Feed aggregator

A network of local officials in Italy want to turn their cities into laboratories for the vehicles of tomorrow in the hope of catching up with the US and China.

Plus: Google Photos lets you convert images to videos, Microsoft has a 5G Surface, and Palmer Luckey asks if you’d buy a US-made laptop.

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Driven by high temperatures in the Gulf, Hurricane Ian rapidly intensified from a Category 3 to Category 5 before making landfall in Southwest Florida on September 28, 2022. The deadly storm caught many by surprise and became the costliest hurricane in state history. Now, researchers from the University of South Florida say they've identified what may have caused Ian to develop so quickly. A strong ocean current called the Loop Current failed to circulate water in the shallow region of the Gulf. As a result, subsurface waters along the West Coast of Florida remained unusually warm during the peak of hurricane season. [...] The researchers found that if the Loop Current reaches an area near the Dry Tortugas, which they call the "pressure point," it can flush warm waters from the West Florida Shelf and replace it with cold water from deeper regions of the Gulf. This pressure point is where the shallow contours of the seafloor converge, forcing cold water to the surface in a process known as upwelling. In the months leading up to Hurricane Ian, the Loop Current did not reach the pressure point, leaving the waters on the shelf unmixed, which caused both the surface and subsurface waters on the West Florida Shelf to remain warm throughout summer. The findings have been published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: On the early evening of June 22, 2010, American tennis star John Isner began a grueling Wimbledon match against Frenchman Nicolas Mahut that would become the longest in the sport's history. The marathon battle lasted 11 hours and stretched across three consecutive days. Though Isner ultimately prevailed 70-68 in the fifth set, some in attendance half-jokingly wondered at the time whether the two men might be trapped on that court for eternity. A similarly endless-seeming skirmish of rackets is currently unfolding just an hour's drive south of the All England Club -- at Google DeepMind. Known for pioneering AI models that have outperformed the best human players at chess and Go, DeepMind now has a pair of robotic arms engaged in a kind of infinite game of table tennis. The goal of this ongoing research project, which began in 2022, is for the two robots to continuously learn from each other through competition. Just as Isner eventually adapted his game to beat Mahut, each robotic arm uses AI models to shift strategies and improve. But unlike the Wimbledon example, there's no final score the robots can reach to end their slugfest. Instead, they continue to compete indefinitely, with the aim of improving at every swing along the way. And while the robotic arms are easily beaten by advanced human players, they've been shown to dominate beginners. Against intermediate players, the robots have roughly 50/50 odds -- placing them, according to researchers, at a level of "solidly amateur human performance." All of this, as two researchers involved noted this week in an IEEE Spectrum blog, is being done in hopes of creating an advanced, general-purpose AI model that could serve as the "brains" of humanoid robots that may one day interact with people in real-world factories, homes, and beyond. Researchers at DeepMind and elsewhere are hopeful that this learning method, if scaled up, could spark a "ChatGPT moment" for robotics -- fast-tracking the field from stumbling, awkward hunks of metal to truly useful assistants. "We are optimistic that continued research in this direction will lead to more capable, adaptable machines that can learn the diverse skills needed to operate effectively and safely in our unstructured world," DeepMind senior staff engineer Pannag Sanketi and Arizona State University Professor Heni Ben Amor write in IEEE Spectrum.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pebble smartwatches are officially reclaiming their iconic name after Core Devices CEO Eric Migicovsky successfully recovered the Pebble trademark. "Great news -- we've been able to recover the trademark for Pebble! Honestly, I wasn't expecting this to work out so easily," Core Devices CEO Eric Migicovsky writes in an update blog. "Core 2 Duo is now Pebble 2 Duo. Core Time 2 is now Pebble Time 2." The Verge reports: As a refresher, Pebble was one of the OG smartwatches. Despite a loyal customer base, however, it wasn't able to compete with bigger names like Fitbit, the Apple Watch, or Samsung. In 2016, Pebble was acquired by Fitbit for $23 million, marking the end of the first Pebble era. Along the way, Fitbit was acquired by Google. That's important because the tech giant agreed to open-source Pebble's software, and Migicovsky announced earlier this year that Pebble was making a comeback. However, because Migicovsky didn't have the trademark, the new Pebble watches were initially dubbed the Core 2 Duo and the Core Time 2. "With the recovery of the Pebble trademark, that means you too can use the word Pebble for Pebble related software and hardware projects," Migicovsky writes, acknowledging Pebble's history of community development.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yasmin Morgan-Griffiths has exclusive access to La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Meta has appointed Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of its new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Zhao was a former OpenAI researcher known for his work on ChatGPT, GPT-4, and the company's first AI reasoning model, o1. "I'm excited to share that Shengjia Zhao will be the Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs," Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads Friday. "Shengjia co-founded the new lab and has been our lead scientist from day one. Now that our recruiting is going well and our team is coming together, we have decided to formalize his leadership role." TechCrunch reports: Zhao will set a research agenda for MSL under the leadership of Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who was recently hired to lead the new unit. Wang, who does not have a research background, was viewed as a somewhat unconventional choice to lead an AI lab. The addition of Zhao, who is a reputable research leader known for developing frontier AI models, rounds out the leadership team. To further fill out the unit, Meta has hired several high-level researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Safe Superintelligence, Apple, and Anthropic, as well as pulling researchers from Meta's existing Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab and generative AI unit. Zuckerberg notes in his post that Zhao has pioneered several breakthroughs, including a "new scaling paradigm." The Meta CEO is likely referencing Zhao's work on OpenAI's reasoning model, o1, in which he is listed as a foundational contributor alongside OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Meta currently doesn't offer a competitor to o1, so AI reasoning models are a key area of focus for MSL. The Information reported in June that Zhao would be joining Meta Superintelligence Labs, alongside three other influential OpenAI researchers -- Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren. Meta has also recruited Trapit Bansal, another OpenAI researcher who worked on AI reasoning models with Zhao, as well as three employees from OpenAI's Zurich office who worked on multimodality.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A recent Echelon firmware update has effectively bricked offline functionality for its smart gym equipment, cutting off compatibility with popular third-party apps like QZ and forcing users to connect to Echelon's servers -- even just to view workout stats. Ars Technica reports: As explained in a Tuesday blog post by Roberto Viola, who develops the "QZ (qdomyos-zwift)" app that connects Echelon machines to third-party fitness platforms, like Peloton, Strava, and Apple HealthKit, the firmware update forces Echelon machines to connect to Echelon's servers in order to work properly. A user online reported that as a result of updating his machine, it is no longer syncing with apps like QZ, and he is unable to view his machine's exercise metrics in the Echelon app without an Internet connection. Affected Echelon machines reportedly only have full functionality, including the ability to share real-time metrics, if a user has the Echelon app active and if the machine is able to reach Echelon's servers. Viola wrote: "On startup, the device must log in to Echelon's servers. The server sends back a temporary, rotating unlock key. Without this handshake, the device is completely bricked -- no manual workout, no Bluetooth pairing, no nothing." Because updated Echelon machines now require a connection to Echelon servers for some basic functionality, users are unable to use their equipment and understand, for example, how fast they're going without an Internet connection. If Echelon were to ever go out of business, the gym equipment would, essentially, get bricked. Viola told Ars Technica that he first started hearing about problems with QZ, which launched in 2020, at the end of 2024 from treadmill owners. He said a firmware update appears to have rolled out this month on Echelon bikes that bricks QZ functionality. In his blog, Viola urged Echelon to let its machines send encrypted data to another device, like a phone or a tablet, without the Internet. He wrote: "Users bought the bike; they should be allowed to use it with or without Echelon's services."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A federal judge reprimanded lawyers with a high-priced firm defending Alabama's prison system for using ChatGPT to write court filings with "completely made up" case citations. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco publicly reprimanded three lawyers with Butler Snow, the law firm hired to defend Alabama and other jurisdictions in lawsuits against their prison systems. The order sanctioned William R. Lunsford, the head of the firm division that handles prison litigation, along with Matthew B. Reeves and William J. Cranford. "Fabricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction," Manasco wrote in the Wednesday sanctions order. Manasco removed the three from participating in the case where the false citations were filed and directed them to share the sanctions order with clients, opposing lawyers and judges in all of their other cases. She also referred the matter to the Alabama State Bar for possible disciplinary action. [...] "In simpler terms, the citations were completely made up," Manasco wrote. She added that using the citations without verifying their accuracy was "recklessness in the extreme." The filings in question were made in a lawsuit filed by an inmate who was stabbed on multiple occasions at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County. The lawsuit alleges that prison officials are failing to keep inmates safe.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Sasha Levin, a respected developer and engineer at Nvidia, has proposed a patch series aimed at formally integrating AI coding assistants into the Linux kernel workflow. The proposal includes two major changes. First, it introduces configuration stubs for popular AI development tools like Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Codeium, Continue, Windsurf, and Aider. These are symlinked to a centralized documentation file to ensure consistency. Second, and more notably, it lays out official guidelines for how AI-generated contributions should be handled. According to the proposed documentation, AI assistants must identify themselves in commit messages using a Co-developed-by: tag, but they cannot use Signed-off-by:, which legally certifies the commit under the Developer Certificate of Origin. That responsibility remains solely with the human developer. One example shared in the patch shows a simple fix to a typo in the kernel's OPP documentation. Claude, an AI assistant, corrects "dont" to "don't" and commits the patch with the proper attribution: "Co-developed-by: Claude claude-opus-4-20250514." Levin's patch also creates a new section under Documentation/AI/ where the expectations and limitations of using AI in kernel development are laid out. This includes reminders to follow kernel coding standards, respect the development process, and understand licensing requirements. There are things AI often struggles with.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Department of Energy has greenlit four federal sites for private sector AI datacenters and nuclear-powered energy projects, aligning with Trump's directive to fast-track AI infrastructure using government land. "The four that have been finalized are the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River Site," reports The Register. "These will now move forward to invite companies in the private sector to build AI datacenter projects plus any necessary energy sources to power them, including nuclear generation." The Register reports: "By leveraging DoE land assets for the deployment of AI and energy infrastructure, we are taking a bold step to accelerate the next Manhattan Project -- ensuring US AI and energy leadership," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. Ironically -- or perhaps not -- Oak Ridge Reservation was established in the early 1940s as part of the original Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb, and is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) that operates the Frontier exascale supercomputer, and the Y-12 National Security Complex which supports US nuclear weapons programs. The other sites are also involved with either nuclear research or atomic weapons in one way or another, which may hint at the administration's intentions for how the datacenters should be powered. All four locations are positioned to host new bit barns as well as power generation to bolster grid reliability, strengthen national security, and reduce energy costs, Wright claimed. [...] In light of this tight time frame, the DoE says that partners may be selected by the end of the year. Details regarding project scope, eligibility requirements, and submission guidelines for each site are expected to be released in the coming months.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google's mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women's dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling through peoples' personal data and selfies uploaded to the app, and then posting that data online, according to screenshots, 4chan posts, and code reviewed by 404 Media. In a statement to 404 Media, Tea confirmed the breach also impacted some direct messages but said that the data is from two years ago. Tea, which claims to have more than 1.6 million users, reached the top of the App Store charts this week and has tens of thousands of reviews there. The app aims to provide a space for women to exchange information about men in order to stay safe, and verifies that new users are women by asking them to upload a selfie. "Yes, if you sent Tea App your face and drivers license, they doxxed you publicly! No authentication, no nothing. It's a public bucket," a post on 4chan providing details of the vulnerability reads. "DRIVERS LICENSES AND FACE PICS! GET THE FUCK IN HERE BEFORE THEY SHUT IT DOWN!" The thread says the issue was an exposed database that allowed anyone to access the material. [...] "The images in the bucket are raw and uncensored," the user wrote. Multiple users have created scripts to automate the process of collecting peoples' personal information from the exposed database, according to other posts in the thread and copies of the scripts. In its terms of use, Tea says "When you first create a Tea account, we ask that you register by creating a username and including your location, birth date, photo and ID photo." After publication of this article, Tea confirmed the breach in an email to 404 Media. The company said on Friday it "identified unauthorized access to one of our systems and immediately launched a full investigation to assess the scope and impact." The company says the breach impacted data from more than two years ago, and included 72,000 images (13,000 selfies and photo IDs, and 59,000 images from app posts and direct messages). "This data was originally stored in compliance with law enforcement requirements related to cyber-bullying prevention," the email continued. "We have engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure our systems. At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that current or additional user data was affected. Protecting our users' privacy and data is our highest priority. We are taking every necessary step to ensure the security of our platform and prevent further exposure."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The electric car maker informed California that it will operate a limited public taxi service. But it’s not legally allowed to do this with self-driving cars.

Scientists led by Daniel Harrison at Southern Cross University conducted their most successful test of marine cloud brightening technology in February, deploying three vessels nicknamed "Big Daddy and the Twins" in the Palm Islands off northeastern Australia. The ships pumped seawater through hundreds of tiny nozzles to create dense fog plumes and brighten existing clouds, aiming to shade and cool reef waters to prevent coral bleaching caused by rising ocean temperatures. Harrison's team has been investigating weather modification above the Great Barrier Reef since 2016 and represents the only group conducting open-ocean cloud brightening experiments. The localized geoengineering approach seeks to reduce stress on corals that forces them to expel symbiotic algae during heat waves.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barbara Sellitto said the committee is working with the state to determine whether Chester and Aaron Barrett, a father and son who died when their scalloping boat sank in January, qualify for a place on the memorial.

The houses — both sides of a duplex in Gray — are part of an effort to increase affordable housing by renovating Maine's existing housing stock.

Current Tour de France competitors are faster than the sport's notorious doping-era champions, according to an analysis. Tadej Pogacar produced approximately 7 watts per kilogram for nearly 40 minutes during a crucial mountain stage in last year's Tour de France. Jonas Vingegaard, generated more than 7 watts per kilogram for nearly 15 minutes during a failed attack attempt. Lance Armstrong, at his blood-doped peak two decades ago, averaged an estimated 6 watts per kilogram and took nearly six minutes longer than Pogacar on the same Pyrenees climb in 2004. The performance gains stem from multiple technological advances. Every rider now uses power meters that provide real-time performance data. Nutrition has shifted from minimal fueling to constant calorie replenishment with precisely measured food intake. Equipment undergoes extensive wind tunnel testing to reduce drag coefficients. Teams use apps like VeloViewer to preview race courses and weather forecasting to optimize wheel selection. "The bias is in favor of clean athletes: that you can be clean and win," said Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dennis Hoey spent nearly 40 years as a reporter, while John Ewing worked as a staff photographer for 33 years.

The Prosperity Place project in Nason's Corner would be the first housing development for Prosperity Maine, a nonprofit that assists immigrant, refugee and low-income families.

Exposure to certain forms of air pollution is linked to an increased risk of developing dementia, according to the most comprehensive study of its kind. From a report: The illness is estimated to affect about 57 million people worldwide, with the number expected to increase to at least 150m cases by 2050. The report, which was produced by researchers at the Medical Research Council's epidemiology unit at the University of Cambridge involved a systematic review of 51 studies. It drew on data from more than 29 million participants who had been exposed to air pollutants for at least a year. Although air pollution has already been identified as a risk factor for dementia, the research, which is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date, found there to be a positive and statistically-significant association between three types of air pollutant and dementia.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.