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Submission + - First Sodium-ion Batteries in Commercial EVs (insideevs.com) 1

Submitted by Geoffrey.landis
Geoffrey.landis writes: While lithium-ion chemistry is currently ubiquitous in commercial batteries, an alternative chemistry, the sodium-ion battery, has projected advantages by using a lower-cost, more abundant material, with potentially a lower fire hazard. Chinese battery manufacturer CATL and automaker Changan Automobile are preparing to put the world’s first passenger car powered by sodium-ion batteries on public roads by mid-2026. The CATL Naxtra sodium-ion battery will debut in the Changan Nevo A06 sedan, delivering an estimated range of around 400 kilometers (249 miles) on the China Light-Duty Test Cycle. “The launch represents a major step in the industry’s transition toward a dual-chemistry ecosystem, where sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries complement each other to meet diverse customer needs,” CATL said in a press release. Studies show that sodium-ion batteries carry no risk of thermal runaway and are far less sensitive to extreme temperatures. From an energy density standpoint, the Naxtra battery is competitive but not revolutionary, at 175 watt-hours per kilogram, lower than nickel-rich Lithium-ion chemistries but roughly on par with LFP. That makes it more suitable for low-cost and low-range EVs as well as stationary energy storage. It reportedly operates well at cold temperatures, retaining more than 90% of its range at -40 degrees C (-40 degrees F).

Submission + - Why is China building so many coal plants despite its solar and wind boom (yahoo.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Even as China's expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world's largest emitter will reduce carbon emissions enough to limit climate change.

More than 50 large coal units — individual boiler and turbine sets with generating capacity of 1 gigawatt or more — were commissioned in 2025, up from fewer than 20 a year over the previous decade, a research report released Tuesday said. Depending on energy use, 1 gigawatt can power from several hundred thousand to more than 2 million homes.

Overall, China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online, a sharp uptick from previous years, according to the joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which studies air pollution and its impacts, and Global Energy Monitor, which develops databases tracking energy trends.

“The scale of the buildout is staggering,” said report co-author Christine Shearer of Global Energy Monitor. “In 2025 alone, China commissioned more coal power capacity than India did over the entire past decade.”

Submission + - Chinese biolab found inside Las Vegas home. (go.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Local and federal investigators in Las Vegas are actively working to determine what substances were found inside a home described as a possible biological lab, with over 1,000 samples sent for testing, authorities said.

In the garage, investigators found multiple refrigerators with vials of unknown liquids, unknown liquids in gallon-size containers, a centrifuge and other laboratory equipment, authorities said.

In an open refrigerator and freezer, investigators saw a "significant volume of material," including vials and storage containers "with liquids of different colors and compositions," McMahill said.

The person arrested on Saturday — identified as Ori Solomon, 55 — is believed to be the property manager at the location, according to McMahill.

Solomon has been charged with felony disposal/ discharge of hazardous waste in an unauthorized manner and remains in custody, according to court records.

The owner of the property was arrested and charged in 2023 in connection with an investigation into an illegal bio lab in Reedley, California, authorities said. The owner, a Chinese national, remains in federal custody and has pleaded not guilty.

Submission + - Havana Syndrome device may have been found (newsweek.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Since the United States reopened its embassy in Cuba in 2015, a number of personnel have reported a series of debilitating medical ailments which include dizziness, fatigue, problems with memory, and impaired vision. For ten years these sudden and unexplained onsets have been studied with no conclusive evidence one way or the other. Now comes word a device, purchased by the Pentagon, has been tested which may be linked to what is known as Havana Syndrome.

Two unnamed sources said officials in the previous administration, under former President Joe Biden, had purchased the device for an eight-figure sum. The funding was provided by the Department of Defense, according to the report.

Speculation had swirled some form of directed-energy weapon could have been behind the baffling illness, and that Russian technology could be behind the symptoms. Moscow has denied any involvement.

The device acquired by Homeland Security Investigations—part of DHS—produces pulsed radio waves, one source told CNN. It contains Russian components but is not entirely Russian-made, they added.

Submission + - Chinese Fusion Reactor Breaks Plasma Density Limit (futurism.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Scientists at China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) program rang in the new year with a stunning accomplishment: empirical evidence that they used the device to achieve nuclear plasma densities once thought to be beyond human capabilities. To reach a point where fusion reactor can power itself — a sustainable fusion reaction — requires that gnarly plasma to stay hot, dense, and stable for long stretches of time. For years, it was understood that higher plasma densities would inevitably result in instability, collapsing the fuel before it could ignite, a threshold known as the Greenwald limit. In deuterium-tritium fusion, the fuel must be heated to about 13 keV (150 million kelvin) to reach optimal conditions. At such temperatures, the amount of fusion power produced increases with the square of the plasma density. This new research seemingly flips all that on its head. As the EAST team explains, the method basically involves creating a high gas pressure environment in the reactor prior to plasma formation, which allows the plasma to interact with the reactor wall in a much less destructive way than it would otherwise. Scientists also manually pump extra energy into the plasma as it heats, allowing an even rise in density. The result is a plasma that remains stable even as its internal density rises, resulting in fuel densities “far exceeding empirical limits.” While there are still plenty of breakthroughs left before humanity achieves practical power production with fusion, shattering the Greenwald represents a major item on the to-do list — and another notch on China’s lengthy green energy belt.

Submission + - New Raymarching GPU Benchmark brings Tim Sweeney's vision to life (gaming67.com)

Submitted by GhostX9
GhostX9 writes: In 1999, Tim Sweeney talked about the death of fixed pipeline graphics cards and predicted a future of all software based rendering. A new benchmark has been released that takes the classic game of breakout and imagines this concept by implementing the game with full raymarching. It brings even a RTX5090 to its knees above 480p. It looks gorgeous at 4K, but no hardware today can handle it.

While the website just shows the DirectX12 version by default, if you click the slider for Advanced, it will show the download links for Linux/Vulkan port as well as Apple/Metal.

Submission + - James Webb Space Telescope confirms 1st 'runaway' supermassive black hole (space.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second).

That not only makes this the first confirmed runaway supermassive black hole, but this object is also one of the fastest-moving bodies ever detected, rocketing through its home, a pair of galaxies named the "Cosmic Owl," at 3,000 times the speed of sound at sea level here on Earth. If that isn't astounding enough, the black hole is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized "bow-shock" of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it, within which gas is accumulating and triggering star formation.

Submission + - Texas makes clean power breakthrough as solar output overtakes coal (reuters.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: For the first time, Texas' main power system looks set to generate more power from solar farms than coal plants during a calendar year in 2025, marking a key new energy transition milestone for the largest power network in the U.S.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) generated 2.64 million megawatt hours (MWh) of power from solar assets, compared with 2.44 million MWh of power from coal plants for the January-to-November period, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Submission + - Over 10,000 Docker Hub images found leaking credentials, auth keys (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: More than 10,000 Docker Hub container images expose data that should be protected, including live credentials to production systems, CI/CD databases, or LLM model keys. After scanning container images uploaded to Docker Hub in November, security researchers at threat intelligence company Flare found that 10,456 of them exposed one or more keys.The most frequent secrets were access tokens for various AI models (OpenAI, HuggingFace, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq). In total, the researchers found 4,000 such keys.

"These multi-secret exposures represent critical risks, as they often provide full access to cloud environments, Git repositories, CI/CD systems, payment integrations, and other core infrastructure components," Flare notes

Additionally, they found hardcoded API tokens for AI services being hardcoded in Python application files, config.json files, YAML configs, GitHub tokens, and credentials for multiple internal environments.

Some of the sensitive data was present in the manifest of Docker images, a file that provides details about the image.Flare notes that roughly 25% of developers who accidentally exposed secrets on Docker Hub realized the mistake and removed the leaked secret from the container or manifest file within 48 hours.

However, in 75% of these cases, the leaked key was not revoked, meaning that anyone who stole it during the exposure period could still use it later to mount attacks.

Flare suggests that developers avoid storing secrets in container images, stop using static, long-lived credentials, and centralize their secrets management using a dedicated vault or secrets manager.

Organizations should implement active scanning across the entire software development life cycle and revoke exposed secrets and invalidate old sessions immediately.

Submission + - Cats Meow More Than Twice as Much at Men, And We Can Only Guess Why (sciencealert.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: "Our results showed that cats vocalized more frequently toward male caregivers, while no other demographic factor had a discernible effect on the frequency or duration of greetings," write the researchers in their published paper.

A total of 22 different behavior types were looked at by the researchers, including yawning (often a sign of cat stress) and food-related behaviors (including heading to their food bowl). The vocalizations were the only behaviors that changed based on the owners' sex.

Submission + - Why GPS fails in cities. And how it was fixed (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Our everyday GPS struggles in “urban canyons,” where skyscrapers bounce satellite signals, confusing even advanced navigation systems. NTNU scientists created SmartNav, combining satellite corrections, wave analysis, and Google’s 3D building data for remarkable precision. Their method achieved accuracy within 10 centimeters during testing. The breakthrough could make reliable urban navigation accessible and affordable worldwide.

Submission + - Most Earth-Like Planet Yet May Have Been Found Just 40 Light Years Away (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: One of the worlds in the TRAPPIST-1 system, a mere 40 light-years away, just might be clad in a life-supporting atmosphere.

In exciting new JWST observations, the Earth-sized exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e shows hints of a gaseous envelope similar to our own, one that could facilitate liquid water on the surface.

Although the detection is ambiguous and needs extensive follow-up to find out what the deal is, it's the closest astronomers have come yet in their quest to find a second Earth.

Submission + - Declawing cats causes them lifelong pain. It's time to ban the practice, says re (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Our findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, were striking: we discovered that declawing causes long-term nerve damage, increased sensitivity to pain, and exacerbated mobility issues, particularly in heavier cats. These animals' nervous systems are overloaded from an early age and eventually become exhausted, which leads to chronic fatigue, hypersensitivity and decreased well-being.

In other words, declawing cats condemns them to a life of pain.

Declawing does not mean simply cutting the claws. It involves amputating the last phalanx of each toe, usually on the front paws, sometimes on all four paws. The operation is performed using a scalpel blade, a surgical laser, or sterilized claw clippers.

Submission + - Colt Telecom attack claimed by WarLock ransomware, data up for sale (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Z00L00K
Z00L00K writes: UK-based telecommunications company Colt Technology Services is dealing with a cyberattack that has caused a multi-day outage of some of the company's operations, including hosting and porting services, Colt Online, and Voice API platforms.

The British telecommunications and network services provider disclosed that the attack started on August 12 and the disruption continues as its IT staff works around the clock to mitigate its effects.

The troubles are still ongoing today the 20th of August.

Submission + - Japanese Company Staff Implicated in Alleged Theft of Key TSMC Technology (cnn.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Taiwanese authorities have detained three current and former employees of the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), for allegedly stealing trade secrets and took them to Japanese company Tokyo Electrons, prosecutors said Tuesday. Nikkei Asia first reported on Tuesday that TSMC had fired staffers suspected of illegally obtaining business secrets related to the manufacturing technology for the company’s 2-nanometer chip, the most advanced processor in the semiconductor industry that is expected to go into mass production this year. Taiwanese local media reported that a former TSMC employee now works at top chip manufacturing equipment supplier Tokyo Electron Ltd., and that the Japanese firm’s Taiwan office was raided by investigators. On Thursday, Tokyo Electron confirmed it had dismissed an employee of its Taiwan subsidiary who was involved in the case, and said the company was cooperating with authorities. “As of now, based upon the findings of our internal investigation we have not confirmed any evidence of the respective confidential information shared to any third parties,” it said in a statement.

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