On Friday, a body that advises US judges revised the document it created to help judges grapple with scientific issues. The move came after a group of Republican state attorneys general wrote a letter to complain about the document’s chapter on climate change, with one of the letter’s criticisms being that it treated human influence on climate as a fact. In response to the letter, the Federal Judicial Center has now deleted the entire chapter.
The Federal Judicial Center has been established by statute as the “research and education agency of the judicial branch of the United States Government.” As part of that role, it prepares documents that can serve as reference material for judges unfamiliar with topics that find their way into the courtroom. Among those projects is the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence,” now in its fourth edition. Prepared in collaboration with the National Academies of Science, the document covers the process of science and specific topics that regularly appear before the courts, like statistical techniques, DNA-based identification, and chemical exposures.
When initially released in December, the fourth edition included material on climate change prepared by two authors at Columbia University. But a group of attorneys general from Republican-leaning states objected to this content. At the end of January, they sent a letter to the leadership of the Federal Judicial Center outlining their issues. Many of them focus on the text that accepts the reality of human-driven climate change as a fact.
The House Judiciary Committee wants the US Department of Justice to turn over all its communications with both Apple and Google regarding the companies’ decisions to remove apps that shared information about sightings of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Several apps were removed from both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store in October. Politico reported that Raskin has contacted Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“The coercion and censorship campaign, which ultimately targets the users of ICE-monitoring applications, is a clear effort to silence this Administration’s critics and suppress any evidence that would expose the Administration’s lies, including its Orwellian attempts to cover up the murders of Renee and Alex,” Raskin wrote to Bondi.
Say goodbye to AI-assisted mass surveillance… for now.
RING
Ring
Ring’s Super Bowl ad showcased its Search Party feature, scaring the pants off anyone concerned about a mass surveillance state and, well, the state of everything at the moment. Search Party turns individual Ring devices into a surveillance network. Each camera uses AI to detect pets running within its field of view, and feeds are pooled to help identify lost animals. If it can handle pups, why not people? Here’s how to disable it.
On a lighter note, consumer tech! Ferrari’s new car is no Apple Car. This is the Ferrari Luce (“light” in Italian), the actual name for the EV formerly known as Elettrica, and we (well, Tim Stevens) were lucky enough to get a walkthrough with Sir Jony Ive himself.
That’s because the interior was designed by LoveFrom, founded by Ive after leaving Apple in 2019. OpenAI acquired the design firm for $6.5 billion, and while the company has had numerous projects, the Luce could be its biggest yet. It’s filled with playful touches and a lot of, well, glass. If that tilting screen doesn’t shout iPhone design, what does?
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-doj-may-face-investigation-over-removal-of-ice-agent-tracking-apps-121500737.html?src=rss
Waymo has gotten a step closer to offering robotaxi rides to the public in Nashville, Tennessee. The company the city and making sure they can operate as fully autonomous rides before launching a paid service in the location. Waymo announced that it was planning to bring its robotaxis to Nashville in September 2025, with the intention opening up rides to the public sometime this year. The company has been testing its technology in Nashville since then, but it has yet say when it’ll start accepting bookings for rides.
The company conducts extensive testing in every new city before deploying its robotaxi service. It starts by having safety drivers map the area and then updating its software with information learned from those tests, since each city has its own driving rules and conditions. Despite its testing, Waymo has had to issue a software recall several times in the past after its vehicles malfunctioned when faced with real hazards on the road. Its vehicles were previously seeing hitting gates, chains, telephone poles and stationary vehicles. Most recently, it issued a recall because its robotaxis failed to stop for school buses.
At the moment, Waymo vehicles are already open to the public in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Phoenix, as well as in Atlanta and Austin through a partnership with Uber. It’s active in a lot more locations, including New York, New Orleans, Seattle and even Tokyo, Japan, but it’s not serving riders in those locations yet. Nashville is in the list of new locations where Waymo is conducting or planning to conduct driverless trials, along with Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Washington and London, UK.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/waymos-vehicles-are-now-fully-driverless-in-nashville-120412343.html?src=rss
The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration risks to the speculative-grade credit market, according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg: They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote in a Monday note. Speculative debt spans high-yield debt, leveraged loans and US private credit.
That’s “a meaningful chunk of debt outstanding that risks souring broader sentiment, if software defaults increase,” the analysts wrote, with “a potential impact that would rival that of the Energy sector in 2016.” Unlike in 2016, pressures would likely first emerge in private credit, business development companies and leveraged loans, with the high-yield market weakening later, the analysts added.
The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools risks further weighing down multiples and revenues for software-as-a-service firms, while the US Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance since 2022 has pressured cash flows, the analysts wrote. For instance, software payment-in-kind loan usage has risen to 11.3% in BDC portfolios, over 2.5 percentage points higher than the already elevated index average of 8.7%, according to Deutsche. PIK deals typically allow borrowers to pay interest in more debt rather than cash.
Microsoft overnight released Azure Linux 3.0.20260204 as the latest release of their in-house Linux distribution widely used within their Azure environment and elsewhere…
CIQ brings NIST‑approved post‑quantum crypto into Rocky Linux, turning quantum risk into a practical planning issue for sysadmins and regulated Linux shops.
The many power management, thermal, and ACPI updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel. As usual there are many changes coming from fixes to new hardware support and more expansive thermal control capabilities under Linux…
The online world that young people navigate today is different from the one we encountered just a few years ago: the search engines, social media platforms and digital tools they use to find information, interact with friends and complete schoolwork are now deeply embedded with AI technologies.
While the core aims of online safety education remain the same, the scope must now expand to include AI literacy: the ability to use, question and navigate AI tools so young people can make responsible choices online.
This is a shared challenge for anyone who supports young people as they navigate the online world: parents and carers, youth leaders and volunteers, and educators across all subjects. Many young people use these AI tools independently, often without guidance, so having open and useful conversations about trust, risk and responsibility matter just as much in the classroom as they do at dinner tables and Code Clubs.
Why AI literacy is essential for staying safe online
At the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we have developed various AI literacy resources for educators, club leaders and parents to address this challenge in age-appropriate and practical ways. Our ‘AI safety’ resources, part of our Experience AI programme, are a set of free comprehensive teaching activities to support you in educating young people aged 11–14 in navigating key safety issues linked to AI, including privacy, misinformation, trust and responsibility. Delivered through videos, unplugged activities and discussions, the activities are adaptable to a range of learning settings, and reflect the real decisions young people are already making online.
For example, in the ‘Trusted Sources’ activity from the ‘Media literacy in the age of AI’ lesson, young people reflect on the ways they look for information related to schoolwork, news and in their free time. They consider which sources are likely to allow the use of generative AI and how that affects their trustworthiness. Rather than labelling sources as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, learners explore questions around responsibility, credibility and oversight, and build practical skills for fact-checking and staying safe online.
Supporting responsible use of generative AI through Experience AI
Alongside the ‘AI safety’ resources, we have also developed a new ‘Large Language Models (LLMs)’ unit for learners aged 11–13 and 14–17, currently being tested in classrooms. The unit focuses on another important aspect of online safety: how young people interact responsibly with AI tools that generate content. While helpful, learners’ uncritical use of these tools could lead to cognitive offloading and limit the development of their higher-order thinking skills. The confident, persuasive tone of LLMs can also make it harder for young people to judge accuracy, recognise bias or notice missing information in outputs.
To support the critical thinking skills that are essential for staying safe online, the new LLM unit includes research-informed lessons that explore how LLMs are created, why their outputs are not always accurate and how to evaluate AI-generated responses. The unit also encourages learners to reflect on when using an LLM is helpful to their learning, when it is not, and how they can remain in control of their own thinking, learning and skills development.
Starting the conversation this Safer Internet Day
Helping young people stay safe online in the age of AI doesn’t require having all the answers. Instead, it’s about creating the space to pause, question, and think critically about what they are encountering online. Through carefully designed, research-informed and pedagogically aligned AI literacy resources, we aim to help you start the conversations that empower young people to think critically, stay curious and remain in control of their learning and online lives.
This Safer Internet Day, we invite educators, parents and anyone who supports young people to explore our AI literacy resources and start the conversation. Visit the Experience AI website for more information.
MythTV 36 is now available for this long-time open-source digital video recorder “DVR” software that has been around now for more than two decades as the leading choice for those wishing to watch and/or record live TV under Linux especially as an HTPC…
We are nearing the stable release of LLVM 22 in hopefully two weeks. Out today is the third release candidate of LLVM 22.1 for soliciting more testing of this open-source compiler stack…
The EFI subsystem updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel. Worth mentioning here is a new quirk for helping Valve’s Steam Deck handheld…
If you think your daily doses of espresso or Earl Grey sharpen your mind, you just might be right, new science suggests. The New York Times: A large new study provides evidence of cognitive benefits from coffee and tea — if it’s caffeinated and consumed in moderation: two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea daily.
People who drank that amount for decades had lower chances of developing dementia than people who drank little or no caffeine, the researchers reported. They followed 131,821 participants for up to 43 years. “This is a very large, rigorous study conducted long term among men and women that shows that drinking two or three cups of coffee per day is associated with reduced risk of dementia,” said Aladdin Shadyab, an associate professor of public health and medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the study.
The findings, published Monday in JAMA, don’t prove caffeine causes these beneficial effects, and it’s possible other attributes protected caffeine drinkers’ brain health. But independent experts said the study adjusted for many other factors, including health conditions, medication, diet, education, socioeconomic status, family history of dementia, body mass index, smoking and mental illness.
The Zwift Games will return for 2026 with an additional sixth stage, drills to teach newcomers the basics of how to race on the platform and lots of XP (experience points) up for grabs.
Running from 16 February to 29 March, the online-racing competition will feature five main stages with brand new routes across Zwift’s worlds “to test the skills of every type of rider”.
You will have a week to complete each stage and the races will be categorised using Zwift’s Racing Score system with open, advanced and women’s only categories.
There will also be a bonus sixth stage for this year’s Zwift Games. This is divided into an A or B option, with a total of seven routes across the platform’s seven worlds:
Stage 1: Kaze Kicker, Makuri – 16.8km, 134m
Stage 2: Hudson Hustle, New York – 20.3km, 216m
Stage 3: Cobbled Crown, Richmond – 24km, 288m
Stage 4: Peaky Pavé, France – 30.6km, 368m
Stage 5: Three Step Sisters, Watopia – 37.8km, 587m
Bonus stage 6b: Crit Cade, Crit City – 15.7km, 136m
You’ll be able to track your progress on the Zwift Games website as well as your ranking in the General Classification for stage 1-5, alongside individual stage results, including for the bonus stages.
Zwift says the two bonus stages provide you with an opportunity to try two styles of racing. The Epiloch TT is a race against the clock, whereas the Crit Cade provides a ‘gamified’ experience with PowerUPs, boosts, hazard pads and steering. The pressure is off for these bonus stages too, with neither counting towards your GC ranking.
Stage 6 is divided into an A and a B option. Zwift
Despite there being one race a week for the Games, Zwift says for the first time this year you’ll be able to ride all the new routes on demand from 13 February, giving you the option to recce the routes, and earn badges, unlocks or XP.
Another change for the 2026 Zwift Games is the Zwift Games Road to Glory. This is a guided group ride that runs from 9 February to 20 February and teaches you the fundamentals of Zwift racing via drills – from when to use PowerUps to when to sprint.
While the racing ends on 29 March, Zwift says there will be a ‘make-up’ week from 30 March to 5 April to complete any you’ve missed or want to improve your time on.
The Games are also an opportunity to unlock virtual kit. This includes Oakley Sphaera sunglasses after stage 1, Zwift Games 2026 kits after stage three, and the Oakley Velo Stelvio helmet after you’ve ridden any five stages.
If you finish all six stages, you’ll earn 6,000 XP points, up from 1,000 XP points for completing last year’s five stages.
The GNU Binutils project announced today the release and general availability of GNU Binutils 2.46 as the latest stable version of this collection of binary tools for GNU/Linux operating systems.
Deepfake fraud has gone “industrial,” an analysis published by AI experts has said. From a report: Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams — leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus — are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident Database.
It catalogued more than a dozen recent examples of “impersonation for profit,” including a deepfake video of Western Australia’s premier, Robert Cook, hawking an investment scheme, and deepfake doctors promoting skin creams. These examples are part of a trend in which scammers are using widely available AI tools to perpetuate increasingly targeted heists. Last year, a finance officer at a Singaporean multinational paid out nearly $500,000 to scammers during what he believed was a video call with company leadership. UK consumers are estimated to have lost $12.86bn to fraud in the nine months to November 2025.
“Capabilities have suddenly reached that level where fake content can be produced by pretty much anybody,” said Simon Mylius, an MIT researcher who works on a project linked to the AI Incident Database. He calculates that “frauds, scams and targeted manipulation” have made up the largest proportion of incidents reported to the database in 11 of the past 12 months. He said: “It’s become very accessible to a point where there is really effectively no barrier to entry.”
pearOS 26.2 has been released today as a major update to this up-and-coming GNU/Linux distribution featuring the KDE Plasma desktop environment and based on the popular Arch Linux distribution.
An anonymous reader shares a report: It turns out that when fewer cars spew exhaust as they drive along, air quality improves. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health that looked at the effect of increased numbers of both EVs and plug-in hybrids on air pollution in California. The Golden State has by far the largest number of plug-in vehicles in the United States, and they’ve now reached significant numbers to have a positive impact on air quality.
Between 2019 and 2023, for every 200 EVs or plug-in hybrids added, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels dropped 1.1%, according to the study, which used satellite data to track those levels through the unique way NO2 absorbs and reflects sunlight. NO2 can trigger asthma attacks, cause bronchitis, and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
A new NBER working paper from researchers at the Federal Reserve, Northwestern’s Kellogg School and Johns Hopkins finds that Kalshi — the largest federally regulated prediction market in the U.S., overseen by the CFTC — produces macroeconomic forecasts that match or beat those of professional forecasters and traditional financial instruments like fed funds futures.
The study compared Kalshi-implied forecasts for the federal funds rate, CPI inflation and unemployment against the New York Fed’s Survey of Market Expectations and Bloomberg consensus. Kalshi’s modal forecast correctly predicted the federal funds rate on the day before every FOMC meeting since 2022, something neither the survey nor fed funds futures achieved. For headline CPI, Kalshi’s median and mode produced a statistically significant improvement over Bloomberg consensus.
Kalshi also fills a gap no other financial market covers: real-time probability distributions for GDP growth, core CPI, unemployment, and payrolls. The paper documented how these distributions shift in response to macro news — positive CPI surprises moved the mean of the fed funds rate distribution four times more than negative ones. Trading volumes on the platform have grown to nearly 100 million contracts for a single FOMC meeting, supported by liquidity from Susquehanna, Citadel, and Two Sigma.
The GNU Linux-libre project announced today the release and general availability of the GNU Linux-libre 6.19 kernel for those who seek 100% freedom for their GNU/Linux computers and software freedom lovers.
