fidzu : geek

Bruce66423 shares a report from the Guardian: New filtration technology developed by Rice University may absorb some Pfas "forever chemicals" at 100 times the rate than previously possible, which could dramatically improve pollution control and speed remediations. Researchers also say they have also found a way to destroy Pfas, though both technologies face a steep challenge in being deployed on an industrial scale. A new peer-reviewed paper details a layered double hydroxide (LDH) material made from copper and aluminum that absorbs long-chain Pfas up to 100 times faster than commonly used filtration systems. [...] [Michael Wong, director of Rice's Water Institute, a Pfas research center] said Rice's non-thermal process works by soaking up and concentrating Pfas at high levels, which makes it possible to destroy them without high temperatures. The LDH material Rice developed is a variation of similar materials previously used, but researchers replaced some aluminum atoms with copper atoms. The LDH material is positively charged and the long-chain Pfas are negatively charged, which causes the material to attract and absorb the chemicals, Wong said. [...] Pfas are virtually indestructible because their carbon atoms are bonded with fluoride, but Rice found that the bonds could be broken if the chemicals in the material were heated to 400-500C -- a relatively low temperature. The fluoride gets trapped in the LDH material and is bonded to calcium. The leftover calcium-fluoride material is safe and can be disposed of in a landfill, Wong said. The process works with some long-chain Pfas that are among the most common water pollutants, and it also absorbed some smaller Pfas that are commonplace. Wong said he is confident the material can be used to absorb a broad array of Pfas, especially if they are negatively charged. Most new Pfas elimination systems fail to work at an industrial scale. Wong said the new material has an advantage because its absorption rate is so strong, it can be used repeatedly and it is in a "drop in material," meaning it can be used with existing filtration infrastructure. That eliminates one of the major cost barriers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

24 Jan 2026 3:30am GMT

California became the first U.S. state to join the World Health Organization's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), one day after the U.S. formally exited the WHO. The Hill reports: This announcement comes just one day after the U.S.'s withdrawal from the WHO became official after nearly 80 years of membership, having been a founding member of the organization. "The Trump administration's withdrawal from WHO is a reckless decision that will hurt all Californians and Americans," [California Governor Gavin Newsom] said in a statement. "California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring. We will continue to foster partnerships across the globe and remain at the forefront of public health preparedness, including through our membership as the only state in WHO's Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

24 Jan 2026 2:02am GMT

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the Guardian: The financial campaigner James Daley has launched a 1.5 billion pound (approximately $1.5 billion) class action lawsuit against Apple over its mobile phone wallet, claiming the U.S. tech company blocked competition and charged hidden fees that ultimately harmed 50 million UK consumers. The lawsuit takes aim at Apple Pay, which they say has been the only contactless payment service available for iPhone users in Britain over the past decade. Daley, who is the founder of the advocacy group Fairer Finance, claims this situation amounted to anti-competitive behavior and allowed Apple to charge hidden fees, ultimately pushing up costs for banks that passed charges on to consumers, regardless of whether they owned an iPhone. It is the first UK legal challenge to the company's conduct in relation to Apple Pay, and takes place months after regulators like the Competition and Markets Authority and the Payments Systems Regulator began scrutinising the tech industry's digital wallet services. The case has been filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, which will now decide whether the class action case can move forward. [...] Daley's lawsuit alleges that Apple refused to give other app developers and outside businesses access to the contactless payment technology on its iPhones, which meant it could charge banks and card issuers fees on Apple Pay transactions that his lawyers say "are not in line with industry practice." The lawsuit notes that similar fees are not charged on equivalent payments on Android devices, which are built by Google. It says that the additional costs were borne by UK consumers, having been passed on through charges on a range of personal banking products ranging from current accounts, credit cards, to savings and mortgages. The lawsuit says that about 98% of consumers are exposed to banks that listed cards on Apple Pay, meaning the vast majority of the UK population may have been affected.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

24 Jan 2026 1:25am GMT

Encrypting the data stored locally on your hard drives is generally a good idea, specifically if you have use a laptop and take it with you a lot and thieves might get a hold of it. This issue becomes even more pressing if you carry sensitive data as a dissident or whistleblower and have to deal with law enforcement. Or, you know, if you're an American citizen fascist paramilitary groups like ICE doesn't like because your skin colour is too brown or whatever. Windows offers local disk encryption too, in the form of its BitLocker feature, and Microsoft suggests users store their encryption keys on Microsoft's servers. However, when you do so, these keys will be stored unencrypted, and it turns out Microsoft will happily hand them over to law enforcement. "This is private data on a private computer and they made the architectural choice to hold access to that data. They absolutely should be treating it like something that belongs to the user," said Matt Green, cryptography expert and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute. "If Apple can do it, if Google can do it, then Microsoft can do it. Microsoft is the only company that's not doing this," he added. "It's a little weird… The lesson here is that if you have access to keys, eventually law enforcement is going to come." ↫ Thomas Brewster Microsoft is choosing to store these keys in unencrypted fashion, and that of course means law enforcement is going to come knocking. With everything that's happening in the United States at the moment, the platitude of "I have nothing to hide" has lost even more of its meaning, as people - even toddlers - are being snatched from the streets and out of their homes on a daily basis by fascist paramilitaries. Even if times were better, though, Microsoft should still refrain from storing these keys unencrypted. It is entirely possible, nay, trivial to address this shortcoming, but the odds of the company fixing this while trying to suck up to the current US regime seem small. Everybody, but especially those living under totalitarian(-esque) regimes, should be taking extra care to make sure their data isn't just encrypted, but that the keys are safe as well.

23 Jan 2026 11:43pm GMT

Last year brought a wealth of new features and fixes to Firefox on Linux. Besides numerous improvements and bug fixes, I want to highlight some major achievements: HDR video playback support, reworked rendering for fractionally scaled displays, and asynchronous rendering implementation. All this progress was enabled by advances in the Wayland compositor ecosystem, with new features implemented by Mutter and KWin. ↫ Martin Stransky It's amazing how the adoption of Wayland is making it so much easier for application developers to support modern features like these. Instead of having to settle for whatever roadblocks and limitations thrown up by legacy X11 cruft, the Linux desktop can now enjoy modern features like HDR, and much more easily support features like fractional scaling. The move to Wayland, as long as it may have taken, has catapulted the Linux desktop from its '90s roots right into the modern era. It's great to see Firefox implementing improvements like these for Linux users, but of course, they come with Mozilla's push to make Firefox an "AI" browser, something few Firefox users seem to want. Luckily, the various Firefox variants like Librewolf and Waterfox will get these same features while removing all the "AI" bloat, so as long as Mozilla remains committed to Firefox for Linux - or Firefox in general - Linux users can rest safe. Sadly, I'm afraid Mozilla's massive pivot to "AI" isn't going to work out, so I have no idea how long Mozilla will be able to afford Firefox on Linux development specifically, and Firefox development generally.

23 Jan 2026 11:18pm GMT

Dense narrative deduction game tells a compellingly academia-tinged sci-fi tale.

23 Jan 2026 9:52pm GMT

Intel is allocating more of its own production to its money-making server chips.

23 Jan 2026 8:48pm GMT

Community watch groups have a playbook to keep ICE away from subscriber information.

23 Jan 2026 8:10pm GMT

Developing for Windows seems to be a bit of a nightmare, at least according to Microsoft, so they're trying to make the lives of developers easier with a new tool called winapp. The winapp CLI is specifically tailored for cross-platform frameworks and developers working outside of Visual Studio or MSBuild. Whether you are a web developer building with Electron, a C++ veteran using CMake, or a .NET, Rust or Dart developer building apps for Windows, the CLI can streamline the complexities of Windows development - from setting up your environment to packaging for distribution. This makes it significantly easier to access modern APIs - including Windows AI APIs, security features and shell integrations - directly from any toolchain. Windows development often involves managing multiple SDKs, creating and editing multiple manifests, generating certificates and navigating intricate packaging requirements. The goal of this project is to unify these tasks into a single CLI, letting you focus on building great apps rather than fighting with configuration. While the CLI is still in its early days, and there are many Windows development scenarios still in the works, we're sharing this public preview now to learn from real usage, gather feedback and feature requests, and focus our investments on the areas that matter most to developers. ↫ Nikola Metulev at the Windows Blogs For instance, run the command winapp init at the root of your project, and winapp will download the proper SDKs, create manifest files, etc., all automatically. You can also generate the correct certificates, easily create MSIX packages, and more. The tool is available through winget and npm (for Electron projects), but is still in preview, with the code available on GitHub.

23 Jan 2026 4:23pm 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

In 2024 the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) started funding work on the ALPM project, which provides a Rust-based framework for Arch Linux Package Management. Refer to the project's FAQ and mission statement to learn more about the relation to the tooling currently in use on Arch Linux. The funding has now concluded, but over the time of 15 months allowed us to create various tools and integrations that we will highlight in the following sections. We have worked on six milestones with focus on various aspects of the package management ecosystem, ranging from formalizing, parsing and writing of …

10 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT