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upstart writes:

Rare "Tatooine-Like" Exoplanet That Orbits Around Two Stars at Once Spotted by Ground-Based Telescope:

A rare exoplanet that orbits around two stars at once has been detected using a ground-based telescope by a team led by the University of Birmingham.

The planet, called Kepler-16b, has so far only been seen using the Kepler space telescope. It orbits around two stars, with the two orbits also orbiting one another, forming a binary star system. Kepler-16b is located some 245 light years from Earth and, like Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine, in the Star Wars universe, it would have two sunsets if you could stand on its surface.

The 193cm telescope used in the new observation is based at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence, in France. The team was able to detect the planet using the radial velocity method, in which astronomers observe a change in the velocity of a star as a planet orbits about it.

The detection of Kepler-16b using the radial velocity method is an important demonstration that it is possible to detect circumbinary planets using more traditional methods, at greater efficiency and lower cost than by using spacecraft.

upstart writes:

Valve has no plans to raise Steam Deck pricing:

Valve has announced that there are no plans to increase the price of its Steam Deck handheld despite the huge popularity of the system. In an interview with IGN, Gabe Newell (head of Valve) confirmed that while pricing the petite PC so low had been tricky, he anticipates that the current MSRP will remain fixed for now.

"I mean, part of what you do with pricing is you're making a promise to customers. [...] But we wouldn't expect to be adjusting the SKU pricing," Newell said during the interview, though he expressed surprise that the more expensive $649 (around £489 / AU$899) Steam Deck model that features 512GB of NVMe SSD internal storage and an anti-glare etched glass, had outsold the affordable $399 (around £299 / AU$550) entry-level model.

You're only getting 64GB of eMMC storage on the entry-level version of the handheld, a type of flash-based internal data storage that's often found in tablets and smartphones. This is typically cheaper than SSDs, but vastly inferior when working with large files like games, which may have swayed some folks to opt for the pricier flagship Steam Deck model.

Given its popularity, it's little wonder that Newell also expressed an interest in developing other variations with even higher specifications, confirming that Valve is considering additional models of the handheld.

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upstart writes:

Torvalds admits he's a bit worried about the next Linux build:

The speed at which Linux developers are working on version 5.17 of the popular kernel has gotten the OS' boss a bit worried.

In the weekly State of the kernel post, Linux creator (and the biggest developer) Linus Torvalds, said he believed the progress (or lack thereof) wasn't caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, or "whatever crazy things are going on in the world", as these things "don't seem to have affected the kernel much."

However, the number of known regressions that Torvalds is claiming have been out there since late January have affected the development cycle. Although these "don't seem all that big and scary", Torvalds did stress that some of them were reported right after the rc1 release, meaning they're getting somewhat stale.

"I'd hate to have to delay 5.17 just because of them, and I'm starting to be a bit worried here. I think all the affected maintainers know who they are," he concluded, before urging subsystem maintainers to make these regressions a priority.

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upstart writes:

Toyota forced to halt car production following supplier cyberattack:

Toyota has been forced to shut production at its Japanese factories following a suspected cyberattack.

The Japanese car giant has revealed that Kojima Industries Corporation, one of its central suppliers, had been affected by an attack that meant it had to shutter activity across its entire production line.

"Due to a system failure at a domestic supplier, we have decided to suspend the operation of 28 lines at 14 plants in Japan on Tuesday, March 1st (both 1st and 2nd shifts)," the company said in a statement. "We apologize to our relevant suppliers and customers for any inconvenience this may cause."

[...] It's not thought that the attack is linked to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, with retaliation to sanctions recently imposed on Russia by the Japanese government a possible motive for hackers.

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upstart writes:

Ethernet co-inventor David Boggs dies at 71:

Pioneering Xerox PARC computer researcher David Boggs has died at 71, The New York Times has reported. He was best known for co-inventing the Ethernet PC connection standard used to link PCs in close proximity to other computers, printers and the internet — over both wired and wireless connections.

The Xerox PARC research lab in Palo Alto developed much of the PC tech we tech[sic] for granted today like the graphic user interface, mouse and word processor. Boggs joined the team in 1973, and started working with fellow researcher Bob Metcalfe on a system to send information to and from the lab's computer.

In about two years, they had designed the first version of Ethernet, a link that could transmit data at 2.94 Mbps over a coaxial cable. It borrowed in part from a wireless networking system developed at the University of Hawaii called ALOHAnet, tapping into Boggs' passion for HAM radio. "He was the perfect partner for me," Metcalfe told the NYT. "I was more of a concept artist, and he was a build-the-hardware-in-the-back-room engineer."

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upstart writes:

A slow-motion section of the San Andreas fault may not be so harmless after all: Where big quakes were thought unlikely, rocks deep down say otherwise:

Lesser known is the fact that the San Andreas comprises three major sections that can move independently. In all three, the plates are trying to move past each other in opposing directions, like two hands rubbing against each other. In the southern and the northern sections, the plates are locked much of the time -- stuck together in a dangerous, immobile embrace. This causes stresses to build over years, decades or centuries. Finally a breaking point comes; the two sides lurch past each other violently, and there is an earthquake. However in the central section, which separates the other two, the plates slip past each other at a pleasant, steady 26 millimeters or so each year. This prevents stresses from building, and there are no big quakes. This is called aseismic creep.

At least that is the story most scientists have been telling so far. Now, a study of rocks drilled from nearly 2 miles under the surface suggests that the central section has hosted many major earthquakes, including some that could have been fairly recent. The study, which uses new chemical-analysis methods to gauge the heating of rocks during prehistoric quakes, just appeared in the online edition of the journal Geology.

"This means we can get larger earthquakes on the central section than we thought," said lead author Genevieve Coffey, who did the research as a graduate student at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "We should be aware that there is this potential, that it is not always just continuous creep."

Journal Reference:
Genevieve L. Coffey, Heather M. Savage, Pratigya J. Polissar, et al. History of earthquakes along the creeping section of the San Andreas fault, California, USA, Geology (DOI: 10.1130/G49451.1)

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upstart writes:

New optical tweezers put on the pressure to change color:

Scientists demonstrate an optical trapping technique using nanotextured black silicon that can efficiently trap polymer chains. By adjusting the laser intensity, these 'optical tweezers' can control the florescence color emitted through a local concentration of a perylene-modified polymer solution. From a low intensity blue to high intensity orange, this reversible and fully remote technology can almost reach the entire RGB spectrum.

One big stumbling block in the field of photonics is that of color control. Until now, to control color, i.e. the wavelength of light emission, researchers would have to alter the chemical structure of the emitter or the concentration of the solvent -- all of which require direct contact, greatly limiting their application.

"Such conditions make it impossible to change color quickly, use it as a light source in microscopic spaces like a cell, or in closed systems where exchange is not an option," says Yasuyuki Tsuboi and professor of the Department of Chemistry, Osaka City University. With "optical tweezers," a technology he developed in previous research, Prof. Tsuboi led a team of researchers to show it possible to control the luminescence color remotely, using only the effect of light pressure.

[...] "We observed the color of the fluorescence emitted by the polymer aggregate change in response to this," explains Prof, Tsuboi, "with low intensities producing blue, and then changing to green, yellow, green yellow, to orange as the intensity increases." As the laser intensity is what is being controlled, the color change is fully reversible and able to be done remotely.

Journal Reference:
Ryota Takao, Kenta Ushiro, Hazuki Kusano,et al. Fluorescence Colour Control in Perylene‐Labeled Polymer Chains Trapped by Nanotextured Silicon. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2022; 61 (11) (DOI: 10.1002/anie.202117227)

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Freeman writes:

Ukraine Asks Musk for Starlink Terminals as Russian Invasion Disrupts Broadband :

SpaceX is sending Starlink user terminals to Ukraine after a request from a government official. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, used Twitter to make a direct plea to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Saturday, writing:

@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars—Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space—Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand.

About 10 hours later, Musk responded, "Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route." A bit later, Fedorov sent a tweet thanking Musk and another tweet thanking Ukraine's ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, "for swift decisions related to authorization and certification that allowed us to activate the Starlink in Ukraine."

[...] Update 4:12 pm EST: Fedorov confirmed in a new tweet today that Starlink terminals have arrived in Ukraine and included a photo of the terminals in the back of a truck:

Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/dZbaYqWYCf

— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 28, 2022

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coolgopher writes:

World's First Hydraulic Drone Promises Six-Hour, Non-Stop Flights Over 805 km:

It might not look perfectly stable in the air just yet, but a company called Flowcopter is building the world's first hydraulic drone that trades batteries and electric motors for pumps and gas engines delivering a range of hundreds of miles and flight times that last hours.

There's little doubt that someday batteries and electric motors will be up to the task of powering all the vehicles we rely on: from cars to massive container ships, even planes, but the current reality is that gasoline and other fossil fuels are much higher density fuel sources than batteries and can power motors and engines much longer with considerably less weight.

[...] A gas engine on a drone could certainly be used to power a generator that supplies power to electric motors — an approach that early electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt used as a backup to extend their range — but Flowcopter's trying something entirely new. Instead of electric motors powering each propeller, hydraulic motors, powered by an endless flow of hydraulic fluid through hoses, make them spin.

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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.