schwit1 shares a report from Gothamist: Wegmans in New York City has begun collecting biometric data from anyone who enters its supermarkets, according to new signage posted at the chain's Manhattan and Brooklyn locations earlier this month. Anyone entering the store could have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored by the Rochester-headquartered supermarket chain. The information is used to "protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees," according to the signage. The new scanning policy is an expansion of a 2024 pilot.

The chain had initially said that the scanning system was only for a small group of employees and promised to delete any biometric data it collected from shoppers during the pilot rollout. The new notice makes no such assurances. Wegmans representatives did not reply to questions about how the data would be stored, why it changed its policy or if it would share the data with law enforcement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon's AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow customers to use Alexa+ online, much as you can do today with other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini.

[...] Related to this expansion, Amazon is updating its Alexa mobile app, which will now offer a more "agent-forward" experience. Or, in other words, it's putting a chatbot-style interface on the app's homepage, making it seem more like a typical AI chatbot. (While you could chat with Alexa before in the app, the focus is now on the chatting -- while the other features take a back seat.) On the Alexa.com website, customers can use Alexa+ for common tasks -- for instance, exploring complex topics, creating content, and making trip itineraries. However, Amazon aims to differentiate its assistant from others by focusing on families and their needs in the home.

[...] The Alexa.com website features a navigation sidebar for quicker access to your most-used Alexa features, so you can pick up where you left off on tasks like setting the thermostat, checking your calendar for appointments, reviewing shopping lists, and more. In addition, Amazon aims to convince customers to share their personal documents, emails, and calendar access with Alexa+, so its AI can become a sort of hub to manage the goings-on at home, from kids' school holidays and soccer schedules to doctor's appointments and other things families need to remember -- like when the dog got its last rabies shot, or what day the neighbor's backyard BBQ is taking place. "Seventy-six percent of what customers are using Alexa+ for no other AI can do," says Daniel Rausch, VP of Alexa and Echo at Amazon.

"Ninety-seven percent of Alexa devices support Alexa+, and we see now in adoption from customers that they're using Alexa across all those many years and many generations of devices," Rausch adds. "We support all of Alexa's original capabilities, the tens of thousands of services and devices that Alexa was integrated with already are carried forward to the Alexa+ experience."

The report notes that Alexa.com will initially only be available to Early Access customers who sign in with their Amazon account.

Last June the Trump organization announced sales of a $499 "T1" smartphone with a gold-colored case. But though they originally were scheduled for release in August, this week a customer service representative for the wireless carrier told CBS News the device will be pushed back again, now until the end of January, "attributing the delay to the recent U.S. government shutdown."

Some context from The Independent: Shortly after the phone was first announced, language describing it as "Made in the USA" was removed from its official website with the vague claim that the devices are "brought to life" in the United States posted in its place... Other information about the phone has also changed or been removed since its first unveiling, The Verge has reported. Trump Mobile initially indicated the T1's screen measured 6.78 inches, but now claims it is 6.25 inches. It also said the phone had 12GB of RAM; however, that claim has now also disappeared.

As the wait for the T1 continues, Trump Mobile has begun offering refurbished Samsung S23s, S24s, and Apple iPhone 15s and 16s for sale on its site, which appear to have no specific Trump branding and are priced considerably higher than customers might pay elsewhere.

Remember how California's government negotiated a 2024 deal where Google contributed millions to California's local newsrooms to offset advertisers moving to the search engine?

"A year after it was cemented — and billed as a model that could succeed where entire countries and continents had fallen short — the agreement is tangled in budget cuts, bureaucratic infighting and unresolved questions about who controls the money," reports Politico, "leaving journalists empty-handed and casting doubt on whether the lofty experiment will ever live up to its promise." The program, initially framed as a nearly $250 million commitment over five years, has secured just $20 million in new money for journalists in its first year, with no guarantee the funding will continue. It's changed hands twice since the University of California, Berkeley withdrew its support [with school officials "worried they wouldn't have enough of a say in how the money was distributed"]. Suggestions that other big tech players like ChatGPT-maker OpenAI could front more resources haven't materialized. A $62.5 million "AI accelerator" tied to the deal hasn't been set up yet.

Not a single newsroom has seen a dollar of funding, and there's no definitive timeline spelling out when they will... [The article adds later that state officials "have yet to draft precise rules for how California will decide which newsrooms get cash..."] Conversations with at least 20 people involved in the deal's rollout reveal how California's budget shortfalls and intraparty spats among Democrats scrambled it... California's struggle to launch its program has dampened hopes of replicating its model in other states such as Oregon, Illinois and New York, where lawmakers have tried but failed to make Big Tech pay for news...

When [California governor] Newsom unveiled his final state budget plan in May 2025 after a $12 billion deficit suddenly scrambled the state's finances, California's first-year commitment was reduced from $30 million to $10 million. Google followed suit within days and cut its first-year contribution from $15 million to $10 million... Whether the program even continues past 2026 is also unclear. Newsom's office declined to confirm whether the state will provide its $10 million commitment to the fund in the coming 2026-27 state budget. Newsom will also be termed out in 2027, and there's no requirement for his successor to honor the state's agreement with Google.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups -- Lucy Nicotine and Sesh -- made branded vending machines filled with flavored products for analytics company Palantir Technologies. Both machines are in the company's Washington, D.C., offices. The pouches are free for employees and guests over the age of 21, a spokeswoman for Palantir said. Palantir pays to stock the nicotine products.

Alex Cohen, a startup founder based in Austin, Texas, said he was first exposed to nicotine pouches in the workplace after seeing tins of Zyns on the desks of his software engineers. His company, Hello Patient, makes AI-powered healthcare-communication software. "They were very productive, so I thought maybe there's something here," he said. Those engineers soon asked him if he could buy it for the office.

Cohen said he initially bought the nicotine pouches as a joke for social media. He posted a picture of a drawer in his startup's office filled with nicotine pouches made by different brands with the caption, "We're hiring." "Then, I accidentally got addicted," said Cohen. He said he uses around two to three pouches a day. His go-to flavors are mango or minty. Cohen said he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and he has found that the pouches can provide a quick productivity boost. "It helps with reining in my focus because it is a stimulant," he said. Today, Hello Patient has a nicotine-pouch fridge in its office kitchen.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Getting to space is hard. In many ways, getting back is even harder. NASA soon aims to pull off the kind of re-entry it last conducted more than 50 years ago: safely returning astronauts to Earth after they fly to the moon and back. The mission is a big moment for NASA, which will put a crew on its Orion ship for the first time. The flight will test the spacecraft's heat shield, designed to protect the astronauts on board.

Re-entries of vehicles from orbit remain one of the high-stakes parts of any human spaceflight, given the stress they put on spacecraft. In 2003, NASA's Columbia Space Shuttle broke apart as it came back from low-Earth orbit due to a breach on the vehicle that occurred during launch. All seven astronauts on board were killed. Orion will be coming back to Earth from much further away than low-Earth orbit, where all recent human spaceflights have been conducted. That means its velocity and the energy it needs to disperse will be greater, putting even more stress on the heat shield.

During a test flight in 2022 that didn't include astronauts, Orion's heat shield didn't perform as expected. That sparked worries about crew safety on future missions, prompting NASA to investigate and address what happened. NASA will launch Orion with the astronauts on board as soon as February. [...] When the vehicle initially re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, it will be traveling around 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The Orion craft, developed by Lockheed Martin for NASA, has a shield that is almost 17 feet in diameter. Installed on the vehicle's underside, the shield is covered in what is called an "ablative" material, which is designed to shift heat away from the craft during re-entry by burning off in a controlled manner.

iRobot, the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company that brought the Roomba vacuum cleaner into American homes over its 35-year history, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday and will be acquired by Picea, its Chinese contract manufacturer that also produces competing household devices.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board placed blame for the company's demise on the Federal Trade Commission under Chair Lina Khan, which opposed Amazon's $1.7 billion bid to acquire iRobot. That deal collapsed in January 2024 amid regulatory pressure from both the FTC and European antitrust authorities. Senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressives had urged Khan to block the acquisition, arguing in a September 2022 letter that Amazon is "'almost universally recognized' as the leader in warehouse and fulfillment robotics space" and that the deal "would open up a new market to Amazon's abuses."

After the deal fell through, iRobot cut 31% of its workforce and moved "non-core engineering functions to lower-cost regions." The company had shifted production to Vietnam to reduce its exposure to China but was hit by tariffs under Trump's Liberation Day trade measures -- initially 46%, later reduced to 20%. iRobot said the trade uncertainty made it difficult to operate.

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said Friday he was moving to file a bipartisan bill to repeal Section 230 of America's Communications Decency Act.

"The law prevents most civil suits against users or services that are based on what others say," explains an EFF blog post. "Experts argue that a repeal of Section 230 could kill free speech on the internet," writes LiveMint — though America's last two presidents both supported a repeal: During his first presidency, U.S. President Donald Trump called to repeal the law and signed an executive order attempting to curb some of its protections, though it was challenged in court. Subsequently, former President Joe Biden also voiced his opinion against the law.
An EFF blog post explains the case for Section 230: Congress passed this bipartisan legislation because it recognized that promoting more user speech online outweighed potential harms. When harmful speech takes place, it's the speaker that should be held responsible, not the service that hosts the speech... Without Section 230, the Internet is different. In Canada and Australia, courts have allowed operators of online discussion groups to be punished for things their users have said. That has reduced the amount of user speech online, particularly on controversial subjects. In non-democratic countries, governments can directly censor the internet, controlling the speech of platforms and users. If the law makes us liable for the speech of others, the biggest platforms would likely become locked-down and heavily censored. The next great websites and apps won't even get started, because they'll face overwhelming legal risk to host users' speech.
But "I strongly believe that Section 230 has long outlived its use," Senator Whitehouse said this week, saying Section 230 "a real vessel for evil that needs to come to an end." "The laws that Section 230 protect these big platforms from are very often laws that go back to the common law of England, that we inherited when this country was initially founded. I mean, these are long-lasting, well-tested, important legal constraints that have — they've met the test of time, not by the year or by the decade, but by the century.

"And yet because of this crazy Section 230, these ancient and highly respected doctrines just don't reach these people. And it really makes no sense, that if you're an internet platform you get treated one way; you do the exact same thing and you're a publisher, you get treated a completely different way.

"And so I think that the time has come.... It really makes no sense... [Testimony before the committee] shows how alone and stranded people are when they don't have the chance to even get justice. It's bad enough to have to live through the tragedy... But to be told by a law of Congress, you can't get justice because of the platform — not because the law is wrong, not because the rule is wrong, not because this is anything new — simply because the wrong type of entity created this harm."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has increasingly moved toward keeping features locked to its hardware products, but the Translate app is bucking that trend. The live translate feature is breaking out of the Google bubble with support for any earbuds you happen to have connected to your Android phone. The app is also getting improved translation quality across dozens of languages and some Duolingo-like learning features.

The latest version of Google's live translation is built on Gemini and initially rolled out earlier this year. It supports smooth back-and-forth translations as both on-screen text and audio. Beginning a live translate session in Google Translate used to require Pixel Buds, but that won't be the case going forward. Google says a beta test of expanded headphone support is launching today in the US, Mexico, and India.

The audio translation attempts to preserve the tone and cadence of the original speaker, but it's not as capable as the full AI-reproduced voice translations you can do on the latest Pixel phones. Google says this feature should work on any earbuds or headphones, but it's only for Android right now. The feature will expand to iOS in the coming months. [...] The new translation model, which is also available in the search-based translation interface, supports over 70 languages.

alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga's new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate the optimal approach direction for each fruit. The system involves image processing/vision of the fruit, its stems, and whether it is concealed behind another part of the plant. These factors inform robot control decisions and help it choose the best approach.

The model represents a shift in focus from the traditional 'detection/recognition' model to what Fujinaga calls a 'harvest-ease estimation.' "This moves beyond simply asking 'can a robot pick a tomato?' to thinking about 'how likely is a successful pick?', which is more meaningful for real-world farming," he explained. When tested, Fujinaga's new model demonstrated an 81% success rate, far above predictions. Notably, about a quarter of the successes were tomatoes that were successfully harvested from the right or left side that had previously failed to be harvested by a front approach. This suggested that the robot changed its approach direction when it initially struggled to pick the fruit. "This is expected to usher in a new form of agriculture where robots and humans collaborate," said Fujinaga. "Robots will automatically harvest tomatoes that are easy to pick, while humans will handle the more challenging fruits."

The findings are published in Smart Agricultural Technology.

"OpenAI is now internally testing 'ads' inside ChatGPT," reports BleepingComputer: Up until now, the ChatGPT experience has been completely free. While there are premium plans and models, you don't see GPT sell you products or show ads. On the other hand, Google Search has ads that influence your buying behaviour. OpenAI is planning to replicate a similar experience.

As spotted [by software engineer Tibor Blaho] on X.com,ChatGPT Android app 1.2025.329 beta includes new references to an "ads feature" with "bazaar content", "search ad" and "search ads carousel."

This move could disrupt the web economy, as what most people don't understand is that GPT likely knows more about users than Google. For example, OpenAI could create personalised ads on ChatGPT that promote products that you really want to buy... The leak suggests that ads will initially be limited to the search experience only, but this may change in the future.

Last week, Google surprised the tech world when it announced AirDrop support on Pixel 10 devices -- all without Apple's involvement. "While it initially seemed like this was a rogue move made by Google to coerce Apple into another boundary-breaking decision, it might actually be part of the repercussions that also led to USB-C on iPhone and the adoption of RCS," reports 9to5Google. From a report: As reported by Ars Technica, the answer to this week's mysterious Quick Share upgrade lies in the EU's interoperability requirements designed for the DMA. The ruling out of the European Commission pushed Apple to begin supporting interoperable wireless standards beginning with this year's set of OS upgrades, replacing the previous proprietary standard the company used to power its various Continuity features. That forced Apple to add support for the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Aware standard of multi-directional file sharing, at the cost of completely phasing out its previous walled-in protocol.

In a 2023 pitch to investors, a "well-financed, highly credentialed" startup named Stardust aimed for a "gradual temperature reduction demonstration" in 2027, according to a massive new 9,600-word article from Politico. ("Annually dispersing ~1 million tons of sun-reflecting particles," says one slide. "Equivalent to ~1% extra cloud coverage.")

"Another page told potential investors Stardust had already run low-altitude experiments using 'test particles'," the article notes: [P]ublic records and interviews with more than three dozen scientists, investors, legal experts and others familiar with the company reveal an organization advancing rapidly to the brink of being able to press "go" on its planet-cooling plans. Meanwhile, Stardust is seeking U.S. government contracts and quietly building an influence machine in Washington to lobby lawmakers and officials in the Trump administration on the need for a regulatory framework that it says is necessary to gain public approval for full-scale deployment....

The presentation also included revenue projections and a series of opportunities for venture capitalists to recoup their investments. Stardust planned to sign "government contracts," said a slide with the company's logo next to an American flag, and consider a "potential acquisition" by 2028. By 2030, the deck foresaw a "large-scale demonstration" of Stardust's system. At that point, the company claimed it would already be bringing in $200 million per year from its government contracts and eyeing an initial public offering, if it hadn't been sold already.
The article notes that for "a widening circle of researchers and government officials, Stardust's perceived failures to be transparent about its work and technology have triggered a larger conversation about what kind of international governance framework will be needed to regulate a new generation of climate technologies." (Since currently Stardust and its backers "have no legal obligations to adhere to strenuous safety principles or to submit themselves to the public view.")

In October Politico spoke to Stardust CEO, Yanai Yedvab, a former nuclear physicist who was once deputy chief scientist at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. Stardust "was ready to announce the $60 million it had raised from 13 new investors," the article points out, "far larger than any previous investment in solar geoengineering." [Yedvab] was delighted, he said, not by the money, but what it meant for the project. "We are, like, few years away from having the technology ready to a level that decisions can be taken" — meaning that deployment was still on track to potentially begin on the timeline laid out in the 2023 pitch deck. The money raised was enough to start "outdoor contained experiments" as soon as April, Yedvab said. These would test how their particles performed inside a plane flying at stratospheric heights, some 11 miles above the Earth's surface... The key thing, he insisted, was the particle was "safe." It would not damage the ozone layer and, when the particles fall back to Earth, they could be absorbed back into the biosphere, he said. Though it's impossible to know this is true until the company releases its formula. Yedvab said this round of testing would make Stardust's technology ready to begin a staged process of full-scale, global deployment before the decade is over — as long as the company can secure a government client. To start, they would only try to stabilize global temperatures — in other words fly enough particles into the sky to counteract the steady rise in greenhouse gas levels — which would initially take a fleet of 100 planes.
This begs the question: should the world attempt solar geoengineering? That the global temperature would drop is not in question. Britain's Royal Society... said in a report issued in early November that there was little doubt it would be effective. They did not endorse its use, but said that, given the growing interest in this field, there was good reason to be better informed about the side effects... [T]hat doesn't mean it can't have broad benefits when weighed against deleterious climate change, according to Ben Kravitz, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University who has closely studied the potential effects of solar geoengineering. "There would be some winners and some losers. But in general, some amount of ... stratospheric aerosol injection would likely benefit a whole lot of people, probably most people," he said. Other scientists are far more cautious. The Royal Society report listed a range of potential negative side effects that climate models had displayed, including drought in sub-Saharan Africa. In accompanying documents, it also warned of more intense hurricanes in the North Atlantic and winter droughts in the Mediterranean. But the picture remains partial, meaning there is no way yet to have an informed debate over how useful or not solar geoengineering could be...

And then there's the problem of trying to stop. Because an abrupt end to geoengineering, with all the carbon still in the atmosphere, would cause the temperature to soar suddenly upward with unknown, but likely disastrous, effects... Once the technology is deployed, the entire world would be dependent on it for however long it takes to reduce the trillion or more tons of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a safe level...

Stardust claims to have solved many technical and safety challenges, especially related to the environmental impacts of the particle, which they say would not harm nature or people. But researchers say the company's current lack of transparency makes it impossible to trust.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.

Microsoft's push to transform Windows into an "agentic OS" that allows AI agents to control PCs is drawing user backlash similar to the Windows 8 controversy, as the company marks the operating system's 40th anniversary this week, writes Tom Warren, a reporter at The Verge who has been covering Microsoft for nearly two decades. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri announced the agentic OS plans in a post on X last week and faced immediate criticism in hundreds of replies before they were locked days later.

"It's evolving into a product that's driving people to Mac and Linux," one person wrote, while another asked for a return to Windows 7's "clean UI, clean icon, a unified control panel, no bloat apps, no ads, just a pure performant OS." Davuluri later responded to software engineer Gergely Orosz, saying "we care deeply about developers" and acknowledging Microsoft has "work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences."

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Dwarkesh Podcast that the company's business "which today is an end user tools business, will become, essentially an infrastructure business in support of agents doing work." The Recall feature already spooked users when it was initially turned on by default before Microsoft reworked it to be opt-in. Navjot Virk, corporate vice president of Windows experiences, told The Verge that "every user can use [AI agents] when they're ready. It's their choice, they decide."

Canadian librarian Ian Linkletter has ended a five-year legal battle with ed-tech firm Proctorio after being sued for sharing public YouTube help videos that exposed how the company's remote-proctoring AI works. Ars Technica reports: ... Together, the videos, the help center screenshot, and another screenshot showing course material describing how Proctorio works were enough for Proctorio to take Linkletter to court. The ed tech company promptly filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary injunction by spuriously claiming that Linkletter shared private YouTube videos containing confidential information. Because the YouTube videos -- which were public but "unlisted" when Linkletter shared them -- had been removed, Linkletter did not have to delete the seven tweets that initially caught Proctorio's attention, but the injunction required that he remove two tweets, including the screenshots.

In the five years since, the legal fight dragged on, with no end in sight until last week, as Canadian courts tangled with copyright allegations that tested a recently passed law intended to shield Canadian rights to free expression, the Protection of Public Participation Act. To fund his defense, Linkletter said in a blog announcing the settlement that he invested his life savings "ten times over." Additionally, about 900 GoFundMe supporters and thousands of members of the Association of Administrative and Professional Staff at UBC contributed tens of thousands more. For the last year of the battle, a law firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, agreed to represent him on a pro bono basis, which Linkletter said âoewas a huge relief to me, as it meant I could defend myself all the way if Proctorio chose to proceed with the litigation."

The terms of the settlement remain confidential, but both Linkletter and Proctorio confirmed that no money was exchanged. For Proctorio, the settlement made permanent the injunction that restricted Linkletter from posting the company's help center or instructional materials. But it doesn't stop Linkletter from remaining the company's biggest critic, as "there are no other restrictions on my freedom of expression," Linkletter's blog noted. "I've won my life back!" Linkletter wrote, while reassuring his supporters that he's "fine" with how things ended. "It doesn't take much imagination to understand why Proctorio is a nightmare for students," Linkletter wrote. "I can say everything that matters about Proctorio using public information."

The EU's cookie consent policies have been an annoying and unavoidable part of browsing the web in Europe since their introduction in 2018. But the cookie nightmare is about to crumble thanks to some big proposed changes announced by the European Commission today. From a report: Instead of having to click accept or reject on a cookie pop-up for every website you visit in Europe, the EU is preparing to enforce rules that will allow users to set their preferences for cookies at the browser level. "People can set their privacy preferences centrally -- for example via the browser -- and websites must respect them," says the EU. "This will drastically simplify users' online experience."

This key change is part of a new Digital Package of proposals to simplify the EU's digital rules, and will initially see cookie prompts change to be a simplified yes or no single-click prompt ahead of the "technological solutions" eventually coming to browsers. Websites will be required to respect cookie choices for at least six months, and the EU also wants website owners to not use cookie banners for "harmless uses" like counting website visits, to lessen the amount of pop-ups.

Cloudflare suffered its worst network outage in six years on Tuesday, beginning at 11:20 UTC. The disruption prevented the content delivery network from routing traffic for roughly three hours. The failure, writes Cloudflare in a blog post, originated from a database permissions change deployed at 11:05 UTC. The modification altered how a database query returned information about bot detection features. The query began returning duplicate entries. A configuration file used to identify automated traffic doubled in size and spread across the network's machines. Cloudflare's traffic routing software reads this file to distinguish bots from legitimate users. The software had a built-in limit of 200 bot detection features. The enlarged file contained more than 200 entries. The software crashed when it encountered the unexpected file size.

Users attempting to access websites behind Cloudflare's network received error messages. The outage affected multiple services. Turnstile security checks failed to load. The Workers KV storage service returned elevated error rates. Users could not log into Cloudflare's dashboard. Access authentication failed for most customers.

Engineers initially suspected a coordinated attack. The configuration file was automatically regenerated every five minutes. Database servers produced either correct or corrupted files during a gradual system update. Services repeatedly recovered and failed as different versions of the file circulated. Teams stopped generating new files at 14:24 UTC and manually restored a working version. Most traffic resumed by 14:30 UTC. All systems returned to normal at 17:06 UTC.

Linux kernel maintainers "are grappling with how to integrate AI-generated contributions without compromising the project's integrity," reports WebProNews: The latest push comes from a proposal by Sasha Levin, a prominent kernel developer at NVIDIA, who has outlined guidelines for tool-generated submissions. Posted to the kernel mailing list, these guidelines aim to standardize how AI-assisted patches are handled. According to Phoronix, the v3 iteration of the proposal [posted by Intel engineer Dave Hansen] emphasizes transparency and accountability, requiring developers to disclose AI involvement in their contributions. This move reflects broader industry concerns about the quality and copyright implications of machine-generated code.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has weighed in on the debate, advocating for treating AI tools no differently than traditional coding aids. As reported by heise online, Torvalds sees no need for special copyright treatment for AI contributions, stating that they should be viewed as extensions of the developer's work. This perspective aligns with the kernel's pragmatic approach to innovation. The proposal, initially put forward by Levin in July 2025, includes a 'Co-developed-by' tag for AI-assisted patches, ensuring credit and traceability. OSTechNix details how tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude are specifically addressed, with configurations to guide their use in kernel development... ZDNET warns that without official policy, AI could 'creep' into the kernel and cause chaos...

The New Stack provides insight into how AI is already assisting kernel maintainers with mundane tasks. According to The New Stack, large language models (LLMs) are being used like 'novice interns' for drudgery work, freeing up experienced developers for complex problems... The Linux kernel's approach could set precedents for other open-source projects. With AI integration accelerating, projects like those in the Linux Foundation are watching closely... Recent kernel releases, such as 6.17.7, include performance improvements that indirectly support AI applications, as noted in Linux Compatible.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Winning the lottery isn't what brought Carrie Edwards her 15 minutes of fame. It was giving it all away. Standing alone in her kitchen one day in September, the Virginia woman was thunderstruck to discover she had won $150,000 in a Powerball drawing. As she was absorbing her windfall, she said, "I just heard as loud as you can hear God or whoever you believe in the universe just say, this is -- it's not your money." Then came a decision: She would donate it all to her three most cherished charities (source paywalled; alternative source). [...] Her journey to the lucky prize started when she walked into a 7-Eleven with a friend who wanted to buy two Powerball tickets. The jackpot for the Sept. 6 drawing was topping $1.7 billion, the second-largest amount ever. Edwards, 68, hardly ever played the lottery, but her friend was an active player who gave her two pieces of advice: Always buy a paper ticket, rather than getting them online. And the Powerball multiplier is a scam, don't do it. She ignored him on both accounts.

She created a Virginia Lottery account on her phone. Then, instead of the typical strategies of using family birthdays and lucky numbers, she went to ChatGPT -- which she had only recently started using for research -- and asked, "Do you have any winning numbers for me?" "Luck is luck," replied the chatbot. Then it gave numbers that she plugged in -- paying the extra dollar for the Power Play to multiply anything she might win. She initially thought luck wasn't on her side when she didn't win the massive jackpot. But what she didn't realize is that she'd picked the "draw two" option, meaning her numbers were reentered for the next drawing. When she got a notification on her phone that she had won, she said, she thought it was a scam, or maybe she'd won something small, like $10. Just to satisfy her curiosity, she logged into her account and saw that she had matched four of the five numbers plus the Powerball in that second drawing. It would have been a $50,000 payout, but the multiplier tripled her winnings.

An anonymous reader shares a report: France has lifted its travel ban on Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who is under investigation over illegal content on his messaging app, judicial sources close to the case said Thursday. The entrepreneur, 41, was detained in Paris in 2024 and is under formal investigation by French authorities over the platform's alleged complicity in criminal activity. Durov, who was initially banned from leaving France, had his judicial control relaxed in July, allowing him to reside in the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram is based, for a maximum of two weeks at a time.