Earth to Voyager 2: After a Year in the Darkness, We Can Talk to You Again

Found on New York Times on Thursday, 18 February 2021
Browse Astronomy

In the nearly 44 years since NASA launched Voyager 2, the spacecraft has gone beyond the frontiers of human exploration by visiting Uranus, Neptune and, eventually, interstellar space.

A device on board called the command loss timer, something like a dead man’s switch, is used to help the spacecraft determine whether it’s lost contact with Earth and should protect itself by going into a form of electronic slumber. The October test reset the timer, and successfully told the spacecraft to continue operating.

It's amazing how well Voyager 2 is doing after all this time, and it's sad that today's tech probably won't last half as long.

8-Year-Old Calls Out NPR For Lack Of Dinosaur Stories

Found on NPR on Wednesday, 17 February 2021
Browse Various

Leo has a point. All Things Considered is about to turn 50 years old. NPR's archivists found the word "dinosaur" appearing in stories 294 times in the show's history. By comparison, "senator" has appeared 20,447 times.

To remedy the situation, All Things Considered invited Leo to ask some questions about dinosaurs to Ashley Poust, a research associate at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Leo wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up.

Dinosaurs aren't in the Bible, maybe that's why.

The Future Of Hydrogen Power… Is Paste?

Found on Hackaday on Tuesday, 16 February 2021
Browse Science

The Fraunhofer Institute wants to run smaller vehicles on magnesium hydride in a paste form that they call POWERPASTE.

Interestingly, the paste only provides half the available hydrogen. The rest is from water added start a reaction to release the hydrogen. Fraunhofer claims the energy density available is greater than that of a 700 bar tank in a conventional hydrogen system and ten times more than current battery technology.

If it's stable it sure sounds like a good option.

A 3D printed house is for sale in New York. Builders say it will cut housing construction costs

Found on CNN on Monday, 15 February 2021
Browse Technology

Now a company says it has listed the first 3D printed house in the United States for sale. The Riverhead, New York, home is listed online through Zillow with an asking price of $299,999.

"What we want to do is print homes fast, and cheap and strong," Andersen said.

Do we really need more cheaper houses?

Fake accounts gain traction as they praise China, mock US

Found on AP News on Sunday, 14 February 2021
Browse Internet

A pro-China network of fake and impostor accounts found a global audience on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to mock the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the deadly riot in Washington that left five dead, new research published Thursday found.

Other fake accounts have questioned the safety of American-approved vaccines for COVID-19, despite studies on tens of thousands of people that found no serious side effects.

Propaganda is a tool used by every government. Some are just not as good as others.

Google will delete your Play Music library later this month, emailing out final warning

Found on 9to5 Google on Saturday, 13 February 2021
Browse Various

Google Play Music stopped working at the start of December, but the files you uploaded to the cloud locker and other data remain available for export. That will be changing later in February when Google deletes all information associated with Play Music.

That year-end deadline slipped into 2021, but Google is now proceeding with its plans to “delete all of your Google Play Music data.”

"Go to the cloud. Never ever lose data again."

Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hijacking its water treatment plant via TeamViewer

Found on The Register on Friday, 12 February 2021
Browse Various

The miscreant gained access through remote-control software TeamViewer that was running on a PC at the plant, the sheriff told Reuters, and used that machine to ultimately attempt to jack up the levels of sodium hydroxide.

“The protocols that we have in place, monitoring protocols, they work – that’s the good news,” said Oldsmar Mayor Eric Seidel. “The important thing is to put everyone on notice. There’s a bad actor out there.”

There's a bad actor in there, if such critical infrastructure can be reached from the Internet.

Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes.

Found on The Register on Thursday, 11 February 2021
Browse Hardware

Synology has introduced its first-ever list of validated disks and won’t allow other devices into its enterprise-class NAS devices. And in a colossal coincidence, half of the disks allowed into its devices – and the only ones larger than 4TB – are Synology’s very own HAT 5300 disks that it launched last week.

So to cut a long story short, if you want to get the most out of Synology's new and future enterprise NAS devices, you’ll need to buy Synology’s own SATA hard disk drives. Any boxes you already own will work just fine with any drive.

Or just buy a NAS from someone else.

Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective against symptomatic covid-19

Found on New Scientist on Wednesday, 10 February 2021
Browse Science

Of the 14,964 people who received the vaccine, 16 developed symptomatic covid-19 compared with 62 out of 4902 in the placebo group. The results, published today in The Lancet, suggest efficacy was similar across all age groups, including among people over the age of 60.

“All our critics are sitting quiet at the moment,” Dmitriev said during a press conference on 2 February. “We have addressed all of the concerns […] Sputnik V has proven itself to be one of the most effective and safest vaccines of the world.” Sputnik V has already been approved in 15 countries, and this could increase to 25 countries by the end of this week, he said.

As long as it works and is safe, it does not matter who made it.

'I was scammed out of £17,000 on Instagram'

Found on BBC News on Tuesday, 09 February 2021
Browse Various

"I was following this guy on Instagram and he always posts with his car, a rose gold Maserati, saying that he's rich and self-made and really young, he's only 21," says Jonathan Reuben, 24, an accountant.

"People are sucked in and want to believe it and want that lifestyle, especially these days, with young people struggling to get jobs," he said. "You definitely see more people looking at different and newer ways to make more money."

Really now?