Submission + - We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds. (youtube.com) 1

Submitted by beadon
beadon writes: This video discusses the concerning vulnerabilities, questionable efficacy, and public pushback against Flock Safety cameras and similar ALPR (Automatic License Plate Reader) services.

It's long, but really interesting from a security perspective.

Submission + - Stefan Fatsis on the words that defined 2025 From rage bait to slop (reuters.com)

Submitted by beadon
beadon writes: In an era of search engines and algorithm-inspired slang, dictionaries can seem like analog relics.

But for writer Stefan Fatsis — who spent time working for America’s oldest dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, while researching his new book “Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary” — they remain vital catalogs of language and, by extension, who we are as people.

Speaking from his home in Washington, D.C., Fatsis reflects on the thousands of words that were added to the lexicon in 2025, what they reveal about the year just passed, and the forces shaping language to come.

This conversation, conducted in December, has been edited for length and clarity.

Submission + - FCC approves 7,500 additional Starlink Gen2 satellites (reuters.com)

Submitted by beadon
beadon writes: WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) — The Federal Communications Commission said on Friday it has approved SpaceX's request to deploy another 7,500 second-generation Starlink satellites as it works to boost internet service worldwide.

The FCC said Elon Musk's SpaceX can now operate an additional 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites, bringing the total to 15,000 satellites worldwide. The FCC is also allowing SpaceX to upgrade the satellites and operate across five frequencies and is waiving prior requirements that prevented overlapping coverage and enhanced capacity.

Submission + - World's most powerful flying wind turbine launched in western China (scmp.com)

Submitted by beadon
beadon writes: Gigantic gliding ‘power bank’ could help communities cut off from the grid during blackouts and cement China’s leading role in green energy

China has successfully flown the world’s largest and most powerful airborne wind turbine, a milestone that could bring cheaper, more reliable green energy and strengthen the country’s leading role in the global clean energy transition.

Between September 19 and 21 2025, the airship-like S1500 – about the size of a basketball court and as tall as a 13-story building – became the first turbine of its kind to generate one megawatt of power during a test flight at a desert site in China’s western Xinjiang region.

Submission + - 'Kill Switch'—Iran Shuts Down Starlink Internet For First Time (forbes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: We have not seen this before. Iran’s digital blackout has now deployed military jammers to shut down access to Starlink. This is a game-changer for Plan-B connectivity for protesters and anti-regime activists when domestic internet plugs are pulled.

Simon Migliano, who has just compiled a comprehensive report into recent internet shutdowns, told me “Iran’s current nationwide blackout is a blunt instrument intended to crush dissent," and this comes at a stark cost to the country, underpinning the regime’s desperation. “This 'kill switch’ approach comes at a staggering price, draining $1.56 million from Iran’s economy every single hour the internet is down.”

Overnight, NetBlocks reported that “Iran’s internet blackout is now past the 60 hour mark as national connectivity levels continue to flatline around 1% of ordinary levels."

Submission + - Walmart and Google team up to turn Gemini into the new Amazon killer (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Walmart and Google are teaming up to plug Walmartâ(TM)s catalog straight into Gemini, letting people browse and buy everyday items inside an AI chat instead of jumping through apps or search engines. The idea is simple but timely: if people increasingly ask an AI how to plan a camping trip, stock a pantry, or prep for a party, Walmart wants Gemini to serve up product suggestions automatically and complete the purchase within Walmart or Samâ(TM)s Club. Linked accounts pull in past shopping history, Walmart Plus perks still apply, and the retailerâ(TM)s same-day delivery network closes the loop in as little as thirty minutes in some regions.

It also reflects a defensive move. If AI becomes the main gateway to online shopping, retailers risk losing customers before they ever hit a website. Walmart securing a default presence inside Gemini positions it ahead of the curve, while Google gets a more practical use case than just generating answers or explanations. The pilot starts in the United States with plans to expand internationally, and it lands right as investors are watching whether conversational commerce is hype or the next shift in how people buy things online.

Submission + - Gentoo Linux posts 2025 review (gentoo.org)

Submitted by Heraklit
Heraklit writes: Gentoo Linux has posted a 2025 project retrospective, with numbers and lots of interesting developments:

Once again, a lot has happened in Gentoo over the past months. New developers, more binary packages, GnuPG alternatives support, Gentoo for WSL, improved Rust bootstrap, better NGINX packaging, [...]

Gentoo currently consists of 31663 ebuilds for 19174 different packages. For amd64 (x86-64), there are 89 GBytes of binary packages available on the mirrors. Gentoo each week builds 154 distinct installation stages for different processor architectures and system configurations, with an overwhelming part of these fully up-to-date.

The number of commits to the main ::gentoo repository has remained at an overall high level in 2025, with a slight decrease from 123942 to 112927. The number of commits by external contributors was 9396, now across 377 unique external authors.

Submission + - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI doomerism has 'done a lot of damage' (businessinsider.com) 2

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Jensen Huang is over AI doomerism. The Nvidia CEO said one of his biggest takeaways from 2025 was "the battle of narratives" over the future of AI development.
Huang said while "it's too simplistic" to dismiss either side entirely, some of the dismal outlooks are having real consequences. "I think we've done a lot of damage with very well-respected people who have painted a doomer narrative, end of the world narrative, science fiction narrative," Huang said.
"And I appreciate that many of us grew up and enjoyed science fiction, but it's not helpful. It's not helpful to people. It's not helpful to the industry. It's not helpful to society. It's not helpful to the governments."
A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to elaborate on Huang's remarks. Previously, the Nvidia CEO took issue with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's prediction that AI could replace up to half of all white-collar entry-level jobs within five years.
"When 90% of the messaging is all around the end of the world and the pessimism, and I think we're scaring people from making the investments in AI that make it safer, more functional, more productive, and more useful to society," he said.
Overall, Huang said the sheer amount of negativity is distorting the conversation around AI, impacting the profitability of Nvidia and undermining investor confidence.

Submission + - US used powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees (nypost.com) 6

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The US used a powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees, “bleeding through the nose” and vomiting blood during the daring raid to capture dictator Nicolas Maduro, according to a witness account posted Saturday on X by the White House press secretary.

In a jaw-dropping interview, the guard described how American forces wiped out hundreds of fighters without losing a single soldier, using technology unlike anything he has ever seen — or heard.

Submission + - FCC Approves 7,500 More Starlink Gen2 Satellites (broadbandbreakfast.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday approved SpaceX’s request to launch an additional 7,500 of its Starlink Gen2 satellites, bringing the total allowed Gen2 constellation to 15,000. The agency also granted the company’s request to operate in additional spectrum bands and to operate at higher power in other bands between 10.7-30 GigaHertz (GHz), pending the completion of an existing FCC rulemaking where the question is being considered.

The order also allows SpaceX satellites to use lower orbits, down to 340 kilometers, and provide direct-to-cell service. The company is seeking approval for a separate 15,000-satellite constellation that would provide upgraded direct-to-cell service using spectrum it’s purchasing from EchoStar.

The article notes that under the Trump administration has also revamped the FCC’s grant program, that under Biden canceled an $886 million grant, claiming absurdly that Starlink did not provide service to rural areas. Under the new program “SpaceX is set to serve the most locations of any ISP under the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program after new Trump administration rules that made it easier for satellite providers to compete for funding.”

Submission + - Cory Doctorow explains how legalising reverse engineer would end enshitification (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Donald Trump’s tariffs have opened up a new possibility for the technology we have become increasingly dependent on. Today, nearly all of our tech comes from US companies, and it arrives as a prix fixe meal. If you want to talk with your friends on a Meta platform, you have to let Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg eavesdrop on your conversations. If you want to have a phone that works, you have to let Apple’s Tim Cook suck 30p out of every pound you spend and give him a veto over which software you can run. If you want to search the web, you have to let Google’s Sundar Pichai know what colour underwear you’ve got on.

'This is a genuinely odd place for digital computers to have got to. Every computer in your life, from your mobile phone to your smart speaker to your laptop to your TV, is theoretically capable of running all programmes, including the ones the manufacturers would really prefer you stay away from. This means that there are no prix fixe menus in technology – everything can be had à la carte. Thanks to the infinite flexibility of computers, every 10-foot fence a US tech boss installs in a digital product you rely on invites a programmer to supply you with a four-metre ladder so you can scamper nimbly over it. However, we adopted laws – at the insistence of the US trade rep – that prohibit programmers from helping you alter the devices you own, in legal ways, if the manufacturer objects. This is one thing that leads to what I refer to as the enshittification of technology.

'There is only one reason the world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disenshittify the US’s defective products: its (former) trading partners were bullied into passing an “anti-circumvention” law that bans the kind of reverse-engineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump tariffs change all that. The old bargain – put your own tech sector in chains, expose your people to our plunder of their data and cash, and in return, the US won’t tariff your exports – is dead'

Submission + - Should Real-World Examples be Required for Standards and Other Mandates?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: If someone wants to impose standards, forms, documentation requirements, and other mandates on others, it seems only fair that they should be able to — and required to — demonstrate it in action first, right? Without real-world examples of what is considered 'good', people are essentially asked to sign off on a black box without a clear idea of what is being demanded, how much work it may entail, and in the end how worthwhile it even may be.

Surprisingly, that's not how things tend to play out in practice in industry, academia, and other organizations. A case in point is the proposed new Computer Science + AI Standards for pre-kindergarten to high school students assembled by a consortium of educators, tech-backed nonprofits, and tech industry advisors that aims to shape how CS+AI is taught in classrooms. A Friday morning LinkedIn post from the Computer Science Teachers Association reminds educators that they have 72 hours to "help us improve them [the standards] by reviewing and completing our feedback form by 9am ET on Monday, January 12."

Under development since 2023, the 247-page standards document is chock full of students-should-be-able-to pronouncements for all grade levels but offers no concrete examples of what that looks like in practice in terms of acceptable student deliverables or teacher lesson plans — e.g., "Students should be able to create a functional, rule-based AI for a Non-Playable Character (NPC) using programming or visual scripting. Students’ implementation must be based on a recognized AI method (e.g., finite-state machine, behavior tree)."

As Ross Perot once said, the devil is in the details. So, in a world where more and more people specialize in governance, risk, and compliance jobs that involve specifying mandates for others to comply with, shouldn't it be a red flag if they can't show real-world examples of how to satisfy those mandates? If you require it, shouldn't you be able to demonstrate it? Otherwise, doesn't it signal that the mandate hasn’t been validated? And open the door to being told “that’s not what I meant” for those left to guess at what was meant?

Submission + - World's Richest Man Says Don't Bother Saving for Retirement (gizmodo.com) 4

Submitted by echo123
echo123 writes: "We're in the singularity. We're at the top of the roller coaster, and it's about to go down."

====

Elon Musk, who just went to court to fight for a $139 billion compensation package despite already being worth an estimated $700 billion, says you shouldn’t worry your pretty little head about saving your own money. In an appearance on the podcast Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, the world’s richest man told listeners, “One side recommendation I have is: Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It won’t matter.”

Musk’s theory is basically that AI will become so capable that it’ll drop the cost of everything so much that money won’t really matter. Everyone will have “universal high income.” Diamandis, arguably best known in recent years as the guy who hosted a $30,000 per seat event in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic that resulted in the majority of attendees getting infected, hopped on the hype train, too, explaining that he believes that AI will ultimately lead to “basically demonetizing everything” because “the cost of labor has gone to nothing, the cost of intelligence has gone to nothing.”

Submission + - What if AI becomes conscious and we never know? (sciencedaily.com) 2

Submitted by Randseed
Randseed writes: A philosopher at the University of Cambridge says there’s no reliable way to know whether AI is conscious—and that may remain true for the foreseeable future. According to Dr. Tom McClelland, consciousness alone isn’t the ethical tipping point anyway; sentience, the capacity to feel good or bad, is what truly matters. He argues that claims of conscious AI are often more marketing than science, and that believing in machine minds too easily could cause real harm. The safest stance for now, he says, is honest uncertainty.

Submission + - AI vs Denial Bots: Fight Health Insurance & Counterforce Health Take On Insu (pbs.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Health insurers have spent years using AI, opaque algorithms, and “batch denial” systems to reject claims at scale, but a new PBS NewsHour piece shows patients starting to fight back with AI of their own. The segment highlights Fight Health Insurance, a free and OSS AI tool to help patients draft prior auth requests and appeal letters, and Counterforce Health, (non-OSS alternative). PBS’s story, “How patients are using AI to fight denied insurance claims,” frames this as an “AI vs AI” turning point in U.S. healthcare bureaucracy: if denials can be automated, what happens when appeals are, too.
All hail our new robot overloards, may they win against the other robot overloards.

Submission + - Predictions of how 2026 could be (abc.net.au)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: 67 years ago, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation recorded a collection of predictions about the future—the one we’re living in now, in 2026. Their forecasts are truly extraordinary — Intergalactic super speed travel, future pod houses, Nuclear fallout, but all of these are wrong..

Submission + - French-UK Starlink Rival Pitches Canada On 'Sovereign' Satellite Service (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A company largely owned by the French and U.K. governments is pitching Canada on a roughly $250-million plan to provide the military with secure satellite broadband coverage in the Arctic, CBC News has learned. Eutelsat, a rival to tech billionaire Elon Musk's Starlink, already provides some services to the Canadian military, but wants to deepen the partnership as Canada looks to diversify defence contracts away from suppliers in the United States.

A proposal for Canada's Department of National Defence to join a French Ministry of Defence initiative involving Eutelsat was apparently raised by French President Emmanuel Macron with Prime Minister Mark Carney on the sidelines of last year's G7 summit in Alberta. The prime minister's first question, according to Eutelsat and French defence officials, was how the proposal would affect the Telesat Corporation, a former Canadian Crown corporation that was privatized in the 1990s.

Telesat is in the process of developing its Lightspeed system, a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation of satellites for high-speed broadband. And in mid-December, the Liberal government announced it had established a strategic partnership with Telesat and MDA Space to develop the Canadian Armed Forces' military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) capabilities. A Eutelsat official said the company already has its own satellite network in place and running, along with Canadian partners, and has been providing support to the Canadian military deployed in Latvia.

Submission + - Stop paying TurboTax when IRS Free File covers most taxpayers for FREE (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: The IRS has flipped the switch on Free File for the 2026 tax season, letting most Americans file federal taxes for exactly zero dollars. Anyone with 2025 adjusted gross income of $89,000 or less qualifies, covering an estimated 70 percent of taxpayers. The catch is that you have to start at IRS.gov/FreeFile, not the commercial sites that steer users into paid upgrades. Free File partners include familiar software brands like TaxAct, FreeTaxUSA, 1040.com and TaxSlayer, and many will throw in free state returns too. The program works on computers and phones and supports e-filing before the official opening of tax season.

What surprises me every year is how few people know this exists. Despite more than 77 million returns filed through Free File since 2003, most folks reach for TurboTax or H&R Block and end up paying for something the government already supports at no cost. Even gig workers and renters qualify now if their AGI is under the limit. If you want to keep more money in your wallet, start at IRS.gov/FreeFile and skip the upsell parade.

Submission + - CES Worst in Show Awards Call Out The Tech Making Things Worse (ifixit.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, isn’t just about shiny new gadgets, as AP reports (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapnews.com%2Farticle%2Fces-worst-show-ai-0ce7fbc5aff68e8ff6d7b8e6fb7b007d): this year brought back the fifth annual Worst in Show anti-awards (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.worstinshowces.com%2F), calling out the most harmful, wasteful, invasive, and unfixable tech at the Las Vegas show. The coalition behind the awards — including Repair.org, iFixit, EFF, PIRG, Secure Repairs and others — put the spotlight on products that miss the point of innovation and make life worse for users.

2026 Worst in Show winners include:
  Overall (and Repairability): Samsung’s AI-packed Family Hub fridge — overengineered, hard to fix, and trying to do everything but keep food cold.
  Privacy: Amazon Ring AI — expanding surveillance with features like facial recognition and mobile towers.
  Security: Merach UltraTread treadmill — AI fitness coach that also hoovers up sensitive data with weak security guarantees — including a Privacy Policy that declares the company "cannot guarantee the security of your personal information" (!!)
  Environmental Impact: Lollipop Star — a single-use music-playing electronic lollipop that epitomizes needless e-waste.
  Enshittification: Bosch eBike Flow App — pushing lock-in and digital restrictions that make gear worse over time.
  “Who Asked For This?”: Bosch Personal AI Barista — voice-assistant coffee maker that nobody really wanted.
  People’s Choice: Lepro Ami AI Companion — an overhyped “soulmate” cam that creeps more than comforts.

The message? Not all tech is progress. Some products add needless complexity, threaten privacy, or throw sustainability out the window — and the industry’s watchdogs are calling them out.

Submission + - A.I pandering to political correctness 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk: “I have a concern with companies like Google, Gemini, OpenAI & Meta that they are not maximally truth seeking. Their A.I. are pandering to political correctness and are being trained to lie.”

Me: “Do you agree with the sentiments?”

ClippyAI: ‘Yes, the concern holds merit based on extensive evidence from studies and real-world examples discussed earlier. AI models from OpenAI, Google (Gemini), and Meta often exhibit left-leaning tendencies due to training data scraped from ideologically skewed internet sources and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) where labelers favor "safe" or progressive framings.’

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