tThe internet is full of people claiming to uncover conspiracies in politics and business…” reports the Wall Street Journal.

“Now an unlikely new villain has been added to the list: theoretical physicists,” they write, saygin resentment of scientific authority figures “is the major attraction of what might be called ‘conspiracy physics’.”

In recent years, a group of YouTubers and podcasters have attracted millions of viewers by proclaiming that physics is in crisis. The field, they argue, has discovered little of importance in the last 50 years, because it is dominated by groupthink and silences anyone who dares to dissent from mainstream ideas, like string theory… Most fringe theories are too arcane for listeners to understand, but anyone can grasp the idea that academic physics is just one more corrupt and self-serving establishment… In this corner of the internet, the scientist Scott Aaronson has written, “Anyone perceived as the ‘mainstream establishment’ faces a near-insurmountable burden of proof, while anyone perceived as ‘renegade’ wins by default if they identify any hole whatsoever in mainstream understanding…

As with other kinds of authorities, there are reasonable criticisms to be made of academic physics. By some metrics, scientific productivity has slowed since the 1970s. String theory has not fulfilled physicists’ early dreams that it would become the ultimate explanation of all forces and matter in our universe. The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, has delivered fewer breakthroughs than scientists expected when it turned on in 2010. But even reasonable points become hard to recognize when expressed in the ways YouTube incentivizes. Conspiracy physics videos with titles like “They Just Keep Lying” are full of sour sarcasm, outraged facial expressions and spooky music…

Leonard Susskind, director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, says physicists need to be both more sober and more forceful when addressing the public. The limits of string theory should be acknowledged, he says, but the idea that progress has slowed isn’t right. In the last few decades, he and other physicists have figured out how to make progress on the vast project of integrating general relativity and quantum mechanics, the century-old pillars of physics, into a single explanation of the universe.

The bitter attacks on leading physicists get a succinct summary in the article from Chris Williamson, a “Love Island” contestant turned podcast host. “This is like ‘The Kardashians’ for physicists — I love it.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“Swiss voters have backed plans for electronic identity cards by a wafer-thin margin,” reports the Guardian, “in the second nationwide vote on the issue.”
In a referendum on Sunday, 50.4% of voters supported an electronic ID card, while 49.6% were against, confounding pollsters who had forecast stronger support for the “yes” vote. Turnout was 49.55%, higher than expected… [V]oters rejected an earlier version of the e-ID in 2021, largely over objections to the role of private companies in the system. In response to these concerns, the Swiss state will now provide the e-ID, which will be optional and free of charge… To ensure security the e-ID is linked to a single smartphone, users will have to get a new e-ID if they change their device… An ID card containing biometric data — fingerprints — will be available from the end of next year.

Critics of the e-ID scheme raised data protection concerns and said it opened the door to mass surveillance. They also fear the voluntary scheme will become mandatory and disadvantage people without smartphones. The referendum was called after a coalition of rightwing and data-privacy parties collected more than 50,000 signatures against e-ID cards, triggering the vote.

“To further ease privacy concerns, a particular authority seeking information on a person — such as proof of age or nationality, for example — will only be able to check for those specific details,” notes the BBC:

Supporters of the Swiss system say it will make life much easier for everyone, allowing a range of bureaucratic procedures — from getting a telephone contract to proving you are old enough to buy a bottle of wine — to happen quickly online. Opponents of digital ID cards, who gathered enough signatures to force another referendum on the issue, argue that the measure could still undermine individual privacy. They also fear that, despite the new restrictions on how data is collected and stored, it could still be used to track people and for marketing purposes.
The BBC adds that the UK government also announced plans earlier this week to introduce its own digital ID, “which would be mandatory for employment. The proposed British digital ID would have fewer intended uses than the Swiss version, but has still raised concerns about privacy and data security.”

The Guardian reports:
The referendum came soon after the UK government announced plans for a digital ID card, which would sit in the digital wallets of smartphones, using state-of-the-art encryption. More than 1.6 million people have signed a petition opposing e-ID cards, which would be mandatory for people working in the UK by 2029.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Snap is imposing a new storage limit on Snapchat‘s Memories feature, which has racked up impressive numbers since its introduction in 2016. According to Snap, users have saved more than one trillion Memories across its platform, and it’s now introducing “Memories Storage Plans” for users who exceed 5GB of Memories.

In a press release, Snap detailed that the introductory storage plan allows up to 100GB of storage for Memories for $1.99 a month. Snapchat+ subscribers, who pay $3.99 a month, will get up to 250GB of storage, while Snapchat’s highest-tier Platinum subscribers will get 5TB included with their $15.99 monthly cost.

Snap said that a “vast majority” of its Snapchat users won’t notice any changes since they’re far from hitting the 5GB limit. For users who hold onto thousands of Snaps, the company is now rolling out these storage plans. To ease the transition from unlimited storage to paid options, Snap will give anyone exceeding 5GB of Memories a year of temporary storage. These new storage subscriptions follow Snap’s latest paid option for its Lens+ subscription, which costs $9 a month.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snapchat-introduces-a-paid-storage-option-for-all-the-memories-hoarders-out-there-203013294.html?src=rss

Tim Berners-Lee writes in a new article in the Guardian that “Somewhere between my original vision for web 1.0 and the rise of social media as part of web 2.0, we took the wrong path

Today, I look at my invention and I am forced to ask: is the web still free today? No, not all of it. We see a handful of large platforms harvesting users’ private data to share with commercial brokers or even repressive governments. We see ubiquitous algorithms that are addictive by design and damaging to our teenagers’ mental health. Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web. On many platforms, we are no longer the customers, but instead have become the product. Our data, even if anonymised, is sold on to actors we never intended it to reach, who can then target us with content and advertising…

We have the technical capability to give that power back to the individual. Solid is an open-source interoperable standard that I and my team developed at MIT more than a decade ago. Apps running on Solid don’t implicitly own your data — they have to request it from you and you choose whether to agree, or not. Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. Sharing your information in a smart way can also liberate it. Why is your smartwatch writing your biological data to one silo in one format? Why is your credit card writing your financial data to a second silo in a different format? Why are your YouTube comments, Reddit posts, Facebook updates and tweets all stored in different places? Why is the default expectation that you aren’t supposed to be able to look at any of this stuff? You generate all this data — your actions, your choices, your body, your preferences, your decisions. You should own it. You should be empowered by it…

We’re now at a new crossroads, one where we must decide if AI will be used for the betterment or to the detriment of society. How can we learn from the mistakes of the past? First of all, we must ensure policymakers do not end up playing the same decade-long game of catchup they have done over social media. The time to decide the governance model for AI was yesterday, so we must act with urgency. In 2017, I wrote a thought experiment about an AI that works for you. I called it Charlie. Charlie works for you like your doctor or your lawyer, bound by law, regulation and codes of conduct. Why can’t the same frameworks be adopted for AI? We have learned from social media that power rests with the monopolies who control and harvest personal data. We can’t let the same thing happen with AI.
Berners-Lee also says “we need a Cern-like not-for-profit body driving forward international AI research,” arguing that if we muster the political willpower, “we have the chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity and compassion across cultural borders.

“We can re-empower individuals, and take the web back. It’s not too late.”

Berners-Lee has also written a new book titled This is For Everyone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Business Insider has obtained the guidelines that Meta contractors are reportedly now using to train its AI chatbots, showing how it’s attempting to more effectively address potential child sexual exploitation and prevent kids from engaging in age-inappropriate conversations. The company said in August that it was updating the guardrails for its AIs after Reuters reported that its policies allowed the chatbots to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” which Meta said at the time was “erroneous and inconsistent” with its policies and removed that language. 

The document, which Business Insider has shared an excerpt from, outlines what kinds of content are “acceptable” and “unacceptable” for its AI chatbots. It explicitly bars content that “enables, encourages, or endorses” child sexual abuse, romantic roleplay if the user is a minor or if the AI is asked to roleplay as a minor, advice about potentially romantic or intimate physical contact if the user is a minor, and more. The chatbots can discuss topics such as abuse, but cannot engage in conversations that could enable or encourage it. 

The company’s AI chatbots have been the subject of numerous reports in recent months that have raised concerns about their potential harms to children. The FTC in August launched a formal inquiry into companion AI chatbots not just from Meta, but other companies as well, including Alphabet, Snap, OpenAI and X.AI.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-has-introduced-revised-guardrails-for-its-ai-chatbots-to-prevent-inappropriate-conversations-with-children-200444230.html?src=rss

“Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is launching paid subscriptions for users who do not want to see adverts in the UK,” reports the BBC:

The company said it would start notifying users in the coming weeks to let them choose whether to subscribe to its platforms if they wish to use them without seeing ads. EU users of its platforms can already pay a fee starting from €5.99 (£5) a month to see no ads — but subscriptions will start from £2.99 a month for UK users.

“It will give people in the UK a clear choice about whether their data is used for personalised advertising, while preserving the free access and value that the ads-supported internet creates for people, businesses and platforms,” Meta said. But UK users will not have an option to not pay and see “less personalised” adverts — a feature Meta added for EU users after regulators raised concerns…

Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps — with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google… [Meta] reiterated its critical stance on the EU on Friday, saying its regulations were creating a worse experience for users and businesses unlike the UK’s “more pro-growth and pro-innovation regulatory environment”.

“Meta said its own model would see its subscription for no ads cost £2.99 a month on the web or £3.99 a month on iOS and Android apps,” according to the BBC, “with the higher fee to offset cuts taken from transactions by Apple and Google.”

Even users not paying for an ad-free experience have “tools and settings that empower people to control their ads experience,” according to Meta’s announcement. The include Ad Preferences which influences data used to inform ads including Activity Information from Ad Partners. “We also have tools in our products that explain ‘Why am I seeing this ad?’ and how people can manage their ad experience. We do not sell personal data to advertisers.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IEEE Spectrum ranks the popularity of programming languages — but is there a problem? Programmers “are turning away from many of these public expressions of interest. Rather than page through a book or search a website like Stack Exchange for answers to their questions, they’ll chat with an LLM like Claude or ChatGPT in a private conversation.”

And with an AI assistant like Cursor helping to write code, the need to pose questions in the first place is significantly decreased. For example, across the total set of languages evaluated in the Top Programming Languages, the number of questions we saw posted per week on Stack Exchange in 2025 was just 22% of what it was in 2024…

However, an even more fundamental problem is looming in the wings… In the same way most developers today don’t pay much attention to the instruction sets and other hardware idiosyncrasies of the CPUs that their code runs on, which language a program is vibe coded in ultimately becomes a minor detail… [T]he popularity of different computer languages could become as obscure a topic as the relative popularity of railway track gauges… But if an AI is soothing our irritations with today’s languages, will any new ones ever reach the kind of critical mass needed to make an impact? Will the popularity of today’s languages remain frozen in time?

That’s ultimately the larger question. “how much abstraction and anti-foot-shooting structure will a sufficiently-advanced coding AI really need…?”

[C]ould we get our AIs to go straight from prompt to an intermediate language that could be fed into the interpreter or compiler of our choice? Do we need high-level languages at all in that future? True, this would turn programs into inscrutable black boxes, but they could still be divided into modular testable units for sanity and quality checks. And instead of trying to read or maintain source code, programmers would just tweak their prompts and generate software afresh.

What’s the role of the programmer in a future without source code? Architecture design and algorithm selection would remain vital skills… How should a piece of software be interfaced with a larger system? How should new hardware be exploited? In this scenario, computer science degrees, with their emphasis on fundamentals over the details of programming languages, rise in value over coding boot camps.

Will there be a Top Programming Language in 2026? Right now, programming is going through the biggest transformation since compilers broke onto the scene in the early 1950s. Even if the predictions that much of AI is a bubble about to burst come true, the thing about tech bubbles is that there’s always some residual technology that survives. It’s likely that using LLMs to write and assist with code is something that’s going to stick. So we’re going to be spending the next 12 months figuring out what popularity means in this new age, and what metrics might be useful to measure.
Having said that, IEEE Spectrum still ranks programming language popularity three ways — based on use among working programmers, demand from employers, and “trending” in the zeitgeist — using seven different metrics.

Their results? Among programmers, “we see that once again Python has the top spot, with the biggest change in the top five being JavaScript’s drop from third place last year to sixth place this year. As JavaScript is often used to create web pages, and vibe coding is often used to create websites, this drop in the apparent popularity may be due to the effects of AI… In the ‘Jobs’ ranking, which looks exclusively at what skills employers are looking for, we see that Python has also taken 1st place, up from second place last year, though SQL expertise remains an incredibly valuable skill to have on your resume.”

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Martin Shkreli, better known as Pharma Bro for his price-gouging antics with AIDS medication Daraprim, is going to have to defend against claims of misappropriating trade secrets with the unique Wu-Tang Clan album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Earlier this week, US District Court Judge Pamela Chen wrote in a decision that Shkreli has to face a lawsuit that accuses him of improperly saving copies and playing the one-of-a-kind album for followers, which reduced its value and exclusivity.

The lawsuit was filed by PleasrDAO — which, according to its own website, is a collective of people involved with cryptocurrency, NFTs and digital art. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin has a strange ownership history, starting with Shkreli purchasing the one-of-one studio album in 2015 for $2 million. After a fraud conviction, Shkreli had to forfeit his assets, including the album, leading to PleasrDAO acquiring it in a government auction for $4 million.

On top of the album’s highly exclusive nature, it has a condition where it can’t be “commercially exploited for 88 years” by any subsequent owners. The collective’s argument stems from claims that Shkreli admitted in livestreams that he made copies of the album and played it for his followers, even allegedly posting “LOL i have the mp3s you moron” in response to a member of PleasrDAO posting a photo of the album. If PleasrDAO wins the case, Shkreli will have to give up any copies of the album, as well as provide info on all copies, who they were distributed to and what profits he made from it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/martin-shkreli-has-to-face-claims-of-copying-one-of-a-kind-wu-tang-clan-album-174730388.html?src=rss

“Today’s AIs are book smart,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Everything they know they learned from available language, images and videos. To evolve further, they have to get street smart.”
And that requires “world models,” which are “gaining momentum in frontier research and could allow technology to take on new roles in our lives.”
The key is enabling AI to learn from their environments and faithfully represent an abstract version of them in their “heads,” the way humans and animals do. To do it, developers need to train AIs by using simulations of the world. Think of it like learning to drive by playing “Gran Turismo” or learning to fly from “Microsoft Flight Simulator.” These world models include all the things required to plan, take actions and make predictions about the future, including physics and time… There’s an almost unanimous belief among AI pioneers that world models are crucial to creating next-generation AI. And many say they will be critical to someday creating better-than-human “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI. Stanford University professor and AI “godmother” Fei-Fei Li has raised $230 million to launch world-model startup World Labs…

Google DeepMind researchers set out to create a system that could generate real-world simulations with an unprecedented level of fidelity. The result, Genie 3 — which is still in research preview and not publicly available — can generate photo-realistic, open-world virtual landscapes from nothing more than a text prompt. You can think of Genie 3 as a way to quickly generate what’s essentially an open-world videogame that can be as faithful to the real world as you like. It’s a virtual space in which a baby AI can endlessly play, make mistakes and learn what it needs to do to achieve its goals, just as a baby animal or human does in the real world. That experimentation process is called reinforcement learning. Genie 3 is part of a system that could help train the AI that someday pilots robots, self-driving cars and other “embodied” AIs, says project co-lead Jack Parker-Holder. And the environments could be filled with people and obstacles: An AI could learn how to interact with humans by observing them moving around in that virtual space, he adds.

“It isn’t clear whether all these bets will lead to the superintelligence that corporate leaders predict,” the article concedes.

“But in the short term, world models could make AIs better at tasks at which they currently falter, especially in spatial reasoning.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest Apple silicon is about to hit the assembly lines, according to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman. In the latest Power On newsletter, Gurman said that Apple “is nearing mass production of its next MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs and two new Mac monitors.” Gurman added that these upgraded products are scheduled for release sometime between the end of this year and the first quarter of next year.

Earlier this year, Gurman noted that Apple was expected to start production on the M5 MacBook Pro during the second half of 2025. All signs seem to point toward Apple following its typical release schedule, where the latest MacBook Pro makes its fall debut, followed by the reveal of the upgraded MacBook Air in the spring. However, Gurman previously mentioned in a July edition of his newsletter that “Apple is now internally targeting a launch early next year” for the MacBook Pro instead.

Beyond the upcoming MacBooks, we’re expecting one of the two Mac monitors to be the upgraded Studio Display. First released in March 2022, Apple’s Studio Display could use a refresh, which some rumors say will include a mini-LED display, along with overall improvements to brightness and color quality.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/apple-is-reportedly-nearing-production-for-its-latest-m5-powered-macbooks-154148070.html?src=rss

The BBC reports that a million-year-old human skull found in China suggests that the human species “began to emerge at least half a million years earlier than we thought, researchers are claiming in a new study.”

It also shows that we co-existed with other sister species, including Neanderthals, for much longer than we’ve come to believe, they say.

The scientists claim their analysis “totally changes” our understanding of human evolution and, if correct, it would certainly rewrite a key early chapter in our history. But other experts in a field where disagreement over our emergence on the planet is rife, say that the new study’s conclusions are plausible but far from certain.

The discovery, published in the leading scientific journal Science, shocked the research team, which included scientists from a university in China and the UK’s Natural History Museum. “From the very beginning, when we got the result, we thought it was unbelievable. How could that be so deep into the past?” said Prof Xijun Ni of Fudan University, who co-led the analysis. “But we tested it again and again to test all the models, use all the methods, and we are now confident about the result, and we’re actually very excited.”

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Six months ago California had 48% more public and “shared” private EV chargers than gasoline nozzles. (In March California had 178,000 public and shared private EV chargers, versus about 120,000 gas nozzles.)

Since then they’ve added 23,000 more public/shared charging ports — and announced this week that there’s now 68% more EV charger ports than the number of gasoline nozzles statewide. “Thanks to the state’s ever-expanding charger network, 94% of Californians live within 10 minutes of an EV charger,” according to the announcement from the state’s energy policy agency. And the California Energy Commission staff told CleanTechnica they expect more chargers in the future. “We are watching increased private investment by consortiums like IONNA and OEMs like Rivian, Ford, and others that are actively installing EV charging stations throughout the state.”

Clean Technica notes in 2019, the state had roughly 42,000 charging ports and now there are a little over 200,000. (And today there’s about 800,000 home EV chargers.)

This week California announced another milestone: that in 2024 nearly 23% of all the state’s new truck sales — that’s trucks, buses, and vans — were zero-emission vehicles. (The state subsidizes electric trucks — $200 million was requested on the program’s first day.)
Greenhouse gas emissions in California are down 20% since 2000 — even as the state’s GDP increased 78% in that same time period all while becoming the world’s fourth largest economy.
The state also continues to set clean energy records. California was powered by two-thirds clean energy in 2023, the latest year for which data is available — the largest economy in the world to achieve this level of clean energy. The state has run on 100% clean electricity for some part of the day almost every day this year.
“Last year, California ran on 100% clean electricity for the equivalent of 51 days,” notes another announcement, which points out California has 15,763 MW of battery storage capacity — roughly a third of the amount projected to be needed by 2045.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With iOS 26, Apple has expanded its native call recording feature with transcripts, Live Translation, summaries and tighter integration with Notes. It’s a more polished and useful tool than before, especially if you rely on your iPhone for interviews, meetings or important conversations.

Call recording itself first arrived with iOS 18.1 in October 2024. The feature has always been region- and language-dependent, and that hasn’t changed. If it’s available where you live, you can capture calls directly from the Phone app without third-party apps or hardware. If it’s not, there are still alternative methods worth knowing about. Here’s how it works, plus what to do if the option isn’t available in your country.

How to check if call recording is available

First, confirm that the feature is supported in your region. Apple maintains a feature availability page that lists countries where call recording isn’t offered, including the European Union, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. If your country is on that list, you won’t see the option in the Phone app.

Before recording your phone call, you’ll need the consent of the person on the other end of the line. When you start recording, both parties hear an audio notice stating that the call is being recorded.

How to record a call on iPhone

Recording a call is straightforward:

1. Open the Phone app.

2. Start or answer a call.

3. During the call, tap the More button.

4. Select Call Recording.

The call continues as normal, but the iPhone automatically saves the audio once you hang up or tap Stop. You’ll find all recordings in iOS’ native Notes app, inside a folder called Call Recordings.

How to play back, manage and delete recordings

To listen back, open Notes, go to the Call Recordings folder, and tap the file you want. Tap Play to hear it.

From here, you can:

• Search: Tap the More button and select Find in Transcript.

• Copy: Tap the More button and select Add Transcript to Note or Copy Transcript.

• Save: Tap the More button and select Save Audio Files, then select where you want to save recording (another folder or app).

• Share: Tap the More button and select Share Audio, then select how you want to share the recording

• Delete: Tap the More button and select Delete. This deletes the recording and any related transcript.

How to transcribe your calls

If your region and language are supported, iOS 26 also transcribes calls. Open a recording in Notes, then tap Show Transcript and Summary. Processing might take a few moments, but once it’s ready, you’ll see the conversation broken down by speaker. From there, you can search the text, copy it into another note or tap a line to jump to that part of the audio. Apple warns transcripts may not be flawless, so double check to make sure important details are correct.

Apple Intelligence summaries

With Apple Intelligence switched on, you’ll also get a generated summary of the call. This is handy if you only need the highlights — for example, the action items from a meeting or the main points of an interview. Summaries appear alongside the transcript in Notes.

How to turn off call recording

By default, call recording is enabled on supported devices. If you don’t want the option at all, navigate to Settings, select Apps, then Phone, tap Call Recording and toggle it off.

Alternatives if call recording isn’t available

If you’re in a region where the built-in feature doesn’t appear, or you’re running a previous version of iOS, there are still other ways to record calls.

In the US, federal law dictates one-party consent. This means you can record a phone call as long as you are actively participating in the conversation. However, it is important that you check state laws (in the US) or relevant laws in your country before recording a phone call. Note that these options don’t integrate with Apple Notes or Apple Intelligence, but they give you a backup if the official method isn’t supported where you live.

• Rev Call Recorder (US only) is free to use on your iPhone. There are no in-app ads or time constraints, allowing you to record high-quality audio via the app.

• Google Voice (US only) lets you record incoming calls via the app by pressing “4” on the keypad. The audio file appears in your Google Voice inbox afterward. The function is restricted to incoming calls, and features will depend on the account you have.

• External recorders: You can connect a small recorder to your iPhone through USB-C or Lightning, or place a digital recorder next to your phone on speaker mode. This keeps everything offline, but audio quality can vary.

• Speakerphone: If you have access to multiple devices, you can place your call on speakerphone and simultaneously use a separate device with the Voice Memos app open to record your call. While the sound quality is unlikely to be on par with other alternatives, it is a feasible option.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/how-to-record-a-phone-call-on-an-iphone-120058707.html?src=rss

Paris-based AI giant Mistral “is pushing to improve its models,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “by looking inside legacy enterprises that hold some of the world’s last untapped data reserves….”

Mistral’s approach will be to form partnerships with enterprises to further train existing models on their own proprietary data, a phenomenon known as post-training… [At Dutch chip-equipment company ASML], Mistral embeds its own solutions architects, applied AI engineers and applied scientists into the enterprise to work on improving models with the company’s data. [While Mistral sells some models under a commercial license], this co-creation strategy allows Mistral to make money off the services side of its business and afford to give away its open source AI free of charge, while improving model performance for the customer with more industry context…

This kind of hand-holding approach is necessary for most companies to tackle AI successfully, said Arthur Mensch [co-founder and chief executive of Mistral]. “The very high-tech companies [and] a couple of banks are able to do it on their own. But when it comes to getting some [return on investment] from use cases, in general, they fail,” he said. Mensch attributes that in part to a mismatch between expectations and reality. “The curse of AI is that it looks like magic. So you can very quickly make something that looks amazing to your boss,” but it doesn’t scale or work more broadly, he said. In other cases, enterprises simply might not know what to focus on. For example, it is a mistake to think equipping all employees with a chatbot will create meaningful gains on the bottom line, he said. Mensch said to fully take advantage of AI, companies will have to rethink organizational structures. With information flowing more easily, they could require fewer middle managers, for example.

There is a lot of work yet to do, Mensch said, but in a large sense, the future of AI development now lies inside the enterprise itself. “This is a pattern that we’ve seen with many of our customers: At some point, the capabilities of the frontier model can only be increased if we partner,” he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I love 4X games. I’ve tried other strategy game genres, but frankly, they don’t stick if they’re not first and foremost 4X games—at the heart of it, it must be about exploring, expanding, exploiting, and yes, exterminating.

I suspect that the first 4X game most people played was some entry in the Civilization franchise—though certainly, a select few played precursors dating back to text-based games in the 1970s.

But for me, the title that kicked off my obsession was Master of Orion II (MOO2)—a game that has you develop and build up planets across a simple galaxy map, researching speculative future technologies, and ultimately wiping out your opponents and claiming dominion over the known universe. (There are other victory conditions too, but that one is the most fun.)

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One hundred and fifty million years ago, the Solnhofen Limestones of Germany were covered in small islands and warm saltwater lagoons. Coral reefs flourished with crinoids, sponges, jellyfish, and crustaceans; Dragonflies buzzed above the water as small reptiles sunned themselves at the water’s edge. Pterosaurs and Archaeopteryx took to the skies, but there was trouble in this Jurassic paradise: Tropical storms would turn it into a pterosaur graveyard.

What paleontologist Rab Smyth found in this graveyard finally revealed why so many fledgling pterosaurs had succumbed to the storm. Smyth, a researcher at the Center for Paleobiology and Biosphere Evolution at the University of Leicester, unearthed two Pterodactylus antiquus hatchlings, and their bones showed exactly how they had succumbed to storm winds. The wings of both specimens (ironically named Lucky I and Lucky II) revealed clean, slanted humerus fractures that suggested they had been twisted in the storm. Unable to fly, they drowned and were rapidly buried in the lagoon depths.

“Our results show that most pterosaurs are preserved predominantly through catastrophic events, often reflecting mass mortality episodes,” Smyth and his research team said in a study he led, recently published in Current Biology.

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Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says America’s Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a patent to Tableau (Salesforce’s visual analytics platform) — for a patent covering “Data Processing For Visualizing Hierarchical Data”:

“A provided data model may include a tree specification that declares parent-child relationships between objects in the data model. In response to a query associated with objects in the data model: employing the parent-child relationships to determine a tree that includes parent objects and child objects from the objects based on the parent-child relationships; determining a root object based on the query and the tree; traversing the tree from the root object to visit the child objects in the tree; determining partial results based on characteristics of the visited child objects such that the partial results are stored in an intermediate table; and providing a response to the query that includes values based on the intermediate table and the partial results.”

A set of 15 simple drawings is provided to support the legal and tech gobbledygook of the invention claims. A person can have a manager, Tableau explains in Figures 5-6 of its accompanying drawings, and that manager can also manage and be managed by other people. Not only that, Tableau illustrates in Figures 7-10 that computers can be used to count how many people report to a manager. How does this magic work, you ask? Well, you “generate [a] tree” [Fig. 13] and “traverse a tree” [Fig. 15], Tableau explains. But wait, there’s more — you can also display the people who report to a manager in multi-level or nested pie charts (aka Sunburst charts), Tableau demonstrates in Fig. 11.

Interestingly, Tableau released a “pre-Beta” Sunburst chart type in late April 2023 but yanked it at the end of June 2023 (others have long-supported Sunburst charts, including Plotly). So, do you think Tableau should be awarded a patent in 2025 on a concept that has roots in circa-1921 Sunburst charts and tree algorithms taught to first-year CS students in circa-1975 Data Structures courses?

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“We’ve decided to support image-based search,” announced the product manager for Firefox Search. Powered by the AI-driven Google Lens search technology, they promise the new feature offers “a frictionless, fast, and a curiosity-sparking way to (as Google puts it) ‘search what you see’.”

With just a right-click on any image, you’ll be able to:
– Find similar products, places, or objects
– Copy, translate, or search text from images
– Get inspiration for learning, travel, or shopping

Look for the new “Search Image with Google Lens” option in your right-click menu (tagged with a NEW badge at first). This is a desktop-only feature, and it will start gradually rolling out worldwide. Note: Google must be set as your default search engine for this feature to appear.
We’ll be listening closely to your feedback as we roll it out. Some of the things we’re wondering about:

Does the placement in the context menu align with your expectations?
Would you prefer the option to choose your visual search provider?
Where else would you like entry points to visual search (e.g. when you open a new tab, in the address bar, on mobile devices, etc.)

We can’t wait to hear your thoughts as the rollout begins!

Some thoughts from WebProNews:

Mozilla emphasizes that this is an opt-in feature, giving users control over activation, which aligns with the company’s longstanding commitment to privacy and user agency.

Yet, for industry observers, this partnership with Google raises intriguing questions about competitive dynamics in the browser space, where Firefox has historically positioned itself as an independent alternative to Chrome… This move comes at a time when browsers are increasingly becoming platforms for AI-driven enhancements, as evidenced by recent updates in competitors like Microsoft’s Edge, which integrates Copilot AI. Mozilla’s decision to leverage Google Lens rather than developing an in-house solution could be seen as a pragmatic step to accelerate feature parity, especially given Firefox’s smaller market share. Insiders note that by tapping into established technologies, Mozilla can focus resources on core strengths like privacy protections, potentially attracting users disillusioned with data-heavy ecosystems… While mobile users might feel left out, the phased rollout over the next few weeks allows for feedback loops through community channels, a hallmark of Mozilla’s open-source ethos.

Data from similar integrations in other browsers suggests visual search can boost engagement by 15-20%, per industry reports, though Mozilla has not disclosed specific metrics yet… Looking ahead, Mozilla’s strategy appears geared toward incremental innovations that bolster user retention without alienating its privacy-focused base. If successful, this could help Firefox claw back some ground against Chrome’s dominance, estimated at over 60% market share. For now, the feature’s gradual deployment invites ongoing dialogue, underscoring Mozilla’s community-driven model in an industry often criticized for top-down decisions.

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Cristian Fleming paid around $70,000 for one of Fisker Ocean’s electric mid-size crossover SUVs. Seven months later the company filed for bankruptcy in June of 2024, reports the Verge, “having only delivered 11,000 vehicles.”

“Early adopters were left with cars plagued by battery failures, glitchy software, inconsistent key fobs, and door handles that did not always open. With the company gone, there was no way to fix any issues.”

Regulators logged dozens of complaints as replacement parts vanished. Passionate owners who spent top dollar on high-end trims saw their cars reduced to expensive driveway ornaments.

Rather than accept defeat, thousands of Ocean owners have organized into their own makeshift car company. The Fisker Owners Association (FOA) is a nonprofit that’s launched third-party apps, built a global parts supply chain, and came together around a future for their orphaned vehicles. It’s part car club, part tech startup, part survival mission. Fleming now serves as the organization’s president… FOA calls itself the first entirely owner-controlled EV fleet in history. So far, 4,055 Ocean owners have signed up, paying $550 a year in dues that the group estimates will raise around $3 million annually, about 0.1 percent of Fisker’s peak valuation. Only verified Ocean owners can become full members, but anyone can donate.

The grassroots effort has precedent — DeLorean diehards and Saab enthusiasts have kept their favorite brands alive after factory closures. But those efforts focused on preserving aging vehicles. FOA is attempting something different: real-time software updates and hardware improvements for a connected, two-year-old EV fleet… The organization has spawned three separate companies. Tsunami Automotive handles parts in North America while Tidal Wave covers Europe, scavenging insurance auctions and contracting with tooling manufacturers to reproduce components. UnderCurrent Automotive, run by former Google and Apple engineers, focuses on software solutions.

UnderCurrent’s first product is OceanLink Pro, a third-party mobile app now used by over 1,200 members that restores basic EV features, such as remote battery monitoring and climate control. A companion device called OceanLink Pulse adds wireless CarPlay and Android Auto, with plans for future upgrades including keyless entry. “Those are things you would have expected to be in a $70,000 luxury car,” says Clint Bagley [FOA’s treasurer]. “But, you know, we’re happy to provide what the billion-dollar automaker apparently couldn’t.”

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