fidzu : computers

Like rocks, egg shells can trap isotopes, allowing us to use them to date samples.

21 Feb 2026 1:00pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: You wear them at work, you wear them at play, you wear them to relax. You may even get sweaty in them at the gym. But an investigation into headphones has found every single pair tested contained substances hazardous to human health, including chemicals that can cause cancer, neurodevelopmental problems and the feminization of males. [...] Researchers say that while individual doses from particular sources may be low, a "cocktail effect" of daily, multi-source exposure nevertheless poses potentially severe long-term risks to health. [...] Researchers bought 81 pairs of in-ear and over-ear headphones, either on the market in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria, or from the online marketplaces Shein and Temu, and took them for laboratory analysis, testing for a range of harmful chemicals. "Hazardous substances were detected in every product tested," they said. Bisphenol A (BPA) appeared in 98% of samples, and its substitute, bisphenol S (BPS), was found in more than three-quarters. Synthetic chemicals used to stiffen plastic, BPA and BPS mimic the action of oestrogen inside organisms, causing a range of adverse effects including the feminization of males, early onset puberty in girls, and cancer. Previous studies have shown that bisphenols can migrate from synthetic materials into sweat, and that they can be absorbed through the skin. "Given the prolonged skin contact associated with headphone use, dermal exposure represents a relevant pathway, and it is reasonable to assume that similar migration of BPA and its substitutes may occur from headphone components directly to the user's skin," the researchers said. Also found in the headphones tested were phthalates, potent reproductive toxins that can impair fertility; chlorinated paraffins, which have been linked to liver and kidney damage; and brominated and organophosphate flame retardants, which have similar endocrine disrupting properties to bisphenols. Most were, however, found in only trace quantities.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

21 Feb 2026 1:00pm GMT

A new book argues that tests might reshape human diversity even if they don't work.

21 Feb 2026 12:00pm GMT

"Noncitizens" lost after-hours access to a NIST lab last month.

21 Feb 2026 11:31am GMT

OpenAI is reportedly developing its first consumer hardware product: a $200-$300 smart speaker with a built-in camera capable of recognizing "items on a nearby table or conversations people are having in the vicinity." It's also said to feature Face ID-style authentication for purchases. The Verge reports: In addition to the smart speaker, OpenAI is "possibly" working on smart glasses and a smart lamp, The Information reports. (Apple may also be working on a smart lamp.) But OpenAI's glasses might not hit mass production until 2028, and while OpenAI has made prototypes of gadgets like the smart lamp, The Information says it's "unclear" if they'll be released and that OpenAI's devices plans are in early stages.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

21 Feb 2026 10:00am GMT

Researchers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility are advancing Accelerator-Driven Systems (ADS) that use high-energy proton beams to transmute long-lived nuclear waste into shorter-lived isotopes. "The process also generates significant heat, which can be harnessed to produce additional electricity for the grid," reports Interesting Engineering. The projects are supported by $8.17 million in grants from the Department of Energy's NEWTON (Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now) program. From the report: The researchers are developing ADS technology. This system uses a particle accelerator to fire high-energy protons at a target (such as liquid mercury), triggering a process called "spallation." This releases a flood of neutrons that interact with unwanted, long-lived isotopes in nuclear waste. The technology can effectively "burn" the most hazardous components of the waste by transmuting these elements. While unprocessed fuel remains dangerous for approximately 100,000 years, partitioning and recycling via ADS can reduce that window to just 300 years. [...] To make ADS economically viability, Jefferson Lab is tackling two primary technical hurdles: efficiency and power. Traditional particle accelerators require massive, expensive cryogenic cooling systems to reach superconducting temperatures. Jefferson Lab is pioneering a more cost-effective approach by coating the interior of pure niobium cavities with tin. These niobium-tin cavities can operate at higher temperatures, allowing for the use of standard commercial cooling units rather than custom, large-scale cryogenic plants. The team is also developing spoke cavities, which is a complex design intended to drive even higher efficiency in neutron spallation. The second project focuses on the power source behind the beam. Researchers are adapting the magnetron -- the same component that powers microwave ovens -- to provide the 10 megawatts of power required for ADS. The primary challenge is that the energy frequency must match the accelerator cavity precisely at 805 Megahertz. In collaboration with Stellant Systems, researchers are prototyping advanced magnetrons that can be combined to reach the necessary high-power thresholds with maximum efficiency. The NEWTON program aims to enable the recycling of the entire US commercial nuclear fuel stockpile within the next 30 years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

21 Feb 2026 7:00am GMT

As if keeping track of whatever counts as a release schedule for Windows wasn't complicated enough - don't lie, you don't know when that feature they announced is actually being released either - Microsoft is making everything even more complicated. Soon, Microsoft will be releasing Windows 11 26H1, but you most likely won't be getting it because it's strictly limited to devices with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 Series processors. The only way to get this version of Windows is to go out and buy a device with a Snapdragon X2 Series processor. Windows 11 26H1 will not be made available to any other Windows 11 users, so nobody will be able to upgrade to it. Furthermore, users of Windows 11 26H1 will not be able to update to the "feature update" for users of Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2, the regular Windows versions, planned for late 2026. Instead, Microsoft promises there will be an upgrade path for 26H1 users in a "future" release of Windows. Why? Devices running Windows 11, version 26H1 will not be able to update to the next annual feature update in the second half of 2026. This is because Windows 11, version 26H1 is based on a different Windows core than Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2, and the upcoming feature update. These devices will have a path to update in a future Windows release. ↫ AriaUpdated at the Windows IT Pro Blog The same thing happened when Qualcomm releases its first round of Snapdragon processors for Windows, as Windows 24H2 was also tied to this specific platform. It seems Microsoft is forced to have entirely separate and partially incompatible codebases just to support Snapdragon processors, which must be a major pain in the ass to deal with. Considering Windows on ARM hasn't exactly been a smashing success, one may wonder how long Microsoft remains willing to make such exceptions for a singular chip.

19 Feb 2026 9:27pm GMT

So vi only has one level of undo, which is simply no longer fit for the times we live in now, and also wholly unnecessary given even the least powerful devices that might need to run vi probably have more than enough resources to give at least a few more levels of undo. What I didn't know, however, is that vi's limited undo behaviour is actually part of POSIX, and for full compliance, you're going to need it. As Chris Siebenmann notes, vim and its derivatives ignore this POSIX requirement and implement multiple levels of undo in the obviously correct way. What about nvi, the default on the BSD variants? I didn't know this, but it has a convoluted workaround to both maintain POSIX compatibility and offer multiple levels of undo, and it's definitely something. Nvi has opted to remain POSIX compliant and operate in the traditional vi way, while still supporting multi-level undo. To get multi-level undo in nvi, you extend the first 'u' with '.' commands, so 'u..' undoes the most recent three changes. The 'u' command can be extended with '.' in either of its modes (undo'ing or redo'ing), so 'u..u..' is a no-op. The '.' operation doesn't appear to take a count in nvi, so there is no way to do multiple undos (or redos) in one action; you have to step through them by hand. I'm not sure how nvi reacts if you want do things like move your cursor position during an undo or redo sequence (my limited testing suggests that it can perturb the sequence, so that '.' now doesn't continue undoing or redoing the way vim will continue if you use 'u' or Ctrl-r again). ↫ Chris Siebenmann Siebenmann lists a few other implementations and how they work with undo, and it's interesting to see how all of them try to solve the problem in slightly different ways.

19 Feb 2026 1:06am GMT

F9 is an L4-inspired microkernel designed for ARM Cortex-M, targeting real-time embedded systems with hard determinism requirements. It implements the fundamental microkernel principles-address spaces, threads, and IPC, while adding advanced features from industrial RTOSes. ↫ F9 kernel GitHub page For once, not written in Rust, and comes with both an L4-style native API and a userspace POSIX API, and there's a ton of documentation to get you started.

18 Feb 2026 10:08pm GMT

On Friday, July 18th, 2025, the Arch Linux team was notified that three AUR packages had been uploaded that contained malware. A few maintainers including myself took care of deleting these packages, removing all traces of the malicious code, and protecting against future malicious uploads.

30 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT

While starting this post I realized I have been maintaining personal infrastructure for over a decade! Most of the things I've self-hosted is been for personal uses. Email server, a blog, an IRC server, image hosting, RSS reader and so on. All of these things has all been a bit all over the place and never properly streamlined. Some has been in containers, some has just been flat files with a nginx service in front and some has been a random installed Debian package from somewhere I just forgot.

19 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT

In the recent blog post on the work funded by Sovereign Tech Fund (STF), we provided an overview of the "File Hierarchy for the Verification of OS Artifacts" (VOA) and the voa project as its reference implementation. VOA is a generic framework for verifying any kind of distribution artifacts (i.e. files) using arbitrary signature verification technologies. The voa CLI ⌨️ The voa project offers the voa(1) command line interface (CLI) which makes use of the voa(5) configuration file format for technology backends. It is recommended to read the respective man pages to get …

11 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT