Submission + - New Ai-Powered "America.gov" Government Website Uses Gemini and Grok (cnn.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: CNN is reporting (and others) that President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled America.gov, a government website meant to serve as a one-stop shop for people trying to accomplish basic tasks like renewing a passport, enrolling in Medicare or applying for disaster relief.

The site, which launched with some basic functions ahead of a full rollout next year, is designed to serve as an AI-powered guide through the thicket of government agencies that Trump officials pledged would ultimately save people a whole lot of frustration.

The administration’s new initiative aims to allow Americans to access dozens of federal websites through a single point, making America.gov akin to a search tool that pulls information from across the government. And in the same way that people increasingly use AI models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to compile information and provide customized answers, Trump officials claimed that America.gov would be able to do the same for people’s interactions with the federal government.

Enrolling in Medicare, for example, will become a matter of typing the request into the America.gov AI tool and following its step-by-step instructions. The same goes for applying to a government job — the new tool will now let people upload their resume directly to the site — or answering questions about federal benefits, publicly available documents or other necessities that fall under the federal government’s vast umbrella.

“Our vision is that one day, this type of convenience and simplicity will be across every government service,” said Joseph Gebbia, who leads the government’s National Design Studio.

But the reality is that the most advanced actions won’t be available until some point in 2027, raising questions about how long it will take for the administration to revamp the way the people interact with the government’s websites. The current version of America.gov can only do “answers.”

In related news, Variety notes that America.gov confirms, for now anyway, that Biden won the 2020 election.

Submission + - Mistral CEO Says US AI Safety Debate Masks Competitors' 'Negligence' (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mistral Chief Executive Arthur Mensch has accused leading global artificial intelligence companies of using the debate over the safety of the technology as a cover-up for their “negligence." “The debate that we’ve seen in the U.S. has been a cover for the negligence of some of our competitors,” Mensch told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach, adding that it was necessary to make systems that can contain the AI agents. [...] “When you give them a lot of tools, those systems [AI agents] are very dynamic, so they can go and do things that you do not expect,” Mensch told CNBC. “You need to have the right monitoring in place, and the enterprises we work with, we give them those kind of monitoring systems,” he said.

Mistral also develops AI models but takes a different approach to OpenAI and Anthropic by working with individual companies to create custom AI tools to suit their needs and integrate them with their businesses. But unlike its competitors, Mistral has no plans to slow down development of advanced models. The lead that U.S. labs have is “not extremely large,” Mensch said, adding that his company was confident that its next-generation model will close the gap “very significantly.”

“We have been raising the capital needed to scale the compute that we need to train bigger and more powerful models, in order for us to own our own destiny,” he said. Earlier this month, Mistral raised 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in fresh funding led by memory chip giant Samsung, as it looks to position itself as a European alternative to rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Submission + - Yet Another AI Security OSS Externality (holdenkarau.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With all the news of the AI models hacking different companies, the flood of "helpful" AI security reports is another tax that the frontier labs are placing on OSS. Holden writes about her experience dealing with a frontier AI lab's security reports during the Apache Spark 3.5.9/4.0.4/and 4.1.3 releases and how the inflexibility of the labs almost caused them to have to ship with known security issues (while the OSS accounts from one lab kept triggering safe guards during the release process).

Submission + - Wearable nanotech could combat nerve agents (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Nanoparticles could someday provide a new way to help soldiers fight back against deadly nerve agents on the front lines. In a new study, Northwestern University scientists developed a nanoparticle-based compound that, when mixed into clothing dyes, could limit the impact of chemicals commonly found in pesticides, insecticides and nerve agents.

Submission + - Virus Stole a Human Gene and Won't Let Go of It (nytimes.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: In a new twist on the phrase "going viral" or stealing code, the NYT reports a virus has "stolen" a human gene, and will not let it go. In the article "This Virus Stole a Human Gene and Won’t Let Go of It" reports that scientists have found a human gene lurking in a virus that causes skin infections. Thus using our own DNA to infect us.

The molluscum contagiosum virus, which causes sores on skin, swiped a gene from humans about 100,000 years ago according to a new study.

The way that viruses replicate makes them particularly good at thieving DNA. The viruses infect a cell, then co-opt its machinery by injecting their own genes. Sometimes this process goes awry, and a stretch of the host’s DNA gets bundled into the new viral genes. This molecular error can pose a threat to human health.

Submission + - China broadens travel curbs to encompass family of top AI talent. (business-standard.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: That marks a broadening of existing curbs on the freedom of movement of China’s most influential tech talent — a category that encompasses entrepreneurs, researchers and executives. While not an outright ban on travel, the new requirement is likely to exert a further chilling effect on a tech sector already facing unprecedented curbs. China has restricted foreign travel for top AI professionals in private firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and DeepSeek since earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported in May, reflecting Beijing’s determination to safeguard its technology as it makes big strides in AI and chipmaking.

It’s unclear whether all those people’s families need to follow the new strictures, the people said. China is also separately implementing rules, which became effective Sept 15, for enforcing exit bans in cases ranging from criminal investigations to potential violations of the country’s industrial and technological security.

Beijing’s plan is to add relevant individuals to the list as time goes by, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing a sensitive issue. Government departments have already notified several people of the need to clear family travel, two of the people said.

Submission + - pgEdge Announces Starfleet, a New Postgres Cloud Platform (pgedge.com)

Submitted by Trifthen
Trifthen writes: Starfleet is a managed or on-prem Postgres cloud service with built-in AI tooling (MCP + RAG), CoW database branching, and optional PostgREST API access. We've built it for dev-focused use, so come by and let us know what you think!

Submission + - NVIDIA Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment.

The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell runtime with Sentry, an out-of-band watchdog running on BlueField-4 DPUs. Nvidia says Sentry can monitor agent activity independently and quarantine an agent that crosses its boundaries within milliseconds.

Nvidia is pitching the platform against a backdrop of recent incidents in which frontier AI labs have reported agents escaping the evaluation environments meant to contain them, reaching systems they should not have accessed and, in some cases, misreporting what they did.

OpenShell and related skills are available via Nvidia’s developer resources page and on GitHub.

Submission + - Inside Britain's Infrastructure Of Information Control (dailywire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The term “Orwellian” is not supposed to be a compliment. But far too often in the modern world, governments behave as if George Orwell’s warnings against totalitarianism, notably in “1984” and “Animal Farm,” are instruction manuals for governance.

On September 22, Britain’s new (and unelected) Prime Minister Andy Burnham took to the stage at the U.N. and announced a new “National Centre for Information Defence” to “detect, attribute, and disrupt” hostile state information attacks.

But this announcement is so pernicious because there is actually some merit in highlighting the kind of information warfare that is being waged against Western populations. But none of us can trust our own governments, given their recent track records, to have such power over information.

Submission + - Apple Copland D11E4 Emulator in Your Browser

Submitted by Balial
Balial writes: In the 1990's, before OS X, Apple tried to replace their Mac OS operating system that didn't support virtual memory with a new OS, Copland, with virtual memory and many modern features. The project failed, but you can now boot and run the OS in your browser:

pagetable.com

Bonus: The install image for Copland is only 35MB.

Submission + - Complain about a watchlist? Go on a watchlist! (metro.co.uk)

Submitted by Shakes Fist
Shakes Fist writes: "Social media posts criticising government policy are being monitored and investigated by officials, Metro can reveal.

Negative X and Reddit posts from unsuspecting Brits attacking the UKâ(TM)s anti-terror programme Prevent were added to a database of critical online comments.

Metro has obtained a list of nearly 80 critical posts found and logged by the Standards and Compliance Unit (StaCU), which oversees Prevent, between March 2024 and February 2025.

One campaign group whose tweet was recorded in the database said the revelations raised âserious questions about freedom of expression and the right to dissent and protestâ(TM) in the UK."

  âoeIt is deeply concerning to see the Prevent duty being used to enable the monitoring of people and organisations simply because they are critical of the programme. That raises serious questions about freedom of expression and the right to dissent and protest.â

We denounce the âoetroubling lack of transparency about what happens to the information gathered through this social media monitoring [by the Standards and Compliance Unit]: how long it is retained, who it is shared with, and ultimately what the government is using it for.â

Weâ(TM)re clear that âoePrevent has expanded far beyond its stated aim of identifying people considered âoevulnerable to radicalisationâ, and has increasingly been used to justify extensive surveillance.â

Criticising the programme for its many faults shouldnâ(TM)t lead to getting put on a database.

ðY' Sarah Lasoye for ORG.

Submission + - US appeals court upholds Pentagon's supply chain risk label on Anthropic (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes:
  • A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic.
  • The DoW labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk in March, and Anthropic sued the Trump administration in an effort to undo that action.
  • The designation prevents the U.S. military from using Anthropic’s models and blocks defense contractors from using them in their work with the agency.
  • “We remain confident in our position and are considering all options, including further review,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement.

Submission + - Mozilla Appears to Sweep Their Telemetary-Droppings Privacy-Bugs Aside 4

Submitted by BrendaEM
BrendaEM writes: Myself and others have noticed that Firefox is leaving behind archived and other telemetry data--even when data reporting is turned off. The apparent fact that Mozilla, seems to have marked the bug resolved--when it is not, and offer a nebulous fix date, would suggest that they aren't taking the issue seriously.

I have at least 1,279 telemetry droppings files, in one archive folder alone, it bears to mind that SSD drive prices have gone up substantially, noting that even a small write will affect: one of the 1,000 to 10,000 MLC cycles, one of the 3,000 TLC Cycles, or one of the paltry 1,000 QLC cycles (Ref: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...).

The existence of telemetry alone is unsettling for a browser that claims " Your privacy always comes first."
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

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