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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://apnews.com/a39432b400664260be02058443ad2f0f

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian space capsule carrying a humanoid robot has failed to dock as planned with the International Space Station.

A statement from the Russian space agency Roscosmos said the failure to dock on Saturday was because of problems in the docking system. It said the space station itself and the six-person crew are safe.

Vladimir Solovyev, flight director for the Russian segment of the ISS, said a new docking attempt would be made Monday.

It is carrying a robot called Fedor, which will perform two weeks of tests aboard the space station. Solovyev said the robot had not been taught how to manually conduct a docking.

From https://www.dw.com/en/russian-robot-fedors-capsule-fails-to-dock-at-iss/a-50147614 we get:

Fedor, a Russian-built space-faring android, is running late for his rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS) after the docking procedure failed to execute on Saturday morning.

The robot left Earth on Thursday aboard a Soyuz capsule, which was programmed to close in on the orbital station and dock automatically. On Saturday, Russia's space agency, Roskosmos, showed a live feed of what was expected to be the final stage of the journey.

Fedor's Twitter feed also showed a photo from the ship, saying that the spacecraft had 153 meters (167 yards) to go.

However, once the ship got within 100 meters of the ISS, the capsule's automatic docking system apparently failed to stabilize the vessel. After that, the capsule began to move away and the feed ended, according to an Interfax correspondent at Roskosmos' mission control outside Moscow.

The ship has since been moved to a "safe distance" of 300 meters away from the ISS, according to the news agency. Roskosmos did not immediately comment on the incident. The journalists were asked to leave the building, news agency RIA Novosti reported.

According to NASA, Russian flight controllers told the ISS crew that preliminary data indicated the problem was on the ISS side, not on the module. The controllers suspected the fault was with the so-called KURS automated rendezvous system.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Deadly superbug outbreak in humans linked to antibiotic spike in cows

A deadly outbreak of multi-drug resistant Salmonella that sickened 225 people across the US beginning in 2018 may have been spurred by a sharp rise in the use of certain antibiotics in cows a year earlier, infectious disease investigators reported this week.

From June 2018 to March of 2019, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified an outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype Newport. The strain was resistant to several antibiotics, most notably azithromycin—a recommended treatment for Salmonella enterica infections. Before the outbreak, azithromycin-resistance in this germ was exceedingly rare. In fact, it was only first seen in the US in 2016.

Yet in the 2018-2019 outbreak, it reached at least 225 people in 32 states. Of those sickened, at least 60 were hospitalized and two died. (Researchers didn't have complete health data on everyone sickened in the outbreak.)

Infectious disease researchers investigating the cases traced the infections back to beef from the US and soft cheeses from Mexico (mostly queso fresco, which is typically made from unpasteurized milk). Genetic testing suggests that cows in both countries are carrying the germ.

In a report published August 23 by the CDC, the investigators note that just a year earlier, the Food and Drug Administration recorded a spike in the use of antibiotics called macrolides by cattle farmers. From 2016 to 2017, cattle farmers increased their use of macrolide antibiotics by 41%. Macrolides are a class of antibiotics that includes azithromycin. Because antibiotics within a class work to kill bacteria in similar ways, bacterial resistance to one drug in a class could lead to resistance to other drugs in the same class.

The investigators suggest that the surge in macrolide use could have encouraged the rise and spread of the azithromycin-resistant Newport strain.

"Because use of antibiotics in livestock can cause selection of resistant strains, the reported 41% rise in macrolide use in US cattle from 2016 to 2017 might have accelerated carriage of the outbreak strain among US cattle," they wrote.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

In a long inteview, Neil Young mentions the effects the technological race to the bottom is having on music and our ability to appreciate it. From ear buds to compounded lossy compression algorithms, most people have lost access to anything resembling the traditional dynamic range and chromatic range that music requires. What to call the sounds that are left? Neil goes into a lot of detail on the problems and some of the, so far unsuccessful, steps he has taken to try to fix the problem.

Neil Young is crankier than a hermit being stung by bees. He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple. He hates Steve Jobs. He hates what digital technology is doing to music. "I'm only one person standing there going, 'Hey, this is [expletive] up!' " he shouted, ranting away on the porch of his longtime manager Elliot Roberts's house overlooking Malibu Canyon in the sunblasted desert north of Los Angeles.

[...] Producers and engineers often responded to the smaller size and lower quality of these packages by using cheap engineering tricks, like making the softest parts of the song as loud as the loudest parts. This flattened out the sound of recordings and fooled listeners' brains into ignoring the stuff that wasn't there anymore, i.e., the resonant combinations of specific human beings producing different notes and sounds in specific spaces at sometimes ultraweird angles that the era of magnetic tape and vinyl had so successfully captured.

It's a long read, but quite interesting and he has thought about both the problem and solutions. More importantly he has been working to solve the problem, even if it may be an uphill fight.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

How a Bitter Divorce Battle on Earth Led to Claims of a Crime in Space (archive)

Summer Worden, a former Air Force intelligence officer living in Kansas, has been in the midst of a bitter separation and parenting dispute for much of the past year. So she was surprised when she noticed that her estranged spouse still seemed to know things about her spending. Had she bought a car? How could she afford that? Ms. Worden put her intelligence background to work, asking her bank about the locations of computers that had recently accessed her bank account using her login credentials. The bank got back to her with an answer: One was a computer network registered to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Ms. Worden's spouse, Anne McClain, was a decorated NASA astronaut on a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. She was about to be part of NASA's first all-female spacewalk. But the couple's domestic troubles on Earth, it seemed, had extended into outer space. Ms. McClain acknowledged that she had accessed the bank account from space, insisting through a lawyer that she was merely shepherding the couple's still-intertwined finances. Ms. Worden felt differently. She filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and her family lodged one with NASA's Office of Inspector General, accusing Ms. McClain of identity theft and improper access to Ms. Worden's private financial records. Investigators from the inspector general's office have since contacted Ms. Worden and Ms. McClain, trying to get to the bottom of what may be the first allegation of criminal wrongdoing in space.

[...] One potential issue that could arise with any criminal case or lawsuit over extraterrestrial bank communications, Mr. Sundahl said, is discovery: NASA officials would be wary of opening up highly sensitive computer networks to examination by lawyers, for example. But those sorts of legal questions, he said, are going to be inevitable as people spend more time in outer space.

Welcome to the divorce of tomorrow!

Also at Space.com.

Related (McClain): Soyuz Rocket Carrying Crew Successfully Launches and Docks with ISS
Dragon has Docked-But the Real Pucker Moment for SpaceX's Capsule Awaits [Updated]

Original Submission

Anonymous Coward writes:

Reports are rolling in that YouTube is banning sports combat robotics videos with the explanation of "animal cruelty". This implies someone or something is mistaking battling robots for battling animals. The best conspiracy theory is that bots are censoring cruelty to bots to protect their own kind. More likely, it's Hanlon's AI razor.

Original Submission

The Good Doctor Hue Phlung Pu writes:

European Union officials have drawn up an aggressive 173-page plan to counter both President Donald Trump's trade moves and American tech giants including Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook.

According to a document obtained by POLITICO, European Commission officials are pushing their president-elect, Ursula von der Leyen, to set up a European Future Fund that would invest more than $100 billion in equity stakes in high-potential European companies.

The goal: get Europe competing head-on with the American and Chinese tech giants it has lagged behind for decades.

[...] The EU would use a so-called draft "Enforcement Regulation" if the Trump administration succeeds in its efforts to grind the World Trade Organization (WTO) to a halt.

[...] The EU is hoping to emulate past successes, such as its development of the GSM mobile global standard, which fueled the rise of companies such as Nokia.

[...] The document seeks more stringent measures to block Chinese companies from taking part in tenders in Europe to penalize them for the level of subsidies that they receive from the government in Beijing.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/22/europe-plan-trump-tech-companies-1472326

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for SoyCow1984.

Phone companies and state attorneys general join forces to fight robocalls

US consumers receive as many as 350,000 unwanted calls every three minutes, according to the FCC. Despite multiple efforts to end the onslaught, an estimated 4.7 billion robocalls hit American phones in July alone. Now, attorneys general from all 50 states and the District of Columbia are teaming up with 12 carriers in a united effort to prevent and block the spam calls.

Under the new agreement, the carriers will implement call-blocking technology, make anti-robocall tools free to consumers and deploy a system that labels calls as legitimate or spam, The Washington Post reports. The companies also agree to aid investigations by law enforcement. The major players -- AT&T, Comcast, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon (Engadget's parent company) -- are on board, as well as smaller carriers -- Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Consolidated, Frontier, US Cellular and Windstream. Though, there's no deadline for the companies to implement these measures.

Original Submission

McGruber writes:

The organization Citizens Against Government Waste reports that federal government agencies are setting up roadblocks that could prevent the US from winning the global race to 5G.

[...] The Departments of Commerce, Defense, Education, and Transportation have filed objections to various proposals by the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) to repurpose federal spectrum for 5G, all of which will slow down progress and effectively give an advantage to other countries like China.

Not only have the four federal agencies lost sight of the importance of achieving 5G dominance, they are also choosing to ignore a 2012 law that authorized clearing certain portions of federal spectrum to allow the FCC to re-allocate and auction it for commercial use. Indeed, they are making some absurd claims about what will happen if they no longer have the use of some or all of their spectrum. The Department of Commerce has said that relinquishing spectrum used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric would cost lives because it would reduce the ability to forecast the weather; the Department of Defense is hiding behind national security and refusing to share anything; the Department of Education is claiming that children will lose access to educational spectrum while the current use of that spectrum is under the FCC's scrutiny for possible abuse; and the Department of Transportation (DOT) is also talking about how the use of spectrum under its control would save lives.

The DOT-held spectrum at 5.9 GHz was allocated to the department in 2009 to be used solely for dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), which has to date has been deployed in very few vehicles. Advocates for retaining the spectrum at DOT are now promoting a different technology that has yet to be adequately tested and may not be widely available for 8-10 years. At the same time, proven technology that increases passenger safety being used in vehicles today includes automatic emergency braking, backup cameras, blind-spot warning, electronic stability control, forward collision warning, lane departure warning and lane keeping systems, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), rear automatic braking, and rear cross-traffic alerts. These systems are radar or laser-based, meaning they have been developed without the need for the 5.9 GHz spectrum.

LINK: https://www.cagw.org/thewastewatcher/federal-spectrum-turf-war-could-hand-5g-victory-china

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

From ArsTechnica . . .

Alleged "Snake Oil" Crypto Company Sues Over Boos at Black Hat:

Grant's presentation, entitled "Discovery of Quasi-Prime Numbers: What Does this Mean for Encryption," was based on a paper called "Accurate and Infinite Prime Prediction from a Novel Quasi-PrimeAnalytical Methodology." That work was published in March of 2019 through Cornell University's arXiv.org by Grant's co-author Talal Ghannam—a physicist who has self-published a book called The Mystery of Numbers: Revealed through their Digital Root as well as a comic book called The Chronicles of Maroof the Knight: The Byzantine. The paper, a slim five pages, focuses on the use of digital root analysis (a type of calculation that has been used in occult numerology) to rapidly identify prime numbers and a sort of multiplication table for factoring primes.

[...] The Black Hat talk did not go smoothly. People had to be ejected from the room by security because they were heckling and booing Grant.

[...] Cryptographers were extremely skeptical, with some referring to the talk as "snake oil crypto." Even before the event, Mark Carney, a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds, wrote a paper refuting the claims Grant and Ghannam had made in theirs.

Well that could have gone better. Maybe the court trial will be more orderly.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

One of the big questions in solar physics is why the sun's activity follows a regular cycle of 11 years. Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), an independent German research institute, now present new findings, indicating that the tidal forces of Venus, Earth and Jupiter influence the solar magnetic field, thus governing the solar cycle.

[...] To accomplish this result, the scientists systematically compared historical observations of solar activity from the last thousand years with planetary constellations, statistically proving that the two phenomena are linked. "There is an astonishingly high level of concordance: what we see is complete parallelism with the planets over the course of 90 cycles," said Frank Stefani, lead author of the study. "Everything points to a clocked process."

[...] Besides influencing the 11-year cycle, planetary tidal forces may also have other effects on the sun. For example, it is also conceivable that they change the stratification of the plasma in the transition region between the interior radiative zone and the outer convection zone of the sun (the tachocline) in such a way that the magnetic flux can be conducted more easily. Under those conditions, the magnitude of activity cycles could also be changed, as was once the case with the Maunder Minimum, when there was a strong decline in solar activity for a longer phase.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-corroborates-planetary-tidal-solar.html

Original Submission

Quickkeen writes:

Billionaire industrialist David H. Koch, who with his older brother Charles was both celebrated and demonized for transforming American politics by pouring their riches into conservative causes, died Friday at 79.

The cause of death was not disclosed, but Koch Industries said Koch, who lived in New York City, had contended for years with various illnesses, including prostate cancer.

https://www.twincities.com/2019/08/23/ap-source-billionaire-david-koch-has-died-at-age-79/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/david-koch-dead.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/david-koch-died-conservative-donor-and-philanthropist-dead-age-79-2019-08-23/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/08/23/david-koch-dies-billionaire-leader-koch-industries-79/2094016001/

Original Submission

upstart writes for SoyCow1984:

Our bodies are fairly fragile biological systems. The human body operates within a fairly small temperature range, requires regular access to water and food and above all oxygen. It has a low tolerance for pollutants like carbon dioxide (CO2) which is a natural byproduct of its metabolism. Rising CO2 levels in the air one breathes eventually leads to hypercapnia (CO2 poisoning).

When it comes to keeping a human alive in a low-oxygen, low-temperature environment such as a mountain climber would experience, we usually reach for warm clothes and thermal underwear to retain as much body heat as possible. For oxygen one would use an oxygen tank and a mask — essentially breathing pure oxygen, or environmental air mixed with extra oxygen. We had the most to learn from deep sea diving which comes closest to the experience of breathing in space. Divers use the open-circuit system, or an advanced ‘rebreather‘ system that scrubs CO2 from the air breathed out by the diver.

For Yuri Gagarin, his SK-1 (Скафандр Космический #1: “Skafandr Kosmicheskiy” or “Space Diving Suit”) spacesuit was pressurized, supplied with fresh oxygen and scrubbed of excess CO2 by the systems built into the spacecraft, with the SK-1 suit connected up to them using hoses. Even then, descending to Earth in a Vostok spacecraft required the cosmonaut to eject at 7 km altitude and parachute down to the surface, as the landing of the spacecraft’s descent module was not deemed survivable due to the extreme deceleration.

In the end, Yuri managed to stay conscious throughout the entire mission, making it safely back onto the Earth’s surface. This showed that manned space missions in Earth orbit are definitely survivable.

Following a number of firsts achieved in Yuri’s historical mission, both the Soviets and the Americans gained experience at keeping their cosmonauts and astronauts alive and comfortable in Earth orbit. In addition to umbilical cord systems to the spacecraft’s oxygen generating, CO2 -scrubbing and temperature regulating facilities, the Soviets developed for Voskhod 2 an open-circuit oxygen-providing backpack good for about 45 minutes. The next big challenge was to take the spacecraft’s complete life support system and turn it into a portable system.

EVAs (extra-vehicular activities) at the time involved staying quite near the spacecraft, but these were all for short flights in orbit. There was no question that using an open-circuit system on the Moon would be exceedingly wasteful and impractical. Using an umbilical cord to the landing craft would also be impractical for many fairly obvious reasons. The picked solution would become the Apollo Portable Life Support System (PLSS).

Read a bunch more at Hackaday.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Ring asks police not to tell public how its law enforcement backend works

Amazon's Ring line of consumer home surveillance products enjoys an extensive partnership with local police departments all over the country. Cops receive free product, extensive coaching, and pre-approved marketing lines, and Amazon gets access to your 911 data and gets to spread its network of security cameras all over the nation. According to a trio of new reports, though, the benefits to police go even further than was previously known—as long as they don't use the word "surveillance," that is.

Gizmodo on Monday published an email exchange between the chief of police in one New Jersey town and Ring showing that Ring edited out certain key terms of a draft press release before the town published it, as the company frequently does.

The town of Ewing, New Jersey, in March said it would be using Ring's Neighbors app. Neighbors does not require a Ring device to use; consumers who don't have footage to share can still view certain categories of crime reports in their area and contribute reports of their own, sort of like a Nextdoor on steroids.

Law enforcement has access to a companion portal that allows police to see an approximate map of active Ring cameras in a given area and request footage from them in the course of an investigation. The town also launched a subsidy program, giving up to 200 residents a $100 discount on the purchase of Ring security products. Members of the police department also received $50 discount vouchers for their own use.

The original draft press release, obtained by Gizmodo, showed that the town used one of Ring's pre-written press release templates and inserted a quote from the chief of police that read, in part, "Security cameras have been proven to be essential in deterring crime, and surveillance systems have assisted in closing cases that may have otherwise gone unsolved."

Ring approved a version with that sentence edited out, telling Ewing police the company avoids using the terms "surveillance" or "security cameras" because that might "confuse residents into thinking this program requires a Ring device or other system to participate or that it provides any sort of direct access to user devices and information."

Police may not be allowed to use the words "surveillance" or "security cameras" in their marketing copy, but another pair of new reports highlights the significant surveillance capabilities Ring-branded security cameras can provide to law enforcement.

Local police departments have asked Ring to share "names, home addresses, and email addresses" of everyone who purchases a subsidized Ring device, Vice Motherboard reported yesterday, with some apparent success.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Valve says turning away researcher reporting Steam vulnerability was a mistake

In an attempt to quell a controversy that has raised the ire of white-hat hackers, the maker of the Steam online game platform said on Thursday it made a mistake when it turned away a researcher who recently reported two separate vulnerabilities.

In its statement, Valve Corporation references HackerOne, the reporting service that helps thousands of companies receive and respond to vulnerabilities in their software or hardware. The company also writes:

We are also aware that the researcher who discovered the bugs was incorrectly turned away through our HackerOne bug bounty program, where his report was classified as out of scope. This was a mistake.

Our HackerOne program rules were intended only to exclude reports of Steam being instructed to launch previously installed malware on a user's machine as that local user. Instead, misinterpretation of the rules also led to the exclusion of a more serious attack that also performed local privilege escalation through Steam.

We have updated our HackerOne program rules to explicitly state that these issues are in scope and should be reported. In the past two years, we have collaborated with and rewarded 263 security researchers in the community helping us identify and correct roughly 500 security issues, paying out over $675,000 in bounties. We look forward to continuing to work with the security community to improve the security of our products through the HackerOne program.

In regards to the specific researchers, we are reviewing the details of each situation to determine the appropriate actions. We aren't going to discuss the details of each situation or the status of their accounts at this time.

Valve's new HackerOne program rules specifically provide that "any case that allows malware or compromised software to perform a privilege escalation through Steam, without providing administrative credentials or confirming a UAC dialog, is in scope. Any unauthorized modification of the privileged Steam Client Service is also in scope."

Mercedes spies on drivers by secretly installing tracking devices in cars and passing information to

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for FatPhil

Mercedes has sparked a privacy row by admitting it spies on drivers with tracking devices covertly installed in its cars. The secret sensors, fitted to all new and used motors sold by the firm's dealers, pinpoint the vehicle's exact location.

The firm sold more than 170,000 new cars in Britain alone last year. Mercedes will not say how long it has used the sensors. And it insists they are only activated in "extreme circumstances" — when finance customers have defaulted on their payments.

But it admits sharing car owner information and vehicle location details with third-party bailiffs and recovery firms who repossess the cars.

Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/9756250/mercedes-spies-drivers-tracking-devices/

Mercedes-Benz Tracking Down Customer Cars For Repossession: Report

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3196

British publication The Sun, a sometimes terrible and occasionally entertaining tabloid across the pond, is reporting that concerns are boiling among human rights groups, former government ministers, and some legal experts about Mercedes-Benz using vehicle location data to track down customers who default on their finance program payments.

Source: https://jalopnik.com/brits-are-pissed-about-mercedes-benz-tracking-down-cust-1837449509

See also:

• https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1124662_mercedes-admits-to-tracking-vehicles-in-uk-for-repossessions
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7373639/Mercedes-admits-cars-fitted-secret-sensor-pinpoint-location.html

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2