breakdown
New hack uses prompt injection to corrupt Gemini’s long-term memory — The result of the attack is the permanent planting of long-term memories that will be present in all future sessions, opening the potential for the chatbot to act on false information or instructions in perpetuity.
Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case in the US, big implications for the battle between generative AI companies and rights holders
Dozens of new obesity drugs are coming, will work differently from Ozempic and Wegovy — aiming to deliver greater weight loss with fewer side effects
Music makes us move even when we don’t like it
English has a pattern of common patronymic names. For example, “John Peters” and “John Peterson” are someone whose father was named “Peter”. (”Peters” should be understood as “Peter’s”.) Similarly we have John Williams and John Williamson, John Roberts and John Robertson, John Richards and John Richardson, John James and John Jameson, John Johns and John Johnson, and so on. […] “Richard” is “Dick”, and we have John Dicks (or Dix) and John Dickson (or Dixon). “Nicholas” is “Nick” and we have John Nicks (or Nix) and John Nickson (or Nixon).
In August 1990, two hikers sent photos of a strange diamond-shaped aircraft to the press – but the story never appeared. Was it a prank, a hoax, an optical illusion or something else entirely? […] it was a classified U.S. military aircraft
U.S. democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration, in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for liberal democracy: full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties. The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country’s professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them. But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. […] Democratic Party donors may be targeted by the IRS; businesses that fund civil rights groups may face heightened tax and legal scrutiny or find their ventures stymied by regulators. Critical media outlets will likely confront costly defamation suits or other legal actions as well as retaliatory policies against their parent companies. […] much of the coming authoritarianism will take a less visible form: the politicization and weaponization of government bureaucracy.
