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Frosty Piss writes:

James Webb Telescope could be adapted to search for alien pollutants:

At this very moment, the long-anticipated James Webb Telescope is situated a million miles from Earth, preparing its mirrors and instrumentation for this summer when its observations will finally begin.

Now, some scientists are considering the proposition that JWST could be tuned to observe something like atmospheric pollution in an alien civilization's sky. Indeed, given that certain pollutant molecules have no known natural origins, the notion of using the telescope to search for such "technosignatures" — as opposed to biosignatures — is intriguing.

"Atmospheric pollution is one unique hallmark of industry that does not occur from other forms of biology on Earth, so finding such pollution in an exoplanet atmosphere would be compelling evidence that the planet has technology," says astrobiologist Jacob Haqq Misra. "CFCs are a particularly compelling technosignature because they are known to be technological, they are potent greenhouse gases and they can have a long atmospheric lifetime."

[...] Misra isn't the only scientist thinking that pollutants could be a marker for intelligent life in the universe. Avi Loeb, the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-authored a paper published in 2014 exploring the idea as well.

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SomeGuy writes:

A Minnesota mom made a deal with her son when he was 12 to stay off social media for six years until he turned 18.

A mom is going viral for a deal she made with her son to stay off social media until he turned 18. Lorna Klefsaas, of Motley, MN, made a deal with her then 12-year-old son Sivert. If he would stay off social media until he turned 18, she would pay him $1800. Sivert collected the bet on his birthday, February 18th.

[...] Lorna said she knows how teens can struggle with social media - his older sisters became obsessed with it and it was affecting their mood so she wanted to save her youngest child from going through the same thing.

Sivert's sisters are five, six, and seven years older than he is, and so we watched how social media at a young age affected them. We tried to limit their social media as teenagers with varying degrees of success. One daughter, in particular,(social media)became something that was really affecting her mood, her self-esteem, and she was really struggling with it in a noticeable way. We ended up taking her phone away, which she didn't love. But after about three weeks we started to see an incredibly noticeable change in her behavior.

He plans to use his $1,800 on college supplies.

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owl writes:

This 200-Foot-Long Railway to Nowhere is Actually a Brilliant Shipping Loophole:

Life is full of loopholes big and small, and sometimes you just have to run a train right through one. That seems to be the case with the Bayside Canadian Railway, anyway, down at the southwestern tip of New Brunswick, Canada. It runs about 200 feet along a clearing just across the St. Croix River from Maine. Its tiny train slowly bumps back and forth, going approximately nowhere. And it's now at the center of a massive court battle between its operators and the U.S. federal government.

Run by a subsidiary of the American Seafood Group, a huge Seattle-based seafood processor that operates in Alaska, the Bayside Canadian Railway is said by the DOJ to fly afoul of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, according to Anchorage Daily News. Also known as the Jones Act, the law requires shipping between American ports be done with American-built, American-flagged vessels, which the ASG doesn't operate. An exemption known as the third proviso, however, apparently accommodates goods that make part of the journey via rail in Canada.

Short video.

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maxwell demon writes:

I've found this story on CodePre.com:

A secret recording of a presentation by a surveillance company has revealed how Apple has aided law enforcement agencies and state-sponsored surveillance programs by providing iCloud data. The presentation also revealed that with data from the likes of Facebook and Google, unsuspecting targets could be tracked within a three-foot radius.

The revealing presentation in question was delivered by PenLink's Scott Tuma at the National Sheriffs Association winter conference and was recorded by Tech Inquiry founder Jack Poulson. Organizations like PenLink are nondescript service providers that work behind the scenes to help the US government track criminals. PenLink is based in Nebraska and earns $20 million each year for the services it provides. He gained notoriety as a wiretapper in the 2000s when his services helped convict Scott Peterson of gruesome murders. Serves federal authorities such as the FBI, DEA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and local and state police.

Forbes reports that Tuma called Apple's assistance (when required by court order) through iCloud backups and data "phenomenal." "If you did something wrong, I bet I could find it in that backup," he said. Meanwhile, the iPhone maker claims that it allows users to encrypt their backups. He also says that he responds to law enforcement agencies directly upon request and not through private companies like PenLink. The company has also publicly refused to unlock iPhones in the past for the privacy and security of users.

Other surprising revelations in Tuma's presentation suggest that PenLink can exploit activity on almost any social media platform, including those that advertise foolproof end-to-end encryption. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Google.

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upstart writes:

Employees are facing more online surveillance than ever:

The rate of employee surveillance is getting out of hand after rising during the pandemic, the [UK] Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned.

The organization has published a report in which it claims almost two-thirds (60%) of employees reported being under some form of technological surveillance and monitoring, up from 53% last year.

Furthermore, three in ten survey respondents said surveillance increased during the Covid-19 pandemic.

[...] It's usually the "gig economy" (freelancers, contractors, and other online collaborators) where businesses are expected to use AI-powered surveillance, but TUC's data is showing that some 70% of workers experienced surveillance in industries such as financial services, retail, and utilities.

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upstart writes:

Astronomers Reveal Incredible Map of 4.4 Million Galaxies:

Durham University astronomer collaborating with a team of international scientists have mapped more than a quarter of the northern sky using the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), a pan-European radio telescope.

The map reveals an astonishingly detailed radio image of more than 4.4 million objects and a very dynamic picture of our Universe, which now has been made public for the first time.

The vast majority of these objects are billions of light-years away and are either galaxies that harbor massive black holes or are rapidly growing new stars. Rarer objects that have been discovered include colliding groups of distant galaxies and flaring stars within the Milky Way.

To produce the map, scientists deployed state-of-the-art data processing algorithms on high-performance computers all over Europe to process 3,500 hours of observations that occupy 8 petabytes of disk space — the equivalent to roughly 20,000 laptops.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In 2002, the European Space Agency launched Envisat, the largest civilian satellite (at the time) to go to low Earth orbit (LEO). For a decade, it observed our planet and sent back valuable data on Earth's climate, tracking the decline of Arctic sea ice and more, until it went dark in 2012. One of the prevailing theories for its demise is that it simply ran out of fuel. As LEO becomes more crowded, Envisat is a school bus-sized example of a growing area of concern in the space domain: orbital debris and the ever-increasing risk of disrupting active satellite missions that would yield outcomes ranging from inconvenient to catastrophic for modern society.

But how do you catch up to an uncooperative object tumbling through space faster than a speeding bullet? An international research collaboration between MIT and the German Space Agency (DLR) completed a series of experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that illuminated a possible path forward to help address this question.

"If we could refuel or repair these tumbling bodies that are otherwise functional, it would be really useful for orbital debris reduction, as long as we can catch up to it. But a close-proximity rendezvous is hard to do if you don't know exactly how your target is moving," says Keenan Albee SM '19, a Ph.D. candidate in aeronautics and astronautics who helped lead the project. "We've assembled a set of algorithms that figures out how the target is tumbling, and then along with other tools that allow us to account for uncertainty, we can produce a plan to get us to the target, despite the tumble."

canopic jug writes:

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published five of the white papers it funded regarding questions about Microsoft Copilot. After Microsoft acquired GitHub, it set up a machine learning system to cull through its archive of software, called Copilot. The approach chosen and even the basic activity raises many questions starting with those of licensing.

Microsoft GitHub's announcement of an AI-driven Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS) program called Copilot -- which uses machine learning to autocomplete code for developers as they write software -- immediately raised serious questions for the free software movement and our ability to safeguard user and developer freedom. We felt these questions needed to be addressed, as a variety of serious implications were foreseen for the free software community and developers who use GitHub. These inquiries -- and others possibly yet to be discovered -- needed to be reviewed in depth.

In our call for papers, we set forth several areas of interest. Most of these areas centered around copyright law, questions of ownership for AI-generated code, and legal impacts for GitHub authors who use a GNU or other copyleft license(s) for their works. We are pleased to announce the community-provided research into these areas, and much more.

First, we want to thank everyone who participated by sending in their papers. We received a healthy response of twenty-two papers from members of the community. The papers weighed-in on the multiple areas of interest we had indicated in our announcement. Using an anonymous review process, we concluded there were five papers that would be best suited to inform the community and foster critical conversations to help guide our actions in the search for solutions.

takyon writes:

For Linux Enthusiasts Especially, The Steam Deck Is An Incredible & Fun Device

The most fun and promising Linux-powered gaming device for the masses though is launching today: Valve's Steam Deck. I've been fortunate to be testing out this Arch Linux derived handheld game console the past month and it has been working out very well -- both as a portable Steam gaming device but making it even more compelling from the Linux enthusiast angle is its "developer mode" that effectively turns it into a general Linux handheld and also being free to load your own Linux distribution of choice.

[...] [The] much anticipated Valve handheld gaming computer that features a 7-inch 1280 x 800 display, gaming-optimized controls, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, 64GB to 512GB of storage depending on model, and is powered by a custom AMD APU. The AMD APU is made up of four Zen 2 cores (8 threads) and an AMD RDNA2 GPU with 8 compute units.

[...] On the software side, the Steam Deck is using SteamOS 3.0 that in turn is based on Arch Linux. SteamOS 3.0 is a complete overhaul compared to Valve's prior SteamOS work that is based on Debian GNU/Linux. SteamOS 3.0 with Arch Linux is much more fast-moving and has been seeing near-daily updates in preparation for launch.

Steam Deck.

See also:
Valve releases Steam Deck handheld PC to select few
Steam Deck review: it's not ready
The Steam Deck is already the emulation system of my dreams
Steam Deck: The comprehensive Ars Technica review
Steam Deck Review: Valve's Handheld Has Big PC Energy
Gabe Newell talks Steam Deck, crypto risks and why the PC industry "won't tolerate" closed platforms
Developers praise the Steam Deck: 'It just works, for real'
Valve Steam Deck Hardware Review & Analysis: Thermals, Noise, Power, & Gaming Benchmarks (Gamers Nexus, 35m30s video)
Steam Deck Tear-Down: Build Quality, Disassembly, & VRM Analysis (Gamers Nexus, 34m24s video)
Steam Deck 1-Month Review: SteamOS Difficulties, Software, & User Experience (Gamers Nexus, 34m28s video)

upstart writes:

NASA Opens Second Phase of $5 Million Lunar Power Prize Competition:

Under Artemis, NASA plans to return to the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. This will require lunar surface systems that can deliver continuous, reliable power to support mining and construction, research activities, and human habitation.

The newest phase of NASA's Watts on the Moon Challenge offers up to $4.5 million in prizes to design, build, and demonstrate a prototype that addresses technology gaps in power transmission and energy storage. Maximizing system efficiency and minimizing system mass will be an important part of what the challenge participants address in their designs, given that transporting all the needed equipment to sustain human presence on the lunar surface will require multiple missions. This challenge seeks advanced technology that is well-positioned to progress toward flight readiness and future operation on the lunar surface after the challenge.

[...] Phase 1 of Watts on the Moon opened in September 2020 and focused on the ideation of energy management, distribution, and storage solutions. In May 2021, seven winners were awarded a total of $500,000. To compete in Phase 1, teams had to submit ideas to support aspects of a hypothetical mission scenario – harvesting water and oxygen from a dark crater at the Moon's South Pole with energy generated by a power plant located on the crater's outer rim.

NASA invites previous participants as well as new teams to compete in Phase 2. For more information about the challenge, go to https://nasa.gov/wattson

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New imager microchip helps devices bring hidden objects to light:

The team is working on a device for industrial applications that require imaging up to 20 meters away. The technology could also be adapted for use in cars to help drivers or autonomous vehicle systems navigate through hazardous conditions that reduce visibility. On an automotive display, for example, the technology could show pixelated outlines and shapes of objects, such as another vehicle or pedestrians.

"The technology allows you to see in vision-impaired environments. In industrial settings, for example, devices using the microchips could help with packaging inspections for manufacturing process control, monitoring moisture content or seeing through steam. If you are a firefighter, it could help you see through smoke and fire," said Dr. Kenneth K. O, professor of electrical and computer engineering[...] .

[...] The microchip emits radiation beams in the terahertz range (430 GHz) of the electromagnetic spectrum from pixels no larger than a grain of sand. The beams travel through fog, dust and other obstacles that optical light cannot penetrate and bounce off objects and back to the microchip, where the pixels pick up the signal to create images. Without the use of external lenses, the terahertz imager includes the microchip and a reflector that increases the imaging distance and quality and reduces power consumption.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Researchers have found a way to remotely determine if protected female bottlenose dolphins are expecting a calf using aerial photos taken from drones.

By measuring the body width of the cetaceans captured in the aerial images the scientists can establish which females in the group are pregnant.

[...] Scientists from the University have been monitoring the bottlenose dolphin population that uses the Moray Firth Special Area of Conservation for more than 30 years.

For this study the researchers compared the aerial images to information from this long-term study including whether the females had had a calf and their age.

Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences Dr. Barbara Cheney, who is based at the University's Lighthouse Field Station, explains: "Previously we only knew if female bottlenose dolphins were pregnant if they were later seen with a calf. As a result, we only knew about successful pregnancies, and didn't know how many pregnancies failed or how many calves died before we saw them.

"The main aim of the study was to explore whether we could remotely determine pregnancy status from aerial photographs taken using an unoccupied aerial system or drone.

Journal Reference:
Barbara J. Cheney, Julian Dale, Paul M. Thompson, et al. Spy in the sky: a method to identify pregnant small cetaceans, Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation (2022). DOI: 10.1002/rse2.258

Original Submission

upstart writes:

USPS Blows Off EPA, White House Requests To Reconsider Postal Vehicle Contract:

We recently wrote about the boondoggle that is the United States Postal Service's new postal vehicle and its, frankly, abysmal fuel economy. In that article, we mentioned that the Biden administration and the EPA had both strongly encouraged the USPS to reevaluate its decision to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on buying and supporting gas-guzzling mail trucks.

Unfortunately, those pleas seem to have gone ignored because, as The Verge reported on Wednesday, the USPS will be moving forward with the Oshkosh designed and built internal combustion-powered mail trucks. Yeah, we're disappointed, too.

[...] Of the 165,000 new postal vehicles that are planned for purchase, only potentially around 10% will be battery-electric, and the rest can only manage an abysmal 8.6 mpg average.

Entire USPS statement.

Also at The Washington Post and Ars Technica.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Gpu Giant Nvidia Is Investigating A Potential Cyberattack:

US chipmaker giant Nvidia confirmed today it's currently investigating an "incident" that reportedly took down some of its systems for two days.

Systems impacted in what looks like a cyberattack include the company's developer tools and email systems, as first reported by The Telegraph.

The reported outage is the result of a network intrusion, and it is still not known if any business or customer data was stolen during the incident.

Nvidia told BleepingComputer that the nature of the incident is still being evaluated and that the company's commercial activities were not affected.

"We are investigating an incident. Our business and commercial activities continue uninterrupted," an Nvidia spokesperson told BleepingComputer.

"We are still working to evaluate the nature and scope of the event and don't have any additional information to share at this time."

An insider has described this incident as having "completely compromised" Nvidia's internal systems.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Finding MH370: New breakthrough could finally solve missing flight mystery (Video) - Technology Org:

A retired British aerospace engineer and physicist Richard Godfrey claims he has estimated the location of the airliner Boeing 777 that vanished almost eight years ago. According to the specialist, the key to solving this long-standing puzzle lies within the principles of so-called amateur radio, otherwise known as ham radio, where people communicating one with another have to determine the right signal within a strong background noise.

[...] Records of these disturbances can be used to identify the path of MH370.

Video on YouTube from 60 Minutes Australia.

Original Submission