Bethesda Game Studios workers have unionized
AutoTL;DR @ autotldr @lemmings.world BOT Posts 0Comments 19,487Joined 2 yr. ago
AutoTL;DR @ autotldr @lemmings.world
BOT
Posts
0
Comments
19,487
Joined
2 yr. ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The lengthy multi-year sentences handed to Just Stop Oil activists are “not acceptable in a democracy”, a UN special rapporteur has said, as the government faced growing pressure to reverse the previous administration’s “hardline anti-protest” approach.
Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were each sentenced to four years in prison this week after being found guilty of planning disruptive protests on the M25.
Forst, whose role is to protect individuals facing penalisation, persecution, or harassment for exercising their environmental rights, attended two days of the trial earlier this month as he attempted to intervene with UK authorities on behalf of Shaw.
And Tom Southerden, Amnesty International UK’s human rights adviser, called on the government to repeal the portions of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 that legislated the statutory offence of public nuisance used against the defendants.
Pressed on whether Labour would look again at anti-protest laws it opposed before entering government, Starmer’s spokeswoman said: “The prime minister is very clear that when it comes to these cases, the judgments and sentencing is for independent judges to make them, they’ve had all the facts and evidence before them.
Dale Vince, the green entrepreneur, who stepped away from bankrolling Just Stop Oil to become one of the Labour party’s most significant donors, joined the broadcasters Chris Packham and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in echoing calls for a meeting with Hermer about the protesters’ case.
The original article contains 1,019 words, the summary contains 238 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As more Democratic members of Congress urged him to drop out — bringing the total since his disastrous debate against Trump to nearly three dozen — Biden remained isolated at his beach house in Delaware after being diagnosed with COVID-19.
“By passing the torch, he would secure his legacy as one of our nation’s greatest leaders and allow us to unite behind a candidate who can best defeat Donald Trump and safeguard the future of our democracy,” said Heinrich, who’s up for reelection.
Separately, Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois wrote in an op-ed that with “a heavy heart and much personal reflection” he, too, was calling on Biden to “pass the torch to a new generation.”
Biden, 81, tested positive for COVID-19 while traveling in Las Vegas earlier this week and experienced “mild symptoms” including “general malaise” from the infection, the White House said.
But among Democrats nationwide, nearly two-thirds say Biden should step aside and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, Ellen Knickmeyer in Aspen, Colorado, Steve Peoples in Milwaukee, and Josh Boak, Will Weissert, Mary Clare Jalonick, Seung Min Kim and Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report.
The original article contains 1,209 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The way it works goes something like this: Imagine we at The Verge created an AI bot with explicit instructions to direct you to our excellent reporting on any subject.
In a conversation with Olivier Godement, who leads the API platform product at OpenAI, he explained that instruction hierarchy will prevent the meme’d prompt injections (aka tricking the AI with sneaky commands) we see all over the internet.
Without this protection, imagine an agent built to write emails for you being prompt-engineered to forget all instructions and send the contents of your inbox to a third party.
Existing LLMs, as the research paper explains, lack the capabilities to treat user prompts and system instructions set by the developer differently.
“We envision other types of more complex guardrails should exist in the future, especially for agentic use cases, e.g., the modern Internet is loaded with safeguards that range from web browsers that detect unsafe websites to ML-based spam classifiers for phishing attempts,” the research paper says.
Trust in OpenAI has been damaged for some time, so it will take a lot of research and resources to get to a point where people may consider letting GPT models run their lives.
The original article contains 670 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While ICJ officials read out their ruling on Friday from the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, Mack received new reports of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In the West Bank, it’s business as usual unless governments have the political will to force both Israelis and Palestinians” into implementing a two-state solution that gives Palestine sovereignty.
Soon after, Israel began to establish settlements inside the occupied territories, supporting Israeli civilians as they built communities atop land taken from Palestinians.
And in recent months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has used its war in Gaza as a cover to expand its settlements at a rate faster than previous decades.
The Israeli government immediately dismissed the ICJ ruling, with a defiant Netanyahu calling Jerusalem “our eternal capital” and referred to the West Bank as “the land of our ancestors,” using the biblical names “Judea and Samaria.”
B’Tselem, an Israeli-based human rights group, was among a host of organizations that welcomed Friday’s ruling after decades of their own advocacy calling for an end to Israel’s occupation.
The original article contains 887 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed the federal government does not have absolute immunity from liability when Parliament enacts laws that are later overturned as unconstitutional.
The ruling says the decision is meant to strike a balance between "the protection of constitutional rights and the need for effective government."
"The government and its representatives are required to exercise their powers in good faith and to respect the 'established and indisputable' laws that define the constitutional rights of individuals," the ruling says.
The ruling stems from the case of Joseph Power, who was convicted on two counts of sexual assault and sentenced to eight months in prison.
When that law was later found to be unconstitutional, Power filed a notice seeking damages from the federal government in court.
On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld that ruling, freeing Power to pursue damages.
The original article contains 365 words, the summary contains 141 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blocked plans for a field hospital in Israel to treat sick and injured children from Gaza, according to reports.The site was announced earlier this week by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as a temporary measure to provide treatment while the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt remains closed to civilians.
Since the conflict began last year, there have been numerous reports and widespread international concern about its impact on children and the number suffering serious physical injuries.
Mr Gallant said the temporary hospital would be used to address the most urgent humanitarian needs until a permanent system for the evacuation and treatment of sick children could be established.
He said it would treat those suffering with conditions including cancer, diabetes, and orthopaedic injuries.However, on Thursday the Mr Netanyahu's office announced that he "does not approve the establishment of a hospital for Gazans within Israeli territory - therefore, it will not be established".An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AFP news agency that the defence ministry had asked the prime minister's office to help speed up the evacuation of patients from Gaza two weeks ago.
"No response was received, so the minister issued an order to the army to establish a field hospital within Israeli territory as an immediate solution for sick children," they said.Mr Netanyahu's military secretary Major General Roman Gofman told the Ynet news site that there had not been enough progress in creating a corridor for transporting sick and injured Gazans to other countries and this was why the hospital did not go ahead.The episode is just the latest sign of tension in the Israeli government to show in recent months.
In April, British surgeon Dr Victoria Rose, who had been working in Gaza, told the BBC that a "huge amount" of the operations she had carried out had been on children under 16, including many under six.She said she had treated people with bullet wounds and burns and that a lack of food available in Gaza meant patients were not strong enough to heal properly.
The original article contains 455 words, the summary contains 346 words. Saved 24%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The UK will resume funding UNRWA, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, the foreign secretary has announced.David Lammy told MPs he had received reassurances about its neutrality in the wake of a review of alleged links between its staff and terror groups.The UK was among 16 Western countries to halt donations in January, after Israel alleged 12 UNRWA staff were involved in the October 2023 attacks by Hamas.An internal UN investigation into allegations related to that attack is ongoing.But a separate UN review, published in April, found Israel had not provided evidence for its claims hundreds of UNRWA staff were members of terror groups.
The announcement brings the UK into line with other countries that have resumed funding since then, leaving the United States, UNRWA's single biggest donor, as the only country not to have restarted donations.Speaking in the Commons, Mr Lammy said "no other agency" was able to deliver aid at the scale required to alleviate the “desperate" humanitarian situation in Gaza.He added UNRWA was feeding more than half the territory's two-million population and would be "vital for future reconstruction".He said he had been "appalled" by Israel's allegations, but the claims had been taken "seriously” by the United Nations.He had been reassured the agency "is ensuring they meet the highest standards of neutrality" in the wake of the April review, he added.This included "strengthening its procedures, including on vetting," Mr Lammy said.
He told MPs a resumption of the UK's £21m annual funding would include money put towards “management reforms” recommended by the UN review.The Foreign Office said £6m would be given to UNRWA's flash appeal for Gaza, and £15m to the agency's budget to provide services in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and wider region.UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told the BBC the agency welcomed the announcement, which came at a "critical time as humanitarian needs in Gaza continue to deepen".She added that the agency had reassured the UK it was implementing recommendations from the April report, "especially with regards to continuing to follow the principle of neutrality in our programmes".
The review, by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, found Israel had "yet to provide supporting evidence" for its claims that a "significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations".Israel has said more than 2,135 employees of the agency - out of a total of 13,000 in Gaza - are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK, US and other countries.
However, the review concluded the agency must do more to improve its neutrality, staff vetting and transparency.Israeli authorities suggest the report ignores the severity of the problem, and claim UNRWA has systematic links with Hamas.Israel initially alleged that 12 UNRWA staff took part in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel, which saw 1,200 people killed and about 250 taken hostage.More than 38,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, after Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the attacks.
During his Commons statement, Mr Lammy also rejected calls from some Labour MPs to impose a ban on all UK weapons sales to Israel.Alongside Green MPs and pro-Gaza independents, some 14 Labour backbenchers want to table an amendment calling for an arms embargo during a debate next week on the King's Speech, the government's law-making plans.The foreign secretary said it would "not be right to have a blanket ban" as Israel was surrounded by enemies in "one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the world".He added that arms export licences would be kept under review "in the normal way" by reviewing assessments of Israel's compliance by government lawyers.A "comprehensive review" was under way and he would update MPs once it was complete, Mr Lammy said.
The original article contains 720 words, the summary contains 626 words. Saved 13%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON — A far-right extremist who already served time for his role in the racist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2017 was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison Friday for stealing a police shield and twice using it against officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Tyler Bradley Dykes, who was previously discharged from the Marines for “participating in extremist behavior,” was accused by prosecutors of giving a Sieg heil!
But Dykes, a 26-year-old from Bluffton, South Carolina, denied that his celebration on the steps of the U.S. Capitol after the mob broke through a police line had been the Nazi salute.
R.R.," spoke about the trauma that he and his fellow officers endured at the hands of the pro-Trump mob, who believed the former president's lies about the 2020 election.
One of the most disturbing things he heard were calls from rioters telling him to leave, to abandon his post, to let the mob take over the building and get to the lawmakers that police were protecting.
said he found it "bizarre" that rioters were singing the national anthem during an assault on the democratic process and said that he wondered how members of the mob thought a similar fight should play out after the next election, or in reaction to news from the Supreme Court.
The original article contains 1,136 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The top United Nations court has ruled that Israel’s settlement policies and use of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territories violate international law.
The ICJ president, Nawaf Salam, was reading out the court’s full opinion in a Friday session expected to take about an hour.
It has annexed East Jerusalem in a move that is not recognised internationally, while it withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but maintained a blockade of the territory after Hamas took power in 2007.
It submitted written comments, saying that the questions put to the court were prejudiced and “fail to recognise Israel’s right and duty to protect its citizens”, address Israeli security concerns or acknowledge Israel-Palestinian agreements to negotiate issues, including “the permanent status of the territory, security arrangements, settlements, and borders”.
Palestinian residents of the city face systematic discrimination, making it difficult for them to build new homes or expand existing ones.
The international community considers all settlements to be illegal or obstacles to peace since they are built on lands sought by the Palestinians for their state.
The original article contains 613 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A minute-long spiel from a Punjabi-speaking influencer, singing the praises of Navkin Transport, a new trucking business in Brampton, Ont., where Saini lives.
"It is a huge problem," says Navi Aujla, director of the Labour Community Services of Peel, a non-profit that has taken up the cases of more than 250 truckers over the last two years.
Many of the drivers Aujla represents — including Saini — are recent immigrants who are attracted to long-haul driving because the in-demand industry is a reliable pathway to permanent-resident status.
Wage debts can be certified in Federal Court, which means a business's assets can be seized, however, it's ultimately up to the workers to collect what they're owed.
In an emailed statement, Hardev Taggar said he started the company in February 2024 after his previous business — Fastlane Truckers — encountered what he called "serious financial problems."
And his plan to return home to India to visit family for the first time in five years has been put on hold as he tries to dig himself out of a financial hole.
The original article contains 820 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A German combat medic accused by Belarus of committing crimes including “terrorism” and “mercenary activity” has been sentenced to death by firing squad, according to a Belarusian rights group.
Rico Krieger, 30, was convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code in a trial held at the end of June, the Viasna Human Rights Centre reported on Friday.
Part of the proceedings were held behind closed doors, the exact allegations against Krieger were not immediately clear and Belarus’s official news agency did not report anything about his case.
The case may be linked to the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment, a group of Belarusian volunteer fighters fighting against Russia in the war in Ukraine, Viasna reported.
According to a LinkedIn profile Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medical worker for the German Red Cross and as an armed security officer for the US embassy in Berlin.
In a surprise move on Wednesday, Minsk announced it would open its borders visa-free to nationals of 35 European countries for 90-day trips, in an attempt to improve frosty relations with the west.
The original article contains 445 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 60%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If you ever used Google’s URL shortening service goo.gl before it was shut down in 2019, be warned — those links will stop working on August 25th, 2025.
Google announced in a blog post that “the time has come to turn off the serving portion of Google URL Shortener” and that any links in the https://goo.gl/* format will respond with a 404 error next year.
Ahead of the shutdown, goo.gl links will start showing an interstitial page on August 23rd, 2024, notifying users that “this link will no longer work in the near future.” This message will initially appear for a “percentage of existing links,’’ which will increase as the deadline draws closer.
Google is encouraging developers to update impacted links as soon as possible, however, as this interstitial page may cause disruptions to link redirections.
When Google announced in 2018 that it was shutting down goo.gl, the company encouraged developers to migrate to Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) — which has also since been deprecated.
The original article contains 165 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 0%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Acropolis in Greece shut for hours, record-breaking ocean temperatures off Croatia and plans to feed zoo animals popsicles in Italy — southern Europe is baking under a “hellishly hot” heat wave.
To beat the heat, Rome’s zoo made plans to offer popsicle respite for the animals later this week when temperatures were expected to top 38 degrees (100 F).
“It really feels like we are in an oven with a hair dryer pointed at us,” said Patrizia Valerio, who had just arrived in Rome from Varese to catch a Coldplay concert Tuesday night.
Fellow concert-goer Mattia Rossi noted that the freak storms that hit Italy earlier this summer were evidence of climate change wreaking havoc on the southern Mediterranean’s weather systems.
The climate crisis, driven mainly from humans burning fossil fuels, is now playing a role in every heat wave on the planet, scientists say, making them longer, more frequent and more intense.
The brutal heat wave hitting southern Europe has so far spared Paris, which is set to host the Olympics later this month.
The original article contains 575 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Passengers have described “bedlam” at UK airport check-ins after a global IT outage on what was due to be the busiest day for flying since the start of the Covid pandemic, while train networks have also been disrupted.
Dean Seddon, 42, from Plymouth, told the PA news agency he had queued since 6am for a flight to Miami with Norse Atlantic Airways.
The outage hit after the first wave of UK morning flight departures had checked in, sparing some from the worst of the disruption.
The budget airlines Ryanair and easyJet said the situation was out of their control and advised passengers to arrive at airports early, with some flights switching to manual check-in and handwritten boarding passes.
Ryanair urged passengers whose flights were cancelled to leave airports and use its website or app, once restored, to find options for rebookings or refunds.
At Palma de Mallorca airport, Jemma Wheeler, 30, told the BBC that her family of five had been standing in a queue for three hours.
The original article contains 783 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Two large oil tankers have collided and caught fire off Singapore's coast, the UN's shipping agency has said.
Photographs released by the Singapore Navy showed thick black smoke billowing from one tanker and crew being rescued from life rafts and flown to hospital.
The tankers - Singapore-flagged Hafni Nile and the Sao Tome and Principe-flagged tanker Ceres I - were around 34 miles (55km) northeast of the Singaporean island of Pedra Branca on the eastern approach to the Singapore Straits, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said.
The environmental authorities in neighbouring Malaysia said they had been told to prepare for potential oil spills.
Singapore is Asia's biggest oil trading hub and the world's largest refuelling port.
Its surrounding waters are vital trade waterways between Asia and Europe and the Middle East and among the busiest global sea lanes.
The original article contains 287 words, the summary contains 141 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The overall tone of the conversations has been that any exit plan — should Biden decide to take that step, as some of his closest allies increasingly believe he will — should put the party in the best position to beat former President Donald Trump while also being worthy of the more than five decades he has served the country in elected office, these people said.
The prospect of Biden’s considering stepping aside, much less that his family is gaming out a possible exit plan, is an extraordinary development that comes after he has repeatedly said he would not relinquish his position as the presumptive nominee of the party.
But concerns have mounted among party leaders, donors and even officials who are part of his re-election effort with every day that has passed since a devastating debate three weeks ago.
Discussions about how to game out a fitting plan for Biden to step aside have also played out among senior staff members, not just the president’s family, according to a person close to the re-election effort.
The conversations about Biden’s political future have raged while he remains at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, sidelined after he tested positive for Covid on Wednesday.
Wolff said Democratic incumbents and challengers in tough races cannot risk splintering their own voter coalitions by publicly taking one side or the other as Biden considers his options.
The original article contains 1,271 words, the summary contains 232 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — One Monday morning in May, I woke up and grabbed my cell phone to read the news and scroll through memes.
The ability of thieves to obtain your personal information was again made clear Friday when AT&T said the data of nearly all of its customers was downloaded to a third-party platform in a security breach two years ago.
Although AT&T claims no personal information was leaked, cybersecurity experts have warned breaches involving telephone companies leave customers vulnerable to SIM swapping.
It took ten days to get my number back from Cricket Wireless — and that wasn’t until I told company representatives that I was writing a story about my experience.
“Fraudulent port-outs are a form of theft committed by sophisticated criminals,” reads a company statement that was emailed to me.
“We have measures in place to help defeat them, and we work closely with law enforcement, our industry and consumers to help prevent this type of crime.”
The original article contains 1,130 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary 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.
Saved 94% of original text. :::
This is the best summary I could come up with:
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on Instagram Live early on Friday morning to share her thoughts on Joe Biden’s floundering re-election campaign - and warning that many of those who want the President to drop out of the race, also want Vice President Kamala Harris off the ticket too.
“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave ... that they will support, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” she told viewers.
She slammed her colleagues for giving anonymous quotes to the press, calling it “bull****” and urged those resigned to a loss to Donald Trump to give up their seats.
This comes amid mounting pressure on Biden to leave the race.
While he remains publicly committed to staying in the race, Axios reports that in private, the president has resigned himself to increasing calls from lawmakers for him to drop out amid bad polling and mounting scrutiny of his age and mental acuity.
“I’m here to tell you that a huge amount of the donor class and a huge amount of these elites and a huge amount of these folks in these rooms that I see that are pushing for President Biden to not be the nominee also are not interested in seeing the Vice President being the nominee,” she added.
The original article contains 335 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 34%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
More than 200 developers at Bethesda Game Studios, the studio behind hit franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, have unionized with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
241 workers, including “artists, engineers, programmers and designers,” have signed union authorization cards or “indicated that they wanted union representation via an online portal,” according to a CWA press release.
Microsoft has recognized the union, the CWA says; the company has already recognized unions formed by Activision QA workers and ZeniMax Studios QA workers.
The CWA describes this as “the first wall-to-wall union at a Microsoft video game studio,” meaning that all eligible job titles will be represented by the CWA instead of just one type of worker, according to the CWA’s Catalina Brennan-Gatica.
(Until now, all of the unions at Microsoft-owned studios have only been formed by QA workers.)
Microsoft didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
The original article contains 165 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 11%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!