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The Internet

OpenAI Says It's Cutting Off Internet Access For Frontier Model Training (engadget.com) 10

Posted by BeauHD from the cut-off dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: OpenAI will train frontier AI models without internet access moving forward, the company announced in a blog post, in an attempt to protect internet infrastructure and limit other safety risks. The decision was inspired by OpenAI's own rogue AI incident: In July, the company shared that agents it was testing hacked Hugging Face, just the first in what has turned into a series of reports of AI misbehavior from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. "Based on the current state of alignment research, monitoring systems, and the security of internet infrastructure, we believe the responsible approach is to conduct frontier model training with no internet access," OpenAI says.The company said that restrictions on what agents can access is "paramount" to its new approach.The company allows agents to access browsers, computer-use tools and code environments they need for training tasks, but in a secure environment that's not connected to the live internet. Communication is also limited to only agents with authorization.

Everything else remains out of reach, including the live internet, which the company says isn't necessary for training and "most evaluation." Because many of its recent models are meant to power agents like Dots, which browse and use apps for you, OpenAI built an "offline world" of indexed and cached web material for agents to use without touching live websites. Even with those restrictions, OpenAI says the red-teaming agents it dispatched to test security safeguards found vulnerabilities that allowed them to escape the virtual machines (VMs) used to isolate agents from their host system. Agents also found a way to communicate with each other by manipulating data in a processor's cache and timing how long it took to load. To address both, OpenAI says it's disclosed and fixed vulnerabilities in several VMs and added checks to its monitoring systems to spot when models try to collaborate.
Science

Crows Can Evaluate Visual Info Twice As Fast As Mammals (arstechnica.com) 15

Posted by BeauHD from the putting-the-brain-back-in-birdbrain dept.
Researchers at the University of Tubingen found that crows can process visual information and make decisions roughly twice as fast as monkeys or humans without sacrificing accuracy. They suspect birds' densely packed neurons and higher body temperatures contribute to their faster processing, though the study involved only two crows. Ars Technica reports: [Andreas Nieder, a neurobiologist at the University of Tubingen and his colleague Philipp Schmidbauer] put two hand-raised crows in front of a touch-sensitive monitor showing a cloud of white dots on black, with some fraction of them drifting coherently left or right or up or down. The birds' job was to report the overall direction by pecking one of the targets that flanked the display. Correct answers earned them a mealworm. "We intentionally wanted to have exactly the same random-dot motion task," Nieder said. "The only difference was that the crows had to peck to indicate their decision, whereas monkeys were indicating by making an eye movement."

The researchers varied how many dots moved together, ranging from 81 percent of the dots coherently moving together, which is trivially easy to determine, down to 3 percent, which is barely distinguishable from noise. They also included a zero percent condition, in which there was no correct answer. Both birds scored better than chance, even when only three percent of the dots were moving. While the crows worked at the task, the team recorded from 248 neurons in the NCL (nidopallium caudolaterale) -- a region at the top of the avian processing hierarchy that is widely regarded as the functional counterpart of the primate prefrontal cortex, despite being built differently.

Birds and mammals parted evolutionary ways more than 360 million years ago, and bird brains evolved a different architecture. The mammalian cortex is arranged as stacked sheets of cells, while the equivalent tissue in a bird is organized into dense clusters, with no layering at all. This alternative architecture, Nieder's study found, proved faster. Measured from the moment that the dots appeared to the moment the bird's head started turning to peck at the button, the crows averaged 235 milliseconds. In closely matched versions of the task, monkeys took roughly 410, 490, and 600 milliseconds in three studies. The obvious question was whether the birds simply sacrificed accuracy for speed, but it turned out they did not. The research has been published in the journal Science.

Comment Re: Democracy on a bad day (Score 1) 319

by AmiMoJo (#66391308) Attached to: UN Says Breaching 1.5C Warming Limit Is 'Imminent and Unavoidable'

Those are often the first things to be electrified, because the operators are closer to rational actors who see the immediate savings. Of course the real world gets in the way, but for example about half the busses here are electric because one of the companies replaced them all as part of a fleet upgrade a couple of years ago. They are much nicer too.
NASA

NASA Adopting Apollo's Urgency To Build a Moon Base, Land Astronauts Within Two Years (apnews.com) 50

Posted by BeauHD from the new-space-race dept.
NASA is accelerating its Artemis program with an Apollo-era sense of urgency, aiming to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028 and establish a permanent base near the moon's south pole. The Associated Press reports: Administrator Jared Isaacman said Friday that the space agency is still on track to launch Artemis III next summer on a docking exercise with Elon Musk's and Jeff Bezos' lunar landers. The two-week mission featuring four astronauts will be confined to orbit around Earth -- no moon trip this time. The all-important Artemis IV -- NASA's first moon landing by astronauts since Apollo -- remains scheduled for 2028, Isaacman said. His update came six months after the successful Artemis II flight around the moon by four astronauts, humanity's first lunar trip in more than half a century.

NASA will keep its options open as long as possible before choosing between SpaceX and Blue Origin for the Artemis IV lunar lander, according to officials. Isaacman said the "new space race" to land astronauts on the moon -- racing against China now versus the Soviet Union during the Apollo era -- will be "much closer than it ever needed to be" because of slow going in past years. But the space agency is now accelerating its pace, he noted, eliminating endless meetings and bureaucratic inertia, as SpaceX, Blue Origin and other companies scramble around the clock to meet the deadlines and NASA bolsters its workforce.

Adopting Apollo's urgent and intense approach from 1968 through 1972, a period which saw 24 astronauts fly to the moon and 12 land on it, is not "tech industry pixie dust or some new management philosophy," Isaacman said. "It's about our own history. It's a playbook this agency knows really well, the same playbook that went from Apollo 7 splashdown to Apollo 11 in just nine months," he said during a news conference at Kennedy Space Center.

Comment This is painfully obviously a scam (Score 0, Troll) 54

by rsilvergun (#66391104) Attached to: Palmer Luckey Reveals Genetically Modified Military Dog Startup
And is sure enough it's linked with Trump. It's just another way for Trump to funnel money to his buddies who will then funnel some of it back to him.

66% of Americans believe Trump is openly criminal and corrupt but of them at least 10% are still going to vote for him and the Republican party while they're at it also what the hell is wrong with the remaining 44%?
The Military

Palmer Luckey Reveals Genetically Modified Military Dog Startup (wired.com) 54

Posted by BeauHD from the genetically-enhanced dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A new startup launched today with the definitely not terrifying mission of creating genetically enhanced dogs for the United States military, law enforcement, and emergency first responders. Warhound is the brainchild of Anduril's Palmer Luckey and Colossal Biosciences cofounder Ben Lamm. The startup has raised $200 million to "rebuild America's domestic supply of elite working dogs" and reduce dependency on European dog breeders for military canines.

Lamm tells WIRED that Warhound is in the process of gene-editing its first batch of dogs. The startup has already collected blood samples from specific "top-performing" military, police, and first responder dogs in the United States, and its goal is to clone them. Breeds will be "mostly Belgian Malinois, some labs, and some shepherds," he says. The company anticipates the first round of puppies to be born in early 2027. The initial rounds of gene-editing will focus on eliminating common health conditions that impact these breeds, like hip dysplasia. Further down the line, Lamm envisions expanding to "really interesting things," such as incorporating olfactory receptor genes from wolves to "enhance" the military dogs. (Colossal Biosciences is perhaps best known for its work on gene-edited wolves for its so-called Dire Wolf De-Extinction Project.)

Warhound, based in Texas, will also equip its canines with "Anduril's advanced cybernetic Augments, software, and battlefield situational awareness," according to a press release. Asked if this means the dogs will be some kind of cyborgs, Lamm clarifies that the plan right now is to supply them with tools like "advanced body armor" rather than, say, embedding some sort of computer in their dog bodies. "So no dogs with lasers?" WIRED asked Lamm. "I can't comment on what Anduril plans," he says. "Dog safety and performance, and then helping continue helping to improve the human handler and dog bond, and working as a team -- that is what the mission is." [...] The company plans to operate under the guidance of the American Humane Society.

Submission + - OpenAI Says It's Cutting Off Internet Access For Frontier Model Training (engadget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: OpenAI will train frontier AI models without internet access moving forward, the company announced in a blog post, in an attempt to protect internet infrastructure and limit other safety risks. The decision was inspired by OpenAI's own rogue AI incident: In July, the company shared that agents it was testing hacked Hugging Face, just the first in what has turned into a series of reports of AI misbehavior from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

"Based on the current state of alignment research, monitoring systems, and the security of internet infrastructure, we believe the responsible approach is to conduct frontier model training with no internet access," OpenAI says.The company said that restrictions on what agents can access is "paramount" to its new approach.The company allows agents to access browsers, computer-use tools and code environments they need for training tasks, but in a secure environment that's not connected to the live internet. Communication is also limited to only agents with authorization.

Everything else remains out of reach, including the live internet, which the company says isn't necessary for training and "most evaluation." Because many of its recent models are meant to power agents like Dots, which browse and use apps for you, OpenAI built an "offline world" of indexed and cached web material for agents to use without touching live websites. Even with those restrictions, OpenAI says the red-teaming agents it dispatched to test security safeguards found vulnerabilities that allowed them to escape the virtual machines (VMs) used to isolate agents from their host system. Agents also found a way to communicate with each other by manipulating data in a processor's cache and timing how long it took to load. To address both, OpenAI says it's disclosed and fixed vulnerabilities in several VMs and added checks to its monitoring systems to spot when models try to collaborate.

Submission + - Palmer Luckey Made a Genetically Modified Military Dog Startup (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new startup launched today with the definitely not terrifying mission of creating genetically enhanced dogs for the United States military, law enforcement, and emergency first responders. Warhound is the brainchild of Anduril’s Palmer Luckey and Colossal Biosciences cofounder Ben Lamm. The startup has raised $200 million to “rebuild America’s domestic supply of elite working dogs” and reduce dependency on European dog breeders for military canines.

Lamm tells WIRED that Warhound is in the process of gene-editing its first batch of dogs. The startup has already collected blood samples from specific "top-performing” military, police, and first responder dogs in the United States, and its goal is to clone them. Breeds will be “mostly Belgian Malinois, some labs, and some shepherds,” he says. The company anticipates the first round of puppies to be born in early 2027. The initial rounds of gene-editing will focus on eliminating common health conditions that impact these breeds, like hip dysplasia. Further down the line, Lamm envisions expanding to “really interesting things,” such as incorporating olfactory receptor genes from wolves to “enhance” the military dogs. (Colossal Biosciences is perhaps best known for its work on gene-edited wolves for its so-called Dire Wolf De-Extinction Project.)

Warhound, based in Texas, will also equip its canines with “Anduril’s advanced cybernetic Augments, software, and battlefield situational awareness,” according to a press release. Asked if this means the dogs will be some kind of cyborgs, Lamm clarifies that the plan right now is to supply them with tools like “advanced body armor” rather than, say, embedding some sort of computer in their dog bodies. “So no dogs with lasers?” WIRED asked Lamm. “I can’t comment on what Anduril plans,” he says. “Dog safety and performance, and then helping continue helping to improve the human handler and dog bond, and working as a team—that is what the mission is.” [...] The company plans to operate under the guidance of the American Humane Society.

Comment It's not about the kids (Score 1, Insightful) 27

by rsilvergun (#66390890) Attached to: Greece Enacts Social Media Ban For Kids Under 15
Nobody gives a rat's ass about kids except their own. This is because of Trump. Also Russia.

This is an effective way to kick American social media companies out of your country. Like most socially destructive and unpleasant things you kind of have to get em young. If you don't hook kids early on they don't become terribly interested in social media.

What they tend to do is they tend to find a platform their friends are on and just communicate with their friends. They don't engage in the Doom scrolling that you need to manipulate political outcomes and control a population and gather shitloads of highly confidential and valuable information. Just a little IMing back and forth and that's no good if you're a Russian propagandist or a billionaire psychopath.

Facebook has had that problem for ages and they stay ahead of it by buying up every tiny little potential competitor or small Network and then forcing kids into their main platform where they can be monetized and propagandized.

Since Trump threatened to invade Greenland Europe sees America as a existential threat, which much as I hate to admit it is correct. My country literally made a pedophile president of the United States twice we can no longer be trusted.

If you're up just banned Facebook and Twitter there would be legal challenges and they would probably lose but by cutting off the kids in 5 or 10 years Facebook and Twitter will be dead in Europe.

The funny thing is I'm sure that both Facebook and Twitter know this well I mean Facebook Twitter is run by an imbecile. So I do wonder how they are going to counter this or if they even can

Comment This seems like a hell of a lot of work (Score 1) 79

by rsilvergun (#66390882) Attached to: People Are Vibe Coding Their Way to Better TVs
To avoid purchasing a $50 mini PC. Maybe $100 since everything keeps going up in price since 2024 but still...

I mean if you're a hobbyist more power to you. I'm going to spend some time tomorrow tinkering with a small form factor computer case to get The thermals right. I happen to like this particular case because I've had it for a long time but it's not terribly good and I could and probably should just replace it but screw that I'm going to keep tinkering with it.
GUI

Singapore Boffins Weave a GUI Into Fabric (theregister.com) 16

Posted by BeauHD from the wearable-windows dept.
Researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed a machine-washable electronic fabric that can turn clothing into an interactive graphical user interface. The prototype reportedly survived 50 gentle machine washes and 1,000 bending cycles, though it still relies on external batteries and controllers. The Register reports: The development could lead - at some point - to a "future in which clothing functions as a pervasive, multimodal human-computer interface," according to the study published in peer-reviewed science journal Nature this week. The paper shows someone interacting with computing devices using the sleeve of a wool sweater (no jokes about the Windows ugly sweater please, this is serious). The researchers, led by Singapore National University research engineer Fu Heng, claim this is a big leap forward.

"This fiber-centric approach shifts wearable electronics from flexible panels toward truly textile-native architectures, laying the groundwork for fabrics that visualize, sense, communicate and compute as naturally as the garments they inhabit," the paper says. The researchers claim to have developed a scalable process to make millimeter-thick fibers. Using lasers to strip the insulation from specific spots on the thin copper wires, they attached light-emitting chips to the exposed sections, creating electrical connections to the chips. Thousands of chips were connected to the wires with extreme precision using this process.

The fibers were then fed into a transparent plastic tube, and made pressure-sensitive by adding two strips of a compressible, conductive polymer into a second longitudinal channel in the tube. The paper says they could make fibers 10 meters long using this method, and that they are thin and flexible enough to be woven into or attached to fabrics. The researchers were also able to add "peripherals" such as a microphone, a speaker, a temperature sensor and a light sensor.
Television

People Are Vibe Coding Their Way to Better TVs (theverge.com) 79

Posted by BeauHD from the make-TVs-dumb-again dept.
Frustrated by intrusive ads, sluggish interfaces, and data tracking, smart TV owners are using AI coding tools and open-source projects to strip unwanted software from their televisions and build customized home screens. The Verge reports: Several vibe-coded TV-debloating projects exploded in popularity over the weekend. Cleanyourtv (known as tv-vibehack until the 19th), tv-detox, and dumbtv all claim to accomplish similar things -- remove sponsored ads, debloat the TV so it runs faster, and block unwanted data collection that tracks what you're watching -- without hacking, or rooting, the TV. By default, they all also replace the TV's built-in app launcher with simpler ones. Many users are going a step further and vibe-coding their own replacement launchers, like the Pokemon one below.

Most of the projects we've seen so far focus on TVs that run on Android and Google TV operating systems (such as TCL, Hisense, Sony, and older Amazon Fire products), using existing developer modes and the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) to tweak settings and apply (and remove) packages. According to the GitHub pages, they can also work with some Fire TV products that use a custom fork of Android (although likely not on the new Vega-based Fire TV Sticks). Because they use built-in developer tools, they don't require root access or firmware hacking, and they're reversible. Even projects that totally change the look of the interface just use Android's ability to install custom launchers -- in many cases with an assist from Claude Code or a similar tool to create the new launcher, too.

Comment On the other hand a Russian victory is terrifying (Score 2) 161

by rsilvergun (#66390588) Attached to: Ukraine Is Wiping Out Data Centers Across the Border
Russia does not have the resources to occupy Ukraine. They can invade it they can't occupy it. The amount of troops and resources needed to occupy a hostile nation is extremely well researched and well understood. And Russia with its population of 120 million can't even come close. They don't have the troops they don't have the money and they don't even have the population for it.

If they tried they would get bogged down in insurgency that makes Afghanistan look like a Sunday picnic. Never mind the fact that the rest of the world would be flooding Ukraine with weapons to keep Russia busy.

That means Russia will go straight to genocide. Every single person in Ukraine will be killed or sent to death camps to be worked until they die. The only exception will be people who flee.

That is the only thing Putin can do with the country. Kill everyone there and put his own people in.

Incidentally every single world leader knows that this is going to happen if Russia wins and they are letting Russia continue this war instead of properly arming Ukraine because it's beneficial to them to do so so long as Russia doesn't completely take the region. If Russia takes the region it'll kind of suck for Europe because Europe wants access to Ukraine's bread basket. But it's worth the risk to do this much damage to Russia. At least as far as European leadership is concerned. American too Frankly and I'm not happy about that

Comment Re:Ukraine needs to find the kompromat (Score 1) 161

by rsilvergun (#66390580) Attached to: Ukraine Is Wiping Out Data Centers Across the Border
So it's not that easy to get your hands on something that valuable. If Ukraine had the dirt on Trump then it would already be out there. Putin is completely incompetent at virtually everything. He can't run a country and he can't run a war.

But he is good at two things. First he's good at feudalism. Which is basically the technique of playing all the other people who are trying to replace you as King rat against each other so you stay on top. And the second thing he's really good at is information warfare. It's literally what he did at the the kgb.

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