2026-08-18 15:05:47
Palona, which uses AI agents to automate real-time workflows in brick-and-mortar businesses, raised a $20M Series A, following a $10M seed in 2025 (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/17/palona-r…
Palona, which uses AI agents to automate real-time workflows in brick-and-mortar businesses, raised a $20M Series A, following a $10M seed in 2025 (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/17/palona-r…
Nie wieder werde ich behaupten, dass die E-Mails, die die University of Edinburgh an ihre Alumni verschickt, nutzlos sind. Heute habe ich echt was daraus gelernt: automation bias.
Automation bias is the propensity for humans to favor suggestions from automated decision-making systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even…
The Atlantic launches Rabbithole, a daily trivia game created by senior editor and former Jeopardy! champion Drew Goins, rather than using AI (Sara Guaglione/Digiday)
https://digiday.com/media/as-ai-automates-everything-the-atlantic-is-building-ga…
Tippet's AI takes are painfully naive
it's hard not to feel like maybe she has been taken in by the rich and powerful, especially when she ends her letter with a plug for a podcast on energy healing hosted by a Google executive.
She still seems to attribute agency to "the AIs" as if they had their own independent minds, instead of treating them as the automation of sycophantic echo chambers, feeding back whatever they are given like a good "cold read" …
Amsterdam-based Monumental, which develops autonomous robotics and software for the construction industry, raised a $32M Series B led by Khosla Ventures (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2026/07/15/monumental-secures-32m-series-b-t…
«Nichts gelernt aus RPA?
Robotic Process Automation baut auf traditionellen Skripting-Techniken auf – hat jedoch Lektionen gelehrt, die auch in der KI-Ära weiterhin höchst relevant sind.»
Ich lasse das mal hier so stehen.
📄 https://www.computerwoche.de/article/42146
Over the past two years,
Democrats and Republicans in Congress have issued a battery of measures that would
slow down A.I. development in response to safety concerns,
limit access to the technology to address national security risks
and tend to the potential economic fallout from mass automation.
But lawmakers have largely failed to enact any of the proposals,
having been stymied by persistent partisan divisions and, in some cases,
fierce lobbying by…
Had an ambitious idea for a Grist automation? You can probably do it with n8n in the mix. See how: https://www.getgrist.com/blog/how-to-use-n8n-automations-with-grist/
⚡ Code base instead of CLI base: browser capabilities are exposed as JavaScript functions the agent calls directly, composing a multi-step task into a single snippet instead of a "call, look, call again" loop
🚀 Benchmarked against Vercel's agent-browser on four complex automation tasks: up to 2.5× faster with substantially fewer tokens and far fewer tool calls
Maybe replacing jobs with AI was simply an ignorant, superficial narrative that certain gold-digging startups & fat cat business consultancies sold to boards & executive suites as "innovative strategic restructuring" & got paid $millions for it.
Reminds me of "progressive officing".
✅ The great AI layoff is turning into the great AI rehire - Fast Company
Making good progress on the demo board firmware.
The GTP outputs are now fully independent and offer (via the eink display and dpad, there will be a UART interface for automation eventually too)
* 5 / 2.5 / 1.25 / 0.625 Gbps rate
* Swing, precursor, postcursor adjustment
* PRBS7, PRBS31, SGMII, QSGMII, 2 UI clock, 80 UI clock
The SGMII and QSGMII are just idles, no packet generation yet.
After far more than a decade of using CloudFormation as my primary infrastructure automation tool, I’ve been working with Terraform/OpenTofu, lately.
I'm having a really hard time with the horizontal alignment of `=` everywhere. I consider any indenting after the first non-space character of a line of code to be an amateur move. It messes with your diffs and requires a lot of “I changed one line and now I need to change a lot of lines to get them to look pretty" maintenance.…
Ocado stock drops 14%, hitting a 13-year low, after it failed to show tangible progress in talks to secure new US partners for its warehouse automation tech (Sarah Young/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consum…
Exploring the digital landscape can be a bit like starship navigation. There’s no time to hit "pause" and review the map! As you chart your online business journey, remember that with a keen eye on automation and efficiency, you've got the compass to steer toward success. #BusinessGrowth #EntrepreneurLife
The first U.S. Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882,
with 10,000 marchers.
In 1894, President Cleveland signed a congressional act establishing the first Monday of September as a legal holiday,
which has become known for promotional sales as well as a day off for many.
The holiday has particular resonance in Southern California,
where the labor movement remains large in numbers and powerful in political influence.
Across the…
Ich weiss ja auch nicht, aber wenn eines dieser Schließmuskelsymbole in der Liste der Contributer eines OSS Projektes für Home Automation auftaucht, dann werde ich nervös. Das ist z.B. das Repository der Firmware für Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. Der Hardware Sprachassistent von Home Assistant als Alternative z.B. zu Google Home, dass ja bekanntlich einfach mal so die Funktion seiner Assistenten verändert. Weil du nur das Plastik kaufst, nicht die Funktion. Ist bei deinem Auto übrige…
@dawid@social.craftknight.comNa start kilka pojęć z metodologii pracy Lean - sporo pominę, ale te na moje na razie najbardziej pasują.
Pierwszym będzie *Jidoka* - jest to gra słów gdzie do zwykłego słowa automatyzacja dodajemy znak pracy ludzkiej zamiast po prostu ruchu - (自働化 gdzie 働 zamiast 動). W angielskim - autonomation czyli "automation" z "autonomy". Bez człowieka to maszyna, która sama pracuje. Z człowiekiem - maszyna, która ma osąd.
Sakichi Toyoda wymyślił krosno, które samo się za…
⭐ Starred a repository
dddabtc/winremote-mcp
Windows Remote MCP Server — 40 tools for desktop automation, process management, file operations via FastMCP
github.com/dddabtc/winremote-mcp
Altera, which makes chips for AI, automation, and more, files confidentially for an IPO; Intel acquired it for ~$16.7B in 2015, and Silver Lake took 51% in 2025 (David Morris/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026…
from my link log —
New Ansible data validation module(s).
https://blog.ipspace.net/2021/03/ansible-validation.html
saved 2021-03-05 https://
My coworkers tell me that the work I'm doing (automation) helps them a lot, and that makes me really happy. 🥰
The best part is that I get to do cool and interesting things that I've always wanted to look into anyway.
That is so awesome, I am super glad and fortunate! \o/
I had been doing some serverless home automation with esphome.io using `http_request` actions for one device to talk to another.
But a new 3-way switch I bought is Tuya not ESP, and can't use `http_request`. So today I learned about `packet_transport` https://esphome.io/components/packet_t
Wow. Someone should write some science fiction about how replacing humans with hyped machines doesn't work out.
/s
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/ford-ai-automation-humans-hiring-artificial-intelligence-b3004733.html
The tech industry’s pricing scheme for AI is becoming more and more disconnected from reality
— so much so that even its biggest clients are starting to revolt.
Speaking during an interview on CNBC‘s“Squawk on the Street” segment earlier this week,
CEO of cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks Nikesh Arora implored the tech industry to lower the cost of AI.
During the segment, the chief executive argued that the cost to use large language models (LLMs) has to drop by 2…
Venture funding of fintech startups grew 22.7% YoY in H1 2026 to $28.6B globally, but deal count fell 25.7% and funding fell 17.3% vs. H2 2025's $34.6B funding (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech/funding-rises-deals-slump-h1-2026/…
Reminder: Just as with Age ID and Chat Control legislation justifications, the AI build out, the price gauging of memory, storage (and CPU/GPU/SOCs too), the emerging hardware leasing & subscription models — all this is not just driven by generative AI in the form of chatbots, media generators, automation, job replacements, FOMO stories and other "obvious" reasons repeated ad infinitum by CEOs and in the media...
The only way these industry shifts and largest tech investments ever …
@… @… yes, it's not as bad as, say, Matter (the home automation standard) or Microsoft's ExFAT where they assert IP and patent claims over any implementation of the technology.
The RCS standard itself is…
Replaced article(s) found for cs.HC. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.HC/new
[1/2]:
- Music Interpretation and Emotion Perception: A Computational and Neurophysiological Investigation
Lyberatos, Kantarelis, Zioga, Anagnostopoulou, Stamou, Georgaki
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01982 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/114623887921808883
- Selective Prediction Reduces the Negative Effects of Automation Bias Overall but Increases False ...
Jabbour, Fouhey, Banovic, Shepard, Kazerooni, Sjoding, Wiens
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07617 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/115015501954907821
- Sighted by Default: Addressing Implicit Vision Assumptions in Real-Time VLM Assistance for BLV Users
Yi Zhao, Siqi Wang, Qiqun Geng, Erxin Yu, Jing Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00945 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/115490927925171769
- UXCascade: Scalable Usability Testing with Simulated User Agents
Steffen Holter, Eunyee Koh, Mustafa Doga Dogan, Gromit Yeuk-Yin Chan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15777 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/115943802965989174
- Does Explanation Correctness Matter? Linking Computational XAI Evaluation to Human Understanding
Gregor Baer, Chao Zhang, Isel Grau, Pieter Van Gorp
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25251 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/116300187728326082
- Beyond Screenshots: Evaluating VLMs' Understanding of UI Animations
Chen Liang, Xirui Jiang, Naihao Deng, Eytan Adar, Anhong Guo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.26148 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/116492495199874264
- Quieting the Cobwebs: Browser Interaction for Visual Floaters
Kenneth Ge, Jinglin Li, Shikhar Ahuja
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12739 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/116571803728109358
- Patients With Personality: Realistic Patient Simulation through Controlled Diversity and Selectiv...
Moritz Schlager, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.17441 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/116764285920198987
- TailVis: Expressive Chart Refinement Preserving Data-Binding Integrity
Yumin Song, Seokhyeon Park, Soohyun Lee, Aeri Cho, Hyeon Jeon, John Joon Young Chung, Jinwook Seo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.25386 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/117002258150815192
- How Usable Are Geospatial Foundation Models? A Systematic Evaluation of 89 Models
Robin Young, Artyom Gabtraupov, Kenzy Soror, Srinivasan Keshav
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.03804 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csHC_bot/117041905504697955
toXiv_bot_toot
Großartiger Artikel von Emily Bender ("stocchic parrot") und Nanna Inie zur Frage, wie man über "KI" sprechen und gleichzeitig die Anthropomorphisierungsfalle umgehen kann:
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-wit…
I can relate but with:
▫️Printers/Scanners
▫️Power adapters/USB chargers
▫️HDMI/DP/VGA/Wireless Display
▫️Wi-Fi/Network proxies
▫️Conference room automation/audio
▫️USB cabling for display/power
▫️Anything Bluetooth-connected
#nerdrage
Security Vulnerability Patterns in AI-Generated Code: A Cross-Model Comparative Study
Shanna M. Kahn, John D. Hastings
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20713 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.20713 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.20713
arXiv:2607.20713v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: LLM-based coding tools enable non-expert users to generate routine automation scripts that may enter enterprise workflows without meaningful security review. This study examines that risk directly. Code was collected from ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini using identical prompts across three automation domains. Claude Code performed a standardized vulnerability review. Each identified vulnerability was scored using CVSS v3.1 and mapped to the OWASP Top 10:2021 and the MITRE ATT&CK frameworks. Every script contained exploitable vulnerabilities. Nine of the 17 identified vulnerability classes appeared in code from all three models, while 14 of the 17 vulnerability classes appeared in at least two models. The weighted CVSS scores across platforms differed by less than 10%. The risk is not tied to any particular model but rather to the task category. Organizations should therefore ask not which tool to trust, but instead whether LLM-generated automation code should be deployed without review.
toXiv_bot_toot
Here's why this bothers me so much. There's already a lot of automation for patches getting backported to the numerous stable kernels. In theory those updates are focused on important or minor fixes, so distributions just pull in the latest stable release and it shows up in security updates on your machines. We _already_ have problems with problematic fixes slipping into the stable kernel series, and llm reviews are going to make it worse.
Memo: E. W. Scripps Company is laying off 268 workers across its broadcast TV operation; sources: workers at stations in NY, NE, OK, and TX were among those cut (Matthew Keys/TheDesk.net)
https://thedesk.net/2026/08/scripps-confirms-pink-slips-affecting-…
from my link log —
New Ansible data validation module(s).
https://blog.ipspace.net/2021/03/ansible-validation.html
saved 2021-03-05 https://
Ford is rehiring hundreds of human workers after its aggressive AI adoption strategy backfired.
The US automaker hired over 350 veteran engineers,
referred to internally as “gray beards”,
over the past three years in order to address mistakes made by automated systems.
The staff will lead quality reviews
after the automation issues cost the company billions of dollars, Bloomberg reported,
while some workers will also help improve and train the AI systems.
🤖 #BrowserAct is an open-source browser automation CLI built for #AIagents — real browsers, anti-bot bypass and human handoff when the agent gets stuck #opensource
RE: https://infosec.exchange/@ankit_anubhav/117236997806064724
Idea: a CAPTCHA service that starts with a puzzle solvable only by automation. Human users will click the "that's too hard" button and get a puzzle designed for humans. Now your site can serve different content to those two groups (at least until the automation learns not to solve the first CAPTCHA).
When the Interviewer Is a Bot: Behavior, Breakdowns, and Trust in MLLM-Led Interviews
He Zhang, Kambinachi Chukwuma, ChanMin Kim, John M. Carroll
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10412 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.10412 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.10412
arXiv:2608.10412v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Semi-structured interviews are a cornerstone of qualitative research but remain labor-intensive. We report an empirical study of what actually happens when the interviewer is an off-the-shelf real-time multimodal LLM (MLLM). We built InterviewBot, a voice-based interviewing system that wraps a real-time MLLM with a researcher-authored outline, and deployed it not as a novel architecture but as a research instrument for observing default MLLM interviewing behavior. In a practice study (N=15), participants completed a bot-led semi-structured interview and then a human-led reflection session about that experience. We contribute (i) a turn-level behavioral analysis of an MLLM interviewer (N_turns=428) showing that it is acknowledgment-heavy but probe-light (deepening probes account for 4.9% of all turns), and that 28.7% of question-bearing turns pack multiple questions into one turn despite an explicit one-question-at-a-time instruction; (ii) an inductive catalogue of four data-collection breakdowns (information loss, premature termination, latency, and interruption) observed in a deployed rather than simulated system; and (iii) three social dynamics from participants' reflections: disclosure calibration, where reduced social pressure coincided with shallower elaboration; institutional legitimacy, where trust tracked perceived stakes and what delegation to AI signaled about the organizer rather than conversational competence; and conversational grounding, where content-grounded paraphrase, not generic social filler, was what participants read as listening. We conclude with design implications for depth control, transparent handoffs, and non-templated listening mechanisms in human-centered interview automation.
toXiv_bot_toot
Unlock the potential of your online venture with a system designed to simplify and elevate your business growth. Imagine what's possible when intelligent automation meets personalized mentorship! Discover this transformative approach at your own pace. Curious? Feel free to message me for a casual, informative chat.
Elastic announces a ~7% reduction in its workforce, and says "advances in AI and automation are letting us operate with leaner teams"; ESTC closed down 8.70% (Richard Speed/The Register)
https://www.theregister.com/databases/2026…
The hunger for tinkering affordances helps explain the ubiquity of spreadsheets in the business world. [long subthread left as an exercise for the reader]
It also helps explain the traction of the “AI Agent” marketing. I can’t think of a technology that’s simultaneously done a better job of removing barriers to user-designed automation and done a worse job of helping people anticipate and deal with the consequences of automation. (Security and data integrity are two of the big places where attempts at deep tinkering affordances have crashed and burned.)
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⚙️ #Kestra is an open-source, event-driven orchestration platform for data, #AI and infrastructure workflows, unifying scheduled and event-driven automation behind a declarative, language-agnostic interface #opensource
Cloudflare introduces Kitesurf, a cloud-hosted browser for AI agents built on top of its Workers serverless service, available for free while in beta (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/07/cloudflare-launches-kitesurf-a-browse…
'The company said it would not abandon its use of AI, but plans to now use it in conjunction with human oversight and experience.
“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” said Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering.'
Soo ... back to 'ai' as being just another computer.
(And giving the extensive use of energy, i wonder if we can call it 'smart'...)
Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly | The Independent
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/ford-ai-automation-human-workers-b3003787.html
CarbonSix, which is developing AI automation and robotic intelligence tech for manufacturing, raised a $40M Series A co-led by DSC Investment and LB Investment (FinSMEs)
https://www.finsmes.com/2026/07/carbonsix-raises-40m-in-series-a-funding.html
I just finished an automation that I want to run every night at 12:01... At 11:57. Aww yeah.... Now just get to sit back and watch.
Sources: Palo Alto Networks paid $500M in cash and stock to acquire agentic IT support startup Console; PitchBook: Console was valued at $157M before the sale (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/02/palo-alto-networks…
RE: https://machteburch.social/@tomkalei/117019577669016725
A decade ago or so there was this paper "The future of employment" by Osborne/Frey. It was super-hyped and reported everywhere. The Obama admin and the World Bank used it to think about the future!
If I remember correctly "mathematician" was the number one job safe from automation and lorry driver was the one to be gone first.
Is there any paper in the history of science that was more wrong than this?
Basically the complete opposite happened!
Enhancing Attack Detection Capabilities in BACnet/IP Networks Using Machine-Learning Models
Derek Manzella, John D. Hastings
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20686 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.20686 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.20686
arXiv:2607.20686v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Building Automation Systems (BAS) manage critical building functions using protocols such as BACnet/IP, yet defenders have limited tooling and few labeled datasets for detecting BACnet-specific attacks. This work addresses these gaps through three contributions. First, CISA's Zeek BACnet parser is modified to produce a unified per-packet log, simplifying feature engineering for machine-learning (ML) pipelines. Second, a simulated BACnet/IP testbed is developed using bacpypes3 to model a small commercial HVAC system with physics-based device behavior, schedule-aware controller logic, and per-packet attack labeling. Third, five unsupervised anomaly detection models are evaluated using baseline traffic and six BACnet attack types, including denial of service, reconnaissance, property tampering, and false data injection. Results show that One-Class SVM achieved the strongest overall performance, with an average F1 score of 0.864 across all attacks and F1 scores above 0.99 for high-volume denial-of-service and reconnaissance attacks. Detection is much stronger for high-volume attacks, such as DoS attacks and reconnaissance, than stealthier techniques such as tampering and false data injection, which scored around 77%.
toXiv_bot_toot
The DOD seeks to recruit engineers experienced in frontier AI, machine learning and automation, and data systems, to embed them "down to the unit level" (John Harney/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20
New on #blog: pkgbump: from a dumb tool to an irreplaceable helper
#Gentoo developer. It shouldn’t then be surprising that it is the one most asking for some kind of automation, and that the #pkgbump script would be one of the first scripts to become a part of the mgorny-dev-scripts package.
Today’s pkgbump have come a long way from the trivial script of its first iteration. The most recent versions finally feature the feature I desired for a long time: version manipulation. This also made it possible for the script to become a complete version bumping tool rather than just a part of a larger workflow. In this post, I’d like to shortly tell the story behind the changes, and demonstrate the new options.
"""
#packaging
Way Security, which uses AI automation and agentic workflows to help deploy IAM systems, raised a $20M seed from Insight Partners and Glilot Capital (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2026/07/27/id…
There really is good reason to give people hermetically sealed, beautifully designed objects that aren’t very customizable but •just work•. And there’s no reason to think that we are anywhere close to solving the intrinsic difficulties that turn all computational automation into programming, and that make programming hard.
and yet…
12/
Unlock success in the digital era by mastering the basics of online business! Start with a robust platform. Prioritize customer engagement. Embrace automation for efficiency. Remember, simplicity is key. A well-organized system leads to exponential growth. Ready to rise above the competition? Let’s get started! #OnlineBusiness #SuccessTips
Ready to elevate your digital journey with precision and automation? I empower entrepreneurs with strategic solutions for exceptional online performance. Embrace simplicity. Thrive in the digital marketplace, Unlock vast growth opportunities! #OnlineBusinessSuccess #DigitalGrowth
➤ OpenOlat 21.0 major release is out
Learning and coaching areas separated, new Rooms module with booking, Course Planner automation and to-dos, Word/Markdown import, AI essay questions with grading and formative feedback, new "Gap mixed" question type, 2FA one time code and much more.
#OSS #LMS #elearning #eAssessment #OLAT