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Submission + - Bombshell report exposes how Meta relied on scam ad profits to fund AI (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Documents showed that internally, Meta was hesitant to abruptly remove accounts, even those considered some of the “scammiest scammers,” out of concern that a drop in revenue could diminish resources needed for artificial intelligence growth.

Instead of promptly removing bad actors, Meta allowed “high value accounts” to “accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down,” Reuters reported. The more strikes a bad actor accrued, the more Meta could charge to run ads, as Meta’s documents showed the company “penalized” scammers by charging higher ad rates. Meanwhile, Meta acknowledged in documents that its systems helped scammers target users most likely to click on their ads.

“Users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta’s ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user’s interests,” Reuters reported.

Internally, Meta estimates that users across its apps in total encounter 15 billion “high risk” scam ads a day. That’s on top of 22 billion organic scam attempts that Meta users are exposed to daily, a 2024 document showed. Last year, the company projected that about $16 billion, which represents about 10 percent of its revenue, would come from scam ads.

Submission + - Musk Wins $1 Trillion Pay Package, Creating Split Screen on Wealth in America (nytimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Tesla shareholders approved a plan to grant Elon Musk shares worth nearly $1 trillion if he meets ambitious goals, including vastly expanding the company’s stock market valuation.

Much like an earlier pay plan that Tesla shareholders approved in 2018, this 12-step package asks Mr. Musk, the company’s chief executive, to vastly expand Tesla’s stock market valuation — to $8.5 trillion from around $1.4 trillion — while hitting a variety of other goals. Those include selling one million robots with humanlike qualities and 10 million paid subscriptions to the company’s self-driving software.

Submission + - The world's tallest chip defies the limits of computing: goodbye to Moore's Law? (elpais.com) 1

Submitted by dbialac
dbialac writes: Building chips up instead of smaller may be a solution to the problems encountered with modern semiconductors.

Xiaohang Li, a researcher at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, and his team have designed a chip with 41 vertical layers of semiconductors and insulating materials, approximately ten times higher than any previously manufactured chip. The work, recently published in the journal Nature Electronics, not only represents a technical milestone but also opens the door to a new generation of flexible, efficient, and sustainable electronic devices. “Having six or more layers of transistors stacked vertically allows us to increase circuit density without making the devices smaller laterally,” Li explains. “With six layers, we can integrate 600% more logic functions in the same area than with a single layer, achieving higher performance and lower power consumption.”

Submission + - Israeli army removing Chinese made service cars from officers - espionage risks (x.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Israeli army has started taking away Chinese-made service cars from officers — espionage risks officially confirmed

The military has strong reasons to believe that built-in cameras, sensors and communication systems in these vehicles could collect data and transmit it to servers in China.

Israel’s Defense Ministry and the IDF have begun a phased phase-out. Hundreds of vehicles are affected — mostly seven-seat CHERY models issued to officers with large families.

  Chinese cars are already banned from entering military bases, and by early 2026 the army plans to completely phase out their use.

Comment Not every 6 months (Score 1) 159

by schwit1 (#65767436) Attached to: Daylight Saving Time: Still Happening. Still Unpopular

Daylight Saving Time (DST): Approximately 238 days per year (about 65% of the year)

From the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November
That's roughly 7 months and 3 weeks

Standard Time: Approximately 127 days per year (about 35% of the year)

From the first Sunday in November to the second Sunday in March
That's roughly 4 months and 1 week

Submission + - Ford to End Production of Failed F-150 Lightning (yahoo.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Ford will stop making its electric vehicle (EV) flagship, the F-150 Lightning. The New York Times reports this could be attributed to both the fire and flagging sales. In the first three quarters of the year, Lightning unit sales were up only 1% to 23,034. The extent to which Ford is entirely a gasoline-powered car company shows up in overall F-Series sales, which rose 12.7% to 620,580. Ford’s management shows wisdom in shutting down Lightning production. The electric pickup never sold well, suggesting its launch was a terrible mistake. Additionally, the U.S. EV market is dying and will not bounce back soon. The $7,500 EV tax credit expired at the end of the third quarter. People who wanted an EV rushed to buy one before the deadline.

Submission + - SpaceX: Starship will be going to the Moon, with or without NASA (behindtheblack.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: SpaceX is going to land this spaceship manned on the Moon, whether or not NASA’s SLS and Orion are ready. And even if those expensive, cumbersome, and poorly designed boondoggles are ready for those first two Artemis landings, SpaceX is likely to quickly outmatch them with numerous other private missions to the Moon, outside of NASA. It has the funds to do it, and it knows it has the customers willing to buy the flights.

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