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Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Wednesday, January 10, 2024 at 21:00 UTC (4pm Eastern) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when complete.

Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information have a page on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/Governance

Expected topics include the formation of a new corporation and the peaceful transfer of assets. Committee members, you don't want to miss this one!

The community, welcome to observe and participate, is also encouraged to attend the meeting.

upstart writes:

Being fully anonymous is next to impossible—but you can significantly limit what the internet knows about you by sticking to a few basic rules:

On the internet, everyone wants to know who you are. Websites are constantly asking for your email address or trying to place tracking cookies on your devices. A murky slurry of advertisers and tech firms track which websites you visit, predicting what your interests are and what you may want to buy. Search engines, browsers, and apps can log each search or scroll you make.

At this stage of the internet, being totally anonymous across your entire online life is incredibly hard to achieve. Phones, SIM cards, browsers, Wi-Fi networks, and more use identifiers that can be linked to your activity. But there are steps you can take to obscure your identity for everyday browsing.

If you're looking to be truly anonymous or to protect your identity for a specific purpose—such as whistleblowing or activism—you should consider your threat model and individual security situation. But many of the changes you can make, which are listed below, are straightforward switches that can stop you from being tracked as much and apply to most people.

Below is a sampling of suggestions from the article, so click through to see the rest. What ways do you limit your digital fingerprint and where is your line between convenience and privacy?

upstart writes:

FDA finds chromium, a second metal contaminant, in applesauce pouches:

Federal investigators have discovered a second contaminant in recalled applesauce pouches — the naturally-occurring metal chromium, which in a certain form can cause a number of adverse health effects.

The finding is the latest development in the Food and Drug Administration's international investigation of high levels of lead found in cinnamon applesauce pouches marketed to children. The pouches of fruit puree that have been recalled were manufactured in Ecuador and sold under the brand names WanaBana, Schnucks and Weis. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking at least 287 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of lead exposure in 37 states linked to the applesauce recall.

The FDA has reported finding extraordinarily high levels of lead in samples of cinnamon from the Ecuador plant where the pouches were made. On Friday, the agency reported it had also found chromium. Chromium is an essential mineral found in foods and dietary supplements, but in one form — called chromium-6 — it can cause harm.

[...] Lead chromate, which contains the potentially toxic chromium-6, has been used in the past to enhance the coloring of turmeric. Federal investigators say the "lead-to-chromium ratio" in the applesauce pouches "is consistent with that of lead chromate."

[...] But investigators said the chromium in lead chromate may be converted to the less toxic form chromium-3, "due to the acidity of the applesauce and the stomach."

Michael Beuhler, the medical director of North Carolina Poison Control, said the discovery of chromium in the applesauce and cinnamon does not necessarily mean the substance will cause harm. He said that "at the levels we're talking about," he doesn't believe there would be much chromium-6 in the pouches. Any chromium-6 that might have been present would probably reduce to a nontoxic form once inside the applesauce pouches, he said.

He said lead chromate could have been added as a powder to cinnamon to affect the weight and color of the spice. Lead chromate can be more than six times heavier than cinnamon, he said.

"I don't believe that this is any cause for additional alarm," Beuhler said. "But it does suggest why it happened."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

To say 2023 was a big year in the world of fusion research would be an understatement.

After achieving fusion ignition in late 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California repeated the feat in late July, and then twice again in recent months, bringing to four the total number of times they've managed to generate more energy from a small pellet of fusion fuel than they put in.

In other words, we're finally on the path to fusion energy, sort of – replicable results and all. 

With the Department of Energy (DoE) recently releasing $42 million in funds for fusion energy research divided between LLNL, Colorado State University, and the University of Rochester, the fusion forecast is calling for some breakthroughs.

Dr John Edwards, LLNL senior advisor and former director of the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program at Livermore, was happy to tell The Register what he sees on the horizon. 

First things first, Edwards told us. He wants to make sure the world understands something about the fusion research at the NIF: It's never been about fusion energy.

"These results have energized people, but all of that work and funding hasn't been for fusion energy. It's been part of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP)," Edwards explained.

[...] "The NIF results were phenomenal," Edwards acknowledged, but "there's a big tech gap between there and commercial fusion. [A pilot plant by the] 2030s is ambitious and there will be setbacks, but we need to be resilient because the results will be tremendous." 

[...] The US government has been wrangling to pass a budget for months, and the latest temporary funding bill only kicks the can down the road to early 2024, but doesn't cover everything. Funding for things like the LLNL and NIF are part of what's been held up, Edwards told us.

[...] If Congress eventually manages to fund the government, the NIF, and "everything else falls into place," Edwards predicted that the NIF will reach new fusion ignition efficiency milestones in 2024.

upstart writes:

Wickr is Dead

The app was a privacy-championing startup, before becoming an app of choice for drug traffickers and being acquired by Amazon Web Services:

If you open the encrypted messaging app Wickr Me today, you'll be greeted with a line of red text: "Reconnecting..."

[...] Wickr Me is no longer available to download on the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The app stopped accepting new users more than a year ago. And now, even current users cannot speak to one another.

So ends the story of an app that while never reaching the popularity of other encrypted messaging apps like Signal, nor those that later turned on end-to-end encryption for the masses like WhatsApp, nonetheless played an important role in the adoption of and debate around secure communications.

[...] Wickr started in 2012. Nico Sell, founder of Wickr, said in a talk a couple of years later that "all of us have something to hide, either now or your future self." Crucially, that came after the Edward Snowden whistleblower revelations of 2013, which saw a massive boom of secure messaging apps and the spread of encryption more generally.

[...] But how was a free app to make money? Part of the answer for Wickr at least ended up being with the U.S. government. In 2021, I reported that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) paid Wickr $700,000 for a number of Wickr licenses. In parallel to its free Wickr Me app, Wickr had developed an enterprise version that allowed governments or businesses to send encrypted messages to one another but still collect and audit messages if necessary. Later that year, I then reported that CBP planned to deploy Wickr across "all components" of the agency as part of a $900,000 contract. I have since obtained more documents about CBP's purchase of Wickr licenses via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). I've uploaded them here for posterity.

[...] That transformation from scrappy upstart to government contractor was solidified when Amazon Web Services acquired Wickr in June 2021. I remember being shocked at the time and writing up the news as quickly as I could. What the hell was AWS going to do with an app that was becoming a hotbed for crime, at least in my anecdotal experience?

The answer was to shut it down entirely. After NBC News found in 2022 that Wickr was linked to a string of child abuse cases, AWS announced it would stop accepting new users at the end of that year. The company said it would then kill Wickr Me entirely on December 31, 2023.

The secure messaging world is very different to the one Wickr launched in more than ten years ago. Today mainstream platforms are turning on end-to-end encryption by default, with Facebook doing just that last month. The need for specialist apps like Wickr may be decreasing with certain groups. Maybe it's even a good sign that Wickr has been shown the door.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Around 3,000 years ago, a star 15 times bigger than our sun exploded. Now, scientists are watching it blast valuable elements into space.

Astronomers have a powerful new observatory orbiting Earth, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission). In collaboration with NASA, the team just captured an unprecedented view of this exploded star, now called "supernova remnant N132D," located some 160,000 light-years away.

Massive stars forge elements deep inside their hot, pressurized cores, and can also create elements during a violent stellar blast that occurs when they run out of fuel and collapse. In the image below, you're seeing the wreckage of such a star enrich the cosmos with these elements. The XRISM observatory picked up evidence of iron, calcium, sulfur, silicon, and argon. (Iron, you may recall, is a vital part of our blood.)

"These elements were forged in the original star and then blasted away when it exploded as a supernova," Brian Williams, NASA’s XRISM project scientist, said in an agency statement.

[...] "XRISM will provide the international science community with a new glimpse of the hidden X-ray sky," Richard Kelley, the U.S. principal investigator for XRISM at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement. "We’ll not only see X-ray images of these sources, but also study their compositions, motions, and physical states."

The ambitious space mission, launched in September 2023, is just beginning. It's designed to last three years, but given the track record, it'll likely last for a lot longer.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered airlines to temporarily ground some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes for safety inspections after an Alaska Airlines plane lost a cabin panel during a flight on Friday with about 180 people on board. The plane, which had only been in service since November, according to the New York Times, was able to safely land back at Portland International Airport in Oregon, where it had taken off from. There were no major injuries, though the Alaska division of the Association of Flight Attendants said workers described “explosive” decompression in the cabin and reported one flight attendant sustained minor injuries.

[...] Immediately following the incident, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci put out a statement saying the company would be grounding its fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft for what it expects to be a few days as it conducts safety checks. “Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections,” Minicucci. The FAA order extends the grounding to “approximately 171 airplanes worldwide” that are either operated by US airlines or in US territory.

Minicucci also said that the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what happened with Flight 1282 and “we will fully support their investigation.” The plane had been on its way to Ontario, California. Reuters, citing FlightRadar24, reported that the blowout occurred at around 16,000 feet. In social media posts shared with Reuters and the NYT, passengers can be seen sitting right next to the gaping hole and the fully exposed sky.

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-method-straighten-space.html

One of the greatest challenges of modern physics is to find a coherent method for describing phenomena, on the cosmic and microscale. For over a hundred years, to describe reality on a cosmic scale we have been using general relativity theory, which has successfully undergone repeated attempts at falsification.

Albert Einstein curved space-time to describe gravity, and despite still-open questions about dark matter or dark energy, it seems, today, to be the best method of analyzing the past and future of the universe.

To describe phenomena on the scale of atoms, we use the second great theory: quantum mechanics, which differs from general relativity in basically everything. It uses flat space-time and a completely different mathematical apparatus, and most importantly, perceives reality radically differently.

In the quantum description, the phenomena around us are only wavering probabilities of events that we can only measure with limited accuracy.

In an article, published in Frontiers in Physics, I managed to demonstrate that there is a method that combines the above descriptions, although it leads to quite a surprising conclusion.

Journal Reference:
Ogonowski, Piotr. Developed method: interactions and their quantum picture, Frontiers in Physics (DOI: 10.3389/fphy.2023.1264925)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

India's solar observation mission on Saturday entered the Sun's orbit after a four-month journey, the latest success for the space exploration ambitions of the world's most populous nation.

The Aditya-L1 mission was launched in September and is carrying an array of instruments to measure and observe the Sun's outermost layers.

India's science and technology minister Jitendra Singh said on social media that the probe had reached its final orbit "to discover the mysteries of Sun-Earth connection".

[...] But the latest mission by the Indian Space Research Organization is the first by any Asian nation to be placed in orbit around the Sun.

[...] Aditya, named after a Hindu Sun deity, has traveled 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) from the Earth—still only one percent of the distance between humanity's home planet and the star at the center of our solar system.

It is now at a point where the gravitational forces of both celestial bodies cancel out, allowing it to remain in a stable halo orbit around the Sun.

The orbiter, which reportedly cost $48 million, will study coronal mass ejections, a periodic phenomenon that sees huge discharges of plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun's atmosphere.

[...] India has a comparatively low-budget space program, but one that has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008.

In August last year, India became the first country to land an uncrewed craft near the largely unexplored lunar south pole, and just the fourth nation to land on the Moon.

India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars in 2014, and it is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into Earth's orbit later this year.

It also plans a joint mission with Japan to send another probe to the Moon by 2025 and an orbital mission to Venus within the next two years.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

It's one of the many new connected bathroom fixtures the company is debuting at CES 2024:

CES is about more than just the gadgets you hold in your hand or sit at the desk to use. It's about the stuff in your bathroom, too, which is why Kohler is using the annual trade show to debut its latest in connected fixtures. The new items include a new shower sprayer, a ventilation fan that helps with humidity after a long shower, and my favorite, the PureWash Bidet Seat with Google and Alexa built-in.

The PureWash Bidet Seat is as standard as any other, but I like that you can talk to it. It's heated, has adjustable temperatures and water pressure, and comes in white or black to match your bathroom style. It also features voice activation via Amazon's Alexa or the Google Assistant. You can use your voice to command the spray pressure and the air dryer—it has a dryer! Ahhh, nice and warm.

[...] Kohler will have other fixtures on display at CES, including the Rista, a 3D-printed sink. I also hope to glimpse the new Anthem+ Smart Showering controls, which offer remote access to lights, water, and sound through the Kohler Konnect app.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

There's always Windows 10, 11, or Linux!

For now, Steam might continue to work with these older operating systems. Valve announced the retirement as its launcher depends on some software vendors' security patches. More specifically, Steam relies on a version of Google Chrome that's not supported on Windows 7. As you'd expect with such announcements, Valve recommends that users jump to Windows 10 or newer. 

[...] The end of support for these operating systems won't impact many Steam users. December's Steam hardware survey shows these operating systems represent between 0% and 0.01% of Steam users worldwide. However, Windows Server 2019 is still supported as Microsoft will keep rolling out security updates until Jan. 9, 2024, impacting about 0.06% of Steam users.
 
[...] Over 96.40% of Steam users are on Windows, while MacOS and Linux have a negligible share in comparison. It will be interesting to see if newer users would migrate to Windows 10, Windows 11, or any of the Linux distros. Arch Linux Ubuntu 64-bit is a home for 0.15% to 0.14% of Steam's user base.

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-01-transistors-based-monolayer-black-phosphorus.html

Journal Reference:
Li, Wanying, Tao, Quanyang, Li, Zhiwei, et al. Monolayer black phosphorus and germanium arsenide transistors via van der Waals channel thinning, Nature Electronics (DOI: 10.1038/s41928-023-01087-8)

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-ancient-roman-wine-production-clues.html

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The 200-foot Vulcan Centaur, in development since 2014, is set for its first flight and poised to make a big impact in the industry:

On Monday, January 8, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur could finally perform its first flight. ULA has been a rock in the spaceflight industry since its founding in 2006, and with this pending launch, the company is ready to take its next bold step into space. Here's how America's new powerhouse rocket could disrupt the sector and compete with the ever-dominant SpaceX.

The Vulcan Centaur rocket, towering at 202 feet (61.6 meters), is scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral's Space Launch Complex-41. ULA, a collaboration between Lockheed Martin Corporation and Boeing Company, hasn't created a rocket that compares technologically to those belonging to SpaceX, but it still represents a big achievement for the company.

Vulcan Centaur could make serious waves in the spaceflight industry, with ULA potentially matching SpaceX's lower launch prices, according to the Motley Fool. SpaceX, known for revolutionizing space travel with affordable launches like the $67 million Falcon 9, prompted ULA to respond with a more affordable option. Vulcan, set to launch at under $100 million, marks a substantial cost reduction from the company's $400 million Delta IV Heavy. This strategic pricing means ULA can stay somewhat competitive, demonstrated by its shared $2.5 billion Space Force contract with SpaceX, and even without the benefit of reusable rockets.

While this might mean lower revenues for Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the Vulcan Centaur's cost-effectiveness could prove beneficial in the long term. This development signals—hopefully—a tightening competition in the space launch sector. What's more, customers must weigh other considerations beyond just launch costs, such as fairing adaptability and the increasing issue of backlogs. Needless to say, the introduction of SpaceX's Starship megarocket could complicate the landscape for ULA, but only time will tell.

Target launch time: 08-JAN-2024 07:18 UTC

Live coverage begins 06:30 UTC on the ULA website

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Multiple sites are reporting on 13-year-old Tetris player, Willis Gibson, also known as Blue Scuti, who played until the NES version gave out. New play methods, such as rolling and hypertapping, were needed to reach a skill level where one can play as long as endurance and the software hold out. In his case it took over half an hour on the NES using rolling:

Blue Scuti is a Tetris prodigy who employs the "rolling" controller technique, a new way of holding and using the NES controller that was popularized in 2021. Rolling surpassed "hyper tapping," which requires players to tap the controller's D-pad 12 times per second, as the fastest and best way of playing Tetris. Rolling is a method where players roll their fingers on the bottom of an NES controller and use that pressure to push the controller into their other hand, which presses the D-pad to move the blocks. With rolling, players can push the D-pad at least 20 times per second, which is fast enough to theoretically play the game until it breaks. The technique has completely revolutionized competitive Tetris over the last few years.

Also at Tom's Hardware, Tetris was finally beaten after 34 years, game kill screen pops up at Level 157 — hypertapping and rolling were key techniques and the BBC, Tetris: How a US teenager achieved the 'impossible' and what his feat tells us about human capabilities.

Previously:
(2023) Hackers' Delight: a History of MIT Pranks and Hacks
(2023) Tetris' Creators Reveal the Game's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries
(2021) Tetris is no Longer Just a Game, but an Algorithm that Ensures Maximum Hotel Room Occupancy
(2014) Happy 30th Birthday Tetris!

Original Submission