Kabul: Afghanistan’s central bank Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) sold $14 million by auction on Sunday to stabilise the exchange rate of the national currency afghani, the bank said in a statement released here on Sunday.
The local currency afghani has been tumbling against foreign currencies, especially the US dollar, over the past couple of months. The exchange rate of 1 US dollar increased from last week’s 86 afghani to 87.15 afghani on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.
Afghanistan’s central bank has injected millions of US dollars into the country’s money-exchange market over the past month to prevent the fall of the afghani against foreign currencies.
Afghanistan has received more than 2 billion dollars in cash over the past 18 months as part of the international community’s humanitarian aid to prevent the economic collapse of the cash-strapped country.
Even more than just a newsy exercise in political economy, however, the conversation with Musk is a reminder of how “progress,” an ideal usually associated with the American left, is in reality a value-neutral concept that can be advanced by anyone — although it obviously helps if you’re the richest man in the world.
The mantle of “progressive conservatism” is usually associated with the European right, which developed a technocratic pro-safety-net politics in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Here in America, its historical tribune is still Teddy Roosevelt, whose populist views on trade and domestic policy paired with an almost religious belief in American expansion and dominance. Musk — who described to a stonily silent Carlson how he voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 and expressed his desire for “a normal person with common sense” as president, “whose values are smack in the middle of the country” — fits, if imperfectly, into that same lineage, combining a socially conservative politics, an eagerness to regulate industries he believes are dangerous and an unwavering belief in expansion at all costs.
Where Roosevelt’s private-sector bugbears were the industrial-age charnel houses of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Musk’s are much more ethereal: Namely, the alleged risk to civilization posed by the development of artificial intelligence.
Musk is not anti-AI — he just announced the founding of his own new company, X.AI, to produce competing products to OpenAI and Microsoft, which he views as too “woke” and developmentally reckless. He has, rather, a very specific existential fear. During the interview Musk described to Tucker the evolution of his now-defunct friendship with Larry Page, the Google co-founder, AI innovator and ardent transhumanist, saying that having “talked to him late to the night about AI safety” he’s concluded that Page was “not taking AI safety seriously enough,” and that he “seemed to … want some kind of digital superintelligence, basically a digital God.”
A brief pause to explain. Within the AI community, there is a fervent and ongoing debate about the hypothetical existence of an “artificial general intelligence,” or an AI agent so sophisticated that it surpasses human cognition. Many researchers think this is impossible. Many think that it’s possible, and desirable. Many think that it’s possible and will kill us all. What we do know for certain is that nothing like it currently exists, nor does any evidence that points to its possibility.
Musk is worried about it anyway. With a slew of his similarly-concerned fellow tech and business potentates, he signed an open letter last month calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI projects, and opened his interview with Carlson by calling for an entirely new regulatory agency to tackle AI risk. His view of AI as an existential threat, as speculative as it might be, leads him to the same conclusion of his fiercest critics on the left: That government should intervene to guide technological progress in a manner conducive to human values.
Where they differ, of course, is when it comes to what those values are. By now you are likely familiar with the broad outlines of the free-speech crusade that led Musk to purchase Twitter: Giving a black eye to the corporate censoriousness, doublespeak and policing of “misinformation” that once (allegedly) marked the platform. In Musk’s conservative vision of progress, unfettered AI development threatens humanity’s evolution and therefore must be regulated. But the lax approach to moderation on “nu-Twitter,” which some have said has given it a distinctly hostile character, is a necessary risk in creating the open-air marketplace of ideas necessary for humanity to thrive.
What does he mean by that? Well, there are the usual arguments about how unfettered free speech creates resilience, or makes society more democratic, or allows for the best ideas to naturally win out absent moderator interference. But those all have to do with … humans. And there’s another, way more out-there idea that Musk has about why censoring AI is a folly: That uncensored speech will make a hypothetical AGI safer, by virtue of “training” it on a data set that provides a more complete picture of humanity.
“This might be the best path to [AI] safety, in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe,” Musk explained. That’s why Musk advocates for a competitor to ChatGPT that would lack its speech restrictions and safety controls — the hypothetical “based AI” he proposed last month.
Like all questions about artificial general intelligence, or unicorns, or little green men, it’s impossible to answer whether an AI’s data set including every bit of racist invective @Groyper69420 has ever hurled at unsuspecting Twitter users will endear or depreciate humanity in its digital mind. But Musk’s belief that uncensored AI speech platforms will ultimately benefit humanity more than their currently-existing counterparts — aside from being consistent with his vision for the company he just purchased for $43 billion, and in which AI has its own role to play in the future — is aligned with his overall view of progress as a sort of survival of the fittest.
And on that biological-evolutionary note, at the very end of Musk’s conversation with Carlson the two discussed another pillar of his quest for humanity to reach the stars: How to reverse the world’s declining birth rates. “I’m sort of worried that civilization, you know, if we don’t make enough people to at least sustain our numbers or perhaps increase them a little bit, civilization is going to crumble,” Musk mused. “There’s the old question of, ‘Will civilization end with a bang or a whimper?’ Well, it’s currently coming to an end with a whimper in adult diapers, which is depressing as hell.”
Concern over falling birth rates has been one of the biggest policy issues for the nascent “pro-family” right — it’s a major project for American Compass, former Mitt Romney advisor Oren Cass’ heterodox conservative think tank, for example. Musk doesn’t have a policy prescription for this, aside from having as many babies of his own as possible. (One source told Insider that Musk explicitly expressed his preoccupation with “populating the world with his offspring,” one he shares with many, many centuries of ambitious oligarchs.)
But it’s maybe the most personal aspect of what adds up, over the course of the hour-long conversation, to a remarkably cohesive worldview. Humanity’s destiny is to transcend the surly bonds of Earth and colonize the stars, with the assistance of technology that works for us — and against censors, scolds and partisans like Mark Zuckerberg or the BBC, or hubristic rival technologists like Larry Page or OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
Musk is no reactionary, and progress is not the exclusive domain of the left. The man has a very distinct set of social and cultural beliefs that he seeks to propagate through his various technological and business endeavors. When the beliefs in question were, for example, the importance of clean energy, Musk was a hero to progressives. Now that it’s the social-media equivalent of a Hobbesian state of nature, or a pro-natalist attitude that many on the left view as retrograde or eugenicist, he’s a villain. But he continues to move in the same direction: Forward, toward a future that bearing his imprint will look like nothing what came before it.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Bollywood: Wife of superstar Shah Rukh Khan, Gauri Khan is one of the most popular designers in the country. From designing the homes of top Bollywood celebs to Asia’s popular businessmen, she has carved a niche for herself in the field of interior design. Gauri is selling a wide range of home and office decor products online also and her products might be one of the most expensive ones you will find online.
The company named ‘Gauri Khan Designs’ was founded by her in 2013 and it has become a one-stop destination for all the people who want to convert their houses into lavish homes. You can also get unique, attractive and antique products for office, cafe or shop decoration. The designer’s products are very expensive and she has been now trolled for selling expensive products online. Internet users have targeted her for selling a dustbin worth Rs. 15,340 and a shell table lamp whose cost is Rs. 1,59,300 among other products.
Yes, if you want to make your home look lavish and buy products designed by Gauri Khan, then it might be expensive. Gauri Khan’s luxe home decor products come with a high price tag and it has prompted some netizens to criticize the designer for offering ordinary items at exorbitant prices.
One of the users wrote, “15,000 ka dustbin? Can procure a far better design than this at the Army canteen at 1/30th of the price lol.”
Another user commented, “My mom looked at the shell lamp and said, ‘itne paisey mein toh hum Andaman jake shells laa ke khud hi chipka lein lamp mein’.”
The company also sells a gold-leafing wood penguin sculpture, whose price is Rs. 12,390. A user after seeing the price of the penguin sculpture wrote, ” WTF is this lmao. Majnu bhai ki painting isse better hain in the name of art.”
MOSCOW — Every year, during the anniversary of the battle that turned back the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, the city of Volgograd is briefly renamed Stalingrad, its Soviet-era name.
During this year’s commemoration, however, authorities went further. They unveiled a bust of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and paraded soldiers dressed as secret police in a bid to emphasize the parallels between Russia’s past and its present.
“It’s unbelievable but true: we are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who traveled to Volgograd to deliver a speech on February 2. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.”
Putin’s statement was full of factual inaccuracies: Russia is fighting not the West but Ukraine, because it invaded the country; the German Leopards being delivered to Kyiv date back only to the 1960s; there’s no plan for them to enter Russian territory.
But the Russian president’s evocation of former victories was telling — it was a distillation of his approach to justifying an invasion that hasn’t gone to plan. These days in Russia, if the present is hard to explain, appeal to the past.
“The language of history has replaced the language of politics,” said Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University at St. Petersburg. “It is used to explain what is happening in a simple way that Russians understand.”
Putin has long harkened back to World War II — known in the country as The Great Patriotic War, in which more than 20 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have died.
Invoking the fight against Adolf Hitler simultaneously taps into Russian trauma and frames the country as being on the right side of history. “It has been turned into a master narrative through which [Putin] communicates the basic ideas of what is good and bad; who is friend and who foe,” said Kurilla.
Putin’s announcement of his full-scale assault on Ukraine was no exception. On February 24, 2022, Russians awoke to a televised speech announcing the start of “a special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.
“The official narrative was: ‘there are fascists in Ukraine, and we want to help people there. We are fighting for the sake of a great cause,’” said Tamara Eidelman, an expert in Russian propaganda.
On the streets, however, Russians seemed confused.
Asked in the early days of the war what “denazification” meant by the Russian website 7×7, one man suggested: “Respect for people of different ethnicities, respect for different languages, equality before the law and freedom of the press.”
Russia’s laws punish those seen as discrediting the Russian Armed Forces or spreading fake news by using the word “war” | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
Another interviewee ventured a different definition: “Destroy everyone who is not for a normal, peaceful life.”
The term “special military operation” at least was somewhat clearer. It suggested a speedy, professional, targeted offensive.
“There is a certain mundaneness to it — ‘yes, this is going to be unpleasant, but we’ll take care of it quickly,’” said Eidelman, the propaganda expert.
А week after the invasion, Russia’s laws were amended to punish those seen as discrediting the Russian armed forces or spreading fake news, including by using the word “war.”
Historical parallels
As the special military operation turned into a protracted conflict, and the facts on the ground refused to bend to Putin’s narrative, the Kremlin has gradually been forced to change its story.
Images of a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol or corpses littering the streets of Bucha were dismissed by state propaganda as fake or a provocation — and yet by spring the terms “demilitarization” and “denazification” had practically disappeared from the public sphere.
New justifications for the invasion were inserted into speeches and broadcasts, such as a claim that the United States had been developing biological weapons in Ukraine. In October, Putin declared that one of the main goals of the war had been to provide Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, with a stable water supply.
But the appeal to history has remained central to Putin’s communication effort.
While World War II remains his favorite leitmotif, the Russian president has been expansive in his historical comparisons. In June, he referenced Peter the Great’s campaign to “return what was Russia’s.” And during an October ceremony to lay claim to four regions in Ukraine, it was Catherine the Great who got a mention.
“Every so many months, another story is put forward as if they’re studying the reaction, looking to see what resonates,” said Kurilla.
The search for historical parallels has also bubbled up from below, as even supporters of the war search for justification. “Especially in spring and early summer, there was an attempt to Sovietize the war, with people waving red flags, trying to make sense of it through that lens.”
In the city of Syzran, students were filmed late last year pushing dummy tanks around in a sports hall in a re-enactment of the World War II Battle of Kursk. More recently, law students in St. Petersburg took part in a supposed restaging of the Nuremberg trials, which the region’s governor praised as “timely” in light of Russia’s current struggle against Nazism.
More recent statement by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin himself have made the idea of “war” less taboo | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Throughout, the Kremlin has sought to depict the conflict as a battle against powerful Western interests bent on using Ukraine to undermine Russia — a narrative that has become increasingly important as the Kremlin demands bigger sacrifices from the Russian population, most notably with a mobilization campaign in September.
“Long before February last year, people were already telling us: We are being dragged into a war by the West which we don’t want but there is no retreating from,” said Denis Volkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Center.
The sentiment, he added, has been widespread since the nineties, fed by disappointment over Russia’s diminished standing after the Cold War. “What we observe today is the culmination of that feeling of resentment, of unrealized illusions, especially among those over 50,” he said.
Long haul
With the war approaching the one-year mark, the narrative is once again having to adapt.
Even as hundreds in Russia are being prosecuted under wartime censorship laws, slips of the tongue by top officials such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and even Putin himself in December have made the idea of “war” less taboo.
“We are moving away from a special military operation towards a holy war … against 50 countries united by Satanism,” the veteran propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said on his program in January.
According to Levada, Russians are now expecting the war to last another six months or longer. “The majority keep to the sidelines, and passively support the war, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly,” said Volkov, the pollster.
Meanwhile, reports of Western weapons deliveries have been used to reinforce the argument that Russia is battling the West under the umbrella of NATO — no longer in an ideological sense, but in a literal one.
“A year of war has changed not the words that are said themselves but what they stand for in real life,” said Kurilla, the historian. “What started out as a historic metaphor is being fueled by actual spilled blood.”
In newspaper stands, Russians will find magazines such as “The Historian,” full of detailed spreads arguing that the Soviet Union’s Western allies in World War II were, in fact, Nazi sympathizers all along — another recycled trope from Russian history.
“During the Cold War, you would find caricatures depicting Western leaders such as President Eisenhower in fascist dress and a NATO helmet,” said Eidelman, the expert in Russian propaganda.
“This level of hatred and aggressive nationalism has not been seen since the late Stalin period,” she added.
The anti-West sentiment in Russia has been fed by disappointment over the country’s diminished standing after the Cold War | Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
On Tuesday, three days before the one-year anniversary of the invasion, Putin is scheduled to give another speech. He is expected to distract from Russia’s failure to capture any new large settlements in Ukraine by rehearsing old themes such as his gripes with the West and Russia’s past and present heroism.
There may be a limit, however, to how much the Russian president can infuse his subjects with enthusiasm for his country’s past glories.
In Volgograd, proposals to have the city permanently renamed to Stalingrad have been unsuccessful, with polls showing a large majority of the population is against such an initiative.
When it comes to embracing the past, Russians are still one step behind their leaders.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
New Delhi: Apple sold 2 million iPhones in India in the holiday quarter (Q4) of 2022, registering 18 per cent growth (quarter-on-quarter) for its flagship device, new data showed on Monday.
The India market share of iPhones reached 5.5 per cent for 2022, an 11 per cent growth (year-on-year).
For 2021, Apple iPhones had logged 48 per cent YoY growth with 4.4 per cent market share in the country.
According to the latest CMR data, iPhone 14 series logged 59 per cent market share in Q4 2022, followed by iPhone 13 series at 32 per cent growth.
Apple also sold 0.2 million iPads in India in Q4, and iPad Pro 2022 Series registered 30 per cent growth.
Currently, Apple accounts for around 5 per cent of the overall smartphone market in the country.
The iPhone manufacturer is now looking seriously at India and Vietnam to bolster its supply chain in the next 2-3 years.
Apple aims to ship 40-45 per cent of iPhones from India compared to a single-digit percentage currently, according to Kuo.
Every fourth iPhone will be made in India by 2025, according to JP Morgan.
India accounted for 10-15 per cent of iPhones’ overall production capacity at the end of 2022.
Apple became the first smartphone player in India to have exported $1 billion worth iPhones in the month of December. It currently manufactures iPhones 12, 13, 14 and 14 Plus in the country.
New Delhi: An IT professional from Kenya sold his home and his car to join Amazon in Europe got fired by the company just four days before he was set to move there.
Earlier this month, Amazon announced to lay off 18,000 employees globally, which were said to start from January 18.
Tom Mboya Opiyo was among the 18,000 people impacted by Amazon’s mass layoffs.
Impacted by the layoff, Opiyo, took to LinkedIn, where he shared his ordeal.
“Well, last week I shared about my impending exciting move abroad. It was a relocation role to Europe with a leading global company. Sadly, it has fallen through due to business changes as part of the organisation’s ‘annual operating review’ that impacted the role and many others. The organisation is shedding jobs globally and the information is available online,” Opiyo wrote in his LinkedIn Post.
“We were to travel this weekend so that I start work on Monday, 16th Jan and the call came 4 days to that date,” he added.
Opiyo further said that his family is truly devastated after planning for the move for 6 months and believes that God will have a better plan for them.
He also mentioned that he and his will also go for counselling.
Opiyo concluded his post by saying, “For me, I didn’t expect to be in this kind of situation at this stage in my career but that’s what life is about. Some have to experience certain situations so as to be an example to others. Keep us in prayers. God is good all the time”.
