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Comment Re: The quiet part: (Score 1) 158

Solution - more mechanization.
But farmers are now in the situation where they can't repair their own machinery because they need special tools and vendor locked in software that only dealers have access to even for minor repairs.
New alternator - you need to 'pair' it with the machine.

Comment Re:Double whammy (Score 3, Insightful) 72

Not emissions standards, fuel consumption standards is what has been driving the upsizing. A larger vehicle is allowed to consume more fuel than a smaller.

The simple fix would have been to not care about the fuel consumption regulation but instead just tax the fuel more and let people bring out their calculators and figure out what fuel consumption that they could afford.

Submission + - University of Phoenix reveals surprising truth about the future of IT careers (nerds.xyz)

BrianFagioli writes: A new white paper from the University of Phoenix dives deep into what the future of IT might actually look like, and it is based on real insights from the people working in the field. Titled The Future of IT: What IT Practitioners Predict Will Drive Career Opportunities and written by Dr. J.L. Graff, the report pulls from a 2025 survey of technology professionals. What it uncovers is a mix of optimism and pressure, where opportunity is high but the pace of change is leaving many workers struggling to keep up.

The good news is that most IT professionals still believe in the value of their field. According to the survey, 86 percent are optimistic about the future of information technology. More than half say they are very optimistic. But that confidence drops when it comes to keeping up with fast-moving trends. Nearly two out of three say they are not fully confident they will be able to keep up over the next five years.

Submission + - Linux can cause seizures if youâ(TM)re not careful (nerds.xyz)

BrianFagioli writes: KDE just pushed out Plasma 6.4.1, and while itâ(TM)s technically a bug-fix release, it includes a surprisingly major change: the âoehighlight windowâ effect is now disabled by default. This is the visual effect where other windows fade away when you hover over a Task Manager thumbnail.

Why the sudden shift? It turns out this flashy feature could do more than just annoy you. Believe it or not, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, it might trigger seizures. No, really.

Developers discovered that if you open several full-screen windows from the same app and then rapidly move your mouse across their thumbnails, it could cause full-screen flickering faster than 3 Hz. Thatâ(TM)s enough to be a medical hazard for people with photosensitive epilepsy.

Submission + - Meta scores worst on GenAI data privacy ranking (scworld.com)

spatwei writes: Meta AI was ranked worst for data privacy among nine AI platforms assessed by Incogni, according to a report published Tuesday.

Mistral AI’s Le Chat was deemed the most privacy-friendly generative AI (GenAI) platform, followed closely by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The GenAI and large language model (LLM) platforms were scored by Incogni based on 11 criteria grouped into three main categories: AI-specific privacy issues, transparency and data collection.

The “AI-specific privacy” ranking mostly covered how users’ prompts and data are used in training AI models, as well as the extent to which user prompts are shared with third parties.

Incogni said its researchers gave the criteria in this category significant weight compared to criteria involving non-AI-specific data privacy issues.

While Google Gemini was ranked as the second most privacy-invasive AI platform overall, it ranked best compared with other platforms for AI-specific issues.

While Gemini does not appear to allow users to opt out of using its prompts to train models, Google does not share prompts with third parties other than necessary service providers and legal entities.

By contrast, Meta, which scored second-worst in this category, shared user prompts with corporate group members and research partners, while OpenAI, which scored third-worst, shared data with unspecified “affiliates.”

Submission + - US judge rules copyrighted books are fair use for AI training (nbcnews.com)

SonicSpike writes: A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in a major copyright ruling, declaring that artificial intelligence developers can train models using published books without authors’ consent.

The decision, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, sets a precedent that training AI systems on copyrighted works constitutes fair use. Though it doesn’t guarantee other courts will follow, Judge William Alsup’s ruling makes the case the first of dozens of ongoing copyright lawsuits to give an answer about fair use in the context of generative AI.

It’s a question that has been raised by creatives across various industries for years since generative AI tools exploded into the mainstream, allowing users to easily produce art from models trained on copyrighted work — often without the human creators’ knowledge or permission.

AI companies have been hit with a slew of copyright lawsuits from media companies, music labels and authors since 2023. Artists have signed multiple open letters urging government officials and AI developers to constrain the unauthorized use of copyrighted works. In recent years, companies have also increasingly reached licensing deals with AI developers to dictate terms of use for their artists’ works.

Submission + - Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits (theguardian.com)

votsalo writes: Research by academics at New York’s Columbia Business School concluded that [Uber] had implemented “algorithmic price discrimination” that had raised “rider fares and cut driver pay on billions of trips, systematically, selectively, and opaquely”. Their research was based on an analysis of 2 million trip requests, focusing on 24532 trips made by a single US driver.

A similar academic paper by the University of Oxford was based on 1.5m UK trips.

Len Sherman, the US report’s author, said: “Uber says ‘we know more about driver and rider behaviour, so we can figure out who is willing to pay more [as a passenger] or accept less [as a driver].’ I’m in awe of what they have been able to accomplish.”

Submission + - U.S. Electric Code Will Soon Ban DIY EV Charger Installs (motortrend.com)

schwit1 writes: Making it illegal for homeowners to install their own EV chargers could actually undermine safety rather than improve it.

The change stems from a new addition to the 2026 NEC that reads, “Permanently installed electric vehicle power transfer system equipment shall be installed by qualified persons.” As proposed and ratified, the 2026 NEC defines a qualified person in vague terms likely to be interpreted by states and code enforcement departments to mean a licensed electrician.

The problem with the proposed language is that making do-it-yourself installations illegal doesn’t necessarily stop homeowners from doing their own electrical work. It does guarantee, however, that any EV chargers put in by amateurs will be installed without the appropriate permit and the accompanying safety inspection.

Comment Re:Updating firmware (Score 4, Informative) 38

A few years ago I had a hue bulb and a remote, but that was just to toy around with. Today with the cloud dependency they are dead to me - there's no reason for any system to be dependent on cloud services.

Shelly is a better alternative. You can connect it to the cloud if you like, but it's purely optional - and it's a pretty nice choice for Home Assistant.

Submission + - Carbon record reveals evidence of extensive human fire use 50,000 years ago (phys.org)

alternative_right writes: To address this question, researchers from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS), alongside collaborators from China, Germany, and France, analyzed the pyrogenic carbon record in a 300,000-year-old sediment core from the East China Sea.

"Our findings challenge the widely held belief that humans only began influencing the environment with fire in the recent past, during the Holocene," said Dr. Zhao Debo, the study's corresponding author.

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