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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/meta-unveils-most-capable-us-open-weight-model-muse-spark-open

The multimodal model has 816bn total parameters, with 42bn active parameters and a 1m-token context window.

Meta has unveiled Muse Spark Open, calling it the “most capable” US open-weight model to date. The company said that the new model is the first in its class to be able to run on a desktop computer using Apple’s M5 Ultra Mac Studios with its latest machine learning framework.

The multimodal model has 816bn total parameters, with 42bn active parameters and a 1m-token context window. According to the company, it is built for coding, agentic work and other complex, multi-step reasoning tasks.

Unlike their closed weight contemporaries, developers can download parameters of an open weight model and modify them for their needs. Open weights, however, are not the same as open source models that also provide access to training data and code.

Meta said that the model weights are available for download via Amazon SageMaker AI, Google Cloud Model Garden, Hugging Face, and Microsoft Foundry Models. The model is available through popular API platforms including Groq, OpenRouter and Baseten.

China is by far the leader in the open-weights space, with models developed by Chinese makers such as Xiaomi, Z AI, Kimi, Alibaba and DeepSeek routinely ranking above their US counterparts in Artificial Analysis ranking.

Muse Spark Open has had additional post-training safety, the company said. It evaluated the model across its “most severe risks” and found that it met the thresholds set by Meta.

Open weight models are considered necessary for AI leadership, as being able to tweak a model means organisations, from start-ups to public institutions can build on advanced models without training one from scratch.

Earlier this month, France’s AI darling Mistral announced its latest open-weight AI model Mistral Large 4, which it said “significantly outperforms” any open-weight model developed in the US or Europe.

Known as ‘Le Chonk’, ML4 is a 1trn-parameter natively multimodal model with 49bn active parameters, and Mistral’s “largest and most capable model to date”.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2026/10/8087-addition-subtraction-microcode.html

In this article, I examine the 8087's microcode and circuitry to explain exactly how floating-point addition and subtraction are implemented, including numerous special cases for infinities and other special values.

...

The key component is the integer adder, located in the center. It receives one argument from the B register and another argument from a component such as the temporary registers or the stack registers. The adder's output is stored in the sum register. The shifter can shift the bits in a value to the left or the right. The shifter occupies a lot of space on the die because its circuitry allows a value to be rapidly shifted by an arbitrary number of bits. Floating-point operations make heavy use of the shifter to align values; the leading zero circuitry counts the number of zero bits or bytes on the left of a value so they can be shifted away. The exponent converter processes exponents, detecting overflows and underflows. These specialized circuits helped the 8087 achieve its high performance.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/10/15/researchers-warned-attackers-could-defrost-the-food-months-before-french-supermarkets-got-hit/5303425

Security researchers warned about exploitable vulnerabilities in refrigeration controllers months - and in one case, more than a year - before cyberattacks disrupted hundreds of French supermarkets.

Late Sunday night, unknown criminals hacked thousands of controllers, cranking the heat as high as 122°F (50°C), spoiling food and sparking fires across nearly 700 of the country's supermarkets.

France's national cybersecurity agency ANSSI on Monday warned of widespread compromises involving Danfoss refrigeration controllers, and a day later added affected systems from Copeland and its Dixell brand. The compromised devices were accessible over the internet, with many reportedly no longer receiving software or security updates and others running outdated firmware.

Danfoss did not immediately respond to The Register's request for comment. Copeland emailed us the following statement: 

"We acknowledge the vulnerability identified in a discontinued, end-of-life generation of controllers. Protecting our customers' operations has always been a top priority. We are currently working with impacted customers to mitigate the risk. We will continue to support customers in strengthening cybersecurity through supported products, current software and industry-recommended practices."

Operational technology (OT) security firm Claroty's Team82 sounded the alarm on these buggy devices in August, warning that hackers could "freeze the controller" and "defrost the food." At the time, the researchers published details of dozens of vulnerabilities, including authentication bypass and operating-system command execution flaws, affecting Danfoss AK-SM 800A and Copeland XWEB controllers.

Even earlier, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published advisories about security flaws in both brands' controllers. 

In February, CISA said nearly two dozen CVEs in Copeland XWEB and XWEB Pro could be exploited to  "allow an attacker to bypass authentication, cause a denial-of-service condition, cause memory corruption, and execute arbitrary code."

In a May 2025 advisory, updated in August 2025, CISA published a similar warning about buggy Danfoss AK-SM 8xxA series devices.

"What makes this incident particularly striking is the timeline," Tiago Henriques, chief underwriting officer at cyber insurance provider Coalition, told The Register. He noted that the French supermarket hacks happened two months after Team82 published its research, and Danfoss released a firmware update (R4.3.1) to mitigate the flaws.

"Yet, despite the availability of these patches, Coalition's scanning identified critical exposure to these threats continuing well into the fall," Henriques said. 

Between September 7 and October 6, Coalition's sensors identified 1,506 unique IP addresses still publicly exposing a Danfoss StoreView web-accessible admin panel, and 820 of these - 54 percent - were associated with French networks. 

"Our scans counted at least 2,624 refrigeration controllers from the named brands with a login page open to the internet: 1,506 Danfoss StoreView and 1,119 XWEB," he added, noting that one IP runs both types of controllers.

To be clear: this doesn't mean all of these controllers were vulnerable, but rather they were exposed to the open internet.

Even after the cyberattacks - as of Thursday - 618 Danfoss devices remain connected to the internet, according to the insurance provider's count. Of these, 206 are connected to French networks, while 50 are in the US, and two in the UK.

"An unpatched device featuring a web-accessible admin panel can act as a major entry point" for digital attackers, Henriques said. "The takeaway is clear: digital risk extends far beyond workstations and email servers."

Criminals are targeting OT and other industrial devices that are connected to the internet, too. 

"Identifying these exposed access points before they are targeted can directly contribute to preserving business continuity," Henriques said.

In America, a group of OT cybersecurity and technology providers doubled down on their call for stronger food and agriculture protections in the US. The French cyberattacks "are another stark reminder of the importance of implementing baseline cybersecurity measures to enhance operational technology cybersecurity," the Operational Technology Cybersecurity Coalition (OTCC) said in a Wednesday statement.

Earlier this month, the group, whose members include Claroty, Forescout, Honeywell, and Schneider Electric, called on CISA to issue a Binding Operational Directive to improve OT cybersecurity within the federal government. The OTCC repeated this demand on Wednesday and suggested that the US Department of Agriculture could encourage organizations in the food and agriculture sector to implement cybersecurity best practices.

"While no incidents have been reported in the United States, malicious actors are undoubtedly viewing this incident as a potential attack vector to perform here," the statement said. "We cannot wait for that to happen."

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.cnet.com/science/world-timekeepers-kill-the-leap-second/

Human timekeeping rests on two main clocks, and they don't always run at the same speed. For decades, the solution was the leap second, a minor adjustment added to international time to keep atomic accuracy aligned with the Earth’s natural motion. But on Thursday, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, or the CGPM (abbreviated from its French name), voted to abolish the leap second, closing a long-standing chapter in global time sync.

Most modern clocks rely on Coordinated Universal Time, a hybrid system caught between atomic time, which flows at a near-perfectly constant rate, and astronomical time, which fluctuates as the Earth’s rotation speeds up and slows down. To bridge the gap, UTC periodically inserted a leap second to keep pace with the planet. But reconciling physical planetary shifts with precise digital systems ultimately created more technical disruptions than it solved.

Computers are sensitive when it comes to timekeeping. The last few times we added a leap second to UTC — in 2012, 2015 and 2016 – some computer systems couldn't handle it. Of the three instances, 2012 was the worst, as adding a leap second caused issues that crashed websites and software platforms, such as Reddit, LinkedIn and Mozilla.

The speed of Earth's rotation experiences small changes all the time. While we can't predict exactly how fast Earth will rotate in the future, the conference wrote that there's a 30% chance we'll have to add a negative leap second by 2035 to keep UTC aligned with rotational time.

If adding a regular leap second was trouble, imagine what adding a negative leap second could do. The conference doesn't want to risk finding out. So, potential future computer anomalies caused by UTC changes are a major reason why the leap second is going away.

"Industrial users and the synchronization needs of national critical infrastructures, for example, transportation, energy distribution, telecommunication, and space projects, require UTC to be continuous without any future adjustment," the group’s resolution reads.

The official death of the leap second will be May 20, 2027, when continuous UTC becomes effective. A continuous UTC means that no more leap seconds, negative or otherwise, will be added to UTC going forward. This also means that UTC and rotational time will begin to drift apart.

The CGPM noted that allowing time measurements to differ by up to an hour will keep UTC stable for several centuries.

This means in the future, when it's noon, the sun might not be at its highest in the sky. But, considering we've only added 27 leap seconds since the concept was introduced in 1972, any changes that occur within our lifetimes will probably be very small.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/paas-and-iaas/2026/10/14/us-tech-giants-warn-europe-that-ditching-us-tech-giants-could-cost-115b/5303031

Some of America's biggest tech companies have a warning for Europe: curb your reliance on US cloud providers, and it could cost you €115 billion.

That's the finding of a new study commissioned by CCIA Europe, a lobbying group whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta, companies that have plenty of reasons to want European governments to keep buying American cloud services.

The research, conducted by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), claims the European Commission's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) could saddle Europe with €115 billion in costs over the next decade, more than six times the Commission's upper estimate of €18 billion.

The report argues that restrictions favoring European cloud providers would leave governments and businesses facing hefty bills to migrate workloads and rewrite software. It puts direct public-sector costs at €33.3 billion, with a further €80 billion potentially falling on private companies in sectors including banking, healthcare, energy, and transport.

However, a rather large asterisk is attached to that €80 billion figure. It assumes the Commission extends sovereignty requirements beyond public procurement to cover 25 percent of cloud workloads in essential private-sector industries. In other words, it's a modeled scenario, not a bill Brussels has already handed European businesses.

The study also comes with some baggage of its own. CCIA represents several US technology giants that dominate the European cloud market, including Amazon and Google. Both have spent years selling European customers cloud services while more recently developing sovereign cloud offerings designed to address concerns about foreign ownership, data access, and regulatory control.

Amazon, for example, has been developing its AWS European Sovereign Cloud, while Google markets a range of sovereign cloud solutions. Apparently, sovereignty is an attractive proposition when it comes with a hyperscaler logo attached. Meta, another CCIA member, has its own interests in European AI infrastructure, although it is not a commercial cloud provider on the scale of AWS or Google Cloud.

The report specifically targets Article 31 of the proposed legislation, which it says could allow the Commission to extend sovereignty requirements into essential private-sector services. CCIA argues that forcing businesses to move away from existing cloud infrastructure could trigger expensive software redevelopment projects, with code rewriting and re-architecting accounting for 69 percent of its estimated costs.

Luxembourg would apparently take the biggest hit, with the study putting the cost at €1,711 per worker over ten years. Denmark (€905), Austria (€900), and Finland (€864) also face hefty bills, as does Ireland (€856), which hosts the European headquarters of several US tech giants.

CCIA is urging EU governments to overhaul the proposed legislation, limit sovereignty restrictions to sensitive workloads, and abandon requirements based on corporate origin or personnel nationality in favor of what it calls risk-based technical safeguards.

"Member States cannot rely on the Commission's incomplete estimates when deciding CADA's strict sovereignty requirements for cloud and AI providers," said Mitchell Rutledge, CCIA Europe's policy manager. "Taxpayers and businesses will foot the bill, yet the official assessment missed 70 percent of CADA's true impact."

For AWS and Google, offering European customers greater control over their data also helps retain business that might otherwise migrate to European competitors. It's a rather convenient arrangement: sell customers sovereignty on one hand, while an industry association representing your interests warns governments against imposing too much of it on the other.

Neither company responded to The Register's questions. 

Whether Europe's sovereignty ambitions will prove as expensive as CCIA predicts is unclear. What's easier to establish is that the companies warning Brussels about the cost of reducing its dependence on US technology have plenty to gain if Europe decides to keep buying American.

Original Submission

quietus writes:

The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit EU has ended in Prague.

The Register has a good writeup -- with extensive links -- about the two focal points of the summit, AI and Digital Sovereignty.

Apart from that, it is well worth a quick rifling through the other Summit presentations, for example the Siemens' presentation "Triaging CVEs for the Linux Kernel". One takeaway there is that something must have happened around 2020. While 200-300 CVEs were kinda the norm before, in 2021 the number of CVEs jumped five-fold, doubling again in 2022 and so on until we ended up with 6317 CVEs for 2026, to date.

Something happened, but what?

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/10/14/new-motherboards-old-ram-plenty-of-life-left-in-yesterdays-pcs/5303018

Gigabyte recently announced new motherboards that use DDR4 RAM, a standard that launched in 2014, and other vendors support even older standards in brand-new kit.

Earlier this year, AMD released a Ryzen 7 5800X3D anniversary edition to mark ten years of AM4. For AM4 processors, Gigabyte offers the new B450M H ARGB, with two DDR4 slots, and the B550 X-Eagle with four slots. Those who prefer Intel chippery can now buy a B760M Aorus Elite.

This is notable because of the age of the DDR4 spec. In case you lose track of these things, The Register first described the new DDR4 spec back in 2012, and a few months later urged the keen to wait a year or two.

DDR5 supports higher transfer rates, and The Reg predicted its arrival in 2017. The DDR5 standard was agreed in 2020, with mainstream PC adoption following in 2021.

Over in the People's Republic of China, several vendors will sell you new DDR3 motherboards for 15-year-old server CPUs, such as Huananzhi's X79-4D or X79 Supreme, or the Machinist X79 V2.82H. These use Intel's LGA-2011 socket – named for the number of pins, but coincidentally launched in 2011. This Chinese SMZDM community discussion is about whether the circa 15-year-old Xeon E5 is still worth buying – a CPU The Reg covered in 2012.

This is partly due to the current price rises and component shortages induced by large-scale, cloud-based LLMs –  but also "training" those "open-weight" models that run on your own kit. Those too are constructed in giant datacenters stuffed full of GPUs, ingesting all the human-written material they can get their hands on, rarely asking for consent. And not just stuff put online either.

Once you wipe the sluggish, bloated commercial OS from your computer's storage, you discover two things. First, you don't need the latest hardware any more. Secondly, the older the PC (or Mac), the better the chances that it will work fine with Linux – or indeed the other FOSS OSes out there.

Current and recent hardware is the most problematic for FOSS developers because most manufacturers prioritize Windows testing, while restricted documentation and proprietary drivers can complicate open source support for new hardware. Together, these things mean that if you're happy without high-powered local LLMs, or three-digit frame rates, second-hand kit is more usable than ever.

(For those who can't do without one or two Windows-only apps that won't run under Wine, we remind you that desktop VMware is free now... and for better desktop integration, we looked at WinApps and WinBoat earlier this year.)

The Reg FOSS desk is based in the British Isles, close enough to order stuff inexpensively from the UK. We've been using online vendors of depreciated ex-corporate kit for decades: we've bought several machines from Morgan Computers, and occasionally from Tier1 Online and Bargain Hardware. Other vendors are available. There are also special-purpose price-comparison sites, such as LowCostMiniPCs.com, which searches other sales sites for bargains.

When we were based in Czechia, we bought a few things from GigaComputer, and we know of others we didn't try, such as Refurbed.cz. Other such European sites include Computershop.eu.

The usability of kit that can only officially run Windows 10 was the entire point of the End of 10 campaign. Microsoft cites security benefits for Windows 11's hardware requirements, but in this vulture's opinion, those benefits don't justify excluding an entire generation of otherwise capable hardware.

Keeping older hardware in service is welcome. If digital sovereignty gives organizations another reason to consider open source alternatives, so much the better.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2282678/us-nhtsa-headlight-brightness-glare-rule-change-plans/

Motorists have relied on automotive headlights for well over a century, with the first being acetylene gas lamps equipped on early versions of the Model T. In the years since, several advancements have transformed headlights, bringing about lighting technology like Halogen, HID(Xenon), and LED.

High intensity headlights are considered by some to be among the worst car trends we've ever seen. In the case of LEDs specifically, many are finding them far too bright. Members of AAA have been vocal for years about their disdain for LED headlights, and a petition on Change.org to "Ban Blinding Headlights and Save Lives!" have garnered well over 80,000 signatures.

Those struggling against the glare of LED beams aren't imagining it, these headlights are brighter, and feature a greater concentration of light than previous technologies. You can employ a little-known trick that can reduce glare from LED headlights, but it doesn't entirely solve the problem. In addition, the blue wavelength the LEDs produce can be especially hard on the eyes. Not only are many calling the situation unsafe due to extensive glare, it's also unclear at this time whether these LED headlights are potentially causing damage to people's retinas through extended exposure.

Finally, surely to many Americans' relief, the U.S. Department of Transportation signaled it's move to investigate and modernize regulations surrounding the LED headlight situation. In an update to the existing Federal Standard 108, the agency will reportedly study the relationship between headlight focus, height and glare, reexamine regulation around LEDs as well as more recent automatic and light sensor features. Jonathan Morrison, NHTSA Administrator promised in a NHTSA press release to "address [the] potential causes of glare," and "to update outdated regulations..."

More common in Europe, there is a technology called matrix headlights that contain many micro-LEDs spaced across a surface. In the Digital Matrix system by Audi, are each thinner than a human hair. With the help of tiny cpu chips and mirrors, these thousands of micro-LEDs selectively form patterns to focus light more intelligently at the road and actively away from other motorists. The video clip shows this technology in action, as an Audi with the Digital Matrix system selectively clicks off light pointed at an approaching driver, and then turns it back on after the vehicle passes.

Other countries in the world have been using these advanced headlights for years, so why not the states? The first issue was Federal Standard 108 instituted by the NHTSA back in the late 1960's – the same one the government is looking to update today. The rule deemed that high and low beams must be powered with different bulbs. Because matrix headlights utilize the same array of micro-LEDs for high and low beam functions, they were effectively illegal in the U.S.

This high and low beam rule was amended in 2022, but it didn't make the situation better. Even though the language in Federal Standard 108 was updated, it ended up making requirements even more stringent than rules in place across the ocean in Europe, requiring those matrix headlight systems to be reengineered for American cars. So, automakers just turned off the adaptive headlight features in the U.S. entirely.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

New desktop app simplifies stripping out bundled software, with heavier cuts carrying security and support risks:

Tiny11 Builder, a tool for creating less-bloated Windows 11 installation images, now has a desktop app preview that makes the process less reliant on PowerShell know-how.

As the author explains: "Tiny11 Builder aims to be the de facto standard for creating lightweight, safe and efficient Windows images."

The tool creates an ISO image for Windows installation, stripping out bundled apps and selected system components. It accepts Windows 11 installation media from 22H2 onward, including 26H2, and the result is something a good deal more compact than Microsoft's original.

The major visible change is a WinUI 3 desktop application that uses a new C# image builder rather than merely running the existing PowerShell scripts behind a graphical interface. Those scripts remain available, but the new interface is considerably more polished.

There are three basic build modes: Tiny11, which removes bundled apps while retaining Windows Update, Defender, and recovery tools; Tiny11 Core, which disables updates and Defender and irreversibly removes components, including the recovery environment; and finally a custom option where users can decide which Windows elements to keep or drop from the ISO image.

Tiny11 remains an impressive technical achievement, but it carries an important health warning: the ISOs it creates are definitely not supported by Microsoft, and if you opt for Tiny11 Core, the author recommends sticking to test VMs only.

This is for enthusiasts who understand that a smaller installation can come with missing functionality, security trade-offs, and support complications. There is also no guarantee that attempts to bypass some of the more onerous aspects of Windows 11 installation will work.

As the author notes in the project's repository: "Local-account and hardware-check settings are best effort, not guaranteed bypasses on new builds."

In other words, don't count on it to bypass Windows 11's hardware requirements or account demands on newer builds. Tiny11 is all about stripping fluff and fripperies from the Windows 11 installation image.

As with earlier versions, a license is still required. While the ISO might have been debloated, this is still Microsoft Windows 11 after all. "No modification bypasses Windows licensing or activation," the author notes.

The appeal of removing Microsoft's excesses is clear. Whether the reduced footprint is worth the loss of components and potential support headaches depends on what users choose to strip out.

[Ed's Comment: Note that a licence or activation is still requireed.]

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

"Small weight-based replicators" could usher in a new generation of computer worms:

AI company Anthropic is warning that advances in small AI models could soon usher in a new era of self-replicating malware that's capable of infecting smart fridges, vacuum cleaners, and a wide range of other Internet-of-things devices and is more resistant to takedown.

By next year, smaller AI models may be able to autonomously self-replicate on all kinds of IoT devices, the company said. Eventually, the capability could enable computer worms, which propagate without requiring human interaction and are capable of infecting unfamiliar IoT devices. An experiment the company performed recently revealed significant challenges in bringing such an AI malware replicator to fruition, so the finding is necessarily tempered. Still, the results do raise concerns about the possibility of new forms of computer worms.

Anthropic further warned not only about the new potential malware, but also that it could be difficult to stop. In its blog post, it wrote that "a replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there's no centralized point to shut off—though it may be slow (with a doubling time of days). Unlike non-AI malware, it could also figure out unfamiliar devices on its own."

Smaller AI models require much less powerful hardware to run than do frontier models. Anthropic ran small open-weight models on real or simulated low-cost, off-brand Android TV boxes and other types of IoT hardware. Company researchers found that by using quantization to represent the models using fewer bits and splitting the workloads into "shards" running on each device, the models were able to establish inference, meaning that the model weights loaded and could generate output.

The lightweight Gemma4-26B-A4B model required just 15 boxes, each equipped with only 4GB of memory, to achieve inference. The Qwen3.5-9B was able to configure other LLMs to run on eight of nine hardware types. Unlike traditional malware, which must be written to run on specific hardware or software, the model was able to use its weights to make configurations on the fly that were specific to the devices it was tested against.

This finding was the starting point for further research that asked: Would it be possible for small models to create self-replicating infections that run themselves on IoT devices the way traditional IoT worms, like Mirai, install DDoS code and other payloads? Unlike Mirai, these AI worms could pose a much higher threat, since the models could tailor exploits and payloads dynamically, depending on the target. Once such an infection chain began, it might also be harder for defenders to stop it.

"Such an 'AI worm' could carry its model weights with it as it reproduces (or re-download them from a public hub), and then run inference directly on compromised hardware," Anthropic said. "Effectively, the weights would become part of the malware payload."

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/openai-employee-fbi-arrest-recording-device-news/

The FBI arrested an OpenAI employee and charged him with planting a surveillance device in an executive conference room to record the company's plans for its artificial intelligence, the company and FBI confirmed on Tuesday.

The US Department of Justice identified the employee as 35-year-old Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi Arabian citizen and legal permanent resident of the US, who joined OpenAI's product team in July 2025. He was fired and arrested on Oct. 9 on suspicion of violating US law by using "an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications." The charge comes with a possible five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

In a statement, Jay Clayton, director of national intelligence, said that the incident underscores the importance of US success in AI development as “a national security prerogative.”

The complaint, filed in the Northern District of California, says Alfozan allegedly placed a "thumb-sized development board with a detachable camera sensor, digital microphone and microSD storage." It was wrapped in toilet paper and stuck into a TV port. A second recording device was found in a bag Alfozan allegedly left in a printer room along with his wallet and ID.

The conference room where he allegedly planted the bug could be reserved only by executives and their assistants — Alfozan did not have access — and was frequently used to discuss proprietary research and hold meetings with government and industry officials. OpenAI said it has evidence Alfozan planned to place additional surveillance bugs to secretly record company meetings.

The ChatGPT maker says it discovered the first bug on Sept. 30 and alerted the FBI. During the 10 days between the discovery and arrest, the company says it took steps to contain the security risk. The company says it has not seen evidence that the safety of its products or customer data has been compromised.

"We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance," OpenAI said in a statement.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/triplet-of-ghostly-galaxies-hints-at-what-dark-matter-is-and-isnt-20261014/

The lack of dark matter in galaxies DF2, DF9, and DF4 (clockwise from left) was a shock to scientists, who speculate that they formed after an ancient collision.

About 65 million light-years from Earth, three galaxies don't look quite right. They aren't whirlpools bursting with light, but pallid objects dimly illuminated by a smattering of stars. "They have this ghostly appearance," said Michael Keim, an astrophysicist at Yale University. And this isn't even the weirdest thing about them.

Dark matter is the invisible glue that keeps the largest structures in the cosmos together. It draws ordinary, visible matter toward it, allowing stars to form and keeping the stelliferous limbs of galaxies from flying off. "Almost all galaxies are dominated by dark matter," said Shyam Balaji, a theoretical physicist at King's College London.

But these three diffuse galaxies, known as DF2, DF4, and DF9, have left astronomers stunned. After using a suite of telescopes to estimate their masses — using the motions of their stars as a proxy — the researchers found that all three have little dark matter. Instead, a pittance of ordinary matter alone must have forged their small selection of stars. How could these rule-breaking galaxies have formed?

A paper published in June 2026 in The Astrophysical Journal offers a potential solution. Once upon a time, two regular galaxies collided. Their ordinary matter — their gas and dust — swirled about and got clumped up. But the dark matter passed right through and continued on, like a specter passing through a wall. The cosmic pileup left behind three new galaxies, each bereft of dark matter, each left to struggle to form a new batch of stars.

It's a convincing explanation for many experts — one that, crucially, may tell us something about the mystery of dark matter.

Is there a way of evolving the galaxies without dark matter in the first place? Our understanding says no.

Some scientists have suggested that dark matter, which has yet to be directly detected, may not exist. Instead, they propose that a tweak to our understanding of the gravitational force might explain various features of the universe.

These bizarre galaxies pour cold water on that idea. "What this is showing is that dark matter is ... not just a modification of gravity," said Keim, who is an author of the new study. If you segregate ordinary matter from dark matter, you'd expect that the dark matter–lacking galaxies would struggle to form stars — and that's what DF2, DF4, and DF9 show.

That suggests, as many have suspected for some time, that dark matter is a physical thing. "The absence of dark matter is, in a way, some evidence of dark matter, which is ironic," Balaji said.

What, exactly, is dark matter? Ever since it was formally proposed by the astronomer Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s — and built upon in the 1970s by the astronomer Vera Rubin — cosmologists and astrophysicists have been putting forward their best candidates. Could it be a stealthy type of neutrino? Might it be so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs? Some have even opined that it could be primordial black holes as small as individual atoms and as old as the universe itself.

"We don't know which dark matter candidate is the right one," said Daniel Whiteson, a particle physicist at the University of California, Irvine. Whatever it is, it has yet to be detected. But "there's a lot of independent lines of evidence that dark matter is matter."

In 2018, scientists used observations from the Keck Observatory in Hawai'i to estimate the mass of galaxy DF2. They discovered that it contained 400 times less dark matter than expected.

Dark matter, which makes up 27% of the universe — and 85% of all matter —interacts with gravity. If it were down to the gravitational pull of ordinary matter alone, stars on the edges of rapidly spinning galaxies would escape into space. Ordinary matter alone would struggle to clump together tightly enough to form stars. Dark matter also seems to warp space itself, bending light around objects in a process known as gravitational lensing.

"You wouldn't get galaxies without dark matter," said Chamkaur Ghag, a physicist at University College London. "Is there a way of evolving the galaxies without dark matter in the first place? Our understanding says no."

So when DF2 was discovered in 2018, astronomers didn't quite know what to make of it. The galaxy is roughly the same size as the Milky Way, but with 200 times fewer stars, it's considerably dimmer. Suspicious, scientists used the Keck Observatory in Hawai'i to track the motions of those stars to estimate its total mass. They discovered that, even for such a star-deficient galaxy, it was lightweight: It seemed to contain, at most, 400 times less dark matter than they would expect, making DF2 the first dark matter–deficient galaxy ever spotted.

In 2019, they observed DF4, another phantom galaxy with a dearth of dark matter. And in 2026, scientists announced that a third, DF9, had joined the club. It contains the mass of roughly 100 million suns, which is consistent with having only ordinary matter. If it were also packed with dark matter, it would be 100 times more massive.

That all three gossamer galaxies existed along a line, as neighbors, didn't escape the attention of astrophysicists, who began to coalesce around an origin story.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/10/13/123456-password-linked-to-denmark-data-breach-affecting-88m-people/5302726

A person claiming responsibility for the breach of Denmark's Central Register of Persons (CPR) says they gained access through an IT company's account protected by the password "123456."

The person told Danish news outlet Politiken  [Website in Danish. --Ed] they had no intention of selling or leaking the data. The newspaper reported that at least three company accounts, including an administrator account, used the same password.

Denmark's CPR administration confirmed a breach affecting the information belonging to 8.8 million people on October 5, adding that a Danish company's legal access to the CPR system was abused.

It did not name Funen-based Pays ApS as the company in question, but managing director Sophie Laursen confirmed on October 9 that it's access had been exploited.

Pays' website has been taken offline, and the business has not responded to The Register's request for more information about the password claims.

Pays had authorized access to the CPR system to provide services such as validating business customers' records.

The Danish government says information relating to 8.8 million people was accessed. The register contains approximately 11 million records, including those of deceased people and people who have moved abroad. The government did not respond to questions about the alleged password failings.

According to documents obtained by broadcaster TV 2 [Website in Danish. --Ed], the attacker gained access to the CPR system on September 10 and ran the 14 million automated searches between then and September 20.

The intrusion was detected on October 2, 12 days after the last reported searches.

Mikkel Leihardt, director of the government's higher education and science ministry, told reporters at a press conference that the attack was discovered after a department staffer picked up an invoice indicating unusually high activity from Pays.

The Danish data protection authority, Datatilsynet, was notified on October 4, and the government disclosed the attack the following day.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.engadget.com/2285013/nasa-perseverance-rover-breaks-record-for-off-world-driving-distance/

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover just broke the record for the farthest distance traveled by any vehicle on another world, the space agency announced. The six-wheeled, nuclear-powered buggy has now traveled 28.10 miles (45.22 km) as of October 11th, besting NASA's Opportunity rover that rolled 28.06 miles (45.16 km) across the red planet's surface. Perseverance managed the feet in just five and a half years, compared to nearly 15 for the plucky Opportunity.

Last we checked with Perseverance, it was officially a marathon finisher with 26.2 miles under its pock-marked metal wheels. While the 28.1 miles it's covered to date may not seem like much, it's pretty good considering the vehicle's maximum speed is a glacial 0.1 mph. It's also impressive considering the challenging terrain it's been tasked to transit, as NASA showed in the video below.

The 2,260 pound rover attained the milestone traveling to a region called Idubi, where it will investigate a feature called "Lac de Charmes" with some of the oldest terrain ever explored in our solar system. "The rocks and terrain of Lac de Charmes are so ancient that their Earthly equivalents have long since been erased by erosion and plate tectonics (Mars doesn't have tectonic plates), and Idubi is where the science team hopes to find traces of ancient hydrothermal systems," NASA explained.

Perseverance's longevity can be chalked up in part to smart navigation decisions powered by its autonomous AutoNav system. Using that, the rover can image terrain and find hazards in real time while driving automatically between waypoints chosen by its planners. By processing 600,000 measurement points with each glance, it has been able to travel more than 90 percent of its total distance autonomously.

Thanks to a recent software update, Perseverance can now roll more and steer less to save wear on parts, while checking its own position against orbital maps in mid-drive. Next, the team wants to overcome camera glare issues from sunlight that impede its vision, so the rover can work longer days.

Perseverance may have out-driven Opportunity, but the Curiosity rover is still exploring Mars as well and has traveled 38.15 km (23.7 miles) to date. The next most traveled US vehicles are the manned rovers from the Apollo 16, 17 and 18 missions — of those, Apollo 17 rover went the farthest at 35.74 km (22.21 miles).

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/10/13/european-datacenter-boom-threatens-higher-energy-bills-unless-governments-intervene/5302583

Datacenters are forecast to consume a growing share of Europe's electricity by 2035, potentially pushing up consumer prices and prompting governments to impose price caps or restrictions on bit barns, according to Moody's.

The credit rating agency is keeping tabs on the financial implications for datacenter operators and electricity networks.

It predicts that while power consumption by server farms is relatively modest today, these facilities are set to become major drivers of electricity demand by 2035, requiring utilities and network operators to invest in generation and grid capacity.

Massive compute sheds still accounted for "a low single-digit share" of electricity in most of the largest European markets in 2025, typically about 2.5 percent. But some of the major markets such as the UK and France are set to see accelerating growth in the number and size of facilities that could substantially increase their share of electricity consumption.

The report estimates datacenters will account for at least 5.7 percent of electricity demand in France and the UK by 2035, but could be as high as 17 percent for the Netherlands and 30 percent for Ireland. The latter country is regarded as an outlier, however, as datacenters already made up 23 percent of Ireland's electricity consumption in 2025 – up from just 5 percent in 2015.

In addition, the EU has set out the goal of more than tripling the bloc's datacenter capacity within five to seven years, and wants to diversify where such projects are sited beyond the primary markets such as Germany, Ireland, France, and the Netherlands to secondary markets in the Nordics and southern Europe.

This means more power generation will be needed, plus expansion of the grid networks to carry the extra energy to where it is required. Moody's says this has the potential to put pressure on grid operators' balance sheets in the short term, compounded by the lag in recovering higher capital spending under many European regulatory regimes.

This pressure is more pronounced for transmission networks than distribution networks because datacenter operators are required to fund only the cost of the connection to the grid, the report by Moody's notes.

It highlights some novel approaches adopted by utilities, such as repurposing old fossil-fuel plant sites for server farm projects because of their existing grid connections – as is said to be the case with at least one of the UK government's AI Growth Zones – and partnering with developers to build new facilities and supply them with power.

The cost of expanding power grids, together with supply-demand imbalances, is set to push energy prices higher, Moody's forecasts. Historically, this has prompted political measures to limit the financial burden borne by customers, it says.

Some governments are already considering tax cuts and additional subsidies for end users, while a growing number of transmission networks are starting to demand financial guarantees to screen out speculative or duplicative projects. The UK government is mulling over this measure, as we reported during the summer.

Looking ahead, intervention could become more intrusive through measures such as electricity price caps, additional taxes, or levies.

Moody's cites Ireland as an example, where the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) replaced a moratorium on new datacenter grid connections with a framework under which operators applying for a grid connection rated at 10 MVA or more must provide matching power generation or storage capacity on-site or nearby, and meet at least 80 percent of their annual electricity demand through additional renewable projects in Ireland.

In America, President Trump brought in a Ratepayer Protection Pledge to try to defuse growing voter unhappiness at datacenters and their effects on energy bills. The pledge now covers utility companies, bit barn developers, and state governments with a pinky promise that citizens' bills won't rise to pay for all the extra energy and grid infrastructure needed.

Moody's expects more European governments to follow the US and Ireland in intervening over datacenter power demand if expansion continues on its current trajectory.

Original Submission