news aggregator

Every human body contains a small population of cells that are not genetically its own -- cells that crossed the placenta during pregnancy and that persist for decades after birth. These "microchimeric" cells, named after the lion-goat-serpent hybrid of Greek mythology, have been found in every organ studied so far, though they are exceedingly rare: one such cell exists for every 10,000 to 1 million of a person's own cells. The cells were first noticed in the late 1800s when pathologist Georg Schmorl described placenta-like "giant cells" in the lungs of people who had died from eclampsia. In 1969, researchers detected Y-chromosome-containing white blood cells in people who would later give birth to boys. For more than two decades, scientists presumed these cells were temporary. That changed in 1993 when geneticist Diana Bianchi found Y-chromosome cells in women who had given birth to sons up to 27 years earlier. The cells appear to have regenerative properties, transforming into blood vessels or skin cells to promote wound healing. They also challenge a central assumption of immunology -- that the immune system classifies cells as either "self" or "non-self" and rejects foreign material. Microchimeric cells should trigger rejection but do not. Higher-than-typical concentrations have been found in people with autoimmune conditions including diabetes, lupus, and scleroderma.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Costco's consistency -- from its $1.50 hot dog and drink combo to its functional shopping carts and satisfied employees -- has produced what The Atlantic calls a "cultlike loyalty" among members at more than 600 locations across the U.S. Its annual membership costs $65. The model traces back to Fedco, a nonprofit wholesale collective for federal employees founded in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Costco's private label Kirkland Signature has become one of the world's largest consumer packaged goods brands while maintaining deliberately understated branding. The company relies on word-of-mouth marketing from satisfied members rather than traditional advertising. Atlantic staff writer Jake Lundberg, who shops at the Granger, Indiana location, describes the stores as spaces of "cooperation, courtesy, and grown-ups mostly acting like grown-ups." Shoppers follow unwritten rules: move along, don't block the way, step aside to check your phone. Checkout lines form orderly queues. The exceptions come near sample stations and before major holidays, when spatial awareness and common courtesy break down.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iran is offering to sell advanced weapons systems including ballistic missiles, drones and warships to foreign governments for cryptocurrency, in a bid to use digital assets to bypass western financial controls. From a report: Iran's Ministry of Defence Export Center, known as Mindex, says it is prepared to negotiate military contracts that allow payment in digital currencies, as well as through barter arrangements and Iranian rials, according to promotional documents and payment terms analysed by the Financial Times. The offer, introduced during the past year, appears to mark one of the first known instances in which a nation state has publicly indicated its willingness to accept cryptocurrency as payment for the export of strategic military hardware. Mindex, a state-run body responsible for Iran's overseas defence sales, says it has client relationships with 35 countries and advertises a catalogue of weapons that includes Emad ballistic missiles, Shahed drones, Shahid Soleimani-class warships and short-range air defence systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Three decades after RFC 1883 promised to future-proof the internet by expanding the available pool of IP addresses from around 4.3 billion to over 340 undecillion, IPv6 has yet to achieve the dominance its creators envisioned. Data from Google, APNIC and Cloudflare analyzed by The Register shows less than half of all internet users rely on IPv6 today. "IPv6 was an extremely conservative protocol that changed as little as possible," APNIC chief scientist Geoff Huston told The Register. "It was a classic case of mis-design by committee." The protocol's lack of backward compatibility with IPv4 meant users had to choose one or run both in parallel. Network address translation, which allows thousands of devices to share a single public IPv4 address, gave operators an easier path forward. Huston adds: "These days the Domain Name Service (DNS) is the service selector, not the IP address," Huston told The Register. "The entire security framework of today's Internet is name based and the world of authentication and channel encryption is based on service names, not IP addresses." "So folk use IPv6 these days based on cost: If the cost of obtaining more IPv4 addresses to fuel bigger NATs is too high, then they deploy IPv6. Not because it's better, but if they are confident that they can work around IPv6's weaknesses then in a largely name based world there is no real issue in using one addressing protocol or another as the transport underlay." But calling IPv6 a failure misses the point. "IPv4's continued viability is largely because IPv6 absorbed that growth pressure elsewhere -- particularly in mobile, broadband, and cloud environments," said John Curran, president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers. "In that sense, IPv6 succeeded where it was needed most." Huawei has sought 2.56 decillion IPv6 addresses and Starlink appears to have acquired 150 sextillion.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn't even work as a national ID. But that's what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country. In a December 11 court filing [PDF], Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant special agent in charge of DHS' Mobile, Alabama, office, stated that, "REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship." Lavoie's declaration was in response to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in October by the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm, on behalf of Leo Garcia Venegas, an Alabama construction worker. Venegas was detained twice in May and June during immigration raids on private construction sites, despite being a U.S. citizen. In both instances, Venegas' lawsuit says, masked federal immigration officers entered the private sites without a warrant and began detaining workers based solely on their apparent ethnicity. And in both instances officers allegedly retrieved Venegas' Alabama-issued REAL ID from his pocket but claimed it could be fake. Venegas was kept handcuffed and detained for an hour the first time and "between 20 and 30 minutes" the second time before officers ran his information and released him.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As the calendar flips to January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 are entering the US public domain alongside sound recordings from 1925, making them free to copy, share, remix and build upon without permission or licensing fees. The literary haul includes William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Hammett's full novel The Maltese Falcon, Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple mystery The Murder at the Vicarage, and the first four Nancy Drew books. The popular illustrated version of The Little Engine That Could also joins the commons. Betty Boop makes her public domain debut through her first appearance in the Fleischer Studios cartoon Dizzy Dishes. The original iteration of Disney's Pluto -- then named Rover -- enters as well. Nine additional Mickey Mouse cartoons and ten Silly Symphonies from 1930 are now available for reuse. Films entering the public domain include the Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers, and John Wayne's first leading role in The Big Trail. Musical compositions going public include George and Ira Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm," Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia on My Mind," and "Dream a Little Dream of Me." Sound recordings from 1925 now available include Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong's "The St. Louis Blues" and Marian Anderson's "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." Piet Mondrian's Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow rounds out the artistic entries.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.