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owl writes:

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/unidentified-pc-dos-1-1-boot-sector-junk-identified/

Anyone trying to disassemble the PC DOS 1.1 boot sector soon notices that at offsets 1A3h through 1BEh there is a byte sequence that just does not belong. It appears to be a fragment of code, but it has no purpose in the boot sector and is never executed. So why is the sequence of junk bytes there, and where did it come from?

The immediate answer is "it came from FORMAT.COM". The junk is copied verbatim from FORMAT.COM to the boot sector. But those junk bytes are not part of FORMAT.COM, either. So the question merely shifts to "why are the junk bytes in FORMAT.COM, and where did they come from?"

It is not known if anyone answered the question in the past, but the answer has been found now, almost 40 years later—twice independently.

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upstart writes:

Drone helps save cardiac arrest patient in Sweden:

An autonomous drone has helped to save the life of a 71-year-old man who was suffering a cardiac arrest.

The drone delivered a defibrillator to a doctor helping the man, who became ill while shovelling snow outside his house in Trollhattan, Sweden.

The man, who didn't wish to be named, told the BBC it was "fantastic" that it arrived so quickly.

The company behind the drone says it meant that defibrillation could begin before the arrival of an ambulance.

Everdrone says it took just over three minutes from the alarm being raised until the Automated External Defibrillator (AED) was delivered.

[...] The patient told the BBC he doesn't remember what happened that day in early December.

He was clearing thick snow from his driveway but when the cardiac arrest hit, "everything went black", he said.

upstart writes:

Kosovo bans cryptocurrency mining after blackouts:

The government says security services will identify and clamp down on sources of cryptocurrency mining.

The mining is energy intensive and involves verifying digital transactions to get cryptocurrencies as a reward.

While all of Europe faces sharp price rises, Kosovo is enforcing rolling blackouts amid an electricity shortage.

The Balkan state's largest coal-fired power plant was shut down last month over a technical issue, forcing the government to import electricity at high prices.

A 60-day state of emergency, declared in December, gave the government powers to allocate more money for energy imports and impose stricter restrictions on power usage.

The blackouts have sparked protests and calls for the resignation of Economy Minister Artane Rizvanolli.

Energy prices are skyrocketing across Europe for various reasons, including low supplies from Russia and high demand for natural gas as economies recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The spike has been fuelled by geopolitical tensions with Russia, which supplies one third of Europe's gas. Russia has rejected European accusations that it has limited gas deliveries while tensions are raised

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upstart writes:

Volcano erupts on Galapagos island home to endangered iguana:

The Wolf volcano's slopes host the pink iguana, only 211 of which were reported to be left on Isabela, the largest island in the Galapagos archipelago, as of last August.

The volcano, the highest of the Galapagos, is some 100 kilometres (62 miles) from the nearest human settlement.

In a statement shared on Facebook on Friday, the Galapagos National Park said the volcano was emitting plumes of smoke and ash several thousand metres high, which were moving towards the north side of the island where no people are at risk.

[...] The national park said it sent eight park rangers and scientists working with the pink iguanas to check out the situation on Friday morning as a matter of precaution.

"The team confirmed that the habitat of these species is far from the eruption and the impact zone, so no additional protection measures are currently being considered," the statement read.

[...] The area also hosts yellow iguanas and the famous Galapagos giant tortoises.

The pink iguana was first spotted by park rangers in 1986 and classified as a separate species to other land iguanas on the Galapagos in 2009, according to the Galapagos Conservation Trust (GCT), a UK-registered charity that works on conservation on the islands.

[...] For its part, the Geophysical Institute of Quito said the 1,707-metre (5,600-foot) volcano spewed gas-and-ash clouds as high as 3,800 metres (12,467 feet) into the air, with lava flows on its southern and southeastern slopes.

Isabela island also hosts four other active volcanos.

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upstart writes:

Verizon will bring ultrafast C-Band 5G to 100 million Americans within weeks:

Verizon Wireless plans to bring its 'Ultra Wideband 5G' service to more than 100 million people in the US later this month, delivering speeds of up to 1Gbps using C-Band spectrum.

5G networks will use a much more diverse range of spectrum than previous generations of mobile technology, with low-band frequencies like 700MHz offering wide coverage and high-band millimetre Wave (mmWave) delivering huge capacity over short distances.

Mid-range C-band 5G spectrum offers a compromise between these two desirable outcomes and will be a vital resource in the rollout of the high-speed networks.

Verizon used mmWave spectrum to become the first operator in the US to launch a commercial 5G service back in 2018 and, along with AT&T, T-Mobile, and US Wireless, won a licence for C-Band airwaves located between 3.7GHz and 3.98GHz in an auction earlier this year that raised $80 billion.

Now we can talk even faster! =)

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upstart writes:

US regulator rules that Google infringed on Sonos speaker patents:

The US International Trade Commission has agreed with Sonos' claims that Google had infringed on its speaker and cast patents. It issued its initial decision back in August, and this finalizes its ruling, which prohibits Google from importing products found to have violated Sonos' intellectual properties. Since Google manufactures its products in China, that means it won't be able to gets them shipped to the US when the import ban takes effect in 60 days.

Sonos sued Google in 2020 over five patents, which include one that details a technology allowing wireless speakers to sync with one another. As The New York Times notes, the products affected include Google's Home smart speakers, Pixel phones and computers, as well as Chromecast devices. While Google is facing an import ban, a spokesperson said that the tech giant doesn't expect the ruling to interrupt its ability to import and sell devices.

"While we disagree with today's decision, we appreciate that the International Trade Commission has approved our modified designs," the spokesperson told Protocol. "We will seek further review and continue to defend ourselves against Sonos' frivolous claims about our partnership and intellectual property." The commission didn't challenge those alternative designs in its final decision, which means Google can implement them.

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Giant dying star explodes as scientists watch in real time — a first for astronomy

owl writes:

https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_a6c9307a6c1df0d4cc9e84ee945f232c

The death of a star is one of the most dramatic and violent events in space -- and astronomers had an unprecedented front-row seat to the explosive end of a stellar giant.

Ground-based telescopes provided the first real-time look at the death throes of a red supergiant star. While these aren't the brightest or most massive stars, they are the largest in terms of volume.

One popular red supergiant star is Betelgeuse, which has captured interest due to its irregular dimming. While it was predicted that Betelgeuse may go supernova, it's still around.

However, the star at the heart of this new research, located in the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million light-years away from Earth, was 10 times more massive than the sun before it exploded.

Explosion of supergiant star captured by UH telescope | University of Hawaiʻi System News

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for boru

For the first time, telescopes imaged the self-destruction and final death throes of a massive star.

A team of researchers used the UH Institute for Astronomy-operated Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Maui and W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaiʻi Island observe the red supergiant during its last 130 days leading up to its deadly detonation. The observations were part of their ongoing Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) transient survey.

"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," said Wynn Jacobson-Galán, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at University of California, Berkeley and lead author of the study. "Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary Type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode!"

Source: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2022/01/06/explosion-of-supergiant-star-captured-by-uh-telescope

owl writes:

The case of the programs that were launched with impossible command line options

Several years ago, a bug was filed automatically due to a spike in failures in the Start menu with a new crash profile. Investigation of this bug was rather complicated, because the crash was "impossible".

Then again, a lot of failures seem to be "impossible", but the fact that they're happening proves that it's possible, and you just have to do some sleuthing and adopt a more creative mindset to figure them out.

One of the tools for investigating these types of failures is seeing what other programs are running at the time, or what other programs crashed shortly before or after the failure occurred. In this case, whenever the crash occurred, there was one specific third-party program running. This program billed itself as a utility that boosts your system's gaming performance by terminating all processes it deemed to be non-essential. Its advertising copy calls out useless "productivity apps" as one of those non-essential processes. (Yeah, how dare you let a computer be used for productivity? Can't you see I'm playing a game?)

Apparently, what happens that when the program detects that you're playing a game, it runs around and simply terminates all the non-essential processes.

Were any Soylentils bit by this?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Global chip shortage: Samsung expects its profits to jump by 52%:

Technology giant Samsung Electronics has said it expects to post a 52% jump in profit for the last three months of 2021, amid the global chip shortage.

The world's biggest memory chip maker estimates that it made 13.8tn won ($11.5bn; £8.5bn) in the period. That would be its highest fourth quarter operating profit in four years. The company's earnings were boosted by strong demand for server memory chips and higher profit margins in its chip contract manufacturing business.

[...] Samsung's spending on such things as employees' bonuses and marketing for its smartphone business were seen as reasons for it missing the market forecast.

In recent months, the global shortage of semiconductors has been causing major disruptions for manufacturers, from carmakers that have had to suspend production to Apple warning that iPhone shipments would be delayed.

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takyon writes:

Apple gets Cydia app store lawsuit dismissed, for now

A US District Judge has dismissed Cydia's lawsuit claiming that Apple's App Store unfairly forced it out of business, but will allow Cydia to amend its complaint.

Originally filed in December 2020, the lawsuit by Jay Freeman, creator of Cydia, says that Apple used its monopoly position against the alternative jailbreaking store. Cydia claimed that it was forced to shut down because of Apple's allegedly unlawful control of app distribution on iOS.

Now U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has granted Apple's motion to dismiss the case. However, she has granted Freeman leave to amend his suit.

Should Freeman choose to proceed, he has until January 19, 2022, to file the amended suit. Then Apple will have until February 2, 2022, to respond.

Also at MacRumors and Wccftech.

Previously: Original Jailbreak App Store Cydia Sues Apple for its Monopoly

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Coming to a laptop near you: A new type of security chip from Microsoft:

In November 2020, Microsoft unveiled Pluton, a security processor that the company designed to thwart some of the most sophisticated types of hack attacks. On Tuesday, AMD said it would integrate the chip into its upcoming Ryzen CPUs for use in Lenovo's ThinkPad Z Series of laptops.

[...] Now, Pluton is evolving to secure PCs against malicious physical hacks designed to install malware or steal cryptographic keys or other sensitive secrets. While many systems already have trusted platform modules or protections such as Intel's Software Guard Extensions to secure such data, the secrets remain vulnerable to several types of attacks.

One such physical attack involves placing wires that tap the connection between a TPM and other device components and extract the secrets that pass between the machines. Last August, researchers disclosed an attack that took only 30 minutes to obtain the BitLocker key from a new Lenovo computer preconfigured to use full-disk encryption with a TPM, password-protected BIOS settings, and UEFI SecureBoot. The hack—which worked by sniffing the connection between the TPM and the CMOS chip—showed that locking down a laptop with the latest defenses isn't always enough.

A similar attack unveiled three months later showed it was possible to exploit a vulnerability (now fixed) in Intel CPUs to defeat a variety of security measures, including those provided by BitLocker, TPMs, and anti-copying restrictions. Attacks known as Spectre and Meltdown have also repeatedly underscored the threat of malicious code pulling secrets directly out of a CPU, even when the secrets are stored in Intel's SGX.

upstart writes:

Students Are Learning To Resist Surveillance: Year in Review 2021:

As schools have shuffled students from in-person education to at-home learning and testing, then back again, the lines between "school" and "home" have been blurred. This has made it increasingly difficult for students to protect their privacy and to freely express themselves, as online proctoring and other sinister forms of surveillance and disciplinary technology have spread. But students have fought back, and often won, and we're glad to have been on their side.

Early in the year, medical students at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine were blindsided by an unfounded dragnet cheating investigation conducted by the administration. The allegations were based on a flawed review of an entire year's worth of student log data from Canvas, the online learning platform that contains class lectures and other substantive information. After a technical examination, EFF determined that the logs easily could have been generated by the automated syncing of course material to devices logged into Canvas.

When EFF and FIRE reached out to Dartmouth and asked them to more carefully review the logs—which Canvas' own documentation explicitly states should not be used for high-stakes analysis—we were rebuffed. With the medical careers of seventeen students hanging in the balance, the students began organizing. At first, the on-campus protest, the letter to school administrators, and the complaints of unfair treatment from the student government didn't make much of an impact. In fact, the university administration dug in, instituting a new social media policy that seemed aimed at chilling anonymous speech that had appeared on Instagram, detailing concerns students had with how these cheating allegations were being handled.

upstart writes:

French regulators to fine Google and Facebook combined $235 million for cookie tracking: report:

Google and Facebook are facing major fines in France for not making it easy enough for French users to reject technology that tracks cookies, according to a report from Politico on Wednesday.

Reporters from the outlet obtained documents that showed French tech regulator Commission Nationale de I'informatique et Des Libertés (CNIL) is planning to fine Google 150 million euros and Facebook 60 million euros for violating French data privacy rules.

CNIL says in the document that both companies will be fined another 100,000 euros per day if they do not resolve the issues within three months of the decision being issued. Politico noted that this applies to google.fr, youtube.fr and all of Facebook's platforms in France.

[...] European regulators have fined Google more than 8 billion euros for a variety of alleged anticompetitive practices and Google lost an appeal for one of the 2.42 billion euro fines in September.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Chrysler to go all-electric by 2028, starting with the Airflow in 2025:

Not much appeared to be happening at Chrysler in the past few years, though that's about to change. Its parent company, Stellantis, announced yesterday that Chrysler will become its vanguard electric brand. By 2028, the 96-year-old automaker's entire lineup will be all-electric.

That's not too much of a stretch. Chrysler only sells two vehicles right now, the decade-old 300C sedan and the Pacifica minivan, which is available as a plug-in hybrid. Today, at the Consumer Electronics Show, the company shared more details on the Airflow, a concept crossover that appears to be close to ready for production—so close, in fact, that the announcement was probably a thinly veiled preview of the company's first EV due in 2025.

The Airflow is powered by two 150 kW (201 hp) electric motors, one for each axle, and while Chrysler hasn't disclosed the size of the battery, it said it is targeting 350–400 miles of range. If the company can achieve that, it would be quite the coup, rivaling the best from Tesla. Good thing it has a few years before it has to deliver.

In resurrecting the Airflow name, Chrysler isn't just giving a nod to its aerodynamicists. It's saying that the storied brand still has what it takes to lead the pack. The original 1934 Airflow was a revolutionary teardrop of a car, designed using extensive wind tunnel testing and made with an all-steel, unibody frame. It drew inspiration from the contemporary Streamline Moderne movement, and though the car was a commercial flop, its design and features were nonetheless influential.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Report: Meta pulls the plug on its AR/VR operating system ambitions:

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has pulled the plug on its current efforts to develop an operating system for AR and VR devices, The Information reported today.

Citing "two people familiar with the decision," the article claims that Meta will return to the status quo of running Oculus devices—and perhaps future mixed reality devices—on a modified version of Google's Android operating system for mobile phones.

The project, which was internally called XROS, had reportedly been underway for years and "involved hundreds of employees." Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was talking up its potential only a few short months ago. The reasons for Meta's decision to pull the plug are not publicly known at this time.

From the outside, the decision appears to be a major setback in a brewing war over mixed reality between Meta, Apple, and potentially other tech giants. Apple's upcoming VR or AR headsets will without a doubt run a custom-made operating system that is designed to leverage tight integration with the hardware for strong performance and a stable experience.

It could be difficult for Facebook to compete with that without its own, ground-up software. That said, Facebook and Apple may end up targeting very different use cases for AR and VR; their ultimate strategies remain a mystery to most.

Original Submission