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Submission + - World's first nuclear microreactor test bed launches at Idaho National Lab (interestingengineering.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The race to dominate next-gen nuclear power just hit ignition at Idaho’s Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments.

The Department of Energy has conditionally selected Westinghouse and Radiant to conduct the first fueled experiments at the DOME, a new test bed at Idaho National Laboratory.

Slated to launch as early as spring 2026, the experiments mark a global first—offering U.S. developers a high-stakes proving ground to accelerate the commercialization of advanced microreactors.

Submission + - 1.5M sq km of sea ice is missing near Antarctica. All climate models were wrong (joannenova.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Something huge is happening around Antarctica and the experts didn’t see it coming

More than a million square kilometers of ice has gone:

Since 2015, the continent has shed sea ice equivalent to the area of Greenland. Researchers call it the largest environmental shift detected anywhere on Earth in recent decades. –– Earth dot com

Everything about Antarctica has defied the experts. For years Antarctic sea ice expanded when it wasn’t supposed to. Then, suddenly in 2016 the sea ice around Antarctica dramatically started to shrink, and that wasn’t supposed to happen either. Scientists wondered at the time if it was just a temporary blip, but then it got even smaller. Holes in the sea ice “as big as Switzerland” have started to appear for the first time since the mid 1970s.

To explain this mystery (that was rarely mentioned) a new paper suggests the salinity of surface waters has changed. We’re not just talking about a small piece of ocean, this is everything south of 50. For decades, the surface of the polar Southern Ocean was getting less salty — an “expected response to a warming climate” they said that started in about 1980, “however, this trend reversed abruptly after 2015”.

So as news seeps out this week that there is a “dangerous feedback loop” where shrinking ice is warming the ocean, bear in mind that the experts also admit this is “completely unexpected” which is their way of saying “the models were wrong”. Carbon dioxide was not supposed to do this.

Comment A cashless society means your money is not yours (Score 1) 179

by schwit1 (#65486748) Attached to: In China, Coins and Banknotes Have All But Disappeared

https://www.reddit.com/r/copyp...

The GoFundMe cancellation of the truckers' money should make you all aware of how a cashless society will work. The government gets mad at you and they wipe out your money. The end. Think they can't get mad at you, you're a good citizen? Welcome to the social credit system.

In a cashless society your money is yours only as long as the banks and government allow it.

Submission + - Chinese military-tied company is choosing new hires at Ford battery plant (justthenews.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes:

Chinese company appears to be in charge of hiring workers for Ford’s new battery plant in Michigan, contradicting the company’s statements that it will be an American-owned and operated project, and amplifying concerns from locals about potential national security implications.

The plant has generated significant controversy because of Ford’s partnership with China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited, known as CATL, which closely collaborates with the Chinese military and government. The U.S. Defense Department earlier this year marked CATL as a Chinese Military Company to warn American firms about the risks of doing business.

Despite the security concerns about its partner, Ford has promised that the battery manufacturing facility, which the company says will help it develop a reliable U.S.-based supply of electric vehicle batteries in Marshall, Michigan, would be completely owned and operated by the American firm. The only contribution from CATL, the company has said, will be Ford’s licensing of its proprietary battery technology.

At the same time, online job listings on multiple recruiting platforms show that CATL’s American subsidiary—Contemporary Amperex Technology Kentucky (CATK)—has posted job listings for roles at the factory, seemingly contradicting Ford’s assurances and revealing a far more active role in management by the Chinese company.

Exit quote: "The Ford plant has drawn scrutiny from Republicans in the Michigan legislature who are concerned that the state government failed to properly vet the project and Ford’s partners in the endeavor."

Who got paid off?

Submission + - AI tool detects 9 types of dementia from a single brain scan (medicalxpress.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The tool, StateViewer, helped researchers identify the dementia type in 88% of cases, according to research published online on June 27, 2025, in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. It also enabled clinicians to interpret brain scans nearly twice as fast and with up to three times greater accuracy than standard workflows. Researchers trained and tested the AI on more than 3,600 scans, including images from patients with dementia and people without cognitive impairment.

Submission + - Doctor who defected to US says China scientists trained to steal US lab research (justthenews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Chinese doctor who fled his home country after blowing the whistle regarding COVID-19 research says that Chinese scientists working in America are trained to steal research from U.S. institutions and represent a significant national security threat.

Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese-educated doctor born in Qingdao, China, says that Chinese scientists are obligated by the government through a “contract” to help steal U.S. intellectual property, research, and anything else of value for use by the Chinese Communist Party.

The doctor’s assessment comes as the Trump administration has launched a vetting process for the hundreds of foreign scientists currently working in the United States from countries of concern like China who were granted visas with the help of the National Institutes of Health and other federal research agencies, Just the News reported this week.

“Scientists getting visa from China to the US, they are visiting scholars. They have signed the contract with Chinese government to go back to China, serve China with whatever they can get from the US,” Dr. Li-Meng Yan told the Just the News, No Noise TV show.

That's why they get visas from the Chinese government. So from the beginning, they have already made a deal with the CCP and become CCP's, kind of agents,” Yan added. “So China has these people come here, grab your intellectual properties, grab your technologies, compromise your people, and that is like the tumor, like the parasites go to your body, go to your country.”

“So China uses these people, and that is China's national strategy. So the US government must treat it as [a] national threat not only in individual cases," she concluded.

Submission + - An "American" company is charging U.S. companies TWICE AS MUCH as Chinese firms (x.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Access Advance is a U.S. company that licenses patents for video streaming software.

As @BreitbartNews reported last week, they offer special 50% discounts for patent usage in countries like China and India—while charging full rate to firms in the U.S. for the same services.

Submission + - California's Corporate Cover-Up Act Is a Privacy Nightmare (eff.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: California lawmakers are pushing one of the most dangerous privacy rollbacks we’ve seen in years. S.B. 690, what we’re calling the Corporate Cover-Up Act, is a brazen attempt to let corporations spy on us in secret, gutting long-standing protections without a shred of accountability.

The Corporate Cover-Up Act is a massive carve-out that would gut California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and give Big Tech and data brokers a green light to spy on us without consent for just about any reason. If passed, S.B. 690 would let companies secretly record your clicks, calls, and behavior online—then share or sell that data with whomever they’d like, all under the banner of a “commercial business purpose.”

Simply put, The Corporate Cover-Up Act (S.B. 690) is a blatant attack on digital privacy, and is written to eviscerate long-standing privacy laws and legal safeguards Californians rely on. If passed, it would:
  • Gut California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA)—a law that protects us from being secretly recorded or monitored
  • Legalize corporate wiretaps, allowing companies to intercept real-time clicks, calls, and communications
  • Authorize pen registers and trap-and-trace tools, which track who you talk to, when, and how—without consent
  • Let companies use all of this surveillance data for “commercial business purposes”—with zero notice and no legal consequences

This isn’t a small fix. It’s a sweeping rollback of hard-won privacy protections—the kind that helped expose serious abuses by companies like Facebook, Google, and Oracle.

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