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Ukraine's soldiers react to US peace plan with defiance, anger and resignation

BBC News

'No one will support it': Ukraine's soldiers react to US peace plan Ukraine's frontline soldiers have reacted to draft US peace proposals with a mixture of defiance, anger and resignation. The BBC spoke to half a dozen who sent us their views via social media and email in response to the original US plan - details of which were leaked last week. Since then, American and Ukrainian negotiators have been working on changes to the proposals - and are set to continue talks about the peace framework. Of the original US plan, Yaroslav, in eastern Ukraine, says it sucks no one will support it while an army medic with the call sign Shtutser dismissed it as an absolutely disgraceful draft of a peace plan, unworthy of our attention. But one soldier with the call sign Snake told us it's time to agree at least on something.


A 100 Billion Chip Project Forced a 91-Year-Old Woman From Her Home

WIRED

Azalia King was the last holdout preventing the construction of a Micron megafab. Onondaga County authorities threatened to use eminent domain to take her home away by force. Azalia King moved into an upstate New York home surrounded by sprawling cattle pastures around 1965, about the time that mass production of the world's first microchips began. Now, 60 years later, the 91-year-old is on the verge of losing her home to make way for what could become the largest chipmaking complex in the US. Local authorities threatened to exercise their power of eminent domain, or taking land for public benefit, to forcibly uproot King and proceed with construction on a $100 billion campus where US tech giant Micron plans to make memory chips for use in a variety of electronics.


Can't tech a joke: AI does not understand puns, study finds

The Guardian

Researchers concluded that LLMs were able to spot the structure of a pun but did not really get the joke. Researchers concluded that LLMs were able to spot the structure of a pun but did not really get the joke. Can't tech a joke: AI does not understand puns, study finds Researchers say results underline large language models' poor grasp of humour, empathy and cultural nuance Comedians who rely on clever wordplay and writers of witty headlines can rest a little easier, for the moment at least, research on AI suggests. Experts from universities in the UK and Italy have been investigating whether large language models (LLMs) understand puns - and found them wanting. The team from Cardiff University, in south Wales, and Ca' Foscari University of Venice concluded that LLMs were able to spot the structure of a pun but did not really get the joke.


Europe Is Bending the Knee to the US on Tech Policy

WIRED

The Trump administration's pressure on European regulators is having an impact, with fewer restrictions on Big Tech and canceled measures. Almost everything is on hiatus. The EU AI Act, Digital Services Act, and Digital Markets Act are all at risk. The European Commission is preparing to end the year with virtually no movement on its most important tech policy initiatives. Many measures may even be reversed.


Sinister patterns in Epstein's emails DECODED: Secret confidants... guru-like advice... and how he reacted as the walls closed in

Daily Mail - Science & tech

It all seems to be falling apart now! Cunning new tactic women are using to cheat. Trump delivers savage parting shot to'lowlifes' MTG and Thomas Massie while declaring GOP has'never been so united' Gavin Newsom's inner circle on edge as multiple aides receive ominous letter from FBI just days after California governor's chief of staff was indicted Experts discover there are EIGHT different types of long Covid... do you have any of them? Full House's Jodie Sweetin reveals how addiction struggle began at 14 at costar Candace Cameron Bure's wedding Fans turn on RichTok influencer Becca Bloom over shocking comments... as she makes stunning admission about her marriage and her wild extravagance is revealed Morgan was searching for her soulmate in church... then she uncovered the sinister underbelly of Christian dating in MAGA America. Rich moms of Manhattan go to WAR: Innocent comment plunges gilded zip code into anarchy... and everyone's looking over their shoulder Two Texas men's twisted fantasy to recruit homeless to invade remote island, kill its inhabitants and ravage their women WANTED: One VERY tolerant Lady! Picky aristocrat, 79, launches bid to find a wife.


Cate Blanchett among BBC Radio 4 festive guest editors

BBC News

Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and former prime minister Baroness Theresa May are among the six public figures who will guest edit BBC Radio 4's Today programme over the Christmas period. Broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, historian and podcaster Tom Holland, inventor Sir James Dyson and Microsoft's head of artificial intelligence (AI) Mustafa Suleyman will also guest edit shows between 24 December and 31 December. For the past 22 years, the news programme has handed over the editorial reins to guest editors during the festive period. Owenna Griffiths, editor of Today, said: In a rapidly changing world, this year's guest editors will help bring illumination and understanding. She added: Every Christmas on Today, a new set of guest editors take up residence and bring with them a wonderful range of new stories, fresh ideas and, hopefully, a sprinkling of joy.


Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,369

Al Jazeera

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? Here's where things stand on Monday, November 24. United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Geneva that "a tremendous amount of progress" was made during talks in the Swiss city on Sunday and that he was "very optimistic" that an agreement could be reached in "a very reasonable period of time, very soon". Rubio also said that specific areas still being worked on from a 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, championed by US President Donald Trump, included the role of NATO and security guarantees for Ukraine.


Machu Picchu hit by a row over tourist buses

BBC News

Machu Picchu, the remains of a 15th Century Inca city, is Peru's most popular tourist destination, and a Unesco world heritage site. Yet a continuing dispute over the buses that take visitors up to the mountain-top site recently saw some 1,400 stranded tourists needing to be evacuated. Cristian Alberto Caballero Chacรณn is head of operations for bus company Consettur, which for the past 30 years has transported some 4,500 people every day to Machu Picchu from the local town of Aguas Calientes. It is a 20-minute journey, and the only alternative is an arduous, steep, two-hour walk. He admits that in the past few months there have been some conflicts between people from different communities here.


Convergence and stability of Q-learning in Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Decision-making architectures have played a central role for decades [1] both in engineering and other domains, e.g., guidance, navigation and control of Apollo missions [2], chemical plants [3], smart grids [4], unmanned aerial vehicles [5], recommender systems [6], and algorithms [7]. Moreover, architectures are ubiquitous in nature, e.g., diversity in the nervous system enables humans to have fast and accurate sensorimotor control [8]. Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a framework in which an agent learns to make sequential decisions through interaction with an environment in order to maximize cumulative reward [9]. Decision-making architectures have also been proposed and studied in RL. Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning (HRL) is a subfield of RL that deals with hierarchical structures for decision-making agents. Prospective advantages include improved long-term credit assignment, continual learning, interpretability, and the integration of preexisting policies [10], [11].


AI Workers, Geopolitics, and Algorithmic Collective Action

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

According to the theory of International Political Economy (IPE), states are often incentivized to rely on rather than constrain powerful corporations. For this reason, IPE provides a useful lens to explain why efforts to govern Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the international and national levels have thus far been developed, applied, and enforced unevenly. Building on recent work that explores how AI companies engage in geopolitics, this position paper argues that some AI workers can be considered actors of geopolitics. It makes the timely case that governance alone cannot ensure responsible, ethical, or robust AI development and use, and greater attention should be paid to bottom-up interventions at the site of AI development. AI workers themselves should be situated as individual agents of change, especially when considering their potential to foster Algorithmic Collective Action (ACA). Drawing on methods of Participatory Design (PD), this paper proposes engaging AI workers as sources of knowledge, relative power, and intentionality to encourage more responsible and just AI development and create the conditions that can facilitate ACA.