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Tag: tells

  • Even A Trump-Hating Governor Calls Out Democrats' Crime "Doesn't Exist" Narrative

    Even A Trump-Hating Governor Calls Out Democrats' Crime "Doesn't Exist" Narrative

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    MSNBC has wall to wall programming claiming that crime isn’t really out of control in Democrat controlled cities and that Trump’s crackdown has been facilitated by a ‘manufactured crisis’, but even a Trump hating governor refused to go along with the talking point.

    The failing network brought on former Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who refused to back Trump and infamously endorsed Joe Biden, presumably thinking he would slam Trump again, but no.

    “I heard the term ‘manufacturing crisis. This is a manufactured crisis,’” Kasich remarked, urging “No! It’s not! It is a crisis!”

    “Have you been in Chicago? Have you been in Baltimore?” Kasich asked the host, adding “My daughter went to school in Chicago. The day she graduated there were shootings and killings right outside of her building.”

    “And in Baltimore, I had friends that go down to Johns Hopkins get treated for medical conditions. I mean they are nervous about ever going there. There were parts of Baltimore that he tells me he wouldn’t go into,” Kasich continued.

    “And this is not some right wing person. This is somebody who wants to be able to go in our great cities and be able to be safe,” he further emphasised.

    “Now, I do think it’s important that if you’re gonna do this, you gotta define the mission,” he added, referring to Trump’s federal crackdown.

    “You’ve got to talk about your authority. And I think one of earlier guest was saying, well maybe there are narrow ways to do it. I agree with that. But that just then says that there are ways to do it,” he added.

    “Look, what’s been happening in Chicago has been terrible. The crime rate is high. The gang problem is real… Chicago is a jewel of America. We just cannot let lawlessness and fear dominate these cities,” Kasich declared as the other members of the panel looked annoyed that he wasn’t towing the line.

    “The idea that these cities are somehow fine? Oh I think you’re just, you’re whistling…There are people at risk in these cities,” Kasich concluded.

    Kasich’s comments come after Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker posted a video of himself walking (out of breath) around a gentrified quiet area of Chicago in the daylight, suggesting it proves the city is safe.

    Residents of Chicago beg to differ with Pritzker

    More residents in D.C. are also explaining how massive the cleanup there is:

    Democrats are literally siding with violent criminals now.

    And massaging the crime stats in a desperate and failing attempt to make it look like there isn’t a problem.

    Maybe next they’ll don pink vests and break out into song for the murderers and drug pushers.

    * * *

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  • Micro1, a competitor to Scale AI, raises funds at 0M valuation

    Micro1, a competitor to Scale AI, raises funds at $500M valuation

    Micro1, a three-year-old startup that helps AI companies find and manage human contractors for data labeling and training, has raised a $35 million Series A funding round that values the company at $500 million. The round was led by 01 Advisors, a venture capital firm co-founded by Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, the former CEO and COO of Twitter.

    The startup is one of many companies looking to fill the gap in the data market created by recent changes involving Scale AI. After Meta invested $14 billion in Scale AI and hired its CEO, AI labs, including OpenAI and Google, said they planned to cut ties with the startup, presumably over concerns that their research could end up in Meta’s hands. (Scale AI denies that it shares confidential information with Meta as part of its partnership.)

    However, AI labs still need these data services, and startups like Micro1 aim to pick up the slack.

    Micro1 CEO Ali Ansari — who is just 24 years old — tells TechCrunch that his company has been working with leading AI labs, including Microsoft, as well as several Fortune 100 companies. Ansari said Micro1 is now generating $50 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), up from $7 million at the start of 2025.

    That’s still a far cry from larger competitors like Mercor, which is generating more than $450 million in ARR, and Surge, which reportedly brought in $1.2 billion in 2024. However, Micro1’s growth and adoption among AI labs seems to be growing at a healthy rate.

    As part of the new funding, Micro1 is also adding Bain to its board of directors, alongside Joshua Browder, founder and CEO of the AI legal assistant DoNotPay.

    “Really the only way models are now learning is through net new human data. Micro1 is at the core of providing that data to all frontier labs, while moving at speeds I’ve never seen before,” Bain said in a statement to TechCrunch.

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    Reuters previously reported details of Micro1’s fundraising efforts.

    All these companies — Micro1, Surge, Mercor, and Scale AI — supply AI labs with access to a large base of human contractors who can label and generate data for AI training. It’s become a crucial service that companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google need to build cutting-edge AI models.

    Scale AI was first to dominate this space, with the initial insight that it could pay relatively little for low-skilled contractors around the world to help label data for AI model training. However, Ansari says that the demands of AI labs have shifted in recent years and that companies now need high-quality data labeling from domain experts — such as senior software engineers, doctors, and professional writers — to improve their AI models. The hard part became recruiting these types of folks.

    This led Micro1 to build its AI recruiter, Zara, which interviews and vets candidates who apply to work as one of the company’s contractors, or as Ansari calls them, experts. Micro1 says Zara has recruited thousands of experts — including professors from Stanford and Harvard — and that the company plans to add hundreds more every week.

    The market for AI training data appears to be changing yet again. Now, many AI labs are interested in working with startups to develop “environments” — virtual workspaces that can be used to train AI agents on simulated tasks. Ansari says Micro1 is building new offerings in the environments space to meet this demand.

    Luckily for startups like Micro1, AI labs seem to be working with multiple training data providers. The nature of the business is such that it’s difficult for any one company to handle all of one AI lab’s data needs. That means there’s plenty of business to go around, at least for now.