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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:
Google's search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.
The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are "reliable" and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic. However, a study that analysed responses to more than 50,000 health queries, captured using Google searches from Berlin, found the top cited source was YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the world's second most visited website, after Google itself, and is owned by Google. Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4.43% of all AI Overview citations. No hospital network, government health portal, medical association or academic institution came close to that number, they said. "This matters because YouTube is not a medical publisher," the researchers wrote. "It is a general-purpose video platform...."
In one case that experts said was "dangerous" and "alarming", Google provided bogus information about crucial liver function tests that could have left people with serious liver disease wrongly thinking they were healthy. The company later removed AI Overviews for some but not all medical searches... Hannah van Kolfschooten, a researcher specialising in AI, health and law at the University of Basel who was not involved with the research, said: "This study provides empirical evidence that the risks posed by AI Overviews for health are structural, not anecdotal. It becomes difficult for Google to argue that misleading or harmful health outputs are rare cases.
"Instead, the findings show that these risks are embedded in the way AI Overviews are designed. In particular, the heavy reliance on YouTube rather than on public health authorities or medical institutions suggests that visibility and popularity, rather than medical reliability, is the central driver for health knowledge."
Google's search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.
The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are "reliable" and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic. However, a study that analysed responses to more than 50,000 health queries, captured using Google searches from Berlin, found the top cited source was YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the world's second most visited website, after Google itself, and is owned by Google. Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4.43% of all AI Overview citations. No hospital network, government health portal, medical association or academic institution came close to that number, they said. "This matters because YouTube is not a medical publisher," the researchers wrote. "It is a general-purpose video platform...."
In one case that experts said was "dangerous" and "alarming", Google provided bogus information about crucial liver function tests that could have left people with serious liver disease wrongly thinking they were healthy. The company later removed AI Overviews for some but not all medical searches... Hannah van Kolfschooten, a researcher specialising in AI, health and law at the University of Basel who was not involved with the research, said: "This study provides empirical evidence that the risks posed by AI Overviews for health are structural, not anecdotal. It becomes difficult for Google to argue that misleading or harmful health outputs are rare cases.
"Instead, the findings show that these risks are embedded in the way AI Overviews are designed. In particular, the heavy reliance on YouTube rather than on public health authorities or medical institutions suggests that visibility and popularity, rather than medical reliability, is the central driver for health knowledge."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Onvoltooid (2014)
Siufungs 小風 korte film Unfinished (2014) is een zes minuten durende experimentele film. Het is een parallelle vertelling van het reciteren van dichtregels uit hun eigen gedicht ‘Unfinished’ en een zwart-wit documentatie van henzelf als transgender, non-binair persoon.
De link naar Unfinished gaat eerst naar de site van Siufung, en schakelt dan automatisch verder naar de documentaire.
I murmur to the mirror
Speak out a body that does not
Belong, you wake up from my nightmare
Discover a language not yet existing
But you stare off into space and betray
Me
Gender beweegt op een spectrum in het brein gevormd door (on)bekende factoren. Waar aan beide uiteinden van dit spectrum de binaire gender man en vrouw staan. Cisgender – als het lichaam met de gender identiteit overeenkomt. De non binaire gender beweegt daar tussen. Transgender waaronder non binair – als het lichaam en de gender identiteit niet of gedeeltelijk overeenkomen. Soms kan het spectrum van masculine naar feminine bewegen, of andersom genderfluide. Vaker heeft deze een meer constante positie en dat kan overal op het genderspectrum zijn.
man_________________non_binair________________vrouw
My body is a genderless one
小風
I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. I am something that you’ll never understand.
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January is a prime time for people looking to get fit, so fraudsters create fake websites and apps
A new year means a new start – it’s time to get fit and there are quite a few deals out there. On Facebook you see a local gym advertising a discount on membership if you sign up within the next few hours. There are limited spaces so you act quickly.
It’s only after you pay that you realise the ad was a fraud: you’ve received no membership details and when you contact the gym it has no record of your payment.
Continue reading...Cold feet? Not on our watch: our fashion expert picks the best boots for every occasion
• How to dress in cold weather
The season of the boot is officially upon us, with cold breezes and dreary downpours all around. Versatile, durable and effortlessly stylish, boots are a wardrobe staple, able to elevate an outfit instantly.
Whether you prefer a wearable ankle cut, a pair fit for muddy walks or something that takes you from day to night, investing in quality is essential. Thoughtful choices can shield you from flimsy soles, cracked faux leather and the disappointment that comes around eventually with impulse buys.
Continue reading...Change your life – or just kick back and relax – by connecting with nature, trying a creative workshop, or taking a yoga course somewhere beautiful
Playfulness is at the heart of the Art and Play holiday, based on a farm outside the Bay of Kotor. A family-friendly retreat designed to reignite joy and reconnect with the inner child, it’s one for solo travellers and couples as well as parents with kids. There are creative sessions on everything from dance to painting, as well as time to enjoy the farm – feeding the animals, collecting eggs or helping harvest vegetables for farm-fresh meals. Excursions include hikes to hidden beaches, kayaking and trips to Kotor and Budva, but there’s time to chill by the pool too; evenings are for board games, music and campfires. Accommodation ranges from camping and glamping to cabins, a treehouse and restored farmhouse.
Seven days from £695, children 5-12 £350, under-fives free, includes brunch, dinner and snacks, 3 May and 23 August, responsibletravel.com
Australian cycling star holds on to lead the hard way
Kangaroo caused Vine and others to crash during final stage
The Australian cycling star Jay Vine has survived a race crash caused by a kangaroo to win the Tour Down Under for the second time.
Despite losing two more UAE Team Emirates colleagues on Sunday’s last stage, Vine’s commanding lead was enough of a buffer. He also won the event in 2023.
Continue reading...World No 1 claims 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 victory over 19th seed
Alcaraz recovers from slow start to navigate first real test at tournament
Carlos Alcaraz continued to build momentum in his pursuit of the career grand slam as he navigated a slow start and pushed through his first test at the Australian Open to reach the quarter-finals with a 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5 win over the 19th seed Tommy Paul.
Alcaraz, the world No 1, has now reached the quarter-finals at Melbourne Park for three consecutive years and this is his first time doing so without dropping a set.
Having already won each of the three other grand slam tournaments twice, he will be attempting to break new ground by reaching the semi-finals of the Australian Open for the first time in his career.
Things were far from easy for Alcaraz, who has played many tough matches with Paul over the past four years, losing to the American twice in their seven meetings.
Amelia, created to deter young people from extremism, has been subverted and is breaking out of niche online silos
In certain corners of the internet, on niche news feeds and algorithms, an AI-generated British schoolgirl has emerged as something of a cultural phenomenon.
Her name is Amelia, a purple-haired “goth girl” who proudly carries a mini union flag everywhere she goes and appears to have a penchant for racism.
Continue reading...In the search for stability, some western nations are turning to a country that many in Washington see as an existential threat
If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland’s good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland’s leader, Micheál Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China’s president, Xi Jinping, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s.
“It was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us but there you are,” Martin told reporters in Beijing.
Continue reading...It was life-affirming to meet the residents of Rainbow Way in Minehead. But so much still stands in the way of Labour’s vision for social housing
I met Carole Guscott, a retired former carer, on a clear winter’s morning in the Somerset town of Minehead. She was walking her whippet, Gracie, on the way back to her new flat, past the local Premier Inn and on to a cul de sac called Rainbow Way. “I knew as soon as I saw it,” she told me. “I just thought: ‘I can make this place my home.’”
Up until recently, she was living in a private rented place near the centre of town and paying £780 a month in rent. For four years she had known that Rainbow Way was being built. She also knew that its houses and flats were an example of something that is vanishingly rare in post-Thatcher Britain: new council housing, which meant security for the people chosen to be the tenants but also intense competition for places.
Continue reading...I sat there in my pyjamas, headset against my ear, and knew I was not doing the right thing
I’m not psychic. During the six months I spent working as a telephone psychic, my only supernatural gift was the ability to sound fascinated by a stranger’s love life at 2.17am. Yet for hundreds of billable hours, I sat on my living room floor wearing plaid pyjamas and a telemarketing headset, charging callers by the minute for insights into their lives. Perhaps this made me a con artist, but I wasn’t a dangerous one.
When it started, I’d recently quit my job as an editor at a publishing company to write a novel while doing telemarketing shifts from my kitchen table. Instead of knocking off a bestseller, I found myself cold-calling strangers about energy bills while gripped by writer’s block and an inconvenient yearning to have a baby.
Continue reading...This all-day Essex cafe next to a garden centre is a scone-fuelled delight
A tipoff to try the Tin Roof Cafe in Maldon came with prior warning: I wouldn’t get a table easily as this all-day spot serving brunch, lunches and sweet stuff from the in-house bakery is constant, scone-fuelled bedlam. Red brick walls, greenery throughout, alfresco spaces, allotments growing fresh veg and herbs. Capacious, family-run, dog-welcoming, pocket-friendly. There’s bubble and squeak with hand-cut ham, Korean-style chicken burgers and a vegan burger called, rather brilliantly, “Peter Egan” after, I’m guessing, the animal-loving actor who played Paul in Ever Decreasing Circles.
Could this place be any more adorable? No, but still, brace yourself. “It’s one in, one out,” I was told. “There’s a seated holding pen at the front where you wait for a table. Stand your ground in there. There’s loads of sharp-elbowed garden-centre folk. I think they’re there for the Basque cheesecake.” Ah, yes, the equally vast Claremont garden centre, just a few steps away. Cake, as we all know, is catnip to gardeners. Sends them daft. Come for 20 litres of alkaline topsoil and a terracotta trough, stay for the seasonal pavlova and thick wodges of billionaire’s shortbread. That’s millionaire’s shortbread with an extra layer of caramel decadence. Clearly real billionaires would never eat this shortbread, as they’re all on longevity hunts fuelled by OMAD (one meal a day), that meal being a posh spin on Trill budgie food.
Continue reading...
In Kesteren (gemeente Neder-Betuwe, provincie Gelderland) is vogelgriep vastgesteld op een bedrijf met vermeerderingslegkippen. Om verspreiding van het virus te voorkomen, worden de circa 44.000 kippen op de locatie geruimd door de Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenautoriteit (NVWA).
Ondanks de woningnood ligt de bouw van in totaal 15.106 Rotterdamse nieuwbouwwoningen stil. Dit komt doordat omwonenden bezwaar maken tegen de plannen. Momenteel zijn er in Rotterdam hierdoor 22 projecten vertraagd.
Weer voor Rotterdam 🌕
Huidige temperatuur (om 07:15): 0.3°C (Helder)Windsnelheid: 16.6 km/u (4.6 m/s), richting: ← 104°
Luchtkwaliteit:
- AQI: 73 🟡 (Matig)
- PM2.5: 30.3 μg/m³
- PM10: 37.3 μg/m³
Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:
- zondag 25 januari: Min -0.2°, Max 4.2° (Bewolkt) ☁️, Windsnelheid: 16.6 km/u (4.6 m/s), richting: ← 92°
- maandag 26 januari: Min -0.4°, Max 4.3° (Bewolkt) ☁️, Windsnelheid: 12.6 km/u (3.5 m/s), richting: ↓ 8°
- dinsdag 27 januari: Min 1.5°, Max 4.2° (Lichte regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 4.5, Kans op neerslag 40%, Windsnelheid: 21.6 km/u (6.0 m/s), richting: ↖ 116°
- woensdag 28 januari: Min 2.7°, Max 6.4° (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.7, Kans op neerslag 16%, Windsnelheid: 9.9 km/u (2.8 m/s), richting: ↙ 62°
- donderdag 29 januari: Min 1.5°, Max 5.5° (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.1, Kans op neerslag 13%, Windsnelheid: 8.7 km/u (2.4 m/s), richting: ← 103°
- vrijdag 30 januari: Min 1.7°, Max 6.2° (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.5, Kans op neerslag 28%, Windsnelheid: 12.7 km/u (3.5 m/s), richting: ↖ 113°
- zaterdag 31 januari: Min 6.0°, Max 8.2° (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 5.6, Kans op neerslag 32%, Windsnelheid: 13.8 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ↑ 168°
Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:
- 08:00: 0.2° (Helder) 🌕, Windsnelheid: 16.6 km/u (4.6 m/s), richting: ← 101°
- 09:00: 0.2° (Licht bewolkt) 🌤️, Windsnelheid: 16.6 km/u (4.6 m/s), richting: ← 102°
- 10:00: 0.6° (Gedeeltelijk bewolkt) ⛅, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ← 104°
- 11:00: 1.5° (Licht bewolkt) 🌤️, Windsnelheid: 14.0 km/u (3.9 m/s), richting: ← 100°
- 12:00: 2.5° (Zonnig) ☀️, Windsnelheid: 12.6 km/u (3.5 m/s), richting: ← 100°
- 13:00: 3.5° (Zonnig) ☀️, Windsnelheid: 12.2 km/u (3.4 m/s), richting: ← 103°
- 14:00: 4.1° (Zonnig) ☀️, Windsnelheid: 13.0 km/u (3.6 m/s), richting: ← 91°
- 15:00: 4.2° (Zonnig) ☀️, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ← 86°
- 16:00: 3.8° (Zonnig) ☀️, Windsnelheid: 15.5 km/u (4.3 m/s), richting: ← 82°
- 17:00: 2.9° (Zonnig) ☀️, Windsnelheid: 15.1 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ← 86°
- 18:00: 2.2° (Helder) 🌕, Windsnelheid: 13.7 km/u (3.8 m/s), richting: ← 86°
- 19:00: 1.5° (Helder) 🌕, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ← 91°
#Rotterdam #Meteo #MeteoBot #MeteoNetherlands #OpenMeteo #FediMeteo
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het aantal publieke laadpunten voor elektrische auto's is in de afgelopen vijf jaar meer dan verdrievoudigd. Dat blijkt uit een analyse van het ANP van cijfers van de Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO).
In 2025 waren er bijna 210.000 van dit soort laadpunten in Nederland. Dit zijn openbare punten voor het opladen van een hybride of elektrische auto. Het cijfer bestaat uit publieke, semipublieke en snellaadpunten. Publieke laders staan langs de openbare weg, terwijl semipublieke zich op privéterrein bevinden. Denk hierbij aan laadpunten in een parkeergarage of op een bedrijventerrein. Snellaadpunten laden in korte tijd een autoaccu vol.
Een jaar eerder waren er nog zo'n 181.000. Vijf jaar geleden, in 2020, waren er ongeveer 63.000 publieke laadpunten voor elektrische auto's.
Groeiend aantal elektrische auto's
In bijna alle gemeenten zijn er nu meer publieke laadpalen dan een jaar eerder. In slechts 38 gemeenten nam dit aantal af, waaronder Hilversum. Daar zijn 216 laadpunten verdwenen. Net als in 2024 staan de meeste oplaadpunten in Amsterdam. Hier zijn er zo'n 16.000 te vinden. Rotterdam volgt met ruim 11.000 laadpunten.
De toename van het aantal laadpunten is te verklaren door het groeiende aantal volledig en deels elektrische auto's in Nederland. In 2025 waren dat er bijna 1,2 miljoen. Vijf jaar daarvoor waren het er nog ruim 270.000.
De RVO registreert de cijfers sinds 2019. Sindsdien kwamen er jaarlijks gemiddeld bijna 35.000 publieke laadpunten bij. De overheid wil milieuvriendelijker rijden stimuleren. Eigenaren van een elektrische auto krijgen tot 2030, wanneer alle nieuwe personenauto's die op de markt komen elektrisch moeten zijn, meerdere belastingvoordelen, waaronder korting op de aanschaf- en wegenbelasting.