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Tony Isaac quotes a report from NPR: The rise of AI assistants is rewriting the rhythms of everyday life: People are feeding their blood test results into chatbots, turning to ChatGPT for advice on their love lives and leaning on AI for everything from planning trips to finishing homework assignments. Now, one organization suggests artificial intelligence can go beyond making daily life more convenient. It says it's the key to reshaping American politics. "Without AI, what we're trying to do would be impossible," explained Adam Brandon, a senior adviser at the Independent Center, a nonprofit that studies and engages with independent voters. The goal is to elect a handful of independent candidates to the House of Representatives in 2026, using AI to identify districts where independents could succeed and uncover diamond in the rough candidates. [...] ... "This isn't going to work everywhere. It's going to work in very specific areas," [said Brett Loyd, who runs The Bullfinch Group, the nonpartisan polling and data firm overseeing the polling and research at the Independent Center]. "If you live in a hyper-Republican or hyper-Democratic district, you should have a Democrat or Republican representing you." But with the help of AI, he identified 40 seats that don't fit that mold, where he said independents can make inroads with voters fed up with both parties. The Independent Center plans to have about 10 candidates in place by spring with the goal of winning at least half of the races. Brandon predicts those wins could prompt moderate partisans in the House to switch affiliations. Their proprietary AI tool created by an outside partner has been years in the making. While focus groups and polling have long driven understanding of American sentiments, AI can monitor what people are talking about in real time. ... They're using AI to understand core issues and concerns of voters and to hunt for districts ripe for an independent candidate to swoop in. From there, the next step is taking the data and finding what the dream candidate looks like. The Independent Center is recruiting candidates both from people who reach out to the organization directly and with the help of AI. They can even run their data through LinkedIn to identify potential candidates with certain interests and career and volunteer history. ... The AI also informs where a candidate is best placed to win.

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2025 Xmas knitware nightmare could be yours if you make us smile: When was peak Microsoft?

Free Wear It's that time of year again when Microsoft dispatches its latest Ugly Sweater to The Register, and we spoil a lucky reader that makes us smile by sending you the garment in time for Christmas.…

We're getting it baked into Windows whether we like it or not

Opinion Making software would be the perfect job if it wasn't for those darn users. Windows head honcho Pavan Davuluri would be forgiven for feeling this of late as his happy online paean about Windows becoming an "agentic OS" was met by massive dissent in the comments. "Agentic schmentic, we want reliability, usability, and stability" was the gist.…

Brit astro Tim Peake's much-vaunted mission to the ISS a distant memory

Nearly ten years after Brit astronaut Tim Peake visited the International Space Station (ISS), the UK has slipped behind Spain in European Space Agency funding rankings.…

Whether you want a studio rig or a featherweight desktop, MX Linux spins have you covered

AV Linux and MX Moksha are a pair of distros tweaked for audio and music production, each using a different branch of the Enlightenment family of desktops.…

Corrected document clears up rollout timeline and confirms switch well ahead of deadline

The UK's Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has confirmed its £312 million Windows 10 laptop refresh was, in fact, followed by a Windows 11 upgrade after an earlier letter to Parliament misstated the department's operating system timeline.…

schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: In its war with the Ukraine, it appears Russia is still managing to obtain black market Starlink mini-terminals for use on its drones, despite an effort since 2024 to block access. [Imagery from eastern Ukraine shows a Russian Molniya-type drone outfitted with a mini-Starlink terminal, reinforcing reports that Russia is improvising satellite-linked UAVs to extend their communication and operational range.] SpaceX has made no comment on this issue. According to the article, Ukraine is "exploring alternative European satellite providers in response, seeking more secure and controllable communications infrastructure for military operations." While switching to another satellite provider might allow Ukraine to shut Starlink down and prevent the Russians from using it within its territory, doing so would likely do more harm to Ukraine's military effort than Russia's. There isn't really any other service comparable at this time. And when Amazon's Leo system comes on line it will face the same black market issues. I doubt it will have any more success than SpaceX in preventing Russia from obtaining its terminals. Overall this issue is probably not a serious one militarily, however. Russia is not likely capable of obtaining enough black market terminals to make any significant difference on the battlefield. This story however highlights a positive aspect of these new constellations. Just as Russia can't be prevented from obtaining black market terminals, neither can the oppressed citizens in totalitarian nations like Russia and China be blocked as well. These constellations as designed act to defeat the censorship and information control of such nations, a very good thing.

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Paying Ingress NGINX maintainers for their work might have avoided this outcome

Opinion There were lots of announcements about Kubernetes at KubeCon North America in Atlanta. I should know, I was there from beginning to end. But the biggest Kubernetes story of all didn't get much attention. Kubernetes is retiring its popular Ingress NGINX controller. Ingress NGINX goes to that big bit farm in the sky in March 2026. After that, "there will be no further releases, no bugfixes, and no updates to resolve any security vulnerabilities that may be discovered."…

Buyers get a one-time discount on screen repairs, which hardly screams ‘we nailed this three-screen thing’

Samsung has revealed its first tri-fold phone, and it runs the Korean giant’s DeX desktop environment without the need for an external monitor.…

A Soyuz launch at Baikonur damaged Russia's only launchpad capable of sending astronauts and crucial propellant to the ISS. "The rocket itself headed to space without incident, taking three astronauts -- Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of Russia and Chris Williams of NASA -- to the space station," reports the New York Times. "But the force of the rocket's exhaust shoved a service platform used for prelaunch preparations out of its protective shelter. The platform fell into the flame trench below." From the report: Photos and videos of the launch site the next day showed the platform out of place and mangled. "It's heavily damaged," said Anatoly Zak, who publishes RussianSpaceWeb.com, a close tracker of Russia's space activities, "and so probably it will have to be rebuilt. Maybe some of the hardware can be reused. But it fell down, and it's destroyed." This is the latest embarrassment for the once-proud Russian space program, which the United States relied on from 2011 to 2020 to get NASA astronauts to orbit. The incident also raises questions about the future of the International Space Station if the launchpad cannot be quickly repaired. In a statement issued on Friday, Roscosmos, the state corporation in charge of the Russian space program, confirmed unspecified "damage" at the launchpad. "All necessary parts needed for repairs are at our disposal, and the damage will be dealt with in the near future," it said.

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Would not massively deplete IPv6, might challenge internet governance

Early in the history of the internet, the powers that be granted amateur radio operators over 16 million IPv4 addresses. Now a proposal has emerged suggesting the same community be granted a substantial chunk of the IPv6 numberspace.…

At an event in Seoul on Tuesday, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z TriFold, a dual-hinged smartphone that unfolds into a 10-inch tablet (source paywalled; alternative source). It launches on Dec. 12 in Korea for about $2,450. The company plans to sell the phone in the U.S., but hasn't shared pricing. Bloomberg reports: Samsung's device has a different hinge design, folding inward from two sides whereas the Mate models take on a Z shape when being folded. When closed, the TriFold's outer screen offers similar dimensions to a regular smartphone. But when unfurled, it provides a tablet-style experience with a 10-inch display, larger than the panel on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. In the tablet-like mode, each of the device's screens can independently run a different app. This provides the equivalent of three separate 6.5-inch bar-style handsets side by side. Using Samsung's DeX software, which has been tweaked for this particular hardware type, you can also run a desktop-like experience directly on the large inner display. (Other Samsung phones must be plugged into an external monitor to activate DeX mode.) In DeX, the TriFold can operate as many as four distinct workspaces that can each run five apps simultaneously. To preempt concerns about potential breakage, Samsung said it has refined the phone's hinges, aluminum frame and display technology to improve long-term durability. The company will also offer a one-time 50% discount on display repair costs should one eventually be needed. At its thinnest point, the TriFold measures 3.9 millimeters (0.15 inch). Inside, it contains a 5,600 milliamp-hour battery, marking the largest capacity that Samsung has used in a folding phone so far. The battery provides as much as 17 hours of consecutive video playback with the TriFold display fully open. However, in specifications shared with Bloomberg, the company didn't say how long it expects the battery to last with typical usage.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation, written by authors Adrian R. Bell, Anne Curry, and Jason Sadler: When you picture medieval warfare, you might think of epic battles and famous monarchs. But what about the everyday soldiers who actually filled the ranks? Until recently, their stories were scattered across handwritten manuscripts in Latin or French and difficult to decipher. Now, our online database makes it possible for anyone to discover who they were and how they lived, fought and travelled. To shed light on the foundations of our armed services -- one of England's oldest professions -- we launched the Medieval Soldier Database in 2009. Today, it's the largest searchable online database of medieval nominal data in the world. It contains military service records giving names of soldiers paid by the English Crown. It covers the period from 1369 to 1453 and many different war zones. We created the database to challenge assumptions about the lack of professionalism of soldiers during the hundred years war and to show what their careers were really like. In response to the high interest from historians and the public (the database has 75,000 visitors per month), the resource has recently been updated. It is now sustainably hosted by GeoData, a University of Southampton research institute. We have recently added new records, taking the dataset back to the late 1350s, meaning it now contains almost 290,000 entries. [...] We hope the database will continue to grow and go on providing answers to questions about our shared military heritage. We are sure that it will unlock many previously untold stories of soldier ancestors.

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'Sanchar Saathi' shares data to help fight fraud and protect carrier security

India’s government has issued a directive that requires all smartphone manufacturers to install a government app on every handset in the country and has given them 90 days to get the job done – and to ensure users can’t remove the code.…

Longtime Slashdot reader krouic shares a report from Europol: From November 24-28, 2025, Europol supported an action week conducted by law enforcement authorities from Switzerland and Germany in Zurich, Switzerland. The operation focused on taking down the illegal cryptocurrency mixing service Cryptomixer, which is suspected of facilitating cybercrime and money laundering. Three servers were seized in Switzerland, along with the cryptomixer.io domain. The operation resulted in the confiscation of over 12 terabytes of data and more than EUR 25 million worth of Bitcoin. After the illegal service was taken over and shut down, law enforcement placed a seizure banner on the website. Authorities allege that the mixing service laundered over 1.3 billion euros in bitcoin since 2016.

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Zig prez complains about 'vibe-scheduling' after safe sleep bug goes unaddressed for eons

The Foundation that promotes the Zig programming language has quit GitHub due to what its leadership perceives as the code sharing site's decline.…

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania finds that preteens who own smartphones by age 12 have significantly higher odds of depression, obesity, and poor sleep compared to their peers. Axios reports: Kids who owned a smartphone at age 12 were found to have about 31% higher odds of depression, 40% higher odds of obesity and 62% higher odds of insufficient sleep than their peers who didn't have one. The researchers analyzed data from the National Institutes of Health-supported Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study assessments conducted between 2016 and 2022. The study included responses from 10,588 youths. Kids who had smartphones were more likely to be female, Black or Hispanic, and from lower-income households. The study has been published in the journal Pediatrics.

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Drive around a virtual track in Las Vegas while watching Matt Garman speak on in-game billboards

RE:INVENT Amazon Web Services has decided to stream all five keynotes from its re:Invent conference in the hit multiplayer game Fortnite, which is more than a little bit bonkers.…

Apple's longtime AI chief John Giannandrea is retiring, with former Microsoft and Google AI leader Amar Subramanya stepping in to take over. MacRumors notes the retirement comes after the company's repeated delays in delivering its revamped Siri and internal turmoil that led to an AI team exodus. From the report: Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Microsoft AI researcher Amar Subramanya set to take over as vice president of AI. Subramanya will report to Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi, and will lead Apple Foundation Models, ML research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. Subramanya was previously corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, and before that, he spent 16 years at Google. He was head of engineering for Google's Gemini Assistant, and Apple says that he has "deep expertise" in both AI and ML research that will be important to "Apple's ongoing innovation and future Apple Intelligence features." Some of the teams that Giannandrea oversaw will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple's new Chief Operating Officer who took over for Jeff Williams earlier this year. Cue has long overseen Apple services. [...] Apple said that it is "poised to accelerate its work in delivering intelligent, trusted, and profoundly personal experiences" with the new AI team. "We are thankful for the role John played in building and advancing our AI work, helping Apple continue to innovate and enrich the lives of our users," said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. "AI has long been central to Apple's strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig's leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple. In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar's joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Flock, the automatic license plate reader and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the United States, according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company. The findings bring up questions about who exactly has access to footage collected by Flock surveillance cameras and where people reviewing the footage may be based. Flock has become a pervasive technology in the US, with its cameras present in thousands of communities that cops use every day to investigate things like carjackings. Local police have also performed numerous lookups for ICE in the system. Companies that use AI or machine learning regularly turn to overseas workers to train their algorithms, often because the labor is cheaper than hiring domestically. But the nature of Flock's business -- creating a surveillance system that constantly monitors US residents' movements -- means that footage might be more sensitive than other AI training jobs. [...] Broadly, Flock uses AI or machine learning to automatically detect license plates, vehicles, and people, including what clothes they are wearing, from camera footage. A Flock patent also mentions cameras detecting "race." It included figures on "annotations completed" and "annotator tasks remaining in queue," with annotations being the notes workers add to reviewed footage to help train AI algorithms. Tasks include categorizing vehicle makes, colors, and types, transcribing license plates, and "audio tasks." Flock recently started advertising a feature that will detect "screaming." The panel showed workers sometimes completed thousands upon thousands of annotations over two day periods. The exposed panel included a list of people tasked with annotating Flock's footage. Taking those names, 404 Media found some were located in the Philippines, according to their LinkedIn and other online profiles. Many of these people were employed through Upwork, according to the exposed material. Upwork is a gig and freelance work platform where companies can hire designers and writers or pay for "AI services," according to Upwork's website. The tipsters also pointed to several publicly available Flock presentations which explained in more detail how workers were to categorize the footage. It is not clear what specific camera footage Flock's AI workers are reviewing. But screenshots included in the worker guides show numerous images from vehicles with US plates, including in New York, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, and California. Other images include road signs clearly showing the footage is taken from inside the US, and one image contains an advertisement for a specific law firm in Atlanta.

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