SoylentNews

upstart writes:

NASA early galaxy discovery shines light on 'Cosmic Dark Ages':

A new discovery by NASA's flagship James Webb Space Telescope has pushed forward the confirmed end date of the so-called "Cosmic Dark Ages" by some 270 million years.

In their study, an international team of researchers led by astrophysicist Joris Witstok of the University of Cambridge in England, analyzed the distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1-LA.

It is so far away that the light from it takes some 13.4 billion years to reach us, meaning we see it as it was just 330 million years after the big bang.

And from JADES-GS-z13-1-LA the team detected a signal of "reionization," the process through which the first stars made the universe once again transparent to light.

"We report the discovery of one of the most distant galaxies known to date," Witstok told Newsweek. "Unlike any other similarly distant galaxy, it shows a very clear, telltale signature that implies the galaxy contains a remarkably powerful source of extreme ultraviolet radiation.

"This also suggests it has made an unexpectedly early start to cosmic reionization, the process where neutral gas in between early galaxies is heated into a plasma by energetic radiation from stars and black holes forming in the first galaxies."

In the wake of the big bang, the universe gradually cooled down from its original, ultra-hot state, eventually allowing—around the universe's 380,000th birthday—free protons and electrons to combine into a fog mainly made up of neutral hydrogen atoms.

Because of this, even when the first stars formed, some 13.7 billion years ago, their light was quickly extinguished by the gas cloud. It is because of this (and the few other sources of light at the time) that this period is called the Cosmic Dark Ages.

Over time, sufficiently energetic ultraviolet radiation from the first stars and galaxies increasingly split the neutral hydrogen atoms back into electrons and protons—that is, "reionizing" them.

"The emergence of these first stars marks the end of the "Dark Ages" in cosmic history, a period characterized by the absence of discrete sources of light," NASA explains on its website.

canopic jug writes:

The cryptographer who blogs under the pseudonym Soatok has written an in depth discussion of the practical limitations of End-to-End Encryption on his blog. For some things, such as planning military strikes, Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIFs) are the right tool for the job, while smartphone apps of any stripe are not.

In the aftermath of this glorious fuck-up by the Trump administration, I have observed many poorly informed hot takes. Some of these were funny, but others are dangerous: they were trying to promote technologies that claim to be Signal alternatives, as if this whole story was somehow a failure of Signal’s security posture.

Not to put too fine a point on it: Switching to Threema or PGP would not have made a lick of difference. Switching to Matrix would have only helped if you consider “unable to decrypt message” helping.

To understand why, you need a clear understanding of what end-to-end encryption is, what it does, what it protects against, and what it doesn’t protect againt.

His prediction is that the White House will lash out at both The Atlantic and at Signal to distract from the catastrophic procedural failure which the administration demonstrated through this incident. He also observed that adding a journalist to the chat group would provide a good distraction from possibly compromised smartphones, devices which are notoriously insecure even when the stakes are much lower.

Previously:
(2025) Apple Pulls End-to-End Encryption From UK Rather Than Provide Government a Backdoor
(2024) U.S. Officials Urge Americans to Use Encrypted Apps Amid Unprecedented Cyberattack
(2024) Here's the Paper No One Read Before Declaring the Demise of Modern Cryptography
(2024) How I Got a Truly Anonymous Signal Account
... and more.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

xAI buys X; deal values social network at $33 billion, $11B less than Musk paid:

Elon Musk today said he has merged X and xAI in a deal that values the social network formerly known as Twitter at $33 billion. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022.

xAI acquired X "in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt)," Musk wrote on X today.

X and xAI were already collaborating, as xAI's Grok is trained on X posts. Grok is made available to X users, with paying subscribers getting higher usage limits and more features.

"xAI and X's futures are intertwined," Musk wrote. "Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI's advanced AI capability and expertise with X's massive reach."

Musk said the combined company will "build a platform that doesn't just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress."

xAI and X are privately held. "Some of the deal's specifics were not yet clear, such as whether investors approved the transaction or how investors may be compensated," Reuters wrote.

See also:
 • Elon Musk's xAI Buys Elon Musk's X
 • Musk's xAI buys his social media platform X

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Three senators have warned President Donald Trump that his handling of the TikTok ban puts Apple and other tech companies at risk of liability, potentially costing firms hundreds of billions of dollars.

The ban on TikTok has largely been ignored by the current U.S. Administration, after President Trump ordered for the ban to be extended until April 5. With that delayed deadline looming, lawmakers are concerned about what could happen next and how it could impact other companies.

In a letter to the President on Monday, Senators Edward Markey (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) insist that there could be considerable costs associated with the way that the delay was instigated.

Rather than triggering a 90-day extension of the deadline as detailed in the original law to ban TikTok if it's not divested, Trump instead issued an executive order. One instructing the Department of Justice not to enforce the law for 75 days.

That extension allowed Apple to return the app to the App Store, and Google to do the same with the Google Play Store.

While the order stops TikTok and connected companies from being prosecuted for the period, it's not the same as legalizing the app. Making TikTok available is still against the law, it's just the Justice Department won't act on it.

Deeming this workaround "unlawful," the letter adds that it "raised serious questions about TikTok's future, as the law imposes liability on companies for facilitating TikTok's continued operations in the United States."

This liability is valued at up to $850 billion in the letter. This could be levied against Apple and Google as distributors of the app in the App Store and Google Play Store, and Oracle for providing cloud services.

[...] "There is a better solution: Work with Congress," the letter writers urge.

Introduced legislation, such as the "Extend the TikTok Deadline Act," would push the deadline back to October 16, 2025, but Republicans in the Senate blocked the bill. Trump is told that, to get more time to complete the deal, he should instruct Senate Republicans to pass the legislation.

[...] There's also the matter of whether Trump will listen to the Democratic senators in the first place. It could well end up with a last-minute executive order attempting to extend the deadline once again.

In any case, there's a very real possibility that Apple, Google, Oracle, and anyone else deemed liable for keeping TikTok available could face a hefty fine in a few years, if the following administration is unfavorable.

Original Submission

oregonjohn writes:

We are entering a new phase of developing Soylent News. I'm John and I am the president of the nonprofit board of Soylent Phoenix, which manages Soylent News.

Soon we'll be asking you to review, suggest, and comment on our proposals for a variety of organizational and management changes that we hope will build our community and that will make the site more useful and friendly without changing the intent and basic design.

More coming soon so keep an eye out for updates. Your input is essential.

https://soylentnews.org/faq.pl

John

Original Submission

upstart writes:

23andMe customers struggle to delete their data:

The computer systems of 23andMe have been struggling to cope with the sheer volume of customers racing to delete their data, after the DNA-testing company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy protection.

The firm says it has now resolved the IT problems caused by increased traffic on its website at the start of the week.

But users have reported ongoing difficulties as they scrambled to protect their genetic information, health histories, and ancestry details.

A number of those who have successfully removed their data have also told the BBC of their ongoing anxieties about 23andMe's future.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday in order to sell itself through a court-supervised process.

"If 23andMe is going to be sold, then my data can be sold, from what I hear," said 52 year old Danielle Landriscina of Maryland. Ms Landriscina signed up for 23andMe in 2018 to connect with members of her father's side of the family.

"What's stopping something like a health insurance company from buying my data and then using it to determine if I get health insurance or how much I have to pay for it?," added Ms Landriscina, who works in tech sales.

For now, 23andMe "will not voluntarily share your Personal Information" with insurance companies, the company's current privacy statement states.

But the future is less certain. 23andMe's proposed May 14 auction of its assets could include the genetic data of its millions of customers.

upstart writes:

New Utah law makes app stores responsible for age verification:

Meta, X, and Snap are celebrating a new Utah law that will require Apple and Google to take responsibility for verifying users' ages on their app stores and obtain parental consent for minors.

The tech giants have been battling to determine which party should be responsible for age verification on the app stores. Companies like Meta believe the app stores themselves should verify users' ages because these entities host and distribute the apps. The app stores, however, argue that companies making the apps should bear the responsibility as they're the ones offering the product to end users.

Utah isn't the only state considering some such legislation around age verification; it is the first to enact a law of this kind. The App Store Accountability Act, as the new law is called, was passed by Utah's legislature earlier this month, then headed to Gov. Spencer Cox's desk for a signature to make it official.

Ahead of the law's passing, Apple announced a new set of child safety initiatives for its App Store, which include an age-checking system for apps. Its implementation would allow app developers to use a new Declared Age Range API to access age range information provided by the parent. This information doesn't provide the app developer with the minor's exact age or birthdate, but allows them to customize their app experiences appropriately based on the age range provided.

Apple's system requires the app developers to do the work of requesting the age range before an app is used, rather than the App Store verifying the age at the time of download.

Not surprisingly, social media companies are thrilled the new Utah law would require app stores to verify users' ages before apps can be downloaded onto their devices.

In a joint statement, Meta, X and Snap praised Utah's move, saying:

"We applaud Governor Cox and the State of Utah for being the first in the nation to empower parents and users with greater control over teen app downloads, and urge other states to consider this groundbreaking approach. Parents want a one-stop-shop to oversee and approve the many apps their teens want to download, and Utah has led the way in centralizing it within a device's app store. This approach spares users from repeatedly submitting personal information to countless individual apps and online services. We are committed to safeguarding parents and teens, and look forward to seeing more states adopt this model."

In total, 16 U.S. states including California and Texas have introduced their own versions of app store legislation focused on age verification and youth safety.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

DragonOS is a Lubuntu-based desktop distribution which is focused on software defined radio (SDR). The distribution provides a pre-installed suite of the most powerful and accessible open source SDR software. DragonOS has verified support for a range of inexpensive and powerful SDR hardware, including RTL-SDR, HackRF One, LimeSDR, BladeRF, and others. - quote source

Some reviews, features, and tutorials are located here!

[ Ed's Note: How many in our community use or have experimented with SDR? I use it for tracking aircraft movements and I know others who live near me who download satellite imagery.]

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Developer Dave Grauer has a long blog post about the broligarchs of Silicon Valley where he asks how they became the face of "technology" and examines how that came to be and what can be done to correct the error.

To be sure, the big software companies were often stupid and greedy, but they seemed relatively harmless to me during that time because progress was so fast, everybody was racing just to keep up. Nobody could capture the market. It was too quick and too slippery to hold.

[...] It would be easy to wrap up in that nostalgia like a warm and comfortable blanket and say that nothing will ever be as good ever again.

So it might surprise you to learn that's not how I feel at all. In fact, if you ask me, right now is the most amazing time to be in computing.

I'm serious. RIGHT NOW is, in a number of ways, far better than when I got started.

Here's the facts:

He provides a lot of examples of both what has happened and ways, both big and small, out of the situation.

Previously:
(2018) FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
(2016) Where Are the Other 10 Million Panama Papers?
(2014) Inside the Mind of an Oligarch

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A protein found in tardigrades — tiny animals less than a millimeter long — can protect mice from radiation damage.

Most cancer patients undergo radiation therapy as part of their treatment, often leading to devastatingly painful side effects. But there may be hope for mitigating some of that damage. Mice with cells engineered to produce a protective protein unique to tardigrades experienced reduced radiation damage, researchers report February 26 in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Radiation attacks the DNA of tumor cells, preventing tumor growth and eventually killing it. But it also damages the DNA of healthy tissue near the tumors, destroying those cells, too. People undergoing treatment for head and neck cancer can develop damaged throats or mouths, making eating and drinking extremely painful. Prostate cancer patients may experience rectal bleeding.

“I treat cancer patients with radiation, and I see a lot of side effects from treatment itself — side effects that can be really debilitating and severe,” says James Byrne, a radiation oncologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

These unintended consequences can lead people to stop treatment before their tumors are under control. While at MIT, Byrne and biomedical researcher Giovanni Traverso had “started to explore possibilities of creating radiation protection,” Byrne says, when they realized they could use a little help from tardigrades. 

Tardigrades may be as tiny as dust mites, but they are tough little creatures — even capable of tolerating extreme conditions like outer space. Nicknamed “water bears,” they can survive radiation doses about 1,000 times the lethal dose to humans.

Tardigrades produce a key damage-suppressor protein known as Dsup, which binds to their DNA to protect them from radiation. Byrne and Traverso wanted to somehow arm mice with this protein so they would be better equipped to deal with radiation.

The duo and their colleagues used lipid nanoparticles — tiny particles composed of fat molecules that can carry chemicals — to deliver messenger RNA, or mRNA, with instructions for creating the Dsup protein directly into mouse cheek and rectum cells. Byrne and his colleagues discovered that when exposed to radiation, the DNA of mice producing Dsup proteins showed fewer signs of radiation-induced damage compared to the DNA of mice that couldn’t make Dsup.

“It highlights some of the value of research into areas where one might not immediately see a clinical outcome, like studies of DNA damage in tardigrades,” says Zachary Morris, an oncologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved with the study. “You can take findings from more basic or fundamental science and pair them with new delivery mechanisms and suddenly be in a situation where you have a very impactful finding with immediate relevance to human health.”

The researchers now plan to carefully evaluate the safety of this system before testing it on humans. Since tardigrade mRNA is foreign to humans, they want to ensure that injecting it doesn’t lead to adverse reactions. Instead of directly injecting cells as they did with mice, they also want to develop patient-friendly ways to deliver the mRNA to human cells, such as using hydrogels.

“We were hoping to use what nature has really perfected as [this] optimized radiation protection, to potentially help patient care in the long term,” Byrne says.

A.R. Kirtane et al. Radioprotection of healthy tissue via nanoparticle-delivered mRNA encoding for a damage-suppressor protein found in tardigrades. Nature Biomedical Engineering. Published online February 26, 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41551-025-01360-5.

L. Li et al. Multi-omics landscape and molecular basis of radiation tolerance in a tardigrade. Science. Vol. 386, October 25, 2024, eadl0799. doi: 10.1126/science.adl0799.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A very pretty and detailed Tor Network Status (Onion link) page, listing node by node and type for each.

This is an unofficial current list.

For official lists and more info, visit:

https://consensus-health.torproject.org/
https://consensus-health.torproject.org/consensus-health.html

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-26/jpmorgan-says-quantum-experiment-generated-truly-random-numbers [Probably paywalled]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08737-1 [Accessible at time of editing--JR]

Over at JP Morgan they have now created certified randomness using a trapped-ion quantum processor. Compared to old-computer with algorithms and the usual "randomness" that we all know. Still somewhat unclear what they are going to use this genuine randomness for but some kind of financial or encryption application seems likely.

Abstract

Although quantum computers can perform a wide range of practically important tasks beyond the abilities of classical computers1,2, realizing this potential remains a challenge. An example is to use an untrusted remote device to generate random bits that can be certified to contain a certain amount of entropy3. Certified randomness has many applications but is impossible to achieve solely by classical computation. Here we demonstrate the generation of certifiably random bits using the 56-qubit Quantinuum H2-1 trapped-ion quantum computer accessed over the Internet. Our protocol leverages the classical hardness of recent random circuit sampling demonstrations4,5: a client generates quantum 'challenge' circuits using a small randomness seed, sends them to an untrusted quantum server to execute and verifies the results of the server. We analyse the security of our protocol against a restricted class of realistic near-term adversaries. Using classical verification with measured combined sustained performance of 1.1 × 10¹⁸ floating-point operations per second across multiple supercomputers, we certify 71,313 bits of entropy under this restricted adversary and additional assumptions. Our results demonstrate a step towards the practical applicability of present-day quantum computers.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-nitisinone-human-blood-lethal-mosquitoes.html

In the fight against malaria, controlling the mosquito population is crucial. Several methods are currently used to reduce mosquito numbers and malaria risk. One of these includes the antiparasitic medication ivermectin. When mosquitoes ingest blood containing ivermectin, it shortens the insect's lifespan and helps decrease the spread of malaria.

However, ivermectin has its own issues. Not only is it environmentally toxic, but also, when it is overused to treat people and animals with worm and parasite infections, resistance to ivermectin becomes a concern.

Now a study in Science Translational Medicine has identified another medication with the potential to suppress mosquito populations to help control malaria. Researchers found when patients take the drug nitisinone, their blood becomes deadly to mosquitoes.

"One way to stop the spread of diseases transmitted by insects is to make the blood of animals and humans toxic to these blood-feeding insects," said Lee R. Haines, associate research professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, honorary fellow at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and co-lead author of the study.

"Our findings suggest that using nitisinone could be a promising new complementary tool for controlling insect-borne diseases like malaria."

Typically, nitisinone is a medication for individuals with rare inherited diseases—such as alkaptonuria and tyrosinemia type 1—whose bodies struggle to metabolize the amino acid tyrosine. The medication works by blocking the enzyme 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD), preventing the build-up of harmful disease byproducts in the human body.

When mosquitoes drink blood that contains nitisinone, the drug also blocks this crucial HPPD enzyme in their bodies. This prevents the mosquitoes from properly digesting the blood, causing them to quickly die.

The researchers analyzed the nitisinone dosing concentrations needed for killing mosquitoes, and how those results would stack up against ivermectin, the gold standard ectoparasitic drug (medication that specifically targets ectoparasites such as mosquitoes).

"We thought that if we wanted to go down this route, nitisinone had to perform better than ivermectin," said Álvaro Acosta Serrano, professor of biological sciences at Notre Dame and co-corresponding author of the study.

"Indeed, nitisinone performance was fantastic; it has a much longer half-life in human blood than ivermectin, which means its mosquitocidal activity remains circulating in the human body for much longer. This is critical when applied in the field for safety and economical reasons."

More information: Lee Haines et al, Nitisinone's mosquitocidal properties hold promise for malaria control, Science Translational Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adr4827.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Record-breaking Explosion by Black Hole Spotted - NASA:

The biggest explosion seen in the universe has been found. This record-breaking, gargantuan eruption came from a black hole in a distant galaxy cluster hundreds of millions of light years away.

"In some ways, this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain," said Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and lead author of the study. "A key difference is that you could fit fifteen Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster's hot gas."

Astronomers made this discovery using X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, and radio data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India.

The unrivaled outburst was detected in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, which is about 390 million light years from Earth. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, containing thousands of individual galaxies, dark matter, and hot gas.

In the center of the Ophiuchus cluster, there is a large galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole. Researchers think that the source of the gigantic eruption is this black hole.

Although black holes are famous for pulling material toward them, they often expel prodigious amounts of material and energy. This happens when matter falling toward the black hole is redirected into jets, or beams, that blast outward into space and slam into any surrounding material.

Chandra observations reported in 2016 first revealed hints of the giant explosion in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Norbert Werner and colleagues reported the discovery of an unusual curved edge in the Chandra image of the cluster. They considered whether this represented part of the wall of a cavity in the hot gas created by jets from the supermassive black hole. However, they discounted this possibility, in part because a huge amount of energy would have been required for the black hole to create a cavity this large.

upstart writes:

Open source devs are fighting AI crawlers with cleverness and vengeance:

AI web-crawling bots are the cockroaches of the internet, many software developers believe. Some devs have started fighting back in ingenuous, often humorous ways.

While any website might be targeted by bad crawler behavior — sometimes taking down the site — open source developers are "disproportionately" impacted, writes Niccolò Venerandi, developer of a Linux desktop known as Plasma and owner of the blog LibreNews.

By their nature, sites hosting free and open source (FOSS) projects share more of their infrastructure publicly, and they also tend to have fewer resources than commercial products.

The issue is that many AI bots don't honor the Robots Exclusion Protocol robot.txt file, the tool that tells bots what not to crawl, originally created for search engine bots.

In a "cry for help" blog post in January, FOSS developer Xe Iaso described how AmazonBot relentlessly pounded on a Git server website to the point of causing DDoS outages. Git servers host FOSS projects so that anyone who wants can download the code or contribute to it.

But this bot ignored Iaso's robot.txt, hid behind other IP addresses, and pretended to be other users, Iaso said.

"It's futile to block AI crawler bots because they lie, change their user agent, use residential IP addresses as proxies, and more," Iaso lamented.

"They will scrape your site until it falls over, and then they will scrape it some more. They will click every link on every link on every link, viewing the same pages over and over and over and over. Some of them will even click on the same link multiple times in the same second," the developer wrote in the post.

So Iaso fought back with cleverness, building a tool called Anubis.

Anubis is a reverse proxy proof-of-work check that must be passed before requests are allowed to hit a Git server. It blocks bots but lets through browsers operated by humans.

The funny part: Anubis is the name of a god in Egyptian mythology who leads the dead to judgment.