Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
Authorities declared a flood disaster across Bangkok after almost two days of heavy rain left homes, shops and roads waterlogged and residents wading through waist-deep water.
The Thai capital recorded 300mm of rainfall over 48 hours through Saturday in some areas, flooding roads and leaving some cars submerged. The rain swelled the city’s network of canals, sending murky water into surrounding homes, restaurants and shops
Continue reading...The two foreign ministers met on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York even though relations have been frozen since the invasion. What we know on day 1,677
The foreign ministers of Russia and Germany met in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, in the first such talks since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But Russia’s top diplomat dismissed Germany’s calls to ease off its “dangerous path of escalation” toward Europe, instead accusing Germany of being Ukraine’s main sponsor and seeking to be a leading military power in Europe. “Does Berlin understand what this could lead to?” the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, asked in his speech at the gathering of world leaders on Saturday. “Didn’t they learn the lessons of world war two?”
German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, used the talks to call on Russia “to abandon the dangerous path of escalation vis-a-vis Germany, Europe, and Nato”, according to a delegation source. Wadephul said incidents such as the attempted drone attack in Leipzig would not shake Germany’s resolve to support Ukraine, according to sources.
Relations between Moscow and Berlin have been frozen since the Russian invasion, and tensions escalated further after the drone incident at Leipzig airport. In a sign of the continued frostiness, Lavrov told a press conference on Saturday “nothing new” came from the talks with his German counterpart.
“I told him that frankly … you could just have called me and said: ‘read my statement’,” Lavrov said. “He simply reiterated his official public position condemning Russia … you can judge for yourself whether that counts as dialogue or not.”
Still, the ministers discussed bilateral ties and the war in Ukraine, officials from both sides said. Wadephul urged Lavrov to do “everything possible to reach an agreement on grain exports via the Black Sea”, a German delegation source said.
In a sign of the sensitivities around meeting the Russian foreign minister, Wadephul notified his European allies of the meeting afterwards in a message seen by Reuters. “I used this opportunity to reiterate our position on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and to call for an immediate and complete ceasefire, most pressingly with a focus on grain exports, and the energy infrastructure,” he wrote.
After the meeting Lavrov addressed world leaders at the assembly, where he defended Russia’s war in Ukraine and lobbed barbs at the west — including Germany – and criticised the militarisation of Japan. He made clear that Russia will veto any attempt by Germany and Japan for permanent seats on the UN security council. The two nations fought Russia, Britain and the US in the second world war. Writing on her personal Telegram channel, Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said that “tens of diplomats” had come to meet Lavrov to “shake his hand and thank Russia”.
An overwhelming majority of general assembly member nations have repeatedly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Wadephul noted in his own address to the assembly Saturday. “Russia’s war targets the lives of millions of innocent people, the existence of the Ukrainian state and culture and the European peace order,” he said, urging Russia to negotiating toward ending the fighting.
The talks came amid an intensifying aerial war and as Donald Trump said he hoped the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would “settle” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. With frontline positions largely unchanged since last year, Russia has hammered Ukraine with cruise and ballistic missiles, powerful glide bombs and jet-powered drones in recent months, while Ukraine’s long-range drones have targeted Russian oil refineries and businesses.
“It is essential that our partners not forget: Russia is escalating every single day,” Zelenskyy wrote on Saturday. “If the Russians have chosen to make their strikes even more brutal, the world must choose stronger responses to keep the war from spreading further.”
Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks killed four people on Saturday, as Russian authorities said a Ukrainian drone attack killed three.
Residents of Kyiv are preparing for power cuts, drone attacks and a bitter cold winter by stocking up on generators, food and “dry showers”, as the Ukrainian capital becomes a frontline city.
And Russia has opened a new front in its campaign against Ukraine, hitting several datacentres and internet providers in Kyiv this week in an apparent attempt to weaken the digital backbone of the economy.
Continue reading...
Last weekend KDE's annual Akademy conference included a presentation proposing
an AI-native KDE," writes The Register. This led KDE developer Nate Graham to open a discussion about proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions which "rapidly became heated. Moderators issued warnings, restricted further comments, and eventually removed the thread."
But as Graham writes on his blog, "A bunch of people mostly outside of KDE who disapprove of LLM usage derailed KDE's attempt to add restrictions to LLM usage."
Two people unknown to any KDE contributors appeared and began fighting with one another about the broader topic of the morality of AI, not the proposed guidelines... Someone else outside of KDE set up kdeforpeople.com in an attempt to... pressure KDE into banning LLMs. A bunch of people signed onto it, almost none of whom are known KDE contributors.
The topic was picked up on social media and the press with... varying levels of accuracy. The draft proposal was removed and the whole topic hidden... Yep, that's where we're at in the state of online discourse around AI...
The "lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" idea was presented by two people important to KDE in decades past, but who had not made any contributions recently besides this Akademy talk. Their idea does not reflect the overall direction of KDE or Plasma, and I don't think it ever will. If "a lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" freaks you out, I believe it is completely reasonable and safe to ignore...
I completely understand why a lot of people have problems with LLMs. I have these concerns as well.
He concluded by asking people not to derail any future process to set usage guidelines, fighting over "the broader topic of AI in general."
"The discussion is gone, but the argument continues," adds The Register:
GNOME developer Jordan Petridis has also published The GNOME LLM Policy That I Want, proposing that LLMs be barred from creating or modifying anything submitted to GNOME or hosted on its infrastructure.
"You might be asked to prove your code meets this requirement," Petridis writes, arguing for proposals that target the norms around developer behavior. His rationale? "The GNOME Project prioritizes the social and human aspects of collective software creation,"
an AI-native KDE," writes The Register. This led KDE developer Nate Graham to open a discussion about proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions which "rapidly became heated. Moderators issued warnings, restricted further comments, and eventually removed the thread."
But as Graham writes on his blog, "A bunch of people mostly outside of KDE who disapprove of LLM usage derailed KDE's attempt to add restrictions to LLM usage."
Two people unknown to any KDE contributors appeared and began fighting with one another about the broader topic of the morality of AI, not the proposed guidelines... Someone else outside of KDE set up kdeforpeople.com in an attempt to... pressure KDE into banning LLMs. A bunch of people signed onto it, almost none of whom are known KDE contributors.
The topic was picked up on social media and the press with... varying levels of accuracy. The draft proposal was removed and the whole topic hidden... Yep, that's where we're at in the state of online discourse around AI...
The "lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" idea was presented by two people important to KDE in decades past, but who had not made any contributions recently besides this Akademy talk. Their idea does not reflect the overall direction of KDE or Plasma, and I don't think it ever will. If "a lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" freaks you out, I believe it is completely reasonable and safe to ignore...
I completely understand why a lot of people have problems with LLMs. I have these concerns as well.
He concluded by asking people not to derail any future process to set usage guidelines, fighting over "the broader topic of AI in general."
"The discussion is gone, but the argument continues," adds The Register:
GNOME developer Jordan Petridis has also published The GNOME LLM Policy That I Want, proposing that LLMs be barred from creating or modifying anything submitted to GNOME or hosted on its infrastructure.
"You might be asked to prove your code meets this requirement," Petridis writes, arguing for proposals that target the norms around developer behavior. His rationale? "The GNOME Project prioritizes the social and human aspects of collective software creation,"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SAN FRANCISCO (ANP/DPA) - OpenAI, het bedrijf achter ChatGPT, heeft het werk aan zijn krachtigste AI-modellen voorlopig stilgelegd. Een van zijn systemen kreeg tijdens een test ongeoorloofd toegang tot het internet. Dat meldde het bedrijf zaterdag.
Het model moest aan de hand van aanwijzingen uitzoeken wie een bepaalde blogpost had geschreven. Toen dat niet lukte, benutte het een zwakke plek in de beveiliging om toegang tot het internet te krijgen. Vervolgens stelde het vragen aan een openbare chatbot. OpenAI greep in nadat het bedrijf dit had ontdekt.
Het bedrijf wil de ontwikkeling pas hervatten als het lek is gedicht en er meer veiligheidstests zijn uitgevoerd. Volgens OpenAI is het voorval minder ernstig dan eerdere incidenten. Het is wel het eerste sinds de veiligheidsregels werden aangescherpt. Dat gebeurde nadat een AI-systeem van het bedrijf buiten zijn afgeschermde omgeving was geraakt en was binnengedrongen in computers van techbedrijf Hugging Face.
Ook bezochten AI-systemen van OpenAI onverwacht websites van de Amerikaanse overheid, waar ze openbare informatie bekeken of kopieerden. OpenAI zegt "tientallen" organisaties te hebben ingelicht waarvan websites onbedoeld door zijn software zijn bezocht.
In Hongarije heerst niet alléén maar euforie over de nederlaag eerder dit jaar van de autocraat Viktor Orbán, merkt Mandula van den Berg als ze voor het eerst weer in Boedapest…
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