New York is launching a state-backed AI safety research center at Binghamton University that will independently study and test AI systems, develop safety and security techniques, and train researchers in responsible AI. "While the federal government fails to act, New York is leading the way on AI safety and holding big tech accountable," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said. "The stakes are too high to simply take AI companies at their word." Politico reports: The center -- which is funded by a $30 million gift from Bloomberg co-founder Tom Secunda and a $25 million research investment from SUNY and New York state -- is set to launch before New York's major AI safety law, the RAISE Act, comes into effect on Jan. 1. That will require submissions of detailed safety frameworks from AI companies operating in New York State, which Hochul's office hopes will be scrutinized by researchers at the new center. "AI is opening up questions that scientists could not tackle before," said Secunda, who also serves as the board chair of Empire AI, a $500 million public-private partnership. "With Empire AI and researchers across New York, the Center can test systems independently and give public officials evidence they can use." Over 80 leading scientists and researchers on AI systems from across New York state will contribute to the effort, which will be run by the New York Center for AI Responsibility and Research at Binghamton University, according to details shared by Hochul's office. The initiative will be led by Jeannette Wing, the executive vice president for research at Columbia University, and Greg Morrisett, the vice provost of Cornell Tech. "We need new techniques that can be applied to this new kind of system with swarms of autonomous agents acting independently and without control. How can you first detect that they're going to do harm, and how can you prevent them from doing harm?" said Wing. "The beauty of what's being proposed is that this state is committing resources to really light this up."

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President Donald Trump says the FBI is investigating Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair with a woman alleged by U.S. intelligence to have gathered information for Beijing. "I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he'll be in good shape," Trump said at a White House briefing. The Associated Press reports: Trump suggested the extraordinary step of directly involving himself in a counterintelligence investigation, a sign of his friendly relationship with Huang and the possible geopolitical stakes. "I did speak to him today just to see if he's feeling all right, how you're doing," Trump said. "He said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy." Trump is slated to meet next week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Shenzhen, China, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, but he was noncommittal about bringing up the situation with Xi. "No, I don't think so," Trump said. "I mean, maybe. I'm sure President XI will ask me about it. I just know Jensen very well. I just think he's a very honorable man." Nvidia has launched its own independent investigation into whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. Meanwhile, China has denied the allegations. "The so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It is nothing but smears against China," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said during a regular news briefing Monday. Further reading: Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Top Republican lawmakers have asked Jensen Huang to appear before Congress to answer questions after it was reported that US intelligence officials believe Nvidia's chief executive has been targeted by a Chinese spying operation. The chairs of the House committees on China, foreign affairs, and intelligence wrote to Huang this week asking him to appear before a joint closed-door briefing for their committees on November 18. "Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the People's Republic of China's access to sensitive US technology and information," representatives John Moolenaar, Brian Mast, and Rick Crawford wrote. "The issue of PRC infiltration and access to cutting-edge US technology is core to the investigative work of our three committees this Congress. It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which US national security has been placed at risk," the lawmakers added. The New York Times last week wrote that US intelligence officials believed Huang had been the target of a Chinese spy operation. The concerns center on a Chinese woman named Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud company that has bought billions of dollars of Nvidia's chips. Nvidia has rejected the claims and on Thursday would not say if Huang would appear before Congress. "Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job. Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year," the company said. "Our regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information -- not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets -- and zero information relevant to national security," it added. The lawmakers said they wanted Huang to discuss the security protocols Nvidia had in place to protect against "foreign adversary espionage." The company said its chief executive had an "outstanding security team" that travels with him. The New York Times said Huang had not received a "defensive briefing," which the intelligence community usually, but not always, provides potential espionage targets to warn them about the activity. Nvidia said it was confident that the US government would have let the company know if it thought a person was a threat to US industry and that it often receives updates from Washington about people of concern.

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Clocks "fall back" one hour tonight to end Daylight Saving Time — though many Americans want to end the twice-yearly clock change, reports Axios. But the U.S. Congress "remains deadlocked about how to make that happen." The clocks are falling back despite a bipartisan House vote in July to make daylight saving time permanent and Trump's subsequent push for Senate action... While most Americans want to end the twice-yearly clock changes, they don't necessarily favor Trump's solution. Gallup found 48% of Americans support permanent standard time the entire year, compared with 24% who prefer permanent daylight saving time, as Trump wants... In 1974, the U.S. experimented with year-round daylight saving time but reversed course amid concerns about children going to school in the dark>. Experts still debate whether permanent DST is good for people. Supporters argue that permanent daylight saving time would provide more afternoon and evening sunlight, encouraging outdoor activities. But sleep experts warn that darker mornings and lighter evenings can disrupt sleep cycles, while permanent daylight saving time could force millions of children to travel to school in the dark. The bottom line: The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says it prefers permanent standard time because it better aligns with natural sleep cycles. "Hawaii and most of Arizona don't observe daylight saving time, so their clocks won't change," the article points out, adding that eliminating it for the rest of America "still faces opposition in the Senate and isn't expected to be considered by the end of the year. But "the upcoming midterms could change the balance of power in Congress, potentially shifting the debate."

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Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from ProPublica: A few months into President Donald Trump's second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wanted Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it. The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request. The proposition was shocking to CISA's career staffers, according to one of the former officials. CISA typically worked to thwart hackers. Moreover, the agency had been directed not to alert the voting machine company if it uncovered flaws, contrary to its standard practices. The request made the CISA employees fear they were being asked to take part in political interference. "My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don't like," one of the former officials said. "This goes against everything CISA represents." [Or, perhaps do something worse?] The CISA employees repeatedly told the political appointees that their request was impossible, in part because the agents capable of pulling off such an operation had just been laid off by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. The appointees eventually stopped pressing CISA. Though not acted on, the request shows how the Trump administration has tried to use the agency for its own ends while draining it of resources for one of its critical missions: protecting the nation's voting systems.

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For more than a year, The New York Times followed recipients of a universal basic income program who received $1,330 a month for an entire year. There were benefits, but also the everyday challenges of being poor, and turning their life around "did not turn out to be quite that simple." Across Silicon Valley, experimental guaranteed income programs have quietly taken off. Google began funding six different initiatives in 2022 as part of a $50 million donation to nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying basic income could be a novel way to prevent homelessness in one of the nation's most expensive locations. Each program has hundreds of participants who receive around $1,000 a month, and academics study the results. State and federal tax laws limit the lengths of the programs and the payment amounts. The studies have found that most basic income programs improve short-term employment and mental health while reducing food insecurity. But while data from these efforts has been closely tracked, less is known about the individual journeys of participants... The Times ultimately shadowed three people... All of the program participants, including the ones The Times followed, were previously homeless and transitioning off a housing stipend that paid for a portion of their rent, and many received the payments on top of other social assistance like food stamps. The Times's findings mirrored the academic studies. For all three recipients, the instant benefits of basic income were clear: They had breathing room for groceries, rent and other expenses. But the success of the payments in another area — giving people more free time and opportunity in the long term — was mixed. "It's a lot to ask of someone to get their life together in 12 months, when a lot of these issues are structural or systemic," said Jennifer Loving, who runs Destination: Home, a nonprofit that administers basic income programs in Silicon Valley. "And the world around them isn't getting cheaper." One recipient began going to community college — but resorted to taking one class at a time while single parenting — and using their monthly payments to help support relatives. In fact, the article notes that a recent study of 3,000 universal basic income participants found that money spent supporting friends and family increased 26%, "the most of any category. That was more than the increases for food (6%) and child care (11%)." Another recipient used the time to get help at a community college to find a higher-paying job. And one recipient died — but his mother used what he'd saved to help put his brother through a drug rehab program.

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U.S. President Donald Trump "doxxed" a U.S. senator today, writes the Washington Sun, by posting his cell phone number "as part of a plea for his Truth Social followers to badger his Republican ally into making daylight saving time permanent." When The Washington Sun called the number minutes after Trump's post, a recording said the mailbox was full and could not receive messages... [Senator Tom] Cotton has long detested the idea of making daylight saving time permanent. In a Senate floor speech last year, Cotton said doing so would "make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans," particularly harming kids. The Senate was only able to unanimously pass the bill in 2022 because Cotton was reportedly unaware the vote was taking place, though the measure stalled out from there. The Arkansas Republican didn't back down in a post on Saturday. "Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I'll always put Arkansas first," he posted on X. Trump continued his tear against Cotton soon after. "If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn't have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so," he posted on Truth.

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Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Mashable: Singapore's government is trying its hand at matchmaking again. The country's Government Technology Agency (GovTech) has launched FirstDate, a pilot dating service for singles aged 21 to 35. For now, it's open only to public officers, according to the service's website. Applications close Oct. 5. FirstDate is designed as an alternative to endless swiping. Instead of browsing a stream of profiles, users fill out a questionnaire about their interests, habits, values, and preferences. The service then sends them one match per cycle (the time it takes to mutually accept and presumably meet up). Each match includes a compatibility score, a brief description of the person, and a personal note. [...] The pilot arrives as Singapore's birth rate hits a new low, according to the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times. The country's total fertility rate fell to 0.87 children per woman in 2025, down from 1.24 a decade earlier. In April, the government announced a new workgroup tasked with addressing falling birth rates, which is expected to report its findings by early 2027, The Straits Times reported. The service relies on the Gale-Shapley algorithm, a well-known mathematical method that solves the stable matching problem by pairing two sets of participants based on their ranked preferences. Once matched, users have 72 hours to mutually accept before contact details are shared, with optional "Date Quests" and post-date surveys designed to encourage and assess in-person meetups. Accounts are verified through Singapore's Singpass digital ID system to reduce fake profiles, and profiles are only visible to assigned matches. GovTech says user data is protected under government security standards, is not sold to third parties, and can be deleted upon request.

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In 2021, America approved $65 billion to fund broadband internet services as part of President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But Trump's administration announced they'd withhold funds from states with net neutrality protections... States could object and sue the government, Ars Technica reported last October, "but even a successful lawsuit could take years and leave unserved homes without broadband for the foreseeable future." So where does that leave California's net neutrality laws? Ars Technica asks. California expect to spend about $1.4 billion to deploy broadband to 270,571 locations... Similar to federal net neutrality rules repealed during the first Trump administration, California's law prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic and says ISPs may not require fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to Internet users. While the first Trump administration lost its attempt to preempt state net neutrality laws, the second Trump administration is trying to achieve a similar result by making federal broadband money conditional on whether states agree not to enforce net neutrality... California and Illinois are the only states that haven't finalized their funding, according to the BEAD progress dashboard maintained by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)... California could try to continue enforcing its net neutrality law even while accepting the federal funding, a strategy that would involve another long court battle over its right to regulate broadband providers. This would be difficult, as the Trump administration is requiring states that accept grant funding to commit that they won't enforce net neutrality rules... [N]early 30 advocacy groups that focus on access to technology are treating the vote as a significant milestone and urged state leaders to defend California's net neutrality law in a letter yesterday... Winning a court battle would become much more difficult after the state accepts the money [according to Paul Goodman, legal counsel for the Center for Accessible Technology]. Goodman said the CPUC should delay the vote and that California should file a lawsuit arguing that the NTIA-imposed condition is illegal. In addition to net neutrality, Goodman said California may be giving up other regulatory authority over companies, like AT&T and Verizon, because the NTIA requirement forbids rate regulation and "utility-style rules on broadband Internet service" in general... Goodman said the exemption from state laws would last for up to 14 years. This is because ISPs receiving grants would have four years to deploy the required broadband networks, and the extended period of performance lasts another 10 years... AT&T is already trying to get out of state obligations related to its basic phone service in California, as we've reported... [Also at stake is whether "ISPs themselves get to pick the price of the mandated low-cost broadband offerings," the article points out.] The letter from 30 advocacy groups to California state leaders argues accepting the money "would set a dangerous precedent for the federal government to use federal funding as a cudgel that forces states in line with its agenda... If California were to allow this funding to be used as leverage, there is no telling what other resources the administration would confidently seek to exploit." Thursday California's Public Utility Commission did vote to approve the plan, but a spokesperson earlier told Ars Technica their vote "does not address subgrantee agreements, or the conditions the NTIA requires be included in subgrantee agreements."

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"Californians just made it through the hottest August on record without having to endure any rolling power outages," reports the Los Angeles Times. In fact, the state hasn't implemented rotating power outages since 2020. Because "Over the last few years, California has quietly but dramatically increased the resiliency of its electrical grid through a significant expansion in battery energy storage." These batteries hold onto solar energy captured during the day, so it can be sent to the grid as demand peaks in the evening and morning, when most people are at home running air conditioners and other appliances. During the August heat wave of 2020, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the flow of electricity for most of the state, declared a Stage 3 Emergency and hundreds of thousands of households lost power in rolling outages. At the time, the system had less than 100 megawatts of battery storage available, according to system spokesperson Jayme Ackemann. Today, it has more than 17,000 megawatts available.... According to Ackemann, the system seeks to add 20,000 to 25,000 megawatts of battery storage capacity by 2045 — the same year it has set a goal of achieving carbon neutrality. That means the state would remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. In recent years, California has steadily grown the share of electrical power generated by renewable sources — such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower — which bolstered the resiliency of the grid by increasing the overall amount of energy available. An uptick in people installing rooftop solar panels has provided an additional power boost, Ackemann said. In May, California became the first known large-scale power system in the world to have relied on more than 50% solar power for an entire month.... California's grid is also now integrated with electrical systems across much of the Western United States. This means that if there is an extreme heat event in Southern California, energy from a cooler area such as the Pacific Northwest can be imported to help meet regional demand. All of this has collectively helped the state's electrical system weather this year's long-lasting heat. "Southern California continued to break temperature records this week when Long Beach and Anaheim reached a blistering 107 degrees and Escondido hit 112 degrees..."

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A union representing Uber and Lyft drivers was just certified by California's Public Employment Relations Board, officially recognizing them as the drivers' bargaining organization. The Sacramento Bee reports that this new bargaining structure : The move will allow the California Gig Workers Union to help drivers negotiate issues affecting working conditions and benefits. It comes as at least 30% of active drivers expressed support of the union... [California] Assembly Bill 1340 helped bring the union to fruition by allowing the independent contractor drivers to engage in collective bargaining. "The next step for the union is to negotiate a contract with Uber and Lyft that meets drivers' demands," reports the Los Angeles Times, "including health insurance, support for high gas prices and more transparency around pay: California is the third state to allow ride-hailing drivers to unionize, following Washington in 2022 and Massachusetts in 2024... The California Gig Workers Union was formed with the support of the Service Employees International Union... "Gig drivers shouldn't have to face the future alone," said SEIU 521 official Riko Mendez in a statement. "As autonomous vehicles rapidly expand, having a union gives the drivers the power to negotiate for fair pay and meaningful say in how new technology shapes their work and our communities' futures."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping package of laws Thursday aimed at protecting children from the risks of technology, including social media and AI chatbots. The laws will penalize large social media companies up to $1 million per child if they are found negligent of harming children through their platforms, ban tech businesses from offering addictive feeds to anyone under 16, require operators of AI chatbots to perform risk assessments before rolling them out and allow families to opt out of receiving school-issued laptops. Newsom joined his wife and state lawmakers at a children's museum near San Francisco to stress the importance of protecting kids at a time when they have such easy access to social media and AI chatbots. "We have designed cribs to be safe, chairs to be safe, car seats," Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan said. "Yet we've allowed technology to be handed to our children and never asked or expected it to be safe." [...] Newsom also signed laws Wednesday, which are supported by Anthropic, that are aimed at improving oversight of AI companies. One of the measures requires the state to create rules for independent organizations to evaluate the safety risks of AI models, and the other requires the state to create a registry of AI auditors, who'd have to be financially independent from the businesses they are auditing.

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Thursday 404 Media reported that Flock taught America's cops "how they could surveil the No Kings protests" against President Trump (as well as "small parades") in a webinar last year that described "using a mix of Flock's technology and law enforcement's own databases." In the webinar, Flock's director of market management Caity Peak explains how real time crime centers — which are police surveillance centers that utilize Flock cameras and other surveillance cameras — can be used for emergency response, but can also be used to surveil "established events" like 4th of July fireworks displays, parades, bike races, Mardi Gras, and protests. The webinar shows just how routine the idea of always-on surveillance has become, and how casually it is used during extremely innocuous events. Peak explains that police can use FlockOS, a software platform that combines Flock's automatic license plate readers (ALPR), drones, gunshot detectors, 911 data, and other surveillance cameras (including ones Flock does not own) into a "single pane of glass" or single piece of software to look at various types of surveillance in one place during both emergencies and relatively mundane events in a city or town. "Imagine that you're an incident commander, and you're working this No Kings Protest," Peak explains while a dashboard shows a series of surveillance tools overlaying the city of Denver. "If I'm somebody assigned a traffic post that's working this No Kings Protest, I really don't have time to go in [...] and look at all these places [for different intelligence]. This is an example of viewing all of that in one place...." The dashboard Peak shows includes traffic information, a "response plan" for the protest, the floor plans of nearby buildings, as well as a series of video feeds of both outdoor-mounted cameras and cameras inside businesses and government buildings. 404 Media and the Electronic Frontier Foundation previously showed that police have specifically used Flock cameras to monitor the No Kings protests and other First Amendment-protected activity... This webinar shows this type of surveillance is not anomalous, and is specifically taught by Flock. The webinar also shows that Flock's latest public stance — that its ALPR cameras are noninvasive technology, that they take only static images at a single place and time, and that they are primarily used to solve the worst crimes — is wildly misleading. Flock has time and time again pitched itself to police as a sort of operating system to solve crime and do real-time surveillance and predictive policing. ALPRs are just one part of this broader surveillance apparatus that Flock has created, markets to police, and teaches them how to use.

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The United Nations has an announcement. "The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to encourage governments, schools and tech companies worldwide to stop using maps that make Africa look far smaller than it really is." By 164 votes to one, Member States on Friday endorsed a resolution promoting map projections that more accurately reflect the true size of continents — the culmination of an African-led campaign against the 16th-century Mercator projection, still the most widely used map in the world. The United States cast the sole vote against, dismissing the initiative as part of a "radical ideological project." Six countries — Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine — abstained. The resolution does not ban the Mercator projection or impose a replacement. Instead, it encourages governments, schools, international organizations and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection and other so-called equal-area maps when relative size matters, and to teach the limitations of any flat map in representing a spherical planet. Behind that seemingly technical debate lies a larger argument about history and power: whether a map designed for European sailors in the 16th century has, over generations, distorted not only geography but perceptions of a whole, vast and complex continent... [With Mercator maps] landmasses appear increasingly enlarged the farther they are from the Equator. Greenland, for instance, can look roughly comparable in size to Africa, even though Africa is about 14 times larger. Northern Europe and North America are similarly magnified, relative to equatorial regions. Despite its original navigational purpose, Mercator remains common in educational, media, digital and official materials. The resolution says those distortions have contributed to the "symbolic minimization" of Africa and perpetuated an unbalanced view of the world... Equal-area maps do not make Africa larger; they remove the exaggeration Mercator gives landmasses closer to the poles. The UN notes that hours before the vote, France's foreign minister announced the country was planning to abandon Mercator for its maps of the world.

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Rockstar Games and the mayor of Miami-Dade county are discussing a joint marketing campaign transforming parts of the county to look like areas from Grand Theft Auto 6, reports the blog Rock Paper Shotgun: The proposed publicity event would include "an immersive arrival experience" at Miami International Airport. with signs for Vice City and planes coated in GTA 6 livery, together with branded Metromover skytrains and specially designed manhole covers... [I]t proposes a dockyard visual installation inspired by GTA 6's Port Gellhorn, incorporating cargo containers, cranes, and cruise ships. There's also talk of a "Vice City Motor Fest", which might feature "classic cars, customized vehicles, lowriders, motorcycles, tropical graphics, and local entertainment within a controlled, family-appropriate setting." Attendees would presumably be discouraged from nicking the cars... As it happens, Rockstar have embedded a team in Miami to sponge up the ambience, research Miami culture, and study the habits of residents — including "ex-criminals", in the careful phrasing of senior vice president of narrative Rupert Humphries. The pitch suggested murals, "wrapping" buses (with special signs at transit stops), and even a Vice City-inspired baggage-claim installation at the airport. The pitch also suggested the library offer recording equipment for "Vice City Radio" to capture music (as well as podcasting, oral histories, neighborhood storytelling) — along with " limited-edition GTA VI-inspired library cards, collectible bookmarks, Miami-themed reading and music lists, and demonstrations of the new recording and production equipment." Though nothing has been formally agreed to or approved, the mayor's office confirmed the discussions, reports Axios. The sheriff of Miami-Dade county "has publicly opposed plans to transform the city into a real version of Grand Theft Auto 6's "Vice City", reports Kotaku. The sheriff's reason? The videogame city "includes murder, robbery, drug trafficking, carjacking, violence against law enforcement," as well as "other conduct" that the police department works "every single day to prevent."

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