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upstart writes:

Using a fan can make older adults hotter in a dry heat:

Montreal Heart Institute-led research has found that older adults using an electric fan at 38 °C and 60% relative humidity experienced a modest fall in core temperature and greater comfort. Fan use at 45 °C and 15% relative humidity raised core temperature and increased discomfort.

CDC guidance warns against fan use above 32 °C because of concerns that added airflow could speed heat gain in vulnerable groups. Modeling studies and small laboratory trials have hinted that airflow may help when humidity is high, but effects at very high temperatures in older adults have remained uncertain. Older individuals face elevated heat-related morbidity, creating an urgent need for practical, low-cost cooling ideas.

In the study, "Thermal and Perceptual Responses of Older Adults With Fan Use in Heat Extremes," published in JAMA Network Open, researchers performed a secondary analysis of a randomized crossover clinical trial to test how fan use and skin wetting influence core temperature, sweating, and thermal perception during extreme-heat exposures.

[...] In the humid chamber, fan use lowered rectal temperature by −0.1 °C, raised sweat rate by 57 mL/h, and improved thermal sensation by −0.6 AU (arbitrary units using an ASHRAE 7-point scale) and comfort by −0.6 AU. Skin wetting cut sweat loss by 67 mL/h and eased perceptions, and combining both strategies produced the largest perceptual gains: thermal sensation −1.1 AU, comfort −0.7 AU, without altering core temperature.

In the dry chamber, fan use raised core temperature by 0.3 °C, boosted sweating by 270 mL/h, and worsened sensation and comfort by 0.5 AU each. Skin wetting alone lowered sweating by 121 mL/h and improved sensation by −0.4 AU, with comfort unchanged.

Study investigators conclude that electric fans can serve as a safe, low-cost cooling option for older adults during hot, humid weather at 38 °C, but should be avoided in very hot, dry conditions. Simple skin wetting offers an additional means to manage heat stress while limiting dehydration. Public health agencies may use these findings to refine summer heat-safety messages for seniors.

Journal Reference: Georgia K. Chaseling et al, Thermal and Perceptual Responses of Older Adults With Fan Use in Heat Extremes, JAMA Network Open (2025). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.23810

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Damien Miller (djm@) just published a Post-Quantum Cryptography FAQ page to the OpenSSH web site. It describes OpenSSH's use of and approach to post-quantum cryptography. A big goal is to minimize the risk from hostiles saving SSH traffic now to then crack the encryption later as new technology allows.

Fortunately, quantum computers of sufficient power to break cryptography have not been invented yet. Estimates for when a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer will arrive, based on the rate of progress in the field, range from 5-20 years, with many observers expecting them to arrive in the mid-2030s.

The entire privacy of an SSH connection depends on cryptographic key agreement. If an attacker can break the key agreement then they are able to decrypt and view the entire session. The attacker need not perform this attack in real time; they may collect encrypted SSH sessions now and then decrypt them later once they have access to a quantum computer. This is referred to as a "store now, decrypt later" attack (also as "harvest now, decrypt later").

OpenSSH supports post-quantum cryptography to protect user traffic against this attack.

Previously:
(2025) New OpenSSH Flaws Enable Man-in-the-Middle and DoS Attacks
(2024) Timeline to Remove DSA Support from OpenSSH
(2021) scp Will Be Replaced With sftp Soon
(2020) SHA-1 to be Disabled in OpenSSH and libssh
(2016) Upgrade Your SSH Keys
(2015) OpenSSH 6.8 Will Feature Key Discovery and Rotation for Easier Switching to DJB's Ed25519
(2014) OpenSSH No Longer has to Depend on OpenSSL

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/coding-error-blamed-after-parts-of-constitution-disappear-from-us-website/

The Library of Congress today said a coding error resulted in the deletion of parts of the US Constitution from Congress' website and promised a fix after many Internet users pointed out the missing sections this morning.

"It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov) website," the Library of Congress said today. "We've learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and expect it to be resolved soon."

[...] "Upkeep of Constitution Annotated and other digital resources is a critical part of the Library's mission, and we appreciate the feedback that alerted us to the error and allowed us to fix it," the Library of Congress said.

[...] The temporarily deleted sections of Article 1 consist of about 650 words, as can be seen in an Internet Archive version comparison. This included part of Section 8 and all of Sections 9 and 10. One deleted bit contains authorization for Congress to provide and maintain a Navy, and to call forth a "Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."

Another victim of the temporary deletion was the section on habeas corpus.

[...] Of course, the Constitution can't be changed by simply deleting passages from a government website, but the error temporarily made it more difficult for people to look up parts of the founding document.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Extra-Strong Bacterial Cellulose Sheets as a Biodegradable Alternative to Plastic:

A team led by researchers from the University of Houston and Rice University has demonstrated a method for producing stronger, multifunctional bacterial cellulose sheets that could support the development of biodegradable alternatives to plastic.

The work, published in Nature Communications, outlines a scalable, single-step biosynthesis approach to produce sheets of plastic-like bacterial cellulose material.

The research addresses growing interest in sustainable materials that reduce environmental reliance on petroleum-based polymers.

Using fluid dynamics to guide bacterial cellulose synthesis

Bacterial cellulose, a naturally derived biopolymer produced by certain strains of bacteria, is known for being biodegradable and biocompatible. However, its mechanical properties have traditionally limited its use as a structural substitute for plastic.

The team used a custom-designed culture system featuring a rotating, oxygen-permeable cylindrical chamber. This setup generates directional fluid flow, which encourages cellulose-producing bacteria to move consistently in a single direction during biosynthesis. As a result, the bacteria produce cellulose nanofibrils that are aligned within the sheet, yielding a material with improved tensile strength, flexibility, foldability, optical transparency and long-term mechanical stability.

"We're essentially guiding the bacteria to behave with purpose. Rather than moving randomly, we direct their motion, so they produce cellulose in an organized way," said study author Maksud Rahman, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Houston.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/08/heres-how-deepfake-vishing-attacks-work-and-why-they-can-be-hard-to-detect/

By now, you've likely heard of fraudulent calls that use AI to clone the voices of people the call recipient knows. Often, the result is what sounds like a grandchild, CEO, or work colleague you've known for years reporting an urgent matter requiring immediate action, saying to wire money, divulge login credentials, or visit a malicious website.

Researchers and government officials [PDF] have been warning of the threat for years, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency saying in 2023 that threats from deepfakes and other forms of synthetic media have increased "exponentially." Last year, Google's Mandiant security division reported that such attacks are being executed with "uncanny precision, creating for more realistic phishing schemes."
[...]
The Mandiant post showed the relative ease with which members of its security team executed such a scam in a simulated red team exercise, designed to test defenses and train personnel. The red teamers collected publicly available voice samples of someone inside the targeted organization who had employees report to them. The red teamers then used publicly available information to identify employees most likely to work under the person being faked and called them. To make the call more convincing, it used a real outage of a VPN service as a pretense for the employee to take immediate action.
[...]
Precautions for preventing such scams from succeeding can be as simple as parties agreeing to a randomly chosen word or phrase that the caller must provide before the recipient complies with a request. Recipients can also end the call and call the person back at a number known to belong to the caller. But it's best to follow both steps.

Original Submission

jelizondo writes:

IFL Science is reporting on a breakthrough in quantum superposition:

States in quantum superposition are notoriously fragile, but researchers in China have reported creating such a state that lasted for a whopping 23 minutes and 20 seconds. While this record-breaking result is exciting in itself, the team believes that it could open new ways to high-precision measurements and even information processing for quantum computers – possibly even allowing scientists to probe the limits of physical theories.

A yet-to-be peer-reviewed study by scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China involved cooling 10,000 ytterbium atoms to just a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero and trapping them using light. Each atom was precisely controlled and placed into a superposition of two distinct spin states. This is known as a "quantum cat" state.

In the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, we see a cat closed in a box with a poison activated by a random quantum process. Without opening the box, we cannot ascertain the state of the cat, so it is both alive and dead, two contradictory states in the non-quantum reality we experience. In the quantum world, quantum cat states are superpositions where a quantum state can exist in several ways at once, although it's impossible to tell which one it really is, so it's effectively all of them at once.

In the recent experiment, it is the length of this quantum cat state that is astounding. In nature, the superposition will collapse into one or the other in a fraction of a second, but here it persisted for 1,400 seconds. The team thinks that with a better vacuum system, it can be made to last even longer.

"It's a big deal because they're making this beautiful cat state in an atomic system and it's stable," Barry Sanders, from the University of Calgary, who was not involved in the study, told New Scientist. "A probe gets jiggled and pushed and nudged and prodded, and then by seeing what happens, you learn about the things that interact with it."

The research shows that there are lots of different elements that can be used for these devices. It doesn't have to be ytterbium, although they did show that this particular setup with the ytterbium atoms is extremely sensitive to measuring magnetic fields, with exciting applications.

This is not the only recent record-breaking event when it comes to quantum cat experiments. Last year, researchers successfully placed the heaviest macroscopic object in superposition. It was a crystal weighing just 16 micrograms, but it shows that the field is truly breaking new ground into what is possible.

A preprint paper describing the experiment and the result is available on the ArXiv.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Asian hornet's unique buzz may hold secret to containing invasive species:

Asian hornets buzz at a unique frequency that could be the key to controlling their spread, scientists have found, as the invasive species experiences a record year in the UK.

Researchers have said this is "great news", as the hornet nests can now be more quickly found and distinguished from those of other species, meaning their threat to bees and other pollinators could be contained.

Vespa velutina dismember and eat bees, and have thrived in France, where they have caused concern because of the number of insects killed. They sit outside honeybee hives and capture bees as they enter and exit, and chop up the smaller insects and feed their thoraxes to their young. Just one Asian hornet can hunt down and eat 30 to 50 honeybees in a day.

Their numbers have soared in recent years in the UK. There were 57 sightings in 2023, more than double the previous seven years combined, and 2024 broke that record with 71 confirmed sightings.

This year, that number has already been surpassed; the National Bee Unit is reporting 73 Asian hornet sightings and 28 nests in 2025 to date – more than double the 28 recorded sightings in the same period last year. The large wasps overwintered in the UK for the first time in 2023-24, which means they could be in the country for good.

Scientists, beekeepers and the government have battled hard to keep hornet numbers down, running a national hornet-spotting campaign so their nests can be identified and destroyed. But despite this, their numbers continue to increase, putting native pollinators at risk.

Now, scientists at the University of Southampton have made a breakthrough, establishing for the first time the frequency and volume of the sound from their nests. This means detection and removal of the creatures could become faster and easier.

They have established the fundamental frequency of Asian hornet nests to be 125 hertz and the loudness in the region of 51 decibels, which is comparable to a normal conversation.

The new research means the sound can be used to distinguish them from the nests and hives of other wasps and bees. This will be particularly useful in September and October, when the nests peak.

Acoustic engineering graduate Sophie Gray, who undertook the research, said: "We observed and measured two Asian hornet nests and a European hornet nest in Jersey before they were destroyed. We found that the fundamental frequency is 125 hertz and that the nest can be detected from about 20 metres away with a directional microphone.

"We also recorded European hornets and honeybees to determine if we can differentiate the frequency. The fundamental frequency of the European hornet is about 110 hertz and honeybees about 210 hertz. It was great news to discover that the frequency is unique for each species, so they are distinguishable."

The species first came to Europe in 2004, when the hornets were spotted in France, and it is thought they were accidentally transported in cargo from Asia. They have since spread rapidly across western Europe.

Original Submission

wirelessduck writes:

Visionary tech pioneer and philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley has died at the age of 91.

The boundary-breaking entrepreneur arrived in London at the age of five, just weeks before the outbreak of World War Two, and went on to become a computer industry and women's rights pioneer in the 1950s and 1960s.

She founded the software company Freelance Programmers in 1962, which shook up the tech industry by almost exclusively hiring women, and in later life donated almost £70m to help those with autism and to IT projects.

She was very smart and truly formidable, even adopting the name "Steve" to help her in a male-dominated tech world.

She died on 9 August, her family said in an Instagram post on Monday.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes Some turbulence at CalyxOS:

CalyxOS is an Android distribution that claims a focus on privacy and security. So when an announcement from the project begins by saying ""we want to assure you that we have no reason to believe the security of CalyxOS and its signing keys have been compromised"", chances are that good things are not happening.

In this case, it would appear that Nicholas Merrill, one of the founders of the project, has left for unclear reasons, and CalyxOS is responding by pausing all releases — and security updates — while its release process, signing keys, and security protocols are reworked. The result will be no updates for ""four to six months"". The project is recommending that its users ""should uninstall the OS"" and wait for an all-clear signal. CalyxOS may have its work cut out for it when the time comes to try to convince those users to come back.

From the announcement:

As you know, we announced a recent leadership transition. When senior personnel have access to signing keys and leave a team, it is security best practice to update signing keys and conduct audits. So in accordance with that, we are using this transition period to update our security protocols, including updating the signing keys and taking other steps to further protect our users.

In the past, security audits have been conducted for parts of CalyxOS, such as the Seedvault project, but not for the entire project. As more and more people across the globe started using this tool, we intend to conduct a broader security audit and publish the reports for the public to review.

As mentioned in our community letter below, we estimate that this audit and the implementation of new security protocols and signing keys will take four to six months, but we will endeavor to complete this process as soon as possible. However, for the time being, current CalyxOS users will not be able to receive further security software updates until our new security protocols are in place.

Without security updates, we can only be honest that this does not guarantee the level of security we strive for, especially when global threats to privacy and human rights are at a critical moment. That is why in the meantime we have posted the recommendation that people who are running CalyxOS should uninstall the OS and follow our community channels for updates, including when the latest version of CalyxOS becomes available again.

[...] We also understand that many community members have expressed interest in having an installation option/images for CalyxOS available again. Due to the overwhelming feedback from our community, we've decided to make the images publicly available once more. Please be aware that this decision is not a recommendation to migrate to CalyxOS now.

[ED. note:] CalyxOS is an Android-based operating system for select smartphones, foldables and tablets with mostly free and open-source software. It is produced by the Calyx Institute as part of its mission to "defend online privacy, security and accessibility."

https://archive.ph/YaJu0

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Americans, Be Warned: Lessons From Reddit's Chaotic UK Age Verification Rollout

Age verification has officially arrived in the UK thanks to the Online Safety Act (OSA), a UK law requiring online platforms to check that all UK-based users are at least eighteen years old before allowing them to access broad categories of "harmful" content that go far beyond graphic sexual content. EFF has extensively criticized the OSA for eroding privacy, chilling speech, and undermining the safety of the children it aims to protect. Now that it's gone into effect, these countless problems have begun to reveal themselves, and the absurd, disastrous outcome illustrates why we must work to avoid this age-verified future at all costs:

Perhaps you've seen the memes as large platforms like Spotify and YouTube attempt to comply with the OSA, while smaller sites—like forums focused on parenting, green living, and gaming on Linux—either shut down or cease some operations rather than face massive fines for not following the law's vague, expensive, and complicated rules and risk assessments.

But even Reddit, a site that prizes anonymity and has regularly demonstrated its commitment to digital rights, was doomed to fail in its attempt to comply with the OSA. Though Reddit is not alone in bowing to the UK mandates, it provides a perfect case study and a particularly instructive glimpse of what the age-verified future would look like if we don't take steps to stop it.

mcgrew writes:

James Lovell, one of the original Apollo astronauts in the infant NASA under President Eisenhower, died yesterday (August 9) at age 97. And here I thought outer space was supposed to be bad for you!

He flew on Gemini 7 and 12. Lovell, along with Commander Frank Borman and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders, were the first people to ever orbit the moon. Commander Lovell was to return to the moon, slated to walk on it this time on Apollo 13, but an oxygen tank exploded. They were incredibly lucky to return alive. It was chronicled in Lovell's book Lost Moon (with co-writer Jeffery Kruger) and the "based on a true story" movie Apollo 13.

The mishap happened a couple weeks after my eighteenth birthday. The news of the accident and their miraculous news outdid all other news, even the Vietnam war and the protests against it.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/winrar-zero-day-flaw-exploited-by-romcom-hackers-in-phishing-attacks/

A recently fixed WinRAR vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-8088 was exploited as a zero-day in phishing attacks to install the RomCom malware.

The flaw is a directory traversal vulnerability that was fixed in WinRAR 7.13, which allows specially crafted archives to extract files into a file path selected by the attacker.

"When extracting a file, previous versions of WinRAR, Windows versions of RAR, UnRAR, portable UnRAR source code and UnRAR.dll can be tricked into using a path, defined in a specially crafted archive, instead of user specified path," reads the WinRAR 7.13 changelog.

[Editor's Comment: It affects Windows only--JR]

"Unix versions of RAR, UnRAR, portable UnRAR source code and UnRAR library, also as RAR for Android, are not affected."

[...] RomCom (also tracked as Storm-0978, Tropical Scorpius, or UNC2596) is a Russian hacking group linked to ransomware and data-theft extortion attacks, along with campaigns focused on stealing credentials.

- Links in article:

https://www.win-rar.com/singlenewsview.html?&L=0&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=283&cHash=a64b4a8f662d3639dec8d65f47bc93c5
https://www.win-rar.com/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/firefox-and-windows-zero-days-exploited-by-russian-romcom-hackers/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-romcom-malware-variant-snipbot-spotted-in-data-theft-attacks/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-uses-new-rat-malware-in-cuba-ransomware-attacks/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/industrial-spy-data-extortion-market-gets-into-the-ransomware-game/

Original Submission

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.

Original Submission

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.

Original Submission