Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 5/1/25. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 5/1/25. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
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Hydrogen-6: One of the furthest reaches of nuclear stability
Hydrogen-6, consisting of a single proton bound to five neutrons, represents one of the furthest reaches of nuclear stability.
“The extremely heavy hydrogen isotopes ⁶H – consisting of one proton and five neutrons – and ⁷H – with one more neutron – have the highest neutron-to-proton ratios known so far,” added the researchers.
Understanding such exotic isotopes is crucial for answering fundamental questions about how many neutrons can be held within an atomic nucleus.
“However, experimental data on these exotic nuclei are scarce, and the results remain controversial. In particular, there is a long-standing debate about whether the ground-state energy of ⁶H is low or high,” remarked the press release.
Combining electron beam, high-res spectrometers
“This measurement could only be carried out thanks to the unique combination of the excellent quality of the MAMI electron beam and the three high-resolution spectrometers of the A1 Collaboration,” noted Professor Josef Pochodzalla from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).
The experiment also overcame significant technical hurdles, including the use of an unusual, elongated lithium target (45 mm long, 0.75 mm thick) positioned along the beam axis to maximize interaction probability, and the careful handling of the highly reactive and fragile lithium material.
Despite the rarity of the process, yielding roughly one ⁶H event per day over a four-week measurement period, the high precision and low background noise of the experiment provided a clear signal and confirmed the isotope’s production and its unexpectedly low energy state.
US Marines unveil new tanks that swim and strike with 30mm cannon precision
The ACV-30 primary armament is a Kongsberg MCT-30 remote turret system armed with the Northrop Grumman Mk44 Bushmaster II 30mm chain gun.
Just days after China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) showcased its new type of amphibious anti-tank missile platform, the US Marine Corps has also started to arm itself with similar platforms.
In a powerful step toward modernizing its amphibious warfare capability, the service has awarded BAE Systems a $188.5 million full-rate production (FRP) contract to deliver 30 ACV-30mm (Amphibious Combat Vehicle – 30mm) vehicles.
The contract award, announced as part of the FRP Lot 5/6 acquisition cycle, comprises the vehicles’ production and fielding support, spare parts provisioning, and test equipment.
This award represents the US Marines’ focus on integrating lethality, survivability, and maneuverability into the Corps’ next-generation amphibious platforms.
8×8 amphibious tank
The ACV-30 is an upgraded version of the baseline ACV platform. According to a press release by BAE Systems, the company aims to deliver direct fire support for Marine infantry units operating across diverse littoral and contested environments.
Central to the ACV-30’s configuration is the integration of a Medium Caliber Remote Turret System (RTS), a government-furnished equipment package that the Naval Information Warfare Integration Center Atlantic will install.
This RTS enables the vehicle to project precision fires with a 30mm cannon while maintaining crew protection through remote operation.
BAE Systems said the vehicle’s dual-domain capability is engineered for open-ocean transit and seamless transition to shore-based operations.
Other details and production
The company is also projecting that the Lumberjack drone can be launched from ships, making it an even more attractive proposition. Further, the fully autonomous drone can also take orders from personnel on the ground to carry out missions.
With a roughly 200-mile range, Northrop expects the drone to fill out the gaps for weapons that can strike at a little longer range than artillery without needing planes in the air.
The submunitions it can carry include Hatchet – a six-pound, miniature precision strike munition – developed by Northrop.
The company has been conducting Lumberjack’s flight tests since 2024 with a research and engineering division of the US defense. It now invites customers to bring it into the production and actual testing phase.
It remains to be seen whether Lumberjack – or any drones with similar capabilities – are inducted by the US forces in the coming days.
Corn-based pads could cut 220,000 tons of plastic waste dumped in oceans yearly
Researchers suggest cornstarch-based products could replace plastic sanitary products, reducing environmental impact while remaining scalable and cost-effective.
A new study has revealed a potential game-changer in the fight against sanitary waste. Researchers found sanitary pads made with cornstarch are 17 times more environmentally friendly than plastic-based ones.
Traditional sanitary pads contain about 90% plastic, equal to the plastic found in four grocery bags per pad. The environmental cost is staggering, with around 220,000 tons of sanitary products thrown away yearly. Much of this waste ends up in oceans, contributing to global plastic pollution.
The study highlights using a biodegradable material called polylactic acid (PLA)—a product made from cornstarch. PLA pads dramatically reduce environmental harm. Even though their production takes up more land, the overall impact is far lower because of their renewable sourcing and less toxic manufacturing processes.
“Research into sustainable sanitary materials has consistently shown that while many alternatives to traditional products exist, the key to widespread adoption lies in ease of production, price and scalability,” said Alice Medeiros de Lima, corresponding author of the study.
“Given the detrimental effects of plastic based sanitary products on the environment, transitioning to cornstarch-based products can significantly reduce waste and provide a more sustainable solution for the future.”
Why aren’t big companies making the switch?
Despite the clear environmental benefits, major manufacturers have yet to embrace cornstarch-based products fully. One reason is that these sustainable alternatives require commercial-scale production to become cost-effective for the mass market.
But the good news is that corn is already one of the most widely grown crops in the world. It’s used not only as food and livestock feed but also in producing biofuels and industrial materials. This global supply chain makes it relatively easy for companies to purchase the raw materials needed to make PLA products.
Because cornstarch is already being grown in large quantities around the world, it could be readily integrated into existing supply systems. That means companies wouldn’t need to create new infrastructures to adopt the material.
The clock behind the internet, finance, and GPS
Time isn’t just about watches and alarms — it powers everything from GPS to stock market trades to data centers.
“Time signals are used literally billions of times each day for everything from setting clocks and watches to ensuring the accurate time stamping of hundreds of billions of dollars of electronic financial transactions,” said Liz Donley, who leads NIST’s Time and Frequency Division.
NIST-F4 helps steer the official U.S. time scale, known as UTC(NIST), and contributes to the global timekeeping standard, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Its ultra-precise data helps ensure systems worldwide stay synchronized down to the microsecond.
Hegseth issues warning to Iran over Houthi support
The Houthis were designated as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2025 by the Trump administration
Iran is suspected of funding and aiding the Houthis, an action that Hegseth cautioned would have dire consequences. The secretary of defense issued the warning in a post on X on Wednesday.
Message to IRAN:
We see your LETHAL support to The Houthis. We know exactly what you are doing.
You know very well what the U.S. Military is capable of — and you were warned. You will pay the CONSEQUENCE at the time and place of our choosing.
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) May 1, 2025
Hegseth’s posts would seem to suggest his message was in response to that event. Later, on his personal X account, Hegseth reposted a March Truth Social post by President Donald Trump in which the president also warned Iran of supporting the Houthis.
“The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by IRAN,” Trump said in the social media post. “Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force and there is no guarantee the force will stop there.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/new-data-reveals-strong-economic-momentum/
“It’s no surprise the leftovers of Biden’s economic disaster have been a drag on economic growth, but the underlying numbers tell the real story of the strong momentum President Trump is delivering. Robust core GDP, the highest gross domestic investment in four years, job growth, and trillions of dollars in new investments secured by President Trump are fueling an economic boom and setting the stage for unprecedented growth as President Trump ushers in the new Golden Age.” — Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Gross domestic investment soared by 22%. This is the highest in four years and comes as businesses and consumers — bolstered by rising take-home pay — fuel an economic boom.
Monthly indicators, which capture growth trends at a much higher frequency, all point to accelerating growth AFTER President Trump took office. Private employment gains, consumer spending, capital investment, and aggregate hours worked have all accelerated since January, while inflation has decelerated.
An unprecedented surge in imports due to tariff frontrunning contributed to most of the decline.
AI Drone Defeats World Champion Drone Pilots
History was made as TU Delft’s AI-powered drone beat the world’s top human pilots in a landmark race. How did it win—and what does this mean for the future of robotics and drones?
Powerful electron beams create extremely heavy hydrogen isotope for first-time ever
⁶H (one proton, five neutrons) and ⁷H (one proton, six neutrons) are the known isotopes with the highest neutron-to-proton ratios.
An international research team has successfully produced hydrogen-6 (⁶H), one of the most neutron-rich isotopes known, for the first time using electron scattering.
The results, obtained at the Mainz Microtron (MAMI) particle accelerator, reveal a new technique for studying exotic nuclei.
“The experiment at the spectrometer facility at the Mainz Microtron (MAMI) particle accelerator presents a new method for investigating light, neutron-rich nuclei and challenges our current understanding of multi-nucleon interactions,” said the researchers in a press release.
The findings reveal that ⁶H possesses a lower ground-state energy than many recent theories predicted.
This suggests that the interactions between the multiple neutrons within this extremely unstable nucleus are stronger than expected, which prompts a re-evaluation of multi-nucleon forces in very neutron-rich environments.
The experiment was a collaborative effort involving the A1 Collaboration at the Institute of Nuclear Physics at JGU, alongside scientists from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, Tohoku University Sendai, and the University of Tokyo in Japan.
‘Lumberjack’: Jet-powered US suicide drone can strike 200 miles away with mini bombs
The new drone offering from Northrop can be launched from either the ground or the air.
United States-based defense firm Northrop Grumman has showcased a new type of loitering one-way attack drone, named Lumberjack, intended for use by the military.
The jet-powered drone has been unveiled at the ongoing Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C.
The Modern Day Marine is a two-day conference for military equipment, systems, services, and technology exposition open exclusively to Marines, Department of Defense (DoD), association partners, and authorized industry representatives. It began on April 30 in Halls A & B of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and will end on May 1.
Lumberjack drone from Northrop Grumman
As told by a Northrop official to The War Zone, the Lumberjack drone belongs to Group 3 of the uncrewed aerial system (UAS) category of the US military.
According to the US government, a Group 3 drone should have a maximum takeoff weight of less than 1,320 pounds (598 kilograms) and be able to fly below 18,000 feet altitude at mean sea level. The speed of the UAS should be between 100 and 250 knots (115 and 287 miles per hour).
The report by The War Zone mentions that the Lumberjack drone can carry a payload similar to a 250-pound small-diameter bomb (SDB). Moreover, it can also drop submunitions and carry out kinetic strikes.
!summarize #intelligence #ai #agi
US scientists debut atomic clock that stays true for 100 million years straight
NIST-F4 is America’s bid for precision timekeeping dominance, accurate to 2.2 parts in 10 quadrillion and critical for finance, GPS, and data centers.
Marvel’s Time Variance Authority (TVA) would probably call dibs on this atomic clock if they could!
The NIST-F4 atomic clock, recently unveiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, is one of the most accurate timekeeping devices ever built on Earth.
This clock is so precise that if it had started ticking during the age of the dinosaurs, it would still be accurate today to within a single second.
This month, NIST scientists officially submitted it to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) for certification as a “primary frequency standard,” a title reserved for the most elite atomic clocks on the planet.
Only around ten countries operate such clocks — now the U.S. is back in that top tier.
How the clock works
Unlike regular clocks, atomic clocks like NIST-F4 keep time using the natural vibrations of atoms — in this case, cesium atoms.
Inside the clock, thousands of these atoms are cooled to near absolute zero using lasers and then tossed upward in a fountain-like motion.
As they rise and fall, they pass through microwave radiation tuned to a frequency that makes the atoms shift their energy state — a transition that defines the “tick” of the clock.
Musk, Tesla chair slam report saying its board wants to replace him as CEO
Elon Musk and Tesla's chair have denied a report that the company's board had launched a search process for a new CEO. The report said that Tesla's board had reached out to several executive search firms to work on a process for finding Tesla's next chief executive. Musk criticized the Wall Street Journal for publishing the article, saying that Tesla's board of directors had unequivocally denied its claims beforehand. The outlet had reported that Musk had not responded to requests for comment.
#technology #tesla #musk
Google Eyes Gemini-iPhone AI Deal This Year, Pichai Tells Court
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during court proceedings that he hopes that Google Gemini will be added as a built-in option for iPhones this year. Pichai has held a series of conversations with Apple CEO Tim Cook and hopes to have a deal completed by the middle of this year. Apple's annual developer conference will be held on the week of June 9 - if a deal is agreed to, it will likely be announced then.
#technology #google #gemini #iphone
Sam Altman’s World unveils a mobile verification device
Tools for Humanity, the startup behind the World human verification project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has unveiled a mobile device designed to help people determine the difference between humans and AI agents. The Orb Mini looks like a smartphone, but it has two large sensors on the front to scan users' eyeballs. The data is used to create a unique identifier on the blockchain to verify that users are human. It is still unclear what the ultimate functionality of the Orb Mini will be, but its current main purpose is to verify more people.
#technology #samaltman #ia
Chinese robot does job of three to four humans installing thousands of panels at Australian solar project
Chinese tech company Leapting's AI-controlled robot successfully helped install 10,000 solar modules at its first commercial deployment in Australia. The 2.5-meter-high robotic arm sits on a crawler that can adapt to different terrain and environmental conditions. Its use increased efficiency by three to five times compared to manual operations. The robot will be deployed to another Australian solar farm to start work in May to install around 500,000 panels.
#technology #robots #china
Judge Rebukes Apple and Orders It to Loosen Grip on App Store
A US federal judge has ruled that Apple must loosen its grip on its App Store and stop collecting a commission on some app sales. Apple was previously ordered to allow apps to provide users with external links to pay developers directly for services to avoid the 30% commission Apple charges. The company instead created a new system that forced apps with external sales to pay a 27% commission to the company and also created pop-up screens that discouraged customers from paying elsewhere. Apple is now restricted from taking commissions from sales outside the App Store and from displaying messages discouraging users from making external purchases. It is being investigated for criminal contempt.
#technology #apple #appstore
Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market
Labor conditions for recent college graduates have deteriorated noticeably in the past few months. Unemployment now stands at an unusually high 5.8%. This could be the signal of short-term economic drag, medium-term changes to the value of a college degree, or long-term changes to the relationship between people and AI. Today's graduates are entering into an uncertain economy where some businesses are so focused on tomorrow's profit margin that they're less willing to hire workers who will take time to learn on the job.
#technology #labor #ai
"AI-first" is the new Return To Office
The audience for these memos is not the people who work at these companies, it's for other CEOs, investors, and VCs in the industry - just as it was for the other fads of the last few years.
#technology #ai
Bitcoin mining now just totes unprofitable, costing over $137,000 to mine just one BTC in the US and near $200,000 per coin in Germany
Bitcoin mining has become nearly unprofitable, with major public miners spending over $82,000 per BTC and smaller U.S. operations over $137,000—well above Bitcoin's current market price. In high-cost regions like Germany, the cost climbs to nearly $200,000 per coin. To adapt, large mining farms are deploying energy-efficient rigs and leasing excess computing capacity for alternative revenue streams.
#technology #crypto #bitcoin #mining
Visa and Bridge partner on new product enabling stablecoin-backed cards
Visa and Bridge, a Stripe-acquired startup, have launched a new product that allows developers to issue Visa cards backed by stablecoins. Users can spend crypto at any Visa-accepting merchant, with merchants receiving payments in local currencies. The rollout will begin in several Latin American countries.
#technology #crypto #stablecoins #visa
Stablecoin B2B Payment is all about Workflows, not Payment itself
B2B payments are shaped less by the act of transferring funds and more by the complex workflows that surround them—such as data validation, compliance checks, tax reconciliation, and multi-party approvals. To meet these demands, stablecoins must be embedded within orchestration layers that manage these processes end-to-end. When integrated into automated workflows, stablecoin infrastructure can enable near-instant settlement, onchain compliance triggers, transparent FX handling, and advanced services like real-time invoice factoring.
#technology #stablecoin #payment #b2b
Musk Fires Back at CEO Replacement Rumors
Elon Musk and Tesla chair Robyn Denholm just shut down claims that Tesla’s board is secretly hunting for a new CEO. The Wall Street Journal said exec search firms were tapped to replace Musk, but he clapped back, calling the story false and saying the board denied it before the piece ran. Imagine your name trending for being replaced—while you're still in charge. Musk wasn’t even asked for comment before it dropped.
#elonmusk #tesla #leadership #businessnews #technology
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Google’s AI May Land on iPhones Soon
Google’s Sundar Pichai told a courtroom he’s aiming to get Gemini, their AI brainchild, baked into iPhones by mid-2025. He’s been chatting with Apple’s Tim Cook, and all eyes are now on Apple’s big developer event starting June 10. That’s the perfect stage for a mic-drop announcement. If this deal lands, it could shake up how millions of people use AI—straight from their lock screens.
#google #apple #ai #iphone #technology
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Sam Altman’s New Gadget Wants to Scan Your Eyes
Sam Altman’s startup Tools for Humanity just dropped the Orb Mini, a handheld device that scans your eyeballs to prove you’re human—not a bot. It’s part of the Worldcoin project, co-founded by the OpenAI CEO, and it creates a unique digital ID on the blockchain. It looks like a phone but acts like a lie detector for AI. Think sci-fi meets TSA screening—but for your digital life.
#worldcoin #blockchain #aiidentity #samaltman #technology
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Robot Replaces an Entire Crew at Aussie Solar Farm
A robot from Chinese firm Leapting just installed 10,000 solar panels in Australia—work that would've taken a small human crew weeks. Standing 2.5 meters tall on a rugged crawler, it’s built to handle rough ground and wild weather. This AI-powered machine boosted speed by up to 5x and is heading to a new site in May to tackle a jaw-dropping 500,000 panels. The future of solar looks fast—and surprisingly robotic.
#solarpower #renewables #automation #airobotics #technology
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Apple Just Got Smacked Down by a Judge
A U.S. judge just told Apple to back off: no more taking commissions on purchases made outside the App Store and no more pop-ups guilting users into paying through Apple. This comes after Apple tried to dodge an earlier order by slapping a 27% fee on apps that offered other payment options. Now, the court says enough is enough—and Apple’s even facing a criminal contempt investigation.
#apple #appstore #antitrust #techlaw #technology
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Visa and Mastercard Just Gave AI Your Wallet
Visa and Mastercard are rolling out AI tools—Intelligent Commerce and Agent Pay—that shop for you. Think of them like super-smart assistants: you tell them what you need, and they handle the rest—from picking products to paying. It’s part of a bigger wave called agentic commerce, where companies like PayPal, Amazon, and OpenAI are letting AI act like your personal shopper. It’s not the future—it’s happening right now.
#ai #ecommerce #fintech #shopping #technology
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!summarize #technology #meta
!summarize #technology #energy #ai
!summarize #technology #ai
!summarize #technology #ai
!summarize #technology #space