Japanese publishing giant Nikkei announced earlier today that its Slack messaging platform had been compromised, exposing the personal information of over 17,000 employees and business partners.
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Data breach at major Swedish software supplier impacts 1.5 million
The Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY) is investigating a cyberattack on IT systems supplier Miljödata that exposed data belonging to 1.5 million people.
Miljödata is an IT systems supplier for roughly 80% of Sweden’s municipalities. The company disclosed the incident on August 25, saying that the attackers stole data and demanded 1.5 Bitcoin to not leak it.
The attack caused operational disruptions that affected citizens in multiple regions in the country, including Halland, Gotland, Skellefteå, Kalmar, Karlstad, and Mönsterås.
PEGATRON Chooses Georgetown, Texas for First U.S. Manufacturing Facility
PEGATRON’s arrival marks a turning point not only for Georgetown, but for the broader Central Texas innovation corridor. The Taiwan-based technology giant, known for designing and manufacturing everything from laptops to automotive electronics, already plays a quiet but massive role in powering many of the world’s best-known tech brands.
According to PEGATRON Corporation, their focus on smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence solutions has made them one of the world’s top players in electronics and computing systems.
When Hello Georgetown first reported PEGATRON’s interest in a U.S. facility earlier this year, the discussion centered on shifting global supply chains and the growing desire to bring advanced production closer to U.S. customers. That conversation has now become reality.
Intelligence Exists in Platonic Space — We Just Download It
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Hidden Alien Microcivilizations
An exploration of the idea of miniaturizing technology and how aliens might make themselves invisible through this process.
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LLM-Based Multi-Agent System for Simulating and Analyzing Marketing and Consumer Behavior
Simulating consumer decision-making is vital for designing and evaluating marketing strategies before costly real-world deployment. However, post-event analyses and rule-based agent-based models (ABMs) struggle to capture the complexity of human behavior and social interaction. We introduce an LLM-powered multi-agent simulation framework that models consumer decisions and social dynamics. Building on recent advances in large language model simulation in a sandbox environment, our framework enables generative agents to interact, express internal reasoning, form habits, and make purchasing decisions without predefined rules. In a price-discount marketing scenario, the system delivers actionable strategy-testing outcomes and reveals emergent social patterns beyond the reach of conventional methods.
Engineers achieve record 31% efficiency in red quantum LEDs for enhanced display color and brightness
A research team led by the School of Engineering of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has made significant advances in quantum rod light-emitting diodes (QR-LEDs), setting record-high efficiency level for red QR-LEDs. This innovation is poised to revolutionize next-generation display and lighting technologies, offering smartphone and television users a vibrant and enhanced visual experience. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.
LEDs have been widely used in electronic products for decades. Recent developments in quantum materials have given rise to quantum dot LEDs (QD-LEDs) and QR-LEDs. QD-LEDs offer superior color purity (color vividness) and higher brightness compared to current mainstream LEDs. However, outcoupling efficiency has now become the primary obstacle, as it sets a fundamental ceiling for external quantum efficiency (EQE), thereby hindering any further performance improvements.
Quantum rods, on which QR-LEDs are based, are a type of elongated anisotropic nanocrystals with unique optical properties that can be engineered to optimize the light emission direction and ultimately improve outcoupling efficiency. However, QR-LEDs encounter two significant technical challenges: first, the ratio of emitted to absorbed photons (photoluminescence quantum yield) is relatively low after the material absorbs photons; second, there is a substantial leakage current due to poor thin-film quality.
480-million-year-old Parasite Still Plagues Today’s Shellfish
A new study has unexpectedly discovered that a common parasite of modern oysters actually started infecting bivalves hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs went extinct.
The research, published in iScience, used high-resolution 3D scans to look inside 480-million-year-old shells from a Moroccan site known for its exceptionally well-preserved sea life. The scans revealed a series of distinctive patterns etched both on the surface of the fossils and hidden inside them.
“The marks weren’t random scratches,” said Karma Nanglu, a UC Riverside paleobiologist who led the research. “We saw seven or eight of these perfect question mark shapes on each shell fossil. That’s a pattern.”
AI assistant developed for every step of the scientific process
Researchers have developed an AI-powered ‘scientific assistant’ designed to accelerate the scientific process by helping them identify new research questions, analyze and interpret data, and produce scientific documents.
The tool, called Denario, uses large language models to help scientists with tasks from developing new hypotheses to compiling manuscripts. The team hopes Denario will make research faster, more dynamic and more interdisciplinary.
AI can already help with parts of the scientific process: tools like ChatGPT can visualize data or write abstracts, for example. But these tools are typically limited to one step at a time.