Submission + - Meta platforms flag migration searches, direct users to UN resources (rmx.news)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Metaâ(TM)s Facebook and Instagram platforms have begun displaying targeted warning messages to users searching for news or information related to mass immigration, including terms such as âoeCeuta.â

The prompts caution users to âoebe careful when searching for migration infoâ and include a prominent link or button offering âoehelp with moving to a new country.â

Clicking through takes users to a Meta Help Center page titled âoeHelp is available if you want to move to a new country.â That page, created in consultation with experts from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), provides tips and guidance to help migrants enter Europe and other states.

Submission + - X's Algorithm Feeds Off Ragebait and Impacts Democrats More, Study Finds (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Xâ(TM)s algorithm learns what you hate and shows you more of it, according to a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper, titled Value misalignment of Xâ(TM)s feed algorithm is a reflection of value tensions in engagement, found that the siteâ(TM)s algorithm prioritized engagement above all else when it generated a userâ(TM)s For You Page. It also showed that X serves more ragebait to people who say they are Democrats, although the exact reason for that is unclear.

âoeIn 2026 thatâ(TM)s maybe not the most surprising headline ever,â Ziv Epstein, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, and co-author of the paper, told 404 Media. âoeSo we actually dug in a little deeper to figure out why this is actually happening, and it turns out that X's feed algorithm, like a lot of these social media algorithms, is optimized for engagement [but] it turns out that not all types of engagement are considered equally.â

Submission + - Physicists entangle quantum memories across a record-breaking 420 km (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Optical fibers are already the backbone of global communication systems. Recently, however, physicists have started to explore how their functionality could be boosted further by conveying information via entangled quantum particlesâ"potentially enabling instantaneous exchanges of information across vast distances. Such a system could eventually be the basis of a future 'quantum internet,' offering a level of security and computing power beyond anything possible today.

Submission + - The global race to make a practical quantum computer just took a big leap forwar (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Quantum computers harness the power of quantum mechanics, the laws that govern physics at atomic and subatomic scales. Among various designs for such machines, Helios is a trapped-ion quantum computer, which means it uses charged atoms suspended in free space using electromagnetic fields.

It operates using 98 qubitsâ"the units of information that a quantum computer uses to process data. This number of qubits makes it the largest trapped-ion quantum computer built so far. Quantinuum, the company behind the device, is based in Cambridge, U.K., and Broomfield, Colorado. It demonstrated earlier machines operating on 32 qubits in 2023 and 56 qubits in 2025.

Helios and its predecessors use an architecture (or operational structure) with separate regions for storing and processing quantum information. The architecture is called a QCCD (quantum charge-coupled device) and was invented in 2002. This is akin to the architecture of classical computers that have memory for storage (hard disk drives, solid-state drives) and a separate processor (CPU, GPU).

The specific geometry of Helios resembles a rosette, with a ring for storage and two streamers for processing. The crucial element is the four-way X junction where they meet. A QCCD physically transports the charged objects (the ions) electrically from the storage to the processing regions.

The processing is done using laser pulses. This requires a quantum algorithm to be broken up into ion transport and quantum processing. This differs substantially from other quantum computing architectures, such as superconducting qubits, where the qubits are fixed in space and processing is executed by electrical signals switched on and off in time.

Submission + - Election Spam Is About To Get Even Worse In Your Inbox Thanks To New Google Move (dailywire.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Google quietly changed Gmail this week to make it easier for political campaigns and PACs to bypass spam folders and pump endless fundraising emails into the inboxes of millions of users.

The move could help qualifying political groups keep fundraising pleas out of the email graveyard and boost donations ahead of the midterm elections. The change follows years of complaints from Republicans that Gmailâ(TM)s spam filters disproportionately blocked their emails more often than Democrats.

The companyâ(TM)s new policy, first reported by the New York Times, came through an opaque policy announcement on its Help Center on Monday.

Submission + - NYT: Civilization underpinned by a Faberge Egg

Submitted by BenBoy
BenBoy writes: NYT discusses the ease with which the US could be rendered literally powerless for a year or more:

“If you knock out nine total substations among those three grids, you can black out the entire United States.” According to Wellinghoff, which nine substations were taken offline didn’t matter as long as each one was among the 10 most important in its region, and you could black out the three interconnections individually as well: “I mean, it’s not like there are particular substations. You just have to figure out what are the top 10 critical ones in each of those interconnects. Which, to do that, it’s probably something that a bunch of 12-year-olds with the internet could do pretty easily. All you have to do is look at a map of the grid and figure out where most of the wires go into the substations — that’s a critical substation.”

Submission + - California regulators approve rules limiting what replacement tires you can buy (kcra.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: California regulators on Monday approved new rules that will restrict what tires you can buy when it’s time to replace them on your car.

In a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission voted to adopt new rules that will phase out the sale of replacement tires that don’t meet certain energy efficiency standards.

“This ultimately is about protecting consumers,” said David Hochschild, the chairman of the California Energy Commission. “I see this as sheltering the public from higher costs in the long run.”

Tire manufacturers and the commission’s staff are at odds over whether this will add to the cost of living in the state. Both sides acknowledged this will no longer allow the sale of a significant portion of the tires currently sold in California.

Submission + - Google buys crashed airline Spirit's data at auction, because AI (theregister.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit.

Spirit hit financial turbulence when COVID-19 blew in during 2020 and started making losses. Its balance sheet never climbed back to a safe altitude and in May 2026 the airline grounded itself permanently.

The low-cost carrier entered liquidation to wind itself up and is now auctioning assets to raise cash and settle at least some of its debts.

A court document filed last week reveals that one of the assets up for sale is a huge trove of deidentified data, which Google bid for and won for just $10 million.

For that sum, Google bought itself 100 million emails and 500 million items from Microsoft Teams, 17 million OneDrive files and 20.5 million items from SharePoint. The search giant also now owns over 30 million recorded customer service calls, and more than 15 million customer service chat records.

There’s also operational data in the trove, describing over 763,000 flights, five million crew pairings, more than 1.2 million fuel slips, and records describing purchases of 787,452 parts.

Submission + - 'Buy Now, Pay Later' Lenders Pitch Loans For Needs Like Electricity and Rent (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “Buy now, pay later” loans took off during the pandemic as a way for online shoppers to go on retail splurges without using a credit card. Now, lenders are offering the loans as a means for people to finance basic households needs. The lending apps Flex and Zip allow customers to take out loans to pay for their broadband, electricity, health insurance, mobile phone service, mortgage and water bills. Affirm, one of the most popular pay-later apps, has started providing some tenants loans to extend their monthly rent payment for a few weeks. Many dentists, veterinarians and medical clinics now often offer instant pay-later financing, and Intuit this year started promoting “File Now, Pay Later” loans to TurboTax users who owe money in their tax return.

Pay-later loans are becoming the “working capital for the modern middle class,” said Karen Webster, the chief executive of Pymnts, a news and market research company for the payments industry. “Consumers are using it more for essential, everyday things.” Americans spent $160 billion last year through pay-later loans, according to research released recently by Federal Reserve economists — nearly twice what consumers spent two years earlier, in 2023. That’s still a fraction of the more than $3 trillion U.S. shoppers spend annually on consumer credit cards. But the industry continues to expand by double-digit rates each year.

How much of that growth reflects consumer preferences, versus desperation, is a question economists and industry analysts are trying to unravel. The rise in pay-later financing comes as many households are leaning more on debt to keep up with their daily expenses. Paying interest — to afford basic needs — adds to the overall cost of living, which has already been rising amid higher medical, housing and fuel costs. For many borrowers, the loans have become their only option: Half of those using them said they could not make ends meet otherwise, according to the latest edition of a survey that LendingTree, a loan marketplace, has compiled for years.

Submission + - Krkn Brings Multi-Cluster Chaos Engineering to Kubernetes (redhat.com)

Submitted by tsebasti
tsebasti writes: Krkn, a CNCF Sandbox chaos engineering project, is expanding with Krkn Operator, a Kubernetes-native platform for centrally orchestrating resilience testing across multiple Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters.

The operator integrates with Open Cluster Management and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management, automatically discovering managed clusters and making them available as chaos targets from a central control plane.

It also introduces Chaos Studio, a graphical editor for building reusable chaos workflows with sequential and parallel failure scenarios. Experiments can incorporate observability data and generate resiliency scores, allowing teams to compare system behavior across upgrades, configuration changes, and releases.

Krkn Operator is Apache 2.0 licensed and fully open source. Red Hat has published a technical walkthrough covering its architecture, multi-cluster model, Chaos Studio, and ACM integration.

Submission + - New Gel Regrows Tooth Enamel (sciencedaily.com) 2

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: ScienceDaily is reporting that researchers have developed a fluoride-free gel that could help rebuild damaged tooth enamel, something the body cannot naturally replace once it is lost. Inspired by the proteins that guide enamel formation in infancy, the gel fills microscopic cracks, acting as as a framework, and draws calcium and phosphate from saliva to grow a new mineral layer that closely matches healthy enamel.

The material draws calcium and phosphate ions from saliva and uses them to guide the controlled formation of new mineral crystals. This process is known as epitaxial mineralization. In simple terms, the new crystals grow in alignment with the tooth's existing structure, allowing them to connect with the natural tissue beneath them rather than forming a separate, poorly organized coating.

According to the researchers, this organized growth helps the repaired surface recover both the microscopic architecture and the physical properties of healthy enamel.

In addition, when applied to exposed dentine, the gel can grow an enamel like mineral layer over the surface. This could help reduce tooth sensitivity while also creating a stronger surface for dental restorations to bond to.

The researchers tested the regenerated material under conditions intended to reproduce the stresses teeth experience in daily life. These included repeated brushing, chewing forces, and contact with acidic foods that can gradually dissolve enamel.

The results showed that the restored tissue displayed mechanical behavior similar to that of healthy natural enamel, suggesting it may be durable enough for practical dental use.

In lab tests on human teeth using human saliva, the process took about 24 hours for the initial crystallization, reaching 80% of the enamel's original strength in 2 weeks. Human trials have recently begun.

The study is published in Nature and also discussed on Instagram.

Submission + - US Grid Operator PJM Proposes Forcing Data Center Off Grid During Emergencies (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: PJM Interconnection, the biggest U.S. grid operator, proposed on Thursday a new framework that would force data centers to use back-up generators when electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels. The grid operator's proposal dovetails with President Donald Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a non-binding initiative to protect residential customers from getting saddled with costs related to data center power consumption, PJM said.

A new emergency procedure would notify utilities to reduce or transfer the electricity demand from data centers and other large power users ahead of any action that would shut off traditional consumers such as households. PJM said it does not, however, currently have the authority to curtail power to those sites and would require the cooperation of individual state governments.

PJM manages the electricity for 67 million people in a territory that stretches from Washington, D.C. to Chicago. Its proposal highlights a growing tension between the rapid expansion of data centers and the ability of the nation's power grid to keep up. If PJM cannot close its supply gap, millions of residents and businesses face an increased risk of blackouts, and the cost of new generation could be passed on to other power consumers.

Submission + - After 50 Years, Physicists May Have Finally Found a Particle Made of Pure Force (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Quarks are fundamental subatomic particles that combine in trios to make up familiar baryons such as protons and neutrons, and gluons are the quantum 'Gorilla Glue' that binds their quark structure together.

For nearly 50 years, physicists have hunted for "glueballs", exotic particles predicted by this theory of the strong interaction.

Now, a collaboration working at a collider in Beijing says it has the clearest evidence yet that a known particle called X(2370) is dominated by one of these elusive states.

Physicists sifted through the wreckage of high-energy particle collisions to find strong evidence of this glueball, made predominantly of gluons â" massless force carriers of the strong interaction between quarks.

The same underlying physics also gives rise to the residual strong force that binds protons and neutrons into an atomic nucleus, much as photons carry the electromagnetic force.

Submission + - What happens to what you share with AI (axios.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: AI companies are seeking access to data beyond the chat window.

OpenAI last week announced an optional Computer History feature that lets ChatGPT retain a record of the apps and websites a person uses.
Google, meanwhile, said last month it will use photos and other material people upload through Search to train its AI systems by default, though users can opt out.
The upside is the potential for more useful, personalized AI. The tradeoff is giving companies a broader and more continuous view of users' lives.

Submission + - Face recognition goes wrong in a supermarket (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Sainsbury’s has paused the use of AI face scanning in one of its stores after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter and ejected from the shop.

'“I was embarrassed, mortified even, and felt quite humiliated and powerless,” Matt Arnold, 46, said of his ordeal.

'The comedy promoter was buying supplies in the store in East Dulwich, in south-east London, for a standup event at Dulwich Hamlet football club when, after scanning his items and a Nectar card, he was approached by two managers who told him he could not be served owing to an earlier incident. He was then asked to leave and they tried to escort him from the store.

'As he left, he saw an overhead CCTV monitor alert with a red circle surrounding his face. He asked the shop staff to keep his shopping in the trolley so his friend could come and pick up the supplies for the comedy night happening soon next door.

“I think they were quite confused by this, understandably, but agreed and my colleague Dave went in to pay for and pick up the shop about five minutes later. There was no pause for thought from the staff, no suggestion that they understood this is not how a shoplifter would behave. Just blindly following the machine’s orders.”

'Sainsbury’s head office apologised to Arnold the next day and has paused use of its AI-assisted Facewatch technology in the store while an investigation takes place.

Submission + - Solar power and batteries have been keeping Europe's grid stable. (euronews.com)

Submitted by AleRunner
AleRunner writes: "Solar has been doing the “heavy lifting” to help Europe meet its energy needs amid a string of blistering heatwaves." Euronews tells us as Europe's energy demands in the meantime, heat and Jellyfish have been causing shutdowns and reduced power output at multiple reactors at French nuclear plants as we already discussed

Submission + - We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process.

A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazonâ(TM)s book buying operation, which hasnâ(TM)t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination.

That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.

Submission + - GEEKOM Turns Four Ubuntu Linux Mini PCs Into Local AI Cluster (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: GEEKOM has connected four of its A9 Mega Mini PCs over USB4 to create a local AI cluster running Ubuntu Linux and an optimized version of DeepSeek V4 Flash. Each system is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with 16 Zen 5 CPU cores, Radeon 8060S graphics, and unified memory. The software stack uses Ubuntu, AMD ROCm, and DwarfStar, while an OpenAI-compatible API lets applications and AI agents communicate with the cluster.

GEEKOM says the four-node setup delivered about 14.61 tokens per second at single concurrency and has operated with contexts up to 250K tokens. The company is pitching the cluster for private AI workloads where documents, source code, credentials, and other sensitive information can remain local rather than being sent to a public cloud. One big unanswered question is cost, as buying four Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Mini PCs could make the economics less attractive compared with a workstation or dedicated AI server.

Submission + - OpenAI Ditches Recall-Style Screenshot Surveillance For Friendly Keylogging (theregister.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you want to record whatever you do on a computer, send those records to OpenAI, use more ChatGPT tokens, and increase your vulnerability to prompt injection, then OpenAI has something for you. It's called Computer History, an opt-in way to record your computer interactions across apps and websites as memories organized on a timeline.

Why would you want to do so? Maybe you found Chronicle, the predecessor of Computer History which compiled similar histories using screenshots, a bit too intrusive but don't mind Computer History's approach – recording input events and storing them unencrypted locally for 48 hours (or more), with a brief visit to OpenAI's servers. Maybe you're not bothered by the warning OpenAI includes in its documentation: "Computer History files can contain sensitive information. They are not encrypted by Computer History, and other programs running as your macOS user may be able to access them."

Perhaps, having given OpenAI's Codex and GPT Work the run of your computer, you're already sold on the suggestion that storing your computer activity in memory files and arranging those interactions in a timeline will improve ChatGPT responses, surface opportunities for automation, and make it easier to resume prior work. Computer History is, to put it bluntly, a keylogging and event capture system.

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