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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

And it does not violate the laws of physics.

Engineers at Northwestern University have successfully achieved quantum communication in parallel with classical channels by identifying specific wavelengths with minimal interference from classical signals (Source: northwestern.edu). This breakthrough lays the groundwork for quantum communication by leveraging existing infrastructure and sending quantum data alongside classical data. The researchers managed quantum teleportation over a 30.2km fiber optic cable carrying 400 Gbps of classical traffic.

Quantum computing seems to be all the hype these days. Google claims its new quantum chip can solve problems swiftly, which classical computers would otherwise take, and I quote 10 billion years to do; that's 10, followed by 24 zeroes. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon wherein two particles are linked so that their quantum states (spin, polarization, energy levels, etc.) are connected, regardless of the physical distance. When measuring the state of one particle, the entanglement collapses, revealing the correlated state of the other particle. However, this does not allow for FTL (Faster Than Light) communication in line with the no communication theorem.

Enter Quantum teleportation. This concept combines entanglement with a classical channel, such as the Internet, and is the backbone of this research. It transfers one particle's quantum state to another located elsewhere.

Jordan Thomas, one of the research paper's authors, underlined the essence of quantum teleportation; “By performing a destructive measurement on two photons — one carrying a quantum state and one entangled with another photon — the quantum state is transferred onto the remaining photon, which can be very far away.” A key point to understand here is that the photons aren't transmitted physically. Instead, information encoded within their quantum states is what is sent.

The primary concern with a worldwide network employing quantum teleportation is compatibility; will quantum communication work over classical channels? The likelihood of interference is exceptionally high among the billions of photons being sent concurrently in a fiber optic cable. The research discovered specific wavelengths where the density of classical photons was lower, making such wavelengths suitable for the photons in quantum teleportation. Bell state measurement, or simply state measurement, is performed at the mid-point of the cable. Coupled with other methods to reduce noise and interference, this method can potentially support multiple TB/s of classical data alongside quantum communication.

While it may take years or decades before quantum communication goes mainstream, Prem Kumar, the head of the research team, has high hopes for the future. Based on the current roadmap, the next major milestones are using two pairs of entangled photons instead of one and scaling this experiment to real-world optical fiber networks.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

How to build (and rebuild) with glass:

[...] For their new study, Becker, Stern, and coauthors Daniel Massimino, SM '24, and Charlotte Folinus '20, SM '22, of MIT and Ethan Townsend at Evenline used a glass printer that pairs with a furnace to melt crushed glass bottles into a material that can be deposited in layered patterns. They printed prototype bricks using soda-lime glass that is typically used in a glassblowing studio. Two round pegs made of a different material, similar to the studs on a Lego brick, are incorporated into each one so they can interlock. Another material placed between the bricks prevents scratches or cracks but can be removed if a structure is to be dismantled and recycled. The prototypes' figure-eight shape allows assembly into curved walls, though recycled bricks could also be remelted in the printer and formed into new shapes. The group is looking into whether more of the interlocking feature could be made from printed glass too.

The team printed glass bricks and tested their mechanical strength in an industrial hydraulic press that squeezed the bricks until they began to fracture. The researchers found that the strongest bricks were able to hold up to pressures that are comparable to what concrete blocks can withstand. Those strongest bricks were made mostly from printed glass, with a separately manufactured interlocking feature attached to the bottom of the brick. These results suggest that most of a masonry brick could be made from printed glass, with an interlocking feature that could be printed, cast, or separately manufactured from a different material. "Glass is a complicated material to work with," said Becker. "The interlocking elements, made from a different material, showed the most promise at this stage." The group is looking into whether more of a brick's interlocking feature could be made from printed glass, but doesn't see this as a dealbreaker in moving forward to scale up the design. To demonstrate glass masonry's potential, they constructed a curved wall of interlocking glass bricks. Next, they aim to build progressively bigger, self-supporting glass structures. "We have more understanding of what the material's limits are, and how to scale," said Stern. "We're thinking of stepping stones to buildings, and want to start with something like a pavilion – a temporary structure that humans can interact with, and that you could then reconfigure into a second design. And you could imagine that these blocks could go through a lot of lives."

MIT spinoff 3D prints architectural glass bricks

According to MIT, engineers, motivated by circular construction's eco potential, are developing a new kind of reconfigurable masonry made from 3D printed, recycled glass. Using a custom 3D glass printing technology provided by MIT spinoff Evenline, the team has made strong, multilayered glass bricks – each in the shape of a figure eight, that are designed to interlock, much like LEGO bricks.

In mechanical testing, a single glass brick withstood pressures similar to that of a concrete block. As a structural demonstration, the researchers constructed a wall of interlocking glass bricks. They envision that 3D printable glass masonry could be reused many times over as recyclable bricks for building facades and internal walls.

"Glass is a highly recyclable material," said Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "We're taking glass and turning it into masonry that, at the end of a structure's life, can be disassembled and reassembled into a new structure, or can be stuck back into the printer and turned into a completely different shape. All this builds into our idea of a sustainable, circular building material."

"Glass as a structural material kind of breaks people's brains a little bit," said Michael Stern, a former MIT graduate student and researcher in both MIT's Media Lab and Lincoln Laboratory, who is also the Founder and Director of Evenline. "We're showing this is an opportunity to push the limits of what's been done in architecture."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Investments in semiconductor manufacturing and innovation matter more than bans and sanctions.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in an interview that the country should focus more on investments in domestic innovation than applying bans and sanctions. “Trying to hold China back is a fool’s errand,” said the politician. She also added that the Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act, which led the country to spend more money on building out its chip infrastructure than the past 28 years combined, “matters more than export controls.” Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal says President Biden still pushed for bans and sanctions against Chinese firms and even urged its allies, including the Netherlands and Japan, to stop China from acquiring advanced tech, especially those containing American tech.

“The only way to beat China is to stay ahead of them,” said Sec. Raimondo. “We have to run faster, out innovate them. That’s the way to win.” Despite the various export controls that the U.S. has applied against several Chinese companies, many of its companies are still able to procure banned chips through the black market and unofficial conduits. Aside from that, Chinese innovation is seemingly continuing, with many businesses and organizations forced to be creative in pursuing their goals despite the roadblocks posed by American sanctions.

Sec. Raimondo said these statements in the interview as President Trump is about to return to the White House in early 2025. The CHIPS and Science Act had bipartisan support when it passed Congress, and some states that are Republican strongholds have seen the benefits of the federal government’s investments. However, the incoming President was quoted saying in October, “That chip deal is so bad.” Instead of direct government funding, Trump spokesman Kush Desai said that he prefers “enacting tariffs, cutting taxes, slashing regulations, and unleashing American energy.”

Because of the uncertainty about the future of the CHIPS Act, many subsidy applicants are rushing to get their funding in place before January 20. Nevertheless, Trump plans to expedite permits for any company that plans to invest at least a billion dollars in the U.S., with some regulations and reviews potentially getting waived. This is likely the reason why SoftBank plans to invest $100 billion in AI and other technologies in the country. But even if Sec. Raimondo agrees that some regulations hold back the competitiveness of American industry, she still believes that Washington shouldn’t let companies act with impunity, even if they have a huge war chest.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-12-nondestructive-microwave-radar-moisture-walls.html

For homeowners, moisture buildup can cause the biggest headaches. Mold grows on drywall and wood-based materials, creeping along walls, floors and ceilings. Building materials begin to erode and rot. As insulation becomes damaged, the home's energy-efficiency decreases. Even human health suffers, as moisture also leads to air-quality issues.

The key to preventing extensive moisture damage is discovering it early, when it can be easily fixed.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using microwave radar reflection to nondestructively detect and measure the moisture content of materials within walls without removing drywall or cladding. This also expedites moisture identification and enables mold growth to be treated in the early stages.

The research team's study results were published in IEEE Xplore and presented during the IEEE Radar Conference 2024 in Denver.

"We know microwave radar shows great promise for this, because it's well known that it can measure the moisture in wood samples," ORNL's Philip Boudreaux said. "But can it measure moisture in wood that is inside a wall to detect high-moisture issues before they become a big problem? That's the challenge."

The envelope of a building consists of exterior walls, the roof and foundation, all of which join to prevent moisture transmission. But the envelope is itself prone to moisture issues caused by many factors: too much rain, ground dampness, air leaking through holes, and vapor diffusion when moisture moves from higher to lower concentrations through the envelope.

Most homes are made from wood-frame construction, and when wood is moist, it's the perfect environment for mold to grow. If a wall is damaged or designed incorrectly, water vapor that seeps through wood can make it damp. For this reason, Boudreaux said, wood was selected as the initial material to investigate the capabilities of microwave radar.

"You can detect water within wood with microwave energy that reflects off of the material using radar," Boudreaux said. "You can also measure moisture in more than one type of material within the wall."

As part of the electromagnetic spectrum, microwaves interact with materials in a similar way to visible light, but they penetrate further, creating reflections. Radar systems work by emitting signals like microwaves and then detecting the reflections of those microwaves. When used with walls, the microwave reflection pulse characteristics are based on the moisture in the material.

Walls are made up of layers of materials, and each layer may have different amounts of moisture. However, by measuring the length of time taken for the microwaves to return to the sensor, the distance to each material in the wall can be calculated, and this can be used to map out and measure the moisture within the layers.

Journal Reference: S. Killough, P. Boudreaux and R. Zhang, "Measuring the Moisture Content of Wood Sheathing with Continuous Wave Radars," 2024 IEEE Radar Conference (RadarConf24), Denver, CO, USA, 2024, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/RadarConf2458775.2024.10548546.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

During peak COVID in 2021, when everybody was freaking out about how shitty and expensive U.S. broadband was for telecommuting and home education, NY state officials had an idea: what if we pass a law demanding that ISPs try to provide cheap broadband (a piddly 25 Mbps for $15) to low income families.

Some particulars of NY’s Affordable Broadband Act: ISPs with less than 20,000 subscribers are exempt. Only Americans on existing low-income programs could qualify. And the price increases had to be capped at two percent per year, though this was to be renegotiated on an ongoing basis. This was a limited form of rate regulation, and not particularly radical.

But NY State’s Affordable Broadband Act didn’t last long. In 2021 a US District Court judge blocked the law, claiming that the first Trump administration’s 2017 net neutrality repeal banned states from trying to regulate broadband. But courts repeatedly have shot down that claim, stating that the feds can’t abdicate their authority over broadband consumer protection and pre-empt state authority.

So in April of 2024, that judge’s ruling was reversed by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Last week the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, leaving the 2nd Circuit’s ruling, and the law, intact. It’s not clear when or if New York State will actually start enforcing it.

As Ars Technica notes, this case has particular importance given all the planned looming dismantling of the federal regulatory state during Trump 2.0:

As Trump 2.0 regulators like the FCC and FTC give up on consumer protection, it’s going to punt many of these fights to the state level. Given corporations spent so much money gutting Chevron deference in a bid to turn federal regulators into decorative gourds, they’re not going to like it much if consumer protection remains healthy and strong on the state level.

The idea of “rate regulation” is just about the most terrible phrase imaginable if you’re a telecom executive or “free market” Libertarian think tanker type. Limiting price gouging in this fashion is repeatedly brought up as a terrifying bogeyman in telecom policy conversations, though it very rarely manifests. NY’s effort to help people during COVID was a pretty far outlier in terms of policy proposals.

But Big Telecom is clearly worried that if NY’s law is allowed to stand, the years of rate regulation being off the table to address telecom monopolization will come to an end:

"ISPs are worried that their success in blocking federal rules will allow New York and other states to regulate. Telco groups told the Supreme Court that the New York law being upheld while federal rules are struck down "will likely lead to more rate regulation absent the Court's intervention. Other States are likely to copy New York once the Attorney General begins enforcing the ABA [Affordable Broadband Act] and New York consumers can buy broadband at below-market rates."

Telecoms want to have their cake (no federal regulation) and eat it too (no state laws filling the obvious void they created). To be clear, there are several cases currently ongoing where telecoms, freshly emboldened by a corrupt Supreme Court, are arguing that the FCC has no federal authority to do much of anything that helps real people (net neutrality, wireless privacy issues, and low-income affordability programs).

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Last year, I wrote a piece here on El Reg about being murdered by ChatGPT as an illustration of the potential harms through the misuse of large language models and other forms of AI.

Since then, I have spoken at events across the globe on the ethical development and use of artificial intelligence – while still waiting for OpenAI to respond to my legal demands in relation to what I've alleged is the unlawful processing of my personal data in the training of their GPT models.

In my earlier article, and my cease-and-desist letter to OpenAI, I stated that such models should be deleted.

Essentially, global technology corporations have decided, rightly or wrongly, the law can be ignored in their pursuit of wealth and power.

Household names and startups have, and still are, scraping the internet and media to train their models, typically without paying for it and while arguing they are doing nothing wrong. Unsurprisingly, a number of them have been fined or are settling out of court after being accused of breaking rules covering not just copyright but also online safety, privacy, and data protection. Big Tech has brought private litigation and watchdog scrutiny upon it, and potentially engendered new laws to fill in any regulatory gaps.

But for them, it's just a cost of business.

[...] After careful consideration over the time between my previous piece here on El Reg and now, I have come to a different opinion with regards to the deletion of these fruits, however. Not because I believe I was wrong, but because of moral and ethical considerations due to the potential environmental impact.

[...] In light of this information, I am forced to reconcile the ethical impact on the environment should such models be deleted under the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine, and it is not something that can be reconciled as the environmental cost is too significant, in my view.

upstart writes:

Fossil fuel-free jet propulsion with air plasmas:

Humans depend on fossil fuels as their primary energy source, especially in transportation. However, fossil fuels are both unsustainable and unsafe, serving as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and leading to adverse respiratory effects and devastation due to global warming.

A team of researchers at the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University has demonstrated a prototype device that uses microwave air plasmas for jet propulsion. They describe the engine in the journal AIP Advances.

"The motivation of our work is to help solve the global warming problems owing to humans' use of fossil fuel combustion engines to power machinery, such as cars and airplanes," said author Jau Tang, a professor at Wuhan University. "There is no need for fossil fuel with our design, and therefore, there is no carbon emission to cause greenhouse effects and global warming."

Beyond solid, liquid and gas, plasma is the fourth state of matter, consisting of an aggregate of charged ions. It exists naturally in places like the sun's surface and Earth's lightning, but it can also be generated. The researchers created a plasma jet by compressing air into high pressures and using a microwave to ionize the pressurized air stream.

This method differs from previous attempts to create plasma jet thrusters in one key way. Other plasma jet thrusters, like NASA's Dawn space probe, use xenon plasma, which cannot overcome the friction in Earth's atmosphere, and are therefore not powerful enough for use in air transportation. Instead, the authors' plasma jet thruster generates the high-temperature, high-pressure plasma in situ using only injected air and electricity.

The prototype plasma jet device can lift a 1-kilogram steel ball over a 24-millimeter diameter quartz tube, where the high-pressure air is converted into a plasma jet by passing through a microwave ionization chamber. To scale, the corresponding thrusting pressure is comparable to a commercial airplane jet engine.

By building a large array of these thrusters with high-power microwave sources, the prototype design can be scaled up to a full-sized jet. The authors are working on improving the efficiency of the device toward this goal.

"Our results demonstrated that such a jet engine based on microwave air plasma can be a potentially viable alternative to the conventional fossil fuel jet engine," Tang said.

More information: "Jet propulsion by microwave air plasma in the atmosphere," AIP Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1063/5.0005814

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Google has announced plans to allow its business customers to begin "fingerprinting" users next year, and the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) isn't happy about it.

Fingerprinting involves building a user profile using information about a device's software and hardware, rather than the use of something like cookies, for advertisement targeting. Despite publicly claiming in 2019 that fingerprinting "subverts user choice and is wrong," Google has apparently decided it's not that big of a deal if third parties are doing it using Google's own services.

While not mentioning fingerprinting by name in a statement or overview of planned Ad Platform changes for February 16, 2025, Google did state that it would allow partners to use "data signals" including IP addresses, "web beacons … or other identifiers" to build device profiles for better serving ads. 

"In the past decade, the way people engage with the internet changed dramatically," Google said to justify the move. The Chocolate Factory cited connected TVs as one device type that needs to serve ads that can't collect user data in the traditional manner.

The ICO doesn't want UK businesses to think they'll be off the hook for relying on fingerprinting, however. ICO executive director of regulatory risk, Stephen Almond, said his office will continue to hold businesses accountable because fingerprinting isn't transparent enough to meet UK privacy standards, and is likely to reduce people's choice over how their data is collected and used. 

"We think this change is irresponsible," Almond said. "Businesses do not have free rein to use fingerprinting as they please. Like all advertising technology, it must be lawfully and transparently deployed – and if it is not, the ICO will act."

Almond said the ICO is engaging with Google "on this u-turn in its position." Google confirmed to The Guardian that it was in discussion with the ICO about the shift, but maintains user privacy will be protected despite the change.

Google, which in the past has used the motto "don't be evil" to explain its core philosophy, also reversed course this year on a promise to eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome. 

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-geochemical-surveys-reveal-ancient-copper.html

A new study from Tel Aviv University overturns prevailing scientific beliefs that King Solomon's Mines not only harmed the health of workers in the ancient copper industry but also pose risks to the health of modern residents living near the site.

In the new study, researchers conducted geochemical surveys at copper production sites in the Timna Valley, dating back to the 10th century BCE and the era of the Biblical Kings David and Solomon. They found that the environmental pollution resulting from copper production was minimal and spatially restricted, posing no danger to the region's inhabitants either in the past or today. Additionally, TAU's archaeologists reviewed previous studies and found no evidence that the ancient copper industry polluted the planet.

The study was led by Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, Dr. Omri Yagel, Willy Ondricek, and Dr. Aaron Greener from the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies and Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. The paper was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

"We inspected two major copper production sites in the Timna Valley, one from the Iron Age and King Solomon's era and another nearby that is about 1,500 years older," says Prof. Ben-Yosef.

"Our study was very extensive. We took hundreds of soil samples from both sites for chemical analyses, creating high-resolution maps of heavy metal presence in the region. We found that pollution levels at the Timna copper mining sites are extremely low and confined to the locations of the ancient smelting furnaces.

"For instance, the concentration of lead—the primary pollutant in metal industries—drops to less than 200 parts per million just a few meters from the furnace. By comparison, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines industrial areas as safe for workers at 1,200 parts per million and residential areas as safe for children at 200 parts per million."

Journal Reference: Omri Yagel et al, Pre-roman copper industry had no polluting impact on the global environment, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-80939-5

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Lawmakers stripped language that would keep the Trump administration from wielding unprecedented authority to surveil Americans.:

The US Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Wednesday after congressional leaders earlier this month stripped the bill of provisions designed to safeguard against excessive government surveillance. The "must-pass" legislation now heads to President Joe Biden for his expected signature.

The Senate's 85–14 vote cements a major expansion of a controversial US surveillance program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Biden's signature will ensure that the Trump administration opens with the newfound power to force a vast range of companies to help US spies wiretap calls between Americans and foreigners abroad.

[...] Legal experts began issuing warnings last winter over Congress's efforts to expand FISA to cover a vast range of new businesses not originally subject to Section 702's wiretap directives. While reauthorizing the program in April, Congress changed the definition of what the government considers an "electronic communications service provider," a term applied to companies that can be compelled to install wiretaps on the government's behalf.

Traditionally, "electronic communications service providers" refers to phone and email providers, such as AT&T and Google. But as a result of Congress redefining the term, the new limits of the government's wiretap powers are unclear.

It is widely assumed that the changes were intended to help the National Security Agency (NSA) target communications stored on servers at US data centers. Due to the classified nature of the 702 program, however, the updated text purposefully avoids specifying which types of new businesses will be subject to government demands.

Marc Zwillinger, one of the few private attorneys to testify before the nation's secret surveillance court, wrote in April that the changes to the 702 statute mean that "any US business could have its communications [wiretapped] by a landlord with access to office wiring, or the data centers where their computers reside," thus expanding the 702 program "into a variety of new contexts where there is a particularly high likelihood that the communications of US citizens and other persons in the US will be 'inadvertently' acquired by the government."

Despite such warnings, Senate Democrats rushed to reauthorize the 702 program in April with the nebulous language attached. In a floor speech urging his colleagues to temporarily disregard the concerns, Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, vowed to amend the law again before the end of year. As of Wednesday it was clear he could no longer keep that pledge.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The age of the rings that encircle Saturn is under dispute thanks to calculations that show they could have been formed billions – rather than millions – of years ago

The rings of Saturn could be much older than previously thought and may have formed around the same time as the planet, according to a modelling study. But not all astronomers are convinced, and a researcher who was part of a team that calculated Saturn’s rings to be relatively young argues that the new work doesn’t change their findings.

For most of the 20th century, scientists assumed that Saturn’s rings formed along with the planet, some 4.5 billion years ago. But when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft visited Saturn in 2004, it found that the rings appeared remarkably free of contamination from small space rocks, known as cosmic dust. This pristine appearance indicated they were far younger, with an estimate in 2023 placing them at between 100 and 400 million years old.

Now, Ryuki Hyodo at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Japan and his colleagues have calculated that Saturn’s rings should be far more resistant to cosmic dust pollution than previously thought, so could maintain a clean appearance for a long time. Hyodo and his team haven’t calculated a new age for the rings, but suggest that they could be as old as the planet, as astronomers used to believe.

Hyodo and his colleagues first simulated how high-speed cosmic dust, accelerated by Saturn’s gravity, would smash into the rings. They found that the collision would create such extreme temperatures that the impacting dust should be vaporised. This vapour, after spreading out in a cloud, would then condense into charged nanoparticles, similar to particles that Cassini has observed.

Journal Reference: Hyodo, R., Genda, H. & Madeira, G. Pollution resistance of Saturn's ring particles during micrometeoroid impact. Nat. Geosci. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01598-9

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

As a part of the Allen Lab's Political Economy of AI Essay Collection, David Gray Widder and Mar Hicks draw on the history of tech hype cycles to warn against the harmful effects of the current generative AI bubble.

Only a few short months ago, generative AI was sold to us as inevitable by AI company leaders, their partners, and venture capitalists. Certain media outlets promoted these claims, fueling online discourse about what each new beta release could accomplish with a few simple prompts. As AI became a viral sensation, every business tried to become an AI business. Some even added "AI" to their names to juice their stock prices, and companies that mentioned "AI" in their earnings calls saw similar increases.

Investors and consultants urged businesses not to get left behind. Morgan Stanley positioned AI as key to a $6 trillion opportunity. McKinsey hailed generative AI as "the next productivity frontier" and estimated $2.6 to 4.4 trillion gains, comparable to the annual GDP of the United Kingdom or all the world's agricultural production. Conveniently, McKinsey also offers consulting services to help businesses "create unimagined opportunities in a constantly changing world." Readers of this piece can likely recall being exhorted by news media or their own industry leaders to "learn AI" while encountering targeted ads hawking AI "boot camps."

While some have long been wise to the hype, global financial institutions and venture capitalists are now beginning to ask if generative AI is overhyped. In this essay, we argue that even as the generative AI hype bubble slowly deflates, its harmful effects will last: carbon can't be put back in the ground, workers continue to face AI's disciplining pressures, and the poisonous effect on our information commons will be hard to undo.

An archival PDF of this essay can be found here.

[Source]: Harvard Kennedy School

Original Submission

upstart writes:

They may one day deliver drugs within the human body:

Swarms of tiny robots guided by magnetic fields can coordinate to act like ants, from packing together to form a floating raft to lifting objects hundreds of times their weight. About the size of a grain of sand, the microrobots could someday do jobs larger bots cannot, such as unblocking blood vessels and delivering drugs to specific locations inside the human body.

Jeong Jae Wie at Hanyang University in South Korea and his colleagues made the tiny, cube-shaped robots using a mould and epoxy resin embedded with magnetic alloy. These small magnetic particles enable the microrobots to be "programmed" to form various configurations after being exposed to strong magnetic fields from certain angles. The bots can then be controlled by external magnetic fields to perform spins or other motions. This approach allowed the team to "efficiently and quickly produce hundreds to thousands of microrobots", each with a magnetic profile designed for specific missions, says Wie.

The researchers directed the microrobot swarms to cooperatively climb over obstacles five times higher than any single microrobot and form a floating raft on water. The bots also pushed through a clogged tube and transported a pill 2000 times their individual weight through liquid, demonstrating potential medical applications.

"These magnetic microrobots hold great promise for minimally invasive drug delivery in small, enclosed and confined spaces," says Xiaoguang Dong at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, who was not involved in the research. But the microrobots cannot yet autonomously navigate complex and tight spaces such as arteries.

Dong says there are safety challenges too, including needing to coat the "potentially toxic" magnetic particles with human-friendly materials. Still, he says he is optimistic about the future medical uses of such microrobots. If safe, the bots "can effectively navigate to targeted disease sites and deliver drugs locally", making treatments more precise and effective.

Journal Reference: 10.1016/j.device.2024.100626

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/12/storm-cloud-approaching-rapidl.html

By Charlie Stross

This, from Techcrunch, seems like a good summary of a bad situation facing this blog: Death Of A Forum: How The UK's Online Safety Act Is Killing Communities.

This blog is just that: my personal blog, with comments.

Over the past two decades a lively community has evolved in the discussion threads. However, the Online Safety Act threatens to impose impossible hurdles on the continuation of open fora in the UK. The intent is officially to protect adults and children from illegal content, but ... there's no lower threshold on scale. A blog with comments is subject to exactly as much regulatory oversight as Facebook. It applies to all fora that enable people in the UK (that would be me) to communicate with other people in the UK (that's a whole bunch of you), so I can't avoid the restrictions by moving to a hosting provider in the US. Nor am I terribly keen on filing the huge amounts of paperwork necessary to identify myself as the Trust and Safety officer of an organization and arrange for commercial age verification services (that I can't in any event integrate with this ancient blogging platform). And the penalties for infractions are the same—fines of up to £18M (which is a gigantic multiple of my gross worth).

From the techdirt article:

We've been warning for years that the UK's Online Safety Act would be a disaster for the open internet. Its supporters accused us of exaggerating, or "shilling" for Big Tech. But as we've long argued, while tech giants like Facebook and Google might be able to shoulder the law's immense regulatory burdens, smaller sites would crumble.

Well, it's already happening.

On Monday, the London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed (LFGSS) online forum announced that it would be shutting down the day before the Online Safety Act goes into effect. It noted that it is effectively impossible to comply with the law. This was in response to UK regulator Ofcom telling online businesses that they need to start complying.

This includes registering a "senior person" with Ofcom who will be held accountable should Ofcom decide your site isn't safe enough. It also means that moderation teams need to be fully staffed with quick response times if bad (loosely defined) content is found on the site. On top of that, sites need to take proactive measures to protect children.

While all of this may make sense for larger sites, it's impossible for a small one-person passion project forum for bikers in London. For a small, community-driven forum, these requirements are not just burdensome, but existential.

[...] This is why we've spent years warning people. When you regulate the internet as if it's all just Facebook, all that will be left is Facebook.

[...] The promise of the internet was supposed to be that it allowed anyone to set up whatever they wanted online, whether it's a blog or a small forum. The UK has decided that the only forums that should remain online are those run by the largest companies in the world.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Sega considering Netflix-like game subscription service:

Sega is considering launching its own Netflix-like subscription service for video games, a move which would accelerate gaming's transition towards streaming.

There are already a number of similar services on the market - such as Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus - which see gamers pay a monthly fee for access to a range of titles rather than owning them outright.

Sega's president Shuji Utsumi told the BBC such subscription products were "very interesting", and his firm was "evaluating some opportunities".

"We're thinking something - and discussing something - we cannot disclose right now," he said.

Some in the industry have expressed concern about the move however telling the BBC it could see gamers "shelling out more money" on multiple subscription services.

It is not just Sony and Microsoft who offer game subscriptions - there are now countless players in the space, with rivals such as Nintendo, EA and Ubisoft all offering their own membership plans.