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Category: computing

Apple adds macOS Terminal warning to block ClickFix attacks

Apple has introduced a security feature in macOS Tahoe 26.4 that blocks pasting and executing potentially harmful commands in Terminal and alerts users to possible risks.

The new mechanism appears to be aimed primarily at blocking ClickFix attacks and has been reported by macOS users since the release candidate version of the operating system. Apple didn’t specifically mention it in macOS Tahoe 26.4 release notes.

ClickFix is a social engineering technique that tricks users into pasting malicious commands into the command line interface under the pretense of fixing a problem or a verification process.

Fragmented phone use—not total screen time—is the main driver of information overload, study finds

Amid hot discussion on screen time, social media use and the impact of digital devices on our well-being, a seven-month study from Aalto University in Finland sheds new light on what overwhelms users the most—and the results aren’t what you might think.

“Screen time does matter, but the heaviest users aren’t the most overloaded,” says doctoral researcher Henrik Lassila. “Those who feel most overwhelmed are the ones who return to their phone again and again for brief moments and then put it down shortly after.”

The seven-month study followed the digital behavior of nearly 300 adults in Germany across smartphones and computers. Participants completed repeated surveys about information overload, while all apps and websites used were logged, creating a rich longitudinal dataset of real world device use.

Silicon quantum computer performs logical operations for the first time

Silicon is ubiquitous in modern electronics, and now it is becoming increasingly useful in quantum computing. In particular, silicon’s compatibility with existing chip technology and its long coherence times in silicon-based spin qubits make it a promising material for scalable quantum computing. A new study, published in Nature Nanotechnology, has demonstrated silicon’s use in a logical quantum processor, representing the first of its kind.

Quantum computers are highly sensitive to errors from environmental noise, creating hurdles for practical quantum computation. To help suppress these errors, information can be encoded in logical qubits using fault-tolerant quantum computation (FTQC). Prior to this study, silicon had not been used for logical operations in FTQC.

“In silicon-based quantum processors, frequency crowding and cross-talk further exacerbate the errors as the system scales. To address these errors, logical encoding stands as the only viable solution by redundantly storing quantum information across multiple physical qubits. While logical qubits and operations have been successfully demonstrated in platforms such as superconducting circuits, neutral atoms, nitrogen-vacancy centers and trapped ions, their implementation in silicon-based spin qubits poses notable technical challenges,” the study authors write.

Stabilized laser components could shrink quantum computers from room- to chip-scale

Scientists in the Riccio College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of California Santa Barbara have demonstrated key laser and ion trap components necessary to help drastically shrink the size of quantum computers, an achievement aligned with the shrinking of integrated microprocessors in the 1970s, 80s and 90s that allowed computers to move from room-sized behemoths to today’s ultrathin smartphones.

The current state-of-the-art technology for quantum computing is too large and complex to scale and too sensitive and bulky to be portable. The largest and most sensitive components of these quantum systems are the optics, which include multiple lasers and vibration-isolated, temperature-controlled vacuum chambers that contain ultrastable optical cavities. These cavities stabilize the lasers to extremely high precision in order to control trapped ions for quantum computing and optical clocks.

Hygroscopic salts pull lithium from mining waste using only moisture from air

The world cannot have enough of the third element on the periodic table. From smartphones and laptops to state-of-the-art EVs, all are powered by lithium batteries. The demand for metal is only going to rise, and projected values suggest nearly a triple increase in demand by 2030. The traditional process of lithium mining is both water and energy-hungry. One such step is the dissolution of lithium salts from other competing minerals during the separation process.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers present a clever way to harness the deliquescence of lithium chloride hydrate (LHT)—a unique ability to naturally pull moisture from the air to dissolve itself—to extract and concentrate lithium from mining waste while leaving behind unwanted minerals.

The method achieved up to 97% lithium recovery with an increase in the lithium purity by 1,500 times, producing a liquid concentrate with lithium levels reaching 97,000 parts per million, which was more than twice as concentrated as the standard solutions used in battery processing.

Photonic chip packaging can withstand extreme environments

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to package photonic integrated circuits—tiny chips that convey information using light instead of electricity—so they can survive and operate in extreme environments, from scorchingly hot industrial settings to ultracold vacuum chambers and the depths of outer space.

“Our study marks a major step toward bringing the speed and efficiency of photonics into environments where conventional semiconductor chips powered by electric current and photonics chips packaged using traditional methods have not been able to operate,” said NIST physicist Nikolai Klimov, who led the project. The results were just published in Photonics Research.

Finding the ‘quantum needle’ in a haystack: New filtering method can isolate photons

In quantum technologies, everything depends on the ability to detect the properties carried by a single photon. But in the real world, that photon of interest is often buried in a sea of unwanted light—a true “needle in a haystack” challenge that currently limits the deployment of many applications, including secure quantum communication, quantum sensors used in telescope networks, as well as the interconnection of quantum computers to accelerate the development of new drugs and materials.

At the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), the team of Professor José Azaña, in collaboration with Professor Roberto Morandotti’s group, has developed a surprisingly simple and energy-efficient way to overcome this obstacle. The work was carried out by Benjamin Crockett during his Ph.D. at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre. He recently completed his degree and is now a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Their method not only reduces noise but, more importantly, recovers essential quantum properties that would otherwise be lost in bright environments where current technologies fail.

Novel protocol reconstructs quantum states in large-scale experiments up to 96 qubits

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could outperform classical computers on some computationally demanding tasks. Despite their potential, as the size of quantum computers increases, reliably describing and measuring the states driving their functioning becomes increasingly difficult.

One mathematical approach to simplify the description of quantum systems entails the use of matrix-product operators (MPOs). These are mathematical representations that allow researchers to break down very large systems into a long chain of connected smaller pieces.

Researchers at Université Grenoble Alpes, Technical University of Munich, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, University of Innsbruck and University of Bologna recently developed a new protocol that could be used to learn the MPO representations of quantum states in real, large-scale quantum experiments. Their protocol, presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, has so far been found to reliably reconstruct states in quantum systems including up to 96 qubits.

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