Stuff – Page 2 – Random 101

Why Is Inflammation a Dangerous Necessity?

The immune system protects us from a full spectrum of pathogens, but without balance, it can end up hurting us over time, too. The immunologist Shruti Naik explains how our defenses can turn on us. Read more…

A Plastic Bag’s 2,000-Mile Journey Shows the Messy Truth About Recycling

When the British supermarket chain Tesco Plc first started collecting plastic bags and wrappers from customers to be recycled in March 2021, Caroline Ragueneau was thrilled. She was working as a retail assistant at a Tesco store in southwest England when the first white deposit boxes appeared, promising to turn what’s typically discarded back intoContinue reading “A Plastic Bag’s 2,000-Mile Journey Shows the Messy Truth About Recycling”

Digging Up the Rich Viking History of Britain

A massive 1,100-year-old graveyard leads to a surprising new view of the Nordic legacy in Britain Cat Jarman led me through a dense tangle of forest called Heath Wood. We were in Derbyshire, close to the very heart of England. There was no path, and the forest floor was overgrown with bracken and bush. ItContinue reading “Digging Up the Rich Viking History of Britain”

Adafruit: Verified Accounts Secured with 2FA for Some High-Demand Products

Due to bots buying out certain high-demand items, such as the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, we are now requiring a verified account with two-factor authentication, 2FA, enabled for purchase. We are working to ensure as many of you makers and engineers out there have a chance to order these items at market prices withoutContinue reading “Adafruit: Verified Accounts Secured with 2FA for Some High-Demand Products”

Simple electrical circuit learns on its own—with no help from a computer

System sidesteps computing bottleneck in tuning artificial intelligence algorithms A simple electrical circuit has learned to recognize flowers based on their petal size. That may seem trivial compared with artificial intelligence (AI) systems that recognize faces in a crowd, transcribe spoken words into text, and perform other astounding feats. However, the tiny circuit outshines conventionalContinue reading “Simple electrical circuit learns on its own—with no help from a computer”

The Royal Mint to build ‘world first’ plant to turn UK’s electronic waste into gold

Has announced plans to build a world first plant in South Wales to recover gold from UK electronic waste. The pioneering facility will help address a growing environmental issue, support jobs and skills in Britain, and create a new source of high quality precious metals for the business. The Royal Mint is using patented newContinue reading “The Royal Mint to build ‘world first’ plant to turn UK’s electronic waste into gold”

LTrack: Stealthy Tracking of Mobile Phones in LTE

We introduce LTrack, a new tracking attack on LTE that allows an attacker to stealthily extract user devices’ locations and permanent identifiers (IMSI). To remain stealthy, the localization of devices in LTrack is fully passive, relying on our new uplink/downlink sniffer. Our sniffer records both the times of arrival of LTE messages and the contentsContinue reading “LTrack: Stealthy Tracking of Mobile Phones in LTE”

Gravity hill

A gravity hill, also known as a magnetic hill, mystery hill, mystery spot, gravity road, or anti-gravity hill, is a place where the layout of the surrounding land produces an optical illusion, making a slight downhill slope appear to be an uphill slope. Thus, a car left out of gear will appear to be rollingContinue reading “Gravity hill”

The Gömböc: The object that shouldn’t exist

A Gömböc is a strange thing. It looks like an egg with sharp edges, and when you put it down it starts wriggling and rolling around with an apparent will of its own. Until quite recently, no-one knew whether Gömböcs even existed. Even now, Gábor Domokos, one of their discoverers, reckons that in some senseContinue reading “The Gömböc: The object that shouldn’t exist”

Microservices: Why Are We Doing This?

I’ve written something like this before on my old (defunct) blog before, but new thoughts and realizations required that I revisit it. The topic? Microservices. The trend to build every single application as a series of tiny web services that talk to each other is growing in prominence, and starting to be picked up by aContinue reading “Microservices: Why Are We Doing This?”