Sunset Lovers

World Thru Lenz has added a photo to the pool:

Sunset Lovers

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Negen aanhoudingen bij demonstratie Universiteit Leiden

LEIDEN (ANP) - Negen demonstranten zijn woensdagavond aangehouden bij de Universiteit Leiden vanwege lokaalvredebreuk, bevestigt een politiewoordvoerder na berichtgeving van Omroep West. Pro-Palestijnse betogers begonnen daar eerder op de dag een actie in en buiten het Academiegebouw. Toen de demonstranten het pand niet verlieten nadat dat was verzocht, ging de politie rond 20.30 uur over tot aanhoudingen.

De actievoerders willen dat de universiteit alle banden met Israël verbreekt vanwege de oorlog in de Gazastrook. Een lezing van een politicoloog werd vanwege de actie naar een ander gebouw verplaatst.

De arrestanten zijn naar het bureau gebracht, aldus de woordvoerder. Zij weet niet wat de vervolgstappen zijn.


Tricks

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Tricks

The Stardust, Las Vegas, Nevada

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

The Stardust, Las Vegas, Nevada

Sherrie Levine, Double Checks #6, 1988

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Sherrie Levine, Double Checks #6, 1988

And You Probably Wouldn't Remember

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

And You Probably Wouldn't Remember

There is Something Better

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

There is Something Better

Satellite Imagery

Every weekend I take an ATV out into the desert and spend a day tracing a faint "(C) GOOGLE 2009" watermark across the landscape.

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

SEC Must Not Let Crypto Companies 'Bypass' Rules, Stock Exchanges Say

The Securities and Exchange Commission's possible plan to grant crypto companies relief from regulation to sell "tokenised" stocks risks harming investors, a group of stock exchanges said in a letter to the U.S. regulator this week. From a report: Several crypto companies plan to sell crypto tokens linked to listed equities to retail investors who want to get exposure to stocks without owning them directly. But to sell the products in the U.S., crypto companies which are not registered as broker-dealers would need the SEC to give them a no-action letter or an exemption.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the agency is working on crafting an "innovation exemption" from securities laws which would enable crypto players to experiment with new business models. The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), a group whose members include the U.S. Nasdaq and Germany's Deutsche Boerse, said in a letter dated November 21 that an exemption could create market integrity risks and undermine investor protections. "The SEC should avoid granting exemptions to firms attempting to bypass regulatory principles that have safeguarded markets for decades," WFE CEO Nandini Sukumar told Reuters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More Than Half of New Articles On the Internet Are Being Written By AI

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation: The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it's become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI. Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study showing that more than 50% of articles on the web are being generated by artificial intelligence. [...]

It's important to clarify what's meant by "online content," the phrase used in the Graphite study, which analyzed over 65,000 randomly selected articles of at least 100 words on the web. These can include anything from peer-reviewed research to promotional copy for miracle supplements. A closer reading of the Graphite study shows that the AI-generated articles consist largely of general-interest writing: news updates, how-to guides, lifestyle posts, reviews and product explainers.

The primary economic purpose of this content is to persuade or inform, not to express originality or creativity. Put differently, AI appears to be most useful when the writing in question is low-stakes and formulaic: the weekend-in-Rome listicle, the standard cover letter, the text produced to market a business. A whole industry of writers -- mostly freelance, including many translators -- has relied on precisely this kind of work, producing blog posts, how-to material, search engine optimization text and social media copy. The rapid adoption of large language models has already displaced many of the gigs that once sustained them.

The dramatic loss of this work points toward another issue raised by the Graphite study: the question of authenticity, not only in identifying who or what produced a text, but also in understanding the value that humans attach to creative activity. How can you distinguish a human-written article from a machine-generated one? And does that ability even matter? Over time, that distinction is likely to grow less significant, particularly as more writing emerges from interactions between humans and AI... "If you set aside the more apocalyptic scenarios and assume that AI will continue to advance -- perhaps at a slower pace than in the recent past -- it's quite possible that thoughtful, original, human-generated writing will become even more valuable," writes author Francesco Agnellini, in closing.

"Put another way: The work of writers, journalists and intellectuals will not become superfluous simply because much of the web is no longer written by humans."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.