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Haakon spoke to the Norwegian people on Saturday in a speech broadcast from the Royal Palace in Oslo in which he thanked his father 'for everything he was and everything he did'.

This week Debian voted on whether to ban AI-assisted contributions. The winning proposal? "Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools" in its projects, documentation, and packaging... Generative AI "is neither exempt from nor subject to special rules beyond the standards already expected of Debian contributors." "The responsibility for every contribution rests with the contributor who submits it, who remains accountable for its technical quality, legal acceptability, and suitability for inclusion in Debian." "We recognize that such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration. The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian. Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian's established development practices. We enourage our contributors to disclose whether a contribution was made with AI assitance, but do not require them to do so. Debian acknowledges that the legal status of material produced by generative AI systems remains the subject of ongoing discussion in many jurisdictions, including questions relating to copyright... The Project does not seek to resolve these unsettled legal questions through this General Resolution, nor does it adopt a position on whether AI-generated output is, in whole or in part, copyrightable or derived from copyrighted works. Instead, Debian continues to rely on the judgment and responsibility of its individual contributors. Project members are expected to exercise appropriate care when using generative AI tools, to consider the provenance and licensing implications of material they contribute, and to avoid introducing content whose legal status they cannot reasonably justify. Existing Debian policies governing licensing, copyright, software freedom, and the acceptance of contributions continue to apply irrespective of the tools used to produce those contributions. It also cautions contributors to keep keys, credentials, and embargoed security reports from leaking to third-party AI services. But discussion continues on Debian's mailing list. "I regret the loss of contributors," wrote the author of the winning proposition (while acknowledging it would have happened with either option winning). "It is just too early to take a final decision on the matter. Let's revisit this in two years or so, and let this mess of a GR be a warning for our future selves." Other comments from the mailing list: "On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web... [W]e have a lot of work ahead of us to act as a community and understand how we can continue to accommodate the very large minority that would have preferred to ban or discourage AI. "I also think that our next discussion should distinguish between locally running LLMs and cloud LLMs. The way things are going, locally running LLMs will be an alternative, and then you can much better control what was the training data and the Freeness of the thing." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Robbat2 for sharing the news.

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As a former senior intelligence officer, I have learned to pay attention to the oddities, the small, unexplained details that make the hairs rise on the back of your neck.

The media consultant from Earl's Court in London, was astonished to receive no fewer than 32 separate £90 fines from seven different local authorities.

The Lib Dem leader appeared to open the door last week to a pact with Kemi Badenoch's party to keep out Reform in the event of a hung Parliament.

A new computer game gives players an opportunity to face various prime ministerial dilemmas and to be scored accordingly.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the historic return of the Bayeux Tapestry to these shores descended into diplomatic farce when French bureaucrats cried 'Non!' at the last minute.

Researchers from Harvard University in the US analysed 3.6 million patient messages from more than 511,000 people.

Cat Deeley and husband Patrick Kielty are learning just that after being forced to knock £250,000 off the asking price of their not-so-forever home.

Children of centenarians also have substantially lower risks of cardiovascular disease and hypertension, researchers discovered.

This week the BBC trumpeted a report claiming that people who took up vaping were more 'successful' at giving up smoking than those who used nicotine patches or gum.

Past PMs tried to ingratiate themselves with Andrew Marr; Andy Burnham seems more concerned with Johnny Marr.

The PM has made his obligatory visit to Ukraine and offered President Zelensky very specific help with missiles which can be used to target Russian territory.

The Mail on Sunday reported in May that the unnamed woman was reluctant to make a formal complaint to British detectives investigating trafficking claims.

After years of speculation, it isn't the actors who are fighting over who will be the next 007, but Apple and Amazon - two of the world's biggest streaming giants.

The one-time Anna, Lady Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe (pictured with a friend who was not involved in the proceedings) sued her ex boyfriend Stephen Constable-Maxwell.

A TikTok safety setting relied upon by millions of parents is failing to stop children being shown graphic videos depicting rape and torture, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

A data centre's water consumption goes up massively during the hot summer weather - at precisely the time water is most likely to be in short supply

Axios reports: Some of the world's largest music publishers filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Anthropic late Friday night, alleging "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history." The suit is the opening salvo in what is now likely to be a yearslong fight over music, AI, and how intellectual property is protected in a new era of technology... The Sony/Warner lawsuit is notable because it's broad. It alleges Anthropic unlawfully trained its models off "tens of thousands" of music publishers' copyrighted compositions, whereas other lawsuits have focused on a narrower set of works. BMG's lawsuit against Anthropic, for example, claims infringement against 493 compositions. What they're saying: "Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the plaintiffs write in the 48-page complaint. They also claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted musical works... More details from The Verge: The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance when identifiable copyright data was stripped. In total, the damages could amount to several billion dollars if a court finds in Sony and Warner's favor and awards the maximum amount... The suit alleges that Mann used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books, and that employees downloaded at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror. It also claims that Anthropic scraped lyrics from sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind, which paid to license content from the labels.

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Kemi Badenoch has said she wants mandarins to be fully across Tory plans for radical reforms should Andy Burnham's gamble backfire.