The GOP's Attacks on James Talarico Are Straight Out of the Incel Handbook Claims about low testosterone and false accusations of veganism might play well to the online far right, but will they win an election? Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico speaks in Houston, Texas. On Tuesday, with Donald Trump's endorsement and the backing of the MAGA faithful, scandal-ridden Texas attorney general Ken Paxton defeated incumbent US senator John Cornyn in a runoff primary to claim the Republican nomination for that seat. He then quickly set about painting his general-election opponent, Democratic Texas state representative James Talarico, as insufficiently masculine. "My opponent is the most extreme radical that Democrats have ever nominated," Paxton said in his victory speech.

Fairness is a critical component of Trustworthy AI. In this paper, we focus on Machine Learning (ML) and the performance of model predictions when dealing with skin color. Unlike other sensitive attributes, the nature of skin color differs significantly. In computer vision, skin color is represented as tensor data rather than categorical values or single numerical points. However, much of the research on fairness across sensitive groups has focused on categorical features such as gender and race. This paper introduces a new technique for evaluating fairness in ML for image classification tasks, specifically without the use of annotation. To address the limitations of prior work, we handle tensor data, like skin color, without classifying it rigidly. Instead, we convert it into probability distributions and apply statistical distance measures. This novel approach allows us to capture fine-grained nuances in fairness both within and across what would traditionally be considered distinct groups. Additionally, we propose an innovative training method to mitigate the latent biases present in conventional skin tone categorization. This method leverages color distance estimates calculated through Bayesian regression with polynomial functions, ensuring a more nuanced and equitable treatment of skin color in ML models.

Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit impressive results across a wide range of natural language processing (NLP) tasks, yet they can often produce factually incorrect outputs. This paper introduces a simple but effective low-latency post-correction method, \textbf{Retrieval Augmented Correction (RAC)}, aimed at enhancing the factual performance of LLMs without requiring additional fine-tuning. Our method is general and can be used with any instruction-tuned LLM, and has greatly reduced latency compared to prior approaches. RAC decomposes the LLM's output into atomic facts and applies a fine-grained verification and correction process with retrieved content to verify and correct the LLM-generated output. Our extensive experiments show that RAC yields up to 30\% improvements over state-of-the-art baselines across two popular factuality evaluation datasets, validating its efficacy and robustness in both with and without the integration of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) across different LLMs.\footnote{Our code is at \url{https://github.com/jlab-nlp/Retrieval-Augmented-Correction}}

Royal Mail has begun using drones to deliver post in the Orkney islands, helping pave the way for drone deliveries to islands around the UK and on the mainland during emergencies. The service between the village of Stromness on Orkney's main island to the nearby islands of Hoy and Graemsay, using aircraft able to carry up to 6kg, is Royal Mail's first permanent drone delivery service. Using drones allows Royal Mail to provide a faster and more secure delivery service to islands such as the Orkneys, avoiding ferries or scheduled air services subject to weather cancellations, tides and timetables that do not suit the postal service. Royal Mail has been testing and evaluating drone services on Scottish islands for some time, as has the NHS, which has trialled their use for flying urgent medical samples from the small Hebridean islands of Coll and Tiree. Chris Paxton, the head of drone trials at Royal Mail, said these flights were far faster and more efficient, and helped cut carbon emissions.

The office of Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against Google over the company's alleged years-long practices to capture and use of biometric data from, "millions of Texans without properly obtaining their informed consent to do so." This is allegedly a violation of the state's Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act of 2009. The AG argues that Google used features in its Photos and Assistant apps, as well as through Nest Hub Max hardware, to scan and store the facial and voice data without first acquiring user consent. Furthermore, Paxton alleges, Google then leveraged that data for commercial gain by using it to train the company's machine learning algorithms. "Google's indiscriminate collection of the personal information of Texans, including very sensitive information like biometric identifiers, will not be tolerated," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in the Thursday press release.

The Texas attorney general sued Alphabet Google on Thursday, alleging the search giant violated state laws by collecting biometric data on face and voice features without seeking the full consent of users. Texas alleged Google's data-collection practices stretched back to 2015 and affected millions of the state's residents, according to a complaint filed in state district court in Midland County, Texas. A weekly digest of tech reviews, headlines, columns and your questions answered by WSJ's Personal Tech gurus. "Google's indiscriminate collection of the personal information of Texans, including very sensitive information like biometric identifiers, will not be tolerated," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said. "I will continue to fight Big Tech to ensure the privacy and security of all Texans."

Instagram and Facebook users in Texas lost access to certain augmented reality filters Wednesday, following a lawsuit accusing parent company Meta of violating privacy laws. In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton revealed he would sue Meta for using facial recognition in filters to collect data for commercial purposes without consent. Paxton claimed Meta was "storing millions of biometric identifiers" that included voiceprints, retina or iris scans, and hand and face geometry. Although Meta argued it does not use facial recognition technology, it has disabled its AR filters and avatars on Facebook and Instagram amid the litigation. The AR effects featured on Facebook, Messenger, Messenger Kids, and Portal will also be shut down for Texas users.

FILE photo - Texas sued Meta on Monday over misuse of biometric data, the latest round of litigation between governments and the company over privacy. FILE photo - Texas sued Meta on Monday over misuse of biometric data, the latest round of litigation between governments and the company over privacy. Texas sued Facebook parent company Meta for exploiting the biometric data of millions of people in the state - including those who used the platform and those who did not. The company, according to a suit filed by state Attorney General Ken Paxton, violated state privacy laws and should be responsible for billions of dollars in damages. The suit involves Facebook's "tag suggestions" feature, which the company ended last year, that used facial recognition to encourage users to link the photo to a friend's profile.

The Texas attorney general is suing Facebook parent Meta, saying the United States company has unlawfully collected biometric data on Texans for commercial purposes, without their informed consent. Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit Monday in state district court, claiming Meta has been "storing millions of biometric identifiers" -- identified as retina or iris scans, voiceprints, or a record of hand and face geometry -- contained in photos and videos people upload to its services, including Facebook and Instagram. "Facebook will no longer take advantage of people and their children with the intent to turn a profit at the expense of one's safety and well-being," Paxton said in a statement. "This is yet another example of Big Tech's deceitful business practices and it must stop. I will continue to fight for Texans' privacy and security."

The Texas Attorney General is suing Facebook parent Meta, saying the company has unlawfully collected biometric data on Texans for commercial purposes, without their informed consent. Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit Monday a state district court claiming Meta has been "storing millions of biometric identifiers" -- identified as retina or iris scans, voice prints, or a record of hand and face geometry -- contained in photos and videos people upload to its services, including Facebook and Instagram. "Facebook will no longer take advantage of people and their children with the intent to turn a profit at the expense of one's safety and well-being," Paxton said in a statement. "This is yet another example of Big Tech's deceitful business practices and it must stop. I will continue to fight for Texans' privacy and security."