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Comment Re: We're so back (Score 1) 38

Do you mean the mass market media where MBAs have moved studios toward milquetoast cheap slop when they get the chance?

Or the "brainrot" short form content that is kind of similar to the super lame the we would do at that age, but now video and distribution is free so the whole world gets to see it?

Well the good news is that at least sometimes the slop flops and studios get reminded they can't just dump any old thing and get success.

Of the younger generation I interact with, they are more likely to know and like a song from a YouTuber from no where, and half of the tracks I hear wouldn't have sounded out of place in the 60s, much to my surprise, with some decent musical depth and theory and not just the nth assemblage of attractive people designated to perform the same chord progression to just take in the money.

Submission + - Canada: Let's allow the US to spy on all our citizens and backdoor everything (eff.org)

sandbagger writes: The Canadian government is preparing to give away Canadians’ digital lives—to U.S. police, to the Donald Trump administration, and possibly to foreign spy agencies.

Bill C-2, the so-called Strong Borders Act, is a sprawling surveillance bill with multiple privacy-invasive provisions. But the thrust is clear: it’s a roadmap to aligning Canadian surveillance with U.S. demands.

Submission + - Scientist Just Learned Our Ancestors Ate Toddlers (dnyuz.com) 1

fjo3 writes: Roughly 850,000 years ago, someone looked at a toddler and saw dinner. That’s the conclusion researchers have drawn after analyzing a child’s neck bone found in the Gran Dolina cave system in northern Spain. The bone, belonging to a 2- to 5-year-old Homo antecessor, shows precise cut marks—signs of decapitation and defleshing. In other words, this poor kid got butchered and eaten.

Submission + - DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations (washingtonpost.com)

sinij writes:

The U.S. DOGE Service is using a new artificial intelligence tool to slash federal regulations, with the goal of eliminating half of Washington’s regulatory mandates by the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration

I, for one, like my shower heads providing enough water, toilets flushing well, washing machines getting laundry clean with just one cycle, and my gas can pouring gasoline well.


Submission + - U.S. Dept. of Education Moves to Make AI the Fourth 'R'

theodp writes: Reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, and now, 'rtificial intelligence? The U.S. Department of Education this week sent a Dear Colleague Letter to grantees and future grantees on leveraging federal grant funds to improve education outcomes through AI, including 'AI-Based High-Quality Instructional Materials' and 'AI-Enhanced High-Impact Tutoring.'

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon also announced her fourth proposed supplemental grantmaking priority, advancing AI in education, including "the integration of AI literacy skills and concepts into teaching and learning" and "expand[ing] offerings of AI and computer science education" in K-12 and higher education.

"Artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize education and support improved outcomes for learners," said McMahon. "It drives personalized learning, sharpens critical thinking, and prepares students with problem-solving skills that are vital for tomorrow's challenges. Today’s guidance also emphasizes the importance of parent and teacher engagement in guiding the ethical use of AI and using it as a tool to support individualized learning and advancement. By teaching about AI and foundational computer science while integrating AI technology responsibly, we can strengthen our schools and lay the foundation for a stronger, more competitive economy."

This week's actions, the Dept. of Education notes, "are in response to President Trump’s April 23 Executive Order, Advancing AI Education for American Youth." The actions also come on the heels of announcements by Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to partner with teacher unions on AI and a pledge by Microsoft to spend $4 billion to push AI into schools and the workforce, as well as the launch of a national campaign by tech leaders and Code.org to make AI and CS a graduation requirement.

McMahon's 2025 AI+CS spending directive is reminiscent of a similar 2017 directive to prioritize K-12 STEM+CS funding enacted by U.S. Dept. of Education Secretary Betsy Devos in response to a Trump Presidential Memorandum "to ensure that federal funding from the Department of Education helps advance [K-12] computer science." In his book Tools and Weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith credited tech companies' efforts — including private sector pledges to spend $300 million on K-12 CS — for unlocking that $1 billion in Federal support.

Comment Re:Read the article about the maths Olympiad (Score 1) 103

25% still seems a bit high to me. I do wonder if they really have forgotten how to do long division, or simply forgot what the words 'long division' mean. Like if you told them to work a division problem by hand, would they naturally just do long division, forgetting that was all that long division meant?

Comment Re:Get it while it's hot! (Score 1) 32

Because either:

a) It works as intended and the job inherently fast-tracks self-obsolescence.

b) It doesn't work as intended and this job evaporates as the hype money comes back down to earth.

No matter how well/poorly this current technology goes, this is a job that is not set to be a career.

Just like people claiming to be "prompt engineers", either the LLMs work and you are a useless middle man or they don't work and people don't want to fool with you. Just like "webmaster" was a thing just by being able to edit HTML files and that evaporated in the early 2000s.

Comment Re:Will it make ICEs irrelevant (Score 2) 173

Even for those that don't need that much range, there can be benefits.

The reason they can tout a goal of 600 mile range is that solid state batteries have much more energy per kg. NMC batteries are roughly 200Wh/kg, *maybe* someone can get 350Wh/kg in the most aggressive marketing claims I could find. Solid state batteries are more like 700-800 Wh/kg.

So if you say for a given car and lifestyle you could accept a 150 mile range, then you could produce for example an electric Miata that could weigh about the same as the ICE miata (ICE miata drivetrain+fuel weighs about 400 lbs, a credible electric motor might weigh 200lbs and a 150 mile solid state might also weigh about 200lbs.) A miata is the sort of car that may likely get away with low range as a 'fun' car you probably don't want to be road tripping in anyway. Or targeting a 300 mile range and being only 200lbs heavier instead of having to be 600 lbs heavier with NMC.

Submission + - UK introduces age-gate for some content from today (theguardian.com)

shilly writes: The UK’s regulations requiring age-gating for porn and various other types of harmful content has come into force today. It goes well beyond imposing requirements on porn sites, covering sites like Twitter as well. British media focus is on critics who say it doesn’t go far enough, with practically no attention given to the warnings from others that forcing individuals to hand credit card or ID information to porn sites may end up in tears being roundly ignored as an issue. This change is likely to be the source of endless stories in the years ahead.

Comment Re:why give AI the previliage? (Score 1) 148

For these people the options are either making Agentic AI able to do everything or them doing nothing at all because they don't actually know how. One of those options includes maybe money for some period of time, and the other has no opportunity for money.

I didn't read much about the other one, but the SaaStr guy was obviously a true believer. He had been making posts gleefully detailing his vibe coding journey and then clearly feeling betrayed by how quickly it all went south out of his control.

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 2) 148

The thing is the "vibe coding" movement is about not needing any of the technical skills that would have you actually understand testing/staging, let alone actually making an environment that would actually enforce it to an otherwise enabled "agentic" LLM.

Having another LLM to fix the other LLM is just the blind leading the blind.

It is a solvable issue, but the solutions run counter to the expectations around the immense amount of money in play. LLMs are useful, but not as useful as the unprecedented investment would demand. After the bubble deflates a bit, maybe we will see good utilization of LLMs, but right now there's a lot of high risk grifting in play and a lot of people getting in way more over their head than they formerly could manage.

Comment Re:This is not an AI failure (Score 1) 148

This is a failure of AI marketing, and how the AI companies encourage this behavior.

There are a *lot* of people without the skillset but have seen the dollars. Either they watch from the outside or they manage to become tech execs by bullshitting other non-tech executives.

Then AI companies talk up just a prose prompt and bam, you have a full stack application. The experienced can evaluate it reasonably in the context of code completion/prompt developing specific function, with a managable review surface and their own experience to evaluate and get a sense for how likely an attempted LLM usage is going to be productive and how much fixing it's going to need. The inexperienced cannot do that, so they make a go at vibe-coding up what would be tutorial fodder. Then they see a hopelessly intimidating full stack application that does exactly what they say and erroneously conclude that it must be generally capable.

So some folks can be happier vibe coding up a shovelware game with pretty low stakes and decent chance of success (though it sucks to dilute the game landscape with too much content that is utterly devoid of creativity). Some people think they can get rich quick by participating in a skilled industry without any skills (The Saastr story is particularly funny, they purport to be a resource for other developers, but can't even develop themselves). Not great, but less of a risk. The real risk are those tech execs high on BS and low on technical acumen, who are generally insecure about people that have an advantage over him. He sees a great equalizer and all his personal sources that could grade it are people he doesn't trust. So it's good to see stories like this for those executives to maybe, possibly understand the risk when they talk about laying off all or nearly all their software developers (yes, a few weeks ago an executive with hundreds of developers told me this was basically his plan, and I was only safe because I understood my respective customer base better than marketing, sales, and the executives, but most of his developers just do what he says and his "executive insight" is valuable, but their work is prime to be replaced by executives just vibe coding up stuff directly instead of having developers do it).

Submission + - Starlink Hit by Major Outage

An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX's Starlink Hit by Major Outage

UPDATE 2: SpaceX's VP of Starlink Engineering Michael Nicolls says: "Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours."

Without elaborating, he blamed the disruption on a "failure of key internal software services that operate the core network." SpaceX plans to "fully root cause" the issue to prevent a repeat, Nicolls added.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile told PCMag that the "T-Satellite service is operating normally with no network impacts or outages."

Submission + - Motorola Solutions introduces AI nutrition labels (nerds.xyz)

BrianFagioli writes: Motorola Solutions is trying something new with its AI-powered security tools. The company is introducing what it calls âoeAI nutrition labels,â designed to help users understand how artificial intelligence is being used inside its products. Itâ(TM)s a bit like the labels on food boxes, but instead of calories and sugar, youâ(TM)re getting insight into algorithms, data handling, and human oversight.

Each label will outline the type of AI being used, what it does, who owns the data, and whether there are any human checks in place. Motorola says itâ(TM)s doing this to improve transparency and build trust with customers who rely on its technology for public safety and enterprise security.

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