The Linkielist

  • Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras

    Slovakia’s national security service NBU has issued a security alert against the use of NERO R-s – Risky Business MediaONE high-speed traffic cameras.

    The agency says the cameras contain a backdoor mechanism that grants shell and network access to the devices via an SMS message received from a list of hardcoded Russian phone numbers.

    The NBU started an investigation into the devices after the country’s opposition accused the government of buying the cameras from Russia and after multiple reports in Slovak media that linked the purchase to a Cyprus shell company with fake certifications.

    According to the NBU, the cameras are a rebranded version of a Russian traffic camera model named CORDON PRO.M, produced by St. Petersburg-based Russian firm Semicon.

    via NBU
    via NBU

    The cameras were bought as part of a €30 million EU-funded project to rebuild the country’s national traffic monitoring system.

    The Interior Ministry has allegedly bought and preparing to install 279 cameras on selected roads across Slovakia.

    The Ministry initially denied that the cameras were of Russian origin and said there’s no danger of data theft since the devices were going to be on a closed loop Ministry network.

    According to an NBU technical report, besides the backdoor system, the cameras also contain several security flaws. They have a crucial SecureBoot security feature that’s turned off so the firmware origin is never enforced, the web management portal contains multiple vulnerabilities, and the cameras expose live streams to anyone without a password and who knows their broadcasting IP.

    Interior Ministry officials paused the camera deployment after the NBU report and said it would order an additional assessment from an independent auditor to confirm the findings.

    Some similar devices are also allegedly installed in Croatia and maybe some other countries in Eastern Europe.

    Source: Risky Bulletin: Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras – Risky Business Media

  • Experimental compound helps burn fat without muscle loss

    […] Researchers at UC Berkeley are now investigating a very different strategy for treating obesity and diabetes. Instead of reducing the amount of energy a person consumes, their approach is designed to increase the amount of energy the body uses by raising metabolic activity.

    A Different Way to Target Weight Loss

    In a study published August 21 in Science Advances, the team reports that a molecular compound called 5-tetradecyloxy-2-furoic acid (TOFA) can interfere with the production of lipids such as cholesterol and triglycerides. At the same time, it activates genes that encourage cells to use fat for fuel and produce more energy.

    In experiments with mice, TOFA improved insulin sensitivity and glucose control, reduced triglyceride levels, and improved signs of fatty liver disease. Obese mice treated with the compound lost fat while showing no significant reduction in lean muscle mass.

    “Body weight responds to two levers: taking in fewer calories, or spending more energy,” said Anders Näär, a professor of metabolic biology and nutrition at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study. “GLP-1s work almost entirely on the first, so we went after the second.”

    […]

    “TOFA appears to engage a coordinated metabolic response,” said study first author Justin Y. Lee, a postdoctoral student at UCSF who conducted the research as a Ph.D. student at Berkeley. “It is not simply blocking lipid synthesis. It is also activating energy expenditure pathways that may help the body handle excess lipid and glucose more effectively.”

    […]

    The team then examined whether TOFA could be paired with existing GLP-1 medications. These included semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic or Wegovy, and tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound.

    In mice, combining TOFA with these GLP-1 drugs produced larger improvements in body weight, glucose control, insulin levels, and triglycerides than either treatment produced on its own.

    […]

    Despite the promising results, the researchers emphasize that TOFA has so far been studied only in animals. Its safety and effectiveness in humans remain unknown and will need to be evaluated in future studies.

    […]

    Source: Experimental compound helps burn fat without muscle loss | ScienceDaily

  • Zero Knowledge Proofs Aren’t Age Verification / Identity Surveillance Silver Bullets | Techdirt

    Age verification (laws and regulations requiring platforms and websites to assure or estimate that a user seeking to use an online service is of a certain age) is everywhere. At the time of writing, about half the states in the US have some internet age verification law in place, and dangerous proposals, from the KIDS Act to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), have been advancing at the federal level. European Union member states are moving toward having age verification in a centralized app by the end of this year. Australia famously now has one extremely broad restriction in place.

    Most age verification laws tend to fail at their primary goal of barring kids from being online or from entering only specially designated zones, not to mention they pose a significant threat to everyone’s privacy. Some proponents of these age-based internet restrictions think they’ve found the silver bullet: Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs). We wrote about ZKP’s when they were first rolled out in the age verification context last year. However, more recent examples show our concerns weren’t just conjecture; ZKP-focused AV schemes are gameable, hackable, and not the cure-all some may claim.

    ZKPs in Age Verification Would Only Centralize Power and Create More Harms

    Before we jump into how these systems work, it must be said: creating a single point of failure for internet access contradicts the very idea of a free and open internet. 

    The mechanisms underlying ZKPs pose an existential threat to everyone’s digital rights, not just kids. The idea behind ZKPs is that you are issued a “token” that vouches for your age every time you log in, creating a constant link back to the entity that verified you. The issuer of the tokens these AV schemes rely on could track every time that credential is used, creating a dangerous trail of metadata on any user they wanted to target.

    […]

    In the ideal scenario, this means that ZKP’s are able to attest to a person’s status as an adult or a child without actually giving away any other private information about that person. In other words, only one entity would collect that private information, typically on the user’s device, instead of every website or app that needs the user’s age attested to. Unfortunately, recent real-world testing of these systems prove that ZKP’s aren’t the silver bullet that proponents of AV laws were hoping for.

    EU’s AV Rollout Reveals How Broken It Is

    By the end of 2026, the 27 states within the European Union are expected to have infrastructure in place to do age verification within a “mini-wallet” app that will live inside the EUDI (European Digital Identity) Wallet. This is being met with plenty of warranted criticism from digital rights experts. The “mini-wallet” version is already being rolled out, with promises that the ZKPs are in working order. But recent insights show that the ZKP features aren’t yet turned on except for the closed demo/prototype build (not the version of the app people are using “out of the box”), which the vast majority of everyday users can’t access. 

    Worse still, a security researcher found they could bypass the app’s system using a quickly built Chrome extension that tricked the app into repeatedly accepting the same “over-18” token. It did so without ever asking for fresh verification. 

    Over 400 security researchers signed an open letter stating that age assurance checkpoints, even if implemented with privacy in mind, would cause more harm than good. A primary focus of their concern, which we share, is the fact that a centralized identity verification system creates a single point of failure that is extremely vulnerable to both cyberattack and authoritarian overreach.

    Once the “mini-wallet” version of this is fully integrated into the EUDI Wallet, it will replicate these same failures, perhaps more, but at a much larger scale. At that point, the failures will involve many more pieces of sensitive information that the EUDI Wallet contains: passports, driver’s licenses, travel information, financial information, to name a few.

    ZKP’s Aren’t The Magic Bullet

    As we’ve said time and time again, no method of online age verification is privacy-protective, fully accurate, and capable of guaranteeing universal coverage without introducing severe security risks. 

    Lawmakers concerned about the privacy failures of age verification mandates must understand that ZKPs are not a magic bullet. They do not solve the age verification paradox; they simply push the burden of trust down the road, relying on technical ignorance and magical thinking about how the internet actually functions.  

    Mandatory online age verification of any kind is a dangerously flawed idea. Tell your lawmakers we said so.

    Source: Zero Knowledge Proofs Aren’t Age Verification Silver Bullets | Techdirt

  • Roblox Claims Dead 13-Year-Old’s Legal Case is Null because Child accepted TOS when she was 8

    Whatever the merits of the case trying to be brought against a company, the argument that the parents of an 8 year old can’t sue because said child clicked on OK to get a working product is beyond ridiculous.

    Every time you think there’s no lower depth for Roblox to reach, the company fetches its shovels. The people who described the “pedophile hellscape” of their product as “an opportunity,” and who recently hired a new “parent advocate” who proceeded to immediately blame all the game’s horrendous failings on parents, have now attempted to get a wrongful death case thrown out of court by arguing that a 13-year-old who died by suicide had signed away her rights to sue when she agreed to the app’s terms and conditions at eight years old.

    Reported by the Courier Journal, via The Gamer, Roblox‘s lawyers are arguing that because Audree Heine clicked the “Agree” box on the application’s impenetrable terms and conditions when she was just eight years old, she had waived her right to ever sue the company, and so a wrongful death lawsuit brought by her mother should be dismissed without a trial. In fact, the multi-billion-dollar company argues, she waived those rights a total of 28 times. How? “By creating her Roblox account, by accepting updates to Roblox’s Terms (six times), by using and redeeming Roblox gift cards (twice), and by purchasing Roblox’s virtual currency on Roblox (19 times).” Which is to say the small child, like countless millions of others, used Roblox at all.

    […]

    Whether Roblox, or indeed Discord and TikTok (which both point out that, unlike on Roblox, a person must be 13 to legally create an account on those platforms) are in any way responsible for the tragic situation is clearly not established. That’s the point of a trial. The merits of this particular case are not the issue. The issue here is the callous and outlandish nature of Roblox’s reasoning. To claim an 8-year-old is making a legally informed decision with regards to their arbitration rights when she clicks the “Agree” box on Roblox’s notoriously lackluster sign-up procedure (at the time of Heine’s account creation, children as young as her didn’t even need to have an email address or phone number to create an account, as there was no authentication process at all), is farcical

    […]

    Source: Roblox Sinks To New Low Over Dead 13-Year-Old’s Legal Case

  • Trump’s FTC Wants You to Call Surveillance Pricing ‘Personalized Pricing’

    The Federal Trade Commission announced this week that the agency is seeking public comment about a new policy document on surveillance pricing, warning companies that they could be breaking the law if they use personal data to charge consumers higher prices. It was a surprise move for President Donald Trump’s administration, which killed a Biden-era FTC study on surveillance pricing in 2025.

    But there’s one thing about the new FTC announcement that’s very different from how President Joe Biden’s administration handled the topic of surveillance pricing. Trump’s FTC doesn’t call it surveillance pricing at all. They call it personalized pricing. And it’s an interesting move that seems to already be having real-world implications about how the issue is discussed in the media.

    “The FTC does not have the legal authority to ban personalized pricing in all circumstances, but businesses that fail to tell consumers how their personal data is being used to set a price may be in violation of the FTC Act and other laws we enforce,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement.

    “We are seeking public input on this draft statement, which would put businesses engaged in or considering personalized pricing on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will not hesitate to enforce the law in this space,” Ferguson continued.

    That simple statement seemed to cause a shift in the national discussion on the topic. News outlets from CBS News to PBS used the term personalized pricing this week after the FTC announcement. PBS used the term surveillance pricing back in Dec. 2025. CBS News used the term surveillance pricing as recently as last month.

    […]

    Source: Trump’s FTC Wants You to Call Surveillance Pricing ‘Personalized Pricing’ | Gizmodo

  • In what Should be Blindingly Obvious, Low Emissions Traffic Zones led to better lung size and function among London children

    And yet there are still people who either don’t understand that pollution is bad or refuse to understand because they want to pollute for… money? That they most likely are not making out of destroying the environment.

    Children’s lungs grew bigger and stronger after the most polluting vehicles were restricted from entering London, a study has found.

    Examinations of London schoolchildren before and after the introduction of the city’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) found a restoration of lung capacity that had been stunted by exposure to pollution.

    The researchers said the findings were a vindication of the low-emission zone policy, which had been criticised as a burden on motorists.

    “Traffic pollution in cities damages children’s health and development,”

    […]

    Source: Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds | Low emission zones | The Guardian

  • Defamation suit demanding Elsevier retract paper heads asks for $1B

    That an air purifying company is actually able to ask for $1 Beeeeeeeeellion Dollahs is absolutely insane, whether they are right or wrong. It shows you how insane lawfare has gotten in the US.

    A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier that alleges the company published what plaintiffs say was a manipulated study about an air purifying technology over objections from peer reviewers. The case has already cost Elsevier a $10,000 sanction from a judge.

    Global Plasma Solutions (GPS), which makes air quality products, sued Elsevier in 2022 after the publisher declined to retract a 2021 paper in Building and Environment about GPS’ needlepoint bipolar ionization technology, which it heavily marketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as an air purifier. The complaint claims Elsevier is responsible for the authors’ alleged omission of data and misleading conclusions in the paper that fueled “massive” financial losses for the company, its lawyers claim. Elsevier knew the paper “failed peer review” under its “own standards,” but moved forward with the article despite this knowledge, according to GPS, which now goes by GPS Air.   

    The complaint has survived a bid by Elsevier to dismiss the case, and a trial has been set for Dec. 7. In allowing the case to proceed, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler said in a May 2024 opinion that GPS has “plausibly alleged actual malice” by Elsevier defined as “knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.” Chief Judge Martin Reidinger of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina upheld Keesler’s recommendation in July 2025.  

    A spokesperson for Elsevier told Retraction Watch the company, “strongly refutes the accusations but cannot comment further on an ongoing legal case.” 

    [….]

    Audwin Cash, CEO for GPS Air, told us the case aims to “remove a false scientific article that has misled the public about GPS’s technology.”

    […]

    In its motion to dismiss, Elsevier defended the study as a “factual report of two experiments” with conclusions that consisted of data and “some opinions about the implications of that data.” GPS, according to the publisher, “picks fights with its methodology,” which is “explained in detail, easily visible to anyone in the narrow community of those with the skill to read the Article.”

    […]

    Source: Defamation suit demanding Elsevier retract paper heads closer to trial – Retraction Watch

  • Microsoft blames Windows gaming issues on RGB lighting devices

    In this case I am not really surprised – RGB device drivers are most usually a bunch of absolute dogshit, causing high CPU and RAM usage, especially if you mix them from different manufacturers (ag ASUS, Lian-Li and Corsair). This problem has been around for years and for some reason the manufacturers absolutely seem to refuse to talk to each other to fix the problems.

    Also see: RGB on your PC – OEM bloatware alternatives tested (with an ASUS)

    Microsoft says ongoing issues causing games to crash or fail to launch after installing the August 2026 Windows updates may be caused by peripherals with RGB lighting.

    As Microsoft explained when it confirmed it’s investigating on Wednesday, this known issue affects games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals on systems running Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2.

    “Following the release of Windows updates on August 11, 2026 (KB5121003) and later, Microsoft received reports of issues involving inability to run games as expected,” Microsoft said on the Windows release health dashboard.

    […]

    “Ongoing investigation indicates that this issue is related to peripherals or internal device components which have RGB lighting features. Such devices may install drivers or code components with file names similar to inpoutx64. In systems where these drivers are found, the issue is then triggered by launching certain games,” it noted.

    “We are presently working to understand the relationship between these RGB components and the games which trigger this issue. We will provide an update when more information is available.”

    […]

    Until Microsoft ships an official fix, Embark shared a multi-step temporary workaround that requires users to delete the service and remove the inpoutx64 file from the Windows drivers folder.

    […]

    Source: Microsoft blames Windows gaming issues on RGB lighting devices

  • Valetudo – rip your Chinese robovacuum from the cloud

    Valetudo is a cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation. It is not a custom firmware.
    Here’s a diagram illustrating the core operation principle:

    You can think of it as a (quoting a user) “brain parasite” for the vendor firmware.

    This comes with pro’s and con’s, with the main pro being that we get to benefit from the hundreds of thousands of hours of R&D the vendors put into their firmwares, but without the cloud and account requirements.

    As such, it protects your data through not sharing it with anyone by being fully local, saves you from in-app ads, upselling, sudden subscriptions and all the other fun enshittification tactics and playbooks.

    Furthermore, Valetudo allows you to connect your robot to your home automation system without having to detour through a vendor cloud, which, apart from the whole privacy topic, might not be reachable due to your internet connection being down or some servers in the datacenter being on fire. Additionally, not having to leave your local network of course also benefits the latency of commands, status reports etc.

    Source: Newcomer Guide – Valetudo

  • Tiny flier drones powered by Sound waves

    Engineers recently discovered a way to power tiny drones and robots with something we encounter every day—sound waves. 

    The technology, described in a study published in the journal Science Advances, is based on a phenomenon in physics called Helmholtz resonance, also known as wind throb. Helmholtz resonance occurs when air trapped in a cavity oscillates back and forth in response to airflow. Think of what happens when you blow air across the opening of a glass bottle—that low hum is these oscillations becoming amplified at certain frequencies. 

    The team looked at how they could use Helmholtz resonance as a way to move objects. Essentially, when sound waves enter these cavities, the moving air is forced out as a concentrated jet. At the same time, the incoming airflow is more spread out. This imbalance creates a net force in one direction, allowing the researchers to design objects that could be propelled by sound. 

    four panels showing the progression of a tiny drone ascending
    A microflier in flight. Image: 2026 EPFL/MICROBS.

    “Instead of pushing devices around with sound waves, we have created acoustic resonators that are tuned to harness sound at specific frequencies to generate directional thrust and controlled motion,” study co-author Selman Sakar, a mechanical engineer at France’s École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), said in a statement. “Our work shows the feasibility of transforming a simple, cleverly designed mechanical piece into robotic matter.”

    First, the team 3D printed a series of cavities in different shapes, sizes, and materials to see which ones generated the greatest thrust, or push forward. They then printed miniature boats equipped with up to three resonators tuned to different frequencies and aimed in a specific direction. By changing the frequency coming from a speaker, the researchers could steer the boat around obstacles in a small pool. They even developed a fully integrated remotely controlled boat and programmed it to trace the letters EPFL, their university’s acronym. 

    a small white boat with an electrical circuit
    The MICROBS Lab’s sound-powered boat. Image: 2026 EPFL/MICROBS

    Next, the team built “microfliers”—tiny drones about the size of a coin, with three microscopic cavities built directly into their structures. The devices were powered by ultrasonic frequencies that can’t be heard by humans. One microflier used the cavities to generate an upward thrust, while another used the sound-generated force to spin tiny blades at up to 13,000 revolutions per minute, lifting like a miniature helicopter. 

    And if you thought these robots were already tiny, you’re in for a surprise: they could get even smaller. 

    a small, clear yellow drone
    The MICROBS Lab’s microflier. Image: 2026 EPFL/MICROBS.

    “Our concept is compatible with even further miniaturization, enabling advanced designs that push the boundaries of robotics and aeronautics,” study co-author and EPFL mechanical engineer Junsun Hwang said in a statement.

    The team believes future designs could build multiple sound-responsive structures into one flexible device. 

    “This would allow specific parts of the device to move, bend or vibrate, potentially leading to aerodynamic robotic devices that can change shape in response to sound,” Sakar added.

    Source: Sound waves power these tiny drones | Popular Science

  • French Constitutional Council Blocks Under-15 Social Media Ban, In A Ruling That Should Apply to Every Other EU Country

    The ruling manages to tack onto every argument against Blanket Identity Checking / Age Verification and makes perfect sense.

    Even as the wider EU was grinding through a long, drawn-out process to figure out which regulatory levers to pull on kids’ safety online, France decided to YOLO it earlier this summer by jumping at the chance to ban all social media for kids under 15. This kind of thing has become popular with out of touch adults in the grips of an ongoing moral panic, since Australia led the way after gambling companies pushed the ban as an alternative to banning gambling ads. Australia’s ban isn’t doing very well, with the majority of kids figuring out how to work around it, and those being left out being the most marginalized and in need of community.

    And yet, countries around the globe have all suddenly decided — some based on reading Jonathan Haidt’s badly reasoned book — that they must do this too.

    France was the first in the EU, with President Emmanuel Macron gleefully treating France’s willingness to rush in with little thought or understanding as a selling point:

    “France is leading the way in Europe in protecting our children and our teenagers,” Macron said. “We will keep on going.”

    He wanted the ban to be implemented in mere months, just as kids returned to school.

    But that’s all run into a bit of a stumbling block known as the French Constitutional Council, which has said the ban is an unconstitutional attack on kids’ rights to free expression and communication. The Council also flagged a second problem: you can’t enforce an under-15 ban without making every user, adults included, prove their age. The law demanded exactly that, without defining a single condition, limit, or technical standard for how that verification would work.

    […]

    Reading through the Google translation of the actual ruling, it’s pretty short and to the point. Similar to how the First Amendment requires any restriction on speech to be narrowly tailored to a specific government interest, here the Council says the ban is way too broad and not based on any specific, narrowly defined harm, though it admits that the aims of protecting children are certainly legitimate

    […]

    the law goes way too far in issuing a blanket ban of all children, no matter what the circumstances. If you have a legitimate, well-defined problem, come up with a narrowly tailored solution. The French government rushed this one through with little concern for things like that.

    It also leaves little room for parents to decide for their own kids what’s appropriate

    […]

    Also, the age verification attack on privacy is important to recognize:

    By prohibiting access for any minor under fifteen years of age to certain online services, the contested provisions imply, in themselves, that any person, even an adult, must prove their age before accessing them.

    The Council further notes that the law makes no real effort to figure out how one might implement age verification in a manner that protects the privacy rights of adults.

    Of course, having hitched his own legacy to this thing, there’s no way Macron lets it go quietly

    […]

    Politico also spoke to Peter Craddock, a Brussels-based attorney who works on social media regulation, who notes that any other EU country attempting a similar blanket ban is likely to run into exactly the same wall:

    “The reasoning is actually equally relevant internationally, throughout the EU, because this fundamental freedom is not specific to France,” he said.

    Which is a useful reminder that the freedom of expression problem here isn’t a quirk of French constitutional law. It’s baked into the whole approach — and no amount of “but it’s for the children” framing makes it go away. That’s even more true of the problems with age verification requiring the scanning of everyone’s ID, which is an even touchier subject in large parts of the EU than elsewhere.

    Really, though, the bigger, more important message here should be to slow down. What’s incredible is that for all of the political and media class whining that social media is some rogue experiment on our children, none of them seem to consider that abruptly trying to block all social media from kids is just as much an experiment, and one that might have equally damaging effects.

    […]

    So what France produced here was a total rush job that sacrificed the expression rights of every teenager in the country, the ability of parents to make their own judgment calls regarding their own kids’ access to information and — as a cherry on top — the privacy of every adult who would now need to prove their age at the door to the internet. Thankfully, the Constitutional Council caught all three.

    Source: French Constitutional Council Blocks Under-15 Social Media Ban, In A Ruling That Should Concern Every Other EU Country | Techdirt

  • Comcast is going to map your house and follow you around it by activating “motion sensing” in millions of homes using its existing Wi-Fi routers

    Don’t be fooled – this is hugely intrusive data. Not only about who is walking around where and when in your house, but how it is laid out. How many pets you have and their eating habits. Comcast will happily harvest this and sell it on for you.

    See also: A.I. Can Track Human Bodies Through Walls Now, With Just a Wifi Signal and https://www.linkielist.com/security/wi-peep-drone-locates-all-your-wifi-devices-and-maps-them-in-your-home-can-tell-if-your-watch-is-moving-around/

    Comcast is bringing Wi-Fi motion sensing to millions of routers that are already in customers’ homes, turning the devices into activity monitors. A new update to the Xfinity Internet app, arriving today, August 18th, enables the feature on compatible Xfinity routers at no extra cost.

    Announced as part of its new Xfinity Shield service, WiFi Motion can monitor activity in your home and send you notifications, similar to a standalone motion sensor. It works by detecting disruptions in the Wi-Fi signal between the Xfinity gateway and any Wi-Fi-connected device, giving you some insight into what’s happening in your home without buying additional hardware. Xfinity Shield is free for all customers and includes a new advanced security feature that protects devices from online threats, including malware and phishing attacks, and improved parental controls.

    Wi-Fi motion sensing is a technology that has been around for a while, but it’s only recently that it’s become accurate and reliable enough to catch on. Linksys launched a similar service in 2021, but discontinued it a few years later. Lighting company Wiz launched a line of Wi-Fi-sensing smart bulbs in 2023, and more recently Philips Hue deployed a similar radio-frequency sensing technology in its products (using Zigbee rather than Wi-Fi).

    […]

    Xfinity doesn’t see the technology as replacing traditional security systems with cameras and physical motion sensors just yet. “But for the average household … this provides an adequate level of security protection,” says Kuda. Xfinity already offers security cameras, and those remain available under a new service called Xfinity Shield Select. This costs $15 a month for an indoor camera and a door/window sensor and includes cloud video storage capabilities and a 24/7 urgent response service.

    The potential uses for a reliable motion-sensing technology that doesn’t require additional hardware are broad, from home security to aging in place. Several companies are starting to develop solutions in this space, including ADT, which recently acquired Origin Wireless, one of the original Wi-Fi motion sensing companies. Comcast also has bigger plans for the technology. “We believe this is the foundation for what we think we can do with more advanced use cases,” says Kuda.

    Source: Comcast is putting motion sensing into millions of homes — using its existing Wi-Fi routers | The Verge

  • New EU packaging rules for less waste and easier recycling come into effect

    From 12 August 2026, new rules on packaging and packaging waste apply in the EU. This will change the way products are packaged to protect the environment and people’s health. It will also create opportunities for businesses.

    Packaging uses large quantities of raw materials and generates waste that ends up in landfills or the sea. Some chemicals used in packaging can also be harmful. The new rules address these issues by setting requirements for the manufacturing and composition of all packaging placed on the EU market. They also require packaging to be reusable or recoverable, meaning it can be used again or turned into something else after use. From 2030, certain single-use packaging will be banned where more sustainable alternatives are available, such as small ketchup packets or mini shampoo bottles in hotels.

    The new measures will make packaging 

    • less wasteful: plastic packaging must be made in part from recycled content, with increasing targets for 2030 and 2040
    • fully recyclable: all packaging must be recyclable by 2030, so its components can be used for something else afterwards
    • clearly labelled: clear labels and colours make it easier to sort trash for recycling – showing what it is made of, where to bin it, and how to return it for reuse 
    • smarter: unnecessary packaging and empty space in deliveries will be reduced
    • easier to re-use, refill and collect: deposit and return systems will be boosted. Companies must make reuse or refill options available whenever possible, with no extra charge
    • fairer and safer: brands using non-recyclable or environmentally harmful materials will have to pay to clean them up. Harmful and cancer-causing ‘forever’ chemicals (PFAS) will be restricted in food packaging 

    The EU is working to protect and improve the environment and build a more circular, sustainable, and competitive economy. The law on packaging addresses the environmental challenges caused by packaging waste, harmonises rules for businesses across the single market, and creates opportunities for businesses involved in recycling and sustainable packaging solutions.

    For more information

    Packaging waste

    Packaging waste regulation – factsheet

    Packaging and packaging waste – facts

    Environment Publication date

    12 August 2026AuthorDirectorate-General for Communication

    Source: New packaging rules for less waste and easier recycling – European Commission

  • A therapy that “rewrites” childhood memories can ease fear of failure | ScienceDaily

    Certain imagery-based psychotherapy techniques may help reduce fear of failure connected to painful childhood experiences, according to research from scientists at SWPS University and the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology. The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

    Difficult experiences early in life, including criticism, neglect, or severe reactions from caregivers, can influence emotional well-being and quality of life years later. How adults respond when a child makes a mistake may be especially important in shaping future patterns of thought and emotion. In some cases, those experiences can contribute to a fear of failure rooted in the belief that mistakes make a person less worthy in the eyes of others.

    […]

    The randomized, controlled clinical trial included 180 young adults (between 18 and 35 years of age) who experienced fear of failure. During a two-week period, participants took part in four therapy sessions focused on difficult childhood memories involving criticism.

    One group used the Imagery Exposure (IE) technique. Participants were asked to recall situations that had triggered fear or anxiety (the active control group).

    A second group received Imagery Rescripting (ImRs), a technique designed to change the way a memory unfolds in the imagination. Participants brought a distressing experience to mind and then imagined a “defender” (e.g., a therapist) entering the scene, confronting the person delivering the criticism, and offering support to the child.

    The third group used the same therapeutic approach, but with a 10-minute delay procedure (ImRs-DSR). Researchers designed this delay to interfere with the memory trace associated with the critical experience, potentially strengthening the intervention’s effects.

    […]

    All of the imagery-based approaches produced a significant and lasting reduction in fear of failure. Participants also reported lower levels of negative emotions, including sadness and guilt.

    Their bodies appeared to respond differently as well. Physiological reactions to memories of criticism decreased, indicating that recalling distressing experiences no longer triggered the same level of intense stress. These improvements remained evident during follow-ups at three and six months, suggesting that the psychological effects were stable over time.

    […]

    The findings suggest that imagery-based techniques can change how people respond to current challenges by allowing them to “write” new, safe endings to painful experiences from the past.

    The results also indicate that difficult memories (including those related to failure) do not necessarily have to be experienced in the same emotional way forever. Julia Bączek emphasizes that past experiences can be processed differently over time, rather than remaining fixed and unchangeable.

    Journal Reference:

    1. Julia Bączek, Stanisław Karkosz, Magdalena Pietruch, Robert Szymański, Jarosław M. Michałowski. Imagine yourself as a little girl…—efficacy and psychophysiology of imagery techniques targeting adverse autobiographical childhood experiences- multi-arm randomised controlled trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 2026; 16 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1710963

    Source: A therapy that “rewrites” childhood memories can ease fear of failure | ScienceDaily

  • Hidden Airtag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI – Ars Technica

    For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon.

    On Monday, 404 Media revealed that it had connected with a bookseller who agreed to plant an Airtag in a rare book that was part of a bulk order. That Airtag was then tracked to an Amazon AI training facility in Las Vegas that housed a team focused on tearing books from their spines and scanning pages, 404 Media reported. Apparently tone-deaf to the escalating backlash over destructive book scanning, a logo on the door of that team’s warehouse, VGT3, showed a Tyrannosaurus rex preparing to devour a book, 404 Media documented.

    Amazon deflects

    Amazon declined to comment on 404 Media’s findings, only providing Ars with the same statement it gave to 404 Media, which does not mention AI training specifically.

    “Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” Amazon’s statement said.

    […]

    Source: Hidden Airtag reveals Amazon is trashing rare books to train AI – Ars Technica

  • Github keeps going down this month

    From the 17th

    If you’re trying (and failing) to access GitHub Monday morning, you aren’t alone. According to Downdetector, the hosting provider has over 15,000 user reports indicating issues or downtime with the service—up from roughly 3,000 reports when I first published this article. Whether you’re a developer trying to update your repository, or you’re a user trying to access one, GitHub may give you trouble. Luckily, the outages should be over soon.

    GitHub officially confirmed the outage through multiple updates to its status page. However, in the latest update at 12:36 p.m. ET, the company confirmed it fixed the issue: “We identified the problematic component and have taken corrective actions. There are strong signs of recovery but we are still working to completely restore service, with error rates still remaining slightly elevated. We will post further updates as recovery continues.” As such, you might still see issues with GitHub as the fix rolls out.

    […]

    If the comments on Downdetector are any indication, this is not the first time GitHub has had service issues. One comment reads: “Cmon [GitHub] get your sh*t together…this is getting old.” (The user added their own asterisks.) Scrolling through the comment history, users reported errors one or twice a week throughout August. I’m not a regular GitHub user, so I can’t attest personally to repeated downtimes, but it does seem as though this isn’t wholly unusual. If you’re still experiencing issues with GitHub, expect service to come back online shortly—assuming nothing catastrophic is happening behind the scenes.

    Source: GitHub Is Down, but There’s a Fix | Lifehacker

  • Ryde hacked, howto do a correct response and howto store important data (pretty much)correctly

    This is nasty, but an example of how to inform your customers properly (in the app, by text message, on the site), how to disclose and how to store payment methods (you store what you need and you fragment where credit card data is stored – nb it would have been better if they had fragmented the dob and address data as well into seperate databases and only retrieved it when necessary) and inform about the impact to customers.

    […] What happened?

    During the night leading into Sunday, 2 August, we discovered that an unauthorized party had gained access to our systems and copied customer data. The unauthorized access was stopped shortly afterwards.

    Our investigation is still ongoing, and the full scope of the incident has not yet been determined. We will update this page if additional information becomes available.

    We have notified the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet), reported the incident to the police, and are notifying affected customers.

    What information was affected?

    All customer accounts are affected. The specific information relating to you depends on what you have registered with us and may include your phone number, email address, date of birth, only the first six and last four digits of your payment card number, and, for a small number of customers, an unverified name and address, as well as your payment history for rides, purchases, and fees.

    Apart from the location where you created your account, no other location data has been extracted, such as your ride history. There are therefore no indications that data relating to where you have travelled has been affected.‍

    What should I do?

    You do not need to take any action regarding your account, and you do not need to block your payment card. We do not store full payment card numbers; they are securely stored by our payment service provider.

    The only thing we ask is that you remain vigilant. Anyone with access to the stolen information may contact you and appear credible by referring to a payment you actually made, including the correct amount, date, and the last four digits of your payment card.

    Never share your password, one-time banking codes, or BankID credentials with anyone who contacts you, regardless of how much they appear to know about you. Neither we nor your bank will ever ask for this information.

    If you are unsure, end the conversation and contact the company or your bank directly using a phone number you have obtained independently.

    […]

    Source: Security Incident August 2026 | Ryde

  • Researchers Built a Coin-Sized Device That Can Hack a Boeing 737’s Electronics

    While much of aviation cybersecurity focuses on network-based threats, researchers just showed that a physical attack on an airplane may require surprisingly little time or money.

    Researchers at the University of California San Diego and Oberlin College built a small, coin-sized device that can take over communications between two key flight computers on Boeing 737 aircraft.

    The prototype costs less than $100 to build and can be plugged into a maintenance port inside an electronics bay underneath the plane’s nose. The bay can be accessed from the ground through an exterior hatch that is not locked and is routinely accessible to maintenance workers and other airport staff.

    The researchers estimate that an attacker would only need 60 seconds to intall the device.

    The protoype they built is Wi-Fi enabled, which the researchers say could theoretically allow it to connect to the plane’s in-flight Wi-Fi and be controlled remotely over the internet.

    “Our goal with this research is to alert the aviation community to this class of risks, so they may be appropriately mitigated well before they become dangerous,” the researchers wrote in a paper presented this week at the USENIX Security Symposium in Baltimore.

    How the hack works

    Once intalled, the device can interfere with communications between the aircraft’s Flight Management Computer, which manages its flight plan and provides important information used during takeoff, and the Multipurpose Control Display Unit pilots use to control it.

    That gives the device the ability to secretly change a plane’s flight plan while preventing those changes from appearing on the pilot’s display. The researchers described scenarios in which hackers could cause the autopilot to divert the aircraft into another country’s airspace or just send it off course.

    The researchers also demonstrated that the device could manipulate information about the plane’s weight, balance and outside temperature, making a takeoff unsafe.

    “We believe we have made a strong case that time-limited physical access (e.g., 60 seconds) represents a realistic goal for a motivated attacker and that the consequences of even such short access can be significant (and hence are worthy of attention),” the researchers wrote.

    The Boeing 737 is one of the most widely used commercial aircraft in the world, with about 8,000 currently in service, according to UC San Diego. The aircraft makes up roughly 25% of Delta’s fleet, 38% of American’s, 53% of United’s,  and all of Southwest Airlines’ fleet. Still, the researchers say their findings point to a broader cybersecurity risk across the aviation industry.

    What can be done about it?

    The researchers first alerted Boeing to their findings in 2020 and continued working with the company over the next several years.

    Still, the researchers say they don’t know whether Boeing has done anything to fix the vulnerability.

    Their proposed fixes include tighter security around who can access planes on the ground, or simply blocking the vulnerable port with epoxy or removing it altogether.

    Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company told Wired that it had reviewed the researchers’ findings and believes existing safeguards are enough to reduce any risks.

    “Our technical experts are confident that the layers of protection in place on the airplane, including within the system design and the operating environment, provide sufficient mitigation to significantly limit the feasibility and risk of real-world attacks,” Boeing told Wired.

    The researchers admit an attack of this type he would require significant planning and engineering expertise. They also acknowledge that an attentive pilot could recover from most of the attacks they tested.

    “All of the authors of this paper routinely travel on Boeing 737 aircraft and expect to continue doing so,” the researchers wrote.

    Source: Researchers Built a Coin-Sized Device That Can Hack a Boeing 737’s Electronics

  • State Judge to Kalshi: Your Sports Betting Is Obviously Illegal. The rest not so much. Trump disagrees

    Gambling site—sorry, we mean “prediction market”—Kalshi is pretty obviously running an illegal gambling site prohibited by Washington state law, a state judge ruled this week.

    In an Aug. 13 press release, the state attorney general’s office touted that King County Superior Court Judge John McHale sided with prosecutors and issued a “final order” that Kalshi shut down most types of betting in the state. Kalshi has fought the preliminary injunction in court since mid-July.

    McHale’s order applies to all bets “related to sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, tech and science, or mentions,” requires Kalshi implement a geofence by Sept. 2, 2026, and threatens penalties of $120,000 for every day Kalshi continues to operate without a geofence past that date. Bets on commodities, climate, economics, and finance aren’t subject to the order.

    The judge couldn’t be clearer about his thoughts on Kalshi: it offers “online gambling activities” that “Kalshi refers to as a ‘prediction market’” instead.

    “Kalshi earns a transaction fee on each bet placed,” McHale wrote, noting Kalshi never obtained a license with the state’s Gambling Commission. “Each bet risks money, relies in part on chance, and promises a payout to winners.”

    In addition to finding it likely that Kalshi’s operations are illegal, McHale found that its ads were likely to trick a “reasonable consumer” into believing Washington state allows gambling. In reality, virtually all betting is illegal except on tribal land.

    To be fair, Kalshi barely puts up the pretense of its legality under state law—the New York Times noted prosecutors cited Kalshi ads containing text like, “I found a way to bet on the NFL even though we live in Washington.” Instead, the company just insists that it does not have to comply with said state laws.

    Federal law hands “exclusive jurisdiction over our exchange” to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Kalshi spokesperson Jacki McGavi told Gizmodo via email. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision and are considering all legal options.”

    For some weird reason, the statement also contained unprompted denials that the company offers markets on wildfires, “war, death, or terrorism.” The next line in the statement linked to a tweet from Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour on the “death carveout” it invoked to rule that the death of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was not a form of “leaving office” by a particular date. So, clearly, there is some way of profiting off death on the site.

    Kalshi is facing similar pushback from state authorities across the country, yet Trump and his cronies have latched onto prediction markets like a not-particularly-choosy sea lamprey onto a diseased shark. Trump-appointed CFTC chair Mike Selig has embraced this interpretation of the Commodity Exchange Act, and the agency has sued multiple states (including Connecticut, Arizona, and Illinois) for attempting to regulate sites like Kalshi and its competitor Polymarket.

    Earlier this week, the CFTC announced it had “ordered [Kalshi] to continue to operate” in the state of New York despite a state lawsuit similarly alleging Kalshi is illegal. It previously issued a similar order in Michigan. (If you’re confused how the CFTC can “order” a company to operate, it more or less argues Kalshi is legally obligated to process customer bets in the same manner that stock exchanges do trades.)

    CFTC chair Mike Selig, whose main priorities have included legalizing ultra-risky cryptocurrency derivatives, argued in a press release in August that Congress “did not intend for derivatives exchanges to be regulated under a patchwork of state gaming laws.”

    This industry-friendly legal argument has provided crucial cover for “prediction markets” to claim they are operating as mostly unregulated businesses rather than illegal ones. It certainly doesn’t help that this gigantic, multi-state legal brawl takes place in a state of genuine uncertainty as to whether, say, the Supreme Court will agree with the companies that the CFTC has sole jurisdiction.

    Meanwhile, the New York Times reported this week that the number of reports from Kalshi and Polymarket raising red flags to the CFTC this year (over 50 and 90, respectively) suggests both sites are rife with insider traders. Many will likely never face charges courtesy of both staffing shortages at the CFTC and the agency’s “own deference” to the companies, the Times wrote.

    Source: State Judge to Kalshi: Your Sports Betting Is Obviously Illegal

  • AI Hiring Tools Can Yield Racial Bias and Systemic Rejection | Stanford HAI

    TL;DR – AI Hiring tools are racist; puts applicants into certain jobgroups; once you are rejected for a job position by one tool, that tool will very likely reject you for every other job position.

    It’s graduation season and the Class of 2026 is entering one of the toughest labor markets in years. Entry-level hiring has slowed. At the same time, AI tools have made it easier than ever for job seekers to fire off applications. Together, fewer jobs and more applications mean companies are now seeing nearly three times as many applications for entry-level positions as in 2022. AI is changing not just if firms hire, but how they hire. Ninety percent of U.S. employers use AI screening tools to sort and rank job seekers, with most relying on the same few third-party vendors. When one algorithm influences many employers, what is the impact on job seekers?

    We follow 3.4 million people who submit 4 million job applications to 1,700 job postings across 150 employers and 11 industry sectors. Each job application was assessed by an AI hiring tool built by a single third-party vendor. Our new paper offers a rare look inside the “black box” of algorithmic hiring, showing that these tools increase racial bias and shut the same people out of jobs everywhere they apply.

    flow chart showing how hiring AIs work

    The hiring AI pipeline: Job seekers submit applications, their applications are sent to the hiring AI vendor, the vendor’s machine learning models make predictions, and the resulting labels of “recommend” or “do not recommend” are sent to the employer to inform decisions.

    Surfacing racial bias at scale

    We find substantial evidence of racial disparities in AI-based candidate screening. To measure adverse impact, we apply the EEOC’s “four-fifths rule,” which flags a position when one group is recommended at less than 80% of the rate of the most-recommended group — the relevant U.S. employment law (Title VII). We discovered that 26% of Black applicants and 15% of Asian applicants applied to positions where the AI system discriminated against their racial group. To put this in perspective: If the AI had recommended Black and Asian candidates at the same rate as it recommended the most-favored group (typically white applicants), 40,000 more of their applications would have advanced to the next stage of hiring. 

    How adverse impact is measured matters. The vendor we study screens applicants for many different positions across many employers. If we pool all of its recommendations together — treating the vendor as one giant hiring process — we don’t find adverse impact. If we look at each position separately, as would be typical in an evaluation of adverse impact, then we expose the adverse impact in many positions. For example, imagine the AI tool frequently recommends Black applicants for warehouse jobs but rarely recommends them for finance jobs. If we were to average all the jobs together, those two patterns would cancel each other out and it would seem like there is no discrimination. The big-picture average hides the real discrimination happening job by job.

    Chart showing bias against Black and Asian candidates

    Our study finds significant adverse impact on Black and Asian applicants.

    Algorithmic monocultures can give rise to systemic rejection

    We also study new concerns brought about by the shared dependence on a single hiring vendor. In our prior work, we theorized that algorithmic monocultures in which many employers came to rely on the same algorithmic recommendations could lead to some people being shut out from jobs. Using our large dataset of real hiring AI recommendations, we test our hypothesis. We find that people who submit multiple applications to positions screened by the same algorithmic hiring vendor are more likely to be rejected from every position to which they apply than would be true if the companies made decisions statistically independently from one another. Ten percent of applicants who submit four applications are rejected from all the places to which they apply.

    Our research also found that this pattern does not appear to be the case in other circumstances. We analyzed data from the largest prior study of hiring decisions, which sent 83,000 applications to 108 Fortune 500 firms during the same time period as our study and did not focus on whether AI was used to make decisions. We found that the rate at which applicants were rejected from every firm they applied to in this data was no higher than what you’d expect if each company decided independently of the others. 

    This suggests market concentration matters: As a single hiring vendor comes to dominate screening for an industry, it may be more likely that candidates are shut out.

    We find applicants are more likely to be rejected from every position they apply to than would be predicted by the baseline of each position making statistically independent decisions.

    We analyze data from the largest previous study of hiring outcomes, finding that the rate at which applicants are rejected from every position they apply to is effectively predicted by the baseline of statistically independent decisions.

    AI screening tools bring together three properties that should not co-exist in high-stakes decision-making: They are pervasively adopted, highly consequential, and opaque to the public. Our research makes progress toward illuminating the consequences of AI hiring tools, but much of this technology’s impact remains unclear. This space is rapidly evolving as new tools are built using language models and agents. 

    The key lesson from this work is the value of and need for independent research into algorithmic hiring. Without independent research, it will be difficult to pursue evidence-based AI policy to govern AI’s impact on individual job prospects and overall workforce composition.

    Source: AI Hiring Tools Can Yield Racial Bias and Systemic Rejection | Stanford HAI

  • The Largest Battery-Electric Plane Ever Made Has Flown For The First Time

    The Largest Battery-Electric Plane Ever Made Has Flown For The First Time

    Heart Aerospace has announced the successful first flight of its prototype all-electric aircraft, the X1 demonstrator. X1 took off from Plattsburgh International Airport in Upstate New York and flew for 27 minutes, reaching an altitude of 1,100 feet, running entirely on its batteries. Heart added the flight, including takeoff and landing, consumed less than $5 worth of electricity, a useful selling point given the price of fuel. It has already earned praise from executives at United Airlines and Air Canada, who are interested in adding electric planes to its fleets.

    If Heart is successful, the X1 will be followed by the ES-30, a fixed-wing 30-seat hybrid model designed to service regional airports. The company’s hope is that its planes can offer a far cheaper service for hopper flights currently operated by turboprop planes like the Embraer ERJ. It is aiming for an all-electric range of 125 miles, with that figure climbing to 500 miles with the hybrid engine. Heart’s broader pitch is that it won’t just be in the cheaper cost of electricity versus jet fuel that will make its plane affordable. Naturally, the cheaper maintenance and operation cost of electric motors, their better reliability will add to the balance sheet. Of more concern, perhaps, is Heart’s belief that the ES-30, while operated by a single pilot initially, will enable autonomous service in the future.

    Right now, the company is aiming for the ES-30 to enter service by 2031, a date we’ll only say is “ambitious” by most plane development standards. The next decade does appear to be one in which a number of aviation startups are looking to offer their vision for the future of flight. Heart will be jostling for space alongside Boom Supersonic, Harbour Air, ZeroAvia, and Rolls-Royce. But, as we opined back in 2021, the future of electric flight is entirely dependent on batteries getting a lot denser and lighter compared to their current-day equivalents.

    Read More: https://www.engadget.com/2236248/the-largest-battery-electric-plane-ever-made-has-flown-for-the-first-time/

    Source: The Largest Battery-Electric Plane Ever Made Has Flown For The First Time

  • Cloud Storage Is Great Until Your Vendor Goes Out Of Business

    Nine PBS, a PBS station in St. Louis, Missouri, must be given access to data it lost when its vendor went out of business, a judge ruled this week. Nine PBS, a PBS station in St. Louis, Missouri, sued data center company Iron Mountain in July to gain access to an archive of 70 years’ worth of cultural artifacts, The Denver Post reported. The station filed its lawsuit after Iron Mountain allegedly refused to hand over data it hosted on behalf of Nine PBS’s now defunct cloud service provider Open Source Storage (OSS).

    Engadget has asked Nine PBS to comment on the ruling. We’ll update this article if we hear back.

    The trapped archive includes TV shows, videos, photos and other digital cultural objects relevant to St. Louis’ history, according to a copy of the lawsuit viewed by The Denver Post. In March, Nine PBS learned that Open Source Storage, its cloud storage provider, wasn’t renewing its contract, but rather than give the station 30 days to retrieve the archive, the company cut off access immediately. The station was then able to get in contact with Open Source Storage’s new owner to confirm the archive was actually safe in April.

    After the owner left the company, though, the station turned to help from Iron Mountain, which physically hosted the data for Open Source Storage. At least so far, Iron Mountain has refused to hand over the data — since its contract is technically with OSS rather than Nine PBS, according to the lawsuit — prompting Nine PBS to pursue legal action.

    “Iron Mountain has acted appropriately and responsibly at every step to safeguard customer data and honor our contractual commitments to OSS,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Engadget. “Throughout this process, we have been transparent with Nine PBS about our role in this dispute, that we do not have access to their data, and we have made consistent efforts to help them resolve the issue.”

    In a hearing on Wednesday, a judge ordered Iron Mountain to cooperate in any way possible with Nine PBS to retrieve the data, Current reports. The judge also ruled that the station must identify a third-party vendor who can help access the data from Iron Mountain’s data center and ensure it doesn’t harm data from other OSS clients. Should the process of retrieving the data be more complicated, the judge said another hearing would be scheduled. “We appreciate the Court’s thoughtful decision establishing a path forward to access and recover our archival materials, which the Court confirmed that Nine PBS rightfully owns,” Nine PBS VP and CCO Leah Freeman told Current.

    While Nine PBS is now on its way to hopefully saving its digital archive, much of this drama could have been avoided with a safer approach to data storage. The most common recommendation is to follow what’s called the “3-2-1 rule,” where you keep three copies of each file across two different mediums (like a physical hard drive and a cloud storage service), with one copy kept offsite. Following the 3-2-1 rule gives you backups if your cloud storage provider goes out of business or your physical drive dies, and means that a flood or fire that destroys one file will, barring global disaster, leave at least one copy untouched.

    Source: Cloud Storage Is Great Until Your Vendor Goes Out Of Business | Engadget

  • Neuroscientists have vastly underestimated brain cells’ computing power | Scientific American

    One of the central mysteries of the brain is how it achieves so much with so little. At any given moment, it processes an entire world of input, pilots a body and generates conscious experience—all with relatively modest energy demands. Traditionally, the brain’s 86 billion neurons are each assumed to be a single “processor,” operating as one computational unit. But for the past few decades, neuroscientists have suspected that a neuron might actually house many processors, making it far more powerful. Now researchers have found the first direct evidence of this in animals, showing that neurons’ many branches, called dendrites, can compute information independently of the cell body.
    The study, published in July in Science, shows that dendrites “dramatically expand” the computational capacity of individual neurons and, consequently, of the brain as a whole, says senior author Attila Losonczy, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Neurons in textbook diagrams look deceptively simple, with only a handful of dendrites extending from the cell body. In reality, they sprawl wildly into elaborate treelike arbors, allowing a single neuron to receive input from thousands of its neighbors. Scientists once thought these dendrites were little more than “boring cables” that merely passed incoming signals to the cell body for processing, Losonczy says. If this were true, each neuron would essentially be one computational unit.
    But dendrites’ sprawling architecture hints at a deeper purpose. “Nature puts a lot of effort and energy to maintain those branched structures,” Losonczy says. For the past 30 years, experiments on lab-grown neurons and excised brain tissue have suggested that dendrites could compute information on their own. To test the idea in living animals, Losonczy’s team used new voltage-imaging technology to record activity from parts of individual neurons in mice’s hippocampi, a brain region involved in memory and navigation. While running on miniature wheels, the mice navigated virtual environments in search of rewards.

    In familiar environments, activity in the dendrites generally matched that of the cell body. And when the researchers moved the reward around within the familiar surroundings, the cell body adjusted quickly, while certain dendrites retained remnants of the earlier activity. But in an entirely new environment, some dendrites changed their activity to represent the new location before the cell body, which caught up only after repeated exploration. This suggests that the dendrites were computing information on their own, while their ability to preserve traces of the past or get ahead of the cell body raises the possibility that they serve as local “memory devices,” Losonczy says.
    The findings reveal how much computation might be happening within a single neuron of a living being. “Perhaps the best analogy is that a neuron itself is already a neural network,” says Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz, a neuroscientist at Cornell University, who was not involved in the new work. Losonczy also suspects that the “nice hierarchical organization” of the dendritic branches might give the brain even more computational power than simply having more neurons acting as single processors.
    Beverley Clark, a neuroscientist at University College London, who also wasn’t involved in the new research, thinks that dendrites computing independently allows each neuron to be “super flexible.” For her, there is more to the computational power of the brain than what we currently understand. What’s happening in the cell body captures only one part of the brain’s power. “It’s what you see across the dendritic tree that’s really important,” Clark says.

    Source: Neuroscientists have vastly underestimated brain cells’ computing power | Scientific American

  • Scientists turn sheep’s wool into a material that helps regrow bone | ScienceDaily

    Scientists have found that wool could provide an effective and sustainable new option for repairing damaged bone.

    The research focused on keratin, a natural structural protein that can be extracted from wool. When tested in a living animal, the material supported bone regeneration and produced new tissue that more closely resembled healthy, natural bone than tissue formed using the current gold standard material.

    Researchers at King’s College London tested the wool-based keratin in animal models and found that it could help direct new bone growth across damaged areas.

    […]

    For decades, collagen has served as the gold standard scaffold in many regenerative medical and dental applications. These scaffolds act as protective barriers during healing, keeping soft tissue from interfering with the damaged area while giving new bone space to grow.

    Collagen, however, has several drawbacks. The material is relatively weak and may degrade too quickly, which can limit its usefulness when repairing bones that need to bear weight or withstand force. Extracting collagen can also be complicated and costly.

    “From a research perspective this is a major milestone. It positions keratin as a potential new class of regenerative biomaterial that could challenge the long-standing reliance on collagen,” said Dr. Sherif Elsharkawy.

    Testing Wool Keratin as a Bone Scaffold

    To investigate whether keratin could overcome some of these limitations, the researchers created membranes from keratin extracted from wool. They chemically treated the material to produce scaffolds designed to remain stable and durable.

    The membranes were first tested with human bone cells in the laboratory. The cells grew well on the material and showed clear signs associated with healthy bone formation.

    Researchers then moved to animal testing. They implanted the keratin membranes into rats with skull defects that were large enough that they would not normally heal on their own. Over the following weeks, the team tracked how effectively the membranes supported new bone growth across the damaged regions.

    Keratin Produced More Naturally Organized Bone

    The results revealed an important difference between keratin and collagen. Collagen membranes generated a greater amount of bone overall, but the bone formed with the keratin scaffolds was more organized and structurally secure. Its fibers were also better aligned, giving the new tissue a closer resemblance to natural, healthy bone.

    The keratin membranes also remained stable during the healing process and integrated smoothly with the surrounding tissue. Both characteristics are important if the material is eventually to be considered for practical medical applications.

    […]

    Source: Scientists turn sheep’s wool into a material that helps regrow bone | ScienceDaily

  • Scientists Identify Mushroom That Makes You Hallucinate ‘Tiny People’

    Researchers at the University of Utah have sequenced DNA from the mushroom species Lanmaoa asiatica, isolated from both southwest China and a remote region of the Philippines, confirming that this fungus induces hallucinations that can manifest dozens or even hundreds of tiny people. But, arguably, the strangest part of their discovery is that L. asiatica contains none of the usual suspects among known psychedelic compounds, leaving the actual mechanism behind this mushroom’s fairy tale trips an ongoing biochemical mystery. “One person told me that while they were eating soup, the little people were jumping off their spoon into the bowl and swimming around.”

    “People pretty much always report seeing dozens or hundreds of little people, about 3 to 30 centimeters [1 inch to 1 foot] tall, in incredible detail, like they’re actually there,” study coauthor Colin Domnauer, a doctoral student specializing in mycology at the university, said in a statement.

    “About 90% of people describe them as little elves or clowns or other fairy-like figures dressed in colorful clothes,” according to Domnauer, who travelled to China’s Yunnan province and the remote Northern Cordillera region of Philippines to collect these mushroom specimens. “What’s fascinating is they interact with the physical world using the laws of physics that govern us.”

    “They’re not walking through walls or anything,” Domnauer explained. “They’re falling off the edge of tables, walking around objects. One person told me that while they were eating soup, the little people were jumping off their spoon into the bowl and swimming around.”

    […]

    “Our analysis showed that L. asiatica is the only psychoactive species in this genus,” Domnauer stated. “Now we’re building an evolutionary map to understand how this trait evolved and if related species produce similar compounds.”

    All the little people

    Domnauer had pivoted from studying planetary astronomy—including an internship with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab—to explore this psychedelic innerspace. One thing that fascinates him about these “Lilliputian hallucinations,” as the phenomenon was first named by a French psychiatrist in 1909, is how these bizarrely concrete hallucinations cross not only cultures but causal factors as well.

    “People have also reported these hallucinations from alcohol withdrawal, dementia, macular degeneration and other neurological conditions,” Domnauer noted. “So, it seems like this phenomenon is fundamental to how the human mind and brain work, but we don’t know what causes it or how to treat it.”

    […]

    “Now, three completely independent cultures have reported the same specific type of hallucination, and two cases are attributed to the same DNA-verified mushroom species,” he said. “That indicates that these bizarre psychological effects aren’t cultural manifestations or coincidences—they must have a shared underlying chemical and neurological basis.”

    Source: Scientists Identify Mushroom That Makes You Hallucinate ‘Tiny People’ | Gizmodo