Today is SN's birthday - we are 12 years old!The site published its first discussion on the 12 February 2014 but had to be reset a few days later on 16 Feb because of software problems which had not been apparent until the community grew. But after 12 years I won't quibble over a few days difference.This site would not exist without many people who wrote code, configured hardware, tested software, and squashed bugs. It would not be fair to try to name them - I would surely miss many who have been instrumental in getting us where we are today. We initially had a Board comprising of 'shareholders', but today we have a Board of volunteers. The running costs which once were around $6,000 pa are now almost zero due to the generosity of those who donate free hardware and the essential internet connection. Many others over the years have given freely of their time in various roles to keep this site running. No ads, no sponsorship, no commercial pressure.But the most important people are you - the community. There are still many accounts active that have been with us from the beginning, but those that have joined sometime over the 12 years are equally important and just as welcome. We hope that you all find something of interest in at least some of the stories that we publish. Please keep commenting in them. And if you can, please make the occasional submissions that are essential for our continued operation.Thank you - this is your site. So I raise my glass to SoylentNews, to this community and, hopefully, to the next 12 years!Read more of this story at SoylentNews.
fliptop writes:Ford Motor Company on Feb. 10 reported fourth-quarter revenue 2025 of $45.9 billion, a 5 percent year-over-year decline that led to its largest earnings miss since the same quarter in 2021:
fliptop writes:In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine's detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren't alone:
hubie writes:Subtle changes in Sir Terry Pratchett's use of language in his books anticipated his dementia diagnosis by almost ten years, research has shown:
When reading my local newspaper online this morning, I noticed for the first time a small message, lower-left of the window, "Opt-Out Signal Honored". A little quick searching turned up GPC, Global Privacy Control https://globalprivacycontrol.org/
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/ai-dot-com-super-bowl-ad-drove-massive-traffic-and-then-it-crashedThe campaign allegedly cost $15 million for the ads, $70 million for the domain name.
hubie writes:Time is almost up on the way we track each second of the day, with optical atomic clocks set to redefine the way the world measures one second in the near future:
jelizondo writes:CIO published a very interesting article about how the use of AI by the best engineers actually is slowing them down, and quite not delivering on the promised speed up of production code:
jelizondo writes:A very interesting article was published by The New Republic, which centers on the intersection of social media, government censorship and activism, China style. It is a long read but very much worth you while, as the "spring" of public freedom becomes the hard, cold winter at the hands of an authoritarian regime.A very interesting article was published by The New Republic, which centers on the intersection of social media, government censorship and activism, China style. It is a long read but very much worth you while, as the "spring" of public freedom becomes the hard, cold winter at the hands of an authoritarian regime.Weibo, the Chinese uber social media platform, is an unlikely vehicle for protests, demand for change and surprisingly results, in the form of government reform, changes to the law and favorable judgments in courts.While China, and its famous Great Firewall, (built using "American bricks" in the form of technology from Cisco and others) is known for its unforgiving censorship of citizen's protests, something changed with social media. This is not to say that China has given up on censorship, some subjects are very much forbidden, for example the so called "Three Ts": Tibet, Tiananmen and Taiwan. No criticism or protest on those subjects is allowed, not even a suggestion of a protest.Other subjects are open for debate. Some examples follow:
fliptop writes:The chief safety officer for a leading self-driving car company admitted during a Senate hearing Wednesday that it hires remote human operators overseas to guide cars in "difficult driving situations:"
canopic jug writes:Spotted via Simon Willison's blog, the plug has been pulled very suddenly on the CIA World Factbook. The old pages all redirect and the CIA has only some short comments and offer no explanation for the bizarre act of cultural vandalism.