Wavegate Corporation Logo LAKE CHARLES, La. , Dec. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Wavegate Corporation, a pioneering developer of neuromodulation technology for chronic pain management, has secured a lead investor in their $26 million Series A funding round led by UCEA Capital Partners Ltd., a London -based investment firm. This financing will accelerate the development of Wavegate's proprietary Ellipse TM platform, featuring StimuLux TM technology, designed to provide breakthrough therapeutic solutions for chronic pain patients.
NoneJake Paul Jokes He's Fighting 392-Year-Old Shark After Mike Tyson WinIn exchange for helping Donald Trump get re-elected by spending $130mn on Trump’s and down-ballot Republicans’ campaigns, and turning X (formerly Twitter) into his messaging machine, Elon Musk earned himself the opportunity to co-lead (along with Vivek Ramaswamy, another major donor) a new “Department of Government Efficiency”. Named after a joke cryptocurrency, DOGE will not be an official agency. But though its role will be purely advisory, Trump has promised to enact its recommendations to slash excess regulations, restructure federal agencies, and cut wasteful expenditures, all with an eye on efficiency. Federal law requires that any government advisory committee provide public notice of its meetings (including agenda, time, place, and purpose) and access to any reports, transcripts, minutes, papers, agendas, or other documents relating to its work. But DOGE may well violate these requirements on the grounds that they unconstitutionally infringe on presidential power. As with his other appointments, Trump will not bother vetting Musk and Ramaswamy thoroughly, nor will he require them to divest their corporate holdings or recuse themselves from offering recommendations on issues raising an obvious conflict of interest (such as with Nasa’s extensive purchases of services from Musk’s SpaceX). To the extent that DOGE eviscerates regulations, it promises to be a powerful vehicle for “crony capitalism.” Its recommendations will have little to do with improving government efficiency or cutting costs, and everything to do with killing regulations and agencies that powerful donors and business lobbyists want dead. Fortunately, DOGE will fail, because it is focusing on the wrong targets, with the wrong approach, and the wrong leadership. Musk initially promised to cut federal government spending by $2tn, which is nearly one-third of all projected spending for 2025. Having quickly realised how absurd that target was, he has since reduced it by 75%, to $500bn. Defence, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), and interest payments on US government debt together account for 74% of total federal spending. Moreover, defence spending will likely increase under Trump, spending on interest payments is essential to avoid default on the federal government’s debt, and spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare is legally required and overwhelmingly supported by the voters who helped re-elect Trump. The remaining 26% of federal spending covers all other functions of the federal government – from defence discretionary programmes like veterans’ health (12%) to essential non-defence programmes (14%) such as the federal highway system, air traffic control, and the judicial system. While all funds for discretionary programmes must be authorised by Congress, the new $500bn target would encompass both programmes whose congressional authorisation runs out in 2024 and those that Musk considers to be incompatible with original Congressional intentions. But veterans’ health care is the largest single function ($119bn) for which congressional authorisation ends in 2024, and despite Trump’s contempt for the military, it is difficult to imagine DOGE going after veterans’ healthcare. Instead, DOGE has already indicated that it will cut funding for Planned Parenthood and other progressive groups ($300mn per year), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($535mn a year), and various international organisations ($1.5bn a year). It may also go after bigger discretionary items like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ($6.6bn), which is responsible for the nation’s weather forecasts; the Federal Aviation Administration ($7bn), which regulates civil aviation safety; many agencies within the State Department ($38bn); and the Education Department ($29bn). But Nasa ($25.4bn), for obvious reasons, will be spared. The problem with this defunding agenda is that it still comes nowhere close to $500bn. If DOGE wanted to try to contribute something positive, it would abandon this target and focus instead on improving the efficiency of the agencies responsible for government programmes, and on eliminating regulations that do not pass a rigorous cost/benefit test. But this has been tried many times before, and usually without much success. President Ronald Reagan’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, known as the Grace Commission, for example, claimed that one-third of all income-tax revenues were consumed by waste and inefficiency – a wild overstatement. Very few of the commission’s 2,500 recommendations were implemented, and the combination of Reagan’s tax cuts and a growing federal government launched the national debt on its long upward trajectory. Similar efforts dating back to president Harry Truman’s Hoover Commission have also been judged “abject failures.” Most flounder because of a fundamental flaw in their design. Led by business leaders who don’t understand how government works, such bodies tend to produce laundry lists of unvetted ideas but have no capacity to carry them out. Implementation remains the responsibility of the relevant agencies and Congress, which legislates and funds federal programmes. Vice-president Al Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government in the early 1990s avoided this design flaw. Housed within the Clinton administration, it was overseen by a cadre of government reformers who succeeded in passing actual legislation: the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, which aimed to embed performance metrics in the federal government’s standard operating procedures. Musk and Ramaswamy, by contrast, are merely the latest in a long line of private-sector poster children whose business-management approaches to government operations will fail. Fewer than one-quarter of all government reform programmes succeed, and those that do have two distinguishing characteristics in common: public-sector employees design the reforms and then use digital tools to measure and improve performance. Unfortunately, Congress does not provide enough funding for agencies to get the tools they need. That is why the Internal Revenue Service has been unable to collect an estimated $1tn of annual revenues from tax evaders and cheaters. Through no fault of their own, most federal government agencies remain far behind the private sector in the digitisation of their services. Moving fast and breaking things does not work in government (or in most large private-sector organisations, for that matter). If Musk and Ramaswamy want to achieve meaningful, lasting improvements in government efficiency, they will have to collaborate with civil servants to change the ways their work gets done. Success depends on the unsexy, hard-to-implement changes in operational processes that can be embedded in government departments. Outcome-based procurement, modern talent management (including government rotation programmes for private-sector leaders), agile information-technology management, data and performance transparency, modern digital tools, and citizen engagement are crucial if we want to improve government performance. DOGE will produce entertaining memes and photo ops for Musk and X, but it will have little tangible, lasting impact on the size and efficiency of the federal government. — Project Syndicate • Laura Tyson, a former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Board of Advisers at Angeleno Group. • Lenny Mendonca, Senior Partner Emeritus at McKinsey & Company, is a former chief economic and business adviser to Governor Gavin Newsom of California and chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. 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Recent comments from Elon Musk have suggested that xAI will soon be releasing a dedicated app for its large language model (LLM), Grok, which is currently deployed on social media platform X. A standalone app could help Grok reach more users beyond X. Elon Musk’s xAI may be a newcomer to the artificial intelligence segment, but its influence has grown significantly in the previous months. A huge part of xAI’s growing prominence is due to Grok, since the large language model has real-time access to data on X posts . Grok, however, is fully tied to X’s ecosystem for now. These concerns were recently voiced on X, with Grok users noting that a standalone app would be beneficial for the large language model’s user experience. As noted by user @battleangelviv , Grok’s current setup still has room for improvement since some users who wish to use the large language model may easily get distracted by their X feed. Coming soon Elon Musk responded with a quick “Coming soon,” suggesting that xAI is working on a standalone Grok app. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s comment was received positively by X users, several of whom noted that Grok could potentially even work as a capable search engine alternative once it is shipped as a standalone service. Today, Grok simply feels like an extra feature that is bundled with an X Premium subscription. While this is true, it does temper down the significance of Grok to users. Packaging the large language model as a standalone solution that rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude AI, and Google’s Gemini could potentially make Grok a more mainstream LLM option. Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
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The AP Top 25 college football poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here . COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A fight broke out at midfield after Michigan stunned No. 2 Ohio State 13-10 on Saturday when Wolverines players attempted to plant their flag on the OSU logo and were confronted by the Buckeyes . Police used pepper spray to break up the players, who threw punches and shoves in the melee that overshadowed the rivalry game. One officer suffered unspecified injuries and was taken to a hospital, a police union official said. After the Ohio State players confronted their rivals at midfield, defensive end Jack Sawyer grabbed the top of the Wolverines’ flag and ripped it off the pole as the brawl moved toward the Michigan bench. Eventually, officers rushed in to try to break up the fracas. Ohio State coach Ryan Day said he understood his players’ actions. “There are some prideful guys on our team who weren’t going to sit back and let that happen,” Day said. The two Ohio State players made available after the game brushed off questions about it. Michigan running back Kalel Mullings, who rushed for 116 yards and a touchdown, said he didn’t like how the Buckeyes players involved themselves in the Wolverines’ postgame celebration, calling it “classless.” RELATED COVERAGE Wisner has career day as No. 3 Texas advances to SEC title game with 17-7 win over No. 20 Texas A&M No. 17 Iowa St beats Wildcats 29-21 for first 10-win season, moves to cusp of Big 12 title game Williams accounts for 3 TDs, No. 21 UNLV beats Nevada 38-14 to make Mountain West title game “For such a great game, you hate to see stuff like that after the game,” he told Fox Sports in an on-field interview. “It’s just bad for the sport, bad for college football. But at the end of the day, you know some people got to — they got to learn how to lose, man. ... We had 60 minutes, we had four quarters, to do all that fighting.” Ohio State police said in a statement that “multiple officers representing Ohio and Michigan deployed pepper spray.” University police said they will continue to investigate the brawl. Brian Steel, president of the police union representing officers in Franklin County, posted on social media that an officer was injured. “Officers are authorized to use pepper spray to stop assaults and protect themselves and others,” Steel added. Michigan players could be seen rubbing their eyes after exposure to the chemical irritant. Michigan coach Sherrone Moore said both teams could have handled the situation differently. “So much emotions on both sides,” he said. “Rivalry games get heated, especially this one. It’s the biggest one in the country, so we got to handle that better.” ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football