Jane Does allege ex-congressman and two others coordinated âpayments, drugs and travelâ for sexual acts
The Republican former congressman Matt Gaetz has been accused of participating in the sex trafficking of two young women in a civil lawsuit filed Thursday in district court in Florida.
The allegations, which Gaetz denied in a statement to the Guardian, are the latest developments in a long-running sexual abuse scandal involving the politician who resigned from Congress in November 2024.
Continue reading...From chat-up lines to social coaching, weâd like to hear from people who use AI to assist them navigating the online dating world
Weâd like to understand more about the different ways that people are using AI to assist with online dating.
Perhaps you have used an AI assistant to help with chat-up lines? Or you may have turned to one for some social coaching? However you have used AI for online dating, weâd like to hear all about it. What worked and what didnât?
Continue reading...ZAANDAM (ANP) - Albert Heijn bezorgt tot en met zondag nog geen online bestelde boodschappen. De supermarktketen zegt zijn systemen stap voor stap weer op orde te brengen na het cybersecurityincident, waardoor er al dagen problemen zijn. De winkels worden inmiddels wel weer volledig bevoorraad. "Dit leidt landelijk tot gevulde schappen", stelt Albert Heijn donderdagavond.
PARIJS (ANP) - Het Internationaal Energieagentschap (IEA) heeft donderdag aangekondigd de vrijgave van strategische oliereserves te versnellen vanwege de sterk stijgende brandstofprijzen. Daarmee geeft de organisatie gehoor aan oproepen van de G7, de groep van grote industrielanden waaronder Duitsland en Frankrijk.
Het doel is om de vrijgave van oliereserves, waarover in maart afspraken zijn gemaakt naar aanleiding van de Iranoorlog, te versnellen en zo snel mogelijk af te ronden. Het IEA had destijds ingestemd met de vrijgave van een recordhoeveelheid van 400 miljoen vaten olie uit noodvoorraden. Daarvan zijn tot nu toe ongeveer 330 miljoen vaten geleverd.
Sommige lidstaten hebben meer olie vrijgegeven dan ze oorspronkelijk hadden toegezegd, aldus het IEA, waarin tientallen landen zijn verenigd. Door de versnelde vrijgave van de resterende, in maart toegezegde reserves komen naar verwachting ongeveer 100 miljoen vaten op de markt. Die hoeveelheid komt overeen met het verzoek dat de G7-landen eerder deze maand deden.
NEW YORK (ANP/AFP/BLOOMBERG) - De door de VS gevangen genomen Venezolaanse president NicolĂĄs Maduro en zijn vrouw zeggen onschuldig te zijn aan het samenspannen om Amerikaanse gevangenen te martelen. Deze nieuwe aanklacht werd recent toegevoegd aan een lopende strafzaak tegen Maduro.
Maduro en zijn vrouw Cilia Flores werden begin dit jaar opgepakt tijdens een Amerikaanse operatie in Venezuela. Sindsdien zitten ze vast in New York. Ze zijn verder aangeklaagd voor drugssmokkel en verboden wapenbezit. Daarvoor hebben ze al onschuldig gepleit.
Volgens aanklagers hadden ze samengespannen om martelpraktijken uit te voeren tegen slachtoffers in Venezolaanse detentiecentra. Onder de slachtoffers zouden Amerikaanse staatsburgers hebben gezeten. Er wordt onder meer gesproken van waterboarding, waarbij iemand het gevoel heeft te verdrinken, verkrachtingen en mishandelingen.
Sinds de gevangenneming van Maduro wordt Venezuela bestuurd door Delcy RodrĂguez.
ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Jan G., het doelwit van het geweld in Overasselt in september, is uit Duitsland overgeleverd. Het Openbaar Ministerie meldt dat een 28-jarige man uit de Gelderse plaats op Nederlandse bodem is.
G. werd op Nederlands verzoek op 18 september door de Duitse autoriteiten aangehouden. Hij wordt ervan verdacht betrokken te zijn bij een poging om bijna 4000 kilo cocaĂŻne in te voeren. Die partij werd op 7 september onderschept in de haven van het Franse Duinkerken.
In de nacht van 31 augustus op 1 september trok een grote groep gewapende mannen door de Gelderse plaats. Daar schoten zij een bewaker dood voor het huis van G. Ook raakten twee agenten gewond. De schutters hadden het gemunt op G., bleek ook later uit een dreigvideo.
Een verkeerd geparkeerde fiets, een paaltje of een drukke straat waarin alle geluiden door elkaar klinken. Voor Erika Rusu en Kornelia Linska-Maczynska zijn het dagelijkse obstakels omdat ze een visuele beperking hebben. Op de Dag van de Witte Stok vragen de twee 13-jarige meiden aandacht voor de toegankelijkheid van Rotterdam.
?a to A? is a future exhibition set in 2051, exploring 127, a countercultural movement that emerged twenty years earlier.?In 2031, as AI began to predict and evaluate human behavior, some people disconnected from centralized AI and turned to personal servers and local AI. ?a to A? archives how the equipment that began as a means of independence gradually became a symbol of identity and evolved into a form of countercultural fashion.
The great grey owl basically has a sound cone for a face, which helps it hunt down voles burrowing through snow in the winter.
The owl’s large facial ruff, formed of dense feathers, helps amplify sound and funnel it towards his ears. Through half a meter of snow, the sound of scampering feet is inaudible to us. But not to him. With the help of a special acoustic camera equipped with 60 highly sensitive microphones, we can see what the owl is hearing.
The footage in this video is amazing â and so is the owl’s sense of hearing. A YouTube commenter says “Cat software in Bird hardware. Bad news for the Rodents.” You can watch a short video on the science behind owl hunting techniques and watch the whole episode this is from about how animals use sound (but only in Canada, it seems…VPN works fine tho).
The only problem with this video is that now I want two hours of just closeup footage of the owl’s face and it flying directly towards the camera. Those eyes! And its mid-flight loaf-of-white-bread-shaped body! I would also like the owl to be my friend.
BTW, this clip is from a show called The Nature of Things, which is a CBC nature series that’s been going since 1960. A good thing to have on your radar if you’re looking for well-produced science & nature programs.
Consulting giant Accenture has told many employees that the company will now only spend $29 a month per person on Claude. Employees subject to the cap, some of whom had been spending as much as $1,000 monthly, are scrambling to find ways to make sure they can keep spending as much as they already are.
The news is a snapshot of what continues to play out across all sorts of industries: companies have spent heavily on AI tools, and are now discovering that many users are burning or “chewing” through AI tokens at a rapid clip. In response, many companies have curbed their employees’ AI use. There is a special irony to Accenture doing much of the same, when it is a company that has encouraged its clients to invest heavily into AI.
“Claude Enterprise Users: Important Updates to Licensing and Usage Costs,” a recent internal Accenture announcement, seen by 404 Media, reads.
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Do you work at a company cutting down on AI? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
It says that effective October 1, Accenture introduced new changes to how Claude Enterprise costs are funded and charged. That includes centrally funding only $29 a month per person towards Claude usage.
Importantly, “all costs are consumption-based,” the announcement says. Meaning, if an employee goes over the allocated $29 — and $29 is nothing compared to the costs some Accenture employees are raking up — workers have to find a specific project or team (called a Work Breakdown Structure or WBS at Accenture) to fund the rest of the usage. Premium plans come with $250 token usage a week, but many employees are not on that plan.
In other words, if you’re an Accenture employee on Premium already, you might be okay. But if you’re on the General plan, and your usage is already high, you’re now expected to find a way to fund that AI use.
“Remember: Claude Enterprise will continue to be available based on role and business need,” the announcement adds. “Providing a WBS and obtaining a license does not guarantee indefinite or ongoing access to Claude. License allocations are reviewed periodically, and access may be reassessed based on business priorities, role requirements, usage patterns, and evolving workforce needs. As needs change, licenses may be reallocated to help ensure they are used where they provide the greatest value.”
Some employees are now trying to find a way to get upgraded to a Premium account so their projects don’t get charged for additional AI use. One Accenture employee said in an internal message viewed by 404 Media that their current usage costs exceed $500, and have for past months too. “How can I speed up the upgrade to a premium account? The upgrade appears to be blocked on the support page. This obviously has a significant impact on project costs,” the person wrote.
Another employee wrote, “Honestly, this is disappointing.” They added they use Claude Code “extensively” to build and test an “AI accelerator” that is being developed for multiple Accenture clients. Their monthly usage is usually around $500 to $1,000, they added.
A third internal message seen by 404 Media shows an Accenture employee saying their Claude access was revoked altogether.
An Accenture spokesperson told 404 Media in an email “At the foundation, we make AI available to all our people. Our approach today is to provide the right tool for the right work, and we continue to invest in AI capabilities, skills and enablement that deliver greater value for clients and our own organization.”
Smartphone shipments fell by at least a fifth in the third calendar quarter as the AI-driven memory crunch battered another consumer hardware market. Preliminary estimates from IDC and Omdia put the year-on-year decline at 22 percent and 20 percent respectively. Memory costs have surged by approximately 350 percent since last year, according to IDC, and are still rising. This continues to place substantial pressure on vendor margins, prompting them to hike price tags and scale back on devices at the value end of the market. IDC estimates that vendors shipped 255.3 million smartphones into distribution channels and warns that the downturn is far from over. "The sharp downturn the industry has been bracing for finally materialized in the third quarter this year. However, the worst is yet to come," said Nabila Popal, IDC's senior research director for worldwide devices. "Current indicators suggest that the market has not yet reached the bottom. While memory inflation is beginning to slow down, with a low double-digit sequential increase in Q3 compared to a 50 to 100 percent jump in prior quarters, costs remain elevated across other critical components as well, compounding the crunch." Omdia puts shipments at roughly 255 million, close to IDC's estimate despite the different annual decline. It says that the shrinking market has further polarized the competitive landscape, with Samsung and Apple now accounting for about 45 percent of global shipments, up approximately 8 percentage points from a year ago, while rising costs hit more price-sensitive segments particularly hard. Omdia still expects global smartphone shipments to fall 12 percent across 2026, followed by another 6 percent decline next year. It previously forecast that devices priced above $400 would prove more resilient and could record shipment growth. "We don't anticipate any relief to the current memory crisis before 2028 at the earliest as we expect there to remain a considerable gap between demand and supply. The first signs of improvement we're looking for is when the memory pricing will stabilize (basically stopping to grow), and we're still not there yet," Omdia principal analyst Runar Bjorhovde told The Register. Omdia says investment in distribution partnerships and premium devices could determine which vendors emerge stronger when costs ease. New flagship launches, promotions, and festive demand in Q4 are unlikely to fully offset persistent supply-side pressures. Omdia reckons buyers may get used to paying more, potentially creating greater opportunities for higher-value devices. The firm previously outlined the measures some phone makers are taking to offset the rising cost of memory parts, including switching to cheaper display panels, sensors, or radio frequency (RF) modules. IDC also sees little prospect of recovery before 2028 and expects a lasting shift toward higher costs. It says vendors that adapt their products and pricing will be best placed to gain market share. Âź
