..."This is what we call Agentic Blabbering: the AI Browser exposing what it sees, what it believes is happening, what it plans to do next, and what signals it considers suspicious or safe."

By intercepting this traffic between the browser and the AI services running on the vendor's servers and feeding it as input to a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), Guardio said it was able to make Perplexity's Comet AI browser fall victim to a phishing scam in under four minutes.

. . .

"If you can observe what the agent flags as suspicious, hesitates on, and more importantly, what it thinks and blabbers about the page, you can use that as a training signal," Chen explained. "The scam evolves until the AI Browser reliably walks into the trap another AI set for it."

Niantic's AI spinout is training a new world model using 30 billion images of urban landmarks crowdsourced from players.

. . .

“Five hundred million people installed that app in 60 days,” says Brian McClendon, CTO at Niantic Spatial, an AI company that Niantic spun out in May last year. According to the video-game firm Scopely, which bought Pokémon Go from Niantic at the same time, the game still drew more than 100 million players in 2024, eight years after it launched.

. . .

Now Niantic Spatial is using that vast and unparalleled trove of crowdsourced data—images of urban landmarks tagged with super-accurate location markers taken from the phones of hundreds of millions of Pokémon Go players around the world—to build a kind of world model, a buzzy new technology that grounds the smarts of LLMs in real-world environments.

The company’s latest product is a model that it says can pinpoint your location on a map to within a few centimeters, based on a handful of snapshots of the buildings or other landmarks in view. The firm wants to use it to help robots navigate with greater precision in places where GPS is unreliable. . .

...A mysterious phenomenon known as “red sprites” randomly occur in the mesosphere, hanging like upside-down jellyfish for a scant ten milliseconds. Blue jets spear from cloud tops toward the stratosphere with eerie, silent urgency.

Both events happen so fast and high that capturing their details was nearly impossible. Yet ASIM can spot them from orbit.

One study used its footage and ground instruments to pinpoint the altitude of a single blue jet. This confirmed that these upward bolts really do punch beyond the weather layer we know.

Those measurements feed directly into storm-charging models, which in turn inform aviation guidelines about where dangerous electrical fields might lurk...

Thousands of companies are jockeying for billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts to build a shield designed to intercept and destroy missiles launched against the United States.

But amid the intense competition, a handful of firms have an important inside connection.

At least four of the companies awarded contracts so far are owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm founded by billionaire Steve Feinberg, who until last year ran the company and is now the deputy secretary of defense — the second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon.

. . .

On his first day back in office, Trump rescinded an executive order signed by President Joe Biden that required his appointees to comply with an ethics pledge. The pledge barred them from working on issues related to their former lobbying topics or clients for two years. Weeks later, Trump fired 17 inspectors general charged with investigating fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest across the federal government. Around the same time, he removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency that oversees ethics compliance throughout the executive branch. The office is currently without a head or a chief of staff.

. . .

“This is what President Eisenhower worried about in the 1960s” when he railed against the military-industrial complex...

...The administration’s removals to date have included stripping information about climate change, slavery, the civil rights movement, and the mistreatment of Native Americans from national park sites, according to court filings from the National Parks Conservation Association. NPCA sued the Interior Department this month over its decision to remove content from park sites.

The organization said in the suit that the content removals “erase the history of countless people and communities from public spaces” and “limit the availability of scientific information relevant to ensuring the long-term preservation of the parks themselves."

"...we can’t talk about times in American history where people in power hurt other people. We can’t talk about times in American history where people’s civil rights were violated..."

...In at least one report, a park service employee suggested the administration review a sign and possibly change it even though they acknowledged changes could run afoul of legal requirements.

“Text addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War,” the report from a staff member at Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee said. “This is both historically correct and legislatively mandated but we ask for further review to confirm it is aligned with SO 3431.”...

Virginia lawmakers on Monday passed a proposal that would require schools, if they teach students about the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to relay the facts of what actually happened, without including misinformation that the 2020 presidential election was stolen or that the attack was just a peaceful protest.

...On March 2, QatarEnergy — the state-owned energy giant responsible for all of the country’s liquefied natural gas exports — announced a complete halt to LNG production...their shutdown effectively removes roughly 20% of the world’s LNG export capacity from the market in one hit...This goes beyond sentiment and sits squarely in the let’s-affect-fundamentals territory...This episode will embed a geopolitical risk premium far deeper into LNG pricing than existed even at the height of the Russia-Ukraine crisis...The long-term impact could be structural and include reconfigured trade flows, geopolitical risk premiums baked into contracts, changes in investment strategies, and a renewed urgency for diversification of supplies.

...when Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, the words “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” did not refer to the signing of the Constitution but rather to the date of the Declaration Of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it said. Those concepts did not make it into the Constitution, because leaders in southern states did not believe in them. Instead they believed in property rights, which included the ownership of slaves. Richardson explains:

In Lincoln’s day, fabulously wealthy enslavers had gained control over the government and had begun to argue that the Founders had gotten their worldview terribly wrong. They insisted that their system of human enslavement, which had enabled them to amass fortunes previously unimaginable, was the right one. Most men were dull drudges who must be led by their betters for their own good, southern leaders said. As South Carolina senator and enslaver James Henry Hammond put it, “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal.’”

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” Either people — men, in his day — were equal, or they were not. Lincoln went on, “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it…where will it stop?”

. . .

...illegal immigrants. That phrase performs essential political work. It marks a population as outside ordinary protection. It reassures everyone else that detention is targeted and procedural.

But detention systems do not remain fixed to their initial category. In Germany, early camps held political enemies. Later they held others. The infrastructure did not change. The classification did.

In the Soviet Union, the Gulag expanded through administrative redefinition — new offenses, broader categories, larger quotas. Infrastructure makes expansion easier than restraint.

...Once physical capacity exists, using it becomes easier — politically, legally, bureaucratically. Expansion rarely arrives as a dramatic announcement. It happens through incremental adjustments — new enforcement priorities, revised definitions, widened discretion. Each change appears limited. The cumulative effect is not.

The early presentation of Dachau shows how normalization forms. The system appears orderly, rational, controlled. Harsh realities are hidden. The language is administrative. Observers see what they are permitted to see. By the time the full character of a detention system becomes undeniable, the infrastructure is already permanent.

The guards are trained. The facilities are staffed. The budgets are embedded. The public is accustomed. And most people still believe it exists for someone else. And once places to concentrate detainees outside of the normal legal system reaches scale, they become enduring instruments of state power that can be deployed against anyone.

A detention network built at this magnitude is not a temporary response. It is a structural shift in what government can do. You do not build a system this large for a moment. You build it for an era.

Current events are echos of most (all?) the grievances against King George:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

From the surface, Chetumal Bay looks almost placid – just a wide sheet of water with no hint of drama underneath. But below that calm is Taam ja’, a massive underwater sinkhole, or “blue hole,” that’s turned into an unexpected mystery for scientists.

At first, the plan seemed straightforward: map it with sonar, get a depth, move on. Instead, the early readings created a bigger problem – what if Taam ja’ isn’t anywhere near as shallow as those first numbers suggested?

The most recent measurements point to a hole that drops far deeper than expected, and the true bottom may still be out of reach...

...Our president insults and threatens countries that never posed any threat to us. There must have been some misunderstanding. We allow our government to kill innocent people and treat children inhumanely. This is not a reflection of our character. Journalists report on astoundingly brazen, breathtakingly massive corruption. We will not let this define us. Italians hear that ICE agents will be here and immediately start protesting. Please—let’s not rush to judgment...

...The strongest evidence that ICE agents are not here is that Italians protested and nobody shot them. As other outlets have reported, ICE often provides security support at major sporting events, but it does not use agents from the detaining-three-year-olds branch of the operation. It is also possible ICE is here to congratulate Italy for how it treated Amanda Knox.

But when Italians heard that ICE agents will be at the Olympics, of course they protested. Why should they wait for reassurance from a U.S. government that lies so regularly?...

...when a nation’s credibility crumbles, it crumbles everywhere, even at the Olympics...

Since it was established in 1962, the Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition (PMGE) has been one of Russia's leading institutions for geological exploration in the Arctic.

But the renowned company has come to the end of the road. Mounting focus on the Arctic and its vast mineral resources notwithstanding, the PMGE will be shut down this month...

"The company can operate if it has orders and they are fulfilled. If there are no orders, the company cannot operate, even if it has historical value,"...

...PMGE has been subject to US sanctions since early 2024...