| Is a Backlash Building Against Smart Glasses That Record? Aug 30th 2025, 15:34 by EditorDavid Remember those Harvard dropouts who built smart glasses for covert facial recognition — and then raised $1 million to develop AI-powered glasses to continuously listen to conversations and display its insights? "People Are REALLY Mad," writes Futurism, noting that some social media users "have responded with horror and outrage." One of its selling points is that the specs don't come with a visual indicator that lights up to let people know when they're being recorded, which is a feature that Meta's smart glasses do currently have. "People don't want this," wrote Whitney Merill, a privacy lawyer. "Wanting this is not normal. It's weird...." [S]ome mocked the deleterious effects this could have on our already smartphone-addicted, brainrotted cerebrums. "I look forward to professional conversations with people who just read robot fever dream hallucinations at me in response to my technical and policy questions," one user mused. The co-founder of the company told TechCrunch their glasses would be the "first real step towards vibe thinking." But there's already millions of other smart glasses out in the world, and they're now drawing a backlash, reports the Washington Post, citing the millions of people viewing "a stream of other critical videos" about Meta's smart glasses. The article argues that Generation Z, "who grew up in an internet era defined by poor personal privacy, are at the forefront of a new backlash against smart glasses' intrusion into everyday life..." Opal Nelson, a 22-year-old in New York, said the more she learns about smart glasses, the angrier she becomes. Meta Ray-Bans have a light that turns on when the gadget is recording video, but she said it doesn't seem to protect people from being recorded without consent... "And now there's more and more tutorials showing people how to cover up the [warning light] and still allow you to record," Nelson said. In one such tutorial with more than 900,000 views, a man claims to explain how to cover the warning light on Meta Ray-Bans without triggering the sensor that prevents the device from secretly recording. One 26-year-old attracted 10 million views to their video on TikTok about the spread of Meta's photography-capable smart glasses. "People specifically in my generation are pretty concerned about the future of technology," the told the Post, "and what that means for all of us and our privacy." The article cites figures from a devices analyst at IDC who estimates U.S. sales for Meta Ray-Bans will hit 4 million units by the end of 2025, compared to 1.2 million in 2024.   Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | New Python Documentary Released On YouTube Aug 30th 2025, 14:34 by EditorDavid "From a side project in Amsterdam to powering AI at the world's biggest companies — this is the story of Python," says the description of a new 84-minute documentary. Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: It traces Python all the way back to its origins in Amsterdam back in 1991. (Although the first time Guido van Rossum showed his new language to a co-worker, they'd typed one line of code just to prove they could crash Python's first interpreter.) The language slowly spread after van Rossum released it on Usenet — split across 21 separate posts — and Robin Friedrich, a NASA aerospace engineer, remembers using Python to build flight simulations for the Space Shuttle. (Friedrich says in the documentary he also attended Guido's first in-person U.S. workshop in 1994, and "I still have the t-shirt...") Dropbox's CEO/founder Drew Houston describes what it was like being one of the first companies to use Python to build a company reaching millions of users. (Another success story was YouTube, which was built by a small team using Python before being acquired by Google). Anaconda co-founder Travis Oliphant remembers Python's popularity increasing even more thanks to the data science/macine learning community. But the documentary also includes the controversial move to Python 3 (which broke compatability with earlier versions) — though ironically, one of the people slogging through a massive code migration ended up being van Rossum himself at his new job at Dropbox. The documentary also includes van Rossum's resignation as "Benevolent Dictator for Life" after approving the walrus operator. (In van Rossum's words, he essentially "rage-quit over this issue.") But the focus is on Python's community. At one point, various interviewees even take turns reciting passages from the "Zen of Python" — which to this day is still hidden in Python as an import-able library as a kind of Easter Egg. "It was a massive undertaking", the director explains in a new interview, describing a full year of interviews. (The article features screenshots from the documentary — including a young Guido van Rossum and the original 1991 email that announced Python to the world.) [Director Bechtle] is part of a group that's filmed documentaries on everything from Kubernetes and Prometheus to Angular, Node.js, and Ruby on Rails... Originally part of the job platform Honeypot, the documentary-makers relaunched in April as Cult.Repo, promising they were "100% independent and more committed than ever to telling the human stories behind technology." Honeypot's founder Emma Tracey bought back its 272,000-subscriber YouTube channel from Honeypot's new owners, New Work SE, and Cult.Repo now bills itself as "The home of Open Source documentaries." Over in a thread at Python.org, language creator Guido van Rossum has identified the Python community members in the film's Monty Python-esque poster art. And core developer Hugo van Kemenade notes there's also a video from EuroPython with a 55-minute Q&A about the documentary. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | London Targets Noisy Commuters With Headphone Campaign Aug 30th 2025, 13:00 by BeauHD An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: After bringing 4G and 5G connectivity to the Underground, London's public transport authority has started scolding noisy passengers who subject everyone to music and calls blasting out of their phones. A new poster campaign launched by Transport for London (TfL) this week encourages customers to wear headphones when watching or listening to content on their devices to reduce disruption for other commuters. "Please don't disturb others with loud music or calls when traveling on the network," reads the "Headphones On" poster. The posters are already being displayed on the Elizabeth rail line, according to TfL, and will expand to bus, Docklands Light Railway, London Overground, London Underground, and London Tram services from October. The campaign targets headphone dodgers as data coverage becomes more available across the underground rail network, making it easier for passengers to stream content and make calls on the go. People who do so without donning headphones are annoying other commuters, however, with TfL research showing that 70 percent of 1,000 surveyed customers reported loud music and phone calls disrupting their journeys. "The vast majority of Londoners use headphones when traveling on public transport in the capital, but the small minority who play music or videos out loud can be a real nuisance to other passengers and directly disturb their journeys," says London's deputy transport mayor, Seb Dance. "TfL's new campaign will remind and encourage Londoners to always be considerate of other passengers." Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | Alibaba Creates AI Chip To Help China Fill Nvidia Void Aug 30th 2025, 10:00 by BeauHD Alibaba, China's largest cloud-computing company, has developed a domestically manufactured, versatile inference chip to fill the gap left by U.S. restrictions on Nvidia's sales in China. The Wall Street Journal reports: Previous cloud-computing chips developed by Alibaba have mostly been designed for specific applications. The new chip, now in testing, is meant to serve a broader range of AI inference tasks, said people familiar with it. The chip is manufactured by a Chinese company, they said, in contrast to an earlier Alibaba AI processor that was fabricated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. Washington has blocked TSMC from manufacturing AI chips for China that use leading-edge technology. [...] Private-sector cloud companies including Alibaba have refrained from bulk orders of Huawei's chips, resisting official suggestions that they should help the national champion, because they consider Huawei a direct rival in cloud services, people close to the firms said. China's biggest weakness is training AI models, for which U.S. companies rely on the most powerful Nvidia products. Alibaba's new chip is designed for inference, not training, people familiar with it said. Chinese engineers have complained that homegrown chips including Huawei's run into problems when training AI, such as overheating and breaking down in the middle of training runs. Huawei declined to comment. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | | China Turns On Giant Neutrino Detector That Took a Decade To Build Aug 30th 2025, 07:00 by BeauHD China has turned on the world's most sensitive neutrino detector after more than a decade of construction. The Register reports: The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Experiment (JUNO) is buried 700 meters under a mountain and features a 20,000-tonne "liquid scintillator detector" that China's Academy of Science says is "housed at the center of a 44-meter-deep water pool." There's also a 35.4-meter-diameter acrylic sphere supported by a 41.1-meter-diameter stainless steel truss. All that stuff is surrounded by more than 45,000 photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs). The latter devices are super-sensitive light detectors. A liquid scintillator is a fluid that, when exposed to ionizing radiation, produces light. At JUNO, the liquid is 99.7 percent alkylbenzene, an ingredient found in detergents and refrigerants. JUNO's designers hope that any neutrinos that pass through its giant tank bonk a hydrogen atom and produce just enough light that the detector array of PMTs can record their passing, producing data scientists can use to learn more about the particles. At this point, readers could sensibly ask how JUNO will catch any of these elusive particles. The answer lies in the facility's location -- a few tens of kilometers away from two nuclear power plants that produce neutrinos. The Chinese Academy of Science's Journal of High Energy Physics says trials of JUNO succeeded, suggesting it will be able to help scientists understand why some neutrinos are heavier than others so we can begin to classify the different types of the particle -- a key goal for the facility. The Journal also reports that scientists from Japan, the United States, Europe, India, and South Korea, are either already using JUNO or plan experiments at the facility. Read more of this story at Slashdot. | |
Comments
Post a Comment