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Skiers create heart-shaped tribute for Switzerland fire victims
Dozens of skiers created a heart shape on the slopes of Crans-Montana to mourn the victims of the deadly bar fire on New Year's Eve. Forty people were killed at the bar where the fire began, while 119 others were injured. Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the managers of Le Constellation bar. The annual food fight festival ''Els Enfarinats'' has left the Spanish town of Ibi covered in flour and egg shells. The French model and actress has died at the age of 91.
Gmail users advised to 'turn off' two features NOW amid email privacy concerns
Gunfire and anti-aircraft blasts heard near Venezuela's presidential palace as chaos unfolds after Maduro's ouster Stephen Miller declares Greenland should be part of US and'nobody will fight' over country's future Timothee Chalamet's declaration of love to his pneumatic girlfriend Kylie Jenner at the Critics Choice Awards has left me with a terribly rude thought: CAROLINE BULLOCK Trump vowed to deport one million migrants. But insiders say explosive data that Kristi Noem is desperate to hide tells the REAL story... The View audience left stunned as woke anti-MAGA co-host defends Trump's arrest of Maduro Trump says US will have to pay oil companies to rebuild Venezuela's aging infrastructure as he declares HIMSELF in charge of ambitious 18-month plan Furious fallen dictator Nicolás Maduro's hearing descends into chaos as he gets into shouting match with man claiming he was prisoner of his regime JFK's grandson Jack Schlossberg, 32, looks heartbroken as he attends sister Tatiana's funeral after she died of cancer aged just 35, with Joe Biden seen crying Kylie Jenner's curves spark surgery rumors as Timothee Chalamet grabs her behind at Critics Choice Awards SNL star Chloe Fineman reveals'botched' cosmetic treatments in candid photos as fans beg her to stop Secrets of JD Vance's'home attacker': Suspect is transgender daughter of wealthy surgeon Democrat donor as ultra-privileged life is revealed Ancient Bible reveals timeline for humanity's final'day' before divine judgment Gmail users advised to'turn off' two features NOW amid email privacy concerns'Super flu' still spreading uncontrollably... as cities see record number of cases and hospitalizations My shock discovery made me rethink everything I know about death. This is exactly what happens after your heart stops beating... and what you'll see, reveals neurosurgeon Caroline Kennedy cradles granddaughter at her daughter Tatiana Schlossberg's funeral, as doctor widower holds onto their son Gmail users advised to'turn off' two features NOW amid email privacy concerns Google users have been warned that they've been secretly opted in to a feature that allows the tech giant to access all their private emails. According to electronics design engineer Dave Jones of Australia, all Gmail users have had their accounts automatically selected to allow Google to scan their messages and attachments to help train its AI models like Gemini.
Car giant Hyundai to use human-like robots in factories
Hyundai Motor Group says it will roll out human-like robots in its factories from 2028, as major companies race to use the new technology. The South Korean firm showed off Atlas, a humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamics, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday. Hyundai says it plans to integrate Atlas across its global network, including a plant in the US state of Georgia that was involved in a massive immigration raid in 2025 . Other firms that have said they will use humanoid robots in their operations include Amazon, Tesla and Chinese car making giant BYD. The Atlas robots will gradually take on more tasks, said Hyundai.
Nvidia announces new, more powerful Vera Rubin chip made for AI
Jensen Huang speaks at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Jensen Huang speaks at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Next generation of chips in'full production' and will arrive later this year, Jensen Huang says at CES in Las Vegas Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Monday that the company's next generation of chips is in "full production" saying they can deliver five times the artificial-intelligence computing of the company's previous chips when serving up chatbots and other AI apps. In a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the leader of the world's most valuable company revealed new details about its chips, which will arrive later this year and which Nvidia executives are in the company's labs being tested by AI firms, as Nvidia faces increasing competition from rivals as well as its own customers. The Vera Rubin platform, made up of six separate Nvidia chips, is expected to debut later this year, with the flagship server containing 72 of the company's graphics units and 36 of its new central processors.
AI images of Maduro capture reap millions of views on social media
A supporter of Maduro holds a painting of him in Caracas. A supporter of Maduro holds a painting of him in Caracas. Minutes after Donald Trump announced a "large-scale strike" against Venezuela early on Saturday morning, false and misleading AI-generated images began flooding social media. There were fake photos of Nicolás Maduro being escorted off a plane by US law enforcement agents, images of jubilant Venezuelans pouring into the streets of Caracas and videos of missiles raining down on the city - all fake. The fabricated content intermixed with real videos and photos of US aircraft flying over the Venezuelan capital and explosions lighting up the dark sky.
Beyond Demand Estimation: Consumer Surplus Evaluation via Cumulative Propensity Weights
Bian, Zeyu, Biggs, Max, Gao, Ruijiang, Qi, Zhengling
This paper develops a practical framework for using observational data to audit the consumer surplus effects of AI-driven decisions, specifically in targeted pricing and algorithmic lending. Traditional approaches first estimate demand functions and then integrate to compute consumer surplus, but these methods can be challenging to implement in practice due to model misspecification in parametric demand forms and the large data requirements and slow convergence of flexible nonparametric or machine learning approaches. Instead, we exploit the randomness inherent in modern algorithmic pricing, arising from the need to balance exploration and exploitation, and introduce an estimator that avoids explicit estimation and numerical integration of the demand function. Each observed purchase outcome at a randomized price is an unbiased estimate of demand and by carefully reweighting purchase outcomes using novel cumulative propensity weights (CPW), we are able to reconstruct the integral. Building on this idea, we introduce a doubly robust variant named the augmented cumulative propensity weighting (ACPW) estimator that only requires one of either the demand model or the historical pricing policy distribution to be correctly specified. Furthermore, this approach facilitates the use of flexible machine learning methods for estimating consumer surplus, since it achieves fast convergence rates by incorporating an estimate of demand, even when the machine learning estimate has slower convergence rates. Neither of these estimators is a standard application of off-policy evaluation techniques as the target estimand, consumer surplus, is unobserved. To address fairness, we extend this framework to an inequality-aware surplus measure, allowing regulators and firms to quantify the profit-equity trade-off. Finally, we validate our methods through comprehensive numerical studies.
A first-order method for nonconvex-strongly-concave constrained minimax optimization
A first-order method for nonconvex-strongly-concave constrained minimax optimization Zhaosong Lu Sanyou Mei May 12, 2024 (Revised: October 23, 2025) Abstract In this paper we study a nonconvex-strongly-concave constrained minimax problem. Specifically, we propose a first-order augmented Lagrangian method for solving it, whose subproblems are nonconvex-strongly-concave unconstrained minimax problems and suitably solved by a first-order method developed in this paper that leverages the strong concavity structure. Under suitable assumptions, the proposed method achieves an operation complexity of O(ε 3.5 log ε 1), measured in terms of its fundamental operations, for finding an ε-KKT solution of the constrained minimax problem, which improves the previous best-known operation complexity by a factor of ε 0.5 . Keywords: minimax optimization, augmented Lagrangian method, first-order method, operation complexity Mathematics Subject Classification: 90C26, 90C30, 90C47, 90C99, 65K05 1 Introduction In this paper, we consider a nonconvex-strongly-concave constrained minimax problem F = min c(x) 0 max d(x,y) 0 {F (x,y):= f (x, y) + p(x) q(y)}. Assume that problem (1) has at least one optimal solution and the following additional assumptions hold.
'Remove her clothes': Global backlash over Grok sexualized images
Grok, a chatbot developed by xAI, has faced criticism for churning out incorrect information about recent crises. Washington - Elon Musk's AI tool Grok faced growing international backlash Monday for generating sexualized deepfakes of women and minors, with the European Union joining the condemnation and Britain warning of an investigation. Complaints of abuse flooded the internet after the recent rollout of an "edit image" button on Grok, which enabled users to alter online images with prompts such as "put her in a bikini" or "remove her clothes." The digital undressing spree, which follows growing concerns among tech campaigners over proliferating AI "nudify" apps, prompted swift probes or calls for remedial action from countries including France, India and Malaysia. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
@Grok, Did Venezuela 'Deserve It'?
The information war will be fought through chatbots. Hours before President Donald Trump announced Nicolás Maduro's capture, on Saturday morning, people had questions for Grok, Elon Musk's chatbot. Footage was circulating on X of explosions in Venezuela, and some users assumed the United States was responsible: "Hey @grok why is Trump sending US airstrikes to bomb Venezuela. Do you think they deserve it or not?"one "@grok what is the reason why America is bombing Venezuela," another asked.
EU flags 'appalling' child-like deepfakes generated by X's Grok AI
EU flags'appalling' child-like deepfakes generated by X's Grok AI The European Commission has condemned the reported spread of explicit, child-like content on social media platform X, calling the material "appalling" and "disgusting". European Union digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier made the comments to reporters on Monday following weeks of complaints over a new feature on X's integrated AI chatbot Grok used to generate pornographic content, including depicting children. Regnier said the European Commission is "very seriously looking" into the matter, and such content has "no place in Europe". Meanwhile, the public prosecutor's office in Paris, France expanded an investigation into X to include accusations that Grok - created by Elon Musk's xAI company - has been used to generate and spread child pornography. In late December, a novel "edit image" feature on Grok allowed users to modify any image on the platform.