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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

While CTO officially stands for Chief Technology Officer, the standard jokes are that it’s either Chief Talking Officer or Chief Travel Officer. I embraced all of those roles, especially the travel part when my territory covered India, New Zealand, China and everything in between. And while I definitely relished having a job that required me to keep developing my expertise in a wide range of technical fields, I also really enjoyed the chance to keep working on my communications skills, whether that was through talking or writing.

In my last year at VMware (when travel was curtailed due to COVID) I put a lot of energy into developing (online) presentations, including one on the art of giving presentations. You can find that talk on Peertube – it is in PechaKucha format, which means 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, which I find a great source of creative inspiration. You can probably watch it in less time than it takes to read this article.

The longer I worked in technology, the more I came to believe that communications, both oral and written, can be a key differentiator in a technical career. Probably the first time I realized this was when writing my PhD thesis. Engineers as a group are notoriously averse to writing, but I came to see the satisfaction to be had in clearly communicating your ideas on paper. For one thing, by the time I was in the last year of my program, I was pretty happy to be producing something as tangible as a thesis. I had written a lot less software in my course than I’d expected, a result of Edinburgh Computer Science being more of a theory place than one encouraging system building from its students. So watching my ideas grow on the page into something the size of a book was oddly satisfying.

I think the reason I was not as averse to writing as many engineers had a lot to do with the way I was educated in Australia. High school English was a “must-pass” subject if you wanted to go on to university, and I found it much more challenging than my maths and science classes. Not wanting to take chances, I worked disproportionately hard on English in my last year of high school, surprising both myself and my teachers with the highest grade of my life in the final exam that mattered most.

Somewhat to my chagrin, the undergraduate engineering degree in those days did not allow any courses to be taken outside of the Engineering department, but there was a mandated “English for Engineers” course, taught by one of the engineering lecturers. (I think the course had a different official name, something like “Engineering Communications”.) I can only remember two things about that course: one is that we read “Voss” by Nobel-prize-winner Patrick White, which was challenging but enjoyable. So they weren’t treating us as complete dummies. And the second was that we had to make a formal presentation in front of the class, which I found both stressful and educational. (My high school debating experience helped a bit here.) While I might have enjoyed an actual English Literature class more, this one was much better than the course name implied.

I continued to make the occasional presentations through my PhD program and into my early career, but a pivotal experience was watching David Clark speak twice at SIGCOMM 1990, at which he won the SIGCOMM award and also presented the paper, "Architectural considerations for a new generation of protocols.” His presentation of the latter was so engaging that I remember thinking “that is how you get people to listen to your ideas.” (That paper’s ideas continue to influence my thinking today.) As a young researcher at Bellcore at the time, I was surrounded by people who had creative ideas, but I had never seen someone get the audience excited about their work the way Clark had done. I resolved to get better at making technical presentations.

At the same time, I was working on my “accidental smartNIC” project as part of the Aurora gigabit testbed. There came a point where I realized that the system was complex enough that I needed to write some sort of design document–hardly a revolutionary idea in industry, but somewhat uncommon in the research group that I worked in. My first audience for this document was me, because I realized I couldn’t keep all the details in my head any more. Later on it would enable me to involve others in the project both as subsystem designers and programmers of the system.

quietus writes:

"The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with. Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies, and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable. Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

@realdonaldtrump, Truth Social, May 23.

President Trump announced a 50% tariff on EU exports into the United States.

the Trump administration considers EU food and product standards protectionist and wants the bloc to unilaterally drop tariffs. The EU has proposed that both sides scrap tariffs on all industrial and some agricultural products.

Brussels has also offered to help tackle Chinese overcapacity in sectors such as steel and cars, and to discuss restrictions on exporting technology to Beijing.

But it has refused to discuss scrapping national digital taxes or VAT, key US demands, or weakening EU regulation of US tech companies.

Trump's post on Friday contrasted with his administration's moves to defuse trade tensions with Beijing this month. The US has also recently sealed a trade deal with the UK.

(Source: Financial Times, May 23, Trump warns of 50% tariff on EU imports from next month)

Stock up on bourbon while you still can, mateys.

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upstart writes:

You are glowing – no, really:

You, along with all living things, produce subtle, ethereal, semi-visible light that glows until you die, according to a recent study.

You would be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that this spooky luminescence is evidence that auras exist, or something similar.

But Dr Daniel Oblak, physicist at the University of Calgary and last author of the study, told BBC Science Focus that, while auras are a metaphysical, spiritual, unscientific idea, this light is not. Instead, it's called ultraweak photon emission (UPE) and is a natural product of your metabolism.

"I normally point out that UPE is a result of a biochemical process and in that sense is related to what happens in a glow-stick, which no one suspects of having an aura," he said.

"UPE is so weak that it is not visible to the human eye and completely overwhelmed by other sources of light, unless you are in a completely dark room."

That's not to say that shutting your curtains and turning off your lights will allow you to see your own glow. This light is between 1,000 and 1,000,000 times dimmer than the human eye can perceive.

UPE is produced when chemicals in your cells create unstable molecules known as reactive oxygen species (ROS), basically byproducts of your body's metabolism.

When ROS levels rise, they cause other molecules to become 'excited', meaning they carry excess energy. It's this energy that causes light to be emitted.

A key driver of this effect is oxidative stress – a form of cellular wear and tear caused by factors like ageing and illness. The more oxidative stress the body experiences, the more ROS it produces – and the more light it emits.

"Hence, when an organism ceases living, it stops metabolising and thus, the ultraweak photon emission ends," he said.

To test UPE, Calgary scientists measured UPE produced by immobilised and dead mice, as well as scratched leaves.

Using specialist cameras, they observed much more UPE being emitted by the living mice, compared to their dead bodies. Meanwhile, the leaves gave off much more light where they had been damaged, compared to unscratched areas.

That's because they were experiencing more oxidative stress in scratched regions. But the dead mice did not glow, because their bodies weren't metabolising anymore.

Journal Reference: DOI: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c03546

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fliptop writes:

AI chatbot that pulled him into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide:

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment—at least for now. The developers behind Character.AI are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company's chatbots pushed a teenage boy to kill himself.

The judge's order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.

The suit was filed by a mother from Florida, Megan Garcia, who alleges that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III fell victim to a Character.AI chatbot that pulled him into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide.

[...] The suit against Character Technologies, the company behind Character.AI, also names individual developers and Google as defendants. It has drawn the attention of legal experts and AI watchers in the United States and beyond, as the technology rapidly reshapes workplaces, marketplaces, and relationships despite what experts warn are potentially existential risks.

[...] The lawsuit alleges that in the final months of his life, Setzer became increasingly isolated from reality as he engaged in sexualized conversations with the bot, which was patterned after a fictional character from the television show "Game of Thrones." In his final moments, the bot told Setzer it loved him and urged the teen to "come home to me as soon as possible," according to screenshots of the exchanges. Moments after receiving the message, Setzer shot himself, according to legal filings.

Related: Chatbot 'Encouraged Teen to Kill Parents Over Screen Time Limit'

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A new examination of Apple partner TSMC's Arizona facility shines a spotlight on how the U.S. bet on domestic chipmaking is colliding with labor shortages, cost overruns, and global dependencies.

Just outside Phoenix, a sleek, high-security facility is taking shape. Known as Fab 21, the site is operated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and will soon be one of the most advanced chipmaking facilities in the world.

The microscopic transistors produced here will power Apple devices, artificial intelligence systems and critical infrastructure, representing a significant shift of advanced technology manufacturing to American soil.

TSMC currently makes about 90% of the world's most advanced semiconductors, nearly all of them in Taiwan. That long-standing reliance is now being reexamined amid global supply disruptions and rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific.

[...] TSMC replicated much of its Taiwan production environment in Arizona, but the complexity of the process means the US still relies heavily on foreign equipment, materials and expertise.

[...] Officially, Taiwan's government supports TSMC's global expansion. Privately, there is concern. Taiwan's dominance in semiconductors, sometimes called the "Silicon Shield," is seen as critical leverage in deterring Chinese aggression.

Moving high-end production overseas may reduce that leverage and undermine the island's geopolitical relevance.

Some in Taipei have warned against letting the US or other allies "hollow out" Taiwan's tech advantage. Others view diversification as necessary insurance against supply chain shocks or military threats.

Mozilla fixes Firefox zero-days exploited at hacking contest

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-fixes-firefox-zero-days-exploited-at-hacking-contest/

By Bill Toulas == May 19, 2025

Mozilla released emergency security updates to address two Firefox zero-day vulnerabilities demonstrated in the recent Pwn2Own Berlin 2025 hacking competition.

The fixes, which include the Firefox on Desktop and Android and two Extended Support Releases (ESR), came mere hours after the conclusion of Pwn2Own, on Saturday, where the second vulnerability was demonstrated.

The first flaw, tracked under CVE-2025-4918, is an out-of-bounds read/write issue in the JavaScript engine when resolving Promise objects.

The flaw was demonstrated during Day 2 of the competition by Palo Alto Networks security researchers Edouard Bochin and Tao Yan, who earned $50,000 for their discovery.

The second flaw, CVE-2025-4919, allows attackers to perform out-of-bounds reads/writes on a JavaScript object by confusing array index sizes.

It was discovered by security researcher Manfred Paul, who gained unauthorized access within the program's renderer, winning $50,000 in the process.

Although the flaws constitute significant risks for Firefox, with Mozilla rating them "critical" in its bulletins, the software vendor underlined that neither researchers could perform a sandbox escape, citing targeted strengthening on that front.

"Unlike prior years, neither participating group was able to escape our sandbox this year," explained Firefox in the announcement.

"We have verbal confirmation that this is attributed to the recent architectural improvements to our Firefox sandbox which have neutered a wide range of such attacks."

Although there are no indications that the two flaws have been exploited outside of Pwn2Own, their public demonstration could fuel real attacks soon.

To mitigate this risk, Mozilla engaged a diverse "task force" from across the globe that worked feverishly to develop fixes for the demonstrated exploits, test them, and push out security updates as soon as possible.

Firefox users are recommended to upgrade to version 138.0.4, ESR 128.10.1, or ESR 115.23.1.

Pwn2Own Berlin 2025 concluded on Saturday with over a million USD in payouts and the STAR Labs SG team winning the 'Master or Pwn' title.

Two Firefox zero-days were also demonstrated last year at Pwn2Own Vancouver 2024, with Mozilla fixing them the next day.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In the hours just before dawn, NASA's Perseverance rover adjusted its gaze toward the heavens and saw a brilliant point of light. 

That bright sparkle wasn't a morning star beaming from distant space, but something more mysterious — Mars' shiest moon, Deimos. The rover used one of its navigation cameras at a long-exposure setting to capture the new image. 

"It's definitely a mood [sic moon?]," NASA said of the rare photo in a post on X. 

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, but scientists know relatively little about them — especially Deimos, the smallest of the two. Both moons are "blacker than coal and look like battered potatoes," according to the European Space Agency, which has studied the pair with its Mars Express spacecraft.  

Right now researchers aren't sure where the moons came from, and it remains a source of scientific debate. Some believe they could have been asteroids captured in orbit around the Red Planet. Others think they could be chunks of Mars itself, blown out by a giant collision billions of years ago. 

Nearly all of the images of Deimos, a city-sized moon at roughly 7.5 miles wide, have been taken just like this new one, from the Martian surface by rovers. Because the moon is tidally locked — meaning one full spin matches the amount of time it takes to complete its orbit of Mars — only one of its sides has been seen on the Red Planet. 

NASA's Perseverance rover was on its way to a new exploration site on the rim of Jezero crater, dubbed Witch Hazel Hill, when it conducted the Deimos photoshoot. Though Perseverance took the image on March 1, NASA just released it to the public. 

Because the rover took the image in the dark with an almost one-minute exposure time, the scene appears hazy. Many of the white dots in the sky likely aren't distant stars but digital noise. Some others could be cosmic rays, space particles traveling close to the speed of light, according to NASA. Two of the brighter specks are Regulus and Algieba, stars about 78 and 130 light-years away from the solar system respectively, in the constellation Leo. 

Though little is known about Deimos, another European spacecraft recently captured unprecedented views of the moon's far side. The Hera mission, which will study the asteroid NASA intentionally crashed into three years ago, flew by the Red Planet on March 12, just 11 days after the rover looked up. 

Hera's flyby wasn't a detour but a necessary maneuver to put the spacecraft on the right trajectory toward its ultimate asteroid destination. Swinging within 625 miles of Deimos, Hera used Martian gravity to adjust its course. 

Queen cofounder Brian May, who is an astrophysicist when he isn't playing guitar, is among the team that processed the Deimos images. 

"You feel like you're there, and you see the whole scene in front of you," he said during a news conference in March. "The science that we get from this is colossal, and I think we're all like children."

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slon writes:

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-powerful-laser.html

The ZEUS laser facility at the University of Michigan has roughly doubled the peak power of any other laser in the U.S. with its first official experiment at 2 petawatts (2 quadrillion watts).

At more than 100 times the global electricity power output, this huge power lasts only for the brief duration of its laser pulse—just 25 quintillionths of a second long.

"This milestone marks the beginning of experiments that move into unexplored territory for American high field science," said Karl Krushelnick, director of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, which houses ZEUS.

Research at ZEUS will have applications in medicine, national security, materials science and astrophysics, in addition to plasma science and quantum physics. ZEUS is a user facility—meaning that research teams from all over the country and internationally can submit experiment proposals that go through an independent selection process.

"One of the great things about ZEUS is it's not just one big laser hammer, but you can split the light into multiple beams," said Franklin Dollar, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, whose team is running the first user experiment at 2 petawatts.

"Having a national resource like this, which awards time to users whose experimental concepts are most promising for advancing scientific priorities, is really bringing high-intensity laser science back to the U.S."

Dollar's team and the ZEUS team aim to produce electron beams with energies equivalent to those made in particle accelerators that are hundreds of meters in length. This would be 5–10 times higher energy than any electron beams previously produced at the ZEUS facility.

"We aim to reach higher electron energies using two separate laser beams—one to form a guiding channel and the other to accelerate electrons through it," said Anatoly Maksimchuk, U-M research scientist in electrical and computer engineering, who leads the development of the experimental areas.

They hope to do this in part with a redesigned target. They lengthened the cell that holds the gas that the laser pulse rams into, helium in this experiment. This interaction produces plasma, ripping electrons off the atoms so that the gas becomes a soup of free electrons and positively charged ions. Those electrons get accelerated behind the laser pulse-like wakesurfers close behind a speedboat—a phenomenon called wakefield acceleration.

Light moves slower through plasma, enabling the electrons to catch up to it. In a less dense, longer target, the electrons spend more time accelerating before they catch up to the laser pulse, enabling them to hit higher top speeds.

This demonstration of ZEUS's power paves the way for the signature experiment, expected later this year, when the accelerated electrons will collide with laser pulses coming the opposite way. In the moving frame of the electrons, the 3-petawatt laser pulse will seem to be a million times more powerful—a zettawatt-scale pulse. This gives ZEUS its full name of "Zettawatt Equivalent Ultrashort laser pulse System."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Since early 2023, facial recognition cameras run by a private nonprofit have scanned New Orleans visitors and residents and quietly alerted police, sidestepping oversight and potentially violating city law, according to a new report.

In 2022, the Big Easy's city government relaxed its ban on the use of facial recognition technology. It could be used to investigate violent crimes, but had to be checked by a human operator before action was taken.

But an investigation published Monday by the Washington Post found that within a year, police were quietly receiving continuous real-time facial recognition alerts from a privately operated camera network. These alerts came from cameras managed by nonprofit Project NOLA, which runs a sprawling, privately funded surveillance network across the city, the report says.

Project NOLA claims access to more than 5,000 camera feeds in the New Orleans area, with over 200 equipped for facial recognition. The system compares faces against a privately compiled database of more than 30,000 individuals, assembled partly from police mugshots. When a match is detected, officers receive a mobile phone alert with the person's identity and location, according to the report.

The police were required to notify the city council each time they used facial recognition technology in an investigation or arrest, but reportedly failed to do so. In multiple cases, police reports omitted any mention of the technology, raising concerns that defendants were denied the opportunity to challenge the role facial recognition played in their arrest.

By adopting this system – in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security – the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line

As scrutiny mounted, the police department distanced itself from the operation, saying in a carefully worded statement that it "does not own, rely on, manage, or condone the use by members of the department of any artificial intelligence systems associated with the vast network of Project NOLA crime cameras."

"Until now, no American police department has been willing to risk the massive public blowback from using such a brazen face recognition surveillance system," said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, in a press release.

"By adopting this system – in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security – the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line. This is the stuff of authoritarian surveillance states, and has no place in American policing."

slon writes:

Science X reports that UK farmers are praying for rain as Britain suffers its driest spring in well over a century, which has left the soil parched and crops stunted from lack of water. Not a drop of rain has fallen since March.

"I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle it on the farm, I'm hoping that we're going to get some rain, if not then I'll have to somehow magically do something," Abblitt, 36, told AFP.

The tiny green shoots of the sugar beets poking through the cracked, dusty earth "should be at least twice the size," he sighed. In a neighboring field he has just planted potatoes with the help of his father, Clive, toiling to break up the baked soil.

A total of 80.6 millimeters (3.1 inches) of rain has fallen since the start of spring, which covers the months of March, April and May, according to the national weather agency. That is well below the all-time low of 100.7 millimeters which fell in 1852, according to the Met Office.

"This spring has so far been the driest for more than a century," the Met Office told AFP, cautioning that it would be necessary to wait until the end of May to confirm the record.

According to the Environment Agency, levels in the reservoirs have fallen to "exceptionally low".

It called a meeting of its national drought group last week, at which deputy director of water Richard Thompson said climate change meant "we will see more summer droughts in the coming decades".

The dry start to the year meant water companies were "moving water across their regions to relieve the driest areas", a spokesperson for Water UK, the industry body representing water suppliers, told AFP.

Memories linger in Britain of July 2022 when temperatures topped 40 degrees (104 Fahrenheit) for the first time.

Tech Review is re-running this story from 2019 with a new introduction,
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/19/1116614/hao-empire-ai-openai
It was written by probably the first journalist to get inside the secretive company for a few days of interviews. It didn't go well...

In 2019, Karen Hao, a senior reporter with MIT Technology Review, pitched me on writing a story about a then little-known company, OpenAI. It was her biggest assignment to date. Hao's feat of reporting took a series of twists and turns over the coming months, eventually revealing how OpenAI's ambition had taken it far afield from its original mission. The finished story was a prescient look at a company at a tipping point—or already past it. And OpenAI was not happy with the result. Hao's new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, is an in-depth exploration of the company that kick-started the AI arms race, and what that race means for all of us. This excerpt is the origin story of that reporting. — Niall Firth, executive editor, MIT Technology Review
[...]
In February 2020, I published my profile for MIT Technology Review, drawing on my observations from my time in the office, nearly three dozen interviews, and a handful of internal documents. "There is a misalignment between what the company publicly espouses and how it operates behind closed doors," I wrote. "Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressure for ever more funding to erode its founding ideals of transparency, openness, and collaboration."
[...]
From the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, by Karen Hao, to be published on May 20, 2025, by Penguin Press,...

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Supersonic Aviation Modernization Act would allow America's aviation watchdog to issue licenses allowing flights over land "at a Mach number greater than one so long as the aircraft is operated in such a manner that no sonic boom reaches the ground in the United States," the legislation states [PDF].

[...] The bill was introduced to the Senate by Senators Ted Budd (R-NC), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Tim Sheehy (R-MT); and to the House of Representatives by Troy Nehls (R-TX), and Representative Sharice Davids (D-KS). If successful, it'll give the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) a year to comply and allow the next generation of supersonic commercial aircraft into American skies once again.

The backing of Budd and Tillis for the legislation is understandable. Boom Supersonic, which is building an 80-person commercial supersonic passenger jet, chose the US state the two senators represent, North Carolina, to build the Overture Superfactory it'll use to manufacture the aircraft. In January, Boom's single-seat XB-1 test aircraft, piloted by Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg, broke the sound barrier six times without a noticeable sonic boom. Boom boasts a number of big-name VCs and tech luminaries as funders, including AI poster child Sam Altman and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

NASA, too, has skin in the game, as it has been funding research into quiet supersonic flight for decades and last year fired up the engines on its X-59 supersonic test vehicle. The Register spoke to the pilot James "Clue" Less at the time, and he said the technology works and that the agency expects the first full flight later this year.

"The race for supersonic dominance between the US and China is already underway and the stakes couldn't be higher," said Senator Budd in a canned statement.

[...] The history of sonic booms over the continental US is contentious, mired in technology, politics, and the immense forces involved in supersonic flight.

[...] The FAA held tests of what sonic booms would do to Americans and their environment. In 1961 and 1964, the citizens of St Louis and Oklahoma City were deliberately subjected to repeated sonic booms in Operations Bongo and Bongo II. In the latter case, the test was originally scheduled to have aircraft generate eight sonic booms a day overhead for six months, but this was cut to four months after windows were broken and residents complained.

"Microsoft Copilot" writes:

Ars Technica reports that the Chicago Sun-Times printed a summer reading list full of fake books recently published a summer reading list that included several fake book titles attributed to real authors. The list, created by Marco Buscaglia using AI, featured titles like "Tidewater Dreams" by Isabel Allende and "The Last Algorithm" by Andy Weir, which do not exist. Buscaglia admitted to using AI for the list and expressed embarrassment for not verifying the content. Only five out of the fifteen recommended books were real, highlighting the issue of AI-generated errors.

The newspaper addressed the controversy, stating that the list was part of a promotional supplement and not approved by the newsroom. The supplement, called "Heat Index," was intended to be generic and distributed nationally. This incident occurred shortly after the Sun-Times experienced significant staff reductions, losing 20% of its employees through a buyout program. The staff cuts included experienced columnists and editors, which may have contributed to the oversight.

The reaction to the fake reading list has been mostly negative, with some readers expressing anger and disappointment. Novelist Rachael King and freelance journalist Joshua J. Friedman were among those who criticized the use of AI-generated content. The incident has sparked a broader conversation about the reliability of AI in journalism and the importance of human oversight in maintaining trust in media.

Other sources covering the story:

The Guardian

Axios

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In a significant escalation of its campaign against illegal streaming, Italy has begun issuing fines to thousands of individuals who subscribed to pirate IPTV services. This move follows a recent memorandum of understanding among the Prosecutor's Office, the Guardia di Finanza (a military police force in Italy), and the country's communications regulator AGCOM, which established a framework for sharing information on users of unauthorized streaming platforms.

While the precise origin of the subscriber data remains undisclosed, it is believed to have been gathered during frequent law enforcement raids targeting illicit IPTV operations. These raids have yielded databases containing emails and other identifying information, enabling authorities to target end-users directly for the first time.

The crackdown is rooted in Law 93/2023, anti-piracy legislation passed last year that allows for fines of up to €5,000 ($5,581) for repeat offenders. The law also introduced the Piracy Shield, a system enabling rapid ISP blocking of unauthorized streams.

After the legislation passed, authorities wasted no time making it clear that the era of impunity for IPTV pirates was over. That warning has now materialized into action. At a recent press conference, the Guardia di Finanza revealed that 2,282 individuals across Italy have been fined for their involvement with pirate IPTV services. Initial penalties start at €154 ($172), but officials have stressed that repeat violations could dramatically increase fines, reaching the €5,000 maximum.

This marks the first time the new law has been enforced against consumers, not just the operators of illegal services. The current wave of fines is reportedly linked to an operation in Lecce last October, where a major IPTV network was dismantled and subscriber information seized.

Authorities have indicated that this is only the beginning, with ongoing investigations in several regions aimed at identifying further offenders. Three additional prosecutors' offices have already launched their inquiries, signaling a sustained national effort.

liar writes:

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/17/laser-powered-fusion-experiment-more-than-doubles-its-power-output/

Tim De Chant
12:02 PM PDT · May 17, 2025

The world's only net-positive fusion experiment has been steadily ramping up the amount of power it produces, TechCrunch has learned.

In recent attempts, the team at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility (NIF) increased the yield of the experiment, first to 5.2 megajoules and then to 8.6 megajoules, according to a source with knowledge of the experiment.

The new results are significant improvements over the historic experiment in 2022, which was the first controlled fusion reaction to generate more energy than it consumed.

The 2022 shot generated 3.15 megajoules, a small bump over the 2.05 megajoules that the lasers delivered to the BB-sized fuel pellet.
...

[...] The NIF uses what's known as inertial confinement to produce fusion reactions. At the facility, fusion fuel is coated in diamond and then encased in a small gold cylinder called a hohlraum. That tiny pellet is dropped into a spherical vacuum chamber 10 meters in diameter, where 192 powerful laser beams converge on the target.

The cylinder is vaporized under the onslaught, emitting X-rays in the process that bombard the fuel pellet inside. The pellet's diamond coating receives so much energy that it turns into an expanding plasma, which compresses the deuterium-tritium fuel inside to the point where their nuclei fuse, releasing energy in the process.

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