Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 19 submissions in the queue.

Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password


Site News

Join our Folding@Home team:
Main F@H site
Our team page


Funding Goal
For 6-month period:
2022-07-01 to 2022-12-31
(All amounts are estimated)
Base Goal:
$3500.00

Currently:
$438.92

12.5%

Covers transactions:
2022-07-02 10:17:28 ..
2022-10-05 12:33:58 UTC
(SPIDs: [1838..1866])
Last Update:
2022-10-05 14:04:11 UTC --fnord666

Support us: Subscribe Here
and buy SoylentNews Swag


We always have a place for talented people, visit the Get Involved section on the wiki to see how you can make SoylentNews better.

What is your favorite classic green site trope?

  • This poll, naked and petrified with hot grits
  • Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster running polls?
  • *BSD polls are dying
  • But can this poll run Linux?
  • IN SOVIET RUSSIA, POLLS VOTE YOU
  • Frikkin' polls mounted on shark's heads
  • CowboyNeal
  • I don't know what you're talking about, you insensitive clod!

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:82 | Votes:288

posted by hubie on Sunday July 05, @11:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the blast-from-the-sesquicentennial-past dept.

Derek Thompson has republished excerpts from an almost 100-year-old report on what the US was like in the 1920s. He includes some of the charts and summaries.

One hundred years ago, on September 26, 1929, President Herbert Hoover gathered a group of social scientists at the White House. He asked them to begin research on the most detailed report ever produced on the state of the nation. Four years later, running more than 1,500 pages long, Recent Social Trends was published, offering an unusually granular look at life in the mid-1920s.

The document is almost entirely forgotten. But today, for America's 250th birthday, I'm blowing the cobwebs off this sucker and taking readers inside its yellowed pages for a look back at what life was like in the U.S. exactly 100 years ago, when the U.S. was celebrating its sesquicentennial anniversary.

Derek observes some interesting parallels between US society around both the sesquicentennial and the recent semiquincentennial.

A scanned version of Recent Social Trends in the United States: Report of the President's Research Committee on Social Trends is available online having been scanned at the University of California back when scanning old material was still allowed, though there are paper copies there and elsewhere. For now.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Sunday July 05, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly

Linux 6.18 arrives with a few desktop tweaks, while the neglected x86 edition remains stuck on Debian 11:

The distro formerly known as Raspbian has received some modest tweaks – and a whole new kernel version.

Raspberry Pi Ltd is a little capricious when it comes to version numbering for Raspberry Pi OS, and although this release contains a fairly significant change, it doesn't seem to have a different version number. While PiOS is based on Debian 13 "Trixie," the company significantly customizes upstream Debian, including newer kernels.

For 13 years now, Raspberry Pi has been adding new sections to the top of a single release notes file, which tells us that this build is dated 2026-06-18 and updates the kernel from version 6.12.75 to version 6.18.34. Even so, the version number on the splash screen is strangely unchanged. It remains at 6.2, which was the modest security update announced in April. Now there's a much bigger change – but no announcement and no new version number. So much for version numbers having meaning.

[...] So what is new in the latest version of PiOS? Well, the kernel is now version 6.18 from November, which became the LTS kernel within days. By default, PiOS 6 uses the labcw Wayland compositor with some components drawn from LXDE, such as the panel and file manager.

This is in place of its old customized version of LXDE, formerly called PIXEL. This release includes labwc version 0.9.7, replacing version 0.9.2. You can still switch back to Openbox for an X11 desktop if you want, but this disables the Wayland-based Raspberry Pi Connect that was added a couple of years ago (and might yet make it over to Windows).

[...] We upgraded a testbed Pi 5 from the January release, and it went smoothly with no apparent difference – and it still only takes about 560 MB of RAM under X11, which is very good for 2026. The new kernel means that some functions are slightly slower and some slightly faster, but you probably won't be able to tell. For the full lowdown, Linux news site Phoronix has extensive benchmarks.

[...] The new Wayland-based PiOS desktop environment is one of our favorites: it's simple, clean, and fast. Back in 2022, we said it was the best way to revive an old PC. The sad thing is that it still is. It takes as little memory as, say, BunsenLabs Carbon or Crunchbang++, but it's a much more familiar desktop layout and easier to use.

[...] There are lots of lightweight Linux distros out there. We still recommend Alpine Linux, but it needs some skill to install, especially if you want to dual-boot – it's harder than Arch Linux. Adélie Linux looks very promising but it's still in beta (there hasn't been a new release since we looked at it in late 2024). There are many others, but they're all rather specialist tools that need some Linux skills. The PiOS Desktop was by far the easiest. 

The Linux world badly needs more lightweight distros that are ruthlessly easy to install – as the Raspberry Pi Desktop was. They need to offer a simple, quick, clean, Windows-like desktop – not something different for its own sake, like GNOME, or cluttered with myriad needless options like KDE Plasma. Something that will work happily on a 15-year-old PC with 3 GB of DDR2 RAM and a spinning disk – the sort of PC that still works fine, but would cost more to upgrade than the price of a Raspberry Pi 5. A distro that works happily on X11 would be a win, too, for old and unsupported GPUs.

The Raspberry Pi Desktop once fit that bill very well. The PC world could really benefit from a freshened-up version. If Mike Thompson and Peter Green from the original project are still around, they might even help.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Sunday July 05, @02:02PM   Printer-friendly

Patients are also three times more likely to trust AI in their doctor's secure portal than a public chatbot:

Only 2% of U.S. adults turned to AI for healthcare information in 2024, and today the number is 61%, according to Salesforce's Connected Health Consumer report, a survey of 3,200 consumers worldwide aimed at better understanding how the rise of agentic AI is reshaping consumer expectations, attitudes, and demands within healthcare -- specifically patient experience. 

Here are the four key findings of the 2026 Connected Health Consumer Report:

The report found that 60% of patients put off care because of scheduling friction. Patients are desperately seeking a better engagement experience with healthcare providers. The current multichannel engagement models fail to deliver a good experience, with 49% of patients noting abandoned calls after 10 minutes of holding. 

The online experience is not better, with 46% of patients labeling websites as confusing and difficult to navigate. One in 6 now says ease of digital access is a deciding factor when choosing a provider. Record sharing is another major deficit for improved experiences. More than half of patients (60%) say poor record sharing between providers means repeating the same medical tests. 

And 66% of patients have run out of medication while waiting for their prescriptions to be refilled.

Nearly 7 out of 10 patients would rather have access to 24/7 help via AI agents versus waiting to speak with a person during standard hours. Bad scheduling experiences are driving patients away from care, and AI agents are helping. Patients want proactive care, with 83% of patients interested in self-enrolled programs that can provide healthcare recommendations. 

[...] Patients are ready to share health information for safer, more proactive care, with 73% saying they trust AI to flag potential drug interactions before picking up new prescriptions. The report found that 63% of patients want automatic reminders for medication use, 66% want AI agents that suggest prevention screenings, and 54% agree that AI agents can help them feel more secure in their provider's care. 

Patients also look for AI agents to help create a smoother hospital-to-home handoff. More than 77% of patients would highly value an AI tool that can simplify the transition from hospital to home care. In fact, 72% would trust an AI agent to create a personalized follow-up schedule based on their complete health history.

The report found that the shift toward greater trust with AI in healthcare has grown significantly since 2024 -- 64% of patients would share their full medical history with AI for faster diagnosis, and only 15% would not share any data with AI agents. Patients are three times more likely to trust an AI agent integrated into their doctor's secure portal than one on a public chatbot or general website.

Patients do want human oversight in order to increase adoption of AI-driven support. The concern is if AI agents can handle sensitive health interactions, including concerns around accuracy and privacy of health data. Patients do not want AI agents to act alone, with 88% requiring evidence of human oversight before accepting AI for administrative support, and 90% expecting the same level of supervision for medical support. Patients also want the option to escalate to human support as an essential trust requirement. Patients also want proof behind AI-generated recommendations -- traceability and accountability. 

The importance of AI agent traceability and accountability is one of the 12 rules for agentic AI successful transformations.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Sunday July 05, @09:21AM   Printer-friendly

Time to start praying to the goddess of wisdom and war:

It's going to be a "messy" summer for security folks, especially when it comes to fixing the open source code that underpins their organizations.

That's according to Dan Lorenc, CEO and co-founder of Chainguard, a software supply-chain security company leading Athena, a newly formed coalition of about two dozen companies that wants to make the process of finding and fixing open source bugs "as easy to consume as possible." 

The members have committed to using AI to prevent attacks on open source software. In addition to Chainguard, other founding member companies include BNY, Cisco, Cloudflare, Corridor, DepthFirst, Docker, JPMorganChase, Kyndryl,  LTM, and PwC.  

Many of these member companies are also partners with Anthropic's Project Glasswing and OpenAI Daybreak, which allow them to try out the pair's most advanced bug-hunting models. The coalition accepts vulnerability findings generated by all frontier models, according to Lorenc.

Athena has already processed more than 20,000 findings and developed over 2,000 patches across 500 open source projects. 

In about three weeks, the coalition's first wave of bug disclosures will begin.

"This is going to be a messy summer for everyone," Lorenc told The Register in a phone interview.

[...] "Put yourself in the shoes of someone with Glasswing access," he said. "You get this crazy, new model that can find vulnerabilities everywhere, that no one had seen and you had missed for years with all of your other tooling. You run it on your code, and it finds tons of stuff in your first-party code, the stuff that you've written, and you fix all of that."

After running Mythos Preview on all of your organization's proprietary code, imagine pointing the model at an application. Most modern apps contain a mixture of code from different sources, mostly third-party. According to Lorenc, 95 percent of the code in any of these codebases is open source.

"When you run [advanced models] at the application level, you find a ton of vulnerabilities in open source code that you can't fix for yourself the same way you can that first-party code," Lorenc said. "So then you're left with: what to do?"

[...] The only guarantee in the entire disclosure process is that attackers are moving quickly and the time to exploit – that's the time between a CVE's public disclosure and first confirmed in-the-wild exploitation – has essentially collapsed.

[...] "It's a super awkward, strange world and timeline we are all living in," Lorenc said. "There's a ton of pressure because all of the frontier models are getting better, and the open models are getting better, and they're going to be able to start discovering these at the same time, too. So, that's what we're trying to help with: to be that clearinghouse for critical industry."

Athena coalition members submit vulnerabilities they find in open source code using any frontier model. Sometimes they find these bugs while scanning their own apps. In other cases they discover them after pointing Mythos or GPT‑5.5‑Cyber at a commonly used library, Lorenc said.

The companies submit a full report to Chainguard, which acts as a clearinghouse, deduplicating, correlating, and addressing findings from members in batches across entire libraries, hardening them against classes of vulnerabilities instead of just one bug. 

Affected projects are rebuilt as private, hardened versions available to Athena members through Chainguard Libraries before vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed – and hopefully addressed upstream – a month later. For maintainers that can't make a permanent fix, Athena acts as a "maintainer of last resort," according to Lorenc.

On Thursday, the Linux Foundation joined the effort and announced Akrites, an industry coalition to defend open source software against AI-enabled threats, by finding and fixing vulnerabilities. Akrites establishes a shared Security Incident Response Team (SIRT) and a standardized Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) process.

Founding companies include Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Chainguard, Cisco, Citi, Endor Labs, Ericsson, Google, IBM, JPMorganChase, Microsoft and GitHub, Nvidia, OpenAI, RapidFort, Red Hat, Rust Foundation, Sonatype, Vodafone, and Zscaler.

"As AI finds more vulnerabilities, the industry will rush to patch them. Without coordination, those fixes will fragment across different patches and forks, and maintainers who are already overwhelmed, unreachable, or haven't touched a project in years," Lorenc said, adding that Akrites provides a coordinated way to fix flaws upstream before criminals exploit them.

Plus having a dedicated SIRT gives maintainers a single partner - and disclosure -to work with on remediation instead of a hundred uncoordinated reports.

"Now the work is making sure there's always someone on the other end to catch them," Lorenc said.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Sunday July 05, @05:34AM   Printer-friendly

The Medievalists has a short list of 10 inventions from the Middle Ages which have shaped the modern world.

The Middle Ages are often portrayed as an age of superstition and stagnation, but many of the technologies that transformed everyday life were first developed or greatly improved during this period. From eyeglasses and mechanical clocks to windmills and universities, these medieval inventions continue to shape the modern world.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Sunday July 05, @12:48AM   Printer-friendly

The High-Luminosity LHC will be mostly the same machine, but it'll deliver 10 times the luminosity and just as little chance of destroying the universe - sorry, conspiracy theorists:

The end has come for CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but it's not being turned off for fear of the world being sucked into some sort of cosmic anomaly - it's getting a major upgrade. 

Physicists at CERN are still bidding goodbye to the LHC, per a Monday announcement from the lab, but this is very much a "the king is dead, long live the king" sort of moment, as the four-year shutdown will result in the completion of the High-Luminosity LHC, or HiLumi LHC, not a full-fledged replacement.

In essence, a younger, fitter model with much better eyesight and most of the same genes will be taking the throne as the world's largest particle accelerator, or human-made machine, for that matter, when it comes online in 2030 after what the lab is calling Long Shutdown 3.

HiLumi LHC will feature a number of upgrades. As its name suggests, increased luminosity is the biggest difference between the new model and the old LHC, which was first switched on in 2008.

Luminosity, as CERN explains, is proportional to the number of collisions produced in a given time. Those collisions are detected in the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the LHC (the pair were responsible for the world's first detection of the Higgs boson in 2012), which will be getting some major upgrades that, per CERN, will effectively make them into entirely new detectors.

In their current incarnation, ATLAS and CMS can detect somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 proton-proton collisions per firing cycle, in what's known as a "bunch crossing" where particles fired in opposite directions come in contact with each other. Once the upgrade to HiLumi LHC is complete, the hope is that they'll be capable of detecting between 140 and 200 collisions per cycle, a luminosity increase of a factor of 10, the lab said. Those collisions are picked out of a massive amount of data (more than five billion interactions per second), and the more collisions the experiments can detect, the greater potential they have of spotting something of interest to CERN particle physicists - like the Higgs boson.

To turn the LHC into the HiLumi LHC, ATLAS and CMS will have their trigger systems that select events for closer examination completely replaced, new detector technology will be installed, and timing detectors able to measure things at a resolution of "a few tens of picoseconds" will be installed. 

[...] "In the LHC alone, 1.2 km of magnets and components will be removed and replaced with new equipment," Jean-Philippe Tock, CERN deputy engineering lead and coordinator for the shutdown, said in the lab's statement. 

As for whether the refurbished LHC will increase the chance that humanity ends the world, CERN assured us the new one will be just as safe as the old 27-kilometer machine that's stirred up controversy and conspiracy theories over the past couple of decades.

"The Universe as a whole produces more than 10 million million LHC-like experiments per second," the lab spokesperson explained. "If such phenomena were dangerous or destructive, it would contradict what we see: stars, galaxies and the Earth still exist."


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04, @08:05PM   Printer-friendly

https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/07/01/nasa-unsure-boeing-starliner-will-ever-be-certified-for-human-flight/5265177

Place your bets, because it looks increasingly unlikely Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will carry astronauts again, if a NASA inspector general's report is anything to go on.

Published on Tuesday, the OIG report on NASA's management of its Commercial Crew Program (CCP) examines how SpaceX and Boeing have performed in providing crew transportation to the International Space Station. The report notes that SpaceX worked through its own technical challenges getting humans into space and to the ISS.

Boeing's Starliner, a.k.a. the Calamity Capsule, on the other hand, featured extensively in the writeup, with the OIG calling into question whether it'll ever get past the testing phase.

"Boeing has been unable to obtain human-rating certification for its Starliner capsule and Atlas V launch vehicle, conducting two orbital flight tests and one crewed flight test that suffered significant issues and was ultimately classified as a serious mishap," the OIG report said. "With over 11 years invested and about 4 years of crewed operations aboard the ISS remaining until the Station's planned decommission in 2030, NASA and Boeing have limited time and resources to realize the value of their significant investments into Starliner." 

The saga of Boeing's Starliner has been one of repeated failures and budget overruns, both at NASA and Boeing, thanks to the capsule's disastrous launch record. 

As the NASA OIG noted in its report, Starliner has flown three test missions, one with crew, and each encountered significant technical problems. 

The first flight, in 2019, failed to reach the ISS because a software-related mission timing error caused an incorrect orbital insertion burn, preventing the spacecraft from docking. Problems with stuck oxidizer valves discovered ahead of a planned 2021 launch delayed the second orbital flight test until May 2022, when Starliner successfully reached the ISS despite experiencing thruster failures and helium leaks.

In other NASA news, the agency announced some new commercial Moon landing plans Tuesday that included a truly oddball idea: Sending an engineering development model of a Mars rover to the Moon instead of a purpose-built one. 

The rover, which currently lives at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and serves as a testbed for Curiosity and Perseverance, could be repurposed as the Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration, or PROMISE, if Isaacman gets his way. 

The move would mean that a rover that was never meant for actual space exploration would be doing just that, and it'd also mean that JPL was left without its engineering model for two active rovers on Mars. NASA didn't respond to questions about the plan. 

NASA was going to get a pair of astronauts up in the craft in 2023, but that didn't happen after a series of issues were discovered, including a faulty parachute system and flammability risks associated with tape used to protect internal wiring. 

The one crewed mission that Starliner attempted was also a disaster. No one was injured or killed in the incident, but NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stranded on the ISS for months after NASA determined the craft wasn't safe enough to return its crew to Earth.

According to the OIG, it's the parachute problems, along with persistent helium leaks and the aforementioned propulsion system failures, that are making it question whether Starliner is fit for purpose. 

"The helium leaks and propulsion systems failures remain unresolved as of March 2026, and NASA is uncertain as to when this testing will be completed or human-rating certification for the Starliner will be obtained," the report states. 

The OIG placed the blame on both NASA and Boeing for the problems, similarly to what NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said earlier this year when he accepted that his agency was part of the reason the whole thing had gone so badly.

Per the OIG, NASA contributed to the problem by being "overconfident in Boeing's design and potential success based on the provider's use of heritage systems," which led to the space agency setting "unrealistic launch and flight test schedules." 

"The pressure to adhere to this aggressive schedule was compounded by NASA's underutilization of the contract's data rights, limiting the Agency's ability to fully analyze and resolve flight simulation training failures to ensure crew safety," the report continued. Staffing constraints driven by the Trump administration's desire to cut costs wherever it can find them are likely to further hinder oversight, the OIG said, calling into question once more whether the Calamity Capsule will ever fly again and whether it's worth the cost.

"We question $127.9 million in payments to Boeing, in addition to the $43 million we questioned in a prior 2019 CCP-related report, for a mission that is far from certain," the OIG said. 

In other words, if you want to trim some NASA fat, the Starliner budget's a perfect place to do it.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04, @03:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the bet-it-sucks! dept.

Oomwoo is a new open-source robot vacuum you can 3D print yourself, sidesteps cloud security risks by running fully offline — project combines Raspberry Pi, 2D LiDAR, and a 3D-printed chassis:

Maker's Pet has launched oomwoo , an open-source robot vacuum that owners build themselves. The robot works by mapping the home with an inexpensive 2D LiDAR sensor and then navigating using ROS 2 and the Nav2 stack on Raspberry Pi, integrating natively with Home Assistant. It can be printed using a regular desktop 3D printer and runs entirely without the cloud, while the hardware, firmware, and software are all open under the Apache 2.0 license. Ilia O of Maker's Pet is also developing oomwoo in public "from the first commit," though the project is so early that it doesn't have any build instructions yet.

Right now, oomwoo is at the request-for-comments stage, with the current v0 milestone covering a 3D-printed chassis, a ROS 2 Gazebo simulation, and LiDAR mapping with manual SLAM, and the compute choice between a Raspberry Pi 5, an ESP32 running micro-ROS, or both is still open. Planned deliverables run from the bill of materials and printable files to firmware and a custom PCB, with the first BoM targeted for around mid-July.

The project is structured so the community can build it in parallel: the robot is split into self-contained modules, and contributors claim one and submit work as a pull request. A convenience kit will be sold through Maker's Pet, but Ilia says that buying it won't be a requirement, and every part can be sourced independently.

The usual route to a cloud-free robot vacuum starts with a robot you already own. Valetudo, maintained by Sören Beye since 2018 and also released under Apache 2.0, replaces a commercial vacuum's cloud connection with local-only control and Home Assistant integration. Installing it, however, means rooting the vendor firmware, which on many supported Dreame, Roborock, and Xiaomi models requires disassembly and voids the warranty, and also can't be undone.

The inclusion of local control could be a boon for getting more tinkerers and enthusiasts on board with the vacuum, following several examples of robot-vacuum security failures over the last few years. At DEF CON 32 in August 2024, researchers Dennis Giese and Braelynn Luedtke showed that several Ecovacs models could be hijacked over Bluetooth to reach their cameras and microphones, with Giese telling TechCrunch the security was "really, really, really, really bad."

Hijacked DEEBOT X2 units later shouted slurs and chased pets in several U.S. homes, and a token flaw in DJI's Romo line let one tinkerer reach roughly 6,700 vacuums worldwide , floor plans, and live feeds included. One owner went as far as reviving a remotely bricked vacuum with custom boards and Python to run it offline. oomwoo's reference design eliminates that attack surface, navigating on 2D LiDAR and bumper sensors with nothing pointed at the room.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04, @10:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the and-it-goes-down-down-down-to-the-ring-of-fire dept.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/07/sony-will-stop-making-physical-copies-of-playstation-games-in-2028/

Some gamers are concerned about the future of game ownership after Sony's announcement today that it won't produce physical discs for PlayStation games as of January 2028. On that date, "new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only," Sony said in a blog post.
[...]
"We'll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that's at retailers or PlayStation Store," the blog said.

No companies other than Sony subsidiary Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation make PlayStation discs, so today's announcement signals the end of physical copies of PlayStation games and marks Sony's evolution toward a licensing-only sales model.
[...]
buying a digital download is not the same as owning a game. Per PlayStation's terms of service:

When you order or purchase a product from PlayStation Store, you buy a personal license to use that product for private, non-commercial use. That license is not transferable unless your local applicable laws say it must be. This means you can use a product in the ways described in the license, but do not own the product.

[...]
Sony also announced today that it will close the PlayStation Store on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, with the US losing access in July 2027.
[...]
"To ease the transition, players will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date for the foreseeable future," Sony said.

Both blog posts have comments decrying Sony's announcements and their implications for ownership and long-term access to PlayStation games.

One user going by Mosquito53, for example, commented:

Another disappointing decision made in the same day. No matter how many users still use these stores, they should remain open. So much content released digital-only, even on these platforms, these games will be lost to time.

Imagine what will happen in the future when this same decision is made for PS4 or PS5 or even the eventual PS6, which now looks to be all digital with the announcement of no more physical disc production.

We will own nothing, it's truly sad.

[...]
in 2024, Sony deleted customers' Funimation digital libraries despite Funimation previously claiming that customers would be able to access these digital copies "forever but" with "some restrictions."
[...]
Sony has also shown a wavering commitment to its digital stores. In 2021, it stopped selling movie and show rentals/purchases. Leaving the door ajar for customers to potentially lose access to digital games they bought for PlayStation 3 or PS Vita doesn't boost confidence around the digital-only future.

Further, the removal of storefronts could mean beloved games released only digitally become virtually impossible to find.
[...]
"This is why physical media matters," a user named Radgatt commented on Sony's PS3 and PS Vita announcement. "More and more proof that you're just buying a license that can be taken away whenever companies feel like it.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04, @05:54AM   Printer-friendly

Engineer open-sources DIY radar system that's 95% cheaper than $250,000 commercial offerings, has 20 kilometer range — Moroccan engineer designs Aeris-10 radar, shares it on GitHub:

"Nice radar you got there," followed by "thanks, I just had it jammed," might be the new word exchange among buddy electronics enthusiasts. In a move that might ruffle the feathers of many large companies with exceedingly pricey wares, a Moroccan electronics engineer named Nawfal Motii has designed the open-source Aeris-10 radar system that is purportedly comparable to commercial systems costing $250,000.

Aeris-10 comes in two variants: 10N Nexus with a 3-km range and an 8x16 patch antenna array, and the 10E Extended, capable of reaching up to 20 km thanks to its 32x16 slotted waveguide array. Motii published the entire project on GitHub , including all the necessary schematics, PBC layouts, components, firmware, and software with a GUI for controlling and monitoring the system.

On the technical end, the Aeris-10 uses an XCA7A50T FPGA as a central brain for doing its FFT math, along with Moving Target Indicator (MTI), Doppler-effect estimation of moving object speed, and CFAR false alarm detection control. The figurative spinal cord is an STM32F746xx microcontroller that orchestrates the frequency synthesizers, ADCs, DACs, the GPS, barometer, stepper motors, and cooling setup.

Watch full video on the link above:

The fact that Aeris-10 offers a true phased array system and ±45° elevation/azimuth adjustments are seemingly its differentiating factors. Prices for electronics are exceedingly floaty in these ship-shinking days, but a brief estimate pins the bill of materials at $5,000 for the 10N and $7,200 for the 10E. Despite the number of zeros on those figures, they're pocket change compared to amounts commanded by off-the-truck offerings. A cursory look puts commercial phase-array systems at somewhere $120k and $200k, and well past those prices for longer-range units.

Motii claims that military surplus radars can be had for $10k to $50k, but those are invariably decades-old tech with next to no spare parts availability. He says that building a DIY system is also a hard ask for a small team, as the testing gear can cost $50k on its own. Describing himself as "a guy in a workshop in Morocco with a soldering iron and an obsession," he took it upon himself to fix that particular problem.

Anyone can hit the project's GitHub page and get their own radar system going, but not everyone might have the necessary electronic and mechanical skills necessary for building one. To that effect, Motti says he's reached an agreement with the Crowed Supply platform, aiming for a Q3 2026 release. The site isn't your standard dice-rolling crowd-sourcing platform, though, as apparently it only accepts fully-designed projects with functional prototypes, rejects 90% of submissions, and claims it never had a scam.

Interestingly enough, this project was originally licensed under the MIT license, but Motti was advised that said license does not protect physical hardware, so it changed to the CERN-OHL-PT license. Should you elect to build your own unit, be aware that the frequencies it operates in are almost assuredly highly regulated in your legal jurisdiction.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04, @04:16AM   Printer-friendly

On behalf of all staff and community members, may we wish all Americans a very happy Independence Day (and weekend!). Importantly, stay cool and safe!

And everyone, Americans and others (and assuming you didn't get an invite to Taylor's wedding celebrations), tell us what you will be doing and how you will spend the weekend!

I will try to keep the stories flowing to allow the Usians to party appropriately.

posted by janrinok on Saturday July 04, @01:13AM   Printer-friendly

I'm not even going to summarize this, but if you value American science you need to read it.

Near the end of May, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed a new rule that would govern how the federal government handles the grants it issues, including those that fund the vast majority of scientific research in the US.

If formalized, the rule would make political priorities the prime determinant of what science gets funded and sideline the opinions of scientific experts. Grants could be canceled due to political whims, and new layers of bureaucracy would inhibit basic scientific activities like publishing papers and attending conferences. Unlike the executive orders it echoes, it would have the force of law behind it and be significantly harder to challenge in court.

Before coming into force, however, the proposal must go through a process that includes public feedback and (potentially) changes in response. The deadline for that feedback—Monday, July 13—is rapidly approaching.

I'm here to explain what makes this proposal so dangerous, why your feedback matters, and how you can craft an effective submission.


Original Submission

posted by jelizondo on Friday July 03, @08:29PM   Printer-friendly

Three companies that account for 90% of RAM revenue are being sued for anti-competitive practices.

The big story in computing these days is how an ongoing shortage of RAM (dubbed RAMageddon or the RAMpocalypse) has led to massive increases in hardware costs. The conventional explanation of the situation has been that shortages have been driven by the widespread construction of AI data centers. However, a new lawsuit (Garciaguirre et al. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al.) filed against RAM manufacturers Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, alleges that these companies are exploiting market conditions to artificially inflate prices.

The class action lawsuit filed by 14 individuals and three businesses accuses Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron of conspiring to fix prices and supply of DDR3 and DDR4 RAM, resulting in higher costs. "This lawsuit seeks to recover for—and stop—concerted anticompetitive behavior by three oligopolists in the market for dynamic random access memory, more commonly called DRAM," the opening line of the suit reads.

DRAM is essential for virtually every computing device, as it stores the bits used for short-term data. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron account for more than 90% of global DRAM revenue. The suit says that the firms have "fixed supply and prices for DRAM, engaging in conduct that makes no economic sense absent collusion and that has driven up the price of conventional DRAM (sometimes called commodity DRAM) approximately 700% in a four-year period."

[Source]: Polygon.Com

Do you agree that these companies are colluding ?


Original Submission

posted by jelizondo on Friday July 03, @03:49PM   Printer-friendly

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/polestar-ev-ban-commerce-department-volvo-china/

Polestar, the Swedish maker of electric vehicles, will not be allowed to sell new vehicle models in the US. It says it will continue to sell existing stock of Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 models. 

The Swedish manufacturer of electric vehicles, which became a distinct brand in 2017, revealed the ban in an SEC filing, which it paired with a press release this week announcing that it's shifting manufacturing to Europe.

It said in the release that it will continue to sell existing stock of its Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 vehicles in the US and to support customers through its service network. 

A representative for Polestar told CNET in an email that, because of the Commerce Department's decision, the company has no plans to sell new cars in the US from model year 2027 onward, including the planned Polestar 7.

The company has marketed the Polestar 7 as a premium compact SUV. It's due out in 2028.

This decision isn't surprising: A 2024 letter from Polestar (PDF) to the Bureau of Industry and Security foreshadowed what would eventually happen. It said at the time that the agency's prohibitions could eventually lead the company to stop selling vehicles in the US, even ones it manufactures in South Carolina.

The US ban has not been posted on the Commerce Department's website or social media, but it's in line with the agency's directive to police technology from China that the government considers a potential security threat. This month, the department issued a $36 million penalty against Bosch for exporting sensors and auto software to Huawei. 

In May, however, the Bureau of Industry and Security granted Volvo special authorization to sell its vehicles in the US after the auto company said it discussed its connected technology with the department. 

A representative of the Bureau of Industry and Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

US agencies aren't just looking at the auto industry. The Federal Communications Commission has targeted consumer products including routers and drones that have technology made in China.

Polestar is not one of the top 10 EV manufacturers, lagging behind larger companies including Tesla, BYD and Volkswagen. 

Electric vehicles only account for about 6.5 percent of the US auto market, according to industry watcher Edmunds. In the US, EVs are typically priced higher, and federal rebates to purchase these types of vehicles have been phased out

With gas prices high this summer, consumers may be giving EVs another look, but concerns remain about pricing and range. 

Some automakers are trying to boost the appeal of electric vehicles through lower-cost models. Slate is taking preorders for a basic, modular EV truck that costs $24,950 before delivery fees. Other EV models, such as the Chevrolet Bolt, can be found for about $30,000.


Original Submission

posted by jelizondo on Friday July 03, @10:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the yaunr dept.

The UN sees great rewards, and risks, with AI for humanity and the world in their new report.

"The potential benefits of AI are ​enormous," the report concluded. "The rapid, unchecked deployment of the technology at scale also presents considerable risks, ​including harms to the mental health of users, potential use as a destructive tool, impacts on social, economic ‌and environmental ⁠systems, and challenges associated with controlling the technology."

AI adoption has accelerated broadly, but unevenly, across countries and sectors. Globally, over a billion people now use conversational AI weekly, but adoption in developing countries lags.

Although more than 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide, current AI models are trained for only a small fraction and machine translation of some languages ​is riddled with errors that can affect health diagnoses and treatment decisions.

https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/en
https://www.un.org/independent-international-scientific-panel-ai/en/preliminary-report

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/un-report-sees-enormous-potential-benefits-big-risks-ai-2026-07-01/

https://www.un.org/en/ai-advisory-body (older report on AI and governance)


Original Submission