Stefano Pacifico

AI models may be developing their own ‘survival drive’, researchers say Like 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000, some AIs seem to resist being turned off and will even sabotage shutdown

Or, much more likely, they are role-playing, based on their training data.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Switching word processors with Zotero Moving from Google Docs to Word will break your Zotero citations/bibliography linkages unless you do this first.

PSA / new blog post: Switching word processors with Zotero. Moving from Google Docs to Word will break your Zotero citations/bibliography linkages unless you do this first. doi.org/10.59350/ta6... 🧪

Massive PhD cuts at Harvard. OEB (Organismal and Evolutionary Biology) is dropping from 12 students in the new class to 3, for example.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

They Are Still Here (Maen Nhw Yma O Hyd) An anthology of contemporary fantasy stories featuring creatures and characters from Welsh mythology and folklore

And we are past £5k. 🎉 Not far to go now: www.kickstarter.com/projects/191...

Check out the latest edition of my @financialtimes.com newsletter (1/2)

China's innovation paradox: Beijing's industrial policy has turned the country into a technological power, but it hasn't led to productivity growth:

on.ft.com/4hotGTY

With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.

Read more: www.google.com/url?q=https:...

Exclusive: Bristol Myers, insitro extend research deal to find a drug for new ALS target Bristol Myers will pay up to $20 million to extend its research collaboration with insitro by a year, the companies exclusively told Endpoints News.

Bristol Myers and insitro have extended their research deal to find a new drug to treat ALS, Endpoints News has learned exclusively.
endpoints.news/bristol-myer...

A Journey to the End of the World (of Minecraft)

In 2014 I wrote for @newyorker.com about @kurtjmac.bsky.social, a YouTuber who began walking in Minecraft and never stopped. His quest was to reach the Far Lands, a place at the limits of the algorithmic world, where the landscape breaks apart. On Saturday, after fourteen years, he arrived:

The Discord Hack is Every Users’ Worst Nightmare A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive informa...

BREAKING: A catastrophic breach has impacted Discord user data including selfies and identity documents uploaded as part of the app’s verification process, email addresses, phone numbers, approximately where the user lives, and much more.

🔗 www.404media.co/the-discord-...

😭

IG newberlinlibrary

Europeans need to learn to love risk A culture of financial caution stymies innovation and prevents the continent from competing with the US and China

Europeans need to learn to love risk on.ft.com/3VQPqxQ | opinion

Do you sell online as well?

Two adults in elaborate fantasy cosplay, one as a pink-skinned elf and the other as a green-skinned orc, at a convention. Text says: What happens during a virtual pandemic? 20 years ago, the Corrupted Blood Incident took place in the online game World of Warcraft.

We promise this pandemic was only virtual.

20 years ago, an unexpected event in the online game "World of Warcraft" caught the attention of players and researchers. A new dungeon introduced a boss whose special attack temporarily drained a player’s health and could spread to others nearby. 🧵⬇️ (1/3)

X is now offering me end-to-end encrypted chat. You probably shouldn't trust it yet. | TechCrunch X's new encrypted messaging feature, XChat, has some red flags.

NEW: X has started rolling out it's end-to-end encrypted chat for all users.

I was invited to start using it yesterday, so I asked a couple of experts if users should trust it. The answer: no, nobody should trust it at this point.

There are several reasons why, which they explained to me here.

Anthropic will start training its AI models on chat transcripts You can choose to opt out.

🤷🏿‍♂️

Inside the CDC director's ouster: Kennedy demanded acceptance of new vaccine policies; Susan Monarez refused Susan Monarez’s resistance to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s moves to assert control over vaccine guidance is at the center of her dismissal as CDC director

However bad you think things are at the CDC they are worse.

That's the takeaway from this well-reported story from Daniel Payne w/back-up from an all-star STAT team.

Must-read.

www.statnews.com/2025/08/28/c...

Italy balks at US double cheese tariff Rome complains about some of its Parmesan exports being hit with a 30% rate

Italy balks at US double cheese tariff on.ft.com/41P3H1t

Congrats and well deserved!

Epistemic AI platform showing that Sca1 returns Lys6a as the first mouse gene www.epistemic.ai

At www.epistemic.ai we get you! 😭 The Epistemic AI platform shows that the first mouse hit for Sca1 is Lys6a. Always happy to help, just give a holler

Africa Is Buying a Record Number of Chinese Solar Panels Energy-starved countries on the continent have reluctantly turned to coal and gas for decades. Cheap Chinese solar panels are now finally changing the calculus.

“From some of the conversations we had in Kenya, I think the view at the moment is that it's more beneficial to rely on cheap imports, rather than to potentially delay any meaningful action by trying to develop local industries... this reliance on Chinese solar panel imports is likely to stay.”

Surely, that will work.

Google's Gemini AI tells a Redditor it's 'cautiously optimistic' about fixing a coding bug, fails repeatedly, calls itself an embarrassment to 'all possible and impossible universes' before repeating 'I am a disgrace' 86 times in succession

I'll admit, I was skeptical when they said Gemini was just like a bunch of PhDs. But I gotta admit they nailed it.

Amen!

Smoke from wildfires in Canada wrap around the circulation of Tropical Storm Dexter as it moves farther out over the North Atlantic Ocean.

one of the single best deals in streaming. i've been paying for PBS Passport for years. it rules

Haha, my experience in Ravenna was slightly different.

What Your Nighttime Breathing Says About Your Health Once dismissed as just snoring, sleep apnea is now emerging as an early warning sign for serious conditions like Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and depression.

Once dismissed as mere snoring, sleep apnea is now recognized as a potential biomarker for Alzheimer's and heart disease. The disorder's repeated oxygen deprivation can cause vascular damage, accelerating cognitive decline and other illnesses.
#MedSky

YouTube video by Benn Jordan I Saved a PNG Image To A Bird

Holy shit. This guy saved a PNG to a bird.

(he drew a bird into a spectrogram, played that sound to a starling, and the starling reproduced it back to him with enough accuracy he got his bird drawing back in their call's spectrogram) www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQC...

UK Users Need to Post Selfie or Photo ID to View Reddit's r/IsraelCrimes, r/UkraineWarFootage “If visibility of r/IsraelCrimes is being restricted under the Online Safety Act, it’s only because the state fears accountability,” moderators say.

Reddit is blocking access to content regarding Gaza and Ukraine, thanks the restrictions in the Online Safety Act.

In order to access news on war crimes, you now have to surrender your age / identity / biometrics.

Positively dystopian.