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Submission + - CheatGPT: Teens Think AI Cheating Has Become a Regular Feature of Student Life

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In another case of life imitating the Simpsons ("Bart Gets Caught Using CheatGPT On His Homework"), nearly 60% of teenagers told Pew that students at their school used chatbots to cheat 'very often' or 'somewhat often', according to a report published Tuesday.

“We’re definitely seeing that the use of A.I. chatbots for help with schoolwork is becoming a common practice for teens,” said Colleen McClain, a senior researcher at Pew and a co-author of the study.

Among the teenagers surveyed, 47% said they had used chatbots for fun, while 42% said they used the tools to summarize content. A smaller group, 12%, said they had used bots for advice or emotional support. The results of the survey, the report said, indicate that teenagers think “cheating with A.I. has become a regular feature of student life.”

Submission + - AI hurts your credibility even if your work is great, study finds (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: New research from Florida International University suggests that simply disclosing AI use can damage a creatorâ(TM)s reputation, even when the creative output itself is identical. In one experiment, participants evaluated the same video game soundtrack but were given different descriptions of the composer. Some were told it was written by Hans Zimmer, while others were told it came from an unknown student. When AI collaboration was disclosed, ratings dropped across the board, regardless of whether the name attached carried prestige.

The study found that reputation offered only limited protection. Participants were slightly more willing to believe a well known composer remained in control of the creative process, but overall perceptions of authenticity and competence still declined. Researchers say the issue is not performance quality but perception. Once AI enters the picture, audiences begin questioning whether the creativity is genuine, suggesting that, at least for now, AI carries a reputational tax.

Comment Re:No Throw away people (Score 2) 98

The wealth gap is irrelevant for amount of invention being done.

Shutting down a car manufacturing plant doesn't have anything to do with amount of innovation either.

What's problematic in Europe isn't the labor laws, it's that it's hard to commercialize inventions because it's way too expensive to produce small scale due to the amount of regulations around products, product responsibility etc. I could probably have created and manufactured something, but it would have required navigating a minefield of regulations.

I could probably have designed the device, then hand it over to China and then get the China Export label that's suspiciously similar to the CE label on it.

Submission + - AI found 12 New OpenSSL zero-days (lesswrong.com)

Submitted by wiredog
wiredog writes: "Our goal was to turn what used to be an elite, artisanal hacker craft into a repeatable industrial process. We do this to secure the software infrastructure of human civilization before strong AI systems become ubiquitous. Prosaically, we want to make sure we don't get hacked into oblivion the moment they come online."

Submission + - ICE reliance on Microsoft technology surged amid immigration crackdown (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deepened its reliance on Microsoft’s cloud technology last year as the agency ramped up arrest and deportation operations, leaked documents reveal.

ICE more than tripled the amount of data it stored in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform in the six months leading up to January 2026, a period in which the agency’s budget swelled and its workforce rapidly expanded, according to the files.

ICE appears to be using a range of Microsoft’s productivity tools, as well as AI-driven products, to search and analyse the data it holds in Azure. Files suggest some of the agency’s own tools and systems may also be running on Microsoft servers.

Submission + - T2/Linux restored XAA in Xorg, making 2D graphics fast again. (t2linux.com)

Submitted by ReneR
ReneR writes: T2 Linux has restored XAA in Xorg, bringing fixed-function hardware 2D acceleration back to many older graphics cards that upstream left in software-rendered mode.
Older fixed-function GPUs now regain smooth window movement, low CPU usage, and proper 24-bit bpp framebuffer support: also restored in T2. Tested hardware includes ATi Mach-64 and Rage-128, SiS, Trident, Cirrus, Matrox (Millennium/G450), Permedia2, Tseng ET6000 and even the Sun Creator/Elite 3D. The result: vintage and retro systems and classic high-end Unix workstations that are fast and responsive again.

Submission + - Researchers develop detachable crawling robotic hand (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Science News is reporting that researchers have developed a robotic hand that can not only skitter about on its fingertips, it can also bend its fingers backward, connect and disconnect from a robotic arm and pick up and carry one or more objects at a time. With its unusual agility, it could navigate and retrieve objects in spaces too confined for human hands. Original study published in Nature Communications on January 20, 2026.

When attached to the mechanical arm, the robotic hand could pick up objects much like a human hand. The bot pinched a ball between two fingers, wrapped four fingers around a metal rod and held a flat disc between fingers and palm.

But the bot isn’t constrained by human anatomy. The fingers bend backward just as easily as forward, allowing the robot to hold objects against both sides of its palm simultaneously. It can even unscrew the cap off a mustard bottle while holding the bottle in place.

When the robot was separated from the arm, it was most stable walking on four or five fingers and using one or two fingers for grabbing and carrying things, the team found. In one set of trials with both bots, the hand detached from the robotic arm and used its fingers as legs to skitter over to a wooden block. Once there, it picked up the block with one finger and carried it back to the arm.

The crawling bot could one day aid in industrial inspections of pipes and equipment too small for a human or larger robot to access, says Xiao Gao, a roboticist now at Wuhan University in China. It might retrieve objects in a warehouse or navigate confined spaces in disaster response efforts.

Submission + - Amazon CPU sales drop nearly 60% year over year (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: New data suggests Amazon sold about 60 % fewer desktop CPUs in January compared to a year ago, highlighting a broader slowdown in PC upgrades and a cooling refresh cycle.

According to figures compiled by TechEpiphany, Amazon sold about 26,100 CPUs in the US in January 2026. AMD's X3D lineup continues to dominate, pushing the company's market share to an eye-popping 88 percent. But look closer and the story shifts from competitive wins to supply constraints: AI data centers are soaking up DRAM, and consumer hardware is paying the price.

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