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Submission + - Student handcuffed by police after AI 'mistakes bag of Doritos for gun' (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Taki Allen was approached by armed officers at Kenwood High School following football practice, who ordered him to the ground and cuffed him before realising he had no weapon.

'The school's Omnilert AI gun detection system, which uses cameras to identify potential weapons, generated an alert that was then forwarded to the school resource officer and police.

'While the student's family and local officials have expressed concern and called for a review of the system, the school superintendent defended its operation, stating it "did what it was supposed to do".

'This incident follows a previous failure of the Omnilert system in January, where it did not detect a gun used in a fatal shooting at a Nashville high school due to camera proximity issues.'

A false positive follows a catastrophic false negative. The price we pay for safety? How big a price should we pay?

Submission + - CCP GOTION DEAD: Whitmer-funded Chinese battery maker pulls plug on project (themidwesterner.news)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan Economic Development Corporation contends it’s “not the outcome we hoped for,” residents in Mecosta County are celebrating its decision to nix $715 million in taxpayer-funded incentives for Gotion.

MEDC officials on Thursday notified lawmakers that the company with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party is in breach of its economic development contract, which was negotiated in secret by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration and select lawmakers just three years ago.

“It’s about damn time,” Marjorie Steele, founder of the Economic Development Responsibility Alliance that opposed Gotion’s planned $2.4 billion EV battery plant, told Bridge Michigan. “What the MEDC tried to pull here in Big Rapids was just so egregious.”

Whitmer claimed in 2022 that the agreement, which included $715 million in taxpayer-funded incentives and tax breaks, would fuel “the biggest ever economic development project in Northern Michigan” and create “2,350 good-paying jobs in Big Rapids.”

Submission + - Alaska Airlines grounds flights nationwide due to IT outage (go.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Alaska Airlines flights were grounded nationwide on Thursday after the airline said it was experiencing an "IT outage affecting operations."

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop after a request by the airline.

Alaska Airlines flights departing from Seattle Tacoma International Airport were not affected, according to the latest advisory from the FAA.

It's the second IT outage affecting the airline this year.

Submission + - PC sales explode in Q3 as Windows 11 deadlines force millions to upgrade (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: IDC says global PC shipments jumped 9.4 percent in Q3 2025, reaching nearly 76 million units. Asia and Japan led the growth thanks to school projects and corporate refreshes tied to Windows 10â(TM)s end of support. North America was the weak link, with tariffs and economic unease keeping buyers on the sidelines even as aging fleets strain under Windows 11 pressure.

Lenovo kept its top spot with 25.5 percent market share, followed by HP at 19.8 and Dell at 13.3. Apple and ASUS both posted double-digit growth. IDCâ(TM)s takeaway is clear: the PC market is not surging on flashy new features, it is being pulled forward by deadlines, old batteries, and the reality that five-year-old laptops do not cut it anymore.

Submission + - There isn't an AI bubble—there are three (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: AI is experiencing not just one, but three bubbles—speculative, infrastructure, and hype. How businesses respond to these bubbles will dictate their fate, and determine whether they will be able to survive when the bubbles burst.

Submission + - Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro makes food taste sweeter and saltier (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Some people taking Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro notice that food suddenly tastes sweeter or saltier, and this subtle shift in flavor perception appears tied to reduced appetite and stronger feelings of fullness. In a study of more than 400 patients, roughly one in five experienced heightened taste sensitivity, and many reported being less hungry and more easily satisfied.

Submission + - Using AI to write degrades your mental performance (arxiv.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Brain-to-LLM users exhibited higher memory recall and activation of occipito-parietal and prefrontal areas, similar to Search Engine users. Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.

Submission + - Undisclosed risks of COVID-19 vaccine

Submitted by Mirnotoriety
Mirnotoriety writes: 03:30: “But it was interesting as we started to understand COVID and understand that the pathogen was the spike protein that the solution that was offered was actually to tell people to make the spike protein for an unknown amount of time for an unknown amount. And that is actually where we got off.

Meaning historically when we think about vaccines, vaccines are passive, meaning your body interfaces with a foreign protein. But usually that protein is not something that's active biologically to most people.

But instead to pick the very protein that is pathological and actually have people make it in a in a way that we didn't really even understand. And even the biodistribution studies are just now catching up where the old it stayed in your arm is completely false.

Uh and we know that now. But of course the the studies just came out because really we weren't studying it before we basically told everybody it was safe and effective.”

Submission + - Do we need opt-out by default privacy laws?

Submitted by BrendaEM
BrendaEM writes: In large, companies failed to self-regulate. They have not been respected the individual's right to privacy. In software and web interfaces, companies have buried their privacy setting so deep that they cannot be found in a reasonable amount of time, or that an unreasonable amount of steps are needed to attempt to retain their data. They have taken the rights of the individual's right to privacy away--by default.

Are laws needed that protect a person's privacy by default--unless specific steps are needed by the user/purchaser to relinquish it? Should the wording of the explanation should be so written that the contract is brief, it explains the forfeiture of the privacy, and where that data might be going? Should a company selling a product should state before purchase, which right need to be dismissed for it's use? Should a legal owner who purchased product expect it to not stop functioning--only because a newer user contract is not agreed to?

Submission + - Among tech layoffs 120K H-1B visas approved (uscis.gov)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

FY 2026 H-1B Cap Process Update We received enough electronic registrations during the initial registration period to reach the fiscal year 2026 H-1B numerical allocations (H-1B cap), including the advanced degree exemption, also known as the masterâ(TM)s cap. We selected 118,660 unique beneficiaries, resulting in 120,141 selected registrations in the initial selection for the FY 2026 H-1B cap.

This is disappointing failure in otherwise excellent track record of Trump administration of reducing out of control immigration.

Comment Re:Google the recidivist monopolist :o (Score 2) 41

by AsylumWraith (#65349411) Attached to: US Asks Judge To Break Up Google's Ad Tech Business

Who's the bingus here?

Comparing Microsoft, Google, and IBM to AT&T and Standard Oil is completely bogus.

AT&T and especially Standard were indeed illegal monopolies. Standard, as you said, simply bought up the competition and build a vertically integrated business that made it impossible for anyone else to enter the market. AT&T built a vertical business by owning all the lines, either the long lines directly, or the local lines through the Baby Bells, and disallowing any hardware that wasn't manufactured by Western Electric, which they also owned.

No one was ever forced to use Internet Explorer; the option to install Netscape, Mosaic, etc. was always there. That IE was integrated with the OS and more convenient to the end user was completely irrelevant. That PCs on the shelves had Windows pre-loaded was also irrelevant; consumers always had the option to build from scratch and not have to buy the license for any OS.

If a company chooses to leverage their patents and charge outrageous prices as IBM did, that might piss the consumers, (at that time, universities, government, and large businesses,) but it's not illegal, and in the long run, is bad business practice. But no one was forced to lease IBM equipment; there were other companies making punched-card tabulators; Remington Rand comes to mind. Consumers simply preferred IBM, and were willing to pay the price.

Same with Ad Sense; there are other platforms out there, and a 10-second search, (using Google, no less!) comes up with at least a dozen alternatives. That Ad Sense pays better and is more effective then their competition doesn't make them an illegal monopoly, it simply means they're out-competing.

There's a world of difference between making it so that there is no alternative, (Standard Oil, AT&T,) and simply being the best competitor in the market, (Microsoft, IBM, Google.)

Submission + - U.S. Government Funding for MITRE's CVE Program to Expire

Submitted by SigmaTao
SigmaTao writes: The U.S. government funding for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program, operated by non-profit research giant MITRE, is set to expire on April 16. This could have significant impacts on the cybersecurity ecosystem, including the deterioration of national vulnerability databases and advisories, as well as delays in vulnerability disclosures.

MITRE remains committed to the program, but warns of potential consequences if the contracting pathway is not maintained. The CVE program is a foundational pillar of the global cybersecurity ecosystem, offering a standard for identifying and cataloging publicly disclosed security flaws.

https://thehackernews.com/2025/04/us-govt-funding-for-mitres-cve-ends.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itbsfeqrRY4

Submission + - Microsoft uses AI to find flaws in GRUB2, U-Boot, Barebox filesystems (bleepingcomputer.com) 1

Submitted by zlives
zlives writes: seems to need physical access with perhaps the exception of GRUB.
from the MS source https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...
"Using Security Copilot, we initially explored which functionalities in a bootloader have the most potential for vulnerabilities, with Copilot identifying network, filesystems, and cryptographic signatures as key areas of interest. Given our ongoing analysis of network vulnerabilities and the fact that cryptography is largely handled by UEFI, we decided to focus on filesystems."
it seems they ignored network and encryption so possible there are additional things to be discovered.

Submission + - Microsoft Attempts to Close Local Account Windows 11 Setup Loophole (theverge.com)

Submitted by jrnvk
jrnvk writes: The Verge is reporting that Microsoft will soon make it harder to run the well-publicized bypassnro command in Windows 11 setup. This command allows skipping the Microsoft account and online connection requirements on install. While the command will be removed, it can still be enabled by a regedit change — for now.

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