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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Fastener with microscopic mushroom design holds promise:

A Velcro-like fastener with a microscopic design that looks like tiny mushrooms could mean advances for everyday consumers and scientific fields like robotics.

In Biointerphases, published by AIP Publishing, researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands show how the design can use softer materials and still be strong enough to work.

Probabilistic fasteners work, because they are designed with a tiny pattern on one surface that interlocks with features on the other surface. Currently available fasteners, like Velcro and 3M, are called hook and loop fasteners. That design requires harder, stiff material, which is what causes the loud ripping sound when they are peeled off and why they can damage delicate surfaces, such as fabrics, when attached to them.

New Atlas adds:

"We wanted to prove that, if you go toward these less stiff features, they can be used to attach and detach to soft and delicate surfaces, like fabrics, without damage," says researcher Preeti Sharma, PhD. "It can be used in many applications such as for diapers or silent fasteners for military use. There is still a lot of research to be done, but the mushroom-shaped design worked quite well for soft mechanical fasteners."

The technology may even find use in foot pads for legged robots, which would allow them to walk up walls or across ceilings like geckos. In fact, the lizards actually already utilize a fairly similar mechanism for clinging to flat surfaces.

Journal Reference:
Preeti Sharma, Vittorio Saggiomo, Vincent van der Doef, et al. Hooked on mushrooms: Preparation and mechanics of a bioinspired soft probabilistic fastener, Biointerphases (DOI: 10.1116/6.0000634)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Report: Samsung may build $10 billion advanced chipmaking plant in Austin

Samsung could build a $10 billion advanced logic chipmaking plant in Austin, according to media reports, potentially adding to the company's existing multibillion-dollar facilities in Central Texas.

If it happens, the Samsung expansion would add to a series of recent stunning wins for Austin's technology sector. In just the past six months, Austin saw electric automaker Tesla pick it as the site for a $1 billion assembly facility and software giant Oracle move its corporate headquarters to Austin.

Citing people familiar with the plans, Bloomberg news service reported that Samsung is considering spending more than $10 billion on the plant, which could be Samsung's most advanced yet. The report said that the final investment amount could fluctuate.

[...] According to the Bloomberg report, the new Samsung facility would be potentially capable of fabricating chips as advanced as 3 nanometers. Construction could start as early as this year, with major equipment added in 2022, and operations as early as 2023.

Also at Bloomberg, The Verge, and Notebookcheck.

Related: Washington in Talks with Chipmakers about Building U.S. Factories
TSMC Will Build a $12 Billion "5nm" Fab in Arizona

Original Submission

[2021-01-24 16:56:40 UTC: UPDATE 2]

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket at 10:30 ET (1630 UTC). The booster -- its 5th flight -- successfully landed on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. All 143 of the satellites on board were released at their scheduled times. Lastly, both fairing halves were successfully caught by the recovery ships Ms Tree and Ms Chief

[2021-01-23 14:37:05 UTC: UPDATE 1]

Although SpaceX pressed ahead with fueling of the Falcon 9 booster on Saturday morning, the company scrubbed the launch attempt of the Transporter-1 mission a few minutes before the window opened due to weather. Conditions at Cape Canaveral violated the electrical field rule for a safe launch. The company now plans to try to launch again on Sunday morning, with the launch window opening at 10am ET (15:00 UTC).

Original story appears below.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Could we harness energy from black holes?:

A remarkable prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity -- the theory that connects space, time and gravity -- is that rotating black holes have enormous amounts of energy available to be tapped.

[...] [Now] physicists Luca Comisso of Columbia University and Felipe Asenjo of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile have found a new way to extract energy from black holes by breaking and rejoining magnetic field lines near the event horizon, the point at which nothing, not even light, can escape a black hole's gravitational pull.

"Black holes are commonly surrounded by a hot 'soup' of plasma particles that carry a magnetic field," said Comisso. "Our theory shows that when magnetic field lines disconnect and reconnect in just the right way, they can accelerate plasma particles to negative energies, and large amounts of black hole energy can be extracted."

The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded research results could allow astronomers to better estimate the spin of black holes and possibly discover a source of energy for the needs of an advanced civilization, Comisso said.

[...] "Thousands or millions of years from now, humanity might be able to survive around a black hole without harnessing energy from stars," Comisso said. "It is essentially a technological problem. If we look at the physics, there is nothing that prevents it."

Journal Reference:
Luca Comisso, Felipe A. Asenjo. Magnetic reconnection as a mechanism for energy extraction from rotating black holes, Physical Review D (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.103.023014)

Original Submission

TomTheFighter writes:

Mira Furlan has passed away - at the age of 65 - far too young.

Babylon 5 is one of the great stories - top notch writing and acting - and Mira's portrayal of Delenn is memorable.

Good bye and thank you.

Mira Furlan, 'Lost' and 'Babylon 5' actress, dead at 65:

Actress Mira Furlan, best known for her roles in the television series "Lost" and "Babylon 5," has died. She was 65.

Furlan's Twitter account confirmed her passing on Thursday with a photo that included her death date as Jan. 20. It also shared a past quote from Furlan.

"I look at the stars. It's a clear night and the Milky Way seems so near. That's where I'll be going soon. 'We're all star stuff', I suddenly remember Delenn's line from Joe's script. Not a bad prospect. I am not afraid. In the meantime, let me close my eyes and sense the beauty around me. And take that breath under the dark sky full of stars. Breathe in. Breathe out. That's all," the quote reads.

[...] "Very few people knew that side of Mira: the fiery, fearless side that fought ceaselessly for art. She brought all of those traits to Delenn, and in turn I tried to write speeches for her that would allow her to comment on what was happening to her homeland without calling it out by name," Straczynski wrote.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

How Law Enforcement Gets Around Your Smartphone's Encryption:

Lawmakers and law enforcement agencies around the world, including in the United States, have increasingly called for backdoors in the encryption schemes that protect your data, arguing that national security is at stake. But new research indicates governments already have methods and tools that, for better or worse, let them access locked smartphones thanks to weaknesses in the security schemes of Android and iOS.

Cryptographers at Johns Hopkins University used publicly available documentation from Apple and Google as well as their own analysis to assess the robustness of Android and iOS encryption. They also studied more than a decade's worth of reports about which of these mobile security features law enforcement and criminals have previously bypassed, or can currently, using special hacking tools. The researchers have dug into the current mobile privacy state of affairs, and provided technical recommendations for how the two major mobile operating systems can continue to improve their protections.

"It just really shocked me, because I came into this project thinking that these phones are really protecting user data well," says Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green, who oversaw the research. "Now I've come out of the project thinking almost nothing is protected as much as it could be. So why do we need a backdoor for law enforcement when the protections that these phones actually offer are so bad?"

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow639:

Microsoft Details OPSEC, Anti-Forensic Techniques Used by SolarWinds Hackers:

Microsoft on Wednesday released another report detailing the activities and the methods of the threat actor behind the attack on IT management solutions firm SolarWinds, including their malware delivery methods, anti-forensic behavior, and operational security (OPSEC).

The attackers, which some believe to be sponsored by Russia, breached SolarWinds' systems in 2019 and used a piece of malware named Sundrop to insert a backdoor tracked as Sunburst into the company's Orion product. Sunburst was delivered to thousands of organizations, but a few hundred victims that presented an interest to the attackers received several other pieces of malware and many of their systems were compromised using hands-on-keyboard techniques.

In the case of these victims, the hackers used loaders named Teardrop and Raindrop to deliver Cobalt Strike payloads.

In its latest report on the SolarWinds attack, which it tracks as Solorigate, Microsoft explains how the attackers got from the Sunburst malware to the Cobalt Strike loaders, and how they kept the components separated as much as possible to avoid being detected.

"What we found from our hunting exercise across Microsoft 365 Defender data further confirms the high level of skill of the attackers and the painstaking planning of every detail to avoid discovery," Microsoft said.

[...] While many of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) leveraged by the attackers are already documented in the MITRE ATT&CK framework, Microsoft says it's working with MITRE to ensure that the new techniques observed in these attacks will also be added to the framework.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow639:

Hacker leaks full database of 77 million Nitro PDF user records:

A stolen database containing the email addresses, names, and passwords of more than 77 million records of Nitro PDF service users was leaked [on January 20, 2021].

[...] The 14GB leaked database contains 77,159,696 records with users' email addresses, full names, bcrypt hashed passwords, titles, company names, IP addresses, and other system-related information.

The database has also been added to the Have I Been Pwned service which allows users to check if their info has also been compromised in this data breach and leaked on the Internet.

Nitro is an application that helps create, edit, and sign PDFs and digital documents, an app that Nitro Software claims to have over 10,000 business customers and roughly 1.8 million licensed users.

Nitro also provides a cloud service that customers can use to share documents with coworkers or any other organizations involved in the document creation process.

The massive Nitro PDF data breach BleepingComputer first reported last year also impacts many well-known organizations, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Chase, and Citibank.

[...] As malicious actors can use the leaked user details to launch more credible phishing attacks or for credential stuffing, affected Nitro PDF users are strongly advised to change their passwords to a strong, unique password.

Wikipedia info on Nitro PDF.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Saturn’s tilt caused by its moons:

Two scientists from CNRS and Sorbonne University working at the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation (Paris Observatory - PSL/CNRS) have just shown that the influence of Saturn's satellites can explain the tilt of the rotation axis of the gas giant. Their work, published on 18 January 2021 in the journal Nature Astronomy, also predicts that the tilt will increase even further over the next few billion years.

Rather like David versus Goliath, it appears that Saturn’s tilt may in fact be caused by its moons. This is the conclusion of recent work carried out by scientists from the CNRS, Sorbonne University and the University of Pisa, which shows that the current tilt of Saturn’s rotation axis is caused by the migration of its satellites, and especially by that of its largest moon, Titan.

Recent observations have shown that Titan and the other moons are gradually moving away from Saturn much faster than astronomers had previously estimated. By incorporating this increased migration rate into their calculations, the researchers concluded that this process affects the inclination of Saturn’s rotation axis: as its satellites move further away, the planet tilts more and more.

[...] The research team had already reached similar conclusions about the planet Jupiter, which is expected to undergo comparable tilting due to the migration of its four main moons and to resonance with the orbit of Uranus: over the next five billion years, the inclination of Jupiter’s axis could increase from 3° to more than 30°.

Journal References:
1.) Melaine Saillenfest, Giacomo Lari, Gwenaël Boué. The large obliquity of Saturn explained by the fast migration of Titan, Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-01284-x)
2.) Melaine Saillenfest, Giacomo Lari, Ariane Courtot. The future large obliquity of Jupiter [open], Astronomy & Astrophysics (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202038432)

Original Submission

t-3 writes:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full

Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth's ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization (Ceballos et al., 2015; IPBES, 2019; Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020; WWF, 2020). While suggested solutions abound (Díaz et al., 2019), the current scale of their implementation does not match the relentless progression of biodiversity loss (Cumming et al., 2006) and other existential threats tied to the continuous expansion of the human enterprise (Rees, 2020). Time delays between ecological deterioration and socio-economic penalties, as with climate disruption for example (IPCC, 2014), impede recognition of the magnitude of the challenge and timely counteraction needed. In addition, disciplinary specialization and insularity encourage unfamiliarity with the complex adaptive systems (Levin, 1999) in which problems and their potential solutions are embedded (Selby, 2006; Brand and Karvonen, 2007). Widespread ignorance of human behavior (Van Bavel et al., 2020) and the incremental nature of socio-political processes that plan and implement solutions further delay effective action (Shanley and López, 2009; King, 2016).

We summarize the state of the natural world in stark form here to help clarify the gravity of the human predicament. We also outline likely future trends in biodiversity decline (Díaz et al., 2019), climate disruption (Ripple et al., 2020), and human consumption and population growth to demonstrate the near certainty that these problems will worsen over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come. Finally, we discuss the ineffectiveness of current and planned actions that are attempting to address the ominous erosion of Earth's life-support system. Ours is not a call to surrender—we aim to provide leaders with a realistic "cold shower" of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future.

Journal Reference:
Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Paul R. Ehrlich, Andrew Beattie. et al. Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future, Frontiers in Conservation Science [OPEN] (DOI: 10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google threatens to remove its search engine from Australia if new law goes into effect

Google is threatening to pull its search engine from an entire country — Australia — if a proposed law goes into effect that would force Google to pay news publishers for their content.

"If this version of the Code were to become law it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia," Google Australia and New Zealand VP Mel Silva told Australia's Senate Economics Legislation Committee today.

"We have had to conclude after looking at the legislation in detail we do not see a way, with the financial and operational risks, that we could continue to offer a service in Australia," she added, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

The company, which has been lobbying against Australia's plan for months, claims the country is trying to make it pay to show links and snippets to news stories in Google Search, not just for news articles featured in places like Google News, saying it "would set an untenable precedent for our business, and the digital economy" and that it's "not compatible with how search engines work."

Also at TechRadar and CNN.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Bugs in Signal, Facebook, Google chat apps let attackers spy on users:

Vulnerabilities found in multiple video conferencing mobile applications allowed attackers to listen to users' surroundings without permission before the person on the other end picked up the calls.

The logic bugs were found by Google Project Zero security researcher Natalie Silvanovich in the Signal, Google Duo, Facebook Messenger, JioChat, and Mocha messaging apps and are now all fixed.

However, before being patched, they made it possible to force targeted devices to transmit audio to the attackers' devices without the need of gaining code execution.

"I investigated the signalling state machines of seven video conferencing applications and found five vulnerabilities that could allow a caller device to force a callee device to transmit audio or video data," Silvanovich explained.

[...] "The majority of calling state machines I investigated had logic vulnerabilities that allowed audio or video content to be transmitted from the callee to the caller without the callee’s consent," Silvanovich added.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Google parent Alphabet to shut down Loon, its internet-beaming balloon project:

Google parent company Alphabet said Thursday that it's shutting down Loon, a project aimed at beaming down internet connectivity from balloons floating in the stratosphere.

The project was born out of X, Alphabet's self-described moonshot factory for experimental projects, which has also developed the company's driverless car and delivery drone services. Alphabet, however, deemed Loon's business model unsustainable and said it couldn't get costs low enough to continue operation.

"The road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped," Astro Teller, who leads X, said in a blog post. "So we've made the difficult decision to close down Loon."

Loon, which debuted in 2013, was spun out of the X division three years ago. The project was meant to serve rural parts of the world that don't have robust broadband infrastructure, serving as flying cellular towers.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record, NASA Analysis Shows:

Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, the year's globally averaged temperature was 1.84 degrees Fahrenheit (1.02 degrees Celsius) warmer than the baseline 1951-1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. 2020 edged out 2016 by a very small amount, within the margin of error of the analysis, making the years effectively tied for the warmest year on record.

"The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend," said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. "Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important – the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken."

[...] A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 2020 was the second-warmest year in their record, behind 2016. NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis, but have a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology. Unlike NASA, NOAA also does not infer temperatures in polar regions lacking observations, which accounts for much of the difference between NASA and NOAA records.

Like all scientific data, these temperature findings contain a small amount of uncertainty – in this case, mainly due to changes in weather station locations and temperature measurement methods over time. The GISS temperature analysis (GISTEMP) is accurate to within 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit with a 95 percent confidence level for the most recent period.

Stacking Sheets of Tissue Builds Better Lab-Grown Meat

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Stacking sheets of tissue builds better lab-grown meat:

The idea of creating meat by cultivating animal cells rather than from the animal itself is an attractive proposition. Regarded as having a lower environmental impact than raising livestock, cultivated or lab-grown meat also avoids the ethical concerns that many people have about eating meat.

However, cultivating meat isn't like growing mushrooms. Meat is essentially muscle organs, which are a complex assembly of various tissues that have been exercised through the animal's lifetime to produce the right texture, consistency, and taste. In addition, it's not just a matter of what cells are present in the meat, but the ratio and distribution as well. This is why anyone who has eaten a well-marbled beef steak with a high fat content and then a very lean bison steak will certainly be able to tell the difference.

While some food engineers have been able to create cultured meat that resembles minced beef, minute steaks, and chicken nuggets, a greater level of control is needed to give cultured meat the full taste and feel of conventional meat. To put it another way, there needs to be much more control over producing the meat to required specifications.

[...] The method is derived from one that was originally developed to grow tissues for human transplants and involves producing sheets of cells in a nutrient medium, which are then concentrated in paper-thin layers on growth plates. These sheets are then peeled off and stacked or folded together, bonding to one another before the cells die.

As a result, the sheets can not only be stacked up as much as desired to create slabs of meat, but the percentage of fat and degree of marbling can be made to order in much the same way as the fat content of milk is controlled. In addition, the sheets can be cultivated in days and assembled in hours.

Journal Reference:
Alireza Shahin-Shamsabadi, P. Ravi Selvaganapathy. Engineering Murine Adipocytes and Skeletal Muscle Cells in Meat-like Constructs Using Self-Assembled Layer-by-Layer Biofabrication: A Platform for Development of Cultivated Meat, Cells Tissues Organs (DOI: 10.1159/000511764)

Lab-Grown Plant Tissue Could Ease the Environmental Toll of Logging and Agriculture

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Could lab-grown plant tissue ease the environmental toll of logging and agriculture?: