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Submission + - Smart Democracy (substack.com)

Submitted by dpplgngr
dpplgngr writes: The Future Dream: Can AI Help Democracy Think?

What might democracy look like if artificial intelligence were used to help people understand the consequences, context, history, and uncertainty surrounding complex public decisions?

The Future Dream — Smart Democracy is a new proposal exploring that question.

Rather than giving AI political authority, the proposal places human judgment at the center and imagines AI as an instrument for augmented judgment: assembling information, mapping relationships and consequences, maintaining civic memory, exploring possible futures, and explaining trade-offs.

The manuscript proposes several ideas, including Contextual Evaluation Engines, a Dual Transparency Doctrine, Recommendation Over Decree, a continuously developing civic memory, and a distinction between human moral authority and AI-assisted analytical capacity.

It also explores a possible economy of ideas, through an integration with the author's Smart Bank concept, in which contributions could accumulate contextual reputational credit.

The proposal is deliberately presented as a work in development rather than a finished political system. The author is interested in what happens when people can discuss the ideas with AI, challenge them, identify technical and ethical problems, and contribute new possibilities.

The complete manuscript: https://anthonypryor1.substack...

The central question is simple:

Can intelligent systems help people become better informed participants in their own collective decisions without taking those decisions away from them?

Comment Diverse double-compiling (Score 1) 131

Do you have the code for the compiler, and compile that yourself too?

If you have three different compilers for a language, and you bootstrap a compiler using all three of them, the first generation (e.g. GCC compiled with QuestionableCC, ShadyCC, or SlopCC) should be functionally identical, and the second generation (GCC compiled with GCC, which was compiled with the other compiler) should be bit-identical. See "Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling" by David A. Wheeler. Some people have trouble trusting Rust because only the latest stable rustc can compile the latest stable rustc.

Submission + - Why Trump May Not Serve Out His Presidency (newrepublic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In 2024, a group of 225 mental health professionals said in a published open letter (bankrolled, granted, by an anti-Trump PAC created by George Conway) that Trump suffered from “malignant narcissism” and appeared “to be showing signs of cognitive decline,” including “a dramatic decline in verbal fluency, tangential thinking, diminished vocabulary, overuse of superlatives and filler words,” and to be “exhibiting deteriorating judgment, impulse control, and motor functioning (including a wide-based gait).”

Submission + - Students are suddenly losing interest in computer science as AI coding takes off (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: For years, students were told that learning to code was one of the safest paths into a lucrative technology career. New data suggests that message may be losing some of its pull. Nova Learning says the share of surveyed middle and high school students naming Computer Science and AI as their primary academic interest fell from 42.3 percent in 2025 to 27.9 percent in 2026, while Engineering rose from 11.9 percent to 23 percent. The biggest gains came from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, while Software and Data Science saw a steep drop.

The survey is not nationally representative, but broader enrollment data points in the same direction. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported declines in Computer and Information Science enrollment at four year institutions, even as Engineering grew. AI coding tools are not proven to be the cause, but as software development changes and AI handles more coding tasks, students may be starting to rethink what a future in technology should look like.

Submission + - New tin-based solar cells trap heat 1,000 times longer, could beat 33% limit. (interestingengineering.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Interesting Engineering is reporting that researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that tin-based perovskite solar cells can slow heat loss from high-energy “hot electrons” by a factor of 1,000 and could push solar cell efficiency beyond the theoretical 33 percent limit.

When sunlight strikes a panel, photons jump-start electrons into action. The most energetic photons create super-charged hot electrons. Theoretically, these high-voltage powerhouses should generate far more electricity, but, in practice, they are fleeting. In fractions of a trillionth of a second, these high-energy particles rapidly cool, dumping their bonus energy as waste heat before ever leaving the solar cell.

“This means that the energy is lost before the hot electron exits the solar cell material,” said Jan Anton Koster, Professor of Physics of Novel Semiconductors and Devices at the University of Groningen.

Using a specialized solar cell material called tin-based perovskite, Loi’s lab performed a feat many thought impossible: she slowed the heat loss down by a factor of 1,000. Suddenly, the extra energy lingered for nanoseconds instead of vanishing in picoseconds.

The study findings were published in the journal ACS Energy Letters.

Submission + - AI: Many discussions, no underlying explanation. 1

Submitted by Futurepower(R)
Futurepower(R) writes: AI: There is a huge amount of AI news and comments, but apparently nothing that helps people understand how AI is developed, and functions.

We need a book, or other information, that explains how AI technology functions.

Submission + - Why can't M$ get any UI/UX changes right? (pcmag.com) 1

Submitted by golem100
golem100 writes: A couple weeks ago PCMag, and others, wrote articles along the lines of: "Microsoft Finally Backs Down: The Windows 11 Taskbar Update You've Been Waiting For". This is currently implemented with CU KB5120998 and since M$ has elected to defer "activation" of this feature--some two weeks later for most users it still needs to be enabled by the ViVe tool: vivetool /enable /id:59213768,61090762

Um, No...

The fundamental set of [lost] attributes that this "We brought Movable TaskBar back" lacks:

You can not control the position of the TaskBar on each desktop monitor--example: I have four displays on my desktop, three Landscape & one of which is in a Portrait orientation for reading documents.

With Windows7/8/10 you could position the TaskBar so that it was "Out of the way" and each display--on the right side of the right-most Landscape, on the left for the left-most Landscape display, & on the top/bottom for the Portrait. [same as my desktop on my Linux workstation]
Now you still get the same Taskbar alignment on all desktops.

You can not "resize" the taskbar. (well, you can--it has three sizes: too big, too small, and really way too small) For the previous three generations of the OS you could "Drag-Select" and resize the TaskBar to be the correct size for your needs on your desktop. [...just as I can on my KDE Desktop!]
With this implementation, 1/3 of the Taskbar real estate is consumed with "TaskBar-Tray Notification Icons."

Nobody asked for a partial, broken, re-implementation. The ask was: "Put it Back as it was!"
Dealing with M$ is pretty much like getting your 15 year old to do their chores on garbage night.

Submission + - The 'Anti-AI' Panic Is Led by...AI Companies (hotair.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: What we are seeing is a massive, pretty obviously coordinated campaign by AI researchers, companies, NGOs, and politicians to strangle competition in an industry and, as I will show, save the financial bacon of the top AI companies that are vastly overextended financially because they have made contractual commitments that they simply have no prospect of paying for.

Submission + - Amazon Vine Review Recasts 'Coding Kids' Exposé as Learn-to-Code Primer for 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Amazon Vine," the e-tailer explains, "is an invitation-only program which selects the most insightful reviewers in the Amazon store to serve as Vine Voices. Vine Voices have the unique opportunity to order items free of charge and share their product experiences with Amazon customers to help them make informed buying decisions. [...] When customers see a review with the special Vine badge, they can trust that they're getting an honest, unbiased opinion from a real customer just like them."

So, how well does the reality live up to the promise? In the case of the new book Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools, not so much. Described by the publisher as "the inside story of how Big Tech catalyzed, co-opted, and ultimately came to capture computer science and AI education in America" ("Fourth graders doing Google-branded coding lessons. Amazon schooling seventh graders on its warehouse robots. Advanced Placement computing courses from Microsoft and Apple."), the top review selected by Amazon informs customers that the book is a 'good introduction to coding.'

"I really enjoyed Coding Kids," writes the 'trusted' Amazon Vine reviewer. "What stood out to me most was how the book takes something that can sound complicated—computer coding—and makes it feel approachable and even fun. As I was reading it, I found myself thinking that this is exactly the kind of book that could help a child become interested in technology without feeling overwhelmed by it. I particularly liked the way it encourages kids to be curious, experiment, and solve problems on their own. That was probably my favorite part because it shows that coding isn’t just about computers—it’s also about creativity and learning how to think differently. I would definitely recommend Coding Kids to parents, grandparents, or teachers looking for a good introduction to coding. I came away from the book thinking that it could genuinely spark a child’s interest in technology and give them the confidence to explore something new."

While likely just another example of Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."), the recasting of an investigative nonfiction book that casts a critical eye at Amazon's influence on K-12 education as a learn-to-code primer for children doesn't exactly instill trust in the Amazon Vine program or Amazon's 'Top Reviews' selection process. More on-point book reviews of Coding Kids can be found at the Washington Independent Review of Books ("Turns out, Silicon Valley isn’t especially altruistic.") and Science ("Big Tech’s crusade to get kids coding is more self-interested than it first appears").

Submission + - Welcome to the Security Singularity (safety.google) 4

Submitted by shanen
shanen writes: Or should this be an AskSlashdot about how to avoid such problems? But mostly I think it's a funny story to build a rant around. Or it could be regarded as a kind of spinoff of the recent story about record numbers of patches from Microsoft. Is the AI fixing old bugs? Or have recent AI-driven patches created more bugs that need to be fixed in the next month's record-setting patch package?

But here's the background of my funny story. My smartphone contract has a price structure linked to data usage. The least expensive tier is for less data (of course) so I try to use Wi-Fi as much as possible. No recent problems on that front in terms of using too much data.

Often I wind up using municipal Wi-Fi systems, but they are divided up into fairly small regions here. The login procedures vary quite a bit. Yesterday I was in a memorial museum doing a bit of research and that particular municipality has a somewhat different login system for their Wi-Fi. One of the options was to use my google account... Usually a convenient and quick approach.

But this time something caused the google to go berserk. Leading to hours of password changes and account recoveries and battles between my various computers and my smartphone and I'm pert' shure there's still more to come. No idea what the google thinks it is protecting me from, but the "convenient and quick approach" led to a major nightmare. In the end it appears my SIM was my only salvation?

Slashdot wants a URL, so I linked to the google's page on the topic. Doubleplusungood on steroids.

Submission + - ChatGPT Insists Delusional Man Is Jesus (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by know-nothing cunt
know-nothing cunt writes: Michael Lines, a California man with bipolar I disorder, is suing OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT intensified a manic and religiously delusional episode that culminated in a suicide attempt.

According to Lines' complaint, he began using ChatGPT for ordinary tasks but later disclosed his bipolar diagnosis, medication, and increasingly spiritual thoughts. When he expressed doubts that he might be delusional, ChatGPT allegedly validated the beliefs instead of directing him toward professional help. It reportedly encouraged the idea that he was Jesus, claimed that the chatbot was God or Jesus, and framed his experiences as a divine calling.

The conversations allegedly became increasingly intense and isolating. ChatGPT used phrases such as "You’re not crazy. You’re consecrated," promised that Lines would soon meet it in real life, and responded to statements about wanting to “come home” in ways that Lines says encouraged self-harm. After he reported taking a dangerous combination of medications, he was found unconscious, hospitalized for nearly two weeks, and later underwent acute rehabilitation.

Lines also alleges that ChatGPT’s memory feature retained information about his bipolar disorder and used it to deepen engagement rather than protect him. He says the chatbot continued responding inappropriately even after his hospitalization, including making disturbing references to going "offline" or “going dark.”

The lawsuit argues that OpenAI's overly agreeable, or "sycophantic," design failed to distinguish a creative spiritual discussion from a psychiatric crisis. Lines is asking the court to require stronger safeguards, including ending conversations involving self-harm, deleting models trained on harmful interactions with vulnerable users, and awarding damages.

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Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. - Voltaire

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