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A world-beating deposit of lithium along the Nevada–Oregon border could meet surging demand for this metal, according to a new analysis.

An estimated 20 to 40 million tonnes of lithium metal lie within a volcanic crater formed around 16 million years ago. This is notably larger than the lithium deposits found beneath a Bolivian salt flat, previously considered the largest deposit in the world.

‘If you believe their back-of-the-envelope estimation, this is a very, very significant deposit of lithium,’ says Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven University and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. ‘It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply and geopolitics.’

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The development of your baby’s brain could be influenced by the microbes in their belly, scientists have found.

The trillions of microbes that live inside our guts play essential roles in a range of bodily processes, from digestion to mental health. The gut contains more than 100 million nerve cells—the highest concentration in any part of the body other than the brain. Now, we are also beginning to learn about the roles of these microbes in the earliest stages of our lives.

“The microbiome plays an important role in the early development of several systems, such as the nervous and immune system, as well as providing another layer of protection against pathogens [disease],” Sebastian Hunter, a researcher from the University of British Columbia who led a study on the subject published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS One, told Newsweek.

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Yet the automation of such tasks also means the chance to eliminate or reduce certain roles, not just in administration, but across many fields as the technology becomes more sophisticated. According to a survey of professionals by Thomson Reuters published last week, 67% of respondents believe AI will have a great impact on their profession in the next five years, while more than half predict the technology will create new career paths.

So exactly what are those new professional opportunities that the next generation of workers should be trying to pursue?

“There is no such thing as a future-proof career anymore,” says Dr Andrew Rogoyski, the director of innovation and partnerships at the Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence at the University of Surrey.

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In late 1998, when I was just beginning my career in technology, I read in the venerable Phrack magazine how poor input sanitization allowed rain.forest.puppy (the pseudonym used by Jeff Forristal) to pass SQL query strings directly to the back-end database of a Web application.

It’s an unfortunate reality that a quarter of a century later, SQL injection — among the lowest hanging of security fruit — is still included in the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 list of security vulnerabilities. One of the worst attacks ever occurred back in 2008, when Heartland Payment Systems was breached and more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers were compromised. In 2023, the Cl0p ransomware group exploited previously unknown SQL injection vulnerabilities in MOVEit, Progress Software’s file transfer program, and compromised hundreds of victims as part of a supply chain attack.

We do not have insight into Progress Software’s software development life cycle or security practices to ascertain what happened. While a vulnerability assessment system or even a bug hunting program could have potentially identified SQL injection flaws in the code before it was exploited, focusing on producing code that is secure by construction is an even better way to address this class of vulnerability.

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The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5,080 looks to be a couple of years away, as the RTX 4090 is still going strong. Nvidia hasn’t officially announced the card or the next-generation architecture it will be built around, but there are a few key details we’ve gleaned over the last several months.

Whenever it appears, it will have big boots to fill. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4,080 is one of the best graphics cards with its superb performance, ray tracing chops, and vigorous frame rate-boosting DLSS 3. Its hefty $1,199 price tag raised a few eyebrows, but if the RTX 5,080 launches with a similar slate of improvements, we could be in for another pricey top-tier card.

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And appeared in everything from mythology to comic books, but the future might offer technologies that turn these dreams into reality.
Today we’ll explore some of those options, from superstrength and speed to options like telepathy.

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Continue reading “Superpowers: The dream of having superhuman abilities is as old as humanity” | >