SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference:

Finland's Transport and Communications Agency, Traficom, has issued a public announcement informing of an unusual spike in GPS interference near the country's eastern border.

The origin of the interference remains unknown, but based on numerous reports submitted to the agency from various sources, it has started during the weekend and is still ongoing.

[...] The equipment required to perform these spoofing attacks costs a couple of hundred USD, while the software to simulate realistic GPS satellite radio signals is generally widely available.

[...] In December 2017, Norwegian authorities accused Russia of widespread disruption of GPS navigation during military drills. In November 2018, NATO military exercises in Finland faced similar problems.

[...] The only way to deal with this on the ground is by incorporating GPS firewalls on the receivers and implementing multi-array antennas to introduce a directional verification factor for the signal.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Solar Orbiter Is Now Halfway Between the Sun and Earth:

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA, is officially halfway between our planet and the Sun. According to an ESA release, the spacecraft is currently 46.6 million miles from our host star.

Solar Orbiter began its scientific observations in November 2021 and will continue them on its way closer and closer to the Sun. The spacecraft is taking measurements of the solar winds and volatile corona.

Being situated so neatly between Earth and the Sun, the probe is giving researchers a unique opportunity to study space weather. Space weather is a feature of the solar wind, a steady stream of charged particles from the Sun that generates aurorae and occasionally disrupts electronics on Earth.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

10 years of Raspberry Pi: The $25 computer has come a long way:

This little device has revolutionized computing since it came on the scene. We take a look back at its journey.

The UK in the 1980s was ground zero for the microcomputer revolution. Cheap computers based on 8-bit processors flooded the market, teaching a generation to program using built-in BASIC interpreters. Homes had devices like Sinclair's ZX81 and Spectrum, while schools used Acorn's BBC Micro.

These weren't like today's PCs. They were designed and built to be accessible, with IO ports that could be accessed directly from the built-in programming environments. Turn one on, and you were ready to start programming.

But then things changed: 16-bit machines were more expensive, and technical and marketing failures started to remove pioneers from the market. The final nail in the coffin was the IBM PC and its myriad clones, focused on the business market and designed to run, not build, applications.

It became harder to learn computing skills, with home computers slowly replaced by gaming consoles, smartphones and tablets. How could an inquisitive child learn to code or build their own hardware?

upstart writes:

A transistor made using two atomically thin materials sets size record:

The ever-shrinking features of transistors etched in silicon have always required pushing the cutting edge of manufacturing technology. The discovery of atomically thin materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes, however, raised the prospect of replacing our manufacturing needs with the natural properties of these materials. There's no need to etch a 1 nanometer feature into silicon if you could simply use a carbon nanotube that's 1 nanometer wide.

And there have been some notable successes, such as a 1 nanometer gate made of a single carbon nanotube. But the work often involves a difficult process of getting the atomically thin materials in the right place to create a functional device. And the rest of the hardware is typically made of bulkier materials that are borrowed from more traditional transistor design.

[...] To make the device, the researchers started with layers of silicon and silicon dioxide. The silicon was purely structural—there's no silicon in the transistor itself. A graphene sheet was layered on top of the silicon and silicon dioxide to create the gate material. On top of that, the researchers placed a layer of aluminum. While aluminum is a conductor, the researchers let it sit in the air for a few days, during which the surface oxidized to aluminum oxide. So, the bottom surface of the graphene sheet was on silicon dioxide, and the top was covered by aluminum oxide, both of which are insulators. This isolated everything but the edge of the graphene from the rest of the transistor hardware.

upstart writes:

EU and UK open antitrust probe into Google and Meta over online ads:

Regulators in Europe and the UK have opened an antitrust probe into a deal between Google and Meta on online advertising, in the latest effort to tackle the market power of the world's biggest technology companies.

The move follows US antitrust investigators who are also probing an agreement informally known as "Jedi Blue." The search engine giant and Facebook's parent company have been accused of working together to carve up advertising profits, acting together to buttress their businesses.

The EU and UK probes represent the latest assault on Big Tech from global regulators that are also preparing to unleash new rules designed to challenge the primacy of groups such as Google, Meta, and Amazon. In response, US tech groups have launched lobbying efforts in Washington and Brussels in an effort to protect their interests.

[...] Companies found in breach of EU law stand to lose up to 10 percent of global revenues, but the legal processes could take years.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Game-Changing Digital Toolbox May Help Diagnose Dementia Earlier:

[...] In a new study from Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH), participants were tested using a digital pen that recorded the entire process of completing the cognitive test and allowed the researchers to pick up subtle measures of cognitive function beyond what is captured in traditional scoring.

“Rather than just being able to say that someone performed poorly on a cognitive test, these digital metrics allow us to delve further into the specific cognitive and physical functions that may be underlying poor test performance for a specific individual,” said corresponding author Mandy (Mengtian) Du, PhD, a former graduate student at BUSPH.

[...] According to the researchers, the digital pen data also allowed them to quantify the number of segments or straight lines that the participant used to complete the connections between the dots. They then looked at how these novel digital metrics were associated with other tests of cognitive and physical function. They found that the digital metrics were associated with specific cognitive functions such as processing speed, auditory attention, learning and working memory and physical functions such as walking speed and grip strength.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Ukraine may move its top-secret data and servers abroad:

Fears that Russia could steal top-secret government documents has caused Ukrainian authorities to explore potentially moving its data and servers to another country, reported Reuters. While the original plan is still to protect the country's IT infrastructure, moving the most sensitive data to another location is a viable Plan B, Victor Zhora— the deputy chief of Ukraine's information protection arm—told the news service.

Ukraine has already faced a litany of aggressive cyberattacks from the neighboring nation, including last month's penetration of its military and energy networks. Russia also attempted to interfere with Ukraine's 2014 presidential election and regularly launches attacks on Ukraine's power grid, leading to outages that last for days.

upstart writes:

Using nature's structures in wooden buildings:

Concern about climate change has focused significant attention on the buildings sector, in particular on the extraction and processing of construction materials. The concrete and steel industries together are responsible for as much as 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. In contrast, wood provides a natural form of carbon sequestration, so there's a move to use timber instead. Indeed, some countries are calling for public buildings to be made at least partly from timber, and large-scale timber buildings have been appearing around the world.

Observing those trends, Caitlin Mueller, an associate professor of architecture and of civil and environmental engineering in the Building Technology Program at MIT, sees an opportunity for further sustainability gains. As the timber industry seeks to produce wooden replacements for traditional concrete and steel elements, the focus is on harvesting the straight sections of trees. Irregular sections such as knots and forks are turned into pellets and burned, or ground up to make garden mulch, which will decompose within a few years; both approaches release the carbon trapped in the wood to the atmosphere.

For the past four years, Mueller and her Digital Structures research group have been developing a strategy for "upcycling" those waste materials by using them in construction—not as cladding or finishes aimed at improving appearance, but as structural components. "The greatest value you can give to a material is to give it a load-bearing role in a structure," she says. But when builders use virgin materials, those structural components are the most emissions-intensive parts of buildings due to their large volume of high-strength materials. Using upcycled materials in place of those high-carbon systems is therefore especially impactful in reducing emissions.

upstart writes:

The Fliegerfaust Roars Back To Life After 77 Years:

For those that like watching home-made weapons and explosions - take a look at this Hackaday story and, in particular, watch the video!

As their prospects for victory in the Second World War became increasingly grim, the Germans developed a wide array of outlandish "Wonder Weapons" that they hoped would help turn the tide of the war. While these Wunderwaffe obviously weren't enough to secure victory against the Allies, many of them represented the absolute state-of-the-art in weapons development, and in several cases ended up being important technological milestones. Others faded away into obscurity, sometimes with little more then anecdotal evidence to prove they ever even existed.

[...] Building the launcher was relatively straightforward, as it's little more than nine tubes bundled together with a handle and a simplistic electric igniter. The trick is in the 20 mm (0.78 inch) rockets themselves, which are spin stabilized by the exhaust gasses exiting the four angled holes on the rear. With no fins or active guidance the path of each rocket is somewhat unpredictable, but this was known to be true of the original as well.

Watch YouTube video

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists Discover Ants Can Be Trained to "Sniff Out" Cancer:

You've probably heard about dogs that have been trained to smell cancer in humans. But what about ants doing the same job? A team of scientists has found that ants can use their keen sense of smell to detect cancerous cells.

The team used Formica fusca ants, also known as silky ants, and trained them through a reward system. "After a few minutes of training, these insects, which use smell for daily tasks, were able to differentiate healthy human cells from cancerous human cells," the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a statement Wednesday.

Journal Reference:
Baptiste Piqueret, Brigitte Bourachot, Chloé Leroy, et al. Ants detect cancer cells through volatile organic compounds, [open] (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.103959)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

California can once again set its own emissions rules, EPA says:

California can now set its own emission standards under the Clean Air Act, the EPA announced today. The decision puts an end to a feud that began when automakers pushed the Trump administration to revisit fuel efficiency rules, which eventually led the former president to revoke California's waiver to declare its own standards in 2019. California is known for pushing stricter emissions requirements than the federal government, standards which have also been adopted by 16 other states and Washington, D.C.

"Today we proudly reaffirm California's longstanding authority to lead in addressing pollution from cars and trucks," EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. "Our partnership with states to confront the climate crisis has never been more important. With today's action, we reinstate an approach that for years has helped advance clean technologies and cut air pollution for people not just in California, but for the U.S. as a whole."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Italy slaps facial recognition firm Clearview AI with €20 million fine:

Italy's data privacy watchdog said it will fine the controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI for breaching EU law. An investigation by Garante, Italy's data protection authority, found that the company's database of 10 billion images of faces includes those of Italians and residents in Italy. The New York City-based firm is being fined €20 million, and will also have to delete any facial biometrics it holds of Italian nationals.

This isn't the first time that the beleaguered facial recognition tech company is facing legal consequences. The UK data protection authority last November fined the company £17 million after finding its practices—which include collecting selfies of people without their consent from security camera footage or mugshots—violate the nation's data protection laws. The company has also been banned in Sweden, France and Australia.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Dell opts out of Microsoft's Pluton security for Windows

This doesn't align with our approach, PC giant tells us

Yet another top-tier PC maker seemingly isn't interested right now in Microsoft's vision of hardware-level security for Windows 11 systems.

Dell won't include Microsoft's Pluton technology in most of its commercial PCs, telling The Register: "Pluton does not align with Dell's approach to hardware security and our most secure commercial PC requirements."

Microsoft launched to much fanfare its Pluton security layer for PCs in 2020 after developing it with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. Pluton effectively bakes a co-processor in silicon that securely stores encryption keys, credentials, and other sensitive information. The idea being that this data is kept close to the CPU cores, within the same processor package, thwarting attempts extract the secret info by, say, snooping an external bus.

It also allows Microsoft to define a base level of security features in the chips that Windows runs on. For instance, Pluton provides a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a technology required by Windows 11."

Lenovo had previously told The Register its Intel-powered ThinkPads "will not support Microsoft Pluton at launch."

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Biden considers digital dollar—here’s how it could differ from regular money:

President Joe Biden today issued an executive order that could lead to the US creating a digital currency.

"My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency]," the executive order said. "These efforts should include assessments of possible benefits and risks for consumers, investors, and businesses; financial stability and systemic risk; payment systems; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and the actions required to launch a United States CBDC if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest."

Biden also ordered government agencies to develop policies for managing cryptocurrencies that already exist. "The rise in digital assets creates an opportunity to reinforce American leadership in the global financial system and at the technological frontier, but also has substantial implications for consumer protection, financial stability, national security, and climate risk," the White House said. Biden's order "encourages regulators to ensure sufficient oversight and safeguard against any systemic financial risks posed by digital assets."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Spotting accelerator-produced neutrinos in a cosmic haystack:

Physicists have developed new tools to help tone down the cosmic "noise" when searching for signs of particles called neutrinos in detectors located near Earth's surface. This method combines data-sifting techniques with image reconstruction methods similar to the computerized tomography (CT) scans used in medicine. It makes the signals of neutrinos produced by a particle accelerator stand out against the "web" of tracks produced by cosmic rays. These cosmic travelers are 20,000 times more numerous than neutrino interactions in the detector. Filtering out the many tracks from cosmic rays should improve experiments on the Earth's surface that are seeking to understand the behavior of the subatomic neutrinos.

Neutrino detectors at Earth's surface need to pick out the signals of elusive neutrino interactions from the background "noise" of cosmic rays. MicroBooNE detects tracks produced when charged particles from neutrino interactions ionize argon atoms in the detector. Three planes of wires in the MicroBooNE experiment are sensitive to electrons in the ionization trails. Each plane captures an image of the track in two dimensions. Computers assemble the 2D images into 3D tracks—similar to the way computed tomography (CT) scanners reconstruct 3D images of internal organs from 2D "slice-like" snapshots of the human body. At MicroBooNE, the shape of the track tells scientists which flavor of neutrino triggered the interaction. To weed out thousands of tracks produced by cosmic rays, scientists first match the track signals with flashes of light also produced in neutrino interactions. The team developed algorithms to help compare the timing and light patterns for each photomultiplier tube in the detector with the locations of all of the particles' tracks. No match means it's not a neutrino event. They also developed methods to eliminate tracks that completely traverse the detector and spot tracks that originate in the detector, rather than outside, completing the job of zeroing in on the neutrino events.