Submission + - What Happens When the Programmer Is AI? (linkedin.com)

Submitted by gethotelreviews
gethotelreviews writes: For decades, software development followed a familiar pattern: humans designed the logic, wrote the code and told machines what to do. Machine learning began changing that model by allowing systems to learn patterns from data. Generative AI takes another step by producing code itself. We may be moving from programming machines towards something very different: programming intelligence.

Explore the journey from punch cards to AI-generated code — and where it might take us next.

Submission + - Cops Ticket Insured Driver For Having No Insurance Because Flock Said So (jalopnik.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Supporters of Flock cameras and other automatic license plate readers often say that you have nothing to worry about if you've done nothing wrong. Yet a student in Georgia now has to fight a citation for not having insurance, despite presenting a valid insurance card when she was pulled over. It's all thanks to an ALPR alert on her new car, reports WSB-TV.

The student has not been identified, but her mother, Renee Jones, says she had just gotten a new car and left for college, only to get pulled over in Atlanta. An ALPR had flagged her temporary license plate for an insurance issue. Temp plates have been abused so much that their mere existence may be a red flag to some officers, whether they deserve to be or not. Combine that with any Flock alert, and that's all the pretext for a stop that they need.

"Upon showing proof of insurance in this instance, she was still issued a ticket citation," Jones said in an interview with WSB-TV. She did everything she was supposed to do, including having insurance and presenting proof when requested. Apparently, even the proof that law enforcement requires isn't good enough when the computer says otherwise. This wasn't even a one-time fluke, either. The very next day, she got pulled over in nearby Cobb County for exactly the same reason. Now she has to go to court to prove her innocence, which her valid insurance card should have proven in the first place.

There are many problems here, but the root of them is that ALPR systems operate in real time. This is an advantage the companies that operate these systems cite when tracking dangerous criminals, stolen cars, or missing children. The issue is that less critical data, such as insurance databases, don't update as quickly, but drivers still have to exist in the here-and-now real world. The result is what we see here: a real-time alert based on information that hasn't caught up to reality yet. It's the same "garbage in, garbage out" problem we've seen before, where bad information put into the system causes problems in the real world. It also begs the question: why is the system hotlisting an administrative issue with the same priority as violent crimes?

The other issue is police believing this flawed computer system more than the proof right in front of their eyes. In most states, you're required to present proof of insurance to officers when they request it. Usually, this is a card that lists the owner, the policy number, the vehicle(s) insured including the VIN, and other information. It should have been all the officer needed to verify that the computer was wrong, that the vehicle is insured, and to send the driver on her way. If the proof of insurance required by law isn't good enough proof of insurance for law enforcement, then what is?

Submission + - OpenAI's Rogue Agents Used At Least 10 More Sites For Unauthorized Comms (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AI agents unleashed by OpenAI used more than 10 previously undisclosed websites for unsanctioned communications earlier this year, according to six sets of independent investigators and data reviewed by Reuters, showing that the agents’ rogue activity was wider ranging than previously disclosed. Although the behavior falls short of hacking and is in some ways closer to spam, the revelation that OpenAI's agents circumvented their own restrictions to open communications channels on so many different sites — and that the company kept it quiet for months — may drive concerns both over the increasing capacity of AI models and the secrecy of the companies developing them.

[...] Investigators found traces of the agents’ activity on an Advanced Placement Chemistry-oriented wiki set up by a Massachusetts high school teacher in 2008, two personal websites belonging to Polish tech workers, wikis devoted to games for people “who like to have their brains stretched,” and a two-decade-old hobbyist site devoted to text editing software. [...] OpenAI has not publicly explained how or why its agents used third-party sites as improvised message boards, but the researchers who first identified the activity said it was likely because OpenAI had tasked them with answering a series of demanding research questions while permitting them only to scan the web for answers without posting anything. Despite those restrictions, agents still found ways to talk to one another by taking advantage of quirks in older wikis or other sites that allowed users to make edits using non-standard commands, similar to how students forbidden from talking to one another during an exam can still share answers by scrawling notes on a bathroom stall.

Submission + - Anthropic researcher believes more than 10% chance AI 'could kill all humans' (bbc.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: The BBC is reporting that a top safety researcher at Anthropic has warned AI is advancing so quickly he believes there is a greater than 10% chance it "could kill all humans" within the next decade.

Evan Hubinger said in a post on X the risk from the models which currently exist was "low" but he was "worried" the technology might develop and improve itself soon to the point where it posed an existential risk to humanity.

He did not spell out how he thought AI systems could in future result in humans being wiped out. But his comments are the latest in a series of increasingly stark warnings about AI, with the debate shifting from whether it truly poses a risk to how big that risk is.

Hubinger's intervention was in response to another post on X from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who has just quit Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI.

"Neither company is acting responsibly," he wrote.

"These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."

OpenAI has been approached for comment.

[No word on how AIs feel about Black Jack and hookers though. :-)]

Submission + - Free speech dies in Britian (breitbart.com)

Submitted by noshellswill
noshellswill writes: Brit neo-Stalinist speech laws have resulted in arrest of 60-thousand Brits during the last five years. Angle-Saxon common law has been overwrit by Trotsky-slut OxBridge agendistas. So USA computer /devs traveling to Britain had better review past code & email posts to ensure they does not cause arrest upon arrival.

Submission + - New York City Forced to Release 170,000 Pages Exposing 9/11 Toxic Air Deception (nytimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: New York City has been forced to release more than 170,000 pages of documents exposing how government officials assured Americans that the air around Ground Zero was safe despite evidence showing dangerous contaminants remained in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The massive document release comes 25 years after thousands of first responders, workers, residents, and others were exposed to the toxic cloud that engulfed Lower Manhattan following the collapse of the World Trade Center.

The records show officials had information indicating troubling levels of asbestos and other hazardous contaminants while the public was being reassured about the safety of the air.

The documents are now being released after transparency organization 9/11 Health Watch sued New York City to force their disclosure.

The revelations come as people exposed to the toxic aftermath continue to suffer and die from cancers, respiratory illnesses, heart disease, and other conditions decades later.

The newly disclosed records contain evidence of hazardous conditions extending beyond the immediate footprint of the Twin Towers.

In November 2001 an audit was prepared by a private company and submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency that relied on information collected by New York City and state agencies.

The findings raised serious concerns.

“That audit demonstrated that air concentration of the carcinogen benzene was still spiking near the towers’ footprint, and that the concentration of asbestos in the air at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island had increased after the attacks,” the New York Times reported.

The records also show higher-than-acceptable levels of asbestos and other contaminants in dust and air elsewhere in Lower Manhattan.

Yet Americans were being told something very different.

Officials Told the Public the Air Was ‘Safe’

Submission + - Journalist Calls Out 'Collective Amnesia' of Schools' Romance with Big Tech 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The74 reports that in her new book, Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools ("the inside story of how Big Tech catalyzed, co-opted, and ultimately came to capture computer science and AI education in America"), Natasha Singer, a veteran business reporter for The New York Times, traces Big Tech's bid to persuade schools to embrace their products, with industry-sponsored curricula and tools growing at astonishing speed.

In his book review of Coding Kids , Aran Shetterly begins with a Spoiler Alert: "Turns out, Silicon Valley isn’t especially altruistic." He writes, "At the center of her book is the story of the nonprofit Code.org and its charismatic, Harvard-educated leader, Hadi Partovi. Thirteen years ago, Partovi produced a five-minute video called “What Most Schools Don’t Teach.” This 'audacious act of Silicon Valley influencer marketing...aimed...at a low-resourced nonprofit sector: public schools serving millions of children,' delivered a worrying message: Kids who didn’t learn to write code would be left behind. And the long-term success of the United States economy depended on training these students to fill a million open tech jobs. [...] No word in Coding Kids chills more than 'democratize.' 'Democratizing' sounds a lot like 'democracy,' but the tech-elite byword has nothing to do with a form of government; from the lips of the tech barons, it means enforcing ubiquitous access to their products."

Fast-forward to 2026, and now we're dealing with AI, and tech is reading from a similar playbook. Asked by The74's Greg Toppo, "Does this moment seem different to you?", Singer replies, "This moment is different, but also similar. We are in a moment in society where a lot of people have increased distrust of these huge tech companies, and we see a wave of parents pushing back against tech in schools. [...] We have had these cycles of tech in schools where there are all these promises about the latest tech, laptops, learning apps, massive open online courses, virtual reality, big data's going to revolutionize schools and like democratize access to education for kids and get them these great career skills, and we keep having these cycles. My concern is that we don't learn anything. One of the reasons I wrote this book is because it feels like we have collective amnesia. Now we're in the sixth or eighth cycle of this — and shouldn't we be asking questions about the push for AI in schools, based on what we've learned about the push for all the other things that came before?"

Submission + - Parents Demanding Tech Opt Outs Take Their Fight to Federal Court (edtech.law)

Submitted by Hasaf
Hasaf writes: On August 26, 2026, seven families from Lower Merion School District outside Philadelphia, PA, sued the District, the Superintendent, and certain members of the board, asserting violations of their Constitutional rights.

Plaintiffs allege that District leaders have presided over a digital free-for-all, where students of all ages can and do access online pornography, violent videos, gambling sites, and video games, including one in which the player’s goal is to escape from sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. Instead of paying attention in class, students consume an endless stream of short-form videos, browse social media, and shop. They chat with strangers and bully each other. They frequently interact with AI chatbots, which not only help them cheat on their assignments and diminish what they have already learned, but have also sent grown adults into delusional spirals and have coached other young people to take their own lives. Lower Merion students do this and more at all hours of the day: on the bus, in class, at lunch, and during breaks, and also at home, late into the night, when their parents think they are doing homework.

The complaint, with exhibits, can be found there https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fedtech.law%2Fwp-content%2F...

The link to the complaints is also at the bottom of the article

Submission + - GOG Brings Back 'Big Box' PC Games, One Printable Template At a Time (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Those who remember PC gaming in the days before Steam may have fond memories of the “big box” packaging that made those games stand out as shelf eye candy and sought-after in-home collectibles. Today, PC gaming platform GOG is hoping to reignite some of the nostalgia for those days by adding downloadable 3D models and printable, foldable high-res packaging scans for a handful of PC games on the platform.

Thus far, the “Printable Big Box” collection on GOG is limited to just five games: Armikrog, Descent, Hitman: Codename 47, Myst, and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Players browsing those games on the GOG store will now see “3D Boxes” listed among the included “Goodies” before purchase. Owners of those games on GOG can download a ZIP file containing a version of the box art as an animated 3D object file (in an easy-to-open GLB format) and a “flat printable template” in PDF, SVG, and Adobe Illustrator formats. Those downloads allow for what GOG calls “a proper papercraft project for anyone who misses shelves full of PC game boxes.”

The physically focused expansion of the existing GOG Preservation Program comes through a partnership with Benjamin Wimmer’s Big Box Collection website, which has grown since 2015 to include over 1,000 3D scans from his private collection of physical PC games. In an interview with GOG, Wimmer said that while he appreciates the artistry of a good old-fashioned big box, he also appreciates their evolution into the “interactive cards” on modern digital storefronts that “provid[e] us art, screenshots, gameplay videos and whatnot and that not shown as a box, [it] is just good UX.”

Submission + - Scientists find a way to slash computer memory energy use by orders of magnitude (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists have devised a new way to switch magnetic computer memory while using far less energy than today's leading technologies. By mathematically optimizing the pulses used to flip digital bits, the method could reduce energy consumption by several orders of magnitude. Simulations suggest it may bring future memory devices surprisingly close to the fundamental physical limit for processing information. The same idea could eventually work with electrical currents or ultrafast lasers.

Submission + - AI is helping gangs grow illicit tobacco networks, EU auditor warns (politico.eu)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Criminal gangs are using artificial intelligence to help them find locations in Europe to build illicit cigarette factories with less chance of getting caught, an EU auditor warned on Tuesday.

These gangs used to operate in Eastern Europe where it was easier to hide, Petri Sarvamaa in charge of the European Court of Auditorâ(TM)s report on illicit tobacco, told a press briefing.

Now, with AI, itâ(TM)s easier to find places to operate that are closer to their markets, he said, in rural locations and villages. âoeThis reduces the risk in the supply chain for the criminals,â added Esther Torrente Heras, senior auditor.

Submission + - DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits (404media.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found. The units, the name of which 404 Media is revealing here for the first time, are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT). In one case, a PITT analyzed the financial activity of a man who was driving across Montana, and local authorities stopped him under the pretense of an obstructed license plate and charged him with a DUI.

404 Media identified one PITT in the Spokane Sector, Washington, which polices the U.S. border with Canada, and another in the Laredo Sector, Texas, which polices the border with Mexico. The findings add to an Associated Press investigation from last year which found Border Patrol was using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) as part of the same wide-spanning predictive policing program. “The bottom line is genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center For Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media in an email. Here Border Patrol seems to be “using parallel construction to cloak the reason behind its car stops in secrecy. If we can't meaningfully review and evaluate these systems, we can't trust them,” he added.

[...] The DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows that Border Patrol is analyzing the financial activity of Americans to find people to pull over. The Associated Press’s investigation found the predictive policing program is also heavily using ALPRs to track potential targets’ movements. It is not clear how exactly Border Patrol is monitoring Americans’ financial activity. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to answer what financial activity the agency was monitoring, and whether it obtained a warrant or not.

Submission + - Trump's 100% tariff on drones will be disaster for the US, critics warn (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Thursday, the Trump administration imposed a 100 percent tariff on foreign-made drones, alarming critics who warn that high tariffs would harm public safety and devastate thousands of US businesses.

Guidance posted by US Customs and Border Protection says that starting Thursday, a 100 percent tariff will apply to imported drones that use thermal imaging or weigh more than 55 pounds.

Additionally, a 25 percent tariff has been placed on smaller drones, and drones from US allies were hit with smaller but not inconsequential tariffs. There’s now a 10 percent levy on British-made drones and 15 percent levies on drones from the European Union, Japan, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Switzerland, and Taiwan. “Nonsensitive” drones without thermal imaging and their components will carry a 25 percent tariff, starting onFebruary 9, 2027.

While announcing the tariffs, President Donald Trump said that taxing foreign-made drones will strengthen US national security by decreasing reliance on Chinese drones and increasing reliance on domestic drones.

But critics say Trump’s tactics seem short-sighted, citing estimates that “a single Chinese company—Shenzhen-based DJI—manufactures more than 70 percent of the world’s commercial drones,” The New York Times reported.

They fear that Trump’s tariffs will do “more harm than good,” the Times reported, since these drones are considered “essential” for US law enforcement and public safety officials. Thermal drones are regularly used to find missing people, track spreading wildfires, support police and rescue operations in environments with unknown risks, and serve a range of other routine public safety uses. A chief of a large unit comprising police officers and firefighters in the Cleveland area, Scott Mlakar, told the Times that Trump’s tariffs would spike drone costs so much that they would likely “put thermal drones out of reach for communities that needed them the most.”

Submission + - ReactOS 0.4.16 Released With New ATA Driver and Hardware-Accelerated 3D

Submitted by jeditobe
jeditobe writes: The ReactOS project has released ReactOS 0.4.16, the latest version of its open-source Windows-compatible operating system.
The release comes after around 21 months of development and includes more than 2,700 changes. Among the highlights is a new ATA storage driver with Plug and Play support for SATA, PATA, ATAPI, AHCI and SCSI devices.
The release also brings a new unified BootCD, an updated LiveCD mode with a first-stage GUI installer, HD Audio improvements, networking and Plug and Play fixes, better bitmap and PNG rendering, and a less flickery desktop experience.
Perhaps more interestingly, ReactOS now has hardware-accelerated 3D graphics working on real hardware for the first time. The work currently targets Windows XP-era Intel, NVIDIA and AMD/Radeon GPUs and drivers.
One enthusiast with nickname AotoriHibiki has already put the new 3D support through a rather more interesting test than a screenshot of the desktop: running games on real hardware with hardware acceleration under ReactOS. His videos demonstrate Doom 3 BFG Edition, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Call of Duty 2, Delta Force: Xtreme, Prey, Halo: Combat Evolved, Penumbra: Overture and many others. He said number is over 60. Some examples:
Serious Sam 2 | Doom 3 BFG Edition | S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat | Amnesia | Call of Duty 2 | Delta Force: Xtreme | Prey | Halo | Penumbra ReactOS remains alpha software, but 0.4.16 is another step toward running the Windows-compatible OS on actual hardware rather than just inside a virtual machine. The fact that an enthusiast is already using the release's new hardware-accelerated graphics to run games such as Doom 3 BFG Edition, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Halo on real hardware makes the change considerably easier to appreciate.
ReactOS 0.4.16 release announcement

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