Ancient Slashdot reader hwstar shares a report from The Conversation: For the first time ever, more than 50 nations will gather next week in Colombia to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas. The history-making conference was planned before the Iran war. But this year's energy crisis has greatly raised the stakes. [...] Around 80% of the trapped oil was destined for the Asia-Pacific. Faced with dwindling supply, the region's governments are implementing emergency measures such as sending workers home, banning government travel, rationing fuel and cutting school hours. The problem is especially bad in the Pacific. Many island nations use diesel for power generation. In response, leaders declared a regional emergency.

[...] But the real difference from half a century ago is that fossil fuel alternatives are ready for prime time. Since the 1970s, the price of solar panels has fallen 99.9%, while the cost of wind has fallen 91% since 1984. Battery prices have fallen 99% since 1991. [...] This year's oil shock shows signs of creating an unplanned social tipping point -- a threshold for self-propelling change beyond which systems shift from one state to another. Climate scientists warn of climate tipping points which amplify feedback and accelerate warming. But social scientists also point to positive tipping points -- collective action that rapidly accelerates climate action.

[...] The routine burning of coal, oil and gas is the primary driver of the climate crisis. The world's highest court last year made clear nations have obligations to stop burning fossil fuels. But fossil fuels have barely been mentioned in 30 years of global climate negotiations, due in part to blocking efforts by big fossil fuel exporters and lobbyists. Frustrated by slow progress, a coalition of nations has bypassed global climate talks to discuss how to actually phase out fossil fuels. The first of these summits will take place next week. More than 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss a potential standalone treaty to manage fossil-fuel phaseout while protecting workers and financial systems.

alternative_right writes: A new technology has been proposed that could fundamentally solve the issue of smartphones overheating during high-spec gaming or extended video streaming. Researchers at KAIST have discovered the principle of processing signals using the minute vibrations of magnets (spin waves) instead of electrons. This method significantly reduces heat generation and power consumption while enabling instantaneous frequency switching within the several GHz range. This breakthrough is expected to pave the way for smart devices with less heat and longer battery life, as well as ultra-low-power, high-speed computing. Professor Kab-Jin Kim from the Department of Physics said: "This study is a case that proves we can implement and control the nonlinear dynamics of magnons -- the principle of information processing using magnetic vibrations -- in actual nano-devices, which had previously only been proposed in theory. It will serve as an important foundation for the development of a new information processing paradigm using spin waves instead of electrons."

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Nearly half of children in the United States are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report, as experts warned Donald Trump's expansive rollback of protections will make the situation worse. The 27th annual air quality report from the American Lung Association (ALA) released on Wednesday evaluates pollution across the country by grading levels of ground-level ozone -- also known as smog -- as well as year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution, commonly referred to as soot. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024. It found that 33.5 million children in the US -- 46% of those under 18 -- live in areas that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. The report also found that 7 million children, or 10% of all children in the US, live in communities that failed all three measures.

The report further found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air. As a result, they are more likely to live with one or more chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to pollution, including asthma, diabetes, and heart disease. Although people of color make up 42.1% of the US population, they represent 54.2% of those living in counties with at least one failing grade, the report noted. It also found that a person of color is 2.42 times more likely than a white person to live in a community that fails all three pollution measures. Smog remains the most widespread pollutant affecting Americans' health. Between 2022 and 2024, 38% of the US population -- approximately 129.1 million people -- were exposed to ozone levels that put their health at risk. This marks the highest number recorded in the ALA's report in six years, and a 3.9 million increase from the previous year.

Several factors contributed to these unhealthy pollution levels, including extreme heat, drought and wildfires which have exposed a growing share of the population to harmful ozone, the report said. The regions most affected by high ozone levels include south-western states from California to Texas, as well as much of the midwest. This is mainly driven by smoke from Canada's 2023 wildfires crossing into the US, along with high temperatures and weather patterns that favored ozone formation in 2023 and 2024 -- particularly in southern states. More broadly, the report found that climate change is intensifying ozone pollution by boosting precursor emissions and creating atmospheric conditions such as higher temperatures and lower wind speeds that allow pollutants to build up and ozone to form. Another growing source of pollution: datacenters. The report notes how they rely on regional electricity grids where fossil fuels like methane gas and coal still account for a large portion of generation. Many datacenters also use dozens of large diesel-powered backup generators, which emit carcinogenic particulate matter.

"Children's lungs are still developing," said Will Barrett, assistant vice-president of the ALA's Nationwide Clean Air Policy. "For their body size, they're breathing more air. And also, kids play outdoors, they're more active, they're breathing in more outdoor air [...]. So, air pollution exposure in children can contribute to long-term developmental harm to their lungs, new cases of asthma, increased risks of respiratory illness and other health considerations later in life."

Ancient Slashdot reader Alain Williams shares a report from the BBC: The Trump family's World Liberty crypto venture is being sued by one of its billionaire backers over allegations of extortion. Justin Sun has accused World Liberty of an "illegal scheme" to seize his WLFI tokens, a cryptocurrency issued by the company. Sun alleges the firm, co-founded by U.S. President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump, has "frozen" all of his tokens and stripped him of his right to vote on governance issues.

[...] Sun alleged that those running World Liberty, including another co-founder, Chase Herro, are using it as a "golden opportunity to leverage the Trump brand to profit through fraud." In his complaint, filed on Tuesday in a San Francisco federal court, Sun argues that initial promises to give token-holders the option to trade the currency in future "were false and misleading." While the tokens at large became tradeable, Sun said World Liberty has blocked him from being able to sell a single one, and is now threatening to "burn" his - deleting them entirely. WLFI said in a post on X: "Does anyone still believe @justinsuntron? Justin's favorite move is playing the victim while making baseless allegations to cover up his own misconduct. Same playbook, different target. WLFI isn't the first. We have the contracts. We have the evidence. We have the truth. See you in court pal."

Sony AI's autonomous table-tennis robot Ace has become the first robot to compete against top-level human players. Reuters reports: Ace, created by the Japanese company Sony's AI research division, is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a competitive physical sport, one that requires rapid decisions and precision execution, the project's leader said. Ace did so by employing high-speed perception, AI-based control and a state-of-the-art robotic system. There have been various ping-pong-playing robots since 1983, but until now they were unable to rival highly skilled human competitors. Ace changed that with its performances against human elite-level and professional players in matches following the rules of the International Table Tennis Federation, the sport's governing body, and officiated by licensed umpires.

The project's goal was not only to compete at table tennis but to develop insights into how robots can perceive, plan and act with human-like speed and precision in dynamic environments. In matches detailed in the study, Ace in April 2025 won three out of five versus elite players and lost two matches against professional players, the top skill level in the sport. Sony AI said that since then Ace beat professional players in December 2025 and last month. "The success of Ace, with its perception system and learning-based control algorithm, suggests that similar techniques could be applied to other areas requiring fast, real-time control and human interaction -- such as manufacturing and service robotics, as well as applications across sports, entertainment and safety-critical physical domains," said Peter Durr, director of Sony AI Zurich and leader for Sony AI's project Ace.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

Bloomberg reports that a small group of unauthorized users gained access to Anthropic's restricted Mythos model through a mix of contractor-linked access and online sleuthing. Anthropic says it is investigating and has no evidence the access extended beyond a third-party vendor environment or affected its own systems. From the report: The users relied on a mix of tactics to get into Mythos. These included using access the person had as a worker at a third-party contractor for Anthropic and trying commonly used internet sleuthing tools often employed by cybersecurity researchers, the person said. The users are part of a private Discord channel that focuses on hunting for information about unreleased models, including by using bots to scour for details that Anthropic and others have posted on unsecured websites such as GitHub. [...] To access Mythos, the group of users made an educated guess about the model's online location based on knowledge about the format Anthropic has used for other models, the person said, adding that such details were revealed in a recent data breach from Mercor, an AI training startup that works with a number of top developers.

Crucially, the person also has permission to access Anthropic models and software related to evaluating the technology for the startup. They gained this access from a company for which they have performed contract work evaluating Anthropic's AI models. Bloomberg is not naming the company for security reasons. The group is interested in playing around with new models, not wreaking havoc with them, the person said. The group has not run cybersecurity-related prompts on the Mythos model, the person said, preferring instead to try tasks like building simple websites in an attempt to avoid detection by Anthropic. The person said the group also has access to a slew of other unreleased Anthropic AI models.

Longtime Slashdot reader mmarlett writes: The Atlantic has a long article on the story of missing scientists recently featured here on Slashdot. In short, it is an incoherent conspiracy theory that spreads wide and far, not paying any attention to boundaries of time, space, or area of expertise. "Which is all to say that another piece of flagrant nonsense has ascended to the highest levels of U.S. politics and media," writes the Atlantic's Daniel Engber. "To call it a conspiracy theory would be far too kind, because no comprehensive theory has been floated to explain the pattern of events. But then, even the phrase pattern of events is imprecise, because there is no pattern here at all. Given all the people who could have been roped into this narrative but weren't, any hope of finding meaning falls away. Barring any dramatic new disclosures, the mystery of the missing scientists has the dubious honor of being a sham in every way at once."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Gates Foundation opened an external review earlier this year into its engagement with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the philanthropic group said on Tuesday. The foundation has been mired in controversy due to Chairman Bill Gates' association with Epstein. A release of emails in January by the U.S. Justice Department also showed communication between Epstein and the Gates Foundation's staff.

"Early this year, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships," the foundation said in a statement. "That review is underway, and we expect the board and management will receive an update this summer," it added. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news earlier on Tuesday, said Suzman told staff in a memo, "this is a challenging time for our organization in many ways, but it also highlights the critical importance of taking the tough actions now." The WSJ also reports that the Gates Foundation will eliminate up to 500 jobs, or about 20% of its staff, by 2030. It said the foundation has a 2026 budget of about $9 billion, but plans to cap operating expenses at $1.25 billion.

Further reading: The Bill Gates-Epstein Bombshell - and What Most People Get Wrong

Google announced two new tensor processing units (TPUs) for the "agentic era," with separate processors dedicated to training and inference. "With the rise of AI agents, we determined the community would benefit from chips individually specialized to the needs of training and serving," Amin Vahdat, a Google senior vice president and chief technologist for AI and infrastructure, said in a blog post. Both chips will become available later this year. CNBC reports: After years of producing chips that can both train artificial intelligence models and handle inference work, Google is separating those tasks into distinct processors, its latest effort to take on Nvidia in AI hardware. [...] None of the tech giants are displacing Nvidia, and Google isn't even comparing the performance of its new chips with those from the AI chip leader. Google did say the training chip enables 2.8 times the performance of the seventh-generation Ironwood TPU, announced in November, for the same price, while performance is 80% better for the inference processor.

Nvidia said its upcoming Groq 3 LPU hardware will draw on large quantities of static random-access memory, or SRAM, which is used by Cerebras, an AI chipmaker that filed to go public earlier this month. Google's new inference chip, dubbed TPU 8i, also relies on SRAM. Each chip contains 384 megabytes of SRAM, triple the amount in Ironwood. The architecture is designed "to deliver the massive throughput and low latency needed to concurrently run millions of agents cost-effectively," Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, wrote in a blog post.

A satirical but working tool called Malus uses AI to create "clean room" clones of open-source software, aiming to reproduce the same functionality while shedding attribution and copyleft obligations. "It works," Mike Nolan, one of the two people behind Malus, who researches the political economy of open source software and currently works for the United Nations, told 404 Media. "The Stripe charge will provide you the thing, and it was important for us to do that, because we felt that if it was just satire, it would end up like every other piece of research I've done on open source, which ends up being largely dismissed by open source tech workers who felt that they were too special and too unique and too intelligent to ever be the ones on the bad side of the layoffs or the economics of the situation." 404 Media reports: Malus's legal strategy for bypassing copyright is based on a historically pivotal moment for software and copyright law dating back to 1982. Back then, IBM dominated home computing, and competitors like Columbia Data Products wanted to sell products that were compatible with software that IBM customers were already using. Reverse engineering IBM's computer would have infringed on the company's copyright, so Columbia Data Products came up with what we now know as a "clean room" design.

It tasked one team with examining IBM's BIOS and creating specifications for what a clone of that system would require. A different "clean" team, one that was never exposed to IBM's code, then created BIOS that met those specifications from scratch. The result was a system that was compatible with IBM's ecosystem but didn't violate its copyright because it did not copy IBM's technical process and counted as original work.

This clean room method, which has been validated by case law and dramatized in the first season of Halt and Catch Fire, made computing more open and competitive than it would have been otherwise. But it has taken on new meaning in the age of generative AI. It is now easier than ever to ask AI tools to produce software that is identical in function to existing open source projects, and that, some would argue, are built from scratch and are therefore original work that can bypass existing copyright licenses. Others would say that software produced by large language models is inherently derivative, because like any LLM output, it is trained on the collective output of humans scraped from the internet, including specific open source projects.

Malus (pronounced malice), uses AI to do the same thing. "Finally, liberation from open source license obligations," Malus's site says. "Our proprietary AI robots independently recreate any open source project from scratch. The result? Legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems." Copyleft is a type of copyright license that ensures reproductions or applications of the software keep it free to share and modify.

CATL unveiled a new wave of EV battery tech, "including a lighter battery pack rated for a 1,000-km (621-mile) driving range and an upgraded fast-charging battery that can go from 10 percent to 98 percent in under seven minutes," reports Interesting Engineering. From the report: The launches were made during a 90-minute event in Beijing ahead of the Beijing Auto Show, where automakers are expected to showcase next-generation EVs and connected technologies. CATL said its latest Qilin battery -- a high-energy-density pack often paired with nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells for long range and improved space efficiency -- can deliver a 1,000-km (621-mile) driving range. It is designed to deliver long range while reducing battery pack weight.

The company said the product is aimed at automakers facing tighter efficiency rules in China and other markets. It also rolled out an upgraded Shenxing battery -- CATL's fast-charging lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pack -- that targets one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption: charging time. CATL said the pack can recharge from 10 percent to 98 percent in less than seven minutes.

The new Shenxing battery marks a significant improvement over CATL's previous version, which charged from 5 percent to 80 percent in 15 minutes, according to Financial Times. [...] The company also announced plans to begin mass delivery of sodium-ion batteries in the fourth quarter. Sodium-ion technology is seen as a lower-cost alternative that could reduce dependence on lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US military's massive $1.5 trillion budget request for the next fiscal year includes what Pentagon officials described as the largest investment in drone warfare and counter-drone technology in US history. The proposed spending on drone and autonomous warfare technologies within the FY2027 budget proposal for the US Department of Defense would surpass most countries' defense budgets and rank among the top 10 in the world for military spending, ahead of countries such as Ukraine, South Korea, and Israel.

Specifically, the Pentagon is requesting $53.6 billion to boost US production and procurement of drones, train drone operators, build out a logistics network for sustaining drone deployments, and expand counter-drone systems to defend more US military sites. The funding request is budgeted under the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG), an organization established in late 2025 that would see a massive budget increase after receiving about $226 million in the 2026 fiscal year budget.

[...] Another $20.6 billion would help purchase one-way attack drones and drone aircraft developed through the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which is building drone prototypes capable of teaming up with human-piloted fighter jets. Part of this funding would also go toward defensive systems for countering small drones and the US Navy's Boeing MQ-25 drone designed to perform midair refueling of carrier-borne fighter aircraft to extend their strike ranges. Such drone-related spending even rivals the entire budget of the US Marine Corps. But the Pentagon has not said that it is creating a dedicated drone branch of the US military similar to the standalone Space Force.

Pentagon officials emphasized that most of the money would go toward procuring drone and autonomous warfare technologies that already exist, and is largely separate from additional funding that would bolster US domestic manufacturing capacity to build such weapon systems. "That $70 billion is all going into existing systems and technologies," said Hurst. "The industrial base support is entirely separate." "The evolution we've seen in the battlefield is this evolution of technologies in the timeframe of weeks, not the typical years we see with our defense production," said Lt. Gen. Steven Whitney, director of force structure, resources, and assessment for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon press briefing. "So it's really critical we work with industry to get that capability fielded."

NASA's Curiosity rover has identified a diverse set of organic molecules on Mars, including a nitrogen-bearing compound similar in structure to DNA precursors. The finding strengthens the case that ancient organic material can survive in the Martian subsurface, though it does not prove past life because the compounds could also come from geology or meteorites. Phys.org reports: The study was led by Amy Williams, Ph.D., a professor of geological sciences at the University of Florida and a scientist on the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rover missions. Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 to find evidence that ancient Mars had conditions that could support microbial life billions of years ago; the Perseverance rover, which landed in 2021, was sent to look for signs of any ancient life that might have formed.

Among the 20-plus chemicals identified by the experiment, Curiosity spotted a nitrogen-bearing molecule with a structure similar to DNA precursors -- a chemical never before spotted on Mars. The rover also identified benzothiophene, a large, double-ringed, sulfurous chemical often delivered to planets by meteorites. "The same stuff that rained down on Mars from meteorites is what rained down on Earth, and it probably provided the building blocks for life as we know it on our planet," Williams said. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Federal authorities are now reviewing a string of deaths and disappearances involving scientists tied to sensitive U.S. aerospace and nuclear work, though officials have not established any confirmed link between the cases. The FBI says it "is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists," adding that it "is working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state ... and local law enforcement partners to find answers." The Republican-led House Oversight Committee also announced an investigation into the reports. CNN reports: A nuclear physicist and MIT professor fatally shot outside his Massachusetts residence. A retired Air Force general missing from his New Mexico home. An aerospace engineer who disappeared during a hike in Los Angeles. These are among at least 10 individuals connected to sensitive US nuclear and aerospace research who have died or disappeared in recent years, prompting concerns whether they are connected and fueling speculation online about the possibility of nefarious activity. [...]

The Defense Department said only that it would respond to the committee directly, and the Department of Energy referred questions to the White House. In a post on X, NASA said it is "coordinating and cooperating with the relevant agencies" in relation to the scientists. "At this time, nothing related to NASA indicates a national security threat," NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said.

The cases vary widely in circumstance. Some involve unsolved homicides, while others are missing persons cases with no signs of foul play. In at least two instances, families have pointed to preexisting medical conditions or personal struggles as explanations. Authorities have not established any links between the cases. The White House said last week it is also working with federal agencies to probe any potential links between the deaths and disappearances, with President Donald Trump referring to the matter as "pretty serious stuff." "The United States has thousands of nuclear scientists and nuclear experts," said Rep. James Walkinshaw, a Democrat who also serves on the Oversight Committee. "It's not the kind of nuclear program that potentially a foreign adversary could significantly impact by targeting 10 individuals."

Further reading: The 'Missing-Scientist' Story Is Unbelievably Dumb

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company, said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the artificial intelligence start-up Cursor that could result in its acquiring the young company for $60 billion. SpaceX is making the deal just as it prepares to go public in what is likely to be one of the largest initial public offerings ever. In a social media post, SpaceX said the combination with Cursor, which makes code-writing software, would "allow us to build the world's most useful" A.I. models.

SpaceX added that the agreement gave it the option "to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together." It is unclear if the companies plan to consummate the deal before or after SpaceX's I.P.O., which could happen as early as June. [...] Cursor, which has raised more than $3 billion in funding, was founded in 2022 and made waves as a fast-growing A.I. start-up. It was under pressure in recent months after OpenAI and Anthropic announced competing code-writing products that were embraced by tech companies. Cursor had been in talks to raise funding in recent weeks.