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Phoenix666 writes:

Scientists discover virus with no recognizable genes:

Viruses are some of the most mysterious organisms on Earth. They're among the world's tiniest lifeforms, and because none can survive and reproduce without a host, some scientists have questioned whether they should even be considered living things. Now, scientists have discovered one that has no recognizable genes, making it among the strangest of all known viruses. But how many viruses do we really know?

[...] The finds speak to "how much we still need to understand" about viruses, says one of the researchers, Jônatas Abrahão, a virologist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.

Abrahão made his discovery while hunting down giant viruses. These microbes—some the size of bacteria—were first discovered in amoebae in 2003. In a local artificial lake, he and his colleagues found not only new giant viruses, but also a virus that—because of its small size—was unlike most that infect in amoebae. They named it Yaravirus. (Yara is the "mother of waters" according to Indigenous Tupi-Guarani mythology.)

Hmm, perhaps Yaravirus hitched a ride in on Oumuamua.

Scientists discover virus with no recognizable genes, (DOI: 10.1126/science.abb2121)

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takyon writes:

NASA safety panel calls for reviews after second Starliner software problem

A NASA safety panel is recommending a review of Boeing's software verification processes after revealing there was a second software problem during a CST-100 Starliner test flight that could have led to a "catastrophic" failure.

That new software problem, not previously discussed by NASA or Boeing, was discussed during a Feb. 6 meeting of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel that examined the December uncrewed test flight of Starliner that was cut short by a timer error.

That anomaly was discovered during ground testing while the spacecraft was in orbit, panel member Paul Hill said. "While this anomaly was corrected in flight, if it had gone uncorrected, it would have led to erroneous thruster firings and uncontrolled motion during [service module] separation for deorbit, with the potential for a catastrophic spacecraft failure," he said.

The exact cause of the failure remains under investigation by Boeing and NASA, who are also still examining the timer failure previously reported. Those problems, Hill said, suggested broader issues with how Boeing develops and tests the software used by the spacecraft.

"The panel has a larger concern with the rigor of Boeing's verification processes," he said. The panel called for reviews of Boeing's flight software integration and testing processes. "Further, with confidence at risk for a spacecraft that is intended to carry humans in space, the panel recommends an even broader Boeing assessment of, and corrective actions in, Boeing's [systems engineering and integration] processes and verification testing."

Previously:
Boeing Provides Damage Control After Inspector General's Report on Commercial Crew Program
Starliner Fails to Make Journey to ISS
Boeing's Failed Starliner Mission Strains 'Reliability' Pitch

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PiMuNu writes:

Phys.org:

Scientists have demonstrated a key technology in making next-generation high-energy particle accelerators possible.

[...] So far, the particles accelerated have been protons, electrons and ions, in concentrated beams. However, an international team called the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration are trying to create a muon beam.

Muons are particles like electrons, but with much greater mass. This means they could be used to create beams with ten times more energy than the Large Hadron Collider

[...] MICE have today announced the success of a crucial step in creating a muon beam—corralling the muons into a small enough volume that collisions are more likely. The results are published today in Nature.

Journal reference: Demonstration of cooling by the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment, Nature (DOI: doi:10.1038/s41586-020-1958-9)

Also at CERN Courier, Fermilab Symmetry & Nature News.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Pluto's icy heart makes winds blow:

Pluto's famous heart-shaped structure, named Tombaugh Regio, quickly became famous after NASA's New Horizons mission captured footage of the dwarf planet in 2015 and revealed it isn't the barren world scientists thought it was.

Now, new research shows Pluto's renowned nitrogen heart rules its atmospheric circulation. Uncovering how Pluto's atmosphere behaves provides scientists with another place to compare to our own planet. Such findings can pinpoint both similar and distinctive features between Earth and a dwarf planet billions of miles away.

Nitrogen gas -- an element also found in air on Earth -- comprises most of Pluto's thin atmosphere, along with small amounts of carbon monoxide and the greenhouse gas methane. Frozen nitrogen also covers part of Pluto's surface in the shape of a heart. During the day, a thin layer of this nitrogen ice warms and turns into vapor. At night, the vapor condenses and once again forms ice. Each sequence is like a heartbeat, pumping nitrogen winds around the dwarf planet.

New research in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets suggests this cycle pushes Pluto's atmosphere to circulate in the opposite direction of its spin -- a unique phenomenon called retro-rotation. As air whips close to the surface, it transports heat, grains of ice and haze particles to create dark wind streaks and plains across the north and northwestern regions.

"This highlights the fact that Pluto's atmosphere and winds -- even if the density of the atmosphere is very low -- can impact the surface," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California and the study's lead author.

Pluto's beating heart regulates the atmospheric circulation: results from high resolution and multi‐year numerical climate simulations, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (DOI: 10.1029/2019JE006120)

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Roofs and the downwind sides of buildings in street canyons have the lowest levels of particulate matter during a single-source pollution event, according to Penn State researchers. The findings have implications for improving evacuation plans during a pollution release as well as for informing ventilation system design of urban buildings.

"Previous research has focused on ambient pollution created by traffic," said Jeremy Gernand, assistant professor of industrial health and safety. "We decided to investigate sources of pollution from a point source of particulate matter, such as a chemical spill or an accidental release from a factory."

The researchers investigated a pollutant release scenario to evaluate the safest locations for evacuation and for building design elements such as air intakes. This marks the first study investigating an emission event from a single source near a street canyon.

Monitoring air quality in urban areas can be very important due to high population density and levels of particulates. Street canyons, or places where the street is bounded on both sides by buildings, are important locations for studying air pollution because they are prevalent in urban areas.

[...] The findings have implications for improving evacuation plans and for informing ventilation system design. In the event of a pollution release emergency from a central source, pedestrians should be evacuated to the leeward side of the transverse channel. For installation of new air intakes, portions of roofs furthest away from inner channels, or roads, of street canyons serve as the safest location, the researchers said.

The researchers reported their findings in the journal Air Quality, Atmosphere and Health.

However, given the variety of possible scenarios, these findings represent only a general guideline and will benefit from further investigation, said Gernand. Building upon the cost-effective modeling approach used in this study, future research will consider additional possibilities with the goal of providing more comprehensive safety recommendations.

More information: Mengfan Li et al, Identifying shelter locations and building air intake risk from release of particulate matter in a three-dimensional street canyon via wind tunnel and CFD simulation, Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health (2019). DOI: 10.1007/s11869-019-00753-1

[20200207_163947 UTC: Updated to correct a copy error in the third paragraph.--martyb]

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DeathMonkey writes:

A new bill in Tennessee is aiming to have internet providers block all porn on every device.

Rep. James Micah Van Huss (R-Jonesborough) filed the ""Safer Internet for Minors Act," or HB 2294, this week. It would essentially make those of age and wishing to view porn take extra steps to do so.

Right now, Van Huss' office says internet providers allow porn on devices by default. Parents, for example, manually have to go in and "opt out" of allowing porn.

This bill aims to have internet providers block porn by default and have those wishing to viewing porn, who are of legal age, manually "opt in."

Tennessee bill aims to have internet providers automatically block porn on all devices

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chromas writes:

Bloomberg:

A wind turbine's blades can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing, so at the end of their lifespan they can't just be hauled away. First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer.

[...] Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It's going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.

Built to withstand hurricane-force winds, the blades can't easily be crushed, recycled or repurposed. That's created an urgent search for alternatives in places that lack wide-open prairies. In the U.S., they go to the handful of landfills that accept them, in Lake Mills, Iowa; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Casper, where they will be interred in stacks that reach 30 feet under.

[...] Wind power is carbon-free and about 85% of turbine components, including steel, copper wire, electronics and gearing can be recycled or reused. But the fiberglass blades remain difficult to dispose of. With some as long as a football field, big rigs can only carry one at a time, making transportation costs prohibitive for long-distance hauls. Scientists are trying to find better ways to separate resins from fibers or to give small chunks new life as pellets or boards.

[...] "Wind turbine blades at the end of their operational life are landfill-safe, unlike the waste from some other energy sources, and represent a small fraction of overall U.S. municipal solid waste," according to an emailed statement from the group. It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/when-your-used-car-is-a-little-too-mobile/

Many modern vehicles let owners use the Internet or a mobile device to control the car's locks, track location and performance data, and start the engine. But who exactly owns that control is not always clear when these smart cars are sold or leased anew. Here's the story of one former electric vehicle owner who discovered he could still gain remote, online access to his old automobile years after his lease ended.

Mathew Marulla began leasing a Ford Focus electric vehicle in 2013, but turned the car back in to Ford at the end of his lease in 2016. So Marulla was surprised when he recently received an email from Ford.com stating that the clock in his car was set incorrectly.

Out of curiosity, Marulla decided to check if his old MyFordMobile.com credentials from 2016 still worked. They did, and Marulla was presented with an online dashboard showing the current location of his old ride and its mileage statistics.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

The CIA's Infamous, Unsolved Cryptographic Puzzle Gets a 'Final Clue':

The CIA's Infamous, Unsolved Cryptographic Puzzle Gets a 'Final Clue'

Almost exactly 30 years ago, the artist and sculptor Jim Sanborn was devising an encrypted code for his sculpture complex at the new CIA headquarters.

The centerpiece of the complex, called Kryptos, is an eight-foot tall sculpture of a copper scroll, with four paragraphs of letters cut from the metal. At first glance, the letters seem to be gibberish. But cryptologists, including NSA experts and the American scientist James Gillogly, gradually decrypted the first three paragraphs of the text. But the full solution has eluded cryptographers, and the 74-year-old Sanborn has just released a new clue in order to help hobbyists solve it.

[...] When the sculpture was made, amateur hobbyists took immediate interest in deciphering the encrypted text, which is itself riddlesome. The first out of four paragraphs, for example, has been decrypted to read, "BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION".

The fourth and final paragraph has, to this day, eluded all efforts at decryption. To the delight of cryptophiles everywhere, Sanborn has just released a new clue to the problem.

"I would prefer the piece to remain a secret indefinitely," Sanborn said. But at 74 years of age, the artist is getting older, and he wants hobbyists to at least have a shot at solving the puzzle that has vexed them so long.

With his new clue he has decoded a word that shows up early on in the fourth paragraph, now revealed to mean "NORTHEAST." In 2010 and 2014, he had revealed that two middle words "NYPVTT" and "MZFPK" decrypted to "BERLIN" and "CLOCK," respectively.

Understandably, the new clue has sparked a new flurry of people working on it. Chris Hanson, a software engineer and self-described nerd, helped cofound a long-standing forum for hobbyists interested in finding the Kryptos solution. Users on the forum such as "Monet Freidrich" have helped decrypt text from the sculpture. But Hanson thinks that the encryption that Sanborn developed for the fourth paragraph may be insurmountable, even with the new clue.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://photographylife.com/camera-companies-smartphone-survival

For the past few years, the camera market has been contracting at an unusually fast pace, resulting in decreased sales of DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The point-and-shoot market is already dead, and entry-level camera sales have also seen huge declines worldwide. This is mostly attributed to the rise of the smartphone, and the fact that smartphone manufacturers have been moving into the camera industry, focusing heavily on camera features. The outlook of the smartphone invasion is pretty grim, and it seems like some companies might not be able to survive as a result. So the big question is, is there anything camera manufacturers can do to stay afloat? I have been wondering about this for a while now, so I have decided to put together some of my thoughts in this article.

The story is a long read, but raises many excellent points. One of the first takeaways was that good cellphone cameras are: compact, quick and easy to use. Professional and prosumer They are carrying around heavy, bulky items that are to time-consuming to get set up.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Road to 80 TB HDDs: Showa Denko Develops HAMR Platters for Hard Drives

Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) has unveiled the the company has finished the development of its next-generation heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) media for hard drives. The platters use all-new magnetic thin films with a very small crystal grain size in order to maximize their areal density, with the goal of eventually enabling 3.5-inch HDDs to be built with capacities of 70 TB to 80 TB.

SDK's platters for HAMR HDDs are made of aluminum and feature thin film magnetic layer made of an Fe-Pt alloy. To improve the magnetic coercivity of the media by several times over existing platters, Showa Denko used a new structure of magnetic layers and implemented new ways of controlling the temperature of the media during production.

[...] SDK is not disclosing the recording density of its new platters nor are they making specific promises about when it intends to start mass production of next-generation disks. Meanwhile, the company notes that today's leading-edge conventional magnetic recording (CMR) platters feature recording density of about 1.14 Tb/in² and it is widely believed that this is not going to grow significantly without using energy assisted recording methods. By contrast, Showa Denko believes, HAMR-based media will achieve areal density of 5-6 Tb/in² in the future, which will increase capacity of hard drives by several times, all the way to 70 TB – 80 TB per 3.5-inch drive without increasing the number of platters. For comparison's sake, today's 16 TB CMR (PMR+TDMR) HDDs use nine disks, so increasing their density by ~5.2X would enable drives featuring capacities higher than 80 TB.

Western Digital is slowly transitioning towards the use of microwave and heat-assisted drives:

Western Digital's development of hard drive technology is advancing on several fronts to push the limits of their high-capacity enterprise HDDs. Helium is old news, and used in all their drives larger than 10TB. Lately, the most attention has been focused on Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR), both of which fall under the heading of energy-assisted recording. Western Digital is still a few years away from deploying either HAMR or MAMR, but their upcoming generation of hard drives takes the first steps in that direction.

This year, WDC is starting to deliver their latest generation of high-capacity enterprise hard drives which were announced in 2019: the 16TB and 18TB Ultrastar DC HC550 and the 20TB Ultrastar DC HC640 with shingled magnetic recording (SMR). All of these new models will feature WDC's first energy-assisted recording technology which they have dubbed ePMR. This is still a fairly ill-defined transitional feature, but it is based on some of the parts needed to implement MAMR. WDC's roadmaps have them sticking with ePMR for a few more years before fully implementing either HAMR or MAMR technology.

CMR (PMR+TDMR) = conventional magnetic recording, aka perpendicular magnetic recording, with the added use of two-dimensional magnetic recording. Shingled magnetic recording (SMR) can boost capacity further, but with reduced write performance.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The CEO of Clearview AI, a controversial and secretive facial recognition startup, is defending his company's massive database of searchable faces, saying in an interview on CBS This Morning Wednesday that it's his First Amendment right to collect public photos. He also has compared the practices to what Google does with its search engine.

Facial recognition technology, which proponents argue helps with security and makes your devices more convenient, has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and advocacy groups. Microsoft, IBM and Amazon, which sells its Rekognition system to law enforcement agencies in the US, have said facial recognition should be regulated by the government, and a few cities, including San Francisco, have banned its use, but there aren't yet any federal laws addressing the issue.

Here is YouTube's full statement:

"YouTube's Terms of Service explicitly forbid collecting data that can be used to identify a person. Clearview has publicly admitted to doing exactly that, and in response we sent them a cease and desist letter. And comparisons to Google Search are inaccurate. Most websites want to be included in Google Search, and we give webmasters control over what information from their site is included in our search results, including the option to opt-out entirely. Clearview secretly collected image data of individuals without their consent, and in violation of rules explicitly forbidding them from doing so."

Facebook has also said that it's reviewing Clearview AI's practices and that it would take action if it learns the company is violating its terms of services.

"We have serious concerns with Clearview's practices, which is why we've requested information as part of our ongoing review. How they respond will determine the next steps we take," a Facebook spokesperson told CBS News on Tuesday. Facebook later said it demanded the company stop scraping photos because the activity violates its policies.

Clearview AI attracted wide attention in January after The New York Times reported how the company's app can identify people by comparing their photo to a database of more than 3 billion pictures that Clearview says it's scraped off social media and other sites. The app is used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the US to identify those suspected of criminal activities.

Previously:
Clearview App Lets Strangers Find Your Name, Info with Snap of a Photo, Report Says

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for carny:

Oh ****... Sudo has a 'make anyone root' bug that needs to be patched – if you're unlucky enough to enable pwfeedback:

Sudo, a standard tool on Unix-y operating systems that lets select users run some or all commands as root, can be exploited to give superpowers to any logged-in user – if deployed with a non-default configuration.

This security hole, discovered by Joe Vennix at Apple Information Security, is only active if the pwfeedback option is enabled. This option shows an asterisk each time a key is pressed, when entering a password. The good news is that pwfeedback is generally disabled by default.

[...] If sudo is installed and vulnerable, any user can trigger the vulnerability, even if not listed in the sudoers list of those with sudo privileges.

[...] You can tell if you are vulnerable by running sudo -l and checking the output. If the word pwfeedback appears under Matching Defaults entries, it is potentially at risk. The next thing to do is to check the version number with sudo --version. Versions 1.7.1 to 1.8.25p1 inclusive are vulnerable. The bug is fixed in sudo 1.8.31, available now, and versions 1.8.26 to 1.8.30 are not exploitable.

[...] The [interim] solution is to disable pwfeedback in the sudoers file, as explained in the linked article.

Better yet, upgrade your copy of sudo so it no longer contains this bug.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for carny:

Sketchy behavior? Wacom tablet drivers phone home with names, times of every app opened on your computer:

FYI: Wacom's official tablet drivers leak to the manufacturer the names of every application opened, and when, on the computers they are connected to.

Software engineer Robert Heaton made this discovery after noticing his drawing board's fine-print included a privacy policy that gave Wacom permission to, effectively, snoop on him.

Looking deeper, he found that the tablet's driver logged each app he opened on his Apple Mac and transmitted the data to Google to analyze. To be clear, we're talking about Wacom's macOS drivers here: the open-source Linux ones aren't affected, though it would seem the Windows counterparts are.

"Being a mostly normal person, I never usually read privacy policies. Instead I vigorously hammer the 'yes' button in an effort to reach the game, machine, or medical advice on the other side of the agreement as fast as possible," Heaton said earlier today.

"But Wacom's request made me pause. Why does a device that is essentially a mouse need a privacy policy?"

After firing up Burp Suite to observe his network traffic, Heaton found that his peripheral's macOS driver would query the presence of an XML file on a wacom.com server, and if this document was present, the software would feed notifications of applications being opened into Wacom's Google Analytics account. If the XML file was not present, the driver would not spill any details to Google, and note in its logs the telling line: "Analytics disabled either locally or from server kill switch." In other words, the XML file acted as a kill switch.

[...] It appears Wacom gathers this information to figure out which specific applications punters are using alongside its hardware: which apps are popular, which get used a lot, and so on, presumably to help it improve its products. Google Analytics will let you inspect the activities of individual users, such as which applications were opened, though it attempts to mask people's identities using ID numbers. You can't drill down to personally-identifiable things like IP addresses. The data can be analyzed in aggregate to figure out which programs are being run and when.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Casper's IPO is officially a disaster

Casper's attempt at a public debut is becoming downright embarrassing. The mattress-in-a-box company dramatically slashed its initial public offering price, cutting its valuation and dimming hopes of a positive reception by investors.

The company said Wednesday in a regulatory filing that it had cut its IPO target share price to $12 to $13 from $17 to $19. That values the company at around $500 million, down from the $705 million it valued itself at last week. At one point, Casper was valued at more than $1 billion. Its shares priced at the low-end, or $12, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The New York-based startup filed to go public earlier in January. It plans to trade under the ticker symbol "CSPR" on the New York Stock Exchange.

Casper's long-term prospects for profitability are questionable at best. Casper reported its preliminary 2019 financial results last week, and although sales soared 23% to about $439 million, it lost about $94 million in the past year. Its loss was about 2% more than its losses during 2018.

See also: Casper prices its IPO at $12 a share, giving it a valuation of $490 million, confirming that it's no longer a unicorn

Original Submission