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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

By European Southern Observatory (ESO) July 3, 2024

Currently under construction in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ESO’s ELT) is one step closer to completion. German company SCHOTT has successfully delivered the blank for the last of the 949 segments commissioned for the telescope’s primary mirror (M1). With a diameter of more than 39 meters, M1 will be by far the largest mirror ever made for a telescope.

Too large to be made from a single piece of glass, M1 will consist of 798 hexagonal segments, each about five centimeters thick and 1.5 meters across, working together to collect tens of millions of times as much light as the human eye. An additional 133 segments have been produced to facilitate the maintenance and recoating of the segments once the telescope is operational. ESO has also procured 18 spare segments, bringing the total number to 949.

The primary mirror of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), known as M1, will be by far the largest mirror ever made for a telescope. With a diameter of more than 39 meters, M1 is too large to be made from a single piece of glass and will instead consist of 798 hexagonal segments, each about five centimeters thick and 1.5 meters across, working together to collect tens of millions of times as much light as the human eye. An additional 133 segments have been produced to facilitate the maintenance and recoating of the segments once the telescope is operational. ESO has also procured 18 spare segments, bringing the total number to 949. Now, German company SCHOTT has successfully cast the blank for the last of the 949 segments, seen in this photo. The M1 blanks, shaped pieces of material that are later polished to become the mirror segments, are made from ZERODUR©, a low-expansion glass-ceramic material developed by SCHOTT and optimized for the extreme temperature ranges at the ELT’s site in the Atacama Desert. The 949th segment is seen in this image before being cut into its hexagonal shape and polished — steps that will be performed by French company Safran Reosc. Credit: SCHOTT

The M1 blanks, shaped pieces of material that are later polished to become the mirror segments, are made from ZERODUR®, a low-expansion glass-ceramic material developed by SCHOTT and optimized for the extreme temperature ranges at the ELT’s site in the Atacama Desert. This company has also manufactured the blanks of three other ELT mirrors — M2, M3, and M4 — at their facilities in Mainz, Germany.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

On the day before Christmas last year, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from California and put two spy satellites into low-Earth orbit for the armed forces of Germany, which are collectively called the Bundeswehr.

Initially, the mission appeared successful. The German satellite manufacturer, OHB, declared that the two satellites were "safely in orbit." The addition of the two SARah satellites completed a next-generation constellation of three reconnaissance satellites, the company said.

However, six months later, the two satellites have yet to become operational. According to the German publication Der Spiegel, the antennas on the satellites cannot be unfolded. Engineers with OHB have tried to resolve the issue by resetting the flight software, performing maneuvers to vibrate or shake the antennas loose, and more to no avail.

As a result, last week, German lawmakers were informed that the two new satellites will probably not go into operation as planned.

The three-satellite constellation known as SARah—the SAR is a reference to the synthetic aperture radar capability of the satellites—was ordered in 2013 at a cost of $800 million. The first of the three satellites, SARah 1, launched in June 2022 on a Falcon 9 rocket. This satellite was built by Airbus in southern Germany, and it has since gone into operation without any problems.

[...] This new constellation was intended to replace an aging fleet of similar, though less capable, satellites known as  SAR-Lupe. This five-satellite constellation launched nearly two decades ago.

According to the Der Spiegel report, the Bundeswehr says the two SARah satellites built by OHB remain the property of the German company and would only be turned over to the military once they were operational. As a result, the military says OHB will be responsible for building two replacement satellites.

[...] the German publication says that its sources indicated OHB did not fully test the functionality and deployment of the satellite antennas on the ground. This could not be confirmed.

This setback comes as OHB is attempting to complete a deal to go private—the investment firm KKR is planning to acquire the German space company. OHB officials said they initiated the effort to go private late last year because public markets had "structurally undervalued" the company.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Austin-based semiconductor company InspireSemi announced that it has tapped out its first Thunderbird "supercomputer-on-a-chip" comprising 1,536 64-bit superscalar RISC-V CPU cores. Four chips can be installed on a single accelerator card, in a form factor similar to a GPU. This configuration brings the total number of cores per card to 6,144, with the potential to scale to multi-processors in a single cluster connected using high-speed serial interconnect.

[...] Thunderbird utilizes standard CPU programming models and compiles without creating workloads on custom platforms like Nvidia's CUDA or AMD's ROCm. This means existing HPC workloads running on CPUs should have little to no custom code to run in Thunderbird. Also, the product is adaptable to existing server infrastructure as it's a PCI add-on card, allowing InspireSemi to reach more customers who do not have the funds to build out new infrastructure and facilities.

According to InspireSemi, the processor's open-source design and agnostic software allows them to target many industries: "Thunderbird accelerates many critical applications in important industries that other approaches do not, including life sciences, genomics, medical devices, climate change research, and applications that require deep simulation and modeling" said the company's founder and CTO Andy Gray.

[...] The speed at which companies are utilizing open-source solutions is remarkable. The Unified Acceleration Foundation's (UXL) mission is to develop universal standards for vendor-agnostic hardware and software, with Intel being one of the main contributors through its oneAPI framework.

If open-source initiatives for building a more open platform continue to gain momentum, then companies like InspireSemi may have a bright future.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Nineteen years and a whole bunch of controversy later, Boeing has decided to reacquire Spirit AeroSystems, maker of parts including the door plug included in select Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft. 

Spirit, which manufactures plane parts like fuselages, wings, and other components for both Boeing and Airbus, is being reacquired for $4.7 billion, with a total transaction value of $8.3 billion once Spirit's debt is added to the mix. Spirit was originally spun off from Boeing in 2005 for what Spirit spokesperson Joe Buccino confirmed was a cost-saving measure. 

"By reintegrating Spirit, we can fully align our commercial production systems, including our Safety and Quality Management Systems, and our workforce to the same priorities, incentives and outcomes – centered on safety and quality," outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said of the deal.

[...] Boeing has been having quality control issues for several years, some of which have been allegedly linked to issues at Spirit.

Spirit was also hit by the 2018 and 2019 fatal crashes of a pair of Boeing 737 Max aircraft. The company was manufacturing the aircraft at the time and was heavily affected by the nearly two-year grounding of the aircraft after the crashes, which have largely been blamed on faulty software.

The DoJ is reportedly seeking a guilty plea from Boeing on criminal charges related to those two Max crashes that killed 346 people and, if it doesn't get it, intends to take the company to trial.

[...] That plea – or a conviction in court – could have serious implications for Boeing's future. Several agencies the company does business with, including the DoD and NASA, have rules in place barring them from signing contracts with companies convicted of a felony.

A number of whistleblowers – employees at both Boeing and Spirit – have come forward in the years since the crashes, and the rate of damning reports only increased after the door plug blowout.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/shopping-app-temu-is-dangerous-malware-spying-on-your-texts-lawsuit-claims/

Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Griffin cited research and media reports exposing Temu's allegedly nefarious design, which "purposely" allows Temu to "gain unrestricted access to a user's phone operating system, including, but not limited to, a user's camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents, and other applications."

"Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users," Griffin's complaint said. "Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place."
[...]
The company that owns Temu, PDD Holdings, was founded in 2015 by a former Google employee, Colin Huang. It was originally based in China, but after security concerns were raised, the company relocated its "principal executive offices" to Ireland, Griffin's complaint said. This, Griffin suggested, was intended to distance the company from debate over national security risks posed by China, but because the majority of its business operations remain in China, risks allegedly remain.
[...]
Last year, Temu was the most downloaded app in the US, Griffin's complaint noted, while most users had no way of knowing that the app was allegedly collecting "a shocking amount of sensitive user data" that was "beyond what is necessary for an online shopping app."

According to the complaint, Temu is allegedly obscuring its unauthorized access to data through misleading terms of use and privacy policies that do not alert users to the full scope of data that the app can potentially collect. That includes not telling users about tracking granular locations for no defined purpose and collecting "even biometric information such as users' fingerprints."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In one of the most massive patent verdicts in legal history, a federal jury in East Texas has ordered cellular giant Verizon to pay patentholder General Access Solutions $847 million.

That's a $583 million "reasonable royalty" for infringing US Patent No 7,230,931 (the '931) patent, and $264 million for infringing the other, 9,426,794 ('794), a jury decided [PDF] late last week.

Verizon banked a $12 billion profit in 2023, so the judgment represents seven percent of that annual income, or about 26 days of annual profit.

Dallas-based non-practicing entity General Access, which acquired the patents from original inventor Raze Technologies, claims elements of Verizon's 5G wireless networks, smartphone hotspots, wireless home routers, and MiFi devices violate its intellectual property.

It claims in the original complaint [PDF] that Verizon's base station equipment infringes its '931 patent – to do with beamforming networks across cell sites – and that Verizon wireless devices that receive 4G and 5G cell signals infringe its '794 patent when they route information to mobile stations using 802.11 Wi-Fi comms protocols.

According to the complaint, devices that infringe '734 include Wi-Fi home or office routers with cellular backhaul, Wi-Fi "hotspots," and even smartphones that have Wi-Fi hotspot functionality. Both patents were originally filed in 2001.

Verizon argued that the patents were invalid due to a lack of written description and/or not being "fully enabled," but the jury ticked "no" on the form when asked if it agreed with this.

[...] Legal news website Law360 has noted that Ericsson will be on the hook for part of that verdict, if it stands. It added that such high verdicts "are often overturned or trimmed by the Federal Circuit."

Ericsson told us: "The judicial process is ongoing, and we will therefore refrain from commenting on the details of it. We do however strongly disagree with the jury's verdict and continue to support Verizon in its vigorous challenge to the result."

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

Smithsonian Magazine is reporting on archaeological finds revealing a trade route between ancient Egypt and India at Berenike, an ancient port city on the Red Sea.

From the article:

On a sunny morning this past January, Ingo Strauch, an expert in ancient Indian history, crouches in the courtyard of what was once an Egyptian temple. The floor is littered with fallen stones and columns. Nearby, carved hieroglyphs are visible on the salt-corroded walls, which in some places still stand nearly eight feet high. Located just a few hundred steps from the glittering water of the Red Sea, in Egypt's eastern desert, this remote shrine was dedicated to the mother goddess Isis some 2,000 years ago.
[...]
In antiquity, this site, known as Berenike, was described by chroniclers such as Strabo and Pliny the Elder as the Roman Empire's maritime gateway to the East: a crucial entry point for mind-boggling riches brought across the sea from eastern Africa, southern Arabia, India and beyond. It is hard to imagine how such vast and complex trade could have been supported here, miles from any natural source of drinking water and many days' arduous trek across mountainous desert from the Nile. Yet excavations are revealing that the stories are true.
[...]
The ruined Isis temple alone has yielded inscriptions and ritual offerings made by Egyptian, Greek and Roman worshipers over hundreds of years, from painted pharaohs on the walls to bronze statues and gilded figurines. But these treasures aren't what Strauch, from the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland, has traveled thousands of miles to see. Laid out before him on a blue blanket is a two-and-a-half-foot-long block of curiously inscribed white gypsum.

Near the top of the stone's rough, corroded surface are three lines of elegantly curved Sanskrit script. Strauch, wearing sunglasses and a Panama hat, traces the curling letters with his finger. "In the sixth year of King Philip," he reads, "the kshatriya Vasula gave this image for the welfare and happiness of all beings." Then he points to a single line, in Greek, written by the same person but in a cruder style, that says simply: "Vasula set this up." If not for the Greek translation and the reference to a Roman emperor—Philip the Arab, who ruled in the third century A.D.—this dedication could be mistaken as coming from India, Strauch says. The words are Sanskrit, expertly written in Brahmi script. The message itself, with its reference to universal happiness, is undeniably Buddhist. And the author, Vasula, who arranged for the dedication, proudly describes himself as kshatriya, from the warrior caste.

It seems that the ancient world was much more connected than we thought, whether that be via the Silk Road to China or sea routes to Africa and India.

Who knew globalization was such an old concept?

TFA has much more info than the above, and is really fascinating. I heartily recommend reading it.

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upstart writes:

Video Shows Giant Explosion After Accidental Rocket Launch In China:

Chinese space company Beijing Tianbing accidentally launched a rocket during a test of its first-stage power system on Sunday.

The company – also known as Space Pioneer – fired up the first-stage Tianlong-3 rocket in what was supposed to be a static test. However, due to a structural failure the rocket was launched to its destruction.

"During the test run, the first-stage rocket ignited normally, and the engine thrust reached 820 tons," the company explained in a statement. "Due to structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench, the first-stage rocket separated from the launch pad."

The onboard computer shut off automatically shortly after the unexpected liftoff, and the rocket was seen flying vertically for a short amount of time, before turning horizontal and falling back down to the ground.

The rocket fell into the mountains around 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from the launch site at Gongyi City, Henan Province, China. There have been no reported casualties, according to the firm, and the surrounding area had been evacuated of personnel in advance of the launch.

Video 1

Video 2

Accidents of this kind are pretty rare in spaceflight history. Astrophysicist Brad Tucker from the Australian National University told the New York Times that the only comparable incident occurred in 1952, when NASA's Viking 8 broke free of its moorings and landed in the desert 8 kilometers (5 miles) away.

The Tianlong-3 rocket is intended to be reusable, as a way of reducing the incredible cost involved in spaceflight. It is hoped the latest version will be capable of carrying up to 17 tons into low-Earth orbit, or 14 tons in a sun-synchronous orbit. The unintended flight was the most-powerful system test of any test conducted in China, according to Beijing Tianbing, though the debris scattered over the nearby hills will attest it wasn't exactly a resounding success.

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owl writes:

https://10maurycy10.github.io/projects/motion_sensor_hacking/

I recently got some cheap RCWL-0516 microwave motion sensors, mostly because I was wondering how China managed to make a radar for under a dollar:

Getting one working was quite easy, I just connected the VIN pin to 5 volts, GND to ground, and added a 1 uF decoupling capacitor on the 3V3 pin. When someone moves within ~5 meters, the OUT pin goes up to 3 volts for 3 seconds.

So it works, but how?

Generally, motion and speed sensing (doppler) radars work by sending out a continuous carrier and mixing the received signal with the transmitted carrier to create a low frequency IF signal. If reflections are coming from a moving object, the received signal will slowly drift in and out of phase with the transmitted signal, creating a beat frequency at just a few hertz. Because a motion sensor doesn't care about the exact speed, all the chip has to do is look for millivolt-level changes: all the hard work is already done.

Original Submission

Wishing all American members of our community a very happy Independence Day!

Enjoy the celebrations but please do so safely.

First Case of Down Syndrome in Neanderthals Documented in New Study

upstart writes:

First case of Down syndrome in Neanderthals documented in new study:

The research, led by anthropologists at the University of Alcalá and the University of Valencia in Spain, studied the skeletal remains of a Neanderthal child, whom they affectionately named "Tina," found at Cova Negra, a cave in Valencia, Spain long known for yielding important Neanderthal discoveries.

"The excavations at Cova Negra have been key to understanding the way of life of the Neanderthals along the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula and have allowed us to define the occupations of the settlement: of short temporal duration and with a small number of individuals, alternating with the presence of carnivores," said University of Valencia Professor of Prehistory Valentín Villaverde.

The researchers made micro-computed tomography scans of a small cranial fragment of the right temporal bone, containing the ear region, to reconstruct a three-dimensional model for measurement and analysis. Tina suffered from a congenital pathology of the inner ear associated with Down syndrome that produced severe hearing loss and disabling vertigo. This individual survived to at least 6 years of age, but would have required extensive care from other members of their social group.

"This is a fantastic study, combining rigorous archaeological excavations, modern medical imaging techniques and diagnostic criteria to document Down syndrome in a Neanderthal individual for the first time. The results have significant implications for our understanding of Neanderthal behavior," said Binghamton University Professor of Anthropology Rolf Quam.

Researchers have known for decades that Neanderthals cared for disabled individuals. However, to date, all known cases of social care among Neanderthals involved adult individuals, leading some scientists to discount this as truly altruistic behavior and instead to suggest it more likely represented reciprocal exchange of help between equals.

"What was not known until now was any case of an individual who had received help, even if they could not return the favor, which would prove the existence of true altruism among Neanderthals. That is precisely what the discovery of 'Tina' means," said Mercedes Conde, professor at the University of Alcalá and lead author of the study. The study, "The child who lived: Down syndrome among Neanderthals?" was published in Science Advances.

Journal Reference:

Mercedes Conde-Valverde, Amara Quirós-Sánchez, Julia Diez-Valero, et al. The child who lived: Down syndrome among Neanderthals?, Science Advances, 2024; 10 (26) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn9310

owl writes:

https://qz.com/mcdonalds-broken-ice-cream-machines-federal-regulators-1851339089

Federal regulators want to fix McDonald's broken ice cream machines, and they're asking to expand right-to-repair laws to address the issue. In a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office on Thursday, regulators asked for commercial soft-serve machines to be exempt from current laws making them difficult to repair. The laws also make it more difficult for you to get a McFlurry.

"In the Agencies' view, renewing and expanding repair-related exemptions would promote competition in markets for replacement parts, repair, and maintenance services," said the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission in a joint letter.

The McDonald's broken ice cream machines have found themselves at the center of the right-to-repair movement. The reason McDonald's ice cream machines are always down is because of copyright law. Only technicians licensed by the company that made the device are allowed to touch the machines, and they charge over $300 for a 15-minute servicing, according to the letter. The DOJ and the FTC identified commercial soft-serve machines as one of four device categories that would benefit from an easing of copyright laws.

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

https://news.mit.edu/2023/surprising-finding-light-makes-water-evaporate-without-heat-1031
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2312751120 Note that the paper is not paywalled.

A newly identified process could explain a variety of natural phenomena and enable new approaches to desalination.

Evaporation is happening all around us all the time, from the sweat cooling our bodies to the dew burning off in the morning sun. But science's understanding of this ubiquitous process may have been missing a piece all this time.

In recent years, some researchers have been puzzled upon finding that water in their experiments, which was held in a sponge-like material known as a hydrogel, was evaporating at a higher rate than could be explained by the amount of heat, or thermal energy, that the water was receiving. And the excess has been significant — a doubling, or even a tripling or more, of the theoretical maximum rate.

After carrying out a series of new experiments and simulations, and reexamining some of the results from various groups that claimed to have exceeded the thermal limit, a team of researchers at MIT has reached a startling conclusion: Under certain conditions, at the interface where water meets air, light can directly bring about evaporation without the need for heat, and it actually does so even more efficiently than heat. In these experiments, the water was held in a hydrogel material, but the researchers suggest that the phenomenon may occur under other conditions as well.

The findings are published this week in a paper in PNAS, by MIT postdoc Yaodong Tu, professor of mechanical engineering Gang Chen, and four others.

The phenomenon might play a role in the formation and evolution of fog and clouds, and thus would be important to incorporate into climate models to improve their accuracy, the researchers say. And it might play an important part in many industrial processes such as solar-powered desalination of water, perhaps enabling alternatives to the step of converting sunlight to heat first.

The new findings come as a surprise because water itself does not absorb light to any significant degree. That's why you can see clearly through many feet of clean water to the surface below. So, when the team initially began exploring the process of solar evaporation for desalination, they first put particles of a black, light-absorbing material in a container of water to help convert the sunlight to heat.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/appeals-court-seems-lost-on-how-internet-archive-harms-publishers/

The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law.

In the weeks ahead of IA's efforts to appeal that ruling, IA was forced to remove 500,000 books from its collection, shocking users. In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt "a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others," who may not have access to a local library or feel "safe accessing the information they need in public."

[...] IA has argued that because copyright law is intended to provide equal access to knowledge, copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it. They're hoping the judges will decide that CDL is fair use, reversing the lower court's decision and restoring access to books recently removed from the open library. But Gratz said there's no telling yet when that decision will come.

[...] McSherry seemed optimistic that the judges at least understood the stakes for IA readers, noting that fair use is "designed to ensure that copyright actually serves the public interest," not publishers'. Should the court decide otherwise, McSherry warned, the court risks allowing "a few powerful publishers" to "hijack the future of books."

When IA first appealed, Kahle put out a statement saying IA couldn't walk away from "a fight to keep library books available for those seeking truth in the digital age."

Previously on SoylentNews:
Internet Archive Forced to Remove 500,000 Books After Publishers' Court Win - 20240627

Original Submission

upstart writes:

China issues rare earth regulations to further protect domestic supply By Reuters:

China has unveiled a list of rare earth regulations aimed at protecting supplies in the name of national security, laying out rules on the mining, smelting and trade in the critical materials used to make products from magnets in electric vehicles to consumer electronics.

The regulations, issued by the State Council or cabinet on Saturday, say rare earth resources belong to the state, and that the government will oversee the development of the industry around rare earths - a group of 17 minerals of which China has in recent years become the world's dominant producer, accounting for nearly 90% of global refined output.

Their global industrial significance is such that under a law that entered into force in May the EU set ambitious 2030 targets for domestic production of minerals crucial in the green transition - particularly rare earths due to their use in permanent magnets that power motors in EVs and wind energy.

EU demand is forecast to soar sixfold in the decade to 2030 and sevenfold by 2050.

The new Chinese regulations, which will take effect on Oct. 1, say the State Council will establish a rare earth product traceability information system.

Enterprises in rare earth mining, smelting and separation, and the export of rare earth products, shall establish a product flow record system, shall "truthfully" record the flow, and shall enter it into the traceability system, the State Council said.

China already last year introduced restrictions on exports of the elements germanium and gallium, used widely in the chip-making sector, citing the need to protect national security and interests.

It also banned the export of technology to make rare earth magnets, in addition to imposing a ban on technology to extract and separate rare earths.

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