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BrianFagioli writes: Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Arm, Mastercard, Siemens, and other companies have joined the newly launched Appia Foundation under the Linux Foundation. The project aims to create common specifications and assessment frameworks that organizations can use to demonstrate AI systems meet emerging safety, trust, and compliance requirements. According to the Linux Foundation, the framework is designed to allow conformity evidence to be reused across the AI supply chain, potentially reducing duplicate assessments and compliance costs. The announcement comes as governments around the world move toward enforcing AI regulations and organizations face increasing pressure to prove AI systems are trustworthy. "As international standards and legal frameworks become more established, global organizations need a consistent, practical way to verify that AI systems conform to new expectations," said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. "The Appia Foundation establishes a neutrally governed environment where the entire industry can collaborate on a common assessment framework. By building this infrastructure in the open, we are helping organizations reduce complexity, lower operational costs and build trust."

Craig Shank, Executive Director of the Appia Foundation, added: "AI systems now make decisions about people's loans, their children's schools and their jobs. People on the receiving end deserve to know those systems were built and assessed against criteria that hold up to scrutiny. The Appia Foundation was formed to do that work: creating publicly available specifications that organizations across the AI value chain use to demonstrate their systems meet those criteria. By establishing this open framework, we are building the accountability layer required to scale safe and trusted AI across major industries."

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Anthropic employees say they remain confused and increasingly convinced that the Trump administration is singling out the company after officials gave it less than 90 minutes to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 over alleged national security concerns. Cybersecurity experts, however, argue that the cited behavior of helping to identify vulnerabilities in software is also available in rival models and is more valuable to defenders than attackers. The New York Times reports: Inside the company, employees' private group chats immediately lit up. Managers were instructed to prepare customers for a potential service disruption to the models, called Fable 5 and Mythos 5. But the messaging kept changing, with workers initially being told that the security problem was the ability of foreign companies to gain access to the systems, and later that a major vulnerability had been discovered in the models.

In employee chats, Anthropic engineers asked one another if the company's plan to go public this year would be harmed by the White House directive. Many shared news reports that offered conflicting information about why the White House had ordered Anthropic to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals. "What are you telling your clients?" one employee asked in a chat viewed by The New York Times. Another said, "Does anyone know what to believe?" In another message, a worker said, "I don't understand what the issue is."

Six days later, Anthropic's roughly 3,000 employees still have few answers. The San Francisco company is continuing to grapple with internal confusion as Dario Amodei, the chief executive, and some of his lieutenants meet with the Trump administration to try and resolve the situation. But after discussions on Monday and Tuesday, there was no breakthrough over ending the U.S. order to limit access to the company's new A.I. models. In a statement on Monday, Anthropic said it would continue meeting with government officials and pledged its "ongoing commitment to working alongside the administration."

The dispute highlights how singular Anthropic has become in Washington. It was the second time in six months that the fast-growing A.I. start-up has become embroiled in a fight with the Trump administration over its powerful technologies, even as other A.I. companies offer similar models that have not received the same attention. And it has left Anthropic's employees in what they described as a holding pattern, with some wondering if they were being picked on by President Trump. "Are we being bullied based on bad vibes?" one employee asked in a chat viewed by The Times. Yesterday, TechCrunch's Zack Whittaker argued that the move sets a troubling precedent: the government can unilaterally disrupt American software products without court approval, potentially undermining trust in U.S. AI providers.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Artificial Intelligence will lead to labour shortages, not the replacement of humans, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted in a highly optimistic appearance at the VivaTech technology conference in Paris on Wednesday. Bezos put forward a rosy vision of how technology will help humanity, speaking about projects including his space venture Blue Origin and his new AI startup Prometheus, which is aimed at speeding up physical manufacturing. "I know there's a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant and so on," Bezos said. "I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage."

Half of Americans fear the rise of AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found this month. Bezos, the world's fourth-richest person with a net worth around $250 billion, argued that people have "endless" things to do, and are currently limited by barriers that he said AI would lower. One goal of space exploration is to move polluting industries off Earth, said Bezos, whose Blue Origin aims to compete with trillionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX in rockets. "If space travel gets reliable enough and inexpensive enough, and we can get materials from asteroids and near-Earth objects and the moon, then this garden planet can be returned to its pre-Industrial Revolution state," Bezos said.

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Epic Games has released Lore, an MIT-licensed version control system written in Rust and designed specifically for "games and entertainment purposes with large file sizes," reports Phoronix. From the report: While there is Git LFS for large file storage with Git, Epic Games has crated Lore as a version control system designed entirely around the large file needs of modern game development as well as multimedia/entertainment purposes. Lore is designed to be fast and efficient for large files including binary files, and be easy-to-use including for 3D artists and more.

The Lore documentation elaborates more on its differences and motivation for development compared to Git: "No existing system was designed for the combination of constraints that large game and entertainment projects require: arbitrary content types, multi-axis scale, multi-tenant safety, and a fully open specification and license. [...] Lore is designed to combine what works in each (Git's content-addressed revision graph and centralized systems): a centralized server-of-record for durability, access control, and conflict resolution; content-addressed storage with fragment-level deduplication that is as effective on a multi-gigabyte binary as on a kilobyte of text; sparse, lazy working copies that materialize only what you need; free branching; and a fully open, publicly versioned specification and MIT license. Normal editing operations -- staging, committing, branching, diffing -- never require a network round trip." You can learn more at Lore.org. All the code is available on GitHub.

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ARNHEM (ANP) - Volgens het Gelderse provinciebestuur komen er definitief geen laagvliegroutes voor vakantievluchten vanaf Lelystad Airport over Gelderland. Die garantie is vanuit het Rijk aan de provincie gegeven, zegt gedeputeerde Klaas Ruitenberg (SGP). Ruitenberg kon op vragen van Statenleden nog niet zeggen of de overheid dezelfde definitie voor laagvliegen hanteert als de provincie. Hij zei toe dit snel te gaan uitzoeken.

Volgens Ruitenberg is laagvliegen boven Gelderland onlangs geschrapt in een herziening van het luchtruim. Daarin is opgenomen hoe de verkeersleiding vluchten begeleidt volgens vaste routes. "Bij de openstelling van Lelystad Airport is het zo dat er geen laagvliegen voorkomt", stelde de bestuurder. "Daar hebben we veel voor gelobbyd, dat heeft geleid tot de herziening en dat de Veluwe gevrijwaard is."

Gelderland is fel tegenstander van laagvliegroutes van en naar Lelystad over haar grondgebied. De provincie heeft onder meer zorgen over geluidsoverlast voor bewoners, uitstoot van stikstof en de gevolgen voor kwetsbare natuur op de Veluwe. Het kabinet is van plan Lelystad Airport in oktober volgend jaar te openen. Eerst is wel nog een natuurvergunning nodig.

Zorgen

De provincie definieert laagvliegen als luchtvaart die onder de 12.500 voet (circa 3800 meter) komt. Volgens Ruitenberg is er straks volgens de definitie van het Rijk geen sprake van vluchten die laag over Gelderland komen. Of dat echter strookt met de Gelderse definitie van laagvliegen, kon de gedeputeerde niet gelijk zeggen. "Het zal iets lager zijn dan dat", aldus Ruitenberg. Coalitiepartijen BBB en ChristenUnie vroegen zich daarop af wat voor toezegging de bestuurder precies uit Den Haag heeft gekregen en of die voldoende is.

De zorgen over laagvliegen zijn ook opgenomen in het Gelderse coalitieakkoord tussen BBB, VVD, CDA, ChristenUnie en SGP. Meerdere fracties in Provinciale Staten willen dat het college duidelijker maakt hoe de provincie "blijft opkomen voor de belangen van Gelderse inwoners, ondernemers en de natuur" rond de opening van Lelystad Airport. De BBB en ChristenUnie agendeerden het onderwerp, samen met oppositiepartijen PvdA en GroenLinks. De Gelderse politiek debatteert op 1 juli over het vliegveld.

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - Koning Willem-Alexander heeft woensdagavond de eeuwenoude vriendschap met Japan benadrukt, maar ook stilgestaan bij een "pijnlijke episode", de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Hij benoemde onder meer dat "ons gedeelde verhaal ook bitterheid omvat". "Diepe wonden die toen zijn geslagen, werken ook in de generaties erna door", zei de koning tijdens het staatsbanket met de Japanse keizer Naruhito.

"Onze burgers en militairen is in deze periode groot leed berokkend. Ook in Japan heeft de bevolking de vreselijke gevolgen van de oorlog moeten dragen, in het bijzonder in de laatste fase", zei de koning in zijn toespraak. Daarmee doelde de vorst op de Amerikaanse atoombommen die in 1945 op de Japanse steden Hiroshima en Nagasaki vielen, met honderdduizenden doden tot gevolg. Willem-Alexander benadrukte daarnaast dat verhalen uit de oorlog verteld moeten blijven worden. "Door erkenning van het verleden in zijn volle breedte, creëren we ruimte voor een gezamenlijke toekomst."

NEW YORK (ANP) - De beurzen in New York gingen woensdag in de laatste handelsuren scherp omlaag door onzekerheid onder beleggers over het toekomstige rentebeleid van de Amerikaanse centrale bank. Uit nieuwe ramingen van de Fed blijkt dat meerdere beleidsmakers later dit jaar een renteverhoging verwachten door groeiende zorgen over hardnekkige inflatie.

De centrale bank liet de rente in de Verenigde Staten onveranderd, zoals algemeen was verwacht op de financiële markten. Maar in een aangepaste beleidsverklaring van de nieuwe Fed-voorzitter Kevin Warsh werden teksten geschrapt die eerder wezen op mogelijke renteverlagingen dit jaar.

De Dow-Jonesindex eindigde 1 procent lager op 51.492,55 punten. Eerder op de dag tikte de toonaangevende index nog een tussentijds nieuw record aan. De S&P 500 verloor 1,2 procent op 7420,10 punten en de technologiegraadmeter Nasdaq ging 1,4 procent omlaag tot 26.021,66 punten.

Koersverlies SpaceX

"Dit comité zal prijsstabiliteit waarborgen tegen elke prijs", benadrukte Warsh tijdens zijn eerste persbijeenkomst als Fed-voorzitter. Beleggers vrezen dat dit wijst op een langere periode van hoge rentes. Dit is vaak slecht voor aandelen omdat het lenen duurder maakt en de economische groei afremt. Warsh is de opvolger van Jerome Powell, die geregeld felle kritiek kreeg van president Donald Trump omdat de Fed de rente niet sneller verlaagde.

Ook een eerste koersverlies van SpaceX sinds de recordbeursgang afgelopen vrijdag zorgde voor een domper. Het ruimtevaart- en AI-bedrijf van Elon Musk is sinds de beursgang nog altijd grofweg met de helft in waarde gestegen. Woensdag zakte het aandeel 5 procent.

Verder kregen vooral de grote techbedrijven zoals Microsoft, Meta Platforms en Amazon koersverliezen te verwerken, tot dalingen van 3,5 procent. Carmax kelderde 9 procent. De verkoper van gebruikte auto's maakte woensdag zijn kwartaalcijfers bekend.

Groups cite detainee maltreatment and degradation of surrounding land as reasons to close facility permanently

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An alliance of environmental groups has welcomed reports that detainees have been moved from Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail, but have promised to press ahead with legal action to ensure its permanent closure and the restoration of the fragile Everglades wetlands where it is located.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement late on Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and authorities in Florida “have moved illegal aliens from the soft sided facility [and] transferred them to other facilities” for their safety, citing this month’s beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season.

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Victims include four airmen, a reservist and three civilians as inquiry into Edwards crash continues

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Air force officials have released the names of the eight men killed in this week’s fiery crash of a B-52 during a test flight at Edwards air force base in southern California.

The deceased, whose identities had initially been withheld while the military notified next of kin, include four active-duty airmen, one reservist and three civilians, military officials said on Wednesday.

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Exclusive: Allies of Labour’s Makerfield candidate concerned rapid collapse of Starmer government would increase instability

Andy Burnham’s campaign has been forced to talk ministers out of resigning as early as this weekend to avoid Keir Starmer’s government descending into chaos amid fallout from the Makerfield byelection, the Guardian can reveal.

As they prepare for a potential change of leader in the event he beats Reform on Thursday, Burnham’s team is increasingly concerned a rapid collapse of Starmer’s administration would mean further instability for the country.

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Full set of Underworld playing live at EDC Las Vegas back in May.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide June 1985

I am trying to control an Internet-of-Shit device that can only speak 2.4GHz wifi. I find that I am unable to operate a 2.4GHz network that anything can connect to on any channel because there is too much interference. (Even when my iPad is sitting directly on top of the AP.) 82% interference, 10% TX retries. Let's take a look at where that's coming from...

Oh. It's because literally every car in the garage is doing wifi bukkake, several floors below me, through many feet of concrete.

Just another normal day of wearing earplugs and also playing music loud enough to drown out my upstairs neighbor's concrete saws. It's like month 3 of this shit. What the fuck are they even doing up there?

De door de president voorgedragen nieuwe voorzitter van de Amerikaanse centrale bank gaf woensdag zijn eerste persconferentie. Over de door president Trump zo gewilde lagere rente ging het niet.

Jongens. Natuurlijk, het Nederlands elftal is leuk, in Frankrijk kunnen ze goed voetballen, in Brazilië doorgaans nog beter, in Spanje weten ze ook wat ze doen, in Italië waren ze vroeger heel goed, vlak de Argentijnen nooit uit, en de Duitsers, nee, dan de Duitsers. Dat zal allemaal wel, voetbal draait om Engeland. Het komt ervandaan (geen idee of dit echt klopt, niet doodchecken, red.), de stadions staan er in woonwijken en zijn doorgaans prachtig, elke lokale pisclub heeft hordes fanatieke supporters, die mensen weten hoe je een wedstrijd beleeft, ze kunnen prachtig zingen en beestachtig juichen, ze bouwden als eerste een subcultuur rondom het elkaar de hersens in slaan ihkv van de bjoetifoel keem, ze wonnen twee wereldoorlogen en één wereldcup, en daarna helemaal niets meer. Ze kunnen ontzettend goed zuipen met die gezellige eilandhoofden van ze, die ze zelden goed insmeren en die dus steevast vuurrood worden. Ze denken elke keer dat ze gaan winnen, en doen dat natuurlijk helemaal niet. Hun meest bekende gerecht is eigenlijk een matig vermomd katerontbijt. Een aanzienlijk deel van de goede muziek is van ze afkomstig. Vanavond nemen ze het op tegen Kroatië en hoewel we op GSHQ onpartijdig zijn hopen we dat Engerland die knakkers helemaal dronken speelt en dat al die gekken op de tribune dan heel mooi juichen. Of, zoals ze het zelf noemen: limbs.

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