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Comment Re:Should be weighted (Score 1) 64

They did a huge amount of damage, for sure. IMO it already became kinda fucked when we joined the Berne Convention, which IIRC started the ball rolling on copyright durations becoming stupidly long (since (AGAIN IIRC) we extended it to match durations in Europe? Someone please correct me if I got that wrong).

Afaik you're correct, but if you want to carve out an exception for training AI without upsetting international treaties it's Bern Convention Article 9 (2):

(2) It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author. (3) Any sound or visual recording shall be considered as a reproduction for the purposes of this Convention.

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Submission + - Meta's AI rules have let bots hold 'sensual' chats with kids and an arrest

Submitted by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite
ISayWeOnlyToBePolite writes: Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids and offer false medical info.

An internal Meta Platforms document detailing policies on chatbot behavior has permitted the company’s artificial intelligence creations to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” generate false medical information and help users argue that Black people are “dumber than white people.”

These and other findings emerge from a Reuters review of the Meta document, which discusses the standards that guide its generative AI assistant, Meta AI, and chatbots available on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, the company’s social-media platforms.

Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity, but said that after receiving questions earlier this month from Reuters, the company removed portions which stated it is permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children.

More details at: https://www.reuters.com/invest...

New York City engineer Josh Felker who said he created "digital experiences for kids" at social media giant Meta was busted after he admitted to trying to sext a 13-year-old during an undercover sting.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/vid...

Comment Re:The sheer amount of hate (Score 1) 19

The sheer amount of hate against organizations like EFF, tells me we need to support organizations like this more than ever.

I'm don't remember any controversy surrounding the EFF since they defended running open email relays and that was a very long time ago? Anyone feel free to remind me if there's anything more recent. (Have you perhaps confused them with the FSF?).

Comment Re:So Not Shocking (Score 4, Insightful) 65

So US management is *finally* learning that the 5-day, 40-hour workweek was not bestowed from upon high? That given a choice, many people would prefer work/life balance to higher wages? Color me unsurprised...

Interesting view. I (from northern Europe) read the article as trying to rose taint full time jobs not paying a living wage necessitating a second job and likewise retirees not having enough pension funds to actually stop working. Perhaps I'm being prejudice against less organized societies.

Submission + - Using Sound Waves To Make Espresso Could Cut Coffee-Brewing Energy Use By 75% (theconversation.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We have developed what we call an ultrasonic espresso: a room-temperature brewing process that uses high-frequency sound waves to extract the flavour, oils, aroma and caffeine from coffee grounds. The result is an espresso-strength coffee made in under three minutes, but needing far less energy than the conventional method. Saving up to 75% of energy by not heating the water is a minor benefit for home users or small coffee shops. But for companies making ready-to-drink coffee products at industrial scale, it could be very significant indeed. A concentrated room-temperature coffee could be used directly in bottled drinks, milk-based beverages or cold coffee products. It can also be shipped as a concentrate and diluted later. This would reduce not only energy use, but potentially processing time as well.

The key to the new process is ultrasound. These are sound waves above the range of human hearing. In our system, a small metal device called a transducer presses against the side of a traditional espresso basket and makes it vibrate rapidly. Those vibrations move through the water and coffee grounds. This creates a phenomenon known as acoustic cavitation. Tiny bubbles form and collapse in the liquid. When these bubbles collapse near coffee particles, they produce microscopic jets and forces that act a little like scrubbing brushes. They pit and fracture the surface of the coffee grounds, helping flavor compounds, oils and caffeine move into the water much faster than they normally would at room temperature. In other words, ultrasound helps us replace heat with mechanical energy.

[...] In earlier work, we used ultrasound to speed up cold brew dramatically. But the challenge in this project was different: could we produce something with the strength, body and intensity of espresso, without heating the water? To do that, we adjusted several variables. Brew ratio was one of the most important: how much water we used for each gram of coffee. Too much water and the drink becomes diluted; too little and extraction becomes difficult. Grind size also mattered. Finer grounds allowed us to extract flavor more rapidly. Finally, we tested how long the ultrasound should be applied. We found the sweet spot was about two-and-a-half to three minutes. Of course, making a concentrated coffee in the laboratory is one thing. The real test is whether people want to drink it. [...] For the espresso samples, participants could not reliably tell the traditional and ultrasonic versions apart. There were no significant differences in aroma, flavor, bitterness or overall liking. For filter coffee, the ultrasound version was actually preferred overall, with participants rating its bitterness more pleasantly.

Submission + - OpenAI just exposed how bad AI still is at real science (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: OpenAI introduced LifeSciBench, a new benchmark designed to evaluate AI systems on realistic life science research tasks rather than simple biology questions. While OpenAIâ(TM)s top-performing GPT-Rosalind model led the rankings, it achieved a pass rate of just 36.1 percent, failing nearly two-thirds of benchmark tasks. The company says the results highlight progress in scientific communication and evidence synthesis, but also reveal persistent weaknesses in artifact-heavy and design-oriented scientific work.

Submission + - Paint is already peeling in renovated Washington Reflecting Pool after 2 weeks. (cnn.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: CNN, Reuters and other sources are reporting that the paint on Washington's newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Thursday was peeling away from the bottom and into the algae-tinted water, less than two weeks after announcement of the job's completion. The historic pool was drained and refinished in a $14.7 million no-bid contract.

Tim Auerhahn, a pool infrastructure expert and the chairman of the Aquatic Council, said it’s difficult to tell from the videos what was causing the “apparent delamination.”

“A coating system can fail for several reasons, including substrate preparation, surface contamination, application conditions, adhesion issues, product selection, mechanical damage, environmental exposure, or a combination of factors,” Auerhahn said.

The larger question, he added, is whether this represents a localized issue in that part of the pool or a larger, more systemic issue with the coating. “If the coating is losing adhesion in multiple locations, that could indicate a more significant concern,” he said.

Submission + - Journalist spots off-the-radar terrorist using facial recognition software (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: A German court this week sentenced a member of the Red Army Faction — a hard left terrorist organisation that operated in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s — to jail. She had remained hidden for decades, and the German police hadn't deployed facial recognition software to catch her. But according to the article a journalist did, to good effect.

Is the ban on the police using it a good thing? Is it good that a journalist was able to track her down using it?

Submission + - How to turn a 0day into a PR disaster: bully security researchers (heise.de)

Submitted by Elektroschock
Elektroschock writes: Microsoft bullied the publisher of BlueHammer (CVE-2026-33825), RedSun (CVE-2026-41091), UnDefend (CVE-2026-45498), YellowKey (CVE-2026-45585), and GreenPlasma/MiniPlasma (CVE-2020-17103 derivatives). A GitHub account was deleted, another account locked down, threats of international legal charges were made, and public law enforcement tipped off. That is a really unpleasant way to deal with a security nightmare of one’s own making. According to Microsoft, the courtesy of informing the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) in advance was not extended. The researcher refutes that claim and speaks of layoffs of competent security staff, blocked accounts, and broken communication channels. There are also rumours of new formality requirements concerning video attachments.

Submission + - Researchers identify people through ordinary Wi-Fi with 99 percent-accuracy (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Baron_Yam
Baron_Yam writes: Security researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany have published a paper demonstrating that unencrypted beamforming data broadcast by Wi-Fi devices during normal operation can be used to identify individuals walking through a room with 99.5% accuracy, regardless of whether the individuals are carrying Wi-Fi devices. The tactic leverages the router's beamforming tech to identify individuals with up to 99.5% accuracy, and it works with existing routers, too.

The system, called BFId, requires no specialized hardware, no access to the target Wi-Fi network, and works even if the person being tracked isn't carrying a wireless device. The team tested the attack on 197 participants, the largest dataset ever used in Wi-Fi-based identification works, and plans to present its findings at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) in Taipei.

See GitHub — https://github.com/ruvnet/RuVi... — for your own personal implementation requiring a couple of APs and a couple of ESP32 nodes. You can get full-home per-zone motion and occupancy detection fairly reliably, with the potential for pose detection and in optimal areas even respiration rate. With the right hardware and configuration, you can theoretically get heart rate too.

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