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- [liar] Politics and AI data centers
- [janrinok] AC Comments in Response to the Analysis of Flagging
- [turgid] The Last Megadeth
- [mcgrew] The Worthless Copilot
- [jelizondo] A House of Dynamtte
- [kolie] Comments Flagged in Turgids Becoming an Atheist Journal
- [fliptop] Better than gender studies
- [Mojibake Tengu] Almost Human
- [quietus] Cargo Cult Society
- [rpnx] Privacy vs Free Speech, Right to Record, Right to Remember.
- [digitalaudiorock] Story submission confusion
- [canopic jug] Final Dr Demento Show on 2025-10-11
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Sunday November 2 -
Saturday November 1- China Releases 'UBIOS' Standard to Replace UEFI (9)
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Friday October 31- Tor Browser 15.0 Anonymous Web Browser Is Out Based on Firefox 140 ESR Series (4)
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Thursday October 30
Quick Links
"You don't have to claim that they're aliens to make these exciting":
[...] Anyone who studies planetary formation would relish the opportunity to get a close-up look at an interstellar object. Sending a mission to one would undoubtedly yield a scientific payoff. There's a good chance that many of these interlopers have been around longer than our own 4.5 billion-year-old Solar System.
One study from the University of Oxford suggests that 3I/ATLAS came from the "thick disk" of the Milky Way, which is home to a dense population of ancient stars. This origin story would mean the comet is probably more than 7 billion years old, holding clues about cosmic history that are simply inaccessible among the planets, comets, and asteroids that formed with the birth of the Sun.
This is enough reason to mount a mission to explore one of these objects, scientists said. It doesn't need justification from unfounded theories that 3I/ATLAS might be an artifact of alien technology, as proposed by Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb. The scientific consensus is that the object is of natural origin.
Loeb shared a similar theory about the first interstellar object found wandering through our Solar System. His statements have sparked questions in popular media about why the world's space agencies don't send a probe to actually visit one. Loeb himself proposed redirecting NASA's Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter on a mission to fly by 3I/ATLAS, and his writings prompted at least one member of Congress to write a letter to NASA to "rejuvenate" the Juno mission by breaking out of Jupiter's orbit and taking aim at 3I/ATLAS for a close-up inspection.
The problem is that Juno simply doesn't have enough fuel to reach the comet, and its main engine is broken. In fact, the total boost required to send Juno from Jupiter to 3I/ATLAS (roughly 5,800 mph or 2.6 kilometers per second) would surpass the fuel capacity of most interplanetary probes.
Ars asked Scott Bolton, lead scientist on the Juno mission, and he confirmed that the spacecraft lacks the oomph required for the kind of maneuvers proposed by Loeb. "We had no role in that paper," Bolton told Ars. "He assumed propellant that we don't really have."
[...] Loeb's calculations also help illustrate the difficulty of pulling off a mission to an interstellar object. So far, we've only known about an incoming interstellar intruder a few months before it comes closest to Earth. That's not to mention the enormous speeds at which these objects move through the Solar System. It's just not feasible to build a spacecraft and launch it on such short notice.
Now, some scientists are working on ways to overcome these limitations.
One of these people is Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer and planetary scientist at the University of Edinburgh. A few years ago, he helped propose to the European Space Agency a mission concept that would have very likely been laughed out of the room a generation ago. Snodgrass and his team wanted a commitment from ESA of up to $175 million (150 million euros) to launch a mission with no idea of where it would go.
ESA officials called Snodgrass in 2019 to say the agency would fund his mission, named Comet Interceptor, for launch in the late 2020s. The goal of the mission is to perform the first detailed observations of a long-period comet. So far, spacecraft have only visited short-period comets that routinely dip into the inner part of the Solar System.
[...] Long-period comets are typically discovered a year or two before coming near the Sun, still not enough time to develop a mission from scratch. With Comet Interceptor, ESA will launch a probe to loiter in space a million miles from Earth, wait for the right comet to come along, then fire its engines to pursue it.
Odds are good that the right comet will come from within the Solar System. "That is the point of the mission," Snodgrass told Ars.
[...] "You don't have to claim that they're aliens to make these exciting," Snodgrass said. "They're interesting because they are a bit of another solar system that you can actually feasibly get an up-close view of, even the sort of telescopic views we're getting now."
[...] Snodgrass sees Comet Interceptor as a proof of concept for scientists to propose a future mission specially designed to travel to an interstellar object. "You need to figure out how do you build the souped-up version that could really get to an interstellar object? I think that's five or 10 years away, but [it's] entirely realistic."
Scientists in the United States are working on just such a proposal. A team from the Southwest Research Institute completed a concept study showing how a mission could fly by one of these interstellar visitors. What's more, the US scientists say their proposed mission could have actually reached 3I/ATLAS had it already been in space.
The American concept is similar to Europe's Comet Interceptor in that it will park a spacecraft somewhere in deep space and wait for the right target to come along. The study was led by Alan Stern, the chief scientist on NASA's New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto a decade ago. "These new kinds of objects offer humankind the first feasible opportunity to closely explore bodies formed in other star systems," he said.
It's impossible with current technology to send a spacecraft to match orbits and rendezvous with a high-speed interstellar comet. "We don't have to catch it," Stern recently told Ars. "We just have to cross its orbit. So it does carry a fair amount of fuel in order to get out of Earth's orbit and onto the comet's path to cross that path."
[...] A mission to encounter an interstellar comet requires no new technologies, Stern said. Hopes for such a mission are bolstered by the activation of the US-funded Vera Rubin Observatory, a state-of-the-art facility high in the mountains of Chile set to begin deep surveys of the entire southern sky later this year. Stern predicts Rubin will discover "one or two" interstellar objects per year. The new observatory should be able to detect the faint light from incoming interstellar bodies sooner, providing missions with more advance warning.
"If we put a spacecraft like this in space for a few years, while it's waiting, there should be five or 10 to choose from," he said.
[...] "Each time that ESA has done a comet mission, it's done something very ambitious and very new," Snodgrass said. "The Giotto mission was the first time ESA really tried to do anything interplanetary... And then, Rosetta, putting this thing in orbit and landing on a comet was a crazy difficult thing to attempt to do."
"They really do push the envelope a bit, which is good because ESA can be quite risk averse, I think it's fair to say, with what they do with missions," he said. "But the comet missions, they are things where they've really gone for that next step, and Comet Interceptor is the same. The whole idea of trying to design a space mission before you know where you're going is a slightly crazy way of doing things. But it's the only way to do this mission. And it's great that we're trying it."
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A handful of bat species hunt birds, and new sensor data tells us how:
There are three species of bats that eat birds. We know that because we have found feathers and other avian remains in their feces. What we didn't know was how exactly they hunt birds, which are quite a bit heavier, faster, and stronger than the insects bats usually dine on.
To find out, Elena Tena, a biologist at Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, and her colleagues attached ultra-light sensors to Nyctalus Iasiopterus, the largest bats in Europe. What they found was jaw-droppingly brutal.
Nyctalus Iasiopterus, otherwise known as greater noctule bats, have a wingspan of about 45 centimeters. They have reddish-brown or chestnut fur with a slightly paler underside, and usually weigh around 40 to 60 grams. Despite that minimal weight, they are the largest of the three bat species known to eat birds, so the key challenge in getting a glimpse into the way they hunt was finding sensors light enough to not impede the bats' flight.
[...] In recent years, the technology and miniaturization finally caught up with Tena's needs, and the team found the right sensors for the job and attached them to 14 greater noctule bats over the course of two years. The tags used in the study weighed around four grams, could run for several hours, and registered sound, altitude, and acceleration. This gave Tena and her colleagues a detailed picture of the bats' behavior in the night sky. The recordings included both ambient environmental sounds and the ultra-frequency bursts bats use for echolocation. Combining altitude with accelerometer readouts enabled scientists to trace the bats' movements through all their fast-paced turns, dives, and maneuvers.
A study from 2000 hypothesized that greater noctule bats most likely attack birds at their roosts, where they're most vulnerable. When Tena recovered the sensors and downloaded the data, she learned the bats did no such thing. Instead, they engaged the birds at high altitudes, like World War II interceptors attacking formations of bombers—think Steven Spielberg's Masters of the Air drama. And it wasn't pretty.
The Masters of the Air comparisons are justified in that the bats used similar tactics. But because they're solitary hunters, they performed them individually, not in larger groups. Their attacks on birds, which the team later identified as European robins, began with the bats climbing very high—up to 1.2 kilometers into the night sky over Spain, where the study took place.
The bats then started diving down, issuing bursts of echolocation buzzes to find their prey and lock onto a single target. The pursuit was significantly longer than the roughly 10 seconds that other bat species need to catch significantly weaker and lighter insects. It took a half a minute to nearly three minutes from the beginning of the dive to the last registered distress calls of an unlucky bird. "They most likely kill the birds with a bite," Tena said.
But even more surprising than the hunt itself was the way bats handled their prey after a successful attack. Tena's team found severed avian wings on the ground beneath the location of the aerial battles between birds and bats. "That was another thing we learned," Tena said. "Bats that managed to catch a bird did not land—their altitude did not change. They were consuming those birds mid-air." Tena thinks the bats bite off the wings to reduce drag and the weight of the bird.
The bats were eating their catches in the sky, as evidenced by registered chewing sounds, which lasted for 23 minutes. "At this point, it is unclear why they don't land to eat. They hunt at high altitudes, so perhaps the energy expenditure to land, eat, and climb back up again would be too high go through it," Tena suggested. "Overall, the way they handle birds is quite similar to the way they handle insects."
Tena thinks passerine birds flying at high altitudes at night are a food source that very few predators have managed to tap into. Falcons, which can also hunt migrating birds in flight, usually do so during the day. Nocturnal avian predators like owls, on the other hand, typically do not fly that high and hunt closer to the ground. Greater noctule bats can likely feed on night-flying passerine birds without any formidable competition.
Journal Reference: 10.1126/science.adr2475
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https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=showheadline&story=20085
SUSE has announced SUSE Linux Enterprise, which is schedule for release on November 4th, will be the first enterprise-focused Linux distribution to include agentic AI.
"SLES 16 introduces agentic AI, with an implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard. The SUSE Linux agentic AI implementation gives enterprises a secure, extensible way to connect AI models with external tools and data sources, while preserving freedom to choose and extend their preferred AI providers without lock-in. It provides a resilient and secure foundation, combining long-term lifecycle guarantees and enterprise-grade automation."
SUSE has also stated SLE 16 will receive up to 16 years of support. Further details are provided in the company's announcement.
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Tom's Hardware published an interesting story about a company using a remote kill command to disable a robo vacuum:
Manufacturer issues remote kill command to disable smart vacuum after engineer blocks it from collecting data — user revives it with custom hardware and Python scripts to run offline
An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That's when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.
He sent it to the service center multiple times, wherein the technicians would turn it on and see nothing wrong with the vacuum. When they returned it to him, it would work for a few days and then fail to boot again. After several rounds of back- and-forth, the service center probably got tired and just stopped accepting it, saying it was out of warranty.
Since the A11 is a smart device, it had an AllWinner A33 SoC with a TinaLinux operating system, plus a GD32F103 microcontroller to manage its plethora of sensors, including Lidar, gyroscopes, and encoders. He created PCB connectors and wrote Python scripts to control them with a computer, presumably to test each piece individually and identify what went wrong. From there, he built a Raspberry Pi joystick to manually drive the vacuum, proving that there was nothing wrong with the hardware.
[...] In the end, the owner was able to run his vacuum fully locally without manufacturer control after all the tweaks he made. This helped him retake control of his data and make use of his $300 software-bricked smart device on his own terms. As for the rest of us who don't have the technical knowledge and time to follow his accomplishments, his advice is to "Never use your primary WiFi network for IoT devices" and to "Treat them as strangers in your home."
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Interesting Engineering published an article about a new mathematical study that dismantles the simulation hypothesis once and for all.
The idea that we might be living inside a vast computer simulation, much like in The Matrix, has fascinated philosophers and scientists for years. But a new study from researchers at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus has delivered a decisive blow to that theory.
According to Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor at UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, and his international collaborators, the structure of reality itself makes simulation impossible.
Their work shows that no computer, no matter how advanced, could ever reproduce the fundamental workings of the universe.
Their research goes further than rejecting the simulation theory. It suggests that reality is built on a kind of understanding that cannot be reduced to computational rules or algorithms.
The researchers approached the simulation question through mathematics and physics rather than philosophy. They explored whether the laws governing the universe could, in theory, be recreated by a computer system.
"It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated," says Dr. Faizal. "If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation.
This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation."
[Journal Reference]: https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488.html
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The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) has officially unveiled the world's first public-safety fleet built entirely from Tesla Cybertrucks, marking a new chapter in electric law enforcement. Ten Cybertrucks, modified by Unplugged Performance's UP.FIT division, were revealed at a ceremony in Las Vegas. Each truck has been outfitted for full patrol capability, complete with emergency lighting, integrated communication systems, police-grade tires, and dedicated storage for gear and equipment.
The department said the Cybertruck program was funded through private partnerships, not taxpayer dollars, and will serve as both a pilot and proof-of-concept for future electrified patrol fleets. According to LVMPD, the goal is to test how electric vehicles perform in 24-hour duty cycles and under Nevada's extreme climate conditions.
Choosing the Cybertruck wasn't just about style. The vehicle's stainless-steel body, torque-heavy dual-motor setup, and adaptive air suspension make it well-suited to the demands of police work, from pursuit operations to disaster-response deployments. It also delivers the quiet operation and low running costs that have made EVs increasingly attractive to municipal fleets.
For Tesla, this debut is a welcome shift in attention following a series of controversies. International regulators have challenged the truck's design and pedestrian-safety credentials, preventing sales in the EU. The Las Vegas fleet, by contrast, provides the company with an opportunity to highlight the truck's practical capabilities in a legitimate, mission-critical setting.
Meanwhile, Tesla's production and allocation strategy for the Cybertruck remains in flux. Recently, unsold units are being redirected to Elon Musk's other ventures, SpaceX and xAI, for internal fleet use. That underscores the challenge of managing public demand while meeting niche commercial orders like this one.
[...] The Las Vegas deployment may set a precedent for police agencies across the country considering EVs for frontline duty. While the Cybertruck's unconventional design has polarized public opinion, its blend of durability and zero-emission performance could prove ideal for roles that demand high torque, instant power, and long idle times.
This rollout also offers Tesla a chance to reframe its narrative, shifting from social-media spectacle to public-sector innovation. If the LVMPD's results show measurable efficiency and reliability gains, Cybertrucks could become a common sight in law-enforcement fleets within a few years.
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Tesla's 'Robotaxis' Keep Crashing-Even With Human 'Safety Monitors' Onboard:
Tesla's pilot "robotaxi" program is facing mounting scrutiny after multiple incidents in Austin, Texas, where the company's driverless cars have reportedly been involved in several low-speed crashes despite having human safety monitors on board. Spotted by Electrek and found here on the NHTSA website, both cite federal reports confirming at least four accidents since the fleet quietly began operations this summer.
The NHTSA is already investigating Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software over erratic traffic behavior, and the robotaxi crashes appear to extend those concerns into Tesla's dedicated autonomous service. The agency said it is reviewing new reports related to these test vehicles as it evaluates whether Tesla's systems meet federal safety standards.
Each Tesla robotaxi currently operates with a safety monitor in the driver's seat, ready to take control if the system fails. But several of the Austin crashes occurred while the vehicles were moving slowly or stationary, one incident involved contact with a fixed object in a parking area. Analysts say this suggests the system's perception and decision-making may not be giving monitors enough time to react, a key issue NHTSA has previously flagged in other FSD-related investigations.
[...] While Tesla's technology ambitions remain unmatched in scale, its safety record continues to trail several competitors in key metrics. A new industry report found that long-term battery reliability may be stronger elsewhere, Tesla ranks behind Kia in overall battery longevity for used EVs and plug-in hybrids, signaling that rivals are quietly catching up in key technical areas.
[...] For Tesla, the robotaxi initiative represents both its boldest gamble and its biggest regulatory risk. Despite years of promises about driverless capability, the company still faces federal oversight, unresolved safety probes, and a string of real-world mishaps that threaten public confidence. Each new incident underscores how complex full autonomy remains, even for a company that dominates global EV sales.
Until Tesla provides transparent data on crash frequency and performance, or demonstrates consistent reliability in live service, its robotaxi fleet will likely remain in testing limbo. For now, the only certainty is that the road to driverless mobility is proving bumpier than Tesla expected.
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Once Again, Chat Control Flails After Strong Public Pressure:
The European Union Council pushed for a dangerous plan to scan encrypted messages, and once again, people around the world loudly called out the risks, leading to the current Danish presidency to withdraw the plan.
EFF has strongly opposed Chat Control since it was first introduced in 2022. The zombie proposal comes back time and time again, and time and time again, it's been shot down because there's no public support. The fight is delayed, but not over.
It's time for lawmakers to stop attempting to compromise encryption under the guise of public safety. Instead of making minor tweaks and resubmitting this proposal over and over, the EU Council should accept that any sort of client-side scanning of devices undermines encryption, and move on to developing real solutions that don't violate the human rights of people around the world.
As long as lawmakers continue to misunderstand the way encryption technology works, there is no way forward with message-scanning proposals, not in the EU or anywhere else. This sort of surveillance is not just an overreach; it's an attack on fundamental human rights.
The coming EU presidencies should abandon these attempts and work on finding a solution that protects people's privacy and security.
Previously:
• Scientists Urge EU Governments to Reject Chat Control Rules
• EU Chat Control Law Proposes Scanning Your Messages — Even Encrypted Ones
• EU Parliament's Research Service Confirms: Chat Control Violates Fundamental Rights
• Client Side Scanning May Cost More Than it Delivers
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https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/former_l3harris_cyber_director_charged/
Federal prosecutors have charged a former general manager of US government defense contractor L3Harris's cyber arm Trenchant with selling secrets to an unidentified Russian buyer for $1.3 million.
According to the Justice Department, Peter Williams stole seven trade secrets belonging to two unnamed companies between April 2022 and June 2025 "knowing and intending those secrets to be sold outside of the United States, and specifically to a buyer based in the Russian Federation."
The court documents [PDF*] don't specify what the trade secrets involved, but Williams worked as a director and general manager at L3Harris' Trenchant division, which develops cyber weapons.
According to the company's website, it supports "national security operations with end-point intelligence solutions," and is "a world authority on cyber capabilities, operating in the fields of computer network operations and vulnerability research."
This is corporate speak for offensive cyber tech, such as zero-day exploits and surveillance tools. But Trenchant claims it uses its cyber powers for good, not evil.
Links in article:
* https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/10/23/peter_williams_charges.pdf
https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/trenchant
https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/offensive-cyber
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https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/11/research-roundup-6-cool-science-stories-we-almost-missed-3/
It's a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. October's list includes the microstructural differences between regular and gluten-free spaghetti, capturing striking snakes in action, the mystery behind the formation of Martian gullies, and—for all you word game enthusiasts—an intriguing computational proof of the highest possible scoring Boggle board.
Highest-scoring Boggle board
Sometimes we get handy story tips from readers about quirkily interesting research projects. Sometimes those projects involve classic games like Boggle, in which players find as many words as they can from a 4×4 grid of 16 lettered cubic dice, within a given time limit. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam alerted us to a preprint he posted to the physics arXiv, detailing his quest to find the Boggle board configuration that yields the highest possible score. It's pictured above, with a total score of 3,625 points, according to Vanderkam's first-ever computational proof. There are more than 1000 possible words, with "replastering" being the longest.
Vanderkam has documented his quest and its resolution (including the code he used) extensively on his blog, admitting to the Financial Times that, "As far as I can tell, I'm the only person who is actually interested in this problem." That's not entirely true: there was an attempt in 1982 that found an optimal board yielding 2,195 points. Vanderkam's board was known as possibly being the highest scoring, it was just very difficult to prove using standard heuristic search methods. Vanderkam's solution involved grouping board configurations with similar patterns into classes, and then finding upper bounds to discard clear losers, rather than trying to tally scores for each board individually—i.e., an old school "branch and bound" technique.
Origins of Egypt's Karnak Temple
Egypt's Karnak Temple complex, located about 500 meters of the Nile River near Luxor, has long been of interest to archaeologists and millions of annual tourists alike. But its actual age has been a matter of much debate. The most comprehensive geological survey conducted to date is yielding fresh insights into the temple's origins and evolution over time, according to a paper published in the journal Antiquity.
The authors analyzed sediment cores and thousands of ceramic fragments from within and around the site to map out how the surrounding landscape has changed. They concluded that early on, circa 2520 BCE, the site would have experienced regular flooding from the Nile; thus, the earliest permanent settlement at Karnak would have emerged between 2591 and 2152 BCE, in keeping with the earliest dated ceramic fragments. This would have been after river channels essentially created an island of higher ground that served as the foundation for constructing the temple. As those channels diverged over millennia, the available area for the temple expanded and thus, so did the complex.
Gullies on Mars
Mars has many intriguing features but one of the more puzzling is the sinuous gullies that form on some its dunes. Scientists have proposed two hypotheses for how such gullies might form. The first is that they are the result of debris flow from an earlier time in the planet's history where liquid water might have existed on the surface—evidence that the red planet might once have been habitable. The second is that the gullies form because of seasonal deposition and sublimation of CO2 ice on the surface in the present day. A paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters demonstrated strong evidence in favor of the latter hypothesis.
[...] Per Roelofs, on Mars, CO2 ice forms over the surface during the winter and starts to sublimate in the spring. The ice blocks are remnants found on the shaded side of dune tops, where they break off once the temperature gets high enough and slide down the slope. At the bottom, they keep sublimating until all the CO2 has evaporated, leaving behind a hollow of sand.
Snake bites in action
Snakes can strike out and bite into prey in as little as 60 microseconds and until quite recently it just wasn't technologically possible to capture those strikes in high definition. Researchers at Monash University in Australia decided to test 36 different species of snake in this way to learn more about their unique biting styles, detailing their results in a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. And oh yes, there is awesome video footage.
[...] Among their findings: vipers moved the fastest when they struck, with the blunt-nosed viper accelerating up to 710 m/s2, landing a bite within 22 microseconds. All the vipers landed bites within 100 microseconds of striking. By contrast, the rough-scaled death adder only reached speeds of 2.5 m/s2. Vipers also sometimes pulled out and reinserted their fangs if they didn't like the resulting angle; only then did they inject their venom. Elapids like the Cape coral cobra bit their prey repeatedly to inject their venom, while colubrids would tear gashes into their prey by sweeping their jaws from side to side, ensuing the maximum possible amount of venom was delivered.
Spaghetti secrets
Spaghetti, like most pasta, is made of semolina flour, which is mixed with water to form a paste and then extruded to create a desired shape. The commercial products are then dried—an active area of research, since it's easy for the strands to crack during the process. In fact, there have been a surprisingly large number of scientific papers seeking to understand the various properties of spaghetti, both cooking and eating it—the mechanics of slurping the pasta into one's mouth, for instance, or spitting it out (aka, the "reverse spaghetti problem"); how to tell when it's perfectly al dente; and how to get dry spaghetti strands to break neatly in two, rather than three or more scattered pieces.
[...] The authors used small-angle x-ray scattering and small-angle neutron scattering to analyze the microstructure of both regular and gluten-free pasta—i.e., the gluten matrix and its artificial counterpart—cooked al dente with varying salt concentrations in the water. They found that because of its gluten matrix, regular pasta has better resistance to structural degradation, and that adding just the right amount of salt further reinforces that matrix—so it's not just a matter of salting to taste. This could lead to a better alternative matrix for gluten-free pasta that holds its structure better and has a taste and mouthfeel closer to that of regular pasta.
Can machine learning identify ancient artists?
Finger flutings are one of the oldest examples of prehistoric art, usually found carved into the walls of caves in southern Australia, New Guinea, and parts of Europe. They're basically just marks made by human fingers drawn through the "moonmilk" (a soft mineral film) covering those walls. Very little is known about the people who left those flutings and while some have tried to draw inferences based on biometric finger ratios or hand size measurements—notably whether given marks were made by men or women—such methods produce inconsistent results and are prone to human error and bias.
[...] The results were decidedly mixed. The virtual reality images performed the worst, yielding highly unreliable attempts at classifying whether flutings were made by men or women. The images produced in actual clay produced better results, even reaching close to 84 percent accuracy in one model. But there were also signs the models were overfitting, i.e., memorizing patterns in the training data rather than more generalized patterns, so the approach needs more refinement before it is ready for actual deployment. As for why determining sex classifications matters, "This information has been used to decide who can access certain sites for cultural reasons," Jalandoni explained.
Journal References:
• Boggle: http://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.02117
• Karnak Temple: http://dx.doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.10185
• Mars Gullies: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2024GL112860
• Snake Bites: http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.250347 and video
• Spaghetti: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodhyd.2025.111855
• Ancient artists: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-18098-4
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Qilin ransomware abuses WSL to run Linux encryptors in Windows
https://archive.ph/lhpiX
The Qilin ransomware operation was spotted executing Linux encryptors in Windows using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to evade detection by traditional security tools.
The ransomware first launched as "Agenda" in August 2022, rebranding to Qilin by September and continuing to operate under that name to this day.
Qilin has become one of the most active ransomware operations, with new research from Trend Micro and Cisco Talos stating that the cybercrime gang has attacked more than 700 victims across 62 countries this year.
Both firms say the group has become one of the most active ransomware threats worldwide, publishing over 40 new victims per month in the second half of 2025.
Both cybersecurity firms report that Qilin affiliates use a mix of legitimate programs and remote management tools to breach networks and steal credentials, including applications such as AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, and Splashtop for remote access, and Cyberduck and WinRAR for data theft.
The threat actors also use common built-in Windows utilities, such as Microsoft Paint (mspaint.exe) and Notepad (notepad.exe), to inspect documents for sensitive data before stealing them.
[...] "After gaining access, the attackers enabled or installed WSL using scripts or command-line tools, then deployed the Linux ransomware payload within that environment. This gave them the ability to execute a Linux-based encryptor directly on a Windows host while avoiding many defenses that are focused on detecting traditional Windows malware."
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"I don't believe we're in an AI bubble," says Huang after announcing $500B in orders:
On Wednesday, Nvidia became the first company in history to reach a $5 trillion market capitalization, fresh on the heels of a GTC conference keynote in Washington, DC, where CEO Jensen Huang announced $500 billion in AI chip orders and plans to build seven supercomputers for the US government. The milestone comes a mere three months after Nvidia crossed the $4 trillion mark in July, vaulting the company past tech giants like Apple and Microsoft in market valuation but also driving continued fears of an AI investment bubble.
Nvidia's shares have climbed nearly 12-fold since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, as the AI boom propelled the S&P 500 to record highs. Shares of Nvidia stock rose 4.6 percent on Wednesday following the Tuesday announcement at the company's GTC conference. During a Bloomberg Television interview at the event, Huang dismissed concerns about overheated valuations, saying, "I don't believe we're in an AI bubble. All of these different AI models we're using—we're using plenty of services and paying happily to do it."
Nvidia expects to ship 20 million units of its latest chips, compared to just 4 million units of the previous Hopper generation over its entire lifetime, Huang said at the conference. The $500 billion figure represents cumulative orders for the company's Blackwell and Rubin processors through the end of 2026, though Huang noted that his projections did not include potential sales to China.
While it probably feels like glory days for Nvidia at the moment, the success comes with a large dose of caution. Even prior to the latest valuation boom of the past 24 hours, the rapid rise in AI-related investments has fueled persistent concerns that market enthusiasm has outstripped the technology's ability to deliver immediate economic value.
Some analysts warn that valuations may be overheated. Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management, told Reuters that "AI's current expansion relies on a few dominant players financing each other's capacity. The moment investors start demanding cash flow returns instead of capacity announcements, some of these flywheels could seize."
At the GTC conference on Tuesday, Nvidia's CEO went out of his way to repeatedly praise Donald Trump and his policies for accelerating domestic tech investment while warning that excluding China from Nvidia's ecosystem could limit US access to half the world's AI developers. The overall event stressed Nvidia's role as an American company, with Huang even nodding to Trump's signature slogan in his sign-off by thanking the audience for "making America great again."
Trump's cooperation is paramount for Nvidia because US export controls have effectively blocked Nvidia's AI chips from China, costing the company billions of dollars in revenue. Bob O'Donnell of TECHnalysis Research told Reuters that "Nvidia clearly brought their story to DC to both educate and gain favor with the US government. They managed to hit most of the hottest and most influential topics in tech."
Beyond the political messaging, Huang announced a series of partnerships and deals that apparently helped ease investor concerns about Nvidia's future. The company announced collaborations with Uber Technologies, Palantir Technologies, and CrowdStrike Holdings, among others. Nvidia also revealed a $1 billion investment in Nokia to support the telecommunications company's shift toward AI and 6G networking.
The agreement with Uber will power a fleet of 100,000 self-driving vehicles with Nvidia technology, with automaker Stellantis among the first to deliver the robotaxis. Palantir will pair Nvidia's technology with its Ontology platform to use AI techniques for logistics insights, with Lowe's as an early adopter. Eli Lilly plans to build what Nvidia described as the most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company, relying on more than 1,000 Blackwell AI accelerator chips.
The $5 trillion valuation surpasses the total cryptocurrency market value and equals roughly half the size of the pan European Stoxx 600 equities index, Reuters notes. At current prices, Huang's stake in Nvidia would be worth about $179.2 billion, making him the world's eighth-richest person.
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Near-Field Communication (NFC) relay malware has grown massively popular in Eastern Europe, with researchers discovering over 760 malicious Android apps using the technique to steal people's payment card information in the past few months.
Contrary to the traditional banking trojans that use overlays to steal banking credentials or remote access tools to perform fraudulent transactions, NFC malware abuses Android's Host Card Emulation (HCE) to emulate or steal contactless credit card and payment data.
They capture EMV fields, respond to APDU commands from a POS terminal with attacker-controlled replies, or forward terminal requests to a remote server, which crafts the proper APDU responses to enable payments at the terminal without the physical cardholder present.
[...] The apps used to distribute the malware impersonate Google Pay or financial institutions such as Santander Bank, VTB Bank, Tinkoff Bank, ING Bank, Bradesco Bank, Promsvyazbank (PSB), and several others.
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from the grok-write-me-a-review-paper-on-moderation-policy-research dept.
Before being considered for submission to arXiv's CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review:
arXiv's computer science (CS) category has updated its moderation practice with respect to review (or survey) articles and position papers. Before being considered for submission to arXiv's CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. When submitting review articles or position papers, authors must include documentation of successful peer review to receive full consideration. Review/survey articles or position papers submitted to arXiv without this documentation will be likely to be rejected and not appear on arXiv.
This change is being implemented due to the unmanageable influx of review articles and position papers to arXiv CS.
[...] In the past few years, arXiv has been flooded with papers. Generative AI / large language models have added to this flood by making papers – especially papers not introducing new research results – fast and easy to write. While categories across arXiv have all seen a major increase in submissions, it's particularly pronounced in arXiv's CS category.
[...] In the past, arXiv CS received a relatively small amount of review or survey articles, and those we did receive were of extremely high quality, written by senior researchers at the request of publications like Annual Reviews, Proceedings of the IEEE, and Computing Surveys. Position paper submissions to arXiv were similarly rare, and usually produced by scientific societies or government study groups (for example,the Computing Research Association of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine). While, as now, these papers were not content types officially accepted by arXiv, the arXiv moderators accepted them because of their scholarly value to the research community.
Fast forward to present day – submissions to arXiv in general have risen dramatically, and we now receive hundreds of review articles every month. The advent of large language models have made this type of content relatively easy to churn out on demand, and the majority of the review articles we receive are little more than annotated bibliographies, with no substantial discussion of open research issues.
arXiv believes that there are position papers and review articles that are of value to the scientific community, and we would like to be able to share them on arXiv. However, our team of volunteer moderators do not have the time or bandwidth to review the hundreds of these articles we receive without taking time away from our core purpose, which is to share research articles.
[...] Each category of arXiv has different moderators, who are subject matter experts with a terminal degree in their particular subject, to best serve the scholarly pursuits, goals, and standards of their category. While all moderators adhere to arXiv policy, the only policy arXiv has in place with regard to review articles and position papers is that they are not a generally accepted content type. The goal of the moderators of each category is to make sure the work being submitted is actually science, and that it is of potential interest to the scientific community. If other categories see a similar rise in LLM-written review articles and position papers, they may choose to change their moderation practices in a similar manner to better serve arXiv authors and readers. We will make these updates public if and when they do occur.
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Meta: Pirated Adult Film Downloads Were For "Personal Use," Not AI Training.
[...] As the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States, the adult film producer has filed tens of thousands of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates. This summer it expanded its scope by taking aim at Meta.
[...] The adult producers discovered the alleged infringements after Meta's BitTorrent activity was revealed in a lawsuit filed by several book authors. In that case, Meta admitted that it obtained content from pirate sources.
[...] Meta clearly denies that the adult video downloads were used for AI purposes. Since there is no evidence that Meta directed this activity, it can't be held liable for direct copyright infringement.
The tech company doesn't just deny the allegations; it also offers an alternative explanation. Meta suggests that employees or visitors may have downloaded the pirated videos for personal use.
Meta denies torrenting porn to train AI, says downloads were for "personal use".
This week, Meta asked a US district court to toss a lawsuit alleging that the tech giant illegally torrented pornography to train AI.
The move comes after Strike 3 Holdings discovered illegal downloads of some of its adult films on Meta corporate IP addresses, as well as other downloads that Meta allegedly concealed using a "stealth network" of 2,500 "hidden IP addresses." Accusing Meta of stealing porn to secretly train an unannounced adult version of its AI model powering Movie Gen, Strike 3 sought damages that could have exceeded $350 million, TorrentFreak reported.
Filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, Meta accused Strike 3 of relying on "guesswork and innuendo," while writing that Strike 3 "has been labeled by some as a 'copyright troll' that files extortive lawsuits." Requesting that all copyright claims be dropped, Meta argued that there was no evidence that the tech giant directed any of the downloads of about 2,400 adult movies owned by Strike 3—or was even aware of the illegal activity.
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