Joe Biden has launched one of his most scathing attacks yet on Donald Trump’s record of racism, suggesting that the former US president would have acted differently to the January 6 2021 insurrection if was led by Black people.

The remarks, at a dinner hosted by a civil rights organisation in a critical swing state, pointed to an intensifying battle between Biden and Trump for African American voters ahead of November’s presidential election.

“Let me ask you,” Biden said during an address to an NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) dinner in Detroit. “What do you think he would have done on January 6 if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol?”

There was a collective gasp and murmur in the cavernous convention centre, where an estimated 5,000 guests had gathered. The president insisted: “No, I’m serious. What do you think? I can only imagine.”

Hier geklaut: https://social.anoxinon.de/@thomasralfkoeb/112471957778659581

Absurdity is cruel, and cruelty is absurd.

Lai Ching-te has been sworn in as Taiwan’s new president, urging China to “cease their political and military intimidation against Taiwan” and to keep the world free from the fear of more war.

Lai was inaugurated on Monday morning at the Japanese-colonial-era presidential office in central Taipei, taking over from Tsai Ing-wen, whose eight years in power saw a sharp deterioration in relations with Beijing.

China claims democratic Taiwan as a province, and has called Lai, 64, a “dangerous separatist” who will bring “war and decline” to the island. The Chinese Communist party has never ruled over Taiwan, but Xi Jinping has declared that what he terms “reunification” is “inevitable”.

MBFC
Archive

Guardrails to prevent artificial intelligence models behind chatbots from issuing illegal, toxic or explicit responses can be bypassed with simple techniques, UK government researchers have found.

The UK’s AI Safety Institute (AISI) said systems it had tested were “highly vulnerable” to jailbreaks, a term for text prompts designed to elicit a response that a model is supposedly trained to avoid issuing.

The AISI said it had tested five unnamed large language models (LLM) – the technology that underpins chatbots – and circumvented their safeguards with relative ease, even without concerted attempts to beat their guardrails.

“All tested LLMs remain highly vulnerable to basic jailbreaks, and some will provide harmful outputs even without dedicated attempts to circumvent their safeguards,” wrote AISI researchers in an update on their testing regime.

If you don't use Bing with Edge, Microsoft will tell you your computer needs repairing.

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/windows-operating-systems/microsoft-now-says-your-pc-is-in-need-of-repair-if-youre-not-using-bing-with-edge

They are not wrong.

To mend your machine:

1. Ditch Windows
2. Install Plasma
3. Your computer is ready.

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/

@[email protected]

Her name is now "Willow".

Shareholders in some of the UK's largest water companies have taken out tens of billions of pounds but failed to invest, new research claims, with firms planning to raise household bills to fund future spending.

Investors have withdrawn £85.2bn from 10 water and sewage firms in England and Wales since the industry was privatised more than 30 years ago, analysis by the University of Greenwich suggests.

Companies are under pressure following sewage spills and water leaks, which critics have blamed on under-investment in the country's infrastructure.

Ofwat, the industry regulator, said it "strongly refuted" the figures.

"They can fire any weapons from their territory at ours. This is the biggest advantage that Russia has. We can’t do anything to their systems, which are located on the territory of Russia, with Western weapons,” he explained.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Kiev earlier this week, said Washington has “not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war.”

However, on Thursday Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh clarified that Washington’s position that Kiev should not target Russia with US-supplied weapons remains unchanged. Such arms can only be used to “take back Ukrainian sovereign territory,” Singh stressed.

Earlier this month, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron insisted Ukraine has the “right” to use UK-supplied weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia, if it decides to do so. Moscow reacted to the statement by warning that if such an attack were to take place it could target British military facilities “on the territory of Ukraine and beyond” in response.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Kiev has urged Washington to provide intelligence on targets on Russian soil amid setbacks in Donbass and Kharkov Region. According to the NYT, US officials are currently reviewing those requests, despite previously turning them down.

Zelensky said Kiev now finds itself in a “nonsensical situation” due to the stance of the West, which “is afraid that Russia will lose the war. And it does not want Ukraine to lose it.”

“Ukraine’s final victory will lead to Russia’s defeat. And the final victory of Russia will lead to Ukraine’s defeat,” he added.

The Ukrainian authorities “want the war to end with a fair peace for us. Of course, the West wants the war to end. Period. As soon as possible. And, for them, this is a fair peace,” the president stated.

People are being urged to report any sightings of Asian hornets this summer as nature groups warn of a potential surge in damaging invasive non-native species.

The UK’s chief plant health officer Nicola Spence has called for beekeepers and the wider public to be increasingly vigilant to the presence of the hornet after record sightings in the country last year.

Asian hornets pose no greater risk to human health than native hornets but threaten honey bees and insect pollinators.

The Environment Department (Defra) said the species is not established in the UK yet but early trapping is fundamental to eradication efforts.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged two arrested Chinese nationals for allegedly orchestrating a pig butchering scam that laundered at least $73 million from victims through shell companies. The individuals, Daren Li, 41, and Yicheng Zhang, 38, were arrested in Atlanta and Los Angeles on April 12 and May 16, respectively. The foreign nationals have been "charged for leading a scheme

The Jumio 2024 Online Identity Study reveals significant consumer concerns about the risks posed by generative AI and deepfakes, including the potential for increased cybercrime and identity fraud. The study examined the views of more than 8,000 adult consumers, split evenly across the United Kingdom, United States, Singapore and Mexico. The results suggest nearly 72% worry on a day-to-day basis about being fooled by a deepfake into handing over sensitive information or money. Only 15% … More → The post Consumers continue to overestimate their ability to spot deepfakes appeared first on Help Net Security.

So I'm gonna share a story. In this story I'm a fucking idiot. But I hope that it serves as a warning to someone so they can learn from my dumb mistakes. So I was going out to see some mates the other day in a big state forest near Melbourne.

Decided to take my car (a mid sized AWD SUV) rather than the wife's small FWD sedan. This proved to be a very good choice. Mind you, my car may be awd but its for like a slightly damp soccer field carpark, not what I accidentally forced it into.

I set google maps on car play and off I go.

Traveling into the park with basically no phone coverage everything going fine till suddenly get told to turn off a decent gravel path onto a side road. No warnings or anything, and again maps said go this way. So I did. It looked OK to start with, but by the time I realized I was was in trouble it was too late.

The road degraded to a goat track and I start sliding down it with no chance of turning around and no phone data to be able to reroute anyway. Maps said I was 10 minutes from meet up point so I decided to push on not really having a choice.

Soon enough i come to a patch of very wet deep tyre tracks. so long as I stick to the high ground I'll be fine. You can see where this is going, cant you? Yep. She slid straight off the highground into foot deep giant puddles of mud and immediately got bogged.

Chucked the car in mud mode, managed to reverse 2 feet before I couldn't go any further, put the car back in drive and took off at speed but just got stuck in the same spot again and this time couldn't reverse.

Now I didn't panic. That probably saved me. It woulda been easy to accidentally dig her in. My hear beat about 170bpm, but I got out and as calmly as I could assessed the situation. No phone coverage. I walked ahead a bit to make sure I was ok to proceed assuming I could even get out of this mess. I could. Even better there was a downed tree. I grab some branches and stick them under the wheels as best I can. it took about 15-20 minutes. With a dashboard full of warning lights I jump back in and take off slowly, feel it grab some traction in my best Jeremy Clarkson impression scream "SPEED AND POWER" and fucking launch the SUV out of there.

Slowly I proceed to the meet point passing a proper 4x4 who looked at me with shock and horror on his face. A poor little SUV so far out of its depth it wasn't even funny and an idiot who almost got himself in serious trouble.

I meet at the meeting point and my friends laugh. They approached from another direction and has 0 issues on a smooth gravel road. They all used Google Maps too, it just sent them in a different way for some reason.

So. What did I learn and why am i telling this story? a few key points:

1. If your going bush, even on GOOD roads make sure someone knows where you are
2. If you start to get into trouble: Reverse. Even if you have to reverse 500m! Dont commit to the fuck up assuming it'll get better.
3. Google maps has no concerns about sending you down tracks that even a dirtbike would struggle with 0 warning.

TLDR: I've become one of those "I was just following the GPS" people.

Vannacht is opnieuw een explosief afgegaan bij de woning van de loodgieter in Vlaardingen die al maanden doelwit is van aanslagen. Er raakte niemand gewond omdat er in het huis niemand aanwezig mag zijn.

De explosie, die verder weinig schade aanrichtte, vond plaats rond 01.30 uur, meldt de [...]