Xi Jinping used his first appearance at China's World AI Conference to promote a vision of low-cost, broadly accessible AI and call for international cooperation rather than technological rivalry. "AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation," he said. Bloomberg reports: His presence at the gathering, attended by scores of tech and government leaders, conveys a potent signal of China's ambitions to dominate a technological sphere with the potential to revolutionize industry and economies -- an effort that's shot to the top of the nation's agenda. Chinese models are winning over companies worldwide, with their share of US firms' AI usage nearing a record 60% on the popular marketplace OpenRouter.

Behind the rhetoric, Beijing is grappling with the balance between openness and national security as models grow more capable. Chinese officials recently discussed with companies including Alibaba -- developer of the popular Qwen models -- how to mitigate the security risks posed by their increasingly powerful models, people familiar with the matter said. The talks are early, with no enforcement planned, but restricting foreign access to top models was among the options raised, the people said. Reuters previously reported that Beijing was weighing curbs on overseas access. Earlier today, the Beijing-based AI company "Moonshot" released a massive new model that reset the AI race overnight, immediately vaulting into the top tier of global AI, beating Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in front-end coding tests.

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AWS says a billing software bug caused some customers to see wildly inflated estimated charges, including reports of accounts showing bills in the billions or even trillions of dollars. The Register reports: An open issue on the AWS Health Dashboard (archived copy at the time of writing) popped up at 1:33 am Pacific time on Friday informing users that Cost Explorer was "reflecting inaccurate estimated billing data." As of writing, the issue is still unresolved despite AWS trying several different things to get it fixed. The company apparently identified the root cause within an hour and a half of beginning its investigation, only describing it as "an issue with unit pricing within the estimated billing computation subsystem."

AWS followed up by pausing estimated bill updates, saying customers would continue to see the inflated figures already displayed, but that those estimates would not increase further. "The displayed billing estimates do not reflect actual usage and charges," AWS explained, noting that customers don't need to take any action, like, we imagine, flooding the help portal with tickets telling them what they already know, for instance.

"Once the issue has been mitigated, we expect full resolution to take multiple hours as we work through recomputing the estimated billing data," AWS added. After we first published this article, Amazon updated the issue page to indicate that it had identified the root cause and mitigated the underlying issue. The company says that it's begun backfilling data in the Cost Management Console to correct billing numbers, and that all customers should see corrected amounts by Saturday, July 18 at noon pacific time.

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uchi uchi has added a photo to the pool:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

Peter.Stokes has added a photo to the pool:

Taken in the rain.
DSC09867

To see more of my photos, please visit my web site at...
Peter Stokes Photography.

Husband of Nancy Pelosi has traffic infractions in California stretching back at least to 2011, according to public records

Paul Pelosi, husband of US congresswoman and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, is facing a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge after he allegedly crashed into a parked vehicle and left the scene in early July, the Napa county district attorney announced on Friday.

No passengers were in the struck car, authorities said, but the vehicle was left with “major” damage. A spokesperson for the Pelosi family told several outlets in a statement that Paul apologized to the owner of the vehicle and was assuming responsibility for the damage.

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• Trump and Infantino appear at Fifa reception

• World Cup final kicks off on Sunday at 3pm ET

Donald Trump credited Fifa president Gianni Infantino for the decision to suspend US striker Folarin Balogun’s red card ahead of his team’s crucial last-16 game against Belgium, which the US eventually lost 4-1.

Trump and Infantino were sharing the stage at a reception in the atrium of Trump Tower ahead of a meeting of the Fifa Council on the Friday before Sunday’s World Cup final. The pair entered a stage as Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA played over the loudspeakers, standing at the dais for two minutes and 15 seconds to wait for the entire song to finish before Infantino made his remarks, before then throwing to Trump.

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Een kruiswoordpuzzel, maar dan heel klein (en snel).

Ik ben in de speeltuin van de kinderboerderij en luister naar twee jongetjes die op de schommel zitten te mopperen over hun ouders.

Je krijgt een paar cijfers cadeau, maar het grid van 9x9 moet foutloos ingevuld worden.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

handwritten on slide, “dark"