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Submission + - How robotic hives and AI are lowering the risk of bee colony collapse (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The unit—dubbed a BeeHome—is an industrial upgrade from the standard wooden beehives, all clad in white metal and solar panels. Inside sits a high-tech scanner and robotic arm powered by artificial intelligence. Roughly 300,000 of these units are in use across the U.S., scattered across fields of almond, canola, pistachios and other crops that require pollination to grow.

AI and robotics are able to replace "90% of what a beekeeper would do in the field," said Beewise Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Saar Safra. The question is whether beekeepers are willing to switch out what's been tried and true equipment.

Comment Re:At least $5.4 billion in damages (Score 0) 78

Some of the commenters on that point raised some interesting details. Crowdstrike does indeed have an $80 billion market cap as suggested by the Wikipedia link. And aside from that they have done valuable work in the security space. However, it also does not earn much revenue because the business is focused on a growth model that is fashionable to startups. But diving deeper, they don't earn much, several hundred million a years of actual earnings in a pinch based on GAAP. I am not sure where the other 80% of those go, probably to the founders that have a few trolls over here. It's not entirely clear how they might manage an onslaught of similar lawsuits if Delta is successful, much less the loss of confidence from existing customers regarding how they handle the matters related to their shoddy deployment processes. I stand firm with this assertion after thinking about it for a few days, and I don't have any particular skin in this game one way or the other. I'm unsure about the one troll saying I always get the facts wrong. To be honest, I have not said much over here, except that maybe people have not considered the growing cost of nuclear energy- just this week, $176 billion in the UK alone. Perhaps we can circle back after a year of lawsuits, and if they are not worth half or less what they are today, I will apologize for my oversight.

Comment At least $5.4 billion in damages (Score -1) 78

This Delta lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg in a test case in what one insurance company estimated to be $5.5 billion in damages across a quarter of the Fortune 500: https://www.parametrixinsuranc... Of course, Crowdstrike does not have that kind of money lying around but Microsoft does and is not out of the woods regarding its role in all this. This should be a wake-up call for the move fast and break things meme that did well up to the point of legal damages, clawing back value for poor software testing and delivery processes.

Comment Yes but (Score 0) 20

by CuriousButterfly (#64877141) Attached to: DoNotPay Will Now Call Customer Service Hotlines For You
I love the concept, but after sending my friend over there to sort out a few problems, he struggled with deleting the autopay situation. WTF. This is all a bit disconcerting when the weird companies promising to protect you from the baddies throw you under a few more hurdles. I am just saying, pick your baddies carefully.

Submission + - EU looking at including Elon Musk total revenue in fine calculations (ft.com)

Submitted by CuriousButterfly
CuriousButterfly writes: The EU is considering including Elon Musk's total revenues in fine calculations related to some of X's questionable practices. X's revenues have dropped significantly since Musk took over, so considering X as an extension of Musk's other businesses would certainly add a bit of pressure against some of the practices that may be deemed illegal in the EU. Issues that might violate the EU Digital Services Act include failing to curb illegal content and disinformation that could face penalties of up to 6 per cent of their annual global turnover.The bill could climb far higher for Musk if regulators decide that Tesla and SpaceX revenues are fair game in their calculations. "Musk and X have been under intense scrutiny from regulators in Brussels. In 2023, the commission opened a probe into the social media platform over the spread of illegal content and disinformation, in particular terrorist and violent content, in the wake of the Hamas attacks of October 7 last year." Still its all pretty early in the process of deciding that maybe he broke the law, or if it would be legal to consider Musk businesses that are actually making money rather than the social media platform that seems to be losing it faster and faster. Other issues have included X's use of "dark patterns" and the rollout of checkmarks for supposedly authentic users that were once reserved for verified users.

Comment A complete sh*t show in the making (Score 0) 49

by CuriousButterfly (#64836799) Attached to: WP Engine Sues WordPress for Libel, Extortion
This is all a bit weird to say, but WordPress put a better UI on poorly implemented webpages, open-sourced it, and WP Engine did a much better job at monetizing that particular monster. I'm not sure how to frame the outrage here. They both sucked and excelled at different things. In the perfect world, they figure out a better way to come together, but this is the modern version of enshittification on both sides of this equation. At least the latter paid a few of my invoices a few years ago, but I would not trust either of them with a ten-foot pole these days.

Comment He's not wrong (Score 0) 52

Microsoft Copilot's stuff is mostly a toy. Salesforce has done a decent job of imagining how to build trust in this new tech and surface GenAI's stupid stuff to subject matter experts to correct. This article goes into more detail about this: https://diginomica.com/dreamfo... Its still a work in progress, but Salesforce has done a much better job at surfacing the dials and levers on this stuff than most.

Comment Building out his very closed AI moat (Score 1) 28

The sorry thing about Altman's doomerism statements like this is he is planting the seeds for tough new regulations against more open AI and startups. OpenAI is one of the least open frameworks out there. This paper ranks OpenAI at the absolute bottom across all openness metrics. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145... Sam Altman can not be trusted to build safe AI, although he may manage to convince a few well-funded legislators and regulators that he can. In the long run, the way towards building more trustable AI, lies in opening all of the processes for creating them, from the data sources, labor issues, and algorithms for analysis and testing.

Comment SV has water/power shortage (Score 1) 34

One thing this story misses is that Silicon Valley has significant water and power constraints compared to other locations. Blackouts and hose pipes bans are common there. Most of the capacity in the US and indeed the world is built in Virginia about 60 miles south of Washington DC that has fewer power and water constraints and is right next to mainline communication trunks on the East Coast. In 2024 Northern Virginia had 2.5 GW of capacity compared to 1000 for Londond and Tokyo. In contrast, Silicon Valley was #12, based on this estimate from CBRE: https://www.cbre.com/insights/...

Submission + - Mike Lynch co-defendant dies in car accident

Submitted by alanw
alanw writes: Following up from today's story about the death of Mike Lynch, his co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain was killed in a car accident on Saturday

The co-defendant of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch — who is currently missing in Italy — has died after being hit by a car.
Stephen Chamberlain, 52, was Mr Lynch's co-defendant in his US fraud trial in which both men were acquitted following the $11bn (£8.64bn) sale of the software giant Autonomy.
Mr Chamberlain died after being fatally struck by the vehicle while out running in Cambridgeshire on Saturday and his family has now paid tribute to him.

Submission + - Revolutionary Quantum Compass Could Soon Make GPS-Free Navigation a Reality (scitechdaily.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: For the first time, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have used silicon photonic microchip components to perform a quantum sensing technique called atom interferometry, an ultra-precise way of measuring acceleration. It is the latest milestone toward developing a kind of quantum compass for navigation when GPS signals are unavailable.

Comment She planted the seeds for scalable AI (Score 1) 57

by CuriousButterfly (#64634399) Attached to: 'Godmother of AI' Builds $1 Billion Startup In 4 Months
It seems significant that Fei-Fei Li is looking to build a new generation of AI tools that do something different than everyone else. Labeling data was a relatively tiny thing before she set up legions of Mechanical Turkers to create Imagenet, which planted the seeds for real breakthroughs in new CNNs for image processing like Alexnet and started opening people's eyes to the potential of scaling more automated AI infrastructure. She also comes with this from a sense of ethics, which seems sadly lacking these days. I once listened to her give a talk about how she spent a week following her mother through a broken healthcare system to understand what it was so hard. Then she went back to Stanford to help organize a cross-disciplinary research project on the topic. It is good to see her thinking about how to bring the same approach to the wider problem of improving scientific discovery across different modalities.

Submission + - What Happens If You Shoot Down a Delivery Drone? (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As deep-pocketed companies like Amazon, Google and Walmart invest in and experiment with drone delivery, a phenomenon reflective of this modern era has emerged. Drones, carrying snacks and other sundries, are being shot out of the sky. Incidents are still rare. However, a recent arrest in Florida, in which a man allegedly shot down a Walmart drone, raises questions of what the legal ramifications are and whether those consequences could escalate if these events become more common. In the Florida case, Walmart was conducting delivery demonstrations in Clermont, Florida — roughly 25 miles west of Orlando — when a loud sound was heard during the craft’s descent. According to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the suspect, Dennis Winn, allegedly admitted to shooting the drone. He allegedly told authorities this wasn’t his first experience with drones flying over and around his home, leading him to believe that the small, unmanned crafts might be spying on him. The man was charged with discharging a firearm and “criminal mischief” resulting in damage of more than $1,000. For its part, Walmart claims that the amount totaled around $2,500, primarily involving the drone’s payload system.

It’s likely more drones will be shot down, considering the United States is home to more guns than people. And while last week’s incident isn’t without precedent, it’s not entirely clear how stiff the consequences could become. That’s due in large part to the fact that there haven’t been any high-profile cases wherein the shooter has received the maximum penalty. That could well change, however, as more multi-billion-dollar corporations stake their airspace. [...] While consumer drones have been proliferating for well over a decade, the question of legal ramifications hasn’t been wholly clear. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave us a partial answer following a 2016 drone shooting in Arkansas. At the time, the FAA pointed interested parties to 18 U.S.C. 32. The law, titled “Aircraft Sabotage,” is focused on the wanton destruction of “any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce.”

At first glance, the law appears primarily focused on manned aircraft, including a provision that “makes it a Federal offense to commit an act of violence against any person on the aircraft, not simply crew members, if the act is likely to endanger the safety of the aircraft.” In responding to the Arkansas drone shooting, however, the FAA asserts that such protections can be interpreted to also include UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). The language does, indeed, appear broad enough to cover drones. That means, in turn, that the penalties are potentially as stiff. The subject was revived after a 2020 incident in Minnesota. In that case, the suspect was hit with felony charges relating to criminal damage and discharging a weapon within city limits. Those would likely also be the charges in most scenarios involving property, rather than bodily damage, drone or not. Even with these examples, there is not a rigid rule that predicts if or when prosecutors might also introduce a federal charge like 18 U.S.C. 32.

As the legal blog Above the Law notes, in most cases, the federal government has deferred to state law for enforcement. Meanwhile, in most cases where 18 U.S.C. 32 has been applied, if a human crew/passengers are involved, there could be other potential charges like murder. It certainly can be argued that shooting a large piece of hardware out of the sky in a heavily populated area invites its own potential for bodily harm, though it may not be prosecuted in the same manner. As drone delivery increases in the U.S., however, we may soon have an answer to the role federal legislation like 18 U.S.C. 32 will play in UAV shootings. Adding that into the picture brings penalties, including fines and up to 20 years in prison, potentially compounding those consequences. What is clear, though, is that the consequences can be severe, whether it is invoked.

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