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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Understanding why our nearest star does what it does:

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has enabled scientists to trace magnetic switchbacks in the solar wind's magnetic field back to their source at the Sun.

"Switchback" is the name given to an S-shaped kink in the solar wind's magnetic field – a sudden and large deflection. In 2022, the spacecraft gave scientists a full view of the structure (confirming the S-shape), but the origin remained up for debate. At the time, the probe's data suggested it might be near the Sun's surface, but a recent flight through a switchback allowed scientists to identify the source.

"Solar Orbiter flew through a very large switchback," said Jesse Coburn of the French National Center for Scientific Research / Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (CNRS/LPP. "Because of this, we were able to sample rarely observed particles there that have tell-tale fingerprints of their origin."

Solar Orbiter's Solar Wind Analyser instrument (SWA) was used to sample the switchback's plasma, and it came up with particles that could only have formed within hot magnetic loops at the surface of the Sun.

Coburn said, "There are two main competing theories for how a switchback, and by extension the solar wind, forms.

"The specific mix of particles detected by Solar Orbiter is the smoking gun for a formation process known as 'interchange reconnection'."

This occurs when parts of the Sun with different magnetic properties interact. Some have field lines that stretch away into space. Others are closed and extend into space before looping back. When the two types meet, the lines can snap open, releasing previously trapped plasma into space.

The other theory focuses on processes involving waves and turbulence.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

TP-Link can't sell latest routers in US, still needs exemption from FCC ban:

TP-Link is facing more legal troubles in the US as Florida and three other states filed lawsuits alleging that it lied to consumers about its connections to China and the risks of its routers being exploited by Chinese state hackers.

The lawsuits were filed yesterday, about six months after the Federal Communications Commission announced a sweeping ban on consumer-grade routers produced wholly or partly outside of the US. Numerous router makers have obtained exemptions to the ban, but the Trump administration so far has not granted one to TP-Link.

Router makers that received exemptions include Netgear, Asus, Adtran, Amazon and its Eero subsidiary, Calix, Nokia, SpaceX's Starlink division, and others. For now, TP-Link is unable to sell its latest Wi-Fi 8 routers in the US, though models approved before the ban can still be sold.

The state lawsuits claim that TP-Link misled US consumers by telling them its routers are safe. The suits allege that TP-Link committed unfair and deceptive trade acts in violation of the states' consumer protection laws.

"Chinese state-sponsored hackers exploited TP-Link routers sitting in American living rooms," Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said while announcing his lawsuit filed in a Florida county court. Uthmeier said Florida "will not allow families to be misled into handing their personal data to the Chinese Communist Party. We are seeking an injunction, restitution for Florida consumers, and [financial] penalties under Florida law."

[...] "The coordinated lawsuits are built on false premises," said Steve Kovsky, TP-Link's corporate affairs officer. "They do nothing to advance national security while unfairly penalizing an industry-leading US company." TP-Link said that for the past few months it has "provided state regulators with clear, verifiable documentation demonstrating two fundamental facts: TP-Link Systems devices sold in the US are manufactured in Vietnam and TP-Link Systems is an independent, US company that is not owned or controlled by any foreign government."

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and six others agree to changes, but the ICO isn't done asking questions:

Ten of the world's biggest AI developers have agreed to tighten their handling of personal data following scrutiny by Britain's privacy watchdog, which is now turning its attention to autonomous AI agents that don't always play by the rules.

The recently rebranded Information Commission's Office (ICO) said Thursday that Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Cohere, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Stability AI have either made changes or committed to doing so after the regulator examined their compliance with UK data protection law.

These include clearer explanations of how personal information is used to train AI models, better ways for people to exercise their data rights, and tougher assessments of developers' safeguards.

The commitments follow a supervisory program launched in 2025 that initially covered 11 developers. That number dropped to ten after the ICO paused its engagement with Elon Musk's xAI to pursue a separate formal investigation into its Grok chatbot.

The watchdog isn't declaring victory just yet. It's monitoring whether developers deliver on their promises and admits that current AI training practices still pose problems under UK data protection law.

Developers still have some explaining to do over personal data buried in their models, particularly sensitive information, and how people are supposed to get their details removed once an AI has been trained on them. There's also the risk of personal information being extracted from models, including data developers never intended them to retain.

The ICO acknowledged that some of these issues will require cooperation between industry, regulators, and government. Getting companies to promise changes is one thing. Making today's AI models comply with the law is another.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/careers/experts-starting-out-stem-career-working-life-tcs-fidelity-investments

Fidelity Investments' Eimear Coffey and TCS' Jennifer Scott explore how a diverse skillset, an open mind and adaptability can form the foundations of a strong career for school leavers and graduates.

Starting a STEM career, or indeed a career in any industry, can be a nerve-wracking experience, as the company or institution you choose to align yourself with has the potential to shape how your professional life unfolds. 

It is also a time of great excitement as you get to put all that you have learned up to now to the test and start to build the foundations of what will hopefully be a long, dynamic and rewarding career. But how do you get started?

For those looking for the most straightforward route, Jennifer Scott, the head of cyber delivery and operations, at Tata Consultancy Services Ireland (TCS), explained that young people who enjoy STEM subjects and are interested in a tech, engineering or science career should look into a Bachelor of Science degree. 

She told SiliconRepublic.com, “This is definitely the most linear entry path to a career in STEM. Organisations, such as TCS, looking to onboard fresh talent into STEM roles, look to universities for graduates. Some organisations contribute to course and curriculum content so are invested in the graduates who pass through these courses.”

It is worth noting that this is not the only route. Scott explained that individuals who have left school, who have drive, ambition and the support of an organisation with early-career starter resources, can start out by making a strong impact in an operational role, before moving on to a more technical position.  

She said, “This is a longer route to landing a job in STEM but the opportunity for growth is definitely there.”

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ernst Abbe worked out in 1873 that even a perfect lens cannot separate details smaller than about half a wavelength of light, which is why a galaxy millions of light-years away photographs cleanly while a virus does not. The limit was not beaten by better glass. It was beaten two other ways: hold a probe closer to the surface than one wavelength and catch the evanescent field (near-field microscopy, ~6 nm lateral resolution demonstrated), or make fluorescent molecules blink one at a time so their centers can be found precisely (super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). Short writeup with sources:

https://telegra.ph/The-Near-Is-Blurrier-Than-the-Far-10-12

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://www.axios.com/2026/10/09/ai-companies-day-after-major-attack

Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.

The first example of significant real-world harm caused by unsafe AI would turn an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as President Trump for his reluctance to regulate it.

Many AI industry insiders told Axios they believe a major event will occur in the next six to 12 months.

The plan for WHEN, not if, their product f*cks over humanity.

When do you think it will happen?
By whom?
Outcome?

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/10/04/spies-prime-ministers-and-balls-the-bbc-domesday-project-40/5300383

Decades before the modern web, the BBC Domesday Project dared to archive an entire nation using.... what else – massive LV-ROM (LaserVision Read Only Memory) LaserDiscs.

To mark the impending 40th anniversary of the BBC Domesday Project's release, the UK's Centre for Computing History (CCH) hosted a celebration at its museum on September 19, bringing together several of the original team members responsible for the system.

One was Mike Tibbetts, an assistant to Peter Armstrong, the BBC producer behind the project. Tibbetts revealed that the UK's domestic intelligence service, MI5, took an interest in the system, but "they didn't understand a word of what we were doing!"

"And on one occasion, Peter and I had to give a presentation, or Peter gave the presentation to [former prime minister] Margaret Thatcher, and well, I'm not sure she understood what we were doing either..."

What they were doing was compiling a trove of data that will prove invaluable to historians in the years to come, even if the politicians of the era looked nervously on at the amount of data being handed over to the public.

The Domesday Project was intended to be a modern version of the Domesday Book, compiled after the 1066 Norman invasion of England. The original book surveyed most of England and parts of Wales and was used by the King to assess dues owed to him. 900 years later, the name was given to a project in which more than a million people participated to provide a snapshot of life in the UK.

Participants (many of whom were school children) contributed content, which was linked with maps, photographs, and other data. It was all compiled onto a pair of LaserDiscs – the Community Disc and the National Disc – and accessed via a BBC Master computer and a Philips VP415 LaserVision player.

Armstrong came up with the idea, and the team compiled the project between 1984 and 1986. The system was eventually released at the end of 1986, and was aimed at schools, libraries, and universities. It was, alas, not a roaring sales success – the exact price per unit is difficult to pin down, but approximately £5,000 is a fair estimate. Government subsidies lowered the cost to around £3,000, but it was still out of reach for much of its audience.

As a resource, however, it has huge value, which will only increase as the years pass. Tibbetts drew parallels to the original Domesday Book, which took centuries for historians to recognize as a vital resource. "Perhaps," he mused, "40 years is simply too short a time for historians to perceive the Domesday Project as a sufficiently distant benchmark of useful research."

Perhaps. However, while hundreds of years have passed since the Domesday Book was compiled, the years have not been kind to the Domesday Project, thanks to technology's inexorable march.

"The original Domesday Book had one huge advantage over the Domesday Project when it comes to future-proofing and longevity," explained Tibbetts. "The vellum pages of the original Domesday have been preserved for 940 years so far, and it's likely to continue to exist well into the future.

"It took very few years for the bespoke technology of the BBC Domesday Project to be overtaken by universal media technologies."

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/exxonmobils-own-scientists-doubted-climate-fixes-the-company-hyped/

If there was a year the world began waking up to climate change, it might have been 1988. That June, the NASA climatologist James Hansen testified to Congress that the climate was warming and would continue to do so as long as humans pumped fossil fuel pollution into the atmosphere. Months later, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And, just weeks before the U.N. vote, Frank Sprow of Exxon's corporate research department warned his colleagues in an internal memo, "If a worldwide consensus emerges that action is needed to mitigate against Greenhouse gas effects, substantial negative impacts on Exxon could occur."

Sprow's memo is part of a batch of previously undisclosed documents released earlier this year without fanfare as part of an ongoing lawsuit Massachusetts filed against ExxonMobil in 2019. While the memo was quoted in a 2023 article by The Wall Street Journal, it has not been published in full. Several other documents included in the filings are being reported on here for the first time, including more recent statements from Exxon scientists challenging the company's climate-solution claims about its work on biofuels and carbon capture and storage.

While the documents align with hundreds of confidential files that have previously come to light through reporting by Inside Climate News and other news organizations, as well as lawsuits and other sources, experts say they provide new details on internal deliberations at Exxon from the 1980s to the 2010s.

The release of the documents comes at a pivotal time for the oil industry and for efforts to hold it accountable for its role fueling climate change. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments from Exxon and oil producer Suncor Energy that a lawsuit filed by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, should be halted. The outcome of that decision could decide whether more than two dozen other claims against oil companies proceed.

Aaron Regunberg, director of climate accountability at the advocacy group Public Citizen, said the documents from the Massachusetts case underscore why Exxon and other companies are fighting to block the lawsuits from even proceeding to the discovery phase.

"They are really scared of the public finding out about this reality," Regunberg said of oil companies. The Massachusetts filings, he said, suggest "that we have seen just a sliver of the evidence that they actually have that they've spent decades knowingly deceiving the public about this crisis. How many more reports are they sitting on?"

Most of the lawsuits assert that oil companies should help pay the escalating costs being imposed on the public by climate-fueled extreme weather because they knew the risks their products posed but worked to publicly question climate science and stymie efforts to curb emissions. Those costs have surged, topping $100 billion in the U.S. in four of the last five years. Exxon, meanwhile, reported nearly $19 billion in earnings over the first six months of this year alone.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/10/08/samsung-eyes-80b-quarterly-profit-as-memory-buyers-pay-the-price/5301933

Samsung Electronics expects third-quarter revenue to more than double and operating profit to reach nearly nine times last year's level as the AI infrastructure boom fuels demand for memory.

The South Korean company is among the major memory manufacturers benefiting from demand for chips used in datacenter servers and GPUs.

Although Samsung will not report its full earnings until the end of this month, its guidance puts sales at between ₩194 trillion and ₩196 trillion (about $145 billion) for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. This is more than double the ₩86.1 trillion ($63 billion) for the same period last year.

The company expects operating profit of between ₩107.3 trillion and ₩107.5 trillion (about $80 billion), compared with just ₩12.2 trillion ($9 billion) for Q3 2025, roughly 8.8 times last year's figure.

Samsung's brief guidance note does not break down performance by business division. Demand for memory, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used alongside AI processors, is likely to be a major contributor.

The demand for DRAM and NAND for AI applications is driving profits across the semiconductor industry. Analyst Gartner forecast that the sector as a whole will bring in $1.6 trillion during 2026, almost double the revenue seen in 2025.

Rival chipmaker Micron posted similar gains last week, and the other Korean memory giant, SK hynix, will likely have the same story to tell when it discloses its own quarterly figures later this month.

The boom is proving costly for buyers of everyday electronics. Memory manufacturers' shift towards more lucrative AI products is squeezing supplies for PCs, smartphones, and other devices, driving up component prices.

As The Register previously reported, rising component costs are pricing budget PCs out of the market. US sales in that bracket fell 18.7 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, while average PC selling prices were forecast to rise by up to 12 percent by December. Smartphone makers face similar pressures, with budget devices becoming increasingly difficult to produce profitably.

Samsung warned earlier this year that it expected the memory supply crunch to deepen in 2027 and potentially persist through 2028, leaving buyers with little to smile about.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/amazons-1b-plan-to-combat-data-center-backlash-draws-more-backlash/

On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers.

In a press release, Amazon Web Services' CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across "education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities."

Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn't increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. Regarding the latter, Amazon promised to be "water positive" by 2030, while claiming that 75 percent of projects have already met this goal.

Rolling out these commitments, Amazon seemed bent on convincing Americans that the swelling data center backlash is based on lies. Echoing Donald Trump's claims that foreign disinformation campaigns are fueling widespread protests, Garman urged that calls for data moratoriums must end or else American frontier AI might fall behind China's.

According to Garman, US rivals are trying to "trick us into slowing down," and Amazon's commitments are meant to reassure Americans that everything's okay and that we should instead plow ahead, as Trump endlessly advocates.

However, advocates at Stand.Earth—a global nonprofit that's been fighting for environmental protections in communities hosting data centers—told Ars that Amazon is the one being "misleading" by spreading "corporate propaganda." Seemingly in crisis mode as billions of dollars in data center projects have been blocked nationwide, Amazon's promised donations represent "a flailing attempt at damage control for the harm its data center build-out has already caused," Stand.Earth said.

Most problematic, Stand.Earth suggested, is Amazon's plan to back a power plant that experts expect will become the largest source of US climate pollution. Glaringly, Amazon's data center commitments don't mention the power plant and scarcely address pollution, apart from promising to exclusively rely on back-up generators that use the lowest possible emissions.

"For all the claims Amazon makes about investing in carbon-free energy, it conveniently leaves out that it is constructing the single-largest source of climate emissions in the United States in Pecos, Texas," Stand.Earth said. "Communities will face 33 million tons of harmful air pollution every year—with the power plant using the same amount of energy needed to run more than 1.9 million homes."

Additionally, Stand.Earth called out Amazon for claiming that most data center generators sparking pollution fears in communities typically sit "idle." Although Amazon emphasized that most generators only run for "roughly 10 hours per year," Stand.Earth cited cases where "Amazon data centers ran on diesel back-up power for days at a time."

At least one part of Amazon's deal is promising, Stand.Earth suggested. The company ending its practice of using nondisclosure agreements when building new data centers will likely help make projects more transparent.

However, "many of the key concerns communities have are not addressed," Stand.Earth found. For example, Amazon's promises to replace all water used for data centers seemingly won't address "the massive water footprint left by energy infrastructure powering its data centers" or "the potential for forever-chemical contamination from nascent cooling technologies," Stand.Earth told Ars.

The total amount Amazon is investing also doesn't seem like much compared to what the company has spent. In the press release, Garman said that Amazon contributed the same amount, more than $1 billion, to data center communities over the past three years.

"Compared to the $220 billion the company is investing in data centers in 2026 alone, Amazon's commitment of $1 billion over five years for community support is a drop in the bucket," Stand.Earth said. "It is difficult to read this statement as anything other than a plea from Amazon to continue exploiting communities at minimal cost."

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2026/10/ML10-switched-capacitor-filter.html

Sometimes it's easier to identify an IC with a microscope. While sorting a box of old ICs, CuriousMarc came across some Harris ICs labeled "F1-10-5", a mysterious part number that didn't show up in any databooks. Since unidentifiable ICs are useless, he gave me one to analyze. Conveniently, it was in a ceramic package, so I could open it up with a quick tap from a chisel. Under the microscope, the chip's most striking feature was a grid of square capacitors. With all those capacitors, I guessed that it was a switched-capacitor filter. The die provided another clue: the part number HF-10. With this information, we quickly found that the chip was Harris's version of the standard MF10 switched-capacitor filter chip.

Switched-capacitor filters were a popular way to implement analog filters in the 1980s. Rapidly switching capacitors in and out of a circuit enabled the construction of single-chip filters that were easy to use and performed well. The MF10, introduced by National Semiconductor in 1981, provides two flexible filters on a chip; each filter acts as a low-pass filter, band-pass filter, or a high-pass filter. The filter's characteristics are simple to control with a few external resistors.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/software-is-over-bold-ai-developer-takes-aim-at-adobe-with-open-source-clones/

For a while, those hoping to avoid the difficulty and expense of dealing with Adobe's Creative Suite have been able to use several free and/or open-source alternatives that replicate some or all of those capabilities. Now, one developer is using AI-powered reverse engineering to mimic the look, feel, and functionality of Adobe's well-known software with what he hopes will soon be perfect fidelity.

Artcraft got its start last year as a "controllable AI for artists" that allows for precise post-generation editing of AI-crafted images and videos. Over the weekend, though, the brand debuted its pivot to a suite of seven open source apps recreating the user interface and tools found in Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro.

In announcing those new apps on Reddit earlier this week, software developer Brandon Thomas said he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to create "clean-room replacements" for Adobe's closed source software in Rust (with WebAssembly versions available for use in a browser). And while commenters on Hacker News and elsewhere have taken pains to point out the new software's many current shortcomings, Thomas make the grandiose promise that the current "super early alpha" state will soon lead to something just as functional as anything Adobe has ever put out.

"We're going to reach 100% [feature] parity within a month," Thomas stated on Reddit of his plans to quickly squash bugs and add features with the help of community reports. Days later, on Hacker News, he amended that position slightly to say that "99% parity will take a while, but I'm sure it'll be measured in months and not years."

Thomas, who says he has about a decade of experience working on large-scale Rust projects, wrote on Hacker News that he was inspired to create his own open source Adobe software alternatives after being "bit by the dark pattern 'cancellation fee' one too many times." Development of the totally free options offered here under MIT/Apache licenses will be funded, Thomas wrote, by selling token-based access to the pre-existing Artcraft visual AI model and IDE, which is offered as an imagery-generation option inside the apps alongside third-party models. This revenue stream will help ensure these apps aren't "going to be some orphaned small-team project," Thomas wrote. "We have a team building popular software for filmmakers, so supporting this is fully funded."

Thomas is the latest in a long line of coders using AI tools to speed up the long-standing but labor-intensive practice of reverse engineering (i.e., replicating the functionality of a piece of software without directly copying the code itself). While that practice has generally been found legally acceptable, the ArtCraft apps could still face legal trouble if their "trade dress" too closely mimics Adobe's familiar appearance and interface.

After coding exclusively with AI tools since February, Thomas said he foresees a near future when everyday developers can re-create open source versions of popular paid software to "take back the internet and own tech forever."

"Now you can just create 1:1 functional equivalents, clean room, that are highly performant and cross-platform. Nothing is stopping you," Thomas wrote. "We'll replace Google Search, we'll build our own smartphones, we'll build better infra. We'll remove all the ads and de-enshittify the entire tech world."

"Software is over," he gloated in an earlier comment, claiming to have "one-shotted Photoshop. The whole thing."

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/10/pediatricians-renew-call-to-ban-raw-milk-as-anti-science-rhetoric-reigns/

As many doctors are moving ahead with the latest advances of modern medicine—from powerful obesity drugs to breakthrough cancer treatments—pediatricians are being forced to turn back, fighting to maintain advances in children's health that were hard-won decades ago.

With anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has spent a considerable amount of time and resources in the past year fiercely defending lifesaving vaccinations—safe, routine shots that have saved the lives of millions of children over decades and thwarted untold suffering and disability.

But just this week, The New York Times reported that Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, has opened aggressive investigations against pediatricians simply because they vaccinated their patients. Paxton falsely claims vaccines are part of a "multi-level, multi-industry scheme." But critics say his anti-vaccine campaign appears more aimed at currying favor with Kennedy, President Trump, and their supporters as Paxton runs for the US Senate.

Meanwhile, the AAP this week had to renew another decades-old stance for children's health—one against unpasteurized dairy, aka raw milk. Since the early 20th century, dairy producers in the US have briefly heated milk to kill the array of dangerous pathogens that naturally dwell in and around cattle and can easily migrate into milk. The simple intervention of pasteurization contributed to a sharp, "remarkable" drop in infant deaths and illnesses.

But, much like vaccines, a flood of misinformation has eroded trust and understanding of this public health triumph. And again, Kennedy has been among the advocates working to reverse this health victory.

In recent years, state laws have been loosening on raw milk, despite a federal ban on interstate commerce. At least 27 states now allow raw milk sales. In turn, outbreaks from raw milk have increased over the past two decades, the AAP highlights. Nearly half the illnesses in these outbreaks are in children—who are particularly vulnerable to foodborne pathogens.

Last week, ProPublica reported the heart-wrenching story of a 17-month-old girl in California, who nearly died after acquiring E. coli O157:H7 from drinking raw goat milk. She developed a life-threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome that destroys red blood cells and damages blood vessels in the kidneys, which can lead to kidney failure and death. She required intensive care, and although she survived, she will have lasting effects from the ordeal. Her speech and motor development were halted, and she faces long-term kidney problems, requiring monitoring by a nephrologist every six months.

Prior to the girl's infection, her mother was unaware of the dangers of unpasteurized dairy and trusted information on social media, which falsely claimed that raw milk has health benefits over pasteurized milk. Such myths have persisted despite experts pointing out for years that they are unfounded or plainly false. The girl's mother now strongly regrets ever giving her daughter the raw milk and has tried to raise awareness of the risk—only to get barred from online groups for speaking out.

In the AAP's policy renewal this week, pediatricians review all the reasons health experts have, for decades, endorsed consuming only pasteurized dairy products.

"The AAP also endorses a ban on the sale or distribution of unpasteurized milk and milk products throughout the United States," the AAP wrote. "This recommendation is based on the multiplicity of data regarding the burden of illness associated with consumption of unpasteurized milk and milk products, especially among pregnant people, fetuses and neonates, and infants and young children, as well as the strong scientific evidence that pasteurization does not alter the nutritional value of milk."

Original Submission

looorg writes:

It's that time of the year. It's Nobel Prize week. A million SEK for your scientific (and other) career and achievements.

  economic sciences (Monday) not yet announced as I made this submission.

Nobel Prize in Physics 2026
Francis Halzen

        "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin"

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026
Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai

        "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis"

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel

        "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics"

Nobel Prize for Literature 2026
Anne Carson

        "for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature"

Nobel Peace Prize 2026
Navanethem "Navi" Pillay

       "for her efforts to promote peace and international law"

https://www.nobelprize.org/
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/
https://time.com/article/2026/10/05/nobel-prize-2026-winners/
https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/articles/announcement-of-the-nobel-peace-prize-2026
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2026/pillay/facts/

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.engadget.com/2276609/ice-is-reportedly-using-a-palantir-database-to-compile-dossiers-on-protestors/

As revealed by unsealed court documents, Department of Homeland Security agents are allegedly creating dossiers on those that are accused of observing or protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. As first reported by Wired, these DHS files on protestors reportedly include sensitive info like photos and license plate numbers and are stored in a database built by Palantir called Investigative Case Management.

The new information comes from a partially unsealed court filing about a January ICE operation that took place in Maine, according to Wired. The filing is part of a class action lawsuit, which led to a redacted version becoming available to the public on Friday and revealing the purported database of ICE protestors.

According to the lawsuit, DHS agents would track and intimidate observers or protestors, sometimes by driving by their homes or labeling them as "Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor." In one example, an agent reportedly called one of the plaintiffs on her cell and suggested that she tell her spouse "not to do anything like that in the future because people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist."

The lawyers representing the plaintiffs said that this sort of database creates a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of protestors. On the other side, a DHS spokesperson told Wired that the case was "meritless" and denied the existence of such a database that labels and tracks "domestic terrorists."

Original Submission