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Month: October 2025

Homeowner’s plan to build pool in front yard divides Seminole neighborhood

Homeowner’s plan to build pool in front yard divides Seminole neighborhood

Robert Taylor set out to build an ultramodern pool with a sunken bar and a vanishing edge, surrounded by waterfalls and turquoise blue pebbles, all in the front yard of his home.

Seminole County quickly approved his application. But when the bulldozers and heavy equipment rolled into the quiet upper middle-class neighborhood just north of Maitland and started digging a big hole, some of his neighbors became outraged when they realized what Taylor was doing.

“The county’s regulations say you can’t have that” in a front yard, said Jason White, who lives across the street from Taylor, about the proposed pool. “It would be totally out of place with our neighborhood. … This would diminish the appearance and harmony of our street.”

Seminole staff agreed: They said they made a mistake in approving Taylor’s request.

The county then ordered Taylor to immediately stop the work and seek a variance from Seminole’s Board of Adjustment.

On Monday, the county board agreed in a 2-to-1 vote that Taylor is entitled to a variance from the county’s development rules and could move forward with building his aquatic oasis. read more

SpaceX sends up Space Coast’s 90th launch of the year

SpaceX sends up Space Coast’s 90th launch of the year

SpaceX took flight again Wednesday with the 90th orbital launch on the Space Coast in 2025.

A Falcon 9 on the Starlink 10-37 mission carried up another 29 of the company’s internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 with liftoff at 12:35 p.m.

The first-stage booster flew for the 15th time with another successful recovery landing downrange on the droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed in the Atlantic.

SpaceX has flown all but five of the orbital missions from either CCSFS or Kennedy Space Center this year.

United Launch Alliance has sent up four others, including three Atlas V rockets and one of its new Vulcan Centaur rockets. Its next launch, an Atlas V on the ViaSat-3 F2 mission, is set to lift off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41 on Nov. 5 at 10:24 p.m. at opening of a 44-minute window.

The second chapter of New Glenn’s story begins tonight at LC-36. Our NG-2 launch vehicle has arrived at the pad for integrated vehicle hotfire. pic.twitter.com/CQeDlu8xB2 read more

OpenAI may move forward with new business structure, partnership with Microsoft, regulators say

OpenAI may move forward with new business structure, partnership with Microsoft, regulators say

By MATT O’BRIEN and THALIA BEATY

OpenAI said Tuesday it has reorganized its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation after two crucial regulators, the Delaware and California attorneys general, said they would not oppose the plan.

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The restructuring paves the way for the ChatGPT maker to more easily profit off its artificial intelligence technology even as it remains technically under the control of a nonprofit.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a call Tuesday that “the most likely path” for the newly formed business is that it becomes publicly traded on the stock market, “given the capital needs that we’ll have and sort of the size of the company,” though a Wall Street debut was not a part of the announcements detailed Tuesday. read more

Elon Musk launches Grokipedia to compete with online encyclopedia Wikipedia

Elon Musk launches Grokipedia to compete with online encyclopedia Wikipedia

Elon Musk has launched Grokipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia that the billionaire seeks to position as a rival to Wikipedia.

Writing on social media, Musk said that Grokipedia.com is “now live” and its goal is the “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Musk has previously criticized Wikipedia for being filled with “propaganda” and called for people to stop donating to the site, which is run by a nonprofit. In September he announced that his artificial intelligence company xAI was working on Grokipedia.

The Grokipedia site has a minimalist appearance with little beyond a search bar where users can type in queries. It states that it has 885,279 articles. Wikipedia, meanwhile, says it has more than 7 million articles in English.

Like Wikipedia, users can search for articles on various topics such as Taylor Swift, the baseball World Series, or Buckingham Palace.

While Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteers, it’s unclear how exactly Grokipedia articles are put together. Reports suggest the site is powered by the same xAI model that underpins Musk’s Grok chatbot, but some articles are seemingly adapted from Wikipedia. read more

Layoffs are piling up, raising worker anxiety. Here are some companies that have cut jobs recently

Layoffs are piling up, raising worker anxiety. Here are some companies that have cut jobs recently

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a tough time for the job market.

Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, some sizeable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors.

Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to investments like artificial intelligence.

In such cases, “it’s not so much AI directly taking jobs, but AI’s appetite for cash that might be taking jobs,” said Jason Schloetzer, professor business administration at Georgetown University’s McDonough School. He pointed to wider “trade offs” from employment to infrastructure investment seen across companies today. read more