An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: As the trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI ended its second week, the Tesla CEO started scoring points against Sam Altman. His witnesses landed three solid punches in testimony about how Altman runs OpenAI as CEO, raising concerns about his dedication to AI safety, the nonprofit's mission, and his honesty as a leader of the organization. [...] This week, Musk's legal team called a parade of witnesses who questioned whether Altman was acting in the interest of the nonprofit. On Thursday, that included a former OpenAI safety researcher, who described a slow erosion of the company's safety teams, which prompted her to leave the company. Witnesses also shared stories about the company launching products without the proper safety reviews -- or the knowledge of the board. Rosie Campbell, a former AI safety researcher at OpenAI, testified that the company became more product-focused during her time there and moved away from the long-term safety work that had initially drawn her in. She said both long-term AI safety teams were eventually eliminated, and that she supported Altman's reinstatement only because she feared OpenAI might otherwise collapse into Microsoft: "It was my understanding at the time that the best way for OpenAI to not disintegrate and fall about would be for Sam to return." Still, Campbell's testimony wasn't entirely favorable to Musk. She also said xAI, Musk's AI company, likely had an inferior approach to safety than OpenAI.

Helen Toner, another former OpenAI board member, also testified about the board's concerns leading up to Altman's removal. She said the board was not primarily worried about ChatGPT's safety, but about Altman's leadership and investor relationships, saying, "The issues that we were concerned about in our decision to fire Sam were exacerbated by relationships with investors." Toner also described concerns that Altman was misrepresenting what others had said, telling the court, "We were concerned that Sam was inserting words into other people's mouths in order to get people to do what he wanted."

Meanwhile, Tasha McCauley, a former OpenAI board member, described a deep loss of trust in Altman and accused him of creating "chaos" and "crisis" inside the company. She said Altman fostered a "culture of lying and culture of deceit," including allegedly misleading others about whether GPT-4 Turbo needed internal safety review before launch.

Musk's lawyers then called to the stand David Schizer, a Columbia Law professor and nonprofit-governance expert, who framed Altman's alleged behavior as a serious governance problem for an organization that was supposed to be mission-driven. Asked about claims that products were launched without full board awareness or safety review, he said, "The board and CEO need to be partnering, working together, to make sure the mission is being followed," adding that "if the CEO is withholding that information, it's a big problem."

The day ended with the start of a Microsoft executive's deposition. Microsoft VP Michael Wetter said Azure had integrated OpenAI technology, that Microsoft saw strategic value in having AI developers build on Azure, and that a 2016 agreement allowed OpenAI to use Microsoft tools for free even though it could mean a loss of up to $15 million for Microsoft. Testimony ended early, with no court on Friday and the trial set to resume Monday.

Recap:

Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LONDEN (ANP) - Bij de donderdag gehouden gemeenteraadsverkiezingen in het Verenigd Koninkrijk lijkt Labour, de partij van premier Keir Starmer, op een groot verlies af te stevenen. Winst is er, zoals verwacht, voor Reform UK, de anti-immigratiepartij van Nigel Farage.

Rond 05.00 uur lokale Britse tijd waren de resultaten bekend van 21 van de totaal 136 lokale volksvertegenwoordigingen. Op dat moment had Labour 186 zetels verloren en Reform UK er 255 gewonnen. In totaal zijn er zo'n 5000 zetels te verdelen. Het merendeel van de uitslagen komt in de loop van vrijdag.

Bij de verkiezingen werd gestemd voor lokale overheden in Engeland en in Wales en Schotland vonden parlementsverkiezingen plaats. Er werd al rekening gehouden met een flink verlies voor Labour. Mogelijk wacht Starmers partij een recordverlies.

De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump meldt op Truth Social dat "drie Amerikaanse torpedobootjagers van wereldklasse zojuist, onder vuur, zeer succesvol de Straat van Hormuz zijn uitgevaren".

Dat is volgens hem gebeurd nadat de "Iraanse aanvallers volledig werden vernietigd". De torpedobootjagers liepen daarbij geen schade op. Het bericht volgt op wederzijdse aanvallen tussen de VS en Iran, ondanks het staakt-het-vuren. De Iraanse staatstelevisie zei later "dat de situatie op de Iraanse eilanden en kustplaatsen aan de Straat van Hormuz weer normaal was."

"Een normaal land zou deze torpedobootjagers hebben laten passeren, maar Iran is geen normaal land. Ze worden geleid door waanzinnigen en als ze de kans kregen om een kernwapen te gebruiken, zouden ze dat zonder aarzeling doen. Maar die kans zullen ze nooit krijgen. En net zoals we ze vandaag weer hebben uitgeschakeld, zullen we ze in de toekomst nog veel harder en veel gewelddadiger uitschakelen als ze hun deal niet SNEL tekenen!", aldus Trump.

Onderhandelingen

Volgens hem is het staakt-het-vuren met Iran nog steeds van kracht. Dat zei hij tegen een verslaggever van ABC News, die dat op X meldt. Trump noemt de vergeldingsaanvallen slechts 'een lieve klap'.

Later vertelde Trump aan verslaggevers dat de VS aan het onderhandelen zijn met Iran. Pakistan zou hem gevraagd hebben om Project Freedom niet uit te voeren gedurende de onderhandelingen met Iran. Die missie is bedoeld om commerciële schepen weer door de Straat van Hormuz te laten varen.

Volgens Amerikaanse media op donderdag heeft Trump dit project tijdelijk stopgezet na druk van Saudi-Arabië en Koeweit. De Golfstaten zouden geen toestemming hebben gegeven om hun vliegbases en luchtruim hiervoor te gebruiken.

Reform runaway winners in north-east, likely pushing Labour into opposition in Hartlepool, with other losses for Starmer in Chorley, Wigan, Redditch and Tamworth

• Election 2026 live: latest news updates

• Full results from England, Scotland and Wales

The scale of the electoral challenge facing Labour was laid bare overnight as the party haemorrhaged councillors at the local elections and Reform made significant gains.

Keir Starmer’s party went into Thursday’s local elections expected to lose up to 1,850 councillors, with senior figures describing the contest as “tough”.

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Their microtonal rock has been a huge viral hit – but are they really 333-year-old aliens inspired by Borneo monkeys? The Quebecois duo tell all

Recently, Angine de Poitrine had to get new heads. The alien-looking rock duo were not in fact born with the monochrome polka-dotted complexions and extruded faces that millions of listeners have obsessed over since they went viral this spring. Guitarist Khn has a long, twangable nose and double-necked guitar/bass; drummer Klek’s dangly proboscis bounces along to his stone-cold playing. Both are apparently 333-year-old time travellers primarily inspired by a solemn musical quartet of monkeys from Borneo. Over months of hard gigging, their handmade papier-mache masks had gone soggy from the musicians’ laboured breathing. “When I looked at mine, I was like: Jesus Christ, did I really play that much with this?” says Klek. “It was falling apart. It was like putting a Christmas box outside when it’s raining.”

But when the masks disintegrated, it was important that their more robust replacements still looked lived-in. “People have fallen in love with the band as it’s always been,” says Khn. “So we’re not gonna change everything [because] we have a bigger budget now. We’re emotionally attached to our old beaten-up costumes that have been in car accidents and are full of snot. We think people love the fact that you can feel they have lived.”

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Some people wear elaborate clothes and spin their sabers like in the movies, but if you fight theatrically you’ll lose

I grew up in the suburbs around Paris and started fencing when I was five. I kept it up until I was about 22, but then began looking for something else. I started running marathons instead. The good thing about running is that you can go whenever you want – but that also means you can put it off all the time. I wanted a sport that had more structure.

I considered options like the canne de combat, a martial art in which people fight each other with a wooden cane. But then I listened to a podcast that mentioned plans to create a fighting sport using lightsabers. I thought: I’m a geek. I like Star Wars. I’ve done fencing. Let’s try it.

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A booming tech sector has disrupted translation jobs in publishing – but they could be needed for a while longer yet

In February 2022, while he was plugging away at rendering the US writer Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward into French, the literary translator Yoann Gentric decided he needed a bit of light relief. He would test whether AI could put him out of work.

Gentric had been grappling with a short non-verbal sentence that described the book’s protagonist’s feelings upon opening a window: “Bright, sharp night air, bracing.” He put the prompt into DeepL, a neural-network-powered machine translation engine that regularly outperforms Google Translate in accuracy assessments.

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He has been besieged by birds, had 120m crabs try to crawl up his trouser leg and stayed cool beside an erupting Icelandic volcano. As David Attenborough turns 100, we celebrate his most extraordinary adventures

Today, David Attenborough turns 100. He is, without question, Britain’s greatest national treasure; a man who has devoted his career to helping the public engage with the natural world. But his story is also the story of television. Attenborough joined the BBC just as television ownership hit its biggest period of growth, then went on to shape the medium, both on and off camera, over the next decades. He is as important a figure in television as you will ever find, and here are his wildest moments.

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Kawsar Ahmad, 53, and Zeinab Ahmad, 31, set to apply for bail in Melbourne as Janai Safar, 32, due to face Sydney court on separate charges including joining a terrorist organisation

Two Australian women charged with committing crimes against humanity including slavery offences during the rule of Islamic State in Syria have faced a Melbourne court.

Kawsar Ahmad, 53, also known as Abbas, and her daughter Zeinab Ahmad, 31, were arrested by officers from the Victorian joint counter-terrorism team at Melbourne airport on Thursday.

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Seven days ago, the US-Iran ceasefire was holding but negotiations seemed stalled, or inching forward at best. Then, Donald Trump and the US launched Project Freedom

It has been a week of dizzying, whiplash news in the Iran war.

Seven days ago, the US-Iran ceasefire was holding but negotiations seemed stalled, or inching forward at best. With the strait of Hormuz effectively choked off by Iran, and the US Navy blockading Iranian ports, there was talk of a one-page memorandum being passed between Washington and Tehran to break the stalemate.

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De radicaal-rechtse partij van Nigel Farage staat op een grote voorsprong in de eerste resultaten van de lokale verkiezingen. De definitieve uitslag volgt pas in de loop van vrijdagmiddag.

De eigenzinnige Anna Weber-van Bosse werd in de 19de eeuw gegrepen door de natuur. Als een van de eerste vrouwen studeerde ze aan de universiteit. Later ging ze met haar man wereldwijd op onderzoek uit.

Trump schiet alle kanten op op zoek naar een uitvlucht uit zijn Iran-oorlog. Maar de president bewees deze week ook dat hij zijn ontevreden partij nog altijd volledig in de hand heeft.

De dag begint met veel hoge bewolking, maar er zijn in de ochtend al zonnige perioden. Vanmiddag wisselt de zon vooral af met wat stapelwolken. Soms is het dus bewolkt, maar de zon is er ook vaak bij. Het wordt vanmiddag 17 tot 19 graden.

tintinetmilou has added a photo to the pool:

Yodobashi camera

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