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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:

"Anonymous Coward" writes:An approach it calls "quantum echoes" takes 13,000 times longer on a supercomputer

Snotnose writes:No tech, no snark, no politics, just good pictures

AnonTechie writes:TechCrunch

An Anonymous Coward has submitted the following:A December update to Microsoft Teams that will be disabled by default will reportedly track user location and report it if the feature is enabled. This will allow bosses to tell if an employee is in the office or working from home and set their status accordingly. It will also be able to tell if the user is not at their normal home logon location and provide evidence to employers showing the user's location. Workers who have been taking mini holidays while claiming to be working from home may be affected by this new feature.

upstart writes:Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://intezer.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-malware-analysis-and-reverse-engineering/

fliptop writes:Ford will ramp up production of the F-150 and F-Series Super Duty in 2026, but the Lightning will pay the price :

anubi writes:Nexperia, a Chinese Semiconductor manufacturing plant, located in the Netherlands, was seized by Dutch authorities last week in response to embargo pressures.https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nexperia-says-it-is-negotiating-with-both-us-china-over-export-controls-2025-10-14/

Do you live in Australia and have an old module Samsung phone? If so, check your SMS messages as your phone may soon no longer work. Due to recent issues with triple zero and subsequent lawsuits Australian Telcos are blocking devices that cannot fallback to make calls on the national 000 number. Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain has ruled out government assistance to Australians whose mobile phone may be unable to call triple-0. Devices affected by this block will no longer work after 26/11/2025.The mobile devices affected by the issue are Galaxy A7 (2017), Galaxy A5 2017, Galaxy J1 2016j, Galaxy J3 2016, Galaxy J5 (2017), Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge.

"Anonymouse" writes:Cache Poisoning Vulnerabilities Found in 2 DNS Resolving Apps

upstart writes:It's Typhoon season...year round:

hubie writes:Copilot now has its own virtual character for its voice mode:

hubie writes:Cast-off turbines generate up to 48 MW of electricity apiece:

upstart writes:New method extracts desirable elements from waste magnets using less energy and acid:

upstart writes:Latvian police bust European cybercrime ring and arrest seven suspects:

hubie writes:"I'm about to just toss the whole thing...":

upstart writes:WindBorne says its balloons are compliant with all applicable airspace regulations:

hubie writes:OpenAI researchers recently claimed a major math breakthrough on X, but quickly walked it back after criticism from the community:

upstart writes:Too many services depend not just on one cloud provider, but on one location:

upstart writes:Water bound in mantle rock alters our view of the Earth's composition:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=12607

upstart writes:Why did NASA's chief just shake up the agency's plans to land on the Moon?:

hubie writes:With bonuses, maximum rewards can be as high as $5 million:

upstart writes:One topic dominated the recent 2025 OpenInfra Summit Europe, and it wasn't AI:

chucky writes:OpenAI launches Atlas broswer.https://chatgpt.com/atlashttps://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-unveils-ai-browser-atlas-2025-10-21/

upstart writes:The HyperCard inventor was a huge proponent of taking lower doses of 5-MeO-DMT, which is widely considered the strongest psychedelic in the world:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-exploit-cisco-snmp-flaw-to-deploy-rootkit-on-switches/

An Anonymous Coward writes:

fliptop writes:Larry Sanger says the website has become biased against conservative and religious viewpoints, but sees a way to fix it:

upstart writes:Malicious app required to make "Pixnapping" attack work requires no permissions:

c0lo writes:The noise of Bitcoin mining is driving Americans crazy

looorg writes:Amazon accidentally turned off large portions of the internet on Monday morning.