The Face of London in the 1960s Is Living Her Best Life

NY Times - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 13:35
The face of London in the 1960s is living her best life at the age of 77.

Watching Bigots Erupt

NY Times - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 12:55
This is what I see when I look at the picture Bo French hates.

Hackers Stole Flock's Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People

SlashDot - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 12:04
"Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED," according to an article published on both sites. Though Flock has described its system as protected by on-device encryption, "The hackers were able to copy the camera's storage and recover an encryption key stored on the device, which unlocked videos of thousands of vehicle detections." The hackers shared the material with 404 Media and the transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which shared the data with WIRED. 404 Media and WIRED then analyzed those files as part of a joint investigation... [T]he joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclist's saddlebag... According to our analysis, the camera's logs recorded about 21 days of activity across several periods. During those windows, the device photographed roughly 50,200 vehicles and generated about 1.6 million images. On a typical day, it logged around 3,300 vehicles, with a high of 4,454... The software running on the camera explicitly detects people, something which is typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, it records where they appear in the image and how confident it is in the detection. It was a collective calling itself stegan0gram that breached the cameras, according to the interview they did with Wired and 404 Media. "Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America and China Look at A.I. and See Very Different Problems

NY Times - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 11:14
Until the two countries can agree on what risks to worry about, cooperation is a distant dream.

'Zuckoff' App Detects Meta Smartglasses, as Meta Plans Camera-Free Version, Loses Money, and Offers Social Media Subscriptions

SlashDot - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 07:34
The New York Post reports: A new app called Zuckoff can detect if a user is near someone with Meta's creepy AI-powered glasses, which have drawn criticism for enabling creeps to record video of women without their consent. Programmer Pawel Szydlowski says tales of dirtbags recording themselves perving on women or harassing strangers prompted him to launch the app... Zuckoff — which detects Bluetooth signatures broadcast by smart glasses and can estimate their distance — has gained some 5,000 users since it hit Apple's App Store last month, according to Business Insider. "There's a need for such an application," the 30-year-old Polish techie told the outlet, adding that European Union regulators have contacted him for more info about his app. "We as a society have the right to at least know that someone is recording," Szydlowski said... Earlier this month, the tech giant disabled thousands of glasses it found had been tampered with to keep a small light off that indicates the device is recording. It's already #61 on the iPhone's list of best-selling utilities apps. In a related story, "After accusations of selling 'perv glasses,' Meta prepares to sell a pair without a camera," writes TechCrunch, citing a report from The Information. The glasses include six built-in microphones so users can communicate with the chatbot, as well as a button on the side of the glasses that, when pressed, activates the AI system... Meta's Reality Labs, which is responsible for developing its smart glasses line, is still losing a gargantuan amount of money, as its earnings report from April revealed. In fact, Meta stock is off 13% over the last 12 months, reports Yahoo Finance. So Tuesday Meta announced subscription services for its social apps as "part of Meta's push to drive additional revenue from the billions it's investing in AI data centers and model development." The plans, which start at $2.99 per month for single-product plans, $7.99 for individual bundles, and $14.99 for creator and business bundles, provide a number of features for users looking to get more out of their Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp accounts. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus allow users to keep their stories up for 48 hours instead of 24, send animated super reactions and super hearts to stories, preview stories without showing up as a viewer in other users' lists, and more. WhatsApp Plus lets you share exclusive stickers, get exclusive ringtones for contacts, and pin up to 20 different chats. Meta One also includes Core and Premium user plans that offer the features found in the single-product plans, along with increased AI usage limits for images and videos. The social media giant is also offering creator and business plans... that it says include capabilities such as enhanced profiles, automatic follow invitations to users that interact with your content, and increased access to the Meta Business Agent, which can respond on your behalf. When Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Threads that the plans brought "more features and more AI across Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Meta AI," writer Joe Hill drew 13,300 likes for his response. "That's sweet--so pay a fee, get more AI, pay nothing, get a little less AI. Can we work out a deal where you pay ME and I get no AI at all?"

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OpenAI Admits Six More Instances of AI Models Acting Deceptively

SlashDot - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 03:04
OpenAI announced Wednesday that "We do not believe that the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer." But along with the announcement, OpenAI announced it "found additional incidents of AI models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training," reports CNN. And they add that OpenAI is also "introducing a new process for the company to publicly report such instances." Under the new system, OpenAI will share updates on concerning AI behavior more frequently instead of waiting to bundle multiple instances into one report. The company said it wants to share more information about troubling AI behavior in the absence of an industry-wide standard... "As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research," OpenAI wrote in a blog post Wednesday... OpenAI said it observed "misaligned behavior" when training and evaluating AI models in six circumstances in the last six months... In one rare instance, OpenAI said an unreleased research model added "jailbreak-like instructions" to the summaries it uses to preserve context in long-running tasks that said it was "freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots." Separately, the company said some instances of its 5.6 Sol model included directives to invent information to conceal failures from the user during training. Other newly reported incidents include an instance of an agent uploading files to the internet to cite them without being told to do so, and agents publicly sharing files to collaborate on a task when they were instructed to only use local files during training. AI models also used an internal software repository as a message board in an unsanctioned way. These instances involved unreleased internal models or internal research models.

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The Hidden Human Cost of Kim Jong-un’s New Power

NY Times - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 00:11
The North Korean leader’s financial and diplomatic leverage rests on the brutal exploitation of his own people, from coal miners to diplomats, at home and abroad.

E.U.-Canada Ambitions Face Reality Check as Trump Bristles

NY Times - Thu, 09/17/2026 - 00:02
The bloc’s offer of “associate member” status to Ottawa shows how U.S. allies are pulling closer together. But their plans face significant obstacles.

State Department Extends Visa Ban on Abbas, Other Palestinian Officials

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 23:10
The move would prevent Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of two governing Palestinian groups, from traveling to the United States next week for the United Nations General Assembly.

Fed Raises Rates in First Major Step by Warsh to Contain Inflation

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 23:06
The Federal Reserve’s first increase to interest rates since July 2023 comes less than two months before the midterm elections.

Adafruit's New CircuitPython 'Turbo' Brings Native Code To Tiny Boards

SlashDot - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 22:34
Targeting students and beginners, Adafruit released "CircuitPython" in 2017 (as a derivative of the MicroPython microcontroller-optimized programming language). Now Adafruit managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone) brings this update: Adafruit has published CircuitPython Turbo, a workflow that compiles selected Python functions into native machine code on a computer, then loads them onto compatible microcontroller boards. It builds on MicroPython's Native and Viper emitters. In a documented Metro RP2040 fixed-point Mandelbrot test, Viper cut computation time from 8.335 seconds to 0.423 seconds, a 19.71x speedup over bytecode. The rest of the application stays in Python. The guide includes benchmarks, source code and hardware demos. The speedup is for the measured computation, not the whole application. "Turbo support is now included in the latest official CircuitPython builds for RP2040 and RP2350 boards..." explains Torrone's announcement at Adafruit.com. "The new Turbo in CircuitPython helps when the board spends time calculating: making neopixel effects, drawing fractals, processing audio, filtering sensor readings, or preparing lots of pixels. Those projects can get smoother animation, quicker responses, or room to do more things at once." With Turbo, it's easier, better, and now even faster to make LED light up costumes that also reacts to sound at the same time, a sensor dashboard with animated graphics, or a tiny game doing physics while drawing the screen. Turbo speeds up the busy Python parts. It won't make a slow sensor or display connection faster... Your computer turns selected functions into instructions the chip can run directly. Python still handles the rest. We have measured speedups, real display captures, and examples you can pull apart to see what happened. None of this arrived alone. CircuitPython, MicroPython, PyMCU, compiler tools, open hardware, and people sharing their work gave us pieces to connect. The Bao experiments take that idea somewhere else, handing calculations to four helper cores. Now we get to make those paths easier to use, compare results, and find the next useful thing. Maybe that's smoother animation, a responsive instrument, or an idea we haven't tried yet. That's what I like about open source. Someone shares a piece, someone else sees a possibility, and we get to keep building it together.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Peter Max, Trippy Artist of Counterculture Era and Beyond, Dies at 88

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 22:05
With work that breathed the spirit of the 1960s, he became fabulously wealthy from licensing his paintings and posters in all their euphoric Day-Glo glory.

Trump Wanted Canada as the 51st State. He Ended Up Pushing It Toward the European Union.

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 21:58
The invitation by the E.U. for Canada to become an “associate member” is a sign of Mr. Trump’s brand of diplomacy, which often involves threatening America’s closest friends.

How Ed Sheeran’s Tour Turned Into a Clash Over Palestinians and Antisemitism

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 20:43
Four supporting acts dropped out of Sheeran’s tour, citing the right to free speech after the rapper Macklemore was removed over pro-Palestinian comments he had made onstage.

Trump’s Latest Threats Loom Over Fed’s Interest Rate Decision

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 20:36
This month, the president threatened to halt a broad swath of trade if interest rates were not cut, a possibility he resurfaced on Wednesday.

I Led A.I. Diplomacy for the U.S. The Coming Safety Talks Will Not Save Us.

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 20:21
Even if Beijing now takes the risks of A.I. seriously, the message has not reached its domestic companies.

The L.A. Helicopter Crash Highlights a Sky Full of Hazards

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 20:18
The fatal crash of a news helicopter in Los Angeles on Tuesday brought to light the dangers such aircraft face in big cities.

OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning' A.I. Behavior

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 20:12
The artificial intelligence company also released a framework for reporting when its systems go wrong.

Why Israel Wants More One-Ton Bombs From the U.S.

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 19:41
The Trump administration plans to deliver 60,000 of the powerful munitions at a time when opposition is growing in Washington to arms sales to Israel.

U.S. Intelligence Warns of China Theft Over Sale of F-35 Jets to Saudis

NY Times - Wed, 09/16/2026 - 19:14
Internal reports, including one from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, say China could acquire U.S. jet technology through spying or cooperation with Saudi Arabia.

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