Technology

Pocket will be shutting down on July 8, 2025. This is very disappointing as I love the compatibility with my Kobo.

i am tempted so strongly to build a FOSS laptop, with either an ARM or RISCV processor, and a model f ssk. you can buy brand new model f's from modelfkeyboards.com, but they're like $400.

it would be so dope to build something like that, with maybe a 3d-printed case, but i can't justify that sort-of investment on a whim, lol.

please, help me justify a very, very poor financial decision.

Microsoft has quietly implemented a policy blocking employee emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “genocide” on its internal Exchange servers, according to No Azure for Apartheid, a group of pro-Palestine Microsoft employees. The automated filter, which silently prevents such emails from reaching recipients was first detected on Wednesday—just after Microsoft’s Build developer conference faced repeated disruptions by the activist group.

Microsoft has been rocked by internal dissent over its collaboration with the Israeli military and government amid the ongoing assault on Gaza. The company has faced disruptions to its events, including protests from employees over its provision of cloud services and other critical infrastructure used by the Israeli military.

Now, the company appears to be tightening its grip on internal discourse. The terms “Israel” and “P4lestine” do not trigger a block, the group said. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yeah I know everyone knows by now, AI is bad and all that but lots of people are about to get fucking LAID OFF in the film industry with this./

China is set to launch a new high-altitude unmanned aircraft capable of releasing up to 100 kamikaze drones simultaneously, in what military observers say could mark a significant advancement in drone warfare technology. The aircraft, named Jiu Tan, which translates to “high sky,” was developed by Shaanxi Unmanned Equipment Technology and is designed to enhance the operational reach of the Chinese air force.

The aircraft’s most notable capability is its ability to deploy large-scale drone swarms mid-flight, potentially overwhelming enemy defenses by sheer volume and unpredictability. State-released video footage simulated the dramatic visual of a synchronized UAV launch sequence.

Drone swarms offer strategic advantages in surveillance, intelligence gathering, and real-time reconnaissance, particularly in contested regions such as the Taiwan Strait. Analysts warn that such a capability could play a central role in a future conflict scenario between China and Taiwan.

In addition to drone launches, the Jiu Tan can also be equipped with cruise missiles and air-to-air weapons like the PL-12E, further expanding its offensive potential.

Traditional autoregressive language models generate text sequentially, one token at a time, leading to slower outputs with limited coherence and quality.

Diffusion models are an alternative approach. Instead of direct prediction, they iteratively refine noise, enabling faster generation, dynamic error correction, and greater control. This makes them particularly effective for editing tasks, including in math and code.

https://github.com/ML-GSAI/LLaDA

had a long-running transcode script running on my t440p while closed -- sustained 90+ C for over a day. speakers are fucked now... lmao

guess who needs to go on ebay again

After 2,5 years of intensive research and programming efforts, the entire Openwebsearch.eu project team is excited to grant access to its pilot of the first-ever federated pan-European Open Web Index (OWI).

From June onward, commercial and scientific development teams of any size as well as interested individuals are welcome to access and make use of almost a petabyte (and growing) of open web data under a general research license or – upon request – under a designated commercial license as well.

Given that the European Commission has launched the InvestAI initiative to mobilize €200 billion of investment in artificial intelligence, the Open Web Index comes with perfect timing.

The OpenWebSearch.eu consortium actively calls early adopters to pioneer innovative projects surrounding vertical web search, argumentative search, LLM applications including RAG and more.

“The OWI symbolizes a first step towards true European digital sovereignty and is a fundamental step in paving the way for a comprehensive open European AI landscape.“ says Community Manager Ursula Gmelch and further:

“Our goal behind this initial pilot phase is to onboard a range of projects from diverse domains to get early feedback in. We look forward to users confirming the quality and value in current functionalities and/or helping us pivot in such ways that real market demands can be met and further expanded upon.“

An official kick-off event will be hosted on 6 June from 10 am to 12 am CEST via Zoom.

Registration to the event is open under the following link:

https://cscfi.zoom.us/meeting/register/eATIpDQ5TZidh4Jzkim6FQ#/registration

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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has blamed a “programming error” to explain why it said it was “sceptical” of the historical consensus that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, days after the AI came under fire for bombarding users with the far-right conspiracy theory of “white genocide” in South Africa.

Last week, Grok was asked to weigh in on the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust. It said: “Historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. However, I’m skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives.”

This week, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee moved forward with a proposal in its budget reconciliation bill to impose a ten-year preemption of state AI regulation—essentially saying only Congress, not state legislatures, can place safeguards on AI for the next decade.

We strongly oppose this. We’ve talked before about why federal preemption of stronger state privacy laws hurts everyone. Many of the same arguments apply here. For one, this would override existing state laws enacted to mitigate against emerging harms from AI use. It would also keep states, which have been more responsive on AI regulatory issues, from reacting to emerging problems.

Finally, it risks freezing any regulation on the issue for the next decade—a considerable problem given the pace at which companies are developing the technology.

The GOP’s budget reconciliation bill includes a ban on state-level artificial intelligence regulations that could undermine efforts in several states to rein in pricing consultants like RealPage, a company that helps landlords use AI to “optimize” rent hikes.

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Republicans’ massive artificial intelligence giveaway in their must-pass budget reconciliation bill could kill crackdowns on real estate management company RealPage for raising rents and contributing to the country’s housing crisis. The move comes after RealPage drastically scaled up its lobbying efforts in Washington.

The language in the bill amounts to a ten-year ban on state governments passing any new regulations on artificial intelligence technology. According to congressional staffers and outside policy advocates monitoring the reconciliation package, that section would apply to the growing industry of pricing consultants using AI tools across various sectors, the most powerful player being RealPage.

RealPage, which offers an “analytics” platform for landlords, is currently facing a bipartisan crackdown in a number of states for helping landlords “optimize” rent increases. Those reforms would be preemptively nullified if the current language in the budget bill makes it into the final version. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted on an initial markup of the bill yesterday afternoon.

RealPage has been hit with a torrent of class action lawsuits since 2022 for allegedly facilitating a price-fixing cartel among landlords, including an active antitrust case from the Department of Justice.

In response to these threats, RealPage has dramatically staffed up its Washington lobbying team...