Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: mobile phones

Open-source ‘digital twin’ enables end-to-end testing of applications over wireless

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed an open-source “digital twin” of a wireless network, giving graduate students, startups and other innovators a free, easy-to-use way to test new technologies and get fast, realistic feedback. The platform could help accelerate the pace of wireless innovation.

“We are building a software replica of everything that happens when you use your phone, from the wireless signals traveling through the environment to the cellular network and apps that deliver data and services like video and Instagram,” said Dinesh Bharadia, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, an affiliate of the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute and senior author of the paper.

“This will help industry and academia build new protocols and algorithms faster using software and AI, with less need for real-world experiments.”

IOS 26.5 Brings Default End-to-End Encrypted RCS Messaging Between iPhone and Android

RCS is a modern, internet-based messaging protocol that allows Android and iPhone users to send high-resolution photos and videos, see typing indicators, and receive read receipts, features all typically present in instant messaging apps. It is built on an industry specification called the RCS Universal Profile.

“When RCS messages are end-to-end encrypted, they can’t be read while they’re sent between devices,” Apple said in a statement. “Users will know that a conversation is end-to-end encrypted when they see a new lock icon in their RCS chats.”

Apple began testing with E2EE in RCS messages in iOS and iPadOS 26.4 Beta, initially limiting it to only conversations between Apple devices. In early 2025, the GSM Association (GSMA) announced support for E2EE for safeguarding messages sent via the RCS protocol.

Qatsi Director Godfrey Reggio: We Are in the Cyborg State!

Thirteen years ago, I sat down with a filmmaker who had spent his life warning us about a future we are now living inside.

Godfrey Reggio is the director of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi, the Qatsi trilogy. Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word. It means life out of balance.

In our conversation, he said something I have never been able to shake:

“It’s our behavior that determines the content of our mind. We become what we do. We become what we see. We become the routine that we are a part of.”

Read that again. Slowly.

Now look at your phone. Look at your feed. Look at the average screen time of the people around you, including yourself.

Continue reading “Qatsi Director Godfrey Reggio: We Are in the Cyborg State!” | >

Fake Call History Apps Stole Payments From Users After 7.3 Million Play Store Downloads

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered fraudulent apps on the official Google Play Store for Android that falsely claimed to offer access to call histories for any phone number, only to trick users into joining a subscription that provided fake data and incurred financial loss.

The 28 apps have collectively racked up more than 7.3 million downloads, with one of them alone accounting for over 3 million downloads, before they were taken down from the official app storefront. The activity, codenamed CallPhantom by Slovakian cybersecurity company ESET, primarily targeted Android users in India and the broader Asia-Pacific region.

“The offending apps, which we named CallPhantom based on their false claims, purport to provide access to call histories, SMS records, and even WhatsApp call logs for any phone number,” ESET security researcher Lukáš Štefanko said in a report shared with The Hacker News. “To unlock this supposed feature, users are asked to pay — but all they get in return is randomly generated data.”

AI data center boom is leaving consumer electronics short of chips − even though they don’t use the same kinds

Data centers need powerful chips, while smartphones need chips that are energy efficient. A supply chain scholar explains why chipmakers’ focus on the former comes at the expense of the latter.

Researchers combine five metals to build a better nanocrystal

A nanocrystal is an extraordinarily tiny piece of material—composed of anywhere from a few to a few thousand atoms—in which atoms are arranged in a precise, ordered structure. Think of it like taking a piece of gold and shrinking it down to the size of a few hundred atoms. It’s still gold, still crystalline, just almost incomprehensibly small.

Nanocrystals are in the transistors inside computers and smartphones, in smartphone displays and TV screens, in the gold-nanoparticle sensors that power COVID and pregnancy tests, and in the pipes of your car exhaust system, among countless other innovations.

Their small size gives them a dramatically higher ratio of surface area to volume, making them especially useful as catalysts—materials that speed up chemical reactions without being consumed in the process.

Twisting atom-thin materials reveals new way to save computing energy

A recent study shows a new and potentially more energy-efficient way for information to be transmitted inside electronic systems, including computers and phones—without relying on electric currents or external magnetic fields.

In today’s electronics, information is transmitted by moving electrons through circuits, where ones and zeros are represented by high or low electrical signals. While this approach has enabled modern computing, the movement of electrical charge inevitably generates heat, leading to energy loss and limiting how much devices can be miniaturized and improved.

In the new study, published in Nano Letters, researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and international collaborators demonstrate that simply twisting two layers of certain atom-thin magnetic materials allows magnetic signals to carry information instead of relying on electrical currents to do the work.

Researchers discover a new pathway to building energy-efficient computing chips

The growing popularity of electronic devices—from fitness trackers and laptops to smartphones—is driving demand for more energy-efficient computing chips. Now, researchers have found a way to change the electronic properties of a common semiconductor material, potentially laying the foundation for faster, lower-power data storage and processing.

In a study published in Science, a UC Berkeley-led team of researchers discovered they can transform titanium dioxide (TiO₂) into a ferroelectric material by reducing its thickness to less than 3 nanometers (nm), roughly the diameter of a single strand of human DNA. These findings, according to the researchers, could open a pathway toward ultra-scaled, energy-efficient electronic devices.

Ferroelectric materials, with their ability to switch electric polarizations, have a long history in the semiconductor industry. Today, many researchers believe that they may hold the key to enabling next-generation, energy-efficient nanoelectronics, including non-volatile memory, logic devices and emerging computing technologies.

/* */