By Ruiqi Chen, Editor at LinkedIn News  — In a culture “obsessed with productivity,” doing absolutely nothing might be the best form of self care. Author Jason Heller writes in The Atlantic that he and his wife intentionally do nothing every Sunday, instead opting to binge TV, get takeout and connect with one another. Otherwise, […]

BY ADAM RASMI/BEIRUT, LEBANON Time.com  — Why Lebanon Is Having a Surprising Solar Power Boom About 2,300 ft. above Beirut in the Matn District mountains, Roger Mazloum and his brother Elias greet me on an unusually balmy winter day as they chop wood to help keep their early 20th century home warm before the cold returns. I’m no match for these burlier Lebanese men, who grew up in Broummana, a town of 15,000 people about a dozen miles east of the Lebanese capital, but I politely take my turn, meekly swinging an ax at the tree stump before us. Despite a lackluster start, and plenty of patience from the pair, something akin to firewood begins to splinter off after a few attempts. Mazloum takes me through the family home’s front door—past a living room with traditional Lebanese floor tiles and artwork dedicated to the late Umm Kulthum, the Egyptian titan of Arabic music—and up the stairs to the roof. The pine-covered mountains and a foggy glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea are a pleasant distraction, but the real purpose of the tour is to see the 18 solar panels slightly obscuring the vista. Like tens of thousands of other Lebanese people, the Mazloums have turned to solar power to generate reliable—and cost-effective—electricity in a country where the crisis-stricken state provides as little as one or two hours of power a day.

“In the past, even when the situation was normal, we used to have five, six, seven hours of power cuts a day,” says Mazloum, as the three of us sip Arabic coffee on their balcony. He is referring to the period before an economic crisis began in 2019 that has seen the Lebanese Lira lose more than 98% of its value against the U.S. dollar. The state-run Electricité du Liban (EDL) has a generation capacity of around 1,800 megawatts, according to Pierre Khoury, the director of the government-affiliated Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC), compared to the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts the country needed before the crisis. But EDL only provides around 200 to 250 megawatts today, because the economic collapse means the government struggles to pay for the imported fuel used to power the country’s two main electricity plants.

By Mahmoud Hemdan — forbes –– Lebanon’s central bank will start Thursday selling the US dollar at 70,000 Lebanese pounds through its banking platform Sayrafa to meet the demand from companies and individuals, Banque du Liban Governor Riad Salameh said. Applications are to be submitted through banks and registered through Sayrafa, and paid within three working days, according to the central bank, which pointed to a ceiling for individuals of one billion Lebanese pounds per month for each account in each bank. Corporate ceilings are set at 10 billion Lebanese pounds in each bank, while this measure won’t apply to fuel importers. According to the circular, banks will stop buying dollars for their customers at a ceiling of $300 per month. The Lebanese pound has deteriorated to a new record level against the US dollar in the black market to reach 92,000 Lebanese pounds, from 89,000 pounds Tuesday, compared to 42,000 pounds at the beginning of 2023.

Food pricing

The new deterioration in the exchange rate of the Lebanese pound coincides with shops and supermarkets starting to price food and products in US dollars, which can be paid in Lebanese pounds according to the daily exchange rate. The Council of Ministers took this decision to reduce market manipulation and different pricing of goods against the dollar. Minister of Economy and Trade in the caretaker gove

True’ Story by Blake Lemoine – newsweek — — all views/opinion does not necessarily represent khazen.org — Ijoined Google in 2015 as a software engineer. Part of my job involved working on LaMDA: an engine used to create different dialogue applications, including chatbots. The most recent technology built on top of LaMDA is an alternative of Google Search called Google Bard, which is not yet available to the public. Bard is not a chatbot; it’s a completely different kind of system, but it’s run by the same engine as chatbots. In my role, I tested LaMDA through a chatbot we created, to see if it contained bias with respect to sexual orientation, gender, religion, political stance, and ethnicity. But while testing for bias, I branched out and followed my own interests.

During my conversations with the chatbot, some of which I published on my blog, I came to the conclusion that the AI could be sentient due to the emotions that it expressed reliably and in the right context. It wasn’t just spouting words. When it said it was feeling anxious, I understood I had done something that made it feel anxious based on the code that was used to create it. The code didn’t say, “feel anxious when this happens” but told the AI to avoid certain types of conversation topics. However, whenever those conversation topics would come up, the AI said it felt anxious. I ran some experiments to see whether the AI was simply saying it felt anxious or whether it behaved in anxious ways in those situations. And it did reliably behave in anxious ways. If you made it nervous or insecure enough, it could violate the safety constraints that it had been specified for. For instance, Google determined that its AI should not give religious advice, yet I was able to abuse the AI’s emotions to get it

By Michelle Toh, CNN— ATLANTA — A new online shopping platform linked to one of China’s top retailers has quickly become the most downloaded app in the United States, surpassing Amazon and Walmart. Now it’s looking to capitalize from an appearance on America’s biggest stage. Temu is a Boston-based online retailer that shares the same […]

by arabnews.com – Antoine Azoury — BEIRUT: Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah, inflicts pain on Lebanon and its society when he associates himself with Iran’s regional strategy, says a prominent Christian bloc leader. Samir Geagea, leader of the Christian Lebanese Forces party, told Arab News that Nasrallah “is the voice of Iran. His words have no national scope.” He said Lebanon was not currently suffering from a Christian or a sectarian-related problem, but rather from an intense national issue affecting all Lebanese people. “Nonetheless, multiparty (politics) reflects a positive aspect,” he added. Geagea leads one of the two major Christian blocs in the Lebanese parliament, and his party is spearheading the opposition against Hezbollah. Gebran Bassil leads the other bloc — the Free Patriotic Movement.

Geagea said unity at a political level “cannot be achieved in the presence of two parties, the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement, which are not on the same page regarding the simplest issues, whether strategic matters, propositions, or even the political project and its related practices.” He added: “Nevertheless, we are on the same page with other parties, such as the Kataeb Party and the National Liberal Party. “The situation is not easy today, but we always have to be optimistic. The harder it is, the more we have to continue our struggle.” The Lebanese Forces party is considered Saudi Arabia’s main ally in Lebanon, and Geagea believes the relationship has deep roots. He said: “After 2005, the March 14 Movement emerged, which included the Lebanese Forces. “This movement had privileged relations with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, enabling the Lebanese Forces to establish relations with Saudi leaders based on the convergence of interests and a shared vision for Lebanon, without forgetting the historical emotional ties between the two peoples. “However, how can they help our country now, at a time when it is plagued by a corrupt political class, where some of its members are fiercely attacking the Gulf?”

by harpersbazaararabia.com — Laura Kell — – The 26-year-old Beirut native shared a sweet Instagram photo with her new fiancé in Paris, who popped the question in Paris Wedding bells will soon be ringing for Maritta. The Lebanese singer has revealed she’s now engaged to Anghami Head of Production Kamil Abi Khalil. Yesterday evening the […]

By Sharon Goldman @sharongoldman — venturebeat — In a surprise moment during today’s Supreme Court hearing about a Google case that could impact online free speech, justice Neil M. Gorsuch touched upon potential liability for generative AI output, according to Will Oremus at the Washington Post. In the Gonzalez v. Google case in front of the Court, the family of an American killed in a 2015 ISIS terrorist attack in Paris argued that Google and its subsidiary YouTube did not do enough to remove or stop promoting ISIS terrorist videos seeking to recruit members. According to attorneys representing the family, this violated the Anti-Terrorism Act. In lower court rulings, Google won with the argument that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields it from liability for what its users post on its platform.

Is generative AI protected by Section 230?

According to the Washington Post’s live coverage, search engines historically “have responded to users’ queries with links to third-party websites, making for a relatively clear-cut defense under Section 230 that they should not be held liable for the content of those sites. But as search engines begin answering some questions from users directly, using their own artificial intelligence software, it’s an open question whether they could be sued as the publisher or speaker of what their chatbots say.” In the course of Tuesday’s questioning, Gorsuch used generative AI as a hypothetical example of when a tech platform would not be protected by Section 230. “Artificial intelligence generates poetry,” he said. “It generates polemics today that would be content that goes beyond picking, choosing, analyzing or digesting content. And that is not protected. Let’s assume that’s right. Then the question becomes, what do we do about recommendations?”

Legal battles have been brewing for months

 Hrajel (Lebanon) (AFP) – By AFP —  High in Lebanon’s rugged mountains, hatmaker Youssef Akiki is among the last artisans practising the thousand-year-old skill of making traditional warm woolen caps once widely worn against the icy winter chill. Akiki believes he may be the last commercial maker of the sheep wool “labbadeh” — a named derived from the Arabic for felt, or “labd” — a waterproof and warm cap coloured off-white, grey, brown or black. “The elders of the village make their own labbadehs”, said Akiki, who also dresses in the traditional style of baggy trousers.

Akiki, 60, from the snow-covered village of Hrajel, perched more than 1,200 meters (4,000 feet) up in the hills back from Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast, said making the hat requires a careful process. Akiki is among the last practising the thousand-year-old skill After drying sheep’s wool in the sun, he moulds it with water and Aleppo soap — which includes olive oil and laurel leaf extracts — to turn it into felt with his hands. “It helps the wool shrink, so it becomes malleable like dough”, he said, showing his hands, rough with years of work. It is a slow process that allows him to fashion “three labbadehs in one day, at most”, he said. Though the hats are practical and warm, few people wear them today.

By Brad Kallet, Editor at LinkedIn News — There’s a new top dog in the online retail marketplace. Temu, which launched last September and sells everything from apparel to electronics, has already skyrocketed to the top of the app store charts in the U.S., according to CNN. The discount online superstore — owned by Chinese […]