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Engineers at Cloudflare and Apple say they've developed a new internet protocol that will shore up one of the biggest holes in internet privacy that many don't know even exists. Dubbed Oblivious DNS-over-HTTPS, or ODoH for short, the new protocol makes it far more difficult for internet providers to know which websites you visit. From a report: [...] Recent developments like DNS-over-HTTPS (or DoH) have added encryption to DNS queries, making it harder for attackers to hijack DNS queries and point victims to malicious websites instead of the real website you wanted to visit. But that still doesn't stop the DNS resolvers from seeing which website you're trying to visit. Enter ODoH, which decouples DNS queries from the internet user, preventing the DNS resolver from knowing which sites you visit. Here's how it works: ODoH wraps a layer of encryption around the DNS query and passes it through a proxy server, which acts as a go-between the internet user and the website they want to visit. Because the DNS query is encrypted, the proxy can't see what's inside, but acts as a shield to prevent the DNS resolver from seeing who sent the query to begin with. "What ODoH is meant to do is separate the information about who is making the query and what the query is," said Nick Sullivan, Cloudflare's head of research.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than a week after Black Friday, Apple's announced its AirPods Max over-ear headphones for $549. It's available for preorder now, and will ship Dec. 15. From a report: Apple said its AirPods Max are designed with similar features to its $249 in-ear AirPods Pro, but in an over-ear design. As a result, it offers many of the same features as its AirPods cousins, including simple setup and connections, active noise cancellation, transparency mode to pipe sound from the outside world into your ears along with whatever you're listening to, and "spatial" simulated surround-sound audio. It also comes in five colors, including silver, green and pink. "With AirPods Max, we are bringing that magical AirPods experience to a stunning over-ear design with high-fidelity audio," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement Tuesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé have been accused of "zero progress" on reducing plastic waste, after being named the world's top plastic polluters for the third year in a row. Coca-Cola was ranked the world's No 1 plastic polluter by Break Free From Plastic in its annual audit, after its beverage bottles were the most frequently found discarded on beaches, rivers, parks and other litter sites in 51 of 55 nations surveyed. Last year it was the most frequently littered bottle in 37 countries, out of 51 surveyed. Coca-Cola was ranked the world's No 1 plastic polluter by Break Free From Plastic in its annual audit, after its beverage bottles were the most frequently found discarded on beaches, rivers, parks and other litter sites in 51 of 55 nations surveyed. Last year it was the most frequently littered bottle in 37 countries, out of 51 surveyed. The annual audit, undertaken by 15,000 volunteers around the world, identifies the largest number of plastic products from global brands found in the highest number of countries. This year they collected 346,494 pieces of plastic waste, 63% of which was marked clearly with a consumer brand. "The world's top polluting corporations claim to be working hard to solve plastic pollution, but instead they are continuing to pump out harmful single-use plastic packaging," said Emma Priestland, Break Free From Plastic's global campaign coordinator. Priestland said the only way to halt the growing global tide of plastic litter was to stop production, phase out single use and implement reuse systems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FriendlySolipsist writes: Independent journalist Rebekah Jones, a scientist fired by the Florida state government because, she said, of her refusal to manipulate official COVID-19 data releases to coincide with political considerations and who now operates website floridacovidaction.com, had her home raided by the FL state police who seized computers and cellphones, the Miami Herald reported. The FDLE affidavit in support of the raid was published by the Miami Herald and asserts that an unauthorized internal message was sent to the "ReadyOps" system within the state Department of Health from an IPv6 address associated with the Comcast account at Jones residence. "The Florida Department of Law Enforcement on Monday raided the home of a former Department of Health data analyst who has been running an alternative web site to the state's COVID dashboard, alleging that she may have broken into a state email system and sent an unauthorized message to employees," reports the Miami Herald. "But Rebekah Jones, who was was fired from her job in May as the geographic information system manager for DOH's Division of Disease Control and Health Protection and who has since filed a whistleblower complaint against the state, denied having any role in the alleged intrusion into the state web site and instead said she believes Monday's action was intended to silence her." Slashdot reader mtrachtenberg shares a thread on Twitter of Jones describing what happened.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The former head of Israel's space program, Haim Eshed, says space aliens have reached an agreement with the U.S. government to stay mum on the experiments they conduct on Earth -- as well as their secret base on Mars -- until mankind is ready to accept them. The New York Post reports: "The aliens have asked not to announce that they are here [because] humanity is not ready yet," Eshed told Israeli paper Yedioth Aharonoth, according to the Jewish Press. The Jewish Press -- speculating that Eshed, 87, may have gone to insanity and beyond -- goes on to unspool his tangled web, which claims the involvement of President Trump and interplanetary diplomacy. "Trump was on the verge of revealing [aliens existence], but the aliens in the Galactic Federation are saying, "Wait, let people calm down first,'" Eshed, who helmed Israel's space security program from 1981 to 2010, reportedly said. "They don't want to start mass hysteria. They want to first make us sane and understanding." Until that day, aliens have secured an agreement to keep their moves under wraps, said Eshed, noting that the extraterrestrials come in peace. "There's an agreement between the U.S. government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here. They, too, are researching and trying to understand the whole fabric of the universe, and they want us as helpers." One of the hubs of the cooperation is a base on Mars -- where, by the way, Eshed claims American astronauts have already set foot. "There's an underground base in the depths of Mars, where their representatives are, and also our American astronauts," Eshed reportedly said. Eshed added: "If I had come up with what I'm saying today five years ago, I would have been hospitalized. Wherever I've gone with this in academia, they've said, 'The man has lost his mind,'" he reportedly said. "Today they're already talking differently. I have nothing to lose. I've received my degrees and awards, I am respected in universities abroad, where the trend is also changing."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Electric-car companies are suddenly worth half of the total market capitalization of the world's 10 most valuable automakers. That's because money managers sized up the convergence of government policies and people's preferences combating climate change and made alternative energy their biggest bet. Much was achieved by Tesla Inc., the Palo Alto maker of the S, X, Y and 3 model vehicles, giving it a market capitalization of $539 billion, or more than Japan's Toyota Motor Corp., Germany's Volkswagen AG and Detroit's General Motors Co. combined. Tesla was barely 26% of Toyota's value at this point last year. None of the industry's Top 10 exclusively manufactured EVs in 2015; this year the list included Shanghai-based Nio Inc. and Guangzhou-based XPeng Inc., EV upstarts in the world's largest market. Tesla and its Chinese competitors accounted for only 8% of the value of the Top 10 in 2019 -- still a huge leap from zero percent in 2016. The three EV makers reported annual sales of $30.5 billion, or about 3% of total sales for the 10 largest companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Commentators and short sellers, who profit when a security's price declines, predict that the companies' shares will plummet before long because the companies' values are far out of proportion to their more modest profits and revenues. Since its initial public offering in June 2010, Tesla revenue increased 241 times as revenue for the rest of the industry rose 19%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Tesla shares appreciated 170 times when the comparable figure was three times for global peers. None of which persuades numerous Tesla detractors, who insist the company will fail as soon as the legacy automakers determine that EVs are profitable. That moment arrives this month when Tesla joins the S&P 500 as its record-breaking largest new member. In China, where EV incentives are part of the government's goal to become carbon neutral by 2060, Nio's annual revenues have tripled since its September 2018 IPO. Nio shares surged 665% during the same period as global peers were gaining 47%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. XPeng's 2020 third-quarter revenue is 4.4 times the amount during the same period a year ago. After the company's August IPO, the shares rose 269% when global peers gained 29%. These unprecedented valuations come at a point when the fossil fuel industry is reporting record losses, including Exxon Mobil Corp.'s $20 billion write-down this month. The market for zero-emission electric vehicles, meanwhile, is poised to become explosive, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2019, 2.1 million cars, or 2.5% of the cars sold worldwide were electric. By 2030, 26 million EVs will be sold, or 28% of total sales worldwide, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. By 2040, 54 million EVs will be sold, or 58% of the global market, the analysts predict.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists developed the world's first mobile genome sequence analyzer, a new iPhone app called iGenomics. By pairing an iPhone with a handheld DNA sequencer, users can create a mobile genetics laboratory, reminiscent of the "tricorder" featured in Star Trek. Phys.Org reports: The iGenomics app runs entirely on the iOS device, reducing the need for laptops or large equipment in the field, which is useful for pandemic and ecology workers. Aspyn Palatnick programmed iGenomics in CSHL Adjunct Associate Professor Michael Schatz's laboratory, over a period of eight years, starting when he was a 14-year-old high school intern. The iPhone app was developed to complement the tiny DNA sequencing devices being made by Oxford Nanopore. Users can AirDrop sequencing data to each other, enabling DNA analysis in the most remote locations -- even those without internet access. iGenomics may soon even find its way into the hands of astronauts, Schatz describes: "There's a lot of interest to do DNA sequencing in space. I'm trying to see if there's a way we can get iGenomics up there. There's a lot of people that are interested to do that. It's a real testament about how it would be impossible to do, you know, any sort of analysis on regular computers. It's just impossible to bring them with you." In the journal Gigascience, Palatnick and Schatz report the iGenomics algorithm can quickly map DNA sequences of viral pathogens, such as a flu virus or Zika virus, and identify mutations important for diagnosis and treatment. They also provide an online tutorial for analyzing other viral genomes, such as from a SARS-CoV-2 patient.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LG has partnered with Swedish manufacturer Assa Abloy Entrance Systems to develop automatic sliding doors with built-in transparent OLED displays, the company announced today. The doors will be aimed at businesses, and LG says they'll be able to greet customers, communicate with employees, or show ads. The Verge reports: LG has been showing off its transparent displays for a little while now, and it unveiled a range of transparent signage early last year. Now, we're seeing the panels used in the real world. In August, LG announced that its displays were being used in the windows of subway carriages in Beijing and Shenzhen in China, and OLED-Info reports that both Panasonic and Xiaomi's transparent OLED TVs use LG panels. LG's announcement doesn't give much of an indication of when these high-end doors might become available for businesses. But considering the transparent OLED technology has started being deployed, they can't be too far away from decorating the world's most decadent shopping centers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Last week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof detailed the easily-searchable horrors uploaded in plain view onto Pornhub, arguing that the site goes unpunished for profiting from child sex abuse material (CSAM), sexual assault, and nonconsensual pornography (sometimes called "revenge porn.") Now, Visa and Mastercard claim that they're reassessing their relationship with the site's parent company, Canadian porn megacorp MindGeek. In emailed statements to Gizmodo, Visa said that it is "vigilant" in rooting out illegal activity in its network, and a site will no longer be able to accept Visa payment if it "is identified as not complying with applicable laws or the financial institutions' acceptable use policies and underwriting standards." Similarly, Mastercard said that it works "closely with law enforcement and organizations like the National and International Center for Missing and Exploited Children to monitor, detect and prevent illegal transactions." "We are investigating the allegations raised in the New York Times and are working with MindGeek's bank to understand this situation," Mastercard added, "in addition to the other steps they have already taken. If the claims are substantiated, we will take immediate action." But it's unclear whether the credit card companies are investigating the existence of CSAM on MindGeek's plexus of sites, or whether MindGeek has been aware of CSAM and hasn't followed legal requirements to act on it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After 70 years in publication, Ikea is ending both the print and digital versions of its annual catalog, citing the increasing shift to online browsing and shopping. "Turning the page with our beloved catalog is in fact a natural process since media consumption and customer behaviors have changed," said Konrad Grüss, an Ikea executive, in a statement. "In order to reach and interact with the many people, we will keep inspiring with our home furnishing solutions in new ways." CNN reports: The first Ikea catalog was released in Swedish in 1951. The first dual-version (online and in print) was released in 2000 and, at its peak in 2016, Ikea printed 200 million copies in 32 languages in 50 markets. âThe 2021 catalog, released in October, will be the final version. Next year, Ikea will release a smaller book that will be "filled with great home furnishing inspiration and knowledge" and celebrates the catalog's history.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A mysterious hacker sed a cyber-attack to force-open the doors of 2,732 package delivery lockers across Moscow. ZDNet reports: The attack, which took place on Friday afternoon, December 4, targeted the network of PickPoint, a local delivery service that maintains a network of more than 8,000 package lockers across Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Russians can order products online and choose to have any of their orders delivered to a PickPoint locker instead of their home address. Once the package arrives, users receive an email or mobile notification, and they can show up and pick up their orders using the PickPoint app. However, the same system that allows users to open lockers and retrieve their packages was attacked on Friday. Using a yet-to-be-identified exploit, a mysterious hacker forced open the doors for a third of PickPoint's lockers, leaving thousands of packages exposed to theft across Moscow. The reason for the attack has yet to be discovered, but in press releases over the weekend, PickPoint said it notified authorities. The Russian company said it is currently working to restore its network, which has been damaged during the attack. It also remains unclear if packages were stolen from lockers. As the company highlighted in a press release on Saturday, this appears to be "the world's first targeted cyberattack against a post-gateway network."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California is partnering with Apple and Google on an app to let people use their phones to track potential exposure to COVID-19. CNET reports: The digital system uses Bluetooth signals from people's phones to alert them if they've been in contact with someone who's tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The project takes advantage of two of the world's most popular operating systems -- Apple's iOS and Google's Android -- to potentially reach billions of people. To use the features, people can download the app, called CA Notify, starting Thursday. On iPhones, people can turn on the alerts in their phone settings. The companies said they intend to shut down the tools after they are no longer needed to fight the pandemic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SpaceX has been awarded $885.51 million by the Federal Communications Commission to provide Starlink broadband to 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. The satellite provider was one of the biggest winners in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, the results of which were released today. Funding is distributed over 10 years, so SpaceX's haul will amount to a little over $88.5 million per year. Charter Communications, the second-largest US cable company after Comcast, did even better. Charter is set to receive $1.22 billion over 10 years to bring service to 1.06 million homes and businesses in 24 states. FCC funding can be used in different ways depending on the type of broadband service. Cable companies like Charter and other wireline providers generally use the money to expand their networks into new areas that don't already have broadband. But with Starlink, SpaceX could theoretically provide service to all of rural America once it has launched enough satellites, even without FCC funding. One possibility is that SpaceX could use the FCC money to lower prices in the 642,925 funded locations, but the FCC announcement didn't say whether that's what SpaceX will do. Starlink is in beta and costs $99 per month, plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router. The 35 states where SpaceX won FCC funding are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uber's self-driving unit, Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), is being acquired by its start-up competitor Aurora Innovation, the companies announced Monday. From a report: The deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2021, values ATG at approximately $4 billion. The unit was valued at $7.25 billion in Apr. 2019 when Softbank, Denso and Toyota took a stake. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will join the company's board, and the ride-sharing giant will invest $400 million into the company. Overall, Uber and ATG investors and employees are expected to own a 40% stake in Aurora, according to a regulatory filing accompanying the deal; Uber alone will hold a 26% stake. The start-up is being valued at $10 billion in the transaction, according to a person familiar with the terms of the deal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LG said on Monday it had reorganised its mobile phone division to increase outsourcing of its low to mid-end smartphones, which analysts said represented an attempt to cut costs and compete with Chinese rivals. From a report: LG's mobile communications business, which has reported an operating loss for 22 consecutive quarters, has created a new management title for original design manufacture (ODM), a spokeswoman for the South Korean company said. This refers to the outsourcing of design and manufacture of smartphones, with LG putting its label on the product. It has also abolished some research and production positions and reshuffled others, the spokeswoman said, as part of an effort to focus its in-house R&D and production on premium smartphones, with low and mid-end ones to be produced by ODM.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carbon capture can make money for oil giants, and scientists say we need it. Is the industry willing to invest enough? From a report: Elk and pronghorn antelope migrate each fall through southern Wyoming, where the sparsely vegetated landscape slowly gives way to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Interrupting this serene vista is a dense web of steel pipes, tanks, and pumps owned by Exxon. The industrial complex provides a clue about what lies beneath: an ancient sea of coral and marine life, petrified by time and pressure into a thick layer of rock. Known as the Madison formation, this geologic structure is miles wide and reaches more than 10 Empire State Buildings below the ground. It contains natural gas, helium, and carbon dioxide. Two of these gases are consistently valuable to Exxon's business. The third is not -- and that's a problem for everyone on the planet. For three decades, the American oil titan has been pumping up these gases, separating them, selling some, and dumping the remainder into the atmosphere. Exxon produces more CO2 than it can sell or use, so the company lets a lot float away -- as much as 300,000 cars' worth of emissions a year. Exxon was set to embark on a project to do the reverse: pump the unwanted gas back down where it came from. The plan was technically and strategically straightforward. By capturing CO2, transporting it to an injection site, and burying it, Exxon would have locked away enough of the planet-warming gas to almost eliminate the climate harm caused by the facility. The captured carbon may not have made much money for Exxon on its own, but a recent change to the U.S. tax code would help overcome that hurdle with lucrative credits for safe storage. The company put the total cost of construction at about $260 million, 1% of its capital budget for 2020. LaBarge, as the gas operation is known, would have become one of the world's foremost examples of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technology most climate-modeling experts view as essential to slowing down global warming and, eventually, reversing it. The project would also help Exxon clean up its image as one of the foremost corporate climate polluters. Construction was set to begin over the summer. But in April, Exxon told Wyoming officials that the project would be delayed indefinitely, because of fallout from Covid-19. The company's share price at one point during the pandemic dropped to an 18-year low, as oil prices cratered, throwing many plans across the industry for this year and beyond into turmoil.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When the heads of state of 14 nations sat down together in late 2018 to discuss the grim condition of the world's oceans, there was no certainty that anything consequential would result. The leaders planned 14 gatherings, but met only twice before the pandemic upended their talks. So when the group announced this week the world's most far-reaching pact to protect and sustain ocean health, it signalled rather more than a noteworthy achievement in a complicated time. From a report: The agreement, negotiated via the nuance-free tool of video conferencing, also offered hope of a renewed era of global accord on climate, where issues grounded in science might finally trump political posturing. Overall, the 14 leaders agreed to sustainably manage 100 percent of the oceans under their national jurisdictions by 2025 -- an area of ocean roughly the size of Africa. Additionally, they vowed to set aside 30 percent of the seas as marine protected areas by 2030, in keeping with the United Nations' campaign known as "30 by 30." Both of those large commitments, the leaders say, will help end overfishing and illegal fishing, rebuild declining fish stocks, halt the flow of plastic waste into the seas, and clean up "dead zones" created by runoff from farm waste. "What I find really interesting is that 14 nations spent the last two years talking to each other in an experiment you'd like to see more of in the future," says Nancy Knowlton, a marine scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, who was not involved in the project. "They are working together as a team. Starting with countries on the same page provides a mechanism for actually achieving success." The group of 14 looks nothing like the usual assemblage of international leaders recruited for global initiatives. France, with its vast array of overseas territories that gives it one of the planet's largest ocean footprints, was not invited. Nor were the powerhouse players of Russia, China, or the United States.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ever since astronomers reached a consensus in the 1980s that most of the mass in the universe is invisible -- that "dark matter" must glue galaxies together and gravitationally sculpt the cosmos as a whole -- experimentalists have hunted for the nonluminous particles. From a report: They first set out in pursuit of a heavy, sluggish form of dark matter called a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP -- the early favorite candidate for the cosmos's missing matter because it could solve another, unrelated puzzle in particle physics. Over the decades, teams of physicists set up ever larger targets, in the form of huge crystals and multi-ton vats of exotic liquids, hoping to catch the rare jiggle of an atom when a WIMP banged into it. But these detectors have stayed quiet, and physicists are increasingly contemplating a broader spectrum of possibilities. On the heavy end, they say the universe's invisible matter could clump into black holes as heavy as stars. At the other extreme, dark matter could spread out in a fine mist of particles thousands of trillions of trillions of times lighter than electrons. With new hypotheses come new detection methods. Kathryn Zurek, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, said that if current WIMP experiments don't see anything, "then I think there's going to be a substantial part of the field that's going to shift into these new kinds of experiments." Already, the work has begun.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the end of a record-setting year of news consumption, Amazon Fire TV said local TV stations in 12 U.S. cities will be added to Amazon's news app, with another 90 on deck for 2021. From a report: The initial dozen stations are in New York, LA, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle. The roster includes CBSN Chicago, ABC7/WABC-TV New York, KIRO7 Seattle, and News 12 New York. In a year marked by Covid-19, a presidential election and racial unrest, overall news consumption has surged 48%, according to Nielsen. Amazon's news app offers free live and on-demand news from ABC News Live, CBS News, Reuters, Cheddar and other providers. The ad-supported app is built into Fire TV streaming media players and smart TVs in the U.S. Local broadcast stations have faced major challenges during the streaming boom, as the pay-TV bundle shrinks and viewership and ad revenues continue to decline. Due to a number of technological and industry-relations issues, most large station groups have not put station signals online in a coordinated fashion, though they stream select content on social media or their own websites.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Internet firms such as Google, Amazon.com and travel websites should explain how they rank search results on their platforms, according to European Union guidelines published Monday that could help businesses to increase their online visibility. From a report: The guidelines "set the standard for algorithmic ranking transparency," Margrethe Vestager, the EU's digital chief, said in a statement on the European Commission website. Online platforms should identify what factors their algorithms use when they decide to prioritize some results and declare when a prominent listing is paid for, according to the guidelines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How tall is Mount Everest? Until now, it depended on whom you asked. China said it was 29,017 feet. Nepal said it was a little taller, at 29,028 feet. The countries have closed that 11-foot gap and reached an agreement. From a report: The world's tallest peak this week will get a new, unified official height from the two nations it straddles. After yearslong surveys, China and Nepal will announce the peak's stature Tuesday, Susheel Dangol, the man in charge of Nepal's Everest-measurement project, said Sunday. "The challenge for us was to prove we could do it," he said. Measuring Everest has always been a challenge, taxing the latest surveying technology since the 1800s. And it created a disagreement between the mountain's two homelands. The difference was over rock versus snow. China's official height for Chomolungma -- its Tibetan name for Everest -- was 29,017 feet, from a 2005 survey. China used "rock height," estimating where the peak lay under the snow. Nepal has used a "snow height" of 29,028 feet for the peak it calls Sagarmatha, from a 1954 survey India did. That's where people stand, atop the snow, and the measure is standard practice in most countries. One of the first official measurements of Everest unveiled globally was in 1855 (29,002 feet). Until a 1975 official measurement by China (29,029 feet), the surveys were by foreigners.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. air pollution monitoring network has fallen into disrepair after years of budget cuts and neglect, leaving tens of millions of Americans vulnerable to undetected bad air quality from events like wildfires to industrial pollution, according to a report by the investigative arm of Congress. Reuters: The conclusions from a 2-1/2-year audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirm key findings in a Reuters special report published last week that detailed broad failures in the air-pollution monitoring system, whose data guides U.S. regulatory policy and informs the public about health risks. Federal funding for the air monitoring network, which is overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and operated and maintained by state and local environmental agencies, has declined by about 20% since 2004, after adjusting for inflation, leaving it in poor condition, according to the GAO report viewed by Reuters. The GAO report said some agencies have reported termite damage and leaky roofs at shelters housing sensitive but aging pollution monitoring equipment, and one state agency resorted to shopping on eBay to find used monitor parts because the manufacturer had stopped making them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Copyright lawyer Richard Liebowitz has been repeatedly sanctioned by federal courts. The controversial attorney has a long track record of disregarding court orders. To protect the public from future missteps, the grievance committee of the Southern District of New York has decided to suspend Liebowitz until further order.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Patterns of missing credit card and loan payments could be an early indicator of dementia years before diagnosis, a new study says. From a report: The study, published Monday in the medical journal JAMA, looked at Medicare patients living alone across the United States and analyzed their credit data and payments over time. Researchers found that patients with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia were more likely to miss payments up to six years before getting diagnosed, the study said. And, those poor financial actions led them to subprime credit scores two and a half years before diagnosis, as opposed to the patients without dementia. "I think we were a little surprised that it was so common that we could really see it in the data," lead author Lauren Hersch Nicholas told CNN. "Doctors colloquially say that you should look for dementia in the checkbook, but I don't think we had any sense of for how many years in advance these effects could be happening." Nicholas is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors led the study. Alzheimer's dementia affects about 5.8 million Americans who are 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer's Association. The number of Americans with the disease is projected to hit 13.8 million by 2050, the non-profit said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is planning a series of new Mac processors for introduction as early as 2021 that are aimed at outperforming Intel's fastest. From a report: Chip engineers at the Cupertino, California-based technology giant are working on several successors to the M1 custom chip, Apple's first Mac main processor that debuted in November. If they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren't yet public. Apple's M1 chip was unveiled in a new entry-level MacBook Pro laptop, a refreshed Mac mini desktop and across the MacBook Air range. The company's next series of chips, planned for release as early as the spring and later in the fall, are destined to be placed across upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops, and later a new Mac Pro workstation, the people said. [...] The current M1 chip inherits a mobile-centric design built around four high-performance processing cores to accelerate tasks like video editing and four power-saving cores that can handle less intensive jobs like web browsing. For its next generation chip targeting MacBook Pro and iMac models, Apple is working on designs with as many as 16 power cores and four efficiency cores, the people said. While that component is in development, Apple could choose to first release variations with only eight or 12 of the high-performance cores enabled depending on production, they said. Chipmakers are often forced to offer some models with lower specifications than they originally intended because of problems that emerge during fabrication. For higher-end desktop computers, planned for later in 2021 and a new half-sized Mac Pro planned to launch by 2022, Apple is testing a chip design with as many as 32 high-performance cores.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most highly anticipated video games of the past decade, has already been delayed three times. Employees at CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind the game, have reportedly been required to work long hours, including six-day weeks, for more than a year. The practice is called "crunch" in the video game industry, and it is sadly all too common. From a report: It's also something that the leadership at CD Projekt Red said wasn't going to happen to the people making Cyberpunk 2077. Video game developers rarely speak openly with the press about their labor practices, but that's just what CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski did in May 2019. In a conversation with Kotaku, he said that his company thought of itself as more humane than its competitors. While long hours would be permitted for those interested in working them, crunch would not be made "mandatory." He called it a "non-obligatory crunch policy" and said it was something to be proud of. [...] Shortly thereafter, signs began to emerge that the Cyberpunk 2077 project was in trouble. In January 2020, CD Projekt announced the game's first delay. The release date was moved from April to September. The multiplayer component was also pushed into at least 2022. "We need more time to finish playtesting, fixing and polishing," said IwiÅski and head of studio Adam Badowski. That same day, during a public call with investors, CD Projekt revealed that crunch would ultimately be needed to get the game done on time. It would also be mandatory for at least some employees. "Is the development team required to put in crunch hours?" asked an investor, to which CD Projekt CEO Adam Kicinski answered, "To some degree, yes, to be honest." [...] In September, Bloomberg reiterated what CD Projekt's leaders said to investors months before. A leaked email mandated six-day work weeks. Crunch had become a requirement, and according to anonymous employees, some developers had been working nights and weekends "for more than a year." In other words, delays do not mean relief for workers. Oftentimes, it simply means working at the same exhausting pace for additional weeks or months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"NASA's twin Voyager probes keep making discoveries in interstellar space," reports Space.comThe Voyager mission has detected a new type of "electron burst," which will provide insights into the mechanisms of flaring stars, a new study reports. The bursts occur when cosmic ray electrons — fast-moving particles from far beyond the solar system — are pushed by shock waves generated by solar eruptions. The electrons then accelerate further along cosmic magnetic field lines to incredible speed, study team members said. "The idea that shock waves accelerate particles is not new," corresponding author Don Gurnett, professor emeritus in physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa, said in a statement. "[But] we detected it in a new realm: the interstellar medium, which is much different than in the solar wind, where similar processes have been observed...." Eventually, the magnetic field lines propel the cosmic rays to almost the speed of light — nearly 670 times faster than the solar shock waves that first pushed them. (The shock waves move at roughly 1 million mph, or 1.6 million kph, study team members said.) The article marvels at the fact that the spacecraft are still sending back data regularly from 14 billion miles away, beyond the edge of our solar system, more than 43 years after they left earth. They even detected the original solar shock wave which caused the electron burst "up to a year after the event occurred. "The wait time happened because the spacecraft are so far from the sun."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writing for TechRepublic, open source advocate Jack Wallen predicts 2021 will be a year where open source technology dominates the world of big data even more than 2021 (with a big role predicted for SUSE). But he also sees businesses cutting costs by switching to open source solutions — including a big move to Linux on enterprise desktops, thanks to enterprise-ready options now available from System76, Lenovo, and Dell:This will have the added benefit of even more companies jumping into the mix and offering more and more desktops and laptops, all powered by Linux and open source technology. One added bonus for this movement is that System76 will finally gain the recognition they've deserved for so many years. Linux on the desktop would not be where it is today, had it not been for their stalwart support for open source technology. Year after year, System76 has proved that high-quality, business-class systems, powered by Linux, can be produced at a level befitting the enterprise. That success within the realm of business will start trickling down to consumers. As more and more people start using Linux at their place of business, they'll begin seeing the benefits of the open source operating system and desire to adopt it for their home computers. I suspect that by the end of 2021, we'll see Linux desktop market share to finally break the 10% bubble. It may not sound like much, but given how Linux has hovered around 2% and maxed out at 5%, that 10% figure is like a dream come true. That's only the tip of the iceberg. Although Linux will max out at around 10% by the end of the year, it will lead to continued growth over the coming years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ZDNet reports:Under the guise of a "cybersecurity exercise," the Kazakhstan government is forcing citizens in its capital of Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana) to install a digital certificate on their devices if they want to access foreign internet services. Once installed, the certificate would allow the government to intercept all HTTPS traffic made from users' devices via a technique called MitM (Man-in-the-Middle). Starting today, December 6, 2020, Kazakh internet service providers (ISPs) such as Beeline, Tele2, and Kcell are redirecting Nur-Sultan-based users to web pages showing instructions on how to install the government's certificate. Earlier this morning, Nur-Sultan residents also received SMS messages informing them of the new rules. Kazakhstan users have told ZDNet today that they are not able to access sites like Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix without installing the government's root certificate. This is the Kazakh government's third attempt at forcing citizens to install root certificates on their devices after a first attempt in December 2015 and a second attempt in July 2019. Both previous attempts failed after browser makers blacklisted the government's certificates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge writes:Maybe you're feeling nostalgic for a classic James Bond film following Sean Connery's death in late October. Or perhaps you're simply feeling a gap given that the next film, No Time to Die, got pushed back to April 2021 or beyond. Either way, you can now binge a sizable selection of the James Bond collection completely for free (with ads) from YouTube, Peacock (with its free subscription), and PlutoTV... You can also find most of the films on Hulu and Amazon Prime this month, though you'd have to pay for those subscriptions, and Netflix has Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and three Pierce Brosnan flicks including GoldenEye — newly relevant now that the famed Arecibo Observatory, which gets destroyed in the film, has also collapsed in real life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"People taking a stroll on Sunday morning stumbled upon another mysterious monolith," reports Insider.com. "This one was found in a northern province of the Netherlands."The monolith was covered in ice and surrounded by a small pool of water, according to local reports. The hikers told the Dutch paper Algemeen Dagblad that they're not sure how the monolith got there. They said they found no footprints around it that would indicate someone placed it there intentionally. And that monolith that disappeared in Atascadero, California has not-so-mysteriously re-appeared, as a group of three local artists takes credit for both creating the original and for successfully retrieving it to restore it to its former glory. "After learning of the second monolith, Travis Kenney had a thought," writes the relationship site Your Tango. "There were three monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why not build the third themselves and make the triad complete...?" "It was meant to be something fun, a change of pace from the kind of conversations 2020 has been plagued with — so much negativity and separation among the people in our country."All the thanks these men really needed was delivered in the positive energy that quickly took hold of their home town. The presence of this now internationally followed mysterious object brought with it an uplifting local pride, as well as a sense of childlike wonder... The monolith's creators quietly made the hike back up to observe people's reactions throughout the day. When they arrived at the top each time, they found themselves soaking in the glow of the many smiles they encountered on faces of visitors. some of whom drove for hours to see the shining obelisk for themselves... While you may think of these monoliths as another square on your 2020 bingo card, it's worth noting that the purpose of the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey was to further the advancement of intelligent life. Cynics can say that sounds cheesy, but for the sake of full disclosure, I know McKenzie personally and can affirm without doubt or irony that they wanted nothing more than to offer their fellow humans some joyful light in these dark times. "There was no esoteric agenda," said McKenzie. "Our topline," added Jared Riddle, "Let's get outside and laugh." 70 miles away yet-another monolith "was discovered by campers on Saturday in San Luis Obispo County in Los Padres National Forest," reports a California newspaper."We were super happy that someone/group went to all that work," Matt Carver wrote in a Facebook message to The Tribune. "It really did make our day to find it! I think we had huge smiles on our faces for the rest of the ride home." The second monolith resembles the monolith in Atascadero, but the structure's top features "CAUTION" written in red and a picture of a UFO beaming in a human. But wait! Insider.com reports that another mysterious monolith has appeared in Pittsburgh — "intentionally placed outside a candy shop by an owner who was trying to attract attention to his small business."Christopher Beers, owner of Grandpa Joe's Candy Shop, asked a friend to make the 10-foot-tall structure and placed it outside his store as a marketing ploy. Grandpa Joe's Candy Shop shared the news using a 30-minute video on Facebook. In a Facebook post on Friday, the shop said: "Come see the Monolith before it mysteriously disappears!" Within one day someone did in fact steal the monolith, reports the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. But Grandpa Joe's owner Beers whipped up another one to replace it. "This one is much heavier and bolted into the ground. That's not a challenge. That's just a statement."Beers said he didn't report the theft to police because they have more important things to deal with... "That's not the story," Beers said of the theft. "The story is I built something fun and made people laugh and we put Pittsburgh on the map. I'm not worried about whoever took it." Beers said the new monolith will stay up for a couple a days before "it'll mysteriously disappear just like all the others." Business Insider reports that monolith jokes have now also appeared in tweets from a wide variety of brands, including Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Ocean Spray, McDonald's, Steak-umm, and MoonPie. And meanwhile, the headline at one Denver news site reports that "Monolith mania comes to Colorado as local businesses report structures 'appearing' outside shops," citing the arrival of a monolith outside McDevitt Taco Supply and on the patio of Morrison Holiday Bar.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"People taking a stroll on Sunday morning stumbled upon another mysterious monolith," reports Insider.com. "This one was found in a northern province of the Netherlands."The monolith was covered in ice and surrounded by a small pool of water, according to local reports. The hikers told the Dutch paper Algemeen Dagblad that they're not sure how the monolith got there. They said they found no footprints around it that would indicate someone placed it there intentionally. And that monolith that disappeared in Atascadero, California has not-so-mysteriously re-appeared, as a group of three local artists takes credit for both creating the original and for successfully retrieving it to restore it to its former glory. "After learning of the second monolith, Travis Kenney had a thought," writes the relationship site Your Tango. "There were three monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Why not build the third themselves and make the triad complete...?" "It was meant to be something fun, a change of pace from the kind of conversations 2020 has been plagued with — so much negativity and separation among the people in our country."All the thanks these men really needed was delivered in the positive energy that quickly took hold of their home town. The presence of this now internationally followed mysterious object brought with it an uplifting local pride, as well as a sense of childlike wonder... The monolith's creators quietly made the hike back up to observe people's reactions throughout the day. When they arrived at the top each time, they found themselves soaking in the glow of the many smiles they encountered on faces of visitors. some of whom drove for hours to see the shining obelisk for themselves... While you may think of these monoliths as another square on your 2020 bingo card, it's worth noting that the purpose of the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey was to further the advancement of intelligent life. Cynics can say that sounds cheesy, but for the sake of full disclosure, I know McKenzie personally and can affirm without doubt or irony that they wanted nothing more than to offer their fellow humans some joyful light in these dark times. "There was no esoteric agenda," said McKenzie. "Our topline," added Jared Riddle, "Let's get outside and laugh." 70 miles away yet-another monolith "was discovered by campers on Saturday in San Luis Obispo County in Los Padres National Forest," reports a California newspaper."We were super happy that someone/group went to all that work," Matt Carver wrote in a Facebook message to The Tribune. "It really did make our day to find it! I think we had huge smiles on our faces for the rest of the ride home." The second monolith resembles the monolith in Atascadero, but the structure's top features "CAUTION" written in red and a picture of a UFO beaming in a human. But wait! Insider.com reports that another mysterious monolith has appeared in Pittsburgh — "intentionally placed outside a candy shop by an owner who was trying to attract attention to his small business."Christopher Beers, owner of Grandpa Joe's Candy Shop, asked a friend to make the 10-foot-tall structure and placed it outside his store as a marketing ploy. Grandpa Joe's Candy Shop shared the news using a 30-minute video on Facebook. In a Facebook post on Friday, the shop said: "Come see the Monolith before it mysteriously disappears!" Within one day someone did in fact steal the monolith, reports the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. But Grandpa Joe's owner Beers whipped up another one to replace it. "This one is much heavier and bolted into the ground. That's not a challenge. That's just a statement."Beers said he didn't report the theft to police because they have more important things to deal with... "That's not the story," Beers said of the theft. "The story is I built something fun and made people laugh and we put Pittsburgh on the map. I'm not worried about whoever took it." Beers said the new monolith will stay up for a couple a days before "it'll mysteriously disappear just like all the others." Business Insider reports that monolith jokes have now also appeared in tweets from a wide variety of brands, including Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Ocean Spray, McDonald's, Steak-umm, and MoonPie. And meanwhile, the headline at one Denver news site reports that "Monolith mania comes to Colorado as local businesses report structures 'appearing' outside shops," citing the arrival of a monolith outside McDevitt Taco Supply and on the patio of Morrison Holiday Bar.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's a zany twist at the end, because "This year more than ever, we felt that it was important to give people a little lift, to remind them that while we are facing a lot of challenges, there are many ways we can connect, be productive and enjoy the time we have at home," Microsoft's VP of brand, advertising, and research told Adweek. But long-time Slashdot reader theodp shares a different opinion:While Adweek finds it "heartwarming", Windows Central's Sean Endicott writes that Microsoft's "Find Your Joy" holiday ad "just left me feeling sad." After lock-downed family members immersed in Microsoft Halo, Teams, Minecraft, and Flight Simulator ignore the family dog, the pooch drifts off to sleep and dreams about being able to use the Microsoft products with fellow canines, including fetching a live grenade in Halo. The ad concludes with the line "This holiday, find your joy." Endicott does not approve: "I expected the ad to end with one of the people playing with the dog or at least cuddling it as it fell asleep. So much for that... Maybe this fictional family does that after the ad finishes, but Microsoft doesn't show it. And that's a real bummer." Adweek points out that in Minecraft's Marketplace, Microsoft is also giving away a free "dogtopia" inspired by the ad (including bacon rollercoasters), while the vintage airplane will appear in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and custom backgrounds from the ad will be made available in Microsoft Teams. Because this year more than ever it's important to give people a little lift to remind them that while we're facing a lot of challenges there's many ways we can connect, be productive and enjoy the time we have at home...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"We recommend that you discuss this situation with us in the chat," one caller warned, "or the problems with your network will never end." ZDNet reports:In attempts to put pressure on victims, some ransomware gangs are now cold-calling victims on their phones if they suspect that a hacked company might try to restore from backups and avoid paying ransom demands. "We've seen this trend since at least August-September," Evgueni Erchov, Director of IR & Cyber Threat Intelligence at Arete Incident Response, told ZDNet on Friday... "We think it's the same outsourced call center group that is working for all the [ransomware gangs] as the templates and scripts are basically the same across the variants," Bill Siegel, CEO and co-founder of cyber-security firm Coveware, told ZDNet in an email. Arete IR and Emsisoft said they've also seen scripted templates in phone calls received by their customers. The use of phone calls is another escalation in the tactics used by ransomware gangs to put pressure on victims to pay ransom demands after they've encrypted corporate networks. Previous tactics included the use of ransom demands that double in value if victims don't pay during an allotted time, threats to notify journalists about the victim company's breach, or threats to leak sensitive documents on so-called "leak sites" if companies don't pay.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Engadget reports:The Wall Street Journal has learned that Google is considering "severe penalties" against internet giant IAC (InterActive Corp) over allegedly deceptive practices in its Chrome extensions. The browser extras reportedly promise features that never materialize, point users toward additional ads, or even trick users into installing them. A Google audit reportedly found that some of IAC's voting ads not only didn't take users to voter info, but installed the Ask.com toolbar and changed users' default home pages. IAC kept running those ads even after Google told the company to stop. The full range of potential punishments isn't clear, but Google is considering banning them, according to WSJ sources and leaked documentsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

All the videos have now appeared online for the talks at this year's virtual EmacsConf 2020, "the conference about the joy of Emacs, Emacs Lisp, and memorizing key sequences." And among them are an appearance by 67-year-old Richard Stallman, reminding the audience he'd created the first Emacs editor in 1976 "with some help from Guy Steele," then created GNU Emacs in 1984. Stallman was there to tell the history of the GNU Emacs Lisp Package Archive (and the licensing issues involved) — and how it's ultimately led to the creation of the NonGNU ELPA."The fundamental plan of NonGNU ELPA is that we won't ask for copyright assignments for those packages, so we won't be able to put them into core Emacs, at least not easily — but we will have some control over how we distribute them. We can put any package into NonGNU ELPA as long as its free software. "If we like it, we can set up that way for users to get it. We can put the package in exactly as it is, if there's no problem at all with it. We can make an arrangement with the package's developers to work on it with us and maintain it directly for distribution by NonGNU ELPA. But if they are not interested, we can put it in ourselves, and if we need to make any changes we can do so. So NonGNU ELPA is not meant to be just a way that others can distribute their packages. Its meant at least in a minimal, technical sense to work with GNU Emacs, and we will make changes if necessary so that it works smoothly with GNU Emacs... "The idea is to have a single Git repository where you can download various packages, but they won't be maintained there. Each of those packages will be copied automatically from some other place, probably some other people have the right access to work on it. This way we can avoid giving a gigantic number of people access to it. "So far NonGNU ELPA is just a plan. We need people to implement the plan, so if you'd like to help, please write to me. I think this is a very important step for progress, and it's got to be implemented. Thanks, and happy hacking." Stallman provided a status update on NonGNU ELPA as part of the 46-minute Q&A that followed. "The creation of it has started. There's an archive and you can download packages. There's a repository to put it in... Still working out the procedures, how to make the arrangements with developers, etc." But he also answered questions on other topics. Some highlights: Q: Which distro of GNU/Linux do you use? guix? or something else? RMS: Trisquel. Q: If you knew that you would get hit by a bus tomorrow, say because of a fortune-teller, what would you leave behind in terms of advice for stewardship of Emacs and its future? RMS: Focus on keeping the community strong in defending freedom. If given the choice to have more people developing the software or defending the software, choose the latter. Guard your soul carefully... :P Q: Would you mind sharing your Emacs configuration files? RMS: Configuration files are personal and will not be shared.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post tells the remarkable story of how both Moderna's vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine relied on a specially designed spike protein partially created by America's Vaccine Research Center — along with messenger RNA, "a technology never before harnessed in an approved vaccine." And also decades of path-breaking research:If, as expected in the next few weeks, regulators give those vaccines the green light, the technology and the precision approach to vaccine design could turn out to be the pandemic's silver linings: scientific breakthroughs that could begin to change the trajectory of the virus this winter and also pave the way for highly effective vaccines and treatments for other diseases. Vaccine development typically takes years, even decades. The progress of the last 11 months shifts the paradigm for what's possible, creating a new model for vaccine development and a toolset for a world that will have to fight more never-before-seen viruses in years to come. But the pandemic wasn't a sudden eureka moment — it was a catalyst that helped ignite lines of research that had been moving forward for years, far outside the spotlight of a global crisis... Long before the pandemic, [Vaccine Research Center deputy director Barney] Graham worked with colleagues there and in academia to create a particularly accurate 3-D version of the spiky proteins that protrude from the surface of coronaviruses — an innovation that was rejected for publication by scientific journals five times because reviewers questioned its relevance. His laboratory partnered with one of the companies, Moderna, working to develop a fast and flexible vaccine technology, in the hope that science would be ready to respond when a pandemic appeared. "People hear about [vaccine progress] and think someone just thought about it that night. The amount of work — it's really a beautiful story of fundamental basic research,", said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [of which the center is an intramural division]... The leading coronavirus vaccine candidates in the United States began their development not in January when a mysterious pneumonia emerged in Wuhan, China, but decades ago — with starts and stops along the way.... Unlike fields that were sparked by a single powerful insight, [Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech] said that the recent success of messenger RNA vaccines is a story of countless improvements that turned an alluring biological idea into a beneficial technology. "This is a field which benefited from hundreds of inventions," said Sahin, who noted that when he started BioNTech in 2008, he cautioned investors that the technology would not yield a product for at least a decade. He kept his word: Until the coronavirus sped things along, BioNTech projected the launch of its first commercial project in 2023... On Jan. 13, Moderna RNA scientist Melissa Moore came into work and found her team already busy translating the stabilized spike protein into their platform. The company could start making the vaccine almost right away because of its experience manufacturing experimental cancer vaccines, which involves taking tumor samples and developing personalized vaccines in 45 days. The Post tries to convey how meaningful this moment is for the scientists involved. Years ago one BioNTech scientist had told their spouse, "I just want to live long enough that I can help the RNA go to the patient. I want to see...at least one person would be helped with this treatment." And when the Vaccine Research Center's deputy director finally learned how effective the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was, "I just let it all go. "I was sobbing, I guess, is the term."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Verge reports that a power component failed on the Orion deep-space crew capsule that NASA hopes to launch (unmanned) from its Space Launch System (or SLS) in late 2021, in a mission called Artemis 1. The problem? It's buried deep within one of the spacecraft's power/data units (or PDUs) within the adapter that connects the capsule to its power/propulsion trunk "service module," so there's no easy way to fix it:As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation. Lockheed has another option, but it's never been done before and may carry extra risks, Lockheed Martin engineers acknowledge in their presentation. To do it, engineers would have to tunnel through the adapter's exterior by removing some of the outer panels of the adapter to get to the PDU. The panels weren't designed to be removed this way, but this scenario may only take up to four months to complete if engineers figure out a way to do it. A third option is that Lockheed Martin and NASA could fly the Orion capsule as is. The PDU failed in such a way that it lost redundancy within the unit, so it can still function. But at a risk-averse agency like NASA, flying a vehicle without a backup plan is not exactly an attractive option... If engineers choose to remove Orion from its service module, the capsule's first flight on the SLS may be delayed past its current date of November 2021. But the SLS has experienced its own set of delays: it was supposed to fly for the first time in 2017 but hasn't done so yet. It's not clear if the SLS itself will make the November 2021 flight date either; a key test of the rocket coming up at the end of the year has been pushed back, with no new target date set. So it's possible that Lockheed Martin and NASA can fix Orion before the SLS is ready to fly. Any further delays to Artemis I add uncertainty to NASA's lunar landing timeline. NASA is hoping to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, though many experts are skeptical that such a mission can be pulled off in time. Artemis I is vulnerable to other possible delays, but the component failure adds one more level of uncertainty to when the Orion and SLS combo will get off the ground.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader sixoh1 shares "an interesting spin on biotechnology tools that we've been seeing explode lately like Crisper-CAS and mRNA." Ars Technica writes:This is in no way a route to a practical therapy, but it does provide a fantastic window into what we can accomplish by manipulating biology. The whole effort described in the new paper is focused on a simple idea: if you figure out how to wreck one of the virus's key proteins, it won't be able to infect anything. And, conveniently, our cells have a system for destroying proteins, since that's often a useful thing to do... This system relies on a small protein called "ubiquitin." When a protein is to be targeted for destruction, enzymes called ubiquitin ligases chemically link a chain of ubiquitins to it. These serve as a tag that is recognized by enzymes that digest any proteins with ubiquitin attached to them. So, the idea behind the new work is to identify a key viral protein and figure out how to attach ubiquitin to it... Unfortunately, there are no proteins that attach ubiquitin to the viral spike protein. Or, rather, there were no proteins that fit that description. But a team at Harvard has now produced one. They fed atomic-level details of the proteins' structure into software that finds the most energetically-favored interactions between proteins, simulated mutations, and eventually engineered the most promising ones to test their efficacy, ultimately cutting the presence of the viral spike protein in tested cells by 60 percent. Ars Technica ultimately calls it "A mildly insane idea for disabling the coronavirus," though "Unfortunately, it's also likely to be absolutely useless... this is likely to be a non-starter, especially given that there are promising vaccines and many other potential therapies ahead of it in the pipeline for safety testing." Yet "while the details of this work aren't really significant, the fact that we've developed all the underlying technology needed for it is worth keeping in mind."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit summarizes a new article from Science magazine:Attention racehorse jockeys: Start fast, but save enough energy for a final kick. That's the ideal strategy to win short-distance horse races, according to the first mathematical model to calculate how horses use up energy in races. The researchers say the approach could be used to identify customized pacing plans that, in theory, would optimize individual horses' chances of winning. The team took advantage of a new GPS tracking tool embedded in French racing saddles. The trackers let fans watch digital images of the horses move across a screen, and they gave the researchers real-time speed and position data. The scientists studied patterns in dozens of races at the Chantilly racetracks north of Paris and developed a model that accounted for winning strategies for three different races: a short one (1300 meters), a medium one (1900 meters), and a slightly longer one (2100 meters), all with different starting points on the same curved track. The model takes into account not just different race distances, but also the size and bend of track curves, and any slopes or friction from the track surface. The results might surprise jockeys who hold horses back early for bursts of energy in the last furlough. Instead, a strong start leads to a better finish, the team found. That doesn't mean those jockeys are wrong, though. Too strong of a start can be devastating as well, leaving the horse 'exhausted by the end,' one of the researchers says. Even so, "We can't truly model performance," argues a veterinarian at the University of Sydney with over 30 years of experience working at horse racetracks. But he also asks Science, "Do we really want to? "For people who love horse racing, the uncertainty provides the excitement, and the actual running of the horses provides the spectacle and the beauty."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday on Instagram Jeff Bezos shared footage from NASA's test of Blue Origin's BE-7 engine, which he described approvingly as "a high-performance, additively manufactured liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen lunar landing engine with 10,000 lbf [pound-force] of thrust — deep throttling down to 2,000 lbf for a precise landing on the Moon." The test brings the program's cumulative test time up to 1,245 seconds, reports Reuters:Blue Origin leads a "national team" as the prime contractor that it assembled in 2019 to help build its Blue Moon lander. That team includes Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and Draper. Blue Origin has vied for lucrative government contracts in recent years and is competing with rival billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX and Dynetics, owned by Leidos Holdings Inc, to win a contract to build NASA's next human lunar landing system to ferry humans to the moon in the next decade. In April, NASA awarded a lunar lander development contract to Blue Origin's team worth $579 million, as well as two other companies: SpaceX which received $135 million to help develop its Starship system and Leidos-owned Dynetics which won $253 million. NASA is poised to pick two of the three companies "in early March" 2021 to continue building their lander prototypes for crewed missions to the moon beginning in 2024, an agency spokeswoman has said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The building did not stand out. Unremarkable industrial building, which was built in hundreds of Soviet cities," explains a web site called Russian Urban Exploration. Hackaday describes what happened next:It's probably a dream most of us share, to stumble upon a dusty hall full of fascinating abandoned tech frozen in time as though its operators walked away one day and simply never returned. It's something documented by some Russian urban explorers who found an unremarkable office building with one of its floors frozen sometime around the transition from Soviet Union to Russian Federation. In it they found their abandoned tech, in the form of a cross-section of Soviet-era computers from the 1970s onwards... As you might expect, in a manner it mirrors the development of civilian computing on the capitalist side of the Iron Curtain over a similar period, starting with minicomputers the size of several large refrigerators and ending with desktop microcomputers. The minis seem to all be Soviet clones of contemporary DEC machines. with some parts of them even looking vaguely familiar. The oldest is a Saratov-2, a PDP/8 clone which we're told is rare enough for no examples to have been believed to have survived until this discovery. We then see a succession of PDP/11 clones each of which becomes ever smaller with advancements in semiconductor integration, starting with the fridge-sized units and eventually ending up with desktop versions that resemble 1980s PCs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst calls Qualcomm "a little too unbothered by Apple's M1 Macs"Qualcomm executives brushed off a question about Apple's new M1-based Macs during a question-and-answer session at the company's Snapdragon Summit today, where Qualcomm announced a new flagship smartphone chipset but no upgrades to its year-old chips for PCs... In general, reviews of Qualcomm-powered laptops such as the Microsoft Surface Pro X have celebrated the devices' long battery life, but lamented problems with third-party apps that were originally coded for Intel processors. That stands in stark contrast to Apple's new M1-based Macs, which don't seem to be slowed down as badly by older software... "It's a great validation of what we've been doing for the past few years and [Qualcomm's product line] is just going to get stronger and stronger as we broaden our scope," said Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm SVP for mobile. Katouzian made sure to subtly call out ways in which Qualcomm's always-connected PCs are superior to Apple's newest Macs. The Macs lack 4G connectivity and still have poor-quality, 720p front-facing cameras... Katouzian also pointed out that (presumably unlike Apple) Qualcomm addresses "many tiers...and many price points" with its 7c, 8c, and 8cx laptop chipsets, letting Windows laptop makers drive prices well below the MacBook Air's $999 list price. The core problem with Qualcomm's always-connected PC strategy is one that Qualcomm itself can't fix. While Qualcomm could, and probably will, soon announce a laptop chip that's based on the new Snapdragon 888 and has a level of raw power closer to Apple's M1, it's really down to Microsoft, as well as peripheral and app makers to solve the platform incompatibilities that have frustrated PC reviewers. Hot Hardware cites Microsoft's promises of changes come in future updates to Windows 10, arguing that "with the arrival of x64 emulation and a growing library of native Arm64 apps, Windows 10 on Arm is going to be an even more powerful platform."From a performance perspective, while running Windows 10 on Arm, these [Snapdragon 8cx] chips may currently be at a disadvantage to the Apple M1, but some day in the not so distant future that might not be the case. We have no doubt that Qualcomm is likely working on a new Windows PC-centric SoC that is based on Snapdragon 888 or similar architecture. Qualcomm has promised a 25 percent uplift in CPU and a 35% lift in GPU performance over the Snapdragon 865, with the Snapdragon 888, which already offers a big boost over the previous gen Snapdragon 855/8cx. So, Qualcomm has the potential to put up a strong showing against the Apple M1, whenever its next-generation Snapdragon PC chip launches. That may be, but John Gruber at Daring Fireball argues that currently "M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux."Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Well, that just doesn't happen, your instincts tell you. One company, even a company like Apple, doesn't just embarrass the entire rest of a highly-competitive longstanding industry. But just because something hasn't happened — or hasn't happened in a very long while — doesn't mean it can't happen. And in this case, it just happened... M1 Macs completely upend what we can and should expect from PCs. It's a breakthrough along the lines of the iPhone itself in 2007.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader reminds us that in 1999 scientists discovered the asteroid Ryugu flying 300 million kilometres (or 186,411,357 miles) from earth. In 2014, Japan launched a probe to collect samples from it. Today those samples returned to earth. The International Business Times shares pictures and report:In a streak of light across the night sky, samples collected from a distant asteroid arrived on Earth after being dropped off by Japanese space probe Hayabusa-2. Scientists hope the precious samples, which are expected to amount to no more than 1 gram of material, could help shed light on the origin of life and the formation of the universe. [That's 0.00220462262185 pounds.] The capsule carrying samples entered the atmosphere just before 2:30 am Japan time (1730 GMT Saturday), creating a shooting-star-like fireball as it entered Earth's atmosphere. "Six years and it has finally come back to Earth," an official narrating a live broadcast of the arrival said, as images showed officials from Japan's space agency JAXA cheering and pumping their fists in excitement... The capsule was recovered in the southern Australian desert, and will now be processed before being sent to Japan... The probe collected both surface dust and pristine material from below the surface that was stirred up by firing an "impactor" into the asteroid. The material collected from the asteroid is believed to be unchanged since the time the universe was formed... Scientists are especially keen to discover whether the samples contain organic matter, which could have helped seed life on Earth.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"There's another global disaster we also need to try to prevent," Bill Gates wrote on his blog Thursday: "climate change." As I have tried to make clear on this blog over the past two years, we have only some of the tools we need to eliminate the world's greenhouse gases. We need breakthroughs in the way we generate and store clean electricity, grow food, make things, move around, and heat and cool our buildings, so we can do all these things without adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In short, we need to revolutionize the world's physical economy — and that will take, among other things, a dramatic infusion of ingenuity, funding, and focus from the federal government. No one else has the resources to drive the research we need. CNBC summarizes Gates' plan:Bill Gates on Thursday proposed the formation of a new U.S. agency to tackle climate change and a five-fold jump in funding for research on renewable energy... "There's no central office that's responsible for evaluating and nurturing great ideas," Gates wrote. "For example, research on clean fuels is managed by offices in the departments of Energy, Transportation, and Defense — and even NASA. Similarly, responsibility for research on energy storage is spread across at least four offices in the Department of Energy..." "To be fair, the U.S. isn't the only country that underfunds clean energy research," Gates writes on his blog. "All the governments in the world spend about $22 billion a year on it, or around 0.02 percent of the global economy. Americans spend more than that on gasoline in a single month." In February Gates will publish a book titled How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"This week's Freakonomics podcast goes into depth at asking if digital advertising actually works," writes Slashdot reader Thelasko:Economist Steve Tadelis [a professor at U.C. Berkeley's business school] was interested in answering that question while working for eBay. So, when eBay, in planning to renegotiate their deal with Bing, turned off their brand-keyword advertising, it created a natural experiment. TADELIS: "We could measure visits and we could measure purchases and we could see whether there was any drop in clicks and purchases. And — not surprisingly — all the search that was taken away from the ads just ended up coming for free through the organic search. Because right below the ad was the free link to eBay. Once we had those results, I went to the chief financial officer of eBay North America and showed him the analysis, to which he responded, "Okay, you guys were right." There's a little more to it than that...TADELIS: One of the lessons we learned from the experiments at eBay was that people who never shopped on eBay, they were very much influenced by having eBay ads for non-brand keywords. You know, "guitar, "chair," "studio microphone." And if eBay would be able to better target ads to customers that are not frequent customers, that's where you would get the real bang for the buck. But the podcast ultimately raises the question whether the $123 billion-a-year digital advertising business has been misguided by bad information. The professor/economist cites the time one of eBay's advertising consultants tried to out-jargon him (after he'd dialed into a call from a landline) by tossing out the phrase "Lagrange multipliers."So, I replied by saying, "Well, we all know that the Lagrange multipliers measure the shadow values of constraints in an optimization problem. So, it would really help me if you explain to me, what is your objective function and what are your constraints?" After a short pause, and this is where I have to take my hat off to the founder of that consulting company, he immediately responded with the only and best answer he could give, which was, "Steve, are you driving now? Because I can't hear you. You're breaking up."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A Mysterious Object Is Hurtling Towards Earth, and Scientists Don't Know What It Is," read Newsweek's headline on Monday, describing an object projected to pass 31,605 miles from earth. (One astronomer told them that was roughly 13% of the average distance between the earth and the moon). But then a computer model calculated its past trajectories through space, according to the director for NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). "One of the possible paths for 2020 SO brought the object very close to Earth and the Moon in late September 1966," he said in a statement. "It was like a eureka moment when a quick check of launch dates for lunar missions showed a match with the Surveyor 2 mission." On Wednesday NASA described how a team led by Vishnu Reddy, an associate professor/planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, tried to prove what they'd seen was a 54-year-old booster rocket:Through a series of follow up observations, Reddy and his team analyzed 2020 SO's composition using NASA's IRTF and compared the spectrum data from 2020 SO with that of 301 stainless steel, the material Centaur rocket boosters were made of in the 1960's. While not immediately a perfect match, Reddy and his team persisted, realizing the discrepancy in spectrum data could be a result of analyzing fresh steel in a lab against steel that would have been exposed to the harsh conditions of space weather for 54 years. This led Reddy and his team to do some additional investigation. "We knew that if we wanted to compare apples to apples, we'd need to try to get spectral data from another Centaur rocket booster that had been in Earth orbit for many years to then see if it better matched 2020 SO's spectrum," said Reddy. "Because of the extreme speed at which Earth-orbiting Centaur boosters travel across the sky, we knew it would be extremely difficult to lock on with the IRTF long enough to get a solid and reliable data set." However, on the morning of Dec. 1, Reddy and his team pulled off what they thought would be impossible. They observed another Centaur D rocket booster from 1971 launch of a communication satellite that was in Geostationary Transfer Orbit, long enough to get a good spectrum. With this new data, Reddy and his team were able to compare it against 2020 SO and found the spectra to be consistent with each another, thus definitively concluding 2020 SO to also be a Centaur rocket booster... So what happens next?2020 SO made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 1, 2020 and will remain within Earth's sphere of gravitational dominance — a region in space called the "Hill Sphere" that extends roughly 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet — until it escapes back into a new orbit around the Sun in March 2021. As NASA-funded telescopes survey the skies for asteroids that could pose an impact threat to Earth, the ability to distinguish between natural and artificial objects is valuable as nations continue to explore and more artificial objects find themselves in orbit about the Sun. Astronomers will continue to observe this particular relic from the early Space Age until it's gone.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NBC News reports:The mysterious neurological symptoms experienced by American diplomats in China and Cuba are consistent with the effects of directed microwave energy, according to a long-awaited report by the National Academies of Sciences that cites medical evidence to support the long-held conviction of American intelligence officials. The report, obtained Friday by NBC News, does not conclude that the directed energy was delivered intentionally, by a weapon, as some U.S. officials have long believed. But it raises that disturbing possibility... A team of medical and scientific experts who studied the symptoms of as many as 40 State Department and other government employees concluded that nothing like them had previously been documented in medical literature, according to the National Academies of Sciences report... "The committee felt that many of the distinctive and acute signs, symptoms and observations reported by (government) employees are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy," the report says. "Studies published in the open literature more than a half-century ago and over the subsequent decades by Western and Soviet sources provide circumstantial support for this possible mechanism...." In the last year, as first reported by GQ Magazine and The New York Times, a number of new incidents have been reported by CIA officers in Europe and Asia, including one involving Marc Polymeropoulos, who retired last year after a long and decorated career as a case officer. He told NBC News he is still suffering the effects of what he believes was a brain injury he sustained on a trip to Moscow. A source directly familiar with the matter told NBC News the CIA, using mobile phone location data, had determined that some Russian intelligence agents who had worked on microwave weapons programs were present in the same cities at the same time that CIA officers suffered mysterious symptoms. CIA officials consider that a promising lead but not conclusive evidence. The State Department, responding to the report, said that "each possible cause remains speculative" and added that the investigation, now three years old, is still "ongoing." Although it praised the National Academies of Sciences for undertaking the effort, the State Department offered a long list of "challenges of their study" and limitations in the data the academies were given access to, suggesting that the report should not be viewed as conclusive... The report says more investigation is required [and] recommends that the State Department establish a response mechanism for similar incidents that allows new cases to be studied more quickly and effectively [as well as neurological assessments for all State Department employees on foreign assignments]. NBC notes that the study examined four possible causes: Infection, chemicals, psychological factors and microwave energy. The report concludes that "Among the plausible mechanisms that the committee considered, directed radio frequency (RF) energy, especially in those with the distinct early manifestations, appears most germane, along with persistent postural perceptual dizziness (PPPD) as a secondary reinforcing mechanism, as well as the additive effects of psychological conditions. "The committee cannot rule out other possible mechanisms, and again, considers it likely that a multiplicity of factors explains some cases and the differences between others."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Advent of Code isn't the only geeky tradition that's continuing in 2020. "This is going to be the first full year with Raku being called Raku," notes the site raku-advent.blog. "However, it's going to be the 12th year (after this first article) in a row with a Perl 6 or Raku calendar, previously published in the Perl 6 Advent Calendar blog." The tradition continues, with a new article about the Raku programming language every day until Christmas. And meanwhile over at perladvent.org, the Perl Advent Calendar is also continuing its own article-a-day tradition (starting with a holiday tale about how Perl's TidyAll library "makes it trivial for the elves to keep their code formatting consistent and clean.") But they're not the only ones. "Pandemic or not, Christmas time is a time for wonder, joy and sharing," writes Kristofer Giltvedt Selbekk from Oslo-based Bekk Consulting (merging technology with user experience, product innovation and strategy). So this year they're "continuing our great tradition of sharing some of the stuff we know every December" with 11 different advent calendar sites sharing articles (or, on one site, podcast episodes), on topics including JavaScript, Kotlin, React, Elm, functional programming, and cloud computing. And if you're more interested in outer space, this also marks the 13th year for the official Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. "Every day until Friday, December 25, this page will present one new incredible image of our universe from NASA's Hubble telescope," explains its page at the Atlantic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ben Bova "was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction," according to Wikipedia, and was also a six-time winner of the Hugo Award. "He was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America." Tor.com reports Bova has passed "due to complications from COVID-19 and a stroke..."Born in 1932, Bova brought experience to the science fiction genre that few authors could match: he worked as a technical editor for the U.S.'s Project Vanguard, the first effort on the part of the country to launch a satellite into space in 1958. Bova went on to work as a science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, which built the heat shields for the Apollo 11 module, putting man on the Moon and ensuring that science fiction would continue to increasingly define the future. It was around that time that Bova began writing and publishing science fiction. He published his first novel, The Star Conquerors, in 1959, and followed up with dozens of others in the following years, as well as numerous short stories that appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Analog Science Fact and Fiction, Galaxy Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and others. In 1971, he took over the helm of Analog following the death of its long-running editor, John W. Campbell Jr. — a huge task, given Campbell's influence on the genre to that point... From there, he became the first editor of Omni Magazine until 1982, and consulted on television shows such as The Starlost and Land of the Lost. While Bova wrote an episode of The Land of the Lost, his best-known works "involved plausible sciences about humanity's expansion into the universe, looking at how we might adapt to live in space..." notes Tor. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction argues that "the straightforwardness of Bova's agenda for humanity may mark him as a figure from an earlier era; but the arguments he laces into sometimes overloaded storylines are arguments it is important, perhaps absolutely vital, to make."Read more of this story at Slashdot.