Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the main-event-horizon department: "Researchers have created the first laboratory analog of the 'black hole bomb'," reports ScienceAlert, "a theoretical concept developed by physicists in the 1970s..."

There's no black hole involved; their experiment just simulates the "electromagnetic analogue" of the theoretical concept — the "exponential runaway amplification of spontaneously generated electromagnetic modes."

Or, as ScienceAlert puts it, "It doesn't, just to set your mind at ease, pose any danger. It consists of a rotating aluminum cylinder, placed inside layers of coils that generate magnetic fields that rotate around it, at controllable speeds."

As Roger Penrose proposed in 1971, the powerful rotational energy of a spinning black hole could be used to amplify the energy of nearby particles. Then, physicist Yakov Zel'Dovich figured out that you didn't need a black hole to see this phenomenon in action. An axially symmetrical body rotating in a resonance chamber, he figured, could produce the same energy transfer and amplification, albeit on a much smaller scale. Later work by other physicists found that, if you enclose the entire apparatus in a mirror, a positive feedback loop is generated, amplifying the energy until it explodes from the system.

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Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the working-at-scale department: Long-time Slashdot reader piojo writes: Tim Friede, Wisconsin man, has been injecting himself with snake venom for 18 years to gain protection from his pet snakes. The antibodies he developed have formed two components of a three-part antivenom, which gives partial or total protection against 18 of 19 species of venomous snakes that were tested. Notably, the antivenom is ineffective against vipers.

From Australia's public broadcaster ABC:

The team's results have been published today in the journal Cell... The new antivenom described in the study is very different to traditional antivenoms, according to Peter Kwong, a biochemist at Columbia University and one of the study's authors.

The scientists call their new antivenom "unparallel," according to the BBC, though the snake enthusiast (a former truck mechanic) had "initially wanted to build up his immunity to protect himself when handling snakes, documenting his exploits on YouTube."

The team is trying to refine the antibodies further and see if adding a fourth component could lead to total protection against elapid snake venom... "Tim's antibodies are really quite extraordinary — he taught his immune system to get this very, very broad recognition," said Professor Peter Kwong [one of the researchers at Columbia University].

In a video interview, CNN shows footage of the man inducing snake bites (calling it "a classic do-not-try-this-at-home moment"). "I have a lot of notes in Excel files," he tells CNN, "where I hit these particular windows to where I know I can boost up before a bite."

"I don't just take the bite, because that can kill you. I properly boost up, and methodically take notes, and weigh the venomes out very specifically..."

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the I'll-be-seeing-you department: America's federal government "is a veritable cosmos of information, made up of constellations of databases," warns the Atlantic. The FBI "has a facial-recognition apparatus capable of matching people against more than 640 million photos — a database made up of driver's license and passport photos, as well as mug shots. The Homeland Security department holds data "about the movements of every person who travels by air commercially". America's Drug Enforcement Administration "tracks license plates scanned on American roads." And there's also every taxpayer's finance and employment history..."
Government agencies including the IRS, the FBI, DHS, and the Department of Defense have all purchased cellphone-location data, and possibly collected them too, via secretive groups such as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. That means the government has at least some ability to map or re-create the past everyday movements of some American citizens.
But now the information at individual agencies "is being pooled together. The question is Why? And what does the administration intend to do with it?" A White House spokesperson confirmed to the Atlantic that data collected by different agencies is now being combined. (They said that "Through data sharing between agencies, departments are collaborating to identify fraud and prevent criminals from exploiting hardworking American taxpayers.") But a March executive explicitly stated an aim "to eliminate the data silos that keep everything separate." The article accuses the administration officials of "not just undoing decades of privacy measures. They appear to be ignoring that they were ever written."

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Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the pulling-on-Threads department: Threads has now grown to over 350 million monthly active users, reports TechCrunch, citing Mark Zuckerberg's comments on a company earnings call. That means Threads grew by 9.4% in roughly 90 days:

That's an increase of 30 million users since the prior quarter, where Meta reported that Threads had 320 million users. The new figure represents increased growth, as Threads added 30 million in the first quarter of this year, compared with 20 million in Q4 2024.

It's also worth noting that in a single quarter, Threads added nearly the same number of users to its network as one of its newer competitors, Bluesky. The latter, a decentralized social app, today has roughly 35 million users.

Zuckerberg also said there's been a 35% increase in time spent on Threads, according to the article, as a result of improvements to its recommendations systems.

Posted by from MMO Champion
Patch 11.1.7 Expected Release Date

Patch 11.1.7 is now live on the Public Test Realms, and the in-game calendar has been updated to include the Turbulent Timeways world event, which returns with a new Infinite Dragon Pirate mount and Battle for Azeroth Timewalking!

Since this world event is a major feature listed on the 2025 roadmap, the expected release date for Patch 11.1.7 is June 17 in North America and June 18 in Europe. This timing also falls exactly eight weeks after the launch of Patch 11.1.5 on April 22, aligning with Blizzard's intent to maintain an 8-week patch cadence.

New Timewalking Rewards in Patch 11.1.7

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the celebrating-software department: May is Maintainer Month: Celebrating those who secure Open Source

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The Open Source Initiative is joining "a global community of contributors" for GitHub's annual event "honoring the individuals who steward and sustain Open Source projects."
And the theme of the 4th Annual "Maintainer Month" will be: securing Open Source:

Throughout the month, OSI and our affiliates will be highlighting maintainers who prioritize security in their projects, sharing their stories, and providing a platform for collaboration and learning... Maintainer Month is a time to gather, share knowledge, and express appreciation for the people who keep Open Source projects running. These maintainers not only review issues and merge pull requests — they also navigate community dynamics, mentor new contributors, and increasingly, adopt security best practices to protect their code and users....

- OSI will publish a series of articles on Opensource.net highlighting maintainers whose work centers around security...
- As part of our programming for May, OSI will host a virtual Town Hall [May 21st] with our affiliate organizations and invite the broader Open Source community to join....
- Maintainer Month is also a time to tell the stories of those who often work behind the scenes. OSI will be amplifying voices from across our affiliate network and encouraging communities to recognize the people whose efforts are often invisible, yet essential.

"These efforts are not just celebrations — they are opportunities to recognize the essential role maintainers play in safeguarding the Open Source infrastructure that underpins so much of our digital world," according to the OSI's announcement. And this year they're focusing on three key areas of open source security:

Adopting security best practices in projects and communities
Recognizing contributors who improve project security
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Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the social-network-effects department: An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:

Facebook's loosening of its content moderation standards early this year got lots of attention and criticism. But a new study suggests that it might matter less what is taken down than when. The research finds that Facebook posts removed for violating standards or other reasons have already been seen by at least three-quarters of the people who would be predicted to ever see them.

"Content takedowns on Facebook just don't matter all that much, because of how long they take to happen," said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and the lead author of the paper in the Journal of Online Trust and Safety. Social media platforms generally measure how many bad posts they have taken down as an indication of their efforts to suppress harmful or illegal material. The researchers advocate a new metric: How many people were prevented from seeing a bad post by Facebook taking it down...?
"Removed content we saw was mostly garden-variety spam — ads for financial scams, [multilevel marketing] schemes, that kind of thing," Edelson said... The new research is a reminder that platforms inadvertently host lots of posts that everyone agrees are bad.

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the gold-records department: Slashdot reader sciencehabit shares this excerpt from a new article in Science magazine:

At first, astronomers knew of only one cosmic scenario that fit the bill for the violent formation of "jewelry shop" elements [gold and sliver]: the collision of two ultra-dense stellar corpses called neutron stars.

Now, a second has stepped onto the scene.

As they report this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers have discovered signatures of this heavy element formation — called the r-process — in a giant flare first detected from a highly magnetic neutron star in 2004. The flare, which released more energy than our Sun does in a million years as it spewed electrically charged material, has remained shrouded in mystery since its discovery 20 years ago. Researchers quickly traced the outburst to a nearby magnetar, a special breed of neutron star whose magnetic fields are trillions times stronger than Earth's. But ten minutes after the massive flare, a second, fainter signal inexplicably came from the same star.

More r-process sources may still be looming in the dark. The new study accounts for about 10% of the Milky Way's heavy elements, suggesting that astronomers will have to scour the cosmos for even more places where the r-process is hiding. One potential spot is a rare type of supernova that births rapidly rotating neutron stars, says says Anirudh Patel, the new study's lead author and an astronomer at Columbia University. He hopes that with more observations, astronomers will be able to sharpen that picture.... "It's humbling to realize that these were made in such extreme astrophysical environments."

Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the missing-the-signal department: Remember when U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted chatroom to discuss looming U.S. military action against Yemen's Houthis?

A recent photo of a high-level cabinet meeting caught Waltz using a "less-secure Signal app knockoff," reports the Guardian:

The chat app Waltz was using appears to be a modified version of Signal called TM SGNL, made by a company that copies messaging apps but adds an ability to retain messages and archive them. The White House officials may be using the modified Signal in order to comply with the legal requirement that presidential records be preserved... That function suggests the end-to-end encryption that makes Signal trusted for sharing private communications is possibly "not maintained, because the messages can be later retrieved after being stored somewhere else", according to 404 Media.

Thursday the national security adviser was removed from his position, the article points out.
He was instead named America's ambassador to the United Nations.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the what-could-possibly-go-wrong department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Google plans to roll out its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot next week for children under 13 (source paywalled; alternative source) who have parent-managed Google accounts, as tech companies vie to attract young users with A.I. products. "Gemini Apps will soon be available for your child," the company said in an email this week to the parent of an 8-year-old. "That means your child will be able to use Gemini" to ask questions, get homework help and make up stories. The chatbot will be available to children whose parents useFamily Link, a Google service that enables families to set up Gmail and opt into services like YouTube for their child. To sign up for a child account, parents provide the tech company with personal data like their child's name and birth date. Gemini has specific guardrails for younger users to hinder the chatbot from producing certain unsafe content, said Karl Ryan, a Google spokesman. When a child with a Family Link account uses Gemini, he added, the company will not use that data to train its A.I.

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Posted by Kotaku Staff from Kotaku
This week saw gaming website Polygon sold to Valnet, the company that owns Screen Rant and Game Rant among other sites, and many of its staffers laid off. Meanwhile publication at another gaming site, Giant Bomb, is currently on hold as owner Fandom engages in what it calls a “strategic reset and realignment of our…

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Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


Coming to us thanks to our very own TFW2005 mod Dachande we have new in-hand images of the new Transformers Action Battler Blind Box Series 1. Made by Chinese company Tanmi Space, these are 6/7 cm tall articulated G1 figurines which include accessories and display bases. Wave 1 consists of Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Starscream (with coronation parts), Shockwave, and Nemesis Prime, with a Golden Optimus Prime chase figure. See the images after the break and then let us know your impressions on the 2005 Boards!

The post Transformers Action Battler Blind Box Series 1 New In-Hand Images appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005


Thanks to 2005 Boards member Pixelmaster we have an image and information about a new official Transformers Age Of The Primes Folder Campaign By Hasbro Hong Kong. By purchasing $300.00 HKD or more in Age Of The Primes products at selected retailers, you can redeem an Age Of The Primes A4 folder. A very nice and useful bonus for sure. See the promotional image after the jump and then sound off on the 2005 Boards!

The post Official Transformers Age Of The Primes Folder Campaign By Hasbro Hong Kong appeared first on Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.

Posted by Paladin from Tokunation


BOOM! Studios is reviving another iconic team of heroes with a six-issue limited series starring the VR Troopers! And the first five pages from Issue #1 have now been released online, with a synopsis for this new project: The VR Troopers are the most elite of the Eltarian Empire’s human heroes on Earth, but what secrets are the Eltarians keeping? When VR Ryan tracks down a rogue Skug, he’ll come face-to-face with a foe who will change his understanding of VR—and himself—forever! The VR Troopers comic is written by Boom! veteran Mairghread Scott with art by Sebastián Piriz. The first » Continue Reading.

The post First Look: BOOM! Studios VR Troopers Comic! appeared first on Tokunation.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the was-it-worth-it? department: A 25-year-old from Santa Clarita has pleaded guilty to hacking a Disney employee's computer using malware disguised as an AI art tool, stealing over 1 terabyte of confidential Disney data and threatening to leak it under the guise of a fake Russian hacktivist group. Variety reports: Santa Clarita resident Ryan Mitchell Kramer, 25, pleaded guilty to two felony charges, including one count of accessing a computer and obtaining information and one count of threatening to damage a protected computer. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. According to the plea agreement, in early 2024 Kramer posted a computer program on various online platforms that appeared to be used to create AI-generated art, when it really contained a malicious file to gain access to victims' computers.

Between April and May 2024, a Disney employee downloaded the program, and Kramer gained access to the victim's personal and work accounts, including a non-public Disney Slack channel. Kramer dowloaded approximately 1.1 terabytes of confidential data from thousands of Disney Slack channels. In July, Kramer contacted the victim by pretending to be a member of a fake Russian hacktivist group called "Nullbulge" and threatened to leak their personal information and Disney Slack data. On July 12, Kramer publicly released the data, including the victim's bank, medical, and personal information on multiple online platforms.

Posted by from MMO Champion
New Battle for Azeroth Timewalking Rewards in Patch 11.1.7

The Turbulent Timeways world event returns in Patch 11.1.7 with a new Infinite Dragon Pirate mount and Battle for Azeroth Timewalking!

New Dungeons

Atal'Dazar

Freehold

Kings' Rest

Shrine of the Storm

Temple of Sethraliss

Waycrest Manor

New Mounts

Chrono Corsair - Reward for completing Master of the Turbulent Timeways III





Reins of the Ivory Savagemane - Purchased for 5000 Timewarped Badges from the Timewalking vendor in Zuldazar and Boralus





Reins of the Moonlit Nightsaber - Purchased for 5000 Timewarped Badges from the Timewalking vendor in Zuldazar and Boralus





New Pets

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Posted by from MMO Champion
WoW Hotfixes - May 2, 2025

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Achievements

Fixed a bug preventing completion of Gilded of the Undermine. If you have attained item level 675 but have not yet received the achievement, log out in a zone from The War Within (such as Dornogal) and then log back in.

Classes

Warrior

Protection

Fixed a bug causing Shield Charge to deal damage extra times or to targets near their starting position.

Dungeons

Priory of the Sacred Flame

Resolved a Captain Dailcry issue where Hurl Spear could damage players that were not in the indicated path of his spear.

Items

Carved Blazikon Wax bonus Versatility increased by 150%.

Entropic Skardyn Core Intellect increased by 15% and fragments will attempt to return to the core.

Soulletting Ruby Critical Strike increased by 10%.

Mounts

Fixed a bug that caused Ground Skimming during Skyriding to recover less vigor than intended.

Nightfall Event

Increased all Flame’s Radiance reputation gains by 100%, including first time completion, Quest, and Weekly Quest reputation rewards.

Nightfall Item vendors now offer all Arathi Abbot’s, Arathi Cleric’s, Arathi Crusader’s, and Arathi Zealot’s weapons and shields.

Transmogrification

Fixed an issue where the Mythic and Elite variants of the Shaman Liberation of Undermine class set gloves were missing additional lightning visual effects.

Season of Discovery

Elemental Invasions now spawn every 1-2 hours (was every 24-48 hours).

The Grand Arcanist and Grand Sorcerer enchants now additionally grant Healing Power equal to the same amount of spell power.

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Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the something's-out-there department: Astronomers may have found the best candidate yet for the elusive Planet Nine: a mysterious object in infrared sky surveys taken 23 years apart that appears to be more massive than Neptune and about 700 times farther from the sun than Earth. Space.com reports: [A] team led by astronomer Terry Long Phan of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan has delved into the archives of two far-infrared all-sky surveys in search of Planet Nine -- and incredibly, they have found something that could possibly be Planet Nine. The Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS, launched in 1983 and surveyed the universe for almost a year before being decommissioned. Then, in 2006, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched AKARI, another infrared astronomy satellite that was active between 2006 and 2011. Phan's team were looking for objects that appeared in IRAS's database, then appeared to have moved by the time AKARI took a look. The amount of movement on the sky would be tiny -- about three arcminutes per year at a distance of approximately 700 astronomical units (AU). One arcminute is 1/60 of an angular degree.

< This article continues on their website >

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the after-decades-of-hype department: An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Driverless trucks are officially running their first regular long-haul routes, making roundtrips between Dallas and Houston. On Thursday, autonomous trucking firm Aurora announced it launched commercial service in Texas under its first customers, Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines, which delivers time- and temperature-sensitive freight. Both companies conducted test runs with Aurora, including safety drivers to monitor the self-driving technology dubbed "Aurora Driver." Aurora's new commercial service will no longer have safety drivers.

"We founded Aurora to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly, said Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora, in a release on Thursday. "Now, we are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads." The trucks are equipped with computers and sensors that can see the length of over four football fields. In four years of practice hauls the trucks' technology has delivered over 10,000 customer loads. As of Thursday, the company's self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck. Aurora is starting with a single self-driving truck and plans to add more by the end of 2025.

Posted by BeauHD from Slashdot
From the playing-catch-up department: Microsoft has appointed a Deputy CISO for Europe to address growing regulatory pressure and reassure EU leaders about its cybersecurity commitment. "The move also highlights strong fears from European IT execs and government officials that the Trump administration may exert significant influence on cybersecurity companies," reports CSO Online. From the report: Who that Deputy CISO will ultimately be is unclear. Wednesday's statement simply said that Microsoft CISO Igor Tsyganskiy is "appointing a new Deputy CISO for Europe as part of the Microsoft Cybersecurity Governance Council," but the phrasing made it unclear when that would happen. However, Tsyganskiy made a separate announcement on LinkedIn that he has given the role to current Deputy CISO Ann Johnson. But he then said that Johnson, who is based at Microsoft's head office in Redmond, Washington, will hold that post "temporarily."

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