Submission + - Beijing Ruled AI-caused Job Replacement Illegal (globaltimes.cn)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: China's state-affiliated Global Times reported that Beijing Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security ruled in a labor dispute arbitration that "AI replacing a position does not equal to legal dismissal," providing a case reference for resolving similar cases in the future. A worker with surname Liu had worked in a technology company for many years, responsible for traditional manual map data collection. In early 2024, the company decided to full transition to AI-managed autonomous data collection, abolishing Liu's department, and terminated Liu's labor contract on the grounds that "major changes have occurred in the objective circumstance on which the hiring contract was based, making it impossible to continue implementing the labor contract." Liu objected to the firm's termination, claiming it was unlawful and applied for arbitration. The labor board ruled that the company's introduction of AI technology was a proactive technological innovation implemented by the enterprise to adapt to market competition, and that termination of Liu's labor contract on the grounds that the position was replaced by AI shifts the risk of normal technological iteration onto the employee. The arbitration committee noted that, against the backdrop of the rapid development of AI technology, employers should properly accommodate affected employees through measures such as negotiating changes to the labor contract, providing skills training, and internal job reassignment. If it is indeed necessary to terminate the labor contract, employers must strictly comply with relevant laws and avoid simply applying "major changes in the objective environment" as grounds for termination. "This ruling safeguards Liu's legitimate rights and interests, providing reassurance to the vast number of workers, helping alleviate employees' anxiety about AI," Wang Peng, an associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

Submission + - Rob Pike gets spammed with AI slop

Submitted by Anomolous Cowturd
Anomolous Cowturd writes: An AI bot let loose on the world by an outfit called AI Village has seen fit to waste a legend's time and patience. See an article by Simon Willison about it.

Says Rob on Bluesky: "Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software. Just fuck you. Fuck you all. I can't remember the last time I was this angry."

Submission + - AI doesn't care about Ethics: Why technoskepticism must be political 1

Submitted by TheBAFH
TheBAFH writes: Here's a philosophy paper that rejects the opposing extreme positions of technophilia and technophobia and defines technoskepticism which "offers a vision where technological development is not an end in itself but a means to foster an autonomous society based on humanistic values, critical thought, and democratic self-governance. "
The paper is about "AI", but the core ideas apply in technology in general.

Submission + - Sal Khan: Companies Should Give 1% of Profits to Retrain Workers Displaced by AI (nytimes.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Sal Kahn (founder/CEO of the nonprofit Khan Academy), says companies should donate 1% of their profits to help retrain the people displaced by AI, in a new guest essay in the New York Times...

This isn’t charity. It is in the best interest of these companies. If the public sees corporate profits skyrocketing while livelihoods evaporate, backlash will follow — through regulation, taxes or outright bans on automation. Helping retrain workers is common sense, and such a small ask that these companies would barely feel it, while the public benefits could be enormous...

Roughly a dozen of the world’s largest corporations now have a combined profit of over a trillion dollars each year. One percent of that would create a $10 billion annual fund that, in part, could create a centralized skill training platform on steroids: online learning, ways to verify skills gained and apprenticeships, coaching and mentorship for tens of millions of people. The fund could be run by an independent nonprofit that would coordinate with corporations to ensure that the skills being developed are exactly what are needed. This is a big task, but it is doable; over the past 15 years, online learning platforms have shown that it can be done for academic learning, and many of the same principles apply for skill training...

To meet the challenges, we don’t need to send millions back to college. We need to create flexible, free paths to hiring, many of which would start in high school and extend through life. Our economy needs low-cost online mechanisms for letting people demonstrate what they know. Imagine a model where capability, not how many hours students sit in class, is what matters; where demonstrated skills earn them credit and where employers recognize those credits as evidence of readiness to enter an apprenticeship program in the trades, health care, hospitality or new categories of white-collar jobs that might emerge...

There is no shortage of meaningful work — only a shortage of pathways into it.

Submission + - Apple's Brain Drain In Post-iPhone Era Proves It Can Handle Executive Turnover (bgr.com)

Submitted by anderzole
anderzole writes: In light of the executive and employee turnover Apple, many analysts and armchair pundits online have begun asking if Apple is losing its magic. The departures, along with rumors of Cook stepping down, have naturally sparked questions about stability within the company, not to mention Apple's ability to keep churning out and developing best-selling products in the years ahead. This speculation is understandable, but Apple is structured in a way such that it can survive any number of key executive departures. This isn't a theory, but rather something that Apple already proved a little more than a decade ago in the years following the release of the iPhone.

If anything, the brain drain following the iPhone release was far more significant than what Apple is experiencing right now. Still, Apple is set up in such a way that it can survive any one person leaving, no matter how important.

Submission + - Digital Sovereignty in Europe (theregister.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: Europe’s quest for digital sovereignty is hampered by a 90 per cent dependency on US cloud infrastructure, claims Cristina Caffarra, a competition expert and a driving force behind the Eurostack initiative.

While Brussels champions policy initiatives and American tech giants market their own ‘sovereign’ solutions, a handful of public authorities in Austria, Germany, and France, alongside the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are taking concrete steps to regain control over their IT.
These cases provide a potential blueprint for a continent grappling with its technological autonomy, while simultaneously revealing the deep-seated legal and commercial challenges that make true independence so difficult to achieve.

The core of the problem lies in a direct and irreconcilable legal conflict. The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally. This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with Europe's own stringent privacy regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Austria's Federal Ministry for Economy, Energy and Tourism is a case in point. The ministry recently completed a migration of 1,200 employees to the European open-source collaboration platform Nextcloud, but the project was not a migration away from an existing US cloud provider. It was a deliberate choice not to adopt one.

The primary driver was not cost, but sovereignty. "It was never about saving money," Zinnagl adds. "It was about maintaining control over our own data and our own systems."

The decision has triggered a ripple effect, as several other Austrian ministries have since begun implementing Nextcloud. For Zinnagl and Ollrom, this proves that one organization willing to take the first step can inspire others to follow.

Their advice to other European governments is clear: be brave, involve management, and start. "You don't achieve digital sovereignty overnight," Ollrom tells The Register. "You have to do this in many steps, but you have to start with the first step. Don't just talk about it, but execute it."

Submission + - Coup in Paris: How an AI-generated video caused Macron a major headache (euronews.com) 2

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Alongside the message, a compelling video showcasing a swirling helicopter, military personnel, crowds and — what appears to be — a news anchor delivering a piece to camera.

"Unofficial reports suggest that there has been a coup in France, led by a colonel whose identity has not been revealed, along with the possible fall of Emmanuel Macron. However, the authorities have not issued a clear statement," she says.

Except, nothing about this video is authentic: it was created with AI.

After discovering the video, Macron asked Pharos — France's official portal for signalling online illicit content — to call Facebook's parent company Meta, to get the fake video removed.

But that request was turned down, as the platform claimed it did not violate its “rules of use."

Submission + - University of Oklahoma removes instructor after grading dispute on gender essay (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by SchroedingersCat
SchroedingersCat writes: Oklahoma instructor who gave student a zero on gender essay barred from teaching duties.

The assignment asked students to write a 650-word "reaction paper" to a scholarly article about gender expectations in society. The student wrote in her essay that the scholarly article bothered her, and she described how God created men and women differently. The instructor, who is transgender, gave the student a failing grade because her “paper ... does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive”. The student appealed the grade and filed a claim of religious discrimination.

The school released a statement on Monday: "Based on an examination of the graduate teaching assistant’s prior grading standards and patterns, as well as the graduate teaching assistant’s own statements related to this matter, it was determined that the graduate teaching assistant was arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper. The graduate teaching assistant will no longer have instructional duties at the University."

Submission + - React2Shell ransomware: Weaxor deployed on vulnerable server (scworld.com)

Submitted by spatwei
spatwei writes: The critical React2Shell unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability has been exploited to deploy Weaxor ransomware, S-RM reported Tuesday.

React2Shell, formally tracked as CVE-2025-55182, affects React Server Components versions 19.0.0, 19.1.0, 19.1.1 and 19.2.0, and has been under heavy exploitation since it was first disclosed on Dec. 3, 2025.

Most attacks thus far have been attributed to nation-state threat actors deploying backdoors and financially-motivated attackers deploying cryptominers.

In a new development, S-RM reports that it responded to an incident in which the maximum-severity vulnerability (CVSS 10.0) was used to gain initial access in a ransomware attack. The intrusion reportedly took place on Dec. 5, 2025, and was confined to the vulnerable web server with no additional lateral movement.

The attacker initially exploited React2Shell — which has multiple public proof-of-concept exploits available — by running a PowerShell command that led to the establishment of a Cobalt Strike beacon for command-and-control (C2) communication.

Once a C2 connection was established, and within less than a minute after initial access, the attacker deployed the Weaxor ransomware binary, which encrypts files and appends them with the file extension “.weax.”

Submission + - Safety panel says NASA should have taken Starliner incident more seriously (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Most of us had no idea how serious the problems were with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station. A safety advisory panel found this uncertainty also filtered through NASA’s workforce.

The Starliner capsule was beset by problems with its maneuvering thrusters and pernicious helium leaks on its 27-hour trip from the launch pad to the ISS. For a short time, Starliner commander Wilmore lost his ability to control the movements of his spacecraft as it moved in for docking at the station in June 2024. Engineers determined that some of the thrusters were overheating and eventually recovered most of their function, allowing Starliner to dock with the ISS.

Throughout that summer, managers from NASA and Boeing repeatedly stated that the spacecraft was safe to bring Wilmore and Williams home if the station needed to be evacuated in an emergency. But officials on the ground ordered extensive testing to understand the root of the problems. Buried behind the headlines, there was a real chance NASA managers would decide—as they ultimately did—not to put astronauts on Boeing’s crew capsule when it was time to depart the ISS.

It would have been better, Precourt and other panel members said Friday, if NASA made a formal declaration of an in-flight “mishap” or “high visibility close call” soon after the Starliner spacecraft’s troubled rendezvous with the ISS. Such a declaration would have elevated responsibility for the investigation to NASA’s safety office.

After months of testing and analysis, NASA officials were unsure if the thruster problems would recur on Starliner’s flight home. They decided in August 2024 to return the spacecraft to the ground without the astronauts, and the capsule safely landed in New Mexico the following month. The next Starliner flight will carry only cargo to the ISS.

The safety panel recommended that NASA review its criteria and processes to ensure the language is “unambiguous” in requiring the agency to declare an in-flight mishap or a high-visibility close call for any event involving NASA personnel “that leads to an impact on crew or spacecraft safety.”

Submission + - Investigation looks into Tesla's electronic door releases which may trap people (caranddriver.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Report: Tesla Doors That Won't Open Have Led to 15 Crash-Related Deaths

When I was recently researching a new car, I was surprised to find that NHITSA does not regulate this and IIHS does not include ability to operate door handles into safety category. It is criminal idiocy to have car door mechanisms that require something other than mechanical pull/release.

Submission + - How a power outage in Colorado caused U.S. official time to be 4.8 microseconds (npr.org) 1

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: The U.S. government calculates the country's official time using more than a dozen atomic clocks at a federal facility northwest of Denver.

But when a destructive windstorm knocked out power to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Boulder on Wednesday and a backup generator subsequently failed, time ever so slightly slowed down.

The lapse "resulted in NIST UTC [universal coordinated time] being 4.8 microseconds slower than it should have been," NIST spokesperson Rebecca Jacobson said in an email.

Submission + - This AI finds simple rules where humans see only chaos (sciencedaily.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new AI developed at Duke University can uncover simple, readable rules behind extremely complex systems. It studies how systems evolve over time and reduces thousands of variables into compact equations that still capture real behavior. The method works across physics, engineering, climate science, and biology. Researchers say it could help scientists understand systems where traditional equations are missing or too complicated to write down.

Submission + - Garmin Emergency Autoland deployed for the first time (flightradar24.com)

Submitted by alanw
alanw writes: On Saturday, 20 December 2025, the Garmin’s Emergency Autoland was used for the first time in a real world emergency situation. The Emergency Autoland system is designed to take control of an aircraft in the event of pilot incapacitation and safely land at a nearby airfield.

That is precisely what happened on Saturday as the pilot of Beech B200 Super King Air N479BR became incapacitated about 20 minutes after departing Aspen for Denver.

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