05 Sci-Tech

Newsom Forces Apple And Google To Track Kids’ Ages Under New California Law– dailycaller.com

pgnewser October 14, 2025 0

Blurb:

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a first-in-the-nation law that forces operating systems and app stores to pass along users’ age brackets to apps — a win for Big Tech over Hollywood in a year-long fight over how to police kids online.

The Digital Age Assurance Act, carried by Democratic Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, pushes age-gating up the stack to Apple, Google and other OS makers starting Jan. 1, 2027, with civil penalties up to $7,500 per child for willful violations. It avoids photo-ID uploads and instead has parents enter a birth date at device setup; apps must request the resulting age signal via API.

Are Abortion Pills Contaminating Our Water?– www.lifenews.com

pgnewser October 14, 2025 0

Blurb:

As the use of the mifepristone chemical abortion pill continues to rise in the U.S., concerns are growing that residue from the powerful drug as well as the remains of aborted babies are contaminating the water supply and may be contributing to fertility problems, as well as other health concerns.

Recently released research by Liberty Counsel Action (LCA) pointed out that when mifepristone was originally approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000, it was predicted that the impact of the drug on the environment would be minimal, and therefore “no further study was completed.” As LCA noted, since mothers who take the abortion pill are instructed to deliver their dead baby into their toilet at home, the assessment “failed to address the issue of how the fetal remains would be disposed of, essentially ignoring the reality that in many cases, said remains would enter U.S. water systems in violation of various fetal disposal and medical waste laws.”

More Evidence Emerges That One of Saturn’s Moons Could Harbor Life– www.wired.com

pgnewser October 14, 2025 0

Blurb:

A recent study of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, has detected several organic compounds that had never been recorded there before. The findings, published this month in Nature Astronomy, provide new clues about the interior chemical composition of this icy world, as well as new hope that it could harbor life.

The researchers analyzed data from the Cassini probe, which launched in 1997 and studied Saturn and its moons for years until its destruction in 2017. For Enceladus, Cassini gathered data from ice fragments forcefully ejected from the moon’s subsurface ocean up into space.

Earth enters ‘new reality’ as coral reefs reach first climate tipping point– phys.org

pgnewser October 14, 2025 0

Blurb:

The world faces a “new reality” as we have reached the first of many Earth system tipping points that will cause catastrophic harm unless humanity takes urgent action, according to a report released by the University of Exeter and international partners.

With ministers gathering ahead of the COP30 summit, the second Global Tipping Points Report finds that warm-water coral reefs—on which nearly a billion people and a quarter of all marine life depend—are passing their tipping point.

DJI fights U.S. government classification as ‘Chinese military company,’ appeals ruling– mashable.com

pgnewser October 14, 2025 0

Blurb:

DJI is continuing to fight the U.S. government’s classification of it as a “Chinese military company,” filing an appeal in its unsuccessful lawsuit against the Department of Defense (DoD, recently renamed the Department of War).

In a ruling against DJI last month, a U.S. district court allowed the DoD’s designation of the Chinese drone manufacturer as a “Chinese military company” to stand. Despite disagreeing with the DoD’s allegation that DJI is “indirectly owned by the Chinese Communist Party,” the judge determined that there is evidence that the company does contribute to the “Chinese defence industrial base,” as drones are of substantial use in military contexts.

Dutch government takes control of China-owned chip firm– www.bbc.com

pgnewser October 14, 2025 0

Blurb:

The Dutch government has taken control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned chipmaker based in the Netherlands, in a bid to safeguard the European supply of semiconductors for cars and other electronic goods and protect Europe’s economic security.

The Hague said it took the decision due to “serious governance shortcomings” and to prevent the chips from becoming unavailable in an emergency.

Nexperia’s owner Wingtech said on Monday that it would take actions to protect its rights and would seek government support.

The development threatens to raise tensions between the European Union and China, which have increased in recent months over trade and Beijing’s relationship with Russia.

An Asteroid Just Streaked Over Antarctica, Becoming the Second Closest Flyby Ever Recorded– www.discovermagazine.com

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

 

One week ago, an asteroid flew so close to Earth that it nearly broke the record for the closest asteroid approach ever.

This space surprise came to astronomers’ attention on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, when the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spotted an asteroid named 2025 TF a few hours after it had passed Earth. Flying over Antarctica, the asteroid came a mere 428 kilometers (266 miles) from Earth’s surface. For reference, the International Space Station orbits our planet at a similar altitude, approximately 370 km to 460 km (254 miles).

Asteroid 2025 TF may have only amounted to a near miss, but keeping tabs on near-Earth objects like this — even if most miss Earth — is a never-ending responsibility for astronomers.

Can Lutnick’s Chip-for-Chip Idea Work?– warontherocks.com

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

The Commerce Department’s imminent Section 232 investigation — launched in April and expected to conclude soon — may fundamentally shift how the United States acquires semiconductors. The chips America imports range from commodity devices embedded in household appliances to the expensive, high-performance AI processors that power the AI boom, designed in America by Nvidia, but manufactured in Asia.

Taiwan and Korea sit at the center of this challenge. Together, they produce the majority of semiconductors used by the United States across nearly every category. This concentration represents a major national security risk, given China’s preparations and repeated threats to use force against Taiwan and antagonism toward South Korea.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick phrased the situation thus in a recent interview: “If you can’t make your own chips, how can you defend yourself?”

Tariffs are one tool to address this exposure, designed to boost demand for chips manufactured in the United States. But they are not enough. Lutnick offers a second measure, called “chip for chip.” It would tie tariff waivers directly to verifiable domestic production milestones, incentivizing U.S. firms to act more in the national interest.

However, Lutnick’s ‘chip-for-chip’ framework could succeed only if Washington pairs it with enforceable production benchmarks and demand-side incentives. Otherwise, it risks becoming another half-measure in America’s decades-long struggle to rebuild semiconductor sovereignty.

Shock as world’s rarest parrot declared EXTINCT is hatched at zoo in major breakthrough– www.thesun.co.uk

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

A RARE blue parrot declared extinct in the wild has hatched for the first time at a conservation centre, sparking new hope for the species.

The Spix’s macaw chick was born at the Centre for the Conservation of Endangered Bird Species in Pairi Daiza, a zoo in Cambron-Casteau, Belgium, on September 21.

It is the first chick of its species to hatch at the park after 100 previous eggs failed to be fertilised, marking a major breakthrough in an international breeding programme to save the world’s rarest parrot.

The zoo said: “Egg 101 is a true miracle of life, the result of years of effort and patience,” and described it as “a birth more precious than gold.”

Specialists decided to remove the egg from its inexperienced parents before it hatched to increase the chick’s chances of survival.

Its caretaker Thomas Biagi said having to feed the chick every two hours was exhausting but motivating because “we’re literally holding the future of one of the world’s most endangered species in our hands.”

Scientists suggest the brain may work best with 7 senses, not just 5– www.sciencedaily.com

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

Skoltech scientists have devised a mathematical model of memory. By analyzing its new model, the team came to surprising conclusions that could prove useful for robot design, artificial intelligence, and for better understanding of human memory. Published in Scientific Reports, the study suggests there may be an optimal number of senses — if so, those of us with five senses could use a couple more!

“Our conclusion is of course highly speculative in application to human senses, although you never know: It could be that humans of the future would evolve a sense of radiation or magnetic field. But in any case, our findings may be of practical importance for robotics and the theory of artificial intelligence,” said study co-author Professor Nikolay Brilliantov of Skoltech AI. “It appears that when each concept retained in memory is characterized in terms of seven features — as opposed to, say, five or eight — the number of distinct objects held in memory is maximized.”

In line with a well-established approach, which originated in the early 20th century, the team models the fundamental building blocks of memory: the memory “engrams.” An engram can be viewed as a sparse ensemble of neurons across multiple regions in the brain that fire together. The conceptual content of an engram is an ideal abstract object characterized with regard to multiple features. In the context of human memory, the features correspond to sensory inputs, so that the notion of a banana would match up with a visual image, a smell, the taste of a banana, and so on. This results in a five-dimensional object that exists and evolves in a five-dimensional space populated by all the other concepts retained in memory.

Court Declares Gun Ban Unconstitutional—Then Demands Names of Pro-2A Group Members– www.usacarry.com

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

LAFAYETTE, LA — A federal judge has issued a final judgment in the closely watched case Reese v. ATF, acknowledging that the federal prohibition on handgun sales to adults under 21 violates the Second Amendment—but limiting the practical impact of the decision to a small, narrowly defined group.

On October 7, U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays issued a two-page ruling in compliance with a January 2025 decision from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That earlier ruling found that the federal law barring handgun sales by licensed dealers to adults aged 18 to 20 was unconstitutional.

Judge Summerhays’ final order declared the statute unconstitutional only as applied to three individual plaintiffs—Caleb Reese, Joseph Granich, and Emily Naquin—as well as members of the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), and Louisiana Shooting Association (LSA) who were members of those organizations on November 6, 2020 and who reside within the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction, which includes Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

The judgment blocks the federal government from enforcing the handgun sales ban against those specific individuals, but only if the buyer is between 18 and 20 years old and is covered by the limited group named in the case.

Satellites detected strange gravity signal coming from deep within Earth almost 20 years ago, study reveals– www.livescience.com

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

Satellites detected a strange gravity signal off the coast of Africa nearly 20 years ago, suggesting something unusual had happened deep within the planet to distort its gravitational field, according to a recent study.

The large gravitational anomaly lasted for about two years over the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It peaked in January 2007, the same month Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone (though, of course, there was no connection between the two events).

The strange anomaly, and the jerk, were caused by a previously unknown geological process, the researchers suspect. Their findings, published Aug. 28 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, indicated that a shift in minerals may have caused a rapid redistribution of mass in the deep mantle, near the core, altering Earth’s magnetic field.

 

‘Squeezed light’ might be the secret to building the quantum internet– www.techexplorist.com

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

Imagine a future where the internet isn’t just fast, it’s fundamentally different. Where information doesn’t travel through cables in bits and bytes, but dances across space in entangled photons, instantaneously linking quantum computers continents apart. In this shimmering vision of tomorrow, the backbone of communication is no longer copper or fiber; it’s quantum light.

At the heart of this revolution is a peculiar phenomenon known as squeezed light, and a team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology believes it may be the key to unlocking scalable quantum networks. Their latest study, led by Fermilab scientist Alexandru Macridin, marks a pivotal step toward building a quantum internet, one that could transform scientific research, cryptography, and computing itself.

Quantum networks rely on entangled qubits: pairs of quantum bits that remain mysteriously connected, no matter how far apart they are. In quantum physics, entanglement is the ghostly thread that links particles across space, such that a change in one instantly affects the other. It’s a phenomenon Einstein famously referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” and it forms the cornerstone of quantum communication.

from www.techexplorist.com

Kentucky sues Roblox after Charlie Kirk ‘assassination simulators’ found on platform | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com

pgnewser October 9, 2025 0

Blurb:

Roblox, which reports more than 111 million active monthly users, is used by roughly two-thirds of American children aged 9 to 12.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has filed a lawsuit against Roblox, alleging the company failed to protect minors from sexual predators and explicit material, including violent simulations depicting the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Filed on Monday, the suit accuses the California gaming platform of operating as a “playground for pedophiles” by neglecting to implement any meaningful age verification, moderation, or parental safeguards. Roblox, which reports more than 111 million active monthly users, is used by roughly two-thirds of American children aged 9 to 12.

According to the complaint, predators frequently create fake accounts posing as children to contact and groom minors. “Roblox is designed to allow predators easy access to children,” prosecutors wrote, alleging that the company’s inaction has resulted in “harassment, kidnapping, trafficking, violence, and sexual assault.”

AMD: Latest news and insights | Network World

AMD wins massive AI chip deal from OpenAI with stock sweetener– arstechnica.com

pgnewser October 7, 2025 0

AMD: Latest news and insights | Network World

AMD wins massive AI chip deal from OpenAI with stock sweetener– arstechnica.com
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Excerpt:

As part of the arrangement, AMD will allow OpenAI to purchase up to 160 million AMD shares at 1 cent each throughout the chips deal.

With demand for AI compute growing rapidly, companies like OpenAI have been looking for secondary supply lines and sources of additional computing capacity, and the AMD partnership is part the company’s wider effort to secure sufficient computing power for its AI operations. In September, Nvidia announced an investment of up to $100 billion in OpenAI that included supplying at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems. OpenAI plans to deploy a gigawatt of Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips in late 2026.

OpenAI has worked with AMD for years, according to Reuters, providing input on the design of older generations of AI chips such as the MI300X. The new agreement calls for deploying the equivalent of 6 gigawatts of computing power using AMD chips over multiple years.

Beyond working with chip suppliers, OpenAI is widely reported to be developing its own silicon for AI applications and has partnered with Broadcom, as we reported in February. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the AMD deal does not change OpenAI’s ongoing compute plans, including its chip development effort or its partnership with Microsoft.

Lockheed, Verizon testing 5G-linked drone swarm for intel collection

‘Swarms of Killer Robots’: Why AI is Terrifying the American Military – Politico

pgnewser October 7, 2025 0

Lockheed, Verizon testing 5G-linked drone swarm for intel collection

‘Swarms of Killer Robots’: Why AI is Terrifying the American Military – Politico
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Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence technology is poised to transform national security. In the United States, experts and policymakers are already experimenting with large language models that can aid in strategic decision-making in conflicts and autonomous weapons systems (or, as they are more commonly called, “killer robots”) that can make real-time decisions about what to target and whether to use lethal force.

But these new technologies also pose enormous risks. The Pentagon is filled with some of the country’s most sensitive information. Putting that information in the hands of AI tools makes it more vulnerable, both to foreign hackers and to malicious inside actors who want to leak information, as AI can comb through and summarize massive amounts of information better than any human. A misaligned AI agent can also quickly lead to decision-making that unnecessarily escalates conflict.

Bacteria - Wikipedia

Bacteria hidden inside tumors could help beat cancer– www.sciencedaily.com

pgnewser October 7, 2025 0

Bacteria - Wikipedia

Bacteria hidden inside tumors could help beat cancer– www.sciencedaily.com
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Excerpt:

An international team of scientists led by researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS), Imperial College London and the University of Cologne have discovered that microbes associated with tumors produce a molecule, which can control cancer progression and boost the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

Most people are familiar with the microbes on our skin or in our gut, but recent discoveries have revealed that tumors also host unique communities of bacteria. Scientists are now investigating how these tumor-associated bacteria can affect tumor growth and the response to chemotherapy.

New research, published online in Cell Systems on September 10, 2025, provides a significant breakthrough in this field, identifying a powerful anti-cancer metabolite produced by bacteria associated with colorectal cancer. This finding opens the door to new strategies for treating cancer, including the development of novel drugs that could make existing therapies more potent.

The researchers used a sophisticated large-scale screening approach to test over 1,100 conditions in a type of microscopic worm called C. elegans. Through this, they found that the bacteria E. coli produced a molecule called 2-methylisocitrate (2-MiCit) that could improve the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU).

Trump Opens the White House Doors to Foreign Regimes and Their Dirty Money– www.thenation.com

pgnewser October 7, 2025 0

Trump Opens the White House Doors to Foreign Regimes and Their Dirty Money– www.thenation.com
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Excerpt:

Lobbyists for foreign countries have long helped other governments influence US policy, but nothing compares to the brazen corruption of the second administration of Trump.

Given that anyone anywhere can quietly bankroll President Donald Trump via his “memecoin,” it’s fair to say that we’ve never seen a White House so saturated in foreign money.

(Paul Yeung / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It’s difficult to overstate how significantly the world of foreign lobbying has transformed in the past few months. An industry that was once relegated to backrooms and back channels is now blasted out in public statements and social media posts. From India to Oman to Romania and beyond, governments are lavishing Donald Trump with luxury jets, high-rise towers, resorts, and crypto investments—and the president is unashamed, even bragging about it. Eight months into Trump’s second administration, it’s difficult to keep track of all the unprecedented ways that regimes have tried to curry favor with him.

Myanmar activists to sue Norway’s Telenor for handing data to military | Privacy News– www.aljazeera.com

pgnewser October 7, 2025 0

Myanmar activists to sue Norway’s Telenor for handing data to military | Privacy News– www.aljazeera.com
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Excerpt:

Claimants say government used data to track and target activists in the wake of 2021 coup.

A group of civil society organisations in Myanmar plans to take legal action against Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor, accusing it of passing customer data to the country’s military government for use in repression.

The activists sent Telenor a notice of intent to sue on Monday, according to a statement from the Netherlands-based nonprofit Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), which is backing the case. The case states that the data shared by the telecoms giant was used by the military following its 2021 coup to trace and target civilians.

The claimants allege that Telenor, majority-owned by the Norwegian government, disclosed data from millions of customers to the military authorities, which, after toppling the country’s elected government, embarked on a campaign of violence and repression.