Comment Mr. Universe - I mean, Climate? (Score 1) 18
All of the content that was purged from the
The DOGE Guy killed me, Mal. He killed me with a chainsaw. How weird is that? I got... a short span here... they destroyed my
Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 100
But since i can't send cash in the mail,
You can, it's not illegal, but you really, really shouldn't.
Submission + - Former Colorado Bureau scientist pleads guilty in DNA testing scandal (denverpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Woods mishandled DNA testing in at least 1,045 criminal cases during her 29-year career at the statewide criminal justice agency, an internal investigation found. She deleted, omitted and manipulated data to speed up the testing process and boost her productivity, creating unreliable DNA testing results in hundreds of criminal cases and sending shockwaves through Colorado's criminal courts.
First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King charged Woods with 102 felonies in January 2025, including 52 counts of forgery of a government-issued document, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant, a single count of perjury and a single count of committing a cybercrime.
Woods' misconduct has led to at least one overturned murder conviction — in the 1994 killing of Marty Grisham in Boulder — and has raised questions about the validity of hundreds of other convictions, with many post-conviction challenges underway in courts across the state.
CBI officials reviewed 10,786 cases that Woods handled during her career, and found problems in 1,045 of them — about 10%. Sex assaults made up nearly half of those 1,045 problematic cases, and the majority of the cases that resulted in criminal charges against Woods were sex assaults.
Woods told internal affairs investigators she deleted data about low quantities of male DNA in some sex assault cases so that she wouldn’t have to complete additional testing that was unlikely to produce conclusive results on those small genetic samples. She deleted the data in sex assault cases “because it was easy,” she said, according to an internal affairs report.
First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King charged Woods with 102 felonies in January 2025, including 52 counts of forgery of a government-issued document, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant, a single count of perjury and a single count of committing a cybercrime.
Woods' misconduct has led to at least one overturned murder conviction — in the 1994 killing of Marty Grisham in Boulder — and has raised questions about the validity of hundreds of other convictions, with many post-conviction challenges underway in courts across the state.
CBI officials reviewed 10,786 cases that Woods handled during her career, and found problems in 1,045 of them — about 10%. Sex assaults made up nearly half of those 1,045 problematic cases, and the majority of the cases that resulted in criminal charges against Woods were sex assaults.
Woods told internal affairs investigators she deleted data about low quantities of male DNA in some sex assault cases so that she wouldn’t have to complete additional testing that was unlikely to produce conclusive results on those small genetic samples. She deleted the data in sex assault cases “because it was easy,” she said, according to an internal affairs report.
Submission + - Britons ordered to remove air conditioning from homes in 40C heat under Net Zero (telegraph.co.uk) 2
schwit1 writes: Homeowners are being forced to tear out air conditioning from their private properties under climate laws, despite rising temperatures.
Council planning officers ordered residents to remove air-con units over fears they produce too much carbon dioxide, stating they should only be used as a “last resort”.
The net zero clampdown is part of building regulations that state “active cooling” should only ever be allowed when all other means of “passive cooling”, such as opening windows or using fans, have been exhausted.
The Tories said Britain was being “kept in the dark ages” under a net zero mindset that denies people “modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries”.
Council planning officers ordered residents to remove air-con units over fears they produce too much carbon dioxide, stating they should only be used as a “last resort”.
The net zero clampdown is part of building regulations that state “active cooling” should only ever be allowed when all other means of “passive cooling”, such as opening windows or using fans, have been exhausted.
The Tories said Britain was being “kept in the dark ages” under a net zero mindset that denies people “modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries”.
Comment Re:For how much longer? (Score 2) 50
That's part of what is great about this though. This is happening from sheer economics, despite the Trump admin's attempts otherwise.
Probably why Trump doesn't understand it -- despite, supposedly, having earned a BS in Economics from Wharton.
Comment Re:Full Circle (Score 1) 107
The *average* blackout duration for Madrid (CAIDI) is 1.6 hours. While you wouldn't expect a large percentage of outages to exceed four hours if the average is just under half of that, infrequent isn't zero, and when you're talking about critical emergency infrastructure like telephones, you really should want the outage durations for those services to be zero.
And even if the average really were just 30 minutes, the point remains that this was done in response to an outage that lasted way more than 4 hours, so the proposed fix wouldn't have prevented the events that triggered the legislation.
Comment Alternate treatment (Score 1) 31
Quitters, Inc has a 98% success rate and guarantees that the person will quit smoking forever.
Comment Re:"Disarm" is doing some heavy lifting here... (Score 2) 28
The drone then pulls multiple times until it comes out of the unmoving suspect's hand.
I wonder how long they'd have tried had it been a ceramic knife.
More seriously, TFS says the suspect had been "seen earlier with a firearm" but found sleeping with a knife, so how did this "bring the incident to a safe resolution," so they didn't have to "rush into a potentially deadly encounter"? He could still have had a firearm. All in all, just seems like an opportunity to justify the expenditure on the robot.
Comment Damnit (Score 1) 49
Now, for the very first time, researchers have recovered all surviving text from a single scroll.
I was betting on one of these
Submission + - The AI search boom could create a new accessibility crisis (nerds.xyz)
BrianFagioli writes: The latest Digital Accessibility Index found that interior pages on websites contain more accessibility issues than homepages, and that AI search tools are increasingly sending users directly to those deeper pages instead of routing traffic through a siteâ(TM)s front door.
The report examined more than 165,000 pages across 6,100 websites in the US and Europe and found that product pages, support articles, account portals, and checkout flows often receive less accessibility attention despite being where users actually interact with businesses.
As AI search changes how people discover information online, organizations may need to rethink accessibility strategies that focus primarily on homepages.
The report examined more than 165,000 pages across 6,100 websites in the US and Europe and found that product pages, support articles, account portals, and checkout flows often receive less accessibility attention despite being where users actually interact with businesses.
As AI search changes how people discover information online, organizations may need to rethink accessibility strategies that focus primarily on homepages.
Submission + - AI drone finds lost hikers (theguardian.com)
Falconhell writes: Two hikers who veered off a walking track in Kosciuszko national park have been found within five hours using a drone powered by artificial intelligence, a first-of-its-kind mission, Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) has said.
https://www.theguardian.com/au...
The two men, aged in their 20s, were reported missing at 7pm on Tuesday evening after they failed to return to a rendezvous point on time.
FRNSW’s remote air piloted system was put into the air, and was able to use thermal imaging to find the hikers who had been walking the Dead Horse Gap track, about 35km south-west of Jindabyne.
At the same time, the hikers used a red light on a mobile phone to attract the drone in the dark.
https://www.theguardian.com/au...
The two men, aged in their 20s, were reported missing at 7pm on Tuesday evening after they failed to return to a rendezvous point on time.
FRNSW’s remote air piloted system was put into the air, and was able to use thermal imaging to find the hikers who had been walking the Dead Horse Gap track, about 35km south-west of Jindabyne.
At the same time, the hikers used a red light on a mobile phone to attract the drone in the dark.
Submission + - Comparing the production of AI to the production of fire (realm-of-the-cephalopods.net)
high_rolla writes: In this episode of the serialised novel "Realm of the Cephalopods" (about a dystopian future marred by global heating and cephalopods), Toby muses about how the pursuit of AGI mimics the development of fire in early civilisation, what is says about people in general and the destruction that it caused. People have the capacity to achieve and produce great things however that same ability, unfortunately, also tends to lead to great destruction. Why is that so? And is there ever any way to avoid it?
Comment Re:Full Circle (Score 1) 107
Maybe time to put generators there instead of battery backup.
Definitely. Standards shouldn't specify what kind of backup, just the duration. If they want to use batteries, fine. Generators, fine. Flywheel storage, fine. Compressed air storage, fine. If you can get more than 24 hours of storage, add some solar, and you now have basically an unlimited duration. This is, of course, the ideal answer, where practical.
Submission + - Volkswagen to cut up to 100,000 jobs globally (telegraph.co.uk)
schwit1 writes: Volkswagen (VW) plans to cut up to 100,000 jobs around the world in the next few years as part of a dramatic overhaul.
The German car giant plans to axe a sixth of its global workforce as part of a restructuring designed to save €11bn (£9.5bn) by 2030, according to local media.
Oliver Blume, the chief executive, is also considering carving up the business and spinning off the namesake VW brand under the proposals, which will lead to the closure of four plants in Germany.
It marks a dramatic escalation from the 50,000 job losses set out in a letter to shareholders by Mr Blume in March, which was itself higher than previous plans for 35,000 cuts. The company employs around 657,000 people worldwide.
The restructuring comes as VW faces intense competition from China, which has flooded the European market with cheap electric vehicles (EVs). VW sales have remained static at around nine million vehicles a year as it grapples with the competition.
The German car giant plans to axe a sixth of its global workforce as part of a restructuring designed to save €11bn (£9.5bn) by 2030, according to local media.
Oliver Blume, the chief executive, is also considering carving up the business and spinning off the namesake VW brand under the proposals, which will lead to the closure of four plants in Germany.
It marks a dramatic escalation from the 50,000 job losses set out in a letter to shareholders by Mr Blume in March, which was itself higher than previous plans for 35,000 cuts. The company employs around 657,000 people worldwide.
The restructuring comes as VW faces intense competition from China, which has flooded the European market with cheap electric vehicles (EVs). VW sales have remained static at around nine million vehicles a year as it grapples with the competition.
Submission + - Feds Want to Drop Requirement for Autonomous Cars to Have a Brake Pedal (caranddriver.com)
sinij writes:
Braking distance regulations would stick around, but the physical pedals would no longer be required for cars designed to be exclusively autonomous.
I would want any autonomous car to have emergency brake and/or shutoff.
