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RandomFactor writes:

The NASA InSight Lander's drill, nicknamed 'The Mole', was unable to penetrate subsurface rocks in its first drilling session.

The instrument known as HP3 (Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package) attempted to drill down on February 28th. In a marathon 4 hour hammering session, that sadly still did not meet Susan Decker's standards, The Mole was able to push aside one subsurface rock at a depth of 13 centimeters (~5 hockey pucks stacked vertically) and reach a final depth of 50 centimeters/1.6 feet (a stack of 20 pucks) before encountering a second rock that it was unable to push aside even after ~4,000 hammer blows.

Another four-hour drilling session should happen soon, but mission planners have to wait for the system to cool down first. The hammering action causes friction, which in turn generates heat; several hours of hammering requires a two-day cooling period. Ideally, as the HP3 experiment proceeds toward the goal of drilling a hole 3 to 5 meters (10 to 16 feet) deep, the project will involve a series of four-hour drilling sessions, followed by two-day cooling periods and a day to take temperature readings.

The purpose of the drilling is to take temperature readings along the depth of the hole in 15 minute intervals to measure heat flow from the interior of Mars.

Here's hoping for more positive news after the next drilling session.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Microsoft is creating Windows Lite for dual-screen and Chromebook-like devices

Microsoft is preparing a new lightweight version of Windows for dual-screen devices and Chromebook competitors. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge that the software maker is stripping back its Windows user interface with dual screens in mind. This new hardware could launch as early as later this year, depending on chip and PC maker readiness.

"Windows Lite," as it's codenamed internally, is a more stripped-down version of Windows that is initially being prioritized for dual-screen devices. Intel has been pushing OEMs to create this new hardware category, and machines could appear much like Microsoft's Courier concept, dual-screen laptops, or even foldable displays in the future. Either way, Microsoft wants Windows to be ready for PC makers to take advantage of it.

Previously: Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS

Related: Intel Reportedly "Petitioned Microsoft Heavily" to Use x86 Instead of ARM Chips in Surface Go
Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 8cx, an ARM Chip Intended for Laptops

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google Finds It's Underpaying Many Men as It Addresses Wage Equity

When Google conducted a study recently to determine whether the company was underpaying women and members of minority groups, it found, to the surprise of just about everyone, that men were paid less money than women for doing similar work.

The study, which disproportionately led to pay raises for thousands of men, is done every year, but the latest findings arrived as Google and other companies in Silicon Valley face increasing pressure to deal with gender issues in the workplace, from sexual harassment to wage discrimination.

Gender inequality is a radioactive topic at Google. The Labor Department is investigating whether the company systematically underpays women. It has been sued by former employees who claim they were paid less than men with the same qualifications. And last fall, thousands of Google employees protested the way the company handles sexual harassment claims against top executives.

Critics said the results of the pay study could give a false impression. Company officials acknowledged that it did not address whether women were hired at a lower pay grade than men with similar qualifications.

In response to the study, pay raises were given out to 10,677 employees, with men accounting for 69% of Google's employees but an undisclosed higher percentage of the raises.

Google blog post. Also at Ars Technica, NPR, and TechCrunch.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

With the looming Daylight Saving Time cruelty of losing an hour descending upon us a mere week from now, it is worth noting that Texas has again introduced bills to abolish it in the Lone Star State.

For the 2019 Texas Legislature, House Bill 49 and Senate Bill 190 have been filed, with both being referred to the House and Senate State Affairs Committees.

The bills would exempt Texas from daylight saving time, including the portion of the state in Mountain Standard Time.

Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that have opted out of Daylight Saving Time currently. New Mexico is also currently considering legislation to stop switching, with the House attempting to end DST and the Senate attempting to switch to it permanently.

Where do Soylentils fall?

[Ed. addition] Properly, DST is not "Daylight Savings Time"; it is "Daylight Saving Time". It has been so often misused, however, that it has become common usage. Also, Wikipedia's entry on Daylight Saving Time notes a tidbit I found interesting:

takyon writes:

Pictured: Intel and Qualcomm to offer 5G Modules for M.2 Slots

Last week we reported on that Fibocom, an Intel partner, had announced a new M.2 module featuring the Intel XMM8160 5G modem to be used in CPEs as well as upcoming PCs and laptops. During the Mobile World Congress show, we actually saw this M.2 module on the Fibocom booth, but to our surprise, we also saw a similar M.2 module for Qualcomm's X55 modem over at the Qualcomm booth.

These modules fit the widest possible M.2 standard, coming in at 30mm wide, which is 8mm wider than the storage based drives we normally see in this form factor. When looking at the Fibocom module first, it was unclear why the module had to be this wide – surely the modem as not 30mm wide, I thought. At the Fibocom booth, we also got hold of a specification list, confirming that the module was to support both SA and NSA networks, and also cover both 5G in the mmWave bands as well as sub 6 GHz.

[...] The unit will support 2x2 MIMO, 4x2 MIMO, and 4x4 MIMO modes for download, but only 2x2 MIMO for upload. The 4x4 MIMO download mode will only be applicable on bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 25, 30, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 48, 66, n77, n78, n79. The unit also integrates support for GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo. Drivers will be available for both Windows 10 and Linux.

Coming soon... to every new laptop.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Heart attack patients taken directly to heart centres for lifesaving treatment have better long-term survival than those transferred from another hospital, reports a large observational study presented today at Acute Cardiovascular Care 20191 a European Society of Cardiology (ESC) congress. Directly admitted patients were older, suggesting that heart attacks in young adults, and particularly women, go unrecognised by paramedics and patients.

Study author Dr Krishnaraj Rathod, of Barts Health NHS Trust, London, UK, said: "The age of first heart attacks is getting younger, one of the reasons is because of lifestyle habits. The average age in our cohort is no longer 60, but around 40 years and we even see patients in their 30s. Directly admitted patients were sicker but they were also older, indicating that paramedics may think heart attack is unlikely in younger adults. My message to them is 'in cases of doubt, repeat the 12 lead ECG and consider speaking to the heart attack centre'."

People in their 30s and 40s should not ignore heart attack symptoms, particularly women who often have atypical symptoms, he said. "Younger patients likely wait longer to call for help because if they have chest pain, heart attack is not the first thing they think of. If you are in any doubt, phone an ambulance."

[...] Dr Rathod said: "Our findings indicate that the superior survival in patients admitted directly to a primary PCI hospital was because there was a shorter gap between calling for help and receiving treatment."

"All patients with STEMI should be admitted directly to a primary PCI centre within 90 minutes of diagnosis by electrocardiogram (ECG), which is done by ambulance teams," he said. "Yet in our study nearly one-third were taken to another hospital first, indicating that a STEMI diagnosis was not made until patients reached that hospital, and they then had to be transferred. However, it must be noted that the rates of transfer directly to a primary PCI centre were better in the later years suggesting better identification of appropriate patients by healthcare staff."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

You heard me. You know how weak your user’s passwords likely are. You know your users are almost certainly sharing their passwords with multiple sites. You know that a compromise of your database could lead to significant damage coming to them. You know this because it happens all the time, all over the web.

You have a duty to protect the security and privacy of your userbase. They’ve entrusted you with their data, and it is on you to keep it safe. So why aren’t you doing everything possible to accomplish that task? For this blog, we are going to talk exclusively about password storage.

If you ask just about any security professional in the world how best to store a password, you’re liable to hear something about using a cryptographically secure hashing function “with a salt.” Some will go so far as to mention algorithms like Bcrypt or Scrypt. Very few will make any mention to how password policy plays a significant part in ensuring the security of any stored values.

But almost none of them, will even mention the word “pepper.” Now I suspect this isn’t malicious, (obviously). I think even most security professionals simply aren’t informed enough to know or act with regard to this concept.

So today we’re gonna work on that…

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

My colleague, Carl Brandon, and I have been running the CubeSat Laboratory at Vermont Technical College (VTC) for over ten years. During that time we have worked with nearly two dozen students on building and programming CubeSat nano satellites. CubeSats are small (usually 10cm cube), easily launched spacecraft that can be outfitted with a variety of cameras, sensing instruments, and communications equipment. Many CubeSats are built by university groups like ours using students at various skill levels in the design and production process.

[...] Like all spacecraft CubeSats are difficult to service once they are launched. Because of the limited financial resources available to university groups, and because of on-board resource constraints, CubeSats typically don't support after-launch uploading of software updates. This means the software must be fully functional and fault-free, with no possibility of being updated, at the time of launch

Many university CubeSat missions have failed due to software errors. This is not surprising considering that most flight software is written in C, a language that is difficult to use correctly. To mitigate this problem we use the SPARK dialect of Ada in all of our software work. Using the SPARK tools we work toward proving the software free of runtime error, meaning that no runtime exceptions will occur. However, in general we have not attempted to prove functional correctness properties, relying instead on conventional testing for that level of verification.

[...] In November 2013 we launched a low Earth orbiting CubeSat. The launch vehicle contained 13 other university built CubeSats. Most were never heard from. One worked for a few months. Ours worked for two years until it reentered Earth's atmosphere as planned in November 2015. Although the reasons for the other failures are not always clear, software problems were known to be an issue in at least one of them and probably for many others. We believe the success of our mission, particularly in light of the small size and experience of our student team, is directly attributable to the use of SPARK.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A MONTH WITHOUT SUNSPOTS: There are 28 days in February. This year, all 28 of them were spotless. The sun had no sunspots for the entire month of Feb. 2019.

The last time a full calendar month passed without a sunspot was August 2008. At the time, the sun was in the deepest Solar Minimum of the Space Age. Now a new Solar Minimum is in progress and it is shaping up to be similarly deep. So far this year, the sun has been blank 73% of the time--the same as 2008.

Solar Minimum is a normal part of the solar cycle. Every ~11 years, sunspot counts drop toward zero. Dark cores that produce solar flares and CMEs vanish from the solar disk, leaving the sun blank for long stretches of time. These minima have been coming and going with regularity since the sunspot cycle was discovered in 1859.

However, not all Solar Minima are alike. The last one in 2008-2009 surprised observers with its depth and side-effects. Sunspot counts dropped to a 100-year low; the sun dimmed by 0.1%; Earth's upper atmosphere collapsed, allowing space junk to accumulate; the pressure of the solar wind flagged while cosmic rays (normally repelled by solar wind) surged to Space Age highs. All these things are happening again.

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=01&month=03&year=2019

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Shortfin mako sharks have been called the "cheetahs of the ocean," capable of swimming at estimated speeds of 70 or 80 miles per hour. To investigate just how the animals achieve this impressive feat, aeronautical engineer Amy Lang of the University of Alabama and colleagues tested real mako shark skin samples, taken from the flank region of the animal, in water tunnel experiments.
...
Lang and her colleagues were specifically interested in the effect of approximately 0.2-millimeter-sized flexible scales located at particular locations on the shark's body, such as on the flank and the fins. The scales can flex at angles in excess of 40 degrees from the body—but only in the direction of reversing flow. In other words, if you were to run your hand over the shark from nose to tail, the skin would feel smooth; in the other direction, it would feel rough like sandpaper. The resistance to your hand is also a resistance to the flow of water. "It impedes the flow from reversing near the skin, which would otherwise lead to what we call flow separation," Lang said.

The flexible scales on the shark skin reduce drag the way dimples on golf balls do.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?

When a news article revealed that Clarifai was working with the Pentagon and some employees questioned the ethics of building artificial intelligence that analyzed video captured by drones, the company said the project would save the lives of civilians and soldiers.

"Clarifai's mission is to accelerate the progress of humanity with continually improving A.I.," read a blog post from Matt Zeiler, the company's founder and chief executive, and a prominent A.I. researcher. Later, in a news media interview, Mr. Zeiler announced a new management position that would ensure all company projects were ethically sound.

As activists, researchers, and journalists voice concerns over the rise of artificial intelligence, warning against biased, deceptive and malicious applications, the companies building this technology are responding. From tech giants like Google and Microsoft to scrappy A.I. start-ups, many are creating corporate principles meant to ensure their systems are designed and deployed in an ethical way. Some set up ethics officers or review boards to oversee these principles.

But tensions continue to rise as some question whether these promises will ultimately be kept. Companies can change course. Idealism can bow to financial pressure. Some activists — and even some companies — are beginning to argue that the only way to ensure ethical practices is through government regulation.

"We don't want to see a commercial race to the bottom," Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, said at the New Work Summit in Half Moon Bay, Calif., hosted last week by The New York Times. "Law is needed."

Possible != Probable. And the "needed law" could come in the form of a ban and/or surveillance of coding and hardware-building activities.

Related:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

U.N. Starts Discussion on Lethal Autonomous Robots
UK Opposes "Killer Robot" Ban
Robot Weapons: What's the Harm?
The UK Government Urged to Establish an Artificial Intelligence Ethics Board
Google Employees on Pentagon AI Algorithms: "Google Should Not be in the Business of War"
South Korea's KAIST University Boycotted Over Alleged "Killer Robot" Partnership
About a Dozen Google Employees Have Resigned Over Project Maven
Google Drafting Ethics Policy for its Involvement in Military Projects
Google Will Not Continue Project Maven After Contract Expires in 2019
Uproar at Google after News of Censored China Search App Breaks
"Senior Google Scientist" Resigns over Chinese Search Engine Censorship Project
Google Suppresses Internal Memo About China Censorship; Eric Schmidt Predicts Internet Split
Leaked Transcript Contradicts Google's Denials About Censored Chinese Search Engine
Senators Demand Answers About Google+ Breach; Project Dragonfly Undermines Google's Neutrality
Google's Secret China Project "Effectively Ended" After Internal Confrontation
Microsoft Misrepresented HoloLens 2 Field of View, Faces Backlash for Military Contract

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

This is a long read, yet quite instructive of where China has been and where it plans to be when it comes to Ultra High Voltage (UHV) transmission lines, where and why it uses AC vs DC, how it converts between the two, and what some of the challenges are that lay ahead.

China's Ambitious Plan to Build the World's Biggest Supergrid

Wind rips across an isolated utility station in northwestern China's desolate Gansu Corridor. More than 2,000 years ago, Silk Road traders from Central Asia and Europe crossed this arid, narrow plain, threading between forbidding mountains to the south and the Gobi Desert to the north, bearing precious cargo bound for Imperial Beijing. Today the corridor carries a distinctly modern commodity: gigawatts of electricity destined for the megacities of eastern China. One waypoint on that journey is this ultrahigh-voltage (UHV) converter station outside the city of Jiuquan, in Gansu province.

Electricity from the region's wind turbines, solar farms, and coal-fired power plants arrives at the station as alternating current. Two dozen 500-metric-ton transformers feed the AC into a cavernous hall, where AC-DC converter circuits hang from the 28-meter-high ceiling, emitting a penetrating, incessant buzz. Within each circuit, solid-state switches known as thyristors chew up the AC and spit it out as DC flowing at 800 kilovolts.

From here, the transmission line traverses three more provinces before terminating at a sister station in Hunan province, more than 2,300 kilometers away. There, the DC is converted back to AC, to be fed onto the regional power grid. Since it opened in mid-2017, the 26.2 billion yuan (US $3.9 billion) Gansu–Hunan transmission line has moved about 24 terawatt-hours.

The sheer scale of the new line and the advanced grid technology that's been developed to support it dwarf anything going on in pretty much any other country. And yet, here in China, it's just one of 22 such ultrahigh-voltage megaprojects that grid operators have built over the past decade. In the northwestern region of Xinjiang, China recently switched on its largest UHV link: a 1,100-kV DC circuit that cost over 40.7 billion yuan. The new line's taller transmission towers and beefier wires parallel the Gansu–Hunan line through the Gansu Corridor, before diverting to Anhui province in the east.

The result of all this effort is an emerging nationwide supergrid that will interconnect China's six regional grids and rectify the huge geographic mismatch between where China produces its cleanest power (in the north and west) and where power is consumed (in the densely populated east). By using higher voltages of direct current, which flows through conductors more uniformly than does alternating current, the new transmission lines dramatically reduce the amount of power that's lost along the way.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 isn't even my final form:

Fulfilling its 2017 promise to make Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free, Intel has given the specification for its high-speed interconnect to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that develops the USB specification. The USB-IF has taken the spec and will use it to form the basis of USB4, the next iteration of USB following USB 3.2.

Thunderbolt 3 not only doubles the bandwidth of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, going from 20Gb/s to 40Gb/s, it also enables the use of multiple data and display protocols simultaneously. We would expect the USB4 specification to be essentially a superset of the Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 specifications, thus incorporating both the traditional USB family of protocols (up to and including the USB 3.2 Gen 2×2) and the Thunderbolt 3 protocol in a single document. Down the line, this should translate into USB4 controllers that support the whole range of speeds.

Lost? Frightened? Confused? Good!

Also at AnandTech, The Verge, and Engadget.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Scientists from Heriot-Watt University have welded glass and metal together using an ultrafast laser system, in a breakthrough for the manufacturing industry.

Various optical materials such as quartz, borosilicate glass and even sapphire were all successfully welded to metals like aluminium, titanium and stainless steel using the Heriot-Watt laser system, which provides very short, picosecond pulses of infrared light in tracks along the materials to fuse them together.

The new process could transform the manufacturing sector and have direct applications in the aerospace, defence, optical technology and even healthcare fields.

Now that iPhone will be welded shut.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Coinomi wallet bug sends users' secret passphrases to Google's Spellcheck API via HTTP, in plaintext.

Cryptocurrency wallet caught sending user passwords to Google's spellchecker

[...] "To understand what's going on, I will explain it technically," Al Maawali said. "Coinomi core functionality is built using Java programming language. The user interface is designed using HTML/JavaScript and rendered using integrated Chromium (Google's open-source project) based browser."

Al Maawali says that just like any other Chromium-based app, it comes integrated with various Google-centered features, such as the automatic spellcheck feature for all user input text boxes.

The issue appears to be that the Coinomi team did not bother to disable this feature in their wallet's UI code, leading to a situation where all their users' passwords are leaking via HTTP during the setup process.

Coinomi's official statement

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission