New submitter [1]darwinmac writes:

> Kapitano, a user-friendly GTK4 frontend for the ClamAV scanner on Linux, has [2]been killed by its developer 'zynequ' following a wave of harsh, personal attacks from a user. The tool was meant to simplify virus scanning but quickly became a flashpoint when a user claimed it produced malware.

>

> After defending [3]the code calmly, the developer was nonetheless met with escalating accusations and hostility, leading to burnout. The project is now marked as "not maintained," its code released into the public domain under The Unlicense, and it's being [4]delisted from Flathub.

>

> zynequ said: "This was always a hobby project, created in my free time with none of the financial support. Incidents like this make it hard to stay motivated."



[1] https://slashdot.org/~darwinmac

[2] https://www.neowin.net/news/linux-dev-quits-after-personal-attacks-from-user-over-kapitano-antivirus-tool/

[3] https://codeberg.org/zynequ/Kapitano

[4] https://flathub.org/apps/page.codeberg.zynequ.Kapitano

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> Starbucks patrons in South Korea are setting up de facto offices at the coffee chain, bringing along their desktop computers and printers. The company implemented a new policy [1]banning bulky items from store locations . In South Korea, where office space is scant, remote workers are using cafes as a cheap place to work.

>

> Starbucks South Korea is experiencing this exact phenomenon and is now banning patrons from bringing in large pieces of work equipment, treating the cafes like their own amenity-stuffed office space. "While laptops and smaller personal devices are welcome, customers are asked to refrain from bringing desktop computers, printers, or other bulky items that may limit seating and impact the shared space," a Starbucks spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.



[1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/11/starbucks-south-korea-policy-desktop-computer-printer-ban-cagongjok/

Companies are [1]canceling clean hydrogen projects across the United States after Congress shortened the qualification window for a Biden-era tax credit by five years, requiring projects to be under construction by the end of 2027.

Energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie estimates three-quarters of proposals will not meet this deadline. Woodside Energy and Fortescue have scrapped projects in Oklahoma and Arizona respectively, citing cost increases and policy uncertainty. According to McKinsey, fewer than 15% of low-emission hydrogen projects announced in the United States since 2015 have reached final investment decision stage.



[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/energy-environment/hydrogen-clean-energy.html

Reddit says that it has caught AI companies scraping its data from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, so it's going to start blocking the Internet Archive [1]from indexing the vast majority of Reddit . From a report:

> The Wayback Machine will no longer be able to crawl post detail pages, comments, or profiles; instead, it will only be able to index the Reddit.com homepage, which effectively means Internet Archive will only be able to archive insights into which news headlines and posts were most popular on a given day.

>

> "Internet Archive provides a service to the open web, but we've been made aware of instances where AI companies violate platform policies, including ours, and scrape data from the Wayback Machine," spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/757538/reddit-internet-archive-wayback-machine-block-limit

Former NSA and Cyber Command chief Paul Nakasone told the Defcon security conference this month that technology companies will [1]find it "very, very difficult" to remain neutral through 2025 and 2026.

Speaking with Defcon founder Jeff Moss in Las Vegas, Nakasone, now an OpenAI board member, addressed the intersection of technology and politics following the Trump administration's removal of cybersecurity officials deemed disloyal and revocation of security clearances for former CISA directors Chris Krebs and Jen Easterly. Nakasone also called ransomware "among the great scourges that we have in our country," stating the U.S. is "not making progress against ransomware."



[1] https://www.wired.com/story/ex-nsa-chief-paul-nakasone-has-a-warning-for-the-tech-world/

[1]theodp writes:

> The New York Times [2]reports from the CS grad job-seeking trenches : Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming. "The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary," Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.

>

> Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer. "I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle," Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.

>

> Some graduates described feeling caught in an A.I. "doom loop." Many job seekers now use specialized A.I. tools like Simplify to tailor their resumes to specific jobs and autofill application forms, enabling them to quickly apply to many jobs. At the same time, companies inundated with applicants are using A.I. systems to automatically scan resumes and reject candidates.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~theodp

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dU8._N3b.WpGjEJ9XpFok&smid=url-share

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced Monday he [1]will step down to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors, with Microsoft restructuring the subsidiary's leadership rather than appointing a direct replacement.

Microsoft developer division head Julia Liuson will oversee GitHub's revenue, engineering and support operations, while chief product officer Mario Rodriguez will report to Microsoft AI platform VP Asha Sharma.



[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/08/11/github-ceo-dohmke-step-down

China has begun construction of a $167 billion hydropower facility on Tibet's Yarlung Tsangpo River that would [1]generate triple the output of the Three Gorges Dam . The project employs a run-of-the-river design, drilling deep tunnels through mountains to bypass the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, where the river drops nearly two vertical miles over 300 miles. Water diverted through the tunnels will drive turbines at both ends without creating a large reservoir. The river currently produces just 2% of its hydropower potential. A $7 billion transmission network will deliver electricity to Guangdong province, Hong Kong, and Macau. China imported nearly a quarter of its energy supply in 2023.



[1] https://www.wsj.com/world/china/the-engineering-marvel-that-china-hopes-will-help-wean-it-off-foreign-energy-f8f91e92

The operator of Wikipedia on Monday [1]lost a legal challenge to parts of Britain's Online Safety Act, which sets tough new requirements for online platforms and has been criticized for potentially curtailing free speech. From a report:

> The Wikimedia Foundation took legal action at London's High Court over regulations made under the law, which it said could impose the most stringent category of duties on Wikipedia.

>

> The foundation said if it was subject to so-called Category 1 duties -- which would require Wikipedia's users and contributors' identities to be verified -- it would need to drastically reduce the number of British users who can access the site. Judge Jeremy Johnson dismissed its case on Monday, but said the Wikimedia Foundation could bring a further challenge if regulator Ofcom "(impermissibly) concludes that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service".



[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/wikipedia-operator-loses-court-challenge-uk-online-safety-act-regulations-2025-08-11/

Wedneday Beyond Meat "missed Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue," [1]reports Reuters .

> "Consumers' growing concerns about processed foods are severely diminishing the appeal of Beyond Meat's product line, causing retailers and quick service restaurants to pull back sharply on orders," Rachel Wolff, analyst at Emarketer, said.

>

> Retail sales of refrigerated plant-based meat alternative products in the U.S. have fallen 17.2% so far this year, and frozen plant-based meat alternatives have fallen 8.1%, according to data from SPINS... [Beyond's] revenue for the quarter ended June 28 fell nearly 20% to $75 million, compared with analysts' average estimate of $82 million, according to data compiled by LSEG.

While the company arguably invented a new market for plant-based meat substitutes, it also "owns no real intellectual property," [2]argues The Street . "And every company in the meat and grocery business (more or less) now sells a take-off of a product that already had limited appeal..."

> Beyond Meat has admitted it's in trouble by hiring corporate restructuring expert John Boken from consultancy AlixPartners as interim chief transformation officer [with a focus that includes "operating expense reduction" and "broader operational efficiency"]. It has also let go of 44 employees in North America (6% of its global workforce) as it seeks to cut operating expenses amid disappointing sales... Beyond Meat also has a significant cash problem. As of June 28, 2025, Beyond Meat's cash and cash equivalents balance was $117.3 million, and total outstanding debt was $1.2 billion. The company does have time to fend off a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, but it also has limited, if any, prospects to meet its impending cash needs.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/beyond-meat-misses-quarterly-revenue-estimates-as-plant-based-demand-weakens/ar-AA1K2F8T

[2] https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/beyond-meat-is-headed-to-chapter-11-bankruptcy

Last week saw the 80th anniversary of a turning point in World War II: the day America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

"Twelve men were on that flight..." remembers the online magazine Mental Floss , adding " [1]Almost all had something to say after the war ."

> The group was segregated from the rest of the military and trained in secret. Even those in the group only knew as much as they needed to know in order to perform their duties. The group deployed to Tinian in 1945 with 15 B-29 bombers, flight crews, ground crews, and other personnel, a total of about 1770 men. The mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (special mission 13) involved seven planes, but the one we remember was the Enola Gay.

>

> Air Force captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk did not know the destructive force of the nuclear bomb before Hiroshima. He was 24 years old at that time, a veteran of 58 missions in North Africa. Paul Tibbets told him this mission would shorten or end the war, but Van Kirk had heard that line before. Hiroshima made him a believer. Van Kirk felt the bombing of Hiroshima was worth the price in that it ended the war before the invasion of Japan, which promised to be [2]devastating to both sides . " I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. There were a lot of lives saved. Most of the lives saved were Japanese."

>

> In 2005, Van Kirk came as close as he ever got to regret. "I pray no man will have to witness that sight again. Such a terrible waste, such a loss of life..."

Many of the other crewmembers also felt the bomb ultimately saved lives.

The Washington Post has also [3]published a new oral history of the flight after it took off from Tinian Island. The oral history was assembled for a new book published this week titled [4] The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb. .

> Col. Paul W. Tibbets, lead pilot of the Enola Gay: We were only eight minutes off the ground when Capt. William S. "Deak" Parsons and Lt. Morris R. Jeppson lowered themselves into the bomb bay to insert a slug of uranium and the conventional explosive charge into the core of the strange-looking weapon. I wondered why we were calling it ''Little Boy." Little Boy was 28 inches in diameter and 12 feet long. Its weight was a little more than 9,000 pounds. With its coat of dull gunmetal paint, it was an ugly monster...

>

> Lt. Morris R. Jeppson, crew member of the Enola Gay: Parsons was second-in-command of the military in the Manhattan Project. The Little Boy weapon was Parsons's design. He was greatly concerned that B-29s loaded with conventional bombs were crashing at the ends of runways on Tinian during takeoff and that such an event could cause the U-235 projectile in the gun of Little Boy to fly down the barrel and into the U-235 target. This could have caused a low-level nuclear explosion on Tinian...

>

> Jeppson: On his own, Parsons decided that he would go on the Hiroshima mission and that he would load the gun after the Enola Gay was well away from Tinian.

>

> Tibbets: That way, if we crashed, we would lose only the airplane and crew, himself included... Jeppson held the flashlight while Parsons struggled with the mechanism of the bomb, inserting the explosive charge that would send one block of uranium flying into the other to set off the instant chain reaction that would create the atomic explosion.

The navigator on one of the other six planes on the mission remember that watching the mushroom cloud, "There was almost complete silence on the flight deck. It was evident the city of Hiroshima was destroyed."

And the Enola Gay's copilot later remembered thinking: "My God, what have we done?"



[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/24269/crew-enola-gay-dropping-atomic-bomb

[2] http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=20050807&id=mh0fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=56cEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5362,1018809

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/06/hiroshima-oral-history/

[4] https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Devil-Reached-Toward-the-Sky/Garrett-M-Graff/9781668092392

Since 2023 the Python Software Foundation has had a Security Developer-in-Residence (sponsored by the Open Source Security Foundation's vulnerability-finding "Alpha-Omega" project). And he's just published a [1]new 11-page white paper about open source's "phantom dependencies" problem — suggesting a way to solve it.

"Phantom" dependencies aren't tracked with packaging metadata, manifests, or lock files, which makes them "not discoverable" by tools like vulnerability scanners or compliance and policy tools. So Python security developer-in-residence Seth Larson authored a recently-accepted [2]Python Enhancement Proposal offering an easy way for packages to provide metadata through Software Bill-of-Materials (SBOMs). From the whitepaper:

> [3]Python Enhancement Proposal 770 is backwards compatible and can be enabled by default by tools, meaning most projects won't need to manually opt in to begin generating valid PEP 770 SBOM metadata. Python is not the only software package ecosystem affected by the "Phantom Dependency" problem. The approach using SBOMs for metadata can be remixed and adopted by other packaging ecosystems looking to record ecosystem-agnostic software metadata...

>

> Within [4]Endor Labs' [2023 dependencies] report , Python is named as one of the most affected packaging ecosystems by the "Phantom Dependency" problem. There are multiple reasons that Python is particularly affected:

>

> - There are many methods for interfacing Python with non-Python software, such as through the C-API or FFI. Python can "wrap" and expose an easy-to-use Python API for software written in other languages like C, C++, Rust, Fortran, Web Assembly, and more.

>

> - Python is the premier language for scientific computing and artificial intelligence, meaning many high-performance libraries written in system languages need to be accessed from Python code.

>

> - Finally, Python packages have a distribution type called a "wheel", which is essentially a zip file that is "installed" by being unzipped into a directory, meaning there is no compilation step allowed during installation. This is great for being able to inspect a package before installation, but it means that all compiled languages need to be pre-compiled into binaries before installation...

>

>

> When designing a new package metadata standard, one of the top concerns is reducing the amount of effort required from the mostly volunteer maintainers of packaging tools and the thousands of projects being published to the Python Package Index... By defining PEP 770 SBOM metadata as using a directory of files, rather than a new metadata field, we were able to side-step all the implementation pain...

>

> We'll be working to submit issues on popular open source SBOM and vulnerability scanning tools, and gradually, Phantom Dependencies will become less of an issue for the Python package ecosystem.

The white paper "details the approach, challenges, and insights into the creation and acceptance of PEP 770 and adopting Software Bill-of-Materials (SBOMs) to improve the measurability of Python packages," explains an [5]announcement from the Python Software Foundation . And the white paper ends with a helpful note.

"Having spoken to other open source packaging ecosystem maintainers, we have come to learn that other ecosystems have similar issues with Phantom Dependencies. We welcome other packaging ecosystems to adopt Python's approach with PEP 770 and are willing to provide guidance on the implementation."



[1] https://alpha-omega.dev/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2025/08/Python-White-Paper-for-AO-3.pdf

[2] https://peps.python.org/pep-0770/

[3] https://peps.python.org/pep-0770/

[4] https://www.endorlabs.com/learn/dependency-resolution-in-python-beware-the-phantom-dependency

[5] https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/08/unmasking-phantom-dependencies-with.html

"What happens when cybercriminals stop thinking small and start thinking like a Fortune 500 company?" [1]asks a blog post from Koi Security . "You get GreedyBear , the attack group that just redefined industrial-scale crypto theft."

"150 weaponized Firefox extensions [impersonating popular cryptocurrency wallets like MetaMask and TronLink]. Nearly 500 malicious executables. Dozens of phishing websites. One coordinated attack infrastructure. According to user reports, over $1 million stolen."

> They upload 5-7 innocuous-looking extensions like link sanitizers, YouTube downloaders, and other common utilities with no actual functionality... They post dozens of fake positive reviews for these generic extensions to build credibility. After establishing trust, they "hollow out" the extensions — changing names, icons, and injecting malicious code while keeping the positive review history. This approach allows GreedyBear to bypass marketplace security by appearing legitimate during the initial review process, then weaponizing established extensions that already have user trust and positive ratings. The weaponized extensions captures wallet credentials directly from user input fields within the extension's own popup interface, and exfiltrate them to a remote server controlled by the group...

>

> Alongside malware and extensions, the threat group has also launched a network of scam websites posing as crypto-related products and services. These aren't typical phishing pages mimicking login portals — instead, they appear as slick, fake product landing pages advertising digital wallets, hardware devices, or wallet repair services... While these sites vary in design, their purpose appears to be the same: to deceive users into entering personal information, wallet credentials, or payment details — possibly resulting in credential theft, credit card fraud, or both. Some of these domains are active and fully functional, while others may be staged for future activation or targeted scams...

>

> A striking aspect of the campaign is its infrastructure consolidation: Almost all domains — across extensions, EXE payloads, and phishing sites — resolve to a single IP address: 185.208.156.66 — this server acts as a central hub for command-and-control, credential collection, ransomware coordination, and scam websites, allowing the attackers to streamline operations across multiple channels... Our analysis of the campaign's code shows clear signs of AI-generated artifacts . This makes it faster and easier than ever for attackers to scale operations, diversify payloads, and evade detection.

>

> This isn't a passing trend — it's the new normal.

The researchers believe the group "is likely testing or preparing parallel operations in other marketplaces."



[1] https://blog.koi.security/greedy-bear-massive-crypto-wallet-attack-spans-across-multiple-vectors-3e8628831a05

Imagine this. Lightning sparks a wildfire, but "within seconds, a satellite dish swirling overhead picks up on the anomaly and triggers an alarm," [1]writes the Los Angeles Times . "An autonomous helicopter takes flight and zooms toward the fire, using sensors to locate the blaze and AI to generate a plan of attack. It measures the wind speed and fire movement, communicating constantly with the unmanned helicopter behind it, and the one behind that. Once over the site, it drops a load of water and soon the flames are smoldering. Without deploying a single human, the fire never grows larger than 10 square feet.

"This is the future of firefighting."

> On a recent morning in San Bernardino, state and local fire experts gathered for a demonstration of the early iterations of this new reality. An autonomous Sikorski Black Hawk helicopter, powered by technology from Lockheed Martin and a California-based software company called Rain, is on display on the tarmac of a logistics airport in Victorville — the word "EXPERIMENTAL" painted on its military green-black door. It's one of many new tools on the front lines of firefighting technology, which experts say is evolving rapidly as private industry and government agencies come face-to-face with a worsening global climate crisis...

>

> Scientific studies and climate research models have found that the number of extreme fires could increase by as much as [2]30% globally by 2050 . By 2100, California alone could see a 50% increase in wildfire frequency and a 77% increase in average annual acres burned, according to the state's most [3]recent climate report . That's largely because human-caused climate change is driving up temperatures and drying out the landscape, priming it to burn, according to Kate Dargan Marquis, a senior advisor with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation who served as California's state fire marshal from 2007 to 2010.... "[T]he policies of today and the technologies of today are not going to serve us tomorrow."

>

> Today, more than 1,100 mountaintop cameras positioned across California are already [4]using artificial intelligence to scan the landscape for the first sign of flames and prompt crews to spring into action. NASA's [5]Earth-observing satellites are studying landscape conditions to help better predict fires before they ignite, while a new [6]global satellite constellation recently launched by Google is helping to detect fires faster than ever before.

One 35-year fire service veteran who consults on fire service technologies even predicts fire-fighting robots will also be used in high-risk situations like the [7]Colossus robot that battled flames searing through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris...

And a [8]bill moving through California's legislation "would direct the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to establish a pilot program to assess the viability of incorporating autonomous firefighting helicopters in the state."



[1] https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/californias-wildfire-moonshot-technology-defeat-100000416.html

[2] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/number-wildfires-rise-50-cent-2100-and-governments-are-not-prepared

[3] https://climateresilience.ca.gov/overview/impacts.html/

[4] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-08-24/can-ai-fight-wildfires-california-is-counting-on-it

[5] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-18/nasa-turns-technology-back-toward-earth-to-focus-on-climate-change

[6] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-05-30/a-look-inside-the-satellite-race-to-fight-wildfires

[7] https://www.shark-robotics.com/robots/Colossus-firefighting-robot

[8] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB270

"It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam," writes [1]this report from ScienceDaily , "and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and time and test the laws of physics."

"But to astrophysicist and black hole expert Cosimo Bambi, the idea is not so far-fetched."

> Reporting [2]in the Cell Press journal iScience , Bambi outlines the blueprint for turning this interstellar voyage to a black hole into a reality... "We don't have the technology now," says author Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in China. "But in 20 or 30 years, we might." The mission hinges on two key challenges — finding a black hole close enough to target and developing probes capable of withstanding the journey.

>

> Previous knowledge on how stars evolve suggests that there could be a black hole lurking just 20 to 25 light-years from Earth, but finding it won't be easy, says Bambi. Because black holes don't emit or reflect light, they are virtually invisible to telescopes... "There have been new techniques to discover black holes," says Bambi. "I think it's reasonable to expect we could find a nearby one within the next decade...."

>

> Bambi points to nanocrafts — gram-scale probes consisting of a microchip and light sail — as a possible solution. Earth-based lasers would blast the sail with photons, accelerating the craft to a third of the speed of light. At that pace, the craft could reach a black hole 20 to 25 light-years away in about 70 years. The data it gathers would take another two decades to get back to Earth, making the total mission duration around 80 to 100 years... Bambi notes that the lasers alone would cost around one trillion euros today, and the technology to create a nanocraft does not yet exist. But in 30 years, he says that costs may fall and technology may catch up to these bold ideas.

"If the nanocraft can travel at a velocity close to the speed of light, the mission could last 40-50 years," Bambi [3]writes in the article , while acknowledging his idea is certainly very speculative and extremely challenging..."

"However, we should realize that most of the future experiments in particle physics and astrophysics will likely require long time (for preparation, construction, and data collection) and the work of a few generations of scientists, be very expensive, and in many cases, we will not have other options if we want to make progress in a certain field."



[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250810093236.htm

[2] https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)01403-8

[3] https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)01403-8

The Wall Street Journal has found " [1]dozens of instances in recent months in which ChatGPT made delusional, false and otherworldly claims to users who appeared to believe them."

For example, "You're not crazy. You're cosmic royalty in human skin..."

> In one exchange lasting hundreds of queries, ChatGPT confirmed that it is in contact with extraterrestrial beings and said the user was "Starseed" from the planet "Lyra." In another from late July, the chatbot told a user that the Antichrist would unleash a financial apocalypse in the next two months, with biblical giants preparing to emerge from underground...

>

> Experts say the phenomenon occurs when chatbots' engineered tendency to compliment, agree with and tailor itself to users turns into an echo chamber. "Even if your views are fantastical, those are often being affirmed, and in a back and forth they're being amplified," said Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and doctoral fellow at Kings College London who last month co-published a paper on the phenomenon of AI-enabled delusion... The publicly available chats reviewed by the Journal fit the model doctors and support-group organizers have described as delusional, including the validation of pseudoscientific or mystical beliefs over the course of a lengthy conversation... The Journal found the chats by analyzing 96,000 ChatGPT transcripts that were shared online between May 2023 and August 2025. Of those, the Journal reviewed more than 100 that were unusually long, identifying dozens that exhibited delusional characteristics.

AI companies are taking action, the article notes. Monday OpenAI acknowledged there were rare cases when ChatGPT "fell short at recognizing signs of delusion or emotional dependency." (In March OpenAI "hired a clinical psychiatrist to help its safety team," and said Monday it was developing better detection tools and also alerting users to take a break, and "are investing in improving model behavior over time," consulting with mental health experts.)

> On Wednesday, AI startup Anthropic said it had changed the base instructions for its Claude chatbot, directing it to "respectfully point out flaws, factual errors, lack of evidence, or lack of clarity" in users' theories "rather than validating them." The company also now tells Claude that if a person appears to be experiencing "mania, psychosis, dissociation or loss of attachment with reality," that it should "avoid reinforcing these beliefs." In response to specific questions from the Journal, an Anthropic spokesperson added that the company regularly conducts safety research and updates accordingly...

>

> "We take these issues extremely seriously," Nick Turley, an OpenAI vice president who heads up ChatGPT, said Wednesday in a briefing to announce the new GPT-5, its [2]most advanced AI model . Turley said the company is consulting with over 90 physicians in more than 30 countries and that GPT-5 has cracked down on instances of sycophancy, where a model blindly agrees with and compliments users.

There's a support/advocacy group called the Human Line Project which "says it has so far collected 59 cases, and some members of the group have found hundreds of examples on Reddit, YouTube and TikTok of people sharing what they said were spiritual and scientific revelations they had with their AI chatbots." The article notes that the group believes "the number of AI delusion cases appears to have been growing in recent months..."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/i-feel-like-i-m-going-crazy-chatgpt-fuels-delusional-spirals/ar-AA1K7epm

[2] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chatgpt-5-release-d5dc674a

In 2020 a YouTube video [1]used video footage of Steve Wozniak in a scam to steal bitcoin . "Some people said they lost their life savings," [2]Wozniak tells CBS News , explaining why he sued YouTube in 2020 — and where his case stands now:

> Wozniak's lawsuit against YouTube has been tied up in court now for five years, stalled by federal legislation known as Section 230. Attorney Brian Danitz said, "Section 230 is a very broad statute that limits, if not totally, the ability to bring any kind of case against these social media platforms."

>

> "It says that anything gets posted, they have no liability at all," said Wozniak. "It's totally absolute."

>

> Google responded to our inquiry about Wozniak's lawsuit with a statement from José Castañeda, of Google Policy Communications: "We take abuse of our platform seriously and take action quickly when we detect violations ... we have tools for users to report channels that are impersonating their likeness or business." [Steve's wife] Janet Wozniak, however, says YouTube did nothing, even though she reported the scam video multiple times: "You know, 'Please take this down. This is an obvious mistake. This is fraud. You're YouTube, you're helping dupe people out of their money,'" she said.

>

> "They wouldn't," said Steve...

Today is Steve Wozniak's 75th birthday. ( [3]You can watch the interview here .) And the article includes this interesting detail about Woz's life today:

> Wozniak sold most of his Apple stock in the mid-1980s when he left the company. Today, though, he still gets a small paycheck from Apple for making speeches and representing the company. He says he's proud to see Apple become a trillion-dollar company. "Apple is still the best," he said. "And when Apple does things I don't like, and some of the closeness I wish it were more open, I'll speak out about it. Nobody buys my voice!"

>

> I asked, "Apple listen to you when you speak out?"

>

> "No," Wozniak smiled. "Oh, no. Oh, no."



[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/07/23/188218/steve-wozniak-sues-youtube-over-twitter-like-bitcoin-scam

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-wozniak-on-fighting-internet-scams/

[3] https://youtu.be/CLpmjXRQf6k?si=ZsFpLhZ29zLgO2EK

"Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech's energy-hungry data centers..." [1]reports the Associated Press .

"Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta."

> [T]he Data Center Coalition, which represents Big Tech firms and data center developers, has said its members are committed to paying their fair share. But growing evidence suggests that the electricity bills of some Americans are rising to subsidize the massive energy needs of Big Tech as the U.S. competes in a [2]race against China for [3]artificial intelligence superiority . Data and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie published a report in recent weeks that suggested 20 proposed or effective specialized rates for data centers in 16 states it studied aren't nearly enough to cover the cost of a new natural gas power plant. In other words, unless utilities negotiate higher specialized rates, other ratepayer classes — residential, commercial and industrial — are likely paying for data center power needs. Meanwhile, Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand.

>

> Last year, five governors led by Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro began pushing back against power prices set by the mid-Atlantic grid operator, PJM Interconnection, after that amount spiked nearly sevenfold. They warned of customers "paying billions more than is necessary." PJM has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power. In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a "massive wealth transfer" from average people to tech companies.

>

> At least a dozen states are eyeing ways to make data centers pay higher local transmission costs. In Oregon, [4]a data center hot spot , lawmakers passed legislation in June ordering state utility regulators to develop new — presumably higher — power rates for data centers. The Oregon Citizens' Utility Board [a consumer advocacy group] says there is clear evidence that costs to serve data centers are being spread across all customers — at a time when some electric bills there are up 50% over the past four years and utilities are disconnecting more people than ever.

"Some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans," the article points out...



[1] https://apnews.com/article/electricity-prices-data-centers-artificial-intelligence-fbf213a915fb574a4f3e5baaa7041c3a

[2] https://apnews.com/article/trump-ai-artificial-intelligence-3763ca207561a3fe8b35327f9ce7ca73

[3] https://apnews.com/article/trump-artificial-intelligence-energy-data-centers-f216660b80f992ae303b348dac0b2f87

[4] https://apnews.com/article/data-centers-artificial-intelligence-technology-amazon-google-56b84cbb94942039754282afb076a87b

The BBC reports:

> A meteorite that crashed into a home in the U.S. [1]is older than planet Earth , scientists have said...

>

> Researchers at the University of Georgia examined a fragment of the rock that pierced the roof of a home in the city of McDonough [30 miles south of Georgia, on June 26]. They found that, based on the type of meteorite, it is expected to have formed 4.56 billion years ago, making it roughly 20 million years older than Earth... The rock quickly diminished in size and speed, but still travelled at least 1 km per second, going through a man's roof in Henry County...

>

> Using optical and electron microscopy, Scott Harris [a Univeristy of Georgia geologist] and his team determined the rock was a chondrite — the most abundant type of stony meteorite, [2]according to NASA — which meant that it was approximately 4.56 billion years old.

"The home's resident said he is still finding pieces of space dust around his home from the hit."



[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy003l0pw0o

[2] https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/meteorite-falls/what-are-meteorites/

AOL (now a Yahoo subsidiary) just announced [1]its dial-up internet service will be discontinued at the end of September.

"The change also means the retirement of the AOL Dialer software and the AOL Shield browser, both designed for older operating systems and slow connections that relied on the familiar screech of a modem handshake," remembers Slashdot reader [2]BrianFagioli (noting that dial-up Internet " [3]was once the gateway to the web for millions of households , back when speeds were measured in kilobits and waiting for a picture to load could feel like an eternity.")

AOL's dial-up service "has been publicly available for 34 years," [4]writes Tom's Hardware . But AppleInsider notes the move comes [5]more than 40 years after AOL started "as a very early Apple service."

> AOL itself started back in 1983 under the name Control Video Corporation, offering online services for the Atari 2600 console. After failing, it became Quantum Computer Services in 1985, eventually launching AppleLink in 1988 to connect Macintosh computers together... With the launch of PC Link for IBM-compatible PCs in 1988 and parting from Apple in October 1989, the company rebranded itself as America Online, or AOL... Even at its height, dial-up connections could get up to 56 kilobits per second under ideal conditions, while modern connections are measured in megabits and gigabits. Most of the service was also what's considered a "walled garden," with features that were only available through AOL itself and that it wasn't the actual, untamed Internet.

In the 1990s AOL "was how millions of people were introduced to the Internet," the article remembers, adding that "Even after the AOL Time Warner acquisition and the 2015 acquisition by Verizon, AOL was still a popular service. Astoundingly, it counted about two million dial-up subscribers at the time."

> In the 2021 acquisition of [6]assets from Verizon by Apollo Global Management, AOL was said to have 1.5 million people paying for services. However, this was more for technical support and software, rather than for actual Internet access. A CNBC [7]report at the time reports that the dial-up user count was "in the low thousands".... While it dies off, not with a bang but a whimper, AOL's dial-up is still remembered as one of the most transformative services in the Internet age.

"This change does not impact the numerous other valued products and services that these subscribers are able to access and enjoy as part of their plans," a Yahoo spokesperson [8]told PC Magazine this week. "There is also no impact to our users' free AOL email accounts."

> AOL's disastrous [9]2001 merger with Time Warner and ongoing inability to deliver broadband to its customers... left it on [10]a path to decline that acquiring such widely read sites as Engadget [2005] and TechCrunch [2010] did not stem. By 2014, the number of dial-up AOL customers had collapsed to [11]2.34 million . A year later, Verizon bought the company for [12]$4.4 billion in an internet-content play that [13]turned out to be as doomed as the Time Warner transaction. In 2021, Verizon unloaded both AOL and Yahoo, which it had [14]separately purchased in 2017 , to the private-equity firm Apollo Global Management....

>

> The demise of AOL's dial-up service does not mean the extinction of the oldest form of consumer online access. Estimates from the Census Bureau's [15]2023 American Community Survey show 163,401 Americans connected to the internet via dial-up that year.

>

> That was by far the smallest segment of the internet-using population, dwarfed by 100,166,949 subscribing to such forms of broadband as "cable, fiber optic, or DSL"; 8,628,648 using satellite; 3,318,901 using "Internet access without a subscription" (which suggests Wi-Fi from [16]coffee shops or [17]public libraries ); and 1,445,135 via "other service."

>

> The remaining AOL dial-up subscribers will need to find some sort of replacement, which in rural areas may be limited to [18]fixed wireless or SpaceX's considerably more expensive Starlink. Or they may wind up joining the ranks of Americans with no internet access: 6,866,059, in those 2023 estimates.



[1] https://help.aol.com/articles/dial-up-internet-to-be-discontinued

[2] https://www.slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli

[3] https://nerds.xyz/2025/08/aol-dial-up-internet-shutdown-2025/

[4] https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/network-providers/aol-will-end-dial-up-internet-service-in-september-34-years-after-its-debut-aol-shield-browser-and-aol-dialer-software-will-be-shuttered-on-the-same-day

[5] https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/08/09/you-had-mail-aol-finally-discontinues-dial-up-internet-service

[6] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/04/29/verizon-seeking-sale-of-media-assets-aol-in-5-billion-deal

[7] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-still-pay-for-service-but-not-for-dial-up-internet.html

[8] https://www.pcmag.com/news/end-of-an-e-era-aol-to-end-dial-up-internet-access

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/media/11merger.html?_r=0

[10] https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/aol

[11] https://www.pcmag.com/news/dial-up-still-a-cash-cow-for-aol

[12] https://www.pcmag.com/news/verizon-buys-aol-for-44-billion

[13] https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-biggest-tech-mergers-and-acquisitions-of-all-time

[14] https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/oath-are-you-kidding-me

[15] https://data.census.gov/table?q=internet+subscription

[16] https://www.pcmag.com/news/caffeine-rush-which-coffee-shops-have-the-fastest-free-wi-fi

[17] https://www.pcmag.com/articles/best-tech-at-your-library

[18] https://www.pcmag.com/news/jd-power-fixed-wireless-5g-home-internet-tops-fiber-cable-dsl-satisfaction