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upstart writes:Canada says hacktivists breached water and energy facilities:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://hackaday.com/2025/10/22/what-happened-to-running-what-you-wanted-on-your-own-machine/

Inside the World's Largest Wind-Powered Cargo Shipupstart writes:The Neoliner Origin is the largest cargo ship powered primarily by wind:

hubie writes:Neural organics lead to lower energy costs, faster calculation speeds:

DECbot writes:Phoronix reports that the apt repository utility core to Debian and its derivative distribution will be adding rust dependencies.

hubie writes:"You don't have to claim that they're aliens to make these exciting":

upstart writes:A handful of bat species hunt birds, and new sensor data tells us how:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=showheadline&story=20085

looorg writes:Tom's Hardware published an interesting story about a company using a remote kill command to disable a robo vacuum:

AnonTechie writes:

hubie writes:The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department just launched the world's first public-safety fleet built from Tesla Cybertrucks:

hubie writes:Tesla's 'Robotaxis' Keep Crashing-Even With Human 'Safety Monitors' Onboard:

hubie writes:Once Again, Chat Control Flails After Strong Public Pressure:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/former_l3harris_cyber_director_charged/

hubie writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/11/research-roundup-6-cool-science-stories-we-almost-missed-3/

An Anonymous Coward writes:Qilin ransomware abuses WSL to run Linux encryptors in Windows

upstart writes:"I don't believe we're in an AI bubble," says Huang after announcing $500B in orders:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/massive-surge-of-nfc-relay-malware-steals-europeans-credit-cards/

hubie writes:Before being considered for submission to arXiv's CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review:

looorg writes:Meta: Pirated Adult Film Downloads Were For "Personal Use," Not AI Training.

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cisa-linux-privilege-escalation-flaw-now-exploited-in-ransomware-attacks/

quietus writes:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://deadline.com/2025/09/spaceballs-2-cast-photo-anthony-carrigan-george-wyner-1236555748/

FunkyLich writes:Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/china-releases-ubios-standard-to-replace-uefi-huawei-backed-bios-firmware-replacement-charges-chinas-domestic-computing-goals

upstart writes:Nvidia reveals Vera Rubin Superchip for the first time:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/nearly-90-percent-of-windows-games-now-run-on-linux-latest-data-shows-as-windows-10-dies-gaming-on-linux-is-more-viable-than-ever

upstart writes:Quantum Mechanics Trumps the Second Law of Thermodynamics at the Atomic Scale:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.phoronix.com/news/Red-Hat-Distribute-CUDA-RHEL

upstart writes:The structures may help protect eggs from hungry predators:

upstart writes:Data centers are water and power hogs, but does putting them in the ocean help?:

fliptop writes:Electric vehicle demand is set to crash this month after tax credits vanish and buyers back away:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/ai-powered-search-engines-rely-on-less-popular-sources-researchers-find/

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://9to5linux.com/fedora-linux-43-officially-released-now-available-for-download

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." :- misattributed to Einstein"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." :- EinsteinThere is a lot in this Meta but it is necessary to have certain aspects of the site's operation explained in detail so that subsequent elements make sense and are understandable by everyone. The initial lessons from the Trial of Flagging by Journal Owners appear later in this Meta.Permanent BanningBanning someone from the site is a serious decision which is why it is rarely considered. It has always been recognised that the act of banning someone is never going to be easy to enforce. Some may wonder why banning is even considered at all, and the explanation is relatively simple. Some acts - in this case doxxing - can have serious repercussions and kolie has described elsewhere those potentially applicable under US law an in particular to the state of Oregon.The rules exist to ensure that we maintain a viable site where people are free to discuss the topics presented in an adversarial yet friendly atmosphere. If the site's rules are not enforced then they are meaningless and, over time, they will be ignored. We are very tolerant of minor infractions but at some point it is necessary to remind somebody of the reason for the rule and that is often all that is needed. The next level usually involves moderation, possibly with an Admin-To-User message warning that the user might receive a temporary ban if (s)he continues. If temporary bans do not work then, in extreme cases, it is necessary to employ a permanent ban. Permanent bans require the approval of the Board.Admin-to-User messages can only be used to communicate from staff to account holders; the only way to communicate with Anonymous Cowards is directly via a comment.DoxxingDuring the last few days some have challenged the definition of doxxing. In particular, they have argued that the addresses given are obviously fake and therefore are not doxxing. The rules are quite clear. It isn't possible for staff to recognise every address as being genuine or fake and so it is always assumed to be genuine and treated as such.Kolie's amusing and robust counter can be seen here.Sock-Puppets and Multiple AccountsEach person is allowed to have one account which gives him the right to vote on the site. They are owned by a community member and they are not transferable nor can they be shared accounts. Additional accounts can be created providing that they are notified to, and agreed by, the Administration and are required to fulfill a specific function e.g upstart and Arthur T Knackerbracket (story submission bots), Acfriendly (journal to facilitate AC participation in front page stories) etc. These additional bots do not have voting rights nor should they receive moderation points.Fake accounts are those accounts created to use the site often by persons not intending to participate in discussions. They are usually created for advertising purposes and might also be created by commercial organisations. As most people never even see them they cause little problem other than take up an account identity. However, occasionally they engage in activities that are not aligned to the site's purpose and they are disabled. Accounts created entirely in, or sometimes using, foreign languages are disabled as a matter of routine. Some of these have been associated with material that is illegal under US Federal or State laws.Sock Puppets are accounts that are created usually with the intention of giving the user an unfair advantage with regards to voting or moderation abuse. They are sometimes intended to give the user an alternative account to use when their primary account would attract a ban, or to use when their primary account has already be given a temporary ban. Very often the sock puppet account is employed to positively moderate inflammatory or abusive posts made Anonymous Cowards, thus preventing the community from controlling such material by selecting a reasonable viewing level, while leaving the sock puppet account apparently innocent of any wrongdoing.Historically, some users have created multiple sock-puppets as were used increasingly during the "Sock-Puppet-War" between 2018 and 2021. Each user employed the sock-puppets in an attempt to prevent the other from expressing his or her personal view and with the further hope that their opponent might be banned from the site. One person has created hundreds of sock-puppets. The names of many of these sock puppets contain doxxing material or express unacceptable statements.I have been watching specific sock-puppets for some time to try to understand their purpose. As recently as earlier this week I disabled 6 such accounts. Their creator is known. There are as yet others that I am still analysing.Real-World PoliticsIn the USA in particular, but elsewhere too, the political situation has become very polarised. There is much hatred between opposing political factions which has sometimes resulted in violence or other physical and verbal abuse. This site is NOT the place to continue to express your dislike of other community members who do not share your own political views. Demanding that someone be banned or continually punished for having a particular political view is abuse and it will be treated as such by the staff.Everyone in our community has the same rights to express their opinion, and any attempt to prevent one of them from doing so is unacceptable. If you find yourself having to name a person in a comment it is often the sign that you are intending that comment as a personal attack. If a topic or journal is intended to discuss a political viewpoint it is entirely correct to do so, but that does not include personal attacks against other community members.JournalsJournals are for account holders to discuss any topic that is legal under US and State laws, but which would not be considered for front page use. The topics do not have to be written to suit everybody in the community. They do not have to meet with the approval of individual community members who have no right to demand that the journal owner stops writing such journals or take other action to intentionally disrupt the subsequent journal discussion....And if you have managed to get this far I hope that what I have written will now make more sense than it might have done before and you will now understand its relevance:Flagging TrialThe removal of non-account Anonymous Cowards from the main pages has made discussion far more acceptable to many people. Unfortunately, it has not had the same effect in the journals which a minority of ACs have been using to disrupt the discussions and abuse the journal owners and other community members. As a result, fewer people are using the journals to introduce their own discussions, and fewer people are participating in journal discussions.Several journal owners requested that we investigate ways of controlling the abuse. It was apparent that such control would be a significant task for staff with the current software and data. The site has always had a means of removing illegal or unacceptable content from display. From the very first days of the site there has been a facility to delete comments from the database. However, the method involved hard deletes (permanent deletions from the database) but that left the child comments also inaccessible. Soft deleting (flagging) was adopted in 2024 as a far better solution. The use of the flagging is different from the community's perception than the previous system because:

upstart writes:Westinghouse is claiming a nuclear deal would see $80B of new reactors:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/senators-move-to-keep-big-techs-creepy-companion-bots-away-from-kids/

upstart writes:Some portions of the OS are still stuck on light:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/25-years-one-website-iss-in-real-time-captures-quarter-century-on-space-station/

upstart writes:ASML launches revolutionary lithography scanner for advanced 3D chip packaging:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/10/an-autonomous-car-for-consumers-lucid-says-its-happening/

The Australian Government wants AI to pay for copyright fees in move that may be more about getting a piece of the billions invested in AI. ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd of the Copyright and AI Reference Group (CAIRG) has called the recommendation for a text and data mining exception "a radical change" that has been "put forward with very little evidence".

Booga1 writes:OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Incorporated (SAI), perhaps best known for the core team that produced what became Shortcuts on Apple platforms. More recently, the team has been working on Sky, a context-aware AI interface layer on top of macOS. The financial terms of the acquisition have not been publicly disclosed.

upstart writes:AI arms dealer relies on Taiwanese advanced packaging plants for top-specced GPUs:

upstart writes:Plus spy helping spy: Typhoons teaming up:

An Anonymous Coward writes:In a study published last month https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02297-0 researchers analyze internal sentence representation for both humans and LLMs. It turns out that humans and LLMs use similar tree structures. Quote from their conclusions: "The results also add to the literature showing that the human brain and LLM, albeit fundamentally different in terms of the implementation, can have aligned internal representations of language."Originally seen on techxplore https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-humans-llms-sentences-similarly.html:

"Anonymouse" writes:Trump Eyes Government Control of Quantum Computing Firms With Intel-Like Deals

upstart writes:ESA astronauts take to helicopters for Moon landing training: