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Submission + - A16z Says You Actually Love Social Media, Enshittification Isnâ(TM)t Real (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: âoePerhaps the reason why the platform seems worse is because your life has changed,â Thelot says. âoeOver the same period of time, your goals have changed, and they no longer fit with the platformâ(TM)s new features. Why the hell would a fifty-five year-old be watching Reels? Go take care of your kids.â

The indisputable fact of Thelotâ(TM)s argument is that various social media platforms have more users and are more profitable than ever. This data is readily available from reliable market surveys, polls, and quarterly earning reports from the companies themselves. Itâ(TM)s important to note that companies like Meta have a history of juking the numbers, and that despite this it recently reported its first ever decline of 20 million users, but Thelotâ(TM)s point stands: Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are massively popular.

Submission + - Chinese study claims stem cell therapy reversed type 2 diabetes in patient (business-standard.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: In a medical breakthrough, researchers in China have reported the world’s first successful reversal of type 2 diabetes using stem cell therapy. By restoring the body’s natural ability to produce insulin, the treatment moves beyond lifelong symptom management and signals a future in which diabetes may no longer be a permanent condition. Researchers in China used advanced stem cell technology to generate insulin-producing pancreatic cells in the laboratory and then transplanted these into a patient with type 2 diabetes. After receiving the treatment, the patient reportedly no longer needed insulin injections or diabetes medications to control blood sugar levels.

Submission + - Debian Developers Reject AI Ban and Vote for Responsible Use of Generative AI (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Debian developers have rejected proposals that would have banned or strongly discouraged the use of artificial intelligence within the project. Instead, members selected a proposal called Responsible Use of Generative AI, which says Debian neither endorses nor prohibits generative AI for software development, packaging, documentation, and other project work.

Under the new policy, contributors remain responsible for the quality, correctness, maintainability, licensing, and legal compliance of anything they submit, including AI-assisted work. Human review and testing are expected, while disclosure of AI use is encouraged but not required. The ballot included several more restrictive alternatives, including proposals to ban LLM contributions through the Debian Social Contract and to declare that Debian is created by humans.

Submission + - Debian's LLM resolution: Responsible Use of Generative AI passes (debian.org)

Submitted by Robbat2
Robbat2 writes: Debian's LLM usage general resolution results in a middle-ground outcome: Responsible Use of Generative AI. Quote: "This resolution therefore affirms that generative AI is neither exempt from nor subject to special rules beyond the standards already expected of Debian contributors. The responsibility for every contribution rests with the contributor who submits it, who remains accountable for its technical quality, legal acceptability, and suitability for inclusion in Debian."

Submission + - The world's busiest spaceport is about to get a lot quieter, at least for now (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

A Falcon 9 launch early Tuesday was the last planned Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral until SpaceX begins flying Starship missions from Florida, according to Kiko Dontchev, the company’s vice president of launch. For at least the rest of the year, and maybe longer, this means the launch rate at the Florida spaceport will drop from eight or nine per month to perhaps two per month.

It wasn’t long ago when two launches per month was the norm, an indication of just how quickly SpaceX’s launch cadence has grown. Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center sit on adjoining property and share the same range on Florida’s east coast, so it is worth considering them a single spaceport. The last time the Florida spaceport did not lead the world in space launches was in 2015.

“From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship,” Dontchev wrote on X. “The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg.”

Yep, that'll be louder — but everybody knows the real action will be in Louisiana, starting in 2029 or so.

Musk’s other unstated reasons for shutting down Falcon 9 in Florida.

Submission + - US sanctions Italian leftwing net infrastructure provider (wewillfreeus.org)

Submitted by Elektroschock
Elektroschock writes: The United States put an Italian hacktivism group providing net infrastructure on a terror list and revoked their domain name. On August 26, 2026, the United States State Department designated Autistici/Inventati a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and placed it on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list.

Submission + - Think You've Eliminated Chinese AI? Check the Model's Lineage, Cisco Says (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: New research shows that country-of-origin labels may reveal little about an AI model’s true lineage. Analyzing Nvidia’s Nemotron and Alibaba’s Qwen families, researchers found that models can retain detectable similarities to upstream models even after post-training and rebranding.

The findings suggest that a US-labeled model could inherit behaviors, vulnerabilities, or biases from a Chinese base model. Cisco is calling for a model bill of materials documenting upstream dependencies.

As the researchers put it: “Models do not have passports. They have supply chains.”

Submission + - New York City 911 system missed 1700 calls due to software update

Submitted by belmolis
belmolis writes: Part of the New York City 911 emergency system was off-line from 3am to 10am on August 18th due to a software update according to Medical Daily. Of 5,659 calls to the Bronx call center, 1,700 calls connected but could not be heard by emergency operators. Some were rerouted to other call centers, but an estimated 400 human callers never got through. The potentially serious consequences of delayed response to emergencies are not yet known. The City did not notify the public and only released information when journalists inquired. How buggy software came to be installed on a running system is not yet known.

Submission + - Hewlett Packard Enterprise retroactively cuts Aruba lifetime warranty to 5 years (hpe.com)

Submitted by UnknowingFool
UnknowingFool writes: Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that starting on January 15, 2027, lifetime warranties on all Aruba networking equipment will change from to "limited lifetime" (End of Sales + 5 years). This was done to “simplify and standardize our warranty experience" and seemingly will affect products already sold to customers. The networking equipment in question is not consumer grade but enterprise level that could cost tens of thousands of dollars a piece. There are questions about the legality of retroactively changing warranty terms after sale and there has not been a reaction by enterprises yet.

Submission + - China's Moonshot in talks with Microsoft, Amazon, Google over K3 revenue sharing (reuters.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: China's Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet's Google, that would allow the U.S. cloud giants to host its blockbuster Kimi K3 model, three people familiar with the talks said.

Any deal could mark the first big revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI firm and a major U.S. cloud company.

The discussions highlight how China's leading AI models, often far cheaper than Western offerings, are gaining traction in the U.S., despite national security concerns in Washington that have led to bans on exports of AI chips to China. They are also taking place despite critical comments about Moonshot from senior U.S. officials.

IPO-bound Moonshot is seeking up to a 30% share of revenue generated from K3-related services on Microsoft's Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, according to the sources who declined to be identified because the discussions are private.

That would be in line with terms that sources have said the startup has outlined for major customers using the open-weight model.

Moonshot has come under fire from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said last month that he might add it to a trade blacklist. U.S. officials have accused the Beijing-based company of stealing from Anthropic's most sophisticated model, Fable, to help create Kimi K3 and illegally acquiring Nvidia chips.

Founded in 2023 by Carnegie Mellon-trained AI researcher Yang Zhilin, Moonshot is backed by several Chinese tech giants including cloud computing giant Alibaba.

Submission + - Scientists may have figured out why dead brains don't always rot. (smithsonianmag.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Smithsonian magazine discusses a new study on how, under the right conditions — wet and oxygen-deprived — the same chemical reactions that cause tissue to break down can instead have the opposite effect on brain tissue and preserve it instead.

The brain is one of the first organs to begin decomposing after death. Yet archaeologists have discovered more than 4,400 preserved human brains around the world, some of which have remained intact for the last 12,000 years. In hundreds of cases, the brain was the only soft tissue left among otherwise skeletal remains.

But how and why do brains sometimes persist for millennia while all other types of soft tissue disappear? This preservation paradox has stumped scientists for years. Now, however, a team of researchers say they may have solved the mystery.

If a brain ends up in a wet, oxygen-starved environment, the processes that usually cause decay can have the opposite effect, researchers report in a study published in the August 7 issue of the Journal of Proteome Research.

“Under the right conditions, preservation actually arises from decay itself: The same reactions that degrade tissue can also weld the breakdown products together into something far tougher,” study co-author Alexandra Seviour, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford in England, tells Live Science’s Victoria Atkinson.

Following experiments on 72 mouse carcasses (described in the article) the scientists think they know why. When oxygen is abundant, it triggers a cascading, chemical chain reaction that causes brain proteins to break down rapidly. This sequence hinges on free radicals, highly reactive, unstable molecules that “steal” electrons from nearby atoms and molecules. The process happens in the brains of living people too, and if left unchecked, can cause health problems.

In low-oxygen environments, however, this chemical sequence appears to play out differently. The researchers’ analyses hint that free radicals instead react and bond with nearby proteins, making the overall tissue tougher and more resistant to decomposition, Seviour tells Chemical and Engineering News’ Anirban Mukhopadhyay.

The findings show that “decay is not the opposite of preservation but, under specific chemical constraints, one of its mechanisms,” the researchers write in the paper.

Submission + - Scientists Turn Plastic Waste Into Edible Cookies (futurism.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: In the event we turn all arable land on this planet into a barren heath incapable of growing food, humankind may have to resort to reaping what we sowed by eating our own plastic pollution.

A team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale just demonstrated that this was possible by using specially engineered yeast to create tasty — and yes, edible — cookies which they 3D printed out of plastic waste.

The yeast breaks down the components of plastic compounds and agricultural byproducts like discarded plant stalks into proteins, fats, acids, and flavorings that we can eat. When these are combined together, the mixture is fed into a 3D printer that spits out cookies of any desired shape.

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