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Submission + - Ex=Tesla Exec Said Company Torn Down Chinese EV to Learn (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Jon McNeill, the former president of Tesla's global sales and marketing who now sits on General Motors' board, told Business Insider that Tesla has torn down Chinese EVs and that the lessons learned can be seen in some of Tesla's most popular models. The former Tesla executive said one lesson learned from Chinese EVs was the reuse of parts — using some of the same guts of one model for another — and that can be seen "across the [Model] 3 and the [Model] Y." It's not a unique concept to Chinese automakers; the automotive industry has long relied on using the same parts from one model of car for another in an automaker's lineup, including components such as the platform, the steering wheel or the turn-signal stalk. BYD and other Chinese automakers, however, are distinctive in the degree to which they reuse parts down to the ancillary components of a vehicle, from the battery packs to the heat pumps and motors inside the car seats, McNeill said. EV makers like Tesla, BYD, and Rivian are able to reuse parts at deeper levels because they're also highly vertically integrated companies, meaning the automaker develops and manufactures some of their car parts in-house. This level of control over design and production can enable automakers to standardize more parts and produce at higher speeds.

Submission + - Be nice - Batman is watching! (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by Black Parrot
Black Parrot writes: From ScienceAlert:

A new study has found that people are more likely to act kind towards others when Batman is present â" and not for the reasons you might assume.
[...]
Psychologists from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy conducted experiments on the Milan metro to see who, if anyone, might offer their seat to a pregnant passenger.
The kicker? Sometimes Batman was there â" or at least, another experimenter dressed as him. The researchers were checking if people were more likely to give up their seat in the presence of the caped crusader.
And sure enough, there did seem to be a correlation. In 138 different experiments, somebody offered their seat to an experimenter wearing a hidden prosthetic belly 67.21 percent of the time in the presence of Batman.
That's a lot more often than times the superhero wasn't around â" in those cases, a passenger offered a seat just 37.66 percent of the time.
[...]
"Interestingly, among those who left their spot in the experimental condition, nobody directly associated their gesture with the presence of Batman, and 14 (43.75 percent) reported that they did not see Batman at all."

The article goes on to speculate about what is causing people to be more generous.

Submission + - Conde Nast fined €750,000 for placing cookies without consent (noyb.eu)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: In December 2019, noyb had filed complaints against three providers of French websites, because they had implemented cookie banners that turned a clear “NO” into “fake consent”. Even if a user went through the trouble of rejecting countless cookies on the eCommerce page CDiscount, the movie guide Allocine.fr and the fashion magazine Vanity Fair, these websites sent digital signals to tracking companies claiming that users had agreed to being tracked online. CDiscount sent “fake consent” signals to 431 tracking companies per user, Allocine to 565, and Vanity Fair to 375, an analysis of the data flows had shown.

Today, almost six (!) years after these complaints had originally been filed, the French data protection authority CNIL has finally reached a decision in the case against Vanity Fair: Conde Nast, the publisher behind Vanity Fair, has failed to obtain user consent before placing cookies. In addition, the company failed to sufficiently inform its users about the purpose of supposedly “necessary” cookies. Thirdly, the implemented mechanisms for refusing and withdrawing consent was ineffective. Conde Nast must therefore pay a fine of €750.000.

Conde Nast also owns Ars Technica.

Submission + - As US Hunger Rises, Food Waste is Increasing (theconversation.com)

Submitted by oumuamua
oumuamua writes: New policies in Trump’s second term have helped create huge food loss even as hunger grew. Aggressive immigration raids and deportations scared workers away from fields and plants, leaving crops unharvested. Cuts and shutdowns at aid agencies meant pallets of ready-to-eat emergency food expired in warehouses instead of reaching people who needed it. Tariffs disrupted soybean markets and left producers with mountains of unsold crops. Cuts to disaster recovery, food-safety staff and a program that linked schools and food banks to local farmers removed outlets and protections that keep food from being wasted. A fall 2025 government shutdown also disrupted SNAP benefits for weeks and made it harder for people and grocers to move food.

The fall 2025 government shutdown left the government’s major food aid program, SNAP, in limbo for weeks, derailing communities’ ability to meet their basic needs. Grocers, who benefit substantially from SNAP funds, announced discounts for SNAP recipients – to help them afford food and to keep food supplies moving before they rotted. The Department of Agriculture ordered them not to, saying SNAP customers must pay the same prices as other customers.

The scale is stark. About 47 million Americans lack enough food while roughly 40 percent of U.S. food is wasted each year, which equals about 120 billion meals and releases more than 4 million metric tons of methane. The article argues that pursuing “efficiency” through enforcement and budget cuts has, paradoxically, increased waste and worsened food insecurity.

Submission + - 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022 (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: AI slop feels inescapable — whether you’re watching TV, reading the news, or trying to find a new apartment.

That is, unless you’re using Slop Evader, a new browser tool that filters your web searches to only include results from before November 30, 2022 — the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.

The tool is available for Firefox and Chrome, and has one simple function: Showing you the web as it was before the deluge of AI-generated garbage. It uses Google search functions to index popular websites and filter results based on publication date, a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free.

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