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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cryptocurrency/americans-lost-usd333-million-to-bitcoin-atm-fraud-in-2025-fbi-says-there-is-a-clear-and-constant-rise-of-this-scam-and-that-it-is-not-slowing-down

turgid writes:The Guardian has an article about the forthcoming upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, which will be overseen by a new CERN Director General, Mark Thomson.

hubie writes:Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy:

janrinok writes:https://phys.org/news/2025-12-scientists-outline-atomic-scale-polaritons.html

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:One small step for chips, one giant leap for a lack of impurities:A team from Cardiff, Wales, is experimenting with the feasibility of building semiconductors in space, and its most recent success is another step forward towards its goal. According to the BBC, Space Forge's microwave-sized furnace has been switched on in space and has reached 1,000C (1,832F) - one of the most important parts of the manufacturing process that the company needs to validate in space."This is so important because it's one of the core ingredients that we need for our in-space manufacturing process," Payload Operations Lead Veronica Vera told the BBC. "So being able to demonstrate this is amazing." Semiconductor manufacturing is a costly and labor-intensive endeavor on Earth, and while putting it in orbit might seem far more complicated, making chips in space offers some theoretical advantages. For example, microgravity conditions would help the atoms in semiconductors line up perfectly, while the lack of an atmosphere would also reduce the chance of contaminants affecting the wafer.These two things would help reduce imperfections in the final wafer output, resulting in a much more efficient fab. "The work that we're doing now is allowing us to create semiconductors up to 4,000 times purer in space than we can currently make here today," Space Forge CEO Josh Western told the publication. "This sort of semiconductor would go on to be in the 5G tower in which you get your mobile phone signal, it's going to be in the car charger you plug an EV into, it's going to be in the latest planes."Space Forge launched its first satellite in June 2025, hitching a ride on the SpaceX Transporter-14 rideshare mission. However, it still took the company several months before it finally succeeded in turning on its furnace, showing how complicated this project can get. Nevertheless, this advancement is quite promising, with Space Forge planning to build a bigger space factory with the capacity to output 10,000 chips. Aside from that, it also needs to work on a way to bring the finished products back to the surface. Other companies are also experimenting with orbital fabs, with U.S. startup Besxar planning to send "Fabships" into space on Falcon 9 booster rockets.Putting semiconductor manufacturing in space could help reduce the massive amounts of power and water that these processes require from our resources while also outputting more wafers with fewer impurities. However, we also have to consider the huge environmental impact of launching multiple rockets per day just to deliver the raw materials and pick up the finished products from orbit.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

janrinok writes:Consumes 1/3 the power of optical, but costs 1/3 more than optical:

janrinok writes:A proof-of-concept is now available on the internet:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.osnews.com/story/144075/qnx-releases-new-desktop-focused-image-qnx-8-0-with-xfce-on-wayland/

hubie writes:Uncovering the unavoidable energy costs of sending information through communication channels could help build energy-efficient systems:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fda-officially-confirms-kava-food-140000605.html

An Anonymous Coward writes:

hubie writes:New Study Reveals How the Brain Measures Distance:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.heise.de/en/news/39C3-Multiple-vulnerabilities-in-GnuPG-and-other-cryptographic-tools-11125362.html

hubie writes:Funding agencies can end profit-first science publishing:

janrinok writes:https://scitechdaily.com/aging-immune-cells-may-rewrite-their-own-dna-to-stay-inflammatory/

hubie writes:The new material is as strong as conventional plastics and biodegradable, but what makes it special is that it breaks down in seawater:

janrinok writes:Players of Sacred and Gothic games can rejoice once again:

janrinok writes:https://mashable.com/article/study-ai-slop-youtube

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/23/us-insurance-giant-aflac-says-hackers-stole-personal-and-health-data-of-22-6-million-people/

hubie writes:Some brains perform a complicated assessment while others seem to take a shortcut:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!Best wishes to the SoylentNews community, whether you've just gotten here, been here since the early days, or perhaps even come back from an extended absence. This site exists because of your support and participation. Keep submitting interesting articles and posting your thoughts or topics of discussion in your journal. If you've never posted in your journal before, well there's a ready-made New Year's Resolution for you!Special thanks goes out to those who volunteer and contribute their time and resources behind the scenes to maintain the existence of the Soylent Phoenix corporation, provide us with hardware and hosting services, fix our code, edit our stories, and just generally keep things running day in and day out.*.*

An Anonymous Coward writes:Over 3,200 backers secure the future of Jolla's upcoming Linux phone, pushing the project beyond its initial funding milestone:

upstart writes:The National Center for Atmospheric Research has played a leading role in providing data, modelling and supercomputing to researchers around the world - but the Trump administration is set to shut it down:

fliptop writes:A California-based aerospace startup, Reflect Orbital, has ignited intense debate within the scientific community by proposing an ambitious plan to "sell sunlight" using massive mirrors placed in low Earth orbit:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://therecord.media/spotify-disables-scraping-annas

An Anonymous Coward writes:Several of Proton's products could be headed elsewhere in Europe in the wake of proposed surveillance laws:

hubie writes:Beware of OpenAI's 'Grantwashing' on AI Harms:

turgid writes:The Register reports that UNIX V4, the first with the kernel written in C, has been recovered, restored and run.The source code and binaries were recovered from a 1970s-vintage nine-track tape and posted to the Internet Archive where it can be downloaded.

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://therecord.media/south-korea-facial-recognition-phones

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://linuxiac.com/phoenix-emerges-as-a-modern-x-server-written-from-scratch-in-zig/

hubie writes:The experiment showed that physical violence is not necessary to scare off gulls:

An Anonymous Coward writes:Engineer turns E-ink tablet into computer monitor in Linux - perfect secondary reading screen to reduce eye strain over the networkE-ink enjoyers can upgrade old tablets into part of the desktop experience using a simple server setup

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/24/lg-forces-tv-owners-to-use-microsoft-ai-copilot-app-you-cant-uninstall-and-nobody-asked-for/

hubie writes:Examining the use of expressions like "recent studies" or "recent data" in different medical specialties:

[Ed. note: Dec. 30 - The headline has been updated to reflect the fact that the Microsoft researcher who posted the original LinkedIn post stating they want to rewrite all Windows code in Rust later qualified his statement by saying that this is a research project --hubie]turgid writes:The Register reports that Microsoft wants to replace all of its C and C++ code bases with Rust rewrites by 2030, developing new technology to do the translation along the way.

hubie writes:Swearing boosts performance by helping people feel focused, disinhibited, study finds:

An Anonymous Coward writes:Study finds built-in browsers across gadgets often ship years out of date

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html

upstart writes:"The vast majority of Codex is built by Codex," OpenAI told us about its new AI coding agent writing code:

What happens when a computer can do your job better than you can? What happened to all those people who studied in school and trained to draft designs on huge desks with filing cabinets that would kill you if it fell? What happened, well, to any job that could be done faster, cheaper, or more effectively? Gone like the dodos. So, in this vein, how long do lawyers have before their profession is made redundant? If an LLM can find which law applies, how it applies, and write the legal argument needed, then why pay tens of thousands for a human to do this? Have lawyers had their day in sun and are now the buggy whip makers of the 21st century?Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/texas-sues-tv-makers-for-spying-on-users-selling-data-without-consent/

jelizondo writes:Recently Popular Mechanics published a report titled Who sets the doomsday clock?. It is a very interesting report and while a bit lengthy, it is perfect to reflect, as we approach a new year, on the fragility of our civilization and indeed, our very existence. Enjoy!

hubie writes:Older adults who were awake more during the night performed worse on cognitive tests the next day, no matter how long they slept:

janrinok writes:Relief for those dealing with data pipelines between the two, but move has its critics:

upstart writes:Science sleuths raise concerns about scores of bioengineering papers:

hubie writes:This gulf in knowledge could be exploited by a tech industry intent on selling the "next level of AI cleverness":

janrinok writes:https://scitechdaily.com/mit-reveals-how-high-fat-diets-quietly-prime-the-liver-for-cancer/

janrinok writes:https://phys.org/news/2025-12-disaster-raw-materials.html

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-ars-technica-guide-to-dumb-tvs/

An Anonymous Coward writes:Reddit has filed suit against Australian social media laws on the grounds of privacy and free speech. It is the first major company to do so. The Australian government is confident the social media ban will be upheld saying that they act in the interests of the children. Meanwhile, Australian children are easily circumventing the ban by ditching accounts associated with their real identity leaving the people primarily affected by the intrusive age testing to be adults.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.