Project Hyperion explores the feasibility of crewed interstellar travel via generation ships, using current and near-future technologies. A generation ship is a hypothetical spacecraft designed for long-duration interstellar travel, where the journey may take centuries to complete. The idea behind a generation ship is that the initial crew would live, reproduce, and die on the ship, with their descendants continuing the journey until reaching the destination. These ships are often envisioned as self-sustaining ecosystems, featuring agriculture, habitation, and other necessary life-support systems to ensure survival across multiple generations.
The Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) is delighted to reveal the winners of the Project Hyperion Design Competition, a landmark global challenge that called upon interdisciplinary teams to envision a generation ship—a crewed interstellar spacecraft designed for a 250-year journey to a habitable planet. The teams designed habitats of such a spacecraft that would allow a society to sustain itself and flourish in a highly resource-constrained environment.
The Project Hyperion Design Competition required architectural designers, engineers, and social scientists to collaborate and address critical mission aspects that enable a spacecraft to function as a closed society over centuries. The collaboration between different disciplines is key to finding holistic solutions that do justice to the complexity of the requirements, in order to provide:
Habitability for 1,000 ± 500 people over centuries
Artificial gravity via rotation
A society that ensures good living conditions, including essential provisions such as shelter, clothing, and other basic needs.
Robust life support systems for food, water, waste, and the atmosphere
Knowledge transfer mechanisms to retain culture and technologies
Microsoft Recall, the AI app that takes screenshots of what you do on your PC so you can search for it later, has a filter that’s supposed to prevent it from screenshotting sensitive info like credit card numbers. But a The Register test shows that it still fails in many cases, creating a potential treasure trove for thieves.
Recall was introduced in 2024 as an exclusive app on Copilot+ PCs, which are laptops that come with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to help with AI-related tasks. Initially, researchers found serious security issues with it, and Redmond pulled it in the spring before re-introducing an ostensibly more secure version in fall 2024. These days, a screen encouraging you to enable it is part of the Windows setup experience on many new PCs.
Microsoft’s out of the box experience pushes you to enable Recall – Click to enlarge
Although Microsoft claims that Recall is safe and private, the software could be a goldmine of personal information if a miscreant manages to break into your system. The app has a “Filter sensitive information” setting enabled by default that’s supposed to exempt personal data such as credit card numbers and passwords from capture. However, according to our tests, that filter frequently fails. And there’s no way it would know to avoid potentially damaging entries in your web history that you’d rather keep private (such as things related to your medical history or personal life). Just as bad, the screenshots Recall takes are available to anyone who has your PIN number, even via remote access.
The Business Court in Brussels, Belgium, has issued a broad site-blocking order that aims to restrict access to shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Libgen, OceanofPDF, Z-Library, and the Internet Archive’s Open Library. In addition to ISP blocks, the order also directs search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs and hosting companies to take action. For now, Open Library doesn’t appear to be actively blocked.
Traditional site-blocking measures that require local ISPs to block subscriber access to popular pirate sites are in common use around the world.
Note: this article was updated to add that Open Library does not appear to be actively blocked. More details here.
[…]
A few months ago DNS blocking arrived in Belgium, where several orders required both ISPs and DNS resolvers to restrict access to pirate sites. This prompted significant pushback, most notably Cisco’s OpenDNS ceasing operations in the country.
Broad Blocking Order Targets Internet Archive’s ‘Open Library’
A new order, issued by the Brussels Business Court in mid-July, targets an even broader set of intermediaries and stands out for other reasons as well.
[…]
Open Library was created by the late Aaron Swartz and Internet Archive’s founder Brewster Kahle, among others. As an open library its goal is to archive all published books, allowing patrons to borrow copies of them online.
The library aims to operate similarly to other libraries, loaning only one copy per book at a time. Instead of licensing digital copies, however, it has an in-house scanning operation to create and archive its own copies.
Open Library
The Open Library project was previously sued by publishers in the United States, where the Internet Archive ultimately losing the case. As a result, over 500,000 books were made unavailable.
[…]
According to the publishers, the operators of the Open Library are not easily identified, while legally required information is allegedly missing from the site, which they see as an indication that the site is meant to operate illegally.
This description seems at odds with the fact that Open Library is part of the Internet Archive, which is a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.
[…]
Internet Archive was not heard in this case, as the blocking order was issued ex parte, without its knowledge. This is remarkable, as the organization is a legal entity in the United States, which receives support from many American libraries.
The broad nature of the order doesn’t stop there either. In addition to requiring ISPs, including Elon Musk’s Starlink, to block the library’s domain names, it also directs a broad range of other intermediaries to take action.
This includes search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs, and hosting companies. An abbreviated overview of the requested measures is as follows;
[…]
Update: After publication, a representative from Internet Archive informed us that they are not aware of any disruption to their services at this time.
The Open Library domain (openlibrary.org) doesn’t appear on the master blacklist of FOD Economie either, while several domains of the other four ‘target sites’ are included. We have reached out to the responsible authority in Belgium to get clarification on this discrepancy and will update the article if we hear back.
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A copy of the order from the Business Court in Brussels (in Dutch) is available here (pdf)
Today, Google admitted the answer was: 14 days. Google had just 14 days to enact major changes to its Google Play app store, and the way it does business with phonemakers, cellular carriers, and app developers, unless it won an emergency stay (pause) from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as it continues to appeal. It must stop forcing apps to use Google Play Billing, allow app developers to freely steer their users to other platforms, and limit the perks it can offer in exchange for preinstalled apps, among other changes.
Those changes would not yet include Epic’s biggest wins. They don’t yet force Google to carry rival app stores within the Google Play Store, or to share its full app catalog with those rival stores, so don’t expect the Epic Games Store or the Microsoft Xbox Store to appear inside Google Play quite yet.
And as of Friday afternoon, all of this may take even longer. Hours after we published our story, Google won its emergency stay, and now has at least three weeks before it has to change Android app store policy.
When he issued the permanent injunction to begin cracking open Android, Judge James Donato gave Google eight months to come up with a “narrowly tailored” system of safety and security procedures before it would be forced to carry rival app stores, so Google has seven and a half months left once the stays have been lifted. Rival app stores won’t appear inside Google Play until 2026 at the earliest.
[…] Airportr, a UK-based luggage service that partners with airlines to let its largely UK- and Europe-based users pay to have their bags picked up, checked, and delivered to their destination. Researchers at the firm CyberX9 found that simple bugs in Airportr’s website allowed them to access virtually all of those users’ personal information, including travel plans, or even gain administrator privileges that would have allowed a hacker to redirect or steal luggage in transit. Among even the small sample of user data that the researchers reviewed and shared with WIRED they found what appear to be the personal information and travel records of multiple government officials and diplomats from the UK, Switzerland, and the US.
[…]
Airportr’s CEO Randel Darby confirmed CyberX9’s findings in a written statement provided to WIRED but noted that Airportr had disabled the vulnerable part of its site’s backend very shortly after the researchers made the company aware of the issues last April and fixed the problems within a few day. “The data was accessed solely by the ethical hackers for the purpose of recommending improvements to Airportr’s security, and our prompt response and mitigation ensured no further risk,” Darby wrote in a statement. “We take our responsibilities to protect customer data very seriously.”
CyberX9’s researchers, for their part, counter that the simplicity of the vulnerabilities they found mean that there’s no guarantee other hackers didn’t access Airportr’s data first. They found that a relatively basic web vulnerability allowed them to change the password of any user to gain access to their account if they had just the user’s email address—and they were also able to brute-force guess email addresses with no rate limitations on the site. As a result, they could access data including all customers’ names, phone numbers, home addresses, detailed travel plans and history, airline tickets, boarding passes and flight details, passport images, and signatures.
“Rust battery” now operational in the Netherlands; first multi-day long-term energy storage system, designed to be implemented using exclusively European production and materials
Ore Energy , the Dutch iron-air long-term energy storage startup, today announced that it has successfully connected its flagship iron-air battery to the Delft electricity grid – the world’s first known fully grid-connected iron-air system. The pilot system is also the first multi-day long-term energy storage (LDES) system designed, built, and installed entirely within the European Union using materials exclusively sourced within Europe. This unique deployment represents a significant technological milestone in long-term energy storage and marks a defining moment in European energy sovereignty and resilience.
Ore Energy’s pilot system—which uses iron, air, and water to store clean energy for up to 100 hours—was deployed at The Green Village, a testing ground for next-generation climate and energy innovations at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The system charges by using electricity to convert iron oxides (such as rust) back into metallic iron. During discharge, the metallic iron reacts with oxygen in the air to form iron oxides again, releasing electrical energy. The installation is now collecting real-world operational data and will serve as a testbed for multi-day energy shifting, a key milestone on the road to full integration of renewable energy grids. Ore Energy’s entire system will utilize modular 12-meter containers, each providing several MWh of multi-day energy storage, optimized for low-cost and compact deployment.
“This achievement proves that Europe can lead the world in energy innovation and energy resilience. We’ve shown that breakthrough solutions like iron-air can be brought from the lab to the grid in just two years and can be built entirely within a European supply chain,” said Aytaç Yilmaz, co-founder and CEO of Ore Energy. “Our battery not only stores clean energy, but also solves three of the biggest problems facing the grid: it reduces renewables’ downtime, replaces fossil fuel backups, and reduces the need to overbuild wind and solar power. Long-term storage like ours makes renewable energy reliable, affordable, and sovereign. And now it’s ready.”
“The Green Village aims to bring bold ideas from the lab to the real world. Ore Energy’s iron-air battery is just such a breakthrough,” says Lidewij van Trigt, Energy Transition Project Manager at The Green Village. “The connection of the first grid-ready iron-air system here in Delft demonstrates what’s possible when research, regulations, and industry are aligned. We’re proud to offer a testing ground for technologies that will shape the future of the European energy system.”
This study begins by outlining the transparency paradox: that trust in science requires transparency, but being transparent about science, medicine and government reduces trust in science. A solution to the paradox is then advanced here: it is argued that, rather than just thinking in terms of transparency and opacity, it is important to think about what institutions are being transparent about. By attending to the particulars of transparency – especially with respect to whether good or bad news is disclosed – it is revealed that transparency about good news increases trust whereas transparency about bad news decreases it, thus explaining the apparent paradox. The apparent solution: to ensure that there is always only good news to report, which might require lying. This study concludes by emphasizing how problematic it is that, currently, the best way to increase public trust is to lie, suggesting that a better way forward (and the real solution to the transparency paradox) would be to resolve the problem of the public overidealizing science through science education and communication to eliminate the naïve view of science as infallible.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: It’s a strange glimpse into the human mind: If you filter search results on Google, Bing, and other search engines to only include URLs from the domain “https://chatgpt.com/share,” you can find strangers’ conversations with ChatGPT. Sometimes, these shared conversation links are pretty dull — people ask for help renovating their bathroom, understanding astrophysics, and finding recipe ideas. In another case, one user asks ChatGPT to rewrite their resume for a particular job application (judging by this person’s LinkedIn, which was easy to find based on the details in the chat log, they did not get the job). Someone else is asking questions that sound like they came out of an incel forum. Another person asks the snarky, hostile AI assistant if they can microwave a metal fork (for the record: no), but they continue to ask the AI increasingly absurd and trollish questions, eventually leading it to create a guide called “How to Use a Microwave Without Summoning Satan: A Beginner’s Guide.”
ChatGPT does not make these conversations public by default. A conversation would be appended with a “/share” URL only if the user deliberately clicks the “share” button on their own chat and then clicks a second “create link” button. The service also declares that “your name, custom instructions, and any messages you add after sharing stay private.” After clicking through to create a link, users can toggle whether or not they want that link to be discoverable. However, users may not anticipate that other search engines will index their shared ChatGPT links, potentially betraying personal information (my apologies to the person whose LinkedIn I discovered). According to ChatGPT, these chats were indexed as part of an experiment. “ChatGPT chats are not public unless you choose to share them,” an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We’ve been testing ways to make it easier to share helpful conversations, while keeping users in control, and we recently ended an experiment to have chats appear in search engine results if you explicitly opted in when sharing.”
A Google spokesperson also weighed in, telling TechCrunch that the company has no control over what gets indexed. “Neither Google nor any other search engine controls what pages are made public on the web. Publishers of these pages have full control over whether they are indexed by search engines.”
Mastercard has broken its silence after being thrust into the middle of a gaming culture war between anti-porn advocates and anti-censorship activists. While Valve previously laid blame for a recent purge of adult sex games from Steam at the feet of “payment processors and their related card networks and banks,” Mastercard released a statement on Friday denying any responsibility for a new wave of censorship that’s recently led some gamers to flood payment company call centers with complaints.
“Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations,” the company wrote in a statement published on its website on August 1. “Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.”
Mastercard and Visa have been on the receiving end of an anti-game censorship backlash after anti-porn group Collective Shout claimed victory in a write-in campaign targeting payment company CEOs for allegedly profiting off of what the group called “violent pornography.” Critics of the move recently told Kotaku they’ve been calling the companies multiple times over the last week to complain about Valve and indie game shop itch.io purging seemingly legal NSFW content from their platforms over fears of reportedly being dropped by Mastercard and others.
To be clear, Mastercard doesn’t say it hasn’t been involved at all, just that it’s gone no further than enforcing its existing guidelines against “unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.” But a renewed crackdown on those requirements, which can be vague in practice, has resulted in Valve and itch.io delisting anywhere from hundreds to thousands of games they worry could get it in trouble with Mastercard and others.
Earlier today, itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran announced the indie storefront is bringing back delisted NSFW games that were free, but is “still in ongoing discussions with payment processors” over paid content which will be reintroduced “slowly.” It could suggest the recent call-in campaigns castigating the credit card companies have changed the calculus for the companies involved. It certainly sounds like Mastercard regrets ever being dragged into this fight, even though it’s the one in the driver’s seat.
Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam, citing Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7.
“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution. Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand.”
Rule 5.12.7 states, “A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.”
It goes on, “The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.”
Violations of rule 5.12.7 can result in fines, audits, or companies being dropped by the payment processors.
Britain’s most tattooed man has a lot more time on his hands and not a lot else thanks to new porn laws.
The King of Ink says facial recognition tech has made it harder to chat to webcam girls, after sites started mistaking his tattooed face for a mask.
The new rules came into force last week, introducing stricter checks under Ofcom’s children’s codes.
The King of Ink, as he’s legally known, said: ‘Some of the websites are asking for picture verification, like selfies, and it’s not recognising my face.
‘It’s saying “remove your mask” because the technology is made so you can’t hold up a picture to the camera or wear a mask.
‘Would this also be the case for someone who is disfigured? They should have thought of this from day one.’
The businessman and entrepreneur, from Stechford, Birmingham, feels discriminated against on the basis of his permanent identity.
The tattoo enthusiast says his heavily tattooed face is a permanent part of his identity (Picture: @kingofinklandkingbodyart)
‘It’s as important as the name really and I changed my name legally,’ he said
‘Without a name you haven’t got an identity, and it’s the same with a face.
So many ways to circumvent it, so many ways it break and really, age verification’s only winners are the tech companies that people are forced to pay money to.
[…]”Spectrometers are critical tools for helping us understand the chemical and physical properties of various materials based on how light changes when it interacts with those materials,” says Brendan O’Connor, corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University. “They are used in applications that range from manufacturing to biomedical diagnostics. However, the smallest spectrometers on the market are still fairly bulky.
“We’ve created a spectrometer that operates quickly, at low voltage, and that is sensitive to a wide spectrum of light,” O’Connor says. “Our demonstration prototype is only a few square millimeters in size – it could fit on your phone. You could make it as small as a pixel, if you wanted to.”
The technology makes use of a tiny photodetector capable of sensing wavelengths of light after the light interacts with a target material. By applying different voltages to the photodetector, you can manipulate which wavelengths of light the photodetector is most sensitive to.
“If you rapidly apply a range of voltages to the photodetector, and measure all of the wavelengths of light being captured at each voltage, you have enough data that a simple computational program can recreate an accurate signature of the light that is passing through or reflecting off of the target material,” O’Connor says. “The range of voltages is less than one volt, and the entire process can take place in less than a millisecond.”
[…]
“In the long term, our goal is to bring spectrometers to the consumer market,” O’Connor says. “The size and energy demand of the technology make it feasible to incorporate into a smartphone, and we think this makes some exciting applications possible. From a research standpoint, this also paves the way for improved access to imaging spectroscopy, microscopic spectroscopy, and other applications that would be useful in the lab.”
Project Hyperion explores the feasibility of crewed interstellar travel via generation ships, using current and near-future technologies. A generation ship is a hypothetical spacecraft designed for long-duration interstellar travel, where the journey may take centuries to complete. The idea behind a generation ship is that the initial crew would live, reproduce, and die on the ship, with their descendants continuing the journey until reaching the destination. These ships are often envisioned as self-sustaining ecosystems, featuring agriculture, habitation, and other necessary life-support systems to ensure survival across multiple generations.
Traditional site-blocking measures that require local ISPs to block subscriber access to popular pirate sites are in common use around the world.
