Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - Blue Origin rocket New Glenn 4 explodes during static fire (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: Many sources. Including Orlando Sentinel.

All personnel accounted for. The rocket, planned to launch Project Leo internet satellites for Amazon in the coming days is lost. The detonation was significant, likely destroying the launch pad and ground support equipment nearby. Speculation is it could be a year or more before Blue Origin can attempt another launch as this is their only launch facility. Another New Glenn booster was on a hangar nearby that appears damaged. No status on that booster yet.

Just days ago NASA announced the selection of New Glenn for launch of two rapid development rovers later this year.

Submission + - Yale Reinstates Mandatory Standardized Testing Admissions Policy (dailycaller.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Yale University is mandating standardized testing (SAT/ACT) scores for all first-year and transfer students after a 6-year test-optional hiatus, the university announced Wednesday.

Beginning in the fall admissions cycle, all undergraduate applicants must submit standardized testing scores from either the SAT or the ACT.

The office of undergraduate admissions dropped its mandatory requirement of scores in 2020 following the COVID-19 school shutdowns. Over a thousand other American universities did the same. (RELATED: Vast Majority Of Americans Say 4-Year College Just Not Worth It, Poll Shows)

Yale moved to a test-flexible admissions policy in 2024, allowing applicants to submit scores from either the SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement (AP), or International Baccalaureate. The university's reinstated policy marks a return to its pre-2020 requirements.

Submission + - China Is Testing Its State Surveillance Model Abroad (nytimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: When a remote Pacific village asked for help with rowdy youth, the Chinese police arrived with a surveillance system. Then came the backlash.

Their solution was to introduce an obscure Mao-era community surveillance system: the Fengqiao Experience.

Named after Fengqiao, a town in eastern China, the system encouraged neighbors to spy and snitch on one another to root out political enemies. The system has been revived under Mr. Xi as part of a push to snuff out any challenges to the Chinese Communist Party.

In China, the system calls for the police to monitor individual households in sprawling apartment complexes, in one example assigning each unit a color code that denoted whether occupants presented a security risk. The police have also visited the homes of minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to promote party policies. Government workers have visited churches to give “anti-cult” lectures. And companies are required to register their employees in police databases.

The idea of introducing such a heavy-handed style of state surveillance in the Solomon Islands alarmed local politicians and observers in nearby countries like Australia, who worried it could give the government the tools to stifle freedoms.

The Fengqiao pilot was suspended after an outcry. And the election this month of Matthew Wale, a prime minister who has historically been skeptical of Beijing, raises questions about China’s foothold in the country, and whether its ideas travel as easily as the party hopes.

Submission + - Two Indicted for Publishing AI Deepfake Porn In Violation of TAKE IT DOWN Act (justice.gov) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Earlier today, at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, two criminal complaints were unsealed charging Cornelius Shannon and Arturo Hernandez with violations of the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which was enacted one year ago and prohibits the nonconsensual publication of AI-generated digital forgeries (deepfake) pornography. Shannon and Hernandez allegedly posted thousands of images and videos that appeared to depict real people nude and/or engaging in sexual acts. The victims included actresses, singers and political figures. Hernandez also posted hundreds of depictions of non-public figures appearing to engage in sexual acts. Hernandez was arrested today in Bedias, Texas, and will be arraigned in the Eastern District of New York at a later date. Shannon was arrested today in New Jersey and will appear this afternoon in Brooklyn before United States Magistrate Judge Peggy Cross-Goldenberg.

Submission + - SPACEXAI HUGE Build Speed Advantage (substack.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “XAI AI data center economics are better when you can start a project and finish it in 12 months and get it rented and paid off while competitors are still building. An active AI Gigawatt of data center in the hand is worth $20 billion per year while an under construction Gigawatt data center is bleeding $5-15 billion per year of cash. XAI is building them for about $30-40 billion per gigawatt while competitors need $50 billion and add on another $10 billion or more in extra financing costs for a multi-year project.”

Submission + - Justice Department settles with IBM over alleged DEI practices (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IBM’s CEO created hiring policies to fire white men, and keep them from being promoted.

The Justice Department touted the settlement as a major win for the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI policies, saying it is the first successful use of the False Claims Act under the department’s new Civil Rights Fraud Initiative. Under that act, federal officials investigated whether IBM lied on federal forms to receive government contracts when it certified that the company was in compliance with antidiscrimination laws.

IBM did not admit to wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

Submission + - NASA practically eliminates any Starliner flights before ISS retires (behindtheblack.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In a procurement announcement on May 18, 2026, NASA added another three to six crewed flights to ISS to its contract with SpaceX, covering all missions possible through 2030, which in turn practically eliminates the possibility it will buy any manned flights on Boeing's Starliner capsule.

In a May 18 procurement filing, NASA announced its intent to add six post-certification missions, or PCMs, to SpaceX’s commercial crew contract on a sole-source basis. The agency would order up to three of those missions at the time it added them, formally starting preparations for them.

... Adding six missions to the contract would cover three years of ISS operations, at a rate of one mission every six months. With the currently contracted missions, running through Crew-14, flying through the fall of 2027, the extension would provide coverage through late 2030, when the ISS is slated for retirement. NASA has previously stated the last crewed mission would likely spend a year at the station.

Though it is not stated yet exactly how much SpaceX will earn with these additional missions, based on previous contracts the revenue will likely range from $1 to $2 billion. Overall, SpaceX has probably received somewhere between $4 to $6 billion additional earnings that was supposed to go to Boeing.

Instead, Boeing is now out of the picture entirely, though NASA is being very coy about saying so.

Submission + - Amsterdam Moves to Rein In "Fatbikes" With Park Ban (straitstimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: City officials have implemented an unprecedented ban on “fatbikes” in Amsterdam’s iconic Vondelpark to protect the crowds of locals and tourists who visit daily on foot, traditional hire bicycles, or roller skates.

The restriction follows growing public frustration over youths tearing through the city on the robust electric vehicles. Reports of “fatbike gangs” causing havoc recently culminated in a petition against aggressive riders that gathered 2,400 signatures, with organisers arguing

Pavements are racetracks. Public space no longer feels safe.

Named for their ultra-thick tyres, fatbikes are capable of hitting speeds up to 60km/h. Sharing space on Amsterdam’s famously crowded cycle paths, they have increasingly become a source of friction with traditional cyclists who view the heavy, fast vehicles as a menace.

Last year saw a rise in public concern about the number of asylum seekers in the Netherlands who appear to be using these typically expensive items as their main mode of transportation.

Comment Re: Thank you (Score 0) 81

LPR surveillance is unconstitutional.

No, it is not. There is no such article in the Constitution.

If they want to use LPR information, then make it a warranting process.

Ah, you're implying, the 4th Amendment covers license plates? No, it doesn't — the license is outside in plain sight. If I can legally see it, I can record it.

Now, the very requirement to have the license plate in the first place — that seems quite bogus to me. Not unconstitutional — just wrong. There is no argument for license plates on personal vehicles on the road, that wouldn't also apply to actual persons on the same road...

Comment This will need to go to the US Supreme Court (Score 2) 132

by schwit1 (#66152619) Attached to: Minnesota Becomes First State To Ban Prediction Markets

Nevada, Maryland, and Ohio federal district courts sided with states.
Nevada: Dissolved Kalshi injunction; ruled sports contracts resemble gambling, not CFTC swaps.
Maryland: Denied preemption; state gambling laws apply.
Ohio: Denied injunction; similar reasoning.

New Jersey and Tennessee courts have favored Kalshi/CFTC.

Submission + - Zombifying the universities (joannejacobs.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: AI use on college campuses “threatens to turn a generation of promising young Americans into a class of drooling morons,” writes Owen Yingling, a University of Chicago philosophy major, in The Great Zombification. “It will grotesquely disfigure, if not destroy, the university as an institute in every way that it is imagined — as a sacrosanct humanist project, as a moral training ground, or even as a vulgar sweatshop for job training,” he argues in The New Critic.

Elite universities are spending millions of dollars to figure out how to “integrate” AI in the classroom, Yingling writes. What it really means is substituting AI “for learning, teaching, and conversing.”

Some will wait for the university system to crumble, hoping to build something new from the ashes, he writes. The ivied halls “will remain, to be observed and treated respectfully — like old cathedrals, mainline Protestant churches, and most of the European continent.”

Slashdot Top Deals

FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies.

Close