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upstart writes:The Worst CPUs Ever Made:

hubie writes:Parkinson's is the canary in the coal mine warning us that our environment is sick:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/u-s-allows-tsmc-to-import-chipmaking-equipment-to-its-china-fabs-samsung-sk-hynix-likewise-receive-go-signal-from-commerce-department

An Anonymous Coward writes:When an associate of mine accessed their personal email account on their work computer, they opened an email from a friend purporting to be an invitation to a holiday party, and it contained a link that it claimed was to RSVP. In fact, the link was to a malicious MSI file hosted on Cloudflare's r2.dev service. Not knowing what an MSI file was, the associate ran the file and installed an instance of ConnectWise's ScreenConnect software operated by an attacker. The attacker promptly took control of the associate's computer for a couple of minutes before the associate wisely powered the computer off. Sure, the obvious answers are that people shouldn't click on suspicious links in emails they weren't expecting, even if they come from a friend or trusted colleague, and that they really shouldn't use work computers for personal tasks and vice versa. But this incident also revealed troubling concerns about how some large companies like Cloudflare have double standards about security.The neighbor's computer was compromised by the same attacker, who accessed their GMail account and apparently sent a single email with the phishing email with the entire contact list as Bcc recipients of the email. This was probably a large number of contacts, and it really should have been automatically flagged by Google as potentially a spam email. A reasonable approach might be to delay sending the email until the sender confirms they really intended to Bcc a large number of people on a potentially suspicious email. The sender would then get a notification on their phone asking to confirm if they really intended to send a mass email, which they could either confirm or reject. Google is keen to push multi-factor authentication and require that users associate phone numbers with their accounts, so it seems like this might be a rational approach for outbound emails that ought to be flagged as suspicious.But I'm more frustrated with Cloudflare, who seems to act as a gatekeeper many websites, arbitrarily blocking browsers and locking people out of websites, especially for the dastardly crime of using a non-Chromium browser like Palemoon. The malicious file was hosted on r2.dev, which is a cloud-based object storage system. Although the actual file might not trip malware scanners because ScreenConnect has legitimate purposes, R2 storage buckets and Cloudflare's other hosting services are also often used to host malware and phishing content. This is probably because Cloudflare has a free tier and is easy to use, making them a good tool for attackers to abuse. One of the logical actions I took was to try to report the malicious content to Cloudflare so they would take it down. They encourage reporting of abuse through an online reporting form. The first time I accessed the abuse reporting form, it was blank. I reloaded the page, and Cloudflare informed me that I had been blocked from accessing their abuse reporting page. The irony here is that Cloudflare has arbitrarily blocked me for no apparent reason, as if I am malicious, preventing me from reporting actual malicious content being hosted on their platform.The problem here is that large companies like Google and Cloudflare have positioned themselves as gatekeepers of the internet, demanding that users conform to their security standards while themselves not taking reasonable steps to prevent attacks originating from their own platforms. In the case of Google, reCaptcha is mostly security theatre, making users jump through hoops to prove they're not malicious while harvesting data that can be used for tracking users through browser fingerprinting. As for Cloudflare, they use methods like blocking browsers with low market share, supposedly in the name of blocking malicious traffic. The hypocrisy is very blatant when Cloudflare's arbitrary and opaque blocking prevents users from reporting actual malicious content hosted by Cloudflare itself. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem particularly uncommon.It's becoming increasingly difficult not to see companies like Google and Cloudflare as bad actors. In the case of Cloudflare, I finally sent complaints to their abuse@ and noc@ email addresses, but I expect little will be done to actually address the problem. How do we demand accountability from companies that act gatekeepers of the internet and treat ordinary users like potential criminals while doing little to prevent their own platforms from being vectors for abuse? In this case, is the best solution to complain to a government agency like the state attorney general, state that the malware may have caused harm, and that Cloudflare has made it next to impossible to get the content taken down?Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

jelizondo writes:IFL Science has an interesting story about Michel Siffre, a guy who went into a cave for two months and emerged to invent a new field of biology:

hubie writes:A scientist's unconventional project illustrates many challenges in developing new vaccines:

jelizondo writes:OS news brings us the news that HP-UX reached the end of its life on December 31st:

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: