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North Wales Live
a day ago
- General
- North Wales Live
Explosion on Welsh beach near where 'top secret' military base was sited
A controlled explosion was carried out on a beach close to a former "top secret" military base. Ynyslas in Ceredigion was selected by the Air Ministry as a missile-testing site for solid fuel rocket systems towards the end of World War Two. The German army and Luftwaffe were developing long-range rockets with guidance systems – the V1 and the V2 - and this provided the impetus for a new Guided Projectile Project. The Ynyslas Range - next to the Dyfi Estuary that separates Ceredigion and Gwynedd - was nominated to provide special test facilities for the testing of rockets propelled by liquid fuels (such as liquid oxygen and petrol). It saw a secret research base set up with workshops, assembly shops, accommodation huts and ancilliary buildings. As the threat of invasion had passed, the pillboxes and barbed wire entanglements installed in 1941 were pressed into service as perimeter defences, keeping the public and prying eyes away. The range was to be called Ministry of Supply Experimental Establishment Anti-Aircraft and was pressed into action - with test firings from concrete bases still located close to the shore car park. Despite the additional facilities installed at the Ynyslas, the long term stumbling block was the limits of the space available for testing, particularly as the technology rapidly developed. This saw Ynyslas dropped in 1946. Equipment was moved to Aberporth in south west Wales, while for testing military chiefs also looked at the potential of the far larger ranges on offer in the giant expanses of Canada and Australia. Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox While its life was short lived, the legacy of the site continues due to the unexploded ordnance left behind. The latest drama started on Sunday afternoon with an initial callout for Borth Coastguard to two people potentially in trouble while swimming in the sea despite this being a red flag beach, mainly due to the tidal currents rather than ordnance. They were then told that witnesses had seen them exit the water safely. But before the team could leave they were called to a potential ordnance a short distance down the beach near the Borth and Ynyslas golf club. The team said: "When we find potential ordnance we place a (switched off) radio close by to provide scale and take photos to send to EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit) to assess. It was initially deemed safe but after a further look, EOD made the decision to come and dispose of the item. "Due to the tides, the team were tasked again this afternoon (Monday) when it would be uncovered again to meet with EOD and provide a safety cordon for detonation. As you can see from the photograph, the burning afterwards confirmed that there was still propellant in an item that has clearly been underwater for many years. "Thank you to the members of the public who were patient and respected the cordon we created. We are not there to inconvenience you, just to keep you safe." The team noted this is certainly not the first time they've dealt with these issues and very likely won't be the last. They offered this advice: "There are many items of ordnance washed up on the beaches locally. If you see anything you suspect to be ordnance DO NOT pick up or move it. Call 999, ask for coastguard and give as exact a location as you are able and if you see anyone in difficulty on the cliffs, shoreline or out to sea call and ask for the Coastguard."
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
GMX Exploiter Return $40M Days After Hack, Token Zooms Higher
The attacker who drained over $40 million from GMX's V1 contracts earlier this week has started returning funds, suggesting they've accepted the project's $5 million white-hat bounty. The first signs came Friday via an on-chain message: 'ok, funds will be returned later.' Hours later, over $10.5 million in FRAX was sent back to GMX's deployer wallet. Security firm PeckShield flagged the returns, which appear to be just the start, with more funds expected to follow. GMX is now trading at $13.15 having risen by 13% over the past 24 hours. Later on, over $40 million in various tokens were returned to the GMX Security Committee MultiSig address, Lookonchain noted. The breach, one of the largest DeFi exploits of the year, targeted GMX's GLP pool on Arbitrum. It exploited a re-entrancy flaw in the OrderBook contract, allowing the attacker to manipulate short positions on BTC, inflate GLP's valuation, and redeem it for outsized profits across USDC, WBTC, WETH, and FRAX. Reentrancy is a common bug that allows exploiters to trick a smart contract by repeatedly calling a protocol to steal assets. A call authorizes the smart contract address to interact with a user's wallet address. GMX responded by halting V1 trading and minting across both Arbitrum and Avalanche. A bug bounty worth more than 10% of the stolen funds was offered, with a promise of no legal pursuit if the full amount was returned within 48 hours (which the hacker seems to have adhered to as of European morning hours Friday). Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Scotsman
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Scotsman
I've experienced nightly attacks by Iranian drones and their despotic regime deserves no sympathy
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... They say never to judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. You might also want to hold off on judgment from what I'm about to say until you've lived under bombing yourself: Israel and the United States were right to bomb Iran, it's only a shame they didn't achieve more substantial results. I'm saying this as someone who's endured night after night of attacks by Iranian Shahed drones in Ukraine. Before the pearl-clutching becomes too constricting, let me reassure you that this is no revenge fantasy, or an expression of hatred for the Iranian people. They have languished under the regime of the mullahs for too long. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The regime itself, however, is as cartoonishly evil as it gets and deserves no legitimacy, or sympathy. Its malign influence extends far from Tehran to Kyiv and even Edinburgh. Iran has supplied Shahed type 131 and 136 drones to Russia since the autumn of 2022 with the full knowledge that these weapons would be used to target civilians. They have limited battlefield use and are weapons of pure terror, much like the German V1 and V2 rockets during the Second World War. The aftermath of a drone strike in Kharkiv on May 30 (Picture: Sergey Bobok) | AFP via Getty Images Dreading the late-night lawnmower Regimes like Iran's and Russia's should be fought, and any action towards their overthrowing should be welcomed, even if it comes from quarters unpalatable to the Scottish body politic, like Israel. Justification for the regime's overthrow for its actions against its own people and in the countries of the Middle East abound; its actions in Ukraine are reason enough too. Since 2022, Moscow has launched 28,743 Shahed-type drones against Ukraine — with 2,736, or roughly 9.5 per cent, fired in June this year alone. Though many are now manufactured in Russia under the name Geran 1/Geran 2, Iranian design, manufacturing and maintenance expertise remain vitally important to their operation . Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Imagine lying in your bed late at night, you've heard the air-raid siren go off but you're shattered, sleep-deprived from previous air raids or hot nights without electricity. You drift back to sleep, until the loud cracks of anti-aircraft fire wake you up again. Then you hear the growl, a buzzing noise overhead that sounds like a lawnmower on its last legs. That's the Shahed, and if you can hear it, it's very close, maybe even over your apartment building. As awful the sound is, in that moment you pray you continue to hear it, because if it suddenly cuts out that growl might have been the last thing you ever hear as it drops on top of you. That is the reality of living under Shahed drone attacks, a reality that most Ukrainians have had to face for three years now. Thousands have lost their homes, their loved ones and their lives as a result of this terror bombing. Airstrikes or any other form of military campaign that halt Iran's support for Russia, even incrementally or momentarily, or result in the regime's eventual downfall, should be welcomed. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Shahed-136 'Kamikaze' drones like this one have been used extensively to attack Ukrainian cities in a way reminiscent of the Nazis' use of V2 rockets to attack London during the Second World War (Picture: Anonymous / Middle East Images) | Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Iran's interference in Scottish politics Don't feel any sympathy for its wretched government; you are an enemy or a target for manipulation as much as any Ukrainian. The fact that a number of pro-independence X accounts mysteriously went dark after an Israeli airstrike on June 13, which caused an internet blackout that affected 95 per cent of national connectivity, should not come as a surprise. Iran sees us as a target whether we're nationalists or unionists, their aim is to merely stoke division. With that being said, and while I wouldn't be surprised if some fringe pro-UK accounts are also run by the regime's security forces, Iranian interference in Scottish constitutional matters would be welcomed by some on the pro-independence lunatic left, the types for whom Scottish identity is merely a means to an end, an extension of class warfare. Believers in mere 'whataboutism', where any cause, any regime and any atrocity can be justified so long as it is ostensibly opposed to American imperialism or the dreaded 'Zionists', this leftist fringe is no stranger to supporting Iran. One of its darlings, former British diplomat and Israel-obsessed grievance-grifter Craig Murray, is well known to the regime's state media . This is the same Murray who has backed Putin's invasion of Ukraine, claimed the Ukrainian state tolerates a 'current strain of Nazism in Ukrainian nationalism', and regurgitated the baseless lie that Russian language speakers in the country's east were being subjected to genocide. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Such views are a calumny, demonstrably false and ridiculous as anyone who has actually been to Ukraine can attest. Murray also believes that despotic regimes like Iran are entitled to defend themselves, while countries like Ukraine are apparently not. Such views are those of a fringe, granted, and are demonstrably false and usually motivated by either ill-placed grievance or attention-seeking behaviour, but nonetheless, they are there. They represent the very worst of Scottish politics, a hateful cancer on the independence movement that distorts truth to suit their own aims. That Iran facilitates the terror bombing of one country, Ukraine, while supporting malcontents in ours who condemn the victims of that terror as Nazis, highlights the unscrupulousness of both. Do not give Iran, nor its stooges, any of your sympathy, wherever they may be. The country's leaders are happy to weaponise social media manipulation and bad-faith actors in our body politic, and any time they receive a bloody nose should be welcomed. Wait until you've lived under a Shahed's growl before you think otherwise.
Indian Express
22-06-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Google used YouTube's video library to train its most powerful AI tool yet: Report
Google used thousands of YouTube videos to train its latest Gemini and Veo 3 models, even as most creators remain unaware of their content being used for AI training purposes. Veo 3 is the tech giant's most advanced AI video generation model that was unveiled at this year's I/O developer conference. It is capable of generating realistic, cinematic-level videos with complete sound and even dialogue. And Google leveraged a subset of the 20-billion catalogue of YouTube videos to train these cutting-edge AI tools, according to a report by CNBC. While it is unclear which of the 20 billion videos on YouTube were used for AI training, Google said that it honours agreements with creators and media companies. 'We've always used YouTube content to make our products better, and this hasn't changed with the advent of AI. We also recognize the need for guardrails, which is why we've invested in robust protections that allow creators to protect their image and likeness in the AI era — something we're committed to continuing.' a company spokesperson was quoted as saying. Creators have the option to block companies like Amazon, Nvidia, and Apple from using their content for AI training. But they do not have the choice to opt out when it comes to Google. While YouTube has previously shared all of this information, many creators and media organisations are yet to fully understand that Google is allowed to train its AI models on YouTube's video library. YouTube's Terms of Service state that 'by providing Content to the Service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use that Content.' YouTube content could be used to 'improve the product experience … including through machine learning and AI applications,' the company further said in a blog post published in September 2024. Independent creators have raised concerns that their content is being used to train AI models that could eventually compete with or replace them. AI-generated content also leads to the rise of other models that could compete with human creators who have said that they are neither credited nor compensated for their contributions. Last week, The Walt Disney Company and Comcast's Universal said that they have filed a copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the AI image generator of unlawfully copying and distributing their most iconic characters. Describing the tool as a 'bottomless pit of plagiarism,' the studios alleged that Midjourney recreated and monetised copyrighted figures without permission. Days later, the AI research lab rolled out its first-ever text-to-video generation model called V1. According to Midjourney, V1 can be used to convert images into five-second AI-generated video clips. Users can also upload images or use an AI-generated image by Midjourney to animate the image.
Time of India
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Midjourney rolls out first-ever AI video model V1: Availability and how to use
Representative Image Midjourney's first-ever AI video generation model, V1, is now official. This new model from the AI startup will allow users to transform photos into five-second video clips. Users can either upload their photos or use images created by other Midjourney models to generate a set of four distinct five-second videos based on the picture provided to the image-to-video model . This model places Midjourney alongside other companies developing AI video generation models, including OpenAI's Sora and Google's Veo 3. While several companies are working on controllable AI video tools for commercial use, Midjourney has taken a different approach by focusing on AI image models aimed at creative users. In a blog post, David Holz, the company's CEO writes: 'As you know, our focus for the past few years has been images. What you might not know, is that we believe the inevitable destination of this technology are models capable of real-time open-world simulations.' Midjourney V1 video-generation AI model: Availability and how to use Similar to Midjourney's image generation tools, V1 is accessible exclusively through Discord and is currently only available on the web. To access V1, users have to purchase Midjourney's Basic plan, priced at $10 per month. Meanwhile, users who subscribe to the $60-per-month Pro plan and the $120-per-month Mega plan can generate unlimited videos using the platform's slower 'Relax' mode. Midjourney has stated that it will review its pricing for video models over the coming month. V1 includes several custom settings that give users control over the video model's output. Users can choose an automatic animation mode, which applies random movement to an image, or a manual mode, where they can describe a specific animation through text input. The settings also allow users to adjust the level of camera and subject movement by selecting either 'low motion' or 'high motion.' Videos generated with V1 are initially five seconds long, but users have the option to extend them by four seconds at a time, up to four times, allowing for a maximum duration of 21 seconds. 5 Must-Have Gadgets for Your Next Beach Holiday to Stay Safe, Cool & Connected AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
