Organizations that invest in robust data governance achieve measurable improvements in data quality...

Getting drunk at the airport might not be the smartest idea. Dukas/Universal Images Group via Getty Images If you're planning on getting a buzz on during your next flight, it might be time to think again. The UK government is weighing creating a blacklist of passengers who cause trouble while intoxicated. Drunk travelers are a "real challenge," the CEO of Europe's biggest airline said last month. A hangover might not be the worst consequence of having one too many beers on your next flight. The British government is considering creating a database of disruptive travelers as the airline industry seeks to crack down on drunk, unruly passengers. A UK government official with knowledge of the plans told Business Insider that, if implemented, airlines would be able to notify authorities of disorderly passengers, so that if they later check in for another flight, other airlines would be alerted. Airlines would then be able to use their own judgment in deciding what to do about the passenger. Passengers behaving badly are a major issue for many airlines, with executives and industry bodies calling for action to stamp out the problem, particularly in Europe. In April, a Jet2 flight from Turkey to London U-turned and diverted to Bulgaria after a pair of passengers began misbehaving. The airline, known for its catchy jingle and affordable vacation packages, said it banned them for life. "We are lobbying for the creation of a national database so that as well as being banned from flying with us, disruptive passengers will also be banned from flying with other UK airlines," Jet2 said in a statement at the time. While it isn't clear whether the people in this case were intoxicated, airline bosses have said alcohol is often to blame. 'A real challenge for all airlines' Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary is one of the strongest voices in calling for action against drunk, rowdy passengers. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo "It's becoming a real challenge for all airlines," Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary told The Times of London in an interview last month. "We have been calling for many years for a limit of two drinks per person per airport," O'Leary added. "I fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning. Who needs to be drinking beer at that time?" In many countries, it is illegal to be drunk on board an aircraft, and offenders face fines or prison time. Jet2 and Ryanair have also said they will pursue misbehaving passengers for the costs associated with flight diversions — including fuel, compensation, and, in some cases, overnight accommodation. In 2025, Ryanair sued a passenger it said had forced a flight to divert, claiming over $15,000 in damages. Later that year, it also asked a Spanish court to fine or potentially imprison another disruptive passenger, who tried to take a seat that wasn't his and caused the flight to take off late. As well as being a costly nuisance, drunk passengers can also land airlines in hot water with regulators. Last Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it was proposing a $165,000 penalty against Alaska Airlines, saying the airline let intoxicated people board 11 flights between February 2024 and February 2025. Alaska Airlines told Reuters that it has "made meaningful changes" to comply with the FAA, including enhanced training for flight attendants and customer service agents. The British government source told Business Insider that, while there are already laws in place to deal with offenses on flights, it wants to crack down on people who "persistently cause disruption." "Anti-social behavior on flights is totally unacceptable, as it threatens the safety of passengers and crew and disrupts hard-earned holidays," they added. Read the original article on Business Insider

Databricks SQL logs key attributes of every query automatically: who ran it, on which...

The API would make IRS data available to any app the agency wishes. The Criminal Investigation arm of the IRS is also modernizing its own systems.

Our family has lived in three countries, and each move has taught us a lot about friendship, culture, and communication. Naomi Tsvirko My family has moved countries twice and has learned what starting over really means. Making new friends wasn't as difficult as I anticipated once I reevaluated my priorities. Navigating healthcare and housing systems has been the most challenging part of our relocations. I've moved my family across three countries, from Australia to Switzerland to the United States, and before each move, I romanticized what starting over would look like. I imagined charming cafés, weekend adventures, and eventually finding a like-minded new community. What I didn't anticipate was that making friends would be one of the easier parts of our moves. Instead, the real challenges were the invisible ones, like navigating unfamiliar healthcare systems, securing suitable housing, and carrying the mental load of rebuilding everyday life from scratch. Each move taught our family something different about what it really means to start over. Trying too hard to make friends often backfires Even though we now live in different time zones, taking time to check in with friends has been worth the effort. Naomi Tsvirko Before moving to Switzerland, I thought making friends would be the hardest part of relocating. I worried about loneliness, fitting in, and whether my children would find their place. So when we arrived, I tried too hard to make connections. I said yes to everything, introduced myself to everyone, and pushed to form friendships quickly. It felt awkward because I was trying to create closeness before it had a chance to grow naturally. It became easier to make friends when we put less pressure on ourselves to form connections. Naomi Tsvirko Eventually, I stepped back — and that's when the magic happened. Instead of focusing on finding friends, I focused on building a life. I joined writing groups, took classes, found work, and met people through hobbies and interests. Those friendships lasted because they were built on common ground, kindness, and shared experiences. Although we now live in different time zones, some of those people are still close friends today. The hidden stress of rebuilding everyday life abroad is housing It hasn't always been easy to find a home that fits our family's needs and preferences. Naomi Tsvirko In both Switzerland and the United States, navigating housing and healthcare became unexpectedly stressful parts of settling in. When we moved to Switzerland, finding an apartment initially seemed manageable. We relied heavily on Google Translate to understand listings and create applications. First, we had to think about which neighborhoods would feel most comfortable for English speakers. And once we started looking more closely, we realized how many small cultural details we hadn't considered. For example, we discovered that it's common for rental apartments in Switzerland not to include light fixtures, so we'd need to purchase and install our own. In-unit washing machines were harder to find than we expected, which became a major consideration for our family because we had two children playing ice hockey (which meant endless amounts of laundry). When we later moved to the United States, our housing search looked different but carried similar emotional weight. Instead of seeking out English-speaking communities, we were looking for a town that aligned with our values. We wanted strong schools that supported both academics and the arts, as well as access to competitive sports programs for our children. We eventually found a community that checked those boxes, but it took time. We rented for two years before feeling confident enough to buy a home. Navigating healthcare was equally challenging in different ways In Switzerland, the language barrier complicated even straightforward medical appointments. Although we found an excellent pediatrician, my husband and I often avoided scheduling appointments unless absolutely necessary because we worried about misunderstandings. We initially struggled to understand how the insurance and billing systems worked. In the United States, the challenge was almost the opposite. There was an overwhelming amount of information available online about doctors and healthcare networks. Every physician seemed to have hundreds of reviews, rankings, and conflicting opinions attached to them. Instead of making decisions easier, the abundance of information often made us feel more uncertain. Ultimately, the most valuable recommendations came through word of mouth. Conversations with other parents and local families helped us far more than online review platforms ever did. Relocation taught our family patience In time, our family got better at communicating and adjusting to new places. Naomi Tsvirko Looking back, the biggest lesson relocation taught us was not to rush anything. It was OK to choose a doctor and later realize they weren't the right fit, or to rent in a town that didn't ultimately suit our family. It was OK for some friends to remain acquaintances while other relationships slowly deepened over time. We learned to give ourselves grace during the adjustment period instead of expecting immediate certainty. Living abroad also forced us to communicate more openly as a family. When everything around you feels unfamiliar, even small frustrations can feel magnified. There were moments when homesickness and exhaustion clouded our perspective, making every challenge seem larger than it really was. Over time, we became better at grounding each other and focusing on what was working rather than what felt wrong. Once we stopped trying to recreate our old lives perfectly, we became more open to appreciating where we were. We've now discovered that the ingredients to a successful relocation are patience, humor, flexibility, and teamwork. With those, it's possible to create a sense of belonging almost anywhere. Read the original article on Business Insider

Industry members weigh in on what is needed for the package to succeed.

Enterprise Document Intelligence [Vol.1 #4] - A diagnostic across PDFs and questions, and a map of the techniques the rest of the series will cover The post From Regex to Vision Models: Which RAG Technique Fits Which Problem appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Switching from fossil fuels to electricity for heating is no longer covered.

🧠 Backlog triaging, API deprecation watchdog, user feedback aggregation and more.

Already this year, more than $14.6 billion in venture investment has gone into companies in Crunchbase’s military, national security and law enforcement categories, blowing past the sector's previous annual record of $9.6 billion raised in all of 2025.

Andrew Martin / Bloomberg: Analysis: Palo Alto Networks shareholders have voted to reject pay packages for top executives seven times since 2015, more than any other S&P 500 company  —  A majority of Palo Alto Networks investors have voted against the cybersecurity company's executive pay seven times in 11 years.

This guide is written for data engineers, architects, analytics engineers, and technical...

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The vendor is among a group of companies targeting the fast-growing physical AI market.

Palestinian workers cross into Israel at gates that use facial recognition. AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner If you are fortunate enough to have a ticket to an event at Madison Square Garden in New York – say, an NBA Finals game – one aspect of your visit will be having your face scanned by a facial recognition system. Major event venues are increasingly using the technology. Some, like Madison Square Garden, use it for surveillance purposes, and some, like Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, to offer visitors optional ticketless admission. Adoption of facial recognition technology is increasing, becoming more prevalent in daily life, from public buses to public buildings. The Transportation Security Administration has deployed the latest facial recognition technology at security checkpoints at numerous airports. The agency says the new system will be used in cities across the U.S. that are hosting World Cup 2026 soccer matches. The growing use of facial recognition has broadened concerns about accuracy and bias. But in my research studying facial recognition technology in the Vision Lab at the University of Dayton, I’ve found that advanced deep learning models have made face recognition systems more accurate and reliable. The AI models, trained on hundreds of millions of face images, are more than 99% accurate in controlled environments – settings such as cellphones, airports and border checkpoints. Facial recognition basics Facial recognition involves three steps: locate a face in an image or video frame, create a faceprint that catalogs salient features – including the shape of the face and landmark points such as eyes, nose and mouth – and record the texture of the skin. Then it compares the faceprint to those in a database, which may be inside a smartphone or at a bank or hospital, to verify a person’s identity or allow access. In the physical world, these systems are faster and simpler than requiring people to show IDs. In the online world, they are easier than entering a login name and password. Facial recognition also significantly reduces the possibility of forgery or fraud when compared with ID cards or passwords. Improvements in the technology have come from a variety of research projects. FaceNet, a deep learning model developed by Google, has upgraded recognition of faces that are partly covered or hidden in images. DeepFace, a landmark AI-powered facial recognition system developed by Facebook AI Research, achieves the same high level of verification shown by humans. NeoFace, a highly accurate AI-powered algorithm developed by NEC, is built into Mobile Fortify, the mobile facial recognition system used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify people. Reducing false positives and negatives Real-world conditions such as poor lighting, difficult viewing angles, extreme facial expressions, concealment by face masks or sunglasses, and poor image quality can still hamper performance, leading to faulty identification. False positives and false negatives are the two primary errors. False positives are when a person is incorrectly matched to a different person in a database. False negatives are when an individual is not found in a database, even though their image exists there. False positives are more critical in security and safety applications. They can lead to wrongful accusations, discrimination or detention. In 2025, a 50-year-old woman in Tennessee was arrested and put in jail for six months based on an AI-powered facial recognition system that incorrectly tied her to a North Dakota bank fraud investigation. False negatives may prompt authorities to deny services to people who qualify for them. Accuracy can suffer if models are trained on data that does not reflect real-world demographics. A 2025 study showed that systems trained on public databases in which people with darker skin tones are lacking leads to lower recognition accuracy. This kind of unintentional bias in training data may lead to misidentification of women, people of color and young and old people. One report found that facial recognition systems used by 42 U.S. government agencies falsely identified African and Asian American faces 10 to 100 times more often than white faces, in some cases leading to wrongful arrests. Accuracy also deteriorates when people are wearing heavy makeup and for young children and old people because their landmark features tend to change more quickly than adults of other ages. Balancing datasets by collecting more representative images across age, gender and ethnicity, and frequently updating databases, can improve accuracy and produce fairer results. Adjusting images before they are sent for matching – for example, changing brightness levels – can improve accuracy, too. People squint their eyes when they are in dark or very bright light. Advanced processing software can mimic this human trait to improve the facial recognition system’s ability to extract facial features from the image. Facial recognition technology is getting better at identifying people when their face is partially obscured. B. Hayes/NIST A full face from partial data Humans are good at identifying a person even if part of their face is covered by sunglasses or a face mask. The brain assigns more significance to the exposed details. If facial recognition programs can learn to do the same, that would reduce false positives and false negatives, including when cameras only capture part of a face. Facial dynamics can help, too. It may be difficult for someone to instantaneously recognize a middle school friend they haven’t seen for many years, but if the old friend smiles, that change in expression can immediately improve recall. Researchers are developing a facial recognition method for doing this, known as volumetric directional patterning. It captures the subtle movements of facial muscles, as well as eyelid blinks, in consecutive frames of a video. It tracks how facial landmarks shift over time, as well as the context in which a face is being observed, which can improve recognition accuracy. Researchers are also creating more accurate AI-powered three-dimensional systems that can capture the precise geometry of a face, including features such as contours of the eye socket, nose and chin. This kind of work could lead to anti-spoofing techniques that prevent facial recognition systems from falling for fake faces that are generated by computers and their human operators. Fewer mistaken identities Setting aside questions of privacy and cybersecurity and lingering issues of bias, one thing is clear: Facial recognition technology is improving. And that promises fewer errors – and fewer of the serious consequences that come with them. Vijayan Asari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How small businesses can leverage AI From accounting to design to market research and product development, there’s a staggering breadth of skills needed to run a business. Large companies can hire…

Travelers built an AI-powered Claim Assistant with OpenAI to guide customers through filing claims, provide 24/7 support, and scale operations during peak demand.