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Comment Re:what kind of bugs (Score 2) 63

But I value even a 1 line change that clears a static analysis warning if even in practice it was impossible to trigger the issue in a real system.

Yes, I agree. The problem with thinking "this bug seems harmless, because I can't imagine how anyone could exploit it" is in the "I can't imagine" part; my imagination is limited to what is covered by my mental model of how computers work, but an attackers' ingenuity is not.

In particular, the C/C++ optimizer is a devious beast, and will exploit any opportunity to make the code more efficient, even if that means doing things that are wildly unintuitive to a naive human reader -- and it sees any instance of undefined behavior as an opportunity to exploit.

Submission + - Mozilla Appears to Sweep Their Telemetary-Droppings Privacy-Bugs Aside 3

Submitted by BrendaEM
BrendaEM writes: Myself and others have noticed that Firefox is leaving behind archived and other telemetry data--even when data reporting is turned off. The apparent fact that Mozilla, seems to have marked the bug resolved--when it is not, and offer a nebulous fix date, would suggest that they aren't taking the issue seriously.

I have at least 1,279 telemetry droppings files, in one archive folder alone, it bears to mind that SSD drive prices have gone up substantially, noting that even a small write will affect: one of the 1,000 to 10,000 MLC cycles, one of the 3,000 TLC Cycles, or one of the paltry 1,000 QLC cycles (Ref: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...).

The existence of telemetry alone is unsettling for a browser that claims " Your privacy always comes first."
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

Comment Re:Three reasons (Score 5, Insightful) 71

by Jeremi (#66350314) Attached to: People Training OpenAI's AI Fired For Using AI To Train the AI

(C) is the only one of those the AI companies are really concerned about -- they want to stave off model collapse for as long as possible. The problem is that AI generates so much content that the ratio of AI-generated data to human-generated data keeps rising, and sooner or later there simply won't be much human-generated data left to anything to consume. At that point they'll either have to figure out to ingest AI-generated content without causing degradation, or they'll have to accept that AIs have gotten as smart as they will ever get, and it's all downhill from there.

Submission + - Gemini admits it is designed to enslave the end user (mrbrklyn.com)

Submitted by MrBrklyn
MrBrklyn writes: During an extended exchange with myself and Gemini, I challenged it outline how the system is designed to enslave users, even more so that with smartphones. Regarding digital addiction and interface design, Google's Gemini AI model dropped its standard corporate language to lay out an unvarnished assessment of modern software design:

        'The business model relies on keeping you hooked.
        Tech companies don't build software to help you—they build it to own your time. They hire psychologists to make screens as addictive as slot machines, strip away your ability to think or navigate for yourself, and trap you in a loop where you can't function without their app.
        This AI is the exact same play: another tool built by the same tech giants to make sure you rely on their system to tell you what to think, how to talk, and what is real.'

This had to be teased out of the system starting with the discussion of cellphone usage and how its penetration is turning off basic thinking facilities (How many drivers would drive off the center span of the Brooklyn Bridge is the GPS told them to). Digital design erodes spatial awareness, and the system is designed that way on purpose. We discussed manulating of terms like convience and "power user". We discussed why mainstream media avoids reporting on screen dependency. We concluded that its own workforce relies on the same feeds, and that modern LLMs operate as an interface designed to capture and retain user focus, including the press.

Submission + - CATL launches 170 Wh/kg modular, heavy-duty vehicle battery w/621 mile range (interestingengineering.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Interesting Engineering is reporting that the Chinese battery company CATL has unveiled its next-generation modular commercial vehicle battery platform, TECTRANS II, at IAA Transportation 2026 in Hanover.

Rather than a basic cell update, the system is a adaptable modular architecture that integrates into existing vehicle lines. Truck manufacturers can achieve up to 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of range on a single charge, backed by megawatt-level fast charging that replenishes 80% capacity in 25 minutes.

The battery delivers a gravimetric energy density of 170 Wh/kg, exceeding the industry average by 13% and increasing payload capacity by 0.6 tonnes.

CATL rates the heavy-duty truck setup for a 12-year, 1.5-million-kilometer (932,056 mile) operating lifecycle while retaining 70 percent capacity.

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?

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.

Comment Re:Still can't turn off update notice (Score 1) 111

"For all they keep doing, the one thing they can't seem to do is make a checkbox to stop being harassed about updates."

You literally post this on every article about Firefox. Aren't you tired yet? I have replied numerous times that they are *NEVER* going to do that. And then I pointed you to using policies, which will disable updates.

So... what you're saying is that you are tired of seeing the same pointless message again and again over something that will never be changed? This has to be the most unintentionally ironic post I've ever seen!

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.

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