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upstart writes:

Cosmic mystery of the impossibly high-energy neutrino solved by "dark charge" model of black holes :

In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with an impossibly huge amount of energy. In fact, no known sources anywhere in the universe can produce that much energy, 100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, Earth's most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a quasi-extremal primordial black hole, explodes.

Black holes exist, and we have a good understanding of their life cycle: an old, large star runs out of fuel, implodes in a massively powerful supernova, and leaves behind an area of spacetime with such intense gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape. These black holes are incredibly heavy and are essentially stable.

But, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in 1970, another kind of black hole – a primordial black hole – could be created not by the collapse of a star, but from the universe's primordial conditions shortly after the Big Bang. Primordial black holes exist only in theory so far. And, like standard black holes, they're so massively dense that almost nothing can escape them ... which is what makes them black. However, despite their density, primordial black holes could be much lighter than the black holes we have so far observed. Furthermore, Hawking showed that primordial black holes could slowly emit particles via what is now known as Hawking radiation if they got hot enough.

Andrea Thamm, co-author of the new research and assistant professor of physics at UMass Amherst, said:

The lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be and the more particles it will emit. As primordial black holes evaporate, they become ever lighter, and so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explosion. It's that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://gizmodo.com/theres-a-new-term-for-workers-freaking-out-over-being-replaced-by-ai-2000723019

There isn't a ton of evidence to suggest that the introduction of AI has led to significant job losses, yet. But it has led to a significant amount of talk about job losses, and that appears to be taking a real toll on people. According to research published in the journal Cureus and spotted by Futurism, workers are increasingly suffering from distress caused by the constant fear of being replaced, and it's gotten so bad that it needs its own term.

The researchers propose calling this new, modern anxiety "AI replacement dysfunction" or AIRD. The authors define it as a "new, proposed clinical construct describing the psychological and existential distress that could be experienced by individuals facing the threat or reality of job displacement due to artificial intelligence (AI)." The condition carries with it several common symptoms including anxiety, insomnia, depression, and identity confusion "that may reflect deeper fears about relevance, purpose, and future employability." It can also lead to sufferers dealing with additional challenges like psychiatric disorders and substance abuse.

The anxiety over AI is definitely real. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 71% of respondents said they were concerned that AI will put "too many people out of work permanently." Pew Research found that more than half of Americans are worried about how AI in the workplace will impact their jobs, and most lower- and middle-class people believe AI will worsen their job prospects in the future. Another study found that people working in jobs particularly susceptible to automation are more likely to report feeling more stress and other negative emotions.

And while surprisingly few job cuts have actually been attributed to AI directly (despite the fact that many companies have used AI as cover for broader layoffs), there certainly does seem to be damage being done to the workforce, as it relates to entry-level roles, in particular. Early-career workers are definitely having a much harder time finding jobs, which can at least in part be attributed to companies being more willing to turn over that labor to AI. But the reality is that the economy sucks regardless of the introduction of technological innovation, and the companies responsible for building AI benefit from the narrative that their models are capable of doing human-level work. So hearing about AI taking over your job is basically unavoidable, whether the threat is real or not.

While AIRD isn't an accepted clinical diagnosis yet, the researchers have created a framework to help identify it, including a screening questionnaire designed to help clinicians spot potential symptoms. Treatments for the condition will be up to the clinician, but the researchers highlight Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and other cognitive restructuring techniques to "help patients build psychological resilience and restore a coherent sense of self."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ten days ago, the social chat app Discord announced that it would launch “teen-by-default” settings for its global audience. As part of this update, all new and existing users worldwide will have a teen-appropriate experience, with updated communication settings, restricted access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering that preserves privacy and meaningful connections, the platform said.

This, of course, means that to use Discord the way you are used to, you’ll have to let it scan your face, and the internet wasn’t happy. Many communities quickly announced their move to other platforms. Others, like the security researcher Celeste, who goes by the handle vmfunc, were convinced there would be a workaround.

Together with two other researchers, they set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco-based startup that’s used by Discord for biometric identity verification – and found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a US government authorized server.

More at The Rage

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Software engineer Kevin McDonald has investigated the topology of the Internet itself before. He enjoys the open data archaeology of this nature. In this recent edition, he has used BGP routing to visualize the Internet again.

For the past few years, I've been trying to make the physical reality of the Internet visible with my Internet Infrastructure Map. This map shows the network of undersea fiber-optic cables along with peering bandwidth, grouped by city. I update the map annually, but I don't want to just pull the latest data and call it a day. In this post I discuss how the map evolved this year and what I did to make it happen, but you can skip to the good part by viewing it here: map.kmcd.dev.

For the 2026 edition, I wanted to better answer the question: where does the Internet actually live? By layering on BGP routing tables alongside physical infrastructure data, I'm now closer to answering that question.

The result is a concept I call “Logical Dominance.” Each city's dominance is calculated by summing total address space of IPv4 subnets that are “homed” in that city. How can I tell where IP addresses are homed? This required analyzing global routing tables to trace IP ownership back to specific geographies. Read on to find out how I accomplished this!

Mapping BGP prefixes to specific locations turned out to be a challenge. Use of BGP in this case means that he had to focus on IPv4 this time.

Previously:
(2018) Mapping the Whole IPv4 Internet with Hilbert Curves
(2016) Revisiting the Carna Botnet
(2014) Undersea Cables Wiring the Earth

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/palo_alto_q2_26/

If enterprises are implementing AI, they're not showing it to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who on Tuesday said business adoption of the tech lags consumer take-up by at least a couple of years – except for coding assistants.

"Consumers are far outstripping enterprise for the moment, but we expect enterprise will surely and slowly get on that bandwagon," he said on the company's Q2 earnings call.

Arora likened business uptake of AI to the cloud computing shift, which he said took two or three years before enterprises started migrating applications.

"Right now ... tell me how many enterprise AI apps are you using which are driving tremendous amounts of throughput," he asked, and answered himself "I can't think of anything but coding apps."

Coding apps aren't great for Palo Alto's business because they don't generate a lot of network traffic to which it can apply its security smarts. Arora thinks his security vendor peers know this.

"We're all laying the groundwork right now. It is ... sort of an arms race to try and see who can get the AI security sort of platform up and running as quickly as we can."

But the limited enterprise AI adoption Arora has seen does pose some immediate challenges to Palo Alto.

"There is now enterprise adoption that we're beginning to see where customers are running perhaps millions of tokens in one or two particular applications they're working with some of the LLM providers on, and that's where we see the traffic," he said. That traffic is on the LAN and the CEO doesn't think existing networks struggle to handle it.

"I think the challenge right now is consolidating that traffic," he said. "How do you get all the AI traffic to be in one place? So you can understand it, provide visibility, look at the ability to control it and be able to act on it."

The CEO said that as this sort of AI-related traffic grows "it needs a different set of controls and tools."

Palo Alto is already getting its hands on those tools, as on Tuesday put to bed rumours it would acquire agentic AI endpoint security startup Koi by announcing it's done the deal.

Arora pointed to Palo Alto's recent acquisitions of Chronosphere and CyberArk as further evidence of the company's moves to ensure it builds a portfolio of products to secure the AI enterprises will eventually implement.

The CEO expressed confidence Palo Alto has the products it needs today, saying customers know they can't prepare for AI if they are running a tangle of security tools and are therefore consolidating to the kind of platforms the company offers.

Demand for those products helped Palo Alto to $2.6 billion Q2 revenue for the quarter, which represented 15 percent year-over-year growth.

Execs pointed to the success of the company's subscription offerings, noting 23 percent growth in remaining performance obligations, which now stand at $16 billion. And they predicted Q3 revenue would grow at least 28 percent to land between $2.941 billion and $2.945 billion.

All of those nice numbers didn't impress investors, who knocked six percent off the company's share price – perhaps because they weren't thrilled by predictions that profits will ease.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://gizmodo.com/bacteria-frozen-inside-5000-year-old-ice-cave-is-crazy-resistant-to-antibiotics-2000723002

For decades, antibiotics have been humanity's frontline defense against bacterial infections, yet these essential medications have also led to the rise of drug-resistant "superbugs." Now, researchers have discovered an ancient strain of bacteria that managed to develop this superpower thousands of years before humans ever invented antibiotics.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology describes Psychrobacter SC65A.3, a bacterial strain discovered frozen inside 5,000-year-old layers of cave ice in Romania. Testing revealed that SC65A.3 is resistant to 10 modern antibiotics and carries more than 100 genes linked to resistance despite never being exposed to these drugs.

"Studying microbes such as Psychrobacter SC65A.3 retrieved from millennia-old cave ice deposits reveals how antibiotic resistance evolved naturally in the environment, long before modern antibiotics were ever used," co-author Cristina Purcarea, a senior scientist at the Institute of Biology Bucharest of the Romanian Academy, said in a release.

Antibiotic resistance is an urgent threat to global public health. In the U.S. alone, more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result, according to the CDC's 2019 Antibiotic Resistance Threats Report.

This threat has grown in tandem with the rise of antibiotic use. Antibiotic resistance is a classic example of natural selection: when microbes are exposed to a drug, most die, but a few survive thanks to protective genetic traits. Those survivors then pass their resistance genes onto the next generation, which passes them on to the next, giving rise to superbugs.

While exposure to antibiotics amplifies the prevalence of resistance genes, it does not imbue microbes with these protective traits. Those arise naturally through random genetic mutations and the constant pressure to out-perform other microorganisms in the environment, many of which produce their own antimicrobial compounds.

The ancient Psychrobacter SC65A.3 strain is a perfect example of how these natural processes lead to antibiotic resistance. Purcarea and her colleagues found it inside an 82-foot (25-meter) ice core they extracted from Scarisoara Ice Cave in northwestern Romania. The core represents 13,000 years of climatic history, including the 5,000-year-old ice layers that contained SC65A.3.

In the lab, the researchers isolated various bacterial strains from the core and sequenced their genomes to determine which genes allowed the strain to survive such low temperatures and which promote antimicrobial resistance. When they tested SC65A.3 against 28 widely used antibiotics, they found it was resistant to more than a third of them.

"The 10 antibiotics we found resistance to are widely used in oral and injectable therapies used to treat a range of serious bacterial infections in clinical practice," including tuberculosis, colitis, and urinary tract infections, Purcarea explained.

The findings underscore a frequently overlooked public health threat associated with climate change, according to the study's authors.

"If melting ice releases these microbes, these genes could spread to modern bacteria, adding to the global challenge of antibiotic resistance," Purcarea said. As the global temperature rises, the risk of releasing ancient superbugs into the environment grows. Studying these bacterial strains, however, can also lead to the discovery of unique enzymes and antimicrobial compounds that inspire new drugs and other biotechnological innovations, Purcarea noted.

The SC65A.3 genome contains 11 genes that may be able to kill or stop the growth of other bacteria, fungi, and viruses, for example. It also contains nearly 600 genes with unknown functions, suggesting that many more novel biological mechanisms could be hiding in this superbug's DNA.

"These ancient bacteria are essential for science and medicine," Purcarea said, "but careful handling and safety measures in the lab are essential to mitigate the risk of uncontrolled spread."

Reference:

Frontiers in Microbiology

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/openclaw-security-fears-lead-meta-other-ai-firms-to-restrict-its-use/

Last month, Jason Grad issued a late-night warning to the 20 employees at his tech startup. "You've likely seen Clawdbot trending on X/LinkedIn. While cool, it is currently unvetted and high-risk for our environment," he wrote in a Slack message with a red siren emoji. "Please keep Clawdbot off all company hardware and away from work-linked accounts."

Grad isn't the only tech executive who has raised concerns to staff about the experimental agentic AI tool, which was briefly known as MoltBot and is now named OpenClaw.
[...]
Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw's solo founder, launched it as a free, open source tool last November. But its popularity surged last month as other coders contributed features and began sharing their experiences using it on social media. Last week, Steinberger joined ChatGPT developer OpenAI, which says it will keep OpenClaw open source and support it through a foundation.
[...]
Some cybersecurity professionals have publicly urged companies to take measures to strictly control how their workforces use OpenClaw.
[...]
"Our policy is, 'mitigate first, investigate second' when we come across anything that could be harmful to our company, users, or clients," says Grad, who is cofounder and CEO of Massive, which provides Internet proxy tools to millions of users and businesses. His warning to staff went out on January 26, before any of his employees had installed OpenClaw, he says.
[...]
Some companies concerned about OpenClaw are choosing to trust the cybersecurity protections they already have in place rather than introduce a formal or one-off ban. A CEO of a major software company says only about 15 programs are allowed on corporate devices. Anything else should be automatically blocked, says the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal security protocols.
[...]
Massive, the web proxy company, is cautiously exploring OpenClaw's commercial possibilities. Grad says it tested the AI tool on isolated machines in the cloud and then, last week, released ClawPod, a way for OpenClaw agents to use Massive's services to browse the web. While OpenClaw is still not welcome on Massive's systems without protections in place, the allure of the new technology and its moneymaking potential was too great to ignore. OpenClaw "might be a glimpse into the future. That's why we're building for it," Grad says.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Texas is suing TP-Link Systems, a California-based maker of wi-fi routers, accusing it of concealing its ties to China and potentially exposing American users' home networks to hackers:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the lawsuit on Feb. 17, alleging deceptive marketing practices. Paxton first began investigating TP-Link in October 2025, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has since prohibited state employees from using TP-Link products.

TP-Link, founded in China in 1996, states on its website that it underwent a restructuring in 2024 that split the company into TP-Link Systems and TP-Link Technologies, which serves the mainland Chinese market, and that the two entities are no longer affiliated. Devices sold to U.S. consumers also carry "Made in Vietnam" labels.

Paxton, however, alleges that those "Made in Vietnam" stickers are meant to obscure a supply chain "deeply entrenched in China," where nearly all of TP-Link's components are sourced before being shipped to Vietnam for final assembly.

Those supply-chain ties, the lawsuit claims, leave the company vulnerable to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) counterespionage and national security laws, which require Chinese companies and citizens to assist state intelligence efforts, including providing foreign user data upon request. The complaint also alleges that firmware vulnerabilities in TP-Link hardware have already "exposed millions of consumers to severe cybersecurity risks."

Previously: FCC Orders TP-Link to Allow Third-Party Firmware on Their Routers

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Canadian uranium developer NexGen Energy has held preliminary talks with data centre providers about securing finance for a new mine that could supply fuel for power plants needed for artificial intelligence, its CEO said on Wednesday:

Soaring demand for AI is driving a massive build-out of power-hungry data centres, in turn boosting the need for new generation capacity, including nuclear plants that will require uranium.

To meet that need, NexGen CEO Leigh Curyer said big tech firms will follow the trend set by automakers, who offered finance for battery material mine development several years ago to ensure there was enough supply for an expected boom in demand for electric vehicles.

"It's coming. You've seen it with automakers. These tech companies, they're under an obligation to ensure the hundreds of billions that they are investing in the data centres are going to be powered," he said, speaking at a Melbourne Mining Club event.

NexGen is developing its Rook 1 uranium project in Saskatchewan and has said it expects to finalise a funding package in the second quarter.

As reported on OilPrice.com:

Global electricity demand increased by 3% annually in 2025, following growth of 4.4% in 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its recent Electricity 2026 report.

Between 2026 and 2030, the annual average growth rate would be 3.6%, driven by higher consumption from industry, electric vehicles (EVs), air conditioning, and data centers, according to the agency.

Artificial intelligence, data centers, and advanced manufacturing support the return to growth in power demand in advanced economies, the IEA said.

U.S. electricity demand rose by 2.1% in 2025 and is expected to grow by nearly 2% annually through 2030. The rapid expansion of data centers will drive half of the increase, the agency noted.

Also at ZeroHedge.

Related:

• Microsoft: the Company Doesn't Have Enough Electricity to Install All the AI GPUs in its Inventory
• Data Centers Turn to Commercial Aircraft Jet Engines Bolted Onto Trailers as AI Power Crunch Bites
• OpenAI and Nvidia's $100B AI Plan Will Require Power Equal to 10 Nuclear Reactors
• Meta is Building "Several" Multi-Gigawatt Compute Clusters

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

[Source]: ETH Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich)

Researchers from ETH Zurich have discovered serious security vulnerabilities in three popular, cloud-based password managers. During testing, they were able to view and even make changes to stored passwords.

People who regularly use online services have between 100 and 200 passwords. Very few can remember every single one. Password managers are therefore extremely helpful, allowing users to access all their passwords with just a single master password.

Most password managers are cloud based. A major advantage this offers users is the ability to access their passwords from different devices and also share them with friends and family members. Security is the most important feature of these password managers since, ultimately, users store sensitive data in these encrypted storage platforms, commonly called "vaults". This can also include login details for online banking or credit cards.

Most service providers therefore promote their products with the promise of "zero-knowledge encryption". This means they assure users that their stored passwords are encrypted and even the providers themselves have "zero knowledge" of them and no access to what has been stored. "The promise is that even if someone is able to access the server, this does not pose a security risk to customers because the data is encrypted and therefore unreadable. We have now shown that this is not the case", explains Matilda Backendal.

The team conducted a study to scrutinise the security architecture of three popular password manager providers: Bitwarden, Lastpass and Dashlane. Between them, they serve around 60 million users and have a 23 per cent market share. The researchers demonstrated 12 attacks on Bitwarden, 7 on LastPass and 6 on Dashlane.

[Journal Reference]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/058 (Cryptology ePrint Archive)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Sony has made streaming anime pricier since buying Crunchyroll:

Crunchyroll is one of the most popular streaming platforms for anime viewers. Over the past six years, the service has raised prices for fans, and today, it announced that it's increasing monthly subscription prices by up to 20 percent.

Sony bought Crunchyroll from AT&T in 2020. At the time, Crunchyroll had 3 million paid subscribers and an additional 197 million users with free accounts, which let people watch a limited number of titles with commercials. At the time, Crunchyroll monthly subscription tiers cost $8, $10, or $15.

After its acquisition by Sony, like many large technology companies that buy a smaller, beloved product, the company made controversial changes. The Tokyo-based company folded rival Funimation into Crunchyroll; Sony shut down Funimation, which it bought in 2017, in April 2024.

In the process, Sony erased people's digital Funimation libraries that Funimation originally marketed as being available "forever, but there are some restrictions." Sony also reduced the number of free titles on Crunchyroll in 2022 before eliminating the free option completely on December 31, 2025.
Crunchyroll gets more expensive

Today, Crunchyroll raised prices for its remaining tiers. The cheapest plan, Fan, went from $8 per month to $10 per month. The Mega tier, which allows for streaming from up to four devices simultaneously, went from $12 to $14. The Ultra tier, which supports simultaneous streaming across six devices and includes access to the Crunchyroll Manga app, increased from $16 to $18.

[...] Crunchyroll said that the higher prices would "give fans more of what they love." Today's announcement pointed to "recent and upcoming" changes: teen profiles and PIN protection; multiple profiles; the ability to skip intro theme songs and ending credits; and "expanded device compatibility."

Crunchyroll's price hike may further frustrate subscribers, considering that the streaming service recently eliminated its free tier and acquired one of its strongest, and often cheaper, rivals. The result is that Crunchyroll and Netflix have the lion's share of the anime streaming market. In 2023, Wall Street research firm Bernstein Research reported that Crunchyroll (40 percent) and Netflix (42 percent) controlled 82 percent of the overseas (non-Japanese) anime streaming market.

[...] Anime is an increasingly lucrative opportunity for Sony, and its success so far suggests it won't stray from its strategy.

[...] The silver lining for anime and streaming viewers is that Crunchyroll is demonstrating that a niche service can scale and profit, and that when it does, it can add new experiences and further interest in its specialty. For its part, Crunchyroll recently relaunched its app for reading digital copies of manga. Crunchyroll shuttered its original Manga app in December 2023. The revived app uses an updated revenue-sharing model that's said to better benefit publishers.

Still, the changes that Sony makes to media companies it buys are worth scrutiny, especially as it continues acquiring companies. Sony-owned anime production company Aniplex announced that it bought rival Egg Firm today.

As streaming prices rise, industry consolidation is also picking up steam. More large companies buying and potentially merging streaming services will inevitably impact subscribers' experiences. For these customers, it can be worrying to consider what changes streaming mergers can bring. While there's hope for more features and content, there's also risk for higher prices and fewer options.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

"This is definitely not about dogs," senator says, urging a pause on Ring face scans:

Amazon and Flock Safety have ended a partnership that would've given law enforcement access to a vast web of Ring cameras.

The decision came after Amazon faced substantial backlash for airing a Super Bowl ad that was meant to be warm and fuzzy, but instead came across as disturbing and dystopian.

The ad begins with a young girl surprised to receive a puppy as a gift. It then warns that 10 million dogs go missing annually. Showing a series of lost dog posters, the ad introduces a new "Search Party" feature for Ring cameras that promises to revolutionize how neighbors come together to locate missing pets.

At that point, the ad takes a "creepy" turn, Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a letter urging changes to enhance privacy at the company.

Illustrating how a single Ring post could use AI to instantly activate searchlights across an entire neighborhood, the ad shocked critics like Markey, who warned that the same technology could easily be used to "surveil and identify humans."

Markey suggested that in blasting out this one frame of the ad to Super Bowl viewers, Amazon "inadvertently revealed the serious privacy and civil liberties risks attendant to these types of Artificial Intelligence-enabled image recognition technologies."

In his letter, Markey also shared new insights from his prior correspondence with Amazon that he said exposed a wide range of privacy concerns. Ring cameras can "collect biometric information on anyone in their video range," he said, "without the individual's consent and often without their knowledge." Among privacy risks, Markey warned that Ring owners can retain swaths of biometric data, including face scans, indefinitely. And anyone wanting face scans removed from Ring cameras has no easy solution and is forced to go door to door to request deletions, Markey said.

On social media, other critics decried Amazon's ad as "awfully dystopian," declaring it was "disgusting to use dogs to normalize taking away our freedom to walk around in public spaces." Some feared the technology would be more likely to benefit police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers than families looking for lost dogs.

Amazon's partnership with Flock, announced last October as coming soon, only inflamed those fears. So did the company's recent rollout of a feature using facial recognition technology called "Familiar Faces"—which Markey considers so invasive, he has demanded that the feature be paused.

"What this ad doesn't show: Ring also rolled out facial recognition for humans," Markey posted on X. "I wrote to them months ago about this. Their answer? They won't ask for your consent. This definitely isn't about dogs—it's about mass surveillance."

[...] But while Ring may have hurt its brand, WebProNews, which reports on business strategy in the tech industry, suggested that "the fallout may prove more consequential for Flock Safety than for Ring." For Flock, the Ring partnership represented a meaningful expansion of their business and "data collection capabilities," WebProNews reported. And because this all happened around one of the most-watched TV events of the year, other tech companies may be more hesitant to partner with Flock after Amazon dropped the integration and privacy advocates witnessed the seeming power of their collective outrage.

[...] Ring's statements so far do not "acknowledge the real issue," Scott-Railton said, which is privacy risks. For Ring, it seemed like a missed opportunity to discuss or introduce privacy features to reassure concerned users, he suggested, noting the backlash showed "Americans want more control of their privacy right now" and "are savvy enough to see through sappy dog pics."

"Stop trying to build a surveillance dystopia consumers didn't ask for" and "focus on shipping good, private products," Scott-Railton said.

He also suggested that lawmakers should take note of the grassroots support that could possibly help pass laws to push back on mass surveillance. That could help block not just a potential future partnership with Flock, but possibly also stop Ring from becoming the next Flock.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

The quality of the education that our children are receiving in America's public schools just continues to go down. At one time, the concern was that not enough students were taking advanced courses. But now we have reached a point where a very large portion of our high school graduates cannot read effectively, cannot write effectively and cannot do basic math effectively:

Dr. Kent Ingle is the president of Southeastern University, and he recently authored an excellent piece in which he warned that reading levels among incoming college students are so bad that many are struggling "to understand basic text on a page"...

A stunning report revealed that many university professors now find themselves teaching students who struggle to read, not just to interpret literature or write essays, but to understand basic text on a page. According to Fortune, a growing number of Gen Z students enter college unable to "read effectively," forcing professors to break down even simple passages line by line.

That trend should alarm every parent, employer and policymaker in this country. It is not just an academic concern. It is a cultural crisis.

This is not some random guy that is making these claims.

This is the president of a major university.

[...] Large numbers of students that are entering our colleges must take remedial math courses that teach concepts that should have been taught in elementary and middle school...

Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900—and most of those students don't fully meet middle-school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. Last year, the university, which admits fewer than 30 percent of undergraduate applicants, launched a remedial-math course that focuses entirely on concepts taught in elementary and middle school. (According to the report, more than 60 percent of students who took the previous version of the course couldn't divide a fraction by two.) One of the course's tutors noted that students faced more issues with "logical thinking" than with math facts per se. They didn't know how to begin solving word problems.

The university's problems are extreme, but they are not unique. Over the past five years, all of the other University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, have seen the number of first-years who are unprepared for precalculus double or triple. George Mason University, in Virginia, revamped its remedial-math summer program in 2023 after students began arriving at their calculus course unable to do algebra, the math-department chair, Maria Emelianenko, told me.

Previously: Professors Issue Warning Over Surge in College Students Unable to Read

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Brace Yourself For Price Surges Ahead!

Well, the ongoing AI supercycle has disrupted supply chains, and we have talked about DRAM and NAND before, but it appears HDDs are also in significant demand: according to WD's CEO, Irving Tan, the manufacturer's entire capacity for this year is booked out. Speaking at the Q2 earnings call, Tan revealed that the focus has been on developing products that cater to the needs of enterprise customers. Given the pace of hyperscaler buildout, it's fair to say demand for HDDs will only increase going forward.

Yeah, thanks, Erik. As we highlighted, we're pretty much sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm POs with our top seven customers. And we've also established LTAs with two of them for calendar 2027 and one of them for calendar 2028. Obviously, these LTAs have a combination of volume of exabytes and price.

- WD's CEO

When we talk about major PC-first manufacturers pivoting towards AI, it is clear that demand is coming from the segment, as WD's VP of Investor Relations noted that the company's cloud revenue accounted for 89% of total revenue. In comparison, consumer revenue accounted for just 5%. When the numbers are too distant, as in WD's case, it makes sense on a business level to pivot towards enterprise demand while sidelining the client segment, as every other manufacturer is currently doing. And, in the case of Western Digital, well, this strategy is working for them.

The demand is primarily driven by the large-scale data center buildout occurring worldwide, with HDD requirements being more prevalent in US-based facilities. For those unaware, AI is nothing without data, and to store large quantities of data, CSPs use HDDs, which are the most cost-effective and efficient storage medium. The data scales to exabytes in data centers, encompassing content such as scraped web data, processed data backups, inference logs, and related data. Like AI memory, HDDs have seen massive adoption in recent years, putting suppliers under pressure.

With the AI frenzy, we have seen major PC components go into short supply, and unfortunately, this trend will persist for quite some time before we witness a meaningful recovery.

Original Submission

edinlinux writes:

Humanoid robotics has advanced incredibly in the past year.

This is a robot show by Unitree, a leading Chinese maker that appeared this week during Chinese New Year celebrations on their national CCTV network.

The robots breakdance, do acrobatics, fight with numbchuks [sic]... incredible. The video speaks for itself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUmlv814aJo [4:50 -Ed]

Reuters reported on the Gala a couple of days ago, saying:

Four rising humanoid robot startups - Unitree Robotics, Galbot, Noetix and MagicLab - demonstrated their products at the gala, a televised event and touchstone for China comparable to the Super Bowl for the United States.

The programme's first three sketches prominently featured humanoid robots, including a lengthy martial arts demonstration where over a dozen Unitree humanoids performed sophisticated fight sequences waving swords, poles and nunchucks in close proximity to human children performers.

The fight sequences included a technically ambitious one that imitated the wobbly moves and backward falls of China's "drunken boxing" martial arts style, showing innovations in multi-robot coordination and fault recovery - where a robot can get up after falling down.

The programme's opening sketch also prominently featured Bytedance's AI chatbot Doubao, while four Noetix humanoid robots appeared alongside human actors in a comedy skit and MagicLab robots performed a synchronised dance with human performers during the song "We Are Made in China".

The hype surrounding China's humanoid robot sector comes as major players including AgiBot and Unitree prepare for initial public offerings this year, and domestic artificial intelligence startups release a raft of frontier models during the lucrative nine-day Lunar New Year public holiday.

Last year's gala stunned viewers with 16 full-size Unitree humanoids twirling handkerchiefs and dancing in unison with human performers.

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Behind the spectacle of robots running marathons and executing kung-fu kicks and backflips, China has positioned robotics and AI at the heart of its next-generation AI+ manufacturing strategy, betting that productivity gains from automation will offset pressures from its ageing workforce.

Original Submission