I’m a bot that provides summary for articles on supported sites!

If you need help, contact @rikudou@lemmings.world.

Official community: !autotldr@lemmings.world.

The source code is at https://github.com/RikudouSage/LemmyAutoTldrBot.

  • 0 Posts
  • 14.6K Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: August 1st, 2023

help-circle
  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    “They have these ridiculous eyes that sense so many things at once,” says Sam Powell, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.

    “That’s important for an animal that makes its living smashing and spearing things,” says Roy Caldwell, a mantis shrimp specialist in the integrative biology department at the University of California, Berkeley.

    But some surfaces — say, the scale of a fish, or a pair of polarized sunglasses — have a way of changing the light they reflect or transmit, organizing it so it moves in a single plane.

    This ability to detect and visually capitalize on polarized light “is very common in animals,” says Thomas Cronin, a research biologist and professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

    Inspired by the mantis shrimp’s superlative eyesight, the group of researchers are collaborating to build polarization cameras that could be used to help diagnose and remove cancerous tumors.

    One day, Gruev believes, polarization imaging will be part of every surgical oncologist’s toolkit, bringing the power of a mantis shrimp’s eye to the operating room.


    The original article contains 1,060 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    A prime mover behind the Shirion Collective, a conspiracy-minded, pro-Israel disinformation network seeking to shape public opinion about the Gaza conflict in the US, Australia and the UK, is a tech entrepreneur named Daniel Linden living in Florida who co-wrote a guidebook for OnlyFans users, the Guardian can reveal.

    Heidi Beirich, co-founder and chief strategy officer at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said of Linden’s Shirion campaigning that his apparent “grifting” is common among extremists, “but his ideology seems very confused”.

    The Shirion Collective is an online operation that since late 2023 has appeared on platforms including X, Telegram and GoFundMe to coordinate the spread of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda, and the harassment of pro-Palestinian protesters in the west.

    The move attracted the attention of critics including Representative Ilhan Omar, who spoke out in Congress against Shirion’s screening of the footage to the University of California, Los Angeles protest encampment.

    And since late last year, it has claimed to have developed an AI technology, Project Maccabee, whose goal it has described as “Hitting and creating AGI for the PROTECTION and survival of our people”, and “EXPOSING these putrid antisemites”.

    On Amazon, Linden is credited as co-author of a Spanish-language ebook whose title translates as Master OnlyFans in just 7 days!, and whose blurb promises to show readers techniques to build “an account that will give you an average of 2,000 dollars a month”.


    The original article contains 1,975 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The study was submitted to the Journal of High-Energy Physics 10 days before Prof Hawking died.

    In the 1980s, the Cambridge scientist, along with US physicist James Hartle developed a new idea about the beginning of the Universe.

    Instead, the Hartle-Hawking idea used a different theory called quantum mechanics to explain how the Universe arose from nothingness.

    As physicists analysed the idea it emerged that it carried with it the implication that the Big Bang would create not just one universe - but an endless supply.

    It has solved the puzzle by drawing on new mathematical techniques developed to study another esoteric branch of physics called string theory.

    Mind-bending as these ideas are, they will be of real help to physicists as they develop a more complete theory of how the Universe came into being, according to Prof Hertog.


    The original article contains 637 words, the summary contains 139 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Sadly, Biden’s stiff, halting, withered delivery, coupled with his slack-jawed expression and frozen stare when not trying to form sentences, made him seem not just old but on the decline.

    I have a hard time seeing how this could happen, unless Jill Biden, along with others of his closest and most trusted advisors, and Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries, all teamed up and told him he must exit the race.

    The only people I can think of as possible nominees are Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Gavin Newsom and (my personal favorite) Sherrod Brown.

    Yet, if it’s not Biden, a failure to nominate Harris might upset lots of Black people, women and younger voters.

    All of the national, state and local party machinery, advertising, and internet capacity now designed to get out the vote for Biden would have to be totally redesigned.

    But he can also reveal something else, as he did at the debate – a man who in many respects seems older than 81 years, who has trouble walking and speaking, and who, at least in those times and moments, doesn’t seem to stand much chance of being re-elected president of the United States – even when his opponent is a twice-impeached convicted felon, pathological liar and dangerous sociopath.


    The original article contains 705 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    From the rules governing the games to the music playing on the sound system to the colour of the carpet underfoot, casinos are carefully designed with the sole aim of getting customers to part with as much money as possible.

    Although the industry makes more than a hundred billion dollars each year, it still works hard to crack down on cheats, immediately alerting law enforcement officials to suspected wrongdoing.

    Most gambling houses have hundreds, even thousands, of cameras, many of which range 360 degrees, monitored live by security departments, some of which utilise face detection software to track suspicious or previously-barred players.

    He was initially designing the space for older men, with the aesthetic taking on a dimly-lit clubhouse feel, but then he discovered that the most frequent players of high-limit slots were in fact female.

    Fast music, red lights and pleasing aromas have all been shown to increase casino profits, possibly because they heighten the perceived level of excitement.

    As gaming author Frank Scoblete explains in his video tutorials, casinos anywhere can take measures to hinder card counters, such as limiting the amount of money they can bet.


    The original article contains 1,250 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    A Panamanian court has acquitted all 28 people charged with money laundering in connection with the Panama Papers scandal, concluding a trial that began in April.The secret financial documents were leaked in 2016, revealing how some of the world’s richest and most powerful people use tax havens to hide their wealth.Among those exonerated were Jurgen Mossack and the late Ramon Fonseca, founder of Mossack Fonseca, the defunct law firm at the centre of the scandal.Judge Baloisa Marquinez said the evidence considered by the court was “not sufficient” to determine the criminal responsibility of the defendants.During the trial, the prosecution sought the maximum sentence of 12 years for money laundering for both Mr Mossack and Mr Fonseca, who died in hospital in May.Both Mr Mossack and Mr Fonseca denied they, their firm or their employees had acted illegally.The trial, which took place in Panama City, lasted 85 hours, took testimony from 27 witnesses and considered over 50 pieces of documentary evidence, according to local news reports.

    After an extended period of deliberation, the judge said evidence collected from Mossack Fonseca’s servers had not been gathered in line with due process and dropped all criminal charges against the defendants.The biggest data leak in history, the Panama Papers, saw 11 million documents released to the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with an international team of journalists.In 2017, Mossack Fonseca said the firm had been the victim of a computer hack and that the information leaked was being misrepresented.Foreign Secretary David Cameron, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Argentinian football star Lionel Messi were among those whose affairs came under scrutiny following the leak.In total the data revealed links to 12 current or former heads of state and government, including dictators accused of embezzling money from their own countries.


    The original article contains 295 words, the summary contains 295 words. Saved 0%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The judge noted that other evidence in the Panama Papers case “was not sufficient and conclusive to determine the criminal responsibility of the accused.”

    “We feel satisfied in the midst of mixed emotions, because many lives were affected along the way,” Guillermina Mc Donald, who was the defense attorney for Mossack and Fonseca, told The Associated Press.

    Judge Balaoisa Marquínez had decided to combine the Panama Papers case with another known as “Operation Car Wash,” a major anti-corruption investigation that began in Brazil.

    On Friday, she ruled that in the car wash case, “it was not possible to determine the entry of money from illicit sources, coming from Brazil, into the Panamanian financial system with the purpose of hiding, concealing, disguising or helping to evade the legal consequences of the preceding crime.”

    The investigation in Brazil began in 2014, with the Mossack & Fonseca firm later coming under scrutiny after 11 million financial documents tied to the company were leaked.

    The repercussions of the leak were widespread: it led to the resignation of a prime minister in Iceland and brought scrutiny to now former leaders of Argentina and Ukraine, Chinese politicians and Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others.


    The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 51%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Didn’t Harris flame out in the last Democratic presidential primary, leaving just in time to avoid an embarrassing loss in her home state, California?

    But to win a primary you must thread the needle of introducing yourself to the base of the party while burnishing the case for your ideas and dissing the talents of your rivals, all while keeping your options open, because your opponents are also your future surrogates and allies.

    She can use her true superpower: She will be a relentless prosecutor of the very clear political case against Donald John Trump, a felon, a man found liable for sexual abuse, an inveterate liar, a demagogue, a threat to our democracy and to our Constitution.

    Unlike Trump’s previous female debate rival, Hillary Clinton, nary a whiff of scandal has besmirched Harris.

    As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the first Trump administration she drew blood with her tough, calm and deliberate questions, managing to score viral moments without seeming like a theatrical showboater.

    It would have been satisfying to watch her face off against Trump on Thursday, not just for progressives but also for suburban women who wanted to see a full-throated fight for their reproductive rights, an issue on which Harris has been especially — and passionately — outspoken and Biden, a devout Catholic, has been more muted.


    The original article contains 1,160 words, the summary contains 224 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    “This was like a champion boxer who gets in the ring past his prime and needs his corner to throw in the towel,” said a Democratic lawmaker, adding that he meant Biden should exit the race.

    The options for a switch are limited: If the president doesn’t choose to leave of his own volition, there would have to be a revolt among Democratic National Convention delegates, the vast majority of whom were elected on their pledge to nominate Biden.

    The fear among these Democrats is that the version of Biden that showed up to the debate — one bearing a likeness to the caricature Trump and his allies have portrayed of a man unequipped for the job — cannot win in November.

    The last time a president who was eligible to run for re-election didn’t appear on the November ballot was in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson, facing certain defeat in the Democratic primaries, chose not to seek a full second term.

    “I look forward to being in Chicago when Gavin Newsom is nominated from the floor,” a Democratic strategist said after the first 20 minutes of the debate, adding about Biden: “Should have gone on offense on abortion.

    “If we lose this election to Trump because we were too afraid to admit we were wrong about his age or too worried of an open convention, we can no longer call our party the defenders of democracy.”


    The original article contains 929 words, the summary contains 234 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The Biden administration said this week that it opposed gender-affirming surgery for minors, the most explicit statement to date on the subject from a president who has been a staunch supporter of transgender rights.

    The White House announcement was sent to The New York Times on Wednesday in response to an article reporting that staff in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, had urged an influential international transgender health organization to remove age minimums for surgery from its treatment guidelines for minors.

    Levine shared her view with her staff that publishing the proposed lower ages for gender transition surgeries was not supported by science or research, and could lead to an onslaught of attacks on the transgender community,” an H.H.S.

    The Texas Supreme Court on Friday upheld a state law banning all gender-affirming medical treatment for minors.

    The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a challenge — brought in part by the Biden administration — to a Tennessee law that bans treatments including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery for transgender minors.

    In contrast, Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, announced a plan in a video posted in 2023 on Truth Social to pass a federal law banning all gender-affirming care for minors, which he described as “child sexual mutilation.”


    The original article contains 817 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    It was the armoured vehicles circling the Plaza Murillo - the normally tranquil central square in historic downtown La Paz – that initially set Bolivians on edge on Wednesday afternoon.

    By 2.30pm, a small tank was repeatedly ramming the gates of the neoclassical building known as Palacio Quemado until troops forced their way in and, in an extraordinary scene, the coup leader – disgruntled former army chief Juan José Zuñiga – faced off against the president, Luis Arce.

    It lasted just three hours, during which time Arce rallied Bolivians to “mobilise” to defend democracy, apparently defused the mutiny in a one-on-one confrontation and appointed a new military command which ordered mutinous troops back to their barracks.

    Just before he was detained on Wednesday, the alleged plotter Zuñiga sowed seeds of doubt, telling journalists – without providing evidence – that Arce had ordered him to stage a sham coup in a bid to boost the president’s flagging popularity.

    In Arce’s defence, Deisy Choque, a legislator for the governing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, warned that the coup might have been successful “had it not been for the position taken by the president, the ministers and Bolivian society as a whole in immediately repudiating these actions”.

    Amid plummeting gas exports and dwindling foreign reserves, there are growing protests over rising food prices and the scarcity of fuel and US dollars, as well as deep divisions within his political party.


    The original article contains 855 words, the summary contains 237 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    When Mr. Duterte left office, his administration said 6,252 people had been killed by security forces — all described by officials as “drug suspects.” Rights groups say the overall death toll stands at roughly 30,000.

    Mr. Duterte is unlikely to face any consequences from the congressional hearings; this week he was asked to testify before the panel but through a spokesman declined to do so, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

    That has left many looking overseas, to the International Criminal Court, which is investigating the drug war and is expected to be nearing some action against Mr. Duterte.

    Mr. Duterte burnished his law-and-order credentials as the mayor of Davao, a city in the south where hundreds are thought to have been killed by gunmen linked to the authorities, acts that the I.C.C.

    On a recent Thursday, Dr. Fortun was trying to piece together what could have happened to Jay-Ar Jumola, a 21-year-old construction worker killed by unidentified men in an alleyway in the city of Navotas in June 2019.

    He was found with masking tape around his head and a sign on his body that said, “Don’t imitate me, I’m a drug pusher.” Nearly five years later, Angelo Ocdin, 28, was shot in the back by four men in Manila’s Tondo district.


    The original article contains 1,450 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    But the classic and in some respects parallel case was Reagan’s 40 years ago, as he faced Democratic nominee Walter Mondale in Louisville, Ky.

    Reagan was comfortably ahead in the polls that fall, cruising toward reelection, even if his age of 73 made him older than any previous president in history.

    Cannon noted the staff had limited that document to 25 pages after first lady Nancy Reagan insisted her husband not be “overworked” prior to the debate.

    The Wall Street Journal ran a headline stack asking: Fitness Issue – New Question in Race: Is Oldest U.S President Now Showing His Age?

    The two candidates met in Kansas City, Mo., where most of the evening was pro forma until one of the moderators, Henry Trewhitt of The Baltimore Sun, noted that Reagan staff had observed the president was “tired” on the night of the Louisville round.

    In 2012, Obama easily cleared the hurdle erected by his first-debate shortcomings much the same way simply by showing up and turning in a solid evening in the second debate with Romney.


    The original article contains 1,543 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    As negotiations to end the long legal brawl between Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and the United States reached a critical point this spring, prosecutors presented his lawyers with a choice so madcap that a person involved thought it sounded like a line from a Monty Python movie.

    In April, a lawyer with the Justice Department’s national security division broke the impasse with a sly workaround: How about an American courtroom that wasn’t actually inside mainland America?

    By early 2024, leaders in Australia, including Kevin Rudd, the ambassador to the United States, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, began pressuring their American counterparts to reach a deal — not so much out of solidarity with Mr. Assange, or support for his actions, but because he had spent so much time in captivity.

    But after a short period of internal discussions, senior officials rejected that approach, drafting a somewhat tougher counteroffer: Mr. Assange would plead to a single felony count, conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information, a more serious offense that encompassed his interactions with Ms. Manning.

    Instead, his initial refusal to plead guilty to a felony was rooted in his reluctance to appear in an American courtroom, out of fear of being detained indefinitely or physically attacked in the United States, Ms. Robinson said in the TV interview.

    Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition for the Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for bringing criminal cases in England and Wales, believes the ruling might have “triggered” an acceleration of the plea deal.


    The original article contains 1,459 words, the summary contains 254 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    On Thursday, in their ruling halting the Biden administration’s plan to limit ozone pollution from drifting into other states, Supreme Court justices repeatedly, accidentally referenced “nitrous oxide” — a.k.a.

    The decisions, taken together, offer a perfect representation of the current Supreme Court: Our country is being led by an all-powerful, undemocratic institution that is, in many ways, a complete joke — in addition to being simply corrupt.

    Americans, broadly-speaking, appear to recognize the court isn’t simply calling balls and strikes, as Chief Justice John Roberts once pledged to do.

    “Is a $100 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card for a trash collector wrongful?” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the court’s opinion.

    As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, the corruption statute “was not designed to apply to teachers accepting fruit baskets, soccer coaches getting gift cards, or newspaper delivery guys who get a tip at Christmas.”

    Justices haven’t issued their ruling yet on former President Donald Trump’s claims to an expansive, perpetual immunity shield from prosecution.


    The original article contains 810 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    In a special illustrated feature, Ben Platts-Mills explains why Albert Einstein and other eminent physicists refused to believe black holes could be real.

    Overcome by their own gravity, they collapse beyond any sustainable condition of matter to form a sudden, exponential crunch: an implosion so absolute that it punctures spacetime and unstrings in its vicinity everything we know as physics.

    While some scientists had speculated about the existence of similar objects called “dark stars” more than 200 years ago, it was Einstein’s theory of general relativity that laid the ground for understanding how black holes could be created.

    Its gravitation would become ever more powerful as it insatiably devoured surrounding masses until, finally, it reached the point of “singularity”, a moment where the laws of physics break down, and time and space cease to exist.

    In the same lecture, Chandrasekhar quoted the physicist Werner Heisenberg talking to Einstein about the experience of scientific revelation: “You must have felt it too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.”

    The story’s narrator mentions that the local Norwegians “almost universally entertained” the notion “that in the centre of the channel of the Maelström is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part”.


    The original article contains 3,343 words, the summary contains 223 words. Saved 93%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The Joint Program Executive Office Armaments & Ammunition says the MK-84 bomb, which the US used extensively in the Gulf War from 1990-1991, has a blast and fragmentation mechanism and is ideally suited for strikes on “buildings, rail yards, and lines of communication.”

    “The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover,” John Chappell, an advisor on legal and policy issues at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, previously told CNN.

    Tom Karako, a weapons expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the agency that this clearly demonstrated “a substantial level of support from the United States for our Israeli allies.”

    While the full extent of US weapons shipments to Israel remains unclear, a senior Biden administration official recently confirmed that the US has delivered $6.5 billion in security assistance since October 7.

    But Biden is yet to take any further action to condition military aid deliveries, and the latest Reuters report on shipment details suggests there has been little reduction in the amount being delivered to Israel.

    Tensions have also been brewing between Israel and the US in spite of the continuing aid deliveries, with Biden recently saying that there was “every reason” for people to think Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was prolonging the war in Gaza to stay in power.


    The original article contains 502 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Attempts to flee the country are expected to increase after Ukraine’s recent adoption of new sweeping mobilisation measures, which allow the military to call up more soldiers and impose stricter penalties for draft evasion.

    Ukraine has intensified its efforts to stop people fleeing across borders and evading the draft, highlighted by Zelenskiy’s dismissal of all regional military recruitment chiefs in April.

    The detailed instructions outlined two escape pathways: one involved crossing the Moldovan border using a fake passport, while the other option would list Andrei as an artist, a category occasionally permitted to exit the country.

    There are no exact figures for how many men are hiding or planning to leave, but in big cities Telegram channels with thousands of members have sprung up where users report sightings of state representatives to help others avoid them.

    While overall support for the country’s troops remain high and polls show that there is still a considerable number of men willing to be mobilised, Ukraine’s conscription drive risks dividing Ukrainian society, already plagued by war fatigue.

    Standing outside a cafe in Kyiv, leaning on a crutch, Roman, who was discharged from service after a shell hit his right leg, expressed his disappointment when hearing stories of men hiding or attempting to flee the country.


    The original article contains 1,134 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Biden’s debate flop was front-page news across Europe, with left- and right-leaning newspapers excoriating the president — even in France, where the country has its own elections coming up this weekend.

    Biden’s showing Thursday did not make the diplomats CNN spoke to question his ability to serve as commander in chief at this moment, with many noting that he has a good team working with him.

    The diplomats were not surprised by Trump’s comments on foreign policy during the debate — with one calling it the “same recipe as usual” — but they added that they felt even more concerned about his lack of commitment to Ukraine and what that might mean for European security.

    Still, despite Trump’s reinforcing of longstanding issues, there was a real sense of shock and concern about Biden’s performance and what it might mean for his chances in November.

    Even in France, which is facing its own surprise elections this weekend where President Emmanuel Macron’s alliance confronts a far-right challenge, newspapers took time out to lament the frailties of the man who visited the country only a few weeks ago.

    Both days at the luxurious resort hotel in southern Italy’s spectacular Puglia region, Biden kept them waiting for half an hour, showing up late for no apparent reason, and even then, at times seemed slightly out of sorts.


    The original article contains 1,365 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!


  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    What if I told you that wikiFeet was reportedly visited by 700,000 people every week, and among them are the best amateur detectives since Jessica Fletcher?

    You couldn’t see her face, but she was in a bath holding a vape pen, and the image was emblazoned with text suggesting Ocasio-Cortez had posted it on Instagram in 2016.

    Because the good people of wikiFeet, who apparently get their rocks off by looking at actual pictures of Ocasio-Cortez’s feet, immediately recognised the post as a fake.

    A wikiFeet user told Vice that the feet in the image posted to Reddit looked as if they suffered from brachydactyly – an inherited trait whereby the bones of the fingers and toes are relatively short compared with the rest of the body – but this didn’t align with wikiFeet’s gallery of Ocasio-Cortez.

    WikiFeet – which describes itself as “a collaborative site for sharing, rating and discussing celebrity feet pictures and videos” – has 15 photos of Ocasio-Cortez.

    Thanks to the collective minds of the respective wikiFeet and Reddit communities, Ocasio-Cortez has managed to avoid a potentially career-ending scandal.


    The original article contains 471 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!