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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/norwegian-consumer-watchdog-calls-out-enshittification

hubie writes:The Slow Death of the Power User:

jelizondo writes:A fascinating report in New Scientist tells of common ancestry between Amazonian and Australasian peoples, dating possibly back more than 10,000 years. How could Australasian people crossed the ocean to arrive at the Amazon?

owl writes:https://buttondown.com/suchbadtechads/archive/maxell-life-size-robots/

oaklandwatch writes:It has seemed to me for a long time it might be better if building AGI were a government project," Sam Altman publicly mused last week... Altman speculated on possibility of the government "nationalizing" private AI companies into a public project, admitting more than once he's wondered what would happen next. "I obviously don't know," Altman said - but he added that "I have thought about it, of course" Altman's speculation hedged that "It doesn't seem super likely on the current trajectory. That said, I do think a close partnership between governments and the companies building this technology is super important."Could powerful AI tools one day slip from the hands of private companies to be controlled by the U.S. government? Fortune magazine's AI editor points out that "many other breakthroughs with big strategic implications - from the Manhattan Project to the space race to early efforts to develop AI - were government-funded and largely government-directed." And Fortune added that last week the Defense Department threatened Anthropic with the Defense Production Act, which allows the president to designate "critical and strategic" goods for which businesses must accept the government's contracts. Fortune speculates this would've been "a sort of soft nationalization of Anthropic's production pipeline".Altman acknowledged Saturday that he'd felt the threat of attempted nationalization "behind a lot of the questions" he'd received when answering questions on X.com... How exactly will this AI build-out be handled - and how should AI companies be working with the government? In a sprawling ask-me-anything session on X that included other members of OpenAI leadership, one Missouri-based developer broached an AGI-government scenario with OpenAI's Head of National Security Partnerships, Katherine Mulligan. If OpenAI built an AGI - something that even passed its own Turing test for AGI - would that be a case where its government contracts compelled them to grant access to the DoD?"No," Mulligan answered. At our current moment in time, "We control which models we deploy."Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:FCC rejects protests because Charter and Cox don't compete directly in most places:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Built on open-source software, this European cloud office suite aims to keep your data out of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace:

Halibut writes:March and April are the time of year where a decent fraction of the world shifts their clocks forward (or back, in the Southern Hemisphere) for Daylight Saving Time (DST). Every year, it seems to result in debate about whether to abolish DST, and, if so, whether to stick with standard time or daylight time.Soylent News, being a science/fact-oriented site, would likely be interested in a comparison of time zones with Mean Solar Time (MST). There is a map showing the difference between the two in the Wikipedia article on time zones. The person who created that map has some short-yet-interesting articles on creating that map and later discussion about it. The articles are old (timeless?), but largely still relevant, as the time zones, and the existence of DST, are largely unchanged since the articles were written.Interesting how standard time, over most of the landmass of the world, is largely ahead of MST, in some places (e.g. western China) by a lot. DST, where observed, makes that difference worse.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

AnonTechie writes:

hubie writes:Free beer is great. Securing the keg costs money:

Uproar About OS-level Age Verification LawsRich writes:Hackaday reports that unnoticed by many, several jurisdictions, including California and Brazil, have passed age verification laws that require operating system providers to keep age records of users. The uproar has now also spread among many FOSS-covering creators.The wording of the California law is vague, and the inevitable interpretation by courts might have the outcome of a mandatory cloud account connection for every computer use ("An operating system provider shall ... provide ... with respect to a particular user ... a digital signal"). It is unclear how server computing and community based distros could deal with this.It appears that the large corporate distributions are willing to cave in, but it is entirely unclear, and has not been even touched within all the uproar, how grassroots distributions like Debian will be affected with their many mirrored repositories and no central user database.System76 on Age Verification LawsAn Anonymous Coward sent in:Access is everything:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/employer-education-experience-ai-expert-leadership-skills-aon

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/tech-industry-is-in-tariff-hell-even-if-refunds-are-automated/

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516990-would-aliens-do-physics-or-is-science-a-human-invention/

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/lawsuit-google-gemini-sent-man-on-violent-missions-set-suicide-countdown/

upstart writes: Clueless cops post seized crypto wallet password. $5M quickly stolen.:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/congress-steps-up-pressure-on-nasa-to-support-private-space-stations/

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:We don't have a date for the upgraded service rollout, but it isn't likely until 2027:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way:

Snotnose writes:You've heard of C++ and Windows, C and Linux. How about HolyC and TempleOS?

An Anonymous Coward writes:Jon Retting has released vscreen, a Rust service that gives AI agents a full Chromium browser with live WebRTC streaming - you see exactly what the AI sees in real-time and can take over mouse and keyboard at any point. The project provides 63 MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools for browser automation: navigation, screenshots, element discovery, cookie/CAPTCHA handling, and multi-agent coordination via lease-based locking.Built from scratch in Rust - not a Puppeteer wrapper - the codebase is ~31,000 lines across 8 crates with unsafe forbidden, 510+ tests, 3 fuzz targets, and supply chain auditing via cargo-deny. Available as pre-built Linux binaries and Docker images. Source-available, non-commercial license.https://github.com/jameswebb68/vscreen

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Total anonymity online is impossible, and it's dangerous to claim otherwise:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:By testing agent-to-agent interactions, researchers observed catastrophic system failures. Here's why that's bad news for everyone:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:"Ultimately, we want to build a fleet of electric harvesters"

owl writes:https://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos-memory-management/

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:A 33% leap in capacity in six months is an impressive feat:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

looorg writes:Supreme court declines to hear dispute over copyright in regards to AI generated art. So AI generated art is not copyrightable. If that is the case are other things generated by AI? Code?

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/drones-attack-several-aws-middle-east-region-data-centers-amid-iran-war-leading-to-outages-service-health-been-disrupted-after-power-cut-due-to-fire-risk

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

canopic jug writes:Web sites are increasingly trying to glean additional personally identifiable information from visitors in the name of authentication. Some nefarious interests actually do have a goal of tracking every minute interaction and communication tied to a real-world identity. However, if the goal is authentication and not just the collection of information, then all that is not necessary. Cryptographer and professor, Matthew Green, has a few thoughts on cryptographic engineering, specifically an illustrated primer on Anonymous credentials. He states the question as being, how do we live in a world with routine age-verification and human identification, without completely abandoning our privacy?

canopic jug writes:Retired programmer Kevin Boone has a guide to the retro-web in which he summarizes as the small web, IndieWeb, Gemini, Gopher, and so on.

upstart writes:LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy:

upstart writes:Medical journal The Lancet blasts RFK Jr.'s health work as a failure:

Anonymous Coward writes:Euro News reports on a growing movement against ChatCGPT after its contract with the Pentagon:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/rising-memory-prices-pile-more-strain-on-consumer-pc-market

hubie writes:Across Cultures, People Combine Reference Frames to Orient Themselves:

canopic jug writes:The Norwegian Consumer Council has published a new report, Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, about countering big tech's growing abuse of its increasingly concentrated power. The 100-page PDF is accompanied by two cover letters, one in English to various EU/EEA/UK and US institutions, and one in Norwegian to Norwegian authorities. The report starts with the problem of platform decay now known colloquially as enshittification. One change is the demand for action to be taken proactively:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.slashgear.com/2112936/africa-coast-brown-ribbon-scientist-alarm/

AnonTechie writes:An interesting analysis:

hubie writes:Cleaner ship fuel is reducing lightning in key shipping lanes, KU research shows:

MotorTrend reports https://www.motortrend.com/news/kia-plant-solar-power-hail-protection that the Kia assembly plant in Georgia suffered very expensive hail damage to new cars waiting to be shipped, back in a storm in 2023. The fix is a massive raised solar array of 3.2 million square feet (300,000 meters^2) over the car park/storage area.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/whoops-us-military-laser-strike-takes-down-cbp-drone-near-mexican-border/

Trump Bans Anthropic AI From Federal Agencies After Firm Refuses to Unlock CapabilitiesArthur T Knackerbracket writes:Anthropic cites risks of autonomous military applications, mass domestic surveillance:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:There's a silent vulnerability lurking underneath the architecture of Wi-Fi networks:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.slashgear.com/2107938/removable-battery-phones-making-comeback/

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/genomes-chart-the-history-of-neanderthal-modern-human-interactions/

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.slashgear.com/2109851/states-cracking-down-drivers-move-over-laws/5def81c4f1d3d85733888dd4951cd6f1

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Neuron-powered computer chips can now be easily programmed to play a first-person shooter game, bringing biological computers a step closer to useful applications:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/block-lays-off-40-of-workforce-as-it-goes-all-in-on-ai-tools/c16fbef0848a80413fcac6e5598b4dc9