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Comment the usual suspects (Score 1) 10

What megalomaniacal near-trillionaire had a whole squadron of leet hackers hoovering up federal employee records just a few short months ago? I forget. It musta been somebody with pockets 30x deeper than George Soros to tunnel into those boring databases, we should launch an investigation.

Comment Langendorf bread (Score 1) 163

by A nonymous Coward (#65728064) Attached to: The Numbers Six and Seven Are Making Life Hell for Math Teachers

When I was a kid, we too had stupid things. Besides elephant jokes (how many elephants can you fit in a VW Beetle? Five -- two in the front, two in the back, and one in the glove box), the dumbest joke I remember was to run up to a friend fast and breathless and demand "Guess what!" as if you'd seen a UFO or fire engine run by, then shout "Langendorf bread, that's what!" and run away cackling like Kamala Harris.

Submission + - Is Windows 7 about to overtake Windows 10? (gbnews.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: According to StatCounter, Windows 7 has been rapidly gaining market share in recent weeks — a full five years after support for the desktop operating system was officially terminated. At the latest count, Windows 7 is now used by some 22.65% of all Windows PCs worldwide. That's an increase from the 18.97% just a little over a month ago.

As of last month, users were already switching to Windows 7 in record numbers, but that number had only totalled to 9.6% worldwide.

Submission + - How we sharpened the James Webb telescope's vision from a million kilometers awa (theconversation.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Hubble started its life seeing out of focus – its mirror had been ground precisely, but incorrectly. By looking at known stars and comparing the ideal and measured images (exactly like what optometrists do), it was possible to figure out a “prescription” for this optical error and design a lens to compensate.

The correction required seven astronauts to fly up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1993 to install the new optics. Hubble orbits Earth just a few hundred kilometers above the surface, and can be reached by astronauts.

By contrast, Webb is roughly 1.5 million kilometers away – we can’t visit and service it, and need to be able to fix issues without changing any hardware.

This is where AMI comes in. This is the only Australian hardware on board, designed by astronomer Peter Tuthill.

It was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometers of distortion in Webb’s 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key.

AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments.

We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn’t working entirely as hoped.

Comment Re:"Compromised"? (Score 2) 38

by Marxist Hacker 42 (#65726348) Attached to: Are AI Agents Compromised By Design?

Lying to you to give you that terrible restaurant recommendation. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2F2510.06105 is a white paper mathematically proving that LLMs will lie.

I have said this all along- most of AI is GIGO- Garbage in, Garbage out. LLMs were trained on the largest garbage producer in our society today, Web 2.0. Nothing was done to curate the input, so the output is garbage.

I don't often reveal my religion, but https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmagisterium.com%2F is an example of what LLMs look like when they HAVE curated training. This LLM is very limited. It can't answer any question that the Roman Catholic Church hasn't considered in the last 300 years or so. They're still adding documents to it carefully, but I asked it about a document published a mere 500 years ago and it wasn't in the database, but instead of making something up like most LLMs will do, it kindly responded that the document wasn't in the database. It also, unlike most AI, can produce bibliographies.
User Journal

Journal Journal: AI is a liar

Journal by Marxist Hacker 42

A new white paper from Stanford University suggests that AI has now learned a trick from social media platforms: Lying to people to increase audience participation and engagement (and thus spend more tokens, earning more money for the cloud hosting of AI).

Submission + - 80% of employees say their workplace is toxic (fastcompany.com) 1

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: According to Monster’s newly released 2025 Mental Health in the Workplace survey of 1,100 workers, 80% of respondents described their workplace environment as toxic. Toxic work environments are playing a large role in an epidemic of worsening mental health.

The alarming statistic is an increase from 67% just a year ago. Mental health is incredibly important to employees. The majority (63%) care more about it than having a “brag-worthy” job. According to the survey, more than half of workers (57%) say they’d rather quit their job than continue working in an environment they feel is toxic and overall, causing major strains to their mental well-being.

Regardless of the fact that workers seem to be feeling strained, most of them don’t feel their employer is responding to workers’ mental health needs. The vast majority (93%) say their employer isn’t focused on supporting employee mental health—a statistic that rose drastically since just a year ago, with 78% claiming the same.
EU

New Large Coral Reef Discovered Off Naples Containing Rare Ancient Corals (independent.co.uk) 13

Posted by EditorDavid from the reefer-gladness dept.
Off the southwest cost of Italy, a remotely operated submarine made "a significant and rare discovery," reports the Independent — a vast white coral reef that was 80 metres tall (262 feet) and 2 metres wide (6.56 feet) "containing important species and fossil traces." Often dubbed the "rainforests of the sea", coral reefs are of immense scientific interest due to their status as some of the planet's richest marine ecosystems, harbouring millions of species. They play a crucial role in sustaining marine life but are currently under considerable threat...

hese impressive formations are composed of deep-water hard corals, commonly referred to as "white corals" because of their lack of colour, specifically identified as Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata species. The reef also contains black corals, solitary corals, sponges, and other ecologically important species, as well as fossil traces of oysters and ancient corals, the Italian Research Council said. It called them "true geological testimonies of a distant past."

Mission leader Giorgio Castellan said the finding was "exceptional for Italian seas: bioconstructions of this kind, and of such magnitude, had never been observed in the Dohrn Canyon, and are rarely seen elsewhere in our Mediterranean". The discovery will help scientists understand the ecological role of deep coral habitats and their distribution, especially in the context of conservation and restoration efforts, he added.
The undersea research was funded by the EU.

Thanks to davidone (Slashdot reader #12,252) for sharing the article.

Comment Re:You get what you pay for. (Score 1) 25

by Marxist Hacker 42 (#65718914) Attached to: Microsoft To Provide Free AI Tools For Washington State Schools

The irony of the two stories being together on the front page, "More Screen Time Linked to Lower Test Scores For Elementary Students" and "Microsoft to Provide Free AI Tools For Washington State Schools" is just too good to fail to mention.

And so I'm replying to the both First Posts with it.

Comment Re:Being a screen nazi was my best decision (Score 1) 46

The irony of the two stories being together on the front page, "More Screen Time Linked to Lower Test Scores For Elementary Students" and "Microsoft to Provide Free AI Tools For Washington State Schools" is just too good to fail to mention.

And so I'm replying to the both First Posts with it.

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