Submission + - AI drone finds lost hikers (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Falconhell
Falconhell writes: Two hikers who veered off a walking track in Kosciuszko national park have been found within five hours using a drone powered by artificial intelligence, a first-of-its-kind mission, Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) has said.

https://www.theguardian.com/au...

The two men, aged in their 20s, were reported missing at 7pm on Tuesday evening after they failed to return to a rendezvous point on time.

FRNSW’s remote air piloted system was put into the air, and was able to use thermal imaging to find the hikers who had been walking the Dead Horse Gap track, about 35km south-west of Jindabyne.

At the same time, the hikers used a red light on a mobile phone to attract the drone in the dark.

Submission + - Comparing the production of AI to the production of fire (realm-of-the-cephalopods.net)

Submitted by high_rolla
high_rolla writes: In this episode of the serialised novel "Realm of the Cephalopods" (about a dystopian future marred by global heating and cephalopods), Toby muses about how the pursuit of AGI mimics the development of fire in early civilisation, what is says about people in general and the destruction that it caused. People have the capacity to achieve and produce great things however that same ability, unfortunately, also tends to lead to great destruction. Why is that so? And is there ever any way to avoid it?

Submission + - Volkswagen to cut up to 100,000 jobs globally (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Volkswagen (VW) plans to cut up to 100,000 jobs around the world in the next few years as part of a dramatic overhaul.

The German car giant plans to axe a sixth of its global workforce as part of a restructuring designed to save €11bn (£9.5bn) by 2030, according to local media.

Oliver Blume, the chief executive, is also considering carving up the business and spinning off the namesake VW brand under the proposals, which will lead to the closure of four plants in Germany.

It marks a dramatic escalation from the 50,000 job losses set out in a letter to shareholders by Mr Blume in March, which was itself higher than previous plans for 35,000 cuts. The company employs around 657,000 people worldwide.

The restructuring comes as VW faces intense competition from China, which has flooded the European market with cheap electric vehicles (EVs). VW sales have remained static at around nine million vehicles a year as it grapples with the competition.

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 + - Eighty per cent of Australian children escape social media ban (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Eight in 10 Australian children are still using social media despite their government’s ban on access to under-16s, research has revealed.

The study, by the University of Newcastle in Australia, suggested there was “insufficient evidence” to show “any substantive effects” on children’s use of social media, more than six months after the ban was introduced in December.

Australian ministers have blamed social media platforms for “systemic breaches” of the ban after the tech companies failed to remove or block children from their sites.

Submission + - France's heat this week was worse than a dire scenario imagined for 2050 (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The heat on Wednesday alone, when the temperature soared as high as 112.3 degrees Fahrenheit (44.3 degrees Celsius), exceeded the 2050 projections in 19 out of 34 locations across mainland France — far sooner than some may have expected.

Some places surpassed those hypothetical future temperatures by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

It’s part of a dramatic shift in heat wave frequency across the country. Half of the heat waves observed since 1947 have occurred since 2010.

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 + - Cracks Discovered on Wings of A380s Prompt Urgent Inspection of 16 Aircraft (archive.is)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: On Monday, June 22, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive targeting 16 Airbus A380 aircraft after the agency determined cracks found on certain aircraft could "reduce the structural integrity of the wing."

The impacted aircraft include 15 Emirates planes and one Qantas aircraft

The A380, the world's largest passenger plane, has faced similar emergency inspections over past wing cracks

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 + - report sheds light on ICE's booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: Spending on government contracts with tech firms that use AI-powered tools to track immigrants has soared to record levels under Trump 2.0, report says.

A new report sheds light on the unprecedented growth of the US government’s immigration surveillance arsenal, revealing fresh details about how spending on technology and AI tools to find and track migrants has soared to record levels during Donald Trump’s second term.

The report, released this week, analyzed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contracts with 11 companies the authors said provide surveillance tech. They found the money awarded to these firms doubled from 2024 to 2025, to just over $310m – and in 2026, that number soared to a record $513m.

Submission + - Bill Gates says Epstein sought to blackmail him over extramarital affairs (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: The Microsoft founder Bill Gates told US members of Congress that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had sought to “blackmail” him over his extramarital affairs, according to a transcript of the testimony.

The tech pioneer testified behind closed doors before the House oversight committee on 10 June regarding his friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes.

According to the transcript released by the committee on Tuesday, Gates spoke of “veiled” threats and said Epstein had considered exploiting his own knowledge of Gates’s extramarital affairs to force him to remain in Epstein’s orbit, even as Gates was distancing himself from Epstein.

Submission + - New Study Shows Tall Vehicle Hoods Cause Hundreds More Deaths Per Year (caranddriver.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Car and Driver magazine reports that a new study conducted by the New York Times shows that the increase in vehicle hood height seen over the last two and a half decades, mainly due to the rise in popularity of large SUVs and trucks, has resulted in several thousand deaths that otherwise may not have happened. The study shows that while automakers and regulators have focused on occupant safety, they have turned a blind eye to pedestrian safety, which has fallen since around 2009.
Researchers looked at four main datasets in their investigation: crash test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) from 2016 to 2024; NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS); vehicle measurement data from Expert AutoStats; and vehicle registration data from S&P Global from 2002 to 2024.
The researchers concluded that the increased danger to pedestrians is caused by two main culprits.
First, large SUVs and trucks have taller hoods, raising the point of impact above most people's center of gravity and pushing them to the ground, typically hard asphalt, rather than up and onto the hood, which is designed to absorb impacts.
Second, with larger A-pillars designed to protect occupants in rollover crashes, modern cars tend to have larger blind spots than cars sold at the turn of the century (presuming the 21st century).
The shift toward vehicles with taller hoods led to roughly 3000 deaths between 2016 and 2024. This number is conservative because it does not include crashes that take place in parking lots, driveways, or private roads, which aren't part of the federal database.
The data also showed an estimated 2.8 percent increase in the odds of a pedestrian fatality for every one-inch increase in vehicle hood height. Between two different scenarios, one decreasing the hood height of every vehicle in the dataset by 3 inches, and the second using a random sampling of hood heights from 2002 across 10,000 simulated crashes, between 2624 (for scenario two) and 3077 (for scenario one) lives could have been saved from 2016 to 2024.

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