Author: Aron Solomon

First appeared in Western Journal By Aron Solomon The pace of change with artificial intelligence is truly remarkable but pales in comparison with how quickly we jump on and off new AI bandwagons, as this week has highlighted. Much of last week’s technology news was driven by the release of magical Meta-developed code that was great and cheap and would help AI researchers and developers for a long time to come. Yet as The Register reported late Monday night, Stanford University researchers have taken down the web demo of Alpaca, a small AI language model based on Meta’s LLaMA system, citing safety and…

First appeared in BOXSCORE By Aron Solomon On Thursday at the Miami Open, a very important WTA and ATP 1000-level tournament event, Russia’s Anastasia Potapova defeated Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk 6-1, 6-3, in a match that never should have been played. If you were waiting for the traditional handshake at the net today, you’re still waiting. By her words and actions, Marta Kostyuk has been one of the heroes of the Ukrainian athletic scene; conversely, Anastasia Potapova has been a self-styled lightning rod for controversy. This barely touches the surface of this important story – one that highlights the WTA’s ongoing failure…

First appeared in NewsBreak By Aron Solomon Social media has become an integral part of our daily lives, providing us with a constant source of information, entertainment, and connection. However, the use of social media has been known to be addictive, with many people struggling to control their usage. This issue is hitting another peak in our news clucks this week with what Axios described as a “slew of lawsuits” being filed by school districts across the country against social media companies, “alleging that the tech giants are contributing to a youth mental health crisis.” The root cause of that crisis…

By Joseph Coffman I recall tossing the football and meandering on the leaf-strewn field as the other boys flew ahead and formed around the receiver, tripping and falling in the leaves before finally rolling with the ball into the largest pile and laughing for a minute at the fall, not caring if we got closer to a touchdown or turnover. Blocking was minimal due to the leaves and the most you got was a twisted ankle or jammed finger. That sensibility moved to larger fields in parks or grass playgrounds as we got older and in high school without gear…

First appeared in Florida Daily By Aron Solomon Just hours before a vote to subpoena him, Howard Schultz agreed last week to testify about Starbucks’ alleged violations of labor laws before Congress on March 29th. As I have written about at length in Fortune, Schultz’s apparent war against unions has put the future of Starbucks in jeopardy and destroyed decades of goodwill between Starbucks and its labor force. Instead of Starbucks being the shining star it once self-identified as in how it treated employees, it is now a business school case study of exactly what not to do when your workers want to unionize. While…

First appeared in NewsBreak By Aron Solomon Cafes have the legal right to forbid the use of laptops in their establishment if they choose to do so. While many cafes welcome customers who want to use their laptops for work or leisure, some cafes may have policies in place that restrict the use of electronic devices like laptops. These policies may be based on the cafe’s size, layout, or type of clientele they cater to. It’s important to note that if a cafe has a policy against using laptops, they should make it clear to customers so that they can make…

First appeared in Boston Herald By Aron Solomon “Calories plus energy equals survival,” roars the refrain of a far-too-frequent FOX News satellite radio commercial.  If you’re like me and a big listener of satellite radio, you can’t help but come across ads for emergency food storage. One of the commercials I hear the most is from a company called mypatriotsupply.com The ads are interesting, as expected, and a little bizarre. They ask if we’ve ever noticed that some people never seem stressed about life? This, of course, leads to the fact that all of these people have emergency food supplies that…

First appeared in DC Journal By Aron Solomon Netflix is killing it. It’s really that simple. From the critically acclaimed car racing “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” to the new tennis “Break Point” to the pretty fantastic golf “Full Swing,” Netflix understands what their tens of millions of viewers want in a sports documentary, and they deliver. We have, in fact, collectively become obsessed with sports documentaries. Adam Birkhold, a New Jersey lawyer and fan of sports and the documentaries they help create, reasons: “If a sports documentary is an escape, these new Netflix sports docu-series are an extended escape. Best…

First appeared in Western Journal By Aron Solomon Is Elon Musk redefining how HR is done? That is, to be crystal-clear, tongue-in-cheek. HR professionals are ordering massive vats of popcorn to munch as they watch things like this corporate nightmare of a Twitter exchange from Monday evening: Believe it or not, it got much worse than this, with Musk opening Twitter up to a HIPAA violation by disclosing disability information about the employee, who later defended himself in a masterful thread that will surely lay the foundation for a civil lawsuit against Musk and Twitter. There is a reason why what Musk did…

First appeared in BOXSCORE By Aron Solomon This week in Montreal is an international Tennis Federation (ITF) men’s 25K ($25,000 total prize money) tournament (M25). At the same time, in other parts of the world, there are two other 25K tournaments and a couple of 15K tournaments. In the big leagues, Indian Wells, the unofficial 5th Grand Slam, kicks off on Wednesday. The winner of the men’s ATP Tour singles draw at Indian Wells will walk away with $1,262,220 (parenthetically this is one of the far too few tournaments that offer the same prize money for men and women). Here in…