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Big Tech muscles in: The 12 months that changed Silicon Valley forever

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

At 1 p.m. on a Friday shortly before Christmas last year, Kent Walker, Google’s top lawyer, summoned four of his employees and ruined their weekend.The group worked in SL1001, a bland building with a blue glass facade betraying no sign that dozens of lawyers inside were toiling to protect the interests of one of the world’s most influential companies. For weeks they had been prepping for a meeting of powerful executives to discuss the safety of Google’s products. The deck was done. But that afternoon Walker told his team the agenda had changed, and they would have to spend the next few days preparing new slides and graphs.In fact, the entire agenda of the company had changed — all in nine days. Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, had decided to ready a slate of products based on artificial intelligence — immediately. He turned to Walker, the same lawyer he was trusting to defend the company in a profit-threatening antitrust case in Washington, D.C. Walker knew he would need to persua...

Grading The Week: If Deion Sanders wants more “privacy,” CU Buffs coach needs to ditch his Amazon, YouTube film crews

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

Based on your emails, especially the ones we can’t print in a family newspaper, y’all feel the Grading The Week staff can be a tad harsh on Deion Sanders.There are reasons for it coming across that way, one of which we’ll get into shortly. But let’s say this, too: To be fair to the GTW peanut gallery, not a single soul on our crack team said Coach Prime couldn’t recruit. Or that he couldn’t sell, as confirmed by the commitment of mega high school tackle Jordan Seaton, the latest feather in the man’s talent-building cap, earlier this week.But GTW’s overall stance hasn’t changed. Yes, 4-8 is a heck of a lot better than 1-11. Yes, Boulder is back on the national college football map. But as to other parts of The Great Deion Sanders Experiment? Jury’s still out.Coach Prime wants … “privacy?” — FAnd Prime hasn’t exactly engendered our sympathies when he stiff-arms local media outlets in favor of vid...

Letters: Cold is cold enough to open warming shelters in Denver

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

Cold is cold enoughRe: “How cold should it be to open shelters?” Nov. 29 news storyI read the recent article in The Denver Post with amazement that a question like this would even need to be discussed. Where is the humanity and compassion in such a question? If it is too cold for you to sleep on the cold ground all night or to consider leaving your pet outside, then it is too cold for an unsheltered person to be outdoors.I have seen people of all ages pushing, carrying or pulling all their belongings with them, who need food, restroom facilities and shelter in nice weather.For those of us lucky enough to have a roof over our heads and warmth from the cold, let’s not quibble about when it is too cold to deny another human being that same warmth.Mary K. August, LakewoodThe value of subscribingI continue to subscribe to The Denver Post and our Golden Transcript. It seems to me that there is personal and social value in reading the news and the stories from around Denv...

Walters: How California education money is spent matters — a lot

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

A decade ago, California’s political apparatus finally recognized a yawning achievement gap in its public schools, separating poor and English-learner students from their more privileged classmates.While overall, California’s nearly 6 million K-12 students were not faring very well in state and federal tests of academic achievement, the shortcomings were particularly evident among Latino and Black kids from poor families.The political response by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators was the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, which provided extra funds to local school systems with large numbers of kids “at-risk” of failure on the expectation that the money would be spent specifically on improving their outcomes.Tens of billions of dollars have been spent on LCFF grants, but the results have been, at best, marginal, and there’s been a running political and legal battle over accountability for spending the extra money and its effects.Brown, for obscure reasons that he extrapolate...

Mathews: California’s most important 2024 election affects India

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

On Jan. 28, Californians will cast ballots in a historic vote on creating a new independent country.Why is the first you’re hearing of it? Because the only Californians who can vote in the election are Sikhs. The proposed country would be in northern India.But that’s no reason to overlook the most important election in the Golden State next year.Indeed, the Khalistan Referendum is worthy of your attention for two reasons. First, it raises the questions of whether democracy is more likely to quell, or to inflame, violence during disputes over nationhood. Second, the vote is part of an ongoing experiment in how ballot measures might shape a new global system of democracy.The Khalistan Referendum is a global election, held on different dates and in different world cities that are home to many Sikhs. The Jan. 28 balloting, which will take place in San Francisco, follows votes in London, Geneva, Rome, Toronto, and Vancouver.The referendum itself is non-binding — even if the majorit...

Kristof: So many child deaths in Gaza, and for what?

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

Consider this: The most dangerous place to be a child in the world today is the Gaza Strip.That’s the assessment of Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, who is not a bleeding-heart radical but a former ambassador and veteran lawyer who worked for Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.Already it appears that more than twice as many children have died in Gaza just since the war started Oct. 7 than in all the conflicts worldwide in 2022, according to United Nations figures.“Almost 1 out of every 150 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed in just two months,” noted Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of MedGlobal, an aid group working there. “That is the equivalent of half a million American children.”Sahloul warned that many others may “die from infections, waterborne diseases or dehydration,” while others will suffer from lifelong physical disabilities.We can and should despise Hamas, a repressive, misogynist and homophobic force that uses Palestinian civilians as human sh...

When it comes to digital ‘experts,’ it’s fear versus facts

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

Q: We are first-time homebuyers. We live in the Bay Area. The chatter on the internet is that foreclosures are increasing in numbers. We are patient. We can wait to buy a foreclosure. Or we can wait until the interest rates on home loans return to the low-interest rates two years ago. Realty gurus on the internet think home prices will fall, too.  Your columns promote homebuying promptly. You rely on your experts. We rely on ours. What will happen with any certainty has yet to be determined. No one knows. So why don’t you present both sides of this homebuying issue? A: The World Wide Web and the Wild West of the 1800s have much in common: lawlessness and charlatans. The lack of governance is evident. The proliferation of self-proclaimed experts is staggering. Opportunists are capitalizing on fears, trends and misinformation.The Old West snake oil salesman gained trust. He was preying on the public — the desperate or gullible. The mirror image of today’s digital “expert.” So-called e...

Feldman: Supreme Court may push Sackler opioid case to Congress

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

Bankruptcy law is all about fresh starts. But just how much of a fresh start does the Sackler family deserve — without having to declare bankruptcy themselves?The family’s former company, Purdue Pharma, has become synonymous with the U.S. opioid epidemic and filed for bankruptcy in 2019. Plaintiffs harmed by that epidemic came to an agreement with the company that if the Sacklers paid $6 billion to victims and states, the family would be protected from further civil suits, even though they hadn’t personally declared bankruptcy. Last week, the Department of Justice argued before the Supreme Court that the deal went too far.At oral argument, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that Congress would have to pass a law expressly authorizing a bankruptcy court to offer protection from civil suits for defendants in cases like this one. Since the justices seemed to be split between liberals and conservatives, if Roberts can convince at least one other justice of his view, it is likely to de...

Kyrgios confirms he won’t compete at the Australian Open

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Nick Kyrgios has confirmed he won’t compete at the Australian Open next month because of injuries.The 28-year-old Australian said on social media he’ll miss the Grand Slam for a second straight year because he needs “a little more time” to recover.Kyrgios, whose name was absent from the entry list for the tournament, pulled out of last season’s Australian Open because he needed knee surgery. He later dealt with a wrist problem.Kyrgios was the runner-up to Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon in 2022 but played in just one official singles match in 2023.Kyrgios teamed with Thanasi Kokkinakis to win the 2022 Australian Open men’s doubles championship.___AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennisSource

EU urges COP28’s oil chief to ‘lead’ on fossil fuel phaseout

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 08:31:54 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The European Union says it’s time for the oil boss presiding over this year’s global climate talks to step up and push for a fossil fuel phaseout. Spanish Ecological Transition Minister Teresa Ribera, who represents EU governments in the negotiations, said Sultan al-Jaber, the COP28 president and CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, needed to take a more active role in the final days of the two-week-long talks, which are scheduled to end on Tuesday.“We’re in the hard moment where we need the clear engagement of the president of the COP,” she told POLITICO in an interview on Saturday. “He should be playing not only the role of a moderator, but the role of a leader trying to identify how we can open this pathway toward the outcomes that we need to get.”Ribera’s comments came as oil producers have stepped up their campaign against efforts to call for a phaseout of fossil fuels in the final COP28 agreement. In a letter leaked to multipl...