Comment Colorado Bill Requires ID Checks embedded into OS (Score 1) 21
Colorado Senate Bill Would Require Apple and Google to Embed ID Checks into the Operating Systems
Comment States need to use the Mississippi model (Score 2) 74
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/0...
Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country on national tests in 2013, to a top 10 state for fourth graders learning to read — even as test scores have fallen almost everywhere else.
Comment Discord used for child-grooming (Score 1) 21
https://x.com/bx_on_x/status/2...
Things like this may cost them big if they don't do age verification.
Submission + - Will Texas Overtake Northern Virginia as the Data Center Capital? (datacenterknowledge.com)
schwit1 writes: The North American data center industry has entered a new phase of expansion, driven by hyperscale and AI demand that has pushed vacancy rates to just 1% for the second consecutive year, according to JLL’s latest market analysis.
With 39 GW of active capacity tracked across the region and a substantial 35 GW pipeline under construction, the industry is expanding rapidly – but not where it traditionally has.
Nearly two-thirds of new capacity is being built outside established hubs such as Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley, signaling a structural shift in how and where infrastructure is deployed.
Texas is emerging as the biggest beneficiary of this expansion, with 6.5 GW currently under construction – enough to position the state to overtake Northern Virginia as the world’s largest data center market by 2030.
Frontier markets such as Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Ohio are also gaining traction, fueled by access to power, available land, and favorable business conditions. Project scale is accelerating sharply, with more than 10 developments exceeding 1 GW now underway, reflecting the immense infrastructure demands of AI workloads.
With 39 GW of active capacity tracked across the region and a substantial 35 GW pipeline under construction, the industry is expanding rapidly – but not where it traditionally has.
Nearly two-thirds of new capacity is being built outside established hubs such as Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley, signaling a structural shift in how and where infrastructure is deployed.
Texas is emerging as the biggest beneficiary of this expansion, with 6.5 GW currently under construction – enough to position the state to overtake Northern Virginia as the world’s largest data center market by 2030.
Frontier markets such as Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Ohio are also gaining traction, fueled by access to power, available land, and favorable business conditions. Project scale is accelerating sharply, with more than 10 developments exceeding 1 GW now underway, reflecting the immense infrastructure demands of AI workloads.
Comment One more untrustworthy TV maker (Score 1, Interesting) 36
Chinese law, specifically Article 7 of the National Intelligence Law compels all citizens and organizations to act as covert arms of state security on demand, even if overseas. There is no saying no. There is no even admitting it’s happened. Chinese owned technology companies can deny this as much as they like, in fact they have to, but the law is clear.
Submission + - Why Music Producers Are Finishing Tracks Inside Cadillacs (autoblog.com)
schwit1 writes: Cadillac has earned a reputation for being America’s benchmark luxury brand. Even as rivals like Lincoln and Lucid Motors push into the premium space, the marque continues to redefine what a high-end cabin experience means. Lately, that effort has moved beyond materials, screens, and tech into sound. At a recent experience at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), music producers used the so-called “Car Test” inside modern Cadillacs to help decide when a track is truly finished. Not only is Cadillac branching out into Formula 1, but it might even step into the music world.
What is the "Car Test"?
The Car Test is simple in theory. Producers play a newly mixed track in a car to hear how it translates outside a controlled studio. Vehicles remain one of the most common places people listen to music, so the cabin easily reveals issues with balance, bass response, or spatial placement, especially those that feature Dolby Atmos. In essence, Dolby Atmos is an advanced surround-sound system that can highlight minute imperfections that might slip by in traditional mixing setups. Dobly Atmos has become a staple feature for luxury automakers, with Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi all offering Atmos-equipped cabins.
What is the "Car Test"?
The Car Test is simple in theory. Producers play a newly mixed track in a car to hear how it translates outside a controlled studio. Vehicles remain one of the most common places people listen to music, so the cabin easily reveals issues with balance, bass response, or spatial placement, especially those that feature Dolby Atmos. In essence, Dolby Atmos is an advanced surround-sound system that can highlight minute imperfections that might slip by in traditional mixing setups. Dobly Atmos has become a staple feature for luxury automakers, with Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi all offering Atmos-equipped cabins.
Submission + - Email blunder exposes $90bn Russian oil smuggling ring (ft.com)
schwit1 writes: Financial Times has identified 48 seemingly independent companies working from different physical addresses that appear to be operating together to disguise the origin of Russian oil, particularly from Kremlin-controlled Rosneft. The network was discovered because they all share a single private email server.
Comment Re:Some of Us... (Score 2, Insightful) 87
A consumption tax would eliminate much of the IRS. Nine states already have no income tax, and they function fine.
Upsides
- The government no longer tracks every dollar you earn or where it comes from.
- Businesses already collect sales taxes, and most of the process is automated. Adding a national consumption tax would require only modest changes.
- The IRS could shrink dramatically—no more processing 100 million individual returns every April 15.
- Taxpayers would be free from filing hassles, deductions, audits, and the annual April rush.
I have zero sympathy for H&R Block or TurboTax. They're products of a corrupt, bloated system.
Downsides and Fixes
A pure consumption tax is regressive—it hits lower-income people harder as a share of their earnings, since they spend most of what they make. (A pure income tax is regressive too without progressive brackets or exemptions.)
Income-tax regressivity is fixed by exempting the first ~$25,000 or so of income. A consumption tax can be fixed the same way: Send every U.S. citizen a monthly prebate (e.g., ~$200 per person, a rough estimate) to offset sales taxes paid on essentials up to the poverty line. This makes the effective tax progressive for low earners while keeping it simple.
The federal income tax needs to go. A well-designed consumption tax with a prebate would be simpler, less intrusive, and better for growth—without the current system's complexity or bias against saving and investment.
Comment Re:Whut?? (Score 1) 73
I wouldn't put it past some IOT devices to have it enabled.
Submission + - The psychology of self-driving cars: Why the technology doesn't suit human brain (techxplore.com)
schwit1 writes: According to Professor of Engineering Psychology Ronald McLeod, cars with autonomous features place unprecedented psychological demands on drivers—demands we are currently drastically unprepared for. McLeod is a world-renowned Human Factors specialist, which involves analyzing and understanding how humans interact with various autonomous systems, from industrial machines to aircraft systems.
In his book "Transitioning to Autonomy", Professor McLeod draws on decades of research into how humans interact with automated systems. But it was his personal experience buying a new car with autonomous features that really opened his eyes to the scale of the problem.
"I was handed the keys with no training whatsoever and let loose into Glasgow rush-hour traffic," he recalls. "No research ethics committee would ever allow such an experiment, yet this is happening to drivers every day around the world."
Most cars manufactured today feature at least some level of driver support technology, and in fact some driving assistance technology is now mandatory in new cars, with the intention of reducing accidents caused by human error. These include lane assistance technology to keep cars driving straight without steering, automatic braking and road sign scanning to ensure you are driving at the correct speed.
The issue lies in a fundamental shift in thinking that most of us would not recognize. When autonomous features engage, drivers do not simply become passengers—they become something far more challenging: supervisory controllers. Instead of actively steering and accelerating, they must monitor the system's ongoing performance and stand ready to intervene at a moment's notice.
This creates what psychologists call a "vigilance task"—maintaining attention during periods of low activity. And, it is something humans are notoriously bad at.
In his book "Transitioning to Autonomy", Professor McLeod draws on decades of research into how humans interact with automated systems. But it was his personal experience buying a new car with autonomous features that really opened his eyes to the scale of the problem.
"I was handed the keys with no training whatsoever and let loose into Glasgow rush-hour traffic," he recalls. "No research ethics committee would ever allow such an experiment, yet this is happening to drivers every day around the world."
Most cars manufactured today feature at least some level of driver support technology, and in fact some driving assistance technology is now mandatory in new cars, with the intention of reducing accidents caused by human error. These include lane assistance technology to keep cars driving straight without steering, automatic braking and road sign scanning to ensure you are driving at the correct speed.
The issue lies in a fundamental shift in thinking that most of us would not recognize. When autonomous features engage, drivers do not simply become passengers—they become something far more challenging: supervisory controllers. Instead of actively steering and accelerating, they must monitor the system's ongoing performance and stand ready to intervene at a moment's notice.
This creates what psychologists call a "vigilance task"—maintaining attention during periods of low activity. And, it is something humans are notoriously bad at.
Submission + - Why doesn't the CDC care about Chinese biolabs in America? (spectator.com)
schwit1 writes: If you rent a cheap Airbnb house in Las Vegas, you might not be altogether surprised to find dead crickets in the garage. But a thousand vials of medical samples in several freezers – and a centrifuge? After the cleaner and one guest fell ill at a property in the city’s Sunrise Manor neighborhood last week, federal agents raided it and found a whole laboratory’s worth of scientific kit of the kind more useful to medical scientists than, say, drug dealers. Curious.
Curiouser still, the house belongs to a Chinese national named Jia Bei (Jesse) Zhu. He is currently in prison awaiting trial over a secret laboratory that (it is alleged) he was running in Reedley, California. In December 2022 an alert city official in Reedley noticed a garden hose leading into a supposedly empty building. She went inside and found three women who identified themselves as Chinese nationals, wearing white coats, masks, safety glasses and latex gloves, among the equipment of a busy laboratory with liquid nitrogen bottles and ultra-cold deep freezes.
https://x.com/mattwridley/stat...
Curiouser still, the house belongs to a Chinese national named Jia Bei (Jesse) Zhu. He is currently in prison awaiting trial over a secret laboratory that (it is alleged) he was running in Reedley, California. In December 2022 an alert city official in Reedley noticed a garden hose leading into a supposedly empty building. She went inside and found three women who identified themselves as Chinese nationals, wearing white coats, masks, safety glasses and latex gloves, among the equipment of a busy laboratory with liquid nitrogen bottles and ultra-cold deep freezes.
https://x.com/mattwridley/stat...
Submission + - Baker McKenzie Law Firm Sacks Hundreds of Employees Amid Pivot to AI (futurism.com)
schwit1 writes: In what might be an augury of how further AI related cuts could sweep other industries, it’s not the lawyers getting the axe, but instead hundreds of their support staff. These include “dozens of roles in London and Belfast,” and hundreds across functions including know-how, research, marketing, and secretarial, according to the reporting.
The cuts, which could affect up to ten percent of its global workforce, or between 600 to 1,000 people, were conducted after the company “undertook a careful review” of its “business professionals functions,” a spokesperson told ROF, with AI explicitly mentioned as a factor in the decision.
The law firm’s reported layoffs come after Anthropic’s new Claude Cowork AI agent sparked a panicked sell off that sent the stock market plunging last week. Investors feared that Claude’s plugin for automating some legal tasks and paperwork could lead to layoffs and outmode the expensive software that legal firms and other white collar organizations use.
Perhaps the fate of Baker McKenzie’s support staff confirms all those worst fears. Or it could be a sign of something else that’s been dominating the discourse in tech and finance circles recently: so-called “AI washing.”
More and more companies are justifying headcount reductions by invoking the tech’s dubious promises, with one report finding that AI was cited in the announcements of more than 54,000 layoffs last year. But critics say that business leaders are simply using AI to justify cuts that were driven by other financial reasons, and point to the fact that many firms don’t have serious AI replacements lined up to make up for the shortfall.
The cuts, which could affect up to ten percent of its global workforce, or between 600 to 1,000 people, were conducted after the company “undertook a careful review” of its “business professionals functions,” a spokesperson told ROF, with AI explicitly mentioned as a factor in the decision.
The law firm’s reported layoffs come after Anthropic’s new Claude Cowork AI agent sparked a panicked sell off that sent the stock market plunging last week. Investors feared that Claude’s plugin for automating some legal tasks and paperwork could lead to layoffs and outmode the expensive software that legal firms and other white collar organizations use.
Perhaps the fate of Baker McKenzie’s support staff confirms all those worst fears. Or it could be a sign of something else that’s been dominating the discourse in tech and finance circles recently: so-called “AI washing.”
More and more companies are justifying headcount reductions by invoking the tech’s dubious promises, with one report finding that AI was cited in the announcements of more than 54,000 layoffs last year. But critics say that business leaders are simply using AI to justify cuts that were driven by other financial reasons, and point to the fact that many firms don’t have serious AI replacements lined up to make up for the shortfall.
Comment Re:And there went any and all trust. (Score 1) 45
Exactly. Palo Alto's 15 minutes of fame, but not quite the way they wanted it.
“It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.”
- Will Rogers
Expect this to be referenced for a long time like Sony's root-kit.
Comment Nine years is not enough, not even close (Score 1, Insightful) 54
He ruined the life of an innocent person
He betrayed his countrymen for money
He compromised security for everyone
This may get people killed.
Submission + - Did Ring's Super Bowl commercial destroy its brand? (nj.com) 1
schwit1 writes: Super Bowl commercials often spark conversation, but one 2026 ad in particular has caused quite a stir.
The home security company Ring aired a Super Bowl advertisement highlighting the AI-powered Search Party feature. When a pet owner reports their pet missing in the Ring app, Search Party kicks in on participating outdoor Ring cameras, scanning the area for the missing pet.
The commercial presented the feature as a wholesome way to reunite pets with their beloved owners, but many viewers took issue with the implications of Search Party.
“Do you see what I did there? I disguised mass human surveliance [sic] as a puppy search party,” one X user wrote.
Other social media posts slammed the commercial as “creepy as can be,” “concerning” and “invasive.”
“Marketing team at Ring Camera HQ seriously sat around and was like, ‘How do we sell unconstitutional surveillance of our citizens during the Super Bowl?’ And one guy was like “DOGS!’” one person quipped.
The home security company Ring aired a Super Bowl advertisement highlighting the AI-powered Search Party feature. When a pet owner reports their pet missing in the Ring app, Search Party kicks in on participating outdoor Ring cameras, scanning the area for the missing pet.
The commercial presented the feature as a wholesome way to reunite pets with their beloved owners, but many viewers took issue with the implications of Search Party.
“Do you see what I did there? I disguised mass human surveliance [sic] as a puppy search party,” one X user wrote.
Other social media posts slammed the commercial as “creepy as can be,” “concerning” and “invasive.”
“Marketing team at Ring Camera HQ seriously sat around and was like, ‘How do we sell unconstitutional surveillance of our citizens during the Super Bowl?’ And one guy was like “DOGS!’” one person quipped.
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In every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours. -- Dr. Laurence J. Peter
