New COVID Variant Emerges, OpenAI Defense Contract, and Social Media News Dominance

Today's episode examined emerging health concerns, escalating geopolitical tensions, and the fundamental transformation of how Americans consume news in the digital age.

New COVID variant swiftly gains ground in US; concern looms for summer wave - Ars Technica

Trump Says Reason For Early G7 Summit Departure 'Much Bigger' Than Iran-Israel Ceasefire - Forbes

A new US paper shows the best frontier LLM models achieve 0% on hard real-life Programming Contest problems - Techmeme

How AI tools collect your data across devices—and how to be selective about what you share - Fast Company

OpenAI awarded $200 million US defense contract - The Verge

Social Media Now Main Source of News In US, Research Suggests - Slashdot

Intel Will Lay Off 15% To 20% of Its Factory Workers, Memo Says - Slashdot

Sources: OpenAI wants Microsoft to take a ~33% stake - The Information

Keywords: COVID variant NB.1.8.1, Trump G7 early departure, AI programming limitations, OpenAI defense contract, social media news consumption, Intel factory layoffs, OpenAI Microsoft restructuring, media literacy, democratic discourse