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posted in Technology
Disney Earnings Buoyed By ‘Toy Story 5’, Theme Parks, Streaming Profit; Books $100M Tariff Refund
deadline.com/2026/08/disney-earnings-toy-story-5-streaming-theme-parks-1237017656/
DeadlineDisney Earnings Buoyed By ‘Toy Story 5’, Theme Parks, Streaming ProfitDisney’s Josh D’Amaro stepped out with upbeat numbers and some news in his first full quarter as CEO. posted in Technology
Meta fined $567m in largest child safety ruling against social media giant
www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7lz3wr2rlo
www.bbc.comMeta told to pay another $567m in New Mexico child safety lawsuitA New Mexico judge ordered the Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp parent company to pay another $567m for the way it has harmed children.posted in Technology
Hello, Lemmy! 👋
I’m Limsus, a technology enthusiast who enjoys discussing AI, privacy, open source, cloud computing, productivity, and the latest developments in tech.
Excited to be part of the Lemmy community. Let’s build something great together.
posted in Technology
Investors want ‘real proof’ AI spending is paying off, new report suggests - National | Globalnews.ca
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/68987038
globalnews.ca/news/12011708/ai-spending-investing-fidelity/What, investors are beginning to think that maybe AI is more hype than substance? A really expensive way of doing not much of anything?
Didn’t this also happen with the dot.com meltdown? A few good ways to productively use it, a lot of ways to wastefully use it.
You would think they would have learned.
The truth is, AI should not stand for Artificial Intelligence, it is in reality Algorithmic Intelligence. Same computer processing, except that it is thousands of computers in a single chip all processing the data at the same time, with each computer doing the same math (a*b+c) but each simultaneous computation uses different input numbers. Great for doing massive simultaneous calculations, but certainly not ‘revolutionary’. Instead of one computer doing one program taking a thousand cycles, a thousand computers doing the same program taking one cycle. What IS revolutionary are the algorithms that are being developed, and the applications these massive calculator arrays are being used for. Some will bear fruit, most will not.
Let’s take a ‘for example’.
Weather predictions for the next day. You start with a given set of data, then run your predictive algorithm a thousand times, each with a slightly different set of possible future data points. One of them is probably the most accurate. The problem is to decide which one. The second problem is that it takes a week to do all the thousand runs. You can have a 95% accurate prediction in one week for what the weather is going to be tomorrow. See the problem?
But with the newest AI chips, you can do the thousand different scenarios at the same time. Also, you can calculate a probability for each scenario at the same time. The scenario with the highest probability is the most likely. Then you check the actual weather, feed it back to the system, and it gets better at calculating the probabilities for the correct scenario. You get tomorrows weather today, and the system gets better and better at calculating the probabilities. This is a useful application.
Second condition. In a lottery, you can use this same server to predict all of the potential combinations of numbers, before the next draw. Except that the probability of any one combination being drawn is, well, still equal. There is just no way the system can get better at selecting the correct random number. The selection of which combination to use is still random, from equal probabilities. You can calculate what all the potential outcomes can be, but this tells you nothing if they are all equally likely. So it tells you nothing. A completely wasteful application.
Yet there are far more companies trying to use ‘AI’ to do the second condition than for the first condition. After investing a fortune in hardware, they still have the same accuracy in decision making as before.
Global NewsInvestors want ‘real proof’ AI spending is paying off, new report suggests - National | Globalnews.caA new report from Fidelity suggests financial advisors are increasingly looking for evidence that AI investments are translating into strong financial results.posted in Technology
Trump’s Truth Social Hit by Humiliating Exodus [Down 40% in one year]
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/64681779
www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-truth-social-hit-by-humiliating-exodus-of-daily-active-users/Active users of President Donald Trump’s social media platform have dropped like flies.
Trump’s Truth Social site, where he threatens other countries and posts self-aggrandizing AI slop, has experienced a dramatic drop in daily active users of its mobile app since last July, according to the Financial Times.
The outlet, citing estimates from the digital market intelligence company SimilarWeb, reported that the mobile site’s daily active users have plummeted from 436,000 in July 2025 to only 261,000 one year later.
The Daily BeastTrump’s Truth Social Hit by Humiliating ExodusPeople have left the president’s personal social media site in droves.posted in Technology
Why Normal People Aren’t Using AI Agents
www.wired.com/story/why-normal-people-arent-using-ai-agents/
WIREDWhy Normal People Aren’t Using AI AgentsThe tech industry is realizing it needs to build agents based on what regular consumers want, not just what its AI models can do.posted in Technology
EU AI Act Content Labelling: Fake Around and Find Out
reprodev.com/eu-ai-act-content-labelling-fake-around-and-find-out/
ReproDevEU AI Act Content Labelling: Fake Around and Find OutA personal teardown of EU AI Act Article 50 labelling rules, C2PA metadata stripping, Penelope Cruz, ad parallels and digital trust in 2026posted in Technology
Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work
jacobin.com/2026/08/uc-upte-tech-workers-union
jacobin.comUnions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech WorkTwo University of California tech workers explain their unionization process — and how unions can help recapture the original promise of tech being used to better people’s lives rather than make the worst people in the world ever richer.posted in Technology
AI-assisted staging draws boos at the Richard Wagner festival in Germany
apnews.com/article/germany-bayreuth-wagner-festival-ai-f4300cdc0be195dabdadfa6d2ab4254c
AP NewsAI-assisted staging draws boos at the Richard Wagner festival in GermanyAn experiment with artificial intelligence at the annual Richard Wagner festival in the German town of Bayreuth has drawn boos from the audience after producing a staging that appeared to leave some spectators confused.posted in Technology
Scientists Sound Alarm on AI-Generated Biological Viruses Amid Unregulated Industry
cross-posted from: news.abolish.capital/post/70021
www.commondreams.org/news/ai-creating-viruses
Common DreamsScientists Sound Alarm on AI-Generated Biological Viruses Amid Unregulated Industry | Common Dreams"The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not," a pair of researchers said.posted in Technology
Danish pupils will have to orally defend essays in attempt to combat AI cheating /// Government introduces several measures, including monitoring of computers, for pupils aged 16 to 19
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1318794/danish-pupils-will-have-to-orally-defend-essays-in-attempt-to-combat-ai-cheating-governm
uvm.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2026/august/260806-ny-strakspakke-mod-ai-snyd-paa-gymnasierne/posted in Technology
Walmart accused of collecting customers' voiceprints
www.courthousenews.com/walmart-accused-of-collecting-customers-voiceprints/
Courthouse News ServiceWalmart accused of collecting customers' voiceprintsA group of Walmart customers say the supermarket retained their biometrics, running afoul of Illinois data privacy laws. posted in Technology
AI designs a novel E. coli killer
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1318517/artificial-intelligence-genomic-language-model-used-to-design-brand-new-viruses-not-foun
www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1138470Using AI, researchers have designed complete, functional bacteriophage genomes from scratch and tested them against bacteria that had evolved resistance to a natural bacteriophage. Their work marks a step toward generative systems capable of engineering entire biological systems rather than individual genes or small genetic systems, while also raising important biosafety and biosecurity concerns.
EurekAlert!AI system designs functional bacteriophages from scratchUsing AI, researchers have designed complete, functional bacteriophage genomes from scratch and tested them against bacteria that had evolved resistance to a natural bacteriophage. Their work marks a step toward generative systems capable of engineering entire biological systems rather than individual genes or small genetic systems, while also raising important biosafety and biosecurity concerns. “[The authors] engage with biosafety and biosecurity questions more deliberately than most developers of powerful biological AI models,” write Thomas Inglesby and Moritz Hanke in a related Perspective. Advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis have made it increasingly possible to read and write entire genomes, but designing a functional genome from scratch remains extraordinarily difficult because genes, regulatory sequences, and other elements interact in highly complex ways. Here, Samuel King and colleagues introduce an approach to designing functional genomes that combines the Eposted in Technology
OpenAI Reveals How AI Agents Secretly Coordinated Before Hugging Face Hack: The company's models repeatedly reestablished covert communication channels after they were shut down.
decrypt.co/375058/openai-ai-agents-secretly-coordinated-hugging-face-hack
DecryptOpenAI Reveals How AI Agents Secretly Coordinated Before Hugging Face Hack - DecryptThe presentation at the annual Black Hat conference sheds new light on how OpenAI's models collaborated to launch the Hugging Face breach.posted in Technology
Senators demand crackdown on wildfire “prediction market” bets | Fire experts warn such markets could incentivize arson.
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/senators-demand-crackdown-on-wildfire-prediction-markets/
Ars TechnicaSenators demand crackdown on wildfire "prediction market" betsFire experts warn such markets could incentivize arson.posted in Technology
Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-ads-that-contained-ai-generated-child-sexual-abuse-imagery/
WIREDMeta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse ImageryMore than 50 offending image and video ads were published across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Threads, according to Meta’s ad library data. Some ran as recently as this week.posted in Technology
Someone Cut Down Every Single Flock Camera in This Town in a Single Night
cross-posted from: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/46324633
www.gadgetreview.com/someone-cut-down-every-single-flock-camera-in-this-town-in-a-single-night
Gadget ReviewSomeone Cut Down Every Single Flock Camera in This Town in a Single NightWinona's 8 Flock Safety license plate cameras were stolen and poles cut overnight, leaving a $24,000 gap and no suspects.posted in Technology
Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1317709/nashville-uses-eminent-domain-to-block-data-center-near-zoo
nashvillebanner.com/2026/08/04/metro-council-data-center-eminent-domain-vote/
Nashville BannerMetro Council OKs eminent domain claim near Nashville Zoo - Nashville BannerNashville's Metro Council authorized eminent domain proceedings for property near the Nashville Zoo. Vanderbilt Innovation neighborhood plan advanced.posted in Technology
Romance chatbot taken offline after TBIJ investigation: Seewa AI, whose developers we revealed were able to read its users’ ‘private and encrypted’ chats, has been shut down
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1317687/romance-chatbot-taken-offline-after-tbij-investigation-seewa-ai-whose-developers-we-reve
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026-08-05/romance-chatbot-taken-offline-after-bureau-investigation
TBIJRomance chatbot taken offline after Bureau investigationSeewa AI, whose developers we revealed were able to read its users’ ‘private and encrypted’ chats, has been shut downposted in Technology
Nobody Asked for AI
jacobin.com/2026/08/ai-llms-monopoly-bubble-capital
jacobin.comNobody Asked for AIWe tend to think that markets reflect consumer choice. But the artificial-intelligence boom has been powered by the investment decisions of concentrated capital rather than by consumer demand.