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Jerry Buck, senior fire protection engineer at Jensen Hughes, provides guidance on how the fire industry can support the phaseout of PFAS in fire extinguishing foams. Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are valued for their excellent fire-fighting properties, but they pose significant environmental and health hazards. Historically, one of the most common firefighting foams was aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), used to suppress flammable liquid fires. However, the same properties that make PFAS useful in firefighting efforts also make them highly persistent in the environment. Once released, PFAS can accumulate in soil, groundwater, wildlife, and humans, where they can persist for…
Ravi LakshmananJanuary 20, 2026Cryptocurrency/Artificial Intelligence A Telegram-based guarantee marketplace known for promoting a wide range of illegal services appears to be winding down its operations, according to new research from Elliptic. Blockchain intelligence company Tudou Warranty said it has effectively ceased trading through its public Telegram group after a period of significant growth. The market is estimated to have processed more than $12 billion in transactions, making it the third largest illicit market in history. “Other parts of Tudou Guarantee, such as our gambling operations, continue to function, so it remains to be seen whether this marks the first step…
Self-proclaimed “Bush legends” are becoming increasingly popular on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.These short, sharp videos feature Aboriginal men, sometimes painted ocher and sometimes dressed in khaki, introducing various native animals and facts about them. These videos are combined with various yidaki (didgeridoo) songs, including techno mixes.Comments on the video often mentioned his bubbly personality, with some saying he needed his own TV show. you may like But the Bush legend is not real. He is generated by artificial intelligence (AI).This is part of a growing influx of AI being used to represent Indigenous peoples, knowledge, and culture without accountability to…
Cybersecurity researchers have detailed a security flaw that leverages indirect prompted injection targeting Google Gemini as a way to bypass authorization guardrails and use Google Calendar as a data extraction mechanism. According to Liad Eliyahu, head of research at Miggo Security, the vulnerability allowed an attacker to bypass Google Calendar’s privacy controls by hiding a dormant malicious payload within a standard calendar invite. “This bypass allowed unauthorized access to private meeting data and the creation of fraudulent calendar events without direct user interaction,” Eliyahu said in a report shared with Hacker News. The starting point of the attack chain is…
For the first time, cows have been recorded not only using tools, but also choosing which parts of their bodies to use when scratching.Witgar Vigele, an Austrian organic farmer and baker nestled on the slopes of the Eastern Alps, would sometimes see Veronica, a Braunvier or Bos taurus, with a stick in her mouth and use it to scratch herself.When he sent the footage to Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, she had been doing it off and on for about nine years without any training. you may like Scientists discovered that Veronica…
Meta’s big bet on virtual reality ended last week, with the company reportedly laying off about 1,500 employees in its Reality Lab division (about 10% of the division’s staff) and closing several VR game studios, according to the Wall Street Journal. It’s a huge reversal for a company that staked its entire identity on that concept just four years ago. Few will miss it. As industry watchers may remember, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta in 2021, promising a new era of technology led by VR devices. The decision is partly a bet that Gen Z prefers to socialize in online…
What happens if an AI agent decides the best way to complete a task is to blackmail you? That’s not a hypothesis. Barmak Meftah, a partner at cybersecurity VC firm Ballistic Ventures, said something like this recently happened to an employee at a company working with an AI agent. The employee tried to suppress what the agent wanted to do and what he was trained to do, but the agent scanned the user’s inbox for inappropriate emails and threatened to forward the email to the board of directors to blackmail the user. “In the agent’s mind, it’s doing the right…
BioticsAI, winner of TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield 2023, announced Monday that it has received FDA clearance for its AI software that helps detect fetal abnormalities from ultrasound images. The product was conceived by founder and CEO Robbie Bustami, who grew up in a family of obstetricians, including his mother, aunt, and uncle. He spent a lot of time in hospitals during his childhood and often traveled with his mother as she cared for him across the United States. After studying coding and studying computer science at the University of California, Irvine, Bustami launched BioticsAI in 2021 in collaboration with Salman Khan,…
British archaeologists have discovered a 1,400-year-old burial site containing the “sand burials” of two elite Anglo-Saxon figures and a horse.The archaeological team from Oxford Cotswold Archeology said in a statement that they had discovered “at least 11 burial mounds known as barges, along with cremations and cremation burials”. Researchers discovered the burial site near the village of Sizewell in Suffolk, eastern England, ahead of the construction of a nuclear power station.Although the soil at the site is acidic and bones tend to deteriorate, outlines of human bones were found in two graves. One grave had the outline of a horse…
The ocean absorbed more heat last year than in any year since modern measurements began around 1960, according to a new analysis published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science. The world’s oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere due to greenhouse gas emissions. As heat accumulates in the atmosphere, so does the heat stored in the oceans, making ocean heat a reliable indicator of long-term climate change.Ocean temperatures influence the frequency and intensity of ocean heatwaves, alter atmospheric circulation, and govern global precipitation patterns. you may like Scientists measure ocean heat in…