By Andreas Rinke BERLIN An agreement on how artificial intelligence should be regulated in the future has been

Texas A&M University has reached a $1 million settlement Thursday with a Black journalism professor whose hiring was sabotaged by backlash her past work promoting diversity

TL;DR: As of May 28, you can score a refurbished Dell Latitude 7400 laptop and

Africa will seek to present itself as a solution to the global warming crisis in a declaration to

Autonomous carmaker Cruise must suspend its driverless taxi operations in California immediately, state motor vehicles regulators announced on Tuesday. "The California DMV today notified Cruise that the department is suspending Cruise’s autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permits, effective immediately,” the state Department of Motor Vehicles said in a statement. “The DMV has provided Cruise with the steps need to apply to reinstate its suspended permits, which the DMV will not approve until the company has fulfilled the requirements to the department’s satisfaction.” The regulator said it has the right to pull back permissions when “there is an unreasonable risk to public safety.” The suspension, which only applies to Cruise trips where no human safety driver is onboard the vehicle, follows an incident earlier this month, where a woman in San Francisco was struck by a human driver in a hit-and-run accident that propelled her into the path of a Cruise robotaxi. “Ultimately, we develop and deploy autonomous vehicles in an effort to save lives,” Cruise said in a statement to ABC7. “In the incident being reviewed by the DMV, a human hit and run driver tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV. The AV braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision, it attempted to pull over to avoid further safety issues. When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward.” “Our thoughts continue to be with the victim as we hope for a rapid and complete recovery,” the company added. The suspension is a major blow to Cruise, which is owned by General Motors. Alongside Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, Cruise saw California, and in particular San Francisco, as a key testing ground of driverless taxi technology. The companies both got permission from state regulators in August to conduct paid taxi service 24/7 without a safety driver in San Francisco, despite vigorous debate in the city over whether the AVs were safe enough to operate. The rollout of robotaxis in San Francisco has been marred with problems. Driverless cars, in particular Cruise taxis, were accused of causing traffic and impeding first responders. According to data Cruise shared with the state in August, between January and mid-July of 2023, Cruise AVs temporarily malfunctioned or shut down 177 times and required recovery, 26 of which such incidents occurred with a passenger inside, while Waymo recorded 58 such events in a similar time frame. Meanwhile, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA), between April 2022 and April 2023, Cruise and Waymo vehicles have been involved in over 300 incidents of irregular driving including unexpected stops and collisions, while the San Francisco Fire Department says AVs have interfered 55 times in their work in 2023. Last year, Cruise lost contact with its entire fleet for 20 minutes according to internal documentation viewed by WIRED, and an anonymous employee warned California regulators that year the company loses touch with its vehicles “with regularity.” Since being rolled out in San Francisco, robotaxis have killed a dog, caused a mile-long traffic jam during rush hour, blocked a traffic lane as officials responded to a shooting, and driven over fire hoses. Jeffrey Tumlin, San Francisco’s director of transportation, has called the rollout of robotaxis a “race to the bottom,” arguing Cruise and Waymo weren’t yet definitive transit solutions, and instead had only “met the requirements for a learner’s permit.” Others have argued the introduction of driverless cars in San Francisco and beyond will further displace workers pushed out of the taxi industry by companies like Uber and Lyft. Read More Live updates: Republicans nominate Tom Emmer for House speaker New doc on the wrestling abuse that dogged Jim Jordan’s Speaker run Trump slams ‘Globalist RINO’ Tom Emmer after speaker nomination win Live updates: Republicans nominate Tom Emmer for House speaker New doc on the wrestling abuse that dogged Jim Jordan’s Speaker run Trump slams ‘Globalist RINO’ Tom Emmer after speaker nomination win

Sky Mobile and O2 appear to have suffered a major outage, with users saying they are unable to connect to mobile internet. Online outage monitor Downdetector registered thousands of user reports about issues with Sky and O2 services on Tuesday afternoon. The issue appeared to begin just after 2pm, with both mobile networks going down simultaneously. Customers took to Twitter and other social media platforms to complain about the problems. The Independent has reached out to both O2 and Sky Mobile for comment. More to follow Read More ChatGPT creator to warn congress of ‘urgent’ AI risks - follow live Watch live as OpenAI CEO faces questions from Congress on potential AI regulation Major WhatsApp update enables secret chats

Back-to-school can be a stressful time, but getting a big discount on a new Lenovo

MILPITAS, Calif. & HERZLIYA, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 7, 2023--

Eight technology companies are making voluntary commitments on AI, a senior Biden administration official told CNN, as the White House looks to safeguard development of the emerging technology while working toward more comprehensive regulation.

Apple has been forced to halt sales of its iPhone 12 in France after a watchdog claimed the device emits too much radiation. The smartphone, which was first released in 2020, has a Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) that is above the legal limit, according to France’s National Frequency Agency (ANFR), which oversees radio-electric frequencies as well as public exposure to electromagnetic radiation. The agency tested 141 phones and found that the iPhone 12 was more than 40 per cent above the legal limit for SAR. The ANFR called on Apple in a statement on Tuesday to “implement all available means to rapidly fix this malfunction.” Corrective updates to the iPhone 12 will be monitored by the agency, according to the statement. If they don’t work, “Apple will have to recall” phones that were already sold, it said. The agency consistently tests devices for waves capable of being absorbed by the human body, measuring against the European Union standard of 4 watts per kilogram. The ANFR said the iPhone 12 met the required threshold when radiation levels were assessed for a phone kept in a jacket or in a bag. The Independent has reached out to Apple for comment. Jean-Noel Barrot, France’s junior minister for digital economy, told Le Parisien newspaper on Tuesday that the ANFR’s data would be shared with other EU member states, which he warned could have a “snowball effect” on Apple. “Apple is expected to respond within two weeks,” he said. “If they fail to do so, I am prepared to order a recall of all iPhones 12 in circulation. The rule is the same for everyone, including the digital giants.” The ANFR’s announcement came on the launch day of Apple’s latest iPhone 15, which saw the whole 12 series of iPhones discontinued. This means any ban is unlikely to have a significant impact on Apple’s phone sales, however a recall could prove damaging depending on the scale. Additional reporting by agencies Read More All the key announcements from Apple’s iPhone 15 event Why Apple getting rid of lightning cable iPhone charger is a big deal Here’s the brand new Apple Watch Apple to stop using leather in all new products

If some influencers on TikTok are to be believed, eating a handful of carrots a day will give you a tan. An account called isabelle.lux posted last week to claim that eating three carrots each day would make you orange. And the fad is spreading like wildfire. @isabelle.lux #stitch with @Isabelle ⚡️ Lux ?CARROT TAN 101 take Astaxanthin (i get mine on amazon) #carrottan #selftan #selftanroutine Tanning hack routine Carrot tan before and after results But like most things promoted by beauty grifters on the internet, all is not what it seems. Two dieticians wrote in The Conversation on 27 September that, no, you probably won't get that golden tan just from eating a couple of root vegetables. They are Lauren Ball, professor of community health and wellbeing at The University of Queensland, and Emily Burch, a dietitian, researcher and lecturer, Southern Cross University. Here’s what they had to say. What is Carotene? The reason carrots are orange is because they contain beta-carotene, a natural pigment. When you eat it, your gut breaks it down into vitamin A, which helps vision, reproduction, immunity and growth. If you eat too much beta-carotene, it stops breaking it down into vitamin A. Then your poo goes orange. (No, really.) The excess beta-carotene gets stored in the liver and fat tissue, write Ball and Burch, and is excreted through your poo, or removed via sweat glands in the outer layer of the skin. This is when your skin goes orange, or “tanned”. There’s even a medical name for the condition – carotenoderma – which sees the orange pigmentation concentrated in the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet and the smile lines near your nose. So how many carrots do you need? “A few days of high carrot intake will unlikely result in a change in skin colour,” Bell and Burch write. Moreover, “no high quality trials have been conducted to test the relationship between number of carrots eaten per day and skin colour changes or other outcomes”. One published case report found that for a person who ate around 3kg of carrots per week (about seven large carrots a day) found the colour of their skin started to change. Other experts have suggest you would need to eat at least ten carrots per day, for at least a few weeks, for colour changes to occur. The experts added: “Most people would find this carrot intake challenging.” Is that even good for you? And while they continue that myths around beta-carotene being toxic for humans don’t quite stack up, there is a potential danger. “There is, however, some evidence that taking high-dose beta-carotene supplements (20 mg per day or more) increases lung cancer risk in people who smoke cigarettes or used to smoke,” they wrote. “This may be due to changes to chemical signalling pathways.” The Cancer Council therefore recommends avoiding high doses of beta-carotene supplements (more than 20 mg per day). But the good news is that if you really want to go a strange orange hue, beta-carotene is also found in parsley, basil, chives, chilli powder and sun-dried tomatoes. So as far as real fruit and veg is concerned, you might as well crack on. Read the full article in The Conversation here. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Scientists have been left baffled by the discovery of the wreck of a 2,000-year-old “computer” that is amazingly complex. The Antikythera mechanism – an astronomical calendar – has been dubbed “‘the first computer” and has baffled scientists for generations after it was first discovered inside a Greek shipwreck in 1901. The device is a hand-powered time-keeping instrument that used a wing-up system to track the sun, moon and planets’ celestial time. It also worked as a calendar, tracking the phases of the Moon and the timing of eclipses. Despite sounding relatively simple, the mechanism was actually ahead of its time, being more technically sophisticated than any other tool that was invented over the next 1,000 years. In its current condition, the mechanism is in 82 separate fragments with only a third of its original structure remaining, including 30 corroded bronze gearwheels. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Research into the device from experts at University College London involved 3D computer modelling and helped them solve the mystery of how the device worked, revealing a “creation of genius”. Adam Wojcik, a materials scientist at UCL said at the time: “We believe that our reconstruction fits all the evidence that scientists have gleaned from the extant remains to date.” They theorised that the device tracked the movement of the sun, moon and planets on concentric rings, as the ancient Greeks believed that the sun and planets revolved around Earth, rather than the sun. The researchers explained in Scientific Reports: “Solving this complex 3D puzzle reveals a creation of genius—combining cycles from Babylonian astronomy, mathematics from Plato’s Academy and ancient Greek astronomical theories.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.