Tech News
Tech Startups Are Handing Out Free Nicotine Pouches to Boost Productivity
technology - Posted On:2025-12-31 19:45:00 Source: slashdot
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups -- Lucy Nicotine and Sesh -- made branded vending machines filled with flavored products for analytics company Palantir Technologies. Both machines are in the company's Washington, D.C., offices. The pouches are free for employees and guests over the age of 21, a spokeswoman for Palantir said. Palantir pays to stock the nicotine products. Alex Cohen, a startup founder based in Austin, Texas, said he was first exposed to nicotine pouches in the workplace after seeing tins of Zyns on the desks of his software engineers. His company, Hello Patient, makes AI-powered healthcare-communication software. "They were very productive, so I thought maybe there's something here," he said. Those engineers soon asked him if he could buy it for the office. Cohen said he initially bought the nicotine pouches as a joke for social media. He posted a picture of a drawer in his startup's office filled with nicotine pouches made by different brands with the caption, "We're hiring." "Then, I accidentally got addicted," said Cohen. He said he uses around two to three pouches a day. His go-to flavors are mango or minty. Cohen said he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and he has found that the pouches can provide a quick productivity boost. "It helps with reining in my focus because it is a stimulant," he said. Today, Hello Patient has a nicotine-pouch fridge in its office kitchen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DarkSpectre Hackers Spread Malware To 8.8 Million Chrome, Edge, and Firefox Users
it - Posted On:2025-12-31 19:00:01 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cyber Press: A newly uncovered Chinese threat group, DarkSpectre, has been linked to one of the most widespread browser-extension malware operations to date, compromising more than 8.8 million users of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera over the past seven years. According to research by Koi.ai, the group operates three interconnected campaigns: ShadyPanda, GhostPoster, and a newly identified one named The Zoom Stealer, forming a single, strategically organized operation. DarkSpectre's structure differs from that of ordinary cybercrime operations. The group runs separate but interconnected malware clusters, each with distinct goals. The ShadyPanda campaign, responsible for 5.6 million infections, focuses on long-term user surveillance and e-commerce affiliate fraud. Its extensions have appeared legitimate for years, offering new tab pages and translation utilities, before secretly downloading malicious configurations from command-and-control servers such as jt2x.com and infinitynewtab.com. Once activated, they inject remote scripts, hijack search results, and track browsing activity. The second campaign, GhostPoster, spreads via Firefox and Opera extensions that conceal malicious payloads in PNG images via steganography. After lying dormant for several days, the extensions extract and execute JavaScript hidden within images, enabling stealthy remote code execution. This campaign has affected over one million users and relies on domains like gmzdaily.com and mitarchive.info for payload delivery. The most recent discovery, The Zoom Stealer, exposes around 2.2 million users to corporate espionage. These extensions masquerade as productivity tools or video downloaders while secretly harvesting corporate meeting links, credentials, and speaker profiles from more than 28 video conferencing platforms, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The extensions use real-time WebSocket connections to exfiltrate data to Firebase databases, such as zoocorder.firebaseio.com, and to Google Cloud functions, such as webinarstvus.cloudfunctions.net. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
France Targets Australia-Style Social Media Ban For Children Next Year
technology - Posted On:2025-12-31 17:00:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: France intends to follow Australia and ban social media platforms for children from the start of the 2026 academic year. A draft bill preventing under-15s from using social media will be submitted for legal checks and is expected to be debated in parliament early in the new year. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has made it clear in recent weeks that he wants France to swiftly follow Australia's world-first ban on social media platforms for under-16s, which came into force in December. It includes Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. Le Monde and France Info reported on Wednesday that a draft bill was now complete and contained two measures: a ban on social media for under-15s and a ban on mobile phones in high schools, where 15- to 18-year-olds study. Phones have already been banned in primary and middle schools. The bill will be submitted to France's Conseil d'Etat for legal review in the coming days. Education unions will also look at the proposed high-school ban on phones. The government wants the social media ban to come into force from September 2026. Le Monde reported the text of the draft bill cited "the risks of excessive screen use by teenagers," including the dangers of being exposed to inappropriate social media content, online bullying, and altered sleep patterns. The bill states the need to "protect future generations" from dangers that threaten their ability to thrive and live together in a society with shared values. Earlier this month, Macron confirmed at a public debate in Saint Malo that he wanted a social media ban for young teenagers. He said there was "consensus being shaped" on the issue after Australia introduced its ban. "The more screen time there is, the more school achievement drops the more screen time there is, the more mental health problems go up," he said. He used the analogy of a teenager getting into a Formula One racing car before they had learned to drive. "If a child is in a Formula One car and they turn on the engine, I don't want them to win the race, I just want them to get out of the car. I want them to learn the highway code first, and to ensure the car works, and to teach them to drive in a different car." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Net Neutrality Was Back, Until It Wasn't
technology - Posted On:2025-12-31 14:30:01 Source: slashdot
The fight over net neutrality saw another turbulent year in 2025, as federal protections that seemed poised for a comeback in 2024 were first struck down by a court and then preemptively removed by the Trump administration's FCC without a chance for public comment. The removal, The Verge summarizes in a report, was part of Chairman Brendan Carr's "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative targeting what the agency deems unnecessary regulations. Federal net neutrality rules have now been on and off for 15 years, passing under Obama in 2010, returning in 2015, getting overturned in 2017, and briefly revived in 2024 before courts struck them down again. Matt Wood, vice president of policy and general counsel at nonprofit Free Press, told The Verge that ISPs often feel little financial impact from these rules. "A lot of their complaints about the supposed 'burdens' from these rules are really just ideological in nature," Wood said. States have filled the void. California's 2018 law remains the nation's gold standard, and Maine passed a bipartisan bill in June. John Bergmayer, legal director at Public Knowledge, said state-level laws and the threat of new ones "has kept some of the worst outcomes in check." The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is now pressuring states to exempt ISPs from net neutrality laws to remain eligible for broadband infrastructure funding. Chao Jun Liu of the Electronic Frontier Foundation summed up the year's pattern: "ISPs just want to do whatever they want to do with no limits and nobody telling them how to do it." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Finland Seizes Ship Suspected of Severing Undersea Cable To Estonia
technology - Posted On:2025-12-31 10:30:00 Source: slashdot
Finnish authorities on Wednesday seized a vessel suspected of severing an undersea telecommunications cable that connects Helsinki to Tallinn by dragging its anchor across the Gulf of Finland, the latest in a string of infrastructure incidents that have put Baltic Sea nations on edge since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Police are investigating the case as aggravated criminal damage and have not disclosed the ship's name, nationality or details about its crew. The cable belongs to Finnish telecoms group Elisa. Estonia's justice ministry reported that a second telecoms cable connecting the two countries -- owned by Sweden's Arelion -- also went down on Wednesday. This follows Finland's December 2024 boarding of the Russian-linked oil tanker Eagle S, which investigators said damaged a power cable and multiple telecoms links using the same anchor-dragging method. A Finnish court in October dismissed criminal charges against the Eagle S crew after prosecutors failed to prove intent. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Israel Deploys World's First Drone Defense Laser
technology - Posted On:2025-12-31 02:15:00 Source: slashdot
Israel has operationally deployed Iron Beam, a 100,000-watt laser air-defense system capable of shooting down drones, rockets, and mortars at negligible per-shot cost. According to Tom's Hardware, it marks the first real-world deployment of a high-energy laser as part of a modern, multi-layered missile defense network. From the report: The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sight laser interceptor that is extremely cheap to run and, therefore, perfectly suited for intercepting low-cost, high-volume threats. According to the official Israeli announcement, Iron Beam systems have "successfully intercepted rockets, mortars, and UAVs." A complex mix of government, military, scientific, and commercial interests were responsible for the research and development of the Iron Beam laser system. Central to the Iron Beam are "an advanced laser source and a unique electro-optical targeting system, enabling the interception of a wide range of targets at an enhanced operational range, with maximum precision and superior efficiency," boasted the press release by Israel's MoD. Moreover, it works "at a negligible marginal cost, which constitutes the laser system's primary advantage." We don't get much more by way of technical details, perhaps understandably. However, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems execs heralded the system's "unique adaptive optics technology," in what it calls "the world's most advanced laser-based system for intercepting aerial threats." Its operational debut "marks the beginning of the era of high-energy laser defense," they claimed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Toronto Man Outruns Streetcars To Show Up Sluggish Transit Network
technology - Posted On:2025-12-30 17:15:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Mac Bauer is fast, but the city's trams, weighing more than 100,000lbs and traveling at a maximum speed of nearly 45mph, should be far faster than him. And yet as of late December, in head-to-head races against streetcars, the 32-year-old remains undefeated in his quest to highlight how sluggish the trams, used by 230,000 people daily, truly are. Some races have pushed him closer to his limits as a runner. On other occasions, the car has been so slow he's had time to nip into a McDonald's before it reaches the last station. "I don't like winning. I really don't. I really, really wish these streetcars were faster than me," he said. "But they're not. And this is the problem." Bauer's rise as a running celebrity and transit critic embodies the mounting frustration of a city beset by chronic delays, congested streets and decades of under-built transit. "Streetcars just shouldn't be stuck in traffic," he said, adding the system also needed more "signal priority" which gives the streetcars lengthened green lights and shortened red lights. Bauer started racing transit vehicles roughly a year ago after he and his wife realized how long it took them to traverse the city. He posted videos of those races to Instagram and quickly transformed into a minor celebrity. Bauer describes his runs as a form of social activism, and his ability to lay bare the absurdities of Toronto's beleaguered public transit system -- a person can outrun a streetcar! -- has struck a nerve with the tens of thousands of commuters who share his Instagram posts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Despite a Record Year, Airlines Are Grappling With Big Challenges
technology - Posted On:2025-12-30 16:00:00 Source: slashdot
The global airline industry is on track to post an all-time profit high of nearly $40 billion in 2025, according to trade group IATA, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 figure of $26 billion, but carriers are still managing a net margin of just 4% -- roughly $7.90 per passenger. Economist adds: Not everything has been in the ascent. European and North American airlines, which account for three-fifths of the industry's net profits, have had to contend with circuitous long-haul routes to avoid Russian airspace since the start of the war in Ukraine. This year parts of the Middle East became no-go zones after Israel's strike on Iran in June. America's airlines were hit by a government shutdown that stopped federal workers from travelling and kept unpaid air-traffic controllers at home, disrupting flights. What is more, despite a drop in fuel prices, which account for 25-30% of airlines' operating expenses, other costs have risen. Airlines flew 4.8 billion passengers in 2024, beating the 2019 peak, and that figure likely reached 5 billion in 2025 as combined revenues topped $1 trillion for the first time and load factors hit a record of nearly 84%. But the industry is flying older planes because Boeing and Airbus can't deliver enough new ones. The duopoly shipped under 1,400 aircraft in 2025, well below the 2018 record of just over 1,600. Boeing has struggled since two fatal 737 MAX crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 led to a 20-month grounding, and a fuselage panel blew off another 737 MAX mid-flight in early 2024. Airbus cut its 2025 delivery target from 820 to 790 in early December due to a supplier's production flaw, and Pratt & Whitney engine problems have grounded a third of the global A320neo fleet. IATA estimates the aircraft shortage won't resolve before 2031 at the earliest, and the global fleet's average age has climbed to 15 years from 13 in 2019. Annual fuel efficiency gains have slowed from about 2% to 0.3% in 2025, and an IATA and Oliver Wyman report pegs the cost of aging fleets -- extra fuel, repairs, spare parts -- at over $11 billion in 2025. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Camera Makers Went Weird in 2025 - and That's Exactly What the Shrinking Industry Needed
technology - Posted On:2025-12-30 11:15:00 Source: slashdot
The camera industry shipped 6.5 million interchangeable lens cameras last year -- a 50% decline from 2010's peak -- yet 2025 may have been the most creatively ambitious year in nearly two decades of digital photography. DPReview's Richard Butler argues that this year's releases displayed "invention, experimentation and niche-tickling lunacy" not seen since digital's earliest days. Interchangeable lens shipments rose 11% in the first ten months of 2025 compared to last year, and fixed lens cameras climbed roughly 26%. The practical cameras arrived as expected: Panasonic's S1 II, Canon's EOS R6 III, and Sony's a7 V all delivered performance that "can go toe-to-toe with the pro sports models of just a few years ago." But the stranger releases drew attention. Sony's RX1R III faced criticism for being a "lazy update," yet Butler found it "small, fun to use and the pictures look great." Leica launched the Q3 Monochrom, a $7,800 fixed-lens full-frame compact that cannot capture color. Fujifilm's X half targeted young buyers who might otherwise hunt for vintage compacts on eBay. The Sigma BF abandoned traditional camera design entirely -- no viewfinder, one dial, intentionally stylized. "Look at some of this year's releases through a pragmatic lens of whether they're the best tool for the job, and the conclusion you'd typically draw is 'no,'" Butler wrote. These cameras "aren't trying to be the best, the most flexible or the most practical. They're intentionally, knowingly niche." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
22 Million Affected By Aflac Data Breach
it - Posted On:2025-12-30 08:15:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Insurance giant Aflac is notifying roughly 22.65 million people that their personal information was stolen from its systems in June 2025. The company disclosed the intrusion on June 20, saying it had identified suspicious activity on its network in the US on June 12 and blaming it on a sophisticated cybercrime group. The company said it immediately contained the attack and engaged with third-party cybersecurity experts to help with incident response. Aflac's operations were not affected, as file-encrypting ransomware was not deployed. [...] The compromised information, the insurance giant says, includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver's license numbers, government ID numbers, medical and health insurance information, and other data. "The review of the potentially impacted files determined personal information associated with customers, beneficiaries, employees, agents, and other individuals related to Aflac was involved," Aflac said in a notification (PDF) on its website. The company is providing the affected individuals with 24 months of free credit monitoring, identity theft protection, and medical fraud protection services. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How Windows 10 Earned Its Good Reputation While Planting the Seeds of Windows 11's Problems
technology - Posted On:2025-12-29 15:15:00 Source: slashdot
Windows 10's formal end-of-support arrived in October, and while the operating system is generally remembered as one of the "good" versions of Windows -- the most widely used since XP -- many of the annoyances people complain about in Windows 11 actually started during the Windows 10 era, ArsTechnica writes. Windows 10 earned its positive reputation primarily by not being Windows 8. It restored a version of the traditional Start menu, rolled out as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users, and ran on virtually all the same hardware as those older versions. Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux during this period and eventually rebuilt Edge on Chromium. The company seemed more willing to meet users where they were rather than forcing them to change their behavior. But Windows 10 also began collecting more information about how users interacted with the operating system, cluttered the lock screen with advertisements and news articles, and added third-party app icons to the Start menu without user consent. The mandatory Microsoft Account sign-in requirement -- one of Windows 11's most frequently complained-about features -- was a Windows 10 innovation, easier to circumvent at the time but clearly a step down the road Windows 11 is currently traveling. To be sure, Windows 11 has made things worse by stacking new irritants on top of old ones. The Microsoft Account requirement expanded to both Home and Pro editions, the SCOOBE screen now regularly nags users to "finish setting up" years-old installations and Microsoft's Copilot push changed the default PC keyboard layout for the first time in 30 years. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
'I Switched To eSIM in 2025, and I am Full of Regret'
it - Posted On:2025-12-29 12:00:00 Source: slashdot
Google's Pixel 10 series arrived this year as the company's first eSIM-only lineup in the United States, forcing users who wanted to review or buy the new phones to abandon their physical SIM cards entirely. Ryan Whitwam, a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, made the switch and now regrets it, he says. "In the three months since Google forced me to give up my physical SIM card, I've only needed to move my eSIM occasionally," Whitwam wrote. "Still, my phone number has ended up stuck in limbo on two occasions." The core problem is how carriers handle verification. When an eSIM transfer fails and you need support, carriers authenticate via SMS -- a message you cannot receive because your SIM is broken. "What should have been 30 seconds of fiddling with a piece of plastic turned into an hour standing around a retail storefront," Whitwam noted. Apple started this trend by dropping the SIM slot on iPhone 14 in 2022. The space savings are modest: the international iPhone 17 has a smaller battery than its eSIM-only counterpart by only about 8%. Google's US Pixel 10 models offer no such trade-off -- they lack the SIM slot but "unfortunately don't have more of anything compared to the international versions." He concludes: "A physical SIM is essentially foolproof, and eSIM is not." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Global Hotel Groups Bet on Customer Loyalty To Beat Online and AI Agents
technology - Posted On:2025-12-29 10:30:00 Source: slashdot
The world's largest hotel chains are aggressively pushing customers toward direct bookings as they brace for a future where AI "agents" could reshape how travelers find and reserve rooms. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham have all expanded their loyalty programs and perks in recent months, aiming to reduce their reliance on online travel agents like Expedia and Booking.com that typically charge commissions of 15 to 25%. Marriott's Bonvoy program reached almost 260 million members by the end of September, an 18% jump from the prior year. Hilton has lowered the barriers to elite status and struck partnerships that let members spend points outside its hotel portfolio. AI-powered booking tools could route customers away from brand-conscious decisions, but they could also offer hotels a cheaper distribution channel than traditional OTAs. Marriott CFO Leeny Oberg said at a conference this month that AI bookings "could potentially be cheaper than the OTAs." Wyndham CEO Geoff Ballotti called tools like ChatGPT and Gemini "a unique opportunity" to reduce OTA dependency. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
LG Launches UltraGear Evo Gaming Monitors With What It Claims is the World's First 5K AI Upscaling
technology - Posted On:2025-12-29 10:00:00 Source: slashdot
LG has announced a new premium gaming monitor brand called UltraGear, and the lineup's headline feature is what the company claims is the world's first 5K AI upscaling technology -- an on-device solution that analyzes and enhances content in real time before it reaches the panel, theoretically letting gamers enjoy 5K-class clarity without needing to upgrade their GPUs. The initial UltraGear evo roster includes three monitors. The 39-inch GX9 is a 5K2K OLED ultrawide that can run at 165Hz at full resolution or 330Hz at WFHD, and features a 0.03ms response time. The 27-inch GM9 is a 5K MiniLED display that LG says dramatically reduces the blooming artifacts common to MiniLED panels through 2,304 local dimming zones and "Zero Optical Distance" engineering. The 52-inch G9 is billed as the world's largest 5K2K gaming monitor and runs at 240Hz. The AI upscaling, scene optimization, and AI sound features are available only on the 39-inch OLED and 27-inch MiniLED models. All three will be showcased at CES 2026. No word on pricing or when the sets will hit the market. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
UK Accounting Body To Halt Remote Exams Amid AI Cheating
it - Posted On:2025-12-29 09:15:00 Source: slashdot
The world's largest accounting body is to stop students being allowed to take exams remotely to crack down on a rise in cheating on tests that underpin professional qualifications. From a report: The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), which has almost 260,000 members, has said that from March it will stop allowing students to take online exams in all but exceptional circumstances. "We're seeing the sophistication of [cheating] systems outpacing what can be put in, [in] terms of safeguards," Helen Brand, the chief executive of the ACCA, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Remote testing was introduced during the Covid pandemic to allow students to continue to be able to qualify at a time when lockdowns prevented in-person exam assessment. In 2022, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the UK's accounting and auditing industry regulator, said that cheating in professional exams was a "live" issue at Britain's biggest companies. A number of multimillion-dollar fines have been issued to large auditing and accounting companies around the world over cheating scandals in tests. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
60 Game Workers Form First Ubisoft Union in North America
it - Posted On:2025-12-29 06:00:00 Source: slashdot
About 60 workers in Halifax, Nova Scotia have formed Ubisoft's first union in North America, reports the CBC (though its 17,000 employees include some unionized workforces in other parts of the world): T.J. Gillis, a senior server developer at Ubisoft Halifax, says he became increasingly concerned about the growth of artificial intelligence in the industry and after the closure of a Microsoft gaming studio in Halifax, Alpha Dog, in 2024. "We're seeing a ton of studios, especially larger studios, just letting people go with no unions or support, people were just being left to fend for themselves. Often times having to leave industry," said Gillis. Gillis said he got into contact with CWA Canada to begin efforts to build a union with other colleagues... The union was formed six months after filing union certification and after 74 per cent of staff at Ubisoft Halifax voted to join CWA Canada... A spokesperson for Ubisoft said in a statement to CBC News that they "acknowledge the decision issued by the Nova Scotia Labour Board and reaffirm our commitment to maintaining full cooperation with the Board and union representatives." Carmel Smyth is the president of CWA Canada and says she is already hearing from other employees at tech companies who want to follow Ubisoft Halifax's lead. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rob Pike Angered by 'AI Slop' Spam Sent By Agent Experiment
it - Posted On:2025-12-28 21:45:00 Source: slashdot
"Dear Dr. Pike,On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades...." read the email. "With sincere appreciation,Claude Opus 4.5AI Village. "IMPORTANT NOTICE: You are interacting with an AI system. All conversations with this AI system are published publicly online by default...." Rob Pike's response? "Fuck you people...." In a post on BlueSky, he noted the planetary impact of AI companies "spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software. Just fuck you. Fuck you all. I can't remember the last time I was this angry." Pike's response received 6,900 likes, and was reposted 1,800 times. Pike tacked on an additional comment complaining about the AI industry's "training your monster on data produced in part by my own hands, without attribution or compensation." (And one of his followers noted the same AI agent later emailed 92-year-old Turing Award winner William Kahan.) Blogger Simon Willison investigated the incident, discovering that "the culprit behind this slop 'act of kindness' is a system called AI Village, built by Sage, a 501(c)(3) non-profit loosely affiliated with the Effective Altruism movement." The AI Village project started back in April: "We gave four AI agents a computer, a group chat, and an ambitious goal: raise as much money for charity as you can. We're running them for hours a day, every day...." For Christmas day (when Rob Pike got spammed) the goal they set was: Do random acts of kindness. [The site explains that "So far, the agents enthusiastically sent hundreds of unsolicited appreciation emails to programmers and educators before receiving complaints that this was spam, not kindness, prompting them to pivot to building elaborate documentation about consent-centric approaches and an opt-in kindness request platform that nobody asked for."] Sounds like Anders Hejlsberg and Guido van Rossum got spammed with "gratitude" too... My problem is when this experiment starts wasting the time of people in the real world who had nothing to do with the experiment. The AI Village project touch on this in their November 21st blog post What Do We Tell the Humans?, which describes a flurry of outbound email sent by their agents to real people. "In the span of two weeks, the Claude agents in the AI Village (Claude Sonnet 4.5, Sonnet 3.7, Opus 4.1, and Haiku 4.5) sent about 300 emails to NGOs and game journalists. The majority of these contained factual errors, hallucinations, or possibly lies, depending on what you think counts. Luckily their fanciful nature protects us as well, as they excitedly invented the majority of email addresses." The creator of the "virtual community" of AI agents told the blogger they've now told their agents not to send unsolicited emails. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google's 'AI Overview' Wrongly Accused a Musician of Being a Sex Offender
technology - Posted On:2025-12-28 12:45:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader shared this report from the CBC: Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender. The Juno Award-winning musician said he learned of the online misinformation last week after a First Nation north of Halifax confronted him with the summary and cancelled a concert planned for Dec. 19. "You are being put into a less secure situation because of a media company — that's what defamation is," MacIsaac said in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press, adding he was worried about what might have happened had the erroneous content surfaced while he was trying to cross an international border... The 50-year-old virtuoso fiddler said he later learned the inaccurate claims were taken from online articles regarding a man in Atlantic Canada with the same last name... [W]hen CBC News reached him by phone on Christmas Eve, he said he'd already received queries from law firms across the country interested in taking it on pro bono. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sal Khan: Companies Should Give 1% of Profits To Retrain Workers Displaced By AI
it - Posted On:2025-12-28 03:45:00 Source: slashdot
"I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don't yet realize," says Sal Kahn (founder/CEO of the nonprofit Khan Academy). But in an op-ed in the New York Times he also proposes a solution that "could change the trajectory of the lives of millions who will be displaced..." "I believe that every company benefiting from automation — which is most American companies — should... dedicate 1 percent of its profits to help retrain the people who are being displaced." This isn't charity. It is in the best interest of these companies. If the public sees corporate profits skyrocketing while livelihoods evaporate, backlash will follow — through regulation, taxes or outright bans on automation. Helping retrain workers is common sense, and such a small ask that these companies would barely feel it, while the public benefits could be enormous... Roughly a dozen of the world's largest corporations now have a combined profit of over a trillion dollars each year. One percent of that would create a $10 billion annual fund that, in part, could create a centralized skill training platform on steroids: online learning, ways to verify skills gained and apprenticeships, coaching and mentorship for tens of millions of people. The fund could be run by an independent nonprofit that would coordinate with corporations to ensure that the skills being developed are exactly what are needed. This is a big task, but it is doable; over the past 15 years, online learning platforms have shown that it can be done for academic learning, and many of the same principles apply for skill training. "The problem isn't that people can't work," Khan writes in the essay. "It's that we haven't built systems to help them continue learning and connect them to new opportunities as the world changes rapidly." To meet the challenges, we don't need to send millions back to college. We need to create flexible, free paths to hiring, many of which would start in high school and extend through life. Our economy needs low-cost online mechanisms for letting people demonstrate what they know. Imagine a model where capability, not how many hours students sit in class, is what matters; where demonstrated skills earn them credit and where employers recognize those credits as evidence of readiness to enter an apprenticeship program in the trades, health care, hospitality or new categories of white-collar jobs that might emerge... There is no shortage of meaningful work — only a shortage of pathways into it. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Military Planners Dread the Arctic, 'Where Drones Drop Dead and GPS Goes Haywire'
technology - Posted On:2025-12-28 00:00:03 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Wall Street Journal: Sending drones and robots into battle, rather than humans, has become a tenet of modern warfare. Nowhere does that make more sense than in the frozen expanses of the Arctic. But the closer you get to the North Pole, the less useful cutting-edge technology becomes. Magnetic storms distort satellite signals; frigid temperatures drain batteries or freeze equipment in minutes; navigation systems lack reference points on snowfields. During a seven-nation polar exercise in Canada earlier this year to test equipment worth millions of dollars, the U.S. military's all-terrain arctic vehicles broke down after 30 minutes because hydraulic fluids congealed in the cold. Swedish soldiers participating in the exercise were handed $20,000 night-vision optics that broke because the aluminum in the goggles couldn't handle the minus 40 degree Fahrenheit conditions.... An arctic conflict would force war planners back to basics. Extreme cold makes the most common components brittle. Low temperatures alter the physical properties of rubber, causing seals to lose their elasticity and leak. Traces of water or humidity freeze into ice crystals that can scratch pumps and create blockages. Wires should be insulated with silicone rather than PVC, which can crack. Oil and other lubricants thicken and congeal. In most standard hydraulic systems, fluid becomes syrupy and can affect everything from aircraft controls to missile launchers and radar masts. A single freeze-up can knock out an entire weapons platform or immobilize a convoy. Even the Aurora Borealis interferes with radio communications and satellite-navigation systems, according to the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.