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upstart writes:

UK government pushes back full fibre coverage target to 2030:

The UK government has watered down its broadband targets yet again, promising to deliver nationwide gigabit broadband coverage five years later than originally promised.

The Conservative manifesto ahead of the 2019 General Election promised nationwide fibre to the premise (FTTP) coverage by 2025 but the government has since backtracked. The revised target is 85%, with the government also backing down on its commitment to using full fibre.

Meanwhile, just £1.2 billion of £5 billion in promised funding will be delivered during this Parliament.

[...] The government’s Project Gigabit will attempt to cover hard-to-reach areas that aren’t covered by commercial rollouts, but the whitepaper did not provide any concrete details on any new initiatives.

[...] The government’s document also promises nationwide 4G coverage by the same date, citing the pre-existing Shared Rural Network (SRN), and 5G coverage for the majority of the population. EE has already promised to deliver 5G to 90% of the UK’s geographic area by 2028 and it is unclear what further government support will be offered to enhance that figure.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Gory footage confirms orca pods can kill adult blue whales:

Killer whales are skilled assassins, hunting everything from herring to great white sharks. Now, for the first time, scientists witnessed a pod of killer whales bring down the world’s largest animal: an adult blue whale.

“This is the biggest predation event on the planet,” says Robert Pitman, a cetacean ecologist at Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute in Newport. “We haven’t seen things like this since dinosaurs were here, and probably not even then.”

[...] The coordinated attack was consistent with methods observed during other orca takedowns of large whales. Orcas will target the fins, tail and jaw, possibly to slow the whale. They will also push the whale’s head underwater to prevent it surfacing for air, while others below push it up so it can’t dive. “These are practiced large-whale hunters,” says study coauthor Pitman. “They know how to do this.”

Journal Reference:
John A. Totterdell, Rebecca Wellard, Isabella M. Reeves, et al. The first three records of killer whales (Orcinus orca) killing and eating blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus), Marine Mammal Science (DOI: 10.1111/mms.12906)

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Tesla Recalls More Than 817,000 Vehicles Over Seat-belt Chime Issue, Which It Will Address Remotely

upstart writes:

Tesla recalls more than 817,000 vehicles over seat-belt chime issue, which it will address remotely:

The electric automaker will remotely update 817,143 vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [(NHTSA)] said, after an issue where its seat-belt chimes go quiet on subsequent drives after having previously been interrupted — for example, when a driver exits the vehicle as the chime sounds.

"The audible chime may not activate when the vehicle starts and the driver has not buckled their seat belt," NHTSA wrote in an issue summary. The agency said the issue puts Tesla out of compliance with "occupant crash protection" requirements of federal auto safety regulations.

"The driver may be unaware that their seat belt is not fastened, increasing the risk of injury during a crash," wrote NHTSA official Alex Ansley, in a letter to Tesla describing the issue.

Tesla said a software release will address the issue over-the-air in February, meaning owners will not be required to bring their vehicles in for service to satisfy the recall requirements. Tesla is one of few automakers that make extensive changes to the way their vehicles operate using over-the-air software updates. The capability has occasionally landed it in trouble with regulators because it failed to notify them of changes that would otherwise be made through the recall process.

Tesla did respond to a request for comment. NHTSA spokeswoman Lucia Sanchez said the agency aims to ensure companies file necessary recalls — even if the fix can be initiated through a software update.

Also at CNN.

upstart writes:

Shocked zircon find a 'one-off gift' from Mars:

Curtin University researchers studying a Martian meteorite have found the first evidence of high-intensity damage caused by asteroid impact, in findings that have implications for understanding when conditions suitable for life may have existed on early Mars.

Published in leading journal Science Advances, the research examined grains of the mineral zircon in Martian meteorite NWA 7034. The meteorite, colloquially known as "Black Beauty", is a rare sample of the surface of Mars. The original 320-gram rock was found in northern Africa and first reported in 2013.

[...] "This grain is truly a one-off gift from the Red Planet. High-pressure shock deformation has not previously been found in any minerals from Black Beauty. This discovery of shock damage in a 4.45 billion-year-old Martian zircon provides new evidence of dynamic processes that affected the surface of early Mars," Ms Cox said.

"The type of shock damage in the Martian zircon involves 'twinning', and has been reported from all of the biggest impact sites on Earth, including the one in Mexico that killed off the dinosaurs, as well as the Moon, but not previously from Mars."

Journal Reference:
Morgan A. Cox, Aaron J. Cavosie, Kenneth J. Orr, et al. Impact and habitability scenarios for early Mars revisited based on a 4.45-Ga shocked zircon in regolith breccia, Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl7497)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Apple's App Store will now let developers unlist apps:

The App Store will now allow developers to restrict their apps so they're only viewable by people with a direct link to the page. Apple foresees the ability to unlist apps being used for exciting purposes such as hiding a company's employee app or their sales tools. I suppose apparent exclusivity is one way to make people actually want an app.

"Unlisted apps don't appear in any App Store categories, recommendations, charts, search results, or other listings," wrote Apple on its Developer website. "They can also be accessed through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager."

[...] In order to unlist an app, developers must submit a request and wait for approval. The app has to be completed and ready for release though, so it can't be in beta. If approved, the app will be unlisted and a link to the App Store listing will be generated, which developers can then write in lemon juice to slip to their secret club at recess.

Apps which were initially listed but then unlisted will still retain the same URL, so if your app was already live it won't suddenly disappear for people stalking its App Store page. Though if anyone is sitting on the page and staring longingly at a corporate app, maybe you should just let them in. Clearly they're in desperate need of some excitement.

Additional coverage at The Verge, MacRumors, and 9to5Mac.

Original Submission

owl writes:

A New Artificial Intelligence Traffic Light Could Help Shorten Your Commute Times:

Ask any nerd and they'll say artificial intelligence is taking over. That may not always be for the best, but finally it seems the tech is being put to good use – in traffic lights.

A new study out of Germany says having traffic lights use AI technology may keep traffic flowing faster and smoother. That means I won't have to wait at intersections longer than I have to, which is a plus if you're as impatient as I am.

One of the partners in the study with an aggressively German name – the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation – recently installed high-resolution cameras and radar sensors at a busy intersection with a traffic light in the city of Lemgo, according to New Atlas. The setup recorded the number of vehicles waiting for the light to change, the amount of time each of them had to wait and the average speed a vehicle drove through the intersection.

Science wizardry was then used to train a machine-learning based computer algorithm. It experimented with different light-changing patterns. They would continuously adapt to real time traffic conditions and see which ones worked best to keep wait times down.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Humans and other primates have evolved less sensitive noses:

Everyone experiences smells in their own unique way—the same scent can be pleasant, too intense or even undetectable to different noses. Scientists can combine these differences in scent perception with a person's genetics to discover the role of various scent receptors. In a new study, researchers screened the genomes of 1,000 Han Chinese people to find genetic variations linked to how the participants perceived 10 different scents. Then they repeated the experiment for six odors in an ethnically diverse population of 364 people to confirm their results. The team identified two new receptors, one that detects a synthetic musk used in fragrances and another for a compound in human underarm odor.

Participants carried different versions of the musk and underarm odor receptor genes, and those genetic variations affected how the person perceived the scents. In combination with previously published results, the researchers find that people with the ancestral versions (the version shared with other non-human primates) of the scent receptors tend to rate the corresponding odor as more intense. These findings support the hypothesis that the sensitivity of humans' and other primates' sense of smell has degraded over time due to changes in the set of genes that code for our smell receptors.

[...] The new results from East Asian and diverse populations suggest that the genetics underlying the ability to detect odors remains constant across people from different backgrounds.

Journal Reference:
Bingjie Li, Marissa L. Kamarck, Qianqian Peng, et al. From musk to body odor: Decoding olfaction through genetic variation, PLOS Genetics (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009564)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The definitive guide to getting tall:

There are many genes, or at least markers of one sort or another within our DNA sequences, that have been associated with height. By some estimates the number could be thousands. However, finding those select genes that have a readily apparent and significant function in height has proven difficult.

One exciting new gene, at least for Chinese horses, was just described in the current issue of Current Biology. The researchers found that a transcription factor known as TBX3 plays a critical role in driving body size differences between Chinese ponies and horses. TBX3 is one of perhaps two dozen proteins in our own genomes that all share a highly conserved DNA binding domain known as a T-box. This domain is a big part of the protein and consists of several hundred amino acids that are typically coded over many exons. The DNA sequence bound by the T-box domain is also, conveniently I suppose, known in the literature as a T-box. The canonical sequence and overall reported length estimates of the the T-box element also come with a lot of variance. Some reports have it nailed at a length of 200 nucleotides, while others offer a shorter, and partly palindromic consensus sequence of "TCACACCT."

takyon writes:

Introducing Wolvic

Today Igalia announces Wolvic, a new browser project with an initial focus of picking up where Firefox Reality leaves off.

XR (eXtended Reality, an umbrella term for Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and similar technologies) systems have advanced quite a bit recently, and experiencing them today is eye-opening. Mozilla invested a lot into R&D in XR in the late 2010s, and in late 2018 they released an experimental browser called Firefox Reality. It was a great entry into the XR field, helping establish what a browser in these devices really looks like, and figure out the unique challenges. Today we're excited to take up this experiment and continue this work as a complete project.

We at Igalia believe the Web is important to the XR space in a large number of ways. XR systems which provide an immersive OS need web browsers to be part of that. Entering a "reality" without access to everything that already exists on the Web would be pretty terrible.

Igalia is known for its work on open source graphics drivers.

Also at Phoronix.

Previously: Mozilla Launches "Firefox Reality", a VR Web Browser

Original Submission

owl writes:

http://www.slackware.com/releasenotes/15.0.php

Slackware 15.0 release notes. Wed Feb 2 18:39:59 CST 2022

Good hello folks, nice to see you here again. :-)

Historically, the RELEASE_NOTES had been mostly technical information, but once again Robby Workman has covered the important technical details in CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT. Thanks!

We've actually built over 400 different Linux kernel versions over the years it took to finally declare Slackware 15.0 stable (by contrast, we tested 34 kernel versions while working on Slackware 14.2). We finally ended up on kernel version 5.15.19 after Greg Kroah-Hartman confirmed that it would get long-term support until at least October 2023 (and quite probably for longer than that). As usual, the kernel is provided in two flavors, generic and huge. The huge kernel contains enough built-in drivers that in most cases an initrd is not needed to boot the system. The generic kernels require the use of an initrd to load the kernel modules needed to mount the root filesystem. Using a generic kernel will save some memory and possibly avoid a few boot time warnings. I'd strongly recommend using a generic kernel for the best kernel module compatibility as well. It's easier to do that than in previous releases - the installer now makes an initrd for you, and the new geninitrd utility will rebuild the initrd automatically for the latest kernel packages you've installed on the system.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Havana Syndrome could be caused by pulsed energy devices – US expert report

A US intelligence report by a panel of expert scientists has named pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound as plausible causes for the mystery Havana Syndrome symptoms suffered by US diplomats and spies in recent years.

The report found that a group of cases could not be explained by health or environmental factors or by psychosomatic illness. It also said that devices exist with “modest energy requirements” which were concealable and could produce the observed symptoms and be effective over hundreds of meters or through walls.

The panel, established last year by the director of national security, Avril Haines, and the CIA director, William Burns, said the investigation was not tasked to identify a culprit, but in a statement accompanying the report, Haines and Burns said it would help sharpen the search for the origins of they mysterious ailments.

“We will stay at it, with continued rigor, for however long it takes,” they said.

Also at BBC and CNN.

Previously:
"Havana Syndrome": U.S. Baffled After New Cases in Europe
CIA Finds No Evidence of a Foreign Adversary Causing "Havana Syndrome"

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Australia to spend a record $35 million to protect koalas:

"Koalas are one of Australia's most loved and best recognised icons, both here at home and across the world, and we are committed to protecting them for generations to come," Morrison said in the statement.

The fund will be used for "restoring koala habitat, improving our understanding of koala populations, supporting training in koala treatment and care, and strengthening research into koala health outcomes," Morrison said.

Alleged 'koala massacre' prompts hundreds of animal cruelty charges

Australian authorities on Wednesday charged a landowner and two companies with more than 250 counts of animal cruelty over the deaths of dozens of koalas during a clearance operation last year.

According to a statement from Victoria state's Conservation Regulator, 21 koalas were found dead and dozens more injured at a timber plantation in Cape Bridgewater, about 377 kilometers (234 miles) southwest of the state capital, Melbourne, in February 2020.

Authorities euthanized 49 of the wounded koalas, with many suffering from starvation, dehydration and fractures, the statement said.

With the new investment, the Australian government will have dedicated $74 million Australian ($52 million US) on koalas since 2019, it added.

Since 2018, about 30% of Australia's koalas have been lost due to bushfire, drought, and land clearing for development, according to an Australian Koala Foundation statement in September 2021. That includes the severe losses of the population after the catastrophic ​bushfires of 2019, which destroyed more than 12 million acres (48,000 square kilometers) of land across New South Wales alone.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Internet:

For the past two weeks, observers of North Korea's strange and tightly restricted corner of the internet began to notice that the country seemed to be dealing with some serious connectivity problems. On several different days, practically all of its websites—the notoriously isolated nation only has a few dozen—intermittently dropped offline en masse, from the booking site for its Air Koryo airline to Naenara, a page that serves as the official portal for dictator Kim Jong-un's government. At least one of the central routers that allow access to the country's networks appeared at one point to be paralyzed, crippling the Hermit Kingdom's digital connections to the outside world.

[...] But responsibility for North Korea's ongoing internet outages doesn't lie with US Cyber Command or any other state-sponsored hacking agency. In fact, it was the work of one American man in a T-shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks—and periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.

Just over a year ago, an independent hacker who goes by the handle P4x was himself hacked by North Korean spies. P4x was just one victim of a hacking campaign that targeted Western security researchers with the apparent aim of stealing their hacking tools and details about software vulnerabilities. He says he managed to prevent those hackers from swiping anything of value from him. But he nonetheless felt deeply unnerved by state-sponsored hackers targeting him personally—and by the lack of any visible response from the US government.

upstart writes:

Musicians are furious at website HitPiece, which listed their music as NFTs without permission:

Musicians have taken to Twitter today to complain about a website that is ostensibly selling their music as NFTs without permission. HitPiece claims to sell one-of-one NFTs, meaning each one is singular and unique (as opposed to the endless iterations of ugly monkeys we are now subjected to).

"Each HitPiece NFT is a One of One NFT for each unique song recording," said the HitPiece website. "Members build their Hitlist of their favorite songs, get on leaderboards, and receive in real life value such as access and experiences with Artists."

There's just one little snag with this plan. According to many of the artists whose songs are being offered as NFTs, HitPiece doesn't actually have any authority to do any of this.

[...] HitPiece's standard response to artists thus far has been to request they send a DM so it can explain how this is actually all fine and "definitely not a scam". However, HitPiece's website began to display a 404 error before seemingly being completely taken down for a period of time. The website's online status remained unstable at time of writing.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit Exits Lengthy Beta

February 2, 2022 marks the day that 64-bit flavor of Raspberry Pi OS moves from a rather lengthy beta, into the world at large. The news, announced via a blog post by Gordon Holingworth, Chief Product Officer at Raspberry Pi Ltd sees the 64-bit OS move to being released. But this new release isn't set to replace the 32-bit version just yet.

Originally released as a beta back in May 2020, Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit looks and feels the same as the venerable 32-bit version but under the hood we get a little more horsepower for the newer models of Raspberry Pi.

[...] At this time, there is no 64-bit support for Widevine DRM. This means that we cannot play media from sites such as Disney+ and Netflix. The current workaround, detailed in the blog post, requires us to install the 32-bit Chromium browser.

[...] We asked Hollingworth if the 32-bit OS will be phased out as more 64-bit compatible models are released? "While we manufacture hardware with 32-bit processors then we will still continue with the 32-bit recommended image. (We still make original Pi model B's because we always said we would continue to do so while it was possible)," he said.

Previously: Raspberry Pi 4 Gets 8 GB RAM Model, Also 64-bit OS and USB Boot (Both in Beta)
Raspberry Pi Raises Price for First Time, Reintroduces 1 GB Model for $35
Quad-Core Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Launched at $15

Original Submission