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Search and rescue operations often take place in areas where human movement is difficult due to extreme weather, rough terrain, and hazardous conditions such as smoke and dust. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) hope to send bat-inspired robots on these missions instead of humans. WPI professor Nitin J. Sanket and his team have developed a small flying robot that fits in the palm of your hand and uses ultrasound waves like a bat. These robots use AI-powered software to remove noise from the ultrasound signals collected by the devices, allowing them to spot obstacles within a two-meter radius. “Search…
While people around the world benefit from the aurora borealis from our active sun, recent solar activity has disappointed Mars exploration fans. Due to inclement weather in space, they will now have to wait for the two Red Planet-bound spacecraft to be launched aboard Blue Origin rockets.NASA’s twin-engine ESCAPADE spacecraft was scheduled to fly to Mars as early as this afternoon (November 12), but due to high solar activity, the mission will have to wait until an undetermined date, Blue Origin officials said in a post on social platform X. The mission has already been delayed several times from its…
If you had any doubts about whether data centers are driving the global economy, a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) should put them to rest. This year, the world will spend $580 billion on data centers, $40 billion more than it will spend on new oil supplies. “This point of comparison provides a clear indicator of the changing nature of today’s highly digitalized economy,” the agency said in its report. Power consumption by AI data centers is expected to increase five times by the end of the decade, and the total power used by all data centers…
A group of Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to several state governors, including Arizona, California, Colorado and Wisconsin, warning that their states are inadvertently sharing driver data with federal immigration authorities. The letter, first reported by Reuters, told governors that each state provides U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies with “fleet self-service access to the personal data of all residents” through a nonprofit called the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (Nlets), which is managed by state law enforcement agencies. Nlets facilitate the sharing of state residents’ personal data (in this case, driver’s license data) between state,…
Anthropic on Wednesday announced an ambitious new data center partnership with UK-based neocloud provider Fluidstack, committing $50 billion to build facilities across the United States to meet growing computing needs. The data centers will be located in Texas and New York and are expected to be operational throughout 2026. The company described these sites as “custom-built for Anthropic with a focus on maximizing workload efficiency.” “We are moving closer to AI that will accelerate scientific discovery and help solve complex problems in ways never before possible,” Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei (pictured above) said in a statement. “To realize…
November 12, 2025Ravi LakshmananCybercrime/Malware Google has filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) against China-based hackers behind a massive phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform called Lighthouse that has captivated more than 1 million users in 120 countries. PhaaS kits are used to run large-scale SMS phishing attacks that exploit trusted brands like E-ZPass and USPS, using decoys related to fake tolls and package deliveries to entice people to click on links and steal people’s financial information. Although the scam itself is very simple, the scale of the industry has allowed more than…
Airbnb is piloting a service with Instacart that lets guests order groceries directly through the Airbnb app before and during their stay, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday. “We regularly test new product updates, categories, and initiatives to provide our community with the best experience possible,” an Airbnb spokesperson said in an email. “As part of this, we will be piloting groceries with Instacart in select markets across the U.S. starting in January, following the launch of our Airbnb service earlier this year.” The new kitchen stocking service is available to select hosts with qualifying listings in Phoenix, Orlando…
November 12, 2025Ravi LakshmananNetwork security/zero day Amazon’s threat intelligence team revealed Wednesday that it observed sophisticated threat actors exploiting two then-current zero-day security flaws in Cisco Identity Service Engine (ISE) and Citrix NetScaler ADC products as part of an attack aimed at delivering custom malware. “This discovery highlights a trend in threat actors’ focus on critical identity and network access control infrastructure, the systems that enterprises rely on to enforce security policies and manage authentication across networks,” CJ Moses, CISO at Amazon Integrated Security, said in a report shared with The Hacker News. This attack was alerted to by the…
Ancient DNA has revealed a mysterious indigenous group that lived in central Argentina for nearly 8,500 years, a new genetic study reports.This newly discovered “deep lineage” of people lived at the same time as two other indigenous lineages in central Argentina, but had little interaction with other indigenous lineages in the region, the researchers found.In the study, published Nov. 5 in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers analyzed 238 genomes from ancient skeletons of people who lived in what is now Argentina 10,000 years ago. Previous research has shown that distinct populations exist in the central Andes, Amazon,…
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving to simplify its rules for reporting PFAS, with the goal of striking a balance between protecting public health and reducing the burden on businesses. The agency’s new proposal under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) aims to make reporting requirements more practical, eliminate duplicate submissions, and focus on collecting the most important data on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), commonly known as the “forever chemicals.” With this approach, EPA hopes to continue to track the environmental and health impacts of these persistent chemicals while facilitating compliance for manufacturers and importers. Understand PFAS…