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Submission + - European Union May Not Ban Combustion Cars After All (caranddriver.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

The European Union's plan to ban new combustion cars starting in 2035 may be over before it has a chance to go into effect, if Germany's leader has anything to say about it.

2035 target was simply infeasible with current technology. While some promising new developments, like solid state batteries, are being worked on, they are not yet ready for mass production.

Submission + - Why meetings can harm employee well-being (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones.

A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of "Meeting Science". Among other things, the research revealed that the real issue may not be the number of meetings, but rather how they are designed, the lack of clarity about their purpose, and the inequalities they (often unconsciously) reinforce.

Faced with what we call meeting madness, the solution is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to design them better. It begins with a simple but often forgotten question: why are we meeting?

Submission + - UK to remove right to trial by jury for most charges (theguardian.com)

Submitted by DesScorp
DesScorp writes: The UK Ministry of Justice will move to eliminate the right to trial by jury for all but the most serious charges in a controversial overhaul of the British court system:

Criminals will be stopped from “gaming the system” by choosing trial by jury in order to increase the chances of proceedings collapsing, the courts minister has said, promising to enact radical changes to limit jury trials by the next election. Drug dealers and career criminals were “laughing in the dock” knowing cases can take years to come to trial, Sarah Sackman said, while warning that inaction would be a road to “chaos and ruin”. Ministers will legislate to remove the right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in one of the biggest and most controversial overhauls of the justice system in England and Wales in generations – promising the changes will significantly shrink the court backlog by 2029. The Ministry of Justice is braced for a backlash from barristers and the judiciary as it presses ahead with the measures to tackle a backlog of nearly 80,000 cases, which will create a proposed new judge-only division of the crown court to hear some cases. Sackman said the “stakes are incredibly high” as she prepared to announce early next month that vast numbers of cases will now be heard by judges and magistrates rather than juries, a response to recommendations in a review by Sir Brian Leveson.

Submission + - Google will leave open the option to sideload apps on Android (googleblog.com)

Submitted by Artem S. Tashkinov
Artem S. Tashkinov writes: A few months ago, Google proposed that every Android developer, including those distributing apps outside the Google Play Store, such as popular third-party stores like F-Droid, must verify their identity to have their apps installable on "certified Android devices," starting circa 2026 in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. This triggered strong push-back from indie developers and open-source advocates, who saw it as a shift toward a more closed ecosystem, raising fears that sideloading would be free in name only and making Android essentially an iOS clone.

In response, Google clarified in its November 2025 blog post that while verification is moving forward, there will be lighter-weight paths for students and hobbyists, and an "advanced flow" for power users to install unverified apps with full warning of the risks, essentially backtracking on its initial proposal.

Submission + - Student handcuffed by police after AI 'mistakes bag of Doritos for gun' (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Taki Allen was approached by armed officers at Kenwood High School following football practice, who ordered him to the ground and cuffed him before realising he had no weapon.

'The school's Omnilert AI gun detection system, which uses cameras to identify potential weapons, generated an alert that was then forwarded to the school resource officer and police.

'While the student's family and local officials have expressed concern and called for a review of the system, the school superintendent defended its operation, stating it "did what it was supposed to do".

'This incident follows a previous failure of the Omnilert system in January, where it did not detect a gun used in a fatal shooting at a Nashville high school due to camera proximity issues.'

A false positive follows a catastrophic false negative. The price we pay for safety? How big a price should we pay?

Submission + - CCP GOTION DEAD: Whitmer-funded Chinese battery maker pulls plug on project (themidwesterner.news)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan Economic Development Corporation contends it’s “not the outcome we hoped for,” residents in Mecosta County are celebrating its decision to nix $715 million in taxpayer-funded incentives for Gotion.

MEDC officials on Thursday notified lawmakers that the company with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party is in breach of its economic development contract, which was negotiated in secret by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration and select lawmakers just three years ago.

“It’s about damn time,” Marjorie Steele, founder of the Economic Development Responsibility Alliance that opposed Gotion’s planned $2.4 billion EV battery plant, told Bridge Michigan. “What the MEDC tried to pull here in Big Rapids was just so egregious.”

Whitmer claimed in 2022 that the agreement, which included $715 million in taxpayer-funded incentives and tax breaks, would fuel “the biggest ever economic development project in Northern Michigan” and create “2,350 good-paying jobs in Big Rapids.”

Submission + - Alaska Airlines grounds flights nationwide due to IT outage (go.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Alaska Airlines flights were grounded nationwide on Thursday after the airline said it was experiencing an "IT outage affecting operations."

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop after a request by the airline.

Alaska Airlines flights departing from Seattle Tacoma International Airport were not affected, according to the latest advisory from the FAA.

It's the second IT outage affecting the airline this year.

Submission + - PC sales explode in Q3 as Windows 11 deadlines force millions to upgrade (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: IDC says global PC shipments jumped 9.4 percent in Q3 2025, reaching nearly 76 million units. Asia and Japan led the growth thanks to school projects and corporate refreshes tied to Windows 10â(TM)s end of support. North America was the weak link, with tariffs and economic unease keeping buyers on the sidelines even as aging fleets strain under Windows 11 pressure.

Lenovo kept its top spot with 25.5 percent market share, followed by HP at 19.8 and Dell at 13.3. Apple and ASUS both posted double-digit growth. IDCâ(TM)s takeaway is clear: the PC market is not surging on flashy new features, it is being pulled forward by deadlines, old batteries, and the reality that five-year-old laptops do not cut it anymore.

Submission + - There isn't an AI bubble—there are three (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: AI is experiencing not just one, but three bubbles—speculative, infrastructure, and hype. How businesses respond to these bubbles will dictate their fate, and determine whether they will be able to survive when the bubbles burst.

Submission + - Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro makes food taste sweeter and saltier (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Some people taking Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro notice that food suddenly tastes sweeter or saltier, and this subtle shift in flavor perception appears tied to reduced appetite and stronger feelings of fullness. In a study of more than 400 patients, roughly one in five experienced heightened taste sensitivity, and many reported being less hungry and more easily satisfied.

Submission + - Using AI to write degrades your mental performance (arxiv.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Brain-to-LLM users exhibited higher memory recall and activation of occipito-parietal and prefrontal areas, similar to Search Engine users. Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.

Submission + - Undisclosed risks of COVID-19 vaccine

Submitted by Mirnotoriety
Mirnotoriety writes: 03:30: “But it was interesting as we started to understand COVID and understand that the pathogen was the spike protein that the solution that was offered was actually to tell people to make the spike protein for an unknown amount of time for an unknown amount. And that is actually where we got off.

Meaning historically when we think about vaccines, vaccines are passive, meaning your body interfaces with a foreign protein. But usually that protein is not something that's active biologically to most people.

But instead to pick the very protein that is pathological and actually have people make it in a in a way that we didn't really even understand. And even the biodistribution studies are just now catching up where the old it stayed in your arm is completely false.

Uh and we know that now. But of course the the studies just came out because really we weren't studying it before we basically told everybody it was safe and effective.”

Submission + - Do we need opt-out by default privacy laws?

Submitted by BrendaEM
BrendaEM writes: In large, companies failed to self-regulate. They have not been respected the individual's right to privacy. In software and web interfaces, companies have buried their privacy setting so deep that they cannot be found in a reasonable amount of time, or that an unreasonable amount of steps are needed to attempt to retain their data. They have taken the rights of the individual's right to privacy away--by default.

Are laws needed that protect a person's privacy by default--unless specific steps are needed by the user/purchaser to relinquish it? Should the wording of the explanation should be so written that the contract is brief, it explains the forfeiture of the privacy, and where that data might be going? Should a company selling a product should state before purchase, which right need to be dismissed for it's use? Should a legal owner who purchased product expect it to not stop functioning--only because a newer user contract is not agreed to?

Submission + - Among tech layoffs 120K H-1B visas approved (uscis.gov)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

FY 2026 H-1B Cap Process Update We received enough electronic registrations during the initial registration period to reach the fiscal year 2026 H-1B numerical allocations (H-1B cap), including the advanced degree exemption, also known as the masterâ(TM)s cap. We selected 118,660 unique beneficiaries, resulting in 120,141 selected registrations in the initial selection for the FY 2026 H-1B cap.

This is disappointing failure in otherwise excellent track record of Trump administration of reducing out of control immigration.

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