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Submission + - Polestar Banned From Selling Cars in the U.S. Starting With Model Year 2027 (autoevolution.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Polestar is now winding down its car sales in the United States, following the decision of the U.S. Department of Commerce

The Connected Vehicle Rule is a regulation that restricts the import and sale of vehicles equipped with Vehicle Connectivity Systems (VCS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) tied to foreign adversaries, primarily from China and Russia.

Polestar is owned by Chinese auto giant Geely, which has also been the parent company of Swedish brand Volvo since 2010. However, Volvo has recently been granted authorization to sell connected vehicles in the United States.

Submission + - Cracks Discovered on Wings of A380s Prompt Urgent Inspection of 16 Aircraft (archive.is)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: On Monday, June 22, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive targeting 16 Airbus A380 aircraft after the agency determined cracks found on certain aircraft could "reduce the structural integrity of the wing."

The impacted aircraft include 15 Emirates planes and one Qantas aircraft

The A380, the world's largest passenger plane, has faced similar emergency inspections over past wing cracks

Submission + - Should AI Ban Users Without Human Review? (medium.com)

Submitted by VTAndrew
VTAndrew writes: Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of content moderation and account enforcement across major online platforms. While AI can help identify spam, scams, and harmful content at internet scale, what happens when the system gets it wrong?

A recently published Medium article examines this question through the experience of a Facebook account suspension that was reportedly initiated by an automated system, followed by an automated appeal denial and no meaningful path to human review.

The article argues that the issue isn't AI itself—it's allowing AI to become investigator, decision-maker, and appeals process without effective human oversight.

The broader concern is that platforms like Meta have evolved into critical pieces of modern infrastructure. They host community groups, school communications, local government announcements, business pages, political discussions, and years of personal history. Their ecosystems also span multiple interconnected services, meaning a single enforcement action can affect Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and Meta hardware tied to the same account.

This concern extends beyond a single user's experience. A growing advocacy effort at People Over Platforms documents thousands of reports from users who say they were wrongfully locked out of their accounts and calls for stronger transparency, meaningful appeals, and human oversight.

The movement originated with a Change.org petition that has gathered more than 63,000 supporters before transitioning to an independent nonprofit focused on digital rights and platform accountability.

Media outlets in multiple countries have also reported on users who say they were wrongly disabled by Meta's automated enforcement systems, with some accounts later restored after additional review.

Rather than asking whether AI should be used for moderation, the article asks a different question:

If AI is empowered to make decisions that can revoke a person's digital identity, communications, communities, and purchased ecosystem, should there always be a meaningful human appeal available?

Medium article:

https://medium.com/@vtadorsett...

People Over Platforms:

https://www.peopleoverplatform...

Original Change.org petition:

https://www.change.org/p/hold-...

Submission + - 'Stringy' universe could unravel the theory of the cosmos (science.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Like a vast bowl of spaghetti, the universe may be stringy on length scales far larger than cosmologists have long assumed. In a study published today in Nature, two researchers argue galaxies align in enormous filaments even on scales where the cosmos should appear smooth and uniform. If correct, the bold claim would upend the cosmological principle, the conceptual cornerstone of the standard cosmological model.

“This is serious,” says Subir Sarkar, a cosmologist at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the work. “If there is a real contradiction between what you expect and what you find, that would be progress, right?” Abandoning the cosmological principle could even eliminate the need for dark energy, the mysterious space-stretching stuff thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, some cosmologists say. But others are skeptical of the new claim.

Submission + - DHL introduces a trimaran sailboat line for freight.

Submitted by Qbertino
Qbertino writes: DHL is about to launch operations of a modern sailboat freight-line in partnership with the french cargo trimaran operator VELA. The ships can carry 600 europaletts of freight and the line is set to operate across the atlantic between Caen-Ouistreham and New Haven as an option for low-emissions freight. VELA has a detailed press release on the topic. Looks like commercial sailing is moving towards critical mass again. Interesting.

Submission + - report sheds light on ICE's booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: Spending on government contracts with tech firms that use AI-powered tools to track immigrants has soared to record levels under Trump 2.0, report says.

A new report sheds light on the unprecedented growth of the US government’s immigration surveillance arsenal, revealing fresh details about how spending on technology and AI tools to find and track migrants has soared to record levels during Donald Trump’s second term.

The report, released this week, analyzed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contracts with 11 companies the authors said provide surveillance tech. They found the money awarded to these firms doubled from 2024 to 2025, to just over $310m – and in 2026, that number soared to a record $513m.

Submission + - New Study Shows Tall Vehicle Hoods Cause Hundreds More Deaths Per Year (caranddriver.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Car and Driver magazine reports that a new study conducted by the New York Times shows that the increase in vehicle hood height seen over the last two and a half decades, mainly due to the rise in popularity of large SUVs and trucks, has resulted in several thousand deaths that otherwise may not have happened. The study shows that while automakers and regulators have focused on occupant safety, they have turned a blind eye to pedestrian safety, which has fallen since around 2009.
Researchers looked at four main datasets in their investigation: crash test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) from 2016 to 2024; NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS); vehicle measurement data from Expert AutoStats; and vehicle registration data from S&P Global from 2002 to 2024.
The researchers concluded that the increased danger to pedestrians is caused by two main culprits.
First, large SUVs and trucks have taller hoods, raising the point of impact above most people's center of gravity and pushing them to the ground, typically hard asphalt, rather than up and onto the hood, which is designed to absorb impacts.
Second, with larger A-pillars designed to protect occupants in rollover crashes, modern cars tend to have larger blind spots than cars sold at the turn of the century (presuming the 21st century).
The shift toward vehicles with taller hoods led to roughly 3000 deaths between 2016 and 2024. This number is conservative because it does not include crashes that take place in parking lots, driveways, or private roads, which aren't part of the federal database.
The data also showed an estimated 2.8 percent increase in the odds of a pedestrian fatality for every one-inch increase in vehicle hood height. Between two different scenarios, one decreasing the hood height of every vehicle in the dataset by 3 inches, and the second using a random sampling of hood heights from 2002 across 10,000 simulated crashes, between 2624 (for scenario two) and 3077 (for scenario one) lives could have been saved from 2016 to 2024.

Submission + - Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI Are Backing Effort To Stop Respiratory Infections (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: [T]he payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new $500 million nonprofit whose goal is preventing both the common cold and the flu. Its eventual aim is to get rid of respiratory viruses altogether. The new organization, called Intercept, will use grants and investments to back prevention approaches, including vaccines, as well as large-scale air-cleaning systems for schools, offices, and other public spaces. In addition to Stripe, other funders include Anthropic, Flu Lab, and the OpenAI Foundation, as well as Bill Gates and several traders at the quantitative investing fund Jane Street Capital, according to an Intercept spokesperson.

“I think we treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but have really underweighted the burden that they impose on society,” says Nan Ransohoff, the Stripe executive leading the initiative along with Charlie Petty, a venture capitalist who joined Stripe this year. On average, people spend 5% of their lifetime fighting a cold or the flu, according to Ransohoff. Despite that, drug companies put relatively little effort into preventing colds. Part of the problem is that the sniffles are caused by more than 200 different viruses, according to the American Lung Association, with rhinoviruses being the most common culprits. There are so many that it typically doesn’t pay to try to stop any one of them with a vaccine. “When pharma companies look at it, it’s not as attractive as other things they could work on,” says Ransohoff. “So it hasn’t attracted the resources.”

[...] The project takes inspiration from efforts to fight the covid-19 virus, where Veesler’s group was among those involved in the speedy development of vaccines, antiviral drugs, and antibodies. According to Ransohoff, Intercept’s advisors will include Peter Marks, a former top FDA official, as well as Moncef Slaoui, the pharmaceutical executive who led the US coronavirus vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed. A key challenge for Intercept will be coming up with ways to counter many viruses at one time. That accounts for the interest in air-cleaning technology, such as using strong ultraviolet light to inactivate viruses. The idea, the group says, is to remove them from the air in the same way municipalities remove impurities from the water supply before it’s piped to people’s homes.

Submission + - When AI Becomes Judge, Jury, and Appeals Court (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Medium article explores the growing use of AI for account enforcement and moderation decisions on large social platforms. The author argues that the real issue isn't AI making mistakes—mistakes are inevitable—but the lack of meaningful human review when those mistakes occur.

The article describes an account suspension process in which an AI system made the initial enforcement decision, an automated appeal upheld it, and human support representatives were reportedly unable to revisit the case because it had already been marked as resolved.

The broader question raised is one of governance rather than technology: if platforms increasingly rely on AI to make decisions that can revoke access to social networks, communications, communities, purchased hardware ecosystems, and digital identities, what level of human oversight should be required?

The article also discusses the concept of "blast radius" in system design, arguing that centralized digital identity systems amplify the consequences of false positives when enforcement actions cascade across multiple services.

What level of human review should be required when AI systems are empowered to make decisions with significant real-world consequences?

Submission + - Google's online dominance is showing signs of cracking in AI era (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Search engine DuckDuckGo is seeing install rates jump by up to 40% a week. Microsoft’s Bing reached 1 billion users for the first time last quarter. And Google’s search engine traffic is down slightly over the past month, while ChatGPT is up a tick.

Google still controls 90% of the search market, its stock price has more than doubled in the past year and revenue growth in the first quarter was the fastest for any period since 2022. But the AI concern persists as more people turn to chatbots as their preferred method to track down information. ChatGPT consistently ranks as the top free app on Apple iOS, and Anthropic’s Claude is currently eighth, one spot behind Google Gemini.

Submission + - Walmart's first nuclear deal shows demand beyond AI data centers (msn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Walmart is signing a long-term contract to buy nuclear power for the first time ever, a promising sign that the industry’s future is supported by more than just the AI data center boom.

The retail giant agreed on Tuesday to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois owned by Constellation Energy for its operations in the area, including its stores and a high-tech warehouse in Illinois that stores and sorts perishable food.

Walmart will buy 176 megawatts of power from the plant over a 15-year period, or enough power to serve around 150,000 homes.

The Walmart deal will allow Constellation to expand the capacity of the Illinois plant by 30 megawatts, a process known as an uprate, which can involve replacing older equipment and improving efficiency.

Walmart, which has pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions from its U.S. operations by 2040, will also receive the environmental attributes associated with the nuclear energy, which generates electricity without carbon emissions.

Submission + - Mushroom Behind 'Tiny Human' Visions Lacks Genes For Known Psychedelics (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: When eaten undercooked, the mushroom can produce vivid visions of miniature people â" not unlike Gulliver on his travels to Lilliput.

"Biosynthetic gene mining of the L. asiatica genome found no close hits with any genes known in the production of mushroom psychoactive compounds," write the researchers in their published paper.

"This supports our hypothesis of the presence of a novel unidentified metabolite responsible for the unique hallucinogenic properties of L. asiatica."

Submission + - China Reclaims Fastest Supercomputer at 2 Exaflops (top500.org)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: The 67th edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was announced today at the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg, Germany. LineShine, a previously unlisted system installed in China, debuts at No. 1, displacing El Capitan as the world’s most powerful supercomputer as measured by the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark. LineShine achieved 2.198 Exaflop/s on HPL — about 80 percent of its 2.736 Exaflop/s theoretical peak — making it the first system on the TOP500 to exceed two exaflops of sustained double-precision performance using CPUs only. Installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen (NSCS) and built by the Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center, the system is based on a custom Chinese processor and the “LingKun” platform: 13.79 million cores across 304-core LX2 processors running at 1.55 GHz, linked by the proprietary LingQi interconnect and running Kylin OS. LineShine draws approximately 42.2 megawatts of power, for an efficiency of 52.07 Gigaflops/Watt. Its debut marks the first time since 2017 that a Chinese system has led the TOP500, and it also takes over the No. 1 position on the HPCG ranking with 22.00 HPCG-Petaflop/s. On the HPL-MxP mixed-precision benchmark, LineShine reached 7.92 Exaflop/s for fourth place, a comparatively modest 3.6x speedup over its HPL score that points to a CPU-only design without dedicated low-precision accelerators.

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