Kyle MacLachlan: David Lynch’s Singular Weirdo Is Secretly a Normie

NY Times - Sun, 09/27/2026 - 05:00
The actor still hasn’t come to grips with the loss of David Lynch. He talks about that, his hesitation about taking a role in “Sex and the City” and his new memoir.

Heavy Rain and Wind Batter Northeast, Bringing Coastal Flooding

NY Times - Sun, 09/27/2026 - 01:38
The storm flooded low-lying areas, knocked out power and forced the cancellation of several major events and hundreds of flights.

China and the US Say They've Agreed to Start Talks About AI

SlashDot - Sun, 09/27/2026 - 01:36
The United States and China have agreed to "launch a dialogue" on AI, reports Reuters. On artificial intelligence, the two sides agreed to hold a dialogue on the technology's risks and benefits, with the next round of discussions set for November, and to set up a communication channel for AI-related incidents, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the White House said. The White House said that the leaders had agreed to use the term "super intelligence" in place of "artificial intelligence." In a separate statement, the Chinese ministry said that Beijing valued Washington's use of the new term. As AI technology continues to advance, the two sides should step up exchanges and work toward consensus in line with new developments, it said. But CNN argues that "Despite growing calls to prevent AI development from spiraling out of control, the Trump-Xi summit has produced little substance, as many experts expected." The right thing to do on AI, [China's leader] Xi said during talks with Trump, is to "draw on each other's strengths, not guard against each other" — a reference to Beijing's concern about US containment, from existing tech export controls to potential AI restrictions. "The two sides can continue their dialogue on AI, exchange views on its risks and benefits, and jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI," he added. But the summit has yielded little progress on AI beyond a formal dialogue and a bilateral communication channel, proposals discussed before the two leaders' summit — underscoring the entrenched mutual mistrust amid contrasting visions on AI... Because of low levels of trust, cooperation between the two superpowers remains limited, said George Chen, chair of digital practice at The Asia Group consultancy. "Beijing continues to believe Washington seeks to contain China's rise in AI and other emerging technologies, a perception that will shape the pace and scope of future engagement for the two countries on AI," he said. CNN also points out that while China trails the US in frontier AI models, "it's rapidly narrowing the technology gap while championing a more open ecosystem centered on accessibility and lower cost." In July, Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization — a rival grouping to the Pax Silica alliance that Trump formed last year to reduce reliance on China for AI supply chains. While over two dozen countries and the European Union signed up to Trump's Pax Silica, Xi has recruited 29 countries, including Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, to his alternative vision of open models, which allow users to freely download, customize and run without paying hefty fees to American firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. For developers in the Global South, an inexpensive Chinese model from DeepSeek or Moonshot may be more useful than a slightly more capable system requiring an expensive subscription and access to a foreign cloud provider, said Eric Olander, editor in chief of The China-Global South Project, a research agency.... China's embrace of open systems has not always been a top-down strategy by Beijing. Restrictions on access to the most advanced chips because of US export controls, coupled with smaller capital markets, have pushed Chinese developers toward open models as a way to compete with leading US proprietary systems. That shift has proved effective. In a year, Chinese models' global usage skyrocketed from less than 15% to over 54% last week, led by DeepSeek, according to AI leaderboard data by OpenRouter, a marketplace for models. Even American firms, from Airbnb and DoorDash to Shopify, have embraced Chinese models, tapping into the advantages of open systems, including lower costs and greater flexibility for customization. CNN adds this insight from Alex Colville, an analyst focusing on tech and security at the government-backed Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "The more capable Chinese models become, the less likely it is Beijing may leave them unrestricted."

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To Feed or Not to Feed the Birds?

NY Times - Sun, 09/27/2026 - 01:00
One of Britain’s favorite national pastimes is hurting as well as helping.

The Surprising Reasons China Is Skeptical of A.I. Safety Calls

NY Times - Sun, 09/27/2026 - 00:01
In China, A.I. doomsday warnings can feel distinctly Western or like a ploy to stop Chinese A.I. companies from trying to overtake their U.S. rivals.

Recreational Aerial Craft Become Weapons in Myanmar’s War

NY Times - Sun, 09/27/2026 - 00:01
Years after a coup, the military is increasingly using motorized paragliders and gyrocopters to bomb towns and villages in rebel-held territory.

Trump Promotes Criticism of Republican Who Broke With Him on Immigration

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 23:12
The president amplified negative social media comments about Representative María Elvira Salazar of Florida, a move that drew a rebuke from at least one Republican.

TV Networks to Resume Trump Coverage, Even as White House Excludes CNN

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 22:40
The White House TV pool went dark this past week amid a standoff between CNN and the president. Network leaders, however, believe an indefinite suspension may be untenable.

Likely Piece of 1884 Shipwreck Washes Ashore in Nantucket During Nor’easter

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 21:04
Powerful waves spat out a chunk of the wooden boat, one of hundreds that had wrecked around the island in the 19th century.

KDE and GNOME Developers Ponder How to Handle AI-Generated Contributions

SlashDot - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 21:04
Last weekend KDE's annual Akademy conference included a presentation proposing an AI-native KDE," writes The Register. This led KDE developer Nate Graham to open a discussion about proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions which "rapidly became heated. Moderators issued warnings, restricted further comments, and eventually removed the thread." But as Graham writes on his blog, "A bunch of people mostly outside of KDE who disapprove of LLM usage derailed KDE's attempt to add restrictions to LLM usage." Two people unknown to any KDE contributors appeared and began fighting with one another about the broader topic of the morality of AI, not the proposed guidelines... Someone else outside of KDE set up kdeforpeople.com in an attempt to... pressure KDE into banning LLMs. A bunch of people signed onto it, almost none of whom are known KDE contributors. The topic was picked up on social media and the press with... varying levels of accuracy. The draft proposal was removed and the whole topic hidden... Yep, that's where we're at in the state of online discourse around AI... The "lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" idea was presented by two people important to KDE in decades past, but who had not made any contributions recently besides this Akademy talk. Their idea does not reflect the overall direction of KDE or Plasma, and I don't think it ever will. If "a lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE" freaks you out, I believe it is completely reasonable and safe to ignore... I completely understand why a lot of people have problems with LLMs. I have these concerns as well. He concluded by asking people not to derail any future process to set usage guidelines, fighting over "the broader topic of AI in general." "The discussion is gone, but the argument continues," adds The Register: GNOME developer Jordan Petridis has also published The GNOME LLM Policy That I Want, proposing that LLMs be barred from creating or modifying anything submitted to GNOME or hosted on its infrastructure. "You might be asked to prove your code meets this requirement," Petridis writes, arguing for proposals that target the norms around developer behavior. His rationale? "The GNOME Project prioritizes the social and human aspects of collective software creation,"

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Trump Administration Plans to Gut Clean Car Rules

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 18:55
New fuel-economy standards, which President Trump said he finalized Saturday, would kill a federal effort to speed the transition to electric vehicles.

Trump Rejects Iran’s Cease-Fire Proposal to Reopen Strait of Hormuz

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 17:02
The president said the deal was not “acceptable” and demurred on whether he would restart military strikes after the midterm elections.

After 40 Years, Microsoft Excel Will Add Single-Cell Lists and Arrays

SlashDot - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 16:34
Microsoft's senior product manager for Excel acknowledges that "Throughout Excel's 40-year history, you've only been able to put one value per cell." But that's now changing with arrays in cells (as well as nested arrays) and lists. "You can create a list by selecting Insert > List or pressing Ctrl+J, then typing or pasting items separated by commas or semicolons, depending on your regional settings. Selecting the icon in the cell shows the individual values..." "With lists, you can filter by one or more individual items instead of whole text entries. Referencing a list returns all its values for calculations. For example, =B2 spills those values into separate cells..." "For the first time in Excel, arrays can exist natively in cells as values or as formula results. They can be any size or shape and can even contain other arrays. You can now keep the result of any spilling formula in a single cell by "wrapping" the formula body with braces { }." "Since the introduction of dynamic arrays, array results have spilled across cells — for example ={1;2;3}. Wrapping the original array with braces creates a 1x1 array around it, so instead of spilling to multiple cells, the array stays in a single cell. Braces have long been used to describe arrays in Excel and this extends that behavior by allowing multiple layers of braces. This gives you more flexibility when building spreadsheets. Instead of leaving room for a formula to spill, you can keep the result in one cell." "Arrays can now also 'nest' inside other arrays... Previously, a formula that produced an array of arrays would return a truncated result or #CALC! error. Now, supported formulas return the complete nested result... FLATTEN(array, [pad_value], [levels]) simplifies nested arrays by removing one or more levels of nesting..." Three HAS functions check whether values are in an array: — HAS(array, value) returns TRUE if value appears anywhere in array, and FALSE otherwise. — HASANY(array, values) returns TRUE if any of the values appear anywhere in array, and FALSE otherwise. — HASALL(array, values) returns TRUE if all of the values appear anywhere in array, and FALSE otherwise.

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Rahm Emanuel, Eyeing 2028, Makes His 2026 Play

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 15:18
The longtime Democratic insider has emerged as a behind-the-scenes force in his party’s push to win back Congress. After that, he’ll think about the next presidential race.

How El Niño Is Shaping Storms on Two Sides of the U.S.

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 13:23
Hurricanes near Hawaii. A nor’easter on the East Coast. The ocean phenomenon’s influence on storms around the country may just be getting started.

AI Finds So Many Linux Bugs, Canonical Changes to a Two-Week Stable Release Update Cycle

SlashDot - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 12:04
"Finding vulnerabilities faster also puts pressure on Linux distributions to fix and deliver patches faster," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli AI has transformed bug discovery from "a manual, time-intensive process into a highly automated engine," notes Canonical's blog, leading to a "recent explosion in the volume of CVEs". Additionally, the upstream kernel community became its own CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) and assigned CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) identifiers to thousands of bugs, arguing that at the kernel level, almost any type of bug that can affect a running system, could potentially be classified as a vulnerability. As a result, the volume of CVEs has skyrocketed exponentially, creating a massive backlog of alerts and forcing defenders to drastically increase the speed of their fixes to close the window of risk. To address the growing volume of CVEs and the demand for faster security fixes, we are transitioning to a unified, 2-week release cycle... While a patch is being prepared, Canonical aims to provide safe workarounds where applicable, so users aren't left exposed in the meantime. Where no safe workaround exists, Canonical will say so clearly and point users toward general hardening steps instead. The goal is to get environments into a defensible, safer state within 24 to 48 hours of public disclosure — well before a patch ships. This doesn't replace the patch; it buys the time needed to fix the vulnerability properly, without sacrificing security. "Linux did not suddenly become wildly insecure overnight," notes the blog Nerds.xyz. "We are getting much better at finding and cataloging problems that may have previously gone unnoticed." There is something almost ironic about all of this. AI is routinely pitched as a tool that will make software development faster, but it is also making vulnerability discovery faster. That means maintainers now have to accelerate the other side of the equation too. For Ubuntu users, that should ultimately be good news. More bugs being discovered is preferable to vulnerabilities sitting unnoticed in the Linux kernel.

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VoteVets Spends Millions to Elect Democrats, Shaping Midterms

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 09:22
The organization, founded in 2006 to back Democratic veterans opposing the Iraq war, is pouring huge sums into this year’s elections amid intense voter antipathy for another conflict in the Middle East.

Sylvester Stallone Hid His Struggles for Decades. Now He’s Coming Clean.

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 09:01
The legendary actor on his disturbing childhood, his Hollywood missteps and the pain he caused to his loved ones, his body and himself.

Bobby Pulido, a Texan Singer, Puts Republicans on Defense

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 08:56
Bobby Pulido, a Tejano musician running as a Democrat for the House, has left his Republican opponent struggling to match his star power in a district that President Trump won easily in 2024.

The Homeless Community in Portland That Became Self-Governed

NY Times - Sat, 09/26/2026 - 08:54
Portland’s Dignity Village has been a place for people without housing for more than 25 years.

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