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Peter Kyle promised alternative to 'ball and chain' of legacy systems, but he has no plan and little power

Comment Last week, UK minister for science, innovation and technology Peter Kyle spoke at Google Cloud Summit in London to tell the audience: "Now, sometimes I'm accused of being 'too close to big tech'," with the Chocolate Factory's multi-colored logo looming behind him.…

Former staffers of struggling UK biz say they don’t expect to be paid for July

UK cybersecurity shop Adarma has confirmed it has entered administration.…

CEOs will chase illusory profits as workers are left to pick defective items from an agentic production line

Column Agentic AI will make jobs – but many will involve picking its failures off automated conveyor belts.…

America's largest corporations are increasingly listing AI among the major risks they must disclose in formal financial filings, despite bullish statements in public about the potential business opportunities it offers. The Register: According to a report from research firm The Autonomy Institute, three-quarters of companies listed in the S&P 500 stock market index have updated their official risk disclosures to detail or expand upon mentions of AI-related risk factors during the past year. The organization drew its findings from an analysis of Form 10-K filings that the top 500 companies submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which they are required to outline any material risks that could negatively affect their business and its financial health.

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Second major change in 18 months will be most unwelcome for many - as will critical flaws announced today

Exclusive VMware has advised partners its current channel program will end, and it seems that smaller players won’t be invited back.…

Network update reports median 25 ms latency – in the US – as capacity rockets upwards

Elon Musk’s space broadband service Starlink has hinted that Elon Musk’s Starship will be ready for commercial flights in 2026.…

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: They went viral, amassing more than 1m streams on Spotify in a matter of weeks, but it later emerged that hot new band the Velvet Sundown were AI-generated -- right down to their music, promotional images and backstory. The episode has triggered a debate about authenticity, with music industry insiders saying streaming sites should be legally obliged to tag music created by AI-generated acts so consumers can make informed decisions about what they are listening to. [...] Several figures told the Guardian that the present situation, where streaming sites, including Spotify, are under no legal obligation to identify AI-generated music, left consumers unaware of the origins of the songs they're listening to. Roberto Neri, the chief executive of the Ivors Academy, said: "AI-generated bands like Velvet Sundown that are reaching big audiences without involving human creators raise serious concerns around transparency, authorship and consent." Neri added that if "used ethically," AI has the potential to enhance songwriting, but said at present his organization was concerned with what he called "deeply troubling issues" with the use of AI in music. Sophie Jones, the chief strategy officer at the music trade body the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), backed calls for clear labelling. "We believe that AI should be used to serve human creativity, not supplant it," said Jones. "That's why we're calling on the UK government to protect copyright and introduce new transparency obligations for AI companies so that music rights can be licensed and enforced, as well as calling for the clear labelling of content solely generated by AI." Liz Pelly, the author of Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, said independent artists could be exploited by people behind AI bands who might create tracks that are trained using their music. She referred to the 2023 case of a song that was uploaded to TikTok, Spotify and YouTube, which used AI-generated vocals claiming to be the Weeknd and Drake. Universal Music Group said the song was "infringing content created with generative AI" and it was removed shortly after it was uploaded. Aurelien Herault, the chief innovation officer at the music streaming service Deezer, said the company uses detection software that identifies AI-generated tracks and tags them. He said: "For the moment, I think platforms need to be transparent and try to inform users. For a period of time, what I call the "naturalization of AI', we need to inform users when it's used or not." Herault did not rule out removing tagging in future if AI-generated music becomes more popular and musicians begin to use it like an "instrument." At present, Spotify does not label music as AI-generated and has previously been criticized for populating some playlists with music by "ghost artists" -- fake acts that create stock music. Bruce66423 comments: "Artists demand 'a warning' on such material. Why? If it is what the people want..."

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Coming soon, somewhere in the Middle East or Asia

Rideshare OG Uber has announced a plan to roll out “thousands” of robo-taxis from Chinese tech giant Baidu.…

The UK secretly relocated thousands of Afghans to the UK after their personal details were disclosed in one of the country's worst ever data breaches, putting them at risk of Taliban retaliation. The operation cost around $2.7 billion and remained under a court-imposed superinjunction until recently lifted. Reuters reports: The leak by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022, which led to data being published on Facebook the following year, and the secret relocation program, were subject to a so-called superinjunction preventing the media reporting what happened, which was lifted on Tuesday by a court. British defence minister John Healey apologised for the leak, which included details about members of parliament and senior military officers who supported applications to help Afghan soldiers who worked with the British military and their families relocate to the UK. "This serious data incident should never have happened," Healey told lawmakers in the House of Commons. It may have occurred three years ago under the previous government, but to all whose data was compromised I offer a sincere apology." The incident ranks among the worst security breaches in modern British history because of the cost and risk posed to the lives of thousands of Afghans, some of whom fought alongside British forces until their chaotic withdrawal in 2021. Healey said about 4,500 Afghans and their family members have been relocated or were on their way to Britain under the previously secret scheme. But he added that no-one else from Afghanistan would be offered asylum because of the data leak, citing a government review which found little evidence of intent from the Taliban to seek retribution against former officials.

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Waiting for license approval but plans to resume shipments of the MI308 accelerator soon-ish

The US government has cleared AMD to resume exporting some accelerators to China.…

Anthropic has launched a specialized version of its Claude AI tools for the financial services sector, designed to assist professionals with investment decisions, market analysis, and research. The Financial Analysis Solution "includes Claude 4 models, Claude Code and Claude for Enterprise with expanded usage limits, implementation support and other features," reports CNBC. From the report: As part of its new Financial Analysis Solution, Claude will get real-time access to financial information through data providers like Box, PitchBook, Databricks, S&P Global and Snowflake. Anthropic said many of these integrations are available on Tuesday, with more to come. Anthropic's Financial Analysis Solution and Claude for Enterprise are available on AWS Marketplace. The company said Google Cloud Marketplace availability is coming soon. "What this is is a tailored version of Claude for Enterprise," Kate Jensen, Anthropic's head of revenue said at an event in New York City on Tuesday. "It's specifically built for financial analysts, and it's equipped for the nuance, accuracy and reasoning that you need to handle the complexity of your work."

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Maintainers struggle to handle growing flow of low-quality bug reports written by bots

Daniel Stenberg, founder and lead developer of the open-source curl command line utility, just wants the AI slop to stop.…

Reddit has begun verifying users' ages in the UK to restrict access to "certain mature content" for minors, complying with the UK's Online Safety Act. The BBC reports: Reddit, known for its online communities and discussions, said that while it does not want to know who its audience is: "It would be helpful for our safety efforts to be able to confirm whether you are a child or an adult." Ofcom, the UK regulator, said: "We expect other companies to follow suit, or face enforcement if they fail to act." Reddit said that from 14 July, an outside firm called Persona will perform age verification for the social media platform either through an uploaded selfie or "a photo of your government ID," such as a passport. It said Reddit will not have access to the photo and will only retain a user's verification status and date of birth so people do not have to re-enter it each time they try to access restricted content. Reddit added that Persona "promises not to retain the picture for longer than seven days" and will not have access to a user's data on the site. The new rules in the UK come into force on 25 July. [...] Companies that fail to meet the rules face fines of up to 18 million pounds or 10% of worldwide revenue, "whichever is greater." [Ofcom] added that in the most serious cases, it can seek a court order for "business disruption measures," such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK."

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Plasma Bigscreen, KDE's TV-focused interface, is being revived after years of inactivity thanks to contributor Devin, who overhauled the UI, redesigned the Settings app, improved app launching, and updated key modules. While still in progress -- with features like HDMI-CEC remote support and a virtual keyboard pending -- the project aims to rejoin KDE's official Plasma release schedule, potentially in version 6.5. Neowin reports: If you have not heard of it, Plasma Bigscreen is a Plasma shell for televisions, with original support for the now-defunct Mycroft AI assistant. It used to provide a simple launcher for apps and custom "Mycroft Skills" before development stalled, causing most distributions to drop it. The project was left behind during the big transition to Plasma 6 last year because no one had ported it in time for the megarelease. After a friend of his started poking at the code, Devin stepped in to tackle the much-needed work. [...] For anyone who wants to test this out, you can do as Devin did by installing Plasma Bigscreen on a Raspberry Pi using postmarketOS, though you would have to compile it yourself or pull from the nightly repos to get the latest changes. Applications like Kodi and VacuumTube (smart TV version of YouTube) work well with remote navigation, and some games like SuperTuxKart are playable. Controller support exists, but getting TV remotes to work over HDMI CEC is still untested. The project is far from finished; it still needs an arrow-navigable virtual keyboard and a clearer long-term direction now that Mycroft is gone. Still, the goal is to get it back into the official Plasma release schedule, possibly for version 6.5.

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File this one under what not to search if you've committed a crime

A former US Army soldier, who reportedly hacked AT&T, bragged about accessing President Donald Trump's call logs, and then Googled "can hacking be treason," and "US military personnel defecting to Russia," pleaded guilty to conspiring to break into telecom firms' databases and extort at least $1 million.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phoronix: Merged yesterday to the latest development code for the LibreOffice open-source office suite is now recognizing Bitcoin "BTC" as a supported currency for use within the Calc spreadsheet program and elsewhere within this cross-platform free software office suite. Stemming from a recent bug report requesting Bitcoin as an official currency option within LibreOffice Calc, the necessary additions are now in place so it's a built-in preset like USD and EUR. Thus easier managing of Bitcoin transactions and the like from within LibreOffice Calc.

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Let us delve swiftly into meticulous inquiry with our AI masters

Like it or not, ChatGPT and other large language models are changing the world, including affecting how we speak, claims a group of researchers, and the end results could be an erosion of linguistic and cultural diversity.…

U.S. prosecutors and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have officially closed their investigations into Polymarket, the decentralized, blockchain-powered prediction market platform where users bet with real cryptocurrency on the outcomes of future events. "The DOJ was investigating Polymarket last year, reportedly for allowing U.S. users to place bets on the site despite Polymarket being required to block U.S. traders," reports CoinDesk. The FBI raided Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's Manhattan apartment last November, seizing his phone and electronic devices. A source close to the matter told The New York Post it was politically motivated due to Polymarket's successful prediction of Trump's election win. It's "grand political theater at its worst," the source said. "They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons."

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Blender 4.5 has arrived and it's a long-term support release. That means users get two full years of updates and bug fixes, making it a smart choice for anyone looking for stability in serious projects. Whether you're a solo artist or part of a studio pipeline, this version is built to last. Here's a list of key features and changes in this release: - Vulkan backend replaces OpenGL (faster, smoother UI) - Adaptive subdivision up to 14x faster with multithreading - New Geometry Nodes: Camera Info, Instance Bounds - GPU-accelerated compositor nodes with standardized inputs - New Boolean solver: Manifold (cleaner, faster mesh operations) - UV maps visible in Object Mode + improved selection behavior - Grease Pencil render pass and Geometry Nodes integration - Improved file import support: PLY, OBJ, STL, CSV, VDB - Deprecations: Collada, Big Endian, legacy .blend, Intel Mac support - Cycles OptiX now requires NVIDIA driver v535+ - New shader variants for add-on developers (POLYLINES_*, POINT_*) ~500 bug fixes across all major systems

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Apache-licensed plan takes aim at costlier options

Mistral has released an open automatic speech recognition (ASR) software bundle called Voxtral in a bid to undercut rivals on price and quality.…