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The largest leak of classified Pentagon documents since Edward Snowden has placed a free chat platform for the video gaming community in the spotlight. Discord began in 2015 as a chat app for gamers to discuss strategy in multiplayer video games, but owing to its privacy features it has morphed into a secure space to have secret discussions. This has inadvertently attracted users seeking to disseminate hate speech without being reported. Unlike most social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, the platform is decentralised, with communities organised into public or private groups known as servers, for gamers to interact. Most servers hosted on Discord are invitation-only and private, not allowing outsiders to find or even search for them. Each group or server in Discord has several channels, which function as separate chatrooms, divided…

What happened The SNP was this week frantically seeking to manage the fallout from the arrest of its former chief executive Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, in an investigation into party finances. Senior figures promised a review of SNP governance and transparency after Murrell’s arrest, saying that the party was facing its “biggest crisis” in 50 years. The warning followed a dramatic week in which police conducted a two-day search of the home that Sturgeon and Murrell share in Glasgow. Officers also searched the SNP’s Edinburgh HQ and seized a camper van from the home of Sturgeon’s mother-in-law. The probe centres on complaints that party funds donated for an independence referendum campaign were misappropriated. Murrell was released without charge pending further investigation. Humza Yousaf, who recently replaced Sturgeon as SNP leader and…

T here's a good reason why James Cameron is running 15 minutes late when Total Film calls. It's five weeks until his deadline to deliver Avatar: The Way Of Water when we speak over Zoom in mid-October, and the legendary filmmaker is spending every waking moment on Pandora. “It's going to be a bit of a photo finish, but the issue is not that we won't get done,” he starts, pausing to grin. “The issue is: will there be some little compromises here and there throughout the film that probably only I would notice?” Cameron has never done things by halves, and the Avatar sequels may be the ultimate example of that thinking in a career built on pushing the limits of what's possible on screen. Subject to a disproportionate level of…

JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF SOURCES: “UN WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS 2022”; GAPMINDER WE’VE REACHED A NEW MILESTONE in the human journey. Last November, according to the United Nations, the number of people on Earth hit eight billion. Our population has doubled in less than 50 years, just since 1974, the year the UN brought the world’s countries together for the first intergovernmental conference to address population growth. At the time, only three metro areas were home to 10 million people or more—New York, Tokyo, and Mexico City. Today there are more than 30. The reasons for this explosion are well known: Medicine, sanitation, and crop yields continue to improve dramatically. As a result, child mortality is plummeting and life expectancy is rising. Demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in Austria, and…

1 UNITED STATES Deportations of Russian asylum seekers resume The Biden administration quietly resumed deportations to Russia. Immigration advocates were taken by surprise when a young Russian man, who came to the US fleeing Vladimir Putin’s efforts to mobilise citizens to fight in Ukraine, was abruptly deported last weekend from the US back to Russia. He was among several Russian asylum seekers, many of whom have made their way to the US in the last year, who are now terrified the US government will return them to Russia where they could face prison or be sent rapidly to the frontline, where Russia has seen tens of thousands of casualties. “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) remains committed to enforcing immigration laws humanely, effectively and with professionalism,” the federal agency said, adding: “Ice conducts…

Locals living close to the sprawling military base in Cape Cod where 21-year-old Jack Teixeira worked for a US air force intelligence unit have been asking the same questions as everyone else. Was his alleged leak of national security documents some kind of principled stand or an immature attempt to impress two dozen members of a closed chat group called Thug Shaker Central on Discord, a video game chat platform, that he lost control of? And why did the Massachusetts air national guardsman have such apparently wide access anyway, from details of Ukrainian military vulnerabilities to surveillance of US allies – something that President Biden has called for an investigation into. At a veterans club in Falmouth, 1 5km from Otis, better known as the Cape Cod joint airbase, where Teixeira worked, locals…

Digital is now a permanent, but dynamic, a fixture in our world, and the IT and communications sectors will be among the most altered in the next years. CIOs must create procurement, development, and operations teams that correspond with as-a-service and outcomes-centric technology delivery models, while ICT providers' main responsibility is to assist organizations in sharing, using, governing, and increasing the value of data." — Rick Villars, group vice president, Worldwide Research at IDC. In this post, we'll look at the Top 10 IDC predictions and see whether they turned out to be true or not. We will grade the predictions as A - Accurate Prediction, B - Prediction was neither accurate nor inaccurate, or C - Prediction was inaccurate. PREDICTION 1 By 2024, digital-first enterprises will have shifted 70% of all tech…

If you haven’t been closely following the world of streaming media, you may have missed the major changes in the past year. Following a particularly bad financial quarter at Netflix, the entertainment industry collectively decided they were done spending huge sums of money to establish new streaming services. The gold rush is over and the rules have changed. One of the biggest changes is that Netflix, which for years refused to even consider offering advertising on its platform, instead announced it would add a discounted version of its service…with commercials. And the results are in: Netflix already makes more money from a subscriber who’s viewing its ad-laden version than it does from a subscriber who’s signed up for a more expensive ad-free tier. If you don’t like ads on your internet video,…

The assault rifle, America’s most popular gun, has become the preferred instrument for mass murder. What defines an assault rifle? Assault rifles, often called AR-15–style weapons, have been used in many mass shootings, including the recent massacre of 10 Black people in a Buffalo supermarket and the slaughter of 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. These weapons are identifiable by three features: They’re semiautomatic, meaning they can be repeatedly fired with the squeeze of the trigger; they have detachable magazines for easy reloading; and they have components, such as a pistol grip, that allow shooters to fire continuously with their rifle trained on the target. The AR-15 is the civilian counterpart of the U.S. military’s M16, which has a shorter barrel and can fire three-round bursts with one…

Boats have always been in my blood. I grew up in Dartmouth where the river was my playground. I started sailing dinghies aged 10 but my fascination with motor boats started when my dad bought the former Admiral’s launch from the Dartmouth Naval College. This handsome 22ft clinker-built wooden launch had clearly seen better days, so my dad set about restoring it to its former glory. It was a great lesson in what you could achieve by refitting an older boat, but my head was already being turned by the shiny new gin palaces that were starting to appear on the river. I loved the sleek styling and performance of these modern sportscruisers. For me it was all about power and speed, an addiction that has stayed with me for…

SORE THROAT SPRAY First sign of a tickle, spray your throat with this spray. Even if it’s not a sore throat, this is so perfectly natural that it doesn’t matter. Don’t wait for it to develop into an actual sore throat. First sign of a tickle, spray your throat with this spray. Even if it’s not a sore throat, this is so perfectly natural that it doesn’t matter. • 100ml / 3.4 fl oz boiling water• 6 tsp raw honey• 1 tsp dried echinacea• spray bottle 1. Boil the water and steep the echinacea in it for 5 minutes. 2. Strain into a mug. Once coolish (not cold), mix in the honey. 3. Siphon into a spray bottle. Use at the first sign of a sore throat by spraying in your mouth. Australian native substitutions Echinacea: gumbi gumbi…

The biggest illusion – and utility – of royal events such as the coronation is that we are somehow a part of them. We are, of course, in a way; we need to be for the institution of monarchy to have any meaning at all. But not as equals: the royal family gives us nothing, and we in turn legitimise it, give it meaning and audience and pay, through subsidies and tax exemptions, for its ability to wow us. The monarchy does provide a service, but not to us. It is to an entire system of political decline and economic inequality that cannot withstand closer scrutiny, and so it must be embellished and cloaked in ceremony. And it was ever thus. The historian David Cannadine, in an essay on the “invented…

The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked extraordinary destruction and misery, killing nearly 7 million people worldwide thus far and devastating the lives of many more. And yet, viewed through the long lens of human history, writes the public health sociologist Jonathan Kennedy, “there is little about it that is new or remarkable”. Previous pandemics have killed many more, both in absolute numbers and as proportions of populations, and so may future ones. Covid should be a wake-up call that helps us manage deadlier plagues in the future. But will we heed it? Our very existence and success as a species, Kennedy argues in this fascinating book, has been shaped by bacteria and viruses. Where, for example, did all the other species of humans go? At one time, early Homo sapiens shared the…

The outsider general How the warlord known as Hemedti captured the country’s politics. By Nesrine Malik Page 34 → On one street is a small cafe where diplomats, successful business-people and visiting dignitaries used to enjoy smoothies and burgers under umbrellas set against the blistering sun. On another is a showroom for custom-designed kitchens imported from Europe. Down dusty potholed roads, there are villas behind high walls and apartment blocks where chandeliers hang above shining marble stairways. These central Khartoum neighbour-hoods, once the most sought-after addresses in Sudan’s capital city, are now so dangerous that residents cannot wait to flee. In recent days, they have been the stage for a brutal power struggle, shattered by shells, grenades and automatic rifle fire that trapped tens of thousands in their homes. Some have managed to escape. Last…

Tonight, and almost every night, something amazing will happen inside your brain. As you turn off the light switch and fall asleep, you will be switching on the neurological equivalent of a dishwasher deep-clean cycle. First, the activity of billions of brain cells will begin to synchronise, and oscillate between bursts of excitation and rest. Coupled with these “slow waves”, blood will begin to flow in and out of your brain, allowing pulses of the straw-coloured cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that usually surrounds your brain to wash in and be pushed through the brain tissue, carrying the day’s molecular detritus away as it leaves. Most people recognise that if they don’t get enough sleep, their mood and memory will suffer the next day. But mounting evidence is implicating this “brainwashing” function of…

Dawn did not break over wartime Kyiv on Orthodox Easter Day. It was more that the darkness gradually paled, leaving the pinnacle of the 18th-century bell tower wreathed in a wan mist. Soon after 5.30am, the faithful began to trickle into Dormition Cathedral, which stands at the heart of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves. Families carried wicker baskets, covered with hand-embroidered cloths and filled with sweet Easter bread, eggs dyed with onion skins, salt and meat. Members of the congregation lit candles; the great golden candelabra in front of the iconostasis was soon bristling with flames. Easter has been celebrated on this spot since the 11th century, when monks from Mount Athos first hollowed out the rocky hillside to form their cells and shrines, establishing the lavra as…

Costa Rica’s Pacific coast has two distinct seasons: dry, from December to May; and rainy, from June to November. The driest weather is in Guanacaste province in the north, and the rainiest part of the country is the Osa Peninsula. During the dry season, there will be more-consistent wind for cruising, but the country is affected by the Papagayo gap winds: strong, intermittent northeasterly winds that commonly blow 30 or 40 knots, with gusts up to double the forecast windspeed. They are strongest from December through March, when the northeast trade winds are at their height in the Caribbean. To sail through the Papagayos, follow the shoreline carefully to avoid the fetch that builds farther out to sea. During the rainy season, winds tend to be light. Take advantage of the regular…

Oxon Hill, Maryland Republican warning: Right-wing Republicans railed against US support for Ukraine last weekend at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman with a history of promoting conspiracy theories, was the most vocal critic of US aid, winning applause for telling Ukraine’s President Zelensky to “leave your hands off our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there”. Ukraine “needs to find peace, not war”, she added. Polls indicate declining support in the US for sending aid to Ukraine; the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, says that his party will not write a “blank cheque” to Kyiv. The conference ended with a fiery address by Donald Trump, in which he reiterated his false claims that the 2020 election was…

A large batch of leaked classified US government information, including top-secret briefings, were discovered online this month, with many relating to perhaps the most sensitive arena of intelligence gathering in the world today – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What do they say? The most significant parts of the leak concern Kyiv’s level of preparedness for an expected counteroffensive, but there are plenty of lines about other countries’ involvement in the conflict that may cause serious diplomatic difficulties. Here are some of the revelations so far. Ukraine: US intelligence officials were pessimistic in February, saying Kyiv could fall “well short” of recapturing territory seized by Russia. There are also details of serious shortages of air defence and a risk of running out of anti-aircraft missiles completely by May. Russia: The leaks suggest the US has…

It is almost a year since many Tories decided that Boris Johnson would have to go, “yet a whole two prime ministers later, it’s almost as if he never left”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. This time last May, Johnson “was trying to bluster his way out of trouble” in the wake of Sue Gray’s report, with its talk of No. 10’s cleaners finding wine stains on the walls after lockdown-busting parties. Twelve months on and here he was again last week, cornered at an airport in the US, where he’d had a meeting with Donald Trump, having to defend himself from reports of new potential infringements of Covid regulations. These were uncovered by his own government-funded lawyers, who were looking at his official diary while preparing his defence…

“I don’t think we’re ever going to go down to pre-pandemic prices.” THE PENTAGON ANNOUNCED ON MAY 13 THAT Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke to his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu for the first time in 84 days, urging “an immediate ceasefire.” Austin’s call, U.S. government sources tell Newsweek, came after high-level White House deliberations where President Joe Biden and his national security advisers discussed a new intelligence assessment of Russia’s effort and the implication of Finland and Sweden’s announcements that they would seek NATO membership. “There’s a general sense growing that Putin indeed is in a corner, not just in Ukraine where his army is failing, but also in facing an existential threat from Europe, now even more united because of his missteps,” says a U.S. senior intelligence official who has…

What happened Worse-than-expected UK inflation data caused ructions in the markets last week, and led to renewed concerns about the pressure on household finances. Although the annual inflation rate in April fell below double digits, it only dropped to 8.7%; the Bank of England had forecast a fall to 8.4%. The inflation rate for food, meanwhile, remained stubbornly high, at 19.1%. Food has now overtaken fuel as the biggest single driver of rising prices. Worse still, core inflation – a measure that strips out volatile food and energy prices – actually rose from 6.2% to 6.8% in April, its highest level in 31 years. The inflation figures spooked the bond markets, pushing the UK’s borrowing costs to their highest level since last year’s “mini-Budget”. In response, banks pushed up mortgage rates. It…

IT’S EARLY AUTUMN IN CENTRAL CHINA, AND THE STREETS OF DING QINGZI’S VILLAGE ARE TURNING INTO GOLD. Thousands of husked corncobs lie in orderly rectangles in front of homes, their kernels drying in the sun. The harvest is one of the heartbeats of rural life in Anhui Province, a constant that Ding, 35, has known since childhood. Yet few other rhythms remain. Except for the corn, the streets are almost empty. Houses have been abandoned. The sounds of children have faded. And for years, Ding struggled to find a wife. Few young women still live in the village. Fewer still would marry a welder unable to buy a house or pay a bride-price. “My family is not rich,” Ding says. Standing in her yard shucking corn, Ding’s aunt bemoans the plight of…

Schnabel recalled in his memoir (My Life and Music, published posthumously in 1961) that Leschetizky, his childhood teacher in Vienna, repeatedly told him: ‘You will never be a pianist. You are a musician.’ Leschetizky’s prediction was off the mark, for Schnabel emerged as one of the most significant pianists (and pedagogues) of the first half of the 20th century. He was not only a serious and erudite musician of integrity, but also a musical polymath: a composer, editor, author and teacher as well as a great pianist. From Schnabel, as from Arturo Toscanini, stems the idea that the composer’s text must be the performer’s guide. Both musicians were committed to faithful realisation of the text, and this principle remains a core aspect of their respective legacies (though the results they obtained…

When you turn on your Mac, various apps, add-ons, and invisible background processes start running all by themselves. This is usually what you want, but you may sometimes see items running that you don’t recall adding yourself. Where do they come from? Sometimes these processes and apps can cause problems, and you need to remove them for your Mac to behave normally. And even if there’s not a problem, such items can increase your Mac’s startup time and may decrease performance, you’ll want to make sure your Mac is loading only items that are useful to you. Here’s a quick primer on the various kinds of startup and login items and how to manage them. LOGIN ITEMS MacOS 13 (Venutra) or later: Open System Settings and click General, then click Login Items (1). You’ll…

Until recently, if you wanted to buy an electric sportsboat your only option was to knock on the door of a handful of specialist electric boat manufacturers such as Candela, X-Shore, Rand or Vita. For the price of a small apartment, they would sell you a purpose-built electric sportsboat. But what if you didn’t like the styling or the layout of the boat itself? What if you already knew the make and model you wanted and just wanted to swap the petrol engine for an electric one? That’s where Evoy comes in. This Norwegian based start-up has been designing and building powerful electric motors for boats since 2019, initially for inboard craft but more recently for outboard powered ones too. It launched its first off-the-shelf electric outboard, the 120hp Breeze, earlier…

Russian President Vladimir Putin got many things wrong when he decided to invade Ukraine. He exaggerated his army’s military prowess. He underestimated the power of Ukrainian nationalism and the ability of its outmanned armed forces to defend their home soil. He appears to have misjudged Western unity, the speed with which NATO and others would come to Ukraine’s aid, and the willingness and ability of energy-importing countries to impose sanctions on Russia and wean themselves off its energy exports. He may also have overestimated China’s willingness to back him up. Put all these errors together, and the result is a decision with negative consequences for Russia that will linger long after Putin has left the stage. But if we are honest with ourselves, we should acknowledge that Russia’s president got some…

Allow me a bit of nostalgia, if you will. When I think of developing a wonder mindset, I imagine one of those Magic Eye posters from the 1990s. For those among the uninitiated, these wildly popular posters were pieces of digitally generated ‘art’ (a term used very loosely here), something of an optical illusion, but one that relied on a perceptual shift. A very complex and colourful variety of what’s called a random-dot autostereogram, the images on these posters looked like a staticky pattern of fractals or coloured shapes. But you weren’t trying to see that patterned image – you were trying to see another image hidden within the piece, something cheesy, such as a breaching dolphin or roaring lion. To view this magic image, one would stare at the…

It’s 9.30pm and groups of British lads are gearing up for a big night out in the red light district. Although Amsterdam’s narrow streets echo with French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Irish banter, last week the city council launched a campaign to tell Britons from 18 to 35 in search of a “messy night” to stay away. Lewis Flanigan, 24, from Middles-brough, is taking the chance to party while he still can. “My plans are for sex and drink, going around the bars until 6am,” he said, peering into brothel windows beside the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal. As Amsterdam braced for another rowdy weekend of visitors, things are indeed changing in this medieval district, where sex workers have operated for centuries. Last weekend was the first when 249 window brothels in De Wallen…

The UK and US have intervened in the race to develop ever more powerful artificial intelligence technology, as the British competition watchdog launched a review of the sector and the White House advised tech firms of their fundamental responsibility to develop safe products. Regulators are under mounting pressure to intervene, as the emergence of AI-powered language generators such as ChatGPT raises concerns about the potential spread of misinformation, a rise in fraud and the impact on the jobs market, with Elon Musk among more than 27,000 signatories to a letter published last month urging a pause in significant projects. The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it would look at the underlying systems behind AI tools. The initial review will publish its findings in September. The US government also announced measures to…

MICHAEL MANN At last, Australia has a climate action policy Page 48 → The United States is a grim warning of what happens when a society dispenses with the idea of truth. Fragmentation, paranoia, division and myth rule – democracy wilts. Fox News, we now know from emails flushed out by a lawsuit from the voting machine company Dominion, feared it would lose audiences if it told the truth about the 2020 presidential election. Instead, it knowingly broadcast and fed Donald Trump’s lie that the election had been stolen – in particular the unfounded allegation that Dominion had programmed its voting machines to throw millions of votes to the Democrats. Fox could have been instructed to tell the truth by its owner, as this month’s Prospect magazine details, but as Rupert Murdoch acknowledged…

The mercury is already nudging 40C on a February morning in Birdsville and, walking down the main drag, you could be forgiven for mistaking yourself in the nearby ghost town of Betoota. A guard dog barks half-heartedly without emerging from the shade beneath a set of stairs while a raptor wheels above. There is not a person in sight. The last census recorded Birdsville’s population as 110, but that figure drops by more than half over summer. Those who stick it out use terms like “hibernate” and “bunkering down” to describe how they survive the three months from December to March. Yet while others have fled the heat, an Australian human rights lawyer has travelled in the opposite direction, as she seeks adaptation strategies she hopes will save lives as the climate crisis…

After a 10,000-year journey, our human civilisation has reached a climate crossroads: what we choose to do in the next few years will determine our fate for millennia. That choice was laid bare in the landmark report published on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), assembled by the foremost climate experts and approved by all the governments. The next update will be published about 2030 – by that time the most critical choices will have been made. The report is clear about what is at stake – everything: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” “The choices and actions implemented in this decade [ie by 2030] will have impacts now and for thousands of years,” it said. The climate crisis…

PASO 4. COLOCA UN BIGOTE Esta vez no se va a realizar la boca, pero en cambio colocamos un bigote, lo cual permite darle una mejor personalidad a nuestro señor. Se le hace un bigote grande y exagerado. PASO 5. TERMINA CON EL CABELLO Como ya lo sabemos, el cabello da muchas veces intuición de la edad de la persona, por lo que vamos a agregar cabello a los lados y lo dejamos calvo en la parte superior. Es increíble lo que crea un aspecto totalmente diferente, también hay que darse cuenta que se le realizaron la misma forma de las orejas que el joven. ¿Cómo aprender a dibujar personajes de Comics? Primero, antes de saber cómo realizar los comics, debemos saber qué es un comic y todas las cosas que rodean la creación de un…

I could smell the forest before I even opened my eyes. It was a sweet, woodsy smell with a heavy fragrance of wet earth. If I kept my eyes closed, I could easily have placed myself on the forest floor, surrounded by the refuse of the trees that were making their way to becoming soil. When I did open my eyes, I remembered that I was lying under anchor on board Triteia, my 1965 Alberg 30 sloop, in Kaneohe Bay, on the windward side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. I climbed out of my berth and started my morning routine: filled the kettle, lit the fire, and loaded up my stainless-steel French press with ground coffee. Out on deck, I looked toward the sea, and then toward land. The boat…

1 ENVIRONMENT UN states finally agree treaty to protect high seas It had been almost two decades in the making, but late last Saturday night in New York, after days of gruelling round-the-clock debate and a full day after the deadline for talks had officially passed, UN member states finally agreed on a treaty to protect the high seas. The conference president, Rena Lee (pictured), of Singapore, received cheers and an ovation from delegates in the room. The historic treaty is crucial for enforcing the 30x30 pledge made at the UN biodiversity conference in December, to protect a third of the sea (and land) by 2030. Without a treaty, this target would certainly fail, as no legal mechanism existed to set up marine protected areas (MPAs) on the high seas. Covering almost two-thirds of…

“‘Four more years.’ Have those words ever elicited less excitement,” asked Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal. The announcement that a president is running for a second term is usually a “rallying moment” for at least half the country. But when Joe Biden confirmed last week that he was seeking re-election, even Democrats groaned. Recent polls suggest that only a quarter of US voters, and a minority of his party’s voters, want him to stand again. And no wonder. Even if Biden had not proved a divisive and unpopular president, there’s no getting around the age thing. At 80, he’s already the oldest US president in history; he would be 86 by the end of a second term. It’s ridiculous, said Daniel J. Flynn in The American Spectator. In…

“DOES THIS REMIND YOU of your childhood?” I ask my mom. I had already posed the question a half dozen times on our journey to find remnants of the summers she spent in New York’s Catskill Mountains in the 1950s. So far, the answer had always been no. Now we are in Ellenville at Cohen’s Bakery, established circa 1920, buying pumpernickel bread and chocolate rugelach. She shrugs. “Maybe if there was a man speaking Yiddish behind the counter.” The Catskills region sprawls across four counties north of New York City, dotted with lakes and crowned with around a hundred mountain peaks. Once it was the sparkling center of Jewish summers, replete with glamorous hotels and thriving small towns. But by the time I moved to New York, in 2011, the glory of…

Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk is again sounding warning bells on the dangers of artificial intelligence to humanity — and claiming that a popular chatbot has a liberal bias that he plans to counter with his own AI creation. Musk told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a segment aired Monday night that he plans to create an alternative to the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT that he is calling “TruthGPT,” which will be a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe.” The idea, Musk said, is that an AI that wants to understand humanity is less likely to destroy it. Musk also said he’s worried that ChatGPT “is being trained to be politically correct.” In the first of a two-part interview with Carlson, Musk also advocated for the regulation…

How far back do its problems go? The state of Sudan took shape in the 19th century, under Egyptian and then British rule. Upon independence in 1956, it was dominated – as it had been for centuries – by Arabic-speaking Muslims who had occupied the fertile lands around the Nile, based in the capital Khartoum. They presided over a vast territory filled with different religious and ethnic groups: Beja, Fur, Nubians, Dinka, Nuer, Copts. The nation’s modern history, wrote the historian Robert O. Collins, “has been consumed by revolution and civil war”. Upon independence, war broke out between the Islamic north and the Christian and animist south (two civil wars would leave 1.9 million dead and would lead eventually to South Sudan’s secession in 2011). But there have also been a…

Why are UPFs suddenly everywhere? Ultra-processed foods themselves aren’t new, but there has been a recent spate of high-profile books warning about their risks. The term itself was coined by Carlos Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Nutritional advice had traditionally focused on ingredients: avoiding too much salt, sugar and fat, for example. But in 2009, Monteiro proposed instead classifying foods by the amount of processing they’ve undergone: in his view, it was the heavily processed ones, the UPFs, that posed the most significant health risks. Researchers were sceptical at first, but a large number of scientific studies have shown a link between UPFs, obesity and associated illnesses. The exact mechanisms by which they affect us are still under debate, but…

What is the problem? Since the pandemic, Britain has faced a novel difficulty. Official unemployment is at its lowest point since the 1970s: at 1.3 million people, or 3.8% of working-age adults. This would usually be a sign of good economic health. Yet at the same time the UK’s workforce actually shrunk; during the pandemic, all major countries saw their workforces shrink but, unusually, Britain’s has not recovered, and is still about 1% smaller than it was. There are about nine million people aged 16 to 64 – a quarter of the working-age population – who are “economically inactive”: neither employed nor looking for work. This figure grew by half a million between 2019 and 2022. Many of these people are genuinely not looking for work: they are, for instance, students…

Relationships between equals There are certain Hollywood tropes that everyone recognises, but there can’t be any that is more common than the high-school drama where the cheerleader is going out with the footballer but ends up seeing the merits of the nerdy hero. It may surprise you that this particular Hollywood confection is not grounded in reality. In a new study, researchers interviewed people about the desirability of other people in the community. Using this information they established everyone’s “mate value”, a measure describing how likely people are to want to be in a relationship with someone. The researchers then analysed the relationship status of the people in the community. The results showed that people with similar mate values were more likely to enter into a relationship with each other and…

While Steinberg are perhaps best known for their DAW software, their product catalogue also includes some excellent virtual instruments. HALion is the flagship item on this list. It can run as a stand-alone instrument, or in any DAW as a plug-in (VST3, AAX and AU formats are supported). As well as playback and performance features, HALion also provides a substantial set of tools for creating your own instruments using samples, synthesis or a combination of both. These tools are suitable for the keen DIY sound designer to build their own unique sounds but, via the Macro and Library Creator options, also allow developers to produce unique front-end designs and commercial library expansion packs for the HALion or HALion Sonic platforms (HALion’s more compact offspring that provides ‘player only’ functions but…

ON THE ROAD The air-raid siren sounded again through the defiant city, but William McNulty refused to be bothered by it. After a long morning of meetings in Kyiv with Ukrainian partners in need of medical tourniquets and coldweather clothing, the man had earned an afternoon nap. The air flowing through the hotel room’s open window nipped of brittle autumn, and sunlight was leaking through gray clouds; winter, as the Ukrainians liked to quip, was coming. Fuck it, McNulty thought. The chances of getting hit by a drone strike in a city of three million people seemed low. A U. S. Marine veteran from Chicago who’s served in Iraq and done humanitarian work in dozens of conflict and natural-disaster zones, he’s grown numb to the frequent sirens that are now a mainstay…

Do you often feel that, to put it bluntly, you suck? Welcome to the club. At the same time, our common struggle with self-worth can mean we’re liable to brush aside the problem. Low self-esteem has become such a commonplace descriptor of feeling bad that maybe we’ve started to tune it out, minimise or even dismiss it, says Elisabeth Shaw, CEO of Relationships Australia NSW and a clinical psychologist with over 30 years’ experience. Research shows poor self-worth is closely associated with depression and anxiety. Unfortunately this link has also led to it being accepted as an insidious part of that package, Shaw says. Pop psychology has contributed to us trivialising the problem with quick-fix Band-Aid ideas that don’t adequately address the issue. We should take self-esteem more seriously of itself,…

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” While some argue over his meaning and intent, the fact remains that the history of America is full of people, families and even companies that have been able to revive, rebuild, reinvent or reimagine themselves, leading to even further successes after overcoming whatever difficulties they faced. Perhaps no person, or family, has ever embodied this sentiment as much as H.L. Hunt and the dynasty he founded, one that continues to impact our nation in enormous ways. After all, how could a story that involves poker winnings, Texas oil booms, an unquenchable entrepreneurial spirit, and a seemingly rotating series of successes and setbacks be any more apropos of the American identity and history? In 1889 Haroldson Lafayette Hunt Jr. certainly…

FAIRLINE PHANTOM 65 LOA 65ft 4in (19.96m) BEAM 17ft 2in (5.23m) ENGINES twin Caterpillar C18-1150 or C32-1622 diesels TOP SPEED 35 knots PRICE £2.05 million ex VAT CONTACT www.fairline.com While Fairline is planning to unveil a revised Squadron 68 in Cannes, the more noteworthy and radical World debut is likely to involve the new Phantom 65. Heralded as Fairline’s first ever ‘sportsbridge’ yacht, it aims to take the external form of the award-winning Targa 65 and add a low-slung fly deck to the mix for tri-deck flexibility alongside a beautifully streamlined sportscruiser aesthetic. With long, blade-like hull windows and a deep-set flybridge that blends gently into the curved roof mouldings as you move aft of the boat’s centreline, it’s clearly a success from a stylistic perspective. But the sportsbridge is still big enough to…

GENERALLY SPEAKING, humans will try to eat anything at least once. Some anthropologists theorize that prehistoric people sussed out what was edible by trial and error, but we haven’t stopped pushing our palates in new, sometimes dangerous directions. The risk of illness and even death is often baked into our favorite flavors and fares. Here are some beloved bites that can kill—if things go awry. Fugu A dash of danger is part of the appeal of this lean and mild whitefish, which is served as slivers of sashimi in select Japanese restaurants. Tetrodotoxin, a paralysis-inducing chemical that disrupts the connections between neurons and muscle cells, collects in the liver and sex organs of this family of pufferfish. Japan’s health ministry requires fugu chefs to be certified in properly cleaning and removing the…

DURING HIS CAMPAIGN for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden repeatedly insisted that his primary goal as president would be to help the struggling American middle class. “Ordinary middle-class Americans built America,” he declared during a June 2019 Democratic primary debate. Under President Donald Trump’s policies, he said, “too many people who are in the middle class and who are poor have the bottom fall out.” In defining the “middle class” and the “poor,” a good place to start is the median household income. In 2020, the year before Biden became president, the U.S. median was about $67,000, down from about $69,000 the previous year. The poor presumably make less than that, and people in the “middle” class, particularly those who feel the economic bottom falling out beneath them, presumably…

For a single decade of F1 racing, the 1970s certainly had some of the most varied engineering we’ve seen on the grid. F1 at the time consisted of big dreams, big budgets and various unique car and aerodynamic designs. One of the wildest of these was the Tyrrell P34 6-wheeler. It also happens to be one of the most iconic and, in my opinion, coolest F1 car designs of all time. Though it may have only won a handful of races in its day, the Tyrrell P34 will forever be a favorite among F1 enthusiasts and took its place as the only 6-wheel car to compete and podium in F1 history. To honor this iconic F1 car, Tamiya has faithfully captured the Tyrrell P34’s design many times over the years, releasing…

As the soft drizzle in London gave way to a downpour, Charles was crowned king in Westminster Abbey, and the feeling came over many, if not all, that some things are the more marvellous for being a bit silly and unfathomable. Queen Victoria spoke of the “disturbing oscillation” of the gold state coach, a phrase that speaks just as well to the events of last Saturday. If the coronation was ludicrous, it was also magnificent; if it reduced you to laughter, it may also have made you cry. A drum horse called Apollo would not behave, skittering sideways determinedly. But in the diamond jubilee state coach – this one comes with both suspension and air conditioning – in their white ermine capes, cosy together on their quilted bench, their majesties looked like…

Towards the end of Traffic, an account of the early years of internet publishing, Ben Smith, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, writes that the site’s failings had come about as a result of a “utopian ideology, from a kind of magical thinking”. No truer words, perhaps, for a business that, for a decade, paddled in a warm bath of venture capital funding but never fully controlled its pricing and distribution, a fundamental business requirement. A pioneer of the internet news business, BuzzFeed News, which walked away with a Pulitzer prize for international reporting in 2021, said it was shutting down on 20 April after shares in the company had tumbled 90% since it went public. Jonah Peretti, the chief executive, said the company could “no longer continue to fund” the site.…

POLITICS Starmer defends attack on Sunak’s sex-abuse stance Keir Starmer has said he will “make absolutely zero apologies for being blunt” in an article published after a row over a widely criticised Labour attack advert on child sexual assaults. In a veiled message to critics within his party, Starmer said he would “stand by every word Labour has said on this subject” and would use the Tories’ record on crime as a legitimate criticism “no matter how squeamish it might make some feel”. The advert (below), which drew criticism from left and right, used a picture of Rishi Sunak and said he did not believe adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison and cited the Conservative record on offenders avoiding jail. Several senior Labour figures distanced themselves from the poster. The Observer…

More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars. Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US green-house gas emissions. Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say. The two new datasets identify the sites most critical to…

CONSERVATIVES Poll pressure on Sunak as investigation launched A prolonged crisis within the NHS stoked by further strikes risks derailing Rishi Sunak’s local election plans amid Tory concern that the prime minister is already facing pressure over pledges on health and the economy. Sunak this week attempted to shore up Tory heartland seats where traditional supporters had been put off by the chaos of the Johnson and Truss regimes. However, opposition parties have reported that the NHS remains the most salient issue among soft Tory voters. The decision by the Royal College of Nursing to reject the government’s pay offer and announce further strikes, together with the threat of coordinated action by junior doctors, has heaped new pressure on Sunak before local polls in England that represent his first electoral test since entering 10…

Joe Biden was in his element last week on his genial tour of Ireland, meeting the politicians, meeting the people, being Joe. But in keeping with the strange – often absurd – state of US national politics, the really big event, his amble into the 2024 race for president, took shape a few days earlier at the White House Easter egg roll. Speaking to Al Roker, the weather presenter for NBC News, Biden made his plans all but official. “I’m planning on running, Al,” Biden said when Roker asked whether the president planned to take part in this frivolity after next year. “But we’re not prepared to announce it yet.” The setting, however, is far from the only absurdity about the presidential contest, still more than 18 months away. Consider the latest…