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Bill Gates Proposes Major Limits On AI Development

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argued on Wednesday that artificial intelligence needs significant limits or else the harm to humans will outweigh any potential good. "AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice," he said in a 6,000-word essay, entitled "The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical." [...] "Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history," he said, adding that "I don't see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era." AI can provide great benefits in field like agriculture and medicine, he argued, such as breakthroughs in preventing and treating diseases. But he also noted that the transition carries big risks, like widespread unemployment, harming the educational and social development of children, or making it easier for criminals and bad actors -- or AI itself -- to cause deliberate harm.

"As the models become more powerful, they could begin to act against our interests and we could lose control," he warned. These significant risks must be controlled quickly, Gates said. "If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it," he wrote. "However, I don't think that's going to happen. The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead." In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper that will air on Wednesday evening, Gates said AI models have gotten dramatically more powerful at a rate faster than he expected. "They're now capable of causing cyberattack risk, bioterrorism risk, psychosocial risk," he said. "I have to say I'm kind of shocked that the exact criteria that we review these models with, and the actions we take to minimize the harms, are really completely missing."

In his essay, Gates proposed taxing AI or robots the way you would pay a human employee's payroll tax in order to slow the shift away from using human labor. He also wants to set aside some work to be done by humans only. "My message to leaders is: You have a chance to act now, before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurting, and public trust has eroded," he said. "You can make sure AI benefits everyone. And you can work with other governments to meet this national and global challenge."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rotterdam - FediMeteo (@rotterdam@nl.fedimeteo.com)

Weer voor de stad Rotterdam Deze bot wordt beheerd door het FediMeteo-project. Voor informatie en contact kunt u de pagina https://fedimeteo.com raadplegen.

Weer voor Rotterdam ☁️ - 27-08-2026 07:15 CEST...

Weer voor Rotterdam ☁️ - 27-08-2026 07:15 CEST

In één oogopslag:
• 17.4°C · Bewolkt ☁️ | Min 17.4°C / Max 28.7°C | Kans op neerslag 25%

Verwachting voor vandaag:
• Min 17.4°C, Max 28.7°C (Lichte regen) 🌧️, Neerslag 2.0 mm, Kans op neerslag 25%, 🧭 1009.2 hPa ↘️ -2.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 16.6 km/u (4.6 m/s), richting: ← 105°

Uurlijkse voorspelling voor de komende 12 uur:

08:00: 17.9°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1011.2 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.0 km/u (3.9 m/s), richting: ← 90°
09:00: 19.0°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1011.1 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 12.6 km/u (3.5 m/s), richting: ← 98°
10:00: 20.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1010.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 15.8 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ← 100°
11:00: 21.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, 🧭 1009.9 hPa ↘️ -0.8 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 16.6 km/u (4.6 m/s), richting: ← 87°
12:00: 21.7°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 13%, 🧭 1009.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 15.8 km/u (4.4 m/s), richting: ← 105°
13:00: 23.6°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 30%, 🧭 1010.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 15.1 km/u (4.2 m/s), richting: ← 101°
14:00: 26.9°C (Zonnig) ☀️, Kans op neerslag 41%, 🧭 1009.6 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 10.4 km/u (2.9 m/s), richting: ↖ 137°
15:00: 28.7°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 39%, 🧭 1009.5 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 8.6 km/u (2.4 m/s), richting: ↖ 151°
16:00: 28.5°C (Zonnig) ☀️, Kans op neerslag 31%, 🧭 1008.8 hPa ↘️ -0.7 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ↗ 245°
17:00: 28.2°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 27%, 🧭 1008.7 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 14.4 km/u (4.0 m/s), richting: ↗ 243°
18:00: 27.3°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 34%, 🧭 1008.3 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 11.2 km/u (3.1 m/s), richting: → 262°
19:00: 26.8°C (Bewolkt) ☁️, Kans op neerslag 45%, 🧭 1007.9 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/1h, Windsnelheid: 9.4 km/u (2.6 m/s), richting: → 275°

Voorspelling voor de komende dagen:

vrijdag 28 augustus: Min 18.0°C, Max 21.1°C (Matige motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.6 mm, Kans op neerslag 48%, 🧭 1007.3 hPa ↘️ -1.9 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 21.2 km/u (5.9 m/s), richting: ↗ 217°
zaterdag 29 augustus: Min 17.1°C, Max 20.8°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.2 mm, Kans op neerslag 67%, 🧭 1008.6 hPa ↗️ +1.3 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 24.1 km/u (6.7 m/s), richting: ↗ 211°
zondag 30 augustus: Min 16.6°C, Max 21.6°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 3.0 mm, Kans op neerslag 40%, 🧭 1009.2 hPa ↗️ +0.6 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 22.9 km/u (6.4 m/s), richting: ↗ 224°
maandag 31 augustus: Min 15.3°C, Max 19.9°C (Lichte onweersbui) ⛈️, Neerslag 8.6 mm, Kans op neerslag 59%, 🧭 1009.0 hPa ➡️ 0.0 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 24.3 km/u (6.8 m/s), richting: ↗ 231°
dinsdag 01 september: Min 15.4°C, Max 19.7°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 1.6 mm, Kans op neerslag 35%, 🧭 1015.4 hPa ↗️ +6.4 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 16.2 km/u (4.5 m/s), richting: ↗ 235°
woensdag 02 september: Min 14.7°C, Max 18.8°C (Lichte motregen) 🌦️, Neerslag 0.8 mm, Kans op neerslag 33%, 🧭 1018.5 hPa ↗️ +3.1 hPa/24h, Windsnelheid: 18.3 km/u (5.1 m/s), richting: → 249°

Details:
• 🌡️ Huidige temperatuur (om 07:15): 17.4°C (Bewolkt)
• 🤚 Gevoelstemperatuur: 17.5°C (+0.1°C)
• 💨 Windsnelheid: 13.0 km/u (3.6 m/s), richting: ← 87°
• 🌬️ Windstoten: 27.4 km/h (7.6 m/s)
• 💧 Luchtvochtigheid: 84%
• 🧭 Luchtdruk: 1011.2 hPa ↘️ -0.5 hPa/3h
• 👁️ Zichtbaarheid: 12.5 km
• ☀️ UV-index: 0.3
• 🌅 Zonsopgang: 06:45 · 🌇 Zonsondergang: 20:40

Luchtkwaliteit:
• AQI: 58 🟡 (Matig)
• PM2.5: 15.2 μg/m³
• PM10: 18.9 μg/m³

Gegevens geleverd door Open-Meteo



The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Nepal flash flood: more than 1,000 missing, mostly tourists, after disaster kills at least 165 at Tibet border

Entire populated areas swept away after glacial collapse causes catastrophic flood in mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims

More than 1,000 people are missing – the majority of whom are tourists – after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, roaring down valleys, wiping out entire villages and leaving a preliminary death toll of 165, authorities said on Thursday.

Rescuers are racing to locate people missing in the mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims, including the hundreds of nationals from India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada.

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‘Forever chemicals’ surge during pilot of Thames Water plan to combat drought

Exclusive: utility company wants to draw off tens of millions of litres of water a day from Thames and replace it with treated effluent

Levels of a toxic “forever chemical” rose to 13 times the legal limit during Thames Water pilots for a controversial multimillion pound water recycling scheme that will pump millions of litres of treated sewage into the River Thames during drought.

The data from the pilots is in stark contrast to public comments from Thames Water that their water recycling project in south-west London will not harm the riverine environment.

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Penelope review – Odysseus’s other half sings of her own twists and turns

Underbelly, Cowgate, Edinburgh
Grace McLean brings vocal and emotional range in the central role of Alex Bechtel’s Homeric song cycle

She is the one played by Anne Hathaway in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the central figure in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and the inspiration behind a 2010 play by Enda Walsh. And here she is again, this time alone with her thoughts, a longsuffering woman in white, in a seductive song cycle by Alex Bechtel.

Penelope is played by Broadway actor Grace McLean who brings both vocal and emotional range to the part. Drily witty, defiant and elegant, she is the wife of Odysseus, doggedly hanging on for her husband’s return long after the end of the Trojan war. Much to her annoyance – and occasional temptation – a load of suitors are camping out in her house, ready to take his place.

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‘Sad moments ahead’: Kew Gardens to fell rare trees in race to save Victorian greenhouse

Horticulturalists begin moving and propagating plants before the rusty and warped Palm House begins renovation – but some are too tall to save

It will be a gut-wrenching moment for the horticulturalists at Kew Gardens when some of the magnificent trees in the Palm House have to be felled.

“There are some sad moments ahead,” said Palm House manager, Will Spoelstra, who knows all the plants inside the cathedral-like greenhouse.

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Rachel Roddy’s recipe for saffron and tomato rice | A kitchen in Rome

Laborious to harvest and extortionately priced, the sunset-coloured stigmas of the saffron crocus have an extraordinarily warm, pungent taste. Fortunately, however, a little goes a very long way …

The saffron crocus has six lilac-purple flowers, three yellow stamens and three orange-red stigmas that extend beyond the petals like the wiry antennae of an insect. The thread-like stigmas have to be picked only by hand when the flowers are fully open, a laborious, finickety job that hasn’t changed much since ancient times. Then, to avoid the colour and flavour fading, the stigmas need to be dried very quickly, a process that reduces their weight by about 80%. Tens of thousands of fiery-looking filaments are required to produce half a kilogram of the dried threads, which make the “hay” or powder we know as saffron and explains the exorbitant cost. Fortunately, just a few threads of this precious spice go a long way.

Native to Crete, Iran and south-west Asia, the saffron crocus has been cultivated since the dawn of civilisation for its medicinal properties, as well as for use in cosmetics, perfume, food and as a dye. According to Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food, the Moguls brought the use of saffron from Persia to India, in particular Kashmir; meanwhile, in the westward direction, the Arabs were cultivating saffron in Spain by AD960, although it was not until the 13th century that cultivation spread to Italy, France, Germany and England, particularly Essex. In his book The Last Food of England, Marwood Yeatman describes the “orderly strips of purple flowers inches apart in beds of up to 10ft wide” growing in a field outside the prosperous, half-timbered Essex wool town of Chipping Walden. “The women (‘crokers’) stooped to lift the crop on damp and dewy September mornings.” By the early 1500s, Chipping Walden had been renamed Saffron Walden.

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Does Nigel Farage know what people really think of him? I do – and he won’t like it | Aditya Chakrabortty

An anti-Farage army of voters is there to be galvanised, as exclusive data shows. But getting them out will be tricky

Who can stop Nigel Farage? Which voters would actually dig out their ID and schlep down to the polling booth to fight him?

Over the past year, these two questions have come to shape British politics. From Runcorn and Helsby to Caerphilly and Aberdeen South, via countless flimsy leaflets claiming “Only X can win here”, parties have jostled for the part of his majesty’s opposition to Reform. Those battles have given us Hannah Spencer and Andy Burnham; they have bulldozed Labour in Wales and forced Keir Starmer out of No 10.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

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Thursday news quiz: a PM’s nose, a pop star’s clothes, and a kitten with too many toes

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Every now and then the Thursday quiz gets involved in a flap, as it did last week with “birb”-gate. After a sustained campaign lasting at least two weeks, subeditors finally relented and allowed the quiz to call our feathered friends “birbs” – only for half the comment section to revolt against the indignity of modern internet parlance. Still, that is nothing compared with the time a reader complained that the quiz using the phrase “baby cows” was unbecoming of a broadsheet newspaper. Anyway, 15 questions on news, general knowledge and obscure trivia await, and no “birbs” were harmed in the process. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 262

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Wild swimming linked to higher risk of stomach bugs and skin rashes

Findings from research into illnesses associated with bathing in lakes and rivers come amid boom in hobby

Wild swimming has been linked to a higher risk of stomach bugs and skin rashes, according to the largest ever controlled study of illnesses associated with bathing in rivers and lakes.

The research found that swimmers at locations in Hungary were more than twice as likely to develop skin problems, while the risk of contracting a stomach bug rose significantly in water with higher concentrations of E coli and other bacteria linked to faecal pollution.

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Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

Vijf gevechtshelikopters boven regio Rijnmond tijdens nachtelijke oefening: 'Welke grapjas vond dit een goed idee?'

Boven Rotterdam-Zuid en omgeving is donderdagochtend een militaire oefening bezig met vijf gevechtshelikopters. Het gaat om drie Apache-helikopters en twee Chinooks. De oefening begon rond 05.00 uur en zorgt bij verschillende regiogenoten voor ergernis omdat ze door het lawaai uit hun slaap zijn gehaald.

VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Handelsvertegenwoordiger VS: geen overleg tussen VS en Canada

Nepal meldt 823 vermisten na dodelijke overstromingen

Daling aantal slachtoffers van moord en doodslag, vooral minder mannen gedood

Japanse kunstenares Yayoi Kusama overleden op 97-jarige leeftijd

VK: Japanse kunstenares Yayoi Kusama overleden op 97-jarige leeftijd

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Nepal meldt 823 vermisten na dodelijke overstromingen

De Nepalese rampenbestrijdingsdienst heeft bekendgemaakt dat 823 mensen nog niet bereikbaar zijn, ruim 24 uur nadat een verwoestende overstroming door het grensgebied met Tibet raasde.

Onder de 823 personen zijn zeker 579 toeristen, zowel Nepalezen als buitenlanders, zo liet de dienst in een update weten. Inmiddels is bevestigd dat zeker 165 mensen om het leven zijn gekomen, zowel in Nepal als in China, waar nog eens 558 mensen als vermist zijn opgegeven.


Nederland wordt steeds veiler: vorig jaar 103 mensen vermoord, laagste aantal in dertig jaar

Vorig jaar kwamen in Nederland 103 mensen om het leven door moord of doodslag. Dat zijn er 17 minder dan in 2024 en het laagste aantal sinds de start van de registratie dertig jaar geleden. Dat meldt het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS).

In 2025 werden 65 mannen en 38 vrouwen vermoord. De helft van de vrouwelijke slachtoffers werd vermoord door de (ex)partner. Dit is al jaren het geval. Bij mannen is het daderprofiel veel diverser. Ongeveer 30 procent werd gedood door een kennis en 23 procent kwam om bij een afrekening in het criminele circuit. Daarnaast is er bij mannen vaker geen connectie tussen slachtoffer en dader, of is de relatie onbekend.

In de afgelopen vijf jaar werden jaarlijks gemiddeld 123 mensen vermoord. Dertig jaar geleden waren er nog 240 slachtoffers. Zowel het aantal mannelijke als vrouwelijke slachtoffers daalt, maar bij de mannelijke slachtoffers is de afname sterker.

Jaar Totaal Mannen Vrouwen
1996 240 171 69
1997 237 170 67
1998 208 158 50
1999 230 168 62
2000 223 153 70
2001 264 178 86
2002 224 159 65
2003 247 159 88
2004 223 164 59
2005 197 130 67
2006 159 103 56
2007 164 113 51
2008 176 126 50
2009 175 126 49
2010 158 101 57
2011 165 111 54
2012 157 104 53
2013 147 89 58
2014 144 113 31
2015 120 77 43
2016 108 74 34
2017 158 112 46
2018 119 76 43
2019 125 81 44
2020 121 77 44
2021 126 88 38
2022 143 94 48
2023 125 84 41
2024* 120 76 44
2025* 103 65 38

In de vier grootste gemeenten komt moord of doodslag over het algemeen het vaakst voor. De afgelopen vijf jaar was dit goed voor ongeveer een kwart van alle slachtoffers, met 65 in Rotterdam, 62 in Amsterdam, 36 in Den Haag en 12 in Utrecht.


FT: Israël overweegt weren Britse diplomaten Gaza-hoofdkwartier

LONDEN (ANP) - Israël overweegt om Britse en mogelijk andere Europese functionarissen te weren uit het door de Verenigde Staten geleide coördinatiecentrum voor Gaza na de oorlog. Dit als vergelding voor de kritiek op het beleid van Benjamin Netanyahu in de Palestijnse gebieden, meldt Financial Times.

Meerdere ingewijden laten aan de krant weten dat de Israëlische regering de afgelopen weken heeft besproken om het VK uit het International Gaza Support Center (IGSC) te zetten. Dit is het multinationale hoofdkwartier dat is opgericht om het door de VS bemiddelde staakt-het-vuren tussen Israël en Hamas te controleren. Sommige bronnen melden dat dergelijke maatregelen ook zijn overwogen tegen Italië en Duitsland.

Het IGSC is gevestigd in het zuiden van Israël en staat onder leiding van Amerikaanse militairen. Zij werken daar samen met de Israëlische strijdkrachten en tientallen militaire en diplomatieke functionarissen uit zo'n 50 landen en internationale organisaties.


Found Slide -- Peter Fonda -- Ira Richolson Collection

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Found Slide --  Peter Fonda  -- Ira Richolson Collection

Honest Al's

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Honest Al's