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Jun 10 2023

Kyiv Visit. ATI Failing. GPT future.

Jun 10, 2023
David Akin's Roundup
Clippings of #cdnpoli, #media, and #tech content aimed at those with an interest in Canadian politics and policy. And sometimes Canadian postage stamps.
Canada
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes surprise visit to Ukraine
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived in Kyiv on Saturday for a surprise visit to show Canada's solidarity with Ukraine's ongoing efforts to push back against Russia more than a year after the invasion began. [CP]
Information held by the government is supposed to be yours. Yet at every turn, the process gives institutions incentives to keep records hidden. [Globe and Mail]
Johnston has faced weeks of scrutiny over what the opposition parties called a conflict of interest due to his ties to Trudeau's family and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. [Global]
Reliance on foreign military equipment and doubling-up of purchasing authority is hamstringing Canada's international defence obligations. [National Post]
From the provinces
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's new cabinet has fewer members, four rookies and strong representation for Calgary and rural Alberta. [Edmonton Journal]
On the last day of Quebec's parliamentary session, all fingers pointed to the CAQ, the party in power. But opposition parties had their track records questioned too. [Global]
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Elsewhere
Former president Donald Trump allegedly lied, schemed and hid boxes from his lawyers to keep highly sensitive military information after leaving the White House. [WaPo]
Biden allies, legal experts and strategists say silence may be the best option even in the face of a torrent of Trump attacks. [NBC]
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the party “has never said ‘don’t vote early,'” but acknowledged the GOP will have to work to shift voters' perceptions. [Global]
Media
A federal court has ruled that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) erred in its decision penalizing Société Radio-Canada (SRC) for broadcasting the N-word. [CBC]
The findings suggest that consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that share content made by real customers instead of traditional, sponsored influencer content. [The Drum]
Tech
Jacob Steinhart: GPT-4 surprised many people with its abilities at coding, creative brainstorming, letter-writing, and other skills. How can we be less surprised by developments in machine learning? In this post, I’ll forecast the properties of large pretrained ML systems in 2030. [Bounded Regret]
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Issued this day ...
Issued this day in 1954: Sc #340: Queen Elizabeth II - Wilding Portrait. Design: Herman Herbert Schwartz. Photograph: Dorothy Wilding.

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