Exclusive: Revelation comes after company’s executive told parliamentary inquiry he did not believe AI had been used to write message

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OpenAI used AI to help write the email to the Australian government advising that its AI agent had hacked into key departmental websites, Guardian Australia can reveal.

On Tuesday, one of the company’s executives told a parliamentary inquiry that he didn’t believe that its own technology had been used to create the email, but said the company needed to confirm this.

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Death toll from latest attack wave on Ukraine climbs to 28; Moscow says it ​hit military cargo vessel and port infrastructure. What we know on day 1,688

The death toll from Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine has climbed to 28, its interior minister, Ivan Vyhivskyi, has said. Russia pounded Ukraine with waves of missiles and drones on Wednesday. The heaviest losses were in ⁠Pryluky, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, where ​a Russian missile obliterated a five-storey residential building. Twenty people died in the attack, including five children, said Pryluky’s regional governor, Vyacheslav Chaus. On Wednesday evening, prosecutors in Kyiv said falling debris from a drone killed two people in a suburb of the capital.

In ‌Pryluky, an excavator and dozens of rescuers with ‌shovels sifted through rubble at the site where several sections of the apartment block had collapsed. Emergency workers used ladders to get to the upper floors of what remained of the building, and as they worked their way down brought out ‌15 survivors. About 55 people were wounded in the town, regional officials said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the Pryluky attack one of Russia’s “most vile”. “The Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively,” the Ukrainian president said. “This was one of the most vile strikes.”

Russia’s ⁠defence ministry has said ⁠its ⁠forces struck a ⁠vessel heading ⁠to the ​Ukrainian ‌Black ‌seaport of ‌Odesa with cargo for the Ukrainian military. The ‌statement on Telegram on Wednesday gave ​no further details of the strike. The ⁠ministry also said ​Russian ​drones had ​hit ​infrastructure in ‌Ukrainian ​ports, without ​elaborating.

Bulgarian president Iliana Yotova blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for worsening security in the Black Sea on Wednesday. Early on Tuesday, two ⁠ships were hit in ​a drone attack in Bulgaria’s Black Sea exclusive economic zone, with one sinking and the other damaged. The crew of the damaged ship were rescued but the crew of the ⁠sunken one remain missing. Yotova did not directly blame Russia, but said on Wednesday that the war had led to “a significant deterioration” in security for commercial vessels in the region. Bulgaria has halted its search for the missing ⁠crew.

European Union envoys approved 1,646 new designations under the bloc’s sanctions regime for Russia, with most focused ⁠on the country’s military industrial complex, three EU diplomats said on Wednesday. More than half of the newly added entities and individuals are involved in the ⁠chain of production of Russia’s ballistic missiles.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet's Google and gaming tools developer Unity Software announced a new platform that will allow people to create video games from simple text prompts, marking the latest incursion of generative artificial intelligence into artistic and creative industries. The initiative, called Playground, will "put game creation in the hands of millions of new creators, and bring new experiences to billions of players worldwide," the companies said in a statement on Oct 7.

With its debut, Playground will let people 18 and older generate and customize games using natural language prompts, "no coding required." Later in 2026, a new expanded creation experience called Unity Spark, will be integrated with Playground, providing "robust, professional-level" mechanics and high-fidelity 3D capabilities. Creators will be able to build "immersive, superlative experiences" with a simple text prompt, according to the release. Playground builds on Google's push into world models, a type of AI that generates virtual environments in real time from text prompts, rather than just video. Google and Unity's partnership "could reduce fears that AI will make Unity's core game-building software less necessary, while posing limited medium-term risk to Roblox's advantage as a social gaming platform," says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathan Naidu.

The introduction of Unity Spark later in 2026 "could broaden Unity's creator base and support its game-development business," which represent about a third of sales.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

A chaya (lit. teahouse) is an exclusive type of restaurant where guests are entertained by geisha who perform song and dance. During the Edo Period (1603 - 1868), chaya were found in designated entertainment districts, usually just outside the city limits. Kanazawa has three, well preserved chaya districts: Higashi Chayagai (Eastern Chaya District), Nishi Chayagai (Western Chaya District) and Kazuemachi.

Of the three districts, the Higashi Chaya District (東茶屋街, Higashi Chayagai) is the largest and by far the most interesting. Two chaya, the Shima Teahouse and Kaikaro Teahouse, are open to the public. Other buildings along the central street now house cafes and shops. One of the shops, Hakuza, sells gold leaf products, a specialty of Kanazawa, and displays a tea ceremony room which is completely covered in gold leaf.

Source: www.japan-guide.com/e/e4206.html

lioil has added a photo to the pool:

Nagasaki, Japan

CAMBRIDGE (ANP) - Margaret Hamilton, de baanbrekende onderzoekster die hielp het vakgebied software-engineering te creëren en wier code de Apollo-astronauten van NASA op de maan liet landen, is overleden. Dat melden diverse Amerikaanse media, waaronder CNN. Ze werd 90 jaar.

Hamilton ging in 1959 bij de universiteit MIT aan de slag en bleef er tot halverwege de jaren zeventig werken. In die tijd leidde ze de Software Engineering Division van het MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. Die afdeling kreeg in 1961 een contract van NASA binnen. Uiteindelijk stond ze aan het hoofd van een team van honderd ingenieurs dat de software ontwierp voor de Apollo-missies van NASA.

Dankzij haar werk geldt Hamilton ook als een van de grondleggers van software-engineering, een term die zij zelf bedacht. In 2016 ontving Hamilton uit handen van president Barack Obama de Presidential Medal of Freedom voor haar bijdrage aan de wetenschap en de ruimtevaart.

WASHINGTON (ANP) - Het Pentagon heeft het Amerikaanse Central Command (CENTCOM) enkele dagen geleden opdracht gegeven de voorbereidingen af te ronden om de grootschalige gevechtsoperaties in Iran te hervatten, zeggen Amerikaanse functionarissen tegen Axios.

Het Pentagon noemde daarbij geen concrete datum voor het begin van de aanvallen, en president Trump heeft nog geen definitieve besluiten genomen. Maar volgens Amerikaanse en Israëlische bronnen kan het gebeuren voor de Amerikaanse tussentijdse verkiezingen en mogelijk ook voor de Israëlische verkiezingen, die een week eerder plaatsvinden.

Als de grootschalige gevechtsoperaties worden hervat, gaat het volgens bronnen naar verwachting om zware bombardementen op Iraanse energie-, infrastructuur- en nucleaire doelen.

Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:

Isle of Wight

Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

North Adelaide, South Australia