Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

At the start of this week, the who’s-who of AI seemed — at least tentatively — on the side of AI regulation. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had proposed a three-step plan for slowing AI development, including by embedding third-party evaluators in labs, coordinating across the domestic industry, and forging international agreements potentially with government assistance. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, and even SpaceX CEO Elon Musk publicly seemed to agree on aspects of all three things.Anthropic and OpenAI had already been dropping hints that they and other labs were working on some kind…

Ethereum Institutional signaled support for Ethlabs’ motion to reduce block times and create a faster Ethereum to address increasing competition from other networks.“Make Ethereum faster,” wrote the non-profit organization in a Friday X post, arguing that reducing block times is needed as “more institutional activity moves onchain.” On Thursday, Ethlabs published an article quoting 20 decentralized finance (DeFi) founders showing broad support for EIP-8198, also known as “Quick Slots,” which seeks to initially reduce Ethereum block times to 10 seconds from 12 seconds.Other blockchain networks are also working on similar block time reduction initiatives. On Monday, the majority of Zcash token…

At least two people have been killed and six injured in a “massive” overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Moscow region, Governor Andrei Vorobyev has said.Vorobyev said 249 drones had been shot down, and he reported fires in several residential houses. A local warehouse was also ablaze. In the capital Moscow, an oil refinery was damaged, and flight restrictions were in place at two airports.Earlier, a Ukraine official said seven people, including two children, were killed in Russian attacks in the Kyiv and Sumy regions on Saturday.Russia and Ukraine have recently intensified their strikes, targeting energy-generating and transport facilities, as…

Standing outside Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, Josh Babarinde doesn’t exactly look like a rabble-rouser. But despite the well-cut suit and disarmingly large smile, the president of the Liberal Democrats is, apparently, up for a fight.“There are big modern giants that are getting in the way of people’s ability to thrive, and it is the job of Liberal Democrats to address that,” says the 33-year-old. “How are we going to do that? Well, first of all, we’ve got to flip the table over and rise up.”Flipping over tables is not behaviour normally associated with Liberal Democrat members,…

Chiltern Railways has become the latest train operator to enter public ownership as the government closes in on its ambition to renationalise all major passenger rail services.The operator, which runs commuter rail services on the Chiltern mainline between London Marylebone and Birmingham, on Sunday became the sixth to be nationalised under Labour, with the remaining four to follow by the end of 2027.The Department for Transport (DfT) said the move would bring more reliable services, with plans to end what it termed the “daily frustration” of overcrowding.It has promised a package of improvements for Chiltern passengers, including more services and…

Today on Decoder, we’ve got the first of a two-part series on the future of business, and I’m talking with Jonathan Kanter, the former antitrust chief for the US Department of Justice in the Biden administration. These days, he’s both a professor of law at WashU and professor of technology policy at Carnegie Mellon.The biggest story in tech right now is the spiraling debate about AI safety and regulation. Researchers at the big AI labs including Anthropic and Google DeepMind have quit in noisy ways, saying the models pose real threats and safety isn’t being taken seriously across the industry.…

Asset manager VanEck has criticized Metaplanet’s executive compensation structure, arguing that recent efforts by the Bitcoin treasury company to curb shareholder dilution still fall short of adequately aligning management with investors.In a Friday report examining executive compensation across the 10 largest digital asset treasury companies, VanEck labeled Metaplanet’s compensation structure “Bad,” making it the only firm to fall into the lowest category. VanEck cited an equity plan equal to 14.7% of fully diluted shares and officer exposure of 8.2%.VanEck said Metaplanet’s officer exposure is roughly 10 times the 0.8% average of the other nine companies analyzed, while its overall equity…

Tropical cyclones generally need to become vertically organized before they can grow much stronger. That means the storm’s rotating centers at different levels of the atmosphere must line up rather than remain tilted away from one another. Using nearly three decades of observations from NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft, researchers have now identified four features that appear to help tilted tropical cyclones become vertically aligned and more capable of intensifying. The research was led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, working with colleagues at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. Their findings…

Selected by Beijing in 1996, Tung Chee-hwa’s tenure shaped post-handover Hong Kong during a turbulent political era.Published On 20 Sep 202620 Sep 2026Hong Kong has given a state funeral to Tung Chee-hwa, its first post-colonial leader, only the third time the city has granted such an honour since Britain returned it to Chinese rule in 1997.Senior Chinese and Hong Kong officials bid farewell to Tung at the Hong Kong Funeral Home in North Point on Sunday, a day after a public vigil that drew dozens of political and business figures.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listTung, Hong Kong’s first…

Not all employees of major firms working on artificial intelligence (AI) think the technology spells doom for humanity.In text exchanges and conversations, multiple people who have worked for companies including OpenAI, Meta and DeepMind were sceptical of the idea that unchecked AI development would lead to tools that could kill people en masse. “Lol”, “Haaaaaa” and “Bringing the luls” were among the reactions the BBC received to a recent flurry of high-profile warnings by some people in the industry.While these fears go back decades, claims made last week by Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee, went viral and were echoed…