To perform a free reverse phone lookup without hitting paywalls, combine real-time community spam directories, exact-match search engine operators, social messaging app profile checks, and free technical carrier lookup tools. This multi-layered investigation method reveals caller identities, line types, and scam risks without requiring a subscription or credit card.
Different reverse phone lookup methods yield distinct types of data. While community databases highlight telemarketers and scammers quickly, search engines and messaging apps are better suited for identifying unknown individuals.
| Lookup Method | Information Discovered | Best Use Case | Paywall Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community Spam Directories | Caller reputation, robocall tags, spam categories, business names | Identifying telemarketers, delivery drivers, and active scam calls | Low (Free web searching available) |
| Exact-Match Search Operators (OSINT) | Associated owner names, forum posts, PDF resumes, public classifieds | Uncovering the digital footprint of unknown individual callers | None (100% free) |
| Messaging App Correlation | Profile pictures, display names, public bios, activity statuses | Verifying personal mobile lines on WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal | None (100% free) |
| Technical Carrier Utilities | Line type (VoIP vs. Mobile vs. Landline), original carrier, line status | Detecting burner numbers, virtual call centers, and spoofing tools | Low (Free daily query tiers) |
Before initiating a reverse search, standardizing your input digits improves accuracy across search engines and directory databases. Most reverse search failures happen because the query string omits essential formatting or includes extra characters that break direct database matching.
Search engines and public databases parse telephone numbers differently depending on how punctuation is used. When preparing a number for analysis, test these common variations:
If you regularly inspect incoming calls on mobile devices, review our reference guide on standard phone number formats to streamline bulk queries across multiple tools.
The vast majority of commercial “free reverse lookup” websites use aggressive lead-generation mechanics. Commercial background check services like Whitepages paywall mobile subscriber names behind subscription models, limiting free results strictly to landline owner details, general city locations, and carrier line types.
Watch for these common indicator patterns that signal a site will demand payment before delivering usable data:
Follow this multi-tier protocol to trace unknown numbers. If you are dealing with suspected robocalls or telemarketers, start at Step 1. If you are trying to identify a specific personal caller, skip directly to Step 2 and Step 3.
When an unknown caller leaves no voicemail, your first step should be cross-referencing public spam reporting networks. Millions of users submit real-time reports categorizing calls from debt collectors, political campaigns, delivery agents, and financial scams.
Expected Outcome: If the number belongs to a call center or scam campaign, community directories will surface the caller’s business identity, operational category, and risk score instantly without requiring account creation.
If community directories return no results, the number likely belongs to a private individual or local small business. General search engine queries often obscure specific phone matches under paid advertising results. Using exact-match search operators (open-source intelligence dorking) bypasses sponsored ads and forces the search engine to return indexed pages containing that explicit digit string.
"123-456-7890" and "1234567890".site:facebook.com "123-456-7890" or site:linkedin.com "123-456-7890".filetype:pdf "123-456-7890".Applying structured advanced search operators exposes forgotten forum postings, old Craigslist listings, church newsletters, and municipal public records where individuals published their direct cell numbers online.
According to the official OSINT Industries investigation workflow, testing both national international prefixes and local hyphenated formats across major search engines captures cached web pages that standard search algorithms filter out.
Expected Outcome: Uncovering direct web footprints connecting the number to real names, personal blog posts, business registration documents, or historical real estate listings.
Mobile messaging applications often link telephone numbers directly to user account profiles. By temporarily saving an unknown number into your device contacts, you can inspect associated profile pictures, screen names, and bio metadata within privacy-respecting messaging ecosystems.
Expected Outcome: High-resolution profile photos, full display names, and personal bio text provided directly by the account owner, effectively confirming who holds the line.
When web searches and messaging applications reveal no user profiles, auditing the technical infrastructure of the phone line provides critical answers. Knowing whether a number is a physical landline, a cellular phone, or a virtual internet line dictates how you should handle incoming calls.
Identifying non-fixed virtual phone line services confirms that the caller operates through an internet application rather than a physical SIM card or home landline, which is a common characteristic of commercial call centers and automated web applications.
Expected Outcome: Clear determination of line type, network operator, origin location, and line activity status, establishing whether the caller is using a physical telephone or a virtual web application.
Gathering a name or carrier record is only effective if you verify that the information actually matches the person on the other end of the line. Misidentification occurs easily when relying on a single data point.
Never accept a single search result as absolute proof of identity. Validate your findings by comparing at least two independent data channels:
Caller ID spoofing occurs when a caller alters the outgoing call signal to display a fake number on your phone screen. Scammers frequently practice “neighbor spoofing,” disguising outgoing calls with your local area code and exchange prefix to increase answer rates.
To guard against spoofed calls, implement these defense measures:
Even structured investigations can encounter dead ends. Here is how to resolve common reverse phone lookup roadblocks.
If every public directory, search engine, and messaging application returns zero records, you are likely dealing with one of these scenarios:
When carrier lookup utilities identify a line as “Non-Fixed VoIP” (provisioned by services like Google Voice, TextNow, Pinger, or Skype), individual owner details are shielded behind service provider privacy protections. Non-fixed VoIP numbers can be created in seconds from anywhere in the world, making them popular for privacy-conscious individuals as well as telemarketers.
If you encounter a persistent virtual line that cannot be traced to a real person, consult our overview of temporary virtual phone numbers to understand how disposable internet numbers operate and how privacy apps handle user registration data.
Understanding the legal limits of public data retrieval prevents wasted effort and keeps your expectations realistic. Cellular carriers in North America and Europe are legally restricted from publishing master subscriber directories under telecommunication privacy regulations, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Legitimate, 100% free reverse phone lookup techniques rely entirely on public OSINT footprints, real-time spam reporting feeds, and opt-in user profiles. Websites promising to reveal private cellular billing addresses, SSNs, or credit histories for free are deceptive lead generators designed to sell recurring monthly subscriptions.
Yes, but not through traditional directory white pages. Because cellular phone owner databases are protected by telecom privacy laws, finding a mobile caller for free requires open-source intelligence methods. By combining exact-match Google search operators, social messaging app profile checks (such as WhatsApp and Telegram), and community caller ID directories, you can identify cell phone users without paying for background check reports.
Commercial reverse lookup websites operate on lead-generation models. They present animated loading graphics to simulate scanning private government or public records, creating a false sense of value. Once the animation finishes, the site hides basic mobile subscriber names behind a paywall, requiring a trial fee or monthly subscription to access records that are often outdated or incomplete.
A VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) classification means the phone number is routed over an internet connection rather than a physical copper landline or cellular cell tower. VoIP numbers are generated by virtual phone services like Google Voice, Skype, or business call center software. While legitimate businesses and privacy-conscious individuals use VoIP lines daily, scammers also favor them because they can be created remotely without a physical location contract.
You can identify potential caller ID spoofing by evaluating caller behavior and technical line data. If an incoming caller claims to represent an official agency (like a bank, government office, or utility provider) but carrier lookup utilities identify the originating line as a non-fixed VoIP number or residential landline, the caller ID is likely spoofed. Always hang up and call back using the institution’s official published website number to verify authenticity.
ServiceNow released security patches for three new maximum-severity AI Platform vulnerabilities that can be exploited in code injection, SQL injection, and privilege escalation attacks.
The ServiceNow AI Platform (formerly known as the Now Platform) is an enterprise-grade Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that helps integrate AI into core enterprise workflows and powers more than 100,000 enterprise AI apps at 85% of all Fortune 500 companies.
In a Thursday advisory, the company said it patched its cloud-based platform against the three critical security flaws (CVE-2026-18885, CVE-2026-18886, and CVE-2026-74820) and advised customers to secure their self-hosted instances.
The first is a code injection vulnerability that can allow attackers to execute arbitrary code, the second stems from a code injection weakness that enables them to escalate privileges, and the third allows threat actors to access or modify instance data through SQL injection attacks.
All three security vulnerabilities can be exploited by unauthenticated threat actors in low-complexity attacks that don’t require user interaction.
On Thursday, ServiceNow also addressed a high-severity sandbox escape security issue (CVE-2026-6876) affecting the same platform that could let attackers with basic privileges gain remote code execution on targeted systems.
| Release | Version Updated |
| Xanadu | Patch 11 Hot Fix 7a |
| Yokohama | Yokohama Patch 12 Hot Fix 3b Yokohama Patch 13 Hot Fix 4 |
| Zurich | Zurich Patch 7b Hot Fix 3 Zurich Patch 8 Hot Fix 5 Zurich Patch 9 Hot Fix 6 Zurich Patch 10 Hot Fix 2m (m-branch) Zurich Patch 10 Hot Fix 3 (standard) Zurich Patch 11 Zurich Patch 12 |
| Australia | Australia Patch 2 Hot Fix 3 Australia Patch 3 Hot Fix 2 Australia Patch 3m Australia Patch 4 Australia Patch 5 |
“We are not currently aware of malicious exploitation against ServiceNow instances. We recommend customers promptly apply appropriate updates or upgrade to a patched release if they have not already done so,” the company said.
While ServiceNow didn’t flag any of the vulnerabilities patched on Thursday as actively exploited, multiple security flaws in ServiceNow products have been targeted in attacks in recent years.
Two years ago, threat actors chained three ServiceNow flaws (CVE-2024-4879, CVE-2024-5178, and CVE-2024-5217) using publicly available exploits to breach private firms and government agencies worldwide in data theft attacks.
More recently, in July, threat intelligence company Defused reported that attackers are now exploiting another critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-6875), a pre-auth sandbox escape in the ServiceNow AI Platform.
ServiceNow has also privately disclosed a security incident last month in which security researchers or customer-led research used an unauthenticated access flaw via a vulnerable API endpoint to query data from customer instances.
Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.
The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.
Courtesy of REI
The REI Half Dome 2 is the best budget two-person backpacking tent. I’ve toted it on many backpacking trips and found it plenty sturdy, quick to set up, and capable of fitting two people along with their gear. It even comes with a footprint (which I never bother with, but it’s nice to have it if you have to deal with pointy rocks).
The Big Agnes Copper Spur series is our top pick among freestanding ultralight tents. This is the bike-packing model, which features shorter pole segments that are easier to haul on a bike, but I really prefer it for the more subdued colors. The Copper Spur is a high-quality, well-designed tent that’s lightweight, easy to set up, and roomy enough to be livable in the backcountry. The “awning” design (with trekking poles or sticks) is a nice extra.
Nemo’s Dragonfly tents are roomy for the weight. There’s a generous amount of mesh at the top, which provides some nice ventilation on warm summer nights and is perfect for falling asleep under the stars when the weather permits. The Osmo fabric is a blend of nylon and polyester that absorbs less water than pure nylon rainflies.
MSR’s Groundhog stakes aren’t cheap, but they’re the best tent upgrade you can make. They’re superstrong—I’ve never had one bend or pull out on me—and considering their strength, they’re pretty lightweight. I suggest carrying a mix of stakes when backpacking—some of these, some carbon fiber pegs, and some shepherd hooks. That way, no matter the terrain, you’ve got something that’ll work.
Now is a great time to score some new base layers and mid layers ahead of the cooler months.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Smartwool’s 100 percent merino base layer is my top pick for cooler weather in our guide to the Best Base Layers. Its loose fit allows it to work as a long-sleeve T-shirt in the shoulder seasons. That extra bit of roominess also makes it possible to use it as a second light layer over something thinner. Note that colors and sizes are limited on this deal.
This is an REI Outlet deal because it’s been discontinued, which is a shame (hopefully that just means new colors are coming next year). REI’s 100 percent merino base layers are some of the best values around, even at full price. On sale, they’re a true steal. I like this half-zip for the extra ventilation the zipper provides, but if you prefer, the regular top (on sale for $30) is also on sale, as is the base layer bottom (on sale for $30).
Nothing says outdoors like a hatchet loop on your pants. Fjällräven Vidda Pro trousers give you that and great ventilation. The Vidda Pro uses Fjällräven’s G-1000 fabric, a 65 percent recycled polyester and 35 percent cotton blend, with pockets everywhere and extras like ventilation zippers, reinforced knees (with openings for pads), and that sweet, sweet hatchet loop on the leg.
This deal is limited to one color, with sizes disappearing fast, but it’s a pretty outstanding deal. The Ghost Whisperer Down Jacket is my top pick for a backpacking puffer jacket. The men’s large I tested weighs just 7.3 ounces, packs down to a tiny little thing (stuffing into its own pocket), and the 800-fill-power goose down offers one of the best warmth-to-weight ratios on the market.
Nothing says camping like roasting marshmallows over open flames and burning beans on the camp stove. Check out our guides to the best backpacking stoves and best camping stoves for more picks.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
MSR’s PocketRocket Deluxe is our top pick for a backpacking stove. It wins the title thanks to its larger burner area, which allows the flame to spread out for faster boil times and better fuel efficiency, especially with larger pots. It also fared better in the wind than smaller burners. The genius of the deluxe model is the small curved lip around the burner, which helps keep wind from getting to the base of the flame. It’s a small design element, and one that you certainly want. During long-term testing, I found it more effective at maintaining a simmer in the wind, should you want to do any actual cooking.
You can put together a lighter cooking setup, but Jetboil’s Stash is the lightest all-in-one system out there, and it does boil water a bit faster than the rest. The heat diffuser design speeds up boil times (Jetboil claims 2.5 minutes, which I could only match indoors in still air), but the real appeal is how this kit packs down into itself and how simple it is to use.
Jetboil’s larger all-in-one cooking system, the Flash, offers a larger capacity 1-liter pot that combines an integrated pot and burner into an easy-to-use system. I prefer the more compact Stash above, but if you’re cooking for two and are all-in on dehydrated meals, this stove is popular for good reason.
While I prefer the larger burner head of the Deluxe model above, the MSR PocketRocket 2 is lighter at 2.6 ounces compared to the Deluxe’s 2.9. It still has wide enough arms to support just about any one- or two-person pot. It’s simple to use, even while wearing gloves, and it’s efficient. At 947-foot elevation, it boiled 1 liter of water in 3 minutes, 47 seconds. You can even get it to simmer, though the flame radius is small, so fancier cooking isn’t easy.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
MSR’s WhisperLite series is probably the most popular backpacking stove ever made. They last forever (mine is over 30 years old and still works great), and this model, the Universal, can use just about any fuel you can imagine—white gas, kerosene, unleaded gasoline, and isobutane-propane canisters, to be precise. The only downside is that it can be fiddly compared to stoves like the Jetboil. But if you’re headed out on a long trip, buying fuel as you go, this is the most flexible option out there.
This is by far the most compact two-burner stove I’ve tested. It’s my pick for any situation where space is at a premium—whether that’s canoeing or just because you have a small car. The burners are large, and with some practice, I could get a light, simmer-friendly flame. My main gripe is the windscreen, which is not the best. The Basecamp version, with fitted pots, is also on sale for $300 ($100 off).
Courtesy of Coleman
My favorite stove in Coleman’s current lineup, the Coleman Cascade 3-in-1 features heavy-duty cast-iron grates and comes with a cast-iron griddle and grill. It’ll comfortably fit a 12-inch pan and a 10-inch pan side by side, and it’s significantly sturdier and more robust than other Coleman stoves, making it worth the extra money if you use it often. That said, the much cheaper stove below will get you by if you’re only using it a few nights a year.
This stove is ubiquitous at campgrounds for a reason. It’s well-built, sturdy on a table, and just works. It’s not the most powerful stove, and it lacks frills like push-button ignition, but it’s capable of holding a low flame, simmering soups, and cooking scrambled eggs without browning them. It’s also incredibly durable.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
The MSR Gravity Autoflow filter is a must-have for backpacking with a group. To use this filter, scoop up 10 liters of water in the dirty water bag, attach the hose, connect your water bottle, and sit back and relax. The filter is good enough to keep you safe from all the usual protozoa and bacteria, and the flow rate is a solid 1.5 liters per minute when the filter is clean.
The MSR Guardian is our pick for trips with sketchy water sources because it filters down to 0.02 microns, which will even remove viruses. It is heavy at 22 ounces and may be overkill for trips in the US, but it’s a great option for overseas adventures. I really like that it’s designed to be self-cleaning, which makes field maintenance incredibly easy, and that it screws right onto a Nalgene bottle. Also, because it’s a pump filter, it’s very fast. You can crank out a couple of liters in hardly any time at all. The gravity-fed version is also on sale at Backcountry for $232 ($78 off).
Courtesy of Kelty
This camp chair is the coziest way to hang out around the fire. It is somewhat huge, heavy, and awkward to fold up and carry, but so long as you have room for it in your vehicle, there’s no better way to relax under the stars with your loved ones.
The thing to keep in mind when you shop REI brand gear is the company’s basic proposition: You get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works well and has produced some great, affordable gear. This chair is a good example: It’s comfortable (it does wobble a little, side-to-side when you move, though) and less than half the price of competitors.
I’ve noticed that when people try to lighten their load with a smaller, lighter-weight backpack, they struggle to fit all their gear. The answer for sleeping bags and clothing is this compression stuff sack, which smashes anything soft down to about half the size of the same item in a regular stuff sack. This works well with sleeping bags and clothing, especially puffer jackets, but also fleece and merino wool.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Our favorite backpacking sleeping bag, the Bishop Pass 15 offers the best warmth-to-weight ratio while packing down small and staying affordable. I have slept in this bag for more than two weeks, with nighttime temps ranging from 28 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and, yes, it was too warm in the heat, but on those warmer nights, I unzipped it and used it as a blanket. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a versatile bag.
REI’s Magma line of down gear is some of the best value around. The Magma 15 sleeping bag has long been an affordable option that’s perfect for shoulder-season trips when the temperature potentially swings lower than you expect (the comfort rating is 21). There are three lengths and three widths, which makes it easy to find a perfect fit for your body, and the 850-fill-power goose down (Bluesign-approved) packs down nicely and small. If you don’t need the shoulder-season coverage, the Magma 30 is also on sale for $262 ($87 off), and makes a great summer sleeping bag.
This down mummy bag has a spoon-shaped design for side sleepers and extra room in the elbows and knees so you can roll over onto your side without feeling like you’re slipping into a straitjacket. It’s built for temps down to 30 degrees Fahrenheit and has zippered gills you can open to avoid overheating when it’s warmer.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
The best budget ultralight quilt, the Magma Trail is a great value for the money. The lower price does mean that this one is a bit heavier (it uses 850-fill-power down), though at 24 ounces for the long, wide version I have, it’s competitive on the scale. The straps for attaching it to your sleep pad aren’t as nice as what you’ll get with something like the Enlightened Equipment’s Revelation Quilt, but it’s just as warm and does a respectable job of keeping out drafts. There’s even a zippered foot box with a drawstring for cooler nights.
Nemo’s Pulse quilt uses RDS-certified, gold-infused 1,000-fill-power ExpeDRY down, which does a good job of shedding moisture from tent condensation and reportedly dries faster than standard down, though I’ve never figured out a good way to test this. The Karo Step baffle stitching keeps down well distributed, and at 12 ounces for the regular, this one is pretty dang lightweight.
Courtesy of REI
This is our favorite sleeping bag for car camping. The REI Siesta is plenty warm and affordable. It’s also not a mummy bag because you’re not climbing Denali here. The rectangular cut makes for a much roomier, more comfortable sleeping experience. The 20-degree-Fahrenheit rating makes it warm enough for three seasons, and unlike most rectangular bags, the Siesta has a hood, which helps on those cold nights.
The Kindercamp makes a great car camping bag if you’ve got young children. Once your kids are about 4 feet tall, an adult sleeping bag works just fine. Prior to that, they’ll benefit from a kids’ sleeping bag like the Kindercamp, which is cut smaller so your little ones don’t have to heat up a huge, adult-size sleeping bag to stay warm.
If you snap a selfie in the woods and Instagram isn’t around to see it, did it happen? You’ll never have to answer that question if you’ve got one of our favorite action cameras or 360 cameras with you.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Insta360’s X6 360 camera just launched—our review will be coming soon—but the X5 is still a great option, especially on sale. The twin 1/1.28-inch sensors capture 8K video, which means you can reframe your footage to fit rectangular video formats and still have nearly 4K clips sharp enough to mix with footage shot with your phone. The dynamic range is impressive, and the X5 also has great battery life.
If you’re going to turn your action camera on yourself, consider the Ace Pro 2, our top pick for vlogging. It has a great lens and sensor co-engineered with Leica, is capable of recording 8K video at up to 30 frames per second (fps), and has some pretty darn nice color even in the default settings. My guess is that the Ace Pro 3 is coming pretty soon, but this is still a good deal.
Sure, phones have some of the features you’ll get with a satellite messenger, but we still think you’re better off with a dedicated device. Garmin’s new inReach Mini 3 Plus now offers some of those phone features—like voice messaging—along with the emergency features and excellent service worldwide. It’s also still tiny, well-built, and it has great battery life. A non-Plus model, which doesn’t have a speaker and mic, is also on sale.
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When you’re in a public space, like the subway, one of the best ways to listen to music with a friend is using headphone splitter. If you’re lucky enough to have one of the few Android devices that let you share audio via Bluetooth, you can use that as well. However, headphone splitters provide a quick and no-nonsense method for enabling multiple people to listen to music from one audio source on two or more pairs of headphones. The biggest concern about these unusual gadgets, however, is whether they actually hurt the quality of audio.
Generally, a good quality headphone splitter won’t negatively affect audio quality. That’s because the splitter’s main function is to just “split” the audio signal between two outputs. That means it doesn’t do any compression or conversion that can affect the quality of audio. In a normal setup, you shouldn’t hear a difference in sound quality compared to when you just plug one pair of headphones in. However, before you visit your favorite e-commerce store and buy just any splitter you find, you should know that there are several factors that play a role in the audio quality while using a headphone splitter.
The quality of the headphone splitter matters for sound quality. Cheap splitters tend to use lower-quality materials, which can negatively affect electrical conductivity and potentially impact audio quality. High-quality ones use better materials like gold-plated connectors and double-shielded cables, which ensure minimal degradation of the audio signal.
Another key factor that determines whether audio quality is affected is the impedance of the source and the headphones. In simple terms, impedance (measured in ohms) “shows how hard the headphones are to drive for your audio source,” according to major headphone brand Sennheiser. Connecting two or more pairs of headphones to a single source decreases the overall impedance.
As a result, the source device has to deliver more current to drive the sound. That can be problematic because if the combined headset impedance is too low for the source to drive properly, you might experience issues when listening to audio, such as reduced volume, distortion, or changes in frequency response. Reviews of products like UGREEN’s Headphone Splitter show that some users faced these issues. Specifically, some reviewers complained about volume loss, while others reported reduced sound quality when using the splitter.
The race car is gearing up for a public launch on 9 September in DCU.
A team of students from Dublin City University (DCU) has designed and built Ireland’s first solar-powered racing car.
The custom-engineered car, which relies entirely on solar energy and clean battery storage, recently under underwent track validation and high-speed testing at Kildare’s Mondello Park motor racing circuit.
After receiving the green light in a test drive today (27 August), the car is now ready for a public launch on 9 September in DCU.
The “ultra-efficient” single-seater vehicle features a six-metre ‘bullet’ model frame that’s been designed for maximum power conversion and minimal drag, the university said. It is equipped with custom solar array architecture, designed with lightweight composite materials and bespoke telemetry systems.
The entire process – from designing to completing a successful test run – took the DCU Solar Racing team four years, and required intensive research, prototyping and aerodynamic testing.
More than 40 multidisciplinary students, spanning mechanical, electrical, software engineering and business operations, contributed to the project, DCU said.
The Solar Racing team is now gearing up to represent Ireland at the iLumen European Solar Challenge, a 24-hour endurance competition for solar vehicles, set to take place this September at Circuit Zolder in Belgium.
It is the largest race of its kind in Europe, and second largest globally – only behind the 3,000km-long World Solar Challenge in Australia.
The Solar Racing team is sponsored by more than 30 organisations including DCU Innovate; Intel; Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland; tire manufacturing giant Bridgestone (which is also the lead sponsor behind the World Solar Challenge); Fidelity Investments; and Irish space-tech EireComposites.
“Timeless hours over the past four years have resulted in this pinnacle of Irish engineering, thanks to the support of our partners, university and the students behind the project,” said Rian Gill, the team principal and lead engineer at DCU Solar Racing.
Jennifer Bruton, the executive dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Computing added: “This project showcases the practical, future-focused, boundary-pushing talent emerging from DCU.
“Beyond competing in international motorsport, these students are proving that sustainable transport solutions are achievable today through dedication, teamwork, multidisciplinary hands-on application and vision.”
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Google’s AI assistant Gemini crawls your Google apps for “more personalized suggestions,” in a feature they call Personal Intelligence. Now when given permission, an Android/iOS app called Dreambeans “uses Personal Intelligence to connect information from Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, Photos, YouTube and Search History, to curate a finite collection of daily stories designed to spark new ideas.” In a slick new video Google says the app will “surface what matters to you.”
The blog 9to5Google notes that after previously requiring a subscription, Dreambeans “is now available for free Google Accounts in the US to test, calling it “very much like a hyper-personalized Google Now or Discover feed.”
Instead of using stock imagery, each Dreambeans story is accompanied by Nano Banana 2-generated artwork that uses an illustrated style. For example, if Dreambeans recommends a hike, you might see yourself and a group of friends at that location… There’s also an “Ask anything” chat experience to get more information. You can leave feedback by tapping the heart or downvoting, while the chat interface allows you to provide more details. “Tune your feed” lets you tell Dreambeans what you “want more stories about” and what it should never show.
Or, as TechCrunch senior writer Lucas Ropek puts it, you get a curated list of AI-illustrated “stories” that “will turn your life into a cartoon”
[Gozde Oznur, the product lead behind the new app, told TechCrunch the app] has also been built as a doomscrolling antidote, in that it only provides users with a limited number of stories per day — typically 10 to 14. The idea is to get a few inspirational ideas and then go out and live your life, she said. A lot of companies are currently trying to court the user that is sick of phone addiction. I recently reviewed a startup, Bond, which also uses AI to auto-generate lifestyle suggestions for the user.
What about privacy protections? According to Oznur, they are pretty solid. The only person with access to the app’s stories is the user, she said. Users can also delete their data whenever they want, and can choose which Google services they want to connect to the tool.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A federal judge has entered a final judgment requiring Guardant Health to pay more than $245 million to Seattle biotech TwinStrand Biosciences and the University of Washington over DNA sequencing technology developed at the university.
The judgment, entered Friday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, follows a 2023 jury verdict that found Guardant willfully infringed two patents covering TwinStrand’s Duplex Sequencing technology.
The case also establishes a continuing revenue stream for the university and TwinStrand from some of Guardant’s products.
The court’s final judgment includes $83.4 million in damages awarded by the jury for infringement through June 2023, plus $19.5 million in supplemental damages, $119.4 million in accrued royalties and $22.9 million in interest.
Going forward, Guardant is required under the judgment to pay a 6% royalty on covered sales through March 2033, when the patents expire.
The technology at the center of the case traces back to research at the University of Washington, where scientists, including co-founder Jesse Salk, developed Duplex Sequencing as a way to make DNA sequencing more accurate. Salk — who stepped down as CEO of TwinStrand in 2022 — now is the co-founder of cancer diagnostics startup CytoTerra.
The molecular biologist and clinical oncologist is the grandson of the late Jonas Salk, the scientist who discovered and developed the polio vaccine.
TwinStrand says its Duplex Sequencing technology can improve the accuracy of next-generation sequencing by more than 10,000-fold, allowing researchers to detect extremely rare genetic mutations that can be obscured by sequencing errors.
“Duplex Sequencing solved an accuracy problem the sequencing field had worked on for years, and this judgment affirms the jury’s finding that Guardant Health built products on that invention without a license,” said Chad Waite, chair of the TwinStrand board of directors, in a press release. “We remained steadfast in our conviction that the facts would prevail, and they have. We intend to see this through and stand firmly behind the intellectual property at the core of our technology.”
Salk and his colleagues from the University of Washington launched TwinStrand in 2015 to commercialize the technology. Based in Seattle, the startup raised funding from Madrona Venture Group, Soleus Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Ridgeback Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments. Section 32 led a $50 million series B round in the company in 2021.
A jury found in November 2023 that Guardant willfully infringed the patents through 11 products and services. The products identified in the judgment include Guardant360, Guardant Reveal, Guardant Shield and other cancer-testing products.
The Delaware court subsequently rejected Guardant’s effort to overturn the verdict or obtain a new trial. In June, the court also awarded TwinStrand and UW ongoing royalties and supplemental damages. The final judgment now formalizes those awards.
Guardant is not accepting the ruling.
The California-based precision oncology company said Monday that it plans to appeal the judgment, arguing that the court’s order covers products that existed at the time of the 2023 trial and that many have since been discontinued or substantially upgraded. Guardant also said current versions of its Reveal and Shield products are excluded from the final district court order.
Guardant — founded in 2012 — said the judgment and collection of potential royalties will be stayed pending the appeal.
“We strongly disagree with this decision and will promptly be appealing for its overturn,” said John Saia, Guardant Health Chief Legal Officer, in a press release. “We have full faith in the strengths and merits of Guardant’s intellectual property and R&D and are confident we will ultimately prevail on appeal.”
While passengers are cruising at 35,000 feet, their checked luggage is already passing through a very different kind of cloud.
In a move designed to eliminate one of the more frustrating friction points of international travel, Richland, Wash.-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has co-developed a mid-flight luggage scanning system to streamline arrivals for inbound U.S. travelers.
PNNL has teamed up with federal security agencies and major airlines to launch the International Remote Baggage Screening (IRBS) platform. The cloud-based system screens and analyzes scans of checked luggage before a flight even touches down in the U.S..
Cleared bags are moved straight to a passenger’s connecting flight without the hassle of retrieving and rechecking them through security — unless Customs and Border Protection explicitly flags a bag for a manual check.
Over the past year, the system has rolled out on select international routes into major U.S. hubs—including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Detroit—on flights arriving from hubs like London-Heathrow and Seoul-Incheon. PNNL and federal agencies developed IRBS alongside key airline partners, including Delta Air Lines, Korean Air, and Virgin Atlantic.
This isn’t PNNL’s first time reshaping airport security — the Department of Energy lab also engineered the millimeter-wave body scanners used in airport checkpoints worldwide. For IRBS, PNNL managed the complex data engineering and privacy compliance needed to stream sensitive imaging between foreign security agencies, private airlines, and U.S. border officials.
The system feeds into the TSA’s “One Stop Security” push to streamline international arrivals. Additional international routes and airports are expected to join the network soon, according to PNNL.
PayPal reportedly rejected a takeover offer last month over concerns it was being undervalued.
Plans for a joint acquisition of PayPal have fallen through, according to Bloomberg News, weeks after the company’s board reportedly rejected a $53bn-plus offer from Stripe and US private equity firm Advent International.
Talks of a potential Stripe acquisition of PayPal have swirled for months. According to reports last month, Stripe and Advent offered to buy PayPal at $60.50 per share, which would have valued the fintech at more than $53bn and represented a 28pc premium to its share price in mid-July.
That offer was, however, reportedly rejected by PayPal’s board over concerns that it undervalued the company. Sources told Bloomberg that Stripe and Advent have now abandoned talks.
Founded in the late 1990s, PayPal has struggled in recent years to modernise against emerging rivals in the payments space such as Apple, Google and Stripe. PayPal’s shares have dropped dramatically over recent years as a result, but picked up somewhat last month after promising reports of a takeover by the $159bn Stripe.
PayPal’s shares have jumped nearly 10pc over the last month, now giving the company a market capitalisation of $52.5bn – up from roughly $43bn in February, when Bloomberg first reported on a potential acquisition. The fintech also recorded a 5pc growth in net revenue in the second quarter.
PayPal and Stripe would each benefit from the possible acquisition, according to Chris Jones, managing director at PSE Consulting.
“PayPal’s wallet could build on the early success of Link, Stripe’s consumer-facing accelerated checkout, which already counts more than 200m consumer accounts, and would create further opportunities to exploit Stripe’s $1.1bn investment in stablecoin infrastructure through its purchase of Bridge,” he told SiliconRepublic.com last month.
The US fintech brought in HP’s Enrique Lores as its new CEO earlier this year, replacing Alex Chriss, whose work was “not in line” with board expectations. By June, PayPal had reportedly planned to shut down its venture capital arm.
Stripe, meanwhile, is investing heavily in product development and making strategic acquisitions, including the programmable wallet company Privy, stablecoin orchestration platform Bridge and billing platform Metronome.
It recently announced that it is acquiring large language model marketplace OpenRouter at a reported cost of between $7bn and $10bn as part of efforts to help businesses optimise token costs.
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A decade or two on the road will drain an EV battery’s range and hobble its acceleration. But while it peters out for daily commutes, that battery still has a lot of juice left.
A cohort of battery entrepreneurs is giving these units a second life, powering off-grid communities, industrial sites and energy-hungry data centers. Industry leaders — British Columbia’s Moment Energy and Redwood Materials in Nevada — are rapidly scaling up as the supply of aging batteries surges.
This summer, Moment moved into its 100,000-square-foot Megafactory 1 near Vancouver, converting a shell into its new HQ and manufacturing space in six weeks. It’s also building a Texas Gigafactory expected to open in January.
Redwood is likewise ramping up after unveiling the world’s largest used-EV battery system in June 2025: A 63-megawatt-hour solar and battery installation powering a Nevada data center run by AI infrastructure company Crusoe.
Absent reuse, these batteries end up in landfills or recycling shredders.
“Why recycle this battery prematurely when there’s over 95% life left?” asked Eddy Chiang, CEO and co-founder of Moment. When the batteries get recycled, some companies send the material to China for refinement, exporting valuable raw materials.
The market’s potential is massive. Chiang estimates that the used batteries available today could match Denver’s electricity use 20 times over — and 90 times over in four years.
So why pull an EV battery that still has 80% or more of its life left? Think Christmas lights, says Chiang.
Particularly with lights sold in the past, “if one light bulb burnt out, the whole string burns out,” he said. “And that’s what’s happening in the battery pack. The actual failure mode for EVs is actually due to a single cell failure, like that light bulb.”
EV battery packs contain hundreds or thousands of cells that are grouped into modules, which are housed in large metal shells affixed under the vehicle’s floorboard. The cells can be similar to the AA batteries in consumer electronics, while others are larger blocks or pouches.
When Moment receives used batteries, it first runs diagnostics to test their performance. Then it breaks down the packs into modules, and racks them in cooled shipping containers. Moment uses proprietary software to redirect energy away from weak cells to healthy ones to extend battery life.
The company’s largest storage system is called Luna, delivering up to 1 megawatt hour of energy, which is enough electricity to power roughly 49 Seattle households for 24 hours. It’s preparing to launch a new model, but keeping the details under wraps.
Moment customers range from God’s Pocket Resort, an eco-lodge on a tiny Canadian island where its system slashed the use of diesel generators, to Vancouver International Airport, which avoided up to $20 million in grid upgrades to power fast chargers for its EV fleet, Chiang said. “Instead, they bought a couple of our batteries.”
Redwood Materials began nearly a decade ago as a battery recycler led by former Tesla executives. But in recent years, they recognized a missed opportunity.
“We had a group of people standing around watching our recycling operation, looking at these giant battery packs that we’re going to so much effort to disassemble, and just wondering, ‘Can we do more with these before we shred them?’” said Colin Campbell, Redwood’s chief technology officer.
Now 95% of the EV batteries Redwood receives are reused rather than recycled. And despite its Tesla roots, the startup accepts batteries from any automaker and has created a “universal translator” that manages battery packs with different voltages, power and chemistry.
Campbell touts the conversion of the EV devices to stationary storage as straightforward.
In its simplest terms, Redwood’s energy storage sites are “an electric vehicle parking lot with the wheels removed,” he said. “So it’s just literally the battery that was in the car. There’s lots of them arranged in a grid together and plugged in.”
That plug-and-play approach solved major headaches for Crusoe. By pairing repurposed EV batteries with solar power for its new AI data center in Nevada, Crusoe bypassed multi-year grid-connection delays, saved money and avoided emissions from diesel generators.
Scott Williams, vice president of energy at Crusoe, said the solution has worked well for his company, which builds data centers and offers its own AI cloud services.
“We’ve signaled to Redwood that we’re going to grow with them,” Williams said, including “multiple gigawatt hours paired with our modular units, which is super exciting.”
Despite the momentum, the sector faces headwinds. Communities have resisted large battery projects due to fire concerns, sparked by high-profile incidents like California’s Moss Landing fire.
The companies emphasize that EV batteries are built to survive high-speed crashes, making them inherently safer than standard stationary battery storage. The Moss Landing fire involved older, non-EV batteries in a very different setup than the startups are using. Additionally, Moment’s systems hold extensive UL safety certifications and Redwood has passed a UL fire-safety test.
Another industry hurdle is competition. Overbuilt recycling capacity — plus U.S. and European mandates requiring recycled content in new batteries — creates competition for used EV packs.
Yet from a climate perspective, repurposing is vital. Batteries are almost always “the most carbon-intensive component” in any electronic device, said Grayson Shor, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Battery Collaborative and co-founder of the startup Buckstop.
Repurposed EV systems can extend that initial carbon investment by providing clean power for 20 to 30 years and meet urgent energy demand.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Where are we going to get electricity?’” Campbell says. “And we have a really excellent option already here.”
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In a nutshell: Cloudflare has cut the memory used by the DNS cache behind its 1.1.1.1 resolver by more than half, freeing about 100TB of RAM across its network. The company did not replace server hardware or remove memory modules. Instead, engineers changed how cached DNS data is stored in software.
The optimization work was centered on Big Pineapple, Cloudflare’s DNS caching platform behind the popular 1.1.1.1 resolver, DNS Firewall, and several other DNS services they offer. In a technical blog post, systems engineer Sebastiaan Neuteboom detailed five changes to the Rust codebase that shrank a typical cache entry from 953 bytes to 420 bytes.
The changes also made the cache faster. Cloudflare reported that insert throughput rose from 625,000 to 893,000 entries per second, while lookup latency fell from 828 nanoseconds to 670 nanoseconds. During the rollout, from mid-May to early July, p99 memory use per instance dropped from 9.3GB to 5.3GB.
Cloudflare says Big Pineapple holds more than 250 billion DNS entries at any given time, and at that scale even small amounts of wasted memory add up fast. The company estimates that a single unnecessary byte in each cache entry costs more than 250GB across its fleet.
One of the biggest changes involved Rust’s Vec and String types. Those containers are designed to grow, so they store capacity data in addition to the data itself. But DNS records do not need to expand after they enter the cache. Cloudflare replaced those structures with fixed-size boxed slices, eliminating metadata that was no longer useful. The company said that change alone saved more than 15TB of RAM.
Engineers also rethought how DNS responses are laid out in memory. Big Pineapple used to store three separate record lists per response. The new design puts the records in one buffer and identifies them with two-byte offsets.
The cache no longer retains owner names when they simply repeat the queried domain. Cloudflare rebuilds those names when it serves the response. It also now stores record data as length-prefixed raw wire-format bytes. That change addresses a mismatch in the earlier design. A four-byte IPv4 A record occupied the same 144 bytes as the largest DNS record type Cloudflare caches, the relatively uncommon NAPTR record. Storing raw data in a variable-length format reduces that waste.
The 100TB of RAM Cloudflare recovered across its fleet is roughly equal to the memory in 130 of its Gen 13 servers, each of which carries 768GB of DDR5-6400. The company had considered a 1,152GB configuration for that server generation but passed on it after weighing the cost of higher-capacity RAM.
With the RAM savings, Cloudflare plans to allocate the memory to larger DNS caches. Keeping more records locally should improve cache hit rates and reduce the traffic it sends to authoritative DNS servers.
This project follows another major memory-efficiency effort completed last year, when Cloudflare rewrote its FL2 request-handling layer in Rust. That’s probably a good way to spend resources and squeeze more out of its existing infrastructure as server memory gets pricier.
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