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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?

Submission + - No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem (reason.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Part of the bedrock of American civil liberties is the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches. There is no right to privacy, and no due process in the justice system, without that. But immigration authorities, cops, and courts keep deciding that, for some reason, the Fourth Amendment just doesn't apply where new technology is concerned.

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 + - 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 + - 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.

Comment Re:Wrong premise. (Score 2, Interesting) 82

I see plenty of people around me living a life without work, or doing only a little work on their own terms, who are not in jail or dead, and often seem pretty happy. You have options. But no one is going to hand them to you on a platter. Capitalist societies have created an utterly unprecedented standard of living, not for the ultra wealthy, but for the masses. And social democracies have taken the edge off capitalism by ensuring a minimum standard of living that is still pretty good, to those who cannot provide for themselves. But screw you if you demand others to provide you with a living, instead of working for it yourself.

With that said, things did get out of control. Regulatory oversight is a joke, and so is antitrust regulation (or the enforcement of it). Companies becoming too large for our own good, and private wealth growing so large that they can simply buy politicians, legislators and governments. That's nothing new, but one would hope that we learned from past mistakes, and taken measures against that.

Though in all of this, the machines are merely tools, none of this happened because of the machines. Social media and AI made control easier, but before that people were controlled by other means. In my own country, there is not much variety of opinion on television, and almost all of the national and regional newspapers (as well as a TV channel) have fallen in the hands of 2 wealthy families, and it shows: variety in opinion has given way to a sameness, across publications that used to span the spectrum from left to right. And it's not just the ultra rich pulling the strings; here in Europe, politicians seem to be withdrawing within a class of their own, with their own agenda. People increasingly voting for radical right parties is not because people have become more right wing, or because they have been unduly influenced by AI or social media, but because they have become disillusioned with the mainstream politicians.

Comment Eisenhower sent 101st Airborne to Little Rock (Score 1) 101

by couchslug (#66344988) Attached to: Fake AI Intelligence Almost Made the US Military Start a War With China

Eisenhower sent 101st Airborne to Little Rock in 1957 to enforce integration with weapons in hand in case they took fire. He also Federalized the Arkansas National Guard.

One segregationist got butt stroked in the face for trying to grab a rifle and another got a bayonet wound to the arm. Eisenhower knew his military options precisely (note his WWII command record). While his orders to deploy were legal, "firing on citizens" was of course an option and may well be used illegally though we're not quite in Weimar mode yet.

Submission + - America PAC's VoteSafe.org is nothing but a honeypot (cybernews.com)

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: Elon Musk’s bogus voter registration website is collecting extensive user data and selling it.

The website was funded by Musk and is operated by America PAC, a conservative political action committee founded in 2024 to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The VoteSafe.org website has been promoted as a way for Americans to register to vote and check their registration ahead of the November midterm elections.

But MeidasTouch and Snopes found that despite presenting itself as a voter-registration resource, the site doesn’t actually register users to vote.

The site's privacy policy says America PAC can collect information, including:

        Users' names
        Dates of birth
        Addresses
        Email addresses
        Phone numbers
        IP addresses
        Location
        Information about how they interact with the site

It also permits the collection of "inferences" about users, including their preferences, characteristics, behavior, attitudes, and psychological tendencies.

The policy says the information may be shared with or sold to business partners for targeted marketing.
 

Submission + - The brain is actually two completely separate organs (stanford.edu)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: From Stanford Medicine:

"For centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years."

The adult brain has three main regions: the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. Scientists could never create hindbrain neurons.

"Previous attempts to make hindbrain neurons likely tried to coax forebrain and midbrain progenitors into hindbrain cells, which our study shows is not possible,” said researcher Rayyan Jokhai.

"The researchers’ breakthrough came from studying the earliest moments of embryonic development, during a stage called gastrulation when the body first takes shape. Jokhai and Dundes discovered that the hindbrain follows a separate developmental path, running in parallel to — rather than branching off from — the pathway that creates the forebrain and midbrain."

With this knowledge, researchers were able to create hindbrain neurons.

Submission + - FCC lets Paramount sell 49.5% equity stake to foreign powers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Local ID10T
Local ID10T writes: The Federal Communications Commission yesterday approved Paramount Skydance's plan to sell large equity stakes to the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

Under US law, companies with licenses to run broadcast stations need FCC approval to have direct or indirect foreign ownership exceeding 25 percent of the company's stock. Paramount says its indirect foreign ownership will reach 49.5 percent after it receives investments from the sovereign wealth funds and filed a petition asking the FCC to waive the foreign ownership limit.

Paramount, the owner of CBS, holds FCC licenses for the 28 local CBS stations that it owns and operates. Paramount is buying Warner Bros. Discovery in a $111 billion deal that is being partially financed with foreign investment but hasn't completed the acquisition because US states filed a lawsuit that aims to block the merger. Trump's Department of Justice approved the merger.

The FCC is letting Paramount sell indirect ownership stakes to "some of the most repressive governments in the world," FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the commission, said yesterday. "An investment this large in one of America's biggest media companies doesn't just buy equity, it secures influence over what gets said and what gets made."

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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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