Details of members of the SAS are among more than 100 Britons named in the database of 18,700 Afghans, the accidental leak of which by a defence official led to thousands being secretly relocated to the UK.

Defence sources said the highly sensitive document contained names and email addresses belonging to people sponsoring or linked to some individual cases. Personal information about MI6 officers was also included.

The identities of members of the SAS and MI6 are a closely guarded secret, and the possibility that following the leak such information could have ended up in the public domain was a source of significant official concern.

Earlier this week it emerged that the Ministry of Defence had obtained a superinjunction preventing the fact of the leak and a £2bn-plus scheme had been created to relocate some Afghans affected by the breach to the UK to protect them from the Taliban.

Spies and SAS personnel among 100-plus Britons included in Afghan data leak

Sources say leak included details of Britons who endorsed Afghan applications to be brought to UK after Taliban takeover

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}

Hi everyone,

I’d like to share an idea I refined together with ChatGPT, combining AI’s strengths with human expertise to create something truly impactful.

🌿 Proposal Summary

“ChatGPT Mental Health Plan” – a new subscription tier or add-on offering hybrid mental health support:
1. AI-powered emotional support and journaling tools
2. Guided pattern-recognition for stress, anxiety, and burnout
3. Optional upgrade to connect with licensed counselors or therapists (e.g. 1–2 virtual sessions/month)
4. Collaboration with trained psychology professionals
5. Privacy-first design with full user consent

🧩 Why this matters:

• Mental health is a growing global crisis, especially among teens and young adults
• Traditional therapy often has access barriers (cost, time, stigma)
• ChatGPT already provides comfort, but combining it with real counselors could offer life-changing support

💡 Benefits:

• AI scales emotional support affordably
• Human professionals provide clinical depth when needed
• Potentially life-saving early intervention for those who otherwise wouldn’t seek help

This post was drafted with assistance from ChatGPT — proof that AI-human collaboration can fuel real-world ideas.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or suggestions on how to make this proposal even stronger or more feasible.

Thanks for reading!

https://www.boomlive.in/decode/when-a-face-scan-decides-who-eats-and-who-keeps-their-job-29048

We all know that AI is expensive, but a new set of algorithms developed by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Intel Labs, and d-Matrix could significantly reduce the cost of serving up your favorite large language model (LLM) with just a few lines of code.

Presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning this week and detailed in this paper, the algorithms offer a new spin on speculative decoding that they say can boost token generation rates by as much as 2.8x while also eliminating the need for specialized draft models.

Speculative decoding, if you're not familiar, isn't a new concept. It works by using a small "draft" model ("drafter" for short) to predict the outputs of larger, slower, but higher quality "target" models.

If the draft model can successfully predict, say, the next four tokens in the sequence, that's four tokens the bigger model doesn't have to generate, and so we get a speed-up. If it's wrong, the larger model discards the draft tokens and generates new ones itself. That last bit is important as it means the entire process is lossless — there's no trade-off in quality required to get that speed-up.

Boffins detail new algorithms to losslessly boost AI perf by up to 2.8x

: New spin on speculative decoding works with any model - now built into Transformers

^{Tobias Mann (The Register)}

I believe that the time has come for a new Social Media Bill of Digital Rights. Just as the original Bill of Rights protected individual freedoms from government overreach, we need fundamental protections for our digital communities from corporate control and surveillance capitalism.

So what could such a Social Media Bill of Rights include?

• The right to privacy & security: The ability to communicate and organize without fear of surveillance or exploitation.
• The right to own and control your identity: People and their communities must own their digital identities, connections and data. And, as the owner of an account, you can exercise the right to be forgotten.
• The right to choose and understand algorithms (transparency): Choosing the algorithms that shape your interactions: no more black box systems optimizing for engagement at the expense of community well-being.
  The right to community self-governance: Crucially, communities of users need the right to self govern, setting their own rules for behavior which are contextually relevant to their community. (Note: this does not preclude developer governance.)
• The right to full portability – the right to exit: The freedom to port your community in its entirety, to another app without losing your connections and content.

ActivityPub is of course mentioned.

We Deserve Better: A New Social Media Bill of Rights

Earlier this year, I was a part of a CNN documentary, Twitter: Breaking the Bird, which gave memuch pause for reflection about the state of social media and how we got here. This year alonewe’…

^Techdirt

The United States is losing strategic ground to China due to US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the global stage and transactional approach to foreign policy, a Democrat-authored report has warned.

Surveying Trump’s first six months in office, the report warns that his tenure has “significantly undermined” Washington’s ability to compete with China.

The report highlights staff reductions at the US Department of State and the “chaotic gutting” of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Agency for Global Media – which oversees Voice of America and Radio Free Asia – as moves that have weakened US power and influence.

US losing ground to China due to Trump’s policies, Democrats warn

Sentiment towards the US is deteriorating even among Washington’s closest allies, according to Pew survey data.

^{Erin Hale (Al Jazeera)}