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upstart writes:

The stream could keep the galaxy supplied with star-forming fuel for a billion years:

A long, cold stream of gas is feeding a very distant galaxy like a vast bendy straw. The finding suggests a new way for galaxies to grow in the early universe, researchers report in the March 31 Science.

Computer simulations predicted that streams of gas should connect galaxies to the cosmic web (SN: 3/6/23). But astronomers expected that gas to be warm, making it unsuitable for star-forming fuel and galaxy growth.

So astronomer Bjorn Emonts and his colleagues were surprised to see a stream of cold, star-forming gas leading into the Anthill Galaxy, a massive galaxy whose light takes 12 billion years to reach Earth.

[...] "People didn't think that these streams could get so cold," says Emonts, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va.

But there, in the data, a frigid stream stretched at least 325,000 light-years away from the galaxy. The stream carries the mass of 70 billion suns and deposits the equivalent of about 450 suns in cold gas onto the galaxy every year, the team calculated. That's enough to double the galaxy's mass within a billion years.

[...] If other galaxies are fed by similar structures, it could mean that early galaxies grew mostly by drinking directly from the cosmic streams, rather than by the leading hypothesis — violent galaxy mergers (SN: 6/28/19).

Journal Reference:
Bjorn H. C. Emonts, Matthew D. Lehnert, Ilsang Yoon, et al., A cosmic stream of atomic carbon gas connected to a massive radio galaxy at redshift 3.8, Science, 379, 2023 (DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh2150)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New editor is integrated with Python lessons:

When we think about Raspberry Pi, we normally picture single-board computers, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation was started to help kids learn about computers and it wants to help whether or not you own its hardware. The non-profit arm of Raspberry Pi this week released its new, browser-based code editor that's designed for young people (or any people) who are learning.

The Raspberry Pi Code Editor, which is considered to be in beta, is available to everyone for free right now at editor.raspberrypi.org. The editor is currently designed to work with Python only, but the organization says that support for other languages such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS is coming.

I tried out the Code Editor on my PC's browser and, in its current form, there's nothing particularly unique about it. However, I found the UI very user-friendly and was impressed with how it is integrated into someone online tutorials. The interface consists of three panes: a list of files in your project, a code editor and an output pane that runs the result of your code when you hit the Run button.

If you create a free account on raspberrypi.org, which I did, the system will save all of your projects in the cloud and you can reload them any time you want. You can also download all the files in a project as a .zip file.

Since the entire programming experience takes place online, there's no way (at least right now) to use Python to control local hardware on your PC or your Raspberry Pi. If you want to attach one of the best Raspberry Pi HATs or use the GPIO pins on your Pi to light up an LED light, you need a local editor like Thonny, which comes preinstalled on all Raspberry Pis and is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

upstart writes:

"You can call it a lie by omission":

Florida health officials deleted key data and statistics from a state analysis on the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, falsely making them appear unsafe for young men, according to draft versions of the analysis obtained by the Tampa Bay Times through public records requests.

The final analysis, which was widely criticized for its poor quality and dubious conclusions, was the basis for a statewide recommendation by Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo last October that young men, ages 18 to 39, should not receive an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The analysis—posted on the Florida Department of Health's website with no authors listed—claimed to find "an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination."

Ladapo, who has a history of fearmongering about COVID-19 vaccines, touted the analysis, saying in a press release at the time that "these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians."

But according to draft versions of the analysis, the state epidemiologists who worked on the report came to entirely different conclusions.

upstart writes:

What Flight 50 Means for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter:

JPL's Ingenuity helicopter is preparing for the 50th flight of its 5-flight mission to Mars. Flight 49, which took place last weekend, was its fastest and highest yet—the little helicopter flew 282 meters at an altitude of 16 meters, reaching a top speed of 6.50 meters per second. Not a bad performance for a tech demo that was supposed to be terminated two years ago.

From here, things are only going to get more difficult for Ingenuity. As the Perseverance rover continues its climb up Jezero crater's ancient river delta, Ingenuity is trying its best to scout ahead. But, the winding hills and valleys make it difficult for the helicopter to communicate with the rover, and through the rover, to its team back on Earth. And there isn't a lot of time or room to spare, because Ingenuity isn't allowed to fly too close to Perseverance, meaning that if the rover ever catches up to the helicopter, the helicopter may have to be left behind for the rover's own safety. This high-stakes race between the helicopter scout and the science rover will continue for kilometers.

For the Ingenuity team, this new mode of operation was both a challenge and an opportunity. This was nothing new for folks who have managed to keep this 30-day technology demo alive and healthy and productive for years, all from a couple hundred million kilometers away. IEEE Spectrum spoke with Ingenuity Team Lead Teddy Tzanetos at JPL last week about whether flying on Mars is ever routine, how they upgraded Ingenuity for its extended mission, and what the helicopter's success means for the future of airborne exploration and science on Mars.

upstart writes:

Videos obtained by WIRED from public transit vehicles reveal self-driving cars causing delays and potential danger to buses, trains, and passengers:

[...] The 54 [Felton line], brought to a halt by an autonomous vehicle belonging to Alphabet's Waymo, isn't the only bus that's run into trouble with San Francisco's growing crowd of driverless vehicles. Bus and train surveillance videos obtained by WIRED through public records requests show a litany of incidents since September in which anxiety and confusion stirred up by driverless cars has spilled onto the streets of the US city that has become the epicenter for testing them.

As the incidents stack up, the companies behind the autonomous vehicles, such as Waymo and General Motors' Cruise, want to add more robotaxis to San Francisco's streets, cover more territory, and run at all hours. Waymo and Cruise say they learn from every incident. Each has logged over 1 million driverless miles and say their cars are safe enough to keep powering forward. But expansions are subject to approval from California state regulators, which have been pressed by San Francisco officials for years to restrict autonomous vehicles until issues subside.

Driverless cars have completed thousands of journeys in San Francisco—taking people to work, to school, and to and from dates. They have also proven to be a glitchy nuisance, snarling traffic and creeping into hazardous terrain such as construction zones and downedpower lines. Autonomous cars in San Francisco made 92 unplanned stops between May and December 2022—88 percent of them on streets with transit service, according to city transportation authorities, who collected the data from social media reports, 911 calls, and other sources, because companies aren't required to report all the breakdowns.

upstart writes:

The 3D5000 has come out of the oven:

Loongson, a Chinese fabless chipmaker, has launched the new 3D5000 processor for data centers and cloud computing. MyDrivers (opens in new tab) reported that Loongson claims its 32-core domestic chips deliver 4X higher performance than rival Arm processors.

The 3D5000 still leverages LoongArch, Loongson's homemade instruction set architecture (ISA) from 2020. The chipmaker was previously a firm believer in MIPS. However, Loongson eventually built LoongArch from the ground up with the sole objective of not relying on foreign technology to develop its processors. LoongArch is a RISC (reduced instruction set computer) ISA, similar to MIPS or RISC-V.

The 3D5000 arrives with 32 LA464 cores running at 2 GHz. The 32-core processor has 64MB of L3 cache, supports eight-channel DDR4-3200 ECC memory, and up to five HyperTransport (HT) 3.0 interfaces. It also supports dynamic frequency and voltage adjustments. Officially, the 3D5000 has a 300W TDP; however, Loongson stated that the conventional power consumption is around 150W. That's roughly 5W per core.

The 3D5000 flaunts a chiplet design since Loongson has glued together two 16-core 3C5000 processors. Loongson developed the 3C5000 server part to compete with AMD's Zen and Zen+ architectures. The latest 3D5000, which measures 75.4 x 58.5 x 7.1mm, slides into a custom LGA4129 socket.

upstart writes:

Ether is finally untethering itself from mining—and driving renewed debate about bitcoin's environmental impact:

At 19:27 Eastern time on April 12, the Ethereum blockchain, home to the world's second-most-popular cryptocurrency, ether, will finally sever its links to crypto mining. Within the Ethereum bubble, a sense of anticipation is building; some are planning "viewing parties" for the occasion. Codenamed "Shanghai," the update to Ethereum caps off a process, after "The Merge," which fundamentally changes the way transactions are verified and the network secured.

Under the old system, proof-of-work (PoW) mining, the right to process a batch of transactions and earn a crypto reward is determined by a race to solve a mathematical puzzle. The greater the computing power miners throw at the problem, the greater their chance of winning the race. Under Ethereum's new proof-of-stake (PoS) system, there is no race and there are no miners; instead, the winner is determined by raffle. The greater the amount of ether somebody locks up on the network—or stakes—the greater the chance they hold a prize-winning ticket.

By demonstrating that a large-scale blockchain can shift from one system to another, Shanghai will reignite a debate over whether the practice of mining that still supports bitcoin, the most widely traded cryptocurrency, is viable and sustainable. [...]

"The energy consumption problem is Bitcoin's achilles heel," says de Vries. "It's a simple fact that as the price of bitcoin gets higher, the energy consumption problem gets worse. The more money miners make, the more they will typically spend on resources: hardware and electricity.

upstart writes:

Europe's JUICE probe will investigate three of Jupiter's largest ice moons for signs of potential habitability:

JUICE, short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, is headed for Jupiter, but the spacecraft will focus its observations on three of the gas giant's many moons: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, hosts more than 70 natural satellites, but these three Galilean moons are thought to hold immense amounts of subsurface water hidden beneath thick layers of ice (Io is the fourth Galilean moon, but it's an inhospitable volcanic hellhole). JUICE, an international collaboration headed by the European Space Agency, will spend three to four years at Jupiter, performing flybys and making detailed observations of the three icy moons and their immediate surroundings.

[...] JUICE will reach Jupiter in 2031 following an eight-year journey, but to get there it'll need to receive four gravity boosts from Earth and Venus. Excitingly, the spacecraft's flyby of the Earth-Moon system, a maneuver known as a Lunar-Earth gravity assist (LEGA), has never been attempted before. As ESA explains, JUICE will first get a gravitational assist from the Moon and then a second from Earth some 1.5 days later, in a maneuver meant to "save a significant amount of propellant."

Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are all suspected of containing subsurface oceans capped in an icy crust. JUICE will evaluate the trio for potential signs of habitability, given the assumed presence of liquid water. Indeed, and as ESA makes clear, the overarching question of the mission is whether gas giants can harbor habitable conditions and spawn primitive life. In addition to its astrobiological duties, JUICE will seek to answer questions about planetary formation and the solar system in general. More conceptually, the spacecraft will evaluate the "wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the Universe," according to ESA.

upstart writes:

They even shared a clip of a child being hit by a car:

Some Tesla workers shared sensitive photos and videos captured by the cameras on owners' cars between each other for several years, according to Reuters. Former employees told the outlet that colleagues shared the images in group chats and one-on-one communications between 2019 and last year.

One such video showed a Tesla driving at high speed before hitting a child on a bike, Reuters reported. Other footage included things like a nude man walking toward a vehicle. "We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids," one of the former employees said.

[...] The company states in its customer privacy notice that it designed the camera system to protect user privacy. It says that even if owners opt in to share camera recordings with Tesla for "fleet learning" purposes, "camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle" unless it receives the footage due to a safety event, such as a crash or an airbag deployment. Even so, one employee said it was possible for Tesla data labelers to see the location of captured footage on Google Maps.

Tesla does not have a communications department that can be reached for comment.

upstart writes:

The analysis could help researchers study storms that strike in the winter:

When a strong tornado roars through a city, it often leaves behind demolished buildings, broken tree limbs and trails of debris. But a similarly powerful storm touching down over barren, unvegetated land is much harder to spot in the rearview mirror.

Now, satellite imagery has revealed a 60-kilometer-long track of moist earth in Arkansas that was invisible to human eyes. The feature was presumably excavated by a tornado when it stripped away the uppermost layer of the soil, researchers report in the March 28 Geophysical Research Letters. This method of looking for "hidden" tornado tracks is particularly valuable for better understanding storms that strike in the winter, when there's less vegetation, the researchers suggest. And recent research has shown that wintertime storms are likely to increase in intensity as the climate warms (SN: 12/16/21).

[...] Swirling winds, even relatively weak ones, can suction up several centimeters of soil. And since deeper layers of the ground tend to be wetter, a tornado ought to leave behind a telltale signature: a long swath of moister-than-usual soil. Two properties linked with soil moisture level — its texture and temperature — in turn impact how much near-infrared light the soil reflects.

Wang and his collaborators analyzed near-infrared data collected by NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and looked for changes in soil moisture consistent with a passing tornado.

upstart writes:

Drivers in Europe net big data rights win against Uber and Ola:

In a major win over opaque algorithmic management in the so-called gig economy an appeals court in the Netherlands has found largely in favor of platform workers litigating against ride-hailing giants Uber and Ola — judging the platforms violated the drivers' rights in a number of instances, including when algorithms were involved in terminating driver accounts.

The court also ruled the platforms cannot rely on trade secrets exemptions to deny drivers access to their data. Although challenges remain for regional workers to use existing laws to get enough visibility into platforms' data processing to know what information to ask for to be able to meaningfully exercise their data access rights.

The appeal court rulings can be found here, here and here (in Dutch).

The appeal was brought by the not-for-profit data trust Worker Info Exchange (WIE) in support of members of the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) in the UK and a driver based in Portugal.

One case against Uber's robo-firings involved four drivers (three based in the UK, one in Portugal); a second case against Uber over data access involved six UK-based drivers; while a data access case against Ola involved thee UK-based drivers.

In the data access cases drivers were seeking information such as passenger ratings, fraud probability scores, earning profiles, as well as data on the allocation of journeys to drivers — including Uber's batch matching and upfront pricing systems — as well as information about the existence of automated decision-making touching their work on the platforms.

Several decisions taken by the ride-hailing platforms were found to meet the relevant legal test of automated decision-making — including assigning rides; calculating prices; rating drivers; calculating 'fraud probability scores'; and deactivating drivers' accounts in response to suspicions of fraud — meaning drivers are entitled to information on the underlying logic of these decisions. (And also to a right to meaningful human review if they object to decisions.)

upstart writes:

Routing 4G cellular data to a BSD network using bridge mode on the RUT-240:

The RUT-240 from Teltonika networks is a small and fairly inexpensive 4G router which is commonly used to provide internet connectivity for remote devices that are either in locations without regular fixed-line broadband, or where high availability is required. Think smart meters, monitoring systems, and so on.

In the case of high availability, the RUT-240 is connected in line with a conventional internet router, and it's own cellular connection is only used when a lack of connectivity is detected. Both of these configurations often involve the use of a special SIM card, to which the cellular operator has provisioned a static, public IP address, thus allowing inbound connections to the connected remote devices, (as well as access to the router itself for configuration and admin purposes).

[...T]oday we're going to use our RUT-240 for a completely different purpose. No special SIM required, and we're not going to be travelling out in to the wilds either. Just a regular pre-paid SIM, and the normal office surroundings.

Instead, we'll be exploring the use of this router as a backup connection for an existing OpenBSD-based router, or even - within limits - as a replacement for fixed line broadband. This latter option might make sense on a short term basis in a new office that hasn't been fully connected yet, or in a temporary office in an awkward location where DSL or fibre isn't available. Attending a conference, but all the decent hotels are fully booked? Stuck on a boat in dry dock? Not a problem!

upstart writes:

Now We Know How a Solar Storm Took Out a Fleet of Starlinks:

On March 23rd, sky observers marvelled at a gorgeous display of northern and southern lights. It was reminder that when our Sun gets active, it can spark a phenomenon called "space weather." Aurorae are among the most benign effects of this phenomenon.

At the other end of the space weather spectrum are solar storms that can knock out satellites. The folks at Starlink found that out the hard way in February 2022. On January 29th that year, the Sun belched out a class M 1.1 flare and related coronal mass ejection. Material from the Sun traveled out on the solar wind and arrived at Earth a few days later. On February 3, Starlink launched a group of 49 satellites to an altitude only 130 miles above Earth's surface. They didn't last long, and now solar physicists know why.

A group of researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Catholic University of America took a closer look at the specifics of that storm. Their analysis identified a mass of plasma that impacted our planet's magnetosphere. The actual event was a halo coronal mass ejection from an active region in the northeast quadrant of the Sun.

The material traveled out at around 690 kilometers per second as a shock-driving magnetic cloud. Think of it as a long ropy mass of material writhing its way through space. As it traveled, it expanded and at solar-facing satellites—including STEREO-A, which took a direct hit from it—made observations. Eventually, the cloud smacked into Earth's magnetosphere creating a geomagnetic storm.

One of the side effects of space weather that can affect satellites is warming in a region called the "thermosphere". That increased the density of the upper atmosphere over a short amount of time and caused it to swell up. A denser atmosphere causes a phenomenon called "atmospheric drag". Essentially, the thicker atmosphere slows down anything moving through. It also heats things up.

canopic jug writes:

Democracy Now has a brief interview with a representative from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on their latest attempt to meet Julian Assange inside Belmarsh high-security prison in the UK. Despite being granted approval, the RSF secretary-general and executive director Christophe Deloire and the others with him were denied entry. No other non-governmental agency has been able to meet with Assange in the last four years either.

CHRISTOPHE DELOIRE: So, what happened is that in the past years we requested to be able to visit Julian in his jail. We got an approval recently, which was confirmed on March 21st with a number, an official number, for myself and my colleague, Rebecca Vincent, and we were invited to come to the prison.

And when we just arrived, the guy at the desk, when he saw my passport, he suddenly was very stressed, and that taking a paper on his office — on his desk, and that read it, saying, "According to Article" — I do not remember the number of the article, but according to this article, "you are not allowed to visit Julian Assange. This is a decision that has been made by the governor of the Belmarsh prison, based on intelligence that we had" — I quote him — "that you are journalists."

And it doesn't make sense at all, first, because, personally, I've been a journalist since 1996, and we were vetted, so it was never a mystery that I was a journalist, never a secret. Second, my colleague wasn't a journalist herself. And we came here not as journalists, but as representatives of an international NGO with a constitutive status in many international organizations. So it was really as Reporters Without Borders representatives, not as reporters covering the case. So, it doesn't make sense for this second reason. And there is a third reason for which it doesn't make sense, is that already two journalists, at least, have been able to visit him in jail in the past four years. So —

Previously:
(2022) Biden Faces Growing Pressure to Drop Charges Against Julian Assange
(2022) Assange Lawyers Sue CIA for Spying on Them
(2022) Julian Assange's Extradition to the US Approved by UK Home Secretary
(2021) Key Witness in Assange Case Jailed in Iceland After Admitting to Lies and Ongoing Crime Spree
(2019) Top Assange Defense Account Suspended By Twitter
(2019) Wikileaks Co-Founder Julian Assange Arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London
(2015) French Justice Minister Says Snowden and Assange Could Be Offered Asylum

And many more.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Inside the bitter campus privacy battle over smart building sensors:

"The initial step was to ... see how these things behave," says Herbsleb, comparing the Mites sensors to motion detectors that people might want to test out. "It's purely just, 'How well does it work as a motion detector?' And, you know, nobody's asked to consent. It's just trying out a piece of hardware."

Of course, the system's advanced capabilities meant that Mites were not just motion detectors—and other department members saw things differently. "It's a lot to ask of people to have a sensor with a microphone that is running in their office," says Jonathan Aldrich, a computer science professor,  even if "I trust my coworkers as a general principle and I believe they deserve that trust." He adds, "Trusting someone to be a good colleague is not the same as giving them a key to your office or having them install something in your office that can record private things." Allowing someone else to control a microphone in your office, he says, is "very much like giving someone else a key."

As the debate built over the next year, it pitted students against their advisors and academic heroes as well—although many objected in private, fearing the consequences of speaking out against a well-funded, university-backed project.

In the video recording of the town hall obtained by MIT Technology Review, attendees asked how researchers planned to notify building occupants and visitors about data collection. Jessica Colnago, then a PhD student, was concerned about how the Mites' mere presence would affect studies she was conducting on privacy. "As a privacy researcher, I would feel morally obligated to tell my participant about the technology in the room," she said in the meeting. While "we are all colleagues here" and "trust each other," she added, "outside participants might not."