185606326
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
'A bipartisan pair of American politicians is telling Britain’s most secretive court to stop hiding its handling of Apple’s legal fight against a government demand to break into its customers’ encrypted data, warning that Whitehall’s taste for secrecy is “needlessly” straining relations between the two allies.
'The letter, shared with the Guardian ahead of being sent to the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) on Friday, is signed by the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the Republican congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio.
'The row dates back to January 2025, when the Home Office served Apple with a technical capability notice under the Investigatory Powers Act, which requires companies to assist law enforcement in providing evidence. The UK government demanded that Apple provide a mechanism to access encrypted iCloud backups worldwide, a call the company met by withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection encryption feature from UK users the following month. Apple’s challenge to that order at the IPT was later thrown out after the Home Office withdrew the original notice and issued a narrower one targeting only British users’ data.'
185063278
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
'A British zoologist involved in risky bat coronavirus experiments in Wuhan is accused of plotting with a senior US health official to shut down the theory that Covid-19 leaked from a lab.
'Dr Peter Daszak, the former president of EcoHealth Alliance, sent bottles of wine to David Morens, thanking him for his “behind the scenes shenanigans” and promising further gifts, such as dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants, US court documents state.
'Morens, 78, a former employee at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and adviser to Dr Anthony Fauci, this week pleaded guilty to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the Covid-19 pandemic.
'He is facing five years in jail. No charges have been brought against Dr Daszak.'
185048558
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
There is a long installation queue for various reasons. The scale is remarkable:
'Nationwide, some 750 gigawatts of energy storage projects — roughly equivalent to the generating capacity of more than 700 nuclear reactors — are in line to get grid connections, according to the lab’s research. Not all of these projects will get built. Many developers already abandoned the queue because of delays. Still, the waiting time is increasing; the median was five years in 2025, up from a year and a half in 2015.'
185020896
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
'Sainsbury’s has paused the use of AI face scanning in one of its stores after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter and ejected from the shop.
'“I was embarrassed, mortified even, and felt quite humiliated and powerless,” Matt Arnold, 46, said of his ordeal.
'The comedy promoter was buying supplies in the store in East Dulwich, in south-east London, for a standup event at Dulwich Hamlet football club when, after scanning his items and a Nectar card, he was approached by two managers who told him he could not be served owing to an earlier incident. He was then asked to leave and they tried to escort him from the store.
'As he left, he saw an overhead CCTV monitor alert with a red circle surrounding his face. He asked the shop staff to keep his shopping in the trolley so his friend could come and pick up the supplies for the comedy night happening soon next door.
“I think they were quite confused by this, understandably, but agreed and my colleague Dave went in to pay for and pick up the shop about five minutes later. There was no pause for thought from the staff, no suggestion that they understood this is not how a shoplifter would behave. Just blindly following the machine’s orders.”
'Sainsbury’s head office apologised to Arnold the next day and has paused use of its AI-assisted Facewatch technology in the store while an investigation takes place.
184982594
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
'A “massive influx” of jellyfish has forced Electricite de France to shut three units at its Gravelines nuclear power plant and reduce output at a fourth, curbing power supply at a time when extremely hot weather is boosting demand. That’s taken some 3.2 gigawatts of capacity offline.
'Last year, it faced similar problems when swarms of jellyfish clogged up filter drums.'
The SF plot line question is: what did it do to upset the jellyfish? The more prosaic one is to ask why they didn't do something about the jellyfish after last year's problem?
184982468
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been accused of damaging scientific integrity after retracting a paper which suggested that Covid vaccines may have been to blame for some excess deaths during the pandemic.
In 2024, a group in the Netherlands published a paper in BMJ Public Health, warning that some pandemic deaths may have been caused by the indirect effects of containment measures and vaccination programmes, and calling for further investigation.
The work was peer reviewed for nine months, and accepted as accurate by the BMJ, the UK’s leading medical journal. However, it was retracted this week after a slew of complaints and an investigation by the Princess Máxima Centre in Utrecht, where three of the four authors worked.
The investigation found no evidence of malicious intent, fabrication or falsification of data, but still labelled the work as misleading and selective because it “did not reflect scientific consensus”, and had disproportionately focused on the negative effects of vaccination.
184586950
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
Southern Water executives to face charges as well as the company. Let's hope it happens more often!
184114658
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
'Doctors at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes.
'H., a 40-year-old family man from northern Israel, was injured in his neck several years ago. Because of the injury, he relied on painkillers and eventually became addicted to them....
'The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution.”'
184037300
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
An artificial intelligence law firm has won a case in an English court, in what is believed to be the first time a trial has been won using an AI lawyer.
A freelance HR consultant, Tamires Camal Taquidir, paid the firm, called Garfield AI, about £400 to send a legal letter and then issue court proceedings over an unpaid debt of £7,000.
183464116
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
A German court this week sentenced a member of the Red Army Faction — a hard left terrorist organisation that operated in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s — to jail. She had remained hidden for decades, and the German police hadn't deployed facial recognition software to catch her. But according to the article a journalist did, to good effect.
Is the ban on the police using it a good thing? Is it good that a journalist was able to track her down using it?
183214643
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
An FOI request resulted in a claim of 1 false positive out of over 66,000. I'm not sure whether to be impressed that false positives are so rare, scared that the technology is so good or focused on the phrase 'confirmed' false positives.
183205187
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
Just for stealing a couple of suitcases from a car. Funny how the elite punish those who inconvenience them. Can you imagine an ordinary victim see their offender get that sort of sentence?
183119864
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
The Guardian has three articles today on the issue
Oversight lagging behind
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
The consequences of false positives
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
UK usage by police force
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
The obvious answer is that any victim of a false positive should receive £1000 for the first event, £2000 for the second etc...
181750128
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
The company had made an agreement with the Islamic State group to allow the continued operation of their cement plant in Syria despite this providing financial support to IS. Two senior executives were taken from the court to prison following the verdict with sentences of five and six years.
One claimed not to have read a particularly damning email. '“I’m not a child of the internet,” he said. “Emails that I’m copied on, I don’t read, and emails from people I don’t know, I don’t open.”'
181728418
submission
Bruce66423 writes:
The London Guardian reflects on the poor reproducibility of experiments in social science revealed by the latest Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (Score) finding, which has now published three studies looking at 3,900 social science papers.
Despite the low quality revealed by these studies, it suggests that things are getting better, admits: 'Some findings don’t matter much' claims 'replication studies can themselves be flawed.... These studies should strengthen the case for change and serve as a warning. Social science is a powerful tool for understanding the world – and that trust will be built by acknowledging uncertainty, not repudiating it.'
Given the degree to which 'following the science' led to some very bad decisions during the pandemic, not least because the social impact of lockdown choices were not well evaluated, it's hard to come to a clear view. And it's worth remembering the size of the industry employed in these science studies... It's encouraging that one of its spokesmen is admitting that mistakes were made in the past. Whether this is enough reason to carry on is less clear!
