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The Small English Town Swept Up in the Global AI Arms Race

WIRED

The residents of Potters Bar are working to protect the "green belt" of farms, forests, and meadows that surround London from the endless demand for AI infrastructure. A short drive from London, the town of Potters Bar is separated from the village of South Mimms by 85 acres of rolling farmland segmented by a scribble of hedgerows. In one of the fields, a lone oak serves as a rest stop along a public footpath. Lately, the tree has become a site of protest, too. A poster tied to its trunk reads: "NO TO DATA CENTRE."


Police told to reinvestigate man's death after suspected blackmail on Grindr

BBC News

Police told to reinvestigate man's death after suspected blackmail on Grindr Police have been told to reopen their investigation into the death of Scott Gough, who allegedly took his own life after being targeted by a gang of men on the gay dating app Grindr. A police Professional Standards Department (PSD) report found failures in the investigation into the 56-year-old's death, which happened the day after a group of men turned up at his home demanding his car keys. His partner, Cameron Tewson accused the police of marking their own homework after his complaint of homophobia was not upheld. Hertfordshire Police, the investigating force, said it remains committed to ensuring members of the LGBTQ+ community feel supported when approaching the force. The report into the police's actions comes after a BBC investigation found multiple cases of suspected blackmail involving victims targeted on Grindr in Gough's local area, with at least four connected to the same gang, which remains at large.


Massive overhaul of England and Wales policing announced

BBC News

The home secretary has announced a blueprint for reforming what she called the broken policing model in England and Wales. Shabana Mahmood confirmed the shake-up will create a new National Police Service (NPS) to fight the most complex cross-border crime and could also see the number of local forces in England and Wales cut by around two-thirds. She told the House of Commons she also intends to make better use of technology - including the largest-ever rollout of facial recognition. This government's reforms will ensure we have the right policing in the right place, Mahmood said. I set out reforms that are long overdue and define a new model for policing in this country, with local policing that protects our communities and national policing that protects us all.


Taking humanoid soccer to the next level: An interview with RoboCup trustee Alessandra Rossi

AIHub

A core objective of RoboCup is to promote and advance robotics and AI research through the challenges offered by its various leagues. The ultimate goal of the soccer competition is that, by 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots will defeat the most recent winner of the FIFA World Cup. To bring this vision closer to reality, the RoboCup Federation has announced several changes to the leagues . We spoke with Alessandra Rossi, a trustee who has been involved in the humanoid soccer league for many years, to learn more. Could you start by introducing yourself and tell us how you've been involved in RoboCup throughout the years, because you've been involved in so many aspects of the competition!

  Country:
  Genre: Personal > Interview (0.41)
  Industry: Leisure & Entertainment > Sports > Soccer (1.00)

Jurassic Coast rockfall captured on video

BBC News

A visitor has called it a miracle no-one was hurt when a section of cliff collapsed on to a beach on Dorset's Jurassic Coast. Suzanne Sears, from Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, was taking a walk near West Bay when she heard a deep cracking noise coming from the cliffs before the rockfall shortly after 16:00 GMT on Tuesday. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency confirmed a rescue team was sent to a report of a cliff fall at West Bay and no one was found to be in distress. A woman was forced to run to safety as the Dorset cliff collapsed on Saturday. The kayakers spotted the creature after hearing it exhaling loudly off Portland Castle beach.


Police accused of 'homophobic assumptions' over victims of blackmail on Grindr

BBC News

Police accused of'homophobic assumptions' over victims of blackmail on Grindr Police failed to properly investigate allegations that a gang was blackmailing men on the gay dating app Grindr, the BBC can reveal. Our investigation has learned of five cases of suspected blackmail involving victims targeted on Grindr in one area, with at least four of them connected to the same gang, which remains at large. In one instance, a suspected victim killed himself 24 hours after a group of men turned up at his home demanding he hand over his new Range Rover. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) watchdog has told Hertfordshire Police - the investigating force - to examine whether homophobic assumptions could have contributed to failures in the investigation. Hertfordshire Police said it was unable to discuss specific points about the case, which has now been reopened, but said it is committed to building and maintaining good working relationships with the LGBTQ+ communities.


Is tracking your adult children OK or should parents learn to let go?

BBC News

Is tracking your adult children OK or should parents learn to let go? Is it caring or overbearing? Many parents are turning to their phones to keep tabs on their adult children - but is this OK (if they agree to it) or is it a sign of mums and dads struggling to let go? Dad-of-two Steven Medway, 53, has his whole family set up on a tracking app and couldn't understand why it was such a divisive subject among fellow parents. He said it became particularly useful when his daughter Martha moved 100 miles away from home for university.


Machine Learning Epidemic Predictions Using Agent-based Wireless Sensor Network Models

Nwokoye, Chukwunonso Henry, Oluchi, Blessing, Waldron, Sharna, Ezzeh, Peace

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Given Name Surname line 2: dept. Abstract -- The lack of epidemiological data in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a fundamental difficulty in constructing robust models to forecast and mitigate threats like viruses and worms. Many studies have looked at different epidemic models for WSNs, focusing on the manner in which malware infections spread given the network's specific properties, including energy limits and node mobili ty. In this study, an agent - based realization of the susceptible - exposed - infected - recovered - vaccinated (SEIRV) mathematical model was employed for machine learning (ML) predictions. Using tools such as Netlogo's BehaviorSpace and Python, two epidemic synth etic datasets were generated and prepared for the application of several ML algorithms. Posed as a regression problem, the infected and recovered nodes were predicted, and the performance of these algorithms is compared using the error metrics of the train and the test sets. The predictions performed quite well, with low error metrics and high R values (0.997, 1.000, 0.999, 1.000), indicating an effective fit to the training set. The validation values were lowered (0.992, 0.998, 0.971, and 0.999), as is ty pical when evaluating model performance on unknown data. Judging from the recorded performances, support vector, linear, Lasso, Ridge, and ElasticNet regression were among the worst performing algorithms, while Random Forest, XGBoost, Decision Trees, and K nearest neighbor had the best model performances. In recent years, the globe as we know it has been changing due to bre akthroughs in numerous linked innovations including smart electrical grids [1], the IoT, long - term evolution, 5G connectivity [2] and cyber physical systems [3] such as wireless sensor networks (WSN).


Inference of Human-derived Specifications of Object Placement via Demonstration

Cuellar, Alex, Siu, Ho Chit, Shah, Julie A

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

As robots' manipulation capabilities improve for pick-and-place tasks (e.g., object packing, sorting, and kitting), methods focused on understanding human-acceptable object configurations remain limited expressively with regard to capturing spatial relationships important to humans. To advance robotic understanding of human rules for object arrangement, we introduce positionally-augmented RCC (PARCC), a formal logic framework based on region connection calculus (RCC) for describing the relative position of objects in space. Additionally, we introduce an inference algorithm for learning PARCC specifications via demonstrations. Finally, we present the results from a human study, which demonstrate our framework's ability to capture a human's intended specification and the benefits of learning from demonstration approaches over human-provided specifications.