Tuesday, 10 November
19:00 EST
The US military seems to be getting nervous about the launch supply crunch [Ars Technica - All content]
The US military is taking a new approach to prop up commercial launch companies as SpaceX looks to wind down its Falcon rocket program, suggesting defense officials see the workhorse rocket's retirement as a potential national security risk.
The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital has twice in the last two weeks announced it was sending cash to two of SpaceX's competitors in the launch business. First, on October 26, the office announced a $150 million conditional loan commitment to Stoke Space. Military officials revealed a second $150 million Pentagon loan Tuesday for Rocket Lab.
Stoke Space and Rocket Lab are the first two launch companies to receive significant support from the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), an organization established in 2022 to infuse companies developing "vital" national security technologies with capital. OSC has been on a loan spree in recent weeks, committing hundreds of millions of dollars to companies specializing in batteries, drones, and semiconductors. In the space sector, the office also provided a $150 million loan to LeoLabs, a commercial satellite tracking company, for production and deployment of radar units.
Ring cameras go mobile as Amazon debuts AI-powered security drone and robot [Ars Technica - All content]
Amazon is betting that many Ring customers will also want an AI-powered security drone and robot patrolling their homes or offices. But the company’s upcoming Ring Robotic products are also certain to intensify privacy concerns previously raised around a prior Amazon attempt to popularize a flying security camera.
The Ring Rover Cam and Ring Drone Cam are expected to reach customers starting at the end of 2026 and in early 2027, respectively, according to an Amazon announcement posted on November 10. Amazon describes the devices as relying on an AI Pilot system that uses each device’s cameras along with “specialized vision models, on-device sensors and cloud processing” to plan patrol routes while autonomously navigating around obstacles such as furniture.
Both devices also use that AI Pilot system to digitally map the floor plan of the customer’s home or business. This setup process occurs after the customer carries the Ring drone through their indoor spaces or allows the Ring Rover to do some autonomous exploration.
House votes to effectively end the impeachment effort against Pete Hegseth [NPR Topics: News]
House Republicans managed to short circuit a floor vote on the impeachment effort brought against the Defense Secretary by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie.
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)
Should you trust new AI agents with your money and data? [NPR Topics: News]
Tech companies want agentic AI to be the new way you shop. But should you trust AI when your money's involved?
Fireworks AI Confirms Wider Breach Affecting Notion AI Chats [Slashdot]
Fireworks AI says its October breach was broader than initially disclosed, with attackers gaining access to customer account and billing information as well as some datasets, incomplete model weights and secrets. Notion, the popular productivity and note-taking app, disclosed that it was impacted in the breach but "fewer than 1% of Notion workspaces" were involved. "Upon analysis of the new data, we discovered that it included Notion AI chat transcripts used for the Insights feature, which for the vast majority of impacted workspaces were unattributable," it said. "'Unattributable' means the chats weren't labeled with who wrote them or which workspace they came from, and the transcripts did not contain tool call results." The Hacker News reports: In a notice published on October 10, 2026, [Fireworks AI] said it detected unauthorized use of internal Fireworks credentials that allowed an unauthorized third-party to access environment variables used in evaluation jobs in a limited number of customer accounts. The activity was detected on October 6, 2026, at 9 a.m. PDT. [...] The latest bulletin from the company reveals that the scope of the breach may have been broader than previously thought. The company said attackers reached its development environment via an unnamed third-party cloud provider that hosted Fireworks research and development (R&D) machines on October 23, 2026. "On October 24, the unauthorized third party used it to reach Fireworks development machines and then run an unauthorized workload that led to additional customer data impact," it added. "As of October 25, we have not detected further evidence of successful unauthorized access by the threat actor on the Fireworks platform customers use." The breach is said to have provided access to the following types of information: [Resource metadata; Billing information; and Model weights and datasets]. Fireworks AI said payment card numbers are not stored by the company and were not impacted by the security incident. It also said it's alerting customers whose data was impacted.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
18:00 EST
Democrats oppose plan to stack FCC with Republicans, plan probes of Chairman Carr [Ars Technica - All content]
Senate Democrats today opposed President Trump's nominee for an open Federal Communications Commission seat, and criticized Republicans for moving to confirm a new commissioner during the period before Democrats take control of Congress in January 2027. Democrats also plan to use their majority next year to launch probes of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
"After the American people last week overwhelmingly rejected the MAGA agenda, there is no justification for this committee to advance partisan nominees during the lame-duck period," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said today at the Commerce Committee's nomination hearing for Danielle Thumann Severs, Trump's pick to fill an empty commissioner's seat.
Thumann Severs, an attorney and senior counsel to Carr, faced questions from Democrats about whether she supports Carr's attacks on TV broadcasters.
Grok Build coding agent leaks oodles of confidential info, some belonging to SpaceXSI [Ars Technica - All content]
Grok Build, the vibe-coding agent from SpaceXSI, is leaking data—some of it proprietary business information and other sensitive secrets—from thousands of its users, including the very same Elon Musk-owned company that offers the platform, new research shows.
The information is revealed through links allowing Grok Build users to share their apps with others. Grok takes steps to randomize the URLs so only people who know the exact URL can access the data stored there. A design decision by developers of the platform, however, completely torpedoes that objective and makes it possible for anyone to enumerate thousands of live Grok Build projects. Except in rare cases, clicking those links opens the app and reveals all data associated with it.
You had one job
Research from security firm Claroc shows that the exposed data includes things like internal business plans, ad proposals, medical exam results, galley checklists from a celebrity cruise line, and employee names and ID numbers. Ironically, some of the sensitive data comes from two-dozen apps built by SpaceXSI (the name of the now-merged SpaceX and xAI) itself. A small sampling of the documents revealed in the SpaceXSI apps—Claroc found 24 of them—include an onboarding plan, marked confidential, for a new member of SpaceXSI’s enterprise sales team, a sales territory map of 594 accounts, internal system addresses for sales team tools, and advertising proposals.
What happens to mathematics when AI becomes an oracle? [Ars Technica - All content]
Our modern world runs on math, from social media algorithms, package delivery, and weather prediction to medical imaging and machine learning. The rise of computers helped fuel its dominance, enabling us to work with increasingly large numbers that would otherwise be beyond the capacity of our finite human brains. But with the rise of large language models, AI chatbots, and, soon, quantum computing, so-called "big math" is beginning to outstrip its creators entirely. What that means, and how we might adapt, is the focus of a new book, Big Math: The Hidden Codes That Run Our World, by applied mathematicians Steven Strogatz and Alex Townsend.
Strogatz is perhaps best known in his field for his co-authorship of a seminal 1998 paper with Duncan Watts on the collective dynamics of small-world networks. He has also studied chaos theory as applied to physics, the geometry of supercoiled DNA, and the biological collective oscillators, such as swarms of synchronously flashing fireflies and crickets that chirp in unison. In 2005, Strogatz extended his study of synchronicity to the crowds that caused the wobbling of London's Millennium Bridge.
An award-winning communicator, Strogatz wrote three series of columns on mathematics for The New York Times in 2010, 2012, and 2025 and hosted a podcast for Quanta magazine from 2020–2021. He has written four popular books: Sync (2003), The Calculus of Friendship (2009), The Joy of X (2012), and the New York Times bestseller Infinite Powers (2019).
New York Launches Nation's First State AI Testing Program [Slashdot]
New York is launching a state-backed AI safety research center at Binghamton University that will independently study and test AI systems, develop safety and security techniques, and train researchers in responsible AI. "While the federal government fails to act, New York is leading the way on AI safety and holding big tech accountable," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said. "The stakes are too high to simply take AI companies at their word." Politico reports: The center -- which is funded by a $30 million gift from Bloomberg co-founder Tom Secunda and a $25 million research investment from SUNY and New York state -- is set to launch before New York's major AI safety law, the RAISE Act, comes into effect on Jan. 1. That will require submissions of detailed safety frameworks from AI companies operating in New York State, which Hochul's office hopes will be scrutinized by researchers at the new center. "AI is opening up questions that scientists could not tackle before," said Secunda, who also serves as the board chair of Empire AI, a $500 million public-private partnership. "With Empire AI and researchers across New York, the Center can test systems independently and give public officials evidence they can use." Over 80 leading scientists and researchers on AI systems from across New York state will contribute to the effort, which will be run by the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research at Binghamton University, according to details shared by Hochul's office. The initiative will be led by Jeannette Wing, the executive vice president for research at Columbia University, and Greg Morrisett, the vice provost of Cornell Tech. "We need new techniques that can be applied to this new kind of system with swarms of autonomous agents acting independently and without control. How can you first detect that they're going to do harm, and how can you prevent them from doing harm?" said Wing. "The beauty of what's being proposed is that this state is committing resources to really light this up."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
16:00 EST
Google Fi adds support for a second 5G network, won't say which one [Ars Technica - All content]
Google has announced a "super network" upgrade for its Fi cell service. For the past few years, Google Fi has operated exclusively on the T-Mobile network, but now it's adding support for a second 5G network. Oddly, Google refuses to say which one.
Google's MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) launched in 2015 as Project Fi with support for both T-Mobile and Sprint service. The service initially only worked on Google's Nexus phones, which would switch between networks based on signal strength. After T-Mobile absorbed Sprint, Fi switched to being a single-network service in the US while continuing to hop between networks for international travel.
With the super network, Google Fi is again a dual-carrier service stateside. Phones connected to Fi will be able to hop between T-Mobile 5G and a different 5G network to provide the best possible connectivity. Google's blog post announcing the change conspicuously doesn't mention either network, saying only that it supports "two of America’s best 5G cellular networks."
Pixel phones getting new icon styles, Create My Widget, and more in November Pixel Drop [Ars Technica - All content]
Google's Pixel phones get an update every month, but most are just security patches and bug fixes. The bigger changes are bundled into quarterly Pixel Drops, and one is rolling out today. The update brings a few new things, and many of the Gemini features previously exclusive to the latest Pixel phones will also expand to Google's Pixel 10 lineup.
The Pixel 11 was Google's first foray into "Gemini Intelligence" branding, something we'll see a lot more of going forward. Some of the features under that heading were limited to Google's newest phones (and in some cases, Samsung's phones). The November Pixel Drop will expand these AI features to the Pixel 10 lineup, but importantly, that doesn't include the budget-oriented Pixel 10a.
For starters, the Pixel 10 series will get the improved personalized suggestions (previously known as Magic Cue) that debuted on the Pixel 11. This enables things like sending grocery lists to Google Keep from other apps and generating summaries from the context menu. Rambler, Google's AI-assisted voice input system, is also coming to the 2025 phones. Likewise, Gemini app automation will roll out on Pixel 10 with this update. This feature is still limited to select apps in rideshare, food delivery, travel, and a few other categories.
Free video-streaming service Tubi lets users share curated watchlists now [Ars Technica - All content]
Tubi users can now create and share playlists of movies and shows available on the streaming service.
Tubi is a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service that has both live channels and on-demand content.
Today, the Fox-owned company announced “Mixtapes” as a way for users to make watchlists from Tubi’s “nearly 400,000 movies and TV episodes,” Tubi’s announcement said, adding:
Which god, and what’s your evidence? Be specific [Pharyngula]
Would you believe that “Scientists who believe in God are challenging the expert atheist establishment”? It’s a peculiar headline. Who are the “expert atheist establishment”? What are they “expert” in, because I know it’s not God — no one, not atheists and not theists — have any expertise in God, since there is nothing in that hypothetical entity that can be tested or measured. So what are they challenging?
I was temporarily discombobulated by that weird claim, but I guess I better go on and read the article.
For much of modern history, religion and science have been cast as natural enemies. But today there is a growing (albeit minority) view among scientists that God may well be behind their new discoveries.
Pardon me, but that is a serious mangling of history. Most of the time I hear apologists declaring that all of the scientists before Darwin were religious, so clearly most scientists did not see a conflict between science and religion. The conflict, if any, is that there is a gigantic explanatory gap, where we lack any evidence for a deity, so we don’t invoke a god in our explanations. Sure, you can go to church, synagogue, or mosque if your heart so desires, but we still expect a material explanation for the phenomena we observe.
I’d like to know who these “scientists” are who claim God is behind their discoveries, and what their evidence is for such intervention.
As they continue to untangle the complexities of the universe and molecular biology, they see a system that only a higher power could construct. Simple mechanical explanations simply fail to meet the explanatory test.
OK, but what about complicated mechanical explanations? I look at the scientific literature and see many sophisticated, detailed explanations; I don’t see papers that say, “I give up, serine-threonine protein kinases can’t possibly explain cell growth, therefore God.” Nobody looked at the irregularities in Uranus’s orbit and suggested that God must be wiggling it, they looked deeper and found Neptune, not God.
I am not impressed by arguments that rely on the inadequacy of a current observation to immediately postulate a fantastical super-powered invisible being. The scientists I know who are theists don’t accept that kind of argument, either.
So who is the author of this silly article talking to?
“The new discoveries in science push us in this direction,” notes Dr Stephen C. Meyer, who recently wowed the broadcaster Piers Morgan (and millions of his viewers) on his eponymous Youtube show.
Oh god. That’s all I can say. Meyer is a phony who doesn’t understand science. You’re going to have to do better.
So, after a stock recitation of historical figures who held religious beliefs, he gives us a list of the “scientists” who are challenging the non-existent atheist establishment.
Even the world’s most important innovator, Elon Musk, has recently become more public in his positivity towards Christianity, which he has described as “a religion of curiosity” and “greater enlightenment”.
Others like Pat Gelsinger, the former head of Intel, Gary Tan, the chief executive of Y Incubator, and Peter Thiel have openly embraced Christianity.
The religious re-discovery among scientists reflects a wider shift among leading intellectuals such as Douglas Murray, historian Tom Holland, and psychologist Jordan Peterson.
None of them are scientists! These aren’t people trying to untangle the complexities of molecular biology at all! When your list of people failing to understand molecular biology and inventing gods to fill their ignorance starts with Elon Musk and ends with Jordan Peterson, and your justifications are all based on the claims of Stephen Meyer, I think I’m warranted in dismissing you as a lying idiot.
Anthropic Launches New Workplace Features To Take On Microsoft and Google [Slashdot]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic announced new workplace features on Tuesday, including Claude Meetings, which brings Claude into video calls to begin working on tasks while participants are still talking. The company also unveiled Claude Whiteboards and Claude Sheets. The launch of Anthropic's new productivity-focused features comes just a few weeks after OpenAI unveiled a series of workplace tools that allow users to collaborate with ChatGPT to do things like visualize company information and create presentations, as both companies compete to turn their products into office suites of sorts to take on Microsoft and Google. Meta is also joining the competition with its Muse AI agent, which can build mini-apps on the fly to help users complete specific tasks. Here's a summary of each of the offerings Anthropic announced today: Claude Meetings: Allows Claude to join video calls as a visible participant, take notes, answer questions, retrieve information from connected apps, and create plans, timelines, and action items in real time. Available in beta for Team and Enterprise plans, initially supporting Google Meet. Claude Whiteboards: A collaborative visual workspace where teams can brainstorm with Claude, organize ideas into timelines and plans, and turn their work into documents or slide decks. It also integrates with Claude Meetings to build whiteboards during conversations. Claude Sheets: Lets teams create and collaboratively edit spreadsheets with Claude, including budgets and trackers with multiple tabs, formulas, formatting, and dropdown menus. Claude can make changes directly in cells while explaining its edits. Anthropic also announced the general availability of Claude Data (formerly Claude Dashboards) that connects Claude to business systems like CRMs and data warehouses. "Users can ask questions, and Claude responds with dashboards, written data stories, or narrated videos," reports TechCrunch. Additionally, the company announced new interactive connectors that let users open Claude and work within third-party apps like Adobe, Atlassian, and HubSpot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Starlink Mini 2 Adds a Swappable Battery, Wi-Fi 6 [Slashdot]
SpaceX has unveiled the Starlink Mini 2, equipping the company's smallest satellite internet terminal with a removable 71Wh battery and Wi-Fi 6. Preorders are opening to select U.S. customers for $999, which also includes a year of Roam Unlimited service. Shipments are expected to begin in mid-December. InterestingEngineering reports: The removable battery represents the biggest functional upgrade over the original Starlink Mini. Previously, users needed an external power source to operate the satellite terminal. That meant carrying additional equipment for camping trips, remote work, or extended journeys. Mini 2 addresses that limitation with a detachable 71 Wh battery pack. It weighs approximately 1.08 pounds (490 grams) and delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity. Owners can replace it with another charged battery when necessary. The battery also features LED indicators and its own USB-C charging port. SpaceX supports 60-watt USB-C Power Delivery charging for the pack. The retail kit includes a compatible 60-watt wall adapter and a three-meter USB-C cable. Users can also power the terminal through USB-C without relying on its battery. A physical power button replaces the original model's simpler plug-and-play arrangement. [...] SpaceX has also upgraded the wireless hardware from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6. The integrated router supports coverage across approximately 1,800 square feet (167 square meters). An IP67 rating provides additional protection against dust and water. Other hardware details include a foldable kickstand and a standard 1/4-inch-20 tripod mounting thread. The terminal also offers a 55-degree field of view for satellite acquisition.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
15:00 EST
Steam Deck performance gets a reality check with Valve's new FPS data [Ars Technica - All content]
Since Valve announced its Steam Deck Verified program in 2021, players have found that a game's "Verified" status doesn't always match how well it actually runs on the handheld. Now, new Steam Deck frame rate data being shared by Valve itself can help players dig deeper into the performance they can expect from many Steam Deck games.
Valve has been collecting anonymized frame rate data from Steam players who opt in since February. Yesterday evening, the company announced it has started sharing that data on many Steam Store pages as averages and histograms for both the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED.
Valve acknowledges that players enabling VSync or frame rate limits can bias the collected data somewhat and that the measurements don't account for custom in-game settings that Steam Deck users may tinker with to get a game running. Regardless, Valve says it has nonetheless "found that the framerate data consolidates around relatively narrow ranges."
Testing the new generation of AI-enabled fire-extinguishing drones [NPR Topics: News]
Drone makers are testing new, big drones that can deliver water or fire retardant with AI assistance. Aspen, Colorado is the first place trying them out. Cool and expensive? Yes. Effective? TBD.
(Image credit: Halle Zander)
U.S. boycotts U.N. human rights review for second year running [NPR Topics: News]
The U.S. has skipped a key U.N. human rights review for the second year running. Rights groups warn the absence risks undermining global accountability.
(Image credit: Lian Yi)
Nintendo Is Officially Investing In Game Preservation [Slashdot]
Nintendo is hiring a digital archivist to help ensure the company's historical records are "preserved for future generations." The 12-month position is tasked with designing and implementing a "structured framework for organizing technical records, engineering documentation, source materials, and institutional knowledge related to legacy systems and platforms." Polygon reports: In the past, Nintendo has drawn criticism from the preservation community. In 2022, the Video Game History Foundation publicly criticized the company for announcing it would be closing the Wii U and 3DS eShops. The foundation released a statement saying that Nintendo's decision was "actively destructive to video game history." The statement also pointed out that Nintendo is part of the Entertainment Software Association, which funds lobbying that prevents a number of preservation efforts.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
14:00 EST
Blender 5.3 Released With Nvidia DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, Vulkan Default [Slashdot]
Blender 5.3 has been released with support for 3D Gaussian Splats, Nvidia DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction and Vulkan as the default graphics backend on Linux. Phoronix reports: Blender now allows importing Gaussian Splats from PLY, SPZ, and glTF files. Also new to Blender 5.3 is NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction support as a new denoiser. Blender 5.3 also brings support for NVIDIA RTX Spark devices. For the Cycles code in Blender 5.3 the Principled BSDF for shader nodes now supports dispersion. Another notable change with Blender 5.3 is the Vulkan back-end now being the default on Windows (except for Windows on ARM) and Linux systems. Vulkan 1.1 or newer is required and should deliver better performance than OpenGL.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
13:00 EST
Americans across the economic spectrum feel a 'panic' about finances, author says [NPR Topics: News]
Mona Chalabi spent five years following Americans living paycheck to paycheck, as well as those earning top wages. Her new book, Ten Lives, explores why financial security can feel so elusive.
(Image credit: LM Otero)
The $4 complete medical review and second opinion from Claude [Philip Greenspun’s Weblog]
A friend’s son has been working on a systematic approach that takes a “computer-readable export” from Epic, the medical record behemoth, and prepare it for analysis by Claude. He uses VS Code with the LLM plugged in. As prep, he has the AI genius convert all of the Epic data into JSON format and then he works for 10-20 minutes on refining prompts to get a good summary. Claude might chew for an hour on its own to produce the final PDF.
What does it cost to have a complex patient’s history analyzed? One example has years of tests, multiple diagnoses, and a record totally 185 MB. Claude Code Fable 5.1 (max) prepared a 18-page summary of tests, conditions, and diagnoses for less than $4. This include graphs, charts, and suggested follow-up tests. Here’s an example excerpt (not going to do too much in order to preserve patient privacy).
The caption reveals the tragic failure of the American health care system: “Eight specialties across two hospital systems are now involved, and none of them owns the whole picture.” Each specialist is great if the patient’s condition is obviously related to his or her specialty, but the patient is in a world of trouble if the symptoms don’t fit neatly into one of our system’s silos. And, perhaps with Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, and Cleveland Clinic as partial exceptions, collaboration among specialists is rare. For one thing, it is challenging to bill an insurance company for “all-hands meeting among specialists without the patient in the office or hospital.” Gemini:
When broken down by an hourly revenue metric, peer-reviewed medical data shows that insurance networks and Medicare historically reimburse physicians 3 to 5 times more per hour for standard procedural work than they do for cognitive work of identical length.
So… assuming that the specialists leave some decent notes in Epic, the all-hands meeting can happen inside the brain of an LLM and at a retail cost of around $4. (In this case, 4% of a monthly quota that cost $100/month was used.)
[Let’s also keep in mind that whatever capability Claude Fable 5.1 has right now for $4 should cost less than $1 in a year. On the other hand, a desktop or laptop PC might cost $50,000 by then, due to competition from data centers for components, so try not to spill any water on your home machine!]
Note that it is possible that ChatGPT Health, a standard feature of the system, might be able to do all of this even more conveniently. You can simply connect it to most hospitals’ EMRs and to various labs, etc. Then ask questions whenever you want that will be based on everything that it has pulled from these sources. I was interested in what the kid did with Claude because it gives us the current full retail price, not hidden as it might be if ChatGPT were used as part of a subscription.
Update: I learned that Claude introduced something similar to ChatGPT Health just a few days after OpenAI/ChatGPT did it.
The post The $4 complete medical review and second opinion from Claude appeared first on Philip Greenspun’s Weblog.
How long would Russell Brand have spent in prison if he had killed a survivor instead of whatever he did in bed with a survivor? [Philip Greenspun’s Weblog]
Russell Brand has been sentenced to 10.5 years in prison, 9 of which relate to an evening in which a survivor voluntarily came to his house in 2009, voluntarily did various things in bed with him, and says that some other things happened that she did not consent to.
What if the story had instead been “a woman came over to Russell Brand’s house in 2009 and did not become a survivor because, following an argument, he killed her”? ChatGPT says that Brand might have been sentenced to approximately 4 years for manslaughter and would then have been eligible for release after 2 years. The prevailing law in 2009 was that “provocation” could turn murder into manslaughter. ChatGPT cited the example of Stephen Paul Faulkner from 2001: “Wife repeatedly taunted him about impotence, unemployment, illiteracy and other men. During an argument he stabbed her and their son [who intervened] to death.” He was sentenced to 3.5 years for manslaughter, a sentence that was upheld on appeal in 2003. (This wasn’t a sudden crime of passion. The appeal notes that “F [defendant] took the car, went to a local store and bought a kitchen knife with a six inch blade. He returned home where they continued to argue, F followed V upstairs into the bedroom”.) ChatGPT also cited Susan Phillipson. In 2007 she took a more direct and honest approach than MIT Prof. Dr. Kristin Knouse, M.D., Ph.D.: “During an argument over her partner leaving her for another woman, fatally stabbed him with a kitchen knife.” She was sentenced to 3.2 years.
ChatGPT also found R v. Taylor (I think that “R” means “Regina” or the Queen):
A man and his common-law wife had been drinking. After a minor disagreement about a door being left open, she mocked him about her relationship with another man. He took a knife from a kitchen drawer and fatally stabbed her once in the stomach. He was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder. His original sentence of seven years was reduced by the Court of Appeal to five years.
(ChatGPT couldn’t find any other case in the history of the UK that was similar to the Russell Brand one, i.e., one in which the jury was hearing about events that occurred 17 years earlier between two people and for which there was no physical evidence to corroborate anyone’s story.)
Comparison to some other sex-related crimes, e.g., “controlling a child prostitute” resulting in Englishman Tanveer Ahmed being sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, while Welshman Mohammed Ali Sultan got 2.5 years for “allowing his flat to be used as a brother by allowing a man to have sex with a girl who was being controlled as a prostitute”:
The post How long would Russell Brand have spent in prison if he had killed a survivor instead of whatever he did in bed with a survivor? appeared first on Philip Greenspun’s Weblog.
Reddit Is Turning User Conversations Into AI-Powered Product Reviews [Slashdot]
Reddit is rolling out an AI-powered shopping feature called "Reddit Reviews" that summarizes user conversations about products and turns them into dedicated reviews. TechCrunch reports: Reddit's announcement points to its rules and its latest measures to combat automated abuse and spam, as well as its practice involving community moderators, as tools it will use to keep the reviews on the site legit. The Reddit Reviews feature itself taps into AI to organize the conversations people are having where they describe their product experiences. These posts will often see users discussing how a product works for them, or why it fails, or what the trade-offs are that someone should consider before buying. The company has been testing the product reviews feature since February, initially with U.S. users in areas like Electronics, Video Games, and Health & Beauty products. In September, Reddit expanded the test to include the Home & Garden and Fashion & Apparel categories as well. Now, the company says Reddit Reviews is rolling out to all U.S. users on iOS, Android, and web, with an initial selection focused on around 10,000 products. Over time, it will roll out to more categories and expand beyond the U.S. To use the feature, Reddit users can search for a product or category in the app's search bar or click on a highlighted product name they see in someone's comment. From there, the user is taken to a screen where important conversations are summarized under a "what people are saying" heading. This will also include a visual breakdown that shows how many of those comments are positive, negative, or mixed, and what sort of things people said they liked or disliked about the item.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
12:00 EST
High oil prices have led to a dip in global carbon emissions [Ars Technica - All content]
Evaluating the annual global temperatures each year requires context. There is a fair amount of natural variability from one year to the next, so it’s important to focus on the trend over time. Famously, global warming did not end in 1998, as some claimed a couple of decades ago—we just had a run of La-Niña-dominated years after a very strong El Niño.
Annual greenhouse gas emissions are much less variable, having increased fairly steadily, but many complicating factors can still muddy the picture. Sometimes those factors conspire to throw a year off the trend. It looks like 2026 will be one of those years.
A new analysis led by Corinne Le Quéré at the University of East Anglia estimates that fossil fuel emissions have fallen about 0.4 percent from last year. This probably isn’t a peak that symbolizes heartening progress on climate change, though; the researchers think it’s a short-term dip driven by the war in Iran and its effect on oil prices.
One space station company sues another for copying its work [Ars Technica - All content]
NASA's competition for the development of private space stations that will take flight in the 2030s is already nearing crunch time. But a recently unsealed lawsuit may spice things up even further.
The lawsuit involves two of the most prominent companies in this competition, Houston-based Axiom Space and Long Beach, California-based Vast Space. And it is surfacing as final proposals for private space stations are due from companies to the US space agency a little more than one month from today, on December 14.
According to the court filings unsealed by a November 4 order from US District Judge Charles Eskridge, Axiom is pursuing a False Claims Act case against Vast in which Axiom accuses Vast of presenting NASA with a fraudulent mission-planning document that incorporates Axiom's proprietary information.
DeepMind reveals Gemini Robotics 2.5 and open safety benchmark "ASIMOV-jailbreak" [Ars Technica - All content]
Google DeepMind has revealed a new generation of the AI-powered Gemini Robotics platform. In the 2.5 release, Google says its robotic AI is getting tantalizingly close to completing real-world tasks as well as humans do. In fact, some Gemini robots were able to get actual work done in Mercedes-Benz factories, and the team is preparing for a day when robots operate alongside humans with an open source safety benchmark.
DeepMind's physical AI platform has several computational layers between user input and robotic action. There's the vision-language model piece, which is Gemini Embodied Reasoning. Essentially, it takes your instructions and uses live video to plan how the robot can accomplish the task. The other main component is the vision-language-action (VLA) that actually generates robot actions, like moving an actuator—that's Gemini Robotics, which has been bumped to version 2.5.
DeepMind says that Gemini Robotics 2.5 is much better at tasks that require a high degree of dexterity. The model was evaluated across more than 200 activities, including serving food with tongs and using a pipette, as you would see in a laboratory. Google also showed that Apptronik’s Apollo 2 humanoid robot with Gemini Robotics 2.5 can now tie a bow with its five-fingered hands, a notable feat, because deformable objects (like ribbon) are notoriously difficult for robots to manipulate.
Nvidia has a Jensen Huang problem—and no obvious successor [Ars Technica - All content]
The investigation of Jensen Huang by Nvidia’s board threatens the future of one of Silicon Valley’s longest-serving executives and a key enabler of the AI boom, who has no obvious successor as leader of the world’s second-most-valuable company.
Huang is fighting for survival after admitting to an extramarital affair, believed to be with an executive at a large Nvidia customer whom US officials also allege was working as a Chinese spy.
The prospect that Huang could be forced out as chief executive of the US chipmaker he co-founded more than 30 years ago has alarmed investors and allies in the tech industry. Shares in Nvidia, which late last month ceded its position as the world’s most valuable to Apple amid a broader sell-off in AI stocks, had fallen more than 5 percent by midday trading on Monday.
FDA warns GLP-1 drugs may pose risk of rare condition that causes vision loss [Ars Technica - All content]
The Food and Drug Administration is warning that popular obesity drugs—including Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, and Mounjaro—may carry a "potential increased risk" of a rare eye condition that can lead to permanent vision loss.
In a drug safety communication Monday, the FDA said it will now require makers of GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs to add a warning about that risk on their drug labels. The specific eye condition it warns of is called non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy or NAION. The condition is caused by restricted blood flow to the optic nerve, which leads to swelling and cell death and ultimately damages the nerve, causing abrupt vision loss that can often be permanent.
It's unknown how GLP-1 drugs may cause NAION. The condition is rare overall, occurring in somewhere between two and 10 people in 100,000 in the general population, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. These small numbers have made it more difficult to determine with certainty if there is a connection. Further complicating the potential link is the fact that the risk factors for developing NAION are common among patients taking GLP-1 drugs. The risk factors include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, and obstructive sleep apnea.
Polestar has a new look with its Formula 2030 concept [Ars Technica - All content]
Perhaps only a small percentage of Ars readers will care about the Polestar 2030 concept, debuted today by the electric automaker. Spun out of Volvo—once upon a time, Polestar was a racing team—the brand has leveraged the resources of parent-automaker Geely to create electric vehicles that marry a modern minimalist style with rewarding driving dynamics. But you now can’t buy any Polestars in the US, since Geely is Chinese, and banning Chinese-owned car brands enjoys remarkable bipartisan support in Congress.
The Formula 2030 is about the same length as a Polestar 2 but with a very low roofline. If anything, the two-box shape reminds me of the Saab Aero-X, one of the final concepts from the then-terminal Swedish automaker. (In many ways, Polestar has adopted Saab’s mantle.)
Polestar says the concept fits into its own segment somewhere between the next Polestar 2 and the Polestar 7—it numbers its cars chronologically (mostly), not based on size—although it’s not saying if the hatchback design will go into series production. Successfully packaging rear-seat passengers and a lithium-ion battery pack is something a concept needn’t worry about, after all. Rather, it’s a styling exercise, or more than one.