Futurology

People used to hold up China as the prime example of Orwellian government monitoring of the citizenry. Now it looks like the US is giving them a run for their money. This spyware is for immigration officials, but how long before its use spreads? Tied to AI, it will be a powerful way to identify and monitor "enemies" of the government.

This software takes control of your phone, meaning its users can act as you. Don't like all those social media posts you made criticising XYZ. Fine, we'll delete them for you. If you think the government wouldn't go that far, I've a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

We used to speculate about a 100% surveillance future. It looks like it has arrived, and we're living in it.

Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/41849856

If an LLM can't be trusted with a fast food order, I can't imagine what it is reliable enough for. I really was expecting this was the easy use case for the things.

It sounds like most orders still worked, so I guess we'll see if other chains come to the same conclusion.

All the 100s of billions of dollars Silicon Valley is pouring into AI depend on one thing. Earning it back in the future. OpenAI, which made $13 billion last year, thinks it might make $200 billion in 2030. New data points to a different reality; AI use may be declining in big corporate customers. Though perhaps it's a blip, and it may begin climbing again.

AI use is still spreading worldwide, and open-source efforts are the equal of Silicon Valley's offerings. Even if the current Silicon Valley AI leaders fail, that won't stop. But the US is piggybacking on the Silicon Valley boom to try to reach AGI. That effort may be affected.

Link to graph of the data, source US Census Bureau - PDF 1 page

380 GW of new solar power has been installed globally in the first six months of 2025; 64% up on the same period last year. GWEC projects that 2025 will see 139 GW of new wind installations. Assuming solar keeps increasing at the near rate in the second half of 2025, the total renewables figure for 2025 will top 1,000 GW for the first time ever. Even if solar slowed down to half its current rate of growth, that will still be true.

Three times the entire global nuclear capacity. Let that sink in. That took decades to build. Now renewables can do three times more in just one year.

Consider something else. Renewables growth has years, if not decades, of further growth ahead of it. Economies of scale mean that as more of it gets built, it keeps getting cheaper. And it's already the cheapest electricity there is. When will the first 2,000 GW year be?

"Swiss firm Novartis’s radioligand therapy, which delivers radioactive isotopes directly to tumours, has completely cleared metastatic cancers in trial patients - an unprecedented result. And, US researchers found that blocking an immune protein (IL-23) makes HPV vaccines effective against existing tumours, raising hopes for therapeutic vaccines."

Quote from Fixthenews newsletter

How Novartis got ahead on ‘incredible’ cancer breakthrough

Preventive HPV vaccines work. Now a new discovery could also help eliminate existing cancers too

Scaling hasn’t gotten us to AGI, or 'superintelligence”, let alone AI we could trust. The field is overdue for a rethink. What do we next?

India has a pretty good track record on following through on space commitments, so this all seems achievable to me. It's already landed on the Moon with Chandrayaan-3. I wonder by 2040 will there be anyone in permanent habitation at the International Lunar Research Station? Who knows how many space stations there will be in ten year's time (2035). China will have one, the ISS will have de-orbited, but presumably there will be Western commercial ones too.

India unveils its space vision to 2040

This is a paper which argues that the true path to a safe, dependable AI system is to take what we've learned from meditation and Buddhism and apply it to AI systems: "Robust alignment strategies need to focus on developing an intrinsic, self-reflective adaptability that is constitutively embedded within the system’s world model, rather than using brittle top-down rules", the authors write.

Contemplative Artificial Intelligence - PDF 37 pages

"The trade-off is profound: by socializing the infrastructure of abundance, we eliminate the need for centralized economic control and bureaucracy. "

This is an interesting essay, though I don't agree with it all. For a start, bureaucracies are not all bad. The countries with the highest standards of living all have well-oiled bureaucracies. But it's interesting to see how other people think.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/27557483

Rocket launches may dominate headlines, but the true bottleneck in space exploration lies not in reaching low Earth orbit (LEO), but in venturing beyond it. From LEO to the Moon or Mars, spacecraft still require costly kick stages or oversized boosters. A decades-old idea known as the skyhook could change that equation.

A skyhook is a rotating orbital tether: essentially, a long, strong cable that swings a spacecraft from one orbit to another, much like a sling. Unlike the space elevator concept, a skyhook looks much more buildable with current technology. By lowering the cost of Earth/Moon & interplanetary transport, skyhooks and related tether technologies could help make space travel beyond LEO economically feasible. The linked interview with Marcus Landgraf, from ESA, connects this to breaking resource limitations and enabling prosperity through space expansion.

How Close Are We To Building A Practical Skyhook? Youtube Interview with Dr. Marcus Landgraf, ESA Human and Robotic Exploration Programme)