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upstart writes:

The James Webb Space Telescope Is in Position. Now It's Booting Up:

Scientist launched the James Webb Space Telescope and sent it about a million miles from Earth. This summer, the technological marvel will begin collecting never-before-seen images of the cosmos. But between now and then, NASA researchers and their European and Canadian colleagues have their work cut out for them.

[...] Now that everything's in place, the JWST team has begun the "commissioning" process for the instruments, setting up the complex cameras and detectors and making sure they work as they're supposed to, Schneider says. Last week, they conducted their first tests with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), allowing the first photons to hit the camera. It's not actually capturing images yet, but this is a step toward doing so. Eventually, scientists will use NIRCam to discover new planets and glimpse some of the first galaxies.

Once they can take real test images, such as of nearby, previously photographed stars, the first batches will be blurry and out of focus. But that's normal. Those tests will enable the Webb team to gradually align the telescope and adjust the mirror segments until the images look clear.

It has become an annual tradition, Today you are invited to attend the 4th annual SoylentNews
      Super Bowl Party!

As mentioned in a comment to a recent story... it's on!

Just use your favorite IRC client or use our site's link. Then /JOIN #SuperBowl-LVI to join in the fur fun!

When? 6:30 PM (ET) / (3:30 PT) (1 hour after this story goes live)
Where? NBC will broadcast live (as will some on-line sources)
Rules? Keep it civil.

Other: rates reached $5-6M per commercial/advert. So they tend to be memorable; YMMV

upstart writes:

The metaverse is a new word for an old idea:

I have spent a lot of my career, both in Silicon Valley and beyond, insisting that all our technologies have histories and even pre-histories, and that far from being neat and tidy, those stories are in fact messy, contested, and conflicted, with competing narrators and meanings.

The metaverse, which graduated from a niche term to a household name in less than a year, is an excellent case in point. Its metamorphosis began in July 2021, when Facebook announced that it would dedicate the next decade to bringing the metaverse to life. In the company's presentation of the concept, the metaverse was a thing of wonder: an immersive, rich digital world combining aspects of social media, online gaming, and augmented and virtual reality. "The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence—like you are right there with another person or in another place," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote, envisioning a creation that would "reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers." By December 2021, a range of other large American technology companies, including Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm, had all articulated metaverse plans of their own. And by the time the Consumer Electronics Show rolled around in January, everyone seemed to have a metaverse angle, no matter how improbable or banal: haptic vests, including one with an air conditioner to create your own localized climate; avatar beauty makeovers; virtual delivery vans for your virtual home.

There has been plenty of discussion about the involvement of Meta (née Facebook) and its current complicated position as a social media platform with considerable purchase on our daily lives. There have also been broader conversations about what form the metaverse could or should take, in terms of technical capabilities, user experiences, business models, access, and regulation, and—more quietly—about what purpose it would serve and what needs it would fulfill.

"There is an easy seductiveness to stories that cast a technology as brand-new."

upstart writes:

New evidence for the importance of educational attainment in brain health:

With aging populations and growing life expectancy, the number of people suffering from dementia is increasing. For more effective dementia prevention, it is important to better understand risk and protective factors affecting late-life cognition. It is known that midlife cardiovascular risk factors are associated with weaker late-life cognition (memory and other information processing skills). A new study from the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku aimed to examine if educational background affects this association. Over 4000 Finnish twins participated in the study published in Age and Ageing.

"The study showed that cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high body mass index and physical inactivity, were associated with poorer late-life cognition. This association was stronger in those with lower educational attainment compared to those with higher education," tells postdoctoral researcher Paula Iso-Markku from the University of Helsinki, the lead author of the study.

The result emphasizes the importance of childhood and adolescent education in dementia prevention.

"The mechanisms are not yet known, but these results may reflect the effect of cognitive reserve. Higher educational attainment may increase cognitive reserve that helps to tolerate dementia risk factors better," says Academy of Finland Research Fellow Eero Vuoksimaa who led the study.

Journal Reference:
Paula Iso-Markku, Jaakko Kaprio, Noora Lindgrén, et al. Education as a moderator of middle-age cardiovascular risk factor [open], Age and Ageing (DOI: 10.1093/ageing/afab228)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

After lying low, SSH botnet mushrooms and is harder than ever to take down:

Two years ago, researchers stumbled upon one of the Internet's most intriguing botnets: a previously undiscovered network of 500 servers, many in well-known universities and businesses around the world, that was impervious to normal takedown methods. After lying low for 16 months, those researchers said, the botnet known as FritzFrog is back with new capabilities and a larger base of infected machines.

FritzFrog targets just about anything with an SSH, or secure shell, server—cloud instances, data center servers, routers, and the like—and installs an unusually advanced payload that was written from scratch. When researchers from security firm Guardicore Labs (now Akamai Labs) reported it in mid-2020, they called it a "next-generation" botnet because of its full suite of capabilities and well-engineered design.

It was a decentralized, peer-to-peer architecture that distributed administration among many infected nodes rather than a central server, making it hard to detect or take it down using traditional methods.

canopic jug writes:

A blogger with the handle "Soatok" has written about considerations in safely using RSA. His first recommendation is not to use RSA at all any more. Failing that, if you must use RSA, he has various recommendations to mitigate the problems that using RSA entails.

Every RSA keypair must be represented as all of the following:

RSA Secret Key (sk)

• Operation (sign or decrypt)
• Mode (padding or KEM-DEM)
• Hash function (signatures, MGF1)
• Modulus size
• Public exponent

RSA Public Key (pk)

• Operation (encrypt or verify)
• Mode (padding, etc.)
• Hash function (signatures, MGF1)
• Modulus size
• Public exponent

Any time you change any of these configuration parameters, it MUST be used with a new asymmetric key-pair. The new key MUST NOT be used with the same raw key bytes as any previous key.

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is apparently easier to work with, but both will be susceptible to cracking with quantum computers some day.

Previously:
(2019) Crown Sterling Demos 256-bit RSA Key-cracking at Private Event
(2016) Upgrade Your SSH Keys
(2015) 512-bit RSA Keys Cracked in Four Hours for only $75
(2014) NSA and RSA - Claims of More Evidence

Original Submission

upstart writes:

UK second in money laundering hall of shame:

The second-highest amount of money is laundered each year in the UK, with an estimated £88bn[*] worth of money cleaned by criminals annually.

Only the US sees more, with £216.5bn laundered annually, while France (£54.5bn), Germany (£51.3bn) and Canada (£25.6bn) also rank among the top five counties in terms of value of money laundered.

The figures, from identity verification software maker Credas Technologies, put together using OECD data, also revealed that about £1.8tn is laundered globally each year, some 3% of total GDP.

Money laundering, and its links to organised crime, is a serious global problem that banks find themselves at the centre of, with their failures to spot suspicious activity partly to blame for the high volumes and value of money cleaned by criminals in the UK.

In October, NatWest Bank admitted that operational failures, including weaknesses in automated monitoring systems, meant that it failed to prevent the money laundering of £400m. It pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates' Court to failing to comply with anti-money laundering regulations between 2012 and 2016.

Current exchange rate is approximately 1 £ = 1.36 $USD.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie and video game rights are being sold off, report says:

The rights to make movies and video games based on JRR Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are about to go up for sale, according to a report Wednesday. The Saul Zaentz Company is selling off the Tolkien rights it acquired back in 1976 for a predicted $2 billion, Variety said.

The rights also include TV shows with more than 8 episodes, live events, merchandise and theme parks, and some rights across additional Tolkien texts The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth, according to Variety.

The Saul Zaentz Company's Middle-earth Enterprises didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon could be considering purchasing the rights, Variety said, after it paid a reported $250 million for the rights to make its upcoming TV series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Amazon reportedly bought those rights directly from the Tolkien estate, however, due to the eight-episode loophole.

Original Submission

Our servers are back up!

Earlier today (about 12 hours before this story), our site had a server crash. Early attempts to restart things (bouncing fluorine and hydrogen) were unsuccessful. (Thanks chromas and janrinok for your efforts!)

Fortunately, the system is usually lightly-loaded at this time, so relatively few people were affected.

Then mechanicjay came on the scene and was able to restart helium and neon. Then the rest of the servers for the site successfully came on-line.

Through it all, we retained access to IRC (thanks Deucalion!) and e-mail (thanks audioguy!).

There may be some lingering hiccups as slashd (which handles scheduled tasks -- think cron) plods through those tasks in due time.

We thank you for your patience during this time and send our thanks to all who notified us (politely!) about the outage on IRC and through e-mails.

Please join me in thanking all those who lent a hand through this period! You ROCK! =)

We return you to your regularly-scheduled stories.
--martyb

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2022/02/a-look-inside-chips-that-powered.html

The revolutionary Polaroid SX-701 camera (1972) was a marvel of engineering: the world's first instant SLR camera. This iconic camera was the brainchild of Dr. Edwin Land, a genius who co-founded Polaroid, invented polarized sunglasses, helped design the optics for the U-2 spy plane, and created a theory of color vision. The camera used self-developing film with square photos that came into view over a few minutes. The film was a complex sandwich of 11 layers of chemicals to develop a negative image and then form the visible color image. But the film was just one of the camera's innovations.

The camera required complex new optics to support the intricate light path shown below. The components included a flat Fresnel mirror, aspherical lenses, and a moving mirror. These optics could focus from infinity down to a closeup of 10 inches. The optics are even more amazing when you consider that the camera folded flat, 3 cm [~ 1.2 inches] thick and able to fit in a jacket pocket.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

European cloud companies want more protection from the EU:

Being a cloud company in 2022 is hard and the task is even harder when you're a European cloud company. All three of the top cloud services – AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud – are American, while the rest are mostly Chinese.

However European cloud companies do have a friend: the European Union. Or so a group of them hope, after writing an open letter, signed by 41 companies, asking for help combating "monopoly software providers" who are "once again using their dominant position to lock in customers, forcing them to use the cloud infrastructure they provide."

The letter is addressed to the EU's Margrethe Vestager, one of the most pro-EU politicians and – helpfully – someone with a track record for being tough on American companies, especially internet and technology firms.

"We have a fast-closing window of opportunity to preserve an autonomous European cloud infrastructure sector," the companies write. "The Digital Markets Act (DMA) could quickly ensure that the European cloud market is free, open and competitive. Unfortunately, the current version of the DMA requires clarification to ensure that its remedies also apply to unfair software practices by gatekeepers with dominant positions in productivity and enterprise software."

[...] The companies might be in luck, too, as the forthcoming DMA specifies that "cloud computing services" would be included under the definition of "core platform service", the framework by which the EU describes which companies fall under the scope of the legislation.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Replacing Huawei gear across the US could be much higher than expected:

The US government's bill for removing and replacing telecom equipment made by Chinese vendors could be billions more than previously thought.

Chinese vendors have largely been excluded from the US market due to ongoing concerns about security, with major carriers opting to use radio equipment from Ericsson, Nokia, and others.

However, several smaller providers still use kit from the likes of Huawei and ZTE because it is relatively inexpensive. The Rural Wireless Association, which represents operators with fewer than 100,000 customers, estimates a quarter of its members have Chinese-made kit in their networks.

[...] Separately, Huawei is also banned from dealing with US suppliers without a licence, severely limiting its access to key technologies such as chips and the Android operating system. Recently, there were moves to make the licence system even more restrictive.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Toshiba: 26TB HDDs Due Within a Year, 40TB HDDs in Five Years:

Toshiba this week outlined its aggressive hard disk drive road-map for the next five years via a Business Wire press release. The company expects to rapidly increase the capacity of its HDDs for nearline applications by adopting next-generation recording technologies as well as increasing the number of platters per drive. The company's nearest plan is to introduce a 26TB hard drive by the end of fiscal 2022, which means in 14 months from now. Meanwhile, a 40+ TB HDD is expected by 2027.

[...] Toshiba's next step will be announcement of a 20TB HDD that will continue to rely on FC-MAMR disks, but will employ 10 of them to increase capacity. Development of a 20TB hard drive is a relatively straightforward move that will enable it to compete against 20TB HDDs from Seagate and Western Digital that have been shipping for several months now.

[...] By the end of fiscal year 2022 that ends on March 31, 2023 (within the next 14 months), Toshiba will introduce its 10-platter 26TB HDD that will switch to microwave assisted switching MAMR (MAS-MAMR) technology enabled by platters developed by Showa Denko K.K. and heads designed by TDK. The company will maintain aggressive onward pace and intends to reveal an 11-platter 30TB drive in the following years (by the end of fiscal 2024, which ends on March 31, 2025).

upstart writes:

Tech bug keeps Mazda radios locked in to NPR:

Owners of 2014-17 Mazdas, in the Puget Sound area, contacted KUOW to report their infotainment systems were permanently locked in to the network.

Missing file extensions in album images sent with its digital-radio broadcast reportedly triggered the glitch.

The fix, according to Mazda, requires the replacement of a component.

[...] "We know lots of you always keep your car radio tuned to KUOW - but now some drivers don't have a choice," KUOW told listeners.

Scott Smith, in Seattle, told the network his on-screen menu would not stop cycling through options.

"I tried rebooting it because I've done that in the past - and nothing happened," he said.

"I realised I could hear NPR - but I can't change the station, can't use the navigation, can't use the Bluetooth."

KUOW said local Mazda dealerships had been "flooded with calls".

[...] "Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has distributed service alerts advising dealers of the issue."

The fix requires the replacement of the $1,500 connectivity master unit, reports say.

But Mazda said customers could apply for a free "goodwill" replacement.

Original Submission

coolgopher writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/09/nuclear-fusion-heat-record-a-huge-step-in-quest-for-new-energy-source

The prospect of harnessing the power of the stars has moved a step closer to reality after scientists set a new record for the amount of energy released in a sustained fusion reaction.

Researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET), a fusion experiment in Oxfordshire, generated 59 megajoules of heat – equivalent to about 14kg of TNT – during a five-second burst of fusion, more than doubling the previous record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997 by the same facility.

The feat announced on Wednesday follows more than two decades of tests and refinements at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and has been hailed as a "major milestone" on the road to fusion becoming a viable and sustainable low-carbon energy source.

Original Submission