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[Ed note: This is highly summarized; it is well-worth reading the entire article.]

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people:

Marianne Bellotti

[...] As I focus on becoming a better manager of engineers, I have been reflecting more and more on the advice that produced a 10X boost in my abilities at that same stage. More often than not the best advice, the things that stuck with me, came from people who had no background at all in software.

[...] These are five of my favorites.

1. "People like us make our money in the seams of things"

[...] Security and reliability are more likely to go wrong in the seams between components. That means literal integrations, but it also means organization seams. Places where no one is sure who owns what, or who is responsible for what are unlikely to have proper monitoring and much more likely to be two or three upgrades behind. The seams are where things get lost, sometimes for years. So if your mandate is security or availability the seams are your best bet of finding a big pay off.

[...] Often I find it useful to just acknowledge the situation up front: I tend to think in edge cases, but edge cases by definition are unlikely. As a result I tend to bring up a lot of irrelevant things. When you're discussing a problem or situation there are basically three buckets of information: things that are true, things that are false, and things that are true but irrelevant. Having a culture where people are not optimizing to avoid mentioning something true but irrelevant means we make better technical decisions overall because we get the benefit of every teammate's complete perspective.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Chinese cargo craft docks with future space station in orbit:

A Chinese cargo spacecraft carrying equipment and supplies has successfully docked with the core module of the country’s future space station, according to state media.

A Long March 7 rocket carrying the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft – loaded with essentials such as food, equipment and fuel – blasted off late on Saturday from the Wenchang launch site on the tropical southern island of Hainan, the Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The docking with the space station’s Tianhe core module was completed at 5.01am Sunday Beijing time, the agency said, citing the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

China will need to carry out about 10 missions in total to complete assembly of the space station – named Tiangong, meaning “heavenly palace” – in orbit.

The station is expected to become fully operational in 2022. Once completed, it is expected to remain in low Earth orbit for up to 15 years.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

US Soldiers Accidentally Reveal Nuclear Weapon Secrets:

For years, US soldiers stationed at military bases in Europe armed with nuclear weapons were unknowingly sharing secret protocols and details on the bases themselves online.

It turns out that the military personnel were relying on flashcard apps to study and memorize the details of the nuclear weapon systems without realizing that the flashcards of highly confidential information would be available online for anyone to look up, according to a Bellingcat investigation. And the flashcards were shockingly detailed, even going as far as helping soldiers remember which specific vaults within a base contained nuclear weapons and which ones were empty — a shocking oversight for information that’s otherwise kept under lock and key.

“This is yet one more warning that these weapons are not secure,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told Bellingcat.

[...] These flashcard apps appear to reveal a great deal of information. By simply looking up the names of specific bases thought to contain nukes, Bellingcat was able to find details not available elsewhere, including about passwords, security procedures, and even the locations of security cameras and information on the duress signals that soldiers are supposed to say when compromised.

[...] Some of the flashcards dated back to 2013 and as recently as April 2021.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

1947 'alien autopsy' film frame is up for auction as an NFT:

A picture is worth a thousand words, but is a single frame of 16-mm film worth $1 million? That's the opening bid for a negative frame of black-and-white movie footage from 1947, allegedly showing an extraterrestrial corpse on a medical examiner's table.

The frame comes from an infamous and very implausible "alien autopsy" said to have been captured on film in 1947, following reports of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico. Lore surrounding the crash claimed that the made-for-a-movie creature was aboard the UFO and died in the crash; it was then dissected in secrecy by the U.S. government, the tale goes, according to a statement about the auction.

And now, one frame of the autopsy film is up for auction as a non-fungible token, or NFT, which means that the highest bidder will acquire a string of unique code that verifies the film frame's authenticity. The winner will also receive an actual physical frame of the autopsy film, according to the auction listing.

takyon writes:

NASA requests $24.8 billion in 2022, proposes to cancel SOFIA again

NASA released its fiscal year 2022 budget request May 28, asking for $24.8 billion to support a number of new and existing science and exploration programs but also proposing once again to cancel an airborne astronomical observatory.

[...] The $7.93 billion for NASA's science programs is the largest ever, Nelson said, eclipsing the $7.3 billion the agency received in 2021. "The Biden administration is proving that science is back," he said. "The record funding in the science area will help NASA address the climate crisis and advance robotic missions that will pave the way for astronauts to explore the moon and Mars."

[...] NASA's planetary science program, though, would see a larger increase of $500 million to $3.2 billion in 2022. That additional funding would primarily go to a new Mars Sample Return program, with $653.2 million requested for it in the budget. It would also ramp up funding for the development of the Near Earth Object Surveyor mission, a small space telescope to search for potentially hazardous asteroids.

Unlike budget requests during the Trump administration, the fiscal year 2022 budget proposal includes funding for several science missions frequently targeted for cancellation, such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the PACE and CLARREO Pathfinder Earth science missions.

However, as with the 2021 budget request, NASA is proposing to cancel the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a modified Boeing 747 that carries a 2.5-meter telescope to perform observations above much of infrared-absorbing water vapor in the lower atmosphere.

See also: NASA budget goes all-in on science, stays the course on Moon lander

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takyon writes:

U.S. Bill Allocates $30 Million To Help Hong Kong Bypass China's Great Firewall Internet Restrictions

In a piece of legislation currently being considered by the United States Senate, the U.S. government will allocate $30 million to enable Hong Kong residents to bypass China's Great Firewall. While residents of one of the most densely populated and developed cities in the world are not directly surveilled by the firewall, a controversial National Security Law which was enforced last year bred fears that the region's internet regulation policies would come to mirror those in Mainland China, where the Great Firewall restricts access to internet platforms such as Google and Facebook.

[...] The bill, officially dubbed the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA), allocates $30 million in funds starting from the next fiscal year. Its Section 3309 aims to aid in developing technologies and programs for an "open, interoperable, reliable and secure internet" for Hong Kong residents.

It then lists down the objectives that this funding will have to achieve. These objectives include diversifying the portfolio of technologies at the disposal of the U.S. government for combating internet censorship.

AnonTechie writes:

Humans probably can't live longer than 150 years, new research finds:

Science is once again casting doubt on the idea that we could live to be nearly as old as the biblical Methuselah or Mel Brooks' famous 2,000-year-old man.

New research from Singapore-base biotech company Gero looks at how well the human body bounces back from disease, accidents or just about anything else that puts stress on its systems. This basic resilience declines as people age, with an 80-year-old requiring three times as long to recover from stresses as a 40-year-old on average.

[...] Extrapolate this decline further, and human body resilience is completely gone at some age between 120 and 150, according to new analysis performed by the researchers. In other words, at some point your body loses all ability to recover from pretty much any potential stressor. The study's conclusion that the body loses all ability to cope -- or at least to recover -- from stress before age 150 is line with the conclusions of similar studies, including one from last year that pegged the maximum possible human age at 138 years.

The full study [PDF] is published and available to the public in the open journal Nature Communications.

I think that quality of life is much more important than number of years. Would you like to live longer?

Journal References:
1.) Dmitriy I. Podolskiy, Andrei Avanesov, Alexander Tyshkovskiy, et al. The landscape of longevity across phylogeny [$], bioRxiv (DOI: 10.1101/2020.03.17.995993)
2.) Aleksandr Zenin, Yakov Tsepilov, Sodbo Sharapov, et al. Identification of 12 genetic loci associated with human healthspan [open], Communications Biology (DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-0290-0)
3.) Timothy V. Pyrkov, Ilya S. Sokolov, Peter O. Fedichev. Deep longitudinal phenotyping of wearable sensor data reveals independent markers of longevity, stress, and resilience [$], medRxiv (DOI: 10.1101/2020.12.24.20248672)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

A two-year old from California is the youngest American to become a member of Mensa:

Kashe Quest may be a two-year-old but her skills include naming all of the elements on the periodic table, identifying all 50 states by shape and location, learning Spanish and deciphering patterns, according to her parents.

"She has always shown us, more than anything, the propensity to explore her surroundings and to ask the question 'Why,'" Kashe's father Devon Athwal told CNN. "If she doesn't know something, she wants to know what it is and how does it function, and once she learns it, she applies it."

The Athwals said that as soon as Kashe said her first word, her skills developed rapidly. Soon she was speaking in sentences that contained five or more words.

Through their daily observations, it struck the family that their daughter might be advanced for her age.

A 4m15s video on YouTube shows her in action.

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AnonTechie writes:

Three years younger in just eight weeks? A new study suggests yes!:

A groundbreaking clinical trial shows we can reduce biological age (as measured by the Horvath 2013 DNAmAge clock) by more than three years in only eight weeks with diet and lifestyle through balancing DNA methylation.

A first-of-its-kind, peer-reviewed study provides scientific evidence that lifestyle and diet changes can deliver immediate and rapid reduction of our biological age. Since aging is the primary driver of chronic disease, this reduction has the power to help us live better, longer.

The study, released on April 12, utilized a randomized controlled clinical trial conducted among 43 healthy adult males between the ages of 50-72. The 8-week treatment program included diet, sleep, exercise and relaxation guidance, and supplemental probiotics and phytonutrients, resulting in a statistically significant reduction of biological age--over three years younger, compared to controls.

The study was independently conducted by the Helfgott Research Institute, with laboratory assistance from Yale University Center for Genome Analysis, and the results independently analyzed at McGill University and the National University of Natural Medicine.

Journal Reference:
Kara N. Fitzgerald, Romilly Hodges, Douglas Hanes, et al. Potential reversal of epigenetic age using a diet and lifestyle intervention: a pilot randomized clinical trial. Aging, 2021; 13 (7): 9419 DOI: 10.18632/aging.202913

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takyon writes:

Google's 80-acre megacampus will take over a chunk of San Jose - Google does not yet know the cost of the 10- to 30-year construction project

Google has gotten approval to build a "multi-billion dollar megacampus" in San Jose, California, just 10 miles away from the other giant campus the company is building in Mountain View. CNBC reports that city officials approved Google's "Downtown West" project on Tuesday night.

Google's sales pitch describes the development as a "mixed-use urban destination" built around the Diridon Station transit hub. When the project is completed, Google will own an 80-acre chunk of land that will have 7.3 million square feet of office space, 4,000 housing units, 15 acres of "parks, plazas, and green space," and 500,000 square feet dedicated to "retail, cultural, arts, education, hotels and more." One thousand of the 4,000 houses will be designated as "affordable" housing. Google's San Jose development director, Alexa Aren, described the project as "much less the corporate campus" and more like "a resilient neighborhood." It sounds like it's essentially going to be a Google Town that employees can live and work in.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Navy's experimental drone ship passes through Panama Canal:

May 20 (UPI) -- Nomad, an experimental unmanned surface vehicle, passed through the Panama Canal en route to its new home port in California, the Navy confirmed.

USNI News reported that ship spotters had found evidence of the vessel's passage through the Panama Canal using data from MarineTraffic.com, and that a Navy official had confirmed the transit.

The Navy did not provide comment on the transit, but web cameras at the Miraflores locks on the canal showed that Nomad -- a retrofitted offshore patrol vessel -- was heading toward the Pacific as of Tuesday night.

Ship spotters said the Nomad was underway in the Gulf Coast and traveled as far away as Norfolk, Va., for testing.

The real ghost guns!

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mrpg writes:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210514134119.htm

Climate change is exacerbating problems like habitat loss and temperatures swings that have already pushed many animal species to the brink. But can scientists predict which animals will be able to adapt and survive? Using genome sequencing, researchers show that some fish, like the threespine stickleback, can adapt very rapidly to extreme seasonal changes. Their findings could help scientists forecast the evolutionary future of these populations.

Journal Reference:

Alan Garcia‐Elfring, Antoine Paccard, Timothy J. Thurman, Ben A. Wasserman, Eric P. Palkovacs, Andrew P. Hendry, Rowan D. H. Barrett. Using seasonal genomic changes to understand historical adaptation to new environments: Parallel selection on stickleback in highly‐variable estuaries. Molecular Ecology, 2021; 30 (9): 2054 DOI: 10.1111/mec.15879

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for aristarchus:

Lopsided Galaxy NGC 2276:

The magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 2276 looks a bit lopsided in this Hubble Space Telescope snapshot. A bright hub of older yellowish stars normally lies directly in the center of most spiral galaxies. But the bulge in NGC 2276 looks offset to the upper left.

What's going on?

In reality, a neighboring galaxy to the right of NGC 2276 (NGC 2300, not seen here) is gravitationally tugging on its disk of blue stars, pulling the stars on one side of the galaxy outward to distort the galaxy's normal fried-egg appearance.

This sort of "tug of war" between galaxies that pass close enough to feel each other's gravitational pull is not uncommon in the universe. But, like snowflakes, no two close encounters look exactly alike.

In addition, newborn and short-lived massive stars form a bright, blue arm along the upper left edge of NGC 2276. They trace out a lane of intense star formation. This may have been triggered by a prior collision with a dwarf galaxy. It could also be due to NGC 2276 plowing into the superheated gas that lies among galaxies in galaxy clusters. This would compress the gas to precipitate into stars, and trigger a firestorm of starbirth.

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aristarchus writes:

Flying has never been a safe or precise art. Even when it is not on Mars! Latest from the Ingenuity saga, from NASA it's own self.

On the 91st Martian day, or sol, of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter performed its sixth flight. The flight was designed to expand the flight envelope and demonstrate aerial-imaging capabilities by taking stereo images of a region of interest to the west. Ingenuity was commanded to climb to an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) before translating 492 feet (150 meters) to the southwest at a ground speed of 9 mph (4 meters per second). At that point, it was to translate 49 feet (15 meters) to the south while taking images toward the west, then fly another 164 feet (50 meters) northeast and land.

Telemetry from Flight Six shows that the first 150-meter leg of the flight went off without a hitch. But toward the end of that leg, something happened: Ingenuity began adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern. This behavior persisted throughout the rest of the flight. Prior to landing safely, onboard sensors indicated the rotorcraft encountered roll and pitch excursions of more than 20 degrees, large control inputs, and spikes in power consumption.

[...] Approximately 54 seconds into the flight, a glitch occurred in the pipeline of images being delivered by the navigation camera. This glitch caused a single image to be lost, but more importantly, it resulted in all later navigation images being delivered with inaccurate timestamps. From this point on, each time the navigation algorithm performed a correction based on a navigation image, it was operating on the basis of incorrect information about when the image was taken. The resulting inconsistencies significantly degraded the information used to fly the helicopter, leading to estimates being constantly "corrected" to account for phantom errors. Large oscillations ensued.

Large oscillations are better than small ones, if the truth be told. Godspeed, Ingenuity!

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Ohio lawmakers want to abolish vaccine requirements:

[...] Lawmakers are working on legislation to call off the lottery immediately. They're also trying to head off any plans for "vaccine passports." And last month, they introduced a sweeping antivaccination bill that would essentially demolish public health and vaccination requirements in the state—and not just requirements for COVID-19 vaccines, requirements for any vaccine.

[...] State Rep. Beth Liston (D-Dublin) blasted the bill, telling The Columbus Dispatch, "Not only would it prevent schools, businesses and communities from putting safety measures in pace related to COVID, it will impact the health of our children... This bill applies to all vaccines—polio, measles, meningitis, etc. If it becomes law we will see worsening measles outbreaks, meningitis in the dorms, and children once again suffering from polio."

[...] "At its core, this proposal would destroy our current public health framework that prevents outbreaks of potentially lethal diseases, threatens the stability of our economy as it recovers from a devastating pandemic and jeopardizes the way we live, learn, work and celebrate life," the letter said.

[...] "HB 248 would put all Ohioans at risk while increasing the cost of health care for families, individuals and businesses," spokesperson Dan Williamson said. "This proposal applies to all immunizations, including childhood vaccines. If passed, this legislation could reverse decades of immunity from life-threatening, but vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, hepatitis, meningitis and tuberculosis."

Also: Ohio GOP lawmakers, citing 'need to protect' from vaccines, seek to expand exemptions, nix COVID passports

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