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Comment Re:There are ~20,000 US citizens in Venezuela (Score 4, Informative) 180

by destinyland (#65899721) Attached to: Airlines Cancel Hundreds of Flights After U.S. Attack on Venezuela
About those U.S. citizens in Venezuela...

"A foundation dedicated to advocating for Americans wrongfully detained abroad said today that it is monitoring the situation in Venezuela — where it says at least five Americans are reportedly held," reports NBC News.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What's the Stupidest Use of AI You Saw in 2025?

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: What's the stupidest use of AI you encountered in 2025? Have you been called by AI telemarketers? Forced to do job interviews with a glitching AI?

With all this talk of "disruption" and "inevitability," this is our chance to have some fun. Personally, I think 2025's worst AI "innovation" was the AI-powered web browsers that eat web pages and then spit out a slop "summary" of what you would've seen if you'd actually visited the page. But there've been other AI projects that were just exquisitely, quintessentially bad...

— Two years after the death of Suzanne Somers, her husband recreated her with an AI-powered robot.

— Disneyland imagineers used deep reinforcement learning to program a talking robot snowman.

— Attendees at an LA Comic Con were offered that chance to to talk to an AI-powered hologram of Stan Lee for $20.

— And of course, as the year ended, the Wall Street Journal announced that a vending machine run by Anthropic's Claude AI had been tricked into giving away hundreds of dollars in merchandise for free, including a PlayStation 5, a live fish, and underwear.

What did I miss? What "AI fails" will you remember most about 2025?

Submission + - Sal Khan: Companies Should Give 1% of Profits to Retrain Workers Displaced by AI (nytimes.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Sal Kahn (founder/CEO of the nonprofit Khan Academy), says companies should donate 1% of their profits to help retrain the people displaced by AI, in a new guest essay in the New York Times...

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...

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.

Submission + - Are 'Geek Gifts' Becoming Their Own Demographic? (thenewstack.io)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Are geek gifts becoming their own demographic? For this year’s holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game “Oregon Trail.” (“Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West.”) That’s what’s different about 2025: Top sites and major brands are now targeting the “tech” demographic — including programmers, sysadmins and even vintage game enthusiasts! And when Hallmark and Amazon are chasing the same customers as GitHub and Copilot, you know there’s been a strange yet meaningful shift in the culture...

While AI was conquering the world, GitHub published its “Ultimate gift guide for the developer in your life” just as soon as doors opened on Black Friday. So if you’re wondering, “Should I push to production on New Year’s Eve?” GitHub recommends their new “GitHub Copilot Amazeball,” which it describes as “GitHub’s magical collectible ready to weigh in on your toughest calls !” Copilot isn’t involved — questions are randomly matched to the answers printed on the side of a triangle-shaped die floating in water. “[Y]ou’ll get answers straight from the repo of destiny with a simple shake,” GitHub promises — just like the Magic 8 Ball of yore. “Get your hands on this must-have collectible and enjoy the cosmic guidance — no real context switching required!” And GitHub’s “Gift Guide for Developers” also suggests GitHub-branded ugly holiday socks and keyboard keycaps with GitHub’s mascots.

But GitHub isn't the only major tech site with a shopping page targeting the geek demographic. Firefox is selling merchandise with its new mascot. Even the Free Software Foundation has its own shop, with Emacs T-shirts, GNU beanies and a stuffed baby gnu ("One of our most sought-after items ... "). Plus an FSF-branded antisurveillance webcam guard.

Maybe Dr. Seuss can write a new book: “How the Geeks Stole Christmas.” Because this newfound interest in the geek demographic seems to have spread to the largest sites of all. Google searches on “Gifts for Programmers” now point to a special page on Amazon with suggestions like Linux crossword puzzles. But what coder could resist a book called “ Cooking for Programmers ? “Each recipe is written as source code in a different programming language,” explains the book’s description... The book is filled with colorful recipes — thanks to syntax highlighting, which turns the letters red, blue and green. There are also real cooking instructions, but presented as an array of strings, with both ingredients and instructions ultimately logged as messages to the console...

Some programmers might prefer their shirts from FreeWear.org, which donates part of the proceeds from every sale to its corresponding FOSS project or organization. (There are T-shirts for Linux, Gnome and the C programming language — and even one making a joke about how hard it is to exit Vim.)

But maybe it all proves that there’s something for everybody. That’s the real heartwarming message behind these extra-geeky Christmas gifts — that in the end, tech is, after all, still a community, with its own hallowed traditions and shared celebrations.

It’s just that instead of singing Christmas carols, we make jokes about Vim.

Submission + - New Python documentary released on YouTube (youtube.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: "From a side project in Amsterdam to powering AI at the world’s biggest companies — this is the story of Python," says the description of a new 84-minute documentary.

It traces Python all the way back to its origins in Amsterdam back in 1991. (Although the first time Guido van Rossum showed his new language to a co-worker, they'd typed one line of code just to prove they could crash Python's first interpreter.) The language slowly spread after van Rossum released it on Usenet — split across 21 separate posts — and Robin Friedrich, a NASA aerospace engineer, rememers using Python to build flight simulations for the Space Shuttle. (Friedrich says he also attended Guido's first in-person U.S. workshop in 1994, and "I still have the t-shirt...")

Dropbox's CEO/founder Drew Houston says they were one of the first companies to use Python to build a company reaching millions of users. (Another success story was YouTube, which was built by a small team using Python before being acquired by Google). Anaconda co-founder Travis Oliphant remembers Python's popularity increasing even more thanks to the data science/macine learning community. But the documentary even includes the controversial move to Python 3 (which broke compatability with earlier versions) — though ironically, one of the people slogging through a massive code migration ended up being van Rossum himself at his new job at Dropbox. The documentary also includes van Rossum's resignation as "Benevolent Dictator for Life" after approving the walrus operator. (In van Rossum's words, he essentially "rage-quit over this issue." But the focus is on Python's community. (At one point, various interviewees take turns reciting passages from the "Zen of Python" — which to this day is still hidden in Python as an import-able library as a kind of Easter Egg.)

Submission + - 'Chuck E. Cheese' handcuffed and arrested in Florida on charges of using a stole (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: "Customers watched in disbelief as Florida police arrested a Chuck E. Cheese employee — in costume portraying the pizza-hawking rodent — and accused him of using a stolen credit card, officials said Thursday," https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...">reports NBC News/. (They've even got video footage of the arrest!)

"I grabbed his right arm while giving the verbal instruction, 'Chuck E, come with me Chuck E,'" Tallahassee police officer Jarrett Cruz wrote in the report.

Comment Re: [NOT a] Misleading article, 0.002% of cars...7 (Score 4, Informative) 172

It's better than it sounds. Ford sold 30,176 EVs in 13 weeks. That'd come out to 120,704 for a year -- but since sales increased over previous quarters, their growth rate is also jumping. So 2025's figures will be even higher.

People say "we need Tesla's levels of sales" -- but we have it. It's just spread across a dozen different automakers. You see that in the final sales figures for 2024.

Tesla: 633,000
GM: 114,432
Ford: 97,865
Hyundai: 61,797
Rivian: 51,579
BMW: 50,981
Kia: 43,732
Nissan: 31,024
Toyota: 28,267
Audi: 23,152
Volkswagen: 18,183

Mercedes-Benz (and others) bring this about to where Tesla's sales are -- and Tesla's sales are roughly the same as the year before (dropping 1.1%).

Other interesting stats: last year about 1 in 8 cars sold in America were (battery-powered) electric. And while at the end of 2023 there were 2.4 million electric cars on America's roads, 2024 saw another 1.2 million electric vehicles sold -- a 50% increase. In just 12 months.

So I think you have to say electric vehicle sales are increasing, quite a bit. The idea is it reaches a "critical mass" of adoption, and then all the infrastructure swings into place.

Submission + - CES 'Worst in Show' Mocked in iFixit Ceremony (thenewstack.io)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Thursday a "panel of dystopia experts" was livestreamed to iFixit’s feed of over 1 million subscribers on YouTube, with the video’s description warning about manufacturers “hoping to convince us that they have invented the future. But will their vision make our lives better, or lead humanity down a dark and twisted path?” The resulting video is a fun and rollicking romp that tries to forestall a future clogged with power-hungry AI and data-collecting sensors.

“We’re seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them,” iFixit‘s Chamberlain told The Associated Press... Proving this point was EFF executive director Cindy Cohn, who gave a truly impassioned takedown for "smart" infant products that "end up traumatizing new parents with false reports that their baby has stopped breathing." But worst for privacy was the $1,200 "Revol" baby bassinet — equipped with a camera, a microphone, and a radar sensor. The video also mocks Samsung's "AI Home" initiative which let you answer phone calls with your washing machine, oven, or refrigerator. (And LG's overpowered "smart" refrigerator won the "Overall Worst in Show" award.)

One of the scariest presentations came from Paul Roberts, founder of SecuRepairs, a group advocating both cybersecurity and the right to repair. Roberts notes that about 65% of the routers sold in the U.S. are from a Chinese company named TP-Link — both wifi routers and the wifi/ethernet routers sold for homes and small offices.Roberts reminded viewers that in October, Microsoft reported “thousands” of compromised routers — most of them manufactured by TP-Link — were found working together in a malicious network trying to crack passwords and penetrate “think tanks, government organizations, non-governmental organizations, law firms, defense industrial base, and others” in North America and in Europe. The U.S. Justice Department soon launched an investigation (as did the U.S. Commerce Department) into TP-Link’s ties to China’s government and military, according to a SecuRepairs blog post. The reason? “As a China-based company, TP-Link is required by law to disclose flaws it discovers in its software to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before making them public.” Inevitably, this creates a window “to exploit the publicly undisclosed flaw That fact, and the coincidence of TP-Link devices playing a role in state-sponsored hacking campaigns, raises the prospects of the U.S. government declaring a ban on the sale of TP-Link technology at some point in the next year.”

TP-Link won the award for the worst in security.

Submission + - When Jimmy Carter Spoke at a Wireless Tradeshow

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: I saw Jimmy Carter speak in Las Vegas on the final day of the CTIA Wireless tradeshow back in 2001. "I feel thrilled to be a part of this," 77-year-old Carter said....

He applauded the work of "entrepreneurs and scientists and engineers that are transforming the face of the globe," and noted their technologies could address problems targeted by the Carter Center.... Interrupted by a few cell phone rings, the former President conversed on a stage at the Sands Expo and Venetian Hotel with Tom Wheeler, the president of the wireless communications trade association. Wheeler reminded the audience of Carter's decidedly nontechnical background, discussing An Hour Before Daylight , Carter's memoir about growing up on a farm in Georgia during the Great Depression. "We were the only family blessed with an outhouse," Carter told the crowd.

Wheeler also asked a question many in the technology community could relate to. Carter, he pointed out, had been involuntarily retired. "What's it feel like?" The former President told the audience he'd re-focussed his energies into humanitarian efforts through the Carter Center, which is active in providing health services around the world as well as monitoring elections...

Carter donated his appearance fee to the Carter Center.

Midway through the hour-long discussion, the former President touted his administration's record of deregulating several industries, including transporation, energy — and communications. "If it hadn't been for that deregulation, this environment in which you all live wouldn't have been possible." Carter also shared with the business crowd that it was a belief in free enterprise that made him want to enter politics, drawn from his experiences selling peanuts as a young boy for a dollar a day.

The audience greeted the former president warmly, giving him a standing ovation both when he took the stage and when he left. Carter joked it was almost enough to make him want to get back into politics.

Submission + - Boeing's Starliner is Experiencing Issues in Space (space.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Space.com reports:

Boeing's Starliner capsule is experiencing some issues in orbit. After launching yesterday (June 5) on its first-ever crewed mission, Starliner missed its first chance to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) today (June 6) after four of its 28 reaction-control thrusters malfunctioned.

That first docking window was at 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT). The next opportunity for Starliner to rendezvous with the orbiting lab opens at 1:33 p.m. EDT (1733 GMT)...

Starliner's thruster issues followed two helium leaks the mission team detected after the capsule reached orbit.

Submission + - Boeing spacecraft carrying two astronauts lifts off on historic maiden voyage (cnn.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: The third attempt was the charm for Boeingâ(TM)s Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test Wednesday in a milestone that has been a decade in the making.

The new spacecraftâ(TM)s maiden voyage with humans on board lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The historic event is streaming live on NASAâ(TM)s website.

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