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janrinok writes:

https://www.techradar.com/vehicle-tech/hybrid-electric-vehicles/shock-horror-in-car-touchscreens-are-way-more-distracting-than-we-first-thought-says-new-study

The results of a new study by the University of Washington (UW) and Toyota Research Institute have provided pretty daming evidence against the use of large, distracting touchscreens when driving a vehicle.

Rather eloquently titled "Touchscreens in Motion: Quantifying the Impact of Cognitive Load on Distracted Drivers", the study saw 16 participants placed in ultra-realistic high-fidelity driving simulators while researchers tracked eye and hand movements, pupil dilation, and skin conductivity.

Participants were asked to drive around a typical urban environment and then interact with various side-tasks presented on the touchscreen; nothing major, simply adjusting car functionality or changing the radio station.

Their ability to both drive and their accuracy when interacting with the touchscreen were measured.

According to Car Scoops, the researchers measured a mix of driver performance metrics and physiological markers, from eye movements, index finger tracking and steering consistency to reaction time and stress signals. This helped them build a better picture of stress and cognitive load on the human in the driving seat.

As you would expect, the results weren't pretty for those peddling an increased reliance on touchscreens over physical buttons. Firstly, pointing accuracy on said touchscreen and the speed of use were reduced by more than 58% when compared to non-driving conditions.

Already, this reveals that us humans struggle to physically interact with a touchscreen when busy processing what's going on out of the windscreen of a moving vehicle. This then requires the driver to apply more focus to tapping digital menu screens.

As a result, the study revealed that lane deviation increased by over 40% once touchscreen interaction was introduced. The vicious cycle then continues.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/18/trump-pot-reclassification-cannabis-stocks-medicare-cbd.html
https://archive.is/7sEWG

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing federal agencies to reclassify marijuana, loosening long-standing restrictions on the drug and marking the most consequential shift in U.S. cannabis policy in more than half a century.

The order, once finalized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, moves cannabis out of Schedule I classification — the most restrictive category under the Controlled Substances Act, alongside heroin and LSD — to a Schedule III classification, which encompasses substances with accepted medical use and a lower potential for abuse, such as ketamine and Tylenol with codeine.

"This action has been requested by American patients suffering from extreme pain, incurable diseases, aggressive cancers, seizure disorders, neurological problems and more, including numerous veterans with service-related injuries, and older Americans who live with chronic medical problems that severely degrade their quality of life," Trump said from the Oval Office on Thursday.

Also on Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, led by Dr. Mehmet Oz, is expected to launch a pilot program in April enabling certain Medicare-covered seniors to receive free, doctor-recommended CBD products, which must comply with all local and state laws on quality and safety, according to senior White House officials. The products must also come from a legally compliant source and undergo third-party testing for CBD levels and contaminants.

Shares of cannabis conglomerates were down following the announcement, likely from worries of new competition from international companies.

"Millions of registered patients across the United States, many of them veterans, rely on cannabis for relief from chronic and debilitating symptoms. We commend the administration for taking this historic step. This is only the beginning," Ben Kovler, founder and CEO of Green Thumb, said in a statement to CNBC.

The reclassification is viewed by many analysts as a financial lifeline for the cannabis industry. The move exempts companies from IRS Code Section 280E, allowing them to deduct standard expenses like rent and payroll for the first time. It also opens the door for banking access and institutional capital previously sidelined by compliance fears.

Many on Wall Street also expect the changes and the Medicare pilot to draw major pharmaceutical players into the sector to chase federally insured revenue.

While CBD has surged in popularity in recent years, with infused consumer goods ranging from seltzers to skin care, the Food and Drug Administration has stopped short of granting the compound its full backing.

Studies have found "inconsistent benefits" for targeted conditions, while FDA-funded research warns that prolonged CBD use can cause liver toxicity and interfere with other lifesaving medications.

Currently, the FDA has only approved one CBD-based drug, Epidiolex, for rare forms of epilepsy.

"I want to emphasize that the order ... doesn't legalize marijuana in any way, shape or form, and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug," Trump said.

Experts and industry insiders told CNBC this week that a reclassification could pave the way for more research into the effects of CBD use.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward and upstart write:

Danish postal service to stop delivering letters after 400 years:

PostNord's decision to end service on 30 December comes after fear over 'increasing digitalisation' of Danish society

The Danish postal service will deliver its last letter on 30 December, ending a more than 400-year-old tradition.

Announcing the decision earlier this year to stop delivering letters, PostNord, formed in 2009 in a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services, said it would cut 1,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1,500 red postboxes amid the "increasing digitalisation" of Danish society.

Describing Denmark as "one of the most digitalised countries in the world", the company said the demand for letters had "fallen drastically" while online shopping continued to increase, prompting the decision to instead focus on parcels.

It took only three hours for 1,000 of the distinctive postboxes, which have already been dismantled, to be bought up when they went on sale earlier this month with a price tag of 2,000 DKK (£235) each for those in good condition and 1,500 DKK (£176) for those a little more well-worn. A further 200 will be auctioned in January. PostNord, which will continue to deliver letters in Sweden, has said it will refund unused Danish stamps for a limited time.

Danes will still be able to send letters, using the delivery company Dao, which already delivers letters in Denmark but will expand its services from 1 January from about 30m letters in 2025 to 80m next year. But customers will instead have to go to a Dao shop to post their letters – or pay extra to have it collected from home – and pay for postage either online or via an app.

The Danish postal service has been responsible for delivering letters in the country since 1624. In the last 25 years, letter-sending has been in sharp decline in Denmark, with a fall of more than 90%.

But evidence suggests a resurgence in letter-writing among younger people could be under way.

Dao said its research had found 18- to 34-year-olds send two to three times as many letters as other age groups, citing the trend researcher Mads Arlien-Søborg, who puts the rise down to young people "looking for a counterbalance to digital oversaturation". Letter-writing, he said, had become a "conscious choice".

hubie writes:

Hubble Space Telescope captures rare collision in nearby planetary system:

In an unprecedented celestial event, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured the dramatic aftermath of colliding space rocks within a nearby planetary system.

When astronomers initially spotted a bright object in the sky, they assumed it was a dust-covered exoplanet, reflecting starlight. But when the "exoplanet" disappeared and a new bright object appeared, the international team of astrophysicists — including Northwestern University's Jason Wang — realized these were not planets at all. Instead, they were the illuminated remains of a cosmic fender bender.

Two distinct, violent collisions generated two luminous clouds of debris in the same planetary system. The discovery offers a unique real-time glimpse into the mechanisms of planet formation and the composition of materials that coalesce to form new worlds.

The study was published in the journal Science.

"Spotting a new light source in the dust belt around a star was surprising. We did not expect that at all," Wang said. "Our primary hypothesis is that we saw two collisions of planetesimals — small rocky objects, like asteroids — over the last two decades. Collisions of planetesimals are extremely rare events, and this marks the first time we have seen one outside our solar system. Studying planetesimal collisions is important for understanding how planets form. It also can tell us about the structure of asteroids, which is important information for planetary defense programs like the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)."

"This is certainly the first time I've ever seen a point of light appear out of nowhere in an exoplanetary system," said lead author Paul Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. "It's absent in all of our previous Hubble images, which means that we just witnessed a violent collision between two massive objects and a huge debris cloud unlike anything in our own solar system today."

[...] For years, astronomers have puzzled over a bright object called Fomalhaut b, an exoplanet candidate residing just outside the star Fomalhaut. Located a mere 25 light-years from Earth in the Piscis Austrinus constellation, Fomalhaut is more massive than the sun and encircled by an intricate system of dusty debris belts.

"The system has one of the largest dust belts that we know of," said Wang, who is part of the team that has monitored the system for two decades. "That makes it an easy target to study."

Since discovering Fomalhaut b in 2008, astronomers have struggled to determine whether it is, indeed, an actual planet or a large expanding cloud of dust. In 2023, researchers used the HST to further examine the strange light source. Surprisingly, it was no longer there. But another bright point of light emerged in a slightly different location within the same system.

"With these observations, our original intention was to monitor Fomalhaut b, which we initially thought was a planet," Wang said. "We assumed the bright light was Fomalhaut b because that's the known source in the system. But, upon carefully comparing our new images to past images, we realized it could not be the same source. That was both exciting and caused us to scratch our heads."

The disappearance of Fomalhaut b (now called Fomalhaut cs1) supports the hypothesis that it was a dissipating dust cloud, likely produced by a collision. The appearance of a second point of light (now called Fomalhaut cs2) further supports the theory that neither are planets, but the dusty remnants of dramatic smashups between planetesimals — the rocky building blocks of planets.

The location and brightness of Fomalhaut cs2 bear striking similarities to the initial observations of Fomalhaut cs1 two decades prior. By imaging the system, the team was able to calculate how frequent such planetesimal collisions occur.

"Theory suggests that there should be one collision every 100,000 years, or longer. Here, in 20 years, we've seen two," Kalas said. "If you had a movie of the last 3,000 years, and it was sped up so that every year was a fraction of a second, imagine how many flashes you'd see over that time. Fomalhaut's planetary system would be sparkling with these collisions."

[...] "Fomalhaut cs2 looks exactly like an extrasolar planet reflecting starlight," Kalas said. "What we learned from studying cs1 is that a large dust cloud can masquerade as a planet for many years. This is a cautionary note for future missions that aim to detect extrasolar planets in reflected light."

Although Fomalhaut cs1 has faded from view, the research team will continue to observe the Fomalhaut system. They plan to track the evolution of Fomalhaut cs2 and potentially uncover more details about the dynamics of collisions in the stellar neighborhood.

Journal Reference: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu6266

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/alan-turings-delilah

A collection of documents was recently sold at auction for almost half a million dollars. The documents detail a top-secret voice-encryption project led by Alan Turing, culminating in the creation of the Delilah machine.

It was 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe Day. With the German military's unconditional surrender, the European part of World War II came to an end. Alan Turing and his assistant Donald Bayley celebrated victory in their quiet English way, by taking a long walk together. They had been working side by side for more than a year in a secret electronics laboratory, deep in the English countryside. Bayley, a young electrical engineer, knew little about his boss's other life as a code breaker, only that Turing would set off on his bicycle every now and then to another secret establishment about 10 miles away along rural lanes, Bletchley Park. As Bayley and the rest of the world would later learn, Bletchley Park was the headquarters of a vast, unprecedented code-breaking operation.

When they sat down for a rest in a clearing in the woods, Bayley said, "Well, the war's over now—it's peacetime, so you can tell us all."

"Don't be so bloody silly," Turing replied. That was the end of that conversation," Bayley recalled 67 years later.

Turing's incredible code-breaking work is now no longer secret. What's more, he is renowned both as a founding father of computer science and as a pioneering figure in artificial intelligence. He is not so well-known, however, for his work in electrical engineering. This may be about to change.

In November 2023, a large cache of his wartime papers—nicknamed the "Bayley papers"—was auctioned in London for almost half a million U.S. dollars. The previously unknown cache contains many sheets in Turing's own handwriting, telling of his top-secret "Delilah" engineering project from 1943 to 1945. Delilah was Turing's portable voice-encryption system, named after the biblical deceiver of men. There is also material written by Bayley, often in the form of notes he took while Turing was speaking. It is thanks to Bayley that the papers survived: He kept them until he died in 2020, 66 years after Turing passed away.

When the British Government learned about the sale of these papers at auction, it acted swiftly to put a ban on their export, declaring them to be "an important part of our national story," and saying "It is right that a UK buyer has the opportunity to purchase these papers." I was lucky enough to get access to the collection prior to the November sale, when the auction house asked for my assistance in identifying some of the technical material. The Bayley papers shine new light on Turing the engineer.

At the time, Turing was traveling from the abstract to the concrete. The papers offer intriguing snapshots of his journey from his prewar focus on mathematical logic and number theory, into a new world of circuits, electronics, and engineering math.

During the war, Turing realized that cryptology's new frontier was going to be the encryption of speech. The existing wartime cipher machines—such as the Japanese " Purple" machine, the British Typex, and the Germans' famous Enigma and teletypewriter-based SZ42—were all for encrypting typewritten text. Text, though, is scarcely the most convenient way for commanders to communicate, and secure voice communication was on the military wish list.

Bell Labs' pioneering SIGSALY speech-encryption system was constructed in New York City, under a U.S. Army contract, during 1942 and 1943. It was gigantic, weighing over 50 thousand kilograms and filling a room. Turing was familiar with SIGSALY and wanted to miniaturize speech encryption. The result, Delilah, consisted of three small units, each roughly the size of a shoebox. Weighing just 39 kg, including its power pack, Delilah would be at home in a truck, a trench, or a large backpack.

In 1943, Turing set up bench space in a Nissen hut and worked on Delilah in secret. The hut was at Hanslope Park, a military-run establishment in the middle of nowhere, England. Today, Hanslope Park is still an ultrasecret intelligence site known as His Majesty's Government Communications Centre. In the Turing tradition, HMGCC engineers supply today's British intelligence agents with specialized hardware and software.

Turing seems to have enjoyed the two years he spent at Hanslope Park working on Delilah. He made an old cottage his home and took meals in the Army mess. The commanding officer recalled that he "soon settled down and became one of us." In 1944, Turing acquired his young assistant, Bayley, who had recently graduated from the University of Birmingham with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. The two became good friends, working together on Delilah until the autumn of 1945. Bayley called Turing simply "Prof," as everyone did in the Bletchley-Hanslope orbit.

"I admired the originality of his mind," Bayley told me when I interviewed him in the 1990s. "He taught me a great deal, for which I have always been grateful."

In return, Bayley taught Turing bench skills. When he first arrived at Hanslope Park, Bayley found Turing wiring together circuits that resembled a "spider's nest," he said. He took Turing firmly by the hand and dragged him through breadboarding boot camp.

A year later, as the European war ground to a close, Turing and Bayley got a prototype system up and running. This "did all that could be expected of it," Bayley said. He described the Delilah system as "one of the first to be based on rigorous cryptographic principles."

hubie writes:

Quickly adopted by European colonists, hammocks also had cultural meaning, according to Binghamton Professor John Kuhn:

When you're swaying in a beachside hammock on a lazy summer day, take a moment to thank the Indigenous cultures that invented it.

Native to South America and the Caribbean, hammocks were traditionally woven by women, who were frequently fiber-workers in Indigenous cultures, said Binghamton University Associate Professor of English John Kuhn, who recently co-authored an article on the topic.

"The oldest preserved specimen is 4,000 years old, but they may actually be much older," said Kuhn, who also directs the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Binghamton. "We just don't know; textiles don't preserve well in the tropics."

[...] Portable, versatile and easy to clean, hammocks are a comfortable way to sleep in a hot climate. They also protect the user from insects, especially when compared to the ground-based bedding common to European colonizers.

"Colonists basically adopt them right from the jump," Kuhn said. "They learn to use them because the hammock was a major component in hospitality rituals that are being extended to them by Indigenous groups who are seeking alliance and friendship."

The technology proved useful for military expeditions in the Americas and was adopted by figures such as English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. As colonial settlements began to develop, their use was adopted by a wider population, from elites to slaves.

[...] The spread of hammock use among colonizers belies the common belief that European technology was far superior to that of Indigenous people. It's far from the only example of cultural borrowing; take chocolate and tobacco, which originated as stimulants developed by Indigenous cultures.

Kuhn is currently working on a book about another Indigenous technology: birchbark canoes, which North American colonists immediately adopted for their own use.

"Sometimes people have this idea that Indigenous cultures were just destroyed, and they aren't necessarily seen as huge technological contributors to the Atlantic world that emerges out of colonization," Kuhn said. "The next time you see a hammock, just take a minute to marvel at the ingenuity of the cultures that it sprang from!"

Journal Reference: Norton, M., Kuhn, J. Towards a history of the hammock: An Indigenous technology in the Atlantic world. [OPEN] Postmedieval (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-025-00379-w

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Nvidia reportedly plans 30-40% cut in GeForce GPU production in early 2026:

Recent reports have claimed that Nvidia intends to reduce its production capacity for GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs in the first half of 2026. These cuts are reportedly due to shortages of memory, not just GDDR7, but all memory types.

30-40% of Nvidia's GeForce GPU production could be axed. This implies that Nvidia cannot get enough GDDR7 memory to produce GPUs at its current rate. Alternatively, it implies that Nvidia expects significantly reduced GPU sales in 2026, possibly due to rising NAND and DRAM costs and their impact on PC prices.

Note that there is no mention of non-GeForce RTX PRO series GPUs. If GDDR7 memory supply is indeed limited, Nvidia may be allocating its limited memory stocks to its more profitable RTX PRO GPU lineup, sacrificing its GeForce lineup.

[...] Benchlife has claimed that Nvidia plans to start its cuts by targeting its RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 5070 Ti. Targeting the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB makes sense, as this GPU has the same amount of memory as an RTX 5080, a much more expensive GPU. The same is true for the RTX 5070 Ti. It's memory could also be used for more profitable RTX 5080 GPUs.

If this is true, Nvidia wants to allocate its memory to its most profitable products. This makes sense from a business perspective. However, this tactic will hit consumers hard. Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is a much better product than its 8GB counterpart. Why? It has enough VRAM to run modern games without compromises. Nvidia's shift in production will force more consumers to purchase their 8GB GPU models.

[...] DDR5 memory prices are already through the roof, and it's likely that these price increases will soon impact the GPU market. Manufacturers will prioritise GPUs with lower memory and higher-margin models with more memory. That's bad news for gamers who want graphics cards with plenty of VRAM.

With Nvidia reportedly reducing its GPU production, one has to wonder whether this will cause a GPU shortage and drive up GPU prices.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A recent review suggests that gifted education and talent programs have been based on false premises:

Traditional research into giftedness and expertise assumes that the key factors to develop outstanding achievements are early performance (e.g., in a school subject, sport, or in concerts) and corresponding abilities (e.g., intelligence, motor skills, musicality) along with many years of intensive training in a discipline. Accordingly, talent programs typically aim to select the top-performing youth and then seek to further accelerate their performance through intensive discipline-specific training. However, this is apparently not the ideal way to promote young talent, as a team led by Arne Güllich, professor of sports science at RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, has recently discovered.

The starting point: Until recently, research into giftedness and expertise has focused on young and sub-elite performers. For example, school and college students, young athletes and chess players, or musicians at conservatories. The conclusions drawn from this research have recently been called into question by evidence from adult world-class athletes. "Traditional research into giftedness and expertise did not sufficiently consider the question of how world-class performers at peak performance age developed in their early years," Arne Güllich summarizes. His research intention in the current Review was, therefore, to investigate the development of these top performers. [...]

[...] A key finding: top performers undergo a different development pattern than previous research assumed. "And a common pattern emerges across the different disciplines," Arne Güllich emphasizes. He identifies three key findings. The first is that the best at a young age and the best later in life are mostly different individuals. Second, those who reached the world-class level showed rather gradual performance development in their early years and were not yet among the best of their age group. And the third finding is that those who later achieved peak performance did not specialize in a single discipline at an early age, but engaged in various disciplines (e.g., different subjects of study, genres of music, sports, or professions).

fliptop writes:

All of the 1,600 workers currently employed at that plant will be laid off before its upcoming conversion:

BlueOval SK CEO Michael Adams informed workers at the Glendale plant of this move in a video statement, saying that Ford's shift would result in "the end of all BlueOval SK Positions in Kentucky." As of this writing, it's unclear when the layoffs will take place, though workers will still continue to receive paychecks and benefits for the next 60 days. Employees will also be able to apply for a position at the revamped site, expected to open in 2027, where Ford will hire 2,100 workers.

"Right now, our primary focus is helping the affected BlueOval employees find new jobs," said Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. "Team Kentucky is coordinating with company and community leaders to directly support these employees, in addition to planning job fairs and creating a website offering resources." Kentucky officials are renegotiating terms of the state's incentive agreement with Ford as well.

From WRDB.com:

According to the Wall Street Journal, Ford has lost $13 billion on its EV business since 2023.

Wall Street Journal automotive reporter Chris Otts, who covered Ford extensively for years at WDRB, said not all batteries are created equally.

"They built the wrong kind of battery and the wrong chemistry for that here in Kentucky, so they have to change the entire plant to make a different product," Otts said. "That's why you're seeing this long lead time and this mass layoff of all the employees here."

Previously: Ford Cancels Electric F-150

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.extremetech.com/internet/google-search-now-lets-you-upload-images-and-pdfs-for-analysis

The new plus button sits to the left of the search bar.

Google Search now allows users to upload images and documents directly via a new plus button. After a file is uploaded, the user can ask questions about it or enter AI Mode, where Gemini breaks down the file's content. The plus button is live on Google's homepage for US-based desktop users and will roll out to all countries where AI Mode is available later this week.

"It's another step in making it easier for you to ask anything, any way," a Google spokesperson told CNET.

The plus button is to the left of the Google search bar and, when clicked, opens a menu to upload an image or file. Any questions the user asks about their file are answered conversationally by Gemini, which can offer summaries, explanations, tips, and follow-up questions.

Adding AI Mode to Google's search bar is another step toward making AI accessible to a wider audience, especially those who are not familiar with AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others. Most people already know Google and how to use it, and these small additions make it easier for the general public to use AI Mode—or AI in general—without having to learn an entirely new platform or interface.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://9to5linux.com/firefox-will-ship-with-an-ai-kill-switch-to-completely-disable-all-ai-features

Mozilla said that all the AI features that are or will be included in Firefox will also be opt-in.

After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla's new CEO that Firefox will evolve into "a modern AI browser," the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.

On Tuesday, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation, the company behind the beloved Firefox web browser used by almost all GNU/Linux distributions as the default browser.

In his message as new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo stated that Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software while remaining the company's anchor, and that Firefox will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.

What was not made clear is that Firefox will also ship with an AI kill switch that will let users completely disable all the AI features that are included in Firefox. Mozilla shared this important update earlier today to make it clear to everyone that Firefox will still be a trusted web browser.

"Something that hasn't been made clear: Firefox will have an option to completely disable all AI features. We've been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I'm sure it'll ship with a less murderous name, but that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this," said Firefox developer Jake Archibald on Mastodon.

In addition, Mozilla said that all the AI features that are or will be included in Firefox will also be opt-in. "I think there are some grey areas in what 'opt-in' means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?), but the kill switch will absolutely remove all that stuff, and never show it in future. That's unambiguous."

Personally, I do hope Firefox will remain the same web browser I've been using for the past 20 years. As long as AI remains opt-in and it's not shoved down our throats, I have no problem with that. The upcoming release, Firefox 147, is expected on January 13th, 2026, with support for the XDG Base Directory Specification.

Previously: Mozilla's New CEO: Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.bamsoftware.com/hacks/zipbomb/

This article shows how to construct a non-recursive zip bomb that achieves a high compression ratio by overlapping files inside the zip container. "Non-recursive" means that it does not rely on a decompressor's recursively unpacking zip files nested within zip files: it expands fully after a single round of decompression. The output size increases quadratically in the input size, reaching a compression ratio of over 28 million (10 MB → 281 TB) at the limits of the zip format. Even greater expansion is possible using 64-bit extensions. The construction uses only the most common compression algorithm, DEFLATE, and is compatible with most zip parsers.

Original Submission

turgid writes:

Saturn's largest natural satellite, Titan, is believed to have a sub-surface ocean containing liquid water from data sent by NASA's Cassini mission. However, new analysis indicates that this might be slushy ice rather than liquid water, as an article in Gizmodo explains.

The Cassini spacecraft made 124 fly-bys of Titan collecting radar and gravity measurements which scientists interpreted as indicating the existence of a sub-surface ocean of water and ammonia. The Huygens lander, deployed on Titan by Cassini, collected data from radio signals further reinforcing this hypothesis.

Due to the presence of liquid water, Titan became a candidate for the existence of life, and perhaps future probes.

However, the Cassini data were inconclusive. Titan is deformed by tidal forces during its orbit of Saturn, which means that its interior cannot be completely solid. An alternative hypothesis has been proposed which says that under the solid crust there may be an ocean of slushy ice and pockets of liquid water rather that a single, continuous liquid ocean.

Models of Titan predict that the liquid water may get as warm as 20C and convection would circulate minerals from the rocky core up to the crust.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-uefi-flaw-enables-pre-boot-attacks-on-motherboards-from-gigabyte-msi-asus-asrock/

The UEFI firmware implementation in some motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock is vulnerable to direct memory access (DMA) attacks that can bypass early-boot memory protections.

The security issue has received multiple identifiers (CVE-2025-11901, CVE-2025‑14302, CVE-2025-14303, and CVE-2025-14304) due to differences in vendor implementations

DMA is a hardware feature that allows devices such as graphics cards, Thunderbolt devices, and PCIe devices to read and write directly to RAM without involving the CPU.

IOMMU is a hardware-enforced memory firewall that sits between devices and RAM, controlling which memory regions are accessible for each device.

During early boot, when UEFI firmware initializes, IOMMU must activate before DMA attacks are possible; otherwise, there is no protection in place to stop reading or writing on memory regions via physical access.

The vulnerability was discovered by Riot Games researchers Nick Peterson and Mohamed Al-Sharifi. It causes the UEFI firmware to show that the DMA protection is enabled even if the IOMMU did not initialize correctly, leaving the system exposed to attacks.

Peterson and Al-Sharifi disclosed the security isssue responsibly and worked with CERT Taiwan to coordinate a response and reach affected vendors.

The researchers explain that when a computer system is turned on, it is "in its most privileged state: it has full, unrestricted access to the entire system and all connected hardware."

Protections become available only after loading the initial firmware, which is UEFI most of the time, which initializes hardware and software in a secure way. The operating system is among the last to load in the boot sequence.

On vulnerable systems, some Riot Games titles, such as the popular Valorant, will not launch. This is due to the Vanguard system that works at the kernel level to protect against cheats.

"If a cheat loads before we do, it has a better chance of hiding where we can't find it. This creates an opportunity for cheats to try and remain undetected, wreaking havoc in your games for longer than we are ok with" - Riot Games

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/creating-apps-like-signal-or-whatsapp-could-be-hostile-activity-claims-uk-watchdog

Developers of apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect private communications could be considered hostile actors in the UK.

That is the stark warning from Jonathan Hall KC, the government's Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation and Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, in a new report on national security laws.

In his independent review of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act and the newly implemented National Security Act, Hall KC highlights the incredibly broad scope of powers granted to authorities.

He warns that developers of apps like Signal and WhatsApp could technically fall within the legal definition of "hostile activity" simply because their technology "make[s] it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor communications."

He writes: "It is a reasonable assumption that this would be in the interests of a foreign state even if though the foreign state has never contemplated this potential advantage."

The report also notes that journalists "carrying confidential information" or material "personally embarrassing to the Prime Minister on the eve of important treaty negotiations" could face similar scrutiny.

While it remains to be seen how this report will influence future amendments, it comes at a time of increasing pressure from lawmakers against encryption.

While the report's strong wording may come as a shock, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Encrypted apps are increasingly in the crosshairs of UK lawmakers, with several pieces of legislation targeting the technology.

Most notably, Apple was served with a technical capability notice under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) demanding it weaken the encryption protecting iCloud data. That legal standoff led the tech giant to disable its Advanced Data Protection instead of creating a backdoor.

The Online Safety Act is already well known for its controversial age verification requirements. However, its most contentious provisions have yet to be fully implemented, and experts fear these could undermine encryption even further.