Tim Belzer – Page 33

WhatsApp provides no cryptographic management for group messages

Biz & IT, confidentiality, group messages, privacy, Security, whatsapp / Tim Belzer / May 8, 2025

The flow of adding new members to a WhatsApp group message is:

A group member sends an unsigned message to the WhatsApp server that designates which users are group members, for instance, Alice, Bob, and Charlie
The server informs all existing group members that Alice, Bob, and Charlie have been added
The existing members have the option of deciding whether to accept messages from Alice, Bob, and Charlie, and whether messages exchanged with them should be encrypted

With no cryptographic signatures verifying an existing member who wants to add a new member, additions can be made by anyone with the ability to control the server or messages that flow into it. Using the common fictional scenario for illustrating end-to-end encryption, this lack of cryptographic assurance leaves open the possibility that Malory can join a group and gain access to the human-readable messages exchanged there.

WhatsApp isn’t the only messenger lacking cryptographic assurances for new group members. In 2022, a team that included some of the same researchers that analyzed WhatsApp found that Matrix—an open source and proprietary platform for chat and collaboration clients and servers—also provided no cryptographic means for ensuring only authorized members join a group. The Telegram messenger, meanwhile, offers no end-to-end encryption for group messages, making the app among the weakest for ensuring the confidentiality of group messages.

By contrast, the open source Signal messenger provides a cryptographic assurance that only an existing group member designated as the group admin can add new members. In an email, researcher Benjamin Dowling, also of King’s College, explained:

Signal implements “cryptographic group management.” Roughly this means that the administrator of a group, a user, signs a message along the lines of “Alice, Bob and Charley are in this group” to everyone else. Then, everybody else in the group makes their decision on who to encrypt to and who to accept messages from based on these cryptographically signed messages, [meaning] who to accept as a group member. The system used by Signal is a bit different [than WhatsApp], since [Signal] makes additional efforts to avoid revealing the group membership to the server, but the core principles remain the same.

On a high-level, in Signal, groups are associated with group membership lists that are stored on the Signal server. An administrator of the group generates a GroupMasterKey that is used to make changes to this group membership list. In particular, the GroupMasterKey is sent to other group members via Signal, and so is unknown to the server. Thus, whenever an administrator wants to make a change to the group (for instance, invite another user), they need to create an updated membership list (authenticated with the GroupMasterKey) telling other users of the group who to add. Existing users are notified of the change and update their group list, and perform the appropriate cryptographic operations with the new member so the existing member can begin sending messages to the new members as part of the group.

Most messaging apps, including Signal, don’t certify the identity of their users. That means there’s no way Signal can verify that the person using an account named Alice does, in fact, belong to Alice. It’s fully possible that Malory could create an account and name it Alice. (As an aside, and in sharp contrast to Signal, the account members that belong to a given WhatsApp group are visible to insiders, hackers, and to anyone with a valid subpoena.)

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Genetically engineered bacteria break down industrial contaminants

biochemistry, Biology, enzymes, Genetics, Genomics, pollution, Science / Tim Belzer / May 8, 2025

Once that was done, the researchers started looking through the genomes of species that have been identified as breaking down industrial contaminants. The breakdown of complex molecules typically involves more than one enzyme, and the genes for these enzymes tend to end up clustered together so they can be produced as a single, large RNA that encodes all the proteins needed. This simplifies regulating their production, making it easy to ensure the bacteria only make the proteins if the molecule they break down is actually present. In this case, the clusters ranged from just three genes all the way up to 11.

Once nine of these gene clusters were identified, the DNA that would encode them was ordered and assembled into a single DNA molecule in yeast. The researchers took some time while ordering this DNA to better optimize the genes to be active and produce proteins in Vibrio natriegens, as opposed to whatever species the genes were normally used by.

From yeast, each of these individual gene clusters was inserted into Vibrio natriegens, creating different strains that could digest one of the following: benzene, toluene, phenol, naphthalene, biphenyl, DBF29, and dibenzothiophene (DBT). (Some of the nine clusters target the same contaminant.) Each of these bacterial strains was then put in a solution with the chemical they were engineered to digest. Five of the nine worked, giving researchers strains that could digest biphenyl, phenol, napthalene, DBF, and toluene.

Good, but limited

From there, the researchers developed a system that would enable them to iteratively insert a new gene cluster at the tail end of a previously inserted gene cluster. This allowed them to build up a cluster of clusters, eventually including all five of the ones that had shown activity in the earlier tests. Given two days, this single strain could remove about a quarter of the phenol, a third of the biphenyl, 30 percent of the DBF, all of the naphthalene, and nearly all of the toluene.

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We have reached the “severed fingers and abductions” stage of the crypto revolution

abductions, crime, crypto, robbery, Security / Tim Belzer / May 8, 2025

French gendarmes have been busy policing crypto crimes, but these aren’t the usual financial schemes, cons, and HODL! shenanigans one usually reads about. No, these crimes involve abductions, (multiple) severed fingers, and (multiple) people rescued from the trunks of cars—once after being doused with gasoline.

This previous weekend was particularly nuts, with an older gentleman snatched from the streets of Paris’ 14th arrondissement on May 1 by men in ski masks. The 14th is a pleasant place—I highly recommend a visit to the catacombs in Place Denfert-Rochereau—and not usually the site of snatch-and-grab operations. The abducted man was apparently the father of someone who had made a packet in crypto. The kidnappers demanded a multimillion-euro ransom from the man’s son.

According to Le Monde, the abducted father was taken to a house in a Parisian suburb, where one of the father’s fingers was cut off in the course of ransom negotiations. Police feared “other mutilations” if they were unable to find the man, but they did locate and raid the house this weekend, arresting five people in their 20s. (According to the BBC, French police used “phone signals” to locate the house.)

Sounds crazy, but this was the second such incident this year. In January, crypto maven David Balland was also abducted along with his partner on January 21. Balland was taken to a house, where he also had a finger cut off. According to The Guardian, “Police were contacted by Balland’s business partner, who received a video of the finger alongside a demand for a large ransom in cryptocurrency, of around 10 million euro. Balland was freed in a police raid soon after. His partner was found tied up in the boot of a car in a carpark in the Essonne area south of Paris the next day.”

And a few weeks before that, attackers went to the home of someone whose son was a “crypto-influencer based in Dubai.” At the father’s home, the kidnappers “tied up [the father’s] wife and daughter and forced him into a car. The man’s influencer son received a ransom demand and contacted police. The two women were then quickly freed. The father was only discovered 24 hours later in the boot of a car in Normandy, tied up and showing signs of physical violence, having been sprinkled with petrol.”

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Everything you ever wanted to know about four-wheel steering

Cars, explainer, rear-wheel steering / Tim Belzer / May 8, 2025

With roots in early 20th-century trucks, 4WS is not widely understood.

The GMC Sierra EV is one of a number of new electric trucks to use rear-wheel steering. Credit: GMC

Like any big industry, the automotive business has several dumpsters filled with products and ideas that should have remained conceptual. From modern climate controls buried within successive infotainment menus that neither Lawrence of Arabia nor Columbo could find to the old and unlamented Chrysler TC by Maserati with its atrocious build quality and a terrible cylinder head (the Maserati part), the collective car circus has spawned no shortage of bad ideas.

However, there are a few good ideas buried under the weight of poor execution, lousy technology, dreadful marketing, steep pricing, or just merely something being ahead of its time. Several of these morsels deserved a better launch and a second chance. One of them is four-wheel steering.

Four-wheel steering, in concept

The idea of steering a two-axle vehicle’s front and rear wheels isn’t new. Very early American 4×4 trucks from the dawn of the 20th century sported four-wheel-steering systems (4WS), including the Cotta Cottamobile, the American ¾-ton to 10-ton trucks, and Jeffery/Nash Quad Lorry 3-ton trucks.

By the early 1980s, a more modern iteration of active 4WS systems was found as a feature on concept (show) cars. However, since that breed of machine rarely had to prove itself, these are more display pieces than working technology.

Active 4WS systems do two physical things. First, they impart opposite-phase steering angles to the rear wheels from those applied to the fronts. When the fronts turn right, the rears turn left at a fraction of the front’s steering angles. This effectively diminishes the vehicle’s turning circle or radius, making it more maneuverable in tight spaces like parking lots.

An illustration showing how rear wheel steering systems work — Credit: Honda

Depending on the system’s engineering, opposite-phase steering takes place only below a certain vehicle speed or with lots of steering lock applied (generally, more than three-quarters of a turn of the steering wheel or about 270 degrees of lock from center). It also never occurs above a trotting pace. Inducing opposite-phase steering above 30 or 40 mph could cause drastic instability at speed, creating a very rapid yaw moment that would likely cause an unrecoverable skid.

The second action of active 4WS is same-phase steering angle input to the rear wheels. Turn the wheel right, and the rear wheels also turn slightly to the right. However, that rear angle is even shallower than the opposite-phase angles in the above scenario. This improves higher-speed stability, like when a driver changes lanes or corners rapidly through fun twisties or on a racetrack. Rear steering angles vary anywhere from 2.5 degrees to 10 degrees, depending on vehicle design and purpose.

Four-wheel steering, in hard parts

In real nuts, bolts, and notoriety, Honda first brought 4WS to modern production in the 1988 Prelude Si as an option. Nissan followed suit with its HICAS system, and Mazda had a system with extremely limited production, but Honda made the biggest splash.

The Honda system was entirely mechanical. It used a shaft connecting the front steering rack to a planetary gear. That gear created the phase (direction) and degree of rear steering indexed to steering wheel input. This shaft led to a sliding rod that acted like the rack of a rack and pinion steering gear, carrying that input to the rear wheels.

At small steering angles, the rear wheels turned a maximum of 1.5 degrees in phase (in the same direction) as the fronts. At larger steering wheel angles above roughly 270 degrees from center, the rear wheels steered as much as 5.3 degrees out-of-phase with the fronts, tightening the turning circle about 10 percent.

The results in those 1980s and ’90s Preludes were impressive. Some auto critics, like that most cerebral of British scribes, L.J.K. Setright of Car Magazine, cited that the third and fourth-generation Honda Preludes with 4WS exuded the finest steering in the history of history. Weight, feel, accuracy, and telepathic information all sent the auto critic into automotive euphoria.

Four-wheel steering, digitally rendered

As Honda engineers toiled away on their system outside Tokyo, about 37 km away, Nissan worked on its HICAS (“High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering”) variants. Only active above roughly 90 km/h (55 mph) and below 200 km/h (125 mph), it used a computer-controlled hydraulic actuator to move the rear lower lateral links. A computer signaled a rear steering rack, allowing toe changes of plus or minus one degree, depending on speed and front steering angle.

The rear wheels of Nissan’s system would initially (and briefly) steer out of phase with the fronts to improve turn-in response. It then switched phasing for greater stability. This enabled excellent slalom performance with rapid directional changes, which Nissan considered important in contemporary vehicle reviews and tests of sporty vehicles at the time.

However, this early HICAS system had no rear steering at low speeds. The Nissan system also differed from Honda’s in that it relied on a variety of sensors to instruct operation, whereas Honda’s was entirely analog.

Other manufacturers had been working on 4WS at roughly the same time, and others even launched production cars with the system before Honda. Mazda’s MX-02 concept car in 1983 showed a real working system, reaching production in the 1988 626 Turbo. Mitsubishi had a system in the Galant VR-4 in 1987 that only steered with same-phase angles above 50 km/h (30 mph). But none made as big an impact as Honda’s.

However, 4WS did not take the world by storm in the marketplace. The complexity of sporty cars coming out of Japan in the 1980s grew enormously. Coupled with the Japanese Yen’s dramatic rise in value against the US dollar and after the Plaza Accord agreement in September 1985 between major industrial countries, the cost of Japanese cars in overseas markets skyrocketed. In the US, the 1984 Nissan 300ZX Turbo cost around $16,000. By 1990, the 300ZX Turbo’s MSRP was $33,260, more than doubling in just six years.

The bigger meaning for us in 2025 is that, conceptually, today’s 4WS systems essentially do the same thing. Slow-speed opposite-phase inputs tighten maneuverability. Same-phase steering at high speed improves directional changes like lane shifting with generally small steering angles at the rear.

Trucks

Even though the 4WS concept dates back to the early 20th-century trucks, GM is the only manufacturer that has produced a 4WS pickup in the modern era. (Ford has tested systems, though.) The initial Quadrasteer system of the 2000s used a set of trailing tie rods (behind the axle), leading to a steering rack, the pinion of which was an electric motor. This motor dialed a maximum of 15 degrees of steering angle out-of-phase with the front wheels, but only below 45 mph. Where a normal GM pickup had a turning circle of 47 feet, a Quadrasteer truck required only 37 feet, a giant 22 percent improvement.

The Quadrasteer’s in-phase rear-steering topped out at 5 degrees to improve highway stability at higher speeds. More importantly, since this was on a pickup truck, towing had to be considered, too. Therefore, GM limited the low-speed, opposite-phase steering angle in towing mode to 12 degrees. This prevented drastic angles from binding up a trailer while turning.

However, GM’s Quadrasteer system fell flat because of its high price. It didn’t cost the moon to produce, but GM priced it at $5,600. The company also made it optional only on the top trim levels of the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra.

GM also faced resistance among truck buyers because more complex mechanicals could mean a threat to durability. And if nothing else, pickup buyers want durability from their trucks, especially work trucks.

Modern-modern day

Today, 4WS is still not commonplace, but many luxury cars and SUVs use it for the same reasons that existed nearly 50 years ago when Honda, Nissan, and Mazda began their studies in the mid-1970s. Mercedes offers it today on several vehicles like the electric EQS, plus S-Class and E-Class models. And it is showing up on some large GM EVs, like the new Silverado and Hummer.

GMC offers a system on pickup trucks that aids low-speed maneuverability and allows the vehicle to crabwalk, changing direction with no yaw. Some high-powered Porsche models and top-level Audis use 4WS with slight variations, but all for the same fundamental reasons as in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite other developments in suspension design, computer aids, and active driving assists, which didn’t exist in the 1980s, the fundamental benefits of four-wheel steering—improved maneuverability at low speed and improved high-speed turning stability—still exist nearly 50 years after the concept first saw the light of day.

A veteran of journalism, product planning and communications in the automotive and music space, Jim reports, critiques and lectures on autos, music and culture.

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FAA green-lights Starship launches every other week from Starbase

Space, space.spacex, spacex, starship / Tim Belzer / May 7, 2025

Although we are still waiting for SpaceX to signal when it will fly the Starship rocket again, the company got some good news from the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday.

After a lengthy review, the federal agency agreed to allow SpaceX to substantially increase the number of annual launches from its Starbase launch site in South Texas. Previously, the company was limited to five launches, but now it will be able to conduct up to 25 Starship launches and landings during a calendar year.

“The FAA has determined that modifying SpaceX’s vehicle operator license supporting the increased launch and landing cadence of the Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment,” states the document, known as a Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact. This finding was signed by Daniel P. Murray, executive director of the FAA’s Office of Operational Safety.

This ruling follows a draft finding issued six months ago that indicated this would be the final outcome.

Assessing all of the impacts

Among the impacts considered were increased trucking operations to deliver water and various propellants needed to support Starship launches. An earlier analysis by the FAA found that, to support a cadence of 25 launches a year, the vehicle presence on State Highway 4 to Boca Chica Beach will grow from an estimated 6,000 trucks a year to 23,771 trucks annually.

Because of this, the FAA is requiring SpaceX to undertake dozens of mitigating actions. For example, for trucks, it has sought to reduce employee miles driven on the primary artery leading to the Starbase launch site.

“The Proposed Action would increase annual truck traffic, but mitigation measures like employee shuttles and limiting water truck deliveries to daytime hours would help reduce traffic impacts to wildlife,” the FAA document states.

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Man pleads guilty to using malicious AI software to hack Disney employee

AI, Biz & IT, guilty plea, nullbulge, Security, us courts / Tim Belzer / May 6, 2025

A California man has pleaded guilty to hacking an employee of The Walt Disney Company by tricking the person into running a malicious version of a widely used open source AI image-generation tool.

Ryan Mitchell Kramer, 25, pleaded guilty to one count of accessing a computer and obtaining information and one count of threatening to damage a protected computer, the US Attorney for the Central District of California said Monday. In a plea agreement, Kramer said he published an app on GitHub for creating AI-generated art. The program contained malicious code that gave access to computers that installed it. Kramer operated using the moniker NullBulge.

Not the ComfyUI you’re looking for

According to researchers at VPNMentor, the program Kramer used was ComfyUI_LLMVISION, which purported to be an extension for the legitimate ComfyUI image generator and had functions added to it for copying passwords, payment card data, and other sensitive information from machines that installed it. The fake extension then sent the data to a Discord server that Kramer operated. To better disguise the malicious code, it was folded into files that used the names OpenAI and Anthropic.

Two files automatically downloaded by ComfyUI_LLMVISION, as displayed by a user’s Python package manager. Credit: VPNMentor

The Disney employee downloaded ComfyUI_LLMVISION in April 2024. After gaining unauthorized access to the victim’s computer and online accounts, Kramer accessed private Disney Slack channels. In May, he downloaded roughly 1.1 terabytes of confidential data from thousands of the channels.

In early July, Kramer contacted the employee and pretended to be a member of a hacktivist group. Later that month, after receiving no reply from the employee, Kramer publicly released the stolen information, which, besides private Disney material, also included the employee’s bank, medical, and personal information.

In the plea agreement, Kramer admitted that two other victims had installed ComfyUI_LLMVISION, and he gained unauthorized access to their computers and accounts as well. The FBI is investigating. Kramer is expected to make his first court appearance in the coming weeks.

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Only elites used hallucinogens in ancient Andes society

anthropology, Archeology, ethnobotany, forensic archaeology, hallucinogens, psychedelics, Science / Tim Belzer / May 6, 2025

“The Wari examples are about 1,000 years later, as are the Tiwanaku ones, so maybe it’s not surprising that there should be some variation in how people were using vilca,” Contreras told Ars. “We don’t know that this is the only context in which vilca was used at Chavín—just that it’s clear it was being used in this particular restricted-access context. That’s not to say that it or other substances—including such simple things as food and chicha—weren’t also being used in more open contexts to build social bonds. Work parties for harvest or canal cleaning, for example, are still very much part of life in the rural Central Andes, and for that matter anywhere else (including the U.S.).”

“If I had to guess, I’d say those were very much part of Chavín as well,” he added. “But that at the same time some kinds of rituals were very particular and likely exclusive with respect to location, content, and maybe substances involvement—both procuring plants and knowing how to prepare them may have required pretty specialized knowledge.”

The discovery has broader implications because Chavín straddled a major social transition. Between 500 and 1,000 years after Chavín, “there were already sedentary villages practicing agriculture and engaged in communal building projects recognizably similar to Chavín—platform mounds arrayed around plazas,” said Contreras. “However, there’s little evidence of the existence of substantial and durable inequality, and much less evidence of craft specialization, production, and long-distance trade/exchange than there is at Chavín.”

But in the 1,000 years after Chavín, “settlements got significantly bigger and more urban, and several Andean societies can be found (Moche, for instance) that were very clearly strongly hierarchical; social, political, and economic inequality had become the norm,” Contreras said. “Chavín is obviously not the only archaeological site found between those two extremes, but it’s a really interesting place to examine that transition.”

PNAS, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425125122 (About DOIs).

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RIP Skype (2003–2025), survived by multiple versions of Microsoft Teams

microsoft, Microsoft Teams, skype, Tech / Tim Belzer / May 6, 2025

Though not the first software to allow video communication over the Internet, Skype was one of the first recognizably modern peer-to-peer video chatting apps. Created by some of the same developers behind the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing software, Skype was originally released in 2003, at around the same time when increasing broadband Internet availability and better video compression codecs were solving the bandwidth problem.

But as detailed by Wired, Skype lost momentum after the Microsoft purchase, partly due to a redesign that people didn’t like and partly because upstarts like Zoom were offering new features and better call quality. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and all kinds of office jobs shifted to remote work, it was Zoom and not Skype that was in a better position to become the video-chatting app everyone was trapped in.

Skype has been merging into or being replaced by Teams for years, starting with the end of Skype for Business in 2017, a few months after formally releasing the first version of Teams. Microsoft has pushed Teams aggressively, including it alongside its flagship Office apps and Microsoft 365 service for years. Some regulators believed this was, in fact, too aggressive, and Microsoft decoupled Teams from the other Office apps in 2023 (for the European Union) and 2024 (for everyone else).

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Screwworms are coming—and they’re just as horrifying as they sound

flies, health, parasite, screwworm / Tim Belzer / May 4, 2025

We’re on the verge of being screwwormed.

The biological barrier was breached, they’re slithering toward our border, and the US Department of Agriculture is now carpet-bombing parts of Mexico with weaponized flies to stave off an invasion.

This is not a drill. Screwworms are possibly the most aptly named parasites imaginable, both literally and figuratively. Screwworms—technically, New World Screwworms—are flies that lay eggs on the mucous membranes, orifices, and wounds of warm-blooded animals. Wounds are the most common sites, and even a prick as small as a tick bite can be an invitation for the savage insects.

Once beckoned, females lay up to 400 eggs at a time. Within about a day, ravenous flesh-eating larvae erupt, which both look and act like literal screws. They viciously and relentlessly bore and twist into their victim, feasting on the living flesh for about seven days. The result is a gaping ulcer writhing with maggots, which attracts yet more adult female screwworms that can lay hundreds more eggs, deepening the putrid, festering lesion. The infection, called myiasis, is intensely painful and life-threatening. Anyone who falls victim to screwworms is figuratively—well, you know.

Previous victories

Screwworms aren’t a new foe for the US. Decades ago, they were endemic to southern areas of the country, as well as the whole of Central America, parts of the Caribbean, and northern areas of South America. While they’re a threat to many animals, including humans, they are a bane to livestock, causing huge economic losses in addition to the carnage.

In the 1950s, the US began an intensive effort to eradicate screwworms. The successful endeavor required carefully inspecting animals and monitoring livestock movements. But most importantly, it relied on a powerful method to kill off the flies.

The ploy—called the Sterile Insect Technique—throws a wrench into the unique life cycle of screwworms. After the larvae feast on flesh, they fall to the ground to develop into adults, a process that takes another seven days or so during warm weather. Once adults emerge, they can live for around two weeks, again depending on the weather. In that time, females generally only mate once, but don’t worry—they make the most of the one-night stand by retaining sperm for multiple batches of eggs. While females lay up to 400 eggs at once, they can lay up to 2,800 in their lives.

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Google teases NotebookLM app in the Play Store ahead of I/O release

AI, Apps, Google, google notebookLM, Tech / Tim Belzer / May 4, 2025

After several years of escalating AI hysteria, we are all familiar with Google’s desire to put Gemini in every one of its products. That can be annoying, but NotebookLM is not—this one actually works. NotebookLM, which helps you parse documents, videos, and more using Google’s advanced AI models, has been available on the web since 2023, but Google recently confirmed it would finally get an Android app. You can get a look at the app now, but it’s not yet available to install.

Until now, NotebookLM was only a website. You can visit it on your phone, but the interface is clunky compared to the desktop version. The arrival of the mobile app will change that. Google said it plans to release the app at Google I/O in late May, but the listing is live in the Play Store early. You can pre-register to be notified when the download is live, but you’ll have to tide yourself over with the screenshots for the time being.

NotebookLM relies on the same underlying technology as Google’s other chatbots and AI projects, but instead of a general purpose robot, NotebookLM is only concerned with the documents you upload. It can assimilate text files, websites, and videos, including multiple files and source types for a single agent. It has a hefty context window of 500,000 tokens and supports document uploads as large as 200MB. Google says this creates a queryable “AI expert” that can answer detailed questions and brainstorm ideas based on the source data.

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NASCAR, IMSA, IndyCar, F1: GM’s motorsport boss explains why it goes racing

Cars, F1, General Motors, IMSA, IndyCar, Motorsport, NASCAR, racing / Tim Belzer / May 3, 2025

The late Richard Parry-Jones, who rose to CTO over at rival Ford, had a similar take: vehicle dynamics matter.

“There are people that think no one can tell the difference, you know, and I’ve always said they absolutely can tell the difference. They don’t know what it is. And the structural feel of the car going down the road, you know, people might explain, ‘It feels like a vault.’ Well, I can tell you exactly what’s going on, physically, from the parts and the tuning, and it’s an outcome that we strive for,” Morris said.

Does it need to be electrified?

The addition of electrified powertrains has certainly been one of the biggest trends in motorsport over the past decade or so. Since F1 made hybrids mandatory in 2014, we’ve also seen hybridization come to IMSA and WEC’s prototypes, and most recently, IndyCar added a supercapacitor-based system. But it hasn’t been a one-way street; this year, both the World Rally Championship and the British Touring Car Championship have abandoned the hybrid systems they adopted just a few years ago.

Win on Sunday, sell on Monday, like concrete tech transfer, is much less of a thing in the early 21st century, but marketing remains a central reason for OEM involvement in the sport. I asked Morris if Cadillac would be endurance racing with the V-Series R if the LMdh ruleset didn’t require a hybrid system.

“I think it’s an interesting discussion because you know, current EVs—the development [needed] where you can really do lapping at the Nürburgring or lapping full laps and not one hot lap, then you’re done, there’s just going to have to be development, development iteration, iteration, and that’s what racing is,” Morris said.

While the mechanical specifications of the hybrid Cadillac (and its rivals) are locked down, software development is unfettered, and Morris is not the first competitor to tell me how important that development path is now. Battery cell chemistries and battery cooling are also very active research areas and will only get more important once Cadillac enters F1. At first, that will be with Ferrari engines in the back, but starting in 2029, the Cadillac team will use a powertrain designed in-house.

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Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests

AI, AI and work, AI assistants, AI study, Biz & IT, generative ai, large language models, machine learning, The Register, University of Chicago, University of Copenhagen / Tim Belzer / May 2, 2025

A new study analyzing the Danish labor market in 2023 and 2024 suggests that generative AI models like ChatGPT have had almost no significant impact on overall wages or employment yet, despite rapid adoption in some workplaces. The findings, detailed in a working paper by economists from the University of Chicago and the University of Copenhagen, provide an early, large-scale empirical look at AI’s transformative potential.

In “Large Language Models, Small Labor Market Effects,” economists Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard focused specifically on the impact of AI chatbots across 11 occupations often considered vulnerable to automation, including accountants, software developers, and customer support specialists. Their analysis covered data from 25,000 workers and 7,000 workplaces in Denmark.

Despite finding widespread and often employer-encouraged adoption of these tools, the study concluded that “AI chatbots have had no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation” during the period studied. The confidence intervals in their statistical analysis ruled out average effects larger than 1 percent.

“The adoption of these chatbots has been remarkably fast,” Humlum told The Register about the study. “Most workers in the exposed occupations have now adopted these chatbots… But then when we look at the economic outcomes, it really has not moved the needle.”

AI creating more work?

During the study, the researchers investigated how company investment in AI affected worker adoption and how chatbots changed workplace processes. While corporate investment boosted AI tool adoption—saving time for 64 to 90 percent of users across studied occupations—the actual benefits were less substantial than expected.

The study revealed that AI chatbots actually created new job tasks for 8.4 percent of workers, including some who did not use the tools themselves, offsetting potential time savings. For example, many teachers now spend time detecting whether students use ChatGPT for homework, while other workers review AI output quality or attempt to craft effective prompts.

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Author name: Tim Belzer