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Category: mobile phones – Page 4

The ‘wonder material’ graphene can be made using a kitchen blender, a mobile phone and a newspaper

There is something slightly ridiculous about using a kitchen blender to make graphene. This is, after all, the “wonder material” associated with futuristic technologies. You might reasonably expect its production to involve equally futuristic equipment. Often, it does.

Producing graphene in liquid form can rely on purified graphite (better known to many as the “lead” in pencils), specialized solvents or additives, ultrapure water and carefully controlled processing. Our latest research, published in ACS Sustainable Resource Management, asked what happens if you try to make it using things you’d find in your household.

Could you start with graphite found in electronic waste, use old newspaper to help hold it in a liquid, mix everything in ordinary tap water and still end up with useful graphene?

New free-space optical link adds a wireless component to the nation’s longest quantum network

There’s a new lighthouse on Long Island. But instead of shining light to guide ships through waterways, this one transmits and receives particles of light that carry quantum information. Perched atop a seven-story building at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, the “Quantum Lighthouse” is a key pillar of the free-space optical (FSO) link spanning Brookhaven Lab, the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook University) and Yale University.

“An FSO link is analogous to the wireless technology that allowed today’s classical internet to expand beyond wired connections to orbiting satellites, as well as our cellphones,” said Justine Haupt, Brookhaven Lab’s lead scientist on the cross-institutional FSO link project. “It’s one of the key technologies needed to make a quantum internet truly useful.”

This FSO link—the first permanent one of its kind—adds a wireless component to the nation’s longest quantum network, which spans 161 miles (259 kilometers) across Long Island and the New York metropolitan area.

Jacob Ward on The Loop, AI, and a World Without Real Choices

I recorded this conversation ten months ago. It has aged into something closer to a warning label.

Jacob Ward wrote The Loop before ChatGPT made his argument obvious. His claim: AI is doing to our decision-making what Google Maps did to our sense of direction. You never notice the skill leaving. You notice, one day, that you cannot get home without the phone.

So I asked him what I thought was a simple question. What is a choice?

Jake’s answer took the rest of the hour, and it starts somewhere uncomfortable. He describes a dinner with addiction scientists, people who study compulsion for a living, hired by consumer app companies. Not to cure anything. To calibrate.

From there we got into the decisions we have already handed over without a vote: hiring, lending, bail, custody, welfare. Hard moral calls outsourced to systems nobody in the room can inspect, because the human version was exhausting and the machine version is fast and cheap.

He is not a doomer, which is why the conversation lands. He thinks the fight for #FreeWill is still winnable, and he pointed to two pieces of evidence I did not expect: teenagers calling AI “clankers,” and the return of film cameras.

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Abstract: 6 Department of Urology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA

6 Department of Urology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.

7Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Address correspondence to: Zhenkun Lou or Robert W. Mutter, Mayo Clinic, Kellen Building 401,200 First Street SW, Rochester, Minnesota 55,905, USA. Phone: 507.284.2702; Email: [email protected] (ZL). Phone: 507.284.3261; Email: [email protected] (RWM).

Why High Tech Cars Might Age Like Smartphones

This is why we drive a 14-year-old car and we’ll keep driving it as long as we can: [ https://youtu.be/_FfIx2cOEYs?si=8Wq0biyGETqw-nZp](https://youtu.be/_FfIx2cOEYs?si=8Wq0biyGETqw-nZp)

Software defined vehicles offer advantages their analog rivals can‘t compete with. But the hardware and software in them needs to be maintained, and some owners have found their cars suddenly obsolete or without key features. CNBC talked with industry figures, including Rivian Chief Software Officer Wassym Bensaid about the promise of software defined vehicles and how his company is trying to handle the challenges this new form of ownership poses.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction.
01:22 Chapter 1: Software-defined cars.
02:34 Chapter 2: The problem.
04:39 Chapter 3: Keep it running.

Produced by: Robert Ferris.
Shot and edited by: Darren Geeter.
Additional Camera: Andrew Evers.
Senior Managing Producer: Tala Hadavi.
Additional footage: Getty Images.

» Subscribe to CNBC: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC

Continue reading “Why High Tech Cars Might Age Like Smartphones” | >

Malicious SIM Card Attacks: How A 1980s Flaw Still Threatens Industrial IoT

Researchers proved that malicious SIM card attacks can execute attacker code inside the cellular modems running EV chargers, industrial routers, and telematics units. Six of eight tested industrial modules accepted the command. No mandatory patch exists yet, only a scattered, vendor-by-vendor response.

Malicious SIM card attacks just moved from theory to demonstrated fact for industrial hardware. Cellular IoT connections are on pace to reach 5.4 billion worldwide in 2026, according to IoT Analytics, and the module makers behind a large share of that growth just received a public lesson in a 40-year-old blind spot.

The vulnerability traces back to Proactive SIM, a legitimate cellular specification that lets a SIM card send commands directly to a device’s modem instead of only answering its requests. One of those commands, RUN AT, tells the modem to execute an AT command, the same control language used to operate modems since the 1980s, according to researchers from the University of Birmingham and security firm Fuzzware who presented the findings at the 2026 USENIX WOOT Conference in Baltimore. Using a custom toolkit called CATana, the team tested 26 devices: 18 smartphones and 8 cellular IoT modules used in EV chargers, industrial equipment, and connected cars.

Apple sends new ‘Threat Notification’ alerts over mercenary spyware attacks

You’re not alone if you just received an “Apple Threat Notification” saying it detected a “mercenary spyware attack targeted at your iPhone.”

Some users on Reddit are reporting that they received these alerts today after Apple sent out a new batch of threat notifications on August 13, but the feature itself is not new.

Apple has been sending these threat notifications multiple times a year since 2021, when it detects highly targeted mercenary spyware attacks.

A Malicious SIM Card Can Run Attacker Code Inside the Modems Behind Cellular IoT Devices

A malicious SIM card can order the device it sits in to run commands of the attacker’s choosing. On the cellular modules built into electric-vehicle chargers, industrial routers, and car telematics units, that is enough to take the whole device over.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham and the security firm Fuzzware tested 26 phones and cellular modules for the capability, found it switched on in 9 of them, and used it to run their own code on a commercial EV charger.

Six of the eight cellular modules they tested accepted the command. Only 3 of 18 phones did: the OPPO Find X5, the OPPO Reno 14 F 5G, and the ASUS Zenfone 9. No iPhone or Pixel was among them.

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