Nuno

Creating apps like Signal or WhatsApp could be 'hostile activity,' claims UK watchdog It's the latest blow to encryption in the UK

www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-priv...

UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones Government seeks “nudity-detection algorithms” in iOS and Android, report says.

More bad news for the privacy-conscious in the UK.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

David Baltimore obituary: virologist whose enzyme discovery transformed understanding of cancer and HIV/AIDS The protein, reverse transcriptase, has become an essential tool for making DNA copies of RNA.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AlphaFold is five years old — these charts show how it revolutionized science Since it was unveiled in 2020, Google DeepMind's game-changing AI tool has helped researchers all over the world to predict the 3D structures of hundreds of millions of proteins.

using AlphaFold, scientists can now predict a protein structure w/o having to do years of work purifying a protein or protein complexes for crying-EM (eg). Made freely available to the scientific community has accelerated our understanding of how proteins function, and how mutations impact activity.

U.K. science sector is ‘bleeding to death,’ lawmakers say in report House of Lords committee urges government to stem exodus of science and technology companies

www.science.org/content/arti...

DOGE Targeted Him on Social Media. Then the Taliban Took His Family. Afghan scholar Mohammad Halimi, who fled the Taliban in 2021, had worked to help U.S. diplomats understand his homeland. Then DOGE put his family’s lives at risk by exposing his sensitive work for a U...

NEW: After DOGE outed Mohammad Halimi on social media, Taliban intelligence agents blindfolded and took three of his family members to a remote prison.

They were repeatedly beaten and questioned about Halimi and his recently publicized work for the United States.

Horrific. mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives and could save millions more.

“I don’t think I’ve seen a more dangerous decision in public health in my 50 years in the business,” said Mike Osterholm, a UMN expert on infectious diseases & pandemic preparations.
www.huffpost.com/entry/rfk-va...

mRNA vaccines for HIV trigger strong immune response in people Nature - Results from early-stage trial show that 80% of participants who received one of two HIV vaccine candidates produced antibodies against viral proteins.

Two vaccine candidates using mRNA technology elicit a potent immune response against HIV

go.nature.com/46Kiais

‘An act of national self-harm’: UK visa system deters top chemistry talent Immigration policies are making it much more difficult to get scientific talent to come to the UK at a time of global flux

www.chemistryworld.com/news/an-act-... UK visa costs 'act of national self-harm' as chemistry departments struggle to attract international research talent | Chemistry World

German police expands use of Palantir surveillance software – DW – 08/02/2025 Police and spy agencies are keen to combat criminality and terrorism with artificial intelligence. But critics say the CIA-funded Palantir surveillance software enables "predictive policing."

p.dw.com/p/4yNxN

Kate Rubins, 1st astronaut to sequence DNA in space, leaves NASA Rubins' last day was on Monday (July 28).

www.space.com/space-explor...

Britain is not a broken society The country has serious problems but the right’s vision of it has become hysterical

Britain is not a broken society https://on.ft.com/45nWkQx | opinion

🇦🇫 On the streets of Kabul, ‘virtue police’ chase and arrest young women for apparent breaches of strict dress code

RFK Jr to remove preservative thimerosal from all US vaccines Anti-vaccine campaigns have targeted thimerosal for decades despite no evidence of ingredient causing harm

These are the same people that would ban table salt because sodium is highly reactive and can explode www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This biologist aims to solve the cell’s biggest mystery. Could it help cancer patients, too? Four decades after his lab found odd, massive particles inside cells, Leonard Rome is still determined to figure out what “vaults” do

www.science.org/content/arti...

It is my opinion that introducing age verification now is irresponsible, mainly because we have now reached the point where Western governments *are* using "the database state" and exploiting online surveillance to be repressive - just as privacy activists warned for decades. This applies to UK & US

= Jonah Aragon @jonah@neat.computer posted here: https://mastodon.social/@jonah@neat.computer/114902990636685184 Buried in Proton's Al announcement [proton me] today is a pretty shocking detail about their service: "Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals [www.tdg.ch] to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move."

So "EU privacy" is better than "Swiss privacy" - interesting news, given the source. 👀

Background on the upcoming Swiss surveillance law that's worse than US surveillance laws - and that we all need to fight against! 💪
👉 tuta.com/blog/switzer...

Wikipedia threatens to limit UK access to website Digital encyclopaedia may impose quota on number of users to comply with Online Safety Act

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

"Voice of Beyond" makes me think more of a séance session in an old Victorian house than in a curiosity-driven, forward-thinking university

Serial femtosecond crystallography reveals protein dynamics in real time Proteins are constantly moving, but our structures of them are static. Clare Sansom talks to the researchers using free-electron lasers to make time-resolved structures

www.chemistryworld.com/features/ser...

I wasn't a massive fan of the music of Black Sabbath, but as a fan of metal it's impossible not to feel what a loss Ozzy Osbourne's passing is. Rest in peace!

That's what I found the most shocking about those news. I thought that few foreigners would render Japan immune to the far-right anti-immigration rhetoric. It seems like immigration is a sort of umbrella term for whatever issues people are now facing and turning to the far-right for answers

UK May Backtrack on Controversial Demand for Backdoor to Encrypted Apple User Data The British government may be forced to drop its plans to force Apple to build a backdoor to access encrypted user data, the Financial Times reports....

It's a pity that decisions like this are likely to be backtracked "just" because of commercial agreements rather thanfor being a bad idea that attacks people's privacy and security. www.macrumors.com/2025/07/20/u...

Chemistry ‘cold spots’ emerging across the UK, RSC warns Some regions face a future with fewer chemists

www.chemistryworld.com/news/chemist...

Why is a prehistoric creature still vital for the pharmaceutical industry? Every year, horseshoe crabs are harvested for their blue blood, but alternatives are now coming through that could help protect these ancient animals

That was an interesting read www.chemistryworld.com/news/why-is-...

‘Landmark’ study: three-person IVF leads to eight healthy children Long-awaited results suggest that mitochondrial donation can prevent babies from inheriting diseases caused by mutant mitochondria.

This is cool. I haven't looked up on this any further (and certainly I'm no expert in mitochondrial biology), but why necessarily "three-person" IVF? Couldn't the father be the mitochondrial donor?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Header text: "HEY YOU! YES YOU! TAKE THIS SHIT OUT OF LINKS!" This is followed by a couple example urls, with a red square highlighting the sections with source identifiers. The rest of the text is as follows: Source identifiers are used to track your activity on a site. Where you came from, what device you use, and even who you talk to. Whether it's written clearly in the url or tied to a random string of characters, it's assigned to your activity. When you send a link containing a source identifier to somebody and they click it, it signals to the website that you two are connected. And that data goes right back to the website operators, and thus their advertisers. Whenever you select "share" or "copy link" on a social app or website, it creates a link like this. If you give even the smallest shit about online privacy, it's important to remove them. Everything after the "?" symbol can be removed without issue, especially sections starting with "si=" or "utm_source="

I saw an infographic a couple years ago about how to remove source identifiers from links and why it's important, but I can't find it again and too many people I know are sending me links with them so here's an infographic straight from the oven

Spain accuses Brussels of ‘complicity’ in Orbán’s ban on Budapest Pride The European Commission must be “much stronger” in confronting the Hungarian leader, say Spanish officials.

Senior Spanish government officials accused the European Commission of “complicity” with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ban on an LGBTQ+ Pride parade in Budapest this weekend.

Instead of having two poles, they only have one, thus being full of magnetism.

Cancer more deadly when tumours lack Y chromosomes — and the loss could be contagious Losing the Y chromosome seems to make cancer cells more aggressive in men and the phenomenon might even spread between cells.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...