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- Zen 5 x86 Bedrock RAI300 delivers 50 TOPS AI in fanless IPC
SolidRun has introduced the Bedrock RAI300, a fanless industrial PC built around one of AMD’s latest Ryzen AI 300 series processors. The system is SolidRun’s first industrial platform based on Zen 5, combining high-performance x86 compute, integrated AI acceleration, and modular I/O for long-term industrial deployment. The Bedrock RAI300 is powered by the AMD Ryzen […]
- Setup Arch Linux KVM Guest via archinstall 3.0.15-2
Following below is an attempt to deploy Arch Linux KVM Guest via archinstall 3.0.15-2. Load Guest via virt-manager into spice console. Pre-install archinstall 3.0.15-2 seems to be needless. However, straight forward run `python -m archinstall` having git clone done and skipping first upgrade didn't work for me .
- ReactOS For "Open-Source Windows" Achieves Massive Networking Performance Boost
ReactOS as the long-in-development "open-source Windows" project has been on quite a roll recently. Beyond a big Windows NT 6 compatibility improvement and fixing a very annoying usability issue, for this third week of the year there is another big change landing: a significant improvement in networking performance on ReactOS...
- 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: January 18th, 2026
The 275th installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending on January 18th, 2026, keeping you updated with the most important things happening in the Linux world.
- Axiomtek Previews Jetson Thor T5000/T4000 Developer Kit for Robotics Systems
Axiomtek has unveiled the AIE015-AT, a robotics developer kit built around NVIDIA Jetson Thor. The system is described as combining high compute density with multi-camera support and industrial I/O for robotics and physical AI workloads. The platform is shown with Jetson Thor T5000 or T4000 modules, offering up to 2070 TFLOPS of compute performance. Axiomtek […]
- Synex Server: A New Debian Based Linux Distro With Native ZFS Installation Support
Synex is a Linux distribution that's been around for some months as a Debian-based, minimalistic Linux distribution out of Argentina focused on the needs of small and medium businesses. Making it a bit more intriguing for some now is that with their new release based on Debian 13 is a server edition and they have added native OpenZFS file-system support for new installations...
- Shotcut 26.1 Beta Video Editor Adds New Hardware Decoder Options
The Shotcut 26.1 beta was released overnight as the newest version of this Qt6-based, cross-platform video editing solution. Standing out the most with this new development release are some new GPU-accelerated hardware decode options for aiming to help speed-up this free software video editor...
- Sequent Microsystems Multichemistry Watchdog HAT Adds UPS Support for Raspberry Pi
Sequent Microsystems has unveiled a multichemistry Watchdog HAT designed to provide battery-backed power, system monitoring, and automatic recovery for Raspberry Pi boards. The HAT targets mission-critical and unattended deployments, combining a hardware watchdog timer with an integrated UPS and battery charger. The Watchdog HAT supports a wide range of rechargeable battery chemistries, including Lithium-Ion, Lithium-Polymer, […]
- FreeBSD 15.1 Aims To Have KDE Desktop Installer Option
FreeBSD 15.0 had been aiming to offer a KDE desktop installation option as part of the FreeBSD OS installer. This initiative as part of the FreeBSD laptop support enhancements project didn't pan out in time for FreeBSD 15.0 but now they are working on getting the installer option ready for FreeBSD 15.1. Adding a NVIDIA GPU driver option to the FreeBSD installer was also recently carried out...
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- NYSE Eyes 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading With Weekend Access and Same-Day Settlement
BrianFagioli writes: The New York Stock Exchange, owned by Intercontinental Exchange, is developing a platform for trading tokenized versions of U.S. listed stocks and ETFs around the clock, pending regulatory approval. The system would combine the NYSE's existing matching engine with blockchain-based settlement, enabling 24x7 trading, instant settlement, and fractional share purchases priced in dollar amounts. Shares would remain fully regulated securities, with dividends and voting rights intact, rather than cryptocurrencies, even though the backend would run on blockchain-style infrastructure.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- IMF Warns Global Economic Resilience at Risk if AI Falters
The "surprisingly resilient" global economy is at risk of being disrupted by a sharp reversal in the AI boom, the IMF warned on Monday, as world leaders prepared for talks in the Swiss resort of Davos. From a report: Risks to global economic expansion were "tilted to the downside," the fund said in an update to its World Economic Outlook, arguing that growth was reliant on a narrow range of drivers, notably the US technology sector and the associated equity boom. Nonetheless, it predicted US growth would strongly outpace the rest of the G7 this year, forecasting an expansion of 2.4 per cent in 2026 and 2 per cent in 2027. Tech investment had surged to its highest share of US economic output since 2001, helping drive growth, the IMF found. "There is a risk of a correction, a market correction, if expectations about AI gains in productivity and profitability are not realised," said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, IMF chief economist. "We're not yet at the levels of market frothiness, if you want, that we saw in the dotcom period," he added. "But nevertheless there are reasons to be somewhat concerned."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- China Birth Rate Falls To Lowest Since 1949
China's birth rate fell to 5.6 per 1,000 people in 2025, the lowest figure since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, and the country's total population contracted by 3.39 million, the sharpest decline since the Mao Zedong era. The drop marks the fourth straight year of population decline and comes despite government efforts to encourage childbearing, including subsidies of about $500 annually per child born on or after January 1, 2025. Beijing has also imposed a 13% value-added tax on contraceptives this year. The government is betting on automation and productivity to offset the shrinking workforce -- China already leads the world in robot installations -- and President Xi Jinping has written that population policy must transition "from being mainly about regulating quantity to improving quality."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- China Consumed 10.4 Trillion Kilowatt-Hours of Electricity In 2025 - Double the US
Slashdot reader hackingbear summarizes this report from Bloomberg: China consumed totally 10.4 trillion kilowatt hours (10.4 petaWh) in 2025 according to data from the National Energy Administration. That's the highest annual electricity use ever recorded by a single country, and doubled the amount used by the US and surpassed the combined annual total of the EU, Russia, India and Japan. The surge in demand for power are results of growth in data centers for artificial intelligence (+17% over 2024) and use of electric vehicles (+48.8%)... However, on a per-capita basis, China uses about 7,300 kWh per person vs about 13,000 kWh per American. More details from Reuters:China's mostly coal-based thermal power generation fell in 2025 for the first time in 10 years, government data showed on Monday, as growing renewable generation met growth in electricity demand even as overall power usage hit a record. The data is a positive signal for the decarbonisation of China's power sector as China sets a course for carbon emissions to peak by 2030... Thermal electricity, generated mostly by coal-fired capacity with a small amount from natural gas, fell 1% in 2025 to 6.29 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It fell more sharply in December, down by 3.2%, from a year earlier, the data showed... [Though the article notes that coal output still edged up to a record high last year.] Hydropower grew at a steady pace, up 4.1% in December and rising 2.8 % for the full year, the NBS data showed. Nuclear power output rose 3.1 in December and 7.7% in 2025, respectively.Thermal power generation is unlikely to accelerate in 2026 as renewables growth continues apace.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- More US States are Putting Bitcoin on Public Balance Sheets
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:Led by Texas and New Hampshire, U.S. states across the national map, both red and blue in political stripes, are developing bitcoin strategic reserves and bringing cryptocurrencies onto their books through additional state finance and budgeting measures. Texas recently became the first state to purchase bitcoin after a legislative effort that began in 2024, but numerous states have joined the "Reserve Race" to pass legislation that will allow them to ultimately buy cryptocurrencies. NewHampshire passed its crypto strategic reserve law last May, even before Texas, giving the state treasurer the authority to invest up to 5% of the state funds in crypto ETFs, though precious metals such as gold are also authorized for purchase. Arizonapassed similar legislation, while Massachusetts,Ohio,and SouthDakota have legislation at various stages of committee review... Similarities in the actions taken across states to date includeinclude authorizing the state treasurer or other investment officialto allow the investment of a limited amount of public funds in cryptoand building out the governance structure needed to invest incrypto... [New Hampshire] became the first state to approve theissuance of a bitcoin-backed municipal bond last November, a $100 million issuance that would mark the first time cryptocurrency is used as collateral in the U.S. municipal bond market. The deal has not taken place yet, though plans are for the issuance to occur this year... "What's different here is it's bitcoin rather than taxpayer dollars as the collateral," [said University of Chicago public policy professor Justin Marlowe]. In numerous states, including, Colorada,Utah, and Louisiana,crypto is now accepted as payment for taxes and other statebusiness... "For many in the state/local investing industry, crypto-backed assets are still far too speculative and volatile for public money," Marlowe said. "But others, and I think there's a sort of generational shift in the works, see it as a reasonable store of value that is actually stronger on many other public sector values like transparency and asset integrity," he added. Public policy professor Marlowe "sees the state-level trend as largely one of signaling at present," according to the article. (Marlowe says "If you're a governor and you want to broadcast that you are amenable to innovative business development in the digital economy, these are relatively low-cost, low-risk ways to send that signal.") But the bigger steps may reflect how crypto advocates have increasing political power in the states. The article notes that the cryptocurrency industry was the largest corporate donor in a U.S. election cycle in 2024, "with support given to candidates on both sides." "It is already amassing a war chest for the 2026 midterms."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Is the Possibility of Conscious AI a Dangerous Myth?
This week Noema magazine published a 7,000-word exploration of our modern "Mythology Of Conscious AI" written by a neuroscience professor who directs the University of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science:The very idea of conscious AI rests on the assumption that consciousness is a matter of computation. More specifically, that implementing the right kind of computation, or information processing, is sufficient for consciousness to arise. This assumption, which philosophers call computational functionalism, is so deeply ingrained that it can be difficult to recognize it as an assumption at all. But that is what it is. And if it's wrong, as I think it may be, then real artificial consciousness is fully off the table, at least for the kinds of AI we're familiar with. He makes detailed arguments against a computation-based consciousness (including "Simulation is not instantiation... If we simulate a living creature, we have not created life.") While a computer may seem like the perfect metaphor for a brain, the cognitive science of "dynamical systems" (and other approaches) reject the idea that minds can be entirely accounted for algorithmically. And maybe actual life needs to be present before something can be declared conscious. He also warns that "Many social and psychological factors, including some well-understood cognitive biases, predispose us to overattribute consciousness to machines." But then his essay reaches a surprising conclusion:As redundant as it may sound, nobody should be deliberately setting out to create conscious AI, whether in the service of some poorly thought-through techno-rapture, or for any other reason. Creating conscious machines would be an ethical disaster. We would be introducing into the world new moral subjects, and with them the potential for new forms of suffering, at (potentially) an exponential pace. And if we give these systems rights, as arguably we should if they really are conscious, we will hamper our ability to control them, or to shut them down if we need to. Even if I'm right that standard digital computers aren't up to the job, other emerging technologies might yet be, whether alternative forms of computation (analogue, neuromorphic, biological and so on) or rapidly developing methods in synthetic biology. For my money, we ought to be more worried about the accidental emergence of consciousness in cerebral organoids (brain-like structures typically grown from human embryonic stem cells) than in any new wave of LLM. But our worries don't stop there. When it comes to the impact of AI in society, it is essential to draw a distinction between AI systems that are actually conscious and those that persuasively seem to be conscious but are, in fact, not. While there is inevitable uncertainty about the former, conscious-seeming systems are much, much closer... Machines that seem conscious pose serious ethical issues distinct from those posed by actually conscious machines. For example, we might give AI systems "rights" that they don't actually need, since they would not actually be conscious, restricting our ability to control them for no good reason. More generally, either we decide to care about conscious-seeming AI, distorting our circles of moral concern, or we decide not to, and risk brutalizing our minds. As Immanuel Kant argued long ago in his lectures on ethics, treating conscious-seeming things as if they lack consciousness is a psychologically unhealthy place to be... One overlooked factor here is that even if we know, or believe, that an AI is not conscious, we still might be unable to resist feeling that it is. Illusions of artificial consciousness might be as impenetrable to our minds as some visual illusions... What's more, because there's no consensus over the necessary or sufficient conditions for consciousness, there aren't any definitive tests for deciding whether an AI is actually conscious.... Illusions of conscious AI are dangerous in their own distinctive ways, especially if we are constantly distracted and fascinated by the lure of truly sentient machines...If we conflate the richness of biological brains and human experience with the information-processing machinations of deepfake-boosted chatbots, or whatever the latest AI wizardry might be, we do our minds, brains and bodies a grave injustice. If we sell ourselves too cheaply to our machine creations, we overestimate them, and we underestimate ourselves... The sociologist Sherry Turkle once said that technology can make us forget what we know about life. It's about time we started to remember.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- EHT Astronomers Will Film Swirling of a Supermassive Black Hole for the First Time
"Astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time," reports the Guardian:The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will track the colossal black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy throughout March and April with the aim of capturing footage of the swirling disc that traces out the edge of the event horizon, the point beyond which no light or matter can escape... The EHT is a global network of 12 radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Korea, which in 2019 unveiled the first image of a black hole's shadow. During March and April, as the Earth rotates, M87's central black hole will come into view for different telescopes, allowing a complete image to be captured every three days... Measuring the black hole's spin speed matters because this could help discriminate between competing theories of how these objects reached such epic proportions. If black holes grow mostly through accretion — steadily snowballing material that strays nearby — they would be expected to end up spinning at incredibly high speeds. By contrast, if black holes expand mostly through merging with other black holes, each merger could slow things down. The observations could also help explain how black hole jets are formed, which are among the largest, most powerful structures produced by galaxies. Jets channel vast columns of gas out of galaxies, slowing down the formation of new stars and limiting galaxy growth. In turn this can create dense pockets of material that trigger bursts of star formation beyond the host galaxy... While the movie campaign will take place in the spring, the sheer volume of data produced by the telescopes means the scientists will need to wait for Antarctic summer before the hard drives can be physically shipped to Germany and the US for processing. So it is likely to be a lengthy wait before the rest of the world gets a glimpse of the black hole in action. In a correction, the Guardian apologizes for originally including an AI-generated illustration of black hole with a caption suggesting it was a photo from telescopes. They've since swapped in an actual picture of the Messier 87 galaxy black hole.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Porsche Sold More Electrified Cars in Europe Last Year than Pure Gas-Powered Models
Porsche made an announcement Friday. In Europe they sold more electrified Porsches last year than pure combustion-engined models, reports Electrek:in Europe, a majority (57.9%) of Porsche's deliveries were plug-ins, with 1/3 of its European sales being fully electric. For models that have no fully electric version but do have a PHEV (Cayenne and Panamera), the plug-in hybrid version dominated sales. Of particular note, the Macan sold better with an electric powertrain than it did with a gas one, and was the company's strongest-selling model line and the line with the largest sales growth. The Macan sold 84,328 units globally (up 2% from last year), with 45,367 (53.8%) of those being electric. That 53.8% may seem like a slim majority, but when compared to EV sales globally, it's incredibly high. About a quarter of new cars sold globally were electric in 2025, so Porsche is beating that number with the one model where direct comparisons are available. And even in the US, about a third of Macans sold were electric. That's notable given the tough year EVs had in the US, with it being the only major car-buying region that experienced a tick down in EV sales... And again, while 1/3 is a minority of Macan sales in the US, it's also well over the US' average ~10% EV sales. So it's clear the EV Macan isn't just performing like an average EV, but well beyond it. The article adds that "we're quite excited about the Cayenne EV, which will be the most powerful Porsche ever."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Young US College Graduates Suddenly Aren't Finding Jobs Faster Than Non-College Graduates
U.S. college graduates "have historically found jobs more quickly than people with only a high school degree," writes Bloomberg. "But that advantage is becoming a thing of the past, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.""Recently, the job-finding rate for young college-educated workers has declined to be roughly in line with the rate for young high-school-educated workers, indicating that a long period of relatively easier job-finding prospects for college grads has ended," Cleveland Fed researchers Alexander Cline and BarıÅY Kaymak said in a blog post published Monday. The study follows the latest monthly employment data released on Nov. 20, which showed the unemployment rate for college-educated workers continued to rise in September amid an ongoing slowdown in white-collar hiring... The unemployment rate for people between the ages of 20 to 24 was 9.2% in September, up 2.2 percentage points from a year prior. There is a caveat. "Young college graduates maintain advantages in job stability and compensation once hired..." the researchers write. "The convergence we document concerns the initial step of securing employment rather than overall labor market outcomes." Their research includes a graph showing how the "unemployment gap" first increased dramatically after 2010 between college-educated and high school-educated workers, which the researchers attribute to "the prolonged jobless recovery after 2008". But that gap has been closing ever since, with that gap now smaller than at any time since the 1970s. "Young high school workers are riding the wave of the historically tight postpandemic labor market with well-below-average unemployment compared to that of past high school graduates, while young college workers are experiencing unemployment rates rarely observed among past college cohorts barring during recessions."The labor market advantages conferred by a college degree have historically justified individual investment in higher education and expanding support for college access. If the job-finding rate of college graduates continues to decline relative to the rate for high school graduates, we may see a reversal of these trends. The convergence we document concerns the initial step of securing employment rather than overall labor market outcomes. These details suggest a nuanced shift in employment dynamics, one in which college graduates face greater difficulty finding jobs than previously but maintain advantages compared with high school graduates in job stability and compensation once hired. Two key quotes:"Declining job prospects among young college graduates may reflect the continued growth in college attainment, adding ever larger cohorts of college graduates to the ranks of job seekers, even though technology no longer favors college-educated workers.""Developments related to AI, which may be affecting job-finding prospects in some cases, cannot explain the decades-long decline in the college job-finding rate."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- SpaceX Launches New NASA Telescope to Help JWST Study Exoplanets
Last week a University of Arizona astronomy professor "watched anxiously...as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA's new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit." In 2018 NASA had approached Daniel Apai to help build the telescope, which he says will "shatter a barrier — to understand and remove a source of noise in the data — that limits our ability to study small exoplanets in detail and search for life on them."Astronomers have a trick to study exoplanet atmospheres. By observing the planets as they orbit in front of their host stars, we can study starlight that filters through their atmospheres... But, starting from 2007, astronomers noted that starspots — cooler, active regions on the stars — may disturb the transit measurements. In 2018 and 2019, then-Ph.D. student Benjamin V. Rackham, astrophysicist Mark Giampapa and I published a series of studies showing how darker starspots and brighter, magnetically active stellar regions can seriously mislead exoplanets measurements. We dubbed this problem "the transit light source effect...." In our papers — published three years before the 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope - we predicted that the Webb cannot reach its full potential. We sounded the alarm bell...Pandora will do what Webb cannot: It will be able to patiently observe stars to understand how their complex atmospheres change. By staring at a star for 24 hours with visible and infrared cameras, it will measure subtle changes in the star's brightness and colors. When active regions in the star rotate in and out of view, and starspots form, evolve and dissipate, Pandora will record them. While Webb very rarely returns to the same planet in the same instrument configuration and almost never monitors their host stars, Pandora will revisit its target stars 10 times over a year, spending over 200 hours on each of them. It's the first space telescope "built specifically for detailed multi-color observations of starlight filtered through the atmospheres of exoplanets," reports the Arizona Daily Star, noting the University of Arizona will serve as mission control:[T]echnicians will operate Pandora in real time and monitor its telemetry and overall health under a contract with NASA... The spacecraft will undergo about a month of commissioning before beginning science operations, which are scheduled to last for a year... Pandora was selected as part of NASA's Astrophysics Pioneers program, which was created in 2020 to foster compelling, relatively low-cost science missions using smaller, cheaper hardware and flight platforms with a price cap of no more than $20 million. By comparison, the Webb telescope — the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent into space — carries a pricetag of about $10 billion. Pandora is a joint mission NASA and California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Hundreds Answer Europe's 'Public Call for Evidence' on an Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy
The European Commission "has opened a public call for evidence on European open digital ecosystems," writes Help Net Security, part of preparations for an upcoming Communication "that will examine the role of open source in EU's digital infrastructure."The consultation runs from January 6 to February 3, 2026. Submissions will be used to shape a Commission Communication addressed to the European Parliament, the Council, and other EU bodies, which is scheduled for publication in the first quarter of 2026... The call for evidence links Europe's reliance on digital technologies developed outside the EU to concerns over long term control of infrastructure and software supply chains... Open digital ecosystems are discussed in the context of technological sovereignty and the use of technologies that can be inspected, adapted, and shared. Long-time Slashdot reader Elektroschock describes it as the European Commission "stepping up its efforts behind open-source software"Building on President von der Leyen's political guidelines, the initiative will review the Commission's 2020-2023 open-source approach and set out concrete actions to strengthen Europe's open-source ecosystem across key areas such as cloud, AI, cybersecurity and industrial technologies. The strategy will be presented alongside the upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act, forming a broader policy package aimed at reducing strategic dependencies and boosting Europe's digital resilience. And "In just a few days, over 370 submissions have already been filed, indicating that the issue is touching a nerve across the EU," writes CyberNews.com:"Europe must regain control over its software supply chain to safeguard freedom, security, and innovation," suggests an individual from Slovakia. Similar perspectives appear to be widely shared among respondents... The document doesn't mention US tech giants specifically, but rather aims to support tech sovereignty and seek "digital solutions that are valid alternatives to proprietary ones...." "This is not a legislative initiative. The strategy will take the form of a Commission communication. The initiative will set out a general approach and will propose: actions relying on further commitments and an implementation process," the EC explains. Policymakers expect the strategy to help EU member states identify the necessary steps to support national open-source companies and communities.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Microsoft Forced to Issue Emergency Out-of-Band Windows Update
The senior editor at the blog Windows Central decries two serious Windows issues "that were not spotted by Microsoft during testing, and are so severe that the company has now issued an emergency fix to address the problems."Microsoft's first update for Windows 11 in 2026 has already caused two major issues that saw users unable to fully shutdown their PCs or sign-in into a device when using Remote Desktop... Being unable to shut down your PC due to a recent OS update is a huge oversight on Microsoft's part, but this is the latest in a long list of updates over the last year to cause a major issue like this... Other issues that have cropped up in Windows 11 in the last year include a bug that caused Task Manager to fail to close when the user exited the application, causing system resources to lock up after a prolonged period of time if the user had opened and closed Task Manager multiple times in a session.Another update caused saw File Explorer flashbang users with a white screen when opening it in dark mode, which appeared in an update that was supposed to improve dark mode on Windows 11... For whatever reason, the Windows Insider Program doesn't appear to be working anymore, as severe bugs are somehow making it into shipping versions of the OS. "The out of band updates, KB5077744 and KB5077797, are available now via Windows Update and is rolling out to everybody," they write. "Once installed, your PC should go back to being able to shut down successfully, and signing-in via Remote Desktop should work again." Microsoft has also officially acknowledged a third bug which crashes Outlook Classic when using POP accounts, according to the blog Windows Latest, which adds that that bug has not yet been fixed. They've also identified other minor bugs, including "a black screen problem in Windows 11 KB5074109... either due to the update itself or some compatibility issues with GPU drivers."After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back. I can't pinpoint any specific configuration, but I can confirm the black screen issue has been observed on a small subset of PCs with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Astronomers Finally Explain How Molecules From Earth's Atmosphere Keep Winding Up On the Moon
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:Particles from Earth's atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study [published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment last month]. The research sheds new light on a puzzle that has endured for over half a century since the Apollo missions brought back lunar samples with traces of substances such as water, carbon dioxide, helium and nitrogen embedded in the regolith — the moon's dusty surface layer. Early studies theorized that the sun was the source of some of these substances. But in 2005 researchers at the University of Tokyo suggested that they could have also originated from the atmosphere of a young Earth before it developed a magnetic field about 3.7 billion years ago. The authors suspected that the magnetic field, once in place, would have stopped the stream by trapping the particles and making it difficult or impossible for them to escape into space. Now, the new research upends that assumption by suggesting that Earth's magnetic field might have helped, rather than blocked, the transfer of atmospheric particles to the moon — which continues to this day. "This means that the Earth has been supplying volatile gases like oxygen and nitrogen to the lunar soil over all this time," said Eric Blackman, coauthor of the new study and a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York. Earth's magnetic field "somewhat inflates the atmosphere of Earth" when it's hit by solar winds, according to study coauthor Eric Blackman, a physics/astronomy professor at New York's University of Rochester. He told CNN the moon passes through this region for a few days each month, with particles landing on the lunar surface and embedding in the soil (because the moon lacks an atmosphere that would block them). This also means the moon's soil could actually contain a chemical record of Earth's ancient atmosphere, according to the study — "spanning billions of years..."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Acer Sues Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, Alleging Infringment on Acer's Cellular Networking Patents
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Acer has filed three separate patent infringement lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, taking the unusual step of hauling the nation's largest wireless carriers into federal court. The suits, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, claim the companies are using Acer-developed cellular networking technology without paying for the privilege. Acer says it tried to negotiate licenses for years but reached a dead end, arguing it was left with no option except litigation. The case centers on six U.S. patents Acer asserts are core to modern wireless networks, rather than anything tied to PCs or laptops. The company describes itself as reluctant to pursue courtroom battles, but it has been quietly building a large global patent portfolio after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D. Acer also notes that some of its patents count as standard-essential, hinting the carriers may be required to license them. All three companies are expected to push back, and the dispute could become another long-running telecom patent saga. Consumers will not notice any immediate changes, but if Acer wins or settles, it may find a new revenue stream far beyond its traditional hardware business. Further coverage from Hot Hardware
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- China Builds 'Hypergravity' Machine 2,000X Stronger Than Earth
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Futurism:China has unveiled an extremely powerful "hypergravity machine" that can generate forces almost two thousand times stronger than Earth's regular gravity. The futuristic-looking machine, called CHIEF1900, was constructed at China's Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) at Zheijang University in Eastern China, and allows researchers to study how extreme forces affect various materials, plants, cells, or other structures, as the South China Morning Post reports... [Once up and running, it will allow researchers to recreate "catastrophic events such as dam failures and earthquakes inside a laboratory, according to the university."] For instance, it can analyze the structural stability of an almost 1,000-feet-tall dam by spinning a ten-foot model at 100 Gs, meaning 100 times the Earth's regular gravity. It could also be used to study the resonance frequencies of high-speed rail tracks, or how pollutants seep into soil over thousands of years. The machine officially dethroned its predecessor, CHIEF1300, which became the world's most powerful centrifuge a mere four months ago... It can generate 1,900 g-tonnes of force, or 1,900 times the Earth's gravity. To put that into perspective, a washing machine only reaches about two g-tonnes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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- Just the Browser claims to tame the bloat without forking
Strips the slop and snoopery from Chrome, Edge, and Firefox
The promise of Just the Browser sounds good. Rather than fork one of the big-name browsers, just run a tiny script that turns off all the bits and functions you don't want.…
- NASA's Artemis II Moon rocket arrives at the launch pad
If it all goes wrong, British kids of the '80s might remember an alternative
NASA's monster Moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), has trundled out to the launch pad – though the upper stage and Orion spacecraft look uncannily like a prop from a 1980s British children's television show.…
- Microsoft Intune changes to start biting unprepared admins
Mobile application management updates mean apps could soon be blocked
Today's a critical day for administrators managing a fleet of mobile devices via Microsoft Intune. Without updates, apps - including Microsoft's own - may stop working.…
- Warwickshire school to reopen after cyberattack crippled IT
Kids return to classrooms after safety infrastructure knocked out
A Warwickshire secondary school says it will fully reopen this week after a cyberattack forced a prolonged closure – though staff will return to classrooms with "very limited access" to IT systems.…
- Price, battery life, performance – that's how you sell PCs
Traditional considerations back in vogue. On-device AI? Not so much
The majority of PCs that commercial resellers shipped to enterprise customers in Q4 were AI-capable, however, it was the traditional levers of price, battery life and performance these biz buyers were mostly sold on.…
- Royal Navy's helicopter drone makes its first autonomous flight
Capable of carrying 1-ton payload and key to strategy protecting North Atlantic from Russian submarines
The Royal Navy has conducted the first flight of a helicopter-sized autonomous drone that is planned to operate from its ships in support of missions, including hunting for hostile submarines.…
- Open source's new mission: Rebuild a continent's tech stack
Freedom can be very contagious if it grows on its own terms. Europe of all places should know that
Opinion Europe is famous for having the most tightly regulated non-existent tech sector in the world. This is a mildly unfair characterization, as there are plenty of tech enterprises across the continent, quite a respectable smattering if it wasn't for the US doing everything at least ten times bigger.…
- Mandiant releases quick credential cracker, to hasten the death of a bad protocol
PLUS: Navy spy sent to brig for 200 months in brig; Black Axe busted again; Bill aims to crimp ICE apps; and more
Infosec In Brief PLUS: Google’s security outfit Mandiant last week released tools that can crack credentials in 12 hours, in the hope that doing so will accelerate the death of an ancient Microsoft security protocol.…
- Nvidia leans on emulation to squeeze more HPC oomph from AI chips in race against AMD
AMD researchers argue that, while algorithms like the Ozaki scheme merit investigation, they're still not ready for prime time.
Double precision floating point computation (aka FP64) is what keeps modern aircraft in the sky, rockets going up, vaccines effective, and, yes, nuclear weapons operational. But rather than building dedicated chips that process this essential data type in hardware, Nvidia is leaning on emulation to increase performance for HPC and scientific computing applications, an area where AMD has had the lead in recent generations.…
- Fast Pair, loose security: Bluetooth accessories open to silent hijack
Sloppy implementation of Google spec leaves 'hundreds of millions' of devices vulnerable
Hundreds of millions of wireless earbuds, headphones, and speakers are vulnerable to silent hijacking due to a flaw in Google's Fast Pair system that allows attackers to seize control without the owner ever touching the pairing button.…
- S Twatter: When text-to-speech goes down the drain
Rinse of the machines: A cautionary tale about relying on robots
Bork!Bork!Bork! UK water company Severn Trent learned an unfortunate lesson about text-to-speech systems when a robocall to customers went hilariously wrong.…
- Trump wants big tech to pay for big beautiful power plants
It just needs PJM Interconnection, one of the US's biggest grid operators, to green light the auction
The Trump administration says it wants big tech companies to take more accountability for the power their datacenters consume in an effort to shield voters from higher power bills at home.…
- Ready for a newbie-friendly Linux? Mint team officially releases v 22.3, 'Zena'
Newer kernel, newer Cinnamon, new tools, and even new icons
The timing is right if you're looking to try out Mint. New improved "Zena" is here – still based on Ubuntu Noble, but now with Cinnamon 6.6 and improved Wayland support, plus better internationalization, new System Information and System Administration tools, and clearer icons.…
- German cops add Black Basta boss to EU most-wanted list
Ransomware kingpin who escaped Armenian custody is believed to be lying low back home
German cops have added Russian national Oleg Evgenievich Nefekov to their list of most-wanted criminals for his services to ransomware.…
- Meta retreats from metaverse after virtual reality check
That went well
Imagine changing your popular brand to capitalize on an emerging tech trend that never emerged. Mark Zuckerberg did just that, and now Meta is backing away from the virtual reality business in which it invested billions.…
- Bankrupt scooter startup left one private key to rule them all
Owner reverse-engineered his ride, revealing authentication was never properly individualized
An Estonian e-scooter owner locked out of his own ride after the manufacturer went bust did what any determined engineer might do. He reverse-engineered it, and claims he ended up discovering the master key that unlocks every scooter the company ever sold.…
- Over half of AI projects are shelved due to complex infrastructure
The answer seems to be educating the enterprise workforce, and creating smarter use cases
More than half of AI projects have been delayed or canceled within the last two years citing complexities with AI infrastructure, according to a research report commissioned by DDN, a data optimization company in partnership with Google Cloud and Cognizant.…
- Chinese spies used Maduro's capture as a lure to phish US govt agencies
What's next for Venezuela? Click on the file and see
What policy wonk wouldn't want to click on an attachment promising to unveil US plans for Venezuela? Chinese cyberspies used just such a lure to target US government agencies and policy-related organizations in a phishing campaign that began just days after an American military operation captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.…
- Flipping one bit leaves AMD CPUs open to VM vuln
Fix landed in July, but OEM firmware updates are required
If you use virtual machines, there's reason to feel less-than-Zen about AMD's CPUs. Computer scientists affiliated with the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Germany have found a vulnerability in AMD CPUs that exposes secrets in its secure virtualization environment.…
- Contagious Claude Code bug Anthropic ignored promptly spreads to Cowork
Office workers without AI experience warned to watch for prompt injection attacks - good luck with that
Anthropic's tendency to wave off prompt-injection risks is rearing its head in the company's new Cowork productivity AI, which suffers from a Files API exfiltration attack chain first disclosed last October and acknowledged but not fixed by Anthropic.…
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