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Submission + - SPAM: Sunspot Activity on The Sun Is Seriously Exceeding Official Predictions

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Weather predictions here on Earth are more accurate than they've ever been; trying to predict the behavior of our wild and wacky Sun is a little more tricky.

Case in point: according to official predictions, the current cycle of solar activity should be mild. But the gap between the prediction and what's actually happening is pretty significant – and it's getting wider. Sunspot counts, used as a measure for solar activity, are way higher than the predicted values calculated by the NOAA, NASA, and the International Space Environmental Service.

"Scientists have struggled to predict both the length and the strength of sunspot cycles because we lack a fundamental understanding of the mechanism that drives the cycle," McIntosh said at the time.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Raspberry Pi OS Ditches Longtime User Account For Security Reasons (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since its launch, the Raspberry Pi OS (and most operating systems based on it) has shipped with a default "pi" user account, making it simpler to boot up a Pi and start working without needing to hook up the device to a monitor or go through a multi-step setup process. But as of today, that's changing—new installs of the Raspberry Pi OS are shedding that default user account for both security and regulatory reasons.

Raspberry Pi Foundation software engineer Simon Long explains the thinking in this blog post. "[The "pi" user account] could potentially make a brute-force attack slightly easier, and in response to this, some countries are now introducing legislation to forbid any Internet-connected device from having default login credentials," he writes. This move will improve the Pi operating system's security.

Before, even if you assigned a good password to the "pi" account, attackers could still assume with a reasonable degree of certainty that most Raspberry Pi boards were using the "pi" username. Many Pi OS-based operating systems also ship with the default "pi" user account enabled and are completely passwordless, requiring extra steps to assign the account a password in the first place. The flip side is that the change could break some software and scripts, particularly those that are hard-coded to use the "pi" user account and home folder.

Submission + - Tesla Officially Opens Texas Gigafactory (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla opened its Austin, Texas-based Gigafactory on Thursday, a crucial step in the company’s delayed plans to begin production of its electric Cybertruck. To celebrate the opening, Tesla held an event, billed as a “Cyber Rodeo,” to which it invited 15,000 people to listen to live music, eat food, and pay homage to Elon Musk and his company. “We are really entering a new phase of Tesla’s future,” Musk told the audience. Clad in a black cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses, Musk said he was excited to begin working on Cybertruck production at last. “I can’t wait to see this baby in production, it’s going to be epic.”

Along with a new version of the Cybertruck, Musk also showed off a new Roadster vehicle, which is slated to begin production next year. He also teased a robotaxi he said would look “quite futuristic” but didn’t elaborate or provide any details. It is the company’s fourth factory in the US, following the vehicle factory in Fremont, California, battery factory in Sparks, Nevada, and solar factory in Buffalo, New York. Tesla also has a vehicle factory outside Shanghai, China, and recently opened its first European factory near Berlin, Germany. Tesla spent an estimated $5 million purchasing the land outside Austin, plus another $1.1 billion to build the plant. “We need a place where we can be really big, and there’s no place like Texas,” Musk said. “We going to move to a truly massive scale.”

The Texas factory is expected to be the site where, starting in 2023, Tesla will make its long-delayed Cybertruck. Indications that the Cybertruck would be delayed first emerged last year, when the online reservation page was changed and then later withdrawn from the site. Musk had said that he expected a few trucks to be delivered to customers by the end of 2021, but no deliveries were ever made. The Cybertruck has already gone through some changes since its initial reveal in 2019 — including the addition of a comically oversized single windshield wiper, traditional folding mirrors, and invisible door handles. In addition to the Cybertruck, Tesla also plans to build Model Ys and Model 3s destined for the East Coast, as well as the long-delayed Tesla Semi. The company has already started to build Model Y crossovers at the unfinished Texas Gigafactory in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the company’s latest earnings report.

Submission + - PlayStation Network is nagging its users into receiving promotional emails.

Submitted by devslash0
devslash0 writes: Earlier today, PlayStation Network (PSN) released an update to its platform. One of the changes included introducing a screen asking users to update their pubic profile and choose in which way they would like to receive "information about new products, special offers and other promotions about PlayStation and Sony from Sony Interactive Entertainment". (click).

Even though selecting none of the options is a perfectly allowed and valid choice, especially from the point of GDPR, if the user select none of the presented methods, they will be asked to choose on every boot of the console which in effect forces the user to agree to at least one marketing method or face seeing the selection screen forever.

There are currently multiple theories circulating why this is happening, including:
  • software bug (developers checking if there's at least one selection, instead of whether the user made a choice or not).
  • or a deliberate move to promote Sony's content, including their all-new PlaysStation Plus service .

Whatever the reason, this move has caused a great annoyance and anger among PS4 users and raised a serious question of where it stands in regards to data protection regulations in Europe.

Submission + - SPAM: Breakthrough could tackle diseases of ageing 1

Submitted by Thelasko
Thelasko writes: Prof Reik's team used the IPS technique on 53-year-old skin cells. But they cut short the chemical bath from 50 days to around 12. Dr Dilgeet Gill was astonished to find that the cells had not turned into embryonic stem cells — but had rejuvenated into skin cells that looked and behaved as if they came from a 23-year old.

The technique cannot immediately be translated to the clinic because the IPS method increases the risk of cancers. But Prof Reik was confident that now it was known that it is possible to rejuvenate cells, his team could find an alternative, safer method.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - U.S. Government Apparently Investigated UFO Related Abductions and Pregnancies (msn.com) 1

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: In what seems like a development straight out of the 'X-Files', a newly released trove of 1574 pages was obtained via a FOIA request related to the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP):

"The bombshell Freedom of Information haul includes reports on the DIA's research into the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans. And this includes burns, heart problems, sleep disturbances — and even bizarre occurrences such as "apparent abduction" and "unaccounted for pregnancy"."

Also revealed is an as-yet unknown classification system used by the U.S. government for categorizing the various types of paranormal encounters one may experience:

"One fascinating document included in an Acquisition Threat Support report, sets out how to categorise "anomalous behaviour" — with encounters with "ghosts, yetis, spirits, elves and other mythical/ legendary entities" classed as "AN3". Seeing a UFO with aliens on board would be "CE3"."

Submission + - Physics Standard Model will require revision due to unexpected experimental data (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: An elementary particle, the W boson, is much more massive than expected, putting it at odds with the Standard Model. This new value was extracted from 10 years of experiments and calculations by 400 researchers at 54 different institutions around the world in a massive effort. All the data was collected from experiments at the four-story-tall, 4,500-ton Collider Detector at Fermilab’s Tevatron accelerator near Chicago, Illinois.

The Standard Model predicts a value for the W boson mass, a value the team sought to measure by assessing 4 million W boson candidates generated by collisions between protons and antiprotons at Fermilab. Their result was higher than the Standard Model’s prediction by a whopping seven standard deviations. Kotwal, who’s published five increasingly precise measurements of the particle’s mass over the last 28 years, said that “the odds of the 7 standard deviation increase being a statistical fluke are less than 1 in a billion.”

But now, with an extraordinarily precise measurement so different from previous measurements, physicists have the unenviable task of figuring out what the Standard Model doesn’t account for.

Comment Re:What did they expect? (Score 1) 74

by cmarkn (#61830063) Attached to: Apple Bans Fortnite Until Appeals Are Exhausted in Legal Fight
As an Apple shareholder, I'm amazed that Epic ever got this into court. Apple developed and built the iPhone into a huge installed base without Epic. Now Epic wants to steal that base and not pay anything for it while they make billions (with a 'B') from it. If Epic wants a platform they don't have to pay to use, they can build their own, just like real game companies do. Nothing is stopping them. Google would probably even let them use Android for it.

Submission + - Texas abortion snitch website is getting booted off its domain (rawstory.com) 2

Submitted by nickwinlund77
nickwinlund77 writes: On Friday, The Verge reported that the website set up by Texas Right to Life to allow concerned citizens anywhere to snitch on anyone who helps a woman procure an abortion is having its registration revoked by GoDaddy.

"'We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service,' a spokesperson told The New York Times," reported Sean Hollister. "GoDaddy didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about whether that applies to the group's other domains, or which terms of service the site violated — but it's probably the part where the company doesn't let anyone 'collect or harvest' any personal information 'about another User or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent.'"

The website — set up to enforce Texas' new draconian abortion ban that allows $10,000 civil bounties on people who "intend to procure" abortions for women past the sixth week of pregnancy — has been flooded with Shrek memes and other content designed to drown out its purpose for days.

But a tech journalist for Gizmodo speculated this week the site could be taken down more effectively by lodging complaints with GoDaddy, pointing out that abortion snitching amounts to non-consensual data collection.

Comment Re:Can Anybody Even Fix a Thirty-Year-Old Computer (Score 3, Informative) 111

The James Webb Space Telescope has been in the works since 1996, originally scheduled to launch in 2007. It's currently scheduled to launch by the end of this year but has no firm launch date yet. But it doesn't matter since we don't have anything that could go to repair Hubble anyway.

Submission + - Green Roads On The Go CBD Fruit Bites Gummie Snacks – 50mg (marijuana-direct.com)

Submitted by marijuanadirect
marijuanadirect writes: Green Roads CBD Fruit Snacks include a moderate dose of CBD and heavy dose of tropical flavor! Including Green Apple, Grape, Lemon, Black Cherry, Strawberry, and Orange, these snacks are the ideal CBD snack that can be incorporated into anyone’s daily routine. Pharmacist formulated and third party lab tested to ensure that what’s on the label is what’s in the package. Furthermore, all of our products are infused with hemp-derived CBD/phytocannabinoid-rich (PCR) oil, the direct product of supercritical CO2 extraction and winterization to ensure that only CBD – and no unwanted plant products or cannabinoids – are included in our final products.

Submission + - SPAM: U.S. Issues Ransomware Protection Guidance for Critical Infrastructure

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: CISA and the FBI issued ransomware guidance late Tuesday in response to the Colonial Pipeline attack that has created energy shortages on the East Coast.

The alert didn't name Colonial, but nonetheless shed light on the extent of the attack and DarkSide's methods.

"The company proactively disconnected operational technology (OT) systems upon discovering the attack, the alert said, noting that 'there are no indications that the threat actor moved laterally to OT systems,'" eSecurity Planet wrote.

Despite those efforts, the pipeline is expected to remain shuttered for days.
Link to Original Source

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