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Colorado woman sues Flock Safety after license-plate reader led to wrongful theft summons

Chrisanna Elser is suing Flock Group, two Colorado towns, and two police officials after a Flock automated license plate reader wrongly linked her Rivian to a $25 package theft, resulting in a criminal summons. The lawsuit, filed in federal court on behalf of Elser and other Coloradans whose plates Flock has logged, alleges intrusion upon seclusion and negligent design, claiming Flock sold searchable location data without requiring a warrant, case number, or supervisor approval before officers could search it.

GoKawiil's Jev reranker tested with LLM-generated relevance rubrics

GoKawiil describes an experimental reranking technique for its Jev model that decomposes a search query into a set of yes/no relevance questions generated by an LLM, rather than asking a single relevance question. Each question is scored by Jev for the probability of a 'yes' answer, and these probabilities are summed to produce an overall relevance score for a document against the query.

Petra Power pitches solid oxide fuel cells to data centers and the Pentagon

Petra Power, founded in 2017, builds solid oxide fuel cells that convert fuel like natural gas directly into electricity without combustion. Founder Aaron Goodman says the devices cut fuel costs and emissions while being more compact than traditional power systems, and the company is pursuing deals with data center operators and the Defense Department. Goodman declined to name specific customers but said Petra is already working with neoclouds and infrastructure providers below the hyperscaler tier.

Samsung publishes guide for factory resetting Smart TVs

Samsung TV owners can perform a factory reset to resolve persistent issues such as app crashes, freezing streaming services, or video glitches. The process reverts the TV entirely to its out-of-box state, wiping all settings, apps, and configurations. Users are advised to try simpler troubleshooting steps first, since a factory reset cannot be undone.

Cloudflare acquires Deno runtime to enhance Workers platform

Cloudflare announced on Friday that it is acquiring Deno, the startup behind the Deno JavaScript runtime co-founded by Bert Belder and Node.js creator Ryan Dahl. Cloudflare principal engineer Kenton Varda said the deal will help improve the programming model behind Cloudflare Workers, its platform for building and running software on its network. Financial terms were not disclosed; Deno had previously raised $26 million, including a Series A led by Sequoia.

Essay likens AI's impact on science to the 'Roadside Picnic' alien artifacts metaphor

A new essay draws on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's novel 'Roadside Picnic,' in which humans scavenge incomprehensible alien technology left behind after an extraterrestrial visit, as a metaphor for how AI systems are reshaping scientific work. The author argues this framing is especially relevant to mathematics, where AI-generated outputs are increasingly used even when their underlying workings are not fully understood.

King Charles marks NCSC's 10th anniversary with warning on evolving cyber threats

In a letter to the National Cyber Security Centre on its tenth anniversary, King Charles III warned that malicious actors are increasingly using automated technologies to spread disinformation and conduct hostile online activity. He praised the agency's decade of work defending the UK against cyber attacks, protecting democratic institutions and critical infrastructure, saying much of its work goes unpraised publicly.

Amazon launches Alexa Tablet lineup, moving from Fire OS to stock Android

Amazon introduced three new Alexa Tablets this week—8.7-inch, 11-inch, and 12-inch Pro models priced at $229, $329, and $499 respectively. The devices drop Amazon's proprietary Fire OS and custom App Store in favor of a near-stock Android experience with access to the Google Play Store. The 11-inch model includes 8GB of RAM and a 90Hz display at a lower starting price than Apple's budget iPad.

Reader Receives Donald Knuth 'Reward Check' for Typo Found on Page One

A reader discovered an error in the very first word of the first paragraph on page one of Donald Knuth's book 'Computer Modern Typefaces,' part of his Computers & Typesetting series. After months of double-checking before submitting the report, Knuth confirmed the mistake and issued his famous reward check, now a decorative certificate from the fictitious 'Bank of San Serriffe' for 0x$1.20 (about $2.88). A later submission for a different suspected error turned out to be wrong, but Knuth still awarded a smaller $0.32 check for a minor useful suggestion buried in the report.

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