pete_link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43810526

Actions by the president and the Pentagon appeared to drive a wedge between Washington and the tech industry, whose leaders and workers spoke out for the start-up.

Feb. 27, 2026

https://archive.ph/hwHbe

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said in a memo to employees this week that “we have long believed that A.I. should not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.”

More than 100 employees at Google signed a petition calling on the tech giant to “refuse to comply” with the Pentagon on some uses of artificial intelligence in military operations.

And employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft urged their leaders in a separate open letter on Thursday to “hold the line” against the Pentagon.

Silicon Valley has rallied behind the A.I. start-up Anthropic, which has been embroiled in a dispute with President Trump and the Pentagon over how its technology may be used for military purposes. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, has said he does not want the company’s A.I. to be used to surveil Americans or in autonomous weapons, saying this could “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”

Aug. 26, 2025, 7:40 AM EDT
By Angela Yang, Laura Jarrett and Fallon Gallagher

[this is a truly scary incident, which shows the incredible dangers of AI without guardrails.]

Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing Editor
July 23, 2025 at 11:31 a.m. PT

Recently, vibe coding bit Jason Lemkin, trusted advisor to SaaStr, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business community, in the worst possible way. The vibe program, Replit, he said, went "rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deleted our entire database."

In a word: Wow. Just wow.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33174237

By Zeynep Tufekci - Opinion Columnist
July 11, 2025

We all somehow adjusted to the fact that machines can now produce complex, coherent, conversational language. But that ability makes it extremely hard not to think about L.L.M.s as possessing a form of humanlike intelligence.

They are not, however, a version of human intelligence. Nor are they truth seekers or reasoning machines. What they are is plausibility engines. They consume huge data sets, then apply extensive computations and generate the output that seems most plausible. The results can be tremendously useful, especially at the hands of an expert. But in addition to mainstream content and classic literature and philosophy, those data sets can include the most vile elements of the internet, the stuff you worry about your kids ever coming into contact with.

https://archive.ph/qZjnK

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29486510

Jason Paladino
May 02, 2025

"During Wednesday’s meeting for Trump’s cabinet, Mike Waltz checked the app on his phone, using what appeared to be Signal. As news broke that Waltz had lost his job as National Security Advisor, images from the cabinet meeting circulated widely online on Thursday. Upon closer inspection of the photos, it turned out that Waltz was not using the traditional Signal app. He appeared to be using an archiving app made by Israeli firm TeleMessage, which sells companion apps meant to enable archiving messages."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29055663

By Simon Hooper
Published date: 23 April 2025 13:51 BST

"Mark Etkind, co-organiser of a network of “#Holocaust survivors and descendants against the Gaza genocide”, whose members have regularly attended pro-#Palestinian protests in London, said it was imperative too for campaigners in the #UK to keep up pressure on the #British government to end its support for Israel and to halt arms exports to the country.

“There’s just an absolutely massive burden of responsibility on everyone, especially those of us with a Holocaust survivor background, to speak out. I can’t think of a better commemoration for the six million,” said Etkind."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29004856

Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem and Malak A Tantesh in Gaza Tue 22 Apr 2025 10.32 EDT

"The first time he spoke to #PopeFrancis during the pontiff’s nightly calls to the Holy Family Catholic church in #Gaza City, the congregant George Antone, 44, found himself at a loss for words.

It was October 2023, a few weeks after #Hamas ignited a devastating war in the Gaza Strip by attacking #Israel. The #Palestinian territory’s tiny Christian community had taken shelter in the strip’s three churches, but that didn’t mean they were safe. An #Israeli airstrike had just hit the Greek Orthodox church, killing 18 people; soon, snipers and bombs would also kill civilians at the Holy Family."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26969442

from The Forward [Jewish publication from #USA]

By Andrew Silverstein
March 7, 2025

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” states a fact sheet published on the White House website along with President Donald Trump’s January executive order on antisemitism, “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26883105

from #MiddleEastEye #MEE

By Nadav Rapaport
Published date: 5 March 2025 15:35 GMT

"The youths film themselves posing as representatives of a fictional humanitarian organisation and call their family members and friends to ask for donations for Palestinian children. Those called usually react with rage, shouting and swearing before the callers reveal themselves in the videos uploaded to the platform as humorous pranks."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26881885

By Philissa Cramer
March 7, 2025

"The documentary chronicles Israeli demolitions in the West Bank Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta. In their acceptance speeches at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, Palestinian co-director Basel Adra criticized the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.” Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham called for an end to Israel’s “unequal” treatment of Palestinians."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24707049

from #TheRegister #Register Thomas Claburn Fri 10 Jan 2025 // 13:37 UTC

Sebastian Steck, a software developer based in Germany, has obtained the source code and library installation scripts for his AVM FRITZ!Box 4020 router, thanks to a lawsuit funded by the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC).