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‘SNL’s Chloe Fineman ‘Burst into Tears' After Elon Musk Said Her Sketches Weren’t Funny

"Saturday Night Live" cast member Chloe Fineman is suddenly telling fans that Elon Musk made her cry three years ago when he guest hosted the show and said her comedy writing wasn't funny.

The post ‘SNL’s Chloe Fineman ‘Burst into Tears’ After Elon Musk Said Her Sketches Weren’t Funny appeared first on Breitbart.





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Sacramento City Council unanimously approves Railyards soccer stadium plan

By Gerardo Zavala

Nov. 13, 12:31 p.m. update:

Sacramento City Council unanimously approved proposals for a new soccer stadium for Sacramento Republic FC in the Railyards. The council voted 8-0 on Tuesday to pass a term sheet outlining plans that will accelerate the stadium's development.

The new project was unveiled last week. It includes the construction of a 12,000-seat stadium as well as a new entertainment venue seating over 3,500 people. The city says the development will be supported through an investment by the Wilton Rancheria Tribe, which has become Sacramento Republic's majority owner. They are also the first Native American Tribe to own a men's professional sports team.

Included in the agreement is a plan for the city to reimburse the team and Downtown Railyard Venture for the project’s estimated $42 million dollar infrastructure costs.

The city would make those reimbursement payments using property tax generated by the project. The new stadium is expected to open in 2027.

Original story, published Nov. 7: 

Sacramento Republic FC and city leaders on Thursday announced plans to construct a long-awaited soccer stadium and live entertainment venue in the Downtown Railyards.

The $175 million stadium is expected to have over 12,000 seats and is part of a larger infrastructure project aimed at making the Railyards an entertainment destination. The project also includes an additional 3,600-seat venue in the Railyard's historic Central Shops. 

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said he plans to present a term sheet to City Council next week that would put the stadium on track to open by 2027.

“This is the biggest announcement for our downtown since the 2013 fight to save the Kings and build the Golden 1 Center,” Steinberg said on Thursday. 

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg speaks during a press conference in which city officials and Sacramento Republic FC leadership announced plans to build a long-awaited soccer stadium on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio

Team officials said this development proposal was possible thanks to a “major investment” from a new ownership group: Wilton Rancheria, the Tribe which owns Sky River Casino in Elk Grove. 

City officials said Wilton Rancheria is the first Tribe to hold majority ownership in a men’s professional sports franchise. 

“This partnership is far more than a business transaction, it represents a significant step forward,” said Wilton Rancheria Chairman Jesus Tarango. “[It] honors the Tribe’s deep and enduring connection to this land, while celebrating the diversity that defines the Sacramento region in an industry where ownership has traditionally lacked diversity.”

Former majority owner and team CEO Kevin Nagle will remain a part owner and manage the team-Tribe partnership.

Wilton Rancheria Chairman Jesus Tarango holds a custom Sacramento Republic FC jersey with his name on it at a press conference in Downtown Sacramento on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio

Sacramento’s long fight for a Downtown soccer stadium

In 2019, city and team officials similarly held a press conference announcing plans to develop a soccer stadium and entertainment district in the Downtown Railyards. But that came with one big caveat: It would only be built if Major League Soccer picked Sacramento as a franchise location.

City Council approved the $262 million plan just days after the announcement was made. Five months later, MLS announced Sacramento Republic FC would be its newest expansion franchise. 

“In a few short years, your club has captured the hearts and minds of soccer fans in this city and throughout the region, and the entire sport has taken notice,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in 2019. “There is no doubt that this is a soccer city.”

The team was initially supposed to make their MLS debut in 2022. But the pandemic pushed back that start date to 2023, and then lead investor Ron Burkle backed out in 2021, scrapping Republic’s opportunity to play in the top division.

In the years since, there have been a number of rumors around new investment groups and potential MLS expansion bids, but none have come to fruition.

Wilton Rancheria Chairman Tarango said MLS is still on the team’s radar. 

“If the opportunities down the road appear, I think we'll be more than welcome to that opportunity, and I think [MLS] would be more than welcome to have Sacramento's region involved in that, especially with our media market here,” he said on Thursday.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Sacramento Republic CEO Kevin Nagle shake hands at a press conference announcing plans to build a long-awaited soccer stadium on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024.Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio

Postseason exit and a leadership change

The announcement of a new stadium comes after the end of The Indomitable Club’s 2024 season. Sacramento reached the USL Championship playoffs for the 10th time in its 11-year history, traveling to Cashman Field on Nov. 1 to face Las Vegas Lights FC in the Western Conference Quarterfinal. It was only the second time in the team’s history that Republic FC played on the road for the opening round.

The teams played to a scoreless draw after 120 minutes and the match went to a penalty shootout, which Las Vegas won 3-2.

Following their playoff exit, Republic FC announced on Nov. 4 that it was parting ways with head coach Mark Briggs after five years.

Briggs was Republic FC’s fourth head coach and the longest-tenured coach in the club’s history. He led the team to the postseason in four out of five seasons — the opening round in 2020 and 2024, the Western Conference Semifinal in 2022 and the Western Conference Final in 2023.

Briggs also coached Sacramento to a historic U.S. Open Cup final in 2022, beating three MLS teams along the way. This was the first time a second-division club reached the cup final in almost two decades.

“Sacramento is a very special place, with a one-of-a-kind club and incredible fans. I’d like to thank the players who’ve been a part of the past five years, the front office who’ve been incredibly supportive, and the fans who welcomed me into the club with tremendous passion and vigor,” Briggs said in a prepared statement earlier this week. “I’m grateful for my time here and it has been an honor to be a part of this community.”





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Supporters of Colorado Springs’ Black mayor faked burning cross, racist slur during 2023 campaign, feds allege

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Denver mail carrier robbed in Central Park neighborhood

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Nuggets Mailbag: Could Denver trade for a backup big to Nikola Jokic this season?

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New Soccer Stadium Approved for Sacramento Railyards | 'The Devil's Bath' Panel at UC Davis | Comedy and Suicide

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What kind of email is "Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)"?

After inspecting this "Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)" email, we determined that it is spam. This fake message encourages the recipient to improve their account security to avoid service interruptions. The goal is to promote a phishing website that targets email account log-in credentials.




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AI Companies Reportedly Struggling to Improve Latest Models

Leading artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are facing "diminishing returns" from their costly efforts to build newer AI models, according to a new Bloomberg report. The stumbling blocks appear to be growing in size as Apple continues a phased rollout of its own AI features through Apple Intelligence.


OpenAI's latest model, known internally as Orion, has reportedly fallen short of the company's performance expectations, particularly in handling coding tasks. The model is said to be lacking the significant improvements over existing systems when compared to the gains GPT-4 made versus its predecessor.

Google is also reportedly facing similar obstacles with its upcoming Gemini software, while Anthropic has delayed the release of its anticipated Claude 3.5 Opus model. Industry experts who spoke to Bloomberg attributed the challenges to the increasing difficulty in finding "new, untapped sources of high-quality, human-made training data" and the enormous costs associated with developing and operating new models concurrently with existing ones.

Silicon Valley's belief that more computing power, data, and larger models will inevitably lead to better performance, and ultimately the holy grail – artificial general intelligence (AGI) – could be based on false assumptions, suggests the report. Consequently, companies are now exploring alternative approaches, including further post-training (incorporating human feedback to improve responses and refining the tone) and developing AI tools called agents that can perform targeted tasks, such as booking flights or sending emails on a user's behalf.

"The AGI bubble is bursting a little bit," said Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at AI startup Hugging Face. She told Bloomberg that "different training approaches" may be needed to make AI models work really well on a variety of tasks. Other experts who spoke to the outlet echoed Mitchell's sentiment.

How much impact these challenges will have on Apple's approach is unclear, though Apple Intelligence is more focused in comparison, and the company uses internal large language models (LLMs) grounded in privacy. Apple's AI services mainly operate on-device, while the company's Private Cloud Compute encrypted servers are only pinged for tasks requiring more advanced processing power.

Apple is integrating AI capabilities into existing products and services, including writing tools, Siri improvements, and image generation features, so it can't be said to be competing directly in the LLM space. However, Apple has agreed a partnership with OpenAI that allows Siri to optionally hand off more open-ended queries to ChatGPT. Apple has also reportedly held discussions with other LLM companies about similar outsourcing partnerships.

It's possible that the challenges faced by major AI companies pursuing breakthrough general-purpose AI models could ultimately validate Apple's more conservative strategy of developing specific AI features that enhance the user experience. In that sense, its privacy-first policy may not be the straitjacket it first seemed. Apple plans to expand Apple Intelligence features next month with the release of iOS 18.2 and then via further updates through 2025.


This article, "AI Companies Reportedly Struggling to Improve Latest Models" first appeared on MacRumors.com

Discuss this article in our forums




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Apple Customers Sue Over Unfixed AirPods Pro Crackling Issue

A trio of Apple customers this month filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, accusing the Cupertino company of violating California consumer protection laws and false advertising for continuing to sell AirPods Pro models that had ongoing issues with crackling or static sounds.


A few months after the ‌AirPods Pro‌ came out in October 2019, buyers began to complain about crackling, rattling, popping, and static-like noises affecting the ‌AirPods Pro‌. The sound seemed to show up when something caused an earbud to move or vibrate, such as walking or running.

Apple tried to fix the problem with software updates, but the company ultimately launched an ‌AirPods Pro‌ repair program in October 2020. Customers with affected ‌AirPods Pro‌ were able to bring them to Apple for a fix or a replacement, but unfortunately, many customers found that their replacement ‌AirPods Pro‌ also suffered from the same issue.

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Apple is also being accused of false advertising for highlighting features like "superior sound quality" and "pure, incredibly clear sound" when knowing there was an issue with crackling and static.

The court will need to decide if the arguments made here hold up, and whether the case deserves class action certification.

Related Roundup: AirPods Pro
Buyer's Guide: AirPods Pro (Neutral)
Related Forum: AirPods

This article, "Apple Customers Sue Over Unfixed AirPods Pro Crackling Issue" first appeared on MacRumors.com

Discuss this article in our forums





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