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- [fliptop] How to teach an old dog new tricks
- [khallow] Ukraine strikes in Russia
- [day of the dalek] Security Theater and Bad Faith Political BS
- [JoeMerchant] The Docapocalypse
- [mcgrew] Declaration of Independunce
- [Tork] I created a nebula fly-thru!
- [janrinok] They're Really Mocking The Truth
- [Gaaark] TACO TUESDAY!
- [kolie] Accidental Python Field Test (Why site_perl Rules the World)
- [Runaway1956] Assault on the White House
- [turgid] Pogrom in the UK
- [Rich] The Ferrari Luce, a dissenting opinion
- [linuxrocks123] France Is Poorer Than Mississippi
- [shrewdsheep] Fdroid petition
- [c0lo] Are there enough of them?
Older Stuff
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Saturday July 11- Geopolitical Tensions Are Complicating Research Efforts in the Norwegian Archipelago of Svalbar (0)
- Secure Unix Ancestor KSOS Did Type Safety Before Rust Made It Cool (8)
- Scientists Discover the Deep Sleep Circuit That Builds Muscle, Burns Fat, and Boosts the Brain (2)
- Suspecting AI Cheating, Ivy League Prof Ordered an in-Person Final; Scores Fell 50% (80)
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Friday July 10- Qualcomm Buys Lattner's Modular for Almost $4bn (2)
- Alibaba Bans Anthropic's Claude Code After an Alleged Hidden China-Detection Backdoor is Uncovered (2)
- Back to Basics, or Masm. Writing a Tiny Notepad for W11. (18)
- Record-Breaking Ocean Drilling Reveals Why Japan's 2011 Tsunami Was So Deadly (5)
- Bethesda, Id Software Reportedly Hit Hard by Microsoft Layoffs (8)
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Thursday July 9- Interoception: the Sense of How You Feel Inside (12)
- NASA May Send A Backup, Nuclear-Powered Mars Rover To The Moon (9)
- The Twenty-Ninth International Obfuscated C Code Contest is back (14)
- The Supreme Court Just Lit a Fuse Under Flock's License Plate Camera Empire (27)
- Rats Show Empathy, According to Model (11)
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Wednesday July 8
Quick Links
from the in-a-driverless-car-no-one-can-let-you-drive dept.
US Weighs Removing Steering Wheel Requirement for Driverless Cars
[...] "If you're developing a vehicle that is designed never to be driven by a human operator, does it make any sense to require manual control for the vehicle?" Morrison said. "I think the answer is pretty clear there."
Some self-driving cars, such as models intended for ridesharing fleets from companies like Uber and Tesla, are already steering in that direction, since they aren't designed for human driving. Some, such as the cars used by Waymo, can be taken over by remote human drivers.
Removing brake pedals and steering wheels, however, would mean that a human could not take over if an autonomous car stalls or a dangerous situation arises that requires intervention.
[...] In the CNBC interview, Morrison also discussed a letter sent to autonomous car makers about incidents in which those vehicles have stalled or been slow to move out of the way of emergency responders.
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Scientist models way to make sure no one's violating the ban on nuclear weapons in space
One scientist has produced a detailed model which proposes a way to verify that no government or rogue actors are secretly hiding nuclear weapons in the Earth's orbit.
Currently, international laws prevent the use of nuclear weapons in orbit, but it also presents a problem.
International space law was created by the Outer Space Treaty, which was drafted in 1966 and has been ratified by 117 nations, including the USA, China, and Russia, since then. It explicitly bans nuclear weapons from being used in space, which is reassuring, because a nuclear explosion launched from an orbiting object could destroy most of the satellites in low Earth orbit, creating havoc with vital satellite communications, imaging and weather forecasting, to say the least.
[...] Danagoulian's modeling showed calculations suggesting a CubeSat made of commercially available equipment weighing up to 18kg could detect the tell-tale signals emitted by nuclear weapons in space. Such a satellite could identify a thermonuclear weapon at a distance of 4 km after around a week of observations, the study found.
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Utility Companies Want To Take Control Of Your Home's Smart Thermostat
One of the uncomfortable elements of a more digitized, interconnected world is that outside parties can access your devices remotely. This is even true for those with smart thermostats, with perks like convenient HVAC adjustment over Wi-Fi and, in some cases, a lower energy bill, which can come with an unusual reality. There are now multiple proposals coming forward, on top of existing agreements between individuals and utility companies, that could grant utility companies remote access to residents' smart thermostats. Of course, these agreements don't come out of nowhere, and so far they're not mandatory.
The idea behind giving utility companies access to thermostats stems from efforts to reduce strain on power grids across the United States. Remote access allows companies to strategically tweak usage at specific points during the day and night, and when grid strain approaches critical levels. In Arizona, three different utilities have pushed for such agreements, seeking to avoid grid overload and blackouts during extreme heat events. Meanwhile, Ohio is pushing to formally authorize these voluntary demand response programs via House Bill 427. These are just two of many state-specific energy-conserving initiatives in play at this point.
[...] While many have already worked with utility companies to grant occasional access to their thermostats, many aren't so keen on the idea. The main concern is that this is an example of corporate overreach and that companies shouldn't be allowed to change how individual homes set their temperatures. Could this lead to higher billing? Or even dangerous in-home temperatures during winter and summer? Some online have even voiced their extreme dislike of these deals, desiring ways to hack into their smart thermostat to prevent any unwanted entity from making remote changes.
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New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation
NASA's New Horizons probe has woken itself up after 321 days of hibernation.
The aerospace agency sent commands to the probe last July, instructing it to commence hibernation on August 7 and then resume activity in July 2026.
On June 23, NASA checked to see if New Horizons had obeyed the instruction to wake up and was pleased to find it was online again.
New Horizons' main job was to make our first ever visit to Pluto, which it accomplished in 2015, before zipping off to visit a Kuiper Belt object named Arrokoth in 2019.
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What, did someone get some bad news during their IPO process or something?
Investment bankers might be next in line to be rendered obsolete by artificial intelligence if OpenAI's latest push into the financial space is any indication.
The House of Altman on Wednesday opened up a new position for an investment banking expert, whose responsibilities include making ChatGPT and its AI relations better at handling the complexities of major financial transactions like mergers, acquisitions, fundraising, and other high-value, high-stakes financial ventures.
The job notice mentions that investment banking is one of the most demanding knowledge work tasks around due to all the things bankers have to consider, and it seems to be hoping AI can serve as an assistant for some of Wall Street's heaviest hitters.
"We are looking for a Subject Matter Expert in Investment Banking to help define what excellent AI-assisted banking work looks like and turn that standard into better models and products," OpenAI said in the posting. "You will use that expertise to design realistic tasks and evaluations, create and assess high-quality reference work, diagnose model failures, and help our technical teams improve model behavior and product experiences."
OpenAI further describes the position as defining "the quality bar for AI-assisted investment banking," making it seem suspiciously like the ChatGPT maker isn't satisfied to keep its financial insights confined to the personal bank accounts of its individual users.
The company announced in May that it was adding connectors for personal financial accounts to be integrated into ChatGPT, giving AI direct access to bank records and other financial data. The feature was rolled out generally to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users at the end of June.
Now, it seems, OpenAI wants ChatGPT to help i-bankers, with the aforementioned "quality bar" touching things like research, analysis, valuation, modeling, diligence, transaction execution, and handling client materials. OpenAI apparently also wants its subject matter expert to help translate banking workflows into "representative evaluation tasks" that would allow AI to handle turning investment ideas into success, and generally "improve model performance on financial work."
Improvement would probably be warranted, given AI's tendency to still get things wrong on the regular. OpenAI even admitted last year that its models are programmed to make things up rather than admitting they don't know something. That's not exactly a comforting thought to businesses considering trusting an AI to provide advice on multi-billion-dollar deals.
OpenAI may have the hubris to believe an LLM that's frequently wrong and makes up facts can substitute for the subject matter expertise of an army of investment bankers, or it could just be unhappy with the investment banking world. The company, now in the process of going public, has slipped from being the darling of the AI world to playing second fiddle to Anthropic, which actually beat the ChatGPT lab to filing its own IPO documents.
Some in the financial industry, meanwhile, are expressing concerns that the AI bubble OpenAI helped to inflate could pop, potentially taking the global economy with it. It's no wonder, then, that the company is looking to train its own investment banking AI that can present more favorable opinions of the AI space than skittish financial heavyweights.
In exchange for teaching an AI to do their own job, OpenAI's future investment banking expert will be offered as much as $205K a year, plus equity. OpenAI didn't respond to questions for this story.
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China's sprawling state-owned rocket developer, maker of the country's Long March rocket family, announced it recovered a reusable orbital-class booster for the first time Friday in the South China Sea.
The milestone mission began with the liftoff of a Long March 10B rocket from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site on Hainan Island, China's southernmost province. Powered by seven kerosene-fueled engines, the approximately 209-foot-tall (63.6-meter) rocket took off at 12:15 am EDT (04:15 UTC), or 12:15 pm local time at the seaside spaceport at Wenchang.
About 10 minutes later, the Long March 10B booster descended from space and guided itself into a four-legged frame affixed to an offshore vessel. Tensioned cables stretched over the ship in a grid pattern captured the rocket as it shut down its landing engines, leaving the smoldering booster hanging in midair. The rocket's upper stage continued into orbit and deployed a payload known only as CX-26. Chinese officials hailed the flight as a "complete success."
"A historic day in China's space program!" wrote Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, on X. "China's Long March 10B has successfully completed its maiden flight—and recovered its first stage via a sea-based net. This marks the country's first-ever controlled rocket recovery. A major leap toward reusable launch capabilities."
The landing on Friday makes the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and its subsidiary, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the third enterprise to accomplish this feat. SpaceX did it with its Falcon 9 rocket in 2015 and with its Starship/Super Heavy booster in 2024. Blue Origin landed its New Glenn booster on an offshore platform for the first time last November.
SpaceX and Blue Origin use propulsive landings to return their Falcon 9 and New Glenn boosters to offshore platforms or onshore landing pads. With Starship, SpaceX pioneered a new method of catching the rocket's reusable booster back at its launch pad using mechanical arms mounted to the launch tower.
The Long March 10B employs a different approach for recovery, combining an offshore vessel floating downrange with the catch technique somewhat like what SpaceX uses for Starship. Catching the rocket in this way reduces the effect of reuse on payload capacity. The Long March 10B doesn't have to carry the extra mass of landing legs, and recovering it downrange reduces how much fuel the rocket must consume during its descent.
In a statement, CASC said the Long March 10B test flight "validated key core technologies" for a reusable launch architecture, such as multiple engine restarts with high-altitude ignition, high-precision navigation and control, and the first capture and recovery using a net system on a sea-based platform.
Friday's launch was the first flight of the Long March 10B, a medium-lift rocket with a payload capacity of approximately 16 metric tons (35,000 pounds) to low-Earth orbit. This is slightly less than the lift capacity of SpaceX's Falcon 9. The Long March 10B has two stages, with seven YF-100K engines on the booster consuming kerosene and liquid oxygen, and a single methane-fueled YF-219 engine on the second stage.
"Moving forward, the Long March 10B development team will continue to optimize the vehicle's performance and accelerate the iterative upgrading of reusable rocket technologies," CASC said. "The first stage reuse flight test is expected to be completed by the end of this year."
The Long March 10B is similar to China's Long March 10A rocket, which is still awaiting its first full-scale test flight. The Long March 10A has the same first stage booster as the Long March 10B, but a different upper stage and a payload fairing to accommodate cargo and satellites. The Long March 10A, on the other hand, is designed for future crew launches to China's Tiangong space station using the country's new human-rated spaceship, the Mengzhou, replacing China's Shenzhou crew capsule and the Long March 2F rocket used to power it into orbit.
A heavier configuration, known simply as the Long March 10, is a key part of China's Moon program. This more powerful rocket will combine three Long March 10 first stage boosters—each reusable—together to generate more thrust at liftoff. A second stage and third stage will propel Chinese astronauts and their lunar landers toward the Moon. The Chinese government says it aims to land its citizens on the Moon by 2030. Friday's launch was a small step toward that goal.
China launched a scaled-down version of the Long March 10A rocket in February with a prototype of the Mengzhou capsule to test the spacecraft's launch abort system, which would trigger to whisk crew members away from a failing rocket. The Mengzhou test went well, and remarkably, the Long March 10A continued flying after the capsule fired away from the booster, eventually coming back to Earth for a controlled splashdown at sea. The Long March 10B took this achievement a step further with a midair catch.
Multiple commercial and government-backed Chinese rocket companies are trying to level the playing field with the United States. China is the world's second-largest spacefaring nation, but US companies, dominated by SpaceX, are launching payloads into orbit about twice as often as Chinese rockets. SpaceX's blistering launch cadence is made possible by the partially reusable Falcon 9, something Blue Origin and Chinese companies are seeking to emulate.
US military officials have identified China's advancements in reusable rocketry as a key to unlocking the country's ability to potentially threaten US assets in space. "I'm concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists," said Maj. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force's deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, at a conference last year.
SpaceX has used the Falcon 9's rapid-fire launch cadence to deploy more than 12,000 satellites for its commercial Starlink Internet network. Starlink has spawned several spinoffs for the US military, including a secure communications network called Starshield, a constellation of spy satellites based on the Starlink design. More recently, SpaceX has won contracts to provide the Space Force with a new Space Data Network and support an emerging capability using satellites to identify moving targets on the ground and in the air.
All of this would give US forces an advantage in any future conflict with China, which is still in the early stages of launching its own versions of Starlink. China's mastery of rocket reuse would significantly expand the country's launch capacity, accelerating its ability to close the gap.
"Clearly, they admire the work that's being done by SpaceX and are trying to replicate it, and at the same time take it away from the United States if it ever came to it," said Charles Galbreath, a retired US Space Force colonel and director and senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute think tank's Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence.
"We'll see what happens next," Galbreath told Ars. "Are they able to rapidly turn and increase their launch rate as a result of this potential reuse? What impact will that have on their ability to field an operational architecture of satellites?"
Two Chinese rocket companies have already tried to recover their rockets after launching from one of China's inland spaceports. The first was LandSpace, a privately funded firm that debuted its medium-class Zhuque-3 rocket in December. The rocket reached orbit, but the booster crashed near the landing zone in the Gobi Desert at high speed. A few weeks later, another one of China's state-owned rocket builders successfully launched the first Long March 12A rocket, but the booster again lost control on descent and could not be recovered.
The next flight of the Zhuque-3 rocket could happen later this month or in August, with LandSpace again expected to attempt to land the booster downrange. Other Chinese rockets that could soon achieve reusability include Space Pioneer's Tianlong-3, China Commercial Rocket Co.'s Long March 12B, CAS Space's Kinetica-2, i-Space's Hyperbola-3, and Galactic Energy's Pallas-1. Further into the future, China aims to debut a huge new reusable rocket on the scale of Starship named the Long March 9.
In the United States, there are SpaceX's Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship, along with Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. Rocket Lab is aiming to launch its first medium-lift Neutron rocket with a reusable booster by the end of the year. Relativity Space is developing a partially reusable heavy-lifter named Terran R, and Firefly Aerospace is partnering with Northrop Grumman on the Eclipse rocket, which officials say will eventually have a recoverable and reusable first stage. Stoke Space has the bolder ambition of a fully reusable rocket called Nova.
Several European companies also plan to test reusable rocket technology, but their vehicles are not as mature as many of the US and Chinese rockets. Rocket builders in India, Japan, and Russia have reuse in their roadmaps, with varying degrees of realism.
The proliferation of Chinese rocket companies, scattered across four land-based spaceports and multiple ocean-going launch platforms, should set up China to quickly ramp up its launch cadence.
"It probably won't be but a few years before they're able to achieve a much higher launch cadence," Galbreath said. "They also have more launch sites than the United States currently, so if you couple their number of sites with reusability, they could surpass us in terms of launch rate, which in and of itself is more of a pride thing. But it's the capability that's being launched as a result of that that could actually have a significant impact on our competition, and if we got to it, a conflict.
"There's nothing wrong with competition as long as it's peaceful," Galbreath said. "That can drive innovation, but I'm concerned that the historic example of Chinese behavior has not always remained peaceful. So, we have to look at everything they do carefully. On the one hand, they're competing with SpaceX, but we know that because of the way China has organized its military, its space capabilities, all under military control, that there is significant utility that their armed forces will receive from this race."
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https://www.slashgear.com/2208743/why-navy-submarine-propeller-designs-are-kept-secret/
Militaries around the world frequently release photographs and videos of submarines entering or leaving port. Yet if you look closely at them, one detail is typically missing: the propeller.
[...] At first glance, a submarine propeller may not seem all that different from one found on a commercial ship. However, every aspect of its design is carefully engineered to help the vessel move as quietly as possible through the water. Put another way, naval propeller design places stealth above propeller efficiency. Stealth is achieved by minimizing cavitation, which is the sudden implosion of vapor bubbles when the speed of propeller blades drops local water pressure below its vapor point, creating an acoustic signature that can be tracked by the enemy. Details such as the number of blades, their shape, curvature, pitch, and even the precision with which they are manufactured all influence the amount of noise and vibration produced as the submarine travels beneath the surface. While those differences may appear subtle to the casual observer, they can have a significant impact on a submarine's ability to remain hidden during operations.
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According to the official press release, the Apex Recordhunter drone was developed over the last year and serves as a technology demonstrator for next-gen electrically powered drones. Tellingly, Ukrainian engineers are also working on this project under the auspices of WIY Drones, a branch of Quantum Systems. It will also be attempting record-breaking speed challenges in Ukraine, as the Apex Recordhunter is being assessed for future interceptor drone programs.
So, we might have a flurry of new drone speed records on the way, and it wouldn’t be a great surprise if the Apex Recordhunter drone pushes past the 700 km/h (435 mph) milestone.
Like with the Apex Recordhunter drone, the Blackbird speed record remains unofficial, as they haven’t had a verification that requires a certified independent observer, verified measurement equipment, documentation including a submission, followed by a controlled two-way run.
At the same time, WIY Drones, part of the Quantum Systems Group, is targeting two official Ukrainian speed records during planned testing expected next week.
- STRILA Interceptor – Highest speed achieved by an FPV interceptor drone carrying a 0.5 kg payload.
- SPYS – Highest speed achieved by an anti-aircraft class FPV interceptor drone.
These initiatives reflect WIY's continued development of high-performance interceptor systems designed to counter increasingly fast and maneuverable aerial threats, building on the company's operational experience and its growing role within the Quantum Systems Group.
Mainstream news sources note that Gulf States are rapidly eating through their air defense supplies. Contrasts are made between the costs of dispatching Ukrainian drone interceptors ($1,000 to $2,000) vs a Patriot missile (~$4 million). It isn't all about the cost, though. Supplies of Patriot missiles are also more constrained. Some commentators note that more Patriot missiles have been fired during the Iran war than Ukraine has been supplied during the last four years.
Another thing in the Ukrainian interceptor drone's favor is that it can be launched and controlled by one person. Patriot missiles need a launcher system and three soldiers for a one-off launch, but around 90 personnel for full sustained operation and maintenance.
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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-higher-blood-glucose-linked-faster.html
The human brain is known to naturally change with age, shrinking in size and volume after people reach their 30s or 40s. In some cases, however, it can age faster than expected, which can increase the risk of early memory loss, cognitive decline and some brain-related disorders.
Faster brain aging has been linked to various neurological and psychiatric disorders, as well as some neurodegenerative diseases. The factors that influence the speed at which the brain ages, however, have not yet been clearly and comprehensively elucidated.
Researchers at Jilin University and China Medical University recently analyzed available neuroimaging, genomic and biological data to better understand the contribution of metabolic processes (i.e., the chemical reactions that transform food into energy) to brain aging. Their findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that higher levels of glucose in the blood are associated with accelerated brain aging.
Publication details:
Zhirong Li et al, Metabolomic signatures of brain aging: A multimodal and genetic study, Molecular Psychiatry (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41380-026-03703-3
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Volkswagen has reported weak sales numbers, with a significant drop in China:
Volkswagen reported weak sales numbers on Friday, a day after the giant German automaker announced plans to slash the number of models by nearly half as sales plunged, particularly in China.
The Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said group sales fell 8.6% in the second quarter to just under 2.1 million vehicles, with sales in China alone plummeted by more than one-third.
After a board meeting on Thursday, Volkswagen said its "fundamental realignment" over the last three years had reached its next phase, announcing plans to streamline the model lineup by up to half, without providing specifics.
[...] Volkswagen cited dramatic change over the last year, including geopolitical tensions, rising costs mainly through tariffs, and increasing regulatory requirements alongside growing competition.
Related: Ranked: The Car Brands With the Fewest Problems in 2026
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For about a century, quantum mechanics, QM, has required the use of complex numbers, but according to a recently published peer reviewed paper in PRL, given a large amount of mathematical fooling around, it's possible to do QM solely with real numbers. That's very unexpected and very cool and the future is going to be very interesting!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.17307
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/4k13-sdjh
There's been an effort in recent years to formulate quantum mechanics without complex numbers, slowly chipping away at existing QM theory. This paper solves the last remaining problem, and now AFAIK the entire QM system works, or is compatible, or at least not disproven yet, when doing QM calcs using only real number space. The conclusion of the abstract kind of says it all "Thus, we argue that real-valued quantum mechanics cannot be falsified, and therefore the use of complex numbers is a matter of convenience."
I read, or tried to read the paper, back in March last year when the free preprint was uploaded to arxiv and I see it successfully made it through peer review and was published in PRL three weeks ago. AFAIK, nobody has successfully shot it down in the last three weeks, so this interesting project is likely to be successfully completed. Apparently, they have done it!
Effects:
This is one of those accomplishments like when a century ago they proved 1+1=2 solely using set theory. That specific example is not immediately useful, a century later, and note that set theory accomplishment from the 1910s is still pretty useless IRL, but the point of the effort was that they successfully connected two "very large theories" that were not supposed to be connectable. It's not supposed to be possible to QM without complex numbers. A somewhat more famous and wildly profitable theory unification would be when the separate theory of electrical fields and theory of magnetic fields were connected (see Maxwell, etc) I'd say the theory of electromagnetism has had quite an effect on the world since it was discovered... The accomplishment in the paper will probably has an impact in between the two examples above.
Trivially, textbooks will need to be updated such that QM does not have a mandatory inherent requirement for complex numbers, although the formulation is simpler if you use them. Sort of like you don't have to use logarithms to multiply numbers, but it sure is easier to manufacture slide rules if you use logarithms to multiply numbers...
I always found it philosophically distasteful that the most accurate model we have for subatomic particles IRL, requires imaginary sqrt(-1) math. It only took a century to prove it does not. The main paper itself is only about five pages and seems pretty clear, its the dozen page long appendix thats mathematically a bit of a beast to get thru.
There will probably be an unpredictable effect on unification theories. I'd sure be excited to hear a news story in a year or two about some dude who has been sitting on an experimental pet string theory or loop quantum gravity or some other misc theory for years (decades?) that would unify gravity and QM into one theory that "was obviously wrong because it required a QM expressible without complex numbers" well its 2026 and we got one of those now, so really big things might happen really soon. Or maybe not.
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A new dental robot is in development at the University of Basel in Switzerland to help with tooth drilling. It's called the MIR, or Miniature Intraoral Robot, and its bite-sized design allows it to fit inside a patient's mouth.
The aim is to speed up the process of fitting a new crown when tooth decay is discovered. Today, a patient with tooth decay needs multiple follow-up appointments to prepare the tooth for the new crown, including fitting a temporary crown. With the MIR, a dentist could scan the patient's mouth and order a new crown during the first appointment, reducing the number of visits required.
The robot's larger components, including the motor and controls, are kept outside the mouth and connected to the robot via cables and a drive shaft. It's similar to the process used in cars to transfer motion from the motor to the wheels.
The dental robot attaches directly to the patient's teeth.
The robot is mounted to a custom-fitted dental splint, which attaches to the teeth. If the patient moves their head, the robot moves with it.
So far it's been tested on fake ceramic teeth in a fake patient's mouth but it's not yet ready to be used on a human. The team plans to add sensors and a camera so the robot can keep track of its position, even during a power outage.
To see the robot in action, check out the video in this article.
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The attempt by Australia's Securities Exchange (ASX) to replace its core trading platform with a blockchain-based system has ended with an A$20.5 million fine ($14.2 million/£10.6 million), further humiliation after the project flopped.
The ASX runs a platform called the Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) to process and track trades on its exchange. In 2017, the ASX decided to replace CHESS, citing difficulties maintaining the application, which the bourse coded in COBOL and ran in OpenVMS on Itanium processors.
The ASX is a listed company so its own shares trade on CHESS.
The organization decided to replace CHESS with blockchain-based architecture. As explained in its 2019 annual report [PDF], the ASX believed its decision would help it "develop new services that improve the efficiency and standardisation of processes, reduce operational risk, and create new opportunities for growth and innovation."
That optimism was utterly misplaced because the project foundered and missed deadline after deadline.
But in February 2022, the ASX issued a statement [PDF] in which it described the project as "progressing well, with the fully integrated industry test environment open and operating successfully."
In the months that followed, the organization issued a string of statements about difficulties with the project and expected deployment delays. The ASX ended up abandoning the project.
In 2024, financial regulator the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) sued, alleging that claim all was well with the CHESS replacement was a misleading statement. The regulator argued that as both the market operator, and a listed company itself, any misleading statements from ASX had the potential to undermine confidence in the entire Australian securities market.
ASX and ASIC settled the matter in June, and the bourse admitted [PDF] to having misled investors.
Australia's Federal Court today handed down its judgement in the matter, noted that the ASX admitted its errors, but still ordered the bourse pay the A$20.5 million fine, plus ASIC's A$3 million ($2.1 million/£1.55 million) costs.
A parliamentary report on the project found three reasons why it failed. One was that the ASX didn't properly define its objectives. Another was that the company kept adding new requirements but started building the CHESS replacement anyway, meaning the planning and deployment phases of the project overlapped.
The report also found "scalability risks were not properly identified and managed; with the result that it was never clear whether the proposed blockchain technology could in fact adequately replace the existing CHESS system."
Those problems weren't apparent to the outside world, where the Blockchain community regarded the ASX's decision as a sign distributed ledger technology was suitable for even the mission-critical role of running a stock exchange.
The Register offers that assessment based on this account of AWS investigating whether it should get into the blockchain business. The author, a former AWS exec, explains how he was sent to Wall Street to research Blockchain, and often heard the opinion that the ASX's project meant the technology must have merit.
AWS did not become a major blockchain player. And the ASX clearly regrets making the attempt.
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The agency is giving autonomous vehicle makers until the end of July to figure out a solution:
The US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is demanding action from autonomous car makers after identifying "a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders" over the past months. Jonathan Morrison, the agency's administrator, wrote a letter addressing the developers and issuing a call to action. Emergency situations are not rare or "edge cases," he wrote, so he wants AV developers and operators focus their resources on fixing the issue immediately.
While the NHTSA didn't give specific examples, there have been news about self-driving vehicles getting in the way of ambulances and fire trucks, like in the image above, for years. After a deadly shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas in March, a Waymo vehicle blocked an ambulance that was responding to the incident. While an officer was able to manually drive the Waymo robotaxi out of the way, it cost them a few minutes to resolve the problem.
According to Wired, emergency first responder leaders told regulators during a meeting in March that they were becoming frustrated at the behavior of autonomous vehicles on the streets. They said they've had to spend time during emergencies resolving problems with frozen or stuck cars. Officials from San Francisco and Austin, where Waymo's robotaxi service has been in operation for a while now, said the company's vehicles have been getting worse. They've apparently been seeing "backsliding" in the AVs' performance, with the vehicles now committing more traffic violations.
San Francisco Fire Department chief Patrick Rabbitt, reportedly said that Waymo vehicles have recently been freezing and blocking the department's fire stations and trucks. Austin officials echoed what Rabbitt said. Waymo vehicles have also been "freezing up" in the city and have been failing to recognize first responders' hand signals. Dealing with the company's robotaxis are costing them precious time and preventing them from responding to emergencies in a timely manner.
"Every second matters when law enforcement officers, firefighters, or paramedics are answering a call because lives are on the line. That is why human drivers who impede these operations are subject to fines and even jail time," Morrison wrote in his letter. "So, when an AV disrupts first responders or impedes an emergency vehicle, it ceases to be a minor software anomaly. The technology driving alongside them must support their efforts and get out of the way, not disrupt their life saving mission or compound the dangers they face."
Morrison said the NHTSA will schedule meetings with autonomous vehicle makers by the end of July to hear their solutions, giving them less than a month to conjure up a response to the agency's call to action.
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Doctors find grey fluid and dead, metallic flesh inside poisoned woman's hip:
A 56-year-old woman was admitted to a hospital with an array of alarming symptoms that were only getting worse. For eight weeks, she had a painful "pins and needles" feeling that started in both of her feet and then began working its way up her legs. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was unable to feel her feet on the ground. She frequently stumbled and clutched at walls to stay up. But the tingling numbness was moving into her hands, too. Then came neurological symptoms. She told her doctors about short-term memory problems and difficulty concentrating. She was irritable and had no appetite. She was experiencing heart palpitations, too.
According to a case report this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, her doctors looked through her medical history for clues, finding nothing that immediately stood out. She had high blood pressure, a history of anxiety and depression, and hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid). They did notice that, although she had managed the thyroid problem for more than a decade at the same dose of medication, she had been switched four weeks earlier to a stronger dose. But the dosage change didn't immediately raise any red flags.
She also had a history of hip problems. Twenty years before, she had a hip replacement that stemmed from an injury she sustained in a car crash ten years before that. While more than 90 percent of hip replacements last at least 30 years, the woman's started failing her after 19.
The year before her current condition, the hip prosthesis had become dislocated. At the time, doctors were able to put it back into position without surgery, but she continued to have pain and problems walking. Imaging also indicated that the lining in the hip socket was failing. So about three months before her alarming symptoms developed, she had surgery at a different medical facility to replace parts of her artificial hip joint, a surgery described as a hip "revision."
[...] At that point, the records from her hip revision came in. The report clarified that 20 years ago, the woman had received a titanium and ceramic hip joint. Specifically, the joint included a titanium shell (acetabular shell) that fit into the hip bone, a ceramic liner in that shell, then a ceramic ball (femoral head) on the top of a titanium stem (femoral stem) that extended into her thigh bone (femur). Over time, the ceramic liner in the acetabular shell shattered, and the ceramic femoral head began directly moving against the titanium shell.
During the hip revision, a surgical team replaced the destroyed ceramic liner with one made of polyethylene. They also replaced the ceramic femoral head with a cobalt–chromium alloy one. The original titanium acetabular shell and femoral stem were kept in place. The report noted that the team had to do extensive cleaning of the woman's hip to try to clear out all the fragments of the wrecked ceramic liner that had scattered in the joint and surrounding tissue.
After seeing the report, the woman's doctors immediately understood the problem: She had severe cobalt poisoning.
[...] The one thing that didn't fit was the rapid progression and severity of her toxicity. In cases of cobalt toxicity linked to hip replacements, the symptoms usually develop over many months, not weeks, as in the woman's case. The doctors speculated that after the revision was done, there may still have been ceramic microparticles from the previous shattered liner left in the joint. Those particles may have been grinding in the joint, causing mechanical wear on the cobalt-chromium femoral head that released cobalt into the surrounding tissue and bloodstream.
The doctors sent the woman to have a second hip revision surgery. When surgeons opened the joint, they immediately understood why her toxicity had progressed so quickly. A pool of grey, metallic fluid filled the joint while the tissues and muscles around the hip were necrotic and stained silver-gray with cobalt. (A picture of what the surgeons saw is here, but be warned that it's graphic.)
Surgeons extensively cleaned the joint, trying to remove all of the dead, cobalt-infused tissue. They also replaced the cobalt-chromium femoral head with one made of ceramic and replaced the old polyethylene liner with a new polyethylene liner. The same day, doctors started the woman on a chelation therapy to clear the cobalt out of her body.
Three days after the surgery, lab tests came back with the level of cobalt in her blood. Before surgery, the tests found she had 592 nanograms per milliliter of cobalt in her blood. A normal value is less than 10 ng/mL. Her chromium level was 62.4 ng/mL, while a normal level is less than 0.2 ng/mL.
[...] In the case report, her doctors note that the use of cobalt–chromium alloy in hip replacements has declined "substantially" in the last 15 years. They remain in use for some purposes, though, such as certain types of hip revisions. When they cause toxicity, it's usually due to mechanical stress over long periods and specifically involves cobalt; chromium isn't as much of a concern. The kind of chromium used in implants is predominantly trivalent (not the hexavalent kind in environmental pollution). Chromium can damage bone near the implant, but it has relatively limited uptake by cells and isn't linked to systemic toxicity like cobalt.
In the woman's case, the daily grind of residual ceramic debris from her previous artificial hip significantly sped up wear-and-tear of the cobalt-chromium femoral head, which in turn sped up the release of cobalt, causing her systemic toxic illness, the doctors concluded.
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