Author name: DJ Henderson

to-avoid-admitting-ignorance,-meta-ai-says-man’s-number-is-a-company-helpline

To avoid admitting ignorance, Meta AI says man’s number is a company helpline

Although that statement may provide comfort to those who have kept their WhatsApp numbers off the Internet, it doesn’t resolve the issue of WhatsApp’s AI helper potentially randomly generating a real person’s private number that may be a few digits off from the business contact information WhatsApp users are seeking.

Expert pushes for chatbot design tweaks

AI companies have recently been grappling with the problem of chatbots being programmed to tell users what they want to hear, instead of providing accurate information. Not only are users sick of “overly flattering” chatbot responses—potentially reinforcing users’ poor decisions—but the chatbots could be inducing users to share more private information than they would otherwise.

The latter could make it easier for AI companies to monetize the interactions, gathering private data to target advertising, which could deter AI companies from solving the sycophantic chatbot problem. Developers for Meta rival OpenAI, The Guardian noted, last month shared examples of “systemic deception behavior masked as helpfulness” and chatbots’ tendency to tell little white lies to mask incompetence.

“When pushed hard—under pressure, deadlines, expectations—it will often say whatever it needs to to appear competent,” developers noted.

Mike Stanhope, the managing director of strategic data consultants Carruthers and Jackson, told The Guardian that Meta should be more transparent about the design of its AI so that users can know if the chatbot is designed to rely on deception to reduce user friction.

“If the engineers at Meta are designing ‘white lie’ tendencies into their AI, the public need to be informed, even if the intention of the feature is to minimize harm,” Stanhope said. “If this behavior is novel, uncommon, or not explicitly designed, this raises even more questions around what safeguards are in place and just how predictable we can force an AI’s behavior to be.”

To avoid admitting ignorance, Meta AI says man’s number is a company helpline Read More »

israel-tied-predatory-sparrow-hackers-are-waging-cyberwar-on-iran’s-financial-system

Israel-tied Predatory Sparrow hackers are waging cyberwar on Iran’s financial system

Elliptic also confirmed in its blog post about the attack that crypto tracing shows Nobitex does in fact have links with sanctioned IRGC operatives, Hamas, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. “It’s also an act of sabotage, by attacking a financial institution that was pivotal in Iran’s use of cryptocurrency to evade sanctions,” Robinson says.

Predatory Sparrow has long been one of the most aggressive cyberwarfare-focused groups in the world. The hackers, who are widely believed to have links to Israel’s military or intelligence agencies, have for years targeted Iran with an intermittent barrage of carefully planned attacks on the country’s critical infrastructure. The group has targeted Iran’s railways with data-destroying attacks and twice disabled payment systems at thousands of Iranian gas stations, triggering nationwide fuel shortages. In 2022, it carried out perhaps the most physically destructive cyberattack in history, hijacking industrial control systems at the Khouzestan steel mill to cause a massive vat of molten steel to spill onto the floor, setting the plant on fire and nearly burning staff there alive, as shown in the group’s own video of the attack posted to its YouTube account.

Exactly why Predatory Sparrow has now turned its attention to Iran’s financial sector—whether because it sees those financial institutions as the most consequential or merely because its banks and crypto exchanges were vulnerable enough to offer a target of opportunity—remains unclear for now, says John Hultquist, chief analyst on Google’s threat intelligence group and a longtime tracker of Predatory Sparrow’s attacks. Almost any conflict, he notes, now includes cyberattacks from hacktivists or state-sponsored hackers. But the entry of Predatory Sparrow in particular into this war suggests there may yet be more to come, with serious consequences.

“This actor is very serious and very capable, and that’s what separates them from many of the operations that we’ll probably see in the coming weeks or months,” Hultquist says. “A lot of actors are going to make threats. This is one that can follow through on those threats.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Israel-tied Predatory Sparrow hackers are waging cyberwar on Iran’s financial system Read More »

smart-tv-os-owners-face-“constant-conflict”-between-privacy,-advertiser-demands

Smart TV OS owners face “constant conflict” between privacy, advertiser demands

DENVER—Most smart TV operating system (OS) owners are in the ad sales business now. Software providers for budget and premium TVs are honing their ad skills, which requires advancing their ability to collect user data. This is creating an “inherent conflict” within the industry, Takashi Nakano, VP of content and programming at Samsung TV Plus, said at the StreamTV Show in Denver last week.

During a panel at StreamTV Insider’s conference entitled “CTV OS Leader Roundtable: From Drivers to Engagement and Content Strategy,” Nakano acknowledged the opposing needs of advertisers and smart TV users, who are calling for a reasonable amount of data privacy.

“Do you want your data sold out there and everyone to know exactly what you’ve been watching … the answer is generally no,” the Samsung executive said. “Yet, advertisers want all of this data. They wanna know exactly what you ate for breakfast.”

Nakano also suggested that the owners of OSes targeting smart TVs and other streaming hardware, like streaming sticks, are inundated with user data that may not actually be that useful or imperative to collect:

I think that there’s inherent conflict in the ad ecosystem supplying so much data. … We’re fortunate to have all that data, but we’re also like, ‘Do we really want to give it all, and hand it all out?’ There’s a constant conflict around that, right? So how do we create an ecosystem where we can serve ads that are pretty good? Maybe it’s not perfect …

Today, connected TV (CTV) OSes are largely built around not just gathering user data, but also creating ways to collect new types of information about viewers in order to deliver more relevant, impactful ads. LG, for example, recently announced that its smart TV OS, webOS, will use a new AI model that informs ad placement based on viewers’ emotions and personal beliefs.

Smart TV OS owners face “constant conflict” between privacy, advertiser demands Read More »

all-17-fired-vaccine-advisors-unite-to-blast-rfk-jr.’s-“destabilizing-decisions”

All 17 fired vaccine advisors unite to blast RFK Jr.’s “destabilizing decisions”

The members highlighted their medical and scientific expertise, lengthy vetting, transparent processes, and evidence-based approach to helping set federal immunization programs, which affect insurance coverage. They also lamented the institutional knowledge lost by the removal of the entire committee and its executive secretary, as well as cuts to the CDC broadly. Together they “have left the US vaccine program critically weakened,” the experts write.

“In this age of government efficiency, the US public needs to know that the routine vaccination of approximately 117 million children from 1994–2023 likely prevented around 508 million lifetime cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths, at a net savings of $540 billion in direct costs and $2.7 trillion in societal costs,” they write.

They also took direct aim at Kennedy, who unilaterally changed the COVID-19 vaccination policy, announcing the changes on social media. This “bypassed the standard, transparent, and evidence-based review process,” they write. “Such actions reflect a troubling disregard for the scientific integrity that has historically guided US immunization strategy.”

Since Kennedy has taken over the US health department, many other vaccine experts have been pushed out or left voluntarily. Peter Marks, the former top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, was reportedly given the choice to resign or be fired. In his resignation letter, he wrote: “it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary [Kennedy], but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

All 17 fired vaccine advisors unite to blast RFK Jr.’s “destabilizing decisions” Read More »

the-first-corvette-hypercar?-chevrolet’s-1,250-hp-zr1x-hybrid-breaks-cover.

The first Corvette hypercar? Chevrolet’s 1,250 hp ZR1X hybrid breaks cover.

The ZR1 engine already produces more than a thousand horsepower; now, it meets an uprated hybrid system from the E-Ray. Credit: Chevrolet

To rein in that speed, a massive set of continuous-weave carbon-ceramic brake rotors from Alcon (option code J59) measure 16.5 inches (420 mm) in diameter, front and rear, clamped down by GM’s first-ever 10-piston calipers. At the Nurburgring’s Tiergarten corner, those brakes managed to haul down the ZR1X at a peak of 1.9 G decel from 180 to 120 mph (290 to 193 km/h).

The AWD isn’t all about straightline speed, however, and the ZR1X can reportedly handle 1 G of lateral and longitudinal acceleration while cornering—simultaneously. Yet the ZR1X should add around the same weight as the E-Ray versus the Z51 Stingray, which rounded out to just shy of 500 pounds (227 kg). For comparison, the ZR1’s official dry weight is 3,670 pounds (1,665 kg) but with 13 radiators supporting a massively capable cooling system, the wet weight likely approaches 4,000 lbs (1,814 kg).

Similarly, the ZR1X will also be available as both a removable hardtop coupe and a powered hardtop convertible—meaning that in its heaviest guise, this American hypercar might push up to nearly 5,000 pounds (2,268 kg).

Even without confirmed pricing, the ZR1X clearly takes a swing at Ferrari’s F80, McLaren’s W1, and Porsche’s highly anticipated but as-yet-unconfirmed next-gen hypercar—and likely at a mere fraction of the cost, given the ZR1’s $174,995 MSRP. However, even though Chief Engineer Josh Holder called this “the most intelligent Corvette ever,” he also owned up to the challenges of cramming 2.5 times the horsepower of the Z51 Stingray into the same chassis.

Huge brake discs fill the 20-inch wheels. Credit: Chevrolet

Developing the ZR1X therefore required refinements to the E-Ray’s software, welcome news after that earlier hybrid variant exhibited some strange behavior almost akin to reverse torque steer due to the front-axle regen programming, plus difficulties handling high-performance loads in anything less than perfect conditions—which occasionally even resulted in the computer fully disconnecting the front axle and switching off the front motor.

The first Corvette hypercar? Chevrolet’s 1,250 hp ZR1X hybrid breaks cover. Read More »

everything-we-know-about-the-2026-nissan-leaf

Everything we know about the 2026 Nissan Leaf

The first-generation Nissan Leaf was an incredible achievement for the company and for the industry. A mass-market EV that wasn’t priced out of reach was something the industry needed at the time.

That’s important. Since then, things have stagnated. To say that the 2026 Leaf is the most important EV launch for Nissan since the original car would be an understatement. It must get it right, because the competition is too good not to.

Starting things off, the car is available with two battery options. There is a 52 kWh base pack and a 75 kWh longer-range option. Each option has an active thermal management system—a first for Leaf—to address DC fast-charging concerns. Those batteries also deliver more range, with up to 303 miles (488 km) on the S+ model.

The 2026 Leaf is 3 inches shorter (76 mm) than the current hatchback, although the wheelbase is only 0.4 inches (10 mm) shorter. Nissan

The 52-kWh version makes 174 hp (130 kW), and the 75-kWh motor generates 215 hp (160 kW).

The Leaf adopts Nissan’s new 3-in-1 EV powertrain, which integrates the motor, inverter, and reducer. This reduces packaging by 10 percent, and Nissan claims it improves responsiveness and refines the powertrain.

Native NACS

Instead of a slow and clunky CHAdeMO connector, the Leaf rocks a Tesla-style NACS port for DC fast charging. Interestingly, the car also has a SAE J-1772 connector for AC charging. The driver’s side fender has the J plug, while the passenger side fender has the NACS.

Confusingly, the NACS connector is only for DC fast charging. If you’re going to level 2 charge, you must use the J plug or a NACS connector with an adapter. It’s weird, but the car will make it obvious to owners if they plug into the wrong connector.

When connected to a DC fast charger that can deliver 150 kW, both battery sizes will charge from 10 to 80 percent in 35 minutes. While not class-leading, it wipes the floor with the old model. It also supports a peak charging rate that is higher than its bigger sibling, the Ariya.

Everything we know about the 2026 Nissan Leaf Read More »

rtfb:-the-raise-act

RTFB: The RAISE Act

The RAISE Act has overwhelmingly passed the New York Assembly (95-0 among Democrats and 24-22 among Republicans) and New York Senate (37-1 among Democrats, 21-0 among Republicans).

Governor Kathy Hochul now has to decide whether or not to sign it, which she has 10 non-Sunday days to do once the bill is delivered (30 if they’re out of session), but the bill might not be delivered for six months.

The aim of this post, now that we are seeing increasing public discussion, is to go through the bill to understand exactly what the bill would and would not do.

The RAISE Act is centrally a transparency bill. It requires frontier model developers to maintain, publish and adhere to (one might say ‘open source’ except that they can redact details for various reasons) a safety and security protocol (SSP) that outlines how they will, before releasing their frontier models, take appropriate steps to reduce risk of critical harm (100 casualties or 1 billion in damages) caused or materially enabled by those models. It must designate senior people as responsible for implementation.

It also requires companies to disclose (as in, write two sentences informing us about) safety incidents within 72 hours.

Enforcement is done only by the attorney general, and limited to injunctive or declaratory relief and fines of a maximum of $10 million for the first violation and $30 million for subsequent violations. This can happen if a company fails to take appropriate preventative steps, even if no critical harm has yet resulted, so if the SSP proves sufficiently inadequate preemptive action can be taken.

My take on the RAISE Act is that it seems clearly to be bending over backwards to avoid imposing substantial costs on the companies involved even if the state were to attempt to enforce it maximally and perversely, to give those companies maximum flexibility in how they respond, and to only apply to a handful of major players.

The bill is thus insufficient on its own but an important improvement upon the status quo. I strongly support this bill. I am very much not alone. The RAISE Act is a highly popular bill, supported (with admittedly very low salience) by 84% of New Yorkers.

a16z has already attempted to kill this bill before it overwhelmingly passed both houses, circulating an opposition memo and reportedly calling members. We should expect a continued flurry of industry lobbying against RAISE, likely following the usual playbooks, and for them to greatly outspend bill advocates.

o3-pro thinks Hochul is likely to ultimately sign the bill. with a 65% chance it becomes law in current form, 15% chance it becomes law with negotiated chapter amendments. The Manifold market has a 57% chance that the bill becomes law.

There are two big advantages we have in reading the RAISE Act.

  1. It is short and simple.

  2. We’ve analyzed similar things before.

Relax. This will be a breeze.

The bill is mostly definitions.

These are mostly standard. The AI definition has been consistent for a while. Compute cost is defined as the published market price cost of cloud compute, as reasonably assessed by the person doing the training, which is as clear and generous as one could hope.

The most important definition is ‘frontier model’:

6. “Frontier model” means either of the following:

(a) an artificial intelligence model trained using greater than 10^26 computational operations (e.g., integer or floating-point operations), the compute cost of which exceeds one hundred million dollars;

OR

(b) an artificial intelligence model produced by applying knowledge distillation to a frontier model as defined in paragraph (a) of this subdivision, provided that the compute cost for such model produced by applying knowledge distillation exceeds five million dollars.

The first provision will centrally be ‘you spent $100 million dollars.’ Which remains a lot of dollars, and means this will only apply to a handful of frontier labs. But also note that 10^26 will for a while remain a lot of FLOPS. Epoch looked at this question, and also estimates the costs of various models, with the only current model over 10^26 likely being Grok 3 (o3-pro suggests it is not impossible that Gemini Ultra or a few others might just barely also qualify, although I find this highly unlikely).

The question is the second provision. How often will companies make distillations that cost more than $5 million and result in ‘similar or equivalent capabilities’ to the original, as required by the definition of distillation used here?

o3-pro believes the current number of such models, even without considering the capabilities requirement, is probably zero (the possible exception is Claude Haiku, if you think it has sufficiently comparable capabilities). It anticipates the number of $5 million distillations will not remain zero, and expects the distillations to mostly (but not entirely) be from the same companies releasing the $100 million frontier models.

Its baseline scenario is by 2029, there will be ~6 American frontier-trainers, in particular OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta, xAI and then maybe Amazon or Apple or perhaps an open source collective, and ~6 more distillers on top of that passing the $5 mark, starting with Cohere, then maybe Databricks or Perplexity.

A ‘large developer’ means spending a combined $100 million in training compute, or someone who buys the full intellectual rights to the results of that, with academic institutions doing research excluded.

This bill would have zero impact on everyone else.

So yes, there will be talk about how this will be ‘more difficult’ for ‘smaller’ companies. But by ‘smaller’ companies we mean a handful of large companies, and by ‘more difficult’ we mean a tiny fraction of overall costs. And as always, please point to the thing that you would have to do, that you don’t think is worth doing, or is even a substantial impact on their business costs?

Bill opponents, of course, are telling the same lies about this they told about SB 1047. Brianna January of the ‘Chamber of Progress’ calls this ‘an eviction notice for New York’s 9,000 AI startups,’ saying it ‘would send AI innovators packing,’ when exactly zero of these 9,000 startups would have to lift a single finger in response to this bill.

This is pure bad faith Obvious Nonsense, and you should treat anyone who says similar things accordingly. (The other Obvious Nonsense claim here is that the bill was ‘rushed’ and lacked a public hearing. The bill very much followed normal procedures and had debate on the floor, the bill was in the public pipeline for months, and bills in New York do not otherwise get pubic hearings, that’s a non sequitur.)

“Critical harm” means the death or serious injury of one hundred or more people or at least one billion dollars of damages to rights in money or property caused or materially enabled by a large developer’s use, storage, or release of a frontier model, through either of the following:

(a) The creation or use of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon; or

(b) An artificial intelligence model engaging in conduct that does both of the following:

(i) Acts with no meaningful human intervention; and

(ii) Would, if committed by a human, constitute a crime specified in the penal law that requires intent, recklessness, or gross negligence, or the solicitation or aiding and abetting of such a crime.

A harm inflicted by an intervening human actor shall not be deemed to result from a developer’s activities unless such activities were a substantial factor in bringing about the harm, the intervening human actor’s conduct was reasonably foreseeable as a probable consequence of the developer’s activities, and could have been reasonably prevented or mitigated through alternative design, or security measures, or safety protocols.

We have ‘caused or materially enabled’ and also ‘substantial factor’ and ‘harm that mitigations could have reasonably prevented’ and either 100 serious injuries or a billion dollars in damage as the thresholds, and either the act has to be autonomous, be a CBRN risk, or constitute a crime in the penal law.

That seems like a robust way of saying ‘if you trigger this provision you screwed up?’

They have to be reported, so what exactly are they?

“Safety incident” means a known incidence of critical harm

OR an incident of the following kinds that occurs in such a way that it provides demonstrable evidence of an increased risk of critical harm:

  1. A frontier model autonomously engaging in behavior other than at the request of a user;

  2. Theft, misappropriation, malicious use, inadvertent release, unauthorized access, or escape of the model weights of a frontier model;

  3. The critical failure of any technical or administrative controls, including controls limiting the ability to modify a frontier model;

  4. Unauthorized use of a frontier model.

The incidence of an actual critical harm is clear.

The second half of the definition has two halves.

  1. It has to involve one of the four things listed.

  2. It has to provide demonstrable evidence of an increased risk of critical harm.

As in, something in your safety protocols goes wrong, in a way that makes you more worried about risk. That seems like the kind of thing you should report. I will be very happy to see these systematically written down, and even happier to have them disclosed.

As in, within 72 hours of any safety incidents, you have to notify the attorney general and DHSES. This is the common standard used for cybersecurity breaches. You have to include:

  1. The date of the incident.

  2. Why it qualifies as a safety incident.

  3. ‘A short and plain statement describing the safety incident.’

Does this, as some have suggested, constitute such a burden that it interferes with the ability to respond to the incident? That seems difficult to believe.

For example, you could write ‘On Tuesday, June 17, 2025, someone gained unauthorized access to our frontier model. This makes us more worried about future unauthorized access.’ That’s it.

I have no sympathy for the claim that asking for that style of statement within three days is a distracting or undue burden that outweighs our right to know, or its costs exceed benefits. In many cases, waiting longer could have serious repercussions.

What are we actually asking companies to produce, exactly? A documentation and description of technical and organizational protocols that if fully implemented would:

  1. ‘Appropriately reduce the risk of critical harm.’

  2. ‘Appropriately reduce the risk of’ unauthorized access to or misuse of the model weights ‘leading to critical harm.’

  3. Describe a detailed test procedure to evaluate potential misuse or loss of control or combination with other software to potentially cause critical harm.

  4. Enable compliance with this article.

  5. Designate senior personnel to be responsible for ensuring compliance.

This requires ‘detailed test procedures’ to be described in advance, which seems like a very good idea, and does not preclude additional tests. The rest seems so basic that it seems laughable to object to being told to do any of it.

Before deploying (meaning externally, as in giving a third party access) to a frontier model, the developer must write and implement an SSP, retain an up-to-date copy of that SSP, conspicuously publish a redacted copy of the SSP, give the attorney general and DHSES access upon request to the full SSP and retain copies of all your test results sufficient to allow third-party replication.

As always, there are no specific requirements for the SSP, other than that it must ‘appropriately reduce the risk’ of critical harms, both directly or through unauthorized access, and that it spell out your testing procedure, and that you actually have someone ensure you use it. If you want to write the classic ‘lol we’re Meta, we don’t run tests, full open weights release without them seems appropriate, I’m sure it will be fine’ you can do that, although you might not like what happens when people notice you did that, or when the risks materialize, or potentially the AG notices you’re not taking the appropriate actions and sues you.

You need to conduct an annual review of the SSP to adjust for increased model capabilities, and make and publish any appropriate adjustments. Seems wise.

I for one think that if your model would create an unreasonable risk of critical harm then that means you shouldn’t release it. But that’s just me.

Again, yeah, I mean, I hope that stands to reason.

The attorney general can bring a civil action with penalties of:

  1. $10 million for the first violation, $30 million for additional ones.

  2. Injunctive or declaratory relief.

And that’s it. Explicitly no private right of action, no limit of the application of other laws, everything is cumulative with other requirements. If you cause an incident that costs billions of dollars, your fines don’t scale with that.

I don’t see any clause allowing compensatory relief. So if there’s a violation related to an actual critical harm, I presume any fines involved will be the least of your problems.

The main actual consequences are that frontier labs will be forced to be transparent about their safety and security protocols (SSPs) and what tests they intend to run and other precautions they intend to take, in order to guard against critical harms. Most labs impacted already do this, and will only have to newly include the evals they intend to run. Publishing these details will allow us to critique them, and apply pressure to create better protocols.

Again, while I have concerns that the bill is insufficient strong, I think all of this is a very good thing. I strongly support the bill.

Discussion about this post

RTFB: The RAISE Act Read More »

f1-in-canada:-well,-that-crash-was-bound-to-happen

F1 in Canada: Well, that crash was bound to happen

Russell led from the start and kept Verstappen in check throughout the race until the thing McLaren has surely been dreading all year happened. Thanks to pit strategy, Norris had moved up the running order and was in fifth place, trying to pass Piastri for fourth. After thinking better of it at the hairpin at the far end of the circuit, Norris thought he saw an opportunity going into turn 1. Instead, he misjudged things, and the gap disappeared. His front wing met Piastri’s rear tire, his car’s left side met the concrete wall, and his day was done.

With two such closely matched drivers in equal machinery, a collision on track was bound to occur. As McLaren teammate collisions go, this one lacked the near-hatred of Prost versus Senna and didn’t cost it a win in the process. Now that it’s out of the way, hopefully the kids won’t do it again.

Norris’ crash brought out a safety car, which remained in effect for the final few laps of the race. So little happened during the race that the highlight reel that plays in the green room post-race was over almost before it started.

MONTREAL, QUEBEC - JUNE 15: Lando Norris of Great Britain and McLaren walks away after a crash during the F1 Grand Prix of Canada at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve on June 15, 2025 in Montreal, Quebec.

Lando Norris walks back to the garage after wrecking just past the start-finish line. Credit: Clive Rose/Getty Images

It’s all getting a bit aggro

The off-track action has been far more vicious, with two big stories dominating the buildup to the Grand Prix. The first was Verstappen’s penalty points: Accumulate 12 points in 12 months, and the result is a one-race ban. Verstappen is currently on 11 points following his collision with Russell in Spain, so any slip-up that earns him a penalty point will send Red Bull scrambling to find enough drivers to fill all four of its cars (two Red Bulls, two RBs), should the reigning world champion get benched.

F1 in Canada: Well, that crash was bound to happen Read More »

these-va-tech-scientists-are-building-a-better-fog-harp

These VA Tech scientists are building a better fog harp

Unlike standard fog harvesting technologies, “We’re trying to use clever geometric designs in place of chemistry,” Boreyko told Ars. “When I first came into this field, virtually everyone was using nets, but they were just trying to make more and more clever chemical coatings to put on the nets to try to reduce the clogging. We found that simply going from a net to a harp, with no chemicals or coatings whatsoever—just the change in geometry solved the clogging problem much better.”

Jimmy Kaindu inspects a new collecting prototype beside the original fog harp.

Jimmy Kaindu inspects a new collecting prototype beside the original fog harp. Credit: Alex Parrish for Virginia Tech

For their scale prototypes in the lab, Boreyko’s team 3D printed their harp “strings” out of a weakly hydrophobic plastic. “But in general, the harp works fantastic with uncoated stainless steel wires and definitely doesn’t require any kind of fancy coating,” said Boreyko. And the hybrid harp can be scaled up with relative ease, just like classic nets. It just means stringing together a bunch of harps of smaller heights, meter by meter, to get the desired size. “There is no limit to how big this thing could be,” he said.

Scaling up the model is the next obvious step, along with testing larger prototypes outdoors. Boreyko would also like to test an electric version of the hybrid fog harp. “If you apply a voltage, it turns out you can catch even more water,” he said. “Because our hybrid’s non-clogging, you can have the best of both worlds: using an electric field to boost the harvesting amount in real-life systems and at the same time preventing clogging.”

While the hybrid fog harp is well-suited for harvesting water in any coastal region that receives a lot of fog, Boreyko also envisions other, less obvious potential applications for high-efficiency fog harvesters, such as roadways, highways, or airport landing strips that are prone to fog that can pose safety hazards. “There’s even industrial chemical supply manufacturers creating things like pressurized nitrogen gas,” he said. “The process cools the surrounding air into an ice fog that can drift across the street and wreak havoc on city blocks.”

Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2025. DOI: 10.1039/d5ta02686e  (About DOIs).

These VA Tech scientists are building a better fog harp Read More »

smart-tires-will-report-on-the-health-of-roads-in-new-pilot-program

Smart tires will report on the health of roads in new pilot program

Do you remember the Pirelli Cyber Tire? No, it’s not an angular nightmare clad in stainless steel. Rather, it’s a sensor-equipped tire that can inform the car it’s fitted to what’s happening, both with the tire itself and the road it’s passing over. The technology has slowly been making its way into the real world, starting with rarified stuff like the McLaren Artura. Now, Pirelli is going to put some Cyber Tires to work for everybody, not just supercar drivers, in a new pilot program with the regional government of Apulia in Italy.

The Cyber Tire has a sensor to monitor temperature and pressure, using Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate with the car. The electronics are able to withstand more than 3,500 G as part of life on the road, and a 0.3-oz (10 g) battery keeps everything running for the life of the tire.

The idea was to develop a better tire pressure monitoring system, one that could tell the car exactly what kind of tire—summer, winter, all-season, and so on—was fitted, and even its state of wear, allowing the car to adapt its settings appropriately. But other applications suggested themselves—at a recent CES, Pirelli showed how a Cyber Tire could warn other road users about aquaplaning. Then again, we’ve been waiting more than a decade for vehicle-to-vehicle communication to make a difference in daily driving to no avail.

Apulia’s program does not rely on crowdsourcing data from Cyber Tires fitted to private vehicles. Regardless of the privacy implications, the rubber isn’t nearly in widespread enough use for there to be a sufficient population of Cyber Tire-shod cars in the region. Instead, Pirelli will fit the tires to a fleet of vehicles supplied by the fleet management and rental company Ayvens. Driving around, the sensors in the tires will be able to infer how rough or irregular the asphalt is, via some clever algorithms.

Smart tires will report on the health of roads in new pilot program Read More »

“yuck”:-wikipedia-pauses-ai-summaries-after-editor-revolt

“Yuck”: Wikipedia pauses AI summaries after editor revolt

Generative AI is permeating the Internet, with chatbots and AI summaries popping up faster than we can keep track. Even Wikipedia, the vast repository of knowledge famously maintained by an army of volunteer human editors, is looking to add robots to the mix. The site began testing AI summaries in some articles over the past week, but the project has been frozen after editors voiced their opinions. And that opinion is: “yuck.”

The seeds of this project were planted at Wikimedia’s 2024 conference, where foundation representatives and editors discussed how AI could advance Wikipedia’s mission. The wiki on the so-called “Simple Article Summaries” notes that the editors who participated in the discussion believed the summaries could improve learning on Wikipedia.

According to 404 Media, Wikipedia announced the opt-in AI pilot on June 2, which was set to run for two weeks on the mobile version of the site. The summaries appeared at the top of select articles in a collapsed form. Users had to tap to expand and read the full summary. The AI text also included a highlighted “Unverified” badge.

Feedback from the larger community of editors was immediate and harsh. Some of the first comments were simply “yuck,” with others calling the addition of AI a “ghastly idea” and “PR hype stunt.”

Others expounded on the issues with adding AI to Wikipedia, citing a potential loss of trust in the site. Editors work together to ensure articles are accurate, featuring verifiable information and a neutral point of view. However, nothing is certain when you put generative AI in the driver’s seat. “I feel like people seriously underestimate the brand risk this sort of thing has,” said one editor. “Wikipedia’s brand is reliability, traceability of changes, and ‘anyone can fix it.’ AI is the opposite of these things.”

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Trade war truce between US and China is back on

Both countries agreed in Geneva last month to slash their respective tariffs by 115 percentage points and provided a 90-day window to resolve the trade war.

But the ceasefire came under pressure after Washington accused Beijing of reneging on an agreement to speed up the export of rare earths, while China criticized new US export controls.

This week’s talks to resolve the impasse were held in the historic Lancaster House mansion in central London, a short walk from Buckingham Palace, which was provided by the British government as a neutral ground for the talks.

Over the two days, the US team, which included Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US trade representative Jamieson Greer, [met with] the Chinese delegation, which was led by He Lifeng, a vice-premier responsible for the economy.

The negotiations were launched to ensure Chinese exports of rare earths to the US and American technology export controls on China did not derail broader talks between the sides.

Ahead of the first round of talks in Geneva, Bessent had warned that the high level of mutual tariffs had amounted to an effective embargo on bilateral trade.

Chinese exports to the US fell more steeply in May compared with a year earlier than at any point since the pandemic in 2020.

The US had said China was not honoring its pledge in Geneva to ease restrictions on rare earths exports, which are critical to the defense, car, and tech industries, and was dragging its feet over approving licenses for shipments, affecting manufacturing supply chains in the US and Europe.

Beijing has accused the US of “seriously violating” the Geneva agreement after it announced new restrictions on sales of chip design software to Chinese companies.

It has also objected to the US issuing new warnings on the global use of Huawei chips and canceling visas for Chinese students.

Separately, a US federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed some of Trump’s broadest tariffs to remain in place while it reviews a lower-court ruling that had blocked his “liberation day” levies on US trading partners.

The ruling extended an earlier temporary reprieve and will allow Trump to enact the measures as well as separate levies targeting Mexico, Canada, and China. The president has, however, already paused the wider “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days.

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