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💻 **Chegg to lay off 22% of workforce as AI tools shake up edtech industry**

“_Chegg (CHGG.N), said on Monday it would lay off about 22% of its workforce, or 248 employees, to cut costs and streamline its operations as students increasingly turn to AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT over traditional edtech platforms._”

🔗 reuters.com/world/americas/che.

@ai

📖 **The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters**

“_Coyle argues that to understand the current economy, we need different data collected in a different framework of categories and definitions, and she offers some suggestions about what this would entail_”

🔗 press.princeton.edu/books/hard.

@bookstodon @economics @finance

I see that Trump has utterly capitulated on his China tariffs. Perhaps this pattern has something to do with it.

Trump talks tough, but China has all the cards.

economicsfromthetopdown.com/20

The data centers are coming. In super, secret secret. Under no circumstances can the community be let know how much water and energy will be used.

"Residents in and around Bessemer are furious over Project Marvel, a plan to build a 4.5-million-square-foot data processing facility on 700 acres of wooded land. Public officials have been sworn to silence."

insideclimatenews.org/news/110

Most #AI spending (64%) driven by FOMO, not ROI, CEOs tell IBM:

Only ~25% of AI initiatives have delivered the expected return on investment, according to an IBM survey of 2,000 CEOs.
#econsky #finsky newsroom.ibm.com/2025-05-06-ib

As tensions between #India and #Pakistan embroil their agreement to share the Indus River, this might be a good time to remind everyone that half the land area of the Earth is in an internationally-shared river basin.
The US shares 20 river basins with Canada; 4 with Mexico.
The Nile is shared by 11 countries.
And violence over #water is growing.

pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads

After decades of solar PV deployment, the world crossed the 1 TW (a million MW) line in 2022. Just two years later, after adding 0.6 TW in 2024, we already crossed the 2 TW mark too!
#SolarPV #solarenergy #renewables

This article is both validating and infuriating.

Validating because it speaks to the lie that generative models are "the worst they'll ever be."

One popular leaderboard...indicates some “reasoning” models – including the DeepSeek-R1 model from developer DeepSeek – saw double-digit rises in hallucination rates compared with previous models from their developers.

The myth of incessant improvement needs to die.

Infuriating because it concludes that "We may have to live with error-prone AI." We really, really don't. This technology has one primary purpose: driving the data and compute hoarding of the oligarchy. It should be considered a tool of the oppressor, and as such should be resisted, confounded, and broken.

We do not have to accept this.

newscientist.com/article/24795

📖 **Modern Magic Unlocks Merlin's Medieval Secrets**

“_Fragments of a rare Merlin manuscript from c. 1300 have been discovered and digitised in a ground-breaking three-year project at Cambridge University Library_”

🔗 cam.ac.uk/stories/merlin-manus.

@medievodons

"#GoogleSearch was the gold standard—a product born in a dorm room during the #internet’s early, idealistic era. But when internal emails surfaced they revealed a deeper conflict inside the company: was Google making Search worse, on purpose, to boost ad revenue? Google says its changes are benefiting users. Critics say it’s all part of a bigger pattern—one that host #CoryDoctorow calls #enshittification: the slow, deliberate decay of platforms in the name of profit."
cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/135

🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🚗 **US automakers rip Trump trade deal with UK**

_“The British auto industry expressed excitement about the deal, which allows the U.K. to export 100,000 cars to the U.S. at a 10-percent tariff rate, and effectively removes another national security tariff._

_American carmakers didn’t share that enthusiasm.” _

🔗 thehill.com/business/5292037-a.

Teachers Using AI to Grade Their Students' Work Sends a Clear Message: They Don't Matter, and Will Soon Be Obsolete
futurism.com/teachers-ai-grade

Posted into All About Artificial Intelligence @all-about-artificial-intelligence-Futurism

🇬🇧 **'Naseby was the battle that transformed Britain'**

_A rare 17th Century map showing details of "the battle that transformed Britain" has gone on show at a new exhibition._

🔗 bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce82dz.

@histodons

📖 🎙️ **Globalization's Backlash: Echoes of the Interwar Era in Today’s World**

“_She highlights how economic insecurity, the rise of mass politics, and anxieties over immigration and trade shaped political reactions in both eras, while noting key differences—such as the role of environmentalism today and the absence of a world war in recent memory._”

🔗 newbooksnetwork.com/globalizat.

@bookstodon @histodons

_A lorry driver in California tells Sky News: “We're already seeing work slowing down. How are we going to survive?”_

Flipboard UK  
Trump's tariffs hit the West's busiest port - with traffic down by nearly a third https://news.sky.com/story/trumps-tariffs-hit-the-wests-busiest-p...
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