Random News Stories

[Leo Enticknap]

Two A340s smuggled out of Lithuania and into Iran

by Miquel Ros, 2024-06-23

Two Airbus A340 aircraft belonging to Gambian leasing company Macka Invest were, reportedly, smuggled out of Lithuania and into Iran.

According to reports that appeared on Lithuanian media, the two aircraft had been parked at Šiauliai airport (SQQ) in Lithuania. They managed to sneak away in February 2024 after declaring that they were departing for Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

After reaching Iranian airspace the two aircraft switched their transponders off and landed at two separate airports in the Middle Eastern country: Tehran’s Mehrabad (THR) and Chabahar Konarak Airport (ZBR).

The two A340s are believed to be currently in service with Iranian airline Mahan Air, which is under US sanctions.

A third A340 belonging to the same Gambian company was prevented from leaving Lithuania upon concerns that it may follow the same path as the other two and it remains at Šiauliai.

This is not the first time that A340 aircraft are smuggled into Iran in contravention of international sanctions.

In 2022, four A340s registered in Burkina Faso ended up in Iran after having filed false flight plans that would have, supposedly, taken them from South Africa to Uzbekistan. Just as in the more recently reported case, in that occasion all four aircraft also disappeared briefly after reaching Iranian airspace, only to be spotted shortly after at Tehran’s Mehrabad international airport.

Whatever one's views on international politics and Iran (it is not my intention to open that can of worms), one has to concede that this demonstrates serious chutzpah! Smuggling one more bottle of Scotch than your duty free allowance permits is one thing ... but knocking off jumbo jets takes it to a whole new, erm, altitude...

I'm guessing that the Iranians are collecting A340s because they are horrendous gas guzzlers that western airlines don't want, but Iran produces more oil than it knows what to do with, and so doesn't have to care about that.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm a "computer bug" but I really don't understand exactly what AI is. That video I posted a while back has a good explanation of how a LLM can write a sentence/paragraph/paper, but I get the impression that there's a lot more to it than that.

You know, you're in good company, as OpenAI, you know, those guys and gals behind the thing called ChatGPT, doesn't know either how their shit works.

AI is a very broad concept, it has been around in one form or another for decades now, but what's catching all the hype lately is generative AI. Generative AI seems to be able to interact with humans in a much more natural way and it shows some real forms of intelligence. While this intelligence isn't the same as human intelligence, it's undeniably a form of intelligence.

The thing is, we build those giant neural networks, consisting of billions of nodes, based on the transformer architecture, we feed them with billions and billions of "information points" and at *some point* something like "intelligence" seems to emerge. Intelligence, to me, it seems, is a function of complexity and structure. Since we have no clear definition of "intelligence", it's also hard to draw a line between when something is intelligent and when something is not. It's probably also not something that can be defined by a hard distinctive line, but only by specifying something of a gradient.

I'd love to explain to you how LLMs and associated beasts work, at least the general concept behind it, but I'm a little constrained by time and forum context. Also, I'm hampered by the same shortcomings that OpenAI also faces: I can't exactly explain what causes those emerging properties of intelligence to arise, although I have some theories, partly backed by some observations we made ourselves while training those LLMs for specific tasks.

In general, we've built a brain-simulator to some extend. A combination of pure cheap processing power, memory and vasts amount of "public" information have enabled us to get here, after quite a few years of trying. While it doesn't exactly work like the brain, it's close enough for quite a few things we're trying to do with it...

[Frank Cox]

And here we go...

https://www.indiewire.com/news/break...ai-1235010605/

Sony Will Use AI to Cut Film Costs, Says CEO Tony Vinciquerra

The next “Spider-Verse” film may have a new animation style: AI.

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) CEO Tony Vinciquerra does not mince words when it comes to artificial intelligence. He likes the tech — or at the very least, he likes the economics.

“We are very focused on AI. The biggest problem with making films today is the expense,” Vinciquerra said at Sony’s Thursday (Friday in Japan) investor event. “We will be looking at ways to…produce both films for theaters and television in a more efficient way, using AI primarily.”

That’s about the strongest support for AI we’ve heard from a film studio head.

Vinciquerra knows how controversial his comments could be with creatives.

“We had an 8-month strike over AI last year,” Vinciquerra began his response to the first analyst question (from Nomura Securities) during his Q&A portion of the annual event. He also acknowledged that ongoing IATSE talks and the forthcoming Teamsters negotiations are “both over AI again.”

The sum total of those discussions between Hollywood’s workers and its studios will inform just how far Vinciquerra and others can go.

I've said before and I'll say again that those who believe union contracts will stop the use of AI are in the position of King Canute against the tide.

If Unionized Movie Studio can make a movie for $100 million and Non-Union Movie Studio can make a similar movie using AI for 98 cents, how long is the first one going to be able to continue operating?

[Frank Cox]

I'm a "computer bug" but I really don't understand exactly what AI is. That video I posted a while back has a good explanation of how a LLM can write a sentence/paragraph/paper, but I get the impression that there's a lot more to it than that.

[Marcel Birgelen]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...owrunner-ai-tv



This whole AI thing seems to be a rocket on rails. A few years ago nobody cared, then chatgpt showed up and suddenly everybody's got an AI and it's the biggest thing since white bread.

"I want to see a movie about X and Y with a happy ending" and the machine creates a movie on the spot just for you?

Right now, the resources to do this are just too limited and the current models aren't good enough yet. But if you look at the progress that has been made over the last few years, it's not a matter of IF, but just a matter of WHEN this happens.

We've been finetuning a bunch of open source models for about a year now and some of them have become scary good at stuff we otherwise had to do by hand.

This whole generative AI thing is like Pandora's box, the devil is outside of the box, you will not get it back in there. Even if all what we have RIGHT NOW is already peak-AI, we're in for a ride, most people simply have no idea yet. This thing will be bigger than the coming of the Internet, it will have a profound effect on the way we look at work, but everybody is still sleeping. If governments should be afraid of something, then it's how they're going to handle this, unfortunately, most politicians are completely clueless about what's coming. Maybe we should replace them with AI first?

[Frank Cox]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...owrunner-ai-tv

A new AI service allows viewers to create TV shows. Are we doomed?

Showrunner will let users generate episodes with prompts, which could be an alarming next step or a fleeting novelty

One of the key strategies of streaming services is to keep you in front of a screen for as long as possible. As soon as one episode of a show you’re watching ends, the next one pops up automatically. But this approach has its limits. After all, when a series ends, Netflix will try to autoplay another series that it thinks you’ll like, but it has a terrible success rate. Maybe the tone of the suggested show is wrong, or maybe it’s too exhausting to be dumped into the sea of exposition that a new show brings. Maybe it’s just too jarring to be pulled out of one world and dumped straight into another without any space to breathe.

You know what would fix that? If Netflix gave you the chance to automatically create a new episode of the show you were already watching. You’d stay there forever, wouldn’t you? It would be wonderful. Ladies and gentlemen, you will be thrilled to learn that this glorious technology now exists.

This week, a company called Fable Studio announced the launch of Showrunner, the world’s first AI-generated streaming service. With a prompt of just a few words, Showrunner promises to allow viewers to write, voice and animate their own television episodes.

Users who sign up for the Showrunner waitlist will eventually get to see 10 animated shows. One of them, Ikiru Shinu, is billed as a dark horror anime. Another, Sim Francisco, is an anthology show about people living in the titular city. And then there’s Exit Valley, a South Park-style Silicon Valley satire. Users can watch the episodes, or make their own by writing prompts that will be generated into scenes that can be stitched together into full episodes. For example, you can presumably watch Exit Valley and then type ‘The characters in his entertainment industry satire learn that they are part of an AI-generated content drive designed specifically to destroy the entertainment industry, and the satire explodes their heads’, and that’s what the next episode will be.

The service isn’t entirely without precedent. Last year Fable released an AI-generated episode of South Park that, if you weren’t watching very closely, came off as fairly convincing. Of course, the moment you did start paying attention, the whole thing became a kind of living nightmare. The jokes were bad, the voices were wrong and everyone spoke with the blank intonation of someone who’d recently been brainwashed into murdering you in your sleep. But it’s early days. As we’ve seen with each successive ChatGPT release, AI can improve at a frightening pace. Before long, Fable might be able to generate a South Park episode that is actually good, and then we’re all in trouble.

Clearly this could go one of two ways. The big fear – the thing that basically caused all of the Hollywood strikes last year – is that, even if Showrunner doesn’t become a mainstream success, the entertainment industry is nevertheless going to co-opt this technology wholesale. It will be slow at first: maybe a studio will use it to generate movie plots, which can then be finessed by the human experts it has to hand. But gradually that could fall away, until the entertainment industry consists of three or four executives writing AI prompts like ‘Dinosaur attacks girl with big boobs’ and keeping all the revenue for themselves.

However, based on current evidence, that isn’t likely to happen just yet. The way it looks now, Showrunner has the unmistakable air of novelty. A flood of people will initially use it to make a bunch of low-quality videos that will turn the platform into an inexplicably less human TikTok or a Quibi that isn’t quite as embarrassing to say out loud. My theory is that everyone will create their own episodes at first, and try to share them, but nobody else will watch because they’re watching episodes that they generated themselves, and then everyone will get bored because what’s the point of making something just for yourself? The bar for creation has been set too low. People will lose interest fast.

And this might be a good thing. God knows the movie industry needs all the help it can get right now. Maybe Showrunner exists as a reminder that the robots are even worse at making stuff than we are. If that doesn’t nudge us back to the mainstream, nothing will.

This whole AI thing seems to be a rocket on rails. A few years ago nobody cared, then chatgpt showed up and suddenly everybody's got an AI and it's the biggest thing since white bread.

"I want to see a movie about X and Y with a happy ending" and the machine creates a movie on the spot just for you?

[Leo Enticknap]

Continuing on the motoring theme:

A driver lost control and plowed into glass windows at the front of a Lake Elsinore Urgent Care Thursday, but no one was injured.

The crash happened about 11:45 a.m. at Accelerated Urgent Care, 29997 Canyon Hills Road, according to the Riverside County Fire Department.

The agency said that several engine crews were sent to the location and discovered that the vehicle had been driven into the windows adjacent to the entranceway.

There was broken glass, but the Urgent Care patients and staff escaped unscathed, as did the motorist, whose identity was not disclosed.

Firefighters found the man sitting on the curb, waiting to speak with sheriff’s deputies, according to reports from the scene.

The Urgent Care apparently remained open after the crash, which was under investigation.

In a radio report I heard (which prompted me to look for an online one to post here), it was claimed that the driver was speeding at the time of the accident, hence the irony in the name of the business he crashed into.

[Frank Cox]

I learned to drive on a 3 on the tree half-ton and then a four on the floor 3 ton.

The old 3 ton was about thirty years older than I was so it wasn't a synchro-mesh transmission (had to double clutch it) but we only used it to haul grain in the fall so it didn't have much on it for mileage.

I just about ended up sitting on the floor every time I tried to depress the clutch, though. Stand on the clutch, haul back on the steering wheel, shift, haul on the steering wheel again, drop it into gear, gas it.

Thinking about it now, my automatic Escape is quite a luxury compared to that.

[Leo Enticknap]

Mrs. Mosley told the court that for eight years her husband had never failed to take a pint of whisky to bed with him and consume it during the night.

I occasionally like a glass of a nice single malt, and so don't want to come across as overly judgmental, but am surprised that he was able to do that for eight years straight and remain alive!

Meanwhile...

Colorado woman's attempt to steal truck thwarted by her inability to drive stick shift: police

Police said Amber Davis was released from jail the day before for trying to steal a different car

Sarah Rumpf-Whitten By Sarah Rumpf-Whitten Fox News

Published May 9, 2024 8:58pm EDT

A Colorado woman's attempt to swipe a truck was thwarted after she was left stumped behind the wheel of the stick shift vehicle, police said.

"Stick Shift FTW [for the win]," the Boulder Police Department said in a press release. "Not a standard recommendation for car theft prevention, but this past Friday a stick shift kept a thief from getting far in a stolen car."

Police confirmed to Fox News Digital that 26-year-old Amber Davis was caught after her inability to drive the vehicle properly caused her to crash into a fire hydrant.

Law enforcement said that they responded to reports of the crash on Friday, May 3 at 4:30 p.m. and quickly identified Davis as the suspect.

Authorities said that the 26-year-old had just been released from jail the day before after she was caught stealing a different car.

Police said that while she was walking, she spotted the truck, saw the keys, got inside and drove off.

Police said that her plan was foiled since she did not know how to drive the truck’s manual transmission.

"Thankfully, no one was injured, and the truck was quickly returned to its rightful owner," the department said.

Davis was charged with felony second degree motor vehicle theft/enhanced circumstance, careless driving, driving without a valid license and duty upon striking an unattended vehicle or other property.

I actually did quite well out of this syndrome. Having been born, raised, and spent the first 38 years of my life living in England (where automatic transmissions are only to be found on high end luxury vehicles, apart from a tiny fraction of mass production cars on which they are specified as a very pricey extra option), I'd never known anything other than manual transmissions, apart from during the odd car rental here and there. Fast forward to 2013, and my first car purchase after moving to California: the local dealership had a manual Honda Fit that they couldn't get rid of. My wife was with me at the time, and kicked me under the table hard when I was about to say that I'd have no problem taking it. She successfully haggled them down by $4K, so anxious were they to get it off their forecourt! It never occurred to me that the manual gearbox is also a theft prevention device in these parts, but I enjoyed driving it until the car was totaled in an accident four years later. The HR-V I bought after that is a CVT, primarily because my wife not being able to drive the Fit (she learned on an automatic and had never driven a manual) had caused a few logistical problems during the time we had the manual.

The next car we buy will likely be electric, which will make the whole question of transmissions irrelevant, obviously.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I bet that went over like a lead balloon...

[Jim Cassedy]

NoNoise1949.jpg


[ Source: Albany Democrat-Herald, Albany Oregon, April 7 1949 ]

[Ed Gordon]

Paramount and Skydance inch closer to a merger as key hurdle looms
Story by Alex Sherman, CNBC

Paramount Global and Skydance Media are making progress on a deal that would merge the media companies and buy out controlling shareholder Shari Redstone.

Paramount Global’s special committee and David Ellison’s Skydance Media, backed by private equity firms KKR and RedBird Capital Partners, are narrowing in on how to value Skydance’s assets as part of a merger, as well as how much equity to add to the company as part of a recapitalization, according to people familiar with the matter.

The sides are close to agreeing on a value for Skydance. The entertainment company will be valued at around $5 billion and merged with Paramount Global, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Ellison and the private equity firms plan to raise roughly $4.5 billion to $5 billion in new equity. Some of that — about $2 billion — will be used to pay Redstone, and another substantial portion will be used to pay down debt.

The buyers would ideally like to get a deal done in May, said the people. Three of the people said that Paramount Global was slow to open a data room to the Skydance consortium, which has slightly pushed back the timeline on a deal. The exclusivity window on merger talks ends May 3, but the Skydance consortium wants to extend it by two weeks, said the people.

Skydance plans to name Ellison as CEO of Paramount Global and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell as the president, said two of the people. Current Paramount CEO Bob Bakish would depart the company, the people said.

Separately, Apollo and Sony have held preliminary discussions about teaming up for a deal that would buy out all Paramount Global shareholders at a premium, according to people familiar with the matter. The special committee hasn’t received concrete details on that offer and isn’t viewing it as a competitive bid to Skydance’s interest, two of the people said.

Still, the committee had more details on an initial offer made by Apollo, which it chose to ignore in favor of exclusive talks with Skydance. The special committee favored Skydance’s offer over Apollo’s in part because it offered shareholders future upside by keeping the company public with a cleaner balance sheet, one of the people said.

Spokespeople for Apollo, the Paramount Global special committee, Paramount Global, and Skydance’s consortium declined to comment.

One significant hurdle that remains is Paramount Global’s renewal agreement with Charter Communications for CBS and its cable networks. That deal is relevant to the value of Paramount Global, which could take a hit if Charter drops the networks or agrees to a lower carriage rate, the people said.

The deadline for that agreement is April 30. Paramount Global reports first-quarter earnings one day earlier, on April 29.

Paramount Global is still dependent on its traditional TV business, which accounts for about two-thirds of the company’s total revenue.

There are signs Charter could prove to be a tough negotiator with Paramount Global: Last year the cable provider, the second-largest in the U.S., briefly stopped carrying Disney’s networks when renewal negotiations between those two companies faltered. (The parties reached a deal 10 days later.)

Paramount’s cable networks are far less popular than Disney’s ESPN, which may put Bakish in a position of weakness.

The timing of the renewal and the deal talks set up an awkward dynamic, where Bakish, who would ultimately leave the company under a Skydance merger, will control Paramount Global’s fate with Charter.

Thus far, Bakish has always reached renewal deals with the major pay-TV distributors since taking over as CEO, dating back to his time running Viacom, beginning in 2016.

Bakish has privately argued against the Skydance deal because it dilutes common shareholders, according to people familiar with the matter. Several Paramount Global investors have also publicly written letters to the company’s board urging directors not to move forward with a Skydance deal, arguing it gives Redstone a massive premium for her controlling shares while leaving common shareholders out in the cold.

Under the terms of the deal, nearly 50% of the company will be owned by Skydance and its private equity partners, CNBC reported earlier this month. The rest of the company would be owned by common shareholders, and the company will continue to trade publicly.

“At Paramount, we’re always looking for ways to create shareholder value. And to be clear, that’s for all shareholders,” Bakish said during his company’s most recent earnings call in February.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Paramount Presents
A Skydance and its private equity partners Production

[Jim Cassedy]

The theater I'm at opened in 1916, and has its' 108th anniversary coming up soon.
I've been searching old San Francisco newspapers online, looking for stories and
info about opening night at the theater. In the process of doing that, I've come across
many other interesting and amusing articles, such as this one:

WhiskyWife.jpg
(SF Chronicle, May 5th 1916)

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The outside vent cover was also the problem in Fallon. It gets cold and snows there too. Bob, the owner said there was a dryer vent cover on it at one time. When I checked out back, it was gone. By the next trip another had been put back on.

[Frank Cox]

I have about two feet of horizontal boiler exhaust pipe about fifteen feet off of the ground and that seems to be a wonderful nesting location.

Every spring I have to climb up and put a grill on the end and every fall I have to climb back up and take the grill back off since it'll freeze over if it's left in place.

So twice a year I'm draggin' out the ladder...