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Comment Discretionary income is situational. (Score 1) 109

by couchslug (#66211974) Attached to: Polestar Banned From Selling Cars In US From Model Year 2027

~$25K is about ten grand less than the average used car price in many non-rich US states so it's obviously affordable for many, self included, of modest incomes.

I only make ~$70K but live below my means using enabling skills in an enabling location. I don't piss away money on new vehicles as a matter of economic principle.

Submission + - Non-invasive stimulation of the brain ends Opioid addiction, cigarette craving (jpost.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Doctors at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa have successfully treated their first Israeli opioid addiction patient using an experimental noninvasive brain technology, easing him through withdrawal in just 20 minutes.

'H., a 40-year-old family man from northern Israel, was injured in his neck several years ago. Because of the injury, he relied on painkillers and eventually became addicted to them....

'The patient himself reported a craving score of zero out of 10 for using the drug, and even another side effect, a drastic drop in the desire for cigarettes, from three packs a day to just a few cigarettes, and with no urge to use alcohol. In other words, in a treatment that lasted about 20 minutes net, our patient was completely freed from an extreme dependence that had accompanied him every day for years. This is nothing less than a medical and therapeutic revolution.”'

Submission + - Max Planck Slapped With Paper Retractions by Suspected Rogue Algorithm (science.org) 1

Submitted by He Who Has No Name
He Who Has No Name writes: Being a titan in the history of physics, the 1918 Nobel Laureate in Physics, having the smallest rational physical measurement (the Planck Length) named after you, and being deceased for 79 years is all apparently still not enough to prevent your work from being threshed and hit with retractions by an algorithm. Science.org has a succinct article that explains it:

"In early May, Yves Gingras, a historian of physics at the University of Quebec (UQ) at Montreal, was browsing Retraction Watch, a website that catalogs fraud, data manipulation, and other scientific sins. He noticed a link that read, “Retractions by Nobel Prize winners.” Were there really Nobel laureates whose papers had been withdrawn from the scientific literature?
After clicking, Gingras froze. “That’s impossible,” he recalls thinking. The fourth name on the list, with two retracted papers, was Max Planck—a legendary pioneer of quantum mechanics and the 1918 Nobel laureate in physics. Gingras had never heard a whiff of scandal about Planck, who was almost as widely revered for his character as his physics. In 1933, for example, he bravely confronted Adolf Hitler over Nazi Germany’s discriminatory laws against Jews."

The Springer Nature, the current-day owner of the journal Naturwissenschaften in which the papers were published 86 years ago, appears to have set an algorithm loose on their library, hunting for plagiarism and other reasons to retract papers... and failed to tell it to leave historic cornerstone works and authors alone.

"The retraction of the second Planck paper, published in 1940, left Gingras and Khelfaoui even more baffled. It also cited copyright violation—yet the piece had never appeared elsewhere. Then Khelfaoui noticed something that added to suspicions that an algorithm was at work. [...] In November 1940, philosopher Aloys Müller criticized Planck’s views in a Naturwissenschaften piece titled “Naturwissenschaft und reale Außenwelt” (“Natural Science and the Real External World”). A month later, Planck responded in print—and used the exact same title. This, Gingras and Khelfaoui suspect, caused Springer Nature’s copyright bot to retract the paper as plagiarism decades later, even though the contents of the two essays differ markedly."

However, apparently feeling like they had to retract the paper was not enough to fully dissuade Springer Nature from still selling it, in its retracted form:

"Gingras was especially incensed that Springer Nature deviated from the normal practice of merely slapping the word RETRACTED across the digital version of the paper while still allowing scholars to read the text. Instead, the publisher posted a blank white page with the cryptic phrase, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” Springer Nature is nevertheless still selling the empty PDF for $39.95."

Submission + - Microsoft extends Win10 CONSUMER ESU for one more year (microsoft.com)

Submitted by williamyf
williamyf writes: Microsoft has extended the consumer ESU support for Windows 10 for another year. It will now run until Oct 2027.

Both the ESU page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates#cw) and a Blog Post (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/06/24/stay-secure-with-windows-11-copilot-pcs-and-windows-365-before-support-ends-for-windows-10/) from Microsoft reflect the change.

Consumer ESU is either free (sometimes with strings attached) or low cost (~30 U$D) compared to Enterprise ESU. The details are in the ESU page.

Enterprise ESU remains unchanged, and runs until Oct 2028. For people still using Win10 as their main OS, either because their HW does not support Win11, or because they like Win10 better, or people (like me) Dualbooting another OS as the main one, with a Win10 partition for other uses, these are excellent news.

Submission + - Polestar Banned From Selling Cars in the U.S. Starting With Model Year 2027 (autoevolution.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Polestar is now winding down its car sales in the United States, following the decision of the U.S. Department of Commerce

The Connected Vehicle Rule is a regulation that restricts the import and sale of vehicles equipped with Vehicle Connectivity Systems (VCS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) tied to foreign adversaries, primarily from China and Russia.

Polestar is owned by Chinese auto giant Geely, which has also been the parent company of Swedish brand Volvo since 2010. However, Volvo has recently been granted authorization to sell connected vehicles in the United States.

Submission + - Should AI Ban Users Without Human Review? (medium.com)

Submitted by VTAndrew
VTAndrew writes: Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of content moderation and account enforcement across major online platforms. While AI can help identify spam, scams, and harmful content at internet scale, what happens when the system gets it wrong?

A recently published Medium article examines this question through the experience of a Facebook account suspension that was reportedly initiated by an automated system, followed by an automated appeal denial and no meaningful path to human review.

The article argues that the issue isn't AI itself—it's allowing AI to become investigator, decision-maker, and appeals process without effective human oversight.

The broader concern is that platforms like Meta have evolved into critical pieces of modern infrastructure. They host community groups, school communications, local government announcements, business pages, political discussions, and years of personal history. Their ecosystems also span multiple interconnected services, meaning a single enforcement action can affect Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and Meta hardware tied to the same account.

This concern extends beyond a single user's experience. A growing advocacy effort at People Over Platforms documents thousands of reports from users who say they were wrongfully locked out of their accounts and calls for stronger transparency, meaningful appeals, and human oversight.

The movement originated with a Change.org petition that has gathered more than 63,000 supporters before transitioning to an independent nonprofit focused on digital rights and platform accountability.

Media outlets in multiple countries have also reported on users who say they were wrongly disabled by Meta's automated enforcement systems, with some accounts later restored after additional review.

Rather than asking whether AI should be used for moderation, the article asks a different question:

If AI is empowered to make decisions that can revoke a person's digital identity, communications, communities, and purchased ecosystem, should there always be a meaningful human appeal available?

Medium article:

https://medium.com/@vtadorsett...

People Over Platforms:

https://www.peopleoverplatform...

Original Change.org petition:

https://www.change.org/p/hold-...

Submission + - When AI Becomes Judge, Jury, and Appeals Court (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Medium article explores the growing use of AI for account enforcement and moderation decisions on large social platforms. The author argues that the real issue isn't AI making mistakes—mistakes are inevitable—but the lack of meaningful human review when those mistakes occur.

The article describes an account suspension process in which an AI system made the initial enforcement decision, an automated appeal upheld it, and human support representatives were reportedly unable to revisit the case because it had already been marked as resolved.

The broader question raised is one of governance rather than technology: if platforms increasingly rely on AI to make decisions that can revoke access to social networks, communications, communities, purchased hardware ecosystems, and digital identities, what level of human oversight should be required?

The article also discusses the concept of "blast radius" in system design, arguing that centralized digital identity systems amplify the consequences of false positives when enforcement actions cascade across multiple services.

What level of human review should be required when AI systems are empowered to make decisions with significant real-world consequences?

Comment Re:Before someone says it (Score 1) 134

by SirSlud (#66207018) Attached to: UK Considers Forcing Social Media Firms To Prioritize Trusted News

True, misinformation coming from "trusted" sources is much more damaging than some idiot with a blog posting nonsense, simply by the fact that it's framed as something trusted by so many others.

False dichotomy. Nobody here is talking about an idiot with a blog posting nonsense.

False information coming from sources that "look" trustable but are actually not are very damaging - on purpose, as that is literally the intent.

Incomplete/biased information from trustable sources that are not deliberately attempting to mislead (as in sources that adhere to the ethics of not presenting information that is factually false, even if the picture is not "complete" as you suggest) is a slight wrong, and has existed since the dawn of the printed word - it's editorial in nature - but its effects on creating social problems pales in comparison to weaponized disinformation campaigns.

Hand-wringing about the later as if it's some kind of new thing, or something most people don't know about strikes me as super naive. The insidiousness of the former is simply that people don't appreciate the scale to which it's happening.

Submission + - Mushroom Behind 'Tiny Human' Visions Lacks Genes For Known Psychedelics (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: When eaten undercooked, the mushroom can produce vivid visions of miniature people â" not unlike Gulliver on his travels to Lilliput.

"Biosynthetic gene mining of the L. asiatica genome found no close hits with any genes known in the production of mushroom psychoactive compounds," write the researchers in their published paper.

"This supports our hypothesis of the presence of a novel unidentified metabolite responsible for the unique hallucinogenic properties of L. asiatica."

Comment Printed Integral Munition Systems (Score 1) 48

by couchslug (#66204890) Attached to: The Secret Revolution in Battery Technology: 3-D Printing

Integral drone batteries would reduce complexity and likely
enhance structural strength. Warheads could similarly integrate explosive filler (with removable fuses for the usual transportation and handling safety reasons) and projectiles. Circuit boards could be rigidly supported without complex parts.

The simpler and more water and weatherproof a munition the better. Printing makes prototyping and mission-specific custom loads easy to fab. A nearly-non-metallic, low observable AI-assisted integral munitions drone package could work wonders on the battlefield and enable David to deter Goliath.

Submission + - How a Seemingly Harmless Image Can Jailbreak AI (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Florida International University researchers have developed a technique called JaiLIP (Jailbreaking with Loss-guided Image Perturbation) that uses subtle image modifications to bypass AI safety guardrails. Unlike traditional jailbreaks that rely on carefully crafted prompts, the attack works through images that appear normal to human viewers.

The researchers tested the technique against BLIP-2, a multimodal AI model, and found that manipulated images significantly increased the likelihood of harmful responses. According to the study, the approach outperformed previous image-based jailbreak methods and nearly doubled the number of unsafe outputs generated during testing.

The findings highlight a potential security risk for businesses deploying AI systems that process both images and text. While most discussions about AI safety focus on prompts, the research suggests that seemingly harmless images may also serve as an attack vector.

Submission + - AI lawyer enables freelancer to win in court (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: An artificial intelligence law firm has won a case in an English court, in what is believed to be the first time a trial has been won using an AI lawyer.

A freelance HR consultant, Tamires Camal Taquidir, paid the firm, called Garfield AI, about £400 to send a legal letter and then issue court proceedings over an unpaid debt of £7,000.

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