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An Anonymous Coward writes:

So I came across this article : Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio and it inspired me to do more research and I plan on trying it out very soon!

The person behind the article had this to say in the start of his article:

"Last week, I attempted the challenge to try to find 50 things to do with an RTL-SDR device in a week!

It was quite an adventure: I received satellites and radio from the other side of the world, I went on a hunt for a radiosonde, and I invented a method to communicate using the NFC tag in a library book!

I used the RTL-SDR Blog V4 for everything, plus the antenna kit, plus a long piece of wire"

- Article Source: https://blinry.org/50-things-with-sdr/
- Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20240607044616/https://blinry.org/50-things-with-sdr/
- Blog post: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/doing-50-things-with-rtl-sdr-in-one-week/
- Blog post Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20240406040514/https://www.rtl-sdr.com/doing-50-things-with-rtl-sdr-in-one-week/

Has anyone here at SoylentNews tried one of these devices? What were your results? What do you most enjoy about it?

Original Submission

mhajicek writes:

https://spacenews.com/fifth-helium-leak-detected-on-starliner/

NASA confirmed that Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft has suffered a fifth, although minor, helium leak in its propulsion system as engineers work to prepare the vehicle for its return to Earth next week.

In a June 10 statement, NASA mentioned that spacecraft teams were examining "what impacts, if any, five small leaks in the service module helium manifolds would have on the remainder of the mission." That was the first reference to there being five leaks in the spacecraft; NASA had mentioned there were four in a briefing hours after the spacecraft's June 6 docking with the International Space Station.

[...] NASA closed the helium manifolds in the propulsion system after docking to stop the leaks, although they will have to be opened to use the spacecraft's thrusters for undocking and deorbit maneuvers. NASA said June 10 that engineers estimate that Starliner has enough helium to support 70 hours of flight operations, while only seven hours is needed for Starliner to return to Earth.

[...] Those teams have some time to complete that work. NASA had initially scheduled a June 14 undocking for Starliner, but NASA said June 9 it was delaying the undocking to no earlier than June 18. That delay was to avoid a conflict with a June 13 ISS spacewalk, or EVA, by NASA astronauts Tracy Dyson and Matt Dominick.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A groundbreaking cancer treatment developed by NUS researchers utilizes engineered bacteria to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly to tumor sites, significantly enhancing treatment efficacy and reducing side effects.

Traditional chemotherapy frequently presents substantial difficulties, such as harsh side effects, harm to healthy cells, and restricted effectiveness.

Researchers at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine), have pioneered a groundbreaking cancer treatment method. This new technique offers a more precise, potent, and less harmful alternative to conventional chemotherapy. It not only enhances the efficacy of the treatment but also substantially lowers the dosage of drugs needed for cancer therapy.

[...] Prodrugs are inactive molecules that transform into active drugs within the body, particularly in tumor environments, by leveraging unique tumor conditions, such as low oxygen or high acidity, to activate the drug precisely at the cancer site, minimizing damage to healthy tissues. However, current prodrug strategies exhibit limited target specificity and frequently depend on macromolecular carriers, which complicates both drug distribution and clearance.

To overcome these limitations, NUS Medicine researchers developed a prodrug delivery method that utilizes a commensal Lactobacillus strain that binds specifically to cancer cells via a surface molecule called heparan sulfate. These engineered bacteria carry a prodrug that converts to the chemotherapy drug SN-38 at the tumor site. In preclinical models of nasopharyngeal cancer, the engineered bacteria localized specifically in the tumor and released the chemotherapy drug directly at the cancer site, reducing tumor growth by 67% and increasing the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug by 54%.

[...] “Cancer treatment often takes a tremendously heavy toll on patients. Our research represents a significant step toward developing a more targeted and less toxic approach to fighting cancer. We hope this can pave the way for therapies that are both mild and effective,” added A/Prof Chang, Dean’s Chair in Medicine and Director of SynCTI and NUS Medicine Syn Bio TRP.

Reference: “Prodrug-conjugated tumor-seeking commensals for targeted cancer therapy” by Haosheng Shen, Changyu Zhang, Shengjie Li, et al., 21 May 2024, Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48661-y

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google Wallet takes over app duties, but it looks like Google is quitting P2P payments:

Google has killed off the Google Pay app. 9to5Google reports Google's old payments app stopped working recently, following shutdown plans that were announced in February. Google is shutting down the Google Pay app in the US, while in-store NFC payments seem to still be branded "Google Pay." Remember, this is Google's dysfunctional payments division, so all that's happening is Google Payment app No. 3 (Google Pay) is being shut down in favor of Google Payment app No. 4 (Google Wallet). The shutdown caps off the implosion of Google's payments division after a lot of poor decisions and failed product launches.

Google's NFC payment journey started in 2011 with Google Wallet (apps No. 1 and No. 4 are both called Google Wallet). In 2011, Google was a technology trailblazer and basically popularized the idea of paying for something with your phone in many regions (with the notable exception of Japan). Google shipped the first non-Japanese phones with the feature, fought carriers trying to stop phone payments from happening, and begged stores to get new, compatible terminals. Google's entire project was blown away when Apple Pay launched in 2014, and Google's response was its second payment app, Android Pay, in 2015. This copied much of Apple's setup, like sending payment tokens instead of the actual credit card number. Google Pay was a rebrand of this setup and arrived in 2018.

[...] The 2021 Google Pay was a totally different codebase based on a Google payments app that was originally developed for India, called Google Tez. Tez was rebranded to Google Pay for the US market and launched on the Play Store. Being designed for India, where a phone might be your first and only Internet device, meant the new Google Pay had a lot of design decisions that didn't fit the US market. [...]

upstart writes:

Apple is to boost its Siri voice assistant and operating systems with OpenAI's ChatGPT as it seeks to catch up in the AI race:

The iPhone maker announced the Siri makeover along with a number of other new features at its annual developers show on Monday.

It is part of a new personalised AI system - called "Apple Intelligence" - that aims to offer users a way to navigate Apple devices more easily.

Updates to its iPhone and Mac operating systems will allow access to ChatGPT through a partnership with developer OpenAI.

[...] There was a cool reaction from the markets though - Apple's share price fell by 1.91% on Monday, the day of the announcement.

The partnership was also not welcomed by Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and Twitter/X, who has threatened to ban iPhones from his companies due to "data security".

"Apple has no clue what's actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI," Mr Musk said on X. "They're selling you down the river."

Apple has not responded to his allegations.

Smartphone maker Samsung also mocked its rival's announcement.

"Adding 'Apple' doesn't make it new or groundbreaking. Welcome to AI", it posted on X.

upstart writes:

When an earthquake rocked Taiwan, hundreds of Gogoro's battery-swap stations automatically stopped drawing electricity to stabilize the grid:

On the morning of April 3, Taiwan was hit by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. Seconds later, hundreds of battery-swap stations in Taiwan sensed something else: the power frequency of the electric grid took a sudden drop, a signal that some power plants had been disconnected in the disaster. The grid was now struggling to meet energy demand.

These stations, built by the Taiwanese company Gogoro for electric-powered two-wheeled vehicles like scooters, mopeds, and bikes, reacted immediately. According to numbers provided by the company, 590 Gogoro battery-swap locations (some of which have more than one swap station) stopped drawing electricity from the grid, lowering local demand by a total six megawatts—enough to power thousands of homes. It took 12 minutes for the grid to recover, and the battery-swap stations then resumed normal operation.

Gogoro is not the only company working on battery-swapping for electric scooters (New York City recently launched a pilot program to give delivery drivers the option to charge this way), but it's certainly one of the most successful. Founded in 2011, the firm has a network of over 12,500 stations across Taiwan and boasts over 600,000 monthly subscribers who pay to swap batteries in and out when required. Each station is roughly the size of two vending machines and can hold around 30 scooter batteries.

Now the company is putting the battery network to another use: Gogoro has been working with Enel X, an Italian company, to incorporate the stations into a virtual power plant (VPP) system that helps the Taiwanese grid stay more resilient in emergencies like April's earthquake.

Battery-swap stations work well for VPP programs because they offer so much more flexibility than charging at home, where an electric-bike owner usually has just one or two batteries and thus must charge immediately after one runs out. With dozens of batteries in a single station as a demand buffer, Gogoro can choose when it charges them—for instance, doing so at night when there's less power demand and it's cheaper. In the meantime, the batteries can give power back to the grid when it is stressed—hence the comparison to power plants.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

California Senator Scott Wiener is used to pushback when he proposes laws aimed at reining in reckless drivers and improving road safety in his car-dependent state. But even he was caught off guard when, earlier this year, he introduced a new bill requiring a speed “governor” on all new cars sold in the state. The opposition from drivers was so fierce that he had to rewrite the proposal to only require weaker versions of the technology.

“There were people who loved it, people who hated it, people who were mad at me, spouses who were arguing with each other about it,” Wiener said in an interview. “It was an interesting situation. There’s a certain cultural embrace of being able to drive your car however you want to drive your car.”

Speeding is part of our cultural identity. Automakers frequently advertise new cars tearing through empty cities or weaving through traffic well above safe speeds. Movies and television shows frequently push these boundaries further. And social media further glorifies lawbreaking by providing a platform for speedsters. It all perpetuates the idea that speeding is not only safe but an American right.

“There’s a certain cultural embrace of being able to drive your car however you want to drive your car.”

Yet speeding is one of the most deadly things you can do in a vehicle. In 2023, more than 40,000 people died in traffic accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data released in April of this year. That’s down about 36 percent from 2022, when crashes accounted for nearly 43,000 deaths. The previous year was even worse, with speeding fatalities reaching a 14-year high. 

[...] “Driver’s behavior is the overwhelming cause of traffic crashes,” Jonathan Adkins, CEO of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “We’re driving too fast or drinking, we’re not wearing our seatbelt. We’re distracted by our cell phones. It’s all those behaviors that lead to the vast majority of crashes.”

Salvation could come from technology like intelligent speed assistance (ISA) systems, but there’s a lot of nuance. These systems use cameras, radar, and lidar in conjunction with GPS data to detect both the speed of your vehicle and “read” the speed limit signs on the road. 

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Imagine misplacing your house keys and then pulling out a 3D printer from your pocket to make new ones.

3D printing has made manufacturing more affordable, especially for low-volume production. However, 3D printers are often huge and heavy devices that need a stable platform to work properly — until now. MIT News reports that its researchers have worked closely with a team from the University of Texas at Austin to create a prototype 3D printer that is smaller than a coin.

This photonic chip focuses its beam into a resin well that rapidly cures when it’s hit by a particular wavelength of light emitted from the chip. The palm-sized 3D printer also saves space by eschewing moving parts — instead of using arms and motors to change the beam’s focal point, the prototype uses tiny optical antennas to move it around and create the desired shape.

If the team is successful in turning this concept into a viable product, it could change the face of instant manufacturing. The portability and speed of this palm-sized printer could allow anyone — engineers, doctors, or even first responders — to create solutions on the fly without needing to lug around a big and heavy device.

[...] These are just some of the exciting possibilities that this 3D printing concept brings to the table. According to MIT Professor Jelena Notaros, “This system is completely rethinking what a 3D printer is. It is no longer a big box sitting on a bench in a lab creating objects, but something that is handheld and portable. It is exciting to think about the new applications that could come out of this and how the field of 3D printing could change.” 

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Water frost detected on Mars' volcanoes in 'significant' first discovery: Study

Researchers say the frost patches equate to '60 Olympic-size swimming pools.'

[....] The thin yet widespread layers of water frost were discovered atop three of Mars' Tharsis volcanoes, located on a plateau at the planet's equator, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Tharsis volcanoes, a string of 12 large peaks, are the tallest volcanoes in our solar system, according to the study, which notes that the water frost was discovered on the volcanoes Olympus, Arsia Ascraeus Mons, and Ceraunius Tholus.

"The researchers calculate the frost constitutes at least 150,000 tons of water that swaps between the surface and atmosphere each day during the cold seasons," researchers from Brown University reported in a press release Monday [...]

[...] "We thought it was improbable for frost to form around Mars' equator, as the mix of sunshine and thin atmosphere keeps temperatures during the day relatively high at both the surface and mountaintop — unlike what we see on Earth, where you might expect to see frosty peaks,"

[...] Researchers hypothesize the air circulating above the calderas creates a "unique microclimate that allows the thin patches of frost to form."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Following the strongest solar storm in twenty years, NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite was put into a safe hold on May 10 due to atmospheric drag from the expanded atmosphere. Recovery actions have since raised its orbit, with operations anticipated to restart on June 17.

The lidar instrument on NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite is scheduled to resume collecting data around June 17, after going into a safe hold on May 10 due to impacts from the strongest solar storm to hit Earth in two decades. The storm did not cause any detectable damage to the satellite or its instrument.

Between May 7 and May 11, strong solar flares and coronal mass ejections were released from the Sun and sparked a geomagnetic storm at Earth that caused our planet’s atmosphere to expand in places. This created unexpected drag on ICESat-2, rotating the satellite, and triggering the satellite to enter safe hold, which turned off ICESat-2’s science instrument.

The ICESat-2 team has conducted two thruster burns to raise the spacecraft’s altitude, allowing it to now drift back to its normal orbit around 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth. Once there, the team will return the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System instrument to science mode, to continue measuring the height of Earth’s ice, water, forests, and land cover.

ICESat-2, short for Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2, is a NASA satellite mission designed to measure ice sheet elevation and sea ice thickness, as well as land topography and vegetation characteristics. Launched in September 2018, the satellite employs a sophisticated laser altimeter system called ATLAS (Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System) to provide precise and detailed measurements of Earth’s surface.

ICESat-2’s high-resolution data helps scientists understand changes in ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice that result from climate change, enhancing our ability to accurately predict future sea level rise and assess changes in Earth’s ecosystems. This satellite is a critical tool in NASA’s Earth Observing System, contributing valuable data for environmental research and climate science.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Back in April the Biden FCC finally got around to restoring both net neutrality rules, and the agency’s Title II authority over telecom providers. The modest rules, as we’ve covered extensively, prevent big telecom giants from abusing their monopoly and gatekeeper power to harm competitors or consumers. They also require that ISPs be transparent about what kind of network management they use.

Contrary to a lot of industry and right wing bullshit, the rules don’t hurt broadband investment and they’re not some “radical government overreach.” They’re some very basic guidelines proposed by an agency that under both parties is generally too feckless to stand up to industry.

But big telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast have unsurprisingly challenged the rules once again in the Fifth Circuit, the Sixth Circuit, Eleventh Circuit, and the D.C. Circuit as they seek a lucky lottery draw. At the same time, they’ve filed a petition asking the FCC to pause the rules (set to take effect July 22), claiming (falsely, as it turns out) that the agency’s decision was illegal (all consumer protection efforts are illegal if you’re ignorant enough to ask an AT&T or Comcast lawyer’s opinion about it).

Big ISPs, as usual, insist that if net neutrality is to be addressed, it should be done by Congress:

Telecom lobbyists, which spend an estimated $320,000 every day lobbying Congress, enjoy making this claim hoping you’re too daft to realize that Congress has long been too corrupted by corporate influence to do this (or much of anything else on consumer protection or consumer privacy). They know they have Congress in their pockets, and they’re obviously working hard on the courts.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

After weeks of being excoriated by cybersecurity experts, Microsoft is making moves to address concerns over its new AI-powered computer history-saving feature: Copilot+ Recall.

Most notably, Microsoft is switching Recall from a default feature to one that requires a user to opt-in first. The company is making the change before Recall officially rolls out on June 18.

"We are updating the set-up experience of Copilot+ PCs to give people a clearer choice to opt-in to saving snapshots using Recall," wrote Microsoft Windows VP Pavan Davuluri in an official company update on the feature. "If you don’t proactively choose to turn it on, it will be off by default."

Last month, Microsoft announced a series of new AI-powered features coming to Windows. One central feature that the company announced was Recall.

Recall takes constant screenshots in the background while a user uses a device. Microsoft's AI then scans the screenshots and makes a searchable archive of all the activity history that a user performed. Which websites were visited, what a user typed into forms – nearly everything is saved.

Cybersecurity experts were immediately concerned. A prominent former Microsoft threat analyst who had hands-on experience using Recall called the feature a "disaster." 

It turns out, Recall really does save pretty much everything including text passwords, sensitive financial information, private Google Chrome browser history, and more. And Recall saves it inside a database that can be easily accessed by a bad actor who gains remote control of a user's device.

Making things even worse, Recall was going to be a feature turned on by default, meaning users might not have even been aware of what was going on in the background of their device.

Thankfully, users will now have to opt-in to the feature, fully aware of what they are turning on and what Recall does.

owl writes:

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/learn-something-old-every-day-part-xii-strange-file-resizing-on-dos/

Someone recently asked an interesting question: Why do Microsoft C and compatible DOS compilers have no truncate() and/or ftruncate() library functions? And how does one resize files on DOS?

OK, that's actually two questions. The first one is easy enough to answer: Because XENIX had no truncate() or ftruncate() either. Instead, XENIX had a chsize() function which, sure enough, can be found in the Microsoft C libraries at least as far back as MS C 3.0 (early 1985).

The second question is rather more interesting. The way files are resized on DOS is moving the file pointer to the desired size by calling the LSEEK function (INT 21h/42h), and then calling the WRITE function (INT 21h/40h) with zero length (CX=0).

Now, this mechanism is rather curious, because the handle-based file API in DOS 2.0 was modeled on XENIX, yet on UNIX systems, the write() function asked to transfer zero bytes simply does nothing. If the mechanism didn't come from XENIX, where did it come from?....

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Multiple sites are reporting on an article in Nature Ecology & Evolution about communication between African elephants (paywall). Using machine learning to analyze the low rumblings that elephants make, they researchs conclude that elephants have names for each other and use them.

Wild African elephants call each other by their names, according to a study published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution — making them the only nonhuman animals known to use language like this.

— Vox, Elephants have names — and they use them with each other

and

For the new study, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savannah elephants in Kenya.

The research "not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others," lead study author Michael Pardo said.

— Science Alert, Wild Elephants Invent Names For One Another in Surprise Sign of Abstract Thinking

and

The researchers analyzed vocalizations - mostly rumbles generated by elephants using their vocal cords, similar to how people speak - made by more than 100 elephants in Amboseli National Park and Samburu National Reserve.

Using a machine-learning model, the researchers identified what appeared to be a name-like component in these calls identifying a specific elephant as the intended addressee. The researchers then played audio for 17 elephants to test how they would respond to a call apparently addressed to them as well as to a call apparently addressed to some other elephant.

— The Hindustan Times, Elephants use 'names' to communicate with each other: Study

and

So Pardo and some colleagues analyzed recordings of 469 rumbling calls that wild African elephants had made to each other in the Amboseli National Park and Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in Kenya between 1986 and 2022.

For every recorded call, the researchers knew the identity of the elephant making the rumble as well as, based on the context, the elephant that was being addressed.

— NPR, Wild elephants may have names that other elephants use to call them

Previously,
(2021) Wise Old Elephants Keep the Young Calm
(2014) Elephants: Best Sense of Smell by a Wide Margin
(2014) Elephants Can Tell Human Ethnicity by our Voices

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2eeg9gygyno

An appeal has been launched for O blood-type donors to book appointments across the country following the ransomware attack affecting major London hospitals.

NHS Blood and Transplant is appealing for O blood-type donors to book appointments to donate as this is safe to use for all patients.

The IT attack means the affected hospitals cannot currently match patients' blood at the same frequency as usual.

Several London hospitals declared a critical incident, cancelled operations and tests, and were unable to carry out blood transfusions last week after the attack on the pathology firm Synnovis, which Qilin, a Russian group of cyber criminals, is understood to have been behind.

Memos to NHS staff at King's College Hospital, Guy's and St Thomas' (including the Royal Brompton and the Evelina London Children's Hospital) and primary care services in London said a critical incident had been declared.

Now NHS Blood and Transplant is calling for O positive and O negative blood donors to book appointments in one of the 25 NHS Blood Donor Centres in England to boost stocks.

For surgeries and procedures requiring blood to take place, hospitals need to use O- type blood as this is safe to use for all patients and blood has a shelf life of 35 days, so stocks need to be continually replenished, the NHS said.

That means more units of these types of blood than usual will be required over the coming weeks.