SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Rocket Lab launches smallsats, catches but drops booster - SpaceNews:

Rocket Lab declared success in its effort to catch an Electron booster in midair after launch May 2, even though the helicopter had to release the booster moments later.

The Electron rocket lifted off from the company's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 6:49 p.m. Eastern after a brief hold in the countdown. The rocket's ascent went as planned, with the kick stage, carrying a payload of 34 smallsats, reaching orbit about 10 minutes later.

[...] The company billed the midair capture as the final step in its efforts to reuse the stage. A successful midair recovery could allow the company to fly the stage again later this year, enabling the company to increase its flight rate without manufacturing more boosters.

About 15 minutes after launch, the descending booster came into view of Rocket Lab's Sikorsky S-92 helicopter. Video from the helicopter appeared to show the hook grappling the parachute to cheers from mission control. Moments later, though, there were groans and the webcast cut away, suggesting that perhaps the helicopter lost the booster.

More than a half-hour later, Rocket Lab confirmed that the helicopter had grappled, but then released, the booster. "After the catch, the helicopter pilot noticed different load characteristics than what we've experienced in testing," company spokesperson Murielle Baker said on the webcast. "At his discretion, the pilot offloaded the stage for a successful splashdown" for recovery by a boat, like on the three previous recovery attempts.

Despite the release, she called the catch "a monumental step forward in our program to make Electron a reusable launch vehicle." It was not clear when Rocket Lab would next attempt a midair booster recovery.

Rocket Lab launch webcast (booster capture about 50 minutes in)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Linux gaming surges in popularity – is this the Steam Deck effect?:

Linux gaming has witnessed an impressive uptick in popularity among Steam gamers, going by the latest hardware survey from Valve's gaming platform.

The hardware survey for April 2022 shows that the amount of gamers using Linux has increased to 1.14%, which is still a modest percentage, but it's up quite strongly on the previous month when Linux sat at exactly 1.0%.

While an increase of 0.14% means very little for Windows, it's actually a big leap for Linux, and in fact represents the second-highest level of adoption the alternative platform has witnessed in recent times, going by Valve's figures.

What was the best month ever for Linux, you may well wonder? That'd be November 2021 when Steam's hardware survey reported an adoption level of 1.16%, as Gaming on Linux, which reported on this, pointed out. Interestingly, that adoption percentage had climbed to that peak quite speedily since July 2021, when the Steam Deck was first announced, but since hitting that high, the percentage has drifted slowly downward to 1% in March 2022.

So what's quite remarkable here is that we've seen a large spike, relatively speaking, with a jump from 1% to 1.14% – the biggest leap in recent times in the space of just a month.

I am not a gamer, so why are Linux users not using it as a gaming platform? Is it lack of graphics card support, poor range of available games or are Linux users simply more orientated towards business, programming and other non-gaming aspects of computing? JR.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) has cleared a big hurdle to becoming a law:

The European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a proposal for bringing competition and fairness back to online platform markets. It just cleared a major hurdle on the way to becoming law in the EU as the European Parliament and the Council, representing the member states, reached a political agreement.

The DMA is complex and has many facets, but its overall approach is to place new requirements and restrictions on online "gatekeepers": the largest tech platforms, which control access to digital markets for other businesses. These requirements are designed to break down the barriers businesses face in competing with the tech giants.

[...] The DMA only places obligations on "gatekeepers," which are companies that create bottlenecks between businesses and consumers and have an entrenched position in digital markets. The DMA's threshold is very high: companies will only be hit by the rules if they have an annual turnover of €7.5 billion within the EU or a worldwide market valuation of €75 billion. Gatekeepers must also have at least 45 million monthly individual end-users and 100,000 business users. Finally, gatekeepers must control one or more "core platform services" such as "marketplaces and app stores, search engines, social networking, cloud services, advertising services, voice assistants and web browsers." In practice, this will almost certainly include Meta (Facebook), Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and possibly a few others.

The DMA restricts gatekeepers in several ways, including:

• limiting how data from different services can be combined,
• banning forced single sign-ons, and
• forbidding app stores from conditioning access on the use of the platform's own payment systems.

Other parts of the DMA make it easier for users to freely choose their browser or search engine, and force companies to make unsubscribing from their "core platform services" as easy as subscribing was in the first place.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Parallel ice ridges, a common feature on Jupiter's moon Europa, are found on Greenland's ice sheet

Parallel ice ridges in Greenland bear a striking resemblance to ridges on Jupiter's ice-encased moon Europa, suggesting the moon's icy shell could be riddled with pockets of water.

This similarity could greatly improve the odds of NASA's Europa Clipper mission detecting potentially habitable environments on the Jovian moon. The spacecraft's ice-penetrating radar instrument REASON (short for Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface) will be ideal for conducting such a search.

"If there are pockets of water under the ridges, we have the right instruments to see them," said Dustin Schroeder, a Stanford University associate professor and coauthor of a new study comparing Greenland's "double ridges" with those of Europa.

[...] "It's exciting, what it would mean if you have plenty of water within the ice shell," said coauthor Gregor Steinbrügge, a former Stanford researcher who is now a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.[...]

Potential life-sustaining nutrients on Europa's surface – perhaps deposited there by another Jupiter moon, volcanic Io – might find their way to the subsurface ocean, he said.

Journal Reference:
Culberg, R., Schroeder, D.M. & Steinbrügge, G. Double ridge formation over shallow water sills on Jupiter's moon Europa. [open] Nat Commun 13, 2007 (2022).
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29458-3

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Clearview AI's co-founder Hoan Ton-That recently defended his startup's use of controversial facial recognition software:

If you're skeptical about whether your company will ever use facial recognition technology as a business tool, you're not alone. Perhaps the most prominent facial recognition technology provider in the world, Clearview AI, has attracted significant criticism and raised ethical concerns even as it has been used by law enforcement.

In a live interview with the Washington Post last week, New York-based Clearview AI's co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That addressed questions about the ethical and legal implications of his software, which became first known to many Americans when a billionaire used it to identify his daughter's dinner date, and for the involvement of far-right individuals in the creation of the company. Pressed on questions about the legal and ethical choices his firm has made while creating a searchable database of 20 billion facial images, Ton-That repeatedly brought up examples where the use cases of Clearview AI's technology would look better in the public eye, mentioning its use in helping catch criminals in child pornography and child abuse cases. Ton-That also pointed to the use of Clearview AI's technology by the Ukrainian government to identify dead Russian soldiers, for notifying their families of their passing.

While Clearview AI has some 20 billion facial images to feed its current product, the dataset is being used only by governments so far. "There's no non-governmental use of this dataset at this time," Ton-That said, adding that "we've developed as prototypes different versions of our technology for retail and banking."

Ton-That went on to say he welcomes regulation and his company will not do business with governments he described as "authoritarian."

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Previously:
Ukraine Reportedly Adopts Clearview AI to Track Russian Invaders
Italy Slaps Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI With €20 Million Fine
Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI Tells Investors: It's Seeking Massive Expansion
France Has Ordered Clearview AI to Delete its Facial Recognition Data
US Government Agencies Plan to Increase Their Use of Facial Recognition Technology
And many more

Original Submission

hubie writes:

From a story out of Princeton University:

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world's oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to a recent study in the journal Science by Princeton University researchers.

The paper's authors modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected climate scenarios. They found that if emissions are not curbed, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone could come to mirror the substantial impact humans already have on marine biodiversity by around 2100. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, the authors reported.

[...] "The silver lining is that the future isn't written in stone," said first author Justin Penn, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Geosciences. "The extinction magnitude that we found depends strongly on how much carbon dioxide [CO2] we emit moving forward. There's still enough time to change the trajectory of CO2 emissions and prevent the magnitude of warming that would cause this mass extinction."

[...] The researchers report that the pattern of extinction their model projected — with a greater global extinction of species at the poles compared to the tropics — mirrors the pattern of past mass extinctions.

[...] The model also helps resolve an ongoing puzzle in the geographic pattern of marine biodiversity. Marine biodiversity increases steadily from the poles towards the tropics, but drops off at the equator. This equatorial dip has long been a mystery; researchers have been unsure about what causes it and some have even wondered whether it is real. Deutsch and Penn's model provides a plausible explanation for the drop in equatorial marine biodiversity: the oxygen supply is too low in these warm waters for some species to tolerate.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Uber admits to misleading Australian users about ride cancellation fees:

Uber has admitted to misleading users about ride cancellation fees and Uber Taxi fare estimates in Australia, with the ride-sharing company set to face AU$26 million in penalties for those practices.

Through an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the consumer watchdog uncovered that Uber's rideshare app displayed a cancellation warning to consumers who sought to cancel a ride saying words to the effect of "[y]ou may be charged a small fee since your driver is already on their way", even when consumers were seeking to cancel a ride within Uber's free cancellation period.

Most of Uber's services provide users with a five-minute free cancellation that commences once a driver has accepted the trip wherein users can cancel their ride without incurring a fee.

Uber engaged in this misleading practice for almost four years, from December 2017 and September 2021, with over two million Australian consumers being shown the misleading cancellation warning.

"Uber admits it misled Australian users for a number of years, and may have caused some of them to decide not to cancel their ride after receiving the cancellation warning, even though they were entitled to cancel free of charge under Uber's own policy," said Gina Cass-Gottlieb, who stepped into the role last month as the agency's first woman chair.

In September 2021, Uber amended its cancellation messaging for Uber services across Australia to "[y]ou won't be charged a cancellation fee".

Uber also admitted that its app deceptively displayed an inflated estimated fare range for its Uber Taxi ride option, which allowed users to book a ride with a taxi rather than a rideshare driver.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Technology journalist Nathan Willis has taken a look at the election at the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The election appears to have brought with it several severe conflicts of interest. Several sponsors are running candidates and several corporations are running multiple candidates for multiple seats. Little information was available about some candidates and their stances on Open Source Software and its community.

Ostensibly, these elections are serious affairs. The OSI is high-profile organization, with a robust list of Big Tech sponsor companies funding it. And "open source" as a term is the OSI's property: the OSI is in charge of the trademark and defends it when it is misused; the OSI also maintains the formal "open source" definition and the list of licenses that you are permitted to call "open source". [...]

Nevertheless, these elections kinda just plod through without a lot of interest or engagement. [...] That's in pretty stark contrast to the public back-and-forth that happens for Debian Project Leader (DPL) elections and the brouhaha over recent leadership "maneuvering" (scare quotes intentional) in the FSF.

The OSI board candidates can each write a candidacy-page text that gets put on the wiki, but it can say whatever they want. In short, to you the voter, there's no genuine back-and-forth provided. No debates, no time allotted, no required position papers, etc. For the past few years, however, Luis Villa has made an effort to pose questions to the candidates. I think that's great. Although not everyone answers, some do. [...]

Follow the story link for a detailed breakdown of the ballot candidates and the issues he is concerned about.

mhajicek provides another lab-grown meat option:

How lab-grown sushi could help tackle overfishing

[...] One company trying to produce fish more sustainably is Wildtype. The California-based startup is creating sushi-grade salmon by cultivating cells extracted from salmon eggs. It raised $100 million in February 2022, which included support from actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jeff Bezos' investment firm Bezos Expeditions. Now, the company is hoping to scale and be one of the first to take a lab-cultivated fish product to market, says Wildtype co-founder Justin Kolbeck.

Wildtype cultivates cells in a nutritious solution in steel vessels similar to the fermentation tanks used by breweries. A plant-based mesh known as a "scaffold" is used to help the cells form fibrous or fat-like tissue.

[...] Aryé Elfenbein, co-founder of Wildtype and a molecular biologist, says that with cell-cultured fish, "there are no antibiotics, no heavy metals, no microplastics." There's no waste, as only the edible parts of the fish are grown, and Wildtype says its product takes only four to six weeks to grow, compared to the two to three years required to grow a mature salmon in aquaculture.

The elevated prices that customers generally pay for quality sushi could help make lab grown fish economically viable. This could also reduce the environmental and economic costs involved in shipping fresh seafood long distances. I'd eat it if it were available here (Minneapolis area), and for a similar price to traditional sushi.

See also: https://vegnews.com/2021/6/lab-grown-sushi-bar-san-francisco

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Billions of dollars to be invested in new submarine internet cables:

Investment in submarine cables could reach $10 billion over the next two years, as telecoms providers and technology companies seek to increase capacity for global data traffic.

Undersea cables were first used in the 19th century to transmit telegrams across oceans and have since provided the foundation for global telephone and internet networks.

[...] TeleGeography's 2022 cable map now indicates 486 cable systems and 1,306 landings globally, with $12 billion worth added in the past five years.

It is predicated that subsea cable spending will increase as hyperscalers shift their position from generating demand to generating supply as mobile data traffic continues to grow and cloud adoption increases.

There are now more than 1.3 million km of submarine cables worldwide.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google Warns Billions That Chrome Has Been Hacked, Patch This Version ASAP:

[...] The Stable Channel for the desktop edition of Chrome had an update on April 26, 2022. That update includes 30 security fixes, some of them so bad that Google is urging all users to update immediately.

The release notes for Google's Chrome v101.0.4951.41 for Windows, Mac, and Linux has a long list of bug fixes; you can view it here. However, there's also a key statement in that page.

"Note: Access to bug details and links may be kept restricted until a majority of users are updated with a fix. We will also retain restrictions if the bug exists in a third party library that other projects similarly depend on, but haven't yet fixed."

Effectively the the non-developer translation of the quote above is that these are serious enough to keep the details hidden from the public to avoid bad actors pouncing on them with exploits. We can tell you a good portion of the bugs that have been published lately have to do with memory manipulation and memory overflow errors, a pretty popular way for malware developers to inject code into memory and allow for arbitrary execution, which is bad. [...]

[Editor's note (hubie): On 5/22 the original article author stepped back from their initial headline and stance. The SN headline here has been changed to reflect the current article headline and relevant text updated. I moved the original text below for posterity.]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

World leaders sign landmark 'future of the internet' pact:

World leaders from more than 60 countries including the US and the UK have come together to commit to a new agreement aimed at safeguarding the future of the internet.

The so-called Declaration of the Future of the Internet (PDF) will help strengthen democracy online as the countries that have agreed to its terms have promised not to undermine elections by running online misinformation campaigns or illegally spying on people according to the White House.

At the same time, the declaration commits to promote safety and the equitable use of the internet, with the countries involved agreeing to refrain from imposing government-led shutdowns while providing both affordable and reliable internet services.

While the Declaration of the Future of the Internet isn't legally binding, the principles set forth within it will serve as a reference for public policy makers, businesses, citizens and civil society organizations.

US tech giants support the declaration with Google saying in a blog post that the private sector must also play an important role when furthering internet standards while Microsoft president Brad Smith explained in a separate blog post that governments cannot manage the global challenges facing the internet on their own.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Cloudflare just mitigated one of the most powerful DDoS attacks ever:

Earlier this week, Cloudflare engineers identified one of the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks ever attempted. The attack, made against an unidentified cryptocurrency platform, was identified and mitigated in under 20 seconds. The individuals behind the act flooded the network with more than 15 million requests.

In addition to the attack's size, the use of HTTPS rather than typical HTTP requests further complicated the issue—the secure protocol results in more resource overhead due to the compute-intensive nature of the secure HTTPS request. According to Cloudflare, the botnet responsible for carrying out the attack represented 6,000 bots from 112 countries around the world.

The attack is believed to have leveraged servers from hosting providers running vulnerable Java-based applications. Those servers were likely unpatched or not updated and susceptible to CVE-2022-21449, Psychic Signatures in Java. The vulnerability allows attackers to use the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) to forge SSL certificates and other authentication-based information in order to obtain unwanted access.

The sharp spike in Cloudflare's traffic analytics shows just how quickly the attack was able to ramp up. At 22:21:15 the platform recorded between 500,000 and 1 million requests. Within five seconds, that number grew to almost 3 million requests. At this point the attack's intensity escalated, generating approximately 15.3 million requests within the next five seconds. Several seconds later, Cloudflare was able to mitigate the attack, bringing traffic patterns back to expected levels.

I am no fan of Cloudflare, but they seem to have done what they said they could do in this particular case.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

An article about how the Russian military stole farm equipment from a John Deere dealership in the Ukraine, only to find it all remotely disabled when trying to use/sell it on the other side:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/01/europe/russia-farm-vehicles-ukraine-disabled-melitopol-intl/index.html

Russian troops in the occupied city of Melitopol have stolen all the equipment from a farm equipment dealership -- and shipped it to Chechnya, according to a Ukrainian businessman in the area.

But after a journey of more than 700 miles, the thieves were unable to use any of the equipment -- because it had been locked remotely.

Over the past few weeks there's been a growing number of reports of Russian troops stealing farm equipment, grain and even building materials - beyond widespread looting of residences. But the removal of valuable agricultural equipment from a John Deere dealership in Melitopol speaks to an increasingly organized operation, one that even uses Russian military transport as part of the heist.

[...] Other sources in the Melitopol region say theft by Russian military units has extended to grain held in silos, in a region that produces hundreds of thousands of tonnes of crops a year.

Are there other examples like this justifying some sort of limited DRM? How prominent do you think this will be held up as an example in lobbying efforts to justify not passing "Right To Repair" laws?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Huge new ichthyosaur, one of the largest animals ever, uncovered high in the Alps:

Huge new ichthyosaur, one of the largest animals ever, uncovered high in the Alps

Paleontologists have discovered sets of fossils representing three new ichthyosaurs that may have been among the largest animals to have ever lived, reports a new paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Unearthed in the Swiss Alps between 1976 and 1990, the discovery includes the largest ichthyosaur tooth ever found. The width of the tooth root is twice as large as any aquatic reptile known, the previous largest belonging to a 15-meter-long ichthyosaur.

Other incomplete skeletal remains include the largest trunk vertebra in Europe that demonstrates another ichthyosaur rivaling the largest marine reptile fossil known today, the 21-meter long Shastasaurus sikkanniensis from British Columbia, Canada.