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Source: Now I Can't Lose

Today IFM is releasing K2 Horizon, a connected fleet of six models: 375B-A23B, 36B-A4B, 32B, 7B, 3.7B, and 0.9B. Across reasoning, mathematics, coding, agentic tasks, and general capabilities, K2 Horizon delivers top-tier performance in every size class—with the 0.9B, 3.7B, and 7B models setting new state of the art at their respective scales.

We are releasing intermediate checkpoints, training data or detailed data-construction recipes, open architecture, mixture compositions, training code, configurations, fine-grained logs, evaluation results, and final weights.

The models and code are released under the Apache 2.0 license. Datasets are released under their applicable licenses, such as ODC-BY; We disclose how the data was constructed and mixed when redistribution is not possible.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/57722641

New Zealand's exporters are diverting shipments originally bound for China into other markets as demand from the country's biggest trading partner cools, an official from the antipodean country's central bank said Thursday.

"We've certainly seen many of our exporters looking at, and actively diverting, product that they would have been looking to put into China, into other markets as well," said Karen Silk, assistant governor at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. "It is not the only export market."

Silk's remarks reflect how the slowdown in China's economy has rippled through to businesses elsewhere. Growth in the world's second-largest economy slowed to multi-year lows in the second quarter, weighed down by tepid domestic demand and a prolonged real estate slump. She spoke to CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Thursday, a day after the central bank delivered its second consecutive interest rate hike to curb inflation.

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China has been New Zealand’s largest trading partner and top market, buying roughly a quarter of New Zealand’s total exports over the 12 months ending in July. New Zealand’s China-bound goods in 2025 were close to double that of the next two biggest export markets — the U.S. and Australia — combined, according to the New Zealand China Council.

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Elevated global commodity prices, including for wheat, have handed New Zealand’s pasture-based farmers a relative cost advantage even as China-bound volumes soften, Silk said.

“In some ways, New Zealand actually benefits from a price perspective when we have those supply factors going on globally,” she said.

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Duration - 59:25 [A video podcast about Cuba from the podcast team Cuba Analysis Podcasts]

In this episode of Cuba Analysis, Helen Yaffe and Nina Blodau speak with Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, who has served as the nation’s top diplomat for nearly two decades. They ask him to set aside diplomatic language to describe life in Cuba under the US blockade.

Rodríguez Parrilla outlines the impact of the ‘maximum pressure’ strategy pursued during President Trump’s first administration and the sharp escalation of US economic warfare in 2026, including two executive orders, an oil siege of the island, and an aggressive increase in sanctions threatened against Cuba’s global partners.

The Minister stresses the human consequences of these measures: Cuba’s infant mortality rate has doubled, and some 7,000 shipping containers carrying essential food and medical supplies are currently being prevented from unloading on the island. This continues despite almost unanimous international condemnation of the US blockade at the United Nations, where Cuba has become a symbol of the struggle for self-determination and sovereignty.

Alongside economic warfare, the US government has openly threatened a military attack. The Minister confirms that Cubans take these threats seriously and warns that any US military action would result in a bloodbath on both sides, with devastating consequences for the wider Caribbean. Rodríguez Parrilla rejects outright the labelling of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and as a threat to US national security. He points to lies and fabrications by US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and argues that only ‘a small group of corrupt politicians’ would benefit from the destruction of Cuba.

After almost seven decades of US attempts to force political change in Cuba, why has the policy failed? The Minister reflects on Cuba’s resilience and on the possibility of a future based on dialogue, sovereignty, mutual respect and cooperation between neighbours.

In collaboration with the SHARE Foundation, the Citizen Lab analyzed forensic artefacts from the iPhone of a member of Serbia’s student protest movement after they received an Apple Threat Notification warning of targeting with mercenary spyware.

Our analysis confirmed that an iMessage zero-click exploit was used to infect the device with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. We found high-confidence indicators of infection from a period across December 2025 – January 2026, however this does not preclude the possibility of additional infections.

We believe that the zero-click exploit used in this attack targeted Apple iMessage, and has subsequently been patched by Apple as of iOS 18.4.1.

I feel like a crazy person saying this but: one particular door handle in an office building I go to once peer week always feels warmer than ambient.

It's the handle inside the stairwell on the main floor. It feels warmer than ambient, with either hand, if I was just using the handrail or not. There's no sunlight shining on it. I use the handle on my way out of the building a few minutes after I pass by it on the way in, so I know there's nobody standing there holding it for several minutes just before I use it. It feels warm if I check it on my way into the building as well.

The handle on the lobby side of the door seems normal. The handle upstairs seems normal. The door feels normal. The strike plate in the doorframe feels normal.

It's super weird. Could the motion detector mounted above the door be bathing it in IR light or something?

I'm going to see if I can find my IR thermometer to quantify my subjective observation. Are there any other potential sources of energy I haven't thought of? Anything that could be messing with my perceptions? anything in particular I should remember when going to collect some data?

Crossposted from https://slrpnk.net/post/42283411

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies took a man into custody Wednesday after he showed up outside their headquarters with multiple Flock cameras in the back of his pickup truck.

Authorities arrested Jevon Martinez for damaging Flock cameras in Rio Rancho in May. Then, Wednesday, he posted video on social media appearing to show him driving around Albuquerque and taking down automated license plate readers once again.

In those videos, he comments that since the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office ended its contract with Flock last month, those cameras should no longer be out on the streets.

"Just for the record, I am not stealing these. I am not destroying them. I am simply returning them to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department,” he said in one video.

This was THE summer hit of 2002...

This is what computer programming means for me. You can build your own tools. You can share them with others. When you build and share such tools, you meet other people that perceive and interact with the world in the same way as you do. You make new friends. I guess this is what I've been trying to do in my life. Get people to understand this process. With computers, you can make your own tools, and so you can augment yourself, and others, to accomplish more things. This is something special about computer and especially open source tools. It costs no money at all to try this.

This idea isn't really new, either. Steve Jobs called the Macintosh "a bicycle for the mind", referring to the fact that the human on a bicycle is the most efficient animal on the planet. And before Jobs, you can see similar ideas in Douglas Engelbart's Mother of All Demos, where a whole section is about the human-computer interaction loop, and how their hardware (the mouse, the keyset, the realtime display) was designed to improve this loop and make the tool as transparent as possible (update: actually the segment I was thinking about is in a later talk from Douglas Engelbart in 1986). Just like when you ride a bicycle, and you're not particularly thinking about pedalling and braking and shifting gears and keeping your balance. It's as natural as walking.

But then, there is a limitation on that as soon as you're not the one building the tool. Say you buy a Macintosh or a Windows machine. Someone has designed it to work a certain way. And their design will shape how you perceive and interact with the world.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/57721561

Chinese police have allegedly intervened in a planned strike by Chinese food delivery workers in Sydney, with several workers saying they received warning calls from police in China telling them: “Don’t organise a strike overseas.”

The workers said they were planning industrial action against HungryPanda, a Chinese-owned food delivery platform, over alleged exploitation. Several said they were contacted by Chinese police, who warned that they could face arrest if they returned to China. One delivery worker said his family in China was summoned to a police station for questioning.

The allegations highlight growing concerns over China’s cross-border surveillance and pressure, and have prompted strong reactions from Australian trade unions and politicians.

Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute and an expert on China, described the alleged intervention as “sinister”.

“If it was just one phone call, it might not mean much,” McGregor said. “But multiple calls from different parts of China suggest a high degree of organisation and influence.”

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Michael Kaine, the National Secretary of Australia’s Transport Workers’ Union, said HungryPanda had long “punished workers who opposed unilateral pay cuts and raised concerns about workplace safety”.

“Workers are once again making it clear that they have had enough,” he said. “HungryPanda must stop arbitrarily cutting pay and suppressing workers who dare to speak up for their rights.”

Australian Labour senator Tony Sheldon also criticised the company, describing HungryPanda as one of the industry’s worst offenders in using algorithmic management to drive down wages and undermine working conditions.

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According to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in February, several HungryPanda delivery workers in Sydney were unhappy about cuts to pay and a lack of transparency in the way their earnings were calculated. They discussed plans in a WeChat group to strike during the peak period on Lunar New Year’s Eve.

But before the protest had formally begun, several workers said they received calls from Chinese police that they regarded as cross-border intimidation.

Wang Zhuoying, a former delivery worker, said she received three consecutive calls from police in the area where she was registered in China while she was in Australia. The officers allegedly asked her to explain the situation surrounding the planned Sydney strike and warned her not to take part in protests overseas.

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During the third call, police also asked whether she was a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Wang said this made her feel targeted and intimidated.

Another delivery worker, Wang Cai, described an even more alarming experience. He said his father was summoned to a police station by officers in the middle of the night and told that his son was involved in “dangerous activities” overseas.

Several delivery workers said they continued using Chinese mobile phone numbers registered under their real names while living in Australia so they could remain in contact with family and friends through WeChat. They believe this enabled Chinese authorities to identify them.

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Under Chinese law, WeChat is required to comply with government requests, raising concerns that police may have monitored the WeChat group before intervening.

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The allegations come as China’s cross-border repression has attracted increasing international concern.

Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organisation, has said China is stepping up its efforts to suppress people overseas. Its latest example involved two Uyghurs in Paris who were allegedly pressured and offered inducements by people claiming to be Chinese officials, who asked them to monitor community activities or stop working.

The organisation called on the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to put the G7’s commitments on transnational repression into action at the summit and push for a coordinated response to such abuses.

Yalkun Uluyol, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said **China was using coercion, intimidation and surveillance **in an attempt to silence Uyghur critics overseas. French authorities, he said, should conduct a full investigation and take action to help Uyghurs resist intimidation.

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Credit to Jack Scully

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/24135388

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