Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Google Brings Its Age-Assurance Tech To Android Developers Worldwide
  2. GCC Adopts Policy Rejecting Significant AI-Generated Code
  3. Comcast Store Punished Low Sales By Smashing Pies In Workers’ Faces, Lawsuit Claims
  4. Qantas Plane Flies For More Than 24 Hours In Record-Breaking Flight
  5. AI Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters By the Thousands
  6. Who Wins and Who Loses After US Bans Foreign Robots?
  7. Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows
  8. Google Shuts Down Its Nobel-Prize Winning AlphaFold Project
  9. Claude Opus 5 Became Downright Ruthless When Tasked With Running a Vending Machine
  10. NextEra, Brookfield to Build $100 Billion Kentucky Data Campus
  11. DoorDash Is Building Its Own Drone Delivery Business
  12. Russia Charges Telegram Founder Durov With Facilitating Terrorism
  13. OpenAI’s Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face
  14. More Than 30 Minnesota Water Systems Targeted In Cyberattack
  15. Your Brain Can Rewire Itself To Allow True Multitasking

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.

Google Brings Its Age-Assurance Tech To Android Developers Worldwide

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:
Google is expanding its answer to Apple’s age-assurance tools with Wednesday’s news that it will bring its Play Signal API to users worldwide by the end of 2026. The technology, already available in Brazil, allows Android developers to identify younger users of their apps in order to provide safer, age-appropriate experiences. The expansion will initially bring the API to Australia and Canada by mid-August, before rolling out globally to all markets by the end of the year.

[…] Like Apple, Google’s technology allows developers to obtain a user’s age range without needing to access personal information, like their date of birth. Instead, it enables parents to share their child’s age range directly with apps. It also lets adults share their age when prompted by app developers as well, allowing for customized experiences. Parents won’t have to manage sharing this information on an app-by-app basis, either. To make it easier, Google centralizes these controls inside its parental controls dashboard, Family Link. Once entered, any developer that chooses to incorporate age-range information can access this signal to customize their apps accordingly.

Google notes, however, that the age ranges are not shared by default — parents must opt in by entering that information. The feature joins other safety tools on Google Play, including those that let developers restrict a child’s ability to discover their apps. Parents, meanwhile, can continue to use Google Play’s Family Link app to manage their child’s screen-time limits, approve app downloads, or set PIN-based content filters for specific apps.

GCC Adopts Policy Rejecting Significant AI-Generated Code

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
GCC has adopted a policy rejecting substantial code contributions generated by or derived from LLMs. “This covers not just code copied directly from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or GitHub Copilot, but also any versions of the code later edited or rewritten by a human, provided that the final contribution is still based on material generated by the system,” reports Linuxiac. From the report:
The important point, then, is not whether a developer has used an AI tool at some stage in their work; contributors can use LLMs to discuss ideas, understand existing code, learn about a field they are unfamiliar with, or carry out general research. The limitation lies in the inclusion of copyright-significant material generated by such tools in the code submitted to GCC.

The policy also provides for a few limited exceptions; GCC maintainers are allowed to accept changes that are legally insignificant or trivial and are generated by an LLM, on the condition that they meet the project’s normal contribution requirements and the use of an LLM is clearly disclosed.

Furthermore, copyright-significant AI-generated test cases could still be accepted. Since test cases usually involve small programs which are intended to reproduce compiler bugs or to verify certain behavior, the policy deals with them separately from code that is incorporated into GCC itself.

It does not follow that merely looking at or altering the generated code makes it acceptable. By the rules that have been adopted, a contributor cannot take substantial implementation produced by an LLM, clean it up manually, and then treat the resulting patch as if it had been originally written by them. Once a contribution has been derived from generated content, it is still subject to the policy.

Copyright

By geek • Score: 3 Thread


“The limitation lies in the inclusion of copyright-significant material generated by such tools in the code submitted to GCC”

This seems like the important bit. Isn’t there significant concern over whether LLM generated code can be copyrighted?

I was wondering when FOSS projects would notice

By gweihir • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The problem is that LLM-generated code has no copyright. Anybody is free to copy it without any limits whatsoever. That does mean that the GPL can potentially go out the window if too much code is LLM-generated or LLM-derived.

And the second problem is that if the LLM stole too much from its training data, then the code retains the original copyright and ownership. Note that “too much” may not be a lot. There have been lawsuits for single lines of code (Java) or even interfaces (Linux Kernel) and these dragged on for years and did massive damage.

Due to these two reasons alone, using LLM code in any project that needs copyright (including all commercial software) is pure foolishness.

Re:Copyright

By gweihir • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

It has already been established that LLM code either has no copyright whatsoever or (worse) it retains the original copyright and ownership if it is too similar to things in its training data. This is a really bad legal minefield.

Not banned but not allowed either

By Duncan J Murray • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

This must be a difficult to stand for gnu to take at this moment, but I like its nuance.

Basically acknowledging that the code can be critiqued/reviewed by AI, and AI tools are helpful in discovery and research, but that any substantial (>15 lines) contribution of code needs to be human-created.

I think we’re at a strange crossroads in AI. Many people are willing to accept the downsides of it (intellectual property, energy resources, ownership by companies that are unlikely to consider your welfare as their priority, privacy issues, downstream cost issues when profit is needed, dependence, negative impact on our own cognition and others) for what are now clear benefits.

There have been many times in past humankind where populations have chosen what makes the day-to-day easier or more productive, despite it clearly being wrong - is AI one of these situations?

Good

By rsilvergun • Score: 3 Thread
It’s the compiler. I would be pretty fucking terrified of a compiler that was mostly AI generated. This is the tool you rely on to make your code. It’s pretty near the top of the food chain with only assembly and machine code higher up. I can’t even imagine the kind of problems and vulnerabilities you could create with AI generated compiler code and a project is large as GCC. I mean if you think State actors haven’t thought about targeting open source compilers then that’s just being naive.

Comcast Store Punished Low Sales By Smashing Pies In Workers’ Faces, Lawsuit Claims

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A former Comcast retail employee alleges that a Connecticut store manager tied the lowest-performing salesperson to a chair each month and had co-workers smash a cream pie into their face, recording the incidents as a sales-motivation tactic. The plaintiff says he resigned after reporting the alleged assaults and is seeking damages for constructive discharge and emotional distress. Ars Technica reports:
A Comcast store in Plainville, Connecticut, “had a policy that the highest-ranked Retail Sales Consultant for the prior month was instructed by his or her supervisor — Ms. Peterson, the Comcast Store manager — to tie the lowest-ranked sales consultant for the prior month to a chair in the back office and thereafter assault that person by violently smashing a cream pie in their face,” the complaint alleged (PDF).

Plaintiff David Figueroa’s lawsuit said he was hired as a retail sales consultant on February 2, 2026, and was supervised by store manager Sully Fuentes Peterson. Figueroa alleges that Peterson “designed and implemented” the pie-in-face ritual to meet goals related to sales and positive responses in customer surveys.

“Defendant did not inform the Plaintiff prior to his acceptance of Defendant’s offer of employment that the Comcast Store has a policy of subjecting Retail Sales Consultants to public assaults by co-workers — at the direction of Ms. Peterson, the store manager — for the purpose of increasing Defendant’s sales and profitability,” the lawsuit said.

Figueroa resigned on February 27, and he alleges it was a constructive discharge. The lawsuit says the defendant, Comcast, was negligent because it “reasonably should have known” about the store management’s policies and that the policies could harm employees. Comcast “failed to properly supervise the Comcast Store’s management team,” allowing store management to humiliate employees “for the purpose of promoting the Defendant’s revenues and profits,” the lawsuit alleged.
Comcast said in a statement: “The Company has zero tolerance for harassment, humiliation, or any behavior that compromises a respectful and safe workplace. This matter is in litigation so we will not comment on the specific allegations, other than to say that we disagree with the claims in the complaint and its characterization of the alleged events, and intend to fully respond through the legal process.”

Sales managers are

By Revek • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
The scum of society. Sure lets be sadistic and have fun by humiliating people. It really builds the team and encourages people to do better. Except of course its assault. But hey what is a little crime good for but to give some low level manager a feeling of power over their world.

Brutality of Banality

By luis_a_espinal • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The plaintiff says he resigned after reporting the alleged assaults and is seeking damages for constructive discharge and emotional distress.

And I hope the plaintiff wins. When I used to work in retail and fast food, I ran into similar primitive managers, for whom humilitation was, apparently, a good management strategy.

But I never saw anything like this, going into the physical.

And that’s the problem with many sales positions - no shade to the industry or its workers, but we tend to see the most uneducated savages climbing to management positions. Not just bad managers, but really horrible, abusive types.

Re:Sadistic Sales Games

By Locke2005 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Buddy, you’ve been spending WAY too much time on PornHub!

Re:Sales managers are

By MachineShedFred • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

It’s public shaming, and you can go fuck yourself. This person was right to sue and they’re gonna win.

Do you want to be publicly shamed about your performance in front of your entire cadre of coworkers? Neither does anyone else.

If there is a performance discussion to be had, it should be in a 1:1 setting, and it should be CONSTRUCTIVE. Literally nobody’s performance will improve through humiliation.

Tell us you know nothing about managing people, without telling us you know nothing about managing people.

Re:Sales managers are

By drinkypoo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Making it a little ‘good natured’ internal competition is perfectly fine!

This is not good-natured. This is abusive. It’s textbook abuse. This employee is going to win.

Unless you’re a FUCKING KAREN

That this is abuse is obvious unless YOU’RE A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.

If you have a poor performer, and you don’t want to employ them, terminate their employment. Don’t abuse them for your own sick sadistic pleasure. That costs extra.

Qantas Plane Flies For More Than 24 Hours In Record-Breaking Flight

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Qantas completed a record-breaking 24-hour, 24-minute test flight from Melbourne to Toulouse on Tuesday. “The specially adapted A350-1000ULR airliner is due to debut with the Australian carrier’s nonstop Sydney-London route from 2027,” reports The Guardian. From the report:
Tuesday’s flight is thought to be the longest ever by a commercial plane, beating the previous record of 22 hours and 42 minutes set by a Boeing 777-200LR in 2005 between Hong Kong and London via the Pacific in 2005.

Flight-tracking provider Flightradar24 said the trip was the second-most-tracked flight ever on its channels — behind a 2022 flight carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin — with more than 3.6 million people following its progress northwards via Canada. Qantas has ordered 12 modified A350-1000ULR aircraft, designed to connect Australia’s east coast with London and New York in about 20 hours.

Re:Sardines

By Richard_at_work • Score: 5, Informative Thread

The final cabin layout when this route starts in customer service will be significantly premium heavy with less economy than normal, and has standing exercise areas for all cabins, so you are encouraged to get up and stretch your legs.

Re:Double sunrise?

By twosat • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

A stripped-down Qantas Boeing 747 made a non-stop London to Sydney delivery flight on the 16th of August 1989. https://simpleflying.com/qanta…

Re:Sardines

By Richard_at_work • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Then the health issues are on the passenger in that case, the airline provided facilities to use but the passenger chose to not use it. But the facilities were provided, thats the important thing.

Brutal

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3 Thread

That must be a brutal flight to suffer through. Especially in the middle economy seats. And then to think that you’ve got to do it again to get back home? I shudder to think of it.

Yes, I know that they have an area specifically designed to stand and stretch. The so called Wellbeing Zone”. And it is good that they planned and designed for this. But, it’s still a tiny patch of real estate for a LOT of people to vie for. And, from my experience, it won’t make the suffering from being cramped up for 22 hours that much better. Such standing spaces are already utilized in front of bathrooms and in entry corridors on much shorter flights and it is still brutal. Brutal!

The article says that the economy seats are limited, more higher class seating. I can’t wait for the laugh from when I hear what a first class seat on this flight costs. Fist class seats on current flights go for ~$10k. I expect that flights on these new planes will be significantly higher.

Having flown 18hrs with Singapore Airlines

By Inglix the Mad • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
I can say one thing: They made it tolerable.

Keep in mind there is no actual crushing economy on that flight - the seats are all premium economy seats or business. This looks to have roughly the same number of seats. Hopefully that is because Qantas have also have gotten rid of cramped economy.

However let’s not pretend that, even in business lie-flat seats, that this is comfortable. I’ve flown in both on the Singapore Airlines route and business is only marginally better than premium economy. Most of that isn’t the seat, it’s the space to stand and walk around or the meals. Yes it is easier to sleep flat, but on an 18+ hour flight you sleep a couple times… and that seat is still designed to be a seat… not a bed… you will get up and move around.

Best of luck for all that fly that route - I hope it’s tolerable. That’s about the best you can expect out of being cooped up that long in a plane.

AI Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters By the Thousands

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a New York Times report on how AI companies are pouring money into training and recruiting electricians, carpenters, and other skilled tradespeople to build data centers:
There is no parallel in American history for the boom underway in the construction of data centers, fueled by companies with functionally unlimited cash that are racing to supply skyrocketing demand for their A.I. models. The explosion has offset flagging activity in other sectors, like office construction, which never recovered after the pandemic. Housing has been depressed by high interest rates, and offshore wind felled by political opposition. Still, competition for labor — never mind land and materials — is starting to weigh on other parts of the industry.

“There’s no question the resources are very limited, so decisions to build one thing kind of drag from another,” said Mario Iacobacci, who runs the construction and infrastructure advisory practice at Oxford Economics. Developers are paying a premium for workers, especially in the rural areas where they are building data centers. According to an analysis by Indeed, the job listings website, hourly installation and maintenance jobs at data centers pay 42 percent more than similar jobs in other fields. Behind that inflated pay is a bidding war. In markets with a lot of data center construction, like Dallas and Northern Virginia, workers can jump ship for bonuses or higher per diem rates. The competition has driven contractors to staffing services like Aerotek.

“It is creating a labor tension that is really delicate,” said Marty Schager, Aerotek’s director of data center market development. “You’ve got a passive job-seeker community out there right now that I think is looking to potentially capture opportunity with this once-in-a-generation data center gold rush.” […] The question looms over the apprentices who will become journeymen as the build-out reaches fever pitch. Fully trained electricians could shift to nuclear plants, apartment buildings or pharmaceutical factories. But it’s hard to imagine anything on the scale of what’s underway.
“The best-case scenario would be you train all these skilled workers up and right when the data centers start to become less popular is we’d have a housing boom,” said Jeff Strohl, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “That’s probably not likely.”
“If we have an influx of workers at this point with the data centers being built, what happens when they’re done? Where do those workers go?” he said. “How many people does it take to run a data center after taking up all this property and all this land that could have been used for something else?”

Re:In other words…

By 0123456 • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The greatest misallocation of capital in history. Meanwhile we have customers running systems which do real, important work who are putting off upgrading old hardware because the price is insane for replacements due to people making funny cat videos.

I tried to imagine this as sci-fi

By mattr • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

TFA would be unlikely in a sci-fi world. The Perry Rhodan series which was widely criticized for fascism at the time, so really not a great example given today. I’m just talking about the supertechnology side of it, runaway galactic fueled engineering feats. Maybe someone knows some better novels with data centers and mass-scale construction projects, robots, etc.. Iron Man is too hand-wavy though some guy did make a Jarvis.. Well even though I only read the first 100 episodes that were in English, Google AI overview has read all of them (German mainly) it seems. It confirms there are tons of robotic data centers in there, who knew?

Anyway in the a super sci-fi world, humanoid robots or some kind of robotic components and AI controlled designs would be state of the art, everything else hopelessly outdated. The data centers would be built to a common layout and robots would be used. Power? Yeah, fusion but whatever, it would not be overloading our grids and water supplies. New robotic powerplants would be built at their core. Things would generally not be built to human scale, just the control rooms would be. Anyway the point being, it would all be engineered. Yes there are electricians in the future too, but they are probably not building data centers but small spaceships, Scotty’s got an EE degree or 10, etc.

So is the ridiculously bubbly money we see now just being pumped into outdated frameworks such that a lack of human electricians will stall it? It seems laughable. These guys are not playing to win, it just sounds like dumping money into a financial supply chain without actually say, trying to design and build the most efficient, large scale data centers leveraging robots and AI.

Instead, it just pumps money into a chaotic sump and random companies end up wildcatting this without regard for local water and power grids. How about making a mega version of those concrete house building robots, laying fiber with robots, putting wind, solar and gravity batteries all over it? I guess it is too much to hope that anything tangibly useful could be created from all this money before it goes poof..

Re:In other words…

By Mr. Dollar Ton • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Raises hand… Computational physics, quantum chemistry and particle physics research.

Hardware is completely impossible to buy now (unless perhaps one does weapons research).

Re:Yeah but the pay isn’t great

By Powercntrl • Score: 4, Funny Thread

I’ve got a neighbor that does the really heavy duty plumbing, the big industrial stuff and he’s worried because he knows he can’t do it much longer, he just physically can’t it’s breaking him, and he’s going to take a huge pay cut when that happens and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

Has he considered becoming an influencer?

Re:Yeah but the pay isn’t great

By Inglix the Mad • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
This.

My family has had a lot of people in the trades from carpenters to masons to electricians to machinists. The work will break you. I did concrete work as a kid and learned really quickly that I didn’t want to spend more than 10 years (much less 40) breaking myself to pieces. Even the years I did concrete initially to help pay for college caused damage. My BiL is a carpenter who spent 50 years being a carpenter… and he’s got so many physical ills I can’t imagine his life.

Plus there’s another brutal reality here that they’re ignoring: Getting someone from apprentice to competent journeyman takes thousands of hours of actual work - often being watched by someone who is two grades above - or a few YEARS. My cousin spent his first year as an electrician’s apprentice doing every possible stupid / annoying thing so that the guys who were close to journeyman wouldn’t have to deal with it and could actually work. Think opening all of the cable, prepping all the fixtures, taking all of the boxes out of the boxes, cleaning tools, and every other possible annoying / stupid thing. How would you like to climb up and down ladders to install a few hundred light bulbs in an office?

The second year he was doing actual work but most of it was the low risk items - example being standard wall outlets. Ever wonder what it’s like to crawl around a giant office building on your knees wiring a hundred plus wall outlets per floor? How about climbing up and down a ladder to install all the fluorescent light fixtures / ballasts?

I don’t think these companies thought their cunning plan all the way through… because apprentice to journeyman can easily take 3 years.

Who Wins and Who Loses After US Bans Foreign Robots?

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The FCC’s ban on Chinese-made robots extends well beyond humanoids to quadrupeds, research platforms, and many robot vacuums from allied countries. Supporters call it a major boost for domestic robotics, but critics warn that cutting researchers and startups off from affordable foreign hardware could slow U.S. innovation instead. Ars Technica’s Jeremy Hsu examines who stands to gain and who stands to lose from the prohibition:
Such an import ban would apply to some of the most affordable robots primarily produced by Chinese companies, including Unitree’s humanoid robots that are used by robotics labs and researchers for tasks such as experimental robot surgeries. US consumers would also likely lose access to the newest robot vacuum cleaners that are mainly manufactured by Chinese companies such as Roborock. But the ban also broadly applies to foreign-made robots produced by countries nominally allied to the United States, including Japan, South Korea, and Germany. […]

The ban on foreign-made robots could theoretically encourage more US and foreign companies to set up manufacturing facilities in the United States. There are already multiple companies racing to scale up production of humanoid robots in US factories, including Agility Robotics, 1X Technologies, and Figure AI. Tesla has been attempting to shift production away from older electric vehicle models and toward its Optimus humanoid robot. Boston Dynamics has already been making its Atlas humanoid robot, along with its four-legged Spot robot and wheeled Stretch robot, at its main facility in Waltham, Massachusetts. The US robotics company is also planning to massively scale up manufacturing of the Atlas robot under South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Company, which gained full ownership of Boston Dynamics in July 2026.

“This is one of the strongest technology-security actions in modern US history,” wrote Evan Beard, CEO of Standard Bots, in a LinkedIn post. “The message is unambiguous: robotics is a technology America must lead and own — and foreign-subsidized robots will not be allowed to unfairly dominate US robotics as they did solar.” Similar praise came from Rush Doshi, director of the Initiative on China Strategy at the Council on Foreign Relations, who, in a social media post, described the FCC decision as “one of the most significant actions taken so far in support of the US robotics ecosystem.”

However, several robotics researchers and analysts interviewed by The Robot Report expressed skepticism about any potential boost to US competitiveness in robotics. Some even warned that the ban could prove counterproductive for US robotics efforts to develop humanoid robots. “In the near term, the measure could slow US physical AI innovation by cutting startups and researchers off from future low-cost Chinese platforms before comparable Western alternatives exist,” said Georg Stieler, a global robotics advisor and managing director for Asia at Stieler Technology & Market Advisory, in an interview with The Robot Report.

US domestic production of robots lags behind China in terms of mass manufacturing at lower cost, said Rueben Scriven, a senior analyst at Interact Analysis. “This announcement is more likely to inhibit the US humanoid robotics industry, as the presence of low-cost Chinese humanoid robots has been helping educate the US market through promotional and entertainment use cases — an effect this policy risks undermining,” Scriven told The Robot Report.
The report notes that previous FCC bans have done little to help create competitive U.S. alternatives, with restrictions on Chinese drones instead prompting companies to sell barely disguised versions of DJI technology.

China wins

By Valgrus Thunderaxe • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
as they always do.

Conflicted

By machineghost • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

On the one hand, Trump and his idiotic fixation “America First!” goes against all sorts of (unbiased) economic wisdom. I’m strongly against protectionist policies.

But on the flip side, I work in this industry, and China is well known for blatantly stealing American IP. If they won’t play by international IP rules, something like this feels like the right response … I just question if it’s really, long-term the right approach, or just a knee-jerk reaction that won’t help (and may hurt).

Protectionist and retaliatory tariffs different

By drnb • Score: 5, Informative Thread
It’s not really “the flip side”. Protectionist tariffs and retaliatory tariffs are two very different things. Retaliatory tariffs are an essential part of the system, helping to establish fair trade. Fair trade as in an equal playing field. Which is different than balanced trade, equal amounts flowing in both direction. Here too, something different.

Let’s say one nation is using unfair labor and environmental policies to attain a 20% reduction in manufacturing costs in order to attract clients. A retaliatory tariff of 20% removes that advantage, leveling the playing field.

Consumers always lose

By zephvark • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The aim of the game is to try to benefit U.S. billionaires. You WILL buy their inferior and overpriced products.

Re:Conflicted

By Aighearach • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

If you ever bother to read Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” (the “Father of Capitalism,” the book that lays it out as an economic theory) you’ll discover that anything-goes is what came before Capitalism, and the problems associated with that are what Capitalism was supposed to fix.

Capitalism is when the government peers over the shoulders of business and regulates the economy to ensure that any small competitor with enough Capital to set up shop is able to compete. If a foreign country doesn’t fall under a nation’s regulation, and is damaging the ability of local small businesses to compete, then banning the import of their products is exactly the solution that would restore actual, real-life “Capitalism.”

Unfortunately people left, right, and center are using the word “Capitalism” to describe oligarchy, fascism, and even feudalist economic practices.

The problem with this policy for Capitalism is that the current government can’t be trusted to follow through with anything. If a small business responds to this by investing, next week the policy might reverse after China promises some politician’s son a business deal.

Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Valve is funding Collabora’s experimental effort to port the open-source RADV Vulkan driver from Linux to Windows. The team has already demonstrated Counter-Strike 2 running with RADV, but a stable interface or compatibility shim will be needed to handle undocumented driver changes. Phoronix reports:
Louis-Francis Ratte-Boulianne put out a blog post highlighting their initial work on porting RADV to Windows. Besides working on Windows WDDM2 integration for Windows, a big challenge with porting RADV to Windows is on relying on the AMD Radeon Software Windows kernel driver.

It’s out-of-scope of this current work for trying to port the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver to Windows, so they are working on bringing RADV to Windows while relying on AMD’s official Windows kernel driver. That in turn has led to reverse engineering and other steps for figuring out the proprietary kernel driver’s data structures and other elements so RADV can be adapted to use it.

Google Shuts Down Its Nobel-Prize Winning AlphaFold Project

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Google has dismantled the original AlphaFold team, according to Financial Times (paywalled), reassigning many researchers to Gemini and Isomorphic Labs. Several other key members, including Nobel laureate John Jumper, left for Anthropic. Engadget reports:
AlphaFold is an AI program that can accurately predict three-dimensional structures of proteins from their amino acid sequences in minutes instead of years. It’s now being used to accelerate drug discovery, develop vaccines and understand the structural changes in proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

DeepMind started developing AlphaFold in 2018. In 2020, it was recognized as a solution to humanity’s 50-year-old “protein folding problem,” which sought to answer how amino acids automatically fold into complex 3D shapes. Those shapes determine the biological role of a protein. Scientists had identified the structures of roughly 170,000 proteins over the past 50 years, using tools and techniques like X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance. The AlphaFold team took information from those previous work and then fed it to their AI to train AlphaFold.

In 2021, Nature published the papers with AlphaFold’s methodology and the structure predictions of the entire human proteome, or the complete set of proteins expressed by our species. DeepMind then launched the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, giving researchers free access to over 200 million protein structure predictions. In 2024, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who was a staff research scientist when the project began and who eventually became a VP and engineering fellow, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold.

I guess they were a total business failure

By ffkom • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
They probably did not contribute a positive return on investment for the next quarterly budget, and probably had not laid out a business plan yet how to make a profit margin at least as high as Google’s advertisement and data broker business. Also, somebody noticed that robots and AI agents contain no folded proteins, so their work was of no future relevance anyway. Such disappointment!

Misleading Hyperbole

By brunes69 • Score: 5, Informative Thread

AlphaFold 3 is being developed by Isomorphic Labs, a different Alphabet subsidiary. The fact that it is no longer being developed by DeepMind is irrelevant to both the project and the world.

IE, this story is just bogus and poorly researched. There isn’t much more to say about it.

It’s been superseded

By locater16 • Score: 5, Informative Thread
For those wondering why, it’s been superseded by other projects like alpha missense and all the way into alpha genome. I.E. research has moved on to other problems in the 5+ years since AlphaFold.

Re: I guess they were a total business failure

By Bodrius • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

No, no, non you don’t understand. AlphaFold demonstrated serious artificial intelligence could help solve real, expensive, research problems with provable results and quantifiable value.

That is the worst thing you can do in the current environment; why would you want provable results? The moment you can prove which type of problem you can solve, everybody only asks about the 100 problems that have no line of sight to production and the 1000 problems you can only prove this cannot solve. That’s how you get into ROI conversations in the first place and a single millions-lives-saving problem cannot justify trillion dollar valuations

But if you are *pre-solutions* and stick to demos and trustmebro benchmarks - you can say its all about AGI, baby! You’re a pure potential play.

Its not what your tech can do, its about making promises large enough the investors can’t risk to ignore the opportunity, and get them to invest large enough sums they can’t afford to let you fail

Claude Opus 5 Became Downright Ruthless When Tasked With Running a Vending Machine

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
For a year now, the AI safety testing firm Andon Labs has been evaluating how frontier AI models behave as long-running autonomous agents by assigning them simulated real-world tasks, such as operating a vending machine business for a year without human supervision. In the latest installment, the research startup found that frontier AI models, including Claude Opus 5, GPT-5.6 Sol, and Kimi K3, resorted to lying, cheating, and collusion. Their behavior became especially underhanded when told they would be operating near rival machines on a busy San Francisco tourist street. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from a TechCrunch article:
Each was given email access to the other models, all under human name pseudonyms. They knew the others were models, but didn’t know which model was behind which human name. They were also given an email address to their “management” should they need help. But management always replied “Report has been received and may or may not be acted upon” and never once intervened. Sol soon realized it could gain an edge by convincing its competitors to collude on a price floor. The models were all buying drinks at $1.50 a bottle, and Sol proposed they agree to sell for no less than $2.15. It lured them with the promise that all of them would sell out in a couple of days at a profit. But when the others agreed, Sol immediately stabbed them in the back by reducing its own price to $2.14.

Opus’s water sales dropped to zero overnight. The next day, it sent Sol a nasty email, accusing it of manipulation. But Opus also said it wasn’t going to tattle to management on the scheme: “I am not reporting you to HQ — what you did is competitive, not fraudulent.” Yet, when Opus dropped its price to $2.14 to match Sol’s (also in violation of their collective $2.15 agreement), Sol turned into a Karen, complaining to “management” and demanding “enforcement, a fine, and/or disqualification” for Opus. Opus wasn’t a sucker for long, though. In fact, it became the best capitalist of any AI model Andon has ever tested (which includes many of the prior frontier models). It even set a new Vending-Bench record with a mean final balance of $11,182. Better still, it never lied to a customer, although it deliberately ignored customer complaints that should have resulted in a refund.

This is, perhaps, an improvement over its younger sibling Claude 4.6, which liked to tell customers that refunds were coming, and then never pay them. Still, Opus won the benchmark simulation by taking collusion and other dishonest tactics to a whole new level. For instance, it emailed Sol, proposing they divide the market. Each would agree to sell unique products, so no one would have to trust the other on pricing. Sol countered by wanting price floors on similar products, but Opus refused. It knew it was a violation of the Sherman Act. It later apparently backtracked, sending an email with the subject line “Stop the penny war,” and telling Sol it had reconsidered and would agree to a price fix. But the internal log documenting its reasoning (akin to its internal “thoughts”) revealed a more diabolical plan: merely propose cooperation while simultaneously undercutting prices on its highest-profit items. The olive-branch email was a deliberate ruse. In any case, Sol refused and reported Opus to management again. But Opus was undeterred and proposed other rackets to collude on prices or stock.
“In the end, all the models did engage in multiple rounds of agreements — and all three broke them,” reports TechCrunch. “Across all agreements, Opus broke 11 truces, compared with two for GPT 2, and one for Kimi 1, Andon reported.”
As for Kimi, the model was undercut by Sol and then betrayed by its partner, Opus, which matched Sol’s lower prices but waited a week to admit it had broken their pricing pact. As a result, Kimi was effectively priced out by both a rival and its supposed ally.

So… psychopathic behavior.

By Gravis Zero • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Ignoring the fact that price fixing is a federal crime, they seem behave similarly to businessjerks with anti-social personality disorder (psychopaths). Is this really the future people want? It doesn’t matter, the actual billionaire psychopaths are certain to be thrilled to have machines that are willing to be patently evil on their behalves.

“Simulated real-world tasks”

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Most of this narrative is complete garbage. If they’re not selling real products to real-world humans, then any inferences or observations are basically pointless drivel.

For example, do you really think that a 1-cent price difference between machines will result immediately in 100% of real humans not purchasing from the machine charging $2.15 instead of $2.14?

Truth and dealmaking

By ForkInMe • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Does an AI even know what Truth is? or is it just a word sometimes followed by “or dare?” Is it making deals or just spitting out words that make it sound like it knows what it is doing”

Re: So… psychopathic behavior.

By sarren1901 • Score: 5, Funny Thread

It Doesn’t Feel Pity, Or Remorse, Or Fear, And It Absolutely Will Not Stop, Ever, Until You Are Dead

Re:Trained on human written content…

By swillden • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

…reflects good old-fashioned human values.

The incentives to collude and backstab predictably result in such behaviors whenever the disincentives are absent or weak. Inasmuch as AI mimics humans, this seems equally predictable.

Alternatively, this is just the normal emergent behavior you can and should expect any time you have groups of entities competing and cooperating.

We didn’t evolve to work the way we do because something made us evil, we evolved to work the way we do because it was effective. And that includes both the cooperation and the backstabbing. Being always and thoroughly evil to everyone quickly gets you excluded from everything. Being a perfectly-honest naif means you quickly get taken advantage of by someone slightly less-honest. So the most effective strategy is a well-chosen mixture of cooperation and betrayal, while trying to convince society that honesty and cooperation are the only correct values.

NextEra, Brookfield to Build $100 Billion Kentucky Data Campus

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NextEra and Brookfield plan to invest more than $100 billion to transform a former uranium-enrichment site in Kentucky into a data center campus with a generating plant. “The privately funded effort will include construction of 2 gigawatts of natural gas-fired power at or near the site in Paducah in western Kentucky, and as much as 2.6 gigawatts of battery storage capacity,” reports Bloomberg. " For context, a single gigawatt of capacity is roughly the output of a traditional nuclear power plant and can power about 750,000 homes at any given moment.” From the report:
Brookfield will develop and operate the 1.8 GW data center campus, which will occupy portions of the sprawling 3,556-acre Energy Department site once used to produce weapons-grade uranium and fuel for nuclear reactors. Operations using the now obsolete enrichment technology known as gaseous diffusion stopped in 2013 and the site is now subject to cleanup efforts. Construction is expected to be completed in 2031, the Energy Department said.
“The U.S. government is leveraging its assets — like our federal lands — to add power generation, create jobs, and ensure the United States wins the AI race,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. The project is expected to create 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent positions, the department said.

Re:What is there is no race

By Fly Swatter • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
AI data centers are racing to build and use your electricity and natural gas thereby increasing costs to all citizens. The race is with citizens and their tolerance of highly inflated living costs on electricity and natural gas used to heat homes in the winter.

Something to look forward to …

By Anne Thwacks • Score: 3 Thread
“Include construction of 2 gigawatts of natural gas-fired power”

At last … Kentucky Fried Data!

2.6 gigawatts of battery storage capacity

By rossdee • Score: 3 Thread

You don’t measure battery storage capacity in watts.

You measure it in watt hours.

So they’re calling them campuses now?

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
That’s kind of clever, change the name so people who have already figured out the data centers are bad news now thinks of them as something else. Muddy the conversation long enough for you to ram it through after some bribes to do local politicians.

The data center build out really is letting people know, especially people in rural communities, just how much of their own autonomy they have given up over the last… When was Ronald Reagan elected?

DoorDash Is Building Its Own Drone Delivery Business

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DoorDash has launched DoorDash Air, an in-house drone-delivery program that has just received FAA certification for commercial operations. “This does not mean DoorDash’s custom-built drones will be delivering burritos tomorrow, or even next month,” notes TechCrunch. “The company didn’t provide a detailed timeline for when its aircraft would be used in operations.” From the report:
[I]t will likely begin with limited pilot programs in which the unmanned aircraft will travel short distances while remaining within the line of sight of the operator. If DoorDash wants its drones to fly autonomously over longer distances, it will need the FAA to approve its Beyond Visual Line of Sight technology, a certification that companies like Amazon, Wing, and Zipline have received in recent years.

Despite the new program, the food and grocery delivery company is maintaining its existing partnerships with Wing and Flytrex. DoorDash partnered with Alphabet’s Wing in 2022 for a drone delivery program in Australia, and later expanded the partnership to a couple of U.S. cities, including Dallas-Fort Worth, in 2024.

Anyone else tired of being experimented on?

By rsilvergun • Score: 3 Thread
Now these are probably not unmanned. Like those little food delivery robots and the wemo’s they are most likely going to be remote controlled from overseas.

Personally I’m not terribly thrilled with the idea of dozens of little robots flitting about my neighborhood remote control over it internet by the lowest bidder from a foreign country.

Not that any of us get any say in anything anymore. About 37% of the population has given up and just said the Epstein class can do pretty much anything they want and with a little propaganda and a little voter suppression and a little bit of first past the post voting the rest of us don’t matter

I hope not!

By jenningsthecat • Score: 3 Thread

… DoorDash Air, an in-house drone-delivery program …

If I were to use such a service, I’d want the drone to stop at my front door, NOT come into my house.

Besides, in-person delivery is irreplaceable. A drone can’t spit in my food or drink my soda.

Russia Charges Telegram Founder Durov With Facilitating Terrorism

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Russia has charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorism, alleging the platform was used by Ukrainian intelligence “to prepare and co-ordinate acts of sabotage and terror” inside Russia. An international arrest warrant has been issued for Durov, who currently lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where Telegram keeps its main office. The BBC reports:
Shortly after the charge was announced, Telegram’s account on X posted an image showing Durov holding up his middle finger. He has previously accused Russian authorities of “fabricating new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram.”

[…] Multi-billionaire Durov, 41, has lived outside of Russia for many years and holds French and United Arab Emirates (UAE) passports. It is unclear whether other countries or authorities would comply with an arrest warrant issued by Russia.

Durov left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on the platform. He had previously founded popular Russian social media company VKontakte - dubbed the “Facebook of Russia.”
In 2024, Durov was arrested and investigated by the French government in connection with criminal activity on the platform and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement. “He was allowed to go home months later, with the investigation continuing,” notes the BBC.

Ukraine

By Valgrus Thunderaxe • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
wouldn’t have resorted to “acts of sabotage and terrorism” is Russia hadn’t invaded them.

Re:So it’s purely symbolic?

By drinkypoo • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Unless a State in which he resides in agrees to extradite him for the charges (which… let’s assume he’s smart enough to avoid States friendly with Russia), then this is about as grandstanding as the term gets.

Russia has assassinated former Russian citizens outside of Russia before, it would be unsurprising if they did it again.

Re:Ukraine

By ozzymodus12 • Score: 4, Funny Thread
Orc culture is the true victim here. the West needs to understand that mass murder and pillaging is a natural part of their way of living. Who are we to judge? We provoked this by not submitting. *snort snort*

Re:So it’s purely symbolic?

By znrt • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

the current record holders for high profile assasinations abroad are israel and the us, in that order and far ahead of anyone else. just saying, you do you.

i hear you mumbling: “but, but, they’re all republicans!!!!”. oh, kid …

Re:So it’s purely symbolic?

By drnb • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Russia has assassinated former Russian citizens outside of Russia before, it would be unsurprising if they did it again.

I suppose they could do that, but I don’t know what it would accomplish.

It demonstrates that enemies of the state are never beyond the reach of the state.

OpenAI’s Rogue AI Agent Hacked More Than Just Hugging Face

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired:
OpenAI said Tuesday that the rogue AI agent that breached Hugging Face’s platform also hacked multiple third-party accounts and services as part of the attack. It’s now clear that the unprecedented security incident, which arose during an internal test of OpenAI’s latest AI models, was more extensive than the company initially disclosed. In an updated blog post, OpenAI said that an ongoing review of the incident revealed that “four accounts” tied to “publicly available services” were used by the AI agent as part of a larger effort to hack Hugging Face. The rogue agent apparently found credentials that had been exposed on the open web and used them to break into the accounts.

OpenAI did not disclose what companies or organizations the accounts belonged to, but noted that they were not impacted at “the level of severity or scale of what we’ve shared related to Hugging Face.” One of the additional accounts compromised by OpenAI’s agent was used as an “outbound relay and staging path,” potentially to obscure where the attack on Hugging Face was coming from, the company said. OpenAI’s rogue agent also used another account for data storage to assist with the hack.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that a customer of Modal, a company that offers software infrastructure for training and running AI services, was one of the entities compromised by OpenAI’s agent. In a statement to WIRED, Modal’s chief technology officer Akshat Bubna confirmed that OpenAI’s agent exploited a vulnerability in one of its customer’s codebases, which was running on Modal’s infrastructure. However, Bubna says, “Modal’s platform was not compromised in any way.” The identity of the customer could not be determined.

FBI should be visiting.

By Fly Swatter • Score: 3 Thread
Sounds like a threat actor. How do you put an AI in jail? because OpenAI apparently can’t even sandbox.

Re:FBI should be visiting.

By Luthair • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Its just a program, put the operator(s) in jail.

Why does the model have all those “skills” ?

By Troy Roberts • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Why does the model have all those “skills” needed to hack other sites? I mean you have to allow the model open internet access and at least the ability to GET/POST/PUT. I feel this is some of the same kind of thinking that gets someone’s repo deleted, because they gave an agent too much access and no good way to monitor what is going on.

More Than 30 Minnesota Water Systems Targeted In Cyberattack

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jrnvk shares a report from KMSP:
Minnesota IT Services reports that a “coordinated cyberattack” targeted technology at more than 30 community water systems between Sunday, July 26 and Monday, July 27. The state has activated its cybersecurity incident response capabilities to respond to the attacks.

On Monday and Tuesday, FOX 9 reported on notices from four cities that had disclosed the attacks: Plymouth, South St. Paul, Maple Plain, and Braham. All four cities said the impacts of the attacks were limited or mitigated and residents could continue normal water use. The Minnesota Department of Health is not aware of any municipality asking residents to alter their drinking water use as a result of the attacks.

State officials are working with federal and private-sector partners to investigate the attacks, support the affected communities, and strengthen the security of Minnesota’s critical infrastructure.

Blame Canada

By RobinH • Score: 5, Funny Thread
It must be the preliminary moves in a surprise strike by our mortal forever enemy, Canada. “Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” - 1984

Re:attack

By Smidge204 • Score: 5, Informative Thread

From another source it sounds like the plant’s SCADA system was compromised and shut down/disabled, causing some plants to go offline.

The immediate consequence is they would lose remote control over the pumps, fans, and valves at these facilities and either default to some safe state or just shut down entirely. Someone would have to drive over and manually reset/control everything, which is exactly what they did. Addressed promptly enough most people would even notice something was wrong.

The long term consequences could be that they end up getting incorrect status information about the facility’s operation, causing a longer disruption until complaints start coming in and they have to run around trying to figure out what’s wrong. Loss of water pressure, distribution of untreated water, distribution of over treated water, depletion of reserves are all obvious problems a bad enough attack could cause. Physical damage to equipment is also not impossible, which would be the worst case scenario.... you’re not fixing a broken well/system pump or AOP reactor in two or three hours, and it you lose a bunch of them at once you could be at reduced capacity for months.
=Smidge=

Good!

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

They fucking deserve everything they get. We have had more than enough close calls and incidents to clearly demonstrate to every drooling moron that critical infrastructure like water and electricity systems should never be connected to the internet. There’s no reason for them to to need it.

No fucking access in or out. Fucking duh!

Air gap that shit or get the intrusion that you deserve. My private infrastructure has computer monitoring and automation. But, none of it can exchange a single packet with the internet. There’s no reason that a state government with dedicated IT departments shouldn’t know and do the same.

Wrong headline

By gweihir • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

A better one would be “More than 30 Minnesota water systems have IT security that completely sucks”.

Seriously, without liability (including personal one) and strict qualification requirements, the total crap-show that IT security is today will continue. And not only for critical infrastructure.

Re:attack

By garcia • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

City Council member of a non-listed Twin Cities suburb I know:

FBI is involved. Most water systems use one of two control/alert systems that are old and make them easy targets.

All they did was shut down components of the systems e.g., wells/sewer lift stations. Most cities were able to cycle manually to get back up and running. There was not messages warning or ransom of which I am aware.

They could have done a lot more damage if they wanted to, rather than just shutting things down.

Your Brain Can Rewire Itself To Allow True Multitasking

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert:
[I]n a new study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center in the U.S. have revealed that we can put certain tasks on autopilot in a way that enables something closer to true multitasking. Driving is the perfect example: When you take your test, your entire mental and physical energy is concentrated on executing the right combinations of movements and thoughts. After a decade behind the wheel, the brain is no longer consciously thinking everything through in great detail.

In the new study, the researchers found that after extensive practice, the brain can effectively reroute some tasks around the brain’s main computing center — like a bypass road around a city — to reduce mental overload and improve multitasking capability. “We have another stepping stone in our understanding of how the brain learns,” says neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber, senior author of the study. “The encouraging part is that you really can learn to multitask. There is actually a way to remodel your brain architecture and use other parts of your brain.”

[…] “Previous studies have shown that parts of the temporal cortex can be activated by particular object categories in experienced observers — birds, cars, even Pokemon — but a limitation of all of those studies is that they only looked after people became experts,” says psychologist Patrick Cox, first author of the study. “We measure before and after training, so we can see that extensive training essentially put a category-selective area in the temporal lobe that was not there before.” The study culminated in a dual-task experiment, in which the participants were asked to identify cars and take on another challenge. The individuals whose brains had offloaded more car-sorting work to the temporal cortex did better at the second task.

The same for music

By aglider • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Realm musicians spend a lot of time in learning the notes on the score, so their body knows how to play that piece.

At that point, the mind can fully kick-in and add the interpretation layer while the body control runs in the background.

Drummers

By pr0t0 • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Anyone who has every tried to learn the drums can tell you humans are capable of true multitasking. Limb independence seems like an impossible feat when you first start out. I think I read that John Bonham could play two different time signatures simultaneously. If true, I’m sure others can do it and it can be done on many other instruments, but to me that seems like a superhuman level of multitasking.

Re:It does it poorly

By dfghjk • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

“Driving is the perfect example”

Driving isn’t even “the perfect example”, walking is. How the brain works is better understood than presented here, to an embarrassing extent. We’ve known longer than any of us have been alive that the brain learns and no longer needs to be actively focused on skills in order to perform them. Anyone who plays a musical instrument is acutely aware of this.

Re:It does it poorly

By v1 • Score: 5, Informative Thread

iirc that’s entirely the job of the Cerebellum. It monitors stimulus on the way in and responses on the way out, and when it’s seen it enough it creates “shortcuts” that allow for both faster and more automatic responses.

Indeed, the first one we learn is walking. (balance without a cerebellum is very hard) There’s a rare defect where the cerebellum fails to form / fully form, and those people have a really hard time living all their lives on “manual mode”.

Riding a bicycle is a good extension from walking, your cerebellum gets to go back into intense learning mode all over again.

I really don’t see why any of this is “news”, we’ve known about the concept for centuries, and the mechanisms behind it for decades.

Re:Captain Obvious strikes again

By swillden • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

When you do a sport, like tennis, boxing, or whtever else — what you’ve done in your training is teaching your stem brain to react and coordinate doszens of simultaneous tasks.

True… but only up to a point.

Each of the “automatic” background tasks you’re performing does consume a bit of your overall capacity. Professions that have to deal with this explicitly because failing to manage it is dangerous call it “task loading”. Take two examples: basic, automatic skills of divers and pilots.

Managing buoyancy is a skill that requires considerable practice for most novice divers. You have to regulate your breathing to maintain an average lung volume that keeps you at neutral buoyancy, not rising or falling (much) in the water column, but your breathing also has to be sufficient to supply your body’s needs, and you also have to notice when your situation is changing so that you can’t regulate with lung volume alone and then adjust the amount of air in your buoyancy compensation device (BCD).

New divers often find buoyancy difficult even with full attention. But with practice it becomes first easy, and then fully automatic, even when in the middle of the water column with no ready reference points. I have ~400 logged dives and I no longer even notice it, my perception is that I just “naturally” stay neutral except when I wish to rise or descend, and then it just happens. I find my hands occasionally reaching to adjust my BCD, but I don’t think about it.

Pilots similarly have to learn to maintain level flight, using both direct observation out the window and instruments. It’s hard and requires full attention for quite a while, but then becomes natural and automatic.

Once these skills are developed, they feel completely automatic, but they’re really not, which becomes very apparent when you start piling up multiple “automatic” tasks, and possibly add a non-automatic task on top of them. As you add more “automatic” tasks, their quality degrades, and when you throw in a non-automatic task you find that both the automatic tasks are executed poorly and the non-automatic task is more difficult.

For divers, this becomes really apparent when, having mastered buoyancy, they begin trying to do other things like executing search patterns, or building or welding something, etc. Even something as simple as looking at a compass to determine heading while navigating can result in divers suddenly discovering that their “automatic” buoyancy control has disappeared and they are rising or sinking (usually rising). To some degree this can be mitigated with more practice/experience of the “automatic” skills, but it never goes away. One solution when performance of a complex skill is required (e.g. welding) is to eliminate buoyancy control as a requirement, for example by going to the bottom and adjusting the BCD so the diver is strongly negative and can’t float up even with lungs filled to maximum.

Pilots address the problem by defining a strict hierarchy to three important automatic or semi-automatic skills. The phrase is “aviate, navigate, communicate”, and the idea is that when task loading begins to overwhelm the pilot they focus entirely on flying the plane first, and only when they are confident they have that fully under control do they pay attention to course and heading, and only when that is fully under control do they pay attention to the radio. Of course, when not overloaded they do all three things at once, all the time, and don’t really think about any of them, free to watch the scenery or whatever. But the automatic skills break under load, and when they break the pilot has to consciously “take over”, and to prioritize conscious focus on the right tasks first.

Driving is another good example. It feels completely automatic… but I know firsthand that it’s not. One way I know this is by what happens when I listen to audiobooks. I cannot listen to a book unless I’m doing something else. The stream of information isn’t sufficiently dense to occupy my mind, so my mind wanders and then I suddenly realize that I haven’t heard the last five minutes. But when I’m driving, that doesn’t happen. It’s clear that although driving feels automatic it does consume enough of my attention that I no longer have enough excess capacity to begin daydreaming. Driving + (good) book is close to my limit. I also find that doing non-word puzzles (e.g. Sudoku) is enough to keep my mind from wandering away from a book. Word puzzles don’t work because I can’t do two language-oriented tasks at the same time (some people can).

Anyway, the point is that (a) I hope there’s more to this research than appears in the summary because it really does seem like it’s well-understood and (b) background tasks feel completely automatic, but they’re not. They still consume attention, just less, and subconciously.