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martyb writes:

One Legacy of Carl Sagan may Take Flight Next Week-A Working Solar Sail:

As early as next Monday night, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a cluster of 24 satellites for the US Air Force. Known as the Space Test Program-2 mission, the rocket will deposit its payloads into three different orbits. Perhaps the most intriguing satellite will be dropped off at the second stop—a circular orbit 720km above the Earth's surface. This is the Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft.

After a week in space, allowing the satellites deposited in this orbit to drift apart, LightSail 2 will eject from its carrying case into open space. About the size of a loaf of bread, the 5-kg satellite will eventually unfurl into a solar sail 4 meters long by 5.6 meters tall. The Mylar material composing the sail is just 4.5 microns thick, or about one-tenth as thick as a human hair.

This experiment, which will attempt to harness the momentum of photons and "sail" through space, is the culmination of decades of work by The Planetary Society. "This goes back to the very beginning, to Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman," the organization's chief executive, Bill Nye, told Ars in an interview. "We are carrying on a legacy that has been with us since the founders. It's just an intriguing technology because it lowers the cost of going all over the place in the Solar System."

There were two prior attempts by the Planetary Society at deploying light sails. In 2005, the first stage of the rocket launching Cosmos 1 failed. In 2015, LightSail 1 was able to achieve orbit but experienced several technical difficulties from which lessons were learned and used to inform the design of this upcoming attempt with LightSail 2.

More details about the process can be found at the Planetary Society.

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martyb writes:

More Bad Buzz for Bees: Record Number of Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter:

Bee colony death continues to rise. According to the Bee Informed Partnership's latest survey, released this week, U.S. beekeepers lost nearly 40% of their honeybee colonies last winter — the greatest reported winter hive loss since the partnership started its surveys 13 years ago. The total annual loss was slightly above average.

The survey included responses from nearly 4,700 beekeepers managing almost 320,000 hives, making up about 12% of total managed honey-producing colonies in the United States.

Bee decline has many causes, including decreasing crop diversity, poor beekeeping practices and loss of habitat. Pesticides weaken bees' immune systems and can kill them. Varroa mites (full, ominous species name: Varroa destructor) latch onto honeybees and suck their "fat body" tissue^[pdf], stunting and weakening them and potentially causing entire colonies to collapse.

"Beekeepers are trying their best to keep [mites] in check, but it's really an arms race," says Nathalie Steinhauer, science coordinator for the Bee Informed Partnership and co-author of the report ([Dennis] vanEngelsdorp is also an author). "That's concerning, because we know arms races don't usually end well."

Steinhauer says Varroa mites are the "number one concern" around wintertime. They've become harder to control, she says, because some of the tools that beekeepers have been using — chemical strips that attract and kill mites, essential oils and organic acids — are losing their efficacy.

Pollinators are responsible for one of every three bites of food we take, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Most of these pollinators are domesticated honeybees. They have become essential for many flowering crops, including blueberries, almonds and cherries. Wild insects can't be relied on to pollinate hundreds of acres of these crops, so fruit and nut producers call in commercial honeybee colonies instead.

[*] Bee Informed Partnership.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Discovery of a 'holy grail' with the invention of universal computer memory

[An] electronic memory device -- described in research published in Scientific Reports -- promises to transform daily life with its ultra-low energy consumption. [...] The device is the realisation of the search for a "Universal Memory" which has preoccupied scientists and engineers for decades.

Physics Professor Manus Hayne of Lancaster University said: "Universal Memory, which has robustly stored data that is easily changed, is widely considered to be unfeasible, or even impossible, but this device demonstrates its contradictory properties."

A US patent has been awarded for the electronic memory device with another patent pending, while several companies have expressed an interest or are actively involved in the research.

The inventors of the device used quantum mechanics to solve the dilemma of choosing between stable, long-term data storage and low-energy writing and erasing. The device could replace the $100bn market for Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), which is the 'working memory' of computers, as well as the long-term memory in flash drives.

[...] Professor Hayne said: "The ideal is to combine the advantages of both without their drawbacks, and this is what we have demonstrated. Our device has an intrinsic data storage time that is predicted to exceed the age of the Universe, yet it can record or delete data using 100 times less energy than DRAM."

Room-temperature Operation of Low-voltage, Non-volatile, Compound-semiconductor Memory Cells (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-45370-1) (DX)

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takyon writes:

Feds: Cyberattack on NASA's JPL Threatened Mission-Control Data

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) may know how to send delicate equipment to Mars, but basic cybersecurity best practices appear to pose an issue for it. A comprehensive federal review has detailed an April 2018 security incident that compromised mission systems – stemming from multiple IT security-control weaknesses exposing NASA systems and data. The review, released Tuesday and carried out by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General, said that the weaknesses "reduce JPL's ability to prevent, detect and mitigate attacks targeting its systems and networks."

Specifically, poor practices when it comes to network segmentation and third parties were source of a cyberattack in April 2018, OIG said. In that incident, hackers targeted a Raspberry Pi computer that was not authorized to be attached to the JPL network, exploited it, and then proceeded to take advantage of the network's lack of segmentation to find a network gateway and pivot deeper into the system.

The attack had deep-space repercussions (literally) that spread to mission control in Houston. The adversaries were able to move between various systems connected to the pwned gateway, including those involved in multiple JPL mission operations and the Deep Space Network (DSN), which is NASA's international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions. "As a result [of the hack], in May 2018 IT security officials from the Johnson Space Center (Johnson), which handles such programs as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and International Space Station, elected to temporarily disconnect from the gateway due to security concerns," OIG explained.

Also at Engadget and PC Magazine.

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takyon writes:

A Florida city paid a $600k Bitcoin ransom to hackers who took over its computers — and it's a massive alarm bell for the rest of the US

A Florida city's council voted to pay a ransom of $600,000 in Bitcoin to hackers that targeted its computer systems — and the payout is a sign of how unprepared much of the US is to deal with a coming wave of cyber attacks.

The city council of Riviera Beach, 50 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, voted on Monday to meet the demands of their hackers in the hope of getting back their compromised data, CBS News reported.

According to The Palm Beach Post, the attack began on May 29, when a employee from the police department opened an email attachment that contained malware. The software quickly spread through the city's computer systems, affecting its email system and even the 911 dispatch operations.

The New York Times reported that the hackers demanded their ransom in bitcoin. The paper noted that there is no guarantee that hackers will honor their end of the deal after getting the money. CBS reported that the council already voted to spend $1 million on new computers after the attack.

Also at CNN.

Related: In Baltimore And Beyond, A Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc

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James Orme writes:

How you lock your smartphone can reveal your age: UBC study:

Older smartphone users tend to rely more on their phones' auto lock feature compared to younger users, a new UBC study has found. They also prefer using PINs over fingerprints to unlock their phones.

Researchers also found that older users are more likely to unlock their phones when they're stationary, such as when working at a desk or sitting at home.

The study is the first to explore the link between age and smartphone use, says Konstantin Beznosov, an electrical and computer engineering professor at UBC who supervised the research.

"As researchers working to protect smartphones from unauthorized access, we need to first understand how users use their devices," said Beznosov. "By tracking actual users during their daily interactions with their device, we now have real-world insights that can be used to inform future smartphone designs."

The full study is available through the ACM Digital Library.

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takyon writes:

Iran says it's 'completely ready for war' after US official confirms it shot down American drone

In a major provocation, Iran shot down an unarmed and unmanned U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton drone while it was flying in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz Thursday, a U.S. official told ABC News.

The incident is sure to trigger serious discussions within the Trump administration about how to respond to a direct attack on a U.S. military asset that goes beyond recent attacks in the Middle East that the U.S. has blamed on Iran.

Gulf crisis: US confirms drone was shot down by Iranian missile

A US military surveillance drone has been shot down by Iranian forces while flying over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said the drone had violated Iranian airspace. But US military said it had been over international waters. IRGC commander-in-chief Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said the downing of the drone sent a "clear message to America" that Iran's borders were its "red line".

It comes at a time of escalating tension between the US and Iran. On Monday, the US defence department said it was deploying 1,000 extra troops to the region in response to "hostile behaviour" by Iranian forces. The US has also accused Iran of attacking two oil tankers with mines last Thursday just outside the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman. Iran rejects the allegation.

Previously: Two Oil Tankers Attacked, US Blames Iran

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Samsung asks users to please virus-scan their TVs

Yesterday on Twitter, Samsung's US support team reminded everyone to regularly—and manually—virus-scan their televisions.

Samsung's team followed this up with a short video showing someone in a conference room going 16 button-presses deep into the system menu of a Samsung QLED TV to activate the television's built-in virus-scan, which is apparently "McAfee Security for TV."

Unsurprisingly, Samsung got immediate pushback on these tweets and almost as immediately deleted them.

This may raise some questions about Samsung's practices and what we as consumers should be expecting of modern devices. The fact that Samsung's malware scanner is McAfee (and that McAfee's only customer for the service is apparently Samsung) raises questions about the real value and intent of the service: is Samsung paying McAfee for what has to be a pretty trivial application, or is McAfee paying Samsung for brand promotion? But even if we skip the brand-related cynicism and take the concept at face value, we are left with a few questions.

Ars reached out to Samsung with the questions below, but the below statement the company provided didn't answer them. The following statement is attributed to Samsung:

Samsung takes security very seriously and our products and services are designed with security in mind. We recently shared information about one of the preventative security features on our Smart TVs, in order to show consumers proactive steps they can take on their device. We want to clarify that this was simply a way to educate consumers about one of the features included in our products and was only posted because we believed that consumers would find it informative.

[...] The best way to keep your big, expensive smart TV safe is never to allow it access to your network in the first place. The consumer electronics space is packed chock-full with inexpensive, high-quality streaming devices that typically have better interfaces and more options than most smart televisions anyway. Roku and Amazon 4K-streaming players both start at less than $50; in the unlikely event one of those becomes compromised, "recycle the bad one and buy a new one, probably from a competing brand" seems like a perfectly reasonable response.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Tiny houses entice budget-conscious Americans (AFP)

In a country that nearly always believes bigger is better—think supersize fries, giant cars and 10-gallon hats—more and more Americans are downsizing their living quarters. Welcome to the world of tiny homes, most of them less than 400 square feet (less than 40 square meters), which savvy buyers are snapping up for their minimalist appeal and much smaller carbon footprints. The tiny homes revolution, which includes those on foundations and those on wheels, began a few decades ago, but the financial crisis of 2008 and the coming-of-age of millennials gave it a new impetus. The proliferation of home improvement shows on networks like HGTV fueled the trend, inspiring customers ready to personalize their own small living spaces.

Cost is one of the driving factors—a tiny home of just over 200 square feet with a customized interior can go for about $50,000—a massive savings over a McMansion in the suburbs.

[...] Despite the advantages, the tiny homes movement is far from widespread. Rough estimates put the number of tiny homes in the United States at a little more than 10,000. The first sticking point is financing—would-be homeowners are finding it impossible to get traditional loans for non-traditional houses. Banks are instead offering medium-term loans of up to seven years—at significantly higher interest rates than regular loans. But the main obstacle is a legal one: most municipalities and towns ban residents from living year-round in anything on wheels, and often have statutes requiring homes to be at least 900 square feet.

[...] To vault over the many legal hurdles, many tiny home buyers are setting up their places without permits from local urban planning officials. But others are opting for tiny house communities, which are on solid legal footing and are sprouting up all over. Tiny Estates in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania took over a former campground and obtained the necessary permits to accommodate tiny homes on wheels. "It's important to go to your town meetings, your borough meetings and just say, 'Hey, here's what they are'," says Berrier. "It's not some clandestine little sketchy thing. These are beautiful tiny houses, well designed. If anything, they add property value to things."

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Abusing A CPU's Adders To Optimize Bit Counting

If you like nitpicking around C code and generated assembly language — and we’ll admit that we do — you shouldn’t miss [Scaramanga’s] analysis of what’s known as Kernighan’s trick. If you haven’t heard of the trick, it’s a pretty efficient way of counting bits.

Like the Wheatstone bridge and a lot of other things, the Kernighan trick is misnamed. Brian Kernighan made it famous, but it was actually first published in 1960 and again in 1964 before he wrote about it in 1988. The naive way to count bits would be to scan through each bit position noting how many one bits you encounter, but the problem is, that takes a loop for each bit. A 64-bit word, then, takes 64 loops no matter what it contains. You can do slightly better by removing each bit you find and stopping when the word goes to zero, but that still could take 64 cycles if the last bit you test is set.

Using the trick, you make the observation that X & (X-1) will always clear the least significant bit of a word. Try a few examples:

X	X-1	X&(X-1)
0001	0000	0000
0010	0001	0000
0011	0010	0010
1010	1001	1000
1100	1011	1000
1111	1110	1110

You can probably see where this is going. By computing X&(X-1) you clear a bit on each loop iteration and you only have to go through the number of bits that are actually set.

[...] If you like this sort of thing, be sure to check out [Sean Anderson’s] extensive list of bit hacks. It shows several different ways to count bits and do other common and uncommon tasks with different tradeoffs. For example, you could dedicate a 256-entry lookup table and do the whole thing with one loop per byte with great speed but bad memory utilization. Always a trade-off.

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martyb writes:

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) holds its annual Amateur Radio Field Day the fourth full weekend in June. That would be on June 22-23 this year. From a story on hackaday:

Hams across North America reserve the fourth full weekend of each June to tear themselves out of their shacks and get into the world to set up operations in some kind of public venue, generally a park or other green space. Part cookout, part community outreach, and part slumber party – it lasts all weekend and goes around the clock – hams use field day as a chance to show the general public where amateur radio really shines: real-time worldwide communications under austere conditions.

It's also a chance to get folks excited about getting their license, with many Field Day locations hosting "Get on the Air" stations so that unlicensed folks can try making a contact under the supervision of a licensed operator. Licensed but underequipped hams also get the chance to spin the knobs on someone else's gear, and maybe line up that first rig purchase. And there are plenty of opportunities to learn about new modes as well, such as FT8 and WSPR. As an example your scribe is looking for some guidance on getting started with APRS, the automated packet reporting system that's used for things like high-altitude balloon tracking.

Take a look at this map to find one of the 1500 locations with 40,000 hams in attendance. Join the fun!

How many hams do we have among us? Are you planning to participate in this year's field day?

[Ed note - this event is North America specific. If you're outside of that area and are interested, check around for local Amateur Radio clubs who may have information on similar events. - Fnord666]

Original Submission

Everest summits smash records amid deadly bottlenecks

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A record 885 people climbed Everest in May this year, figures showed Tuesday, capping a deadly traffic-clogged season that also saw 11 climbers die on the world's highest mountain.

The number smashed last year's record of 807 summits despite a short weather window that resulted in fatal bottlenecks on the peak.

[...]A traffic jam forced teams to wait for hours in freezing temperatures to reach Everest's 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) summit and then descend, increasing the risk of frostbite, altitude sickness and exhaustion from depleted oxygen levels.

Experts said too many of the new wave of mountaineer tourists were ill-prepared and inexperienced. Others have called for a cut in the number of climbing permits, or tougher standards for guides.

[...]A government team re-measuring the height of Everest also reached the top.

martyb writes:

Putting a Price on Chat: Slack is Going Public at $16 Billion Value :

In just five years, Slack has grown to have more than 10 million users and has become a verb in the process. "I'll Slack you" is shorthand for sending a message via the workplace chat platform.

On Thursday, the company will take that popularity to the New York Stock Exchange, where its shares will be publicly listed for the first time.

At a starting price of $26 per share set Wednesday, Slack Technologies would be worth about $16 billion.

Instead of having a conventional initial public offering, Slack will enter into the market as a direct listing, which means the shares will simply be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Most firms that pass on an IPO are widely known companies that are in good financial shape.

[...] In the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, Slack nearly doubled its revenues, to about $400 million. But it had a net loss of nearly $139 million.

[...] Slack, which was publicly released in 2014, stemmed from an internal chat platform created by CEO Stewart Butterfield during a failed video game development. The software was created to avoid the confusion of email and, per its acronym, provide a "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge" for the team, which had people working all over North America.

A company that lost $133 million on revenue of $400 million is worth... $16 billion? I must be doing something wrong.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

LLNL-led study finds any single hair from the human body can be used for identification

Any single hair from anywhere on the human body can be used to identify a person. This conclusion is one of the key findings from a nearly year-long study by a team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) Forensic Science Center (FSC) and Michigan State University. The team's study, published in Scientific Reports, a journal of Nature Magazine, could provide an important new avenue of evidence for law enforcement authorities in sexual assault cases.

[...] The team discovered that the protein content of pubic hair is significantly higher than head and arm hair, according to Chu, who noted this means more protein markers can be found, making the individual profiles more discriminating.

Through the first few years of the Lab's research (2013-2016) into using protein markers from human hair to identify people, the researchers used multiple hairs for their samples. They were able to find enough markers to provide a unique pattern for an individual that would distinguish that person among a population of 1 million.

Now, six years after starting their research, the Livermore team can use a single one-inch strand of hair to identify one person from among 10 million people.

Hair Proteome Variation at Different Body Locations on Genetically Variant Peptide Detection for Protein-Based Human Identification (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44007-7) (DX)

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aristarchus writes:

From The Verge, an article on autonomous weapons systems:

YouTube’s new policies designed to more aggressively tackle supremacist content have also led to some creators claiming their videos have been improperly removed or hidden in the process. They argue that YouTube is not distinguishing between actual hate content and videos that document hate groups for educational or journalistic purposes.

In militaries, there is a saying: "Friendly fire isn't."

YouTube announced on Wednesday that it was taking stronger measures to ban “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.” It was only minutes later that creators began to see channels being removed or videos pulled down — including a channel run by a history teacher, a video uploaded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and independent journalist Ford Fischer.

Fischer is a YouTube-based reporter who covers politics, activism, and extremism. He’s shot footage at events like the Unite the Right white supremacy rally that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, as well as gay pride parades. Some of his footage is used by documentarians and educators to study extremism and activist groups around the world, Fischer tells The Verge.

Looks like YouTube is going to demonetize aristarchus!

Previously: YouTube Clamps Down Further on Undesireable Speech

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