Aggregator

Jamie Varley, 37, made the comment to a female officer interviewing him following the death of Preston Davey, 13 months.

Google is giving its iconic search box its first major redesign since 2001. The new design incorporates, you guessed it, artificial intelligence, "getting bigger and more interactive so that people can ask even longer questions and upload photographs and videos into queries," reports the New York Times. "In addition, people can ask follow-up questions with a chatbot on Google's main search page." From the report: The company will also offer digital assistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone who may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site like Zillow. The search features will be powered by a new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google said the model had improved on creating software code and performing autonomous tasks, worked faster and was less expensive to run than comparable models. [...] Google is also bringing one of A.I.'s biggest breakthroughs -- software coding -- to search. When people research complex topics like astrophysics, Gemini can build interactive graphics and simulations behind the scenes to provide a deeper answer than its previous listing of websites. Google said it was introducing an alternative to the agents powered by Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Called Gemini Spark, the service is embedded in Gmail, Docs and other Google products, where it can turn meeting notes spread across emails and chats into a single document. It can also read and draft emails. "The open web is on its way out," says Richard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research. "With A.I., Google is reducing everyone to raw data providers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Thousands' of US victims, including 12+ machines owned and operated by Redmond

The Office for National Statistics said the jobless rate among 18 to 24-year-olds now stands at 14.7 per cent, a rate not seen since late 2014.

Zack Polanski's party will select a candidate on Wednesday but there is still an internal debate raging over how hard the Greens should campaign against the Manchester Mayor.

Taxpayers should pay for the BBC in the same way as they subsidise the NHS or state schools, TV producers claimed on Tuesday, because the broadcaster performs a 'public good'.

Southampton have been EXPELLED from the Championship play-off final after admitting to spying on MULTIPLE rivals.

Dietitians say most supermarket breads are refined white flour in disguise, but the right loaf delivers real fiber and protein benefits.

The Defence Secretary has pledged to back British manufacturers when deciding what equipment the Armed Forces should buy.

A leaked workforce plan says the NHS in England will have to rely on technology to get by with hundreds of thousands fewer staff than the previous Conservative government had planned.

The group claims $100M in losses from flubby system

Experts fear the UK is staring in the face of stagflation, a ruinous combination of high unemployment, high inflation and low growth.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inside Climate News: A proposed merger of the largest utility in the country by market value, NextEra Energy, with the sixth-largest, Dominion, would create a megacompany at a time when data centers and rapid increases in electricity demand are reshaping the industry. The proposal, announced Monday morning and contingent on state and federal regulatory approval, would result in a company that leads in nearly every aspect of the US power and utility industry, including overall electricity generation, natural gas generation, and renewables. The $67 billion deal combines NextEra's size and reach with Dominion's positioning as the local utility for the world's largest concentration of data centers in northern Virginia. But the results are likely bad for consumers and the environment, creating a company with enormous financial and political strength that will be difficult to effectively regulate, according to consumer advocates and analysts. For perspective, only Exxon Mobil and Chevron would be larger based on market value among US-based energy companies. "Mergers are not about consumers; they're about shareholders," said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. "For the Dominion shareholders, they are selling their shares at a premium. The executives are getting massive payouts for facilitating this, assuming it all goes through, and obviously NextEra believes the transaction is going to add value to the company. Ratepayers are all an afterthought." The deal makes financial sense for both companies, said Andrew Bischof, an equity analyst for Morningstar. "We view the transaction as allowing NextEra to accelerate its data center ambitions, which had trailed those of its regulated peers, by using Dominion's expertise and relationships to expedite NextEra's data center hub plans," he said in a note to clients. NextEra, based in Juno Beach, Florida, includes Florida Power & Light, the largest regulated electricity utility in the state, and NextEra Energy Resources, a wholesale electricity supplier that owns power plants across the nation. Dominion, based in Richmond, Virginia, includes regulated utilities serving much of Virginia, parts of North Carolina and South Carolina, and other assets across the country. The company would be called NextEra Energy, and NextEra CEO John W. Ketchum would serve in the same role after the deal closes. Robert M. Blue, Dominion's CEO, would be the CEO for regulated utilities for the merged company. The parties said they expect regulatory approvals to take 12 to 18 months. NextEra shareholders would own 74.5 percent and Dominion shareholders would own 25.5 percent, respectively, of the combined company in the all-stock transaction. "We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever -- not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies," Ketchum said in a statement. Although the companies claim the deal would produce savings, including $2.25 billion in Dominion customer bill credits, former regulator Marissa Paslick Gillett said she was "flabbergasted by the tone deafness," arguing that major utility mergers rarely deliver the promised "synergies" and often create "a behemoth" that is harder to regulate. Others warned that a larger NextEra could use its political power "to the disadvantage of ratepayers," while climate advocates said expanding methane gas plants to serve data centers would worsen pollution and leave vulnerable communities "at the short end of the stick."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Follow Daily Mail Sport's live blog for the latest score, team news and updates as Bournemouth welcome Manchester City to the Vitality Stadium in the Premier League.

Chocolate Factory readies always-on agents for searchers

Vice President JD Vance revealed that wife Usha, who was born and raised in San Diego, 'absolutely' knew of people who attended the mosque where three people were killed on Monday.

F-16 fighter jets were scrambled over Washington DC on Tuesday.

The CDC is working closely with FIFA on safety and screening measures ahead of the World Cup as a team from Congo, which is experiencing an Ebola outbreak, plans to travel to the US for the tournament.

'I have visited those caves countless times. There is no current. They swam into that third cave. They chose to go in there,' a former military diver for the Maldives National Defence Force tells the Daily Mail.

The 18-year-old, whose dad is Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden, was showing off her dyed dark hair as she modeled a goth look made up of a strapless leather minidress with black boots.