Are car headlights too bright, or not bright enough? Experts and drivers disagree, and that matters. CC-licensed photo by Kamal Hamid on Flickr.
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It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.
A selection of 10 links for you. Brightly. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Everything I learned while visiting Google HQ for the “Web Creator Conversation Event”, a recap • TechRaptor
Rutledge Daugette was one of about 20 web publishers who have seen their rankings plummet after recent Google search updates, and were invited to go along and talk about it:
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we got onto the topic of AI, which was mentioned HEAVILY in the Google Earnings call that occurred during the day. I specifically asked about how Google Docs and other Accounts were posting on X about creating content using AI and publishing it with ease.
There was a little bit of gaslighting from [Google search VP] Pandu Nayak about this one and how we should be using AI as a writing assistant, or to use it to help us create content but not all of the content. That piece, considering many of us were impacted because of the rate of spam that AI is creating, was pretty tone deaf to the audience and none of us were happy about it.
I think that Pandu was probably the wrong person to have speaking here – he was very clearly an engineer, and I’m sure to him everything was “normal” but to us it just fueled the frustration. Elizabeth [Tucker, director of product management] by contrast felt more measured, but both of them expressed frustration around other parts of Google “touting” writing with AI for content creation.
Once again, a bit of the Spider-Man meme when it comes to the different parts and teams within Google. Search is pretty disconnected, and doesn’t get much say in what the Google Docs team or others share and promote.
In my eyes, there is a sitewide classifier. There is no other explanation for the sitewide hits that our sites have taken. Unfortunately, Google refused to really acknowledge this, consistently saying it was all page-level classifications.
I think the exact quote was “There are not sitewide penalties, only page-level classifications.”
This is one point that continues to lead me to believe that Google’s Search Team has somewhat “lost control” of the systems that are in place.
There is absolutely some level of sitewide classifier in place – I’d understand if individual pages dropped out of Search – but losing 200,000 keywords over the last two years doesn’t signify a “page-level” classifier being the reality.
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Here’s another writeup; they all agree that Google doesn’t seem to be in control of its search engine results any more, and can’t discern new AI-generated junk from long-term human-created work.
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Deadliest weather made worse by climate change, report says • BBC News
Justin Rowlatt:
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Human-caused climate change made the ten deadliest extreme weather events of the last 20 years more intense and more likely, according to new analysis.
The killer storms, heatwaves and floods affected Europe, Africa and Asia killing more than 570,000 people.
The new analysis highlights how scientists can now discern the fingerprint of climate change in complex weather events.The study involved reanalysing data for some of the extreme weather events and was carried out by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group at Imperial College London.
“This study should be an eye-opener for political leaders hanging on to fossil fuels that heat the planet and destroy lives”, said Dr Friederike Otto, co-founder and lead of WWA.
“If we keep burning oil, gas and coal, the suffering will continue,” she said.
The researchers focused on the 10 deadliest weather events registered in the International Disaster Database since 2004. That was when the first study was published linking a weather event – a heatwave in Europe – with our changing climate.
The deadliest event of the last two decades was a drought in Somalia in 2011 which is reckoned to have killed more than 250,000 people. The researchers found the low rainfall that drove the drought was made more likely and more extreme by climate change.
The list includes the heatwave that hit France in 2015 killing more than 3,000 people, where researchers say high temperatures were made twice as likely because of climate change.
…The study was carried out before the storms in Spain left more than 100 dead this week.
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BYD quarterly sales beat Tesla for first time • Financial Times
Gloria Li:
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China’s biggest electric vehicle maker BYD has posted higher quarterly revenues than US rival Tesla for the first time, but a bruising price war in its domestic market dragged on its profitability.
BYD revenues for the third quarter reached Rmb201bn ($28.2bn), surpassing the $25.2bn sales that Tesla reported last week. The Warren Buffett-backed carmaker sold a record 1.1mn cars in the three-month period, boosted by a new round of Chinese government subsidies for EVs.
However, the 24% increase in sales reported on Wednesday came at the expense of BYD’s gross margins, which slipped from 22.1% last year to 21.9%. Net income was Rmb11.6bn, rising 11.5% from a year earlier.
Instead of directly offering discounts, BYD has in recent months launched longer range models equipped with more advanced features at lower prices than their old versions. The strategy has helped it cement its market leadership amid fierce price competition, but pulled down the group’s net profit per vehicle, analysts said.
A continued price war in the world’s largest car market is eating into the margins of both homegrown brands and foreign carmakers. Volkswagen has warned that operating profit from its Chinese joint ventures could hit the low end of its forecast for 2024, coming at €1.6bn instead of as much as €2bn.
Due to a high level of vertical integration, including controlling production of batteries and computer chips, BYD’s gross margin of 21.9% is still far ahead of Tesla’s 17% and Chinese rivals Zeekr’s on 14.2% and Xpeng’s on 6.4%.
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The key point to note in all this is that BYD is not yet in the US market, but Tesla is in the Chinese market. Chinese EV makers are going to dominate within a few years; it might not even be close. US and EU protectionism in the form of tariffs can hold things back for a while, but EVs are where vehicle makers have to be.
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Chinese sanctions hit US drone maker supplying Ukraine • Financial Times
Demetri Sevastopulo, Kathrin Hille and Ryan McMorrow:
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Skydio, the US’s largest drone maker and a supplier to Ukraine’s military, faces a supply chain crisis after Beijing imposed sanctions on the company, including banning Chinese groups from providing it with critical components.
Skydio is rushing to find alternative suppliers after Beijing’s move, which also blocks battery supplies from its sole provider, said people familiar with the situation.
The drone maker has sought help from the Biden administration. Chief executive Adam Bry last week met US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell and held discussions with senior officials at the White House.
American officials are concerned about China disrupting US supply chains and provision to Ukraine of drones used in intelligence gathering.
“This is a clarifying moment for the drone industry,” Bry wrote in a note to customers obtained by the Financial Times. “If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours.
“This is an attempt to eliminate the leading American drone company and deepen the world’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers,” he added.
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This basically kills Skydio unless it can find alternative sources.
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Zuckerberg: the AI slop will continue until morale improves • 404 Meida
Jason Koebler:
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During my year-long odyssey into the world of AI-generated slop on Facebook and other Meta platforms, I had come to the conclusion that Meta does not mind—and actively likes—the bizarre AI spam that has taken over its platforms. Wednesday, in a call with investors, Mark Zuckerberg made this clear: the AI-generated content will continue until morale improves.
In a quarterly earnings call that was overwhelmingly about AI and Meta’s plans for it, Zuckerberg said that new, AI-generated feeds are likely to come to Facebook and other Meta platforms. Zuckerberg said he is excited for the “opportunity for AI to help people create content that just makes people’s feed experiences better.” Zuckerberg’s comments were first reported by Fortune.
“I think we’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated or AI summarized content or kind of existing content pulled together by AI in some way,” he said. “And I think that that’s going to be just very exciting for the—for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads or other kind of Feed experiences over time.”
Zuckerberg said this would continue to be an evolution of traditional feeds on Meta products. As we have previously reported, the virality of AI-generated slop made and posted by people trying to make money on Facebook has been powered by Meta’s “recommendation” algorithm, which boosts content that was not posted by your friends or anyone you know—and which is often engagement bait—into feeds because it increases engagement and time on site. On Wednesday, Zuckerberg explained this strategy in the investor call, and said the new AI feeds would be built with the success of the recommended feed in mind.
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Meta is moving more and more towards being the social network where you’re the only human who creates any real interaction, and all the rest is AI-generated. Wedges have thin ends, remember.
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I replied ‘Stop’ to a political text message. I got a hundred more • WSJ
Joanna Stern:
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In the game of political texts, “Stop” apparently means “Go! Go! Go!”
Perhaps you’ve heard there’s an election next week. Ahead of it, campaigns and political groups are scrambling to get their messages out and gather last-minute donations. Some are using shady tactics to get it done.
For years, I’ve passed on—and abided by—the advice of messaging experts: Text “Stop” to end unwanted messages, as long as they’re not blatantly scammy. Often it works. Last week? Not so much.
“Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous texting vendors out there who will perversely use that opt-out message that you sent back,” said Thomas Peters, chief executive of RumbleUp, a political texting platform. “They use that as a data point, that ‘Oh, we found a live number!’”
Even though my flood of messages came from right-leaning groups, others I’ve talked to have had similar barrages from the left.
Look at that—a nonpartisan issue we can all agree on: relentless political texts need to stop.
Since the text-pocalypse hit my iPhone, I’ve been digging into what happened, and how to filter out the SMS spam. Here’s what I suggest in these final days of election-related text spam.
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In short: don’t reply “Stop” (it just gets passed on as indicating there’s a live person reading messages there, much as clicking the “unsubscribe” link on spam confirms you’re alive and reading spam), report the numbers as junk (to your phone if nothing else), get a spam filter. Thankful that the UK has strict laws preventing this.
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Facebook took more than $1m for ads sowing election lies • Forbes
Emily Baker-White:
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Just six days before the 2024 presidential election, Facebook is running hundreds of ads from pages that falsely claim that the upcoming election may be rigged or postponed. Facebook parent company Meta’s ad library shows that the pages behind the ads have paid the company more than $1m to run them. They racked up a bill of more than $350,000 for ads run in just the past week.
One of the ads features a stylized image of Vice President Kamala Harris with devil horns and an American flag burning behind her. Other ads feature images of Harris and VP candidate Tim Walz interposed with post-apocalyptic scenes, and pictures of Walz and President Biden mashed up with images of prescription drugs spilling out of bottles. One features an apparently AI-generated image of a smiling Harris in a hospital room preparing to give a screaming child an injection. Another features images of anti-vaxxer and third-party candidate RFK Jr. Some of the ads question whether Harris will remain in the race and suggest that America is “headed for another civil war.”
Meta’s election rules prohibit posts containing “misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods of voting” and “misinformation about whether a candidate is running or not,” and its ad rules prohibit ads that “call into question the legitimacy of an upcoming or ongoing election.”
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Facebook is “reviewing” the ads because of course it is, shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted. Political ads are a huge problem because they need a human to review them, and once they’re shown the damage is done.
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GPT-4o and Co. get it wrong more often than right, says OpenAI study • The Decoder
Matthias Bastian:
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A new OpenAI study using their in-house SimpleQA benchmark shows that even the most advanced AI language models fail more often than they succeed when answering factual questions.
The SimpleQA test contains 4,326 questions across science, politics, and art, with each question designed to have one clear correct answer. Two independent reviewers verified answer accuracy.
OpenAI’s best model, o1-preview, achieved only a 42.7% success rate. GPT-4o followed with 38.2% correct answers, while the smaller GPT-4o-mini managed just 8.6% accuracy.
Anthropic’s Claude models performed even worse. Their top model, Claude-3.5-sonnet, got 28.9% right and 36.1% wrong. However, smaller Claude models more often declined to answer when uncertain – a desirable response that shows they recognize their knowledge limitations.
Note that the test specifically measures knowledge acquired during training. It does not assess the models’ general ability to provide correct answers when given additional context, Internet access, or database connections.
The key takeaway: users should think of AI models as information processors, not as stand-alone sources of knowledge. For best results, provide them with reliable data rather than relying solely on their built-in knowledge.
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But, of course, many people don’t: they think of them as oracles which can answer anything correctly, and they aren’t warned otherwise.
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Inside Sophos’ five-year war with the Chinese hackers hijacking its devices • WIRED
Andy Greenberg:
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For more than five years, the UK cybersecurity firm Sophos engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with one loosely connected team of adversaries who targeted its firewalls. The company went so far as to track down and monitor the specific devices on which the hackers were testing their intrusion techniques, surveil the hackers at work, and ultimately trace that focused, years-long exploitation effort to a single network of vulnerability researchers in Chengdu, China.
On Thursday, Sophos chronicled that half-decade-long war with those Chinese hackers in a report that details its escalating tit-for-tat. The company went as far as discreetly installing its own “implants” on the Chinese hackers’ Sophos devices to monitor and preempt their attempts at exploiting its firewalls. Sophos researchers even eventually obtained from the hackers’ test machines a specimen of “bootkit” malware designed to hide undetectably in the firewalls’ low-level code used to boot up the devices, a trick that has never been seen in the wild.
In the process, Sophos analysts identified a series of hacking campaigns that had started with indiscriminate mass exploitation of its products but eventually became more stealthy and targeted, hitting nuclear energy suppliers and regulators, military targets including a military hospital, telecoms, government and intelligence agencies, and the airport of one national capital. While most of the targets—which Sophos declined to identify in greater detail—were in South and Southeast Asia, a smaller number were in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.
Sophos’ report ties those multiple hacking campaigns—with varying levels of confidence—to Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups including those known as APT41, APT31, and Volt Typhoon…
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Sophos says one important point is to highlight the weaknesses in “security appliances”. These stories are always absorbing, and usually highly complex.
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Headlights are too bright! But US experts say they’re not bright enough • The Guardian
Madeleine Aggeler:
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A few weeks ago, I was driving along a dark road at night. Suddenly, I couldn’t see. The headlights of the cars behind and ahead of me were, by my most conservative estimate, as bright as the surface of the sun. For a few seconds, I was blinded. I managed to pull over and waited for my vision to return.
Complaints about the brightness of modern headlights have become commonplace. On X, thousands of users have tweeted about headlights being too bright. The subreddit r/fuckyourheadlights has over 35,000 members who post blurry photos of offending high beams and LED headlights. Outlets like the New York Times and NBC News have written about the risks of headlight glare. Advocacy groups have called for bans on LED headlights. And the UK government launched a review into the dangers of headlight glare earlier this year, after many driver complaints.
And yet, according to many experts, the problem with headlights is not that they’re too bright – it’s that they’re not bright enough.
“We actually need more light on the road than what we have,” says Greg Bannon, director of automotive engineering at the American Automobile Association (AAA). Only a minority of US roadways have overhead street lighting, as one 2019 AAA report noted. As a result, in many areas, headlights are the sole method of illumination when driving at night.
But which is the safety bigger risk: inadequate illumination, or headlights that impair the vision of other drivers?
Driving at night is significantly more dangerous than driving during the day. “When adjusted for distances travelled, the fatality rate [of driving] at night is two to four times higher than during the daytime,” says Dr Joanne Wood, a professor in the school of optometry and vision science at the Queensland University of Technology who specializes in vision and driving. One reason is that there tend to be more incidents of drunk and fatigued driving at night. The more common reason is it’s simply harder to see at night.
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A counterpoint to the UK’s plan to remove 1.5 million streetlights on the basis that vehicles provide enough light from their headlights.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 