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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Europe's drought exposes WWII ships, bombs and prehistoric stones:

Weeks of baking heat and drought across Europe have seen water levels in rivers and lakes fall to levels few can remember, exposing long-submerged treasures – and some deadly hazards.

In Spain, archaeologists have been delighted by the emergence of a prehistoric stone circle dubbed the “Spanish Stonehenge” that is usually covered by waters of a dam that have fallen in the worst drought in decades.

[...] The stone circle was discovered by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier in 1926, but the area was flooded in 1963 in a rural development project under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Since then it has only become fully visible four times.

Another of Europe’s mighty rivers, the Danube, has fallen to one of its lowest levels in almost a century as a result of the drought, exposing the hulks of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War II near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo.

[...] Memories of past droughts have also been rekindled in Germany by the reappearance of so-called “hunger stones” along the Rhine river. Many such stones have become visible along the banks of Germany’s largest river in recent weeks.

Bearing dates and people’s initials, their re-emergence is seen by some as a warning and reminder of the hardships people faced during former droughts.

Dates visible on stones seen in Worms, south of Frankfurt, and Rheindorf, near Leverkusen, included 1947, 1959, 2003 and 2018.

See also:
    Europe's Rhine River Runs Dry
    European Drought Dries Up Rivers, Kills Fish, Shrivels Crops
    Drought Forces Water Use Rethink In Spain

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Urine has lots of nitrogen and phosphorus—a problem as waste, great as fertilizer:

Removing urine from wastewater and using it as fertilizer has the potential to decrease nutrient loading in water bodies and boost sustainability by making use of a common waste material.

In excess, nitrogen and phosphorus in our waste streams can stimulate algal blooms and create conditions dangerous to marine and lake ecosystems and human health. According to the website of the Rich Earth Institute, a Vermont-based company focused on using human waste as a resource, most of the nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater comes from human urine, even though it makes up only 1 percent of wastewater. Removing urine could remove 75 percent of the nitrogen and 55 percent of the phosphorus from municipal wastewater treatment plants. And those nutrients could then be recycled for use as fertilizer.

[...] If it can be separated, urine can act to partly sterilize itself. The nitrogen in urine leaves the body as urea, a simple organic compound. Bacteria in pipes typically break down urea into ammonia. When urine is sitting in a container, the ammonia raises the pH of the solution to about eight or nine. The high pH environment kills any pathogens from the body that might have entered the urine, Vinnerås said.

“It’s like a Twinkie,” Noe-Hays said, referring to urine’s long shelf-life.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Water levels on the Rhine River, Europe's second-largest river, have continued to drop owing to soaring temperatures and lack of rainfall, preventing many vessels from navigating through the waters at full capacity. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has captured part of the Rhine River near Cologne, showing the stark difference between August 2021 and August 2022.

Flowing from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea, the Rhine River is an important shipping route for many products from grains to chemicals to coal. When water levels drop, cargo vessels need to sail with reduced load, so they don't run aground.

Water levels at the chokepoint of Kaub, near Frankfurt, fell to 32 cm in depth on Monday, down from 42 cm last week. Ships, however, need around 1.5 m to be able to sail fully loaded making it difficult for larger ships to navigate through the waters. Freight ships continue to sail, but only with around 25% to 35% of the ship's capacity.

The low water levels are emerging earlier than usual, with the lowest water levels typically recorded in September or October. However, reduced temperatures and predicted rainfall forecasted for this week may offer relief to the Rhine.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Samsung said on Friday that it will spend 20 trillion won, approximately $15 billion, by 2028 to build a new advanced chip research complex in South Korea.

The new facility to be built at its Giheung campus will lead advanced research on innovative new technologies and new wafer fabrication processes for memory and system semiconductors, the South Korean tech giant said.

The groundbreaking ceremony on Friday was attended by Samsung vice chairman Jay Y Lee, his first official move since he received a presidential pardon last week for his bribery conviction

"We are taking on a new challenge from the very location where we broke ground 40 years ago to build our first semiconductor plant," Lee, the de facto leader of Samsung, told executives and employees at the ceremony.

"If we hadn't made bold R&D investments for next-generation products and in products that came after that, there would be no semiconductor business for Samsung today. We need to continue our tradition of investing preemptively and emphasizing technology," he added.

The facility will cover 109,000 square meters at Samsung's Giheung campus, located just south of Seoul and one of three of the company's major semiconductor production facilities, or fabs, in South Korea. Along with the other campuses in Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek, it manufactures the company's latest chips.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

SAN FRANCISCO – Ball Aerospace and Seagate Technology Holdings are working together to develop and test high-capacity commercial data processing and storage devices for spaceflight applications.

The companies are conducting laboratory demonstrations to determine how Seagate storage devices can be integrated with Ball spaceflight avionics and software.

[...] The two companies plan to conduct further testing of a Seagate storage device providing memory for a Ball payload on a small satellite in low Earth orbit in 2023.

The growth of the space sector along with surging demand for data processing and storage is attracting the attention of firms focused primarily on terrestrial markets.

“Lots of data is coming off focal planes and RF sensors,” Ellis said. “There are a lot of things that we can do onboard [satellites] if [they] can keep up with what the sensors are putting out. We can do a little bit of processing, downlink important things first, stack frames to get better signal-to-noise.”

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hubie writes:

People are touched by small kindnesses and led to greater generosity, new research shows:

Anyone who has given a friend a ride, baked cookies for a sick family member, or even bought a stranger a cup of coffee knows acts of kindness can enhance happiness.

But such random acts of kindness are still somewhat rare. Texas McCombs Assistant Professor of Marketing Amit Kumar set out to discover why people don't engage in prosocial acts — such as helping, sharing, or donating — more often.

In a new study, Kumar, along with Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, found that people often underestimate how good these actions make recipients feel. Givers tend to focus on the object they're providing or action they're performing, while receivers instead concentrate on the feelings of warmth the act of kindness has conjured up. Givers' "miscalibrated expectations" — that receivers are solely concerned with the gift itself — can function as a barrier to performing more prosocial behaviors.

[...] The researchers' findings offer practical implications and advice for people going about their everyday lives. When people realize their small actions have a large impact, they can choose to be nicer and carry out more acts of random kindness, enhancing both their well-being and that of others.

"Positive interpersonal contact is a powerful source of happiness," Kumar says. "It will make you feel better and someone else feel better, even better than you think they'll feel. A little good doesn't just go a long way — it goes an unexpectedly long way."

Video summary

See also: Friends Enjoy Being Reached Out to More Than We Think

Journal Reference:
Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 10.1037/xge0001271

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Russia’s state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor will take punitive measures against a string of foreign IT companies, including TikTok, Telegram, Zoom, Discord and Pinterest.

In a statement on Friday, Roskomnadzor said its actions were in response to failure by the companies to remove content that it had flagged as illegal, and the punitive measures would remain in place until the firms complied with its demands.

The regulator did not specify what measures would be taken.

Russia has repeatedly threatened to impose fines on IT companies – including Google – that it has said violated harsh new laws criminalising the spreading of so-called “false information” about the Russian military.

Russia has branded its war on Ukraine a “special military operation”. In March, Roskomnadzor warned that referring to the military campaign as an “invasion”, “attack” or “declaration of war” will lead to websites being blocked.

On Tuesday, Russian courts imposed a two million rouble (around $33,000) fine on the US-based live streaming service Twitch, and an 11 million rouble ($179,000) fine on the messenger service Telegram, for violating military censorship laws.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Study Illuminates Trade-Off Between Complex Words and Complex Sentences:

Widespread public attention was brought to the neurological condition aphasia by Bruce Willis’s recent announcement that he was retiring from acting. While just about everyone struggles occasionally with finding the right word or tripping over their sentences, aphasia patients can lose the ability to comprehend language entirely.

Though Willis hasn’t confirmed it, some doctors suspect that he may have an especially brutal and degenerative form called primary progressive aphasia (PPA).

Scientists have long understood that there are several subtypes of PPA. While some versions come with lexical deficits, affecting a person’s ability to access words, others cause syntactic deficits, making it difficult to construct sentences.

Cognitive scientists and doctors from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), working as a collaborative team, have now developed a quantitative way to identify these different deficits. In the process, they illuminated a fundamental trade-off the brain makes when speaking between grammar and vocabulary. Their findings show that PPA patients with grammar deficits use richer, more complex vocabulary to compensate for their syntax struggles and vice versa.

upstart writes:

Army creating first tactical bra for female soldiers:

The bra, dubbed the Army Tactical Brassier, is in development at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Center in Natick, Mass., according to the Army Times, which was the first to report the bra's development.

[...] If approved, it would make the garment the first tactical bra to be added to the U.S. Army's uniform.

Women make up about 16 percent of those in active duty in the United States armed forces, according to data from the Brookings Institute.

The Army is working on a tactical bra:

The bra's development began with a survey given to female soldiers on what type of functionality and preferences should be considered during initial design. It has been labeled a "tactical rather than sportswear item," according to Soldier Touchpoints.

It's meant to integrate into existing body armor and give an added level of protection to female soldiers.

"This means that designers are evaluating options such as the inclusion of flame-retardant fabrics and expertly layered compression, structural and protective materials while also taking into account the importance of accurate sizing, reliable comfort, moisture management and breathability," Touchpoints noted.

"The overall goal is to produce garments that not only protect the user, but reduce the cognitive burden on the female Soldier caused by discomfort and ill fit," said Ashley Cushon, clothing designer and project lead for the ATB at the DEVCOM Soldier Center. "Achieving this will improve the Soldier's overall readiness and performance levels, allowing them to focus on their mission," she explained.

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upstart writes:

Hak5's new USB Rubber Ducky, unveiled at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, is more effective than ever, thanks to the inclusion of a new structured programming language (DuckyScript 3.0) that allows it to execute more sophisticated hacks.

The beloved hacker tool can now pwn you with its own programming language:

To the human eye, the USB Rubber Ducky looks like an unremarkable USB flash drive. Plug it into a computer, though, and the machine sees it as a USB keyboard — which means it accepts keystroke commands from the device just as if a person was typing them in.

"Everything it types is trusted to the same degree as the user is trusted," Kitchen told me, "so it takes advantage of the trust model built in, where computers have been taught to trust a human. And a computer knows that a human typically communicates with it through clicking and typing."

[...] The newest Rubber Ducky [...] ships with a major upgrade to the DuckyScript programming language, which is used to create the commands that the Rubber Ducky will enter into a target machine. While previous versions were mostly limited to writing keystroke sequences, DuckyScript 3.0 is a feature-rich language, letting users write functions, store variables, and use logic flow controls (i.e., if this... then that).

[...] Perhaps most impressively, it can steal data from a target machine by encoding it in binary format and transmitting it through the signals meant to tell a keyboard when the CapsLock or NumLock LEDs should light up. With this method, an attacker could plug it in for a few seconds, tell someone, "Sorry, I guess that USB drive is broken," and take it back with all their passwords saved.

[...] It also comes with an online development suite, which can be used to write and compile attack payloads, then load them onto the device. And it's easy for users of the product to connect with a broader community: a "payload hub" section of the site makes it easy for hackers to share what they've created, and the Hak5 Discord is also active with conversation and helpful tips.

Shouldn't this be fairly easy to block by something like the OS requiring user confirmation to connect a communications device ("Do you want to connect this keyboard?")? [hubie]

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upstart writes:

Researchers said there are three main clusters of foods that share similar genetic components:

People's genes play a significant role in why they love certain types of food but dislike others, according to a new study.

[...] The researchers said they found 401 genetic variants that influence which foods the participants liked. Many of these variants affected more than one food-liking trait, but some only affected one particular food.

[...] The food map created in the study suggests there are three main clusters of foods that share a similar genetic component.

One group is made up of high-calorie foods such as meat, dairy and desserts. The second group consists of strong-tasting foods that are known as an acquired taste, such as alcohol and pungent vegetables. The third group contains low-calorie foods such as fruit and vegetables.

The researchers also said that these food groups shared genes that are associated with distinct health traits, such as obesity and cholesterol profiles.

Dr Nicola Pirastu from Human Technopole said that although taste receptors are important in determining which foods people like, it is "what happens in your brain which is driving what we observe".

"Another important observation is that the main division of preferences is not between savoury and sweet foods, as might have been expected, but between highly pleasurable and high-calorie foods and those for which taste needs to be learned," Pirastu said.

Journal Reference:
May-Wilson, S., Matoba, N., Wade, K.H. et al. Large-scale GWAS of food liking reveals genetic determinants and genetic correlations with distinct neurophysiological traits. Nat Commun 13, 2743 (2022). 10.1038/s41467-022-30187-w

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DannyB writes:

The James Webb Space Telescope runs JavaScript, apparently

It turns out that JavaScript, the programming language that web developers and users alike love to complain about, had a hand in delivering the stunning images that the James Webb Space Telescope has been beaming back to Earth. And no, I don't mean that in some snarky way, like that the website NASA hosts them on uses JavaScript (it does). I mean that the actual telescope, arguably one of humanity's finest scientific achievements, is largely controlled by JavaScript files. Oh, and it's based on a software development kit from 2002.

[....] This knowledge has been bubbling up on the internet in Hacker News and Twitter threads for years, but it still surprised quite a few of us here at The Verge once it actually clicked. At first blush, it just seems odd that such a vital (not to mention expensive) piece of scientific equipment would be controlled by a very old version of a technology that's not particularly known for being robust.

After thinking about it for a second, though, the software's age makes a bit more sense — while the JWST was launched in late 2021, the project has been in the works since 1989.

[....] NASA's document says that this way of doing things gives "operations personnel greater visibility, control and flexibility over the telescope operations," letting them easily change the scripts "as they learn the ramifications and subtleties of operating the instruments." Basically, NASA's working with a bunch of files that are written in a somewhat human-readable format — if they need to make changes, they can just open up a text editor, do a bunch of testing on the ground, then send the updated file to the JWST

I would remind everyone that SpaceX Dragon 2 crewed capsule's touch screen control panels are run by the Chrome browser and Javascript.

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owl writes:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994

A colleague of mine shared a story from Windows XP product support. A major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" would crash certain models of laptops. I would not have wanted to be in the laboratory that they must have set up to investigate this problem.

[...] One discovery during the investigation is that playing the music video also crashed some of their competitors' laptops.

And then they discovered something extremely weird: Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn't playing the video!

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Images of damaged coastlines, oily sheens, containment booms and endangered wildlife are part of every offshore oil spill.

And while a response team arrives and the clean up gets underway, UBC Okanagan researchers are now exploring how to effectively handle the waste created from that spill.

As part of a Multi-Partner Research Initiative sponsored by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, UBCO engineers are conducting new research to help the oil spill response industry and its regulators enhance response preparedness and efficiency in Canadian waters. A new research study, published recently in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, conducts a lifecycle assessment of oil spill waste mitigation and how to properly dispose of the refuse.

"We never want to experience any sort of spill, but when it happens we need to be prepared," explains Dr. Guangji Hu, a School of Engineering postdoctoral fellow and report co-author. "If a spill is on land, contaminated soil can be removed and remediated off-site, but that simply isn't feasible on the water."

Using a lifecycle assessment approach, the researchers developed a framework to help decision-makers effectively manage the waste of an offshore oil spill cleanup. The lifecycle assessment quantifies the environmental impacts associated with products and services at different points of their life cycle.

upstart writes:

How I Hacked my Car:

Last summer I bought a 2021 Hyundai Ioniq SEL. It is a nice fuel-efficient hybrid with a decent amount of features like wireless Android Auto/Apple CarPlay, wireless phone charging, heated seats, & a sunroof.

One thing I particularly liked about this vehicle was the In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) system. As I mentioned before it had wireless Android Auto which seemed to be uncommon in this price range, and it had pretty nice, smooth animations in its menus which told me the CPU/GPU in it wasn't completely underpowered, or at least the software it was running wasn't super bloated.

As with many new gadgets I get, I wanted to play around with it and ultimately see what I could do with it.

The IVI in the car, like many things these days, is just a computer. My goal was to hack the IVI to get root access and hopefully be able to run my own software on it. Of course, the first step in hacking a device like this is research.

Some of the obvious things that I looked up were:

• What is the device running?
  • There are two versions of the IVI, the navigation one that runs Android, and a Linux based one.
• Has anyone else hacked this before?
  • The Android based, navigation version is easy to hack by installing your own APKs through the engineering menu.
  • The linux based one has not been hacked.
• Does the non-navigation IVI have an Engineering Mode?
  • Yes it does

I love developer settings and test apps. There is usually tons of fun to be had playing around with them. I thought I might even get lucky and it would have an option to enable an SSH server or the like.

This is one of those summaries that can never do the full article justice. The only option is to read the linked article - I found it well worth the read! [JR]

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