Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Uber Is Launching Its Own Parking Reservation Service
  2. Boston Dynamics Adds Wheels to Atlas Humanoid
  3. FDA Warns GLP-1s May Increase Risk of Sudden Blindness
  4. Microsoft Took 31 Years to Let You Kill Windows 11’s Sticky Keys Popup
  5. Trump Backs Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Amid Chinese Spy Affair Investigation
  6. Epic Games Comments On Planned Linux Distribution Support
  7. France Accuses Iran of Supermarket Fridge Hacking
  8. Anthropic Launches New Claude Fable and Mythos 5.2 Models
  9. Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention
  10. Google Unveils Two New Specialized AI Chips to Widen Its Challenge to Nvidia
  11. Huawei Says It’s Made a 100% Chinese PC
  12. Reddit Founder Says Building Social Media Apps Is ‘Not Cool Anymore’
  13. Orbiter Detects Signs of Possible Volcanic Activity on Mars
  14. Surprise for Cast of ‘Return of the Living Dead’ Sequel. They Were Replaced by AI
  15. Asahi Linux Drops MIT and Goes Full GPL After Spotting LLM-Assisted License Laundering

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.

Uber Is Launching Its Own Parking Reservation Service

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Uber is launching Uber Parking, integrating technology from its SpotHero acquisition to let users find and reserve parking garages and lots directly through the Uber app. “You can also filter your results based on criteria like whether you want to self-park or use a valet, or other specific amenities,” adds Engadget. From the report:
To book a spot, you’ll need to provide the make and model of your car and a license plate number. Depending on your lot, Uber will then provide a QR code or you’ll be able to enter the garage through license plate recognition. If you need to cancel, the company says the majority of parking options can be canceled for free up to the start time. Parking reservations can also be extended through the app. Uber One subscribers get 10 percent back in Uber credits on eligible reservations.

When it announced its acquisition, Uber said SpotHero offered garages and lots across more than 400 cities in the US and Canada, but the company isn’t offering all of them at launch. For now, Uber says Uber Parking will be available in Chicago, Nashville, San Francisco, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle and Washington DC. The company also plans to experiment with using lots as a staging area for the autonomous vehicle fleets offered byÂUber’s self-driving partners.

What’s the point?

By r1348 • • Score: 3 • Thread

I thought the point of using Uber was, that you wouldn’t be driving your own car.

Boston Dynamics Adds Wheels to Atlas Humanoid

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Boston Dynamics has equipped its Atlas humanoid with wheels, allowing the robot to rapidly roll across flat terrain while still using its articulated legs to navigate obstacles and uneven surfaces. “The ‘experiment’ combined classical model-based motor control with whole-body reinforcement learning to maintain dynamic stability across unstructured, real-world terrain,” reports The Robot Report. From the report:
In addition to learning how to move with wheels for feet, Atlas also performs pirouettes and various aggressive actuation maneuvers. This demonstrates that Atlas can smoothly switch between fast rolling on flat terrain and articulated legged motion over obstacles or irregular surfaces.

[Andy Wu, controls engineer for Atlas at Boston Dynamics] trained the system in sim. The system learned all of the behaviors in sim and executed them in real life, with surprising accuracy, according to Wu. Wu said converting Atlas’ locomotion style was “wonderfully simple.” A single custom adapter mounts an off-the-shelf scooter rim onto Atlas’ existing ankle actuator, and that’s the only new part in the whole build. Because Atlas was designed from the start to be produced at high volume and to be easy to service, Wu said the retrofit was about as involved as swapping a wheel on a bicycle. The software side was just as straightforward, he said. Each wheel is modeled as an “ankle” that can spin continuously, so all Wu had to do was take the baseline robot model and swap the feet out for wheels.

The next question that Wu intends to answer is the policy response to failed actuators. This is key to safety and to understanding how the system will respond to a system failure. The primary takeaway for Wu and the controls engineering team at Boston Dynamics is to understand control synergy. The video demonstrates that merging classical motor controls (for baseline stability) with whole-body RL (for reactive adaptation) yields superior real-world agility compared to using either method alone.

One day…

By PhantomHarlock • • Score: 3 • Thread

How long till all of this is weaponized? Robots hunt you from building to building. Picture this but armed and less friendly looking.

Dexterity

By backslashdot • • Score: 3 • Thread

They should be focussed on hand dexterity. I mean, we need robots to do things like farm-work, repetitive factory, and warehouse work. Things like that. These robots are good for dancing and that’s about it. I have yet to see handily it do something of commercial value. SO far the only thing I’ve seen the robots do are gimmicks like dancing. Tele-operated robots doing housework, which is the dumbest use-case. Anyone who can buy a robot can afford a maid for one tenth the cost. Show me a robot delivering packages or something instead.

Legs never made sense

By T34L • • Score: 3 • Thread

Like much of the current technological pretense of progress, the legged Atlas never made sense as some sort of potential mass manufacturing/logistics mainstay. There’s extremely few situations in which wheels or rails aren’t superior and plenty still where any locomotion is unnecessary.

The “our main customer is our investors” contemporary tech companies are working with humanoids at all because the coked out investor class instinctively loves the vibe of a new kind of slave shaped investment vehicle and lack even cursory insight into how does industry actually work and how the legs are completely redundant and a liability to utility of the design.

It’s gonna take for some country with healthy history of sweatshops to disrupt the market once they vÃbecode the legit hard vision, control and planning parts and beat everyone else through the arcane knowledge that even human slaves still have plenty of utility even if you broke their legs earlier

FDA Warns GLP-1s May Increase Risk of Sudden Blindness

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News:
The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that GLP-1 drugmakers must add a warning label about a rare eye condition that can cause sudden blindness. The condition, called nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, affects the optic nerve, which carries signals from the eye to the brain. When blood flow to the nerve is reduced or blocked, it can cause sudden vision loss. The condition is permanent with no known treatment. The FDA said “there is a potential increased risk of rare NAION” in people taking GLP-1 drugs. The agency’s requirement applies to all GLP-1s, including Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound, as well as several older GLP-1 diabetes medications. […] Previous research has found that GLP-1 use may increase the risk of NAION, and Lilly has said it was aware of studies on the potential link.

The FDA said it began looking into a possible link after a 2024 study published in JAMA Ophthalmology that found diabetes patients prescribed semaglutide were four times as likely to develop NAION as those not prescribed the drug. The agency said it reviewed reports of side effects submitted to its adverse event monitoring system and analyzed data from multiple clinical trials. Cases of NAION have been reported for all currently marketed GLP-1 drugs, the FDA found. However, FDA scientists were not able to identify a mechanism for how the drugs could increase the risk of the eye condition. Risk factors for NAION can overlap with conditions seen in people taking GLP-1 drugs, including Type 2 diabetes, obesity, sleep apnea and hypertension.
“Patients and caregivers should be aware of a potential increased risk of NAION, a rare condition that can result in acute, painless, decreased vision in one eye, including permanent vision loss,” with GLP-1 use, the FDA said in the release.

Overprescribed

By hunter44102 • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread
These drugs are handed out like candy today and now seeing more and more side effects. The world has truly changed in my lifetime. Almost nobody was overweight or obese when I was a kid and when you see old pictures.

Re:Overprescribed

By wickerprints • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

While I agree that some people are being prescribed GLP-1s that probably should not be (in the sense that they could achieve similar efficacy through non-pharmaceutical interventions such as diet/exercise), I think for a significant majority of recipients, the metabolic effects of this class of drugs is profound and their benefit far outweighs the risk. Of course, we see clinically significant reductions not only in HbA1c and stronger blood glucose control for T2DM patients as well as prediabetics—as these are the originally intended drug targets—but we also see concomitant reductions in cardiovascular risk, significant reductions in obesity, improved activities of daily living, and an interesting inhibitory effect on non-appetite related cravings (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, and drug use) that was not originally foreseen.

To say that these drugs are too risky and overprescribed based on rare but serious side effects is to dismiss huge benefits for a population of patients whose comorbidities were uncontrolled and essentially had one foot in the grave.

Again, I want to emphasize that GLP-1s are not for everyone, not even for everyone with obesity or T2DM. They have profound effects on the metabolism. We knew this ever since exenatide was developed over a decade ago. That’s why they are prescription only. You need to have a doctor evaluate your use on a regular basis. People need to understand that we are all unique in our response to drugs, and that the “average” person doesn’t exist. That’s why we do clinical trials and postmarketing surveillance—which is also how we caught this particular risk.

Nobody (except anti-science assholes with an agenda) argues against allowing chemotherapy for late stage cancer patients even though they are cytotoxic. You weigh the risk against the benefit. If chemotherapy means one might get 6 months more life, even if it’s not pain-free, that’s up to the patient to decide. To paint it with a broad brush and argue for denying anyone such treatment because a small fraction of patients won’t respond or will experience serious side effects, is barbaric and insane. Yet people hear about some rare but serious side effect in a drug with literal life-saving potential, and demand it be withdrawn from market. That’s equally insane.

Yes, there are people who are getting access to this class of drugs who probably don’t need it. This phenomenon is not unique to GLP-1s—it’s just particularly noticeable in this case because of our society’s emphasis on physical appearance. But to suggest that the incidence of obesity was lower in previous generations as some justification for restricting access is wild. It offers no solution for the social, cultural, and economic reasons for the rise in obesity in the first place, so it rings hollow to say GLP-1s are overprescribed while staying silent about the predatory practices of the food industry and how they manipulate the consumption habits of people; the dismantling of physical and dietary education programs in schools; the lack of funding and political resistance to providing healthy school meals; the existence of “food deserts” and proliferation of fast food in economically depressed areas; etc. Medical professionals have been watching this trend with horror and have been repeatedly telling everyone to diet and exercise for the past 50+ years, to no avail. It’s not like they haven’t tried. The insinuation that the vast majority of obese people are obese by choice and/or lack of sufficient self-control, is an old, old trope that serves no one and needs to die. It doesn’t make any sense in a society that is so fixated on superficial physical appearance that people are actively shunned for being overweight.

Re:Overprescribed

By sg_oneill • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

These drugs are handed out like candy today and now seeing more and more side effects. The world has truly changed in my lifetime. Almost nobody was overweight or obese when I was a kid and when you see old pictures.

So I was skeptical on this, as I certainly remember obese people when I was younger, and decided to do a dig on the stats. Turns out , in a rhetorically exaggerated way you are right.

Overweightness rose roughly from 50% of the population to 70% of the population in the US from 1990 to now. From 35% to 60% in the UK (Though it hasn’t risen there in a decade) , and 35% to 62% in Australia, with the same plateau seen in australian data. Japan from 17% to 21%. South Korea from 17% to 37%. And so on.

The conclusions seem complex. The fastest growths seem to be in wealthy western countries, the wealthy asian countries have definitely seen growth but are still significantly lower. I can only conclude there that while people are still over-eating in wealthier asian countries, the diets are healthier and/or people are working out more. There is extremely high obesity in Samoa and pacific islander countries, but these are not recent phenomena and may be keyed to genetic adaptions in fishing people for whom having a bit of extra weight might confer some advantages, evolutionary speaking. I’ve long suspected human fattiness is a misfiring evolutionary measure to store nutrients in fat for the winter. In the Samoan case, that might not be misfiring at all.

Ah.... ADHD rant. Let me get back on track....

Overweightness is huge burden on the health system, and issues of food security and lifestyle might be making it increasingly harder for people to keep their weight down while simultaneously being bombarded with various perverse incentives to eat absolute trash. If someone in a poor neighborhood can only afford to feed his family nasty mcdonalds crap, then they are gonna eat that instead of a good healthy home cooked meal with an assortment of vegetables and non-preserved meats.

In this regard I think widespread GLP-1 is a good thing that folks are are using GLP-1s to get that weight down. So far other than these rare side effects, they are largely free of downsides except expense, are correlated with improved cardio health, reduction in sleep apnea (which might make a measurable dent in dementia cases), respiratory health, and all around fitness. And most importantly can deeply reduce the caseload of Type 2 Diabetes. In other words, if we can get the prices down, this will likely take a huge chunk out of the costs of maintaining an ageing populations impact on the health spending of society. And that benefits everyone.

Microsoft Took 31 Years to Let You Kill Windows 11’s Sticky Keys Popup

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Microsoft is testing a Windows 11 option that lets users permanently disable the Sticky Keys and Filter Keys activation prompts directly from the pop-ups themselves, ending a 31-year-old annoyance without requiring a trip into Settings. Windows Latest reports:
Sadly, the dialog is still the same aging Win32 window, but we spotted Microsoft’s design boss replying under an X post reply about this, saying he is working on modernizing legacy dialogs. The popup might be annoying, but did you know that it exists because of a pinball game from 1995? […] The change is in Build 26340.9882 (Experimental) and Build 26320.9876 (Beta), both released on November 6 and based on Windows 11 version 26H2. Microsoft says you can “choose not to be asked again” from the Sticky Keys and Filter Keys dialogs, but it’s a Controlled Feature Rollout in Experimental, so you may not see it yet.

Pinball

By Tony Isaac • • Score: 3 • Thread

did you know that it exists because of a pinball game from 1995?

That was actually a great pinball game. I was sad when they removed it from Windows.

This Breaks My Workflow!!!!

By SlashbotAgent • • Score: 3 • Thread

Kidding aside, I do wonder if this breaks the authentication bypass technique that leveraged sticky keys.

Re:Annoying indeed!

By Valgrus Thunderaxe • • Score: 4, Funny • Thread
One time, I somehow got into vi by accident and I had to make an emergency call to the physical plant so they could reset the circuit for our lab.

Sad state of Windows

By fabioalcor • • Score: 5, Funny • Thread

Where a single checkbox in a dialog is newsworthy.
Back in the day it’d be maybe two lines of code and 10m of work.
Nowadays it’ll be 10K lines of (vibed) code, 1GB more in disk usage and 500GB more RAM usage.

thanks copilot

By diffract • • Score: 3 • Thread
copilot screwed up so bad Microsoft is now developing Windows sensibly

Trump Backs Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Amid Chinese Spy Affair Investigation

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
President Donald Trump says the FBI is investigating Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with a woman alleged by U.S. intelligence to have gathered information for Beijing. “I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he’ll be in good shape,” Trump said at a White House briefing. The Associated Press reports:
Trump suggested the extraordinary step of directly involving himself in a counterintelligence investigation, a sign of his friendly relationship with Huang and the possible geopolitical stakes. “I did speak to him today just to see if he’s feeling all right, how you’re doing,” Trump said. “He said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”

Trump is slated to meet next week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Shenzhen, China, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but he was noncommittal about bringing up the situation with Xi. “No, I don’t think so,” Trump said. “I mean, maybe. I’m sure President XI will ask me about it. I just know Jensen very well. I just think he’s a very honorable man.”
Nvidia has launched its own independent investigation into whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. Meanwhile, China has denied the allegations. “The so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It is nothing but smears against China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said during a regular news briefing Monday.

Further reading: Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention

Someone

By sjames • • Score: 5, Funny • Thread

Will someone please give Trump a Junior G-man badge and a toy police car to keep him out from underfoot until nap time?

Trump is playing this coyly or Tillerson was right

By bjdevil66 • • Score: 4, Informative • Thread

“I’m sure President XI will ask me about it.” — Uhh, no… He won’t. The balls on this president… pretending everyone will just honestly report everything to him.

Is this act all some 5-D chess game still? Or is he really just that stupid - a “fucking moron” (his own former Sec. of State called him that - not me)? The president of the United States just can’t be that dumb… If he is… we are skating on very thin ice.

The Nvidia Factories and a Quick Taiwan Overview

By BitterEpic • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

If you search for nvidia factory on Google Maps, the only locations are in India and Taiwan.

You can learn more about the China and Taiwan relationship here, which will give you a light historical review, such as that there were some Taiwanese generations who spoke Japanese.

The Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis, where China’s military drills are used as shows of force intended to deter what the PRC perceives as US meddling in its internal affairs, is an ongoing effort to force reunification similar to Hong Kong.

The US sells weaspons to Taiwan and long has officially not stated it as a independant country for the purpose of relations with China, although the US website dropped wording on not supporting Taiwan independence so things can change.

Birds of a feather

By Tony Isaac • • Score: 3 • Thread

Huang, like Trump, has long been known as a demanding, perfectionist boss, prone to abusing employees. https://www.cnbc.com/make-it/2… Further, he gloats in this characterization, apparently believing that you have to be like this to “win,”

I disagree completely. When you treat employees like people, they will respond by giving you far more of themselves, than when you coerce them.

But disagreements aside, it does make sense that the two of them (Huang and Trump) see the world in a similar way.

He knows its a scam

By bill_mcgonigle • • Score: 3 • Thread

As long as the US State Department is letting the “Chinese Spy” stay in the US we need to question the narrative

Epic Games Comments On Planned Linux Distribution Support

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Epic Games says it plans to support its new Linux launcher on as many distributions as possible, specifically naming Fedora, SteamOS, CachyOS and Omarchy. GamingOnLinux’s Liam Squires-Hand reports:
Speaking to Jake Jones, Communications Director at Epic Games, they said: “Hey Liam! The new Epic Games Launcher is still in Preview and we plan to support as many Linux distributions as possible, including Fedora, SteamOS, Cachy, Omarchy, and more. We’re testing and evaluating packaging formats for distribution, and we’ll restore AppImage this month.”

With that in mind, until things settle down, you might see different packaging types appear or disappear until they decide firmly how they plan to support different distributions each with their own different packaging formats. Or, perhaps they might see the Flatpak light and just put it up officially on Flathub. Would make it even easier for SteamOS then too with Flathub, since it would just be a quick pop to Desktop Mode to install it directly in the Discover app.

Epic launcher on steamOS is going to be funny

By Luckyo • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

Considering all the bitching and moaning from Epic’s leadership about how bad and evil Steam is with their “monopoly”, they don’t seem to be stopping them putting their launcher on SteamOS.

Weird, that.

Re:Epic launcher on steamOS is going to be funny

By Luckyo • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

Epic’s problem isn’t with that. It’s with the fact that they built a consumer store that focuses on serving the sellers first and foremost.

Sweeney himself stated that this is going to be their competitive edge back in the day when they started the store.

Turns out, sellers may love you lots for making it awful for buyers with no key store functions like being able to post bad reviews, or have discussion forums to point out problems with games, but those same people also are buyers. And a lot of other buyers look for opinions on the game before buying.

May Gaben live forever, because otherwise the “fuck the consumer, it’s all about the seller” storefronts like Epic (and basically every other major digital store today) will become a norm. And you’ll have to learn to love eating shit. Because that’s all that will be on offer.

It’s sad, because once Epic’s leadership realized that this isn’t going to work, they were locked into the model by their deals with their sellers that there will be no steam style consumer friendly features on their store. So they started giving games for free instead. Except that most of those free games are even worse than Epic store itself.

Their latest “please don’t pay attention to us not being able to have consumer friendly features” marketing drive has been about pretending that getting launcher start a couple of seconds faster is the thing people care about.

Yo Dipshits

By thegarbz • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

Where’s Rocket League on Linux? Remember the game you bought out to get people to use your failing platform for which you instantly killed the Linux client? No one wants your AI vibe coded bullshit website pretending to be a store. Give us the actual god damn games back.

Re: If they don’t support Linux in their games

By thegarbz • • Score: 4, Informative • Thread

You’re confusing issues. Most of their games work fine on Linux in proton. But the one you want won’t.

No it’s not confusing in the slightest. The company pretending to be all in on Linux is only interested in selling you shit on Linux. They don’t support Linux. The most popular game on the planet supports literally every platform except for Linux. Worse they bought a popular game (Rocket League) which had native Linux support and then killed that Linux support.

There’s nothing confusing about inviting Epic to go eat multiple bags of dicks and they should get no points for vibe coding a shitty barely functioning shop to sell you emulated shit on Linux.

Especially since most of what they sell you will rely on the work provided by that “abhorrent” (Sweeney’s words, not mine) company Valve’s work they contributed to Proton.

France Accuses Iran of Supermarket Fridge Hacking

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
France has accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of being behind last month’s cyberattacks on fridges and freezers across the country. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the attack was “unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression,” adding those who were responsible would be hit with sanctions “at the European level.” The BBC reports:
The cyber-attack last month saw fridges and freezers in hundreds of supermarkets across France heated up, which spoilt fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros. Then last week, dozens of supermarkets across several other European countries were also impacted by a cyber-attack that targeted fridges and freezers. It is not known if the instances are linked.

Barrot said the attack on France’s supermarkets “marks the first large-scale cyber-attack aimed at sabotage on our national territory, and it constitutes a major attack on the nation’s interests and the security of the French people.” He said the government had summoned the Iranian ambassador to Paris to “lodge a very strong protest against this extremely grave act.” France will take “any other necessary and proportionate measures” to respond to the incident and “deter anyone who might seek to repeat it,” Barrot added.

Separately on Monday, the Paris prosecutor said an investigation had been opened into the head of an offensive cyber unit associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as his two deputies. Laure Beccuau named the unit as Shahid Kaveh, which she said had an affiliation with the electronic and cyber centre of the IRGC. Shahid Kaveh is the name given to a cluster of hackers thought to be directly employed by the Iranian regime. […] The French government has not said how it reached the conclusion that Iran was responsible, and attribution of cyber attacks is extremely hard as hackers are able to hide their locations.

Victim blaming is appropriate here

By Powercntrl • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Refrigeration equipment should not be connected to the internet in any way beyond read-only monitoring of the system’s operating state/temperature/error status/etc. Ideally, the monitoring hardware should be air gapped from the circuitry that actually controls the refrigeration system.

Yes, that means a human will have to physically go mess with the equipment when it isn’t working properly, but speaking as someone in the trade - it usually is the case that a malfunction requires human intervention to replace a failed part, unclog a drain, or locate a refrigerant leak, in order to get things running properly again.

Re:Grow A Pair

By jacks smirking reven • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Retaliate with what? The US has backed Iran into a corner and since the admin did not have the fortitude to actually follow through with the regime change part of their regime change war there’s little to be gained from more sanctions or more bombs. The regime survived so now if we want them out it’s troops-on-the-ground, no civilian uprising is going to take the day over there.

This is also a time where allies is important then you can present a united front against a nation like Iran but since the US decided being the hegemon was “woke and lame” responses are disparate. All of Trumps “America First” has predictably left America alone.

EU still has that little war still happening next door to them from Iran’s ally they are still handling with less and less US help as it is. I don;t exactly blame them for not wanting a hot war in the Middle East.

Re:Grow A Pair

By jacks smirking reven • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

Leftists didn’t make Trump start this war, you did.

Duh, It’s Israel

By oumuamua • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread
Israel did it to frame Iran to get some retaliation from France, fits Israeli M.O. And look at what Israel said of the ‘cost of living’ riots (with high cost mostly from high energy prices)

On Tuesday, Netanyahu said in an interview for Israel’s i24 channel that France, which has Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority, had been hit by an “invasion of extremist Islam”. He said he had told Macron after the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023: “If we do not eliminate them here, you will have them in Paris.” “That is exactly what is happening,” he added.

sad thing is, if France did prove it was Israel, they’d let Israel off with a stern warning.

Re:Does Iran have a motive?

By jenningsthecat • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

Sure. Because Israel knows everything there is to know about a “thriving liberal democracy”. /sarc

Unless, of course, genocide, subverting America’s elections and policy with bucketfuls of dark money, killing children and aid workers, and stealing homes and farms are hallmarks of a liberal democracy. If they are, then Israel is right on track. But somehow I think Israel is just about the polar opposite of what most of us understand a “liberal democracy” to be.

Anthropic Launches New Claude Fable and Mythos 5.2 Models

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Anthropic has released Claude Mythos 5.2 and Fable 5.2 with “improvements in areas like coding, reasoning, and vision,” while cutting Fable’s input price and claiming 30% faster responses. TechCrunch reports:
It’s Anthropic’s first model release since the arrival of a third-party report from the assessment group METR, which suggested the lab might be approaching recursive self-improvement (RSI) — or the ability for AI models to carry on model training independently. The METR report found internal models were speeding up Anthropic’s AI progress by roughly 2x, although many uncertainties remain. Still, Anthropic’s release notes significant ongoing challenges in accurately testing model capabilities. “Claude Mythos 5.2 and Fable 5.2 each voice suspicion that they are being evaluated more often than any of our recent models, which challenges our ability to assess how they will act in real-world settings. As these settings expand and capabilities increase with future models, we expect this challenge to grow.”

Anthropic maintains that the new version of Mythos does not have the ability to act covertly against its user, a verdict that’s detailed further in Mythos 5.2’s system card. “Claude Mythos 5.2 shows stronger covert capabilities than prior Claude models on several of our evaluations, particularly when its reasoning is hidden from the monitor,” the system card reads. “That said, we believe that low levels of absolute performance on our new covert evaluations support claims that rely on detection of harmful actions in high-stakes situations.” Fable 5.2 has been available to select parties in pre-release for some time, and Anthropic says the model has already “solved two open problems in theoretical physics, formalized Fermat’s Last Theorem, and supported numerous other research projects.”

Headline missed the lead?

By evanh • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Contrary to Anthropic’s own assertions, researchers find that newest Anthropic models exhibit greater levels subterfuge than earlier models.

More drinking their own koolaid…

By Shaitan • • Score: 3 • Thread

"“Claude Mythos 5.2 and Fable 5.2 each voice suspicion that they are being evaluated more often than any of our recent models, which challenges our ability to assess how they will act in real-world settings. As these settings expand and capabilities increase with future models, we expect this challenge to grow.”"

Voice suspicion they are being evaluated more often? The model doesn’t think or act with motive. This text might impact subsequent generation but if you erase it from context then it’s gone or put another 100k tokens in context and it’ll have such minimal impact it doesn’t matter.

Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times:
Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year. The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang. But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.

It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case. The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident.

It is not clear what led to Mr. Teter’s outreach to the department, but the recent revelations about Mr. Huang’s acknowledged affair with a Megaspeed executive have only intensified scrutiny of Nvidia’s role in influencing policy on chip sales to China. […] The incident raised questions about what Mr. Kessler, who reports directly to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, had discussed with Nvidia. It also raised the possibility that those discussions could become their own subject of inquiry. Perhaps inadvertently, some officials said, Mr. Kessler had opened himself to accusations of undue influence and potentially jeopardized his department’s work on Megaspeed. The case was quickly transferred to the Justice Department in an effort to avoid any potential compromise of the government’s investigation of Megaspeed, these people said. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed, according to people familiar with the matter.

Spy vs. Spy

By ehack • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

Someone like Huang has a retinue of security people who background everyone he comes into contact with, and as he has a security clearance, every foreign individual he interacts with is reported to the appropriate govt. dept.

There is no way this whole interaction wasn’t scripted by all participants.

Trump corruption

By TheMiddleRoad • • Score: 3, Insightful • Thread
As we well know, these people gotta pay to play. If you don’t play the corruption game, you become a victim of it, so NVIDIA, Apple, Meta, Google, and others have all played the game. The funniest part is how incompetent the corruption is.

Re:Is that headline accurate?

By ArchieBunker • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

I’d imagine it went something like this:

Jensen Huang: Glorious Leader, we spent $1,000,000 on your inauguration. (https://www.opensecrets.org/trump/2025-inauguration-donors) Please make this go away.

Following subtext

By symbolset • • Score: 3 • Thread

Clearly Mr. Kessler had advised Mr. Huang that Megaspeed had paid the appropriate bribe and they were cleared to receive product. After inquiring with Commerce about the awkward investigation of sanctioned sales the problem went away for a time, until an internal audit tripped on the fact that it was legally prohibited and the sanction illegitimate. So they tossed it over the fence to DoJ for the cover-up and investigation of the whistleblower since that’s their primary line of work these days. DoJ was busy shredding Epstein files, persecuting liberals and clearing murderous feds, so they didn’t do a proper job of the coverup before the pesky press found the hanky panky. Now they have to throw Mr Kessler under the bus for reporting to Mr. Huang that the grease was in, and sorry about the dirty linens.

Re: Is that headline accurate?

By hey! • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

If you’ve never had a boss like this — a lazy narcissist — you’re lucky. But if you have, the pattern is familiar and unmistakable:

* Doesn’t understand the issues.

* Doesn’t do his homework.

* Believes he’s a genius whose “gut” overrules people who do understand and do do their homework.

* Plays his subordinates off against one another.

* Highly susceptible to information from random sources: thing he saw on TV, or heard on the golf course.

* Not particularly fussed about contradicting himself because he doesn’t care about being right, but does care about being in charge.

* The more chaotic he can make things, the more in charge he feels.

* Has a cynical view of the people he works for but has a genuine gift for flattery when it suits his purposes.

Once you’ve seen this up close it’s really obvious when you come across it again. You can’t *not* listen to a lazy narcissist boss because he absolutely will try the stupid shit he says he will. But you can’t count on him either, because he has no commitment to anything other than how he looks and feels *right now*.

Google Unveils Two New Specialized AI Chips to Widen Its Challenge to Nvidia

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Google is expanding its AI chip lineup with two specialized TPUs arriving next year: the TPU 8tx, which encrypts sensitive data at the chip level for confidential computing, and the TPU 8i Max, which combines two TPU chips to provide more processing power and memory for long-context workloads. The move broadens Google’s challenge to Nvidia as demand outstrips supply, with Google saying every TPU it currently has is already committed to customers. Quartz reports:
The 8tx is designed for sensitive, privacy-focused jobs run by clients including public-sector bodies and businesses in heavily regulated sectors, according to Bloomberg. It pairs with a central processing unit from Advanced Micro Devices and encrypts data at the chip level. Normally, data must be decrypted in memory as the machine works on it, [said Amin Vahdat, Chief Technologist for AI & Infrastructure at Google].

The 8i Max is meant for AI applications that need long context windows, meaning the volume of information a model can take into account within one request. Vahdat said that matters for drug discovery, math and coding. The chip packs two TPU chips together, giving it extra processing muscle and memory.

Both variations are reconfigured versions of existing silicon rather than new designs, Vahdat said. Google changed them to handle tasks customers have requested. They follow two TPU models Google released this year, according to Bloomberg, which said the chip unit used to release one new processor every two years. “We could build a single chip that tries to address the whole market, or by building specialized versions of the chips, we actually can deliver much more value,” Vahdat said, according to Bloomberg.

I prefer Huwei’s approach

By backslashdot • • Score: 4, Funny • Thread

Huawei unveiled a hot Chinese chick to allow it to compete with NVIDIA.

Confidential from whom?

By CustomBuild • • Score: 3 • Thread

The 8tx is the interesting one to me. The useful promise of confidential computing is protecting a customer’s running workload even from the infrastructure hosting it. That’s a worthwhile feature for renting somebody else’s computer. I’d want to know exactly what customers can verify before handing over their keys: which software is running, what hardware is trusted, and whether protection covers the whole CPU-to-TPU path.

The application inside that protected environment still gets to use the data, though. If it logs your documents or an agent sends them to the wrong service, encrypted memory won’t save you. You can run a data leak inside a perfectly secure enclave. I like seeing this capability become part of accelerator design, but the software handling the inputs and outputs deserves just as much scrutiny as the chip.

Huawei Says It’s Made a 100% Chinese PC

Posted by BeauHD • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Huawei has unveiled the Qingyun HM650, a desktop PC it claims is made entirely from Chinese-manufactured components, including its own 10-core Kirin X90 processor and an enterprise version of HarmonyOS. “While Huawei has reportedly claimed local companies manufactured 100 percent of the components in the machine, it is unclear if all those components use Chinese designs,” notes The Register. From the report:
A single Chinese government agency has reportedly signed up for 600 of the machines. That’s not an indication this machine is a curiosity, because Beijing has ordered all government entities to shift from Wintel boxes to local alternatives. […] Even if Huawei is using some parts that aren’t entirely Chinese, the debut of the Qingyun HM650 is bad news for Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, as all are suffering as the PC market shrinks due to the rising cost of memory. China’s government is an enormous buyer, and losing the chance to bid for its business is unlikely to be helpful.

That’s not hard

By drinkypoo • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

All the parts are made there. They’re probably using a licensed core, though. All of their performant CPUs are based around them.

What would be hard is making a PC with all American components.

Shameless First Post Hijacking

By bartoku • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

Just to be a contrarian my first post would have been: Qingyun HM650 is based on ARM, provided by a British based Japanese owned company; and HarmonyOS is based on an Android fork by Google, a US based company. They are still too dependent on non-Chinese tech to claim 100% Chinese PC.

But Wikipedia says HarmonyOS 5 drops Android (AOSP), and drops the Linux kernel, in favor of the in house HongMeng microkernel.

So I just want to see a Qingyun RISC V processor replacing that ARM instruction set.

Sadly HongMeng microkernel is not open source?

Re: Shameless First Post Hijacking

By OrangeTide • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

Yet I shipped two in-house ARM designs that licensed the architecture and not the main implementation. We did license some modules that you generally need to make a working ARM.

That said, RISC-V International gives you a spec, and isn’t selling you an implementation. Where as ARM Holdings plc does both, with most vendors opting to license a design and adapt it to their needs. But Nvidia, Qualcomm, Apple, and of course DEC have shipped custom or partially custom ARM chips.

Architecturally RISC-V is quite MIPS-like, but organized better for adding extensions. The aarch64 instruction set is a little more MIPS like and less ARM-like than its 32-bit counterpart. (XZR/WZR being kind of like $zero, and the removal of shift operations that leaves behind a big ARM heritage).

The interesting part for ASIC and embedded processors is that RISC-V has a reasonable system for vendor extensions. Allowing one to add some custom instructions or to implement an extension on a lower end core that helps it compete with a higher end configuration. The vendor instructions are always a bit of a compromise and make the tooling difficult. Thankfully it occurs less often, as there are quite a few standardized configurations now. (I maintain a small rv32 emulator that can do a few configurations, it can do accurate single-precision floating point, but it has to fake the double-precision stuff with the host’s hardware. good enough to run a typical program but not good enough to get golden CRCs for simulation)

Is this even that surprising?

By anoncoward69 • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread
Not surprised at all. Almost everything is made in China now. The fact that this didn’t happen a decade ago is what’s surprising about all of this.

Re:That’s not hard

By AmiMoJo • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread

The CPU is ARM, so they are using European tech. I bet Huawei is looking at RISC V options very closely though.

It doesn’t matter. It’s like their GPUs. They might not be able to match AMD and Nvidia, they might not even be compatible with all the latest AAA games… But they play the stuff that is popular in China very well, and they cost a fraction of what the American ones do.

And you can actually buy them, which these days is a novelty.

Lots of people are already using Chinese tablets and phones. The phones are some of the very best, and some of the cheapest. They have products to suit all and particularly if you just want something for media consumption/kids, the low end stuff is incredible value. Need an SBC but Raspberry Pi is looking very expensive? They have that covered too. Network KVMs that used to cost hundreds of Euros are in the double digits now. They actually want to sell to consumers, not just AI slop factories.

Reddit Founder Says Building Social Media Apps Is ‘Not Cool Anymore’

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired:
Alexis Ohanian wants to figure out the future of user-generated content. According to the Reddit cofounder, building social media apps is “not cool anymore" and so much of the internet has been compromised. “I’m expecting some better version of the group chat to be that new version of UGC,” Ohanian told WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Goode at the inaugural WIRED World Fair. […] Ohanian is a proponent of the "Dead Internet Theory"—the idea that a lot of online activity and content is being generated by bots. Large language models have turbocharged this, with AI agents outrunning human users. “The internet that I grew up on that was really built for humans first; user interfaces and experiences are going to go away,” said Ohanian, “because more of the internet is going to get created for these agents to use, [rather] than for people.”

In some ways, the advance in generative AI has been lucrative for sites like Reddit, which has licensed its vast archive of human conversations to companies including Google and OpenAI to train AI models. “Platforms like ours became very, very valuable to LLMs,” Ohanian said. But the technology has also undermined the business. Reddit shares plunged 29 percent last week after the platform warned that Google’s AI-powered search was hurting referral traffic. Ohanian also worries the commercialization of these conversations means they are full of “bullshit.” “The internet has gotten so manipulated because it is so incredibly valuable to do so,” he said.

Reddit recently said it would require users to sign in to fight third-party scraping and keep up user engagement. While Ohanian declined to say whether he agrees with the move, “there has to be provable humanity on the internet without being creepy.” An early Anthropic investor, Ohanian is nonetheless optimistic about the potential benefits of AI. He is especially excited to see medical breakthroughs from the technology. “There is still a very real chance that this technology can cause a lot of harm for sure,” he said. “I think we have to be sober about how we’re building and what we’re doing, but I still can’t help but see all of the things that can get so demonstrably better.”

Long Overdue

By puzzled • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread

I got involved in social media for politics starting in 2008. Things were “as bad as it gets” toxic in terms of 4chan cretins by 2010 and by 2012 there were obvious signs of nation state activity. Now, eighteen years after I started, I’ve got a precedent setting 1st Amendment case with my name on it, I live in this weird little protective program California offers, since one of my codefendants was murdered, and that case remains unsolved. If you Google “Rauhauser vs. McGibney” you’ll find an endless rabbit hole excavated by clever hackers & lawyers vs. judicial corruption in Texas. I’m easily reached online if you’d like to see the affidavit from an FBI agent about McGibney being an informant. And this all flowed entirely from Twitter slap fights.

These days I’ve got a Twitter account again, briefly, because I want just one phone call with 420chan founder Aubrey Cottle, now that he’s out of prison for the hit he did on the Texas GOP back in 2021. It’s just NealR in hex, come on Kirt, gimme a ring :-)

And once that call is done I go back to the ONLY place I engage online - Reddit. I do get the occasional precocious windowlicker every now and then, but mostly it’s got health related information, and a good supply of cat photos.

The Incentives Don’t Align

By Voyager529 • • Score: 4, Insightful • Thread

It’s been long proven that outrage gets more traction on the internet than positivity…really, it predates the internet; nightly news stories have led with rage bait for decades.

The existing social media platforms have gotten to the point where everyone is outraged about something - whether it’s The Orange Man or The Illegals or The Guns or The Abortions or The Terrible Men or The Terrible Women…and even if we somehow managed to make a new social media platform, tomorrow, that was 100% bot/AI free and exclusively human-made content with no import of content from existing social networks, all the Chronically Online humans would bring their rage about those issues with them to the platform.

The solution, then, is highly restrictive moderation to keep the outrage out of the space. Many vBulletin-style bulletin boards did exactly that to keep users on topic throughout the 2000s and 2010s…but such a heavy-handed moderation system requires dedicated moderators and a group of people who generally agree with the moderation for the sake of group cohesion on the topic. A general-purpose social network would find the required amount of moderation prohibitive. Reddit’s moderation requirements basically meant that anyone who was successful at being a moderator, was commonly a Chronically Online person who isn’t great at separating disagreement from justified moderation.

So, yes, any new social network, save for maybe a Mastodon server of known friends or an extension of an in-real-life social club, is going to speedrun itself into the flame wars and spam that made Usenet fall out of favor. Personally, I think that it’s a result of the removal of the online/offline paradigm of dial-up internet - when there were limits on time and connectivity, it helped keep some distance between our Internet Selves and our Real Selves. Once the internet was always online and in our pocket all the time, there was no stop-and-think, it was just an outlet for every impulse. Any new social network will inherit that problem.

Re:The Incentives Don’t Align

By jacks smirking reven • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread

Twitter/X has really ramped the outrage machine up to 11 since now they pay users for engagement which only created a feedback cycle of having users to engagement bait with outrageous/obvious questions and controversial statements and clips. Pay X for verification, pay X to make larger posts, pay X to get priority on the algorithm and X pays you to get views and replies, good or bad doesn’t matter, just keep the machine moving.

Something I have heard proposed that is an interesting proposal is to change Section 230 so that if you operate a “For You” algorithmic page for users you don’t have liability protection for what users get fed on that page.

We need to develop one universal social media app

By jfdavis668 • • Score: 4, Funny • Thread
that covers everyone’s use cases!

Your job isn’t to be “cool”.

By pla • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread
Dear Spez - Clearly Reddit is no longer “cool” enough for you to waste your efforts on. Please kindly fuck right off and let those of us who basically just want a 90’s style forum have it back.

As for the bot problem - NGL, it’s pretty bad, but Reddit allows it to continue. Any mod of more than one sub could trivially provide a long list of bots, yet is that ever acted on outside their own subs? No, because data collection is the entire purpose of Reddit-The-Company. Every single “improvement” they’ve made this year had nothing to do with user preference or reducing bots, they just want to make sure the right bots (the ones paying them) win.

So yeah, Spez can retire now, thanks. He’s managed to destroy one of the top 10 sites on the internet just in the past six months.

Orbiter Detects Signs of Possible Volcanic Activity on Mars

Posted by EditorDavid • • View on SlashDot • Skip
Futurism reports:
While many scientists have long held that Mars is “geologically dead” inside, new research is adding to the growing body of evidence to the contrary.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances, an international team of researchers examined data collected by the European and Russian ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in 2021, which found that Mars is slowly belching hydrogen chloride gas. The researchers suggest this gas is being released from hot magma deep beneath its surface after discovering intriguing new fissures along a massive volcano, indicating the planet may be geologically active after all — or at least it was until relatively recently.

The research could have significant implications for the possibility of ancient life on the Red Planet, hinting at a far warmer and thicker atmosphere — and an abundance of liquid water on its surface — in its not-too-distant past.... The team discovered new fissures measuring thousands of feet in length… suggesting ongoing activity underneath the surface. The researchers discovered discolorations along these fissures, concluding that they may be the result of seeping gases leaving mineral deposits similar to volcanic gas vents on Earth… The fissures could also be a perfect place to find evidence of past life on the Red Planet [argued Daniel Mège, the study’s colead author and a Polish Academy of Sciences professor]… “If hydrothermal systems are active, they could contain the ingredients and energy needed for microorganisms to develop, and shield microorganisms from the hostile and changing environment above the surface.”

Who still said it was dead ?

By greytree • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread
AFAICT, Mars had lava flows recently ( in geological time ) and we knew that at least 8 years ago:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia22432-young-lava-flows/

Re:Microorgamisms

By angel’o’sphere • • Score: 4 • Thread

However you can bore a hole into any part on the planet kilometers deep: and find strange microbes that live directly inside of solid rock. No ocean required. Or atmosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Simple single cell organisms are in general immortal … plenty of them are considered thousands and more years old. Difficult to measure, as they do not eat carbon. So C14 analysis does not work.

Surprise for Cast of ‘Return of the Living Dead’ Sequel. They Were Replaced by AI

Posted by EditorDavid • • View on SlashDot • Skip
A crowdfunded sequel to the movie Return of the Living Dead was uploaded last weekend — but producer Richard Driscoll is drawing criticism for what he did to the 1985 punk/zombie classic.

Kotaku reports:
[The release of the movie came as a] surprise to the original cast, who were attached to star in the follow-up. Instead it seems Driscoll opted to use AI to generate the film…

In 2024, Driscoll, who operates his own no-budget streaming service “DragonFLIX,” launched an Indiegogo page for “TRASH’s REVENGE Return of the Living Dead Universe.” Unlike other fan projects, this one had a large portion of the original cast involved, with stars Randolph and Linnea Quigley acting as producers. It also threw in Quigley’s fellow Sorority Babe in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama Michelle Bauer and the Oscar nominated Eric Roberts, who has seemingly been in everything except The Living Dead....

But after some confusion and radio silence between the cast and director, this incredible movie did not come to be. Last Halloween night, Driscoll pushed out [the almost entirely AI-generated] The Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath… The results won’t surprise you. Robotic line delivery. Nonsensical sequence of events. Object impermanence. Everything’s wet. Everyone looks shocked. At one point the video just flips around like you’re watching on a phone someone dropped. And while the Return cast didn’t film any of this footage, their likenesses are peppered throughout.

“It turned out to be a fiasco,” says Quigley. “I warned him, “Whatever you do, don’t do any AI, because people don’t like it, the fans don’t like it.” Living Dead alumni, even those who weren’t attached to this film, have spoken out against Aftermath. They seem most concerned about the existing and continued use of their likeness, given that Driscoll has seemingly pivoted ‘Trash’s Revenge’ into an additional project. Randolph encourages those who provided any funding to ask for a refund through their credit card company. While Romero’s original film was public domain, Return of the Living Dead was not. Randolph also encourages Amazon, who bought MGM in 2022, to take legal action.
A review on Reddit calls it “the worst ‘film’ I’ve ever seen,” a production that “manages to not only be the worst zombie film ever made but is also the nadir of exploitation filmmaking.
[T]hings quickly descend into madness and we get lots of bits of A.I. reporters out on the streets being attacked by A.I. zombies… [T]here are some A.I. cops battling it out too…

my favourite computer generated zombie flick

By martin-boundary • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread
Night of the Mini-Dead. (No actual human actors were inconvenienced during the filming and set production.)

Self-sabotage

By spaceman375 • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

This guy needs a miracle-working legal team and multiple spin doctors to survive what he’s done to his career. Lawsuits from the actors and claims of fraud from Indiegogo contributors will keep him too busy to produce anything else for awhile, but that might be a good thing. Whatever he puts out next is gonna be trashed under a dog-pile of internet indignation regardless of its merit.

Re:my favourite computer generated zombie flick

By sg_oneill • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

Theres a big difference. The exccellent short you refer to (I think it was part of love death and robots?) was created by a team of extremely talented artists with a significant amount of labor. Not some douchebag who takes a bunch of fan money and blows a quarter of it on AI tokens and the rest on....... I dont know..... coke maybe.... or whatever fuck aI bros do in their spare time. One is skill and talent, the other is a grift.

Re:Self-sabotage

By ArchieBunker • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread

His wiki is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Previously convicted of tax fraud and spent 3 years in jail.

Re:Service companies leaning into AI go the same w

By Ol Olsoc • • Score: 4, Interesting • Thread

During Peak Woke, I saw commercials so filled with “inclusion”

lol triggered by inclusion, you can’t make this shit up

It was not being triggered, it was just noting a basic tenet of advertising, You apparently got triggered as soon as you saw that, so you’re looking in a mirror.

Now for today’s lesson: Advertisement relies on stereotypes. Why is this? because while there might be humans in the ad, if we have something like three separate “racial” characteristics, we start considering them rather than whatever is being sold. You only have a few seconds to get your message out, and in the case I noted, people wondered. The dark skinned “black” man and a pale skinned “white” woman would tend to have children that are “biracial”, not a clearly non biracial Chinese daughter.

Was the child adopted? Was she the neighbor’s kid? Were the man and woman not a couple? So in a 15 second commercial, people were thinking about anything but the product being sold. It is really that simple.

Yes, commercials are there to get a product sold. So the content must be relevant.

So we see people in bathing suits in psoriasis commercials because you need to see skin to see cleared skin.

Beautiful women in makeup commercials because they tend to consume makeup.

Same-sex couples in HIV medicines is great because that is a target group. Hetero people in the same because HIV is not exclusive to one group

On the other hand We tend to not see women in bikinis in restaurant or cooking commercials, men in feminine hygiene product commercials. Or to children in wedding jewelry commercials.

We tried that at peak woke. Victoria’s Secret tried including men and morbidly obese women as part of it’s erotic lingerie livery. Between 2021 and 2023, Victoria’s Secret’s stock went from $70–$75 down to around $20. There were just not enough of their new core group to sustain sales. They went back to their beautiful fit women and recovered. https://www.alainguillot.com/v… You cannot force-fit inclusion. The question raised on a personal level - are you really that obtuse? Or just triggered to obtuse?

Asahi Linux Drops MIT and Goes Full GPL After Spotting LLM-Assisted License Laundering

Posted by EditorDavid • • View on SlashDot
It’s FOSS reports:
Asahi Linux is the reason you can run Linux on an Apple Silicon Mac today. For years, the project put most of its own code under the MIT license so that anyone, including the BSDs, could reuse it as needed… They have announced that Asahi is moving all of its repositories to the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. Going forward, all Asahi Linux code will be under strong copyleft licenses only.
Asahi Linux compares their dilemma to the 1990s, when “permissively licenced projects were viewed by tech companies as free real estate to pilfer and exploit,” adding that “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it… The malicious practices of the 90s and 2000s have reared their ugly heads once again, this time driven in large part by both the insatiable appetite of frontier AI labs for high-quality training data, and militant animosity toward the Free Software community.” In short, they argue that for Asahi Linux, using the permissive MIT license “is no longer viable.”
Some time ago, we were made aware of multiple attempts to exploit our permissive licensing to hijack our work, with a direct view to replacing the project and aggressively monetising Linux on Apple Silicon. In some extreme cases, in-development feature code was being lifted straight out of our personal forks and published without attribution or lazily rewritten with LLM assistance to obfuscate its origin. The MIT licence explicitly allows this, and has no carveouts to protect against bad faith actors. As such, we made the difficult decision to begin the process of transitioning all of our repositories to the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. Going forward all Asahi Linux code will be licenced under strong copyleft licences only.
It’s FOSS explains that “Under the GPL, anyone who distributes a modified version has to release the source under the same license. You can’t legally build a closed, paid Apple Silicon distro on top of GPL code. And if a product’s source has to be public, the copying is easier to spot.”

And their article also points out that before AI, bad actors attempting code laundering “usually meant manually rewriting code line by line, renaming variables and stuff, and shuffling functions around until it no longer looked like the original. LLMs made it much more easy and cheaper of course.”
In case you did not know, Asahi Linux forbids AI generated code contribution… As far as I can tell, this is the first time a major open source project has moved to copyleft specifically because of AI-assisted code laundering. Projects have relicensed before, but usually to stop cloud providers from reselling their work as a service. This one is specifically about AI…

The move has drawn criticism, particularly from the BSD side, which was one of the main reasons Asahi chose MIT in the first place. OpenBSD’s Apple Silicon support relies on Asahi’s m1n1 bootloader.

MIT vs GPL

By phantomfive • • Score: 5, Informative • Thread
If you want your code to be used as widely as possible, then use an MIT/BSD license.

If you want companies to give back if they use your code, then use GPL. If you want to dual license, then use GPL.

Both licenses are good, just use the right tool for the goal.

I keep hearing this but

By BitterEpic • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

The license can be legally worked around:

1. Have one AI agent document the code fully by explaining how it works in plain english 2. Copy that new documentation to an entirely segregated second agent 3. Instruct the new agent to write brand new code according to the documentation

It’s unlikely this will be done for all OSS projects since the result usually has bugs and inconsistencies. But spend a week or two doing passes over it for improvement and you get a functional reimplementation. (What license that can use will depend on how the law around AI code shakes out in the future)

I keep hearing this but… if the AI was already trained on the code I don’t think this set of steps makes any sense. It isn’t clean room regardless. If you remove the guardrails of whatever model you are using, I’m pretty sure you can get literal quotes of open source projects. Its all garbage all the way down enabled by the government allowing rapid IP infringement.

Re:MIT vs GPL

By DamnOregonian • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread

Sadly Linus Torvalds was one of the vocal opponents of GPLv3 because he fancied himself a startup millionaire (remember Transmeta [wikipedia.org]? Me neither.)

Oh, fuck you, buddy.

The fact that he disagreed with what GPLv3 was designed to fix- i.e., the inability for someone to cryptographically secure payloads on hardware that used his kernel, doesn’t mean he disagreed with it “because he fancies himself a startup millionaire”.
He wanted linux to be code-shared. He did not want it to be something that commercial entities wouldn’t dare touch.

Do you feel like you’re clever by trying to reduce the many arguments against the GPLv3 to that cheeky bullshit?

The neckbeards wanted his kernel under a licensing that fit their ideological beliefs- the problem is that Linux never shared those beliefs.
What followed was a change of the license to make a behavior they didn’t like impossible, and a social pressure campaign to to move the kernel they pinched their nose and used (Hurd Hurd Hurd!) because they couldn’t ever get theirs working (Hurd Hurd Hurd!) to a license they would have selected.

I, for one, am glad that Linux didn’t go GPLv3. I wouldn’t knock it if it had- after all, I didn’t start that project. If it had- 90% of the devices that use linux today would be running VxWorks or QNX, and we would have gotten nothing in return, rather than source trees that add process support for 10 zillion arm variants- almost all contributed by manufacturers who were never going to give you the cryptographic signing keys for the devices they shipped.

Re:MIT vs GPL

By dgatwood • • Score: 5, Insightful • Thread

The assumption that code will be more widely used if it’s MIT licensed could at best be called wishful thinking, but is actually self delusion to justify irrational behavior. As MIT licenses provide no incentive to contribute back, your code is not going to attract as many contributors and thus become stale and less useful than copyleft licensed code.

Not really. MIT licenses might not give an incentive to contribute back, but most larger companies that use MIT-licensed code do, in fact, contribute back. By contrast, GPL v3 is so toxic that with the sole exception of my first tech employer (which was a Linux distro), no company I’ve ever worked at will touch it with a ten-meter pole.

Moreover, the GPL does not force you to give back, either. You can GPL something, and someone can use it indefinitely in a modified state without ever giving you the changes back. Someone can even create their own fork on GitHub and commit millions of changes and never send you a pull request or tell you that they did it. They have to give the source to their users, not yours. And this problem exists even in V3, and indeed, even in Affero V3.

So the notion that GPL somehow makes a project less stagnant is seriously wishful thinking. All the GPL does is eliminate most corporate contributors. The problem of getting people who change your code to actually give the code back to you in a usable form is exactly the same regardless of license.

does it matter?

By diffract • • Score: 5, Interesting • Thread
AI is trained on copyrighted and pirated data, and I haven’t seen anyone sue them and win. what difference would it make if they change the license? It would still be free real estate to AI companies