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Submission + - Debian Developers Reject AI Ban and Vote for Responsible Use of Generative AI (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Debian developers have rejected proposals that would have banned or strongly discouraged the use of artificial intelligence within the project. Instead, members selected a proposal called Responsible Use of Generative AI, which says Debian neither endorses nor prohibits generative AI for software development, packaging, documentation, and other project work.

Under the new policy, contributors remain responsible for the quality, correctness, maintainability, licensing, and legal compliance of anything they submit, including AI-assisted work. Human review and testing are expected, while disclosure of AI use is encouraged but not required. The ballot included several more restrictive alternatives, including proposals to ban LLM contributions through the Debian Social Contract and to declare that Debian is created by humans.

Submission + - Debian's LLM resolution: Responsible Use of Generative AI passes (debian.org)

Submitted by Robbat2
Robbat2 writes: Debian's LLM usage general resolution results in a middle-ground outcome: Responsible Use of Generative AI. Quote: "This resolution therefore affirms that generative AI is neither exempt from nor subject to special rules beyond the standards already expected of Debian contributors. The responsibility for every contribution rests with the contributor who submits it, who remains accountable for its technical quality, legal acceptability, and suitability for inclusion in Debian."

Submission + - I teach calculus at Berkeley. Some of my students can't do middle school math (sfstandard.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: I teach mathematics at UC Berkeley. Three days a week, I stand in front of lecture halls with 500 to 1,400 students. By the second week of the semester, I already know who is in trouble. Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school.

That is why this spring and summer, thousands of faculty members across all 10 UC campuses — including more than two-thirds of UC’s mathematics faculty — signed open letters(opens in new tab) urging the system to restore the SAT and ACT in admissions. Five Nobel laureates joined us, along with professors from across the university, including Beatriz Manz, Berkeley’s first Latina full professor.

Submission + - Small Hidden Chip Could Let Someone Manipulate Boeing 737â(TM)s Flight Comp (studyfinds.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Researchers built a tiny device that fits inside an existing maintenance port in the belly of a Boeing 737 and demonstrated, on a genuine Boeing 737 test setup, that it could alter the flight management computerâ(TM)s route and performance data, the inputs that tell the autopilot where to fly, while hiding those changes from pilots in that test environment.

Submission + - Microsoft Japan's 4-day work week boosted productivity by 40 percent (mashable.com) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Microsoft Japan has announced the results of its 4-day work week trial, and it will shock no-one to know the experiment was hugely popular with the company's employees. What may surprise people is that the shortened week increased productivity by almost 40 percent — thanks in part to shorter, more efficient meetings.

This August, Microsoft Japan trialed a 4-day work week for its entire workforce, calling the project the "Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019". Approximately 2300 employees were given 5 Fridays off, with no reduction in salary and no days taken out of their annual leave.

Further, The Mainichi reported that Microsoft Japan also planned to subsidise employees' family vacations or further education by up to ¥100,000.

"Work a short time, rest well and learn a lot. It's necessary to have an environment that allows you to feel your purpose in life and make a greater impact at work," said Microsoft Japan president and CEO Takuya Hirano. "I want employees to think about and experience how they can achieve the same results with 20 percent less working time."

Comment Re:How would you "break up progressive groupthink" (Score 0) 214

by AIXadmin (#66206990) Attached to: Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger Banned From Site for 'Canvassing'

To the insiders, the 72-hour ban-unban-ban sequence was just the organic, self-correcting machine cleaning up an external threat. To anyone looking from the outside, it’s definitive proof of broken governance, an anarchic mob rule where volume of availability has completely replaced the validity of consensus.

Comment Wikipedia functions as a tyranny of the dedicated (Score 5, Interesting) 214

by AIXadmin (#66206984) Attached to: Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger Banned From Site for 'Canvassing'

Wikipedia’s governance is fundamentally broken, operating less like an open meritocracy and more as a tyranny of the dedicated. The platform purports to represent a massive global community of editors, yet its most critical systemic policies are routinely captured by a fraction of a percent of that pool. A stark case in point is the ratification of the English Wikipedia's binding AI content guideline (WP:LLM), which was enacted following a Request for Comment that closed with just 44 votes in favor out of tens of thousands of active contributors. This structural failure stems from an intense "time tax": navigating dense internal bureaucracies and litigating talk pages requires a massive, asymmetric availability of free time. Domain experts and casual contributors are systematically filtered out, leaving policy-making to a self-selecting oligarchy of hyper-active insiders. Ultimately, the system fails because it treats sheer endurance as a proxy for consensus, allowing the rules of the web's primary reference engine to be dictated by whoever has the bandwidth to outlast everyone else.

Comment Re:Where are the jobs??? (Score 1) 155

STEM is such a big area. Where are the jobs???

Daughter just complete BS in Math in 3yrs and cannot find a job. Now, is user support line on how to fill out a health insurance website at $10/hr.

So what good is STEM student degree by a female, if their is nothing waiting at the other end??????

If your daughter has a degree in mathametics then she should have no trouble learning and becoming a programmer. Success in life is correlated with tenacity. Not with the level of education.

Comment Driving into San Francisco costs (Score 1) 1137

by AIXadmin (#27868425) Attached to: Your Commuting Costs By Car Vs. Train?

My commute by car is 37.9 miles each way to my job in San Francisco. According to Google Maps, it costs me $22.18 to drive into San Francisco each way, not counting the Bay Bridge toll at 4.00, plus parking at 10-20 dollars a day.

This adds up $68.36 round trip to drive to my job in San Francisco per day.

BART takes 20 minutes longer and costs me 10 dollars per round trip. Which one do you think I take?
Software

Recognizing Scenes Like the Brain Does 115

Posted by kdawson from the software-meets-wetware dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research have used a biological model to train a computer model to recognize objects, such as cars or people, in busy street scenes. Their innovative approach, which combines neuroscience and artificial intelligence with computer science, mimics how the brain functions to recognize objects in the real world. This versatile model could one day be used for automobile driver's assistance, visual search engines, biomedical imaging analysis, or robots with realistic vision. Here is the researchers' paper in PDF format."

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"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb." -- Spaceballs

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