A new startup says it will let you interrogate your DNA via a chatbot. Do you want to, though? CC-licensed photo by Tom Purcell on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Don’t ask. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
American kids can’t do math anymore • The Atlantic
Rose Horowitch:
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For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Schools across the country have been lowering standards and removing penalties for failure. The results are coming into focus.
Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900—and most of those students don’t fully meet middle-school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. Last year, the university, which admits fewer than 30% of undergraduate applicants, launched a remedial-math course that focuses entirely on concepts taught in elementary and middle school. (According to the report, more than 60% of students who took the previous version of the course couldn’t divide a fraction by two.) One of the course’s tutors noted that students faced more issues with “logical thinking” than with math facts per se. They didn’t know how to begin solving word problems.
The university’s problems are extreme, but they are not unique. Over the past five years, all of the other University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, have seen the number of first-years who are unprepared for precalculus double or triple. George Mason University, in Virginia, revamped its remedial-math summer program in 2023 after students began arriving at their calculus course unable to do algebra, the math-department chair, Maria Emelianenko, told me.
“We call it quantitative literacy, just knowing which fraction is larger or smaller, that the slope is positive when it is going up,” Janine Wilson, the chair of the undergraduate economics program at UC Davis, told me. “Things like that are just kind of in our bones when we are college ready. We are just seeing many folks without that capability.”
Part of what’s happening here is that as more students choose STEM majors, more of them are being funneled into introductory math courses during their freshman year. But the national trend is very clear: America’s students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. The average eighth grader’s math skills, which rose steadily from 1990 to 2013, are now a full school year behind where they were in 2013…
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This is part of a generally concerning trend: one of the most economically important countries in the world is regressing, at pace.
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CDC links measles outbreaks in multiple states for first time • NY Times
Apoorva Mandavilli and Teddy Rosenbluth:
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Health officials on Monday linked for the first time the measles outbreak that began in Texas with another in Utah and Arizona, a finding that could end America’s status as a nation that has eliminated measles.
The news came in a phone call, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, among officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments.
The chain of transmission began in January, in a conservative Mennonite group on the western edge of Texas, and spread to Oklahoma and New Mexico.
Countries lose their elimination status after 12 months of sustained transmission. If the outbreak cannot be extinguished by January, the anniversary of the first cases in Texas, the United States will lose what is known as “elimination status” as determined by the World Health Organization, which it has had for 25 years.
“I wouldn’t call the code yet, but I think the patient’s not looking real good,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Canada lost its status last week, ending a 27-year run, after failing to control an outbreak that began at a Mennonite gathering in October 2024.
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92% of the cases are people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status isn’t known. (Take a wild guess.) Total of 1,723 cases. Though a lot of the new cases have originated abroad.
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The last penny: legal chaos after America’s smallest coin dies • Lawyer Monthly
Susan Stein:
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The last one-cent coin was officially struck at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia on November 12, 2025, following a directive from President Donald Trump earlier this year – a move that has already set off complex consumer-protection and monetary-law questions across the country.
…Amid the politics, everyday Americans are asking: What happens when prices can no longer end in .99?
If you pay cash, you’ll start to notice changes almost immediately. Retailers are beginning to round totals to the nearest five cents, a method already used in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Some stores are rounding down, absorbing small losses to stay consumer-friendly. Others are rounding up, sparking online backlash and potential legal risk. Digital payments and cards, however, still charge exact amounts.
The Federal Reserve projects the shift will cost or benefit households by mere pennies per year about five cents annually per family — but it’s the confusion, not the math, that’s driving frustration.
Several states including Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan, and Oregon, require merchants to provide exact change by law.
Meanwhile, the federal food assistance program SNAP mandates that recipients can’t be charged more than other customers. That means if a store rounds down for cash but not for card transactions, it could violate consumer-protection statutes or even civil-rights rules tied to federal benefit programs.Retail trade groups like the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) have already written to Congress demanding emergency legislation. Without it, well-intentioned rounding could become a legal minefield.
Under 31 U.S.C. § 5103, all U.S. coins and currency remain legal tender for debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Ending production doesn’t automatically revoke the penny’s status — only Congress can do that. Some state statutes, however, forbid businesses from charging different prices based on payment method or rounding practices.
“Traditional rounding might violate consumer-protection laws, including cash-discounting statutes and USDA SNAP rules,” explained Holland & Knight LLP in an October 2025 bulletin on retail compliance.
If a store rounds $4.97 up to $5.00 for cash customers, but not for those paying by card, it could be accused of unfair pricing or discrimination. The same issue arises for government offices accepting cash for taxes or fines.
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The UK must have gone through something similar when the half-penny went away – to say nothing of the shift to decimalisation. Americans need more practice with changing currency.
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Update on invoking Goods Availability Act • Government.nl [Dutch government]
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Minister Vincent Karremans (Economic Affairs): “In light of recent developments, I consider it the right moment to take a constructive step by suspending my order under the Goods Availability Act regarding Nexperia, in close consultation with our European and international partners. In the past few days we have had constructive meetings with the Chinese authorities. We are positive about the measures already taken by the Chinese authorities to ensure the supply of chips to Europe and the rest of the world. We see this as a show of goodwill. We will continue to engage in constructive dialogue with the Chinese authorities in the period ahead.”
…On Tuesday, 30 September 2025, the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs invoked the Goods Availability Act (Wet beschikbaarheid goederen, Wbg) in response to serious concerns at semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia, headquartered in Nijmegen. These concerns stemmed from actions attributed to the now-suspended CEO, involving the improper transfer of product assets, funds, technology, and knowledge to a foreign entity. These actions ran counter to the interests of the company, its shareholders, and Dutch and European strategic autonomy and security of supply.
The decision aims to prevent a situation in which the production capabilities of Nexperia (for finished and semi-finished products) would become unavailable to Europe in an emergency. Nexperia produces, among other things, chips and components used in the European automotive industry and in consumer electronics. The signals at Nexperia showed there was a threat to the continuity on Dutch and European soil of crucial technological knowledge and capabilities.
What are the consequences of the order for the company’s production, supply chain and customers?
The company’s normal production activities and processes can continue unhampered. The measure specifically addresses a risk arising from actions attributed to the now-suspended CEO as described in the previous answer. The order targets only Nexperia and does not affect other companies, the wider sector or countries.«
So a complete reversal by the Dutch government on its plan to take control of the chipmaker Nexperia, with its Chinese owners, for national security reasons. Absolute back to square one.
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A researcher made an AI that completely breaks the online surveys scientists rely on • 404 Media
Emanuel Maiberg:
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Online survey research, a fundamental method for data collection in many scientific studies, is facing an existential threat because of large language models, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The author of the paper, associate professor of government at Dartmouth and director of the Polarization Research Lab Sean Westwood, created an AI tool he calls “an autonomous synthetic respondent,” which can answer survey questions and “demonstrated a near-flawless ability to bypass the full range” of “state-of-the-art” methods for detecting bots.
According to the paper, the AI agent evaded detection 99.8% of the time.
“We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people,” Westwood said in a press release. “With survey data tainted by bots, AI can poison the entire knowledge ecosystem.”
Survey research relies on attention check questions (ACQs), behavioral flags, and response pattern analysis to detect inattentive humans or automated bots. Westwood said these methods are now obsolete after his AI agent bypassed the full range of standard ACQs and other detection methods outlined in prominent papers, including one paper designed to detect AI responses. The AI agent also successfully avoided “reverse shibboleth” questions designed to detect nonhuman actors by presenting tasks that an LLM could complete easily, but are nearly impossible for a human.
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I’m not sure that these were trustworthy in the first place, but now this is really going to put the responsibility on the researchers to do face-to-face work.
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Bystro: an AI Genomics Assistant
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Welcome to Bystro – the world’s first natural language AI platform for genetics and proteomics. Ask questions in plain English and get research-grade analysis instantly. No code required.
Talk to your data like never before. Ask any genetics question in plain English and watch the AI agent create custom analysis, statistical tests, and stunning visualizations on the spot.
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Interesting new application for LLMs, which according to the press release I received, “is not another chatbot layered on top of biology. Bystro is already being used inside major academic centers like Emory University to analyze entire genomes with the same statistical tools top researchers use. The team is now opening that technology to the public.”
Not sure we all want to query whether our genome is stuffed full of Alzheimer’s genes. Though maybe we’d like to know about genetically driven responses to medication.
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Interstellar space travel will never, ever happen • Jason Pargin’s Newsletter
Jason Pargin:
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it turns out that the ships in Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune etc. are not based on some kind of hypothetical technology that could maybe exist someday with better energy sources and materials (as I had thought). In every case, their tech is the equivalent of just having Albus Dumbledore in the engine room cast a teleportation spell. Their ships skip the vast distances of space entirely, arriving at their destinations many times faster than light itself could have made the trip. Just to be clear, there is absolutely no remotely possible method for doing this, even on paper.
“Well, science does the impossible all the time!” some of you say, pointing out that no one 200 years ago could have conceived of landing a rover on Mars. But I’m saying that expecting science to develop real warp drives, hyperspace or wormhole travel is asking it to utterly break the fundamental laws of the universe, no different than expecting to someday have a time machine, or a portal to a parallel dimension. These are plot devices, not science.
Experts can correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like if you had two agencies with infinite budgets, one dedicated to developing interstellar space travel and the other dedicated to giving a young child all of the magical abilities of Harry Potter, the latter would get to the finish line first. Both would be tasked with bending the laws of physics in equally unlikely ways, but the second one wouldn’t have to also keep dozens of humans alive indefinitely in a frozen radioactive vacuum that is relentlessly trying to murder them every single second of the day.
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The fizzing outrage, allied to the factual explanation of how we are absolutely not going to achieve interstellar travel, makes for an excellent read. The comments – trying to somehow retrieve interstellar travel from the deep hole that Pargin has buried it in – are inadvertently comic.
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The Saudification of America is under way • The Guardian
Karen Attiah:
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There’s much to say about the Saudification of western cultural spaces through the sheer sums of money the kingdom is so obviously throwing into what it sees as soft power. Writers and observers have commented for years about Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing”, like the kingdom’s sponsorship of LIV golf tournament and the purchase of the Newcastle United soccer team.
The kingdom invested heavily in tourism campaigns for Saudi Arabia, paying online influencers hefty sums to post pictures of their heavily curated trips to the country.
Jamal warned about these hollow visions of Saudi Arabia. He warned that behind the glitz and glamour of the Saudi royal family, and promises of futuristic cities, there was poverty and discontent. He often told me how proud he was to have his words in the Washington Post, and he hoped the Post could be a model for voices like his to be heard. I still admire Jamal’s relentless optimism about media and America.
In death, Jamal’s faith would prove to be misplaced. The Washington Post’s erasure of Jamal’s memory and the freedom he stood for has been brewing in the background.
The global opinion section that Jamal wrote for was dismantled. The Jamal Khashoggi fellowship – which was offered to writers speaking out against authoritarian regimes – was left to fade away. Jamal used to tell me about his days as an editor chairing newspaper editorial meetings in Saudi Arabia, where editors were given marching orders from the top about the “red lines”, or what the royal regime wanted and did not want published.
Today, the Washington Post opinion section is going through an increasing Saudification – imposing harsh red lines on who and what can publish. Under owner Jeff Bezos’s edict to write only about “free markets” and “personal liberties”, the Washington Post opinion section, the first major US paper to publicly impose such heavy censorship, purged nearly all its full-time voices that wrote against censorship, political violence and repression at home and abroad, myself included.
To date, the Washington Post editorial board has not mentioned Jamal’s name ahead of Prince Mohammed’s visit. The Saudification of the mainstream news media means that other US media outlets and institutions are bending the knee to Trump, agreeing to multimillion-dollar shakedowns in exchange for eliminating diversity.
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The influence of enormous amounts of money deployed by regimes which have their own very specific agendas can be easily overlooked in everyday life. Oh look, it’s golf, with something called LIV. Oh look, it’s a tennis exhibition with $6m in prize money in Saudi Arabia. Oh look, it’s the ruler who ordered the dismemberment of a critical journalist being feted by the money-loving White House. Depravity has more than one setting.
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“Don’t want no Samsung”
Jim Waterson, Polly Smythe, Cormac Kehoe and Sophie Wilkinson:
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Sam was walking past a Royal Mail depot in south London in January when his path was blocked by a group of eight men.
“I tried to move to let them pass, but the last guy blocked the path,” the 32-year-old told London Centric. “They started pushing me and hitting me, telling me to give them everything.”
The thieves took Sam’s phone, his camera and even the beanie hat off his head. After checking Sam had nothing else on him, they started to run off.
What happened next was a surprise. With most of the gang already heading down the Old Kent Road, one turned around and handed Sam back his Android phone.
The thief bluntly told him why: “Don’t want no Samsung.”
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Not sure that this will be a line in Samsung’s next advertising campaign. There’s plenty more to the story, which shows: thieves shun Android phones.
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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. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 