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Comments come after Moscow warned it would ‘deploy its entire arsenal’ if Kaliningrad was threatened. What we know on day 1,680

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A record 157,957 new EVs were sold nationally between January and June, according to the Electric Vehicle Council

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Australians are buying electric vehicles at record levels, with sales more than doubling year on year and occurring at a rate equivalent to one EV sold every 100 seconds.

A record 157,957 EV sales occurred between January and June – an 117% increase on the same period last year, according to a new report released by the Electric Vehicle Council.

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More than 100,000 have enrolled to vote from abroad in the November poll, and many are unhappy with how things look back home

New Zealander Kris Taute has lived in Australia for 15 years, but his head and heart are turning towards his home country and a looming general election that could be influenced by a large block of overseas voters.

From across the Tasman Sea, Taute has felt growing frustration at New Zealand’s centre-right coalition government, and analysts believe large numbers of New Zealanders who have left the country since they came to power in 2023 may be poised to vent their grievances at the ballot box in November.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

ajpscs posted a photo:

LOST NIGHT
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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide February 1988

A tidy little drama unfolded during today's US Senate hearings (C-Span, via YouTube).

Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, who is being floated as a possible VP candidate for a Vance presidential run (Axios, sigh), lined up dutifully for his sound bite attacking former special counsel Jack Smith. Then things took a turn. The whole seven minutes or so are worth taking in. As a dessert, you can watch Alabama Senator Katie Britt at the moment of unraveling (YouTube).

US president Donald Trump has convinced six leading AI companies to sign up for non-binding and vague regulation called the “White House Accord on Superintelligence” that doesn’t require them to do anything but does let them set their own rules. Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, and XAI signed the document, which appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account. The document, subtitled the "Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities,” opens with the observation that “every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public.” “This starts with every company that is training and deploying frontier models having robust internal processes and controls to ensure that their technology behaves as intended and that any issues are promptly identified and resolved.” The document then outlines four “layers of controls and audits” the White House believes signatories should implement “in addition to any other precautions.” The four are: Implement robust internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of its models during training and deployment around areas like cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats, and to ensure that its models do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways. Empower an internal team to ensure all of the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended, and that any issues are remediated. Partner with an independent external auditor or evaluator to carry out independent assessments of whether the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended. Designate an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee and receive reports from the teams operating the controls and the internal and external auditors and evaluators, as well as to ensure any issues identified are remediated. The document offers no definition of what constitutes “robust” internal controls, does not specify how often external auditors should inspect signatories’ systems, and contains no references to how often evaluations should take place. It does state that participating companies “will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices to improve the safety of their systems.” Or in other words, they get to make their own rules. The document leaves open the possibility that one day “it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.” For now, all involved “believe that implementing these controls and audits is critical to ensuring a safe future for everyone, and each of our companies are committed to doing this.” The document reflects Trump’s belief that the artificial intelligence industry doesn’t need strong regulation, save in one matter: its name. To address that matter, on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order requiring federal government agencies to use the term “Super Intelligence” and the acronym “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other government documents. The president wants that to happen despite not yet having a working definition of SI. He tasked his Assistant for Science and Technology to work with other agencies to sort that out within 60 days. Trump’s starting point for those deliberations, as explained in the executive order, is that frontier AI systems “do much more than imitate or automate discrete aspects of human intelligence” and “increasingly amplify human ingenuity and unlock new forms of creativity.” Those abilities apparently justify having the US government, which Trump has often accused of being enormously wasteful, devise a new definition. ®

Firefox 157 is rolling out a major redesign across desktop and mobile, bringing rounded "bubble" tabs, a curved address bar, refreshed icons and colors, and a more consistent visual language across devices. Mozilla is also adding more themes and wallpapers while bringing back Compact Mode, which the company says "reduces the size of your tabs and toolbar to give more of your screen to the web, with an auto-compact option for smaller screens." The Verge reports: According to Mozilla, the design changes will have "no cost to your browser performance." Mozilla says the overhauled design is a "renewal" for Firefox, following major updates over the last year, like homepage widgets, Split View, a built-in VPN, and controls for disabling the browser's AI features.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Microsoft has made WSL Containers generally available, giving Windows 11 developers a built-in way to build, run, and deploy Linux containers through Windows Subsystem for Linux. The release includes wslc.exe for managing containers, GPU support, networking improvements, health checks, storage mounts, and integration with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Intune. Microsoft also claims up to twice the performance when Linux environments access files stored on Windows. Docker Desktop, Podman Desktop, and Rancher Desktop are not going anywhere, but developers who only need basic container functionality now have another option built around WSL. One notable feature is still missing: Compose support. Microsoft says adding it is now a priority.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

martinphoto11 has added a photo to the pool:

Face to face with a Central Bearded Dragon. It stayed perfectly still among the rocks, watching me closely as I captured this moment.

JERUZALEM (ANP) - De Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu heeft dinsdag een rechtszaak wegens smaad aangespannen tegen diverse grote Israëlische nieuwsmedia en journalisten. Dat melden Israëlische media waaronder Haaretz, de krant die het voornaamste doelwit is van de aanklacht.

De zaak draait om berichten dat Netanyahu voorafgaand aan 7 oktober 2023 waarschuwingen had ontvangen van de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten en Egypte over een aanstaande aanval van Hamas. Haaretz bracht dat nieuws als eerste en blijft achter zijn berichtgeving staan.

Volgens de berichten waarschuwde de president van de VAE, Mohammed bin Zayed, Netanyahu persoonlijk dat Hamas een grote aanval beraamde. Ook zou de toenmalige Egyptische inlichtingenchef Abbas Kamel Israëlische functionarissen hebben gewaarschuwd dat in Gaza in de dagen voor 7 oktober een grote escalatie dreigde.

De aanklacht is gericht tegen Haaretz en media en journalisten die het nieuws verspreid hebben: de media Yedioth Ahronoth, Channel 12 News en Ynet, en de journalisten Shlomi Eldar, Ruti Yuval, Uri Misgav, Nadav Eyal, Barak Ravid en Attila Somfalvi.

Netanyahu ontkent categorisch dat hij zulke waarschuwingen heeft ontvangen en noemt de berichten verzonnen.