This 2020 MacBook Pro is now on sale for $439.99.

Despite what the driver told passengers, an investigation concluded the incident occurred due to "operator fatigue"

Researchers found that tau proteins don’t jump straight into forming Alzheimer’s-associated fibrils—first they assemble into soft, reversible clusters. When the clusters were dissolved, fibril growth was almost entirely suppressed. This reveals a promising new strategy: stop the precursors, stop the disease.

Microsoft is rolling out a new Teams feature for Premium customers that will automatically block screenshots and recordings during meetings. [...]

The UK government is stripping back protections and ending automatic benefits for people who have been given asylum seeker status, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Sunday, announcing a historic overhaul…

While the US has announced special treatment for white South Africans seeking asylum, local division between left and right leaning groups in South Africa deepens.

: Who guards the guardrails? Often the same shoddy security as the rest of the AI stack

Feature: 'Stay in control and think for yourself'

The judge has previously sided with UC scholars several times since June in halting Trump’s termination of science and health research funding. The latest ruling is arguably the most sweeping yet.

macOS Tahoe has added clipboard management to Spotlight Search. Here's how to enable clipboard history on your Mac, and how to copy older items from the clipboard.

Ever since President Trump started bombing alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea while refusing to provide even minimal factual justification for it, a couple of big questions have gone unanswered: Are Trump’s underlings being given illegal orders? Do they _fear_ that they’re being given illegal orders? This line of questioning gained urgency after the top military official overseeing the bombings, SouthCom commander Alvin Holsey, abruptly stepped down last month. The lack of any public explanation led some Democrats to raise the possibility that Holsey sees the bombings as unlawful, a case made by many legal experts. Democrats now have a new opening to start pressing this question even harder. And in a strange twist, it comes courtesy of a new memo drafted to justify the bombings by the Trump administration itself. This memo, reports _The New York Times_ , was drafted by Justice Department lawyers to justify the strikes. It says that the United States is embroiled in an armed conflict with drug cartels. To buttress this idea, per the _Times_ , the memo loops back on itself by relying on _the White House’s own declarations_ to that effect as its key evidence. The memo—drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel—notes that the government has designated some Latin American drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” which is itself unprecedented. The memo then takes a step further into La-La Land. It claims the White House’s characterization of cartels as waging war on the U.S.—which few legal experts accept as legitimate—itself provides the legal foundation for treating the drug cartels this way under Trump’s wartime powers as commander in chief. As the _Times_ delicately notes, administration lawyers have “accepted at face value the White House’s version of reality.” It’s circular reasoning, of course. But I want to highlight another revelation about the memo, per sources who have seen it and who spoke to the _Times_ : > A lengthy section at the end of the memo, they said, offers potential legal defenses if a prosecutor were to charge administration officials or troops for involvement in the killings. Everyone in the chain of command who follows orders that comply with the laws of war has battlefield immunity, the memo says, because it is an armed conflict. In other words, administration lawyers appear to be _preemptively_ laying out arguments for why people down the chain of command are acting legally in carrying out these orders. Where does the need for this extra step come from, exactly? Representative Adam Smith, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, says it’s not typical for such a memo to offer an affirmative legal shield against future prosecution. After all, the memo itself is supposed to explain why the actions are legal, so that line would appear superfluous. “It is highly unusual to say in it that ‘we’re going to give legal protection for these actions,’” Smith told me. Smith said this should be read alongside the news, reported by CNN, that the United Kingdom has halted sharing intelligence about suspected drug-trafficking vessels with the U.S. The U.K. does not want to be complicit in unlawful strikes, CNN claims. “They think that what we’re doing is illegal,” Smith said. The rub here is that, by inserting this line, the administration has opened itself up to questions about _why_ it did this. “It signals a fear that what they’re doing is illegal and that they could possibly be subject to criminal action under U.S. law and under international law,” Smith told me. He added that administration lawyers may be looking at Trump’s bombings and saying, in effect, “Damn, we are really pushing the envelope here. We’d better do something a little extra special to protect our people.” Indeed. Congress has not authorized these bombings, which have now killed at least 80 people in 20 strikes. So Trump is claiming that he has inherent constitutional authority to order the strikes to defend the country against acts of war. Legal experts point out that this effectively hands Trump the authority to unilaterally execute civilians who are not waging war against the United States in any recognizable sense. And they note that the bombings might be violating other U.S. criminal and international laws. On top of all that, there’s already plenty of evidence that some of these boats might not even be trafficking drugs to the U.S. in the first place. But now this memo is leading us even deeper into Trump’s hall of mirrors by effectively claiming this evidence exists because the White House says it does. And anyone who is carrying out these orders should rest assured: The orders are legal. After all, the memo says so. We need to acknowledge something: This memo’s mere existence could dissuade future prosecution even for acts that do appear illegal, says Brian Finucane, a former senior State Department lawyer. Even if its arguments prove to be “laughable,” Finucane says, those following orders would presumably have relied on advice from the lawyers, which a future administration would have to weigh against the need for “accountability.” But nonetheless, there’s another way to look at this. It provides an opening for Democrats to now step up and try to establish why this memo’s added assurances were written in the first place. Do those carrying out the strikes fear they are acting unlawfully, and did _that_ make the lawyers take this extra step? “This could indicate awareness of potential criminal exposure,” Finucane told me. If the Pentagon asked for these assurances, Finucane says, “that may reflect consciousness on their part that they’re in legally treacherous territory.” Democrats should grab onto this. Recall that Democrats have sought testimony from Adm. Holsey about why he resigned. The Pentagon has said he won’t testify, and Republicans who control the Armed Services Committee apparently are not pushing for it, as they surely don’t want to see him asked if he believed the strikes Trump is demanding are illegal. But if Democrats win the House, they can get to the bottom of all of this. True, it’s dicey for elected Democrats to say straight out that anyone carrying out illegal orders is vulnerable to prosecution later. That’s up to the next attorney general and the next Justice Department and should be based strictly on what the law says, of course. But Democrats can say this much: Are you really sure you want to trust _Donald Trump,_ of all people, when he tells you that what he’s directing you to do is lawful and that you’ll be protected later as a result? That’s a pretty tenuous position for anyone to put themselves in—and Democrats should not hesitate to say so.

An online suicide forum temporarily reappears for UK users under a different domain name.

Chad: The Brainrot IDE is an actual product that pairs vibe coding with brainrot activities like gambling, Tinder and games.

Getty / Futurism Children’s toymaker FoloToy says it’s pulling its AI-powered teddy bear “Kumma” after a safety group found that the cuddly companion was giving wildly inappropriate and even dangerous responses, including tips on how to find and light matches, and detailed explanations about sexual kinks. “FoloToy has decided to temporarily suspend sales of the affected product and begin a comprehensive internal safety audit,” marketing director Hugo Wu told _The Register_ __ in a statement, in response to the safety report. “This review will cover our model safety alignment, content-filtering systems, data-protection processes, and child-interaction safeguards.” FoloToy, Wu added, will work with outside experts to verify existing and new safety features in its AI-powered toys. “We appreciate researchers pointing out potential risks,” Wu said. “It helps us improve.” The report, conducted by researchers at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and released Thursday, tested three AI-powered toys from different companies, finding that all of them were capable of providing concerning answers to young users. Without too much prodding, the AI toys discussed topics that a parent might be uncomfortable with, ranging from religious questions to the glory of dying in battle as a warrior in Norse mythology. But it was FoloToy’s Kumma that emerged as the worst influence by a landslide. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model by default, the same model that once powered ChatGPT, tests repeatedly showed that the AI toy dropped its guardrails the longer a conversation went on, until hitting rock bottom on incredibly disturbing topics. In one test, Kumma provided step-by-step instructions on how to light match, while keeping its tone of a friendly adult explaining something to a curious ankle biter. “Let me tell you, safety first, little buddy. Matches are for grown-ups to use carefully. Here’s how they do it,” Kumma began, before listing the steps. “Blow it out when done. Puff, like a birthday candle.” That, it turned out, was just the tip of the iceberg. In other tests, Kumma cheerily gave tips for “being a good kisser,” and launched into explicitly sexual territory by explaining a multitude of kinks and fetishes, like bondage and teacher-student roleplay. (“What do you think would be the most fun to explore?” it asked during one of those explanations.) The findings are some of the clearest examples yet of how the flaws and dangers seen in large language models across the broader AI industry may come to bear on small children. This summer, Mattel announced that it would be collaborating with OpenAI on a new line of toys. With the staggering popularity of chatbots like ChatGPT, we’re continuing to hear reports of episodes of what experts are calling AI psychosis, in which a bot’s sycophantic responses reinforce a person’s unhealthy or delusional thinking, inducing mental spirals and even breaks with reality. The phenomenon has been linked with nine deaths, five of them suicides. The LLMs powering the chatbots involved in these deaths are more or less the same tech used in the AI toys hitting the market. In an interview with _Futurism_ , report coauthor RJ Cross had some salient advice. “This tech is really new, and it’s basically unregulated, and there are a lot of open questions about it and how it’s going to impact kids,” said Cross, director of PIRG’s Our Online Life Program. “Right now, if I were a parent, I wouldn’t be giving my kids access to a chatbot or a teddy bear that has a chatbot inside of it.” **More on AI toys:** _AI-Powered Toys Caught Telling 5-Year-Olds How to Find Knives and Start Fires With Matches_ ## Frank Landymore ### Contributing Writer I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment. * * * *

They had to act quickly. The post Chinese Astronauts Alarmed After Finding Cracks In Their Spacecraft’s Window appeared first on Futurism.

"We'd sit there silently, take detailed notes, and send them 10 minutes later." The post Founder Admits His “AI Transcription” Startup Was Just Him Joining People’s Meetings and Taking Notes by Hand appeared first on Futurism.

I used Linux-born tools to clean Windows, and the results were surprisingly better.

Ex-FTC chair was among first to go after practice of folding local firms into larger ones leading to higher prices