Authors like me are being targeted by AI-powered accounts promising exposure and fake reviews

• Self-publish and be scammed: Jon’s tale of heartbreak highlights boom in fraudsters using AI to supercharge book swindles

My latest book had been out for less than a month when the emails started to arrive.

One came from “Elena”, with the tantalising subject line, “When history flutters its wings and reveals a crime too beautiful to ignore.” Then followed a long, florid message about how it was “one of those rare true stories that makes you question everything you thought you knew about history, museums, and human obsession”.

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At least there was no public humiliation for Filip Jörgensen from his manager. But while Liam Rosenior did not do an Igor Tudor and hook his goalkeeper, this hurt. It is why a goalkeeper passing out from the back only looks clever until the moment it goes wrong.

Above all, it was tough for Chelsea to take. They impressed at the Parc des Princes, twice pegging Paris Saint-Germain back, but there was no escaping the reality that the focus was on the moment Jörgensen’s stray ball out gifted the European champions the advantage in this last-16 Champions League tie.

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Federico Valverde was the Real Madrid hero who wrote himself into this storied club’s folklore with an immortal first-half, 22-minute hat-trick that decimated Manchester City and cast Pep Guardiola as a tactical novice.

Each of Valverde’s goals were a diagram of his supreme skill and City’s chump-like defending that leaves their hopes of a quarter-final berth near extinct. If Vinícius Júnior had netted a second-half penalty Real could all but celebrate progression, yet if City score early in Tuesday’s return who knows.

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The People Who Shun Super-Popular Pop Culture. “Some people are early adopters; others are late adopters. I’m simply a weirdly resistant one.”

Juist nu het nieuwe kabinet een taskforce voor stikstof heeft ingesteld, waarschuwen het PBL, RIVM en Wageningen University Research in een gezamenlijk rapport voor een nog te grote stikstofuitstoot. „Op de meeste locaties slaat er nog steeds meer stikstof neer dan de natuur kan verdragen.”

A Swiss e-voting pilot was suspended after officials couldn't decrypt 2,048 ballots because the USB keys needed to unlock them failed. "Three USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked," spokesperson Marco Greiner told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's Swissinfo service. The canton government says it "deeply regrets" the incident and has launched an investigation with authorities. The Register reports: Basel-Stadt announced the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities, last Friday afternoon. It encouraged participants to deliver a paper vote to the town hall or use a polling station but admitted this would not be possible for many. By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes, but Basel-Stadt officials were not able to decrypt them with the hardware provided, despite the involvement of IT experts. [...]

The votes made up less than 4 percent of those cast in Basel-Stadt and would not have changed any results, but the canton is delaying confirmation of voting figures until March 21 and suspending its e-voting pilot until the end of December, while its public prosecutor's office has started criminal proceedings. The country's Federal Chancellery said e-voting in three other cantons -- Thurgau, Graubunden, and St Gallen -- along with the nationally used Swiss Post e-voting system, had not been affected.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

tintinetmilou has added a photo to the pool:

Kawagoe

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

CINCINNATI (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump heeft aangegeven dat hij olie wil vrijgeven uit de strategische reserve die de Verenigde Staten aanhouden. Hij zei te verwachten dat dit de brandstofprijzen omlaag brengt.

"We gaan dat doen, en daarna vullen we het weer", zei Trump tegen de lokale televisiezender WKRC over het vrijgeven van olie uit de voorraad. "Ik heb het eerder gevuld, en ik vul het opnieuw."

Olie is hard in prijs gestegen sinds het begin van de aanvallen van de Verenigde Staten en Israël op Iran. Dat laatste land houdt scheepsverkeer bij de Straat van Hormuz feitelijk tegen, waardoor de toevoer van olie en lng uit de Golfstaten stokt.

WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - President Donald Trump zegt dat de Amerikanen de oorlog in Iran al hebben gewonnen, maar dat de aanvallen voorlopig nog doorgaan om het land definitief te verslaan. "We willen niet te vroeg vertrekken, toch?", zei Trump tijdens een toespraak in Kentucky. "We moeten de klus afmaken."

De president claimde dat de Verenigde Staten inmiddels 58 Iraanse marineschepen hebben uitgeschakeld. "Je wilt nooit te vroeg zeggen dat je gewonnen hebt", aldus Trump. "Maar wij hebben gewonnen. Het was voorbij in het eerste uur."

Trump zei te willen voorkomen dat de Amerikanen elke twee jaar moeten terugkeren naar Iran.

Een hooggeplaatste militaire adviseur van de Iraanse leider Mojtaba Khamenei noemde Trump ondertussen "Satan zelf". "Hij is de corruptste en domste Amerikaanse president ooit", zei Yahya Rahim Safavi. Hij zei ook dat Iran en Israël niet naast elkaar kunnen bestaan in het Midden-Oosten en zwoer Israël te vernietigen.