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Researchers at the University of Hull recently unveiled a novel method for detecting AI-generated deepfake images by analyzing reflections in human eyes.

Adejumoke Owolabi, an MSc student at the University of Hull, headed the research under the guidance of Dr. Kevin Pimbblet, professor of astrophysics.

In some ways, the astronomy angle isn’t always necessary for this kind of deepfake detection because a quick glance at a pair of eyes in a photo can reveal reflection inconsistencies, which is something artists who paint portraits have to keep in mind.

They used the Gini coefficient, typically employed to measure light distribution in galaxy images, to assess the uniformity of reflections across eye pixels.

The approach also risks producing false positives, as even authentic photos can sometimes exhibit inconsistent eye reflections due to varied lighting conditions or post-processing techniques.

But analyzing eye reflections may still be a useful tool in a larger deepfake detection toolset that also considers other factors such as hair texture, anatomy, skin details, and background consistency.

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In the biggest news of all, Rivian and Volkswagen announced a $5 billion joint venture that will co-develop core parts of the hardware and software platform to be used in cars from both automakers.

We love that because it aligns so beautifully with our mission: the ability to help accelerate putting highly compelling electric vehicles into the market, which will ultimately drive more demand.

A core objective of how we’ve structured the joint venture is that we don’t lose the velocity and the speed and the decisiveness and lack of bureaucracy that exists within our software function today.

Beyond just simplification of how we manage running over-the-air updates across so many different instances, it also gets us a lot of supply chain leverage in a way that we, Rivian, haven’t had in the past.

In fact, you can imagine the day of the announcement, I had a handful of phone calls from CEOs of big semiconductor suppliers, and they’re like, “Hey, we can work harder on pricing.” So, that was awesome.

So, taking away all those mechanical design studio packaging constraints that we had before, and then solving the biggest challenge, which was network architecture by this being that as a project, it’s just a very different type of relationship.

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After a week saturated with the endlessly repeated and parsed video of former President Donald Trump being shot at a Pennsylvania campaign rally, and the carefully choreographed four-day television show of the Republican National Convention that followed it, here was a dramatic news story that lacked the visual element in almost every way.

Because it was a summer Sunday afternoon, TV news’ first string wasn’t immediately available, giving opportunities to ABC’s Rachel Scott, CBS’ Kristine Johnson and NBC’s Hallie Jackson to anchor the initial reports.

Biden’s former White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was in a studio after finishing her Sunday show, which put her in place to break the news about her former boss.

The networks quickly pivoted to talking about a Harris-Trump general election matchup, even before Harris announced — again, via a printed statement — about two hours after Biden’s endorsement that she would be a candidate.

That was a complete surprise, compared to the seemingly endless discussion that absorbed the political world during the past three weeks about whether the 81-year-old Biden could effectively continue as a candidate following his disastrous performance in a June 27 debate against Trump.

But Biden had repeatedly and emphatically insisted he was staying in the race, and the Sunday morning political talk shows featured surrogates pushing that line.

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He could depend on the 16 solar panels mounted in his backyard and a battery system to provide for the basic needs of his house in the suburban community of Hilshire Village.

He was one of the people I reached out to this week to get a sense of whether Beryl, along with longer-term concerns about the reliability of the grid, have made Texans more receptive to rooftop solar.

Such customer-owned resources are an essential part of the shift away from fossil fuels, helping to reduce demand on a grid that relies on natural gas power plants to produce electricity.

How much room is difficult to say, but a good way to frame it is that the state’s generation from small-scale solar last year was equivalent to about 1% of the total from large power plants.

Some of the main drivers of rooftop solar in Texas have been a desire to reduce exposure to rising utility costs and concerns about reliability of the grid, said Ryan Barnett, senior vice president of policy and market development for Palmetto, a North Carolina-based climate tech company whose products include solar and battery storage.

Disclosure: CenterPoint Energy has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors.

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They voted almost unanimously to authorise strike action on Friday, just days before union contract negotiations for workers are set to resume.

The contract for cast members at Disneyland expired 16 June, and the current negotiations involves a coalition of unions that represent nearly 10,000 employees at the park, which includes everyone from those who work as characters and operate rides to sales, restaurant, and janitorial workers.

A survey of employees showed 73% say they don’t make enough to cover basic expenses each month and about a third said they experienced housing insecurity within the last year.

Disney unsuccessfully fought the wage hike, but workers say it’s still not enough to survive in Southern California.A living wage calculator built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, says a single person with no children would need to be paid $30.48 an hour to afford to live near Disneyland in Orange County, which is about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.Workers who talked to the BBC said they have kept their jobs at the park because they love the Disney brand, and they rely on the generous healthcare benefits and union-operated food bank, which some workers described as a saving-grace.

Disney says it is committed to negotiations with its “cast members” - the company’s term for employees who play princesses and pirates as well as the chefs or janitors who maintain the park.

Ms Carranza described the back-breaking work she does nightly at the park - cleaning, polishing, repairing floors and sometimes installing carpets.She said last summer living in her car was the lowest point in her life, and she credits her dogs with keeping her alive.“I know that they’re the reason why I’m still here, why I didn’t let go," she said.

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Police in Bangladesh have been granted “shoot-on-sight” orders and a nationwide curfew has been imposed as student-led protests continue to roil the country, leaving more than 100 people dead.

The curfew, imposed at midnight on Friday, was expected to last until Sunday morning as police tried to bring the swiftly deteriorating security situation under control, with military personnel patrolling the streets of the capital.

In extreme cases, police officers have been granted powers to open fire on those violating the curfew, confirmed Obaidul Quader, the general secretary of the ruling Awami League party.

They began earlier this month on university campuses as students protested against the reintroduction of civil service job quotas that they say are discriminatory and benefit the Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister.

Pro-government student groups attacked protesters earlier this week and police were accused of instigating violence by firing teargas, rubber bullets and stun grenades at the demonstrators.

Representatives from both sides met late on Friday in an attempt to reach a resolution, with several student leaders demanding a complete reform of the quota system and for universities to be reopened.

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She pushed her one-month-old daughter in a stroller as her sister-in-law and two-year-old niece followed with a shopping cart choosing the necessities: milk, eggs, bread, cornmeal, fresh pasta and organic fruits and vegetables such as strawberries, red onions and sweet potatoes – all for free, with no line.

The market, which sits within a few blocks of seven transportation lines in the historically Black Bayview neighborhood, is the brainchild of local lawmakers and community advocates.

Inspired by similar markets in Nashville and Santa Barbara, city and community leaders set out to transform a former Italian grocery that served ravioli and tagliarini before closing in the 1980s.

Clients are polled on their way out, too, so Shugerman can continue to be culturally responsive – say, making sure they always have coconut milk or Maseca, a popular instant corn masa flour, or the right kinds of noodles, from cellophane and egg to spaghetti.

The market will be open twice a week as it ramps up to serve 1,500 people, who must live in a nearby zip code, receive public assistance and have a child in the home.

Shoppers receive a membership card similar to Costco’s, and signs in English, Spanish, Samoan and simplified Chinese direct the diverse clientele.

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There’s a big piece of paper in the San Francisco offices of Daylight Computer, with a list written in purple ink of all the kinds of devices the company hopes to one day make.

And as CEO Anjan Katta shows me around the office, the rest of the team is preparing for a launch party for its first device, a tablet called the DC-1, it’s clear he’s worried about how the world will respond to his big idea about the future.

Instead of modeling themselves off of purveyors of high tech like Apple or Samsung, Katta and Daylight seem to idolize companies like Patagonia, which both made good things and stands for something.

I like the speckled back and the clicky buttons, but I can’t stop noticing the very slightly misaligned ports or the fact that I can slide my fingernail between the display and the case and literally pry the thing apart.

Live Paper is actually designed to solve some of the weaknesses of E Ink — particularly its slow refresh rate and the ghosting that leaves faint impressions of stuff on the screen for too long.

He hasn’t solved all of them — the DC-1 doesn’t do color, which Katta tells me is technically possible but causes a bunch of other compromises — but the Daylight team has managed to make a 10.5-inch reflective LCD that is almost as easy on the eyes as E Ink and almost as responsive as a typical tablet screen.

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Over the decades, the appliance has fundamentally changed the way Americans shop, cook and eat, and they’re undeniably handy for prolonging the life of so many foods (yes, including tomatoes!

Paul Hollywood, the cookbook author, TV personality and “Great British Baking Show” judge, recently posted a video on TikTok in which he proclaimed that the correct method of storage for bread is not inside an icebox.

We’ve been telling readers this for years: A 1996 test by The Washington Post of various bread-storing methods concluded that “about the worst thing you can do is refrigerate the bread.”

Science notwithstanding, it seems that Team Fridge is strong, and plenty of commenters took issue with the instructions from the guy who should know — after all, you don’t get called “the King of Bread” for nothing.

“You don’t want to put bread in the fridge, ever,” Andrew Janjigian, author of the bread-focused Wordloaf newsletter, told my colleague Aaron Hutcherson last year.

For a crusty loaf, Janjigian prefers to store it cut-side down on the cutting board — a technique that my colleague Becky Krystal also employs at home.

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As a summer wave of COVID-19 infections swells once again, a study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine offers some positive news about the pandemic disease: Rates of long COVID have declined since the beginning of the health crisis, with rates falling from a high of 10.4 percent before vaccines were available to a low of 3.5 percent for those vaccinated during the omicron era, according to the new analysis.

Further, looking at data on the disease categories related to long COVID cases, the researchers also did an analysis finding a shift in symptoms over the eras.

The researchers looked at over 10 disease categories: cardiovascular, coagulation and hematologic, fatigue, gastrointestinal, kidney, mental health, metabolic, musculoskeletal, neurologic, and pulmonary.

Overall, the study points to a welcomed decline in the rates of long COVID among the infected, particularly for those who are vaccinated.

But, it also makes clear that long COVID isn’t a thing of the past: “a substantial residual risk of PASC remains among vaccinated persons who had SARS-CoV-2 infection during the omicron era,” Al-Aly and his colleagues conclude.

The study also didn’t allow researchers to assess whether repeat infections increase the burden of long COVID.

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A widespread technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

“Due to the worldwide Microsoft outage, all Maryland courts, offices, and facilities will be closed to the public today but will remain open for emergency matters,” the judiciary said in a news release.

“While things are still very uncertain, we do not anticipate a major macroeconomic or financial market impact at this stage,” Jennifer McKeown, chief global economist at Capital Economics, said in a written comment.

At the Narita International Airport near Tokyo, passengers of low-cost carrier Jetstar Japan formed long lines waiting at the airline’s departure counter, where boarding had to be processed manually due to a system failure.

At Hong Kong’s airport, hundreds of travellers were queuing for manual check-in around the counters of budget airline HK Express, which said that its global e-commerce system was affected by Microsoft’s service outage.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company was working to fix problems created for Windows users of its tools by a recent update in a post on the social media platform X.

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YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was convicted Friday of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison on charges that his employer and the U.S. government have rejected as fabricated.

“This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal Publisher Almar Latour and Editor in Chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel on Thursday declined to discuss negotiations about a possible exchange, but said: “We have been clear from the get-go that Evan did nothing wrong and should not have been detained.

Speaking to reporters after the verdict, prosecutor Mikael Ozdoyev reaffirmed that Gershkovich was accused of gathering secret information about production and repair of military equipment at Uralvagonzavod, a huge industrial plant about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Yekaterinburg that manufactures tanks.

Russia’s interpretation of what constitutes high crimes like espionage and treason is broad, with authorities often going after people who share publicly available information with foreigners and accusing them of divulging state secrets.

The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, Gershkovich was fluent in Russian and moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

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The Los Angeles City Council is considering whether to give public funds to private, armed security patrols to protect its religious communities, following a protest against the marketing of West Bank settlement properties at an LA synagogue last month that turned violent.

The group is alarmed that city leaders are choosing to fund individuals who served a military that commits ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Magen Am’s director for its veterans program, Leibel Mangel, who served in the IDF’s counterterrorism unit during the 2014 Gaza War, flew to Israel in the days following October 7 to join the conflict, according to a post on Instagram.

He shared in a podcast interview that he was stationed with other reservists along Israel’s southern border with Gaza, and later, in the West Bank, “protecting communities there, trying to put a dent in Hamas infrastructure.” One post showed him carrying an assault rifle and looking out into a desert with the caption, “Their spilled blood will be avenged.”

Mangel and Pike did not respond to requests for comment.“An organization that thinks it’s appropriate to have that be one of their instructors who is going to then teach other people how to patrol our streets is really scary,” said Camnitzer, who is gay and whose father escaped Nazi Germany with his family in 1939.

They were there to oppose a real estate event taking place inside the house of worship, in which companies marketed the sale of properties in both Israel and in West Bank settlements considered illegal under international law.The demonstrators were met with opposition from pro-Israel counterprotesters, whose agitation led to several fights, multiple injuries, and a couple of arrests, authorities said at the time.

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