Scientists believe they have found evidence of microbes that were thriving near hydrothermal vents on Earth's surface just 300m years after the planet formed -- the strongest evidence yet that life began far earlier than is widely assumed. From a report: If confirmed, it would suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life are relatively basic. "If life is relatively quick to emerge, given the right conditions, this increases the chance that life exists on other planets," said Dominic Papineau, of University College London, who led the research. Five years ago, Papineau and colleagues announced they had found microfossils in iron-rich sedimentary rocks from the Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt in Quebec, Canada. The team suggested that these tiny filaments, knobs and tubes of an iron oxide called haematite could have been made by bacteria living around hydrothermal vents that used iron-based chemical reactions to obtain their energy.

Scientific dating of the rocks has suggested they are at least 3.75bn years old, and possibly as old as 4.28bn years, the age of the volcanic rocks they are embedded in. Before this, the oldest reported microfossils dated to 3.46bn and 3.7bn years ago, potentially making the Canadian specimens the oldest direct evidence of life on Earth. Now, further analysis of the rock has revealed a much larger and more complex structure -- a stem with parallel branches on one side that is nearly a centimetre long -- as well as hundreds of distorted spheres, or ellipsoids, alongside the tubes and filaments.

Most simulations of our climate's future may be overly sensitive to Arctic ice melt as a cause of abrupt changes in ocean circulation, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Phys.Org reports: Climate scientists count the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (or AMOC) among the biggest tipping points on the way to a planetary climate disaster. The Atlantic Ocean current acts like a conveyor belt carrying warm tropical surface water north and cooler, heavier deeper water south. [...] In a study published [...] in the journal Nature Climate Change, He and Oregon State University paleoclimatologist Peter Clark describe a new model simulation that matches the warmth of the last 10,000 years. And they did it by doing away with the trigger most scientists believe stalls or shuts down the AMOC.

Warming temperatures on Earth's surface cause sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and the Greenland Ice Sheet to melt, releasing fresh water into the ocean. Scientists widely believed that the freshwater influx disrupts the density differences in the North Atlantic that make the AMOC's north-bound water sink and turn back south. "The problem," says He, "is with the geological climate data." Though the climate record shows an abundance of freshwater that came from the final melting of the ice sheets over North America and Europe, the AMOC barely changed. So, He removed the assumption of a freshwater deluge from his model.

"Without the freshwater coming in making the AMOC slow down in the model, we get a simulation with much better, lasting agreement with the temperature data from the climate record," He says. "The important result is that the AMOC appears to be less sensitive to freshwater forcing than has long been thought, according to both the data and model." [...] The widespread consequences of a drastic weakening of the AMOC include rapid sea-level rise on the eastern coast of North America, cooling over Europe that could disrupt agriculture, a parched Amazon rainforest and disruption of Asian monsoons. The new modeling study anticipates a much smaller reduction in AMOC strength, but that doesn't rule out abrupt change.

CNET points out the far side of the moon — the one that never faces earth — is "rugged, spotted with tons of craters" and "filled with totally different elements."

"In essence, our moon has two faces, and scientists are still trying to solve the mystery of why they're so different." But a paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances might finally have an explanation for one major aspect of this enigmatic lunar duality. It has to do dark shadows, a massive impact many billions of years ago, and... lava....

They used computer simulations to see what might've gone on long, long (long) ago, way before there was any volcanic activity on the moon's surface. More specifically, they re-created a massive impact that, billions of years ago, changed the base of the moon, forming a gigantic crater that we now refer to as the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin.... What they found is that this huge smash would've created a plume of heat that carried a bunch of specific chemical elements to the near side of the moon, and not the far side. "We expect that this contributed to the mantle melting that produced the lava flows we see on the surface," Jones said.

In other words, those elements presumably contributed to an era of volcanism on the lunar face we can see from Earth but it left the far side untouched.

Slashdot reader sciencehabit shares this article from Science magazine: Robots can be programmed to lift a car and even help perform some surgeries, but when it comes to picking up an object they have not touched before, such as an egg, they often fail miserably. Now, engineers have come up with an artificial fingertip that overcomes that limitation. The advance enables machines to sense the textures of these surfaces a lot like a human fingertip does....

[W]hen researchers at the University of Bristol began designing an artificial fingertip in 2009, they used human skin as a guide. Their first fingertip — assembled by hand — was about the size of a soda can. By 2018, they had switched to 3D printing. That made it possible to make the tip and all its components about the size of an adult's big toe and more easily create a series of layers approximating the multilayered structure of human skin. More recently, the scientists have incorporated neural networks into the fingertip, which they call TacTip. The neural networks help a robot quickly process what it's sensing and react accordingly — seemingly just like a real finger.

In our fingertips, a layer of nerve endings deforms when skin contacts an object and tells the brain what's happening. These nerves send "fast" signals to help us avoid dropping something and "slow" signals to convey an object's shape. TacTip's equivalent signals come from an array of pinlike projections underneath a rubbery surface layer that move when the surface is touched. The array's pins are like a hairbrush's bristles: stiff but bendable. Beneath that array is, among other things, a camera that detects when and how the pins move. The amount of bending of the pins provides the slow signal and the speed of bending provides the fast signal. The neural network translates those signals into the fingertip's actions, making it grip more tightly for example, or adjust the angle of the fingertip....

In a second project, Lepora's team added more pins and a microphone to TacTip. The microphone mimics another set of nerve endings deep within our skin that sense vibrations felt as we run our fingers across a surface. These nerve endings enhance our ability to feel how rough a surface is. The microphone did likewise when the researchers tested the enhanced fingertip's ability to differentiate among 13 fabrics.
The article points out that in testing, the artificial fingertip's output "closely matched the neuronal signaling patterns of human fingertips undergoing the same tests."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Bad news for everyone who loved watching Bill Nye the Science Guy during middle school science class: your fave is problematic. This week, Coca-Cola, one of the world's biggest plastic polluters, teamed up with TV's favorite scientist for a campaign to create a "world without waste," a joke of a corporate greenwashing campaign. In a video innocuously titled "The Coca-Cola Company and Bill Nye Demystify Recycling," an animated version of Nye -- with a head made out of a plastic bottle and his signature bow tie fashioned from a Coke label -- walks viewers through the ways "the good people at the Coca-Cola company are dedicating themselves to addressing our global plastic waste problem." Coke, Nye explains, wants to use predominantly recycled materials to create bottles for its beverages; he then describes the process of recycling a plastic bottle, from a user throwing it into a recycling bin to being sorted and shredded into new material.

"If we can recover and recycle plastic, we can not only keep it from becoming trash, but we can use that plastic again and again -- it's an amazing material," quips Shill Nye the Plastic Guy. "What's more, when we use recycled material, we also reduce our carbon footprint. What's not to love?" What's not, indeed! The video is, on the surface, an accurate depiction of the process of recycling a beverage bottle. The problem lies in what recycling can actually do. Nye paints a rosy picture in the video of plastic Coke bottles being recycled "again and again" -- but if everything worked like he's said, we wouldn't be facing plastic pollution that has grown fourfold over the past few decades. Thanks to concerted lobbying efforts, the public has been led to believe that recycling is the cure for our disastrous plastic addiction. What it does in actuality is place the burden of responsibility on the consumer and allow companies like Coca-Cola to get away with no repercussions for their waste.

Research Sid Assawaworrarit and his colleagues have outfitted an ordinary solar panel with a thermoelectric generator, capable of generating a small amount of electricity from the slight difference in temperature between the ambient air and the surface of a solar panel pointed deep into space. Interesting Engineering reports: "During the day, there's a light coming in from the Sun and hitting the solar cell, but during the night, something of a reverse happens," Assawaworrarit says. That's because solar panels -- like everything warmer than absolute zero -- emit infrared radiation. "There's actually light going out [from the solar panel], and we use that to generate electricity at night. The photons going out into the night sky actually cool down the solar cell," he says.

As those photons leave the skyward surface of the solar panel, they cary heat with them. That means that on a clear night -- when there are no clouds to reflect infrared light back toward the Earth -- the surface of a solar panel will be a few degrees cooler than the air around it. That temperature differential is what Assawaworrarit and his colleagues are taking advantage of. A device called a thermoelectric generator can capture some of the heat flowing from the warmer air to the cooler solar panel and convert it into electricity.

On a clear night, the device Assawaworrarit tested on the Stanford rooftop generates roughly fifty milliwatts for every square meter of solar panel (50 mW/m2). "I think that's probably a record number," he says. But Assawaworrarit and his team aren't stopping there. He says that with a couple of improvements (and in a good location) such a device could generate twice that amount of electricity. "The theoretical limit is probably about one or two watts per square meter," he says. "That's not a huge number, but there are a lot of applications" where that kind of energy at night would come in handy.

"For 50 years, interplanetary probes have returned thousands of striking images of the surface of Mars, but never a single sound." So says the largest fundamental science agency in Europe, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (France's state research organisation).

Then they made a surprising discovery, reports CBS News: Researchers studying recordings made by microphones on NASA's Perseverance rover found that sound travels much slower on Mars than it does on Earth... In addition, the researchers realized that there are two speeds of sound on Mars — one for high-pitched sounds and one for low-pitched sounds. This would "make it difficult for two people standing only five meters apart to have a conversation," according to a press release on the findings.

The unique sound environment is due to the incredibly low atmospheric surface pressure. Mars' pressure is 170 times lower than Earth's pressure. For example, if a high-pitched sound travels 213 feet on Earth, it will travel just 26 feet on Mars.

While sounds on Mars can be heard by human ears, they are incredibly soft. "At some point, we thought the microphone was broken, it was so quiet," said Sylvestre Maurice, an astrophysicist at the University of Toulouse in France and lead author of the study, according to NASA. Besides the wind, "natural sound sources are rare," the press release said.

But NASA scientists think Mars may become more noisy in the autumn months, when there is higher atmospheric pressure. "We are entering a high-pressure season," co-author of the study Baptiste Chide said in the press release. "Maybe the acoustic environment on Mars will be less quiet than it was when we landed."

"Following up on a 2020 submission, more samples and hi-res data have been added to NASA's research-grade Astromaterials 3D site," writes Slashdot reader White Yeti. "I don't see a new/news link, so here's text from the informal release statement." From the release: Astromaterials 3D, the first virtual library of NASA's collections of Apollo Lunar and Antarctic Meteorite samples, is releasing 20 new lunar and meteorite samples to the public this month! This launch also includes the release of an exciting new feature, called NASA Pins, which allows the public to view pre-selected sample characteristics on each rock's surface and within the XCT imagery, in order to share the incredible science these space rocks reveal. Each NASA Pin is curated by NASA Scientists and includes brief explanations about each pinned feature. This launch also includes the highly anticipated public release of the actual high-resolution OBJ files that the Astromaterials 3D team creates for each rock, easily and freely downloadable from every rock's page. Originally launched to the public in December 2020, the Astromaterials 3D Website and Explorer Application continues to grow, offering a dynamic, interactive, and information-rich visualization tool for researchers and the general public. Keep your eye on the site for this exciting forthcoming release: https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/astromaterials3d/.

schwit1 shares a report from EurekAlert: A nitrogen doped carbon-coated nickel anode can catalyze an essential reaction in hydrogen fuel cells at a fraction of the cost of the precious metals currently used, Cornell University researchers have found. The new discovery could accelerate the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells, which hold great promise as efficient, clean energy sources for vehicles and other applications. It's one of a string of discoveries for the Hector D. Abruna lab in their ongoing search for active, inexpensive, durable catalysts for use in alkaline fuel cells.

Recent experiments with nonprecious-metal HOR electrocatalysts needed to overcome two major challenges, the researchers wrote: low intrinsic activity from too strong a hydrogen binding energy, and poor durability due to rapid passivation from metal oxide formation. To overcome these challenges, the researchers designed a nickel-based electrocatalyst with a 2 nanometer shell made of nitrogen-doped carbon. Their hydrogen fuel cell has an anode (where hydrogen is oxidized) catalyst consisting of a solid nickel core surrounded by the carbon shell. When paired with a cobalt-manganese cathode (where oxygen is reduced), the resulting completely precious-metal-free hydrogen fuel cell outputs more than 200 milliwatts per square centimeter.

The presence of nickel oxide species on the surface of the nickel electrode slows the hydrogen oxidation reaction dramatically, Abruna said. The nitrogen-doped carbon coating serves as a protection layer and enhances the HOR kinetics, making the reaction quicker and much more efficient. In addition, the presence of the graphene coating on the nickel electrode prevents the formation of nickel oxides -- resulting in electrodes with dramatically enhanced lifetimes. These electrodes are also much more tolerant to carbon monoxide, which rapidly poisons platinum. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Existence of volcanoes makes idea that dwarf planet is inert ball of ice look increasingly improbable. From a report: Strung out in the icy reaches of our solar system, two peaks that tower over the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto have perplexed planetary scientists for years. Some speculated it could be an ice volcano, spewing out not lava but vast quantities of icy slush -- yet no cauldron-like caldera could be seen. Now a full analysis of images and topographical data suggests it is not one ice volcano but a merger of many -- some up to 7,000 metres tall and about 10-150km across. Their discovery has reignited another debate: what could be keeping Pluto warm enough to support volcanic activity? Sitting at the southern edge of a vast heart-shaped ice sheet, these unusual surface features were initially spotted when Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft flew past in July 2015, providing the first close-up images of the icy former planet and its moons.

"We were instantly intrigued by this area because it was so different and striking-looking," said Dr Kelsi Singer, a New Horizons co-investigator and deputy project scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "There are these giant broad mounds, and then this hummocky-like, undulating texture superimposed on top; and even on top of that there's a smaller bouldery kind of texture." At the time, an ice volcano seemed like the least-weird explanation for these features -- there were no impact craters from asteroids or meteors nearby, suggesting these features had been erased by relatively recent geological events; and no evidence of plate tectonics -- a key contributor to mountain formation on Earth.

"Microsoft has been struggling to reach a state of convergence between tablet and desktop ever since Windows 8 and the original Surface," argues Neowin, adding "If we're using Windows 11 as a barometer of their progress, they'll likely never get there...."

But meanwhile, writes Slashdot reader segaboy81, "KDE's new swipe gesture is awesome. It's about 1000% smoother than the overview in Windows 11 and the swiping mechanism is easier, too. Is KDE getting better for tablets?"

From Neowin's report: Starting in KDE Plasma 5.25, users with touch screen devices will be able to enter their tasks and virtual desktops overview by simply swiping down from the top edge, but with a special twist. The scale of the windows directly follows the path of your finger. The result is every bit as fluid as you might imagine. While you can achieve the same result in Windows 11 with a simple three-finger swipe up, this implementation looks great and performs great too.

"Pong on a Commodore 64 is one thing... but Pong in a single C64 sprite? That's uncharted territory," writes Slashdot reader segaboy81.

Neowin reports: The Commodore 64 is an iconic machine. For many of us boomers, it was our introduction to programming... Josip Retro Bits is a YouTube channel that specializes in fun challenges on old hardware like the Commodore 64. In an older video, Josip creates a game of Pong using Basic. On the surface, this doesn't sound very interesting, but it's a real challenge because Basic is very limited when compared to writing machine code. Basically, the C64 is perfectly capable of a game like Pong, but not really in Basic. Spoiler alert: he does it. However, a commenter on that video had a novel idea. How about creating an entire game of Pong in a single spite?
That's a 24 x 21 pixels object. ("It can be seen as a bigger programmable character that can be moved on hardware on steps of one pixel," explains one tech blog.) And another spoiler alert: he does it again.

Here's the repository for the "Tiny Pong" code. It's written in C, with functions like drawScreen() and batSound().

And about 18 minutes into the video, he not only plays a game of Pong inside the sprite — he simultaneously makes that sprite move around the screen like the ball in a game of Pong.

Apple argued in court papers this week that appeals filings by Epic Games don't point to legal errors by a US District Court judge who ruled last year that the iPhone maker hadn't violated antitrust laws with its App Store. Instead, Apple cited the many times the judge said Epic had "failed to demonstrate," "failed to show" and "failed to prove" the facts of its case. From a report: "On the facts and the law, the court correctly decided every issue presented in Epic's appeal," Apple lawyers wrote in the company's filing. They repeated earlier arguments that Epic is attempting to fundamentally change the App Store. "While these appeals are both important and complex, resolving the issues should not be difficult: Applying settled precedent to the adjudicated facts requires ruling for Apple across the board." Apple's 135-page filing is the latest in the legal battle it's been fighting with Epic since August 2020. On the surface, the two companies are battling over who gets how much when consumers spend money on the App Store. Apple is fighting to maintain control of its App Store, which has become such a key feature of its iPhones that the company's ads saying "there's an app for that" are referenced in crossword puzzles and on the trivia TV show Jeopardy.

Over the past couple of years, though, Apple's runaway success with its App Store has been challenged. Epic, which makes the hit online battle game Fortnite, argued that Apple should loosen its control. In emails, court filings and public statements, Epic has said Apple should allow alternative app stores onto the iPhone and iPad, something it currently doesn't allow. Epic also says Apple should free developers to use alternative payment processors in their apps, rather than Apple's current rule requiring they use only its App Store, through which Apple takes a cut of in-app purchases on its devices.

An international team of researchers analyzing the sounds captured by the Perseverance rover has determined the speed of sound on Mars. Phys.org reports: Baptiste Chide, with Los Alamos National Laboratory, gave a presentation (PDF) at this year's 53rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference outlining the findings by the team. [...] Chide reported that the team has used data from the microphone to measure the speed of sound on Mars. This was done by measuring the amount of time it took for sounds emanating from laser blasts from Perseverance to return to the rover's microphone. The laser blasts were used to vaporize nearby rocks to learn more about their composition. They found sound to be traveling on Mars at approximately 240 m/s. But they also found that different frequencies of sound travel at different speeds on Mars. The speed increases by approximately 10 m/s above 400 Hz. This finding suggests that communication would be extremely difficult on Mars with different parts of speech arriving to listeners at different times, making conversations sound garbled.

Chide says the microphone also allowed for measuring temperature on Mar's surface in and around the rover. This is because sound travels at different speeds depending on temperature. By measuring sound speed every time Perseverance fired its laser, the researchers were able to calculate rapid temperature changes. Chide also noted that the research team plans to continue monitoring and analyzing sounds from Mars over the course of a year to learn more about fluctuations during different events on the planet, such as during the winter months or when dust storms kick up.

NASA plans to encourage the development of another commercial vehicle that can land its Artemis astronauts on the moon. Space.com reports: In April 2021, NASA picked SpaceX to build the first crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program, which is working to put astronauts on the moon in the mid-2020s and establish a sustainable human presence on and around Earth's nearest neighbor by the end of the decade. But SpaceX apparently won't have the moon-landing market cornered: NASA announced today (March 23) that it plans to support the development of a second privately built crewed lunar lander.

"This strategy expedites progress toward a long-term, sustaining lander capability as early as the 2026 or 2027 timeframe," Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for the Human Landing System Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said in a statement today. "We expect to have two companies safely carry astronauts in their landers to the surface of the moon under NASA's guidance before we ask for services, which could result in multiple experienced providers in the market," Watson-Morgan added. [...] Congress is "committed to ensuring that we have more than one lander to choose [from] for future missions," [NASA Administrator Bill Nelson] said during a news conference today, citing conversations he's had with people on Capitol Hill over the past year. "We're expecting to have both Congress support and that of the Biden administration," Nelson said. "And we're expecting to get this competition started in the fiscal year [20]23 budget."

Exact funding amounts and other details should be coming next week when the White House releases its 2023 federal budget request, he added. "So what we're doing today is a bit of a preview," Nelson said. "I think you'll find it's an indication that there are good things to come for this agency and, if we're right, good things to come for all of humanity." NASA plans to release a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the second moon lander by the end of the month and a final RFP later this spring, agency officials said. If all goes according to plan, NASA will pick the builder of the new vehicle in early 2023. That craft will have the ability to dock with Gateway, the small moon-orbiting space station that NASA plans to build, and take people and scientific gear from there to the surface (and back). This newly announced competition will be open to all American companies except SpaceX. But Elon Musk's company will have the opportunity to negotiate the terms of its existing contract to perform additional lunar development work, NASA officials said during today's news conference.

Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas were trying to understand how water might behave under the high pressures inside distant planets.

But along the way the team discovered a new form of ice, reports Phys.org, "redefining the properties of water at high pressures." Solid water, or ice, is like many other materials in that it can form different solid materials based on variable temperature and pressure conditions, like carbon forming diamond or graphite. However, water is exceptional in this aspect as there are at least 20 solid forms of ice known to us.

A team of scientists working in UNLV's Nevada Extreme Conditions Lab pioneered a new method for measuring the properties of water under high pressure. The water sample was first squeezed between the tips of two opposite-facing diamonds — freezing into several jumbled ice crystals. The ice was then subjected to a laser-heating technique that temporarily melted it before it quickly re-formed into a powder-like collection of tiny crystals. By incrementally raising the pressure, and periodically blasting it with the laser beam, the team observed the water ice make the transition from a known cubic phase, Ice-VII, to the newly discovered intermediate, and tetragonal, phase, Ice-VIIt, before settling into another known phase, Ice-X....

While it's unlikely we'll find this new phase of ice anywhere on the surface of Earth, it is likely a common ingredient within the mantle of Earth as well as in large moons and water-rich planets outside of our solar system. The team's findings were reported in the March 17 issue of the journal Physical Review B.... The work also recalibrates our understanding of the composition of exoplanets, UNLV physicist Ashkan Salamat added. Researchers hypothesize that the Ice-VIIt phase of ice could exist in abundance in the crust and upper mantle of expected water-rich planets outside of our solar system, meaning they could have conditions habitable for life.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the story...

sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: For years, scientists have believed frigid craters at the Moon's poles hold water ice, which would be both a scientific boon and a potential resource for human missions. Now, researchers have discovered (PDF) a reason why the ice has persisted on an otherwise bone-dry world: Some polar craters may be protected by ancient magnetic fields. Researchers have known about the anomalies ever since the Apollo 15 and 16 missions in 1971 and 1972, when astronauts measured regions of unusual magnetic strength on the surface. Some anomalies are now known to be up to hundreds of kilometers across. Although their origin is debated, one possibility is they were created more than 4 billion years ago when the Moon had a magnetic field and iron-rich asteroids crashed into its surface. The resultant molten material may have been permanently magnetized.

Thousands of the anomalies are thought to exist across the lunar surface, but the team mapped ones at the south pole in detail using data from Japan's Kaguya spacecraft, which orbited the Moon from 2007 to 2009. They found at least two permanently shadowed craters that were overlapped by these anomalies, the Sverdrup and Shoemaker craters, and there are likely more. Although the remnant fields are thousands of times weaker than Earth's, they could be sufficient to deflect the solar wind. Craters with known anomalies could become prime targets for science and exploration. NASA is already planning to visit the south polar region with a rover due for launch next year, called VIPER, and the agency intends to send humans there later this decade as part of its Artemis program. Studying the ice could reveal how it was delivered, which may in turn shed light on how Earth got its water.

PowerPoint presentations may change in the next few months, as Microsoft integrates live and pre-recorded video into presentations you view and create. From a report: Microsoft's engineering teams are always hard at work launching features, and today marks Microsoft's spring 2022 update of sorts, on a variety of different subjects. Microsoft announced a new Surface Hub-specific webcam, updated features to Teams and other productivity apps, and some specific improvements to how Microsoft deals with workers who are returning to the office. For that matter, Microsoft also released a survey noting that many workers aren't all that interested in returning to work, either preferring to work remotely or as a hybrid of at-home and in-person work.

PowerPoint touches many different lives and careers (even holiday parties) so it's not surprising that two of the most important announcements involve it. Specifically, Microsoft is merging PowerPoint Cameo with its Recording Studio function, so you'll have more ways to deliver video as part of presentations. PowerPoint Cameo takes an idea that has appeared in mmhmm and other solutions: It captures a small live feed of you talking through your slides, and integrates that with the presentation. All Recording Studio does is simply add the capability to pre-record that video, so you'll have the option of presenting live or pre-recording the video so others can review it on their own time -- as we've seen already happen with the ability to record Teams calls, for example.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Foxconn, the biggest assembler of Apple iPhones, is in talks with Saudi Arabia about jointly building a $9 billion multipurpose facility (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) that could make microchips, electric-vehicle components and other electronics like displays, according to people familiar with the matter. The Saudi government is reviewing an offer from the company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., to build a dual-line foundry for surface-mount technology and wafer fabrication in Neom, a tech-focused city-state the kingdom is developing in the desert, the people said. Discussions over the project started last year, they said. The Saudis are conducting due diligence and benchmarking the offer against others that Foxconn has made for similar projects globally, one of the people said. Besides Saudi Arabia, Foxconn is also talking with the United Arab Emirates about potentially siting the project there, one of the people said.

The Taiwan-based company has looked to diversify its manufacturing sites amid rising tensions between China and the U.S. that put it in a potentially vulnerable spot. Riyadh wants the company to guarantee that it would direct at least two-thirds of the foundry's production into Foxconn's existing supply chain, one of the people said, to ensure there are buyers for its products and the project is ultimately profitable. Foxconn is seeking large incentives including financing, tax holidays and subsidies for power and water in exchange for helping set up a high-tech manufacturing sector in the kingdom, the people said, as Saudi Arabia seeks to diversify its economy away from oil. The Saudis could offer direct equity co-investment, industrial development loans, low-interest debt from local banks and export credits to compete with other jurisdictions that Foxconn might consider, said another person familiar with the talks.

"The European Space Agency has announced it has chosen a team to make oxygen on the moon," reports Digital Trends.

"The team, led by aerospace manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, will design and build a payload to create oxygen from lunar soil." [C]arrying oxygen into space using rockets is inefficient, so it would be better if astronauts could find ways to make what they need in the places they are exploring. This principle is called in-situ resource utilization and is a key idea for future missions to the moon and Mars.

The payload for the moon will be designed to create between 50 and 100 grams of oxygen from the dusty material which covers the moon, called regolith. The aim is to extract 70% of the available oxygen in the sample within a 10 day period. That time limit is because it will need to operate within the window of available solar power in a lunar day, which is around two weeks long.

Previous experiments and concepts have shown that it is possible to extract oxygen from lunar regolith, which is made up of around 40 — 45% oxygen by weight. Now, the challenge is to make a workable system within the constraints of size and materials.
A systems engineer from the space agency's design facility has high hopes for the project, according to a statement released Wednesday. "Being able to extract oxygen from moonrock, along with useable metals, will be a game-changer for lunar exploration, allowing the international explorers set to return to the Moon to 'live off the land' without being dependent on long and expensive terrestrial supply lines."