R.NF

Archiv: https://archive.ph/K7f6R

Three weeks ago, Wauquiez caused a stir by proposing that individuals under a deportation order deemed dangerous should be sent to the French archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, off the coast of Canada. He also recently said that France had become “the most violent country in Europe.”

Retailleau, for his part, has toughened France’s immigration policies since taking the interior minister job in September. He stated that a “multicultural society" carries the risk of also becoming "a multiracist society."

Duolingo will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle,” according to an all-hands email sent by cofounder and CEO Luis von Ahn announcing that the company will be “AI-first.” The email was posted on Duolingo’s LinkedIn account.

According to von Ahn, being “AI-first” means the company will “need to rethink much of how we work” and that “making minor tweaks to systems designed for humans won’t get us there.” As part of the shift, the company will roll out “a few constructive constraints,” including the changes to how it works with contractors, looking for AI use in hiring and in performance reviews, and that “headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.”

von Ahn says that “Duolingo will remain a company that cares deeply about its employees” and that “this isn’t about replacing Duos with AI.” Instead, he says that the changes are “about removing bottlenecks” so that employees can “focus on creative work and real problems, not repetitive tasks.”

Ukraine and the United States on April 30 signed a long-awaited minerals agreement that establishes a joint investment fund for reconstruction in Ukraine.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250430221348/https://kyivindependent.com/breaking-ukraine-us-sign-minerals-deal/

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Astrazeneca's boss has warned Europe is falling behind as it steps up investment in the United States.

Pascal Soriot said innovation in pharmaceuticals ‘has mostly been funded by the US’ as he doubled down on plans to grow the business in America – which already accounts for 40 per cent of revenues.

Eisa Hussein took part in a clinical trial testing the new gene therapy.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/patients-children-medics-berkshire-reading-b2742663.html

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Pushed to the brink by heat and injustice, South Asia’s workers demand reparations from fossil fuel corporations.

archived (Wayback Machine)

So this is a pretty big deal to me (it looks recent, just put up last October). One of my big frustrations with Matrix was that they didn't offer helm charts for a kubernetes deployment, which makes it difficult for entities like nonprofits and community clubs to use it for their own purposes. Those entities need more hardware than an individual self hoster, and may want features like high availability, and kubernetes makes horizontal scaling and high availability easy.

Now, according to the site, many of these features seem to be "enterprise only" — but it's very strangely worded. I can't find anything that explicitly states these features aren't in the fully FOSS self hosted version of matrix-stack, and instead they seem to be only advertised as features of the enterprise version

My understanding of Kubernetes architecture is that it's difficult for people to not do high availability, which is why this makes me wonder.

Looking through the docs for the "enterprise version, it doesn't look like anything really stops me from doing this with the community addition.

They do claim to have rewritten synapse in rust though

Being built in Rust allows server workers to use multiple CPU cores for superior performance. It is fully Kubernetes-compatible, enabling scaling and resource allocation. By implementing shared data caches, Synapse Pro also significantly reduces RAM footprint and server costs. Compared to the community version of Synapse, it's at least 5x smaller for huge deployments.

And this part does not seem to be open source (unless it's rebranded conduit, but conduit doesn't seem to support the newer Matrix Authentication Service.)

So, it looks Matrix/Element has recently become simultaneously much more open source, but also more opaque.

🔗

Caption:

“Dang! ... Who ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs?”

No alt text

Disqus comments

Archived Page

Honestly, Phi-4 is just 8GB, which even my laptop 2070 can do and it's not that much worse that ChatGPT for most stuff.

Runs pretty well as an AppImage on my linux boxes. On my workstation I run it with a 3090 and the new Gemma LLM has like 20GB and that's a really good model in my experience so far.

It's also by microsoft (disclaimer: absolutely fuck microsoft), which owns chatgpt, so makes sense that it's somewhat capable.

Tokyo (AFP) – The Bank of Japan on Thursday left its key interest rate unchanged but revised down its growth forecasts, warning that US trade tariffs are fuelling economic uncertainty.

"The introduction of wide-ranging tariffs is expected to impact global trade activity," the central bank said.

"Heightened uncertainties regarding policies including tariffs are likely to have a large impact on business and household sentiment around the world and on the global financial and capital markets."

Since coming to office in January, US President Donald Trump has embarked on a hardball campaign to rectify what he says are unfair trade imbalances.

His administration has imposed hefty levies on multiple trading partners and imports including steel and automobiles.

The BoJ said Thursday it now expects Japan's gross domestic product (GDP) to rise 0.5 percent in fiscal 2025 -- down from its previous estimate of 1.1 percent.

In fiscal 2026, it expects GDP in the world's fourth largest economy to expand 0.7 percent, down from 1.0 percent previously forecast.

"Japan's economic growth is likely to moderate, as trade and other policies in each jurisdiction lead to a slowdown in overseas economies and to a decline in domestic corporate profits and other factors," the bank added.

However for growth "factors such as accommodative financial conditions are expected to provide support" and "thereafter, Japan's economic growth rate is likely to rise", it said.

The BoJ's decision to stand pat on interest rates -- holding them at around 0.5 percent -- following a two-day policy meeting had been widely expected.

Bank officials began lifting borrowing costs last year after nearly two decades of ultra-loose monetary policies aimed at kickstarting torpid economic growth in Japan.

Masamichi Adachi and Go Kurihara of UBS said ahead of the BoJ policy meeting that "market fragility and uncertainty in the global economy due to the US tariff/trade policies" would lead the BOJ to hold rates.

Japanese tariff talks envoy Ryosei Akazawa will hold a second round of negotiations later Thursday in Washington, seeking to secure relief from the trade levies.

"We still believe there will be an interest hike later this year," Katsutoshi Inadome, Senior Strategist at SuMi TRUST, said before the BoJ's decision.

"Fruitful negotiations between Washington and Tokyo to mitigate the impact of tariffs on exporters may help Japanese policy makers in hiking interest rates," he said.

I made a weird accountability tool that basically harasses you until you quit.

It sends texts or calls every day asking why you’re still clocking in.

I built it for myself originally but turned it into something other people can use.

Not linking it here — mods are strict — but DM me if you’re curious.

Just wanted to share this with others stuck in the same loop.

It’s been a decade since the Axial Seamount last erupted off the West Coast

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/underwater-volcano-eruption-oregon-b2742582.html

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

🔗

No caption

Alt text:

FAKE OUT

Disqus comments

Archived Page