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owl writes:

http://www.righto.com/2025/05/386-prefetch-circuitry-reverse-engineered.html

In 1985, Intel introduced the groundbreaking 386 processor, the first 32-bit processor in the x86 architecture. To improve performance, the 386 has a 16-byte instruction prefetch queue. The purpose of the prefetch queue is to fetch instructions from memory before they are needed, so the processor usually doesn't need to wait on memory while executing instructions. Instruction prefetching takes advantage of times when the processor is "thinking" and the memory bus would otherwise be unused.

In this article, I look at the 386's prefetch queue circuitry in detail. One interesting circuit is the incrementer, which adds 1 to a pointer to step through memory. This sounds easy enough, but the incrementer uses complicated circuitry for high performance. The prefetch queue uses a large network to shift bytes around so they are properly aligned. It also has a compact circuit to extend signed 8-bit and 16-bit numbers to 32 bits. There aren't any major discoveries in this post, but if you're interested in low-level circuits and dynamic logic, keep reading.

Original Submission

slon writes:

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-05-urine-powered-electrolysis-energy-efficient.html

Researchers have developed two unique energy-efficient and cost-effective systems that use urea found in urine and wastewater to generate hydrogen. The unique systems reveal pathways to economically generate "green" hydrogen, a sustainable and renewable energy source, and the potential to remediate nitrogenous waste in aquatic environments.

Typically, we generate hydrogen through the electrolysis of water where water is split into oxygen and hydrogen. It is a promising technology to help solve the global energy crisis, but the process is energy intensive, which renders it cost-prohibitive when compared to extracting hydrogen from fossil fuels (gray hydrogen), itself an undesirable process because of the carbon emissions it generates.

In contrast to water, an electrolysis system that generates hydrogen from urea uses significantly less energy.

Despite this advantage, existing urea-based systems face several limitations, such as the low conversion efficiency of urea to hydrogen and the generation of undesirable nitrogenous by-products (nitrates and nitrites) that are toxic and compete with hydrogen production, further reducing overall system efficiency.

Researchers from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Carbon Science and Innovation (COE-CSI) and the University of Adelaide developed two urea-based electrolysis systems that overcome these problems and can generate green hydrogen at a cost that they have calculated is comparable to or cheaper than the cost of producing gray hydrogen.

"While we haven't solved all the problems, should these systems be scaled up, our systems produce harmless nitrogen gas instead of the toxic nitrates and nitrites, and either system will use between 20-27% less electricity than water splitting systems," says COE-CSI Chief Investigator, Professor Yao Zheng.

The research for each system was published in separate papers, one in Angewandte Chemie International, the other in Nature Communications.

DannyB writes:

'Tone deaf': US tech company responsible for global IT outage to cut jobs and use AI

CrowdStrike CEO announces 5% of workforce to be slashed globally, citing artificial intelligence efficiencies created in the business

The cybersecurity company that became a household name after causing a massive global IT outage last year has announced it will cut 5% of its workforce in part due to "AI efficiency".

In a note to staff earlier this week, released in stock market filings in the US, CrowdStrike's chief executive, George Kurtz, announced that 500 positions, or 5% of its workforce, would be cut globally, citing AI efficiencies created in the business.

And a quote that almost could only have come from an AI or someone trained in corporate drone speak:

"We're operating in a market and technology inflection point, with AI reshaping every industry, accelerating threats, and evolving customer needs," he said.

Kurtz said AI "flattens our hiring curve, and helps us innovate from idea to product faster", adding it "drives efficiencies across both the front and back office".

Why the company is highly recognized and well known for its products.

In July last year, CrowdStrike pushed out a faulty update to its software designed to detect cybersecurity threats that brought down 8.5m Windows systems worldwide.

The outage caused chaos at airports, and took down computers in hospitals, TV networks, payment systems and people's personal computers.

They have to be seen to be doing something.

McEwan said companies were facing pressure to deliver on the big investments made in AI.

I feel safer already.

Original Submission

quietus writes:

Christopher (Chris) Alan Pelkey had two tours of duty in Iraq, and one in Afghanistan, behind him when, on a November Saturday afternoon, a car stopped behind him at a red light and started honking his horn. The veteran sergeant got out of his car and walked to the other car with his hands held up, as if he wanted to ask what the problem was. Then three shots rang out.

Now, three years later, his family has used generative AI to allow him to appear as a witness in his own murder case. It is worth watching the generated video here.

I have difficulty interpreting this. While this video appears eerily touching to me, it is not hard to foresee how these kind of videos could also be used to sway a judge or jury to much heavier penalties.

The video also reminded me of the Caleb character in the science fiction series WestWorld (seasons 3 and 4). Caleb is an army veteran who, for therapy purposes, is coupled to an AI version of his killed-in-action army buddy. Instead of having a liberating effect though, the feeling is more that his AI buddy holds him back, keeping him instead dependent on the service.

And then there's this video of a recent interview given by Mark Zuckerberg -- wearing Meta's Ray-Ban AI connected glasses, which he claimed were selling by the millions -- at Stripe Sessions, where he talks about how personal AI will be their focus, and what that actually will mean (at 14'), and, connected to that, the need to long-term invest in glasses as the ultimate devices for AI (24') -- seeing what you see, hearing what you hear.

The currently existing AI ethics rules/frameworks focus on data privacy and legal responsibility. Maybe we should start to think early, here, about potential sociological and psychological impacts.

Original Submission

Skype Shuts Down Today [May 5], Marking The End Of An Internet Era

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

When I first heard Skype was shutting down, I had one reaction: “Wait…people are still using it?” But jokes apart, hearing that the platform I once used for prank calls and late-night chats is officially retiring hit me with a surprising wave of nostalgia. If you’re a 90s kid like me, you’re probably feeling it too. Yes, today, May 5, 2025, is the day Skype takes its last breath.

Microsoft is moving Skype users over to Teams Free, which will serve as Skype’s successor. The good news is you won’t have to start from scratch. You can log into Microsoft Teams Free with your existing Skype credentials. Your Skype contacts and chat history will also automatically transfer to Teams. If you were still using Skype, you may have already seen an in-app notification prompting you to migrate your data before it’s too late.

[...] So here’s to you, Skype. Thanks for the memories, the dial tones, the pixelated video chats, and the surreal experience of calling a phone from a desktop PC with a dial-up connection. Even as you fade into the Microsoft Teams ecosystem, a little piece of internet history is dying off with you.

Skype is Officially Dead Today and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Skype is Officially Dead Today [May 5] and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead (Goodbye, Microsoft)

Today, or this morning in the US (this was one hour ago), some of the technical media will offer a timely and much-needed reminder; some will tell you to move to another Microsoft thing (checking the Web, some of the sites spew out promotional spam or chaff for Microsoft today; those sites are connected to Microsoft! "Microsoft mourners" psydroid calls them, "can't get more pathetic than this") and some will tell you to move to some other proprietary thing, i.e. move from one spyware to other spyware from another company, usually from the same country, i.e. the same masters. Few will have the guts/courage/"balls" to mention truly secure software because there's no "money" in selling confidentiality; sponsors, except phonies (false marketing), won't pay to seed such promotional (sponsored) articles. "Skype to go offline on May 5; Microsoft urges transition to Teams", said an LLM slop hub, failing to mention good and ethical alternatives. Maybe it does not quite "rhyme" in Microsoft-controlled LLMs.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

openSUSE removes Deepin from its repositories after long string of security issues and unauthorised security bypass

Thom Holwerda - 2025-05-07

The openSUSE team has decided to remove the Deepin Desktop Environment from openSUSE, after the project's packager for openSUSE was found to have added workaround specifically to bypass various security requirements openSUSE has in place for RPM packages.

"Recently we noticed a policy violation in the packaging of the Deepin desktop environment in openSUSE. To get around security review requirements, our Deepin community packager implemented a workaround which bypasses the regular RPM packaging mechanisms to install restricted assets.

As a result of this violation, and in the light of the difficult history we have with Deepin code reviews, we will be removing the Deepin Desktop packages from openSUSE distributions for the time being." -- Matthias Gerstner

Matthias Gerstner goes into great detail to lay out every single time the openSUSE team found massive, glaring security issues in Deepin, and the complete lack of adequate responses from the Deepin upstream team over the past 8 or so years. It's absolutely shocking to see how utterly lax the Deepin developers have been regarding the security of their desktop environment and its dependencies, and the openSUSE team could really only come to one harsh conclusion: Deepin has no security culture whatsoever, and it's extremely likely that every corner of the Deepin code is riddled with very serious security issues.

As such, despite the relatively large number of Deepin users on openSUSE, the team has decided to remove Deepin from openSUSE entirely, instead pointing users to a third-party repository if they desire to keep using Deepin. I think this is the best possible option in this situation, but it's not exactly ideal. After reading this entire saga, however, I don't think anyone who cares about security should be using Deepin.

Of course, I doubt this will be the end of the story. What about all the other Linux distributions out there? The security issues in Deepin itself are most likely also present in Debian, Fedora, and other distributions who have the Deepin Desktop Environment in their repositories, but what about the workaround to bypass packaging security practices? Does that exist elsewhere as well?

I think we're about to find out.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

Just how many penises are there on the Bayeux tapestry? The previous count was 93. Now they claim to have found another one. So is it 93 or 94? Most of them belong to horses. So it's a Oxford professor showdown in how many penises they can see in a tapestry. Nobs for History!

Garnett's results made headline news: he identified 88 penises belonging to horses and five human penises, for a grand total of 93.

Although Monk agrees with Garnett on the first 93, he believes he has spotted one more appendage dangling liberally down from the tunic of a soldier.

To George Garnett, it is clearly a scabbard—the long protective sheath that holds the sword or dagger. To Dr. Monk, on the other hand, it far more closely resembles a penis.

Scabbard or Penis?

The men's penises are included in the border of the embroidery, but there is no agreement about why they are there.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn05wyld45wo
https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/bayeux-tapestry-count/
https://www.thevikingherald.com/article/archeologists-dispute-penis-count-in-bayeux-tapestry/1172
https://allthatsinteresting.com/bayeux-tapestry-penises
  -- there is an image of the part of the tapestry in question here where you can see the penis/scabbard in question. To judge for yourself ...

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Curl project founder snaps over deluge of time-sucking AI slop bug reports

Curl project founder Daniel Stenberg is fed up with of the deluge of AI-generated "slop" bug reports and recently introduced a checkbox to screen low-effort submissions that are draining maintainers' time.

Stenberg said the amount of time it takes project maintainers to triage each AI-assisted vulnerability report made via HackerOne, only for them to be deemed invalid, is tantamount to a DDoS attack on the project.

[...] Citing a specific recent report that "pushed [him] over the limit," Stenberg said via LinkedIn: "That's it. I've had it. I'm putting my foot down on this craziness."

[...] Generative AI tools have allowed low-skilled individuals with an awareness of bug bounty programs to quickly file reports based on AI-generated content in the hope they can cash in on the rewards they offer.

[...] It was pitched as "a novel exploit leveraging stream dependency cycles in the HTTP/3 protocol stack was discovered, resulting in memory corruption and potential denial-of-service or remote code execution scenarios."

Ultimately, though, it was found to refer to nonexistent functions.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Sunscreen might have helped early humans outlive Neanderthals:

Sunscreen may have been essential to the survival of prehistoric humans at a time when Neanderthals were dying out, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan.

European Homo sapiens may have protected themselves from harmful solar radiation using ochre: a natural mineral, known for its rich yellow, red and brown hues, that can act as a sunscreen when applied to the skin.

This was at a time – between 41,000 and 39,000 years ago – during a period of unusual activity in Earth's magnetic field that left early humans at particular risk of Sun damage.

The magnetic field is generated by electrical currents from the Earth's core, creating an invisible halo that protects us against cosmic radiation and charged particles from the Sun.

The North and South poles act as the north and south of the magnetic field – but that's not fixed. It is possible for the poles to wander from their geographical positions and for the strength of the magnetic field to change.

The last time this happened was around 40,000 years ago, called the Laschamps excursion. Scientists at the University of Michigan recently developed models to estimate how this excursion would have changed the Earth's magnetic field, and calculate any knock-on effects.

"During the Laschamps event, the magnetic poles shifted away from true north," Dr Agnit Mukhopadhyay, lead author and U-M research affiliate in climate and space sciences and engineering, told BBC Science Focus.

"This movement, coupled with a notable weakening of the magnetic field, resulted in an expanded auroral zone and increased atmospheric penetration by energetic particles, such as solar energetic particles and cosmic radiation."

The scientists estimated that the Earth's magnetic field would have reduced to approximately 10 per cent of its current strength, and that the North Pole would have drooped down near the Earth's equator, during the Laschamps excursion.

As a result, auroras – spectacular light shows that are usually only visible near the poles – would have been visible all over Europe and into northern Africa.

Their calculations also show that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals would have been much more vulnerable to the harmful effects of ultraviolet light.

upstart writes:

Scientists transformed energy-storing white fat cells into calorie-burning 'beige' fat. Once implanted, How Hungry Fat Cells Could Someday Starve Cancer to Death:

Liposuction and plastic surgery aren't often mentioned in the same breath as cancer.

But they are the inspiration for a new approach to treating cancer that uses engineered fat cells to deprive tumors of nutrition.

Researchers at UC San Francisco used the gene editing technology CRISPR to turn ordinary white fat cells into "beige" fat cells, which voraciously consume calories to make heat.

Then, they implanted them near tumors the way plastic surgeons inject fat from one part of the body to plump up another. The fat cells scarfed up all the nutrients, starving most of the tumor cells to death. The approach even worked when the fat cells were implanted in mice far from the sites of their tumors.

Relying on common procedures like this could speed its use as a new form of cellular therapy.

"We already routinely remove fat cells with liposuction and put them back via plastic surgery," said Nadav Ahituv, PhD, director of the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics and professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. He is the senior author of the paper, which appears Feb. 4 in Nature Biotechnology. "These fat cells can be easily manipulated in the lab and safely placed back into the body, making them an attractive platform for cellular therapy, including for cancer."

Ahituv and his post-doc at the time, Hai Nguyen, PhD, were aware of studies that showed exposure to cold could suppress cancer in mice. One experiment even showed it could help a patient with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Scientists concluded that the cancer cells were starving because the cold was activating brown fat cells, which use nutrients to produce heat.

But cold therapy isn't a viable option for cancer patients with fragile health. So, Ahituv and Nguyen turned to the idea of using beige fat, wagering that they could engineer it to burn enough calories, even in the absence of cold, to deprive tumors of the fuel they needed to grow.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Kuwait has launched a sweeping crackdown on cryptocurrency mining, blaming the activity for worsening a power crisis that has led to rolling blackouts across the country as temperatures soar and air conditioning demand surges. The Ministry of Interior announced last week that it had begun a "wide-ranging" security operation targeting homes suspected of hosting crypto mining rigs, which officials described as illegal.

"These mining operations represent an unlawful misuse of electrical power … and may lead to outages impacting residential, commercial, and service areas, posing a direct risk to public safety," the ministry said.

The government's campaign has focused on the Al-Wafrah region in southern Kuwait. The Ministry of Electricity reported that around 100 homes were being used for mining, with some consuming up to 20 times the electricity of a typical household. Following the raids, energy consumption in Al-Wafrah dropped by 55 percent, according to a government statement.

Electricity in Kuwait is heavily subsidized and among the cheapest in the world, making the country an attractive destination for crypto miners seeking to maximize profits.

Kuwait's power grid is under strain from multiple sources, including rapid population growth, urban expansion, rising temperatures, and deferred maintenance at power plants. Electricity is heavily subsidized and among the cheapest in the world, making the country an attractive destination for crypto miners seeking to maximize profits.

However, officials warn that the unchecked power consumption from mining rigs is pushing the grid beyond capacity, exacerbating the risk of blackouts as summer heat intensifies.

While cryptocurrency trading has been banned in Kuwait since 2023, mining has existed in a legal gray area, with no specific legislation until recent government action.

[...] Despite the government's assertion that mining is a "major" factor in the power crisis, a source at the electricity ministry told Reuters it is not the only cause. Researchers at the University of Cambridge estimated that Kuwait accounted for just 0.05 percent of global bitcoin mining in 2022. Still, Alex de Vries-Gao, founder of Digiconomist, told Reuters, "It only takes a very small share of the total bitcoin mining network to have significant impact on the relatively small total electricity consumption of Kuwait."

Original Submission

Gaaark writes:

For years, some astronomers have believed there might be an extra planet in our solar system that may be so distant and dim that even the best telescopes have missed it. A new study looks into decades-old infrared maps of the sky where they noticed a slow moving, very faint speck in two different maps taken 24 years apart.

[...] Far beyond Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy leftovers from the Solar System's early days. Several of those objects, including the dwarf planet Sedna, follow orbits that cluster in one sector of space instead of being spread evenly around the Sun. Computer simulations in 2016 showed that a hidden planet five-to-10 times Earth's mass could shepherd those orbits into the observed pattern. Other explanations exist, but none fit the data as neatly.

[...] Two dots separated by two decades do not make an orbit. [...] A handful of detections spread over months would trace a curved path, proving the object orbits the Sun and revealing how massive and distant it really is.

Even if this candidate fades on closer inspection, the search is poised to speed up. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, due to begin full operations in Chile later this year, will photograph the whole southern sky every few nights and is expected to discover tens of thousands of new Kuiper Belt objects. If Planet Nine (with apologies to Pluto) lurks out there, Rubin's nightly movies of the heavens should either pin it down or finally rule it out.

https://www.zmescience.com/space/astronomers-just-found-a-faint-speck-that-might-be-the-missing-ninth-planet/

Submitter writes: "I'd name the planet Vulcan. Any other ideas?"

Journal Reference: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.17288

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Washington will soon become the eighth state in the country to pass Right to Repair legislation. While U.S. consumer protection is generally an historic hot mess right now, the “right to repair” movement — making it easier and cheaper to repair the things you own — continues to make steady inroads thanks to widespread, bipartisan annoyance at giant companies trying to monopolize repair.

Technically Washington state is poised to pass two new right to repair bills.

The Right to Repair bill for wheelchairs and mobility devices (SB 5680) also passed both chambers with unanimous votes. Getting both bills passed required a lot of hard work from activists across consumer rights, disability, and environmental sectors:

Ohio could potentially be the ninth state to pass such a law, again showcasing how the issue has broad, bipartisan support. Thanks in part due to the monopolistic behavior of agricultural giants like John Deere.

One problem, as noted recently, is that none of the states that have passed such laws have bothered to enforce them. Companies in most states haven’t really been asked to do anything different. In some states, like New York, the bills were watered down after passage to be far less useful.

That’s going to need to change for the reform movement to have real-world impact; but with states facing unprecedented legal threats across the board during Trump 2.0, it’s not hard to think that meaningful consumer protection — and picking bold new fights with corporate giants — will be among the first things on the cutting room floor for cash-strapped states.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The best proofs are works of art. They’re not just rigorous; they’re elegant, creative and beautiful. This makes them feel like a distinctly human activity — our way of making sense of the world, of sharpening our minds, of testing the limits of thought itself.

But proofs are also inherently rational. And so it was only natural that when researchers started developing artificial intelligence in the mid-1950s, they hoped to automate theorem proving: to design computer programs capable of generating proofs of their own. They had some success. One of the earliest AI programs could output proofs of dozens of statements in mathematical logic. Other programs followed, coming up with ways to prove statements in geometry, calculus and other areas.

[...] They have not, as yet, built systems that can generate the proofs from start to finish, but that may be changing. In 2024, Google DeepMind announced that they had developed an AI system that scored a silver medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad, a prestigious proof-based exam for high school students. OpenAI’s more generalized “large language model,” ChatGPT, has made significant headway on reproducing proofs and solving challenging problems, as have smaller-scale bespoke systems. “It’s stunning how much they’re improving,” said Andrew Granville, a mathematician at the University of Montreal who until recently doubted claims that this technology might soon have a real impact on theorem proving. “They absolutely blow apart where I thought the limitations were. The cat’s out of the bag.”

Researchers predict they’ll be able to start outsourcing more tedious sections of proofs to AI within the next few years. They’re mixed on whether AI will ever be able to prove their most important conjectures entirely: Some are willing to entertain the notion, while others think there are insurmountable technological barriers. But it’s no longer entirely out of the question that the more creative aspects of the mathematical enterprise might one day be automated.

Andrew Granville worries that outsourcing more rigorous aspects of mathematics to AI could adversely affect researchers’ ability to think. “I feel that my own understanding is not from the bigger picture,” he said. “It’s from getting your hands dirty.”

Even so, most mathematicians at the moment “have their heads buried firmly in the sand,” Granville said. They’re ignoring the latest developments, preferring to spend their time and energy on their usual jobs.

[...] He and a relatively small group of other mathematicians are now starting to examine what an AI-powered mathematical future might look like, and how it will change what they value. In such a future, instead of spending most of their time proving theorems, mathematicians will play the role of critic, translator, conductor, experimentalist. Mathematics might draw closer to laboratory sciences, or even to the arts and humanities.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The US Department of Justice has confirmed its intention to pursue a breakup of Google's advertising technology business, escalating the stakes in a high-profile antitrust battle. The DOJ is seeking a court order to force Google to divest key parts of its ad tech operations, including its ad exchange and publisher ad server, as part of efforts to restore competition in the digital advertising market.

This confirmation came during a hearing where US District Judge Leonie Brinkema set a trial date for September 22 to determine the appropriate remedies following last month's ruling that Google illegally monopolized critical segments of online advertising technology.

The judge's earlier decision found that Google unlawfully maintained monopoly power by tying its publisher ad server – software that helps websites manage and sell ad space – with its ad exchange, where advertisers bid for that space.

Judge Brinkema emphasized that this conduct harmed publishers, competitors, and consumers by restricting competition and locking publishers into Google's ecosystem. However, the court did not find Google to hold a monopoly over advertiser-facing tools, narrowing the scope of the ruling.

The DOJ's proposed remedy is a phased approach beginning with Google providing real-time access to bidding data from its ad exchange to rival publisher ad servers. Ultimately, the government wants Google to sell off its ad exchange and publisher ad server businesses, a process DOJ attorney Julia Tarver Wood acknowledged could take several years. "Leaving Google with 90 percent of publishers dependent on them is, frankly, too dangerous," Wood said.

Google vehemently opposes the breakup plan, arguing that the DOJ's demands exceed the court's findings and lack a legal basis. Karen Dunn, Google's lead attorney, described the forced divestiture as "very likely completely impossible" and warned it would cause "serious complications," including the loss of important privacy and security protections.