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takyon writes:

Russia says it's going to beat Elon Musk and SpaceX's 'old tech' with a nuclear rocket

Elon Musk and SpaceX won't be leading the reusable rocket space race long, at least not if Russia has anything to say about it. Russia's Keldysh Research Center has been working on a reusable rocket solution for nearly a decade now, and now it's ramping up the hype with a new concept video showing how its spacecraft works.

Speaking with reporters, Vladimir Koshlakov explained that Elon Musk and SpaceX pose no real threat to the group's plans. Musk, Koshlakov says, is relying on technology that will soon be antiquated, while Russia is looking towards shaping the future of spaceflight.

The Russian researchers say that their nuclear-powered rocket platform will be able to make it to Mars seven months after launch, and that its reusable rocket stages can be put back into service after just 48 hours.

"Reusability is the priority," Koshlakov reportedly said. "We must develop engines that do not need to be fine-tuned or repaired more than once every ten flights. Also, 48 hours after the rocket returns from space, it must be ready to go again. This is what the market demands."

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Asustek Computer has seen its shipments to the DIY sector and related motherboards affected by Intel's supply strategy for CPUs, with the prospects that the CPU shortages, particularly those for desktop PCs, will continue into the second quarter of 2019, according to company CEO Jerry Shen.

The continued CPU supply crunch, escalating US-China trade disputes, and increasing competition in the notebook segment in Europe have pressed down Asustek's "operational visibility" for the fourth quarter of 2018 to the lowest level of 20% compared to an over 50% seen in previous years, Shen said.

Although Intel has pledged to address the supply issues since September and has continued to pour investments to ramp up output from its 10nm process, the tight CPU supplies have not been solved as the US chipmaker has given the priority to the production of high-end Xeon and Core series CPUs, instead of CPUs for the entry-level or other consumer models, Shen indicated.

CPU shortages to continue into 2Q19, says Asustek CEO

This intel "shortage" remains unexplained.

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takyon writes:

System error: Japan cybersecurity minister admits he has never used a computer

A Japanese minister in charge of cybersecurity has provoked astonishment by admitting he has never used a computer in his professional life, and appearing confused by the concept of a USB drive. Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, is the deputy chief of the government's cybersecurity strategy office and also the minister in charge of the Olympic and Paralympic Games that Tokyo will host in 2020.

In parliament on Wednesday however, he admitted he doesn't use computers. "Since the age of 25, I have instructed my employees and secretaries, so I don't use computers myself," he said in a response to an opposition question in a lower house session, local media reported.

He also appeared confused by the question when asked about whether USB drives were in use at Japanese nuclear facilities. His comments were met with incredulity by opposition lawmakers. "It's unbelievable that someone who has not touched computers is responsible for cybersecurity policies," said opposition lawmaker Masato Imai.

And his comments provoked a firestorm online. "Doesn't he feel ashamed?" wrote one Twitter user. "Today any company president uses a PC. He doesn't even know what a USB is. Holy cow."

Another joked that perhaps Sakurada was simply engaged in his own kind of cybersecurity. "If a hacker targets this Minister Sakurada, they wouldn't be able to steal any information. Indeed it might be the strongest kind of security!"

Also at NYT, The Register, and Reuters.

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martyb writes:

SpaceX Seeks to tie its Record for Most Launches in a Year on Thursday:

This year the company has had a lot on its plate. It flew the large Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time in February. It introduced a brand-new, potentially highly reusable variant of the Falcon 9 rocket in May. And all throughout the year, the company's engineers have been scrambling to finalize development of the Dragon spacecraft to meet NASA's needs to get its astronauts to the International Space Station.

Even so, the company has maintained a steady launch cadence, and on Thursday the company will attempt its 18th mission of this year from Launch Complex-39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Thursday launch window for the Es’hail-2 satellite mission opens at 3:46pm ET (20:46 UTC) and lasts until 5:29pm ET (22:29 UTC). Weather conditions are 60 percent favorable, and a back-up launch window exists for Friday afternoon.

The Es’hail-2 satellite will provide telecommunications services for the Middle East and North Africa regions as well as providing the first amateur radio geostationary communication capability. The three-ton satellite will be delivered to a geostationary transfer orbit.

[...] The first stage of this Falcon 9 rocket, a Block 5 variant of the booster, first flew on July 22 to launch the Telstar 19V mission. The company will attempt to land the first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship that will be located offshore, in the Atlantic Ocean. This landing will come about eight minutes after liftoff, and the satellite is scheduled to be deployed into its transfer orbit a little more than 32 minutes into the flight.

Up to 4 more flights are planned for this year; the next — possibly as soon as Monday — would be Spaceflight Industries' SSO-A flight-sharing mission. That flight is slated to deliver 64 spacecraft from 34 organizations into Sun-Synchronous Low Earth Orbit.

Live stream on YouTube should start about 15 minutes before launch.

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canopic jug writes:

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has unveiled a smaller, cheaper, lower-powered Pi 3, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+. The new model will sell for $25 USD and has lower power requirements with less RAM than the 3B+ (512 MB DDR2), only a single USB port, and no Ethernet port. However, it has the same BCM2837B0 quad core processor running at 1.4 GHz, a dual band WIFI networking, Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy connectivity, the normal 40-pin GPIO header, and audio and video output.

OpenSource.com : New Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ unveiled
TechRepublic : Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+: A closer look at the new $25 board
CNX Software : Compact Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ Launched for $25

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takyon writes:

Ancient Greek city Tenea found by archaeologists

Archaeologists in Greece believe they have found the lost city of Tenea, thought to have been founded by captives of the legendary Trojan War.

They said they had discovered the remains of a housing settlement, jewellery, coins and several burial sites in the southern Peloponnese area.

Until now, archaeologists had a rough idea of where the city might have been located but had no tangible proof.

The items date from 4th Century BC to Roman times.

Excavation work around the modern-day village of Chiliomodi began in 2013, and "proof of the existence" of Tenea emerged in work carried out in September and early October this year, officials said.

Tenea.

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takyon writes:

Ford's China partner planning to sell in U.S. in 2020

Ford Motor Co.'s newest Chinese partner, Zotye Automobile, is preparing to launch at least two SUVs in the Blue Oval's backyard.

The relatively small Chinese automaker Zotye Automobile International Co. is partnering with California-based HAAH Automotive Holdings to look beyond its home market and form a new sales distribution company in the United States known as Zotye USA (pronounced ZOH-tay) — a tie-up that would sell direct competitors to some of Ford's most lucrative SUVs.

"We're facing a new reality where the Chinese domestic market is slowing for the first time in recent memory," said Michael Dunne, CEO of Hong Kong-based ZoZo Go, a firm that advises automakers on the Chinese market. "Now that things have gone soft, automakers are finding themselves in a situation where they have to export and find new markets. Zotye is possibly the first, but they won't be the last."

Also at MarketWatch and CNET.

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upstart writes for SoyCow1984:

I Bought Used Voting Machines on eBay for $100 Apiece. What I Found Was Alarming

In 2016, I bought two voting machines online for less than $100 apiece. I didn't even have to search the dark web. I found them on eBay.

Surely, I thought, these machines would have strict guidelines for lifecycle control like other sensitive equipment, like medical devices. I was wrong. I was able to purchase a pair of direct-recording electronic voting machines and have them delivered to my home in just a few days. I did this again just a few months ago. Alarmingly, they are still available to buy online.

If getting voting machines delivered to my door was shockingly easy, getting inside them proved to be simpler still. The tamper-proof screws didn't work, all the computing equipment was still intact, and the hard drives had not been wiped. The information I found on the drives, including candidates, precincts, and the number of votes cast on the machine, were not encrypted. Worse, the "Property Of" government labels were still attached, meaning someone had sold government property filled with voter information and location data online, at a low cost, with no consequences. It would be the equivalent of buying a surplus police car with the logos still on it.

[...] I reverse-engineered the machines to understand how they could be manipulated. After removing the internal hard drive, I was able to access the file structure and operating system. Since the machines were not wiped after they were used in the 2012 presidential election, I got a great deal of insight into how the machines store the votes that were cast on them. Within hours, I was able to change the candidates' names to be that of anyone I wanted. When the machine printed out the official record for the votes that were cast, it showed that the candidate's name I invented had received the most votes on that particular machine.

This year, I bought two more machines to see if security had improved. To my dismay, I discovered that the newer model machines—those that were used in the 2016 election—are running Windows CE and have USB ports, along with other components, that make them even easier to exploit than the older ones. Our voting machines, billed as "next generation," and still in use today, are worse than they were before—dispersed, disorganized, and susceptible to manipulation.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

A judge has ordered Amazon to hand over Echo records to assist with a murder investigation. When Christine Sullivan was found dead in her backyard after being stabbed multiple times, New Hampshire requested for data held by Amazon to be released to help solve the crime.

An Amazon spokesperson said earlier it would not release the recordings "without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us."

The judge agrees.

So he issued just such a legal demand.

[...] "Amazon does not seek to obstruct any lawful investigation but rather seeks to protect the privacy rights of its customers when the government is seeking their data from Amazon, especially when that data may include expressive content protected by the First Amendment," company lawyers wrote at the time.

It is yet to respond to the New Hampshire Court order.

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martyb writes:

Oracle's JEDI mind-meld doesn't work on Uncle Sam's auditors; These are not the govt droids you are looking for:

Oracle's bid to halt the Pentagon's JEDI $10bn winner-takes-all cloud IT contract has been turned down.

Uncle Sam's Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a statement on Wednesday explaining that it would not be taking up Oracle's appeal of the US Department of Defense's stipulation that the entire JEDI technology platform be limited to a single supplier.

Considered one of the most lucrative and sought-after government contracts in recent memory, JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) will award the winning contractor a $10bn decade-long contract to overhaul the DoD's entire IT infrastructure.

Oracle filed complaints, but on Wednesday, the GAO concluded:

"GAO's decision concludes that the Defense Department's decision to pursue a single-award approach to obtain these cloud services is consistent with applicable statutes (and regulations) because the agency reasonably determined that a single-award approach is in the government's best interests for various reasons, including national security concerns, as the statute allows," the office said.

"GAO's decision also concludes that the Defense Department provided reasonable support for all of the solicitation provisions that Oracle contended exceeded the agency's needs. Finally, GAO's decision concludes that the allegations regarding conflicts of interest do not provide a basis for sustaining Oracle's protest."

[...] The decision does not mean the JEDI process is in the clear. IBM has filed a similar protest objecting to the contract's bidding and procurement process. The GAO says that it will be handling those filings separately, with a decision on the IBM appeal due to be delivered by January 18

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RandomFactor writes:

The San Diego Union-Tribune is one of a few sources reporting: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sd-me-climate-study-error-20181113-story.html

Researchers with UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Princeton University recently walked back scientific findings published last month that showed oceans have been heating up dramatically faster than previously thought as a result of climate change.

The original paper indicated that oceans were warming 60 percent more than outlined by the IPCC and was widely published and remarked. The significantly increased warming conclusion was quickly challenged by an English mathematician looking at the methodologies used.
The authors promptly confirmed the issue thanking him for pointing it out, and have redone their calculations and submitted corrections to the journal Nature. Per one of the authors after reviewing and correcting:

"Our error margins are too big now to really weigh in on the precise amount of warming that's going on in the ocean," Keeling said. "We really muffed the error margins."

The article continues:

While papers are peer reviewed before they're published, new findings must always be reproduced before gaining widespread acceptance throughout the scientific community, said Gerald Meehl, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

"This is how the process works," he said. "Every paper that comes out is not bulletproof or infallible. If it doesn't stand up under scrutiny, you review the findings."

The same author indicates "the ocean is still likely warmer than the estimate used by the IPCC"

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martyb writes:

Russia: We did not hack the US Democrats. But if we did, we're immune from prosecution:

The Russian government has denied having anything to do with hacking the US Democratic party in 2016, although in a court filing this week stressed that even if it did break into the DNC's servers, it is immune from prosecution.

And furthermore the Kremlin claimed America is "one of the most prolific practitioners of cyberattacks and cyber-intrusions on the planet." So, nerr!

"The [Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act] FSIA provides that foreign sovereign states enjoy absolute jurisdictional immunity from suit unless a plaintiff can demonstrate that one of the FSIA's enumerated 'exceptions' applies," argued [PDF] the Russian government this week in a New York court in response to a lawsuit from the DNC.

The DNC claims that it was subject to a "military attack" by Kremlin intelligence, causing Russia to argue back that any act of its military is a sovereign action and so therefore it can't be sued for it.

It's an amazing defense though one the DNC foresaw. It argued in its initial court paperwork [PDF] that "Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity because the DNC's claims arise out of Russia's trespass onto the DNC's private servers - a tort allegedly committed in the United States.

"In addition, Russia committed the trespass in order to steal trade secrets and commit economic espionage, two forms of commercial activity undertaken in and directly affecting the United States."

Of course this being 2018 and Russia, the Putin administration can't leave it at that, and takes the opportunity to troll the US government by pointing out that the immunity provision is also heavily relied upon by Uncle Sam and its officials abroad.

"The United States benefits significantly from the sovereign immunity that it enjoys (and US officials enjoy) in foreign courts around the world with respect to the United States' frequency acts of cyber intrusion and political interference," Russia's response reads. "As current and former US officials have acknowledged on many occasion, the United States - acting primarily through the National Security Agency (NSA) with the US Department of Defense - is one of the most prolific practitioners of cyberattacks and cyber-intrusions on the planet."

Pot calling the kettle black?

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martyb writes:

Facebook Executives Ignored Warnings, Deflected Blame as Scandals Mounted, Report Says :

From Russian election meddling to a massive data privacy scandal, Facebook has faced a seemingly endless list of troubles. Now, a new report suggests the social network's leadership may be among its biggest challenges.

Over the past three years, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg ignored warnings, deflected blame and were distracted by other projects as the social network lurched from crisis to crisis, according to a more than 5,000-word report by The New York Times. The paper, which interviewed more than 50 people for the story, painted an unflattering portrait of two executives' handling of the series of scandals, some of which eventually promoted [Ed: prompted?] Congress to ask both of them to testify.

The piece focused on Facebook's handling of fake news posted by Russian trolls ahead of the 2016 presidential, the impact of which Zuckerberg initially dismissed as "crazy," and the company's efforts to deflect blame after data of 87 million users was harvested by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. The story also touched on in-fighting at the highest of levels of the company.

"Bent on growth, the pair ignored warning signs and then sought to conceal them from public view," The Times wrote. "At critical moments over the last three years, they were distracted by personal projects, and passed off security and policy decisions to subordinates, according to current and former executives."

Facebook told the paper it was committed to addressing the challenges.

Honesty: The absence of the intent to deceive.

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quietus writes:

Under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) any ordinary online Joe or Jeanette has the right to know which data are gathered about his/her activities. What's more, if a site wants to share those data with a third-party, it also has to clearly inform ya about those other companies, who in turn have to inform you about which personal data they're processing, with whom they're sharing those data and so on.

In short, turtles all the way down.

Yet that's a concept that apparently has zoomed right past the well-educated heads of such obscure companies like Oracle, Acxiom, Criteo, Equifax, Experian, Quantcast and Tapiad: just some of the data processors at the heart of the commercialized Internet.

Let's take a look at just two of them: Oracle and Acxiom.

takyon writes:

AI software helped NASA dream up this spider-like interplanetary lander

Using an AI design process, engineers at software company Autodesk and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory came up with a new interplanetary lander concept that could explore distant moons like Europa and Enceladus. Its slim design weighs less than most of the landers that NASA has already sent to other planets and moons.

Autodesk announced its new innovative lander design today at the company's conference in Las Vegas — revealing a spacecraft that looks like a spider woven from metal. The company says the idea to create the vehicle was sparked when Autodesk approached NASA to validate a lander prototype it had been working on. After looking at Autodesk's work, JPL and the company decided to form a design team — comprised of five engineers from Autodesk and five from JPL — to come up with a new way to design landers.

See also: These Organic-Inspired Planetary Landers Could Help NASA Reach Other Worlds

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