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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Hackers were reportedly able to modify several Chrome extensions with malicious code this month after gaining access to admin accounts through a phishing campaign. The cybersecurity company Cyberhaven shared in a blog post this weekend that its Chrome extension was compromised on December 24 in an attack that appeared to be “targeting logins to specific social media advertising and AI platforms.” A few other extensions were hit as well, going back to mid-December, Reuters reported. According to Nudge Security’s Jaime Blasco, that includes ParrotTalks, Uvoice and VPNCity.

Cyberhaven notified its customers on December 26 in an email seen by TechCrunch, which advised them to revoke and rotate their passwords and other credentials. The company’s initial investigation of the incident found that the malicious extension targeted Facebook Ads users, with a goal of stealing data such as access tokens, user IDs and other account information, along with cookies. The code also added a mouse click listener. “After successfully sending all the data to the [Command & Control] server, the Facebook user ID is saved to browser storage,” Cyberhaven said in its analysis. “That user ID is then used in mouse click events to help attackers with 2FA on their side if that was needed.”

Cyberhaven said it first detected the breach on December 25 and was able to remove the malicious version of the extension within an hour. It’s since pushed out a clean version.

From https://www.techspot.com/news/106205-widespread-cyberattack-targets-google-chrome-extensions-compromises-26.html

Cyberhaven breach reported. Employee phished and pushed malicious chrome extension.
 
  Command and Control:
  149.28.124.84
  cyberhavenext[.]pro
 
  File Hashes:
  content.js AC5CC8BCC05AC27A8F189134C2E3300863B317FB
 
  worker.js 0B871BDEE9D8302A48D6D6511228CAF67A08EC60

– Christopher Stanley (@cstanley)

[...] Here's a compilation of known extensions to have been compromised (thanks Ars Technica), with further updates available here. If you used any of these, you should update passwords and other login credentials:

Further investigation revealed an even more alarming trend. One of the compromised extensions, Reader Mode, had been part of a separate campaign dating back to at least April 2023. This earlier compromise was linked to a monetization code library that collected detailed data on every web visit a browser makes. Tuckner identified 13 Chrome extensions, with a combined 1.14 million installations, that had used this library to collect potentially sensitive data.

---

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://english.elpais.com/technology/2024-12-22/hybrid-work-a-cause-of-techno-stress-you-have-to-be-there-all-the-time.html#?rel=mas

"It's that pressure to respond, like when I get an email and feel I have to reply quickly, or someone will think, 'What are you doing at home?'"

"The truth is that I leave my phone in the car at night, so I'm not tempted to look at it."

These are just two of the responses featured in a recent study exploring the challenges of hybrid work — the combination of in-person and remote work that has become more prevalent since the pandemic.

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has only just accepted "teleworking" as a new word, but society has been ahead of the curve for years, already grappling with the challenges of blending office and remote work. This hybrid format — particularly common in computer-based jobs — has attracted a lot of attention from academia. A recent qualitative study, based on 14 in-depth interviews conducted in 2022 with individuals ranging in age from 27 to 60 and from various work backgrounds, delves into the complexities of this new work dynamic.

"The article provides concrete insights into how the work experience is lived in a digital environment with high demands and intense use of technology," says Elizabeth Marsh, co-author and professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. "It analyzes how employees perceive being hyperconnected and feeling overwhelmed by their digital work, and the consequences for their mental and physical health."

Five common themes emerged from the responses, highlighting the "dark side" of hybrid work: hyperconnectivity, digital fatigue, system feature overload, informational fear of missing out, and techno-stress. Drawing from previous research, the article mentions that hybrid workers, driven in part by "productivity paranoia" from distrustful bosses, "can spend up to 67 extra minutes a day to avoid appearing to be faltering."

Several of the phrases cited in the study reflect common complaints about hybrid work: "You feel like you have to be there all the time, as if you had to be that little green light that's always on," "I'm constantly on Slack on my phone, and sometimes it affects other things I should be doing," and "I could be working, but I get distracted and think, 'I'm going to check my emails,' and before I know it, I've spent half an hour just looking at emails without doing anything in particular."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Fast radio bursts are brief and brilliant explosions of radio waves emitted by extremely compact objects such as neutron stars and possibly black holes. These fleeting fireworks last for just a thousandth of a second and can carry an enormous amount of energy — enough to briefly outshine entire galaxies.

Since the first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of FRBs, whose locations range from within our own galaxy to as far as 8 billion light-years away. Exactly how these cosmic radio flares are launched is a highly contested unknown.

Now, astronomers at MIT have pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst using a novel technique that could do the same for other FRBs. In their new study, appearing today in the journal Nature, the team focused on FRB 20221022A — a previously discovered fast radio burst that was detected from a galaxy about 200 million light-years away.

The team zeroed in further to determine the precise location of the radio signal by analyzing its “scintillation,” similar to how stars twinkle in the night sky. The scientists studied changes in the FRB’s brightness and determined that the burst must have originated from the immediate vicinity of its source, rather than much further out, as some models have predicted.

The team estimates that FRB 20221022A exploded from a region that is extremely close to a rotating neutron star, 10,000 kilometers away at most. That’s less than the distance between New York and Singapore. At such close range, the burst likely emerged from the neutron star’s magnetosphere — a highly magnetic region immediately surrounding the ultracompact star.

The team’s findings provide the first conclusive evidence that a fast radio burst can originate from the magnetosphere, the highly magnetic environment immediately surrounding an extremely compact object.

“In these environments of neutron stars, the magnetic fields are really at the limits of what the universe can produce,” says lead author Kenzie Nimmo, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “There’s been a lot of debate about whether this bright radio emission could even escape from that extreme plasma.”

“Around these highly magnetic neutron stars, also known as magnetars, atoms can’t exist — they would just get torn apart by the magnetic fields,” says Kiyoshi Masui, associate professor of physics at MIT. “The exciting thing here is, we find that the energy stored in those magnetic fields, close to the source, is twisting and reconfiguring such that it can be released as radio waves that we can see halfway across the universe.”

Detections of fast radio bursts have ramped up in recent years, due to the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). The radio telescope array comprises four large, stationary receivers, each shaped like a half-pipe, that are tuned to detect radio emissions within a range that is highly sensitive to fast radio bursts.

Automobile Sales, Including EVs and Hybrids, Surge in 2024

hubie writes:

EV Sales, Including Hybrids, Surge for Auto Giants Not Named Tesla:

General Motors and Ford Motor on Friday reported robust U.S. auto sales and electric-vehicle sales for the final quarter of 2024. GM more than doubled EV sales for the full year, while Tesla suffered a sales decline. GM stock edged higher on Friday, while Ford stock popped and Tesla jumped.

Toyota Motor posted declining U.S. new vehicle sales, but marked an EV sales milestone, including hybrid vehicles. Hyundai, which trades over the counter, and Honda Motor saw robust hybrid and EV sales, spearheading their overall sales growth.

GM, Ford report best annual U.S. sales since 2019 as auto recovery continues:

Sales of new vehicles in the U.S. continued to rise last year, rebounding from historical lows caused by the coronavirus pandemic and supply chain shortages during the past four years.

American legacy automakers General Motors and Ford Motor on Friday both reported their best annual U.S. new vehicle sales since 2019, led by growth of electrified vehicles such as all-electric and hybrid models.

Those results are in line with industrywide expectations for automakers. Market research firms expected U.S. automakers to report total sales of nearly 16 million vehicles in 2024, which would mark the industry's best year since selling roughly 17 million units in 2019.

[...] GM said sales were driven by increases in all four of its U.S. brands as well as a roughly 50% rise in sales of electric vehicles to more than 114,400 units.

Despite the notable jump in EV sales, the vehicles only made up 4.2% of the automaker's overall sales. GM estimated it achieved a 12% EV market share in the U.S. during the fourth quarter.

It was a similar trend at Ford, which reported a notable increase in sales of its "electrified" vehicles, including EVs and hybrids.

Mazda is Selling More Cars Than Ever—All Without an EV in Sight

fliptop writes:

However, EVs are not the focus of some auto manufacturers.

Mazda is defying industry trends with surging sales of its gas-powered SUVs. Can it keep the momentum going without a fully electric vehicle in its lineup?

While many automakers are racing toward electrification, Mazda is proving that there's still room for gas-powered success. The Japanese automaker is set to break its U.S. sales record from 1986, with over 420,000 vehicles expected to be sold in 2024—a 16% increase from the previous year.

Mazda's president of North American operations, Tom Donnelly, credited the popularity of its compact crossovers and mid-size SUVs for this growth, with a target of 450,000 vehicles for 2025. "We're growing our business in what has largely been a stable industry," Donnelly said, talking about the consistent sales volume that Mazda has seen from its compacts and mid-size SUVs.

[...] What's driving Mazda's success? Mazda's lineup relies heavily on a few key models. The CX-5, a compact crossover manufactured in Japan, remains its best seller, despite being one of the oldest vehicles in its lineup. A redesign is expected within the next two years. The CX-30 subcompact hatchback and the Alabama-made CX-50 have also contributed significantly to the brand's recent surge.

[...] With overall US auto sales projected by Kelley Blue Book to rise just 2.3% in 2024, Mazda's performance is a standout. However, challenges remain. While Mazda charts new territory for its U.S. sales, it still lags behind competitors like Subaru, Kia and even Nissan, which has struggled with a host of its own problems in 2024.

Previously: Mazda: Americans Want Cheap Gas Cars

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

owl writes:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/03/science/mystery-volcano-1831-eruption-simushir/index.html

An unknown volcano erupted so explosively in 1831 that it cooled Earth's climate. Now, nearly 200 years later, scientists have identified the "mystery volcano."

The eruption was one of the most powerful of the 19th century, spewing so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that annual average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped by about one 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). The event took place during the last gasp of the Little Ice Age, one of the coldest periods on Earth in the past 10,000 years.

While the year of this historic eruption was known, the volcano's location was not. Researchers recently solved that puzzle by sampling ice cores in Greenland, peering back in time through the cores' layers to examine sulfur isotopes, grains of ash and tiny volcanic glass shards deposited between 1831 and 1834.

[...] According to the analysis, the mystery volcano was Zavaritskii (also spelled Zavaritsky) on Simushir Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago, an area disputed by Russia and Japan. Before the scientists' findings, Zavaritskii's last known eruption was in 800 BC.

Using geochemistry, radioactive dating and computer modeling to map particles' trajectories, the scientists linked the 1831 eruption to an island volcano in the northwest Pacific Ocean, they reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the analysis, the mystery volcano was Zavaritskii (also spelled Zavaritsky) on Simushir Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago, an area disputed by Russia and Japan. Before the scientists' findings, Zavaritskii's last known eruption was in 800 BC.

"For many of Earth's volcanoes, particularly those in remote areas, we have a very poor understanding of their eruptive history," said lead study author Dr. William Hutchison, a principal research fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom.

"Zavaritskii is located on an extremely remote island between Japan and Russia. No one lives there and historical records are limited to a handful of diaries from ships that passed these islands every few years," Hutchison told CNN in an email.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

The incident exposes the growing vulnerabilities tied to digital ID systems and mandatory KYC (know your customer) data collection:

A US-based online gift card retailer has resolved a critical data exposure incident that left highly sensitive customer identity documents accessible on the internet, raising concerns about the growing risks posed by mandatory data collection under "know your customer" (KYC) and digital ID regulations.

The issue came to light when a security researcher, known by the alias JayeLTee, discovered an unprotected storage server linked to MyGiftCardSupply. According to TechCrunch, the server, which lacked even basic password protection, contained hundreds of thousands of government-issued IDs, including driver's licenses and passports, as well as selfies submitted by customers. These documents are required by the company to comply with US anti-money laundering laws, which mandate identity verification for certain transactions.

Despite an attempt by JayeLTee to notify MyGiftCardSupply about the exposure, the company did not respond until TechCrunch reported the breach. MyGiftCardSupply's founder, Sam Gastro, later confirmed the issue. "The files are now secure, and we are doing a full audit of the KYC verification procedure," Gastro stated. He also pledged that the company would delete identity documents promptly after verification in the future.

[...] According to JayeLTee, the server, hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, contained over 600,000 images of identity documents and selfies from approximately 200,000 customers. These materials are a part of controversial KYC procedures, intended to confirm identities and prevent fraud.

Related: Chinese Organized Crime's Latest U.S. Target: Gift Cards

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Social media addiction can reduce grey matter, shorten attention spans, weaken memory, and distort core cognitive functions, according to recent research:

"Brain rot" was named the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 after a public vote involving more than 37,000 people. Oxford University Press defines the concept as "the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of over consumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging."

According to Oxford's language experts, the term reflects growing concerns about "the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media." The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024.

But brain rot is not just a linguistic quirk. Over the past decade, scientific studies have shown that consuming excessive amounts of junk content — including sensationalist news, conspiracy theories and vacuous entertainment — can profoundly affect our brains. In other words, "rot" may not be that big of an exaggeration when it comes to describing the impact of low-quality online content.

Research from prestigious institutions such as Harvard Medical School, Oxford University, and King's College London — cited by The Guardian — reveals that social media consumption can reduce grey matter, shorten attention spans, weaken memory, and distort core cognitive functions.

[...] The problem, says the researcher, is that social media users are constantly exposed to rapidly changing and variable stimuli — such as Instagram notifications, WhatsApp messages, or news alerts — that have addictive potential. This means users are constantly switching their focus, which undermines their ability to concentrate effectively.

[...] In December, psychologist Carlos Losada offered advice to EL PAÍS on how to avoid falling into the trap of doomscrolling — or, in other words, being consumed by the endless cycle of junk content amplified by algorithms. His recommendations included recognizing the problem, making a conscious effort to disconnect, and engaging in activities that require physical presence, such as meeting friends or playing sports.

"These activities are critical for brain health and overall wellbeing, helping to balance the potentially damaging effects of prolonged screen use," explains Moshel, who stresses that the type of content consumed plays a pivotal role in shaping brain anatomy. "Focus on both the quality and quantity of screen time. Prioritize educational content that avoids addictive features. Set clear, age-appropriate limits on daily screen use and encourage regular breaks."

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Hollow-eyed insincere robot posters are already flooding Meta's sites and they're everything we dreaded:

Update 1/03/24: After the publication of this article, Meta told 404 Media that it had begun to delete the AI-generated accounts and that many had been managed by humans. Since then, Meta has deleted the accounts. Our original story follows below.

As I stared into the dead-eyed visage of "Carter," one of Meta's new AI posters, I remembered a line from Dawn of the Dead. "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth."

Something about George Romero's 1978 film about doomed survivors riding out the zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall feels resonant today as I look across Meta's suite of AI-created profiles. The movie's blue-skinned corpses don't know they're dead. They just wander through the shopping center on autopilot, looking for something new to consume.

That's how many of our social media spaces feel now. Digital town squares populated by undead posters, zombies spouting lines they learned from an LLM, the digested material from decades of the internet spewed back at the audience. That's what Meta is selling now.

Meta's various sites have over 3 billion users, an incredible percentage of the world's population. But businesses demand constant growth and, not content with almost half of the living people on the planet, Meta has decided to cut out the middle-man. It is flooding Facebook and Instagram with AI-generated posters of its own creation.

A December 27, 2024 article in Financial Times laid out the vision. "We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do," Connor Hayes, vice president of generative AI at Meta, told the outlet. "They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform . . . that's where we see all of this going."

[...] The AIs don't seem to be faring well on Instagram. They have low engagement numbers and people are calling them out as AI slop. It's different on Facebook, where the norm has been AI-powered slop for a year now. The post has 13 likes and 2 comments on Instagram and 192 likes, 112 comments, and 33 shares on Facebook. Many of the comments are spam, links to other profiles, or phishing bait of one kind or another.

But it's all interaction and, on a spreadsheet, that's all that matters.

[...] The AI apocalypse is here and it's far stupider and more depressing than we were promised. Instead of being hunted down by a gleaming metal skeleton in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, we are surrounded by zombies endlessly repeating our own posts back to us.

And the worst is yet to come. Remember that to power these nightmares Big Tech is going to revive the nuclear power industry. That's our future. A barren mall kept alight with nuclear power, filled with the dead and the never-born.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The iPhone 6 and Apple Watch were two devices owned by the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit:

Apple has agreed to pay $95m (£77m) to settle a court case alleging some of its devices were listening to people without their permission.

The tech giant was accused of eavesdropping on its customers through its virtual assistant Siri.

The claimants also allege voice recordings were shared with advertisers.

Apple, which has not admitted any wrongdoing, has been approached for comment.

In the preliminary settlement, the tech firm denies any wrongdoing, as well as claims that it "recorded, disclosed to third parties, or failed to delete, conversations recorded as the result of a Siri activation" without consent.

Apple's lawyers also say they will confirm they have "permanently deleted individual Siri audio recordings collected by Apple prior to October 2019".

But the claimants say the tech firm recorded people who activated the virtual assistant unintentionally - without using the phrase "Hey, Siri" to wake it.

And they say advertisers who received the recordings could then look for keywords in them to better target ads.

[...] According to the court documents, each claimant - who has to be based in the US -could be paid up to $20 per Siri-enabled device they owned between 2014 and 2019.

In this case, the lawyers could take 30% of the fee plus expenses - which comes to just under $30m.

By settling, Apple not only denies wrongdoing, but it also avoids the risk of facing a court case which could potentially mean a much larger pay out.

The California company earned $94.9bn in the three months up to 28 September 2024.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Great White North recognizes our need for more sources for these crucial elements.

The Canadian government released its Canadian Critical Mineral Strategy Annual Report 2024, highlighting the progress and further plans the nation has made in expanding its mining industry to produce critical minerals, including rare earth elements. The EE Times says that Canada’s Critical Minerals Center of Excellence at Natural Resources Canada works “to identify and support strategic projects within the semiconductor supply chain.”

The report defines a critical mineral with a threatened supply chain and must have a reasonable chance of being produced in the country. Furthermore, it must meet one or more of the following criteria: it is essential to Canadian economic and national security, it is needed for Canada to hit its net-zero target, and it allows the country to be a sustainable and strategic partner in the global supply chain. Currently, there are 34 critical minerals on the Canadian list, but the following six are a priority for the government: lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements.

Rare earth minerals are used to make the latest chips, but, as their name suggests, they’re not as abundant as other minerals like silicon or iron. The ongoing tensions between China and the rest of the Western world have even moved the former to tighten export controls for its supply of these crucial elements, leading to increased pricing of these products. This has led other countries like Australia to find alternative sources for these products to help alleviate the supply crunch and keep semiconductor production going. Aside from this, lithium, nickel, and copper are also crucial elements in producing EVs and the battery technology they require.

However, one industry executive says this move is too little, too late for Canada, noting that putting up a new mine in the country takes at least 10 to 15 years owing to strict regulations. CMC Microsystems CEO Gordon Harling said in his personal capacity that the U.S., China, and Australia already have a head start in production and are “much less likely to slow things down for environmental reasons” compared to Canada. He added, “The other fly in the ointment is that a new battery chemistry could show up at any moment, which eliminates the need for lithium.”

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

While the majority of the bill was allowed to proceed, two elements were blocked over concerns that they may infringe tech companies’ First Amendment rights.

A US district judge has blocked the state of California from enforcing parts of a bill aimed at safeguarding children and teenagers from social media, following a lawsuit filed by tech lobbying group NetChoice.

Senate Bill 976, also known as the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, was initially passed in September of last year and prevents social media companies from purposely providing an addictive content feed to minors without the consent of their parents.

While judge Edward J Davila denied NetChoice’s motion for an injunction to stop the law in its entirety – thus allowing most elements of the bill to come into effect – he did block some elements of the bill from proceeding after finding they may infringe tech companies’ First Amendment rights.

Specifically, he blocked two elements of the bill: one that proposed restrictions on night-time notifications for minors and another that compelled social media companies to disclose the number of minors using their platforms.

upstart writes:

Once you get over the ick factor, new technologies are efficiently transforming human waste into agricultural solutions:

This system, called Varcor, was designed by the Seattle engineering firm Sedron Technologies and is owned by the San Francisco–based company Generate Upcycle. Wastewater treatment plants across the country are using high heat, composting, and devices akin to pressure cookers to transform leftover biomass into rich fertilizers, mulches, and other soil additives with names like Bloom and TAGRO (short for "Tacoma Grow"). Some process the wastewater in a separate step to extract phosphorus—an essential plant nutrient and a common element in the human diet—and layer it to form round pellets, in a technique a bit like building pearls. This technology, developed by a St. Louis–based company called Ostara, creates a slow-release fertilizer that can be sold back to farmers.

"We love tackling the yuck factor head-on," says the CEO of Epic Cleantec, which transforms wastewater into clean water and a natural soil additive.

Even portable toilets can be vehicles for nutrient recovery, through nitrogen-capturing methods developed by "peecycling" groups like the Rich Earth Institute and Wasted in Vermont and by Sanitation360 AB in Sweden. Because our protein-rich diets contain abundant nitrogen, the element can be readily recycled from both urine and feces.

Making fertilizer from the nutrients that we and other animals excrete has a long and colorful history; for generations it helped Indigenous cultures around the world create exceptionally fertile soil. These systems fell out of favor in Western culture, but researchers and engineers have joined advocates in reframing feces, urine, and their ingredients as invaluable natural resources to reuse instead of waste products to burn or bury. Several companies are now showing how to safely scale up the transformation with energy-efficient technologies. "We love tackling the yuck factor head-on," says Aaron Tartakovsky, cofounder and CEO of Epic Cleantec, which uses a chemical reaction and heat to transform wastewater into clean water and a natural soil additive.

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/good-thinking/indent-data-storage/

Cuneiform, the world's oldest form of writing, involved making indentations in clay tablets. Scientists have now developed a data storage system that's like cuneiform on steroids – and it's capable of storing more data than a typical hard disc drive.

The experimental new technology was created by Abigail Mann and colleagues at Australia's Flinders University.

Instead of a clay tablet, the system utilizes an inexpensive polymer film composed of sulfur and a chemical compound known as dicyclopentadiene. Data is stored on that film in the form of a series of nanoscale indentations. These tiny indents are made (and read) using a fine-tip probe mounted on an atomic force microscope ... not by a reed stylus.

In previous attempts at such "indent-based" data storage systems, the indents served as binary code. The presence of an indent represented a 1, while the absence of an indent represented a 0.

Not only were the polymer substrates that were used in these earlier systems difficult to produce, they also weren't very stable or finely workable. That's where the Flinders polymer comes in.

It's sensitive enough that the depth of each indent can be precisely tweaked. As a result, instead of data being stored via two-state binary code, it can be stored via a three-state ternary code in which the absence of an indent is a 0, a 0.3- to 1.0-nanometer-deep indent is a 1, and a 1.5- to 2.5-nanometer-deep indent is a 2.

This capability boosts the system's data density four-fold over binary coding.

What's more, the indents remain intact and readable until the polymer is heated to 140 ºC (284 ºF) for just 10 seconds, thus erasing it. The film can then be rewritten with new data. In tests performed so far, the material remained functional through four write-read-erase-rewrite cycles.

As an added bonus, the indent-writing process can be performed at room temperature, keeping the system's energy requirements relatively low.

"This research unlocks the potential for using simple, renewable polysulfides in probe-based mechanical data storage, offering a potential lower-energy, higher density and more sustainable alternative to current technologies," says Mann, who is a PhD student in Flinders' College of Science and Engineering.

Journal Reference: Probe-Based Mechanical Data Storage on Polymers Made by Inverse Vulcanization, Abigail K. Mann, Samuel J. Tonkin, Pankaj Sharma, et al., First published: 16 December 2024 https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202409438

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Dark energy does not exist, some scientists have claimed – which could help get rid of one of the universe's biggest mysteries.

For a century, scientists have thought that the universe was expanding in all directions. To make that assumption work, astronomers have used the concept of dark energy.

Dark energy cannot be seen directly and has never been proven. But scientists have suggested that it must exist because of the effect is seemingly exerts on the universe and as it is needed to help resolve some fundamental problems in our understanding of the cosmos.

Now, however, researchers from the University of Canterbury say that the universe is not actually expanding equally in all directions. Instead, it is growing in a "lumpier" way, in more varied directions.

[...] "Dark energy is a misidentification of variations in the kinetic energy of expansion, which is not uniform in a Universe as lumpy as the one we actually live in.

[Source]: The Independent

[Abstract]: Supernovae evidence for foundational change to cosmological models

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

This basement seismometer is relatively compact yet still sensitive enough to detect the low-frequency vibrations from distant earthquakes.

In September of 2023, I wrote in these pages about using a Raspberry Pi–based seismometer—a Raspberry Shake—to record earthquakes. But as time went by, I found the results disappointing. In retrospect, I realize that my creation was struggling to overcome a fundamental hurdle.

I live on the tectonically stable U.S. East Coast, so the only earthquakes I could hope to detect would be ones taking place far away. Unfortunately, the signals from distant quakes have relatively low vibrational frequencies, and the compact geophone sensor in a Raspberry Shake is meant for higher frequencies.

I had initially considered other sorts of DIY seismometers, and I was put off by how large and ungainly they were. But my disappointment with the Raspberry Shake drove me to construct a seismometer that represents a good compromise: It’s not so large (about 60 centimeters across), and its resonant frequency (about 0.2 Hertz) is low enough to make it better at sensing distant earthquakes.

My new design is for a horizontal-pendulum seismometer, which contains a pendulum that swings horizontally—or almost so, being inclined just a smidge. Think of a fence gate with its two hinges not quite aligned vertically. It has a stable position in the middle, but when it’s nudged, the restoring force is very weak, so the gate makes slow oscillations back and forth.

[...] Most DIY seismometers use a magnet and coil to sense motion as the moving magnet induces a current in the fixed coil. That’s a tricky proposition in a long-period seismometer, because the relative motion of the magnet is so slow that only very faint electrical signals are induced in the coil. One of the more sophisticated designs I saw online called for an LVDT (linear variable differential transformer), but such devices seem hard to come by. Instead, I adopted a strategy I hadn’t seen used in any other homebrewed seismometer: employing a Hall-effect magnetometer to sense position. All I needed was a small neodymium magnet attached to the boom and an inexpensive Hall-effect sensor board positioned beneath it. It worked just great.