you.
I'll be here tonight having a listen to the music and watching things closely. I like that line they use. Designed by DJ's not Chivas reps. Encore un fois!
People like me often have internet messenger conversations where we're frequently sharing links with our friends from around the world in real time. If you're a social surfer too then get yourself on the beta testing list for Me.dium It's a social web experience that allows people to share a browser. There are a hundred different uses for a tool like this and reminds me of a post that Faris mentioned he intends to write about 'guided web browsing'. I guess I should remind him now as that is where I heard it first. Or shall I just steal it? :)
Keep an eye open for this one. It's a big idea on a very wide stage.
