Essential summertime reading: Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning. “Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.”
Paus Leo XIV heeft een ferme waarschuwing voor kunstmatige intelligentie de wereld ingestuurd. In zijn eerste encycliek roept hij op tot 'ethisch gebruik' van de technologie. Volgens critici is de paus vooral bang dat AI zijn baan zal overnemen.
"Het is vrij opzichtig", zegt journalist Daniël Verlaan. "Leo is natuurlijk ook niet de enige. Wereldwijd voelen mensen in allerlei sectoren aankomen dat hun baan weleens zou kunnen gaan verdwijnen. En laten we wel wezen: het bewaken van de katholieke leer, het benoemen van bisschoppen en het oproepen tot vrede, dat kan AI heus ook wel. Misschien zelfs wel beter."
De vraag is echter of we dat moeten willen, werpt Vaticaan-correspondent Andrea Vreede tegen. "Juist die folklore rondom de Rooms-Katholieke Kerk vinden we allemaal zo mooi. Kunnen algoritmes dat overnemen? Het Urbi et Orbi klinkt toch anders wanneer paus Claudius IV.VI het uitspreekt. En zitten we echt te wachten op witte rook uit een datacenter op een industrieterrein in Rome? Ik denk het niet."
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Exclusive: Police data shows 21% of the 949 people detained in England and Northern Ireland were later accused of violence against intimate partner
One out of every five people arrested after their participation in the 2024 summer riots has since been reported to the police for domestic abuse, the Guardian can disclose.
Police data released under freedom of information (FoI) laws shows that 21% of 949 people arrested for taking part in the violent disorder have been reported for crimes associated with intimate partner violence since August 2024.
Continue reading...Prediction sites, which allow bets on all topics from weather to politics, may be in breach of country’s rules
Spain’s ministry of consumer rights has blocked access to Polymarket and Kalshi while it investigates whether the leading prediction market sites are violating Spanish law by operating without a gambling licence.
On Tuesday the ministry said it had launched disciplinary proceedings against the two platforms, which allow users to bet on everything from the weather to political events, amid allegations that they lacked the “necessary administrative authorisation” to operate in Spain.
Continue reading...Penises, vaginas and breasts abound in the Indian painter’s work. As the son of a Hindu priest, he says his orgasmic scenes give us a way to consider religion
T Venkanna’s paintings land like a sucker-punch. At the centre of his first institutional solo show is an overbearing altarpiece, modified by two squat side panels to take the overall shape of a juvenile dick drawing. Perched at the bottom, on either side, are Adam and Eve. Their backs are turned as they look out on an orgasmic thicket of desire. A female figure is pleasured by another’s nose, someone copulates with the hindquarters of an animal and others fondle in a kaleidoscopic blur of colours and styles that make Hieronymus Bosch look restrained.
But carnal enjoyment is merely the footnote. “It is a way to consider many things, including the myth of religions,” says Venkanna. Scattered within this longing landscape are stony figures redolent of India’s pantheon of gods and goddesses. Women worship a topiary lingam – the aniconic depiction of Shiva – and a man caresses a statuesque woman’s breast (while drinking from her vagina). Graphic? “That is what you see in ancient temples,” says Venkanna. “People touch the breasts of sculptures so that over time they become very smooth and shiny.”
Continue reading...Police responded to reports of gunfire at store in town of Scottsbluff, and found the culprit to be a dog
Police responding to reports of a shotgun blast at a convenience store sounds like the opening of countless American crime movies, but when cops in Nebraska responded to a recent such call they found an unusual culprit: a dog.
Local TV station KNOP News 2 reported that police in the town of Scottsbluff were called out to a local store recently after reports of a blast involving a shotgun.
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Toegegeven, het artikel zelf zet ook vraagtekens bij wat er in de kop nog zo stellig beweerd wordt. "Hoe oud Ali precies is, weet niemand zeker. Hij kwam ongedocumenteerd Nederland binnen en staat officieel geregistreerd met 1 januari als geboortedatum." Klinkt en is misschien ergens nog redelijk onschuldig, maar waar het op neer komt dat we simpelweg niet weten wie we dit land binnenlaten, we doen echt maar wat. Maar goed, hij vindt het fijn in Nederland, maar 't is ook even wennen. "De verschillen tussen Afghanistan en Nederland zijn groot. Vooral de vrijheid van vrouwen en homoseksuelen viel Ali direct op. „Toen ik hier voor het eerst kwam, zag ik twee vrouwen elkaar kussen,” zegt hij. „Dat vind ik nog steeds een beetje raar.”" Desondanks heeft hij z'n ogen op de toekomst. "Ali wil vooral rust en een normaal leven. „Ik wil Nederlands leren”, zegt hij. „Werk vinden. Een huis. Misschien een vrouw.”" De laatste zin roept overigens de eeuwige vraag op. "Buiten staat Ali’s fatbike klaar". HOE KOMEN ZE ALTIJD AAN FATBIKES?
Vrolijk 10-jarig jubileum AD's "16-jarige migrant" voor iedereen die het viert
BusPatrol, a company that has installed AI-powered cameras in tens of thousands of school buses around the U.S., now plans to turn those cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capturing the location of every vehicle the buses drive past, and give that data to law enforcement, 404 Media has learned. The plan will essentially transform school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles, taking a technology that was originally designed to issue tickets to people illegally passing stopped buses and using it for much wider and general law enforcement, likely without a warrant.
BusPatrol has already taken steps to share the collected data with law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to leaked BusPatrol documents and a source with knowledge of the plans. Internally, BusPatrol has acknowledged how controversial its plan to collect and share this data is, pointing specifically to concerns about ICE using license plate data, but emphasizes the likely success of selling the angle of protecting children.
“Who would have thought that school buses would be turned into the mass surveillance state?,” Michael Soyfer, an attorney from the Institute for Justice, which has various ongoing ALPR-related lawsuits, told 404 Media in a phone call.
BusPatrol says it has cameras in more than 40,000 buses across 24 states. Ordinarily, those cameras track whether a vehicle illegally passes the school bus while it has its stop signs, or stop arms, extended. BusPatrol then reviews the footage and passes it to the police, who decide if the driver violated the law. BusPatrol then sends the ticket to the driver. For cities and counties, the attraction of BusPatrol is as a revenue generator while also theoretically making cars drive more safely near children. (In April, Bloomberg Businessweek published an investigation showing in one case there was no evidence of a decline in collisions near stopped school buses, and the respective county paid BusPatrol tens of millions of dollars.)
The planned changes would dramatically expand that system to scan the license plates of all vehicles the buses pass, regardless of whether they violated a law, and then give that data to law enforcement, either directly or through contractors the agencies already use. The system would work much like other ALPR systems: BusPatrol’s cameras would take a photo of each car a bus drives past, record the car’s license plate and GPS location, and then law enforcement can query that data, according to one of the documents describing the plans.
Typically, law enforcement agencies query ALPR tools without a warrant. Officials can enter a license plate of a vehicle and see all of the locations that vehicle was spotted at and when, meaning they can map a car—and by extension a person’s—movements, depending on how many cameras are active in the particular area. The Institute for Justice has argued that warrantless use of ALPR systems is unconstitutional, describing similar systems as a “dragnet.”
Often ALPR cameras are in a fixed position. Cameras from Flock, a widespread ALPR system, are typically attached to poles. A roaming ALPR camera inside a school bus, though, will likely cover a larger area, and capture more data, than a stationary camera as the school bus drives around.
There are also concerns about who can access collected ALPR data and for what purpose. Often, ALPRs are pitched as a way for cities to find stolen cars or missing people. But last year, 404 Media revealed that local cops were performing lookups in the national system of Flock on behalf of ICE. That coverage and others, such as police using Flock cameras to track a woman who self-administered an abortion, have triggered a nationwide debate around ALPR cameras, with many communities deciding to rip out the cameras altogether.
BusPatrol is aware of the controversy around ALPR cameras, and particularly of the concern that ICE may gain access to the data, according to the BusPatrol documents viewed by 404 Media. The company anticipates the plans will receive resistance from communities that already have school buses with BusPatrol cameras installed, they say. 404 Media contacted multiple school districts listed as BusPatrol users on the company’s website but did not receive a response. The company also sees potential legal issues if it provides incorrect data.
“Protecting children is one of the highest priorities of any community. In theory, a technology could be narrowly tailored here and not engage in surveillance or collect information except when there appears to be a violation of stop arm laws. But by trying to plug a child-safety technology in to the unethical license plate mass-surveillance ecosystem that lacks societal acceptance and legitimacy, you guarantee that your technology will have problems with acceptance,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media in an email. “Leveraging something everybody supports—in this case protecting children—in order to expand mass surveillance is a typical way of trying to get people to accept surveillance, one we've seen since 9/11 and before.”
Stanley said that BusPatrol is part of a larger trend: “using AI to scale surveillance for compliance purposes.” He said this will start with laws that he suspects everyone supports, like the stop arm statutes banning people from overtaking stopped school buses. But when AI monitoring tools are extended to other laws, rules, and norms “there's a real risk that AI will be used to create a hellscape of over-enforcement. We're already seeing AI used to ticket drivers who are holding cellphones and to monitor workers such as delivery drivers in oppressive minute ways.”
The reason for turning buses into surveillance vehicles is to generate more revenue, according to the source with knowledge of the plans. After GI Partners, an investment firm, invested $300 million in BusPatrol, it has “been pushing the company to find alternate revenue streams,” the source said. 404 Media granted the person anonymity as they weren’t permitted to speak to the press.
404 Media sent BusPatrol a detailed set of questions, including whether BusPatrol is exploring the possibility of sharing ALPR data with Axon or other companies. At first, Kate Spree, senior manager of brand communications at BusPatrol, said in an email “This inquiry is based on a false premise and inaccurate information. BusPatrol does not pool or sell data across communities; student safety program data is used only to support the BusPatrol program in the community where that data was created.”
When 404 Media asked clarifying questions and said that the reporting is based on leaked BusPatrol material, Spree stopped replying to text messages and emails.
GI Partners did not respond to a request for comment.
BusPatrol is already figuring out how to integrate with Axon, the source explained. Axon sells its own ALPR cameras and in 2024 acquired Fusus. Fusus lets law enforcement bring in camera feeds and data from disparate sources into a single interface, and add AI features such as scanning for people wearing certain clothes to live footage.
Axon’s website has a page that says “BusPatrol Works with Axon [Coming in 2025],” and Axon mentioned a partnership with BusPatrol in an April press release, but publicly neither company has said what that partnership means in practice. The source with knowledge of the plan said that originally the Axon partnership was for “full fleetwide realtime camera access,” but the cost was too high. Instead, BusPatrol plans to add an AI accelerator to its school bus devices to facilitate the ALPR feature.
The rollout won’t be immediate, according to the source, with a trial run on one bus currently underway, before increasing to 100 by the end of next month.
The company has also discussed the possibility of providing the collected license plate data to Flock, according to the BusPatrol documents. Flock told 404 Media in an email it does not work with BusPatrol.
ALPR companies often explore ways to expand their fleet of cameras or obtain images from unlikely sources. In August 404 Media reported Flock was looking to integrate with Nexar, a company that makes AI-powered dashcams placed inside peoples’ personal cars. That move would increase the amount of data available to Flock, and by extension, law enforcement agencies that tap into it. Vigilant Solutions and Digital Recognition Network, two ALPR sister companies now owned by Motorola Solutions, have gathered ALPR data through cameras installed in police and repo men’s vehicles.
This month 404 Media reported the FBI wants to buy nationwide access to license plate readers.
NEW YORK (ANP) - De beurzen in New York gingen dinsdag verder omhoog na het lange weekend in de Verenigde Staten. Beleggers op Wall Street bleven optimistisch over een naderend einde aan de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten. Zo zei de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump afgelopen weekend dat er grotendeels overeenstemming is over een vredesakkoord met Iran.
De Amerikaanse aanvallen op Iraanse doelen van maandagnacht temperden het optimisme enigszins, maar volgens Washington ging het om "zelfverdedigingsaanvallen". Ook zei de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Marco Rubio dat een akkoord om de oorlog te beëindigen "nog steeds mogelijk" is en dat er binnen een paar dagen een akkoord kan zijn.
De Dow-Jonesindex noteerde kort na opening van de markt 0,2 procent hoger op 50.709 punten. De brede S&P 500-index steeg 0,6 procent tot 7515 punten en techbeurs Nasdaq won 0,8 procent tot 26.551 punten. Maandag waren de beurzen in New York dicht om Memorial Day.
De Dow-Jonesindex, de graadmeter van dertig grote Amerikaanse bedrijven, eindigde vrijdag al op een nieuw slotrecord door de aanhoudende hoop op een spoedig einde aan de oorlog. De S&P 500-index boekte vorige week zelfs de achtste weekwinst op rij, de langste winstreeks sinds december 2023. Naast de speculatie over een mogelijke vredesdeal met Iran wakkert het aanhoudende optimisme over de opkomst van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) de kooplust bij beleggers al enige tijd aan.
Chipbedrijven, die de afgelopen weken flink profiteerden van de aanhoudende sterke vraag naar chips voor AI-toepassingen, wonnen opnieuw terrein. Marvell Technology steeg ruim 8 procent, Micron Technology won 13 procent en Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 3 procent.
Kyndryl zakte 0,8 procent. De Amerikaanse IT-dienstverlener verklaarde zeer teleurgesteld te zijn over het besluit van de Nederlandse overheid om de overname van Solvinity te verbieden. Kyndryl kondigde in november vorig jaar aan het Nederlandse bedrijf, dat het platform levert waarop DigiD en MijnOverheid draaien, over te nemen. Volgens staatssecretaris Willemijn Aerdts (Economische Zaken) vormt de overname van Solvinity mogelijk een risico voor het publieke belang.
Een vat Brentolie werd 3,4 procent duurder op 99,38 dollar na de nieuwe aanvallen van de VS op Iran. Maandag werd Brentolie nog fors goedkoper door optimisme over een aanstaande vredesdeal tussen de VS en Iran.
TEHERAN (ANP) - De internettoegang in Iran is weer gedeeltelijk hersteld, meldt internetmonitor NetBlocks in een post op sociaal netwerk Mastodon. Maandag schreven de Iraanse staatsmedia dat president Masoud Pezeshkian had bevolen de internationale internettoegang te herstellen.
Volgens NetBlocks heeft de blokkade 88 dagen geduurd en gebeurde het nog niet eerder dat een land zo lang was afgesloten van het internet.
Onduidelijk is volgens NetBlocks of het internetherstel van lange duur zal zijn.
