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Submission + - UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'Leading professor at Sheffield Hallam was told to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China after demands from authorities

'The decision to halt Murphy’s research appeared to come from a number of factors. Officially, the university gave two reasons: concern about the safety of staff in China, and the fact that, after being sued by a Chinese company named in one of the HKC’s reports, the university’s insurance provider said it would no longer cover work produced by the HKC for defamation risk. That lawsuit is ongoing.

'For years, the university has faced a backlash in China, and falling student numbers. In the summer of 2022, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian called the HKC – whose namesake, Lady Kennedy, has herself been hit with sanctions by Beijing because of her criticisms of China’s human rights record – a “vanguard for anti-China forces”. Around the same time, Sheffield Hallam’s websites were blocked in China. “This undoubtedly had a negative impact on recruitment in 23/24,” a university employee wrote in July 2024.'

Note the use of the GDPR law to extract the information from the university that revealed the scandal.

Submission + - Employees are the new hackers: 1Password warns AI chaos is breaking corporate se (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: 1Passwordâ(TM)s 2025 Annual Report: The Access-Trust Gap exposes how everyday employees are becoming accidental hackers in the AI era. The companyâ(TM)s data shows that 73 percent of workers are encouraged to use AI tools, yet more than a third admit they do not always follow corporate policies. Many employees are feeding sensitive information into large language models or using unapproved AI apps to get work done, creating what 1Password calls âoeShadow AI.â At the same time, traditional defenses like single sign-on (SSO) and mobile device management (MDM) are failing to keep pace, leaving gaps in visibility and control.

The report warns that corporate security is being undermined from within. More than half of employees have installed software without IT approval, two-thirds still use weak passwords, and 38 percent have accessed accounts at previous employers. Despite rising enthusiasm for passkeys and passwordless authentication, 1Password says most organizations still depend on outdated systems that were never built for cloud-native, AI-driven work. The result is a growing âoeAccess-Trust Gapâ that could allow AI chaos and employee shortcuts to dismantle enterprise security from the inside.

Submission + - China Passes New Law Requiring Influencers to Hold Professional Credentials (iol.co.za)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: China has enacted a new law regulating social media influencers, requiring them to hold verified professional qualifications before posting content on sensitive topics such as medicine, law, education, and finance, IOL reported. The new law went into effect on Saturday.

The regulation was introduced by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) as part of its broader effort to curb misinformation online.

Under the new rules, influencers must prove their expertise through recognized degrees, certifications, or licenses before discussing regulated subjects. Major platforms such as Douyin (China’s TikTok), Bilibili, and Weibo are now responsible for verifying influencer credentials and ensuring that content includes clear citations, disclaimers, and transparency about sources.

Audiences expect influencers to be both creative and credible. Yet when they blur the line between opinion and expertise, the impact can be severe. A single misleading financial tip could wipe out someone’s savings. A viral health trend could cause real harm.

That’s why many believe it’s time for creators to acknowledge the weight of their influence. However, China’s new law raises deeper questions: Who defines “expertise”? What happens to independent creators who challenge official narratives but lack formal credentials? And how far can regulation go before it suppresses free thought?

Submission + - MIT physicists just found a way to see inside atoms (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: MIT researchers have devised a new molecular technique that lets electrons probe inside atomic nuclei, replacing massive particle accelerators with a tabletop setup. By studying radium monofluoride, they detected energy shifts showing electrons interacting within the nucleus. This breakthrough could help reveal why matter dominates over antimatter in the universe.

Submission + - Bay Area tech CEO says test project likely struck United flight at 36,000 feet (sfgate.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: The mystery object that struck a plane at 36,000 feet is likely not space debris, as some speculated, but rather a Silicon Valley test project gone wrong.

WindBorne Systems, a Palo Alto startup that uses atmospheric balloons to collect weather data for AI-based forecast models, has come forward to say that they believe they may be responsible for the object that hit the windshield.

“Yes, I think this was a WindBorne balloon. We learned about UA1093 and the potential that it was related to one of our balloons at 11pm PT on Sunday and immediately looked into it,” WindBorne CEO John Dean posted on social media. “At 6am PT, we sent our preliminary investigation to both NTSB and FAA, and are working with both of them to investigate further.”

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement released on social media on Sunday that the windscreen was being sent to their lab for testing, using “radar, weather, flight recorder data” to determine the cause of the incident.
WindBorne said the company has launched more than 4,000 balloons and that it coordinates with the Federal Aviation Administration for every launch. After presenting one of its balloons as a possible cause of the collision, the company said in a statement on its website that it “immediately rolled out changes to minimize time spent between 30,000 and 40,000 feet.”

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for a comment about the structural integrity of the windshields on its 737 Max planes.

Submission + - Iceland Just Found Its First Mosquitoes (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Iceland’s frozen, inhospitable winters have long protected it from mosquitoes, but that may be changing. This week, scientists announced the discovery of three mosquitoes — marking the country’s first confirmed finding of these insects in the wild. Mosquitoes are found almost everywhere in the world, with the exception of Antarctica and, until very recently, Iceland, due to their extreme cold.

The mosquitoes were discovered by Bjorn Hjaltason in Kioafell, Kjos, in western Iceland about 20 miles north of the capital Reykjavik. “At dusk on October 16, I caught sight of a strange fly,” Hjaltason posted in a Facebook group about insects, according to reports in the Icelandic media. “I immediately suspected what was going on and quickly collected the fly,” he added.

He contacted Matthías Alfreosson, an entomologist at the Natural Science Institute of Iceland, who drove out to Hjaltason’s house the next day. They captured three in total, two females and a male. Alfreðsson identified them as mosquitoes from the Culiseta annulata species. A single mosquito from a different species was discovered many years ago on an airplane at the country’s Keflavik International Airport, Alfreosson told CNN, but this “is the first record of mosquitoes occurring in the natural environment in Iceland.”

Submission + - Independent investigation issues final analysis of AI171 crash (youtube.com) 2

Submitted by tyroxy
tyroxy writes: India blamed the AI171 pilots, but after investigating and producing a hundred videos (!) on the topic, these intrepid sleuths unearthed the real story.

tl;dr Shortly after takeoff electrical fault interrupts throttle position signal, and the "safety" logic causes the engine thrust level to be reset to idle. The engines restart automatically once the data link recovers, and this took place, but not soon enough to sustain flight. The cause of the short was water ingress into a DC electrical panel, pulling down the bus voltage enough to cause faulty frames in the throttle position signal.

Submission + - Why Signal's post-quantum makeover is an amazing engineering achievement (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: One exception to the industry-wide lethargy is the engineering team that designs the Signal Protocol, the open source engine that powers the world’s most robust and resilient form of end-to-end encryption for multiple private chat apps, most notably the Signal Messenger. Eleven days ago, the nonprofit entity that develops the protocol, Signal Messenger LLC, published a 5,900-word write-up describing its latest updates that bring Signal a significant step toward being fully quantum-resistant.

The complexity and problem-solving required for making the Signal Protocol quantum safe are as daunting as just about any in modern-day engineering. The original Signal Protocol already resembled the inside of a fine Swiss timepiece, with countless gears, wheels, springs, hands, and other parts all interoperating in an intricate way. In less adept hands, mucking about with an instrument as complex as the Signal protocol could have led to shortcuts or unintended consequences that hurt performance, undoing what would otherwise be a perfectly running watch. Yet this latest post-quantum upgrade (the first one came in 2023) is nothing short of a triumph
Outside researchers are applauding the work.

“If the normal encrypted messages we use are cats, then post-quantum ciphertexts are elephants,” Matt Green, a cryptography expert at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in an interview. “So the problem here is to sneak an elephant through a tunnel designed for cats. And that’s an amazing engineering achievement. But it also makes me wish we didn’t have to deal with elephants.”

Submission + - China tests world's first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds (interestingengineering.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Interesting Engineering reports (also here) that China has successfully completed the first flight of its home-designed floating [in the air] wind turbine, the S1500, in Hami, Xinjiang.

The S1500 is a megawatt-scale commercial system that floats in the sky like a giant Zeppelin. Measuring approximately 197 feet long (60 meters), 131 feet wide (40 meters), and 131 feet tall (40 meters), it is by far the largest airborne wind-power generator ever built, according to Beijing SAWES Energy Technology Co., Ltd., one of the developers.

Unlike traditional turbines, the S1500 does not need a tower or deep foundation. This reduces material use by 40 percent and cuts electricity costs by 30 percent. The entire unit can be moved within hours, making it suitable for deserts, islands, and mining sites.

The S1500 features a main airfoil and an annular wing that together form a giant duct. Inside this duct are 12 turbine-generator sets, each rated at 100 kW. These rotors capture steady high-altitude winds and convert them into electricity. The power is transmitted to the ground via a tether cable.

High-altitude winds between 1,640 and 3,281 feet (500 and 10,000 meters) above the ground are stronger and steadier than surface winds. These winds are abundant, widely available, and carbon-free.

The physics of wind power makes this resource extremely valuable. “When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold, triple the speed, and you have 27 times the energy,” explained Gong Zeqi, a researcher from AIR.

This exponential growth shows why high-altitude turbines like the S1500 can generate much more power than conventional land-based systems.

SAWES also envisions the platform for rapid disaster response. The system can be deployed quickly after earthquakes or floods to supply electricity to lights, radios, and life-saving equipment.

“The airborne platform can be launched quickly after an earthquake or flood to keep lights, radios and life-saving equipment running,” said Weng Hanke, chief technology officer of SAWES.

Submission + - Is Windows 7 about to overtake Windows 10? (gbnews.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: According to StatCounter, Windows 7 has been rapidly gaining market share in recent weeks — a full five years after support for the desktop operating system was officially terminated. At the latest count, Windows 7 is now used by some 22.65% of all Windows PCs worldwide. That's an increase from the 18.97% just a little over a month ago.

As of last month, users were already switching to Windows 7 in record numbers, but that number had only totalled to 9.6% worldwide.

Submission + - How we sharpened the James Webb telescope's vision from a million kilometers awa (theconversation.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Hubble started its life seeing out of focus – its mirror had been ground precisely, but incorrectly. By looking at known stars and comparing the ideal and measured images (exactly like what optometrists do), it was possible to figure out a “prescription” for this optical error and design a lens to compensate.

The correction required seven astronauts to fly up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1993 to install the new optics. Hubble orbits Earth just a few hundred kilometers above the surface, and can be reached by astronauts.

By contrast, Webb is roughly 1.5 million kilometers away – we can’t visit and service it, and need to be able to fix issues without changing any hardware.

This is where AMI comes in. This is the only Australian hardware on board, designed by astronomer Peter Tuthill.

It was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometers of distortion in Webb’s 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key.

AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments.

We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn’t working entirely as hoped.

Submission + - Western Executives Shaken After Visiting China (futurism.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled â" and even terrified.

As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the countryâ(TM)s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.
You get this sense of a change, where Chinaâ(TM)s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad,â British energy supplier Octopus CEO Greg Jackson told the newspaper.

According to recent figures by the International Federation of Robotics, China has deployed orders of magnitude more industrial robots than Germany, the US, and the UK.

Submission + - Coral reef discovered off Naples (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by davidone
davidone writes: A large white coral reef containing important species and fossil traces has been discovered at a depth of more than 500 metres in the Gulf of Naples, in a rare discovery for the Mediterranean, the Italian Research Council (CNR) said on Friday.

Submission + - Microsoft to Kids: You Get AI! Your Teacher Gets AI! Every [WA] School Gets AI! 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: GeekWire reports that Microsoft is bringing artificial intelligence to every public classroom in its home state — and sparking new questions about its role in education. The Redmond tech giant on Thursday unveiled Microsoft Elevate Washington, a sweeping new initiative that will provide free access to AI-powered software and training for all 295 public school districts and 34 community and technical colleges across Washington state. The program is part of Microsoft Elevate, the company’s broader $4 billion, five-year commitment to support schools and nonprofits with AI tools and training that was announced in July.

“This is our home,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said at a launch event on the company’s headquarters campus. “A big part of what we’re doing today is investing in our home.” Smith said Microsoft understands the unease around AI in classrooms but argued that waiting isn’t an option. “I don’t know that it will be possible to slow down the use of AI, even if someone wanted to,” he said. In an interview with KING-TV Seattle, Smith added, "We're making a bigger commitment to this state than we are to any state in the country. [...] Above all else, we want to ensure that people can learn how to use the technology of tomorrow. That's the only way for our kids to succeed in the future."

The event on Thursday also included comedian Trevor Noah, the company’s “chief questions officer,” as well as Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi. Noah and Partovi both also appeared with Smith at the Microsoft Elevate launch event in July, where Smith told Partovi it was time to "switch hats" from coding to AI, adding that "the last 12 years have been about the Hour of Code [Code.org's flagship event, credited with pushing CS into K-12 classrooms], but the future involves the Hour of AI." Code.org last month committed to "engage 25M learners in an Hour of AI in school year '25/'26" at a meeting of the White House Task Force on AI Education that preceded a White House dinner for top execs from the nation's leading AI companies.

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