Latest news with #Rigby
Spectator
5 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Starmer looked out of place in the mountains with Sky's Beth Rigby
Sir Keir Starmer was doing an interview with Beth Rigby in the lush mountain landscape of Canada. Hardly a man who evokes the sweeping grandeur of nature, seeing the Prime Minister surrounded by mountains and pines was odd. It looked a little like someone had mistakenly cast a chartered accountant in the Sound of Music. What percentage is his approval rating? Seventeen going on sixteen of course. Seeing the Prime Minister surrounded by mountains and pines was odd Rigby asked whether the Prime Minister had any idea what President Trump was doing about the Middle East that was so important that he had to leave the G7 early. 'I actually sat next to the President at that meeting,' came the non sequitur reply. I have confidence that there is probably a 15 per cent chance that The Donald actually doesn't know who Starmer is. One can imagine the conversation on the home trip on Air Force One: 'Hey, lil' Marco, why'd they sit me next to that brylcreamed Limey who sounds like he has a cold?' Next came the inevitable Grooming Gangs question. Hardly one of the PM's favourite things; he gave a weird look that was supposed to say 'earnest' but actually said 'constipated'. Rigby hammered home; he really didn't think he owed anyone an apology, did he? There followed a self justificatory list of his achievements. Somewhere in his youth or childhood, he must have done something good, that sort of thing. After this touching interlude was over he claimed that he 'tried to remain courteous at all times' – which will come as news to any of the women who have ever asked him a question he didn't like in the House – before launching into a direct attack on Kemi Badenoch. At the end of this, Rigby gave him a sort of pitying smile, like one might deliver at the sight of a dropped bag of shopping or a weeping clown. Rigby went further: did there need to be prosecutions of those in institutions who had covered this up? The hills were alive with the sound of bluster. 'There must be accountability…there must be no stone unturned…but I'm not going to say here X, Y, Z'. He might as well have added 'Do-Re-Mi' for all the effect it would have had on his meaning. I have read things on the back of lavatory cubicles or scrawled on railway underpasses which convey more meaning than this string of platitudes. Rigby asked again if he wanted to see more prosecutions and got the same answer. Interviewing the present government is no easy task: you can Climb Every Mountain, ford every stream: and still at the end of it you have a pile of Edelscheiss. Rigby ended on a 'most proud moment and biggest regret', as if it was an interview with Smash Hits! magazine. Apparently our Lonely Goatherd hadn't 'told his story as best he could'. You can say that again. Or yodel it, it'd be just as compelling and coherent. So it was we bid 'So Long, Farewell' to the Prime Minister. Unlike the Sound of Music there is no happy ending to this tale: instead of staying in his alpine G7 wonderland, our very own Maria is back on Wednesday.
The Review Geek
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
MindsEye Guide: Missions 7-9 Walkthrough
Mindseye Guide: Missions 7-9 Mission 7: This Means War Back to top ↑ When you gain control of Jacob Diaz, you'll be driving with Rigby and need to lose your tail. Thanks to the terrible AI in this game, you can actually cheese this encounter by ramming into the car as hard as you can. They don't bat an eyelid, nor does it end the mission. If you do it enough you can actually destroy the car quite a bit but a better idea is to ram them over the bollards so they take an age to follow you (pictured below). Either way, once they're out of sight, be sure to cross back and forth over the streets to properly lose them, then head back to base. Depending on how quickly you lose the tail, you might have a 3 mile trek. When you get near the base, it'll trigger another cutscene. In the middle of this, we'll have a QTE section to complete. You need to press L2 and R2 at the exact same time when the circles hit the middle of the crosshairs. If you miss over 50% of these, you'll need to replay this section until you get it right. After the chess compressions, you'll now need to give mouth to mouth. The game doesn't tell you this but you need to move both the left and right analog sticks in-sync up and down following the wave to get through this section. Again, if you miss too much, you'll need to replay it from the beginning again. With this complete, you'll gain the Achievement: Razed Anatomy. Mission 8: Robin Hood Back to top ↑ At the start of the mission, get in your car and drive to the target area. A cutscene will trigger when you get near to the trailer park and then you'll be heading in by foot. To begin with, circle around the trailer park to the left (south on the map) until you find a camper you can climb up to enter the area (pictured below). Inside the trailer park, you'll need to find the pictured trailer on the right hand side of your screen. This is quite easy to find from this spot – take a left and head all the way west in the trailer park to find it. When you get near, a cutscene will trigger. Afterwards, you'll need to fight your way out the trailer park. Be sure to stick to cover and keep moving forward to your car. Don't forget to scan the area as there are two weapons we can collect from enemies here – Weapon #3: Linebacker & Weapon #4: Wraith. As you enter your car after grabbing these two weapons, you'll need to chase after the truck on the road. Don't try to run it off the road, or get too close because it'll fire machine gun fire at you and you have no gun to defend yourself. Just stay back at a comfortable distance and wait for it to enter the residential area. When it does stop, you'll have another shootout. Make sure you keep cover behind your car and watch your back as this is one of the rare occasions where enemies will flank and attack you. Watch out for the approaching car too and before approaching the house, be sure to tap down to scan the enemies. Some of them will be holding Weapon #5: DPR. When you're ready though, approach the house. After another cutscene, we'll now have unlimited ammo in a car with goons incoming. Don't worry about missing, you can literally hold the trigger and keep firing to your heart's content until these guys are dealt with. It's quite a long section though but eventually Robin Hood will drive you up to Silva's safehouse. Once this is done, you'll gain the Achievement: Robin Hood. The mission isn't over quite yet though. Get back in your car and drive over to the factory. Then, enter the security office to finally finish this mission. Mission 9: Meeting Marco Silva Back to top ↑ After the next cutscene, get in your car and drive over to Silva's house. The path is quite straightforward and when you arrive at the house, you'll have another cutscene. When you regain control of Jacob, we'll now have the 'exposition and tap forward' part of this game. You literally just need to continue forward, ascending high enough that you don't hit any buildings. As you approach your target, hover over the helipad and descend, then another cutscene will trigger. When it's done, and Silva is out of commission, we'll now need to fight through a whole bunch of soldiers that show up. The gun you have has horrible recoil so it's actually a good idea to switch back to your pistol. Either way, stick to cover and keep working your way up the hill. Regardless of if you kill all the enemies or not, enter your car after and chase after the drone. This mission actually has a good amount of leeway and you can get quite far away from your target without triggering a Game Over. For that reason, it's a good idea to stick to the roads for a while to get some speed up before heading into the wilderness. Eventually, the drone will land at a gas station and you'll need to fight your way through waves of enemies. If you're trying to brute force your way through and cheese the fight, you can avoid almost all the soldiers and head round the back. If you play it straight, be sure to target the gas pumps to trigger a big explosion and take out some of the enemies in the process. If you take the path round the back, enemies do spawn here, but it's nowhere near as many from the front. If you sprint through near the end of the path and do end up dying, you'll actually respawn midway through the fight, saving you time. Either way, stick to cover as often as you can and keep moving west. Eventually you'll reach the drone so hop on inside and ascend, taking it back to Silva's house. When you get near, another cutscene will trigger and with it, the Achievement: Good First Impression.
The Star
12-06-2025
- Business
- The Star
While AI gains ground, traditional search engines still have a place, say experts
Has artificial intelligence (AI) changed the way we interact with the digital world, and more importantly, have old systems and principles become irrelevant with the advent of AI? Those questions took centre stage during the Malaysia Digital Association (MDA) D-Conference 2025 on June 12, which brought speakers from across various industries to discuss the intersection between technology and creativity. A panel discussion titled "AI vs Search: Reinventing Discovery Or Breaking The System" explored the impact of AI on how people find information online. US-based web advertising company Taboola's regional director for India and South-East Asia, Aaron Rigby, highlights fragmentation across generational lines regarding the use of "search". He observes that older users are sticking to traditional search engines and research behaviour, while those from younger generations are relying on platforms like TikTok when searching for information. Rigby says that despite advances in AI chatbots, search engines are not going anywhere. — RAJA FAISAL HISHAN/The Star With the rise of chatbots and AI integration in search results, Rigby sees them taking a complementary role to one another. "Firstly, is AI going to replace search? No, I don't think so. It's pretty much reimagining search. "Google still receives 370 times the number of queries that AI chatbots are receiving. "Of all the people using ChatGPT, 99% of them, which is another way of saying 100% with a rounding error, are still using Google search, so it's not going anywhere," he says. The shift, Rigby says, will be in how users interact with both chatbots and search engines. He believes that both will have their respective roles to play in developing distinct workflows and splitting up the search process. For example, when aiming for more thorough and complex questions that require context, users are opting for AI assistance to get the answers they are looking for, he says. Meanwhile, when it comes to simpler, quickfire answers, they go straight to Google, he adds. "I think as we move forward, it's not going to replace, it's going to converge and evolve in an interesting way," he says. Vinda Malaysia's head of media, business intelligence and data Neeraj Mishra, on the other hand, touched on the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence when compared with traditional organic search results. Neeraj says that just a short two years ago, he would not have trusted the accuracy of results obtained from AI. Since then, however, he has seen rapid improvements and developments in the various AI platforms. Neeraj says that just a short two years ago, he would not have trusted the accuracy of results obtained from AI. — RAJA FAISAL HISHAN/The Star "I'll take a specific example: initially when ChatGPT launched, it was not connected to the Internet. "I'm not sure whether the results it gives me are correct or not, so I have to go to Google to confirm it. "But now, what happens is, within ChatGPT, it is connected to the Internet, and when you search, your search results also comes with the source. "Then what happens is, I can verify that it then and there whether the results are okay or not," he says, adding that he no longer needs to manually cross-check information from chatbots. He stresses that users now need to make sure to feed their chatbots well-worded and accurate prompts in order to receive high quality, trustworthy, and verified responses. "If you are using it and your prompts are good enough, the result you will get is reliable, trustworthy, and can be verified too. "But if your prompts are not accurate, the outcome will not be good," he says. Neeraj further stresses that it now falls on the user to ensure the quality of their prompts, rather than the blame falling on chatbots like ChatGPT. From an ethical perspective, Rigby says that the biggest challenge is in creative attribution. "AI is coming back with good results, and that is not being attributed to the publishers, and not being attributed to the creative industry. "So, if we continue down this way, we're essentially strip mining the very industry that AI is built for, right? "And then we'll have an AI which is fueled by nothing. So, from an ethical standpoint, it's so important we have to get this creative attribution right," he says. The human touch Another presentation given by Peter Kua, co-founder of AI consulting firm Data Science, titled "The AI takeover: Is UX as we know it over", discussed how humans are a necessary element in the design of user experience (UX). He emphasises that humans are the ones responsible for the inclusion of empathy and creativity in UX design. "The reality is that AI cannot replace human programmers. I mean, sure, AI is able to solve simple hackathon types of problems. It's also able to generate code snippets that you can cut and paste into your work. "But the real world is a lot more complex than that," he says, adding that AI fails miserably at addressing complex business problems and at figuring out current and legacy systems. The conference also included discussions on whether AI represents a boon or bane for creative works, the future of advertising in an AI era, and authenticity in a synthetic world, among others. Following the conference was the D-Awards 2025 ceremony, celebrating innovations in the creative space the past year.
Powys County Times
05-06-2025
- General
- Powys County Times
Powys man recieves British Empire Medal for chess club
A Welshpool man who has been using chess to help young people for decades received his British Empire Medal in the Powys town. After being listed among the New Years honours list at the end of 2024, Welshpool resident Steve Rigby received the British Empire Medal at a ceremony in The Westwood Park Hotel. Mr Rigby was presented with his British Empire Medal by the Lord Lieutenant of Powys, Tia Catherine Jones, in her role as the King's representative. He was recognised for his work as part of 3C's chess club in Oldham, having started the club with his friend Roy Williams as a way to give children in the area a chance to do something that would help give them opportunities. He's also taken the game to several corners of the world, listing Uzbekistan, Galveston and Texas as just some of the places he's played chess and gotten to know people through the game. At the time the honour was announced, he said: 'All this publicity isn't me. People are doing this as a gesture to me, I find it very flattering I am absolutely amazed. 'The first thing I thought was about all the people who aren't with us any longer since when we started in 1978 and I immediately thought of them and in a way it is for them. 'In 78 I was a teacher in Chadderton in Oldham, which is not the most fashionable part of the country and had quite a bit of deprivation. 'I always thought that if you give kids the opportunities if you give the families the opportunities they will take it. 'For me chess was a vehicle that allowed me to get to provide opportunities to socialise and learn how to play chess and develop friendships. 'I could take them to places they could experience different venues away from the estates. 'Me and Roy thought this would be a great vehicle to get them out of this academic isolation and get them out there. 'We have had children who have been enormously successful in the chess world but when you have children from quite poor homes and you can take them up and down the country and give them opportunities to see things beyond where they live it's a big thing – it matters.'
The Review Geek
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
MobLand – Season 1 Episode 9 'Beggar's Banquet' Recap & Review
Beggar's Banquet Episode 9 of Mobland starts with Eddie waking up to find Conrad lurking in his room. He wants to have a chat but we don't see the full context of this until later in the chapter. One thing's for sure though – it's not good news. Off the back of this, Eddie ignores Jan in the kitchen and heads outside with a coffee, asking the dog who's better off here. This is, of course, a metaphor for his own life where he feels trapped in a cage and used as a pet for the Harrigans. Elsewhere, Kevin has gone AWOL, determined to get revenge on Rigby for the abuse he suffered back in prison. He plays the role of a taxi driver, taking the guy back home. Kevin manages to work his way into Rigby's house, and eventually confronts him about the abuse. Rigby has had bad memory loss over the years and anything beyond 5 years back is a bit hazy. That doesn't really help Kevin get closure, who has been haunted by this abuse all season long. Rigby does apologize, after questioning if he actually imagined the whole thing, and tells him that he's found Jesus. This is enough for Kevin to get his gun out and, after breaking down crying, shoots the guy in the head. Conrad works with Harry to try and sort out an alliance with Jaime. Conrad is a bit of a loose cannon and jokes about putting a tommy gun in the bathroom before the meet, and it's hard to know if the guy is joking or not. Apparently he is, but either way, this doesn't look like it's going to be a particularly pleasant meet. First impressions are not great either. Seraphina is here to try and smooth things over and gets down to business in order to make a deal. Jaime has his own reasons for being here. He speaks plainly to Harry, ignoring Conrad completely here, and brings up how the earlier favour was for Kat, not for him. Conrad gives him four hours to come to a decision, but Jaime simply looks over at Harry and tells him he can understand why he wants to leave the Harrigans. This gets right under Conrad's skin back home, which isn't helped when Maeve questions him about Alice coming to dinner, warning him off doing anything silly. Alice though is actually buzzing given her undercover escapades. After the murder of those two officers last time out, Colin is now in charge of the case and he recognizes this excitement in Alice. He speaks to her plainly about how she's a risk-taker like him, and encourages her to try and plant evidence at the Harrigan house in exchange for securing a big promotion and a nice payday. Back at the estate, Maeve speaks to Gina and demands she leave Eddie alone. She threatens her badly, scathingly growling that she'll eat her eyeballs, and scares Gina into running away. Bella meets with Antoine and organizes traffic here with the Home Secretary. As the group begin talking, we can see that Antoine is wearing a camera on his tie. Something big is about to go down and it actually comes from this dinner at the Harrigan estate. Colin has bugged Alice's phone and speaks to Richie about the current plan, including a tactical team nearby ready to swoop in as soon as Alice has planted the evidence. Richie agrees that Harry is unhappy and it seems like he's not going to get caught in the crossfire here, which is at least something. Jaime agrees to the Harrigan deal but only after confirmation that Harry has got the rat out the house. Harry knows who this is and works to resolve the situation before it gets messy. He also has to meet Kat the following day at 5pm too in order to make good on his favour. The dinner goes ahead that night, minus Gina who's 'not feeling well'. Maeve is a complete loose cannon and speaks about the 'fragility' of marriage, likening it to an egg. It's also worth noting that she grabs Eddie's thigh here, who looks very uncomfortable. As for Seraphina, she gets right to the crux of the issue. She questions Alice's motives, and why she's not feeling a bit scared, given where she is, but it's Maeve who forces Alice's uncomfortableness to flyoff the Richter scale and leave the table. Then, everything kicks off. Conrad questions Maeve and things get hostile between them, while Harry slips away and catches up to Alice, who's busy bagging up 'evidence' to plant across the house. The façade slips here, as Alice knows the game is up. She reveals what's happening, and Harry lets her go. He doesn't tell Conrad either, as he and Maeve wind up at loggerheads… until the police show up. Maeve and Conrad are both arrested, although they wind up singing as they're taken out, laughing all the while as they're bundled into police cars. The Episode Review So it looks like the time of the Harrigans is coming to an end and the final scenes really sum up the absolute chaos that both Maeve and Conrad have caused here. The pair deserve each other, and while they're not entirely evil personified, they're pretty close to being the devil's minions given their cold, calculated and sociopathic tendencies. It's interesting that Harry decided to let Alice leave without much fuss either, especially as he's always been relatively loyal to Conrad. However, even he can see that the pair have been coming apart at the seams for a while. While yes, Freddie was one of the moles, it would appear there could be another inside that house working alongside him. We'll have to wait and see if these charges actually stick for Conrad and Maeve though, leaving things wide open for the finale next week. Previous Episode Next Episode Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
