Author Archives: Robin Edgar

About Robin Edgar

Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft

Simple light trick reveals hidden organic pathways in microscopic detail

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Every tissue in the human body contains exceptionally small fibers that help coordinate how organs move, function and communicate. Muscle fibers guide physical force, intestinal fibers support the motion of the digestive tract, and brain fibers carry electrical signals that allow different regions to exchange information. Together, these intricate fiber systems help shape the structure of each organ and keep them operating properly.

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Although these microscopic structures play essential roles, they have long been challenging to study. Researchers have struggled to determine how fibers are oriented inside tissues, which has made it difficult to fully understand how they change in health and disease.

A Simple Method for Revealing Hidden Microstructure

A research team led by Marios Georgiadis, PhD, instructor of neuroimaging, has now introduced an approach that makes these hard-to-see fiber patterns visible with exceptional clarity and at a relatively low cost.

Their technique, described in Nature Communications, is known as computational scattered light imaging (ComSLI). It can reveal the orientation and organization of tissue fibers at micrometer resolution on virtually any histology slide, regardless of how it was stained or preserved — even if the slide is many decades old.

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ComSLI relies on a basic physical principle: when light encounters microscopic structures, it scatters in different directions based on their orientation. By rotating the light source and recording how the scattering signal changes, researchers can reconstruct the direction of the fibers within each pixel of an image.

The method requires only a rotating LED light and a microscope camera, making the setup accessible compared with other forms of advanced microscopy. After the images are collected, software analyzes delicate patterns in the scattered light to generate color-coded maps of fiber orientation and density, known as microstructure-informed fiber orientation distributions.

ComSLI is not limited by sample preparation. It works with formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sections (a standard in hospitals and pathology labs) as well as fresh-frozen, stained or unstained slides.

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“This is a tool that any lab can use,” Zeineh said. “You don’t need specialized preparation or expensive equipment. What excites me most is that this approach opens the door for anyone, from small research labs to pathology labs, to uncover new insights from slides they already have.”

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To test the limits of the method, the researchers analyzed a brain section prepared in 1904. Even in this century-old sample, ComSLI identified intricate fiber patterns, allowing scientists to study historical specimens and explore how structural features evolve across generations of disease.

Applications Beyond the Brain

Although first designed for brain research, ComSLI also works well in other tissues. The team used it to study muscle, bone and vascular samples, each revealing unique fiber arrangements tied to their biological functions.

In tongue muscle, the method highlighted layered fiber orientations linked to movement and flexibility. In bone, it captured collagen fibers that align with mechanical stress. In arteries, it showed alternating collagen and elastin layers that support both strength and elasticity.

This ability to map fiber orientation across species, organs and archival specimens could significantly change how scientists investigate structure and function.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Stanford Medicine. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Marios Georgiadis, Franca auf der Heiden, Hamed Abbasi, Loes Ettema, Jeffrey Nirschl, Hossein Moein Taghavi, Moe Wakatsuki, Andy Liu, William Hai Dang Ho, Mackenzie Carlson, Michail Doukas, Sjors A. Koppes, Stijn Keereweer, Raymond A. Sobel, Kawin Setsompop, Congyu Liao, Katrin Amunts, Markus Axer, Michael Zeineh, Miriam Menzel. Micron-resolution fiber mapping in histology independent of sample preparation. Nature Communications, 2025; 16 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-64896-9

Source: Simple light trick reveals hidden brain pathways in microscopic detail | ScienceDaily

Instacart Charging Customers up to 25% Different Prices for Same Products

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How much does a carton of eggs cost? Depends on who you are. A new study produced in collaboration with policy group Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union found that people who purchased the exact same product from the exact same store at the exact same time were charged different prices—sometimes up to nearly 25% more—when placing the order on Instacart.

The study tapped 437 volunteer shoppers in four cities who were put in groups that were synced up virtually to add items from a specific grocery store into their Instacart shopping carts at the same time. They then reported the prices that appeared for those researchers to determine if people were being charged different prices for the same goods.

The result was a pretty resounding “Yes.” According to the study, nearly three-quarters of all grocery items tested in the experiment produced multiple prices across shoppers, including some products that showed five different prices for the same product.

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Researchers reported that the final total of the Instacart shopping carts varied by an average of 7% despite every item and condition being identical.

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According to Consumer Reports, the company confirmed the study accurately reflected its pricing strategies, which it claims to only do at 10 partnering grocery retailers that it chose not to name.

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While Instacart didn’t name the retailers they have partnered with for this program, the study did name where they performed their tests. One retailer was Target, and they found varying prices on items sold through Instacart from the retailer. Target told Groundwork Collaborative that it has no business relationship with Instacart and “does not directly share any pricing information with Instacart or dictate what Instacart prices appear on their platform.” Instacart acknowledged to the publication that it scrapes Target’s prices and adds an upcharge to offset “operating and technology costs.” So Target was seemingly not one of the 10 retail partners, but shoppers there were still exposed to price variance. Instacart claims it has ended pricing experiments at Target.

It certainly seems like the pricing discrepancies are an example of surveillance pricing, where consumers are served different prices based on information the platform knows about them. The study didn’t find any clear correlation that would link certain shopper demographic data and the prices they were presented, and Instacart told Consumer Reports that it doesn’t use any personal or demographic data from users in its pricing experiments and instead explained that customers are randomly assigned to price groups.

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“These tests are not dynamic pricing – prices never change in real-time, including in response to supply and demand. The tests are never based on personal or behavioral characteristics — they are completely randomized,” an Instacart spokesperson told Gizmodo.

So Instacart’s varied pricing is allegedly part of an experiment that randomly assigns shoppers to different pricing groups, but brands whose goods are available on Instacart can use the company’s data-driven pricing platform to serve different prices based on different demographic data. For the end user, that likely feels like a distinction without a difference, as they are ultimately seeing different prices based on conditions that are outside of their control.

Source: Instacart Charging Customers Different Prices for Same Products, Study Finds

Australias Social Media Ban goes into Effect

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The BBC has a live page following the ban and surprise surprise – it didn’t take long for people to circumvent the ban at all, with alternative social media being used (eg Lemon8, Yope, etc), VPNs being used (and the use of VPNs being threatened by ministers), pleas by campaigners asking for parents not to help circumvent the rules, etc.

That the ban won’t work is predictable. It will force kids into hiding, where they will be beyond the oversight of absolutely anyone. Worse, it will leave them with no help when things do go wrong – who is going to be complaining to their parents or the police about cyberbullying when they are using an illegal platform where they are being bullied on?

The age limit of 16 is entirely arbitrary too. Some kids develop faster than others and some very much slower. With science showing that adulthood starts at 32 (and looking at how far right politics and belief in populist nonsense is going globally, in many cases seemingly never), mature children are being punished and immature young adults are being exposed to content that they are not equipped to handle.

The goal – stopping toxic, unwanted behaviors in social media platforms – is a good one. By now we should be able to define these unwanted behaviours (eg no false news; no body shaming; no targeted abuse; no political preferences in feeds; who really needs video calls with groups of more than 6 people on a social media platform anyway? etc) and test them. To throw a random age line at the problem doesn’t solve it. How about for every instance of one of these behaviours a huge fine is levied (eg $1 million or above – the scale of the profits of the social media companies beggars belief, so only huge fines will make them feel the cost / benefit of paying the fine / fixing the problem lies in the fixing the problem side of things) – something that these behemoths cannot ignore. And if too many transgressions are detected in a certain period (eg 100 fines per week) then the platform is closed entirely for a certain period (weeks / months). This will incentivise the social media platforms to fix the problems which is what we want instead of driving kids into hiding and exposing them to a much more dangerous social media landscape.

Congress strips right-to-repair from military spending bill despite bipartisan support. Why? Lobbying Money!

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Congress has released the final version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and critics have been quick to point out that previously proposed rules giving the US military the right to repair its equipment without having to rely on contractors have gone missing.

The House and Senate versions of the NDAA passed earlier both included provisions that would have extended common right-to-repair rules to US military branches, requiring defense contractors to provide access to technical data, information, and components that enabled military customers to quickly repair essential equipment. Both of those provisions were stripped from the final joint-chamber reconciled version of the bill, published Monday, right-to-repair advocates at the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) pointed out in a press release.

Support for the military’s right to repair is so broad, and it’s one of the few issues where liberal Democrats in Congress are aligned with President Trump. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) even introduced a bill over the summer that would have legislated “fair and reasonable access” to necessary parts and information that would enable the US military to fix gear faster than farmers with broken John Deere tractors. That bill, referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, hasn’t budged since.

In other words, the 2026 NDAA was the latest best hope to give the troops some repairability leeway.

“Despite support from Republicans, Democrats, the White House, and key military leaders, troops will keep waiting for repairs they could perform themselves,” PIRG legislative associate Charlie Schuyler said in the group’s statement. “Taxpayers will keep paying inflated costs. And in some cases, soldiers might not get the equipment they need when they need it most.”

The US military has been waging a war to achieve the right to repair its own equipment for some time, with the effort accelerating during the second Trump administration. The US Army, for example, has taken it upon itself to demand that future contracts include right to repair provisions, while the Navy has told Congress that it wants the right to repair its own gear, too.

In the Navy’s case, part of that was motivated by incredibly costly repairs needed for the USS Gerald R. Ford, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a crew of 4,500 that, at one point, had six of eight kitchen ovens out of commission. The support contract for ship maintenance barred sailors from fixing the ovens themselves, even if they could do it.

“The Trump administration, in addition to the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, have all expressed support for military Right to Repair,” PIRG said in its press release.

Isaac Bowers, PIRG’s federal legislative director, told The Register that, while it’s hard to fathom a reason the repairability provisions were stripped from the final bill, he has a sneaking suspicion: Defense industry lobbying.

The right-to-repair provisions “were opposed by a defense industry that has deep pockets, influence on Capitol Hill and a lot invested in the U.S. military continuing to pay their inflated sustainment costs,” Bowers told us.

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Source: Congress strips right-to-repair from military spending bill • The Register

Colour Epaper Digital Screens Takes Color Resolution to 25,000 pixels per inch

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Visual displays have steadily gotten smaller and held closer to our eyes as our viewing habits have shifted from cinema screens to TVs to computers, smartphones and virtual reality. This shift has required higher image resolution (usually through increased pixel counts) to provide enough detail. Conventional light-emitting pixels work poorly below a certain size: brightness drops, and colors bleed. The same isn’t true for reflective displays such as those used in many e-readers, whose pixels reflect ambient light rather than emitting their own—but creating those pixels typically requires larger components.

A new reflective display could shatter those restrictions with resolutions beyond the limit of human perception. In a recent study in Nature, scientists describe a reflective retina e-paper that can display color video on screens smaller than two square millimeters across.

The researchers used nanoparticles whose size and spacing affect how light is scattered, tuning them to create red, green and blue subpixels. The material is electrochromic, so its light absorption and reflection can be controlled with electrical signals. With this setup, “metapixels” consisting of the three subpixels can generate any color if you deliver appropriate signals.

Each pixel is only 560 nanometers wide, creating a resolution above 25,000 pixels per inch—more than 50 times that of current smartphones. “We can make displays a similar size as your pupil, with a similar number of pixels as photoreceptors in your eyes,” says study co-author Kunli Xiong of Uppsala University in Sweden. “So we can create virtual worlds very close to reality.”

Graphic compares the scale, resolution and color quality of an image of Gustav Klimt’s painting The Kiss on a phone screen versus the e-paper.

Source: “Video‐Rate Tunable Color Electronic Paper with Human Resolution,” by Ade Satria Saloka Santosa et al., in Nature, Vol. 646; October 30, 2025; restyled by Amanda Montañez

E-paper screens also have relatively low energy requirements; the pixels retain their color for some time, so power is generally needed only when colors change. “It uses ultralow power,” Xiong says. “For very small devices, it is not easy to integrate large batteries, so that energy saving becomes even more important.”

The team demonstrated the technology with a version of The Kiss by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt and a three-dimensional butterfly image. “People have made these kinds of materials before, but usually they produce poor colors,” says Jeremy Baumberg, a nanotechnologist at the University of Cambridge, who studies how nanoscale materials interact with light. In comparison, the design of Xiong and his colleagues’ subpixels “generates colors that look more compelling than I’ve seen before,” Baumberg says.

These pixels can be rapidly controlled, enabling a reasonable refresh rate—but the necessary electronics for such a high resolution do not yet exist. Xiong and his colleagues anticipate that engineering companies will begin to develop such systems.

Meanwhile Xiong’s team plans to optimize other aspects of the technology such as its speed and lifetime. “Every time you switch [colors], the material’s structure changes, and eventually it crumbles,” Baumberg says—similar to how batteries decay. He estimates that it’ll be five to 10 years before we see commercially available devices.

Source: Breakthrough in Digital Screens Takes Color Resolution to Incredibly Small Scale | Scientific American

Why Local Airports Matter More Than Ever

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Europe’s map is not just its capitals and hubs: it is a constellation of cultures and communities. It is a simple fact that many of these communities, industrial towns, university centres, and touristic villages depend on reliable, affordable air links to the rest of Europe and beyond – provided by their regional airports.

For them, the nearest airport is a lifeline and their sole link to the world. If the EU is serious about cohesion, competitiveness and the green transition for aviation, then it must recognise the strategic value of regional airports in ensuring no citizen is left behind.

This means the EU must also recognise that these airports, which provide such essential connections, are not often in a position to be profitable and self-funding. This is the role of State aid: to ensure citizens across Regional communities are not isolated from education, employment, culture and the opportunities that come from being connected.

This is why ACI EUROPE continues to raise alarms about the need to extend EU guidelines that allow well-governed State aid to small airports. Those guidelines are at risk in an ongoing European Commission evaluation.

Here is the policy rub: the EU’s current State Aid Aviation Guidelines assume that small airports will adjust to become financially viable over time. The reality is that many will not be able to, through no fault of their own. High fixed costs, lumpy seasonality and airline market power in route development negotiations act against them. That is why extending the possibility for operating state aid beyond 2027 for airports up to 1 million passengers, with sensible intensity thresholds and guardrails, is not market distortion. It is the targeted correction of a structural market failure that preserves connectivity possibilities where the market alone undersupplies it.

The fiscal scale is modest; the payoff is large. Airports up to 1 million passengers account for only about 2.5% of total EU traffic – so the envelope of potential operating support is limited, precise, and efficient: the social and economic returns are concentrated in exactly the places EU cohesion policy is meant to serve. Put differently: a relatively small public outlay secures links that keep regions investable, stem brain drain, and maintain equal access to essential services.

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Source: Why Local Airports Matter More Than Ever | Euractiv

For simple politicians, it is easy to think in simple solutions: on paper having huge airports (owned by a huge company with huge lobbying power) servicing centrally will seem more efficient. With connections, it is not about efficiency, it is about quantity – seeing that as many points are connected is more important than that the existing connections have huge throughput.

Google and Apple partner on better Android-iPhone switching 

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The latest Android Canary build is available today and it features work by Apple and Google to make switching between Android and iPhone devices easier.

A joint collaboration between the two companies aims to make transferring data between Android and iOS easier. Google and Apple tell us that this will be available during the device setup process.

This work is beginning to go live today with Android Canary 2512 (ZP11.251121.010) on all Pixel devices, while this is coming with a future iOS 26 developer beta. Ahead of launch, this easier switching will add more functionality and support for additional data types that are transferred over.

As always, Android Canary and iOS developer betas are not intended for general use, and might have other performance issues. On the Google side, these features will eventually make their way to the Android Beta before launch.

It’s not clear when the final version of this improved switching is going live, with Android support happening on a device-by-device basis. Until then, there is Apple’s Move to iOS app on Android and Google’s Android Switch app on iOS.

Source: Google and Apple partner on better Android-iPhone switching 

The year age verification laws came for the open internet

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When the nonprofit Freedom House recently published its annual report, it noted that 2025 marked the 15th straight year of decline for global internet freedom. The biggest decline, after Georgia and Germany, came within the United States.

Among the culprits cited in the report: age verification laws, dozens of which have come into effect over the last year. “Online anonymity, an essential enabler for freedom of expression, is entering a period of crisis as policymakers in free and autocratic countries alike mandate the use of identity verification technology for certain websites or platforms, motivated in some cases by the legitimate aim of protecting children,” the report warns.

Age verification laws are, in some ways, part of a years-long reckoning over child safety online, as tech companies have shown themselves unable to prevent serious harms to their most vulnerable users. Lawmakers, who have failed to pass data privacy regulations, Section 230 reform or any other meaningful legislation that would thoughtfully reimagine what responsibilities tech companies owe their users, have instead turned to the blunt tool of age-based restrictions — and with much greater success.

Over the last two years, 25 states have passed laws requiring some kind of age verification to access adult content online. This year, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory to backers of age verification standards when it upheld a Texas law requiring sites hosting adult content to check the ages of their users.

Age checks have also expanded to social media and online platforms more broadly. Sixteen states now have laws requiring parental controls or other age-based restrictions for social media services. (Six of these measures are currently in limbo due to court challenges.) A federal bill to ban kids younger than 13 from social media has gained bipartisan support in Congress. Utah, Texas and Louisiana passed laws requiring app stores to check the ages of their users, all of which are set to go into effect next year. California plans to enact age-based rules for app stores in 2027.

These laws have started to fragment the internet. Smaller platforms and websites that don’t have the resources to pay for third-party verification services may have no choice but to exit markets where age checks are required. Blogging service Dreamwidth pulled out of Mississippi after its age verification laws went into effect, saying that the $10,000 per user fines it could face were an “existential threat” to the company. Bluesky also opted to go dark in Mississippi rather than comply. (The service has complied with age verification laws in South Dakota and Wyoming, as well as the UK.) Pornhub, which has called existing age verification laws “haphazard and dangerous,” has blocked access in 23 states.

Pornhub is not an outlier in its assessment. Privacy advocates have long warned that age verification laws put everyone’s privacy at risk. Practically, there’s no way to limit age verification standards only to minors. Confirming the ages of everyone under 18 means you have to confirm the ages of everyone. In practice, this often means submitting a government-issued ID or allowing an app to scan your face. Both are problematic and we don’t need to look far to see how these methods can go wrong.

Discord recently revealed that around 70,000 users “may” have had their government IDs leaked due to an “incident” involving a third-party vendor the company contracts with to provide customer service related to age verification. Last year, another third-party identity provider that had worked with TikTok, Uber and other services exposed drivers’ licenses. As a growing number of platforms require us to hand over an ID, these kinds of incidents will likely become even more common.

Similar risks exist for face scans. Because most minors don’t have official IDs, platforms often rely on AI-based tools that can guess users’ ages. A face scan may seem more private than handing over a social security number, but we could be turning over far more information than we realize, according to experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

“When we submit to a face scan to estimate our age, a less scrupulous company could flip a switch and use the same face scan, plus a slightly different algorithm, to guess our name or other demographics,” the organization notes. “A poorly designed system might store this personal data, and even correlate it to the online content that we look at. In the hands of an adversary, and cross-referenced to other readily available information, this information can expose intimate details about us.”

These issues aren’t limited to the United States. Australia, Denmark and Malaysia have taken steps to ban younger teens from social media entirely. Officials in France are pushing for a similar ban, as well as a “curfew” for older teens. These measures would also necessitate some form of age verification in order to block the intended users. In the UK, where the Online Safety Act went into effect earlier this year, we’ve already seen how well-intentioned efforts to protect teens from supposedly harmful content can end up making large swaths of the internet more difficult to access.

The law is ostensibly meant to “prevent young people from encountering harmful content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography,” according to the BBC. But the law has also resulted in age checks that reach far beyond porn sites. Age verification is required to access music on Spotify. It will soon be required for Xbox accounts. On X, videos of protests have been blocked. Redditors have reported being blocked from a lengthy number of subreddits that are marked NSFW but don’t actually host porn, including those related to menstruation, news and addiction recovery. Wikipedia, which recently lost a challenge to be excluded from the law’s strictest requirements, is facing the prospect of being forced to verify the ages of its UK contributors, which the organization has said could have disastrous consequences.

The UK law has also shown how ineffective existing age verification methods are. Users have been able to circumvent the checks by using selfies of video game characters, AI-generated images of ID documents and, of course, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

As the EFF notes, VPNs are incredibly widely used. The software allows people to browse the internet while masking their actual location. They’re used by activists and students and people who want to get around geoblocks built into streaming services. Many universities and businesses (including Engadget parent company Yahoo) require their students and workers to use VPNs in order to access certain information. Blocking VPNs would have serious repercussions for all of these groups.

The makers of several popular VPN services reported major spikes in the UK following the Online Safety Act going into effect this summer, with ProtonVPN reporting a 1,400 percent surge in sign-ups. That’s also led to fears of a renewed crackdown on VPNs. Ofcom, the regulator tasked with enforcing the law, told TechRadar it was “monitoring” VPN usage, which has further fueled speculation it could try to ban or restrict their use. And here in the States, lawmakers in Wisconsin have proposed an age verification law that would require sites that host “harmful” content to also block VPNs.

While restrictions on VPNs are, for now, mostly theoretical, the fact that such measures are even being considered is alarming. Up to now, VPN bans are more closely associated with authoritarian countries without an open internet, like Russia and China. If we continue down a path of trying to put age gates up around every piece of potentially objectionable content, the internet could get a lot worse for everyone.

Source: The year age verification laws came for the open internet

Pebble smart ring for recording thoughts, battery life: years. Software – open.

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Pebble just announced the Index 01, a smart ring for recording thoughts. It’s a little ring with a built-in microphone and that’s about it. The Index 01 is almost anti-tech in its simplicity. There’s no needless AI component shoehorned in, aside from speech-to-text. It’s a ring with a microphone that you whisper ideas into and I want one.

Here’s how it works. You get an idea while walking down the street, so you quietly whisper it into the ring. The ring sends the idea to a notes app or saves it for later review. Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky calls this an “external memory” for the brain, but I call it a nice way to avoid having to dig the phone out of a pocket or bag just to utter something like “pizza, but for cats.”

The ring doesn’t record unless a button is pushed, so it won’t be listening in on private conversations, and it doesn’t require a paid subscription of any kind. It’s on the smaller side, about the size of a wedding band, and is water-resistant.

The battery also lasts for “years” and never needs to be charged. The ring is designed to be worn at all times, so users develop the muscle memory of holding down the little button when they have something to share. See what I mean? I want one, and I’ve quite literally never worn a ring in my life.

A ring.
Pebble

Migicovsky says this is an open source product and that Pebble is “leaving the side door open for folks to customize.” He envisions people will integrate AI voice agents and that the ring will eventually work with stuff like ChatGPT, Beeper, Google and other services.

The Pebble Index 01 works with iPhone and Android and is available for preorder right now. It costs $75 during this preorder period, but the price jacks up to $99 when shipments start going out in March.

This is just the latest product by Migicovsky and Pebble. The company unveiled the Core 2 Duo and the Core Time 2 smartwatches earlier this year.

Source: Pebble is making a weird little smart ring for recording thoughts

Timing cancer drug delivery around our body clock may boost survival

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They say timing is everything, and treating cancer may be no exception. Researchers have found that simply shifting when people with cancer receive immunotherapy drugs could improve their survival, adding to evidence that our body’s internal clocks influence how well cancer treatments work.

The activity of our cells and tissues works on 24-hour cycles, known as circadian rhythms, which coordinate everything from hormone release to the timing of cell division and repair. These rhythms are often disrupted in cancer cells, which tend to divide continuously, rather than at set times.

This has prompted efforts to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, which targets rapidly dividing cells, by administering it when healthy tissues are least active. Increasingly, however, researchers are exploring whether the effectiveness of cancer drugs might also be improved by giving them at particular times.

One such group of drugs is immune checkpoint inhibitors, which help immune T-cells recognise and attack tumours more effectively. “T-cells and other immune defenders are naturally more active in the morning; primed to respond,” says Seline Ismail-Sutton at Ysbyty Gwynedd hospital in Bangor, UK, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Administering immune checkpoint inhibitors during this window may amplify anti-tumour effects and enhance efficacy.”

Earlier this year, Zhe Huang at Central South University in Changsha, China, and his colleagues reported that giving the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab alongside chemotherapy to people with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) before 11.30am was associated with nearly double the survival rate seen in those who received most of their treatment in the afternoon.

To investigate whether timing treatments around circadian rhythms – known as chronotherapy – might also benefit people with small cell lung cancer, a faster-growing and more aggressive form of the condition, the same team analysed data from 397 people treated with the checkpoint inhibitors atezolizumab or durvalumab alongside chemotherapy between 2019 and 2023.

“Compared with patients treated later in the day, those treated before 3pm had significantly longer progression‑free survival and overall survival,” says team member Yongchang Zhang, also at Central South University.

After adjusting for multiple confounding factors, earlier administration was associated with a 52 per cent lower risk of cancer progression and a 63 per cent lower risk of death.

Zhang believes this effect probably exists for other tumour types, pointing to hints from studies of renal cell carcinoma and melanoma. As to why this dosing regimen has this effect, the NSCLC trial showed that morning administration boosted circulating T-cell numbers and activation, while late-day dosing had the opposite effect. Studies in mice have also shown that tumour-infiltrating T-cells vary in function over 24 hours, and that the circadian clocks of nearby endothelial cells can regulate when immune cells enter tumours.

Although randomised controlled trials with larger sample sizes are needed, this study “further supports the growing number of reports from all over the world describing better results with early time of day of immunotherapy drugs administration,” says Pasquale Innominato at the University of Warwick, UK.

Source: Timing cancer drug delivery around our body clock may boost survival | New Scientist

Minor Video Call Glitches create uncanny feelings and impact you negatively

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During covid-19, most of us became accustomed to conducting all sorts of business via video call, as well as struggling with the unavoidable technical problems associated with such digital interactions. New research, however, reveals that in certain situations, glitches can be more harmful than one might think.

Researchers found that audiovisual glitches during face-to-face video calls can trigger a feeling of “uncanniness,” even if they don’t impact the communicated information. Depending on the context, this can have serious implications for the outcome of the call. In potentially the most striking example, researchers associated disrupted online court hearings with lower likelihoods of individuals being granted criminal parole.

The danger zone

“The best feature of video calling is the fact that you basically feel like you’re together,” Jacqueline Rifkin, assistant professor of marketing and management communications at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, said in a university statement. “And so when there’s a glitch, you’re right in that danger zone where it’s almost perfect, but not quite—what has become known as the ‘uncanny valley.’ It triggers this switch in your brain where things feel just a little bit creepy,” she explained. She’s a co-first author of a study published December 3 in the journal Nature.

To investigate the matter, Rifkin and her colleagues analyzed previously held video conferences and conducted real-life experiments. They studied a database of over 1,600 “get-to-know-you” video calls that took place in 2020, after which participants took a survey including questions about interpersonal connection and any technical difficulties during the call. The data revealed that the connection was weaker between video callers who had experienced glitches, no matter what type of glitch and whether they had happened for one or both individuals.

Another analysis of transcript data from hundreds of virtual parole hearings in Kentucky in 2021 identified glitches in 32.6% of cases. Individuals whose hearings experienced glitches were granted parole 48% of the time, whereas those who didn’t have problematic calls were granted parole 60% of the time. Taking into account the individual’s or crime’s characteristics didn’t make a difference. Simply put, disrupted connections were associated with lower chances of individuals being granted parole.

“That was when we started feeling like, wow, there’s really something quite important to say here,” Rifkin explained.

Potential to further inequalities

Their experiments also confirmed that glitches during face-to-face video calls broke the illusion of in-person reality. In one, the team had over 3,000 participants watch job interview recordings similarly to how one would experience a video call. Glitches during the “calls” lowered the interviewee’s chances of being recommended for hire. Similarly, of the almost 500 participants who listened to healthcare advice in a replication of a virtual health consultation, 77% said they were confident in working with the professional during a smooth call, while only 61% were confident when they experienced connection problems on the call.

According to Rifkin, the feeling of uncanniness is difficult to ignore once it takes hold. “We tried a lot of different interventions, but we basically struggled to overcome it,” she explained. In short, their work indicates that small audiovisual issues during video calls result in negative consequences for interpersonal judgements. This could further inequalities among already disadvantaged groups, such as those with suboptimal internet connections.

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Source: Even Minor Video Call Glitches Could Cost You a Job—or Your Freedom

Boomerang – the guy from WeTransfer rebuilds file sharing

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We’ve been here before. Back in 2009, the idea was simple: upload without too much hassle. Somewhere along the way, file-sharing got complicated. Features piled up. Ads crept in. Settings multiplied. Privacy gone. We think it’s time to get back to the basics.

Spearheaded by Nalden, one of the original founders of WeTransfer, we’ve built Boomerang for people who believe sharing files should just be easy. We won’t use your data to train any AI models. We simply want to help you to share your files fast.

Built for Speed

Boomerang runs on Cloudflare’s global edge network, one of the fastest infrastructures on the planet. Your files upload and download from the server closest to you, whether you’re in Tokyo, Berlin, or São Paulo. We use modern web technologies including Hono, TypeScript, and Drizzle ORM because we believe the best tools make the best products.

A Canvas, Not a Control Panel

Boomerang has features; stuff you can customize, files you can manage, passwords, collaboration. But we approach design like a wireframe that actually works. A clean canvas where you paint only what you need.

[…]

File sharing hasn’t changed much, but web technology has transformed completely. We’re building Boomerang with the latest infrastructure: edge computing, distributed storage, global CDN delivery, because your files deserve better than legacy tech.

Easy-duz-it.

If you have any ideas, feedback or feature requests, simply reach out via email and we will get back to you. No bots, no AI. Just imperfectly human. hi@bmrng.me.

Source: Boomerang

iFixit Made an AI Assistant to Help You Fix Your Gadgets (and It’s Free, for Now)

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iFixit, the internet’s go-to for repair guides and spare parts, just launched a new mobile app with what sounds like a genuinely useful AI chatbot.

Starting today, iOS and Android users can download the iFixit app and chat directly with the new FixBot to get curated expert advice on how to fix everything from a cracked phone screen to a faulty dishwasher.

The team at iFixit says it spent two years building the chatbot, which utilizes a combination of AI models for its language, voice, and vision capabilities. What makes FixBot stand out from a general chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini is its laser focus on repairs. FixBot won’t answer questions that are not about fixing things, and it’s trained on iFixit’s 125,000 repair guides, community forums, and a huge repository of PDF manuals.

To use the bot, users can type or vocally explain their issue to the bot, or they can even just snap a photo of whatever needs fixing. FixBot will try to identify the device and model, then ask follow-up questions until it figures out the problem. The bot will then walk users through a step-by-step repair, pulling answers from the iFixIt library, even if that means surfacing something buried on page 500 of a PDF manual. It will also provide links to buy the spare parts you need. Along the way, users can ask FixBot questions. Its voice command features are also designed to help anyone who’s elbow-deep in a repair and can’t reach their phone.

Source: iFixit Made an AI Assistant to Help You Fix Your Gadgets (and It’s Free, for Now)

And this is how you do useful AI

All of Russia’s Porsches Were Bricked By a Satellite Outage

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Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That’s exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based security system that’s supposed to protect against theft. Instead, it turned these Porsches into driveway ornaments.

The issue was first reported at the end of November, with owners reporting identical symptoms of their cars refusing to start or shutting down soon after ignition. Russia’s largest dealership group, Rolf, confirmed that the problem stems from a complete loss of satellite connectivity to the VTS. When it loses its connection, it interprets the outage as a potential theft attempt and automatically activates the engine immobilizer.

What Actually Happened

The issue affects all models and engine types, meaning any Porsche equipped with the system could potentially disable itself without warning. The malfunction impacts Porsche models dating back to 2013 that have the factory VTS installed. This includes popular models like the Cayenne, Macan, Panamera, Taycan, 911, and the 718 Cayman and Boxster. When the VTS connection drops, the anti-theft protocol kicks in, cutting fuel delivery and locking down the engine completely.

[…]

Some drivers reported success after disconnecting their car batteries for up to 10 hours, while others managed to restore function by disabling or rebooting the VTS module entirely. Rolf dealerships have been instructing technicians to manually reset the alarm units, which often requires partially dismantling the vehicle. Some cars spring back to life immediately, while others remain stubbornly offline despite multiple attempts.

[…]

Source: All of Russia’s Porsches Were Bricked By a Mysterious Satellite Outage – Autoblog

Now you might say Fuck the Russians, but this is something that could happen anywhere and to anyone.

New EU Jolla Phone Now Available for Pre-Order as an Independent No Spyware Linux Phone

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Jolla kicked off a campaign for a new Jolla Phone, which they call the independent European Do It Together (DIT) Linux phone, shaped by the people who use it.

“The Jolla Phone is not based on Big Tech technology. It is governed by European privacy thinking and a community-led model.”

The new Jolla Phone is powered by a high-performing Mediatek 5G SoC, and features 12GB RAM, 256GB storage that can be expanded to up to 2TB with a microSDXC card, a 6.36-inch FullHD AMOLED display with ~390ppi, 20:9 aspect ratio, and Gorilla Glass, and a user-replaceable 5,500mAh battery.

The Linux phone also features 4G/5G support with dual nano-SIM and a global roaming modem configuration, Wi-Fi 6 wireless, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, 50MP Wide and 13MP Ultrawide main cameras, front front-facing wide-lens selfie camera, fingerprint reader on the power key, a user-changeable back cover, and an RGB indication LED.

On top of that, the new Jolla Phone promises a user-configurable physical Privacy Switch that lets you turn off the microphone, Bluetooth, Android apps, or whatever you wish.

The device will be available in three colors, including Snow White, Kaamos Black, and The Orange. All the specs of the new Jolla Phone were voted on by Sailfish OS community members over the past few months.

Honouring the original Jolla Phone form factor and design, the new model ships with Sailfish OS (with support for Android apps), a Linux-based European alternative to dominating mobile operating systems that promises a minimum of 5 years of support, no tracking, no calling home, and no hidden analytics.

“Mainstream phones send vast amounts of background data. A common Android phone sends megabytes of data per day to Google even if the device is not used at all. Sailfish OS stays silent unless you explicitly allow connections,” said Jolla.

The new Jolla Phone is now available for pre-order for 99 EUR and will only be produced if at least 2000 pre-orders are reached in one month from today, until January 4th, 2026. The full price of the Linux phone will be 499 EUR (incl. local VAT), and the 99 EUR pre-order price will be fully refundable and deducted from the full price.

The device will be manufactured and sold in Europe, but Jolla says that it will design the cellular band configuration to enable global travelling as much as possible, including e.g. roaming in the U.S. carrier networks. The initial sales markets are the EU, the UK, Switzerland, and Norway.

Source: New Jolla Phone Now Available for Pre-Order as an Independent Linux Phone – 9to5Linux

Brickstorm used to backdoor into critical US networks for over a year

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Chinese cyberspies maintained long-term access to critical networks – sometimes for years – and used this access to infect computers with malware and steal data, according to Thursday warnings from government agencies and private security firms.

PRC-backed goons infected at least eight government services and IT organizations with Brickstorm backdoors, according to a joint security alert from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the US National Security Agency, and the Canadian Cyber Security Centre.

However, “it’s a logical conclusion to assume that there are additional victims out there until we have not yet had the opportunity to communicate with,” CISA’s Nick Andersen, executive assistant director for cybersecurity, told reporters on Thursday, describing Brickstorm as a “terribly sophisticated piece of malware.”

The backdoor works across Linux, VMware, and Windows environments, and while Andersen declined to attribute the malware infections to a specific People’s Republic of China cyber group, he said it illustrates the threat PRC crews pose to US critical infrastructure.

“State-sponsored actors are not just infiltrating networks,” Andersen said. “They’re embedding themselves to enable long term access, disruption, and potential sabotage.”

In one incident that CISA responded to, the PRC goons gained access to the organization’s internal network in April 2024, uploaded Brickstorm to an internal VMware vCenter server, and used the backdoor for persistent access until at least September 3.

While in the victim’s network, the crew also gained access to two domain controllers and an Active Directory Federation Services server, which they used to steal cryptographic keys.

Dozens of organizations in the US have been impacted by Brickstorm, not including downstream victims

Google Threat Intelligence, which first sounded the alarm on Brickstorm in a September report, “strongly” recommended organizations run the open-source scanner that Google-owned Mandiant published on GitHub to help detect the backdoor on their appliances.

“We believe dozens of organizations in the US have been impacted by Brickstorm, not including downstream victims,” Google Threat Intelligence Group principal analyst Austin Larsen told The Register. “These actors are still actively targeting US organizations and are evolving Brickstorm and their techniques after our September report.”

[…]

Source: PRC spies Brickstormed their way into critical US networks • The Register

Cloudflare suffers second outage in as many months

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Routine Cloudflare maintenance went awry this morning, knocking over the company’s dashboard and API and sending sites around the world into error screens.

Cloudflare was working through its scheduled servicing when things went sideways. Maintenance was in progress in its Chicago datacenter from 0700 UTC, with work due to begin in its Detroit datacenter at 0900 UTC when red lights began flashing at administrators around the world.

Cloudflare status

Cloudflare status this morning

The content delivery network giant admitted a problem with its service at 0856 UTC, rolled out a fix shortly after, and seemed to be back up and running by 0930 UTC. It has, however, now reported issues with Workers (the serverless functions, not the employees likely frantically trying to stop the company’s systems from falling over again).

Cloudflare on Down Detector

Cloudflare on Down Detector

We’ve asked the company for more information, and will update this piece should an explanation be forthcoming.

Cloudflare proudly proclaims that “20 percent of all websites are protected by Cloudflare.” Unfortunately, this also means that 20 percent of all websites could catch a cold should Cloudflare sneeze. Two outages in two months is less than ideal, and could cause affected customers to take a hard look at their dependencies.

[…]

A spokesperson at Cloudflare sent us a statement after publication:

“A change made to how Cloudflare’s Web Application Firewall parses requests impacted the availability of Cloudflare’s network at approximately 8:47 GMT and concluded approximately 9:13 GMT. This was not an attack; the change was deployed by our team to help mitigate the industry-wide vulnerability disclosed this week in React Server Components.”

Source: Cloudflare suffers second outage in as many months • The Register

New hotness in democracy: if the people say no to mass surveillance, do it again right after you have said you won’t do it. Not EU this time: it’s India

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You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed at mass government surveillance, try, try again. Only two days after India backpedaled on its plan to force smartphone makers to preinstall a state-run “cybersecurity” app, Reuters reports that the country is back at it. It’s said to be considering a telecom industry proposal with another draconian requirement. This one would require smartphone makers to enable always-on satellite-based location tracking (Assisted GPS).

The measure would require location services to remain on at all times, with no option to switch them off. The telecom industry also wants phone makers to disable notifications that alert users when their carriers have accessed their location.

[…]

Source: India is reportedly considering another draconian smartphone surveillance plan

Looks like the Indians took a page out of the Danish playbook for Chat Control and turning the EU into a 1984 Brave New World

Kohler Can Access Data and Pictures from Toilet Camera It Describes as “End-to-End Encrypted”

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In October Kohler launched Dekota, a $600 (plus monthly subscription) device that attaches to the rim of your toilet and collects images and data from inside, promising to track and provide insights on gut health, hydration, and more. To allay the obvious privacy concerns, the company emphasizes the sensors are only pointed down, into the bowl, and assures potential buyers that the data collected by the device and app are protected with “end-to-end encryption”.

Kohler Health’s homepage, the page for the Kohler Health App, and a support page all use the term “end-to-end encryption” to describe the protection the app provides for data. Many media outlets included the claim in their articles covering the launch of the product.

However, responses from the company make it clear that—contrary to common understanding of the term—Kohler is able to access data collected by the device and associated application. Additionally, the company states that the data collected by the device and app may be used to train AI models.

[…]

emails exchanged with Kohler’s privacy contact clarified that the other “end” that can decrypt the data is Kohler themselves: “User data is encrypted at rest, when it’s stored on the user’s mobile phone, toilet attachment, and on our systems.  Data in transit is also encrypted end-to-end, as it travels between the user’s devices and our systems, where it is decrypted and processed to provide our service.”

They additionally told me “We have designed our systems and processes to protect identifiable images from access by Kohler Health employees through a combination of data encryption, technical safeguards, and governance controls.”

What Kohler is referring to as E2EE here is simply HTTPS encryption between the app and the server, something that has been basic security practice for two decades now, plus encryption at rest.

[…]

Source: Kohler Can Access Data and Pictures from Toilet Camera It Describes as “End-to-End Encrypted” – /var/log/simon

Subaru Owners Are Ticked About In-Car Pop-Up Ads for SiriusXM

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I’ve written about Stellantis brands doing this twice already in 2025, and this time, it’s Subaru sending pop-up ads for SiriusXM to owners’ infotainment screens.

The Autopian ran a story on the egregious push notifications on Monday, and it only took a short search to find more examples. It happened right around Thanksgiving, as the promotion urged drivers to “Enjoy SiriusXM FREE thru 12/1.” That day has come and gone, but not before it angered droves of Subaru owners.

“I have got this Sirius XM ad a few times over the last couple of years,” the caption on the embedded Reddit thread reads. “This last time was the final straw as I almost wrecked because of it. My entire infotainment screen changed which caused me to take my eyes off the road and since I was going 55mph in winter I swerved a bit and slid and almost went off into a ditch. Something that would not have happened had this ad not popped up.

[…]

At least one 2024 Crosstrek owner reported that the pop-up took over their screen even though they were using Apple CarPlay. To force-close an application that’s in use, solely for the sake of in-car advertising, is especially egregious.

[…]

Reddit posts dating back as far as 2023 show owners complaining about in-car notifications.

[…]

 

Source: Subaru Owners Are Ticked About In-Car Pop-Up Ads for SiriusXM

New Baldness Drug Boosted Hair Growth by 168% – 539% in Trials

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[…] On Wednesday, Cosmo Pharmaceuticals announced the results of its two phase III trials testing out the topical drug clascoterone for AGA. Compared to placebo, people on clascoterone gained back significantly more hair—with one trial showing a roughly 500% improvement in hair restoration. The results will pave the way for a potential FDA approval next year, which could make clascoterone the first truly novel treatment for pattern baldness seen in decades.

First-in-class

Male pattern baldness is primarily caused by having genes that make a person’s hair follicles overly sensitive to androgens (male-related sex hormones), particularly the hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT).

There are effective medications for AGA, such as minoxidil (the active ingredient in Rogaine) and finasteride, as well as other interventions like hair transplants. But these treatments have all their potential drawbacks (including cost) or may not work for everyone.

Cosmo is hoping that clascoterone can become the first of a new class of hair loss drugs. The topical drug is an androgen receptor inhibitor, meaning it directly targets the hormones that help cause the loss of hair follicles in AGA. The Dublin-based company also argues that clascoterone isn’t systemically absorbed by the body, minimizing the risk of potential side effects.

Its two pivotal trials involved nearly 1,500 male patients diagnosed with AGA. The volunteers were randomized to receive a placebo or a topical clascoterone 5% solution on affected parts of their scalp. Both trials met their primary goal. In one, clascoterone users experienced a 539% improvement in the amount of hair grown relative to placebo, while in the other, there was a 168% improvement. According to the company, however, the absolute amount of regrown hair seen during the trials was similar between the two treatment groups. Clascoterone also appeared to be safe and tolerable, the company said, with most adverse events recorded during the studies not related to the drug itself.

[…]

Source: New Baldness Drug Boosted Hair Growth by 539% in Trials

Build Your Own Glasshole Detector

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Connected devices are ubiquitous in our era of wireless chips heavily relying on streaming data to someone else’s servers. This sentence might already start to sound dodgy, and it doesn’t get better when you think about today’s smart glasses, like the ones built by Meta (aka Facebook).

[sh4d0wm45k] doesn’t shy away from fighting fire with fire, and shows you how to build a wireless device detecting Meta’s smart glasses – or any other company’s Bluetooth devices, really, as long as you can match them by the beginning of the Bluetooth MAC address.

[sh4d0wm45k]’s device is a mini light-up sign saying “GLASSHOLE”, that turns bright white as soon as a pair of Meta glasses is detected in the vicinity. Under the hood, a commonly found ESP32 devboard suffices for the task, coupled to two lines of white LEDs on a custom PCB. The code is super simple, sifting through packets flying through the air, and lets you easily contribute with your own OUIs (Organizationally Unique Identifier, first three bytes of a MAC address). It wouldn’t be hard to add such a feature to any device of your own with Arduino code under its hood, or to rewrite it to fit a platform of your choice.

We’ve been talking about smart glasses ever since Google Glass, but recently, with Meta’s offerings, the smart glasses debate has reignited. Due to inherent anti-social aspects of the technology, we can see what’d motivate one to build such a hack. Perhaps, the next thing we’ll see is some sort of spoofed packets shutting off the glasses, making them temporarily inoperable in your presence in a similar way we’ve seen with spamming proximity pairing packets onto iPhones.

Source: Build Your Own Glasshole Detector | Hackaday

Shopify goes down: Cyber Monday outage disrupting your online shopping

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Here’s hoping the retailers offering tasty Cyber Monday deals that caught your eye aren’t having trouble with Shopify. The ecommerce platform is experiencing some issues. According to a support page, some merchants were having trouble logging into the Shopify platform, which was experiencing outages with the checkout and admin systems. Shopify’s point-of-sale (POS), API and mobile and support systems also saw “degraded performance.”

“We are continuing to investigate and apply mitigations for the issues with accessing Admins and POS systems,” Shopify wrote in an update at 12:39PM ET. “Some merchants may also see an issue with POS checkouts, due to not being able to access POS systems.”

At 2:31PM ET, the company posted an update to its status page, saying “We have found and fixed an issue with our login authentication flow, and are seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues now. We are continuing to monitor recovery.” You might start to see some services go back to normal, and it should hopefully not impact your holiday shopping too much.

Shopify said in a blog post just last week that it powers 12 percent of ecommerce in the US. Brands including Netflix, Mattel, Supreme, Glossier and Converse are among those that use the platform.

When asked for more details about the outage, Shopify directed Engadget to its status page as well as a tweet posted at 10AM that read, “We’re aware of an issue with Admins impacting selected stores, and are working to resolve it.”

[…]

Source: Shopify is down: Updates on the Cyber Monday outage disrupting your online shopping

Netflix Is Killing Casting From Your Phone

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[…]

Among other methods, like plugging a laptop directly into the TV, many people still enjoying casting their content from small screens to big screens. For years, this has been a reliable way to switch from watching Netflix on your smartphone or tablet to watching on your TV—you just tap the cast button, select your TV, and in a few moments, your content is beamed to the proper place. Your device becomes its own remote, with search built right-in, and it avoids the need to sign into Netflix on TVs outside your home, such as when staying in hotels.

At least it did, but Netflix no longer wants to let you do it.

Netflix no longer supports casting on most devices

While you can still cast to your TV from other streaming platforms, there’s bad news for Netflix fans: The company has abruptly dropped casting support for most devices. Android Authority was the first to report on the change, though you might have stumbled upon the development yourself when looking for the cast button in the Netflix app. In fact, Netflix has prepared for your confusion, as you can see from this Netflix Help Center page titled “Can’t find ‘Cast’ button in Netflix app.” This page might offer a glimmer of hope at first, as you think “Oh good, Netflix has a solution if the Cast button is missing.” Unfortunately, the response isn’t going to make you happy: “Netflix no longer supports casting shows from a mobile device to most TVs and TV-streaming devices. You’ll need to use the remote that came with your TV or TV-streaming device to navigate Netflix.”

The exception here is for “older” Chromecast devices or TVs that work with Google Cast—but only if you pay for an ad-free Netflix plan. If you took Netflix up on its lower-cost subscription offer, those ads not only cost you extra watch time, but also your ability to cast—assuming you even have the older hardware to cast to.

[…]

Source: Netflix Is Killing Casting From Your Phone | Lifehacker