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Comment Massive size. (Score 2) 37

This is a very cool and worthy project but damn if they didn't build this thing terribly because it's 179 gigabytes. I would love to tell you why exactly it's bloated as hell (I have some good guesses) but I can't even view the contents because you have to download it as a 127GiB zip file! To be honest, I'm pretty sure about 5GiB is actual OS data while the rest is an ungodly amount of packaging.

I have no doubt there is a better way to accomplish this task because this is obscene.

Submission + - Maryland Governor Signs K-12 AI Bill Under Microsoft's Watchful Eye

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Thank you, Gov. Wes Moore, for signing SB 720 into law yesterday!" exclaimed Microsoft Sr. Director of Education and Workforce Policy Allyson Knox in a LinkedIn post celebrating the passage of the Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act. "Microsoft was proud to support this legislation, and I was honored to represent the company at yesterday’s bill signing at the Maryland State House. This law accomplishes the following: 1) Establishes statewide AI guidance for schools ... 2) Requires every district to have an AI plan ... 3) Builds teacher capacity and professional learning ... 4) Promotes AI literacy for students ... 5) Creates tools to evaluate AI technologies ... 6) Establishes a statewide AI Education Collaborative." At the same bill-signing ceremony, Gov. Moore paradoxically also signed into law the Phone-Free Schools Act, "prohibiting the use of certain electronic communication devices by a student during the academic school day."

Knox reports up to Microsoft President Brad Smith, who last July told Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi it was time for the tech-backed K-12 CS education nonprofit to "switch hats" from coding to AI as Microsoft announced its new $4 billion Microsoft Elevate initiative to advance AI education. The Maryland State Department of Education is one of many government agencies that are participating in Code.org's Microsoft-advised TeachAI initiative. Code.org also took to social media to celebrate the Maryland win, proclaiming that "Maryland just made AI and CS Education the law."

Interestingly, Maryland's commitment to K-12 AI comes in the same week as the NY Times reports a $22.5 million AI partnership to 'bring AI into the classroom' struck last July between the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, Microsoft, and OpenAI has hit a bump in the road as the AFT urges schools to curb AI chatbots and screen time, recommending 'no screens' at all for those in second grade or younger, and no AI chatbots for students in elementary school. AFT president Randi Weingarten said that the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for AI use in schools with 'our partners in the AI academy,' and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards. "We’re willing to walk away from the funding that we receive here if we don’t get the safety and privacy," Weingarten said.

Comment Re:Should be required by law. (Score 1) 42

I guess this must depend on the specific customer.

I'm thinking about people in general, not technically inclined individuals like those at Slashdot. Slashdot's audience is far from general, so assume people are tech illiterate, since that is a target demographic for this device.

what would "using the device as they please" mean in this case?

I suppose it would mean enabling other websites to make purchasing ebooks on the device a trivial task. Maybe add a selection menu of shops (that can be modified of course) in place of the way you buy on amazon, similar to how MS was forced to let people choose which browser to use in the EU.

Submission + - China Is Testing Its State Surveillance Model Abroad (nytimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: When a remote Pacific village asked for help with rowdy youth, the Chinese police arrived with a surveillance system. Then came the backlash.

Their solution was to introduce an obscure Mao-era community surveillance system: the Fengqiao Experience.

Named after Fengqiao, a town in eastern China, the system encouraged neighbors to spy and snitch on one another to root out political enemies. The system has been revived under Mr. Xi as part of a push to snuff out any challenges to the Chinese Communist Party.

In China, the system calls for the police to monitor individual households in sprawling apartment complexes, in one example assigning each unit a color code that denoted whether occupants presented a security risk. The police have also visited the homes of minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to promote party policies. Government workers have visited churches to give “anti-cult” lectures. And companies are required to register their employees in police databases.

The idea of introducing such a heavy-handed style of state surveillance in the Solomon Islands alarmed local politicians and observers in nearby countries like Australia, who worried it could give the government the tools to stifle freedoms.

The Fengqiao pilot was suspended after an outcry. And the election this month of Matthew Wale, a prime minister who has historically been skeptical of Beijing, raises questions about China’s foothold in the country, and whether its ideas travel as easily as the party hopes.

Comment This helps EU digital sovereignty? (Score 1) 16

I can't help but think some of the higher ups will have a problem with this. The EU has started making a push for "digital sovereignty" so it seems like it would be a massive conflict to turn over control of key infrastructure like communications to a foreign company.

However, I could see this going through if the deal is for one or more EU companies to use them to bounce their own connection signals. Relying on foreign companies would still represent a potential single point of failure but this also creates the possibility of developing your EU satellites while building out the local infrastructure and accruing users. Using starlink/amazon satellites on a temporary basis would buy EU officials the time to make the economic case to develop EU owned satellites. It would effectively solve the "horse before the cart" issue that comes with deploying expensive satellites with no supporting infrastructure/users.

Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said EU-wide satellite connectivity was "synonymous with resilience, security, and capability" given the current geopolitical context.

Security and capability, maybe... but resilience? the only way this is improving resilience is if it's merely a fallback option. Satellite communications are a poor option for dependable consumer communications as it's impacted by the weather and easily jammed. It can only improve resilience if it's solely used as a fallback option.

Comment Re:Death of security (Score 1) 74

by Gravis Zero (#66162046) Attached to: Mythos Detected 23,000 Vulnerabilities Across 1,000 OSS Projects

When the pace of bug discovery overwhelms the capacity to patch, and the discovery tools are available to... well, everybody... doing any business online is fraught with peril.

Kinda sounds like the online businesses need to start being financial contributors to ensure they are not relying on flawed software.

Besides, bugs are finite.

Mythos found only one low-severity vulnerability in Curl, with experts debating whether that is a failure of the AI model or a testament to the open source data transfer tool’s maturity.

Comment hype, so much hype. (Score 1) 1

by Gravis Zero (#66157816) Attached to: Ordinary WiFi can now identify people with near perfect accuracy

After the machine learning model has been trained, identifying a person reportedly takes only a few seconds.

Alright, so first you need machine learning to model a specific area in a stable condition on people and then you can identify them... only in that specific area because all areas need to be trained differently. Furthermore, signal interference can impact results.

It's good work but it's a non-threat.

Comment The answer you deserve. (Score 1) 11

Why not? What's holding them up?

The Antarctic Treaty (of 1959) designated Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity, nuclear testing, and territorial claims, while promoting scientific research and international cooperation. As such, to travel to Antarctic you must obtain the permits through a recognized tour operator or your country's government. This means it non-scientific activities in Antarctica aren't really a thing... unless you want to go to jail for being a dumbass.

Submission + - The world has 6 months to avert major food crisis, says UN (politico.eu)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a severe global food price crisis within six to 12 months unless governments act quickly, the Food and Agriculture Organization warned Wednesday.

Decisions now by farmers and governments on fertilizer use, imports, financing and crop choices will determine whether food prices spike later this year or in early 2027, the agency said.

"Start seriously thinking about how to increase the absorption capacity of countries, how to increase their resilience to this choke, so that we start to minimize the potential impacts," FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero said in a podcast published Wednesday.

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