Woman, 27, prevented from accessing medical treatment prior to her death
The woman was a patient detained under the mental health act at the Linden Centre in Chelmsford when she died
Sainsbury's staff eject wrong shopper after facial recognition alert – again
Facewatch says its technology worked as intended before humans mishandled the result
Tourist teen's grieving family demand $105M from NYC after 'stray electrical current' made Central Park horse bolt and kill their son, lawsuit claims
Romanch Mahajan, 18, died on June 17 after he jumped out of the ride and hit his head after the carriage horse bolted suddenly during their family trip to the Big Apple from India.
Seven new deputy lieutenants appointed in Essex
Seven new deputy lieutenants have been appointed to represent the King in Essex.
New outdoor play area opens to children at Coggeshall Mill development
Bovis Homes opened a new outdoor play area for children at it Coggeshall Mill development.
Seven new deputy lieutenants appointed in Essex
Seven new deputy lieutenants have been appointed to represent the King in Essex.
Construction firm invests £700,000 in upgrading Braintree branch
Keyline, a major civils and drainage specialist, has invested £700,000 in upgrading its Braintree branch.
Perez Hilton is STILL hospitalized at inpatient mental health facility... after he was treated for overdose following horror self-harm livestream
Perez Hilton has yet to be released from medical care following his horrific self-harm livestream earlier this month.
Elaine Paige reveals she was addicted to sleeping pills and 'lived on the tablets' during her theatre days - yet has kicked the 'dreadful' habit since the pandemic
Elaine Paige has admitted she was addicted to 'dreadful' sleeping pills during her years on the stage and lived on them for years.
Moment 'migrants' jump out of lorry at Northampton yard, pose for photos and brazenly walk away... as staff 'turn a blind eye'
Footage shown to the Daily Mail showed the pair emerging from a heavy goods truck that had travelled from Calais to Dover then finally Northampton last Friday, on August 7.
Bipartisan 'Uprising' Against Flock Cameras: a Larger Fight Against Big Tech and Surveillance?
Politico notes that over 20 local jurisdictions in America "either stopped using Flock cameras or began the process of doing so in July, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, an activist group that has been mapping the company. It's the highest amount in a single month since they began tracking in 2021."
Some local officials said the public safety promises weren't worth the cost. The cameras "didn't help us with anything. From a utility aspect, they were just kind of not useful," said Eric Couture, a Democratic first selectman in Killingworth, Connecticut, another city that recently canceled its contract with Flock. "I'd say it was a net negative."
And their article adds that it's a bipartisan pushback that "runs parallel to sprawling fights over the future of technology in American life, including the rise of increasingly advanced artificial intelligence tools and the construction of massive data centers needed to power them."
Salon even argues Flock's cameras "have become a symbol of growing anger over the efforts by technology oligarchs to impose their dystopian fantasies on the country, replacing liberal democracy with a surveillance state... People are sick of tech billionaires trying to control our lives""
By targeting Flock cameras, activists are building momentum for a larger rebellion against the tech industry — and against political leaders who are complicit in their assault on our freedoms. Flock Safety embodies the dishonesty that has been the prevailing theme of tech corporate communications and marketing for at least the past decade. While the cameras are sold to the public as a banal traffic safety measure, they have prompted an outpouring of stories about how they're being used to violate civil liberties and undermine democracy...
According to an exhaustive 10-month analysis by Electronic Foundation Frontier, a nonprofit dedicated to defending civil liberties in our digital age, local police were using the cameras to track protesters, such as those at No Kings rallies, who were then put in a national database to be used across all jurisdictions. Despite claims that the cameras only record license plates, the technology-focused outlet 404 Media found that the database is also being used to collect information on individual people whom cops can then search for using descriptions of clothing, race, gender and body type.
The Flock uprising, though, is the stirrings of public understanding that none of this inevitable — and we have the right to fight back... Along with protests against data centers, it's a sign that the public is desperate for a way to fight back against not just AI, but also the anti-democratic forces fueling this latest tech wave.
Salon's writer also adds that "what stands out about the burgeoning public rebellion against Flock security cameras is just how fun it all is," citing "a national cat-and-mouse game between vandals and cops that is being merrily followed on social media, mostly by people rooting for the vandals."
City council meetings in which citizens swarm to protest paying for the cameras are the new must-see TV. In Huntington, West Virginia, a small city in the heart of Appalachia, one man became an internet folk hero when he stood up at a city council meeting and said, "I'm not gonna waste your time; I'm kinda hungry. But one last thing: Every single Flock camera has about 2-3 pounds of copper and about 1-2 grams of gold. Do with that information what you will." He then walked off in triumph.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Beckhams win battle for 'Blackpool illuminations', hot tub and firepit at their £6.15M Cotswolds home despite objections from Nimby neighbour (who lives 9,000 miles away in Australia)
James Worthington had lodged a string of complaints against planning applications linked to the Beckhams' home, accusing the couple of turning the countryside into 'Miami or Florida'.
Johnny Depp in discussions to return as Captain Jack Sparrow for sixth Pirates Of The Caribbean film
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer teased the comeback of Captain Jack Sparrow while attending Disney's D23 fan event on Sunday.
Jennifer Garner beams as she leaves church... after reuniting with ex-husband Ben Affleck on his 54th birthday
The 54-year-old actress was dressed in a crew neck white T-shirt and billowy, patterned blue and white skirt.
Victoria Beckham says she is making memories with 'special people' amid Brooklyn rift as she shares family photos and reveals David's overgrown holiday beard that 'needs a trim'
Victoria Beckham gushed over her close knit family as she revealed she is 'making memories with special people' on her European summer holiday.
Microsoft blames AI for delayed Exchange update, can’t say when it will arrive
Dealing with machine-made bug backlog makes it hard to find a moment to deliver promised subscription service
Minneapolis mayor is shamed for cringeworthy dancing at state fair... while violent crime rates explode in his city
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was ridiculed online for his awkward dance moves at a recent state fair, while violent crime rates in the city remain high.
Little League World Series erupts into cheating scandal as kids are accused of using illegal tactics
Davenport Northwest beat Whitefish Bay of Wisconsin 7-6 in Friday's Midwest Regional Championship to earn their spot in the Little League World Series but has now been engulfed in scandal.
Revealed: The middle-class dealers illegally selling unlicensed 'Godzilla' fat jabs made in China
Vast quantities of retatrutide, potentially the most powerful weight loss medication ever developed, are being flogged online despite concerns over its safety.
Anthropic Criticized For Adding Watermarks to Text that Claude Generates - or Processes
This week Anthropic announced its Claude chatbot will watermark the text it generates, reports the blog Futurism. "It works by making subtle changes in the AI's word choices across the text it generates, which are supposed to be imperceptible to a human but, in aggregate, form a pattern that is detectable with the tool."
Anthropic said it was implementing the watermark system in response to the European Union's landmark AI Act passed in 2024, which requires that AI companies mark content that's been generated or edited by their systems.
TechCrunch notes that other companies including Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Synthesia have committed to adhering to the EU's code. But "The news about Claude watermarking kicked off a firestorm on X," reports Forbes, "with users panicking that AI-assisted writing will now bear a kind of permanent 'scarlet letter.'" (Forbes wonders if media companies are normalizing AI "while at the same time stigmatizing the output.")
But there's another issue. Anthropic said the watermark indicates Claude processed text, Business Insider points out, "not that it was necessarily the original author. The company said marks can remain after Claude proofreads, translates, summarizes, or otherwise edits content... a watermark shows that Claude processed text, not necessarily that it wrote it."
In the days since, "Dozens of people have posted on X since Monday that they had canceled their Claude subscriptions, citing the watermark."
Vladislav Rajtmajer, a freelance developer in the Czech Republic, told Business Insider he canceled his Claude Max subscription on Tuesday, citing the watermark as the main reason. He said he uses AI for code reviews and translations, and worried an AI label on code shipped to clients could raise questions about authorship or trigger contract penalties... Richard Echols, an AI consultant in Georgia, also said he canceled his Claude Max subscription on Wednesday and that the watermark was a major factor in his decision. He said he uses Claude to create documentation for businesses and worried the mark could appear when he had written the underlying material himself and used the chatbot only for edits. "Even if you edit your own work that you wrote, they add the watermark anyway," Echols said...
Anthropic isn't the only AI lab to use watermarks: Google uses its SynthID technology to watermark AI-generated content, and OpenAI uses SynthID for supported images and audio. Elon Musk's social media platform X also adds a "Made with AI" tag on content it determines to be AI-generated or manipulated.
Long-time Slashdot reader kmleon (also a tech consultant and RPG researcher) experienced another issue. He'd built some software using their own custom-built AI tool, only asking Claude to do some testing. "Little did I know that Claude would sometimes decide, since it was involved on the edges... to take credit for all of my work, claiming some parts were either '100%' or 'Co-Authored/Created' by Claude.Ai / Claude Code!"
I'm sure the good folks at Anthropic will eventually tweak Claude enough to, hopefully, not make these mistakes in the future.... I only became aware of it today, because I recently setup scanners to catch Claude incorrectly watermarking any content it touches for various projects I'm working on. I found that it has (apparently as far back as Sonnet 4.6, but as recently as today, August 14th, 2026) sometimes been mistakenly over-zealous in taking credit for 100% creating or co-authoring docs, code, images, videos, etc. I've only, so far, found about a dozen instances spanning the past year, and most of them appear to have been injected in the last few weeks, so it is not a common issue (yet).
On the bright side? Maybe watermarks can help AI stop training on AI-generated text.
Although Forbes also reports that
Google "announced on Friday that it will now let users remove the visible watermark from AI-generated images, videos and music created with several of its models."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.