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TUESDAY, 01 JULY 2025, 03:00

Science/Tech

R90bn Unclaimed Funds: How To Claim Your Missing Money

Sunday at 09:19 AM, via Tech Financials

South African financial institutions are currently holding more than R90 billion in unclaimed benefits that rightfully belong to members of the public, according to a report in the Sunday Times. This staggering amount includes R4.5 billion in unclaimed dividends alone, according to a recent report. Banks, retirement fund administrators, insurance companies and the Johannesburg Stock […]

DA Backs Steenhuisen, Rejects GNU Exit Over Whitfield Firing

Sunday at 09:07 AM, via Tech Financials

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has rejected calls to leave South Africa’s Government of National Unity (GNU), despite tensions with the ANC over President Cyril Ramaphosa’s firing of DA deputy minister Andrew Whitfield, according to a report in the Sunday Times. At a heated two-hour federal executive meeting, some senior DA members pushed for the party […]

Interesting

Sunday at 09:00 AM, via New York Times

A reporter who writes about A.I. finds her work is catching on — with the Chatbot she often writes about.

RAF CEO Spent R10M On Security, Including R4M Armoured BMW

Sunday at 08:59 AM, via Tech Financials

Embattled Road Accident Fund (RAF) CEO Collins Letsoalo allegedly spent over R10 million in public funds on his security detail, including a R4 million armoured BMW X5, over three years, according to a Sunday Times report. Law enforcement sources revealed that Letsoalo’s security detail, comprising nine bodyguards, makes him the most protected state-owned entity (SOE) CEO, surpassing […]

New Linux Kernel Drama: Torvalds Drops Bcachefs Support After Clash

Sunday at 05:34 AM, via Slashdot

Bcachefs “pitches itself as a filesystem that ‘doesn’t eat your data’,” writes the open source/Linux blog It’s FOSS. Although it was last October that Bcachefs developer Kent Overstreet was restricted from participating in the Linux 6.13 kernel development cycle (after ending a mailing list post with “Get your head examined. And get the fuck out of here with this shit.”) And now with the...

AI Improves At Improving Itself Using an Evolutionary Trick

Sunday at 03:34 AM, via Slashdot

Technology writer Matthew Hutson (also Slashdot reader #1,467,653) looks at a new kind of self-improving AI coding system. It rewrites its own code based on empirical evidence of what’s helping — as described in a recent preprint on arXiv. From Hutson’s new article in IEEE Spectrum:A Darwin Gödel Machine (or DGM) starts with a coding agent that can read, write, and execute code, leveraging...

People Are Being Committed After Spiraling Into ‘ChatGPT Psychosis’

Sunday at 00:39 AM, via Slashdot

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but something is very bad — I’m very scared, and I need to go to the hospital,” a man told his wife, after experiencing what Futurism calls a “ten-day descent into AI-fueled delusion” and “a frightening break with reality.” And a San Francisco psychiatrist tells the site he’s seen similar cases in his own clinical practice.The consequences can be dire. As...

Sinaloa Cartel Used Phone Data and Surveillance Cameras To Find and Kill FBI Informants in 2018, DOJ Says

Saturday at 23:39 PM, via Slashdot

Designated as a foreign terrorist group by multiple countries, Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel fiercely defends its transnational organized crime syndicate. “A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone records,” reports Reuters, “and use Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency’s informants in 2018, the U.S. Justice Department...

Duolingo Stock Plummets After Slowing User Growth, Possibly Caused By ‘AI-First’ Backlash

Saturday at 22:39 PM, via Slashdot

“Duolingo stock fell for the fourth straight trading day on Wednesday,” reported Investor’s Business Daily, “as data shows user growth slowing for the language-learning software provider.” Jefferies analyst John Colantuoni said he was “concerned” by this drop — saying it “may be the result of Duolingo’s poorly received AI-driven hiring announcement in late April (later clarified in late...

How sorry are you? Why learning to apologise well could save your relationships

Saturday at 22:00 PM, via The Guardian

Does a good apology contain five steps, seven steps – even eight? And why do we find it so difficult?

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Got something to say sorry for? Here are words that have no place in your apologies, according to those who have spent years analysing them: “It was not my intent”. “What I meant was”. “Sorry you misunderstood”. And any use of the word...

Leak Stops on the International Space Station. But NASA Engineers Still Worry

Saturday at 21:34 PM, via Slashdot

On the International Space Station, air has been slowly leaking out for years from a Russia-controlled module, reports CNN. But recently “station operators realized the gradual, steady leak had stopped. And that raised an even larger concern.”It’s possible that efforts to seal cracks in the module’s exterior wall have worked, and the patches are finally trapping air as intended. But, according...

Call Center Workers Are Tired of Being Mistaken for AI

Saturday at 20:34 PM, via Slashdot

Bloomberg reports:By the time Jessica Lindsey’s customers accuse her of being an AI, they are often already shouting. For the past two years, her work as a call center agent for outsourcing company Concentrix has been punctuated by people at the other end of the phone demanding to speak to a real human. Sometimes they ask her straight, ‘Are you an AI?’ Other times they just start yelling...

Researchers Accuse Uber of Using Opaque Algorithm To Dramatically Boost Its Profits

Saturday at 19:34 PM, via Slashdot

“A second major academic institution has accused Uber of using opaque computer code to dramatically increase its profits at the expense of the ride-hailing app’s drivers and passengers,” reports the Guardian:Research by academics at New York’s Columbia Business School concluded that the Silicon Valley company had implemented “algorithmic price discrimination” that had raised “rider fares and...

X11 Fork XLibre Released For Testing On Systemd-Free Artix Linux

Saturday at 18:34 PM, via Slashdot

An anonymous reader shared this report from WebProNews:The Linux world is abuzz with news of XLibre, a fork of the venerable X11 window display system, which aims to be an alternative to X11’s successor, Wayland. Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora...

How a Crewless, AI-Enhanced Vessel Will Patrol Denmark’s and NATO’s Waters

Saturday at 17:34 PM, via Slashdot

After past damage to undersea cables, Denmark will boost their surveillance of Baltic Sea/North Sea waters by deploying four uncrewed surface vessels — about 10 meters long — that are equipped with drones and also AI, reports Euronews. The founder/CEO of the company that makes the vessels — Saildrone — says they’ll work “like a truck” that “carries the sensors.” And then “we use...

Mercedes-AMG to Drop Four-Cylinder for Inline-Sixes and V-8s

Saturday at 16:34 PM, via Slashdot

“Mercedes-AMG is transitioning away from the four-cylinder plug-in hybrid powertrain,” reports Car and Driver, “and back towards the inline-six and V-8 powertrains more traditionally associated with the brand.”That isn’t to say that AMG had a change of heart concerning the merits of the four-cylinder powertrain, but rather that the automaker is responding to customer criticisms. “Technically,...

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