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Submission + - Little Caesars drone delivery proves even terrible pizza can fly (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Flytrex is expanding its drone delivery ambitions with a new partnership with Little Caesars, and the hook here is scale. The companyâ(TM)s new Sky2 drone can carry up to 8.8 pounds, which is enough for two large pizzas, sides, and drinks in a single flight. That may not sound like a big leap, but most drone delivery efforts so far have been limited to small, lightweight orders. This setup stretches to about four miles and Flytrex claims roughly 4.5 minutes from takeoff to drop-off, with direct integration into restaurant ordering systems to cut down on delays. The drone itself uses an eight-motor design for redundancy, dual batteries, and high-precision navigation, plus onboard AI managing flight operations.

If you care about the tech, this is one of the more practical implementations weâ(TM)ve seen, especially with recent FAA approvals for beyond visual line of sight flights and partnerships forming across the delivery ecosystem. If you care about the food, well, thatâ(TM)s a different conversation. As someone from Long Island, Iâ(TM)m not convinced that shaving minutes off delivery time suddenly makes chain pizza desirable, even if it arrives via autonomous octocopter. Still, convenience tends to win, and if suburban customers can get dinner dropped in their yard without dealing with traffic or drivers, this kind of system might actually stick.

Submission + - Researchers Induce Smells With Ultrasound, No Chemical Cartridges Required (uploadvr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group of independent researchers built a device that can artificially induce smell using ultrasound, with no consumable cartridges required. [...] The team of four are Lev Chizhov, Albert Yan-Huang, Thomas Ribeiro, Aayush Gupta. Chizhov is a neurotech entrepreneur with a background in math and physics, Yan-Huang is a researcher at Caltech with a background in computation and neural systems, and Ribeiro and Gupta are co-researchers on the project with software engineering and AI expertise.

Instead of targeting your nose at all, the device directly targets the olfactory bulb in your brain with "focused ultrasound through the skull." The researchers say that as far as they're aware, no one has ever done this before, even in animals. A challenge in targeting the olfactory bulb is that it's buried behind the top of your nose, and your nose doesn't provide a flat surface for an emitter. Ultrasound also doesn't travel well through air. The solution the researchers came up with was to place the emitter on your forehead instead, with a "solid, jello-like pad for stability and general comfort," and the ultrasound directed downward towards the olfactory bulb.

To determine the best placement, they say they used an MRI of one of their skulls to "roughly determine where the transducer would point and how the focal region (where ultrasound waves actually concentrate) aligned with the olfactory bulb (the target for stimulation)". [...] According to the researchers, they were able to induce the sensation of fresh air "with a lot of oxygen", the smell of garbage "like few-day-old fruit peels," an ozone-like sensation "like you're next to an air ionizer," and a campfire smell of burning wood. While technically head-mounted, the current device does require being held up with two hands. But as with all such prototypes, it likely could be significantly miniaturized.

Submission + - Particles seen emerging from empty space for first time (newscientist.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: A pair of rare particles produced in high-energy proton collisions may be the clearest evidence yet that mass can emerge from empty space. The finding could shed light on one of the biggest puzzles in physics: how particles acquire their mass.

According to quantum chromodynamics (QCD) – widely considered to be our best theory for describing the strong force, which binds quarks inside protons and neutrons – even a perfect vacuum isn’t truly empty. Instead, it is filled with short-lived disturbances in the underlying energy of space that flicker in and out of existence, known as virtual particles. Among them are quark-antiquark pairs.

Under normal conditions, these fleeting pairs vanish almost as soon as they appear. But if enough energy is injected into a vacuum, QCD predicts they can be promoted into real, detectable particles with measurable mass.

Now, the STAR collaboration – an international team of physicists working at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state – has observed this process for the first time.

The team smashed together high-energy protons in a vacuum, producing a spray of particles. Some of these particles should be quark-antiquark pairs pulled directly from the vacuum itself, but quarks can never exist alone and immediately combine into composite particles. Quarks and antiquarks are born with their spins correlated — a shared quantum alignment inherited from the vacuum.

The researchers found that this link persists even after the quarks and antiquarks become part of larger particles called hyperons, which decay in less than a tenth of a billionth of a second. Spotting these spin-aligned hyperons in the aftermath of the proton collisions allowed the researchers to confirm that the quarks within them came from the vacuum.

“This is the first time we’ve seen the entire process,” says Zhoudunming Tu, a member of the STAR collaboration.

Submission + - Fujifilm LTO Ultrium 10 40TB tape cartridge arrives in the US (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Fujifilm has introduced its LTO Ultrium 10 40TB data cartridge in the United States, offering 40TB of native capacity and up to 100TB with compression. While tape storage might sound like a relic from the past, the format continues to evolve and remains widely used for long term archival storage. The new cartridge supports transfer speeds up to 400MB/s natively and integrates with existing LTO 10 tape drives, allowing organizations to expand storage without replacing existing infrastructure.

Tape remains attractive for certain workloads because it is inexpensive, energy efficient, and naturally air gapped when stored offline. That makes it appealing for large scale archives in industries such as media, finance, research, and healthcare. As AI systems generate massive datasets that must be retained for years, vendors like Fujifilm argue that magnetic tape still fills an important role alongside modern storage technologies.

Submission + - Scientists Engineered a Plant to Produce 5 Different Psychedelics at Once (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: What do plants, toads, and mushrooms have in common? They can all produce psychedelic substances â" and now their powers have been combined in one plant, like a trippier Captain Planet.

In a wild first, scientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant (Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously.

Submission + - The document foundation descends into chaos as biggest contributor to is ejected

Submitted by paulatz
paulatz writes: After a controversial vote in January, the board of the Document Foundation (TDF) changed its statute to substantially widen its definition of "affiliation". The entire staff of Collabora has now been expel from membership and from the board itself, including the board members that opposed the initial change. Collabora is an UK-based firm and the single largest contributor to the LibreOffice codebase, they continued the development of a rebranded version of LibreOffice Online when it was dropped by TDF in 2022. However, in 2026, TDF has revived the development of their web-based suite while Collabora is bringing its web-based suite to the desktop with a completely redesigned GUI.

After the fork from OpenOffice in 2010, it looks like the most popular open-source office suite is headed into a new period of strife.

Submission + - AMD says it will buy Intel (techspot.com)

Submitted by ZipNada
ZipNada writes: In a move that feels less like a corporate transaction and more like the final punchline to a 40-year industry rivalry, AMD announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Intel, the company it has spent decades chasing, imitating, undercutting, suing, licensing from, and lately outperforming.

The all-stock transaction, which AMD described as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to unify x86 innovation," would combine the two companies under a single umbrella just a few years after such an outcome would have sounded ridiculous.

For most of modern computing history, Intel was the empire and AMD the scrappy survivor, the perpetual second source that somehow kept finding ways to stay alive. Now, after a bruising run of manufacturing delays, product stumbles, strategic resets, and a historic reversal in investor confidence, Intel is poised to be absorbed by the smaller company it long treated as a footnote.

Submission + - Big Tech deserves its Big Tobacco moment (marketwatch.com) 1

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Landmark verdicts shatter the Section 230 shield, turning ‘addictive’ product design into a legal thicket for Meta, Alphabet and others.

The fact that social media is designed to be addictive is now court-tested fact.

Submission + - Ads Are Popping Up on the Fridge and It Isn't Going Over Well (wsj.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Walking into his kitchen, Tim Yoder recoiled at a message on his refrigerator door: “Shop Samsung water filters.”

Yoder, a supply-chain manager in Chicago, owns a Samsung Electronics Family Hub fridge. He paid $1,400 for an appliance that came with a 32-inch screen on the door that allows him to control other Samsung gadgets, pull up recipes or stream music.

Submission + - Hijacking a global ocean supply chain network

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm the Captain now: Hijacking a global ocean supply chain network

“BLUVOYIX by Bluspark Global is an ocean logistics / supply chain platform used by hundreds of the world’s largest companies. The software is also used by several affiliated companies. Critical vulnerabilities were uncovered that enabled full platform takeover and access to all customer data/shipments. As of the date of publication, these issues are resolved.”

Submission + - Windows 12, Codenamed 'Hudson Valley': Everything We Know So Far (technobezz.com)

Submitted by meriksen
meriksen writes: Can Microsoft recover from the bad press that Windows 11 has received?
Can they turn the tide and prevent an exodus away from Windows?

Microsoft hasn't officially announced Windows 12, but mounting evidence from industry reporting suggests a major new version with deep AI integration and a modular "CorePC" architecture is in the works for 2026.

Rumors indicate it may require specialized NPU hardware and could introduce new AI feature tiers, though some speculation about a subscription-based OS has been debunked.

Here's everything we know so far about features, hardware requirements, and what to expect. Original story here: https://www.technobezz.com/new...

Submission + - United Airlines Can Now Remove Passengers Who Won't Put Headphones On (cbsnews.com) 1

Submitted by msmash
msmash writes: United Airlines has quietly updated its contract of carriage to require all passengers to wear headphones whenever they use a personal device that produces sound — covering music, videos and social media feeds alike. The airline now reserves the right to remove passengers who don't comply, and may refuse them transport on a permanent basis. United also noted on its website that it will provide a free pair of earbuds to passengers who forget theirs in some instances.

Submission + - UFO files reveal giant glowing sphere over military base hidden for 35 years (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Declassified documents from over three decades ago have revealed how an encounter with a suspected UFO at the south pole was covered up.

The records unsealed this year by Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs have confirmed an eyewitness account from 1991, when military personnel and civilian researchers in Antarctica detected and then saw a large flying saucer over their base.

Miguel Amaya, a retired Argentine Air Force non-commissioned officer, told UFO investigators in the early 2000s that he was stationed at General San Martín Base, a small scientific and military station on a tiny island in Antarctica in April of that year.

At the start of the polar night, when the sun stays down for months, an alarm went off on the station's riometer, a machine that measures changes in the upper atmosphere.

Despite the three needle pens measuring different heights of the ionosphere, the part of the atmosphere where solar radiation ionizes atoms, all of the needles began drawing the same pattern, which is scientifically impossible.

According to Amaya, outpost personnel claimed that the strange readings could only have been caused by something producing the same energy as a nuclear aircraft carrier or a large city floating over Antarctica.

Hours later, another base member was walking outside during a snowstorm when they allegedly saw 'a huge circle of light' moving slowly and silently right over the building.

The 1991 incident has finally come to light after Amaya claimed he and the other members at General San Martín Base were told never to talk about what they had seen by their superiors.

Comment Re:Riiight (Score 3, Informative) 107

I've been working for a couple decades in the manufacturing system space. For several years, multiple companies came to us "we want to work with you on 5G adoption in manufacturing".... They wanted us to come up with ideas of why manufacturers would deploy private 5G networks within factories. I couldn't come up with any good reason.

I typically work wit large enterprises, and when you're spending 100's of millions, if not billions of dollars on a factory, why would you use cheap IoT sensors, when you can hardwire industrial sensors you know will work for a very long time? and then you don't need to deal with all the EMF noise manufacturing hardware produces These other companies trying to push 5G would make suggestions, and I'd respond with "we've been doing that for years with wifi". The whole 5G IIoT (Industrial IoT) was a solution looking for a problem.

Submission + - For the first time, light mimics a Nobel Prize quantum effect (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists have pulled off a feat long considered out of reach: getting light to mimic the famous quantum Hall effect. In their experiment, photons drift sideways in perfectly defined, quantized steps—just like electrons do in powerful magnetic fields. Because these steps depend only on nature’s fundamental constants, they could become a new gold standard for ultra-precise measurements. The discovery also hints at tougher, more reliable quantum photonic technologies.

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I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos. -- Albert Einstein, on the randomness of quantum mechanics

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