Two people having a drink at bar are crushed by man after he plunged from Majorcan apartment block
The pair he hit as he reached the ground were sat at a bar terrace in the capital Palma having a drink.
Manhunt underway after child rapist escapes prison staff while on escorted leave in city centre
Restricted patient, Cliff Lyons Dobbie, fled from officers in Perth city centre on Thursday.
Kalshi and Polymarket Bets On Clinical Trials Criticized As 'Ghastly'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Billions of dollars are traded every week on the lightly regulated prediction market sites, where users bet on everything from movie reviews to elections to conflicts in the Middle East. Clinical trials are just the latest area where the industry's rapid growth is raising ethical questions. Kalshi claims such bets will provide a new source of information about which drugs will get approved, and what clinical trials will show promising results, which the company says can help investors decide what new drugs to fund.
"If you want to ban profiting from the failure of clinical trials, you would start with the stock market, where the financial incentive for this type of profit is orders of magnitude larger," said Kalshi spokesman Jack Such, pointing to stock market short sellers who have profited from clinical trial failures. "While Kalshi and the stock market are the same in this regard, they do differ in one important way: the stock market doesn't give any valuable information to researchers," Such said.
Drug trial researchers, though, are far from convinced. David Tsai, who runs clinical trials at a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area, started an online petition pushing for such betting to be banned, making the case that betting on drug trials "threatens the very foundation of trust and integrity in biotechnology." Tsai is concerned that the prospect of betting provides those involved with a clinical trial a reason to tamper with the results for a prediction market payout. "If we were running a trial for an oncology drug that requires an infusion, a pharmacist who had placed a bet saying that it's gonna work well, or doesn't work well, could obviously adjust the infusion rate, could adjust the source temperature of the drug," he said. "They could change any number of variables that could obviously have a direct impact [on] how the trial and the data and the patient safety would come out."
Another skeptic is Nicholas Zaorsky, a professor of radiation oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who has helped run clinical trials and agrees that prediction markets can interfere with the advancement of life-saving drugs. "Prediction markets can be valuable in some settings because they aggregate information, but clinical trials are fundamentally different: investigators, coordinators, and sometimes even participants can directly influence aspects of the outcomes being wagered on," Zaorsky said. "That creates financial incentives that risk undermining trial integrity." Bettors should not be rooting for an experimental medicine to fail just to earn a buck, says Joshua Pederson, the father of a 12-year-old cancer patient enrolled in a clinical trial. "It's a dark idea," he said. "It's quite ghastly."
Kalshi, for its part, argues that its prediction markets could help patients track promising medical breakthroughs and clinical trials, enlisting experts including 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki to make the case.
"Most patients don't know about the choices available in clinical trials or which programs are most promising. The opportunity to have an open, transparent dataset about trial probabilities is extremely promising and empowering for people," a white paper sponsored by Kalshi stated.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Two brothers who killed 'deeply loved father', 41, and injured his nine-year-old son while racing each other home are jailed
Rhys Jenkins, 41, died after a BMW X3 driven by Abubakr Ben Yusaf crashed head-on into his Toyota Yaris in November 2024.
Serial Tube sex attacker Simon Levy is found guilty of murdering two women and almost killing a third while on police bail
Simon Levy, 40, suffocated Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo, in March 2025, then killed Sheryl Wilkins while on bail.
Declassified UFO files reveal hunt for 'dead spaceman' after mysterious sphere crashed in city
Declassified UFO files have revealed how US officials investigated reports that a 'dead spaceman' had been discovered inside a mysterious metal sphere.
Bradley Dack's new girlfriend Emily Moloney shows off huge bouquet of roses amid their rekindled romance just weeks after his ex Olivia Attwood received a very similar bunch from boyfriend Pete Wicks
Bradley Dack's new girlfriend Emily Moloney has showed off a huge bunch of red roses, presumably from the footballer amid their recently rekindled romance.
'Asimov Was Right' About Rules For Robots, Says Ex-US Cyber Director
Former U.S. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis says the biggest AI risk isn't sentience but autonomy. "What I'm worried about is that they get to choose what and where they do something, and under what rules they do it," he said, citing recent cases of AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta escaping security sandboxes. He argues developers need stronger safeguards, monitoring, and human accountability, invoking Asimov's idea that protecting humans should come before simply obeying them. The Register reports: "Asimov was right," he said, referring to science fiction author Isaac Asimov and his three laws that were to be followed by robots -- more specifically, AIs, in this case. "The first rule, and we call it the superior role, must be that it's designed not to hurt humans," Inglis said. "Second rule: To obey humans, such that it doesn't achieve agency and aspiration on its own. And the third: To do what humans tell it - and in that order. Instead we've designed them in the exact opposite way."
What this means, he explained, is that AI developers created models to "do what humans tell you, obey the humans until it's inconvenient, and then the third one is maybe implied - protect humans - but if that's not built into the DNA, hardwired into it, then we have no right to expect it." Inglis admits it's not possible to hardwire rules into models and still keep their non-deterministic nature. "I would offer that you can tease those out in a highly controlled environment, a true sandbox, where you say, 'Let's put this thing through its paces, and let's back away to see what happens,'" he said. "Maybe you get the equivalent of a mini nuclear explosion in that room, and now you know this thing is capable of that."
Inglis thinks another problem with AI is that it's become a commodity. "It's not like you can control it like you can nuclear material," he said. "You can't even specify its properties the way you can for an airplane or for an automobile, as diverse as they might be. Its manifestations are so numerous, so diverse, that as a general matter, you can't actually win by simply saying, "I will design those properties in,'" he added. "You need to do that to some degree, and then make sure that you understand how to watch it, monitor it, make sure you know what it does."
[...] Ultimately, humans remain accountable for AI models' actions, according to Inglis. "They remain the source of agency and aspiration. It's possible for them to give broad authority to an AI model and have it run around for 30 hours without further consultation, but they need to know what they've asked it to do, and they need to know what they expect it will deliver in terms of performance on the back end. If they don't, then they're going to get what they deserve, which is the very frequent unpleasant surprise."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Water system controllers don't belong on the internet, says ex-NSA chief after suspected Iran attacks
Calling all defenders
Pictured: Mother and father charged after one-year-old boy died from 'severe malnutrition' and second child found 'neglected'
Police were called after Maero Johnson had been rushed to hospital, where despite the best efforts of staff he passed away in the early hours of August 23, 2023.
Sir Cliff Richard, 85, shows his silly side in jazzy attire as he shares pictures from his travels for his 2027 calendar - and there's even a tribute to his late friend Cilla
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Pregnant Scarlett Moffatt proudly shows off her baby bump as she shares highlights from her third trimester
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With Taalas, AMD Can Bake AI Inference Directly Into Its Chippery
Framework Notifies 'All Customers' of a Data Breach Via Compromised Metabase BI Service
"Framework has been sending out email notifications to customers alerting of a limited data breach in which customer information was accessed through a Metabase BI service zero-day exploit," writes Slashdot reader DuoDreamer. Data includes customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses. "Framework is investigating whether or not this included Framework for Business customers as well." TechCrunch reports: Framework's spokesperson Eric Schumacher told TechCrunch that the breach affected "all customers," but declined to specify a specific number. Framework computers are relatively niche products, but some estimates say the company sold hundreds of thousands of devices.
Metabase disclosed its own breach in a blog post on its official website, where it said that it was hacked by someone using an unknown security flaw, a so-called zero-day. The company said the hackers exploited the bug to give them the ability to access customers' databases stored on Metabase's cloud servers.
In its email to customers, Framework also included the email Metabase sent to the company, which says hackers accessed Framework's cloud instance. The computer maker said it investigated the incident and found that hackers had stolen its customers' personal data, but did not include their payment information.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AI titans to tidy agent frontier with plugin prescription
Agent Plugins 1.0 defines a write-once-run-anywhere container for passing tools and skills across different agent platforms
Call the Midwife Christmas special first look: Filming wraps on new prequel series Sisters In Arms as former Corrie star Julie Hesmondhalgh poses with a clapperboard
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Trump releases new UFO footage as files expose silent 500ft triangle over US base and mysterious body with indecipherable markings
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JK Rowling calls Nicola Sturgeon a 'world-class misogynist' and the 'blindest wife ever' as she reignites feud with former SNP leader
The Harry Potter author, who also publishes novels under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, responded after new words were added to Ms Sturgeon's memoir.
Trump ordered to STOP his massive White House ballroom construction by appeals court
A federal court has dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump's White House ballroom construction project, ordering it to be halted after a legal challenge.
Struggling to sell your home? Blame your garden! Location, Location, Location's Phil Spencer says buyers are pickier than ever as he reveals the top outdoor mistakes owners make
Phil Spencer has revealed his top garden 'turn-offs' - which could be decreasing the property value of your home.