Soon AI agents will be able to surf, shop and act on your behalf. That could be the foundation of a new and very different version of the internet.
Illustration: Karan Singh
AI will surf, shop and act on your behalf.
Category: internet
Scale of living things
Neal Agarwal published another gift to the internet with Size of Life. It shows the scale of living things, starting with DNA, to hemoglobin, and keeps going up.
The scientific illustrations are hand-drawn (without AI) by Julius Csotonyi. Sound & FX by Aleix Ramon and cello music by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga calm the mind and encourage a slow observation of things, but also grow in complexity and weight with the scale. It kind of feels like a meditation exercise.
See also: shrinking to an atom, the speed of light, and of course the classic Powers of Ten.
Active Attacks Exploit Gladinet’s Hard-Coded Keys for Unauthorized Access and Code Execution
Huntress is warning of a new actively exploited vulnerability in Gladinet’s CentreStack and Triofox products stemming from the use of hard-coded cryptographic keys that have affected nine organizations so far.
“Threat actors can potentially abuse this as a way to access the web.config file, opening the door for deserialization and remote code execution,” security researcher Bryan Masters said.
The use of hard-coded cryptographic keys could allow threat actors to decrypt or forge access tickets, enabling them to access sensitive files like web.config that can be exploited to achieve ViewState deserialization and remote code execution, the cybersecurity company added.
Google Chrome adds new security layer for Gemini AI agentic browsing
Google is introducing in the Chrome browser a new defense layer called ‘User Alignment Critic’ to protect upcoming agentic AI browsing features powered by Gemini.
Agentic browsing is an emerging mode in which an AI agent is configured to autonomously perform for the user multi-step tasks on the web, including navigating sites, reading their content, clicking buttons, filling forms, and carrying out a sequence of actions.
User Alignment Critic is a separate LLM model isolated from untrusted content that acts as a “high-trust system component.”
Rydberg-atom detector conquers a new spectral frontier
A team from the Faculty of Physics and the Center for Quantum Optica l Technologies at the Center of New Technologies, University of Warsaw has developed a new method for measuring elusive terahertz signals using a “quantum antenna.”
The authors of the work utilized a novel setup for radio wave detection with Rydberg atoms to not only detect but also precisely calibrate a so-called frequency comb in the terahertz band. This band was until recently a white spot in the electromagnetic spectrum, and the solution described in the journal Optica paves the way for ultrasensitive spectroscopy and a new generation of quantum sensors operating at room temperature.
Terahertz (THz) radiation, being part of the electromagnetic spectrum, lies at the boundary of electronics and optics, positioned between microwaves (used, for example, in Wi-Fi) and infrared.
A direct leap into terahertz: Dirac materials enable efficient signal conversion at room temperature
Highspeed Internet, autonomous driving, the Internet of Things: data streams are proliferating at enormous speed. But classic radio technology is reaching its limits: the higher the data rate, the faster the signals need to be transmitted.
Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have now demonstrated that weak radio signals can be efficiently converted into significantly higher frequencies using this material that is just several tens of nanometers thick. And at room temperature, at that. The results open up prospects for future generations of mobile communications and high-resolution sensor technology. The paper is published in the journal Communications Physics.
The more data to be transmitted simultaneously, the higher the carrier frequency must be. As a result, research is now delving into the terahertz range. This frequency spectrum lies outside the microwave range currently used and, so far, has been difficult to access technologically.
Single-photon teleportation achieved between distant quantum dots for the first time
An international research team involving Paderborn University has achieved a crucial breakthrough on the road to a quantum internet. For the first time ever, the polarization state of a single photon emitted from a quantum dot was successfully teleported to another physically separated quantum dot.
This means that the properties of one photon can be transmitted to another via teleportation. This is a particularly vital step for future quantum communication networks. For example, the scientists used a 270m free-space optical link for their experiments. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Communications.
WORLDCHANGING Space Energy Supercharges AI! What it means for Nvidia, Tesla and Other AI Companies
Elon Musk plans to launch solar-powered AI satellites that could provide a nearly limitless source of energy to supercharge AI processing capacity, potentially disrupting traditional energy production and benefiting companies like Nvidia and Tesla ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.
Space Solar Power Economics.
🚀 Q: What’s the projected cost trajectory for space-based solar power? A: SpaceX could achieve $10 per watt for space solar by 2030–2032, down from previously estimated $100 per watt, with ultimate target of $1 per watt for operational systems, requiring 3–4 orders of magnitude cost reduction through Wright’s Law.
💰 Q: How much would launching 1 terawatt of space solar cost? A: Launching 1 terawatt of space solar power requires $1 trillion in launch costs alone, not including manufacturing and operational expenses.
⚡ Q: What energy advantage does space solar have over ground-based systems? A: Space solar plants generate 10x more energy than ground-based sources by operating 24/7 with double intensity, each equivalent to a nuclear power plant in output.
SpaceX Launch Capacity and Timeline.
Man behind in-flight Evil Twin WiFi attacks gets 7 years in prison
A 44-year-old man was sentenced to seven years and four months in prison for operating an “evil twin” WiFi network to steal the data of unsuspecting travelers during flights and at various airports across Australia.
The man, an Australian national, was charged in July 2024 after Australian authorities had confiscated his equipment in April and confirmed that he was engaging in malicious activities during domestic flights and at airports in Perth, Melbourne, and Adelaide.
Specifically, the man was setting up an access point with a ‘WiFi Pineapple’ portable wireless access device and used the same name (SSID) for the rogue wireless network as the legitimate ones in airports.