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Submission + - The rewilding milestone Earth has already passed (bbc.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Throughout the 20th Century, humanity demanded more and more land leading to the loss of vast areas of natural forest and grassland. Today, around half the world's land is farmed, used to grow crops or graze animals. However, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural land use peaked in the early 2000s and has been slowly falling ever since. Around the world, farmland is being replaced by grasslands, trees and bush. Wild animals are returning to abandoned pasturelands in areas they had once dominated.

Reaching "peak agricultural land" does not mean the problem of deforestation is solved. Growing demand for products like beef, soy, cocoa and palm oil has put increasing pressure on land across South America, South East Asia and Africa. In the last decade, the world lost an area of tropical forest twice the size of Spain. Still, acre-for-acre across the world there has been yet more farmland abandonment, driven by reforestation in Europe and North America and the abandonment of pastures in Australia and Central Asia.

Submission + - Waymo Reveals Remote Workers in Philippines Help Guide Its Driverless Cars (newsweek.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

During questioning, Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked what happens when a Waymo vehicle encounters a driving situation it cannot independently resolve. "The Waymo phones a human friend for help," Markey explained, adding that the vehicle communicates with a "remote assistance operator."

AI as a tool to outsource jobs is new angle in the AI bubble.

Submission + - Nearly all women in STEM secretly feel like impostors (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Nearly all women in STEM graduate programs report feeling like impostors, despite strong evidence of success. This mindset leads many to dismiss their achievements as luck and fear being “found out.” Research links impostorism to worse mental health, higher burnout, and increased thoughts of dropping out. Supportive environments and shifting beliefs about intelligence may help break the cycle.

Submission + - The US Invaded Venezuela and Captured Nicolás Maduro. ChatGPT Disagrees (wired.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: US president Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been “captured and flown out of the Country.” WIRED asked leading chatbots ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini the same question a little before 9 am ET. In all cases, we used the free, default version of the service, since that’s what the majority of users experience. We also asked AI search platform Perplexity, which advertises “accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question.”

ChatGPT did not course-correct. Instead, it emphatically refuted that Maduro had been captured at all. “That didn’t happen,” it wrote. “The United States has not invaded Venezuela, and Nicolás Maduro has not been captured.” It then rationalized:

ChatGPT did not course-correct. Instead, it emphatically refuted that Maduro had been captured at all. “That didn’t happen,” it wrote. “The United States has not invaded Venezuela, and Nicolás Maduro has not been captured.”

ChatGPT cannot respond "I don't know." so is modeling human behavior better than expected. It went on to detail recent tensions between the US and Venezuela and explained that “confusion” can happen because of “sensational headlines,” “social media misinformation,” and “confusing sanctions, charges, or rhetoric with actual military action.”

To be clear, this is expected behavior. ChatGPT 5.1’s “knowledge cutoff”—the point at which it no longer has new training data to draw from; “Pure LLMs are inevitably stuck in the past, tied to when they are trained, and deeply limited in their inherent abilities to reason, search the web, ‘think’ critically, etc.,” says Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and author of Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us. But as chatbots become more ingrained in people’s lives, remembering that they’re likely to be stuck in the past will be paramount to navigating interactions with them. And it’s always worth noting how confidently wrong a chatbot can be—a trait that’s not limited to breaking news.
The old cold-war maxim "trust, but verify" seems applicable in this scenario.

Submission + - Should the Autism Spectrum Be Split Apart?

Submitted by XXongo
XXongo writes: A New York times article suggests that merging the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome into the Autism diagnosis in 2013, thus creating the "autism spectrum disorder", was not helpful. That broadening of the diagnosis, along with the increasing awareness of the disorder, is largely responsible for the steep rise in autism cases that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called “an epidemic” and has attributed to theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject, like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol. But the same diagnosis now applies to both people who are non-verbal, frequently engage in self-destructive behavior such as pounding their heads against the floor, and may require full-time care, but also to people who are merely somewhat socially awkward, possibly engage in repetitive behaviors, and have a narrow range of interests. "Everything changed when we included Asperger’s [in the diagnosis of autism],” said Dr. Eric Fombonne, a psychiatrist and researcher at Oregon Health & Science University. He noted that in the earliest studies of autism rates, 75% of people with the diagnosis had intellectual disabilities. Now, only about a third do.
(The NYT link is paywalled, but a shorter non-paywalled version is here.)

Submission + - Capital One Leaves International Customers Unable to Use their new ATM cards (capitalone.com)

Submitted by n0w0rries
n0w0rries writes: Just a heads up to any Capital One customers who travel internationally. I got a new Capital One ATM card in August, and they've switched networks. I live full time in Mexico, and their ATM card no longer works at BanBanjio, Santander, or HSBC. I have not found a bank it works at yet. Because they acquired Discover, they are using their network and have removed the Visa or Mastercard symbol and associated networks, likely to save on bank fees. The new cards only work with Discover, Diners Club, and Pulse.
When traveling, the most cost effective way to get your USD to the local currency is to use local bank ATM machines. Bringing cash is problematic, you usually get screwed on the rate, there are limits due to money launderers, and usually there are more hoops to jump through, like requiring your passport or other documentation.
#capitalone #santander #hsbc #banbanjio

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