Even more oddities spotted in the news

[robkelk]

I do not recommend visiting Aiken, South Carolina, USA in order to get insect-themed superpowers.

Wasp nest at US nuclear site tests ten times over safe radiation limit

[Norgarth]

... Anybody remember the name of those mutant wasps from Fallout?

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, there was Steve, Walter, Joey... <grin>

I think you're thinking of "cazadores".

[Bob Schroeck]

Cloudflare announces that Perplexity's crawlers ignore and actively attempt to circumvent efforts to keep it from trawling websites.

[robkelk]

Meet President Willian H. Brusen from the great state of Onegon

tl;dr: To nobody's surprise, generative AI sucks at text in images. It handles text as text just fine, but ask it to draw pictures of letter-forms and it usually collapses.

Some of the generated images:


Maps of the USA, as drawn by generative AI.


GPT-5 ChatGPT:




GPT-5 canvas:




Bing Image Creator:




Claude LLM:




Google Gemini:





James Bond actor infographics, as drawn by generative AI.

GPT-5:



(Hmmmmm... It might be worthwhile putting this one on ATT's page for the James Bond movies. AI-generated images are PD in the USA...)


Bing Image Creator:




Google Gemini:

[robkelk]

Air Force buying two Tesla Cybertrucks so it can learn to destroy them

My immediate reaction before reading the article was "Don't they self-destruct?"

[Norgarth]

Air Force buying two Tesla Cybertrucks so it can learn to destroy them

My immediate reaction before reading the article was "Don't they self-destruct?"

Yeah, but like the Cybertruck in so many other ways, not reliably.  

[classicdrogn]

They do have that whole Bond villain "awesome but impractical" thing going on, like so many of Musk's (or COBRA Commander's) projects.

[robkelk]

Jellyfish shut down Gravelines nuclear power plant

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AOL to pull the plug on its dial-up service

Waitaminute... AOL still has dial-up?

There are plenty of commercial applications where a reliable, low-bandwidth connection is more than adequate. Some users in remote, rural areas might have few other options.

There is that. They'll need to find another supplier after September 30.

[robkelk]

Answerman and the Case of the Phantom Dubber

Now, Dear Reader, this isn't just about one overzealous fan and their digital dubbing dreams. This is about the fundamental breakdown of the systems that are supposed to protect creators, voice actors, and copyright holders in the digital age.

No tl;dr -- it's worthwhile reading the entire article.

[robkelk]

Thousands of music fans say iconic rock track is 'best song in history'

Music enthusiasts from around the globe have united to debate what they consider the greatest song of all time. With countless tracks to pick from, a viral X post has sparked widespread discussion, with many pointing to a rock and roll classic as music's ultimate masterpiece.

Don't you just love clickbait articles? </sarcasm>

First, it was a self-selected poll. Second, it was on the service formerly known as Twitter. So, yeah, sample bias.

Can you guess the song? Two hints:

• It's on a 1975 album, but isn't the title track.
  
• Doug Sangnoir has used it in-story for a power.
  

Spoiler

[robkelk]

Developer jailed for taking down employer's network with kill switch malware

All the fancy firewalls, AI tools, and malware monitoring services won't protect you if the person running them goes rogue.

[robkelk]

AI Darwin Awards launch to celebrate spectacularly bad deployments

As the organizers say: "Why stop at individual acts of spectacular stupidity when you can scale them to global proportions with machine learning?"

[Bob Schroeck]

Bill and Ted are waiting for Godot on Broadway.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

Software update shoves ads onto Samsung’s pricey fridges - Ars Technica

[classicdrogn]

Le gasp! Who could possibly have seen that coming!?[/sarcasm]

[Bob Schroeck]

A massive M&M spill shuts down I-80 in northern New Jersey.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

"MrBeast defends trapping man in burning building for $500,000" (BBC)

[Bob Schroeck]

It's the end of an era -- AOL ends dial-up internet service.

[Bob Schroeck]

The baby from the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind loses his case to have it declared child pornography.

[robkelk]

UK Power Networks replacing household gas-powered boilers with Raspberry Pi server farms

This will equip participating households with solar and battery systems, while one-third will also receive the "HeatHub" system - a compact datacenter roughly the size of a large heat pump that replaces traditional gas boilers.

This phase of the project will collect data to support the scaling up of SHIELD, with UKPN aiming to deploy 100,000 systems a year by 2030.

[Matrix Dragon]

"MrBeast defends trapping man in burning building for $500,000" (BBC)

Fucking hell, every time news about that man crosses my screen, I am reminded what a soulless piece of filth he is, and every time he oozes his way out of consequences somehow.

[robkelk]

Rush Sets Reunion Tour for 2026; Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Discuss the ‘Difficult Decision’ of Finding a New Drummer After Neil Peart’s Death

Who's replacing Neil Peart? Somebody who toured with Jeff Beck, and has four solo albums and a website

[Bob Schroeck]

Department of Energy employee caught uploading nearly 200,000 explicit images to the DOE network to make "robot porn", is fired, loses his security clearance, and then complains he's facing "the Spanish Inquisition".

Well. I wasn't expecting that.

[robkelk]

Nobody ever does.

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St. Lawrence River being flooded in order to float some boats