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canopic jug writes:

Monday is the 75^th annivesary of the introduction of the ENIAC, which is regarded the first general-purpose, fully electronic computer. The original six programmers, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances "Betty" Snyder Holberton, Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence worked with a physical interface of switches and wires to implement programs they designed on paper. The process of rewiring the machine could take days. The purpose was mainly to calculate ballistic tables.

On February 15, 1946, the Army revealed the existence of ENIAC to the public. In a special ceremony, the Army introduced ENIAC and its hardware inventors Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. The presentation featured its trajectory ballistics program, operating at a speed thousands of time faster than any prior calculations. The ENIAC women's program worked perfectly - and conveyed the immense calculating power of ENIAC and its ability to tackle the millennium problems that had previously taken a man 100 years to do. It calculated the trajectory of a shell that took 30 seconds to trace it. But, it took ENIAC only 20 seconds to calculate it - faster than a speeding bullet! Indeed!

Work on constructing the ENIAC went from 1943 to 1946.

When the United States entered World War II, the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania undertook the building of an electronic computing machine for the Ballistic Research Laboratory. The principal designers were J. Presper Eckert, an electrical engineer at the Moore School, and John Mauchly, a physicist who had become interested in calculating devices from his efforts to apply statistical methods to meteorological data. Eckert and Mauchly designed the machine to compute ballistic tables, but recognized that it could be applied to a very wide range of problems.

ENIAC contained 20 electronic accumulators, each of which could store a 10-digit decimal number. Its logic circuits were also electronic. The sequence of operations was set by the placement of patchcords in plugboards. ENIAC also had read-only memory of about 300 numbers, which were entered by turning switches. An IBM card reader and an IBM cardpunch provided input and output. All together there were 18,000 tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1500 relays, and 6000 manual switches. This equipment consumed 140 kW of power and filled a room 20 feet by 40 feet.

Previously:
(2017) Software Engineers Are the Heroes of New Computer History Museum Exhibit

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Microsoft's Big Win in Quantum Computing Was an 'Error' After All:

Dutch physicist and Microsoft employee Leo Kouwenhoven published headline-grabbing new evidence that he had observed an elusive particle called a Majorana fermion.

Microsoft hoped to harness Majorana particles to build a quantum computer, which promises unprecedented power by tapping quirky physics. Rivals IBM and Google had already built impressive prototypes using more established technology. Kouwenhoven's discovery buoyed Microsoft's chance to catch up. The company's director of quantum computing business development, Julie Love, told the BBC that Microsoft would have a commercial quantum computer "within five years."

Three years later, Microsoft's 2018 physics fillip has fizzled. Late last month, Kouwenhoven and his 21 coauthors released a new paper including more data from their experiments. It concludes that they did not find the prized particle after all. An attached note from the authors said the original paper, in the prestigious journal Nature, would be retracted, citing "technical errors."

Two physicists in the field say extra data Kouwenhoven's group provided them after they questioned the 2018 results shows the team had originally excluded data points that undermined its news-making claims. "I don't know for sure what was in their heads," says Sergey Frolov, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, "but they skipped some data that contradicts directly what was in the paper. From the fuller data, there's no doubt that there's no Majorana."

Journal Reference:
Zhang, Hao, de Moor, Michiel W. A., Bommer, Jouri D. S., et al. Large zero-bias peaks in InSb-Al hybrid semiconductor-superconductor nanowire devices, (DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.11456)

Original Submission

MrPlow wrote in with a submission for Fnord666.

It reverses a landmark victory for privacy advocates.

Border Agents Can Search Phones Freely Under New Circuit Court Ruling - The Verge:

A US appeals court has ruled that Customs and Border Protection agents can conduct in-depth searches of phones and laptops, overturning an earlier legal victory for civil liberties groups. First Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch declared that both basic and "advanced" searches, which include reviewing and copying data without a warrant, fall within "permissible constitutional grounds" at the American border.

Lynch ruled against a group of US citizens and residents objecting to invasive searches of their electronic devices.

[...] A district court declared that CBP searches violated the Fourth Amendment by not requiring "reasonable suspicion" that the devices contained contraband. Lynch disagreed. "Electronic device searches do not fit neatly into other categories of property searches, but the bottom line is that basic border searches of electronic devices do not involve an intrusive search of a person," she wrote. That lowers the bar for conducting them at the border, where the government's interest in security is "at its zenith."

Appeals courts have issued conflicting opinions on how electronic devices fall under the "border search exception," a rule allowing warrantless searches that might otherwise be unconstitutional. [...] The exception is primarily intended for finding contraband or unauthorized entrants, but it applies to federal agents working within 100 miles of the US border — an area that covers most metropolitan areas.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Sea salt embedded in the dusty surface of Mars and lofted into the planet’s atmosphere has led to the discovery of hydrogen chloride – the first time the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has detected a new gas. The spacecraft is also providing new information about how Mars is losing its water.

A major quest in Mars exploration is hunting for atmospheric gases linked to biological or geological activity, as well as understanding the past and present water inventory of the planet, to determine if Mars could ever have been habitable and if any water reservoirs could be accessible for future human exploration. Two new results from the ExoMars team published today in Science Advances unveil an entirely new class of chemistry and provide further insights into seasonal changes and surface-atmosphere interactions as driving forces behind the new observations.

AnonTechie writes:

Is China trying to make its own version of Captain America? US intelligence has suggested so. But beyond the hype, the possibility of a super soldier is not so outlandish and one that not just China is interested in. With deep pockets, and a desire to get an edge, the world's militaries have often driven technological innovation, from the state-of-the-art to the humble.

[...] Exoskeletons are just one of the promising technologies militaries are exploring to enhance their soldiers. Enhancement is nothing new - since ancient times, troops have been bolstered by advancements in weaponry, kit and training. But today, enhancement could mean much more than merely giving an individual soldier a better gun. It could mean altering the individual soldier.

"One may imagine that a man can create a man with some given characteristics, not only theoretically but also practically. He can be a genius mathematician, a brilliant musician or a soldier, a man who can fight without fear, compassion, regret or pain."
Last year, the former US Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Ratcliffe, went further with a blunt accusation against China. "China has even conducted human testing on members of the People's Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities. There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing's pursuit of power," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. China called the article a "miscellany of lies".

Astronomers Confirm Solar System's Most Distant Known Object Is Indeed Farfarout

martyb writes:

Astronomers Confirm Solar System's Most Distant Known Object Is Indeed Farfarout:

With the help of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab, and other ground-based telescopes, astronomers have confirmed that a faint object discovered in 2018 and nicknamed "Farfarout" is indeed the most distant object yet found in our Solar System. The object has just received its designation from the International Astronomical Union.

Farfarout was first spotted in January 2018 by the Subaru Telescope, located on Maunakea in Hawai'i. Its discoverers could tell it was very far away, but they weren't sure exactly how far. They needed more observations.

"At that time we did not know the object's orbit as we only had the Subaru discovery observations over 24 hours, but it takes years of observations to get an object's orbit around the Sun," explained co-discoverer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science. "All we knew was that the object appeared to be very distant at the time of discovery."

Sheppard and his colleagues, David Tholen of the University of Hawai'i and Chad Trujillo of Northern Arizona University, spent the next few years tracking the object with the Gemini North telescope (also on Maunakea in Hawai'i) and the Carnegie Institution for Science's Magellan Telescopes in Chile to determine its orbit. [1] They have now confirmed that Farfarout currently lies 132 astronomical units (au) from the Sun, which is 132 times farther from the Sun than Earth is. (For comparison, Pluto is 39 au from the Sun, on average.)

Farfarout is even more remote than the previous Solar System distance record-holder, which was discovered by the same team and nicknamed "Farout." Provisionally designated 2018 VG18, Farout is 124 au from the Sun.

However, the orbit of Farfarout is quite elongated, taking it 175 au from the Sun at its farthest point and around 27 au at its closest, which is inside the orbit of Neptune. Because its orbit crosses Neptune's, Farfarout could provide insights into the history of the outer Solar System.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

United Airlines plans to buy 200 flying electric taxis that it hopes will fly passengers to the airport within the next five years.

The US airline is one of the first major carriers to commit to the purchase of flying taxis.

[...] United and Mesa said they predict using the taxis to fly passengers over congested highways to hub airports.

California-based Archer says the taxis will be capable of flying a distance of 60 miles (95km) at 150 miles an hour (240km/h) and could nearly halve carbon dioxide emissions for passengers travelling to the airport.

"With the right technology, we can curb the impact aircraft have on the planet, but we have to identify the next generation of companies who will make this a reality early and find ways to help them get off the ground," United Airlines chief executive Scott Kirby said in a statement.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Breached water plant employees used the same TeamViewer password and no firewall:

The Florida water treatment facility whose computer system experienced a potentially hazardous computer breach last week used an unsupported version of Windows with no firewall and shared the same TeamViewer password among its employees, government officials have reported.

After gaining remote access [...] the unknown intruder increased the amount of sodium hydroxide—a caustic chemical better known as lye—by a factor of 100. The tampering could have caused severe sickness or death had it not been for safeguards the city has in place.

According to an advisory from the state of Massachusetts, employees with the Oldsmar facility used a computer running Windows 7 to remotely access plant controls known as a SCADA—short for “supervisory control and data acquisition”—system. What’s more, the computer had no firewall installed and used a password that was shared among employees for remotely logging in to city systems with the TeamViewer application.

Massachusetts officials wrote:

The unidentified actors accessed the water treatment plant’s SCADA controls via remote access software, TeamViewer, which was installed on one of several computers the water treatment plant personnel used to conduct system status checks and to respond to alarms or any other issues that arose during the water treatment process. All computers used by water plant personnel were connected to the SCADA system and used the 32-bit version of the Windows 7 operating system. Further, all computers shared the same password for remote access and appeared to be connected directly to the Internet without any type of firewall protection installed.

[....] The revelations illustrate the lack of security rigor found inside many critical infrastructure environments.

It was a 32-bit computer; so they wisely had Windows 7 instead of XP.

See also:
recent SoylentNews article about this, attempt to poison the water supply of residents in Oldsmar, Forida.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Pigs show potential for 'remarkable' level of behavioral, mental flexibility in new study

Pigs will probably never be able to fly, but new research is revealing that some species within the genus Sus may possess a remarkable level of behavioral and mental flexibility. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology [open, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.631755] [DX] tested the ability of four pigs to play a simple joystick-enabled video game. Each animal demonstrated some conceptual understanding despite limited dexterity on tasks normally given to non-human primates to analyze intelligence.

The study involved two Yorkshire pigs named Hamlet and Omelette, and two Panepinto micro pigs, Ebony and Ivory. All four animals were trained to approach and manipulate a joystick with their snouts in front of a computer monitor during the first phase of the experiment. They were then taught how to play a video game in which the goal was to move a cursor using the joystick toward up to four target walls on the screen.

Each pig performed the tasks well above chance, indicating the animal understood that the movement of the joystick was connected to the cursor on the computer screen. The fact that these far-sighted animals with no opposable thumbs could succeed at the task is "remarkable," according to the researchers.

Also at The Guardian, Gizmodo, and TechRaptor.

Hat tip to The Mighty Buzzard for his submission which gave us the TechRaptor link!)

Journal Reference:
Candace C. Croney, Sarah T. Boysen. Acquisition of a Joystick-Operated Video Task by Pigs (Sus scrofa), Frontiers in Psychology (DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.631755)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nvidia's US$40 billion deal to buy Arm is all but dead – it's a classic example of geopolitics killing innovation

Under normal circumstances, US tech giant Nvidia's takeover of British chip designer Arm for US$40 billion (£29 billion) would have sailed through without registering beyond the computing industry. Instead, it has made international headlines, with UK and EU monopolies regulators launching an in-depth investigation after outcry from competitors.

In effect, the deal is pretty much dead before it starts. At the heart of this lies a row about technological sovereignty. So what is going on?

[...] The biggest pushback, behind the scenes, actually appears to be from China. Ever since the US blacklisted Huawei and other semiconductor manufacturers in China, Beijing has been obsessed with becoming technically "self-sufficient".

While it works towards this goal, Arm has continued to license its chip architectures to Huawei. Arm claims that its chip technology is of British origin and therefore does not breach the US restrictions on exporting tech to a group of blacklisted Chinese companies. Thanks to this ongoing arrangement, Arm is one of the remaining enablers for China's semiconductor sector to keep pace with the outside world.

See also: ANALYSIS-Nvidia acquisition of Arm throws company into tech spat between U.S. and China

Previously: Nvidia Announces $40 Billion Acquisition of Arm Holdings
Nvidia-Branded ARM CPUs; UK Trade Union Speaks Out Against Deal

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel sues Oregon engineer who left for Microsoft, allegedly taking trade secrets with him

Intel sued a former Oregon employee Friday, alleging he took trade secrets with him when he bolted for Microsoft and used the information to gain an advantage in subsequent business negotiations with Intel.

The engineer, Varun Gupta, worked for Intel for a decade before leaving for Microsoft in January 2020, according to the suit. He allegedly loaded Intel trade secrets onto two USB drives before quitting and later accessed them on his Microsoft-issued laptop.

[...] [The] litigation indicates Intel and Microsoft worked together to investigate the incident.

Intel's complaint claims that Gupta had denied knowing where the one of the USB drives was, but later turned it over to Microsoft for analysis. He claimed to have discarded a second USB drive that allegedly contained Intel secrets, according to the litigation.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers in Southampton and San Francisco have developed the first compact 3D LiDAR imaging system that can match and exceed the performance and accuracy of most advanced, mechanical systems currently used.

3D LiDAR can provide accurate imaging and mapping for many applications; it is the "eyes" for autonomous cars and is used in facial recognition software and by autonomous robots and drones. Accurate imaging is essential for machines to map and interact with the physical world but the size and costs of the technology currently needed has limited LIDAR's use in commercial applications.

Now a team of researchers from Pointcloud Inc in San Francisco and the University of Southampton's Optoelectronic Research Centre (ORC) have developed a new, integrated system, which uses silicon photonic components and CMOS electronic circuits in the same microchip. The prototype they have developed would be a low-cost solution and could pave the way to large volume production of low-cost, compact and high-performance 3D imaging cameras for use in robotics, autonomous navigation systems, mapping of building sites to increase safety and in healthcare.

[...] The latest tests of the prototype, published in the journal Nature, show that it has an accuracy of 3.1 millimetres at a distance of 75 metres.

Amongst the problems faced by previous integrated systems are the difficulties in providing a dense array of pixels that can be easily addressed; this has restricted them to fewer than 20 pixels whereas this new system is the first large-scale 2D coherent detector array consisting of 512 pixels. The research teams are now working to extend the pixels arrays and the beam steering technology to make the system even better suited to real-world applications and further improve performance.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Fantastical News Everyone! Remember an earlier SN article about CELLMATE, a male chastity device that got hacked and would not unlock your hardware? Well, now the maker of that IoT device says it's now totally safe to put your equipment into their device once again! They promise! This time for sure! Nothing could go wrong!

Chastity Penis Lock Company That Was Hacked Says It's Now Totally Safe To Put Your Penis Back In That Chastity Lock

While we've covered the Internet of Broken Things for some time, where companies fail to secure the devices they sell which connect to the internet, the entire genre sort of jumped the shark in October of last year. That's when Qiui, a Chinese company, was found to have sold a penis chastity lock that communicates with an API that was wide open and sans any password protection. The end result is that users of a device that locks up their private parts could enjoy those private parts entirely at the pleasure of nefarious third parties. Qiui pushed out a fix to the API... but didn't do so for existing users, only new devices. Why? Well, the company stated that pushing it out to existing devices would again cause them to all lock up, with no override available. Understandably, there wasn't a whole lot of interest in the company's devices at that point.

But fear not, target market for penis chastity locks! Qiui says it's now totally safe to use the product again!

Since this device uses a proprietary API, there is still the issue of Vendor Lock In to be concerned about.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55975052

South Africa has put its rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on hold after a study showed "disappointing" results against its new Covid variant.

Scientists say the variant accounts for 90% of new Covid cases in South Africa.

The trial, involving some 2,000 people, found that the vaccine offered "minimal protection" against mild and moderate cases.

(Submitter's Note: it's worth pointing out that mild and moderate cases are the less important things to prevent against. The big thing is to prevent severe cases. So even if this proves true, it may not be a huge deal.)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/army-builds-wideband-dc-to-20-ghz-quantum-receiver/

Back in July 2019 we posted about a new development in radio technology known as "Atomic Radio" or "Quantum Radio". In that post we discussed an article that explained the concept and science behind the idea and noted how some researchers described the possibility of a very wideband capable receiver.

Recently the US Army has described how they built a quantum radio that can receive from DC to 20 GHz. If you're interested in the science, the paper is published in the Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics and it is available on sci-hub. The radio uses something called a Rydberg sensor which they describe below.

Journal Reference:
David H Meyer et al, Assessment of Rydberg atoms for wideband electric field sensing 2020 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys, https://sci-hub.se/10.1088/1361-6455/ab6051

Original Submission