Tootfinder

NASA and IBM release Surya, an open-source AI model trained on over a decade's worth of NASA solar data to predict solar flares and winds (Peter Hall/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/08/20/1122163/nasa-ibm-ai-predict-solar-…

NASA’s new AI model can predict when a solar storm may strike
Surya, an AI model developed by NASA and IBM, tries to find hidden patterns in solar data to detect solar flares and winds.

Overly academic/distanced ethical discussions
Had a weird interaction with @/brainwane@social.coop just now. I misinterpreted one of their posts quoting someone else and I think the combination of that plus an interaction pattern where I'd assume their stance on something and respond critically to that ended up with me getting blocked. I don't have hard feelings exactly, and this post is only partly about this particular person, but I noticed something interesting by the end of the conversation that had been bothering me. They repeatedly criticized me for assuming what their position was, but never actually stated their position. They didn't say: "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, it's actually Y." They just said "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, please don't assume my position!" I get that it's annoying to have people respond to a straw man version of your argument, but when I in response asked some direct questions about what their position was, they gave some non-answers and then blocked me. It's entirely possible it's a coincidence, and they just happened to run out of patience on that iteration, but it makes me take their critique of my interactions a bit less seriously. I suspect that they just didn't want to hear what I was saying, while at the same time they wanted to feel as if they were someone who values public critique and open discussion of tricky issues (if anyone reading this post also followed our interaction and has a different opinion of my behavior, I'd be glad to hear it; it's possible In effectively being an asshole here and it would be useful to hear that if so).
In any case, the fact that at the end of the entire discussion, I'm realizing I still don't actually know their position on whether they think the AI use case in question is worthwhile feels odd. They praised the system on several occasions, albeit noting some drawbacks while doing so. They said that the system was possibly changing their anti-AI stance, but then got mad at me for assuming this meant that they thought this use-case was justified. Maybe they just haven't made up their mind yet but didn't want to say that?
Interestingly, in one of their own blog posts that got linked in the discussion, they discuss a different AI system, and despite listing a bunch of concrete harms, conclude that it's okay to use it. That's fine; I don't think *every* use of AI is wrong on balance, but what bothered me was that their post dismissed a number of real ethical issues by saying essentially "I haven't seen calls for a boycott over this issue, so it's not a reason to stop use." That's an extremely socially conformist version of ethics that doesn't sit well with me. The discussion also ended up linking this post: https://chelseatroy.com/2024/08/28/does-ai-benefit-the-world/ which bothered me in a related way. In it, Troy describes classroom teaching techniques for introducing and helping students explore the ethics of AI, and they seem mostly great. They avoid prescribing any particular correct stance, which is important when teaching given the power relationship, and they help students understand the limitations of their perspectives regarding global impacts, which is great. But the overall conclusion of the post is that "nobody is qualified to really judge global impacts, so we should focus on ways to improve outcomes instead of trying to judge them." This bothers me because we actually do have a responsibility to make decisive ethical judgments despite limitations of our perspectives. If we never commit to any ethical judgment against a technology because we think our perspective is too limited to know the true impacts (which I'll concede it invariably is) then we'll have to accept every technology without objection, limiting ourselves to trying to improve their impacts without opposing them. Given who currently controls most of the resources that go into exploration for new technologies, this stance is too permissive. Perhaps if our objection to a technology was absolute and instantly effective, I'd buy the argument that objecting without a deep global view of the long-term risks is dangerous. As things stand, I think that objecting to the development/use of certain technologies in certain contexts is necessary, and although there's a lot of uncertainly, I expect strongly enough that the overall outcomes of objection will be positive that I think it's a good thing to do.
The deeper point here I guess is that this kind of "things are too complicated, let's have a nuanced discussion where we don't come to any conclusions because we see a lot of unknowns along with definite harms" really bothers me.

NYT over ICC-casus. Europese landen en politici komen aan de orde.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/technology/us-tech-europe-microsoft-trump-icc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Q…

Europe’s Growing Fear: How Trump Might Use U.S. Tech Dominance Against It
To comply with a Trump executive order, Microsoft recently helped suspend the email account of an International Criminal Court prosecutor in the Netherlands who was investigating Israel for war crimes.

Orchestration of Music by Grammar Systems
Jozef Maki\v{s} (Faculty of Information Technology, Brno University of Technology), Alexander Meduna (Faculty of Information Technology, Brno University of Technology), Zbyn\v{e}k K\v{r}ivka (Faculty of Information Technology, Brno University of Technology)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15314

Orchestration of Music by Grammar Systems
This application-oriented study concerns computational musicology, which makes use of grammar systems. We define multi-generative rule-synchronized scattered-context grammar systems (without erasing rules) and demonstrates how to simultaneously make the arrangement of a musical composition for performance by a whole orchestra, consisting of several instruments. Primarily, an orchestration like this is illustrated by examples in terms of classical music. In addition, the orchestration of jazz co…

What does the DEI rollback mean for the music technology industry? https://musictech.com/features/intervi

What does the DEI rollback mean for the music technology industry?
As DEI becomes a toxic term in the corporate world, we talk to advocacy groups and music professionals about what it means for music

Ukraine may receive state-of-art NATO technologies capable of destroying Russian glide bombs and drone swarms - Euromaidan Press
https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/06/21/ukraine-may-receive-state-of-art-nato-technologies-capable-of-destroying-russian-glide-bombs-and-drone-swarms/

Engineer Pleads Guilty to Stealing for Chinese Government's Benefit Trade Secret Technology Designed for Missile Launch and Detection (US Department of Justice)
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/engineer-pleads-guilty-stealing-chinese-governments-benefit-trade-secret-technology-designed
http://www.memeorandum.com/250721/p130#a250721p130

This whole opinion, while well-meaning and bringing up generally good points (we humans can decide what technology we research and how we use it)—misses the point: there will not be an “AGI” that derives from current “AI” technology.
What the “AI” companies are proposing and the media is accepting at face value is like saying ever more realistic graphics in computer games will suddenly reach some threshold and the graphics will become the real world.
It’s nonsense.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2025/jul/21/human-level-artificial-intelligence

Google says the median Gemini app text prompt consumes 0.24Wh of energy, about the same as running a microwave for a second, and emits 0.03g of CO2 equivalent (Casey Crownhart/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/08/21/1122288/google-gemin…

In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses
It’s the most transparent estimate yet from one of the big AI companies, and a long-awaited peek behind the curtain for researchers.

Nine current and ex-Apple staffers accuse Apple VP of Fitness Tech Jay Blahnik of creating a toxic work environment; Apple settled a sexual harassment complaint (Tripp Mickle/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/technology/apple-fitness-jay-blahnik.…

Apple Fitness Chief Accused of Toxic Workplace Culture and Harassment
Workers say the executive was volatile and retaliated when they cooperated with an investigation. Apple denies the claims.