Waymo Robotaxi Hits a Child Near an Elementary School in Santa Monica
A Waymo robotaxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23, according to the company. Waymo told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that the child – whose age and identity are not currently public – sustained minor injuries. TechCrunch: The NHTSA has opened an investigation into the … ⌘ Read more

South Korea Launches Landmark Laws To Regulate AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Korea Herald: South Korea will begin enforcing its Artificial Intelligence Act on Thursday, becoming the first country to formally establish safety requirements for high-performance, or so-called frontier, AI systems – a move that sets the country apart in the global regulatory landscape. According to the Ministry of Science and IC … ⌘ Read more

Spent basically the entire day (except for the mandatory walk) fighting with Python’s type hints. But, the result is that my widget toolkit now passes mypy --strict.

I really, really don’t want to write larger pieces of software without static typing anymore. With dynamic typing, you must test every code path in your program to catch even the most basic errors. pylint helps a bit (doesn’t need type hints), but that’s really not enough.

Also, somewhere along the way, I picked up a very bad (Python) programming style. (Actually, I know exactly where I picked that up, but I don’t want to point the finger now.) This style makes heavy use of dicts and tuples instead of proper classes. That works for small scripts, but it very quickly turns into an absolute mess once the program grows. Prime example: jenny. 😩

I have a love-hate relationship with Python’s type hints, because they are meaningless at runtime, so they can be utterly misleading. I’m beginning to like them as an additional safety-net, though.

(But really, if correctness is the goal, you either need to invest a ton of time to get 100% test coverage – or don’t use Python.)

How Much Do AI Models Resemble a Brain?
At the AI safety site Foom, science journalist Mordechai Rorvig explores a paper presented at November’s Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference:

[R]esearchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Georgia Tech revisited earlier findings that showed that language models, the engines of commercial AI chatbots, sh … ⌘ Read more

Boeing Knew About Flaws in UPS Plane That Crashed in Louisville, NTSB Says
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a report this week that a UPS cargo plane that crashed in Louisville, Ky., last year, killing 15, had a structural flaw that the manufacturer Boeing had previously concluded would not affect flight safety. The New York Times: The N.T.S.B. has said that cracks in the assembly hold … ⌘ Read more

How Bright Headlights Escaped Regulation
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Autoblog: … the problem is that the federal brightness standards for automotive headlights have not changed for decades. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 hasn’t had significant updates since 1986, with an addition allowing Adaptive Driving Beam (ADB) headlights coming only in 2022. The NHTSA last investigated (PDF) the is … ⌘ Read more

Japan’s Nuclear Watchdog Halts Plant’s Reactor Safety Screening Over Falsified Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Japan’s nuclear watchdog said Wednesday it is scrapping the safety screening for two reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan, after its operator was found to have fabricated data about earthquake risks. It was a setback to Japan’s at … ⌘ Read more

California Lawmaker Proposes a Four-Year Ban On AI Chatbots In Kids’ Toys
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Senator Steve Padilla (D-CA) introduced a bill [dubbed SB 867] on Monday that would place a four-year ban on the sale and manufacture of toys with AI chatbot capabilities for kids under 18. The goal is to give safety regulators time to develop regulations to protect children f … ⌘ Read more

GStreamer 1.28-RC1 Brings A Rust-Based GIF Decoder, Other New Rust Components
On Monday the first release candidate of the GStreamer 1.28 multimedia framework was released. As is a recurring focus in recent releases, more GStreamer code is written in Rust for memory safety especially around decoding content… ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Lowering Orbits of 4,400 Starlink Satellites for Safety’s Sake
“Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety,” announced Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s vice president of engineering:

“We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tig … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI is Hiring a New ‘Head of Preparedness’ to Predict/Mitigate AI’s Harms
An anonymous reader shared this report from Engadget:

OpenAI is looking for a new Head of Preparedness who can help it anticipate the potential harms of its models and how they can be abused, in order to guide the company’s safety strategy.

It comes at the end of a year that’s seen OpenAI hit with numerous accusations about ChatG … ⌘ Read more

Safety Panel Says NASA Should Have Taken Starliner Incident More Seriously
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: For the better part of two months last year, most of us had no idea how serious the problems were with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station. A safety advisory panel found this uncertainty also filtered through NASA’s workforce. […] The Starli … ⌘ Read more

Welcome To America’s New Surveillance High Schools
Beverly Hills High School has deployed an AI-powered surveillance apparatus that includes facial recognition cameras, behavioral analysis software, smoke detector-shaped bathroom listening devices from Motorola, drones, and license plate readers from Flock Safety – a setup the district spent $4.8 million on in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and considers necessary given the scho … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA’s Quest For A “Safe” Linux Kernel For Automobiles, Robotics
NVIDIA engineer Igor Stoppa presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) earlier this month around using Linux in safety-critical environments like automobiles and the current shortcomings of the upstream Linux kernel and the challenges on achieving Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) certifications around the Linux kernel. It’s an interesting read/watch around the safety of Linux (or not) for such strict safety environments… ⌘ Read more

Cambodia withdraws from Thailand’s Southeast Asian Games over border conflict
Cambodia withdraws its team from the Southeast Asian Games in Thailand for safety reasons, as a border conflict between the two neighbours rages for a third day. ⌘ Read more

North Queenslanders split over new crocodile management plan
The new management plan sees the expansion of crocodile removal zones across north and far north Queensland. Some say it will not increase safety without better community education. ⌘ Read more

India’s Aviation Crisis Is All About Too Big to Tame
India’s dominant airline IndiGo has cancelled roughly 3,000 flights since last week after new pilot fatigue regulations collided with technical issues and the seasonal schedule shift, stranding more than half a million passengers and forcing aviation authorities to reverse course on the safety rules they had just implemented.

InterGlobe Aviation, IndiGo’s parent company, … ⌘ Read more

Science Journal Retracts Study On Safety of Monsanto’s Roundup
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer. Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chie … ⌘ Read more

Queensland expands croc management plan to ease targeted removal
The government says the plan will help improve public safety and make it easier to remove crocodiles in hotspots along the coast. ⌘ Read more

Farmsafe Australia issues warning after two serious hay bale incidents
A woman has died and a man has been hospitalised in two separate incidents involving falling hay bales in southern Queensland. Farm safety advocates are calling for increased caution while manoeuvring hay bales. ⌘ Read more

‘Essential for water safety’: Fears Canberra won’t have enough pools
As temperatures soar, advocates of public pools in Canberra say they want to see greater support and investment for facilities in the national capital. ⌘ Read more

Chernobyl’s Protective Shield Can No Longer Confine Radiation, UN Nuclear Watchdog Says
“A structure designed to prevent radioactive leakage at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine is no longer operational,” reports Politico, “after Russian drones targeted it earlier this year, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has found.”

[T]he large steel structure “lost its primary safety fun … ⌘ Read more

Thousands call for dog ban to be overturned at popular Sydney beach
Kutti Beach in Sydney’s east had previously allowed dogs on leash but Woollahra Council then decided to ban dogs altogether for “safety and hygiene” concerns following a committee report. ⌘ Read more

Plane Crashed After 3D-Printed Part Collapsed
A light aircraft crashed in Gloucestershire after a 3D-printed plastic air-induction elbow softened from engine heat and collapsed, cutting power during final approach and causing the plane to undershoot the runway. Investigators say the part was made from “inappropriate material” and safety actions will be taken in the future regarding 3D printed parts. The BBC reports: Followin … ⌘ Read more

Zlib-rs 0.5.3 Expands AVX-512 Usage For Faster Performance
The Trifecta Tech Foundation today released zlib-rs 0.5.3 as the newest version of this Zlib implementation written in the Rust programming language for better memory safety. Zlib-rs is advertised as “a safer Zlib” for use by both C and Rust projects while delivering competitive performance to the C-based zlib-ng… ⌘ Read more

Porn company fined £1m over inadequate age checks
The penalty imposed on AVS Group Ltd is the biggest handed out so far under the Online Safety Act. ⌘ Read more

Five people and a puppy saved from ocean after boat sinks
A rescue helicopter has winched five people and a blue heeler puppy to safety after their boat filled with water off the north Queensland coast. ⌘ Read more

Childcare centre closed indefinitely due to rodents and mould
Parents have been left scrambling for childcare weeks out from Christmas due to health and safety breaches at a facility on the Central Coast. ⌘ Read more

Safety bureau finds WA pilots were unaware of each other’s flight paths
ATSB investigators say the two helicopter pilots that died in a mustering crash in WA’s north were unaware of each other’s flight paths. ⌘ Read more

Waymo Hits a Dog In San Francisco, Reigniting Safety Debate
A Waymo robotaxi struck a small unleashed dog in San Francisco – just weeks after another Waymo killed a beloved neighborhood cat. The dog’s condition is unknown. The Los Angeles Times reports: The incident occurred near the intersection of Scott and Eddy streets and drew a small crowd, according to social media posts. A person claiming to be one of the pa … ⌘ Read more

Apple To Resist India Order To Preload State-Run App As Political Outcry Builds
Apple does not plan to comply with India’s mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app that cannot be disabled. According to Reuters, the order “sparked surveillance concerns and a political uproar” after it was revealed on Monday. From the report: In the wake of the criticism, India’s tel … ⌘ Read more

Mother frightened for children’s safety after encountering needle in backyard
A single mother-of-two no longer feels safe in her government-provided housing after her child found a used needle in their backyard. ⌘ Read more

‘Cascading’ errors lead to safety risk on Qantas flight
A data-entry mistake by a Qantas employee set off a series of errors that caused a Boeing 737 to take off slower than it should have. ⌘ Read more

Victorian music festival cancelled at last minute due to fire safety, permit problems
A festival that has been running for 30 years has been cancelled just days before it was due to begin. ⌘ Read more

Uber driver says rideshare app tells workers to flout road rules
The NSW government introduces legislation that would require employers to ensure their algorithms and automation practises do not risk a worker’s health and safety. ⌘ Read more

India Orders Mobile Phones Preloaded With Government App To Ensure Cyber Safety
An anonymous reader shares a report: India’s telecoms ministry has privately asked all smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cyber security app, a government order showed, a move set to spark a tussle with Apple, which typically dislikes such directives.

[…] The November 28 order, seen … ⌘ Read more

Inquest into fatal Sea World helicopter crash hears pilot prioritised safety
The executive assistant of chief pilot Ashley Jenkinson has appeared before a coronial inquest into the 2023 tragedy. ⌘ Read more

Hillcrest jumping castle operator seeking possible ‘millions’ in costs
The operator of the jumping castle at the centre of the tragedy in which six schoolchildren died in 2021 is seeking to recoup potentially “millions” in court costs following her being found not guilty of a health and safety charge in relation to the incident. ⌘ Read more

New warning for Ozempic-style drugs over risk of suicidal thoughts
Australia’s medicines regulator issues a safety warning over the potential risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviours when taking Ozempic-style drugs. ⌘ Read more

How OpenAI Reacted When Some ChatGPT Users Lost Touch with Reality
Some AI experts were reportedly shocked ChatGPT wasn’t fully tested for sycophancy by last spring. “OpenAI did not see the scale at which disturbing conversations were happening,” writes the New York Times — sharing what they learned after interviewing more than 40 current and former OpenAI employees, including safety engineers, executives, and re … ⌘ Read more

Minister will not commit to childcare inquiry despite safety concerns
The early childhood education minister is refusing to say whether the federal government will establish an independent review of childcare standards. ⌘ Read more

Failed fire alarms and months of warnings — Hong Kong questions why ‘so many died’
Many of the people who managed to escape the Wang Fuk Court fires in Hong Kong believe the disaster could have been prevented, saying they had flagged safety concerns more than a year ago. ⌘ Read more

Hong Kong fires prompt anger, questions about construction safety
Just months ago, Hong Kong leaders were dismissing calls for a total ban on bamboo scaffolding on construction sites. Now they are facing one of the region’s worst building-fire catastrophes, and anger is growing. ⌘ Read more

ABC’s Adele Ferguson, Chris Gillett win Gold Walkley for childcare investigation
The pair’s investigation had an immediate impact on Australia’s childcare industry, resulting in the suspension of one centre and a raft of government policy changes and safety reforms. ⌘ Read more

Hot air balloon rides nearly 10 times riskier as helicopter or plane
Hot air balloon rides are nearly 10 times riskier than a joy flight in a light plane or a helicopter, a new report by the national transport safety investigator has found. ⌘ Read more

Social media ban implementation will ‘vary’ across platforms, regulator warns
Not all Australians aged under 16 will “magically disappear overnight” from social media, the nation’s online safety regulator says, amid a legal challenge to pause the start of the federal government’s ban. ⌘ Read more

Tasmanian man jailed after two ‘inexcusable’ police chases
During sentencing, a Supreme Court Justice told Patrick Lee Brown he “completely disregarded the safety of anyone else” during two different police pursuits, including one in a stolen rental truck with blown-out tyres. ⌘ Read more

How the ABC uncovered the dangers lurking in Australia’s childcare centres
This story is about something deeper than policy or profit. It’s about the trust parents place in childcare every morning when they hand over their children, believing they will be safe — only to find they’re not. ⌘ Read more

Child safety inquiry flags subpoena as department accused of ignoring law
The head of Queensland’s child safety inquiry says he “might need to subpoena” files from the department after hearing it was often “not” following its own legislation around preferred permanency options for children in care. ⌘ Read more

Government backtracks on default speed limit
The truck industry has welcomed a federal government decision to walk away from lowering speeds on unsigned roads, but road safety experts question the move. ⌘ Read more