that presented themselves as "male" were paid more per task and perceived as more "human-like" than their "female" counterparts

Those complaining loudest are the ones, who can't define the term "woman".

And if a rogue AI agent actually *causes* one of those more damaging attacks, what then? "To err is human, but to really fsck things up takes a computer" and all that?

What seems to be missing here isn't just any clarity in legislation about liability for AI agents, especially labs running frontier models who seem to get free legal passes that would absolutely not be afforded to regular plebs who - potentially entirely by accident - cause an agent to hack someone else, but any serious discussion about putting those legal frameworks in place is also lacking. Seriously, WTF is up with that? How many incidents that are clearly in breach of existing computer misuse legislation do we need to get some action here, either under existing laws (including, potentially, civil law) or to start working on tweaks to existing laws to provide some specific clarity relating who is liable for any misuse of AI agents?

I get the AI labs almost certainly have a tacit "don't sue us, and we won't sue you" agreement in place for things like this to try and avoid regulation they definitely do not want because their actions are quite obviously not aligned with the regulation they are claiming they want put into place. Third parties like South Korean banks are under no such terms however, and given they are in the financial sector (or health sector in another recent example) probably have legal obligations of their own as well, so again - why are we not even hearing of any talk of legal action?

Forty bucks lets you turn pages on a non-paper device. What a world we live in.

Maybe we could just cut to the chase and go straight to Plaid Intelligence? It's not like anyone outside 1600 Pennsylvania is taking this "rebranding" seriously anyway, so why not have some fun with mocking it while we can?

At least the voters are not talking about things like Epstein, Iran, and the price of gas, which is likely the whole point; look at all the stupid, forget about the serious, and (for ~50% of the them) be sure to tick the name with "R" next to it next month like you're programmed to.

That was a new one for me too. My guess was what we used to refer to as "red tops" in the UK; the tabloid / gutter press because they typically have a red banner with the name of the paper on the front page, although some of the worst modern examples of that (the Mail & Express) actually don't have a red banner. In the mostly online world, that obviously needs to cover online-only and broadcast media forms too so "red top" seems to be falling out of use.

Apparently though, it's actually a reference to totally fake or low-quality news sites, masquerading as legitimate outlets purely to push misinformation and is named for the "Mystery Meat" by-product that resembles pink slime used as filler in some processed meats (mmm, yummy!) Defining characteristics include:

• The content is generally produced by low-wage employees, automated content production (e.g. AI), and templates. It might just list information without any analysis or context.
• Purport to cover local or hyperlocal news and to some extent are taking advantage of a decline in traditional local news.
• Many outlets are part of networks financed by partisans to push their narrative or point-of-view.

If you're thinking that mostly means the likes of Reach's portfolio of garbage and so-called "independent journalist" sites, take a look at the default Microsoft Edge homepage on MSN, which would totally qualify. It's clearly largely AI-generated, highly formulaic/template based, seldom provides any analysis or context, pretends to be local (because clickbait sites that include a country's name in them are *totally* relevant to another country entirely), and, yup, is financed by someone with a definite narrative to push. It clearly only exists to get people to doomscroll and generate clicks and ad-revenue. Bingo! Full house!

Heads *need* to roll though, but I'm not sure anyone with a say in the matter at the Pentagon realises that, let alone why is really does need to be the case. The US' own judiciary has been pretty clear on this; whenever a lawyer has been caught using AI-generated submissions that contain hallucinations some form of censure has ensured PDQ. It's similar in industry as well; multiple instances of employees using AI without checking the facts that have subsequently been either disciplined, fired, or (if they are senior enough and the screw-up warrants it) issued a golden parachute.

Now, look at the situation on the ground. This school has been there for around a decade, and it is *very* obviously a school - pink and blue painted play areas, with assembly areas and sports facilities suitable for kids; that is totally NOT a military PT facility within the larger complex. Sure, it's surrounded by IRGC facilities, but absolutely no military anywhere else in the world co-locates their military's family accommodation blocks and support facilities close to the operations blocks and facilities to make it easier for their staff & troops, right? Oh, wait, yes, they do, don't they? Not always, sure, but often enough that the US response here matters, because if they try and sweep this under the rug "because AI", then they just made all their similar facilities viable targets "because AI". There's a reason everyone else, including US allies, were quick to publically condemn this, and even say it might be a war crime because of failure to properly assess the strike's potential for collateral damage, and that's to make it absolutely clear they do not consider this have acceptable levels of collateral damage, let alone be a legitimate target.

Don't forget, the IRGC tend to be fanatics even by Iranian standards, and are often either willing to strap on a suicide vest or can motivate others to do it for them. 123 dead kids means a *LOT* of bereaved parents, brothers, sisters, and other family members, many of whom are probably already linked to the IRGC, who are going to need a lot less motivation to do something a little more radical than just march along the street waving flags and chanting "Death to America!" the next time they are asked to do something for their country. What the US does here is totally going to be interpreted as setting precedent by Iran, and quite possibly by other countries and groups within their axis, should it come to a conflict or just an opportunistic attempt at some terrorism.

I think there's a bit of a difference though. Regardless of hat colour, most hackers have going to have at least some sense of what the likely repercussions of their actions might be and, even when those standards are very low indeed, are probably not going to think doing something that could cause serious loss of life "for the Lulz" is a good life option. They might make a mistake here and there, but how many times have you read about some random hacker *deliberately* doing something that would definitely cause loss of life in full knowledge that it was going to happen outside of on the periphery of an actual conflict?

GANs on the other hand have no such moral compass, sense of self-preservation, or keen interest in avoiding lengthy spells in government run institutions where they'll in all likelihood get to make some interesting new "friends" (unless it's a web forum they hijacked in Germany, apparently). They'll just carry on trying to complete whatever poorly defined objective they have been set, within whatever limited / technically absent guardrails they can't circumvent - the pattern here seems very much that meeting the objective has more weight in the models than any guardrails. If a GAN somehow computes that global thermonuclear war is a required step to its objective of having a nice game of chess, then you'd better hope it warms up with a LOT of Tic-Tac-Toe.

One model going down is happenstance, two — a coincidence, the third one — it's enemy action.

— James Bond

Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

-

This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

"Hi, BYD, set the temperature to 21 degrees."
"Hi, BYD, turn off the air conditioning."
"Hi, BYD, volume down/up."
"Hi, BYD, next song."

Saw this on an Atto3, and it worked surprisingly well. Not perfect, but just about all the controls you might need to adjust while driving that are not on the wheel or stalks are covered. I also prefer physical controls that I can operate through muscle memory for everything, but voice control seems like a good move to address the obvious safety concern that moving to many controls to a touch screen brings. Fact is, this kind of UI is what Millennials and later have grown up on, so barring some safety edict from a major market, like China's ban on retracting door handles, it's not going away. That leaves those of us that prefer physical controls to either get used to it, find a car that keeps the balance sane (VAG group seems to be moving in this direction), or squabbling over the declining supply of roadworthy cars that predate the screens taking over.

I think there may be a bit of back-and-forth while marques work out which controls are adjusted while driving and probably ought to have a tactile control and how best to present the UI to minimise eyes-on time by the driver if they do try and adjust things while moving, but the battle to retain fully tactile controls is probably already lost. Either way, any controls are almost certainly all going to be linked into the same car management / data capture system, and any physical controls will be no more independent that those specialist control keyboard add-ons you can get for PCs. That data can be monetized, and there's no way any marque is going to pass up on that - ultimately, as BMW has demonstrated, they want as much control over their car (what, you thought it was yours just because you paid for it?) as Microsoft has over a Windows PC.

Joking aside, there's a much more subtle change too. Look at the quoted wording from the astronauts: "*our* nation", "inspire *this* nation". Even at the height of the US-Soviet cold war it was still "for *all* mankind".

I get Trump's order is very much aimed at the NASA and the US (and probably getting his name onto it somehow), so can give that a pass, but the astronauts had an opportunity to rise above all that partisanship and slip in a message of much needed global unity, yet failed to do so. There are precious few institutions left in the world that can at least try and claim to be at least somewhat above / outside the direct influence of politics, and it looks like we're about to lose another one. Quite possibly for good once the ISS is finally decommissioned.

It wasn't 7 years to find the right spot. It was 7 years to realize Texas isn't as accommodating as he hoped, and he can buy off a broke state cheaper than a rich state. Of course, finding enough people to move to the Texan Everglades was easy compared to finding enough who will live in the bayous to run his steel penis rocket facilities.

Not only the sensors. The Insulet Omnipod Insulin pump is also a 24x7 device (I've done wear studies for it). Bath, swim, it keeps on pumping away.