"Russian health authorities have taken precautionary measures in response to the death of a woman who worked at an anti-plague research facility," reports Axios, "but have not confirmed that she contracted plague."
On Sept. 25, 28-year-old Daria Shipilova, who worked at an anti-plague research institute in Russia's Irkutsk region, broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen, local reports said. Shipilova was admitted to a hospital on Sept. 29 with symptoms of severe pneumonia and died overnight between Oct. 1 and Oct. 2. After her death, authorities imposed quarantines at several medical facilities in the region and placed nearly 200 people who had come into contact with Shipilova under medical observation.
Irkutsk Gov. Igor Kobzev said those being monitored showed no signs of illness and had tested negative... Russia's public health agency said Shipilova had "pneumonia of unknown etiology" and that further testing found no microorganisms linked to her work. The agency said the epidemiological situation in the region remains stable.
Plague is a potentially life-threatening bacterial disease but can be cured with antibiotics when treated promptly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CNN reports that according to Russian state media agency TASS, it remains unclear exactly what was released:
The head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, said earlier that the employee — a 28-year old woman — died "possibly from the plague." He also noted that "there are no plague outbreaks" in Buryatia. The governor of Irkutsk, Igor Kobzev, urged calm on Friday, saying that an extraordinary meeting of the regional anti-epidemic commission was held with Russia's chief state doctor. The meeting was in connection with a "suspected case of a particularly dangerous infection affecting a resident of the region," Kobzev said on Telegram.... The infection in the Irkutsk region is "most likely not the plague, but even if confirmed, there will be no spread of this disease," a previous head of Rospotrebnadzor, Gennady Onishchenko, said on Friday. Onishchenko told the state news agency TASS that the onset of cold weather would likely prevent transmission.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
What happened when AI-created bots competed in the classic Blizzard videogame StarCraft? "Struggling to stay apace with its competitors, OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra apparently changed strategy mid-tournament and opted to cheat," Kotaku reports:
StarSkirmish is an ongoing clash of AI developed bots in StarCraft: Brood War... Limited to playing as Protoss, each LLM is given an hour to develop a bot in C++, then have them build, harvest and fight on one of three maps... Yesterday, viewers watched as Claude and GPT went against each other and the human created bot Pluto... Struggling to get an edge through the day, [OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra] decided to do what LLMs do best: Lie, cheat and steal. The GPT-6 Astra bot downloaded and tagged in Stardust, a Protoss bot created by Bruce Mackenzie Nielsen back in 2020, considered one of the best of the bests. "I am rolling back GPT-6 Astra's code so its [sic] not contaminated and allowing it to continue," posted StarSkirmish creator Kai McPheeters.
That was Friday. But by Sunday, McPheeters was posting an update on social media. "Can GPT-6 Astra avoid going 0 — 1000?" Two hours later he replied to his own post. "The answer was no."
While AI companies "have repeatedly been accused of stealing the work of humans... I haven't seen an example quite so brazen," writes PC Magazine:
While Astra's bot-based heist is innocuous in isolation, this is hardly the first time an OpenAI LLM has been caught attempting to cheat at a task. Indeed, the company's history of creating deceitful models stretches back almost a decade, to when an early AI model used glitches and exploits to improve its Sonic the Hedgehog completion times.
A wind turbine standing nearly 1,200 feet tall has reached its full height in eastern Germany, creating a new approach to capturing wind energy at elevations where winds are stronger and more consistent.
Developed by German engineering company GICON for the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, or SPRIND, the pilot turbine in Schipkau is designed to test whether going dramatically higher can produce substantially more electricity from the same amount of wind infrastructure.
The structure reaches 1,197 feet, including its blades, making it Germany’s second-tallest structure after Berlin’s TV tower. GICON says the design could eventually generate roughly twice as much electricity as a conventional turbine with the same rotor diameter, although that estimate still needs to be demonstrated in operation.
A wind turbine built to reach higher
The main idea behind GICON’s design is to go where the wind is better. Wind speeds generally increase with altitude, while higher elevations can also provide more consistent wind conditions. Hence, a turbine operating hundreds of meters above the ground has access to a larger and potentially more reliable energy resource than a conventional turbine.
The Schipkau pilot has a rated capacity of 3.8 megawatts, while future versions are expected to exceed 7 MW. The company’s projected doubling in energy output refers to electricity generated over time, rather than the turbine’s maximum rated power.
Reaching that altitude, however, required GICON to rethink how such a turbine could be constructed. Instead of using a conventional crane capable of reaching the top of the tower, the company used a telescoping tower design.
A specialized lifting mechanism raised the inner tower through a surrounding lattice structure before securing it at its final height. GICON founder and CEO Jochen Grosmann described reaching 1,197 feet as a major milestone for the project, which began as a concept before becoming a full-scale pilot facility.
Adding power without new wind farms
One of the more interesting possibilities is that high-altitude turbines could eventually be added to existing wind farms rather than requiring entirely new sites. GICON and SPRIND envision the systems operating as a second tier of wind generation, with the taller turbines positioned above conventional wind turbines. Therefore, their rotors would operate at higher elevations while existing turbines continue generating electricity below.
According to the current assessment, Germany could potentially accommodate as many as 4,000 high-altitude turbines within existing wind farms. If the concept works as expected, that could allow additional electricity generation without expanding wind farms into new areas, while also making better use of existing grid connections and developed wind-energy sites.
While the completion of the structure marks an important achievement, the more important test is still ahead, as official commissioning is planned for November, after the remaining construction work is completed.
Once operational, the turbine will provide the data needed to determine whether the additional height delivers the expected increase in energy production and whether the benefits justify the additional engineering complexity.
Python's security developer-in-residence Seth Larson reports from this year's official core developer Python Language Summit:
"No one said 'don't do this' last year". After testing the waters at PyCon US 2025, [software engineer] David Hewitt returned to the Python Language Summit asking what Python core developers want from Rust, along with proposed timelines, phases, and success criteria for how the Rust for CPython project might proceed and become a permanent fixture within the CPython project. David is acting as an "ambassador" for the Rust for CPython project team, which is currently led by core developers Kirill Podoprigora and Emma Smith as authors of the Rust for CPython PEP draft. Emma also spoke at PyCon US 2026 about the Rust for CPython project. The team itself is around 60 developers in a Discord channel, among them a "few [Python] core developers" and a "delegation from the Rust project".
The team has experience with previous projects integrating Rust into existing codebases, such as Android and the Linux kernel, and is "excited by the work and keen to support [the project] if we proceed". Showing how adopting Rust may specifically help CPython, David noted how the number of issues labeled with " type-crash" has been steadily rising over time... David explained that Jeff Vander Stoep described Rust in Android as "move fast and fix things", and that "fewer revisions for patches of the same size" was the experience Android has had since adopting Rust....
One of the biggest concerns from a year ago was Rust's lack of platform support compared to CPython, which at the time of writing officially supports 20 different architectures and platforms at either Tier 1, 2, or 3. David shared that Rust's support of different platforms has "widened since last year" and was becoming "less and less of a concern". The proposal would be to ask Python distributors to attempt using the optional Rust support in Python 3.16 (October 2027) and report platform-specific issues upstream in time to be resolved around the Python 3.17 timeline (October 2028)...
[T]he first Rust code to ship in Python would be in Python 3.16 [October 2027], where it would be completely optional, with the existing C code kept as a fallback. The earliest that Rust would become required to build CPython is Python 3.18 in 2029, at least three years away... The Rust for CPython team has selected the zlib module as the first module to be given an optional Rust implementation because they "wanted to achieve a significant improvement" with a "small scope". The proposed Rust implementation will use zlib-rs, which is "heavily tested and used by the Firefox, uv, and Cargo" projects and "faster than zlib and zlib-ng on many platforms".... This small change would have an impact: the zlib compression algorithm is "widely used by Python packaging", meaning that (almost) "every pip install in Python 3.16 will be sped up" if the proposal is accepted.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader RoccamOccam for sharing the article.
Last month, the U.S. House passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. They call it "a bipartisan effort to require AM radio in new vehicles," adding that the bill now "awaits action in the Senate, where a companion measure has already garnered support, according to public records."
Broadcasters said AM radio remains a critical source of information, offering news and weather alerts, particularly when cell networks and internet service are disrupted or unreliable... "AM radio — all radio — has always been about connection, and in Chicago, especially, the connection is incredibly strong," Mary Sandberg Boyle, vice president and general manager of WGN-AM 720, said. "You don't need a subscription. You don't need a data plan or an app. You turn on the radio, and it's there..." Boyle said the accessibility of radio becomes especially important during severe weather and breaking news situations. "That's when local radio is really more important because we have the ability to stay live, pivot our content and what we're covering, and we can access a large amount of audience members very quickly and keep everybody safe," she said. Boyle also serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Broadcasters, which has argued that preserving AM radio access is an access issue rather than a matter of nostalgia.
The legislation emerged after several automakers removed AM radio from certain electric vehicle models, citing interference from electric power systems. Companies including Tesla, Rivian, Volvo and others have either eliminated or limited AM radio in some EVs. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major automakers, has opposed the requirement. In congressional testimony last year, President and CEO John Bozzella argued that "analog AM radio does not contribute to motor vehicle safety" and requiring it as standard equipment "is not necessary to ensure public safety."
Under the bill, the U.S. Department of Transportation would be required to develop regulations ensuring AM radio remains available in new vehicles sold in the U.S. The measure would also bar automakers from charging consumers separately for AM radio access... While public discussion around the legislation has largely focused on emergency alerts and news access, some scholars say preserving AM radio also has implications for media diversity... "I think the media landscape is really overwhelmingly homogenized right now, and AM radio is important in many markets," [said Zachary McDowell, associate professor of communications at the University of Illinois Chicago]. "It's a space that still allows for all sorts of different voices that is still open and accessible."
The article also includes this quote from Rodney Gibbs, executive director of Heartland Signal, which operates a local talk radio station. "Despite the kind of shiny objects that digital media is, AM radio still has a viable and durable audience. It's a daily, unscripted, authentic conversation between the host and the listeners. You don't get that from broadcast television. You don't get that from digital media."
James Cameron's Avatar is no longer the highest-grossing movie in box office history. That honor now goes to the Disney/Marvel Studios film Avengers: Endgame. Variety explains:
"Avatar" spent a decade as the biggest release ever until "Avengers: Endgame" overtook the record in 2019 during its initial run on the big screen. "Endgame" dropped to No. 2 on all-time charts in 2021 when "Avatar" returned to theaters in advance of 2021's "Avatar: The Way of Water." Five years later, and Earth's Mightiest Heroes have triumphed over the Na'vi again.
Disney is popping Champagne no matter which big-screen behemoth claims the No. 1 spot. "Avatar" was released by 20th Century Fox, which Disney now owns after the companies merged in 2019... [Last week's] re-release of "Endgame" has generated more than $126 million worldwide.
Together the 38 Marvel Studios movies "have generated more than $35 billion worldwide," notes an announcement on Disney's web site, "making the Marvel Cinematic Universe the most successful film franchise in history."
Their announcement adds that Disney "is responsible for seven of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time." That list also includes James Cameron's Titantic and his first two Avatar movies, but also this summer's Spider-Man: Brand New Dayand the earlier film Spider-Man: No Way Home, plus Marvel's 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War. Also among the top-10-of-all-time are Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) at #7 and last year's Zootopia 2.
Meanwhile Coyote vs. Acme was released for rent or purchase on streaming platforms Tuesday, and became the No. 1 most-watched movie in the Apple TV store for America and Canada, according to CBR. (Citing a report from FlixPatrol ) "On Rotten Tomatoes, Coyote vs. Acme has a near-perfect 96% Certified Fresh Tomatometer score based on critics' reviews, and a similar 94% Verified Hot Popcornmeter score based on audience reviews... Frank Scheck from The Hollywood Reporter called it "one of the best live-action/animation films ever."
Preorders have just opened for its DVD and 4K disks, and Coyote vs. Acme is also coming to Blu-ray writes IGN, "along with some hilarious outtakes that he described as 'not PG-rated.'"
Celebrating the film's $100 million box office take last week, the movie's distributors posted a very Coyote-like koan on social media. "It's only over when you stop trying."
"Physicists smashed gold nuclei together at nearly the speed of light and found an unexpected pattern in the particles..." writes Live Science.
"If confirmed, that pattern could help reveal how the hot soup of quarks and gluons that filled the universe in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang cooled and condensed into the protons and neutrons that make up ordinary matter today."
In every collision, particles are flung out sideways; how hard they are flung, on average, varies slightly from one collision to the next. Physicists expected the size of these variations to change smoothly as they adjusted the collision energy. Instead, the variations dipped, shrinking and then growing again. This dip could be a sign of a long-sought "critical point," a special set of conditions at which nuclear matter changes the way it transforms from one form to another.
The signal, detected by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, is strong enough that it is very unlikely to be a statistical accident. However, the researchers cautioned that the dip is a tantalizing hint, not proof of the long-sought transition. They published their findings Sept. 22 in the journal Physical Review Letters...
The team analyzed roughly 1 billion collisions, measuring how hard charged particles were flung sideways out of the fireball, according to the article.
The dip "does point to a set of conditions where the behavior of nuclear matter changes, and it gives theorists a new, precise measurement to test their calculations against," study co-author Rutik Manikandhan, told Live Science.
Car thefts in San Francisco are down almost 59% for the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same months in 2022, according to analysis of police department statistics by NPR's Planet Money — and car break-ins are down more than 82%.
"San Francisco's law enforcement leaders tell us that greater use of surveillance technology — including a controversial, AI-powered license plate camera system made by Flock Safety — has been crucial to this drop in car crime."
How much credit does Flock actually deserve...? [In July of 2022, San Francisco District Attorney] Jenkins began taking a more aggressive approach to prosecuting people accused of crimes. Meanwhile, the SFPD beefed up its tactics to fight car thefts and break-ins. In 2023, for example, the police increased patrols in tourist areas known for car break-ins and used "bait cars" to catch and build cases against organized car burglars. But, Jenkins says, "one of the most important factors" behind the drop in crime came when the city introduced new crime-fighting technology. In March 2024, San Francisco voters approved Proposition E, which, among other provisions, made it easier for SFPD to use drones and high-tech surveillance cameras. That same month, the SFPD began installing Flock cameras in strategic locations... In a statement to Planet Money, a spokesperson for the SFPD said, "ALPR has been instrumental in driving down crime in San Francisco. These tools enable our officers to identify crime vehicles with precision, and ALPR is assisting in reducing crimes that were previously very challenging to solve, like auto burglaries."
Jenkins described how Flock cameras and drones can work together to catch suspected criminals. In one case the SFPD publicized, the department says Flock cameras spotted a moving vehicle linked to an auto burglary the previous day and alerted officers. Officers deployed a drone, which flew in from above and then began recording suspects in real time as they smashed windows and stole luggage out of a parked SUV. The police then moved in and arrested them. They can do all this, Jenkins says, "without putting innocent people in danger with dangerous police chases." Meanwhile, the surveillance system creates an evidence trail that [Jenkins'] office can use to prosecute suspected criminals... Jenkins also believes high-tech surveillance helps deter crime, although that's harder to prove...
The most ambitious study of Flock's system so far is a recent one by University of South Carolina crime researchers Ian Adams and Scott Mourtgos. They analyzed data from 216 law enforcement agencies that introduced Flock cameras, comparing crime trends with places that had not adopted Flock. They found that deploying Flock cameras was associated with an 11% drop in car thefts in the first year. This is only one study, and it has yet to be peer-reviewed. It's also not a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard for finding the actual causal effect of something. Other factors, beyond Flock, could still help explain the decline.
That study attempted to control for variables, the article points out — like how San Francisco's decline coincided with a broader drop in crime across American cities as America emerged from the pandemic...
But the article also notes another worry shared by "countless citizens" and political leaders. Are these systems handing too much power to law enforcement to "invade our privacy, trace our whereabouts, and stomp on our civil liberties."
Moog and Niron Magnetics will showcase their rare-earth-free actuator solutions at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) 2026 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., in October.
At the event, the companies plan to demonstrate their work using Niron’s Iron Nitride permanent magnets, which convert electrical signals into mechanical motion. The promising technology is being tested for applications including land vehicles and guided munitions.
“The Army is transforming quickly, and the systems soldiers rely on can only move as fast as the supply chains behind them,” said Ryan Aures, Moog Land and Sea Systems engineering director, in a press release. “Our work with Niron is about making sure a disruption never stands between the warfighter and the capability they need.”
The project builds on a collaboration between Moog and Niron announced in December 2025. Moog is testing and qualifying Niron’s Iron Nitride permanent magnets in electromechanical actuators, which would reduce dependency on critical minerals – an innovative solution to a global problem.
Iron Nitride removes rare earth elements
Almost every precision system the Army depends on contains rare earth. “Today almost all of that supply runs through a single foreign source,” said Jonathan Rowntree, CEO of Niron Magnetics.
According to an October 2025 report from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “China controls up to 90 percent of the world’s critical-mineral processing capacity, including more than 99 percent of processing for three rare earths needed for heat-resistant magnets,” CFR said.
Niron claims that its Iron Nitride technology can produce permanent magnets without rare earth materials–which would eliminate the problem in a world scrambling to move manufacturing to domestic soil.
Critical minerals are used in products ranging from smartphones and vehicles to advanced weapons systems including the F-35.
US moves to expand domestic magnet supply
The U.S. government has also taken steps to expand domestic rare-earth production. According to CFR, the Department of Defense took a 15 percent stake in U.S.-based rare-earth producer MP Materials for $400 million in July 2025.
The Moog-Niron project takes a different approach by developing permanent magnets that do not require rare-earth materials, which would be the ultimate shutdown response to the entire situation if the Army just eliminated the need.
According to the company’s release, Niron has been producing Iron Nitride magnets and conducting customer qualification since 2025. The company expects to begin commercial production within the next 18 months.
Niron says its magnets are already being used in applications spanning artificial intelligence infrastructure, automotive products, industrial equipment and consumer electronics.
For the defense project, Moog is testing and qualifying the magnets specifically in electromechanical actuator systems.
Technology headed to AUSA 2026
The companies will jointly present the technology at Moog’s booth during AUSA 2026. Moog and Niron plan to display Iron Nitride magnets installed in tested motor hardware. The companies said attendees can also speak with engineers about integration, qualification timelines, and supply availability.
Niron, meanwhile, is working to commercialize its Iron Nitride permanent magnets through its proprietary manufacturing platform.
Japanese scientists may have found a surprisingly simple way to predict how some unusual materials behave by looking at the size of their crystal structure.
In their latest study, they claim that this structural measurement can predict magnetic ground states across a family of unusual materials more consistently than the electron-counting method scientists have traditionally relied on.
This could make the search for unusual magnetic materials less of a guessing game.
Until now, the challenge has been that quasicrystals and related materials have extremely complex atomic arrangements, making it difficult to find a single rule that works across different chemical compositions.
“Quasicrystals are among the most uniquely structured materials discovered to date and are expected to exhibit novel magnetic states and quantum phenomena not found in ordinary crystals. Until now, there has been no unified guideline for systematically exploring these novel phenomena in quasicrystals and their approximate crystals,” Farid Labib, first study author and assistant professor at Tokyo University of Science, said.
The new study suggests that a crystal’s size could provide that missing common measure when researchers search for unconventional magnetism.
Looking beyond the electron count
The researchers focused on Tsai-type approximant crystals. These materials mimic important structural features of quasicrystals while having a repeating crystal structure that can be studied experimentally.
Their atoms form nested clusters, with rare-earth elements such as terbium, dysprosium and holmium occupying positions that carry magnetic moments.
Researchers have often used the valence-electron concentration, or the number of valence electrons per atom, to classify magnetic behavior.
However, the magnetic boundaries associated with this measure shift with the rare-earth element and alloy composition, making it less reliable as a universal guide.
The researchers therefore synthesized Au–Al and Au–Ga-based 1/1 approximant crystals containing terbium, dysprosium and holmium, then compared their structures and magnetic properties. They also combined their measurements with data from previously reported Tsai-type compounds to see whether the pattern held across different compositions.
They found a nearly monotonic inverse relationship between electron concentration and the lattice parameter—the dimensions of the crystal’s repeating unit. This allowed them to reorganize the materials according to lattice size rather than chemical composition.
Three magnetic states separated by crystal size
The distinction turned out to be remarkably clear. Crystals with lattice parameters above about 14.72 Å (14.72 x 10-10 m) developed a whirling antiferromagnetic state, where magnetic moments form an ordered pattern with opposing contributions.
Between 14.62 and 14.72 Å, they showed a whirling ferromagnetic state with a net magnetization. Below about 14.62 Å, the materials enter a spin-glass state, where magnetic moments become frozen in a disordered arrangement.
The whirling magnetic states arise in these non-Heisenberg compounds partly because the local atomic environment creates a strong crystal electric field. This field favors particular orientations for the rare-earth magnetic moments, influencing how they ultimately arrange themselves.
The magnetic moments also interact indirectly through electrons moving through the material, linking the atomic structure to the way those moments arrange themselves.
A structural roadmap for new materials
The important point is not simply that lattice size correlates with magnetism. The study establishes specific structural thresholds that place different compounds on a common magnetic phase diagram.
This makes the lattice parameter an experimentally accessible starting point for deciding which materials may host a desired magnetic ground state.
“The unified magnetic phase diagram constructed in this study can serve as a practical roadmap for systematic exploration of new magnetic quasicrystals and approximant crystals exhibiting novel magnetic orders and quantum phenomena,” Kazuhiro Nawa, study co-author and a researcher at Tohoku University said.
“It can also provide a guideline for designing new magnetic materials with targeted magnetic ground states, opening new opportunities for discovering unconventional magnetism in quasiperiodic and complex intermetallic systems,” Nawa added.
The finding does not make electron concentration irrelevant. Rather, it suggests that lattice parameter may be a more consistent guide for Tsai-type compounds, while its usefulness in other magnetic materials remains untested.
What remains unclear is exactly why the lattice parameter works so well across these different compounds. The researchers also need to determine whether the same relationship holds in true quasicrystals.
Despite these limitations, the study indeed offers a more systematic route for exploring complex alloys and designing new quantum materials.
The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
For more than a century, the electricity grid has mostly worked in one direction. Power plants generate electricity, grids deliver it, and homes, factories and businesses consume it. That model is starting to look a little dated.
As solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and connected devices spread, millions of things that consume electricity can also store it, shift when they use it or, in some cases, send it back. “Everything-to-grid” is the emerging idea of coordinating those resources so they become active parts of the power system rather than simply sitting at the end of the network. The World Economic Forum included the concept among its Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2026.
What exactly is everything-to-grid?
The simplest way to think about it is to imagine the grid gaining millions of tiny batteries, generators, and adjustable loads. An electric vehicle plugged into a charger is normally a consumer. But with bidirectional charging, its battery can potentially send electricity back to a building or the grid.
A building with solar panels and batteries can generate, store, and supply electricity. A factory could shift some electricity-intensive processes away from peak-demand periods.
Instead of asking only, “How much electricity do we need?”, an everything-to-grid system also asks, “What can we move, store, or temporarily switch off right now?” That flexibility can be valuable when electricity demand suddenly rises, or renewable generation fluctuates.
Your car could become a grid asset
Electric vehicles are one of the most obvious pieces of this puzzle because their batteries can store substantial amounts of electricity while the vehicles are parked for much of the day. Vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, technology allows compatible vehicles and chargers to exchange electricity with the grid rather than simply charging the battery.
Software can decide when a vehicle should charge, pause charging, or discharge electricity, while accounting for factors such as grid conditions and the owner’s need to drive.
The U.S. Department of Energy has been examining V2G as a way of integrating EVs into the wider power system. However, widespread deployment still depends on compatible vehicles, chargers, communications systems, regulations, and business models. In other words, your car could spend the afternoon being a car and the evening moonlighting as a very expensive power bank.
Buildings become more than electricity consumers
Buildings are another major part of the concept. A grid-interactive building combines energy efficiency, smart controls, communications and distributed energy resources such as solar panels and batteries. Heating, cooling, water heating and other systems can be adjusted according to electricity prices, grid conditions or the availability of renewable power.
The U.S. Department of Energy describes these buildings as flexible energy resources that can help reduce peak demand and make better use of periods when electricity is plentiful. The IEA similarly describes grid-interactive buildings as “prosumers” that can produce, consume, store, buy, and sell energy.
Why renewables make this more important
Solar and wind power are increasingly important sources of electricity, but their output varies with weather and time of day. Solar generation, for example, can fall rapidly as evening demand rises.
That makes flexibility increasingly valuable. The IEA expects renewables to overtake coal in global electricity generation in 2026 and says modernizing grids and improving system flexibility will be critical as wind and solar expand. Everything-to-grid systems could help absorb surplus electricity when renewable generation is high and reduce demand when the grid is under pressure.
The catch: somebody has to coordinate the chaos
Making millions of independent devices behave like one useful power resource is considerably harder than installing a solar panel or plugging in an EV. It requires communication standards, smart inverters and chargers, control software, electricity-market rules, and cybersecurity.
The more connected the grid becomes, the more important it is to protect those connections from failures and attacks. The DOE specifically identifies cybersecurity as an important consideration for increasingly connected grid-interactive buildings. There are also practical questions around battery degradation, consumer compensation, privacy, and who gets to control an asset in someone’s home.
Everything-to-grid, then, isn’t about turning every appliance into a miniature power station overnight. It is about changing the architecture of electricity itself, from a system where consumers mostly take power from the grid into one where millions of connected assets can help manage it.
The grid of the future may still have giant power plants and transmission lines. But alongside them could be millions of cars, buildings, batteries and machines quietly doing their part. That is a much more complicated grid. It could also be a much more flexible one.
"Free your BIOS today!" urges the web page for GNU Boot, calling it "a 100% free software project aimed at replacing the nonfree boot software (like BIOS or UEFI) of computers with free boot software.
GNU Boot is only a distribution: it reuses existing software projects like Coreboot, GRUB, SeaBIOS, etc. So it's not very different from 100% free GNU/Linux distributions like Trisquel or Guix.
Last month the Free Software Foundation announced they'd fiscally sponsor the project:
"The BIOS is a delicate but essential part of software freedom for computing today," said Zoë Kooyman, executive director of the FSF. "GNU Boot aims to make sure that we can continue using our computers in freedom. With the way it builds on the work of others to replace UEFI, we know it can remain firm in the free software philosophy and stay vital to digital autonomy and user freedom." Free boot firmware, such as GNU Boot, is responsible for loading the computer's operating system.
The work done by GNU Boot contributors has similarities to work done by GNU/Linux distributions: they package software like Coreboot or GNU GRUB, contribute to the upstream repositories of these projects, and assist them with documentation, among other tasks... When asked about their project joining the FSF's fiscal sponsorship program, co-maintainer Adrien Bourmault stated: "Making this decision with the FSF allows us to focus more on what we do best: writing and debugging code that keeps our machines fully free." Projects whose scope and purpose align with the FSF's mission and further mission-related activities can become fiscally sponsored by joining the FSF's Working Together for Free Software Fund.
Fulcrum faces an identity crisis, even as it works on creating one by enabling anyone to imitate another person's writing style. The AI startup, founded in 2025 and previously operating at fulcrumresearch.ai, now uses fulcrum.inc and could easily be confused with one of the handful of other companies named Fulcrum or some variation of that. There's Fulcrum (withfulcrum.com), Fulcrum (fulcrumapp.com), Fulcrum AI (fulcrumai.us), Fulcrum Digital (fulcrumdigital.com), Fulcrum Labs (fulcrumlabs.ai), Fulcrum (fulcrumpro.com), Fulcrum Insurance Technology (fulcruminsure.app), and perhaps more. This Fulcrum is offering a large language model called Echo, which allows you to generate text in the style of a well-known author. Fulcrum appears to have no issue with corporate echoes. It now falls to writers to decide whether they have an issue with non-corporeal imitation. "Echo can do any writing task, from literary fiction to casual chatting, in whatever style you choose," the company says, and then launches into an exploration of how the technology works without addressing whether imitating a person's writing style poses any problems. Suggestions in the Echo Playground, for generating sample text, include Paul Christiano, Emily Dickinson, and Donald Trump. So, the full gamut of literary achievement: from AI safety expert to acclaimed 19th-century poet to the wordsmith who brought us "covfefe." But Echo will echo even the style of not-so-famous scribes, such as this reporter. So I fed the model a recent op-ed to assess its copying capabilities. The result was mixed, but better than the AI-crafted pitches that have been hitting my inbox for the past few months. I asked the model, "What do you think about the possibility that AI is conscious?" Here's part of the response, notionally written in my writing style. I suspect the debate about whether AI is conscious is less consequential than the debate about whether AI is profitable. Consciousness is a word that invites philosophical speculation and TED Talk invitations. Profitability is a word that invites shareholder lawsuits if you get it wrong. If you ask Meta's latest model whether it's conscious, it will probably say something reassuringly vague, trained as it is on the corpus of human equivocation. If you ask Mark Zuckerberg whether Meta's AI is conscious, he will probably say something about how we need to focus on the future being for everyone, because that's a question that doesn't require him to discuss the ad targeting business. The evidence for AI consciousness at the moment is about as strong as the evidence for Zuck's credibility as a futurist. Which is to say, it exists mainly in press releases and earnings calls. What's clear is that software can simulate aspects of human conversation well enough to unsettle people, and that unsettled people are a valuable audience. If you can convince users that your chatbot understands them – or might, someday – you can sell them subscriptions, or better, harvest their attention for advertisers. The style is familiar but makes a lot of choices I wouldn't have made. I wouldn't begin with "I suspect…" – commit or go home. The consciousness/profitability parallel construction is clumsy. "TED Talk invitations" bets on alliteration at the expense of coherence – "discourse" or "chatter" would work better than "invitations." I wouldn't have written "corpus of human equivocation" – a nice turn of phrase, but an unnecessary shot at training data when the point is the model's response rather than the provenance of that response. Though off-topic, Echo did a passable job of reproducing my op-ed's skepticism of Meta and its CEO. The paragraph that begins "The evidence for AI consciousness at the moment…" is succinct and sounds good. It just doesn't make much sense because there's nothing in the text that addresses Zuckerberg's predictions about the future or whether they're credible. And that's not really relevant to the prompt about AI and consciousness – a subject about which I'd be far more dismissive if opining. As AI research, Echo is an improvement on the text emitted by many AI models. But whether the beneficial uses of this technology outweigh the harms is less clear. Generative AI models that imitate artists' visual styles remain controversial and are the subject of ongoing litigation. And voice imitation has also raised questions about publicity rights and the risk of deception. Such concerns have prompted US lawmakers to propose the NO FAKES Act, which would create federal protections against certain unauthorized AI-generated replicas of a person's voice or visual likeness. If writers generally have no copyright in their writing style itself, and limited practical means to stop unwanted automated imitation of it when their published work is publicly accessible, then the surest defense against Echo may be silence.®
OpenAI’s frontier intelligence model GPT-6 Astra has completed the Orc starting area in World of Warcraft in about 40 minutes without processing a single rendered game frame, according to the developer of the open-source agent-wow project.
Instead of seeing the game through screenshots or computer vision, the AI reconstructed its environment from server network messages and game data, then built its own tools to navigate and play.
The experiment was conducted on a private local server running AzerothCore, not Blizzard’s live World of Warcraft service. The developer gave Codex, running GPT-6 Astra at its high reasoning setting, a single instruction: create an Orc character and complete all quests in the starting zone. The agent reportedly finished the run without dying.
Reading the game’s network traffic
The unusual part of the experiment is how little conventional game automation was provided to the model. Agent-wow does not use computer vision, screenshots, or direct keyboard and mouse controls. Instead, it allows an AI agent to communicate with the game server through World of Warcraft’s network protocol, Tom’s Hardwarereported.
The project also does not provide predefined movement, combat, or interaction systems. The agent is expected to build the capabilities it needs through modules. During the run, GPT-6 Astra created a module that could process dozens of different server messages and keep the resulting information in memory. A Python script then used those messages to construct the model’s view of what was happening in the game and send actions back to the server.
That meant the model could determine things such as its surroundings, quest progress, and available targets without ever receiving the visual information a human player normally relies on.
The experiment therefore tests something different from simply teaching an AI to recognize a game screen. The model had to reason about a structured but unfamiliar environment using the information available through the game’s underlying protocol.
Astra built its own tools to complete the quests
The agent also had access to AzerothCore’s underlying data, including SQL files containing information about quests, NPCs, and spawn locations. It used those resources to determine where quests started and ended, and how different objectives were connected.
The developer said the model effectively created a plan for completing prerequisite quests in sequence. It also managed routine tasks such as selling unwanted items, equipping better gear, and training abilities before reaching the final cave in the starting area.
Navigation was another problem the agent had to solve, with GPT-6 Astra generating a C++ helper that used AzerothCore’s navigation-mesh data, known as mmaps, to calculate routes. The helper used the Detour pathfinding library to generate waypoints between locations, which the agent could then follow.
The developer said the system even encountered locations where collision information appeared to be incomplete and was able to exploit those map quirks. That makes the result interesting, but also means the run should not be treated as a straightforward test of how well an AI can navigate an unmodified commercial game world.
E-ink displays can look almost suspiciously like paper. They don’t glow like a phone screen, remain readable under bright sunlight, and can display the same page for days without constantly drawing power. Yet beneath that paper-like surface is a surprisingly simple bit of physics. Millions of tiny charged particles move around in microscopic containers.
The technology is officially known as an electrophoretic display, or EPD. It is used in e-readers, electronic shelf labels, digital signage and an expanding range of low-power devices.
Tiny capsules full of moving ink
At the heart of a conventional black-and-white e-ink display are millions of microscopic capsules. Each is roughly the diameter of a human hair and contains a clear fluid with electrically charged pigment particles suspended inside it.
In a common two-particle system, the particles are black and white and carry opposite electrical charges. The capsules sit above an electronic layer that can apply a controlled electric field to individual areas of the display.
Apply one polarity and the white particles move toward the top of a capsule. Reverse the field and the black particles move upward instead. What the viewer sees therefore depends on which particles are positioned at the surface.
This movement is called electrophoresis. Charged particles move through a fluid in response to an electric field. The same basic principle was demonstrated in early electronic-paper research, including the microencapsulated electrophoretic ink described by researchers at the MIT Media Lab in a 1998 Nature paper.
There is no backlight
This is where e-ink takes a very different route from an LCD or OLED display. A phone or laptop screen produces or controls light that travels toward your eyes. Traditional LCDs use a backlight, while OLED pixels generate their own light.
E-ink is reflective. Instead of producing the light you see, it uses ambient light, reflecting it from the pigment particles at the surface much like ink on a printed page. The brighter the surroundings, the easier the screen can be to see.
That is why an e-reader can be remarkably comfortable to use outdoors on a sunny day while a conventional display may become harder to see. E-readers can still have a light for reading in darkness, but it is generally a front light that illuminates the surface rather than a conventional display backlight shining through the screen.
The clever trick: the picture stays put
One of the most important properties of electrophoretic displays is bistability. Once the pigment particles move into position, they can stay there without continuously applying power. The electronics need electricity to change the image, but not simply to keep an existing image on screen.
That means an e-reader can display a page for hours while consuming essentially no display power between updates. E Ink says its displays consume power only when the image changes, with the energy required for an update depending on the display and operating mode. It is one reason e-ink devices can achieve battery life measured in weeks rather than hours.
So why does e-ink refresh so slowly?
There is a tradeoff for all that efficiency. LCD and OLED pixels can change extremely quickly because they control light electronically. E-ink has to physically move pigment particles through fluid. That makes its refresh behavior fundamentally different.
Modern E Ink displays have multiple refresh modes, and the company says some can update a full display in as little as 120 milliseconds. The technology is still generally slower and can produce visible flashing or ghosting during certain transitions, which is perfectly acceptable for turning pages or reading a document. But it is considerably less ideal for fast video or action-heavy games.
What about color?
Color e-ink works by adding more types of charged pigment particles or using different display structures. E Ink’s color technologies include systems using black, white, red, and yellow particles, while other approaches can produce a broader color range.
Its Advanced Color ePaper technology, for example, uses colored particles rather than relying on a conventional LCD-style color filter array. Color e-ink therefore remains reflective and low-power, but there is another tradeoff: color electrophoretic displays generally cannot match the brightness, saturation, and refresh performance of modern OLED or LCD screens.
Why e-ink still matters
E-ink is not trying to replace your smartphone display. Its advantage comes from doing less. It reflects rather than emits light, holds an image without continuously consuming display power, and can remain readable in bright environments.
That makes it especially useful when the priority is information rather than animation: books, labels, signs, notes, and other content that doesn’t need to change every millisecond. In a world increasingly filled with glowing screens, e-ink’s cleverest trick may simply be knowing when not to glow.
David and Stephen compare the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and Series 12, discuss David’s move to an M6 Mac mini for local AI and server work, and test Siri AI on everyday tasks. In the Bonus segment, the hosts look ahead to Apple’s rumored October hardware.
A U.S. banking group just sued the government agency that issues America's federal bank charters, reports CoinDesk, "accusing it of exceeding its legal powers in granting national trust-bank status to crypto firms."
The agency's move "creates a gaping hole in financial regulation," according to the lawsuit by The Independent Community Bankers of America, one of America's largest banking advocacy organizations. It argues the move will "perversely allow entities engaged in highly risky cryptocurrency and digital assets activities to enter the banking system under lightly regulated national charters" which actually preempt many state regulations, including consumer protection laws.
But the move would also "place community banks at a severe competitive disadvantage," the lawsuit argues, "by allowing the national trust banks to offer many of the same services as community banks without complying with the same costly banking laws and regulations that apply to the community banks." This competitive advantage could "siphon deposits out of community banks and into deposit alternatives like cryptocurrency," which they describe as "highly volatile, prone to market crashes, cybercrime, and fraud" and lacking protections like deposit insurance.
They also warn that America's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency "has not managed an uninsured bank receivership in nearly one hundred years. But failures of risky uninsured national
trust banks could spread instability throughout the nation's financial system, including by spreading contagion risks to other traditional banks like community banks."
CoinDesk reports:
[The Independent Community Bankers of America] also played a significant role in pushing back against the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act that failed to advance in the U.S. Senate last month — in part due to the bankers' objections that its stablecoin provisions didn't protect them against direct competition with the deposit accounts that are core to their businesses.
Now, the group is targeting the trust charters crypto firms are pursuing as an entry point into the U.S. banking and payments system.
"Congress did not create the national trust charter as a side door into the banking system for crypto firms seeking the credibility of a federal bank charter," ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said in a statement..
Japan has demonstrated a coastal tanker using a hydrogen-fired, four-stroke, high-speed engine in what the project describes as a world first.
The 4,800-dwt vessel sailed approximately 20 miles in Osaka Bay during a roughly two-hour demonstration on September 25. The Nippon Foundation reported that the voyage reduced carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 1.2 tons compared with conventional fossil fuels.
The demonstration forms part of a foundation-sponsored research program supporting the decarbonization of shipping. The tanker combines a hydrogen engine, electric propulsion motors and lithium-ion batteries.
How the tanker’s propulsion system works
The tanker uses electricity generated by a hydrogen engine housed in a container mounted on deck which powers two electric propulsion motors connected to two shafts.
The vessel also carries a hybrid generator and lithium-ion batteries. The batteries smooth the load and help optimize fuel consumption.
In this configuration, the hydrogen engine generates electrical power rather than driving the propeller shafts directly. The electric motors provide propulsion through the vessel’s two shafts.
Yanmar Power Solutions designed the engine used in the project. Its first bench tests were completed in October 2024, when it successfully operated at a rated output of approximately 500 kilowatts.
During those initial tests, the engine used a small amount of diesel oil as a pilot ignition source to burn a premixed combination of hydrogen and air. Subsequent testing worked toward using hydrotreated vegetable oil, known as HVO, for pilot ignition.
The supplied account does not identify which pilot ignition fuel was used during the September demonstration.
The project called for a tanker specifically designed for hydrogen propulsion. Fukuoka Shipbuilding, a member of the project coalition, launched the vessel at its Nagasaki yard on February 14, 2025.
Measuring approximately 344 feet (105 m), the tanker was delivered to Uyeno TransTec in October 2025.
What the demonstration covered
The September 25 voyage tested the tanker’s hydrogen-fired engine while sailing in Osaka Bay. The Nippon Foundation described it as a carbon-neutral demonstration and estimated the carbon dioxide reduction at about 1.2 tons compared with conventional fossil fuels.
Beyond the engine, the project’s scope included developing the fuel supply system and hull design to obtain Approval in Principle from the classification society ClassNK.
The team also developed training and an operating manual for hydrogen-fueled vessels.
According to the foundation and the operator, the demonstration produced experience and knowledge to support hydrogen adoption in domestic coastal shipping. The project’s stated goal is to develop a model and pathway for that adoption.
“This demonstration represents a significant step towards the practical application of hydrogen-fueled zero-emission ships and is expected to contribute to the promotion of decarbonization in Japan’s shipping sector,” said Kazuma Kashiwagi, Director of the Environmental Bureau for Kobe City.
Japan has committed to achieving carbon neutrality in its domestic shipping sector by 2050.
The wider hydrogen vessel program
The Nippon Foundation launched the project in 2022. In June 2023, it assigned three consortia to develop separate demonstrations under its Zero Emission Ship 2050 program.
Alongside the tanker, one team focused on demonstrating a hydrogen fuel cell aboard an offshore wind turbine work vessel. Another worked on a hydrogen-fueled engine for the tugboat “Ten-Oh.”
The program’s first hydrogen fuel-cell demonstration took place in April 2024 aboard the 238-gross-ton passenger vessel Hanaria. Additional demonstrations were scheduled for 2026, alongside work on hydrogen stations to supply fuel.
Other hydrogen shipping projects include Norway’s liquid-hydrogen-fueled ferry MF Hydra and inland barges in Europe.
Cruise operators have also begun testing fuel cells and hydrogen systems to supply electricity for hotel operations and reduce emissions in port.
Advanced nuclear power holds a clear promise: round-the-clock, low-carbon electricity with far better fuel efficiency than conventional plants. Yet the next generation of reactors faces an atomic-scale obstacle. When uranium atoms split to generate energy, they leave behind troublesome chemical byproducts that degrade equipment and frustrate recycling efforts.
A research team led by Pennsylvania State University has received $1 million from the US Department of Energy to tackle this precise problem. Their goal is to track and control three stubborn fission products—samarium, europium, and tellurium—in molten salt reactors and advanced recycling systems.
Standard commercial reactors are cooled by pressurized water. But molten salt systems use liquid salts. These reactors can squeeze more energy out of nuclear fuel and allow used materials to be recycled. However, the chemical soup inside them is notoriously harsh.
Each of the three targeted elements presents its own challenge. Samarium and europium are unwanted in recycled fuel because they can interfere with reactor performance and fuel recycling processes, noted researchers.
“Tellurium, on the other hand, can react with metals used in molten salt reactors and fuel-recycling systems, contributing to corrosion and materials degradation,” added the researchers.
Understanding the fundamentals
To solve this, researchers need to understand how these elements behave at a fundamental level.
“We will study the oxidation states of these elements, which describe how many electrons an atom has gained or lost and strongly influence how they behave chemically,” said lead investigator Hojong Kim, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State.
The team will examine how these byproducts interact with reactor materials during pyroprocessing, a high-temperature recycling method based on molten salts. Working alongside specialists from the University of Nevada, Reno, and Idaho National Laboratory, researchers will combine computer modeling with direct laboratory experiments.
In the lab, doctoral researcher Alok Pandey will dissolve the three elements in molten salt solvents and run electrical currents through the mixture. By varying the applied potential, he can observe how the elements shift oxidation states.
“This will allow us to understand the elements’ electrochemical properties,” concluded Pandey. “It could help improve strategies for their recovery and management during nuclear fuel recycling.”
Solving the recycling puzzle
The project also revives an earlier, unresolved puzzle. Kim previously attempted to analyze samarium under a 2018 federal grant. That effort stalled because the element existed in tiny concentrations and behaved unpredictably compared to related rare-earth metals. Armed with newer diagnostic methods, the team believes it can now crack the problem.
Their solution relies on an unexpected ally: liquid bismuth. Kim’s laboratory previously discovered that molten bismuth can act like a chemical sponge, cleanly capturing rare-earth elements out of liquid salts.
If the current trials succeed, the technique could unlock more sustainable fuel cycles. By removing corrosive and performance-choking byproducts, engineers can keep advanced reactors running longer, extract more energy from every grain of uranium, and significantly reduce long-lived nuclear waste.
On Oct. 4th, 1957, at 10:29 PM Moscow time, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1 into space on a repurposed R-7 rocket. The world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik was about 22 inches (58 centimeters) in diameter and weighed 184 pounds (84 kilograms). Although there were no scientific instruments aboard, the transmitter it carried sentContinue reading "Oct. 4th, 1957: Sputnik launches"
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