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"Delta Air Lines Flight 1334 was flying from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale last month when smoke and flames started pouring out of a backpack," reports CNN. "The pilots declared an emergency and diverted to Fort Meyers where the 191 people onboard safely evacuated." The culprit was a passenger's personal lithium-ion battery pack, which had been tucked away in the carry-on bag. At the FAA's William J. Hughes Technical Center for Advanced Aerospace in Atlantic City, New Jersey, fire safety engineers research and demonstrate just how bad it can be. "Lithium batteries can go into what's called thermal runaway," Fire Safety Branch Manager Robert Ochs, explained. "All of a sudden, it'll start to short circuit ... It will get warmer and warmer and warmer until the structure of the battery itself fails. At that point, it can eject molten electrolyte and flames and smoke and toxic gas...." These thermal runaways are difficult to fight. The FAA recommends flight attendants first use a halon fire extinguisher, which is standard equipment on planes, but that alone may not be enough. In the test performed for CNN, the flames sprung back up in just moments... "Adding the water, as much water from the galley cart, non-alcoholic liquids, everything that they can get to just start pouring on that device." The problems are not new, but more batteries are being carried onto planes than ever before. Safety organization UL Standards and Engagement says today an average passenger flies with four devices powered by lithium-ion batteries. "The incidents of fire are rare, but they are increasing. We're seeing as many as two per week, either on planes or within airports," Jeff Marootian, the president and CEO of the organization, told CNN... [T]he latest federal data shows external battery packs are the top cause of incidents, and as a result the FAA has banned them from checked baggage where they are harder to extinguish. But despite all of the warnings, UL Standards and Engagement says two in five passengers still say they check them.

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The mysterious X-37B space-plane — the U.S. military's orbital test vehicle — "serves partly as a platform for cutting-edge experiments," writes Space.com And "one of these experiments is a potential alternative to GPS that makes use of quantum science as a tool for navigation: a quantum inertial sensor." This technology could revolutionize how spacecraft, airplanes, ships and submarines navigate in environments where GPS is unavailable or compromised. In space, especially beyond Earth's orbit, GPS signals become unreliable or simply vanish. The same applies underwater, where submarines cannot access GPS at all. And even on Earth, GPS signals can be jammed (blocked), spoofed (making a GPS receiver think it is in a different location) or disabled — for instance, during a conflict... Traditional inertial navigation systems, which use accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure a vehicle's acceleration and rotation, do provide independent navigation, as they can estimate position by tracking how the vehicle moves over time... Eventually though, without visual cues, small errors will accumulate and you will entirely lose your positioning... At very low temperatures, atoms obey the rules of quantum mechanics: they behave like waves and can exist in multiple states simultaneously — two properties that lie at the heart of quantum inertial sensors. The quantum inertial sensor aboard the X-37B uses a technique called atom interferometry, where atoms are cooled to the temperature of near absolute zero, so they behave like waves. Using fine-tuned lasers, each atom is split into what's called a superposition state, similar to Schrödinger's cat, so that it simultaneously travels along two paths, which are then recombined. Since the atom behaves like a wave in quantum mechanics, these two paths interfere with each other, creating a pattern similar to overlapping ripples on water. Encoded in this pattern is detailed information about how the atom's environment has affected its journey. In particular, the tiniest shifts in motion, like sensor rotations or accelerations, leave detectable marks on these atomic "waves". Compared to classical inertial navigation systems, quantum sensors offer orders of magnitude greater sensitivity. Because atoms are identical and do not change, unlike mechanical components or electronics, they are far less prone to drift or bias. The result is long duration and high accuracy navigation without the need for external references. The upcoming X-37B mission will be the first time this level of quantum inertial navigation is tested in space. The article points out that a quantum navigation system could be crucial "for future space exploration, such as to the Moon, Mars or even deep space," where autonomy is key and when signals from Earth are unavailable. "While quantum computing and quantum communication often steal headlines, systems like quantum clocks and quantum sensors are likely to be the first to see widespread use."

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The BBC reports a growing trend in music: "for established (but not superstar) artists to be targeted by fake albums or songs that suddenly appear on their pages on Spotify and other streaming services." Even dead musicians have had AI-generated "new" material added to their catalogues... According to music industry analysts Luminate, about 99,000 songs are uploaded to streaming services every day, usually via dozens of distribution services, which ask the uploader to submit the artist's details. If that information is incorrect, and a song wrongly gets listed under an existing artist's name, it's down to them or their label to complain and get it removed. Spotify took three weeks to remove fakes of folk singer/songwriter Emily Portman, according to the article, "and she still hasn't regained control of her Spotify artist profile... Considering how the streaming era has already made a big dent in many artists' incomes, Emily Portman says this affair has felt like a "very low blow"... She suspects independent artists are being targeted because star names have more protection and more power to get fraudulent releases removed swiftly." But it's also happened to "a number of Americana and folk-rock artists who have had fake tracks posted using their names in recent weeks — apparently all from the same source," including Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, J Tillman (now known as Father John Misty), Sam Beam (aka Iron & Wine), Teddy Thompson and Jakob Dylan: All the releases used the same style of AI artwork and were credited to three record labels, two with apparently Indonesian names. Many listed the same name as a songwriter — Zyan Maliq Mahardika. That name has also been credited on other songs mimicking real US Christian musicians and metalcore bands. Spotify said it had flagged the issue with the distributor and removed these tracks as they "violated our policy against impersonating another person or brand." It added it would "remove any distributor who repeatedly allows this type of content on our platform".... Tatiana Cirisano from media and technology analysis company Midia Research says AI is "making it easier for fraudsters" to fool listeners, who are also more "passive" in the algorithmic age. She thinks bad actors posing as real-life artists are hoping their fraudulent tracks will "rack up enough streams" — hundreds of thousands — to earn them a nice payday. "I would think that the AI fakes are targeting lesser-known artists in the hopes that their schemes fly under the radar, compared to if they were to target a superstar who could immediately get Spotify on the line," she notes. But streaming services and distributors are "working hard" and getting better at spotting it, she stresses, "ironically, also by using AI and machine learning!

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Archer Aviation is "the official air taxi partner" of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Electrek reported in May. In June it entered "a key development phase ahead of full-fledged flight certification and commercial operations" by completing a piloted flight in its flagship Midnight aircraft, "demonstrating a conventional takeoff and landing instead of vertical (it can do both)." During that flight, which took place in the skies above Salinas, California, the eVTOL achieved a top speed of 125 mph and a maximum altitude of 1,500 feet above ground level. Most recently, Archer has taken its Midnight eVTOL above Salinas again, achieving its longest flight to date. Per Archer, the recent successful flight in California lasted 31 minutes, and the piloted Midnight eVTOL traveled 55 miles — the company's longest recorded flight yet with a pilot onboard... [Again with speeds exceeding 125 mph] United Airlines CFO Mike Leskinen, who led the airline's early investment in Archer Aviation, was present at the test facility to witness the milestone flight. Leskinen congratulated the Archer team on its longest eVTOL flight and expressed his satisfaction with the Midnight aircraft's quiet operation. Their aircraft even "reached speeds of nearly 150 miles per hour" the week before, according to Archer's announcement. They're calling it another milestone "as the company advances toward FAA certification in the U.S. and near-term commercialization in the United Arab Emirates." And Archer's Founder/CEO said crossing the 50-mile mark at speed "is another clear step toward commercialization that shows the maturity of our program."

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"Good news, everyone! The new version of Mozilla's browser now makes even more extensive use of AI," writes the Register, "providing summaries of linked content and offering developers the ability to add LLM support to extensions." Firefox 142 brings some visible shininess, but due to the combination of regional restrictions and Mozilla's progressive rollout system, not everybody can see all the features just yet... Not geofenced but subject to phased rollout are link previews, for various native-English-speaking regions. Hover over, long-press, or right-click a link and pick Preview Link, and a summary should appear. Mozilla's summary says: "Previews can optionally include AI-generated key points, which are processed on your device to protect your privacy." "Link Previews is gradually rolling out to ensure performance and quality," Firefox says in their release notes, "and is now available in en-US, en-CA, en-GB, en-AU for users with more than 3 GB of available RAM." (The notes also add a welcome for "the developers who contributed their first code change to Firefox in this release, 20 of whom were brand new volunteers!") The Register notes that Firefox 142 also gives developers the ability to add LLM support to extensions using wllama, a Wasm binding interfacing with llama.cpp, which lets you run Meta's Llama LLM and other models, locally or in the cloud.

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