Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov said in February that his ministry was restoring more than 20,000 civil defense facilities nationwide.

Experts blame the nationwide spate of killings on climate change and human incompetence.

Een gedeelte van de gepensioneerde Rotterdammers maakt wellicht toch weer kans op voortzetting van het gratis reizen in het openbaar vervoer in de daluren. De RET onderzoekt na een gesprek met wethouder Chantal Zeegers (D66) of een regeling mogelijk is voor aow'ers met een inkomen van 110 procent van het wettelijk sociaal minimum.

“Sky burial is a funeral practice in which a corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to the elements, or to be eaten by scavenging animals.” (CW: there are some potentially upsetting photos on that page.)

Overal is te horen hoe machtig en mogelijk zelfs gevaarlijk kunstmatige intelligentie kan zijn. De roep om ‘vangrails’ wordt steeds luider. Net als in andere landen denkt Nederland na over een AI-veiligheidsinstituut. Wat kost dat en wat is daar voor nodig?

Ik vond een pakje shag in een doos met boeken. Tussen ‘Oranjebitter’, de prinses Margarita-saga van mijn oud-collega Thieu Vaessen en ‘Ganz Unten’, participerende journalistiek…

LONDEN (ANP) - De Britse overheid vermoedt dat Iran een rol speelde bij het incident bij de luchtmachtbasis bij Fairford afgelopen zondag. Dat zegt premier Andy Burnham in een interview met de BBC. "We zullen er te zijner tijd meer over zeggen, maar we kunnen bevestigen dat we vermoeden dat Iran betrokken was", aldus Burnham.

Vijf Britse mannen werden zondag opgepakt en drie witte busjes niet ver van de luchthaven werden door de explosievendienst gecontroleerd. Verder is er nog weinig bekend over het incident.

TEL AVIV (ANP) - Het toestel van flydubai met daarin de inzittenden van het vliegtuig waarin eerder op de dag een gevecht was uitgebroken in de cockpit, is volgens internationale media geland in Tel Aviv. De vlucht zou zijn geëscorteerd door Israëlische gevechtsvliegtuigen.

Op beelden bij de BBC is te zien hoe in de ontvangsthal Israëlische militairen klaarstaan om passagiers op te vangen. Buiten de luchthaven staan ambulances klaar.

Op een flydubai-vlucht van Dubai naar Tel Aviv brak woensdag een gevecht uit in de cockpit tussen de twee piloten. Een van hen zou de ander hebben neergestoken, volgens Israël in een poging het toestel te doen neerstorten. Dat kon worden verhinderd, waarna een meereizende pilotenploeg het toestel een noodlanding liet maken in het Saudische Tabuk. De aanvaller kon worden gearresteerd en wordt ondervraagd, aldus de Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu eerder op woensdag.

Eerder werd gemeld dat Saudi-Arabië een Israëlisch voorstel om repatriëringsvluchten te sturen, zou hebben afgewezen.

MOSKOU (ANP/RTR) - Wapenfabrieken die in Europese landen wapens speciaal voor Oekraïne maken, zijn voor Rusland militaire doelwitten, aldus een woordvoerder van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken.

Ze stelde dat de bewering dat Rusland geen vrede wil ongefundeerd is. Het is juist de EU die probeert met massale wapenleveranties een vredesregeling te voorkomen of te vertragen, aldus woordvoerder Maria Zacharova.

Ze beklemtoonde dat Rusland in Europese wapenfabrieken een militair doelwit kan zien. Zo zou Polen bereid zijn een fabriek te herbergen waar voor Oekraïne bestemde raketten voor het Amerikaanse luchtverdedigingssysteem Patriot kunnen worden geproduceerd.

George Russell cut Kimi Antonelli’s championship lead from 81 points to 66 at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, bringing him back into the title race conversation after he had ruled himself out of it. Can the Briton build on that swing at the Bahrain Grand Prix and beyond, and become a genuine contender once more? F1.com runs through the factors working in his favour…

Hailing from the French West Indies in the Caribbean—specifically the island of Guadeloupe—and currently based in Montréal, multi-disciplinary artist Eddy Firmin is deeply interested in the history and politics of colonization and identity. His home region’s inextricable ties to the dark legacy of slavery informs a practice that interrogates how knowledge is shared and passed down through generations.

Throughout more than three centuries, upwards of 20 million or more people were transported to the Western Hemisphere to be sold as slaves in what is now viewed as one of the most atrocious crimes against humanity ever perpetrated. Millions died due to exhaustion, disease, and brutal transport and living conditions.

Chattel slavery was particularly extreme in the Caribbean, where roughly 40 percent of those taken from African were put to work on sugar cane plantations owned by European capitalists. Myriad African traditions crossed the Atlantic with members of their displaced communities, taking on new forms and evolving into tools for resistance.

One of these traditions is known as Gwoka, an Afro-Caribbean custom that involves music, dance, and storytelling. It continues today in contemporary form, taking place during festivals and other events, furthering a legacy of resilience that enslaved people drew on for mutual support and perseverance.

In Gwoka and similar artistic endeavors, technical ability and aesthetics “aim to seduce and mesmerize, while the hidden message fosters resistance to dominant discourse in the arts as in the social space,” Firmin says in a statement. Music and the way it’s broadcasted continues thematically in a large-scale collaborative work made with Afro-Caribbean and Franco-Canadian artist Géraldine Entiope titled “Pa ka tann ?!” A vibrant, elaborately patterned DJ booth with monumental speakers is set on top of a small car, from which Caribbean music can be played and celebrated.

The artist often works with ceramics, recontextualizing symbolic motifs and patterns and testing our associations with materials and their applications. Punching bags and tools are made of porcelain, while sculptures drawing on the African masking traditions are paired with glossy corporate branding.

Busts of Black men, often depicting Firmin himself, mirror the types of marble and alabaster sculptures that historically honored affluent or influential European figures. In the artist’s reimagining, we are confronted by uneasy, contemporary relationships. The self-portrait titled “Sans Signe” (“Without Sign”), for instance, portrays a man with a metal collar around his neck and the seemingly incongruent monogram pattern of Louis Vuitton emblazoned across his face. Eyes closed, he may even be blinded.

The public occasionally scrutinizes fashion brands’ ethics, such as the enormous backlash Nike faced in the 1990s due to its reliance on overseas sweatshops. But most people never see or even think about how the products they purchase are made. Just because it’s not immediately apparent doesn’t mean that the corporate messaging and reliance on material possessions isn’t altering the very fabric of global society. Firmin prompts us to consider how much agency anyone has in a capitalist system where enormous wealth increasingly concentrates for a slim few while most people struggle to get by.

The artist also interprets consumerism as yet another colonizing force: when corporate interests and the demand for manufactured goods increasingly influence daily life, what happens to local and Indigenous customs, value systems, creativity, and autonomy? Here, shackles serve as a stark reminder of both a grim past and a present peril.

If you’re in Toronto, a few of Firmin’s works will go on view starting October 9 in the exhibition After the Island: Caribbean Canadian Ceramics at the Gardiner Museum. See more and follow updates on the artist’s Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Eddy Firmin Interrogates History and Colonizing Forces in Provocative Sculptures appeared first on Colossal.

⚽ Updates from the 5.45pm BST kick-off in France
⚽ Live scores | Read Moving the Goalposts | Mail Niall

Renée Slegers makes just two changes from the 1-0 defeat to Chelsea, with Misa Rodriguez in goal ahead of Anneke Borbe, while Lotte Wubben-Moy replaces Steph Catley in defence. Catley, like Chloe Kelly, is injured and did not travel for the game.

Paris FC (4-2-3-1): Chavas; N’Dongala, Hocine, Greboval, Liaigre; Le Moguedec, Korosec; Reynders, Toloba, Mateo (c); Viens.
Subs: Seweryn, Mendonca, Baquerizo, Diaz, Corboz, Traore, Scott, Sangare, Picard, Ishizaka, Torres, Mendy.

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The United States Postal Service is running a pilot program to put cameras in its mail carrier trucks that continuously scan roads and signs, map roadways and sidewalks, and improve “community safety,” according to a letter posted by a labor union and a statement from the agency to 404 Media. The idea is that, since the trucks are constantly traveling anyway, they can be used as a way to collect data, eventually potentially across the nation.

“The purpose of this pilot is to leverage the Postal Service’s unique ability to collect this valuable data due to the scale and frequency with which our fleet of postal vehicles travel the streets of every community across the country,” the letter, posted by NALC Branch 238 to Facebook, reads.

The letter, written by the United States Postal Service (USPS) Labor Relations to Brian Renfroe, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, says the USPS will partner with Next Base, a dashcam company, for the pilot. At the moment, the cameras will be used in the Washington, DC area, and will be installed on a hundred vehicles, the letter says.

On its website, Next Base offers a variety of dash cams, marketed to ordinary drivers, fleet operators, and ride share drivers. Its website says Next Base’s cameras record in up to 4K, and can capture every “license plate” with precision. The cameras don’t run automatic license plate reader (ALPR) software, though.

The letter continues, “Next Base cameras will scan and analyze roads, signage, maps roadways [sic] and sidewalks.” It says the cameras will be forward-facing, installed inside the trucks, and will begin recording as soon as the vehicle is in drive and away from the postal facility. “The cameras will not hinder the vehicle operator’s field of vision, nor does it record audio,” it adds.

The pilot was slated to start on September 21, and is expected to last several months, the letter says.

A spokesperson for the USPS told 404 Media in an email “The Postal Service is conducting a limited pilot to assess whether vehicle-mounted cameras can help identify roadway conditions and support community safety. The pilot includes privacy safeguards and requires no additional action from employees. Findings will inform any future decisions.”

USPS trucks already have 360 degree cameras that capture the outside of the vehicle for a period of time.

Abusive, sexually explicit deepfakes have only become easier to make and more widespread in the last nine years. Since we first covered deepfakes when they appeared in 2017, they’ve never been the stuff of dark web sites or shadowy networks. They're found on social media networks, through basic web searches, and on easily downloadable apps and accessible forums. 

The most prominent hosts of non-consensual, AI-generated imagery are supported by some of the biggest web infrastructure providers in the world, getting their hosting, email, advertising, and content management systems from these companies. A new study examines how providers like Cloudflare, Google, Proton, Namecheap, and WordPress help non-consensual imagery sites thrive. Despite years of knowledge about these wildly popular sites, big tech companies continue providing infrastructure services that prop up abuse imagery, even though their own terms of service often prohibit illegal and harmful content, the study claims. 

Hany Farid, professor in Computer Science at Dartmouth College, Sophie Nightingale, a senior lecturer in psychology at Lancaster University, and Lancaster’s Sarah Morgan, who acts as the project coordinator on Nightingale’s “Protecting Ordinary People from Deepfake Harms” fellowship published their paper, “The Backbone of Abuse: How Infrastructure Providers Enable the Proliferation of AI-Generated Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery” in Stanford’s peer-reviewed Journal of Online Trust and Safety on Wednesday. 

In a six-week period between February and March, they identified 400 URLs based on keyword searching and Google Alerts, then narrowed the sites down to 88 that were actively hosting non-consensual intimate imagery. Most of the content on these sites was of female celebrities, actresses, pop singers, K-pop idols, and women working in politics or activism. From there, they used open-source web-analysis tools like WHOIS to see what infrastructure providers the sites used.   

“Five players emerged as dominant infrastructure providers: Cloudflare, Google, Namecheap, WordPress, and Protonmail,” the researchers wrote in their paper. Cloudflare provided “the lion’s share of services,” they wrote, by providing website hosting, content delivery network, and domain-name server services, as well as analytic tools. Google provided SSL certificates and advertising space for the majority of the sites studied, while Namecheap was the dominant provider of domain registrar services, WordPress provided the majority of their content management system services, and Proton provided mail servers.

Each of these service providers forbid customers and users from using their services for illegal activity. Publishing or threatening to publish AI-generated non-consensual sexual imagery is a federal crime in the U.S. and elsewhere, and sexual abuse imagery in general is illegal in many countries. 

Cloudflare, Proton, and Namecheap did not respond to 404 Media’s requests for comment about these findings. 

A spokesperson for Google told 404 Media in a statement: “Without the specific domains from the report, we can’t investigate these claims. We have strict policies against non-consensual explicit content — including AI-generated imagery — across all our products. We make it easy for people to quickly remove this content on Search, continuously update our systems to limit its visibility, and we prohibit monetizing or promoting non-consensual and sexually explicit content."

The Google spokesperson added that its advertising platform prohibits monetizing or promoting non-consensual and sexually explicit content, and treats this content as egregious violations, blocking ads on the sites or suspending the advertiser accounts involved. They also noted people can request the removal of non-consensual explicit images from Search, and pointed to Google’s recently-updated removal request process. Google has also updated its ranking algorithms by promoting non-explicit content where possible, they said, and demotes sites in search results that have a high number of removals against them.

A WordPress spokesperson said WordPress is “open-source software, not a hosting provider,” and wrote in a statement: “WordPress.org does not host websites or provide hosting services to sites that use WordPress, and we do not have access to or control over content published on independently hosted WordPress sites.” They noted that WordPress’s software is distributed under the general public use license, allowing anyone to use it for any purpose. “We take the issue of non-consensual intimate imagery seriously, but describing WordPress as providing services or infrastructure to these sites conflates the software a site uses with the services that host and operate it,” the spokesperson said.

In response to WordPress’s statement, Farid noted that while WordPress.org is not a host, WordPress.com is a hosting service. “It's operated by Automattic, which Matt Mullenweg also runs, and it hosts millions of sites. Any NCII site on WordPress.com is squarely within scope,” he told 404 Media. “Automattic provides services to self-hosted sites. Jetpack and the WordPress.com CDN serve images from i0.wp.com/i1.wp.com for sites that enable it, meaning the intimate images themselves can be served from Automattic infrastructure even when the site is hosted elsewhere. That's infrastructure by any definition.”

Farid also noted that WordPress.org maintains “an ongoing service relationship with self-hosted sites,” he said, with core updates, plugin and theme distribution, and security patches coming from WordPress.org servers. Farid mentioned Automattic’s ongoing legal battle with WP Engine, during which, in 2024, Mullenweg announced WP Engine was blocked and then unblocked from accessing WordPress servers; this “showed the project can and will cut a specific operator off from those services,” he said.

“So ‘no access to or control over’ is not entirely accurate,” Farid said. 

‘The Most Dejected I’ve Ever Felt:’ Harassers Made Nude AI Images of Her, Then Started an OnlyFans

Kylie Brewer isn’t unaccustomed to harassment online. But when people started using Grok-generated nudes of her on an OnlyFans account, it reached another level.

These providers do draw their own moral and legal lines on what kinds of customers they’ll tolerate and when they cooperate with authorities. After initially refusing to do so, Cloudflare dropped hate speech and doxing site Kiwifarms from its protection services in 2022, and terrorist manifesto host 8chan in 2019. In 2018, Cloudflare banned sex work harm reduction social network Switter from using its services, citing anti-trafficking legislation FOSTA/SESTA, and in 2017, it Cloudflare stopped services to neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer. In 2023, victims of the sex trafficking ring Girls Do Porn demanded Cloudflare stop providing services to sites hosting their abuse; Cloudflare claimed it doesn’t have “control over the content of websites using those services,” doesn’t have “the ability to alter or remove content on them,” and doesn’t “have knowledge of the people or entities who post any specific content to such websites.” 

404 Media previously reported Proton gave the Swiss government payment data related to a Stop Cop City Protonmail account, which in turn handed it to the FBI, and in 2024, Proton gave Spanish police information that identified a pseudonymous activist.

New Research Shows Deepfake Harassment Tools Spread on Social Media and Search Engines

An analysis of how tools to make non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes spread online, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, shows X and search engines surface these sites easily.

Aside from the infrastructure issue the researchers were studying, they found that 312 of the 400 sites they initially identified were unrelated to deepfakes, like gambling or random travel or cooking SEO-slop sites, but were using non-consensual imagery keywords as a way to rank higher in search results. This shows how incredibly popular the marketplace is for AI-generated abuse imagery, and how sites are able to manipulate Google search to appear higher in results if they use related terms. 

Morgan told me that while journalists can expose site administrators (like in the case of MrDeepfakes.com, whose owner was identified by a massive joint investigation by Bellingcat, the CBC and TjekDet), and legislation can act as a deterrent, the research group wanted to focus on infrastructure providers as the “distribution supply” for these sites. “Creators are going to create and people are going to demand. We can’t stop that. But we can call for providers to cut the distribution supply and stop enabling these sites. This content needs preventing from being shared in the first place. All parts of the ecosystem have to work together to play a part,” she said.

The researchers recommend in their paper that these providers stop supplying services to sites hosting non-consensual imagery. 

“We aren’t saying that infrastructure providers are knowingly facilitating this content — or that they are aware of what’s on every site that uses their provisions — but it’s in providers’ power to vastly improve their moderation and cease services to sites as soon as they are identified as hosting this content. And to check sites that are reported to them,” Morgan said. “A gold standard response in our eyes would be a commitment from infrastructure providers to working with NGOs and governments across the globe who are searching for solutions that will lead to verifying URLs and sharing these with participating platforms so they can be blocked.”   

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

If you've always wanted to say you have "people" to attend your meetings, there's an app in development for that, as long as you're comfortable with the idea of eventually sending an AI bot in your place and potentially offending your human colleagues. MeetTwins, from Indian developer Aditya Shinde, is an AI assistant currently recruiting users for its beta. It's designed for a single purpose: to attend Google Meet calls on behalf of its operator and relay approved information to colleagues without requiring its human to spend precious time actually speaking to coworkers. Shinde describes the tool on its website as being inspired by his own desire to send an AI bot to his Google Meet calls, an idea he instead decided to develop into an actual product built using AI models from India-based AI firm Sarvam, and with the ability to add a digital twin avatar created by Simli. Use cases described on MeetTwins' website include status update meetings, students who have to juggle work with class, and even sales and customer teams who need to handle routine check-in calls with clients, though we don't advise that for businesses who want their customers to feel like they care about them. Prepping MeetTwins for a call involves telling it what questions to answer, providing documents or files participants may request, and supplying other context it may need. Certain topics can be designated off limits for the discussion as well. Shinde told The Register in a LinkedIn conversation that it’s solely designed to answer questions that were approved by its user, and that it won’t guess, make anything up, or promise something that a human ought to have final say on. “If a prospect asks something that isn't covered in the brief, MeetTwins will not try to improvise,” Shinde told us. Anything outside the defined realm of discussion is instead referred to MeetTwins’ operator, who receives an email after the call summarizing the things that were discussed and any open items to address. Let’s be frank for a moment: No one wants to be stuck in a boring Google Meet call that could have been an email – an argument for which MeetTwins, ironically, provides even further justification – but deciding to send an AI representative on your behalf isn’t likely to engender feelings of camaraderie or support from one’s coworkers. Shinde admitted he’s aware of that and has built features into MeetTwins to account for that very situation. “We are very conscious of this,” Shinde noted. “If anyone in the meeting is uncomfortable, they can simply type "/stop" in the chat, and MeetTwins will leave immediately.” In other words, there’s a distinct possibility that colleagues upset they had to engage with an AI instead of their coworker will simply eject the bot and send a grumpy email after the meeting asking for whatever information you were going to provide, potentially CC’ing a supervisor on that note, too. Shinde said that clearly labeling the MeetTwins bot as an AI in the call, and announcing it when it first speaks, "actually builds trust,” though we imagine that might not be the case with those who are skeptical of AI. A good use of AI? That’s up for debate, but it does prove one thing: We’re all wasting a lot of time in virtual meetings that could probably just be an email or a Slack message - preferably one penned by an actual human whose busy schedule might not have any spare time. ®