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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/07/sony-will-stop-making-physical-copies-of-playstation-games-in-2028/

Some gamers are concerned about the future of game ownership after Sony's announcement today that it won't produce physical discs for PlayStation games as of January 2028. On that date, "new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only," Sony said in a blog post.
[...]
"We'll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that's at retailers or PlayStation Store," the blog said.

No companies other than Sony subsidiary Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation make PlayStation discs, so today's announcement signals the end of physical copies of PlayStation games and marks Sony's evolution toward a licensing-only sales model.
[...]
buying a digital download is not the same as owning a game. Per PlayStation's terms of service:

When you order or purchase a product from PlayStation Store, you buy a personal license to use that product for private, non-commercial use. That license is not transferable unless your local applicable laws say it must be. This means you can use a product in the ways described in the license, but do not own the product.

[...]
Sony also announced today that it will close the PlayStation Store on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, with the US losing access in July 2027.
[...]
"To ease the transition, players will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date for the foreseeable future," Sony said.

Both blog posts have comments decrying Sony's announcements and their implications for ownership and long-term access to PlayStation games.

One user going by Mosquito53, for example, commented:

Another disappointing decision made in the same day. No matter how many users still use these stores, they should remain open. So much content released digital-only, even on these platforms, these games will be lost to time.

Imagine what will happen in the future when this same decision is made for PS4 or PS5 or even the eventual PS6, which now looks to be all digital with the announcement of no more physical disc production.

We will own nothing, it's truly sad.

[...]
in 2024, Sony deleted customers' Funimation digital libraries despite Funimation previously claiming that customers would be able to access these digital copies "forever but" with "some restrictions."
[...]
Sony has also shown a wavering commitment to its digital stores. In 2021, it stopped selling movie and show rentals/purchases. Leaving the door ajar for customers to potentially lose access to digital games they bought for PlayStation 3 or PS Vita doesn't boost confidence around the digital-only future.

Further, the removal of storefronts could mean beloved games released only digitally become virtually impossible to find.
[...]
"This is why physical media matters," a user named Radgatt commented on Sony's PS3 and PS Vita announcement. "More and more proof that you're just buying a license that can be taken away whenever companies feel like it.

Original Submission

"Fnord666" writes:

Engineer open-sources DIY radar system that's 95% cheaper than $250,000 commercial offerings, has 20 kilometer range — Moroccan engineer designs Aeris-10 radar, shares it on GitHub:

"Nice radar you got there," followed by "thanks, I just had it jammed," might be the new word exchange among buddy electronics enthusiasts. In a move that might ruffle the feathers of many large companies with exceedingly pricey wares, a Moroccan electronics engineer named Nawfal Motii has designed the open-source Aeris-10 radar system that is purportedly comparable to commercial systems costing $250,000.

Aeris-10 comes in two variants: 10N Nexus with a 3-km range and an 8x16 patch antenna array, and the 10E Extended, capable of reaching up to 20 km thanks to its 32x16 slotted waveguide array. Motii published the entire project on GitHub , including all the necessary schematics, PBC layouts, components, firmware, and software with a GUI for controlling and monitoring the system.

On the technical end, the Aeris-10 uses an XCA7A50T FPGA as a central brain for doing its FFT math, along with Moving Target Indicator (MTI), Doppler-effect estimation of moving object speed, and CFAR false alarm detection control. The figurative spinal cord is an STM32F746xx microcontroller that orchestrates the frequency synthesizers, ADCs, DACs, the GPS, barometer, stepper motors, and cooling setup.

Watch full video on the link above:

The fact that Aeris-10 offers a true phased array system and ±45° elevation/azimuth adjustments are seemingly its differentiating factors. Prices for electronics are exceedingly floaty in these ship-shinking days, but a brief estimate pins the bill of materials at $5,000 for the 10N and $7,200 for the 10E. Despite the number of zeros on those figures, they're pocket change compared to amounts commanded by off-the-truck offerings. A cursory look puts commercial phase-array systems at somewhere $120k and $200k, and well past those prices for longer-range units.

Motii claims that military surplus radars can be had for $10k to $50k, but those are invariably decades-old tech with next to no spare parts availability. He says that building a DIY system is also a hard ask for a small team, as the testing gear can cost $50k on its own. Describing himself as "a guy in a workshop in Morocco with a soldering iron and an obsession," he took it upon himself to fix that particular problem.

Anyone can hit the project's GitHub page and get their own radar system going, but not everyone might have the necessary electronic and mechanical skills necessary for building one. To that effect, Motti says he's reached an agreement with the Crowed Supply platform, aiming for a Q3 2026 release. The site isn't your standard dice-rolling crowd-sourcing platform, though, as apparently it only accepts fully-designed projects with functional prototypes, rejects 90% of submissions, and claims it never had a scam.

Interestingly enough, this project was originally licensed under the MIT license, but Motti was advised that said license does not protect physical hardware, so it changed to the CERN-OHL-PT license. Should you elect to build your own unit, be aware that the frequencies it operates in are almost assuredly highly regulated in your legal jurisdiction.

Original Submission

On behalf of all staff and community members, may we wish all Americans a very happy Independence Day (and weekend!). Importantly, stay cool and safe!

And everyone, Americans and others (and assuming you didn't get an invite to Taylor's wedding celebrations), tell us what you will be doing and how you will spend the weekend!

I will try to keep the stories flowing to allow the Usians to party appropriately.

Snotnose writes:

I'm not even going to summarize this, but if you value American science you need to read it.

Near the end of May, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed a new rule that would govern how the federal government handles the grants it issues, including those that fund the vast majority of scientific research in the US.

If formalized, the rule would make political priorities the prime determinant of what science gets funded and sideline the opinions of scientific experts. Grants could be canceled due to political whims, and new layers of bureaucracy would inhibit basic scientific activities like publishing papers and attending conferences. Unlike the executive orders it echoes, it would have the force of law behind it and be significantly harder to challenge in court.

Before coming into force, however, the proposal must go through a process that includes public feedback and (potentially) changes in response. The deadline for that feedback—Monday, July 13—is rapidly approaching.

I'm here to explain what makes this proposal so dangerous, why your feedback matters, and how you can craft an effective submission.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Three companies that account for 90% of RAM revenue are being sued for anti-competitive practices.

The big story in computing these days is how an ongoing shortage of RAM (dubbed RAMageddon or the RAMpocalypse) has led to massive increases in hardware costs. The conventional explanation of the situation has been that shortages have been driven by the widespread construction of AI data centers. However, a new lawsuit (Garciaguirre et al. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al.) filed against RAM manufacturers Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, alleges that these companies are exploiting market conditions to artificially inflate prices.

The class action lawsuit filed by 14 individuals and three businesses accuses Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron of conspiring to fix prices and supply of DDR3 and DDR4 RAM, resulting in higher costs. "This lawsuit seeks to recover for—and stop—concerted anticompetitive behavior by three oligopolists in the market for dynamic random access memory, more commonly called DRAM," the opening line of the suit reads.

DRAM is essential for virtually every computing device, as it stores the bits used for short-term data. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron account for more than 90% of global DRAM revenue. The suit says that the firms have "fixed supply and prices for DRAM, engaging in conduct that makes no economic sense absent collusion and that has driven up the price of conventional DRAM (sometimes called commodity DRAM) approximately 700% in a four-year period."

[Source]: Polygon.Com

Do you agree that these companies are colluding ?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/polestar-ev-ban-commerce-department-volvo-china/

Polestar, the Swedish maker of electric vehicles, will not be allowed to sell new vehicle models in the US. It says it will continue to sell existing stock of Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 models. 

The Swedish manufacturer of electric vehicles, which became a distinct brand in 2017, revealed the ban in an SEC filing, which it paired with a press release this week announcing that it's shifting manufacturing to Europe.

It said in the release that it will continue to sell existing stock of its Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 vehicles in the US and to support customers through its service network. 

A representative for Polestar told CNET in an email that, because of the Commerce Department's decision, the company has no plans to sell new cars in the US from model year 2027 onward, including the planned Polestar 7.

The company has marketed the Polestar 7 as a premium compact SUV. It's due out in 2028.

This decision isn't surprising: A 2024 letter from Polestar (PDF) to the Bureau of Industry and Security foreshadowed what would eventually happen. It said at the time that the agency's prohibitions could eventually lead the company to stop selling vehicles in the US, even ones it manufactures in South Carolina.

The US ban has not been posted on the Commerce Department's website or social media, but it's in line with the agency's directive to police technology from China that the government considers a potential security threat. This month, the department issued a $36 million penalty against Bosch for exporting sensors and auto software to Huawei. 

In May, however, the Bureau of Industry and Security granted Volvo special authorization to sell its vehicles in the US after the auto company said it discussed its connected technology with the department. 

A representative of the Bureau of Industry and Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

US agencies aren't just looking at the auto industry. The Federal Communications Commission has targeted consumer products including routers and drones that have technology made in China.

Polestar is not one of the top 10 EV manufacturers, lagging behind larger companies including Tesla, BYD and Volkswagen. 

Electric vehicles only account for about 6.5 percent of the US auto market, according to industry watcher Edmunds. In the US, EVs are typically priced higher, and federal rebates to purchase these types of vehicles have been phased out. 

With gas prices high this summer, consumers may be giving EVs another look, but concerns remain about pricing and range. 

Some automakers are trying to boost the appeal of electric vehicles through lower-cost models. Slate is taking preorders for a basic, modular EV truck that costs $24,950 before delivery fees. Other EV models, such as the Chevrolet Bolt, can be found for about $30,000.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

The UN sees great rewards, and risks, with AI for humanity and the world in their new report.

"The potential benefits of AI are ​enormous," the report concluded. "The rapid, unchecked deployment of the technology at scale also presents considerable risks, ​including harms to the mental health of users, potential use as a destructive tool, impacts on social, economic ‌and environmental ⁠systems, and challenges associated with controlling the technology."

AI adoption has accelerated broadly, but unevenly, across countries and sectors. Globally, over a billion people now use conversational AI weekly, but adoption in developing countries lags.

Although more than 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide, current AI models are trained for only a small fraction and machine translation of some languages ​is riddled with errors that can affect health diagnoses and treatment decisions.

https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/en
https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/en/preliminary-report

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/un-report-sees-enormous-potential-benefits-big-risks-ai-2026-07-01/

https://www.un.org/en/ai-advisory-body (older report on AI and governance)

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The Internet Archive and the Authors Alliance are producing a six-part series from the Future Knowledge podcast. The series, Vanishing Culture explores what happens when our shared cultural heritage disappears, and what we can do to preserve it. The first episode was published July 1^st, 2026 starts out discussing the growing threat of cultural loss in the digital age:

From disappearing websites and deleted social media archives to lost films, books, music, and video games, Luca explores why culture vanishes and why it matters. He explains how copyright law, corporate control of digital platforms, and the shift from ownership to licensing are making it harder for libraries, archives, and communities to preserve cultural memory. Along the way, he shares stories that illustrate both the fragility of our digital heritage and the importance of preserving it: from a favorite YouTube recipe rescued by the Wayback Machine to the role cultural artifacts play in memory and identity. The conversation wraps on a positive note, with a look toward solutions and what creators, libraries, and everyday citizens can do to help ensure culture remains accessible for generations to come.

There is also a open access ebook with the same title, Vanishing Culture from this year by Luca Messarra, Chris Freeland, and Juliya Ziskina. It's available from the Internet Archive as EPub or PDF. See also another open access book, Walled Culture: A Journey Behind the Copyright Bricks, from 2022 by Glyn Moody.

In addition to all the other problems, digital goes away by default once active support stops. Contrast that with paper, microfilm, and microfiche which have to have someone expend time and effort (aka money) to be disposed of or, better, you can keep the copy you have regardless of other factors. Physical media are also decentralized, where as with digital information, there is often only a single copy in the world. Yes, the physical media disappear and rot if neglected, but it is a far cry from the out-like-a-light loss that digital information is afflicted by — unless proactive efforts are taken, such as the heroic efforts by the Internet Archive and other archiving services.

Previously:
(2024) Internet Archive Responds to Appellate Opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive
(2024) It's the End of the Web as We Know It
(2022) Digitization Wars, Redux
(2020) On the Disappearance of Open Access Journals Over Time
(2014) The Importance of Information Preservation

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

An interesting interview with Cory Doctorow

Sci-fi author/tech journalist Cory Doctorow on his new book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.

The prolific Doctorow is back with a provocative new book that serves as a follow-up of sorts, focusing on AI and related issues: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI. [Available wherever books are sold. --Ed]

Doctorow doesn't actually enjoy talking about AI, but he's constantly being asked to comment on it. "I made the tactical error of being sick of talking about AI," Doctorow told Ars. "So I wrote a book about why I think it's a dumb thing to keep asking people to talk about, and now I have to talk about it." Reverse Centaur is Doctorow's attempt to "sort out the bullshit from the material reality."

In automation theory, per Doctorow, a "centaur" describes a human augmented with a technology, like machine learning, or even just driving a car or using autocomplete. A reverse centaur "is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine," Doctorow said in a speech last December. He gave the example of an Amazon delivery driver, surrounded by AI cameras monitoring their driving, who essentially serves as a peripheral to the delivery van.

[Source]: Ars Technica

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.engadget.com/2203145/nasa-tests-in-orbit-refueling-device-deep-space-missions/

Future deep space missions may need to refuel in orbit before they can head to their final destinations. NASA has been working on in-orbit refueling solutions for years, and one of its latest efforts is testing a "cryocoupler" developed by American tech company L3Harris. You can think of the cryocoupler as the nozzle of a gas pump, which is needed so it can fit a car's fuel tank. Cryocouplers will allow spacecraft to link to orbiting gas stations, so they can fill up before they leave the vicinity of our planet.

"In-orbit cryogenic refueling between two spacecraft has yet to be done and remains one of the toughest engineering challenges in spaceflight," said Travis Belcher, cryocoupler project manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Effective cryocouplers will have to be able to facilitate the transfer of extremely cold fluid, such as liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, without leaking. And since these propellants have to stay chilled at hundreds of degrees below Fahrenheit, the device will need to have the proper materials and strong seals. They (obviously) cannot be manually operated, as well.

"The cryocouplers we're working on can attach and detach multiple times and are fully automated, so astronauts won't have to perform a spacewalk to transfer propellant," Belcher added. "They're rigorously designed to withstand space and sized for the expected tank designs."

To test L3Harris' cryocoupler, Belcher's team ran liquid nitrogen at negative 321 degrees Fahrenheit through several connected and disconnected configurations. Those tests provided the team with data on how the device reacts to significant temperature differences. They also put the coupler through operational tests, such as simulations of misaligned dockings, as the device was designed to accommodate some degree of misalignment.

It's early days for L3Harris' cryocoupler, so these tests are pretty basic. Belcher says future tests will be designed for specific missions, so the coupler can be assessed according to those missions' requirements. For now, you can watch part of the test below.

Engineers from #NASAMarshall and L3Harris are testing a technology vital for in-orbit refueling: https://t.co/oeqGBtvzpj pic.twitter.com/4w6HErAIAq

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2531894-remote-controlled-cockroach-swarm-can-now-breathe-underwater/?utm_campaign=rss%7cnsns&utm_source=nsns&utm_medium=rss&utm_content=technology

Swarms of cyborg insects controlled remotely via electrical implants can now operate underwater, thanks to tiny diving suits supplying them with oxygen – which could one day enable them to explore Mars.

Hirotaka Sato at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and his colleagues first demonstrated in 2021 that Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) could be remotely controlled with electrodes embedded in sensory organs known as cerci. In 2024, they demonstrated that a swarm of 20 of these cyborg insects could coordinate.

The aim was to develop biological robots equipped with infrared sensors that could be released in large numbers after natural disasters to search for survivors. Cockroaches represent a ready-made platform for such applications with a working fuel source, efficient locomotion and in-built reflexes to dodge obstacles – capabilities that engineers still struggle to replicate mechanically at such a small scale.

But Sato and his team were unhappy with the insects’ inability to search flooded areas, which aren’t uncommon in disaster zones, so they have developed a diving suit to allow them to operate underwater.

Cockroaches breathe through pores called spiracles on their abdomen and thorax. The researchers 3D printed a watertight resin suit, which protects the abdominal spiracles from water. Tiny hoses run forwards from the suit to connect directly to the thorax spiracles; the main part of the suit would interfere with leg movement if it covered the thorax as well.

Rather than supplying the insects with a pressurised tank of oxygen, as scuba suits do, the researchers included a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide. When these two chemicals react, the hydrogen peroxide decomposes to produce oxygen, which the cockroach can absorb.

While wearing the suit, the cockroaches were able to walk underwater for up to 3 hours at a time, at depths of up to 50 centimetres, with no ill effects: all five insects that were monitored after wearing the suits were still healthy three days later.

The suits also allowed the insects to move underwater surprisingly naturally. On land, the suit-wearing cyborg insects achieved an average forward speed of 87.5 millimetres per second, and this only slowed to 78.4 millimetres per second underwater.

Sato says such suits could make search-and-rescue cyborg insects far more capable, but he also hopes to explore their use in space, another environment lacking in vital oxygen.

“The ultimate goal is to [take this technology to] space,” he says. “It’s kind of one step, one big step, towards space suits for cyborg insects. Exploration over the Mars surface, for example.”

To this end, the research team now intends to test the cockroach suits in the various harsh conditions that they could encounter in orbit or on the surface of a planet like Mars: very low and high temperatures, a vacuum and intense radiation exposure. However, space agencies may not like the idea of sending cockroaches to Mars because it would risk contaminating the planet with microbes from Earth.

Alan Winfield at the University of the West of England says the concept of scuba-diving cockroaches may seem strange, but it has obvious applications, such as environmental monitoring.

“There have been attempts to build very small robots, but the problem is batteries. With a very small robot, you typically don’t get very much battery life,” he says. “People often used to say to me, what are the three big problems in mobile robots? And I’d say: energy, energy and energy.”

Cockroaches are not only vastly more efficient than robots and able to operate for longer without refuelling, they are also capable of foraging for their own food in the wild and operating almost indefinitely.

JournalReference: " "Nature Communications " DOI="10.1038/s41467-026-74235-1" This session brings together Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, and Meganne Christian, a current ESA astronaut reserve. This is an inspirational session of bold ideas, real world insight, and a taste of off-planet science and adventure.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/supreme-court-ruling-guts-governments-use-of-geofence-warrants/

The Fourth Amendment protects a user's "location history," the Supreme Court ruled [.PDF] Monday.

The same logic already applied to a cellphone's tracking, and the high court found "no good reason exists to reach a different result for Location History" collected by third parties like Google.

Split 6-3, the majority agreed that the government needs a warrant and must show reasonable cause to turn a phone's location-tracking services into a government surveillance tool.

The decision came in a case where cops used so-called geofence warrants to track down an armed bank robber from a list of all phones logged in the area. Applying a three-part process, cops worked with Google to narrow down the list of suspects and eventually arrested Okello Chatrie, who had opted in to share his location with Google every few minutes. Chatrie was sentenced to 12 years in prison but challenged the geofence warrant as an unconstitutional search.

The US tried and failed to argue that no search was conducted under the Fourth Amendment, partly because they only searched a little bit of Chatrie's location data, which the government considered too small to warrant privacy protections.

They also claimed that Chatrie was aware that voluntarily sharing his location with Google could mean that law enforcement might get access to the data. And along similar lines, the government argued that Chatrie's data simply showed his movements in public, where he supposedly had no reasonable expectation of privacy.

However, Justice Elena Kagan, penning the majority opinion, said it didn't matter how much data the government obtained. It was still a search under the Fourth Amendment because people carrying cellphones today commonly opt in to location-tracking, so that their apps work.

"Google repeatedly prompts users to turn on the service, often warning that devices will not 'work correctly' otherwise, while not disclosing in that prompt how frequently users' location information would be recorded, how precise it would be, or how it might be given to the government," the majority agreed.

Much like carrying a cellphone is part of modern life, so is allowing a third party to track your movements, and that doesn't diminish a person's right to privacy, the majority ruled. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that "even short-term monitoring" of where a person has been can reveal "a wealth of detail about [his] familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations"—particularly if he's seen visiting a sensitive location, like a clinic, an attorney's office, or a strip club.

"An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone's location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information—even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company," Kagan wrote.

Privacy advocates cheered the ruling, even though it "stopped short of striking down these warrants as inherently unconstitutional," the surveillance litigation director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Andrew Crocker, said in a statement provided to Ars.

"We applaud the Court's decision," Crocker said. "The Court reaffirmed that you have an expectation of privacy in location data that reveals your movements in the physical world, and that even short-term surveillance of these movements is a search subject to the Fourth Amendment."

"fab23" writes:

FreeBSD vs. Linux: The Eternal Open:

In the vast and often passionate world of open-source operating systems, few debates are as enduring as the one between Linux and FreeBSD. Both are powerful, free, and Unix-like, serving as the backbone for countless servers, development environments, and even desktop machines around the globe. But beneath the surface of shared open-source principles lie fundamental differences that dictate their strengths, weaknesses, and ultimately, which one might be the superior choice for your specific needs.

This isn't just a technical comparison; it's a look at two distinct philosophies of building an operating system. So, let's cut through the noise and explore what sets these titans apart.

Let's be honest: the FreeBSD vs. Linux debate is the open-source world's version of "tabs vs. spaces", endless, passionate, and usually missing the point. Both are rock-solid, both are free, both are everywhere. But if you think they're interchangeable, you haven't been paying attention. Under the hood, these two take wildly different approaches to what an OS should be, who it's for, and how much control you actually have.

This isn't a dry technical checklist. It's about philosophy, real-world tradeoffs, and what actually matters when you're the one on the hook for uptime, security, or just getting your damn code to compile.

The following are discussed:

• The Core Divide: Kernel, Licensing, and Philosophy. [...] This isn't just legalese. It's a worldview: Linux is about keeping code open; BSD is about letting you do whatever the hell you want with it.

• Linux's Dominance: Versatility and Broad Appeal. [...] Why does Linux win the popularity contest? Simple: it runs on everything, everyone supports it, and if you Google your problem, you'll find a fix. Want to run a desktop, a Raspberry Pi, a supercomputer, or a Kubernetes cluster? Linux is the default. The community is massive, the software ecosystem is endless, and if you want to play with the latest tech, it'll land on Linux first.

• FreeBSD's Quiet Strength: Stability and Precision Engineering [...] While less ubiquitous, FreeBSD holds its own with a reputation for rock-solid stability, clean design, and a focus on specific strengths:

• When to Choose Which: Use Cases and Practical Considerations [...] The "superior" OS isn't about popularity; it's about the right tool for the job. The decision often comes down to a blend of technical requirements and practical realities.

"Fnord666" writes:

Prompt Injection as Role Confusion:

FNord666 has submitted a comprehensive study of using prompt injection to 'poison' or confuse a LLM. For those who are interested in such things it is an interesting read. It identifies various ways in which current LLMs process the tags, known as roles, and the resulting analysis indicates that they are vulnerable to certain role tags being misused.

The following is an excerpt from part way through the study (which therefore assumes you have understood the terms and techniques which have been discussed earlier) and it details several ways that the authors have already identified as being suitable for further research and potential exploitation.

8. Open Ideas for Roles Research

What would it look like to actually study roles? They're quietly one of the most important parts of the LLM stack, but little research on roles as their own abstraction exists. Here are some directions we like:

Subconscious steering. We've seen that role perception isn't binary. If that's the case, then downstream effects of role, like how much a token is treated as an instruction, are probably continuous as well. Combine this with LLMs seeing every token as a single stream of text, and we get "state bleeding": every token slightly shifts the LLM's state, even along dimensions that should be role-gated . For example, consider a shopping webpage retrieved as tool data. If the webpage has an enthusiastic tone, that tone could bypass role boundaries to bleed into the model's sense of its own persona (to be more enthusiastic itself), which could then steer the LLM toward recommending a purchase.

Current prompt injection research focuses on dramatic and illegal cybersecurity attacks. I think the bigger wave could be this kind of subconscious steering : using seemingly innocuous text to subtly shift an LLM's state toward an intended goal, legally and at scale. E-commerce is just the clearest application.

Advertisers already exploit humans like this. Ads with flashing colors and motion spike arousal, which bleeds into desire for consumption. LLMs are a much easier target. Their role boundaries are softer, there are only a few LLMs, and automated exploitation is trivial - thousands of variations of a product page can be tested in an hour to find which ones shift an agent's purchase recommendation From some early testing, it seems emotive steering doesn't always mirror human psychology (e.g., cockroach-related text on food product pages doesn't reduce agent purchase rate), but other traits like trust and skepticism can be subconsciously steered. If agents are responsible for a large share of shopping, the commercial incentive would be massive.

There's close to zero existing research here. What are the key emotive states of an LLM that can be subconsciously steered by external tokens? How well do these correspond to human states? Is this the same mechanism as in-context learning? What would defense or regulation of this even look like?

When to use roles. If roles exist where objectives collide, the current set probably isn't the final one. Adding roles trades off flexibility for objective splitting, which can improve interpretability or performance.

Consider a concrete case: nearly all coding agents use planning tools. The agent generates a plan intended as a "contract", providing both human transparency and a persistent signal to keep itself on track. In practice, agents often abandon the plan mid-task. Indeed, plans are tool text, which LLMs are biased to treat as ephemeral data. A dedicated planning role could train the LLM to treat plans as commitments rather than suggestions.

A similar tension appears in self-evaluation. RLHF trains the assistant role for coherent continuations, which works against the critical distance needed for honest evaluation. Coherence and evaluation are competing objectives (commitment vs distance), and cramming both into one role means training can't optimize for either cleanly. A dedicated eval role could split them. We know injecting the opinions of a second LLM into context reduces sycophancy and hallucination; a role could internalize this within a single model.

What other objective conflicts suggest new roles? Could roles be dynamic, introduced at inference time as the task demands? And can models learn role separation as a meta-skill, so new roles work without retraining every boundary from scratch?

Roles as a cognitive window. There's almost no existing research on how roles affect representations or internal computation. This is a missed opportunity, because roles create sharp discontinuities in how models process tokens, and each discontinuity is an unexploited natural experiment.

Here's one idea, which is surprisingly completely unstudied. During training, tokens in input-only roles ( user , tool ) are loss-masked: the LLM never has to predict the next token at those positions, so their activations focus entirely on comprehension instead of generation That is, their activations only have value used via attention for downstream tokens. In comparison, tokens in output roles ( assistant , think ) must simultaneously encode what the model understands and what the LLM is about to say . This is a problem for interp work: in later layers, the generation signal drowns out the comprehension signal, making it hard to study the latter. If so, could user -token activations be a clean window into what the model actually understands, unpolluted with the generation signal? Can the contrast between input and output roles tell us about how LLMs split storage from usage?

Here's another. Recall the "one-way mirror" from earlier: in many LLMs, the assistant text is computationally shaped by the preceding think block, but it can't quote or verbally acknowledge it. Ask such an LLM what it was thinking about, and it'll be surprised and skeptical at the idea that it had any thoughts at all, even as those thoughts are visibly steering its output. This is a consequence of how reasoning is trained, but the result is very weird. It means there's a discrete boundary across which information goes from fully accessible to verbally inaccessible while remaining causally active. Studying what information is lost or suppressed between late think tokens and early assistant tokens could tell us something fundamental about how LLMs verbalize computation.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Wants to revive the lost art of the National Internet Registry, which APNIC has deprecated and isn't keen to bring back:

The government of Malaysia has commenced a consultation on whether it should regulate management of IP addresses and autonomous systems numbers, over objections from regional internet registry the Asian Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC).

Malaysia announced its consultation in June, when the nation's Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) posted a paper [PDF] in which it explains that a lot has happened since passage of the 1998 Act that governs its activities – so it probably needs an update.

One of the proposed changes would see Malaysia create a statutory authority with the power to manage electronic addressing "including the management of IP addresses, AS numbers and associated fees."

"This is to support the development of a National Internet Registry model and to ensure a transparent and sustainable administration of electronic addressing resources in Malaysia which will be overseen by the Commission," the consultation paper states. "This will contribute to a more robust and well-governed digital infrastructure environment in Malaysia."

APNIC says its talks with the MCMC saw the Malaysian entity express a desire for "full operational and technical autonomy over resource assignments" – powers that existing NIRs don't have.

National Internet Registries (NIRs) are a relic of the time before regional internet registries came into being. Only APNIC and LACNIC, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry, allowed NIRs – and only nine exist, covering China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil.

APNIC stopped accepting applications for new NIRs in 2012, and in 2024 made the moratorium on new applications permanent.

[...] The internet governance community long ago decided that internet resource distribution and management works best when handled by sizable organizations which operate at regional scale, and that if every country had an NIR it would create unhelpful risks and overlapping authorities.

If Malaysia presses ahead with its desire to create its own National Internet Registry (NIR) and have it assume some of APNIC's functions, it will therefore challenge the status quo. If it actually gets an NIR into operation, that would likely revive debate about whether national governments should have a role in allocating internet resources given the potential for such power to be used for political purposes such as denying resources to groups that a government opposes.

[...] If MCMC decides to pursue creation of an NIR, it will be in conflict on a collision course with APNIC. In the past, most collisions in the world of internet governance occurred at low speed and involved mostly civil debate that plays out over years.

Original Submission