By MATT O’BRIEN

Artificial intelligence researchers said Friday they have deleted more than 2,000 web links to suspected child sexual abuse imagery from a database used to train popular AI image-generator tools.

The LAION research database is a huge index of online images and captions that’s been a source for leading AI image-makers such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.

But a report last year by the Stanford Internet Observatory found it contained links to sexually explicit images of children, contributing to the ease with which some AI tools have been able to produce photorealistic deepfakes that depict children.

That December report led LAION, which stands for the nonprofit Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network, to immediately remove its dataset. Eight months later, LAION said in a blog post that it worked with the Stanford University watchdog group and anti-abuse organizations in Canada and the United Kingdom to fix the problem and release a cleaned-up database for future AI research.

Stanford researcher David Thiel, author of the December report, commended LAION for significant improvements but said the next step is to withdraw from distribution the “tainted models” that are still able to produce child abuse imagery.

One of the LAION-based tools that Stanford identified as the “most popular model for generating explicit imagery” — an older and lightly filtered version of Stable Diffusion — remained easily accessible until Thursday, when the New York-based company Runway ML removed it from the AI model repository Hugging Face. Runway said in a statement Friday it was a “planned deprecation of research models and code that have not been actively maintained.”

The cleaned-up version of the LAION database comes as governments around the world are taking a closer look at how some tech tools are being used to make or distribute illegal images of children.

San Francisco’s city attorney earlier this month filed a lawsuit seeking to shut down a group of websites that enable the creation of AI-generated nudes of women and girls. The alleged distribution of child sexual abuse images on the messaging app Telegram is part of what led French authorities to bring charges on Wednesday against the platform’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov.

With each erosion of its amateurism, each time it takes a sandblaster to everything that makes it great, college football has a way of pulling you back in.

Part of that is because it’s so entertaining, a way for excellent athletes to do extraordinary things against good but decidedly less-excellent athletes, and for good coaches to outwit bad ones. Because the talent level is so disparate, the game’s mechanisms are easier for most fans to actually understand what’s going on, and upsets become more likely.

The other attraction, of course, is pure spite. A Minnesota college football fan, for instance, won’t just root against Wisconsin or Iowa when they’re playing the Gophers; if they see on the score feed at the bottom of the screen that Purdue or Northwestern is beating the Badgers or Hawkeyes early, they’ll scroll the channel guide to find that game and hate-watch it.

College football has abandoned virtually everything it once pretended to be about, but it doesn’t matter — at least not until it begins killing programs outright — because the old canard of amateurism and the old college try isn’t what made college football so irrepressibly endearing to the majority of fans who aren’t yet inveterate gamblers. It’s the fact that we’re all from somewhere and in major college sports, there is always — always! — someone to root against.

And here comes Deion Sanders.

Colorado hasn’t been a consistently relevant program since the mid-1990s, yet the former Dallas Cowboys cornerback has found a way to unite college football fans in 49 states against the Centennial State’s only Power 4 football team.

North Dakota State has a good program and a rabid following at home, but when they played the Buffaloes on Thursday night, that fan base grew exponentially. There were a lot of college football fans rooting for the Bison, and whether they were from North Dakota or Hawaii, they were disappointed when NDSU fell just short in a 31-26 loss.

This in itself isn’t a problem for Colorado. Even people inside Michigan hate Michigan, and neither that nor a cheating scandal stopped the Wolverines from winning the NCAA championship last season. Right now, Sanders is more embarrassment than boon for Colorado on the field — one game into Coach Prime’s second season, they’re 5-8 under his auspices — but off the field, the money and five- and four-star recruits are rolling in. Right now, his 2024 class hasn’t cracked the Top 50 for Rivals or 247sports, but if Sanders can prime the NIL pump and get out of town when either his kids go pro or he wins eight games, this might be a worthy gambit.

Might be.

Because Colorado’s program — and the school by extension — has become a disgrace in the wake of its stance (LOL) on Sanders’ availability to reporters covering the team. In short, Coach Prime and his players answer questions only from media members approved by Coach Prime (it’s in his contract). The current narrative is that Sanders can’t coach and the school is spineless.

The former is up in the air. Most coaches’ first seasons after taking over down programs are rough — Kirk Ferentz was 1-10 in his first season in Iowa City — and Sanders was 27-6 in three seasons at Jackson State. The latter, however, is unmistakably true. And we can go ahead and add the Big 12 Conference, which took the Buffs back in after the Pac-12 crumbled under the weight of conference expansion.

Neither the school nor the Big 12 have so much as sent an email to Sean Keeler, the Denver Post columnist now verboten to Sanders and his players, to explain themselves. CBS Sports also is disallowed from asking questions during team access, and it apparently doesn’t matter which representative is asking — a valuable life lesson for Coach Prime’s players.

Imagine running a taxpayer-funded institution of higher education and selling out your school and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for a football coach of unproven merits who not coincidentally has the emotional intelligence of a teenager.

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By Julie Myhre-Nunes | NerdWallet

I had never driven an electric car before, so, naturally, I made sure my first drive covered 500 miles across two states in one day.

Although public opinion on electric cars is still mixed, facts suggest these cars are not a passing fad. Electric vehicle sales in the U.S. topped 1 million for the first time in 2023, quadrupling the figure three years prior. And although demand has slowed, a recent study by industry group Cox Automotive found that more than half of shoppers previously identified as skeptics are poised to enter the EV market in the second half of the decade.

While my first experience with an EV was unusual — I rented one to drive from San Jose, California, to a work event in Las Vegas — it included many situations a prospective buyer would want to consider. If you’re new to EVs or just curious about what a road trip in one is like, here are the lessons I learned.

Maximum range isn’t the actual range

The 2023 Chevy Bolt EV 1LT that I drove has a combined miles-per-gallon equivalent (MPGe) of 120 and a maximum range of 259 miles, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. These totals didn’t translate to real life.

That’s because an electric vehicle’s maximum range doesn’t take into account the use of anything in the car, including air conditioning/heater, the infotainment system, charging your phone or the terrain you’ll drive through. It’s just a measurement of what the 100% charged battery is capable of.

It turns out, though, that an electric battery functions best when it is between 20% and 80% full, because going over that exposes the battery to high voltages that can accelerate degradation over time. (Think of your phone battery and how the battery dies faster as the phone ages.) So if you’re keeping the car’s battery between 20% and 80% most of the time, your battery should last longer.

When I picked up the car, the battery was at 80%, which gave me a minimum of 151 miles. I had mapped out my trip based on where I could find public charging stations, and I knew the first leg of my trip would cover about 150 miles while driving through a mountain pass. Before heading out, I decided to top up the charge to a minimum of 163 miles — but, happily, I got to the first stop with 60 miles left, mostly due to regenerative braking that takes the energy usually wasted with braking and puts it back into the battery.

Charging isn’t always available

I charged the vehicle four times on my trip, using three of the four largest public charging companies: Electrify America, ChargePoint and EVgo. Because all three charging companies function differently, this meant that each time I was figuring out how payments and plugging in worked. It felt like I was 16 again and learning how to fuel up my car for the first time.

Depending on your area, you might have a plethora of charging options or not many at all, and it’s not always predictable. Consider two California cities of comparable size: Fresno with a population of 542,107 and Sacramento with a population of 524,943. When it comes to charging stations with Level 2 and direct-current (DC) fast chargers (the two fastest charging options), Sacramento has more than double the number of chargers in Fresno — 359 and 174, respectively, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. And there’s even more of a divide in different areas across the country.

Keep in mind, too, that not all of those chargers work for every car. Tesla has the largest network of charging stations by far, but while the company is opening up that network to other manufacturers and charge-point operators, that process is very much in-progress. What’s more, at any given station some of the chargers may be out of order (two of the four stations I visited had chargers that weren’t working), and if you get to a station and it’s full, you may have a wait ahead of you.

Charging may take a long time

Enter a drive from San Jose to Vegas in your favorite mapping software and it’ll say it takes about eight hours. My drive required 11 and a half.

Travel time in an EV depends on the vehicle you’re driving and what kind of public chargers you use. DC fast chargers can fill a battery electric vehicle to 80% in as little as 20 minutes or as long as an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. When I stopped at the ChargePoint in Coalinga, California, I had a minimum of 60 miles left in the battery. I used a DC fast charger for 1 hour, 9 minutes to gain an additional 103 miles.

But most plug-in hybrids and many electric cars are not yet equipped for that type of fast charging, and so realistically it may take longer. I didn’t do any Level 2 charging on my trip, but that technology can charge a battery electric vehicle to 80% in four to 10 hours and a plug-in hybrid in one to two hours.

In total I charged for 3 hours and 6 minutes over my 529-mile drive. For comparison’s sake, I drove a gas-powered car back from Vegas and had to gas up only once for eight minutes.

Charging anxiety is real

Awful. That’s how it feels to be on a long drive in an EV wondering if you’ll make it to the next charging station.

I experienced this twice on my trip — when I reached Mojave, California, with a minimum of 20 miles left, and then pulling into Las Vegas, with a minimum of 32 miles left. Both times I was genuinely concerned that I wouldn’t make it to my next stop. I turned off the air conditioning, stopped listening to my audiobook, unplugged my cell phone and tried to remain positive.

I started to plan out my options for what to do if the car died. I looked up charging stations near me using my phone, but had no luck. Worst case, I was ready to use my AAA membership, although I don’t know what they could do other than tow the vehicle to a charger. Of course, this was first timer’s nerves, but in survey after survey, anxiety over charging and range is among the biggest blockers to widespread EV adoption, with one noting that some 40% of current EV owners still report having a little.

A smartphone is essential for EV drivers

When you’re driving a gas car, there are plenty of opportunities to stop. In fact, you’ll see road signs along the highway to let you know when you can stop. This isn’t something you can rely on in an electric car. Instead, you’ll have to rely on your phone or previously mapped out charging stations. Despite mapping my stops ahead of time, I ended up looking for stops when I started getting charging anxiety.

Additionally, paying for charging may require your cell phone. Gas stations generally have two payment options: at the pump or with an attendant. None of the charging stations I visited had an attendant working, and ChargePoint didn’t let me tap or pay at the plug. Instead, I had to pay using its app, which isn’t ideal if your phone is dead or you can’t get the app to work.

Would I buy an EV after this trip?

Yes, but there are some caveats. I’m fortunate enough to be a two-car household, and if we were to get an electric car, it would replace one of the gas vehicles. I suspect electric cars are great for short trips, like a daily commute, but I’m not ready for one on a longer journey. And if I did buy an electric car, I don’t think I would rely on public charging. I would install a Level 2 charger in my home, which costs extra for the charger and the electrician but gives peace of mind that I could quickly top up every night.

Julie Myhre-Nunes is an editor at NerdWallet. Email: jmyhrenunes@nerdwallet.com.

The article What I Learned From My First EV Road Trip originally appeared on NerdWallet.

The Vikings decision to cut running back Kene Nwangwu this week came as a surprise to many who assumed he was going to be the kick returner this season. It starts to make more sense when listening to general manger Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell talk about running back Myles Gaskin.

“I want to make it more about Myles,” Adofo-Mensah said. “He just has a really diverse skill set to help us.”

“We felt like he earned the opportunity,” O’Connell said. “That’s really where that decision kind of went.”

Technically, the Vikings cut Gaskin this week, too, bringing him back as a member of the practice squad. But Gaskin will almost certainly be activated for the Sept. 8 season opener against the Giants in East Rutherford, N.J.

It sounds like the plan is for Gaskin to serve as the kick returner while playing in other areas on special teams. He also will fill an important role behind starting running back Aaron Jones and backup Ty Chandler. The latter role appears to be what tipped the scales in Gaskin’s favor.

Nwangwu had developed into a dynamic kick returner but wasn’t consistently contributing out of the backfield. Though he showed some increased ability running between the tackles in the preseason, Nwangwu struggled mightily in pass protection.

“You have to be aware where, maybe, if we overvalue any particular individual role,” O’Connell said. “It’s not as easy just to keep that position in a vacuum as it once was.”

Notably, Nwangwu was claimed off waivers by the Saints, then waived less than 24 hours later due to a failed physical.

As for Gaskin, he has steadily improved since joining the Vikings last season, showcasing his versatility in multiple phases of the game. Not only did he take a majority of the reps as the kick returner in the preseason, he turned some heads as a workhorse carrying the ball.

The biggest thing that stood out when evaluating Gaskin?

“His versatility to really be a true three-down back. The work he’s put in that really changed his physical style as a player,” O’Connell said.

That improvement is something Adofo-Mensah saw happening in real time. He mentioned how throughout training camp he would occasionally peek out the window in his office at TCO Performance Center and see Gaskin working in the distance.

“You see a guy after game day doing all kinds of drills, just deciding for himself, ‘I want to be the best version of myself for this team,’ ” the GM said.

Now it’s on Gaskin to prove the Vikings were right about him.

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