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Wired	[ "software", "how-to", "tips", "artificial intelligence", "chatgpt", "productivity" ]	# How ChatGPT's Canvas Can Help You Use AI More Productively By David Nield December 6th, 2024 08:30 AM --- Canvas, which is available to OpenAI's paid subscribers, is a little bit like an AI-powered Google Docs. Here's how to use it. With multiple AI platforms and bots competing against each other—there's Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, to name just a few—we're seeing new updates and upgrades appear on a frequent basis. One of the newest additions OpenAI has pushed out to ChatGPT is called Canvas, and it's a little bit like an AI-powered Google Docs. OpenAI describes it as "a new way of working with ChatGPT to write and code," and it means you're essentially collaborating with the AI on a text document or on program code. You can already do this in the main chat interface of course, but with Canvas it's a bit more like having an AI coworker with you. Right now, you have to be a ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Pro, or ChatGPT Plus user (from $20 a month) to access the Canvas model. You'll find it in the drop-down menu at the top of the conversation screen, in the top left corner. ## Getting Started With Canvas With Canvas selected as the AI model, you can start interacting with ChatGPT just as you would normally. Use the prompt box to describe the kind of code you need to write, or the type of text you need to generate. You do need to say something to indicate you want a new canvas to be created, though—something like "Create a document" or "Start a canvas" somewhere in your prompt will do it. When the ChatGPT Canvas interface launches in full, you'll see the familiar chat conversation on the left, and whatever it is you're working on on the right. You've got a few different options here. You can enter a new prompt to get more text (or code), you can manually type in something yourself in the canvas pane, or you can select something ChatGPT has generated and ask for revisions. Those different options are what makes Canvas a more collaborative mode. Up in the top right corner you'll find shortcuts for viewing earlier versions of your document, or copying the text elsewhere. Down in the lower right corner, meanwhile, you'll find a pop-up toolbox that gives you a variety of options, depending on whether you're writing text or programming code with ChatGPT. If you're writing, you can find tools for suggesting edits, adjusting the length of the output ChatGPT has created, changing the reading level of the text, polishing up the written output, or adding emoji to the document. For example, click Reading level, and you can use the slider to make the text more or less complex. For programming, the same pop-up toolbox gives you options for reviewing the code, porting it to a different language, fixing bugs, adding logs, and adding comments. For example, you can choose Add Logs, then click the arrow that appears, and ChatGPT will drop in log statements for the code. ## Collaborating on a Document As I'm a writer rather than a coder, I'll talk through the writing options in ChatGPT Canvas in more depth than the coding options. Just know that if you're using Canvas for programming, the tools and options work in a similar way. If you want to, you can just click inside the text the ChatGPT has produced and make changes. You can also add or insert entirely new paragraphs. Any text, whether it's been written by you or the bot, can be selected: That will then bring up a ChatGPT prompt window, where you can make changes to the selected text only. For example, you might want the selected text to be phrased more clearly, or you might want to expand on the ideas in the text to make it longer. Each paragraph comes with its own comment icon (a small speech bubble), and you can click on these to focus the AI bot on one block of text in particular. Your ChatGPT prompts don't necessarily have to be about text changes. You could ask if a paragraph might be better placed elsewhere in a document, for instance, or get ChatGPT to explain something without actually making any changes. As you make more requests to ChatGPT, it reports back on what it's doing in the pane on the left—and as usual, you can rate the responses you're getting with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If you find it easier, you can do all of your collaboration and editing through the conversation on the left. You don't get much in the way of formatting tools, but you can highlight text and apply bold or italics, or create a heading. (A toolbar will instantly pop up with these options when you select text.) You can even get ChatGPT to insert headings at suitable spots, if your text needs to be broken up. It does feel like a much more interactive way of producing AI text, and is especially useful if you still want to do some of the work yourself.
TechCrunch	[ "autonomous vehicles", "robotaxis", "Uber", "weride" ]	# Uber and WeRide launch robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi By Rebecca Bellan December 6th, 2024 08:08 AM --- Ride-hail giant Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide have launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi. The launch marks Uber's first international autonomous vehicle offering. Uber has been snatching up partnerships with autonomous vehicle companies across sectors, including ride-hail, delivery, and trucking. Other partners include Wayve, Serve Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Waabi, and others. Still, investors are wary that incumbents like Uber won't be able to compete with the companies building the technology, like Waymo and potentially Tesla. On Thursday, Uber's stock dropped nearly 10% after Waymo announced plans to launch a robotaxi service in Miami — this despite the fact that a true autonomous vehicle-flavored disruption to the ride-hail industry will take years and that Uber may be one of the apps where riders end up connecting to those robotaxis. Uber's launch with WeRide, which went public on the Nasdaq in late October, will be small-scale, according to an Uber spokesperson. Neither Uber nor WeRide shared how many vehicles would hit Abu Dhabi's streets initially. The first rollout will take place between Saadiyat Island and Yas Island, and along routes to and from Zayed International Airport, with plans to expand in the future. A human safety operator will be present in each vehicle to start, with a fully driverless commercial launch planned for later in 2025. Uber and WeRide will work with local Tawasul Transport to handle fleet operations.
The BBC	[ "Cirencester", "The Cotswolds", "Potholes", "Gloucestershire" ]	# Exasperation over misspelt road repainting in Cirencester By BBC News December 5th, 2024 04:33 PM --- Newly repainted road markings reading "Ceep Klear" near a school have caused dismay among residents. The misspelling appeared on a re-patched section of Watermoor Road in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Pictures of the sign, near Paternoster School, attracted hundreds of comments on social media, with locals complaining the error was part of a wider problem with the town's roads. Paul Skuse, who runs a Cirencester group on Facebook, posted: "Another top quality repair carried out." One group member said: "Must be a joke. No one can be that bad at spelling!" Another complained that poor repairs were making the town's roads and pavements dangerous for push chairs and wheelchair users. ## 'Bonkers' One man remarked: "[The] 'repair' won't last long enough for anyone else to notice." Joe Harris, the Liberal Democrat leader of Cotswold District Council, said the mistake was proof "the management of the roads in this county simply isn't good enough". Wales & West Utilities, which carried out the work, has been approached for comment.
TechCrunch	[ "Fly Ventures", "VC" ]	# Fly Ventures sets its eyes on technical founders with a fresh €80M fund By Mike Butcher December 6th, 2024 08:01 AM --- Fly Ventures, the Berlin-based VC that invests in seed-stage European startups within enterprise and deep tech, has launched its third fund at €80 million. The firm raised its last €53 million fund in 2020. Aiming at technical founders, the firm claims Fund III was oversubscribed and raised in a single closing. Meanwhile, the small increase in fund size reflects the firm's desire to operate as a boutique firm. Founded by Gabriel Matuschka and Fredrik Bergenlid, Fly Ventures invests €1 million to €4 million in rounds of €2 million to €10 million at the inception stage. Matuschka told TechCrunch: "We like doing things that at the time, other people think, what the ... material science and AI?! These days, more people do it, but our game plan is to do these kinds of investments two or three years before anybody else cares." With Matt Wichrowski, Marie Brayer, Bergenlid, and Matuschka, the firm operates in an equal-GP model of four partners each distributed across Berlin, London, Paris, and Zurich. "I think the Berlin/London thing specifically is also plus Munich, because from Berlin you can cover Munich. And for the more technical stuff, Munich tends to be a bit stronger. But it was always clear you had to do Germany and the UK. Then I guess over the last four years or so, Paris, on the more technical side, also really accelerated, which is the reason why we also added Marie, who is based in Paris," said Matuschka. Bergenlid previously worked at Google on Google Assistant, and Matuschka previously founded travel shopping club TripHunter (acquired by brands4friends, now owned by eBay). AI has so far accounted for about 45% of Fly's investments, with vertical applications and industrial tech taking up 35%, and dev tools/infrastructure taking up 20%. In its portfolio exists clinical trials marketplace Inato, anti-money-laundering startup Salv, and cybersecurity startup GitGuardian. Another, Wayve, recently raised $1.05 billion in a Series C round led by SoftBank to progress autonomous driving with self-learning technology. It's also invested in Lakera, a Zurich-based startup that aims to protect enterprises from LLM vulnerabilities, and Orbital Materials, a U.K.-based company developing foundation models for materials science.
Wired	[ "japan", "netflix", "food and drink", "culture", "travel" ]	# Finding the Real 'Midnight Diner' By Joe Ray December 6th, 2024 08:00 AM --- The restaurant featured in the hit TV show Midnight Diner is a wholly a fictitious izakaya. On a recent trip to Tokyo, I set out to find it anyway. Every night in the darkest, most depressing depths of the pandemic, one TV show, which I watched over and over, helped get me through. Midnight Diner, a series on Netflix set in a Tokyo restaurant, became a healing balm and a reminder of the warmth of being around people. The chef at this izakaya, referred to only as "Master," cooks surrounded by a service counter on three sides, at which loyal regulars sit bathing in each others' company. Perhaps thought of as a quirky cousin to the 1980s NBC sitcom Cheers, every episode tells a sweet, sad, or occasionally heartbreaking story. Master, a man of few words with a mysterious scar on his face, is like their conscience and a confidant, helping make sense of the world. Characters are kind, quirky, and loyal. As a taxi glides dreamily through the Shinjuku neighborhood in the opening credits, Master gives a little voice-over: "When people finish their day and hurry home, my day starts ... My diner is open from midnight to seven in the morning. They call it 'Midnight Diner.' Do I even have customers? More than you would expect." A little research confirmed that the izakaya in the show is wholly fictitious, yet I wanted to believe a place with that kind of food and that kind of feeling was real. On a recent trip to Tokyo, I set out to find one just like it. ## "An Ideal in Your Heart" I start seeing elements of what I hoped to find surprisingly quickly. I immediately find a postage-stamp-sized bar in my neighborhood where people are friendly and curious. At my first dinner out at an izakaya in the Nakano neighborhood, the food is surprisingly good for a casual spot: generous and unfussy sashimi, fish collar, smashed cucumbers with sesame, seared mushrooms, and an Asahi Super Dry or two. The busy, cheery waitstaff still takes the time to help me navigate the menu. Barely 24 hours into my trip, I meet restaurant reviewer Mackey Makimoto at Toranomon Yokocho, a multi-restaurant project he has helped put together that's like a food court in heaven. He's sporting a short-brimmed fedora and is talking with a chef when I arrive with my fixer and translator, Mai Nomura. Over fried chicken, grilled sardines, fried oysters, and fried tofu, we bond over a love of Midnight Diner, but my first real question for him is whether a place like that exists. "Izakaya is very Japanese. They started from sake shops, where customers wanted something to eat to go with their drink," he says, "Communities would have a liquor shop, and people would buy sake to go, but then in the Edo period, they wanted to stay. At first it was only standing, but over time they wanted to sit. Eventually, they got hungry." This, Makimoto explains, is where the word izakaya comes from, its three characters roughly translating into "a liquor store you stay at." Over time, in this densely populated but sometimes lonely city, something else blossomed. "I go to over 700 restaurants a year, but I don't always feel happy or cheerful in them. Here, I feel happy when I speak to the chef," he says, gesturing into the central kitchen. "The food is good, but most important is that this is where you can meet people you want to meet. Customers become friends, and friends become community." "On the show, almost everyone comes in by themselves. They are lonely inside," he says. "People who are single and lonely inside can be cheered by places like this. They can show us how to be warmhearted." So is it real? Is there one place like it? Can I go to Midnight Diner? "There is none. It's utopia. It's an ideal in your heart." Yet he also knows what he would order there. "Yakisoba with Worcestershire sauce," he says in a nod to his neighborhood. "They always serve this at the summer festival in Nakano." This simultaneously raises and lowers my hopes, but he also pulls up an address on his phone for a place that might fit the bill and sends me off into the night. ## Found in Translation The next evening, following his instructions, I take a train out to the Keisei Hikifune station, walk through a residential neighborhood, then up to the restaurant's frosted glass sliders. Opening them reveals a bar with four women working behind it wreathed by customers and a handful of tiny tables along the opposite wall. Everyone looks up as I poke my head in and, to my amazement, I am meeting people before I sit on a green stool at the corner of the bar. The guy two seats to the left is five cigarettes in. I meet my neighbors to the right: a rental car agent who works in the Tokyo Station and her chef friend who works at an izakaya. As we talk, a fish broker sits in the empty seat to my left. Almost immediately, we've opened the translation apps on our phones and are chattering away. "Do you like to drink?" the fish broker asks while sharing some sake. "I love alcohol." The apps and everyone's willingness to use them allow us to have surprisingly intimate and detailed conversations. In all my years of travel writing, I've never used a translation app this way, and I'm stunned at how quickly it allows you to create a conversation with some depth to it. First, I get them to tell me what to eat. I start with an herby meatball on a stick, ham tonkatsu, and an only-in-Tokyo casserole-like dish called monja. These are followed by slabs of wasabi-dabbed cheese wrapped in nori, horse mackerel sashimi, and grilled dried anchovies with mayonnaise. It's all good to very good, and there's a fair amount of sharing among strangers. I ask about the clientele and how they all seem to know each other, and the rental car agent tells me that even if you're by yourself, "there are many people who often come, so everyone gets along well." The vibe of the evening is a slow crescendo, our chatter building to the point where three or four of us are simultaneously talking into our phones and thrusting them in front of one another, all with a remarkable sense of good cheer. The fish broker is jokey and friendly, and it turns out he comes in about once a week. People sit close, lean in, and touch each other on the shoulder while they speak. Someone says, "The toilet here is interesting. You should go." I comply, and it turns out to have a surprisingly large and vibrant fish tank. At one point, an elderly couple comes in, and along with ordering dinner and drinks they've brought in a bag full of homemade fried chicken for the owner. She distributes pieces of it to her patrons at the bar, a move received with great excitement. As this happens, I just look around, appreciating the happy bubble surrounding the restaurant and marvel at my luck. I've found something more magic than I dared to hope for. In all my years of writing about food and restaurants, this memory will be among the most indelible. "You may have discovered the best shop in Tokyo," says the fish broker. While this was the most magical night of my trip, the bonhomie was not at all uncommon. In fact, it's closer to the norm. So many nights end up with me walking out of a restaurant and snapping a selfie with a gaggle of new friends. To find these places, I'd wander smaller neighborhoods, take my time, look for little places with the right vibe, and keep my heart open. For semi-outgoing travelers who like to eat and meet locals, it's wonderful. ## Local Flavors A few days later, my intrepid interpreter Mai and I meet Takanori Nakamura, a food writer and television personality and the Japan chair for Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. He's wearing a blue blazer with a puffy pocket square over a yellow argyle sweater and low-top cowboy boots, a dandy in a diner. The spot, an izakaya called Tohachi, is a few steps from the Nakameguro station, and one stop from where he lived as a university student in the 1980s. There's a mix of Eastern and Western seating styles, and the walls are festooned with paper tags called tanzaku that list menu items. Customers' personal shochu bottles line the half wall in front of our sunken bar seats. Over little macaroni-salad otōshi—amuse-bouche–style appetizers—along with fish cakes, croquettes, sashimi, and delicious thin slices of fatty cured sausage, all washed down by fantastic regional sakes, he explains the importance of izakaya in personal terms. "There are so many kinds of food at a place like this. It's very cozy and very inexpensive. If this restaurant is famous, it's because everything is homemade," he says, noting how many restaurants now outsource work to centralized industrial kitchens. Here, it's homemade and familiar. "It's always maintained the same taste. The same! And the same family runs it. Yet when I came here 40 years ago, the competition between mom-and-pop and industrial was already happening. That's when I knew that I wanted to be a food writer." "This was a vital moment for me, and coming back here helps me remember that time," he says, drawing a line in the air from the present to the past. As he talks, my eyes settle on the half wall in front of me where a laminated article with his photo on it sings the praises of the very fish cakes we are eating. "In Japan, each region has a different cuisine. It's kind of a wonderland. The sake here comes from all over the country. Izakaya is an assembly of all of the different parts." I'm about to ask what he'd order at his dream izakaya, then realize it's right in front of us. Mai adds a little aside to her translating: "He's brought us to his Midnight Diner." I keep this in my head throughout the rest of the trip and keep finding that with that bit of openness on my part, I'd receive even more in return, having conversations with curious locals at almost every place I visit. On my last night, I go to the little neighborhood bar where for one week I've been a local, take a selfie with my new friends as I walk out and make my way back to my guest house, thinking up my own little variation on Master's opening-credit monologue: Do places like Midnight Diner even exist? More than I dared to hope.
The BBC	[ "Wind", "Bridgnorth" ]	# Shropshire Christmas events cancelled over Storm Darragh fears By Chloe Hughes December 5th, 2024 04:37 PM --- Christmas events have been cancelled in Shropshire as heavy rain and strong winds are forecast, prompting serious safety concerns. Bridgnorth Town Council said it had reluctantly decided to cancel its Christmas lights switch-on event on Friday, while Madeley Town Council postponed its touring Santa Christmas float planned for Friday and Saturday. Much Wenlock Christmas Fayre will also no longer go ahead on Saturday over concerns for stallholders and visitors. The Met office has issued yellow warnings for wind and rain in the county from Thursday to Sunday. Bridgnorth Town Council added the lights would be turned on at a safe time during the weekend. The Christmas float was due to tour around Madeley, Sutton Hill and Woodside. Madeley Town Council said it would instead go ahead on both 11 and 19 December. "This does not affect the community events at the Park Lane Centre and Hub on the Hill which will be going ahead as planned," it said.
TechCrunch	[ "India", "IPOs", "Mobikwik" ]	# MobiKwik's IPO will value it at $250M, 73% less than its last private valuation By Manish Singh December 6th, 2024 06:33 AM --- MobiKwik, an Indian financial services startup, has cut the size of its planned IPO for the third time, setting a price band of ₹265 to ₹279 ($3.1 to $3.3) that values it at $250 million — down sharply from its last private valuation of $924 million in 2021. The Gurugram-based fintech, backed by Peak XV and ADIA, is seeking to raise about $69 million in the IPO, well below the $255 million it initially targeted back in 2021. The IPO opens on December 11, and the stock will start trading on December 18. The 15-year-old startup operates one of the most widely used mobile wallet apps in India. But it has struggled to maintain relevance after a government-backed protocol, UPI, saw broader adoption. The company has raised more than $268 million to date. MobiKwik says it will use the proceeds from the IPO to fund its growth and to invest in AI. The startup serves 161 million users and 4.26 million merchants.
Wired	[ "buying guides", "shopping", "cold brew", "coffee makers" ]	# 11 Best Cold-Brew Coffee Makers (2024): Oxo, KitchenAid, and More By Matthew Korfhage June 22nd, 2018 08:00 AM --- Good cold-brewed coffee tastes like magic. Learn how to make it right—no barista necessary. A classic cold-brew maker is a little like a kindergarten art teacher for coffee. It requires a whole lot of patience—and really it's just there to let the coffee express itself. And so the best cold-brew coffee maker isn't necessarily the most high-tech. It's often the device that best gets out of the way, granting cool-steeped coffee grounds the space to slowly release their natural sweetness and most delicate flavors—not to mention a bracing hit of caffeine. The result is a refreshing and low-acidity brew that's gentle on both the stomach and the palate. But as with all subtle things, what goes wrong while making cold brew can also be subtle. We carefully tested dozens of cold-brew devices to find our favorites, the ones that consistently lead to a full-flavored and full-bodied cup without off-notes or unwanted grittiness. We assessed ease of use, consistency of brews, simple messiness, and simple beauty. And we also tried a new generation of devices that aim to hurry up the process, from slow-drip coffee devices that look like chemistry sets to some of the most hyped new devices in the coffee world—to see whether any of them can match up to the long, slow process of just letting coffee be itself. Be sure to check out our other coffee guides to round out your coffee tool set, like the Best Espresso Machines, Best Latte & Cappuccino Makers, Best Portable Coffee Makers, Best Coffee Subscriptions, and Best Coffee Grinders. Updated December 2024: We've added the Fellow Aiden, Cumulus, Bodum Melior and Bean, Kinto Capsule, Ovalware Cold Brew Maker, and Mueller Smoothbrew, and adjusted picks, pricing, and product descriptions throughout. Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting that's too important to ignore for just $2.50 $1 per month for 1 year. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive subscriber-only content. Subscribe Today. ## Best Brewers If you want the sweet, smooth, full-bodied character of classic cold brew, it turns out nothing beats a full-immersion device like the Oxo Compact. The robust and lovely coffee we've made with this device compared favorably to the best packaged cold brews—but at a fraction of the cost per cup. The Oxo's brewing chamber is basically a bucket, with grounds steeped directly in the water and then filtered out. A device like this, so simple you can hardly call it a device, is almost certainly what your local cafe uses to make the cold brew you pay $5 or more a cup to receive. So what gives the Oxo Compact the edge over similar devices, including the iconically classic Toddy? Ease, elegance, flexibility, a lack of mess, and a firm respect for shelf space. The Oxo's "rainmaker" lid provides the water agitation needed to extract a full-flavored brew without additional stirring. Filtration is as easy as placing the immersion chamber atop Oxo's glass carafe, and waiting 15 minutes. You can adjust your desired strength to your heart's content. And the device's mesh filter can be augmented with an optional additional paper filter for a cleaner-tasting, fine-free cold brew that'll keep its flavor longer. All parts unscrew easily and can be cleaned with ease, and the device's design is low-key graceful, with a cork-topped and airtight carafe that a previous Wired reviewer has called "adorable." When you want to stow the Oxo, the carafe fits inside the device's other half like a Russian nesting doll. One overnight steep makes about a pint of cold brew, meaning the Oxo Compact is best suited for making strong cold brew concentrate that you can dilute one-to-one with water or milk. We recommend 110 grams (about 4 ounces) of course-grind coffee, plus 600 milliliters (about 20 ounces) of water. Why? This uses up about one-third of a standard 12-ounce coffee bag, and yields four to five sturdy cups of cold brew after you dilute to drinking strength. If you need larger cold-brew batches for a big household or a serious caffeine habit, we'll steer you to the larger Oxo Good Grips or the Toddy. Japanese-style iced coffee, aka "Flash Brew," took the internet by storm in the waning days of the pandemic. It sounds fancy and exotic, but the mechanics are simple: Use your preferred drip device (most very-online coffee geeks agree a pour-over is the only correct option) to slowly brew coffee directly over a pot or carafe filled with ice, thus cooling the coffee in a "flash." The magic is in the ratio of water to grounds as well as the timing, which is simple in theory but a pain in the ass in practice. Yet again the Fellow Aiden (8/10, WIRED Recommends) handles the annoying stuff for you, while doing things its own way. Aiden's "Cold Brew" function is not flash coffee, nor quite a cold brew. The Aiden uses a hot initial bloom of water to aid full extraction, but brews the rest of the way with a slow drip of cool water. The result is a faster, brighter cold-drip coffee without the bitter character of some iced coffee. Dial in your desired output in ounces, and the machine tells you how many grams of ground coffee you'll need. Pop in the correct brew basket, dial in the matching brew head, then spend the next hour or so doing literally anything else. In our tests, an output setting of 16 ounces required 35 grams of grounds and a 90-minute brew time. We used our trusty Kirkland Signature Organic Ethiopia ground on a setting just a few clicks coarser than an espresso grind. After the machine beeped, the pot was filled with a rich 75-degree-Fahrenheit liquid that barely melted the ice it was poured over, eschewing any bitter notes caused by shocking the brew in ice for a smooth cup with mild grassy notes and the beans' signature wine-y aftertaste. The machines are coming for our barista jobs, and in this case I'm totally OK with it. —Pete Cottell The WIRED Gear team has liked Oxo's full-sized cold brew maker for years (8/10 and our WIRED Recommends). It's a cold brew connoisseur's dream rig that's meant to sit proudly on your kitchen counter. Oxo's full-sized offers similar upsides to the Compact model, including the rainmaker pouring device and paper/mesh filter options. The difference is the larger model can produce 24 to 28 ounces of full-flavored cold brew. The trade-off for the added capacity is that the stand will require significantly more dedicated shelf space, both in height and breadth. And for me at least, counter space is always at a premium. After letting your coffee sit on the counter or in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours, flip a switch and your brew cleanly drains into the decanter. It also comes with a measuring lid. Perhaps most important, the coffee it makes tastes just as fantastic as the Compact. I have a perhaps irrational affection for the Kinto Capsule, both for its pleasing heft and shape and an elegant omnidirectional pouring device that doubles as a lid. I'll be honest: I have little love for most pitcher-style devices. In theory, they're designed to remove the mess and fuss of making cold brew. In practice, most make weak and inconsistent coffee even after a full day of steeping. This is a sad situation usually caused by simple geometry. The ratio of coffee to water is generally inflexible and too dilute. The coffee grounds can clump inside the filter basket if they're packed too densely, and extraction is often unpredictable. It's a lot to think about. And yet over and over, I came back to this one-liter Kinto, which makes about five servings of satisfying, complex, ready-to-drink cold brew. The mesh filter is easy to clean and doesn't clog like the laser-cut metal filters on some similar devices. Its thin-cylindered shape provides lots of surface-area contact between the coffee basket and the water reservoir, making for both good extraction and a snug fit in a fridge door. Plus, that little cap atop the Capsule's coffee filter chamber, allowing you to agitate the carafe without getting grit in your cold brew? Chef's kiss. The simplicity of the Mizudashi's design makes it an absolute joy to use. It's an elegant, understated device that works just as well for coffee as it does for tea. The reusable filter provides less filtration than a paper filter—which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The presence of microscopic coffee particles in a cup of cold brew will leave some sediment in the bottom of the cup, but they also provide a little more body to the brew itself. A silken mouthfeel that, in my opinion, helps the cold brew stand up to the addition of milk a bit better without getting watery. The thing I love the most about the Mizudashi is its size. The 600-milliliter version is perfect for the amount of cold brew I usually want to have on hand, and the shape and build quality of the Mizudashi just makes me want to make cold brew, and that's an important quality. Hario is a Japanese company with a long record of making quality glassware, and it shows in the craftsmanship of this simple carafe. Japan has a long history with cold brew, by some accounts going as far back as the 1600s. The Mizudashi is named after the cold-steeping method used for tea that was reportedly the inspiration for early Japanese coffee drinkers to first try cold-steeping coffee grounds. It's an acknowledgment of the history of this preparation method, and it speaks to the care and thought that went into the design of this cold brew maker. —Jaina Grey The Bruer is the device that truly opened our reviewers' eyes to the magic of iced slow-drip brewing—a process that can evince lighter and brighter flavors that better showcase single-origin beans than the gentler, more muted results of cold brew. And though it's called "slow-drip," the process is quite a bit faster than traditional cold brew. Unlike some lesser slow-drip makers that have had mixed results for WIRED testers, the Cold Bruer Drip makes delightful, concentrated, virtually grit-free slow-drip coffee. Instead of asking you to pour a bunch of grounds into water and let it sit, the Bruer lets water drip through the grounds using gravity. It looks a little bananas at first, but it's simple. You fill the bottom of a glass container with coarse coffee grounds. Below the grounds is a steel mesh filter. After you dampen those grounds, put a paper filter on top, snap in the silicone seal, and place the container into the glass carafe. Fill up the top section with water and ice, then twist the knob in the center to slow or speed up the drip—you want a drop per second—as needed. It's not foolproof. You must follow the directions precisely, including using ice—and if your coffee grind is too fine, water may form pathways through it, like an ant colony. If what's dripping out doesn't look dark, or it's coming out quickly, adjust your tactics. It also holds only 20 ounces of water, and since it's made of glass, it's fragile. Some buyers have complained of drip-valve issues, but I have not encountered any yet. —Jeff Van Camp Never in our memory has a cold-brew device arrived with as much hoopla and fanfare as the Cumulus. Why? It is the promise of a unicorn: a frothing cup of nitro cold brew, made near instantaneously at home by a whizzbangy machine conceived by former Starbucks innovation czar Mesh Gelman. Look closely, and you'll realize what the device actually does is make cold brew out of ... cold brew. Cumulus brews it the old-fashioned way, in cold water, over the course of many hours, then vacuum distills the brew to condense it into a minuscule and proprietary coffee capsule that costs about $2.50 a pop. Insert that capsule into a Cumulus Machine, and it'll unpack that super-dense concentrate into a frigid 10-ounce glass of cold brew, or a fabulously frothy nitro version made by pressure-injecting air into the coffee. Another novelty? A bracing double-shot of cold espresso, complete with actual crema—ready for a milk mixer or service in an espresso martini. We're still testing the many flavors, from light to dark to decaf to capsules specially designed for espresso. But early worries are that vacuum distillation might impart a somewhat processed character to the coffee's flavor—a rubbery tang that not everyone will be sensitive to. My mother, on a visit, raved about the abundant froth in the nitro, and preferred the result to packaged nitro cold brew. So far, I'm less convinced. But the nitro bubbles are indeed abundant and impressive. And the cold espresso feels like more than a novelty: it's an actual treat. We don't expect the device will win over cold brew nerds or the craft coffee crowd. But on-demand nitro cold brew at home will be an extravagant luxury for those who like to mix cold brew with milk and sugar. If you'd otherwise be shelling out $7 for the complicated cold concoctions at Gelman's alma mater, Starbucks, you might even make back the device's $700 entry fee. Yes, you can make good cold brew in an Aeropress! All you have to do is pour some grounds in the Aeropress and top them off with cold water all the way up to the 4 on the cylinder. Give it a stir and place the plunger in the top, but don't press down. At this point I've found I get my best results by putting the whole thing in the fridge overnight. Once it has steeped, put the fully loaded Aeropress on your cup of choice and press the plunger down about a third of the way. I like my cold brew small, over ice, with two to three parts milk. I find I can get three to four cold brews out of one steeping with this method, but I treat it like espresso and only use about one shot-glass-worth at a time for a full cup. If you like yours a bit stronger, you might only get about two big glasses of cold brew out of this method. —Jaina Grey The Toddy has been around since the 1960s. It's similar to the Oxo brewing system, just a little more DIY. It's basically a big bucket with grounds in it and a glass carafe to hold the coffee when it's done brewing. The brew bucket is made of plastic, and it requires paper liners and filter pads that you'll have to keep buying (filter pads last about 10 brews, or three months). You have to remove a rubber stopper to drain the coffee after 24 hours, which will always get your hands messy—cleanup is time-consuming. Fortunately, it makes rich, full-bodied cold brew that tastes as robust as any other method I've tried, sometimes better. Those pads and paper filters are annoying, but they work. If you're OK with a little inconvenience, the Toddy makes a damn good cold-brew concentrate. It's similar to the Filtron Brewer, but more well constructed. There's even a giant 2.5-gallon Toddy that's used in coffee shops. —Jeff Van Camp I used French presses as a quasi-control in my testing, and the Secura is the nicest I've tried. To my dismay, I haven't been able to get any French press to produce cold-brewed coffee with flavor that's as smooth or rich as with other methods. It's usually a little bitter and too gritty. But it's still quite drinkable, and if you play around enough or find the right coffee grounds, you can probably make a batch that you like. You might already own a French press for hot coffee; if you don't, I recommend the Secura. It's made of stainless steel and well insulated to keep cold brew cold or hot coffee hot, and the handle doesn't get too hot. —Jeff Van Camp KitchenAid doesn't make the absolute best cold brew I've had, but more care went into its design than almost any other pot I've listed. It's made of steel and thick glass, with a built-in handle and a spigot for dispensing cold brew—perfect if you have a shelf to set it on, in or out of the fridge. (There's an XL version that holds 40-ish ounces of coffee and has a stand to sit on the countertop.) It has a stainless steel grounds tray (with a handle!) that you set in the larger glass container. Dampen your grounds, then fill it with water. It says it holds 28 ounces, but I easily fit 32. Let it sit for at least 12 hours, as usual (24 if you fridge it), and you're good to go. The steel filter is too porous and lets a lot of sediment through, but KitchenAid smartly has a textured bottom that lets the grit settle on the sides of the bottom. It doesn't seem to come through the spigot, so after my first gritty glass, the coffee was a lot smoother and quite rich. I haven't had any issues, but a few users have reported the spigot leaking. —Jeff Van Camp ## Coffee & Accessories I like the Fellow Prismo for all my Aeropress use, and it's great for cold brew. It comes with a reusable filter and replaces the cap that goes on the end of your Aeropress with one that's a little thicker and has single hole. This config makes the coffee come out of the Aeropress under more pressure than with the standard Aeropress cap. That way you get a little aeration and, in my experience, a cleaner cup than from just metal filters in the traditional Aeropress cap. —Jaina Grey If you prefer cold brew with as little coffee silt as possible, the Shimmy can definitely help. It's a sieve you fill with coffee grounds, then shake to separate out more of the fine particles, or fines, from your coffee. During testing, I found it significantly reduced the silty dregs from the bottom of my cup, but a little bit remained, though not nearly enough to spoil that last sip the way too much sediment can. —Jaina Grey These ready-to-brew pouches from Partners are like big tea bags full of coffee. They're great for turning any pitcher or big jar into a cold brew maker. Given their size, I found I got the best coffee after at least 24 hours of steeping, and it was fully flavored, rich, silky, and sweet with just a hint of acidity. —Jaina Grey The perfect cold-brew coffee beans are in the eye of the beholder, but there are a few schools of thought. Most cold brew blends tend to reinforce the brew's smoothness and drinkability, of course. But those who mix with milk might favor roasty and chocolatey dark beans that loudly scream "coffee" amid the dairy. For those whose hot-side tastes veer closer to pour-over, try cold brewing or slow-dripping a medium roast, fruit-intensive African. After multiple blind taste tests over the years, I always come back to Portland's Stumptown Coffee for sweet and balanced cold-brew flavors. Its excellent Original Cold Brew blend is sadly only seasonal, but its Homestead blend also makes for a deliciously sweet and smooth cold brew. If you blindfold me, spin me around, confuse me by shouting, and then ask me what classic cold brew tastes like? This is probably closest to the flavor I'd describe. That said, the best and most interesting cold brew we've had from Stumptown comes from its single-origin Ethiopia Guji—whose seasonal bottled version wins national blind taste tests the way Englishmen win at darts. Cold brew made with the Guji is a heady mix of caramel smoothness and bright berry pop. The first time I tried it seven years ago, it changed what I look for in a cold-brew bean. The Playlist blend from Oakland's Blue Bottle also makes for a wildly bright and fruity take on cold brew, but it's hardly for the budget-conscious. Otherwise, Stone Street's Arabica Colombian Supremo dark roast and Bizzy's organic Smooth & Sweet Blend are two favorites of former WIRED reviewer and cold-brew aficionado Jeff Van Camp. Each is also made specifically with cold brewing in mind and come coarsely ground (a coarse grind is usually best for cold brew), or as whole beans if you own a grinder. Below are some cold brew makers we liked but didn't exactly love, or they had features we enjoyed but some drawbacks that kept them from making our best-of list. We didn't like these cold brew makers much at all.
Associated Press News	[ "Noticias", "Health" ]	# Departamento de Agricultura de EEUU ordena pruebas de gripe aviar en leche a nivel nacional By JONEL ALECCIA December 6th, 2024 09:23 PM --- El gobierno de Estados Unidos ordenó el viernes la realización de pruebas en el suministro nacional de leche para detectar la gripe aviar y así monitorear mejor la propagación del virus en las vacas lecheras. A partir del 16 de diciembre, será necesario realizar pruebas en la leche cruda o no pasteurizada de granjas lecheras y procesadoras de todo el país cuando se solicite, informó el Departamento de Agricultura de Estados Unidos (USDA, por sus siglas en inglés). Las pruebas comenzarán en seis estados: California, Colorado, Míchigan, Mississippi, Oregon y Pensilvania. Los funcionarios indicaron que la medida tiene como objetivo "contener y finalmente eliminar el virus", conocido como Tipo A H5N1, que se detectó por primera vez en vacas lecheras de Estados Unidos en marzo. Desde entonces, se ha confirmado que más de 700 hatos en 15 estados están infectados. "Esto dará a las granjas y a los trabajadores agrícolas una mayor confianza en la salubridad de sus animales y en su capacidad para protegerse, y nos ayudará a controlar y detener rápidamente la propagación del virus a nivel nacional", dijo en un comunicado el secretario de Agricultura, Tom Vilsack. El riesgo para las personas por la gripe aviar sigue siendo bajo, dijeron los funcionarios del USDA. La pasteurización mata el virus en la leche, de manera que es segura para el consumo. Veterinarios, agricultores, científicos y académicos han estado solicitando pruebas de leche a nivel nacional durante meses, dijo Keith Poulsen, director del Laboratorio de Diagnóstico Veterinario de Wisconsin, quien lideró los esfuerzos. "Es otro paso en la dirección correcta", dijo Poulsen. "Están llegando a la conclusión de que necesitamos un mejor control sobre esto". Los productores y procesadores de lácteos en Estados Unidos han sido reacios a realizar pruebas en animales o leche para detectar el virus, por temor a repercusiones económicas o de otro tipo. Jamie Jonker, director científico de la Federación Nacional de Productores de Leche, dijo que el gremio apoya los esfuerzos del USDA para eliminar el virus. Bajo la orden federal, los productores de lácteos y aquellos que manejan leche cruda destinada a la pasteurización deben proporcionar muestras de la leche a pedido para las pruebas diagnósticas de gripe aviar. Requiere la notificación de pruebas positivas al USDA y exige que los propietarios de rebaños proporcionen información básica para permitir el rastreo de la enfermedad en el ganado. La medida se suma a una orden federal del 24 de abril que exigía hacer pruebas a cierto ganado lechero antes de que pudiera ser trasladado entre estados y requería la notificación de cualquier prueba que resultara positiva. A pesar de esa orden, el virus ha seguido propagándose, señaló Poulsen. Las pruebas han demostrado que la leche cruda de vacas infectadas contiene altas cargas de virus vivo. Al menos 58 personas en Estados Unidos han sido infectadas con gripe aviar, principalmente trabajadores agrícolas que se enfermaron levemente después de un contacto cercano con vacas infectadas, incluyendo su leche, o con aves de corral infectadas. La gripe aviar también se ha estado propagando entre aves silvestres y varios otros animales. Los funcionarios federales continúan recomendando que no se consuma leche sin pasteurizar, ya que ésta puede contener una serie de gérmenes que enferman a las personas. En California, los funcionarios pusieron en cuarentena una granja y detuvieron la distribución de leche después de que se detectara el virus de la gripe aviar en leche cruda vendida en tiendas. Raw Farm de Fresno emitió un retiro voluntario de leche cruda y de crema producida después del 9 de noviembre.
CBC News	[ "Russia", "Syria", "Turkey", "Abu Muhammed al-Jolani", "Haid Haid", "Hayat Tahrir al-Sham", "Vladimir Putin", "Bombings", "War and unrest", "Civil wars", "War crimes" ]	# In Syria, a ruthless dictator is under siege. Will anyone step up to save him? By Chris Brown December 6th, 2024 02:27 PM --- Front lines are collapsing and Bashar al-Assad's enemies are celebrating Across northern and central Syria this week, families who've been torn apart by more than a decade of civil war have been holding joyous reunions. "I didn't believe it, it was very emotional," said Ismail Alabullah, a volunteer with the Syrian NGO the White Helmets, as he described returning to the city of Aleppo for the first time since 2013 and reuniting with his sister. "I couldn't believe I was seeing her again," he told CBC News from northern Syria. "I lost my brother, my mother and father over the past two years — I couldn't say goodbye to any of them. Now, it's just me and my sister." The White Helmets, a first responders' group best-known for rescuing and evacuating civilians from active war zones, are considered arch enemies of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Since 2016, Assad's forces have controlled Aleppo. But with his army now retreating from territory where just days ago it seemed to be firmly in charge, families stranded on opposite sides of the front lines are able to be together again. ## Dynamic situation After years of stalemate, Syria's map of control is being redrawn almost by the hour. First, Aleppo — a city of more than 2.3 million people and the second-largest in the country — fell to opposition forces on Nov. 27. In the days that followed, so did many towns to the south. On Thursday, Assad's forces abandoned the strategic centre of Hama when rebel forces pushed in. Most observers expect an assault on a key Assad power base — the city of Homs, 40 kilometres to the south of Hama — is only hours away. If opposition forces are successful, the move would cut off Assad's strongholds along the Syrian coast from the capital, Damascus. "It's clear that the regime itself cannot defend these territories," said Haid Haid, a Syria analyst with Chatham House, a London-based think-tank. This conclusion leads to inevitable speculation over whether Assad's government may be hurtling faster than almost anyone expected toward its demise, after surviving years of intense fighting in a civil war. "No one can give any absolute answers," Haid told CBC News from Istanbul. "I think it's safe to say that Assad is not 100 per cent secure, but no one knows when and if the regime will collapse completely." ## Political dynasty Assad and his family have ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than 50 years. Since he took over as president in 2000 after his father's death, the UN says Assad's forces have killed more than 350,000 opponents, jailed and tortured countless thousands more and used banned nerve gas on opposition towns to deter any challengers to his rule. In 2011, Syria was rocked by anti-Assad protests, inspired by anti-regime demonstrations across the wider region, known as the Arab Spring. Assad responded with a violent crackdown that evolved into a full-scale civil war. By 2015, opposition groups — and forces of the Islamic State (IS) — had seized vast swaths of the country. But intervention from Russia turned the tide. A devastating aerial bombing campaign by Vladimir Putin's forces secured Assad's position, but at a horrendous cost. Humanitarian groups accused Russia and Syria of war crimes for indiscriminately bombing civilians using cluster munitions. After a concerted effort led by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in the east — and with help from Russia — IS was eventually pushed back into a few pockets in the desert. Since 2016, the battle lines of the conflict have remained largely in stasis, with Assad's Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in control of most of the country's major cities. ## Major successes In Idlib province, next to Turkey, forces belonging to a one-time al-Qaeda spinoff, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have controlled most of the territory. And the group has spearheaded most of the battlefield successes over the past 10 days. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has been listed as a terrorist entity by Canada since 2013. But more recently, its 42-year-old leader, Abu Muhammed al-Jolani, has disavowed any connection with the group or its radical ideology. In a social media post on Thursday, HTS unusually referred to him by his given name — Ahmad al-Shara — rather than al-Jolani, which he uses in military settings. This appeared to showcase him as a statesman or politician rather than the leader of a banned militia. Al-Jolani also gave a rare interview to a Western media outlet, telling CNN his goal is to overthrow Assad's regime and replace it with a new government for all Syrians. The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think-tank that studies global conflict zones, noted that a major reason HTS has gained territory so rapidly has been its willingness to negotiate deals with local communities to avoid fighting. ISW said two majority-Christian towns and one largely Shia city had all come to agreements with HTS, allowing the group's fighters to avoid costly combat in rural areas. Longtime Syria watcher Charles Lister, who publishes a weekly newsletter on the Syrian conflict, has written that HTS has built a formidable diplomatic presence beyond its base in Idlib province, by engaging with local Syrian tribes and other social bodies to improve the group's outreach. Lister says as a result, there have been few clashes with other Syrian opposition groups — particularly the powerful Kurds — as HTS's forces have moved rapidly through the countryside. Finally, Lister says al-Jolani has attempted to "replicate a sovereign government" in Idlib province, with HTS issuing ID cards, administering the banking system and taking on many of the functions usually performed by municipalities. Nonetheless, HTS's listing as a terror entity has put NGOs and Western governments in a challenging position, with most unwilling to directly help the group, resulting in a worsening humanitarian situation in places such as Aleppo. Ismail Alabduallah, the White Helmet worker, told CBC News the city is already seeing food shortages. "The situation is very difficult. Some NGOs we co-ordinate with have this responsibility, and now no one is distributing bread every day in Aleppo," he said. "They are working to make the bakeries operate again as before." ## Foreign actors With the city of Homs, another key power base for Assad, just a half-hour drive away from advancing HTS forces, the key question is whether any of the regime's allies will intervene militarily to stop the latest opposition push. The Iranian government has reportedly ordered some of the militias it controls in neighbouring Iraq to cross the border to help its ally Assad. But their presence on the battlefield has yet to be felt. Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said Thursday that his group will help Assad, and there reports that what the group calls "supervising forces" arrived in Syria overnight. Until recently, Iran-backed Hezbollah was arguably the most powerful militia in the Middle East. But Israeli assassinations of its top leadership and an immense aerial campaign against its fighters in southern Lebanon have severely weakened the group. One neighbour Assad won't be able to count on is Turkey. Its government has been a major supplier of weapons and money to several opposition groups, and on Friday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hopes the Syrian opposition forces continue to make gains. That leaves Vladimir Putin, who most observers credit with saving Assad the last time opposition forces encroached in 2016. "It's not clear where Moscow is heading or what its main priority is at this point," said Chatham House's Haid Haid. Russian bombing of the Aleppo area and of the key approaches to Homs has resumed in recent days, but with Putin's war in Ukraine a drain on its combat resources, Russia's options for intervention may be limited. Russia has leased a naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus since the 1970s. It also has a sizeable airbase outside Latakia, further to the north. Both could be vulnerable to opposition forces if Assad's lines continue to collapse. Haid Haid says even if Assad manages to fend off the opposition advances, Russia has already emerged as one of major losers of renewed fighting. "Russia's past victories have been forgotten now because of the recent defeat of regime forces," he said. "It means Russia has not been able to support its allies."
The BBC	[ "Marble Arch", "Westminster Council", "London", "City of Westminster", "Marks & Spencer" ]	# M&S Oxford Street redevelopment plan given government approval By Jess Warren December 5th, 2024 05:05 PM --- Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has granted permission for Marks & Spencer to demolish and redevelop its flagship London store. Rayner approved plans to flatten and rebuild the retail giant's Marble Arch store in Oxford Street. M&S previously took legal action against the Conservative government in the High Court over its "unusual" decision to refuse permission for the scheme. M&S CEO Stuart Machin said he was delighted at Rayner's decision, adding that the company would "move as fast as we can" to make progress. "After three unnecessary years of delays, obfuscation and political posturing at its worst under the previous government, our plans for Marble Arch – the only retail-led regeneration proposal on Oxford Street – have finally been approved," he said. "We can now get on with the job of helping to rejuvenate the UK's premier shopping street." Mr Machin said the shop would support 2,000 jobs. Westminster City Council originally approved M&S's plans to tear down Orchard House, an Art Deco building, and replace it with a modernised shop featuring a new café, offices and a gym in 2021. But Michael Gove, then communities secretary, launched an inquiry and eventually blocked the proposals. However, the High Court ruled that Mr Gove had misinterpreted the national planning policy framework and "erred in law". Adam Hug, leader of Westminster City Council, welcomed the approval, adding: "This scheme has significant implications for the future of the West End and it was right to consider the detail carefully." Charles Begley, chief executive of the London Property Alliance, said the uncertainty had damaged growth. "The fact that the property industry had been waiting the outcome of this case for clarity is clearly a failure of national policy," he said. "The application itself had unfortunately become a lightning rod for the 'retrofit v redevelopment' debate. "But we need to recognise that a more nuanced approach is needed."
TechCrunch	[ "Bill Staples", "ceo", "gitlab", "In Brief" ]	# GitLab names Bill Staples as its new CEO By Kyle Wiggers December 6th, 2024 02:45 AM --- GitLab, the popular developer and security platform, has named a new CEO, Bill Staples, effective immediately. Staples, who has also been appointed to the company's board of directors, succeeds CEO Sid Sijbrandij, who's battling a rare form of cancer. Sijbrandij will transition to executive chair of the board. "I believe [Bill's] passion for software, commitment to customers, and strong track record make him the right person to lead the company going forward," Sijbrandij said in a statement. "This is the right time to focus on my cancer treatment and health." Staples was previously the CEO at New Relic, the web tracking and analytics firm. Prior to his tenure there, Staples headed Microsoft's Azure application platform, where he helped incubate products like the streaming infrastructure that once powered Azure and Office 365 video services. Staples was also an Adobe VP for several years, spearheading the development of cloud services and analytics tooling.
Wired	[ "science", "environment", "fire", "animals", "wired uk", "drones" ]	# Environmental Sensing Is Here, Tracking Everything from Forest Fires to Threatened Species By Sabrina Weiss December 6th, 2024 07:30 AM --- The internet of things turned every device in your house into a smart something. Now it's coming for nature—to track forest fires and tree health or to listen out for threatened animals. You are in a lush forest. Sunlight filters through the bright green canopy, casting dappled shadows on the ground. Towering trees rise over delicate ferns, wildflowers, and colorful mushrooms. A deer slinks behind a shrub. But there are subtle signs of human intervention: small electronic devices gathering vital data on potential threats such as drought or pests and transmitting them miles away. Although technology has long been used to study animals and plants in forests, it's evolving rapidly—becoming smaller, smarter, and more interconnected. Some devices are so small they can be placed on a single leaf. "For developers of such devices, the forest presents a completely new challenge," says Ulrike Wallrabe, a professor of microsystem technology. Here, tech must withstand ever-changing conditions, from fluctuating temperatures to rain and snowfall, and even curious creatures, such as mice. Once up and running, the new generation of smart devices will offer unprecedented insights into the forest. "Drones already monitor large areas of forest, but they cannot explain why one tree is thriving and another is struggling," says Wallrabe. "We need to understand what's happening on a small scale and over time." Wallrabe and her fellow researchers are working on a range of devices that will be deployed from the ground to the treetops, transmitting data from Germany's Black Forest to their labs at the University of Freiburg. At the same time, scientists and engineers at other companies are also focused on making their devices unobtrusive and, ultimately, self-sustaining. ## Silvanet Wildfire Sensor Time is of the essence when fighting forest fires. Sensors attached to trunks "smell" tell-tale gases like hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and alert firefighters within the first hour—before satellites or cameras can spot open flames. German startup Dryad Networks has built AI into its solar-powered sensors to ensure that they can distinguish between real fires and, say, passing diesel trucks. ## Treevia Digital dendrometers relieve foresters of tedious work. As trees grow, the elastic band wrapped around their trunk stretches and transmits data directly to a computer. The lightweight device from Brazilian startup Treevia can even be attached to saplings. It also contains a humidity and heat sensor, providing insights into climatic impacts on reforested areas. ## The Guardian What does it take to catch illegal loggers or poachers? A smartphone is a good start. Rainforest Connection's recycled, solar-powered smartphone listens for the sound of chain saws or gunshots within a 1-mile radius. The recordings are transmitted to the cloud for analysis and alert local authorities in near real time. This device also provides insights into the distribution and calling behavior of animals. ## BiodivX Drone As animals move through trees, they shed DNA through feces, skin, and hair. This innovative drone collects what is known as environmental DNA (eDNA) from leaves and branches—with particles sticking to its adhesive strips. Scientists from Switzerland programmed the drone so it can navigate autonomously through dense forests and hover steadily around branches to take samples. ## Leaf Sensor Wallrabe and her team at the University of Freiburg have developed a glass capsule that measures gas exchange between a leaf and its surroundings. It can detect specific chemicals that trees emit under stress, for example, in the event of a drought, infestation, or disease. The capsule is transparent so that sunlight can reach the leaf without impairing its function. ## Plant-e When sunlight is limited, most devices are powered by batteries. Plant-e, a Dutch company spun out of Wageningen University, makes use of a natural process: Plants produce organic material through photosynthesis; some they use for growth, the rest ends up into the soil. Bacteria break down this material and release electrons that Plant-e uses to power its sensors. ## Seed-dropping drones To scale up and accelerate tree planting efforts, several companies, including UK-based Dendra Systems, have developed cutting-edge drones. These drones, loaded with an array of seeds, hover over target areas and release their precious cargo. This is particularly helpful in remote areas that are difficult for humans to access. By recording the exact location of drop sites, foresters can monitor growth and health of the newly planted trees. This article appears in the January/February 2025 issue of WIRED UK magazine.
CBC News	[ "2024", "South Korea political turmoil", "South Korea politics", "Yoon Suk Yeol impeachment vote", "Seoul", "South Korea", "Park Geun-hye", "Yoon Suk Yeol", "Protests and demonstrations", "Martial law", "Police", "Impeachments" ]	# South Korea's president apologizes to nation for declaring martial law December 7th, 2024 02:20 AM --- In televised address, President Yoon Suk Yeol tells public he's 'very sorry' South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol apologized for his attempt to impose martial law this week but did not resign, defying intense pressure to step down even from some in his ruling party and only hours ahead of a planned impeachment vote. Yoon said he would not seek to avoid legal and political responsibility for his decision to declare martial law for the first time in South Korea in decades. He said the decision was born of desperation and also promised not to make another attempt to impose martial law. Yoon's speech was the embattled leader's first public appearance since he rescinded the martial law order early on Wednesday, just six hours after it was declared, after parliament defied military and police cordons to vote against the decree. "I am very sorry and would like to sincerely apologize to the people who were shocked," Yoon said in a televised address to the nation, during which he bowed. "I leave it up to my party to take steps to stabilize the political situation in future, including the issue of my term in office," he added. Han Dong-hoon, leader of Yoon's People Power Party (PPP), said after the addres the president was no longer in a position to carry out his public duties and that his resignation was now unavoidable. On Friday, Han said Yoon was a danger to the country and needed to be removed from power, increasing the pressure on him to quit even though PPP members later reaffirmed a formal opposition to his impeachment. Han was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on Saturday, local Yonhap News reported. Under the constitution if Yoon resigns or is impeached then the prime minister, who was appointed by Yoon, becomes South Korea's interim president. It remained unclear ahead of the vote as to whether the impeachment motion will obtain the support of two-thirds of lawmakers it needs to move forward. On Saturday, most ruling party lawmakers were boycotting the parliamentary vote on the main opposition Democratic Party's motion to impeach Yoon. Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the Democratic Party, told reporters that Yoon's speech was "greatly disappointing" and the only way forward is his immediate resignation or impeachment. ## A shock to the nation Yoon shocked the nation late on Tuesday when he gave the military sweeping emergency powers in order to root out what he called "anti-state forces" and overcome obstructionist political opponents. Some PPP members urged Yoon to resign before the vote, saying they did not want a repeat of the 2016 impeachment of then-president Park Geun-hye, who left office following months of candlelit protests over an influence-peddling scandal. Her downfall triggered the implosion of the party and a victory by liberals in presidential and general elections. In scenes reminiscent of those protests, thousands of demonstrators holding candles assembled outside parliament on Friday night demanding Yoon's impeachment. More demonstrations are expected on Saturday during the vote. Prosecutors, the police and the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials have all launched probes into Yoon and senior officials involved in the martial law decree, seeking to pursue charges of insurrection and abuse of power, among others. The officials face potential charges of insurrection, abuse of authority and obstructing other people from exercising their rights. If convicted, the crime of leading an insurrection is punishable by death or life imprisonment, with or without prison labour.
The BBC	[ "A47", "King's Lynn" ]	# Man found beside A47 in King's Lynn died of head injury - police By BBC News December 5th, 2024 05:12 PM --- Police have said a man whose body was found beside a major road died from a "head injury". Emergency services were called to the A47 near King's Lynn at about 09:22 GMT on Monday. Norfolk Police said a Home Office post-mortem examination took place on Tuesday and the preliminary findings were that the man, aged in his 20s, died as "a result of a head injury". The force said the death was still being treated as unexplained and it was "working to understand the full circumstances". Earlier in the week, officers appealed for anyone with information or dashcam footage showing a man walking along the A47 Pullover Road, at Tilney All Saints, in the early hours.
Wired	[ "the monitor" ]	# Spotify Wrapped, TikTok—Maybe the Algorithms Are Losing Touch By Angela Watercutter December 6th, 2024 07:00 AM --- Once an internet cause célèbre, this year lots of folks turned cold on Spotify Wrapped. TikTok's year in review also felt unsurprising. Maybe our platforms know less about us than we think. If there's one term that's been used more than others when describing this year's Spotify Wrapped, it's this: flat. The New York Times said it. So did TikTokkers. Between its "Pink Pilates Princess Roller Skating Pop" phases and AI-generated mini-podcasts, lots of listeners took time away from the time-honored tradition of posting their cringiest Wrapped stats to say that this year's offerings were milquetoast at best. "Spotify Wrapped is a bit ... underwhelming this year," wrote one X user. "NOT worth the hype," offered another. The annual tradition "lost what made it so dynamic in the first place," wrote a third, citing things like location- and music-based Sound Towns that rolled out with Wrapped in previous years. "Which is to say that PEOPLE make things better. Those layoffs are showing." Quite a few frustrated Spotify users referenced layoffs at the company and questioned whether its shedding of key talent was to blame for Wrapped's fizzle. The company let go of some 1,500 people, 17 percent of its workforce, this time last year, something CEO Daniel Ek later acknowledged "did disrupt our day-to-day operations more than we anticipated." Seemingly, Wrapped relied on AI more than ever this year, with AI podcasts to analyze your listening habits, an algorithmic playlist hosted by Spotify's AI DJ, and bizarre, probably AI-generated genre descriptions. Yet it seems unlikely the layoffs were the only thing that impacted the quality of Wrapped this year. It could be that the algorithms are just losing touch. That's not to say they're not tracking stream numbers the way they used to—although there are conspiracy theories to that effect—but rather that everyone now knows they're being tracked, and algorithms just aren't able to pick up on organic trends the way they used to. After years of embarrassingly finding out that they spent more time listening to My Chemical Romance breakup songs than they did listening to their friends' advice, people are now self-conscious about what they play and in what volume. Just as much as everyone went into this year's Wrapped season prepared to brag about their Brat Summer, they were just as worried about telling on their Sad Bastard autumn. Parents, once again, found that their Wrapped wasn't about their own tastes, but their children's. Wrapped has ceased being about one person's surprising listening habits and more about nebulous shifts in vibe. Yes, lots of people listened to Chappell Roan and Kendrick Lamar this year. Is anyone the least bit stunned? But this isn't even just a Spotify issue. Lots of platforms now offer year-in-review wrap-ups, and nearly all of them feel like a collective shrug. Over on TikTok, the company touted that its users were very interested in being demure, very into Moo Deng. Yeah, no kidding. These revelations are about as shocking as the fact that there were 1.2 million BookTok posts in the first 10 months of the year, something anyone who has ever opened the app could probably tell you is a big part of the platform. Reading its annual report, I was reminded that, perhaps, TikTok's algorithm has gotten too good at pointing people in the direction of sure-fire hits and less good at loading FYPs with videos people will find incredibly inventive or fascinating. In other unsurprising news, horniness was big on Grindr this year. The hookup app's Unwrapped report also named Charli XCX as Mother of the Year and found that the Sex Position of the Year was missionary. Actually, maybe that is surprising. For Grindr, at least. My final thought, though, comes from a year-end mainstay that (I don't think) is algorithmically based: Oxford University Press' Word of the Year. Determined by popular vote, input from experts, and, as Oxford Languages president Casper Grathwohl told The New York Times, a little bit of "dark art," this year's word is ... drumroll ... "brain rot." Er, you know, the degeneration that comes from too much time looking at dumb stuff online. First, yes, that's two words. Second, other people also noticed this discrepancy, proving that maybe all of the internet's beloved year-end traditions are feeling the heat of social media scrutiny this year. "Brain rot" also beat out "demure" and "romantasy," the frequent BookTok topic. So, ultimately, maybe algorithms did impact this one, too, just not in the way you might expect. Maybe the real brain rot was all the decisions we made along the way. ## Loose Threads: Martial law on Bluesky. Earlier this week South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol briefly declared martial law in the country. The country's opposition parties have already moved to impeach him, but while it was happening, it served as one of Bluesky's first big news events to unfold on the platform. If you missed it, I highly suggest going back and reliving the moment through Verge features editor Sarah Jeong's semi-drunk skeets. Tsunami warning on Bluesky. On Thursday, Bluesky had another big news event: a tsunami warning that kept much of Northern California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, on edge for over an hour, sharing updates, cracking jokes, and relishing the fact that there was a new place to go to discuss these things. An astute skeet. About Chappell Roan and Twisted Sister. Need some holiday ... something? Advent Carolndar is back. It's a fun lil web show of made-up holiday carols from a pair of very witty theater nerds. If you haven't watched it before, go back and watch all the episodes from years past while you're on their Instagram page.
TechCrunch	[ "A.P. Moller Holding", "maersk", "neobank", "Zopa" ]	# Zopa, the UK neobank, snaps up $87M at a $1B+ valuation, eschewing the IPO route By Ingrid Lunden December 6th, 2024 12:05 AM --- Some believe Klarna's planned IPO in 2025 could set the stage for other fintech startups to go public. But with the tech IPO market still sluggish, one of the candidates hotly tipped to follow suit has instead just announced a fundraise, and its CEO says going public is "not a priority." Zopa, the U.K. neobank that provides loans, credit cards and savings accounts to some 1.3 million customers, has raised €82 million ($86.8 million based on current exchange rates) in equity funding. The company is not disclosing an exact valuation, but from what we understand it is an upround and values Zopa at well over $1 billion. For some context, that figure is an increase on Zopa's last big valuation reveal, when it raised $300 million in 2021. The company is profitable and has been growing its customer base at a rate of around 35% annually. Zopa expects to end the year with 1.4 million customers, £5 billion in deposits, and its profit doubling compared to the year before to £32 million (around $40 million) and revenues to "north of" £300 million ($383 million). The lead investor in this round is an interesting one: it's A.P. Moller Holding, a giant in Danish business that owns not just the shipping behemoth Maersk but also Danske Bank, among other assets. Other investors are not being disclosed except to note they are existing backers. Zopa's previous investors include SoftBank, which led that $300 million round in 2021; as well as Silverstripe, Northzone, and Uprising. (Some of the details of this investment were leaked earlier in the week, although the amount and investors were not accurate.) But while Zopa's numbers look strong, especially for the current market where later-stage startups continue to struggle to raise growth rounds — let alone grow — they also speak to how the company has had to take a longer time to get to where it has wanted to go. In 2021, when Zopa announced a $300 million fundraise that first catapulted it to a $1 billion valuation, CEO Jaidev Janardana described it to TechCrunch as a "pre-IPO round" ahead of an offering at the end of 2022. It also said it expected to be profitable by the end of 2021. Not only did that IPO never materialize, but it's largely off the table for the foreseeable. "We will wait for the markets to revive and be more positive," Janardana said in an interview on Thursday, noting that it has plenty of cash in the bank and just £75 million in debt payable years from now. Meanwhile, Zopa reached its profit milestone — a full year of profit — only in April 2024. A recent, recurring theme in fintech has been high valuations attached to very fast-growing startups that have subsequently struggled to live up to lofty projections, but Zopa is not your typical fintech startup. The company has actually been around since 2005, when it started out as a pioneer in the peer-to-peer lending space competing against startups like Prosper, providing a platform to match up investors with borrowers at rates more competitive than traditional banks and returns that were more attractive than other investment opportunities. By 2020, it started to move out of that business — which had become more tricky over the years due to regulation, reduced returns and a lot of high profile players exiting the space after Covid-19 killed the model. Zopa picked up a banking license that year and started a pivot into savings and non-P2P loan products. (By the end of 2021, Zopa's P2P lending was shut down completely.) But bucking the "hypergrowth" mantra of so many fintech companies, in the years since, rather than using that pivot to spin up a lot of new services, it's largely doubled down on those first products. Crypto is nowhere in its roadmap for now, for example. "As of now, we still remain arm's length," Janardana said in reference to decentralized currencies. "Ultimately, we have a responsibility that we give our customers products that we think are suitable for them, and that they understand. I don't feel that as of today, that the average of a customer, at least in our mind, passes that bar." Nor has it felt the need yet to expand outside the U.K. "The U.K. has a lot of road to run, so we remain focused there," he said. "International continues to be longer term and opportunistic." Plans for 2025 do include Zopa launching its first current account products — checking accounts as they are typically called in the U.S. — and bringing more AI into the company, he said. Janardana said that Zopa is already using AI, for example developers are leaning on it to help write code. AI will expand to the front office next year, he said. He company is building a generative AI platform to help customers manage their money, and to help them buy more Zopa products in a more personalized way. "We are really looking forward to how our interactions with customers can move beyond the mobile app into something bit more warm, personal, and 'human,'" he said of the GenAI plans. Putting GenAI to work in fintech is a holy grail in the space, and some efforts are extremely ambitious. One Zero out of Israel, one of the many startups being founded by Mobileye's Amnon Shashua, is aiming to build the GenAI equivalent of a private banking specialist — typically the kind of service reserved for high net-worth individuals. Its plans will be eventually to turn that into a service it sells to other banks, and likely others will, too, so Zopa may have options beyond what it choose to build itself. Building itself has been the other USP for Zopa up to now. Unlike other neobanks that essentially pull together fintech-as-a-service APIs to power their products, Zopa has built its platform itself from the ground up, and that's allowed it to gradually become the fintech supplier itself, powering financial services for other companies. These have included partnerships with electricity supplier Octopus Energy, and with the retailer John Lewis to offer personal loans directly to its 23 million customers. Updated with an adjusted amount raised (Zopa disclosed that the funding was €82 million, not €80 million.)
CBC News	[ "UnitedHealth Group Inc", "UnitedHealthcare", "2024", "Brian Thompson killing", "Gun violence", "U.S. gun violence", "UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting", "criminal investigation", "fatal shooting", "homicide investigation", "Atlanta", "Central Park", "Georgia", "Manhattan", "New York", "New York City", "United States of America", "NYPD", "Brian Thompson", "Jessica Tisch", "Joseph Kenny", "Insurance industry", "Health insurance providers", "General news", "Crime", "Violent crime", "Homicide", "Shootings", "Police", "Laws", "Hostels", "Gun violence" ]	# Suspect in CEO's fatal shooting may have left NYC on bus, police say December 6th, 2024 11:29 PM --- Backpack found in Central Park as hunt continues for gunman who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO earlier this week The gunman who killed the CEO of the largest U.S. health insurer likely left New York City soon after the brazen ambush that has shaken corporate America, police officials said Friday. But he left something behind: a backpack that was discovered in Central Park. Three days after the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, police still did not know the gunman's whereabouts or have a motive for the killing. Investigators were looking at whether the shooter may have been a disgruntled employee or client of the insurer, the NYPD's Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters. Video of the gunman fleeing Wednesday's shooting showed him riding a bicycle into Central Park and later taking a taxi to a bus terminal that offers commuter service to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C., according to Kenny. Police have video of the man entering the bus station but no video of him exiting, leading them to believe he left the city, Kenny said. CNN first reported that the suspect may have escaped the city by bus. ## Abandoned backpack found in Central Park Investigators on Friday found a backpack in the park that had been worn by the gunman during the shooting, police said, following a massive sweep through a vast area with lakes and ponds, meadows, playgrounds and woods. Police didn't immediately reveal what, if anything, the backpack contained, but said it would be analyzed for clues. The gunman made sure to conceal his identity with a mask during almost all of his time in the city — including during the attack and while he ate — yet left a trail of evidence in view of the nation's biggest city and its network of security cameras. The gunman arrived in New York City on Nov. 24, and shot Thompson 10 days later, outside his company's annual investor conference at a hotel just blocks from Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center. The gunman got off a bus that originated in Atlanta and made several stops along the way, Kenny said. Police have not determined where he got on the bus. Investigators believe the suspect used a fake identification card and paid cash, Kenny said, when he checked in at the hostel, which has a café, along with shared and private rooms and is blocks from Columbia University. ## Police test discarded items Investigators have tested a discarded water bottle and protein bar wrapper in a hunt for the gunman's DNA. They also were trying to obtain additional information from a cellphone found along his escape route. Photos of the suspected shooter that were taken in the lobby of a hostel on Manhattan's Upper West Side appear to be from the only time he removed his mask, Kenny said. The images show a man smiling in the lobby of the HI New York City hostel. They are among a collection of photos and video circulated since the shooting — including footage of the attack, as well as images of the suspected gunman at a Starbucks beforehand. "From every indication we have from witnesses, from the Starbucks, from the hostel, he kept his mask on at all times except for the one instance where we have him photographed with the mask off," Kenny said. His roommates at the hostel also said he didn't speak to them. Nothing of investigative value was found in a search of the suspected shooter's room. Kenney was asked Friday how close he felt police were to making an arrest. "This isn't Blue Bloods. We're not going to solve this in 60 minutes," he said. "We're painstakingly going through every bit of evidence that we can come across. Eventually, when an apprehension is made, we will have to present all of these facts to a judge and jury, so we're taking our time, doing it right and making sure we're going to get justice for this victim and closure for his family." ## Words on ammunition Security video of the shooting shows the killer approaching Thompson from behind, firing several shots with a gun equipped with a silencer, barely pausing to clear a jam while the executive fell to the sidewalk. The words "delay," "deny" and "depose" were scrawled on the ammunition, one word on each of three bullets, Kenny said. A law enforcement official previously told The Associated Press that the words scrawled on the ammunition were "deny," "defend" and "depose." The messages mirror the phrase "delay, deny, defend," which is commonly used by lawyers and critics about insurers that delay payments, deny claims and defend their actions. Thompson, a father of two sons who lived in a Minneapolis suburb, had been with Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare since 2004 and served as CEO for more than three years. After Thompson's death, the insurer's parent company, UnitedHealth Group Inc., abruptly ended the annual investors conference being held in New York. The shooting has rocked the health insurance industry in particular, causing companies to re-evaluate security plans and delete photos of executives from their websites. A different Minnesota-based health care company said Friday it was temporarily closing its offices out of an abundance of caution, telling employees to work from home.
The BBC	[ "Housing", "Glastonbury", "Somerset Council" ]	# Glastonbury Tor : Homes within view of landmark 'a travesty' By Daniel Mumby December 5th, 2024 05:13 PM --- A bid to build new homes within view of Glastonbury Tor in Somerset has been called a "travesty". Developer T&A Land Associates Ltd wants to attach 24 homes to a new estate next to Cullen Farm Road, in Glastonbury. But Somerset Council's planning committee refused the application on Tuesday, with councillor Susanna Hart, whose Glastonbury division includes the site, saying "it would be a travesty if we allow this to happen". Glastonbury's mayor, councillor Lokabee Lokabandhu, added: "We are pursuing applying to become a world heritage site, the only one in Somerset, and we would love to preserve the tor and the landscape around it as much as possible as part of that process." The site was not included in the former Mendip District Council local plan in December 2021, before the council merged with others into Somerset Council. However, the process is being revised after a successful legal challenge, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) says. The LDRS added Glastonbury was expected to deliver a significant amount of new housing over the next decade. ## 'Hugely unpopular' The mayor added: "We would hate for our landscape around the tor to be filled up with housing, spoiling the views." Hart added: "This is hugely unpopular in the town. It's in open pasture land, near the most important site in the south west until we get to Stonehenge." The planning committee argued it was important to "protect what's left" of the beloved landscape The developer has yet indicated whether it intends to challenge the refusal by lodging an appeal with the government's Planning Inspectorate.
TechCrunch	[ "Exclusive", "Planet A Foods", "cocoa-free chocolate", "sustainable chocolate", "Burda Principal Investments", "Zintinus" ]	# Planet A Foods nabs $30M to make tons more cocoa-free chocolate By Natasha Lomas December 5th, 2024 11:00 PM --- Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B food tech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production capacity by around 7.5x. The round fast follows a $15.4 million Series A back in February. Currently, the startup is producing 2,000 tons of ChoViva, as it calls its cocoa-free, lower carbon chocolate alternative, per year. It plans to step that up to over 15,000 tons as it adds capacity and kicks off international expansion outside an initial trio of European markets. Opening its first U.S.-based production facility is on the cards. Building on the three local markets (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) where its chocolate substitute is already in food products that aim to tempt sweet-toothed consumers, it is also eyeing launches into the U.K. and France during the first quarter of 2025. Brands buying into ChoViva so far include Lambertz, Lindt, Rewe Group, and even the German train operator, Deutsche Bahn, which doubtless pops a lot of chocolate treats on customers' tea trays every day. So far, the startup has around 20 customers for its alt chocolate ingredients, mostly major European food manufacturers but also some U.S. brands. As it grows capacity, it'll be aiming to add more strategic partners too. ## Cocoa, not so sweet The problem Planet A Foods is tackling is making a staple sweet treat (chocolate) less of an environmental horror. Traditional cocoa-based chocolate production raises serious sustainability issues, since the crop grows in areas with rainforest, which can be cut down to make way for cocoa bean plantations. Global demand is also outstripping an increasingly fragile (and ethically fraught) supply, leading to inflated costs and fears for the future of the cocoa bean in a rapidly warming world. Supplying the food industry with an alternative chocolate-esque ingredient that — just like the real deal — can be baked into or folded onto snack products like breakfast cereals, confectionary, and cakes is Planet A's mission. And it's not a trivial goal: The startup reckons an annual toll of some 500 million tons of CO2 could be avoided through switching bulk chocolate production away from cocoa beans to its more sustainable method that avoids deforestation and localizes ingredients sourcing. The ingredients it uses to produce ChoViva have been selected in part as they can be grown locally (oats are another of its staples) — hence it claims a carbon footprint that's up to 80% lower than conventional chocolate (but note that higher bound is for the vegan version of ChoViva which, unlike other blends, doesn't contain any milk products). "We're not against chocolate," stresses co-founder and CEO Dr. Maximilian Marquart, one half of the brother-sister founder team behind Planet A Foods. CTO Dr. Sara Marquart is the food scientist who developed the process for making the cocoa-free chocolate. "That's very important. So we're not taking away your [premium] chocolate. We're after all the snacking applications — [confectionary such as] M&Ms, Snickers, Mars, Bounty, you know, all that stuff." Premium chocolate is a tiny market compared to the bulk business of mass market confectionary that Planet A Foods is targeting. And in this domain, where environmental degradation occurs at terrible scale, the quality of the chocolate that's used is generally lower, often because it's lower in actual cocoa-content — hence [Maximilian] Marquart argues there's no difference between how ChoViva tastes, and the stuff consumers are routinely being sold in mass market products. "It's indistinguishable," he suggests. "My sister Sara ... found out that actually 80% of the typical chocolate flavors come from the processing of the cocoa beans and not from the beans itself — so ... if eight out of 10 flavors are actually coming from fermentation roasting, why do you need cocoa beans?" ## Scaling for impact The economics also make ChoViva an attractive switch for the industrial food industry, as the startup tells it, since the product is not subject to the price volatility that can hit cocoa beans as a limited resource. But for such a switch to happen, the startup needs to be able to produce its alternative at the volumes that food giants demand — so there's a long road of scaling ahead for the team. At this point, the production capacity for ChoViva still represents an incredibly tiny portion of the global cocoa bean harvest — which [Maximilian] Marquart notes is between 4 million and 5 million tons annually. So it will require giant leaps in production capacity to have the massive positive sustainability change the Marquarts want. "We've already acquired the machines [for this stage of industrialization]. So we are already in the scale-up runs, and we have some real industrial clients already, so we're currently just trying to cope with the demand in Europe," he says, adding: "We're automating. We're improving the processes. We are also commissioning new machines. Plus, we are currently planning another facility in the States." They are also exploring how the business might respond to demand from Asia ([Maximilian] Marquart happens to be on a business trip to Japan when we talk). But he says they also recognize that, as a startup, they do need to focus, too. "We're a startup ... we're not naive. So we can't conquer the world alone," he tells TechCrunch. "I think U.K. and U.S. are the main markets where we will expand. However, in Asia we have a lot of demand, so we're currently investigating what we do here — what we can do alone, and together with partners eventually." ## Supply chain all-nighters Being in the (quasi) chocolate-making business might conjure up quaint images of high-hatted chocolatiers gently whipping batches of sweet stuff in charmingly rustic environs. But don't be fooled: the business of manufacturing ChoViva is already sweating toil. Having everything in place to be able to precisely produce tons of cocoa-free chocolate to ship out exactly when customers need it has required the founders to pull some all-nighters at the plant. And [Maximilian] Marquart says a big focus for this tranche of scaling is automation — so they can reduce the risk of human errors causing supply chain headaches. "I think currently we're at a scale — industrial scale — that no one else is," he suggests when asked about the competitive landscape for cocoa-free chocolate. Other startups he name-checks are Foreverland, Nukoko, WinWin, and Voyage Foods. They are using various methods and base ingredients (including cereals, broad beans, carob, grape seeds, and more) to blend up rival cocoa-free chocolate products. So there's a range of approaches in play. In this context, and, indeed, for almost any kind of startup, succeeding "takes more than just developing a product" — or, in this case, an ingredient in a lab — and [Maximilian] Marquart says this invention element represents only 5% of the challenge they've set themselves. "The main challenge lies in building up production, building up quality management, building up the supply chain. Every day, two 40-ton lorries leave our factory with our product. And that's something that someone else needs to figure out. It's really a challenge," he emphasizes, adding: "Sara — my sister — and I, we slept under those machines. We really figured out the supply chain. It's a big hassle. Every day our life is a hell given the challenges that we have in the supply chain." "Most of the other competitors, they have great products, but they need to bring that into reality, and need to be really able to deliver it to their customers, and that lies ahead of them. It's incredibly difficult to deliver 40 tons of chocolate to a customer in time, at the right place, at the right recipe, the right quality." Planet A Foods' Series B was co-led by Burda Principal Investments and Zintinus, with participation from AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance, Bayern Kapital, Cherry Ventures, Omnes Capital, Tengelmann Ventures, and World Fund. ## R&D Scaling aside, funding will also go on further research and development, as the team is working on an alternative to cocoa butter, which is another key ingredient for the food industry. Being able to offer a replacement for palm oil is another goal, as that also creates huge sustainability problems. The startup also believes its approach could work to replace other specialty fats that are used in food production, such as stearin, an animal fat, or coconut oil, per [Maximilian] Marquart. "[Sara] developed a kind of full fermentation platform where we can make bio identical coco butter," he notes, saying bio identical in this context "means the right mouthful, the right snap, the right melting point, the right properties." "With our fermentation technology, we can offer a bio identical cocoa butter using fermentation at a much lower price than conventional cocoa butter, and that's really a game changer in the future," he suggests. "I think we're the only company that is actually able to produce cocoa butter using fermentation at a lower price than natural cocoa butter." There's an additional challenge here, though. For one version of the cocoa butter, which [Maximilian] Marquart suggests yields the best set of properties, they use precision fermentation. It's a biotech method that involves genetically engineered microorganisms. This version of the product has to be approved as a novel food before it can be sold. And since European regulations are more stringent, he suggests it could hit the U.S. market first.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "East Asia" ]	# US to observe 83rd anniversary of attack on Pearl Harbor By VOA News December 7th, 2024 08:04 AM --- Pearl Harbor "changed the future of the world," U.S. President Joe Biden said at a White House event for veterans and their families on Friday, the eve of the anniversary of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The president recalled that he "heard so much" about Pearl Harbor when he was growing up and talked about his uncles who enlisted in the military after the attack. "During World War II, we stood at an inflection point," the president said. "We still stand at an inflection point. The decisions we make now in the next four to five years will determine the course of our future for decades to come. ... We owe it to the next generation to set that course on a more free, more secure and more just path." Saturday, December 7, marks the 83rd anniversary of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a U.S. naval base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, near Honolulu. Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes unleashed bombs, bullets and aerial torpedoes on America's Pacific Fleet in the Sunday morning attack. More than 2,400 U.S. sailors, soldiers and civilians were killed that day. About half of them died on the USS Arizona battleship. The Japanese succeeded in sinking four of the eight U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor and damaging the remaining four. According to the Naval History and History Command website, "That more Japanese aircraft were not shot down had nothing to do with the skill, training or bravery of our Sailors and other servicemembers. "Rather, U.S. antiaircraft weapons were inadequate in number and capability, for not only had the Japanese achieved tactical surprise, they achieved technological surprise with aircraft and weapons far better than anticipated — a lesson in the danger of underestimating the enemy that resonates to this day." The day after the attack, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress, seeking a declaration of war. After he delivered his famous "Day of Infamy" speech, the Senate unanimously supported the declaration. In the House, there was one dissenter, Montana's Representative Jeanette Rankin, a pacifist. Roosevelt signed the declaration Monday afternoon. The United States had now been officially drawn into World War II. Before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had imposed economic sanctions on Japan as a way of stopping Japan's expansion goals in Asia. The sanctions affected Japan's access to aircraft exports. The attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was part of Japan's plan to prevent any challenges to those goals in Asia. There is now a USS Arizona Memorial that expands over the hull of the sunken vessel without touching it. Earlier this week, a 104-year-old survivor of Pearl Harbor returned to Hawaii to participate in this year's commemorations. Ira "Ike" Schab Jr. of Portland, Oregon, who was a Navy musician, was greeted at the airport in Honolulu with a water cannon salute and music from the U.S. Pacific Fleet Band. When asked what he remembers about that day, Schab told the Hawaii News Now website, "Being scared, more than anything else." Schab said he made the trip because he is one of the Pacific Fleet's "very few" survivors remaining from that day. He said, "They deserve to be recognized and honored."
The BBC	[ "East Renfrewshire Council" ]	# East Renfrewshire Council puts off decision on social care charges By BBC News December 5th, 2024 05:15 PM --- East Renfrewshire Council has deferred a decision on the introduction of non-residential care charges until February. The council had planned to start charging for elements of care, such as social support and day trips, however, campaigners had called the £20 per hour fees "unfair" and "immoral". They said the charges could lead to people who relied on support becoming socially isolated. The council had said it hoped the charges would raise £1.5m to help plug a £12m gap in East Renfrewshire's health and social care partnership (HSCP) budget. The charges do not affect personal care or services for children. Non-residential care includes social supports, charges for meals, day opportunities and community-based services. Tracey Campbell, whose 18-year-old daughter Leia needs 24-hour support, told the BBC earlier this week she was worried about the impact of the charges. She said Leia receives a self-directed support budget which is "mainly spent on support workers to keep her safe". Ms Campbell says her daughter, who has Angelman syndrome, relies on trips out and hobbies such as horse riding to avoid social isolation and keep her feeling safe and well. Leia's condition means she has severe physical and learning disabilities. Ms Campbell said she feared the new charge would mean her daughter would not be able to pay for the support to be able to continue her hobbies and still be financially independent. ## Social isolation Almost 1,000 people had backed a petition from the Netherlee mum which asked health chiefs in East Renfrewshire to drop the proposed charges. The petition said: "For my daughter, going to the cinema, shows, and pantomime is not a pastime. It's a lifeline in her battle against social isolation. "This proposal would potentially strip away 60% of affected individual's disposable income, making it almost impossible for them to participate in much-needed social activities." Members of the council's cabinet discussed the proposal and agreed to defer the decision until the implications of Wednesday's Scottish government budget were clear. Council leader Owen O'Donnell said: "This is a proposal that has implications for some of our most vulnerable residents, so we need to ensure that we give it the time and care it deserves. "While we don't want to give people false hope, it's only right we pause and have all the facts available before we make this difficult decision." The council said it had spent many years avoiding proposing these charges and it was the only HSCP in Greater Glasgow and Clyde that did not charge for non-residential care. The proposal will be reconsidered at the next Cabinet meeting on 6 February 2025.
TechCrunch	[ "hopskipdrive", "ridehail", "Uber", "uber for teens" ]	# Uber will need to fingerprint drivers in California to transport teens By Rebecca Bellan December 5th, 2024 10:06 PM --- Uber has 30 days to require certain drivers to get fingerprinted if the ride-hail giant intends to continue transporting unaccompanied teens in California. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a ruling Thursday that requires taxi and ride-hail drivers who are carrying unaccompanied minors in the state to pass a fingerprint background check. The ruling also requires transport companies to pay for the cost of those background checks. Uber has a history of fighting back against fingerprint-based background check requirements for drivers. Seven years ago, Uber and Lyft blocked a similar effort in California to fingerprint drivers. The company has argued that its current name-based background checks and other guardrails are sufficient, and that such an inconvenient step would discourage drivers from signing up to the platform and would disproportionately affect minorities. All that goes out the window when it comes to transporting kids safely and ensuring they're not getting into the car with a potential sex offender. "When an adult is being tasked to provide a service to a minor, the adult is placed in a position of trust, responsibility, and control over California's most vulnerable citizenry — children," reads the decision. "Not conducting a fingerprint-based background check to identify adults with disqualifying arrests or criminal records would place the unaccompanied minor in a potentially dangerous, if not life-threatening situation." Uber launched Uber for Teens, its service that allows teens aged 13 to 17 to hail an Uber without a parent or guardian, in February 2024. The CPUC sent a warning letter to Uber strongly recommending that Uber stop the service until a 2016 rulemaking around background checks could be resolved. In March, Uber asked for clarity on the rule, specifically the part that stated any business involved "primarily" in transporting minors would need to enforce strict background checks. The company said this summer that fewer than 10% of the company's total rides involve unaccompanied minors. At the core of the debate has been whether Uber should be required to participate in the Department of Justice's Trustline program. Trustline is a registry maintained by the California Department of Social Services that uses fingerprinting to screen caregivers for criminal arrests and convictions. It also screens applicants against the Child Abuse Central Index, which contains reports of suspected child abuse and neglect. Uber has said its own name-based screening system via Checkr, as well as safety features like live trip tracking included in Uber for Teens, is adequate to keep riders of any age safe. Uber also says it only pairs the most experienced and highly rated drivers with teens. Uber has also been accused of not taking enough steps to protect riders from dangerous situations, including child trafficking. In July, two families in South Carolina sued Uber alleging the company allowed their teen daughters to be taken across state lines to a predator's home where one of the girls was sexually assaulted. The CPUC's ruling is bad news for Uber, which launched Uber for Teens in California in February 2024, but good news for HopSkipDrive, a startup that provides a ride-sharing service for kids and advocated in favor of this ruling. HopSkipDrive refers to its drivers as "CareDrivers" and says they all have caregiving experience and go through a 15-point certification before being onboarded — including a fingerprint-based background check. The startup also uses telematics to detect unsafe driving behavior and enable real-time ride tracking, and has a dedicated team monitoring each ride. The CPUC's ruling also requires transport companies that intend to transport minors share information with the agency on how they implement live trip tracking for parents, what safety procedures they implement at pickup and drop-off locations, and what sort of driver training the companies implement specifically around transporting unaccompanied minors. The ruling also says that each company is responsible for paying for the checks. Uber has also argued against this stipulation, saying that forcing the company — which has a market cap of around $150 billion as of December — to pay for fingerprinting would result in a price hike for the Uber for Teens service. Uber, like many large companies, has a history of offloading costs associated with rulings and legislation onto the customer. For example, California riders can expect to see the following message at the bottom of their Uber receipts: "In California, on average, roughly 33% of the customer price went towards covering government-mandated commercial insurance for rideshare in July 2024, one of the highest rates in the country." HopSkipDrive pays for the cost of fingerprint checks for its drivers. The Commission wrote in its ruling that "if small [transportation network companies] like HopSkipDrive can cover the cost of a TrustLine background check, Uber should do so as well." Uber did not respond in time to TechCrunch's request for comment.
Voice Of America	[ "South & Central Asia", "Press Freedom", "press freedom", "Central Asia", "Afghanistan" ]	# Taliban shutter Afghan broadcaster over foreign content By VOA Afghan December 7th, 2024 08:04 AM --- The Taliban said Thursday it had shuttered an Afghan TV station over what it said was "vulgar" programming. Around eight Taliban officials, including at least one who was armed, raided the Kabul office of Arezo TV on Wednesday morning. Men and women were separated, and their phones taken, according to an employee who spoke with Agence France-Presse on the condition of anonymity. At least six staff members were detained and placed under investigation. The offices were sealed and the staff told to wait for further orders, the employee said. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said Thursday that Arezo TV had been working with foreign media to dub TV programs into the Afghan language. The content appears to have been foreign TV dramas. "Some people were using the name of Arezo TV to carry out actions that were contrary to Islamic values and national traditions," the ministry said in a statement. "It became clear that some people had used the name and building of Arezo TV as well as their position in the media outlet to pay temporary workers to dub vulgar serials and programs that were against Islamic and Afghan principles and traditions with the financial support of exiled media outlets outside the country," it said. Arezo TV, which was founded in 2006, produces news, wildlife documentaries and "Islamic series" that are dubbed from Turkish. The broadcaster has a staff of about 70 in Kabul, according to a local journalists' association. The raid and arrests will have a negative impact on media in Afghanistan, media associations said. Mohammad Graan, president of the Afghanistan chapter of the South Asian Association of Reporters Club and Journalists Forum, or SJF, said that detaining Arezo TV staff could "dishearten" journalists. "It is clear that it will pressure journalists psychologically and demotivate them," he told VOA. Graan said that under the law, no one has the right to search an individual's phone or computer but, he said, "the Taliban are doing that, and that would have a negative impact on all journalists." He said that the Taliban are selective in dealing with the media and journalists. "It is clear that whoever is against them or whatever damages their image, they would take action against it," said Graan. When the Taliban seized power in August 2021, they said media were free to report, if they didn't publish content that is "contrary to Islam." Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has said that there are no restrictions on journalists, if they "consider the national interest and Islamic values and avoid spreading rumors." But journalists say a lack of clarity around rules makes reporting in Afghanistan hard. A Kabul-based journalist who did not want his identity to be disclosed told VOA that the Taliban actions "show that they are not committed to their words on respecting freedom of speech." "It is not the first time, and it won't be the last time in Afghanistan that the Taliban closed a TV [station]," he said. The journalist said that the Taliban have closed stations in the capital and other provinces for years. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says that since the Taliban takeover, more than 40% of media outlets have disappeared and that media work under strict conditions. The watchdog ranks Afghanistan as the third-worst country globally for press freedom. The Kabul journalist said journalists are working under a lot of pressure. He said managers at the media outlet he works for pressured him to remove a post this week about the Taliban ban on women training at medical institutes. "They [the management] told me that if there is any problem, we would not be able to help you as we are also under a lot of pressure," he said. Graan, of the SJF, said that the journalists in Afghanistan do not feel safe. "They live in fear. They fear that what they report could create problems for them. They could lose their job or be put in jail." The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the Human Rights Office have both said that journalists and media outlets "operate under an environment of censorship and tight restrictions." Some information in this report came from Agence France-Presse.
Wired	[ "shopping", "sex", "bedroom", "review", "reviews" ]	# Crave Vesper 2 Review: A Discreet Vibrator By Amanda Chatel December 6th, 2024 05:00 AM --- Roughly 10 years since the original, this vibrating pendant is a reminder that good things can come in small packages. Crave first launched the Vesper back in 2014. At the time, the world had never seen anything like this vibrator necklace, and because of its originality, it garnered fans worldwide. When I first got my hands on one shortly after Vesper hit the market, I was blown away by the concept. Slick and sophisticated, Vesper wasn't simply about looks. It was a symbol of sex positivity, a reminder that owning our sexual pleasure is an essential facet of being human—plus it's a great conversation starter. It also made me feel like I belonged to a private club, especially if I ran into someone else rocking one around their neck. From the moment I slipped it on, I was in love and wore it all the time. Now we have the Vesper 2—born out of a Kickstarter campaign in late 2022 and officially launched in the summer of 2023. When it arrived at my doorstep, I had mixed feelings. Could it live up to my expectations? How could Crave upgrade something that was already close to perfection? Well, let me just say if you're a fan of the original Vesper, you'll love this one too. ## Intense Upgrade Visually, there's no difference between Vesper and Vesper 2. Both products are the same size, shape, and weight, meaning the second generation is just as elegant as the original. Your color options are monochrome black, rose gold, and the same 24-karat gold plating option as its predecessor. One new thing is the Vesper 2 is fully submersible, and that's great news for those of us who constantly forget to remove their jewelry before getting into the shower. While both the Vesper and Vesper 2 have four vibration intensities to choose from, the pattern setting on the newer model is now a wave-like sensation as opposed to the original's pulsing. I usually have no interest in patterns, but the wave is better than the pulse, if only because it's a continuous sensation whereas the pulse felt like someone playing staccato on my clit. Where Vesper 2 stands out is in its intensity. Granted, my original Vesper is 10 years old at this point, so I imagine some of the magic has been lost, but using them both back-to-back (it's called due diligence!), the Vesper 2 is significantly stronger. Thanks to its shape, it's perfect for precise stimulation of not only the clitoris, but also nipples, perineum, frenulum, or other specific external spots on the body that love a good buzz. In fact, on the highest intensity, the Vesper 2 doesn't even have to be directly on whatever erogenous zone you're looking to stimulate because it sends vibrations that run deep enough to result in an orgasm—at least that was my experience when I was experimenting with direct versus nondirect contact around my vulva. This can be a great technique for anyone who has a sensitive clitoris or body parts that can't handle too much stimulation. ## Plain Sight As I said in my review of Unbound Flick, jewelry is for everyone. Jewelry is a fun way to express yourself and decorate your body, and it can make people feel more attractive and confident. I'd be doing all of us a disservice if I angled this review toward only people with vulvas. If you have a penis and like to enjoy vibrations either solo or during partnered sexual activities, then there's no reason why you can't rock the Vesper 2 outside the bedroom. Then turn it on for some orgasmic fun inside the bedroom. (Or in the bathroom at your favorite seedy bar. It's whisper-quiet so you can use it anywhere.) Unfortunately, I didn't get to try Vesper 2 with my penis-wielding partner, but that's fine. For me, the Vesper has always been about empowerment. Every time I wore it, I was expressing my sexuality in a way that would have had me burned at the stake in 17th-century Salem. Because the Vesper 2 makes me feel the same way, it's not something I even wanted to share with my partner. I wanted the discovery, the pleasure, and the orgasms to be on my terms with my brand-new vibrator necklace—a sentiment, I'm sure, some people will understand once they get their hands on Vesper 2. The Vesper 2 is great. I stand by the fact that it didn't really need an upgrade in the first place, but the waterproof design is especially welcome. The 40-minute battery life just isn't enough some days, but I might be greedy. Frankly, I don't need more than a couple minutes with the Vesper 2 to orgasm, so unless I'm making it a whole hour-long sexual self-care session, 40 minutes is enough. This sex toy does have a higher price than the original, but considering that my Vesper from 2014 is still working—it's a worthy investment. You'll also get to be part of a club of bold and fearless people who know that sometimes, the best place for your favorite vibrator is around your neck.
The BBC	[ "Worcester" ]	# Lioness' England debut inspires Worcester pupils at her former school By Aida Fofana and Tom Edwards December 5th, 2024 05:15 PM --- Students at England Lioness Laura Blindkilde Brown's former school said her England debut was inspirational and encouraged them to pursue a career in football. The footballer studied at Tudor Grange Academy before going on to play for Aston Villa and Manchester City. Pupils at the school in Worcester said watching her play against Switzerland on Saturday filled them with pride. "I think it's really impressive how she can start from somewhere like this and be able to get to the point of playing for the Lionesses. I just think that's amazing," said 14-year-old Ellie. "It is impressive she's played for the Lionesses and Man City and it's something to be very proud of." Ellie said Laura's success and the support she was getting from school staff made her want to play professional football. "We've got PE teachers who want girl's football to progress and they do such a good job getting fixtures for us all the time and keep us playing to get us to the same level as the boys, because that's what we deserve," she said. Blindkilde Brown joined City from Aston Villa in January after being bought for £200,000 after she had made more than 50 senior appearances for her former club before she turned 21. She made her senior England debut in the Lionesses' 1-0 win over Switzerland. Maya, 15, said watching her play was "inspiring to everyone who comes here" "To know that she played here and she would have played for a school team as well, you feel like you're following her footsteps," she said. "It's great for her to reach the highest level of football, playing for her country, especially at such a young age." Teacher Bethany Merriman said she remembered that when she was younger at the school, Blindkilde Brown always showed determination and talent on the pitch. "At the time, we didn't have a lot of girl's football here so she was playing with the boys, and held her own," she said. "Her technical ability, even at that age, just shone on the pitch. "It's a massive dream for a lot of them. "Laura doing it shows that they're no different, they could do that if they have that same work ethic and that same commitment to school and training."
TechCrunch	[ "electric vehicles", "EVs", "Lucid Motors" ]	# Lucid Motors completes its first Gravity SUV By Sean O'Kane December 5th, 2024 09:25 PM --- The first Lucid Motors Gravity SUV has rolled off the company's production line in Casa Grande, Arizona, according to a post on X. The company will now set its aim on ramping up production of the new electric vehicle and making the first deliveries — though the company is staying quiet about when it will hand those first vehicles over to customers. It's a crucial milestone for Lucid, which is banking on the Gravity's SUV form factor turning it into a bigger success than its lone current model, the Air sedan. The Air has been off to a much slower start than Lucid originally predicted. And while sales have increased the last few quarters, the company has kept going back to its majority owner, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, for more money to make sure it can stay afloat through the first year of Gravity production and deliveries. The initial Grand Touring version of the Gravity starts at $94,900. The company boasts that it can travel more than 440 miles on a full charge. Two electric motors — one front, one rear — help it create the equivalent of 828 horsepower. And it comes standard with two rows but can be optioned to have three. A cheaper version of the Gravity is slated to roll off Lucid's production lines in "late 2025" and will start at $79,900.
Voice Of America	[ "Europe", "LGBTQ", "russia", "europe" ]	# Russian LGBTQ+ activists describe a climate of fear amid new laws, court rulings By Associated Press December 7th, 2024 08:02 AM --- In the year since Russia's Supreme Court effectively outlawed any promotion of LGBTQ+ rights, activists say they are experiencing a climate of fear and intimidation in the country. LGBTQ+ rights have been under legal and public pressure for over a decade under President Vladimir Putin, but especially since the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Putin has argued the war is a proxy battle with the West, which he says aims to destroy Russia and its "traditional family values." Putin insists Russia doesn't discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, but he also decries "perversions that lead to degradation and extinction." Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin last year called gender transitioning "pure satanism" that should stay in the U.S. Any public representation of gay and transgender people is banned. Gender-affirming medical care and changing one's gender in official documents is prohibited. With the Supreme Court's ruling in November 2023 that found "the international LGBT movement" to be extremist, members of the LGBTQ+ community can be prosecuted and imprisoned for up to six years. As a result, many people like Gela Gogishvili and Haoyang Xu have fled Russia. They lived a happy life in the republic of Tatarstan, where Gogishvili was a pharmacist and Xu was a student from China. They were detained after the Kremlin in December 2022 expanded its ban of "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" from minors to adults, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities. Authorities accused them of spreading "LGBT propaganda" among minors. Gogishvili was fined, while Xu was put in a detention center for migrants pending deportation. They eventually fled abroad separately and are seeking asylum in France. "I'm scared for the queer community in Russia that remains in the country," Gogishvili said. Targeting nightclubs, rainbow flags and gay tourism Those who remain find themselves pushed into the shadows, marginalized even further and dogged by fear of repression and prison. "Six years, it's not a joke," said Olga Baranova, head of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives. She says activists must decide if what they're doing is worth that kind of a prison sentence. Just days after the Supreme Court ruling in 2023, the LGBTQ+ community was rattled by news of police raiding gay bars, nightclubs and venues that hosted drag shows in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities. Last spring, the first criminal case on charges of involvement with the "LGBT movement" extremist group was lodged against the owner and staff of a bar in the city of Orenburg that held drag performances. Charges have been filed for displaying symbols such as a rainbow flag — even though many of those accused had nothing to do with the LGBTQ+ community, said human rights lawyer Max Olenichev. More raids of bars and nightclubs were reported in Moscow last month, almost exactly a year since the Supreme Court ruling. One man arrested for allegedly running a travel agency for gay customers faces charges of organizing activities of an extremist organization. Independent news outlet Mediazona reported that Andrei Kotov, 48, rejected the charges and said police beat him and administered electric shocks during his arrest, even though he didn't resist. Fear, intimidation and terror This "speaks more about the desire of the authorities to create some kind of atmosphere of fear. It's not repressions, it's terror," said Vladimir, an LGBTQ+ rights advocate in Russia who like many interviewed by AP insisted on being identified only by a first name out of security concerns. Ikar, a fellow activist and transgender man, described the actions by authorities as "an attempt to intimidate ... to make people lose their social connections, stay silent, stay home." Vladimir and Ikar belong to an underground LGBTQ+ rights group offering legal aid. Activists thoroughly verify identities of anyone seeking its help. The group sees a growing number of cases related to violence against LGBTQ+ people, Vladimir said. Some regional organizations have closed and others have changed their operations. The Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives moved much of its work to online chats and meetings so people can still "support each other," according to Baranova. Help for hard-hit transgender community The ban and other repressive laws and rulings have delivered a harsh blow to the already-vulnerable trans community, says Yan Dvorkin, head of the Center T trans rights group. Finding a job is more difficult, both for those who haven't changed their gender marker in documents and those who have. Access to gender-affirming medical care is a major issue. Violence has spiked, Dvorkin said, as has harassment and discrimination, including blackmail attempts, by threatening to report them to authorities. Anna, a 25-year-old transgender Muscovite, said being part of the community provided the courage to transition last year, after the ban on gender-affirming care was enacted. Anna considers herself lucky to have a good paying job to afford a doctor advising her from abroad on hormonal therapy, and is able to get the medicine in Moscow. But she said she hasn't come out to her colleagues for fear of losing her job, and she is sometimes harassed on the street because of her appearance. She says she has a support network of friends and doesn't want to leave Russia, even though she' knows the risks. Uncertainty for those staying in Russia Yulia, another transgender woman, also says she wants to stay, describing it as a kind of mission to show that "people like me are not necessarily weak." In her mid-40s, she has a family and children, a successful career, and the respect and acceptance from colleagues and friends. For her, "it's about normalizing" being trans, she said. But much "normalizing" is possible now and in the future is uncertain. The ban on "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" forces print, TV and movie censorship of LGBTQ+ relations. In a recent example, two Russian streaming services cut a trans character from the 1990 drama series Twin Peaks. At the same time, there is abundant official rhetoric condemning LGBTQ+ people. Gela Gogishvili, the gay man who fled Russia last year, worries about the next generation of LGBTQ+ people who are currently growing up and "will be taught that (being queer) is bad."
CBC News	[ "Pennsylvania", "Pittsburgh", "United States of America", "Chief John Bacha", "Coal mining", "Coal mining", "Cats", "Police", "Restaurants", "Cats" ]	# Body of missing grandmother recovered from Pennsylvania sinkhole December 6th, 2024 06:24 PM --- Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was last seen searching for her cat Pepper The remains of a woman who fell into a sinkhole were recovered Friday, four days after she went missing while searching for her cat, a state police spokesperson said. Trooper Steve Limani said the body of Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was being taken to the Westmoreland County Coroner's Office for an autopsy. More details will come during a news conference planned for this afternoon at a nearby fire hall. The announcement came in the fourth day of the search for Pollard, who had last been seen Monday evening, looking for her cat Pepper near a restaurant less than a kilometre from her home in the village of Marguerite, Pa. Axel Hayes, Pollard's son, said a state trooper told him and other family members that her body had been found. "I was hoping for the best, I really was," Hayes said in a phone interview. "I was hoping she was still alive, maybe in a coma or something. I wasn't expecting all of this." Pollard's family reported her missing around 1 a.m. Tuesday as the temperature in the area dropped below freezing. The search for her focused on a sinkhole with a manhole-sized surface gap that may have only recently opened up in the village of Marguerite. The sinkhole was above a former coal mine, which last operated about 70 years ago. Police said they found Pollard's car parked about six metres from the sinkhole. Pollard's five-year-old granddaughter was found safe inside the car. Hunters and restaurant workers who were in the area in the hours before Pollard's disappearance told police they hadn't noticed the sinkhole. ## State to see whether mine created sinkhole The effort to find Pollard included lowering a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole, although it detected nothing. Crews removed a massive amount of soil and rock to try to reach the area where they believed the grandmother fell into the nine-metre-deep chasm. Pollard grew up in Jeanette, about nine kilometres from Unity Township, where she lived for much of her adult life. She previously worked at Walmart and had been married for more than 40 years. Neil Shader, spokesperson with the Department of Environmental Protection, said the state's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation will examine the scene to see if the sinkhole was indeed caused by mine subsidence. In June, a giant sinkhole in southern Illinois swallowed the centre of a soccer field built on top of a limestone mine, taking down a large light pole and leaving a gaping chasm where squads of kids often play. No one was hurt. In 2023, a sinkhole that in 2013 fatally swallowed a man sleeping in his house in suburban Tampa, Fla., reopened for a third time, but it was behind fencing and caused no harm to people or property.
The BBC	[ "Leeds" ]	# Leeds: No decision yet on Lower Kirkgate collapsed buildings work By Don Mort and Alex Moss December 5th, 2024 05:15 PM --- One of Leeds' oldest streets remains closed to traffic as the council waits for a decision on whether it can carry out urgent repairs on derelict buildings. In August, Leeds City Council applied to the government for permission to issue the owner of several buildings on Lower Kirkgate an urgent works notice, which would allow the authority to carry out structural work. Four months on, the council was still waiting for a decision from the secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. The government department said it had requested advice from Historic England and a decision would be shared "in due course". The move comes after a former shop on the street partially collapsed in April, leading to the road being closed to traffic for most of 2024. Nearby businesses previously said they feared the safety risk posed by the condition of the buildings. The council said it had attempted to work with the owner of the impacted buildings, City Fusion Ltd, for more than a decade but had been unable to agree a proposal to renovate 83-89 Kirkgate. The authority wanted to serve the company with an urgent works notice, which would enable it to carry out emergency works and then recover the costs, estimated at £700,000, from the firm. A Leeds City Council spokesperson said: "We recognise that the ongoing closure of the road and the dilapidated condition of some buildings on Lower Kirkgate is proving frustrating for local businesses and residents. "As a council, we are working hard to find a solution to the issues in the area." They continued: "Matters relating to historic buildings such as these clearly require careful consideration and the proper use of established procedures by all parties." The council previously said it was also seeking to acquire seven buildings on the street from City Fusion Ltd. A feasibility study was being carried out into the redevelopment of the buildings. The spokesperson added: "We thank businesses and residents for their patience and remain fully committed to driving forward the continued regeneration of a street that has already seen many hugely positive changes over the last decade."
TechCrunch	[ "AMP Robotics", "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", "Congruent Ventures", "recycling", "robots" ]	# Amp Robotics raises $91M to build more robot-filled waste-sorting facilities By Tim De Chant December 5th, 2024 08:23 PM --- Recycling today kind of sucks. People are generally confused about what can be recycled and where. As a result, only about 32% of eligible waste actually gets recycled. It would be a lot easier if people could dump everything into one bin and let the waste-management companies deal with it, but that's proven to be too expensive with humans in the loop. Enter robots. Myriad companies, from small startups like Glacier to large multinationals like Apple, have been working to automate recycling. Most of that work has centered on the robots, placing them in existing facilities to help humans recover more waste. More recently, Amp Robotics, an early entrant, changed its business model to focus on running entire facilities. That shift has now netted the company $91 million in fresh funding. The decade-old company has deployed around 400 robots, and it operates three facilities with another in the works. Companies can specify how many sorting modules depending on how much trash they need to sort or which material they're looking for. Inside, cameras watch the flow of trash, using AI to identify what can be recycled, and robotic arms pluck bits from the conveyor belt. Amp handles operations, maintenance, and upgrades, with the contracting company handling waste sourcing, offtake of any valuable materials, and disposal of anything that can't be recycled. It's basically another "as a service" business model, with the company charging per ton of waste sorted. The new funding round, a Series D, was led by Congruent Ventures with participation from Blue Earth Capital, California State Teachers Retirement System, Liberty Mutual Investments, Wellington Management, Range Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Tao Capital Partners, and XN. The round is a little smaller than Amp's Series C, which after additions ended up raising $104 million, per SEC filings, highlighting the challenging fundraising environment that many mid- to late-stage startups face.
Wired	[ "cryptocurrency", "money" ]	# A Kid Made $50,000 Dumping Crypto He'd Created. Then Came the Backlash By Joel Khalili December 6th, 2024 05:00 AM --- In less than 10 minutes, a US teen made a small fortune selling off a memecoin he'd made on a lark. Traders, feeling swindled, sought revenge. On the evening of November 19, art adviser Adam Biesk was finishing work at his California home when he overheard a conversation between his wife and son, who had just come downstairs. The son, a kid in his early teens, was saying he had made a ton of money on a cryptocurrency that he himself had created. Initially, Biesk ignored it. He knew that his son played around with crypto, but to have turned a small fortune before bedtime was too far-fetched. "We didn't really believe it," says Biesk. But when the phone started to ring off the hook and his wife was flooded with angry messages on Instagram, Biesk realized that his son was telling the truth—if not quite the full story. Earlier that evening, at 7:48 pm PT, Biesk's son had released into the wild 1 billion units of a new crypto coin, which he named Gen Z Quant. Simultaneously, he spent about $350 to purchase 51 million tokens, about 5 percent of the total supply, for himself. Then he started to livestream himself on Pump.Fun, the website he had used to launch the coin. As people tuned in to see what he was doing, they started to buy into Gen Z Quant, leading the price to pitch sharply upwards. By 7:56 pm PT, a whirlwind eight minutes later, Biesk's son's tokens were worth almost $30,000—and he cashed out. "No way. Holy fuck! Holy fuck!" he said, flipping two middle fingers to the webcam, with tongue sticking out of his mouth. "Holy fuck! Thanks for the twenty bandos." After he dumped the tokens, the price of the coin plummeted, so large was his single trade. To the normie ear, all this might sound impossible. But in the realm of memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency with no purpose or utility beyond financial speculation, it's relatively routine. Although many people lose money, a few have been known to make a lot—and fast. In this case, Biesk's son had seemingly performed what is known as a soft rug pull, whereby somebody creates a new crypto token, promotes it online, then sells off their entire holdings either swiftly or over time, sinking its price. These maneuvers occupy something of a legal gray area, lawyers say, but are roundly condemned in the cryptosphere as ethically dubious at the least. After dumping Gen Z Quant, Biesk's son did the same thing with two more coins—one called im sorry and another called my dog lucy—bringing his takings for the evening to more than $50,000. The backlash was swift and ferocious. A torrent of abuse began to pour into the chat log on Pump.Fun, from traders who felt they had been swindled. "You little fucking scammer," wrote one commenter. Soon, the names and pictures of Biesk, his son, and other family members were circulating on X. They had been doxed. "Our phone started blowing up. Just phone call after phone call," says Biesk. "It was a very frightening situation." As part of their revenge campaign, crypto traders continued to buy into Gen Z Quant, driving the coin's price far higher than the level at which Biesk's son had cashed out. At its peak, around 3:00 am PT the following morning, the coin had a theoretical total value of $72 million; the tokens the teenager had initially held were worth more than $3 million. Even now the trading frenzy has died down, they continue to be valued at twice the amount he received. "In the end, a lot of people made money on his coin. But for us, caught in the middle, there was a lot of emotion," says Biesk. "The online backlash became so frighteningly scary that the realization that he made money was kind of tempered down with the fact that people became angry and started bullying." Biesk concedes to a limited understanding of crypto. But he sees little distinction between what his son did and, say, playing the stock market or winning at a casino. Though under California law someone must be at least 18 years old to gamble or invest in stocks, the unregulated memecoin market, which has been compared to a "casino" in risk profile, had given Biesk's teenage son early access to a similar arena, in which some must lose for others to profit. "The way I understand it is he made money and he cashed out, which to me seems like that's what anybody would've done," says Biesk. "You get people who are cheering at the craps table, or angry at the craps table." Memecoins have been around since 2013, when Dogecoin was released. In the following years, a few developers tried to replicate the success of Dogecoin, making play of popular internet memes or tapping into the zeitgeist in some other way in a bid to encourage people to invest. But the cost and complexity of development generally limited the number of memecoins that came to market. That equation was flipped in January with the launch of Pump.Fun, which lets people release new memecoins instantly, at no cost. The idea was to give people a safer way to trade memecoins by standardizing the underlying code, which prevents developers from building in malicious mechanisms to steal funds, in what's known as a hard rug pull. "Buying into memecoins was a very unsafe thing to do. Programmers could create systems that would obfuscate what you are buying into and, basically, behave as malicious actors. Everything was designed to suck money out of people," one of the three anonymous cofounders of Pump.Fun, who goes by Sapijiju, told WIRED earlier in the year. "The idea with Pump was to build something where everyone was on the same playing field." Since Pump.Fun launched, millions of unique memecoins have entered the market through the platform. By some metrics, Pump.Fun is the fastest-growing crypto application ever, taking in more than $250 million in revenue—as a 1 percent cut of trades on the platform—in less than a year in operation. However, Pump.Fun has found it impossible to insulate users from soft rug pulls. Though the platform gives users access to information to help assess risk—like the proportion of a coin belonging to the largest few holders—soft rug pulls are difficult to prevent by technical means, claims Sapijiju. "People say there's a bunch of different stuff you can do to block [soft rug pulls]—maybe a sell tax or lock up the people who create the coin. Truthfully, all of this is very easy to manipulate," he says. "Whatever we do to stop people doing this, there's always a way to circumnavigate if you're smart enough. The important thing is creating an interface that is as simple as possible and giving the tools for users to see if a coin is legitimate or not." The "overwhelming majority" of new crypto tokens entering the market are scams of one form or another, designed expressly to squeeze money from buyers, not to hold a sustained value in the long term, according to crypto security company Blockaid. In the period since memecoin launchpads like Pump.Fun began to gain traction, the volume of soft rug pulls has increased in lockstep, says Ido Ben-Natan, Blockaid founder. "I generally agree that it is kind of impossible to prevent holistically. It's a game of cat and mouse," says Ben-Natan. "It's definitely impossible to cover a hundred percent of these things. But it definitely is possible to detect repeat offenders, looking at metadata and different kinds of patterns." Now memecoin trading has been popularized, there can be no putting the genie back in the bottle, says Ben-Natan. But traders are perhaps uniquely vulnerable at present, he says, in a period when many are newly infatuated with memecoins, yet before the fledgling platforms have figured out the best way to protect them. "The space is immature," says Ben-Natan. Whether it is legal to perform a rug pull is also something of a gray area. It depends on both jurisdiction and whether explicit promises are made to prospective investors, experts say. The absence of bespoke crypto regulations in countries like the US, meanwhile, inadvertently creates cloud cover for acts that are perhaps not overtly illegal. "These actions exploit the gaps in existing regulatory frameworks, where unethical behavior—like developers hyping a project and later abandoning it—might not explicitly violate laws if no fraudulent misrepresentation, contractual breach, or other violations occur," says Ronghui Gu, cofounder of crypto security firm CertiK and associate professor of computer science at Columbia University. The Gen Z Quant broadcast is no longer available to view in full, but in the clips reviewed by WIRED, at no point does Biesk's son promise to hold his tokens for any specific period. Neither do the Pump.Fun terms of use require people to refrain from selling tokens they create. (Sapijiju, the Pump.Fun cofounder, declined to comment on the Gen Z Quant incident. They say that Pump.Fun will be "introducing age restrictions in future," but declined to elaborate.) But even then, under the laws of numerous US states, among them California, "the developer likely still owes heightened legal duties to the investors, so may be liable for breaching obligations that result in loss of value," says Geoffrey Berg, partner at law firm Berg Plummer & Johnson. "The developer is in a position of trust and must place the interests of his investors over his own." To clarify whether these legal duties apply to people who release memecoins through websites like Pump.Fun—who buy into their coins like everyone else, albeit at the moment of launch and therefore at a discount and in potentially market-swinging quantities—new laws may be required. In July 2026, a new regime will take effect in California, where Biesk's family lives, requiring residents to obtain a license to take part in "digital financial asset business activity," including exchanging, transferring, storing or administering certain crypto assets. President-elect Donald Trump has also promised new crypto regulations. But for now, there are no crypto-specific laws in place. "We are in a legal vacuum where there are no clear laws," says Andrew Gordon, partner at law firm Gordon Law. "Once we know what is 'in bounds,' we will also know what is 'out of bounds.' This will hopefully create a climate where rug pulls don't happen, or when they do they are seen as a criminal violation." On November 19, as the evening wore on, angry messages continued to tumble in, says Biesk. Though some celebrated his son's antics, calling for him to return and create another coin, others were threatening or aggressive. "Your son stole my fucking money," wrote one person over Instagram. Biesk and his wife were still trying to understand quite how their son was able to make so much money, so fast. "I was trying to get an understanding of exactly how this meme crypto trading works," says Biesk. Some memecoin traders, sensing there could be money in riffing off the turn of events, created new coins on Pump.Fun inspired by Biesk and his wife: QUANT DAD and QUANTS MOM. (Both are now practically worthless.) Equally disturbed and bewildered, Biesk and his wife formed a provisional plan: to make all public social media accounts private, stop answering the phone, and, generally, hunker down until things blew over. (Biesk's account is active at the time of writing.) Biesk declined to comment on whether the family made contact with law enforcement or what would happen to the funds, saying only that his son would "put the money away." A few hours later, an X account under the name of Biesk's son posted on X, pleading for people to stop contacting his parents. "Im sorry about Quant, I didnt realize I get so much money. Please dont write to my parents, I wiill pay you back [sic]," read the post. Biesk claims the account is not operated by his son. Though alarmed by the backlash, Biesk is impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit and technical capability his son displayed. "It's actually sort of a sophisticated trading platform," he says. "He obviously learned it on his own." That his teenager was capable of making $50,000 in an evening, Biesk theorizes, speaks to the fundamentally different relationship kids of that age have with money and investing, characterized by an urgency and hyperactivity that rubs up against traditional wisdom. "To me, crypto can be hard to grasp, because there is nothing there behind it—it's not anything tangible. But I think kids relate to this intangible digital world more than adults do," says Biesk. "This has an immediacy to him. It's almost like he understands this better." On December 1, after a two-week hiatus, Biesk's son returned to Pump.Fun to launch five new memecoins, apparently undeterred by the abuse. Disregarding the warnings built into the very names of some of the new coins—one was named test and another dontbuy—people bought in. Biesk's son made another $5,000.
The New Yorker	[]	# Which of Your Selves Should Win? By Hannah Jocelyn December 6th, 2024 06:00 PM --- In today's newsletter, Alice Gregory on the philosophy of L. A. Paul, and then: To whom should we have allegiance—the version of ourself making choices, or the version of ourself who will be affected by them? Before she presented the paper that became her book "Transformative Experience," L. A. Paul remembers thinking, "This is going to ruin my career." She was forty-six, a philosopher with tenure at the University of Arizona, and she was asking her colleagues to consider the experience of having a child—a vital area of concern in millions of people's lives, but rarely discussed in the world of academic philosophy. "It's all going to be over, because here I am talking about babies." In fact, the opposite happened. Paul won the 2020 Lebowitz Prize for philosophical achievement, and "Transformative Experience" has been translated into several languages and is widely read outside academic circles. It is an investigation of personal change, those "special types of situations that change not only what we know but also who we are," Alice Gregory writes, in a Profile of the philosopher for this week's issue. Childbirth, or going to war, or taking LSD, could be considered a transformative experience. So could divorce, Paul realizes, in the wake of her breakup after twenty-two years with her husband. Paul is now at Yale, and her work has been used by others to examine issues such as gender transitioning, whistle-blowing, treating Alzheimer's—and it provides a framework for Gregory to reflect on aspects of her own pregnancy. "Choosing to undergo such an experience, on the occasions when choice is even possible," Gregory notes, "requires us to violate who we take our current self to be." Read or listen to the story » The President-elect is on the verge of beating most, if not all, of the criminal charges against him. In general, "Presidents have become less, not more, subject to criminal law," Jeannie Suk Gersen writes, "and have become more, not less, likely to view criminal law as an option for use against political opponents." What will be the long-term consequences? Read the story » P.S. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook California yesterday, prompting a tsunami warning. It wasn't quite "the really big one," a long-predicted quake that would be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2 on the Richter scale and would leave the region unrecognizable. Read Kathryn Schulz's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the next full-margin rupture, and follow up with her piece on how to stay safe when it comes. 🌊
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Science & Health", "health", "United States" ]	# Maternal mortality review panels are in the spotlight. Here's what they do By Associated Press December 7th, 2024 08:02 AM --- Efforts to reduce the nation's persistently high maternal mortality rates involve state panels of experts that investigate and learn from each mother's death. The panels — called maternal mortality review committees — usually do their work quietly and out of the public eye. But that's not been the case recently in three states with strict abortion laws. Georgia dismissed all members of its committee in November after information about deaths being reviewed leaked to the news organization ProPublica. Days later, The Washington Post reported that Texas' committee won't review cases from 2022 and 2023, the first two years after the state banned nearly all abortions. In Idaho, the state let its panel disband in 2023 only to reinstate it earlier this year. "They've become more of a lightning rod than they were before," said epidemiologist Michael Kramer, director of the Center for Rural Health and Health Disparities at Mercer University in Georgia. Here's what maternal mortality review committees across the nation do and what might happen next: What are they? "Maternal mortality review committees are important because they are the most comprehensive source of information about maternal mortality that we have," said David Goodman, who leads the maternal mortality prevention team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The panels review deaths that occur during pregnancy or within a year after it ends, whether directly related to the pregnancy or not. Causes of death can range from hemorrhage during childbirth to drug overdoses to traffic accidents. The goal, Kramer said, is to examine maternal deaths and help "decide what we can do about them." All states, a few cities and Puerto Rico have these committees. Their membership varies and may include OB-GYNs, maternal-fetal medicine doctors, nurses, midwives, mental and public health experts and members of patient advocacy groups. Most have representatives from several areas of expertise, which the CDC recommends. How members are selected also varies; people may apply, submit letters of interest or be invited to serve. The selection shouldn't be politically motivated, Kramer said, because "if there's a systematic exclusion of certain data or certain perspectives" it's difficult to truly understand what's happening. How do they look at deaths? First, the panels work with state vital statistics offices and epidemiologists to identify deaths associated with pregnancy by examining death certificates and looking for a pregnancy checkbox or a related cause of death. They may also search for links to birth and fetal death records, or delve into hospital discharge data, media reports and obituaries. Once they identify cases, they collect as much information as possible, such as prenatal care records, hospital and social service records, autopsy reports and interviews with family members. Professional "abstractors" distill all this into case narratives, which committee members pore over. Most use a standardized review process developed by the CDC — and all panels can get help and guidance from the agency. They consider questions such as: Was the death pregnancy-related? What was the underlying cause? Was it preventable? What factors contributed? States generally have privacy rules that protect committee members and people who provide information on the deaths. The groups then issue public reports that don't name moms or hospitals but include overall findings, trends and recommendations. Some come out a couple of years or more after the deaths. Across the nation in 2023, Goodman said, 151 recommendations from those reports were implemented by communities, hospitals, medical professionals and policymakers. What about Georgia, Texas and Idaho? Georgia will rebuild its committee through a new application process, the state public health commissioner said. Texas' committee has been reviewing 2021 deaths and will start on 2024 cases at its next meeting, Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton said in an email to The Associated Press. "Reviewing cases is a lengthy process and legislators have asked for more recent data. Starting the next review cycle with 2024 cases will allow us to provide that in the next report," Anton said, adding that maternal and child health epidemiologists will continue to analyze and publish data for 2022 and 2023. In Idaho, the reconstituted review committee now falls under the state board of medicine, which licenses doctors, instead of the state's health and welfare department. It will operate like it always has, said Bob McLaughlin, spokesperson for the medical board. Members met for the first time in November and plan to issue a report by Jan. 31. Because the legislature wanted the most up-to-date information, McLaughlin said the first report will cover only 2023 cases, and the group will review 2022 deaths next. Goodman said he's encouraged that every state has a review committee now — only 20 had them in 2015.
CBC News	[ "TikTok", "Moscow", "Romania", "Russia", "European Commission", "European Union", "Elections", "Presidential elections", "Courts", "Democracy" ]	# Romanian court orders election redo after allegations of pro-Russia propaganda campaign on TikTok December 6th, 2024 03:14 PM --- Declassified files allege pro-Russia campaign of many TikTok users promoting Calin Georgescu A top Romanian court on Friday annulled the first round of the country's presidential election, days after allegations that Russia ran a co-ordinated online campaign to promote the far-right outsider who won the first round. The Constitutional Court's unprecedented decision — which is final — came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms like TikTok and Telegram. Despite being a huge outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner on Nov. 24. He was due to face reformist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party in a runoff on Sunday, with some 951 voting stations having already opened abroad on Friday. A new date will now be set to rerun the first round. But Lasconi strongly condemned the court's decision, saying it was "illegal, immoral and crushes the very essence of democracy." "We should have moved forward with the vote. We should have respected the will of the Romanian people. Whether we like it or not, from a legal and legitimate standpoint, nine million Romanian citizens, both in the country and the diaspora, expressed their preference for a particular candidate through their votes. We cannot ignore their will!" she said. She said the issue of Russian interference should have been tackled after the election was completed. Some 9.4 million people — about 52.5 per cent of eligible voters — had cast ballots in the first round. The president serves a five-year term and has significant decision-making powers in areas such as national security, foreign policy and judicial appointments. Romania is a member of both the European Union and NATO. ## Accounts activated in vote run-up, files suggest Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said in a statement the annulment was "the only correct solution" following the intelligence drop which revealed the "Romanian people's vote was flagrantly distorted as a result of Russian interference." "At the same time, investigations by the authorities must uncover who is responsible for the massive attempt to influence the outcome of the presidential election," he added in a Facebook post. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians, said the development was a "coup d'état in full swing" but urged people not to take to the streets. The intelligence files were from the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Special Telecommunication Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same court last week ordered a recount of the first-round votes, which added to the myriad controversies that have engulfed a chaotic election cycle. Declassified files suggest a pro-Russia campaign used the messaging app Telegram to recruit thousands of TikTok users to promote Georgescu. Romania's intelligence services alleged one TikTok user paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to influencers on the platform to promote content about the candidate. Some of the thousands of social media accounts used in the campaign were allegedly created years ago but were only activated in the weeks leading up to the first-round vote, the files indicated. It is unclear from the intelligence release whether Georgescu was even aware of the alleged campaign, let alone that he assisted in it. ## EU wants to hear from TikTok The European Union said Friday it sent TikTok an urgent request for more information. The commission previously asked the Chinese-owned platform to retain all Romania election-related files and evidence. "We are concerned about mounting indications of coordinated foreign online influence operation targeting ongoing Romanian elections, especially on TikTok," said Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission's executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, in a post on X. TikTok has 24 hours to respond to the EU request, officials told a press briefing in Brussels. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said the court's decision amounts to a "crisis mode situation for the Romanian democracy." "In light of the information about the external interference, the massive interference in elections, I think this was not normal but predictable, because it's not normal times at all. Romania is an uncharted territory," he told The Associated Press. "The problem is here, do we have the institutions to manage such an interference in the future?" EU lawmakers last week urged a rerun of the parliamentary vote of Georgia's October election within a year, to be run by an independent election administration and undertaken with international supervision. The Georgian president, who has a largely ceremonial role, has accused the ruling Georgia Dream party of rigging that election with the help of Russia, which previously ruled Georgia from Moscow when it was part of the Soviet Union.
The BBC	[ "Rangers" ]	# Danilo 'ready to challenge' at Rangers after injury return By BBC Sport December 5th, 2024 05:19 PM --- Rangers forward Danilo insists there is "more to come" from him following his first league start in a year. The 25-year-old scored in the 6-0 win over Kilmarnock on Wednesday night and is looking to kick on in Glasgow after an injury-hit start to life at Ibrox. The Brazilian joined Philippe Clement's side in the summer of 2023 on a five-year deal but after injuring his knee against Hearts last December, Danilo has had to bide his time. "100% it's a relief," the striker said of his goal. "That's what the celebration was about, just being out there after coming back from the injury. I've had my opportunities before but didn't finish them off. "So, yeah, obviously when you score it's so nice to have those feelings again. Hopefully there's more to come. "It's about keeping myself fit and also prevent those kind of silly injuries I've had as well. But sometimes things happen without even wanting that, so we just have to be careful. "So right now, I've been really good. I've been looking after my body looking to prevent those kind of injuries. And right now I'm feeling fine, feeling great, and I'm ready to challenge."
Wired	[ "coupons", "shopping" ]	# 10% Off eBay Coupon Code \| December 2024 By Molly Higgins November 8th, 2024 02:40 AM --- Get 10% off select products and enjoy other great deals at eBay this December. Long before we had Amazon or Facebook marketplace, or thousands of other online retailers, we had eBay. And now, we have an eBay coupon to help you save on basics like vacuums and phones, to even your most niche need—because eBay has everything from haunted objects to ironic landline phones to retro gaming consoles. One of the first and most enduring online shopping platforms, eBay has stood the test of time, providing us with the old-school feel of estate sales, complete with bidding wars and gently used items of quite literally every type. ## Get 10% Off With This eBay Coupon Code We have an eBay promo code for deals, where you can get 10% off toys, games, puzzles, electronics, and more. Just paste the code HEATHERSFINDS10 in the box at checkout to save (expires Dec. 31). ## How to Use an eBay Coupon Once you've perused the nearly endless options of items on eBay, here's how you can redeem the eBay discount code or offer at checkout: first, make sure your code isn't expired (I know it sounds like a no-brainer, but you don't want to be disappointed when that dreaded 'invalid' pop-up comes on the screen). Enter the code in the 'Add coupons' section. or check the box if the coupon is displayed. When you select 'apply,' you should see the discounted total, and then you'll be prompted to pay. ## Save More With Free Shipping Once you find the special item of your dreams, go to the "shipping and pickup" search filter and check the "free shipping" box to get free shipping. Make sure you choose eBay free shipping on a multitude of items like motor parts, books, golf clubs, Pokemon cards, haunted objects, tech, and virtually anything else you can imagine. ## Shop These Rotating eBay Deals eBay has rotating deals, like 20% off up-and-coming brands, so be sure to check their page often to know which deals are next. They also have spotlighted, trending, and featured deals for huge savings on a myriad of products like auto parts, golf clubs, shoes, and more. eBay has a money-back guarantee to ensure you get the item you ordered or you get your money back. Head back to eBay and see what you've been missing, and save even more with our eBay coupon code HEATHERSFINDS10 for 10% off select products.
TechCrunch	[ "Education", "interview", "AI", "OpenAI", "Generative AI", "Fireside", "ChatGPT", "GPTs" ]	# OpenAI wants to pair online courses with chatbots By Kyle Wiggers December 5th, 2024 08:14 PM --- If OpenAI has its way, the next online course you take might have a chatbot component. Speaking at a fireside on Monday hosted by Coeus Collective, Siya Raj Purohit, a member of OpenAI's go-to-market team for education, said that OpenAI might explore ways to let e-learning instructors create custom "GPTs" that tie into online curriculums. "What I'm hoping is going to happen is that professors are going to create custom GPTs for the public and let people engage with content in a lifelong manner," Purohit said. "It's not part of the current work that we're doing, but it's definitely on the roadmap." Purohit says that already, she's observed professors uploading a "semester's worth" of content to create custom GPTs with OpenAI's existing tools, and then making those GPTs available to their students. "Students engage with that finite knowledge ... [which] I think is a really powerful and good way to let them research," she added. OpenAI is aggressively going after the education market, which it sees as a key area of growth. In September, the company hired former Coursera chief revenue officer Leah Belsky as its first education GM and charged her with bringing OpenAI's products to more schools. And this spring, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT built for universities. According to Allied Market Research, the AI in education market could be worth $88.2 billion within the next decade. But growth is off to a sluggish start, in large part thanks to skeptical pedagogues. The GPTs Purohit described might look something like Khanmigo, a chatbot Khan Academy, the e-learning platform, launched in collaboration with OpenAI last year. Khanmigo can give students pointers on homework assignments, test prep, and more, tightly integrating with Khan Academy's educational content library. Illustrating the pitfalls of AI today, Khanmingo makes mistakes. When The Wall Street Journal tested the chatbot in February, it struggled with basic math, and often didn't correct errors when asked to double-check solutions. Purohit asserted that the tech is improving, however. "All of our models keep getting better, and our goal is to help translate that into what works in learning and teaching," she said. Educators remain largely skeptical. In a survey this year by the Pew Research Center, a quarter of public K-12 teachers said using AI tools in education does more harm than good. A separate poll by the Rand Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that just 18% of K-12 educators are applying AI in their classrooms.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Europe", "YouTuber", "Sean McLoughlin", "Thankmas" ]	# Irish YouTuber moves millions of followers to donate millions for charity By Associated Press December 7th, 2024 08:01 AM --- Sean McLoughlin wears a lot of hats: YouTuber. Voice actor. Coffee entrepreneur. But McLoughlin, better known by his pseudonym Jacksepticeye, likes to say he would be a therapist if he wasn't posting video game playthroughs for his nearly 31 million subscribers. The 34-year-old Irish creator finds that gaming enthusiasts aren't just drawn by his expressive reactions to the latest action role-playing games; fans also resonate with his candid discussions of mental health. The supportive responses from his niche but passionate following make McLoughlin feel "less alone," he said, forging the same camaraderie that brought him to online gaming communities as a lonely 20-something living at his family's remote home. That shared connection is also central to his annual fundraiser, "Thankmas." The charity livestream is one of many online specials emerging as a modern spin on the classic telethon. Total donations have increased more than 50% over the last year on Tiltify, a digital platform that integrates giving tools into streams. The spaces are credited for allowing more authentic interactions between nonprofits and young donors — and encouraging benevolence in a corner of the web marked by incendiary rhetoric. "If you want to do good things, the people are there, and they'll listen," McLoughlin said. "They're already following you for what you do for a reason. So they'll follow you to help out people as well." Follow they have. His streams have raked in more than $26 million, according to partner Tiltify. This year's goal is to collect $6 million for two nonprofits supporting mental health: Crisis Text Line and Samaritans. A seven-figure target would have seemed a longshot when McLoughlin entered the space. The initial idea was to hold monthly fundraisers. He hosted seven charitable streams in 2018, Tiltify records show, for causes including pediatric cancer and clean water. The year culminated in the inaugural "Thankmas," which pulled over a quarter of a million dollars. But McLoughlin said the pace became "a bit much." That same year he announced a brief break from YouTube, in part due to unhappiness from the demands he felt for high content volumes. He resolved to focus on one big holiday event at the end of the year, when he said people are "a bit more giving and heartfelt." It wasn't until 2020 that Tiltify CEO Michael Wasserman said the two began working closely to maximize the streams' reach. McLoughlin reached out, according to Wasserman, and said he wanted something "more impactful." With communities worldwide reeling from the pandemic, they put together the #HopeFromHome campaign: a peer-to-peer event where multitudes could simultaneously rally around the same cause. McLoughlin served as a tent pole supporting the other streamers. Their first effort together yielded $1.9 million for United Way Worldwide and more than one-third came from McLoughlin's stream alone. The following "Thankmas" generated more than $4.7 million. Wasserman said he'd never seen his technology used so collaboratively. "That's what really made this a regular, multimillion-dollar event," Wasserman said. "Not just making it, 'Hey I'm going to fundraise and just watch me,' but, 'We as a community can do this and get involved together.'" Specials feature calls, celebrities This year's "Thankmas" will be performed before a live audience in Los Angeles but broadcast online. Recent specials have seen McLoughlin make surprise calls into streams that are also pooling contributions. Comedic segments sometimes feature traditional celebrities; actor Jack Black played a life-sized game of Jenga in 2022. The idea resembles the star-studded telethon pioneered last century by comedian Jerry Lewis. But new technologies and web cultures enable more engaging experiences. Wasserman said charitable livestreams like McLoughlin's are not a "passive watching experience." It's "a much more personable approach to giving," according to Yvette Wohn, a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who studies human-computer interaction. A streamer's audience "cares about them," Wohn said, and donors flock to their content because "they really like that person." Social media and chat boxes allow fans to feel seen by hosts in ways television viewers could never expect. Followers might get shoutouts by name upon contributing. McLoughlin has previously shared fan art submitted through specific hashtags. Fandoms also develop subcultures. McLoughlin's gaming catchphrases are especially popular among his circles. Jacksepticeye content often starts with him shouting, "Top of the morning to ya, laddies!" and fans have uploaded video compilations of the expression. Members then form friendships with others in the fandom. That creates a "positive social pressure" to donate, according to Wohn, helping new generations "dip their toes into building an identity as somebody that gives." "Giving habits are things that build over time," Wohn said. "If younger people start to engage in this culture of giving, I feel like the general culture of giving might expand in ways that cannot be done from a top-down perspective." Online communities offer kinship Still, McLoughlin describes online communities as a "double-edged sword." The "monetization of hate," he said, is "bigger than it's ever been." And the desire for acceptance can introduce lonely people to dark pockets of the internet that nevertheless provide kinship. "Thankmas" aims to prove it's easy to do good online. Yes, he acknowledged, charity work is "quite intimidating." Where is the line between promoting the fundraiser and promoting himself? McLoughlin doesn't know. He just hopes people trust it's coming from the right place. At least one longtime follower was drawn by McLoughlin's ties to this year's cause. Jack Worthey, a 20-year-old from Texas, said McLoughlin brought much comfort growing up with "similar family troubles." It had been several years since he watched Jacksepticeye content, he said, but he was pulled back by an October video where McLoughlin detailed his journey finding mental health treatment. Worthey said he wouldn't have looked into "Thankmas" had McLoughlin had not made the promotion so personal. He now plans to raise awareness through digital art. For Worthey, returning to the channel as an adult and seeing the "positive product" has been "really amazing." "It makes you see what I was enjoying when I was younger in a different light," Worthey said. "It brings a different type of joy."
CBC News	[ "Middle East crisis", "Hamas", "Abu Kamal Al-Assar", "Ahmad Al-Siqali", "Khan Younis", "Mohamed Abu Shahla", "Explosions", "Fires", "Assault", "War and unrest" ]	# 'Charred body pieces everywhere' after Israeli strike sets tents ablaze in Gaza safe zone By Sara Jabakhanji December 5th, 2024 05:33 PM --- Strike kills some 20 people in designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza Palestinians were digging through burnt debris searching for bodies Thursday after some 20 people were killed a day earlier in an Israeli strike that set ablaze tents sheltering displaced families in a designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza. Residents carried a body wrapped in carpets out of the charred wreckage of the makeshift shelters in Al-Mawasi, near the beach west of Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of people have sheltered in the crowded tent camp for months. The tent camp was designated a humanitarian zone by Israeli authorities, who have long told Palestinians to go there for safety. Mohamed Abu Shahla was sheltering in the tent camp when the strike hit "all of a sudden and without any warning." "It didn't spare any people or anything," Abu Shahla told CBC News on Thursday. The strike set several large tents ablaze, and the fire was worsened by the explosion of cooking gas canisters and the burning furniture of the displaced people. On Thursday, the area was strewn with charred clothing, mattresses and other belongings among the twisted frames of scorched shelters. He said displaced Palestinians were looking for some 15 children missing following the attack. "You heard the screams of women and children while they burned ... there isn't a single body that's whole. All of them are in pieces," he said. ## Majority of victims are women, children: Civil defence Eyewitnesses said the strike on the tent camp caused a fireball to erupt. "[Al-]Mawasi is not safe ... nowhere in the Gaza Strip is safe," Ahmad Al-Siqali said. Muhammad Abdul Raouf, a night director with the volunteer-run Palestinian Civil Defence group, said the majority of the 20 confirmed killed were women and children. "The place was scattered with martyrs [when we arrived], charred body pieces everywhere," he told CBC News Wednesday. Israel said the strike targeted senior Hamas operatives, whom it did not identify. "We don't see anyone from the whole world standing by us or helping us in this situation. Let them stop this crazy war that's against us. Let them stop the war," said Abu Kamal Al-Assar, a witness at the site. At a funeral in Khan Younis, where relatives wept over the white-shrouded bodies of people killed the day before, resident Abu Anas Mustafa called the Amnesty report, which accuses Israel of commiting genocide in Gaza, "a victory for Palestinian diplomacy," although he said it "came late." "It is the 430th day of the war today, and Israel has been carrying out massacres and a genocide from the first 10 days of the war," he said. ## House in Gaza City destroyed in attack The attack was one of several others across the Gaza Strip that killed a total of 39 Palestinians, according to medics. In Gaza City, medics said an attack destroyed a house where an extended family had taken shelter and damaged two nearby homes, killing at least three people. The Israeli army says militants frequently use residential buildings, schools and hospitals for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminate attacks and ignoring the plight of civilians in harm's way. In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, an Israeli strike killed three Palestinians on Thursday, medics said. Three others were killed in a separate airstrike in Shejaia, in eastern Gaza City, they added. On Thursday, Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in the north of the enclave, said a 16-year-old boy who used a wheelchair was killed, and several people, including medics, were wounded by Israeli drone fire against the medical facility. There was no Israeli comment on Abu Safiya's account. The health ministry said the three hospitals that are barely operational on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip have come under repeated attack since Israeli forces sent tanks to Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun towns and the nearby Jabalia camp in October. Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, it has laid much of the Gaza Strip to waste, forcing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people from their homes. Authorities in the Hamas-run territory say more than 44,500 Gazans have been killed, with thousands of others feared dead under the rubble.
The BBC	[ "Severe weather" ]	# Guernsey warning to boat owners with 75mph winds expected By BBC News December 5th, 2024 05:32 PM --- Winds gusting up to 75mph (120km/h) are expected to hit Guernsey at the weekend as Storm Darragh sweeps in. Winds are expected to increase on Friday evening and through Saturday and be at their strongest on Saturday afternoon, said the States of Guernsey. Boat owners have been warned by Guernsey Harbours to secure their vessels by double checking covers and hatches and ensuring mooring lines are correctly rigged. The States of Guernsey said islanders "should consider cancelling any activities which may put them at risk". ## Coastal areas vulnerable The warnings come amid a red wind warning from 03:00 to 11:00 GMT on Saturday, covering western and southern coastal regions of Wales as well as the Bristol Channel in England. The States said: "Anything on the coast, particularly on the west coast, could be very dangerous and people should avoid these areas. "Depending on how badly the winds materialise, outdoor activities in general may be unwise. "Unlike Jersey, our tides are expected to be high, so we are expecting some degree of flooding on the west coast. "There will almost certainly be major disruption at the ports and airport tomorrow, with the possibility it extends into Sunday." Guernsey Football Club has postponed its fixture with Ashford Town on Saturday. The National Trust of Guernsey cancelled its Christmas market at Saumarez Park on Monday. "Our hearts go out to all the stallholders, suppliers, staff and volunteers who have worked so hard to make this one of Guernsey's favourite Christmas events," it said. The States of Alderney urged people to "take extra care when venturing out". "Particular emphasis is placed on avoiding the west coast of the island on Saturday when the most severe period of weather is forecast," it said. Access to the Commercial Quay would be restricted to "essential personnel only" and people were discouraged from attempting to visit the Admiralty Breakwater and surrounding areas during the severe weather. ## Aurigny offers flexibility Aurigny warned customers booked on flights on Saturday and Sunday of the potential for disruption. It offered a free change, which would let passengers move to an alternative flight within seven days of the original scheduled departure, or the opportunity to travel earlier on Friday. Chief commercial officer Sudeep Ghai said: "We hope the extra flexibility offered will provide some reassurance and a little extra certainty to our communities at this time." Guernsey's house waste and recycling centre and the Mont Cuet green waste site will be closed on Saturday as a precaution. The fourth named storm of the season, Darragh comes only weeks after Storm Bert and Storm Conall caused disruption at the end of last month. While heavy rain was expected, there was unlikely to be as much rainfall and flooding as seen with Storm Bert, forecasters said.
Wired	[ "design", "artificial intelligence", "startups", "wired uk" ]	# Canva Revolutionized Graphic Design. Will It Survive the Age of AI? By Victoria Turk December 5th, 2024 09:00 PM --- Generative AI could have been an existential threat for Canva, which made billions by making graphic design quick and easy. But for CEO Melanie Perkins, it's simply making the world more visual. Design platform Canva launched in 2013 with the aim of democratizing visual creation through features like templates and drag-and-drop graphics. It focused on ease, offering a design suite less daunting for nonprofessionals than tools like Adobe's Photoshop, and simplified access with a web platform and freemium model. Since then, the Sydney-headquartered company has grown to 220 million monthly active users and an 11-figure valuation. But with the advent of generative AI, it's having to innovate to keep its place. Cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins insists she never saw AI as an existential threat and is excited to embrace it: This year, Canva acquired text-to-image generator Leonardo.ai and launched its Magic Studio suite of AI design tools. In October, it launched an AI generator, Dream Lab, which can help users refine their work—changing data into visuals, for instance—or offer design inspiration. Previously focused on individuals and small businesses, the company is now going after larger corporate clients, acquiring business-focused design platform Affinity in March and courting CIOs with a rap battle that went viral for its extreme levels of cringe. Alongside lofty growth ambitions, Perkins and her cofounder (and husband) Cliff Obrecht have committed to putting most of their equity—totalling 30 percent—into giving back. Perkins told WIRED how they plan to reach both goals. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. WIRED: What was your reaction when generative AI tools emerged, and suddenly designing visuals became as simple as typing a prompt? MELANIE PERKINS: Canva's vision has always been to enable you to take your idea and turn it into a design, and reduce the friction between those two points. I think because that has always been our ambition, we were very early to start to adopt AI in our product. The first really big piece for us was with Background Remover [Canva acquired AI background removal tool Kaleido in 2021], and we've continued to invest heavily in this space ever since. So when I first saw LLMs and generative AI, it was extraordinarily exciting, because I think it really helps us to achieve that initial mission. There wasn't a moment of concern that this might be an existential threat? No, not at all. Talk me through your AI game plan ... We have what we call our three-pronged approach. The first is taking the world's latest and greatest technology and integrating it into our product and ensuring it's a seamless user experience. Then in areas where we need to invest deeply, we're investing really deeply, which was why we acquired Leonardo.ai recently, why we acquired Kaleido, and why we're continuing to invest heavily at the forefront of AI. And the other is our app ecosystem, which means that companies can integrate into Canva's platform and access our huge user base. There's a broader discussion about the impact of AI on human creativity. Do you have any concerns that AI could go too far—that it could take some of the fun out of design, or risk homogenizing it? The tools designers have used over the years have changed and transformed with technology that's available, and it feels very reminiscent of what's happening now. The world of visual communication has changed so radically. When we started out with Canva, 10 years ago, we were like, "The world's going to become visual." Over the last decade, that's certainly proven to be more true. A decade ago, a marketer might create one billboard for a company or very minimal amounts of visual content, and now, pretty much every single touch point is an opportunity to express their brand and to be visual. It feels like the number of assets a company creates—even a student or a teacher, every profession and industry—has just grown exponentially. So I don't think there's going to be less room for creativity by any stretch of the imagination. You're currently leaning into the enterprise market. Where is Canva mainly being used within larger businesses? It's pretty extraordinary how widespread the use is across these organizations. We've done a deep dive with certain companies, and it's surprisingly spread across everything from software teams creating technical diagrams to HR teams doing onboarding, to accounting teams doing presentations. I think we've particularly hit a sweet spot with marketing teams and sales teams. And then earlier this year, we launched Courses, which was a really exciting unlock for HR teams specifically. In this new enterprise space, who do you see as your key competitors? Are you coming up against Microsoft Office and Google Workspace? Right from the start, we had this Venn diagram: On one side is creativity, and on the other side is productivity. And you might guess, right in the center is Canva. We really believe that people on the productivity side actually want to be more creative, and that people on the creative side want to be more productive. And so we really found that to be the sweet spot—it was a huge gap in the market that we saw right in the early days, and it's where we're continuing to invest very heavily. What about you? How does Canva use Canva? Extremely extensively, for literally everything. Our engineers do their engineering docs in Canva, we do all-hands, I do all of my product mock-ups in it. I've used it for decision decks and vision decks and onboarding and hiring and recruitment—name something, we're using Canva for it very extensively. Your peak valuation was $40 billion in 2021. A year later, this was cut to $26 billion. What happened? I think it was purely the macro shift in the market. During that time, Canva has continued to grow rapidly, both on revenue and active users. We've been profitable for seven years as well, so even though the market [switched to caring] more about profitability, we were fortunately already on that trend. Markets are going to value different things over time, and markets are going to be frothy and then not frothy. We are just always caring about building a strong, enduring company with good foundations that serves our community. So it's not a particular bother what's happening out there in the market. You've pledged 30 pecent of Canva—the majority of your and Obrecht's equity—to doing good in the world. What does that mean to you? It seems completely absurd that we have the prosperity that we do across the globe, and there are people that still don't have basic human needs being met. The first step that we've taken is partnering with GiveDirectly, where we give money directly to people who are living in extreme poverty. [Canva has so far donated a total of $30 million to people living in poverty in Malawi.] I love the empowerment that gives them to be able to spend the money on their community, on their family, on their basic human needs—sending their kids to school, getting a roof over their head. We have an extremely long way to go, but we're really excited that we've started that process. You aim to reach 1 billion users. What's the plan to get there? When we set that as a goal a number of years ago, it seemed completely ridiculous, but over the years, it's becoming less ridiculous. We need about one in five internet users in every country to reach a billion. Now in the Philippines it's one in six internet users, and in Australia it's one in eight internet users. In Spain, it's one in 11. In the USA, it's one in 12. So at 200 million now, we're a fifth of the way towards the billion number, and if we can continue to grow as rapidly as we have been, we'll hopefully get there. Any plans to IPO? It's definitely something on the horizon. This article first appeared in the January/February 2025 edition of WIRED UK.
TechCrunch	[ "AI", "Elon Musk", "Funding", "Generative AI", "startup", "xAI" ]	# Elon Musk's xAI lands $6B in new cash to fuel AI ambitions By Kyle Wiggers December 5th, 2024 08:05 PM --- xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, has raised $6 billion, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. Investors gave a minimum of $77,593, per the filing (97 participated, but the document doesn't reveal their identities). The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz were expected to contribute to the round, along with Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. The new cash brings xAI's total raised to $12 billion, adding to the $6 billion tranche xAI raised this spring. CNBC reported in November that xAI was aiming for a $50 billion valuation — double its valuation as of six months ago. According to the Financial Times, only investors who'd backed xAI in its previous fundraising round were permitted to participate in this one. Reportedly, investors who helped finance Musk's Twitter acquisition were given access to up to 25% of xAI's shares. ## Ramping up AI Musk formed xAI last year. Soon after, the company released Grok, a flagship generative AI model that now powers a number of features on X, including a chatbot accessible to X Premium subscribers and free users in some regions. Grok has what Musk has described as "a rebellious streak" — a willingness to answer "spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems." Told to be vulgar, for example, Grok will happily oblige, spewing profanities and colorful language you won't hear from ChatGPT. Musk has derided ChatGPT and other AI systems for being too "woke" and "politically correct," despite Grok's own unwillingness to cross certain boundaries and hedge on political subjects. He's also referred to Grok as "maximally truth-seeking" and less biased than competing models, although there's evidence to suggest that Grok leans to the left. Over the past year, Grok has become increasingly ingrained in X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. At launch, Grok was only available to X users — and developers skilled enough to get the "open source" edition up and running. Thanks to an integration with the open image generator Flux, Grok can generate images on X (without guardrails, controversially). The model can analyze images as well, and summarize news and trending events (imperfectly, mind). Reports indicate that Grok may handle even more X functions in the future, from enhancing X's search capabilities and account bios to helping with post analytics and reply settings. xAI is sprinting to catch up to formidable competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic in the generative AI race. The company launched an API in October, allowing customers to build Grok into third-party apps, platforms, and services. According to The Wall Street Journal, xAI is preparing to release a standalone consumer app similar to OpenAI's in December. Musk asserts that it hasn't been a fair fight. In a lawsuit filed against OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI's close collaborator, attorneys for Musk accuse OpenAI of "actively trying to eliminate competitors" like xAI by "extracting promises from investors not to fund them." OpenAI, Musk's counsel says, also unfairly benefits from Microsoft's infrastructure and expertise in what the attorneys describe as a "de facto merger." Yet Musk often says that X's data gives xAI a leg up compared to rivals. Last month, X changed its privacy policy to allow third parties, including xAI, to train models on X posts. Musk, it's worth noting, was one of the original founders of OpenAI, and left the company in 2018 after disagreements over its direction. He's argued in previous suits that OpenAI profited from his early involvement yet reneged on its nonprofit pledge to make the fruits of its AI research available to all. ## An xAI ecosystem xAI has outlined a vision according to which its models would be trained on data from Musk's various companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, and its models could then improve technology across those companies. It is already powering customer support features for SpaceX's Starlink internet service, according to The Wall Street Journal, and the startup is said to be in talks with Tesla to provide R&D in exchange for some of the carmaker's revenue. Tesla shareholders, for one, object to these plans. Several have sued Musk over his decision to start xAI, arguing that Musk has diverted both talent and resources from Tesla to what's essentially a competing venture. Nevertheless, the deals — and xAI's developer and consumer-facing products — have driven xAI's revenue to around $100 million a year. For comparison, Anthropic is reportedly on pace to generate $1 billion in revenue this year, and OpenAI is targeting $4 billion by the end of 2024. Musk said this summer that xAI is training the next generation of Grok models at its Memphis data center, which was apparently built in just 122 days and is currently powered partly by portable diesel generators. The company hopes to upgrade the server farm, which contains 100,000 Nvidia GPUs, next year. (Because of their ability to perform many calculations in parallel, GPUs are the favored chips for training and running models.) In November, xAI won approval from the regional power authority in Memphis for 150MW of additional power — enough to power roughly 100,000 homes. To win the agency over, xAI pledged to improve the quality of the city's drinking water and provide the Memphis grid with discounted Tesla-manufactured batteries. But some residents criticized the move, arguing it would strain the grid and worsen the area's air quality. Tesla is also expected to use the upgraded data center to improve its autonomous driving technologies. xAI has expanded quite rapidly from an operations standpoint in the year since its founding, growing from just a dozen employees in March 2023 to over 100 today. In October, the startup moved into OpenAI's old corporate offices in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood. xAI has reportedly told investors it plans to raise more money next year. It won't be the only AI lab raising immense cash. Anthropic recently secured $4 billion from Amazon, bringing its total raised to $13.7 billion, while OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in October to grow its war chest to $17.9 billion. Megadeals like OpenAI's and Anthropic's drove AI venture capital activity to $31.1 billion across over 2,000 deals in Q3 2024, per PitchBook data. TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter! Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.
CBC News	[ "Aoraki", "California", "Canada", "New Zealand", "United States of America", "American Mountain Guides Association", "Carlos Romero", "Inspector Vicki Walker", "Kurt Blair", "Glaciers", "Mountains", "Weather", "Police" ]	# Climber from Canada among 3 hikers believed to have died in fall on New Zealand mountain December 6th, 2024 05:23 AM --- Hikers reported missing after they did not arrive to meet prearranged transport after climb Three mountain climbers — one from Canada and two from the U.S. — missing for five days on Aoraki, New Zealand's tallest peak, are believed to have died in a fall, local authorities said Friday. The men's bodies were not found. But based on footprints glimpsed in the snow during an aerial survey, and items believed to belong to them retrieved from the slopes this week, the search for them has ended, Police Area Commander Inspector Vicki Walker told reporters. The Americans — Kurt Blair, 56, from Colorado and Carlos Romero, 50, of California — were certified alpine guides, according to the website of the non-profit American Mountain Guides Association. New Zealand authorities have not named the Canadian climber at the request of his family. ## Reported missing Monday The men flew to a hut partway up the mountain on Saturday to begin their ascent and were reported missing on Monday when they did not arrive to meet their prearranged transport after the climb. Searchers hours later found several climbing-related items believed to belong to the men, but no sign of them, police said. A search stalled for three days due to harsh weather conditions in the area. On Friday, drone operators spotted footprints in the snow and more items that authorities believe belong to the men. "After reviewing the number of days the climbers have been missing, no communication, the items we have retrieved, and our reconnaissance today, we do not believe the men have survived," Walker said. "We believe they have taken a fall." The search would resume if more evidence came to light, but the men's deaths have been referred to a coroner, Walker added. Aoraki is 3,724 metres high and is part of the Southern Alps, the scenic and icy mountain range that runs the length of New Zealand's South Island. A settlement of the same name at its base is a destination for domestic and foreign tourists. The peak is popular among experienced climbers. Its terrain is technically difficult due to crevasses, avalanche risk, changeable weather and glacier movement. More than 240 deaths have been recorded on the mountain and in the surrounding national park since the start of the 20th century.
The BBC	[ "University of Glasgow", "Home Office", "Students", "Glasgow" ]	# University of Glasgow warned over foreign student sponsor breach By Mary McCool December 5th, 2024 05:35 PM --- The University of Glasgow has been warned it has three months to fix several compliance issues with its sponsor system for foreign students. Problems were raised in a Home Office audit of the university's systems in June. The university has now put together a taskforce to respond to the issues and process student visa applications. The details of the problems have not been disclosed. The union Unison said that before this group was assembled, four members of staff were processing applications for more than 13,000 students. Branch secretary Kirsteen Fraser said the process had "ground to a halt", a scenario she said staff had repeatedly warned the university about. "We've gone from a situation where we had 3,000 sponsored students 10 years ago to 13,000 in 2024," she said. "What has happened is the senior management group has failed to invest in staff and in systems at the university. "The focus for a long time has been constant growth without upscaling." The university said the audit had raised "several compliance issues" that needed to be addressed in the next three months. A spokesperson added: "We are confident that we can complete the required actions in the specified timescale. "In the meantime, all activities continue as normal." ## What are the sponsor rules? The audit was carried out by UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), which is part of the Home Office. Institutions that want to host foreign students - a vital part of university finances in Scotland - have to comply with sponsorship duties, external. These duties include doing everything possible to ensure students are genuine, that they comply with immigration rules and see their courses through to the end. If there is a breach of these conditions, UKVI will examine the circumstances and decide what action is appropriate. A serious breach, one that "constitutes a serious threat to immigration control" for instance, could result in the university losing its sponsor licence. Unison's Kirsteen Fraser said the union hoped that the impact of the situation on students will be an "absolute minimum". She said the union had faith that staff would be able to resolve problems. A Home Office spokesperson said: "It is essential that sponsoring institutions comply with their sponsorship duties to avoid abuse of the system." ## 'Worst time of year' Ms Fraser said the taskforce assembled following the audit was put together with little consultation and that staff felt pressured to take part. "That's a sign of how badly the university has managed this, they've panicked," she said. She said the university "absolutely" had the money to properly resource its sponsor system. "We would expect this to be a wake up call," she added. "Our members forewarned that this could happen for a long time. "It's coming at the worst time of year - not just Christmas but it's exam time, there are students starting in January. "This is just another crisis to deal with."
Wired	[ "artificial intelligence", "chatbots", "openai", "chatgpt" ]	# Here's What OpenAI's $200 Monthly ChatGPT Pro Subscription Includes By Reece Rogers December 5th, 2024 04:13 PM --- OpenAI just unveiled a new subscription tier called ChatGPT Pro. Users can pay $200 a month for almost unlimited access to ChatGPT's tools, and an exclusive new AI model. Earlier today, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly subscription for its flagship chatbot. This release is the first of many expected during the next 12 days, as the San Francisco startup has scheduled a slew of announcements to roll out starting today. Everything from OpenAI's $20 monthly subscription is included at this price level as well as significantly more access to the GPT-4o and o1 artificial intelligence models. With a ChatGPT Pro subscription—which will cost $2,400 for a full year—users can also use an exclusive model from OpenAI called o1 pro mode that wields more computing power to process answers. "Power users of ChatGPT, at this point, they really use it a lot, and they want more compute than $20 can buy," said CEO Sam Altman during the video broadcast announcing the new premium tier. While the hefty price tag may be a shock to many consumers, this subscription is targeted at hyper-engaged users who desire almost unlimited access and at researchers who potentially want to experiment with using ChatGPT for more complex, intensive tasks. No change to the pricing of OpenAI's other subscription plans were announced, and the free option remains available. The startup's first subscription option for its consumer chatbot, called ChatGPT Plus, originally launched in February of last year for $20 a month, and remains that price for now. At the Plus level, users unlock most of ChatGPT's new features and generative AI models. These subscribers are also not rate-limited as much by OpenAI as free users. How many ChatGPT requests users can make a day, or the amount of time they can spend gabbing with ChatGPT's best voice interface, is determined by their subscription tier. The company is targeting its new $200 monthly subscription at those using OpenAI's generative AI model for more technical work. "People will find o1 pro mode the most useful for hard math, science, or programming problems," said Jason Wei, an OpenAI research scientist, during the video stream. WIRED has not yet tried a ChatGPT Pro subscription out firsthand to see how it handles these types of requests, though I look forward to testing out the tool as part of helping readers better understand its strengths and limitations, similar to our past work on ChatGPT Plus, as well as its specific features, like Advanced Voice Mode and AI web browsing. Even though subscribers to ChatGPT Pro receive what OpenAI calls "unlimited access" to the o1 model, GPT-4o model, and Advanced Voice Mode feature, the startup is clear its terms of use still apply. So, actions like sharing an account between multiple people or using the Pro plan to power your own service is not allowed and may get your account banned. Users can request a refund for the $200 subscription within the first two weeks of purchasing it if they are dissatisfied, by going through OpenAI's online help center. In addition to ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI announced that the o1 model, which focuses on "reasoning" capabilities and multi-step processing of user input, is no longer in a limited preview. According to the startup, this fully released o1 model answers questions more quickly, can now accept images as inputs, and makes fewer errors. The startup plans to add web browsing and file upload features for ChatGPT's o1 setting in the future. As the end of the year approaches, OpenAI is expected to continue launching new AI features. Reporting from The Verge suggests that these year-end releases may include OpenAI's heavily anticipated generative AI video model, Sora. It's possible that some of these impending announcements could also provide more insights into how Altman is thinking about AI agents, tools that can potentially perform online tasks on your behalf, and the company's focus going into 2025.
TechCrunch	[ "ChatGPT", "evergreens", "Generative AI", "OpenAI" ]	# ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot By Kyle Wiggers, Cody Corrall, and Alyssa Stringer December 5th, 2024 08:00 PM --- ChatGPT, OpenAI's text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies. That growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory. And its latest partnership with Apple for its upcoming generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, has given the company another significant bump in the AI race. 2024 also saw the release of GPT-4o, OpenAI's new flagship omni model for ChatGPT. GPT-4o is now the default free model, complete with voice capabilities. But after demoing GPT-4o, OpenAI paused one of its voices, Sky, after allegations that it was mimicking Scarlett Johansson's voice in "Her." OpenAI is facing internal drama, including the sizable exit of co-founder and longtime chief scientist Ilya Sutskever as the company dissolved its Superalignment team. OpenAI is also facing a lawsuit from Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, for alleged copyright infringement, following a similar suit filed by The New York Times last year. Here's a timeline of ChatGPT product updates and releases, starting with the latest, which we've been updating throughout the year. And if you have any other questions, check out our ChatGPT FAQ here. ## Timeline of the most recent ChatGPT updates December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 ChatGPT FAQs On day one of its 12 Days of OpenAI event, the company announced a new — and expensive — subscription plan. ChatGPT Pro is a $200-per-month tier that provides unlimited access to all of OpenAI's models, including the full version of its o1 "reasoning" model. The full version of o1, which was released as a preview in September, can now reason about image uploads and has been trained to be "more concise in its thinking" to improve response times. Over the next few weeks, we'll be updating all the news from OpenAI as it happens on our live blog. Follow along with us! OpenAI announced "12 Days of OpenAI," which will feature livestreams every weekday starting December 5 at 10 a.m. PT. Each day's stream is said to include either a product launch or a demo in varying sizes. At the New York Times' Dealbook Summit, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that ChatGPT has surpassed 300 million weekly active users. The milestone comes just a few months after the chatbot hit 200 million weekly active users in August 2024 and just over a year after reaching 100 million weekly active users in November 2023. ChatGPT users discovered an interesting phenomenon: the popular chatbot refused to answer questions asked about a "David Mayer," and asking it to do so caused it to freeze up instantly. While the strange behavior spawned conspiracy theories, and a slew of other names being impacted, a much more ordinary reason may be at the heart of it: digital privacy requests. OpenAI is toying with the idea of getting into ads. CFO Sarah Friar told the Financial Times it's weighing an ads business model, with plans to be "thoughtful" about when and where ads appear — though she later stressed that the company has "no active plans to pursue advertising." Still, the exploration may raise eyebrows given that Sam Altman recently said ads would be a "last resort." A group of Canadian media companies, including the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. The companies behind the suit said that OpenAI infringed their copyrights and are seeking to win monetary damages — and ban OpenAI from making further use of their work. OpenAI announced that its GPT-4o model has been updated to feature more "natural" and "engaging" creative writing abilities as well as more thorough responses and insights when accessing files uploaded by users. ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode feature is expanding to the web, allowing users to talk to the chatbot through their browser. The conversational feature is rolling out to ChatGPT's paying Plus, Enterprise, Teams, or Edu subscribers. OpenAI announced the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS can now read code in a handful of developer-focused coding apps, such as VS Code, Xcode, TextEdit, Terminal, and iTerm2 — meaning that developers will no longer have to copy and paste their code into ChatGPT. When the feature is enabled, OpenAI will automatically send the section of code you're working on through its chatbot as context, alongside your prompt. Lilian Weng announced on X that she is departing OpenAI. Weng served as VP of research and safety since August, and before that was the head of OpenAI's safety systems team. It's the latest in a long string of AI safety researchers,policy researchers, and other executives who have exited the company in the last year. OpenAI stated that it told around 2 million users of ChatGPT to go elsewhere for information about the 2024 U.S. election, and instead recommended trusted news sources like Reuters and the Associated Press. In a blog post, OpenAI said that ChatGPT sent roughly a million people to CanIVote.org when they asked questions specific to voting in the lead-up to the election and rejected around 250,000 requests to generate images of the candidates over the same period. Adding to its collection of high-profile domain names, Chat.com now redirects to ChatGPT. Last year, it was reported that HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah acquired Chat.com for $15.5 million, making it one of the top two all-time publicly reported domain sales — though OpenAI declined to state how much it paid for it. The former head of Meta's augmented reality glasses efforts is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware. Kalinowski is a hardware executive who began leading Meta's AR glasses team in March 2022. She oversaw the creation of Orion, the impressive augmented reality prototype that Meta recently showed off at its annual Connect conference. Apple is including an option to upgrade to ChatGPT Plus inside its Settings app, according to an update to the iOS 18.2 beta spotted by 9to5Mac. This will give Apple users a direct route to sign up for OpenAI's premium subscription plan, which costs $20 a month. In a Reddit AMA, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that a lack of compute capacity is one major factor preventing the company from shipping products as often as it'd like, including the vision capabilities for Advanced Voice Mode first teased in May. Altman also indicated that the next major release of DALL-E, OpenAI's image generator, has no launch timeline, and that Sora, OpenAI's video-generating tool, has also been held back. Altman also admitted to using ChatGPT "sometimes" to answer questions throughout the AMA. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Search, an evolution of the SearchGPT prototype it unveiled this summer. Powered by a fine-tuned version of OpenAI's GPT-4o model, ChatGPT Search serves up information and photos from the web along with links to relevant sources, at which point you can ask follow-up questions to refine an ongoing search. OpenAI has rolled out Advanced Voice Mode to ChatGPT's desktop apps for macOS and Windows. For Mac users, that means that both ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode can coexist with Siri on the same device, leading the way for ChatGPT's Apple Intelligence integration. Reuters reports that OpenAI is working with TSMC and Broadcom to build an in-house AI chip, which could arrive as soon as 2026. It appears, at least for now, the company has abandoned plans to establish a network of factories for chip manufacturing and is instead focusing on in-house chip design. OpenAI announced it's rolling out a feature that allows users to search through their ChatGPT chat histories on the web. The new feature will let users bring up an old chat to remember something or pick back up a chat right where it was left off. With the release of iOS 18.1, Apple Intelligence features powered by ChatGPT are now available to users. The ChatGPT features include integrated writing tools, image cleanup, article summaries, and a typing input for the redesigned Siri experience. OpenAI denied reports that it is intending to release an AI model, code-named Orion, by December of this year. An OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that they "don't have plans to release a model code-named Orion this year," but that leaves OpenAI substantial wiggle room. OpenAI has begun previewing a dedicated Windows app for ChatGPT. The company says the app is an early version and is currently only available to ChatGPT Plus, Team, Enterprise, and Edu users with a "full experience" set to come later this year. OpenAI struck a content deal with Hearst, the newspaper and magazine publisher known for the San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, and others. The partnership will allow OpenAI to surface stories from Hearst publications with citations and direct links. OpenAI introduced a new way to interact with ChatGPT called "Canvas." The canvas workspace allows for users to generate writing or code, then highlight sections of the work to have the model edit. Canvas is rolling out in beta to ChatGPT Plus and Teams, with a rollout to come to Enterprise and Edu tier users next week. OpenAI has closed the largest VC round of all time. The startup announced it raised $6.6 billion in a funding round that values OpenAI at $157 billion post-money. Led by previous investor Thrive Capital, the new cash brings OpenAI's total raised to $17.9 billion, per Crunchbase. At the first of its 2024 Dev Day events, OpenAI announced a new API tool that will let developers build nearly real-time, speech-to-speech experiences in their apps, with the choice of using six voices provided by OpenAI. These voices are distinct from those offered for ChatGPT, and developers can't use third party voices, in order to prevent copyright issues. OpenAI is planning to raise the price of individual ChatGPT subscriptions from $20 per month to $22 per month by the end of the year, according to a report from The New York Times. The report notes that a steeper increase could come over the next five years; by 2029, OpenAI expects it'll charge $44 per month for ChatGPT Plus. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced that she is leaving the company after more than six years. Hours after the announcement, OpenAI's chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and a research VP, Barret Zoph, also left the company. CEO Sam Altman revealed the two latest resignations in a post on X, along with leadership transition plans. After a delay, OpenAI is finally rolling out Advanced Voice Mode to an expanded set of ChatGPT's paying customers. AVM is also getting a revamped design — the feature is now represented by a blue animated sphere instead of the animated black dots that were presented back in May. OpenAI is highlighting improvements in conversational speed, accents in foreign languages, and five new voices as part of the rollout. A video from YouTube creator ChromaLock showcased how to modify a TI-84 graphing calculator so that it can connect to the internet and access ChatGPT, touting it as the "ultimate cheating device." As demonstrated in the video, it's a pretty complicated process for the average high school student to follow — but it might stoke more concerns from teachers about the ongoing concerns about ChatGPT and cheating in schools. OpenAI unveiled a preview of OpenAI o1, also known as "Strawberry." The collection of models are available in ChatGPT and via OpenAI's API: o1-preview and o1 mini. The company claims that o1 can more effectively reason through math and science and fact-check itself by spending more time considering all parts of a command or question. Unlike ChatGPT, o1 can't browse the web or analyze files yet, is rate-limited and expensive compared to other models. OpenAI says it plans to bring o1-mini access to all free users of ChatGPT, but hasn't set a release date. An artist and hacker found a way to jailbreak ChatGPT to produce instructions for making powerful explosives, a request that the chatbot normally refuses. An explosives expert who reviewed the chatbot's output told TechCrunch that the instructions could be used to make a detonatable product and was too sensitive to be released. OpenAI announced it has surpassed 1 million paid users for its versions of ChatGPT intended for businesses, including ChatGPT Team, ChatGPT Enterprise and its educational offering, ChatGPT Edu. The company said that nearly half of OpenAI's corporate users are based in the US. Volkswagen is taking its ChatGPT voice assistant experiment to vehicles in the United States. Its ChatGPT-integrated Plus Speech voice assistant is an AI chatbot based on Cerence's Chat Pro product and a LLM from OpenAI and will begin rolling out on September 6 with the 2025 Jetta and Jetta GLI models. As part of the new deal, OpenAI will surface stories from Condé Nast properties like The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit and Wired in ChatGPT and SearchGPT. Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch implied that the "multi-year" deal will involve payment from OpenAI in some form and a Condé Nast spokesperson told TechCrunch that OpenAI will have permission to train on Condé Nast content. TechCrunch's Maxwell Zeff has been playing around with OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode, in what he describes as "the most convincing taste I've had of an AI-powered future yet." Compared to Siri or Alexa, Advanced Voice Mode stands out with faster response times, unique answers and the ability to answer complex questions. But the feature falls short as an effective replacement for virtual assistants. OpenAI has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian influence operation that was generating content about the U.S. presidential election. OpenAI identified five website fronts presenting as both progressive and conservative news outlets that used ChatGPT to draft several long-form articles, though it doesn't seem that it reached much of an audience. OpenAI has found that GPT-4o, which powers the recently launched alpha of Advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, can behave in strange ways. In a new "red teaming" report, OpenAI reveals some of GPT-4o's weirder quirks, like mimicking the voice of the person speaking to it or randomly shouting in the middle of a conversation. After a big jump following the release of OpenAI's new GPT-4o "omni" model, the mobile version of ChatGPT has now seen its biggest month of revenue yet. The app pulled in $28 million in net revenue from the App Store and Google Play in July, according to data provided by app intelligence firm Appfigures. OpenAI has built a watermarking tool that could potentially catch students who cheat by using ChatGPT — but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is debating whether to actually release it. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the company is researching tools that can detect writing from ChatGPT, but said it's taking a "deliberate approach" to releasing it. OpenAI is giving users their first access to GPT-4o's updated realistic audio responses. The alpha version is now available to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users, and the company says the feature will gradually roll out to all Plus users in the fall of 2024. The release follows controversy surrounding the voice's similarity to Scarlett Johansson, leading OpenAI to delay its release. OpenAI is testing SearchGPT, a new AI search experience to compete with Google. SearchGPT aims to elevate search queries with "timely answers" from across the internet, as well as the ability to ask follow-up questions. The temporary prototype is currently only available to a small group of users and its publisher partners, like The Atlantic, for testing and feedback. A new report from The Information, based on undisclosed financial information, claims OpenAI could lose up to $5 billion due to how costly the business is to operate. The report also says the company could spend as much as $7 billion in 2024 to train and operate ChatGPT. OpenAI released its latest small AI model, GPT-4o mini. The company says GPT-4o mini, which is cheaper and faster than OpenAI's current AI models, outperforms industry leading small AI models on reasoning tasks involving text and vision. GPT-4o mini will replace GPT-3.5 Turbo as the smallest model OpenAI offers. OpenAI announced a partnership with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to study how AI can be employed by scientists in order to advance research in healthcare and bioscience. This follows other health-related research collaborations at OpenAI, including Moderna and Color Health. OpenAI announced it has trained a model off of GPT-4, dubbed CriticGPT, which aims to find errors in ChatGPT's code output so they can make improvements and better help so-called human "AI trainers" rate the quality and accuracy of ChatGPT responses. OpenAI and TIME announced a multi-year strategic partnership that brings the magazine's content, both modern and archival, to ChatGPT. As part of the deal, TIME will also gain access to OpenAI's technology in order to develop new audience-based products. OpenAI planned to start rolling out its advanced Voice Mode feature to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but it says lingering issues forced it to postpone the launch to July. OpenAI says Advanced Voice Mode might not launch for all ChatGPT Plus customers until the fall, depending on whether it meets certain internal safety and reliability checks. ChatGPT for macOS is now available for all users. With the app, users can quickly call up ChatGPT by using the keyboard combination of Option + Space. The app allows users to upload files and other photos, as well as speak to ChatGPT from their desktop and search through their past conversations. Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it is bringing ChatGPT to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems. The ChatGPT integrations, powered by GPT-4o, will arrive on iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia later this year, and will be free without the need to create a ChatGPT or OpenAI account. Features exclusive to paying ChatGPT users will also be available through Apple devices. Scarlett Johansson has been invited to testify about the controversy surrounding OpenAI's Sky voice at a hearing for the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation. In a letter, Rep. Nancy Mace said Johansson's testimony could "provide a platform" for concerns around deepfakes. ChatGPT was down twice in one day: one multi-hour outage in the early hours of the morning Tuesday and another outage later in the day that is still ongoing. Anthropic's Claude and Perplexity also experienced some issues. The Atlantic and Vox Media have announced licensing and product partnerships with OpenAI. Both agreements allow OpenAI to use the publishers' current content to generate responses in ChatGPT, which will feature citations to relevant articles. Vox Media says it will use OpenAI's technology to build "audience-facing and internal applications," while The Atlantic will build a new experimental product called Atlantic Labs. OpenAI announced a new deal with management consulting giant PwC. The company will become OpenAI's biggest customer to date, covering 100,000 users, and will become OpenAI's first partner for selling its enterprise offerings to other businesses. OpenAI announced in a blog post that it has recently begun training its next flagship model to succeed GPT-4. The news came in an announcement of its new safety and security committee, which is responsible for informing safety and security decisions across OpenAI's products. On the The TED AI Show podcast, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner revealed that the board did not know about ChatGPT until its launch in November 2022. Toner also said that Sam Altman gave the board inaccurate information about the safety processes the company had in place and that he didn't disclose his involvement in the OpenAI Startup Fund. The launch of GPT-4o has driven the company's biggest-ever spike in revenue on mobile, despite the model being freely available on the web. Mobile users are being pushed to upgrade to its $19.99 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Plus, if they want to experiment with OpenAI's most recent launch. After demoing its new GPT-4o model last week, OpenAI announced it is pausing one of its voices, Sky, after users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson in "Her." OpenAI explained in a blog post that Sky's voice is "not an imitation" of the actress and that AI voices should not intentionally mimic the voice of a celebrity. The blog post went on to explain how the company chose its voices: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky. OpenAI announced new updates for easier data analysis within ChatGPT. Users can now upload files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, interact with tables and charts, and export customized charts for presentations. The company says these improvements will be added to GPT-4o in the coming weeks. OpenAI announced a partnership with Reddit that will give the company access to "real-time, structured and unique content" from the social network. Content from Reddit will be incorporated into ChatGPT, and the companies will work together to bring new AI-powered features to Reddit users and moderators. OpenAI's spring update event saw the reveal of its new omni model, GPT-4o, which has a black hole-like interface, as well as voice and vision capabilities that feel eerily like something out of "Her." GPT-4o is set to roll out "iteratively" across its developer and consumer-facing products over the next few weeks. The company announced it's building a tool, Media Manager, that will allow creators to better control how their content is being used to train generative AI models — and give them an option to opt out. The goal is to have the new tool in place and ready to use by 2025. In a new peek behind the curtain of its AI's secret instructions, OpenAI also released a new NSFW policy. Though it's intended to start a conversation about how it might allow explicit images and text in its AI products, it raises questions about whether OpenAI — or any generative AI vendor — can be trusted to handle sensitive content ethically. In a new partnership, OpenAI will get access to developer platform Stack Overflow's API and will get feedback from developers to improve the performance of their AI models. In return, OpenAI will include attributions to Stack Overflow in ChatGPT. However, the deal was not favorable to some Stack Overflow users — leading to some sabotaging their answer in protest. Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Denver Post, are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that the companies stole millions of copyrighted articles "without permission and without payment" to bolster ChatGPT and Copilot. OpenAI has partnered with another news publisher in Europe, London's Financial Times, that the company will be paying for content access. "Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries," the FT wrote in a press release. OpenAI is opening a new office in Tokyo and has plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language. The move underscores how OpenAI will likely need to localize its technology to different languages as it expands. According to Reuters, OpenAI's Sam Altman hosted hundreds of executives from Fortune 500 companies across several cities in April, pitching versions of its AI services intended for corporate use. Premium ChatGPT users — customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise — can now use an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo. The new model brings with it improvements in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding, OpenAI claims, as well as a more up-to-date knowledge base. You can now use ChatGPT without signing up for an account, but it won't be quite the same experience. You won't be able to save or share chats, use custom instructions, or other features associated with a persistent account. This version of ChatGPT will have "slightly more restrictive content policies," according to OpenAI. When TechCrunch asked for more details, however, the response was unclear: "The signed out experience will benefit from the existing safety mitigations that are already built into the model, such as refusing to generate harmful content. In addition to these existing mitigations, we are also implementing additional safeguards specifically designed to address other forms of content that may be inappropriate for a signed out experience," a spokesperson said. TechCrunch found that the OpenAI's GPT Store is flooded with bizarre, potentially copyright-infringing GPTs. A cursory search pulls up GPTs that claim to generate art in the style of Disney and Marvel properties, but serve as little more than funnels to third-party paid services and advertise themselves as being able to bypass AI content detection tools. In a court filing opposing OpenAI's motion to dismiss The New York Times' lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, the newspaper asserted that "OpenAI's attention-grabbing claim that The Times 'hacked' its products is as irrelevant as it is false." The New York Times also claimed that some users of ChatGPT used the tool to bypass its paywalls. At a SXSW 2024 panel, Peter Deng, OpenAI's VP of consumer product dodged a question on whether artists whose work was used to train generative AI models should be compensated. While OpenAI lets artists "opt out" of and remove their work from the datasets that the company uses to train its image-generating models, some artists have described the tool as onerous. ChatGPT's environmental impact appears to be massive. According to a report from The New Yorker, ChatGPT uses an estimated 17,000 times the amount of electricity than the average U.S. household to respond to roughly 200 million requests each day. OpenAI released a new Read Aloud feature for the web version of ChatGPT as well as the iOS and Android apps. The feature allows ChatGPT to read its responses to queries in one of five voice options and can speak 37 languages, according to the company. Read aloud is available on both GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 models. As part of a new partnership with OpenAI, the Dublin City Council will use GPT-4 to craft personalized itineraries for travelers, including recommendations of unique and cultural destinations, in an effort to support tourism across Europe. New York-based law firm Cuddy Law was criticized by a judge for using ChatGPT to calculate their hourly billing rate. The firm submitted a $113,500 bill to the court, which was then halved by District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who called the figure "well above" reasonable demands. ChatGPT users found that ChatGPT was giving nonsensical answers for several hours, prompting OpenAI to investigate the issue. Incidents varied from repetitive phrases to confusing and incorrect answers to queries. The issue was resolved by OpenAI the following morning. The dating app giant home to Tinder, Match and OkCupid announced an enterprise agreement with OpenAI in an enthusiastic press release written with the help of ChatGPT. The AI tech will be used to help employees with work-related tasks and come as part of Match's $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024. As part of a test, OpenAI began rolling out new "memory" controls for a small portion of ChatGPT free and paid users, with a broader rollout to follow. The controls let you tell ChatGPT explicitly to remember something, see what it remembers or turn off its memory altogether. Note that deleting a chat from chat history won't erase ChatGPT's or a custom GPT's memories — you must delete the memory itself. Initially limited to a small subset of free and subscription users, Temporary Chat lets you have a dialogue with a blank slate. With Temporary Chat, ChatGPT won't be aware of previous conversations or access memories but will follow custom instructions if they're enabled. But, OpenAI says it may keep a copy of Temporary Chat conversations for up to 30 days for "safety reasons." Paid users of ChatGPT can now bring GPTs into a conversation by typing "@" and selecting a GPT from the list. The chosen GPT will have an understanding of the full conversation, and different GPTs can be "tagged in" for different use cases and needs. Screenshots provided to Ars Technica found that ChatGPT is potentially leaking unpublished research papers, login credentials and private information from its users. An OpenAI representative told Ars Technica that the company was investigating the report. OpenAI has been told it's suspected of violating European Union privacy, following a multi-month investigation of ChatGPT by Italy's data protection authority. Details of the draft findings haven't been disclosed, but in a response, OpenAI said: "We want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals." In an effort to win the trust of parents and policymakers, OpenAI announced it's partnering with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines and education materials for parents, educators and young adults. The organization works to identify and minimize tech harms to young people and previously flagged ChatGPT as lacking in transparency and privacy. After a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus questioned the lack of diversity in OpenAI's board, the company responded. The response, signed by CEO Sam Altman and Chairman of the Board Bret Taylor, said building a complete and diverse board was one of the company's top priorities and that it was working with an executive search firm to assist it in finding talent. In a blog post, OpenAI announced price drops for GPT-3.5's API, with input prices dropping to 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. GPT-4 Turbo also got a new preview model for API use, which includes an interesting fix that aims to reduce "laziness" that users have experienced. OpenAI has suspended AI startup Delphi, which developed a bot impersonating Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) to help bolster his presidential campaign. The ban comes just weeks after OpenAI published a plan to combat election misinformation, which listed "chatbots impersonating candidates" as against its policy. Beginning in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT's Enterprise tier, which the university plans to use to build a personalized AI tutor, develop AI avatars, bolster their prompt engineering course and more. It marks OpenAI's first partnership with a higher education institution. After receiving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her novel The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy, author Rie Kudan admitted that around 5% of the book quoted ChatGPT-generated sentences "verbatim." Interestingly enough, the novel revolves around a futuristic world with a pervasive presence of AI. In a conversation with Bill Gates on the Unconfuse Me podcast, Sam Altman confirmed an upcoming release of GPT-5 that will be "fully multimodal with speech, image, code, and video support." Altman said users can expect to see GPT-5 drop sometime in 2024. OpenAI is forming a Collective Alignment team of researchers and engineers to create a system for collecting and "encoding" public input on its models' behaviors into OpenAI products and services. This comes as a part of OpenAI's public program to award grants to fund experiments in setting up a "democratic process" for determining the rules AI systems follow. In a blog post, OpenAI announced users will not be allowed to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying until the company works out how effective their tools are for "personalized persuasion." Users will also be banned from creating chatbots that impersonate candidates or government institutions, and from using OpenAI tools to misrepresent the voting process or otherwise discourage voting. The company is also testing out a tool that detects DALL-E generated images and will incorporate access to real-time news, with attribution, in ChatGPT. In an unannounced update to its usage policy, OpenAI removed language previously prohibiting the use of its products for the purposes of "military and warfare." In an additional statement, OpenAI confirmed that the language was changed in order to accommodate military customers and projects that do not violate their ban on efforts to use their tools to "harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property." Aptly called ChatGPT Team, the new plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams of up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management. In addition to gaining access to GPT-4, GPT-4 with Vision and DALL-E3, ChatGPT Team lets teams build and share GPTs for their business needs. After some back and forth over the last few months, OpenAI's GPT Store is finally here. The feature lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT web client, and includes a range of GPTs developed both by OpenAI's partners and the wider dev community. To access the GPT Store, users must be subscribed to one of OpenAI's premium ChatGPT plans — ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Enterprise or the newly launched ChatGPT Team. Following a proposed ban on using news publications and books to train AI chatbots in the U.K., OpenAI submitted a plea to the House of Lords communications and digital committee. OpenAI argued that it would be "impossible" to train AI models without using copyrighted materials, and that they believe copyright law "does not forbid training." OpenAI published a public response to The New York Times's lawsuit against them and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law, claiming that the case is without merit. In the response, OpenAI reiterates its view that training AI models using publicly available data from the web is fair use. It also makes the case that regurgitation is less likely to occur with training data from a single source and places the onus on users to "act responsibly." After being delayed in December, OpenAI plans to launch its GPT Store sometime in the coming week, according to an email viewed by TechCrunch. OpenAI says developers building GPTs will have to review the company's updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines to ensure their GPTs are compliant before they're eligible for listing in the GPT Store. OpenAI's update notably didn't include any information on the expected monetization opportunities for developers listing their apps on the storefront. In an email, OpenAI detailed an incoming update to its terms, including changing the OpenAI entity providing services to EEA and Swiss residents to OpenAI Ireland Limited. The move appears to be intended to shrink its regulatory risk in the European Union, where the company has been under scrutiny over ChatGPT's impact on people's privacy. ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI. The chatbot uses GPT-4, a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was released for public use. Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. The most recent model is GPT-4o. There is a free version of ChatGPT that only requires a sign-in in addition to the paid version, ChatGPT Plus. Anyone can use ChatGPT! More and more tech companies and search engines are utilizing the chatbot to automate text or quickly answer user questions/concerns. Multiple enterprises utilize ChatGPT, although others may limit the use of the AI-powered tool. Most recently, Microsoft announced at its 2023 Build conference that it is integrating it ChatGPT-based Bing experience into Windows 11. A Brooklyn-based 3D display startup Looking Glass utilizes ChatGPT to produce holograms you can communicate with by using ChatGPT. And nonprofit organization Solana officially integrated the chatbot into its network with a ChatGPT plug-in geared toward end users to help onboard into the web3 space. GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. A chatbot can be any software/system that holds dialogue with you/a person but doesn't necessarily have to be AI-powered. For example, there are chatbots that are rules-based in the sense that they'll give canned responses to questions. ChatGPT is AI-powered and utilizes LLM technology to generate text after a prompt. Yes. Due to the nature of how these models work, they don't know or care whether something is true, only that it looks true. That's a problem when you're using it to do your homework, sure, but when it accuses you of a crime you didn't commit, that may well at this point be libel. We will see how handling troubling statements produced by ChatGPT will play out over the next few months as tech and legal experts attempt to tackle the fastest moving target in the industry. Yes, there is a free ChatGPT mobile app for iOS and Android users. It's not documented anywhere that ChatGPT has a character limit. However, users have noted that there are some character limitations after around 500 words. Yes, it was released March 1, 2023. Everyday examples include programming, scripts, email replies, listicles, blog ideas, summarization, etc. Advanced use examples include debugging code, programming languages, scientific concepts, complex problem solving, etc. It depends on the nature of the program. While ChatGPT can write workable Python code, it can't necessarily program an entire app's worth of code. That's because ChatGPT lacks context awareness — in other words, the generated code isn't always appropriate for the specific context in which it's being used. Yes. OpenAI allows users to save chats in the ChatGPT interface, stored in the sidebar of the screen. There are no built-in sharing features yet. Yes. There are multiple AI-powered chatbot competitors such as Together, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, and developers are creating open source alternatives. OpenAI has said that individuals in "certain jurisdictions" (such as the EU) can object to the processing of their personal information by its AI models by filling out this form. This includes the ability to make requests for deletion of AI-generated references about you. Although OpenAI notes it may not grant every request since it must balance privacy requests against freedom of expression "in accordance with applicable laws". The web form for making a deletion of data about you request is entitled "OpenAI Personal Data Removal Request". In its privacy policy, the ChatGPT maker makes a passing acknowledgement of the objection requirements attached to relying on "legitimate interest" (LI), pointing users towards more information about requesting an opt out — when it writes: "See here for instructions on how you can opt out of our use of your information to train our models." Recently, Discord announced that it had integrated OpenAI's technology into its bot named Clyde where two users tricked Clyde into providing them with instructions for making the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth) and the incendiary mixture napalm. An Australian mayor has publicly announced he may sue OpenAI for defamation due to ChatGPT's false claims that he had served time in prison for bribery. This would be the first defamation lawsuit against the text-generating service. CNET found itself in the midst of controversy after Futurism reported the publication was publishing articles under a mysterious byline completely generated by AI. The private equity company that owns CNET, Red Ventures, was accused of using ChatGPT for SEO farming, even if the information was incorrect. Several major school systems and colleges, including New York City Public Schools, have banned ChatGPT from their networks and devices. They claim that the AI impedes the learning process by promoting plagiarism and misinformation, a claim that not every educator agrees with. There have also been cases of ChatGPT accusing individuals of false crimes. Several marketplaces host and provide ChatGPT prompts, either for free or for a nominal fee. One is PromptBase. Another is ChatX. More launch every day. Poorly. Several tools claim to detect ChatGPT-generated text, but in our tests, they're inconsistent at best. No. But OpenAI recently disclosed a bug, since fixed, that exposed the titles of some users' conversations to other people on the service. None specifically targeting ChatGPT. But OpenAI is involved in at least one lawsuit that has implications for AI systems trained on publicly available data, which would touch on ChatGPT. Yes. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data.
CBC News	[ "Damascus", "Iraq", "Syria", "Bashar al-Assad", "War and unrest", "Civil wars" ]	# Syrian government forces pull out of Hama after rebel advance December 5th, 2024 02:57 PM --- Hama fighting follows surprise capture of Aleppo last week Syrian rebels ousted pro-government forces from Hama on Thursday, bringing the insurgents a major new victory after a lightning advance across northern Syria and dealing a new blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. The Syrian army announced that the rebels had entered Hama after intense clashes and said it was redeploying outside the city "to preserve civilians lives and prevent urban combat." Rebels said they had taken districts in the city's northeast and had seized the central prison, freeing detainees. Rebels said they were preparing to keep marching south towards Homs, Syria's great crossroads city that links the capital Damascus to the north and coast. "Your time has come," said a rebel operations room in an online post, calling on city residents to rise up in revolution. Al Jazeera television broadcast what it said were images of rebels inside the city, some of them meeting civilians near a roundabout while others drove in military vehicles and on mopeds. The rebels took the main northern city of Aleppo last week and have since pushed south from their enclave in northwest Syria, reaching a strategic hill just north of Hama on Tuesday and advancing toward the city's east and west flanks on Wednesday. Hama has remained in government hands throughout the civil war, which erupted in 2011 as a rebellion against Assad. Its fall to a revived insurgency would send shockwaves through Damascus and its Russian and Iranian allies. The city lies more than a third of the way from Aleppo to Damascus and its capture would open the road for a rebel advance on Homs, the main central city that functions as a crossroads connecting Syria's most populous regions. Inside Hama, the scene of an Islamist uprising that the Assad dynasty crushed in 1982, the internet was cut off and streets emptied on Wednesday according to a resident whose family remain in the city. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday there is an urgent need for immediate humanitarian access to all civilians in need in Syria and a return to a UN-facilitated political process to end the bloodshed. He urged "all those with influence to do their part for the long-suffering people" of Syria and said all parties are obligated to protect civilians. ## Rebel leader warns Iraqi PM The most powerful rebel faction is the militant Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Abu Mohammed al-Golani, its leader, has pledged to protect Syria's religious minorities and has called on them to abandon Assad, but many remain fearful of the insurgents. Golani on Thursday in a video statement urged Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani not to allow the country's Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to intervene in Syria. The PMF, known as the Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic, contains many Iran-backed armed factions that previously fought in Syria to help Assad retake territory that fell to rebels in the early years of the Syrian war. "We urge and hope Iraqi politicians, first and foremost Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ... do their duty to prevent the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi's intervention in what is happening in Syria," Jolani said. The PMF has said that it is not deployed in Syria, and commanders within it have said they would only do so on orders from their leadership. Reuters reported earlier this week that several hundred Iraqi militia fighters had deployed to Syria to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week. Golani said the fighting in Syria would not expand to Iraq, as rebel forces wanted strategic economic and political relations with Baghdad after achieving their goal of overthrowing the current Assad regime. On Wednesday, Golani visited Aleppo's historic citadel, a symbolic moment for rebels who were driven out of the city in 2016 after months of siege and intense fighting, their biggest defeat of the war. ## Turkey denies involvement Sudani said this week Iraq would exert all efforts to preserve the security of both that country and Syria, according to the official readout of his call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Aleppo was Syria's biggest city before the war. HTS and the other rebel groups are trying to consolidate their rule in Aleppo, bringing it under the administration of the so-called Salvation Government they established in their northwestern enclave. Aleppo residents have said there are shortages of bread and fuel and that telecom services have been cut. The rebel forces advancing on Hama have included a Turkey-backed insurgent coalition called the Syrian National Army, which holds a strip of territory along the Syrian-Turkish frontier, rebel sources said. Turkey, which designates HTS as a terrorist organization, has long been the biggest external backer of other rebel factions and its role will be critical to the future of any enlarged insurgent region in Syria. Ankara has denied having taken part in the rebels' sudden sweep into Aleppo last week.
The BBC	[ "Mafia", "Italy" ]	# Mafia-employed nun among 25 arrested in northern Italy By Jacqueline Howard December 5th, 2024 05:36 PM --- A nun is among 24 people arrested in northern Italy in connection with a mafia investigation, Italian police have said. The nun, named in Italian press as Sister Anna Donelli, was arrested for allegedly acting as a go-between for the 'Ndrangheta mafia and its jailed gang members. Police also arrested two politicians and seized more than €1.8m (£1.5m) worth of assets in raids across several towns in the Lombardy and Veneto regions, as well as Calabria in the south. The arrests are a result of a four-year investigation into the 'Ndrangheta, which is one of Europe's most influential and dangerous criminal organisations. Statements released by the coalition of law enforcement agencies behind the sting detail allegations that the nun leveraged her position as a volunteer at the prison. The Brescia Carabinieri said she was an unsuspecting figure, whose religious role allowed her "free access to the penitentiary facilities". Police statements did not identify the politicians or any others targeted in the investigation. The operation is continuing, with hundreds of police officers conducting searches across northern Italy. They are aided by sniffer dog units searching for weapons and drugs, as well as "cash dogs" which are trained to search for cash, police said. Investigators allege the group primarily used scrap metal trade businesses as a front to launder money, totalling approximately €12m in laundered cash, prosecutors said. Originating in the impoverished region of Calabria, the 'Ndrangheta is considered one of the world's most dangerous criminal organisations. In November last year, more than 200 people were sentenced to a total of more than 2,200 years in jail in one of Italy's biggest mafia trials for generations.
TechCrunch	[ "mac", "Apps", "Christmas", "Xmas", "mac apps", "Festivitas" ]	# Holiday app Festivitas puts Xmas lights on your Mac By Sarah Perez December 5th, 2024 07:54 PM --- Getting into the holiday spirit but still stuck at work? A cute new macOS app called Festivitas can help you decorate your Mac computer screen with twinkling, holiday lights that are strung up from your menu bar and illuminate your dock. This whimsical holiday treat was dreamed up by software developer Simon B. Støvring, the maker of other iOS apps favored by developers like text editor Runestone, scripting app Scriptable, JSON editor Jayson, and others. He's been teasing the app on social media in the days ahead of its launch, showing off different customizations he added. At launch, you're able to adjust things like the cable thickness, size of lights, distance apart, drop height and width, flashing pattern, speed of flash, and colors. You can also switch to white lights instead of colored and can optionally disable the lights in the dock or menu bar, per your preferences. That way, if you find the lights are distracting you from seeing, say, your important Slack notifications in the dock, you could simply turn the dock lights off during your workday. Or, if the menu bar lights are in the way of your collection of open Chrome tabs, you could choose to adjust the drop height so the lights sit above the tabs, for instance. The app, which requires macOS 14.6 or later, has to be enabled in the Mac's Accessibility settings to work. (It's a simple toggle switch, however). Afterwards, the lights are automatically added to your Mac and you can tweak their look and customize them to your preferences. To turn them off, you can just quit the app from the menu bar or dock. The new app is available as a name-your-own-price download from the Festivitas website. Støvring says users so far have been paying anywhere from €4-30 for the app.
Wired	[ "culture guides", "movies", "hulu" ]	# The 34 Best Movies on Hulu This Week (December 2024) By Jennifer M. Wood and WIRED Staff February 15th, 2023 03:00 PM --- Thelma, Gladiator, and Kinds of Kindness are just a few of the movies you need to watch on Hulu right now. In 2017, Hulu made television history by becoming the first streaming network to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, thanks to the phenomenon that was The Handmaid's Tale. While Netflix has largely cornered the streaming market on original movies—and even managed to persuade A-listers like Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Martin Scorsese to come aboard—Hulu is starting to find its footing in features too. Below are some of our top picks for the best movies (original and otherwise) streaming on Hulu right now. Still looking for more great titles to add to your queue? Check out WIRED's guides to the best TV shows on Hulu, best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Disney+, and the best movies on Amazon Prime. Don't like our picks, or want to offer suggestions of your own? Head to the comments below. ## Gladiator Nearly a quarter century before Paul Mescal was avenging the death of his family in Gladiator II, Russell Crowe was the one swinging swords to avenge his own loved ones in Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning epic. Maximus Decimus Meridius (Crowe) is a celebrated general who Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) personally seeks out to act as regent and help restore the Roman Republic to its former glory. It's a request that doesn't sit well with Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), the Emperor's son and presumed successor. So he does what any spoiled brat would do: murders his dad, has Maximus' wife and child killed, and attempts to enslave his enemy. But Commodus wasn't counting on the lengths to which Maximus will go in order to get his revenge. ## Thelma June Squibb is the action hero you didn't know you needed. In the decade since her Oscar-nominated turn in Alexander Payne's Nebraska, the 95-year-old actress has become one of Hollywood's most in-demand actors. Here, she plays the eponymous grandma who is swindled out of $10,000 by a phone scammer targeting elderly citizens. When the authorities seem reluctant to take any real action, Thelma grabs a gun and her motorized scooter and takes the law into her own hands. Best of all? This vigilante comedy is based on writer-director Josh Margolin's own grandmother. ## Ad Astra At an unspecified date in the near future, US Space Command Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) learns that mysterious power surges originating from an old space station are posing a threat to Earth. When he finds out that the activity can be traced back to the Lima Project—a search for extraterrestrial life led by his father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), who has been lost in space for 30 years—Roy journeys into the unknown. When cowriter/director James Gray announced the project, he very boldly stated that he was hoping to create "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie." Did he succeed? Watch and make your own determination. ## La La Land La La Land is the musical that famously won, then lost, the Oscar for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards. (The award was meant for Moonlight, and the mistake was quickly—and quite memorably—corrected in the midst of the acceptance speeches.) None of which takes away from the six Oscars the film did win, including Best Director for Damien Chazelle and Best Supporting Actress for Emma Stone. Nor does it detract from the movie's dazzling spectacle of bright colors, infectious music, and dreamy dance sequences, as an aspiring actress (Stone) and old-school jazz musician (Ryan Gosling) meet and fall in love, then attempt to weather the challenges of any romantic relationship. ## Late Night With the Devil In the 1970s, Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) is a late-night talk show host who is constantly chasing Johnny Carson's ratings but simply cannot compete. He scores the highest ratings of his career when he sits down for an interview with his beloved wife, Madeleine (Georgina Haig), who is dying of cancer. When she passes away shortly afterward, Jack halts production on his show entirely. When he's eventually ready to come back to work he's even more determined to compete with Carson, so he decides to throw an occult-themed Halloween show for the ages, complete with a psychic (Fayssal Bazzi), a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon), and a possessed teen (Ingrid Torelli) who seems to know more about Jack and Madeleine's relationship than he bargained for. Many critics have deemed Late Night With the Devil the best horror movie of the year—and with good reason. ## Babes Pamela Adlon's directorial debut does for motherhood what Bridesmaids did for marriage. New Yorkers Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau) are lifelong best friends with decades of history and traditions but now find themselves facing very different chapters in their lives. Dawn, who is struggling with postpartum depression, is trying hard to balance the demands of being a working mom and partner to her husband, while Eden has never been burdened by such demands. But when she discovers she's pregnant after a one-night stand and determines that she is ready to be a single mom, their friendship begins to fracture in ways they never would have imagined. Glazer and Buteau's chemistry as BFFs is undeniable in this brash comedy that isn't always pretty, in part because of its brutal honesty. ## The First Omen True to its title, the sixth film in The Omen franchise is a prequel to the 1976 horror classic that birthed it. If you weren't aware that there were half a dozen films in this series, there's a reason for that: Aside from the Richard Donner–directed original, they're just not very good. But nearly 50 years later, The First Omen has breathed new life into this seemingly tired premise. It's 1971, and Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), a young American novitiate, travels to Rome to work at an orphanage. She quickly forms a bond with Carlita (Nicole Sorace), one of the older wards, who is plagued by terrible visions. Despite warnings from the head priest (Ralph Ineson) that "evil things" will happen if she engages with Carlita, Margaret is convinced she can help the young girl. If you know anything about The Omen movies, you probably know where this is headed: Satanic kids bearing the mark of the devil (666) abound. Despite it being somewhat predictable, the film is well acted and well made—and could very likely spawn more entries. ## Kinds of Kindness Just three months after Poor Things scored four Oscar wins, Yorgos Lanthimos got much of the gang back together—including Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley—for Kinds of Kindness, which debuted at Cannes. Unlike his previous works, this one is an anthology film, or what came to be marketed as a "triptych fable." Just like the writer-director's other movies, it is born from a place of absurdist comedy and over-the-top performances from its stars. Sex cults, reanimation, sandwiches, murder-happy bosses, and John McEnroe's smashed tennis racket all play a part in the wildly fun festivities. ## Little Women Greta Gerwig is far (far) from the first writer-director to adapt Louisa May Alcott's Little Women for the big screen. And she's certainly not the first person to do an admirable job of it. (Gillian Armstrong's 1994 version starring Winona Ryder and Christian Bale is still a much beloved interpretation.) Yet Gerwig made the 19th century tale seem practically modern-day, and different from all the rest, with seemingly small decisions like playing with the novel's timelines. It also doesn't hurt that it just happens to star some of the most impressive actors working today, including Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, James Norton, Laura Dern, Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts, Meryl Streep, and Bob Odenkirk. ## Immaculate Sydney Sweeney produced this religious horror flick and also stars as Cecilia, a young nun (yep, you read that right) whose traumatic brush with death has convinced her that God saved her for a higher purpose. When she is invited to join a convent in the remote Italian countryside that assists older nuns at the end of their life, she happily accepts—then quickly comes to realize that all may not be what it seems. ## Ferrari Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is a man who should have it all: the one-time race car driver and founder of the Ferrari car company oozes charm, wealth, and excitement. But behind the scenes, the walls are closing in on him. Set during the summer of 1957, Michael Mann's biopic finds Ferrari (the man) on the verge of bankruptcy, mourning the death of his son, and desperately trying to hide his past indiscretions from his estranged wife—who helped build the car company and who holds the key to his financial future. Though the film earned mixed reviews, it does a solid job of telling the complex story of a complicated man. But it's biggest selling point is Penélope Cruz's bravura performance. ## Perfect Days Nearly 60 years into his career as a filmmaker, Wim Wenders managed to make one of his best films yet with Perfect Days—which is saying a lot when you consider that this is the same director who made Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987). Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) is a toilet cleaner in Tokyo who is blissfully content with the simplicity of his life, as it allows him the time to indulge his more personal passions: music (he's an avid collector of cassette tapes and allows his favorite music to set the soundtrack to his life), books, and nature. The movie is not punctuated by any overly dramatic storylines; just the quiet interactions that Hirayama has with those around him—family, coworkers, total strangers—and the way those interludes impact him. It's that poetic simplicity, and Yakusho's wonderful performance, that gives the film its heart. ## Origin Writer-director Ava DuVernay finds a way to yet again change the language of cinema with what is both a biopic and a historical document. The movie is based on the life of Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism for her work at The New York Times. It follows Wilkerson's journey to write her 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents—a project that took her from the US to Germany to India to research the troubling history of each country's caste system and the parallels that exist between them. ## Fight Club An office drone (Edward Norton) with a love of catalog shopping and self-help groups meets a rebellious soap maker (Brad Pitt) on a flight. Then doesn't seem able to shake him. But doesn't really seem to want to, especially when they realize that beating the shit out of each other is a great way to relieve the stress of everyday life. Soon, they've assembled an army of Fight Club members who are ready to take on the world. It's been 25 years since David Fincher's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's bestselling novel turned a generation of moviegoers on their head, and even though the film was a bit of a bomb when it was released in theaters, it has since gained a massive cult following—and even spawned some very real fight clubs. ## The Contestant On January 11, 1998, 22-year-old comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu entered an apartment in Japan where he lived, nude and with no human contact, for 15 months as part of an understandably controversial game show titled Susunu! Denpa Shōnen. Hamatsu had no idea his life was being broadcast. This riveting documentary delves into not just how anyone ever allowed this experiment to happen, but the real-world effects—cultural, psychological, and beyond—it had on both Hamatsu and the tens of millions of viewers who were somehow drawn into witnessing his on-camera abuse. ## Anatomy of a Fall Between her starring roles in The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall, German actress Sandra Hüller made it clear that when it comes to scripts, she knows how to pick 'em. In this compelling courtroom drama, Hüller plays a successful writer turned murder suspect when her husband (Samuel Theis) is found dead outside their home on a snowy day. Ultimately, it might be her son (Milo Machado-Graner) and/or his guide dog (Messi, the movie's real star) who ultimately seal Sandra's fate. It's a smart, twisty, and well-acted mystery that will keep you guessing. ## Poor Things Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is a young woman with the brain of an infant who is brought back to life by the lovably mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter, aka God (Willem Dafoe). But Bella is a fast learner and is intrigued by the many adventures the world has to offer her—regardless of what polite society dictates. Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, and Christopher Abbott are among the men who are entranced by Bella's frankness ("I must go punch that baby") in what is undoubtedly the most over-the-top title in Yorgos Lanthimos' filmography—which is saying a lot. One caveat: Those who are easily offended by nudity or graphic sex might want to give this a skip. ## BlackBerry It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Glenn Howerton is practically unrecognizable in this immensely entertaining recounting of the rise and fall of BlackBerry—the must-have cell phone that had the world entranced before the iPhone came along. Howerton costars as Jim Balsillie, the very real negotiator who, alongside Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), gave the world its first smartphone. Which is a lot more dramatic (and darkly humorous) than it sounds. ## The Royal Hotel Ozark star Julia Garner reunites with director Kitty Green (The Assistant) for this taut psychological thriller in which BFFs Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) decide to backpack their way through the Australian outback. When they're offered the chance to live and work at a remote hotel in order to replenish their dwindling bank accounts, they jump at the chance—despite Hanna feeling that something isn't quite right with their place of employment or its clientele. She's on to something. Garner has played one badass character after the next, and The Royal Hotel is no exception. ## All of Us Strangers Adam (the always superb Andrew Scott) is a television writer who largely keeps to himself, until an awkward encounter with his tipsy neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) kickstarts a passionate new relationship. But when he's not in London with Harry, Adam is returning to the suburban home where he grew up—and where he encounters and is able to interact with his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), despite their having died 30 years ago. In the hands of a lesser director, the fantastical elements could seem forced. But with Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) behind the camera, the surreal setup only augments the emotion. ## The Creator Director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One) imagines a not-too-distant future in which the human race is at war with AI—which feels all too relatable for some. John David Washington (Tenet star/son of Denzel) is the world's best hope for putting an end to this battle once and for all when he's tasked with tracking down the eponymous Creator, the architect behind the technology that has created this world upheaval. While there are some undeniable plot holes, the Oscar-nominated film's stellar set pieces and first-class acting talent make this a must-see film for sci-fi fans. ## Self Reliance New Girl's Jake Johnson makes his feature directorial debut with this wonderfully weird and occasionally dark meta comedy, which he also wrote and stars in. Tommy Walcott (Johnson) is living a pretty ordinary existence until he's approached by Andy Samberg (as Andy Samberg), who offers him the chance of a lifetime: the opportunity to win $1 million as part of a massive reality competition. The only thing Tommy needs to do is not get murdered for 30 days, despite being hunted by dozens of contract killers whose job is to ensure that no contestant walks away with the big prize. The catch? Contestants can only be killed when they're entirely alone. So Tommy takes it upon himself to partner up with another contestant, which is where Maddy (Anna Kendrick) comes in. Since they both have a cool mil to gain and a lot to lose (aka their lives) if they don't triumph, they make a pact to spend every waking moment of the next 30 days together. Just when you think you know where Self Reliance is headed, it goes ahead and surprises—and in the best ways possible. ## No One Will Save You Home invasion thrillers are never in short supply, but the really effective ones are hard to come by. Kaitlyn Dever shines—and proves yet again that she can shoulder the weight of an entire film—as Brynn Adams, a seamstress living a solitary existence in her childhood home and mourning the loss of her mother and closest friend. When she wakes up one night to discover that someone is in her house, that someone turns out to be something. A home invasion thriller with extraterrestrials might not have been on your must-watch Bingo card, but No One Will Save You is 93 minutes well spent. ## Miguel Wants to Fight Miguel (Tyler Dean Flores) is 17 years old and has never been in a fight. So when he learns that he'll be moving away from the place and people he has known all his life, he enlists his pals to help him get into his first fistfight. It's probably not the first coming-of-age ritual to spring to mind, but it's certainly among them. A talented cast of young actors make this comedy—cowritten by Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion—immensely watchable. ## Sanctuary Hal Porterfield (Christopher Abbott) has just been handed the keys to the castle following the death of his hotel magnate father. Rebecca Marin (Margaret Qualley) is a dominatrix who believes she deserves some of the credit—and half the cash—that comes with Hal's new CEO position. Sexual politics have rarely played out as twisted, or darkly funny, as they do in this mesmerizing, and often claustrophobic, thriller from Zachary Wigon. ## Corsage Vicky Krieps delivers yet another top-notch performance as Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who—following her 40th birthday—longs to recapture the freedom of her youth. Marie Kreutzer writes and directs this fictional biopic (Empress Elisabeth is real, though the story told within takes plenty of creative liberties), which sees the royal rebelling against her lack of power to affect any real change, despite her title. Even more so, it's about a woman who is desperate to hold on to the power that youth and beauty entitle her to—regardless of the consequences. ## How to Blow Up a Pipeline Environmentalism meets heist movie in director Daniel Goldhaber's thriller about a group of young people who try to—as the title implies—expose the fragility of the oil industry. It's not often that a movie examining the fight against the climate crisis is also an edge-of-your-seat adventure, but here those elements come together beautifully. (You can give cinematographer Tehillah de Castro a bit of credit for that.) Smart, prescient, and nearly unprecedented, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is more than worth the stream. ## Alien Alien was originally released in 1979, but it has lost none of its potency in the intervening years—which isn't something most fortysomethings could say. By now you probably know the story: The crew aboard the spacecraft Nostromo, including warrant officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), put a presumably slight pause on their trip back to Earth in order to respond to a distress call from a nearby planetoid. But what they discover is a bizarre alien life form that seems to delight in knocking off crew members in new—and frequently terrifying—ways. Can you say Facehugger? Or Chestburster? Alien is also noteworthy for being the film that kicked off a bona fide, and legendary, sci-fi/horror franchise—and introduced the world to Ridley Scott, who changed the genre game yet again with his next feature, Blade Runner. ## Rye Lane Raine Allen-Miller made a splash at Sundance in 2023 with her directorial debut, which offers a playful twist on the typical rom-com. Yas (Vivian Oparah) and Dom (David Jonsson) are both twentysomethings reeling from recent break-ups. After a chance—and rather awkward—first meeting, the pair spend a day wandering around South London, bonding over their shared experience, finding cheeky ways to get over the mourning of their previous relationships, and maybe discovering that romance is not dead after all. ## Triangle of Sadness Think of it like Gilligan's Island, but with more class commentary and vomit. When a bunch of rich people head out to sea on a luxury yacht, their plans are thwarted when a terrible storm leaves many of them stranded on a beach where none of their money or power can help them survive. That already gives away too much, but suffice to say, if you like The Menu-esque critiques of the excesses of wealth with just as many dark-comedy twists, this Oscar-nominated film is right for you. ## Portrait of a Lady on Fire OK, so this might be the movie that turned the idea of "lesbian period drama" into a trope, but it's also one of the best modern queer romance films around, alongside Moonlight and Carol. Set on an isolated French coast in the late-1700s, writer-director Céline Sciamma's film centers on a young aristocrat woman, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who is betrothed to a wealthy Milanese man. When Héloïse's mother hires Marianne (Noémie Merlant) to paint a portrait of her daughter, the two women fall in love and have the kind of heartbreaking affair that made lesbian period dramas so undeniable in the first place. You'll be transfixed. ## Nomadland This film from director Chloé Zhao, about one woman's post–Great Recession quest through the American West, won a ton of Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress for lead Frances McDormand, and Best Director and Best Editing wins for Zhao. Zhao also won for Best Adapted Screenplay for her adaptation of WIRED contributor Jessica Bruder's book, also called Nomadland. It's a bracing look at the modern American dream. ## Fresh Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a single woman who is on the lookout for a partner but tired of the online dating scene. When she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), a quirky, handsome stranger, she decides to give him her number. The two hit it off on the first date and eventually find themselves making plans to spend a weekend away—which is when Noa realizes that Steve has been hiding a few disturbing details about himself. Ultimately, Fresh stands as a lesson in the horrors of dating in the digital age (both real and imagined). ## Palm Springs Given the existence of Harold Ramis' near-perfect Groundhog Day, it takes a whole lot of chutzpah for a filmmaker to add another picture to the infinite-time-loop rom-com canon. But writer-director Max Barbakow did it anyway with Palm Springs, and audiences are thankful he did. Building upon the rules originally established in Groundhog Day, Palm Springs offers its own unique twist on the story. Instead of showing one person (Bill Murray's Phil Conners) slowly being pushed to the brink of insanity because he's the only one who seems to be experiencing the phenomenon, Palm Springs has three wedding guests—Nyles (Andy Samberg), Sarah (Cristin Milioti), and Roy (J. K. Simmons)—living the same day again and again and working together to find a way out of it.
Voice Of America	[ "Arts & Culture", "Europe", "France", "europe" ]	# France's Notre Dame Cathedral reopens 5 years after shocking blaze By Agence France-Presse December 7th, 2024 07:38 AM --- Notre Dame will formally reopen Saturday, five years after the Paris cathedral was devastated by fire, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump among world leaders there to celebrate its remarkably rapid restoration. Held up as an example of French creativity and resilience by President Emmanuel Macron, Notre Dame's renaissance so soon after a 2019 blaze that destroyed its roof and spire comes at a difficult time for the country. The sense of national accomplishment in restoring a beloved symbol of Paris has been undercut by political turmoil that has left France without a proper government and in a budget crisis. Macron is hoping that the first full service inside Notre Dame and the sight of around 40 world leaders in Paris might provide a fleeting sense of pride and unity — as the Paris Olympics did in July and August. The reopening "is the proof that we know how to do grand things, we know how to do the impossible and the whole world has admired us for it on two occasions this year," Macron said during a televised address on Thursday, referring to the widely praised Olympics. During a visit with TV cameras last week, however, he somewhat undermined the suspense behind the reopening, revealing the cathedral's freshly scrubbed limestone walls, new furniture and vaulted wooden roof cut from ancient oak trees selected from the finest forests of France. The reconstruction effort has cost around $750 million, financed from donations, with the reopening achieved within five years despite predictions it could take decades. Workers had to overcome problems with lead pollution, the COVID-19 epidemic, and the general overseeing the project falling to his death while hiking in the Pyrenees last year. Trump show? While the reborn 12th-century architectural masterpiece will be the main focus of public attention on Saturday, TV cameras are also likely to linger on Trump who will be making his first overseas trip since winning reelection to the White House last month. He accepted an invitation from Macron to attend earlier this week, saying the French leader had done "a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so." U.S. President Joe Biden will be represented by his wife, Jill, while Britain's Prince William and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also be present. Zelenskyy is expected to seek his first face-to-face meeting with Trump who has vowed to force a peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine, possibly by withholding U.S. weapon supplies. One surprising absentee will be Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, who has decided against breaking off from a weekend trip to the French island of Corsica. A message from Francis addressed to the French people will be read out to the congregation of VIPs, church figures and selected members of the public when the service begins on Saturday evening. 'Universal sadness' Parisians watched in horror in 2019 as flames ravaged Notre Dame, a landmark famed as the setting for Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame and one of the world's most-visited monuments. The apocalyptic images were even seen by some as a sign of the demise of Western civilization, with the 850-year-old wonder saved from complete collapse only by the heroic intervention of firefighters. The exact cause of the blaze has never been identified despite a forensic investigation by prosecutors, who believe an accident such as an electrical fault was the most likely reason. "We felt a sense of universal sadness when Notre Dame burned," said fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, who has dreamed up colorful new priestly vestments that will be worn by senior clergy on Saturday. "It was a moment of terrible emotions, like a premonition of our world in difficulty," he told AFP recently. The service will feature prayer, organ music and hymns from the cathedral's choir, followed by a televised concert with performances by Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang, South African opera singer Pretty Yende and possibly American singer and fashion designer Pharrell Williams. Harsh weather forced officials to move Macron's planned speech indoors and prerecord the concert Friday night, with forecasts for winds of up to 80 kph as Storm Darragh put parts of France on red alert. On Sunday, the first Mass with 170 bishops and more than 100 Paris priests will take place at 10:30 a.m., followed by a second service at 6:30 p.m., which will be open to the public.
CBC News	[ "Middle East crisis", "Israel", "Hamas", "International Court of Justice", "United Nations", "Crime", "War and unrest", "Genocides", "War crimes" ]	# Amnesty report concludes Israel's actions against Palestinians in Gaza constitute genocide By Sara Jabakhanji December 5th, 2024 03:49 PM --- Israeli government rejects genocide accusations, calls report 'entirely false' A new report from Amnesty International found that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its nearly 14-month-long campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced most of the enclave's population. The report, published Wednesday, said the ongoing assault on Gaza met the legal threshold for the crime of genocide after Amnesty spent months analyzing incidents and statements of Israeli officials. "Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza," Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said in a news release on Wednesday. "It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza." The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention created international laws criminalizing genocide, defining it as "the deliberate attempt to erase a national, ethnic, religious or racial group." Applying these laws has been a struggle. Other genocidal acts have followed since the convention's creation — but while it may be easy to apply a label, it's not so easy to prove in law. Israel, which has repeatedly rejected any allegation of genocide, called the report "entirely false" in a statement posted Thursday by its Foreign Affairs Ministry on X, formerly Twitter. It said Israel has respected international law and has a right to defend itself after the cross-border Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. Callamard said while Israel argues that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas, she said: "Genocidal intent can coexist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel's sole intent." The report noted that there is no casualty threshold in proving the international crime of genocide. ## Palestinians face 'slow and calculated death': report The U.K.-based human rights group said it analyzed the overall pattern of Israel's conduct in Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023 and early July. To establish intent, Amnesty said it reviewed over 100 statements by Israeli government and military officials and others since the start of the war that "dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them." It also analyzed 15 airstrikes from the start of the war until April that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of other people. It said it found no evidence that any of the strikes were directed at military objectives. It said one of the strikes destroyed the Abdelal family home in the southern city of Rafah on April 20, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping. "Israel's military offensive has killed and seriously injured tens of thousands of Palestinians, including thousands of children, many of them in direct or indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multi-generational families," the report said. Amnesty said Israel has forcibly displaced 90 per cent of Gaza's population of roughly 2.2 million, "many of them multiple times, into ever-shrinking, ever-changing pockets of land that lacked basic infrastructure, forcing people to live in conditions that exposed them to a slow and calculated death." ## 'This is genocide. It must stop now' Israel launched its air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities across the border 14 months ago, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Gaza's Health Ministry says that Israel's military campaign since then has killed more than 44,400 Palestinians and injured countless others. The Palestinian civil emergency service estimates that the bodies of 10,000 people may be trapped under the rubble, which would take the reported death toll to more than 50,000. Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe areas left in Gaza, a tiny, densely populated and heavily built-up coastal territory. Most of Gaza's population has been internally displaced, some as many as 10 times. "Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: This is genocide. It must stop now," Callamard said in the report. The United States, which has provided crucial military aid to Israel, said it believes Amnesty's allegations are "unfounded." Amnesty International Israel, a local branch of the organization that was not involved in the report, also disputed the allegation of genocide in a rare public airing of internal dissent at the rights group, saying the report had not proved genocidal intent beyond a reasonable doubt. However, the local branch said there were nevertheless suspicions that Israel had committed "widespread violations of international law" that "may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing." But Amnesty International said its Israeli branch is "undergoing deep internal divisions," with a series of resignations amid accusations that Palestinians in the group had been silenced. Those accusations are "unacceptable and will be handled through Amnesty's international democratic processes." But the group defended its report overall. ## 'No doubt' genocide being committed: Amnesty At hearings earlier this year before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Israel faces accusations of genocide brought by South Africa, lawyers for the country denied the charge. They argued that there was no genocidal intent and no genocide in Israel's conduct of the war, where the stated objective is the eradication of Hamas. Presenting the Amnesty report to journalists in The Hague, Callamard said the conclusion had not been taken "lightly, politically or preferentially." "There is a genocide being committed. There is no doubt, not one doubt in our mind after six months of in-depth, focused research," she told reporters. Amnesty said it concluded that Israel and the Israeli military committed at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a protected group's physical destruction, including demolishing vital infrastructure, and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid. These acts were done with the intent required by the convention, according to Amnesty, which said it reviewed more than 100 statements from Israeli officials. Israel's military accuses Hamas of planting militants within populated neighbourhoods for operational cover, which Hamas denies, while accusing Israel of indiscriminate strikes. ## ICC continues investigation into alleged crimes Callamard said Amnesty had not set out to prove genocide, but after reviewing the evidence and statements collectively, she said it was the only possible conclusion. "The assertion that Israel's war in Gaza aims solely to dismantle Hamas and not to physically destroy Palestinians as a national and ethnic group, that assertion simply does not stand up to scrutiny," she said. Amnesty urged the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — which last month issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity directed at Palestinians in Gaza — to investigate alleged genocide. An arrest warrant was also issued for Hamas official Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, who is said by the Israeli military to have been killed in July. The ICC noted it can't determine whether or not Dief is alive. Amnesty has previously joined other major human rights groups in accusing Israel of the international crime of apartheid, saying that for decades it has systematically denied Palestinians basic rights in the territories under its control. Israel has also denied those allegations. The office of the prosecutor said in a statement that it is continuing investigations into alleged crimes committed in the Palestinian territories and is unable to provide further comment.
Wired	[ "ars technica", "electric vehicles", "infrastructure", "batteries", "energy", "tesla" ]	# Universal Plug-and-Charge for EV Charging Stations Is Set to Launch in 2025 By Kevin Purdy and Ars Technica December 5th, 2024 12:20 PM --- Next year, you won't need to download yet another app to use an EV charger from an unfamiliar brand. Most of the major EV makers and charging networks are on board. To fill a car with gas, you generally just need a credit card or cash. To charge an EV at a DC fast-charging station, you need any number of things to work—a credit card reader, an app for that charger's network, a touchscreen that's working—and they're all a little different. That situation could change next year if a new "universal Plug and Charge" initiative from SAE International, a group of EV carmakers and chargers, moves ahead and gains ground. Launching in early 2025, the network could make charging an EV actually easier than gassing up: Plug in, let the car and charger figure out the payment details over a cloud connection, and go. Some car and charging network combinations already offer such a system through a patchwork of individual deals, as listed at Inside EVs. Teslas have always offered a plug-and-charge experience, given the tight integration between its Superchargers and vehicles. Now Tesla will join the plug-and-charge movement proper, allowing Teslas to have a roughly similar experience at other stations. The Electric Vehicle Public Key Infrastructure, or EVPKI, has a good number of the major players on board, and it builds on the ISO standard (15118) to make it faster and more secure for cars to be authenticated and authorized to charge at stations. A whole bunch of certificates are in place at every step of the charging process, as detailed in an EVPKI presentation, and the system includes a Certified Trust List. With an open standard and authentication system, there should be room for new charging networks and vehicle makers. Charging networks can and likely will continue to offer incentives for brand loyalty, whether through apps or rewards points. But new EV owners will not have to do quite so much work to figure out "the good ones" while on road trips. By getting cars linked up to key-based authentication systems, there is also the chance that this initiative will also push forward vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging, in which the huge batteries in cars can be used to balance regional power loads and make the grid more resilient. "We are rapidly approaching a future where every EV driver can just plug in, charge up, and go; the network will talk to your car and process the payment seamlessly," Gabe Klein, executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, said in a statement. "This is a fundamental step in architecture toward enabling bidirectional charging and true vehicle-to-grid integration, the holy grail for energy and transportation." The Joint Office is a collaboration between the Departments of Energy and Transportation. The EV Hummer-sized elephant in the room is how the incoming Trump administration, with its stated opposition to the Biden administration's EV policies, could affect this initiative. Klein told The Verge that, with buy-in and real work done by automakers and the industry—including the Elon Musk–led Tesla—"the ship has sort of sailed, if you will." This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
TechCrunch	[ "Meta", "Threads" ]	# Threads tests a feature that lets you see how well specific posts performed By Aisha Malik December 5th, 2024 07:00 PM --- Threads is testing the ability for its users to see how well their individual posts performed on the social network. Up until now, Threads' "Insights" feature only showed you aggregated metrics for all of your posts. Now, the feature can show you metrics for each post. If you're in the test, you can sort posts by the highest or lowest number of views, likes, and replies that they received. Plus, you can see a breakdown of views and interactions by followers and non-followers for each post. You will also be able to see how many people followed you from a specific post. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the change on Thursday, noting that it will help users better understand what sorts of posts are resonating with their audiences, especially now that Threads has changed its algorithm to show users more content from accounts they actually follow. The latest change comes as Meta has been rapidly building out and updating Threads over the past few weeks, likely in response to the increasing popularity of X competitor Bluesky, which recently surpassed 20 million users. The updates include a deeper integration with the fediverse, advanced search, custom feeds, the option to choose a default feed, AI-powered summaries of trending topics, and more. Although Threads has a solid user base of more than 275 million monthly active users, Bluesky is catching up with Threads when it comes to daily active users. As a result, the Meta-owned social network has been working to appease users and roll out additional functionality likely in an effort to remain competitive and keep its users from moving to Bluesky. Bluesky soared in popularity following the U.S. presidential election as X gained more of a right-wing approach, especially after Musk used the social network to campaign for President-elect Donald Trump.
Voice Of America	[ "Europe", "Romania", "europe" ]	# Romania's top court scraps presidential election By Agence France-Presse December 7th, 2024 07:16 AM --- Romania's constitutional court on Friday canceled the country's presidential election following allegations of Russian interference in favor of the far-right front-runner, just two days ahead of the run-off. Romania's pro-EU President Klaus Iohannis said he would stay in his post until a new government that emerges from legislative elections last weekend can be formed to set a new presidential election date. The country's authorities had objected after far-right outsider Calin Georgescu topped the election's first round on November 24, a shock result in the EU and NATO member bordering Ukraine. On Wednesday, the presidency declassified documents detailing allegations against Georgescu and Russia, including "massive" social media promotion and cyberattacks. Based on this, said the court, it had unanimously decided to annul the entire electoral process to ensure its "correctness and legality." The process "was marred throughout its entire duration and at all stages by multiple irregularities and violations of electoral legislation that distorted the free and correct nature of the vote cast by citizens," it said in its ruling. "All these aspects had the converging effect of disregarding the essential principles of democratic elections," it added. 'Attack on democracy' Georgescu, a former senior civil servant, had been due to face centrist mayor Elena Lasconi in Sunday's runoff. "It is basically a formalized coup d'etat... Our democracy is under attack," Georgescu, 62, said in a video message, calling on Romanians to "remain faithful to our common ideal." "They will not be able to stop me. And they cannot stop the Romanian people from what they want to change," he told local media. Lasconi, a 52-year-old former journalist, also called the court's decision "illegal, immoral ... crushing the very essence of democracy." Fears had been raised that if Georgescu won, the country -- whose strategic importance has increased since Moscow invaded Ukraine -- would join the EU's far-right bloc and undermine European unity against Russia. While Bucharest streets were largely empty late Friday, without any protests taking place as far as AFP journalists could see, several people condemned the court's decision. "We are upset because this is a political game" to allow the losers to "get back in the game," said Marius Neagu, a 48-year-old salesman. Miruna Mihai, 25, said the decision "is a slap in the face of everyone who voted in this election" and risked "radicalizing" Georgescu's supporters. IT worker Madalina Stroe, 34, welcomed it however, saying she didn't want Romania "to go back in time to Communism in case Georgescu was elected. I don't want us to lose our freedom." Outgoing Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu -- who lost in the first round of presidential elections -- hailed the decision as "the only correct solution." Late on Friday, the United States said it had faith in Romania's institutions and called for a "peaceful democratic process." "We call on all parties to uphold Romania's constitutional order and engage in a peaceful democratic process free from threats of violence and intimidation," said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. 'Deepens polarization' Anti-corruption prosecutors said Friday they had opened an investigation into "illegal operations with computer devices or software." Prosecutors are already probing "possible violations of electoral legislation" and "money laundering offenses." In documents drawn up for a security council meeting and published Wednesday, authorities said data had "revealed an aggressive promotional campaign, in violation of electoral legislation." Last week, authorities condemned "preferential treatment" of Georgescu by TikTok, something the social media platform has denied. The European Commission announced Thursday it had stepped up monitoring of TikTok. A separate intelligence services document stated that Romania was a "target for aggressive Russian hybrid actions," including cyberattacks. On Monday, before the documents were released, Romania's constitutional court validated the first-round presidential results. Friday's decision to cancel the elections is "an unprecedented and historic decision," political analyst Costin Ciobanu told AFP. It "deepens uncertainty and polarization within Romanian society, raising serious concerns about the strength of Romania's institutions and democracy," he added. Georgescu shot into the limelight with his performance in the first round of voting. Having praised Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past, he has more recently avoided answering questions about him being pro-Russian. While the president's post is largely ceremonial, the head-of-state has moral authority and influence on Romania's foreign policy. The president also designates the prime minister -- a key role especially since legislative elections last weekend returned a fragmented parliament. The governing pro-European Social Democrats won the vote, but far-right parties made strong gains, together securing a third of the ballots. Since the 1989 fall of Communism, Romania has not seen such a breakthrough by the far right, fueled by mounting anger over soaring inflation and fears over Russia's war in neighboring Ukraine.
CBC News	[ "Health", "Anemia", "Flu", "Epidemics" ]	# Congo 'on general alert' over flu-like disease that's killed dozens By Jean-Yves Kamale and Monika Pronczuk December 5th, 2024 04:16 PM --- Some deaths due to lack of blood transfusion, health minister says Public health officials in Africa urged caution Thursday as Congo's health minister said the government was on alert over a flu-like disease that in recent weeks killed dozens of people. Jean Kaseya, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters that more details about the disease should be known in the next 48 hours as experts receive results from laboratory samples of infected people. "First diagnostics are leading us to think it is a respiratory disease," Kaseya said. "But we need to wait for the laboratory results." "There are so many things we don't know" about the disease — including whether it is infectious and how it is transmitted, Kaseya added. Authorities in Congo have so far confirmed 71 deaths, including 27 people who died in hospitals and 44 in the community in the southern Kwango province, Health Minister Roger Kamba said. "The Congolese government is on general alert regarding this disease," Kamba said, without providing more details. Of the victims at the hospitals, 10 died due to lack of blood transfusion and 17 as a result of respiratory problems, he said. ## Epidemiological investigation starts The deaths were recorded between Nov. 10 and Nov. 25 in the Panzi health zone of Kwango province. There were around 380 cases, almost half of which were children under the age of five, according to the minister. The Africa CDC recorded slightly different numbers, with 376 cases and 79 deaths. The discrepancy was caused by problems with surveillance and case definition, Kaseya said. Authorities have said that symptoms include fever, headache, cough and anemia. Epidemiological experts are in the region to take samples and investigate the disease, the minister said. The Panzi health zone, located around 700 kilometres from the capital Kinshasa, is a remote area of the Kwango province, making it hard to access. The epidemiological experts took two days to arrive there, the minister said. Because of the lack of testing capacity, samples had to be taken to Kikwit, more than 500 kilometres away, said Dieudonne Mwamba, the head of the National Institute for Public Health. "The health system is quite weak in our rural areas, but for certain types of care, the ministry has all the provisions, and we are waiting for the first results of the sample analysis to properly calibrate things," Kaseya said. Mwamba said that Panzi was already a "fragile" zone, with 40 per cent of its residents experiencing malnutrition. It was also hit by an epidemic of typhoid fever two years ago, and there is currently a resurgence of seasonal flu across the country. "We need to take into account all this as context," Mwamba said. ## 'A problem of care,' resident says A Panzi resident, Claude Niongo, said his wife and seven-year-old daughter died from the disease. "We do not know the cause but I only noticed high fevers, vomiting ... and then death," Niongo told The Associated Press over the phone. "Now, the authorities are talking to us about an epidemic but in the meantime, there is a problem of care [and] people are dying," he added. Lucien Lufutu, president of the civil society consultation framework of Kwango province, who is in Panzi, said the local hospital where patients are treated is underequipped. "There is a lack of medicines and medical supplies, since the disease is not yet known, most of the population is treated by traditional practitioners," Lufutu told the AP. He also said the disease affected Katenda, another nearby health zone. When asked about a potential outbreak in other health zones, the minister said he could not tell if that was the case but that nothing was reported. Congo is already plagued by the mpox epidemic, with more than 47,000 suspected cases and more than 1,000 suspected deaths from the disease in the Central African country, according to the World Health Organization.
Wired	[ "shopping", "google", "pixel", "android", "software", "accessibility" ]	# Android Is Now Using AI to Upgrade Your Phone's Closed Captions By Julian Chokkattu December 5th, 2024 12:00 PM --- Google is rolling out new features for Android and Pixel devices, including a new memory capability for Gemini and the ability to generate expressive captions for nonspoken audio elements in videos. If you've ever watched a movie with closed captioning, you've probably seen [APPLAUSE] or [dramatic music] pop up at the bottom of the screen to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing better understand the non-dialog audio elements that shape what's happening in a scene. Google is bringing a similar capability to the Android mobile operating system, and, naturally, it's powered by artificial intelligence. This is one of many new features coming to Android and Google Pixel devices today. Expressive Captions is a new tool that's part of Google's existing Live Caption feature, which enables captions on almost any media playing on your phone, no matter what app you're in. (These can even be translated to different languages, though at varying degrees of quality.) The new addition expands the scope by captioning tone and nonspeech elements. If someone yells in a video, like a sports commentator when someone scores a touchdown, the captions will now display in all-caps to emphasize that excitement. If someone lets out a big sigh or gasps, these will now be captioned as [sighs] or [gasps], respectively. Other ambient sounds will also be included, like applause and cheers. These captions are generated by AI software running on the phone itself, not in the cloud. Google says because Live Captions is built into Android and runs "on device," the new Expressive Captions feature will work similarly throughout any app you use, even video calls, once you enable it. They'll occur in real time (though there's often a slight delay) and even when your phone is in Airplane mode. It's rolling out for Android phones with Live Caption functionality running Android 14. AI-powered transcribing features are quickly becoming commonplace on smartphones—many new devices tap large language models to transcribe voice into text, like Samsung's Galaxy S24 series, which can transcribe phone calls, not to mention Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 16, which can transcribe calls and even recordings in the Voice Memo and Notes apps. ## Android Updates Expressive Captions is one of several new Android features Google just announced. There's another accessibility feature coming to the Lookout app for people who are blind or have low vision. The Image Q&A feature within the app lets users upload or take a picture and get an AI-generated description, but the feature now employs Google's more advanced Gemini 1.5 Pro large language model. Think of it as an upgrade that offers richer descriptions, and you can still ask follow-up questions to learn more about an image. Google's Gemini chatbot is getting a lift on Android through new integrations with third-party apps. The latest is a Spotify extension, which lets you ask Gemini to play your favorite songs or discover new playlists based on your mood. Google says you can also use Gemini to call and send messages via your phone's default apps and even control the camera to take a selfie. Soon, Gemini will be able to control your smart home devices too. (Right now, it hands off many of the smart home interaction requests to Google Assistant.) Some of these new features might sound familiar—you've been able to do them before through Google Assistant (RIP?)—but Gemini is better at understanding natural conversation, so you need not be as picky with your words when making requests. Other Android upgrades include better-looking document scans in Google Drive thanks to improved contrast and white balance in the document processing steps, and easier sharing with Quick Share, which is the Google equivalent of Apple's AirDrop. You can quickly share images and videos with a QR code rather than requiring the person to be a contact or fiddling with your app's sharing settings. One of the most notable Gemini enhancements is "Saved info with Gemini," which lets you tell Gemini to remember certain things about yourself so that it can generate better results tailored for you. As an example, if you're vegan and you ask it to find recipes, Gemini can remember that you're vegan and will only provide vegan recipes without you ever having to specify that detail in your query. "Saved info with Gemini" is rolling out to Gemini on all Android phones and the web. ## Pixel Phone Updates Many other new features being announced today will specifically roll out to Google's Pixel phones, though some of these may make their way to the broader Android ecosystem down the road. Some core Pixel phone features are getting quality-of-life updates. Call screen, which is Google's system that screens phone calls to obliterate robocalls and telemarketers from your life, now offers suggested replies you can tap through when a call is being screened. So if a delivery driver is calling and you're in a meeting, you can respond through a series of taps on the screen instead of picking up. You can also look at the real-time conversation between Google's screening agent and the caller, and take over at any time. This latter feature is available on Pixel 6 and newer, but the suggested replies are exclusive to the Pixel 9 series. Google's Recorder app, which transcribes recordings in real time, now has a "Clear Voice" feature you can toggle on to cut out distracting noises from the audio, like the typing of a keyboard or blaring horns on the street if you were in a noisy environment when you recorded the conversation. Cleaning up audio has been a bit of a theme for Google as it uses similar technology called "Clear Calling" in its Pixel Buds Pro 2 wireless earbuds and Pixel phones to reduce background sounds, not to mention the Audio Magic Eraser, which lets you erase unwanted sounds in recorded videos. Now Playing, one of the original features that debuted on the second Pixel phone, lets you see right on the lock screen what music is playing in your surroundings so you don't have to look anything up. This feature now can recognize even more songs and artists, and when you go to your Now Playing history in the settings menu, it'll show album art. Finally, if someone steals your phone, a beta feature called Identity Check will recognize when your phone is in a new location. This will require the thief to provide biometric authentication for when they inevitably will try to access sensitive settings (like changing your passcode). Identity Check is one of several new theft protection features Google recently rolled out in Android 15. There are many more small updates, such as Simple View, a new user interface with larger fonts, bigger touch targets, and increased touchscreen sensitivity. Also, you can use Google's Circle to Search feature to save screenshots, and these screenshots can be saved in your Google Wallet. If you make a sticker of someone's face in Google's Pixel Studio app, these are now accessible in the Gboard keyboard app, and so on. You can read more here. ## Other Pixel Updates Got an older Pixel Watch or Fitbit? You'll be excited to hear that Google's porting back its new Daily Readiness algorithm, along with tools such as Cardio Load and Target Load that debuted on the Pixel Watch 3 to older devices. These include the first two Pixel Watches, along with the Fitbit Sense and Sense 2, Versa 2 through 4, Charge 5 and 6, Inspire 2 and 3, and Luxe. The Pixel Watch 3 specifically introduced a brand-new Loss of Pulse feature that detects when the wearer's heart stops beating, and while this is still not available in the US, it's expanding to Germany and Portugal, with the full list of countries totaling 14. As for the Pixel Tablet, which rumors suggest may not see a successor, owners can now take advantage of Google's homebrewed virtual private network (VPN)—the very same baked into its Pixel phones designed to encrypt your internet data over public Wi-Fi networks.
The BBC	[ "Southall", "Chertsey", "Cats", "Surrey Police" ]	# Chertsey: Southall man jailed for five months for theft of cats By Bob Dale December 5th, 2024 05:36 PM --- A man has been jailed for five months after admitting stealing two pet cats. Carlos Cyrus, 30 and from Southall in London, admitted taking the animals from different addresses in Chertsey on two separate days in July. Cyrus pleaded guilty to two charges of theft, and was sentenced to 20 weeks for each offence at Guildford Crown Court on Thursday, with the sentences to run concurrently. Neither of the stolen cats have been recovered. Surrey Police said they were called to Abbey Road in Chertsey on 17 July, after a man driving a VW Golf had been seen on a video doorbell taking a cat from the street. The second incident was reported in Stepgates Close, with neighbours describing the same car being driven erratically after the cat was put inside. Cyrus was arrested on 30 July after officers reviewed CCTV and doorbell footage. Detectives said he answered "no comment" during questioning, with the missing cats not found during searches of several addresses. ## 'Callous theft' Insp Chris Thoday said: "The two stolen cats, Tilly and Maisie, were much loved members of their families and the callous theft and refusal by Cyrus to tell us where they are, demonstrates his blatant disregard for animals and their owners. "We know that these incidents had a real impact on the local community, and we hope that our swift action in apprehending Cyrus reassures you that we take the thefts of animals seriously and will do what we can to pursue offenders. "We would also like to thank everyone in the local community who came forward with information around this case, no matter how small it might have seemed. This sentencing would not have been possible without your help." Follow BBC Surrey on Facebook, external, on X, external. Send your story ideas to [email protected] , external or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.
TechCrunch	[ "Elon Musk", "Tesla", "hyundai", "TuSimple", "Northvolt", "techcrunch mobility" ]	# Delaware judge rules against Elon Musk's $56B pay package again By Rebecca Bellan December 5th, 2024 06:05 PM --- Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Your usual host Kirsten is out this week, so I'll be taking you through the last couple weeks' worth of mobility news. Top of mind this week is a Delaware judge's decision to uphold her previous ruling denying the legality of Elon Musk's exorbitant $56 billion pay package. To refresh your memory, Delaware Chancery court judge Kathaleen McCormick in January ruled that the pay package — the largest compensation deal in corporate history — is unfair given that the CEO spends so much of his time occupied with his many other companies and projects, including X (formerly Twitter). And now he's in charge of "government efficiency" to boot! Tesla tried to change McCormick's mind after shareholders voted to "re-ratify" the deal, but she wasn't swayed by their arguments. In her decision, she wrote, among other things, that a shareholder vote can't overturn a court ruling. The X-verse is up in arms about it, arguing that no, in fact, a judge's ruling shouldn't be able to overrule a shareholder vote. Musk has threatened to pull back from helping Tesla grow if he doesn't get his money, a prospect that terrifies shareholders. Tesla will appeal the decision again, and with Musk as Trump's new right-hand man, this will be an interesting one to watch. — Rebecca Bellan ## A little bird Looks like Henrik Fisker, founder of the now-defunct EV startup Fisker, has his name on something new. It's called "Glogy Foods LLC" and is described in a filing as having something to do with food and beverage. With a name like that, I'm not sure I want to know. Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at [email protected], Sean O'Kane at [email protected] or Rebecca Bellan at [email protected]. Or check out these instructions to learn how to contact us via encrypted messaging apps or SecureDrop. ## Deals! Chinese autonomous vehicle company Pony AI debuted on the Nasdaq last week as investors showed an interest in backing Chinese tech companies following a de facto ban on foreign IPOs from Beijing. Pony's debut comes after WeRide and Zeekr became publicly traded companies earlier this year. Pony opened at $15 per share, pulling in a valuation of $5.25 billion. That opening price was higher than Pony's offering price of $13 per share, but it quickly dropped down to size and on Wednesday closed just shy of $12. Perhaps that's because Pony, like most other AV companies, is operating at a heavy loss as it throws money into R&D and attempts to scale a frontier technology. Ampeco, an EV charging platform, raised a $26 million Series B round led by Revaia. The startup provides OEMs with a charging network to mix and match hardware partners, which has helped it scale with major utilities companies across Europe. The Biden administration is racing to approve clean energy loans before Trump takes over, and companies are benefiting. Rivian snagged a $6.6 billion conditional federal loan to resume construction of its Georgia EV factory; and Stellantis and Samsung, via their JV StarPlus Energy, secured a conditional loan of up to $7.54 billion to help finance two lithium-ion battery cell and module factories in Indiana. Speaking of battery factories, General Motors is selling its stake in the nearly completed Ultium battery cell plant in Lansing, Michigan, to its JV partner LG Energy Solution (LGES). We don't have a deal number, but GM says it expects to recoup its initial investment into the factory. GM and LGES had promised to invest over $2 billion into that site. ## Notable reads and other tidbits Tesla appears to be building a teleoperations team for its robotaxi service. The company posted a job listing for a software engineer that can help develop the system to allow human operators to remotely access and control Tesla's upcoming robotaxis. TuSimple co-founder and former CEO Xiaodi Hou is demanding that the board immediately liquidate the company and return all remaining funds to shareholders. Things are getting super spicy over here! California plans to offer EV rebates if Trump kills the federal tax credits currently offered to Americans via the Inflation Reduction Act. EVgo and GM have surpassed 2,000 public fast-charging stalls through their ongoing charging collab. That's double their shared EV charging footprint from a year ago. General Motors has taken a $5 billion hit due to weakness in its China business. GM, via state-owned SAIC Motor, used to be a dominant player in China but is struggling to compete with the influx of new models over the past couple of years. Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis are recalling about 208,000 EVs in the U.S. due to an issue that could cause the cars to suddenly lose power. The pope is getting his first electric popemobile, and, no, it's not from now-defunct Fisker. His Holiness will cruise around in a Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV. Northvolt, a Swedish battery manufacturer and unicorn, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. The company will work to reorganize and ramp up operations in order to better position itself for the long term. Revel is expanding its EV-charging empire in New York City. The startup is working with Port Authority to install 24 fast chargers at JFK airport. Tesla came out with a host of new features this week, including a new Tesla app for the Apple Watch and the ability to prank your friends with a fart sound when they sit down in a passenger seat. Joco, the NYC-based startup offering bright orange e-bikes to delivery workers, offers a slice of hope for founders taking on micromobility. The company almost died several times, including at launch, but has managed to expand mainly on its own cashflow and become a profitable business. London has had it with all the dockless e-bikes crowding up sidewalks and streets. The city's transport authority announced a new enforcement policy that will restrict parking for the tens of thousands of e-bikes offered for rent by Lime, Human Forest, and Dott. Skarper, the U.K. startup that helps convert bicycles to e-bikes, must have done something right because the company has got the backing and endorsement of Sir Chris Hoy, one of the most decorated track cyclists. Uber is expanding what it means to be a gig worker. The company is hiring contractors for a new AI and data-labeling division called Scaled Solutions that services both Uber and outside customers, like Aurora Innovation and Niantic. Uber is also under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission over whether the company broke consumer protection laws by allegedly automatically signing people up for its Uber One subscription service and making it hard to cancel. ## This week's wheels While reporting on Joco, I got to test-drive some of their now-iconic orange e-bikes, which are custom made for the company based on Segway's A200 platform. And I must say, that's one hell of a sturdy ride. There wasn't a pothole or cracked bit of pavement that slowed my roll. The acceleration was smooth, and I felt like I was flying down those NYC bike paths — something I'm sure NYC's many delivery drivers will also appreciate. Perhaps my favorite part of the bike, though, was the built-in phone holder that not only secures your phone in place on the handlebars so you can use GPS, but also charges your phone at the same time. What is "This week's wheels"? It's a chance to learn about the different transportation products we're testing, whether it's an electric or hybrid car, an e-bike, or even a ride in an autonomous vehicle. Future vehicles include the Lucid Air, more time in the next-gen Rivian R1S, and the Volkswagen ID Buzz. Stay tuned.
CBC News	[ "Tennessee", "United States of America", "Washington", "Tennessee Attorney General's Office", "Tennessee state government", "Trans and gender-diverse people", "General news", "Courts", "Supreme courts", "Laws", "Supreme courts" ]	# How a single U.S. Supreme Court case could shape life for transgender Americans December 5th, 2024 12:23 AM --- Justices to decide whether Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical care is unconstitutional The highest court in the United States is set to decide whether a statewide ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors is unconstitutional. The landmark case could have major consequences for transgender people across the country — and not just when it comes to their health care. Here's what you need to know. ## What is the case about? The case, United States v. Skrmetti, centres around a law in Tennessee that bans gender-affirming medical care for minors under 18 — treatments like puberty-delaying medication, hormone therapy and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria, which is the distressing feeling people experience when their gender identity isn't the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. Under the Tennessee law, which passed last year, medical providers who administer those treatments can be sued, fined or otherwise professionally punished. ## What is the court deciding? The justices are being asked to rule on whether the Tennessee law violates the U.S. Constitution — specifically the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment — by making distinctions based on sex. They are not ruling on the issue of medical treatments for transgender minors itself. ## Is Tennessee the only state with that kind of ban? No. A wave of conservative state lawmakers have approved similar policies across the country in the last few years, but the one from Tennessee is the only one being examined by the U.S. Supreme Court. ## Why is this such a major case? It's the first time the country's highest court will rule on a state ban denying gender-affirming medical care for youth. It's also only the second time in four years that the court has had to decide the extent to which federal law protects transgender people from discrimination. The Biden administration's top Supreme Court lawyer warned that a decision siding with Tennessee could be used to justify nationwide restrictions on health care for transgender minors. A ruling against Tennessee, on the other hand, could open the door for challenges against similar policies in other states. It might also go beyond health care. The ruling could impact efforts to regulate other aspects of transgender Americans' lives — like sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use. ## What is the makeup of the court? Six of the nine justices are conservative, with three having been appointed by president-elect Donald Trump when he was in the White House from 2017-21. During the presidential election campaign, Trump and his allies promised to roll back protections for transgender people. After hearing arguments for two hours on Wednesday, the court seemed likely to uphold Tennessee's ban. The three liberal justices appeared inclined to agree with the challengers, but they do not hold enough seats to sway a decision. ## When will the justices make their decision? A ruling is expected by the end of June 2025.
The BBC	[ "London violence", "London", "Upper Norwood", "South Norwood" ]	# Dajour Jones: Man found guilty of Jamie Gilbey's murder By Jeremy Britton December 5th, 2024 05:42 PM --- A labourer has been found guilty of murdering a 20-year-old man and dismembering his body in a "sustained and brutal" attack. Dajour Jones, 27, stabbed to death Jamie Gilbey before cutting up the body and distributing the remains in undergrowth at South Norwood Lake and Grounds in south London in January 2022. Jurors at the Old Bailey had been told it was a "deeply disturbing" case in which the victim was a "defenceless" man. Jones refused to attend the court hearing by video link from Belmarsh Prison for the verdict. He had claimed he had hit the victim with a broom in self-defence after Mr Gilbey confronted him with a knife and stole his phone. Prosecutor Simon Dennison KC said Mr Gilbey was an "innocent victim of a highly dangerous man" and had been "too trusting" and "too eager to please". He was a "very vulnerable, physically unimposing 20-year-old man who above all wanted to have friends", he said. Mr Dennison dismissed the defendant's claim of self-defence, saying Mr Gilbey was "incapable of presenting any physical threat to the defendant let alone taking out a knife and threatening to stab him with it". After deliberating for five hours, jurors convicted Jones of murder following a two-month trial. ## 'Never seen alive again' The court heard both men were seen returning to the Fitze Millennium Centre housing and support facility on the evening of 27 January, and CCTV showed them going into the defendant's room. "Jamie Gilbey was never seen alive again," Mr Dennison said. "The defendant murdered him there in a brutal, sustained, and particularly disturbing attack in which he inflicted multiple blunt force injuries to Jamie's head, and he stabbed him multiple times with a sharp weapon." Jurors heard Jones set about removing Mr Gilbey's dismembered body from his room without being seen to do so. The prosecution said Jones acquired a large suitcase on 28 January that he took back to his room and made three trips with over the next few days. Jurors were told the trips included two visits to Cantley Gardens, where Jones disposed of Mr Gilbey's body. A third trip was made to Love Lane Green in South Norwood, where clothing and bedding "heavily stained with blood" were disposed of, the prosecution said. Having "calmly disposed of the body", Jones also carried out a "remarkably thorough" clean-up operation in his room and seemed "extra ordinarily relaxed and cheerful", the court heard. Evidence of the clean-up could be seen when chemicals were applied to the floor, the jury heard, but no murder weapon was recovered. ## History of violence Police found the suitcase containing the bloodstained clothing on 27 February 2022. Jones was arrested on 3 March but when questioned, he declined to answer any police questions or tell them what had happened to the body, the court heard. Giving evidence at the trial, the defendant said he acted in self-defence. He also denied dismembering the body, saying he took it away from the hostel in one trip and handed it to others to dispose of, and stabbing the victim's feet after he was already dead. The trial heard that at the time of the murder, Jones was on licence having been released from prison after attacking a man in a cycle shop in London Bridge. Police said he had a history of violence. Sentencing was adjourned to 13 December with Judge Nigel Lickley KC saying Jones would be required to attend.
Wired	[ "lgbtq+", "transgender", "tiktok", "instagram", "social media" ]	# Trans Americans Are Turning to TikTok to Crowdfund Their Relocations By Megan Farokhmanesh December 5th, 2024 11:01 AM --- With their health care before the Supreme Court and president-elect Donald Trump about to take office, trans Americans are seeking to move to states where they feel safest. The day after the 2024 US presidential election, Iris, a Black trans woman living in Texas, laid in bed and cried. Not typically one for tears, she'd woken up to a "numbing" realization: "This changes everything. If I stay in the state now that [Donald Trump]'s going to be president, I will die here." On November 13, Iris posted a two-minute video to TikTok with a link to a fundraising platform to help her cover moving costs. At age 20, she has not yet gone through the process of finding gender-affirming care, or legally changing her name or gender marker. Already in states like Texas, trans people can no longer correct the gender marker on their birth certificates. With laws in red states poised to become even more restrictive, Iris felt that she had no choice but to leave. "I can't live here as long as that's a danger for me," she says in the video. "I feel like my life has just started and I can't let it end before I get to do anything." She asked for support, whether it was donations to relocate to another state, or something as small as a comment. "I just didn't know what else to do," she added. Iris is one of countless transgender Americans who—already grappling with draconian laws and bills that seek to cut off their access to health care and prevent them from using public bathrooms corresponding to their genders, on top of rising hateful rhetoric in conservative states—are scrambling to move as Trump prepares to take office for a second term. With limited resources and little time, some are seeking relocation help directly through pleas on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Others are seeking to help through mutual aid fundraisers being organized on social media. For Iris, that means eyeing a move to a state like California, where LGBTQ+ people have stronger legal protections. "I just want to be allowed to be myself and be seen and just be accepted," Iris says. (WIRED is withholding Iris' full name for her safety.) "It sucks every time you're reminded that this country doesn't want that for you." Shortly after Iris posted her initial TikTok, she'd raised more than $34,000, overshooting her $10,000 goal by a wide margin. She posted another video to let her viewers know she was ending her crowdfunding efforts and now had the means to start a new life elsewhere. "Making that TikTok was really hard, because I've never been a person who likes asking for help or needing help, really," Iris says. "Especially in a system that values this imaginary idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, doing everything for yourself, and this individualism—it makes it really hard to be vulnerable and ask for help because it feels like a failure." Since she posted that first TikTok, Iris' follower count has jumped from 100 to nearly 19,000. With her new platform, she hopes to create a space where other trans and queer people can connect, perhaps learn from her efforts. "The biggest act of resistance that trans people can do in this country," Iris says, "is to refuse to die and refuse to let ourselves be pushed into the darkness." In the hours following the election, concern from queer Americans surged. On November 6, suicide prevention and crisis prevention organization The Trevor Project reported a 125 percent increase in "outreach from LGBTQ+ young people needing support in direct response to election results," the organization said in a blog post. "We anticipate this number will be at least maintained, and potentially only increase." It did; by the end of the following day, the organization reported that the uptick in post-election call volume was 700 percent. Basic rights for trans Americans, including lifesaving health care and safe access to bathrooms, have increasingly come under attack over the past decade. Twenty-six states, including Texas, have bans or proposed bans on gender-affirming care for minors. States such as Utah, Oklahoma, Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky have laws in place that require people to use public school and government building bathrooms that correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth. Ohio has a similar bathroom law, affecting students from kindergarten through college, slated to go into effect in 2025. According to a study released by The Trevor Project this fall, "anti-transgender state laws significantly increased incidents of past-year suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth by as much as 72 percent." In the runup to the 2024 election, trans Americans' lives and experiences were frequently reduced to political talking points. Trump made dismantling trans rights a prominent part of his campaign, promising to get "transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women's sports." According to The Times, Trump has expressed an interest in removing trans military members from service as soon as he takes office. (A Trump spokesperson said the president-elect hasn't settled on any plan). Trump has vowed to remove federal funding for trans health care; end programs that "promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age"; allow citizens who've previously received gender affirming care to sue doctors who provided it; ask Congress to pass a bill that would only recognize male and female genders, assigned at birth, and more. After the first openly transgender member of Congress, Representative-elect Sarah McBride of Delaware, won her bid in November, Republican representatives swiftly proposed a new policy to bar trans women from using women's restrooms in the Capitol, with a push for a broader impact on bathrooms in all government buildings. On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in a potentially monumental case challenging a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for young people. The court is expected to issue its decision in June. Iris says that like many other trans people, she's struggled with gender dysphoria, depression, and suicidal ideation. "What's kept me strong through it all is the belief that I will eventually get to a point of being able to transition," she says. "Just the idea of that was enough to sustain me mentally. The realization that all of that could be taken away from me, despite how long I've waited and how much I've been trying to prepare for that—I knew that if I had to sit in that feeling for four years, I would not survive." Iris, born and raised in Texas, says that while she's accepted moving, it's not always the first choice for many people in her communities. "Trans people who are looking to leave their state don't want to leave their state," she says. "Leaving is not something that we choose lightly. Nobody wants to leave the place that they grew up their entire life, unless they feel like they need to." Kaliyah, a 27-year-old trans woman, has lived in Texas for the past five years. She'd intended to stay longer, first to go to school for sonography, with plans to work in Austin after that. But Trump's election, along with increasingly hostile local legislation, has changed her plans. She's looking to relocate to Maryland and turned to TikTok to look for help. "I'm not leaving because, oh, I just got tired of Texas," she says, "I'm leaving because my safety is at risk." Kaliyah says that TikTok, aside from a place where she can find recipes or funny content, has been a source of information for her. She credits TikTok for her political cognizance and says it's given her direction on where to research more thoroughly on her own. After seeing others reach out to their communities for assistance, Kaliyah decided to try it for herself. She doesn't consider herself an influencer or a professional at social media, but TikTok presented an opportunity that other platforms can't match. "The beauty of TikTok is that as long as you can generate content that even in the most basic sense appeals to people, it's so easy for the algorithm to pick up engagement and push that content out in front of people," Kaliyah says. "You don't have to already have a huge following for something like that to be successful." Even for people who decide they want to leave states with anti-transgender laws, packing up and moving is a daunting, if not impossible task, rife with financial burden and the emotional hardship of leaving behind support networks. "I think the problem is that the information that's out there for assisting trans people is so focused on gender-affirming care, which is so important," Iris says. "But it's also that trans people tend to be in really dangerous situations." This can mean anything from the legal protections of their state, to abusive situations in their home life. In states like Colorado, grassroots efforts, mutual aid, and small nonprofits are working to bridge that gap. "Most of the people reaching out [to us] just don't have the ability to move across the country," says Keira Richards, executive director of Denver-based nonprofit Trans Continental Pipeline. TCP helps people relocate to Colorado, a state with strong LGBTQ+ rights and gender-affirming health care protections, by offering financial assistance, transportation, resources for local housing, and community assistance. "For people in the service industry, retail, lower-paying jobs, they don't have the ability to save the finances that are required to pack up their whole lives and move a couple thousand miles," Richards says. "We can get creative, but it's still a very heavy financial rift." For some people, moving also means giving up the job they have and seeking out new employment. It's a cycle, Richards says: "You need somewhere to stay to get the job, but you need to get the job to have somewhere to stay." TCP is trying to break that cycle with a temporary housing program that gives people at least a month to get on their feet. "Really, it's leaning on your community," Richards says. "If you can build a strong community, get mutual aid networks going, then you will be in a much better position than anybody isolated in a red state." Since the election, Richards says that applications have skyrocketed, with a majority of requests coming from Texas and Florida. In October, TCP had gotten a little more than 20 applications. By mid-November, that number was already over 400. "Everyone is terrified right now," she says. "Nobody really knows what's going to happen ... the rhetoric is already occurring and already being translated to legislation. We have our problems already, even without whatever Trump's going to do." On platforms such as Instagram, mutual aid funds have offered a safe way for people to both anonymously seek assistance for, and donate toward, relocation costs, medical costs, therapy, travel expenses, and more. One popular account started in 2020, transanta, posts stories from and letters from trans people in need; users can then anonymously donate directly to whomever they like by visiting that person's gift registry, which is shared by the Instagram account. Others, like Genderbands, offer yearly grants for a variety of transition care-related costs, including procedures, travel costs, and paperwork. It can be tricky, however, for people in need to find these networks. Both Iris and Kaliyah were familiar with Rainbow Railroad, a non-profit operating globally that helps LGBTQ+ flee persecution, but less so with smaller, more concentrated efforts. Getting word out to people who need assistance is paramount. Complicating the issue is also the question of safety for organizers themselves. To make themselves known is to also put a target on their backs. Richards has taken the responsibility of a spotlight to better protect her team, she says. TCP is intent on " scaling as quickly as possible," including fundraising, training volunteers, and trying to compile resources outside of Colorado. "We're talking to other groups in Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Washington, the other safe states who are trying to compile similar resource lists like we do," she says. "We're trying to support other groups trying to do the same so we can meet this demand." None of that work can be done blindly and requires careful vetting. "It's definitely tricky," she says. "It requires a lot of trust on both ends." "And even some of those networks are too underground for us to touch. They will not work with a 501(c)(3), which I respect. I understand that because we are more above ground than most of these networks have been, we are inherently at a greater risk." With weeks left before Trump takes office in January, the politicization of the trans community shows no signs of slowing down. Kaliyah points to the millions of dollars Republicans spent on anti-trans ads in the most recent election cycle. "For people who refuse to educate themselves—we are also in the age of misinformation where things that are not true get spread," Kaliyah says. Focusing on trans people, she says, "was just a way to sway the election for people who were already radically right to further demonize a demographic of people."
TechCrunch	[ "ChatGPT", "chatgpt pro", "o1", "o1-mini", "OpenAI", "reasoning models" ]	# OpenAI confirms new $200 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Pro, which includes its o1 reasoning model By Kyle Wiggers December 5th, 2024 06:00 PM --- OpenAI has launched a new subscription plan for ChatGPT, its AI-powered chatbot platform — and it's very, very expensive. Confirming leaks this morning, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Pro, a new $200-per-month subscription tier that provides unlimited access to all of OpenAI's models, including the full version of its o1 "reasoning" model. "We think the audience for ChatGPT Pro will be the power users of ChatGPT — those who are already pushing the models to the limits of their capabilities on tasks like math, programming, and writing," Jason Wei, a member of OpenAI's technical staff, said during a livestreamed press conference on Thursday. Unlike most AI, o1 and other reasoning models attempt to check their own work as they do it. This helps them avoid some of the pitfalls that normally trip up models, with the downside being that they often take longer to arrive at solutions. O1 reasons through tasks, planning ahead and performing a series of actions that help the model tease out answers. OpenAI released a preview of o1 in September, but this new version is, generally speaking, more performant. Compared to the preview, users can expect "a faster, more powerful, and accurate reasoning model that is even better at coding and math," an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch. Additionally, o1 can reason about image uploads now (this wasn't possible during the preview), and has been trained to be "more concise in its thinking" to improve response times. According to OpenAI's internal testing, o1 reduces "major errors" on "difficult real-world questions" by 34% compared to the preview version. Oddly enough, though, the full o1 performs worse than the preview version on a number of common benchmarks. One of those benchmarks is MLE-Bench, which measures how well AI "agents" perform at machine learning engineering. O1 doesn't require a ChatGPT Pro subscription. As of this afternoon, all paid ChatGPT users can access o1 through the ChatGPT model selector tool. But ChatGPT Pro subscribers will get an ostensibly better version of o1 than users who don't shell out as much. Called o1 pro mode, it "uses more compute for the best answers to the hardest questions," OpenAI says. ChatGPT Pro users can access the functionality by selecting "o1 pro mode" in the model picker and asking a question directly. Since answers will take longer to generate, ChatGPT will display a progress bar and send an in-app notification if they switch away to another conversation. O1 pro mode may simply up the "reasoning" time the model takes before it responds with an answer. In its o1 preview announcement, OpenAI said that it aimed to experiment with o1 models that reason for hours, days, or even weeks to further boost their reasoning capabilities, and this could well be a step toward that direction. "In evaluations from external expert testers, o1 pro mode produces more reliably accurate and comprehensive responses, especially in areas like data science, programming, and case law analysis," an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch. "Compared to both o1 and o1-preview, o1 pro mode performs better on challenging machine learning benchmarks across math, science, and coding. In particular, we saw a 75% reduction in errors for easier coding competition questions more reflective of everyday programming queries." O1 will soon be available in OpenAI's API, as well, with new capabilities including function calling (i.e. the ability to use outside tools) and image analysis. OpenAI says that it plans to add support for web browsing, file uploads, and more in the months ahead. ChatGPT Pro is easily OpenAI's priciest plan yet — and 10x the cost of ChatGPT Plus. It's likely to be a tough sell to all but the most devoted users, considering many people already think ChatGPT Plus is too expensive. To sweeten the pot, ChatGPT Pro also includes unlimited access to GPT-4o and Advanced Voice Mode, ChatGPT's human-like conversational feature. OpenAI will also give some subscriptions away for free. The company announced a program to award 10 grants of ChatGPT Pro to medical researchers at "leading institutions," with plans for additional grants across "various disciplines" in the future. Price hikes for the premium ChatGPT have long been rumored. OpenAI expects to charge $44 per month for ChatGPT Plus by 2029, according to reporting by The New York Times. The company has also toyed with the idea of ultra-costly business subscriptions with additional functionality and access to models under development, per The Information. Today's news certainly supports those reports. The aggressive moves reflect pressure on OpenAI from investors to narrow its losses. While the company's monthly revenue reached $300 million in August, according to The New York Times, OpenAI expects to lose roughly $5 billion this year. Expenditures like staffing, office rent, and AI training infrastructure are to blame. ChatGPT alone was at one point reportedly costing OpenAI $700,000 per day. ChatGPT remains one of OpenAI's biggest revenue sources. The platform has over 300 million weekly active users, around 10 million of whom are paying subscribers. TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter! Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.
CBC News	[ "2024", "Cuba power grid failure", "Cuban government", "Cuban power grid", "Government of Cuba", "electrical grid failure", "Cuba", "Havana", "Danielis Mora", "Financial crisis", "Financial crisis", "Power outages" ]	# Millions remain without power in Cuba after latest power grid failure December 4th, 2024 01:24 PM --- Island nation generating electricity to cover roughly one-sixth of peak demand as of late Wednesday Cuba says it was generating only enough electricity to cover about one-sixth of peak demand late on Wednesday, hours after its national grid collapsed leaving millions without power. The National Electric Union (UNE) said it was producing 533 megawatts of electricity by evening, still just a fraction of typical dinnertime demand of between 3,000 and 3,200 megawatts, leaving most Cubans in the dark as night fell across the Caribbean island. Earlier, the communist-run government said it would prioritize returning power to hospitals and water pumping facilities. Schools and non-essential government services were closed until further notice. Lights flickered on across parts of the capital Havana late on Wednesday. The local electric company said more than 260,000 clients had seen power restored. It was the latest in a string of countrywide blackouts of Cuba's antiquated and increasingly frail power generation system. This year, Cuba's grid fell into near-total disarray, stressed by fuel shortages, natural disaster and economic crisis. Dwindling oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico pushed the island's obsolete and struggling oil-fired power plants into full crisis several months ago. Hours-long rolling blackouts and severe shortages of food, medicine and water have made life increasingly hard for many Cubans, who in recent years have fled the island in record-breaking numbers. Cuba blames U.S. sanctions, which complicate financial transactions and the purchase of fuel, for the crisis. ## Blackout triggered by power plant failure The Wednesday morning blackout was triggered by a failure at the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, which shut down around 2 a.m. local time. Several other major power plants were undergoing maintenance and were offline when the Matanzas plant failed, starving the grid of electricity and leading to the countrywide collapse, the energy minister said. Havana hotel worker Danielis Mora woke up frustrated and confused, like many Havana residents who now experience regular blackouts. "I didn't know it was a total blackout again," Mora said. "Where I am living ... there is no gas either, if there is no electricity there is no way to make food, it has to be with firewood or charcoal." Scattered protests have erupted over the past two months over the repeated power failures as well as water, gas and food shortages. Cuba's decrepit and long obsolete grid collapsed multiple times in October as fuel supplies dwindled and Hurricane Oscar struck the far eastern end of the island, then again in November with the passage of Hurricane Rafael. Cuba's government last week issued a decree ordering state and private businesses to generate more of their own electricity from renewable resources. The regulations also require businesses to limit their use of air conditioning — among other measures — as the country wrestles with the increasingly dire energy crisis.
The BBC	[ "Melton Mowbray" ]	# Storm Darragh cancels Melton Mowbray Christmas lights switch-on By Isaac Ashe December 5th, 2024 05:43 PM --- A Leicestershire town's Christmas lights switch-on event has been cancelled due to Storm Darragh. Melton Mowbray's festive displays were due to be formally turned on on Friday. But with gusts of up to 60mph forecast and a yellow weather warning from the Met Office in place, a decision has been made to cancel parts of the town's Christmas programme. Melton Borough Council said it would not have been possible to carry out the planned event safely. Borough councillor Sharon Butcher said: "Although the light switch on event is not taking place, the lights will be turned on for the weekend, ensuring the town looks festive for our residents during the Christmas period." Melton Business Improvement District's Christmas Market will still be taking place on Friday with reduced opening hours from 10:00 to 14:00 GMT, ending ahead of when the strongest winds are forecast. The market will then relocate to The Stockyard to take place undercover over the weekend. A car boot sale scheduled to take place at The Stockyard on Sunday has been cancelled. St Mary's Christmas Tree Festival is also going ahead as planned from Friday.
TechCrunch	[ "AI", "bias", "emotion detection", "Generative AI", "Google", "open models", "paligemma 2" ]	# Google says its new AI models can identify emotions — and that has experts worried By Kyle Wiggers December 5th, 2024 05:30 PM --- Google says its new AI model family has a curious feature: the ability to "identify" emotions. Announced on Thursday, the PaliGemma 2 family of models can analyze images, enabling the AI to generate captions and answer questions about people it "sees" in photos. "PaliGemma 2 generates detailed, contextually relevant captions for images," Google wrote in a blog post shared with TechCrunch, "going beyond simple object identification to describe actions, emotions, and the overall narrative of the scene." Emotion recognition doesn't work out of the box, and PaliGemma 2 has to be fine-tuned for the purpose. Nonetheless, experts TechCrunch spoke with were alarmed at the prospect of an openly available emotion detector. "This is very troubling to me," Sandra Wachter, a professor in data ethics and AI at the Oxford Internet Institute, told TechCrunch. "I find it problematic to assume that we can 'read' people's emotions. It's like asking a Magic 8 Ball for advice." For years, startups and tech giants alike have tried to build AI that can detect emotions for everything from sales training to preventing accidents. Some claim to have attained it, but the science stands on shaky empirical ground. The majority of emotion detectors take cues from the early work of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who theorized that humans share six fundamental emotions in common: anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, and sadness. Subsequent studies cast doubt on Ekman's hypothesis, however, demonstrating there are major differences in the way people from different backgrounds express how they're feeling. "Emotion detection isn't possible in the general case, because people experience emotion in complex ways," Mike Cook, a research fellow at King's College London specializing in AI, told TechCrunch. "Of course, we do think we can tell what other people are feeling by looking at them, and lots of people over the years have tried, too, like spy agencies or marketing companies. I'm sure it's absolutely possible to detect some generic signifiers in some cases, but it's not something we can ever fully 'solve.'" The unsurprising consequence is that emotion-detecting systems tend to be unreliable and biased by the assumptions of their designers. In a 2020 MIT study, researchers showed that face-analyzing models could develop unintended preferences for certain expressions, like smiling. More recent work suggests that emotional analysis models assign more negative emotions to Black people's faces than white people's faces. Google says it conducted "extensive testing" to evaluate demographic biases in PaliGemma 2, and found "low levels of toxicity and profanity" compared to industry benchmarks. But the company didn't provide the full list of benchmarks it used, nor did it indicate which types of tests were performed. The only benchmark Google has disclosed is FairFace, a set of tens of thousands of people's headshots. The company claims that PaliGemma 2 scored well on FairFace. But some researchers have criticized the benchmark as a bias metric, noting that FairFace represents only a handful of race groups. "Interpreting emotions is quite a subjective matter that extends beyond use of visual aids and is heavily embedded within a personal and cultural context," said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, a nonprofit that studies the societal implications of artificial intelligence. "AI aside, research has shown that we cannot infer emotions from facial features alone." Emotion detection systems have raised the ire of regulators overseas, who've sought to limit the use of the technology in high-risk contexts. The AI Act, the major piece of AI legislation in the EU, prohibits schools and employers from deploying emotion detectors (but not law enforcement agencies). The biggest apprehension around open models like PaliGemma 2, which is available from a number of hosts, including AI dev platform Hugging Face, is that they'll be abused or misused, which could lead to real-world harm. "If this so-called emotional identification is built on pseudoscientific presumptions, there are significant implications in how this capability may be used to further — and falsely — discriminate against marginalized groups such as in law enforcement, human resourcing, border governance, and so on," Khlaaf said. Asked about the dangers of publicly releasing PaliGemma 2, a Google spokesperson said the company stands behind its tests for "representational harms" as they relate to visual question answering and captioning. "We conducted robust evaluations of PaliGemma 2 models concerning ethics and safety, including child safety, content safety," they added. Wachter isn't convinced that's enough. "Responsible innovation means that you think about the consequences from the first day you step into your lab and continue to do so throughout the life cycle of a product," she said. "I can think of myriad potential issues [with models like this] that can lead to a dystopian future, where your emotions determine if you get the job, a loan, and if you're admitted to uni."
The BBC	[ "Halifax" ]	# Halifax man jailed for historical child sex offence By Kit Taylor December 5th, 2024 05:48 PM --- A man has been jailed for two years for sexually abusing a girl in West Yorkshire more than a decade ago. Zaheer Ahmed, 34, from Halifax, was found guilty of sexual activity with a child at Bradford Crown Court, with the offence taking place in 2009 when the victim was 15. At Bradford Crown Court on Thursday, he was ordered to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years and will be subject to a 10-year restraining order. West Yorkshire Police said Ahmed was charged after the victim came forward to report the offence in 2020, prompting an investigation by Calderdale child safeguarding officers. Det Ch Insp Claire Smith, from the force, said: "I commend the victim in this case for her strength, patience and fortitude and I hope the outcome today gives her some comfort knowing justice has been served. "We know the effects such offending has on victims and their families - I thank them for their perseverance and support through the investigation and the court process."
Voice Of America	[ "Middle East", "middle east", "syria" ]	# Syrian opposition says insurgents have reached Damascus suburbs By Associated Press December 7th, 2024 06:43 AM --- Syrian insurgents have reached the suburbs of Damascus as part of a rapidly moving offensive that has seen them take over some of Syria's largest cities, opposition activists and a rebel commander said Saturday. It was the first time that opposition forces reached the outskirts of the Syrian capital since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured the region adjacent to the capital following a yearslong siege. It came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern Syria on Saturday, leaving more areas of the country, including two provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters. The rapid advance by insurgents is a stunning reversal of fortunes for Syria's President Bashar Assad, who appears to be largely on his own, with erstwhile allies preoccupied with other conflicts. His chief international backer, Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine, and Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up his forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its proxies across the region degraded by Israeli airstrikes. Amid the dramatic developments, Syria's state media denied rumors flooding social media that Assad has left the country, saying he is performing his duties in the capital, Damascus. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents are now active in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. He added that opposition fighters on Saturday were also marching from eastern Syria toward the Damascus suburb of Harasta. A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces have started carrying out the "final stage" of their offensive by encircling Damascus. He added that insurgents were headed from southern Syria toward Damascus. Syria's military, meanwhile, sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend the key central city of Homs, Syria's third largest, as insurgents approached its outskirts. Abdurrahman reported Saturday that Iran's military advisers have started leaving Syria. He added that Iran-backed fighters in eastern Syria, mainly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, have withdrawn into central Syria. The shock offensive, which began November 27, is led by the jihadi Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS. Gunmen captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest, and the central city of Hama, the country's fourth-largest city. The group has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani told CNN on Thursday from Syria that the aim of the offensive is to overthrow Assad's government. The Britain-based Observatory said Syrian troops have withdrawn from much of the two southern provinces and are sending reinforcements to Homs, where a battle is looming. If the insurgents capture Homs, they would cut the link between Damascus, Assad's seat of power, and the coastal region where the president enjoys wide support. The Syrian army said in a statement Saturday that it has carried out redeployment and repositioning in Sweida and Daraa after its checkpoints came under attack by "terrorists." The army said it is setting up a "strong and coherent defensive and security belt in the area," apparently to defend Damascus from the south. Since Syria's conflict broke out in March 2011, the Syrian government has been referring to opposition gunmen as terrorists. In Qatar, the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey were scheduled to meet to discuss the situation in Syria. Turkey is a main backer of the rebels seeking to overthrow Assad. Qatar's top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in fighting in recent years to address the country's underlying problems. "Assad didn't seize this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his people," he said. Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by how quickly the rebels have advanced and said there is a real threat to Syria's "territorial integrity." He said the war could "damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency" to start a political process. After the fall of the cities of Daraa and Sweida early Saturday, Syrian government forces remain in control of five provincial capitals — Damascus, Homs and Quneitra, as well as Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean cost. Tartus is home to the only Russian naval base outside the former Soviet Union, while Latakia is home to a major Russian air base. On Friday, U.S.-backed fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, captured wide parts of the eastern province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq as well as the provincial capital that carries the same name. The capture of areas in Deir el-Zour is a blow to Iran's influence in the region as the area is the gateway to the corridor linking the Mediterranean to Iran, a supply line for Iran-backed fighters, including Lebanon's Hezbollah. With the capture of a main border crossing with Iraq by the SDF and after opposition fighters took control of the Naseeb border crossing to Jordan in southern Syria, the Syrian government's only gateway to the outside world is the Masnaa border crossing with Lebanon.
The BBC	[ "Chelmsford", "Great Bentley", "Transport", "Canvey Island", "Bus travel", "Halstead", "Essex County Council", "Essex" ]	# BBC Essex journalists race by bus to highlight travel times By Lewis Adams December 5th, 2024 05:52 PM --- A team of radio journalists have raced each other by bus to highlight the lengthy commutes their listeners are facing. It took BBC Essex mid-morning presenter Ben Fryer almost three hours to travel from his home in Great Bentley near Colchester, to the station's base in Chelmsford. He was competing against his producers Adam Bennett, who lives in Halstead, and Robyn Wallis of Canvey Island. Essex County Council has said it is hoping to invest £23m to improve bus services in the area. The race was inspired by callers to the show who believed it took too long to reach Essex's county town by bus. Fryer boarded the number 77 Hedingham & Chambers bus from Great Bentley to Colchester at 07:29 GMT - his first local service of the day - before boarding another bus to Chelmsford at 08:30. He arrived in Chelmsford shortly after 10:00 and subsequently walked to the BBC Essex building in New London Road - meaning he was 25 minutes late for his show. Breakfast presenter Sonia Watson had to hold the fort for an extra half an hour. "The lowest point for me was when I saw loads of people leaving on the train to Chelmsford at my local railway station," said Fryer. Wallis boarded a bus from Canvey at 07:12 and arrived about two hours later. She usually completes the journey by car in under an hour and said: "I'm not sure I'll be doing it again in a hurry." It was an earlier start for Bennett, who boarded the number 38 bus from Halstead at 06:52 - operated by Stephensons - before jumping on a connecting bus at Braintree. He won the three-way race, having walked into the office at about 09:00. Bennett described the journey as "very cost effective" but added: "I don't think I would use the buses during rush hour again." Single bus fares across England are capped at £2, although the cost is due to rise to £3 from January. A report by the County Councils Network, published last year, said the frequency of bus services in England had reached an "historic low", external. Last month, the government said it had earmarked nearly £1bn to be spent on bus services between now and 2026. Essex County Council said it was waiting on more information from the Department for Transport, having been promised a £23m portion of this funding. However, the local authority stressed that the private bus operators were responsible for timetables.
Associated Press News	[ "Noticias", "Health" ]	# Enfermedad misteriosa mata a decenas en el Congo; expertos de la ONU investigan By JEAN-YVES KAMALE and MARK BANCHEREAU December 6th, 2024 06:30 PM --- KINSASA, Congo (AP) — La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) anunció el viernes que desplegará expertos para investigar una enfermedad misteriosa similar a la gripe que ha matado a decenas de personas en el suroeste de la República Democrática del Congo en las últimas semanas. "Se están realizando todos los esfuerzos para identificar la causa de la enfermedad, entender sus modos de transmisión y asegurar una respuesta adecuada lo más rápido posible", dijo en un comunicado el director regional para África de la OMS, el doctor Matshidiso Moeti. Los síntomas incluyen fiebre, dolor de cabeza, tos y anemia. Expertos epidemiológicos del Equipo Nacional de Respuesta Rápida están en la región para tomar muestras e investigar la enfermedad. Las autoridades congoleñas han confirmado hasta ahora 71 muertes, incluyendo 27 personas que fallecieron en hospitales y 44 en comunidades en la provincia sureña de Kwango, dijo el jueves el ministro de Salud, Roger Kamba. Las muertes se registraron entre el 10 y el 25 de noviembre, en la zona de Panzi, en Kwango. Hubo alrededor de 380 casos, casi la mitad de los cuales eran niños menores de 5 años, según el ministro. Los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades de África registraron cifras ligeramente diferentes: 376 casos y 79 muertes. La discrepancia fue causada por problemas con la vigilancia y la definición de casos, dijo el jefe de los Centros, Jean Kaseya. "Los primeros diagnósticos nos llevan a pensar que es una enfermedad respiratoria", dijo Kaseya. "Pero necesitamos esperar los resultados de laboratorio". Panzi, ubicada a unos 700 kilómetros (435 millas) de la capital Kinsasa, está en una parte remota de la provincia de Kwango, lo que dificulta el acceso. Los expertos epidemiológicos tardaron dos días en llegar allí, dijo el ministro de Salud del Congo. Debido a la falta de capacidad para realizar las pruebas, las muestras tuvieron que ser llevadas a Kikwit, a más de 500 kilómetros (310 millas) de distancia, dijo Dieudonné Mwamba, jefe del Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública. Mwamba dijo que Panzi ya era una zona "frágil", con el 40% de sus residentes sufriendo de malnutrición. También fue afectada por una epidemia de fiebre tifoidea hace dos años, y actualmente hay un resurgimiento de la gripe estacional en todo el país. Oscar Kazwa, un residente de Panzi, dijo que su hija de 28 años murió hace dos semanas a causa de la enfermedad misteriosa. "Tuvo fiebre alta, tos, vómitos y estaba muy débil", indicó Kazwa. "Como no había atención adecuada, murió". Los expertos de la OMS se están uniendo al Equipo Nacional de Respuesta Rápida en Panzi para apoyar la respuesta al brote. El equipo, que incluye epidemiólogos y clínicos, entregará medicamentos y kits de muestras para ayudar a identificar la causa de la enfermedad.
The BBC	[ "Boris Johnson", "UK Parliament", "Nick Thomas-Symonds", "House of Lords" ]	# Should you be a peer? 150 words to explain why By Oscar Bentley December 5th, 2024 05:54 PM --- Leaders of political parties must explain why they are nominating someone to the House of Lords, under new rules. The leaders will have to submit a 150 word summary justifying why they are putting a candidate forwards. The statement will be published online upon the successful appointment of a nominee. The change will come into effect immediately and forms part of a wider set of reforms the government is making to the Lords. Announcing the change, Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds told MPs that it was a "reform that this government are proud to announce as part of our wider agenda". It follows the introduction of legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit in the Lords, external. That legislation is already more than halfway through its parliamentary scrutiny, with Thomas-Symonds saying he wanted it to be law as soon as possible. "It just should not be the case, in a modern legislature, that there are places reserved for people by accident of birth," he said. Labour pledged in their manifesto to "reform the appointments process to ensure the quality of new appointments" to the House of Lords. The manifesto also said that because peers are appointed for life, the chamber had become too big. Party leaders can make appointments to top-up the number of peers they have, and when Parliament is dissolved because of a general election. Those nominated to become peers in July's dissolution honours included former prime minister Theresa May and former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett. Prime ministers also often make a set of resignation honours, or appoint people to become ministers. Sir Keir Starmer appointed a number of peers to become ministers on taking office, such as Attorney General Richard Hermer. Appointments are formally made by the King, on the advice of the prime minister. Appointments are overseen by the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC), who advise the prime minister on the appropriateness of candidates. The move follows criticism of appointments in recent years, particularly under Boris Johnson. HOLAC rejected over half of Johnson's resignation nominations on propriety grounds. Some of those nominations that were accepted also faced criticism, such as Charlotte Owen, a short-serving political adviser to Johnson who became the youngest peer at age 30. In October Johnson attacked critics of the appointment, saying Baroness Owen's treatment had been "absolutely shameful" and sexist.
Associated Press News	[ "Noticias" ]	# Fiscalía rumana allana domicilios relacionados con promoción ilegal de candidato ultraderechista By STEPHEN McGRATH December 7th, 2024 03:51 PM --- BUCAREST, Rumania (AP) — Fiscales rumanos realizaron el sábado allanamientos en domicilios vinculados a un hombre sospechoso de financiar ilegalmente una campaña para promover la candidatura presidencial de Calin Georgescu, un día después de que el máximo tribunal del país anulara las elecciones en las que el candidato de extrema derecha había ganado la primera ronda. Los allanamientos, efectuados en tres domicilios en la ciudad central de Brasov, fueron motivados por sospechas de corrupción de votantes, lavado de dinero y fraude cibernético, dijeron los fiscales, y se sospecha que los fondos provienen de actividades ilícitas. Los hechos se producen después de que el Tribunal Constitucional tomara el viernes la decisión sin precedentes de cancelar las elecciones presidenciales cuando, en una importante cantidad de informes de inteligencia desclasificados, se afirmara el miércoles que Rusia organizó una extensa campaña en plataformas como TikTok y Telegram para promover a Calin Georgescu. Un funcionario de la fiscalía, que habló bajo condición de anonimato porque el caso está en curso, dijo a The Associated Press que los allanamientos del sábado se realizaron en propiedades vinculadas a Bogdan Peschir. En los informes de inteligencia se afirma que Peschir es un elemento clave detrás de una campaña masiva en TikTok que promovió a Georgescu. Los servicios secretos afirmaron que Peschir pagó 381.000 dólares (361.000 euros) a usuarios de TikTok para promover contenido de Georgescu en la plataforma, de propiedad china. Las autoridades de inteligencia dijeron que la información obtenida "reveló una agresiva campaña de promoción" para aumentar y acelerar la popularidad de Georgescu. "El cargo es lavado de dinero vinculado con la financiación de Georgescu", dijo el funcionario. Añadió que Peschir será trasladado a Bucarest, la capital, para ser interrogado. No hay un vínculo claro entre Peschir y la supuesta interferencia rusa. Rusia niega haber intervenido en Rumania. En la decisión de anular la elección, publicada por el tribunal, se menciona el uso ilegal de tecnologías digitales, entre ellas, la inteligencia artificial, así como el uso de "fuentes de financiación no declaradas". Sin nombrar a Georgescu, el tribunal dijo que uno de los 13 candidatos en la primera ronda del 24 de noviembre había recibido "trato preferencial" en las redes sociales, lo que distorsionó el resultado de la votación. Georgescu también denunció el veredicto emitido el viernes por el tribunal como un "golpe de Estado oficializado" y un ataque a la democracia. A pesar de ser un elemento externo que declaró cero gastos de campaña, Georgescu surgió como el favorito el 24 de noviembre. Debía enfrentarse el domingo, en una segunda vuelta, a la reformista Elena Lasconi, del partido Unión Salvar Rumania. Trece candidatos compitieron en la primera ronda de la elección presidencial en este país, miembro de la Unión Europea y de la OTAN, que ha estado envuelto en numerosas controversias desde la primera vuelta. Se establecerán nuevas fechas para repetir la votación desde cero. En una declaración televisada el viernes, el presidente Klaus Iohannis dijo que estaba "profundamente preocupado" por el contenido de los informes de inteligencia, según los cuales la campaña de un candidato fue "apoyada ilegalmente desde fuera de Rumania" y era un asunto de seguridad nacional. "El mismo candidato declaró cero gastos de campaña, a pesar de llevar a cabo una campaña altamente sofisticada", afirmó. "Los informes de inteligencia revelaron que la campaña de este candidato fue apoyada por un estado extranjero con intereses contrarios a los de Rumania". Lasconi condenó enérgicamente la decisión del tribunal, diciendo que era "ilegal, inmoral y aplasta la esencia misma de la democracia" y que la segunda ronda debería haberse llevado a cabo. Después de que Georgescu encabezara las encuestas en la primera ronda, su éxito hizo que muchos observadores políticos se preguntaran por qué la mayoría de las encuestas locales lo habían colocado detrás de al menos cinco candidatos antes de la votación. Muchos observadores atribuyeron su éxito a su cuenta de TikTok, que ahora tiene 6 millones de "me gusta" y 541.000 seguidores. Pero algunos expertos sospecharon que el número de simpatizantes en línea de Georgescu había sido inflado artificialmente, mientras que el principal órgano de seguridad de Rumania afirmó que se le dio un trato preferencial en TikTok por encima de otros candidatos. El sábado, en un caso separado, los fiscales allanaron otras nueve propiedades en seis condados, en una investigación sobre grupos extremistas acusados de "promover la violencia o el odio contra individuos basados en su etnia, orientación sexual u opiniones políticas" en relación con las elecciones. Los fiscales dijeron que investigaban mensajes que incitaban a la violencia contra un candidato a la presidencia o sus seguidores, y la promoción de ideologías fascistas, racistas o xenófobas.
Wired	[ "uncanny valley podcast", "podcasts", "technology", "sam altman", "openai", "artificial intelligence" ]	# In Sam Altman We Trust? By Lauren Goode, Michael Calore, and Zoë Schiffer December 5th, 2024 08:00 AM --- This week on Uncanny Valley, we do a deep dive on Open AI's Sam Altman. Sam Altman is the king of generative artificial intelligence. But is he the person we should trust to guide our explorations into AI? This week, we do a deep dive on Sam Altman, from his Midwest roots to his early startup days, his time in venture capital, and his rise and fall and rise again at OpenAI. You can follow Michael Calore on Mastodon at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Threads and @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Threads @reporterzoe. Write to us at [email protected]. ## How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for "Uncanny Valley." We're on Spotify too. ## Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Sam Altman [archival audio]: We have been a misunderstood and badly mocked org for a long time. When we started and said we were going to work on a AGI, people thought we were batshit insane. Michael Calore: Sam Altman is the CEO and one of the founders of OpenAI, the generative AI company that launched ChatGPT about two years ago, and essentially ushered in a new era of artificial intelligence. This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. Today on the show, we're doing a deep dive on Sam Altman, from his Midwest roots to his early startup days, his time as a venture capitalist, and his rise and fall and rise again at OpenAI. We're going to look at it all while asking, is this the man we should trust to guide our explorations into artificial intelligence, and do we even have a choice? I'm Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture here at WIRED. Lauren Goode: I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED. Zoë Schiffer: I'm Zoe Schiffer, WIRED's director of business and industry. Michael Calore: OK. I want to start today by going back one year into the past, November 2023, to an event that we refer to as the blip. Lauren Goode: The blip. We don't just refer to it as the blip. That is actually the internal phrase that is used at OpenAI to describe some of the most chaotic three to four days in that company's history. [archival audio]: The company OpenAI, one of the top players in artificial intelligence, thrown into disarray. [archival audio]: One of the most spectacular corporate fall-outs. [archival audio]: The news on Wall Street today involves the stunning developments in the world of artificial intelligence. Zoë Schiffer: It really started on November 17th, this Friday afternoon when Sam Altman, the CEO of the company, gets what he says is the most surprising, shocking, and difficult news of his professional career. [archival audio]: The shock dismissal of former boss, Sam Altman. [archival audio]: His firing sent shock waves through Silicon Valley. Zoë Schiffer: The board at OpenAI, which at the time was a nonprofit, has lost confidence in him, it says. Despite the fact that the company is by all measures doing incredibly well, he's out. He's no longer going to lead the company. Michael Calore: He's effectively fired from the company that he cofounded. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. That immediately sets off a chain reaction of events. His cofounder and president of the company, Greg Brockman, resigns in solidarity. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that Sam Altman is actually going to join Microsoft and lead an advanced AI research team there. Then we see almost the entire employee base at OpenAI sign a letter saying, "Wait, wait, wait. If Sam leaves, we're leaving, too." [archival audio]: Some 500 of these 700-odd employees— [archival audio]: ... threatening to quit over the board's abrupt firing of OpenAI's popular CEO, Sam Altman. Zoë Schiffer: Eventually there's this back and forth tense negotiation between Sam Altman and the board of directors, and eventually the board then installs Mira Murati, the CTO, as the interim CEO. Then shortly after that, Sam is able to reach an agreement with the board and he returns as CEO and the board looks instantly different, with Brett Taylor and Larry Summers joining, Adam D'Angelo staying, and the rest of the board leaving. Michael Calore: All of this happened over a weekend in the first couple of days of the following week. It ruined a lot of our weekends as technology journalists. I'm sure it ruined a lot of weekends for everybody in the generative AI industry, but for a lot of people who don't follow this stuff, it was the first time that they heard of Sam Altman, first time maybe they heard about OpenAI. Why was this important? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. This was such an interesting moment, because it surprised me. Lauren, I'm curious if it surprised you that this story broke through on such a national scale. People went from not really knowing who Sam Altman was to being shocked and disturbed that he was fired from his own company. Lauren Goode: I think at this moment, everyone was hearing about generative AI and how it was going to change our lives. Sam was now officially the face of this, and it took this chaos, this Silicon Valley drama to bring that to the forefront, because then in trying to understand what was happening with the mutiny, you got a sense of there are these people in these different camps of AI. Some who believe in artificial general intelligence, that eventually it's going to totally take over our lives. Some who fall in the camp of accelerationists who believe that AI should just scale as quickly as possible, unfettered AI. Others who are a little bit more cautious in their approach and believe that there should be safety measures and guardrails put around AI. All of these things came into sharp focus through this one very long, chaotic weekend. Michael Calore: We're going to talk a lot about Sam on this episode, and I want to make sure that we get a sense of who he is as a person. How do we know him? How do we understand him as a person? What's his vibe? Zoë Schiffer: Well, I think Lauren might be the only one who's actually met him. Is that right? Lauren Goode: Yeah. I have met him a few times, and my first interaction with Sam goes back about a decade. He's around 29 years old, and he is the president of Y Combinator, which is this very well-known startup incubator here in Silicon Valley. The idea is that all these startups pitch their ideas and they get a very small amount of seed funding, but they also get a lot of coaching and mentorship. The person who's running YC is really this very glorified camp counselor for Silicon Valley, and that was Sam at the time. I remember talking to him briefly at one of their YC demo days in Mountain View. He exuded a lot of energy. He's clearly a smart guy. He comes across as friendly and open. People who know him really well will say he's really one of the most ambitious people who they know. But at first glance, you wouldn't necessarily think that he's the person, fast-forward 10 years later, meeting with prime ministers and heads of state around the world to talk to them about his grand vision of artificial intelligence, and someone who's really positioning himself to be this power monger in artificial intelligence. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think one of the interesting things about Sam is just that he seems like such an enigma. People have a really hard time, myself included, putting a finger on what is he all about. Should we trust this guy? I think there are other CEOs and executives in the Valley who have such brash personas, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, that you kind of instantly feel one way or another about them. You either really like them or you're really turned off by them, and Sam is somewhere in the middle. He seems a little more quiet, a little more thoughtful, a little more nerdy. But there's this sense of, like Lauren said, an appetite for power that makes you pause and think, "Wait. What is this guy all about? What's in it for him?" Lauren Goode: Right. He also wears a lot of Henley shirts. Now, I know this is not a fashion show. People who listen to our very first episode— Zoë Schiffer: But it's not not. Lauren Goode: ... might be like, "Are they just going to talk about hoodies every episode?" But he wears a lot of Henleys and jeans and nice sneakers, except for when he's meeting with heads of state, where he suits up appropriately. Zoë Schiffer: Sam, we have notes on the outfits if you want them, so call us. Michael Calore: Well, Zoe, to your point, Paul Graham, who was at one time the head of Y Combinator, the incubator that Lauren was just talking about, described Sam as extremely good at becoming powerful. It seems like he's somebody who can read the situation and read the room and figure out where to go next before other people can figure it out. A lot of people point to parallels between Sam Altman and Steve Jobs. I feel like Steve Jobs was somebody who had a vision for the future and was able to communicate why it was important, and he had a consumer product that got people very, very excited. Sam Altman is also somebody who has a vision for the future, is able to communicate why it's important to the rest of us, and has a product that everybody is excited about in ChatGPT. I think that's where the parallel ends. Lauren Goode: I think just the question of is Sam Altman the Steve Jobs of this era a really good one to ask? You're right in that they were both effectively the salespeople for products that other people made. They're in a sense marketers. Jobs marketed the smartphone, which literally changed the world. Sam has helped productize AI, this new form of generative AI through ChatGPT. That's a similarity. They're both or were both extremely ambitious, enigmatic, as Zoe said, reportedly impatient. They have some employees who would follow them to the end of the earth and others who have gone running scared. They've both been ousted from companies they were running and then returned. Although Sam's absence was infinitely shorter than Steve Jobs' return to Apple. I think there are some key differences though. One is that we have the benefit of hindsight with Jobs. We know what he accomplished, and we have yet to see if Altman is really going to be a defining character of AI for the next 10 or 20 or 30 years. The second thing is that while Jobs had some very real personality quirks and complexes by all accounts, I tend to see him as being put into this messianic position by his acolytes. Whereas Sam seems to really, really want to elevate himself to that position, and there are some people who are still really skeptical about that. Zoë Schiffer: That's really interesting. Just to double-click, as the tech people say, on the salesperson analogy, that can sound a little reductive as well, but I actually think it's a really important point, because large language models have existed. AI has existed to some extent. But if people, regular users don't know how to use those products or interact with them, do they really break out and change the world in the way that people like Sam Wollman think they will? I would say no. His role in launching ChatGPT, which is I think by all accounts not an incredibly useful tool, but points to future uses of AI and what they could be and how it could interact with people's everyday lives. That is a really important change and an important impact that he's had. Michael Calore: Yeah. Lauren touched on this point, too. We don't know what the impact is going to be. We don't have the benefit of hindsight here, and we don't know whether these promises about how artificial intelligence is going to transform all of our lives, how those are going to play out. There are a lot of people who are very skeptical about AI, particularly artists and creative people, but also people who work in surveillance and security and the military have a fear and a healthy skepticism around AI. We're looking at this figurehead as the person who's going to lead us into the future where this becomes the defining technology of that future, so the question becomes, can we trust this person? Lauren Goode: I feel like Sam's feedback to that would be, "No. You shouldn't trust me, and you shouldn't have to." He has said in interviews before that he's trying to set up the company where he doesn't have quite as much power. He doesn't have total control in that way. He has definitely hinted that he thinks a lot of the decisions governing AI should be democratic. I think it's just again, this question of do we trust those statements or do we trust more what he's doing, which is consolidating power and leading a for-profit company, what used to be a nonprofit. Michael Calore: Yeah. We should underscore that, that he's always encouraging healthy debate. He encourages open dialog about what the limits of AI should be, but that still doesn't seem to be satisfying the people who are skeptical of it. Lauren Goode: Yeah. I think it's also important to make the distinction between people being skeptical of it and people who are fearful of it, too. There are people who are skeptical about the tech itself. There are people who are skeptical that Sam Altman may be the figurehead that we need here. Then there's fear of the tech from some people who actually do believe in its potential to revolutionize the world, and the fear is that that may not happen necessarily in a good way. Maybe someone will use AI for bio-terrorism. Maybe someone uses AI to launch nukes. Maybe the AI itself becomes so all-knowing and powerful that it somehow becomes violent against humans. Those are some real fears that research scientists and policymakers have. The questions about Sam's trustworthiness aren't only from, let's call it a capital perspective. What's going on in terms of is OpenAI a nonprofit or a for-profit, or can we trust this man with billions of dollars in funding? It's literally can we trust him in a sense with our lives? Zoë Schiffer: Right. It's the degree to which we should be worried about Sam Altman is the degree to which you personally believe that artificial general intelligence is a real concern or that AI could significantly change the world in a way that could be potentially quite catastrophic. Lauren Goode: Altman was quoted in a New York magazine profile about him as saying AI is not a clean story of only benefits. Stuff is going to be lost here as it develops. It's super relatable and natural for people to have loss aversion. They don't want to hear stories in which they're the casualty. Michael Calore: We have a self-appointed figurehead whether we like it or not, and we have to make decisions about whether or not this is somebody we can trust. But before we get there, we should talk about how Sam got to where he is today. What do we know about Sam Altman the man, before he was Sam Altman the tech founder? Lauren Goode: Well, he's the oldest of four children. He comes from this Midwestern Jewish family. He grew up in St. Louis. His family, by all accounts, he had a pretty good childhood, I believe. They hung out together. They played games. I think his brother has said that Sam always needed to win those games. In high school, he comes out as gay, which was pretty unusual at the time. He said that his high school was actually quite intolerant toward gay people. At one point he gets up on stage at his school, according to this New York Magazine profile, and gives a speech about the importance of having an open society. My takeaway from that was that he was willing from an early age to be different from other people and to reject the dominant ideology. There was also this really funny section in the profile where they said that he was a boy genius, and at age 3 was fixing the family's VCR. As the mom of a 3-year-old, I was like, what the fuck? Michael Calore: I was resetting the clock on the family VCR by 11, and I just want to say that I'm also a boy genius. Lauren Goode: It's funny with profiles of some of these founders, because I do feel like there's this hagiographic tendency to be like, "Of course, they were a child genius, too." No one is ever just mid in childhood and then ends up being a billionaire. There's always something special. Michael Calore: Right. Well, there was something special about Sam, that's for sure. Lauren Goode: Yeah. He starts at Stanford in 2003. This is the time period when other young, ambitious people are starting companies like Facebook and LinkedIn. I think if you were smart and ambitious like Sam clearly was, you weren't going to go into the traditional law, doctor type fields. You were going to try and start a company, which is what he does. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. He starts this company called Looped. He's a sophomore at Stanford. He teams up with his then boyfriend, and they create what's basically like an early Foursquare. This is when Sam gets involved with Y Combinator for the first time. He and his cofounder receive a $6,000 investment. They're accepted into a summer founders program at Y Combinator, and this is where they get to spend a few months incubating their app with mentorship. They're with a bunch of other nerds. There's this great detail about how Sam worked so much during that time period that he got scurvy. Lauren Goode: Oh, my God. That also feels like mythologizing. Zoë Schiffer: It really does. Fast-forward a few years, it's 2012. Looped has raised about $30 million in venture capital, and the company announces that it's going to be acquired by another company for around $43 million. This sounds like a lot of money to people who don't start apps and sell their companies, but by Silicon Valley standards, this is not really deemed a success. Sam is comfortable. He's able to travel the world a bit, find himself, think about what he wants to do next, but there's still a lot of ambition there, and we're still yet to see the real Sam Altman. Lauren Goode: Does money seem like it's a motivating force for him, or what is he after during this time period? Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. That's a really good question, and this I think is maybe emblematic of his personality, because he doesn't just stop there. He's still ruminating on a lot of things. He's still thinking a lot about technology. Then in 2014, he was tapped by Paul Graham to be president of Y Combinator, so he's immersed himself in a bunch of other technologists with all these new ideas. Around 2015, as he's thinking about all this stuff, that's really when we have the seeds of OpenAI. Michael Calore: Let's talk about Open AI. Who are the cofounders? What do the early days of the company look like, and what is its mission when it takes off? Lauren Goode: Originally, open AI is founded as this group of researchers who are coming together to explore artificial general intelligence. A group of cofounders, including Sam and Elon Musk, set up OpenAI as a nonprofit. They don't really have a conception of having a commercial component to it or a consumer-facing app involved. It really does feel like a research org at this point, but Elon Musk in classic Elon Musk form wants to wrest more control away from the other cofounders. He tries to take it over repeatedly and floats the idea that Tesla could acquire OpenAI, and the rest of his founders reject this idea allegedly, and so ultimately Musk walks away and Sam Altman gets control of the company. Michael Calore: I think it's important to also make the distinction that there were a lot of companies working on artificial intelligence at this time, about eight or nine years ago, and OpenAI saw themselves as the good guys in the group. Lauren Goode: That's the open. Michael Calore: Yeah. Basically, if you're building artificial intelligence tools, they may be harnessed by military. They may be harnessed by bad actors. They may get to the point where they become dangerous, like some of the dangers that Lauren was talking about earlier, and they saw themselves as the people who are going to do it the right way. People are going to do it so that AI can benefit society and not harm society. They wanted to make their tools available for free to as many people as possible, and they really wanted to make sure that this wasn't just a closed box that ended up just making a few people a bunch of money while everybody else sat on the outside. Lauren Goode: That was how they conceived of being good. It was the democratization factor more than the trust and safety factor. Is that fair? Were they sitting around being like, "We're really going to study the harms, all of the potential misuses?" Or was it more like, "We're going to put this in people's hands and see what they do with it?" Zoë Schiffer: That's a good question. I think they saw themselves as "value aligned." Michael Calore: Yes. That's a term that they all use. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. In 2012, there was something called AlexNet that was this convolutional neural network. It was able to identify and classify images in a way that hadn't been done before by AI. It blew people's minds. You can hear Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talk about how that convinced him to change the company's direction towards AI, so a big moment. Then in 2017, there were some Google researchers that worked on this paper. It's known as the attention paper now that basically defined the modern day transformers that make up the T in ChatGPT. You're right, Mike, there were these groups and companies that were hopping on the train, and OpenAI from the beginning was like, "We definitely want to be on that train, but we think that we're more value-aligned than the others." Michael Calore: Something that they realized very quickly is that if you're building artificial intelligence models, you need massive amounts of computing power, and they did not have the money to buy that power. That created a shift. Lauren Goode: They turned to daddy Microsoft. Zoë Schiffer: Well, they try and raise as a nonprofit, and Sam says it's just not successful, and so they're forced to take on a different model, and the nonprofit starts to morph into this other thing that has a for-profit subsidiary. OpenAI starts to look weird and Frankenstein even in its early years. Lauren Goode: Yeah. By the early 2020s, Sam had left Y Combinator. OpenAI was his full-time thing. They had created this for-profit arm, and then that enabled them to go to Microsoft, daddy Warbucks, and raise, I think, a billion dollars to start. Michael Calore: Then what is Sam's own journey during this time? Is he investing? Is he just running this company? Lauren Goode: He's meditating. Michael Calore: He's very into meditation. Lauren Goode: Just meditating. Zoë Schiffer: In classic founder, venture capitalist kind of fashion, he's investing in a bunch of different companies. He's poured $375 million into Helion Energy, which is a speculative nuclear fusion company. He's put $180 million into Retro Biosciences, which is looking at longevity and how people can live longer. He's raised $115 million for WorldCoin, which Lauren, you went to another events recently, right? Lauren Goode: Yeah. WorldCoin is a pretty fascinating company, and I think in some ways is also emblematic of Sam's approach, ambition, personality, because what they're creating is, well, there's an app, but there's also an orb. A physical orb like a ball that you're supposed to gaze into, and it captures your irises, and then it transforms that into an identity token that puts it on the blockchain. The idea that Sam has expressed is that, "Look, in the not-so-distant future, there's going to be so much fakeness out there in the world because of AI, and people are going to be really easily able to spoof your identity thanks to the AI I'm building. Therefore, I have a solution for you." His solution is this WorldCoin, now just called World product. Here's the man who is accelerating the development of AI and saying, "Here are the potential perils, but also I have the solution, folks." Zoë Schiffer: I'm pro anything that lets me not remember my many, many passwords, so you can scan my iris, Sam. Lauren Goode: What else was he investing in? Zoë Schiffer: During this period, he's also getting rich. He's buying fancy cars. He's racing those fancy cars. He gets married. He says he wants to have kids soon. He purchases a $27 million house in San Francisco, and then he's pouring a ton of energy into OpenAI and specifically launching ChatGPT, which is going to be the commercial face of what was previously a nonprofit. Lauren Goode: Yeah. That's really a watershed moment. It's the end of 2022, and all of a sudden people have a user interface. It's not just some LLM that people don't fully understand or comprehend that's working behind the scenes. It's something that they can go to on their laptop or on their phone and type in and then have this search experience that feels very conversational and different from the search experience that we've known and understood for the past 20 years. Sam is the face of this. The product events that OpenAI starts hosting intermittently start to feel a little bit like Apple events in the way that people, us, tech journalists are covering it. Then the next year in 2023, before the blip, Sam goes on this world tour. He's meeting with prime ministers and heads of state, and what he's doing is he's calling for a very specific kind of regulatory agency for AI. He has decided that if AI continues to grow in its influence and power, that it's going to be regulated at some point potentially, and that he wants to be a part of that conversation. Not just a part of that conversation. He wants to have control over what that framework looks like. Zoë Schiffer: Right. You pointed to this earlier, but there is this ongoing debate about artificial general intelligence and the idea that AI will become sentient at some point and maybe even escape the box and turn against us humans. Sam recently said that this isn't actually his top concern, which I think is a little concerning. But he said something smart, I thought, which was that there's a lot of harm that can be done without reaching AGI, like misinformation and political misuses of AI. They don't really need artificial intelligence to be that intelligent in order to be very, very destructive Michael Calore: Yeah. Job loss. We should also mention AI's impact on labor, because a lot of companies are eager to cut costs and they buy into an AI system that automates some of the work they used to rely on humans to do. Those humans lose their jobs. The company realizes that maybe the AI tool that they're relying on is not as good as the humans. Maybe it actually does the job better. Zoë Schiffer: We're already seeing somewhat. I feel like Duolingo laid off a bunch of their translators and is investing a lot of money in AI right now. Lauren Goode: That's a real bummer, because I thought my next career would be a Duolingo translator. Zoë Schiffer: It's a bummer, because I'm looking at the Duolingo owl right behind your head, so we know you're in bed with Duolingo. Lauren Goode: There really is one in the studio here. Duolingo sent me some owl heads. I just love Duolingo. Michael Calore: You know who loves Duolingo? Lauren Goode: Who? Who? That was an owl joke, folks. This podcast is over. Oh, I love it so much. Back to Sam Altman. You're correct, Zoe. One of the most interesting parts about Sam going around the world talking to politicians and heads of state about how to regulate AI is that there's this assumption that it is just one overarching solution for how to regulate it as opposed to seeing what comes up and the different needs we have in different spaces for how the technology is actually going to work. Zoë Schiffer: That's one criticism he's gotten from people like Mark Andreessen who say he's going for regulatory capture. They're very suspect of his efforts to be part of the regulatory push of AI, because obviously he's invested in seeing that regulation look a certain way. One other thing that he says, which I think is quite interesting and a bit self-serving, is that some of the things that look like they're separate, or as tech people like to say, orthogonal to AI safety are actually really closely related to AI safety. When we look at human reinforcement of models, so the idea that you get two different responses to your prompt and you as a human vote on which one was more helpful. That can make the model a lot smarter, a lot faster, but it also can make the model more aligned to our societal values in theory. Michael Calore: That pretty much brings us back to the scene that we outlined at the beginning, the blip when Sam was fired, and then four or five days later got his job back. Well, now that Sam Altman has been back at the helm of OpenAI for about a year, it has been an eventful year, and part of that is because all eyes are on the company. We're paying extra close attention to everything that we're doing, but it's also due to the fact that this company is making a massively impactful piece of technology that touches so many different things in our world. Let's very quickly go through what the last year has been like with Sam back at the driver's seat. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It's not even, I would say just that all eyes are on the company and that they're building these massively impactful products. It's also that OpenAI is a messy company. Its executives are constantly leaving. They're constantly starting other companies that are even more overtly safety conscious supposedly than OpenAI. Lauren Goode: They have these really funny names, the people who leave. They're like, "I'm starting a new startup. It's brand new. It's called the anti-OpenAI safety alignment measures OpenAI never took company." Zoë Schiffer: The super, super, super, super safe non-OpenAI safety company. Just to start with some of the copyright claims, one of the major points of contention with what Sam is building and what AI companies are building is that in order to train a large language model, you need a shit ton of data. A lot of these companies are allegedly scraping that data from the open web. They're taking artists' work without their permission. They're scraping YouTube in what might be an illegal fashion. They're using all of that to train their models, and they're often not crediting the sources. When ChatGPT 4.0 comes out, it has a voice that sounds remarkably like Scarlett Johansson's voice in the movie Heart. Scarlett Johansson gets really upset about this, and she almost sues the company. She says that Sam Altman came to her directly and asked her to participate in this project to record her voice and be the voice of Sky, which is the voice of ChatGPT 4.0, and she said no. She thought about it and then she didn't feel comfortable doing it. She felt like the company had gone ahead and used her voice without permission. It comes out that that wasn't actually the case. It seems like they just hired an actor that sounded remarkably like her, but again, messy. Messy, messy, messy. Michael Calore: All right. Let's take another break and we'll come right back. Welcome back. On one side, we have all the mess. We have the FTC looking into violations of consumer protection laws. We have lawsuits and deals being signed between media companies and other people who publish copyrighted work. Lauren Goode: Is this where we do the disclaimer? Michael Calore: Oh, yes. Including Conde Nast. Lauren Goode: Including Conde Nast, our parent company. Michael Calore: Our parent company has signed a deal with OpenAI, a licensing deal so that our published work can be used to train its models. There are safety and culture concerns. There's the fact that they're being fast and loose with celebrity impressions. Then on the other side, we have a company that is making a big important technology that many in the industry are throwing tons of money and tons of deals behind in order to prop it up and make sure that it accelerates as quickly as possible. We're in this position as users where we have to ask ourselves, do we trust this company? Do we trust Sam Altman to have our best future in mind when they're rolling this stuff out into the world? Lauren Goode: Knowing fair well that this very podcast is going to be used to train some future voice bot in OpenAI. Michael Calore: It'll sound like all three of us mixed together. Lauren Goode: Sorry about the vocal fry. Zoë Schiffer: I would listen to that. Lauren Goode: Right now, there's this equation that is being made as we use not just ChatGPT, not just going to ChatGPT and typing in a query and training the model that way. Just our data being on the internet is being used to train these models in many instances without anyone's consent, and it just feels like this moment. It requires so much intellectual or existential gymnastics of living a life online right now to think about whether what you're getting from this tech is actually as great as what you have to put into it, what you are putting into it. I personally have not gotten a lot of benefit from using apps like ChatGPT or Gemini or others. That could change. It could absolutely change. There are a lot of instances of AI that I use in my day-to-day life right now, embedded in my email application and my phone and all this stuff that actually are really great, have absolutely benefited me. These new models of generative AI tools, it's still a giant TBD, and yet I know that I've already given more to these machines. Is Sam Altman the singular person who I look to and I'm like, "I trust this guy with that, with figuring out that equation for me?" No. Michael Calore: No. What about you, Zoe? Zoë Schiffer: I would say no, I don't think he's proven himself to be particularly trustworthy. If the people who work closely with him are leaving and starting their own things that they say will be more trustworthy, then I think that speaks to something we should be somewhat concerned about. At the same time, I don't know if there's any single person that I would trust with this. It's a lot of power and a lot of responsibility to have in one fallible human being. Lauren Goode: Yet I definitely have met and reported on tech entrepreneurs who I think have a pretty straight moral compass, who are being very thoughtful about what they build, who have been thoughtful about what they build. I'm not saying that it's like, "Oh, tech bro bad." He's definitely not the guy. He may emerge as that person, but at this moment right now, no. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I will say that he does seem very thoughtful. He doesn't seem like an Elon Musk in the way that he's just making impulsive decisions. He seems to really think through things and take the power and responsibility that he has pretty seriously. Lauren Goode: He did manage to raise $6.6 billion from investors just a month or so ago, so there are clearly a lot of people in the industry who do have a certain level of faith in him. It doesn't mean they have faith that he's going to handle all this data in the best way possible, but it certainly means they have faith that he's going to make a lot of money through ChatGPT. Zoë Schiffer: Or they're just really concerned about missing out. Lauren Goode: They have a lot of FOMO. They're looking at the subscription numbers for ChatGPT, but they're also seeing a lot of potential for growth in the enterprise business, the way that ChatGPT will license its API or work with other businesses so that those businesses can create all these different plugins in their day-to-day applications and make their workers more productive and stuff. There's a lot of potential there, and I think that's what investors are looking at right now. Michael Calore: This is normally the point in the podcast where, as the third person in the room, I provide a balanced perspective by taking a different tack than the two of you. But I'm going to throw that out the window because I also do not think that we should be trusting Sam Altman or OpenAI with open arms. Now, there are things that the company is doing that I think are very good, like the idea of a productivity tool or a suite of productivity tools that can help people do their jobs better. It can help you study. It can help you understand complex concepts. It can help you shop for things online. Those are all interesting. I'm particularly very curious to see what they do with search when their search tool becomes more mature, and we can really see whether or not it's a challenge to this paradigm for search that has existed for almost 20 years at this point. Capital G. Google. Beyond that, I don't think that their tools are going to have an impact on society that is going to be a net positive. I think there is going to be enough strife in the job loss and in the theft of copyrighted work and in energy use and water use that are required to run all these complex models on the cloud computing data centers. Then of course, misinformation and deep fakes, which now are pretty easy to spot and are getting harder to spot, and within a couple of years will become indistinguishable from actual footage and actual news. I feel like as human beings on the internet, we are going to bear the brunt of these bad things that are coming. To your point, Lauren, as journalists, we are going to be collateral damage in this race to see who can create the model that does our jobs for us the best, and OpenAI is the leader there. This pursuit of profit without really looking at those problems head on sounds dangerous to me. We talked about earlier in the episode, Sam Altman has said that he encourages open debate and he encourages us as a society to decide what the boundaries of this technology should be. But I think that we're moving way too quickly and the debate is happening way too slowly. That feels like an avoidant stance to say, "Oh, don't worry. We're going to figure it out as a collective." While at the same time you're pressing on the accelerator pedal as hard as you can to go as fast as possible and spend as much money as possible. Those things feel out of sync. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. He speaks very generally when he talks about how everyone should have a voice in these decisions regarding how AI is built and how it's governed. One thing when you mentioned job loss that it made me think of, and we've mentioned this on a previous podcast episode, is that Sam Altman is involved in universal basic income experiments. The idea that you give people a fixed amount of money every month, and hopefully that mitigates any job loss that's involved in your other projects. Lauren Goode: I think that we're in this moment generally, technology and society, where we may be forced to let go of some of the institutions that we've relied on for the past few decades. Technologists are often the first people to jump on that and say, "We have a better idea. We have a better solution. We have a better idea for government. We have a better idea for how people should get paid and make money. We have a better idea for how you should be doing your work and what can make you more productive. We have all these ideas." They're not always bad ideas, and at some point we do have to let go. Change happens. It's inevitable. What is it? It's not death and taxes. It's change and taxes. That's the inevitable. Also, death. Zoë Schiffer: Lauren is part of the DOGE commission and she's coming for your institution. Lauren Goode: Yes. But then you have to also identify the right people to affect that change. That is, I think, the question that we're asking. We're not asking are these bad ideas? We're asking who is Sam Altman? Is this the person who should be steering this change, and if not him, then who? Zoë Schiffer: But Lauren, just to push back on that, he is the person. At a certain point, we're living in a fantasy if we three tech journalists are just sitting here talking about, should it be Sam? Should it not be? Well, he's doing it and it doesn't look like he's going away anytime soon, because the board was not in a real sense able to push him out despite the fact that it legally had that right. He's still CEO. Lauren Goode: Yeah. He's entrenched at this point, and the company is entrenched simply just based on how much money is invested in them. There are a lot of stakeholders who absolutely are going to make sure that this company succeeds, no doubt. But also, if we're at the early-ish phase of generative AI in the way that other transformative technologies have had their early-ish stages, and then sometimes there are other people in companies that emerge that actually end up doing more. Michael Calore: What we're hoping for is corrective forces. Lauren Goode: Maybe. We'll see. Zoë Schiffer: Okay. I stand corrected then. I feel like maybe it is worth having this discussion on who should lead it. We're early days still, I feel like. I lose sight of that sometimes. Lauren Goode: That's okay. You may be right. Zoë Schiffer: Because it feels like he's the dominant player. Michael Calore: That's the best part about reporting on technology is that we're always in the early days of something, Lauren Goode: I suppose so. Michael Calore: All right. Well, that feels like as good of a place as any to end it. We've solved it. We should not trust Sam Altman, but we should trust the AI industry to self-correct. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think of this quote that Sam wrote on his blog many, many years ago, and he said, "A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time, and most people don't even try. They just accept the way things as they are." I feel like that says a lot about him. It also makes me think, Lauren, to your point, that I've accepted, well, Sam Altman is just in charge, and that's just the reality. Well, maybe the world needs to bend things a little to our will in a democratic fashion, not let him just lead the new future. Lauren Goode: Never succumb to inevitability. Michael Calore: Now, that really is a good place to end it. That's our show for today. We'll be back next week with an episode about whether or not it's time to get off social media. Thanks for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to get in touch with any of us to ask questions, leave comments, give us some show suggestions, you can write to us at [email protected]. Today's show is produced by Kyana Moghadam. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon.
The New Yorker	[]	# Songs to Get Through the Winter Holidays By Amanda Petrusich December 5th, 2024 06:00 PM --- In today's newsletter, a playlist for the season. Plus: Amanda PetrusichStaff writer The winter holidays can be joyous, exuberant, warming. But if the season's relentless jubilance has left you a little raw and crabby, if you are overdue for a good sob-and-wallow, if you are jonesing for a long walk in the spindly cold, if you are feeling newly devastated and oppressed by what Emily Dickinson once called the "certain Slant of light" that hits on winter afternoons, allow me to offer a short playlist of songs that forego the mandatory cheer in favor of a darker, moodier vibe. In my opinion, December is a terrific time to turn up the collar of your wool coat and cultivate an air of gloomy complexity. Enjoy! Plus: Read Amanda Petrusich on the Best Albums of 2024 » Emily and her family faced grave danger in their native Venezuela. Her husband, a policeman who had become a target of the government, had fled the country for the United States, forcing Emily and her two children to go into hiding. For them, a Biden Administration immigration policy built around a legal principle known as "humanitarian parole" was a transformative chance at a safer new life. The program—which allows certain migrants who have a U.S.-based supporter and who have passed government vetting to live and work legally in the country for up to two years—brought the family back together. As Emily tells Jonathan Blitzer, "Humanitarian parole was complete salvation. Salvation from politics. Salvation from repression. Salvation from a family situation that was terrifying." They have been afforded legal status for now, but Emily and others like her may face the most immediate danger under the unsettled deportation policies of the incoming Administration, Blitzer reports. What might happen next, and why hasn't the current Administration done anything to intervene while it still can? Read the story » P.S. Richard Penniman, known by his stage name Little Richard, was born on this day in 1932. Writing about what the trailblazing, incomparable rock-and-roll singer was denied, and what he deserved and demanded for himself, Hanif Abdurraqib notes, "To remind people of all you're capable of, and all you've done, may not stop you from being erased, but it might at least hang some shame around the necks of those doing the erasing." 🔊 Ian Crouch contributed to this edition.
Associated Press News	[ "Michael Bloomberg", "New York City", "Kidnapping", "Colorado", "Cheyenne", "Legal proceedings", "New York City Wire", "Thomas Fleener", "Joseph Beecher", "Alan Johnson" ]	# Colorado man gets 22 years in prison for kidnapping a woman from Michael Bloomberg's ranch By ASSOCIATED PRESS December 6th, 2024 07:48 PM --- CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A judge sentenced a man to 22 years in federal prison for kidnapping a woman from Michael Bloomberg's Colorado ranch during what prosecutors said was a failed attempt to kill the media mogul. Joseph Lee Beecher, 51, had faced up to life in prison after his August conviction by a jury on kidnapping, carjacking and firearm charges. He was sentenced on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson in Cheyenne and ordered to pay $5,306 restitution, according to court records. The kidnapped woman, a housekeeper at Bloomberg's western Colorado ranch, was rescued unharmed on the morning after the kidnapping. Authorities found her and Beecher in a motel room in Cheyenne, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) northeast of the Bloomberg property. Beecher represented himself during his three day trial. He was returned to custody following the sentencing hearing and could not be reached immediately for comment. He was being held Friday at the Scotts Bluff County jail in Gering, Nebraska. The kidnapping happened in February 2022, after Beecher was dismissed from his job as a hotel handyman in Craig, Colorado. Beecher broke into his employer's home, stole two rifles including an AR-15 and went looking for Bloomberg, according to officials. Beecher's motivation for seeking Bloomberg was unclear but prosecutors said he was "intent" on killing the billionaire. Later that day the defendant rammed his pickup truck through the gate of the former New York City mayor's ranch about 70 miles (113 kilometers) from Craig, according to court documents. But Bloomberg, who bought the ranch in 2020 for $44.8 million, was not there. The housekeeper, who didn't know Beecher, was abducted at gunpoint and they drove in her husband's truck first to the Denver area and then to Cheyenne. Investigators traced the woman's iPad to a motel where they saw the pickup truck. A SWAT team raided it, freeing the woman and arresting Beecher. After Beecher said he wanted to represent himself in the case, the court appointed Laramie attorney Thomas Fleener as the defendant's standby counsel for the trial. Fleener declined comment on the sentence.
Wired	[ "volcanoes", "aviation", "iceland", "travel", "tips" ]	# I Flew Over an Erupting Icelandic Volcano in a Helicopter. Maybe You Can, Too By Jaclyn Greenberg December 5th, 2024 07:30 AM --- Volcanic eruptions are common in Iceland. Some helicopter tours allow visitors a close-up glimpse at the oozing magma. My first day in Iceland this past August was clear and sunny, a vacationer's dream. And it turned out to be a great day to squeeze in a sightseeing activity I hadn't initially signed up to do: fly over the Reykjanes peninsula in a helicopter to get a top-down view of an active volcanic eruption, specifically Sundhnúksgígar. Ryan Connolly from Hidden Iceland, a tour company who helped me organize my trip, suggested the last-minute helicopter ride because a volcano on the southwestern edge of the island had recently become active. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, I paid for the helicopter tour from my phone at 1 pm after having arrived in Iceland that morning at 6:15. After a brief nap at the hotel, I drove two hours to the meeting point, which is located 10 minutes from the city of Reykjavík, for a 7 pm flight that evening. The helicopter seated six people total, including the pilot, with little wiggle room. Based on the heights and weights of me and my fellow passengers, I was strategically placed in the back-right of the helicopter. The cabin had glass windows from the roof to the floor so we could take in the full view of the landscape. We all put on headsets fitted with microphones, the only way we could communicate with one another over the noise of the helicopter's thudding blades. Within minutes of take-off, the pilot described the sights below, which at first included the city but soon became a vast, vacant, black land. As the helicopter dipped to the right, the erupting volcano came into full view with magma rising and sparking red and orange, a stark contrast to the black earth. We could see the magma ooze down the side, becoming thinner and more subdued as it moved farther down from the slope. The pilot circled the volcano a few times so passengers on the left and right each got a good look before flying to a nearby dormant volcano and explaining its history. ## Safety Regulations Jón Grétar Sigurðsson, owner of Atlantsflug, the helicopter touring company I used, explains that planning for these flights has become standard since the eruptions have become more common. "We fly in accordance with aviation regulations. Usually when an eruption starts, the area is closed for everybody. But now the Icelandic government has set up certain flight routes we follow and certain procedures, [including] distances of how close we can come and what altitude we have to stay at." When I arrived that evening, the flight before me had been delayed. So, I waited in the office with the other guests where we chatted, had coffee, and watched a live feed of the volcano. Overall, there are two main reasons why a flight may be delayed or canceled. "Sometimes the area is closed to all operations because the government is doing some measurements," says Sigurðsson. "Something that can happen without much notice. The weather can also be a factor, especially in the wintertime. If there is a delay on the first one or two flights, we have usually picked it up on the third flight to get on contract again." ## How They Monitor Volcanic Activity According to Sigurðsson, the government in Iceland is tuned into the volcanic activity and is monitoring it constantly. "It's like a patient in constant care at the hospital," he says. "I would say they're measuring very extensively and watch the lifting of the ground in millimeters. On the graph, we see when the eruption started and then the ground sinks down again. While the eruption is ongoing, and starts to climb up again, we know magma is collecting in the same chamber. I was showing the pilot this morning that there's a definite increase in the uplifting of the area, and it's a duplicate of what happened last time." Volcanic eruptions are a regular occurrence in Iceland and something Sigurðsson says they can expect for the next 30 to 100 years. My helicopter ride on that August night lasted about 40 minutes, with the six of us circling the volcano from the left side to the right and back again. Smoke was billowing out but headed in the opposite direction of our flight pattern, giving us a clear view of the volcano. As the pilot flew us to the airport, I could see the ground become more populated again before we descended toward the earth. A smooth landing got me on the ground, and I headed to my hotel that night glad to have been in the right place at the right time. Note: Since this article was written there has been another eruption in a similar location. According to Connolly of Hidden Iceland, it is still "business as usual for international flights, main roads, local infrastructure, and travel to anywhere other than the eruption site, which includes Grindavík and the Blue Lagoon." At the moment, the only safe way to see the volcano is by helicopter.
Wired	[ "wired politics lab", "politics", "donald trump", "tiktok", "elections" ]	# The Future of TikTok Is Being Decided This Week By Makena Kelly December 5th, 2024 07:00 AM --- Depending on what a federal appeals court decides, TikTok's fate might be left in the hands of president-elect Donald Trump. Republicans and Democrats sank ungodly amounts of money into creating content for TikTok this election year, but there's a chance the app might not be around in the US come next cycle. Or even president-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in January. Quickly, a refresher: President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in April, creating the state of affairs we find ourselves in today. The law put in place a system that would ban TikTok if the app's parent company, Bytedance, didn't sell to a US-based owner by January 19, 2025. Once that deadline rolls around, the president can decide to extend it an additional 90 days. We're supposed to find out by tomorrow if a federal appeals court will uphold the law requiring Bytedance to sell off its stake. Soon, we'll know whether the court will strike down the ban bill or if TikTok's fate is left in the Trump administration's hands. Right now, two things stand in the way of this ban going into effect. First, the deadline. And second, a lawsuit. Shortly after the bill became law, TikTok sued the US government for violating the free speech protections of the company and its users by, effectively, banning the app. That's the decision we're waiting on this week. It's not your average politics newsletter. Makena Kelly and the WIRED Politics team help you make sense of how the internet is shaping our political reality. There are a few different outcomes that could play out. The court could agree with TikTok's arguments and strike down the law on First Amendment grounds. If that were to happen, TikTok would be safe unless the Justice Department decides to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court or the full DC circuit. Even if the feds appealed, it could take months or years before the justices take up the case, leaving us in an even lengthier limbo. The court could also uphold the law, setting TikTok up for an outright ban. But if the court sides with the Justice Department, the incoming Trump administration may still find a way to keep the app around. In September, Trump posted to Truth Social, saying "FOR ALL OF THOSE THAT WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!" (caps his, not mine). "I'm a big star on TikTok," he said in the attached video. It was an odd statement coming from the man who was the first president who tried to ban the app. But according to The Washington Post, the Trump administration now plans to find a way to halt any ban of TikTok once the president-elect takes office, though it hasn't announced any official plans. Trump warmed up to TikTok over the course of the election year, promising to protect the beloved app. One of the TikTok's biggest investors, billionaire Jeff Yass, was also one of Trump's biggest donors. He also used it to his advantage: Over the summer, Trump joined TikTok and racked up millions of followers and collabs with popular streamers that played a huge role in his campaign's appeal to young voters. His many podcast appearances with people like Joe Rogan, the Nelk Boys, and Andrew Schultz were also clipped and shared in bite-size pieces throughout the app. More than 170 million Americans use TikTok, according to the most recent numbers shared by the company. Only 32 percent of Americans support a TikTok ban, according to a recent Pew survey. When a similar study was conducted in May 2023, 50 percent of Americans supported it. Trump's inauguration is scheduled for January 20, the day after the deadline to give TikTok more time to find a buyer. I'd bet that Biden would decide to extend it, making TikTok's future Trump's problem, but the current president hasn't given any signals on what he could do. The White House did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED. While Trump may have won TikTok this cycle, Democrats don't see the app as a lost cause. In fact, the Democratic strategists I've spoken to have argued that a presence on the app is more necessary than ever. "I'm against the ban. Not only will it hurt us with younger voters, it will eliminate a channel where Democrats can compete to get their message out," says Ryan Davis, cofounder and chief operating officer at People First, a political influencer and relational marketing firm that partnered with the Biden and Harris campaigns. "Trump may have won TikTok in 2024, but it's a channel Democrats demographically should be highly competitive on." I genuinely have no idea whether TikTok will come out on top this week. When oral arguments were presented in September, the judges didn't sound too sold on the idea that the law was, well, unlawful. More likely than not, we'll still be stuck in this limbo of not knowing whether we'll be able to scroll and watch important and groundbreaking content like this. ## The Chatroom What do you think? Is there still reason to believe TikTok poses a threat to US national security? Even if that's true, is this bill the best way to protect the app's US users from foreign surveillance? Personally, I've always thought the law was a dud. If the Chinese government really wanted my data, they could easily buy it off some shady broker online. Send your thoughts to [email protected]. ## WIRED Reads Want more? Subscribe now for unlimited access to WIRED. ## What Else We're Reading 🔗 Six Hours Under Martial Law in Seoul: Verge editor Sarah Jeong found herself in the middle of history this week when visiting Seoul. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, she witnessed protests against martial law ... incredibly blitzed. (The Verge) 🔗 How the Supreme Court's Transgender Care Case Could Reverberate Across Health Care: The Supreme Court heard arguments in United States v. Skrmetti on Wednesday that could determine the future of trans health care in America. It could also have trickle down effects on other health care issues like abortion rights. (Stat) 🔗 Professor Apologizes for Using Fake AI-Generated Citations in Defense of Minnesota's Unconstitutional Deepfake Law: Minnesota is on the verge of adopting a new law outlawing deepfakes, and one of the state's main witnesses was caught using the same tools to offer a defense of the rules. The hypocrisy is hilarious enough, but the chatbot completely made up some of the cited research as well. (Techdirt) ## The Download On this week's WIRED Politics Lab podcast, Leah spoke with WIRED security and investigations editor Andrew Couts and business editor Louise Matsakis about protecting yourself from government surveillance. There's a lot of helpful tips in there, go listen. It was a big week for big interviews at WIRED! Check out coverage from our event in San Francisco this week. And don't miss Steven Levy's killer interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook on our YouTube channel here. Plus, one thing our polarized nation can agree on. That's it for today—thanks again for subscribing. You can get in touch with me via email, Instagram, X, and Signal at makenakelly.32.
The BBC	[ "Hereford", "Chester", "Cheshire", "Lucy Letby" ]	# Thirlwall Inquiry: NHS whistleblowers say concerns get ignored By BBC News December 5th, 2024 06:01 PM --- Nearly a third of NHS employees who called a whistleblowing charity said concerns they raised were ignored, the public inquiry into the crimes of Lucy Letby has heard. Consultant paediatricians had voiced fears that the nurse was deliberately harming babies on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Letby was redeployed to a non-clinical role in July 2016 but the medics continued to speak out as hospital executives later planned to return Letby to the unit. Sybille Raphael, legal director of Protect, said NHS staff felt raising concerns was "like throwing a pebble in a dark hole", adding: "It's completely pointless." The Thirlwall Inquiry, which is examining Letby's crimes, has previously heard Letby had launched a grievance against her transfer, and that it was upheld later that year. But the serial killer, originally from Hereford, never went back as Cheshire Constabulary was asked in May 2017 to investigate the increased number of infant deaths on the unit. Former chief executive Tony Chambers previously denied to the Thirlwall Inquiry that he had sought to "ruin the careers" of consultants Dr Ravi Jayaram and Dr Stephen Brearey after they brought the concerns to his attention. ## 'Blame culture' Giving evidence to the inquiry, Ms Raphael said 31% of healthcare workers from the NHS who rang the campaign group had said their concerns had been ignored. She said: "Ignored means not even investigated, ignored means no-one has done anything about it. "It's like throwing a pebble in a dark hole. It's completely pointless to raise that issue because no-one took any notice." She added that 62% of NHS callers to Protect said they were punished for speaking out. Ms Raphael added: "Instead of being thanked for doing what they should do, which is raising a concern, they are being punished for it, they are being victimised." She said those figures were "not widely different" from other industries but suggested there was more of a blame culture in the NHS than other sectors. Protect is calling for a whistleblowing commissioner for England and Wales. "There is nothing in our legal system that actually forces employers to have systems in place," Ms Raphael said. Letby, 34, is serving 15 whole-life orders after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others between June 2015 and June 2016, with two attempts on one baby's life. The inquiry, sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, will hear evidence until January, with findings to be published by the late autumn.
Wired	[ "shopping", "buying guides", "kitchen", "household", "food and drink", "gift guides" ]	# The Best Gifts for the Beverage Enthusiast in Your Life (2024) By Andrew Watman December 5th, 2024 06:36 AM --- Our favorite WIRED-tested giftable gadgets for everything from water and coffee to wine and cocktails. Cocktails, coffee, and cola—the beverage trifecta. Your loved one who's always talking about the latest in one or all three of these lovely liquids may just be the easiest person to buy a gift for this holiday season. You're just searching for some inspiration. They're that person who prides themselves on being the go-to bartender for every party you throw. Maybe they're practicing the art of pulling the perfect espresso shot, or perhaps they're obsessed with staying hydrated at all hours of the day. From drinkware that makes your drinks more aesthetically appealing to high-tech gadgets that boost the efficiency of your kitchen routines, there's a panoply of gifts you can get for the beverage enthusiast in your life. I gathered some of my favorites from the past year, some of which are tried-and-true essentials and others which are more experimental. For more inspiration, check out some of our other kitchen-related gift guides, including barbecue and hot sauce subscriptions and options for coffee lovers and home chefs. Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting that's too important to ignore for just $2.50 $1 per month for 1 year. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive subscriber-only content. Subscribe Today. ## Barware When I smoke a cocktail, my priority is to make sure I'm not adding anything toxic to my drink (many cocktail smokers are coated in polyurethane). Smokeshow makes a great smoker, first because it's made of walnut wood and coated in a natural beeswax. The holes in the side help fill your glass with smoke quicker than others do and help the wood chips last longer. The starter set comes with a walnut spoon to scoop your wood chips and a stainless steel wire brush to clean the mesh basket. If you buy from Smokeshow's website you can also get a torch with a can of butane that lasts for hundreds of cocktails. This torch is strong, which helps push the smoke down. Smokeshow also sells a wide range of wood chips, including savory blends like rosemary or sweet aromas like grapefruit peel and maple—all sourced in America. You receive four tins in this set, but you can purchase many more individually if you know the person you're gifting enjoys particular smoky scents. This is the perfect gift for the beginner bartender who needs to stock up on the essentials to get started. (If you're looking for more, check out our guide to the Best Cocktail Gear.) This set includes good-quality tools your giftee will be excited to start using. That includes the most basic of basics, like a shaker. I like using a Boston shaker, which consists of a large and small tin to shake your cocktails. These ones have a proper shape around the edges that gives them a solid seal while also making them easier to crack open once they're cold and ready to pour. The set also includes essential tools like a muddler, Hawthorne strainer, mixing spoon, and jigger. Where this set goes the extra mile is by including a set of rocks glasses and a crystal mixing glass. Flair is an important aspect of bartending, and these allow you to really show off your presentation. For the cherry on top (literally), six garnish picks are included in this set, which many professional bartenders don't even use. Everything is packaged in a sturdy, padded box, which makes the whole set wonderfully giftable. The Rocco Super Smart Fridge (7/10, WIRED Recommends) has taken the internet by storm this year. I've loved being able to include a huge variety of drinks in my living space in a way that's fashionable and practical. The mini-fridge is pristinely engineered, and I love the fluted-glass door. There are six pull-out racks that allow you to fit dozens of cans and bottles like a puzzle. It also connects to your phone with a corresponding app that shows you everything you're storing inside so that you can see what you're running low on when you're at the grocery store. There are also a few energy-saving modes, in addition to changing the temperature and lights, all of which you can control from the app. The company just released a green color and a limited-edition cream color with gold hardware. ## Drinkware Any coffee lover will squeal when opening a box of Flur glassware. Designed by coffee influencer Ethan Rode, Flur's primary feature is that the glasses are double-walled and transparent, which allows you to hold the cup without burning your hand or changing the temperature of the coffee while still seeing exactly what you're sipping. The bulb at the bottom of the glasses makes drinking coffee out of these a vivid experience to match the caffeine inside. They come in four sizes: the smallest for espresso and the tallest glass for iced coffee. The colors are also a way you can personalize the gift further, with options like teal, amber, purple, smoke, and clear. Viski makes inspired glassware at a price that says you're purchasing a quality product but is still affordable. One of my favorite glassware sets is the Bodega six-piece stackable glasses. They're just so charming and minimalist. I like to drink wine out of these. It's an interesting way to switch up the standard routine of a standard bulbed wine glass. I've also been using these angled rocks glasses. I don't typically like rocks glasses that have so many patterns and carvings on them, and these give some extra personality while remaining smooth and classy. The smooth, slightly matte finish on Myrth's porcelain drinkware makes it feel cozy in your hands. The drinkware and all of its kitchen products come in a variety of subdued colors and earth tones. I love the "swig" cups. They fit 8 ounces of liquid—enough for a small cup of coffee, an espresso, or anything else that you just want a quick sip from. Myrth also carries more standard-sized mugs with handles and adorable sake cups. There's a warmth exuded in Myrth's ceramic products that makes them feel so appropriate for the fall and winter. ## Coffee and Tea This professional home espresso machine will make anyone's jaw drop when unboxing it. The design is both classic yet innovative. To start, this is a semiautomatic machine for the espresso enthusiast who already knows how to use an espresso machine. If you're looking for an espresso machine for someone who's less experienced, you can browse WIRED's guide to the Best Espresso Machines for suggestions. Ascaso, a Spanish company, designed this machine's counter appeal magnificently, with carbon and stainless steel along with a wooden portafilter handle and steam knob. It's engineered with two thermacoils that allow you to steam your milk and pull a shot simultaneously. There's also a spout for hot water which you can use by itself for tea or the like. The machine also includes a shot timer and heats up much faster than many others. It comes in black, white, and "inox" (looks like stainless steel) and includes a stainless steel tamper and a converter for American outlets. Swedish kitchen tech company Aarke is introducing itself into the coffee business this holiday season with a countertop showstopper. The Aarke Coffee System includes a grinder and a drip coffee maker, although you also have the option to buy each individually if you don't need both. While the futuristic design makes it look like a science experiment (it's a major conversation starter), it's very straightforward to use. The grinder has modes for a manual or automatic grind. When it comes to the drip coffee maker, you're brewing a lovely pot of coffee that makes up to 10 cups. One downside is that it doesn't come with a filter, so you need to either use paper coffee filters or purchase a reusable one separately. I ordered this one from Amazon, which fits well, works perfectly, and matches the stainless steel aesthetic. Verve is an increasingly popular craft coffee brand, so it's no surprise that it's launching its first branded gadget this holiday season, the Dwell Dripper pour-over system. It's made of a soft, BPA-free silicone that makes it easy to travel with and rids you of any worry that you may break it. Most of all, it helps you brew a perky cup of coffee. It's designed really well in a way that lifts the coffee filter, giving some breathing room between the device and the filter. It comes with a scoop for your beans and you can also purchase the corresponding small coffee filters directly on Verve's website. While you can use the pour-over dripper directly on top of your mug, you can also use it on top of a carafe to brew multiple servings. I've been using this one, which sits perfectly flush under the Dwell Dripper. Gifting someone a handheld milk frother will completely change their morning coffee routine. Wired milk frothers are more common to come across—for more options check out our guide to the Best Milk Frothers—but I like Subminimal's frother because it uses a screen instead, which feels sturdier, so it should last much longer. I have found this one adds more texture to the milk. This frother has two speed settings. Whether you're using it to make latte art, or just want some thick, bubbly foam on top of your iced or hot coffee, it's one of the easiest ways to elevate your home coffee game. This version is lithium, so you charge it by plugging it into the wall, but there's also a cheaper version that takes batteries. When it comes to brewing fresh matcha, Jugetsudo's starter set is a great for someone interested in deepening their relationship with the traditional Japanese tea. The packaging here will wow anyone who receives this. The authentic woven bamboo whets your appetite for what's inside. I wouldn't even wrap it in wrapping paper. The set comes with all the essential matcha classics: a bamboo whisk, tea scoop, handmade whisking bowl, and a tin of ceremonial-grade organic matcha. Jugetsudo has been around since the mid-1800s and has tea houses in the Tsukiji and Ginza districts of Tokyo as well as Paris. You can always elevate the gift a bit more by adding some a la carte matcha from Jugetsudo's illustrious line of teas here. For a classy coffee concentrate experience that gives the appeal of wine tasting, Kloo is really the best option out there. The tasting sets are probably your best bet for gifting. Kloo is different from other cold coffee concentrates because each roast is specialty-grade and selected by a Q-grader, which is the coffee equivalent of a sommelier. These aren't exactly like the cold brew concentrates that are increasingly popular in grocery stores. On each bottle, you'll see a stamp noting when each batch was brewed. This set also comes with a variety of coffee bean origins like Kenya and Guatemala. The packaging is the most upscale I've ever come across in this category. The mint green boxes, in addition to the rounded square glass bottles with a weighted metal cap, heighten the gifting appeal. The set even comes with a jigger to mimic a bartending experience. Kloo works for hot or iced coffee. You can purchase the tasting set in mini 100-milliliter bottles or standard 8-ounce bottles, or you can get a subscription plan. At last, an instant coffee that's more than just OK and instead truly tastes like the real thing. Diamond Brew has a proprietary freeze-dry process that locks in the coffee flavor better than pretty much any other instant coffee. What makes Diamond Brew different too is its recyclable pods. You just tear it open, pour the shards in a glass, and add hot or cold water. Within just a few seconds, you have a really bold coffee with 160 milligrams of caffeine—more than a double shot of espresso. You'll feel it. This is great for travel but also for when you're at home and not in the mood to brew a fresh pot but need caffeine right away. Plus, it comes in a sleek box that makes it a gifting gem. ## Wine Vinalia is a great gift because it's not your typical wine brand. Vinalia works with winemakers and vineyards from all over the world to produce rare wines from grapes that you don't always see on store shelves. Instead, you'll receive wines like a Macedonian Vranec, a Greek Moschofilero, and an Italian Rosso Piceno. Yep, those are real types of wines. Vinalia makes the selection process easy, because it can be tricky to navigate these unfamiliar wine varieties. You can choose packs of curated collections or packs for certain holidays or occasions, or purchase a bimonthly subscription. Of course if you know what you're looking for, you can also purchase individual bottles from a vast amount of interesting regions around the world. Any true wine lover would get excited opening a box of these small-batch wines from underutilized terrains. This one's a fun stocking stuffer. I personally prefer wine keys to uncork bottles of wine (for more options, check out our complete guide to the Best Corkscrews), but this is a perfect corkscrew for someone who doesn't like putting in all the manpower and just wants to get to the wine as fast as possible. This corkscrew from Viski is very sturdy and has a substantial weight to it. The gunmetal metallic exterior gives it great gifting appeal. Opening a bottle of wine with this corkscrew is smooth as can be. From inserting the screw into the cork and pulling it back up, it's almost as if it's lubricated. It's butter. ## Water and Ice Lots of establishments that rely on water as a primary ingredient, like pizza shops or cafés, install reverse osmosis systems to obtain the most purified water possible for the best-quality outcome possible. But it's not exclusive to commercial use. If the person you're gifting is handy and wouldn't mind some plumbing, Waterdrop has some options to install a reverse osmosis water system directly into your kitchen sink. If not, you can also get one of its countertop reverse osmosis water purifiers like the A1 model. There are several models, but this one allows you to dispense both hot and cold water. It doesn't connect to a water source; you fill the back tank up with tap water. Lots of water filters really don't do a great job at filtering. Some people also find drinking tap water questionable, so this is a clean and techy way to hydrate. This one's our pick for Best Overall Soda Maker. Sodastream's highest-quality soda maker, Enso, is extremely streamlined. It comes with a hard plastic bottle, which you just input into the wand once you fill it with water and push to lock it in place. You can do it with one hand. Then you just push lightly on the top of the stainless steel gadget and carbonate it to your preferential bubbling. It could not be easier. I don't even buy seltzer anymore—I just use this. The starter pack comes with one CO2 canister. For gifting, it could be thoughtful to include an extra canister or two, as it can run out of gas pretty quickly if it's used a lot. You can also purchase individual beverage mixers to add to your newly carbonated water, like Pepsi and Mountain Dew, and Sodastream's own brand of cherry cola, ginger ale, root beer, lemonade, and lots of other flavors. The obsession with chewable nugget ice is real. Charming, convenient, and practical. I love it for my lattes, soda, and certain cocktails. The person in your life who also claims the obsession will love you forever if you gift them this. It's the most robust one on the market. It creates a whole bucket's worth of that perfect pebble ice in minutes. The only thing I don't like about this is that you need to flip the side tank upside down to fill water into it, which can get a little wet when flipping it back upright. The Opal can also connect to your phone through Wi-Fi, which allows you to schedule your ice-making and use voice control through Alexa and Google. There are three models: one with a 1-gallon side tank, one with a .75-gallon side tank, and one with no tank at all. That one uses water from the built-in reservoir only, which may be a good choice if you're concerned about counter space. The product comes with an ice scoop that slaps onto the side of the machine through a strong magnet. The Klaris Clear Ice Maker (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is an incredibly thoughtful gift for someone looking to take their home bartending game to the next level. Rather than cloudy rocks of ice for a drink like an old-fashioned, the Klaris allows you to elevate the cocktail with a crystal-clear cube. You won't even be able to see the ice once you pour your liquid in the glass. It's like magic. The Klaris could not be much simpler to use. You just pour tap water into the silicone mold provided, place it in the machine, and press start. In eight to 12 hours, you can harvest your clear ice. It's a niche product, but bartenders know how important clear ice is to achieving a stellar cocktail. It provides a classy aesthetic in addition to practical purposes like not adding any impurities from cloudy ice and slower melting. You can't achieve clear ice with a standard silicone ice mold in your freezer because that doesn't allow for directional freezing and agitation, both of which the Klaris provide. You can also purchase additional storage containers to store extra ice in the freezer. You're also supporting small businesses by buying a Klaris—it's made by an engineer in Minnesota. ## On the Go Who doesn't want a Yeti cooler? The cream of the crop when it comes to coolers, Yeti has pristinely engineered every nook and cranny to simplify and facilitate your outdoor adventures, from a beach day, a weekend camping trip, or just your kid's Little League game. I like Yeti's rover model because the adjustable handle makes it so insanely easy to roll around what's otherwise pretty heavy when it's full of ice (the 60 holds 68 pounds of ice alone). The wheels on this thing are incredible. When you're rolling the cooler around, you barely feel any bumps on the ground. Such a smooth experience. You can also buy the smaller wheeled models, the 32—as seen in our guide to the Best Coolers—and the 40. All of them come with a basket to store dry goods in the cooler that you don't want to get in contact with the ice. Have fun with all the colors, too! Packing food and beverages for a camping trip can often be the trickiest part of the planning process. VSSL's portable pour-over set is an ergonomic solution to brew fresh coffee at your campsite or during a road trip. You'll still have to plan a way to heat up your water, but this set includes two mugs, a pour-over vessel, and a mesh filter that all screw on top of each other for easy traveling. You could even pack this if you're not camping but staying at a hotel somewhere and don't want to rely on potentially questionable hotel coffee. VSSL also carries a nifty handheld coffee bean grinder if you want to really bring the portable coffee adventure to the next level and round out the gift. For more ideas, check out our guide to the Best Gifts for Coffee Lovers. Deemed Best for Traveling in our guide to the Best Soda Makers, this one's for the person who always chooses sparkling water over still. The Aerflo Aer1 is a sturdy water bottle that allows you to carbonate your H2O all by yourself on the go. It comes with a pack of small carbonation capsules that you place inside the tube attached to the cap of the bottle. Then you just push the top of it and the bubbles start flowing. The bottom half of the bottle has a stainless steel casing which helps keep your liquid chilled for longer. The kit comes with 15 of the small capsules along with a silicone case to carry a few of them plus a mailing label to send them back for recycling once they're out of gas. If you buy from Aerflo's website you can personalize the bottle by getting someone's initials engraved onto it, which would be such a thoughtful gesture for a gift.
The BBC	[]	# £300,000 i ymgyrch gymunedol adfywio Ysgol Abersoch By BBC Cymru Fyw December 5th, 2024 06:01 PM --- Mae ymgyrch i droi hen ysgol bentref yng Ngwynedd a gaeodd ei drysau dair blynedd yn ôl yn ganolfan gymunedol wedi derbyn arian er mwyn gallu parhau â'r nod. Yn dilyn misoedd o ymgyrchu, mae Menter Rabar wedi derbyn £298,340 gan Raglen Cyfleusterau Cymunedol, Llywodraeth Cymru er mwyn adfywio hen ysgol fabanod Abersoch at ddiben y pentref a'r cymunedau cyfagos. Dywedodd y grŵp bod y swm yn golygu bod modd dechrau ar y gwaith, ond eu bod yn gobeithio denu mwy o gyllid i wireddu'r cynllun yn llwyr. Wrth siarad â Cymru Fyw, dywedodd Einir Wyn, ysgrifennydd y fenter ei bod yn "hynod o falch" fod y fenter wedi derbyn yr arian ac yn "edrych ymlaen" at weld yr adeilad yn cael ei ddefnyddio gan y gymuned leol. Wrth edrych ymlaen at y camau nesaf, dywedodd eu bod "mewn proses o drosglwyddo'r les gyda'r cyngor, 'da ni'n gobeithio bydd hynny wedi cwblhau tua Chwefror fel y medrwn ni ddechrau adnewyddu'r ysgol". Wrth sôn am y broses o ymgyrchu, dywedodd fod y criw wedi cael gwybod eleni fod Cyngor Gwynedd yn "cytuno mewn egwyddor i drosglwyddo'r safle ar les o 99 mlynedd ar yr amod bod ni'n gallu sicrhau caniatâd cynllunio a'r cyllid". "Da ni wedi gweithio'n galed fel criw bach," meddai, gan ychwanegu eu bod wedi parhau i gynnal digwyddiadau yn y misoedd diwethaf er mwyn "codi ymwybyddiaeth pawb ac i gael cyfraniadau". Gydag Abersoch yn adnabyddus fel cyrchfan i dwristiaid ond hefyd â chyfran uchel o ail gartrefi, roedd pryder byddai cau'r ysgol yn cael effaith negyddol ar yr iaith Gymraeg. Cafodd y criw wybod eu bod wedi derbyn yr arian ddydd Mawrth diwethaf. Mae'r criw hefyd yn gobeithio gwneud dau gais arall am gyllid pellach er mwyn gallu gwireddu'r cynllun yn ei gyfanrwydd. Gyda'r arian yn eu pocedi, y bwriad yw datblygu'r ganolfan newydd i gynnwys caffi a theras, gardd, arddangosfa ar dreftadaeth Abersoch ac unedau busnes i'w rhentu. Yn gynharach eleni, dywedodd llefarydd ar ran Cyngor Gwynedd eu bod yn cefnogi'r cais gan y fenter. "Yn dilyn derbyn cynllun busnes gan Menter Rabar i gefnogi eu cais am drosglwyddiad cymunedol o safle Ysgol Abersoch, mae Cyngor Gwynedd wedi darparu ymrwymiad i gefnogi'r cais," meddai. "Mae'r ymrwymiad hwn yn amodol ar allu'r fenter i sicrhau ymrwymiad o ffynonellau ariannu ar gyfer gwireddu'r cynllun, ac ar dderbyn sêl bendith Cabinet y Cyngor i'r trosglwyddiad."
Wired	[ "wired uk", "harassment", "online harassment", "safety", "security" ]	# She Escaped an Abusive Marriage—Now She Helps Women Battle Cyber Harassment By Kanika Gupta December 5th, 2024 06:29 AM --- Inspired by her own experience of abuse, Nighat Dad fights for women's social and digital rights in Pakistan and beyond. Nighat Dad grew up in a conservative family in Jhang, in Pakistan's Punjab province. The threat of early marriage hung over her childhood like a cloud. But despite their traditional values, Dad's parents were determined that all their children get an education, and they moved the family to Karachi so she could complete her bachelor's degree. "I never really thought I would work, because I was never taught that we could work and be independent," she says. "We always needed permission to do anything." Dad thought a master's in law might delay the inevitable betrothal, but soon after she completed the course, she found out her parents had arranged a marriage for her. She didn't mind her new life of domestic chores in a household she describes as "lower-middle class"—that is, until the abuse started. "That's when my legal education reminded me that this was wrong," she says. "Our laws, our constitution, everything protects me, so why was I facing this? Why was I tolerating it?" With her family's backing, Dad left her husband and filed for divorce. But after years of domestic violence and abuse and with no experience of working, she struggled with a lack of confidence. "I had no idea that women who are divorced and have a child face such difficulties in a society like ours," she says. When her ex-husband filed a custody case for their 2-month-old baby, Dad wasn't sure how she would pay for a lawyer. That's when her father reminded her that she was a lawyer too. Dad used her degree to win custody of her only child. In the process, she realized how many women in Pakistan were facing years of violence and systemic injustice. But the thing that bothered her most was the digital divide. Before her marriage, Dad's family never allowed her access to her own cell phone, and when she finally did get one, her husband would use it as a surveillance tool—keeping track of who she called and who was texting her. She had an escape tool in her hand, but she couldn't use it. "Going through that by myself made me realize how quickly technology is evolving, and how it's creating virtual spaces for marginalized communities that might not have access to physical ones," she says. "Facing those restrictions made me understand just how crucial it is to challenge societal norms and structures around women's access to technology and the internet, so they can use it as freely as men." In 2012, Dad established the Digital Rights Foundation, an NGO that aims to address the digital divide and fight online abuse of women and other gender minorities in Pakistan. She began by helping women who reached out to the organization, providing advice on digital safety and emotional and mental support. In 2016—the same year Pakistan finally passed legislation against online crimes—Dad and her team launched a cyber-harassment helpline. Since 2016, it has addressed more than 16,000 complaints from across the country. "Sometimes, the police would give our phone numbers to victims seeking reliable help," she says. The DRF's in-house legal team offers pro bono advice and helps women file and follow-up complaints against their abusers. "In many cases, we were successful in actually getting the perpetrator arrested and taken to trial," Dad says. In October 2021, the DRF's legal team helped journalist Asma Shirazi win a landmark case in the Islamabad High Court against broadcaster ARY News, after she became the target of a coordinated troll campaign which was exacerbated by a false story aired on the channel. "If an organization like the DRF had existed when I was facing my own issues, I would have felt so much more supported—knowing there was someone to guide me legally and help me navigate the complexities," she says. "My abuse started with surveillance, and if I had someone to talk to back then, I might have avoided the deep depression that followed. I might not have ended up in such a miserable situation." Today, Dad and the DRF are helping to steer global conversations about tech policy reform. She recently joined the United Nations' AI Advisory Board, and was a founder member of Meta's Oversight Board, which acts as an independent platform for people to appeal decisions made by the social media giant. "The emerging tech space is mostly driven by big Western companies and governments, leaving out civil society NGOs from the Global South," she says. "This puts us far behind in global AI governance, always playing catch-up in a fast-moving world. If we're not part of the conversation, the gap just keeps widening. It's about reminding the powerful that they can't win this race alone—they have a responsibility to include the rest of the world, especially those without the same resources." This article first appeared in the January/February 2025 edition of WIRED UK.
Wired	[ "food", "instagram", "social media", "wired uk" ]	# Tricked by a Fake Viral Food Product? You've Just Been Snackfished By Amelia Tait December 5th, 2024 06:00 AM --- They've racked up millions of views on Instagram, but these products aren't coming to a store near you. In November 2023, a new product set the internet alight. "You won't believe what I found in the shops today," an Australian man told the world over a nine-second video of him pulling a bottle from a supermarket shelf. Tomato Ketchup Clear was exactly what it sounded like: a totally transparent bottle of Heinz. "Brits Left Horrified After Heinz Tease Introduction of Clear Ketchup," ran one headline. "How? and more importantly ... WHY!?" pleaded a user on X. More than 113 million people watched the video on Instagram. But the product disappeared from shelves almost instantly—up and down the country, no one could find any in the shops. That, of course, is because clear tomato ketchup doesn't actually exist. The video was in fact the work of Benji—a 28-year-old armed with an empty bottle, a styling product, and a printer. "It was just hair gel," the London-based data analyst confesses. (He isn't actually Australian; that was a voice filter.) "I still feel bad for the people working at Heinz, constantly being asked if clear ketchup is real!" You've heard of a "catfish"—a fake online identity adopted by someone who wants to trick or scam other people. Transparent ketchup was a "snackfish," and Benji is the UK's number one snackfisher. Benji's Instagram account—UK Snack Attack—is home to pistachio-flavored Coco Pops, pickle-shaped Haribo, mint Coca-Cola, ice-cream Pringles, and butter Oreos. It all started with rare Fantas. In 2019, Benji and his university housemates enjoyed hunting around for imported Fanta flavors and "making a little ceremony" out of tasting them. From there, the computing student became obsessed with seeking out "weird" snacks, which he posted on his personal Instagram page. "I realized I should probably stop harassing my friends by posting snacks, so I shifted it to its own account," says Benji, who asked WIRED not to disclose his surname for privacy reasons. Benji's account was aggressively straightforward—he'd go to the shops and take photos of new foods. "But then lockdown happened, and going to the supermarket and handling food was not a great look," he says. So instead of fondling food, he started making it. After following an online recipe for white chocolate Nutella, Benji started concocting different chocolate spreads every weekend—online, he called it Spread Saturday. A self-taught photoshopper, Benji also made fake labels for his creations. But then one day a company he was imitating sent him a message essentially saying: "Hey, can you say it's not real please? We're getting a lot of messages asking to buy this!" And so snackfishing was born. "In some ways, I wanted to trick people online," Benji admits. "I'm not going to pretend it wasn't that." But over Zoom, Benji isn't remotely trollish; he has a gentle-speaking manner, wire-framed glasses, and what looks like a cozy fleece. When the world emerged from lockdown, Benji started staging his snackfishes in shops, filming himself pulling them off the shelves. At first, Benji's friends and family were perplexed. "Are you OK? Is this a normal thing to do?" But they were soon onboard, and his mum and grandma took him out for afternoon tea when he hit 200,000 followers. Today, Benji adds disclosures to every post ("THESE DO NOT EXIST!") to avoid frustrating people and to stay on the right side of multinational conglomerates. He also posts "snacksclusive" news about real upcoming snacks that have been leaked elsewhere online, which brands are less happy about—some have sent him cease-and-desist notices. When Benji comes up with an idea for a new snack, sometimes he'll photoshop it entirely, but if he thinks it's possible he'll sit down and make it for real. He has munched on Milkybar-dipped Pringles ("what shop r they in" demanded one commenter) and chomped a Werther's Original chocolate bar. He dreams of one day making his own snackfish recipe book, but the "real dream" would be to have a snackfish brought to life by a company. "That would be so cool—some dumb flavor that I've thought of, and then suddenly everyone gets to try it." Ultimately, clear ketchup and lemon Nutella might never exist, and snackfishing probably won't make Benji rich or famous—he hasn't really made any money from his account. Still, he doesn't really mind. "I don't want it to feel like a job; I love doing it," he says, noting that his "day is numbers," so creating fake foods offers a creative outlet. "For me it's just a little hobby. As long as I have fun making it, I'm happy." This article first appeared in the January/February 2025 edition of WIRED UK magazine.
The BBC	[]	# Surrey: Man charged following stabbing outside Whyteleafe pub By Jacob Panons December 5th, 2024 06:03 PM --- A man has been charged with three offences after a person was stabbed outside a pub in Surrey. Police said they were called to the Whyteleafe Tavern, in Whyteleafe, at 17:30 GMT on 30 October and a man in his 30s was taken to hospital, but later released. A 52-year-old from Warlingham has now been charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent, possession of an offensive weapon in a public place and possession of a knife blade/pointed item in a public place, Surrey Police said. He is due to appear at Guildford Crown Court in January. Follow BBC Surrey on Facebook, external and X, external. Send your story ideas to [email protected] , external or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.
CBC News	[ "Canada", "Montréal", "Provost", "Gun control", "Gun politics", "Gun politics", "Violence", "Gun violence" ]	# Politicians mark 35th anniversary of Polytechnique shooting at Montreal ceremony By Sidhartha Banerjee December 6th, 2024 12:34 AM --- Montreal shines with 15th beam in tribute to all murdered women to commemorate anniversary Braving a biting winter wind, dignitaries gathered in front of Polytechnique Montréal's main campus on Friday to pay tribute to the 14 women killed at the engineering school in an anti-feminist attack 35 years ago. Among those silently laying white flowers at the foot of a commemorative plaque in Montreal's Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood was Louis Courville, who was the interim director of the school in 1989. "I am glad that there are many people who did not forget what has happened," Courville, 90, said afterwards. "At the same time, it's the memory of a very sad, horrible thing." The women murdered in 1989 were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. Thirteen others were injured in the attack perpetrated by Marc Lépine, who took his own life. He had ranted about feminists ruining his life. Courville was in his office when the shooting began and all he could hear was a rain of bullets. He assumed an armed group had besieged the school. "I couldn't think that it was only one person. I tried to figure out, what are they going to ask of me? Am I going to have to negotiate something?" he recalled. "But Marc Lépine wasn't coming to negotiate," Courville added. In the days and weeks that followed, he and his wife Jeanne Dauphinais would travel across the province to meet with families of the victims. Polytechnique Montréal president Maud Cohen said Friday there's a duty to learn from what happened. "We need to remember these young ladies that lost their lives: there were 13 students, one employee," Cohen said. "It's about making sure that everyone, women specifically on Dec. 6, can feel welcome, they can feel like they can blossom and they can really enjoy a place where they can fulfil their dreams." Cohen said she is worried that incursions on women's rights in the United States could seep into Canada. "When I see what's happening with the laws that are being changed in the United States regarding rights of women, I'm wondering if the rights that I have right now are going to be the same that the next generation of women are going to have," Cohen said. "I think we all have a responsibility, not just us women, but also the men around us to make sure this doesn't happen to any groups, specifically women." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a statement Friday describing the 14 women killed as "talented students, beloved daughters and sisters and Canada's future. Their lives were tragically cut short simply because they were women." "As we remember the victims of this hateful, cowardly act, we are also reminded that, for many women, girls and gender-diverse people, the violent misogyny that led to this tragedy still exists," Trudeau added. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recalled on the anniversary that "this brutality is remembered as one of the worst attacks on women and on the values that unite us." "Canada's promise is one of guaranteed freedom, safety and opportunity for all, regardless of gender or origin," Poilievre said in a statement. "Any form of violence against women is totally unacceptable." At 5:10 p.m. on Friday, at the exact time the first shots were fired, 14 beams of light will illuminate the sky above Mount Royal, lit one at a time as the names of the 14 victims are read out. For the first time this year, a 15th beam will be added in memory of all murdered women. Families will be present for the ceremony along with Trudeau, Premier François Legault and Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante. Vigils and other events are scheduled in Montreal and across the country to mark the anniversary. "Thirty-five years later, we still have to reiterate that women have the right to live without fear, to follow their aspirations and to achieve their dreams," Plante said in a statement Friday. "Every step toward equality benefits society as a whole."
Voice Of America	[ "East Asia", "Yoon Suk Yeol", "South Korea" ]	# Ahead of impeachment vote, Yoon apologizes for anxiety over martial law decree By William Gallo and Lee Juhyun December 7th, 2024 03:00 AM --- South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday apologized for causing public anxiety and vowed he would not attempt a second martial law decree, in an apparent last-minute bid to save his presidency ahead of an impeachment vote. In a televised address, Yoon said his decision to impose martial law late Tuesday was a "desperate decision made by me, the president, as the final authority responsible for state affairs." "I deeply regret the anxiety and inconvenience this has caused to people. I sincerely apologize to the citizens who were greatly appalled by this," Yoon added in the two-minute speech, before bowing in front of the camera. Yoon also said he will take "full legal and political responsibility" and will "leave the responsibility of stabilizing the political situation, as well as my term, to our party." "The future governance will be jointly handled by our party and the government," he added. It is not clear how Yoon would yield any presidential authority to his ruling People Power Party, the PPP, analysts said, since there does not appear to be an established political process for doing so. "The only way I know of that he can be relieved from duty is impeachment or resignation," said Ben Engel, who teaches political science and international relations at Dankook University outside Seoul. Yoon, frustrated for months by what he saw as opposition attempts to obstruct his governance, declared martial law late Tuesday, claiming it was necessary to "crush anti-state forces" and "protect constitutional order." Within hours, South Korean lawmakers overturned the decree, after fighting their way through police and military personnel who had been sent to the National Assembly Building. The opposition, which holds a majority in the National Assembly, plans to vote on Yoon's impeachment late Saturday. For the measure to pass, eight members of the PPP must support it. If Yoon is impeached, he would be immediately suspended while the Constitutional Court deliberates on whether to remove him from office, a process that could take weeks or months. So far, only two PPP lawmakers have publicly said they will support impeachment. However, one of those lawmakers, Rep. Cho Kyung-tae, changed his mind and will no longer support the impeachment motion on Saturday, according to a South Korean media report. Following Yoon's speech, ruling party chief Han Dong-hoon called it impossible for the president to perform his duties as normal, noting that Yoon's early resignation remains "inevitable," according to the Yonhap news agency. In a surprise announcement on Friday, Han signaled he personally supports Yoon's impeachment, but later made clear this is not the official position of the party. Rep. Shin Ji-ho, a key member of Han's party faction, later said he does not support impeachment. As both sides held intense, closed-door discussions ahead of the impeachment vote, some PPP lawmakers have begun pushing for a compromise proposal, whereby South Korea's constitution would be amended to shorten presidential terms to four years, rather than the current five. Under such a rumored proposal, Yoon would apparently step down early and the powers of the presidency could be reduced in some manner. However, opposition party lawmakers have given no indication that they would support such a deal. "This is a cunning tactic only in order to buy time," Kim Joon-hyung, a lawmaker with the opposition Rebuilding Korea Party told VOA. "This regime, and the ruling party is dead and dysfunctional, even if the impeachment vote fails." South Korea's presidential office has not clarified Yoon's remarks or whether he would support such an arrangement. A Seoul-based law professor, who preferred not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing discussions, said there is no process by which the president can transfer the powers of the presidency to the party. "But more importantly, I don't think that's what [Yoon] meant," he added. "I think he merely meant that he will follow whatever decision the party makes regarding how to stabilize the situation ... whether that refers to constitutional revision is unclear." Yoon and his party may be trying to avoid a vacancy in the presidential office, because under such a scenario an election must be held, according to the constitution, he said. "President Yoon seems to be trying everything he can to hang on to power, but the idea of him staying in office any longer seems totally out of sync with the public outrage right now," said Hans Schattle, a professor of political science at Seoul's Yonsei University. "It isn't even clear that his own political party will be on board."
Wired	[ "the wired world in 2025", "space", "astronomy", "hubble", "exoplanets", "ideas", "james webb space telescope" ]	# We've Never Been Closer to Finding Life Outside Our Solar System By Lisa Kaltenegger December 5th, 2024 04:00 AM --- Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we may have spotted a galactic neighbor with all the right molecular ingredients a mere 40 light-years away. In 2025, we might detect the first signs of life outside our solar system. Crucial to this potential breakthrough is the 6.5-meter-diameter James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Launched aboard an Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou, a coastal town in French Guiana, in 2021, the JWST is our biggest space telescope to date. Since it began collecting data, this telescope has allowed astronomers to observe some of the dimmest objects in the cosmos, like ancient galaxies and black holes. Perhaps more importantly, in 2022, the telescope has also provided us with the first glimpses of rocky exoplanets inside what astronomers call the habitable zone. This is the area around a star where temperatures are just right for the existence of liquid water—one of the key ingredients of life as we know it—in the planet's rocky surface. These Earth-sized planets were found orbiting a small red star called TRAPPIST-1, a star 40 light-years away with one-tenth of the mass of the sun. Red stars are cooler and smaller than our yellow sun, making it easier to detect Earth-sized planets orbiting around them. Nevertheless, the signal detected from exoplanets is typically weaker than the one emitted by the much brighter host star. Discovering these planets was an extremely difficult technical achievement. The next stage—detecting molecules in the planets' atmosphere—will be an even more challenging astronomical feat. Every time a planet passes between us and its star—when it transits—the starlight gets filtered by the planet's atmosphere and hits the molecules in its path, creating spectral absorption features we can search for. These features are very difficult to identify. To accomplish that, the JWST will need to collect enough data from several planetary transits to suppress the signal from the host star and amplify the molecular features in the incredibly thin atmosphere of the rocky exoplanets (if you'd shrink these planets to the size of an apple, for instance, at that scale their atmosphere would be thinner than the fruit's peel). However, with a space telescope as powerful as the JWST, 2025 might just be the year when we can finally detect these molecular signatures. Detecting water in TRAPPIST-1's exoplanets, however, is not our only chance to find life in faraway exoplanets. In 2024, for instance, the JWST also revealed potential signs of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of K2-18b, a planet located 124 light-years from Earth. K2-18b, however, is not a rocky, Earth-like planet orbiting its star in the Habitable zone. Instead, it's more likely to be a giant gas ball with a water ocean similar to Neptune (albeit smaller in size). This means that if there's life on K2-18b, it might be in a form completely different from life as we know it on Earth. In 2025, the JWST will likely shed more light into these tantalizing detections, and hopefully confirm, for the first time ever, if there is life on alien worlds light-years away from our own.
CBC News	[ "CBC Vancouver Island", "British Columbia", "Victoria", "Minister Lisa Beare", "Police", "Education", "School boards", "Students" ]	# Thousands of social assistance cheques haven't been given out during Canada Post strike: B.C. ombudsperson December 6th, 2024 09:46 PM --- Provincial watchdog says up to 40 per cent of payments haven't been sent, launches investigation Thousands of social assistance cheques have not been distributed in British Columbia because of the Canada Post strike, prompting an investigation by provincial Ombudsperson Jay Chalke. Chalke's office began investigating when he was told by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction that many income and disability assistance cheques weren't delivered. Chalke says in a statement that he's concerned that many of B.C.'s most vulnerable people will be left without funds for food and shelter, especially during the upcoming holiday season. He says that despite the ministry's efforts to encourage direct deposit, thousands of hard-copy cheques are mailed every month, and the ministry says 40 per cent of those payments weren't sent last month. The potential for a Canada Post strike was widely reported before it happened, and Chalke says the ministry needed to have a plan for distributing the cheques without mail service. Chalke says his investigation will assess the adequacy of that plan. The statement says the investigation will also look into the ministry's contingency planning before the strike was announced, as well as steps taken during the strike to distribute hard copy cheques to the 15 per cent of income and disability assistance recipients who don't get direct deposit. "The next social assistance payment date is Dec. 18. The end of December is when many ministry employees intend to be on vacation, which could present operational challenges," Chalke says. "I am calling on the government to demonstrate it has a plan in place to achieve better and faster results for December's cheques in the event the strike continues." ## Talks between union, employer stalled There are currently no new developments in the impasse between Canada Post employees and its workers, who began talks toward a new contract on Nov. 15, 2023. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) says it is seeking fair wages as the cost of living has gone up, with high rent and inflation leaving employees "unable to survive." Before and during the strike, Canada Post workers have been struggling with the cost of living, the union says. Among its key demands are wage increases, a guaranteed pension and safer working conditions, with the union citing the "second highest rate of disability injury among workers under federal jurisdiction." Canada Post, meanwhile, says it has lost $3 billion since 2018. The company says the union's demands will lead to more fixed costs that Canada Post can't afford.
The BBC	[ "Hereford", "Market Drayton", "Strike action" ]	# Union threatens turkey shortage this Christmas By Andy Giddings December 5th, 2024 06:10 PM --- The Unite union has threatened to cut the supply of turkeys to supermarkets this Christmas. It said it was taking the action in protest against the Shropshire-based logistics company Culina, which it said had not offered its delivery drivers a pay increase. About 40 of its members were preparing to go on strike on 19 and 20 December. Culina's contract is with Avara Foods in Hereford, which delivers poultry from abattoirs to warehouses belonging to Tesco and Marks and Spencer and which said it hoped ongoing discussions would reach an "agreeable solution". The Unite union has warned there could be a "shortage of Christmas turkeys" as a result of its planned industrial action and that families "could see empty tables this Christmas". It accused Culina of playing the role of Scrooge and said: "Despite being in pay negotiations since April, no offer has been made to drivers who have been left with little choice but to take industrial action." The union also warned more strike dates could be announced if the company did not come back to the negotiating table with an improved offer. A spokesperson for Avara said: "We understand that discussions between Culina and Unite are ongoing and we hope they will reach a mutually agreeable solution. "We expect to meet our Christmas commitments for turkey in full" Culina has also been approached by the BBC for a response. The logistics firm is part of the Müller group with its headquarters in Market Drayton.
CBC News	[ "Border security", "Canada", "Manitoba", "United States of America", "Canada Border Services Agency", "Royal Canadian Mounted Police", "Donald Trump", "Wab Kinew", "Tariffs", "Environment", "Environmental conservation and preservation", "Smuggling", "Tariffs" ]	# Manitoba to send conservation officers to U.S. border to boost security, placate Trump: Kinew December 6th, 2024 08:54 PM --- Opposition, union, wildlife federation all raise concerns service will be spread too thin Manitoba plans to send conservation officers to the international border in an attempt to defuse U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's trade tariff threats, Premier Wab Kinew announced Friday. "Eyes on the border. Everyone has said we need a strong approach to border security here," Kinew said. "The federal government has announced potentially new resources coming with the RCMP. We're saying, at the provincial level, we're standing up a plan as well. "This is a new direction we're going in." Kinew made the surprise announcement during an event for the Christmas Cheer Board. He was asked about border security while answering reporters' questions after the event. Kinew couldn't say how many officers will be part of the new plan, but said the government will roll out more details soon. The usual job of conservation officers is to patrol and enforce the Wildlife Act in the province. Kinew insisted the redeployment wouldn't shortchange the Natural Resources and Indigenous Futures department — the umbrella under which conservation falls — of the officers. "[We'll be] making sure we have the COs in place to do the important work that they do during hunting season and the other jobs that would typically occupy their time," he said. Kinew's announcement comes just over a week after Trump threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all products entering the U.S. from Canada and Mexico after he takes office in January, unless those countries stem the flow of drugs and migrants across their borders. "We want to ensure that some of our law enforcement resources here in the province are supporting the broader border security effort," Kinew said, adding that in addition to deterring crime, "there's a strong humanitarian argument to be made" for the change. He cited the deaths in January 2022 of a family from India. The Patel family — Jagdish, 39, Vaishaliben, 37, and their children, Dharmik, 3, and Vihangi, 11 — froze to death in Manitoba while trying to walk through a field into the U.S. Kinew also said if further steps are needed to ensure that jobs reliant on U.S. trade and the province's economy are protected, "we're moving in that direction." ## Concerns over staffing shortage Greg Nesbitt, the Progressive Conservative critic for environment and climate change, said the party is in support of bolstering security at the border. But he said conservation officers are already working understaffed, and relocating some of them to patrol the border will stretch the department's resources "really thin." "We're 30 per cent less than our 130 field officers that we should have. We have just around 90," Nesbitt said. "I'm just not sure this has been very well thought out." Nesbitt is concerned Kinew's plan will create a strain on the enforcement of rules around wildlife resources in Manitoba, which could ripple into an increase in illegal hunting. The Opposition is also worried for the safety of conservation officers, who could be redeployed in a role they are not prepared for. "Conservation officers are perhaps trained to use firearms but it's not an everyday occurrence they're dealing with drug smuggling and illegal immigration," Nesbitt said. Kinew said conservation officers would get involved in humanitarian situations and "more likely just be that additional eyes and ears to report things to the RCMP or to the Canadian Border Services Agency." "The idea is just to have more presence in the region, given the fact that our economic relationship with the U.S., which is so important, is going to rely on us saying, you know what, we are a trusted partner." ## Relocating officers 'a workload issue': union The Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union, said the province hasn't communicated to them on how the rollout of conservation officers at the border will be carried out or specifics on what's expected from them. Kyle Ross, the union's president, said recruitment efforts to onboard more conservation officers will be needed regardless if the government wants to implement its plan. He said the department has been working short-staffed and with the hunting and fishing season approaching, along with the increased use of snowmobiles during the winter, resources for monitoring are already scarce. "It's a workload issue," Ross said. "They have vast land to cover, so it's as it is, it's a taxing role for them and without hiring more and pulling some away potentially to do other duties, it's going to be challenging." Carly Deacon with the Manitoba Wildlife Federation said assigning conservation officers to cover areas around the border is going to have a "detrimental effect" on enforcing wildlife regulations, and losing officers on the ground would ultimately take a toll on protecting the sustainability of resources. "We're already struggling in Manitoba," Deacon said. "This decision is just implementing conservation officers at the expense of fish and wildlife and rural public safety."
The BBC	[ "UK air pollution", "Traffic congestion and policy", "York" ]	# York Gillygate traffic lights plan to tackle air pollution By Naj Modak, Joe Gerrard, and Naj Modak December 5th, 2024 06:10 PM --- A trial scheme to reduce the amount of standing traffic in York's most polluted street has been approved, despite fears it could mean a rise in congestion in nearby roads. Changes to traffic light sequencing in Gillygate were approved by councillors on Thursday, with the experiment expected to last for a year. York Council transport spokesperson Kate Ravilious said action was needed for the sake of people's health, but she added that teething problems were expected as drivers adjusted to the changes. Ravilious said: "Small changes to traffic signals is one thing we can do to address poor air quality. It should reduce the amount of standing traffic." Pollution in Gillygate has remained above legal limits despite the latest council air quality data showing it had fallen between 2022 and 2023, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS). Ravilious told the council's Transport Decision Session that "although we can see air quality has improved, it's not enough to give us confidence this is a consistent trend". The narrowness of Gillygate, combined with tall buildings either side of it, was believed to create a "canyon effect" where emissions from traffic gathered rather than scattered, councillors heard. Findings from the trial would be used to help make changes to traffic management in other parts of the city prone to congestion or poor air quality, they were told. But members also heard there was a risk that issues such as traffic moving to other roads such as Lord Mayor's Walk and Clarence Street could offset the benefits to Gillygate. Jordan Thomson, owner of the Love Cheese shop on Gillygate, said air pollution on the street was definitely an issue. He said there was a layer of dust from the cars which he had to clean every morning, adding: "It gets into all the gaps." Meanwhile, Liam Sherwood, from Sore Thumb Retro Games, said: "You can see straight away that it gets black really quickly and you can see dust and stuff." Mr Sherwood said he had to clean the premises more often, and the "black sooty dirt" was "not very nice". Brendan Hopkins, from the Gillygate Air Quality Action Group, whose members monitor traffic in the area, explained: "The canyonesque quality of the street basically traps the air." The council had been very supportive of change to tackle the issue, Mr Hopkins added. Gillygate resident John Gannon and York Civic Trust transport lead Tony May told Thursday's meeting that while the trial was welcome, a city-wide reduction in traffic was needed to tackle pollution long-term. The effects of the air quality trial would be monitored throughout 2025 and would include studying its impact on emergency vehicles, City of York Council said.
Associated Press News	[ "Mississippi", "Oxford", "Homicide", "Shane Fortner", "Jay Lee", "Law enforcement", "Crime", "Kevin Horan", "LGBTQ", "Gwen Agho" ]	# Man on trial in the killing of an Ole Miss student gave conflicting information, police say By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS December 7th, 2024 12:11 AM --- The man on trial in the killing of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee gave conflicting information to police about how well he and Lee knew each other, according to testimony Friday by an officer who helped lead the investigation. Lee disappeared July 8, 2022, in Oxford, Mississippi, and police interviewed Sheldon "Timothy" Herrington Jr. two weeks later. Two officers talked to Herrington at his Oxford apartment and then took him to a police building and did another interview after advising him of his rights, said Shane Fortner, one of the officers involved. In the first interview, Herrington said he knew Lee but "did not have any kind of sexual relationship with him," said Fortner, who was the Oxford Police Department's lieutenant in charge of criminal investigations in July 2022 and is now the city's emergency management director. During the second interview, Herrington said he and Lee had a "deeper relationship" and that they had a sexual encounter just hours before Lee disappeared, Fortner said. Fortner said that statement made him think Herrington had lied during the first interview. Lee, 20, of Jackson, Mississippi, was a gay man well known in the LGBTQ+ community at Ole Miss and in Oxford, where the university is located and Herrington's trial is being held. Herrington, now 24, of Grenada, Mississippi, is charged with capital murder. Lee's body has never been found, but a judge has declared him dead. Herrington maintains his own innocence. Before police interviewed Herrington, investigators had already found security camera video footage showing a man they believe was him jogging out of the parking lot where Lee's car was found, Fortner said. Police also had read sexually explicit Snapchat messages exchanged between accounts belonging to Lee and Herrington. According to police body camera footage shown in court Friday in Oxford, Herrington talked to two officers without having an attorney present. Fortner said the officers asked Herrington what he thought had happened to Lee, and Herrington said Lee could have gone to have casual sex with somebody and then been kidnapped. "I think what happened is, Tim described what he did to Jay Lee," Fortner said. Herrington "was not openly in the LGBTQ community," but evidence will show he had a relationship with Lee and is responsible for the death, assistant district attorney Gwen Agho said during opening arguments Tuesday. Herrington's attorney, Kevin Horan, told jurors that prosecutors have "zero" proof Lee was killed. The same day Lee disappeared, his car was towed from the Molly Barr Trails apartment complex in Oxford, where neither he nor Herrington lived. Herrington said in his first police interview that he had not been to that complex for months because it was common for vehicles there to be towed away, Fortner said. Investigators had already seen security camera footage that showed a man they believe was Herrington jogging out of the Molly Barr Trails parking lot a few minutes after Lee's car arrived. Both Herrington and Lee had graduated from the University of Mississippi. Lee was pursuing a master's degree. He was known for his creative expression through fashion and makeup and often performed in drag shows in Oxford, according to a support group called Justice for Jay Lee. Prosecutors have announced they do not intend to pursue the death penalty, meaning Herrington could get a life sentence if convicted. Mississippi law defines capital murder as a killing committed along with another felony — in this case, kidnapping.
The New Yorker	[]	# How to Break Up Better By Jennifer Wilson December 4th, 2024 06:00 PM --- In today's newsletter, we choose the twenty-four best books of the year. But, first, a report on the new business of breakups. Plus: Jennifer WilsonStaff writer Earlier this summer, I had to report to my friends that the new guy I'd just been telling them about over dinner, so starry-eyed I barely touched my food, had texted me to say he just wanted to be friends. I had anticipated that the usual platitudes would roll in: "you're too good for him," "his loss," "does he have a car we can key?" But one friend surprised me by asking whether I had a "breakup plan." You mean, other than to wallow and eat carbs? No, I did not. I searched the phrase online, and found something on Etsy that looked like it was modelled on a birthing plan—except, instead of "I may want a walking epidural," among the options to numb the pain was "start a side hustle." The breakup plan also advised against "stalking" your ex's "socials," so I stopped doing that, and I started to look deeper into this new-to-me world of breaking up better. It was populated by coaches and doulas for the recently dumped, and its landscape was dotted with heartbreak-themed spa vacations (one offered an exfoliating treatment meant to symbolize the "scrubbing away of the past"). I had fallen down a rabbit hole, or should I say a k-hole: I discovered a clinic with locations in the Midwest advertising ketamine-assisted breakup therapy and some other unnerving—literally—interventions to curtail the hurt. I was a bit freaked out. When you're heartbroken, it feels like you'll do anything, pay anything, to make it go away or, however improbably, to bring the person back. And now here was this burgeoning industry of pricey get-over-him getaways and move-on medicines. I wanted to find out whether there were any actual remedies in this heartbreak boomtown or if it was all just fool's gold. For a piece in this week's issue, I attended a three-day "Healing from Heartbreak" workshop at Kripalu, in the Berkshires. I spent time in London with a psychologist who runs retreats at a "Heartbreak Hotel," staffed by experts in treating P.T.S.D. I even flew to Berlin for a one-on-one session with the owner of Die Liebeskümmerer, the Heartbreak Agency, an institution that inspired a recent film of the same name featuring a freshly dumped journalist who skeptically attends a heartbreak retreat and comes out a romantic. Would life imitate art? Read or listen to the story » The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today in a trans-rights case challenging a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors. Chase Strangio, an attorney at the A.C.L.U., is the case's lead lawyer and will be the first openly trans person to argue in front of the Supreme Court. "As a trans lawyer, Strangio works as a representative in every sense of the word," M. Gessen wrote in a 2020 piece about the attorney, "in court, in the media, and sometimes in state legislatures, for his clients, for the trans community, and for himself." P.S. The Forbes 30 Under 30 lists came out yesterday, filled with accomplished young people. But what about those less aspirational among us? Bess Kalb offers a humorous list of the 30 Most Disappointing Under 30—including Joanna Feldman, twenty-two, who "misquoted E. E. Cummings in her rib-cage tattoo," and Victor Chen, twenty-eight, who "used an app to hire a person to pick up and deliver a Chipotle burrito to him every night for twenty-two consecutive nights." 🌯 Erin Neil contributed to this edition.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Technology", "tiktok", "bytedance" ]	# Appeals court upholds law that could ban TikTok in US By Rob Garver December 7th, 2024 02:55 AM --- A federal appeals court in Washington on Friday upheld a law requiring the wildly popular social media app TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese owner or face closure in the United States by next month. The court cited "persuasive" and "compelling" arguments presented by the federal government that TikTok poses a risk to national security. The ruling could leave the 170 million Americans who regularly use TikTok without access to a social media platform that has enjoyed explosive global growth in recent years. It could also mean that the millions of Americans who create content for TikTok — some of whom rely on monetizing that content for their livelihood — could be cut off from their audiences. The government has argued that TikTok presents a unique danger to national security because it collects vast amounts of information about its users, and because the Chinese government ultimately exercises control over its parent company, ByteDance, and over the algorithm that determines what content TikTok users see. Because ByteDance is in the People's Republic of China (PRC) it is subject to that country's laws, including measures requiring private companies to cooperate with government intelligence agencies. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the government has a compelling interest in taking steps "to counter the PRC's efforts to collect great quantities of data about tens of millions of Americans" and "to limit the PRC's ability to manipulate content covertly on the TikTok platform." TikTok signals an appeal TikTok immediately signaled that it would appeal the circuit court's ruling to the Supreme Court. In a statement posted to its website, the company said, "The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue." The company said that the law underlying the case "was conceived and pushed through based on inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people," and warned that it "will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the U.S. and around the world." The Supreme Court is not obligated to hear the company's appeal, and it was not immediately clear that it would do so. If the high court accepts the case, it is possible that it would block the government from enforcing the law until the case is decided. President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported a TikTok ban before changing his mind during the recent presidential election, has suggested that he will act to save the app when he takes office. However, it is unclear what options he might have for doing that. Lack of trust In April, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law. The measure gave TikTok 270 days to find a way to separate itself from ByteDance before a ban on the application would kick in on January 19, 2025. The federal government made it clear that the only kind of divestiture that it would accept was a complete separation of TikTok from its Chinese parent. The company offered alternatives, and established TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. (TTUSDS) as a subsidiary in Delaware, to wall off U.S. user data from ByteDance. However, the government cited instances in which U.S. user data that the company claimed to have shielded from the PRC was, in fact, accessible to ByteDance employees in mainland China. It told the court that it lacked "the requisite trust" that "ByteDance and TTUSDS would comply in good faith" with any arrangement other than complete separation of TikTok and ByteDance. In Friday's ruling, the judges wrote, "The court can neither fault nor second-guess the government on these crucial points." First Amendment concerns TikTok and its supporters have claimed that severing TikTok from ByteDance is both practically impossible for technological reasons and legally impossible because the Chinese government will block the sale of the company. Therefore, they claim, the law constitutes a de facto ban and a violation of the guarantee of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution. In a sign of how seriously the court took the First Amendment arguments, the panel of judges agreed that the law should be subject to "heightened scrutiny," which the Supreme Court has applied to measures restricting fundamental rights. In the end, the panel determined that the law satisfies even the most stringent form of "strict scrutiny," which requires that the government "prove that the restriction furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest." Free speech advocates respond The decision came under immediate criticism from free speech advocates. "Although we're still analyzing the decision, we find it deeply disappointing," David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a statement emailed to VOA. "The court appropriately applied strict scrutiny as we have urged it to. But the strict-scrutiny analysis is lacking, relying heavily on speculation about possible future harms. "Restricting the free flow of information, even from foreign adversaries, is fundamentally undemocratic," Greene said. "Until now, the U.S. has championed the free flow of information and called out other nations when they have shut down internet access or banned online communications tools like social media apps." George Wang, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told VOA that the court accorded "a shocking amount of deference" to the government's claims about the danger TikTok poses to national security. "We should be really wary whenever we allow the government to use vague national security arguments as a justification to shut down speech," Wang said. "That's a tactic of authoritarian regimes, not democracies. It's usually the job of courts to stand up to the government when it infringes on the constitutional rights of millions of Americans, and I think the D.C. Circuit really didn't do that today." 'A victory for the American people' Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the senior Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and one of the original sponsors of the law requiring TikTok's divestiture or ban, released a statement Friday praising the court's decision. "With today's opinion, all three branches of government have reached the same conclusion: ByteDance is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and TikTok's ownership by ByteDance is a national security threat that cannot be mitigated through any other means than divestiture," Krishnamoorthi said. "Every day that TikTok remains under the Chinese Communist Party's control is a day that our security is at risk," Krishnamoorthi added. Representative John Moolenaar, the committee's Republican chairman, said in a statement that the ruling was "a victory for the American people and TikTok users, and a loss for the Chinese Communist Party, which will no longer be able to exploit ByteDance's control over TikTok to undermine our sovereignty, surveil our citizens and threaten our national security." Moolenaar also held out hope to the app's users that access to it may, in the end, be preserved under a Trump presidency. "I am optimistic that President Trump will facilitate an American takeover of TikTok to allow its continued use in the United States and I look forward to welcoming the app in America under new ownership," Moolenaar said.
CBC News	[ "Saskatchewan", "Michael Jackson", "Zoey Kim-Zeggelaar", "Prisons", "Sentencing", "Trials", "Immunizations" ]	# Sask. man who abducted daughter to prevent her from getting COVID vaccine gets 1-year sentence, already served By Jeffery Tram December 6th, 2024 07:07 PM --- Michael Jackson, 55, still faces 2 years of probation and 100 hours of community service A Saskatchewan man who abducted his daughter to prevent her from getting the COVID-19 vaccine was sentenced Friday morning at Court of King's Bench in Regina. Justice MacMillan-Brown gave Michael Jackson, 55, a one-year jail sentence, which he has already more than served while his case was before the courts, two years of probation and 100 hours of community service. Jackson spent 541 days in remand, meaning he doesn't need to serve any more jail time. "He will be free to go today subject to the terms of the probation order," MacMillan-Brown said. Jackson's conditions include no contact with his daughter and her mother, who is also his ex-wife. The Crown was seeking a two-year prison sentence with credit for time served on remand, plus three years of probation and 200 hours of community service. Crown prosecutor Zoey Kim-Zeggelaar said she was appreciative of MacMillan-Brown's breakdown of her decision. "The judge obviously took the law and all the facts under very careful consideration and she laid out a very well-written and well-reasoned decision which really spoke to all of the factors that played in this particular case," Kim-Zeggelaar said. A jury found Jackson guilty in April of abducting his daughter in November 2021. Jackson did not return the then-seven-year-old girl to her mother and disappeared with the child for more than 100 days. Police found them in Vernon, B.C., in February 2022 after tracking Jackson's phone. Jackson was granted bail in February 2023. In April 2024, Jackson was found guilty of contravention of a custody order after two weeks of court proceedings. During sentencing submissions, Jackson said not being able to see his daughter since his arrest was punishment enough. MacMillan-Brown showed no sympathy for Jackson as she read out her decision on Friday. "Mr. Jackson is the author of his own misfortune."
The BBC	[ "Scotland Men's Football Team" ]	# John Carver will get 'earliest flight' back to Poland after Scotland play-off By BBC Sport December 5th, 2024 06:13 PM --- John Carver says his primary focus is on Lechia Gdansk after Steve Clarke's Scotland assistant was appointed head coach of the Polish club. The 59-year-old will remain part of Clarke's coaching staff for Scotland's Nations League play-off against Greece in March, but says his plan is to rush back to his club side after that international camp. When asked about how he will balance the two roles, Carver praised the "cooperation" between the SFA and Lechia since he took the role in Poland's top flight. "The cooperation between Scotland and the club has been very good," Carver said. "What I will guarantee is this: while I'm here, all my energy will go into this team. "Back in Scotland we have so many good people working behind the scenes to make sure the preparation is right for that March camp. "When I do go to Scotland for those 10 days, I know I'm in good hands with the guys who are left behind. I've just met the staff and they've been really impressive. I can trust them, and I have to trust them to make sure the ship is running properly when I'm not here. "I guarantee I'll be on the earliest flight possible back here to get on with my work." Carver's deal with Lechia runs until the end of the season, with an option to extend for additional year.
Voice Of America	[ "Science & Health", "Americas", "Climate Change", "Mexico", "science", "health", "climate change" ]	# Mexico study finds that heat kills young people more than elderly By Associated Press December 7th, 2024 02:08 AM --- A surprising study of temperature-related deaths in Mexico upends conventional thinking about what age group is hit hardest by heat. Researchers found at higher temperatures and humidity, the heat kills far more young people under 35 than those older than 50. For decades, health and weather experts have warned that the elderly and the youngest children were most vulnerable in heat waves. But this study looking at all deaths in Mexico from 1998 to 2019 shows that when the combination of humidity and temperature reach uncomfortable levels, around 30 degrees Celsius and 50% relative humidity, there were nearly 32 temperature-related deaths of people 35 years old for every temperature-related death of someone 50 and older. The study in Friday's journal Science Advances shows an especially surprising spike of heat-related deaths in an age group thought to be young and robust: people between 18 and 35. That age group alone had nine times as many temperature-related deaths as those older than 50. Study authors and outside experts are scrambling to figure out why. Demographics alone don't explain why more young adult Mexicans are dying in high heat than their elders. Two theories: Outdoor workers who can't escape the heat, and young people who don't know their limits. The trend is likely to widen as the world warms from human-caused climate change, according to computer simulations run by the study team. "We found that younger people are especially vulnerable to humid heat," study co-author Jeffrey Shrader, a climate economist at Columbia University, said. "As the climate warms, we're really going to be shifting the burden of temperature-related mortality towards younger individuals and away from older individuals who tend to be more vulnerable to cold temperatures." Data from cold weather shows more than 300 deaths of Mexican residents 50 and older for every young person dying from cold temperatures, according to the study. "People of all ages are increasingly at risk from the rising temperatures, and this study shows that those that we might have considered relatively safe from heat-related adverse health outcomes might not be so much so," said Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown that monitors health effects of climate change. She was not part of the study team. "Heat is a much more dangerous silent killer than most people acknowledge it to be, and that heat is increasingly putting our health and survival at risk," Romanello said in an email. Study authors decided to examine weather-related deaths in Mexico because that country not only has detailed mortality data, but it has a variety of different climates making it an ideal place to study in depth, Shrader said. Researchers also want to figure out whether this is just a situation in Mexico or other warmer sections of the globe have similar spikes in young adult deaths in high heat and humidity. Initially the team just wanted to look at deaths and what scientists call wet-bulb globe temperatures, but when they looked at age differences, they were surprised and looked in more detail, Shrader said. Wet-bulb temperature, which is intended to mirror how the body cools itself, is derived using a complicated measurement system that factors in humidity and solar radiation. A wet-bulb globe temperature of 35 degrees Celsius is thought to be the limit for human survivability. Most places don't reach that level. Researchers determined temperature-related mortality by complex statistical analysis that compares numerous factors in the number of deaths and removes everything they can except temperature fluctuations, said study co-author Andrew Wilson, a Columbia climate economics researcher. Researchers also calculated the ideal temperature for when there are the fewest excess deaths at each age group. Younger adults' sweet temperature spot is about 5 degrees Celsius cooler than it is for older people, Shrader and Wilson said. Some outside health and climate experts were initially puzzled at the higher youth mortality seen in the study. Co-author Patrick Kinney, a professor of urban health and sustainability at Boston University, said it was likely the study included a higher proportion of outdoor workers exposed to heat than prior studies did. Study co-author Tereza Cavazos, a climate scientist at the Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education in Mexico, said she remembers her father's generations taking siestas in the high heat of the day and that was healthy. That doesn't happen so much now, she said. "There is a lot of population that is vulnerable in the future. Not even in the future, right now," Cavazos said. She mentioned three Mexican heat waves this year that hit in the middle of the country and kept the deadly heat going overnight so people had little relief. Usually cool nights allow a body to recover. Younger people often have a sense of invulnerability to weather extremes and do things that increase their risk, such as play sports in high heat, Cavazos said. "High humidity makes it a lot harder for the body to cool itself through sweating – which is how our body primarily stays cool," said Dr. Renee Salas, an emergency medicine physician and climate change expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She was not part of the study team. "So someone young and healthy working outside in heat and high humidity can reach a point where the body can no longer cool itself safely – causing a deadly form of heat injury called heat stroke."
CBC News	[ "Temporary Foreign Worker Program", "Alberta", "Canada", "Fort McMurray", "United Arab Emirates", "Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference", "Alberta Federation Of Labour", "Alberta Immigration and Multiculturalism", "Government of Alberta", "IBEW Local 424", "International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers", "Macdonald-Laurier Institute", "Prairies Economic Development Canada", "Statistics Canada", "Brian Jean", "Charlie Angus", "Danielle Smith", "Gil McGowan", "Ginette Petitpas Taylor", "Heather Exner-Pirot", "Heather McPherson", "Josh Aldrich", "Savannah Johannsen", "Scott Crichton", "Economy", "International trade", "Employment costs", "Employment figures", "Jobless claims", "Oil and gas industry", "Oil and gas refining", "Oilsands", "Workers' rights", "Immigration", "Temporary workers", "Labour unions", "Migrant workers", "Temporary workers" ]	# Alberta seeking to recruit foreign workers from United Arab Emirates, emails say By Joel Dryden December 6th, 2024 06:50 PM --- Electrician and contractors union concerned with plan Alberta is looking to lure workers from the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) as part of a 2025 international recruitment mission, according to documents and emails shared with CBC News. It's a move that's raising concerns among labour leaders in the province. In a Nov. 5 email, obtained by the federal NDP and shared with CBC News, an immigration partnerships advisor with Alberta Immigration and Multiculturalism outlined steps for participating employers interested in joining the mission, advising of two employer information sessions scheduled for later in the month. A separate one-page document was shared with CBC News by Local 424 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents more than 4,000 electricians in Alberta and the Northwest Territories. It outlined the international talent mission, tentatively scheduled for the end of February or for early March 2025. The document outlines the rationale of the mission: The Alberta government said it would support venue arrangements, promotion of job opportunities, interview logistics, informational workshops and travel recommendations for employers. Local 424, which was organized 96 years ago, includes electricians who do construction maintenance. When it learned of the Alberta government's plans to attract skilled workers, the union sought to learn more. "We were a little bit confused why the government would be doing such a trip," Scott Crichton, a spokesperson with the group, told CBC News. "If there are issues related to meeting skilled labour demands, we want to be part of that conversation. We want to be involved with any consultation the government does ... we have a lot of electricians ready to go to work." In late November, they reached out to Prairies Economic Development Canada, the federal department that promotes economic growth in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, sharing concerns about the mission. A spokesperson with Prairies Economic Development Canada forwarded the concerns to the assistant deputy minister of the immigration division of Alberta Immigration and Multiculturalism. "Scott, we would be pleased to discuss province's plans and priorities. My office will reach out to you to find a mutually convenient time," the assistant deputy minister wrote in a followup email to Crichton. Crichton said the government told him it would meet with him to discuss on Dec. 5. However, he said the meeting was cancelled on Dec. 5 and rescheduled for Dec. 11. Crichton added his concern was that the government would utilize the temporary foreign worker program, which could limit wage growth in these positions. ## Premier's office says it is unaware of plan CBC News emailed the office of Premier Smith, as well as the Immigration and Multiculturalism ministry, requesting information on the mission. They did not answer specific questions about what qualifications the government was looking for or whether the trip is part of a broader effort to attract workers from other parts of the world. "The premier is not aware of any upcoming recruitment missions, however, we'll look into the concerns," wrote spokesperson Savannah Johannsen in a statement. "Alberta has experienced unsustainable levels of immigration due to the federal government's policies and we are advocating for more sustainable immigration policies. "It is our belief that Ottawa's priority should be on reducing the number of temporary foreign workers, international students and asylum seekers — not on reducing provincially selected economic migrants." LISTEN \| Criticism of the temporary foreign worker program: The news drew fire from two federal New Democrats — Timmins James Bay MP Charlie Angus and Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson. "Bringing foreign workers to an economy suffering elevated levels of unemployment poses a serious threat of driving down wages," the two wrote in a letter sent Dec. 2 to federal Minister of Employment Ginette Petitpas Taylor. "Alberta is already suffering from the lowest minimum wage in the country. This would leave Alberta workers in an even more precarious situation." Statistics Canada's October 2024 Labour Force Survey suggested that as of October, Alberta had the third highest unemployment of all Canadian provinces, behind Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. The Alberta minimum wage is $15 an hour, tied with Saskatchewan for the lowest in the country. In November, Smith travelled to the U.A.E. and attended the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference. "Deepening our relationship with the U.A.E. is critical to the long-term economic prosperity of Alberta," reads a statement attributed to Smith from November, prior to her trip. Alberta exported nearly $243 million in products to the U.A.E. in 2023, according to the province, mostly consisting of canola seeds, wheat, lentils, machinery and electronics. Alberta's imports from the U.A.E. were $67.8 million in 2023. In recent years, Alberta has promoted its relationship with the U.A.E., suggesting that opportunities are emerging for Alberta in onshore gas development and manufacturing. WATCH \| Drillers see growth but fears linger over an emissions cap and U.S. tariffs: ## Incentivizing hiring locals In their letter, Angus and McPherson drew focus to September 2024 comments from Alberta's Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean. "We are making it an advantage for people to fly from other provinces and other countries to come here and take our resources, to take our jobs, and actually take that money back to their hometown," Jean said. "That's not reasonable. That's not right. And, quite frankly, I find it disgusting." Jean was referring to the fly-in-fly-out model of work camps, which the minister said was hollowing out resource towns. It would be preferable, Jean said at the time, to incentivize oilsands companies to hire more locals. "We are concerned that the UCP government finds it 'disgusting' that thousands of people from across Canada work in the oilpatch, while they are actively recruiting workers from a country with the abysmal human rights record of the U.A.E.," the MPs wrote in their letter. "Such an effort is not in the national interest." The initiative also drew criticism from the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL). Its president, Gil McGowan, said the AFL has long-standing concerns tied to the temporary foreign worker program specifically. "I think the record shows that too many employers view the program as a first choice for recruitment, rather than a last resort," McGowan said. "To see the Alberta government facilitating employers going overseas to find workers when there's plenty of people who could fill these positions, it's not just galling, it's completely unacceptable." A spokesperson in Jean's office said his comments were taken out of context. "Minister Jean was talking about disincentivizing work camps, for many reasons, but to also ensure economic impacts of major oilsands projects remain in the community and the province. Our goal is to have people who work in Alberta energy, living and paying taxes in Alberta," wrote Josh Aldrich in an email. ## Changing sector Heather Exner-Pirot, a senior fellow and director of natural resources, energy and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said what Jean was trying to emphasize was the importance of building up a Fort McMurray workforce. "A Fort McMurray workforce, that helps rent houses, buys houses, builds up that regional economy ... the oilsands are driving the Canadian economy, have contributed more than $100 billion in royalties and taxes to Canadians, and that community is suffering," she said. Given high unemployment and a low minimum wage in the province, Exner-Pirot said there's a balance to consider when it comes to the jobs being discussed. "It's been showing in the data for years of young Canadians, people in colleges and universities interested in the oil and gas sector, and they've been told it's a dying sector. They've been told to go into coding instead," she said. "The financial incentive is there. I guess it's the status, it's the working conditions ... in that case, there is a skilled immigrant balance to be found to kind of curb that gap." Global oil and gas companies have, in recent years, posted historic profits, and Canada's oil production reached a record high in 2024. But experts predict that era is set to come to an end.
The BBC	[ "Housing", "Angela Rayner", "Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities", "Construction industry", "Local government" ]	# Angela Rayner: Deputy PM will 'unblock' south east housing sites By Charlotte Wright December 5th, 2024 06:13 PM --- The deputy prime minister has pledged to "unblock" sites not being developed for housing in the South East. In an interview with BBC South East, Angela Rayner said there were lots of areas in Kent, Surrey and Sussex that needed to be "unlocked" for development, because developers are "frustrated that they are constantly in this process of being blocked". It comes after she approved a housing development previously refused by Conservative councillors in an area of outstanding natural beauty in Cranbrook, Kent. In a major speech on Thursday Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer reiterated the government's pledge to build 1.5m homes in England over the next Parliament, saying there would be "no solution to the housing crisis without approving controversial development". The Kent Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) described the 165-home development at Cranbrook as "a political signal that the countryside is fair game for developers". Ms Rayner, who is also the Secretary of State for Housing, would not talk about individual planning scenarios but said the government had pledged to "build on brownfield sites first". Councils in Sussex have said they have major concerns about reaching the government's new housebuilding targets because they are restricted by the sea to the south, as well as the South Downs National Park and High Weald National Landscape. "I don't believe for one minute across the whole of the South East - which I know very well - that there is only the rolling hills of Sussex," Ms Rayner said. "There is lots of brownfield, lots of areas that need to be unlocked for development. "And developers who have got land there are frustrated that they are constantly in this process of being blocked so what we want to do is unlock those sites and get those houses built." Under new proposed house-building targets, authorities in Kent, Sussex and Surrey will have to build an additional 7,116 homes a year on top of existing targets. The Surrey CPRE says it will mean a "tsunami" of development on the county's green belt. Ms Rayner said the environment and nature would be taken into account. She said: "National parks and heritage sites, they're all excluded and within the National Planning Policy Framework it clearly sets out what our rules are and it also talks about brownfield first. "With local plans and mandatory targets it means local areas will identify the areas of land that they believe is where the houses should go and the infrastructure and we will help deliver it."
The BBC	[ "Barnsley", "Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council" ]	# Budget woes worsen as Barnsley Council has to find extra £6m By Danielle Andrews December 5th, 2024 06:14 PM --- Barnsley Council's financial position is worse than initially thought and the authority has to find an extra £6m to fund services next year, it has been revealed. A new report to go before the authority's cabinet next week said it expected to exceed its budget for 2024/25 due to unexpected costs in several departments. This could lead to a larger budget funding gap than anticipated by the council, which has previously been estimated at £19m. To address the shortfall, the cabinet is being asked to approve taking £636,000 from its savings. Departments are also being tasked with reviewing their services to find more savings given government funding for the next financial year is still unknown. The report said children's services was one of the departments facing spiralling costs despite a decrease in the number of children in care across the borough. ## Increased waste costs The service has been particularly hard-hit because of the rising costs of residential placements and fostering services, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. The report highlighted the cost of placing children in external residential care had increased due to a shortage of available placements, with some costing more than £8,000 per week. In addition, the council was spending more on supporting young people leaving care, due to a lack of affordable housing and delays in processing asylum claims. A £1.8m shortfall has been identified in the authority's environment and highways department due to rising waste collection costs and higher operational costs. The report added that the council holds £30.5m in unapproved funding, mostly from developers and school grants, which will be allocated to specific projects once the necessary approvals are made. It said the council expects to save £3m through service improvements and a review of its assets including buildings and land.

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