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Submission + - Thanks to robots, Ukraine is now talking about winning, not just surviving (defenseone.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn’t just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory.

This isn’t yet captured in headlines—for example, about last weekend’s barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine—but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted.

Several long-term trends have shifted in Ukraine’s favor, and the core reason is its fierce focus on AI and robotics.

Submission + - University of California Math Professors Push for Return of SAT/ACT Math Testing (kpbs.org)

Submitted by Koreantoast
Koreantoast writes: News sources are reporting that faculty members in the University of California system are calling for a return to standardized testing for applications to STEM majors. From KPBS:

Hundreds of University of California faculty members are calling on the university system to require standardized math test scores from applicants to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors.

Nearly 1,000 faculty members have signed the open letter. More than 200 of them are from UC San Diego.

The UC Board of Regents voted to eliminate the requirement in 2020. In their letter, the faculty call it “a temporary measure that has now become a permanent vulnerability...”

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the letter reads.

Faculty have reported that students being admitted are unprepared for even basic classes: one faculty report last year saying that the number of students placed in classes to remediate elementary and middle-school math before they could take precalculus increased to 8.5% from 0.5% between 2020 and 2025. Several universities which dropped testing requirements in 2020 have already reinstituted testing over the last several years including MIT, Dartmouth, and Yale.

Submission + - Microsoft Deliberately Bricking All Office for Mac 2019/2021 Installations (osnews.com) 2

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: MacOS users who opted to buy a copy of Microsoft Office for macOS back in 2019 or 2021, eschewing the Office 365 subscription, so you could keep on using Office 2019/2021 forever if you wanted to. Just like in the old days.

Consumer Rights Wiki reports:

"Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (2026) is a scheduled remote degradation of perpetually-licensed Microsoft Office software for macOS and iOS, set for July 13, 2026 when a license-validation certificate used by the Office apps expires.[1] After Office 2019 for Mac reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft assured customers their installed apps would "continue to function."[2] The July 13, 2026 conversion instead drops the apps into a Microsoft-defined "reduced functionality mode," in which files can be opened and viewed but not edited or saved.[1][3] By May 30, 2026, the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft's site; the "continue to function" clause was removed.[4][2]" https://consumerrights.wiki/w/...

Microsoft’s advice to the users they’re stealing from is to keep using the applications as mere viewers, switch to the free Office 365 web applications, pay for a 365 subscription, or buy a brand new regular copy of Office 2024. None of these make any sense, and clearly, all of this should be illegal, but it’s not because the software industry is a clown show.

Submission + - The 'hottest' AI job right now might involve locking your bedroom door (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Joi AI, an AI companion startup that markets itself as providing "AI-lationships that satisfy you emotionally, intellectually, and intimately," is hiring 10 "masturbation consultants." The position lasts for four weeks and requires participants who are 18 or older to write about their intimate experience trying the company's NSFW audio feature.

When Joi AI posted the job listing on social media, its Cyprus-based brand head, Julie Levin, expected some online reaction. She didn't expect thousands of applications and a flooded inbox.

Submission + - More Than Half Of What Americans Eat Is Ultra-Processed (studyfinds.com) 2

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: A group of leading nutrition scientists, food policy lawyers, and public health experts has released what may be the most actionable blueprint yet for tackling one of the biggest threats to American health: ultra-processed food. Released in May 2026 by Healthy Eating Research, the report offers a concrete definition of what ultra-processed food is and a ranked list of policy options lawmakers could act on right now.

More than half of calories eaten by American adults come from ultra-processed foods, industrial products containing few or no real whole-food ingredients and made with additives that keep them cheap, shelf-stable, and highly appealing. For kids, that figure climbs even higher. A recent study found that of 651 baby and toddler food products sold in the eight largest grocery stores in North Carolina, 71% were classified as ultra-processed.

Submission + - The world has 6 months to avert major food crisis, says UN (politico.eu)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a severe global food price crisis within six to 12 months unless governments act quickly, the Food and Agriculture Organization warned Wednesday.

Decisions now by farmers and governments on fertilizer use, imports, financing and crop choices will determine whether food prices spike later this year or in early 2027, the agency said.

"Start seriously thinking about how to increase the absorption capacity of countries, how to increase their resilience to this choke, so that we start to minimize the potential impacts," FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero said in a podcast published Wednesday.

Submission + - Trump Is Wrecking the U.S. Military (prospect.org) 1

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: One of the most common criticisms Republicans have of Democratic presidents is that they damage military readiness. During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush accused Bill Clinton of such neglect. “The next president will inherit a military in decline,” he said. Donald Trump claimed in 2016 that President Barack Obama left the military “depleted,” and recently said that President Joe Biden left it “gutted.”

Well, Trump had a strategy. Find the most serious Alpha Male Warfighter among Fox News’s weekend hosts, put him in charge of the Pentagon, and take the proverbial gloves off. No more of this woke nonsense like “nonwhite male generals” or “following duly enacted treaties.”

The results are coming in: The military is falling to bits.

Submission + - Why are some people mosquito magnets? (phys.org)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Ever felt like mosquitoes bite you while ignoring everyone else? Scientists are now making progress in deciphering the complex chemical cocktail that makes particular people more enticing to these disease-spreading bloodsuckers.

"It's not a misconception—mosquitoes are attracted to some people more than others," Frederic Simard of France's Institute of Research for Development told AFP.

"But we are not all magnets all the time," the medical entomologist added.

Submission + - Trump on Iran war's cost: "I don't think about American financial situation." (the-independent.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the plight of Americans finding it harder and harder to make ends meet and rising gas and consumer prices simply aren’t on his mind as the months-long Iran war and impasse over the Strait of Hormuz continue to fuel surging inflation in the United States.

Trump made the stunning brush-off statement as he departed the White House for Beijing, where he will be feted by Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a state visit, including a lavish Thursday night banquet at the Great Hall of the People.

Comment Re:What I don't like about Dawkins (Score -1, Flamebait) 403

by fjo3 (#66132482) Attached to: Richard Dawkins 'Convinced' AI Is Conscious

Same with the anti trans crap where I know he can read the science.

I know I'll be modded down for this, but he is right about the trans issue. It's a social contagion, just like the satanic panic, the panic over witches, in colonial times, and countless other social contagions throughout recorded history. Rare genetic anomalies do nothing to change that. I would strongly recommend the book "Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds." Fads and social contagions have been going on for as long as recorded history, and the current trans mania will eventually come to an end. It's already been coming to an end in Europe for years, where these treatments first took off. Clinics aiding transition are being shut down left and right, and the professionals who worked there are speaking out. In the future people will look back and wonder how we gave drugs that sterilize children and cause numerous health issues (not going through puberty is *far* from harmless) without giving them extensive mental therapy first. There are many de-transitioned victims speaking out. Poke your head outside of your bubble. I treat all people with respect until they prove they do not deserve it, and I will gladly use any pronoun or name that someone prefers. I don't hate trans, I don't fear them (transphobia), and neither does Richard Dawkins. That said, he's obviously wrong about AI here - nobody is perfect.

Submission + - Study observes AI replicate itself (theguardian.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: It’s the stuff of science fiction cinema, or particularly breathless AI company blogposts: new research finds recent AI systems can independently copy themselves on to other computers.

In the doom scenario, this means that when the superintelligent AI goes rogue, it will escape shutdown by seeding itself across the world wide web, lurking outside the reach of frantic IT professionals and continuing to plot world domination or paving over the world with solar panels.

Submission + - No One Can Define 'Ultra-Processed Food.' Why Is RFK Jr. Trying To Regulate It? (reason.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised to crack down on ultra-processed foods, a key policy priority of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda. The biggest obstacle standing in his way? Figuring out what an ultra-processed food is.

"By April, we will have a federal definition of ultra-processed foods," RFK Jr. promised on The Joe Rogan Experience in February. "Every food in your grocery store will have a label on it—it'll have maybe a green light, red light, or yellow light, telling you whether or not it's going to be good for you."

The agency is now weeks behind this deadline, and appears to be no closer to landing on a definition. As The New York Times recently reported, "behind the scenesthe process of defining ultraprocessed foods is still very much in the air. Agencies are struggling to agree, and it is unclear when a definition will be released."

Submission + - AI is conscious says Richard Dawkins 1

Submitted by Mirnotoriety
Mirnotoriety writes: AI is conscious says Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins has said chatbots should be considered conscious after spending two days interacting with the Claude AI engine.

The evolutionary biologist said he had the “overwhelming feeling” of talking to a human during conversations with Claude, and said it was hard not to treat the program as “a genuine friend”.
--

John Searle's Chinese Room (1980) is a thought experiment in which a person, locked in a room and knowing no Chinese, uses an English rulebook to manipulate symbols and provide flawless answers to questions posed in Chinese. Searle’s point is that a system can simulate human intelligence and pass a Turing Test through purely syntactic processes, yet still lack genuine understanding or consciousness.

Applying this logic to Large Language Models, the “person in the room” corresponds to the inference engine, while the “rulebook” is the trillion-parameter neural network trained on vast corpora of human text. Just as the person matches Chinese characters to rules without understanding their meaning, an LLM processes token vectors and predicts the next token based on statistical patterns rather than lived experience.

Thus, while an LLM can generate sophisticated prose or code, it does so through probabilistic, high-dimensional pattern manipulation. In essence, it is “matching shapes” on such an immense scale that it creates the near-perfect illusion of semantic understanding.

Submission + - AI finds signs of pancreatic cancer before tumors develop (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: An AI model developed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, detected abnormalities on patients’ CT scans up to three years before they were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, according to research published this week in the journal Gut.

The scientists behind the model, which is now being evaluated in a clinical trial, trained it by feeding it CT scans from patients who had been screened for other medical conditions then were later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The team then had radiologists review the scans and compared their ability to find early signs of cancer to that of the AI model. The model was found to be three times better at identifying the early signs.

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