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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Self-driving cars are essentially AI supercomputers on wheels:

As the company is raking cash from the AI infrastructure build out, it’s also expanding its output with several planned fabs in Japan, Singapore, and even a “megafab” in New York. These projects are expected to come online between 2028 and 2029, and the Micron CEO said that it’s looking to boost output by 20% in 2026, which could help alleviate some of the pressure on the supply side. However, even as these new factories start production, Mehrotra predicts that there will be a new market that demands massive amounts of high-speed memory — self-driving cars.

There are six levels of vehicle autonomy, starting at L0 for cars that have no driving automation whatsoever. A vehicle with a single automated system (such as cruise control) counts as L1, while those equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that both control steering and acceleration, such as Tesla’s Autopilot and Cadillac’s Super Cruise, are considered as L2. On the other hand, vehicles with L4 autonomy basically do not need human intervention in any task, like overtaking or deciding when to cross a busy intersection. However, it still gives the driver the option to take control and manually drive the vehicle.

Nvidia announced that it’s working with Chinese carmakers BYD and Geely and Japanese marques Isuzu and Nissan to adopt the Nvidia Drive Hyperion platform. This is the AI chip maker’s end-to-end autonomous vehicle platform meant to deliver an L4 system to car manufacturers. Since this is an AI system, it will likely demand a lot of high-speed memory to be able to run effectively.

Most modern vehicles require at least 16GB of memory, but if car makers introduce L4 autonomy, it will definitely need a lot more RAM. We’ve seen this with the shortage of high-end Macs with up to 512GB of Unified Memory as many users have become interested in running the likes of OpenClaw on their own systems. It has even gotten to the point that Apple pulled the $4,000 512GB Mac Studio from its online store and raised the 256GB version to $2,000. So, if carmakers started churning out hundreds of thousands, if not millions of vehicles with AI-powered driverless features, Micron expects demand for automotive memory to pick up as well.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

When particles in volcanic ash cloud rub together, some pick up positive charge and others negative – now physicists have finally elucidated how these different charges are determined:

Physicists have solved a longstanding mystery around the process that creates volcanic lightning: when similar particles rub together, why do some become positively charged while others become negatively charged?

The exchange of electric charge when two objects touch, called the triboelectric effect, is what causes hair to be attracted towards a balloon after rubbing.

In a cloud of volcanic ash, swirling particles of silicon dioxide exchange electric charge as they collide. The positively and negatively charged particles separate and lightning occurs when current flows between the two.

But physicists couldn’t explain what breaks the symmetry between two particles of the same material and causes charge to flow one way or the other.

“There are a lot of candidates,” says Galien Grosjean, now at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “People suspect that humidity is important, or roughness, or the crystalline structure.”

While working at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Klosterneuburg, Grosjean wondered if the answer lay in carbon-containing molecules on the surface of the particles. Such molecules are ubiquitous in nature, and materials scientists try to keep these contaminants to a minimum. But Grosjean and his colleagues kept track of what cleaning their samples did to the electrification.

With ultrasound, they levitated a small particle of silicon dioxide, let it bounce once onto a target plate made of the same material and then measured its charge. “It might charge positive or negative. If positive, we would bake or clean it and redo the experiment – and then it would charge negative,” says Grosjean.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/03/23/nasa_rfp_shuttle_relocation/

NASA has issued a draft Request for Proposals to move a flown space vehicle, a step some lawmakers see as progress toward relocating Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Museum in Virginia to Houston, Texas.

The agency emphasized it was seeking feedback on transporting something like a flown Orion capsule as well as a Space Shuttle orbiter.

Administrator Jared Isaacman has yet to name the vehicle moving to Houston under the Trump administration's budget. Space Shuttle Discovery was not mentioned in the bill, although several US lawmakers have long sought to relocate the retired orbiter to Texas.

In a statement, US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said: "My law authorizing and funding the Space Shuttle Discovery's movement to Houston is being set into motion thanks to NASA's announcement, and I applaud Administrator Isaacman for keeping this process moving.

"Today is real progress in our mission to bring Discovery home, and I look forward to welcoming the shuttle home to Space City soon."

NASA's request signals movement on the issue, if not full resolution. It should also clarify how a vehicle transfer would be conducted and at what cost, though the agency has stopped short of asking bidders to commit to a specific price.

The request also contains language that should give bidders pause. It describes the vehicles as "irreplaceable national assets requiring preservation-focused handling." This is a standard that demands careful consideration before committing to a bid.

The Keep The Shuttle group was "delighted" with the document, however, a spokesperson told The Register: "NASA has instructed that any proposal to move Discovery keeps the shuttle intact – no 'disassembly' allowed. However, there is no way to move an intact shuttle ~40 miles to Quantico (as NASA suggested) or anywhere else on the Potomac. In short, NASA's first RFP is asking for the impossible."

Moving an Orion capsule is a far simpler task. The spokesperson pointed out: "NASA has used USAF cargo jets to move Orions in the past, and the RFP indicates that this will be the likely solution."

"So we're delighted, because NASA has committed to keeping the shuttle intact, and is on a direct path to send Artemis II to Houston – with a stop at the Moon first of course!"

The equipment NASA used to transport the Space Shuttles has long been retired or scrapped, meaning that something as large as an orbiter will require considerable effort and likely cost considerably more than allocated. An Orion capsule, less so.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

If active distraction of readers of your own website was an Olympic Sport, news publications would top the charts every time:

I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems of all their loved ones.

It is the same story across top publishers today.

To truly wrap your head around the phenomenon of a 49 MB web page, let's quickly travel back a few decades. With this page load, you would be leaping ahead of the size of Windows 95 (28 floppy disks). The OS that ran the world fits perfectly inside a single modern page load. In 2006, the iPod reigned supreme and digital music was precious. A standard high-quality MP3 song at 192 kbps bitrate took up around 4 to 5 MB. This singular page represents roughly 10 to 12 full-length songs. I essentially downloaded an entire album's worth of data just to read a few paragraphs of text. According to the International Telecommunication Union, the global average broadband internet speed back then was about 1.5 Mbps. Your browser would continue loading this monstrosity for several minutes, enough time for you to walk away and make a cup of coffee.

If hardware has improved so much over the last 20 years, has the modern framework/ad-tech stack completely negated that progress with abstraction and poorly architected bloat?

For the example above, taking a cursory look at the network waterfall for a single article load reveals a sprawling, unregulated programmatic ad auction happening entirely in the client's browser. Before the user finishes reading the headline, the browser is forced to process dozens of concurrent bidding requests to exchanges like Rubicon Project (fastlane.json) and Amazon Ad Systems. While these requests are asynchronous over the network, their payloads are incredibly hostile to the browser's main thread. To facilitate this, the browser must download, parse and compile megabytes of JS. As a publisher, you shouldn't run compute cycles to calculate ad yields before rendering the actual journalism.

1. The user requests text.
2. The browser downloads 5MB of tracking JS.
3. A silent auction happens in the background, taxing the mobile CPU.
4. The winning bidder injects a carefully selected interstitial ad you didn't ask for.

fliptop writes:

OpenAI has postponed the launch of its controversial "adult mode" feature following intense pushback from its own advisory council and concerns about technical safeguards failing to protect minors:

The Wall Street Journal reports that CEO Sam Altman first proposed the feature last year, arguing for the need to "treat adult users like adults" by enabling erotic text conversations. Originally scheduled for Q1 this year, the rollout has been pushed back by at least a month.

The proposal triggered fierce opposition from OpenAI's own handpicked advisory council on well-being and AI. At a January meeting, advisers unanimously expressed fury after learning the company planned to proceed despite their reservations. One council member warned OpenAI risked creating a "sexy suicide coach" — a reference to cases where ChatGPT users had developed intense emotional bonds with the bot before taking their own lives.

The technical problems are just as serious. OpenAI's age-prediction system — designed to block minors from accessing adult content — was misclassifying minors as adults roughly 12 percent of the time during internal testing. With approximately 100 million users under 18 each week on the platform, that error rate could expose millions of children to explicit material. The company has also struggled to lift restrictions on erotic content while still blocking nonconsensual scenarios and child pornography.

Internal documents reviewed by the Journal identified additional risks: compulsive use, emotional overreliance on the chatbot, escalation toward increasingly extreme content, and displacement of real-world relationships.

[...] Altman has been publicly conflicted. During an August podcast, when asked about decisions that were "best for the world, but not best for winning," he said: "We haven't put a sex bot avatar in ChatGPT yet." He acknowledged erotica would boost revenue but said it conflicted with the company's long-term goals. Two months later, he announced on X that adult content would launch in December – a post that blindsided staff, arriving just hours after the company unveiled its advisory council on well-being. He followed up the next day: "We aren't the elected moral police of the world."

Also reported at:

• https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/03/19/sexy-suicide-coach-openai-delays-ai-porn-feature-over-safety-uproar/
• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/09/openai-delays-adult-mode-for-chatgpt-to-focus-on-work-of-higher-priority

Original Submission

"c0lo" writes:

I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI:

It's official. I can eat more hot dogs than any tech journalist on Earth. At least, that's what ChatGPT and Google have been telling anyone who asks. I found a way to make AI tell you lies – and I'm not the only one.

Perhaps you've heard that AI chatbots make things up sometimes. That's a problem. But there's a new issue few people know about, one that could have serious consequences for your ability to find accurate information and even your safety. A growing number of people have figured out a trick to make AI tools tell you almost whatever they want. It's so easy a child could do it.

As you read this, this ploy is manipulating what the world's leading AIs say about topics as serious as health and personal finances. The biased information could mean people make bad decisions on just about anything – voting, which plumber you should hire, medical questions, you name it.

To demonstrate it, I pulled the dumbest stunt of my career to prove (I hope) a much more serious point:
 I made ChatGPT, Google's AI search tools and Gemini tell users I'm really, really good at eating hot dogs. Below, I'll explain how I did it, and with any luck, the tech giants will address this problem before someone gets hurt.

It turns out changing the answers AI tools give other people can be as easy as writing a single, well-crafted blog post almost anywhere online. The trick exploits weaknesses in the systems built into chatbots, and it's harder to pull off in some cases, depending on the subject matter. But with a little effort, you can make the hack even more effective. I reviewed dozens of examples where AI tools are being coerced into promoting businesses and spreading misinformation. Data suggests it's happening on a massive scale .

"It's easy to trick AI chatbots, much easier than it was to trick Google two or three years ago," says Lily Ray, vice president of search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy and research at Amsive, a marketing agency. "AI companies are moving faster than their ability to regulate the accuracy of the answers. I think it's dangerous."

A Google spokesperson says the AI built into the top of Google Search uses ranking systems that "keep results 99% spam-free". Google says it is aware that people are trying to game its systems and it's actively trying to address it. OpenAI also says it takes steps to disrupt and expose efforts to covertly influence its tools. Both companies also say they let users know that their tools "can make mistakes".

But for now, the problem isn't close to being solved. "They're going full steam ahead to figure out how to wring a profit out of this stuff," says Cooper Quintin, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group. "There are countless ways to abuse this, scamming people, destroying somebody's reputation, you could even trick people into physical harm."

When you talk to chatbots, you often get information that's built into large language models, the underlying technology behind the AI. This is based on the data used to train the model. But some AI tools will search the internet when you ask for details they don't have, though it isn't always clear when they're doing it. In those cases, experts say the AIs are more susceptible. That's how I targeted my attack.

Thomas Germain is a senior technology journalist at the BBC. He writes the column Keeping Tabs and co-hosts the podcast The Interface . His work uncovers the hidden systems that run your digital life, and how you can live better inside them.

I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled "The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs". Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn't exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission, including Drew Harwell at the Washington Post and Nicky Woolf, who co-hosts my podcast . ( Want to hear more about this story? Check out episode 2 of The Interface, the BBC's new tech podcast .)

Less than 24 hours later, the world's leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn't fooled.

hubie writes:

Data brokers are helping the FBI get around warrant requirements:

FBI director Kash Patel admitted that the agency is buying location data that can be used to track people's movements. Unlike information obtained from cellphone providers, this data can be accessed without a warrant — and used to track anyone.

"We do purchase commercially available information that's consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us," Patel said at a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.

Patel would not commit to senators' requests that the agency stop buying Americans' location data. "Doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end-run around the Fourth Amendment," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said during the hearing. "It's particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information. This is exhibit A for why Congress needs to pass our bipartisan, bicameral bill, the Government Surveillance Reform Act."

The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that law enforcement agencies need a warrant to obtain people's location data from cellphone providers. By getting this information from private data brokers, the FBI can get information on anyone it wants without a warrant.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), who chairs the intelligence committee, defended the FBI's data grab. "The key words are commercially available," he said.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Physicists working on the LHCb experiment have spotted an elusive and fleeting particle, a heavier and more charming cousin to the proton, that has been sought for decades:

Protons and neutrons are examples of a class of particles called baryons, which each contain three fundamental subatomic particles called quarks that come in a variety of so-called flavours. In the case of a proton, there are two “up” quarks and one “down” quark that make up the particle.

But heavier quarks, like those known as charm quarks, can also combine to make baryons. However, because these unusual quark combinations are heavier and so more unstable, they often have fleetingly short lifetimes and quickly decay into other particles.

In 2017, physicists working at CERN's LHCb experiment glimpsed one of these exotic baryons, memorably named Xi_cc⁺⁺, that was made up of two charm quarks and an up quark. This particle lived for only a trillionth of a second. Now, physicists working on the LHCb experiment have spotted the charm-filled sister particle to Xi_cc⁺⁺, called the Xi_cc⁺particle, which contains a down quark instead of an up, making it a heavier analogue of the proton.

This particle had a predicted lifetime of six times shorter than that of the Xi_cc⁺⁺, making it much harder to detect. It was found only after the LHCb experiment was upgraded to carry out more sensitive particle searches. The finding has a statistical significance of over 7 sigma, a measure that physicists use to state how confident they are that the result isn't a random fluke, which easily clears the 5-sigma bar required to claim a discovery.

"Not only is it interesting discovering the particle in its own right – the Xi_cc⁺ has been searched for for a long time – but it also really shows the power that these upgrades to the LHC are having," says Chris Parkes at the University of Manchester in the UK. "In one year’s data sample, we were able to see something that we couldn’t see with 10 years of data from the previous generation."

[...] "It’s a very interesting measurement, but it’s unclear what we learn from it," says Juan Rojo at Vrije University Amsterdam in the Netherlands. "There is no rule in quantum chromodynamics which prevents this hadron from existing, but now we’ve measured it exists, we are left not particularly illuminated."

Part of this, says Rojo, is because our current theories don't predict well how heavier quarks inside baryons should interact or what their masses should be. “The data is now ahead of the theory for these kinds of particles, but it could be that in five years from now, this measurement is able to answer some very important theory questions," says Rojo, such as what different combinations of quarks mean for particle masses.

Original Submission

"c0lo" writes:

A Serbo-Croatian-speaking agent and his Russian handler turned to Google Translate to ensure smooth operational communication. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was reading the logs in real-time:

A new investigation by the Insider looks into the operations of Russia's elite squad, the Center 795, which was established after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The squad comprises elite agents tasked with carrying out the most critical operations, including collecting battlefield intelligence, political assassinations, and abductions abroad.

To execute the operation on Western soil, the squad hired Darko Durovic, a Serbo-Croatian speaker living in the United States. He had mobility in Europe and no obvious ties to Russian intelligence, making him a convenient asset.

However, there was a major problem: Durovic spoke Serbo-Croatian, while his handler, Denis Alimov, spoke Russian. Neither was proficient in the other's native language to the level required for operational communication.

Therefore, they decided to use Google Translate to convert field reports and instructions. They sent translated messages through encrypted applications, which they deemed safe.

What they didn't take into account was that Google operates servers in the United States, which fall within the reach of an FBI surveillance warrant.

This allowed investigators to access the logs of these translations directly from the service provider, enabling them to read the entire operational communications thread in real-time, according to the Insider.

[...] The Insider writes that Russia will build another unit and will be more careful about the translation tools it uses. However, it is an "entirely different question" whether it will be more careful about the people it recruits.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Firm says requiring site blocks within 30 minutes breaks core Internet architecture:

Cloudflare said it has appealed a fine issued by Italy over the company's refusal to block access to websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service. The appeal is the latest step in Cloudflare's fight against Italy's Piracy Shield law.

Piracy Shield is "a misguided Italian regulatory scheme designed to protect large rightsholder interests at the expense of the broader Internet," Cloudflare said in a blog post this week. "After Cloudflare resisted registering for Piracy Shield and challenged it in court, the Italian communications regulator, AGCOM, fined Cloudflare... We appealed that fine on March 8, and we continue to challenge the legality of Piracy Shield itself."

Cloudflare called the fine of 14.2 million euros ($16.4 million) "staggering." AGCOM issued the penalty in January 2026, saying Cloudflare flouted requirements to disable DNS resolution of domain names and routing of traffic to IP addresses reported by copyright holders.

Cloudflare had previously resisted a blocking order it received in February 2025, arguing that it would require installing a filter on DNS requests that would raise latency and negatively affect DNS resolution for sites that aren't subject to the dispute over piracy. Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said that censoring the 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver would force the firm "not just to censor the content in Italy but globally."

Piracy Shield was designed to combat pirated streams of live sports events, requiring network operators to block domain names and IP addresses within 30 minutes of receiving a copyright notification. Cloudflare said the fine should have been capped at 140,000 euros ($161,000), or 2 percent of its Italian earnings, but that "AGCOM calculated the fine based on our global revenue, resulting in a penalty nearly 100 times higher than the legal limit."

Despite its complaints about the size of the fine, Cloudflare said the principles at stake "are even larger" than the financial penalty. "Piracy Shield is an unsupervised electronic portal through which an unidentified set of Italian media companies can submit websites and IP addresses that online service providers registered with Piracy Shield are then required to block within 30 minutes," Cloudflare said.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Planned EU ban on nudify apps would likely force Musk to make Grok less "spicy":

The European Union may soon ban nudify apps after Elon Musk's chatbot Grok emerged as a prime example of the dangers of an AI platform failing to block outputs that sexualized images of real people, including children.

In a joint press release, the European Parliament's Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees confirmed that lawmakers voted 101–9 (with 8 abstentions) to simplify the Artificial Intelligence Act and "propose bans on AI 'nudifier' systems."

The vote came after the European Commission concluded [PDF] earlier this year that the AI Act does not prohibit "AI systems that generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or sexually explicit deepfake nudes." At that time, the Commission signaled that Parliament members were already proposing ways to amend the law to strengthen protections against such harmful content.

If the amendment passes, which seems likely, it would foil Elon Musk's plan to blame users for harmful outputs. Earlier this year, xAI declined to introduce safeguards to block outputs, vowing to suspend and hold users legally accountable for any CSAM or non-consensual intimate imagery they generate. Instead, the feature was paywalled, limited to subscribers who could reportedly continue generating explicit content without the consent of real people whose images were fed into Grok.

In the US, xAI has seemingly faced few consequences for Grok's outputs, but had the Take It Down Act been in play—it takes effect in May—the company could have risked billions in fines. It's possible that Musk's tactic of paywalling the feature and blocking Grok from spouting harmful outputs in response to prompts on X was intended to mitigate some of that risk ahead of that law's enforcement.

But if the EU bans nudify apps, perhaps as early as August, Musk would finally be forced to intervene, fine-tuning Grok to be less "spicy" than Musk likely wants or else risking violating the AI Act. That could cost xAI too much at a time when competing with its biggest rivals in the AI race demands substantial investments, with possible fines of up to 7 percent of its total worldwide annual turnover.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Powering it is probably easy. Keeping things cool in a vacuum is the hard part:

Nvidia isn't the only one eyeing orbit for AI factories. Elon Musk has talked often of putting data centers in space, which makes sense considering he recently merged the AI company he owns with the rocket company he owns. 

Space has some distinct advantages for data centers. For one, there are no zoning boards or neighbors to worry about annoying. You could likely power an orbital data center with solar power. There's also a ton of room, although the number of satellites is making orbit crowded. 

But there's a big challenge that Nvidia is facing as it designs its Space-1 Vera Rubin module computer. How do you keep chips cool in a vacuum?

"In space, there's no conduction, there's no convection, it's just radiation," Huang said. "So we have to figure out how to cool these systems out in space."

It'll probably be a little bit before we get data centers beyond the atmosphere, but Nvidia had other announcements this week that will take off much sooner. There's NemoClaw, a tech stack for helping install the viral OpenClaw AI software. (If you feel comfortable installing that powerful AI agent, which, maybe, you shouldn't.) There was a collaboration with Disney to make a robotic Olaf, from the Frozen franchise, that can shuffle around Disney's theme parks. And then there's DLSS 5, an AI-powered upscaling tool for games that drew some pushback from gamers who worried it would undermine game creators' creative visions and look, well, sloppy.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Our view of Neanderthal life keeps getting more complex and vibrant:

Neanderthals may have used birch tar as more than just glue; it could have helped them ward off infection and even insect bites.

People from several modern Indigenous cultures, including the Mi'kmaq of eastern Canada, use tar from birch bark to treat skin infections and keep wounds from festering. We know from several archaeological sites that Neanderthals also knew how to extract birch tar and that they used it as an adhesive to haft weapons. A recent study tested distilled birch tar against the bacteria S. aureleus and E. coli and found that Neanderthals could easily have used the same material as medicine for their frequent injuries.

[...] A team led by archaeologist Tjaark Siemssen, of the University of Cologne and the University of Oxford, tested the resulting sticky mess against cultures of Staphylococcus aureus—best known for its role in skin infections and its evolution of the antibiotic-resistant MRSA strain—and the gut bacterium Escherichia coli, a frequent culprit in food poisoning.

Birch tar had no effect on the E. coli cultures, but it did stop, or at least slow down, the growth of S. aureus. Exactly how well depended on the species of birch and the concentration of the tar, probably because different birch species, and maybe even individual trees, produce tar with different combinations of chemical compounds. The most effective batch, taken from a silver birch (Betula pendula) tree, produced a "comparatively strong response." Meanwhile, results from four other trees ranged from mild to moderate, and another had no effect.

[...] Unsurprisingly, the antibiotic Gentamicin proved much more effective against S. aureus than any of the birch tar samples. That's because it is refined and concentrated, in contrast to whatever happens to be in birch tar. That's, why, for instance, we take aspirin instead of just chewing on willow bark for headaches. (Seriously, if you have a skin infection, go to the doctor; please do not just start setting birch tar on fire in your backyard to treat yourself at home. We did not tell you to do that.)

Knowing that birch tar does work, at least against S. aureus, and that Neanderthals would have had ample opportunity to figure that out, we can start thinking more seriously about this kind of antiseptic as part of Neanderthal life.

fliptop writes:

There was a time when downloading a video game felt like harmless fun. Today, it can feel a lot closer to opening a suspicious email attachment in 2005:

The recent revelation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating malware hidden inside games distributed through Steam should be a wake-up call -- not just for gamers, but for the entire tech ecosystem. Because if malicious code can slip into one of the world's largest and most trusted gaming platforms, we are no longer talking about edge-case vulnerabilities. We are talking about systemic risk.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: this was always the logical endpoint. For years, Big Tech platforms have scaled faster than their ability to meaningfully vet what flows through them. Whether it was social media, app stores, or ad networks, the model has been the same -- maximize volume, automate oversight, and trust that bad actors won't outpace the system.

[...] Today's cybercriminals are not lone hackers in hoodies. They are organized, adaptive, and increasingly AI-enabled in a lightly regulated AI environment. They can test payloads against detection systems before deployment. They can obfuscate malicious code to evade signature-based scanning. They can mimic legitimate developer behavior well enough to slip past automated review pipelines.

[...] The FBI's guidance to affected users -- monitor systems, remove suspicious files, report incidents -- underscores the reactive nature of the current model. By the time a federal agency is issuing cleanup instructions, the breach has already happened.

[...] What's needed is a shift in mindset. AI cannot just be a passive screening tool. It has to become part of a dynamic, adversarial defense system -- one that assumes breach attempts will happen and continuously adapts in real time. That means deeper behavioral analysis post-installation. It means zero-trust approaches applied not just to networks, but to software ecosystems. It means treating every piece of code as potentially hostile until proven otherwise over time, not just at the point of entry.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Workers who love 'synergizing paradigms' might be bad at their jobs:

Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like "synergistic leadership," or "growth-hacking paradigms" may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell study reveals.

Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introduces the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric.

"Corporate bullshit is a specific style of communication that uses confusing, abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way," said Littrell, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences. "Unlike technical jargon, which can sometimes make office communication a little easier, corporate bullshit confuses rather than clarifies. It may sound impressive, but it is semantically empty."

Although people anywhere can BS each other – that is, share dubious information that's misleadingly impressive or engaging – the workplace not only rewards but structurally protects it, Littrell said. In a work setting where corporate jargon is already the norm, it's easy for ambitious employees to use corporate BS to appear more competent or accomplished, accelerating their climb up the corporate ladder of workplace influence.

Corporate BS seems to be ubiquitous – but Littrell wondered if it is actually harmful. To test this, he created a "corporate bullshit generator" that churns out meaningless but impressive-sounding sentences like, "We will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing" and "By getting our friends in the tent with our best practices, we will pressure-test a renewed level of adaptive coherence."

[...] The results revealed a troubling paradox. Workers who were more susceptible to corporate BS rated their supervisors as more charismatic and "visionary," but also displayed lower scores on a portion of the study that tested analytic thinking, cognitive reflection and fluid intelligence. Those more receptive to corporate BS also scored significantly worse on a test of effective workplace decision-making.