CNN reports that images from Iran's capital "have shown cars jammed along Tehran's street, with heavy traffic on major roads after today's wave of attacks by the US and Israel." And though Iran has a population of 93 million, the attacks suddenly plunged Iran into "a near-total internet blackout with national connectivity at 4% of ordinary levels," according to internet monitoring experts at NetBlocks. CNN reports: Since Iran's brutal crackdown earlier this year, the regime has made progress to allow only a subset of people with security clearance to access the international web, experts said. After previous internet shutdowns, some platforms never returned. The Iranian government blocked Instagram after the internet shutdown and protests in 2022, and the popular messaging app Telegram following protests in 2018. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced an hour ago that they're "closely monitoring developments" — keeping in contact with countries in the region and so far seeing "no evidence of any radiological impact." They're also urging "restraint to avoid any nuclear safety risks to people in the region."

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A start-up called Reflect Orbital "proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night," reports the Washington Post, "with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight...." Slashdot noted their idea in 2022 — but Reflect Orbital now expects to launch its first satellite in April, according to the article. "But its grand vision is largely 'aspirational,' as its young founder, Ben Nowack, told me..." Reflect Orbital's Nowack describes a scene right out of sci-fi: An extremely bright star appears on the northern horizon and makes its way across the sky, illuminating a 5-kilometer circle on Earth, then setting on the southern horizon about five minutes later, just as another such "star" appears in the north. To make the night even brighter, a customer could make 10 "stars" appear at once in the north by ordering them on an app. Two such artificial stars are in development in Reflect Orbital's factory. Nowack showed them to me on a Zoom call. The first to launch is 50 feet across, but he plans later to build them three times that size. If all goes according to plan, he'll have 50,000 of them circling the Earth in 2035 at an altitude of around 400 miles. Nowack plans to start selling the service "in mostly developing nations or places that don't have streetlights yet." Eventually, he thinks, he can illuminate major cities, turn solar fields and farms into round-the-clock operations for any business or municipality that pays for it. He likened his technology to the invention of crop irrigation thousands of years ago. "I see this as much the same thing," he said, arguing that people would no longer have to "wait for the sun to shine." The article adds that Elon Musk's SpaceX "wants to launch as many as a million satellites to serve as orbiting data centers — 70 times the number of satellites now in orbit." (America's satellite-regulation Federal Communications Commission grants a "categorical exclusion" from environmental review to satellites on the grounds that their operations "normally do not have significant effects on the human environment.") The public comment periods for the two proposals close on March 6 and March 9.

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Tuesday Pew Research announced their newest findings: that 54% of America's teens use AI help with schoolwork: One-in-five teens living in households making less than $30,000 a year say they do all or most of their schoolwork with AI chatbots' help. A similar share of those in households making $30,000 to just under $75,000 annually say this. Fewer teens living in higher-earning households (7%) say the same." "The survey did not ask students whether they had used chatbots to write essays or generate other assignments..." notes the New York Times. "But nearly 60% of teenagers told Pew that students at their school used chatbots to cheat 'very often' or 'somewhat often.'" Agreeing with that are the Pew Researchers themselves. "Our survey shows that many teens think cheating with AI has become a regular feature of student life." One worried teenager still told the researchers that AI "makes people lazy and takes away jobs." But another teenager told the researchers that "Everyone's going to have to know how to use AI or they'll be left behind." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

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Xiaomiがバルセロナで「Xiaomi 17」シリーズのグローバル展開を発表した。ライカ共同開発カメラやSnapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5を備えた2機種が主軸となる。さらにライカブランドを冠した「Leica Leitzphone」の海外初投入も明かされた。

A start-up called Reflect Orbital "proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night," reports the Washington Post, "with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight...." Slashdot noted their idea in 2022 — but Reflect Orbital now expects to launch its first satellite in April, according to the article. "But its grand vision is largely 'aspirational,' as its young founder, Ben Nowack, told me..." Reflect Orbital's Nowack describes a scene right out of sci-fi: An extremely bright star appears on the northern horizon and makes its way across the sky, illuminating a 5-kilometer circle on Earth, then setting on the southern horizon about five minutes later, just as another such "star" appears in the north. To make the night even brighter, a customer could make 10 "stars" appear at once in the north by ordering them on an app. Two such artificial stars are in development in Reflect Orbital's factory. Nowack showed them to me on a Zoom call. The first to launch is 50 feet across, but he plans later to build them three times that size. If all goes according to plan, he'll have 50,000 of them circling the Earth in 2035 at an altitude of around 400 miles. Nowack plans to start selling the service "in mostly developing nations or places that don't have streetlights yet." Eventually, he thinks, he can illuminate major cities, turn solar fields and farms into round-the-clock operations for any business or municipality that pays for it. He likened his technology to the invention of crop irrigation thousands of years ago. "I see this as much the same thing," he said, arguing that people would no longer have to "wait for the sun to shine." The article adds that Elon Musk's SpaceX "wants to launch as many as a million satellites to serve as orbiting data centers — 70 times the number of satellites now in orbit." (America's satellite-regulation Federal Communications Commission grants a "categorical exclusion" from environmental review to satellites on the grounds that their operations "normally do not have significant effects on the human environment.") The public comment periods for the two proposals close on March 6 and March 9.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

2026年2月1日（日）から始まった位置情報ゲーム『ピクミン ブルーム』の長期イベント・バレンタインチョコ2026も、ついに本日（2/28）をもって閉幕。前回のリポートで、全8種類いる対象の限定デコピクミンがいまだコンプリートできていないと報告。残す3種...続きを読む

既存のホームページにタグを埋め込むだけで導入でき、Markdown対応・匿名コメント・OAuthログインなど多彩な機能を備え、広告やトラッキングのないオープンソースのコメントエンジン「Comentario」が公開されています。

続きを読む...

本記事で紹介した事象が発生したのは、2月28日に『ポケモンGO』で行われた大型イベント「Pokémon GO Tour：カロス地方–グローバル」の1日目が終了した18時過ぎのタイミング。あまりの出来事に、トレーナーたちが半ばパニックになっています。ゲンシ...続きを読む

Image:©BradleyHart,AnnaZorinaGallery2024年2月9日の記事を編集して再掲載しています。こちらは、ニューヨークを拠点に活動するアーティストのブラッドリー・ハート（BradleyHart）が制作したアート作品。この緻密なモザイク画は、なんと再利用された気泡緩衝材（いわゆるプチプチ）を使って作られたのです。子どもの頃に多くの人がつぶして遊んだであろうプチプチを使って

Photo:OGMAX今年は花粉の飛び始めが早く、まだ寒いのに外出時はマスクが手放せなくなりました。寒い時期のマスク着用でいつも困るのがメガネのくもり。冬にマスクを着用するときは、いつも液体タイプのくもり止めを使っていたのですが、塗り忘れてしまうことも多く、持ち歩くにも外出時には使いにくい。せっかく新しくメガネのくもり止めを買うなら、クロスタイプにしたいなと思い探してみると、こんなものを発見しまし

自宅の製氷機で作った真っ白の氷。水中の空気や不純物のせいで飲み物もちょっとランクダウンしちゃう。じっくり凍らた透明丸氷なら晩酌もリッチに味わえるよ。

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Friday unveiled its plan for its Chrome browser to secure HTTPS certificates against quantum computer attacks without breaking the Internet. The objective is a tall order. The quantum-resistant cryptographic data needed to transparently publish TLS certificates is roughly 40 times bigger than the classical cryptographic material used today. Today's X.509 certificates are about 64 bytes in size, and comprise six elliptic curve signatures and two EC public keys. This material can be cracked through the quantum-enabled Shor's algorithm. Certificates containing the equivalent quantum-resistant cryptographic material are roughly 2.5 kilobytes. All this data must be transmitted when a browser connects to a site. To bypass the bottleneck, companies are turning to Merkle Trees, a data structure that uses cryptographic hashes and other math to verify the contents of large amounts of information using a small fraction of material used in more traditional verification processes in public key infrastructure. Merkle Tree Certificates, "replace the heavy, serialized chain of signatures found in traditional PKI with compact Merkle Tree proofs," members of Google's Chrome Secure Web and Networking Team wrote Friday. "In this model, a Certification Authority (CA) signs a single 'Tree Head' representing potentially millions of certificates, and the 'certificate' sent to the browser is merely a lightweight proof of inclusion in that tree." [...] Google is [also] adding cryptographic material from quantum-resistant algorithms such as ML-DSA (PDF). This addition would allow forgeries only if an attacker were to break both classical and post-quantum encryption. The new regime is part of what Google is calling the quantum-resistant root store, which will complement the Chrome Root Store the company formed in 2022. The [Merkle Tree Certificates] MTCs use Merkle Trees to provide quantum-resistant assurances that a certificate has been published without having to add most of the lengthy keys and hashes. Using other techniques to reduce the data sizes, the MTCs will be roughly the same 64-byte length they are now [...]. The new system has already been implemented in Chrome.

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Photo:ますえい筆者の趣味は散歩です。歩くことが大好きなんですが、靴ひもがよくほどけてしまうのが悩み。素材の相性が悪いのか、いくら強く結んでも数分後にはほどけてしまうんです。その度に歩道の端に寄り、しゃがんで靴ひもを結び直すのがめんどう……。そんな悩みを解決してくれたのが「靴ひもを結ばない」がコンセプトのHIGHFIVEの靴ひもです。結ばなければほどけもしないことに気づいた筆者は、早速使ってみ