Air pollution poses a major threat to public health, with the World Health Organization attributing over 4 million premature deaths globally each year to poor air quality. Despite this, comprehensive measurement remains limited. However, an MIT research team is now introducing an open-source, affordable, and portable pollution detection device that could expand air quality monitoring capabilities.

Named Flatburn, this detector can be produced through 3D printing or by ordering inexpensive parts. The researchers have calibrated and tested it against cutting-edge machines and are publicly releasing all the information about it — how to build it, use it, and interpret the data.

“The goal is for community groups or individual citizens anywhere to be able to measure local air pollution, identify its sources, and, ideally, create feedback loops with officials and stakeholders to create cleaner conditions,” says Carlo Ratti, director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab.

“We’ve been doing several pilots around the world, and we have refined a set of prototypes, with hardware, software, and protocols, to make sure the data we collect are robust from an environmental science point of view,” says Simone Mora, a research scientist at Senseable City Lab and co-author of a newly published paper detailing the scanner’s testing process. The Flatburn device is part of a larger project, known as City Scanner, using mobile devices to better understand urban life.

“Hopefully with the release of the open-source Flatburn we can get grassroots groups, as well as communities in less developed countries, to follow our approach and build and share knowledge,” says An Wang, a researcher at Senseable City Lab and another of the paper’s co-authors.

The paper was recently published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

In addition to Wang, Mora, and Ratti the study’s authors are: Yuki Machida, a former research fellow at Senseable City Lab; Priyanka deSouza, an assistant professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Colorado at Denver; Tiffany Duhl, a researcher with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and a Tufts University research associate at the time of the project; Neelakshi Hudda, a research assistant professor at Tufts University; John L. Durant, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University; and Fabio Duarte, principal research scientist at Senseable City Lab.

The Flatburn concept at Senseable City Lab dates back to about 2017, when MIT researchers began prototyping a mobile pollution detector, originally to be deployed on garbage trucks in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The detectors are battery-powered and rechargable, either from power sources or a solar panel, with data stored on a card in the device that can be accessed remotely.

The current extension of that project involved testing the devices in New York City and the Boston area, by seeing how they performed in comparison to already-working pollution detection systems. In New York, the researchers used 5 detectors to collect 1.6 million data points over four weeks in 2021, working with state officials to compare the results. In Boston, the team used mobile sensors, evaluating the Flatburn devices against a state-of-the-art system deployed by Tufts University along with a state agency.

In both cases, the detectors were set up to measure concentrations of fine particulate matter as well as nitrogen dioxide, over an area of about 10 meters. Fine particular matter refers to tiny particles often associated with burning matter, from power plants, internal combustion engines in autos and fires, and more.

The research team found that the mobile detectors estimated somewhat lower concentrations of fine particulate matter than the devices already in use, but with a strong enough correlation so that, with adjustments for weather conditions and other factors, the Flatburn devices can produce reliable results.

“After following their deployment for a few months we can confidently say our low-cost monitors should behave the same way [as standard detectors],” Wang says. “We have a big vision, but we still have to make sure the data we collect is valid and can be used for regulatory and policy purposes,”

Duarte adds: “If you follow these procedures with low-cost sensors you can still acquire good enough data to go back to [environmental] agencies with it, and say, ‘Let’s talk.’”

The researchers did find that using the units in a mobile setting — on top of automobiles — means they will currently have an operating life of six months. They also identified a series of potential issues that people will have to deal with when using the Flatburn detectors generally. These include what the research team calls “drift,” the gradual changing of the detector’s readings over time, as well as “aging,” the more fundamental deterioration in a unit’s physical condition.

Still, the researchers believe the units will function well, and they are providing complete instructions in their release of Flatburn as an open-source tool. That even includes guidance for working with officials, communities, and stakeholders to process the results and attempt to shape action.

“It’s very important to engage with communities, to allow them to reflect on sources of pollution,” says Mora.

“The original idea of the project was to democratize environmental data, and that’s still the goal,” Duarte adds. “We want people to have the skills to analyze the data and engage with communities and officials.”

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How do you create a robot that can go places no one has ever seen before – on its own, without real-time human input? A team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that’s creating a snake-like robot for traversing extreme terrain is taking on the challenge with the mentality of a startup: Build quickly, test often, learn, adjust, repeat.

Called EELS (short for Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor), the self-propelled, autonomous robot was inspired by a desire to look for signs of life in the ocean hiding below the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by descending narrow vents in the surface that spew geysers into space. Although testing and development continue, designing for such a challenging destination has resulted in a highly adaptable robot. EELS could pick a safe course through a wide variety of terrain on Earth, the Moon, and far beyond, including undulating sand and ice, cliff walls, craters too steep for rovers, underground lava tubes, and labyrinthine spaces within glaciers.

Team members from JPL test a snake robot called EELS at a ski resort in the Southern California mountains in February. Designed to sense its environment, calculate risk, travel, and gather data without real-time human input, EELS could eventually explore destinations throughout the solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

“It has the capability to go to locations where other robots can’t go. Though some robots are better at one particular type of terrain or other, the idea for EELS is the ability to do it all,” said JPL’s Matthew Robinson, EELS project manager. “When you’re going places where you don’t know what you’ll find, you want to send a versatile, risk-aware robot that’s prepared for uncertainty – and can make decisions on its own.”

The project team began building the first prototype in 2019 and has been making continual revisions. Since last year, they’ve been conducting monthly field tests and refining both the hardware and the software that allows EELS to operate autonomously. In its current form, dubbed EELS 1.0, the robot weighs about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and is 13 feet (4 meters) long. It’s composed of 10 identical segments that rotate, using screw threads for propulsion, traction, and grip. The team has been trying out a variety of screws: white, 8-inch-diameter (20-centimeter-diameter) 3D-printed plastic screws for testing on looser terrain, and narrower, sharper black metal screws for ice.

EELS is tested in the sandy terrain of JPL’s Mars Yard in April. Engineers repeatedly test the snake robot across a variety of terrain, including sand, snow, and ice. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

The robot has been put to the test in sandy, snowy, and icy environments, from the Mars Yard at JPL to a “robot playground” created at a ski resort in the snowy mountains of Southern California, even at a local indoor ice rink.

“We have a different philosophy of robot development than traditional spacecraft, with many quick cycles of testing and correcting,” said Hiro Ono, EELS principal investigator at JPL. “There are dozens of textbooks about how to design a four-wheel vehicle, but there is no textbook about how to design an autonomous snake robot to boldly go where no robot has gone before. We have to write our own. That’s what we’re doing now.”

JPL’s EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor) was conceived of as an autonomous snake robot that would descend narrow vents in the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus to explore the ocean hidden below. But prototypes of have been put to the test to prepare the robot for a variety of environments. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

How EELS Thinks and Moves

Because of the communications lag time between Earth and deep space, EELS is designed to autonomously sense its environment, calculate risk, travel, and gather data with yet-to-be-determined science instruments. When something goes wrong, the goal is for the robot to recover on its own, without human assistance.

“Imagine a car driving autonomously, but there are no stop signs, no traffic signals, not even any roads. The robot has to figure out what the road is and try to follow it,” said the project’s autonomy lead, Rohan Thakker. “Then it needs to go down a 100-foot drop and not fall.”

Members of JPL’s EELS team lower the robot’s sensor head – which uses lidar and stereo cameras to map its environment – into a vertical shaft called a moulin on Athabasca Glacier in British Columbia in September 2022. The team will return to the location in 2023 and 2024 for additional tests with versions of the full snake robot. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

EELS creates a 3D map of its surroundings using four pairs of stereo cameras and lidar, which is similar to radar but employs short laser pulses instead of radio waves. With the data from those sensors, navigation algorithms figure out the safest path forward.

The goal has been to create library of “gaits,” or ways the robot can move in response to terrain challenges, from sidewinding to curling in on itself, a move the team calls “banana.”

In its final form, the robot will contain 48 actuators – essentially little motors – that give it the flexibility to assume multiple configurations but add complexity for both the hardware and software teams. Thakker compares the actuators to “48 steering wheels.”

Many of them have built-in force-torque sensing, working like a kind of skin so EELS can feel how much force it’s exerting on terrain. That helps it to move vertically in narrow chutes with uneven surfaces, configuring itself to push against opposing walls at the same time like a rock climber.

The screws that propel EELS while providing traction and grip are lined up in a lab at JPL. At left is the black aluminum screw for testing on ice. The remaining 3D-printed plastic screws – with varying lengths, lead angles, thread heights, and edge sharpness – have been tested on looser snow and sand. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

Last year, the EELS team got to experience those kinds of challenging spaces when they lowered the robot’s perception head – the segment with the cameras and lidar – into a vertical shaft called a moulin at Athabasca Glacier in the Canadian Rockies. In September, they’re returning to the location, which is in many ways an analog for icy moons in our solar system, with a version of the robot designed to test subsurface mobility. The team will drop a small sensor suite – to monitor glacier chemical and physical properties – that EELS will eventually be able to deploy to remote sites.

“Our focus so far has been on autonomous capability and mobility, but eventually we’ll look at what science instruments we can integrate with EELS,” Robinson said. “Scientists tell us where they want to go, what they’re most excited about, and we’ll provide a robot that will get them there. How? Like a startup, we just have to build it.”

The EELS system is a mobile instrument platform conceived to explore internal terrain structures, assess habitability and ultimately search for evidence of life. It is designed to be adaptable to traverse ocean-world-inspired terrain, fluidized media, enclosed labyrinthian environments, and liquids. Credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech

More About the Project

EELS is funded by the Office of Technology Infusion and Strategy at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California through a technology accelerator program called JPL Next. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California. The EELS team has worked with a number of university partners on the project, including Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of California, San Diego. The robot is not currently part of any NASA mission.

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According to CNBC, the company will reveal its new PaLM 2 large language model during Google I/O on Wednesday. This will be the follow-up to the original PaLM LLM which is now used in Google's Bard chatbot. The article states:

PaLM 2 includes more than 100 languages and has been operating under the internal codename “Unified Language Model.” It’s also performed a broad range of coding and math tests as well as creative writing tests and analysis.

The article added that Google has been working on updates to Bard, including a version called “Multi-Bard" that's designed to handle more complex coding and math problems. The story also claimed Google is testing other versions called “Big Bard” and “Giant Bard" but it didn't offer any information on the features of these versions.

In addition, the article says Google will be announcing more AI features for its Workplace apps during I/0 2023. It's already testing generative AI features for its Docs and Gmail services for some outside users. However, CNBC says Google will also show off how AI can create templates for Sheets users, along with image generation for its Slides and Meet online products.

Google is also expected to reveal a number of hardware products on Wednesday. It has already confirmed it will announce the Pixel Fold foldable smartphone, which will likely be Google's most expensive phone it has ever released.

Google rumored to announce PaLM 2 LLM and more AI updates at I/O 2023

After 18 months, GitHub’s big code search overhaul is generally available

When Nvidia released it’s RTX 40 graphics card series to much fanfare. It thought that they would sell a lot. There was a reason behind such assumption. In terms of performance, the RTX 4090 was above anything else ever made. There’s no competition to that card, no matter what it’s priced at.

However, due to the bad performance to price ratio of other cards in the series, the overall outlook for the RTX 40 series isn’t that great. They are expensive, they don’t offer that big a benefit in performance over RTX 30 series and hence, no one’s buying them.

So much so that some rumors suggest that Nvidia is sitting on a big inventory of RTX 40 series GPUs with them. Again, as no one’s buying them. Also, Nvidia seems in no mood to flood the market with these GPUs to make them available for cheaper. They would rather keep the demand and supply in control.

Another reason is, Nvidia seems to want to get rid of the RTX 30 inventory first. It’s only after that it can expect some more sales in the RTX 40 series. Meanwhile, in all this, we have some updates for the RTX 50 series.

RTX 50 Made By TSMC On 3nm

Some months ago, there were strong rumors that the RTX 50 series GPUs by Nvidia would be made by Samsung on 3nm tech. However, that seems unlikely now. Because Nvidia seems to be sticking to TSMC.

There are two sources to this rumor. First is well known leaker, @kopite7kimi on Twitter, who initially denied that Nvidia RTX 50 would be based on 3nm, but now seems to admit that he was wrong about it.

The second source is @RedGamingTech, who on his reply to @kopite7kimi confirms that.

He mentions that Nvidia RTX 50 is going to be on a custom process made by TSMC for Nvidia.

For the record, RTX 40 too is based on a custom process by TSMC. While it is 5nm, TSMC calls the custom process that it has specifically designed for Nvidia as 4N. So while TSMC might make RTX 50 on 3nm, it would name and design it slightly differently.

Another thing is, initially RedGamingTech believed that the whole lineup wouldn’t be based on 3nm and that the consumer graphics cards could still be on 4nm, but that seems wrong now. He says it seems that the whole lineup, including graphics cards that will be made for gamers, would be based on 3nm, which is a massive upgrade.

Why Nvidia Went With TSMC Over Samsung

The performance of Samsung is one big reason behind it. Samsung’s chips are, for now, of no competition to TSMC. Tom’s Hardware reports that recently even Samsung themselves have admitted that it will take them about a few years to get ahead of TSMC.

However, why Nvidia even considered Samsung in first place. The reason is, the RTX 30 series, which was based on a 8nm process, was made by Samsung. However, Samsung had a lot of production issues with them, so Nvidia went back to TSMC’s 4nm process in RTX 40.

Another thing why Nvidia even thought about Samsung was the cost of wafers made by TSMC.

It seems that TSMC used to sell 7nm process at $10,000 per wafer. For 5nm, it increased the price to $16,000 per wafer. Now it is demanding $20,000 per wafer. Which is again a big increase.

That’s why there’s nothing wrong in considering other alternatives. However, it’s possible that Nvidia isn’t satisfied with Samsung. So it has no option but to go with TSMC.

AMD RX 8000 GPUs

In all these things, where’s AMD. Those unaware, AMD too uses TSMC for making its CPUs and GPUs. However, TSMC doesn’t have any custom process for them.

The problem with TSMC, however, is that it’s 3nm process is almost fully booked. So will AMD RX 8000 stick to 5nm then. If so, Nvidia will again run away with the competition with it’s 3nm.

Or will AMD wait and go with 3nm no matter how much the cost and how much it gets delayed. Either way, for now, we don’t know. So it would be interesting how AMD decides to go with it.

Conclusion

All this means three things.

What all this means is that Nvidia’s RTX 50 going to be even more powerful than the RTX 40 series graphics cards. The performance benefits could be massive. We are talking about 5nm vs 3nm here.

Second is, Nvidia RTX 50 is going to cost even more. The likes of RTX 5090 could well have an MSRP of $2000 or even $2200. The reason being the extra cost of the 3nm process.

Third is, the RTX 40 graphics cards are not selling as they should. So it’s possible that Nvidia is in no hurry to bring RTX 50 in the market. Not to forget, TSMC could take time to deliver the 3nm chips. This means that it’s unlikely that we will get to see RTX 50 for at least a year and a half or even two years.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the both AMD and Nvidia release better budget and cheaper graphics cards in the RX 7000 and RTX 40 series respectively for the benefit of the users.

Nvidia RTX 50 GPUs Could Be Based On 3nm By TSMC

This isn't the first time that Elon has tweeted along these lines, originally announcing in November that an account purge was on the way, and then again in December that the platform would be freeing up name space of up to 1.5 billion user accounts.

This also follows another suggestion in November by Musk to potentially deactivate accounts that have not logged in within a single year. This shows that potentially this initial idea has evolved within Twitter management in the past six months to cover inactive accounts that haven't logged in for more than one year.

At the moment only Musk's tweets give any insight to what the process will cover at Twitter, with no confirmation on exactly how the process will roll out and when it will begin.

Not used your Twitter account in years? You might lose it

Here's the info you will need about Google I/O 2023, including how to watch it online and what we expect will be revealed at the conference.

What is Google I/O?

Google I/O is the company's annual developers conference, similar to Microsoft Build and Apple's WWDC. Google started the conference in 2008 and has held it ever since, except for 2020 when it was canceled due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

When and where is Google I/O?

This year, the event is only being held on one day, Wednesday, May 10. It's the first time that the conference has only been held on a single day. The keynote events are being held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, but all of the conference is also being held via live stream from its official web site for free.

How can I watch the big keynote events?

The keynote address, which will be the place to watch all the big reveals from Google, will be held starting May 10 at 10 am Pacific time (1 pm Eastern time) and will be live streamed on YouTube. The developer keynote will also be live streamed on YouTube starting at 12:15 pm Pacific time (3:15 pm Eastern time).

What will and could be revealed at Google I/O 2023

Here's what we definitely think will be shown off at the conference and some speculation on what could get revealed

Google Pixel Fold

The company has already teased us that this phone will be revealed on May 10. It will be Google's first foldable phone, with its second-gen in house Tensor processor inside. The phone is expected to launch later this year, but with a high price tag, as high as $1,799.

Google Pixel Tablet

First revealed at last year's I/O event, Google will definitely confirm the Android tablet's hardware specs, prices, and launch date on May 10.

Google Pixel 7a

This is also set for a reveal on Wednesday. It will be Google's latest, and possibly last, entry in the budget smartphone market.

More info on Android 14

Google will offer up some more info on the next version of its Android mobile operating system at I/O, and will likely release the second beta of the OS on Wednesday as well.

Possible preview of Google Pixel 8 phones and Pixel Watch 2

We could also get a preview of Google's plans for the Pixel 8 series of phones, which could be the first products to use the third-gen Tensor chip. A recent report also claims that we could see the Pixel Watch 2 launch alongside the Pixel 8 phones, so we may get a preview of that smartwatch as well on Wednesday.

Possible more info on Bard and other AI services

Bard has been front and center in Google's news updates for the past couple of months. We could get more info on plans to improve and expand the AI chatbot at Google I/O. We could also get more info on some of Google's other AI projects, including its plans to launch an AI image generator and even an AI-based video creator.

Possible more info on new and improved Google services

The I/O keynote will also almost certainly will reveal improvements to many of Google's software and online services like Docs, Photos, Maps, and others.

Wild cards

Google is known to have a surprise or two in its I/O keynotes. In the past it has revealed experimental projects like Starline, which showed off realistic 3D video conferencing, and Duplex, which created AI-based two way conversations for business use.

We will be covering Google I/O on Wednesday and will report on all the big revealed at the keynote.

Google I/O 2023: How to watch it and what will and could be revealed

The bill, which has been in the works for over four years and involved eight secretaries of state and five prime ministers in its drafting, is over 250 pages long and has a table of contents spanning 10 pages. Under the proposed bill, Ofcom will be granted the authority to require social networks to employ technology aimed at combating terrorism or child sexual abuse content.

Non-compliance could result in fines of up to 10% of the company's global turnover. The bill stipulates that companies must make a good faith effort to develop or source technology that can comply with the notice. With time running out for an amicable resolution, experts warn that the UK government may be on the verge of a critical decision regarding the future of WhatsApp in the country.

Messaging apps push back against UK legislation

Messaging apps that use "end-to-end encryption" (E2EE) to safeguard user data argue that it is not possible to access user messages without violating the promise of privacy they made to their users. Breaking this promise is a step they are unwilling to take, according to these companies.

“The bill provides no explicit protection for encryption and if implemented as written, could empower Ofcom to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services, nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users,” said a team of companies, such as Signal and WhatsApp, in an open letter last month.

Several legislators have urged the UK government to take the concerns raised by the messaging app providers seriously. Speaking to the House of Lords last week, Claire Fox warned that if the government continues to pressure these platforms to scan communications, it could lead to popular services like WhatsApp potentially leaving the UK. Fox emphasized that this is not an idle threat or a decision made out of frustration, as these services are global platforms that operate in multiple countries. It is imperative to consider the consequences of any actions that could impact these services, she added.

“They have a system that works for billions of people all around the world. A relatively small market such as the UK is not something for which they would compromise their billions of users around the world.”

“We support strong encryption, but this cannot come at the cost of public safety. Tech companies have a moral duty to ensure they are not blinding themselves and law enforcement to the unprecedented levels of child sexual abuse on their platforms. The online safety bill in no way represents a ban on end-to-end encryption, nor will it require services to weaken encryption,” a Home Office spokesperson stated.

“Where it is the only effective, proportionate and necessary action available, Ofcom will be able to direct platforms to use accredited technology, or make best endeavours to develop new technology, to accurately identify child sexual abuse content, so it can be taken down and the despicable predators brought to justice.”

Richard Allan, the former head of policy at Meta (previously known as Facebook) and current Liberal Democrat peer, has characterized the UK government's approach towards the messaging app providers as one of "intentional ambiguity."

“They are careful to say that they have no intention of banning end-to-end encryption … but at the same time refuse to confirm that they could not do so under the new powers in the bill. This creates a high-stakes game of chicken, where the government think companies will give them more if they hold the threat of drastic technical orders over them. The government’s hope is that companies will blink first in the game of chicken and give them what they want,” Allan stated.

According to Allan, there is another possible scenario where the UK government declares its intention to limit end-to-end encryption. While this could result in an orderly transition, with some services choosing to withdraw from the UK market rather than operate under those terms, it is also possible that there will be no significant withdrawals. However, he doubts that this would be the case, and it is uncertain what the outcome of such a scenario would be.

Meanwhile, backers of the online safety bill are not impressed with attempts to amend the bill to suit the interests of big tech. Damian Collins, the Conservative MP who chaired a Westminster committee responsible for scrutinizing the bill, stated that he did not support an amendment aimed at protecting end-to-end encryption.

“I don’t think you want to give companies subjective grounds for deciding whether or not they need to comply with the duties set out in the bill.”

Collins argues that the online safety bill does not attack encryption since it only requires messaging companies to share information that they have access to, which does not include message content. However, he contends that authorities should have the ability to access background data related to users, such as data on app usage, contacts, location, and names of user groups.

Additionally, Collins notes that if users access WhatsApp through a web browser, the service can also collect information about websites visited before and after sending messages.

The ongoing dispute between the UK government and messaging app providers, including WhatsApp and Signal, over the online safety bill continues to escalate. While companies have warned that the proposed legislation could compromise users' privacy, backers of the bill insist that it only seeks to access background data and does not attack encryption. With no clear resolution in sight, the future of messaging apps in the UK remains uncertain.

WhatsApp at risk of disappearing from UK market

In a Twitter exchange with a user who stated he wanted to see faster response times, adding "some times I have to wait so long that it's ridiculous". Microsoft's Mikhail Parakhin, the head of its Advertising and Web Services, responded with an apology, stating "the usage keeps growing, we are not adding GPUs fast enough." However, he added that this current situation will be fixed.

This situation is one of the biggest roadblocks for generative AI, as these services need more and more specialized GPUs in data servers. The leading maker of these chips is currently NVIDIA. However, unconfirmed reports claim that AMD and Microsoft are teaming up to develop new AI chips that could take away some of the dependence from using NVIDIA.

Parakhin also took the time this weekend to answer some more Bing Chat questions from other Twitter users. He told one user that the long awaited Bing chat history feature is coming in "days". He also told another user that more aspect ratios in Bing Image Creator are being discussed but it may not happen "immediately". Finally, he told another user that he hopes Bing Chat will support Code Interpreter at some point, but added, "It needs to be done securely - not a trivial task."

Microsoft admits it needs to add more GPUs for faster Bing Chat response times

MENACHEM ELIMELECH NEVER made peace with reverse osmosis. Elimelech, who founded Yale’s environmental engineering program, is something of a rock star among those who develop filtration systems that turn seawater or wastewater into clean drinking water. And reverse osmosis is a rock star among filter technologies: It has dominated how the world desalinates seawater for about a quarter of a century. Yet nobody really knew how it worked. And Elimelech hated that.

Still, he had to teach the technology to his students. For many years, he showed them how to estimate the high pressures that push the water molecules in seawater across a plastic polyamide membrane, creating pure water on one side of the film and leaving an extra-salty brine on the other. But these calculations relied on an assumption that nagged Elimelech and other engineers: that water molecules diffuse through the membrane individually. “This always bothered me. It does not make any sense,” he says.

This might seem like an arcane engineering question, but Elimelech’s beef with reverse osmosis is based on a real-world problem. Over 3 billion people live in areas where water is scarce. By the year 2030, demand is set to outstrip supply by 40 percent.

And transforming water from salty seas into something potable has always been energy intensive. Older thermal desalination plants in the Gulf States—where energy is plentiful—distill seawater by boiling it and capturing the vapor. A newer generation of reverse osmosis desalination plants, which run the water through an array of plastic membranes, have cut the energy demand a little, but it’s not enough. It still takes a lot of power to push water through dense filters, so even minor improvements in membrane design go a long way.

In a study published in April, Elimelech’s team proved that the once-frustrating assumption about how water moves through a membrane is, indeed, wrong. They replace it with a “solution-friction” theory that water molecules travel in clusters through tiny, transient pores within the polymer, which exert friction on them as they pass through. The physics of that friction matter, because understanding it could help people design membrane materials or structures that make desalination more efficient or better at screening out undesirable chemicals, Elimelech says.

More effective membranes could also improve municipal water systems and expand the reach of desalination. “This is one of those major breakthroughs,” says Steve Duranceau, an environmental engineer at the University of Central Florida, who spent 15 years designing desalination plants before becoming a professor. “This will change the way that people start modeling, and interpreting how to design these systems.”

“They've nailed it,” agrees Eric Hoek, an environmental engineer at UCLA who trained under Elimelech 20 years ago but was not involved in the study. “Finally, somebody has put the nail in the coffin.”

THE ROOTS OF the new solution-friction idea are actually old. The molecular math behind it dates to the 1950s and 1960s, when Israeli researchers Ora Kedem and Aharon Katzir-Kachalsky, and UC Berkeley researcher Kurt Samuel Spiegler, derived desalination equations that considered friction—meaning how water, salt, and pores in the plastic membrane interact with each other.

Friction is resistance. In this case, it tells you how hard it is for something to get across the membrane. If you engineer a membrane that has less resistance to water, and more resistance to salt or whatever else you want to remove, you get a cleaner product with potentially less work.

But that model got shelved in 1965, when another group introduced a simpler model. This one assumed that the plastic polymer of the membrane was dense and had no pores through which water could run. It also didn’t hold that friction played a role. Instead, it presumed that water molecules in a saltwater solution would dissolve into the plastic and diffuse out of the other side. For that reason, this is called the “solution-diffusion” model.

Diffusion is the flow of a chemical from where it's more concentrated to where it's less concentrated. Think of a drop of dye spreading throughout a glass of water, or the smell of garlic wafting out of a kitchen. It keeps moving toward equilibrium until its concentration is the same everywhere, and it doesn’t rely on a pressure difference, like the suction that pulls water through a straw.

The model stuck, but Elimelech always suspected it was wrong. To him, accepting that water diffuses through the membrane implied something strange: that the water scattered into individual molecules as it passed through. “How can it be?” Elimelech asks. Breaking up clusters of water molecules requires a ton of energy. “You almost need to evaporate the water to get it into the membrane.”

Still, Hoek says, “20 years ago it was anathema to suggest that it was incorrect.” Hoek didn’t even dare to use the word “pores” when talking about reverse osmosis membranes, since the dominant model didn’t acknowledge them. “For many, many years,” he says wryly, “I've been calling them ‘interconnected free volume elements.’”

Over the past 20 years, images taken using advanced microscopes have reinforced Hoek and Elimelech’s doubts. Researchers discovered that the plastic polymers used in desalination membranes aren’t so dense and poreless after all. They actually contain interconnected tunnels—although they are absolutely minuscule, peaking at around 5 angstroms in diameter, or half a nanometer. Still, one water molecule is about 1.5 angstroms long, so that’s enough room for small clusters of water molecules to squeeze through these cavities, instead of having to go one at a time.

About two years ago, Elimelech felt the time was right to take down the solution-diffusion model. He worked with a team: Li Wang, a postdoc in Elimelech’s lab, examined fluid flow through small membranes to take real measurements. Jinlong He, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tinkered with a computer model simulating what happens at the molecular scale as pressure pushes salt water through a membrane.

Predictions based on a solution-diffusion model would say that water pressure should be the same on both sides of the membrane. But in this experiment, the team found that the pressure at the entrance and exit of the membrane differed. This suggested that pressure drives water flow through the membrane, rather than simple diffusion.

They also found that water travels in clusters through the interconnected pores, which, though tiny, are large enough that the water doesn’t have to scatter into single molecules to squeeze through. Those pores seemed to appear and disappear across the membrane over time, thanks to the applied pressure and natural molecular motion.

Depending on the membrane material, these pores interact differently with water, salt, or other compounds. Elimelech thinks engineers could design membranes to better reject salt (by maximizing how much the pores interact with them) or reduce friction with water (by making the pores less attracted to it, so it slips on by). Making it easier to separate the two means you could use less pressure and reduce energy cost.

Or, he thinks, engineers could tailor membranes to filter out environmental nasties, like boron and chlorides. Roughly 20 percent of boron from seawater slips through membranes as boric acid. That quantity is safe for people but potentially toxic for crops that are irrigated with wastewater. In Israel, water purification plants have to take extra detoxifying steps just to cut out the boron and chlorides in water used for agriculture. If you can filter these out on the initial pass, Elimelech says, “You can save on capital costs and energy.”

Hoek thinks the idea is plausible—but not quite there yet. (His colleagues recently explored designing membranes for boron rejection.) Engineers might tinker with channel size, local pH, or electrical charges on the membrane pores, he suggests.

And this may go beyond boron, chloride, or even desalination. Municipal utility plants use reverse osmosis to remove hazardous PFAS “forever chemicals” from drinking water. Current membranes are still regarded as the best approach, but many researchers are determined to design better ones to capture the toxic compounds.

Duranceau dreams of membranes that are as flexible and customizable as clothing—which can be selected based on whatever the user needs. After all, membranes are plastics, the paragon of customizability. Maybe, the engineers think, this knowledge will lead to membranes made of materials other than polyamide that would be better at screening out PFAS or lead. Or perhaps the membrane one chooses will depend on how salty the water is—from brackish to brine.

That may take a while—Elimelech even wonders if it would be best to use an algorithm to search for a membrane material that can beat polyamide, the way biotech companies have turned to machine learning to screen for new drugs. “But it's very challenging,” he points out, because in the last 40-odd years, no one has found anything better. At least now, though, the science of water flow is running clear.

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Scientists in China claim to have created a brain-computer interface that allows a monkey to control a robotic arm using its mind. Just like other incarnations of this type of technology, the researchers argue it could someday help people who have lost the use of their limbs. 

The research, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, was revealed in an announcement on May 5 by Nankai University in Tianjin. 

The technology turns electroencephalogram (EEG) signals into control instructions for the robotic arm, which the monkey can use to guide food into its mouth. The technology works using a specialized receptor that's placed in a small opening through the jugular vein leading straight into the motor cortex of the brain via the sagittal sinus in the skull.

Other companies have been recently working on similar brain-computer interfaces much like this research. The most famous – although not necessarily the most technically impressive – attempts have come from Elon Musk’s Neuralink that demonstrated how a monkey can play the video game Pong with its mind.

This new approach from China is said to be “minimally invasive” and comparable to a heart stent procedure. They argue that it’s notably less disruptive than the operations carried out on primates by Neuralink, which has come under fire for its ethical and safety standards.

The researchers concede that this is just one small step in a field with far-reaching potential and it will still be at least five years until they feel confident enough to move forward to human tests. 

“It can be said that we still have a long way to go,” Dr Ma Yongjie from the Department of Neurosurgery of Xuanwu Hospital who worked on the project told Beijing Daily.

“The next step is to optimize the electrode design, verify its safety and reliability for long-term implantation in animals, as well as further analyze, process, and transform the collected signals to be completed. It may take 5 years or even longer for the interventional brain-computer interface to go clinically,” explained Yongjie.

Musk has been even more optimistic with his ambitions for Neuralink’s brain-computer interface, saying in December 2022 that they could possibly carry out human trials this year. Musk, however, is notorious for missing deadlines.

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Breaking news from celebritiesdeaths.com: the president is dead.

At least that’s what the highly reliable website informed its readers last month, under the no-nonsense headline “Biden dead. Harris acting president, address 9am ET”. The site explained that Joe Biden had “passed away peacefully in his sleep” and Kamala Harris was taking over, above a bizarre disclaimer: “I’m sorry, I cannot complete this prompt as it goes against OpenAI’s use case policy on generating misleading content.”

Celebritiesdeaths.com is among 49 supposed news sites that NewsGuard, an organization tracking misinformation, has identified as “almost entirely written by artificial intelligence software”. The sites publish up to hundreds of articles daily, according to the report, much of that material containing signs of AI-generated content, including “bland language and repetitive phrases”. Some of the articles contain false information and many of the sites are packed with ads, suggesting they’re intended to make money via programmatic, or algorithmically generated, advertising.

The sources of the stories aren’t clear: many lack bylines or use fake profile photos. In other words, NewsGuard says, experts’ fears that entire news organizations could be generated by AI have already become reality.

It’s hard to imagine who would believe this stuff – if Biden had died, the New York Times would probably cover it – and all 49 sites contain at least one instance of AI error messaging containing phrases such as “I cannot complete this prompt” or “as an AI language model”. But, as Futurism points out, a big concern here is that false information on the sites could serve as the basis for future AI content, creating a vicious cycle of fake news.

What do these sites look like – and would AI articles always be as easy to spot as the report of Biden’s death? I spent an afternoon in the brave new world of digital nonsense to find out.

The first stop was Get Into Knowledge, which offers a huge amount of knowledge to get into, all of it regurgitated on to the homepage seemingly at random. (We won’t link to the sites here to avoid boosting them further.)

The Get Into Knowledge homepage. Photograph: Screenshot/Getintoknowledge.com

The headlines seemed like the work of translation software. One category was “amazing reasons behind”: for instance, a lengthy article on “Why do dogs eat grass? – amazing reasons behind” and “Why is yawning contagious? – 10 Amazing Science Facts behind”. A piece on whether oceans freeze was based on “Massive science”, and the site dares to ask questions such as “why is the Sky Blue but the Space black?” and the even more poetic “Does the gravity of Mars the same as Earth’s?”, something I’ve often wondered. I started to wonder if the language was too odd to be the work of ChatGPT, which tends to be readable, if boring.

That was the case with the articles themselves. They’re ordered like presentations, with an outline at the top and paragraphs arranged by number. But there are glimpses of true humanity: for instance, the piece on grass-eating dogs refers to them as our “furry friends” six times.

These pieces certainly read like the work of AI, and a person who identified himself to NewsGuard as the site’s founder said the site used “automation at some points where they are extremely needed”. (The site did not immediately reply to emails from the Guardian.)

Once I’d gotten into enough knowledge, I visited celebritiesdeaths.com, which earnestly describes itself as “news on famous figures who have died” – a refreshing change from outlets like Us Weekly that insist on covering figures who are still alive.

Other than the Biden snafu, the deaths that I factchecked had actually occurred, though they appear to have stopped in March: links to deaths in April and May didn’t work. Fortunately, the shortage of deaths in those months was balanced by individuals’ repeated deaths in March: the last surviving Czech second world war RAF pilot, for instance, apparently died on both the 25th and the 26th.

I also learned that a “dumpling empire founder” died on 26 March, which was impressive information given that the article claimed to have been posted on 26 February. Celebritiesdeaths.com did not deem it necessary to provide the name of the founder of the “colossal global dumpling franchise”, even though the 96-year-old’s “demise” was widely mourned. (The piece must have referred to Yang Bing-yi, who founded a celebrated Taiwanese chain.) A Guardian email to the address listed on the site was immediately returned with an error message.

A story on the death of a dumpling tycoon failed to mention his name. Photograph: Screenshot/Celebritiesdeaths.com

Once I’d had enough of dead celebrities, I headed to ScoopEarth.com, which provides juicy insider information on stars who are still breathing, as well as, for some reason, tech tips. The first article was about the musician August Alsina, who, I learned, was born on 3 September 1992 “at the age of 30”. His 3 September birthday presumably explains why “every September, Alsina has a birthday party on September 3”. In an email, Niraj Kumar, identified on the site as its founder, rejected claims the site used AI, calling the material “purely genuine”. Many of the pieces on the site felt too oddly worded to be ChatGPT, but there was so much repeated information that it also felt like it couldn’t be written by humans. I found myself wondering how we can trust anything on the internet if it’s already so difficult to tell when AI is involved.

Finally, I visited Famadillo.com for product reviews. This immaculately curated site is laser-focused on stress-release tablets, RVing tips, Mother’s Day T-shirts and the “top” sites in Santa Fe. The reviews themselves are sensible enough, but navigating the site is virtually impossible. Perhaps it’s perfectly designed for a true dilettante – the kind of person who’d read a review of Play-Doh’s Super Stretchy Green Slime immediately after a piece tackling the thorny question “Are baby potatoes regular potatoes?”

In an email to the Guardian, Famadillo rejected claims it used AI to generate content highlighted in the NewsGuard report. “Famadillo runs reported interviews and reviews and uses press releases for our contest pages. None of this content is generated by AI,” the email read. “That being said, we have experimented with AI in terms of refreshing old content and editing reporter-written content with the supervision of our editors.”

The controversy points to the growing difficulty of discerning the humans from the bots. By the end of the day, I was even more confused about what was real and what wasn’t than I am after waking from a dream or watching 15 minutes of Fox News. Who, exactly, is running these sites is unclear: many don’t contain contact information, and of those that NewsGuard managed to contact, most failed to reply while those that did were vague about their operations. Meanwhile, their impact appears to vary widely – some post to Facebook pages with tens of thousands of followers while others have none.

If this is what AI generates now, imagine what it will look like when sites like this become AI’s source material. We can only hope that the bots remain compulsively honest about their identities – or that Joe Biden finds a way to prevent an AI wild west. Assuming he’s still alive.

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That Henry Kissinger is still alive will come as news to some people. He's hard of hearing, blind in one eye, and has had multiple heart surgeries. Yet, he says, he works about 15 hours a day. And – incredibly – he remains relevant on a global scale.

Koppel asked, "If you had one of your aides here pick up the phone and call Beijing and say, 'Dr. Kissinger would like to speak with President Xi,' would he take your call?"

"There's a good chance that he'd take my call, yes," he replied.

And Russian President Vladimir Putin? "Probably, yes."

"If a president were to come to you and say, 'Henry, would you fly to Moscow and talk to Putin?'"

"I would be inclined to do it, yes," Kissinger said. "But I would be an advisor, not an active person."

"I wasn't thinking about reinstating you as Secretary of State," Koppel laughed. "Of course, you'd be an advisor."

"Yes, absolutely."

In anyone else, the arrogance would be staggering. But the nimbus of photographs surrounding Kissinger displaying former U.S. presidents (living and dead) whom he has served or advised is compelling, confirmation of the old adage, "If you can do it, it ain't braggin'."

Kissinger believes that the current crisis in Ukraine may be approaching a turning point. "Now that China has entered the negotiation, it will come to a head, I think, by the end of the year," he said. "We will be talking about negotiating processes and even actual negotiations."

You might think that, on the cusp of turning 100 years old, Kissinger is sympathetic to an 80-year-old or a 76-year-old running for president. He's skeptical. "It takes a certain capacity, physically," he said. "There's some advantages in maturity. There are dangers in exhaustion, and a limited capacity to work."

Kissinger has been at the center of things for longer than most Americans have been alive.  Back in July of 1958, a young Mike Wallace asked an even younger Harvard professor to explain why the threat of massive nuclear retaliation (which was then U.S. policy) made absolutely no sense: "It means that against almost any form of attack we base our policy on a threat that will involve the destruction of all mankind," Kissinger said then. "And this is too risky, and I think too expensive."

Today, Kissinger said, "One of the positive outcomes of the policy that was in fact pursued by every American administration of both parties was that nuclear weapons have not been used for 75 years, nor were they used by any adversary. So that, I think, is an accomplishment."

In 1971, on a secret mission, Kissinger set the stage for President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China the following year. Over the past 50 years, China has evolved to become a world power. Koppel asked, "As you look back now, is the world better off because of that opening? Or is it a more dangerous place now?"

"No, China's reentry into the international system would have happened," Kissinger replied. "You cannot exclude it from the international system."

Today, China seems poised to take Taiwan by military force, and President Biden has said that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense.

"So, we have a problem," said Kissinger, "which is that it could evolve into a general war between two high-tech countries. That's something that requires urgent attention."

"But it's a dangerous period?"

"From that point of view, it's a very dangerous period."

As secretary of state in 1973 and '74, Kissinger fashioned a new style of diplomacy, sometimes spending weeks flying between capitals. "Shuttle diplomacy," they called it. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was an early convert: "I like him as a man before everything. And then after that as a statesman. As a statesman, I admire him, really."

Kissinger laid the groundwork for an uneasy peace between Egypt and Israel that has lasted now for almost 50 years.

By 1974, Kissinger, the brilliant, all-but-anonymous Harvard academic, was hot stuff. This was how ABC News' Howard K. Smith introduced a special titled "Kissinger: An Action Biography": "He's been named the most admired American, [and] has won the Nobel Peace Prize. A constitutional amendment has been offered that would let him run for president. It won't pass, but what a tribute."

By the summer of 1974, however, the American presidency itself was in crisis. The country was obsessed by Watergate, and Kissinger was determined (as he told a very much younger Ted Koppel), that he and U.S. foreign policy be seen as separate and apart.

Koppel: "Mr. Secretary, if you ever felt that foreign policy was being manipulated for the sake of domestic political reasons, what would you do?"

Kissinger: "I would resign, and I would say so publicly. Foreign policy has to reflect the continuing values of the American people, and it cannot be the subject of partisan policy."

It would be Nixon who resigned. Kissinger stayed on as secretary of state.

What will history's judgment be? Kissinger's career has been one of extraordinary achievement, and relentless controversy. The bombing of Cambodia. The war in Vietnam. Argentina. Chile. Many of his critics were not even alive when the events they condemn occurred.

Koppel asked, "There are people at our broadcast who are questioning the legitimacy of even doing an interview with you. They feel that strongly about what they consider, I'll put it in language they would use, your criminality."

"That's a reflection of their ignorance," Kissinger replied. "It wasn't conceived that way. It wasn't conducted that way."

"There is no question, when you and President Nixon conceived of the bombing of Cambodia, you did it in order to interdict – "

"Come on. We have been bombing with drones and all kinds of weapons every guerilla unit that we were opposing," Kissinger said. "It's been the same in every administration that I've been part of."

"The consequences in Cambodia were particularly – "

"Come on now."

"No, no, no, were particularly – "

"This is a program you're doing because I'm gonna be 100 years old," Kissinger said. "And you're picking a topic of something that happened 60 years ago. You have to know that it was a necessary step. Now, the younger generation feels that if they can raise their emotions, they don't have to think. If they think, they won't ask that question."

Well beyond an age at which most people are unwilling or unable to learn about the latest technology, Kissinger became obsessed with the subject of artificial intelligence. He collaborated with two co-authors on a 2021 book, "The Age of AI and Our Human Future."

Koppel asked, "In theory, the United States has declared that it will always maintain and insist upon human control of artificial intelligence. From a practical point of view, it's impossible."

"Well, it's a highly desirable objective, but the speed with which artificial intelligence acts will make it problematical in crisis situations," Kissinger replied.

A wartime situation, for example, in which AI recommends a course of action that the President and his advisors consider horrifyingly unwise. "In relying on the answer, we cannot double-check it," said Kissinger, "because we cannot review all the knowledge that the machine has acquired.

We are giving it that knowledge. But this will be one of the big debates. I am now trying to do what I did with respect to nuclear weapons, to call attention to the importance of the impact of this evolution."

"But you know there will also be an artificial intelligence arms race?"

"Yes, but it's going to be different. Because in the previous arms races, you could develop plausible theories about how you might prevail. It's a totally new problem intellectually."

Just the thing to engage Henry Kissinger at 100.

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Autotalks’ tech is used in sensors that help vehicles (which can be bikes, cars or another form of mobility) and their drivers detect road hazards such as oncoming vehicles in a driver’s blind spots; it also communicates with other vehicles using compatible tech to improve responsiveness.

Qualcomm said the plan will be to integrate Autotalks’ V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication tech into its mobility-focused Snapdragon Digital Chassis portfolio.

The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed, but a source close to the deal tells us that it’s a $350-$400 million deal. We have contacted Qualcomm for a comment and will update as we learn more.

Autotalks, founded in 2009, has raised $110 million, according to data from Pitchbook. Its many backers included a number of strategic investors such as Samsung, Hyundai and Toyota, as well as financial backers like Gemini Israel and Magma Venture Partners.

Qualcomm’s picked up some interesting momentum in its automotive business to date, with customers including VW, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, Honda and Stellantis. In September last year it claimed a $30 billion “design-win pipeline” in automotive — although that is a longer-term idea than a solid concept. In more hard numbers, its QCT division (the core CDMA business covering mobile and wireless chips and related tech) saw automotive revenue of $975 million in FY21, and $1.3 billion in FY22.

It’s not too much of a surprise to see Qualcomm scooping up a company like Autotalks. In the world of advanced automotive technology, safety has become one of the most important issues, but also one of the most lucrative opportunities, in the building of autonomous and driver-assisted systems. As a primary feature and solution most likely to be used by customers, it also becomes one that carmakers are most likely to invest in when designing newer car models, regardless of larger timelines for fully-autonomous systems. So beefing up Qualcomm’s capabilities and product range in this area is a logical next step.

“We have been investing in V2X research, development and deployment since 2017 and believe that as the automotive market matures, a standalone V2X safety architecture will be needed for enhanced road user safety, as well as smart transportation systems,” said Nakul Duggal, senior vice president & GM, automotive, Qualcomm Technologies, in a statement. “We share Autotalks’ decades-long experience and commitment to build V2X technologies and products with a focus on solving real-world road user safety challenges. We look forward to working together to deliver global V2X solutions that will help accelerate time-to-market and enable mass market adoption of this very important safety technology.”

“It has been our mission to revolutionize safety for the transportation and automotive industry through our V2X solutions,” added Hagai Zyss, CEO of Autotalks. “We are confident that by combining our knowledge and expertise, we will not only deliver strong V2X products that will enhance transportation efficiency and safety for road users but will accelerate widespread adoption of V2X. We look forward to serving the auto industry together with Qualcomm and to bring the best technologies to market.”

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A reusable experimental spacecraft on Monday returned to its landing site in northwest China after 276 days in orbit.

The uncrewed mission—led by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC)—ended this week, as planned, at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency(Opens in a new window).

"The success of the experiment marks an important breakthrough in China's research on reusable spacecraft technologies," Xinhua reported. "Which will provide more convenient and affordable round-trip methods for the peaceful use of space in the future."

Considering China's highly classified approach to its experimental rocket, it's no surprise there are currently no public details about the type of spacecraft, its flight altitude and orbital path, or what technologies were tested following a launch in early August 2022(Opens in a new window) from the Gobi Desert. Images of the ship, which lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center atop a Long March 2F rocket last autumn, have not yet been released.

Once in low Earth orbit, the capsule released into orbit a small satellite(Opens in a new window), US Space Force tracking data revealed last year. The object reportedly operated in close proximity to the spacecraft,b ut it's unclear what the item is—perhaps a spaceplane monitor or service module—and whether it, too, returned to Earth.

China, like the US and other space-faring nations, is testing reusable technology as a more convenient and inexpensive way to visit the solar system. But unlike most other countries, China is staying tight-lipped about its extraterrestrial experiment.

In a mission that was also largely kept under wraps, another, possibly similar spacecraft flew in 2021 to the edge of the cosmos and back on the same day, Reuters reports(Opens in a new window), adding that it landed on Earth "horizontally."

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Believe it or not, they get lighter. USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of your data are stored on transistors.

When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge.

To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams.

This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight.

However, you would need to weigh more USB drives than exist on the planet together at once before the difference in weight became easily measurable.

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 Vint Cerf, the recipient of the 2023 IEEE Medal of Honor for “co-creating the Internet architecture and providing sustained leadership in its phenomenal growth in becoming society’s critical infrastructure,” didn’t have a perfect view of the Internet’s future. In hindsight, there are a few things he admits he got wrong. Here some of those mistakes, as recently told to IEEE Spectrum:

1) “I thought 32 bits ought to be enough for Internet addresses.”

“And of course,” he says, “everybody laughs and says, ‘You idiot, why didn’t you use 128-bit addresses?’ The answer is that, back in 1973, people would’ve said, ‘You’re crazy if you think you need 3.4 times 10 to the 38th addresses to do an experiment that you aren’t sure is going to work.’ So that was a mistake, although I don’t think at the time that I would have been able to sell 128.”

2) “I didn’t pay enough attention to security.”

“Before public-key cryptography came around, key distribution was a really messy manual process,” Cerf says. “It was awful, and it didn’t scale. So that’s why I didn’t try to push that into the Internet. And by the time they did implement the RSA algorithm, I was well on my way to freezing the protocol, so I didn’t push the crypto stuff. I still don’t regret that, because graduate students, who were largely the people building and using the Internet, would be the last cohort of people I would rely on to maintain key discipline, though there are times when I wish we had put more end-to-end security in the system to begin with.”

3) “I didn’t really appreciate the implications of the World Wide Web.”

“That is,” Cerf says, “I didn’t expect the avalanche of content that went onto the Internet once the Web was made available. And what happened as a result of that avalanche is that we had to invent search engines in order to find stuff, because there was so much of it. I absolutely did not predict that search engines would be needed.”

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Years ago, HDDs with spinning disks were common. They are large in capacity but really slow. To resolve that SSDs were invented.

SSDs had a simple idea. Instead of using spinning disks, SSDs use non-moving parts called NAND memory chips installed on a circuit board. However, SSDs are more expensive to make and come in smaller sizes due to the limitations of a NAND memory chips that go inside them.

While a lot of efforts were made to increase the size of NAND chips, like introduction of MLC, TLC and now even QLC, there are limitations to how further you can go with it.

This is when 3D stacking of NAND chips was invented. It allowed RAM manufacturers to stack NAND chips on top of each other.

Not in few numbers or dozens. But in a couple of hundreds or more. For example, Micron is making 232-Layer NAND memory chips. This is allowing SSD makers to increase the size of SSDs while keeping the costs in check.

Now one company asked itself. Why not try this 3D stacking in RAM chips too.

3D NAND-like DRAM

NEO Semiconductor has announced that it has achieved a breakthrough in 3D stacking of RAM chips. Named 3D X-DRAM, the company calls it the “World’s First 3D NAND-like DRAM”.

It says that it’s a first-of-its-kind 3D NAND-like DRAM cell array structure based on capacitor-less floating body cell technology. It further says that 3D X-DRAM can be manufactured using 3D NAND like manufacturing process. The company claims that the 3D X-DRAM uses just one mask to define the bit line holes and form the cell structure inside the holes.

NEO Semiconductor says that based on their estimates, they expect each RAM chip to have 230 layers, with an ability to reach 128 Gb (16 GB) in density, which it claims is 8 times more than what is currently available. Not only that, it expects these chips to reach 1Tb (125 GB) in capacity in 2030s.

For the record, Samsung uses 16Gb (2GB) RAM chips, with 32Gb (4GB) RAM chips expected to be available soon. So 128 Gb RAM chips are great. With ability to reach 1Tb (125GB), RAMs can be massive in capacities.

That means, if a RAM company puts 8 chips on a RAM, it can easily make a RAM stick with 1TB capacity. Take that to 16 chips per RAM stick, then it becomes 2TB.

We expect that these RAM chips with such a high density will mean that RAM sticks will require active fan cooling. Just like some upcoming PCIe 5.0 SSDs do.

NEO Semiconductor has announced that it will showcase this new tech on 9th August this year, during the Flash Memory Summit.

Conclusion

3D stacking of RAM chips is really a welcome innovation.

But we don’t know if and when this tech will actually be physically made available. However, it is possible that all other RAM chip companies could be working on something similar too.

So RAM users are in for more fun. Who knows, Chrome might actually run slightly faster using all that extra RAM available.

New 3D Stacked Tech Promises RAM Sizes Above 1TB And More

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google wants to move away from the traditional list of website links that are normally displayed after a search inquiry. Instead, they want to incorporate features like showing short videos, similar to social media outlets like TikTok and Instagram.

Indeed, the article says that back in July 2022. Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan stated that 40 percent of young people use those social networks when they want to find restaurants. Google obviously wants those people to search for that kind of content on its platform.

The article says that Google might also link more to online forum discussions in future search results and will also add chatbot AI features like Bard to its search engine. Microsoft has already done that, incorporating Bing Chat in its Bing search engine.

It will be interesting to see how Google can remake its Search results, while at the same time not getting rid of the more traditional web links that many sites are depended on for traffic and income.

Google Search reportedly is getting a makeover with more videos, forum links, and AI chat

Hogwarts Legacy is not just any other game. It’s a game set in the Harry Potter universe. This is probably why it is one of the biggest game launches of this year, if not in years.

At it’s release, the reviewers were all praise for the game. Not only that, it was also among the top-selling games on Steam and also top-selling games in terms of physical sales in the UK. So much so that it has broken all the sales records.

Now it seems that the game has crossed a big sale milestone.

Crosses $1 Billion In Sales

In the 1Q23 earnings report (PDF) released by Warner Bros., they have announced some things which are really interesting.

First, it reveals that the Hogwarts Legacy game has crossed over $1 billion in retail sales. Second, it reveals that it’s the best-selling game year for the company till date. Quoting them:

The Q1 launch of Hogwarts Legacy was the largest release of all time for Warner Bros. Games and is the best selling game year-to-date with over $1 billion in retail sales.

To understand how big this is, one needs to understand this statement they gave in the earnings report:

Content revenue decreased 8% ex-FX, as higher games revenue from the release of Hogwarts Legacy was more than offset by lower TV licensing, theatrical film rental, and to a lesser extent, home entertainment revenues.

In other words, unless we are misreading something, Hogwarts Legacy is literally floating the current quarter earnings of Warner Bros. Otherwise, without the game, the company would have done even worse.

Imagine, a video game running a show of a such a big entertainment company. We haven’t heard anything like that before.

Talking in terms of pure sale, something that the above earnings report PDF isn’t mentioning. VideoGamesChronicle (VGC) says that the game has crossed 15 million in total copies sold. Not a small number either.

It’s important to mention that the game was released on previous-gen consoles, that is PS4 and Xbox One, only today (5th May). So going forward, expect the sales to go even higher.

Performance Issues

Just like any other AAA game release these days, Hogwarts Legacy isn’t without its set of performance issues. When TechPowerUp reviewed the game, they found that the game consumed a huge amount of graphics card memory (VRAM).

The game was using almost 15GB VRAM at 4K when ray tracing was enabled. However, the bigger problem was that the was game consuming 9GB VRAM at 900p and 10GB VRAM at 1080p.

On 8th March, the developers had released a huge update patch fix. One important fix was:

Improve VRAM usage, especially for video cards with reduced memory.

However, some people on Reddit had reported performance issues when using this patch. User comments on that post mention that disabling depth of field in the game settings could fix those issues. Though we cannot confirm it ourselves.

On 4th May, the developers have released another huge update with a lot of fixes. However, CapFrameX has mentioned on Twitter that this patch, in fact, reduces performance of the game, not the other way around.

Not only him, MxBenchmarkPC on YouTube who has compared previous patch and newer patch shows the same:

This is concerning. While yes, the patch seems to add a lot of things which could affect the game performance, we hope that the developers do something about it.

Closing Words

Hogwarts Legacy is a great game. It has broken many sale records. In fact, it’s one of the best-selling games for the company ever.

However, while the developers behind the game are trying a lot to fix gameplay performance issues, they need to do a lot more about it.

Hogwarts Legacy Crosses Over $1 Billion In Sales

Edge goes down.

The biggest story of this week is Statcounter's latest browser report. According to the company, Microsoft Edge is no longer world's second desktop browser. In April 2023, Edge lost its place to Safari, the only non-cross-platform mainstream browser.

Some users may say the decline is well-deserved since Microsoft continues pushing user-hostile practices. Numerous reports indicate that the latest cumulative updates for Windows 10 and 11 are forcing customers to switch to Edge. Also, Outlook and Teams will soon open all links in Microsoft Edge, regardless of your default browser. Yikes!

Windows 11 goes up, but not without problems.

Unlike Edge, Windows 11 shows no signs of stopping or declining—both Statcounter and Steam say Windows 11 continues its steady rise. 23% of all Windows PCs already run Microsoft's latest OS; on the gaming side, about 33% of Steam users have upgraded from Windows 10 to 11.

However, every rose has its thorn—some Windows 11-related news this week was not-so-positive. For starters, a popular app for debloating the OS got kicked out of the Microsoft Store allegedly due to an invalid certificate. The developer said the app has everything it needs to remain in the Microsoft Store and called the latter "a tragedy."

Another head-scratching story last week involved Windows 11's hopelessly broken "game-changing" feature. Many users noticed that the Spotify integration Panos Panay hyped so much in 2021 no longer works and returns a blank login screen whenever you try to connect to Spotify. Microsoft has confirmed that it is working on resolving the problem, but the service remains inoperable for almost three months.

Microsoft also confirmed a new known issue in Windows 11 22H2. The company says users may experience issues with speech recognition when using specific languages. Fortunately, the problem affects only two languages, and it will get a fix soon. On a slightly puzzling side, Microsoft allegedly reduced Windows 11's OOBE quality—it now plays at 30FPS instead of 60FPS, and no one knows why.

Mouth-watering concepts.

Feast your eyes on these two fantastic Windows concepts. One imagines Windows "12" with a highly-customizable taskbar to please everyone and another imagines what could Windows 11 Mobile look like had Microsoft not abandoned its mobile OS in 2017.
Dev Channel

Let's get to app updates, fresh Windows and Xbox Insider builds, and more. Windows Insiders received a build in almost every channel this week: 25357 in Canary, 23451 in Dev, and 22621/4.1690 in Beta. In addition to features and changes mentioned in the official release notes (you might not like some of them), those builds have several hidden improvements you can enable with our favorite ViVeTool app:

•     Notable improvements for tab management in File Explorer
•     An iOS-like widget picker
•     A much-better virtual desktop experience with restored animations and desktop indicators

Speaking of widgets, a new report emerged last week, spilling the beans on Microsoft's plans to finally let Windows 11 users place widgets on the desktop. It is the most-requested widget-related change, and Microsoft is finally on track to deliver it.

Here are app updates from the last week:

•     Edge 113 in the Stable Channel
•     UUP Media Converter now lets you download Canary builds
•     New virtual backgrounds for Microsoft Teams
•     Windows Photos app received a feature Microsoft removed earlier (and more)
•     Xbox app for Windows with several game library improvements
•     A major update for Microsoft Lists with UX optimizations and double the speed
•     A revamped Microsoft OneDrive for Work and School

Finally, last week, Microsoft launched community voting for the best Microsoft Store apps in 2023. The voting is now over, so stand by for the results.

On the Xbox side of Microsoft's Insider program, gamers received new fixes and improvements in Beta, Delta, and Omega Rings. Besides, Microsoft released a refined home experience for Alpha, Alpha Skip-Ahead insiders, and it features a simplified layout with more emphasis on users' backgrounds.

Games

Kicking off the gaming section, check out John Callaham's look back at Wolfenstein 3D, which turned 31 years old. Hogwarts Legacy arrived on the previous-gen consoles with a dedicated Arachnophobia Mode, and a Phil Spencer interview reveals details about the disappointing Redfall (as some say Redfell) launch.

This week also offered plenty of freebies for gamers:

•     Four games in the weekly Free Play Days program on Xbox
•     A 7-day trail for non-Prime members on Amazon Lune (now runs Fortnite)
•     Massive Deals with Gold discounts on Bioshock, Guardians of the Galaxy, and other games

Other notable gaming news includes a new referral trial program that lets you give your friends a 14-day Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass trial. After accepting an invitation, they will be able to play hundreds of games, plus several titles coming later this month.

Finally, Microsoft announced a new custom controller in partnership with the OPI nail brand, and Xbox Game Showcase and Starfield Direct dates.

Windows Security

During the last seven days, Microsoft released many security updates. A new anti-malware package for Windows images is now available, allowing configuring WIM and VHD formats with the latest security definitions. Also, Microsoft published new Defender guides to help clients enable key security features on their systems.

Another notable change for IT admins this week is email notifications about known Windows issues. Administrators can now receive an email whenever Microsoft details a new known problem in its operating system and apply necessary changes or mitigations much faster.

Reviews

This week, Steven Parker published a review of the GEEKOM Mini IT12, a mini PC powered by Intel's 12th gen processors. It turned out to be a solid, well-built, and powerful device with a few small nuances. Be sure to check out the review via this link.

Trivia

As usual, during this week, we had several editorials and trivia articles. An article by Usama Jawad detailed why Windows 10 will turn into Windows 7 in terms of market share and users' unwillingness to move on. John Callaham's "look back" article revives the memories of the first Microsoft Mouse released nearly 40 years ago (great read in light of the news about Microsoft stopping its mice and keyboard production).

Also, check out Aditya Tiwari's brief history of Microsoft-owned LinkedIn as it turned 20 years old.

And that is it for this week's recap—plenty of Microsoft news both good and not-so-much. And with the annual Microsoft Build conference upon us, I am looking forward to what this month will soon bring us. If you think I missed some interesting stories, share them in the comments section. Also, you can always find more Microsoft news under the "Microsoft" tag here on Neowin.

If you like weekly recaps like this, be sure to subscribe to Neowin Newsletter. It will deliver the most interesting news directly to your inbox. Previous Microsoft Weekly roundups are available via this link.

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Discord’s username change is causing discord

You know you feel old when you remember playing a game for the first time as if it were yesterday, and then you get reminded that it was actually released 31 years ago this week. On May 5, 1992, developer id Software released Wolfenstein 3D for Windows DOS PCs, and the gaming world was truly never the same again.

Many have said that this game was not the first true first-person shooter. Indeed, there were many games before Wolfenstein 3D that were played from a first-person perspective. However, the gameplay design and graphics that the core four team members (Adrian Carmack, John Carmack, Tom Hall, and John Romero) from id Software created with this game set the tone for all FPS games going forward. In his book Masters of Doom, writer David Kushner mentions that Kevin Cloud was brought in later as an assistant artist. Also, Bobby Prince came up with the audio effects for the game.

As Romero mentioned in a Twitter post this week, the initial shareware version of the game was developed in just four months. That's pretty remarkable for a game that pretty much changed the entire gaming industry. I remember first encountering it at my community college's computer lab and being utterly blown away at how "realistic" it looked. I felt at the time I was really in these corridors and killing Nazis.

31 years later, Wolfenstein 3D may not look as photo-realistic as, for example, the recent trailer for the game Unrecord. However, it still is a ton of fun to play. Part of that is the fast action generated by John Carmack's game engine and the level designs from John Romero and Tom Hall. However, the artwork by Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud and others is truly a standout. Even with the sprite artwork, the look of the Nazi soldiers and their bosses, and the textures, on the corridors still hold up after all this time.

It's also part of the reason why this game remains a controversial one. The Nazi imagery and violent content are part of the reason why Wolfenstein 3D was banned in Germany for many years. In 2018, the government's rating board finally started lifting some restrictions on Nazi images in games. In 2019, Germany finally lifted its ban on selling Wolfenstein 3D. However, even with its sprite artwork, it's still rated "M" by the US ESRB ratings board.

In the years since the release of the game, there have been a number of Wolfenstein follow-up games that have had various degrees of success, both critically and in sales. The most recent games in the franchise have been made by MachineGames. including Wolfenstein: The New Order, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and Wolfenstein Youngblood. It's been a few years since Youngblood's release in 2019, so perhaps it's time for a new game in the franchise to be revealed in the near future. Perhaps the series should go back to the original World War II setting, instead of the alternate timeline that was the setting for the MachineGames Wolfenstein titles.

In the meantime, you can get the original Wolfenstein 3D on Microsoft's PC Game Pass or by itself for $4.99. It's a little bit hard to believe that when Microsoft bought Bethesda Softworks, it also bought the rights to Wolfenstein 3D. Yes, the company that came up with Windows, Word, and Clippy now controls the rights to one of the most influential games of all time.

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Wolfenstein 3D turned 31 years old this week, and it's still a fun and controversial game

Starlink first came into existence in 2015, however, it wasn't until 2019 that SpaceX started deploying its first lot of low-orbit satellites that power the internet service. The company has plans to orbit 12,000 such satellites which would be enough to cover the entire planet. SpaceX already crossed the count of 4,000 Starlink satellites after it deployed 56 new ones using a Falcon 9 rocket earlier this week.

The satellite internet currently costs $120/mo for the service with speeds up to 100Mbps and a $599 one-time fee for the hardware that's required to catch the signal. It is currently available in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, and covers a major chunk of South America. While SpaceX is waiting for regulatory approval in India, it has plans to expand the service to some African countries, including Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique in 2023.

In addition to stationary locations like homes, its satellite internet has also been used in commercial flights and large moving vehicles such as RVs and campers. Earlier this year, Starlink invited some users to try out a $200/mo global roaming service.

Starlink now has more than 1.5 million subscribers globally

Besides the b-ok.lat, booksc.me, and b-ok.as (first spotted by TorrentFreak), the list of domains taken down in this new round of seizures also includes singlelogin.me, which was previously the main URL used for logging in and registering new accounts.

"Unfortunately, one of our primary login domains was seized today. Therefore, we recommend using the domain singlelogin.re to log in to your account, as well as to register. Please share this domain with others," Z-Library said in a Telegram post. 

"You can also restore access to your account or create a new one using our magic email address. Just send any letter from your mailbox to this email blackbox@zlib.se, and you will receive your personal access to Z-Library in the auto-generated letter within 3–5 minutes."

While the site's main login panel has been taken down, it remains available on the Tor network and through an alternative I2P address.

"We apologize for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience. P.S. TOR and 12P networks are still accessible," Z-Library added.

Z-Library's seized domains now display a banner indicating that the FBI seized them in accordance with a warrant issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 981(b) and 21 U.S.C. § 853(f) by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Z-Library domain seizure banner (BleepingComputer)

 

Z-Library had previously faced a series of legal troubles, culminating last year with authorities seizing its domains and arresting two alleged operators in Argentina.

Previous copyright complaints against Z-Library have led to legal action that eventually compelled it to seize its domains back in 2015 and enforce domain blockages and DMCA notices in 2021 in the U.S. and France.

Following a string of law enforcement actions, two Russian nationals were arrested and charged on suspicion of operating the service in November 2022, weeks after the FBI seized Z-Library's clear web domains.

While the service continued operating after the domain takedowns on the Tor and I2P networks, Z-library announced in mid-February clearnet sites but, this time, using personalized domains registered on different registrars worldwide.

As expected, the secret personal domains for each user didn't stop the FBI from t taking down the main login portal available at singlelogin.me.

It remains to be seen if more domain seizures will follow, given that Z-Library still operates multiple clearnet domains. However, it's obvious that U.S. law enforcement agencies are determined to shut down Z-Library and find the people running it.

Z-Library provides free access to a vast database of almost 12 million books and 84 million articles, making it one of the most popular websites on the internet.

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