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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-i-block-ads-with-cheap-raspberry-pi-alternative/

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and the skyrocketing prices of Raspberry Pi boards have definitely been the kick in the pants that I've needed to look at cheaper, perhaps also better-suited, alternatives. I mean, the Pi is a great board, but for a lot of applications I've used it for over the almost 15 years that they've been around, it's also been overkill.

The other day, I needed to put together an ad-block solution, not because I dislike ads, but simply because I was working with quite a limited bandwidth. I reflexively reached for a Raspberry Pi board, but stopped when I remembered how much they cost nowadays and put it back.

I was going to use PiHole on the Pi, but then I remembered coming across an ad-block project that worked on an ESP32 board. And the good news is that you can pick up one of those boards for under $10.

There's a huge difference between a Raspberry Pi 5 and an ESP32 board (specifically the ESP32-S3 board). The Pi 5 is powered by a 2.4 GHz quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 64-bit chip, gigabytes of RAM, and the ability to use microSD or fast NVMe SSD storage, while the ESP32 makes use of a dual-core Tensilica Xtensa LX7 32-bit processor that can run at up to 240 MHz, 520 KB of RAM, and up to 16MB of flash storage. 

A Pi 5 can use as much as 12 W of power (and that's before you hook up various HATs and such), while an ESP32 board uses milliwatts. 

For this project, I'm happy to go with the ESP32, but there are a few compromises that I'll have to live with -- more on those later.

First, you need an ESP32 board. Look for the ESP32-S3 with 8MB of PSRAM (there's a 4MB version too, but using this board will result in compromises) rather than the classic ESP32. The ESP32-S3 is faster and more efficient, and you need this power to run the ad-block software. The cheapest way to buy these boards is in a 3-pack for $20. 

When you get an ESP32-S3 board for the first time, it's normal to think, "Wow, this is tiny, there must be more to it," but there isn't. It really is a computer you can balance on a finger. 

Well, you will need a USB-C cable to transfer data and power the board. However, you don't even need a microSD card for the board to work.

owl writes:

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/28/ford-rehires-gray-beard-engineers-after-ai-falls-short/

Ford executives said they have hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them were former employees, while others had been working at suppliers — after artificial intelligence and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality level.

Bloomberg reports the company's chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been "relying more and more on automated quality systems" with disappointing results. So the company "brought back technical specialists," and those specialists "hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor."

Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added, "Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product."

To be clear, this doesn't mean Ford is abandoning its AI plans entirely. Instead, it's using the rehired employees — referred to as "gray beard" engineers — to train younger staff and reprogram AI tools.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intels-next-gen-52-core-nova-lake-cpu-could-pull-up-to-474w-high-end-lga1954-motherboards-may-need-three-8-pin-power-connectors-to-feed-the-monster

PL2, or Power Limit 2, represents the maximum power a CPU can draw during short boost periods. That said, a PL2 target of 474W remains quite demanding, although a previous rumor suggests Intel may also have a PL4 emergency power limit over 700W. It is important to note that these power limits may only apply to the top-end models with the dual-tile architecture.

The upcoming Nova Lake-S lineup is expected to carry the ‘Core Ultra 400S’ moniker and will be Intel's biggest desktop CPU overhaul in years. We’ve previously reported leaked specifications indicating configurations ranging from 6 to 52 cores, with support for DDR5-8000 memory. The flagship 52-core model is expected to feature 16 performance cores, 32 efficiency cores, and a new Big Last Level Cache (bLLC) design to take on AMD's 3D V-Cache gaming dominance. The company is also rumored to introduce integrated Xe3 graphics, Thunderbolt 5, PCIe 5.0 connectivity, and an upgraded NPU for AI workloads.

While these specifications are unconfirmed, it is clear that Intel is targeting substantial gains in gaming, multi-threaded performance, and overall platform capabilities with its next-gen processors.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

[Source]: yahoo!tech

[Editor's Comment: This is a biased article, but we have quoted the original source.]

The explosive popularity of prediction markets, spearheaded by Polymarket and Kalshi, has shocked experts, who are warning of a surge in gambling addiction. The platforms have massively lowered the barriers to entry for problem betting, allowing practically anybody to wager their hard-earned cash on events ranging from the outcomes of deadly wars to who will win the World Cup .

Given all that controversy, maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who excels at bringing out the absolute worst of humanity — has directed his staff to create a similar betting app of their own, dubbed "Arena."

As two employees with knowledge of the matter told the New York Times, users wouldn't be wagering real money, relying instead on a "video game-like points system." That makes it an even more baffling endeavor, considering the promise of getting rich quick is the only real reason prediction markets have become as popular as they are now.

[...] Meanwhile, Meta's graveyard of ill-conceived products has become crowded, from a botched cryptocurrency and paying celebrities millions of dollars to turn them into AI chatbots to cartoonized "metaverse" worlds filled with screaming children.

Beyond gambling, Meta is also trying to get an AI photo generating app off the ground, according to the NYT's sources. But whether there's any appetite left for even more slop apps is dubious at best.

Will this be successful or another disaster, as predicted ??

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/07/boeing-747-retirement/687304/

Through the heat haze, airplane tails rose from the desert. As I steered off the interstate toward Pinal Airpark, in Marana, Arizona, I got my first view of a corpse in full: a stark-white Boeing 747, its wings sheared off, its passenger doors open to the dust and wind, a rickety set of airstairs inviting no one aboard. The plane was a memory, a ruin, but its swooping, humped nose was still striking—a visage that signaled the freedom of movement in the Jet Age.

I was arriving at this desolate site north of Tucson, where airplanes go to die, to mourn the 747, the original jumbo jet—a.k.a. the Whale, the Longreach, the Sky Cruiser, the Mother of All Airliners, the Queen of the Skies. For 50 years, the aircraft was the principal host of Important Journeys: a young student's trip to study abroad in Paris, a first-generation American's pilgrimage to their ancestral home in Hungary, an Iranian family fleeing the 1979 revolution. Combining the immensity of an ocean liner and the elegance of a swan, the 747 is the only commercial jet that deserves to be called beautiful. Over the past two decades, airlines have stopped using it as a passenger plane and replaced it with smaller aircraft that are more efficient, but far less majestic and memorable. The 747 was once a symbol of American might, invention, progress, and populism. Now it embodies the decline of all of those values.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/hpc/2026/06/23/bold-move-cotton-trump-administration-tells-us-techies-it-expects-american-quantum-computer-by-2028/5260074

President Trump has ordered the development of a quantum computer to ensure that the US maintains a strategic technical advantage, along with a nationwide migration to post-quantum cryptography to protect sensitive data against just such a computer.

In an executive order signed Monday, Trump directed various federal agencies to establish a national program to deliver a quantum computer, aimed at driving scientific discoveries and keeping the US at the forefront of technology.

To be precise, it calls for "the first ever quantum computer powerful enough to initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery and accelerate quantum capabilities for commercial applications."

Trump's order directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), Michael Kratsios, to coordinate the effort across the Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and the Intelligence Community, as well as with the broader industry and research communities.

The program is to be given the somewhat clumsy moniker of Quantum Computer for Application Development and Discovery Science (QC-ADDS), and the intent is to deliver at least one such computer to a Department of Energy (DoE) facility and make it available to the scientific community.

Kratsios told reporters that the administration believes that this goal can be achieved by 2028, so that at least one full-blown quantum system will be operating by the time Trump leaves office.

This is a bold claim, as quantum computers are one of those technologies where a big breakthrough has been promised to be just around the corner for decades, yet never seems to arrive.

[...] The executive order makes no mention of a budget or how much the Trump administration believes development of its quantum Holy Grail will cost. However, our colleagues over at The Next Platform reported last month that it intends to dole out more than $2 billion to various companies for quantum research, plus $1.375 billion to GlobalFoundries and IBM to develop quantum foundries.

In anticipation that truly useful quantum kit could soon become reality, Trump also orders federal agencies to lead a nationwide migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

The agencies in question are chiefly the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, which are to deliver guidance to other agencies on making the move to quantum-resistant encryption.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Poll finds two-thirds support squeeze on Silicon Valley despite US pressure:

The majority of Britons still believe Big Tech should be contributing more to the public purse, new research suggests.

Polling by the Fair Tax Foundation, shared with The Register, found that 67 percent of respondents believe the UK should ensure large technology companies such as Meta, Google, Apple, and Amazon pay more in Digital Services Tax (DST) to increase their overall tax contribution.

The same proportion of Brits said the government should aim to become a world leader in regulating cryptocurrencies and other digital assets to help prevent tax avoidance and evasion.

The findings arrive as the future of the UK's Digital Services Tax continues to attract scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic. Introduced in 2020, the levy was designed to extract more money from online giants that generate substantial revenues from UK users while often reporting profits elsewhere. Last year alone, the tax raised around £800 million for the Treasury.

Not everyone has been thrilled by the arrangement. President Donald Trump threatened in April to impose a "big tariff" on British imports if the government refused to drop the Digital Services Tax, arguing it unfairly targets US tech giants. 

The British public, however, appear less concerned, and the polling suggests support extends well beyond the digital tax itself. Three-quarters of respondents said they would prefer to work for a company that can demonstrate it pays its fair share of tax, while 74 percent said they would rather spend money with such a business. More than seven in ten backed requiring fair tax practices from companies bidding for public sector contracts, while 82 percent supported similar requirements for firms receiving government bailout funds.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/06/23/five-eyes-spooks-warn-ai-means-infosec-incidents-can-become-major-operational-and-financial-crises/5259916

The leaders of intelligence agencies from the Five Eyes nations – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA and the UK – have together issued strongly worded advice calling for leaders to nail cybersecurity basics or fall victim to ruinous AI-powered attacks.

"The rapid pace of frontier AI development means cyber risk assumptions can become outdated in months, not years," the advice warns, and calls for organizations to take rapid action to ensure their defenses remain potent.

"While AI will help us improve cyber defence over time, it also accelerates the speed, scale, and sophistication of cyber threats," the advice adds. "Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months."

After all that scary stuff, the spook bosses offer some antidote: "Cyber resilience is integral to advancing business continuity, market confidence, and long-term value."

And how might one achieve that resilience? The Five Eyes have four suggestions:

• Understand and assess risk, readiness and accountability
• Prioritize foundational cyber security practices and controls
• Empower cyber leaders with authority and resources
• Stay actively engaged as threats and guidance evolve

"Cyber risk can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue," the advice points out. "This is a core business risk and leadership responsibility," because breaches are inevitable and "Breaches will occur. Preparedness helps you contain them quickly and prevent escalation into major operational and financial crises."

The intelligence chiefs therefore want organizations to test their cyber resilience rigs.

"It is not enough to have controls," they write. "Leaders must be confident those controls will perform during a real incident. This requires reassessing long-standing trade-offs and using AI deliberately to strengthen defence – not just improve efficiency."

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/sk-telecom-named-as-the-korean-carrier-at-the-center-of-anthropics-mythos-export-controls

Wired has identified SK Telecom as the South Korean telecom company whose access to Anthropic's Claude Mythos model the White House ordered revoked over alleged ties to China, days before the Trump administration imposed the export controls that pulled Anthropic's most advanced AI models offline.

SK Telecom’s footprint in China is minimal, generating roughly $1.9 million in Chinese revenue in 2024 and employing seven people in the country, according to its annual report. The national-security concern attaches instead to its parent, SK Group, whose affiliates hold extensive interests in Chinese semiconductors, energy, and other sectors.

SK hynix belongs to the same SK Group, and it received Mythos access in the same expansion, as did Samsung. The two rank among the largest suppliers of the memory and logic silicon that underpins AI hardware, and both joined Anthropic's funding round as strategic investors.

The export controls followed a separate dispute, however, when Amazon, Anthropic's largest investor with a cumulative stake of about $13 billion, flagged a guardrail bypass in Fable 5 to the White House after researchers prompted the model to read a codebase and fix its flaws, turning it into a vulnerability-discovery tool. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reportedly raised the findings with administration officials directly, which then led to the Commerce Department’s order on June 12 barring all foreign nationals — including immigrants inside the U.S. — from accessing Fable 5 and the underlying Mythos 5.

Rather than filter users by nationality, Anthropic disabled both models for everyone. The company said the demonstration it reviewed surfaced only a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities, and that banning a capability common to other frontier models would halt deployments across the industry.

About 100 cybersecurity professionals, including former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos and Luta Security's Katie Moussouris, signed an open letter arguing that while Mythos-class models are “quite good” at finding and weaponizing software flaws, they “are not uniquely good,” calling for the controls to be lifted.

Mythos 5 and Fable 5 remain offline as Anthropic and the White House continue negotiations over restoring access. Anthropic opened a Seoul office on June 17 and signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (Information and Communication Technology), naming SK Telecom among its local partners. SK Telecom has denied the allegations, telling a Korean newspaper that the anonymous claims in foreign media “lack verified facts,” and that it has no ties to China.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Since 2000 there has been an explosion of creators publishing their content online and with it a raft of laws and restrictions for what is and is not acceptable. At the forefront of this is automated scanning for images that are deemed to be inappropriate. Now Adobe has taken this one step further by incorporating AI into Photoshop to check images being edited to block what they deem to be inapproriate images from being created. Content creator Alsoashley discovered this while editing a photo of herself in a bikini (also posted on youtube).

Do you think that AI blocking you from editing a photo on your computer because it deems your art to be inappropriate to be acceptable?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

This is reminiscent of the acoustic mirror used from World War I until the advent of radar as an early warning system for bombers:

A Lithuanian startup developed an Android app that lets verified users monitor the general area for the acoustic signature of Shahed-type drones used by Russia to strike targets and report their approximate location. According to state broadcaster Lithuanian National Radio and Television, the app uses an embedded algorithm to isolate and analyze targets from environmental noise. It reports a possible detection on a public map. With the app running on enough devices, the system could determine the potential location and direction of these drones and warn both civilians and the military of an impending strike.

Shahed-type drones have been widely employed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is quite effective for its relatively low price compared to other, more advanced missile systems. Ukraine has been taking steps to counter this threat, including requiring users inside the country to register their Starlink units to avoid getting blocked because Russia has been using the service to guide its drones as late as last year. Other nations are experimenting with cost-effective countermeasures, too, including microwave drone swarm killers and man-portable anti-drone laser systems.

The biggest issue for air defense systems is that these drones are quite small and made of lightweight materials, which gives them a relatively low radar cross-section (RCS). A Shahed-type drone usually measures around eight to 12 feet in length and has a wingspan of around eight feet. Although they could be detected by standard radar systems, their speed and size mean that the radar receiver would also pick up a lot of other clutter, such as birds, making it hard to distinguish relevant targets from background noise. These characteristics, combined with their low flight cruising altitude, mean that ground-based radars have trouble picking them up unless they’re flying relatively close.

However, their low flight path also means that they could easily be heard by observers on the ground. So, if enough people can detect their aural signature and report it to a central database, defense forces could mobilize and engage these threats while they’re still distant from their targets and away from population centers. This is similar to the acoustic mirrors and acoustic locators that militaries used in World War I before the advent of radar, wherein they built massive concrete dishes aimed upward, or used smaller, more portable metal horn arrays, crewed by trained personnel listening in to detect the low-frequency sound coming from aircraft piston engines from far away.

We expect this to be far more accurate, though, because it uses advanced algorithms and thousands of detectors operated by verified users. While using this system alone is probably not enough to accurately detect these drones, pairing it with modern radar systems could make the radar operators’ job far easier, as they would have another data source to confirm whether they’re actually seeing drones on their screens or just a flock of birds.

Here's the old school acoustic mirrors referenced in TFA

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2197980/how-airbags-deploy-so-quickly-in-a-crash-physics-explained/

Front airbags have been required in new passenger vehicles since the 1999 model year. While side airbags aren't specifically mandated, auto manufacturers install them to meet other federal safety requirements regarding side protection. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) claims that airbags saved over 70,000 lives in the U.S. since their implementation, so they work. But how do they work?

Airbags, which have recently become targets of theft, are part of the vehicle's passive safety system designed to help keep passengers safe during an accident. On average, an accident happens in roughly 200 milliseconds — less than 1/5 of a second. So, the system needs to detect, react, and deploy faster than that to be effective — usually just 10 to 30 milliseconds, which is quicker than you can blink. The deployment of an airbag has been described as "engineered violence" because it essentially contains and directs a literal explosion.

First of all, the term "airbag" isn't accurate since they don't actually use "air" per se. Today's systems use guanidinium nitrate with a copper nitrate oxidizer to produce nitrogen gas. When guanidinium nitrate is ignited, it breaks down into nitrogen gas, water, and carbon. The copper nitrate oxidizer is included to help reduce the temperature of the expelled gas. Older airbag systems once used ammonium nitrate, a chemical that didn't play nicely with humidity and moisture, and ended up causing several injuries and even some deaths. Guanidinium nitrate isn't affected by moisture.

Airbags are designed to deploy at various speeds depending on the scenario. If a car hits something narrow (think tree or pole), bags can deploy at just 8 mph. Impacts involving larger objects (such as other cars) can cause bags to unfurl at 18 mph. But the technology and methods used in the front passenger compartment are different than those used in other parts of the car.

Front airbags use small electronic accelerometers that can detect when a car suddenly decelerates, which is technically what occurs when it's involved in a crash. Using a technology called MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems), the onboard impact sensors determine — in the proverbial blink of an eye — changes in the vehicle's speed, how fast the car was going, what hit it, and whether the occupants were wearing seat belts. Passengers wearing seatbelts are considered safer, so airbags won't deploy unless the speed exceeds 16 mph. However, those not wearing them are at greater risk, so the system typically triggers bag deployment at speeds between 10 and 12 mph.

owl writes:

https://www.newsweek.com/cost-me-the-election-data-centers-trigger-voter-backlash-12118327

A wave of voter anger over massive data center projects is beginning to reshape U.S. politics, with local officials and senior lawmakers losing elections after backing controversial developments tied to the artificial intelligence boom.

In Utah on Wednesday, State Senate President J. Stuart Adams—one of the most powerful Republicans in the state—lost his primary election after supporting a major data center development near the Great Salt Lake, in one of the clearest signs yet of the growing political risks tied to the industry.

At the local level, the fallout was just as direct. "Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do," former Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry said after conceding his primary race, after voting to advance the same project.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.timwehrle.de/blog/i-stored-a-website-in-a-favicon/

A while ago I wrote about storing two bytes inside my mouse's DPI register. It wasn't useful. It wasn't practical. But it did something unfortunate to my brain. Once you've successfully hidden data somewhere it doesn't belong, you start looking at everything as potential storage.
A monitor is storage.

A keyboard is storage.

A BIOS splash screen is (maybe) storage.

A favicon is storage.

And yes, here we are.

Every website has a favicon. It's that little icon in your browser tab. Usually you upload it once and then never think about it again. But. A favicon is just an image. An image is just pixels. And pixels are just bytes.

So of course I wondered if I could store something inside one.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

ASML denies it has ever shipped an EUV scanner to China:

The company is refuting a recent report claiming the U.S. government believes that one of ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems may have somehow reached China despite export restrictions, according to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with negotiations between the U.S. officials and ASML executives. ASML denies any wrongdoing and claims that it knows the location of every EUV tool it has ever built.

"In recent years, ASML has refuted several unfounded rumors regarding non-compliance with export controls concerning China which were inaccurate and damaging to our reputation," a spokesperson for ASML told Tom's Hardware.

The U.S. government has not publicly produced evidence that a complete EUV scanner is operating in China. Yet, several senior administration officials told Bloomberg that they possess information indicating that ASML exported equipment associated with EUV systems, including specialized systems used to 'transport EUV machines.' Those officials declined to disclose any evidence, citing sensitivity concerns.

"ASML has never shipped an EUV machine to China, nor have we shipped to China any component, module or equipment specially designed to be used in an EUV machine," the spokesperson told us.

An ASML EUV scanner is made of 100,000 components and weighs 180 tons. It is transported only by air on multiple planes, and it would be impossible to intercept such a shipment without causing an international scandal. Meanwhile, given the complexity of the machine, it is impossible to build one using spare or scrap parts or reverse engineer it using its components, as we reported back in December.

Bloomberg claims that ASML has circulated an internal presentation titled 'No indication of any ASML EUV System in China,' which reportedly states there are 314 EUV systems currently operating worldwide and another 26 that have been retired. According to the document, none are located in China. The presentation further notes that EUV scanners continuously communicate with ASML, so the company can detect interruptions, abnormal activity, or connectivity issues. In addition, customers cannot simply dismantle, transport, and reinstall an EUV scanner without direct assistance from ASML due to specialized logistics and handling requirements.

Original Submission