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upstart writes:

Advanced transmission technologies could sidestep permitting challenges and clear the bottleneck holding up hundreds of gigawatts' worth of renewable-energy projects:

US electricity consumption is rising faster than it has in decades, thanks in part to the boom in data center development, the resurgence in manufacturing, and the increasing popularity of electric vehicles.

Accommodating that growth will require building wind turbines, solar farms, and other power plants faster than we ever have before—and expanding the network of wires needed to connect those facilities to the grid.

But one major problem is that it's expensive and slow to secure permits for new transmission lines and build them across the country. This challenge has created one of the biggest obstacles to getting more electricity generation online, reducing investment in new power plants and stranding others in years-long "interconnection queues" while they wait to join the grid.

Fortunately, there are some shortcuts that could expand the capacity of the existing system without requiring completely new infrastructure: a suite of hardware and software tools known as advanced transmission technologies (ATTs), which can increase both the capacity and the efficiency of the power sector.

ATTs have the potential to radically reduce timelines for grid upgrades, avoid tricky permitting issues, and yield billions in annual savings for US consumers. They could help us quickly bring online a significant portion of the nearly 2,600 gigawatts of backlogged generation and storage projects awaiting pathways to connect to the electric grid.

The opportunity to leverage advanced transmission technologies to update the way we deliver and consume electricity in America is as close to a $20 bill sitting on the sidewalk as policymakers may ever encounter. Promoting the development and use of these technologies should be a top priority for politicians in Washington, DC, as well as electricity market regulators around the country.

[...] ATTs generally fall into four categories: dynamic line ratings, which combine local weather forecasts and measurements on or near the transmission line to safely increase their capacity when conditions allow; high-performance conductors, which are advanced wires that use carbon fiber, composite cores, or superconducting materials to carry more electricity than traditional steel-core conductors; topology optimization, which uses software to model fluctuating conditions across the grid and identify the most efficient routes to distribute electricity from moment to moment; and advanced power flow control devices, which redistribute electricity to lines with available capacity.

[...] So why are we not seeing an explosion in ATT investment and deployment in the US? Because despite their potential to unlock 21st-century technology, the 20th-century structure of the nation's electricity markets discourages adoption of these solutions.

upstart writes:

Humans have a third set of teeth: Scientists discover medicine to grow them:

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw called the newly developed drug capable of regrowing human teeth an "amazing discovery" that could make dental implants obsolete. Imagine a world in which losing a tooth does not require the use of dentures or implants. Scientists in Japan have unearthed an important first in regenerative medicine: a medication that could enable humans develop a third set of teeth. This study, which focusses on a single gene responsible for tooth growth, has begun clinical testing and could be accessible for general use by 2030. If successful, this finding has the potential to improve dental treatment and provide hope to millions of people who are missing teeth.A team of Japanese researchers, lead by Dr. Katsu Takahashi of the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, has been studying the genetic principles of tooth development. Their findings build on a 2021 study published in Scientific Reports, which found that reducing the USAG-1 gene in mice resulted in the creation of new teeth.The USAG-1 gene produces a protein that suppresses tooth development. Researchers discovered that employing an antibody that disables this protein allowed mice to regenerate teeth. Encouraged by these findings, the team has shifted its focus to humans, assuming that comparable genetic systems exist within us.Handout images from the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital show before (top) and after images of the regrowth of teeth in a ferret (centre) and mice (R and L).Humans already have a hidden third set of teeth

One of the most intriguing aspects of this discovery is that humans already have the potential to grow a third set of teeth. "The idea of growing new teeth is every dentist's dream," Dr Takahashi told Mainichi. "We're hoping to see a time when tooth regrowth medicine is a third choice alongside dentures and implants."While most people develop only two sets of teeth—baby teeth and permanent teeth—some individuals with a condition called hyperdontia naturally grow extra teeth. This suggests that the body already has the biological framework for an additional set. Scientists believe that activating these latent tooth buds using gene-targeting therapy could stimulate controlled regrowth in the general population.How this discovery could revolutionise dentistry

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-attention-limitations-idea-thieves-workplaces.html

It happens all the time. You're in a meeting, brainstorming with your team to uncover the next big idea. As the discussion unfolds, one of the standout ideas is yours—or so you thought. Suddenly, you realize a colleague is getting the credit.

You've just encountered an idea thief.

Despite the high reputational cost of being caught, idea theft is surprisingly common. A 2015 poll of 1,000 British workers revealed nearly half had their ideas stolen by colleagues, while 1 in 5 admitted to stealing an idea themselves.

Why is idea theft so common? And how do so many idea thieves get away with it? Zoe Kinias, professor of organizational behavior and sustainability at Ivey Business School, tackled these questions with her colleagues in a new study, "Social inattentional blindness to idea stealing in meetings," published in Scientific Reports.

Today's managers and executives are juggling more than ever, balancing diverse tasks in dynamic and information-rich workplaces. It's hard to stay fully informed and keep a finger on the pulse of everything that matters, experts say.

"As humans, our senses are constantly working together to create a vivid and detailed perception of the world," said Kinias. "Yet, our brains process only a tiny fraction of the information around us, leaving much unnoticed. This phenomenon, known as inattentional blindness, highlights just how selective our attention truly is."

Inattentional blindness offers profound opportunities for understanding complex social dynamics. But how do you study something most people fail to notice? Enter Theodore C. Masters-Waage, then a Ph.D. student at Singapore Management University, who approached Kinias—an expert in empowering workers—with a bold idea: leveraging virtual reality (VR) to explore social attention in the workplace.

"While VR has long been a powerful tool in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, its use in organizational behavior research is still in its early days," Kinias said. "For this study, VR was essential. It allowed us to create a hyper-realistic scenario with complete control, enabling us to examine how subtle social changes influence where people focus, or fail to focus, their attention."

In their experiment, 154 participants used VR headsets to enter a virtual meeting, where they watched four team members brainstorm ideas. Their task was straightforward: Identify the best idea. But there was a twist—midway through the meeting, one person blatantly stole another's idea and claimed it as their own.

The results were surprising: While nearly all participants—more than 99%—could pinpoint the best idea, only 30% could recall who originally shared it. The study revealed that the person who swooped in and claimed the idea as their own reaped the rewards. In fact, 42 percent of participants mistakenly credited the idea thief.

Journal Reference: Masters-Waage, T.C., Kinias, Z., Argueta-Rivera, J. et al. Social inattentional blindness to idea stealing in meetings. Sci Rep 14, 8060 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-56905-6

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Exclusive: General Fusion fires up its newest steampunk fusion reactor:

General Fusion announced on Tuesday that it had successfully created plasma, a superheated fourth state of matter required for fusion, inside a prototype reactor. The milestone marks the beginning of a 93-week quest to prove that the outfit's steampunk approach to fusion power remains a viable contender.

The reactor, called Lawson Machine 26 (LM26), is General Fusion's latest iteration in a string of devices that have tested various parts of its unique approach. The company assembled LM26 in just 16 months, and it hopes to hit "breakeven" sometime in 2026.

General Fusion is one of the oldest fusion companies still operating. Founded in 2002, it has raised $440 million to date, according to PitchBook. Over that time, it has seen competitors rise and fall, and, like the fusion industry writ large, it has failed to meet breakeven promises, including one made over 20 years ago.

In fusion power, there are two points at which a reaction is said to breakeven. The one most people think of is called commercial breakeven. That's when a fusion reaction produces more power than the entire facility consumes, allowing the power plant to put electricity on the grid. No one has reached this milestone yet.

The other is known as scientific breakeven. In this case, the fusion reaction needs to produce at least as much power as was delivered directly to the fuel. Scientific breakeven only looks within the boundaries of the experimental system, ignoring the rest of the facility. Still, it's an important milestone for any fusion attempt. So far, only the U.S. Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility has reached it.

General Fusion's approach to fusion power differs significantly from other startups. Called magnetized target fusion (MTF), it's similar in some regards to inertial confinement, the technique the National Ignition Facility used in late 2022 to prove that fusion reactions could generate more power than was required to start them.

But where the National Ignition Facility uses lasers to compress a fuel pellet, General Fusion's MTF reactor design relies on steam-driven pistons. Inside the chamber, deuterium-tritium fuel is zapped with a bit of electricity to generate a magnetic field, which helps keep the plasma contained. The pistons then drive a liquid lithium wall inward on the plasma, compressing it.

owl writes:

https://apnews.com/article/conveyor-dune-oil-sand-texas-hydraulic-fracturing-1e98b8438de8dfa687118599ec2ff7f4

It's longer than the width of Rhode Island, snakes across the oil fields of the southwest U.S. and crawls at 10 mph – too slow for a truck and too long for a train.

It's a new sight: the longest conveyer belt in America.

Atlas Energy Solutions, a Texas-based oil field company, has installed a 42-mile long (67 kilometers) conveyer belt to transport millions of tons of sand for hydraulic fracturing. The belt the company named "The Dune Express" runs from tiny Kermit, Texas, and across state borders into Lea County, New Mexico. Tall and lanky with lids that resemble solar modules, the steel structure could almost be mistaken for a roller coaster.

In remote West Texas, there are few people to marvel at the unusual machine in Kermit, a city with a population of less than 6,000, where the sand is typically hauled by tractor-trailers. During fracking, liquid is pumped into the ground at a high pressure to create holes, or fractures, that release oil. The sand helps keep the holes open as water, oil and gas flow through it.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Chipmaking tool biz ASML plans to open a new facility in China this year amid rising trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

The supplier of advanced lithography equipment disclosed in its latest Annual Report that it aims to inaugurate a Beijing-based Reuse & Repair Center in 2025, recognizing the importance of China as one of its largest markets, alongside Taiwan.

This is a facility for reconditioning and reusing materials from systems that have been returned from the field, so the unit won't manufacture from scratch.

The decision comes after US authorities extended the list of restrictions on suppliers of chip manufacturing tech in December to include metrology – the precise measurement and validation of semiconductor materials using e-beams, X-rays and more – and software. Meanwhile further fab locations, mainly in China, were added to the export blacklist.

In retaliation, Beijing kicked off an investigation in January to decide if US subsidies to chipmakers are harming its semiconductor companies and amount to unreasonable trade practices.

This was days before President Donald Trump's administration - which itself isn't keen on the CHIPs Act - took over in Washington and introduced a further hardening of its stance on China, hiking tariffs on goods imported from the country by an extra ten percent.

ASML is currently the world's only supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography equipment, used in the making of advanced chips with smaller features to cram in more circuitry. Export of these products to China was blocked by the Dutch government several years ago.

Fresh reports from China now suggest local researchers may have found a way to produce light at a 13.5 nm wavelength – the same in ASML's EUV kit – and are working to produce homegrown tech to sidestep the export ban.

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-psychological-booster-shots-resistance-misinformation.html

A new study has found that targeted psychological interventions can significantly enhance long-term resistance to misinformation. Dubbed "psychological booster shots," these interventions improve memory retention and help individuals recognize and resist misleading information more effectively over time.

The study, published in Nature Communications, explores how different approaches, including text-based messages, videos, and online games, can inoculate people against misinformation.

The researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Potsdam and King's College London conducted five large-scale experiments with over 11,000 participants to examine the durability of these interventions and identify ways to strengthen their effects.

The research team tested three types of misinformation-prevention methods:

• Text-based interventions, where participants read pre-emptive messages explaining common misinformation tactics.

• Video-based interventions, short educational clips that expose the emotional manipulation techniques used in misleading content.

• Gamified interventions, an interactive game that teaches people to spot misinformation tactics by having them create their own (fictional) fake news stories in a safe, controlled environment.

Participants were then exposed to misinformation and evaluated on their ability to detect and resist it over time. The study found that while all three interventions were effective, their effects diminished quickly over time, prompting questions about their long-term impact. However, providing memory-enhancing "booster" interventions, such as a follow-up reminder or reinforcement message, helped maintain misinformation resistance for a significantly longer period.

The study found that the longevity of misinformation resistance was primarily driven by how well participants remembered the original intervention. Follow-up reminders or memory-enhancing exercises were also found to significantly extend the effectiveness of the initial intervention, much like medical booster vaccines.

By contrast, the researchers found that boosters that did not focus on memory, but rather focused on increasing participants' motivation to defend themselves by reminding people of the looming threat of misinformation, did not have any measurable benefits for the longevity of the effects.

Journal Reference: Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Simons, J.S. et al. Psychological booster shots targeting memory increase long-term resistance against misinformation. Nat Commun 16, 2062 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57205-x

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-warns-users-to-update-firefox-before-certificate-expires/

  By Bill Toulas

        March 12, 2025 11:01 AM

Mozilla is warning Firefox users to update their browsers to the latest version to avoid facing disruption and security risks caused by the upcoming expiration of one of the company's root certificates.

The Mozilla certificate is set to expire this Friday, March 14, 2025, and was used to sign content, including add-ons for various Mozilla projects and Firefox itself.

Users need to update their browsers to Firefox 128 (released in July 2024) or later and ESR 115.13 or later for 'Extended Support Release' (ESR) users.

"On 14 March a root certificate (the resource used to prove an add-on was approved by Mozilla) will expire, meaning Firefox users on versions older than 128 (or ESR 115) will not be able to use their add-ons," warns a Mozilla blog post.

"We want developers to be aware of this in case some of your users are on older versions of Firefox that may be impacted."

A Mozilla support document explains that failing to update Firefox could expose users to significant security risks and practical issues, which, according to Mozilla, include:

        Malicious add-ons can compromise user data or privacy by bypassing security protections.
        Untrusted certificates may allow users to visit fraudulent or insecure websites without warning.
        Compromised password alerts may stop working, leaving users unaware of potential account breaches.

Users are recommended to check and confirm they're running Firefox version 128 and later via Menu > Help > About Firefox. This action should also automatically trigger a check for updates.

It is noted that the problem impacts Firefox on all platforms, including Windows, Android, Linux, and macOS, except for iOS, where there's an independent root certificate management system.

Mozilla says that users relying on older versions of Firefox may continue using their browsers after the expiration of the certificate if they accept the security risks, but the software's performance and functionality may be severely impacted.

"We strongly advise you to update to the latest version to avoid these issues and ensure your browser stays secure and efficient," advises Mozilla.

Mozilla has also set up a support thread for users who encounter problems or need help updating their Firefox browsers.

Users of Firefox-based browsers like Tor, LibreWolf, and Waterfox should also ensure they're running a version based on Firefox 128 and later.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Woolly mice are cute and impressive – but they won't bring back mammoths or save endangered species:

US company Colossal Biosciences has announced the creation of a "woolly mouse" — a laboratory mouse with a series of genetic modifications that lead to a woolly coat. The company claims this is the first step toward "de-extincting" the woolly mammoth.

The successful genetic modification of a laboratory mouse is a testament to the progress science has made in understanding gene function, developmental biology and genome editing. But does a woolly mouse really teach us anything about the woolly mammoth?

Woolly mammoths were cold-adapted members of the elephant family, which disappeared from mainland Siberia at the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 years ago. The last surviving population, on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean, went extinct about 4,000 years ago.

The house mouse (Mus musculus) is a far more familiar creature, which most of us know as a kitchen pest. It is also one of the most studied organisms in biology and medical research. We know more about this laboratory mouse than perhaps any other mammal besides humans.

Colossal details its new research in a pre-print paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. According to the paper, the researchers disrupted the normal function of seven different genes in laboratory mice via gene editing.

Six of these genes were targeted because a large body of existing research on the mouse model had already demonstrated their roles in hair-related traits, such as coat colour, texture and thickness.

The modifications in a seventh gene — FABP2 — was based on evidence from the woolly mammoth genome. The gene is involved in the transport of fats in the body.

Woolly mammoths had a slightly shorter version of the gene, which the researchers believe may have contributed to its adaptation to life in cold climates. However, the "woolly mice" with the mammoth-style variant of FABP2 did not show significant differences in body mass compared to regular lab mice.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Rust is alive and well in the Linux kernel and is expected to translate into noticeable benefits shortly, though its integration with the largely C-oriented codebase still looks uneasy.

In a hopeful coda to the recent maintainer drama that raised questions about the willingness of Linux maintainers to accommodate Rust code, Josh Aas, who oversees the Internet Security Research Group's Prossimo memory-safety project, late last week hailed Miguel Ojeda's work to advance memory safety in the kernel without mentioning the programming language schism.

"While our goal was never to rewrite the entire kernel in Rust, we are glad to see growing acceptance of Rust's benefits in various subsystems," said Aas. "Today, multiple companies have full time engineers dedicated to working on Rust in the Linux kernel."

Since at least September last year, when Microsoft software engineer Wedson Almeida Filho left the Rust for Linux project citing "non-technical nonsense," it's been clear that acceptance had limits. Tensions between Rust and C kernel contributors flared again in January over concerns about the challenges of maintaining a mixed language codebase – likened to cancer by one maintainer. Urged to intervene, Linux creator Linux Torvalds did so, making his annoyance known to both parties and prompting their departures as Linux maintainers.

Amid all that, Ojeda, who helms the Rust for Linux project, published a "Rust kernel policy" as a way to clarify that those contributing Rust code to the Linux kernel should stay the course and to underscore that Linux leaders still support the initiative.

According to Aas, the presence of Rust code is increasing in various Linux subsystems, including: PHY drivers, the null block driver, the DRM panic screen QR code generator, the Android binder driver, the Apple AGX GPU driver, the NVMe driver, and the Nova GPU driver.

"We expect that one of them will be merged into the mainline kernel in the next 12-18 months," said Aas, pointing to remarks from Linux lieutenant Greg Kroah-Hartman last November suggesting that the availability of Rust driver bindings represented a tipping point that would allow most driver subsystems to start getting Rust drivers.

Once this happens, said Aas, "the goal of the effort will start to be realized: Products and services running Linux with Rust drivers will be more secure, and that means the people using them will be more secure, too."

[...] "The good news is that with the rare exception of code that must be written in assembly for performance and/or security reasons (eg, cryptographic routines), we know how to get rid of memory safety vulnerabilities entirely: write code in languages that don't allow for those kinds of mistakes. It's a more or less solved research problem, and as such we don't need to suffer from this kind of thing any more. It can be relegated to the past like smallpox, we just have to do the work."

Between evocations of cancer and smallpox, it sounds like the Linux and Rust communities still have some issues to work out.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers have criticised Microsoft's new Majorana 1 quantum computer, saying it has made claims about the way it works that aren't fully backed up by scientific evidence

Last month Microsoft announced, with fanfare, that it had created a new kind of matter and used it to make a quantum computer architecture that could lead to machines “capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems in years, not decades”.

But since then, the tech giant has increasingly come under fire from researchers who say it has done nothing of the sort. “My impression is that the response of the expert physics community has been overwhelmingly negative. Privately, people are just outraged,” says Sergey Frolov at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Microsoft’s claim rests on elusive and exotic quasiparticles called Majorana zero modes (MZMs). These can theoretically be used to create a topological qubit, a new type of quantum bit – the building blocks of information processing within a quantum computer. Because of their inherent properties, such qubits could excel at reducing errors, addressing a big shortcoming of all quantum computers in use today.

MZM’s have been theorised to emerge from the collective behaviour of electrons at the edges of thin superconducting wires. Microsoft’s new Majorana 1 chip contains several such wires and, according to the firm, enough MZMs to make eight topological qubits. A Microsoft spokesperson told New Scientist that the chip was “a significant breakthrough for us and the industry”.

Yet researchers say Microsoft hasn’t provided enough evidence to support these claims. Alongside its press announcement, the company published a paper in the journal Nature that it said confirmed its results. “The Nature paper marks peer-reviewed confirmation that Microsoft has not only been able to create Majorana particles, which help protect quantum information from random disturbance, but can also reliably measure that information from them,” said a Microsoft press release.

But editors at Nature made it explicitly clear that this statement is incorrect. A publicly available report on the peer-review process states: “The editorial team wishes to point out that the results in this manuscript do not represent evidence for the presence of Majorana zero modes in the reported devices.”

In other words, Microsoft and Nature are directly contradicting each other. “The press releases have said something totally different [than the Nature paper],” says Henry Legg at the University of St Andrews in the UK.

[...] This isn’t the only unorthodox aspect of Microsoft’s paper. Legg points out that two of the four peer reviewers initially gave rather critical and negative feedback which, in his experience, would typically disqualify a paper from publication in the prestigious journal. The peer-review report shows that by the last round of editing, one reviewer still disagreed with publication of the paper, while the other three signed off on it. A spokesperson for Nature told New Scientist that the ultimate decision to publish came down to the potential they saw for experiments with future MZMs in Microsoft’s device, rather than necessarily what it had achieved so far.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

DOGE axes CISA 'red team' staffers amid ongoing federal cuts:

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fired more than a hundred employees working for the U.S. government's cybersecurity agency CISA, including "red team" staffers, two people affected by the layoffs told TechCrunch.

The people, who asked not to be named, said affected employees were axed immediately when their network access was revoked with no prior warning.

The layoffs, which happened in late February and early March, are the latest round of staff cuts to hit the federal cybersecurity agency since the start of the Trump administration.

CISA spokesperson Tess Hyre declined to comment on the latest round of job cuts affecting the agency and wouldn't say how many employees had been affected. Hyre told TechCrunch that CISA's red team "remains operational" but said the agency is "reviewing all contracts to ensure that they align with the priorities of the new administration."

One of the people affected told TechCrunch that CISA red team employees, who simulate real-world attacks to identify security weaknesses in networks before attackers do, were affected by the DOGE-enforced cuts.

Another person affected by the layoffs, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of government retaliation, told TechCrunch that laid-off employees also include staffers who worked for CISA's Cyber Incident Response Team (CIRT), which is responsible for penetration testing and vulnerability management of networks belonging to U.S. federal government departments and agencies.

[...] This is by our count the third known round of job cuts to affect CISA employees since January 20. More than 130 CISA employees were cut by DOGE earlier in February, according to reports, and several CISA employees working on election security were placed on leave in January.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Where will the 'Blood Moon' total lunar eclipse be visible in March 2025?A total lunar eclipse on March 13-14, 2025, will be visible across Earth's night side:

A total lunar eclipse will occur on March 13-14, 2025 — the first on Earth since 2022 — but only the night side of the planet will get to see it. During this global event, which will occur at the same time across the world, the lunar surface will turn reddish for 65 minutes — a phenomenon often dubbed a "blood moon."

Although the point of greatest eclipse will be in the Pacific Ocean, North America and South America will get the best views. Some areas of Europe will get a slight view of the moonset, and East Asia will glimpse the spectacle at moonrise.

[...] The total lunar eclipse on March 13-14, 2025, will last just over six hours, beginning with a penumbral eclipse — when the moon enters Earth's fuzzy outer shadow and loses brightness — from 11:57 p.m. to 1:09 a.m. EDT (03:57 to 05:09 UTC). There will then be a partial phase — when the moon begins to enter Earth's darker umbral shadow and starts to turn red — from 1:09 a.m. to 2:26 a.m. (05:09 to 06:26 UTC). Totality — when the whole moon is within Earth's umbra — will last 65 minutes, from 2:26 a.m. to 3:31 a.m. EDT (06:26 to 07:31 UTC). The spectacle then reverses, with totality followed by a partial phase from 3:31 to 4:47 a.m. (07:31 to 08:47 UTC) and a penumbral phase from 4:47 to 6 a.m. EDT (08:47 to 10:00 UTC).

The entire eclipse will be visible — and at its best — across most of the Americas, with glimpses for Europe, Africa and East Asia. Here's a breakdown of the eclipse's visibility by region:

• North America: All phases of the eclipse will be visible across all 50 U.S. states (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada and Mexico.
• South America: Most of the continent will witness the entire event, with totality visible from Brazil, Argentina and Chile starting after midnight on March 14.
• Europe: Western Europe — including Spain, France and the U.K. — will see totality as the moon sets early on the morning of March 14.
• Africa: Extreme Western Africa — including Cape Verde, Morocco and Senegal — will see totality as the moon sets early on the morning of March 14.
• Oceania: New Zealanders will see the eclipse in its later stages, with the moon already in partial shadow as it rises on March 14.

[...] Europe gets a poor view of this total lunar eclipse. In London, the penumbral phase will be viewable from 3:47 a.m. GMT on March 14 and the partial phase from 5:09 a.m. GMT. However, the full moon will set at 6:22 a.m. GMT, just before totality begins, so the only spectacle will be a barely distinguishable line of Earth's shadow across the moon as it sinks into the western horizon. Locations farther west get a slightly better view. From Cardiff, Wales, totality will begin at 6:26 a.m. GMT, 10 minutes before the local moonset, while in Dublin, the local moonset isn't until 6:48 a.m. GMT.

Arguably, the only locations in Europe to see this eclipse in an impressive way are Iceland and Greenland. From Reykjavik, Iceland, totality occurs between 06:26 and 7:31 a.m. GMT, and the local moonset isn't until 7:58 a.m.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The Hacker News has an interesting article on a PHP-CGI RCE flaw that is being exploited in the wild.

Threat actors of unknown provenance have been attributed to a malicious campaign predominantly targeting organizations in Japan since January 2025.

"The attacker has exploited the vulnerability CVE-2024-4577, a remote code execution (RCE) flaw in the PHP-CGI implementation of PHP on Windows, to gain initial access to victim machines," Cisco Talos researcher Chetan Raghuprasad said in a technical report published Thursday.

"The attacker utilizes plugins of the publicly available Cobalt Strike kit 'TaoWu' for-post exploitation activities."

Targets of the malicious activity encompass companies across technology, telecommunications, entertainment, education, and e-commerce sectors in Japan.

[...] "We assess with moderate confidence that the attacker's motive extends beyond just credential harvesting, based on our observation of other post-exploitation activities, such as establishing persistence, elevating to SYSTEM level privilege, and potential access to adversarial frameworks, indicating the likelihood of future attacks," Raghuprasad said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Disney is reportedly cutting staff across ABC News Group and its entertainment network as media layoffs continue:

The popular political poll news and analysis website, 538, is being shut down as part of a broader shuttering effort across ABC News and Disney Entertainment, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday night.

Disney is reportedly cutting 200 positions across ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, including shutting down the data-driven 538.

[...] FiveThirtyEight, which is named after the number of electors in the US electoral college, has become a popular website for predictions, analysis and watching the polls in the months and days leading up to election night.

But the website's workforce had been slowly dwindling for a couple of years. The 15 employees still with the outlet make up less than half of the team from 2023, when it had about 35 employees.

The decline began when 538's founder, Nate Silver, left the company two years ago when his Disney contract expired.

[...] The broader media landscape has been hit with mass layoffs seemingly nonstop for months. Last month, MSNBC announced a massive shakeup at the network that included letting go of Joy Reid and her production team, as well as no longer using the Spanish-language network Telemundo.

Original Submission