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Comment Re:Does EU has any authority over it? (Score 1) 79

EU can easily have their ISPs block the Ali Express website.

It is slightly harder but still possible to block all shipping from China.

They could still sell digital content via another web site. But that would still be a miniscule portion of their profits.

If Ali Express wants to do business in Europe they have to obey the laws of Europe or have their business be blocked both online and via shipping.

Submission + - FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval fo (propublica.org)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: ProPublica reports that disclosures show FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty are among seven FCC commissioners who have accepted Kennedy gala tickets from CBS or its parent company over the last decade. Ethics experts told ProPublica this poses a blatant conflict of interest since the commission regulates the network. Carr’s previous financial statements show he has accepted tickets at least seven times since his 2017 appointment, totaling over $63,000 in gifts. It’s unclear if Paramount gifted Carr the premium seats because the FCC has yet to make public his financial disclosure for last year.

Federal ethics rules ban employees from taking gifts from any entity that does business with, is regulated by or seeks official action from their agency.

Four ethics experts told ProPublica that by accepting the premium tickets Trusty and Carr compromised the FCC’s impartiality and should not take part in any upcoming decision on the merger.

“There’s no way that any top federal regulator should ever, ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect,” said Walter Shaub, who led the federal Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017. “The appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible. What’s at stake is nothing less than the public’s trust in government.”

The FCC’s review of the merger is one of the final hurdles facing a historic $110 billion consolidation of two of the five largest film studios in Hollywood. The deal would unite Paramount Skydance with Warner Bros., bringing under the control of one company Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services; CBS and CNN; and scores of other major broadcast channels, cable networks, and digital platforms.

American and international regulators are evaluating the deal for its potential national security implications and impacts to consumers worldwide. Last week, the British government signaled it planned to investigate whether the new entertainment titan that would emerge from the union would unfairly stifle competition. The FCC’s ongoing review includes examining the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds backing the deal, including from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The FCC usually has five commissioners — all appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve five-year terms — but the agency currently has only three. Any vote by the full commission would likely be decided by Republicans Carr and Trusty over Democrat Anna Gomez.

The experts warned the commissioners’ gifts might become central in legal challenges and said the Justice Department should investigate potential violations of federal rules or laws.

Neither Carr nor Trusty responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment. Gomez said in a statement that she followed agency advice when she attended the event in 2023 and 2024. Her statement did not elaborate or otherwise address why taking gifts from Paramount did not pose a conflict of interest.

An FCC spokesperson said agency ethics officers have for years cleared commissioner appearances, finding it consistent with ethics law.

“FCC Chairs and officials have attended the same event, in the same ways, consistently from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration to the Obama Administration,” the FCC said in a statement. “There has been no change in recent years.”

Shaub called the justification outrageous.

“It’s no excuse to say that you took the gift because everyone else was doing it or that your agency has had a bad habit of indulging in gift taking for a long time,” Shaub said. “That kind of explanation doesn’t work for school children, and it sure as hell doesn’t work for government officials who are supposed to have better judgment than a fifth grader.”

Richard Painter, a former White House ethics attorney in the administration of George W. Bush, said while courts often defer to the government’s judgment, they also can become skeptical if a regulatory agency is shown to have violated ethics rules.

“A judge may very well say that the merger decision of the FCC isn’t worth jack because the process was corrupted,” he said.

Comment Symptoms are not a disease. (Score 1) 57

I like the fact they checked the reverse. Important part of any social experiment.

However, they did not mention any attempt to confirm the diagnosis of ADHD by administering medication. ADHD medication does not always work and many doctors believe that the cases of it not working indicate the patient did not in fact have ADHD, just some of the symptoms.

The symptoms of ADHD basically fall into two categories:
1) Stereotypical 'childish' behavior.
2) Poor social skills.

This is combined with the facts that about 20% of kids diagnosed with ADHD lose all symptoms after adulthood and only 15% retain all their symptoms.

Some people think the 20% that get cured never really had ADHD, they were misdiagnosed and just took a bit longer to mature. Others believe ADHD is a spectrum and most people have it in very slight degrees that can be 'cured'/overcome.

These facts along with the study seems to imply an explanation that social media may not 'hurt' the children and instead are more like filler. Too much filler activity delays maturation rather than causing ADHD.

I would love to see how the children that got symptoms of ADHD after engaging with social media reacted to the medications. In addition, I would like to know if the
'ADHD' symptoms that 'appeared' always existed and were just ignored until the child reached an age where those behaviors were less accepted.

Comment Even an idiot can be right (Score 3, Interesting) 118

Cramer is not someone I respect. There is a study that says if you invest the opposite of what Cramer advises on TV you make more money than if you follow his advice. He is an entertainer more than a financial adviser.

That said, I do agree with Cramer that many people are doing stupid things with AI and making bad assumptions.

Humans do higher quality work than AI, AI's advantage is SPEED.

Sometimes speed is an advantage. Sometimes it is a bad idea. Do you think it is a good idea to travel at 90 mph all the time? Do you want your doctor to take extra time considering your illness, or make an instant snap decision? Would you prefer to accept an AI's diagnosis or would you rather have a human do it?

I have no doubt many businesses will make a ton of money because they use AI. I also have no doubt many a business will bankrupt themselves trying to do the same thing.

It is true that millions of protein foldings were first calculated using the first AI. I am sure there will be many other good uses of AI. But in addition tho that Lawyers are being fined and fired for using AI. Kids are using it to cheat at school.

Corporations need to prove they are making good use of the new technology rather than just hoping on the bandwagon and wasting a ton of money.

Comment Re:Compared to....? (Score 1) 223

by gurps_npc (#66241584) Attached to: US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026

You make a lot of good points.
.
However, two environmental disasters creating an increase may indicate an underlying cause. Many environmental scientists claim that both more fires and more frost are a result of climate change that is itself a trend that will continue.

Adjustments for population growth is also an underlying cause, not something we should ignore.

The idea that it is a couple of local problems rather than a national one has significant importance. Texas in particular, being a separate power grid, may have issues that the rest of the country does not.

Comment Compared to....? (Score 1) 223

by gurps_npc (#66241412) Attached to: US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026

This is one of those things that people do not have a frame of reference for.

The question is not did we have a power outage every month, but did we have MORE power outages these past 6 months than we had last year during the same 6 months. Without that data, we have curiosity and mindless fear, nothing more.

Here is the actual data the industry uses, from 2014 to 2024.: https://www.eia.gov/electricit...

While these numbers are hard to inteerupt without a graph (particularly because 2024 was a 'bad' year), there are some clear trends:

Non-major events is pretty much unchanged.
Major events have gone up significantly - perhaps even doubled.
Durations of events have also gone up.
Finally, losses due to power plant failures ('supply removed') rather than transmission line events has a slight upward trend.

Submission + - US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026 (electrek.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Reddit post making the rounds this week claims the US has experienced at least one major power outage every month of 2026 – but is it true? I dug into several outages, the extreme weather behind them, and what we can do to help keep the lights on. [...] The claim that hundreds of thousands of Americans were without power over extended periods at least once per month, every month of 2026 surprised be in two ways. First, because I had no idea if it was true – and, second, because it felt true. We try to do better than writing about things that feel true around here, however, so I did a bit of research (translation: I Googled power outages by month) and came up with the following examples in about sixty seconds

January: More than 296,000 customers still without power as winter storm freezes much of the US
February: More than 380,000 customers without power as winter storm hits US Northeast
March: Storms Cut Power to Over 1 Million Customers in US Midwest, Mid-Atlantic; Ohio Hardest Hit
April: At least 29 tornadoes touched down in Central Illinois on April 17th
May: Energy Secretary Issues Emergency Order to Deploy Backup Generation in the Mid-Atlantic Amid Heatwave
June: More than 373,000 US customers without power due to extreme weather

... and that list is far from comprehensive, and how you feel about it might depend on what you consider a “major” outage, of course – but consider that there are tens of thousands of Americans without power right now, and that’s not making the news. [...] The lesson here is that weather-related grid outages – whether they’re caused by wildfires, mudslides, derechos, tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, heat waves, or some other disaster I’m lucky enough to have forgotten about – read like statistics when they’re happening over there, but get personal real quick when they’re happening to you.

Comment Serious quality improvements (Score 1) 76

by gurps_npc (#66239782) Attached to: Microsoft Patches a Record 570 Security Flaws

I can easily see a day where every bit of software is subjected to an AI check before it is released.

There may come a day when hacking is far more rare and requires government level resources to pay for an AI better than the one software makers use.

There will always be vulnerabilities but they might only be visible to government spies.

Comment Stupidest product I have ever heard of. (Score 2, Insightful) 106

It is designed under the assumption that AI works better than it does without any need for verification.

Screens are cheap, put one in just to list what prompt the AI heard, you idiots.

Smart homes are dying because they were stupid BEFORE AI came about. No one is willing to let an AI control their temperature, let alone the lighting, doors, etc.

What is going on is people are trying to create products for a Science Fiction version of AI, when what we have is closer to a Horror movie version of AI.

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