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upstart writes:

Internet on the go: FCC greenlights Starlink service on moving cars, boats, and planes:

If you're ready for connectivity on the move, SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband may soon be the answer. The US Federal Communications Commission on Thursday gave the internet provider the greenlight to provide service on moving vehicles, boats, and planes.

The new authority should help SpaceX meet "the growing user demands that now require connectivity while on the move," wrote FCC International Bureau Chief Tom Sullivan in the approval, "whether driving an RV across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a U.S. port, or while on a domestic or international flight."

The new approval specifically grants SpaceX authority to operate consumer and enterprise Ku-band Earth Stations in Motion (ESIM) in the 12 GHz band. However, the FCC granted the approval with some conditions.

First, SpaceX has to accept that there could be interference from other current and future operators in the 12 GHz band. SpaceX's authority to operate in the band is unprotected, so if other services interfere with the quality of SpaceX's service, that's simply too bad. The FCC also is requiring SpaceX to disclose to its customers that there's no expectation of interference protection.

The FCC granted SpaceX its new authority over the objections of a handful of other service providers. Satellite broadband provider Viasat, RS Access (a wireless network service backed by Michael Dell), and DISH all petitioned against it. DISH and RS Access already operate in the 12 GHz band, while Viasat is a manufacturer of Ku-band equipment, a provider of Ku-band satellite connectivity, and a Ku-band ESIM licensee.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Ukraine targeted by almost 800 cyberattacks since the war started:

Ukrainian government and private sector organizations have been the target of 796 cyberattacks since the start of the war on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

According to Ukraine's cybersecurity defense and security agency SSSCIP (State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection), the country's networks have been under a constant barrage of hacking attempts since the war started.

"Enemy hackers continue to attack Ukraine. The intensity of cyberattacks has not decreased since the beginning of Russia's full-scale military invasion, although their quality has been declining," SSSCIP said on Thursday.

The country's government and local authorities, as well as its defense organizations, are the key sectors that have been targeted the most during the first months of the war, in a total of 281 attacks.

The list of industry sectors heavily impacted by cyberattacks also includes the financial, telecom, infrastructure, and energy sectors.

Some Viruses Make You Smell Tastier to Mosquitoes

hubie writes:

A sneaky way of increasing a virus's odds of transmission:

Zika and dengue fever viruses alter the scent of mice and humans they infect, researchers report in the June 30 issue of Cell. The altered scent attracts mosquitoes, which bite the host, drink their infected blood, and then carry the virus to its next victim.

[...] These viruses require ongoing infections in animal hosts as well as mosquitoes in order to spread. If either of these are missing—if all the susceptible hosts clear the virus, or all the mosquitoes die—the virus disappears. For example, during the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793, the coming of the fall frosts killed the local mosquitoes, and the outbreak ended.

In tropical climates without killing frosts, there are always mosquitoes; the virus just needs one to bite an infected host animal in order to spread. Zika and dengue viruses seem to have developed a sneaky way of increasing the odds.

[...] "The virus can manipulate the hosts' skin microbiome to attract more mosquitoes to spread faster!" says Penghua Wang, an immunologist at UConn Health and one of the study authors. The findings could explain how mosquito viruses manage to persist for such a long time.

Wang and his coauthors also tested a potential preventative. They gave mice with dengue fever a type of vitamin A derivatives, isotretinoin, known to increase the production of the skin's antimicrobial peptide. The isotretinoin-treated mice gave off less acetophenone, reducing their attractiveness to mosquitoes and potentially reducing the risk of infecting others with the virus.

Wang says the next step is to analyze more human patients with dengue and Zika to see if the skin odor-microbiome connection is generally true in real world conditions, and to see if isotretinoin reduces acetophenone production in sick humans as well as it does in sick mice.

Journal Reference:
HongZhang, YibinZhu, ZiwenLiu, et al., A volatile from the skin microbiota of flavivirus-infected hosts promotes mosquito attractiveness, Cell, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.05.016

upstart writes:

'Urgent' action needed in Europe over monkeypox spread: WHO:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for 'urgent' action to prevent the spread of monkeypox in Europe, noting that cases had tripled there over the past two weeks.

To date, more than 5,000 monkeypox cases have been reported from 51 countries worldwide, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Infections in Europe represent about 90 percent of the global total of cases, and 31 countries in the European region have now identified cases, WHO Regional Director for Europe Dr Hans Henri Kluge said on Friday.

"Today, I am intensifying my call for governments and civil society to scale up efforts ... to prevent monkeypox from establishing itself across a growing geographical area," Kluge said in a statement.

[...] Kluge also said in his statement that there are no reported deaths from the current outbreak so far.

[...] The UN agency estimates that the disease can be fatal, but smallpox vaccines are protective and some antiviral drugs are also being developed.

To date, there have been about 1,800 suspected monkeypox cases including more than 70 deaths in Africa. Vaccines have never been used to stop monkeypox outbreaks in Africa. The WHO's Africa office said this week that countries with vaccine supplies "are mainly reserving them for their own populations".

Original Submission

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[Editor's Note - This story has been moved up the display queue so that new arrivals can see what has been happening. JR 02-07-22 09:52 UTC]

upstart writes:

NASA is developing small robots to swim the subsurface seas of other world:

Some of the most promising places to look for alien life beyond Earth are the hidden oceans that lie beneath thick icy shells on other worlds like Saturn's moon Enceladus. NASA is funding research to develop tiny, swimming robots that could search these darkened depths for marine extra-terrestrials.

Plumes of liquid water erupt into space through fissures in Enceladus's frozen surface and when NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew through that cosmic mist, it detected interesting molecules that are often associated with the presence of life, like methane.

NASA engineer Ethan Schaler has developed a concept involving an ice-melting probe and a school of cell phone-size aquatic drones to explore such eerie environments. It's called Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers (SWIM), and it has recently received funding to create and test 3D-printed prototypes.

[...] The triangular swimming robots could be loaded into a larger "cryobot" design that tunnels its way through the ice by melting it, perhaps using radiation. Cryobot concepts are currently in development through other NASA programs.

[...] It will be some time before the little bots could touch an alien ocean. The concept isn't currently attached to any NASA mission to such a world. But the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to the Jovian moon of the same name will certainly provide valuable data from another frozen world hiding a subterranean sea. It launches in 2024 with a planned arrival at Europa in 2030.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Uber Reports Fewer Sexual Assaults but Greater Rate of Deaths During Rides:

After lawsuits and calls for greater rider protections, Uber released its second safety report, disclosing that during 2019 and 2020, there were fewer sexual assaults but a greater rate of deaths in the course of giving rides.

Uber reported that 1.4 billion rides were taken in the US in 2019 but only 650 million in 2020, a slowdown attributed to the pandemic when trips taken decreased by as much as 80% in April 2020. The report concluded that 99.9% of those trips ended without a safety issue, though there were also 101 deaths by crashes. Also, 20 people were killed in assaults related to a trip, an increase of 18% compared with 2017 and 2018, the period which Uber's first safety report covered.

Uber said the rise in assaults followed national trends of an increase in violent homicides, which rose 30% between 2019 and 2020, according to Pew Research. As for the 101 deaths caused by crashes, Uber says 67 were the fault of third-party drivers impaired by alcohol, speeding or driving the wrong way -- though three accounts linked a death to an Uber driver who was speeding. The remaining deaths involved unbuckled riders and other drivers, as well as pedestrians, bicyclists and third-party motorcyclists, though the report didn't explain who caused their deaths.

Even considering the fewer rides taken due to the pandemic, the rate of sexual assault related to Uber rides declined 38%, with 3,824 reports filed in 2019 and 2020 compared with the 5,981 sexual assaults in the 2017-2018 period, when Uber provided 2.3 billion rides. While most types of sexual assault dropped by 20% or more, rape had the least rate of reduction with 388 reports, down from 466 in the 2017-2018 period.

[...] Uber released its first report in late 2019 and has committed to releasing another every two years. The 2021-22 report will reflect other efforts Uber has made to increase safety for drivers and riders, like slowly rolling out the capability to record audio of rides and expanding its RideCheck feature to check in when rides take unexpected routes or make unscheduled stops.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The 27 EU countries agree to support the 2035 fossil fuel car ban and compromise on fund to shield citizens from CO2 costs:

European Union countries have reached a deal backing stricter climate rules that will eliminate carbon emissions from new cars by 2035 and a multibillion-euro fund to shield poorer citizens from carbon dioxide (CO2) costs.

The 27 EU members found a common agreement on Wednesday morning on draft legislation aimed at slashing EU greenhouse gases by at least 55 percent in 2030 compared with 1990 rather than by a previously agreed 40 percent.

[...] The decision to introduce a 100 percent CO2 emissions reduction target by 2035 for new cars and vans will effectively prohibit the sale of new cars powered by petrol or diesel in the EU nations.

After fraught negotiations, they agreed to form a 59 billion euros ($61bn) EU fund to shield low-income citizens from the policy's costs over 2027-32.

[...] Europe's leading clean transport campaign group, Transport and Environment, said the EU governments' agreement is "historic" as it "breaks the hold of the oil industry over transport".

[...] By declaring that only cars and light utility vehicles which emit no CO2 can be sold from 2035, "we are sending a clear signal that we need to meet the climate targets. This gives the car industry the planning security it needs," she said.

[...] The overall goal is to put the EU on track to become climate-neutral in 2050 and to prod other big polluters, including the United States and China, to follow suit.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New single-mode semiconductor laser delivers power with scalability:

Berkeley engineers have created a new type of semiconductor laser that accomplishes an elusive goal in the field of optics: the ability to maintain a single mode of emitted light while maintaining the ability to scale up in size and power. It is an achievement that means size does not have to come at the expense of coherence, enabling lasers to be more powerful and to cover longer distances for many applications.

A research team [...] showed that a semiconductor membrane perforated with evenly spaced and same-sized holes functioned as a perfect scalable laser cavity. They demonstrated that the laser emits a consistent, single wavelength, regardless of the size of the cavity.

The study's results are particularly relevant to vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, in which laser light is emitted vertically out of the chip. Such lasers are used in a wide range of applications, including fiber optic communications, computer mice, laser printers and biometric identification systems.

owl writes:

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29885/eaten-grue-brief-history-zork

Zork is a text-based video game, a genre also known as "interactive fiction," whose defining feature is the absence of typical video game graphics. Instead, the game's environments and the actions you take are described for you. For example, the first line of Zork is, "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here." Using a series of simple commands, you direct the main character to do something, like "open mailbox." To which the game will reply, "Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet." Naturally, you would then "take leaflet," "read leaflet", and then maybe "walk east" to get to the house. The story unfolds from there as you collect items, like a sword, a lantern, rope, and other adventuring necessities, before entering a vast, underground cave where you'll face enemies inspired by The Lord of the Rings, like elves, trolls, and the darkness-lurking grue.

The young geeks got the idea for Zork from the first text-based video game, Adventure (also called Colossal Cave Adventure or ADVENT, because the computer it ran on could only use so many letters in the command line). Adventure was created in 1976 by Will Crowther, a student at Stanford, as a simulation of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, with a few Tolkien-esque fantasy elements thrown in by fellow Stanfordite Don Woods. The MIT guys weren't impressed with Adventure's limited two-word command structure ("kill troll"), so they wrote Zork to understand complete sentences ("kill troll with sword").

Originally, Zork and Adventure were both written for the PDP-10, a room-sized computer mainframe that was popular with universities in the late-1970s. Adventure was written in a very common programming language called FORTRAN, so copies of the game spread rapidly among mainframe users. Zork, however, was written with MDL, a more specialized language that wasn't as popular. So, for a while, the only way to play Zork was to log on to the MIT PDP-10 through ARPAnet, an early version of the internet, and run it remotely. Zork was never officially announced to the world; people just heard about it through ARPANet, making it an early viral sensation.

Read on .....

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA scientists say images from the Webb telescope nearly brought them to tears:

Six months have passed since a European rocket lofted the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit. Since that time, the ultra-complex telescope has successfully unfolded its expansive sunshield, commissioned its science instruments, and reached an observation point more than 1 million km from Earth.

This white-knuckle period in space followed nearly two decades of effort to design, build, and test the telescope on Earth prior to its launch on Christmas Day, 2021. But now, all of that effort is in the rearview mirror, and Webb's massive 6.5-meter diameter mirror is gazing outward and collecting scientific data and images. It is the largest and most powerful telescope that humans have ever put into space, and it's already revealing new insights about our cosmos.

"The images are being taken right now," said Thomas Zurbuchen, who leads NASA's scientific programs, during a news conference on Wednesday. "There is already some amazing science in the can, and some others are yet to be taken as we go forward. We are in the middle of getting the history-making data down."

NASA said it plans to release several images beginning at 10:30 am ET (14:30 UTC) on July 12, the result of Webb's "first light" observations. On Wednesday, space agency officials said the images and other data would include the deepest-field image of the universe ever taken—looking further into the cosmos than humans ever have before—as well as the spectrum of an atmosphere around an exoplanet. By looking in the infrared, Webb will be able to identify the fingerprints of small molecules, such as carbon dioxide and ozone, that will offer meaningful clues about the habitability of worlds around other stars.

NASA's deputy administrator, Pam Melroy, said she was blown away by the images Webb has produced so far. "What I have seen moved me, as a scientist, as an engineer, and as a human being," she said.

[...] Unfortunately, we will have to wait nearly two full weeks to see the final products from Webb's first observations. NASA said it will not be releasing any images early, even on an embargoed basis. But we've waited 20 years for Webb to come online and offer a truly worthy successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. I suppose we can wait a little while longer.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Patchable and Preventable Security Issues Lead Causes of Q1 Attacks:

Attacks against U.S. companies spike in Q1 2022 with patchable and preventable external vulnerabilities responsible for bulk of attacks.

Eighty-two percent of attacks on organizations in Q1 2022 were caused by the external exposure of a known vulnerabilities in the victim's external-facing perimeter or attack surface. Those unpatched bugs overshadowed breach-related financial losses tied to human error, which accounted for 18 percent.

The numbers come from Tetra Defense and its quarterly report that sheds light on a notable uptick in cyberattacks against United States organizations between January and March 2022.

The report did not let employee security hygiene, or a lack thereof, off the hook. Tetra revealed that a lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA) mechanisms adopted by firms and compromised credential are still major factors in attacks against organizations.

The study looks at the Root Point of Compromise (RPOC) in attacks. The RPOC is the initial entry point through which a threat actor infiltrates a victim organization and is categorized as the external exposure to a known vulnerability, or a malicious action performed by the user or a system misconfiguration.

"Incidents caused by unpatched systems cost organizations 54 percent more than those caused by employee error," according to the report.

upstart writes:

New chip for robots conveys 'sense of touch' to human operators:

A Japanese startup is taking a major step toward commercializing real haptics technology that can replicate the exact feel and texture of objects, opening up new remote opportunities in health care, construction, manufacturing and other fields.

Motion Lib, launched out of Japan's Keio University, will enter a partnership with Tata Consultancy Services as early as this month to develop an advanced haptics feedback system that can be used in a variety of industries.

They aim to launch the system globally as early as 2024. TCS will also work on cloud infrastructure to store data of different tasks and movements that the system can carry out.

TCS has a market capitalization of around 12 trillion rupees ($153 billion), more than IBM, operating in 46 countries and working with over 2,000 startups. It partners with over 500 researchers worldwide, including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has the connections to introduce new technology to major corporations.

Conventional haptics systems cannot replicate small differences in resistance, making handling delicate items a challenge. Real haptics technology, first put into practical use by Keio University project professor Kohei Onishi, can simulate minute tactile sensations, allowing users to pick up balloons and potato chips via a robotic arm without damaging them, or figure out how hard they can squeeze a cake before crushing it, for example.

upstart writes:

Rocket Lab sees payoff from CAPSTONE launch - SpaceNews:

The successful launch of a NASA lunar cubesat mission was the culmination of two and a half years of work at Rocket Lab that, the company's chief executive says, could enable "ridiculously low cost" planetary missions.

Rocket Lab's Electron launched NASA's Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) cubesat and the company's Lunar Photon kick stage June 28. The Photon will gradually raise its orbit over the next several days before a final burn that places CAPSTONE on a ballistic lunar trajectory.

The payload, with an overall mass of more than 300 kilograms, pushed the Electron to the limit. "Electron gave everything that it could give. We've never run the engines as hard as we ran them tonight," Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview a few hours after the launch, which took place in the evening in New Zealand. "We put the Lunar Photon exactly where it needed to be and we had some performance left over in the vehicle."

[...] The payoff, he said, is a system that can be used for other smallsat missions with high performance requirements. Rocket Lab is already planning to use the same kick stage for a privately funded mission to Venus, replacing the CAPSTONE cubesat with an atmospheric entry probe.

"We can go to Mars and to asteroids equally well," he said. "This really is an entirely new system for deep space exploration at just a ridiculously low cost."

Perhaps we're getting closer to the point where we can crowdsource a Soylent mission to Mars!

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Raspberry Pi Pico W Launches For $6

The Raspberry Pi Pico W is an update to last year's Raspberry Pi Pico using their in-house RP2040 silicon. The Pico W is a small update to this IoT platform that has already sold more than two million boards.

With the Raspberry Pi Pico W, there is now 802.11n wireless networking added to the Pico platform to make it more attractive for IoT use-cases. The Pico W retains pin compatibility with the original Pico. The Pico W makes use of an Infineon CYW43439 wireless chip.

Aside from the addition of 802.11n wireless networking, the Pico W is the same platform as the Pico. Rather than $4, this 802.11n WiFi variant will sell for $6 USD.

Also launching are two versions with pre-soldered headers:

Pico H ($5) and Pico WH ($7) add pre-populated headers, and our new 3-pin debug connector, to Pico and Pico W respectively. Pico H and Pico W are available today; Pico WH will follow in August.

[...] Eagle-eyed readers of datasheets will notice that CYW43439 supports both Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low-Energy: we have not enabled Bluetooth on Pico W at launch, but may do so in the future.

Previously: Raspberry Pi Releases "Pico" Microcontroller at $4 Per Unit
Raspberry Pi Begins Selling its RP2040 Microcontroller for $1

Original Submission