The Wall Street Journal looks at swarm robotics, where no single robot is in charge, robots interact only with nearby robots — and the swarm accomplishes complex tasks through simple interactions.
"Researchers say this approach could excel where traditional robots fail, like situations where central control is impractical or impossible due to distance, scale or communication barriers."
For instance, a swarm of drones might one day monitor vast areas to detect early-stage wildfires that current monitoring systems sometimes miss... A human operator might set parameters like where to search, but the drones would independently share information like which areas have been searched, adjust search patterns based on wind and other weather data from other drones in the swarm, and converge for more complete coverage of a particular area when one detects smoke.
In another potential application, a swarm of robots could make deliveries across wide areas more efficient by alerting each other to changing traffic conditions or redistributing packages among themselves if one breaks down. Robot swarms could also manage agricultural operations in places without reliable internet service. And disaster-response teams see potential for swarms in hurricane and tsunami zones where communication infrastructure has been destroyed.
At the microscopic scale, researchers are developing tiny robots that could work together to navigate the human body to deliver medication or clear blockages without surgery... In recent demonstrations, teams of tiny magnetic robots — each about the size of a grain of sand — cleared blockages in artificial blood vessels by forming chains to push through the obstructions. The robots navigate individually through blood vessels to reach a clog, guided by doctors or technicians using magnetic fields to steer them, says researcher J.J. Wie, a professor of organic and nano engineering at Hanyang University in South Korea. When they reach an obstruction, the robots coordinate with each other to team up and break through. Wie's group is developing versions of these robots that biodegrade after use, eliminating the need for surgical removal, and coatings that make the robots compatible with human tissue. And while robots the size of sand grains work for some applications, Wie says that they will need to be shrunk to nano scale to cross biological barriers, such as cell membranes, or bind to specific molecular targets, like surface proteins or receptors on cancer cells.
Some researchers are even exploring emergent intelligence — "when simple machines, following only a few local cues, begin to organize and act as if they share a mind...beyond human-designed
coordination."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.
All cats are unique, let's start with that. Even the simplest trashcan kitty will have something special about it. Some spot, some dot, some little tiny patch of color that you - their owner - would recognize on literally any picture. None of the cats that we have are rare breeds of cats that would cost thousands of dollars. They all came to us from their own little corner of the universe, and they are all unique to us in their own ways. The fact that one of my cat's beans is black while the rest are pink is something that I will forever love about her.
With that said, some cats have truly striking fur patterns or markings that everyone would point at and say: "whoa", and these are the kinds of cats that we have for you today. These are the kinds of cats that most of us would only ever see on the internet. Cats with hearts on their furs, distinct mustache shapes on their faces or itty bitty paw marks directly on their paws. Unique and beautiful.
Every cat owner knows that a little chaos comes standard with those tiny paws and twitching whiskers. Whether it's knocking over your water glass just because it was there, unrolling toilet paper like it's a personal art project, or sprinting through the house at 3 a.m. for absolutely no reason, cats are professional troublemakers and somehow, we adore them for it.
There's something endlessly funny about their confidence. They'll lock eyes with you mid-mischief, give a slow blink, and keep right on doing it. Maybe it's because deep down, they know they can get away with anything. A broken vase? Just part of the décor now. Scratched furniture? A custom touch.
But that's the magic of living with a cat. Their chaos fills the house with life and laughter, and when the day winds down, that same tiny troublemaker curls up beside you like the sweetest angel. You can't stay mad. Especially when the purrs start. After all, a little mischief is a small price to pay for that much love.
Explaining the Rightis a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
Democrats have been sounding the alarm over the last week after the Trump administration made clear that it would not act to provide emergency funding to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is set to lose funding in November.
A volunteer loads a vehicle during a food distribution for federal employees and SNAP recipients on Oct. 27.
A coalition of Democratic leaders from 25 states and Washington, D.C., sued the administration Tuesday, arguing that it’s illegal to cut off an estimated 42 million people from food aid.
On the surface, the decision to hurt some of the most economically vulnerable Americans seems tone deaf, even for the right. Historically, the GOP has at least tried to disguise the cruelty of its policies, arguing that suffering is for the greater good or in service of a long-term payoff.
But the right has spent so much time in its feedback loop—where it makes sense to hurt the poor—that ending SNAP benefits seems perfectly rational to many conservatives.
Conservatives vs. helping Americans
Ronald Reagan rallied support for his presidential campaigns with acompletely fabricated story about “welfare queens,” a direct attack on government help for struggling families.
He used his platform to popularize the notion that people on government assistance—particularly Black women—were undeserving scam artists living high on the hog. The fake stories popularized the belief that it’s better to cut off these programs than to keep a vital safety net created after the Great Depression left many Americans to suffer and die.
Former President Ronald Reagan
Reagan’s action to further this mythologyechoes his work as an actor and political activist in the years before his presidency, where he was part of a scare campaign falsely equating Medicare with communism.
Right-wing media—especially Fox News—has also played a role in pushing conservatives to oppose basic government assistance, framing people who scam the system not as outliers but as poster children for a system gone bad.
In 2013, Fox ran a special titled “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” which portrayed a “jobless California surfer” taking SNAP benefits while enjoying a life of leisure as the norm. Of course, most people who need and use food assistance aren’t young layabouts, but conservative media is interested in demonization, not reality.
Continuing the hurt
The rhetoric from the Fox special lives on in language from congressional Republicans whocurrently argue that beneficiaries of government assistance are otherwise healthy young men who spend their days playing video games.
Republicans have further tied themselves in rhetorical knots to justify opposition to government aid programs. For example, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynoldssaid last year that she would not take in federal aid to help families pay for groceries because “an EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”
Legislation like the GOP’s “On Big, Beautiful Bill,”which passed on a party line, has made the situation considerably worse.
In exchange for retaining tax cuts for the wealthy,Republicans cut programs that provide health care, food benefits, and financial assistance to millions of vulnerable children. The GOP argued that tax cuts—which most families on assistance did not receive—would lead to growth, and the families wouldn’t be harmed.
Ironically, many of the states and regions who have backed Trump and Republicans the strongest are the ones who are suffering the most.
The right-wing bubble heads for a pop
Programs like SNAPhelp millions of Americans in the most pro-Republican states and in rural regions of swing and Democratic states. Voters who buy the GOP’s propaganda end up hurting themselves, their families, and their friends—without benefitting from right-wing policies.
A cartoon by Jack Ohman.
But outside of the base, cutting these programs isn’t a political winner. While the right repeats the argument that getting rid of the social safety net is popular, data proves otherwise.
A May FMI-The Food Industry Association poll found that, of the 1,000 registered voters surveyed, 64% have a favorable opinion of SNAP. Similarly, 59% said they oppose cutting SNAP benefits, and only 33% shared the GOP position of cutting or reducing SNAP.
Republicans exist in an alternate reality on this issue—as they do on so many others. They’ve convinced themselves that cutting off basic human needs is a winner, setting themselves up to live and die in a moral black hole.
All-solid-state batteries (ASSBs) "are widely viewed as the 'holy grail' of EV battery tech," writes Electrek, "promising to double driving range, halve charging times, and reduce costs." Toyota hopes to launch its first production EV powered by the batteries in 2027 or 2028, and Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are also testing the technology.
But now Samsung SDI is teaming up with BMW and US-based battery company Solid Power for their own effort at commercializing all-solid-state EV batteries "in what's expected to be a trilateral powerhouse."
BMW and Solid Power have been working together to develop the next-gen battery tech since 2022...
Under the new agreement signed this week, Samsung will supply all-solid-state battery cells. Samsung will use Solid Power's Sulfide-Based Solid Electrolyte solution, while BMW will develop the battery pack and modules.
The strategic alliance aims to take the lead in commercializing all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs). Together, they've created a real-world system for producing ASSB cells, pooling their expertise in batteries, automaking, and materials to bring it closer to mass production. Solid Power's electrolyte solution is designed for stability and maximum conductivity. By teaming up with BMW and Samsung SDI, the company said it aims to bring all-solid-state batteries closer to widespread adoption.
"By pooling resources, BMW, Samsung SDI, and Solid Power have a real shot..." argues Electrek.
A couple is buying some items at my checkout. The guy has typed in his number for the rewards card. A notification appears on my screen. Me: “Excuse me, Mr. [Customer’s Name], it appears you have enough points for—” Customer: “—it’s doctor.” Me: “Pardon?” Customer: “I worked hard to be called Dr. [Customer’s Name]. Not […]
From feral to full of love, Café Au Lait's glow-up story is one for the heart. When this little stray first limped into her rescuer's life, she was in rough shape. Injured, feverish, and pregnant. After a trip to the vet and plenty of care, she began her long road from survival mode to snuggle mode.
At first, Café wanted absolutely nothing to do with hoomans. She hissed, hid, and made her feelings very clear. But time, patience, and gentle care have a way of working magic. One day, she decided that playtime wasn't so bad, and soon after, she was rubbing up against her new pawrent's legs like they'd been best friends forever.
Now, this once-fearful feline spends her days purring on laps, following her favorite purrson around, and sprinting away from any open door like she's saying, "I've done the outdoor thing, thanks!" From surviving the streets to ruling the couch, Café Au Lait proves that love, trust, and a warm home can truly change everything.
A Department of Veterans Affairs memo obtained by ProPublica erects new roadblocks to care for veterans with the rare but deadly cancer. The agency cites no new science but relies on an executive order about “restoring biological truth” in government.
The Trump administration is making it more difficult for veterans with a rare but deadly cancer to get their health care needs covered by the government. The new policy, involving breast cancer in men, is laid out in a Department of Veterans Affairs memo obtained by ProPublica.
“As of Sept. 30, the department no longer presumes service connection for male breast cancer,” press secretary Pete Kasperowicz wrote in a statement to ProPublica. He noted that veterans who’ve previously qualified for coverage can keep it.
But for the roughly 100 male veterans who are newly diagnosed each year, the path will now be significantly harder. They will have to show their cancer was connected to their military service, a burden that has often been hard to meet.
Navy veteran Kirby Lewis has Stage 4 breast cancer and had a left breast mastectomy after being diagnosed about a dozen years ago. A new VA policy would make it harder for male veterans to get health care coverage for newly diagnosed breast cancer.
Without VA coverage, experts say, veterans’ care could be delayed or even missed altogether — even as research has shown the rate of breast cancer among men hasbeen increasingand the disease isdeadlier than for women. One study also found that breast cancer for men is “notably higher among veterans.”
“Cancer in male veterans should be covered,” said Dr. Anita Aggarwal, a VA oncologist who researched and treated breast cancer for years before retiring recently. “These people have put their lives at risk for us.”
As Aggarwal noted, breast tissue in men and women are similar. “Male breasts don’t produce milk,” Aggarwal said. “But the treatment is the same.” She added thatresearch has linkedbreast cancer to toxic exposure.
The administration’s new policy rolls back benefits that were created under the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics, or PACT, Act, a Biden-era law that ushered in one of the largest expansions of health care and benefits in VA history.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins testifies before a Senate subcommittee on June 24.
After a longfight by advocates, congressional Democrats and Republicans passed the measure three years ago, making it easier for veterans poisoned by Agent Orange and other toxic substances to get benefits.
Before the law, the VA had frequently been denying the claims. Now, the government would presume many ailments were connected to veterans’ military service, so long as they served in particular areas and had any number of diseases on a VA list.
As a result, more than200,000 veteranslikely exposed to toxic substances during their service have qualified to have their care covered.
The Trump administration’s change means that male veterans who get breast cancer will no longer be able to benefit from that easier path for coverage.
Veterans who have breast cancer said the move left them aghast and puzzled.
Jack Gelman, a 80-year-old former Navy fighter pilot who served in Vietnam, is already facing the fact that his long-dormant breast cancer came back last year. Now he has to grapple with the fact that the government has just made it harder to get his care covered.
“I’m astonished,” Gelman said repeatedly when ProPublica told him about the change. “This is really nickel and diming a very small group of people who should be taken care of.”
Other veterans echoed that. “I don’t care if it’s toenail cancer,” said Kirby Lewis, who was diagnosed with breast cancer about a dozen years ago and is now Stage 4. “If exposure occurs, they should take care of those people.”
Lewis, who served in the Navy for five years during the 1980s, isn’t worried about losing his coverage, which the VA granted him as a result of unrelated heart issues. But he said the administration’s decision risks further stigmatizing men with the disease.
“There’s this machinismo aspect that they don’t want to accept that we have breasts, but we do,” said Lewis, who called the decision “very upsetting.”
A flag, a porthole, and color bars are some of the items Lewis has on display at his home from his time in the Navy.
The PACT Act gives administrations widespread discretion to cover diseases as science develops. Last year,the VA added three cancers, including male breast cancer.
The law states that “reproductive cancer of any type” be covered. Officials added male breast cancer under that category after a working group of experts reviewed the science.The decision noted“the marked similarity of male and female breast cancer.”
The Trump administration’s memo argues that designation is a mistake. “The Biden Administration falsely classified male breasts as reproductive organs,” Kasperowicz said in his statement to ProPublica.
A former official who was involved in the VA’s decision last year said that while there were discussions about how to interpret “reproductive cancer,” the scientific consensus among VA oncologists was clear. “The evidence showed that male and female breast tissue respond similarly to toxic exposures and share nearly identical biological and mutational profiles,” said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing concern for his job prospects in government. “Expanding coverage to male breast cancer was the right call.”
Rosie Torres, who advocated for the PACT Act after her husband became sick, said the current administration is putting politics above patriotism and people. “It shouldn’t matter who signed the bill,” Torres said, referring to Biden. “If you don’t like the ‘reproductive’ word, do it under another category. Don’t remove it. These are peoples’ lives.”
Kasperowicz emphasized that veterans can still get coverage, so long as they show a connection between their illness and their service.
“The department grants disability benefits compensation claims for male Veterans with breast cancer on an individual basis and will continue to do so,” he said in his statement. “VA encourages any male Veterans with breast cancer who feel their health may have been impacted by their military service to submit a disability compensation claim.”
The change followsa wider tumult at the VA, where tens of thousands of staffers have left amid plummeting morale and work edicts such as a return to office.
Secretary Doug Collins has long insisted that care will not be affected. “Veterans benefits aren’t getting cut,”Collins said in February. “In fact, we are actually giving and improving services.”
Advocates and Democrats say they’re concernedthat the rollback of presumptive coverage for male breast cancer could presage wider cuts. This year, House Republicans passed a bill tocut a fundfor veterans covered under the PACT Act, which they’ve criticized as lacking in oversight. The bill has not passed in the Senate.
Meanwhile, Project 2025, the conservative initiative to create a blueprint for the Trump administration, urges officials toroll back benefits, or as the initiative puts it, to “target significant cost savings from revising disability rating awards.”
Who needs therapy when there are cat memes? When you're down and out, struggling to handle the expectations to keep a smiling face through life's tumults and turbulations, there's nothing that flatters humility more than cat memes. There's no such thing as rock bottom when you have a cell phone circulating the latest cat memes to laugh hissterically at and ignore your actual responsibilities. Gen Z and Alpha already decided that existentialism is all the rage, barring Camus or other philosophers. But you know it means something special when all the kids are doing it.
We've all had ours highs and lows in life. That's why I Can Has Cheezburger has organized this specific list of hilarious existential, chaotic, and dissociated cat memes. They're handpicked just for you when you're doing through it, when you don't know how to tell people how you feel, and when your cat can't even understand your meows. Don't keep trying to communicate without success and scroll these adorable bug-eyed cat memes.
Some people wait all year for Halloween night. From ghouls, witches, wearing all black, ravens, gothic macabre things, and black cats, some people just get a thrill from the one day of the year where we celebrate the sinister over the happy. There are Christmas people, and then there's Halloween people. Even if you're not a gothic soul, you may just love dressing up and eating candy. And guess what? Your cat loves it too! Cats are big fans of O' Hallows Eve because they can also be spooky and silly at the same time. They may have made Halloween weekend their whole identity, and now that the big day is done, they just don't know what to do with themselves.
The next day is another holiday, but one that's not as practiced, at least in the US. But don't let any rules or restrictions stop you from enjoying yourself with costumes, candy, and kitty cat fun.
"A nearby galaxy once thought to be dominated by dark matter seems to have a surprise supermassive black hole at its centre," reports New Scientist.
Yet scientists "are convinced dark matter is out there," writes Space.com. "The quest to detect it arguably remains both one of the most frustrating and most exhilarating challenges in modern physics."
And now they report that the century-old mystery of dark matter — the invisible glue thought to hold galaxies together — "just got a modern clue."
Scientists say they may be one step closer to confirming the existence of this elusive material, thanks to new simulations suggesting that a faint glow at the center of the Milky Way could be dark matter's long-sought signature. "It's very hard to actually prove, but it does seem likely," Moorits Muru of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany, who led the new study, told Space.com...
The findings, show that dark matter near the Milky Way's center might not form a perfect sphere as scientists long thought. Instead, it appears flattened, almost egg-shaped, and that shape closely mirrors the pattern of mysterious gamma rays observed by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope... Using powerful supercomputers, [the researchers] recreated how the Milky Way formed, including billions of years of violent collisions and mergers with smaller galaxies. Those violent events, the researchers found, left deep "fingerprints" on the way dark matter is distributed in the galactic core.... matching the pattern of gamma-ray emission Fermi has observed, the new study reports...
If the excess truly arises from dark matter collisions, it would mark the first indirect evidence that weakly interacting massive particles [WIMPs], a leading dark matter candidate, really exist...
"We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS," notes
Phys.org, in an article titled "The Empty Search for Dark Matter."
We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS — dark matter particles in this particular mass range. And they're not all the same kind of experiments. There are also the scintillators, which use a giant vat of liquefied noble gas, like several tons of xenon. They wait for a dark matter particle to strike the xenon and cause it to scintillate, which is a fancy science word for "sparkle." We see the sparkle; we detect dark matter...
They're just one example of a broader class of dark matter candidates, with delightful names like Q-balls, WIMPzillas, and sterile neutrinos. We've tuned our different experiments to capture different mass ranges or interaction strengths to cover as much of that wide dark matter spectrum as possible. We've even tried to manufacture various kinds of dark matter in our particle collider experiments.
And we've found nothing.
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Password manager 1Password's 2025 Annual Report: The Access-Trust Gap exposes how everyday employees are becoming accidental hackers in the AI era. The company's data shows that 73% of workers are encouraged to use AI tools, yet more than a third admit they do not always follow corporate policies. Many employees are feeding sensitive information into large language models or using unapproved AI apps to get work done, creating what 1Password calls "Shadow AI." At the same time, traditional defenses like single sign-on (SSO) and mobile device management (MDM) are failing to keep pace, leaving gaps in visibility and control. The report warns that corporate security is being undermined from within. More than half of employees have installed software without IT approval, two-thirds still use weak passwords, and 38% have accessed accounts at previous employers. Despite rising enthusiasm for passkeys and passwordless authentication, 1Password says most organizations still depend on outdated systems that were never built for cloud-native, AI-driven work. The result is a growing "Access-Trust Gap" that could allow AI chaos and employee shortcuts to dismantle enterprise security from the inside.
TL;DR: Eight courses covering CISSP's eight domains—risk, assets, IAM, ops, and more—so you can prep like a pro for just $29.97!
If "security" is already in your job title (or soon will be), this CISSP Security & Risk Management Training Bundle keeps things simple: eight courses that line up with the eight CISSP domains, so you can learn in the same lanes you'll be tested on. — Read the rest
Rep. Thomas Massie is kind of the rat terrier of Republicans, and by that I mean once he grabs hold of an issue, he just won't let go. In this case, not a bad thing!
The Kentucky congressman accused America’s political and business elite of benefiting from “immunities and privileges exceeding those of Royalty in Britain," as the release of the Epstein files remains stalled in Congress -- because of Speaker Johnson's refusal to swear in Adelita Grijalva. Via Newsweek:
It comes after Andrew, a brother of Britain's King Charles III, was stripped of his title of "prince" and evicted from his residence in Windsor, England, amid scrutiny of his relationship with Epstein.
In an email to Newsweek, Massie said: “On the day the House returns to session, I’ll have 218 signatures on my discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Speaker Johnson's manipulation of the House calendar has delayed this for several weeks. If he’s hoping the news will get better or that people will forget, he should think again. We know from the victims’ lawyers that at least 20 men are implicated in files the FBI possesses, and we learned today from the New York Times that after his death suspicious activity reports were filed with the government on nearly a billion dollars of transfers from Epstein’s account.”
Nancy Mace seems to have issues. I don't mean issues of magazines. Something else is going on and it is weird and escalating and alarming. Does she have histrionic personality disorder? I do not know. I am not a mental health specialist. But here are the symptoms, you decide what you think:
Constant need for attention
Discomfort when not the center of attention
Overly seductive or provocative behavior
Rapidly shifting emotions
Display dramatic and exaggerated emotional responses
*LEGAL: I, the writer, and C&L are not claiming that Nancy Mace has a mental health condition. We are merely pointing out the symptoms of HPD and allowing the reader to make their own decision*
On Thursday, Nancy displayed 4 of the 5 symptoms listed above while having a complete and utter meltdown at Charleston Airport in South Carolina. She screamed at police officers and TSA agents, called them “fucking incompetent” and insulted them repeatedly, according to reports.
Last month, Ellen wrote about plunging ticket sales for the Kennedy Center after Trump took it over, but it's gotten worse. The Washington Post took a good look at the numbers, saying this year, more than 40% of all seats remained available/unsold on the day of the performance. Further, ticket sales hit their lowest point since the 2020 pandemic shutdown.
After President Donald Trump took over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in February, he and the executive he put in charge repeatedly accused the institution’s former leadership of not doing the very thing they are responsible for: selling tickets.
“We had spent way too much on programming that doesn’t bring in any revenue,” Richard Grenell, a Trump ally and former ambassador to Germany, told the Washington Reporter, a conservative media outlet, in late March. According to Grenell, the center hadn’t been making money. It was too woke and niche. The new team was, in Trump’s words, going to make it “hot” again.
Sounds like Epstein's original sweetheart deal was a much bigger deal than we knew, with subpoenas going out to his banks and attorneys tracking all of his financial transactions. What was big enough to persuade prosecutors to back off from the investigation? Via Bloomberg News:
New evidence of a money laundering probe into Epstein's financial transactions raises the question as to whether Alex Acosta, who went on to become Trump's labor secretary in his first term, lied to the House Oversight committee last month. (Ha ha, of course he did!)
As you will recall, Acosta was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who signed off on Epstein's plea deal.
"Acosta told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he didn’t recall any discussion of 'potential financial crimes' as part of his office’s Epstein investigation," Bloomberg News reports. "Yet the emails and documents from Epstein’s Yahoo account show that prosecutors in his office discussed the financial-crimes component of the investigation with Acosta and copied him on correspondence about it."
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