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How a Tiny Bit of Lacquer Grounded New Falcon 9 Rockets For a Month Published on November 01, 2020 at 10:04AM On October 2, SpaceX automatically aborted the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket (with just two seconds left in the countdown) after two of its first-stage engines ignited early. Investigating the problem ended up delaying the October 31st launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station until November 14, reports Ars Technica, citing a teleconference with SpaceX's Hans Koenigsmann. "Had the abort not triggered, it is likely that nothing bad would have occurred, but Koenigsmann said that under certain extreme scenarios, rattling from an early ignition may cause significant damage to the Merlin engines." SpaceX technicians removed the two engines and shipped them from Florida to the company's test site in McGregor, Texas, where they were able to replicate the problem. They found that a relief valve within the gas generator — a tiny rocket within the eng...

'I'm Not Drunk, It's My Car.' Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving' Gets Mixed Reviews Published on November 01, 2020 at 07:04AM CNN describes the reactions posted online by six beta testers of Tesla's "full self-driving" software, saying they "appear to be both delighted and alarmed by what they've experienced so far." "Turn left. Come on. What are you doing?" said one frustrated Tesla owner as his car appeared slow to change lanes during a trip he posted on YouTube last week. "I swear I'm not drunk you guys, I'm not drunk, it's my car...." CNN Business reviewed hours of footage and found early impressions of the software are a mixed bag. At times the testers are impressed with the "full self-driving" technology, in other cases they say it's overly cautious. The videos also show unsafe situations that appear to result from the car not understanding traffic well enough. Brandon McGowen, one of...

Trump's TikTok Ban Temporarily Blocked by US Judge Published on November 01, 2020 at 05:14AM Forbes reports that TikTok "cannot be shut down in the United States next month, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Friday afternoon, the latest setback in President Donald Trump's push to force the Chinese-owned app to be transferred to American ownership." In an August executive order that labeled TikTok a national security threat, Trump required Beijing-based tech company ByteDance to sell its popular short-form video app to an American firm by Nov. 12, or else the federal government would enforce restrictions on data transfers that effectively make the app unusable. Pennsylvania Judge Wendy Beetlestone blocked that order Friday, issuing a preliminary injunction while the court considers a lawsuit brought by several TikTok content creators. Beetlestone said Trump probably doesn't have the power to block TikTok: he tried to force a sale using a 43-year-old law that give...

'Don't Even Try Paying With Cash in China' Published on November 01, 2020 at 04:24AM "It's hard for those of us who live outside of China to grasp how paying for everything has gone digital in the country," writes the New York Times, introducing a Q&A with technology reporter Ray Zhong (who used to live in Beijing): Most businesses there, from the fanciest hotels to roadside fruit stands, display a QR code — a type of bar code — that people scan with a smartphone camera to pay with China's dominant digital payment apps, Alipay and WeChat. Paying by app is so much the norm that taxi drivers might curse at you for handing them cash... Ray: Credit cards were never prevalent in China. The country skipped over a generation of finance and went straight to smartphone-based digital payments. And the apps are simple for businesses. If a business can get a printout of a QR code, it can get paid by app. They don't need special machines like businesses do to...

Moderna On Track to Report COVID-19 Vaccine Late-Stage Trial Data in November Published on November 01, 2020 at 03:06AM This week Moderna "said it is on track to report early data from a late-stage trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine next month, reports Reuters, "offering the clearest timeline yet for when the world will know whether it is effective." The company, one of the front-runners in the global race to produce vaccines to protect against COVID-19, said an independent data monitoring committee is expected to conduct an interim review of its ongoing 30,000-person trial in November... The company said it is preparing to distribute the vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, and expects to be able to produce 20 million doses by the end of the year, and between 500 million and 1 billion in 2021. Moderna said infection rates in the trial were on track with expectations... Moderna said it expects two-month follow-up safety data, as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Admin...

After 3-Year Hiatus, 'Pyston' Runtime Returns to Make Python Code Faster Published on November 01, 2020 at 02:09AM "Development of Pyston, a variant of the Python runtime that uses just-in-time compilation to speed up the execution of Python programs, is back on again," reports InfoWorld — after a hiatus that began in 2017: Picking up where Dropbox left off, a new development team has released Pyston 2.0. Pyston provides what is ultimately intended to be a drop-in replacement for the standard Python runtime, CPython. It's compatible with Python 3.8, so programs that runs with that version of Python should run as-is on Pyston... One of the goals of the project was to remain as close as possible to the original implementation of CPython, since many third-party projects make assumptions about CPython behavior. Thus Pyston 2.0 began with the existing CPython codebase and added features from Pyston 1.0 that worked well, such as caching attributes and JITting. Pyston...

New Chinese Laptop Appears With 14nm Loongsoon Quad-Core 3A4000 CPU Published on November 01, 2020 at 01:12AM "BDY electronics, a Chinese laptop manufacturer, has unveiled an all-new 13.3-inch laptop sporting Longsoon's new Dragon Core 3A4000 quad-core 14nm CPU," reports Tom's Hardware: The biggest feature of this laptop is the CPU, featuring Longsoon's latest 14nm quad-core 3A4000 CPU. Longsoon claims the CPU is 100% faster than the previous generation 3A3000 and is comparable in performance to AMD's "Excavator" cores used in the A8-7680 Godavari architecture. Of course, this demonstrates how far behind Longsoon is from TSMC and Intel in performance, speed, and efficiency of its latest node. However, the chairman of Loongsoon Technologies, Hu Weiwu, says, "14nm and 28nm (for its GPU node) is enough for 90% of applications.," so it appears the company isn't too worried about catching up to the performance leaders like Intel and AMD. D...

Scientists Discover New Molecule, Possible Basis For Life, on Saturn's Moon Titan Published on November 01, 2020 at 12:18AM CNN reports: Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is the only moon in our solar system that has a thick atmosphere. It's four times denser than Earth's. And now, scientists have discovered a molecule in it that has never been found in any other atmosphere. The particle is called cyclopropenylidene, or C3H2, and it's made of carbon and hydrogen. This simple carbon-based molecule could be a precursor that contributes to chemical reactions that may create complex compounds. And those compounds could be the basis for potential life on Titan. The molecule was first noticed as researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes in Chile. This radio telescope observatory captures a range of light signatures, which revealed the molecule among the unique chemistry of Titan's atmosphere. The study published earlier this month i...

Sean Connery Dies at Age 90. Remembered as 'The Best of Many' James Bonds Published on October 31, 2020 at 11:24PM In 1962 Sean Connery became the first actor to appear in movies as secret agent James Bond, and according to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 was "The best of the many Bonds, by far." An anonymous reader writes: Connery influenced the character deeply. The Huffington Post once wrote that James Bond wasn't Scottish until Sean Connery played the role. Ian Fleming was still writing his series of James Bond novels, and "After seeing Connery in Dr. No and thinking the actor did a superb job, Fleming wrote Connery's heritage into the character. In the book You Only Live Twice, Fleming wrote that James Bond's father was Scottish and was from the town of Glencoe. Coincidentally, Connery would film Highlander in Glencoe decades later." Sir Sean Connery — he was also knighted in the year 2000 — performed many other iconic roles throught his...

Fox News Breaking News Alert WATCH LIVE: Obama, Biden to make first joint appearance in Michigan 10/31/20 10:44 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert WATCH LIVE: Trump to tell Pennsylvania it can 'save the American Dream' from 'corrupt forces' 10/31/20 9:37 AM

Software Freedom Conservancy: Microsoft Should Resign from RIAA Over Youtube-DL Takedown Demand Published on October 31, 2020 at 10:04PM "We believe that youtube-dl has substantial non-infringing uses," argues the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy. But while that software faces a DMCA takedown notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), GitHub's owner Microsoft is also a paying member of the RIAA. The Software Freedom Conservancy argues that this leaves Microsoft "stuck between their industry association's abuses of the law and the needs of FOSS projects for which they provide infrastructure." While under current law (which we object to), complying with the takedown notice is admittedly the fastest way to limit Microsoft's liability, we view Microsoft's membership in the RIAA as a much bigger liability to our community, now that Microsoft controls GitHub. We call on Microsoft to resign from the RIAA and remove their conf...

Therapy Patients Blackmailed For Cash After Clinic Data Breach Published on October 31, 2020 at 09:04PM "Many patients of a large psychotherapy clinic in Finland have been contacted individually by a blackmailer, after their data was stolen," reports the BBC: The data appears to have included personal identification records and notes about what was discussed in therapy sessions. Vastaamo is a nationwide practice with about 20 branches and thousands of patients. The clinic has advised those affected to contact the police. It said it believed the data had been stolen in November 2018, with a further potential breach in March 2019... About 300 records have already been published on the dark web, according to the Associated Press news agency. On its website, the clinic calls the attack "a great crisis". It has set up a helpline and is offering all victims one free therapy session, the details of which will not be recorded. According to the article, the blackmailer cla...

While Europe Accounts for 46% of COVID-19 Cases, Taiwan Goes 200 Days Without a Local Infection Published on October 31, 2020 at 08:04PM Europe "now accounts for 46% of global coronavirus cases," reports ABC News, "and nearly a third of total related deaths." Dr. Jean-Francois Delfraissy, a senior French physician and the president of the scientific council that reports to the government, warned that the country has "lost control of the epidemic," after health authorities reported more than 52,000 new cases. He said that the council estimates that the true figure could well be closer to 100,000 daily cases, accounting for asymptomatic cases and those who haven't been tested... Fearing both the economic price of national lockdowns and the political backlash from citizens increasingly wearied of the restrictions on their livelihoods, government officials around Europe have been reluctant to shutter businesses to the extent that they did in the spring. ...

Fox News Breaking News Alert American hostage rescued in West Africa by SEAL Team 6 in daring raid 10/31/20 6:12 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert Sean Connery, Scottish actor who played James Bond in 7 movies, dead at 90 10/31/20 6:07 AM

Amazon Now Has More Than 1 Million Employees Published on October 31, 2020 at 06:30PM An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Amazon.com said it now has about 1 million employees after hiring 250,000 workers in the third quarter, part of a growth spurt driven by booming ecommerce sales during the coronavirus pandemic and a milestone for a company founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookseller. Despite its rapid ascent, Amazon still has fewer workers than the nation's biggest private employer, Walmart, which has 2.2 million global workers. Even so, Amazon's explosive growth underscores the historic shift in financial might from manufacturers such as General Motors, U.S. Steel and General Electric. In the 1950s, these three corporations were the country's biggest employers, with a combined workforce of more than 1 million employees at the time. Today, the three employ about 400,000 workers as the U.S. economy has shed factory jobs in favor of service-orien...

Apple Says Some AirPods Pro Have Sound Problems, Will Replace For Free Published on October 31, 2020 at 03:30PM Apple said on Friday that it's replacing AirPods Pro headphones that have sound problems. CNBC reports: These problems include a static or crackling sound that increases in loud environments and issues with active noise cancellation. Apple said AirPods Pro made after October 2020 don't have the problems. Owners who experience problems can contact Apple online or make an appointment at an Apple store to get their AirPods Pro replaced for free. Only devices that are confirmed to have the issue will be replaced. The replacement applies only to the buds, not the charging case. Apple's not offering a similar program for other AirPod models. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX Will 'Make Its Own Laws On Mars' Published on October 31, 2020 at 12:30PM schwit1 writes: SpaceX will not recognize international law on Mars, according to the Terms of Service of its Starlink internet project. Elon Musk's space company will instead reportedly adhere to a set of "self-governing principles" that will be defined at the time of Martian settlement. Musk revealed plans to create a self-sustaining city on Mars last week, though no timeframe is yet to be put in place for its development. Any future colony created by SpaceX would likely use constellations of Starlink satellites orbiting the planet to provide internet connection to people and machines on the surface. "For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities," the governing law section states. "...

US and UK Citizens Are World's Biggest Sources of Plastic Waste Published on October 31, 2020 at 09:00AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The U.S. and UK produce more plastic waste per person than any other major countries, according to new research. The analysis also shows the U.S. produces the most plastic waste in total and that its citizens may rank as high as third in the world in contributing to plastic pollution in the oceans. Previous work had suggested Asian countries dominated marine plastic pollution and placed the U.S. in 20th place, but this did not account for U.S. waste exports or illegal dumping within the country. Data from 2016, the latest available, show that more than half of the plastic collected for recycling in the U.S. was shipped abroad, mostly to countries already struggling to manage plastic waste effectively. The researchers said years of exporting had masked the U.S.'s enormous contribution to plastic pollution. The latest st...

'Time Cells' Discovered In Human Brains Published on October 31, 2020 at 07:40AM Researchers have identified cells in the human brain that are responsible for episodic memories. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. NPR reports: The cells are called time cells, and they place a sort of time stamp on memories as they are being formed. That allows us to recall sequences of events or experiences in the right order. "By having time cells create this indexing across time, you can put everything together in a way that makes sense," says Dr. Bradley Lega, the study's senior author and a neurosurgeon at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Time cells were discovered in rodents decades ago. But the new study is critical because "the final arbitrator is always the human brain," says Dr. Gyorgy Buzsaki, Biggs Professor of Neuroscience at New York University. Buzsaki is not an author ...

A 5-Story Building In Shanghai 'Walks' To a New Location Using Technology Published on October 31, 2020 at 07:00AM In Shanghai's latest effort to preserve historic structures, engineers have relocated an 85-year-old, five-story building in its entirety using new technology dubbed the "walking machine." CNN reports: [E]ngineers attached nearly 200 mobile supports under the five-story building, according to Lan Wuji, chief technical supervisor of the project. The supports act like robotic legs. They're split into two groups which alternately rise up and down, imitating the human stride. Attached sensors help control how the building moves forward, said Lan, whose company Shanghai Evolution Shift developed the new technology in 2018. "It's like giving the building crutches so it can stand up and then walk," he said. A timelapse shot by the company shows the school inching laboriously along, one tiny step at a time. According to a statement from th...

Sony Close To Buying Crunchyroll For Nearly $1 Billion Published on October 31, 2020 at 06:20AM According to Nikkei, Sony is close to acquiring U.S. anime-streaming service Crunchyroll for more than $957 million. From the report: Sony has its own popular anime, titles like "Demon Slayer" and "Kimetsu no Yaiba," but has been licensing it to streaming services. Sony's Aniplex, the studio behind "Kimetsu no Yaiba," has a variety of content, including movies and music, that is mainly distributed by overseas companies. If the acquisition is realized, global competition for content among companies like Netflix and Hulu will intensify. Crunchyroll was founded in 2006 and has its headquarters in San Francisco. In 2018, AT&T, the U.S. telecommunications giant, became its parent company. Sony recently obtained the exclusive right to negotiate for Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll has 70 million free members and 3 million paying subscribers in more than 200 countrie...

Russian Hackers Targeted California, Indiana Democratic Parties In Repeat of 2016 Attacks Published on October 31, 2020 at 05:40AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The group of Russian hackers accused of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election earlier this year targeted the email accounts of Democratic state parties in California and Indiana, and influential think tanks in Washington and New York, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The attempted intrusions, many of which were internally flagged by Microsoft Corp over the summer, were carried out by a group often nicknamed "Fancy Bear." The hackers' activity provides insight into how Russian intelligence is targeting the United States in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election. The targets identified by Reuters, which include the Center for American Progress, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said they had not seen any e...

Fox News Breaking News Alert OFFICERS AMBUSHED: Two New Orleans cops shot at in French Quarter 10/30/20 5:30 PM

NASA has awarded a contract to MathWorks Inc. of Natick, Massachusetts, to provide new software licenses, maintenance, and product training for mathematical computing software to be used by all NASA centers and associated facilities. October 30, 2020 from NASA https://ift.tt/3jLZwKG

Seagate Says 20 TB HAMR Drives Will Arrive in December, 50 TB Capacities in 2026 Published on October 31, 2020 at 01:35AM Seagate revealed several interesting points about its upcoming releases of next-generation hard drives during its quarterly earnings call this week. From a report: The company has disclosed a shift to a new generation of HDDs based on so-called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. This technology is set to bring many improvements compared to the one currently used by Seagate's rivals like Western Digital. The rivaling company uses energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) and microwave-assisted (MAMR) technologies and it already has a 20 TB drive in the offering. Seagate announced that they will unveil a 20 TB HDD in December this year, with the use of HAMR technology, which will bring many improvements like better speed and more efficient disk read/write. It added, "Seagate will be the first to ship this crucial technology wi...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Breaking News: Lori Loughlin reports to prison for two-month sentence 10/30/20 10:58 AM

Google Discloses Windows Zero-Day Exploited in the Wild Published on October 31, 2020 at 01:05AM Security researchers from Google have disclosed today a zero-day vulnerability in the Windows operating system that is currently under active exploitation. From a report: The zero-day is expected to be patched on November 10, which is the date of Microsoft's next Patch Tuesday, according to Ben Hawkes, team lead for Project Zero, Google's elite vulnerability research team. On Twitter, Hawkes said the Windows zero-day (tracked as CVE-2020-17087) was used as part of a two-punch attack, together with another a Chrome zero-day (tracked as CVE-2020-15999) that his team disclosed last week. The Chrome zero-day was used to allow attackers to run malicious code inside Chrome, while the Windows zero-day was the second part of this attack, allowing threat actors to escape Chrome's secure container and run code on the underlying operating system -- in what security experts call a sandbox...

Is This the End of the Repairable iPhone? Published on October 31, 2020 at 12:21AM iFixit: After exhaustive testing, comparing notes with multiple repair technicians, and reviewing leaked Apple training documents, we've found that the iPhone 12 camera is entirely unreliable when swapped between iPhones. This latest fault, along with indications from Apple's repair guides, makes it more clear than ever: Apple, by design or neglect or both, is making it extremely hard to repair an iPhone without their blessing. This may be a bug that Apple eventually fixes. There is even precedent for iPhone parts misbehaving when swapped between phones. But it is also possible that Apple is planning on locking out all unauthorized iPhone camera and screen repairs. Apple's internal training guides tell authorized technicians that, starting with the 12 and its variants, they will need to run Apple's proprietary, cloud-linked System Configuration app to fully repair cameras and screens. W...

Every morning, Johnny Sayles wakes up and scrolls through news about the collapse of human civilization . Formerly a medical assistant at a surgical department in Washington state, Sayles was laid off at the beginning of April, when the pandemic hit. Confined to his home by stay-at-home orders, he began spending more time on the social network Reddit , and came across /r/collapse , a part of the site where users discuss what many see as the inevitable collapse of globalized society. Sayles says /r/collapse has become part of his morning routine. “I just go to that subreddit and I compare what the world was like last week with this week,” he says. “And every week there is something worse. It’s depressing, but collapse is inevitable. It might be tomorrow, it might be in 10 years. But our ecosystem is shot and there’s only so much time left.” In one week in early October, the top posts on /r/collapse told you that ice cover in the Siberian Arctic was at its lowest extent in...

Fox News Breaking News Alert Breaking News: Lori Loughlin reports to prison for two-month sentence 10/30/20 10:58 AM

Facebook Says Technical Glitches Improperly Blocked Campaign Ads Published on October 30, 2020 at 11:41PM Facebook revealed Thursday how internal technical glitches had disrupted the delivery of some ads from the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns, but said it made changes to resolve those hiccups in the run-up to the November U.S. presidential election. From a report: The social media giant's admission followed complaints from the Biden camp about how thousands of its ads had been blocked. Facebook said in a blog post it spotted "unanticipated issues" affecting both campaigns, including technical flaws that caused a number of ads to be "paused improperly." "No ad was paused or rejected by a person, or because of any partisan consideration," Facebook said in its post. "The technical problems were automated and impacted ads from across the political spectrum and both Presidential campaigns." Read more of this story at Slashdot.