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Data security on the internet is under threat: in the future, quantum computers could decode even encrypted files sent over the internet in no time. Researchers worldwide are, therefore, experimenting with quantum networks that will enable a paradigm shift in the future when globally connected to form the quantum internet.

Such systems would be able to guarantee tap-proof communication through quantum mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement, as well as cryptographic quantum protocols. However, the is still in its infancy: high costs coupled with high energy consumption and a high level of complexity for the necessary technologies have prevented quantum networks from scaling easily.

Two researchers at the Institute of Photonics at the Leibniz University Hannover want to remedy this situation. Using frequency-bin coding, they have developed a novel method for entanglement-based quantum key distribution. This quantum mechanical encryption technique uses different light frequencies, i.e. colors, to encode the respective quantum states. The method increases security and resource efficiency.

Researchers from SANKEN (The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research) at Osaka University have discovered that temperature-controlled conductive networks in vanadium dioxide significantly improve the sensitivity of silicon devices to terahertz.

Terahertz radiation refers to the electromagnetic waves that occupy the frequency range between microwaves and infrared light, typically from about 0.1 to 10 terahertz (THz). This region of the electromagnetic spectrum is notable for its potential applications across a wide variety of fields, including imaging, telecommunications, and spectroscopy. Terahertz waves can penetrate non-conducting materials such as clothing, paper, and wood, making them particularly useful for security screening and non-destructive testing. In spectroscopy, they can be used to study the molecular composition of substances, as many molecules exhibit unique absorption signatures in the terahertz range.

In today’s AI news, a consortium of investors led by Elon Musk is offering $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. The unsolicited offer adds a complication to Altman’s carefully laid plans for OpenAI’s future, including converting it to a for-profit company and spending up to $500 billion on AI infrastructure through a JV called Stargate.

In other advancements, all eyes were on French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday at the end of the first day of the AI Action Summit in Paris after he announced a €109 billion investment package. “For me, this summit is not just the announcement of a lot of investment in France. It’s a wake-up call for a European strategy,” he said.

And, Current AI, a “public interest” initiative focused on fostering and steering development of artificial intelligence in societally beneficial directions, was announced at the French AI Action summit on Monday. It’s kicking off with an initial $400 million in pledges from backers and a plan to pull in $2.5 billion more over the next five years.

Then, ZDNET contributor Jack Wallen reports his local AI of choice is the open-source Ollama. He recently wrote a piece on how to make using this local LLM easier with the help of a browser extension, which he uses on Linux. But on MacOS devices, Jack turns to an easy-to-use, free app called Msty.

In videos, At the AI Action Summit in Paris, Yann LeCun underscored a fundamental shift in artificial intelligence—one that moves beyond the brute-force approach of large language models in his presentation, “The Next AI Revolution”. The future of AI hinges on *world models*—structured, adaptive representations that can infer, reason, and plan.

AMD has released mitigation and firmware updates to address a high-severity vulnerability that can be exploited to load malicious CPU microcode on unpatched devices.

The security flaw (CVE-2024–56161) is caused by an improper signature verification weakness in AMD’s CPU ROM microcode patch loader.

Attackers with local administrator privileges can exploit this weakness, resulting in the loss of confidentiality and integrity of a confidential guest running under AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP).

Researchers have designed a single-photon time-of-flight LiDAR system that can acquire a high-resolution 3D image of an object or scene up to 1 kilometer away. The new system could help enhance security, monitoring, and remote sensing by enabling detailed imaging even in challenging environmental conditions or when objects are obscured by foliage or camouflage netting.

“Our system uses a single-photon detector approximately twice as efficient as detectors deployed in similar LiDAR systems reported by other research groups and has a system timing resolution at least 10 times better,” said research team member Aongus McCarthy, from Heriot-Watt University in the UK.

“These improvements allow the to collect more scattered photons from the target and achieve a much higher spatial resolution.”

The study of ‘starquakes’ (like earthquakes, but in stars) promises to give us important new insights into the properties of neutron stars (the collapsed remnants of massive stars), according to new research led by the University of Bath in the UK.

Such explorations have the potential to challenge our current approaches to studying , with important impacts for the future of both nuclear physics and astronomy. Longer term, there may also be implications in the fields of health, security and energy.

The value of studying asteroseismology—as these vibrations and flares are known—has emerged from research carried out by an international team of physicists that includes Dr. David Tsang and Dr. Duncan Neill from the Department of Physics at Bath, along with colleagues from Texas A&M and the University of Ohio.

Researchers have discovered a method to induce chirality in non-chiral materials using terahertz.

Terahertz radiation refers to the electromagnetic waves that occupy the frequency range between microwaves and infrared light, typically from about 0.1 to 10 terahertz (THz). This region of the electromagnetic spectrum is notable for its potential applications across a wide variety of fields, including imaging, telecommunications, and spectroscopy. Terahertz waves can penetrate non-conducting materials such as clothing, paper, and wood, making them particularly useful for security screening and non-destructive testing. In spectroscopy, they can be used to study the molecular composition of substances, as many molecules exhibit unique absorption signatures in the terahertz range.

Netgear has fixed two critical vulnerabilities affecting multiple WiFi router models and urged customers to update their devices to the latest firmware as soon as possible.

The security flaws impact multiple WiFi 6 access points (WAX206, WAX214v2, and WAX220) and Nighthawk Pro Gaming router models (XR1000, XR1000v2, XR500).

Although the American computer networking company did not disclose more details about the two bugs, it did reveal that unauthenticated threat actors can exploit them for remote code execution (tracked internally as PSV-2023–0039) and authentication bypass (PSV-2021–0117) in low-complexity attacks that don’t require user interaction.