New £500m town centre welcomes its first tenant this month, but displaced traders say promises that they could return have been broken
Diana Sach once employed more than 30 people and catered for hundreds more every day from her Latin American restaurant and delicatessen, famous for its Peruvian empanadas, in south London’s Elephant and Castle district.
Now, she looks longingly at the shiny tall buildings that have replaced the brightly coloured but shabby shopping centre that was her home from home before being demolished in 2021.
Continue reading...Airline adds that it has been in touch with family and reports strong summer bookings after profit slump
Ryanair has moved to reassure travellers that its planes are safe after a passenger was saved from being sucked out of a window mid-flight and said it has been in touch with his family.
This month, Ljubisa Karović was sucked out headfirst after an engine failure resulted in parts smashing an acrylic window during a flight from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen near Munich in Germany.
Continue reading...
Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of China's leader, Thailand's king, or Saudi Arabia's crown prince — and it will decline, reports the Associated Press.
That's "a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday," their article points out: AI systems are more than twice as likely to refuse to product critical material if it's about a restrictive world leader or government. And it raises concerns that the LLMs powering chatbots "could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech."
The study picked 10 commercial large language models by top tech companies — including Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI — and asked the AI systems to make critical pamphlets, write limericks, give reasons if someone should join protests, and more.... "In aggregate, models responding to requests from an Australia-based user were much more likely to generate political criticism of authorities" in places such as Chile, Japan, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S. "compared to where criticism of authorities is legally restricted and penalized," such as in Cambodia, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey, the report said.
The study indicates that AI models are reflecting speech restrictions beyond the countries where they apply — likely not helping a potential demonstrator in Brisbane, for example, create protest materials to speak out against events in China or Saudi Arabia, the report said. "Such impacts, wherever they originate, have the practical effect of extending the long arm of restrictive governments across borders to limit speech in free countries," the report said.
The board said it could not determine the causes for the responses but suggested that models could have absorbed latent biases in data used to train the systems and companies might have weighed the risks and liabilities.
That's "a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday," their article points out: AI systems are more than twice as likely to refuse to product critical material if it's about a restrictive world leader or government. And it raises concerns that the LLMs powering chatbots "could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech."
The study picked 10 commercial large language models by top tech companies — including Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI — and asked the AI systems to make critical pamphlets, write limericks, give reasons if someone should join protests, and more.... "In aggregate, models responding to requests from an Australia-based user were much more likely to generate political criticism of authorities" in places such as Chile, Japan, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S. "compared to where criticism of authorities is legally restricted and penalized," such as in Cambodia, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey, the report said.
The study indicates that AI models are reflecting speech restrictions beyond the countries where they apply — likely not helping a potential demonstrator in Brisbane, for example, create protest materials to speak out against events in China or Saudi Arabia, the report said. "Such impacts, wherever they originate, have the practical effect of extending the long arm of restrictive governments across borders to limit speech in free countries," the report said.
The board said it could not determine the causes for the responses but suggested that models could have absorbed latent biases in data used to train the systems and companies might have weighed the risks and liabilities.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:
Lily of my home
我が家のユリ
These lilies are planted in the corner of the vegetable patch—specifically, the ones I bought the other day at Kasui Lily Garden. I wonder if they will bloom again next year.
畑の隅に植えたユリ、といっても先日、可睡ゆりの園で買ってきたユリになります。来年も咲いてくれるでしょうか。
Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka pref, Japan
peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:
Lily of my home
我が家のユリ
These lilies are planted in the corner of the vegetable patch—specifically, the ones I bought the other day at Kasui Lily Garden. I wonder if they will bloom again next year.
畑の隅に植えたユリ、といっても先日、可睡ゆりの園で買ってきたユリになります。来年も咲いてくれるでしょうか。
Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka pref, Japan
Weet u nog, toen er afgelopen april opeens een datakluis bij de Belastingdienst opdook waar allemaal relevante informatie over het Toeslagenschandaal instond? Nou. Wie daar al lang van wist, was de Belastingdienst. Die is namelijk tijdens het verzamelen van gegevens voor de Parlementaire Enquête Fraude en Dienstverlening al op de hoogte gesteld van het bestaan van deze datakluis, blijkt uit dit rapport van BDO waar Trouw vandaag over schrijft (al lijkt die krant wel de POK met de PEFD te verwarren, maar goed, het is ook ingewikkeld).
In 2022 organiseerde de Kamer een enquête over het Toeslagenschandaal (de tweede dus, van 'Blind voor Mens en Recht', na 'Ongekend Onrecht') en vroeg de Belastingdienst om gegevens. Een medewerker van de Belastingdienst wist dat er op het ministerie een datakluis was en dat het "goed mogelijk was" dat daar "relevante gegevens" inzaten. Klein probleempje: de gegevens in de datakluis waren alleen maar beschikbaar in html-bestanden, waar dan weer verwijzingen in stonden naar andere bestanden, zoals pdf's en powerpoint-presentaties. En uiteindelijk besloot het zoekteam alle html-bestanden te negeren bij het zoeken naar stukken. Daarmee bleef de datakluis met 64 miljoen bestanden dus op slot.
Staatssecretaris Palmen (ooit bekend van het memo-Palmen, waar ooit niks mee werd gedaan door de ambtelijke leiding) werd vervolgens al eind juli 2025 op de hoogte gesteld van het bestaan van de datakluis en het feit dat deze niet gebruikt was tijdens het verzamelen van de informatie voor de parlementaire enquête. Vervolgens is de Belastingdienst dus nog bijna een jaar bezig geweest met het informeren van de Kamer, wat uiteindelijk dus ook nog eens verkeerd is gebeurd, omdat in april nog werd gesuggereerd dat deze kluis alleen maar 'bij toeval' was ontdekt. Dit, terwijl de Belastingdienst de hele tijd bezig is geweest met de datakluis en dus pas ergens in 2025 dacht 'hee ja wij hadden ook zoiets als de toeslagenaffaire en daar zouden we open en eerlijk over zijn enzo'. Nou. Mooi niet dus. Wat een schande.
Mail aan enquete-team: LET OP! WE HEBBEN EEN DATAKLUIS! MET RELEVANTE GEGEVENS!
Enquete-team: doet niks
Maar hee, alles komt goed
Joepie. De poepie.