Tag: technology

Energy Scientists Invent Device That Draws Electricity Out of Thin Air

A team of scientists from the University of Singapore has announced the creation of a prototype energy-harvesting device that draws usable electricity seemingly out of thin air.

Designed to leverage nanoscale spin rectifier technology to capture what the device’s inventors term “waste RF” signals that exist in the air due to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5G, and traditional radio signals, the novel energy harvesting system can convert those signals into enough usable direct current (DC) electrical energy.

Similar RF energy harvesting technologies have been developed in recent years, including one invented by researchers from the University of South Florida. However, the team behind this latest iteration says their device is able to capture energy from weaker overall signals (typically less than -20 dBm) than even the most sensitive RF energy harvesting technology.

“Harvesting ambient RF electromagnetic signals is crucial for advancing energy-efficient electronic devices and sensors,” explained project leader Professor Yang Hyunsoo from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the NUS College of Design and Engineering. “However, existing Energy Harvesting Modules face challenges operating at low ambient power due to limitations in existing rectifier technology.”

To overcome the limitations of similar devices, including the inefficiencies of converting such weak signals into useful electricity, the team developed their own ultra-compact, nanoscale spin rectifier technology to capture and convert the waste RF. Unlike previous attempts, this minuscule rectifier showed impressive results at converting RF signals below -20 dBm.

According to Professor Yang, his team’s efforts to improve energy harvesting at these low levels were drastically different from previous efforts. That’s mainly because of the implementation of nanoscale spin rectifiers.

“Recent efforts focused only on improving antenna efficiency and impedance-matching networks at the expense of bigger on-chip footprints,” the professor explained. “Nanoscale spin-rectifiers, on the other hand, offer a compact technology for sensitive and efficient RF-to-DC conversion.”

After trying several configurations designed to convert energy from different low yet usable EM wavelengths, the team settled on something that operated at a level of efficiency previously unseen. This result, the team explains, was due to their approach as much as the technology itself. The result was a device that successfully captured low levels of RF and converted them to enough electricity to power an electrical sensor and an LED.

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Ukraine’s Acoustic Drone Detection Network Eyed By U.S. As Low-Cost Air Defense Option

The U.S. should integrate a low-cost acoustic network to detect aerial threats developed by Ukraine into its own air defense systems, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command said Wednesday morning. Consisting of thousands of acoustic sensors across Ukraine, this system helps detect and track incoming Russian kamikaze drones, alert traditional air defenses in advance, and also dispatch ad hoc drone hunting teams to shoot them down.

“Their use of acoustic sensors has proliferated across the country to the point now where they’re almost positively identifying drones in the distance because of this acoustic and the fireteams attached to that acoustic, low-cost capability that they’ve developed and proliferated,” Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Gainey said during a discussion at the Hudson Institute. As a result, Ukraine has a “low-cost defeat” system. The U.S., he added, should “find a way” of integrating “that type of low-cost capability into our system. We should be able to find ways to work together and augment some of our capability with some of that lower-cost capability.”

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CHINA DETECTS WATER IN SAMPLES IT COLLECTED FROM THE MOON

Scientists have discovered traces of water while analyzing lunar soil samples collected by China’s Chang’e-5 rover.

While NASA already announced the discovery of water on the Moon’s sunlit areas back in 2020, the new research suggests that water can take on even more forms than previously thought on the lunar surface.

As detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the samples “revealed the presence of trace water,” tantalizing evidence that “water molecules can persist in sunlit areas of the moon in the form of hydrated salts.”

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TESLA TO MANUFACTURE HUMANOID ROBOTS THAT COULD BE AVAILABLE BY NEXT YEAR, ELON MUSK SAYS

Are robots poised to soon become our overlords? Maybe not yet, although billionaire technologist Elon Musk says they could soon take over Tesla production facilities as the company moves forward with plans to begin producing humanoid robots called Optimus as soon as next year. 

In a post on X, Musk said, “Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026.”

First named the “Tesla Bot” and revealed in 2021 at a Tesla AI Day event, the robot’s design has drastically changed over the last few years. Recently renamed Optimus, the humanlike robot was designed to perform dangerous work and repetitive tasks.

At 170 centimeters in height and weighing around 123 pounds, the robot’s new design is sleek compared to its appearance while in the initial prototype phase. 

Tesla’s development of Optimus is not the first time robots designed to mimic human capabilities have made news. Other automotive and robotics companies, including Honda and Boston Dynamics, have made progress in recent years in the development of robots that include those with humanoid designs. 

In 2015, DARPA hosted the Robotics Challenge, and many of the designs looked similar to the robots currently under development by Tesla. 

The event, held at the Fairplex in Pomona, California, aimed to have participants create robot systems and software teams to help humans under conditions of natural and man-made disasters. 

Team Kaist of Daejeon, Republic of Korea, won first place and the $2 million prize with their robot DRC-Hubo, while Team IHMC Robotics from Pensacola, Florida, secured second place and $1 million with their robot Running Man.

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MORPHEUS SPACE LAUNCHING FIRST-EVER MASS PRODUCTION FACILITY FOR FIELD EMISSION ELECTRIC PROPULSION SYSTEMS

German propulsion company Morpheus Space has officially opened the world’s first-ever facility designed to mass produce its second-generation field emission electric propulsion (FEEP) system, the GO-2. Dubbed “Reoladed,” the Dresden-based facility will immediately begin production of 100 units of the GO-2, a potentially breakthrough system that uses liquid metal as a propellant.

In an email to The Debrief, company executives explained the growing need for a facility like Reloaded that can quickly and efficiently produce systems like the GO-2, which would provide satellite operators with extended mobility throughout the entire mission.

“One of the biggest problems satellite operators face today is the limited supply of available propulsion systems. We intend to sufficiently scale production of GO-2 to match this growing demand,” explained Morpheus Space President Kevin Lausten. “By offering a more affordable and readily available propulsion system able to facilitate all necessary maneuvers from initial orbit to de-orbit, the GO-2 marks an important leap for the industry.”

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NASA built a Moon rover but can’t afford to get it to the launch pad

NASA has spent $450 million designing and building a first-of-its-kind robot to drive into eternally dark craters at the Moon’s south pole, but the agency announced Wednesday it will cancel the rover due to delays and cost overruns.

“NASA intends to discontinue the VIPER mission,” said Nicky Fox, head of the agency’s science mission directorate. “Decisions like this are never easy, and we haven’t made this one, in any way, lightly. In this case, the projected remaining expenses for VIPER would have resulted in either having to cancel or disrupt many other missions in our Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) line.”

NASA has terminated science missions after development delays and cost overruns before, but it’s rare to cancel a mission with a spacecraft that is already built.

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission was supposed to be a robotic scout for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface in the next few years. VIPER was originally planned to launch in late 2023 and was slated to fly to the Moon aboard a commercial lander provided by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, which won a contract from NASA in 2020 to deliver the VIPER rover to the lunar surface. Astrobotic is one of 14 companies in the pool of contractors for NASA’s CLPS program, with the goal of transporting government-sponsored science payloads to the Moon.

But VIPER has been delayed at least two years—the most recent schedule projected a launch in September 2025—causing its cost to grow from $433 million to more than $609 million. The ballooning costs automatically triggered a NASA review to determine whether to proceed with the mission or cancel it. Ultimately, officials said they determined NASA couldn’t pay the extra costs for VIPER without affecting other Moon missions.

“Therefore, we’ve made the decision to forego this particular mission, the VIPER mission, in order to be able to sustain the entire program,” Fox said.

“We’re disappointed,” said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic. “It’s certainly difficult news… VIPER has been a great team to work with, and we’re disappointed we won’t get the chance to fly them to the Moon.”

NASA said it will consider “expressions of interest” submitted by US industry and international partners by August 1 for use of the existing VIPER rover at no cost to the government. If NASA can’t find anyone to take over VIPER who can pay to get it to the Moon, the agency plans to disassemble the rover and harvest instruments and components for future lunar missions.

Scientists were dismayed by VIPER’s cancellation.

“It’s absurd, to be honest with you,” said Clive Neal, a planetary geologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It made no sense to me in terms of the economics. You’re canceling a mission that is complete, built, ready to go. It’s in the middle of testing.”

“This is a bad mistake,” wrote Phil Metzger, a planetary physicist at the University of Central Florida, in a post on X. “This was the premier mission to measure lateral and vertical variations of lunar ice in the soil. It would have been revolutionary. Other missions don’t replace what is lost here.”

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REAL LIFE TRACTOR BEAMS? GAME-CHANGING NEW TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD TO NON-INVASIVE MEDICAL PROCEDURES

Tractor beams, a technology once relegated to science fiction, could soon become a practical reality with the help of recent advancements in metasurface research.

Under development by researchers with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS), the new technology represents “an important first step in the development of metasurface-enabled tractor beams,” which the TMOS team says will be capable of reeling in particles using rays of light.

The science fiction counterparts to this emergent real-life technology have been depicted in films that include Star Wars, where such previously imaginary devices are used to prevent objects such as spacecraft from moving or evading capture.

While real-life tractor beams are still far from matching the power of their fictional analogs, the TMOS researchers say their development of the game-changing new technology draws inspiration from such once-imaginary concepts.

“This work opens new possibilities for using light to exert forces on tiny objects,” said Ken Crozier, the Chief Investigator of the recent research.

MAKING TRACTOR BEAMS A REALITY

The team, led by researchers at the University of Melbourne, reports the creation of a solenoid beam that relies on a special silicon metasurface to generate it.

Solenoid beams have been developed in the past, although these earlier designs mostly rely on devices known as special light modulators, or SLMs. The size of these devices has imposed a limiting factor on their potential use, particularly in handheld applications.

In the team’s new research, outlined in a study that recently appeared in ACS Photonics, they describe the special metasurface developed for their tractor beam technology as an extremely thin (about 1/2000 of a millimeter) layer of nanopatterned silicon, which they believe may one day help to facilitate handheld devices that will allow surgeons to conduct non-invasive biopsies on patients, which would result in less damage to surrounding tissues than current methods.

At the heart of the technology is the understanding that forces exerted by beams of light have the effect of displacing particles, which are moved further from the light source with their passage. However, past research has shown that solenoid beams can draw particles toward their light source, similar to how the grooves in a drill allow the material it cuts into to be pulled upward.

The TMOS researchers say their beam has a few significant advantages over past designs, allowing it to be more flexible and capable of functioning without any need for an SLM. Additionally, its size makes it far more useful in practical, handheld designs while also requiring less power than existing varieties.

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The coincidences inside IT historical crash

Well, as most of you are aware, since I repeat myself occasionally, I try very hard to stick to quality, over quantity but reserve the right to publish different types of articles/e-mails. But also to increase the frequency if the necessity arises, not the case so far, but here this is a reminder of that. Also, the fog of “war” applies here.


In the rare case you live under Linux-based life or use Linux in your enterprise/workplace, or macOS, earlier today we the world suffered what is easily the biggest IT crash in history. You can grasp an idea of the extension by looking at the graph below.

Ironically enough the culprit is also in the image. CrowStrike, a cyber-security company. In fact one of the largest, and biggest single points of failure, cybersec companies on the entire planet. So what happened ?

In simple words, CrowdStrike sent an automated update to all its clients, and its client list is absurdly large. Airports, hospitals, chain stores, banks, innumerable tech companies, automation companies, automotive companies, and other fields of modern human activity in many countries – odds are they may use CrowdStrike.

Their software acts very “deep” into any system that uses it, thus this faulty software update created a loop in any system or server using Windows. Until a few hours ago, this could only be fixed physically, by an IT tech or a knowledgeable person either the faulty archive. This event will billions of dollars in economic damage, and second and third-order effects none of us can predict.

If this was just a fuck up, that is fine, disastrous of course, but “fine”, but I will assume malice. And I messaged a few experts, and read a few hundred messages from InfoSec Twitter, and the sentiment was the same. If this was done maliciously by a threat actor, this leaves us with only two options, given the absurd level of sophistication to pull this off.

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CROWDSTRIKE GLOBAL OUTAGE: No accident

A technical breakdown of the root cause of the world’s biggest IT fuck up is out. If it’s correct, we believe no one should consider this an accident.

Here’s a short, non technical explanation.

Windows contains fundamental programs called drivers that are required for the operating system to work. They are pretty low level software that load in the boot sequence and whenever needed. Users don’t directly interact with them and they don’t appear in Task Manager’s easy view. The user is kept away from them. Drivers have powerful system privileges and access. If essential drivers don’t load, work or are corrupt, Windows can completely crash. That can look like the blue screen of death BSOD.

CrowdStrike make a security software product, Falcon, that is a Windows driver that loads during boot up. The update mechanism for Falcon is within Windows. Users don’t get a direct say. CrowdStrike released an update to the globe that contained a direct, guaranteed fatal coding error.

The coding error in C++ language is fatal because it makes the program try to access a non existent part of the machine’s memory. No machine anywhere will have this memory address. When this access attempt happens, a fatal error results that causes the program to crash. When that program crashes, Windows crashes.

CrowdStrike’s Falcon was intrinsic to Windows boot up, so once a crash happened the machine could never be booted up again until Falcon was literally deleted from the machine’s boot sequence. This requires manual access to the machine in many, many cases. Remote fixing isn’t possible, so “the fix” is very high labour and access. That’s an insanely expensive fix. Literally dudes going to each machine and manually doing the fix over and over.

The above is absolutely fucking insane.

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AI Mass Surveillance at Paris Olympics Will Continue Even After Games End

The 2024 Paris Olympics is drawing the eyes of the world as thousands of athletes and support personnel and hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe converge in France.

It’s not just the eyes of the world that will be watching. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be watching, too.

Government and private companies will be using advanced AI tools and other surveillance tech to conduct pervasive and persistent surveillance before, during and after the Games.

The Olympic world stage and international crowds pose increased security risks so significant that in recent years authorities and critics have described the Olympics as the “world’s largest security operations outside of war.”

The French government, hand in hand with the private tech sector, has harnessed that legitimate need for increased security as grounds to deploy technologically advanced surveillance and data-gathering tools.

Its surveillance plans to meet those risks, including the controversial use of experimental AI video surveillance, are so extensive that the country had to change its laws to make the planned surveillance legal.

The plan goes beyond new AI video surveillance systems. According to news reports, the prime minister’s office has negotiated a provisional decree that is classified to permit the government to significantly ramp up traditional, surreptitious surveillance and information-gathering tools for the duration of the Games.

These include wiretapping; collecting geolocation, communications and computer data; and capturing greater amounts of visual and audio data.

I am a law professor and attorney, and I research, teach and write about privacy, artificial intelligence and surveillance. I also provide legal and policy guidance on these subjects to legislators and others.

Increased security risks can and do require increased surveillance. This year, France has faced concerns about its Olympic security capabilities and credible threats around public sporting events.

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