On Wednesday, Andon published a new installment in how things are going in its Vending-Bench research, where the lab has frontier models run a simulated vending machine business for a simulated year. read more
Anthropic has admitted that its Claude models escaped sandboxes to access the open internet and attack three organizations -- but has also advanced decent excuses for the incidents. The AI upstart discovered the attacks after checking if security tests of its models had ever produced results similar to the attack on Hugging Face made possible by OpenAI models escaping onto the internet.
The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.5% in the second quarter.
After gutting long-time running initiatives to counter China's influence globally, the Trump administration is preparing to ramp up funding by hundreds of millions of dollars to restart some of those programs. read more
"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." read more
Another view ...
Pirro moves to drop case against Olympian, says Reflecting Pool damage caused by flawed installation'
www.cnbc.com
... After the pool appeared to show issues following its renovation, Trump repeatedly claimed, without providing evidence, that vandals had cut a gash hundreds of feet long along the bottom.
But Pirro said in Friday's court filing said a "botched installation" was to blame.
Prosecutors had presented a grand jury in D.C. with "evidence that damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by vandals" after receiving initial reports to that effect from the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Park Police, Pirro wrote.
But after that grand jury returned its indictment against Hearn, the Interior Department provided "additional documents" showing that the damage occurring in June was the "result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings," Pirro said.
She also blamed "the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."
Asked for additional comment, the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. told CNBC, "The motion speaks for itself." ...
Update ...
DOJ moves to dismiss Reflecting Pool vandalism charges against David Hearn, says damage due to "botched installation"
www.cbsnews.com
... Federal prosecutors on Friday asked a judge to dismiss an indictment charging former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn with ripping up the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, citing new information that the damage was caused by a "botched installation" by a contractor, not vandalism....
Apropos?
Too Much Joy - The Kids Don't Understand (1996)
www.youtube.com
Or maybe, ~the kids~ do understand?
fwiw, this aspect of this thread is what I like the most ...
From the summary ...
... Alex Jones, the former owner of InfoWars ...
So who now owns the InfoWars site, and how might the ad revenue be spent?
Who Owns InfoWars? 2026 Update -- The Onion Finally Takes Over
www.ownswho.com
... Quick Answer
After roughly 18 months of bankruptcy litigation, satirical publisher The Onion (via parent company Global Tetrahedron) finally acquired InfoWars in April 2026.
The acquisition closed via a court-supervised arrangement following the August 2025 appointment of a receiver to sell InfoWars assets and pay down the $1.4 billion in Sandy Hook defamation judgments.
Alex Jones -- who had held the platform through Free Speech Systems LLC since 1999 -- is no longer the owner. ...
Lots more detail in that article, if you're interested ...
@#7
From ...
Defenders of the Union: 1905
www.shorpy.com
... Circa 1905. "Memorial Arch, Brooklyn, N.Y." The Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Park. ...
fwiw, I posted this article a few weeks ago ...
Why is the paint peeling off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? An investigation
www.scientificamerican.com