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Australia clamps downs on 'nudify' sites used for AI-generated child abuse

Al Jazeera

Australia clamps downs on'nudify' sites used for AI-generated child abuse Internet users in Australia have been blocked from accessing several websites that used artificial intelligence to create child sexual exploitation material, the country's internet regulator has announced. The three "nudify" sites withdrew from Australia following an official warning, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said on Thursday. Grant said such "nudify" services, which allow users to make images of real people appear naked using AI, have had a "devastating" effect in Australian schools. "We took enforcement action in September because this provider failed to put in safeguards to prevent its services being used to create child sexual exploitation material and were even marketing features like undressing'any girl,' and with options for'schoolgirl' image generation and features such as'sex mode,'" Grand said in a statement. The development comes after Grant's office issued a formal warning to the United Kingdom-based company behind the sites in September, threatening civil penalties of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.2m) if it did not introduce safeguards to prevent image-based abuse.


G-Net: A Provably Easy Construction of High-Accuracy Random Binary Neural Networks

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We propose a novel randomized algorithm for constructing binary neural networks with tunable accuracy. This approach is motivated by hyperdimensional computing (HDC), which is a brain-inspired paradigm that leverages high-dimensional vector representations, offering efficient hardware implementation and robustness to model corruptions. Unlike traditional low-precision methods that use quantization, we consider binary embeddings of data as points in the hypercube equipped with the Hamming distance. We propose a novel family of floating-point neural networks, G-Nets, which are general enough to mimic standard network layers. Each floating-point G-Net has a randomized binary embedding, an embedded hyperdimensional (EHD) G-Net, that retains the accuracy of its floating-point counterparts, with theoretical guarantees, due to the concentration of measure. Empirically, our binary models match convolutional neural network accuracies and outperform prior HDC models by large margins, for example, we achieve almost 30% higher accuracy on CIFAR-10 compared to prior HDC models. G-Nets are a theoretically justified bridge between neural networks and randomized binary neural networks, opening a new direction for constructing robust binary/quantized deep learning models. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/GNet2025/GNet .


A Unified Understanding of Offline Data Selection and Online Self-refining Generation for Post-training LLMs

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Offline data selection and online self-refining generation, which enhance the data quality, are crucial steps in adapting large language models (LLMs) to specific downstream tasks. We tackle offline data selection and online self-refining generations through an optimization perspective. Specifically, bilevel data selection is used for offline data selection with respect to the validation dataset, and we treat online self-refining generation as a model adaptation step of selecting the model trained on current responses that best fits the validation data. Our framework offers a unified understanding of offline data selection and self-refining generation by assigning a learned data weight to each question and response, either explicitly or implicitly. For the first time, we theoretically demonstrate the effectiveness of the bilevel data selection framework and demonstrate its performance gains over unfiltered direct mixing baselines. By combining offline data with validation-weighted online generations, our method enhances fine-tuning performance. Experiments on quality enhancement and safety-aware LLM fine-tuning validate its effectiveness.


Campbell's FIRES executive secretly recorded saying its soups are full of 'bioengineered meat' and made for 'poor people'

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Karoline Leavitt's family member was swarmed by ICE agents while picking up son from school as child's father tell her to'self deport' Deaths from highly infectious virus are growing... as states brace for widespread outbreaks My book on the Kennedys was used as a'mistress manual' by Olivia Nuzzi... then this wannabe Carolyn Bessette had the nerve to hound me with these outrageous texts: MAUREEN CALLAHAN Katy Perry's legal victory as judge orders disabled veteran to pay singer nearly $2m over Montecito mansion Trump reveals next DC renovation project to remove'Biden filth' after White House ballroom Cracker Barrel CEO whines that she got'fired by America' for woke redesign Kroger employee reveals shocking amount laundry products have increased by... 'biggest price jump I've seen in a single week' Hollywood heir, 23, whose mom Anne Heche died in horror car fireball has secret LOVE CHILD with 43-year-old... now she's telling all Missing Melodee Buzzard's mom'left her daughter with strangers she met at the zoo' Rachel Zoe reveals why she dumped husband of 26 years... and if she has started dating again Horrific moment cops found body of Cowboys star Marshawn Kneeland after he shot himself at end of 145 mph chase'This is pretty lurid' Jenny McCarthy, 53, reveals health emergency that involved NINE surgeries, her'teeth falling out' and'growth' on her eyeballs Maryland grandma, 58, dragged across floor after being deported to country she'has never even visited' Campbell's FIRES executive secretly recorded saying its soups are full of'bioengineered meat' and made for'poor people' Campbell's Soup has fired the executive caught in a secret recording insulting customers and claiming the company's products were filled with bioengineered meat. Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer Martin Bally was originally placed on administrative leave after a lawsuit against Campbell's was filed last week and the audio recording was released. In the audio, a speaker identified as Bally was heard saying: 'We have s**t for f***king poor people. It's not healthy now that I know what the f**'s in it.' The voice, alleged to be Bally, also claimed that the chicken used in the brand's soups'came from a 3D printer.' Campbell's revealed on Wednesday that their investigation concluded that the voice on the secret recording was Bally and the executive was removed from the company on Tuesday.


Russia says talks to end Ukraine war 'serious' but rules out concessions

Al Jazeera

What is in the 28-point US plan for Ukraine? Why is Europe opposing Trump's peace plan? Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? 'A corruption scandal may well end the Ukraine war' Russia says talks to end Ukraine war'serious' but rules out concessions Russia says the United States-brokered talks to end the war with Ukraine are "serious", but its officials caution that an agreement is a long way off and Moscow would offer no major concessions to Kyiv. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in televised comments on Wednesday that the negotiations were ongoing and "the process is serious."


Easter Island mystery is SOLVED: Scientists finally pinpoint who built the iconic stone heads 900 years ago

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Karoline Leavitt's family member was swarmed by ICE agents while picking up son from school as child's father tell her to'self deport' Deaths from highly infectious virus are growing... as states brace for widespread outbreaks My book on the Kennedys was used as a'mistress manual' by Olivia Nuzzi... then this wannabe Carolyn Bessette had the nerve to hound me with these outrageous texts: MAUREEN CALLAHAN Katy Perry's legal victory as judge orders disabled veteran to pay singer nearly $2m over Montecito mansion Trump reveals next DC renovation project to remove'Biden filth' after White House ballroom Cracker Barrel CEO whines that she got'fired by America' for woke redesign Kroger employee reveals shocking amount laundry products have increased by... 'biggest price jump I've seen in a single week' Hollywood heir, 23, whose mom Anne Heche died in horror car fireball has secret LOVE CHILD with 43-year-old... now she's telling all Missing Melodee Buzzard's mom'left her daughter with strangers she met at the zoo' Rachel Zoe reveals why she dumped husband of 26 years... and if she has started dating again Horrific moment cops found body of Cowboys star Marshawn Kneeland after he shot himself at end of 145 mph chase'This is pretty lurid' Jenny McCarthy, 53, reveals health emergency that involved NINE surgeries, her'teeth falling out' and'growth' on her eyeballs Maryland grandma, 58, dragged across floor after being deported to country she'has never even visited' READ MORE: New'stone head' statue mysteriously appears on Easter Island One of the biggest mysteries surrounding Easter Island may finally be solved - as scientists pinpoint who built the iconic stone heads over 900 years ago. In the past, researchers assumed that the 12 to 80-ton statues would have required the combined efforts of hundreds of labourers to build and move. However, new archaeological evidence shows that the statues, known as moai, were not carved by a single powerful chiefdom. Instead, each moai was carved by a small clan or by an individual family, with as few as four to six people working on a single statue. Using a new 3D model of the island's main moai quarry, which you can explore below, archaeologists identified 30 unique'workshops' where the statues were produced.


New scam sends fake Microsoft 365 login pages

FOX News

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Australia's beloved weather website got a makeover - and infuriated users

BBC News

Australia's beloved weather website got a makeover - and infuriated users It was an unseasonably warm spring day in Sydney on 22 October, with a forecast of 39C (99F) - a real scorcher. The day before, the state of New South Wales had reported its hottest day in over a century, a high of 44.8C in the outback town of Bourke. But little did the team at the national Bureau of Meteorology foresee that they, in particular, would soon be feeling the heat. Affectionately known by Australians as the Bom, the agency's long-awaited website redesign went live that morning, more than a decade after the last update. Within hours, the Bom was flooded with a deluge of complaints.


Thanksgiving blizzard and arctic blast plunges holiday travel into chaos for millions across US

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Karoline Leavitt's family member was swarmed by ICE agents while picking up son from school as child's father tell her to'self deport' Deaths from highly infectious virus are growing... as states brace for widespread outbreaks My book on the Kennedys was used as a'mistress manual' by Olivia Nuzzi... then this wannabe Carolyn Bessette had the nerve to hound me with these outrageous texts: MAUREEN CALLAHAN Katy Perry's legal victory as judge orders disabled veteran to pay singer nearly $2m over Montecito mansion Trump reveals next DC renovation project to remove'Biden filth' after White House ballroom Cracker Barrel CEO whines that she got'fired by America' for woke redesign Kroger employee reveals shocking amount laundry products have increased by... 'biggest price jump I've seen in a single week' Hollywood heir, 23, whose mom Anne Heche died in horror car fireball has secret LOVE CHILD with 43-year-old... now she's telling all Missing Melodee Buzzard's mom'left her daughter with strangers she met at the zoo' Rachel Zoe reveals why she dumped husband of 26 years... and if she has started dating again Horrific moment cops found body of Cowboys star Marshawn Kneeland after he shot himself at end of 145 mph chase'This is pretty lurid' Jenny McCarthy, 53, reveals health emergency that involved NINE surgeries, her'teeth falling out' and'growth' on her eyeballs Maryland grandma, 58, dragged across floor after being deported to country she'has never even visited' Millions of Thanksgiving travelers have been met with holiday chaos at airports and on snowy roads as a major winter blasts rips through the US. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered a ground delay at Chicago O'Hare International Airport Wednesday morning due to snow and ice building up on runways. The delay is scheduled to last until 10pm ET and has already caused average wait times of more than an hour for departing flights. According to Flight Aware, more than 2,300 flights entering and exiting the US today have been delayed, including over 350 at Chicago O'Hare alone. Departures at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston were delayed by 30 minutes due to strong winds, and the FAA expected those wait times to increase throughout the day.


The 12 best science fiction books of 2025

New Scientist

From drowned worlds to virtual utopias via deep space, wild ideas abound in Emily H. Wilson's picks for her favourite sci-fi reads of the year So: what were the best works of science fiction published this year? I will start with two new books that aren't actually new, but have only just been published in English. First up is Ice by Jacek Dukaj, originally published to great acclaim in Poland all the way back in 2007. It is an alternative history set in Europe in the early 1920s. A terrible winter grips the land, and the cause of it may be something very alien.