Fans of Studio Ghibli, the famed Japanese animation studio behind “Spirited Away” and other beloved movies, were delighted this week when a new version of ChatGPT let them transform popular internet memes or personal photos into the distinct style of Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki.
Researchers at The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute have introduced a new class of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces capable of dynamically shaping terahertz (THz) and millimeter (mm) waves. Detailed in a paper published in Nature Communications, this breakthrough overcomes long-standing technological barriers and could pave the way for next-generation 6G wireless technologies and non-invasive imaging systems.
The breakthrough centers around an active spatial light modulator, a surface with more than 300,000 sub-wavelength pixels capable of manipulating THz light in both transmission and reflection.
Unlike previous modulators, which were limited to small-scale demonstrations, the Manchester team integrated graphene-based THz modulators with large-area thin-film transistor (TFT) arrays, enabling high-speed, programmable control over the amplitude and phase of THz light across expansive areas.
Mozilla has released Firefox 136.0.4 to patch a critical security vulnerability that can let attackers escape the web browser’s sandbox on Windows systems.
Tracked as CVE-2025–2857, this flaw is described as an “incorrect handle could lead to sandbox escapes” and was reported by Mozilla developer Andrew McCreight.
The vulnerability impacts the latest Firefox standard and extended support releases (ESR) designed for organizations that require extended support for mass deployments. Mozilla fixed the security flaw in Firefox 136.0.4 and Firefox ESR versions 115.21.1 and 128.8.1.
Posted in energy, internet | Leave a Comment on IoT vs. IIoT
The IoT world is a big world that everybody is talking about. IoT products nowadays come in different forms — some are labelled as IoT, but in fact they represent only a small portion of what an IoT product really entails. A fully fledged IoT project not only requires programming and hardware expertise but also expertise on a broad range of domains from energy to smart home and even automotive.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the significant differences among the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and while walking through the listed considerations, the reader will have the chance to learn about their ecosystems and the particularities of their applications. Moreover, the gaps in the standardization of the technologies related to the IoT are presented along with the current initiatives from various institutions for mitigating these gaps.
Before talking about the differences between the IoT and IIoT, let’s look first at the similarities of the two. Both have the same fundamental layer on top of which they are built. With IIoT being a subset of the larger IoT, they automatically share common technologies like sensors, cloud platforms, connectivity and analytics.
Google’s Taara Lightbridge has become a standalone company setting stage for competition with SpaceX-owned Starlink
Artificial intelligence in various forms has been used in medicine for decades — but not like this. Experts predict that the adoption of large language models will reshape medicine. Some compare the potential impact with the decoding of the human genome, even the rise of the internet. The impact is expected to show up in doctor-patient interactions, physicians’ paperwork load, hospital and physician practice administration, medical research, and medical education.
Most of these effects are likely to be positive, increasing efficiency, reducing mistakes, easing the nationwide crunch in primary care, bringing data to bear more fully on decision-making, reducing administrative burdens, and creating space for longer, deeper person-to-person interactions.
Google X has introduced the Taara chip, a fingernail-sized invention that taps the “virtually limitless” potential of light-based internet connectivity.
The Black Basta ransomware operation created an automated brute-forcing framework dubbed ‘BRUTED’ to breach edge networking devices like firewalls and VPNs.
The framework has enabled BlackBasta to streamline initial network access and scale ransomware attacks on vulnerable internet-exposed endpoints.
The discovery of BRUTED comes from EclecticIQ researcher Arda Büyükkaya following an in-depth examination of the ransomware gang’s leaked internal chat logs.
Deals get remote islanders online, but fears linger over stranded investment, data security.
SHAUN TURTON and RURIKA IMAHASHI.
Chinese internet search giant Baidu released a new artificial intelligence reasoning model Sunday and made its AI chatbot services free to consumers as ferocious competition grips the sector.
Technology companies in China have been scrambling to release improved AI platforms since start-up DeepSeek shocked its rivals with its open source and highly cost-efficient model in January.
In a post on WeChat, Baidu announced the launch of its latest X1 reasoning model—which the company claims performs similarly to DeepSeek’s but for lower cost—and a new foundation model, Ernie 4.5.