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AnonTechie writes:

Interesting Engineering published an article about a new mathematical study that dismantles the simulation hypothesis once and for all.

The idea that we might be living inside a vast computer simulation, much like in The Matrix, has fascinated philosophers and scientists for years. But a new study from researchers at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus has delivered a decisive blow to that theory.

According to Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor at UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, and his international collaborators, the structure of reality itself makes simulation impossible.

Their work shows that no computer, no matter how advanced, could ever reproduce the fundamental workings of the universe.

Their research goes further than rejecting the simulation theory. It suggests that reality is built on a kind of understanding that cannot be reduced to computational rules or algorithms.

The researchers approached the simulation question through mathematics and physics rather than philosophy. They explored whether the laws governing the universe could, in theory, be recreated by a computer system.

"It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated," says Dr. Faizal. "If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation.

This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation."

[Journal Reference]: https://jhap.du.ac.ir/article_488.html

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department just launched the world's first public-safety fleet built from Tesla Cybertrucks:

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) has officially unveiled the world's first public-safety fleet built entirely from Tesla Cybertrucks, marking a new chapter in electric law enforcement. Ten Cybertrucks, modified by Unplugged Performance's UP.FIT division, were revealed at a ceremony in Las Vegas. Each truck has been outfitted for full patrol capability, complete with emergency lighting, integrated communication systems, police-grade tires, and dedicated storage for gear and equipment.

The department said the Cybertruck program was funded through private partnerships, not taxpayer dollars, and will serve as both a pilot and proof-of-concept for future electrified patrol fleets. According to LVMPD, the goal is to test how electric vehicles perform in 24-hour duty cycles and under Nevada's extreme climate conditions.

Choosing the Cybertruck wasn't just about style. The vehicle's stainless-steel body, torque-heavy dual-motor setup, and adaptive air suspension make it well-suited to the demands of police work, from pursuit operations to disaster-response deployments. It also delivers the quiet operation and low running costs that have made EVs increasingly attractive to municipal fleets.

For Tesla, this debut is a welcome shift in attention following a series of controversies. International regulators have challenged the truck's design and pedestrian-safety credentials, preventing sales in the EU. The Las Vegas fleet, by contrast, provides the company with an opportunity to highlight the truck's practical capabilities in a legitimate, mission-critical setting.

Meanwhile, Tesla's production and allocation strategy for the Cybertruck remains in flux. Recently, unsold units are being redirected to Elon Musk's other ventures, SpaceX and xAI, for internal fleet use. That underscores the challenge of managing public demand while meeting niche commercial orders like this one.

[...] The Las Vegas deployment may set a precedent for police agencies across the country considering EVs for frontline duty. While the Cybertruck's unconventional design has polarized public opinion, its blend of durability and zero-emission performance could prove ideal for roles that demand high torque, instant power, and long idle times.

This rollout also offers Tesla a chance to reframe its narrative, shifting from social-media spectacle to public-sector innovation. If the LVMPD's results show measurable efficiency and reliability gains, Cybertrucks could become a common sight in law-enforcement fleets within a few years.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Tesla's 'Robotaxis' Keep Crashing-Even With Human 'Safety Monitors' Onboard:

Tesla's pilot "robotaxi" program is facing mounting scrutiny after multiple incidents in Austin, Texas, where the company's driverless cars have reportedly been involved in several low-speed crashes despite having human safety monitors on board. Spotted by Electrek and found here on the NHTSA website, both cite federal reports confirming at least four accidents since the fleet quietly began operations this summer.

The NHTSA is already investigating Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software over erratic traffic behavior, and the robotaxi crashes appear to extend those concerns into Tesla's dedicated autonomous service. The agency said it is reviewing new reports related to these test vehicles as it evaluates whether Tesla's systems meet federal safety standards.

Each Tesla robotaxi currently operates with a safety monitor in the driver's seat, ready to take control if the system fails. But several of the Austin crashes occurred while the vehicles were moving slowly or stationary, one incident involved contact with a fixed object in a parking area. Analysts say this suggests the system's perception and decision-making may not be giving monitors enough time to react, a key issue NHTSA has previously flagged in other FSD-related investigations.

[...] While Tesla's technology ambitions remain unmatched in scale, its safety record continues to trail several competitors in key metrics. A new industry report found that long-term battery reliability may be stronger elsewhere, Tesla ranks behind Kia in overall battery longevity for used EVs and plug-in hybrids, signaling that rivals are quietly catching up in key technical areas.

[...] For Tesla, the robotaxi initiative represents both its boldest gamble and its biggest regulatory risk. Despite years of promises about driverless capability, the company still faces federal oversight, unresolved safety probes, and a string of real-world mishaps that threaten public confidence. Each new incident underscores how complex full autonomy remains, even for a company that dominates global EV sales.

Until Tesla provides transparent data on crash frequency and performance, or demonstrates consistent reliability in live service, its robotaxi fleet will likely remain in testing limbo. For now, the only certainty is that the road to driverless mobility is proving bumpier than Tesla expected.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Once Again, Chat Control Flails After Strong Public Pressure:

The European Union Council pushed for a dangerous plan to scan encrypted messages, and once again, people around the world loudly called out the risks, leading to the current Danish presidency to withdraw the plan.

EFF has strongly opposed Chat Control since it was first introduced in 2022. The zombie proposal comes back time and time again, and time and time again, it's been shot down because there's no public support. The fight is delayed, but not over.

It's time for lawmakers to stop attempting to compromise encryption under the guise of public safety. Instead of making minor tweaks and resubmitting this proposal over and over, the EU Council should accept that any sort of client-side scanning of devices undermines encryption, and move on to developing real solutions that don't violate the human rights of people around the world.

As long as lawmakers continue to misunderstand the way encryption technology works, there is no way forward with message-scanning proposals, not in the EU or anywhere else. This sort of surveillance is not just an overreach; it's an attack on fundamental human rights.

The coming EU presidencies should abandon these attempts and work on finding a solution that protects people's privacy and security.

Previously:
    • Scientists Urge EU Governments to Reject Chat Control Rules
    • EU Chat Control Law Proposes Scanning Your Messages — Even Encrypted Ones
    • EU Parliament's Research Service Confirms: Chat Control Violates Fundamental Rights
    • Client Side Scanning May Cost More Than it Delivers

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/former_l3harris_cyber_director_charged/

Federal prosecutors have charged a former general manager of US government defense contractor L3Harris's cyber arm Trenchant with selling secrets to an unidentified Russian buyer for $1.3 million.

According to the Justice Department, Peter Williams stole seven trade secrets belonging to two unnamed companies between April 2022 and June 2025 "knowing and intending those secrets to be sold outside of the United States, and specifically to a buyer based in the Russian Federation."

The court documents [PDF*] don't specify what the trade secrets involved, but Williams worked as a director and general manager at L3Harris' Trenchant division, which develops cyber weapons.

According to the company's website, it supports "national security operations with end-point intelligence solutions," and is "a world authority on cyber capabilities, operating in the fields of computer network operations and vulnerability research."

This is corporate speak for offensive cyber tech, such as zero-day exploits and surveillance tools. But Trenchant claims it uses its cyber powers for good, not evil.

Links in article:
* https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/10/23/peter_williams_charges.pdf
https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/trenchant
https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/offensive-cyber

Original Submission

hubie writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/11/research-roundup-6-cool-science-stories-we-almost-missed-3/

It's a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. October's list includes the microstructural differences between regular and gluten-free spaghetti, capturing striking snakes in action, the mystery behind the formation of Martian gullies, and—for all you word game enthusiasts—an intriguing computational proof of the highest possible scoring Boggle board.

Highest-scoring Boggle board

Sometimes we get handy story tips from readers about quirkily interesting research projects. Sometimes those projects involve classic games like Boggle, in which players find as many words as they can from a 4×4 grid of 16 lettered cubic dice, within a given time limit. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam alerted us to a preprint he posted to the physics arXiv, detailing his quest to find the Boggle board configuration that yields the highest possible score. It's pictured above, with a total score of 3,625 points, according to Vanderkam's first-ever computational proof. There are more than 1000 possible words, with "replastering" being the longest.

Vanderkam has documented his quest and its resolution (including the code he used) extensively on his blog, admitting to the Financial Times that, "As far as I can tell, I'm the only person who is actually interested in this problem." That's not entirely true: there was an attempt in 1982 that found an optimal board yielding 2,195 points. Vanderkam's board was known as possibly being the highest scoring, it was just very difficult to prove using standard heuristic search methods. Vanderkam's solution involved grouping board configurations with similar patterns into classes, and then finding upper bounds to discard clear losers, rather than trying to tally scores for each board individually—i.e., an old school "branch and bound" technique.

Origins of Egypt's Karnak Temple

Egypt's Karnak Temple complex, located about 500 meters of the Nile River near Luxor, has long been of interest to archaeologists and millions of annual tourists alike. But its actual age has been a matter of much debate. The most comprehensive geological survey conducted to date is yielding fresh insights into the temple's origins and evolution over time, according to a paper published in the journal Antiquity.

The authors analyzed sediment cores and thousands of ceramic fragments from within and around the site to map out how the surrounding landscape has changed. They concluded that early on, circa 2520 BCE, the site would have experienced regular flooding from the Nile; thus, the earliest permanent settlement at Karnak would have emerged between 2591 and 2152 BCE, in keeping with the earliest dated ceramic fragments. This would have been after river channels essentially created an island of higher ground that served as the foundation for constructing the temple. As those channels diverged over millennia, the available area for the temple expanded and thus, so did the complex.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Qilin ransomware abuses WSL to run Linux encryptors in Windows
https://archive.ph/lhpiX

The Qilin ransomware operation was spotted executing Linux encryptors in Windows using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to evade detection by traditional security tools.

The ransomware first launched as "Agenda" in August 2022, rebranding to Qilin by September and continuing to operate under that name to this day.

Qilin has become one of the most active ransomware operations, with new research from Trend Micro and Cisco Talos stating that the cybercrime gang has attacked more than 700 victims across 62 countries this year.

Both firms say the group has become one of the most active ransomware threats worldwide, publishing over 40 new victims per month in the second half of 2025.

Both cybersecurity firms report that Qilin affiliates use a mix of legitimate programs and remote management tools to breach networks and steal credentials, including applications such as AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, and Splashtop for remote access, and Cyberduck and WinRAR for data theft.

The threat actors also use common built-in Windows utilities, such as Microsoft Paint (mspaint.exe) and Notepad (notepad.exe), to inspect documents for sensitive data before stealing them.

[...] "After gaining access, the attackers enabled or installed WSL using scripts or command-line tools, then deployed the Linux ransomware payload within that environment. This gave them the ability to execute a Linux-based encryptor directly on a Windows host while avoiding many defenses that are focused on detecting traditional Windows malware."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

"I don't believe we're in an AI bubble," says Huang after announcing $500B in orders:

On Wednesday, Nvidia became the first company in history to reach a $5 trillion market capitalization, fresh on the heels of a GTC conference keynote in Washington, DC, where CEO Jensen Huang announced $500 billion in AI chip orders and plans to build seven supercomputers for the US government. The milestone comes a mere three months after Nvidia crossed the $4 trillion mark in July, vaulting the company past tech giants like Apple and Microsoft in market valuation but also driving continued fears of an AI investment bubble.

Nvidia's shares have climbed nearly 12-fold since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, as the AI boom propelled the S&P 500 to record highs. Shares of Nvidia stock rose 4.6 percent on Wednesday following the Tuesday announcement at the company's GTC conference. During a Bloomberg Television interview at the event, Huang dismissed concerns about overheated valuations, saying, "I don't believe we're in an AI bubble. All of these different AI models we're using—we're using plenty of services and paying happily to do it."

Nvidia expects to ship 20 million units of its latest chips, compared to just 4 million units of the previous Hopper generation over its entire lifetime, Huang said at the conference. The $500 billion figure represents cumulative orders for the company's Blackwell and Rubin processors through the end of 2026, though Huang noted that his projections did not include potential sales to China.

While it probably feels like glory days for Nvidia at the moment, the success comes with a large dose of caution. Even prior to the latest valuation boom of the past 24 hours, the rapid rise in AI-related investments has fueled persistent concerns that market enthusiasm has outstripped the technology's ability to deliver immediate economic value.

Some analysts warn that valuations may be overheated. Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management, told Reuters that "AI's current expansion relies on a few dominant players financing each other's capacity. The moment investors start demanding cash flow returns instead of capacity announcements, some of these flywheels could seize."

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/massive-surge-of-nfc-relay-malware-steals-europeans-credit-cards/

Near-Field Communication (NFC) relay malware has grown massively popular in Eastern Europe, with researchers discovering over 760 malicious Android apps using the technique to steal people's payment card information in the past few months.

Contrary to the traditional banking trojans that use overlays to steal banking credentials or remote access tools to perform fraudulent transactions, NFC malware abuses Android's Host Card Emulation (HCE) to emulate or steal contactless credit card and payment data.

They capture EMV fields, respond to APDU commands from a POS terminal with attacker-controlled replies, or forward terminal requests to a remote server, which crafts the proper APDU responses to enable payments at the terminal without the physical cardholder present.

[...] The apps used to distribute the malware impersonate Google Pay or financial institutions such as Santander Bank, VTB Bank, Tinkoff Bank, ING Bank, Bradesco Bank, Promsvyazbank (PSB), and several others.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Before being considered for submission to arXiv's CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review:

arXiv's computer science (CS) category has updated its moderation practice with respect to review (or survey) articles and position papers. Before being considered for submission to arXiv's CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. When submitting review articles or position papers, authors must include documentation of successful peer review to receive full consideration. Review/survey articles or position papers submitted to arXiv without this documentation will be likely to be rejected and not appear on arXiv.

This change is being implemented due to the unmanageable influx of review articles and position papers to arXiv CS.

[...] In the past few years, arXiv has been flooded with papers. Generative AI / large language models have added to this flood by making papers – especially papers not introducing new research results – fast and easy to write. While categories across arXiv have all seen a major increase in submissions, it's particularly pronounced in arXiv's CS category.

[...] In the past, arXiv CS received a relatively small amount of review or survey articles, and those we did receive were of extremely high quality, written by senior researchers at the request of publications like Annual Reviews, Proceedings of the IEEE, and Computing Surveys. Position paper submissions to arXiv were similarly rare, and usually produced by scientific societies or government study groups (for example,the Computing Research Association of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine). While, as now, these papers were not content types officially accepted by arXiv, the arXiv moderators accepted them because of their scholarly value to the research community.

Fast forward to present day – submissions to arXiv in general have risen dramatically, and we now receive hundreds of review articles every month. The advent of large language models have made this type of content relatively easy to churn out on demand, and the majority of the review articles we receive are little more than annotated bibliographies, with no substantial discussion of open research issues.

arXiv believes that there are position papers and review articles that are of value to the scientific community, and we would like to be able to share them on arXiv. However, our team of volunteer moderators do not have the time or bandwidth to review the hundreds of these articles we receive without taking time away from our core purpose, which is to share research articles.

[...] Each category of arXiv has different moderators, who are subject matter experts with a terminal degree in their particular subject, to best serve the scholarly pursuits, goals, and standards of their category. While all moderators adhere to arXiv policy, the only policy arXiv has in place with regard to review articles and position papers is that they are not a generally accepted content type. The goal of the moderators of each category is to make sure the work being submitted is actually science, and that it is of potential interest to the scientific community. If other categories see a similar rise in LLM-written review articles and position papers, they may choose to change their moderation practices in a similar manner to better serve arXiv authors and readers. We will make these updates public if and when they do occur.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

Meta: Pirated Adult Film Downloads Were For "Personal Use," Not AI Training.

[...] As the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States, the adult film producer has filed tens of thousands of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates. This summer it expanded its scope by taking aim at Meta.

[...] The adult producers discovered the alleged infringements after Meta's BitTorrent activity was revealed in a lawsuit filed by several book authors. In that case, Meta admitted that it obtained content from pirate sources.

[...] Meta clearly denies that the adult video downloads were used for AI purposes. Since there is no evidence that Meta directed this activity, it can't be held liable for direct copyright infringement.

The tech company doesn't just deny the allegations; it also offers an alternative explanation. Meta suggests that employees or visitors may have downloaded the pirated videos for personal use.

Meta denies torrenting porn to train AI, says downloads were for "personal use".

This week, Meta asked a US district court to toss a lawsuit alleging that the tech giant illegally torrented pornography to train AI.

The move comes after Strike 3 Holdings discovered illegal downloads of some of its adult films on Meta corporate IP addresses, as well as other downloads that Meta allegedly concealed using a "stealth network" of 2,500 "hidden IP addresses." Accusing Meta of stealing porn to secretly train an unannounced adult version of its AI model powering Movie Gen, Strike 3 sought damages that could have exceeded $350 million, TorrentFreak reported.

Filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, Meta accused Strike 3 of relying on "guesswork and innuendo," while writing that Strike 3 "has been labeled by some as a 'copyright troll' that files extortive lawsuits." Requesting that all copyright claims be dropped, Meta argued that there was no evidence that the tech giant directed any of the downloads of about 2,400 adult movies owned by Strike 3—or was even aware of the illegal activity.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cisa-linux-privilege-escalation-flaw-now-exploited-in-ransomware-attacks/

CISA confirmed on Thursday that a high-severity privilege escalation flaw in the Linux kernel is now being exploited in ransomware attacks.

While the vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2024-1086) was disclosed on January 31, 2024, as a use-after-free weakness in the netfilter: nf_tables kernel component and was fixed via a commit submitted in January 2024, it was first introduced by a decade-old commit in February 2014.

Successful exploitation enables attackers with local access to escalate privileges on the target system, potentially resulting in root-level access to compromised devices.

As Immersive Labs explains, potential impact includes system takeover once root access is gained (allowing attackers to disable defenses, modify files, or install malware), lateral movement through the network, and data theft.

In late March 2024, a security researcher using the 'Notselwyn' alias published a detailed write-up and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code targeting CVE-2024-1086 on GitHub, showcasing how to achieve local privilege escalation on Linux kernel versions between 5.14 and 6.6.

The flaw impacts many major Linux distributions, including but not limited to Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Red Hat, which use kernel versions from 3.15 to 6.8-rc1

In a Thursday update to its catalog of vulnerabilities exploited in the wild, the U.S. cybersecurity agency said the flaw is now known to be used in ransomware campaigns, but didn't provide more information regarding ongoing exploitation attempts.

CISA added this security flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog in May 2024 and ordered federal agencies to secure their systems by June 20, 2024.

If patching is not possible, IT admins are advised to apply one of the following mitigations:

        Blocklist 'nf_tables' if it's not needed/actively used,
        Restrict access to user namespaces to limit the attack surface,
        Load the Linux Kernel Runtime Guard (LKRG) module (however, this can cause system instability).

"These types of vulnerabilities are frequent attack vectors for malicious cyber actors and pose significant risks to the federal enterprise," CISA said. "Apply mitigations per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if mitigations are unavailable."

Original Submission

quietus writes:

"When the music stops ... but as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance."

(Charles "Chuck" Prince, Citigroup CEO, July 2007, FT interview)

About 85 percent of US GDP. That has been the average total value of all US stocks since 1970. Warren Buffett once described this as "probably the single best measure of where valuations stand at any given moment".

On Tuesday,October 28, that value reached 220% of US GDP.

US stocks are trading at extreme levels, notes the Financial Times. Price to earnings ratios for the S&P500 are at a 25 year high; price-to-sales ratios are higher than before the dotcom bust.

AI companies are almost entirely to blame, with a focus on the Magnificent Seven: Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia and Tesla. Microsoft, for example, took 35 years to reach a dazzling trillion dollar valuation, in 2021. Just 4 years later it trades at 4 trillion dollar. That valuation comes on top of impressive infrastructure investment numbers: Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, for example, plan to spend more than $400bn on data centres in 2026, on top of more than $350bn this year.

Notes the article, wryly:

some investors seem to have discounted the notion that AI might prove anything less than earth-shatteringly revolutionary

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

I recently spun up a .onion mirror of this website.

Why? Because why not. And also because I can. Oh, and free speech and anti-censorship and all that jazz.

I'd like to pretend that it was some grand technological challenge, but if I'm being entirely candid, it was like 3 commands and 4 lines of configuration.

If you, too, would like to become a member of the dark web, here's how I did it:

https://flower.codes/2025/10/23/onion-mirror.html
https://archive.ph/WADPR

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://deadline.com/2025/09/spaceballs-2-cast-photo-anthony-carrigan-george-wyner-1236555748/

Amazon MGM Studios has made official what Deadline previously told you: There is a Spaceballs 2 with Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman and Daphne Zuniga reprising their respective roles as Dark Helmet, Lone Star and Princess Vespa. There's also the series additions, which we told you about, including Josh Gad, Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman.

New cast members who were unannounced are Barry and Superman actor Anthony Carrigan and A Serious Man's George Wyner, who played Colonel Sandurz in the original 1987 movie which grossed over $38M domestic.

  And of course, the sci-fi comedy pic's architect, Mel Brooks, is back, returning to his roles as Zen Yiddish wise guy Yogurt and President Skroob.

The photo, of course, mirrors the famous table read image featuring the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which itself marked a return to a beloved franchise from a galaxy far, far away. Appropriate, given Spaceballs is a parody of that mythos.

Production is underway with Josh Greenbaum directing. Check out the great cast table read shot above, a nod to what JJ Abrams did when he assembled the Star Wars gang new and old for Force Awakens, more than a decade ago. Expected theatrical release is 2027 for the Spaceballs sequel which is currently untitled.

The screenplay logline from scribe duo Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez (Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy; TMNT: Mutant Mayhem), and Gad is under wraps. Amazon MGM Studios aren't making official the roles of Palmer, Gad and Lewis Pullman.

Will it be as good as Spaceballs, or perhaps even better?

Original Submission