US rare earths flow to Asia as domestic demand is slow to emerge

<p>US rare earths produced by Washington-backed companies are flowing to Japan and South Korea, as American demand has yet to materialize despite the Trump administration’s push to develop a national supply chain.</p> <p>Rare earths products produced by MP Materials, Energy Fuels and Phoenix Tailings—which together have won billions of dollars in US government support—are being sold to companies in Asia, where the scale of magnet manufacturing remains larger than the nascent production in the US.</p> <p>China’s lock on global supplies of rare earths and critical minerals has become a national security concern in the US and other Western nations, since Beijing started restricting access to them. The metals are crucial to 21st-century technology and are used in the manufacturing of everything from weapons guidance systems to electric vehicle batteries.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/07/us-rare-earths-flow-to-asia-as-domestic-demand-is-slow-to-emerge/">Read full article</a></p> <p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/07/us-rare-earths-flow-to-asia-as-domestic-demand-is-slow-to-emerge/#comments">Comments</a></p> Reference : https://ift.tt/i72CXVu

IEEE Honors Robotics Pioneer Toshio Fukuda

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/three-men-in-suits-onstage-smiling-as-one-presents-an-award-medal-in-a-box.jpg?id=67107362&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C469%2C0%2C469"/><br/><br/><p><a href="https://ethw.org/Toshio_Fukuda" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Toshio Fukuda</a> has been blazing trails for most of his career. He is considered to be one of the most prolific scholars in <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/topic/robotics/" target="_self">robotics</a>, writing more than 2,000 research papers and authoring several books on the field. He’s an influential figure thanks to his pioneering work developing biomedical robotic systems, industrial robots, micro-nano robotics, mechatronics, and AI-driven automation.</p><p>Fukuda launched one of the first robotics conferences, the <a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/conferences-workshops/financially-co-sponsored/iros/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems</a> (IROS). It is still popular almost 40 years later.</p><h3>Toshio Fukuda</h3><br/><p><strong>Employer</strong></p><p>Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology, in Alexandria</p> <p><strong>Title</strong></p><p>Professor and vice president of research</p> <p><strong>Member grade</strong></p><p>Life Fellow</p> <p><strong>Alma maters</strong></p><p>Waseda University, in Tokyo; University of Tokyo </p><p>An IEEE Life Fellow, he is a professor emeritus in the department of micro-nano systems engineering and a visiting professor at <a href="https://en.nagoya-u.ac.jp/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nagoya University</a>, in Japan, where he taught for nearly 25 years. Currently, he is a vice president of research at the <a href="https://ejust.edu.eg/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology</a>, in Alexandria, Egypt.</p><p>Within IEEE, Fukuda has held top volunteer positions including the organization’s highest office: He served as <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/u/toshio-fukuda" target="_self">IEEE president</a> in 2020, becoming the first person of Asian descent to hold the role.</p><p>He’s a former program director of Japan’s <a href="https://www.jst.go.jp/moonshot/en/about.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Moonshot program</a>, which by 2050 intends to develop advanced AI robots.</p><p>Born in Japan, Fukuda has been recognized by the country for his contributions to science with two of its highest awards: the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medals_of_Honor_(Japan)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Medal of Honor with a purple ribbon</a> in 2015 and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Sacred_Treasure" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Order of the Sacred Treasure</a> in 2022.</p><p>IEEE honored him with this year’s <a href="https://corporate-awards.ieee.org/award/ieee-richard-m-emberson-award/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Richard M. Emberson Award</a> for “distinguished service advancing the technical objectives of IEEE, especially in the area of robotics.” The IEEE Board-level award is sponsored by the <a href="https://ta.ieee.org/technical-activities-board" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Technical Activities Board</a>. Fukuda received the award on 24 April at a <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-celebrates-honors-ceremony-2026" target="_self">ceremony</a> in New York City.</p><p>As a former IEEE president who has served as a master of ceremonies at several of the organization’s major award events, Fukuda noted that he is more accustomed to bestowing awards than receiving them.</p><p>“It’s very interesting to be on the receiving end,” he says.</p><h2>The journey into robotics research</h2><p>As a teenager, Fukuda spent his summer breaks teaching himself how to build things including transistor radios and steam engines.</p><p>“It was very nice to have a hands-on hobby and make these kinds of things myself,” he says. His experimentation led him to study engineering.</p><p>He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1971 from <a href="https://www.waseda.jp/top/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Waseda University</a>, in Tokyo. He says one of his professors there—<a href="https://www.humanoid.waseda.ac.jp/history.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ichiro Kato</a>, regarded as the father of Japanese robotics research—was a good mentor who made a positive impact.</p><p>Fukuda’s research interests were robotics and mechatronics, a field that combines robotics, electronics, computer science, and control systems.</p><p>He went on to earn a master’s degree and a doctorate in science from the <a href="https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">University of Tokyo</a>, in 1971 and 1977. During those years, he also attended <a href="https://www.yale.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Yale</a>, where he conducted research on advanced control theory in 1973.</p><p>He reflects fondly on his time at Yale: “It was a very nice environment and a kind of free-thinking atmosphere. It motivated me to study more.”</p><p class="pull-quote">“IEEE doesn’t care who you are, what you do, what country you are from, or whether you are male or female. IEEE accepts people who have energy and passion.”</p><p>While at Yale, Fukuda served as an assistant to his advisor—which led him to consider a career in academia, he says, because he enjoyed the freedom that research work afforded him.</p><p>But he realized that such freedom comes with a price. University researchers are expected to raise the money that funds their work. He compares researchers to small-business owners who have to bring in money to keep their enterprise afloat.</p><p>That realization led him to select robotics as his field because he intended to develop technologies useful to industry, he says.</p><p>After earning his doctorate, he returned to Japan in 1977 to work as a research scientist at the government’s Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, later renamed the <a href="https://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/about_aist/" target="_blank">National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology</a>, in Tsukuba.</p><p>“There was a lot of research going on at the lab, including practical robotics and theory,” he says.</p><p>He left Japan in 1979 to become a visiting research fellow at the <a href="https://www.uni-stuttgart.de/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">University of Stuttgart</a>, in Germany. During his year there, he studied systems, software problems, and related topics.</p><p>He returned to Japan and was hired as an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the <a href="https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tokyo University of Science</a>. He conducted research into practical uses for robots by visiting industrial plants. He decided to develop robots that inspect industrial equipment such as those used in assembly plants, oil refineries, and power stations—places that “can be hostile environments for humans,” he says.</p><p>His work drew interest from chemical, oil, and utility companies.</p><p>“I got a lot of money from them for this very practical application, which funded my research,” he says, laughing.</p><h2>Developing popular robotic systems</h2><p>Fukuda grew tired of making those robots, he says, so he switched to creating ones for scientific applications. He developed many techniques, but he probably is best known for his modular, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004579069290029D" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">cellular robotic systems</a> (CEBOTs), which he introduced in 1985.</p><p>He has described how <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?newsearch=true&queryText=CEBOT" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CEBOTs work</a> in numerous papers published in the <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Xplore Digital Library</a>.</p><p>The CEBOT system is composed of a number of autonomous robotic cells that stick together like interlocking <a href="https://www.lego.com/en-us" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lego</a> plastic bricks, he says.</p><p>Each cell is a fundamental modular unit that has a function. When a simple task is given, the system can analyze it and generate the structure of the cellular manipulator. The cells connect to and detach from each other through connection mechanisms and cooperate mutually, creating complex structures and configurations.</p><p>“You start developing from the component-wise to the cell-wise to a small functional unit—and then you come up with clusters that make bigger systems. We can make a society of robot beings like that,” he explained in his <a href="https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Toshio_Fukuda" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">oral history</a> published on the <a href="https://ethw.org/Main_Page" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Engineering and Technology History Wiki</a>. “It’s a distributed robotic system, a self-organized robotic system, and also an evolutionary robotic system.</p><p>“It’s also a fault-tolerant robot system because if something is wrong, you just remove those things and make a new one. You keep the system working. That’s a great thing.”</p><p>Today CEBOTs are used for a variety of tasks such as delivering medication in hospitals, assisting with planting crops, and transporting products in distribution centers. Check out <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/" target="_self"><em><em>IEEE Spectrum</em></em></a>’s <a href="https://robotsguide.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Robots Guide</a> for news from the world of robotics.</p><p>In 1989 Fukuda joined Nagoya University as a professor of mechanical engineering and micro-nano systems engineering. During his 24-year career there, he was director of the university’s <a href="https://en.nagoya-u.ac.jp/assets/pdf/pages/about/communications/schools/about_communications_schools_7.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Center for Micro-Nano Mechatronics</a>. He developed a long list of technologies at the university, including many for medical applications. He also conducted groundbreaking research into intelligent robotic systems and micro- and nano-robotics.</p><p>Another technology he is known for is <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/240556" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">brachiation robots</a>, which he helped develop in 1988. He calls them <em><em>monkey robots</em></em> because they’re based on the pendulum-like movement of monkeys swinging from tree to tree. The gravity-based locomotion enables continuous movement.</p><p>Brachiation robots now are inspecting high-voltage transmission towers and bridges, searching damaged buildings for survivors, and performing maintenance on pipelines and cables.</p><p>Fukuda retired from the university in 2013 and was named professor emeritus.</p><p>He didn’t stay retired for long, though. He next held a teaching appointment at <a href="https://www.meijo-u.ac.jp/english/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Meijo University</a>, in Nagoya, until he left in 2022 to join the Egypt-Japan University.</p><h2>A prominent volunteer</h2><p>He joined IEEE in 1980 at the encouragement of one of his research advisors, Professor <a href="https://ethw.org/Fumio_Harashima" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Fumio Harashima</a>, now an IEEE Life Fellow. After attending conferences and reading the organization’s publications, Fukuda says, he looked forward to becoming more involved.</p><p>“I wanted to know how to organize a conference and how to edit a paper for one of its <em><em>Transactions</em></em>,” he says. “I wanted to know what was going on from inside the organization, not just the outside.”</p><p>In 1988 he was the founding chair and organizer of IROS, in Tokyo. The conference had 330 attendees that year, and was supported by Harashima. Today it is one of the largest and most prestigious conferences on the topic, attracting more than 9,000 people annually. Out of 120,000 conferences, it was the only conference in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature-index/faq" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nature Index</a> database for this year, Fukuda says.</p><p>In 1996 he and other members launched <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=3516" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em><em>IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics</em></em></a>.</p><p>He was the founding president of the <a href="https://ieeenano.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Nanotechnology Council</a>, which was established in 2002. He is considered a pioneer in nanotechnology research, particularly regarding how it relates to robotics.</p><p>Over the years, he has held numerous volunteer positions on IEEE editorial boards and committees.</p><p>He was the 1998–1999 president of the <a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Robotics and Automation Society</a>, becoming the first non-U.S. member to hold the title.</p><p>He was director of <a href="https://ta.ieee.org/society-council-resources/society-and-council-operations/divisions-society-groupings" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Division X</a> (2001–2002 and 2017–2018), which covers intelligent systems, biological engineering, robotics, control systems, and photonic technologies. He served as the 2013–2014 director of <a href="https://www.ieeer10.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Region 10</a> (Asia-Pacific).</p><p>As the 2020 IEEE president, Fukuda saw the organization through the early part of the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-presidents-column-strength-and-solidarity-in-responding-to-the-challenges-of-covid19" target="_self">COVID-19 pandemic</a>. Because of travel restrictions, he realized IEEE should change how it offered its in-person services, specifically educational programs. He encouraged <a href="https://ea.ieee.org/ea-programs" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Educational Activities</a> to develop an online learning platform. The <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-president-lets-focus-on-continuing-education" target="_self">IEEE Learning Network</a> started with just three courses and now offers nearly 2,000 courses, webinars, and learning materials.</p><h2>An award-winning member</h2><p>The Emberson Award joins a slew of other recognitions Fukuda has received from IEEE. They include several from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society: a 2004 <a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/awards-recognition/society-awards/pioneer-in-robotics-and-automation-award/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Pioneer Award</a>, a 2009 <a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/2026-ieee-ras-award-recipients-announced/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Saridis Leadership Award</a>, and the 2011 <a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/awards-recognition/conference-awards/iros-harashima-award-for-innovative-technologies/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Harashima Award for Innovative Technologies</a>. He is also a recipient of the Board-level 2010 IEEE Robotics and Automation <a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/awards-recognition/ieee-awards/ieee-robotics-and-automation-technical-field-award-tfa/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Technical Field Award</a>.</p><p>He says he feels strongly that IEEE should be a diverse organization that is welcoming to all. As IEEE president, he led efforts to devise a <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-diversity-and-inclusion-efforts" target="_self">diversity, equity, and inclusion program</a>. Several policies, procedures, and bylaws were revised to give members a safe, inclusive place for discourse.</p><p>“It’s important for IEEE to make everyone feel comfortable,” he says. “DEI programs are important. All people should be equal. IEEE doesn’t care who you are, what you do, what country you are from, or whether you are male or female. IEEE accepts people who have energy and passion.</p><p>“It accepted me, from the Far East. That’s why I like it.”</p><p>You can learn more about Fukuda and his career from the <a href="https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Toshio_Fukuda" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">oral history</a> conducted by the <a href="https://www.ieee.org/about/history-center" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE History Center</a>.</p> Reference: https://ift.tt/0a1PXD8

Hackers can use 9 of the most popular AI tools to assemble massive botnets

<p>In the brief history of AI security, the prompt injection has quickly become the top threat. Large language models are inherently unable to distinguish between legitimate instructions provided by users and malicious ones sneaked into emails, source code, and other third-party content the models are processing. This makes it trivial to surreptitiously inject malicious commands that the LLM readily follows.</p> <p>With no way to enforce this crucial boundary between trusted and untrusted sources, AI engine developers are left to erect elaborate guardrails designed to mitigate the damage rather than solve the root cause.</p> <p>To date, most prompt injections have fallen into a class known as push, in which each potential victim is targeted. For example, the adversary injects malicious instructions into an individual email or calendar invitation. Because the injection must then be sent (or pushed) to each specific target, the scale of the attack is limited, hampering mass exploits that hit the Internet at large.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/07/hackers-can-use-9-of-the-most-popular-ai-tools-to-assemble-massive-botnets/">Read full article</a></p> <p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/07/hackers-can-use-9-of-the-most-popular-ai-tools-to-assemble-massive-botnets/#comments">Comments</a></p> Reference : https://ift.tt/bDENqis

VHF Propagation: What Every RF Engineer Should Know

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/rohde-schwarz-logo-with-slogan-make-ideas-real-and-rs-monogram-in-diamond.png?id=67100642&width=980"/><br/><br/><p>A practical educational guide to common and uncommon VHF propagation modes, covering the <span>physics, range implications, and real-world behaviors engineers need to understand.</span></p><p>What Attendees will Learn</p><p>1. Why “line of sight” fails as a practical VHF planning model.</p><p>2. How refraction, reflection, diffraction, and scattering deliver or destroy signals where geometry alone cannot predict.3. How tropospheric refraction extends the VHF radio horizon roughly one-third beyond optical line of sight.</p><p>4. How temperature inversions form ducts that can carry VHF signals over 1,500 km.5. How sporadic E, meteor burst, and EME propagate VHF signals across hundreds to thousands of kilometers.</p><p>6. What frequency limits, distance ranges, and environmental triggers apply to each <span>propagation mode.</span></p><p>7. How to apply this knowledge to link budgeting, interference prediction, and contingency planning.</p><p><span><a href="https://content.knowledgehub.wiley.com/understanding-vhf-very-high-frequency-propagation/" target="_blank">Download this free whitepaper now!</a></span></p> Reference: https://ift.tt/VSo16OE

Home Broadband Is 5G’s Surprise Killer App

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/colorful-abstract-scene-with-stick-figures-lines-and-a-smiling-black-house.png?id=67006895&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C220%2C0%2C220"/><br/><br/><p>5G telecommunications, according to <a href="https://www.androidauthority.com/5g-technology-1221372/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">industry hype</a> when 5G <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G#Commercial_rollout_(2019%E2%80%932021)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first launched in 2019</a>, was going to be all about buzzy applications like mobile augmented reality and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/autonomous-vehicles" target="_self">autonomous vehicles</a>. But the surprise plot twist came when replacing home cable internet turned into 5G’s most widely adopted new application.</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_wireless#Fixed_wireless_broadband" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Fixed wireless access</a> (FWA) now serves <a href="https://www.rcrwireless.com/20251215/carriers/fwa-ookla" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">over 14 million U.S. customers</a>, and <a href="https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/mobility-report/dataforecasts/fwa-outlook" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">contributes 28 percent of worldwide wireless traffic</a>. Fixed wireless access is what the term sounds like: broadband internet delivered over a cellular radio link to a stationary location—no cable, no fiber, no trenching, no satellite broadband antenna pointed at the sky. What makes FWA distinctive is that it repurposes the same towers, spectrum, and 5G infrastructure that was built for mobile devices.</p><p>One U.S. Federal Communications Commission commissioner has called FWA 5G’s <a href="https://broadbandbreakfast.com/fcc-chief-of-staff-calls-fixed-wireless-5gs-killer-app/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">killer app</a>. And that’s true not just in the United States either. <a href="https://www.trai.gov.in/release-publication/reports/telecom-subscriptions-reports" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jio, India’s largest carrier, is also one of the world’s largest FWA providers, with over 9 million customers</a> as of last year.</p><p>Carriers discovered they could repurpose surplus 5G capacity, while also exploiting a usage pattern quirk: <a href="https://fi.ee.tsinghua.edu.cn/~wanghuandong/papers/ton16.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">mobile traffic starts to drop after 8 p.m.</a>, just when home internet usage peaks. The result is broadband, delivered via traditional cellphone towers, at a lower cost than fiber deployment. For these reasons, FWA <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-400675A1.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">provides real price competition to cable broadband</a>, while reaching underserved rural and suburban communities.</p><h2>Fixed Wireless Access Repurposes Ambitious 5G Infrastructure</h2><p>FWA is cheaper to deploy than fiber, and for most homes and small businesses, fiber’s gigabit speeds are overkill anyway. And since FWA uses the same wireless networks built for cellular service, FWA works anywhere that receives a steady cellular signal.</p><p>As cellular networks extend into areas with minimal service, FWA’s coverage map expands with them. In these remote locales, the other main viable broadband alternative typically comes from satellite services like <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/starlink" target="_self">Starlink</a>—which are, compared to FWA, more expensive, with higher delays, and lower bandwidth.</p><p>While most FWA deployments use currently underused microwave bands, some FWA deployments use electromagnetic spectrum that 5G launched but that mostly failed with mobile users. <span>Millimeter waves operate at frequencies 10 to 40 times higher than 4G’s spectrum, offering high data rates from their wide available bandwidth.</span></p><p><span>However, there are good reasons 5G mobile users today don’t generally use millimeter-wave spectrum. </span><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/5g-rollout-disappointments" target="_self">Millimeter waves can’t penetrate buildings. Plus, they lose signal strength within a kilometer or two of the transmitter.</a><span> Millimeter-wave antennas are </span><span>also a real</span><span> drain on</span><span> cellphone batteries compared to</span><span> microwave and radio-wave tech</span><span>.</span></p><p>Yet none of these challenges applies to a fixed station with a clear line of sight to a nearby tower. <a href="https://www.nokia.com/broadband-access/in-home-connectivity/fastmile-fwa/" target="_blank">FWA home units (called customer premise equipment or CPEs)</a> outperform 5G handsets by a significant margin. That’s mostly because of hardware. CPEs carry larger, more sensitive antennas than a typical cellphone, paired with more capable transceivers. CPEs also tend to be plugged into wall outlets, making battery concerns a nonissue.</p><p><span>Another 5G technology that did not gain traction in mobile wireless is multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-user_MIMO" target="_blank">MU-MIMO</a><span>). </span><span>A base station with MU-MIMO uses an array of antennas to serve multiple users on the same frequency simultaneously.</span></p><p><span>However, maintaining a MU-MIMO signal involves tracking each user individually—a problem that quickly becomes overwhelming with enough mobile users. FWA is different, however. Static CPEs, with their steadier downlink traffic loads, are an ideal match for MU-MIMO technology.</span></p><p>So, FWA internet service not only uses mostly fallow spectrum but also uses 5G spectrum more efficiently than do 5G mobile users—for whom, of course, these 5G technologies were originally designed!</p><h2>How FWA Became 5G’s Surprise Killer App</h2><p>Not long ago, the <a href="https://www.etsi.org/technologies/5g#:~:text=2016%20with%20the%203GPP%20TR%2038.913%20which%20describes%20scenarios%2C%20key,=%3E%20active):%2010%2D20ms" target="_blank">high-bandwidth use cases</a> for 5G made for an impressive list: millisecond latency for autonomous vehicles, mobile <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/augmented-reality-glasses-metasurface" target="_self">augmented reality headsets</a> with extensive high-speed data needs, and massive machine connectivity for an expanding <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/internet-of-things" target="_self">internet of things</a> (IoT).</p><p>These applications have all stalled. Autonomous vehicles pose challenging—and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rob.70108" target="_blank">still unsolved</a>—problems unrelated to spectrum allocation. Augmented and virtual reality technologies have <a href="https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-xr-arvr-headsets-market-2024" target="_blank">yet to create meaningful spikes</a> in bandwidth demand. And the IoT has, to date at least, fragmented across an <a href="https://www.link-labs.com/blog/complete-list-iot-network-protocols" target="_blank">array of competing standards</a>.</p><p>Mobile carriers had built dense 5G networks for mobile customers whose needs rarely saturated the network’s capacity. Home broadband usage peaks in the evening hours, precisely when cellular networks are quietest.</p><p>FWA sits at cellular networks’ crossroads of supply and demand.</p><h2>The Advent of 6G Will Only Expand FWA’s Reach</h2><p>In December, the telecom standards body, the Third Generation Partnership Project (<a href="https://www.3gpp.org/" target="_blank">3GPP</a>), issued its latest 5G specification—<a href="https://www.3gpp.org/specifications-technologies/releases/release-20" target="_blank">Release 20</a>, the final “5G only” update. So, although 6G is still years away (its first specifications <a href="https://www.lightreading.com/6g/it-s-official-6g-specs-are-set-for-early-2029" target="_blank">are expected in early 2029</a>), engineering decisions that will define 6G are being made today. And FWA is not on the margins of that conversation; FWA is <a href="https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2024/3/6g-standardization-timeline-and-technology-principles" target="_blank">currently considered an established day-one use case</a>.</p><p>6G wireless technology promises to expand FWA’s reach—not only via spectrum but also via geometry. Instead of following 4G and 5G’s connectivity model—strong signals near towers and weak signals far away—future 6G networks will let homes connect to multiple towers simultaneously, using a technology called distributed MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output).</p><p>Where 5G’s version of MIMO (a.k.a. <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/5g-bytes-massive-mimo-explained" target="_self">massive MIMO</a>) concentrates user communication with dozens of antennas at a single tower, <a href="https://research.samsung.com/blog/UE-Centric-Distributed-MIMO-for-5G-and-Beyond-Benefits-Challenges-and-Promising-Solutions" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">distributed MIMO uses antennas across multiple base stations and coordinates them</a> to deliver signals to your home from multiple directions simultaneously.</p><p>The practical result: Because no single tower is responsible for any given connection, the “edge” of a cell network—that outer boundary where signal strength falls off and service degrades—no longer represents a hard limit on who gets well served. A home that would once have been too distant from a tower, or blocked by terrain, could now be within reach of several base stations working together.</p><p>6G may eventually adopt distributed MIMO technology for mobile users, when <a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2401.03898v2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">synchronization challenges and other signal engineering hurdles</a> are solved and deployed for real-world cellular networks. The jury, as of 2026, is still out on whether the full distributed MIMO problem will be solved once the 6G standards start to be set in place, within three years.</p><p><span>As demand for FWA grows, carriers will also deploy increasingly capable millimeter-wave infrastructure for fixed customers first—the stationary CPE use case that millimeter wave best suits. The dense millimeter-wave antenna infrastructure that FWA requires is the same infrastructure that future mobile applications will eventually inherit. </span><span>AR glasses, AI-powered wearables, and other bandwidth-hungry applications originally promised for 5G are not canceled</span><span>—</span><span>they are waiting for the infrastructure to arrive.</span></p><p><span>The pathway to FWA is being prepared at lower frequencies, too. There is growing interest today in the largely unoccupied </span><a href="https://www.everythingrf.com/community/fr3-frequency-bands" target="_blank">FR3 band</a>, which spans roughly 7 to 24 gigahertz,<span> situated between crowded low/mid-bands and the much higher millimeter-wave frequencies. </span></p><p><span>Recent</span><a href="https://www.nokia.com/asset/214027/" target="_blank"> field trials by Nokia</a><span> have demonstrated FR3’s viability for both cellular and FWA applications. FR3 is emerging as one of the more promising near-term frontiers for extending FWA coverage beyond its current footprint.</span></p><p>None of this was the plan. No carrier executive in 2020 stood on a stage and announced that 5G’s defining achievement would be delivering living room broadband to rural homes and suburban subdivisions underserved by cable.</p><p>FWA became 5G’s killer app because the engineering economics made it happen. Surplus wireless capacity met unmet consumer broadband demand, with the physics of a stationary receiver doing the rest.</p><p>That is not a criticism of the engineers or the carriers. It is simply how technology sometimes advances—sideways, through gaps nobody was trying to fill.</p><p>But FWA’s model of prioritizing unconnected users may in the end prove to be telecom’s on-ramp to everything else. Fix the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/wireless-broadband" target="_self">digital divide</a> first. Tomorrow’s sci-fi future appears set to follow close behind.</p> Reference: https://ift.tt/sJxtAYz

Newly discovered PamStealer isn't your typical macOS malware

<p>Researchers have found a never-before-seen piece of macOS malware that combines a series of clever tradecraft to infect Macs with stealthy, custom-developed credential-stealing code.</p> <p>The malware is delivered in two stages. The first is distributed in a disk image that masquerades as <a href="https://maccy.app/">Maccy</a>, a clipboard manager for Macs. It’s compiled as AppleScript that is notable for the way it delivers the second stage. The malware is named PamStealer because the Rust-written infostealer uses the Pluggable Authentication Modules interface built into macOS to validate the target’s login password before sending it to an attacker-controlled server.</p> <h2>A quieter execution chain</h2> <p>The use of both disk image and AppleScript is common in malware for Macs. More unusual is the way PamStealer combines them to gain stealth. When the AppleScript is double-clicked, it’s opened in the macOS Script Editor, where the malicious functionality is buried deep within the file.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/07/new-pamstealer-macos-malware-uses-clever-tradecraft-to-remain-stealthy/">Read full article</a></p> <p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/07/new-pamstealer-macos-malware-uses-clever-tradecraft-to-remain-stealthy/#comments">Comments</a></p> Reference : https://ift.tt/7qSR6DX

T-Mobile moving tens of thousands of virtual machines off VMware amid lawsuit

<p>T-Mobile is asking a New York court to rule that Broadcom was contractually obligated to continue supporting its VMware perpetual licenses.</p> <p>In its complaint, T-Mobile said it has tens of thousands of virtual machines using VMware software across approximately 303,140 CPU cores. It also said that it was migrating off VMware but noted the <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/01/a-long-costly-road-ahead-for-customers-abandoning-broadcoms-vmware/">time-consuming and technical challenges</a> involved in migrating over 1,000 applications.</p> <p>It filed its lawsuit, which was first reported by <a href="https://www.theregister.com/virtualization/2026/07/01/t-mobile-appears-to-be-quitting-vmware-and-fighting-a-very-familiar-battle-for-support-rights-on-the-way-out/5264750">The Register</a> today, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in August 2025 <a href="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/654741_2025_T_Mobile_USA_Inc_v_Broadcom_Inc_et_al_COMPLAINT_58.pdf">(PDF)</a>.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/07/t-mobile-moving-tens-of-thousands-of-virtual-machines-off-vmware-amid-lawsuit/">Read full article</a></p> <p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/07/t-mobile-moving-tens-of-thousands-of-virtual-machines-off-vmware-amid-lawsuit/#comments">Comments</a></p> Reference : https://ift.tt/JUcv6Dp