Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

“I do see this as a continued trajectory of their main business model of controlling what people see, putting ads in front of them, and collecting more data,” Mir says.It’s definitely rational to be anxious about handing over your credit card to an agent. Even if you could trust these AI tools wouldn’t be tricked into spending money in ways you don’t want, outsourcing your shopping decisions can have unintended consequences. Consumer advocates see this purchasing automation as potentially opening the door for companies to prioritize certain brands or other products in an agent’s output, based on sponsorship deals. Meta’s…

US President Donald Trump said that he plans to create an “AI Force” and appoint an artificial intelligence czar.Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday that his new project would manage the fast-growing sector without adding regulations that could slow innovation, according to Newsweek and other media.“For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term,” the president wrote. “To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar’ — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!”Trump did not say whether the…

For more than a century, scientists have tried to reconstruct the biology of Tyrannosaurus rex from bones, teeth, footprints, and other traces left behind more than 60 million years ago. Fossils discovered as far north as Alaska have suggested that T. rex could tolerate cold conditions, adding to evidence that the giant dinosaur was moving away from the cold-blooded physiology of many reptiles and toward the warm-blooded metabolism seen in birds. Now scientists have done something that once seemed impossible: they have effectively taken T. rex’s temperature. Researchers at UCLA developed a method for estimating body temperature from fossilized teeth…

Albanese says he will put concerns about AI to TrumpSarah Basford CanalesThe intergenerational report also said Australia was well positioned to benefit from AI but its impact on many industries – such as the labour market – were too early to forecast. double quotation markThe economic and social implications of AI are expected to be profound but the specific impacts will depend on the evolution of the technology, how deeply and broadly AI is adopted, and how it will be used. Australia is a leading destination globally for datacentre investment and has seen a near doubling of capital expenditure in…

But as Germany’s export-oriented growth model continues to suffer amid increased competition from China and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff wars, German voters don’t appear to be giving him the benefit of the doubt. The chancellor’s agenda includes raising the retirement age to shore up the pension system, cutting some health-insurance benefits to curb rising premiums and making it harder for workers to take sick leave in an effort to boost growth. Many of those reforms impose clear costs on ordinary voters, giving the far right and far left ample opportunity to exploit public discontent. Despite the AfD’s victory in…

In August, I wrote about my love of the music history podcast No Dogs in Space, but mourned the fact that there hadn’t been a new episode in over two years. Little did I know that hosts Carolina Hidalgo and Marcus Parks were gearing up to announce the show’s return with season four, Punk 2.0. The first episode premiered this week, part one of a series on the New York Dolls, a band near and dear to my heart as a native Staten Islander, home of frontman David Johansen.For the new season, Hidalgo and Parks decided it was time to…

Flet is an open source Python framework that renders its UI with Flutter. You write Python, and Flet draws Material and Cupertino widgets on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux and the browser. No Dart, Swift, Kotlin or JavaScript required. Last week, the Flet team released Flet 1.0 and declared it ready for building production apps. The release lands roughly four years after the project started. Is it deployable? Yes, today. Flet 1.0.0 is on PyPI under the Apache 2.0 license, requires Python 3.10 or newer for the SDK, and installs with pip install ‘flet[all]’. flet build produces artifacts for Windows,…

There is one hurdle if Coinbase wants to run a trading venue directly under the exemption. Its exchanges use central limit order books, while the SEC framework is built around automated market makers (AMM).That means, the Goldman report noted, Coinbase would need new infrastructure or could route activity through AMM-based decentralized exchanges, for example to protocols on Base.Robinhood expected to adjust for U.S. marketRobinhood could also benefit, even though its current offshore stock tokens do not fit the SEC framework.Those products provide price exposure to U.S. shares through a derivative without conveying the full ownership rights required under the exemption.…

In 1963, a television crew documented the lives of 14 children. Michael Apted, then a young researcher, saw Seven Up! as an opportunity to expose the British class system, juxtaposing public schoolboys with counterparts from children’s homes and council estates. Seven years later, Apted returned to direct an update – then went back again, and again. For the most part, his subjects followed the socioeconomic paths one might have predicted. But what emerged over the decades was much more piercing and poignant than initially envisaged. It turned out – as its participants have noted – that the programme was as much…

US President Donald Trump has signed a sweeping sanctions bill, taking aim at Russia’s economy by punishing major purchasers of its oil and gas. The bill, passed by the US House of Representatives earlier this week, gives Trump broad powers to levy tariffs of up to 100% on the top five purchasers of Russian oil and gas – most significantly China and India.At Trump’s behest, the bill also extends to Iran’s energy and weapons sectors. The bill is named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Ukraine’s staunchest defenders in Washington before his death on 11 July. The 48-page…