Month: July 2025

• Elon Musk says he’s doing away with the “researcher” job title at xAI.
• Musk’s move echoes the approach used by OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Both use a single title, “Member of Technical Staff,” for their engineering and research hires.

Elon Musk says he has banished the job title “researcher” from his AI startup, xAI.

The distinction between researcher and engineer is a “thinly masked way of describing a two-tier engineering system,” Musk wrote in an X post on Tuesday.

“There are only engineers,” Musk said.”Researcher is a relic term from academia.”

Musk then drew a comparison to his rocket company, SpaceX, which he said did more “meaningful, cutting-edge” research on rockets and satellites than “all the academic university labs on earth combined.”

“But we don’t use the pretentious, low-accountability term ‘researcher,'” Musk said.

xAI did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

OpenAI, which Musk co-founded with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2015, uses a similar naming approach for its technical hires.

Brockman, the president of OpenAI, wrote in an X post in February 2023 that they did not want to “bucket people into researchers and engineers” and “thought hard about what job titles to use.” OpenAI later decided to use the term “Member of Technical Staff.”

Brockman said the term was first used by Xerox PARC, a research laboratory known for its pioneering innovations, such as the mouse and the graphical user interface used on computers.

Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI employees, said on its website that its “research and engineering hires all share a single title — ‘Member of Technical Staff.'” The company said it listed its engineers as authors on their research papers, “often as first author.”

“While there’s historically been a division between engineering and research in machine learning, we think that boundary has dissolved with the advent of large models,” Anthropic wrote on its career page.

• Zac Brown, 46, says he doesn’t consume gluten, dairy, sugar, or alcohol.
• He also gets regular NAD drips and has a trailer gym inspired by a tip from Bruce Springsteen.
• He says he weighed 265 pounds at his heaviest. He’s now down to around 200 pounds.

Fortnite, NAD, no seed oil — country musician Zac Brown‘s approach to health isn’t what you’d expect.

In an interview with GQ published on Tuesday, the front man of the Zac Brown Band spoke about how his diet and fitness routine have helped him transform his body.

Brown told GQ he’s cut out gluten, dairy, sugar, and alcohol from his diet, and he now reads all food labels carefully.

His diet is simple and involves “a lot of paleo, vegetables, good, clean proteins, whole foods, things that aren’t just processed in a bag or in a box,” Brown said.

“It’s based on three meals a day that are about four hours apart. After your last meal, you fast for 14 hours,” he said.

Brown added that clean eating requires discipline and commitment, something that he still struggles with, especially when he’s on press tours and working on new music.

However, even small changes in his diet — like cutting out seed oil — can make a big difference in how he feels.

“The kind of oil that you intake, only avocado, olive, or coconut oil. That cuts out a lot, on top of those other restrictions. Everything has some kind of seed oil in it, sunflower oil or canola oil or something,” Brown said.

“Once your psychology gets around feeling good, then that gives you a lot of strength to just sacrifice things,” he added.

In recent years, there have been various claims that seed oils cause inflammation and are bad for health. However, nutritionists and health scientists tell Business Insider that the reality is more nuanced. Blaming seed oil also overlooks the bigger culprits behind chronic diseases.

“There are things that are way more important for you than to even think about seed oils,” Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist, told BI. “I want people to be avoiding super processed foods and to be avoiding refined flours and sugars.”

Diet aside, Brown says he gets his bloodwork done every month with a regenerative medicine doctor.

“On top of that, I’ve been doing stem cells to help regenerate, and I’ve been taking peptides. I take NAD. I do a monthly IV with some exosomes and NAD in it. I take my vitamins and my supplements,” Brown said.

NAD, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, is a molecule found in living cells that’s required for energy production and cellular repair. As natural NAD production declines with age, NAD+ boosters have become a popular fix in the longevity and biohacking world.

As for his workouts, Brown said he built a trailer outfitted with a full gym for when he’s on tour. It’s inspired by a tip he once got from Bruce Springsteen.

“He said, ‘I sweat for an hour a day, no matter where I am, what I’m doing, I sweat for an hour a day.’ He’s like, ‘It’ll change your life.’ I started doing that when I was home or even on the road,” Brown said.

Brown says he’s also found a clever hack to make his cardio sessions more bearable.

“I have an overactive brain, so being able to play ‘Madden’ or ‘Fortnite’ while I’m on the Arc Trainer for an hour, it makes an hour go by like that,” Brown said. “In my mind, I’m like, I’m going to go down and play a game. I’m not thinking, I’m going to go down and torture myself with an hour of cardio.”

Brown says he’s lost over 60 pounds from his peak weight.

“I’m probably a little under 200 right now. 265 was the biggest. I was a big boy,” he added.

A representative for Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular hours.

• Starbucks is phasing out mobile order-only stores, converting some to full-service locations.
• The shift comes as Starbucks faces declining same-store sales for six consecutive quarters.
• Starbucks has a new store prototype and a $500 million investment plan to improve operations.

Starbucks’ grab-and-go stores are on the way out.

On Tuesday, the coffee store chain announced that it’s discontinuing its mobile order-only store model.

Around 80 to 90 pickup-only locations in the US, many of which are located in office buildings and offer no seating, will be phased out, said CEO Brian Niccol. Some will be converted into full-service stores with room to linger.

“These stores felt too transactional and didn’t deliver the warmth or human connection our customers expect,” Niccol told investors on the third-quarter earnings call.

A Starbucks spokeswoman declined to comment, including on how much the store renovations would cost.

The company has also been working with CloudKitchens, the ghost kitchen company run by Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick, to broaden Starbucks’ network in locations like San Francisco, Business Insider reported in 2023. These ghost kitchens, with private kitchens and no corporate storefronts, get Starbucks orders out on platforms like DoorDash to lessen the burden on brick-and-mortar stores.

Starbucks announced on Tuesday that it is developing a new “coffeehouse of the future” prototype that includes 32 seats and a drive-thru, which it plans to debut in the company’s next fiscal year. Starbucks is investing $500 million over the next year to bolster staffing and improve in-store wait times.

These changes come as Starbucks tries to boost sales — same-store sales dropped for a sixth quarter in a row. Niccol, who took over as CEO last year, has issued memos telling employees to spend more time in the office as part of his effort to “turn things around.”

On Tuesday’s call, Niccol said unpredictable coffee prices and ongoing pressure from tariffs may mean challenging financials until 2026. He said that “momentum is building” and that the company is “ahead of schedule.”

Throughout the day, Starbucks shares dipped on Q3 earnings that came in below analyst expectations, but rose around 3% in after-hours trading. Shares are flat this year.

A powerful 8.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked Russia’s eastern peninsula has triggered tsunami warnings in Russia, Japan, and parts of the U.S.

The quake, which struck the Kamchatka Peninsula around 8:25 a.m. local time Wednesday (4:25 p.m. ET, Tuesday), was initially reported at a magnitude of 8.0 but upgraded to 8.8, making it the joint-sixth strongest ever recorded on Earth (tied with the 2010 earthquake in Biobío, Chile, and 1906 earthquake in Esmeraldas, Ecuador). The Kamchatka Krai earthquake was centered 74 mi (119 km) east-southeast of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population of 165,000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and it left several people injured, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

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A tsunami with waves of 10-13 ft (3-4 m) hit Severo-Kurilsk in Russia’s far east coast after the quake, flooding the port town, which has a population of around 2,000 people, according to Russia’s Emergencies Ministry. The ministry said the town has been evacuated. Russia’s Geophysical Service also warned that aftershocks of up to M7.5 could last up to a month. Already over a dozen smaller quakes have hit the region  in the last several hours since the quake.

“Today’s earthquake was serious and the strongest in decades of tremors,” Kamchatka Gov. Vladimir Solodov said in a video posted on Telegram. The Kuril-Kamchatka arc experiences frequent earthquakes, according to the USGS, including a M7.4 earthquake on July 20 that is now seen as a foreshock of Wednesday’s quake. The fifth strongest quake on Earth also hit Kamchatka in 1952, with a magnitude of 9.0.

Several countries around the world, including Japan and the U.S., have issued tsunami warnings and placed areas on tsunami watch following the quake. To view the latest tsunami advisories, visit tsunami.gov.

Tsunami alerts come in four levels, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. A tsunami warning is the highest alert, followed by a tsunami advisory, a tsunami watch, and a tsunami information statement.

“STAY STRONG AND STAY SAFE!” President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social.

Here’s what we know so far.

Japan hit by 12-inch waves, Fukushima evacuated

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a country-wide tsunami warning at 9:40 a.m. local time (upgraded from an earlier tsunami advisory) and has urged people in coastal areas to evacuate immediately. People should move to the highest ground possible and should not stop or return to coastal areas, the agency warned.

The agency forecasted a tsunami height of three meters but said the tsunami may exceed that height and may involve multiple waves for an extended period which can suddenly increase in height.

Coastal towns in Hokkaido, Japan, recorded 12-in (30-cm) waves around 10:46 a.m. local time, according to broadcaster NHK, while a 16-in (40-cm) tsunami hit Tokachi port in Hokkaido. Erimo town, Hanasaki port, Hamanaka town, and Kushiro port in southeastern and eastern Hokkaido were among those to be hit with tsunami waves as of 1 p.m. local time (12 a.m. ET).

Japan’s Tohoku and Kanto regions also observed waves of 8 inches (20cm) to 16 inches (40cm) high.

Workers at northeast Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant have been evacuated. The plant suffered a meltdown in 2011 following a M9.0 earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan and massive tsunami, which led to the country’s worst nuclear accident and the world’s second worst in recorded history.

Read More: A Manga Is Causing Earthquake Panic in Japan

Hawaii issues warnings; U.S. West Coast, Alaska on tsunami watch

Tsunami sirens sounded across all of Hawaii’s islands, with the first wave impact expected at 7:10 p.m. local time (1:10 a.m. ET), according to the state’s Emergency Management Agency.

“URGENT ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PROTECT LIVES AND PROPERTY,” the agency warned in multiple alerts.

“God willing, these waves will not hurt us, but you have to assume—assume that they will be life threatening,” said Gov. Josh Green during a press conference. He advised residents to evacuate from coastal zones and inundation areas, to stay away from beaches and harbors, and to go to high ground such as the fourth floor or higher of buildings. “You have to expect that there will be flooding on all the islands, and it will be imminent after the wave hits. You should be safe and therefore not sorry.”

The National Tsunami Warning Center also issued tsunami advisories for parts of Alaska and the entire West Coast, including California, Oregon, Washington, as well as Canada’s British Columbia. The Alaskan Aleutian island of Shemya could see tsunami activity beginning at 4:40 p.m. local time (8:40 p.m. ET), while Kodiak is forecast to see waves starting at 8:20 p.m. local time, according to the National Weather Service. Langara and Tofino in British Columbia could see waves by around 10:05 p.m. local time (1:05 a.m. ET), while potential tsunami activity could reach parts of Washington, Oregon and California, starting after 11 p.m. local time (2 a.m. ET).

“Areas in the advisory should not expect widespread inundation,” the NWS said, adding that people should move away from beaches, harbors, and marinas. “Do not go to the coast to watch,” NWS Los Angeles warned.

Pacific Islands, Philippines, others issue warnings and alerts

A tsunami alert has been issued for the Pacific Islands, including the Northern Mariana islands of Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan, according to the USGS.

Pacific coastal areas of the Philippines could see tsunami waves of up to 3 ft (1 m) high with the first waves expected between 1:20 to 2:30 p.m. local time (1:20 to 2:30 a.m. ET), the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology warned. The affected regions include: Albay province, Aurora province, the Batanes islands, Cagayan province, Camarines Norte province, Camarines Sur province, Catanduanes Island, Davao del Norte province, Davao del Sur province, Davao de Oro province, Davao Occidental province, Davao Oriental province, the Dinagat islands, Eastern Samar province, Isabela province, Leyte Island, Northern Samar province, Quezon province, Sorsogan province, Southern Leyte province, Surigao del Norte province, and Surigao del Sur province.

Taiwan has issued a tsunami warning, forecasting waves as high as 3 ft (1 m) hitting the country’s southeastern coastal areas by 1:19 p.m. local time (1:19 a.m. ET) and southwestern coast by 1:31 p.m.

Indonesia has also issued a warning for tsunami waves of less than 1.6 ft (0.5 m) that could reach coastal areas in Papua, North Maluku province and Gorontalo province, according to the country’s geophysics agency.

The Mexican Navy has warned people to avoid Pacific beaches and said strong currents are expected at port entrances from Baja California to Chiapas.