Squid Dominated the Oceans in the Late Cretaceous

New research:

One reason the early years of squids has been such a mystery is because squids’ lack of hard shells made their fossils hard to come by. Undeterred, the team instead focused on finding ancient squid beaks—hard mouthparts with high fossilization potential that could help the team figure out how squids evolved.

With that in mind, the team developed an advanced fossil discovery technique that completely digitized rocks with all their embedded fossils in complete 3D form. Upon using that technique on Late Cretaceous rocks from Japan, the team identified 1,000 fossilized cephalopod beaks hidden inside the rocks, which included 263 squid specimens and 40 previously unknown squid species.

The team said the number of squid fossils they found vastly outnumbered the number of bony fishes and ammonites, which are extinct shelled relatives of squids that are considered among the most successful swimmers of the Mesozoic era.

“Forty previously unknown squid species.” Wow.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

Tags:

Posted on July 11, 2025 at 5:04 PM • 25 Comments

Comments

Clive Robinson • July 11, 2025 8:11 PM

@ ALL,

There is apparently a preliminary report in on the Air India crash,

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/11/india/air-india-crash-report-intl-latam

The provisional finding being,

“The aircraft had reached an airspeed of 180 knots when both engines’ fuel cutoff switches were “transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec,” according to the report”

I’ll leave it for others to read the article.

Snarki, child of Loki • July 11, 2025 9:47 PM

Many (10x? 100x?) more species existed and went extinct than are currently living, so it’s not surprising finding previously unknown species of fossil squid.

If you know a paleontologist, chances are pretty good that they’ve named a species after you, because they need to come up with lots of new species names.

The 3D imaging part is pretty awesome. Alternative is soaking in (mild) acid to dissolve the rock, but not the fossils, then sort through the result “by hand” (under a microscope).

Clive Robinson • July 12, 2025 12:04 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Flashback to the 1980’s and DRM war.

Sone of us lived through the “Digital Rights Management”(DRM) wars of the 1990’s. Where those seeking to protect their digital rights hid messages in noise they xalled “Watermarks”. That they “added” to digital media using techniques very similar to “Low Probability of Intercept”(LPI) “Spread Spectrum”(SS) Techniques.

Each time the Pro-DRM people would come up with a new Watermark / “rights protection method” the Anti-DRM researchers would come up with ways to either remove it or nullify it.

Eventually Prof Ross J Anderson and his group at the UK Cambridge Computer labs came up with an Anti-DRM method that the Pro-DRM people effectively gave up against.

Without going into details[1] the Anti-DRM method added tiny two dimensional twists to the image. Not enough to upset the human eye, but enough to upset the DRM Signature detecting methods thus nullify Property rights Watermarks.

Well back then it was the Evil Disney Corp and Co that were the enemy… Today it’s Alphabet/Google, Meta, Microsoft, and even Apple as well as many Governments.

With artists trying to protect their work against AI Systems “scanning the world” and ignoring any kind of creator “Intellectual Property”(IP) rights.

So in a way a form of role reversal with agnostic technology in the divide between the waring factions. With the AI side apparently run by latter-day sociopaths.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/11/defenses_against_ai_scrapers_beaten/

“Some visual artists, concerned about copyright violations and the possibility that AI-generated images will destroy the demand for their work, have taken to using software that adds “adversarial perturbations” – data patterns that will make AI model predictions misfire. Now, researchers have described a method to beat those perturbations in a paper [PDF] titled, “LightShed: Defeating Perturbation-based Image Copyright Protections.””

One odd thing is,

“”We view LightShed primarily as an awareness effort to highlight weaknesses in existing protection schemes, and we have conducted our work under strict responsible disclosure protocols, which is required by the conference as well,” said Hanna Foerster, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and one of the authors, in an email to The Register.”

I find it odd that the references on Hanna Foerster’s paper do not include any of Ross J. Andersons highly relevant papers from the mid to late 1990’s on Watermarking. Being as she is from what was Ross’s laboratory, I find it odd that she did not mention him.

[1] I would have given a link that used to be up on Ross’s home page. But he apparently tided things up in line with not supporting “closed journals” behind PayWalls and quite a few pre-2005 papers and earlier appear to have gone. However one of his DRM Watermark papers is sort of available at,

https://www.academia.edu/3121998/Attacks_on_Copyright_Marking_Systems

Clive Robinson • July 12, 2025 10:34 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Another UK flashback to National ID Cards.

Apparently the current UK Government have decided via their usual nonsense that massively expensive IT contracts through unreliable insecure vendors is the way to make everyone and their most minor and also intimate activities known and held on a massive Database.

It’s sometimes known as “Blairite twaddle” for good reasons, yet he can not let it go,

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14582903/Labour-MPs-ministers-digital-ID-Brits-grip-illegal-immigration-boost-economy.html

But the real reason originally was it was a way the political party Tony Blair was the leader off used to avoid becoming bankrupt. It also acted as a seque into the “cash for questions” and similar questions about corruption that brought the labour government down.

The previous scheam was such a disaster in so many ways actual legislation was brought in to kill the ID cards off and for compensation to be made payable to those effected by it,

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/identity-cards-and-new-identity-and-passport-service-suppliers

The only thing that has changed since is those in the Government ICT sector who will get given over priced contracts have actually got worse in their failing behaviours not better…

The stupidity of the Blairite politicians from back then is still on display for all to see,

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/digital-id-cards-would-help-to-deter-migrants-from-heading-to-uk-harriet-harman-says/ar-AA1IneBI

The fact is illegal economic migrants will “die trying” to get here and many have. So realistically do people honestly think “a bit of plastic” will stop them? Of course not.

Further no matter what politicians say illegal economic migrants will always find “work” legal or illegal… And as recent news has shown even when deported they just come back one way or another to carry on. With some being very dangerous criminals that have caused significant harm and death to others.

In short “a bit of plastic” will not stop them in any way, in fact it will probably have two effects,

1, Make a new fake-credential crime market.
2, Make the criminal behaviours considerably worse.

We know this from previous attempts at ID cards, not just in the UK but all over the world…

I’m surprised it’s not yet been proposed as a “solve all” in the USA.

So anyone who thinks that ID cards will be a “silver bullet” to crime, illegal immigration, and very much more are deluding themselves. And worse daftly falling to the political “dog whistles” of “think of the children” and similar.

None of these issues can be solved by such techno-dross and people should be aware of this before politicians “on the take” via lobbyists and worse hand over billions for not even “snake oil”.

It was something that greatly concerned Ross Anderson not just for the reasons already given, but that he had absolutely no confidence that the backend database to ID cards could ever be secure or safe.

But even the multi-billion industry behind ID-Cards has it’s self doubts and concerns,

https://www.biometricupdate.com/202507/is-the-uk-falling-behind-europe-on-digital-identity-security

But unfortunately has to “jack-up the FUD” by talking about how it could solve the AI Fake ID issue…

The true answer if you think about it, is ID-Cards and databases can not, nor will not, solve these issues.

Not just because trying to solve social issues with technology almost always becomes a disaster…

But due also to basic foundational failings that can not be resolved currently, nor are likely to be anytime in our future.

To give you a “taste” of the more general issues a UK Barrister has put up this video,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nCNOenDiY8c

lurker • July 12, 2025 1:40 PM

@Clive Robinson, ALL

A danger with ID cards is that third parties will start to require them for various other functions, e.g. proof of age for liquor purchase might seem trivial, but if a website asks for the ID card Nr as proof of age ….

And long before cellphones, the Chinese tracking system required an ID card to buy a train ticket.

Clive Robinson • July 12, 2025 5:33 PM

@ lurker, all,

With regards,

“And long before cellphones, the Chinese tracking system required an ID card to buy a train ticket.”

The Barrister in the video is married and his wife is Chinese by birth. And she has indicated that in parts of China even the “street sellers” of garden grown vegetables require you to provide State ID…

The current UK Government wants to replicate this by in part stopping the use of “cash” as I’ve mentioned in the past. But also that every transaction be recorded an idea that goes back directly to Blair and the desire to set local land taxes –rates– on what the average house hold spends in an area. Thus if you are an old couple that have lived in your house for fifty years and are on the most meagre of pensions… Yet the area goes from run down to trendy and wealthy people come in as their neighbours and spend as much in a week as the pensioners do in six months then guess what’s going to happen to the pensioners rates…

Hence my lead in comment of

“… is the way to make everyone and their most minor and also intimate activities known and held on a massive Database.”

They have not said it yet but that is almost certainly just one of the intents of the introduction of National ID.

Which will no doubt quickly expand via the “Single Justice System” into AI driven fine systems.

The current Single Justice System is currently being abused by “Television Licencing” in the UK and it’s estimated that around 50,000 people are wrongly fined and quite a few are then turned into criminals. All to often it’s disabled people who have their “affairs” managed by court or legal appointed guardians who suffer no penalty for making the disabled people they are responsible for criminals.

As I’ve noted before, the UK Government can not raise taxes nor can they stop giving money away to “the favoured few”. So they are turning to “fines” as a way to cover the ever growing loss of revenue into the Treasury…

not important • July 12, 2025 6:08 PM

@Clive: ‘As I’ve noted before, the UK Government can not raise taxes nor can they stop giving money away to “the favored few”. So they are turning to “fines” as a way to cover the ever growing loss of revenue into the Treasury’

What about tariffs on import which will be transferred by businesses to consumers by price increase? It should be domestic alternative for tariffed import to protect domestic manufacturer. Then tariffs will not affect customers.

Treasury needs money but what is spending purpose? Benefits of own taxpayers or financing ideologically based domestic and foreign policy?

not important • July 12, 2025 6:11 PM

https://cyberguy.com/robot-tech/solar-robot-zaps-weeds/

=the solar-powered weeding robot for cotton fields is offering farmers a smarter and more sustainable way to tackle weeds. This technology is arriving just in time, as growers across the country face a shortage of available workers and weeds that are becoming increasingly resistant to herbicides.

Aigen’s Element robot is designed to meet the real-world needs of modern agriculture. It runs entirely on solar power, which means farmers can save money on fuel while also reducing their environmental impact.

The robot uses advanced AI and onboard cameras to spot and remove weeds with impressive accuracy, all without damaging the crops.

Its rugged design allows it to handle rough terrain and changing weather, and it can work alongside other robots, communicating wirelessly to cover large fields efficiently. The Element robot isn’t limited to cotton; it’s also being used in soy and sugar beet fields, showing just how versatile this technology can be.=

JG5 • July 13, 2025 9:13 AM

This is a stunning exposition of what is possible in converting blue sky and sunshine into fuels – and plastics:

To Conquer the Primary Energy Consumption Layer of Our Entire Civilization – Casey Handmer’s blog
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2025/04/08/to-conquer-the-primary-energy-consumption-layer-of-our-entire-civilization/
[Originally posted on the Terraform blog April 3, 2025.]

Even without accounting for the triple health disasters of Forever Wars, air pollution, and climate change, solar electricity is cheaper than fossil fuels. And iron-air batteries will keep the lights on at night.

The future of this planet and species is being made in Asia. Happy to flesh out these topics further as time and interest suggest.

Back in the day, I was enthusiastic about renewable energy:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/a_50-foot_squid.html/#comment-288841

Energy is a key component of data security. It doesn’t matter how much concurrency and integrity you have if you don’t have any availability. You won’t have to string together very many dots to get from data security to national security. The Amish may eventually get around to fully optical data systems that run on pure sunshine. Until then, you’ll need some electricity to go with your computing engine.

There were a lot of topics that I didn’t have the time or energy to fully explain back in the day. I should have posted the links to Hubbert’s 1956 paper and Rickover’s 1957 dinner speech, but I didn’t want to push the bounds of topics too far. Both show that fossil fuels only ever could be stepping stones for humans. Admiral Rickover argued that energy is the backbone of civilization. I always thought that his speech was based on Hubbert’s paper. For a long time, I thought that they were correct about nuclear power. I believe now that solar PV is the better choice, and fairly soon it will be beamed down from orbit. Power also will be beamed up and down to rockets and aircraft.

The US is lagging pretty badly in renewable energy, perhaps not recognizing how important it is – and will be. I misplaced an article last week that advanced the argument that the hotspot in “AI” is going to move from hardware to software to the energy to power it. China are installing 7.5 GW/week of renewable energy generating capacity. That is the output power of 5 good-sized nuclear power plants. Fair enough, it doesn’t run 24/7, but it doesn’t have to if you have batteries.

At the current price of solar PV panels and lithium-iron phosphate batteries, you can generate and store your own power on the east coast of the US for about 6 cents/kW-hr, which is 1/4 of the current retail price. The explosion of data centers and the electricity demand that goes with them will drive the retail price a lot higher. Solar PV and long-life batteries are a special class of investment that is inflation-proof and substantially all-weather. The vulnerability is hail, but not economic collapse.

Winter • July 13, 2025 11:17 AM

@Clive

“CO2 + H2O + i = plastic feedstock”

There have been several developments that convert CO2 to organic matter (methanol etc.). They are unavoidable, and run by way of H2.

When you have H2, you can do almost anything, from producing steel to creating kerosine. But H2 is not a nice gas to work with. It wil take some time and a lot of investments to set up a production& transport chain.

Clive Robinson • July 15, 2025 6:26 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

In the past I’ve noted that there is an issue between engineers world view and secure systems when it comes to any kind of communication.

Engineers try to keep things,

1, Simple.
2, Human understandable.
3, Require minimal equipment that is standard.

Because although it makes communications inefficient it does make development and debugging, repair and maintenance so much simpler and constrainable.

However these goals tend to make security either an afterthought that is in effect a “bolt on”, Or extreamly fragile and vulnerable. With all to often both failings creating significant problems.

There are solutions to this but care has to be exercised, as it is all to easy to create a system vulnerable to a simple man in the middle attack that causes security to “fall back” to the no security or similar insecure state.

As an example of this that has real world physical safety issues that is now in the Tech MSM,

Train Brakes Can Be Hacked Over Radio—And the Industry Knew for 20 Years

https://www.securityweek.com/train-hack-gets-proper-attention-after-20-years-researcher/

“CISA last week published an advisory describing CVE-2025-1727, an issue affecting the remote linking protocol used by systems known as End-of-Train [EoT] and Head-of-Train[HoT].”

“The problem, according to CISA’s advisory, is that the protocol remotely linking the EoT and HoT over radio signals is not secure (no authentication or encryption are used)”

With CISA noting,

“Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to send their own brake control commands to the end-of-train device, causing a sudden stoppage of the train which may lead to a disruption of operations, or induce brake failure”

This problem does not just effect train systems, it effects many if not all remote mechanical actuators where control is over a vulnerable communications channel.

Those cranes who’s “jib operators” now use a “control deck” strapped to their waist or slung around their necks… Rarely is the comms from the control deck properly secured or authenticated.

I know from work I did in the 1980’s in the offshore oil industry that the links from “Remote Telemetry Units”(RTUs) back to “Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition”(SCADA) systems then under the control of remote operators by various “telepresence systems” all to often now over the Internet were not secure or authenticated and mostly could be hacked via the use of a VT52 or similar terminal/program.

And we know that “backwards compatibility” is a major selling point… So “fallback” to “insecure and unauthenticated” will almost always be possible unless legislation and regulation stops it.

But the “regulation” has to come from “outside industry influence”… as can be seen from the article “the trade” associations/bodies will down play risk or ask for impossible proofs and even if proved they will fight tooth and nail before they will act in ways that “protect not just public safety but workers”.

lurker • July 15, 2025 4:55 PM

Thousands of Afghan collaborators endangered by “data leak.”
Will we ever be rid of those fools who think an Excel spreadsheet is a database; and those who think email is a safe way to move large amounts of data …

‘https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8zy78787o

not important • July 16, 2025 7:12 PM

https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-ai-researchers-concerned-losing-161531516.html

=Researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta have joined forces to warn about what they’re building.

In a new position paper, 40 researchers spread across those four companies called for more investigation of AI powered by so-called “chains-of-thought” (CoT), the “thinking out loud” process that advanced “reasoning” models — the current vanguard of consumer-facing AI — use when they’re working through a query.

As those researchers acknowledge, CoTs add a certain transparency into the inner workings of AI, allowing users to see “intent to misbehave” or get stuff wrong as it happens. Still, there is “no guarantee that the current degree of visibility will persist,” especially as models continue to advance.

There’s also the non-zero chance that models could intentionally “obfuscate” their CoTs after realizing that they’re being watched, the researchers noted — and as we’ve already seen, AI has indeed rapidly become very good at lying and deception.

nobody is entirely sure why the models are “thinking” this way, or how long they will continue to do so.

Top researchers in an emerging field are warning that they don’t quite understand how their creation works, and lack confidence in their ability to control it going forward, even as they forge ahead making it stronger; there’s no clear precedent in the history of innovation, even looking back to civilization-shifting inventions like atomic energy and the combustion engine.

Once again, there appears to be tacit acknowledgement of AI’s “black box” nature — and to be fair,

even CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have admitted that at a deep level, they don’t really understand how the technology they’re building works.=

Clive Robinson • July 16, 2025 10:37 PM

@ ALL,

Did we just escape an existential celestial bullet?

A few readers will know there was a rather large “solar filament” carving out a “grand canyon” in the suns surface a few hours ago (~1200UTC 15th July).

Such events chuck out inordinate amounts of highly charged matter known as “Coronal Mass Ejections”(CMEs) that can from time to tine hit the Earth.

https://gizmodo.com/colossal-eruption-carves-canyon-of-fire-onto-the-suns-surface-2000630397

It is only a question of probability as to “when” not “if” it’s going to happen.

Prior to the Victorian era a CME hitting earth did not do very much other than light up the night sky, and make a few knee benders think it was the holy hosts coming to claim their souls etc..

However just about everything we do in this day and age is based on the supply of “electricity” or things done by “electronically controlled” devices and communications.

(Funny thing there has just been a short power outage as I type this…)

Those “toilet rolls” that people apparently prize so highly, they will fight tooth and nail for… Only get made, transported and put on store shelves by the use of electricity. Likewise your attempt to pay for them so they are yours to take home.

Ask yourself what life would be like without toilet paper, then consider running potable water, not just to flush the toilet, but to drink. Likewise food to eat and just about everything else your life depends on…

The following times have been noted by various people,

1, Dead in three minutes without air.
2, Dead in three hours without heat.
3, Dead in three days without water.
4, Dead in three weeks by disease.
5, Dead in three months by malnutrition.

All happen in some way without electricity to prevent them.

A direct hit with a large CME can take out National and International power grids in many ways.

Whilst what happened on the Iberian Peninsula in South West Europe a little while back was not caused by a CME the outage was a minimum of what could happen with a CME direct hit.

For various reasons continental North America is more vulnerable than other First World parts of the world… Just something else to think about whilst you are dodging puddles etc.

Oh and don’t believe those that say the end is nigh because,

“There is a hell mouth opening”

Unless of course it’s Orange and makes you think “backpfeifengesicht” whilst it lurks in the Palace like an evil toad that we know has to pay to be kissed… But warning girls it ain’t no frog so no prince or king 😉

bilocation • July 17, 2025 8:10 PM

It certainly seems or feels like piecewise things are swapped/altered from traditional/well-tested to ↺ “move fast and break things”… or vendor lock-in/centralisation (a la Snaps). Worse yet, more and more of Ubuntu, in spite of past GitHub breaches, ↺ becomes Microsoft GitHub (now sudo):

https://techrights.org/i/2025/05/British-Army-Officer-Ubuntu.png

Seager is at it again. He did the same to GNU just months ago.

The new ‘sudo’ (a name or term or generic alias that
Microsoft abuses already) will be controlled by Microsoft, i.e. expect back doors (the CSO of GitHub spent decades at the NSA). Then again, this is what today’s British government demands. They insinuate that what you use is dangerous if it does not have back doors.

No kidding. Read that again.

As we put it back in March, this is a “Push Away From GNU and GPL Led by Army Officers.”

This project isn’t GPL or even copyleft and notice how,

ONCE AGAIN, this decision was made by a man from the

British Army, including the spy agencies.

It’s not like he has much relevant experience, either. So what is going on here?

You’re hopeless, Canonical.

GNU may be mostly secure. Its commands or program implementations had decades to mature.

Linux does not have back doors (that we know of). However, the way Ubuntu puts things together (and the components/”ingredients”) is a mystery – perhaps an enigma worthy of another E.N.I.G.M.A.

Whose HR decision was this? It happened before. See “Man From Microsoft Runs the Ubuntu Project Now” (2013) or “Ubuntu Desktop Director of Engineering Has Only One Blog Post. It Promotes Microsoft Windows.” (2025)

Numb Lock • July 17, 2025 10:57 PM

= DebConf25 – The 26th Debian Linux Conference

https://debconf25.debconf.org/
https://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2025/DebConf25/
https://debconf25.debconf.org/schedule

= HP is going to monitor PC usage with a “carfax for PCs” with firmware-level data collector

https://spectrum.ieee.org/carfax-used-pcs

= The Latest Windows PCs Remember Everything

https://spectrum.ieee.org/microsoft-copilot

= FuguIta: OpenBSD Live CD – Desktop Environment Demo Version with XFCE v.4.20.0!

https://fuguita.org/?FuguIta/BBS#ba2ab6a8
https://fuguita.org/

Clive Robinson • July 18, 2025 4:57 AM

@ lurker, ALL,

Practical Quantum Factoring worse than using VIC-20, an abacus, and a dog says grumpy old man in NZ[1]…

As pointed out in,

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/17/quantum_cryptanalysis_criticism/

The US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has been pushing for the development of post-quantum cryptographic algorithms since 2016.

And some ask if the whole effort appears to be at best a questionable “physics experiment” that others think might be better as a “noise generator”.

NIST claims in its “Post-Quantum Cryptography”(PQC) blurb that,

“If large-scale quantum computers are ever built, they will be able to break many of the public-key cryptosystems currently in use,”

So sounds “existential for online commerce”…

But note the two major “weasel words” of “If” and “ever” in the first sentence.

After way more than two decades of active research glaciers have moved faster… As noted in The Register article, the reality is not exactly anything to write home about,

“The paper notes that IBM in 2001 implemented Shor’s algorithm in a seven-qubit quantum computer, demonstrating the factorization of the number 15. A decade later, researchers managed to use a quantum computer to factor the number 21. IBM tried to factor 35 in 2019 but basically failed – the algorithm worked 14 percent of the time due to rampant qubit errors.”

So four bit numbers in the bag, five bit not so much…

Which is why Prof. Peter Gutmann has wryly observed,

PQC…isn’t mathematics or engineering, it’s augury: ‘A great machine shall arise, and it will cast aside all existing cryptography, there shall be Famine, Plague, War, and a long arable field.’

Thus the bones shall click and clatter when cast in the bowl, the birds will fly toward the clouds as the goat blood drips down and Shammen will wail and prance.

As for the Chinese claim via Shanghai University,

[T]o have used a quantum computer from D-Wave, which specializes in quantum annealing computers tuned for specific optimization problems, to have factored a 2,048-bit RSA integer.

The Prof is not in the slightest bit impressed and points out with either a one word epithet of “B@11@cks” or a longer acid observation of,

[The] “Quantum factorization is performed using sleight-of-hand numbers that have been selected to make them very easy to factorize using a physics experiment and, by extension, a VIC-20, an abacus, and a dog.”

(Which I think is a bit mean about his dog –yup it’s a real mut that barks–).

For those that want to see the rather fun paper,

https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237.pdf

[1] As for “grumpy old man” it’s probably not true, but like “absent-mindedness” it’s a trope about distinguished academics, along with puffing pipes and being covered in chalk dust 😉 But Peter does say of himself,

“Peter Gutmann arrived on earth some eons ago when his physical essence filtered down from the stars, and he took human(?) form. Lingering for awhile on the plateau of Leng while waiting for the apes to evolve, he eventually mingled among human society, generally without being detected, although the century he spent staked out in a peat bog in Denmark was rather unpleasant and not something he’d care to repeat. Once computers were invented he became involved in security research in the hope that enough insider knowledge would, at the right time, allow him to bypass electronic security measures on the first translight spacecraft and allow him to return to the stars. This is probably still some time away. Until then he spends his time as a researcher at the University of Auckland, poking holes in security systems and mechanisms (purely for practice), and throwing rocks at PKIs.”

lurker • July 18, 2025 2:29 PM

@Clive, ALL

I suspected the dog might have been to eat as part of the magic, but it seems the dog is PG’s, not from Shanghai University.

More debunking at

‘https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/cybersecurity/no-chinese-did-not-crack-rsa-with-quantum-yet/

JG5 • July 20, 2025 10:03 PM

@Clive – Glad that you still are going. Can’t recall if I suggested a old-time beverage here:

The Old Bridge Inn
Priest Lane Ripponden HX6 4DF United Kingdom

I picked up on it @23:23 There is good hiking in the area.

Richard Feynman – The World from another point of view
mrtp 15.7K subscribers
1.3M views | 9 years ago

Did someone say “StarFish Prime?” I feel like this came up before, but this is a little more complete.

The Carrington Event of 1859 was not the largest solar storm to impact Earth, according to geochemical evidence from tree rings and ice cores.

The 774–775 CE (common era) Miyake Event is documented in tree rings by a dramatic 12% increase in radiocarbon (14C), far greater than the less than 1% increase for the Carrington Event. The Miyake Event is estimated to have been at least 10 times, possibly up to 20 times, more powerful than the Carrington Event.

Other large ancient events have been found:

Around 993–994 CE, another major solar storm occurred, at about 60% the size of the Miyake Event.

A newly analyzed event around 12,350 BC (~14,300 years ago) is now considered the strongest known, at least 18% stronger than even the 774–775 CE event, and over 500 times stronger than the largest modern (satellite-era) particle storm.

Additional events have been detected at 7176 BC, 5259 BC, and 663 BC, with several other candidates under investigation.

These events are detected in tree rings (by spikes in 14 C) and in ice cores (by beryllium-10 and other isotopes).

The best-supported super events are 774–775 CE, 993–994 CE, and the major late Ice Age event at 12,350 BC.

JG5 • September 14, 2025 8:09 AM

Sorry to be slowed 2-1/2 years by the effects of time, temperature, vibration, corrosion, oxidative stress, premature ageing, and other well-known physics and chemistry.

I have been meaning to reply to the other half of the dioxin/polychlorodisaster that followed a week later in the Ohio train wreck discussion. Wherein MarkH implied the EPA to be honest and competent:

MarkH • February 12, 2023 7:36 PM
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/02/friday-squid-blogging-squid-is-a-blockchain-thingy.html/#comment-417567
Ohio Derailment, Pt 1
…
Meanwhile, EPA has also established a strong record of impartiality. I confide that what they are reporting conforms to what they know.
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@MarkH – I wish you well with that line of thinking. Here is the truth from yet another whistle-blower:

Whistleblower: EPA failed to protect town | CUOMO
https://www.newsnationnow.com/video/whistleblower-epa-failed-to-protect-town-cuomo/9695335/
May 14, 2024 / 08:08 PM CDT

I drove through the area 6 weeks ago, but forgot to visit East Palestine. Might get another chance before it is all ice and snow from here to there. I did get thrown off the grounds of Form Energy for taking pictures, but they were pleasant about it. I was too, because I had stopped at the local VFW watering hole.

The main point of stopping by today is to comment on space weather. Didn’t realize how tight the coupling is or might be from solar wind to earth’s rotation and the internal magnetic field.

I have seen in recent days the claim that tectonic activity can be jump-started by solar storms. I’ve only seen the aurora once. A good story for another day. A fun GlueTube channel. I invented the term of art k00kf4ct0r, but I’m not sure they’re wrong.

Government Tracking the Pole Shift
SpaceWeatherNews (S0) 824K subscribers
64K views | 1 day ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsFqmc_m-bw

It seems very benign. The presenter/narrator/commentators’ voice is calm and scientific. They have lots of charts and graphs. And links to credible research papers. I have known for at least 55 years that solar activity affects life on earth. I missed a few links in the chain of causality, which still are poorly understood. Pole shifts probably alter coupling of solar wind to atmospheric angular momentum. IIRC, up to 1% of atmospheric angular momentum is exchanged in and out of the earth’s rotational speed. It is thought that solar activity can trigger seismic events. They even have a stargazing site in Colorado. I thought about going to visit on the way to through. The old pinto did well at 10,000 feet. Would have liked to go up to Telluride. Maybe next time.

Clive Robinson • September 14, 2025 12:14 PM

@ JG5

With regards Solar Weather…

First off,

“It seems very benign”

It rather depends on how you think of it…

For instance the build up of energy in the clouds is often spread across a very very great area and volume. So appears tiny per squ/cm etc or cubic CM. Less than you would get out os a small battery, so small / benign.

However it in effect attracts together, and the voltage and current become immense on little more than a few square cm. Thus becomes more than humans can effectively generate.

Such that strong insulators like sand in a dry desert become completely molten or full plasma. With the result when the energy is dissipated we are left with what looks like cooled molten glass…

So it depends on how you view it.

With regards

“It is thought that solar activity can trigger seismic events”

Solar Weather is well known to effect both natural and man made satellites

Years ago I wrote software to measure some of the effects of Solar Weather that can involve mass at extream velocity.

It is certainly capable to cause changes in tidal effects, that in turn effect planetary movement. So under some circumstances the end result can be that seismic events that have stored energy, can be triggered by reletaively small forces to release immense amounts of energy.

The other thing is the old “energy/mass can nether be created or destroyed”. The Solar system has matter orbiting the Sun, which we can not measure only estimate.

Ask yourself what is involved with getting a lump of rock to orbit at speeds mankind can only amaze at. Just by what is effect solar weather effects. And when such rocks hit other objects just what energy gets released…

It’s been said in the past that such rocks have caused near extermination events on Earth.

The thing is we are only just learning about what can and can not happen.

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