Sakana AI, working with UC Berkeley researchers, has published a paper introducing MASS, a technique that repeatedly optimizes multi-agent AI workflows and then distills the resulting 'collective intelligence' back into a self-supervision signal for a single base model. The authors report that this approach improves the score-per-output-token performance of the base model on research benchmarks compared to not using the method.
pub.sakana.ai
· 2026-10-11
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed released digital video and billboard ads targeting Republican opponent Mike Rogers for his history of backing government surveillance measures, including the Patriot Act and a 2011 bill allowing companies to share emails with the NSA. The ads also highlight a 2013 quote from Rogers saying privacy can't be violated if people don't know about it, and will appear on billboards reading 'Mike Rogers is watching you' across the state.
wired.com
· 2026-10-06
A U.S. federal judge ruled that Flock's automated license-plate reading cameras constitute 'indiscriminate mass surveillance' by continuously logging vehicle locations. The ruling threw out drug charges against a driver after finding that an officer's warrantless use of Flock's travel-history data to justify a traffic stop violated reasonable expectations of privacy, suppressing all evidence gathered afterward.
yro.slashdot.org
· 2026-10-03
Planetary scientist Paul Byrne posted a 12-year sequence of real telescope images showing four exoplanets, each more massive than Jupiter, orbiting a star 133 light-years away. The images capture the planets visibly moving along their orbits around their host star over the decade-plus timespan.
bsky.app
· 2026-10-02
After canceling its Flock contract, St. Lucie County, Florida discovered 66 license-plate-reading cameras installed instead of the 52 it had authorized. The sheriff's office admitted to owning three of the extras without explaining their deployment, leaving 11 cameras that no local police agency has claimed. The county has wrapped the unclaimed devices in plastic with notices stating they will be removed within 30 days.
techspot.com
· 2026-10-02
In an interview, national security journalist Annie Jacobsen says biological weapons rank as a close second to nuclear weapons on a Defense Department threat spectrum, despite being less destructive overall. She attributes this to the low barrier to entry for creating bioweapons compared to nuclear arms, which require state-level resources like fissile material and delivery systems.
wired.com
· 2026-09-30
Commentary on tech industry layoffs points to a broader trend: the US labor participation rate has dropped to levels last seen in the 1970s. Observers argue that the focus on layoff headlines obscures this larger shift, which they link partly to the growing use of AI in workplaces.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-24
XPENG announced on September 7 that its Iron humanoid robot autonomously walked off its newly operational assembly line right after being built, with CEO He Xiaopeng marking the moment by giving it a staff badge. The company says more than 80 percent of the line's core processes are automated, using quality-control methods borrowed from its car manufacturing operations, as it targets mass production of Iron by year's end.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-22
New research examining stellar activity finds that outbursts resembling the Sun's coronal mass ejections and flares are uncommon among similar stars. Researchers compared magnetic and rotational characteristics across many stars to explain why the Sun's behavior may be more of an exception than the norm.
nature.com
· 2026-09-16
Cindy Cohn and Bruce Schneier trace how post-9/11 mass surveillance infrastructure, originally justified for counterterrorism, has expanded into routine domestic policing, immigration enforcement by ICE, and private security systems like facial recognition and license plate readers. They highlight that government agencies increasingly rely on private companies' data—including purchasing information directly from data brokers, as confirmed by FBI Director Kash Patel—rather than going through traditional legal channels.
lawfaremedia.org
· 2026-09-15
An EFF essay co-authored with Cindy Cohn argues that surveillance tools built after Sept. 11 for counterterrorism have expanded far beyond that purpose, now used routinely by agencies like ICE and local police, and increasingly fused with private systems such as facial recognition and license-plate readers. It highlights that most of this data actually originates with private companies, including data brokers, which sell information to agencies like the FBI.
schneier.com
· 2026-09-15
A growing community of hobbyists is using AI chatbots and open-source language models to co-create sprawling fantasy stories and role-plays, often through tools like SillyTavern that run models locally. Users like Brazilian software engineer Petra Ferraz de Novaes describe building elaborate, ever-evolving narratives across fandoms such as Star Wars and Pokémon, valuing the AI's unpredictable, sometimes bizarre outputs. Researchers at the University of Washington found that many participants know the content is AI-generated and see that as part of the appeal, not a drawback.
wired.com
· 2026-09-14
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