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Comment Re:Wheres the fiscal outrage (Score 1, Troll) 24

The entire state of Florida is a grift, built by corrupt people for corrupt people.

Everything in the state is geared to fuck regular people over at every turn and bend in the road. It's literally a huge grift made legal by calling it a "state", but other than that it's the equivalent of a 65,758 square mile used car lot filled with voracious con men.

Comment Re:a step too far (Score 1) 242

you sir, are blind, war is never good

What an utterly naive interpretation of world history you have. I can assure you, if you'd been a Jew being rounded up for extermination in WW2 you'd have a different opinion. Likewise, if you were Chinese or Korean being subjugated by Imperial Japan, you'd have a different perspective. There is such a thing as a "just war" even though you somehow ignore the concept. It's usually when your opponent starts the war and is hell bent on eradicating you and your way of life.

Alas, you sit there in perfect safety and comfort, passing judgement on those who sacrificed fa more than you can ever imagine so you could impugn their sacrifices.

Comment Re:Microsoft can't sustain two platforms (Score 4, Interesting) 35

by JustAnotherOldGuy (#66186666) Attached to: Xbox CEO Says Current Margins 'Cannot Continue'

Members of the PC Master Race concur.

Consoles seem unsustainable at this point and speaking of points, there doesn't seem to be one for continued console development or ownership.

Yeah, you got a $900 box that can't open a spreadsheet, run GIMP or Blender or multitask, and it can't be modded much, but on the upside it'll play COD at almost the speed of a decent gaming PC.

Comment Re:Oh look. (Score 1) 242

For now, people can worry about what type of weapons to use and whether or not certain types should be banned.

But in the future, all the debates will be about will be "how do we pick just the right grid squares in which to Kill All Humans?"

Banned for who? And who's going to enforce this ban?

You have to remember any treaty (a) must have signatories that agree to follow it and (b) there must be a method of enforcement. If you lack either of these two conditions, the treaty has no effect.

Comment Re: Oh look. (Score 1) 242

If there was a "total war" America would not exist anymore.

Not sure how you think you could pull that off, but whatever.

We sink your carriers, then we siege your cities.

Again...exactly how do you plan to accomplish this? It's not like Iran hasn't been firing missiles at our carriers this whole time. Yeah, it's a halfhearted effort by the Iranians, but what exactly do you think would happen to Iran if you managed to even damage one of our carriers, much less sink one? I can describe it thusly: the American gloves would come off. Iran would be plastered into oblivion via conventional bombardment, and there's very little Iran could do to stop it. Sure, we'd take losses, but the Iranian regime would cease to exist in totality. America has had this option available to it since day one. We haven't exercised it. Not because we couldn't do it but because we chose not to. Do not mistake restraint for a lack of capability.

Submission + - College Students Are Rapidly Losing the Ability to Read (futurism.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In a new essay for The Chronicle Higher Education , university-level literature and writing instructor Tyler Jagt recalls how not a single one of his students could get through an assigned 20-page article, something that he had read "without complaint" as an undergraduate a decade ago.

One student confessed that the reason they didn't finish was that they kept losing track of what the paper was about. And there's no doubt that they're not alone.

Jagt cites the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment results released last year. It showed that 12th grade reading scores were at the lowest level since the assessment began in 1992. Nearly a third of those 12th graders scored below the assessment's "basic" level in reading, meaning they likely "cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text." Younger children aren't better off: a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 70 percent of fourth graders, or around two million kids, can't read at a proficient level.

"What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch," Jagt writes. "There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires."

Pupils arriving unable to read is an increasingly common complaint from college-level educators amid the explosion of generative AI. Many students treat AI as a genuine learning tool — perhaps to summarize a lengthy article they can't understand, for example — becoming reliant on its speedy responses to race through coursework.

More flagrantly detrimental to learning, plenty more use the tech to generate entire essays and solve math problems — or, in a word, cheat. That many universities have partnered with tech companies to provide students with access to their shiny AI models has only served to rubber stamp and accelerate the tech's adoption in the classroom, marooning individual instructors to figure out how to work around AI on their own.

Submission + - Pokémon Go Trained the Nav Tech For Military Drones (dronexl.co) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hundreds of millions of Pokémon Go players spent years filming the streets, parks, and buildings around them to earn in-game rewards. Those roughly 30 billion environmental scans are now owned by Niantic Spatial, and they helped train a camera-based navigation model that a U.S. defense contractor is preparing to put into drones and other military robots. Most of the players had no idea.

The pipeline runs from a mobile game to the battlefield in three steps. Players scanned the physical world. Niantic Spatial turned those scans into a 3D map that lets a machine locate itself by sight when satellite signals fail. And in December 2025, Niantic Spatial announced a partnership with Vantor, the defense and intelligence firm formerly known as Maxar Intelligence, to fuse that ground-level system with Vantor’s aerial navigation software for use in GPS-denied operations.

Niantic’s Roots Run Back to a CIA-Backed Mapping Firm

The military turn looks less like a swerve once you trace the company’s lineage. Niantic grew out of Keyhole, a geographic data firm that took funding in 2003 from In-Q-Tel, the venture arm financed by the CIA. An In-Q-Tel release from that year stated Keyhole’s services were used to support U.S. troops during the Iraq War. Google bought Keyhole the following year, and Keyhole CEO John Hanke went on to lead the team behind Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View.

Hanke formed Niantic Labs inside Google in 2010, then spun it out in 2015. The company collected camera imagery from players once before, through its 2014 game Ingress, using the same method later applied in Pokémon Go. In 2025 the structure split again: Scopely, owned by Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group and ultimately the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, acquired Niantic’s games business for $3.5 billion in a deal that closed in late May, while the technology platform spun off as the standalone Niantic Spatial under Hanke. The games went to a Saudi sovereign wealth fund. The map went to defense.

Submission + - OpenAI Says China Launched Influence Campaign To Shape US Attitudes On AI (politico.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China was likely behind an online influence operation to sway U.S. perceptions of artificial intelligence technology and reshape the debate in Washington around the infrastructure needed to support it, according to research from OpenAI published Wednesday. OpenAI said it caught the influence campaign because China-backed operatives were using ChatGPT to create content for the social media campaign. [...] OpenAI’s researchers identified two clusters of ChatGPT users “likely originating from China” who used the AI chatbot to generate social media content “in support of apparent covert influence operations” promoting certain narratives about AI. This includes claims that data center build-outs are raising electricity costs for the average American family and that President Donald Trump has weaponized tariffs to keep the U.S. ahead in the global tech race. These accounts have since been banned, the report said.

One cluster of users asked ChatGPT to generate images and comments pushing these narratives. These comments were then posted on social media by “batches of accounts” posing as Americans, Nimmo said. Another cluster identified by researchers used AI to generate social media content criticizing the Trump administration’s tariffs as an attempt to “dominate technological competition.” Prompts used for this campaign were submitted in Simplified Chinese and asked that AI-generated content not include Chinese President Xi Jinping and focus solely on Trump — a possible tell that China was behind the operation, according to the report. Nimmo said that the influence campaign amplified existing public backlash in the U.S. against the creation of new AI data centers, which has resulted in dozens of proposed moratoriums at the local, state and national level.

Submission + - Microsoft President Likens AI Haters to 19th Century Neoclassical French Painter

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In AI, jobs, and the next generation, Microsoft President Brad Smith responds to the recent booing of AI by graduates during commencement addresses by curiously likening today's AI naysayers to a 19th century French painter who lamented that photography would adversely affect artists' careers (similar arguments about AI are working their way through the Courts today).

Smith begins: "In 1838, the invention of the camera sparked predictions that photography would make artists obsolete. When the noted French painter Paul Delaroche first saw an early photograph on a metal plate, he declared that “From today, painting is dead!” As he reasoned, why would anyone pay an artist to slowly and laboriously paint a scene when a camera could do the job more accurately, more quickly, and at a lower cost? This question has echoed through technological shifts and has resurfaced with intensity in recent weeks, as university students graduated on campuses across the United States. Today’s topic obviously is not photography but the societal impact of artificial intelligence."

Not to worry, Smith says: "The good news is that human ambition is irrepressible. It has been almost 300 years since the start of the first industrial revolution, and technology has changed many times over. But there is more human creativity at work in the world today than ever before. A trip to an art museum shows this is true even for the impact of the camera on painting. The invention of the camera initially led to a decline in portrait painting. But even that made a comeback. More remarkable was the way accurate photos spurred new forms of artistic expression. By the 1870s, photography’s 'artificial eye' led a new generation of artists to portray emotion rather than detail. Impressionist artists captured the effects of light, color, and atmosphere in ways that a camera shutter could not. New artistic movements followed – Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism – and continue today, expanding what it means to be an artist. As it turns out, few things are as resilient as human creativity."

In closing, Smith offers "a second message for today’s graduates: you’re in a unique position to have a positive impact. You’ve lived through significant challenges. While it may feel unfair that the job market is so uncertain, you were made for this moment. Technology is second nature to your generation. Constant change has taught you how to adapt quickly. As AI reshapes how we work, you don’t need to unlearn decades of habits the way some of us do. You are better equipped to move forward."

Submission + - The FDA Approved a New Sunscreen Ingredient (reason.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added bemotrizinol (BEMT) to its list of permitted active sunscreen ingredients, updating the list for the first time since 1999, according to National Geographic. BEMT, per the FDA, "provides protection against both ultraviolet A and B rays and has low levels of absorption through the skin into the body," and it is safe and effective "for use in sunscreens by adults and children 6 months of age and older." Beginning August 9, BEMT will be sold in the U.S. exclusively by the manufacturer DSM, under the name Parsol Shield, The Hill reports. After 18 months, other manufacturers will be allowed to sell BEMT.

Submission + - Solar Beats Coal In the US For the First Month Ever (electrek.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Solar generated more US electricity than coal for the first month on record in May 2026, according to new analysis from global energy think tank Ember. Solar supplied 12.8% of US electricity during the month, while coal dropped to 12.2%. That’s a dramatic shift in the US power mix. Just five years ago, coal generated 19.7% of US electricity in May, while solar accounted for only 5.4%. US solar generation hit a record 45.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in May 2026, up 17% from May 2025 and higher than the previous record set last July. Ember says another record could be broken again this summer.

Solar output usually peaks in June or July, but its share of the electricity mix is often highest in spring, when strong sunshine lines up with milder temperatures before summer cooling demand ramps up. May was also the first time solar became the third-largest individual source of electricity in the US, behind only natural gas and nuclear. (If solar is included with all other renewables, then they’re the second-largest source of electricity as an overall category of electricity.) Meanwhile, coal keeps sliding (and will continue to slide). Coal generation hit an all-time monthly low of 39.3 TWh in April 2026. Output rose slightly in May to 43.4 TWh, but it was still 11% lower than May 2025 levels. Even with that small rebound, coal couldn’t keep pace with solar’s rapid growth.

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