AI glasses are helping students in test-obsessed Asia cheat in exams. If these kids know the stuff and are just using AI to fill in details or confirm right answers, then we're doomed. If those kids really don't know the material and are using AI just to pass the tests, then Asia is in trouble. Right now, the glasses are still nerdy and thick, but soon they will be more subtle and harder to detect. Like special contact lenses that pick up WiFi or Bluetooth signals. Someday.
There have been more articles like this recently:
AI is degrading the value of a university degree
AI is degrading the value of a university degree
No wonder: Students are doing worse than you think. Some at college or university are testing no better than ten-year-olds .
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SearcX is starting to look good again. All the major search engines are embracing AI answers are becoming enshittified. Even DuckDuckGo, pulling in an AI answer, stated that Trump died of rabies, because DDG pulls in search results from Bing and perhaps Google. You can host your own SearX instance, or just use a public one. Pick on in the U.S. and pick one that only uses IPv4, to preserve anonymity. Then off you go.
Unruky is another privacy-oriented search engine, that offers its source code for inspection. But it's a subscription model and is not free, which puts me off. I'm still not yet sold on paid search, like with Kagi. Here's their scare page as to why you need it. There are other alternatives, which don't cost money.
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iOS 27 Makes the Shortcuts App Much Less Intimidating. This would be great. Shortcuts is such a non-intuitive app to use, especially if you only use it once in a great while. I waste so much time each time I want to use it, trying to figure out how to make the connections work. I'm sure it all made sense to the nerd who designed it.
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Here's a neat service, called linkinseconds. You upload a PDF file, image, or HTML page and get a shareable link to it in seconds. It's like Imgur, but for everything. I can't find how long the link lasts. But it does have analytics so you can see who viewed your file.
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AI Burnout Hits Silicon Valley as Output Surges 100 Times. Apparently a lot of folks are running their Claude agents constantly, over the weekend, cutting into family time. All the while scared of the next layoff announcement. What a life.
And this columnist is unsure of the AI economy. Lots of spending, but where's the ROI? And are we going to build enough datacenters? With all the component shortages? And all the anti-datacenter sentiment? Clearly we need GenAI – at least the students do. So how will it all be paid for?
Asia doesn't seem to be worrying about these things. They reportedly have a Mythos-grade model that they will release soon, called Tulongfeng. So weird that China didn't have anything like this, until the U.S. had a Mythos. Now suddenly they do, too. Very strange.
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Scientific American has been acquired by LabX Media Group, which holds Discover Magazine, IFLScience, and a number of other science publications. I used to read SciAm regularly as a kid. This was back when it was aimed at educated individuals at the college level. Their math and computing articles were great. Remember this book? It would never get released today! SciAm got taken over by people who dumbed it down and made it woke. I don't recognize it anymore.
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Cool. This Device Takes Photographs With a Single Atom. The single-atom camera, uses optical tweezers and lets you see things that an electron microscope can't, like the workings of quantum computers.
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Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia, got banned by his own staff. Sorry, but I couldn't help but chuckle. This is a microcosm of socialism isn't it? Someone creates something of value. Then others come and think they know how to run it better, and they take over and the original creators are shut out. Learn a valuable lesson, Larry.
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This is a great reason why I am firmly against universal care run by the federal government: Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Oz have just announced OVER *ONE MILLION* PEOPLE are on Obamacare with NO Social Security number. The fraud has been going on for years.
Meanwhile: Millions drop Obamacare health coverage after subsidies expire and costs rise. Like solar power and EVs, it only pencils out if there are federal subsidies. Take those subsidies away, and the whole thing collapses. (I'm not talking about federal subsidies to folks like Elon Musk, who use it to build businesses. Not to just use it to pay off debt.) Medicaid money was also used to fund political campaigns, too. Yeah, "Medicare for All" will be the ultimate corruption.
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