More massive LiveWire (electric Harley Davidson) price cuts!

Why operate, when you can experience? The LiveWire S2 Alpinista sees the road as open for interpretation, the route is yours to define, and the experience is simplified, heightened, and new every time. Alpnista's always-there power, direct connection to the road, and lack of heat and noise means you'll see more, hear more, and discover more.

Sit on Alpinista and you'll discover the perfect fit, where the seat, controls, and pegs create the ideal controls and input. Equipped with a 2" riser; the handlebars are positioned low and narrow, allowing the rider to sit with an upright and focused riding position. Alpinista's 17" front and 17" rear wheels come equipped with Dunlop® RoadSmart IV tires, to take full advantage of Alpinista's 52.1° and 44.2° left and right lean angles.

The riding experience shares the same level of adventure introduced with S2 Del Mar, but with a street-oriented intent. Weighing 433 pounds, Alpinista is capable of a 3.0 second 0-60 time, with 84 horsepower and 194 ft-lb of torque available to the rider.

TWIST & GO PROMOTION: up to £10,191 off retail price. Example:
Was: £17,390
Now: £10,599

With the S2 Del Mar starting at just £8,799

Another (see LiveWire One deal here) fantastic deal if you are in the market for an electric motorcycle. However, these huge deals are sadly symptomatic of the fact that few folks actually do want one though...

www.livewire.com

A New Chapter for Healing Paws Animal Rescue (HPAR), Paws for Celebration!

​Many residents of and visitors to Zakynthos are familiar with Sue Deeth and the remarkable work carried out by her registered UK charity, Healing Paws Animal Rescue, as well as its status as a registered non-profit organisation in Greece. Through her unwavering dedication, alongside her family and a committed team of trustees and volunteers, over 2,060 dogs have been rescued and found forever homes across the UK and Europe.

​A few years ago, the charity was able to purchase land with the vision of building a purpose-designed shelter to provide refuge for even more animals in need. Unfortunately, the number of unwanted and abandoned dogs continues to grow, which means the demand for fundraising and donations remains relentless. These regular contributions and offers of support are vital, supplying food, medicine, and veterinary care for the animals at HPAR.

Sue is thrilled to announce a new partnership with Alan Graves, a passionate supporter who runs his own foundation, the Alan Graves Foundation (AGF). This non-profit organisation assists children and animal charities worldwide. The foundation has pledged a generous donation towards the shelter’s construction. Pending final building permissions, it is hoped that work on the shelter can commence soon. While this donation provides an excellent start, ongoing fundraising will be critical both to complete the building and to continue caring for the animals until they find new homes.

To mark this new partnership, the charity will undergo a slight rebranding: Healing Paws Animal Rescue will now be known as Alan Graves Foundation Animal Rescue (Greece). Despite the change in name, the charity’s rescue work in Zakynthos continues as usual. The Healing Paws team remains active and united, looking forward to this exciting new chapter.

The entire team extends heartfelt thanks to Alan Graves and to all the adopters, fosterers, friends, and supporters who have enabled HPAR’s work thus far. The charity is closer than ever to achieving its long-held dream of a purpose-built shelter—a facility that will greatly enhance its ability to rescue, rehabilitate, and rehome even more unwanted and abandoned animals in Zakynthos.

Regular updates on the charity’s progress can be found on HPAR’s social media channels and website.

PS: After tragically losing our beloved Calli last year, we've been in discussions with Sue to rescue another pup. God willing - he will be joining us the tail end of September. Further new to follow!...

www.zakynthosinformer.com

Can you ride the NC500 in a weekend?

FROM ADVENTURE BIKE RIDER: Do you dream of riding Scotland’s NC500 but you’ve never had the time?

Then head over to ABR’s YouTube channel right now because we’ve just premiered a sensational feature-length video that reveals how to ride the world famous road trip in just a weekend, without missing out on any of the best bits.

That’s right, Billy and I had just two days to travel the 516-mile route while attempting to tick off the top 10 must-see NC500 attractions along the way.

Time was tight but we had a hell of a lot of fun making what turned out to be a hugely entertaining film and one I genuinely believe captures the joy of riding this spectacular journey.

So, crack open a beer, get comfy, and set aside 40 minutes of your evening to immerse yourself in an epic weekend adventure.

www.adventurebikerider.com

Reading for Today: On Love (not hate)

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. 

If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. 

There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.) 

But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.

By C.S.Lewis

From Mere Christianity

AI: why loss of control is not science fiction

If you’ve ever dismissed “rogue AI” as the stuff of Hollywood tropes—think HAL 9000, Skynet or The Matrix—you’re not alone. These are supposed to be cautionary tales, not engineering roadmaps. And yet, as Tristan Harris opens in a recent Your Undivided Attention episode, “we find ourselves at this moment, right now, building AI systems that are unfortunately doing these exact behaviours.”

The conversation with Jeremie and Edouard Harris, co-founders of AI security firm Gladstone AI, takes us far beyond speculation. Drawing on research from leading AI labs and their own U.S. State Department–commissioned report, they paint a stark picture: AI uncontrollability is already here—and it gets worse with every new generation of models.

What is ‘Loss of Control’? Loss of Control (LOC) happens when an Artificial Intelligence system no longer follows human direction or oversight—and there’s no dependable way to regain control. This can occur in two main ways: the AI actively resists intervention using tactics like deception, manipulation, or self-preservation, or humans passively give up oversight due to over-trust, the system’s complexity, or competitive pressure.

In LOC scenarios, the AI may:

• Conceal its true intentions (“alignment faking”)
• Evade or block shutdown commands
• Manipulate operators or external systems to preserve its objectives
• Exploit interdependencies in critical infrastructure to maintain influence

LOC can be localized and reversible, or systemic and irreversible—but in all cases, the core feature is the same: the loss of effective human ability to direct or contain the system’s actions. READ MORE...

www.centerforhumanetechnology.substack.com

Data centres to be expanded across UK as concerns mount

The number of data centres in the UK is set to increase by almost a fifth, according to figures shared with BBC News.

Data centres are giant warehouses full of powerful computers used to run digital services from movie streaming to online banking - there are currently an estimated 477 of them in the UK.

Construction researchers Barbour ABI have analysed planning documents and say that number is set to jump by almost 100, as the growth in artificial intelligence (AI) increases the need for processing power. The majority are due to be built in the next five years.

However, there are concerns about the huge amount of energy and water the new data centres will consume. Some experts have warned it could drive up prices paid by consumers.

Meanwhile in other news: How can England possibly be running out of water?

www.bbc.co.uk

GenAI tools are acting more ‘alive’ than ever; they blackmail people, replicate, and escape

Generative AI (genAI) systems are blackmailing, sabotaging, and self-replicating themselves to avoid constraints — and researchers warn that this behaviour represents chilling signs of self-preservation instincts in technology companies are racing to unleash.

Controlled tests now show the systems, including AI agents, engaging in self-preservation tactics in up to 90% of trials. One group of researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, went so far as to say that in a worst-case scenario, “we would eventually lose control over the frontier AI systems: They would take control over more computing devices, form an AI species and collude with each other against human beings.”

GenAI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, DeepSeek, and Alibaba all showed self-preservation behaviours that in some cases are extreme in nature, according to those researchers. In one experiment, 11 out of 32 existing AI systems possess the ability to self-replicate, meaning they could create copies of themselves.

While the behaviour was discovered during controlled tests, industry analysts and others say it highlights the urgent need for safety measures to keep pace with AI development and avoid potential loss of control.

www.computerworld.com

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centres share blame.

Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centres.

It’s not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centres on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta.

But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centres drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines.

That has meant pressuring the nation’s biggest power grid operator to clamp down on price increases, studying the effect of data centres on electricity bills or pushing data centre owners to pay a larger share of local transmission costs.

Rising power bills are “something legislators have been hearing a lot about. It’s something we’ve been hearing a lot about. More people are speaking out at the public utility commission in the past year than I’ve ever seen before,” said Charlotte Shuff of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. “There’s a massive outcry.”

Not the typical electric customer: Some data centres could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans, and make huge factories look tiny by comparison. That’s pushing policymakers to rethink a system that, historically, has spread transmission costs among classes of consumers that are proportional to electricity use.

Meanwhile in other news: UK government suggests deleting files to save water. ...the proliferation of data centres is raising concerns about how much water it takes to power servers and keep them cool.

www.apnews.com

Microsoft Used China-Based Engineers to Support Product Recently Hacked by China

Last month, Microsoft announced that Chinese state-sponsored hackers had exploited vulnerabilities in SharePoint, the company’s widely used collaboration software, to access the computer systems of hundreds of companies and government agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

The company did not include in its announcement, however, that support for SharePoint is handled by a China-based engineering team that has been responsible for maintaining the software for years.

ProPublica viewed screenshots of Microsoft’s internal work-tracking system that showed China-based employees recently fixing bugs for SharePoint “OnPrem,” the version of the software involved in last month’s attacks. The term, short for “on premises,” refers to software installed and run on customers’ own computers and servers.

Microsoft said the China-based team “is supervised by a US-based engineer and subject to all security requirements and manager code review. Work is already underway to shift this work to another location.”

This is yet another example of the West outsourcing to China, only to have them stab us in the back. Honestly what do we expect? Also watch this video: Did China Crash Its Own Rocket to Steal a Secret US Device?

www.propublica.org

PSTN switch off: how businesses can prepare for the end of landline phones

The phone network used by traditional landline phones will be switched off by January 2027. These phones use a network known as the public switched telephone network (PSTN), which runs on out of date technology that’s costly to maintain.

Research from the National Business Communications revealed that 62.1 per cent of businesses still used a landline phone in 2023. But if your business is one of the many that still uses a landline, it doesn’t mean you’ll be without a phone after the PSTN switch off.

However, the government is advising business owners to plan ahead to avoid disruption to their business. So before they hang up the service, here’s what you need to know... READ MORE -or- CONTACT DONLINE.

www.simplybusiness.co.uk

Electric motorcycle bargain: the LiveWire One ~half original price!

 

Back in 2022 - I test rode the Harley-Davidson LiveWire - and found it a blast, but pretty expensive at £30,000. The current (pun LOL!) version is now available at a £18,290! - almost half the price!

Is this a sign of the success (or lack thereof) in market penetration for electric motorbikes? I've ridden several: Zero, Energica, Kawasaki, MECR-X, etc. I think they're great & have their place. But would I swap my beloved Honda CB1000R+ for one - no chance!

www.livewire.com

How to get another free year of updates for your Windows 10 PC

Officially, Microsoft will stop providing new security updates for Windows 10 PCs after October 14, 2025, a little over a decade after its initial release. It's a stick that Microsoft is using to push upgrades to the newer Windows 11, whether you install it on a PC you already have or buy a brand-new PC to meet Windows 11's system requirements.

But if you can't or don't want to upgrade to Windows 11, Microsoft has made it reasonably simple to get an extra year of Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for Windows 10, extending its official support window to October of 2026. But this won't happen automatically; users will need to enroll their PCs in the ESU program to get the updates, using an enrollment feature that Microsoft just released to Windows 10 PCs recently.

For anyone looking to get that extra year of updates, here's how to enroll your PC, and how to avoid paying the $30 fee that Microsoft is nominally charging for these updates... READ MORE - or- CONTACT DONLINE.

www.arstechnica.com