Author: Bruce Hawsking

Super Bowl 2025 odds: 49ers are early favorites; Chiefs, Ravens and Bills among top teams
13Feb Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Sports

Super Bowl 2025 odds: 49ers are early favorites; Chiefs, Ravens and Bills among top teams

The Chiefs beat the 49ers in overtime to win Super Bowl LVIII. Is it too early to start looking ahead to Super Bowl LVIX held in New Orleans? Never. The San Francisco 49ers are Super Bowl favorites at +500 on BetMGM, despite losing to the Kansas City Chiefs (+700 to repeat) in Super Bowl 58. The Baltimore Ravens (+850), Buffalo Bills (+1200) and Detroit Lions (+1200) have the next-best odds.Of course, the Chiefs are still one of the favorites to win the AFC. It’s assumed that general manager Brett Veach will do everything in his power to find help for Patrick Mahomes after the offense’s struggles for most of the regular season.Along with the Chiefs, the Ravens, Bills and Bengals are the favorites from the AFC. The Jets have worse odds now (+3000) than they did at this time last season (+25...
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OpenAI Gives ChatGPT a Better ‘Memory’
13Feb Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Technology

OpenAI Gives ChatGPT a Better ‘Memory’

OpenAI is giving ChatGPT a better memory.The San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up said on Tuesday that it was releasing a new version of its chatbot that would remember what users said so it could use that information in future chats.If a user mentions a daughter, Lina, who is about to turn 5, likes the color pink and enjoys jellyfish, for example, ChatGPT can store this information and retrieve it as needed. When the same user asks the bot to “create a birthday card for my daughter,” it might generate a card with pink jellyfish that reads, “Happy 5th Birthday, Lina!”With this new technology, OpenAI continues to transform ChatGPT into an automated digital assistant that can compete with existing services like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. Last year, the company allowed users to...
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Stock Markets Sink After Hotter-Than-Expected Inflation Report
13Feb Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Business

Stock Markets Sink After Hotter-Than-Expected Inflation Report

Stocks tumbled on Tuesday after a hotter-than-expected inflation report pushed investors to rethink bets on how soon the Federal Reserve will take the brakes off the economy and cut interest rates.The benchmark S&P 500 stock index fell 1.4 percent. The index has suffered only one other loss greater than 1 percent this year, with bullishness about the resilience of the economy and corporate profits continually pushing stocks to new highs.Investors still expect the Fed to pull inflation back to manageable levels without inflicting too much pain on the broader economy. But that forecast was put under pressure on Tuesday by a consumer inflation report that showed prices had been rising more quickly than what had been forecast.The consumer data “came in stronger than either the Fed or the m...
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Israel-Hamas Live Updates: C.I.A. Chief Helps Push for Gaza Cease-Fire in Cairo
13Feb Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
World

Israel-Hamas Live Updates: C.I.A. Chief Helps Push for Gaza Cease-Fire in Cairo

A buzz saw of Republican opposition in the House is threatening to kill the $95 billion aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate overwhelmingly passed early Tuesday, leaving proponents of the emergency aid legislation scrounging for unorthodox ways to push the bill over the finish line.Hours before the Senate approved the bill in a lopsided 70-to-29 vote, Speaker Mike Johnson suggested he would not allow the aid package to receive a vote on the House floor. The measure would provide an additional $60.1 billion for Kyiv — which would bring the total U.S. investment in the war effort to more than $170 billion — as well as $14.1 billion for Israel’s war against Hamas and almost $10 billion for humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Palestinians in Gaza.“House Re...
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Will the Super Bowl Affect Fans’ Political Views? Bet on It.
12Feb Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Health

Will the Super Bowl Affect Fans’ Political Views? Bet on It.

Damian R. Murray, a psychologist at Tulane University, studies how various social circumstances and life events affect people’s political views. For instance, he found recently, becoming a parent makes a person grow more socially conservative. On the eve of the Super Bowl, he sat down for an interview with The New York Times to discuss another recent study, which examined how the political perspectives of sports fans can be altered by their teams’ wins and losses.This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.What inspired this work?These games are so emotionally potent, and people are so emotionally invested. The question is: What might be the downstream, real-world implications for things that have nothing to do with the sporting event itself? Are there consequences for poli...
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Caitlin Clark’s green-light range made her the gold standard in women’s college basketball
12Feb Avatar photoBy Bruce HawskingNo Comments
Sports

Caitlin Clark’s green-light range made her the gold standard in women’s college basketball

IOWA CITY, Iowa — It’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when it was determined in Iowa that any shot that left Caitlin Clark’s hands was not just a reasonable shot, but also a good shot. Because there are green lights, and then there are green lights. And Clark has matter-of-factly operated in the latter for much of her career.But there’s a solid argument to be made that it was Feb. 6, 2022.It was Clark’s sophomore season, and while she had been putting up big numbers, she wasn’t yet considered the one-woman wrecking crew that she has now become. To get to that level of lore, a player needs to not just throw the rocks but slay Goliath. And at that point, though she was a massive scorer, she was on a team that hadn’t yet taken down the best opponents. The Hawkeyes were 1-9 against to...
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