technology 24 for you

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Direct-to-Cell Technology: Enabling Satellite Connectivity for Legacy Devices

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/rohde-schwarz-logo-with-slogan-make-ideas-real-and-rs-monogram-in-a-diamond.png?id=66784674&width=980"/> Direct-to-cell technology uses LEO satellites as spaceborne cell towers. It delivers LTE services to existing smartphones without hardware changes, bridging global coverage gaps.What Attendees will Learn<ol><li>How DTC works as a spaceborne cell tower — LEO satellites carry LTE eNodeB payloads in regenerative mode. How they serve unmodified phones using quasi-earth-fixed multi-beam antennas. How the satellite compensates for Doppler shift and time delay on thenetwork side.</li><li>Why Doppler shift and round-trip time are critical challenges — A LEO satellite’s high velocity causes carrier frequency offsets in OFDMA systems. Pre-compensation at a reference point helps, but cell-edge users still face residual Doppler.</li><li>How spectrum sharing and regulation shape DTC deployment — DTC has no dedicated spectrum allocation. It relies on spectrum sharing between terrestrial and satellite operators or re-farmed MSS bands. How national regulations like the FCC SCS framework govern access.</li><li>Where DTC fits in the evolution toward 5G NTN and 6G — DTC is an interim technology offering fast time-to-market satellite services. It bridges the gap until 3GPP NR-NTN matures. How NR-NTN will bring purpose-built NTN features and international spectrum frameworks.</li></ol><div><a href="https://content.knowledgehub.wiley.com/direct-to-cell-technology-enabling-satellite-connectivity-for-legacy-devices/" target="_blank">Download this free whitepaper now!</a></div> Reference: https://ift.tt/vP7tgCO

Monday, June 1, 2026

Dozens of Red Hat packages backdoored through its offical NPM channel

Official Red Hat NPM accounts have been compromised and used to push a malicious worm that spreads from machine to machine, where it pilfers sensitive credentials in hopes of stealing yet more confidential data, researchers said. The supply-chain attack <a href="https://www.aikido.dev/blog/red-hat-npm-packages-compromised-credential-stealing-worm">began Monday</a> and remained active at the time this post went live, according to researchers at security firm Aikido. It’s the result of the threat actor responsible for the hack taking control of @redhat-cloud-services, a legitimate channel in the npm repository that’s reserved for official Red Hat packages. As such, the channel is widely trusted by developers who rely on Red Hat cloud services. <h2>The vicious cycle of today’s supply-chain attacks</h2> It’s unclear precisely how the threat actor took control of the namespace, but it almost certainly involved the compromise of credentials required to access it, possibly through a previous supply-chain attack. More than 30 packages seem to be affected.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/dozens-of-red-hat-packages-backdoored-through-its-offical-npm-channel/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/dozens-of-red-hat-packages-backdoored-through-its-offical-npm-channel/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/igsWTYV

IEEE President’s Note: Designing a Safer Digital World for Kids

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/person-wearing-a-scarf-over-a-dark-sweater-with-a-blue-background.png?id=65004859&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C119%2C0%2C120"/> Children born after 2013 are the first generation to grow up fully immersed in digital systems, which weren’t designed with them in mind. One‑third of the world’s Internet users are younger than 18, according to <a href="https://www.unicef.org/northmacedonia/press-releases/more-175000-children-go-online-first-time-every-day-tapping-great-opportunities" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">UNICEF</a>, yet these systems shaping their daily lives were built for adults. They were optimized for engagement and designed long before people understood how profoundly digital environments influence children.For engineers and technical professionals, online safety is not an abstract policy debate. It is a design challenge that demands rigor, systems thinking, and ethical foresight.Governments around the world are also beginning to recognize the problem. Policymakers from across Australia, Brazil, the European Union, Indonesia, and the United States are responding to risks engineers have long understood: Addictive features, inappropriate content, opaque data practices, and algorithmic systems shape user behavior in ways that their creators did not fully predict. For years, technology moved faster than governance. Now governance is trying to catch up.<h2>Global Shift Toward Design Reform</h2><h3>Supporting National Digital Ambitions</h3> <img alt="Three men in suit jackets smiling and posing with a middle-aged woman." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f7581428b6630311e33e124d134e7463" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="cfc58" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/three-men-in-suit-jackets-smiling-and-posing-with-a-middle-aged-woman.png?id=66836634&width=980"/>In Athens this year I met with senior leaders of Greek government agencies and key national research institutions. Greece is moving quickly on <a href="https://digitalstrategy.gov.gr/en/" target="_blank">digital transformation</a> and responsible technology governance, and our discussions reinforced IEEE’s role as a trusted, neutral collaborator.We focused on supporting Greece’s ambitions in digital modernization and public‑sector innovation. We also discussed responsible AI and age-appropriate digital design in Europe and elsewhere. These engagements, grounded in shared values and long‑term commitment, strengthened IEEE’s presence within the European ecosystem and opened new pathways for collaboration on trustworthy AI and child‑focused digital well‑being.The European Union and the United Kingdom have been among the first to act, embedding age‑appropriate digital design into their broader children’s rights agenda. Drawing on IEEE expertise and global best practices, Indonesia is the first country in Asia, and Brazil is the first country in Latin America, to adopt age-appropriate design regulation. Australia is aiming to limit access to harmful content and addictive design features through age restrictions on certain platforms. And in the United States, in addition to federal efforts, states including California, New York, and Utah are enacting approaches including age-appropriate design principles.Across these efforts, a shared realization is emerging. Protecting children online is not simply about filtering content or adding parental controls. It requires rethinking the architecture of digital systems regarding how data is collected, how algorithms make decisions, how interfaces influence attention, and how AI interacts with the developing minds of young users.Engineers and technical professionals understand that design choices are never neutral. They encode values, incentives, and assumptions. When the user is a child, those choices carry greater weight.This is where IEEE’s work becomes more essential.<h2> Protecting Children Online</h2>For more than a decade, IEEE has been building technical and ethical foundations for safer digital experiences. The first IEEE standard on age-appropriate design in 2021 marked a turning point. It offers a structured, principled approach to designing with children’s rights in mind. <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-institute/" target="_self">The Institute</a>’s 2022 article “<a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-standard-protecting-kids-online" target="_self">Use a New IEEE Standard to Design a Safer Digital World for Kids</a>” highlights how the standard helps translate those principles into engineering practice.Today the <a href="https://standards.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Standards Association</a>’s (SA) <a href="https://standards.ieee.org/initiatives/trustworthy-digital-experiences/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Trustworthy Digital Experiences</a> portfolio provides a practical, technically grounded framework for governments and industry. Spanning ethical design, data governance, algorithmic transparency, and child‑focused digital well‑being, it has already initiated discussions with government stakeholders around the world. This work helps bridge the gap between engineering realities and policy ambitions.No single country can solve these challenges alone. Many policymakers lack access to the combined expertise in technology, governance, and children’s rights needed to act quickly and effectively. This collaborative effort helps close that gap.The stakes are high. Without coordinated action, public policy will continue to lag behind technology, leaving children exposed to risks that could have been mitigated through thoughtful design. But with the right frameworks, governments can ensure digital systems respect children’s rights, support healthy development, and promote well‑being.IEEE’s emerging standards and collaborative technology policy work offer a path forward. By grounding national efforts in evidence‑based, rights-aligned design principles, IEEE is helping governments move from reactive regulation to proactive, coherent, and globally informed strategies for protecting children online.Safeguarding childhood in the digital age is both a moral imperative and an engineering challenge. And IEEE is helping to lead the way.—Mary Ellen RandallIEEE president and CEOPlease share your thoughts with me: <a href="mailto:president@ieee.org">president@ieee.org</a>.This article appears in the June 2026 print issue. Reference: https://ift.tt/tkFCgmi

Why Sardinians Are Fighting the Renewable Energy Transition

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/five-workers-in-reflective-safety-gear-and-helmets-standing-in-an-underground-tunnel.jpg?id=66832214&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C417%2C0%2C417"/> “Not in my backyard” is the rallying cry of citizens everywhere resisting projects proposed for their locality. Whether it’s affordable housing, a waste treatment plant, or a new data center, they may recognize the benefit of the activity. They just don’t want it near them. And the roots of that resistance differ from place to place. When it comes to the ongoing transition from fossil fuels to renewables, companies and policymakers need to know where, exactly, people are coming from.The Italian island of Sardinia is a textbook example. As IEEE Spectrum’s power and energy editor Emily Waltz discovered when she traveled there last October, Sardinian opposition to wind and solar projects runs deep. It spurred a quarter of the voting population to queue up in public squares in 2024 to sign a petition banning all construction of renewable energy. Waltz was surprised. She went there to see a promising new <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/co2-battery-energy-storage" target="_self">grid-scale energy storage system that uses domes</a> inflated with carbon dioxide. While reporting on that project, she interviewed residents, engineers, activists, and professors about their attitudes toward climate change and the Italian government’s grand plans for renewable energy on the island. And Waltz soon learned of Sardinians’ profound antipathy toward renewable energy and its deep ties to a history of invasion, occupation, and exploitation stretching back 2,700 years. It started with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_and_Punic_Sardinia" target="_blank">Phoenicians</a> and then extended through the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Iberians. Sardinia was absorbed into a newly unified Italy in 1861, and it became an autonomous region of Italy in 1948. The island’s population is justifiably suspicious of outsiders, including the Italian government. “When you’re in Sardinia, the weight of history—you can feel it like in the air,” Waltz told me. “And it gets passed down from one generation to the next.”Now, Italy needs Sardinia to produce even more power to meet the country’s climate goals—something that Sardinians see as Rome’s problem, not theirs. “Sardinia already exports about 30 percent of its electricity. It’s not like they need more,” Waltz says. “So it’s hard to make the case to build, build, build.”The result of Waltz’s old-fashioned shoe leather reporting is this month’s <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/sardinia-renewable-energy-conflict" target="_blank">cover story</a>. She notes that the Sardinians she talked to aren’t climate-change deniers, and they don’t object to renewables per se. They just don’t like the way corporations and Italian policymakers are trying to plug into Sardinia like it’s one giant battery rather than the home of an ancient and proud people.“I think Sardinians would be more receptive to renewable projects if it was more of a ground-up, grassroots approach,” Waltz says. Indeed, this homegrown approach is already working in some places in Sardinia. She knows of more than 50 projects, called energy communities, where the residents are deploying renewables themselves. The idea also holds promise for other places struggling to get locals to buy into the renewable-energy transition. The Sardinian experience is both a cautionary tale and a blueprint. Ignore the weight of history that communities carry and your project risks failure. Meet the people where they are and you might just get somewhere. The same lesson applies whether you’re in <a href="https://unepccc.org/sulawesi-renewable-energy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sulawesi</a> or <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/broadband-internet-in-nigeria" target="_self">sub-Saharan Africa</a>. You just have to show up to learn it. Reference: https://ift.tt/Om5InTy

Sunday, May 31, 2026

This DIY Bipedal Robot Used Pneumatic “Air-Muscles” Instead of Motors

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-photos-of-a-prototype-humanoid-robot-with-a-wooden-frame-and-wires-and-other-components-strung-on-its-body.jpg?id=66825613&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C187%2C0%2C188"/> In 1987, <a href="https://shadowrobot.com/the-story-of-our-founder-richard-greenhill/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Richard Greenhill</a>, a British photographer who was fascinated by (but had no actual training in) robotics, decided he wanted to build a life-size humanoid that could do useful things, like carrying luggage. He was working at a startup called Intergalactic Robots, but he couldn’t convince anyone there to build such a machine, so he set about building one himself, in his attic.<div class="rm-embed embed-media"><iframe height="110px" id="noa-web-audio-player" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=q5m19e&id=https://spectrum.ieee.org/shadow-walker-biped-humanoid-robot&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=1b1b1c&playColor=1b1b1c&progressBgColor=F5F5F5&progressBorderColor=bdbbbb&titleColor=1b1b1c&timeColor=1b1b1c&speedColor=1b1b1c&noaLinkColor=556B7D&noaLinkHighlightColor=FF4B00&feedbackButton=true" style="border: none" width="100%"></iframe></div>To help with his project, he organized a weekly get-together of a dozen or so like-minded folks. Every Wednesday night, his wife, Sally, would make a big pot of spaghetti, and the group would tinker with components scavenged from old printers and picked up from junkyards. They called themselves the Shadow Group. They eventually constructed several different robots, but their main project was the two-legged Shadow Walker. <img alt="Two color photos of a casually dressed white man in a workroom posing with a partially assembled wooden robot." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="abd4fd0237110b3339a5f336e96006e6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="b189a" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-color-photos-of-a-casually-dressed-white-man-in-a-workroom-posing-with-a-partially-assembled-wooden-robot.jpg?id=66825888&width=980"/> In 1987, photographer Richard Greenhill organized a weekly gathering of DIY enthusiasts to work on projects in his attic, including the Shadow Walker. Richard Greenhill and David BuckleyGreenhill’s friend <a href="https://davidbuckley.net/DB/aboutme.htm" target="_blank">David Buckley</a>, a robotics and animatronics expert he’d met at Intergalactic, sketched out a rough design based on medical textbooks of human bone structure and muscle movement. The robot’s skeleton, made of maple, was greatly simplified—only one bone in the lower leg and a single wide toe on each foot. The ankle’s double-axis design allowed for two degrees of movement. The knee had no complicating kneecap.Greenhill didn’t want the robot to use motors, so its movement was controlled using compressed air to extend and contract 28 “air-muscles”—his version of a McKibben muscle, invented in the 1950s to mimic musculature with pneumatics. The muscles were connected to the bones across eight joints (hips, knees, ankles, toes), which provided 12 degrees of freedom.RELATED: <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-short-strange-life-of-the-first-friendly-robot" target="_self">The Short, Strange Life of the First Friendly Robot</a>The robot’s headless torso held the control valves, electronics, and computer interfaces. It stood 168 centimeters tall and 46 cm wide and weighed about 38 kilograms. The group managed to get the robot to stand up reliably and balance itself; it could even regain its center if pushed a little. But walking turned out to be more of a challenge.<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/walkerrich/" target="_blank">Rich Walker</a> joined the group as a teenager and began writing software to get the robot to stand. He was particularly interested in using neural networks to solve balancing problems, although he ran into a number of hardware obstacles, including the unreliability of the sensors and the valves, and the robot’s overall fragility. Over time, Walker and the team developed a standard library of routines to control the robot. Walker wrote a <a href="https://davidbuckley.net/DB/ShadowBiped/ShadBipedArchive/Shadow%20Robot%20Company%20Shadow%20Biped.htm" target="_blank">detailed description</a> of the Shadow Walker in 1999, which is available on David Buckley’s website.<h2>The 1st International Robot Olympics</h2>By the time the Shadow Group began developing Shadow Walker, engineers in academia and industry had been working on robotics for several decades. The world’s first industrial robot, the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/unimation-robot" target="_self">Unimate</a>, debuted in 1961, and in 1967 Donald Michie and others began building a series of <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/freddy-robot-british-ai-winter" target="_self">Freddy </a>robots to investigate machine intelligence. The IEEE created its first dedicated robotics organization in 1984 when it established the IEEE Robotics and Automation Council, which became the <a href="https://www.ieee-ras.org/" target="_blank">IEEE Robotics and Automation Society</a> in 1987. Also in 1987, the nonprofit International Federation of Robotics was established to promote research, development, use, and cooperation in the field of robotics.As Shadow Walker pushed the limits for a DIY humanoid robot, industrial humanoids were also gaining ground. In 1986, Honda began working on its experimental (E-series) and later the prototype (P-series) humanoid robots, finally unveiling the P2 in 1996. The P2 stood 183 cm tall and weighed 210 kg. It was the first humanoid capable of stable, autonomous walking. This work eventually led to the development of the groundbreaking <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/honda-p2-robot-ieee-milestone" target="_self">ASIMO</a>. <img alt="Two color photos of a casually dressed bearded white man posing with a wooden robot leg and with a computer and other equipment." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e7e2d6657e6037ef204eb6ab36e813d3" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="45b6e" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-color-photos-of-a-casually-dressed-bearded-white-man-posing-with-a-wooden-robot-leg-and-with-a-computer-and-other-equipment.jpg?id=66826216&width=980"/> Greenhill’s friend, roboticist David Buckley, consulted medical textbooks to create Shadow Walker’s humanoid design.Richard Greenhill and David BuckleyIn the late 1980s, the public was both fascinated and horrified by the potential of robots. Businesses saw robots as a way to increase productivity, while workers worried they would take their jobs. Children viewed them as wondrous toys, while people with disabilities embraced them as tools of liberation. Military experts hoped robots would fight wars without endangering human soldiers, while politicians pondered if robots might eventually get to vote. Philosophers thought robots could challenge our notions of intelligence (and stupidity), while the religious struggled with concerns about the human race in a robot-dominated future. <img alt="Photo of two articulated feet made of pieces of wood strung with wires and other components." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e8188dfa6302c3d8a0eaa3319645c146" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="528f6" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-two-articulated-feet-made-of-pieces-of-wood-strung-with-wires-and-other-components.jpg?id=66835726&width=980"/> Shadow Walker’s simplified anatomy included only one bone in the lower leg and a single wide toe on each foot.Science Museum GroupPeter Mowforth, cofounder of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Institute" target="_blank">Turing Institute</a> in Glasgow, noted these disparate visions for robots when he announced the 1st International Robot Olympics, to be held in 27 and 28 September 1990 and hosted by the Turing Institute and the University of Strathclyde. The Olympics would round up the world’s best robots and showcase them head-to-head.Mowforth himself thought all of the competing visions of robots were overblown. Steeped in machine learning research and robotics development, he knew firsthand the limitations of the state of the art: Robots rarely worked as intended, easily broke down, and glitched over seemingly trivial problems. He envisioned the Robot Olympics as a testbed to assess what the latest generation of robots could and could not do. <img alt="Photo of a headless and armless humanoid robot wearing red pants." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6e64cccdcd490f06a27f02e2a64277b4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="3135a" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-a-headless-and-armless-humanoid-robot-wearing-red-pants.jpg?id=66826230&width=980"/> At the 1990 Robot Olympics, held in Glasgow, Shadow Walker wore pants to conceal its pneumatic “air-muscles” from competitors.Adam Hart-Davis/Science SourceThe call for participation was wide open. Instead of having predetermined categories of competition, the organizers opted to see who applied to compete and then group them based on their claimed capabilities. In addition to picking the winners of individual events, the judges would select an overall Olympic champion based on the quality of the hardware, the sophistication of behavior, and novelty. Other prizes were given for young competitors, technologies that showed commercial potential, and design. In the end, more than 50 robots were entered, from a mix of universities, industry, and hobbyist groups from Canada, France, India, Japan, Mexico, the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia.There were plenty of disappointments. Trolleyman, a golf-cart-like wheeled robot, suffered a power failure while carrying the opening Olympic torch through the streets of Glasgow. The pile rug in the arena tripped up many robots that had been trained only on flat, smooth floors. David Buckley later concluded that the events were too difficult, and that the Olympics didn’t push development forward. <iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I37bUBVM854?rel=0&start=151" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe>Of course, there were winners. In a surprise triumph for vintage technology, the fully mechanical 19th-century Japanese Archer from the Museum of Automata in York, England, won gold in javelin, beating out competitors more than 100 years its junior. The overall Olympic Champion was Yamabico, Shoji Suzuki’s entry from the University of Tsukuba, in Japan, which won bronze in obstacle avoidance and gold in wall following, but was disqualified in the talking category for not speaking English.The Shadow Group had high hopes for Shadow Walker. Unfortunately, though, it failed to take a step, and the biped race was won by the Cardiff University Biped. Shadow Walker now resides in the <a href="https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8366055/biped-robot" target="_blank">collections of the Science Museum</a> in London.<h2>The Legacy of Shadow Walker</h2>In 1997, a paying customer in search of a robotic leg compelled the Shadow Group to get serious and become a registered company. <a href="https://shadowrobot.com/" target="_blank">Shadow Robot</a> is now Britain’s oldest robotics company. Rich Walker, who had left the Shadow Group to earn a B.A. in mathematics and a diploma in computer science at the University of Cambridge, joined Shadow Robot in 1999 as technical director. Today he’s the director of the company.Shadow Robot specializes in durable <a href="https://robotsguide.com/robots/shadow" target="_blank">robot hands</a> rather than walking robots. But the focus on hands is also a legacy of the Shadow Group. Walker remembers that the Shadow Group’s first humanoid hand in the late 1990s was impressive simply for being able to pick up a pint of beer (a smooth-sided, thin-walled glass). Today, Shadow Robot’s hands are <a href="https://shadowrobot.com/dexterous-hand-series/" target="_blank">testbeds for dexterity</a>. Gone are the pneumatic muscles, replaced by actuators that move each finger with precision. The classic model contains 20 motors, allowing for <a href="https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/abduction-adduction-mean-3562250/" target="_blank">abductive and adductive </a>movement with 24 degrees of freedom. <img alt="Black and white photo of a two-legged humanoid robot with its left leg raised, next to a man with his right leg raised while another man looks on." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="dd88249ff45a90cd091024b40970aeec" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="8e4ba" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/black-and-white-photo-of-a-two-legged-humanoid-robot-with-its-left-leg-raised-next-to-a-man-with-his-right-leg-raised-while-ano.jpg?id=66826242&width=980"/> Shadow Walker’s operator wore a data suit that captured his movements and allowed the robot to copy them.Richard GreenhillIn a <a href="https://shadowrobot.com/why-your-industry-needs-dexterity-not-humanoids/" target="_blank">recent blog post</a>, Sejal Parsotomo, senior marketing executive at Shadow Robot, wrote that while humanoid robots are great for public relations, specialized dexterity is key for success: A robot that can walk into your factory may be impressive, but a robot that can <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/robot-hand-shadow-robot-company" target="_blank">reliably manipulate objects</a> is transformative.In its struggles to take more than a few steps, the Shadow Walker showed the inherent difficulty that robots had in mastering even low-level skills. In August 2025, Beijing hosted the <a href="https://www.whrgoc.com/about" target="_blank">World Humanoid Robot Games</a>. Competing in sports such as gymnastics, soccer, and track events, as well as more “useful” tasks like hotel cleaning and sorting medicine, these robots could literally have run circles around the competitors in the first Robot Olympics 35 years earlier. And yet, there is still so much work needed in order for robots to navigate the human-built environment. Despite the astonishing progress, we’re still not all that close to actually useful humanoid robots.Part of a <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/collections/past-forward/" target="_self">continuing series</a> looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.An abridged version of this article appears in the June 2026 print issue as “Learning to Walk.”<h3>References</h3> Richard Greenhill gives an <a href="https://shadowrobot.com/the-story-of-our-founder-richard-greenhill/" target="_blank">overview of his life</a> and the founding of the Shadow Group in a post on Shadow Robot’s corporate website.David Buckley has a compilation of resources on the <a href="https://davidbuckley.net/DB/ShadowBiped/ShadBiped.htm" target="_blank">Shadow Biped Walker</a>, including <a href="https://davidbuckley.net/DB/ShadowBiped/ShadBipedArchive/Shadow%20Robot%20Company%20Shadow%20Biped.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">specifications</a> from the 1999 iteration and a <a href="https://davidbuckley.net/RS/History/Olympics90_files/Brochure.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">brochure</a> from the 1st International Robot Olympics.There is coverage of the Robot Olympics worthy of a gossip sheet in <a href="https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/1990/09/30/olimpiade-dei-robot.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">La Repubblica</a> and lovely footage of the competition in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I37bUBVM854" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">this TV-am interview</a> of Peter Mowforth by Lorraine Kelly. Reference: https://ift.tt/4EhgLQm

Saturday, May 30, 2026

Poetry for Engineers: Cyborg Laboratory

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/illustration-of-a-1950s-businessman-with-modern-robotic-limbs-collaged-over-his-arm-and-leg.jpg?id=66831451&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C187%2C0%2C188"/> This is the place where you face yourself, the you that could be you with a few different parts, a pump for your heart, eyes off color, and fresh off the shelf fake hair (a bit obvious), skin smoothed. You’re not perfect, but it’s a good start.Down to small digits, you’ll be improved. Memory maintained by small motors, as long as these gizmos don’t glitch. What’s before you? Full replacement or a constant game of test and switch, pieces peeled off, disconnected, removed, until you are not yourself, at least, not the self you knew. That self has ceased, bit by bit less you at each release. Reference: https://ift.tt/xbkhn9A

Friday, May 29, 2026

Botnet of more than 17 million devices dismantled

Authorities in the Netherlands said they dismantled a botnet that comprised more than 17 million devices and were managed by 200 servers in a joint operation by the police and the National Cyber Security Center. The action, <a href="https://www.ncsc.nl/nieuws/gezamenlijke-actie-politie-en-ncsc-legt-groot-botnetwerk-plat">announced Thursday</a>, came about after a security researcher reported the sprawling network to authorities. The host infrastructure was located in the Netherlands. <h2>Used for criminal purposes</h2> “The police then seized several botnet servers from a hosting provider for investigation,” the NCSC said. “The botnet was taken offline by the provider because it was used for criminal purposes.”<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/botnet-of-more-than-17-million-devices-dismantled/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/botnet-of-more-than-17-million-devices-dismantled/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/VcAyfvw