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CVID - Gene for Ai personal assistant
Everybody should have their own set of CVID - genes for the ai personal assistant
It can be downloaded and preset as a personal assistant to bridge between a person with others externally
The Beach Boy genius
The Guardian 14 Jun 2025 Who today innovates like Brian Wilson?
By all accounts, Brian Wilson was a genius. Fellow greats Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan both used the word in their tributes to the creative force behind the Beach Boys, who died this week aged 82. So did Mick Fleetwood, John Cale and Elton John. And so did his bandmates, who wrote in a joint statement: “The world mourns a genius today.” You may imagine Wilson accrued such standing gradually. Artistic legacy is largely dependent on the longevity of mass appeal, and the fact that the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds remains one of the most famous, celebrated and beloved albums of all time almost 60 years since its release is proof enough of his incredible talent.
In fact, Wilson’s claim to genius status began with a 1966 PR campaign masterminded by the ex-Beatles publicist Derek Taylor. Fortunately, Wilson’s output justified it, and after spreading through the British music press, the “Brian Wilson is a genius” rhetoric quickly caught on, says Wilson’s biographer, David Leaf. It has been the consensus ever since.
Do we just imagine musical geniuses are anointed in retrospect because we no longer have any? It is extremely difficult to argue that any artist of the last 30 years has reached the trailblazing standards of Wilson, Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell and David Bowie.
The remaining members of those acts are all over 80 (with the exception of Ronnie Wood at 78). Stevie Wonder is 75, Brian Eno is 77, Ralf Hütter, the surviving founder of Kraftwerk, is 78. The most recent claimants to the title of musical genius are generally seen as Michael Jackson and Prince, both of whom died relatively young. Soon, the very idea of a living legend may be a thing of the past.
In pop music, which reveres the new, genius is synonymous with innovation. It is no coincidence that our most innovative musical minds were of a similar generation, starting out in the 1960s and 70s, when all the new drum, guitar and keyboard sounds and most memorable melodies were there for the taking. Such was the virgin territory, the Beach Boys even got to sonically codify California, one of the most culturally significant places on Earth.
Wilson once sang: “I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.” But if he hadn’t been active precisely when he was, would he have been considered a genius?
Of course, musical progress didn’t abruptly end half a century ago. There is still as-yet-unheard music
nd to be made. Generic fusions, formal variations and experimental production techniques are not infinite, but nor are they exhausted, and some have coalesced into era-defining movements, as 21st-century genres such as grime, trap and hyperpop prove.
Some genres even have specific originators. Grime can be convincingly traced back to Wiley, and his turn-of-the-millennium production experiments, while hyperpop is the brainchild of the London producer AG Cook and his PC Music collective. But these pockets of innovation still haven’t produced any bona fide musical geniuses.
The demise of the monoculture has a part to play, here. Technology’s fracturing of the cultural and media landscape means only the most aggressively mainstream and inoffensively palatable acts (Adele, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift) can command a similar level of fame and musical familiarity to their 60s and 70s counterparts. Meanwhile, invention remains staunchly at the cultural fringes – and if it does get anywhere near the zeitgeist, the journey is leisurely.
Grime took off a full decade after its creation, thanks to Skepta and Stormzy; so did hyperpop, in the guise of Charli xcx’s album Brat. This is another reason why musical genius is so thin on the ground: the people who do the actual innovating rarely end up in the spotlight themselves.
Rivalry between Wilson and the Beatles accelerated progress and incentivised change; the pressure is also thought to have contributed to the decline of Wilson’s mental health later in the 60s.
But then comes the more mysterious part. What is so astonishing about Wilson is how many different groundbreaking things he did simultaneously.
In the studio, he invented “a new way of making popular music”, says Leaf, “recording bits and pieces of a song and then piecing it together”. He also blazed a trail for the idea of one person helming all elements of a recorded song: from composition, arrangement and performance to mixing and production. On top of that, says Leaf, he did something lyrically radical, turning pop into an “emotional autobiography”.
This determination to, in Leaf’s words, “put his feelings on to the recording tape and share it with the world” was genuinely surprising at the time. Today’s pop music is only really controversial when it overlaps with sex and violence; it is practically impossible to sonically shock the listening public.
The prospect of musical innovation coming to an end is something students and lovers of guitar music have already had to make peace with: at this point nostalgia is inherent to the genre. “I’m aware it’s impossible to make genuinely new, novel guitar music, and so I tend to lean into anachronism,” is how Owen Williams, the frontman of my new favourite old-sounding band, The Tubs, once put it.
Just as selling out became a respected career move, explicit derivation is now an artform in itself. In recent years Beyoncé has stayed at the forefront of pop by becoming a kind of musical historian.
There is one thing that does feel jarring about the slowed pace of musical progress. Technological advancement has always been woven into sonic novelty – the advent of synths (which Wilson also anticipated), for example, or sampling. Given that technology has accelerated in unimaginable and terrifying ways over the past 20 years, you’d think that might be reflected in the pop zeitgeist.
Instead, we have a chart stuffed with tracks that could essentially have been made at any point in the past 50 years. Perhaps the late 20th century created a sort of natural selection of music. We found the combinations of notes and rhythms that appealed most to the western ear and that is what we have continued to rehash.
Surely, then, this is a problem AI might be able to solve. In theory, it could supplant human creativity. In actuality, AI is unlikely to wrest control of pop’s soul – and that’s because musical innovation and even catchy melodies have ceded importance to the branding of people. If Taylor Swift’s gargantuan success is anything to go by, which it probably is, pop’s future depends on the carefully honed appeal of an individual’s human personalities, not what they can do on a keyboard (the musical kind).
Swift’s approach to her public image and to the music business in general is groundbreaking in its own way, even if her music isn’t. We will be mourning her as a cultural figure at some point, but as a musical genius? That would take some real cognitive dissonance. It seems unlikely that we will mourn anyone of similar vintage in such a way by the end of this century. We have no currently minted visionaries – though time will tell if anyone retroactively earns the title.
What is certain is that as the pop canon continues to splinter into countless smaller, personal rosters, we will find ourselves losing musicians who mean everything to some people, but not – like Wilson – who mean something to almost everyone.
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VCs are hyped on AI agents
VCs do believe agents are the next big paradigm shift, like mobile or cloud. They're imagining a future where agents are embedded into every workflow. Not just a flashy Chrome plugin but something more like Zapier on steroids.
BUT: They're not funding “wrappers” If your agent is just calling OpenAI + browsing = you're gonna get grilled. They want:
👉 Example they love:
an AI agent that performs continuous A/B testing & actually boosts your conversion rate . Seeing an agent deliver a 20%+ lift in conversion without needing a growth team certainly gets their blood going.
Clear ROI. No fluff. Just more revenue. That’s what sells.
Infra (vector DBs, orchestration layers, observability tools) is hot but crowded. One VC told us:
If you’re building infra, be ready to answer: “Why won’t OpenAI, LangChain, or a16z infra portfolio just eat your lunch?”
Apps are still raising, but only if they go deep into a vertical. Think agents that automate boring, high-friction stuff in healthcare, finance, or B2B ops.
New hot niche in infra: “AgentOps” tools for managing, monitoring, and securing agents in production. Think DevOps for autonomous workflows.
Getting attention:
Getting ghosted:
Hype is real, but the bar is rising.
US VCs:
EU VCs:
But here's the kicker: European agents often land their first paying customers in the U.S. because buyers are more willing to experiment. So a lot of EU startups are fundraising in euros and selling in dollars.
And LLMs still suck at planning. Most current agents are copilots, not full operators — and that’s OK. Just don’t pretend it’s AGI.
VCs are cool with this — they just want to know you’re not bullshitting.
Anyway, I hope this helps some of you to avoid the landmines.
Video games best played side by side
HAROLD GOLDBERG
The New York Times (International Edition) 18 Mar 2025 Designer seeks to prove there is still a market for shared experiences
Within a modern but nondescript building a few hundred feet from Stockholm’s pretty Riddarfjarden Bay, a frosted glass wall in Josef Fares’s office displays etched characters from It Takes Two, his video game studio’s “Toy Story”-esque cooperative adventure about an adult couple’s broken relationship. Near his desk, in a lighted case, sits a pair of Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves.
“I can relate, you know, to someone who’s speaking his mind,” Fares said.
In an industry where executives have become mired in tech marketing-speak and can be as protected by publicists as Hollywood stars are, Fares stands out. Many gamers know the garrulous designer for his appearance at the glitzy Game Awards in 2017, when he twice dismissed the Oscars with a swear word before raising his middle finger to the camera.
The sentiment could come as a shock from a person who began his artistic career as a moviemaker, including an autobiographical coming-of-age film set during the Lebanese civil war that was Sweden’s entry for best international feature at the Oscars in 2006. But for the past dozen years, Fares’s passion has been video games, especially cooperative experiences that can be played on the couch with a sibling, partner, child or friend.
Fares enjoyed games from the moment he played Pong on an Atari 2600 while living in Beirut; he fell in love in 1988 when he experienced Super Mario Bros. in Stockholm.
After working with a few students to make a game demo in 2009, Fares got excited. That very night he came up with the concept of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, about siblings working together in a time of crisis. His interest in movies dwindled.
“It’s like falling in love with something I can’t quit,” Fares, 47, said. “There’s not a single day in my life that I don’t think about video games.”
During an era of faceless online gaming, Fares has shown time and time again that there is still a market for the communal experience. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013) became an essential part of the indie game revolution. Hazelight, the studio he began afterward, found immediate success with A Way Out (2018), a cooperative prison-escape experience, and then sold nearly 23 million copies of It Takes Two (2021).
Hazelight’s newest game, Split Fiction, is a rocket-fast roller coaster ride of science fiction, fantasy and collegiality that has received critical praise. During the game’s eight chapters, which can be played online, two daring scribes travel to fantastical, sometimes surreal environments.
Neil Druckmann, the studio director of Naughty Dog whose credits include Uncharted and The Last of Us, called Fares a “high-energy dude” and a “confident artist” who wanted to try things no one had done. He likened Fares’s work to making music.
“There’s a little bit of, like, a hip-hop to it, you know, where you’re kind of sampling these ideas,” Druckmann said. “But he’s making them his own.”
Fares’s personality is regularly described as “eccentric” or “crazy,” and he even pokes fun at his persona. The video of his Oscars outburst — in which he highlighted how video games are an interactive experience — is an Easter egg in It Takes Two.
But on a recent video call, Fares, dressed in a beige, cable-stitched sweater, was reflective. Sitting on a couch in Hazelight’s office with his feet up on the cushions, he explained how his parents had tried to emigrate to Sweden from Beirut five times before their application was approved.
They were eager to get their six children to a peaceful environment far away from the constant bombings of Lebanon’s civil war.
“The first 10 years of my life was very violent and very harsh,” said Fares, who added that the formative experience built his self-assurance.
In 2005, Fares documented his childhood in the midst of war through “Zozo,” a movie that depicted bombs exploding, apartments blowing up and lives eliminated. Oddly but effectively, a shellshocked child befriends a chick he finds on his rooftop.
Fares himself had a chicken as a pet, a friend he could talk to amid the real-life devastation he witnessed. When he left it with older chickens, the chick was attacked and killed.
“It was traumatic,” he said, a terribly disquieting moment.
Several of Fares’s other movies featured his brother, Fares Fares, an actor who went on to appear in the television series “Tyrant,” “Westworld” and “The Wheel of Time.” And as he did with “Zozo,” also Fares’s nickname, he has placed portions of his life in Hazelight’s games, sometimes bravely. At the end of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, there is an emotional burial.
“I actually buried my own little brother,” Fares said. “He died in his birth. So he was still a baby. And for some reason, me and my sister went to bury him.”
It is here that Fares talked quietly about the need for family and friends. All of Hazelight’s games are cooperative endeavors, played best with two people sitting near each other on the couch. The studio tries to balance its desire for challenging gameplay with its concern of causing too much strife, and the automatic save points in Split Fiction come frequently.
“We build up a super hard trust between two people,” Fares said. “And then you all of a sudden, you might trash it and you might have to go against each other. There’s something interesting about that to create this kind of tension between two people.”
Earlier in the day, before work, Fares had driven his two young daughters to school. He was now readying to pick them up. Mio and Zoe, the two characters in Split Fiction, are named after his children, he said, “so I can have them with me even when I’m working.” In the game, Mio is introverted and Zoe is extroverted; unlike his children, they do not immediately care for each other’s company.
Early on, after each voices a distaste for the other’s favored writing genre, the authors are forced to jump from one moving space vehicle to another, all while under attack. The scene is backed by a sci-fi soundtrack with high-tension synths by the musician Gustaf Grefberg, who has scored all of Hazelight’s games.
Grefberg believed in Fares’s vision as soon as he saw a prototype of Brothers. “I begged Josef to work with him,” Grefberg said.
Moved by Fares’s excitement and confidence, Grefberg wanted to join a team that had so many new ideas. An annual game jam at Hazelight known as “Freaky Week” generates free-flowing ideas from across the 83-person company.
Beyond Fares’s intensity — “When Josef says he wants more action, he says it as if it’s almost like an emotional word,” Grefberg said — he is deeply philosophical. The colleagues have had wide-ranging conversations about the meaning of meditation, Zen concepts and spirituality. That does not mean Fares has lost his ambition. He may even return to filmmaking, if he can find the time.
“I believe Split Fiction could potentially be a great movie,” he said.
The game already has audiences transfixed.
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The Magic Flute review – humour, colour and plenty of drama in Opera North’s kooky take Grand Theatre, Leeds
A lively revival of James Brining’s occasionally enigmatic staging sees Soraya Mafi make an exceptional role debut as a tenacious and principled Pamina
A child’s fantasy or a skewering of grown-up power games? James Brining’s production of The Magic Flute for Opera North, first seen in 2019 and revived for the second time this season, has a foot in both camps. Initially framed as the dream of the young girl seen heading for bed during the overture – its heroes, villains, and monsters conjured up from her toy box and a fractious family life – things turn starker and darker in Sarastro’s palace, where misogyny and casual corruption undermine any cultish declamations about truth and love.
It’s still not a wholly satisfactory staging – the final tableau in particular is so enigmatic that the audience on opening night were audibly uncertain the show had ended, and forays into feminism also feel underdeveloped – but its humour and dramatic momentum are admirable, and there’s a healthy helping of kooky visual appeal courtesy of Colin Richmond’s sets and Douglas O’Connell’s video designs.
While a number of the cast return from the autumn run, there’s also a clutch of notable firsts among the principals. Tenor Trystan Llŷr Griffiths makes his Opera North debut as Tamino – a Perrault-style Prince Charming with just a touch of Lohengrin in both voice and manner – as does soprano Nazan Fikret as a gleaming, formidable Queen of the Night, her accustomed ease apparent in what has become a signature role. Soraya Mafi, meanwhile, makes an exceptional role debut as a tenacious and principled Pamina: sung with thrilling assurance and swooning lyricism, she’s a princess well worth trials by fire and ice.
Charlie Drummond, Katie Sharpe and Hazel Croft in The Magic Flute at Opera North. View image in fullscreen Sassy trio: Charlie Drummond, Katie Sharpe and Hazel Croft in The Magic Flute at Opera North. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian Fresh from last month’s Love Life, bass-baritone Justin Hopkins is an icily charismatic Sarastro, labouring a little over his lowest notes but singing with appealing richness of tone elsewhere, and Andri Björn Róbertsson remains a towering Speaker in every sense. There are welcome returns, too, from chorus members Charlie Drummond, Katie Sharpe and Hazel Croft as a sassy trio of bewimpled, lightsaber-toting Ladies, and tenor Colin Judson as a grubbily lecherous Monostatos. And, best of all among the returnees are Emyr Wyn Jones’s wildman Papageno and Pasquale Orchard’s sparky Papagena: comic timing sharpened, and accents (Welsh and New Zealand respectively) gloriously intact, they’re the double-act of dreams – and Jones’s mellifluous baritone in particular seems to have gained depth even since September.
One further debutant is arguably the making of this revival. In his first (and surely not last) appearance with the company, conductor Patrick Lange’s fleet-footed tempi and knack for colour have the Orchestra of Opera North playing at the top of their game: a Magic Flute brimming with all the light and humanity which its final chorus proclaims.
At the Grand theatre, Leeds, until 22 February. Then touring until 29 March.
笛》評論——幽默、色彩與戲劇張力並存，Opera North 在利茲大劇院的古怪演繹
詹姆斯·布里寧（James Brining）這部偶爾帶有神秘色彩的復排版本充滿活力，索拉婭·馬菲（Soraya Mafi）首次飾演堅定而有原則的帕米娜（Pamina），表現出色。
這是一場兒童的幻想，還是對成人權力遊戲的犀利解讀？詹姆斯·布里寧為 Opera North 執導的《魔笛》，最初於 2019 年首演，本季迎來第二次復排，巧妙地遊走於這兩種詮釋之間。開場序曲時，一位小女孩準備上床睡覺，而劇中的英雄、反派與怪獸似乎都來自她的玩具箱與動盪不安的家庭生活。然而，當場景轉至薩拉斯特羅（Sarastro）的宮殿時，氛圍逐漸變得嚴峻與黑暗，厭女情結與習以為常的腐敗現象顛覆了那些關於「真理與愛」的狂熱宣言。
這依然不是一部完全令人滿意的演出——尤其是最終場景過於晦澀，以至於首演之夜的觀眾在謝幕時都顯得困惑不已。此外，劇中的女性主義視角似乎也未能充分展開。然而，其幽默感與戲劇張力值得肯定，並且在柯林·里士滿（Colin Richmond）的舞台設計與道格拉斯·奧康奈爾（Douglas O’Connell）的視頻設計加持下，視覺效果充滿奇趣。
除了部分秋季演出的演員回歸之外，這次還有幾位主要角色首次亮相。男高音特里斯坦·利爾·格里菲思（Trystan Llŷr Griffiths）在 Opera North 首次飾演塔米諾（Tamino），他的形象宛如夏爾·佩羅（Perrault）筆下的白馬王子，並帶有一絲《羅恩格林》（Lohengrin）式的英氣與聲線特質。同樣首次加盟的還有女高音納桑·菲克雷特（Nazan Fikret），她以璀璨且充滿威嚴的嗓音詮釋夜后（Queen of the Night），展現出對這個標誌性角色的熟練掌控。至於索拉婭·馬菲（Soraya Mafi），她首次出演帕米娜即表現非凡——歌聲充滿自信，抒情性極具感染力，她所塑造的這位公主的確值得經歷火與冰的試煉。
活力四射的配角陣容
剛剛在上月的《愛的生活》（Love Life）中大放異彩的低男中音賈斯汀·霍普金斯（Justin Hopkins）飾演冷峻而富有魅力的薩拉斯特羅，雖然在最低音域略顯吃力，但整體音色依然溫潤動聽。而安德里·比約恩·羅伯特森（Andri Björn Róbertsson）則依舊以高大威嚴的形象詮釋發言人（Speaker）。此外，合唱團成員查理·德拉蒙德（Charlie Drummond）、凱蒂·夏普（Katie Sharpe）與海澤爾·克羅夫特（Hazel Croft）以活潑俏皮的形象再次亮相，飾演手持光劍的三位侍女，帶來妙趣橫生的表演。而男高音科林·賈德森（Colin Judson）則將莫諾斯塔托斯（Monostatos）詮釋得既骯髒又好色，讓人印象深刻。
然而，最令人驚喜的，莫過於艾米爾·溫·瓊斯（Emyr Wyn Jones）與帕斯夸萊·奧查德（Pasquale Orchard）這對夢幻搭檔——分別飾演野性十足的帕帕基諾（Papageno）與機靈可愛的帕帕蓋娜（Papagena）。兩人的喜劇節奏掌控得更加精準，並且維持了各自的威爾士與紐西蘭口音，讓角色更加鮮活。其中，瓊斯的男中音歌聲自去年九月以來似乎更增添了一份深度。
樂團與指揮的亮眼表現
本次復排能夠如此成功，還要歸功於一位新面孔——指揮帕特里克·朗格（Patrick Lange）。這是他首次與 Opera North 合作（但絕對不會是最後一次），他靈活的節奏掌控與出色的音色感知力，使 Opera North 樂團發揮出最佳狀態。這是一部充滿光輝與人性的《魔笛》，完美呼應了終場合唱所傳達的希望與光明。
Travelers Discover Vacationing In a Ghost Town Can Be Grim
KAILYN RHONE A very quiet escape
The Wall Street Journal 17 Jan 2025 Abandoned locales pitch longer stays, but visitors say that’s too spooky
For a vacation to Italy, Ramy Awad wanted an adventure. So he picked Fossa, a town deep in the middle of the country that was abandoned after a 2009 earthquake. But things quickly went sideways for the 35year-old and two friends he brought with him.
It took the group almost three days to find the town, with GPS leading them in circles. When they finally arrived late at night and got ready to settle in, they heard strange voices. They didn’t know if they were real or imagined, but nobody wanted to leave the tent to investigate. In the morning, they woke up to the sound of a drone that followed them for the next three days.
At some point, Awad wondered if he should have settled for the Leaning Tower of Pisa. “My least favorite part was getting chased by drones,” said Awad, a content creator based in New York City. “That’s some
thing I will never forget.”
Americans have been visiting ghost towns for years, but usually for an afternoon. Lately travelers have been planning extended stays in abandoned towns, seeking adventure or an opportunity to disconnect. Some are discovering that ghost towns in heavier doses can be grim.
There are more than 3,800 deserted towns across the U.S., according to Geotab, a company that provides data analytics, including GPS location. While most ghost towns remain vacant, some have restored their remaining hotels, seeking to transform them into more luxurious or familyfriendly destinations.
“We’ve got people that are staying for several days now, instead of just people wandering through, taking pictures and leaving,” said Scott Marrs, general manager of a hotel in ghost town Shaniko, Ore., that reopened in 2023 after being abandoned for 16 years.
Price is a selling point. The cost of a ghost-a-away can be anywhere from $50 to over $300 per night, depending on location. Some travelers say they quickly realized there wasn’t enough to do to fill the time or that the paranormal activity that often is a draw was a little too real.
Cimcie Nichols and her best friend were looking for a fun place to go for the Fourth of July weekend. While listening to a podcast, they heard about renting a cabin in a ghost town called Gunslinger Gulch for around $250 a night. Intrigued, they decided to check it out. “I have not done ghost tourism before but I do love spooky movies,” Nichols, 44, said of trips to locations associated with death or the supernatural. “So we thought, ‘Why don’t we spend the night?’”
When they arrived at the town on the outskirts of Anaconda, Montana, they joined a ghost hunt using a “ghost box”—a device designed to let spirits communicate through FM radio frequencies. The two were having a great time until that night. While sleeping in their 1880s-style cabins, Nichols said she felt something trying to pull her out of bed, but she couldn’t move. When she discovered the next day her friend didn’t have a similar experience, Nichols was ready to go. They stayed another night, but only because they had already paid.
“It’s like immersive theater but there’s no safe word,” said Nichols, owner of a beverage business called Hatchet Granny, from Los Angeles.
Nichols said she probably wouldn’t return because of her experience. “Once you’re in the middle of it, and it’s the real world…you might chicken out,” she said.
The owner of Gunslinger Gulch, Karen Broussard, who bought the 52-acre property with her three children, said they have traced the town’s history back to 1864, when it was a stagecoach stop for miners and prison transports. “Paranormal activity is quite normal around here,” said Broussard, who often hosts overnight investigations for guests at the ranch.
Alex Sarha and his wife, Nicole, had passed through Shaniko, the ghost town in Oregon once known as the wool capital of the world. After the town’s hotel reopened in 2023, they returned for a weekend.
Since then, they have stayed several times. During one trip, they decided to test the paranormal rumors using a ghost-hunting app. At first, Nicole was skeptical, refusing to believe in anything unusual. But when their car keys went missing overnight and later turned up hidden in Alex’s camera case, she became more open to the possibility that something strange could be happening.
“It has the creep factor, but it’s the cool creep factor,” said Alex, 58, who works for a trucking company.
Their most recent visit in October was quieter. There were no paranormal events but dining options were limited. The hotel’s cafe—the only food place in town—is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., so they had to pack their own dinners and snacks. That’s why they haven’t stayed for longer than a weekend.
Still, the couple said they enjoyed the lack of distractions and the opportunity to disconnect as the hotel has no TVs and slow Wi-Fi reception.
Awad, who went to the abandoned Italian town, said he would return in a heartbeat. His friends, however, weren’t so enthusiastic. They couldn’t shake the strange voices, one of them had a nasty encounter with sleep paralysis, and none of them liked being watched by a mysterious drone 24/7. “I would prefer for [spooky] things to happen,” said Awad. “It makes the adventure more fun, more exciting or memorable.”
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Avatars help tennis reach new audiences online
Snape Melbourne
The Guardian 15 Jan 2025
The proposition is compelling: nearlive, commentated coverage of the Australian Open, free to anyone across the world on YouTube, enhanced by a stream of comments from a likeminded online community.
Put like that, it is no surprise a project called AO Animated has taken off at this year’s grand slam tournament at Melbourne Park. The catch? The players, ball and court are all computer-generated.
That has not dissuaded hundreds of thousands of viewers from tuning in to this vision of the Australian Open, featuring video game-like avatars but using realworld data in an emerging category of sports broadcasting aimed at bringing tennis to new fans.
The technology made its debut at the grand slam last year and audiences peaked for the rendering of the men’s final, which attracted almost 800,000 views on YouTube. Interest appears to be increasing this year and matches are attracting roughly four times as many viewers as in 2024.
The director of innovation at Tennis Australia, Machar Reid, said although the technology was far from polished, it was developing quickly. “Limb tracking is complex. You’ve got 12 cameras trying to process the silhouette of the human in real time, and stitch that together across 29 points in the skeleton,” he said. “It’s not as seamless as it could be – we don’t have fingers – but in time you can begin to imagine a world where that comes.”
The data from sensors on the court is fed into a system that creates the graphic reproduction with a two-minute delay. The same commentary and arena noises that would otherwise be heard on TV – as well as interstitial vision direct from the broadcast – are synced with the virtual representation of the match.
“It’s that community that engages with animated or virtual or gaming products, that’s our intuition, right?” Reid said of the target market. “There’s an immediate kind of blending of those two worlds and that’s instinctively where we’re positioning it for the moment.”
Similar projects have been tried in other sports, including an NFL broadcast with an animated Simpsons theme in December. Reid said the motivations were around attracting a new category of fans to sport, supported by a tech-engaged online community.
He hopes broadcasters will one day adopt the technology alongside the live action. The project has been stewarded by Reid and driven by Mark Riedy, an engineer who has worked on video game crossovers in his time at Tennis Australia.
It is part of a push into technology by the sport’s top body in Australia, which includes media and health startup partnerships and in some cases investment.
“We always try and innovate the fan experience,” Reid said. “Here’s a way through the world of broadcast that we can try and personalise the content in different ways, and present a different offering that ultimately we’d love to see the broadcasters pick up.”
Tennis Australia has established a A$30m (£15.2m) venture-capital fund called AO Ventures that has drawn investment from the Wollemi Capital Group of the Tesla chair, Robyn Denholm, and the Gnanalingam family, who own Queens Park Rangers.
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As a UK resident employed in Hong Kong with income below the National Insurance (NI) threshold for the 2023-24 tax year, you generally wouldn’t need to pay UK National Insurance (NI) contributions on your income, provided that your earnings don’t exceed the Lower Earnings Limit (LEL) for NI contributions.
However, there are a few things to consider:
Voluntary Contributions: You can choose to make voluntary NI contributions if you want to protect your State Pension or qualify for certain benefits. This is particularly relevant if you’re earning below the NI threshold and you want to ensure that you continue to build up your National Insurance record. These voluntary contributions are typically paid under Class 2 or Class 3, depending on your situation.
Class 2 contributions are available for self-employed individuals and may be available to you if you meet specific criteria.
Even if your income doesn’t require compulsory contributions, making voluntary Class 3 contributions can help you maintain your entitlement to a full State Pension.
State Pension Impact: If you have low or no NI contributions for an extended period, it could impact your entitlement to the full State Pension in the future. The full State Pension typically requires 35 qualifying years of NI contributions. If you don’t meet this threshold, you may receive a reduced State Pension. Voluntary contributions can help fill any gaps in your NI record, ensuring you maintain a full entitlement.
International Considerations: Since you’re working in Hong Kong, it’s important to check if you’re covered by a social security agreement between the UK and Hong Kong (which typically protects your NI contributions if you were to work abroad). If such an agreement exists, you may be able to continue contributing to the UK system or have your contributions from Hong Kong counted towards your UK State Pension, depending on the terms of the agreement.
In summary, if you are below the NI threshold and are concerned about your State Pension, it could be worth paying voluntary contributions. If you’re unsure, it’s always a good idea to contact HMRC directly or consult with a tax advisor to ensure you're making the right decision for your future pension and benefits.
Yes, you can pay Class 3 voluntary National Insurance contributions at any time, but there are a few important things to keep in mind:
Deadline for Paying: While you can make voluntary contributions at any time, you can usually only pay for up to 6 years in arrears. For example, for the 2023-24 tax year, you could pay contributions for previous years, but you'd typically have until April 5, 2029, to do so. After that, you'd lose the ability to make payments for that tax year.
Payment Method: You can pay Class 3 contributions through various methods, including direct debit, bank transfer, or online payment. It's a good idea to contact HMRC for the most convenient and updated payment options.
Impact on State Pension: The sooner you make contributions, the sooner they will count toward your State Pension and other benefits. If you're concerned about any gaps in your National Insurance record, it’s advisable to make the payments sooner rather than later to avoid missing out on building up a full record.
If you want to ensure you're making the right payments, it's a good idea to check with HMRC to verify your eligibility and confirm the specific steps for making a payment.
The main difference between paying Class 3 voluntary National Insurance (NI) contributions now versus waiting until 2028 is the impact on your State Pension and potentially other benefits. Here's a breakdown of the key points:
Paying Now (2023-2024):
Paying Later (2028):
If you're concerned about having a full State Pension and maintaining your benefits, paying now would be a better strategy, as it locks in the current contribution rate, helps build up your qualifying years, and avoids any potential price increases in future years. Waiting until 2028 might cost you more and could limit the time you have to ensure a full entitlement.
UK property sellers ‘make lowest return in a decade
Butler
The Guardian 13 Jan 2025
Sellers in England and Wales made less than £100,000 profit on the sale of their home last year, or 42% – the lowest return in a decade – according to the estate agent Hamptons.
It was the second annual fall in a row in terms of cash profit after the market reached a peak in 2022 when the average gain hit almost £113,000 compared with £91,820 last year. The average cash return in London fell by the most – dropping below £200,000 for the first time since at least 2015.
Londoners still made the most on their sales at £172,350 on average, according to Hamptons, followed by sellers in the south-east and east of England, while sellers in the northeast gained the least at £38,220.
Aneisha Beveridge, the head of research at Hamptons, said profits on the sale of properties typically funded a step up the ladder but “smaller and slower equity gains over recent years, particularly for flat owners, has made this more challenging”.
Beveridge added: “Sellers in 2024 generally experienced less price growth than those who sold during the pandemic. Property prices rose 43% across the country between 2015 and 2024, compared with 64% between 2013 and 2022, just before mortgage rates spiked. On top of this, households have had to grapple with higher mortgage and transaction costs, such as stamp duty, making it more costly to move.”
Once all those factors were taken into account, 9% of sellers in England and Wales sold for less than they paid, rising to an average 14% in London – putting the capital on a par with the north-east as the most likely location to sell for a loss. In 2016, just 2% of London sellers sold at a loss, compared with 32% in the north-east.
Merthyr Tydfil in southern Wales replaced Barking and Dagenham as the local authority where sellers made the biggest percentage gains in 2024 at 68%. It was followed by Shepway in Kent and Trafford, Greater Manchester, with just two London boroughs appearing in the top 10 list in 2024, compared with all 10 being in the capital in both 2019 and 2020.
High transaction costs are causing households to move less often, with only 34% of sellers having owned the property for less than five years.
House sellers received more than double the gains in percentage terms than those who sold a flat last year. In 2024 the average house sold for 47% (or £102,500) more than its purchase price, having been owned for nine years. The average flat sold for 23% (or £48,050) more, having been bought 8.8 years ago.
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UK may have no choice but to raise tax
Guardian 13 Jan 2025
It seems unlikely that Rachel Reeves would have had “cut back public spending plans” on her list of new year resolutions – but by the end of a rocky week, it is clear she has the red pen ready if bond markets fail to settle down.
At one level, this makes perfect logical sense: the chancellor has promised not to raise taxes in the near future, after a whopping £40bn increase announced in October; and her fiscal rules are, as her chief secretary, Darren Jones, told MPs, “non- negotiable”.
Last week’s market moves, which drove 30-year gilt yields to their highest level since 1998, above 5%, probably had more to do with the chaos to come in the US than Reeves’s budget plans.
But whatever the cause, if sustained, the jump in yields will push up the interest bill on the government’s vast debt pile. And that would jeopardise Reeves’s hopes of meeting her fiscal rules – specifically, the “current budget balance” one – by the end of the five-year forecast period.
There is no doubt that the UK’s fiscal position is unenviable. Even before the latest market panic, the Office for Budget Responsibility was expecting the Treasury to be spending more than £122bn on debt interest payments a year by 2029-30.
Take all this into account and it may seem a reasonable response to impose a tougher spending squeeze in the later years of the upcoming spending review than Reeves sketched out in the autumn. It is certainly the action government officials have been pointing to, alongside dark hints about the benefits bill and the need for public sector pay restraint.
Yet as the Resolution Foundation pointed out on Friday, kneejerk spending cuts are not just digits on a spreadsheet but have material implications – see last year’s decision to scrap the winter fuel allowance for the vast majority of pensioners, which was also made with fretful markets in mind.
The thinktank warned Reeves against “taking permanent and concrete policy decisions with real-life impacts on households, in reaction to bond market movements that may turn out to be temporary”, urging her to “keep calm and carry on”.
Doing nothing at all could rile the gods of the bond markets – risky for any chancellor, as Kwasi Kwarteng can attest.
But perhaps there is a sensible halfway house that involves promising action at the autumn budget, should borrowing costs fail to come down, rather than fine-tuning on the basis of a market tantrum.
If there must be an adjustment, it has to be worth asking whether it should happen through taxation rather than spending.
As the Institute for Fiscal Studies never tires of pointing out – to the Treasury’s irritation – the projections for the final years of the spending review period already look eye-wateringly tight, with growth of only 1.3% a year pencilled in after 2025-26.
Reeves is right to focus on the need to drive out government waste and inefficiency and demand higher productivity from public services. There’s nothing wrong with promising what she calls an “iron grip” on the public purse.
Voters have the right to demand their taxes are well spent.
But also: look around you. Schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, potholed roads, crappy bus links – so many aspects of the public realm are broken. Reeves knows about this: in her budget speech, as she set aside extra funding for schools, she talked about being taught in mobile classrooms in the 1990s, after long years of underinvestment by the Tories – an experience I remember, too.
She has changed the way the debt rule is calculated, to make some space for much-needed capital spending, including for crumbling classrooms. But new public infrastructure is no use without the day-to-day spending needed to staff and run it.
Stronger-than-expected growth may yet come through and save the day. But, ultimately, Labour may have to acknowledge that (even more) tax rises are needed. It would be politically painful, but so are all the other options.
If Reeves ends up unable to spend enough to improve the UK’s broken public services in a way that registers with the public as the “change” they voted for, there is a risk that Labour ultimately loses the next election, boxed in by the promises it made to win the last one.
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Fears of radicalisation of older people with no Meta factchecked
Ben Quinn
The Guardian 13 Jan 2025
Experts fear the decision by Meta to drop professional factcheckers from Facebook will exacerbate so-called boomer radicalisation in the UK.
Even before what Keir Starmer described as “far-right riots” in England last summer, alarm bells were ringing amid fears that older people were even more susceptible to misinformation and radicalisation than younger “digital natives”.
Suspects were generally older than those charged in the 2011 unrest, according to a Guardian analysis of hundreds of defendants that found that as much as 35% were aged in their 40s and above. But after Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that Meta would replace factcheckers with a crowdsourced system and recommend more political content, there is new concern about the potential radicalisation risks on Facebook, the social media platform of choice for older people.
“It’s clearly a retrograde step that comes with all sorts of risks,” said Dr Sara Wilford of De Montfort University, a lead researcher on a pioneering European-wide project called Smidge (Social Media Narratives: Addressing Extremism in Middle Age).
“X might be the model for the crowd-sourced ‘community notes’ approach that Meta seems to be embracing, instead of professional moderators, but it just won’t work in the same way with Facebook,” she said. “I’m concerned that, for middleaged Facebook users who risk being exposed to extremist content, it will be even harder to discern the truth.”
The anti-extremism campaign group Hope Not Hate said it feared that Zuckerberg’s announcement was a prelude to far-right figures and groups such as Tommy Robinson and Britain First being allowed back on to Facebook.
In terms of perpetrators of crime, young men still account for the majority of culprits. Yet before the riots, discussion about “boomer radicalisation” had already been sparked by cases such as that of Darren Osborne, who was 48 when he was jailed in 2018 for his lethal terror attack at a mosque in Finsbury Park, north London, after – in the words of the judge – being “rapidly radicalised” online
With regard to the riots, Hope Not Hate says Facebook was used in a particular way by the far right. “Telegram was for whipping up the most extreme hate or sometimes plotting and planning, while X was used to disseminate that message,” said Joe Mulhall, the group’s director of research. “Facebook was then often where you would see a group creating hyper-local targeted content … We’ve also seen over the last three to four years that anti-migrant protest Facebook groups were really fundamental in organising the targeting of asylum centres.”
Wilford said her research suggested some older Facebook users were vulnerable for reasons including a reluctance to factcheck.
Britain’s seismic political events of recent years have transformed the Facebook experience for many. Brexit, Trump’s 2016 win and the Covid pandemic acted as a catalyst for engagement with more extreme forms of rightwing politics via Facebook, according to Dr Natalie-Anne Hall, a lecturer at Cardiff university and author of Brexit, Facebook, and Transnational Right-Wing Populism.
“Facebook is a key site for algorithmically driven encounters with these harmful ideas within people’s everyday practices of social media use,” she said. “Meta should be doing more, not less, to combat this harm.”
When asked to comment, Meta pointed to its recent blogpost that said its “complex systems” to manage content had “gone too far”.
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Cost of housing makes UK’s poor worse off than in western Europe
Sarah Butler
The Guardian 13 Jan 2025
Low-to-middle income families in Britain are much poorer than their counterparts in western Europe because of sky-high housing costs, according to analysis by the Resolution Foundation.
The thinktank said that while prices in the UK are 8% higher than the average in the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), less well off families are more affected by the cost of housing, which is 44% higher in the UK than the OECD average.
Higher housing costs more than offset the benefit in the UK of food, another major area of spending for those on lower incomes, being 12% cheaper than the average in those developed countries.
When lower-income families’ tendency to spend more on necessities and less on luxuries is factored in, German families are 21% or £2,300 a year better off than their UK equivalents and the gap with Dutch families is even wider at 39%.
Simon Pittaway, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “Britain’s housing costs crisis is a major driver of child poverty, and contributes to poor families being £2,300 worse off than their German counterparts. The crisis needs to be tackled urgently – from building more affordable homes to providing better support for low-income renters.”
Labour has promised to tackle the housing crisis with a pledge to build 1.5m homes over the parliament, promising to liberalise the planning regime and make it easier to buy land for building. However, experts say the plan will be hard to realise.
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Almost all violent or sexual offences unsolved in crime hotspots last year
Josh Halliday Michael Goodier
The Guardian 13 Jan 2025
Victims are being “let down time and time again” by police, a minister has said, as almost every violent or sexual offence went unsolved in hundreds of Britain’s crime hotspots last year.
Nearly 1.9m violent or sexual crimes in England and Wales were closed without a suspect being caught or charged in the year to June 2024 – about 89% of all offences given an outcome, official figures show.
Less than one in 10 cases were resolved in 611 neighbourhoods with the highest levels of these offences, according to a Guardian analysis, as growing numbers of victims withdraw from investigations after losing faith in securing justice.
Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said: “It is completely unacceptable that fewer and fewer violent and sexual crimes are being solved, with more victims being let down time and time again.
“The severity of these numbers prove why violence against women and girls is a national emergency and that is why we have set out our unprecedented mission to halve it in a decade.”
Only 11% of the violent and sexual offence cases in England and Wales were closed after a suspect was caught or charged in the year to June 2024, about half the proportion seven years earlier.
There were stark differences in the proportion of violent and sexual crimes going unsolved across the country, with big urban forces faring far worse than those parts of England and Wales with fewer offences.
Only 6.9% of violent or sexual crimes were solved in the West Midlands in the year ending in June, and 7% were solved in the Metropolitan police area, according to Home Office figures. That compares with 19.2% in Lancashire and 18% in Cumbria.
About 10% of such offences led to a charge or out-of-court outcome in Greater Manchester and Merseyside in the year to June, compared with about 17% in Cheshire, Durham and Humberside.
Violent and sexual crimes include offences such as grievous bodily harm, sexual assault, stalking, harassment and rape.
The leader of Britain’s police chiefs, Gavin Stephens, has conceded that victims face a “disparity” of policing across the country and backed calls for a “major shake-up” of how the country’s 43 forces operate.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has promised to end a “postcode lottery” of policing, and in November announced a new body that would coordinate functions such as forensics, IT and the use of drones and helicopters. More details are expected within weeks when a white paper is published.
Helen Newlove, the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, said in response to the Guardian investigation that people were now questioning whether to report even the most serious crimes as so many investigations end without justice.
Lady Newlove, whose husband Garry was killed by a gang of teenagers in 2007, said: “When reporting a crime, victims place their trust in the justice system to seek truth and deliver justice, knowing that their reports are taken seriously no matter who they are or where they live. Yet, too often, investigations are closed with no resolution, leaving victims feeling unheard and unsupported.
“Victim confidence in policing remains frail, with many questioning whether reporting a crime will lead to justice. It is up to police leaders to turn this around.”
Newlove has warned that victims are increasingly withdrawing from investigations as it takes years to bring perpetrators to court. As many as 60% of all rape investigations are closed before prosecution because the alleged victim no longer supports police action, up from 43% nine years earlier, according to official data.
Separate CPS figures show the number of alleged rape victims pulling out of prosecutions before trial has more than doubled in five years. The average rape investigation takes 423 days – compared with 55 days for violence or 28 days for theft.
The proportion of violent or sexual offence crimes solved rose slightly last year, to 11%, compared with 10% a year earlier. But solve rates remain lower than before the Covid-19 pandemic: 16% were solved in 2018 and 13% the following year.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said it was vitally important that victims of crime felt able to contact police. It said there had been a cultural shift in the way police forces approached sexual offence investigations in the last two and a half years and that there had been a 38% increase in rape suspects being charged in the year to December 2023, compared with the previous year.
The NPCC added: “However, we have much more to do. Through listening to victims, we know that disadvantage, discrimination and contextual incompetence are still being felt. We are determined to make lasting positive change to better protect victims and hold more perpetrators to justice.”
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High cost of groceries
13 Jan 2025
One in six workers are skipping meals to make ends meet – TUC survey
As many as one in six workers in Britain are skipping meals regularly to make ends meet as households remain under pressure from the higher cost of groceries, energy and other essentials.
Highlighting the impact of the cost of living crisis on working households, figures from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) showed 17% of full- or part-time workers had skipped a meal to reduce their spending in the last three months.
According to a survey of more than 2,500 working adults by YouGov in the week before Christmas, carried out on behalf of the trade unions’ umbrella group, as many as one in 10 said they had skipped a meal every day or most days.
The Post Office said separately that cash withdrawals at its branches topped £1bn in December, the first time on record that this has happened in a single month, as people relied on cash to manage budgets. About £979m of personal cash withdrawals were made, and £35m of business cash withdrawals.
“Our figures demonstrate that millions of people clearly still rely on cash to manage their budget on a day-to-day basis,” said Ross Borkett, a banking director at the Post Office.
“We saw significant amounts of cash withdrawn every day in the run-up to Christmas Day, highlighting just how vital it is for people to be able to withdraw the amount of cash that they need, to the penny if they require, at our branches.”
The TUC said its findings showed the legacy of “14 years of Tory stagnation” and highlighted the importance of Labour’s plans to strengthen workers’ rights as part of the most radical shake-up of employment law in a generation.
The intervention comes as Keir Starmer’s government faces mounting pressure to find ways to boost the economy after a week of turbulence in the financial markets sent the UK’s borrowing costs to the highest levels in decades.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has asked her cabinet colleagues to draft plans for improving growth amid concerns that the rise in borrowing costs, alongside a weak outlook for the economy and stubborn inflation, could force her to break her own fiscal rules.
Reeves is understood to have held meetings with business leaders last week to underscore her priority to “work in partnership” with companies. A senior Treasury source said companies had also been asked to submit their growth policy ideas, before the chancellor gives a major speech this month.
Reeves is also believed to be exploring cuts to public spending among options to balance the books, amid warnings that the sharp rise in borrowing costs could sweep away all of a £10bn buffer kept in reserve at the autumn budget.
Union leaders are fearful that the government could face pressure from industry groups to water down the package of workers’ rights reforms as a “cost free” option for helping businesses to navigate a perilous economic outlook.
Business leaders have stepped up their lobbying on the issue in recent weeks, complaining they have been treated like a “cash cow” since Labour came to power.
Companies have warned that jobs and growth will be hit by the chancellor’s £25bn increase in employer national insurance contributions and rise in the minimum wage announced at the budget.
Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has warned Labour to “stick to its guns” on the reforms to workers’ rights, which include banning zero-hours contracts and introducing protections on day one of a job.
Union leaders believe raising employment rights would make Britain’s economy more productive by handing more job security to workers, while also putting more money in their pockets to spend on goods and services.
“After 14 years of Tory chaos and stagnation, we urgently need to boost living standards and to get more money into people’s pockets. This is vital for workers and for local economies too,” Nowak said. “We cannot continue with the same broken status quo.”
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