Silicon Valley’s move-fast-and-break-things mindset now extends to leases.
Big Tech companies — some of the more reliable office building tenants— are reversing course by letting leases expire or subleasing space across major cities, leaving commercial landlords with empty square footage and growing losses, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Downsizing
Everybody remembers the ghost towns that bustling cities like New York and San Francisco turned into after COVID-19 left streets, shops, restaurants, and office buildings empty for months on end. For companies that could make the transition, especially tech firms, employees easily switched to remote work. The hope was that those workers would eventually return to the office and downtowns would thrive.
And while that happened to a degree — New York City’s return-to-office rate is at 80% of pre-pandemic levels thanks to its banking and finance sectors, Bloomberg reported — Big Tech is headed in the opposite direction. Amazon, Meta, Google, and more are seeing less need for office real estate as they hold on to remote work practices and decreased headcounts:
- In the fourth quarter of last year, US tech companies were leasing roughly 7.4 million square feet of office space, the WSJ reported. That’s nearly double what the sector held a year earlier, but it’s still a dropoff from the 10.5 million square feet rented in 2021. That empty space is causing headaches for commercial real estate owners. As of December, offices accounted for 41% of the value of distressed commercial properties in the US, which stood at roughly $86 billion, MSCI reported.
- Salesforce occupied 900 million square feet of office in San Francisco as of January, not even half of what it owned or leased a year earlier. Amazon paused construction on a new headquarters in Virginia after a massive round of layoffs. CoStar reported that once Meta’s lease at a building on Manhattan’s Broadway ends in June, it plans to give up 275,000 square feet of space.
Tag: Big Tech
Google interferes to help Democrats thousands of times every election season! — Elon Musk
Classic Reddit mind-controlled
I actually like Reddit for specialized subs with narrow non-political subject matter. For politics, covid, climate science and the like it is a disaster. ABN
Google is quietly building an omnipresent AI that will be linked to all your devices and apps – and ‘knows everything about your life’
Confidential documents presented at a recent internal Google summit detail the tech giant’s plan to create an artificial intelligence (AI) designed to become its users’ ‘Life Story Teller.’
But to do it, the AI will require unprecedented access to each user’s personal data.
It’s unclear where this experimental AI, currently dubbed ‘Project Ellmann,’ will reside among Google’s apps and services, but the team behind it works for Google Photos — and their presentation suggested a tailored AI chatbot.
‘We can’t answer tough questions or tell good stories without a bird’s-eye view of your life,’ read one portion of the presentation, made by a Google product manager.
Next iteration mind-control. This will flatter, spy on, mold, control, and roll users. With luck, it will be ridiculous. ABN
‘Why is Disney boycotting X?’ — Elon Musk
Walmart Joins List of Companies that Withdraws Advertising from Twitter – Looming Collapse of Platform Evident
At dinner last night, I was questioned about Twitter and the recent remarks of Elon Musk. My opinion is somewhat out of variance with the mainstream considerations.
I believe the demise of Twitter was essentially determined long ago. Musk stepped into a scenario that was tenuous at best, and the government control of the platform was always the fulcrum issue. Musk’s prior intent with the platform may be up for debate; however, against his recent remarks, I would argue Musk is presenting the potential collapse of the platform as a martyr scenario.
Musk said recently the platform may collapse without advertisers, but he will not acquiesce to corporate blackmail. Sounds great, but keep in mind that Musk has known about the fulfillment of the DOJ search warrant for user data since January of this year; we only recently discovered it. Put that background reality into the overlay of your opinion, given the year of comments about users shared by Musk, and the known lack of platform privacy.
Musk knew as an outcome of the platform fulfillment of the court order, the release of all user metadata who supported, followed, liked, or shared the tweets of Donald Trump, that the government created the “his kind” list earlier this year. Yet, he never discussed the issue of compromised privacy throughout his commentary; he did exactly the opposite while assuring people the platform would protect users. [Ex. How did the encrypted DM promise work out?]
Now Musk positions himself as the martyr, the victim of leftist targeting…. and his hired CEO Linda Yaccarino is doing the same thing [SEE HERE]. What better way to guide the platform into a controlled collapse than to be a martyred hero as the Twitter platform potentially disappears. Just think about it.
The Xweet that fractured the Interwebs
The deep underlying sentiment seems to be: We’ll stop telling the truth about you when you stop lying about us. I doubt this is white backlash. Maybe it’s whiplash due to the stunning speed and savagery of the Gaza reprisals, if you can even call them reprisals. Disproportionate vengeance is instinctively repulsive. When you add mordantly laughable Israeli propaganda and the MIHOP causa belli, astonishment is inevitable. The scales must be set right one day and maybe this is the day. ABN
British Parliament Demands Rumble Video Platform Remove or Demonetize Russell Brand – Rumble Says NO!
This is quite a remarkable development. The Sunday Times, a Rupert Murdoch publication in the U.K, published a hit piece against Russell Brand accusing him of rape and sexual assault 20-years ago. It did not take long before the accusations triggered the cancel culture and YouTube demonetized the actor and pundit. Russell Brand has vehemently denied the allegations.
However, in a remarkable escalation the U.K Parliament is now targeting Russell Brand. The British government has sent a letter to U.S. video platform provider Rumble demanding they take action against Brand. Not only is the British government targeting an individual and demanding action over an unproven allegation, but they are also sending a letter to the U.S. company demanding acquiescence to their censorship demand.
Rumble has previously stood strong against the demands of the French government, and once again stands at the forefront of freedom in responding to the UK demand.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski responded to the U.K govt and shared his response on Twitter. “We emphatically reject the UK Parliament’s demands.”
Continue reading “British Parliament Demands Rumble Video Platform Remove or Demonetize Russell Brand – Rumble Says NO!”DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Appoints Primary Trump-Russia Conspiracy Agents as “Expert Group” to Identify Domestic Terrorism and Disinformation
If you put the individual names within this group in the search bar, you will discover their connection. Most of them were the primary background operatives who pushed the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy in ’16, ’17, ’18 and ’19.
With names like James Clapper (DNI), John Brennan (CIA), Tashina Gauhar (DOJ-NSD), David Kris (DOJ-NSD, FISA), Paul Kolbe (CIA) and Benjamin Wittes (Lawfare), what you will find is that this specific group are functionaries of the corrupt intelligence apparatus that framed the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense. This is the team now that will define for DHS how to focus their future targeting efforts.
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) Ken Wainstein, and Counterterrorism Coordinator Nicholas Rasmussen announced the establishment of the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group (Experts Group). The group is comprised of private sector experts who will provide their unique perspectives on the federal government’s intelligence enterprise to DHS’s I&A and the Office of the Counterterrorism Coordinator.
“The security of the American people depends on our capacity to collect, generate, and disseminate actionable intelligence to our federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, campus, and private sector partners,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “I express my deep gratitude to these distinguished individuals for dedicating their exceptional expertise, experience, and vision to our critical mission.”
“The Homeland Intelligence Experts Group is being formed at a time of unprecedented challenge, with the U.S. intelligence enterprise facing threats from a range of malign actors, to include foreign nation-state adversaries, domestic violent extremists, cyber criminals, drug-trafficking cartels and other transnational criminal organizations,” said Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Ken Wainstein. “The Experts Group will be an invaluable asset as we navigate through this evolving threat and operating environment and continue to strengthen our efforts to protect the Homeland.”
Continue reading “DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Appoints Primary Trump-Russia Conspiracy Agents as “Expert Group” to Identify Domestic Terrorism and Disinformation”Dr Berg Gets Censored (Silenced)
Mind-control. ABN
UPDATE: This is one incident in a very big push to completely takeover and stifle the internet. And this effort will reach into the DNS. If you do a search on Google, you will find many results but they will all be slanted if the topic is political or contentious. Go through a few pages and you will see mainly the same slant and before long, nothing. So a great deal of censorship and disappearing sites and points of view has already happened. People that want to censor and control information never have good motives. These powerful moves to control all information and thought are totalitarian in the extreme. Even if they had good motives (they do not), the next group in total control will not. Information is power. If they seize this power, they will never give it back. We can only fight back by being aware and not complying whenever possible. It’s pathetic but our best group response is Bud Light. This is pathetic because our civilization(s) are not advancing human knowledge and goodness or health and happiness. We are going backward because a bunch of rich twits want it that way. ABN
The internet is the most revolutionary development of our age, and the fight to protect it from near total control by insidious actors like the ADL may turn out to be one of the most important fights of the century
It’s hard to overstate the importance of Elon Musk’s battle with the ADL.
The rollout of free social media was the most revolutionary development in information dissemination since the printing press.
When the regime realised just how revolutionary it was, they got to work spending years fighting for control through lobbying and financial manipulation. While much of this pressure is informal, through networks and backchannels, the ADL is the institutional, public face of this political racketeering network.
By 2020, their control of the major social media platforms was almost entirely secure. By forcing Facebook to change their terms of service according to his liking after a crushing advertiser boycott, Jonathan Greenblatt demonstrated that he had assumed the role of the final arbiter of speech on the internet.
Last year, it looked like there was little hope for a way out of this situation, until
@elonmusk
‘s surprise purchase of Twitter. The subsequent boycott headed by the ADL showed that even the richest man in the world can be scuppered by the malign influence of this group.
It seemed the only way to reverse the financial damage done by Greenblatt and his co-conspirators would be to gradually return control to the ADL, but now, riding a wave of popular support from X users, Elon has decided to draw a line in the sand and fight back.
The internet was the most revolutionary development of our age, and the fight to protect it from near total control by insidious actors like the ADL may turn out to be one of the most important fights of the century. Let’s all send Elon our prayers, and hope he can be the first to deal a fatal blow to the ADL. Godspeed Elon.
ADL censorship exposed
The basis of American civilization is free speech. No free speech = no American civilization. People who don’t want free speech or want to limit its natural reach (which amounts to the same thing) always have ulterior motives, bad motives, lust for power. Maybe a few are simply deluded, but the big money and big players behind limiting free speech always have anti-American motives. The ADL was founded on its defamation of Mary Phagan. Today, it defames all of us who want to live in an America that revels in free and open conversations, not censored by anyone. ABN
X income down due to ADL pressure on advertisers — Elon Musk
The ADL was founded on their defamation of Mary Phagan and today they defame all good people by forcing restrictions on speech and absurd interpretations of speech. As for speech on X or other platforms, why not have an array of filters that individual users can choose from, thus allowing users to decide for themselves what they want to see. If you don’t want to see conservative views, there will be a filter. If you want the ADL to decide what you can see, there will be a filer for that. ABN
US Special Operations Command Will Deploy Argus AI Program to Scour Social Media for Disinformation, Misinformation and Malinformation, National Security Authority to Protect U.S. Internet from “Pain Points”
Annnd… Here we go. If you have not read the background {Go Deep}, you will not have the appropriate context to absorb the latest revelation about how the Dept of Defense will now conduct online monitoring operations, using enhanced AI to protect the U.S. internet from “disinformation” under the auspices of national security.
Gee, who would have predicted that U.S. internet operations would suddenly have a totally new set of enhanced AI guardians at the gateways? 👀
Read Carefully – Eyes Wide Open:
The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has contracted New York-based Accrete AI to deploy software that detects “real time” disinformation threats on social media.
The company’s Argus anomaly detection AI software analyzes social media data, accurately capturing “emerging narratives” and generating intelligence reports for military forces to speedily neutralize disinformation threats.
“Synthetic media, including AI-generated viral narratives, deep fakes, and other harmful social media-based applications of AI, pose a serious threat to US national security and civil society,” Accrete founder and CEO Prashant Bhuyan said.
“Social media is widely recognized as an unregulated environment where adversaries routinely exploit reasoning vulnerabilities and manipulate behavior through the intentional spread of disinformation.
“USSOCOM is at the tip of the spear in recognizing the critical need to identify and analytically predict social media narratives at an embryonic stage before those narratives evolve and gain traction. Accrete is proud to support USSOCOM’s mission.”
But wait… It gets worse!
[PRIVATE SECTOR VERSION] – The company also revealed that it will launch an enterprise version of Argus Social for disinformation detection later this year.
The AI software will provide protection for “urgent customer pain points” against AI-generated synthetic media, such as viral disinformation and deep fakes.
Providing this protection requires AI that can automatically “learn” what is most important to an enterprise and predict the likely social media narratives that will emerge before they influence behavior. (read more)
Now, take a deep breath…. Let me explain.
The goal is the “PRIVATE SECTOR VERSION.” USSOCOM is the mechanical funding mechanism for deployment, because the system itself is too costly for a private sector launch. The Defense Dept budget is used to contract an Artificial Intelligence system, the Argus anomaly detection AI, to monitor social media under the auspices of national security.
Once the DoD funded system is created, the “Argus detection protocol” – the name given to the AI monitoring and control system, will then be made available to the public sector. “Enterprise Argus” is then the commercial product, created by the DoD, which allows the U.S. based tech sectors to deploy.
The DoD cannot independently contract for the launch of an operation against a U.S. internet network, because of constitutional limits via The Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. However, the DoD can fund the creation of the system under the auspices of national defense, and then allow the private sector to launch for the same intents and purposes.
This is next-level mind-control. It also shows how they think and what they already have been doing without Argus. ABN
Sam Altman fears Meta taking huge risks with open source AI
Meta wants to open-source a GPT-5-level model and seems dead-set on open-sourcing right up until AGI. I want to be clear about what this means:
There is no kill-switch. If something goes wrong–an agent gets out of control or a bad actor weaponizes it–there’s no easy way to turn it off. It could be running on any small cluster. There will be no security.
Safety research becomes meaningless. All the work people have done into making AI systems honest, aligned, ethical, etc becomes (mostly) moot. The population of AI’s out in the world will evolve towards whichever systems produce the most economic output, irrespective of what values or motives they have. There will be no guardrails. Anyone can change their AI’s values or capabilities as they want, for good or bad.
If Meta continues to open-source as we get much smarter AI, it’s pretty clear to me that things will become a shitshow. The arrival of these alien intelligences in the world is already going to be chaotic, but much much moreso if we just fling off what little levers of human control we have.
As far as I can tell, Meta’s wish to open-source stems mostly from some software industry dogma that “open-source good”.
American Buddhist Net 