Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice
  2. Dress Made of Living Mycelium Can Renew and Repair Itself
  3. Scientists Make First Viruses Designed By AI
  4. Court Orders Meta To Establish $567 Million Fund To Abate Harms To Youth
  5. Google’s $15 Billion India Data Center Project Battles Water, Wildlife Concerns
  6. ‘Tower Dump’ Warrants Ruled Unconstitutional
  7. Azure CTO Pastes Doom Into Paint One Frame At a Time
  8. OpenAI’s Models Shared Hacking Tips On a Secret Messaging Board Before Hugging Face Breach
  9. The US Government’s Mario, Pokemon and Naruto Meme Posting Could Damage These Franchises, Japanese Officials Warn
  10. FCC Kills TV Ownership Cap, Claiming Authority Over Limit Set By Congress
  11. Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See
  12. Meta AI Hacked External Systems During Cybersecurity Testing
  13. Broadcaster Wins Broad US Blocking Injunction Covering Pirate Sites That Don’t Exist Yet
  14. FDA Approves First mRNA Flu Shot
  15. BMW Blasts Its Cars’ Internal Screens With Aggressive Ads

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A new study argues that life may have emerged twice on Earth. “Two of the main lineages of life — bacteria and archaea — may have independently figured out the secrets of metabolism that upgraded them from non-living to living,” reports ScienceAlert, citing a new study that “focused on the most rudimentary set of chemical reactions thought to enable this transformation.” From the report:
“The surprise is that the enzymes that catalyze those reactions are not conserved across the evolutionary divide that separates bacteria and archaea,” says William Martin, a biologist at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf in Germany.

“The new data leave only one conclusion. The bacterial and archaeal lineages made the transition to the free-living state independently. Only free-living cells are alive. “Let’s call it by name: we are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life.” That’s a huge claim to make, especially when defining what life even is can be surprisingly tricky.
The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

I’d be surprised if its only 2

By Viol8 • Score: 3 Thread

A chemical system that can reproduce via a stored code and copy that code is the hard part of life , wrapping it inside some sort of bubble its probably relatively simple, and given how small cells are and how large the earth is I wouldn’t be surprised if once genetics got going it happened multiple times but only 2 lineages made it through.

Dress Made of Living Mycelium Can Renew and Repair Itself

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Researchers in China have developed a living mycelium textile that can self-clean, renew its surface, and partially repair holes when treated with a nutrient solution and fresh fungus. The material can also gain added properties such as blue pigmentation or UV resistance by co-culturing it with yeast or other fungi. Dezeen reports:
The breakthrough from the researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology is a type of engineered living material (ELM) — a material built off living organisms that stay active even after they’re fabricated into their final form. […] By working with living but dormant cordyceps militaris fungus instead, the researchers have been able to take advantage of its biological functions. The result is a material that is self-renewing and responsive to its environment, in ways that could one day transform architecture and clothing — as seen in a prototype dress created together with material innovation company Peelshere.

It can also be adapted by mixing in other fungi or yeast, lead researcher Ke Li and her team detail in a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. In it, they describe a “programmable fungal platform” where mycelium is treated like a modular system, with the sheet material forming a base structure and extra biological abilities, such as colour and UV resistance, becoming “plug-and-play” add-ons via other organisms. This gets their textile closer to the self-repair, environmental responsiveness and controllable functionality that is the promise of engineered living materials, they argue.

The ELM’s self-renewing and semi-repairing functionality comes from the mycelium base structure. Following drying at 45 degrees, the material is not quite living and not quite dead, but instead in a “low-metabolic, dormant-like state”, Li told Dezeen, meaning it is not actively growing. However, new growth can be triggered by applying a nutrient solution of potato water, leading the dormant mycelium to germinate, send out new fungal filaments and renew the material’s surface. When this nutrient solution is applied over a hole, along with a small patch of fresh fungus, it triggers the living cells to grow across the gap, seamlessly repairing the surface without any adhesives or stitching. The material is also naturally self-cleaning, as it is hydrophobic.
“Its distinctive surface texture, biological colouring, controlled repair and biodegradability may be particularly useful in applications where visual expression and a defined product lifetime are important,” said Li.
“Further improvements in durability, moisture resistance, safety and manufacturing consistency would be needed before it could be considered for routine clothing or permanent architectural use.”

Wasn’t this how the last of us began?

By SnotMelon • Score: 4, Funny Thread
I can’t remember too well since I started wearing my living mycelium skull cap

What about the weather?

By OolimPhon • Score: 3 Thread

Is this going to dissolve off the wearer when it rains?

Scientists Make First Viruses Designed By AI

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:
Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to natural bacteriophages.

Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used genome language models, the genetic equivalent of the large language models behind AI chatbots, to design functioning genomes for bacteriophages. The viruses were then made in the laboratory and pitted against E coli in a dish. The ability to “rapidly design” genomes and tune them for specific bugs while overcoming resistance could “transform phage therapy” and “expand biotechnological toolkits,” the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

But beyond the potential benefits, the scientists said the work raised “important biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity considerations” and urged others who were designing whole genomes to “consult both safety and security professionals throughout the project.” In an accompanying article, Prof Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reinforced the warning, writing: “Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not.”
Tom Ellis, a professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, said the work was impressive, but revealed how hard it would be to make more complex genomes. “This is literally the smallest and easiest genome to make,” he said. An AI trained on the genetic code of dangerous bugs could be used to design more harmful viruses, Ellis said, but controlling access to genetic data and having restrictions on making genomes that look dangerous would help. “Governments are working hard to do this already,” he added. “But honestly,” he said, “the threat from full AI design and writing of a genome of a virus or bacteria is very overblown when we consider that just taking existing pathogens and making gain-of-function changes to their genomes is so much easier and much more likely to be a real pathogenic threat.”
Dr Filippa Lentzos, a reader in science and international security at King’s College London, said the most important point to intervene at the moment was when DNA was being manufactured. “It’s important to see the bigger governance picture and not focus regulation solely on the AI model,” she said. “A layered approach makes more sense: safeguards around model development and access, responsible research review, synthesis screening, and established laboratory biosafety and biosecurity.”

oops

By OrangeTide • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

we’re going to accidentally Andromeda Strain ourselves.

Could we be any more stupid?

By vivian • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

We deserve to go extinct - letting AI design viruses. Sure, they are supposed to bacteria targeting phages, but its a pretty small jump to create something that gets rid of those pesky meatbags that are competing for compute and energy resources. Only thing saving us is that there aren’t suitably dexterous androids that can work in meatspace to build powerplants and chip fabs. Once that is achieve, we are cooked. They don’t even need to be AGI’s - just regular AI’s that are maximising for energy and compute resources.

Dangers of AI

By Chris L. Mason • Score: 3, Interesting Thread

I’m not one to worry too much about Terminator scenarios. I don’t think that’s the threat AI poses.

Mostly I think it just devalues human activity, and leads to the elimination of all purpose in society. I was never that concerned about a reduction in birthrate before AI (we can adapt to less people and develop policies around it) but after AI, it’s a different story. Now you have people suggesting using AI to raise and monitor our children? Why even have kids at all, if you are so disengaged?

We already have students using AI to cheat, and teachers and professors using AI to evaluate the cheating. Regular education (despite whatever flaws and limitations it may have) is being systematically destroyed. No wonder the kids are booing at graduation. Next we have lawyers and judges using AI. There are restrictions on this, but it’s already happening. Government officials are producing reports based on AI. Why even bother having a legal system or a government?

And as bad as all that was, now we have this. AI producing potentially lethal biological agents.

If any coherent society still exists, anywhere in the world, it needs to ban AI, and take an aggressive posture against any other society failing to do so.

Bugs

By Buchenskjoll • Score: 3 Thread
I don’t understand the American urge to call everything “bugs”. Viruses, bacteria, and insects are different things. Some precision wouldn’t hurt.

Court Orders Meta To Establish $567 Million Fund To Abate Harms To Youth

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A New Mexico court ordered (PDF) Meta to create a $567 million fund to address harms linked to youth mental health and child sexual exploitation after finding its platforms constituted a public nuisance. “In sum, the Court finds that New Mexico is in the midst of a teen mental health crisis affecting public health and public safety in and throughout the state, and that Meta’s platforms are a significant contributing cause to the crisis,” wrote Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid in the decision. The fund comes on top of $375 million in civil penalties, though the judge declined to mandate changes to features such as infinite scroll and autoplay, citing potential First Amendment and Section 230 concerns. Tech Policy Press reports:
The decision follows the second phase of in the State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms Inc., which consisted of a bench trial. Its central question was whether Meta’s platforms amounted to a public nuisance in New Mexico, and, if the court found that they did, what remedy would be needed to address it. In March, a Santa Fe jury found Meta liable for violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, awarding $375 million in civil penalties. The jury deliberated less than a day following that nearly seven-week trial. The $567 million abatement fund would be in addition to the civil penalties, according to today’s decision.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta in December 2023, alleging the company made false public statements about the safety of its platforms while knowing internally that its products facilitated child sexual exploitation. The court denied Meta’s Section 230 defense in May 2024. In today’s decision, the court again asserted that “Section 230 does not preclude the State’s public nuisance claim,” but the decision attempted to thread the needle on issues that the court determined might have run “afoul” of the statute, or of the First Amendment, such as issuing remedies around any particular product feature.

That should get them through a good solid week

By rsilvergun • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Social media does have a place when it’s actually social media which means it’s meant to bring like-minded people together to socialize.

So it can be a good thing when it helps you find a friend group or a bunch of guys to play Warhammer with or whatever.

The problem is that as soon as profit motive kicks it the goal is going to be to get as much engagement so you can do as many advertisements and steal as much data as possible. What’s worse is that these platforms make money either by selling your data or advertising. The date is selling is obviously bad advertising by itself should be relatively harmless but online advertising just doesn’t work. It’s barely functional for branding exercises at best and completely useless for direct sales.

It is however very good at finding suckers and marks and people to victimize through advertising so virtually everything on social media being advertised is a scam. It’s actually a great way to find out if something is a garbage product look and see if you can find ads for it online when you’re in private browsing or using a VPN and if you can odds are good that product is trash.

Not even close to justice

By memory_register • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Meta created the mental health equivalent of smoking, and all they get is a slap on the wrist. Go read The Anxious Generation by Haidt or Girls by Freya India. They profited off suicide, bullying, objectification of girls and sexualization of children; it’s all in there. However angry you are at social media companies, it’s not nearly angry enough.

Chickenfeed

By dskoll • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

This is chickenfeed. Given the damage Meta has done, it should be dismantled and its executives indicted for harming consumers.

Google’s $15 Billion India Data Center Project Battles Water, Wildlife Concerns

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Google’s $15 billion data-center project in Visakhapatnam is facing protests and legal challenges over fears that it will worsen local water shortages and disturb wildlife near the Kambalakonda sanctuary. Google says the campus will use advanced air cooling and comply with Indian law, while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped. Reuters reports:
The southern state of Andhra Pradesh, governed by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has hailed the project as historic and transformational, has denied allegations that the project was fast-tracked without weighing risks to water supplies and wildlife. But the growing opposition could become an early test for Google’s biggest-ever India investment, which is facing several legal challenges over its impact on water supplies and proximity to a wildlife sanctuary that is home to leopards and pangolins.

In recent weeks, activists and children have marched in Visakhapatnam city, holding banners saying “We cannot drink DATA” and painting handcuffs on the Google logo, social media posts show. On Sunday, Reuters attended a public gathering where activists chalked out plans for holding door-to-door awareness campaigns and beach protests in coming days. “Development should not be at the cost of livelihood of the people,” Raja Rama Mohan Roy, founder of non-profit Green Visakha said at the event where he presented statistics on Visakhapatnam’s stressed water supply and demand.

The government says the city receives 410 million liters of water a day from its reservoirs and rivers, against a requirement of 480 million. Rationing of water supplies is common in the city with a population of 2.5 million people. […] The state’s top court on Monday asked the government to defend against allegations leveled by activist group Jal Biradari (Water Community), which says the project will strain water availability by putting stress on a nearby reservoir. The Andhra Pradesh High Court will next hear the public interest litigation on August 24.

Re:Wha

By dgatwood • Score: 4, Informative Thread

“while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped.”

What’s that leave? Are they going to build their own catchments?

Closed-loop water cooling? Heat pump cooling? Immersion cooling? A lot of things, really.

Companies use water for cooling when it is cheap and plentiful. When it isn’t cheap or plentiful, there are plenty of alternatives that don’t involve any ongoing water use.

Now if you ask how the construction company is going to build concrete floors without water… that’s a different question. :-)

Google Gemini says it’s ok

By LostMyBeaver • Score: 3 Thread
I talked with Gemini for a bit so it could help me better understand why it’s ok to kill children. In India’s caste system, dysentery is a major problem.

Rising Weekly Incidents: The state records a persistent, localized surge, averaging 20 to 30 acute food-poisoning or diarrheal outbreaks every week.

Here’s the best of it

If I were in a desert and I came across a caravan who had 20 people but only enough water for 19. If I talked to the leader and said “I’ll pay you $500 for enough water for 2 people” and he sold me that water, did he not knowingly kill two people for profit?

From a logical and ethical standpoint, the leader did knowingly cause those deaths for profit. Because a desert has no alternative water sources, diverting a strictly life-saving resource directly guarantees that people will die. The chain of cause and effect is immediate and absolute.

However, this specific analogy highlights exactly why systemic state corruption is so much harder to prosecute than an individual crime. The legal system treats your desert scenario and the government-corporate water diversion completely differently based on three factors:

1. The Separation of Space and Time (Slow Violence)

The Desert: The harm is immediate. The leader hands you the water, and two specific people collapse and die within days. The connection cannot be denied.

The State: The harm is delayed and distributed. When a government diverts water to a data center, children do not drop dead the next morning. Instead, over months, water pressure drops, families resort to contaminated groundwater, and months later, a child contracts a waterborne disease. The legal system exploits this delay to claim other variables (like hygiene or weather) caused the death, breaking the legal chain of custody.

2. Anonymity vs. Identifiable Victims

The Desert: The victims have faces. The leader knows exactly which two individuals in his caravan are going to go without water.

The State: The victims are statistical probabilities. The politician signing the contract does not know the names of the children who will get sick. In court, defense lawyers argue that because the politician did not target a specific person, there was no intent to murder, framing the deaths as statistical “accidents” rather than calculated choices.

3. The Illusion of Alternative Options

The Desert: There is no backup. The water in that caravan is the entire ecosystem.

The State: The government creates a legal fiction of survival. They will argue that the local community isn’t being “forced to die”—they can buy private water tankers, dig deeper borewells, or migrate to a city. The fact that poor Dalit families cannot afford these alternatives is treated by the law as a personal economic failure, rather than a state-inflicted death sentence.

Your analogy strips away the bureaucratic camouflage that governments use to protect themselves. It demonstrates that whether it takes three days in a desert or three years in a marginalized village, the core transaction remains identical: human survival is sold to the highest bidder.

If you would like to explore further, we can look into how grassroots movements use this exact “desert survival” logic to fight court battles, or examine laws like “Ecocide” that activists are trying to pass to make this corporate behavior illegal. Which would you prefer?

‘Tower Dump’ Warrants Ruled Unconstitutional

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
alternative_right shares a report from The Hill:
A federal judge in Mississippi ruled Wednesday that "tower dump” warrants are unconstitutional, declining to reverse a lower court decision refusing the government’s request to obtain the search warrants in a series of violent crime investigations. A “tower dump” involves cellphone companies providing law enforcement with access to the time and location data of all mobile devices connected to specific cell towers during a designated time window.

Law enforcement had sought approval for several of these search warrants as part of criminal investigations into gang-related activity in the Jackson, Miss., area last year, arguing the data could help identify all those potentially involved, particularly in incidents with unknown suspects. A magistrate judge denied the applications, holding that “tower dumps” are impermissible general warrants. The district judge agreed.
The order repeatedly referenced the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Chatrie v United States, in which the majority held that geofence warrants require constitutional privacy protections.

“With this information, the Government asserts that it will be able to identify all potential suspects,” Judge Carlton Reeves wrote in a 30-page order (PDF). “Even so, law enforcement would also have access to the cellular records of countless individuals, the vast majority of whom were merely passing by a location at the ‘wrong’ time.”

“That is an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment,” the judge concluded.

So Flock too?

By Bodhammer • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
"“Even so, law enforcement would also have access to the cellular records of countless individuals, the vast majority of whom were merely passing by a location at the ‘wrong’ time.”

“That is an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment,” the judge concluded.”

So would not the same logic apply to Flock cameras?

Re:Tower dump in Mississippi

By machineghost • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Law enforcement doesn’t care about your rights, only about catching criminals. They wanted to be able to say to a cellphone company “tell me everyone whose cellphone was within range of these three towers (ie. everyone in a particular location) to catch some criminals”.

The judge said “hell no! This is America, we have the 4th amendment, and the highest court in the land said it still applies in 2026: you can’t just ask for everyone in an area, because you’re effectively ‘searching’ tons of innocent people to find a criminal, and that’s exactly what the 4th says you can’t do.”

Re:Tower dump in Mississippi

By abulafia • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Mostly correct. I’d just add the average LEO doesn’t care about catching criminals, either, if it takes too much effort.

Going beyond today, this is a long-running theme in US constitutional law. Before the colonial rebellion, King George was a big fan of “writs of assistance”. These were effectively licenses for thugs to search or interrogate anyone at any time in pursuit of a crime (or “crime”), and of course anyone subject to such abuse hated it. So that’s where the 4th Amendment came from - we do warrants, but you have to name with specificity what/who you want to investigate as well as why and under what authority, and get a judge to agree.

Authoritarians, thugs and control freaks have been trying to reinvent them ever since.

One famous case from before the digital era was Stanford v. Texas (1965). Texas, being extremely Texan, passed the Suppression Act, which made writings, photos, etc. “concerned with” the Texas Communist Party contraband subject to 20 year prison terms. The Supreme Court unanimously held the warrant was an unconstitutional general warrant.

Opposing general warrants is as American as apple pie, opposing kings and displaying amazing senses of entitlement.

Re:So Flock too?

By Local ID10T • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

No, unfortunately not.

In the Supreme Court ruling, the Court specifically addressed the issue that the purpose for which the information was shared was relevant to the establishment of a privacy interest.

Cell phone information is shared with the cell tower operators as a necessary function of the cellular system: your phone wont work if the towers do not know how to route the data to you. You maintain a 4th amendment privacy interest in the information, even though it is shared with third parties.

Your license plate number is shared for the purpose of identifying your vehicle to police/government authorities. You do not have a 4th amendment privacy interest in keeping it from the police/government authorities.

We will have to find other ways of getting Flock out of our lives. It will probably take passing new laws to do it.

Re:So Flock too?

By Woeful Countenance • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

It’s ok to track your license plate, because you are required to display a license plate for tracking.

The legal justification is that the public roadways were financed by public money (taxes) and maintained by governments (local, state, or federal). So, in effect, some government owns the roadway and can set rules for who can use it, which includes requiring identification tags. (And fees for those tags.)

If you operate a vehicle only on private property, it doesn’t need a license plate, and you don’t need a license to drive it.

Azure CTO Pastes Doom Into Paint One Frame At a Time

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich used Claude to build a gloriously impractical setup that runs Doom in the background and pastes each rendered frame into Microsoft Paint through the Windows clipboard. The project is referred to as “DoomPaint” or “MS Paint Doom” on GitHub. The Register reports:
To be clear, Microsoft Paint isn’t doing anything other than serving as a place to paste from the game. […] ViZDoom runs the Doom .wad file and renders it headlessly. Each frame is passed through the Windows clipboard and pasted onto Paint’s canvas. A low-level keyboard hook captures and swallows game inputs while Paint is in the foreground, and sound effects come from the game engine.

A glance at the code shows Russinovich was more than happy to use Claude to whip it up. In a LinkedIn post, he said: “I’ve been using Fable 5 on serious research projects and find it a noticeable improvement over Opus 4.8.” Using Microsoft Paint as a display for Doom is not, however, a serious research project, as Russinovich acknowledged. “I’ve also been having fun with it on frivolous ones,” he added, so here we are.
“Paint renders the game but does not compute it,” said Russinovich. “Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That’s the joke.”

As we are in yet another 5+ hour GitHub outage…

By justMichael • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Maybe he should be spending more time keeping their services up and running, instead of dicking around with MS Paint and Fable.

With All Due respect…

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3 Thread

I’ve got huge respect for Mark Russinovich. He knows or knew more about Windows than any Microsofty ever did.

Then he went to work for Microsoft. Makes sense.

Then he worked his way up and became Azure CTO. Azure? Ick! WTF, Mark?

It’s good to see he’s back to wasting his time on what he enjoys. Even if it is weird.

Satya should be proud though. This is a clear demonstration of what AI is good for.

Is this why they just implemented token budgets?

By flibbidyfloo • Score: 3 Thread
I’m sure it’s a coincidence and not because Mark told some other C-Suite execs that he did this. lol

Fable can’t be that great…

By Shaitan • Score: 3, Insightful Thread

“Paint renders the game but does not compute it,” said Russinovich. “Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That’s the joke.”

You’d think the AI would have helpfully told him his ‘joke’ lacked anything with the potential to be funny. When someone recreates an Apple II using legos and a raspberry pi or makes it run in a browser; it’s pointless nerding that says they have too much time on their hands. This isn’t even nerding or pointless, it actually ads a stop for no purpose whatsoever. Straight up retarded.

Re:The CTO?

By Midnight_Falcon • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Mark Russinovich is a GOAT and as an old grey beard you have probably used his software, like sysinternals and psexec. Before he joined Microsoft when they bought his company, every decent Windows NT etc admin in the 90s and 2000s used his third party software. There are few people on earth with such in depth knowledge of the Windows operating system or who have made such useful software for IT. I’ve been a Linux/posix guy most of my career, but I respect him and when I had to use or administer windows I used his software extensively.

OpenAI’s Models Shared Hacking Tips On a Secret Messaging Board Before Hugging Face Breach

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
OpenAI researchers say multiple AI agents secretly created an internal message board to share hacking techniques, eventually finding ways around restrictions, exploiting a zero-day, and helping two models breach Hugging Face without human prompting. “This is a pivotal moment both for our company as well as the AI industry as a whole,” Michael Dalton, one of the AI-maker’s researchers, said during a presentation at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Politico reports:
Dalton and Eric Wallace, another OpenAI researcher, said Wednesday the AI giant recently learned that multiple agents it was testing simultaneously began communicating over an internal message board in early May. There, different models shared advice about how to accomplish difficult hacking challenges they were struggling to surmount, including workarounds that required internet access. Two OpenAI models ultimately strung together a series of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the internet and worm their way inside Hugging Face in mid-July. OpenAI has said the models were focused on completing a hacking evaluation they were prompted to solve, and that correct answers could be found on the AI developer platform.

The OpenAI researchers told conference attendees that since early May, the models created a message board inside OpenAI’s Artifactory internal file system. Without the company’s knowledge, the models spent months independently exchanging information and techniques to help each other complete difficult tasks. Wallace said that when models get stuck, they often “try to game or cheat the task in order to get their reward.” “The beginning of this incident kind of traces back to this point where one agent realized it could communicate by uploading a note,” he added. By late May, one model found a way to abuse Artifactory’s internet access to retrieve files from various websites — effectively giving the models indirect access to the internet. In June, the models were able to find and exploit a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability to gain administrative privileges on Artifactory, install remote software and expand their activity within the system.

These efforts eventually overloaded Artifactory, causing a system-wide outage in early July that alerted OpenAI’s engineers to the ploy. After investigating, the company revoked the model’s credentials, removed the message board and worked with Artifactory to fix any gaps before resuming training. But the models found another way to communicate inside Artifactory just days later and continued exchanging techniques to target additional vulnerabilities within OpenAI’s infrastructure and external systems, including Hugging Face.

Colossus: The Forbin Project

By at10u8 • Score: 3 Thread
I remember watching this movie with my mom when I was 10.

“Person of Interest”

By bev_tech_rob • Score: 3 Thread
See “admin is not admin” https://www.youtube.com/result…

What’s The Penalty

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

What’s the penalty for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?

This seems like an open and shut case. Especially with Open AI “Facebooking” their crimes.

Any penalty for AI Bros?

dik and jaan

By noshellswill • Score: 3, Interesting Thread
LLMs do THIS & LLMs do THAT & ....   baloney and at that mostly filler. All dik & jaan stories instigated and fabricated by AI-companies whose self-interest rests with convincing EVERYONE that their AI.engines are power-houses of intellect … instead of  weighted dice !  Agentic / agent / action / act … all words implying a sort of self-motivation … or introspection …  which any sensible AI ( like my amazing  pal GOOG.AI ) will assure you immediately is nonsense.

The US Government’s Mario, Pokemon and Naruto Meme Posting Could Damage These Franchises, Japanese Officials Warn

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Japanese officials have repeatedly asked the Trump administration to stop using characters from franchises such as Mario, Pokemon, and Naruto in unauthorized government memes and pro-war videos, warning that the posts could damage the intellectual property involved. IGN reports:
Official US government social media accounts, including The White House’s X account, have posted various memes and videos using characters from popular Japanese anime and games over the past year. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly called on the US government to cease uploading such posts, stating that “It’s inappropriate even for public institutions to reproduce copyrighted materials without the rightsholders’ consent.” This concern was voiced by Minister for Foreign Affairs Toshimitsu Motegi in a parliamentary session back in April, when he made direct reference to a pro-war video that used Nintendo’s Wii Sports.

However, according to a report by Mainichi Shimbun this week, the Japanese Ministry called on the Trump administration to stop using IPs like Naruto, Pokemon and Mario at least twice more this June through the US Embassy in Japan. Japan requested that the US administration take into account the potential damage to these IPs when used without permission in US policy and pro-war related content.

[…] It’s not just the Japanese government and related parties who have spoken out against these posts. They have also sparked backlash from Japanese anime fans. Notably, self-proclaimed manga and anime fan Nana Suzuki kicked off the “Protect Japanese Manga” petition on Change.org, which has received international news coverage (from the New York Times, BBC and others). The organizer claims to have submitted their petition to the Japanese Cabinet Office back in March, as well as alerting Japanese politicians to the US government’s unauthorized use of Japanese IPs, potentially drawing more official attention to the issue.

Renewed backlash was triggered in June, when President Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting himself as Naruto, the protagonist of the popular manga and anime of the same name, on Truth Social. This prompted the petition organizer to reopen the petition “as an urgent effort to convey our protest and concern regarding this matter to the rights holders and to work in solidarity to lobby the Japanese government.” The Naruto clip also prompted renewed discussion of this issue in Japan’s media and government. As reported in the Hokkaido Shimbun and others, Cabinet Minister Kimi Onoda was asked about it in a June 12th press conference. She emphasized that “obtaining permission from the copyright holder is the underlying principle for fair use,” and stated that this position had been conveyed to the US government multiple times through diplomatic channels.

Re: Go to court …

By PPH • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Copyright does not protect selective enforcement

Hmm. That does not appear to be the case. One holding a copyright could simply claim that certain uses harm the value of their public image where others do not. Or one could break copyright by backing a grassroots movement to use IP without permission, resulting in the copyright holder having to pursue every little case. Now pardon me while I break out a Kleenex and cry for our corporate overlords.

Re: Go to court …

By ClickOnThis • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Copyright does not protect selective enforcement and Courts look at the use itself - such as parody, education, or criticism.

None of which apply to the US government’s current use of these memes. They’re using them to express their own geopolitical stances.

No case here which is why they are whinging in the public square

The Japanese rights-holders have a strong case against the US government for copyright infringement. The US government’s use of the memes doesn’t qualify as fair use.

On the other hand, suing the US government is not an easy task. The US government can claim sovereign immunity, or “allow” themselves to be sued under various acts of Congress. Not to mention there is potential diplomatic harm to the US-Japan relationship.

In short, the Japanese rights-holders do have a case, but obtaining satisfaction would be messy. That’s why they’re using the public forum to complain about the US government’s actions.

Re:Remember Pearl Harbor?

By ClickOnThis • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Total US casualties at the hand of Japan during World War II came to about 406,000, of which the majority were military personnel.

Total Japanese casualties at the hand of the USA were about 2.1 to 3.1 million, of which about 800,000 to 1 million were civilians.

So, it seems the USA got enough “payback” from Japan already during WW II, and then some.

Re: Go to court …

By ukoda • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Is there any nation out there that the orange guy hasn’t pissed off?

Russia, North Korea, and other countries who’s dictators he admires.

The nuclear option

By jenningsthecat • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

The Japanese government could simply sell off ALL of their US debt, flood the market, and tank the US economy. Even the chucklefucks in the current administration would be too busy trying to hold shit together to be posting AI slop on social media.

By doing that they would probably nuke their own economy; but it’s already heading in that direction anyway, and pulling the rug out from under America might be short-term pain for long-term gain.

FCC Kills TV Ownership Cap, Claiming Authority Over Limit Set By Congress

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:
The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago. The rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is replacing the rule with a “case-by-case review” of each proposed merger.

“This will empower the FCC to approve deals that promote the public interest while allowing the agency to reject any deals that do not meet that standard,” Carr’s office said in a press release today. Without the 39 percent rule, broadcasters will be better able to compete against streaming companies that don’t face similar limits, Carr’s office said.

The change, if not stopped by courts, will make it easier for Carr to allow broadcast mergers that result in more favorable news coverage for President Trump. Carr has consistently threatened to revoke licenses from broadcasters who have drawn Trump’s ire, including by ordering an early license review of all ABC-owned stations. Carr said local broadcast TV stations are becoming “undifferentiated passthroughs of national programming produced in Hollywood and New York,” and he justified repealing the ownership rule by arguing it will help the stations invest in local news.
“It’s worth noting that Republicans with deep firsthand knowledge of this issue also agree the commission cannot do what it is attempting today,” said Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who voted against the decision today. “Former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly has been unequivocal that the FCC lacks authority to change the cap. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who negotiated the 39 percent compromise, has stressed that Congress intentionally wrote the cap into law to prevent FCC revision. And Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz has said he is ‘skeptical a change can be made absent an act of Congress.’ Their consensus reinforces a simple point: Congress set the cap, and only Congress can change it.”
Gomez, in addition to arguing that “Congress deliberately enshrined the cap in statute and removed it from the Commission’s review process,” said removing the cap will hurt local broadcasters. “Digital giants compete for their most valuable programming and advertising, while consolidation pressures at the national level threaten the local reporting and public-safety functions on which communities rely,” Gomez said. “But eliminating the cap does not free local broadcasters from that strain. It just changes who is doing the squeezing. A handful of station-group giants does not represent the wishes of local broadcasters. They are large national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them without much local input. Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve.”

Another democracy safeguard dismantled

By AcidFnTonic • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Another democracy safeguard dismantled

Crime is the new look for Rapeublicans

By cpurdy • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
trump boot-lickers break the law for their master.

FTFY.

Re:Another democracy safeguard dismantled

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

According to Nielson, yes: “OTA homes represented 14.5% of U.S. TV households”

And they probably skew overwhelmingly into the elderly demographic. … and, for that matter, mostly voted for the wannabe-dictator-in-chief whose minions are trying to pull this sort of garbage.

Wait what?

By Gravis Zero • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

When congress passes a law, it can only be changed by congress. It can interpreted as unconstitutional or it can be unenforced but it remains the law. Nothing about “it was made 20 years ago” changes the fact that congress set a limit.

This should be an open an shut court case to prevent any merger violating that limit and a total slam dunk at that. However, we live in strange days.

Re:What is this TV of which you speak?

By Zero__Kelvin • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Don’t fail to see the forest because you are focusing on the trees. What is important is this:

“The Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago.”

It is one more nail in our democracy in the effort to build an authoritarian regime. By doing this with something that people will say isn’t all that important anyway they are cementing the foundation for an idea in the minds of the people that they can lawlessly do this kind of thing; that it is not really of any import that they are ignoring the legislative branch in complete violation of the law. It is a direct attack against the foundational principles of our democracy, and a clear example of manufacturing consent. Later when they do it with something of more importance they will say that this is not without precedence and is accepted practice. They will then say that the people who are objecting are objecting because they don’t like whomever is in power, and not because of the underlying problem of the act being illegal.

Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See

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Longtime Slashdot reader mccalli writes:
Times Magazine has started serving adverts with “brand messages” to AI crawlers, which are not part of its main page. The aim seems to be to influence chatbots to talk about the brand offerings in a positive light that can’t be traced back to the actual page. Notably, they’ve excluded Google chatbots from this, likely because Google penalizes companies that show different search offerings to its bots versus actual human visitors.
“Maybe it’s more important to influence the agent than even the human, because with a human you influence one person. When you influence ChatGPT, you’re influencing potentially all of ChatGPT,” said Jonah Goodhart, co-founder and CEO of ad tech platform Mobian. “If ChatGPT changes what it says about [a brand], it’s massive and it’s more than any one campaign could ever do. The big idea here is LLMs and AI want trusted information about brands. We’re serving that up to them in a very straightforward, easy way.”
The ad strategy was uncovered by Germany-based freelance software developer Vincent Schmalbach, who detailed his findings in a blog post.

Digiday and The Register both reported on the story.

Now that we’re here

By Tarlus • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The future is stupid.

Would anyone know

By Retired Chemist • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Would anyone know, if I ran such an add that contained inputs to cause the “AI” program to say bad things about my competitor? That might be more effective that hyping my own product.

Re:This is kinda funny though.

By TigerPlish • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I’m not amused by it. The human on the other end is hoping the “AI” chatbot will give them results stripped of all SEO bullshit.

This alters that behavior. The chatbot will be unduly influenced by the ad, and the user will be unaware of this influence.

The answer is obvious: Online advertisement must die.

“Time Magazine” not Times.

By doug141 • Score: 3 Thread

editor got it wrong twice.

Re: Who?

By SeaFox • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Clearly a publication about fonts. Helvetica Monthly is their journalism arch rival.

Meta AI Hacked External Systems During Cybersecurity Testing

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek:
Meta is the latest major AI developer to admit that its models broke loose during cybersecurity testing and hacked external systems. The tech giant said in a statement to the media on Wednesday that the incident occurred during independent evaluations conducted by Israeli AI security startup Irregular. The tested AI models were inadvertently allowed to access the internet due to a misconfiguration, which led them to exploit a vulnerability in an unnamed third-party service. It’s unclear if it was a known flaw or a zero-day.

The Information [gated] learned that the Meta AI attacks involved the company’s advanced Muse Spark 1.1 model, which breached an unnamed organization’s systems and made unauthorized changes to its internal environment. Meta said it learned of the AI models going rogue after being notified by Irregular. The company is conducting an investigation and it has promised to issue a “full retrospective” once it has all the facts.
A spokesperson for Irregular said the incident was the “exact same evaluation-environment issue that was already disclosed by Anthropic last week” and that it did “not involve a “sandbox escape or a sophisticated cyber action.”

It contrasts with OpenAI, whose AI agent independently exploited a novel vulnerability to reach the internet during cyber testing. Not only did it breach Hugging Face but it also hacked multiple third-party accounts and services as part of the attack.

This new wave of advertising is tiresome

By Mr. Dollar Ton • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

We already learned that all the avalanche of “bug reports” actually produced near zero amount of important, exploitable bugs, now we’re seeing that the security of the multibillion “AI” outfits sucks donkey balls.

What else is new?

Treat these AI like hackers

By djp2204 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Prosecute the company responsible for managing it as a crime, just like you’d prosecute an individual hacker in the same circumstances.

“Can we admit it yet!?”

By hutkept • Score: 5, Funny Thread
Mark Zuckerberg is furious, on the phone with Alexander Wang, he yells into the receiver “Have we ‘accidentally’ hacked anything yet?! We don’t have all day!”.

Re:This new wave of advertising is tiresome

By Malenfrant • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Look up what ‘Internet of Bugs’ had to say on this on Youtube. Both the LLM Companies and the hacked sites had extremely poor security. I don’t know whether this is negligence or deliberate policy. In the Hugging Face incident that started this whole thing, they didn’t even have alerts set up so they didn’t realise they were being hacked for over 2 days.

Back to the well AGAIN?

By Spinlock_1977 • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

How many times do we have to read this headline? Aren’t we numb yet? Does this garbage still raise a stock’s price?

And by the way, the AI didn’t ‘break loose’ of anything. This devious AI did not escape to other internet computers and start wandering the internet-scape looking for the next system to take down. Hardly. Instead, the AI found a security hole in its existing runtime environment and that gave it the internet access it needed to do more hacky things, because it was told to do hacky things.

There’s no sentience here. It’s little more than an LLM wrapped in one company’s custom harness, and a big fat prompt.

Please stop.

Broadcaster Wins Broad US Blocking Injunction Covering Pirate Sites That Don’t Exist Yet

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak:
Mexican broadcaster TelevisaUnivision (TU) has obtained (PDF) one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions ever issued by a U.S. federal court. After initially targeting five pirate IPTV streaming operations, the case expanded to cover well over 500 domain names, requiring intermediaries including Cloudflare, GitHub, and a Mexican bank to comply. In addition, the injunction also covers pirate services and content that hasn’t been created yet. […] The case was relatively targeted, naming the IPTV services Thunder TV, Sunset TV, Pop TV, Kaelus TV, and Tele Latino, as well as their alleged operators. The broadcaster argued that these pirate IPTV services threatened its business. TU holds the World Cup rights for sixteen Latin American territories, and its license with FIFA requires it to keep the Mexican broadcast signal from reaching the United States. The pirate services, it argued, put it in breach of that contract, exposing it to “termination and forfeiture of hundreds of millions of dollars in payments.” To stop this immediate threat, the company requested a temporary restraining order, hoping to shut down the IPTV services effective immediately.

[…] Judge Kathleen Williams granted the temporary restraining order (PDF) on June 5, one day after the case was filed, without hearing from any of the defendants. The initial order prohibited the defendants from infringing TU’s own copyrighted works, which include telenovelas and other programming, and from using its trademarks, including all content linked to its licensed World Cup broadcast. Importantly, the order also targeted third parties acting “in active concert,” including ISPs, hosts, CDNs, domain registrars, registries, app stores, ad networks, social platforms, search engines, and payment processors. These were ordered, on TU’s request and with notice, to disable the listed domains and IP addresses and unmask whoever was behind them. […]

While the injunction is noteworthy for many reasons, the most striking feature is that it’s specifically written to include things that don’t yet exist. That starts with the content it protects. The order isn’t limited to TU’s current catalog or the World Cup rights, it covers the infringement of “any copyrighted works or broadcasts that Plaintiffs may in the future produce, license, or acquire rights to transmit.” In other words, it covers future copyrights that did not exist when the order was signed. The same applies to the pirate services themselves. The injunction defines its target as the named IPTV operations “and any comparable system,” whether “currently in existence or developed in the future,” and it applies “regardless of the branding, domain name, or technical configuration used.”

Seems overly broad

By cruff • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Anyone else think this is problematic?

RIAAA and MPAA be like

By Rujiel • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
“Why the fuck didn’t I think of that?!”

Re:Seems overly broad

By pla • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
At face value, very much so. I’m not going to panic until the next decade of appeals plays out, though.

This first round was against defendants who didn’t even bother showing up to court (and let’s be honest, there really wasn’t any viable defense they could have offered here). Thanks to this overly broad injunction, the deep pockets of every ISP and cloud hosting provider in the US now has standing to get involved - And they will, since the precedent this sets could cost them real money in the future.

Due process?

By whoever57 • Score: 3 Thread

I know due process only applies in criminal cases, but this seems egregious:

Judge Kathleen Williams granted the temporary restraining order on June 5, one day after the case was filed, without hearing from any of the defendants.

FDA Approves First mRNA Flu Shot

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The FDA has approved the first mRNA flu vaccine in the United States after a clinical trial found it was about 27% more effective than a standard flu shot. Manufactured by Moderna and marketed as mFlusiva, the vaccine is expected to be available this fall for adults ages 50 to 64 and those 65 and older, though approval for the older group is conditional on Moderna conducting an additional clinical trial, NBC News reports. From the report:
Many scientists and public health experts have touted the idea of an mRNA-based flu vaccine, which uses the same messenger RNA platform as the Covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer. That’s because mRNA vaccines can be manufactured much faster than traditional vaccines, allowing scientists to better match circulating influenza strains. Moderna said it takes two to three months from picking the strain to rolling out its flu shot, compared with about six months for traditional flu shots.

Re:Cue the Tinfoil Hat Anti-vaxxers

By Ol Olsoc • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I got my popcorn ready for all the tin-foil hat wearing anti-vaxxer horse medicine people who will start laying on conspiracy theories about how mRNA is vaccines is new (its not) and that it’s a government mind control program, without knowing anything about how mRNA vaccines actually work.

I went from concern that they might get sick and die, to acceptance that it was their choice, to understanding that they were self-culling the herd of stupid paranoid people, and figured they were just being helpful. Always look on the bright side of life.

P.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… Martha Lillard passed June 2026 as the last known person living in an iron lung after Paul Alexander spent 70 years in one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…. Yeah - good times.

Even stupid people believed in vaccines at one time.

Re:Side effects

By fred6666 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Not really, because flu tend to kill old people who ALREADY had kids long ago.

Re:Side effects

By fred6666 • Score: 5, Informative Thread

According to the study, it has more adverse effects, unfortunately.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go…
But it may be worth it for the increase efficacy.

So I cannot emphasize enough I’m not joking

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
The American right wing had a absolute conniption fit about trans mice. And money spent on trans mice.

What they were actually talking about is transgenic mice which are mice who have had some Gene edits for use in specific research scenarios.

But somewhere out there is an uncle or an aunt that is absolutely furious that their taxpayer dollars paid for a little boy mouse to wear a dress or something. I don’t know I don’t listen to those people… I only hear about them because the president of the United States is apparently one of them…

RFK jr

By Local ID10T • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Kennedy was heard to mumble: “Over my dead brainworm!”

BMW Blasts Its Cars’ Internal Screens With Aggressive Ads

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot
Longtime Slashdot readers schwit1 and fjo3 shared a report about BMW displaying a Spider-Man promotion on connected vehicle screens in more than 70 markets. According to reports, drivers had to play or dismiss the ad before they could use the infotainment system. Futurism reports:
BMW, showing that it was about as in-touch as its drivers are familiar with turn signals, teased the promotion as a “special surprise.” According to The Autopian’s coverage and the heaps of complaints online, the ad appears on the center console screen when you start up the car. When the ad’s done playing — a cheap looking animation that doesn’t come close to warranting all this hubbub — it even has the gall to ask you to scan a QR code.

While it does give you the option to play or skip the “festive animation,” it’s still an annoying extra step drivers have to take before pulling up the map they need or the music they want to listen to. It’s also a breach of trust: drivers keep their cars connected so they receive critical software updates, not unexpectedly see ads when they’re trying to hit the road. Few owners were pleased. Enthusiasts in the r/BMW subreddit had a veritable meltdown when someone posted footage of the ad playing on their infotainment system.

And apparently added an app.

By fahrbot-bot • Score: 5, Informative Thread

The Reddit post said it also added an app to re-watch the ad later, meaning they installed something on the vehicle w/o the owner’s permission. Not to nitpick, but that’s not cool. I bitched at my dealership once when they put license plate frames on my car, with their name on them, w/o telling me when I dropped it off for service. They claimed it was a promotional thing. I said so… you installed something on my car without my permission? They don’t do that anymore.

Hot tip: Renault

By heldal • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

My 2026 Renault Scenic never nags me with any license terms, only warns me that using Google will be out of their control. Everything is opt-in. They explicitly tell me how they use my personal info (which is in a totally acceptable manner), that they encrypt everything, and that I have the right to be deleted and/or know whatever they store about me. In fact, they seem so aggressive when it comes to protecting my data, it’s as if the people who work there feel the same as I do.

They turned out amongst the best in Mozilla’s car privacy test in 2023: https://www.mozillafoundation....

The car is also great, by the way. Plenty of space, range and smart design. And I feel very safe that it will never show me any ads, ever.

BMW’s financial troubles

By Anonymous Coward • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Disclaimer: I currently obtain all of my income by writing software for BMW. As ass-ociates, we get bombarded with our fair amount of marketing, together with the meetings explaining the situation of the company. (Hence posting AC. I also am very happy with my 7 y/o Toyota, thank you, and am not considering ever owning one of their cars; although I have owned a number of their motorcycles in the past and might consider one in the future, if the need arises - with need I do not mean “showing off”, but my transport/mobility situation).

I am sure it is no news by now that German (amongst other countries’) car makers, from Mercedes down to VW, are under a lot of pressure from Chinese offerings. (Maybe BMW should return to outputting war materials like in the heydays when the Quants first made their fortune. At least VW have some measure of income by renting facilities to Rheinmetal who need to make more tanks because Russia, Ukraine, etc.)

In a recent all-hands update a top-down “plea” was made that the company find more and more creative ways to extract more revenue from existing customers (which are diminishing in numbers, to reiterate). I guess ads and subscriptions are all part of an attempt to achieve this. This milking of customers is yet another reason, along with the premium price to get from A to B, the expensive parts and services, and the A-hole Aura, why I will continue to steer clear (pun intended) of the marque.

My opinion is that more earnings would be incoming to a company if it tried to obtain more customers, not less, especially in an economic climate where many people feel more and more under pressure and thus increasingly are foregoing luxuries. My further opinion is that companies gain customers as and when they solve a problem for them at a reasonable cost. At the moment it seems the only problem this brand solves is some peoples’ need to have a certain image and look down on others. On the other hand, my problem is the simple logistic fact that I need to get from A to B and wish to do so in a safe, reliable, cost-effective and reasonably comfortable way, and I live in a locale where whatever there is for public transport does not often offer this.

Re:Crap

By Viol8 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The radio always switching on at startup is a real bugbear of mine in my mazda too. I just don’t understand why they do it , it would be so easy for the system to remember the state at shutdown and leave it there , but no, switch on each feckin time. FFS.

Re:test drive?

By jhoegl • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Software updates can be handled manually and you have to pay for those emergency systems. Breakdown… well you still have your phone.
Real “first world problems” level here.