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takyon writes:

It took Google three years to add Firefox, Edge and Opera support to Google Earth

When Google unveiled the new Google Earth back in 2017, it switched Google Earth from being a desktop application to a web application. The company made Google Earth Chrome-exclusive at the time stating that the company's own Chrome browser was the only browser to support Native Client (NaCl) technology at the time and that the technology "was the only we [Google] could make sure that Earth would work well on the web".

The emergence of new web standards, WebAssembly in particular, allowed Google to switch to the standard supported by other browsers. The company launched a beta of Google Earth for browsers that support WebAssembly, Firefox, Edge and Opera are mentioned specifically six months ago.

Today, Google revealed that it has made Google Earth available officially for the web browsers Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), and Opera.

Google Earth.

Also at The Verge and Thurrott.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A birthday gift: 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 now only $35

In two days' time, it will be our eighth birthday (or our second, depending on your point of view). Many of you set your alarms and got up early on the morning of 29 February 2012, to order your Raspberry Pi from our newly minted licensee partners, RS Components and Premier Farnell. In the years since, we've sold over 30 million Raspberry Pi computers; we've seen our products used in an incredible range of applications all over the world (and occasionally off it); and we've found our own place in a community of makers, hobbyists, engineers and educators who are changing the world, one project, or one student, at a time.

[...] Which brings us to today's announcement. The fall in RAM prices over the last year has allowed us to cut the price of the 2GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 to $35. Effective immediately, you will be able to buy a no-compromises desktop PC for the same price as Raspberry Pi 1 in 2012. [...] And of course, thanks to inflation, $35 in 2012 is equivalent to nearly $40 today. So effectively you're getting all these improvements, and a $5 price cut.

[...] In line with our commitment to long-term support, the 1GB product will remain available to industrial and commercial customers, at a list price of $35. As there is no price advantage over the 2GB product, we expect most users to opt for the larger-memory variant. [...] The 4GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 will remain on sale, priced at $55.

In addition to falling RAM prices (which will hopefully continue to fall in the future), there is likely an oversupply of the 2 GB model as the 4 GB model proved to be the most popular.

Also at TechCrunch, Tom's Hardware, PCWorld, and Hackaday.

The USB Type-C resistor issue has been fixed by the latest revision of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B hardware, which is confirmed to be out in the wild. The issue prevented some USB-C power supplies from working with Pi4B:

canopic jug writes:

The Helsinki Times reports that Finland's Minister of Finance suggested during a recent foreign policy speech that Finland and the EU could pursue self-sufficiency in computing, in particular to avoid over dependence on just a handful of companies. She pointed out that this overreliance on said companies has become so severe that company policy has already started to override existing relevant legislation. The topic had earlier been brought up by President Sauli Niinistö. So far, though, not even Russia has made progress in that direction despite over a decade passing since announcing plans.

"Cyber self-sufficiency, in practical terms, could mean having a European operating system and web browser. The EU could also function as a provider of certificates," she envisioned in a foreign and security policy speech in Helsinki on Wednesday, 26 February.

Previously:
Moscow Bans Sale of Gadgets Without Russian-Made Software

Original Submission

Based on a submission from aristarchus we have the following:

As per The New York Times, and undoubtedly elsewhere,

China's robotic Chang'e-4 spacecraft did something last year that had never been done before: It landed on the moon's far side, and Yutu-2, a small rover it was carrying, began trundling through a crater there. One of the rover's instruments, a ground-penetrating radar, is now revealing what lies beneath.

The Chang'e-4 mission, the first to land on the lunar far side, is demonstrating the promise and peril of using ground-penetrating radar in planetary science.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, a team of Chinese and Italian researchers showed that the top layer of the lunar soil on that part of the moon is considerably thicker than some expected, about 130 feet of what scientists call regolith.

"It's a fine, dusty, sandy environment," said Elena Pettinelli, a professor of mathematics and physics at Rome Tre University who was one of the authors of the paper.

Based on what NASA astronauts observed during the Apollo moon landings, other scientists said they would have expected one-quarter as much soil.

"That's a lot of regolith," said David A. Kring, a senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston who is not involved with the Chinese moon mission. That's food for thought.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Clinical trials of remdesivir, an experimental drug to treat COVID-19, have begun at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha. More detail is provided in an article posted by the National Institutes of Health. The initial trial will involve 400 patients and will be conducted internationally but is beginning in Nebraska. There are currently 15 patients being monitored at UNMC, 13 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19. According to the daily update from UNMC, all of the 15 patients are now in the National Quarantine Unit, which has 20 beds. Previously, some of the patients had been in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, which is the largest facility of its kind in the country and had previously been used to treat ebola patients.

Note: The February 25 edition of the daily update mentioned the clinical trial, so there's a good possibility that additional updates will be posted in UNMC's daily update. The additional discussion may help explain why the trial is beginning in Nebraska even though there haven't been any cases that reported there -- all of the COVID-19 patients at UNMC were either sent there originally or were previously quarantined at Camp Ashland or were transported there from elsewhere.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

London, United Kingdom - A decade of "austerity" - a political programme of slashing public spending on services in a bid to reduce government budget deficits - has seen significant effects on the health and wellbeing of Britons, new research has reported.

Life expectancy has stalled and mortality rates have increased, especially for the poorest in the United Kingdom, according to a report commissioned by the Institute of Health Equity.

The report, Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review Ten Years On, was launched on Tuesday and sees Sir Michael Marmot, a former president of the World Medical Association, updating his influential 2010 report, having been asked by the then-Labour government to study the question: "Is inequality making us sick?"

Marmot's latest research analysed a wealth of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Public Health England to explore what has happened since his last landmark report. And the answer can only be summarised as: Not only is inequality making us sick but it is killing us quicker.

In the past decade - for the first time in 120 years of increasing life expectancy in England - life expectancy has stalled for those people living in the UK's 10 percent most deprived areas, particularly in the northeast.

Among women from the most deprived areas - especially British women of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin - life expectancy fell between 2010-2012 and again between 2016-2018.

Mortality rates have meanwhile increased for people aged between 45 and 49 - the generation that grew up under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's administrations. The report details how life expectancy follows the social gradient - the more deprived the area, the shorter the life expectancy.

Marmot's data analysis finds that, as the social gradient has become steeper, so inequalities in life expectancy have also increased.

Austerity has adversely affected the social determinants that impact on health in the short, medium and long term. Austerity will cast a long shadow over the lives of the children born and growing up under its effects

:- Professor Sir Michael Marmot

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Astra, DARPA prepare for upcoming launch challenge

Astra and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are readying for the first launch in a dual-mission "launch challenge". Astra, the launch contractor, is currently conducting final preparations ahead of the launch of their Rocket 3.0 vehicle, nicknamed "1 of 3". Both missions will launch from the Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska (PSCA) in Kodiak, Alaska. The first launch attempt is scheduled for 3:30 PM ET on February 28. The window stretches until March 1.

Thursday's launch will be the third for Astra, coming after two launches in July and November 2018. Both launched from the PSCA in Alaska. These were originally believed to be failures. However, Astra stated that the first was successful, and the second was only "shorter than planned". Neither were designed to reach orbit, as they didn't have functioning second stages.

[...] Tuesday's launch, the first in the challenge, will see "1 of 3" lift four small payloads to a 445km orbit. DARPA has stated that they will accept an orbit as low at 150km as a success.

The list of payloads includes two cubesats from the University of South Florida that will test communications between cubesats, a single Department of Defense-sponsored cubesat called "Prometheus", and Tiger Innovations' Space Object Automated Reporting Systems (SOARS) payload – which will remain attached to the second stage.

Astra only learned of the payload manifest on January 22 of this year. As part of the challenge, they will have to integrate the payloads themselves.

Original Submission

Booga1 writes:

Peanut butter brand Jif has put forth their opinion on how to pronounce GIF.

From their website(warning, lots of animated GIFs):

When is it OK to call a Gif a "Jif"? Never.

Jif^® is peanut butter. GIFs are
looping animations.
SNACK ON THAT.

That would be all well and good except for just one thing. The person who actually created the format, Steve Wilhite, explicitly stated GIF was to be pronounced with a soft "G"!

From a 1997 edition of the NetBITS newsletter, down near the bottom of the page appears:

It's "Jiff" and I Don't Want to Hear Another Word -- Logic may dictate the "g" in GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is pronounced hard, like gift or gefilte fish, but that didn't stop dozens and dozens of readers from offering opinions, many of them hilarious.

However, several people wrote to say that they either worked with folks at CompuServe or read the original GIF specification, all of which specified a soft "g". None of us at NetBITS understand why we haven't seen the definitive word before, so here it is. Charlie Reading <charlier@kreber.com> writes:

I worked with the creator of GIF (Steve Wilhite) when I was still employed by CompuServe. Steve always pronounced it "jiff" and would correct those who pronounced it with a hard G. "Choosy developers choose GIF" (spinning off of a historically popular peanut butter commercial).

An article at Ars Technica actually queries professional linguists in pursuit of the ultimate answer.

See this Sesame Street-like GIF which mentions popular words that start with a soft G such as Giant and Giraffe.

Lastly, here is a short video (1m18s) with what is quite possibly the strongest affirmation of all. David Karp presents Steve Wilhite with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 17th Annual Webbys where Steve dramatically uses a GIF as his acceptance 'speech' and sets the matter straight once and for all.

Not that it settles anything. The debate will rage on like vi vs. Emacs.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow9876:

Apple Takes Heat Over 'Vulnerable' iOS Cut-and-Paste Data:

Any cut-and-paste data temporarily stored to an iPhone or iPad's memory can be accessed by all apps installed on the specific device – even malicious ones. That data can then reveal private information such as a user's GPS coordinates, passwords, banking data or a spreadsheet copied into an email.

Shedding light onto the potential harm of this scenario is German software engineer, Tommy Mysk, who is trying to raise awareness around what he believes is an Apple vulnerability. To illustrate his concerns, Mysk created a rogue proof-of-concept (PoC) app called KlipboardSpy and an iOS widget named KlipSpyWidget.

Both are designed to illustrate how any app installed on an iOS device can act maliciously and access clipboard data and use it to spy or steal sensitive personal information. To highlight and demonstrate his concerns, Mysk told Threatpost he focused on photos taken by a device's camera that contain time and GPS metadata that could be used to pinpoint a user.

"A user may unwittingly expose their precise location to apps by simply copying a photo taken by the built-in Camera app to the general pasteboard," the developer wrote in a technical blog post outlining his research on Monday.

"Through the GPS coordinates contained in the embedded image properties, any app used by the user after copying such a photo to the pasteboard can read the location information stored in the image properties, and accurately infer a user's precise location. This can happen completely transparently and without user consent," he wrote.

Apple, in response to his research, said it didn't consider its implementation of cut-and-paste as a vulnerability, rather a basic function of most operating systems and applications that run on them, Mysk told Threatpsot[sic].

Apple did not return Threatpost's request for comment for this story.

Original Submission

kazzie writes:

A recent murder trial involving the most medieval of weapons has recently concluded with a guilty verdict, thanks to some high-tech sleuthing.

From the BBC's report:

Some modern, expensive cars are installed with electronic systems which can track and store information about its movements. This so-called telematics system can be used as a tracking device if the car is stolen. It can also tell when a car's engine is started or stopped and even when a window, door or boot is opened and closed. When combined with evidence of owning a crossbow and bolts of the type used in the murder, it was enough to secure a conviction.

Like a mobile phone on wheels, the system uses a SIM card. Nick Harvey, risk data manager for Plant-I telematics company, said data is live constantly and GPS tracking could be accurate within 5m.

He said over the past 10 years, such tracking had become more commonplace in car technology and security systems and could now help with investigations. "Wherever a vehicle is going, it is sending into a cloud - no matter what happens to that vehicle there is always data behind," he said.

A car belonging to the defendant was found burned several miles away two weeks after the murder, but the incriminating data had long since been sent to the cloud. It placed the owner outside the victim's house at the time of the murder, with timestamps indicating details like the engine being turned off, and when the doors and boot (trunk) were opened and closed.

The complexity of the case saw it generate 5,500 documents and involve a team of 50 police officers before going to a trial lasting five weeks.

"If it wasn't for the electronics, the black box in the Land Rover - which didn't just record information but sent it to Jaguar Land Rover, [the defendant] Whall would have got away with his lies," the jury was told.

Original Submission

New Temporary Moon in Earth Orbit

JoeMerchant writes:

On February 15th 2020 a magnitude 20 object designated 2020 CD3 was observed and projected to be in a 47 day elliptical orbit of the Earth. Projections do not all agree yet, but the orbit is believed to be unstable and should not last more than about 3 years. 2020 CD3 is estimated to be between 1 and 6 meters in diameter, though reportage varies wildly on the size estimates. Nobody seems to be commenting on perigee, though the simulation images suggest it is approximately at lunar orbit distance - of course with the 47 day period apogee is well beyond lunar orbit.

This is only the second "captured asteroid" to be observed in Earth orbit, 2006 RH120 was observed to be in Earth orbit from September 2006 to June 2007 - although 1991 VG was weakly captured for a month in 1992 and is expected to return in the future.

Many stories have already been published elsewhere - Wikipedia has already been updated; but, nobody seems to be asking the important questions like: if Pluto can be disqualified as a planet, how can 2020 CD3 be called a moon? ;-) EarthSky was unable to be consulted, perhaps due to the traffic spike, but other astronomers have referred to the object as a TCO - Temporarily Captured Object, while some question if 2020 CD3 is in fact an artificial object like a spent Apollo era booster stage.

Earth has a new mini-moon -- but it's only temporary

Gaaark writes:

"Earth has captured a tiny object and pulled it into orbit.
The asteroid, known as 2020 CD3, is only the second asteroid known to orbit Earth. And while it won't last, this asteroid acts as a temporary mini-moon whirling around our planet."

--The article doesn't expand on why its' orbit is only temporary so I can only imagine that its' orbit is not stable for....reasons.

"In this case, they found a natural satellite that was pulled into Earth's orbit three years ago. "

The article does not say WHEN the orbit may end and... will likely be pulled into collision vector with Earth?

"The asteroid is likely between 6.2 feet and 11.4 feet in diameter, the researchers said on Twitter."

VERY mini-me!

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/world/earth-mini-moon-asteroid-scn-trnd/index.html

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ghacks reports:

A new study Web Browser Privacy: What Do Browsers Say When They Phone Home?, looked at the six popular desktop web browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), Apple Safari, Brave, and Yandex, to uncover what these browsers send back to the mothership.

If you just want the result, the study found that used out of the box, Brave "is by far the most private of the browsers studied" followed by Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Brave is the only web browser that did not use identifiers that allowed tracking of the IP address over time and did not share details of web pages visited to backend servers.

Where is my Moon?

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Clearview AI, which contracts with law enforcement after reportedly scraping 3 billion images from the web, now says someone got "unauthorized access" to its list of customers:

[...] the startup Clearview AI disclosed to its customers that an intruder "gained unauthorized access" to its list of customers, to the number of user accounts those customers had set up, and to the number of searches its customers have conducted. The notification said the company's servers were not breached and that there was "no compromise of Clearview's systems or network." The company also said it fixed the vulnerability and that the intruder did not obtain any law-enforcement agencies' search histories.

[...] The firm drew national attention when The New York Times ran a front-page story about its work with law-enforcement agencies. The Times reported that the company scraped 3 billion images from the internet, including from Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo. That process violated Facebook's terms of service, according to the paper. It also created a resource that drew the attention of hundreds of law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, according to that report. In a follow-up story, the Times reported that law-enforcement officials have used the tools to identify children who are victims of sexual abuse. One anonymous Canadian law-enforcement official told the paper that Clearview was "the biggest breakthrough in the last decade" for investigations of those crimes.

The notification did not describe the breach as a hack. David Forscey, the managing director of the no-profit Aspen Cybersecurity Group, said the breach is concerning.

Previously on SN:

Canadian Privacy Commissioners to Investigate "Creepy" Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI
Clearview AI Hit with Cease-And-Desist from Google, Facebook Over Facial Recognition Collection
Clearview App Lets Strangers Find Your Name, Info with Snap of a Photo, Report Says

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers have converted human stem cells into insulin-producing cells and demonstrated in mice infused with such cells that blood sugar levels can be controlled and diabetes functionally cured for nine months.

The findings, from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are published online Feb. 24 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

"These mice had very severe diabetes with blood sugar readings of more than 500 milligrams per deciliter of blood—levels that could be fatal for a person—and when we gave the mice the insulin-secreting cells, within two weeks their blood glucose levels had returned to normal and stayed that way for many months," said principal investigator Jeffrey R. Millman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of medicine and of biomedical engineering at Washington University.

Several years ago, the same researchers discovered how to convert human stem cells into pancreatic beta cells that make insulin. When such cells encounter blood sugar, they secrete insulin. Still, previous work has had its limitations and had not effectively controlled diabetes in mice.

Now, the researchers have shown a new technique they developed can more efficiently convert human stem cells into insulin-producing cells that more effectively control blood sugar.

"A common problem when you're trying to transform a human stem cell into an insulin-producing beta cell—or a neuron or a heart cell —is that you also produce other cells that you don't want," Millman said. "In the case of beta cells, we might get other types of pancreas cells or liver cells."

[...] He explained that there still is much to do before this strategy can be used to treat people with diabetes. They will need to test the cells over longer periods of time in larger animal models and work to automate the process to have any hope of producing beta cells that can help the millions of people who currently require insulin injections to control their diabetes. But the research is continuing.

More information: Nathaniel J. Hogrebe et al. Targeting the cytoskeleton to direct pancreatic differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells, Nature Biotechnology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-020-0430-6

Original Submission

Tesla Autopilot Crash Driver 'Was Playing Video Game'

Phoenix666 writes:

BBC:

An Apple employee who died after his Tesla car hit a concrete barrier was playing a video game at the time of the crash, investigators believe.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the car had been driving semi-autonomously using Tesla's Autopilot software.

Tesla instructs drivers to keep their hands on the wheel in Autopilot mode.
...
But critics say the "Autopilot" branding makes some drivers think the car is driving fully autonomously.

The NTSB said the driver had been "over-reliant" on the software.

Tesla does instruct drivers to keep their hands on the wheel when using Autopilot, and an audible warning sounds if they fail to do so.

Does the Tesla branding of "autopilot" lure drivers into driving dangerously?

Tesla Crash Likely Caused by Video Game Distraction

Booga1 writes:

The NTSB has published a review of a fatal crash involving a Tesla in March 2018 that includes a set of safety recommendations.