SlashdotNews for nerds, stuff that matters
4 Oct 2026, 03:21 by EditorDavid
"Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago," writes the New York Times. "And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us." Phys.org explains that it's "both an important gene for brain function and a jumping gene capable of moving and inserting itself into genomes." BC200 is found only in humans and related primates and was discovered in the late 1980s as an abundant noncoding RNA in human neurons. Although BC200's physiological function is poorly understood, evidence suggests it may be involved in regulating the translation of neuronal messenger RNAs into proteins... The researchers also suspect that BC200 jumped in skin cells because these are the only cells known to be infected by molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV). The gene is also abnormally expressed in some tumors and overexpressed in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease, suggesting its jumping ability could play roles in these diseases. [Cedric Feschotte, a senior author of the study] said he and his colleagues would like to explore whether the molluscum contagiosum virus uses BC200 to manipulate human host cells. They are also interested in better understanding the gene's role in disease, including breast and other types of tumors in which it is abnormally expressed, and whether it jumps in cancer cells and causes mutations. Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.
 
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4 Oct 2026, 01:21 by EditorDavid
While most magnets have two poles (north and south, or positive and negative), recent advances in quantum mechanics have revealed an "octupolar order," writes Phys.org, where a pattern of particles in a crystalline structure "behaves as if it has eight magnetic poles rather than the familiar two." Now, a team led by quantum physicists at the University of Toronto has established a new method for observing quantum magnetic states using light to probe the atomic vibrations produced as electrons spin. The work is a critical first step toward harnessing multipolar magnetism for practical technologies, including next-generation data storage and computing devices. "We identified new signatures of a hidden type of magnetic state which cannot be detected using ordinary probes," says Arun Paramekanti, a professor in the Department of Physics and the Center for Quantum Information & Quantum Control in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto, and senior author of a study published in Physical Review Letters that describes the findings. "Our research opens up the possibility for using higher-order magnets in several applications including controllable read-write memory elements found in everyday computers...." By directing a special type of rotating light at magnetic materials, the team observed a clear optical fingerprint of the otherwise hidden magnetic order.... The findings offer a new tool for uncovering and manipulating previously inaccessible forms of magnetism, opening new avenues for quantum technology development.
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4 Oct 2026, 00:21 by EditorDavid
404 Media reports: "We will not add facial recognition to our devices," Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to "close that gap." A company called VIDIZMO is advertising the capability to export footage from FlockOS to its own platforms that do facial recognition, behavior prediction, and racial and gender analysis on live camera feeds. VIDIZMO is a several decades-old video analysis and database company that has started offering facial recognition technology to cops within the last six months. In a May email to Johnson City, Tennessee, deputy police chief Michael Adams, a salesperson from VIDIZMO wrote that the company's product could do facial recognition on both Flock and Axon [body-worn camera] data in "one searchable platform...." VIDIZMO's CEO, Nadeem Khan, told 404 Media on a video call that the company has not yet started running facial recognition tech on footage from Flock cameras, and that it has not actually built the specific tool that would export data from Flock's system to its own platform (though the company advertises this capability online, and the company already sells other facial recognition products). But Khan said VIDIZMO "would love to do the integration," and that he believes facial recognition "is the way the world is going, the way the world will have to be," and that he thinks Flock should offer the capability itself in a way that "balances privacy, security, and the freedom that we enjoy in this country." The article notes that VIDIZMO says on its website, "You can identify individuals from seven races: White, Black, Indian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latino Hispanic." VIDIZMO adds that stores or cities can also then do "demographic analysis" for marketing purposes by determining the races or ages of people showing up....
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3 Oct 2026, 23:21 by EditorDavid
Spaceflight Now reports: "A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Florida Thursday night on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, America's spy satellite agency... The NRO has previously flown payloads on 22 Falcon 9 rockets but this is the first time it has used the heavy-lift Falcon Heavy, which consists of three Falcon 9 boosters and an upper stage, topped by a payload fairing. The powerful rocket, which lifts off under the power of 27 Merlin 1D engines, was introduced to great fanfare in 2018 and made its 14th flight Thursday night... NROL-97 was SpaceX's third Falcon launch of the day. In addition to the Crew 13 mission, the company launched 130 payloads on the Transporter 13 rideshare mission from its West Coast pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It was the first time the company has landed four boosters in a single day. CNN reports: As Starship flights ramp up, SpaceX has made clear that the company will phase out the use of two of its most iconic creations: the Dragon spacecraft, which ferries astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and the Falcon 9 rocket, which for a decade has dominated the global launch market. These vehicles not only revolutionized the space industry in their own way, they're also still very much essential to ongoing work in Earth orbit, without clear backup options in place. The prospect of this loss is already spurring panic among some satellite operators, said Caleb Henry, director of research at analytics firm Quilty Space... Henry said he expects that most of the remaining space on board Falcon 9 rockets has already been sold and — beyond early 2029 — such flights may be reserved solely for the US government. Even NASA, which currently counts the Dragon capsule as the only US-made spacecraft capable of getting its astronauts to and from the ISS, has also acknowledged the looming retirement of SpaceX's workhorse vehicles.... Despite the success of Falcon and Dragon, a peek at SpaceX's business book may hint at financial reasons for retiring the vehicles. In its first quarterly earnings report, SpaceX revealed its space segment — which includes Falcon, Dragon and Starship — lost $542 million. By comparison, its Starlink internet and connectivity business made nearly $1.7 billion. Starship is expected to continue to cost SpaceX untold millions as it moves out of the prototyping phase. But one reason SpaceX is willing to bet big on Starship is that it's simply "much better" for achieving the company's own long-term goals, said SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell at a recent conference. So it makes sense to shift resources toward the megarocket's future.... This rocket supply crunch has been looming since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine — which immediately removed Russia's Soyuz and Proton rockets from the commercial market, Henry noted. On top of that, Amazon — which is deploying a space-based internet constellation to rival SpaceX's Starlink — stepped in to buy more than 100 launches from various rocket makers.... Though some satellite manufacturers are hopeful that space onboard future Starship launches will be offered to satellite operators, it's not clear when or if that will happen.... It is possible that a launch supply crunch could be averted, noted Micah Walter-Range, a space analyst and contributor to the VettaFi Space Index. But satellite operators may be wary because newer rockets that have for years promised to step up to compete with the Falcon 9 have not yet begun flying with any regularity. "The space industry hates uncertainty, particularly when it comes to planning of launches," Walter-Range said. The article notes that Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, United Launch Alliance, and the Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin "have not yet reached the scale or launch cadence that the industry is demanding."
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3 Oct 2026, 22:15 by EditorDavid
U.S. President Donald Trump "doxxed" a U.S. senator today, writes the Washington Sun, by posting his cell phone number "as part of a plea for his Truth Social followers to badger his Republican ally into making daylight saving time permanent." When The Washington Sun called the number minutes after Trump's post, a recording said the mailbox was full and could not receive messages... [Senator Tom] Cotton has long detested the idea of making daylight saving time permanent. In a Senate floor speech last year, Cotton said doing so would "make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans," particularly harming kids. The Senate was only able to unanimously pass the bill in 2022 because Cotton was reportedly unaware the vote was taking place, though the measure stalled out from there. The Arkansas Republican didn't back down in a post on Saturday. "Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I'll always put Arkansas first," he posted on X. Trump continued his tear against Cotton soon after. "If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn't have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so," he posted on Truth.
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3 Oct 2026, 20:51 by EditorDavid
Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results... indicate a rather steep decline of 0.85%, down to 3.05%. Meanwhile macOS is at 1.92% and Microsoft Windows at 95%... Steam's Survey reports a 7.42% increase in Chinese use, up to 31.39% overall of the Steam population. Usually those large month-over-month swings where Steam China use shoots up dramatically is a boost to Windows and a detriment to Linux. Some attribute the large increases in Simplified Chinese use to being a reporting/sampling issue. When diving into the Steam Linux data exclusively, CachyOS has spiked by another 2.65% to now account for 18.12% of the sampled Linux gaming population. That even outperforms SteamOS Holo coming in at 17.37%. Among Linux gamers on Steam, AMD CPUs still account for the high 60 percentage space thanks to the Steam Deck and Steam Machine using AMD APUs and their open-source/Linux support being popular with enthusiasts.
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3 Oct 2026, 19:51 by EditorDavid
"The winner of the Nikon Small World in Motion competition is under investigation," writes the photography news site PetaPixel , "after scientists accused Dr Ning Xu of using AI in his video." The Nikon competition is about showcasing the beauty, complexity, and artistry of the microscopic world. The entries are abstract, often baffling to laypeople. But when Dr Xu was announced as the winner last month, members of the scientific community began to cry foul. "There are many serious problems with this video," Edward Phelps, associate professor at Florida University, says on LinkedIn. Phelps points out that "purple structures pop in and out of existence" and "green cilia also appear from nowhere and do not match the known size." Dr Xu's video is supposed to show the movement of cilia, which are hair-like structures that line part of the lungs... However, since Dr Xu won the prize, Nikon Small World updated its LinkedIn post celebrating his triumph with a note that reads: "Regarding questions raised about this year's Small World In Motion winning video, Nikon is carefully re-reviewing the information provided during the initial vetting, along with additional supporting materials from the entrant." Nikon adds that Dr Xu is "respectfully complying and has provided detailed technical documentation outlining the microscopy equipment, imaging methods, and processing techniques used to create the source video." Worse still, Ian Donovan, an MD/PhD Student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, says he ran the video through Google Gemini, and the result came back with an invisible Google SynthID watermark that indicates at least some of the video is AI-generated. Dr Xu, an optical engineering researcher at the National University of Singapore, reportedly responded to the LinkedIn post. According to Nature, Dr Xu accepted that he had used an AI model to assist with post-processing but denied breaking the rules of the competition, which clearly state that "AI-generated videos are not permitted." "It was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology," he wrote. However, Dr Xu's messages on the LinkedIn post can't be found as of today (October 1), and his LinkedIn profile now appears to have been deleted entirely. Meanwhile, some college students "see a double standard when colleges penalize them for outsourcing academic work to AI but allow similar use by institutional leaders," writes Entrepreneur magazine: According to a recent report from The New York Times, Dartmouth College students are calling out a top professor for allegedly using AI to help with writing... The school's provost, Santiago Schnell, faced allegations of AI use last week from the college's student-run newspaper, which detected AI in some of his published writing. The college said it was launching an investigation into the written work. Schnell said in a statement to the student-run newspaper, The Dartmouth, that he used AI "for language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient." The newspaper ran his statement through an AI detector, which said that Schnell had used AI to write it, too.
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3 Oct 2026, 17:00 by EditorDavid
The Guardian reports that California governor Gavin Newsom signed laws on Wednesday "aimed at protecting California workers from the threats of artificial intelligence , including potential job losses and workplace surveillance." The laws ban employers from using the technology to predict a worker's emotional state by using their biometric data, require employers to send written notices to workers if AI is responsible for mass layoffs and ban employers from relying on AI to decide to fire someone... The governor signed a law this month requiring operators of AI chatbots to perform risk assessments before rolling them out and an executive order requiring the state to consult with experts to further improve oversight over the industry. The law includes "expanded tracking of AI's economic effects" leading to recommendations on how to best "adapt job-training and public-benefit programs," according to the governor's office. "California has also launched an AI Unemployment Tracker and solicited statewide public input on AI's economic impacts through Engaged California." But two weeks ago Politico reported that the governor also signed executive orders to "explore proposals like requiring that AI companies develop a 'kill switch' for their most advanced models." Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called for a slowdown in AI development amid existential risk concerns, said... that while a kill switch "could be a good idea," it was no "panacea...." [California lawmakers] were generally supportive of Newsom's plan and showed signs of coalescing around the kill switch idea, which was stripped out of legislation proposed two years ago. Rep. Ted Lieu, who introduced bipartisan kill switch legislation in the House, boosted Newsom's call for Congress to mirror California's approach. But not everyone supports this approach, including the Free Software Foundation's campaigns manager, Greg Farough: FSF: Having control over the technology we use is a fundamental part of software freedom. Without it, you simply don't have the basic freedoms you deserve when doing any type of computing, large or small. Don't let "artificial intelligence" be an exception: all users everywhere deserve complete control over their own computing. While it's understandable to be pleased by this news from California, Newsom's executive order also invites questions about the "kill switch" itself that could matter a great deal for freedom. Assuming such a kill switch was developed, who would really control it? We hope our readers understand the problems inherent in giving one single or a small number of kill switches to anyone. Newsom wisely wants an independent organization to verify their functionality, but even this still sets too dangerous of a precedent. We cannot allow such centralization of power over our computing to become commonplace, especially by the corporations that provide these models in the first place. We also cannot trust even the most well-intentioned "independent organization" to take care of its verification. Giving users the freedom that they deserve over large languages models would be an enormous departure from how most are developed and used today. But, if any group is capable of coming up with such a plan, it's the experts mentioned in Newsom's order. Like he states at the beginning of his executive order, the vast majority of them are already right there in California. We urge the Government Operations Agency to consider the precedent they are setting, and ask them to write their recommendation to the governor in ways that puts the freedom and dignity of the individual user first and foremost. The Guardian adds that Newsom also signed an executive order this week "to require state agencies to continue to refer to the technology as 'artificial intelligence' instead of the term 'super intelligence' as Donald Trump recently ordered US diplomats to use."
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