SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Tesla is recalling over 475,000 Model 3 and Model S vehicles:

Tesla is recalling over 475,000 of its vehicles because of a pair of safety issues. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 356,309 Tesla Model 3s covering model years 2017-2020 are being recalled due to problems with the rearview cameras. The 2017-2020 Model S is the other target with 119,009 of those BEVs due to a problem with the front hood latch.

[...] Owners of the affected vehicles will receive notification letters by the end of February, according to the NHTSA.

I almost hesitate to ask, but do we have any Tesla owners/drivers in our community?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Plans To Capture Co2 From Coal Plants Wasted Federal Dollars, Watchdog Says - The Verge:

The Biden administration wants to shove more money into projects that are supposed to capture CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities before they can escape and heat up the planet. But carbon capture technologies that the Department of Energy has already supported in the name of tackling climate change have mostly fallen flat, according to a recent report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office.

About $1.1 billion has flowed from the Department of Energy to carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects since 2009. Had they panned out, nine coal plants and industrial facilities would have been outfitted with devices that scrub most of the CO2 out of their emissions. Once captured, the CO2 can be sent via pipelines to underground storage in geologic formations.

That's not what happened. The DOE doled out $684 million to coal[sic] six coal plants, but only one of them actually got built and started operating before shuttering in 2020. Of the three separate industrial facilities that received $438 million, just two got off the ground. Without more accountability, "DOE may risk expending significant taxpayer funds on CCS demonstrations that have little likelihood of success," the GAO says.

To stop that from happening, the GAO says there ought to be more congressional oversight of DOE-funded demonstration projects. The GAO report also recommends that the DOE do a better job of choosing which projects to fund and that the DOE should establish more consistent "scopes, schedules, and budgets" for projects.

takyon writes:

Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times, prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C and Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS, and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 in some IoT boards.

We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 got delayed by another year, although it's getting really close with the first board expected in H1 2022. I promise! The company still introduced the RK3566 and RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processors with plenty of I/O for AIoT use cases. There was less to announce on Amlogic side with [the] S908X processor still being very elusive (or has it been canceled?), but we still got news of [an] Amlogic A311D2 octa-core Cortex-A73/A53processor be found next year in the upcoming Khadas VIM4 single board computer. Allwinner hasn't released any really interesting [Arm] processors in the last couple of years, and 2021 was not different.

Instead, the most exciting announcement from Allwinner was their RISC-V processor namely [the] Allwinner D1 and D1s/F133, the first affordable RISC-V Linux processors found in boards such as Nezha and Lichee RV. In other RISC-V news, higher-end RISC-V cores were announced like the StarFive Dubhe (Cortex-A75 like) and SiFive Performance P650 (Cortex-A77 like) and should start to be found in new SoCs in 2022 or 2023. Espressif launched the ESP32-C3 WiFi & BLE SoC, announced the ESP32-H2 with BLE 5.2, ZIgbee and Thread connectivity, and we got announcements for a wider variety of RISC-V microcontroller or processors for televisions, the automotive market, the Smart Home with more Bluetooth LE 5.3 and Zigbee MCU, as well as artificial intelligence, and more.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

CES 2022 attendees scale back plans but keep plane tickets as Lenovo, T-Mobile, Twitter and Meta back out:

IT professionals with in-person tickets for CES 2022 are holding onto plans to attend as big tech companies scrap Las Vegas appearances. T-Mobile canceled its CES 2022 keynote earlier this week and Lenovo is keeping its team at home too. Amazon, AT&T, Meta and TikTok also have decided against in-person attendance.

Individual attendees with speaking plans and networking events are keeping their plane tickets for Las Vegas for now, while keeping an eye on case rates. The Omicron variant is pushing case numbers higher than the peak of Delta cases with the US hitting 267,305 cases on Tuesday, December 28. Cases reached 165,000 on Sept. 1. Cases are up 65% in the Las Vegas area as well. The vaccination rate is 53% in that part of the country.

Intel and self-driving car company Waymo also decided to move to a virtual-only CES 2022 late last week. P&G changed its plans on Tuesday and will be hosting its CES activities in its PGLifeLab. Google, Microsoft, AMD, HP, Nvidia and Intel also have cancelled plans for in-person attendance.

Is anybody in our community planning to go?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Elon Musk rejects claims his satellites are squeezing out rivals in space:

Elon Musk has hit back at criticism that his company's Starlink satellites are hogging too much room in space, and has instead argued there could be room for "tens of billions" of spacecraft in orbits close to Earth.

"Space is just extremely enormous, and satellites are very tiny," Musk said. "This is not some situation where we're effectively blocking others in any way. We've not blocked anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect to."

His comments, made in an interview with the Financial Times, came in response to a claim from Josef Aschbacher, head of the European Space Agency, that Musk was "making the rules" for the new commercial space economy. Speaking to the FT earlier this month, Aschbacher warned that Musk's rush to launch thousands of communications satellites would leave fewer radio frequencies and orbital slots available for everyone else.

[...] Rejecting suggestions he was "squeezing out" future satellite competitors, Musk compared the number of satellites in low Earth orbit to what he said were 2 billion cars and trucks on Earth. Each orbital "shell" around the Earth is larger than the planet's surface, he said, with an additional shell every 10 meters or so further out into space.

upstart writes:

Researchers offer future 6G network concept:

With commercial 5G rapidly deploying, researchers have begun to look at 6G. Its key technologies for mobile communication networks are expected to become available as early as 2023, with 6G networks emerging in 2030, according to Saad et al. Compared to 5G, the 6G network will increase data rates by over 100 times, to one terabyte per second or more, enabling the inclusion of edge intelligent devices and computing. To move large amounts of data to where and when it is needed, 6G networks will need to customize services to meet demands, transmit valued data, and interact with users.

To meet these requirements, the paper offers a "mailbox theory" that envisions a 6G network characterized as a:

• Distributed Intelligent Network [...]
• Proactive Interactive Network [...]
• Cognitive Information Transmission [...]

Journal Reference:
Yixue Hao, Yiming Miao, Min Chen, et al. 6G Cognitive Information Theory: A Mailbox Perspective, Big Data and Cognitive Computing BDCC (2021) [open] (DOI: 10.3390/bdcc5040056)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Drone flight trials in Poland bring EU-wide urban air mobility a step closer:

An initial series of test flights with drones has been launched in Poland as part of the EU-funded Uspace4UAM project. The first of these trials is now underway in Rzeszów, a city of close to 200,000 people.

The test flights are being carried out by three Uspace4UAM consortium members: Dronehub, the developer of drone-in-a-box systems for automated monitoring and data collection; drone equipment and sensor supplier Honeywell; and drone software technology company Altitude Angel. About 160 flights will be carried out in the Rzeszów area during the first phase, under 3 scenarios of autonomous drones flying for public service missions. The first scenario will involve emergency aerial monitoring of accident sites, the second will take ortho- and photogrammetric photos for public institutions, and the third will replicate the transportation of automated external defibrillators for use in life-threatening situations.

"Dronehub demos within Uspace4UAM started in November 2021, and we will end in June 2022. During this time, amongst other objectives, we will check how drones react to different and rapidly changing weather conditions," states test flight project manager Jakub Węglarz of Dronehub in a news item posted on the SESAR Joint Undertaking website. The SESAR Joint Undertaking—which is funding Uspace4UAM—is a partnership between European private and public sector institutions formed to speed up the delivery of smarter, connected, accessible and more sustainable air transport solutions through research and innovation.

upstart writes:

China's Xi'an lockdown hits some of the world's largest chipmakers:

Two of the world's biggest chipmakers are warning that Covid-19 outbreaks and stringent lockdowns in a major Chinese industrial hub are hampering their operations.

Samsung and Micron said this week that they've had to adjust operations in the northwestern city of Xi'an, which is experiencing one of China's worst community outbreaks of the coronavirus pandemic. Authorities have responded by enacting sweeping measures with an intensity and on a scale rarely seen since Wuhan, the pandemic's original epicenter.

[...] Samsung said Wednesday that it had to "temporarily adjust operations" in Xi'an.

[...] According to the Korea Economic Daily, output in the city accounts for over 40% of Samsung's total global production of NAND memory chips, a product found in smartphones, tablets and hard drives.

[...] American chipmaker Micron also said Wednesday that Xi'an's lockdown could impact the production of its DRAM memory chips, which are used in computers, as the company has had to reduce its workforce at the site.

[...] Xi'an, an ancient city in Shaanxi province, has reported 1,117 total cases in the latest outbreak. It rolled out city-wide testing and placed its 13 million residents under a strict lockdown last week, closing schools, public venues and transportation. The lockdown is China's largest since Wuhan, which sealed off 11 million people.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Mexico's central bank to launch digital currency by 2024:

Mexico's central bank will have its digital currency by 2024, the Mexican government announced on social media, although the development was not confirmed by the monetary authority, known locally as Banxico. "Banxico reports that it will have its own digital currency in circulation by 2024," the Mexican government wrote late on Wednesday on its official Twitter account.

[...] But a senior central bank source, who requested anonymity, told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that the government announcement was "not official."

[...] Mexico's central bank is legally independent of the government.

[...] "The project has among its objectives the opening of accounts for the registration of a digital currency for both banked and unbanked people, thereby contributing to financial inclusion," the report added.

Several central banks worldwide are exploring the launch of digital currencies, concerned that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could weaken government control of monetary policy.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

University Loses Valuable Supercomputer Research After Backup Error Wipes 77 Terabytes of Data:

Kyoto University, a top research institute in Japan, recently lost a whole bunch of research after its supercomputer system accidentally wiped out a whopping 77 terabytes of data during what was supposed to be a routine backup procedure.

That malfunction, which occurred sometime between Dec. 14 and Dec. 16, erased approximately 34 million files belonging to 14 different research groups that had been using the school's supercomputing system. The university operates Hewlett Packard Cray computing systems and a DataDirect ExaScaler storage system—the likes of which can be utilized by research teams for various purposes.

It's unclear what kind of files were specifically deleted or what caused the actual malfunction, though the school has said that the work of at least four different groups will not be able to be restored.

Also at BleepingComputer.

Original announcement from the university.

Original Submission

Happy New Year!
As the final hours of 2021 here's wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

In light of the holiday, I am inviting the editorial staff to post stories on a weekend/holiday schedule. Thank you for all your hard work in 2021. Here's wishing for a better year to come! Enjoy!

We did it! [*]
([*] I think).

Current Status:
Thanks to a VERY generous subscription of nearly $1,000, we reached our fundraising goal for the second half of the year THANK YOU!: $4,132.81 on a goal of $3,500.00 (all amounts are estimates):

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

mysql>  SELECT  SUM(payment_net) AS Net,  100.0 * SUM(payment_net) / 3500.00  AS GoalPercent, MAX(ts), MAX(spid), NOW() FROM subscribe_payments WHERE ts > '2021-06-30' ;
+---------+-------------+---------------------+-----------+---------------------+
| Net     | GoalPercent | MAX(ts)             | MAX(spid) | NOW()               |
+---------+-------------+---------------------+-----------+---------------------+
| 4132.81 | 118.0802857 | 2021-12-30 17:36:36 |      1744 | 2021-12-30 23:45:49 |
+---------+-------------+---------------------+-----------+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

And for those of you interested in the details:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

mysql> SELECT spid, ts, payment_gross, payment_net, payment_type FROM subscribe_payments WHERE ts > '2021-12-29 22:06:03' AND payment_gross > 0 ORDER BY ts ;
+------+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------------+
| spid | ts                  | payment_gross | payment_net | payment_type |
+------+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------------+
| 1728 | 2021-12-29 23:16:21 |         20.00 |       18.81 | user         |
| 1729 | 2021-12-30 00:15:05 |        100.00 |       96.80 | user         |
| 1730 | 2021-12-30 01:08:02 |         20.00 |       19.12 | user         |
| 1731 | 2021-12-30 01:13:58 |         30.00 |       28.01 | user         |
| 1732 | 2021-12-30 01:45:50 |         50.00 |       48.25 | user         |
| 1733 | 2021-12-30 02:35:54 |         40.00 |       38.54 | user         |
| 1734 | 2021-12-30 03:12:48 |         20.00 |       18.81 | user         |
| 1735 | 2021-12-30 04:24:07 |        924.43 |      897.32 | user         |
| 1736 | 2021-12-30 07:05:37 |         20.00 |       18.51 | user         |
| 1737 | 2021-12-30 07:50:05 |         20.00 |       18.51 | gift         |
| 1738 | 2021-12-30 09:23:14 |         20.00 |       19.12 | gift         |
| 1739 | 2021-12-30 12:22:42 |         20.00 |       18.51 | user         |
| 1740 | 2021-12-30 12:24:24 |         20.00 |       18.81 | user         |
| 1741 | 2021-12-30 13:59:52 |         40.00 |       38.11 | user         |
| 1742 | 2021-12-30 17:33:36 |         20.00 |       19.12 | gift         |
| 1743 | 2021-12-30 17:35:13 |         20.00 |       19.12 | gift         |
| 1744 | 2021-12-30 17:36:36 |         20.00 |       19.12 | gift         |
+------+---------------------+---------------+-------------+--------------+
17 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

That's great news! So why the equivocation?

Looking Closer:
Actually, it's more of a stepping back to look at things over the course of the entire year:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

mysql> SELECT SUM(payment_gross) AS Gross, SUM(payment_net) AS Net, ts, max(spid) AS SPID FROM subscribe_payments WHERE ts > '2020-12-31' ;
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
| Gross   | Net     | ts                  | SPID |
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
| 6916.61 | 6611.75 | 2020-12-31 21:47:25 | 1744 |
+---------+---------+---------------------+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

The fundraising goal for the first half of the year was also $3,500.00. So... (2 x $3,500.00) is $7,000.00 but we have a total of... $6,916.61?

The Crash:
And then I remembered. Early this year we had a server (fluorine) crash. We had backups (yay!), but they were borken (Boo! Hiss!). We lost over a day's worth of activity, including a number of subscriptions. I *was* able to manually reconstruct people's subscriptions (time) based on information displayed on a window I just happened to have open at the time. But that was in a table separate from what is used to generate these numbers. After 3 days' effort, I'd patched things up as well as I could. Thankfully the official numbers (on which income and taxes are calculated) are kept on a completely separate server. Whew! One that I DO NOT have access. I'd concluded that we'll just have to sort things out at the end of the year. And that time has draw nigh.

tl;dr:
We're probably all set for the year, but there is also the matter that (unknown to me) we had previously been running at a deficit for a couple years. So anything additional you can contribute will go to replenish our funding base. (NCommander and Matt_ each put up $5,000.00 of their own money that to get us started.)

upstart writes:

For mammals, eating other animals can increase cancer risk:

Cancer is a sad fact of life, as nearly 40 percent of people are diagnosed with it at some point in their lives. But humans aren't alone in this. Many different species can also develop the disease—some more often than others. By studying these species and their habits and natural defenses (or lack thereof), we can learn new ways to combat the disease.

New research that involves a comprehensive survey of cancer shows that many mammals can indeed get cancer. To gain insight into this, the team looked at records for 110,148 animals from 191 species that died in zoos. The data came from Species360, an international non-profit that collects and unifies this kind of data from zoos across the world, according to Orsolya Vincze, a research fellow at the Centre for Ecological Research in Hungary and one of the paper's authors.

Using the data gathered by the organization, the research team could "collect information on what the animals died of," she told Ars.

[...] Carnivores, however, were particularly prone to cancer. Within the dataset, more than a quarter of clouded leopards, bat-eared foxes, and red wolves died of cancer, for instance. According to Vincze, there are some hypotheses surrounding why this might be the case.

Journal Reference:
Orsolya Vincze, Fernando Colchero, Jean-Francois Lemaître, et al. Cancer risk across mammals [open], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04224-5)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

China upset about needing to dodge SpaceX Starlink satellites:

Earlier in December, the Chinese government filed a document with the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space at the United Nations. The body helps manage the terms of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, more commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty. In the document, China alleges that it had to move its space station twice this year due to potential collisions with Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX.

The document pointedly notes that signatories of the treaty, which include the US, are responsible for the actions of any nongovernmental activities based within their borders.

The document was filed back on December 6, but it only came to light recently when Chinese Internet users became aware of it and started flaming Elon Musk, head of SpaceX.

The document starts out with an impossibly formal 110-word-long sentence that notes the Outer Space Treaty obliges its signatories to inform other nations when they discover any phenomena in space that could pose a risk to astronauts. It then indicates that China has identified such a threat: Starlink satellites.

upstart writes:

Intel to invest $7.1B in Malaysia chipmaking expansion:

Intel said it will invest 30 billion ringgit ($7.1 billion) to expand its manufacturing operation in Malaysia as chipmakers work to diversify their global supply chains that were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. semiconductor company is no stranger to Malaysia, where it built its first offshore assembly plant in Penang in 1972.

[...] the new investment will expand the operations of its Malaysian subsidiary across Penang and Kulim, creating more than 4,000 new Intel jobs and more than 5,000 local construction jobs. That's on top of 13,000 people that Intel already employs in Malaysia, roughly 10% of the company's global workforce.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Why you should consider purchasing refurbished over new electronics:

[...] And there's another set of benefits to refurbished electronics these days, which I discussed with Lauren Benton, the general manager at Back Market.

"One major issue here is too much demand, and not enough supply of chips. Refurbished electronics helps alleviate supply chain woes by keeping chips in circulation longer. Back Market­­ is leading the charge against buying new these days to support and promote sustainability in tech," Benton told me.

She outlined further the benefits of buying refurbished:

First and foremost, major cost savings can be realized. Refurbished devices are usually half the price of new while still functioning like new (they can be up to 70% off the price of new).

Better quality is another factor. Benton said that when working with professional refurbishers, consumers can expect a professional review of their device. I myself can attest to this since these devices have been proven to work reliably.

"For example, at Back Market, all sellers must meet a 25-point quality charter, which ensures that the defective rate on the platform remains low — generally below 5%. For reference, the unofficial failure rate of new devices hovers at around 3% (case in point, the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 Plus, which both came out at the end of 2017, were each reported to have a 3% failure rate in Q1 of 2018)" she told me.

Have you used reconditioned hardware and, if so, what are your experiences? If you have bought used hardware (but not reconditioned) has it turned out to be a bargain or a disappointment?

Original Submission