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'If we always worked in a way that we first thought was ultimate comfort, we probably wouldn’t get much work done'

A former Manchester City player has opened up about his financial troubles as he is set to spend two years and two months in prison.

Police last night warned their ability to fight crime is being hampered by the spiralling cost of Scotland's growing number of public inquiries.

Our beloved county has been the backdrop for lots of top movies and hit shows

Cat Deeley looked effortlessly chic in a red roll neck jumper and navy coat as she enjoyed a girls' day out in London on Friday.

The Hollywood star turns 51 in January but could still pass as a man in his mid-forties rather than one hurtling towards middle age.

Nelly Furtado stunned fans on Friday by revealing she's putting a stop to performing - a decision that comes amid a wave of cruel body-shaming comments.

"Clippy, the animated paper clip that annoyed Microsoft Office users nearly three decades ago, might have just been ahead of its time," writes the Associated Press: Microsoft introduced a new artificial intelligence character called Mico (pronounced MEE'koh) on Thursday, a floating cartoon face shaped like a blob or flame that will embody the software giant's Copilot virtual assistant and marks the latest attempt by tech companies to imbue their AI chatbots with more of a personality... "When you talk about something sad, you can see Mico's face change. You can see it dance around and move as it gets excited with you," said Jacob Andreou, corporate vice president of product and growth for Microsoft AI, in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's in this effort of really landing this AI companion that you can really feel." In the U.S. only so far, Copilot users on laptops and phone apps can speak to Mico, which changes colors, spins around and wears glasses when in "study" mode. It's also easy to shut off, which is a big difference from Microsoft's Clippit, better known as Clippy and infamous for its persistence in offering advice on word processing tools when it first appeared on desktop screens in 1997. "It was not well-attuned to user needs at the time," said Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Microsoft pushed it, we resisted it and they got rid of it. I think we're much more ready for things like that today..." Microsoft's product releases Thursday include a new option to invite Copilot into a group chat, an idea that resembles how AI has been integrated into social media platforms like Snapchat, where Andreou used to work, or Meta's WhatsApp and Instagram. But Andreou said those interactions have often involved bringing in AI as a joke to "troll your friends," in contrast to Microsoft's designs for an "intensely collaborative" AI-assisted workplace.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You can say anything about Prince Andrew except 'leave him alone'. Well, that is my advice. Leave him alone. That's enough.

Over the last two decades viewers have some incredible products be put forward in front of the Dragons in a bid for some cash and expertise from the professionals.

'She's working with Dom Cummings to bring down Kemi, and replace her as leader after the local elections next year,' one shadow minister tells me. 'They've been plotting together for months.'

Toby Carvery has long been self-proclaimed as the home of the roast. So I went to Colchester's branch to see if that really is the case.

Jaywick has long had the reputation of being Essex's most deprived - but somewhere else is the county's hotspot

Officers made 26 arrests and recovered eight stolen vehicles in three days targeting the criminal use of roads in Essex.

Officers made 26 arrests and recovered eight stolen vehicles in three days targeting the criminal use of roads in Essex.

Has the clock going back left you struggling to move forward? As we enter winter officially, these easy but effective tweaks to your morning routine will get you raring to go

The BBC is under pressure to 'review one of its biggest stars' after British Airways pulled its support for Louis Theroux's podcast over platforming Bob Vylan 's lead singer.

Eight years ago, Cirencester's most famous siblings, Daisy May and Charlie Cooper, became the toast of the TV world.

The Washington Post reports on 996, "a term popularized in China that refers to a rigid work schedule in which people work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week..." As the artificial intelligence race heats up, many start-ups in Silicon Valley and New York are promoting hardcore culture as a way of life, pushing the limits of work hours, demanding that workers move fast to be first in the market. Some are even promoting 996 as a virtue in the hiring process and keeping "grind scores" of companies... Whoever builds first in AI will capture the market, and the window of opportunity is two to three years, "so you better run faster than everyone else," said Inaki Berenguer, managing partner of venture-capital firm LifeX Ventures. At San Francisco-based AI start-up Sonatic, the grind culture also allows for meal, gym and pickleball time, said Kinjal Nandy, its CEO. Nandy recently posted a job opening on X that requires in-person work seven days a week. He said working 10-hour days sounds like a lot but the company also offers its first hires perks such as free housing in a hacker house, food delivery credits and a free subscription to the dating service Raya... Mercor, a San Francisco-based start-up that uses AI to match people to jobs, recently posted an opening for a customer success engineer, saying that candidates should have a willingness to work six days a week, and it's not negotiable. "We know this isn't for everyone, so we want to put it up top," the listing reads. Being in-person rather than remote is a requirement at some start-ups. AI start-up StarSling had two engineering job descriptions that required six days a week of in-person work. In a job description for an engineer, Rilla, an AI company in New York, said candidates should not work at the company if they're not excited about working about 70 hours a week in person. One venture capitalist even started tracking "grind scores." Jared Sleeper, a partner at New York-based venture capital firm Avenir, recently ranked public software companies' "grind score" in a post on X, which went viral. Using data from Glassdoor, it ranks the percentage of employees who have a positive outlook for the company compared with their views on work-life balance. "At Google's AI division, cofounder Sergey Brin views 60 hours per week as the 'sweet spot' for productivity," notes the Independent: Working more than 55 hours a week, compared with a standard 35-40-hour week, is linked to a 35 percent higher risk of stroke and a 17 percent higher risk of death from heart disease, according to the World Health Organization. Productivity also suffers. A British study shows that working beyond 60 hours a week can reduce overall output, slow cognitive performance, and impair tasks ranging from call handling to problem-solving. Shorter workweeks, in contrast, appear to boost productivity. Microsoft Japan saw a roughly 40% increase in output after adopting a four-day work week. In a UK trial, 61 companies that tested a four-day schedule reported revenue gains, with 92 percent choosing to keep the policy, according to Bloomberg.

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31 alleged poker schemers nabbed alongside arrest of separate sports betting ring

The feds on Thursday charged alleged mafia associates and current and former National Basketball Association players and coaches with running rigged poker games and illegal sports betting.…