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'Eat the future, pay with your face': my dystopian trip to an AI burger joint

theguardian.com

On 1 April, the same day California’s new $20 hourly minimum wage for fast-food workers went...
On 1 April, the same day California’s new $20 hourly minimum wage for fast-food workers went into effect, a new restaurant opened in north-east Los Angeles that was conspicuously light on human staff.CaliExpress by Flippy claims to be the world’s first fully autonomous restaurant, using a system of AI-powered robots...
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We found unhealthy pesticide levels in 20% of US produce

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When it comes to healthy eating, fruits and vegetables reign supreme. But along with all their...
When it comes to healthy eating, fruits and vegetables reign supreme. But along with all their vitamins, minerals and other nutrients can come something else: an unhealthy dose of dangerous pesticides.Though using chemicals to control bugs, fungi and weeds helps farmers grow the food we need, it’s been clear since a...
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Nestlé adds sugar to infant milk sold in poorer countries, report finds

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Chemist fired by ADA for not endorsing Splenda-filled salads to diabetics

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Elizabeth Hanna had a simple job: help people with diabetes figure out what to eat. Anyone...
Elizabeth Hanna had a simple job: help people with diabetes figure out what to eat. Anyone with common sense knows this should probably not entail foods that might increase people’s risk of getting diabetes. But that’s not necessarily the thinking at the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the world’s leading diabe...
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How cheap, outsourced labour in Africa is shaping AI English

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We’re witnessing the birth of AI-ese, and it’s not what anyone could have guessed. Let’s delve...
We’re witnessing the birth of AI-ese, and it’s not what anyone could have guessed. Let’s delve deeper.If you’ve spent enough time using AI assistants, you’ll have noticed a certain quality to the responses generated. Without a concerted effort to break the systems out of their default register, the text they spit ou...
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California cracks down on water pumping: 'The ground is collapsing'

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Even after two back-to-back wet years, California’s water wars are far from over. On Tuesday, state...
Even after two back-to-back wet years, California’s water wars are far from over. On Tuesday, state water officials took an unprecedented step to intervene in the destructive pumping of depleted groundwater in the state’s sprawling agricultural heartland.The decision puts a farming region known as the Tulare Lake gr...
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Post Office urged by external lawyers to 'suppress' key document, inquiry hears

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The Post Office was urged by its external law firm to “try and suppress” disclosure of...
The Post Office was urged by its external law firm to “try and suppress” disclosure of a key document for “as long as possible” as branch owner-operators tried to mount legal action against the state-owned postal company, a public inquiry has heard.Rodric Williams, a senior in-house lawyer at the Post Office, giving...
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Mentally stimulating work plays key role in staving off dementia, study finds

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If work is a constant flurry of mind-straining challenges, bursts of creativity and delicate negotiations to...
If work is a constant flurry of mind-straining challenges, bursts of creativity and delicate negotiations to keep the troops happy, consider yourself lucky.Researchers have found that the more people use their brains at work, the better they seem to be protected against thinking and memory problems that come with ol...
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US provides assurances to prevent Julian Assange appeal against extradition

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The US has provided assurances to the high court in London in an attempt to prevent...
The US has provided assurances to the high court in London in an attempt to prevent a last-ditch appeal by Julian Assange against extradition, but the WikiLeaks founder’s wife has dismissed them as “weasel words”.Last month, two judges deferred a decision on whether Assange, who is trying to avoid being prosecuted i...
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World faces 'deathly silence' of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts

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Sounds of the natural world are rapidly falling silent and will become “acoustic fossils” without urgent...
Sounds of the natural world are rapidly falling silent and will become “acoustic fossils” without urgent action to halt environmental destruction, international experts have warned.As technology develops, sound has become an increasingly important way of measuring the health and biodiversity of ecosystems: our fores...
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Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050

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Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result...
Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather a...
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Desert city of Dubai floods as UAE hit by heaviest rainfall in 75 years

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'Water is more valuable than oil': the corporation cashing in on America drought

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One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the...
One of the biggest battles over Colorado River water is being staged in one of the west’s smallest rural enclaves.Tucked into the bends of the lower Colorado River, Cibola, Arizona, is a community of about 200 people. Maybe 300, if you count the weekenders who come to boat and hunt. Dusty shrublands run into sleepy ...
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The US reauthorizing and expanding its surveillance laws

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The US House of Representatives agreed to reauthorize a controversial spying law known as Section 702...
The US House of Representatives agreed to reauthorize a controversial spying law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last Friday without any meaningful reforms, dashing hopes that Congress might finally put a stop to intelligence agencies’ warrantless surveillance of Americans’ emails, ...
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Dead satellites could affect Earth's magnetic field

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A dead spacecraft the size of a truck ignites with plasma and pulverizes into dust and...
A dead spacecraft the size of a truck ignites with plasma and pulverizes into dust and litter as it rips through the ionosphere and atmosphere. This is what happens to internet service satellites during re-entry. When the full mega-constellation of satellites is deployed in the 2030s, companies will do this every ho...
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Creating sexually explicit deepfake images to be made offence in UK

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Creating a sexually explicit “deepfake” image is to be made an offence under a new law,...
Creating a sexually explicit “deepfake” image is to be made an offence under a new law, the Ministry of Justice has announced.Under the legislation, anyone who creates such an image without consent will face a criminal record and an unlimited fine. They could also face jail if the image is shared more widely.The cre...
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Astronomers discover Milky Way's biggest stellar black hole–33 times size of sun

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Astronomers have discovered an enormous black hole which formed in the aftermath of an exploding star...
Astronomers have discovered an enormous black hole which formed in the aftermath of an exploding star a mere 2,000 light years from Earth.BH3 is the most massive stellar black hole yet found in the Milky Way and revealed itself to researchers through the powerful tug it exerts on a companion star that orbits the obj...
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Astonishing array of wildlife discovered in Cambodia mangroves

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Dun, Dun Duuun Where did pop culture's most dramatic sound come from? (2022)

theguardian.com

There’s surely only one thing that unites Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the 1974...
There’s surely only one thing that unites Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the 1974 comedy horror Young Frankenstein and The Muppets’ most recent special on Disney+. Regrettably, it is not Kermit the Frog. The thing that appears in all of these works has no easily recognisable familiar name, althou...
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Colorado funeral home where 190 bodies were found charged with Covid fraud

theguardian.com

The couple who owned a Colorado funeral home – where 190 decaying bodies were discovered last...
The couple who owned a Colorado funeral home – where 190 decaying bodies were discovered last year – have been indicted on federal charges for fraudulently obtaining nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds from the US government, according to court documents unsealed on Monday.The new federal charges against Jon an...

coloradous newsus crime
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'We're the last bastion of rental': video stores resisting rise of streaming

theguardian.com

A man shuffles along a royal blue carpet and props himself up against a stacked shelf...
A man shuffles along a royal blue carpet and props himself up against a stacked shelf of videos. Reeling off a list of films, he is handed three store-branded DVD cases. In return? A crisp fiver – plus his thoughts on South Korean horror flicks without any dialogue. This isn’t a sepia-tinged flashback from the past....
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Top cosmologists convene to question conventional view of the universe

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If you zoomed out on the universe, well beyond the level of planets, stars or galaxies,...
If you zoomed out on the universe, well beyond the level of planets, stars or galaxies, you would eventually see a vast, evenly speckled expanse with no notable features. At least, that has been the conventional view.The principle that everything looks the same everywhere is a fundamental pillar of the standard mode...
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From boom to burst, the AI bubble is only heading in one direction

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“Are we really in an AI bubble,” asked a reader of last month’s column about the...
“Are we really in an AI bubble,” asked a reader of last month’s column about the apparently unstoppable rise of Nvidia, “and how would we know?” Good question, so I asked an AI about it and was pointed to Investopedia, which is written by humans who know about this stuff. It told me that a bubble goes through five s...
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US House votes to re-authorize law, allows warrantless surveillance of citizens

theguardian.com

House lawmakers voted on Friday to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or...
House lawmakers voted on Friday to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, including a key measure that allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans. The controversial law allows for far-reaching monitoring of foreign communications, but has also led to the collection of US...
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