All signs point to a future internet where bot-driven interactions far outnumber human ones.
AlterEgo is a non-invasive, wearable, peripheral neural interface that allows humans to converse in natural language with machines, artificial intelligence assistants, services, and other people without any voice—without opening their mouth, and without externally observable movements—simply by articulating words internally. The feedback to the user is given through audio, via bone conduction, without disrupting the user’s usual auditory perception, and making the interface closed-loop. This enables a human-computer interaction that is subjectively experienced as completely internal to the human user—like speaking to one’s self.
A primary focus of this project is to help support communication for people with speech disorders including conditions like ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and MS (multiple sclerosis). Beyond that, the system has the potential to seamlessly integrate humans and computers—such that computing, the Internet, and AI would weave into our daily life as a “second self” and augment our cognition and abilities.
The wearable system captures peripheral neural signals when internal speech articulators are volitionally and neurologically activated, during a user’s internal articulation of words. This enables a user to transmit and receive streams of information to and from a computing device or any other person without any observable action, in discretion, without unplugging the user from her environment, without invading the user’s privacy.
Scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can forecast solar wind speeds up to four days in advance, significantly more accurately than current methods. The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
Solar wind is a continuous stream of charged particles released by the sun. When these particles speed up, they can cause “space weather” events that disrupt Earth’s atmosphere and drag satellites out of orbit, damage their electrons, and interfere with power grids. In 2022, a strong solar wind event caused SpaceX to lose 40 Starlink satellites, showing the urgent need for better forecasting.
The NYUAD team, led by Postdoctoral Associate Dattaraj Dhuri and Co-Principal Investigator at the Center for Space Science (CASS) Shravan Hanasoge, trained their AI model using high-resolution ultraviolet (UV) images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, combined with historical records of solar wind.
Tesla continues to advance and solidify its momentum in the electric vehicle market through significant technological innovations, expansions, and achievements in autonomous driving, AI-powered technologies, and overall growth.
## Questions to inspire discussion.
Robo Taxi Service Expansion.
🚕 Q: How has Tesla’s robo taxi service in California expanded its operations? A: Tesla’s robo taxi service now operates until 2 a.m. with only 4 hours of downtime, indicating operational readiness and confidence in the system’s performance.
🌎 Q: What hiring moves suggest Tesla’s plans for global robo taxi expansion? A: Tesla is hiring a senior software engineer in Fremont to develop backend systems for real-time pricing and fees for robo taxi rides worldwide.
🌙 Q: How is Tesla preparing for expanded robo taxi coverage across the US? A: Tesla is hiring autopilot data collection supervisors for night and afternoon shifts in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Nevada, indicating planned expansion of services.
Fire kills nearly 3,700 Americans annually and destroys $23 billion in property, with many deaths occurring because traditional smoke detectors fail to alert occupants in time.
Now, the NYU Fire Research Group at NYU Tandon School of Engineering has developed an artificial intelligence system that could significantly improve fire safety by detecting fires and smoke in real-time using ordinary security cameras already installed in many buildings.
Published in the IEEE Internet of Things, the research demonstrates a system that can analyze video footage and identify fires within 0.016 seconds per frame—faster than the blink of an eye—potentially providing crucial extra minutes for evacuation and emergency response. Unlike conventional smoke detectors that require significant smoke buildup and proximity to activate, this AI system can spot fires in their earliest stages from video alone.
But now, researchers have integrated the entire wireless spectrum covering nine radio-frequency (RF) bands — from 0.5 to 110 GHz — into a chip measuring just 0.07 by 0.43 inches (1.7 by 11 millimeters).
The new chip is also capable of achieving a data transmission rate of more than 100 gigabits per second, including on low bands used in rural areas, where speeds can be notoriously slow. Communication also remained stable across the entire spectrum, the researchers found. They revealed their research in a study published Aug. 27 in the journal Nature.
One of the buzziest technologies in modern science may be running right under your feet. Fiber optic cables bring you the internet as data-rich pulses of light, but they also detect signals from the surrounding environment: Researchers can analyze the light that’s scattered when a volcanic eruption or tsunami jostles the wiring. Known as distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS, the technique is so sensitive that it can track your footsteps as you walk over a cable, and may one day even warn you of an impending earthquake.
Now, researchers have laid a fiber optic cable on the seafloor near a glacier in Greenland, revealing in unprecedented detail what happens during a calving event, when chunks of ice drop into the ocean. That, in turn, could help solve a long-standing conundrum and better understand the hidden processes driving the rapid deterioration of the island’s ice sheet, which would add 23 feet to sea levels if it disappeared.
Even before humans started changing the climate, Greenland’s glaciers were calving naturally. The island is covered in glaciers that slowly flow toward the ocean, breaking into icebergs that float out to sea. When temperatures were lower, the ice sheet was also readily regenerating as snow fell.
Cybersecurity researchers have lifted the lid on a previously undocumented threat cluster dubbed GhostRedirector that has managed to compromise at least 65 Windows servers primarily located in Brazil, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The attacks, per Slovak cybersecurity company ESET, led to the deployment of a passive C++ backdoor called Rungan and a native Internet Information Services (IIS) module codenamed Gamshen. The threat actor is believed to be active since at least August 2024.
“While Rungan has the capability of executing commands on a compromised server, the purpose of Gamshen is to provide SEO fraud as-a-service, i.e., to manipulate search engine results, boosting the page ranking of a configured target website,” ESET researcher Fernando Tavella said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
Quantum scientists in Innsbruck have taken a major leap toward building the internet of the future. Using a string of calcium ions and finely tuned lasers, they created quantum nodes capable of generating streams of entangled photons with 92% fidelity. This scalable setup could one day link quantum computers across continents, enable unbreakable communication, and even transform timekeeping by powering a global network of optical atomic clocks that are so precise they’d barely lose a second over the universe’s entire lifetime.