Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it’s a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has fundamental physical limits that restrict how compact and energy-efficient a transistor can be.

MIT researchers have now replaced silicon with a magnetic semiconductor, creating a magnetic transistor that could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient circuits. The material’s magnetism strongly influences its electronic behavior, leading to more efficient control of the flow of electricity. 

The team used a novel magnetic material and an optimization process that reduces the material’s defects, which boosts the transistor’s performance.

The material’s unique magnetic properties also allow for transistors with built-in memory, which would simplify circuit design and unlock new applications for high-performance electronics.

“People have known about magnets for thousands of years, but there are very limited ways to incorporate magnetism into electronics. We have shown a new way to efficiently utilize magnetism that opens up a lot of possibilities for future applications and research,” says Chung-Tao Chou, an MIT graduate student in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Physics, and co-lead author of a paper on this advance.

Chou is joined on the paper by co-lead author Eugene Park, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Julian Klein, a DMSE research scientist; Josep Ingla-Aynes, a postdoc in the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center; Jagadeesh S. Moodera, a senior research scientist in the Department of Physics; and senior authors Frances Ross, TDK Professor in DMSE; and Luqiao Liu, an associate professor in EECS, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics; as well as others at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. The paper appears today in Physical Review Letters.

Overcoming the limits

In an electronic device, silicon semiconductor transistors act like tiny light switches that turn a circuit on and off, or amplify weak signals in a communication system. They do this using a small input voltage.

But a fundamental physical limit of silicon semiconductors prevents a transistor from operating below a certain voltage, which hinders its energy efficiency.

To make more efficient electronics, researchers have spent decades working toward magnetic transistors that utilize electron spin to control the flow of electricity. Electron spin is a fundamental property that enables electrons to behave like tiny magnets.

So far, scientists have mostly been limited to using certain magnetic materials. These lack the favorable electronic properties of semiconductors, constraining device performance.

“In this work, we combine magnetism and semiconductor physics to realize useful spintronic devices,” Liu says.

The researchers replace the silicon in the surface layer of a transistor with chromium sulfur bromide, a two-dimensional material that acts as a magnetic semiconductor.

Due to the material’s structure, researchers can switch between two magnetic states very cleanly. This makes it ideal for use in a transistor that smoothly switches between “on” and “off.”

“One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding the right material. We tried many other materials that didn’t work,” Chou says.

They discovered that changing these magnetic states modifies the material’s electronic properties, enabling low-energy operation. And unlike many other 2D materials, chromium sulfur bromide remains stable in air.

To make a transistor, the researchers pattern electrodes onto a silicon substrate, then carefully align and transfer the 2D material on top. They use tape to pick up a tiny piece of material, only a few tens of nanometers thick, and place it onto the substrate.

“A lot of researchers will use solvents or glue to do the transfer, but transistors require a very clean surface. We eliminate all those risks by simplifying this step,” Chou says.

Leveraging magnetism

This lack of contamination enables their device to outperform existing magnetic transistors. Most others can only create a weak magnetic effect, changing the flow of current by a few percent or less. Their new transistor can switch or amplify the electric current by a factor of 10.

They use an external magnetic field to change the magnetic state of the material, switching the transistor using significantly less energy than would usually be required.

The material also allows them to control the magnetic states with electric current. This is important because engineers cannot apply magnetic fields to individual transistors in an electronic device. They need to control each one electrically.

The material’s magnetic properties could also enable transistors with built-in memory, simplifying the design of logic or memory circuits.

A typical memory device has a magnetic cell to store information and a transistor to read it out. Their method can combine both into one magnetic transistor.

“Now, not only are transistors turning on and off, they are also remembering information. And because we can switch the transistor with greater magnitude, the signal is much stronger so we can read out the information faster, and in a much more reliable way,” Liu says.

Building on this demonstration, the researchers plan to further study the use of electrical current to control the device. They are also working to make their method scalable so they can fabricate arrays of transistors.

This research was supported, in part, by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. The work was partially carried out at the MIT.nano facilities.

Balancing economic growth and environmental protection is not easy. Consider wetlands, which provide flood protection, aid water quality, and are linchpins of larger ecosystems. How can we best preserve wetlands while enhancing economic activity? 

According to a new study, one solution involves supplanting traditional conservation mandates, which require replacing affected wetlands locally, with tradeable offsets. Through this system, a developer can build on a wetland by purchasing credits representing an equivalent environmental value created by improving a wetland somewhere else in the same watershed, away from concentrated development. 

While this has largely been the approach of U.S. federal and state regulators since the mid-1990s, current regulations do not account for the flood protection benefits of wetlands. The new study finds a workable solution in an offset policy that also includes a locally varying tax on development, precisely to compensate for the increased flood risk it causes. 

In the lower 48 states of the U.S., wetlands are heavily concentrated in California and Florida, two high-population states. Through a highly granular look at Florida’s wetlands from 1995 to 2020, with a new scholarly methodology that carefully weighs local factors, the scholars estimate that development of wetlands led to $2.4 billion in net economic gains. Their alternate policy would have preserved most of these gains while also preventing about $1.6 billion in flood damage. 

“You’re retaining two-thirds of the private gains from trade,” says Daniel Aronoff PhD ’22, a research affiliate in MIT’s Department of Economics and co-author of a newly published paper summarizing the study’s findings. “And the flood damages shrink by an order of magnitude, so only you’re incurring a small fraction of the flood damage while collecting that amount in increased tax revenue, which can subsidize the cost of restoration after flood damage has occurred.”

This system is neither a simple conservation mandate nor a free ride for developers. The scholars say it would provide a better way of balancing wetlands preservation and economic gains, while lowering flood risk.

“You could do this,” Aronoff says. “It’s an implementable thing. You could build a policy out of this.” 

The paper, “Conservation Priorities and Environmental Offsets: Markets for Florida Wetlands,” appears in the May issue of the American Economic Review. The authors are Aronoff, who is also a research associate at the Laboratory for Economic Analysis and Design at MIT and a research collaborator at the Digital Currency Initiative; and Will Rafey PhD ’20, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Los Angeles.

No net loss — but more risk

Federal wetlands policy in the U.S. has been governed since the 1970s by a “no net loss” objective, meaning that development must be accompanied by approved actions to offset any loss of wetlands functionality. State laws have often mirrored this federal approach. The current rules work on a watershed level, enabling public and private developers to offset the impact of developing a wetland by purchasing offset credits from a “wetland mitigation bank” in the same watershed.

The researchers developed their study as an ambitious, data-rich project. They obtained comprehensive data on environmental offset credits issued, and transfers to developers from state and regional regulators; a record of offset prices from a private broker as well as state and county purchase records; maps detailing wetlands development and private property ownership; and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) data on flood risk policies and claims. 

The scholars then built a detailed database of development from every wetland bank permit issued in Florida that included enhancements, land acquisition, estimated costs, and offset credit release schedules, as well as records of actual releases and sales over time. They used these data to build a dynamic model of the wetland offset market, from which they obtained their estimates of economic gains and flood risk costs.

Whereas other work has applied national data to wetlands analysis, this more granular approach allowed the scholars to conduct a locally focused examination of economic activity, floods, and policy specifically applying to Florida. 

“The functional form that has been used to estimate the relationship between wetlands and flood risk across all America is not compatible with data on wetlands and flooding in Florida,” Aronoff says. 

The study also underscores an important distinction in the kinds of offset policies that have previously been deployed. The first iteration of offset policy required a developer to restore wetlands adjacent to any wetlands area that is newly developed. A second iteration, the one still in use, allows developers to purchase offset credits — which might apply to wetlands that are not adjacent to the development in question. The latter carries with it greater risk of flood damage to developed property, as an equivalent amount of restored wetlands in a rural area will not serve as a flood buffer for as many structures. 

The proposed policy solution would levy a tax — either on offset sellers or buyers — that would equal the estimated increase in flood risk created by the development. 

“Going from the first policy iteration to the second iteration could have created a lot of value, because you have development taking place with wetlands created in the lowest-cost way,” Aronoff says. “But that gave rise to an externality: the flood risk. Because you’re creating flood risk by developing in urban areas with lots of buildings, while creating wetlands in rural areas without buildings around.”

Tuning the policy

Ultimately, that is why the empirical analysis developed by the economists shows a more optimal path using so-called Pigouvian taxes, named after 20th-century economist Arthur Pigou. These taxes add a levy when people create negative circumstances for society at large. Taxes to inhibit pollution, for instance, are Pigouvian. The modeling in the current study indicates the same concept would work effectively for wetlands policy. 

“Economics is about tradeoffs,” Aronoff says. “And this is a tradeoff. Flood risk is expensive — that’s a cost. But development creates value because it is only profitable to the extent that the end user desires it.”

Ultimately, the scholars think, implementing systems that balance factors will work better in the long run than many kinds of prohibitions on economic activity — or than allowing unrestricted activity without weighing the public good. 

“If you choose an absolute, you’re choosing one over the other in all instances,” Aronoff says. “And what is at the core of the outlook of an economist is to assume there’s a tradeoff, and the question is how do you negotiate that tradeoff in an optimal way. That’s what we are trying to get at here.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the George and Obie Schultz Fund. 

MIT engineers are testing a new propulsion system that combines the power and speed of conventional chemical thrusters with the precision and fuel-efficiency of electrical thrusters. 

The system could enable the design of nimbler, more flexible small satellites, which could perform both fast, powerful maneuvers and slower, precise adjustments, depending on the mission and moment at hand.

The key to the new system is a special propellant that can power both chemical and electrical thrusters, which traditionally have required separate, bulky fuel sources. 

“If you can have chemical and electrical propulsion in one small package, it’s the best of both worlds,” says Amelia Bruno, a former postdoc in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). “This opens the door for small satellites to do even more science, more observations, and more interesting missions, all on a smaller and cheaper platform.” 

Bruno is the lead author of a study appearing this week in the Journal of Propulsion and Power showing that a type of “green monopropellant” originally developed by the U.S. Air Force for use in chemical propulsion in space can also effectively power tiny “electrospray” thrusters. Electrospray thrusters are dime-sized rockets that use electric fields to charge up a liquid propellant’s particles, which are then shot into space as a thrust-generating spray.

Electrospray thrusters are extremely fuel-efficient and can perform slow and precise maneuvers, such as pushing a small spacecraft bit by bit through a long, interplanetary journey. Chemical thrusters, in contrast, require a large fuel supply to perform short and fast bursts, for instance to quickly ascend and descend, or speed up and slow down. 

Now that the MIT group has found a propellant that can fuel both chemical and electrospray thrusters, they see big potential for small spacecraft. The team is working with NASA to launch the Green Propulsion Dual Mode mission — a briefcase-sized CubeSat that will carry a chemical thruster and four electrospray thrusters, all fueled by a single propellant tank. The mission will be the first to test such a two-in-one propulsion system for small spacecraft. If it is successful, Bruno says the mission could pave the way for small satellites to explore beyond Earth’s orbit. 

“We could send CubeSats to Mars, or the asteroid belt, where they could make the journey slowly, using electrospray thrusters,” says study co-author Paulo Lozano, the Miguel Alemán Velasco Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. “You could then use your chemical thrusters to quickly move to look at interesting features. You could have a lot more flexibility to do a lot more things.”

The study’s co-authors also include Matthew Corrado SM ’22, PhD ’26.

A sea of ions

Lozano’s group at MIT designs, fabricates, and tests electrospray thrusters for use in satellites that range from the size of a lunchbox to a small carry-on suitcase. Compared to conventional satellites, these microsatellites are significantly smaller and cheaper to launch into space.

But smaller spacecraft require smaller everything else, including propulsion systems. In that respect, electrospray thrusters are a good fit. The thrusters Lozano develops are about the size of a thumbnail. Each thruster sits atop a small reservoir of ionic liquid propellant. When the reservoir is connected to a battery, the battery supplies some amount of voltage that electrically charges a corresponding amount of ions in the liquid. The charged particles are then channeled out of the reservoir, through the thruster’s tips and into space as a thrust-inducing spray. 

Over the past decade, Lozano has tested many thruster designs, under varying conditions, and with various types of ionic liquid propellant — a fuel that is essentially made from salts that can remain in liquid form. 

“Ionic liquids are very stable and can even remain a liquid in space, which not a lot of materials can do,” Bruno says. “And it’s basically a sea of ions, which is why we base our technology around it, so we can pull those ions out into an electrospray.”

Bruno and Lozano have collaborated with the U.S. Air Force, which synthesized a new kind of ionic liquid propellant — the Advanced SpaceCraft Energetic Non-Toxic propellant (ASCENT) — which was being tested in chemical thrusters. Chemical thrusters are high-force propulsion systems typically associated with launching rockets and performing hard and fast maneuvers once in space. ASCENT was designed as a “green,” less toxic alternative to hydrazine, which has been the traditional fuel source for chemical propulsion and is extremely hazardous to handle. 

“ASCENT happens to be an ionic liquid mixture,” Bruno says. “And we said, hey, that’s the stuff we typically use. Theoretically, this should work. Let’s go figure out how.”

Spray and spin

In their new study, Bruno, Lozano, and Corrado tested the performance of electrospray thrusters that they fueled with ASCENT. Each thruster they used was attached to a small cube-shaped reservoir about the size of a Lego brick. They filled each reservoir with 1 gram of ASCENT, a liquid that has a viscosity similar to baby oil. They then attached a thruster to opposite sides of a CubeSat, which they set on a MagLev stand — a custom testbed that is designed to magnetically levitate a sample or device. The MagLev in Lozano’s lab is installed inside a large vacuum chamber, which the researchers can tune to mimic the conditions in space.

Over multiple experiments, the team remotely applied varying levels of voltage to activate the thrusters, which in turn produced a spray that spun the CubeSat around, like a floating, spinning top. The researchers measured the amount of thrust produced with each trial, and calculated ASCENT’s fuel efficiency as they ran the thrusters continuously over periods lasting up to 100 hours. 

In the end, they found that ASCENT was able to successfully fuel each electrospray thruster. What’s more, the propellant, which was originally intended for chemical propulsion, was just as efficient as other, conventional ionic liquids at propelling electric thrusters.

“Compared to our normal electrospray propellants, ASCENT can provide similar performance in terms of thrust,” Bruno says. “Now that we know our thrusters work with ASCENT, we can start thinking of all the ways we can make them even better.” 

Now that ASCENT has been proven to work in both chemical and electrical propulsion, she and Lozano say that a single tank of the fuel can be used to power both types of thrusters, all in a compact, two-in-one system that could fit within a small CubeSat. The team will test the idea with NASA’s Green Propulsion Dual Mode mission, which is scheduled to launch in November. 

“This will be the first time that a satellite will have a shared propellant tank,” says Lozano, who notes that in addition to long, exploratory interplanetary missions, small satellites equipped with both chemical and electrical propulsion could also be useful for missions closer to Earth, such as for weather and climate observations. 

“Say there’s a storm coming, and you’d want to deploy your constellation of small satellites to observe over one location,” he says. “You could choose to send them quickly or slowly depending on the nature of the observation. And the only way to do that is if you have two propulsion systems, which is now possible.”

This research is supported, in part, by NASA.

New article: “Responsible Disclosure in the Age of AI: A Call for Urgent Action,” by Melissa Hathaway.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping the balance between vulnerability discovery and remediation. Frontier AI models are now capable of autonomously identifying exploitable software vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed and scale. This development exposes decades of accumulated technical debt created by a software industry that prioritized rapid deployment over secure-by-design engineering practices. Drawing on the evolution of software assurance, vulnerability disclosure frameworks, and U.S. cyber policy, this perspective argues that the current moment represents a strategic inflection point for governments, industry, and critical infrastructure operators. The author examines the growing tension between offensive and defensive equities in cyberspace, the emergence of AI-enabled vulnerability discovery capabilities in both the U.S. and China, and the increasing risks posed by unsupported legacy systems and AI-assisted code generation practices. Responsible disclosure can no longer remain a reactive or fragmented process, but must become a coordinated national and international resilience effort involving governments, software vendors, infrastructure operators, and emergency response organizations. The article concludes with an urgent call for accelerated remediation, large-scale patch management coordination, and sustained investment in automated vulnerability repair capabilities before adversaries exploit this rapidly narrowing window of opportunity...

Within the past decade, biologists have discovered that one strategy cells use to keep their contents organized is a phenomenon known as phase separation. 

Similar to the way oil forms droplets that float in a vinegar solution, proteins inside cells can phase separate to form highly concentrated droplets that keep them organized within the cell. In a new study, MIT researchers have now shown that this droplet formation is critical for controlling the function of a class of enzymes called kinases.

The researchers found that condensing into droplets optimizes the biochemical conditions needed for kinases to catalyze reactions, allowing them to more rapidly activate cell signaling pathways. In some cases, droplet formation can even change which reactions the kinases perform. 

“Many biological molecules have this propensity to spontaneously separate. We were really interested in asking, if we have these kinases forming droplets, what is the consequence of that in the context of signaling?” says Lindsay Case, an assistant professor of biology at MIT and the senior author of the study.

Learning more about how these droplets form could help researchers design drugs that target kinases, some of which can be overactive in cancer cells.

“Understanding the chemistry of these compartments, and what molecules go into them and what molecules don’t go into them, could help us design drugs that better localize to their target of interest,” Case says.

Nicholas Lea, an MIT graduate student, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Cell Reports.

Forming droplets

Since her days as a graduate student, Case has been studying how the physical organization of molecules inside cells affects their function. As a postdoc, she began studying how phase separation might affect a signaling pathway that allows cells to sense when they’re attached to their environment, so they can respond appropriately. 

Some of the proteins in this pathway are kinases, which activate other proteins by adding phosphate groups to them. Kinases can also activate themselves through a process called autophosphorylation.

“Inside of the cell, you have these kinase molecules that are responsible for carrying a signal through the cell, and we know that the organization of these molecules changes. When the information is present, they’re organized in a different way than when the information is not present,” Case says. “We think that having the right molecules in the right place is incredibly important for the right biochemistry to occur.”

Phase separation is one of the methods that cells appear to use for this organization. The most familiar example of phase separation can be seen in a salad dressing, where oil forms droplets to minimize contact with water-based vinegar. Proteins can phase separate when they are highly concentrated, leading them to self-assemble into dense droplets floating in the cell’s cytoplasm.

Case hypothesized that this phase separation, which brings kinases together at a high density, might help cells to boost the enzymes’ activity because they are more likely to bump into and phosphorylate each other.

In this study, Case and Lea set out to test that hypothesis, focusing on an enzyme called focal adhesion kinase (FAK). This kinase, which becomes activated when cells attach to their surrounding environment, activates pro-growth and pro-survival signals. In cancer cells, this signaling pathway can go awry, allowing cells to proliferate even when they detach from their original locations.

Scientists already knew that when cells are properly attached to their environment, that adhesion signal causes FAK to accumulate at the cell membrane. In the new study, the MIT team mimicked that effect by overexpressing FAK in cells. These cells were floating freely in a solution, not attached to any surface. Even so, the high concentration of FAK caused the kinase to phase separate into droplets, which turned on the pro-growth signal.

“It was surprising that just by condensing this protein into a droplet, you can actually turn on a signaling pathway that should be turned off,” Case says. “If FAK concentration is too high, you’re always getting these droplets and you’re always signaling, regardless of what the receptors that are supposed to be controlling this are doing.” 

The findings suggest that in cancer cells, overexpression of FAK may lead to phase separation, which then helps to drive cancer progression and metastasis. 

“It may be that for some kinases, you’re not supposed to form these droplets in the cytoplasm because it leads to this always-on signal, and then the cells no longer listen to the information coming from the environment,” Case says.

Interfering with FAK’s ability to form droplets could offer a new strategy for cancer drug development, she says. 

Controlling reactions

The researchers also studied two other kinases, Mst2 and Abl. They found that these enzymes could also phase separate at high concentrations, and that this increased their activity. While phase separation of FAK in the cytoplasm may occur only in cancerous cells, for Mst2, it appears to be a strategy that healthy cells use to control a signaling pathway called Hippo, which promotes cell growth and survival.

Additionally, for both Mst2 and Abl, the researchers discovered that phase separation can lead the enzymes to phosphorylate additional targets, which may lead them to activate different signaling pathways.

“It’s not just that you’re getting faster phosphorylation, but in those cases, the patterns of what is actually getting phosphorylated were very different inside of the droplet compared to what might be happening in a non-droplet context,” Case says. “The kinase is able to phosphorylate amino acid residues beyond the set of canonical sites that have been described before.”

The researchers also found that when these droplets form, they attract high concentrations of ATP, the molecule that kinases use as a source of phosphate. This occurs because kinases tend to contain floppy sections containing many positively charged amino acids, which attract negatively charged ATP.

Using a machine-learning model, the researchers predicted that about 45 percent of the 500 kinases found in human cells would have the ability to form droplets like those seen in this study. Those kinases were also more likely to be highly positively charged, which could help them to recruit ATP into the droplets.

In future work, Case hopes to explore the possibility of designing drugs that could mimic ATP’s ability to be attracted into droplets within a cell, which could help reduce negative side effects of the drugs. 

“By localizing drugs to the compartment where your target localizes, that could reduce off-target effects by concentrating the drug with the target of interest and reducing interactions with other molecules,” Case says. 

The research was funded by a Searle Scholars Program Award, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Institutes of Health, the Royal G. and Mae H. Westaway Family Memorial Fund, and a David H. Koch Graduate Fellowship.

EFF welcomes our new Executive Director Nicole Ozer today! 

Nicole is a legal expert on privacy and surveillance, artificial intelligence, and digital speech who previously served as the inaugural executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco. From 2004-2025, she was founding director of the Technology and Civil Liberties Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. 

Nicole has long been a partner of EFF’s in the fight to defend civil liberties in the digital world. Many of us already know her, and she’s basically as close to EFF “family” as someone can be without actually having worked here.   

Over her more than two decades leading public interest technology work, Nicole has:  

• spearheaded passage of the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act – working with EFF to enact the nation’s strongest electronic surveillance law, requiring a warrant for government access to electronic information; 
• modernized California law to protect reading records in the digital age by helping, along with EFF, to craft the Reader Privacy Act, requiring a “super warrant” for government access; 
• created a groundbreaking model law for local democratic oversight of surveillance systems which inspired 25 laws across the country that help safeguard the rights and safety of more than 17 million people; 
• litigated civil liberties cases, including work with EFF on the NSA cases, and drafted influential amicus briefs on technology issues at all levels of state and federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court and California Supreme Court; and 
• developed multi-year campaigns to strengthen the anti-surveillance policies related to social media surveillance and face recognition of major technology companies and foster stronger privacy and free expression protection for billions of people worldwide. 

And that's just the TL;DR! You can read more about her bona fides here. 

EFF’s work to ensure technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation is more urgent than ever. And with Nicole’s decades of leadership in public interest technology work, EFF is poised to be stronger than ever to meet this moment and build for the fights ahead. 

Nicole succeeds Cindy Cohn, who has been with EFF for more than 25 years and served as executive director since 2015. Cindy is leaving EFF later this month – not to retire, but to find a role that puts her back in the courtroom doing what she does best: suing the government! She’ll still be part of the EFF community. 

We are living digital lives, using technology to connect, communicate, and mobilize for change. And we need you in these critical fights to defend and advance rights in the digital world – so join EFF today, and sign up for our EFFector newsletter to make sure you’re updated on the latest EFF news including upcoming events to help you get to know Nicole. 

Welcome Nicole! 

A political earthquake over energy prices in New England is transforming Democratic positions on natural gas.

The request to Congress' watchdog agency comes after POLITICO's E&E News found that Trump has approved only 23 percent of blue-state aid requests.

EPA’s refrigerator rule rollback rests on a one-sided ledger.

Labor unions are using their political power — and a jobs message — to influence state efforts to regulate data centers.

Illinois will impose its first restrictions on rate hikes and could order policyholder refunds. "They're losing," an advocate says of insurers.

The settlement is the latest agreement the state has reached with oil companies over their alleged liability for Louisiana's disappearing coast.

Regulators approved changes meant to ease costs for refineries, while critics warn the overhaul could undermine emissions goals and drain climate funding.

Gov. Kathy Hochul secured changes to the state’s 50-year-old environmental review law to speed up housing construction.

Player-turned-chemicals boss Mathieu Flamini believes going green is the answer to Europe’s competitiveness problems.

Fordlandia was built in 1927 in Pará by Ford Motor as a rubber-tapping metropolis intended to secure a steady supply of natural rubber for tires.

These subscription-based services ship straight to customers everything from everyday and workwear. Then, the items are returned for someone else to use.

Someone named “Squid” seems to be a “West Country legend.”

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

After public outrage, California lawmakers are moving closer to exempting open-source operating systems from the sweeping age-bracketing regime mandated by last year’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043). Nonetheless, the current bill still jeopardizes internet users’ speech, privacy, and security.

While the open source exemption, if passed, would improve the law, the remaining amendments proposed by AB 1856 would require all web browsers and websites to request and collect users’ ages. This is an expansion of last year's AB 1043's age-bracketing system that compounds its constitutional harms to users’ speech, privacy, and security. As AB 1856 moves on to the Senate, EFF will continue fighting for amendments that reduce those harms.

AB 1856 Extends AB 1043’s Age-Gating Regime

Last year, California passed AB 1043, which requires all operating systems and app stores to create age-bracketing systems that segment users based on their ages. As we’ve written, that regime is a recipe for censorship: it creates unnecessary and unconstitutional barriers to accessing lawful online speech, threatens our right to anonymity, and pressures online services to collect troves of valuable and sensitive user data. On top of that, A.B. 1043’s wide-sweeping compliance burdens impose disproportionate harms on the open-source ecosystem that underpins much of the modern web. 

Given these flaws, lawmakers introduced AB 1856 this year as a supposed “clean-up” bill for AB 1043. But instead of sticking to fixing AB 1043’s unique and serious harms (like its impact on open-source operating systems), AB 1856 also expanded the regime even further—extending its age-bracketing requirements beyond operating systems and app stores to browsers and websites. 

EFF opposed AB 1856 on two grounds, which we explained in our opposition letter to the Assembly: 

1. The harms that age-gating regimes pose to users’ speech, privacy, and anonymity; and
2. The disproportionate harms that this particular regime imposes on open-source developers. 

Open Source Concerns Somewhat Alleviated By Amendment

On May 28th, AB 1856 passed the Assembly in a nearly unanimous vote (68-1). 

Before that vote, however, AB 1856 was amended to relieve the compliance burden on open-source operating systems. This is a meaningful improvement and a welcome relief for open-source developers, who have been loud and clear about how much of an existential threat A.B. 1043’s age-gating mandate would pose.

The new exception reads:

“Operating system provider” does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.”

EFF understands this amendment to exempt open-source operating systems from the requirement to collect and transmit users’ age-bracket data. That is a definite win for open-source developers. The bill is narrower now than it was before, and lawmakers clearly responded to concerns raised by EFF and the broader open-source community. 

Some important questions still remain—for example, it is unclear how the law would apply when an open-source operating system is incorporated into a commercial product or service. And, given the structure of where the exemption is placed under the “operating system provider” definition, lawmakers could stand to clarify that the exemption applies to open-source operating systems and applications.

Nonetheless, that ambiguity aside, this amendment does substantially reduce the threat that AB 1043 could have on many open-source developers. 

AB 1856 Still Expands the Problematic Age-Bracketing Regime

Don’t get us wrong—if this bill passes, we will be very happy that AB 1043 does not pose nearly the amount of harm to our friends behind open-source operating systems. But even after these amendments, EFF remains opposed to AB 1856 because it ultimately expands California’s sweeping age-bracketing framework far beyond the original scope of AB 1043. 

In AB 1856 and its amendments, the Assembly failed to address the core problem with AB 1043’s age-bracketing regime: mandated age-gating systems threaten users’ speech, privacy, anonymity, and security. 

Even after these amendments, EFF remains opposed to AB 1856 because it ultimately expands California’s sweeping age-bracketing framework far beyond the original scope of AB 1043. 

Even though AB 1043 does not explicitly require companies to perform age verification, it nonetheless imposes a liability structure that strongly pressures companies to verify users’ ages anyway. In practice, that could lead to more ID checks, more biometric scanning, more invasive data collection and risk of breach, and more barriers to adults’ and young people’s lawful speech.

In fact, instead of narrowing AB 1043’s wide net, AB 1856 expanded it to add browser providers and website operators to the list of entities that must comply with its age-bracketing requirements. This dramatically broadens the scope of AB 1043 and pulls more services, developers, and users into an anonymity- and privacy-destroying data collection framework that has not yet been implemented or evaluated. The result would make it nearly impossible for regular internet users to avoid AB 1043’s age gates.

The Fight Moves to the Senate

On those grounds, EFF will continue to oppose AB 1856. Though it has passed the Assembly, the fight is not over. As the bill moves through the Senate, we’ll continue to push for amendments that actually “clean up” and narrow the scope of AB 1043, and offer more protection to users from the harms of age-gating systems.

Cheered on by the greater MIT community, members of the Class of 2026 were honored this week for the hard work that earned them their newly minted MIT degrees.

The 2026 Commencement celebrations spanned three days filled with degree ceremonies, receptions, and reunions, at locations spread across campus. The weather ranged widely, but spirits remained high even as Wednesday’s sunny, selfie-perfect weather gave way to some rain later in the week.

Advanced Micro Devices chair and CEO Lisa Su ’90, SM ’91, PhD ’94 gave the Commencement address at the OneMIT ceremony for all graduates, held Thursday. Undergraduates crossed the stage during their own ceremony on Friday, and throughout the three-day celebration, MIT’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing each held ceremonies to recognize their graduate students. Friday also kicked off a weekend of Tech Reunions.

As Institute Professor and School of Engineering Dean Paula Hammond told graduate students earning degrees from her school and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, “What makes MIT special isn’t just what happens underneath this dome. What makes MIT special is you.”

The following photo essay provides a snapshot of MIT Commencement activities throughout the week. (Additional recaps/photo collections are available for the School of Architecture and Planning, School of Engineering/MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences).