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jelizondo writes:

The BBC is running a very interesting story about Perrier and other "natural" waters not being quite what they claim to be. While some might see it as only a technicality on what "natural" means, some aspects of it point to larger, and more frightening problems:

France's multi-billion euro mineral water companies are under the spotlight because of climate change and growing concerns about the industry's environmental impact.

At issue is whether some world-famous brands, notably the iconic Perrier label, can even continue calling themselves "natural mineral water".

A decision in the Perrier case is due in the coming months. It follows revelations in the French media about illicit filtration systems that have been widely used in the industry, apparently because of worries about water contamination, after years of drought linked to climate change.

[...] The issue was not one of public health. The treated water was by definition safe to drink.

The problem was that under EU law, "natural mineral water" – which sells at a huge premium over tap water – is supposed to be unaltered between the underground source and the bottle. That is the whole point of it.

[...] Complicating matters for Perrier and its parent company Nestlé – as well as President Emmanuel Macron's government – is the charge that executives and ministers conspired to keep the affair quiet, covered up reports of contamination, and re-wrote the rules so that Perrier could continue using micro-filtration.

[...] The analysis made by Haziza and other hydrologists is that there is now a clear link between deeper and surface aquifers. Contaminants (farm chemicals or human waste) that drain off the land in the increasingly frequent flash floods, can now make their way into the lower aquifers.

At the same time, the effects of long-term drought and over-pumping mean these lower aquifers contain less volume, so any contamination will be more concentrated, the experts say.

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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/08/after-using-chatgpt-man-swaps-his-salt-for-sodium-bromide-and-suffers-psychosis/

After seeking advice on health topics from ChatGPT, a 60-year-old man who had a "history of studying nutrition in college" decided to try a health experiment: He would eliminate all chlorine from his diet, which for him meant eliminating even table salt (sodium chloride). His ChatGPT conversations led him to believe that he could replace his sodium chloride with sodium bromide, which he obtained over the Internet.

Three months later, the man showed up at his local emergency room. [...] His distress, coupled with the odd behavior, led the doctors to run a broad set of lab tests, revealing multiple micronutrient deficiencies, especially in key vitamins. But the bigger problem was that the man appeared to be suffering from a serious case of "bromism." That is, an excess amount of the element bromine had built up in his body.

[...] Bromide sedatives vanished from the US market by 1989, after the Food and Drug Administration banned them, and "bromism" as a syndrome is today unfamiliar to many Americans. (Though you can still get it by drinking, as one poor guy did, two to four liters of cola daily [!], if that cola contains "brominated vegetable oil." Fortunately, the FDA removed brominated vegetable oil from US food products in 2024.)

[...] In this case, over the man's first day at the hospital, he grew worse and showed "increasing paranoia and auditory and visual hallucinations." He then attempted to escape the facility.

[...] In the end, the man suffered from a terrifying psychosis and was kept in the hospital for three full weeks over an entirely preventable condition.

[...] The doctors who wrote up this case study for Annals of Internal Medicine: Clinical Cases note that they never got access to the man's actual ChatGPT logs. He likely used ChatGPT 3.5 or 4.0, they say, but it's not clear that the man was actually told by the chatbot to do what he did. Bromide salts can be substituted for table salt—just not in the human body. They are used in various cleaning products and pool treatments, however.

[...] The current free model of ChatGPT appears to be better at answering this sort of query. When I asked it how to replace chloride in my diet, it first asked to "clarify your goal," giving me three choices:

• Reduce salt (sodium chloride) in your diet or home use?
• Avoid toxic/reactive chlorine compounds like bleach or pool chlorine?
• Replace chlorine-based cleaning or disinfecting agents?

ChatGPT did list bromide as an alternative, but only under the third option (cleaning or disinfecting), noting that bromide treatments are "often used in hot tubs."

Original Submission

jelizondo writes:

IFL Science has a funny report about a robotic crab confronted by real crabs:

Wavy Dave the robot crustacean has been showing scientists how male fiddler crabs respond when they see a fellow crab waving. Famous for their enormous claws, the team made Wavy Dave blend in by giving him a huge claw of his own, only for it to get ripped off by a male crab.

Before he was struck down, Wavy Dave's experiments revealed that male crabs would wave for longer when the robot crab was waving. They didn't pick up their speed, however. It could be that the robot's waving was a signal to them that a female might be around, but without actually laying eyes on her, they didn't put in their all.

"Our findings reveal the subtle ways in which these crabs adjust their behaviour to compete in a dynamic environment, investing more in signalling when it is likely to be most profitable," said study author Dr Joe Wilde in a release sent to IFLScience. "We know many animals adjust their sexual displays if rivals are nearby, but less is known about how they react to the actual displays themselves."

Fiddler crabs live in burrows and when it's time to make baby fiddler crabs, the males will stand outside their burrows and try to woo a female by waving their impressive claws. Females are most drawn to the males that wave at speed and have particularly big claws, so competition is stiff. So, how do the crabs respond to that competition?

As for what females made of Wavy Dave, Wilde reports they seemed to clock something was "a bit odd" about the robot crab. There were also males who didn't tolerate his presence, trying to fight him, and one male even succeeded in pulling off his claw. After that, the trial had to be abandoned so they could reboot Wavy Dave.

"When the crab attacked Wavy Dave, I felt 75% excited (because the attack showed us that the crabs were interacting with the robot as they would each other, which was the dream), and 25% heartbroken (the bond forged between a researcher and his Bluetooth robotic crab is a strong one)," Wilde told IFLScience.

The biomimetic robot was a pipedream of Wilde's during lockdown when 3D scans of fiddler crabs' impressive claws became freely available. He had printed his own claw and taught himself enough robotics to make Wavy Dave, eventually developing an app that would enable him to control the waving via Bluetooth.

Thanks to funding from the Natural Environment Research Council GW4+ Doctoral Training Partnership, Wavy Dave became a reality, and has provided intriguing insights into the flexibility of fiddler crabs' sexual displays when they see a rival is nearby, however shifty looking he may be.

"For me, the most fascinating takeaway is the subtle complexity of the behavioural changes we see in response to the robotic rival," Wilde told IFLScience. "It highlights the types of behavioural adjustments wild animals perform in order to stay competitive in these kinds of social contexts.

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upstart writes:

Japanese Scientists Develop Artificial Blood:

A critical component of healthcare, blood transfusions play a vital role in saving lives around the globe every day. Maintaining an adequate blood supply, though, is no easy task, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The demand for O–negative blood — the universal donor type — often exceeds supply and donations have a limited shelf life. Looking to address the issue are a group of Japanese scientists led by Hiromi Sakai at Nara Medical University. They've developed a new type of artificial blood that can be used in patients of any blood type.

The artificial blood is created by extracting hemoglobin — a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells — from expired donor blood. It is then encased in a protective shell to create stable, virus-free artificial red blood cells. As these artificial cells have no blood type, there is no need for compatibility testing. The synthetic blood can reportedly be stored for up to two years at room temperature and five years under refrigeration. That is a significant improvement over donated red blood cells, which can only be stored under refrigeration for a maximum of 42 days.

Small-scale studies began in 2022. Three groups of four healthy male volunteers aged 20 to 50 received a single intravenous injection of hemoglobin vesicles — artificial oxygen carriers that mimic the structure of red blood cells — in increasing amounts, up to 100 milliliters. While some participants experienced mild side effects, there were no significant changes in vital signs, including blood pressure. Building on that success, Sakai announced that his team was accelerating the process last July. In March, it started administering between 100 and 400 milliliters of the artificial blood cell solution to volunteers.

If no side effects are confirmed, the trial will shift to examining the treatment's efficacy and safety. It aims to put the artificial red blood cells into practical use by around 2030. While these studies are taking place, Professor Teruyuki Komatsu of Chuo University's Faculty of Science and Engineering is also working on the development of artificial oxygen carriers, using albumin-encased hemoglobin to stabilize blood pressure and treat conditions like hemorrhage and stroke. So far, animal studies have shown promising results. As a result, researchers are now eager to move to human trials.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ar-AA1JUyYS
https://archive.ph/6Y1XA

A zoo in northern Denmark is asking pet owners to donate their unwanted guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens and even small horses – not to put them on display but to feed them to the zoo's predators.

The Aalborg Zoo wrote in a Facebook post that it is trying to "imitate the natural food chain of the animals".

"Chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs form an important part of the diet of our predators," it wrote in the post alongside an image of openmouthed, sharp-toothed lynx.

"That way, nothing goes to waste — and we ensure natural behavior, nutrition and well-being of our predators," the zoo added.

On its website, the zoo said the donated animals will be "gently euthanized" by trained staff before being served up as food. The zoo is home to carnivorous predators such as the Asiatic lion, European lynx and Sumatran tiger.

The zoo's public request has drawn lively debate online with some protesting the idea of turning pets into prey, and others praising the zoo's efforts to maintain natural feeding behaviors.

Deputy director of Aalborg Zoo, Pia Nielsen, said in an emailed statement the initiative has been in place for years and is common practice in Denmark.

"For many years at Aalborg Zoo, we have fed our carnivores with smaller livestock. When keeping carnivores, it is necessary to provide them with meat, preferably with fur, bones, etc to give them as natural a diet as possible," Nielsen said.

"Therefore, it makes sense to allow animals that need to be euthanized for various reasons to be of use in this way."

"In Denmark, this practice is common, and many of our guests and partners appreciate the opportunity to contribute. The livestock we receive as donations are chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, and horses."

Carnivores fill a central niche in ecosystems, Nielsen added, saying they play a crucial role in the balance of nature.

It's not the first time that Denmark's zoos have come under scrutiny for the way they feed their animals and control populations. In 2014, the Copenhagen Zoo in the Danish capital euthanized a healthy young giraffe named Marius to avoid inbreeding, despite a petition trying to stop the move. Its carcass was used partly for research and partly to feed carnivores at the zoo – lions, tigers, and leopards.

Weeks later, public criticism flared again when the zoo euthanized four of those lions, to make way for a new male in hopes to breed a new generation of cubs.

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upstart writes:

Personalized pricing has spread across many industries. Here's how consumers can avoid it:

Recently, Delta Air Lines announced it would expand its use of artificial intelligence to provide individualized prices to customers. This move sparked concern among flyers and politicians. But Delta isn’t the only business interested in using AI this way. Personalized pricing has already spread across a range of industries, from finance to online gaming.

Customized pricing – where each customer receives a different price for the same product – is a holy grail for businesses because it boosts profits. With customized pricing, free-spending people pay more while the price-sensitive pay less. Just as clothes can be tailored to each person, custom pricing fits each person’s ability and desire to pay.

[...] Third, many computer pricing algorithms look at your location, since location is a good proxy for income. I was once in Botswana and needed to buy a plane ticket. The price on my computer was about $200. Unfortunately, before booking I was called away to dinner. After dinner my computer showed the cost was $1,000 − five times higher. It turned out after dinner I used my university’s VPN, which told the airline I was located in a rich American neighborhood. Before dinner I was located in a poor African town. Shutting off the VPN reduced the price.

Last, often to get a better price in face-to-face negotiations, you need to walk away. To do this online, put something in your basket and then wait before hitting purchase. I recently bought eyeglasses online. As a cash payer, I didn’t have my credit card handy. It took five minutes to find it, and the delay caused the site to offer a large discount to complete the purchase.

See also:

• AI Price Gouging: Corporate Greed Is Out of Control [18:02 Frightening. --JE]
• Delta Air Lines is Using AI to Set the Maximum Price You’re Willing to Pay - SoylentNews

Original Submission

upstart writes:

YouTube to gauge US users’ ages with AI after UK and Australia add age checks:

YouTube announced on Tuesday that it will begin to use artificial intelligence to estimate the ages of users in the US, in order to show them age-appropriate content.

The rollout of the new feature comes one day after Australia’s government announced it would ban children under 16 from using YouTube and less than a week after the UK implemented sweeping age checks on content on social networks.

YouTube’s AI age verification on its home turf indicates it is putting into place a form of compliance with the Australian and UK requirements, despite its persistent opposition to age-check requirements.

[...] When YouTube determines a user is teen or pre-teen, the site will disable personalized advertising, activate digital wellbeing features and put stricter content filters as well as behavioral restrictions into place.

YouTube’s AI will assess a user’s age via multiple behavioral factors, including what kind of videos the user searches for, the categories of videos they watch, and how long the account has been active, per its blogpost.

“This technology will allow us to infer a user’s age and then use that signal, regardless of the birthday in the account, to deliver our age-appropriate product experiences and protections,” Beser wrote, adding that the company had used the technology in other markets before introducing it in the US.

If the AI’s estimation is incorrect, YouTube says it will allow a user to verify their age with a credit card, a government ID or a selfie.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

These are the conference events to keep an eye on. You can even stream a few:

The security industry is hitting Vegas hard this week with three conferences in Sin City that bring the world's largest collection of security pros together for the annual summer camp.

The week kicks off with BSides Las Vegas, which runs from Monday to Wednesday. Of the over 200 BSides security conventions held around the world every year, this one is the biggest and is being held at the Tuscany Hotel, although tickets are sold out.

BSides started as a conference for rejected Black Hat speakers, but those days are long gone. Now it has a range of talk tracks showcasing new research, and this year, passwords are a key theme, with a specific three-day schedule devoted to finding solutions to one of computing's oldest security challenges.

There is a series of live feeds on the conference's YouTube channel and, if you miss seeing the talks in real time, the videos should remain archived. At the password track on Monday at 1700 PT, there's a disturbing-sounding presentation on a custom rig used to crack 936 million passwords with 92 percent accuracy that should be worth tuning into.

[...] For anyone considering adding BSides to their schedule, it's worth a visit. While the smallest of the conventions, it's also one of the most offbeat and there are presentations on everything from building hacking hardware to commercial licensing problems in the industry. And, as is traditional, there's a Capture the Flag competition running and festivities in the evening.

[...] Black Hat: The opening keynote will be a farewell (sort of) address from Mikko Hyppönen, who, after a 34-year tenure at F-Secure hunting malware, is quitting the industry to work on drones. As he told The Register in June, the Ukraine war has spurred him into working on the technology, particularly since his home country, newly minted NATO member Finland, has a massive border with Russia.

The core of the talks is about unpleasant new hacks and vulnerabilities in hardware and software. It was at Black Hat in 2008 that the late Dan Kaminsky revealed a fundamental flaw in DNS that could have run riot through the internet's backbone. While there's nothing on that scale this year, there are sessions scheduled on an Apple zero-day, ways to bypass Windows Hello's authentication systems, and even a talk on satellite vulnerabilities and how to exploit them.

Elsewhere in the talk tracks, there is a key focus on AI, as with everything in the security business these days, but this isn't a cheerleading event and there are some skeptical sessions planned, as well as deep dives into flaws. Several speakers are giving talks on how to fool AIs into breaking safety guardrails or leak information and bots – their use and misuse – are a particular focus.

upstart writes:

An Ohio couple welcomes a baby boy from a nearly 31-year-old frozen embryo:

A baby boy born last week to an Ohio couple developed from an embryo that had been frozen for more than 30 years in what is believed to be the longest storage time before a birth.

In what's known as embryo adoption, Lindsey and Tim Pierce used a handful of donated embryos that have been frozen since 1994 in pursuit of having a child after fighting infertility for years. Their son was born Saturday from an embryo that had been in storage for 11,148 days, which the Pierces' doctor says sets a record.

It's a concept that has been around since the 1990s but is gaining traction as some fertility clinics and advocates, often Christian-centered, oppose discarding leftover embryos because of their belief that life begins at or around conception and that all embryos deserve to be treated like children who need a home.

"I felt all along that these three little hopes, these little embryos, deserved to live just like my daughter did," said Linda Archerd, 62, who donated her embryos to the Pierces.

Just about 2% of births in the U.S. are the result of in vitro fertilization, and an even smaller fraction involve donated embryos.

However, medical experts estimate about 1.5 million frozen embryos are currently being stored throughout the country, with many of those in limbo as parents wrestle with what to do with their leftover embryos created in IVF labs.

[...] According to Dr. John David Gordon, the transfer of the nearly 31-year-old embryo marks the longest-frozen embryo to result in a live birth. He would know: Gordon says his clinic assisted in the previous record, when Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from embryos frozen for 30 years, or 10,905 days.

"I think that these stories catch the imagination," Gordon said. "But I think they also provide a little bit of a cautionary tale to say, Why are these embryos sitting in storage? You know, why do we have this problem?"

In a statement, Lindsey and Tim Pierce said the clinic's support was just what they needed.

"We didn't go into this thinking about records—we just wanted to have a baby," Lindsey Pierce said.

Previously: Baby Born From Embryo Conceived When Birth Mother Was One Year Old [2017]

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upstart writes:

KubeSphere kills open source edition:

KubeSphere has become the latest service to abruptly yank an open source edition of a product, triggering outcry from users.

An announcement was posted in the project's repository stating: "Effective immediately ... we will suspend the download links for the KubeSphere open source version and cease providing free technical support."

"We are fully aware that this may cause inconvenience to some users, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused. However, we believe that by concentrating our resources, we can provide users with more professional, stable, and comprehensive commercial-grade services and support."

KubeSphere is "a distributed operating system for cloud-native application management, using Kubernetes as its kernel." It is also, according to the project's website, "a CNCF-certified [Cloud Native Computing Foundation] Kubernetes platform, 100 percent open source, built and improved by the community."

Effectively, KubeSphere simplifies the management of Kubernetes, which can be unwieldy when it comes to setup and configuration.

One of the founding members of the KubeSphere team, having left KubeSphere developer QingCloud the previous day, posted some of the possible reasoning behind the move: "In recent years, repeated violations of the open source license – by third parties repackaging and monetizing the project – have caused tangible impact on QingCloud's interests.

"While the source code remains available under open source norms, discontinuing the out-of-the-box distributions is, in my view, a challenging adjustment for today's collaborative open source ecosystem.

"Still, as someone who once helped steer this journey, I respect the decision."

upstart writes:

RFK Jr cancels $500m in mRNA vaccine development in the US:

RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines for diseases like Covid

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses that cause diseases such as the flu and Covid-19.

That will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said.

Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, announced he was pulling the funding over claims that "mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses".

Doctors and health experts have criticised Kennedy's longstanding questioning of the safety and efficacy of vaccines and his views on health policies.

The development of mRNA vaccines to target Covid-19 was critical in helping slow down the pandemic and saving millions of lives, said Peter Lurie, a former US Food and Drug Administration official.

He told the BBC that the change was the US "turning its back on one of the most promising tools to fight the next pandemic".

In a statement, Kennedy said his team had "reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted". "[T]he data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu," he said.

He said the department was shifting the funding toward "safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate".

Kennedy also claimed that mRNA vaccines can help "encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics as the virus constantly mutates to escape the protective effects of the vaccine".

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Linuxiac reports that another malicious package has been uploaded to the Arch User Repository (AUR). This time around the package was google-chrome-stable, which installed a remote-access trojan along with Google Chrome.

        The good news—if you can call it that—is that the google-chrome-stable package was available on the AUR only for a few hours before the malware hidden inside was discovered. Still, it did get a few upvotes, which suggests at least some users ended up installing it.

The Arch Linux project had to warn users about a similar attack less than a month ago when a user uploaded three browser packages that also installed a malicious script identified as a remote-access trojan.

Also see: https://lwn.net/Articles/1032193/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ubuntu users will see a few changes to their command line tools with the launch of Ubuntu 25.10 in October. The wget utility for downloading files is being replaced by wcurl which offers most of the same basic functionality. It's FOSS reports: "Ubuntu Server 25.10 will no longer include wget by default, switching to wcurl instead."

Fresh installations will see this change when 25.10 releases in October. wget has been the standard command-line download tool on Linux systems for years. Most server administrators and scripts rely on its straightforward syntax for file downloads. On the other hand, wcurl is a simple curl wrapper that lets you download files without remembering curl parameters, using curl under the hood with sane defaults."

The report goes on to note another GNU utility, the screen command, will be dropped in favour of Tmux.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Hiding secret codes in light can protect against fake videos

A team of Cornell researchers has developed a way to "watermark" light in videos, which they can use to detect if video is fake or has been manipulated.

The idea is to hide information in nearly-invisible fluctuations of lighting at important events and locations, such as interviews and press conferences or even entire buildings, like the United Nations Headquarters. These fluctuations are designed to go unnoticed by humans, but are recorded as a hidden watermark in any video captured under the special lighting, which could be programmed into computer screens, photography lamps and built-in lighting. Each watermarked light source has a secret code that can be used to check for the corresponding watermark in the video and reveal any malicious editing.

Peter Michael, a graduate student in the field of computer science who led the work, will present the study, "Noise-Coded Illumination for Forensic and Photometric Video," on Aug. 10 at SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Editing video footage in a misleading way is nothing new. But with generative AI and social media, it is faster and easier to spread misinformation than ever before.

"Video used to be treated as a source of truth, but that's no longer an assumption we can make," said Abe Davis, assistant professor of computer science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, who first conceived of the idea. "Now you can pretty much create video of whatever you want. That can be fun, but also problematic, because it's only getting harder to tell what's real."

fliptop writes:

China's biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year, company filings show, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses:

The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China.

Longi Green Energy (601012.SS), Trina Solar , Jinko Solar (688223.SS), JA Solar ( 002459.SZ), and Tongwei (600438.SS), collectively shed some 87,000 staff, or 31% of their workforces on average last year, according to a Reuters review of employment figures in public filings.

Analysts say the previously unreported job losses were likely a mix of layoffs and attrition due to cuts to pay and hours as companies sought to stem losses.

[...] While analysts say it is unclear whether job cuts continued this year, Beijing is increasingly signalling it intends to intervene to cut capacity, sending polysilicon prices soaring nearly 70% in July while solar panel prices have increased more modestly.

[...] But many provincial governments are likely to be reluctant to crack down hard on overcapacity, analysts say. These officials are scored on jobs and economic growth and are loathe to see local champions sacrificed to meet someone else's target.

Also at ZeroHedge.

Original Submission