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The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Ukraine skeleton racer gifted $200,000 by Shakhtar Donetsk owner after Winter Olympics ban

  • Football club donation equal to prize money Ukraine pays gold medallists

  • Heraskevych barred from racing while wearing ‘helmet of memory’

The owner of Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk has donated more than $200,000 to skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych. The athlete was disqualified from the Milano Cortina Winter Games before competing over the use of a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, the club said on Tuesday.

The 27-year-old Heraskevych was disqualified last week when the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation jury ruled that imagery on the helmet — depicting athletes killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 — breached rules on athletes’ expression at the Games.

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Trump officials sued over effort to ‘erase history and science’ in national parks

National Park Service also sued for removing rainbow Pride flag from Stonewall national monument in New York

Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.

A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by Donald Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant US history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.

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Wealthy Americans top ‘golden visa’ surge in New Zealand and applications from China double

US family who were 100th to be granted residency under investor scheme say they want to give back to ‘amazing’ New Zealand

Wealthy Americans are dominating applications for New Zealand’s “golden visa”, driven by a love for the country’s natural beauty and entrepreneurial spirit, as well a desire to escape Trump’s administration.

New rules for the Active Investor Plus visa came into effect in April 2025, lowering investment thresholds, removing English-language requirements and cutting the amount of time applicants must spend in the country to establish residency from three years to three weeks. Successful applicants can only purchase homes in New Zealand worth more than $5m.

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Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy says Trump exerting ‘unfair’ pressure on Kyiv during Geneva talks

Ukrainian president says he hopes Trump’s recent remarks are ‘just his tactics and not the decision’ as negotiators meet in Switzerland. What we know on day 1,456

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Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Model Brings 'Much-Improved Coding Skills', Upgraded Free Tier

Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, the first upgrade to its mid-tier AI model since version 4.5 arrived in September 2025. The new model features a "1M token context window" and delivers a "full upgrade of the model's skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge work, and design." From Anthropic: Sonnet 4.6 brings much-improved coding skills to more of our users. Improvements in consistency, instruction following, and more have made developers with early access prefer Sonnet 4.6 to its predecessor by a wide margin. They often even prefer it to our smartest model from November 2025, Claude Opus 4.5.

Performance that would have previously required reaching for an Opus-class model -- including on real-world, economically valuable office tasks -- is now available with Sonnet 4.6. The model also shows a major improvement in computer use skills compared to prior Sonnet models. The free tier now uses Sonnet 4.6 by default and with "file creation, connectors, skills, and compaction" included.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discord Rival Maxes Out Hosting Capacity As Players Flee Age-Verification Crackdown

Following backlash over Discord's global rollout of strict age-verification checks, users are flocking to rival platform TeamSpeak and overwhelming its servers. According to PC Gamer, the Discord alternative said its hosting capacity has been maxed out in a number of regions including the U.S. From the report: [A]s I saw for myself while testing out free Discord alternatives, it's hard to deny the appeal of TeamSpeak. It's quick and easy to make an account, join or start a group chat, or join a massive, game-based community voice server, and at no point does TeamSpeak cheekily ask if it can scan your wizened visage.

During my testing, I was able to dive into 18+ group chats without tripping over an age gate. However, there's no guarantee TeamSpeak won't have to deploy its own age verification mechanism in the future. In the UK at least, the Online Safety Act makes those sorts of checks a legal obligation, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently stating "No social media platform should get a free pass when it comes to protecting our kids."

Besides all of that, if you'd rather not chat to randoms who also happen to have an unhealthy obsession with Arc Raiders, you'll likely need to pay an admittedly small subscription fee to rent your own ten-person community voice server. By that point, you're handing over card details and essentially fulfilling an age assurance check anyway. If you'd rather limit how much info your chat platform of choice has about you, there are arguably better options out there.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Is Reportedly Planning To Launch AI-Powered Glasses, a Pendant, and AirPods

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), Apple is reportedly developing AI-powered smart glasses, a wearable pendant, and camera-equipped AirPods that connect to the iPhone and use "visual context" to let Siri perform real-world actions. The Verge reports: Apple is reportedly aiming to start production of its smart glasses in December, ahead of a 2027 launch. The new device will compete directly with Meta's lineup of smart glasses and is rumored to feature speakers, microphones, and a high-resolution camera for taking photos and videos, in addition to another lens designed to enable AI-powered features.

The glasses won't have a built-in display, but they will allow users to make phone calls, interact with Siri, play music, and "take actions based on surroundings," such as asking about the ingredients in a meal, according to Bloomberg. Apple's smart glasses could also help users identify what they're seeing, reference landmarks when offering directions, and remind wearers to complete a task in specific situations, Bloomberg reports.

The company is reportedly planning to develop the frames for the smart glasses in-house, instead of partnering with a third-party company like Meta does with Ray-Ban and Oakley. Prototypes of the glasses use a cable to connect to a battery pack and an iPhone, but Bloomberg reports that "newer versions have the components embedded in the frame." Apple reportedly wants to make its smart glasses stand out by offering a high-quality build and advanced camera technology. The company is still working on AI-powered smart glasses with a display, though their launch "remains many years away," Bloomberg says.

Apple's plans for AI hardware don't end there, as the company is expected to build upon its Google Gemini-powered Siri upgrade with an AirTag-sized AI pendant that people can either wear as a necklace or a pin. This device would "essentially serve as an always-on camera" for the iPhone and has a microphone for prompting Siri, Bloomberg reports. The pendant, which The Information first reported on last month, is rumored to come with a built-in chip, but will mainly rely on the iPhone's processing power. The device could arrive as early as next year, according to Bloomberg.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NPR's Radio Host David Greene Says Google's NotebookLM Tool Stole His Voice

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: David Greene had never heard of NotebookLM, Google's buzzy artificial intelligence tool that spins up podcasts on demand, until a former colleague emailed him to ask if he'd lent it his voice. "So... I'm probably the 148th person to ask this, but did you license your voice to Google?" the former co-worker asked in a fall 2024 email. "It sounds very much like you!"

Greene, a public radio veteran who has hosted NPR's "Morning Edition" and KCRW's political podcast "Left, Right & Center," looked up the tool, listening to the two virtual co-hosts -- one male and one female -- engage in light banter. "I was, like, completely freaked out," Greene said. "It's this eerie moment where you feel like you're listening to yourself." Greene felt the male voice sounded just like him -- from the cadence and intonation to the occasional "uhhs" and "likes" that Greene had worked over the years to minimize but never eliminated. He said he played it for his wife and her eyes popped.

As emails and texts rolled in from friends, family members and co-workers, asking if the AI podcast voice was his, Greene became convinced he'd been ripped off. Now he's suing Google, alleging that it violated his rights by building a product that replicated his voice without payment or permission, giving users the power to make it say things Greene would never say. Google told The Washington Post in a statement on Thursday that NotebookLM's male podcast voice has nothing to do with Greene. Now a Santa Clara County, California, court may be asked to determine whether the resemblance is uncanny enough that ordinary people hearing the voice would assume it's his -- and if so, what to do about it. Greene's lawsuit cites an unnamed AI forensic firm that used its software to compare the artificial voice to Greene's. It gave a confidence rating of 53-60% that Greene's voice was used to train the model, which it considers "relatively high" confidence.

"If I was David Greene I would be upset, not just because they stole my voice," but because they used it to make the podcasting equivalent of AI "slop," said Mike Pesca, host of "The Gist" podcast and a former colleague of Greene's at NPR. "They have banter, but it's very surface-level, un-insightful banter, and they're always saying, 'Yeah, that's so interesting.' It's really bad, because what do we as show hosts have except our taste in commentary and pointing our audience to that which is interesting?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

16 skiërs getroffen door lawine in VS, nog meerdere vermist

SODA SPRINGS (ANP/AFP) - Tien skiërs worden vermist nadat ze getroffen werden door een lawine in de buurt van Lake Tahoe in de Amerikaanse staat Californië. Door een zware storm valt daar veel sneeuw en geldt lawinegevaar.

Een groep van zestien personen, onder wie vier gidsen, werd dinsdagochtend door de lawine getroffen. Zes personen zijn gelokaliseerd. Door de gevaarlijke weersomstandigheden hebben reddingsteams moeite hen te bereiken. Ook wordt er nog gezocht naar de andere tien skiërs.

"Zeer ervaren reddingsskiteams zijn vertrokken vanaf zowel Boreal Mountain Ski Resort als Tahoe Donner's Alder Creek Adventure Center om zich een weg te banen naar de zes bekende overlevenden, die de instructie hebben gekregen zo goed mogelijk ter plaatse beschutting te zoeken", aldus het sheriffdepartement van Nevada County.


Eerste Europese vlucht geland in Venezuela na ontvoering Maduro

CARACAS (ANP/AFP) - Een vliegtuig van de Spaanse luchtvaartmaatschappij Air Europa is dinsdag geland op de internationale luchthaven Simón Bolívar nabij de Venezolaanse hoofdstad Caracas, aldus Flightradar24 en luchthavenautoriteiten. Het is de eerste commerciële vlucht uit Europa die in Venezuela aankomt sinds de Verenigde Staten op 3 januari Venezuela binnenvielen en president Nicolás Maduro en zijn vrouw ontvoerden.

Eind november waarschuwden de Verenigde Staten voor "een mogelijk gevaarlijke situatie" voor vliegtuigen boven Venezuela, waarna veel internationale luchtvaartmaatschappijen stopten met vliegen naar Venezuela.

De Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner vanuit Madrid landde om 21.00 uur op de internationale luchthaven Simón Bolívar.


Hacker Noon - python

I have this awesome Python library that -- wait, are you on 2 or 3?

Build a Two-Pane Market Brief MVP in Streamlit

Streamlit is a tool-backed market brief copilot app. It uses EODHD tools and a single `run_brief()` function. It has a two-pane layout: brief on the left, numbers on the right. It's designed to feel like a product screen, not a chat window.

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CPython Lists, Explained Like You’re the Interpreter

CPython lists are actually static arrays. Understanding their contiguous memory layout explains why append() is cheap but insert() is expensive. Here is the mental model required for interviews.

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Agents Can Pay and Talk—So Why Can’t They Register?

AgentDoor is a middleware that adds a machine-readable front door to your API. When an AI agent hits your service, instead of navigating a human signup flow, it does this. Agents are hitting your endpoints through hacky browser automation, scraping your docs, and reverse-engineering your auth flows.

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This Tiny Python Script Runs Encrypted Code Straight From Memory

This program will execute XOR encrypted ciphertext (Python code) when provided the right passphrase or key, in memory. In this example, the encrypted code outputs, “Hello, lets go to google.com.” to the terminal. It then creates a connection to Google.com and retrieves the homepage using urllib3.request.

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The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Indian conglomerate Adani plans very slow $100 billion AI datacenter build

PM Modi tells citizens AI will lift them up, not take their jobs

Giant Indian industrial conglomerate Adani has said it will spend up to $100 billion on AI datacenters to equip the nation with sovereign infrastructure, but will do so at slower pace than Big Tech tech companies plan to bring their own bit barns to Bharat.…

Found Photo Booth photograph

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Found Photo Booth photograph

The Marlon D. Beltran Collection

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

The Marlon D. Beltran Collection

handwritten on negative sleeve, "March-April, 1984"

Fokke & Sukke

F & S