Hard Pass

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In a city that often seems to be staggering from one crisis to the next, the sudden resignation of police Chief Brian O’Hara after a finding he likely interfered in a misconduct investigation has left Minneapolis searching again for a way forward.

That means MORE DEAD CHILDREN for your hard earned tax dollars! (not Israel's)

Yes Israel ostensibly paid for these aircraft, but don't be foolish enough to see this as anything but one vector in a series that forms a circular chain of violence that is never actually paid for by those who demand it.

Archive: [ https://archive.ph/vim5w ]

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/52742292

Temu was hit with a 200 million euro ($232 million) fine Thursday after a European Union investigation found the Chinese online retailer failed to protect consumers from illegal products like toxic or hazardous toys and unsafe electronics.

The 27-nation EU’s fine follows preliminary findings last year that Temu was exposing consumers to a high risk of products sold on its platform like baby toys and small electronics that didn’t comply with EU consumer safety rules.

The bloc’s executive arm issued the penalty under the Digital Services Act, or DSA, a wide-ranging rulebook that requires online platforms to do more to keep internet users safe from harmful content or dodgy goods, under the threat of hefty fines.

It’s the second time Brussels has issued a fine under three-year-old DSA, following a $120 million penalty last year for Elon Musk’s social media site X.

...

The European Commission said Temu failed to identify, analyze and assess the systemic risks of illegal goods for sale on the platform and the resulting harm to European consumers.

Investigators had carried out a “mystery shopping exercise” that turned up a number of “non-compliant” products, including many electronic device chargers that failed basic safety tests. They also found a very high percentage of baby toys that posed safety risks, either because they contained chemicals at levels that exceeded safety limits or because they had parts that came off and could be a suffocation risk.

...

Risk assessments are “not box‐ticking exercises,” European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkunnen said.

“Temu’s risk assessment underestimates concrete risks, lacks specificity, is not grounded in solid evidence, and is not comprehensive,” she said in a prepared statement. “It leaves regulators, users, and the public in the dark about the true scale of potential harm posed by illegal products sold on Temu. Now it is time for Temu to comply with the law.”

Temu has until the end of August to submit an “action plan” to remedy the problem. It could be hit with additional daily, weekly or monthly fines if it fails to comply.

...

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Recent post re: AI as utility

https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/people-will-buy-intelligence-from-us-on-a-meter-chatgpts-ceo-sam-altman-has-critics-worried-with-his-ai-vision

Myself, I'm a fan of local LLM / self hosted ML.... but if you ever needed a clarion call that a hard pivot is coming (soon) for online/ cloud based AI...Altman et al are making some concerning mouth noises (to say nothing of broader concerns with OAI, Anthropic etc).

Right now, I'm sketching out a plan where my Raspberry Pi (always on, 2-3w) uses a magic packet to wake up my modest AI server (Lenovo P330 with Tesla P4) if/when needed (Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B); no point in chugging down 80-100w, 24/7 for no good reason.

If the trend continues the direction it appears to be (increasing costs, environmental impacts etc) then I'd feel a lot better hosting my own as port of first call and replacing simpler tasks with more traditional programs. YMMV.

I love potatoes Potatoes are delicious Potatoes love you We love potatoes Potatoes love us

OpenAI still leads in agentic terminal coding, but by less.

Claude can plan the work and then run hundreds of parallel subagents in a single session (and with Opus 4.8, the agents can run for even longer)

That’s one way to turn profitable before the IPO, I guess. Goodbye tokens.