"Scientists at the world's largest particle collider have observed a new class of antimatter particles breaking down at a different rate than their matter counterparts," reports Scientific American: [P]hysicists have been on the hunt for any sign of difference between matter and antimatter, known in the field as a violation of "charge conjugation-parity symmetry," or CP violation, that could explain why some matter escaped destruction in the early universe. [Wednesday] physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)'s LHCb experiment published a paper in the journal Nature announcing that they've measured CP violation for the first time in baryons — the class of particles that includes the protons and neutrons inside atoms. Baryons are all built from triplets of even smaller particles called quarks. Previous experiments dating back to 1964 had seen CP violation in meson particles, which unlike baryons are made of a quark-antiquark pair. In the new experiment, scientists observed that baryons made of an up quark, a down quark and one of their more exotic cousins called a beauty quark decay more often than baryons made of the antimatter versions of those same three quarks... The matter-antimatter difference scientists observed in this case is relatively small, and it fits within predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics — the reigning theory of the subatomic realm. This puny amount of CP violation, however, cannot account for the profound asymmetry between matter and antimatter we see throughout space... "We are trying to find little discrepancies between what we observe and what is predicted by the Standard Model," [says LHCb spokesperson/study co-author Vincenzo Vagnoni of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics]. "If we find a discrepancy, then we can pinpoint what is wrong." The researchers hope to discover more cracks in the Standard Model as the experiment keeps running. Eventually LHCb should collect about 30 times more data than was used for this analysis, which will allow physicists to search for CP violation in particle decays that are even rarer than the one observed here. So stay tuned for an answer to why anything exists at all.

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"The distant reaches of the Solar System are still mysterious," writes ScienceAlert. "Not much sunlight pierces these regions, and there are strong hints that undiscovered objects lurk there. The objects that astronomers have discovered in these dim reaches are primordial, and their orbits suggest the presence of more undiscovered objects." And now thanks to the giant 8.2-meter Subaru telescope at Hawaii's Mauna Kea Observatory, astronomers have discovered "a massive new solar system body located beyond the orbit of Pluto," reports Space.com. The weird elongated orbit of the object suggests that if "Planet Nine" exists, it is much further from the sun than thought, or it has been ejected from our planetary system altogether. The strange orbit of the object, designated 2023 KQ14 and nicknamed "Ammonite," classifies it as a "sednoid." Sednoids are bodies beyond the orbit of the ice giant Neptune, known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), characterized by a highly eccentric (non-circular) orbit and a distant closest approach to the sun or "perihelion." The closest distance that 2023 KQ14 ever comes to our star is equivalent to 71 times the distance between Earth and the sun... This is just the fourth known sednoid, and its orbit is currently different from that of its siblings, though it seems to have been stable for 4.5 billion years. However, the team behind the discovery, made using Subaru Telescope as part of the Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy (FOSSIL) survey, thinks that all four sednoids were on similar orbits around 4.2 billion years ago. That implies something dramatic happened out at the edge of the solar system around 400 million years after its birth. Not only does the fact that 2023 KQ14 now follows a unique orbit suggest that the outer solar system is more complex and varied than previously thought, but it also places limits on a hypothetical "Planet Nine" theorized to lurk at the edge of the solar system. There's "no viable transfer mechanisms" to explain the observed orbits "with the current configuration of planets," according to the team's recently-published paper. But since those orbits are stable, it "suggests that an external gravitational influence beyond those of the currently known Solar System planets is required to form their orbits." So where does that leave us? ScienceAlert summarizes the rest of the paper — and where things stand now: Astronomers have proposed many sources for this external gravitational influence, including interactions with a rogue planet or star, ancient stellar interactions from when the Sun was still in its natal cluster, and the capture of objects from other lower-mass stars in the Solar System's early times. But the explanation that gets the most attention is interactions with a hypothetical planet, Planet Nine. If Planet Nine exists, it has a huge area to hide in. Some astronomers who have studied its potential existence think it could be the fifth largest planet in the Solar System. It would be so far away that it would be extremely dim. However, we may be on the cusp of detecting it, if it exists. The Vera Rubin Observatory recently saw first light and will begin its decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST will find transient events and objects in the Solar System like no other telescope before it. It's purpose-built to find hard-to-detect objects, and not even an elusive object like Planet Nine may be able to hide from it.

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"Anybody who's got a hosted SharePoint server has got a problem," the senior VP of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike told the Washington Post. "It's a significant vulnerability." And it's led to a new "global attack on government agencies and businesses" in the last few days, according to the article, "breaching U.S. federal and state agencies, universities, energy companies and an Asian telecommunications company, according to state officials and private researchers..." "Tens of thousands of such servers are at risk, experts said, and Microsoft has issued no patch for the flaw, leaving victims around the world scrambling to respond." Microsoft has suggested that users make modifications to SharePoint server programs or simply unplug them from the internet to stanch the breach. Microsoft issued an alert to customers but declined to comment further... "We are seeing attempts to exploit thousands of SharePoint servers globally before a patch is available," said Pete Renals, a senior manager with Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42. "We have identified dozens of compromised organizations spanning both commercial and government sectors.'' With access to these servers, which often connect to Outlook email, Teams and other core services, a breach can lead to theft of sensitive data as well as password harvesting, Netherlands-based research company Eye Security noted. What's also alarming, researchers said, is that the hackers have gained access to keys that may allow them to regain entry even after a system is patched. "So pushing out a patch on Monday or Tuesday doesn't help anybody who's been compromised in the past 72 hours," said one researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a federal investigation is ongoing. The breaches occurred after Microsoft fixed a security flaw this month. The attackers realized they could use a similar vulnerability, according to the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA spokeswoman Marci McCarthy said the agency was alerted to the issue Friday by a cyber research firm and immediately contacted Microsoft... The nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which staffs an information-sharing group for state and local governments, notified about 100 organizations that they were vulnerable and potentially compromised, said Randy Rose, the organization's vice president. Those warned included public schools and universities. Others that were breached included a government agency in Spain, a local agency in Albuquerque and a university in Brazil, security researchers said. But there's many more breaches, according to the article: "Eye Security said it has tracked more than 50 breaches, including at an energy company in a large state and several European government agencies." "At least two U.S. federal agencies have seen their servers breached, according to researchers." "One state official in the eastern U.S. said the attackers had 'hijacked' a repository of documents provided to the public to help residents understand how their government works. The agency involved can no longer access the material..." "It was not immediately clear who is behind the hacking of global reach or what its ultimate goal is. One private research company found the hackers targeting servers in China..."

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Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige "isn't interested in your theories of superhero fatigue, which he doesn't buy as real," writes The Hollywood Reporter. Feige points to the $400 million worldwide box office for Superman (which another article notes in only its second weekend "has already passed up the entire lifetime run of Marvel's Thunderbolts*.") So how is Marvel moving forward? Yes, Feige knows Marvel made too many movies and shows (and the other things they did wrong). From the first Iron Man in 2008 through Avengers: Endgame in 2019, Marvel produced around 50 hours of screen storytelling. In the six years since Endgame, the number jumps to an astounding 102 hours of movies and television. 127 hours if you include animation. "That's too much," Feige said. He characterized the time period after Endgame as an era of experimentation, evolution and, unfortunately, expansion. And while he's proud of the experimentation — he points to WandaVision and Loki as some of the best stories they've made — he admits "It's the expansion that is certainly what devalued" that output. Being high on success also may have pushed them to readily agree to try to deliver more programming at a time when Disney and the rest of Hollywood were engaged in the streaming wars. "It was a big company push... [T]here was a mandate that we were put in the middle of, but we also thought it'd be fun to bring these to life." Marvel has already pulled back the amount of movies and shows it will make. Some years may even only have one movie. Certainly there will be years with only one show released. Also, Marvel has started "grinding down" on budgets, with movies costing up to a third cheaper than the films from 2022 or 2023. Feige also explains why Thunderbolts* struggled at the box office (even though he's called it a "very, very good movie"). The massive expansion into television and focus on Disney+ led to the feeling that watching Marvel was becoming a type of homework. "It's that expansion that I think led people to say, 'Do I have to see all of these? It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?' And I think The Marvels hit it hardest where people are like, 'Okay, I recognize her from a billion dollar movie. But who are those other two? I guess they were in some TV show. I'll skip it.'" Which had an effect on Thunderbolts*, which featured characters that were seen on various platforms, including some only on shows. The article notes Friday's release of Fantastic Four: First Steps is Marvel Studios' first crack at the characters after "a trio of movies of various quality and box office made by Twentieth Century Fox before its 2019 acquisition by Disney." And the article also acknowledges "the never-released, 1994 feature produced low-budget king Roger Corman. (Fun fact: the four stars of that movie cameo in Fantastic Four: First Steps.)"

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"Amazon stretched out its annual Prime Day sales event so that it lasted four days — twice as long as in the past — and, as a result, blew away previous sales figures," reports USA Today: Spending for [the four-day] Prime Day amounted to "more than two Black Fridays — which drove $10.8 billion in online spending during the 2024 holiday shopping season — and sets a new benchmark for the summer shopping season," Adobe said in a news release. The total also surpassed Adobe's pre-Prime Day estimate of $23.8 billion in sales. But an article in Fortune notes that "what stood out to this longtime Amazon watcher is that the company didn't disclose anything about the number of items sold." The last time it made that choice was 2020, when nothing normal was happening anywhere in the world, and Prime Day was moved from summer to October. Before that, you have to go back to the second-ever Prime Day in 2016 to find a wrap-up that didn't provide any update on the number of "units" sold. It's unclear exactly why Amazon decided to withhold that number for 2025, but this Prime Day was odd for a few reasons. Sellers, and brands big and small, had to come up with different strategies to contend with tariff chaos. And they're trying to woo increasingly pessimistic consumers. Those factors could be weighing on the company's decision to withhold exact numbers. Instead Amazon's official Prime Day recap swapped in some unusual alternate statistics. For example, Amazon reported that if you added up all the discounts given to customers over the four-day event, it was larger than any previous total amount of all discounts given to customers (over the earlier two-day events). To be sure, it's possible that this Prime Day was a success. An outside analysis from Adobe estimated that sales across online retailers overall increased by more than 30% during this year's four day Prime Day period, compared to last year. And Amazon said in this year's recap that the four days of Prime Day 2025 outsold any other four-day period that included previous Prime Days. But historically, the event hasn't run longer than two days. That means that previous years have included two prime days and two regular days, while this year included four prime days. It's unclear why the company would change the basis of comparison. Amazon "declined to comment on the absence of specific product sales tallies for 2025," according to the article (while pointing Fortune instead to an Amazon blog post with facts about past Prime Day events.) But in a sign of the time, Amazon's announcement notes that their Prime Day customers found deals and other product information using Amazon's AI-generated buying guides, as well as an AI-powered shopping assistant named Rufus and Alexa+ — Amazon's next-generation personal assistant ("now available in Early Access to millions of customers"). Another interesting statistic? USA Today notes that "a majority of shoppers (53.2%) made purchases on mobile devices, compared to on desktop computers, accounting for $12.8 billion of the spending, according to Adobe."

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ABC News reports that Ukrainian drones struck Moscow last night — over 100 of them — closing all four of Moscow's international airports and diverting at least 134 planes. And Ukrainian commanders estimate that drones now account for 70% of all Russian deaths and injuries, according to the BBC — which means attacks on the front line are filmed, logged, and counted. "And now put to use too, as the Ukrainian military tries to extract every advantage it can against its much more powerful opponent." Under a scheme first trialled last year and dubbed "Army of Drones: Bonus" (also known as "e-points"), units can earn points for each Russian soldier killed or piece of equipment destroyed. And like a killstreak in Call of Duty, or a 1970s TV game show, points mean prizes [described later as "extra equipment."] "The more strategically important and large-scale the target, the more points a unit receives," reads a statement from the team at Brave 1, which brings together experts from government and the military. "For example, destroying an enemy multiple rocket launch system earns up to 50 points; 40 points are awarded for a destroyed tank and 20 for a damaged one." Call it the gamification of war. The article concludes that the e-points scheme "is typical of the way Ukraine has fought this war: creative, out-of-the-box thinking designed to make the most of the country's innovative skills and minimise the effect of its numerical disadvantage." And "It turns out that encouraging a Russian soldier to surrender is worth more points than killing one," the article notes — up to 10x more, since "a prisoner of war can always be used in future deals over prisoner exchanges." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

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Long-time Slashdot reader wattersa is a lawyer in Redwood City, California, and a Slashdot reader since 1998. In 2022 he shared the remarkable story of a three-year missing person investigation that was ultimately solved with a subpoena to Google. A murder victim appeared to have sent an email at a time which would exonerate the chief suspect. But a closer inspection of that email's IP addresses revealed it was actually sent from a hotel where the suspect was staying. ("Although Google does not include the originating IP address in the email headers, it turns out that they retain the IP address for some unknown length of time...") Today wattersa brings this update: The case finally went to trial in July 2025, where I testified about the investigation along with an expert witness on computer networking. The jury took three hours to return a verdict against the victim's husband for wrongful death in the amount of $23.2 million, with a special finding that he caused the death of his wife. The defendant is a successful mechanical engineer at an energy company, but is walking as a free man because he is Canadian and no one can prosecute him in the U.S., since Taiwan and the U.S. don't have extradition with each other. It was an interesting case and I look forward to using it as a model in other missing person cases.

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A new video shows flames emanating from one side of a Boeing 767 moments after takeoff, reports LiveMint.com. "Delta flight 446 was forced to make an emergency landing in Los Angeles," they report, adding "No one was injured. The fire was extinguished upon landing." According to a report by Aviation A2Z, the plane (24-year-old Boeing 767-400 with registration N836MH) had just departed from Los Angeles International Airport when its left engine ignited. The pilots promptly declared an emergency and requested to return to the airport. Delta faced a similar issue less than three months ago. The article notes the engine of an Airbus also caught on fire in April when pushing back from the gate for departure. CBS News describes that incident: Delta said crew members evacuated the cabin when flames were seen in the tailpipe of one of the plane's two main engines and fire crews quickly responded. According to Delta, the plane, an Airbus 330, had 282 passengers, 10 flight attendants and two pilots on board... The engine fire marks the latest aviation scare involving the airline in recent months. In February, 21 people were injured after a Delta plane flipped upside down while landing amid wintry conditions at Toronto Pearson International Airport. All of the injured passengers were later released from the hospital. In January, several people were injured after a Delta flight aborted its takeoff at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, forcing about 200 passengers to evacuate the plane through emergency slides. ["A passenger says the engine on the Boeing 757 caught fire," according to CBS's video report in January.]

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San Francisco-based startup Orchid Health "screens embryos for thousands of potential future illnesses," reports the Washington Post, calling it "the first company to say it can sequence an embryo's entire genome of 3 billion base pairs." It uses as few as five cells from an embryo to test for more than 1,200 of these uncommon single-gene-derived, or monogenic, conditions. The company also applies custom-built algorithms to produce what are known as polygenic risk scores, which are designed to measure a future child's genetic propensity for developing complex ailments later in life, such as bipolar disorder, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and schizophrenia. Orchid, [founder Noor] Siddiqui said in a tweet, is ushering in "a generation that gets to be genetically blessed and avoid disease." Right now, at $2,500 per embryo-screening on top of the average $20,000 for a single cycle of IVF, Siddiqui's social network in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs is an ideal target market... Yet several genetic scientists told The Post they doubt Orchid's core claim: that it can accurately sequence an entire human genome from just five cells collected from an early-stage embryo, enabling it to see many more single- and multiple-gene-derived disorders than other methods have. Experts have struggled to extract accurate genetic information from small embryonic samples, said Svetlana Yatsenko, a Stanford University pathology professor who specializes in clinical and research genetics. Genetic tests that use saliva or blood samples typically collect hundreds of thousands of cells. For its vastly smaller samples, Orchid uses a process called amplification, which creates copies of the DNA retrieved from the embryo. That process, Yatsenko said, can introduce major inaccuracies. "You're making many, many mistakes in the amplification," she said, rendering it problematic to declare any embryo free of a particular disease, or positive for one. "It's basically Russian roulette...." Numerous fertility doctors and scientists also told The Post they have serious reservations about screening embryos through polygenic risk scoring, the technique that allows Orchid and other companies to predict future disease by tying clusters of hundreds or even thousands of genes to disease outcomes and in some cases to other traits, such as intelligence and height. The vast majority of diseases that afflict humans are associated with many different genes rather than a single gene... And for traits such as intelligence, polygenic scoring has almost negligible predictive capacity — just a handful of IQ points... Or parents might select against an unwanted trait, such as schizophrenia, without understanding how they may be screening out desired traits associated with the same genes, such as creativity... The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics calls the benefits of screening embryos for polygenic risks "unproven" and warns that such tests "should not be offered" by clinicians. A pioneer of polygenic risk scores, Harvard epidemiology professor Peter Kraft, has criticized Orchid, saying on X that "the science doesn't add up" and that "waving a magic wand and changing some of these variants at birth may not do anything at all." The article notes several startups are already providing predictions on intelligence. "In the United States, there are virtually no restrictions on the types of genetic predictions companies can offer, and no external vetting of their proprietary scoring methods."

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Fast Company's tech editor Harry McCracken (also harrymccSlashdot reader #1,641,347) writes: As part of Fast Company's "1995 week", I wrote about IBM's ThinkPad 701, the famous model with an expanding "butterfly" keyboard [which could be stretched from 9.7-inches to 11.5 inches]. By putting full-sized keys in a subnotebook-sized laptop, it solved one of mobile computing's biggest problems. IBM discontinued it before the end of the year, and neither it nor anyone else ever made anything similar again. And yet it remains amazing. Check out this 1995 ad for the keyboard! The article calls the butterfly ThinkPad "one of the best things the technology industry has ever done with moving parts," and revisits 1995's race "to design a subnotebook-sized laptop with a desktop-sized keyboard." It's still comically thick, standing almost as tall as four MacBook Airs stacked on each other. That height is required to accommodate multiple technologies later rendered obsolete by technological progress, such as a dial-up fax/modem, an infrared port, two PCMCIA expansion card slots, and a bulky connector for an external docking station... Lifting the screen set off a system of concealed gears and levers that propelled the two sections of keyboard into position with balletic grace... A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995's best-selling PC laptop. Yet by the time that story appeared in February 1996, the 701 had been discontinued. IBM never made anything like it again. Neither did anyone else... As portable computers became more popular, progress in display technology had made it possible for PC makers to use larger screens. Manufacturers were also getting better at fitting a laptop's necessary components into less space. These advances let them design a new generation of thin, light laptops that went beyond the limitations of subnotebooks. Once IBM could make a lightweight laptop with a wider screen, "the need for an expanding keyboard was no longer essential," says [butterfly ThinkPad engineer] George Karidis. "It would have just been a novelty." The article notes a fan's open source guides for repairing butterfly Thinkpads at Project Butterfly, and all the fan-community videos about it on YouTube, "from an excellent documentary to people simply being entranced by it. "As a thing of wonder, it continues to transcend its own obsolescence."

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Feature work on Plasma 6.5 this week includes "a major visual change that has been years in the wanting," according to the KDE blog: "rounded bottom corners for windows!" Neowin reports: This visual refresh, planned for the upcoming Plasma 6.5, is a feature that many users have been asking for over a long period, with a formal proposal even being submitted back in 2021. Its official arrival will mean less need for community-developed workarounds like kde-rounded-corners, a popular third-party script that has served this purpose for years. The feature will be enabled by default, but it includes an option for those who prefer the classic, sharp-cornered look.

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Twitter co-founder/Block CEO Jack Dorsey isn't just vibe coding new apps like Bitchat and Sun Day. He's also "invested $10 million in an effort to fund experimental open source projects and other tools that could ultimately transform the social media landscape," reports TechCrunch," funding the projects through an online collective formed in May called "andOtherStuff: [T]he team at "andOtherStuff" is determined not to build a company but is instead operating like a "community of hackers," explains Evan Henshaw-Plath [who handles UX/onboarding and was also Twitter's first employee]. Together, they're working to create technologies that could include new consumer social apps as well as various experiments, like developer tools or libraries, that would allow others to build apps for themselves. For instance, the team is behind an app called Shakespeare, which is like the app-building platform Lovable, but specifically for building Nostr-based social apps with AI assistance. The group is also behind heynow, a voice note app built on Nostr; Cashu wallet; private messenger White Noise; and the Nostr-based social community +chorus, in addition to the apps Dorsey has already released. Developments in AI-based coding have made this type of experimentation possible, Henshaw-Plath points out, in the same way that technologies like Ruby on Rails, Django, and JSON helped to fuel an earlier version of the web, dubbed Web 2.0. Related to these efforts, Henshaw-Plath sat down with Dorsey for the debut episode of his new podcast, revolution.social with @rabble... Dorsey believes Bluesky faces the same challenges as traditional social media because of its structure — it's funded by VCs, like other startups. Already, it has had to bow to government requests and faced moderation challenges, he points out. "I think [Bluesky CEO] Jay [Graber] is great. I think the team is great," Dorsey told Henshaw-Plath, "but the structure is what I disagree with ... I want to push the energy in a different direction, which is more like Bitcoin, which is completely open and not owned by anyone from a protocol layer...." Dorsey's initial investment has gotten the new nonprofit up and running, and he worked on some of its initial iOS apps. Meanwhile, others are contributing their time to build Android versions, developer tools, and different social media experiments. More is still in the works, says Henshaw-Plath. "There are things that we're not ready to talk about yet that'll be very exciting," he teases.

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"Eight healthy babies were born in Britain," reports Phys.org, "with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported Wednesday." Mutations in mitochondrial DNA "can cause a range of diseases in children that can lead to muscle weakness, seizures, developmental delays, major organ failure and death," and in rare cases even pre-IVF testing can't clearly detect their presence. Researchers have been developing a technique that tries to avoid the problem by using the healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. They reported in 2023 that the first babies had been born using this method... Using this method means the embryo has DNA from three people — from the mother's egg, the father's sperm and the donor's mitochondria — and it required a 2016 U.K. law change to approve it. It is also allowed in Australia but not in many other countries, including the U.S. Experts at Britain's Newcastle University and Monash University in Australia reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday that they performed the new technique in fertilized embryos from 22 patients, which resulted in eight babies that appear to be free of mitochondrial diseases. One woman is still pregnant... Robin Lovell-Badge [a stem cell and developmental genetics scientist at the Francis Crick Institute who was not involved in the research] said the amount of DNA from the donor is insignificant, noting that any resulting child would have no traits from the woman who donated the healthy mitochondria... In the U.K., every couple seeking a baby born through donated mitochondria must be approved by the country's fertility regulator. As of this month, 35 patients have been authorized to undergo the technique. Critics have previously raised concerns, warning that it's impossible to know the impact these sorts of novel techniques might have on future generations... But in countries where the technique is allowed, advocates say it could provide a promising alternative for some families.

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"I vibe coded a little game called Coldplay Canoodlers," reads the X.com post by gaming enthusiast/songwriter Jonathan Mann. "You're the camera operator and you have to find the CEO and HR lady canoodling. 10 points every time you find them." Mann's post includes a 30-second clip from the game, which is playable here. Forbes notes that the TikTok video of the couple's reaction has drawn more than 100 million views — and that the married-to-someone-else CEO has now tendered his resignation from his dataops company Astronomer (which was accepted). The company is now searching for a new chief executive, according to a statement posted on LinkedIn. ("Comments have been turned off on this post...") "Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met." But songwriter Mann saw a chance to have some fun, writes Forbes: Mann used ChatGPT to make the "Coldplay Canoodlers" game, inputting such prompts as: "Can you generate an 8-bit pixel image of a stadium concert viewed from the stage" and "there should be a large jumbotron somewhere up in the stadium seats." He also entered rough drawings of the visual style he envisioned... The response to the game, Mann said in an interview, has been unexpected. "I have gone viral many times with my songs," he said. It's "very strange to have it happen with a game I made in four hours." Songwriter Mann has been sharing an original song online every day for over 17 years. Last summer Slashdot also covered Mann's attempts to sell NFTs of his songs, and his concerns about SEC regulations. (This led him to file a real-world legal challenge — and to write a song titled "I'm Suing the SEC".) So with all the attention this weekend to his instant game, there was nothing to do but... write a new song about it. And minutes ago on X.com, Mann also posted a new update about his game. "I turned it into an NFT." "Took some time," Mann explained later. "But I vibe coded my own ERC-721 contract and minted the game as a playable NFT. (Plays great on OpenSea)."

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It's "a milestone for scalable quantum technologies," according to the announcement from Boston University. Scientists from Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University "reported the world's first electronic-photonic-quantum system on a chip, according to a study published in Nature Electronics." Quantum computing is on "a decades-long path from concept to reality," says Milos PopoviÄ, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at BU and a senior author on the study. "This is a small step on that path — but an important one, because it shows we can build repeatable, controllable quantum systems in commercial semiconductor foundries." The system combines quantum light sources and stabilizing electronics using a standard 45-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process to produce reliable streams of correlated photon pairs (particles of light) — a key resource for emerging quantum technologies. The advance paves the way for mass-producible "quantum light factory" chips and large-scale quantum systems built from many such chips working together... Just as electronic chips are powered by electric currents, and optical communication links by laser light, future quantum technologies will require a steady stream of quantum light resource units to perform their functions. To provide this, the researchers' work created an array of "quantum light factories" on a silicon chip, each less than a millimeter by a millimeter in dimension... "What excites me most is that we embedded the control directly on-chip — stabilizing a quantum process in real time," says Anirudh Ramesh, a PhD student at Northwestern who led the quantum measurements. "That's a critical step toward scalable quantum systems." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the news.

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"Nearly 2 million people protected their privacy by deleting their DNA from 23andMe after it declared bankruptcy in March," writes a Washington Post technology columnist. "Now it's back with the same person in charge — and I still don't trust it." As of this week, genetic data from the more than 10 million remaining 23andMe customers has been formally sold to an organization called TTAM Research Institute for $305 million. That nonprofit is run by the person who co-founded and ran 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki. In a recent email to customers, the new 23andMe said it "will be operating with the same employees and privacy protocols that have protected your data." Never mind that Wojcicki and her privacy protocols are what put your DNA at risk in the first place... The company is legally obligated to maintain and honor 23andMe's existing privacy policies, user consents and data protection measures. And as part of a settlement with states, TTAM also agreed to provide annual privacy reports to state regulators and set up a privacy board. But it hasn't agreed to take the fundamental step of asking for permission to acquire existing customers' genetic information. And it's leaving the door open to selling people's genes to the highest bidder again in the future... Existing 23andMe customers have the right to delete their data or opt out of TTAM's research. But the new company is not asking for opt-in permission before it takes ownership of customers' DNA... Why does that matter? Because people who handed over the DNA 15 years ago, often to learn about their genetic ancestry, never imagined it might be used in this way now. Asking for new permission might significantly shrink the size (and value) of 23andMe's DNA database — but it would be the right thing to do given the rocky history. Neil M. Richards [the Washington University professor who served as privacy ombudsman for the bankruptcy court], pointed out that about a third of 23andMe customers haven't logged in for at least three years, so they may have no idea what is going on. Some 23andMe users never even clicked "agree" on a legal agreement that allowed their data to be sold like this; the word "bankruptcy" wasn't added to the company's privacy policy until 2022. And then there is an unknown number of deceased users who most certainly can't consent, but whose DNA still has an impact on their living genetic relatives... [S]everal states have argued that their existing genetic privacy laws don't allow 23andMe to receive the information without getting permission from every single person. Virginia has an ongoing lawsuit over the issue, and the California attorney general's office told me it "will continue to fight to protect and vindicate the rights" of consumers.... Two more points of concern: "There is nothing in 23andMe's bankruptcy agreement or privacy statement to prevent TTAM from selling or transferring DNA to some other organization in the future." The article also notes a 2023 data breach affecting 6.9 million users, arguing "They haven't shown they can keep your data safe... 23andMe's financial struggles could make it hard to run a robust cybersecurity program."

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Ships trigger seafloor methane emissions while moving through shallow water, researchers report in Communications Earth & Environment. The scientists say the unexpected discovery has nothing to do with the type of fuel used by the ship. Instead, "ship-induced pressure changes and turbulent mixing" trigger the release of the gas from the seafloor. Bubbles and gas diffusion push the methane into the atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas... Container and cruise ships triggered the largest and most frequent methane emissions, but the study suggests that ships of all kinds, regardless of their type of engine or size, trigger methane emissions. Researchers said they observed emissions that were 20 times higher in the shipping lane than in undisturbed nearby areas. Given the number of ports in similarly shallow areas worldwide, it's important to learn more about emissions in shipping lanes and to better estimate their "hitherto unknown impact," study co-author Johan Mellqvist, a professor of optical remote sensing at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, said in a news release.

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Electronic messages travel faster than seismic waves, Gizmodo points out — meaning some people near an earthquake receive an Android Earthquake Alert "before the seismic waves reach them — and even a few seconds could be just enough time to hide under a table or run outside." Richard Allen from the University of California in Berkeley's Seismological Laboratory, writes in a new study that "The global adoption of smartphone technology places sophisticated sensing and alerting capabilities in people's hands, in both the wealthy and less-wealthy portions of the planet." From Gizmodo: According to the study, 70% of the world's smartphones are Android phones, which by default come with the aforementioned sensing and alerting capabilities. From 2021 to 2024, the Android Earthquake Alert (AEA) system detected an average of 312 earthquakes per month across 98 countries. The earthquakes had a magnitude between 1.9 and 7.8, and the system alerted users of earthquakes at or over a magnitude of 4.5, averaging around 60 events and 18 million alerts per month. The AEA system also collected user feedback, revealing that 85% of users who received alerts experienced shaking, with 36% receiving the alert before, 28% during, and 23% after the shaking began... "AEA demonstrates that globally distributed smartphones can be used to detect earthquakes and issue warnings at scale with an effectiveness comparable to established national systems," the researchers wrote. The system detected 11,231 earthquakes between April of 2021 and March of 2024, according to the study, which notes that the length of the advanced warning "ranged from seconds up to a minute" for moderate shaking, and about 15 seconds for the strongest shaking.

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Historian Garrett M. Graff describes his upcoming book, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb. "I assembled an oral history of the Manhattan Project, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II in the Pacific, told through the voices of around 500 participants and witnesses of the events — including luminaries like Albert Einstein and Oppenheimer and political figures like President Harry Truman." It was 80 years ago this week that physicists and 150 other leaders in the atomic bomb program "gathered in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the world's first test of a nuclear explosion." In an except from his upcoming book, Graff publishes quotes from eyewitness: Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. He had also said that after all it wouldn't make any difference whether the bomb went off or not because it would still have been a well worthwhile scientific experiment. For if it did fail to go off, we would have proved that an atomic explosion was not possible. Afterward, I realized that his talk had served to smooth down the frayed nerves and ease the tension of the people at the base camp, and I have always thought that this was his conscious purpose. Certainly, he himself showed no signs of tension that I could see... As the hour approached, we had to postpone the test — first for an hour and then later for 30 minutes more — so that the explosion was actually three- and one-half hours behind the original schedule... Our preparations were simple. Everyone was told to lie face down on the ground, with his feet toward the blast, to close his eyes and to cover his eyes with his hands as the countdown approached zero. As soon as they became aware of the flash they could turn over and sit or stand up, covering their eyes with the smoked glass with which each had been supplied... The quiet grew more intense. I, myself, was on the ground between Bush and Conant... Edward Teller: We all were lying on the ground, supposedly with our backs turned to the explosion. But I had decided to disobey that instruction and instead looked straight at the bomb. I was wearing the welder's glasses that we had been given so that the light from the bomb would not damage our eyes. But because I wanted to face the explosion, I had decided to add some extra protection. I put on dark glasses under the welder's glasses, rubbed some ointment on my face to prevent sunburn from the radiation, and pulled on thick gloves to press the welding glasses to my face to prevent light from entering at the sides... We all listened anxiously as the broadcast of the final countdown started; but, for whatever reason, the transmission ended at minus five seconds... Kenneth T. Bainbridge: My personal nightmare was knowing that if the bomb didn't go off or hang-fired, I, as head of the test, would have to go to the tower first and seek to find out what had gone wrong... Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead. A few examples of how they remembered the explosion: William L. Laurence: There rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. Kenneth T. Bainbridge: I felt the heat on the back of my neck, disturbingly warm. George B. Kistiakowsky: I am sure that at the end of the world — in the last millisecond of the earth's existence — the last man will see what we have just seen. Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Oppenheimer's face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief. J. Robert Oppenheimer: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Norris Bradbury, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind. I didn't. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.

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ABC News reports: Dialogue heard on a cockpit voice recording indicates that the captain of the Air India flight that crashed in June, killing 260 people, may have turned off the fuel just after takeoff, prompting the first officer to panic, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with U.S. official's early assessment... The president of the Federation of Indian Pilots condemned the Wall Street Journal report, saying, "The preliminary report nowhere states that the pilots have moved the fuel control switches, and this has been corroborated by the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] recording." But meanwhile "India on Monday ordered its airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing aircraft models," reports Reuters, "while South Korea ordered a similar measure on Tuesday, as scrutiny intensified of fuel switch locks at the centre of an investigation into a deadly Air India crash." The precautionary moves by the two countries and airlines in several others came despite the planemaker and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration assuring airlines and regulators in recent days that the fuel switch locks on Boeing jets are safe... [The preliminary report] noted a 2018 advisory from the FAA, which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, to inspect the locking feature of fuel cutoff switches to ensure they could not be moved accidentally... Some airlines around the world told Reuters they had been checking relevant switches since 2018 in accordance with the FAA advisory, including Australia's Qantas Airways. Others said they had made additional or new checks since the release of the preliminary report into the Air India crash. The web site of India's Financial Express newspaper spoke to Mary Schiavo, who was Inspector General of America's Transportation Department from 1990 to 1996 (and is also a long-time critic of the FAA). The site notes Schiavo "rejected the claims of human error that a pilot downed the Ahmedabad to London flight by cutting off the fuel supply." Schiavo exclusively told FinancialExpress.com that this is not the first time fuel switch transitioned from "Run" to "Cutoff" on its own. It happened five years ago, too. "There was an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight in 2019 in which the 787 aircraft did this itself, while the flight was on final approach. No pilot input cutting off the fuel whatsoever," Schiavo told FinancialExpress.com... "The investigation revealed the plane software made the 787 think it was on the ground and the Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation System cut the fuel to the engines," she told FinancialExpress.com, before adding, "The pilots never touched the fuel cutoff..." Both engines flamed out immediately after the pilot deployed the thrust reversers for landing. The aircraft, which was also a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, was towed away from the runway by the authorities, and no injuries were reported. UK Civil Aviation Authority, four weeks before the crash, had warned about similar fuel system issues on Boeing aircraft [on May 15, 2025]. "The FAA has issued an Airworthiness Directive addressing a potential unsafe condition affecting fuel shutoff valves installed on Boeing aircraft," the UK regulator's notice read, listing the B737, B757, B767, B777 and B787... Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation informs FADEC [a digital computer] about whether the aircraft is on the ground or in the air, and if it believes the aircraft is on the ground, it may automatically throttle back the engines, without the pilot's input. Reuters notes that the Air India crash preliminary report "said maintenance records showed that the throttle control module, which includes the fuel switches, was replaced in 2019 and 2023 on the plane involved in the crash." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot for sharing the news.

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