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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/paas-and-iaas/2026/07/16/airbus-migrating-70-critical-apps-from-aws-to-frances-scaleway-amid-digital-sovereignty-push/5272373

Airbus is migrating its most critical applications for sensitive workloads from AWS to French cloud provider Scaleway's under a drive to increase digital sovereignty. 

As exclusively revealed by The Register in December, the European-based aerospace manufacturer, said it needed to guarantee the data remained "under European control" and was launching a tender at the start of 2026. 

Catherine Jestin, head of digital at Airbus, told us on Thursday: "The selection of Scaleway is a combination of a very strong technical answer and a very strong commercial offer making it competitive compared to hyperscalers' public cloud offerings. In addition, Scaleway is committed to involving Airbus in the definition of its future product roadmap."

"The objective is to host Airbus's most critical applications (those required for the Minimum Viable Company). This represents 900 applications and we will start with 70 of them today hosted on AWS." 

Applications being sent to Scaleway include ERP, manufacturing execution systems, CRM, and product lifecycle management. Finding a cloud provider to host its most sensitive applications for defense and industrial workloads was not a certainty when the process began, Airbus told us last year, because European cloud providers do not have the scale of their US rivals. 

Jestin said Airbus will continue to work with AWS. Skywise, a platform that aggregates and analyzes aviation data, and Case Management Assistant for customers' technical queries will continue to be hosted by AWS. 

In a statement, she said: "By integrating a trusted, high performance, cloud environment that keeps our critical data assets shielded from foreign extraterritorial laws, we are ensuring that our digital infrastructure keeps pace with our aerospace innovation, while maintaining control and resilience of our industrial operations." 

Since President Donald Trump came to power for a second term, his antagonistic approach to allies - some of them now former allies - has created economic and geopolitical tensions between the US and Europe. 

This has heightened concern about the US Cloud Act, which allows the American government to request data held in overseas datacenters owned by US businesses, and only served to reinforce calls for digital sovereignty. 

Reacting to the movement in Europe, AWS, Microsoft and Google have all worked to convince customers they can provide digitally sovereign services, although a Microsoft exec previously admitted in a French court - under oath - that he could not guarantee digital sovereignty. 

Airbus continues to work with both Microsoft and Google's productivity suites though this latest move with Scaleway exemplifies the broader pattern across the trading bloc: to become more self sufficient and less reliant on US big tech. 

Jestin told us the aerospace corp will also still use US providers, including Salesforce, Coupa and Workday.

"We do not intend to move away from all non European solutions; we balance our choices based on the criticality of the data. 

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

Deep-sea life has a secret food source scientists never expected https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260711010127.htm

Scientists have uncovered an unexpected source of food in the deep ocean that could change how researchers understand both marine ecosystems and Earth's carbon cycle. A new study from the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) suggests that deep ocean microbes are not living in such a nutrient-starved environment after all.

The research found that tiny sinking particles known as marine snow release dissolved carbon and nitrogen as they descend into the deep sea. Those leaked nutrients become an immediate food source for microbes living in the surrounding seawater. Marine snow is made up of tiny clumps of dead algae, microbes, and other organic material drifting through the ocean. According to the study, once these particles reach depths of about 2 to 6 kilometers, the enormous hydrostatic pressure begins forcing dissolved organic matter out of them.

"The pressure acts almost like a giant juicer," says first author of the study, biologist and Associate Professor Peter Stief from research centers Nordcee and Danish Center for Hadal Research, "It squeezes dissolved organic compounds out of the particles, and microbes can use them immediately."

The findings were published in Science Advances in the paper, "Hydrostatic pressure induces strong leakage of dissolved organic matter from 'marine snow' particles."

The researchers estimate that sinking marine snow can lose as much as 50% of its original carbon and between 58% and 63% of its original nitrogen during its descent through the deep ocean.

The results also have important implications for Earth's carbon cycle.

Scientists have long assumed that much of the carbon carried by marine snow eventually becomes buried in deep ocean sediments. However, if large amounts of carbon leak out before the particles reach the seafloor, less carbon may be permanently stored in sediments than previously believed. Instead, much of that dissolved carbon remains suspended in deep ocean waters, where it can stay for hundreds or even thousands of years before gradually returning to the surface ocean and eventually the atmosphere. Carbon that does become buried in seafloor sediments, by contrast, can remain locked away for millions of years, accumulating over vast stretches of time. Much of the oil and natural gas extracted today formed through this long-term burial process.

"This process affects how much carbon the ocean can store and for how long," says Peter Stief, "It's relevant for understanding climate processes and for improving future models."

mrpg writes:

Eating large amounts of chili peppers may raise the risk of esophageal cancer, but scientists say the evidence is not yet strong enough to prove a direct cause:

Could eating lots of chili peppers affect your cancer risk? Scientists have been debating that question for years, and the answer remains far from simple. While chili peppers contain compounds that have shown anti inflammatory and even anticancer effects in laboratory experiments, some human studies have linked very high consumption to a greater risk of certain cancers of the digestive tract.

A large review published in Frontiers in Nutrition examined the available evidence and found that people who consumed the most chili peppers were more likely to develop certain gastrointestinal cancers, especially esophageal cancer. At the same time, researchers emphasized that the evidence does not prove chili peppers cause cancer and that more rigorous studies are still needed.

[...] Chili peppers are eaten every day by billions of people and are an essential ingredient in cuisines across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and many other parts of the world. Their signature heat comes from capsaicin, a natural compound that activates heat and pain sensing nerve receptors.

Capsaicin has attracted considerable scientific interest. Laboratory studies have suggested it may reduce inflammation, influence metabolism, and even kill certain cancer cells under specific conditions. However, other experiments have found that under different circumstances it could promote tumor growth or contribute to tissue irritation. That conflicting evidence has made its overall effect on cancer difficult to pin down.

To better understand the relationship, researchers combined data from 14 observational studies involving more than 11,000 participants, including over 5,000 people diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancers.

Compared with people who consumed the least chili peppers, those with the highest intake were about 64% more likely to develop gastrointestinal cancers overall.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

European authorities dismantled the VPN service in May following a yearslong investigation:

In May, European authorities dismantled First VPN, also known as 1VPNS, and arrested Rashevskyi, who is based in Dnipro, Ukraine, to culminate an investigation that began in 2021. 

Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, said that First VPN was well publicized on Russian-language cybercrime forums as a service offering anonymous payments, hidden infrastructure and services "designed specifically for criminal use."

The agency also said the VPN service helped cybercriminals hide their identities while carrying out ransomware attacks and data theft, and that it appeared "in almost every major cybercrime investigation supported by Europol in recent years."

[...] Under the sanctions enacted this week, the Department of the Treasury will prohibit all transactions by people in the US involving property owned by Rashevskyi or Silayev. The department also said any of their property that is in the country or in possession of anyone in the country must be reported to the department. Financial institutions and others are prohibited from "engaging in certain transactions or activities" involving Rashevskyi or Silayev.

"The ultimate goal of sanctions is not to punish, but to bring about a positive change in behavior," the department said in the statement.

When used legally and ethically, a VPN is an invaluable tool for consumers seeking online privacy. The safest and most effective VPNs -- CNET advises against using free ones -- will not log or record your data, meaning that no one can see your internet activity. VPNs also mask your physical location by using a unique IP address, making it look as though you're in a different country than the one you're in. Many people use VPNs to watch online content that is geo-restricted from their actual country of residence.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

New Debian versions hit FOSSland in the form of 13.6 and 12.15:

This week brings two point releases for both Debian 13 - aka "Trixie" - and Debian 12 - "Bookworm," the latter now shuffling off into long-term support. 

Debian 13.6 and Debian 12.15 are just the latest point releases of Trixie and Bookworm, but Debian 12.15 is also significant in another way: it marks the end of regular support for Debian 12, which is being handed over to the LTS team. That reduced level of support is scheduled to last until mid-2028.

That means Debian 12.15 is the last point release of Debian 12. There won't be a Debian 12.16. In turn, that means mainstream support for Debian on 32-bit x86 is over. (Debian 13 does still support some 32-bit Arm CPUs via the armhf port.)

As we warned you in 2023, to run Debian 13 on x86, you require a 64-bit CPU. It supports 32-bit packages and libraries, so you can run 32-bit programs fine – but if you want to install Trixie on a 32-bit CPU, then you need to compile your own kernel. That's not impossible: as we reported in late 2025, WindowMaker Live 13.2 does this, and so does antiX Linux, which we last looked at in March.

The new releases both have two significant changes worth knowing about.

The fwupd firmware-update tool from the Linux Vendor Firmware Service has been updated to version 2.0.20. As the Arch wiki describes, fwupd can only update the system firmware if your machine boots in UEFI mode (that is, not legacy BIOS boot.) However, that's useful, as it can update UEFI machines' secure-boot signing certificates and database too – and as Red Hat warned last month, Microsoft's original 2011 secure-boot certificates just expired.

If you don't use secure boot, that doesn't matter, but if you do and your boxes haven't rebooted in a while, you might have problems. Don't panic: problems aren't likely, but if you do have some, disabling secure boot will work around it. Either way, it's worth updating those certificates. The Debian Wiki has more info, and Linux Weekly News has a full rundown on the problem.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

This project uses a clever hashing trick to fit over half a million blocked domains into just 4MB of flash memory:

Firmware Uses Only Around 50KB Of RAM And Can Answer Blocked Lookups In 10 Milliseconds

How cheap can you build a hardware-based ad-blocking DNS filter? "Free," if you're willing to salvage some used hardware that's being thrown away. What if you aren't so lucky? In the era of the RAMageddon, even a Raspberry Pi will cost you a couple hundred bucks. But you know, you don't even need something that powerful. In fact, you can use a $5 microcontroller to build a fully functional ad-blocking filter with over 500,000 domains blocked and around 10ms latency.

We know that's possible because Egyptian full-stack developer ZedAxis (@M-Abozaid on GitHub) has already built one. Using an ESP32-C3 "SuperMini" board, he's created a backup DNS for his home network that still provides ad blocking. His primary router is a Pi-hole, which is a Raspberry Pi running specialized software to manage DHCP addressing and DNS resolution with integrated ad-blocking. The SuperMini serves as a backup when the Pi-Hole is rebooting or otherwise unavailable.

Instead, the ESP32-C3 used by ZedAxis has just 400KB of RAM, and 4MB of flash memory. With these limited specifications, he wasn't able to store a plaintext blocklist of any real size; it's simply too much data. So, he did what any enterprising hacker would do: he started hashing the data to reduce its size. Using 40-bit FNV-1a hashes, because 32-bit would give too many collisions and 64-bit wastes too much space, he can store some 537,000 domains in the flash memory of the device.

mrpg writes:

Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for over 15 million years:

Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for over 15 million years, a University of Warwick study reveals, providing an unexpected clue to how human speech evolved.

All living great apes - chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans - laugh. But until now, it has been unclear how our laughter may have changed over millions of years of evolution, and how it might relate to the evolution of our speech.

In a new Communications Biology study, Warwick researchers analysed laughter recordings from four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos, four chimpanzees, and four humans. Across 140 laughter sequences, they found the same pattern: all species produce laughter with evenly spaced rhythmic intervals between successive sounds.

The researchers propose this basic rhythmic laughing structure was already present in a shared common ancestor 15 million years ago and has remained remarkably conserved with all living great apes and humans still showing the same underlying pattern in their laughter.

[...] However, while the basic rhythm stayed constant between species, the researchers did find that human laughter has become faster, more variable, and has gained sophisticated context-dependent control over time.

Of the great apes, humans alone have the ability to control when and how they laugh depending on context: an uncontrollable laugh when tickled differs sharply from a polite laugh in a meeting, a nervous laugh after a mistake, or the infectious laughter that spreads through a group of friends. The same underlying rhythm, shaped by conscious control to communicate different emotions and intentions.

The findings of this study suggest that throughout great ape evolution, our ancestors gradually developed greater control over the timing of their vocalisations, including laughter – showing a fundamental building block of speech.

Submitted from ScienceDaily

Journal Reference: De Gregorio, C., Davila-Ross, M. & Lameira, A.R. Rhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum. Commun Biol 9, 824 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-10499-z

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

'Operation Muck And Load' Has Published 700 Malicious Modules Since January:

Supply-chain security firm Socket has published research findings describing a Go module that posed as a DNS and subdomain scanner while acting as a first-stage Windows malware loader. The firm then traced it to a network of 222 GitHub repositories across 190 accounts. The module published its first version on January 24 this year and has since accumulated more than 1,200 versions, over 700 of them malicious. Socket tracks the campaign as "Operation Muck and Load" and reported the module to the Go security team, which blocked it from the Go module proxy.

[...] The module's main.go launches a hidden PowerShell command that downloads content from muckcoding.com, decodes it with certutil, and runs the result with execution-policy bypass. Socket describes the decoded script as a multi-layer loader using Base64 encoding and XOR decryption, with a Turkish-language comment in one layer that translates to "run directly, no other step is needed."

Rather than hardcoding a payload URL, the resolver retrieves text from public platforms, searches it for the marker string "LastW," then decrypts the trailing blob with a hardcoded key to recover the actual download location. Primary dead drops include Pastebin and a paste service called Rlim, with fallbacks across YouTube, Instagram, Telegram, Google Docs, and GitCode. If defenders remove one paste or block the final archive URL, the actor can update the resolver content without touching the first-stage loader.

The resolved URL points to a password-protected 7-Zip archive hosted as a GitHub release asset. The loader extracts it into a directory named to resemble a legitimate Microsoft Photos install and launches Microsoft.exe from that path with a hidden window. Decoded payload stages map to AsyncRAT, Quasar, and Remcos-style RAT detections alongside infostealer behavior.

mrpg writes:

The Coldest "Stars" in the Galaxy Might Actually Be Alien Megastructures:

Ever since physicist Freeman Dyson first proposed the concept in 1960, the "Dyson sphere" has been the holy grail of techno-signature hunters. A highly advanced civilization could build a "sphere" (or, in our more modern understanding, a "swarm" of smaller components) around their host star to harvest its entire energy output. We know, in theory at least, that such a swarm could exist - but what would it actually look like if we were able to observe one? A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv, and soon to be published in Universe from Amirnezam Amiri of the University of Arkansas digs into that question - and in the process discloses the types of stars that are the most likely to find them around.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of those types is a Red Dwarf. The most abundant type of stars in the Milky Way, they burn through their nuclear fuel incredibly slowly making them extremely long lived. With estimated lives in the trillions of years - far longer than the current lifetime of the universe - they are also relatively small compared to our own Sun. A Dyson swarm could be built around 0.05 to 0.3 AU away from its surface, with relatively low cost of material.

White dwarfs are arguably even better for material costs, and represent the second type of star that it's worth tracking. These are compact, dead remnants of stars like our Sun, which have shrunk down to have incredibly small radii - around 1% of their original star. In this scenario, a Dyson swarm could be built just a few million kilometers away from the surface of the star, alleviating much of the engineering challenge of build a supermassive structure around a larger star. They also radiate energy steadily for billions of years, essentially creating an effective long-lived power source.

But what would stars surrounded by such megastructures actually look like? Astronomers typically use a tool called the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram to classify stars based on their temperature and luminosity. However, since a Dyson sphere would block all of a star's natural light, it would completely change where on the diagram it would fall. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so the sphere itself would have to emit the exact same amount of radiation away from itself as the star is putting into it. It just does it in the form of heat, or infrared light instead. So a Dyson sphere can really be thought of as a shell that absorbs a star's light, does something useful with that energy, and then emits it as heat.

mrpg writes:

The 27th Debian Conference is in Santa Fe, Argentina, Monday July 20th to Saturday July 25th 2026. Some of the planned talks:

• Free as in Burned Out: who really pays for Open Source Software
• Is it even possible to build a truly universal system installer?
• Debian in Disaster + Security Incidents
• You Too Can Fix That Bug on That Weird Architecture
• Debian in the Classroom - Episode III: The Students Strike Back (with code)

DebConf is the annual conference for Debian contributors and users interested in improving Debian. Previous Debian conferences have featured speakers and attendees from all around the world. The last DebConf, DebConf25, took place in Brest, France and was attended by 443 participants from 51 countries.

Original Submission

hopdevil writes:

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/

Are companies actually seeing massive productivity gains from their AI adoption? Does any of this sordid affair make sense?

This should be an easy question, but it is surprisingly hard to get a straight answer to it. Executives that tell the press that their company has gone insane will quickly find themselves removed from their positions. Employees who are honest will find themselves fired in short-order, or "randomly" selected for a round of layoffs. In fact, it is in the interests of almost every actor in the space – boards, executives, employees, vendors, consultants – to obfuscate and misrepresent the success rate of AI projects. Many publicly traded companies are putting out announcements about their AI productivity gains when I know for a fact that the businesses have done nothing other than purchase Copilot licenses and declare victory.

Yet we need to know if these projects are panning out – if the total focus on AI as a core tenet of business strategy is succeeding at a reasonable rate, then a discussion about the relative risk and reward is warranted.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Under Helsinki, there is a network of over 5,500 bomb shelters capable of sheltering nearly a million people in the event of a nuclear attack or Russian invasion. The shelters are equipped with autonomous systems and are used in peacetime as sports complexes:

Finland has built an underground network beneath Helsinki capable of sheltering nearly one million people. Let that sink in. Nearly one million people. This is not a handful of bomb shelters scattered throughout the city, but rather an underground city stretching beneath the capital, consisting of more than 5,500 reinforced shelters connected by tunnels carved directly into solid granite. They can be converted from civilian use into military-grade protection in as little as 72 hours.

Engineered to withstand explosions, chemical attacks, biological threats, radiation, and the collapse of the world above. The shelters contain independent power systems, water supplies, communications networks, hospitals, sanitation, filtration systems, and enough infrastructure to sustain life if the surface becomes uninhabitable. During peacetime, they function as swimming pools, hockey arenas, churches, sports centers, parking garages, and shopping facilities.

[...] Finland is not building these shelters because of some passing political disagreement with Moscow. The country shares an 830-mile border with Russia and has never forgotten the Winter War. Unlike much of Europe, Finland never embraced the fantasy that major wars had become impossible. While politicians across Europe dismantled civil defense, reduced their militaries, and diverted spending toward every fashionable political cause imaginable, Finland kept digging.

Today, nearly 4.8 million shelter spaces exist for a nation of just 5.6 million people. Very few countries on Earth have anything remotely comparable. That means Finland has spent generations preparing to keep the overwhelming majority of its population alive during the unthinkable. Governments do not invest on that scale because they expect peace.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

NTP server that traveled back in time caused massive Aussie mobile outage

Australian telco Telstra has revealed the cause of the recent incident that caused widespread connectivity problems across its mobile networks, inculding outages to Australia's 000 emergency services line, plus outages to electronic payments services and transport networks.

[...] The outage did happen because once the NTP server came online it reset its clocks to the year 2006.

The server then did what NTP servers do: publish that time to myriad other machines across the network.

Once those machines received the incorrect time, other kit on the Telstra network compared digital certificates and decided something dodgy was going on – so denied connections.

[...] That wasn't the end of the matter, because as valid time information rippled across the network, some equipment didn't close IP sessions. Customer devices therefore couldn't reconnect to the network unless rebooted.

[..] The carrier has done the usual thing by promising to conduct deep and lengthy self-reflection, submit itself to further flagellation at more inquiries, co-operate with a probe by the relevant regulator, and to do what it takes to prevent similar incidents.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2213160/ev-battery-lifespan-longer-than-expert-estimations/

For all the technological advancements they promise, EVs haven't entirely convinced people about their batteries. Many people may assume they wear down as fast as the units in phones do, which seems like a valid fear at first considering how pricey batteries are to replace. However, they have turned out to be well capable of lasting as long as the cars themselves. Recent research has proven that the industry has been setting its battery lifespan numbers way too low — by a huge margin, too.

A Wall Street Journal report from July has laid out how far off the early predictions were. It cited figures by Recurrent, which found that an electric car — even after five years of use — still retained 95% of its driving range. That's impressive, and it gets even more so when the actual claims by EV makers are taken into account. One example is Tesla, which for most of its cars, promises the battery will stay above 70% of its original capacity for eight years. However, if the Recurrent report is anything to go by, the degradation is a lot slower, so the promise looks rather humble.

Take one particular 2016 Tesla Model S 90D that has spent nearly a decade serving as a UK airport taxi as an example. As reported by InsideEVs, the car had racked up around 430,000 miles on its original battery and motors. Yet through it all, it only lost about 65 miles of range. Some back of the napkin math later, you'd arrive at a battery capacity of roughly 78% at the time.

A big reason estimates have been so off is apparently because lab tests have been roughing up batteries a little too much. Research coming out of Stanford in 2024 put 92 lithium-ion batteries through their paces for over two years. They found that real-world driving is actually a lot easier on the batteries. All that stopping, starting, and staying parked for hours actually helps the cells recover.

Taking all this into account, they concluded that most batteries could last up to a whopping 40% longer than previously thought. The lead researcher went as far as saying that the industry had been testing those poor batteries wrong. One of the lead authors even noted that something like hard acceleration – a huge power drainer and therefore also long assumed to be rough on a pack — seemed to actually slow the wear a bit rather than speed it up.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

You can't tighten the timings either, apparently:

Homegrown DDR5 memory from China, manufactured by ChangXing Memory Technologies, has been making the rounds lately as more and more vendors start legitimizing it. However, new testing from overclocker Safedisk, shared by Uniko's Hardware, purportedly shows that it actually carries inferior performance compared to similar options from SK Hynix, alongside significant variance in the silicon between different batches.

CXMT began producing DDR5 in late 2025 despite lacking any cutting-edge EUV lithography tools. Fast forward to today, and reports of the company matching Micron's memory capacity by this year are now floating around. If true, China would become the second-largest memory maker in the world. At such scale, it's no wonder that many companies in China have already started sourcing CXMT-made RAM to fill the gap in the consumer market.

Throughout 2026, we've seen motherboard manufacturers verify CXMT's DDR5 with official BIOS optimizations that allow it to run beyond 8,000 MT/s at this point. OEMs such as Dell and HP are using CXMT RAM in their region-bound systems, and even proper PC hardware companies like Corsair are using CXMT modules. Lexar, Kingbank, Netac, Asgard, Gloaway and more are also producing retail DDR5 kits with CXMT chips.

As such, the testing features a Kingbank 48GB (2x24) DDR5-6000 kit running at CL36 and found several weaknesses despite successfully achieving an 8,600 MT/s overclock at CL44. The first revelation is that CXMT modules don't scale with voltage, meaning you can't just increase voltage in hopes of achieving higher clocks. CXMT's DDR5 apparently doesn't respond well to tuning sub-timings either, forcing you to remain stuck with baseline CAS latency (or higher, like in this case).

Overall, if Asus' testing is to be believed, it serves as counterprogramming against the popular narrative forming around China as the savior of consumer interests. CXMT's strength lies in the fact that it doesn't have to cater to opulent AI clients as much as the Big Three, which reduces opportunity cost, allowing CXMT to produce more DDR5 memory. That doesn't mean it would be cheaper, though, or at least no evidence has suggested that so far.