Figuring out when and how to use these tools appropriately and productively will take time.  When the same tools are available to everyone, the differentiator will be in how we use the tools, not the tools themselves.  By default, they are homogenization machines, spinning out lookalike content for everyone.  It takes work and creativity to use them in ways that will actually stand out.

On Friday this week the FTC’s open comment period regarding its “Policy Statement Addressing AI Accuracy” will close, which means that a bunch of very smart, very busy people are wasting a ton of time this week writing up comments that will mostly be ignored by the FTC — but still matter for the record. The whole thing is so ridiculous that a former FTC lawyer has sarcastically requested that the FTC publish a quarterly “schedule of values” so AI companies at least know which ideologies they’re required to support to keep Donald Trump happy.

It’s an unconstitutional sham from an FTC whose chairman, Andrew Ferguson, quite openly sees his job as putting his thumb on the scale of speech to favor the MAGA worldview. Ferguson has been doing this since the very start of his tenure and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down now.

Not to mention that this sets precedent for future administrations to use this power to determine what is biased.

Yet, that’s exactly what this proposed FTC policy is setting up: if AI tools don’t produce properly MAGA-fied outputs, the FTC might go after them, claiming that the outputs are not in line with “consumers’ expectations” (as determined by the MAGA FTC) and thus, “unfair and deceptive.”

Elon Musk’s X has settled a long-running legal battle with a major advertising trade body that it had accused of orchestrating an “illegal boycott” against the social media platform.

The advertisers rejected the allegations, arguing brands had the right to decide where to spend their money themselves rather than be forced to back a particular platform. The case was dismissed in March by a federal judge but X then launched an appeal in April.

In a statement on Wednesday, X Corp and the WFA said they were “putting the litigation . . . behind them”. They added that this “resets the relationship between the two organisations”. No terms of the agreement were disclosed.

The WFA said it “reiterates its commitment to freedom of speech, a principle first included in WFA’s founding constitution back in 1953, and a principle it shares with X”.

In 2024, X dropped Unilever from the lawsuit after it restarted advertising on the platform.

When it filed the lawsuit, Musk posted that “we tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now, it is war.”

Musk has had other run-ins with advertisers, including telling them “go fuck themselves” after advertising revenues fell after his takeover. X last year merged with xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, which has in turn combined with SpaceX.

Moscow has effectively throttled the service as part of a wider campaign to ​cut off access to foreign tech platforms and tighten control over the internet.

Russians can only access Telegram now by using a VPN ​to encrypt traffic and conceal their location. Yet state bodies including the Kremlin and the defence ministry continue to post ⁠to it on a daily basis.

In statements, the FSB and the state Investigative Committee said a chatbot available on Telegram called "Daivinchik/Leo" had been ​used by Ukrainian special services to recruit young Russians to carry out sabotage and terrorist operations.

Daivinchik/Leo is a popular dating chatbot in Russia, where Tinder is no longer available. The statement said Ukrainian spies posting as young women were using it to contact and entrap Russians before coercing them into committing crimes.

The FSB statement said Durov was being placed on an international wanted list, but it ‌did not ⁠specify what mechanism Russia would use to do this.

The global police organisation Interpol did not immediately respond to a request for comment. If Moscow does request a Red Notice, however, the process is unlikely to be quick, said a source with knowledge of the situation.

Dubai, where Durov lives, has friendly relations with Moscow and growing ties in energy, business and finance. But handing him over to Russia could risk damaging the emirate's image as an attractive hub ​for enterprise and technology.

Born in Russia, he now holds Emirati and French passports. He founded Russia's Facebook equivalent, VKontakte, before selling his remaining stake in 2014 amid pressure from Russian authorities.

In 2024 he was arrested in ​France over allegations that Telegram failed to adequately counter criminal activity on the platform and did not sufficiently ​cooperate with law enforcement ⁠requests. He was later allowed to leave the country while investigations continue.

"They must be suspecting me of defending Articles 29 and 23 of the Russian Constitution — which guarantee freedom of speech and the right to private correspondence. Proud to be guilty!" he ​wrote at the time.

NISQA is a deep learning model/framework for speech quality prediction. The NISQA model weights can be used to predict the quality of a speech sample that has been sent through a communication system (e.g telephone or video call). Besides overall speech quality, NISQA also provides predictions for the quality dimensions Noisiness, Coloration, Discontinuity, and Loudness to give more insight into the cause of the quality degradation.

For the second time in less than a month, Israeli forces and municipal officials today forcibly entered the Kalandia Training Centre (KTC), a United Nations facility located in occupied East Jerusalem, disrupting ongoing educational activities and raising renewed concern over the protection of UN premises under international law.

The KTC has been under threat of unlawful seizure by the Israeli authorities for several months. UNRWA has cautioned that this would not only constitute a violation of international law but would also result in an irreplaceable loss of critical vocational education opportunities that the Agency provides under its mandate from the United Nations General Assembly — opportunities on which Palestine Refugee youth rely to build skills, secure employment, and shape their futures.

In October 2025, the International Court of Justice affirmed Israel's obligations to facilitate UNRWA's operations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem. The Agency takes this opportunity to remind the Government of Israel of the Court's determination:

For the Rub

• Brown Sugar: For sweetness, use 3 tablespoons of light brown sugar.
• Salt: You’ll need 2 tablespoons of kosher salt.
• Dried Herbs: We’re using a tablespoon each of dried parsley and ground dill weed.
• Garlic Powder: This provides an intense garlic flavor with no need for mincing!
• Black Pepper: Freshly ground or cracked is best. 
• Spices: You’ll need 1 tablespoon of paprika and a teaspoon each of coriander and cumin.

• Prepare Grill: Preheat the grill to about 450˚F. Clean the cooking grates with a brush and close the lid. 

• Prep Fillets: While the grill preheats, pat dry the fillets with paper towels. Lightly grease the fillets with cooking spray and set aside.

• Make Spice Blend & Rub on Salmon: In a mixing bowl, combine the ingredients for the rub. Sprinkle the desired amount of seasoning onto the fillets and rub all around the flesh of the salmon. Store extra seasoning in an airtight container and keep for later use.

• Grill Salmon: Place the salmon fillets skin-side down over direct high heat; close the lid and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the fish is firm to the touch and there’s no resistance when you try to lift it up to turn it. Using a fish spatula, carefully turn over the fillets; close the lid and cook for 3 to 5 more minutes, or until the internal temperature of the fish registers at 145˚F. Use an Instant Read Meat Thermometer to check for doneness. 

• Let Rest & Serve: Transfer the cooked fillets to a plate and let them rest for a few minutes before serving.

When you call 9-1-1, every second matters. Through our partnership with Rapid SOS, 9-1-1 dispatchers can access enhanced location information and additional data to help connect people in need of emergency services faster.

X650 | Development Kit » Carbon Fiber 650mm Frame » Foldable Arm Design » Minmal Assembly Time » No Soldering Required » 3.5kg Payload (w/ 5200mAh Lipo)

Automated provisioning of secure boot and encryption for Raspberry Pi devices

What Problem Does This Solve?

Imagine you need to prepare 100 Raspberry Pi devices for your business.

Each device needs:

• A secure boot system (so only your software can run on it)

• Encrypted storage (so your data is protected)

• Your custom operating system installed

• Security keys programmed correctly

Without this tool, preparing each device manually is time-consuming and error-prone. Each command must be executed precisely. A single mistake requires restarting the entire process.

This tool automates the entire provisioning workflow. Connect a device, and the tool handles all configuration steps automatically. Typical provisioning time is approximately 3 minutes per device (for a 2.6GB OS image).

• Nvidia Corp. is working on AI infrastructure deals potentially worth more than $750 billion, including an artificial intelligence initiative with SK Hynix Inc.'s parent worth more than $500 billion.

• Nvidia is in discussions to provide a guarantee of as much as $250 billion to help OpenAI lease computing from a US data center project and to finance $350 billion of OpenAI's purchases of its chips.

While critics have for months warned of the circular nature of such agreements — the companies Nvidia finances and takes stakes in typically buy or use its chips — the pace of the deals is only quickening. The risk with these transactions is they may create skewed incentives for business across a plethora of industries, spur bad decision-making and magnify losses if demand for AI fails to match lofty expectations. Nvidia is also in discussions to finance $350 billion of OpenAI’s purchases of its chips for the US project, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Industry peers are opting for similar arrangements. Google, whose AI entries include Gemini, agreed to backstop lease payments at five data center locations for Anthropic PBC, helping the OpenAI rival obtain what amounts to a $35 billion loan.

An ESPHome external component for monitoring and controlling GE appliances — and other appliances supporting the GEA bus — via the GEA2 or GEA3 serial bus, with native Home Assistant integration.

What was Citizens United about?

Citizens United arose in 2007 when a conservative nonprofit organization challenged campaign finance rules that stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Supreme Court eventually decided 5–4 that Citizens United was within its First Amendment rights to spend its money disseminating the film. But rather than opining solely on the case before it as it had been asked to do, the Court took the opportunity to entirely strike down century-old prohibitions on corporate “independent” spending — money that doesn’t go directly to a candidate or party.

The justices who decided Citizens United held that independent spending could not pose a substantial risk of corruption on the erroneous assumption that the money wouldn’t be under the control of any single candidate or party.  They also assumed that existing transparency rules would require all the new spending they were permitting to be fully transparent, allowing voters to appropriately evaluate the messages targeting them.

Both assumptions have proven to be incorrect. While super PACs and other outside spenders are supposed to be separate from candidates and parties, they usually work in tandem with them — to the point where affiliated super PACs that can raise unlimited money are now integral to most major campaigns. Legal loopholes also mean that many of these groups can keep their sources of funding secret.

These trends reached new heights in the 2024 election. Billionaire-backed super PACs helped the winning presidential candidate close a substantial fundraising gap. These groups also went beyond just running supportive ads. A group funded by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, took on core components of the winning campaign, including voter outreach operations. And dark money from groups that do not disclose their donors topped $1 billion, including at least $182 million that was funneled through groups closely aligned with the two major parties’ congressional leadership campaigns.

Political action committees, known as PACs, are organizations that raise and spend money for campaigns, or whose major purpose is to support or oppose political candidates or ballot initiatives. Traditional PACs are permitted to donate directly to a candidate’s official campaign, but they are also subject to contribution limits, both in terms of what they can receive from individuals and what they can give to candidates. For example, PACs are only permitted to contribute up to $5,000 per year to a candidate per election.

In the 2010 case Speechnow.org v. FEC, however, a federal appeals court ruled — applying logic from Citizens United — that outside groups could accept unlimited contributions from both individual donors and corporations as long as the groups don’t give directly to candidates. Labeled “super PACs,” these outside groups were still permitted to spend money on independently produced ads and on other communications that promote or attack specific candidates.

In other words, super PACs are not bound by spending limits on what they can collect or spend. Additionally, super PACs are required to disclose their donors, but those donors can include dark money groups, which make the original source of the donations unclear. And while super PACs are technically prohibited from working directly with candidates, weak rules that are supposed to enforce this separation have often proven ineffective.

For example, in the 2022 midterms, just 21 of the biggest donor families contributed $783 million and billionaires provided 15 percent of all federal election financing — most of which went to super PACs supporting congressional campaigns. These donors easily outspent the total given by the millions of small donors giving to House and Senate candidates that cycle.

Citizens United allowed big political spenders to exploit the growing lack of transparency in political spending. This has contributed to a surge in secret spending from outside groups in federal elections. Dark money expenditures increased from less than $5 million in 2006 to more than $1 billion in the 2024 presidential elections alone.

Over the long-term, Citizens United would have to be overturned by a constitutional amendment or the Supreme Court. In the meantime, there are policies that can combat the dominance of big money in politics and the lack of transparency.

At a minimum, it is critical to ensure that all large campaign donors are disclosed. Strong disclosure laws, like the one enacted in Washington, require groups spending significant sums on election activity to report their largest donors. Separately, lawmakers and regulators should pass stricter rules to prevent super PACs and other outside groups that can raise unlimited money from coordinating directly with candidates and parties. Existing laws also need to be fully enforced, which has been a longstanding challenge at the federal level thanks to dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission.

Further, candidates can be offered alternative means to fund their campaigns without relying on big donors and super PACs. The most effective way to do that is public campaign financing, specifically small donor matching, in which small private contributions are amplified using public funds. Fourteen states and dozens of large cities and counties have enacted some form of public financing, with other localities actively considering it. Such a system recently went into effect in New York State and candidates have widely adopted it, allowing them to raise far more in small donations from their own constituents.

Notably, overwhelming majorities of Americans across party lines have consistently expressed disapproval of Citizens United. At least 22 states and hundreds of cities have already voted to support a constitutional amendment to overturn it. And national polls routinely show that reducing the influence of money in politics is a top policy priority for Americans, a finding consistent across demographics including race, age, and political party affiliation.

So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security. What's more the “purchase [of] a little temporary safety” of which Franklin complains was not the ceding of power to a government Leviathan in exchange for some promise of protection from external threat; for in Franklin’s letter, the word “purchase” does not appear to have been a metaphor. The governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes--and thus triggering his intervention. And the Penn family later offered cash to fund defense of the frontier--as long as the Assembly would acknowledge that it lacked the power to tax the family’s lands. Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance--and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former.

In short, Franklin was not describing some tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade. Notwithstanding the way the quotation has come down to us, Franklin saw the liberty and security interests of Pennsylvanians as aligned.

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2026 UFMP Vision and Goals

Council Study Session

July 21, 2026

Anna Heckman, Environmental Program Coordinator

Board Certified Master Arborist, Certified Urban and Community Forester

A majority of Democrats opposed the legislation, citing opposition to the Iran war and concerns about a provision in the bill that would establish the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. The section also directs the Secretary of Defense to appoint an “executive agent” at the Pentagon to oversee the newly formed initiative.

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), who led an unsuccessful effort to remove Section 219 from this bill earlier this week, said this provision “tragically merges our military and supply chains with Israel’s.”

A plugin driven framework to build WYSIWYG Markdown editor.