Google is giving its iconic search box its first major redesign since 2001. The new design incorporates, you guessed it, artificial intelligence, "getting bigger and more interactive so that people can ask even longer questions and upload photographs and videos into queries," reports the New York Times. "In addition, people can ask follow-up questions with a chatbot on Google's main search page." From the report: The company will also offer digital assistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone who may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site like Zillow. The search features will be powered by a new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google said the model had improved on creating software code and performing autonomous tasks, worked faster and was less expensive to run than comparable models.

[...] Google is also bringing one of A.I.'s biggest breakthroughs -- software coding -- to search. When people research complex topics like astrophysics, Gemini can build interactive graphics and simulations behind the scenes to provide a deeper answer than its previous listing of websites. Google said it was introducing an alternative to the agents powered by Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Called Gemini Spark, the service is embedded in Gmail, Docs and other Google products, where it can turn meeting notes spread across emails and chats into a single document. It can also read and draft emails. "The open web is on its way out," says Richard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research. "With A.I., Google is reducing everyone to raw data providers."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inside Climate News: A proposed merger of the largest utility in the country by market value, NextEra Energy, with the sixth-largest, Dominion, would create a megacompany at a time when data centers and rapid increases in electricity demand are reshaping the industry. The proposal, announced Monday morning and contingent on state and federal regulatory approval, would result in a company that leads in nearly every aspect of the US power and utility industry, including overall electricity generation, natural gas generation, and renewables. The $67 billion deal combines NextEra's size and reach with Dominion's positioning as the local utility for the world's largest concentration of data centers in northern Virginia. But the results are likely bad for consumers and the environment, creating a company with enormous financial and political strength that will be difficult to effectively regulate, according to consumer advocates and analysts.

For perspective, only Exxon Mobil and Chevron would be larger based on market value among US-based energy companies. "Mergers are not about consumers; they're about shareholders," said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. "For the Dominion shareholders, they are selling their shares at a premium. The executives are getting massive payouts for facilitating this, assuming it all goes through, and obviously NextEra believes the transaction is going to add value to the company. Ratepayers are all an afterthought." The deal makes financial sense for both companies, said Andrew Bischof, an equity analyst for Morningstar. "We view the transaction as allowing NextEra to accelerate its data center ambitions, which had trailed those of its regulated peers, by using Dominion's expertise and relationships to expedite NextEra's data center hub plans," he said in a note to clients.

NextEra, based in Juno Beach, Florida, includes Florida Power & Light, the largest regulated electricity utility in the state, and NextEra Energy Resources, a wholesale electricity supplier that owns power plants across the nation. Dominion, based in Richmond, Virginia, includes regulated utilities serving much of Virginia, parts of North Carolina and South Carolina, and other assets across the country. The company would be called NextEra Energy, and NextEra CEO John W. Ketchum would serve in the same role after the deal closes. Robert M. Blue, Dominion's CEO, would be the CEO for regulated utilities for the merged company. The parties said they expect regulatory approvals to take 12 to 18 months. NextEra shareholders would own 74.5 percent and Dominion shareholders would own 25.5 percent, respectively, of the combined company in the all-stock transaction. "We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever -- not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies," Ketchum said in a statement.

Although the companies claim the deal would produce savings, including $2.25 billion in Dominion customer bill credits, former regulator Marissa Paslick Gillett said she was "flabbergasted by the tone deafness," arguing that major utility mergers rarely deliver the promised "synergies" and often create "a behemoth" that is harder to regulate.

Others warned that a larger NextEra could use its political power "to the disadvantage of ratepayers," while climate advocates said expanding methane gas plants to serve data centers would worsen pollution and leave vulnerable communities "at the short end of the stick."

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OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy has joined rival AI lab Anthropic. "The hire is a major coup for Anthropic in the high-stakes competition for elite AI talent -- and another sign the company is emerging as a magnet for some of the industry's most respected technical minds," reports Axios. From the report: Karpathy will start this week on Anthropic's pre-training team, which is responsible for the massive training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to Anthropic. Karpathy will help launch a new team focused on using Claude itself to accelerate pretraining research -- an increasingly important frontier as AI companies race to automate parts of AI development. "I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D," Karpathy said in a post on X.

Karpathy is a rare AI figure with credibility across research, industry and education. He was a founding member of OpenAI before serving as Tesla's director of AI, where he led the computer vision team behind Autopilot. Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding" and recently described himself as being in a "state of AI psychosis" since December -- embracing "tokenmaxxing" and aggressively stress-testing frontier models.

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The London-headquartered lender Standard Chartered announced plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs by 2030, with CEO Bill Winters saying the bank will replace some "lower-value human capital" through automation and AI while offering retraining to affected workers. "It's not cost-cutting. It's replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we're putting in," CEO Bill Winters told reporters. "So, the people that want to reskill, that want to carry on, we're giving every opportunity to reposition," Winters said. Reuters reports: The cuts, alongside higher shareholder return targets announced in a strategy update, come as StanChart is at the tail-end of a decade-long effort to transform itself from a potential takeover target to a steadily profitable lender. Its London-listed shares, which have risen 65% in the last 12 months, fell 0.5% in early trading, as analysts said the new targets were at the conservative end of their expectations.

"In a world full of uncertainty, performance may prove more challenging further out," said Ed Firth, analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, citing how the bank has benefited in recent years from high interest rates and huge wealth flows. StanChart's move to streamline operations and rein in costs comes as more global firms slash jobs by deploying AI to improve efficiency. Japanese lender Mizuho in March unveiled up to 5,000 job cuts over a decade. And banks globally are scrambling to integrate frontier AI models and fend off rising cyber threats.

The most affected roles will be in the bank's back-office centres, including those in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur and Warsaw, according to Winters. "Of course we're using AI along the way and AI will be a huge facilitator and enabler of that," he added, referring to its ongoing revamp to automate more of its core banking system. StanChart said it would deliver over 15% return on tangible equity in 2028, more than three percentage points higher than in 2025, and building to about 18% in 2030. Meta also announced plans to reassign 7,000 employees into AI-related initiatives, just ahead of layoffs expected to affect roughly 8,000 workers.

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DEN HAAG (ANP) - De pro-Palestijnse demonstranten die dinsdag zijn aangehouden in Den Haag in de buurt van de Tweede Kamer beklagen zich over de opstelling van de politie. De politie zou zich zonder duidelijke reden agressief hebben opgesteld en geweld hebben gebruikt.

Een van de aanwezigen was de vader van Jesse van Schaik, een van de door Israël opgepakte opvarenden van de Global Sumud Flotilla. "Ik ben echt verbijsterd door het optreden van de politie", zegt hij. Volgens hem wilden de demonstranten naar de agenten luisteren, maar kregen ze daar de kans niet voor en sloegen agenten op een gegeven moment met wapenstokken hard in op de demonstranten. Hij overweegt stappen te nemen tegen de politie.

Ook een woordvoerder van Global Sumud Flotilla Nederland laat weten dat sommige aanwezigen slechts één vordering hadden gehoord voordat ze werden aangehouden. "Vervolgens ging de politie op dreigende wijze om de demonstranten heen staan en dwong ze hen met geweld zich weg te bewegen richting de steeg die naar de Tweede Kamer toe leidt. Hierbij werd geweld toegepast door middel van wapenstokken." Ook waren er volgens haar demonstranten die pas later aankwamen zonder te weten dat de politie had gevorderd en die ook werden aangehouden.

De onaangekondigde demonstratie om aandacht te vragen voor de Flotilla begon rond 16.00 uur bij het Tweede Kamergebouw. Daar moesten ze al snel weg van de politie. Die geeft aan dat de demonstranten "meermaals" is gevraagd naar een demonstratievak te gaan en dat ze "ruim de kans hebben gehad" om daarheen te verplaatsen. Ruim zeventig mensen zijn vervolgens aangehouden.

Verder laat een politiewoordvoerster weten dat de balans nog precies wordt opgemaakt over het verloop van het politieoptreden. Ze kan daarom niet op elk detail reageren.

OSTRAVA (ANP) - Femke Broeders-Bol komt al uit op de 800 meter op de Gouden Spike in het Tsjechische Ostrava op 16 juni. Dat is vijf dagen voor haar race op de FBK Games in Hengelo, zo maakte de organisatie van de atletiekmeeting in Tsjechië bekend.

Broeders-Bol maakte na jaren van successen op de 400 meter horden en 400 meter deze winter de overstap naar de 800 meter. Ze liep in februari in Metz bij haar eerste optreden een Nederlands indoorrecord van 1.59,07. Een voetblessure noopte de Amersfoortse vervolgens tot een rustperiode.

De 800 meter in Ostrava wordt haar eerste outdoorwedstrijd, kondigt de Gouden Spike aan.

Interview with the guy behind the great Art But Make It Sports social accounts. “When he sees a sports photograph, he can recall, off the top of his head, a pose, or a style, or even just a figure or a form, from a painting or a sculpture.”

The Banality of the Video Podcast. “The sets, installed with plentiful mics awaiting speech, are authoritative and yet unintimidating, like a friend’s renovated suburban basement.”

Bankai

David de Groot has added a photo to the pool:

A sculpture in Mayfield Garden, Oberon NSW. Behind me, up on the hill, is the owner's residence, so they could look down on this scene from there.

Hundreds of firefighters continue to battle the wind-driven fire in the Simi Valley area as at least one home is destroyed

More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.

The wind-driven Sandy fire was reported on Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48km) north-west of Los Angeles.

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Research appears to challenge previous studies but some experts call aspects of it ‘misguided’

People who are the least fit need to do 30-50 minutes more exercise a week than the fittest to get the same reduction in cardiovascular risk, according to research.

Researchers examined data from more than 17,000 British adults taking part in the UK Biobank study. They completed a cycle test to measure their baseline cardiorespiratory fitness (estimated VO₂ max) and wore a fitness tracker for a week to record typical exercise levels.

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The firearms the shooters, aged 17 and 18, used in the fatal rampage were registered to one of their parents

The two teenage assailants responsible for a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, rushed toward the mosque “fully armored” with handguns and rifles, authorities said.

A security guard shot and struck one of the shooters, according to members of the mosque – but the attacker continued charging. The guard also alerted administrators of the school at the Islamic Center, telling them to go into lockdown, before he was shot and killed. “If it was not for him … The carnage would be much worse,” said imam Taha Hassane. “He sacrificed his life.”

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⚽ Gunners win fourth Premier League title after City held
⚽ Bournemouth 1-1 Man City | Table | Follow us on Bluesky

We’ll keep the focus here on Arsenal’s title win – so Gunners fans, drop me a line here wherever you are. I have to give a shoutout to my friends from uni, Andy and James. We watched the Invicibles’ parade on a beaten-up telly at our student digs in Cardiff, and it’s been a long, long wait for them to celebrate again. Congratulations, chaps.

Pep Guardiola has offered his congratulations to Arsenal and Arteta, his former assistant at Manchester City. “We were close. On behalf of everyone at Manchester City, we congratulate Mikel and all the staff, players and fans on winning the Premier League. They deserve it, for so much hard work and effort.

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De twee verdachten van de dodelijke aanslag bij een moskee in San Diego zouden online zijn geradicaliseerd. Ze publiceerden teksten met haatdragende retoriek, onder meer jegens moslims en Joden.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo at the “Shinsaibashi-suji Shopping Street ” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting Osaka, Japan. Located just north of the Dotonbori Bridge, this nearly mile-long, roofed arcade is Osaka's oldest and busiest shopping street. It features a mix of international brands, local boutiques, and cafes…

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of the “Dotonbori River Shopping Area” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting Osaka, Japan. The Dotonbori River area is Osaka’s premier entertainment and culinary hub. While famous for its street food and neon signs, it connects directly to massive, covered shopping arcades…It is lively and comes alive at night…