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Researchers Claim First 'Unconditional Proof' of Quantum Advantage. What Happens Next?
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Researchers Claim First ‘Unconditional Proof’ of Quantum Advantage. What Happens Next?

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Quantum computers are already here, even though it’s not readily apparent. Now, researchers say quantum advantage—the field’s long-promised milestone of outperforming classical computers—appears to have finally arrived. But the story comes with an important caveat.

Research by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and Colorado computing firm Quantinuum devised and carried out an experiment that demonstrates “unconditional” quantum advantage, sometimes referred to as quantum supremacy. As the researchers phrased it, their “result is provable and permanent: no future development in classical algorithms can close this gap.” The preprint, which has yet to be peer reviewed, was made available on arXiv earlier this month.

Gizmodo reached out to several experts in the field, who affirmed the new results. They added that the experiment, while commendable, isn’t the most practical use of a quantum computer—which already gets flak for its uselessness to everyday users.

Then again, “quantum advantage” is a weird, surprisingly malleable concept with many possible applications. Overall, the results are definitely worth a closer look.

Alice and Bob make a cameo

Quantum enthusiasts may be familiar with Alice and Bob, two fictional characters often summoned for quantum thought experiments. In the context of the new experiment, Alice and Bob are two researchers collaborating on a computation using a single device. They receive different inputs at different points in time, but only Alice can send Bob a message, and not the other way around. Based on Alice’s message, Bob must decide how to measure and interpret to produce a final output.

A simplified diagram representing the experimental setup. © Kretschmer et al., 2025

According to the paper, “the use of a quantum message can provably reduce the amount of communication required by an exponential factor compared to any protocol that uses classical communication alone.” In other words, a small quantum message can replace a much larger classical one. To prove their point, the team repeated the experiment 10,000 times on Quantinuum’s H1-1 trapped-ion quantum computers, coupled with a careful mathematical validation of their protocol.

Surprisingly, they found that a quantum computer only needed 12 qubits (qubits are the smallest unit of information for quantum computers) to solve this problem. By contrast, even the most efficient classical computers needed 330 bits.

A different way to play the game

“This is a very different type of quantum advantage than we have seen before—not better or worse, but it’s just proving something completely different from past experiments,” Bill Fefferman, a computer scientist at the University of Chicago, told Gizmodo in an email. Fefferman previously collaborated with senior author Scott Aaronson but wasn’t involved in the new study.

Fefferman explained that scientists typically equate quantum advantage to “striving to perform a computation on a quantum computer that can be solved dramatically faster than any classical computer.” By contrast, the new experiment achieves “quantum information supremacy,” in which the focus isn’t so much on speed as it is on using fewer qubits to solve a problem that classical computers need many more bits to crack.

“It is true that their result is unconditional, in the sense that it doesn’t rely on unproven assumptions,” Fefferman said. “This is, of course, a great feature of this new experiment, but it’s also inherited by this ‘moving of the goalposts.’”

Gizmodo contacted the study’s authors, who said they couldn’t comment until the paper is formally published.

Pressing the advantage

The results raise questions about the broader goals of proving quantum advantage. As IBM Quantum’s director told Gizmodo in a previous interview, a potential answer is to ask how quantum computers can enhance computing problems we’re already familiar with.

IBM’s Quantum System Two installed at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. © IBM

But as Fefferman noted, there isn’t necessarily a better or worse approach for arriving at quantum advantage—although this “goalpost” appears to be the holy grail for the field’s struggle to prove its worth.

That may be a product of quantum computing’s history, Giuseppe Carleo, a computational physicist at EPFL in Switzerland who wasn’t involved in the new work, explained to Gizmodo in a video call. The rapid growth of quantum computing makes it easy to forget how recently the right hardware became available to test theory.

“So the field has developed historically in the past 20, 30 years much closer to mathematics, rather than an applied field where, if you want, you can use a machine to run things,” said Carleo, who spoke with Gizmodo about the history of quantum computing. As a result, most of the analysis in the field remained at theoretical levels for a longer time than scientists would’ve hoped.

But with hardware advances and a fast-growing industry, this trend is gradually shifting—as it should, Carleo said. More projects are moving away from designing quantum advantage experiments “specifically tailored to show advantage,” he said, turning instead to places where quantum computers can help, not necessarily upend.

That’s actually closer to the field’s “origins,” he added. Richard Feynman, the physicist instrumental to quantum computing’s foundations, suggested that quantum computers should predict quantum phenomena. Sure, there might not be so much “money attached to it,” but they are “of tremendous interest for theoretical physics,” particularly with regard to fundamental questions about our universe, Carleo explained.

Quantum-anything never makes it easy

The new experiment might struggle to prove its immediate connection to practicality. But in a way, the preprint does adhere to Feynman’s advice. It’s certainly a theoretically robust demonstration of using quantum hardware to investigate quantum concepts.

At this very moment, that makes it seem detached from reality. Then again, when has anything quantum ever given easy answers? Yet, if science history is any guide, the best discoveries come from the most unexpected, seemingly impractical pursuits. We’ll just have to keep watch.



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Researchers Build Microscopic Gears Powered by Light in Milestone for Nano-Scale Machines

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In brief

  • Scientists etched working gear trains on a chip, driven solely by photon momentum.
  • The devices could someday power microfluidic pumps, reconfigurable optics, and tiny surgical tools.
  • Efficiency remains extremely low, making the work an elegant proof-of-concept, not a product.

Researchers have built microscopic machines—complete with working gears, racks, and pinions—that run entirely on light.

The study, published recently in Nature, marks the first time engineers have assembled functional “gear trains” at micrometer scales, harnessing photons rather than motors or wires to drive motion.

If the technology matures, then its future could look surprisingly practical. Light-driven micromotors could pump reagents in postage-stamp-sized diagnostic labs, steer mirrors inside ultra-compact cameras, or open and close valves in drug-delivery implants—no batteries or wiring required.

In data centers, swarms of these gear systems might reconfigure optical circuits on the fly, helping direct laser signals between chips. And in biomedical research, tiny optomechanical arms could one day manipulate single cells or proteins with pinpoint control, performing tasks now reserved for bulky, expensive instruments.

Tiny gears, big ambitions

The achievement, led by a team of physicists and engineers using standard semiconductor fabrication tools, demonstrates a long-sought bridge between photonics and mechanics: miniature machines powered and controlled by beams of light.

Each “metamachine,” as the authors call them, is etched onto a chip using lithography similar to that used for computer chips. When illuminated, the patterned metasurfaces redirect photons in such a way that their momentum—tiny though it is—translates into torque, setting the gears spinning.

The devices aren’t merely rotating discs. They include entire assemblies of interconnected parts, like trains of gears that transmit force, and rack-and-pinion systems that convert rotation into linear motion. By changing the polarization of the light or tweaking the metasurface geometry, the researchers can reverse direction or modulate speed.

They even coupled these microscopic engines to mirrors, demonstrating how mechanical movement could alter optical signals on demand—a tantalizing glimpse at reconfigurable optical circuits.

Yet, as with many dazzling breakthroughs, the results come with caveats that cast them more as proof-of-concept than practical prototype. The conversion efficiency is vanishingly small, around one ten-trillionth of the light’s energy.



In other words, these machines operate—but barely. The torque they generate is minuscule, the rotations slow, and the operation precariously dependent on precise illumination and stable environments. Thermal effects from absorbed light can introduce drift or damage, and the machines themselves face the timeless foes of mechanics: friction, wear, and contamination.

From lab curiosity to future tools

Still, the demonstration matters. For decades, researchers have tried to integrate moving mechanical components with optical and electronic systems at micron scales, only to hit engineering dead ends. Electrical micro-actuators demand wiring and contacts that become unmanageable at such dimensions. Chemical and magnetic drives bring complexity and incompatibility with chip manufacturing.

Light offers a non-contact alternative—if it can be tamed to do useful work. By embedding optical metasurfaces directly into the gear structures, the team has shown that photons can indeed serve as a power source, however inefficient, for linked mechanical motion.

The potential applications are wide-ranging, if distant. In microfluidics, light-driven pumps or valves might one day move molecules without electrodes or tubing. In sensing and optics, miniature mirrors and shutters could dynamically steer or filter light, building blocks for agile photonic circuits.

Biologists dream of micromechanical tools that can operate inside cells or manipulate microscopic organisms without wires or magnets. Even fundamental science could benefit: arrays of these tiny gears could help researchers study friction, adhesion, and wear at scales where surface forces dominate.

How it works, in miniature

What makes the approach particularly appealing is its compatibility with established chipmaking processes. The metamachines are fabricated from common materials using lithographic steps already routine in semiconductor foundries. That means, in theory, entire fields of microdevices—optical, mechanical, or even biological—could someday incorporate these structures as easily as adding a new layer of circuitry.

But realizing that promise will require solving a formidable list of problems. Light is an elegant power source, but a weak one; each photon carries only a wisp of momentum. Scaling up output may demand lasers so intense they introduce destructive heating. The gears’ tiny teeth must mesh with atomic precision, making them vulnerable to defects and dust. And while the study shows operation over hours, questions linger about longevity, repeatability, and control in realistic environments.

For now, the metamachines are best viewed as exquisite demonstrations of what’s possible rather than as ready-to-use components. But in a field where progress has long been measured in nanometers, even small steps can feel revolutionary. The vision of microscopic factories, weaving motion from beams of light, remains distant—but suddenly, it’s no longer imaginary.

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A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.



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Robot Swarms Could Solve Blockchain’s Oracle Problem, Researchers Say

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In brief

  • Researchers built a “Swarm Oracle” of robots that collectively agreed on sensor data under adversarial attacks.
  • The system uses a reputation token model to penalize faulty robots and reward accurate ones, enabling self-healing over time.
  • Potential applications include disaster insurance, climate monitoring, and DePIN networks, though scalability remains a challenge.

A swarm of autonomous robots could offer a new way to bring trustworthy real-world data onto blockchains—without relying on centralized sources.

The idea, detailed in a new preprint study titled Swarm Oracle: Trustless Blockchain Agreements through Robot Swarms, builds on earlier peer-reviewed research where researchers demonstrated that mobile robots could reach reliable consensus, even in times of disruption, cyberattack, or in hostile environments. The new study applies that approach to a persistent problem in blockchain design: how to get verified real-world data into smart contracts without introducing new points of trust.

A blockchain oracle is a service that securely supplies external, real-world data to blockchain smart contracts, enabling those contracts to execute based on information that exists outside the blockchain network.

The “oracle problem” refers to the challenge of feeding off-chain data into decentralized systems. Blockchains like Ethereum are built to be trustless—each node independently verifies transactions. But that same design prevents smart contracts from accessing external information, such as weather reports, price feeds, or sensor readings, without third-party input.



Today’s blockchain oracles, like Chainlink, aggregate data from multiple sources to reduce reliance on any one feed. But they can still reintroduce centralized risks, either through opaque aggregation methods or single points of failure.

Swarm Oracle proposes a different model: robot swarms. The system uses a collective of simple, low-cost mobile robots—each equipped with basic sensors and communication hardware—to gather environmental data and reach consensus through a Byzantine fault-tolerant protocol. Once a consensus is reached, the swarm can publish its findings to a blockchain, where the data becomes available to smart contracts.

The concept expands on earlier work by integrating blockchain publishing into the robot swarm’s decision-making process. In a 2023 Nature study, researchers showed how swarms could maintain consensus accuracy even when up to one-third of robots were compromised, misreporting data, abstaining from voting, or physically interfering with other robots.

In the new system, the robots host a permissioned blockchain locally, allowing them to store and verify data without needing continuous internet access. When appropriate, they can upload finalized agreements to public blockchains like Ethereum. The local chain reduces communication overhead while enabling transparency.

The swarm includes a built-in reputation system. Robots that attempt to manipulate the system gradually lose the ability to participate. This provides a mechanism for “self-healing,” with faulty or malicious robots excluded from future consensus rounds.

The researchers tested the Swarm Oracle protocol in simulations and with physical robots called Pi-Pucks—ground-based devices powered by Raspberry Pi boards. While the experiments used identical robots from a single lab, the system is designed to support diverse swarms types.

Use cases for Swarm Oracle include verifying disaster damage for insurance claims, monitoring air or water quality, or supporting decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs). By operating independently and across varied terrain, the robots can reach areas that are inaccessible or too costly to monitor.

However, the researchers acknowledge that challenges remain. Malicious agents could attempt to mimic honest robots. While robots can recover from temporary disconnections, long distances may strain communication.

The idea of robots as blockchain participants isn’t new—projects like Helium have explored decentralized hardware oracles for specific tasks such as network connectivity.

The concept is a part of a growing interest in using autonomous agents to make economic decisions, such as routing deliveries or managing grid loads. Robotics developers are also embedding cryptocurrency wallets into autonomous systems to carry out transactions for their users.

Whether Swarm Oracle can move from simulation to real-world deployment remains to be seen, with cost, availability of the robots, and a general mistrust of AI slowing adoption.

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Trump’s Tylenol Directive Could Actually Increase Autism Rates, Researchers Warn
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Trump’s Tylenol Directive Could Actually Increase Autism Rates, Researchers Warn

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For decades, the discussion around autism has been a hotbed of misinformation, misinterpretation, and bad science, ranging from the long-discredited link between the neurodevelopmental condition and vaccines, to newer claims that going gluten-free and avoiding ultra-processed foods can reverse autistic traits.

On Monday night, this specter arose again in the Oval Office, as President Donald Trump announced his administration’s new push to study the causes of autism with claims that the common painkiller Tylenol, otherwise known as acetaminophen, can cause the condition. The FDA subsequently announced that the drug would be slapped with a warning label citing a “possible association.”

David Amaral, professor and director of research at the UC Davis MIND Institute, was among those watching in dismay as the president launched into a diatribe about Tylenol, repeatedly warning pregnant women not to take it, even to treat fevers.

“We heard the president say that women should tough it out,” says Amaral. “I was really taken aback by that, because we do know that prolonged fever, in particular, is a risk factor for autism. So I worry that this admonition to not take Tylenol is going to do the reverse of what they’re hoping.”

The speculation surrounding Tylenol stems from correlations drawn by some studies that have touted an association between use of the painkiller and neurodevelopmental disorders. One such analysis was published last month. The problem, says Renee Gardner, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is that these studies often reach this conclusion because they don’t sufficiently account for what statisticians describe as “confounding factors”—additional variables related to those being studied that might influence the relationship between them.

In particular, Gardner points out that pregnant women needing to take Tylenol are more likely to have pain, fevers, and prenatal infections, which are themselves risk factors for autism. More importantly, given the heritability of autism, many of the genetic variants that make women more likely to have impaired immunity and greater pain perception, and hence use painkillers like acetaminophen, are also linked to autism. The painkiller use, she says, is a red herring.

Last year, Gardner and other scientists published what is widely regarded within the scientific field as the most conclusive investigation so far on the subject, one that did account for confounding factors. Using health records from nearly 2.5 million children in Sweden, they reached the opposite conclusion to the president: Tylenol has no link to autism. Another major study of more than 200,000 children in Japan, published earlier this month, also found no link.

Doctors are worried that Trump’s claims will have adverse consequences. Michael Absoud, a pediatric neurodisability consultant and a researcher in pediatric neurosciences at King’s College London, says he fears that pregnant women will start using other painkillers with a less well-proven safety profile.

Gardner is concerned that it will also lead to self-blaming among parents, a flashback to the 1950s and ’60s, a time when autism was wrongly attributed to emotionally cold “refrigerator mothers.” “It’s making parents of children with neurodevelopmental conditions feel responsible,” she says. “It harks back to the early dark days of psychiatry.”



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Are SLMs the future of AI? Nvidia researchers think so. Here's why - 1
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Nvidia researchers call SLMs the future of AI: Here’s why

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Experts at Nvidia claim that Small Language Models (SLMs) are key to the future of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.

However, most investments are still being made into Large Language Models (LLMs). If this situation persists, the industry may slow down and subsequently dent the U.S. economy. 

Summary

  • Most AI investors are attracted to companies working on LLM-based products.
  • SLM agents are cheaper and often more efficient for specific tasks than LLMs. 
  • Nvidia calls SLMs the future of AI and urges companies to work with smaller models.

SLMs vs. LLMs

SLMs are trained on up to 40 billion parameters, excelling at a narrow set of specified tasks while consuming significantly less resources. In other words, they’re cheaper.

LLMs are expensive. In April, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman famously said that his company’s flagship product, ChatGPT, costs OpenAI tens of millions of dollars when users say “please” and “thank you. It gives a clue to the costliness of LLMs. That’s where SLMs steal the show since they don’t require expensive data centers to complete tasks.

SLMs, for instance, can serve as client support chatbots and don’t need to learn much about a variety of topics.

According to a Nvidia research paper released in June, SLM agents are the future of AI, not LLM agents:

“…small language models (SLMs) are sufficiently powerful, inherently more suitable, and necessarily more economical for many invocations in agentic systems, and are therefore the future of agentic AI.” 

LLMs also help to train SLMs so they don’t have to absorb all the data from scratch. They learn from large models efficiently and quickly, and become almost as good at solving specific tasks without having to spend many resources.

The tiniest language models are trained on one billion parameters and can operate on regular CPUs. 

Companies don’t need virtual human beings with encyclopedic knowledge. Instead, they need tools that solve certain tasks quickly and precisely.

That’s why cheap SLM agents are much more lucrative investments than LLMs. Notably, GPT-5 uses several models, including small ones, depending on specific tasks. 

What happens if an AI sector takes a setback?

Crypto and blockchain firms are increasingly leveraging LLMs to streamline operations and enhance decision-making. DeFi platforms like Zignaly use LLMs to summarize trades and manage social investment insights, while infrastructure firms such as Platonic and Network3 employ them to support developers and optimize on-chain workflows.

Trading firms are also combining LLMs with other AI tools for market intelligence and predictive analytics.

But the biggest projects are Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and xAI’s Grok. Each one requires massive data centers (a lot of electricity) and a ton of capital. 

The AI sector in the U.S. raised $109 billion in investments in 2024 alone. This year, American AI companies have already spent $400 billion on infrastructure. In August, it was reported that OpenAI is seeking to sell $500 billion worth of its stock. According to Morgan Stanley’s Andrew Sheets, AI companies may spend $3 trillion on data centers by 2029.

According to IDC Research, by 2030, each dollar spent on AI-based business solutions will bring $4.6 to the global economy.

Yet, a problem lingers. If there aren’t enough data centers being built, it may have a substantial impact on the economy and scare off big investors. Once investors reduce their allocations in AI companies, spending will decrease. 

The slowdown of AI companies using LLMs may be caused by factors such as troubled electricity supplies, high interest rates, a trade war, and growing demand for SLMs, among other reasons.

What’s worse, some note that inflating the data centers creates a bubble, and it’s not as lovely as the dotcom era that helped to propel the Internet to new highs. The problem with data centers is that they use chips that will eventually become obsolete.

It will take only a few years. Thus, while these chips are costly, they won’t be reused for other purposes.

How to avoid collapse

To avoid the collapse, Nvidia researchers recommend that AI companies opt for using SLMs and boost the specialization of SLM agents.

Such an approach will help to save resources and increase efficiency and competitiveness.

Researchers suggest that creating modular agent systems will help to keep flexibility and use LLMs only for complex reasoning.  



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Researchers Uncover Undetectable Malware Draining Crypto Browser Wallets

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In brief

  • ModStealer spreads through fake recruiter ads using obfuscated code.
  • It targets browser wallets and hides by disguising itself as a background helper.
  • The malware poses a direct threat to crypto users and platforms, Decrypt was told.

A new malware strain that can slip past antivirus checks and steal data from crypto wallets on Windows, Linux, and macOS systems was discovered on Thursday.

Dubbed ModStealer, it had remained undetected by major antivirus engines for almost a month at the time of disclosure, with its package being delivered through fake job recruiter ads targeting developers. 

The disclosure was made by security firm Mosyle, according to an initial report from 9to5Mac. Decrypt has reached out to Mosyle to learn more.



Distributing through fake job recruiter ads was an intentional tactic, according to Mosyle, because it was designed to reach developers who were likely already using or had Node.js environments installed.

ModStealer “evades detection by mainstream antivirus solutions and poses significant risks to the broader digital asset ecosystem,” Shān Zhang, chief information security officer at blockchain security firm Slowmist, told Decrypt. “Unlike traditional stealers, ModStealer stands out for its multi-platform support and stealthy ‘zero-detection’ execution chain.”

Once executed, the malware scans for browser-based crypto wallet extensions, system credentials, and digital certificates. 

It then “exfiltrates the data to remote C2 servers,” Zhang explained. A C2, or “Command and Control” server, is a centralized system used by cybercriminals to manage and control compromised devices in a network, acting as the operational hub for malware and cyberattacks.

On Apple hardware running macOS, the malware sets itself up through a “persistence method” to run automatically every time the computer starts by disguising itself as a background helper program. 

The setup keeps it running quietly without the user noticing. Signs of infection include a secret file called “.sysupdater.dat” and connections to a suspicious server, per the disclosure.

“Although common in isolation, these persistence methods combined with strong obfuscation make ModStealer resilient against signature-based security tools,” Zhang said.

The discovery of ModStealer comes on the heels of a related warning from Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet, who disclosed Tuesday that attackers had compromised an NPM developer account and attempted to spread malicious code that could silently replace crypto wallet addresses during transactions, putting funds at risk across multiple blockchains.

Although the attack was detected early and failed, Guillemet later noted that the compromised packages had been hooked to Ethereum, Solana, and other chains.

“If your funds sit in a software wallet or on an exchange, you’re one code execution away from losing everything.” Guillemet tweeted hours after his initial warning.

Asked about the new malware’s possible impact, Zhang warned that ModStealer poses a “direct threat to crypto users and platforms.”

For end-users, “private keys, seed phrases, and exchange API keys may be compromised, resulting in direct asset loss,” Zhang said, adding that for the crypto industry, “mass theft of browser extension wallet data could trigger large-scale on-chain exploits, eroding trust and amplifying supply chain risks.”

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Researchers find alarming overlaps among 18 popular VPNs

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A new peer-reviewed study alleges that 18 of the 100 most-downloaded virtual private network (VPN) apps on the Google Play Store are secretly connected in three large families, despite claiming to be independent providers. The paper doesn’t indict any of our picks for the best VPN, but the services it investigates are popular, with 700 million collective downloads on Android alone.

The study, published in the journal of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), doesn’t just find that the VPNs in question failed to disclose behind-the-scenes relationships, but also that their shared infrastructures contain serious security flaws. Well-known services like Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master and X-VPN were found to be vulnerable to attacks capable of exposing a user’s browsing activity and injecting corrupted data.

Titled “Hidden Links: Analyzing Secret Families of VPN apps,” the paper was inspired by an investigation by VPN Pro, which found that several VPN companies each were selling multiple apps without identifying the connections between them. This spurred the “Hidden Links” researchers to ask whether the relationships between secretly co-owned VPNs could be documented systematically.

Starting from the list of the most-downloaded VPNs on Android, the researchers compiled data from each VPN’s business paperwork, web presence and codebase and sifted through it for connections. Primarily through identifying suspicious similarities in the code, they were able to sort 18 VPN apps into three groups.

Family A consists of Turbo VPN, Turbo VPN Lite, VPN Monster, VPN Proxy Master, VPN Proxy Master Lite, Snap VPN, Robot VPN and SuperNet VPN. These were found to be shared between three providers — Innovative Connecting, Lemon Clove and Autumn Breeze. All three have all been linked to Qihoo 360, a firm based in mainland China and identified as a “Chinese military company” by the US Department of Defense.

Family B consists of Global VPN, XY VPN, Super Z VPN, Touch VPN, VPN ProMaster, 3X VPN, VPN Inf and Melon VPN. These eight services, which are shared between five providers, all use the same IP addresses from the same hosting company.

Family C consists of X-VPN and Fast Potato VPN. Although these two apps each come from a different provider, the researchers found that both used very similar code and included the same custom VPN protocol.

If you’re a VPN user, this study should concern you for two reasons. The first problem is that companies entrusted with your private activities and personal data are not being honest about where they’re based, who owns them or who they might be sharing your sensitive information with. Even if their apps were all perfect, this would be a severe breach of trust.

But their apps are far from perfect, which is the second problem. All 18 VPNs across all three families use the Shadowsocks protocol with a hard-coded password, which makes them susceptible to takeover from both the server side (which can be used for malware attacks) and the client side (which can be used to eavesdrop on web activity).

Ultimately, a VPN provider being dishonest about its background and a VPN client running on slapdash infrastructure are symptoms of the same problem: these are apps designed to do something other than keep you safe online. Since all 18 were listed as unrelated products, it’s also clear that app stores are not an effective line of defense. The “Hidden Links” paper makes it all the more imperative to never download a free VPN without vetting it first, and to only use free VPNs that are supported by paid subscriptions, like Proton VPN.



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Two Years After Maui Burned, Researchers Reveal the Wildfire’s True Death Toll
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Two Years After Maui Burned, Researchers Reveal the Wildfire’s True Death Toll

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In August 2023, downed power lines on Maui, Hawaii, sparked a wildfire that quickly exploded into multiple, fast-moving blazes fanned by high winds. Over several days, the fires reduced much of the town of Lāhainā to ashes, displacing thousands and killing more than 100 people.

New research published Thursday, August 22, in the journal Frontiers in Climate suggests this disaster also caused a population-wide increase in mortality beyond what the official death count captured. By calculating the all-cause excess fatality rate—how many more deaths took place over a given period than expected—scientists found a 67% increase in the local mortality rate for August 2023. During the deadliest week of the blaze, the local death rate was 367% higher than expected. These findings underscore a need for improved disaster preparedness that incorporates Native Hawaiian ecological knowledge, the researchers concluded.

What excess death rate reveals

Looking at the excess death rate offered a fuller picture of the fire’s impact, co-first author Michelle Nakatsuka, a medical student and researcher at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told Gizmodo in an email. “The official numbers mostly count direct causes, like burns or smoke inhalation, but excess deaths capture [the] true toll better by telling us how many more people died than would have otherwise been expected in the month of the Lāhainā fires,” she explained.

Disasters like wildfires often cause deaths in indirect ways that affect communities over time. When clinics shut down and roads are blocked off, people can’t refill their prescriptions or get dialysis treatments, Nakatsuka explained. Stress and displacement can worsen chronic conditions, and power or communication failures can delay emergency responses. “These impacts are amplified in under-resourced settings and [are] disproportionately suffered by vulnerable groups, like the elderly or people of color,” she said.

The tragic toll of the Maui fires

Even with this knowledge, Nakatsuka and her colleagues were surprised by the increase in excess mortality during the month of August 2023. Their analysis included all causes of death except covid-19. “While we anticipated an increase in excess deaths, seeing more than 80 additional deaths in the month of the Lāhainā fires was striking,” Nakatsuka said. “It was also surprising to see that the proportion of those deaths occurring outside of medical settings was larger than expected,” she added.

Indeed, the number of deaths that didn’t take place in a medical context—such as the emergency room—rose from 68% in previous months to 80% in August 2023. These people died in homes or public locations, suggesting that many were unable to reach medical care because of the fires.

A path to resilience

While all-cause excess mortality is useful for correlating increased fatalities with natural disasters, it offers little insight into the details of these deaths, Nakatsuka clarified. “The main limitation here is that we can’t say exactly which deaths were caused by the fires or look into Lāhainā-specific excess mortality; we can only measure the overall increase in deaths,” she said, adding that future research should analyze death records alongside medical and toxicology reports to identify causes of death.

Still, these findings reveal a need to improve Maui’s disaster preparedness and invest in wildfire mitigation strategies rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Nakatsuka said. “Native Hawaiian practices center around caring for the land (mālama ʻāina) in ways that naturally reduce fire risk, like restoring native plants, maintaining diverse ecosystems, and managing water resources,” she said. “Bringing Indigenous knowledge together with modern climate prediction tools will minimize risk of future climate crises and center the community’s voice at the heart of disaster prevention and recovery efforts.”



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Researchers Find Strange Link Between Marathon Running and Cancer
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Researchers Find Strange Link Between Marathon Running and Cancer

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Some of the most physically fit people in the world may have a unique health risk. New research uncovers a possible link between marathon running and colorectal cancer.

Oncologists at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute in Virginia conducted the study, which examined the colons of relatively young people who had run several long-distance races. They found these runners had a much higher rate of having potentially dangerous adenomas (a type of polyp) than would be expected for their age. Though the findings are preliminary and require more confirmation, they may point to a real connection between colorectal cancer and extreme physical activity.

“It tells us there’s a signal here,” David Lieberman, a gastroenterologist and professor emeritus at Oregon Health and Science University not affiliated with the study, told the New York Times Tuesday. “We wouldn’t have expected these rates of high-risk adenomas, which are cancer precursor lesions, in an age group like this.”

A mysterious trend

Lead researcher Timothy Cannon was inspired to perform the study after he treated three young patients with colorectal cancer, all of whom had run ultramarathons (defined as any race longer than 26.2 miles). Not only were his patients fit, but they were also much younger than the typical case, the oldest being 40.

In 2022, Cannon and his colleagues began recruiting endurance athletes for their prospective study. The volunteers had all run at least two ultramarathons or five regular marathons; they also had no family history of colorectal cancer or other apparent risk factors. All told, 100 athletes between the ages of 35 and 50 took part and were given colonoscopies.

The researchers went looking for advanced adenomas in the colons of their volunteers, relatively large or otherwise unusual polyps. Though these growths are themselves benign, they have a higher risk of turning cancerous than other polyps. Then they compared the rate of finding these polyps in their athletes to historical trends.

About 1.2% of people in their 40s at average risk for colorectal cancer would be expected to have advanced adenomas, according to the researchers. By sharp contrast, 15% of the runners they studied had them, while nearly half had polyps in general.

“Consideration of refined screening strategies for this population is warranted,” the researchers wrote in their study.

Much left to understand

The team presented its results earlier this year at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. That means this study hasn’t yet undergone the formal peer-review process. The authors are also quick to note their work isn’t definitive proof that endurance running can cause colorectal cancer.

Assuming this link is causative, there remains the burning question of why. As even weekend 5k joggers will know, running can occasionally trigger bouts of gastrointestinal distress (the namesake runner’s diarrhea). These injuries are sometimes caused by temporarily restricted blood flow to the intestines that damages nearby cells. It’s possible, the researchers speculate, that extreme runners who regularly experience this blood flow loss can develop the sort of chronic inflammation that makes cancer more likely to emerge.

At this point, though, that’s only one hypothesis for what may be happening here. The researchers say future studies should try to confirm their findings as well as untangle the causes and risk factors that could explain this potential higher risk.

All that said, this research shouldn’t scare anyone away from running or any other form of cardio. The many health benefits of regular physical activity—which importantly include a lower risk of at least eight different types of cancer—still far outweigh the risks for the average person.



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