153896365
submission
Thelasko writes:
Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel Dune gets a new film adaptation—this one helmed by Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049)—later this month. But before Ars Technica reviews the movie, there's the matter of its predecessor: 1984's Dune, made by a then up-and-coming filmmaker named David Lynch.
Detractors call Lynch's saga—a tale of two noble space families 8,000 years in the future, fighting over the most valuable resource in the universe amidst sandworms the size of aircraft carriers—incomprehensible, stilted, and ridiculous. It lost piles of money. Yet fans, especially in recent years, have reclaimed Lynch's film as a magnificent folly, a work of holy, glorious madness.Link to Original Source
153445695
submission
Thelasko writes:
A US nuclear submarine hit an "unknown object" while submerged in waters in the Asia-Pacific region, injuring a number of sailors, US officials say.
It was not clear what caused the incident on Saturday, they said. The submarine remained "fully operational".
Unnamed officials told US media the collision happened in international waters in the South China Sea, and that 11 sailors had been injured.
The incident happened amid rising tensions in the region.
The US Navy said the extent of the damage was still being assessed and that the submarine's nuclear propulsion plant and spaces had not been affected.
The statement did not give details about where the incident took place or the number of people hurt, saying only that the injuries were not "life threatening".
153270057
submission
Thelasko writes:
Russia has taken the lead in a space race with a difference, sending a team to the International Space Station to shoot a feature film ahead of an American crew.
Filming will take part in the Russian section of the ISS and the mission has proved contentious in Russia's space industry.
The feature film is the brainchild of the Roscosmos chief, who at one point fired the space agency's head of crewed missions in a row over the project.
152354533
submission
Thelasko writes:
Each new U.S. president scrambled NASA’s priorities; Bigelow told Mystery Wire. He said this led to delays and impediments to private space developments. His work force expanded and contracted several times.
The pandemic proved the final nail. Bigelow Aerospace was shut down. His entire workforce was laid off, and it is unlikely he will ever reopen the plant.
Private space races are risky, even for billionaires, but Robert Bigelow knows the other billionaires in the space game will eventually need to address the missing piece.
If more people are going to spend more time in space, they will need a place to stay.Link to Original Source
152117401
submission
Thelasko writes:
"We have banned seven users and desysopped a further 12 as a result of long and deep investigations into activities around some members of the unrecognized group Wikimedians of Mainland China," Dennis wrote. "We have also reached out to a number of other editors with explanations around canvassing guidelines and doxing policies and requests to modify their behaviors."
The letter and statement don't explain the source of the conflict, but do mention "recent world events" as one catalyst.
152006631
submission
Thelasko writes:
A new "massive" undersea transatlantic communications cable has been brought ashore on a beach in Cornwall.
The Google data cable, called Grace Hopper, was landed in Bude on Tuesday.
Once operational, it would have the capacity to handle "17.5 million people streaming 4K video concurrently", Google bosses said.
The cable has been laid between New York in the United States, Bilbao in Spain and Bude over several months, and is expected to be operational in 2022.
It was part of a "new generation" of lines that "connect continents along the ocean floor with an additional layer of security beyond what's available over the public internet", Google said.
151950669
submission
Thelasko writes:
The push to roll out Covid-19 booster shots is not being driven by sound scientific evidence, according to a group of international researchers writing in the the Lancet medical journal Monday, who said available evidence shows vaccines to be highly effective against the delta coronavirus variant and that unwarranted messaging about booster doses undermines overall confidence in vaccines.
150842911
submission
Thelasko writes:
If you have to pick one, what is your favorite tech company?
Apple Inc.
Alphabet Inc.
Facebook
Microsoft
Amazon
Other (in comments. "I hate them all" isn't an answer)
149945919
submission
Thelasko writes:
The American SpaceX company has stacked the biggest rocket ever constructed.
The vehicle's two segments — an upper-stage called Starship and a booster called Super Heavy — were connected together at the firm's Starbase R&D facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
Standing roughly 120m (400ft) in height, it dwarfs any previous rocket system.
When it eventually lifts off, it will produce about twice the thrust of the vehicles that sent men to the Moon.
149892611
submission
Thelasko writes:
A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles is pushing pro-China narratives and attempting to discredit those seen as opponents of China's government, according to a new study.
The aim is to delegitimise the West and boost China's influence and image overseas, the report by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) suggests.
149795277
submission
Thelasko writes:
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has thrown out frivolous protests filed by Blue Origin and Dynetics after NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9B contract to develop a crewed Starship Moon lander.
In mid-April, NASA announced that it had chosen SpaceX and SpaceX alone to develop a Starship-derived lander capable of returning humanity to the Moon more than half a century after astronauts last stepped foot on Earth’s neighbor. Ultimately, in the context of dismal Congressional support, NASA analyzed proposals submitted by SpaceX, Dynetics, and a Blue Origin-led team and concluded that Congress had only provided enough funding for the space agency to pick a single provider.Link to Original Source
149331321
submission
Thelasko writes:
A Russian rocket has departed the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, to deliver a new science module to the International space station (ISS).
The 13m-long, 20-tonne Nauka laboratory will go on the rear of the orbiting platform, connected to the other major Russian segments, Zvezda and Zarya.
The new module carries with it a large robotic arm (ERA) supplied by the European Space Agency (Esa).
Nauka is much delayed. It was originally supposed to launch in 2007.
But it suffered repeated slips in schedule, in part because of budget difficulties but also because engineers encountered a raft of technical problems during development.
The module will result in a significant boost in habitable volume for the ISS, raising it by 70 cubic metres.
149085625
submission
Thelasko writes:
Culley ordered those seeds herself, Amazon told me. I took this with a grain of salt. Culley had mentioned that she had bought seeds much earlier in the year, and this matched a pattern I’d observed—that many people who received mystery seeds had previously made genuine seed orders. Maybe, I speculated, the brushers thought it made sense to send something that the recipients were used to receiving.
I assumed that Amazon was speciously linking these different events. I asked Culley to go into her order history and pull out her invoices, so we could show that the seeds she knew she had ordered had been delivered long before the mystery seeds arrived.
What she found was not what she—or I—expected.
On April 25, Culley had ordered three packets of seeds from three different sellers: 100 clematis-flower seeds from C-Pioneer for $1.99, 100 clematis-vine seeds from zhang-yubryy for $1.53, and 25 wisteria seeds from DIANHzu1 for $1.99. Unbeknownst to Culley, these sellers were all Chinese, based in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Changsha, respectively. Each seller had more negative reviews than positive ones, many complaining about seeds that were delayed, or hadn’t arrived, or had arrived identified as jewelry. And crucially, Culley’s three April orders, the records showed, had not been shipped until between June 15, 2020, and July 7, 2020.
Duggan was somewhat abashed when it all came back to her. “That was, as my kids call it, the OG pandemic, the original pandemic, when we were baking and sewing and doing all that kind of stuff We weren’t going anywhere; we weren’t seeing anyone; we were hunkered down. That was the mode we were in, and that was the impetus: Oh, maybe I’ll plant some seeds.” When they didn’t come, she forgot all about them, and bought some young lettuces and tomatoes at a plant sale instead. When, months later, the mystery seeds from China arrived, she did momentarily wonder about her previous order, but was too thrown off by the weirdness of the packages to imagine that a sufficient explanation.
148645182
submission
Thelasko writes:
A US police officer played a Taylor Swift song on his phone in a bid to prevent activists who were filming him uploading the video to YouTube.
The video platform regularly removes videos that break music copyright rules.
However, the officer's efforts were in vain as the clip of the encounter in Oakland, California promptly went viral.
148527790
submission
Thelasko writes:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up three cases that relate to constitutional requirements for U.S. border searches of electronic devices like laptops and cell phones.
In one of the cases, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the justices to review a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in which a three-judge panel ruled in February that U.S. border agents don't need warrants to search travelers' smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry.
