March 25 2024
Oil’s sunset?
1 Moscow terror attack kills 137
2 Big Oil pushes back on timing of energy transition
3 Govt averts shutdown
4 NCAA tournament TV audience biggest in ten years
5 Big Tech competes for talent and future of AI economy
3/25/1970 The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight.
Sports
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1 Moscow terror attack kills 137
Russian authorities said they had detained 11 people in connection with a terrorist attack on a concert hall in a Moscow suburb, as the death toll from Friday night’s violence rose to 137, according to investigators. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to punish those responsible for what he called “a premeditated mass killing of unarmed people.” Among those taken into custody were four people who prosecutors said played a direct role in the attack, in which gunmen shot audience members at close range and set off smoke bombs. Islamist extremist group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assault, saying it had struck “a strong blow” in its campaign against “countries fighting Islam.” U.S. officials—who said they warned Russia earlier this month of intelligence indicating an impending terrorist threat—said they believe a branch of Islamic State based in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K, was behind the attack.
On Saturday, Putin sought to connect the perpetrators of the concert-hall attack to Kyiv, saying some had been apprehended while attempting to escape to Ukraine. He offered no evidence to back his assertions. “According to preliminary information, an opening had been prepared for them from the Ukrainian side,” he said. Ukraine has denied any involvement in the attack.
WSJ
2 Big Oil pushes back on timing of energy transition
Liam Mallon, head of ExxonMobil’s upstream business, said that the “brutal reality” was that the world was “not yet at a point where the big customers are willing to pay for the cost of this new energy and the consumers probably don’t really know the cost of it”. “Until such time as there is a market-based economy and everyone understands the cost of it, consumers are paying more than they need to be paying for energy — simple, it’s not that complicated,” he said. “You can argue green all day and NGOs all day, but those are the facts. I think that message is beginning to resonate.” Industry heavyweight Shell last week weakened its target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. BP, which dialled back its own climate targets last year, touted the potential to grow its oil and gas operations in the US’s Permian Basin at the conference. US oil and gas production have smashed fresh records in recent months and the country now pumps more than any other nation in history. Meanwhile, surging prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have propelled producers across the world to report record profits in the past two years “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and, instead, invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions,” Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, told delegates to the conference this week.
oil and gas executives pointed to the need for dependable electricity to feed the soaring power demand sparked by the proliferation of data centres needed for AI. The International Energy Agency anticipates global power consumption from data centres could surpass 1,000 terawatt hours by 2026, more than double 2022 levels and an increase equivalent to Germany’s total power use in the space of four years.
FT
3 Govt averts shutdown
The Senate overwhelmingly gave final approval early Saturday to a $1.2 trillion spending bill to fund more than half of the government, effectively averting a shutdown by sending the legislation to President Biden’s desk just hours after a midnight deadline. The 74-to-24 vote, which concluded about 2 a.m., capped an extraordinary day on Capitol Hill that began with a big bipartisan vote to speed the measure through the House, which set off a conservative revolt and prompted one Republican to threaten a bid to oust Speaker Mike Johnson from his post. The Senate action came more than 12 hours after the House vote, after intense haggling to arrange a series of politically charged votes on proposed changes to the legislation that Republicans had demanded that threatened to push the government into a brief partial shutdown into the weekend. The White House said in a statement minutes after the midnight deadline that federal officials had “ceased shutdown preparations” in anticipation of Mr. Biden signing the legislation later Saturday. But the delay underscored the difficulties that have plagued spending negotiations from the beginning and was a fitting coda to an excruciating set of talks that are on track to finally fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, six months behind schedule.
NYT
4 NCAA tournament TV audience biggest in ten years
The first full day of this year's March Madness tournament has been declared as the most watched in 10 years, compared to other years, as 8.5million viewers tuned into all 16 games. That's according to CBS and TNT Sports, as both networks shared in a statement on Saturday that Thursday's coverage, which was provided by the two aforementioned TV channels, as well as TBS and truTV, 'is the Most-Watched First Round Opening Day since 2015.
Daily Mail
5 Big Tech competes for talent and future of AI economy
Microsoft’s latest hiring spree, following its $13bn investment in OpenAI and its more recent partnership with France’s Mistral, highlights the company’s intent to ally with ambitious AI start-ups and command the market. It had also been an early backer of Inflection. The company’s hyperactivity, laced with a lot of investor hype about AI, has helped Microsoft re-emerge as the world’s most valuable public company with a market value of $3.1tn, more than all the companies listed on London’s FTSE 100 index put together. Once again, Microsoft has left its arch-rival Google spitting dust. Microsoft’s move illustrates the scramble for the best researchers among the world’s biggest tech companies as they stake their claims in the future AI economy. Even relatively junior engineers at the leading research companies that are developing AI foundation models, including OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic, can command seven-figure salaries and are bombarded with job offers whenever they log on to LinkedIn. More senior engineers can earn up to $10mn.
But it is also a further sign that the emerging AI economy will probably be dominated by the US tech giants with the money, human capital and cloud computing infrastructure needed to train state of the art foundation models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini.
FT
3/25/1970 The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight.
Sports
2024 March Madness features older players
Not so long ago, the NCAA tournament was the ultimate coming out party for freshmen bound for the NBA. In 2024, it’s more like one of those parties where they give you a gold watch. Because this year, the Big Dance belongs to the old guys. Nearly every one of the teams advancing to the Sweet 16 has an old-timer or two holding things together. Some of this is down to the pandemic, when the NCAA granted athletes a bonus year of eligibility. Some of it owes to the changing financial dynamics in college basketball, where players can make some cash without having to forego their collegiate careers. Whatever the reason, making a long run in the tournament now requires players who are a bit long in the tooth.
In all, a whopping 296 players in their fourth, fifth or sixth seasons have logged March Madness minutes this year. That number is the highest since at least 2008, the earliest year Stats Perform has such data. If college basketball once ran on high-school recruiting—land a pro prospect and try to win before he leaves campus—it now features something more like the pro sports model, with players staying as long as they can land name, image and likeness money. There’s even a measure of free agency, with players granted immediate eligibility if they change schools—as Gohlke, a former Division II standout, did when he joined Oakland last offseason.
WSJ
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I love following this channel, but any chance you could move the hyperlinks to the end of your posts? I mostly listen to these and hearing the narrator read all of the random URL strings can be brutal sometimes