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DannyB writes:

Amazon's crazy cheap satellite internet antenna is a huge advantage rivals like SpaceX's Starlink may 'struggle to overcome' industry experts say

• Amazon says antennas for its Project Kuiper satellite internet service cost under $500 to build.
• One analyst called the remarkably cheap antennas "an earth shattering development."
• The price delta could give Project Kuiper a leg up on arch rival SpaceX's Starlink.

When Amazon announced its massive rocket launch deal for Project Kuiper, its satellite internet service earlier this month, one detail flew mostly under the radar. Amazon said it has figured out how to make the antennas consumers mount on their homes for less than $500. That's more than five times cheaper than what SpaceX reportedly spends to build its Starlink antennas, which have long been the cheapest on the market.

The cost delta could give Amazon a major leg up as it launches its Kuiper service and looks to overtake Starlink, which has already launched more than 2,000 satellites and had more than 145,000 users globally as of January, according to CNBC.

[....] To make internet service providers Kuiper and Starlink work, consumers need what's called an all-electronically-steered flat panel antenna, capable of tracking satellites in orbit. This tech has historically been used only for military purposes, and can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, Quilty Analytics founder Chris Quilty told Insider.

To bring satellite internet to the public, providers have to figure out how to make the necessary antennas affordable.

[....] Another reason Amazon may have been able to get antenna costs so much lower than SpaceX is because Amazon started Project Kuiper as an engineering exercise to see if it was possible to build the antennas for less than $500, according to Quilty. The company didn't want to spend billions to build out a constellation if it wasn't possible.

By running the economics of a running a megaconstellation like Kuiper, it becomes clear that the cost of the user terminal is the most important factor, Quilty said, adding that it was insightful on Amazon's part that that's where they started their Project Kuiper efforts.

Is the one time cost of the ground terminal the biggest factor when considering purchasing a satellite internet service?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Attacker Breach 'Dozens' of GitHub Repos Using Stolen OAuth Tokens:

GitHub shared the timeline of breaches in April 2022, this timeline encompasses the information related to when a threat actor gained access and stole private repositories belonging to dozens of organizations.

GitHub revealed details tied to last week's incident where hackers, using stolen OAuth tokens, downloaded data from private repositories.

"We do not believe the attacker obtained these tokens via a compromise of GitHub or its systems because the tokens in question are not stored by GitHub in their original, usable formats," said Mike Hanley, chief security officer, GitHub.

[...] GitHub analysis the incident include[sic] that the attackers authenticated to the GitHub API using the stolen OAuth tokens issued to accounts Heroku and Travis CI. It added, most most of those affected authorized Heroku or Travis CI OAuth apps in their GitHub accounts. Attacks were selective and attackers listed the private repositories of interest. Next, attackers proceeded to clone private repositories.

"This pattern of behavior suggests the attacker was only listing organizations in order to identify accounts to selectively target for listing and downloading private repositories," Hanley said. "GitHub believes these attacks were highly targeted," he added.

GitHub said it is in the process of sending the final notification to its customer who had either Travis CI or Heroku OAuth apps integrated into their GitHub accounts.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Greene offers bill to abolish Section 230

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday is introducing a bill to abolish Section 230 — the law the protects online platforms from liability — on the heels of Twitter accepting Elon Musk's offer to buy the company and take it private.

Greene's bill would eliminate the law making online platforms not liable for content posted by third parties and replace it with a provision to require "reasonable, non-discriminatory access to online communications platforms" through a "common carrier" framework that Greene compared to airlines or package delivery services.

Republicans have long claimed that social media platforms have an anti-conservative bias, pointing to tweets that have been taken down and the removal of entire feeds from networks.

[....] Titled the 21st Century FREE Speech Act, Greene's measure will serve as the House version of a Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.).

To combat the alleged bias against conservatives, it would prevent online communications platforms from exerting "undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons, political or religious group or affiliation, or locality" and would provide consumers a mechanism to sue for violations.

Should any platform be liable for someone else's speech? Even if they engage in moderation?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists use recycled glass waste as sand replacement in 3D printing:

Glass is one material that can be 100 per cent recycled with no reduction in quality, yet it is one of the least recycled waste types. Glass is made up of silicon dioxide, or silica, which is a major component of sand, and therefore it offers significant untapped potential to be recycled into other products.

At the same time, due to growing populations, urbanisation and infrastructure development, the world is facing a shortage of sand, with climate scientists calling it one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century.

For these reasons, the NTU research team is seeking to find ways to recycle glass by 3D printing it into items for everyday use.

One of their innovations published recently in the Journal of Building Engineering, used a specially formulated concrete mix comprising recycled glass, commercial cement products, water, and additives to 3D print a concrete bench. By figuring out the optimal concrete formulation, the NTU research team was able to successfully 3D-print a 40cm tall L-shaped bench (see image) as a proof of concept that their material could be 3D printed into an everyday structural (weight-bearing) product.

upstart writes:

New Nimbuspwn Linux vulnerability gives hackers root privileges:

A new set of vulnerabilities collectively tracked as Nimbuspwn could let local attackers escalate privileges on Linux systems to deploy malware ranging from backdoors to ransomware.

Security researchers at Microsoft disclosed the issues in a report today noting that they can be chained together to achieve root privileges on a vulnerable system.

Tracked as CVE-2022-29799 and CVE-2022-29800, the Nimbuspwn security issues were discovered in networkd-dispatcher, a component that sends connection status changes on Linux machines.

Discovering the vulnerabilities started with "listening to messages on the System Bus," which prompted the researchers to review the code flow for networkd-dispatcher.

The Nimbuspwn security flaws refer to directory traversal, symlink race, and time-of-check-time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition issues, explains Microsoft researcher Jonathan Bar Or says in the report.

hubie writes:

New jumping device achieves the tallest height of any known jumper, engineered or biological

A mechanical jumper developed by UC Santa Barbara engineering professor Elliot Hawkes and collaborators is capable of achieving the tallest height—roughly 100 feet (30 meters)—of any jumper to date, engineered or biological. The feat represents a fresh approach to the design of jumping devices and advances the understanding of jumping as a form of locomotion.

[...] Biological systems have long served as the first and best models for locomotion, and that has been especially true for jumping, defined by the researchers as a "movement created by forces applied to the ground by the jumper, while maintaining a constant mass." Many engineered jumpers have focused on duplicating the designs provided by evolution, and to great effect.

[...] "Biological systems can only jump with as much energy as they can produce in a single stroke of their muscle," Xaio said. Thus, the system is limited in the amount of energy it can give to pushing the body off the ground, and the jumper can jump only so high.

[...] "This difference between energy production in biological versus engineered jumpers means that the two should have very different designs to maximize jump height," Xiao said. "Animals should have a small spring—only enough to store the relatively small amount of energy produced by their single muscle stroke—and a large muscle mass. In contrast, engineered jumpers should have as large a spring as possible and a tiny motor."

[...] This design and the ability to exceed the limits set by biological designs sets the stage for the reimagining of jumping as an efficient form of machine locomotion: Jumping robots could get places where only flying robots currently reach.

[...] "We calculated that the device should be able to clear 125 meters in height while jumping half of a kilometer forward on the moon," said Hawkes, pointing out that gravity is 1/6 of that on Earth and that there is basically no air drag. "That would be one giant leap for engineered jumpers."

Hopping robots have been shown to be effective for exploring.

Journal Reference:
Elliot Hawkes et al, Engineered jumpers overcome biological limits via work multiplication, Nature (2022).
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04606-3

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA Ingenuity Helicopter Spots Spacecraft Wreckage on Mars – Perseverance's Cone-Shaped Backshell:

NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter recently surveyed both the parachute that assisted the agency's Perseverance rover land on Mars and the cone-shaped backshell that protected the rover in deep space and during its fiery descent toward the Martian surface on February 18, 2021. Engineers with the Mars Sample Return program asked whether Ingenuity could provide this perspective. What resulted were 10 aerial color images captured on April 19 during Ingenuity's Flight 26.

"NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity's team lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Every time we're airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve. Mars Sample Return's reconnaissance request is a perfect example of the utility of aerial platforms on Mars."

[...] Entry, descent, and landing on Mars is fast-paced and stressful, not only for the engineers back on Earth, but also for the vehicle enduring the gravitational forces, high temperatures, and other extremes that come with entering Mars' atmosphere at nearly 12,500 mph (20,000 kph). The parachute and backshell were previously imaged from a distance by the Perseverance rover.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

EFF to European Court: No Intermediary Liability for Social Media Users:

Courts and legislatures around the globe are hotly debating to what degree online intermediaries—the chain of entities that facilitate or support speech on the internet—are liable for the content they help publish. One thing they should not be doing is holding social media users legally responsible for comments posted by others to their social media feeds, EFF and Media Defence told the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

Before the court is the case Sanchez v. France, in which a politician argued that his right to freedom of expression was violated when he was subjected to a criminal fine for not promptly deleting hateful comments posted on the "wall" of his Facebook account by others. The ECtHR's Chamber, a judicial body that hears most of its cases, found there was no violation of freedom of expression, extending its rules for online intermediaries to social media users. The politician is seeking review of this decision by ECtHR's Grand Chamber, which only hears its most serious cases.

EFF and Media Defence, in an amicus brief submitted to the Grand Chamber, asked it to revisit the Chamber's expansive interpretation of how intermediary liability rules should apply to social media users. Imposing liability on them for third-party content will discourage social media users, especially journalists, human rights defenders, civil society actors, and political figures, from using social media platforms, as they are often targeted by governments seeking to suppress speech. Subjecting these users to liability would make them vulnerable to coordinated attacks on their sites and pages meant to trigger liability and removal of speech, we told the court.

Further, ECtHR's current case law does not support and should not apply to social media users who act as intermediaries, we said. The ECtHR laid out its intermediary liability rules in Delfi A.S. v. Estonia, which concerned the failure of a commercial news media organization to monitor and promptly delete "clearly unlawful" comments online. The ECtHR rules consider whether the third-party commenters can be identified, and whether they have any control over their comments once they submit them.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Future of the NTFS Linux Driver as Part of the Kernel is in Question:

Support in the Linux kernel for NTFS, the primary filesystem for Windows systems, has always been important for people who use both operating systems. The existing Linux NTFS driver has been unmaintained and has always lacked proper write support. A filesystem in userspace (FUSE) driver, NTFS-3G, came along, but since it operates in userspace, it isn't considered particularly fast.

So when last August, the German software company Paragon Software offered to open source its in-house developed NTFS3 driver to become part of the Linux kernel, the news was welcomed among the Linux community. However, the driver was a proprietary software sold commercially before that.

[...] However, the first steps of adopting the driver as part of the Linux kernel were accompanied by many strange events and misunderstandings.

The point is that a straightforward procedure like creating a pull request (PR) proved to be a difficult task for the driver developers at Paragon Software. After several failed attempts, the driver was still submitted as a single dump of 27,000 lines of code!

Despite all the glitches, the driver was eventually implemented, and on October 31, 2021, Linux kernel 5.15 was officially announced with the Paragon NTFS3 driver integrated into it.

Unfortunately, thus far, the code has not received any maintenance.

takyon writes:

All of the bases in DNA and RNA have now been found in meteorites

More of the ingredients for life have been found in meteorites.

Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report April 26 in Nature Communications.

These "nucleobases" — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — combine with sugars and phosphates to make up the genetic code of all life on Earth. Whether these basic ingredients for life first came from space or instead formed in a warm soup of earthly chemistry is still not known. But the discovery adds to evidence that suggests life's precursors originally came from space, the researchers say.

Scientists have detected bits of adenine, guanine and other organic compounds in meteorites since the 1960s. Researchers have also seen hints of uracil, but cytosine and thymine remained elusive, until now.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

First Human Case of H3N8 Bird Flu Detected in China:

[...] A case of H3N8 influenza was detected in a 4-year-old boy in China. [...] It's the first time the virus has jumped from animals to humans -- but it looks like a one-off jump and further risk of spread is low.

The first case of H3N8 avian influenza has been recorded in China, according to a report by Reuters on Tuesday.

China's National Health Commission released a statement on Tuesday confirming a 4-year-old boy was infected with the strain of bird flu. The boy, from the central Chinese province of Henan, was in close contact with chickens and wild ducks and came down with a fever on April 5. He was admitted to hospital on April 10.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Arducam Reveals Hawk-eye, a 64MP Raspberry Pi Camera:

Arducam's latest Raspberry Pi camera module, Hawk-eye, is now available for pre-order, somehow cramming 64 megapixels into a sensor measuring just 7.4mm x 5.55mm. Its lens has full autofocus, a maximum aperture of f/1.8, and sees an angle of view of 84 degrees - the same as a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera.

Of course, all those megapixels mean there's plenty of opportunity to crop into your images or print them on huge pieces of paper - Sony's A7R IV currently takes the crown for the highest resolution full-frame (24mm x 36mm) mirrorless camera with 61MP, while Nikon and Canon top out at around the 45MP mark. Fujifilm will sell you a 102MP camera, but it uses its 32.9mm x 43.8mm medium format sensor.

Arducam's new device uses the same libcamera library, ribbon connector, and dimensions as the official Raspberry Pi camera module 2.1, so it can slot into existing Pi camera setups, and you can use up to four of them with a single board to create a multiplexed depth-mapping system. The camera can capture still images at up to 9152x6944 pixels on a Raspberry Pi 4 or Compute Module 4 (16MP on older boards and Zeros), and video at up to 1080p30 on a Raspberry Pi, though you may be able to take it higher on other boards, up to 9152x6944 at 2.7 frames per second.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

DoD agency warns $22 billion Army/Microsoft HoloLens deal could be waste of taxpayer money:

[...] Microsoft's deal to supply the US Army with 121,500 Integrated Visual Augmentation Systems (IVAS) augmented reality glasses based on its HoloLens technology could be a $22 billion waste of taxpayer money, according to a Department of Defense oversight agency.

Back in 2018, Microsoft began prototyping the IVAS glasses and was awarded a $480 million contract by the Army for 100,000 units. In April last year, Microsoft won the contract to build the final version for soldiers in a deal worth $22 billion over ten years.

The system combines high-resolution night, thermal, and soldier-borne sensors into a heads-up display. It also leverages augmented reality and machine learning to enable a life-like mixed reality training environment, the military branch wrote.

Signs that the project could be running into trouble arrived a few months later when the AR goggles' rollout was pushed back from fiscal year 2021 to September 2022, but the Army said it remained fully committed to the deal.

Yet it seems the US Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) doesn't share the Army's enthusiasm, nothing [sic] that many soldiers are having issues with the devices. "Procuring IVAS without attaining user acceptance could result in wasting up to $21.88 billion in taxpayer funds to field a system that soldiers may not want to use or use as intended," it wrote in an audit report (via The Reg).

This sounds like the usual story for defence procurement - time and cost over-runs, and failure to meet the original specification are the norm, aren't they?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Researchers develop a paper-thin loudspeaker:

This thin-film loudspeaker produces sound with minimal distortion while using a fraction of the energy required by a traditional loudspeaker. The hand-sized loudspeaker the team demonstrated, which weighs about as much as a dime, can generate high-quality sound no matter what surface the film is bonded to.

To achieve these properties, the researchers pioneered a deceptively simple fabrication technique, which requires only three basic steps and can be scaled up to produce ultrathin loudspeakers large enough to cover the inside of an automobile or to wallpaper a room.

Used this way, the thin-film loudspeaker could provide active noise cancellation in clamorous environments, such as an airplane cockpit, by generating sound of the same amplitude but opposite phase; the two sounds cancel each other out. The flexible device could also be used for immersive entertainment, perhaps by providing three-dimensional audio in a theater or theme park ride. And because it is lightweight and requires such a small amount of power to operate, the device is well-suited for applications on smart devices where battery life is limited.

[...] A typical loudspeaker found in headphones or an audio system uses electric current inputs that pass through a coil of wire that generates a magnetic field, which moves a speaker membrane, that moves the air above it, that makes the sound we hear. By contrast, the new loudspeaker simplifies the speaker design by using a thin film of a shaped piezoelectric material that moves when voltage is applied over it, which moves the air above it and generates sound.

upstart writes:

'Vampire devices' cost UK households £147 a year:

UK households could save an average of £147 per year by switching off so-called vampire devices.

Vampire devices are electronics that drain a surprising amount of power even when they are on standby.

British Gas research indicates households in the UK are spending £3.16bn annually just for the privilege of leaving vampire devices on standby.

This equates to £147 a year for the average household - the equivalent of two months' electricity charges.

Has anyone got any similar figures for their home countries?

Original Submission