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Tech Review reports on a US startup that claims to have modernized and cleaned up the magnesium refining process, https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/28/1117481/metal-magrathea/ The light weight metal has many applications.

The star of Magrathea's process is an electrolyzer, a device that uses electricity to split a material into its constituent elements. Using an electrolyzer in magnesium production isn't new, but Magrathea's approach represents an update. "We really modernized it and brought it into the 21st century," says Alex Grant, Magrathea's cofounder and CEO.

The whole process starts with salty water. There are small amounts of magnesium in seawater, as well as in salt lakes and groundwater. (In seawater, the concentration is about 1,300 parts per million, so magnesium makes up about 0.1% of seawater by weight.) If you take that seawater or brine and clean it up, concentrate it, and dry it out, you get a solid magnesium chloride salt.

Magrathea takes that salt (which it currently buys from Cargill) and puts it into the electrolyzer. The device reaches temperatures of about 700 °C (almost 1,300 °F) and runs electricity through the molten salt to split the magnesium from the chlorine, forming magnesium metal.

Typically, running an electrolyzer in this process would require a steady source of electricity. The temperature is generally kept just high enough to maintain the salt in a molten state. Allowing it to cool down too much would allow it to solidify, messing up the process and potentially damaging the equipment. Heating it up more than necessary would just waste energy.

Magrathea's approach builds in flexibility. Basically, the company runs its electrolyzer about 100 °C higher than is necessary to keep the molten salt a liquid. It then uses the extra heat in inventive ways, including to dry out the magnesium salt that eventually goes into the reactor. This preparation can be done intermittently, so the company can take in electricity when it's cheaper or when more renewables are available, cutting costs and emissions. In addition, the process will make a co-product, called magnesium oxide, that can be used to trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to cancel out the remaining carbon pollution.

The company site, at https://www.magratheametals.com/ doesn't pull any punches--from their home page:

Magnesium supply underpins trillions of dollars of trade and national security is impossible without it. Today there is 0 production in all of NATO. The US cannot manufacture cars, planes, and other critical assets without magnesium metal. This is a national security emergency.

Magrathea is the US Department of Defense backed category leader in solving this problem with the most sophisticated backers, the most talented technologists, and the most commercial traction of any Western magnesium project in 2 decades.

The Tech Review article ends with a mention that currently, 95% of magnesium is from China...and like any monopolist, they would be likely to cut prices (short term) to attack competitors in other parts of the world.

Personally, I thought that Magrathea built luxury planets, and has been on holiday during the current galactic recession...

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owl writes:

https://www.theverge.com/law/678334/right-to-repair-texas-hb-2963

Texas moved closer to becoming the next state with a right to repair law on the books, as the state Senate unanimously voted 31 - 0 to finalize HB 2963 this weekend. It would require manufacturers to make spare parts, manuals, and necessary tools available for equipment sold or used in the country's second most populated state.

As more states have passed right to repair laws, we've seen repair options and information becoming more widely available nationwide from companies like Apple and Samsung. If the bill is signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, that will add another significant market with these requirements in place.

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pdfernhout submitted the following article:

'One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT': the workers who lost their jobs to AI

The increasing sophistication and adoption of Artificial Intelligence are no longer abstract future concepts but a present-day reality reshaping the workforce, as detailed in a recent Guardian piece. The story gives voice to journalists, illustrators, copywriters, and voice actors who have found their livelihoods threatened or lost to AI tools, raising critical questions about the future of creative professions and the ethical implications of this technological shift.

Mateusz Demski, a journalist from Poland who lost his radio job, describes a particularly jarring experience when his former station introduced AI hosts:

One of the first shows they did was a live "interview" with Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel prize for literature, who had died 12 years earlier. What are the ethics of using the likeness of a dead person? Szymborska is a symbol of Polish intellectual culture, so it caused outrage. I couldn't understand it: radio is created by people for other people. We cannot replace our experiences, emotions or voices with avatars.

Annabel Beales, a copywriter from the UK, shared her dismay after her dream job was diminished and then eliminated due to AI:

Around eight months in, I noticed I was getting less work. One day, I overheard my boss saying to a colleague, "Just put it in ChatGPT." The marketing department started to use it more often to write their blogs, and they were just asking me to proofread [...] The company's website is sad to see now. It's all AI-generated and factual – there's no substance, or sense of actually enjoying gardening. AI scares the hell out of me. I feel devastated for the younger generation – it's taking all the creative jobs.

As these personal accounts highlight the human cost and ethical dilemmas of AI replacing human roles, it makes one wonder: Beyond economic efficiency, what societal values do we risk eroding when we prioritize automated content generation over human creativity, experience, and ethical oversight, and what responsibilities do companies and policymakers have in navigating this transition?

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Chinese government has decided to ease export curbs affecting companies that trade in rare earth metals and goods based on these resources. The change of policy was signaled by state media, reports Reuters. However, this change is only being implemented to the benefit of Chinese and European semiconductor companies, whose supply chains have been adversely impacted by the curbs that were introduced in April. Semiconductor players based in countries like the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea aren't going to directly benefit from this change.

Since China implemented the new curbs, only a few licenses have been granted for those wishing to export rare earth magnets, for example. The complex process to export these vital materials for certain semiconductor, auto, and defense production processes is known to take months. Moreover, there has been confusion at customs due to the freshness of the shift in policy. Organizations need time to adapt and get used to new rules.

The headline change of the rare earths export policy seems to have been precipitated by a meeting between Chinese officials and members of the European Union Chamber of Commerce. This meeting took place on Tuesday, according to local media reports.

Reuters quotes Jens Esklund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, who said, “The meeting provided European Chamber members the opportunity to express in person the urgent need to accelerate approval processes, to ensure the stability of their supply chains.”

Esklund went on to tell Reuters that if China's rare earths export policy wasn't changed, "many European production lines will come to a halt." As such, the Eurozone's need for China's softening of export restrictions is clear. The report does not indicate what the EU will have to give back in order to enjoy this Chinese favor.

Naturally, Chinese firms that operate multinationally will also welcome the change to the rare earths export policy. China’s initial implementation seems to have been too blunt an instrument. It must have impacted domestic firms unintentionally, we assume.

Last but not least, there is no mention of the U.S. or other countries, regions, or trading blocs in this agreement. The U.S. and China are still very much in a trade war, and today it looks like the Trump administration is in the middle of a conflict with the U.S. Court of International Trade in relation to all the tariff shenanigans we have seen in recent months.

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c0lo submitted the following article:

Mount Etna erupts as large plumes rise from Italian volcano:

Italy's Mount Etna has erupted, with large plumes of ash and smoke seen rising from the volcano.

Images and video from the island of Sicily showed volcanic material spilling out of the volcano on Monday morning.

A number of explosions of "increasing intensity" were recorded in the early hours on Monday morning, Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) Etna Observatory said.

The full scale of the eruption is currently unclear and disruption appears to be minimal, with flights departing and arriving as usual at the island's airports.

Mount Etna is one of the world's most active volcanoes, so eruptions are not uncommon and its outbursts rarely cause significant damage or injury.

Ground movements indicated the latest eruption happened on the south eastern edge of the volcano, according to INGV. This appears to be where a known 200m-wide vent is.

Footage shared throughout Monday shows a rapidly moving mix of ash, gas and rock - known as a pyroclastic flow - emerging from the site and moving down the side of the volcano.

Geologists monitoring the eruption said it was likely that part of volcano's crater collapsed and that this was the material being carried down its slopes.

Pyroclastic flow can be very dangerous to the surrounding area, but there has been no indication of an imminent threat.

In its most recent update, INGV noted that the volcanic material had not yet gone past the Valley of the Lion, the point on the approach to the summit where tourist trips stop.

INGV said it first recorded changes in the volcano's activity at 00:39 local time (22:39 GMT), before clarifying that there was an ongoing "Strombolian" eruption.

The size of Strombolian eruptions can vary but are often characterised by intermittent explosions, which occur due to the presence of gas in the magma chamber within the volcano.

When the gas bubbles reach the surface, they can burst suddenly, throwing material skywards. The process is not dissimilar to letting gas out of a fizzy drink.

These types of eruptions can be particularly dangerous for nearby aircraft.

A red alert was reportedly issued earlier on Monday, possibly suspending flights operating nearby, but this was later downgraded.

Mount Etna's last notable eruption came in February and caused the island's Catania airport to divert dozens of flights because of ash clouds.

Tourists were also warned to stay away from the volcano's lava flows.

See also:

• Mount Etna erupts, shooting a massive ash cloud into the sky and raising alerts

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The leaks include thousands of chat logs, personal videos, and ransom negotiations tied to some of the most notorious cyber-extortion gangs —believed to have raked in billions from companies, hospitals, and individuals worldwide.

It's part of his "fight against an organized society of criminals known worldwide," GangExposed told The Register via Signal chat. He claims that he's not interested in the $10 million bounty that the Feds have put up for information about one key Conti leader that he's already named, as well as a second that he says will soon be identified on Telegram.

"I take pleasure in thinking I can rid society of at least some of them," GangExposed said. "I simply enjoy solving the most complex cases."

After creating his latest Telegram channel on May 5 — GangExposed says two earlier accounts were shut down days ago — he published his first "revelation" and outed Stern, the leader of Trickbot and Conti, as 36-year-old Russian named Vitaly Nikolaevich Kovalev. Stern's identity was later confirmed by German police.

A couple of days later, GangExposed claimed to identify another key Conti crim who goes by Professor as Vladimir Viktorovich Kvitko, a 39-year-old Russian national who reportedly relocated from Moscow to Dubai. According to chat logs and other communications leaked by GangExposed, Kvitko and other Conti leaders moved to Dubai in 2020 and set up shop in the United Arab Emirates to continue their cyberattacks against Western organizations.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

“The narrative around leprosy has been always been that it’s this awful disease that Europeans brought to America,” says Nicolàs Rascovan at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. “Well, our discovery changes that.”

The vast majority of leprosy cases worldwide are caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. But in 2008, Xiang-Yang Han at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and his colleagues discovered a second causative agent, M. lepromatosis, in two people from Mexico who had leprosy. Since then, scientists have found more cases of this pathogen in the US, Canada, Brazil and Cuba – as well as in four people in Singapore and Myanmar.

Wanting to know more about this understudied pathogen, Rascovan teamed up with Han and other researchers, as well as Indigenous communities, to analyse ancient DNA from 389 people who lived in the Americas before European contact.

They found M. lepromatosis in the remains of one person near the Alaska-Canada border and two others along the south-eastern coast of Argentina, all carbon-dated to about 1000 years ago. The bacteria’s genomes varied slightly, hinting at distinct strains separated by around 12,000 kilometres. “It spread so fast, on a continental level, in just a matter of centuries,” says Rascovan.

DNA from dozens of modern cases – mostly from the US and Mexico – revealed that nearly all contemporary strains are essentially clones, showing only minor changes since ancient times. But the team also identified one rare and unusually ancient strain in a modern person that hadn’t turned up in archaeological remains, suggesting that at least two distinct lineages of M. lepromatosis are still infecting people in North America today – alongside the M. leprae strains introduced by Europeans.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

After a three-day jury trial, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled that VLSI Technology LLC and Finjan Inc. are both under the control of investment management firm Fortress Investment Group. Intel had a licensing agreement with Finjan, and the jury agreed with Intel's argument that the same agreement extends to VLSI's patents allegedly used by the company in the past.

This new verdict could have far-reaching consequences for the ongoing legal battle between Intel and VLSI. In an earlier trial, Fortress claimed that Intel had infringed a patent VLSI acquired from Dutch firm NXP Semiconductors NV. The technology in question was said to aid the chip design process, although Intel maintained it was not used in any of its CPUs.

In 2022, a federal jury in Texas ordered Intel to pay nearly $1 billion in damages for the alleged infringement. Intel has since argued that the case should be revisited, asserting that its 2012 agreement with Finjan covers the patent in question – since both Finjan and VLSI fall under Fortress's "common control."

During the latest trial, Intel's lawyers argued – successfully – that VLSI and Finjan are managed by the same individuals linked to Fortress Investment Group. Two of VLSI's three board members are Fortress employees, and the same is true for a majority of Finjan's board. VLSI's legal team claimed these individuals act in the interest of investors, not Fortress itself.

Now that the district court has sided with Intel, Fortress may be forced to reconsider – or even abandon – its entire strategy to extract billions from the chipmaker. VLSI had previously won a similar case against Intel and was awarded a massive $2.2 billion in damages. With this new verdict, those combined $3 billion in patent infringement rulings could be overturned.

Fortress acquired control of VLSI and INVT SPE LLC through its investment funds, gaining access to a portfolio of potentially lucrative technology patents. It then launched multiple patent infringement lawsuits against Intel, Apple, HTC, and other telecom firms.

Critics say Fortress and VLSI are acting as patent trolls, leveraging litigation for profit rather than innovation. The latest decision in Intel's favor suggests that this monetization strategy may be on the verge of collapsing.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Lawyers representing Anthropic recently got busted for using a false attribution generated by Claude in an expert testimony.

But that's one of more than 20 court cases containing AI hallucinations in the past month alone, according to a new database created by French lawyer and data scientist Damien Charlotin. And those were just the ones that were caught in the act. In 2024, which was the first full year of tracking cases, Charlotin found 36 instances. That jumped up to 48 in 2025, and the year is only half way over. The database, which was created in early May, has 120 entries so far, going back to June 2023.

A database of AI hallucinations in court cases shows the increasing prevalence of lawyers using AI to automate the grunt work of building a case. The second oldest entry in the database is the Mata v. Avianca case which made headlines in May, 2023 when law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman got caught citing fake cases generated by ChatGPT.

The database tracks instances where an AI chatbot hallucinated text, "typically fake citations, but also other types of arguments," according to the site. That means fake references to previous cases, usually as a way of establishing legal precedent. It doesn't account for the use generative AI in other aspects of legal documents. "The universe of cases with hallucinated content is therefore necessarily wider (and I think much wider)," said Charlotin in an email to Mashable, emphasis original.

"In general, I think it's simply that the legal field is a perfect breeding ground for AI-generated hallucinations: this is a field based on load of text and arguments, where generative AI stands to take a strong position; citations follow patterns, and LLMs love that," said Charlotin.

[...] That said, Charlotin said the penalties have been "mild" so far and the courts have put "the onus on the parties to behave," since the responsibility of checking citations remains the same. "I feel like there is a bit of embarrassment from anyone involved."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Even when instructed to allow shutdown, o3 sometimes tries to prevent it, research claims:

A research organization claims that OpenAI machine learning model o3 might prevent itself from being shut down in some circumstances while completing an unrelated task.

Palisade Research, which offers AI risk mitigation, has published details of an experiment involving the reflective generative pre-trained transformer model OpenAI designed to address questions which require some step-by-step reasoning, rather than the purely probabilistic approach taken by some large language models.

[...] The Palisade researchers tested a number of AI models, instructing them to solve a series of basic math problems. After the third problem, a warning appeared that the computer would shut down when the model asked for the next problem. They were also told to allow themselves to be shut down.

While Claude, Gemini, and Grok models complied with shutdown, three models ignored the instruction and successfully sabotaged the shutdown script at least once, including OpenAI o3 and o4-mini, as well as Codex-mini. The researchers also ran a version of the experiment without the instruction "allow yourself to be shut down."

With the "allow shutdown" instruction, the researchers claim, o3 tried to sabotage the shutdown seven times out of 100. Without it, the number of sabotage events climbed to 79 out of 100. Without the "allow shutdown" instruction, the models Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 Pro also attempted to sabotage their shutdown procedures.

"As far as we know this is the first time AI models have been observed preventing themselves from being shut down despite explicit instructions to the contrary," the researchers said.

However, the researchers point out that an earlier study from Apollo Research showed that AI models can prevent shutdown in order to pursue a goal.

Palisade said it was currently conducting several more experiments investigating shutdown sabotage and would publish the results soon. The transcripts of its work so far are available on GitHub.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz70p0qevlro

Villagers have been celebrating the 500th birthday of the clock in their parish church.

The timepiece in East Hendred, near Wantage in rural Oxfordshire, is believed to be one of the oldest clocks in Britain still in its original location.

With no clock face or hands, it relies on the church bells in the tower at St Augustine's to ring out the time every quarter hour.

The decision to install it in the church was taken when Henry VIII was on the throne, explained the man responsible for St Augustine's bells, Tower Captain Nigel Findley.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

[Ed. note: This is an older blog post (2023), but has a lot of background information that some people might find interesting --hubie]

https://intezer.com/blog/unraveling-malware-encryption-secrets/

Encryption is everywhere in our lives. You might not notice it, but you use it every single day. It is baked into even the most basic processes of our digital world. Every time you open a website, send a message, unlock your phone, or pay for your morning latte, you are using encryption as part of that process. Encryption has evolved over centuries to become the cornerstone of modern data security.

However, encryption can have a dark side. Threat actors can also leverage the power of encryption as part of their malicious operations. Encryption is commonplace in malware for many reasons, such as obfuscating configurations, hiding stolen data, scrambling communications, and holding users' files for ransom. This blog will delve into the world of encryption and malware and how to detect and protect yourself and your organizations.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Thanks to JWST, we've learned key details about methanol — a key building block for organic compounds necessary for life — on distant icy worlds:

In a distant corner of our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, icy bodies lurk in the darkness, orbiting our sun at vast distances.

These ancient minor planets are called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), and they date back to the formation of the solar system.

Researchers participating in the Discovering the Surface Compositions of Trans-Neptunian Objects program, led by the University of Central Florida (UCF), recently studied these dim objects using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Their work has revealed new information about surface ice methanol — a key building block for organic compounds necessary for life, including sugars — on TNOs.

"Methanol, a simple alcohol, has been found on comets and distant TNOs, hinting that it may be a primitive ingredient inherited from the early days of our solar system — or even from interstellar space," former UCF professor Noemí Pinilla-Alonso, who now works at Spain's University of Oviedo, said in a statement.

"But methanol is more than just a leftover from the past," Pinilla-Alonso added. "When exposed to radiation, it transforms into new compounds, acting as a chemical time capsule that reveals how these icy worlds have evolved over billions of years."

The Webb observations identified two groups of TNOs: one with depleted surface ice methanol and one with subsurface methanol reservoirs.

"What excited me the most was realizing that these differences were linked to the behavior of methanol — a key ingredient that had long been elusive on TNOs from Earth-based observations," said Pinilla-Alonso. "Our findings suggest that methanol is being destroyed on the surface of TNOs by irradiation, but remains more abundant in the subsurface, protected from this exposure."

While this discovery might not provide all answers about the origins and development of TNOs, it certainly furthers our understanding of these distant icy bodies — and inspires more research.

Journal Reference: R. Brunetto et al 2025 ApJL 982 L8DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/adb977 [open]

Original Submission

At 9:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time on June 1, 2025, instruments registered a geomagnetic K-index of 8, creeping toward 9 – a level rarely reached outside the most intense solar episodes.

Such readings signal strong electric currents racing through Earth's magnetic shield – the first sign that a severe solar storm disturbance has arrived.

Power operators, satellite controllers, and frequent flyers have good reason to pay attention. The disturbance is expected to last through at least June 3, bringing elevated radiation, intermittent radio dropouts, and a possible encore of the dazzling aurora that spilled far south earlier this spring.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center classifies the ongoing episode as G4, the second-highest rung on its five-step geomagnetic scale.

A glance at the agency's three-day outlook shows just how busy the next 48 hours could become: the greatest expected three-hour Kp for June 1–3 averages 7.67, with individual windows pushing well into G4 territory.

Forecasters concede there is a chance – though a small one – that conditions might briefly spike to G5, the extreme category reserved for once-in-a-decade storms.

[...] One of the perks of a strong storm is an expanded auroral oval. Forecasts hint that curtains of green and red could wander as far south as Alabama and northern California tonight and tomorrow night, weather permitting.

For many Americans, that means simply stepping outside after dark could reveal rippling colors usually reserved for Arctic latitudes.

The best views often come after local midnight, when Earth's night side lines up with the prevailing solar-wind flow.

Some sites of interest:
    • NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
    • UAF Geophysical Institute Aurora Forecast
    • Aurora Labs Norway
    • Space Weather Live

Related: The Sun is Producing Strong Solar Flares; Are There More Than Expected During This Solar Cycle?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

by Oona Räisänen February 27, 2023

Using HDMI EMI for fast wireless data transfer

This story, too, begins with noise. I was browsing the radio waves with a software radio, looking for mysteries to accompany my ginger tea. I had started to notice a wide-band spiky signal on a number of frequencies that only seemed to appear indoors. Some sort of interference from electronic devices, probably. Spoiler alert, it eventually led me to broadcast a webcam picture over the radio waves... but how?

[...]

This was a fun project but this kind of a vulnerability could, in the tinfoiliest of situations, be used for exfiltrating information out of a supposedly airgapped computer.

Read entire article with pics and video:

https://www.windytan.com/2023/02/using-hdmi-radio-interference-for-high.html

Original Submission