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owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2026/09/8087-tangent-cordic.html

I hope you're not tired of the 8087, because I have another article about Intel's floating-point chip.1 In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087, making floating-point operations much faster in the IBM PC and other systems. In this article, I look at the algorithm behind the chip's tangent instruction. One popular approach for trigonometric functions is an algorithm called CORDIC. Another approach is a polynomial approximation. The 8087 combined the two to obtain both high accuracy and high performance. The 8087 provided an enormous speedup over the 8086 microprocessor, computing a tangent in 90 microseconds rather than 13,000 microseconds.2

By examining the circuitry and microcode of the 8087, I can explain the algorithm behind the tangent instruction, called FPTAN. To explore the 8087's circuitry, I popped the lid off a chip with a chisel and created a high-resolution image with a microscope.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Experts have warned of the hidden health risks associated with the unregulated global trade of mummified remains:

A new study, led by University of Staffordshire, has found evidence of potentially hazardous microbial growth on mummified human and animal remains advertised for sale online – posing risks to both sellers and buyers.

The analysis of 128 online posts and auction listings also highlighted non-compliance with postal regulations, potentially putting delivery workers, customs officials and other members of the public at risk.

Isolated human body parts, including hands and feet, were the most frequently listed items, while more than half of the sample involved heads in varying states of completeness and preservation.

Sellers were found to provide little information about the safe handling of remains, while some posts showed people handling mummified human remains without gloves.

Although not all items in the study had visible signs of possible fungal growth or extensive deterioration, the researchers warn that microbial colonisation may not always be visible, meaning apparently well-preserved remains can still present potential risks.

Lead author Dr Kirsty Squires, Professor of Human Bioarchaeology at University of Staffordshire, conducted the research with international colleagues from Vilnius University, the University of Salento, the University of Messina, and Adelaide University.

"The rise of the internet, especially social media, has amplified international trafficking and driven demand for unique cultural heritage, including mummified humans and animals," she explained.

"However, these preserved remains pose health and biosecurity risks, due to the toxicity of embalming methods and/or suboptimal storage that can promote microbial growth.

Our research revealed that mummified remains sold online exhibit signs of biodeterioration, yet sellers provide no safety guidance, suggesting limited awareness or deliberate disregard of hazards.

"There is also evidence to show that mummified remains are being mailed to buyers, both nationally and internationally, with little (if any) consideration of the health and safety implications of these actions. Clearer, more prominent guidelines are needed to ensure buyers and sellers are unable to misinterpret or find loopholes in shipping policies."

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Pew finds growing concern over their effects on energy bills, the environment, and nearby communities:

Americans are growing more and more wary of datacenters, with a Pew Research Center survey finding sharp rises since January in those who view the effect on the environment, energy bills, and nearby communities negatively.

Pew surveyed 10,548 US adults between July 20 and August 9. Fifty-four percent said datacenters were mostly bad for the environment, up from 39 percent in January. Half said they were mostly bad for household energy costs, up from 38 percent, while 49 percent viewed them negatively for the quality of life of nearby residents, up from 30 percent.

In each category, only 4 percent described their impact as mostly good. Views were more evenly divided on local employment and tax revenue, while 12 percent of respondents said they had not heard of datacenters.

The shift spans demographic groups: men and women, adults of every age and education level, and urban, suburban, and rural residents have all grown more negative since the start of the year.

The movement also crosses party lines. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents remain more negative than Republicans and Republican leaners, but among the latter group, 42 percent now say datacenters are mostly bad for nearby residents' quality of life, up from 24 percent in January.

The research comes amid growing scrutiny of datacenters' electricity and water consumption and their effects on household utility bills.

The Register has reported on US senators investigating rising energy bills, gaps in operators' disclosure of emissions, and allegations that compute sheds consume more water than their owners acknowledge.

Amazon's chief sustainability officer this week said communities should hold the company accountable over datacenters and called for greater transparency about their effects.

The industry has long recognized its image problem. At last year's Datacloud Global Congress, executives discussed ways to win over communities increasingly wary of new facilities.

Republican officials have taken differing positions. Trump has consistently supported datacenter construction, arguing that it is needed to help the US compete with China, while Texas Governor Greg Abbott imposed a statewide moratorium in August after previously backing expansion. Trump has also blamed opposition to datacenters on Chinese propaganda.

Whatever the cause, 60 percent of respondents said they would be not too or not at all comfortable with a new datacenter operating nearby. Majorities of urban, suburban, and rural Americans agreed.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Discord will try to automatically estimate ages, require verification when it can't:

Discord today [Sept. 23] is rolling out an age-verification system that estimates each user's age and requires some users to prove they are old enough to access age-restricted content. Discord said it will take a few days for the global system to reach all user accounts.

Discord had announced a somewhat different plan for age checks in February, but scrapped it amid backlash from users concerned about privacy. The privacy concerns were heightened by a 2025 incident in which hackers stole government IDs of 70,000 Discord users from a third-party service that Discord used to verify ages in the UK and Australia.

The original plan was to require ID uploads or face scans from users seeking to access age-restricted servers and channels. The revised system, detailed yesterday by Discord CTO and co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy, will provide several additional options.

"In February, the only methods we'd planned for to confirm your age were facial age estimation or an ID scan. Based on your feedback, we committed to giving you more options that meet our high privacy standards," Vishnevskiy wrote.

A Discord system will automatically estimate user ages and place each user into an adult age group (18+), a teen group (13-17), or an "unconfirmed" group for which there isn't enough data to determine whether a person is an adult or teen.

[...] Discord estimates that more than 90 percent of users will not be asked to confirm their age. Adults who want to access age-restricted content, but are incorrectly placed in the 13-17 age group or put into "unconfirmed," will have several options to prove they are old enough.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Someday, AI agents will buy you anything you want — or what they think you want:

The keynote kicking off Snapdragon Summit 2026 in Maui had the latest forecast for how AI agents will organize our lives through the phones in our pockets. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon spent some time walking viewers through how the agents will buy things for them, preparing for the day when AI will have access to our bank accounts or credit cards — and why that’s a good idea.

For years, Qualcomm has pitched a future where AI agents on your devices know your habits and preferences well enough to make informed decisions on your behalf. Eventually, this will include the capability to spend your money on things such as necessities, gifts and travel. The question is how agents will decide whether or not to pull the trigger on a purchase — and how much input you’ll have on what decisions they make.

Nobody’s figured this out yet, and might not for some time. The fear is that an AI agent would run off with your bank account numbers, clear out your savings and run up your credit card. But at this year’s summit, Qualcomm suggested how this might actually work, wherein agents would repeatedly check in before they spend your money.

“When an agent is acting as a proxy of you, you need to trust the agent, and you need to trust the device, especially for something like shopping,” Amon said on the keynote stage. 

Naturally, the CEO was pitching a method with his company’s technology at the center, but it was at least sensitive to the uncertainties people likely have about an AI buying things for them. He said that the company is developing technologies to protect personal information and provide a secure device environment.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/27/uk/fairford-arrests-uk-raf-us-intl

UK counter-terrorism police are leading an investigation after several men were arrested on suspicion of explosives offenses near an air base used by US forces.

A number of properties were evacuated in the Whelford area in the county of Gloucestershire "following the declaration of a major incident," a police statement said.

"The Army's specialist explosive ordnance disposal team are currently examining a number of vehicles," the statement said

Whelford is close to the Royal Air Force base at Fairford which has been used by US B-1 bombers involved in targeting Iran and is a forward operating location for US Global Strike Command, which is tasked with managing long-distance strikes.

A US air force spokesperson at Fairford - where the 501st ​Combat Support Wing is based - told CNN: "For operational security reasons we will not discuss specific force protection measures."

The unit "remains vigilant and will take appropriate actions to ensure the safety and security of our US service ⁠members, civilians, contractors, and their families," the spokesperson said.

The threat level at RAF Fairford has been raised to Delta. The threat level at RAF Lakenheath, which is also used by the USAF, has been raised to Charlie.

Threat level Delta suggests that there was prior intelligence to the potential attack and there is a large police presence deployed around the base.

As yet there has been no statement attributing the disrupted attack to any specific nation or organisation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqrm99mm9l84o

UK counter-terrorism police are leading an investigation in which several men were arrested on suspicion of explosives offences near an RAF station which hosts the United States Air Force (USAF).

An Army explosive ordnance disposal team has been examining vehicles near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and homes in the nearby village of Whelford have been evacuated while investigations continue, police said.

The men were detained early on Sunday and a Hazardous Area Response Team has been deployed inside a security cordon at the base but officers believe the incident is contained.

The base has been recently used to deploy USAF bombers since the country's conflict in Iran began in February.

In March, four USAF bombers landed at RAF Fairford and the US started using British bases for "specific defensive operations" against Iranian missile sites after then prime minister Sir Keir Starmer granted permission for "defensive" US action from UK bases.

A government spokesperson said Prime Minister Andy Burnham was receiving regular updates on the evolving situation.

A police statement has just been made (13:56 BST):

Three suspicious white vans were reported by a telephone call to be heading towards the Fairford area at 12:45 am

Police stopped the vehicles and have detained 5 men, who remain in custody. They are held under suspicion of committing offences related to the Explosives Act.

The vehicles are being investigated by a military Explosive Ordnance Disposal team.

The police have just announced that the 5 detained men have been further charged with preparation of a terrorist act. [Corrected at 1427BST--JR]

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Post-eruption imaging of the Hunga caldera gives new details of its collapse:

Krakatau, a volcanic island in Indonesia, killed more than 30,000 people when it erupted in 1883. One might assume that volcanic debris posed the major threat, yet many of the victims died from a tsunami caused by the volcanic eruption instead.

Volcanoes at sea can pose hazards quite different from those on land, as their impact can vary depending on how the volcanic activity interacts with seawater. In the deep ocean, high water pressure can suppress explosive volcanic activity, making eruptions less destructive. But closer to the surface, the lower water pressure and the high temperatures of volcanic material can cause violent explosions. Yet scientists still do not fully understand the conditions under which volcanic activity can cause a tsunami.

To better understand these risks, an international team of researchers examined the 2022 Hunga eruption in Tonga, focusing on the rapid caldera collapse that may have amplified its powerful tsunami. Calderas form when the ground above a magma reservoir collapses as the magma drains away. Comparisons of seafloor topography before and after the eruption showed that a roughly 4-kilometer-wide caldera sank by about a kilometer during the eruption.

The researchers argue that the rapid collapse of the entire caldera may have enhanced the massive tsunami. Even a relatively small caldera like Hunga may be capable of producing a dangerous tsunami, depending on the speed and nature of its collapse. This suggests that other underwater volcanoes may also have the potential to generate dangerous tsunamis. Still, the paper warns: "The dynamics of submarine caldera-forming eruptions and, thus, the hazards they pose are not well understood, owing to the relative inaccessibility of the resulting calderas and eruption products."

The Hunga volcano's eruption on January 15, 2022, ranks among the most powerful volcanic events this century. The eruption column soared more than 55 km, pushing vaporized seawater up into the stratosphere, and the pressure wave from the explosion was detected across the globe. The accompanying tsunami is estimated to have reached heights of 40 meters within about 100 km from the source. It is the highest tsunami ever recorded from an underwater volcanic eruption.

For all its impact, Hunga's caldera is quite small. The caldera left after the eruption is about 4 kilometers in diameter, making it one of the smallest of the 177 known calderas in a global database. What sets Hunga apart is that its caldera is unusually deep relative to its size. Relative to its diameter, the subsidence depth was comparable to that of famous calderas like Newberry in the United States.

The researchers suspect that the speed of the caldera collapse may have been one of the factors behind the massive tsunami. In general, when a submarine caldera collapses, the sinking seafloor pulls the seawater above it along with it. If the seafloor hundreds of meters below the surface drops abruptly, as it did at Hunga, a large volume of water can be displaced in a short time, potentially creating a tsunami.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Crew-15 through Crew-17 shore up astronaut access to ISS while Starliner's future remains uncertain:

NASA has added almost $1 billion to SpaceX's commercial crew contract for three more Crew Dragon missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

The $946 million contract modification covers Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17, along with ground operations, launch, in-orbit services, return and recovery, cargo transportation, and lifeboat capability while the spacecraft is docked to the ISS.

The addition brings the value of SpaceX's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract to $5.92 billion.

Whether there will be more remains unclear. NASA explicitly said the award does not prevent it from buying additional transportation services if needed.

SpaceX has said it ultimately intends to retire Dragon and Falcon 9 in favor of Starship, assuming it can get the vastly larger vehicle operating reliably. NASA plans to retire the ISS around 2030 and use a SpaceX-developed vehicle to perform its controlled deorbit.

NASA lists mission readiness dates in 2027 and 2028, with the contract's period of performance running through 2030.

NASA awarded CCtCap contracts to SpaceX and Boeing in 2014. SpaceX has since flown numerous crews to the ISS. Boeing, not so much. The aviation giant's calamity capsule, Starliner, finally carried two astronauts to the outpost in 2024. They remained there until a SpaceX Crew Dragon brought them home after NASA decided that returning them aboard the Boeing vehicle posed too much risk. Starliner later returned safely to Earth without a crew.

If these missions prove to be Crew Dragon's last hurrah, NASA and its partners will face a challenge in maintaining crewed access to low Earth orbit and the commercial stations planned to succeed the ISS.

A report from NASA's Office of Inspector General identified multiple problems with the Starliner program and faulted both Boeing and the agency. SpaceX has had problems of its own, not least the explosion of a Crew Dragon capsule during ground testing in 2019. Starliner nevertheless earned its calamity capsule nickname through repeated uncrewed test failures and a 2024 Crew Flight Test that ended with the spacecraft returning without its astronauts.

Despite the billions spent on Starliner, there is no guarantee that it will ever enter regular crew rotation service. Crew Dragon, meanwhile, could be approaching the end of its run, with one of these newly ordered flights potentially carrying the final astronauts to or from the ISS.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/stolen-sensitive-fbi-employee-data-significant-intelligence-risk/

Hackers from the group ShinyHunters claim to have stolen personal data of "all" FBI employees and applicants, according to a report published Tuesday by 404 Media.

The group, which was also behind a breach that disrupted software used by 9,000 schools during final exams in May, reportedly gained access to the FBI's recruitment site via an exploit in Oracle’s PeopleSoft product. ShinyHunters says it now has sensitive data on individuals who applied for FBI jobs as well as current employees, according to 404 Media. ShinyHunters couldn’t be reached for comment.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the apply.fbijobs.gov site shows a maintenance page reading, "We're sniffing out site updates for you!" The main FBI Jobs home page serves up a "503 Service Temporarily Unavailable" error page. The bureau's page highlighting eligibility for new applicants is live with a "System Unavailable" banner reading, "Apply.fbijobs.gov and the Special Agent Application Portal are currently unavailable."

"The FBI is aware of a cyber-criminal enterprise group claiming a compromise of the FBIJobs.gov portal and alleged impact to FBI employee personally identifiable information,” a spokesperson for the FBI told CNET via email. “While the point of breach is still undetermined — whether a third-party or the FBI's enterprise — we are actively and aggressively investigating this matter and working closely with those third-party providers that support FBIJobs.gov to mitigate any and all risk."

ShinyHunters has been linked to numerous ransomware attacks, including a breach of 4.4 million TransUnion credit records and access to servers belonging to Rockstar Games, the developer of the Grand Theft Auto series. The group usually demands extortion payments to prevent it from leaking the stolen information.

However, the attack on the FBI's data is different and has potentially much more serious implications.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/22/california-tightens-datacenter-rules-on-water-and-power/5298028

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday signed seven state bills that require datacenter operators to report more info about their operations, and to involve communities as they plan future facilities.

The California Assembly Bills (AB) and Senate Bills (SB) signed by Newsom require greater disclosure of datacenter water and electricity use, address who pays for grid connections and other power infrastructure, and introduce rules covering electricity rates, water resources, and environmental review. They include:

California state senator Steve Padilla, who authored two of the bills, said the bills will ensure that datacenters pay for energy grid connection, for electricity generation costs, and for a larger share of wildfire mitigation and liability costs.

The governor's office cited the Trump administration's dismissal of Americans' concerns about AI and datacenters to emphasize Newsom's willingness to constrain an industry of major significance to California's economy.

"While the Trump administration moves toward deregulation, communities are left to deal with the consequences — higher electricity demand, grid constraints, water use, and pollution," said Newsom in a statement. 

"Today we are once again laying the groundwork for a stronger approach, because we know that we don't have to sell out Californians or sacrifice our well-being to innovate and succeed. California has proven that time and time again."

Dr. Nathan Wangusi, who runs the independent water data transparency platform Data Center Water Leaks, sent a statement to The Register in which he observed that California's new disclosure requirements could improve transparency around how much water datacenters use, help communities understand the bit barns' impact on local water supplies, and protect ratepayers from infrastructure costs.

Much has been said about the need to regulate the safety of AI services, and the environmental impact of the datacenters that host them.

The White House has pushed to accelerate datacenter deployment with executive orders and President Trump has insisted regulation is not necessary.

owl writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/owners-mourn-spoiled-food-after-firmware-update-bricks-samsung-smart-fridges/

Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update.

Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung's Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.

Affected fridges "suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after" trying to issue a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung's smart home platform, per Star News Korea. The SmartThings app then showed the devices as offline. Some users said that their fridge's internal display was stuck showing the message "Checking SmartThings app during update."

There are numerous reports on Samsung's Korean community forum detailing the problem. Some users claim that they have owned their affected fridge for just a year or less.

"[T]he refrigeration and refrigeration functions themselves did not work normally, so all the food in the refrigerator had to be disposed of," one user wrote, per a translation.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/china-silent-as-us-touts-plan-for-ai-safety-alerts-that-omits-tech-experts/

This week, the US and China, the two world leaders on AI, finally started talks meant to keep the whole world safe from emerging safety risks. But whether meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping can lead to a reliable global governance framework for AI depends on how much the fierce rivals are actually willing to cooperate.

It's clear Trump wants it to seem like discussions are going well. Before Trump and Xi meet on Thursday and Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that both sides had already discussed setting up a new AI safety notification mechanism. If China agrees to participate, that would create an open line for either side to send alerts when their country's AI systems pose threats or behave unpredictably. The same channel, Bessent said, could allow the countries to share their "vision of common goals."

However, the proposal comes at a time when China may not be ready to trust the US to have AI safety conversations that aren't about limiting China's capabilities. Not only has Trump steadily increased export controls that explicitly seek to block China from accessing technology to advance AI, but Congress is mulling bills that would cut the country off from more chips and hardware. Adding to tensions, just two weeks ago, Trump's Justice Department accused six of China's leading AI makers of stealing from US frontier labs, which China has strongly disputed.

Some US-China experts told Ars that there were concerns that China might cancel talks, but China seemingly isn't taking offense to Trump's rhetoric. Even Truth Social posts where Trump insists that America must dominate China on AI—declaring "WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so"—didn't keep China from showing up.

Notably, China has yet to publicly acknowledge the proposed alert system. Even if China bought into the system, people familiar with Bessent's plan told Politico that the plan to monitor safety alerts appears superficial, since it involves no officials with technical expertise who could be trusted to assess the urgency of risks described in communications.

Describing the significance of the arrangement, one source mocked the plan, saying "the scientific, technical term is BS."

Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at a Georgetown University think tank called the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, monitors national security applications of AI and US-China tech competition. He agreed it's a red flag that there's no tech body of tech experts monitoring the channel.

"It's an existing channel, which I think is better than creating a whole new channel," Bresnick told Ars. But if both sides had tech experts, the US and China could have really high-level conversations about how they're assessing risk. That's particularly important when discussing military risks, Bresnick emphasized.

"I think it's better than nothing for sure, but I don't have a lot of confidence that that is going to make a major difference going forward," Bresnick said.

Su Lian Jye, a chief analyst at a global technology research and advisory group called Omdia, told the South China Morning Post that the AI alerts may help "promote more transparency," but it won't make either side less wary of the other.

"I don't think the dialog will remove all concerns and differences on distillation, pricing competition, and pacing," Su said.

Praising the plan as a good start to open dialogues, Su suggested that much more cooperation would be needed to make the safety mechanism meaningful.

"Turning the proposal into an effective tool would require both countries to agree on risk classifications, notification triggers, response protocols, and regular review procedures," he said.

Perhaps that will come up when Trump and Xi meet later this week, with AI supposedly at the top of the agenda.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://linuxiac.com/vlc-3-0-24-upgrades-to-ffmpeg-8-1-2-adds-flatpak-support/

VLC 3.0.24 upgrades FFmpeg from 4.4 to 8.1.2, adds Flatpak build support, improves Qt 6 compatibility, and delivers numerous playback fixes.

VLC, the popular open-source multimedia player, has been updated to version 3.0.24 "Vetinari," bringing a major FFmpeg upgrade, Flatpak build support, improved Qt 6 compatibility, and a long list of playback and streaming improvements.

The biggest change in VLC 3.0.24 is the move from FFmpeg 4.4 to 8.1.2. According to the developers, the newer multimedia stack should improve decoding performance and resolve playback issues across many formats. The update also refreshes many of VLC's third-party libraries and continues improving Qt 6 support.

Linux users get another notable addition: Flatpak build support is now included directly in VLC. Codec support has also been expanded. VLC 3.0.24 adds decoding support for ATRAC3 and ATRAC9 audio, while MP4 files gain support for CEA-708 closed captions.

Subtitle handling sees several improvements as well, including better language detection and improved WebVTT handling.

The release also fixes numerous issues in VLC's demuxers, including crashes, memory leaks, hangs, and malformed-file handling issues affecting MKV, MP4, MPEG-TS, Ogg, AVI, and other formats.

Streaming support gets several additions. RIST input and output now use librist, with support for both Simple and Main profiles, while SRT gains listener mode. SFTP support has also been improved with public-key authentication options and support for ED25519 host keys.

On Windows, VLC 3.0.24 fixes issues with the Direct3D11 adjust filter and texture leaks, while adding NV12 DirectShow capture support.

Several Windows audio crashes, leaks, and deadlocks have also been fixed. Another change fixes slow VLC startup during Daylight Saving Time changes. The release additionally adds Super Resolution scaling support for Moore Threads GPUs.

macOS users get a fix for an AudioToolbox MIDI synthesizer crash affecting macOS 26 and newer.

Moreover, VLC 3.0.24 improves several Qt dialogs and fixes how the effects window geometry is saved. A race condition affecting the LibVLC media list player has also been resolved.

A few obsolete or broken components are being removed at the same time. The RealRTSP plugin is now disabled in all build configurations, while the old NPAPI browser plugin and broken YouTube Lua script have been removed.

Importantly, HEVC streaming to original-generation Chromecast devices has also been disabled.

Finally, VLC 3.0.24 includes many security fixes addressing issues such as out-of-bounds accesses, integer overflows, double frees, and use-after-free bugs.

For additional details, see the changelog.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/reviews/2026/09/how-the-us-handed-china-control-of-the-rare-earth-supply-chain/

Look around you, and you'll see rare earth elements at work. A phone vibrates because a magnet moves a weight. Its screen was polished with cerium powder. Its connection to the rest of the world crosses oceans on cables amplified with erbium. If you drove today, a rare earth magnet helped you steer, and a cerium compound scrubbed the exhaust.

All of these devices function because of 17 metals collectively known as rare earth elements [PDF]. The scientists who gave the group that name in 1794 created a misnomer. Cerium alone is about as common in the Earth's crust as copper.

However, separating rare earth minerals from one another and from raw ore is intensely difficult. As a result, countries that control the processing of rare earth minerals have a lot of political leverage.

China processes most of the rare earth minerals used around the world, and it isn't just consumer electronics that depend on Chinese exports. The US military's F-35 fighter jets and Virginia-class submarines need rare earths too.

I spent years adjudicating war games for the US Navy. War games force players to identify the hidden constraints that render a beautiful plan untenable. Rare earth processing is exactly such a constraint.

China showcased the power of its rare earths leverage with a series of export controls issued in 2025 that it agreed to suspend—at least until Nov. 10, 2026. Controlling the supply enables a government to slow a rival's growth, or halt it. China's ability to extend the suspension of its export controls or let them go into effect gives it leverage on the geopolitical stage. In the parlance of Theodore Roosevelt, it's a very big stick.

California's Mountain Pass mine led world production of rare earths until the late 1980s. Multiple instances of radioactive wastewater spilling from the mine into the Mojave Desert made it hard to keep domestic production running.

When China expanded its own mining and sold the processed materials for less, the logic of switching rare earth suppliers was easy.

Mountain Pass' separation plant closed in 1998, and the mine itself stopped in 2002. MP Materials restarted mining there in 2017 as concern about access to rare earth minerals rose, but the US still imported more than two-thirds [PDF] of the rare earth elements it used as recently as 2025.

China, which mined about 60 percent of the world's rare earth elements used in magnets in 2024, handled about 91 percent of separation and refining.

Buyers using processing in China got material below the cost of making it themselves, and none of the cleanup bills or the bad press. But they ceded leverage to the processor in exchange. The trade was understood. It just didn't look as threatening at first from a China that was still rising.

The US Government Accountability Office cited estimates in 2010 that rebuilding a domestic supply chain including mining, separation, and magnet manufacturing would take as long as 15 years. Actually rebuilding that supply chain has been slow for several reasons.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/09/23/southern-water-taps-fiber-network-to-sniff-out-leaky-pipes/5298527

UK utility provider Southern Water is turning fiber-optic telecoms cables into underground sensors in an effort to find leaks in its water network.

The privatized biz is trialing tech from Lightsonic that uses Openreach's fiber network to detect leaking pipes. Openreach - BT's infrastructure arm - and Affinity Water, which supplies parts of southern England, tested the system in March.

As The Register reported at the time, the system analyzes tiny changes in light traveling through fiber-optic cables to detect vibrations caused by nearby underground leaks. Machine learning helps distinguish those signals from traffic, roadworks and other background noise, and estimates where the water is escaping.

Lightsonic says the resulting location data allows engineers to investigate and repair leaks more quickly. It claims the tech is already preventing the loss of more than four million liters (about a million gallons) of water per day across 650 km (400 miles) of the UK's water network.

Southern Water is adopting the technology after one of Britain's hottest and driest summers on record, with almost three-quarters of England officially under drought conditions. Southern England is among the country's most water-stressed regions.
The utility said Lightsonic's work with Affinity Water and Openreach influenced its decision to run the trial.

Southern Water hopes the trial will help it meet Ofwat's leakage-reduction targets for 2030 and strengthen its drought resilience by easing pressure on reservoirs and water abstraction.

The company provides water and wastewater services across parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, West Sussex, East Sussex, and Kent.

"We've reduced leakage across our network for three consecutive years and continue to invest in innovative techniques and technologies to find and fix leaks even more effectively," said Wayne Novelli, Southern Water's leakage and network strategy manager.

"We've been impressed by the leakage reduction metrics and proven success of Lightsonic's technology and are looking forward to working with the team to trial a new way of detecting and tackling them."

Southern Water's efforts to conserve clean water come against a less flattering record on wastewater. A court this week fined it £2.4 million ($3.1 million) over several pollution incidents in Kent. That followed a £7.1 million ($9.4 million) fine in July for illegal sewage discharges that forced beaches in Thanet to close. Both prosecutions were brought by the Environment Agency.

Original Submission