Last month, I went to York to build a robot. I came back with a robot, a tiny trophy-shaped sense of achievement, and somehow a few new friends. From 25th-27th August, I joined the UK RAS STEPS MicroMaze Robot Hackathon at the Institute for Safe Autonomy, University of York. The brief sounded simple: build a small autonomous robot, then make it survive increasingly difficult mazes. Until you actually have to build one.

Image caption, Parents like Natalie (right) say it's important children are confident enough to use the loo on their own when they start school The number of children who were toilet-trained before starting school this year has increased significantly in a city where parents were given potty training guides with their first school offers. York was the subject of the city-wide pilot, which also put on workshops for parents and offered special training for early years staff. Twenty local authorities across England are now signed up to launch similar schemes to tackle the number of pupils starting school without being fully toilet-trained. The government said the pilot's results were encouraging, and confirmed they were committed to 75% of pupils reaching a good level of development at the end of their first year in school by 2028. Since April this year, parents across York have been targeted via GP surgeries, pharmacies, family hubs, schools and nurseries with information and offers of support on how to potty-train their child ahead of starting school.

Kelly Stafford knows how to make an 8-year-old's birthday party more entertaining: Jell-O shots WNBA fight over males in women's sports exposes how the left keeps answering a question nobody asked Browns pick Deshaun Watson as their starting QB despite home crowd booing and his '17 away games' comments Why Wyndham Clark deserves PGA Tour Player of the Year, LIV Golf's final hoorah, and Scottie Scheffler's money Sam Burns is one of America's best golfers, but faith, family and the USA matter more to him than golf Donald Trump waves a patriotic green flag and the liberals are furious, Bubba Wallace locks up & 'F-K HIM!' Scottie Scheffler reveals he played through'pretty painful' illness during the BMW Championship Fever coach dismisses Enes Kanter Freedom's women's sports fight as a'social media thing' US'entering the endgame' with Iran as economy targeted New York City taxpayers could pay twice under Mamdani's grocery plan US announces'Economic D-Day' against Iran Steve Doocy explores the US Air Force Academy's elite military training Dr. Marc Siegel analyzes new study suggesting GLP-1 may slow down aging Humanoid robot beats Usain Bolt's 100m dash record at Beijing games Bessent SENDS WARNING to Iran: 'We are entering the ENDGAME' South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham makes her case ahead of GOP runoff OutKick Sports 49ers owner Jed York arrested for'engaging in prostitution' in Ohio, pleads no contest to lesser charges NFL great says he has'no damn idea' what's going on with embattled 49ers star Steve Smith Sr. says Brandon Aiyuk is self-sabotaging his NFL career during a recent appearance on OutKick's Don't @ Me with Dan Dakich. San Francisco 49ers owner and CEO John Jed York was arrested and arraigned in East Palestine, Ohio on suspicion of engaging in prostitution and possessing criminal tools charges that were later amended to misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and possessing criminal tools, according to court records. York was booked Sunday morning and released that afternoon on a $5,000 bond, the Columbiana County Sheriff's Office confirmed to OutKick. San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York was arrested in August 2026 in East Palestine, Ohio. Owner Jed York of the San Francisco 49ers is seen on the field prior to a game against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field on December 15, 2022 in Seattle, Washington.

New York state has required companies to disclose if "technological innovation or automation" was the cause of job loss for nearly a year. Over 160 companies in New York state have filed notices of mass layoffs since last March. None--in a group that includes Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and other employers that are adopting AI tools --attributed their workforce cuts in those filings to "technological innovation or automation." That option was added 11 months ago to a required question on paperwork that businesses with 50 or more employees must file with the state to notify of sizable job losses. New York's Department of Labor told WIRED that, as of the end of January, no employer had marked tech as the reason for their workforce reduction.

'I'm baffled how anyone could use AI to participate in a hobby.' 'I'm baffled how anyone could use AI to participate in a hobby.' I'm a committed introvert - but no AI will take away the joy I get from other people T his is depressing: according to the Cut, people are using AI to solve escape room puzzles and cheat at trivia nights. Surely, that is the definition of spoiling your own fun? "Like going into a corn maze and just wanting a straight line to the end," says one TikToker quoted in the article. There's also an interview with a keen reader who uses ChatGPT as a book club replacement, scraping the internet and aggregating "stimulating opinions and perspectives". All well and good (actually, no, it sounds bleak as hell) until he had a character's death spoilered in the fantasy epic he had been enjoying.

In the field of railway automation, one of the key challenges has been the development of effective computer vision systems due to the limited availability of high-quality, sequential data. Traditional datasets are restricted in scope, lacking the spatio temporal context necessary for real-time decision-making, while alternative solutions introduce issues related to realism and applicability. By focusing on route-specific, contextually relevant cues, we can generate rich, sequential datasets that align more closely with real-world operational logic. The concept of milestone determination allows for the development of targeted, rule-based models that simplify the learning process by eliminating the need for generalized recognition of dynamic components, focusing instead on the critical decision points along a route. We argue that this approach provides a practical framework for training vision agents in controlled, predictable environments, facilitating safer and more efficient machine learning systems for railway automation.

NYS mental health committee member Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick on the bipartisan efforts to pass legislation to protect children online. Every state has its own set of strange laws still technically on the books that may surprise you, including New York. When it comes to strange laws in a state, many have little evidence to back them, with origins unknown, while others are ones you can still find in written law. Strange laws are often head-scratchers in terms of trying to figure out why the law was created in the first place. Below are a few examples of strange laws in New York.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams--who truly believes that God put him in that job--was indicted this week on five federal charges related to bribery, wire fraud, and accepting straw donations from foreign officials. The acts detailed in the nearly 60-page indictment from the Southern District of New York span a full decade of Adams' political career, dating back to his tenure as Brooklyn borough president and extending up through his current mayoral reelection campaign. Despite being the only mayor in NYC history to be charged during his tenure, Adams is still doing what he does best: refusing to budge an inch and clumsily making his case before a city that's long tired of his shenanigans. "From here, my attorneys will take care of the case so I can take care of the city," he declared during a rainy Thursday morning press conference, sheltering under a pavilion with members of the city's Black clergy. "My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New ...

ChatGPT is a conversational agent built on a large language model. Trained on a significant portion of human output, ChatGPT can mimic people to a degree. As such, we need to consider what social identities ChatGPT simulates (or can be designed to simulate). In this study, we explored the case of identity simulation through Japanese first-person pronouns, which are tightly connected to social identities in intersectional ways, i.e., intersectional pronouns. We conducted a controlled online experiment where people from two regions in Japan (Kanto and Kinki) witnessed interactions with ChatGPT using ten sets of first-person pronouns. We discovered that pronouns alone can evoke perceptions of social identities in ChatGPT at the intersections of gender, age, region, and formality, with caveats. This work highlights the importance of pronoun use for social identity simulation, provides a language-based methodology for culturally-sensitive persona development, and advances the potential of intersectional identities in intelligent agents.

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become. "Right now, we have young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don't even know what the word computer is. They don't know, they don't know these things." If recent polling is any indication, it seems pretty clear to everyone that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul could be doing a better job of running her state. If I may offer a little advice, maybe she could start by understanding New York City a little better--and by being just a biiiiiiit less racist.