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Submission + - CubeSat Rocket Thruster Is So Small It Has To Be Made Like Microchips (newatlas.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Imperial College is developing a rocket thruster called the Iridium Catalysed Electrolysis CubeSat Thruster (ICE-Cube Thruster) that is so small that it can only be fabricated using techniques originally designed for making silicon chips. The entire thruster chip is about the length of a fingernail, with the combustion chamber and nozzle only measuring 1 mm long. It also requires only 20 watts of electric current to operate and in a test campaign generated 1.25 millinewtons of thrust at a specific impulse of 185 seconds on a sustained basis. To put that into perspective, that's half a billion times less thrust than the engines used on the Space Shuttle.

However, the party trick of the ICE-Cube Thruster is that it uses ordinary water as its propellant, which is about as non-explosive and non-flammable as you can get. Onboard electric current creates electrolysis to break down the water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is fed into the combustion chamber to ignite, generating thrust to maneuver the CubeSat. Using water is not only very green, it also reduces payload because no pressurization is needed to store it, so storage and handling systems can be lighter and simpler. However, fabricating the combustion chamber and nozzle for the thruster in what is essentially two dimensions required taking a page from microelectronics by using the Micro-Electrical Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technique normally employed for machining silicon wafers for processors to sub-micrometer tolerances.

Submission + - Conditions On Earth May Be Moving Outside the Safe Operating Space For Humanity (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries. The scientists analyzed nine interlinked “planetary boundaries,” which they define as thresholds the world needs to stay within to ensure a stable, livable planet. These include climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and land use, and the impact of synthetic chemicals and aerosols. Human activities have breached safe levels for six of these boundaries and are pushing the world outside a “safe operating space” for humanity, according to the report, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The nine boundaries, first set out in a 2009 paper, aim to establish a set of defined “limits” on changes humans are making to the planet – from pumping out planet-heating pollution to clearing forests for farming. Beyond these limits, the theory goes, the risk of destabilizing conditions on Earth increases dramatically. The limits are designed to be conservative, to enable society to solve the problems before reaching a “very high risk zone,” said Katherine Richardson, a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author on the report. She pointed to the unprecedented summer of extreme weather the world has just experienced at 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming. “We didn’t think it was going to be like this at 1 degree [Celsius]” she said. “No human has experienced the conditions that we’re experiencing right now,” she added.

Of the three boundaries that scientists found are still within a safe space, two of them – ocean acidification and the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere – are moving in the wrong direction. There is some good news, however. The ozone layer was on the wrong side of the boundary in the 1990s, Richardson said. But thanks to international cooperation to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, it is on track to recover completely. Crossing planetary boundaries does not mean the world has reached a disastrous tipping point. Hitting one does not mean “falling off a cliff,” Richardson said. But it is a clear warning signal. The significance of the planetary boundaries model is that it doesn’t analyze climate and biodiversity in isolation, the report authors said. Instead, it looks at the interaction of both, as well as a host of other ways humans are affecting the planet. Breaching one boundary is likely to have knock-on effects for others.

Submission + - The IM1 meteorite was of extrasolar composition

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: An update to a previous slashdot article.

Spherules recovered from the IM1 meteorite by Avi Loeb have been analyzed, and found to be of extrasolar composition.

Technical details can be found here, and a readable accounting of the analysis and results can be found on Avi Loeb's blog.

An interesting read. The next step is to go back and see if large chunks of the meteorite can be retrieved.

Submission + - What happens when you cross a gas turbine with an internal combustion engine? (driving.ca)

Submitted by Inzkeeper
Inzkeeper writes: Here is another radical replacement for the traditional combustion engine.
Check out the Astron Aerospace H2 Starfire Omega 1
. Astron Aerospace is makes turbines for commercial jet engines.
However, they have come up with a novel way to make an ICE engine with a turbine configuration.
This raises engine thermal efficiency from 35% for ICE engines to 80%.
From https://www.hotcars.com/omega-...:

Even though the Omega 1 is around the size of a regular sewing machine, it packs a punch well above its weight. The entire engine only weighs in at around 35 lbs and the system produces in the region of 160 hp and 170 lb-ft – around the same as a non-sporty turbocharged 2.0-liter 4-cylinder. Unfortunately, Astron Aerospace is not able to tell the cubic size of the engine, but we expect it to follow the traditional rotaries’ smaller capacities.

Although there is a working prototype, there are still many hurdles to overcome to get this to mass market.

Submission + - Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found (chemistryworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A world-beating deposit of lithium along the Nevada–Oregon border could meet surging demand for this metal, according to a new analysis.

An estimated 20 to 40 million tonnes of lithium metal lie within a volcanic crater formed around 16 million years ago. This is notably larger than the lithium deposits found beneath a Bolivian salt flat, previously considered the largest deposit in the world.

‘If you believe their back-of-the-envelope estimation, this is a very, very significant deposit of lithium,’ says Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven University and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. ‘It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply and geopolitics.’

New in situ analysis reveals that an unusual claystone, composed of the mineral illite, contains 1.3% to 2.4% of lithium in the volcanic crater. This is almost double the lithium present in the main lithium-bearing clay mineral, magnesium smectite, which is more common than illite.

CHINA HAD BETTER HURRY AND BRIBE SOME GREEN ACTIVISTS TO BE SURE WE CAN’T EXPLOIT IT

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Submission + - UNESCO: Dependence on Tech Caused 'Staggering' Education Inequality

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: A report from UNESCO, the United Nations' educational and cultural organization, says that overreliance on remote learning technology during the pandemic led to 'staggering' education inequality around the world (alt link). It was, according to a 655-page report that UNESCO released on Wednesday, a worldwide "ed-tech tragedy." Some of the main findings of the report (An Ed-Tech Tragedy?) include: 1. The promise of education technology was overstated, 2. Remote online learning worsened education disparities, 3. Learning was hindered and altered, 4. Regulation and guardrails are needed.

The release of the cautionary UNESCO report questioning the technology-centric education experiences of the pandemic period comes as tech-backed nonprofit Code.org veers a bit from its stated mission ("to give every student in every school the opportunity to learn CS") to team up with fellow pandemic remote learning provider and tech-backed nonprofit Kahn Academy to promote "the groundbreaking world of artificial intelligence (AI) and its transformative potential in education," introducing an online learning series called AI 101 for Teachers, part of the new TeachAI initiative ("Empowering educators to teach with AI and about AI") led by Code.org and Khan Academy with partners Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, and Meta. All six of these private sector organizations earned mentions in the UNESCO report for their control of or influence on public education.

Separately, Amazon coincidentally on Wednesday explained how it's helping to address STEM education inequality by providing children with online virtual field trips that "explore Amazon’s technologies" and by partnering with nonprofit online learning providers Code.org, ProjectSTEM, and BootUp to bring free computer science programming to elementary, middle, and high schools. Thanks to the free online CS curriculum it provides, Amazon explained, "Teachers do not need prior experience in computer science." Amazon reported in March that it will be "providing access to computer science education for 2 million students, across almost 8,000 U.S. schools, by the end of the 2022–2023 academic year," while Code.org reports it had already 'prepared' 106,547 new CS teachers across grades K-12 by the end of 2019.

Submission + - The End of Airbnb In New York (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Thousands of Airbnbsand short-term rentals are about to be wiped off the map in New York City. Local Law 18, which came into force Tuesday, is so strict it doesn’t just limit how Airbnb operates in the city—it almost bans it entirely for many guests and hosts. From now on, all short-term rental hosts in New York must register with the city, and only those who live in the place they’re renting—and are present when someone is staying—can qualify. And people can only have two guests.

Gone are the days of sleek downtown apartments outfitted for bachelorette parties, cozy two- and three-bedroom apartments near museums for families, and even the option for people to rent out their apartment on weekends when they’re away. While Airbnb, Vrbo, and others can continue to operate in New York, the new rules are so tight that Airbnb sees it as a “de facto ban” on its business.

Submission + - Toyota Says Filled Disk Storage Halted Japan-Based Factories (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Toyota says a recent disruption of operations in Japan-based production plants was caused by its database servers running out of storage space. On August 29th, it was reported that Toyota had to halt operations on 12 of its 14 Japan-based car assembly plants due to an undefined system malfunction. As one of the largest automakers in the world, the situation caused production output losses of roughly 13,000 cars daily, threatening to impact exports to the global market.

In a statement released today on Toyota's Japanese news portal, the company explains that the malfunction occurred during a planned IT systems maintenance event on August 27th, 2023. The planned maintenance was to organize the data and deletion of fragmented data in a database. However, as the storage was filled to capacity before the completion of the tasks, an error occurred, causing the system to shut down. This shutdown directly impacted the company's production ordering system so that no production tasks could be planned and executed.

Toyota explains that its main servers and backup machines operate on the same system. Due to this, both systems faced the same failure, making a switchover impossible, inevitably leading to a halt in factory operations. The restoration came on August 29th, 2023, when Toyota's IT team had prepared a larger capacity server to accept the data that was partially transferred two days back. This allowed Toyota's engineers to restore the production ordering system and the plants to resume operations.

Submission + - University of Michigan Halts Internet During First Week of Classes (insidehighered.com)

Submitted by regoli
regoli writes: The University of Michigan cut off internet access and online services across all three of its campuses early this week to ward off a potential cyberattack, leaving students and faculty in digital limbo during the first week of classes. According to the story from Inside Higher Ed, "The FBI’s Detroit field office would not confirm the existence of an investigation into the attack, but the FBI is aware of the outage and prepared to provide assistance if U-M requests it, said Mara Schneider, public affairs officer at the Detroit FBI office."

Submission + - The $53,000 Connection: The High Cost of High-Speed Internet for Everyone (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes:

Nebraska’s Winnebago Tribe has long been stuck with sluggish internet service. The federal government plans to fix that by crisscrossing the reservation with fiber-optic cable—at an average cost of $53,000 for each household and workplace connected.

That amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the homes getting hookups, property records show. While most connections will cost far less, the expense to reach some remote communities has triggered concerns over the ultimate price tag for ensuring every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy.

“The problem is, money is not infinite,” said Blair Levin, a senior communications policy official in the Clinton and Obama administrations who is now an equity research analyst. “If you’re spending $50,000 to connect a very remote location, you have to ask yourself, would we be better off spending that same amount of money to connect [more] families?”

The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the “Internet for All” program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed internet to rural areas.

Plus: "In Montana, laying fiber-optic cable to some remote locations could cost more than $300,000 per connection, said Misty Ann Giles, director of Montana’s Department of Administration. Building to those places would empty the state’s coffers, she said: 'That’s when we might not reach everyone.'"

Ya think?

Private Enterprise: Rural users in most places in the US can get Starlink up and running for $599 in hardware, do-it-yourself installation in most cases, and $120 a month for high-speed service.

Submission + - In Its First Monopoly Trial of Modern Internet Era, U.S. Sets Sights on Google (nytimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Justice Department has spent three years over two presidential administrations building the case that Google illegally abused its power over online search to throttle competition. To defend itself, Google has enlisted hundreds of employees and three powerful law firms and spent millions of dollars on legal fees and lobbyists.

On Tuesday, a judge in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will begin considering their arguments at a trial that cuts to the heart of a long-simmering question: Did today’s tech giants become dominant by breaking the law?

Apple execs lose bid to block testimony at Google antitrust trial

Submission + - Experts Fear Crooks are Cracking Keys Stolen in LastPass Breach (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: In November 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which hackers stole password vaults containing both encrypted and plaintext data for more than 25 million users. Since then, a steady trickle of six-figure cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious people throughout the tech industry has led some security experts to conclude that crooks likely have succeeded at cracking open some of the stolen LastPass vaults.

Taylor Monahan is founder and CEO of MetaMask, a popular software cryptocurrency wallet used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. Since late December 2022, Monahan and other researchers have identified a highly reliable set of clues that they say connect recent thefts targeting more than 150 people, Collectively, these individuals have been robbed of more than $35 million worth of crypto.

Submission + - Sony Sends Copyright Notices To TV Museum About Shows 40 To 60 Years Old (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rick Klein and his team have been preserving TV adverts, forgotten tapes, and decades-old TV programming for years. Now operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the Museum of Classic Chicago Television has called YouTube home since 2007. However, copyright notices sent on behalf of Sony, protecting TV shows between 40 and 60 years old, could shut down the project in 48 hours. “Our YouTube channel with 150k subscribers is in danger of being terminated by September 6th if I don’t find a way to resolve these copyright claims that Markscan made,” Klein told TorrentFreak on Friday. “At this point, I don’t even care if they were issued under authorization by Sony or not – I just need to reach a live human being to try to resolve this without copyright strikes. I am willing to remove the material manually to get the strikes reversed.”

Over the weekend Klein shared details of the copyright complaints filed with YouTube. Two of the claims can be seen in the image below and on first view, appear straightforward enough. Two episodes of the TV series Bewitched dated 1964 aired on ABC Network and almost sixty years later, archive copies of those transmissions were removed from YouTube for violating Sony copyrights, with MCCTv receiving a strike. A claim targeting an upload titled Bewitched – ‘Twitch or Treat’ – WPWR Channel 60 (Complete Broadcast, 8/6/1984) follows the same pattern, but what isn’t shown are the details added by MCCTv to place the episode (and the included commercials) in historical context. Another takedown target – Bewitched – ‘Sam in the Moon’ (Complete 16mm Network Print, 1/5/1967) is accompanied by even more detail, including references in the episode to then-current events.

Given that copyright law locks content down for decades, Klein understands that can sometimes cause issues, although 16 years on YouTube suggests that the overwhelming majority of rightsholders don’t consider his channel a threat. If they did, the option to monetize the recordings can be an option. [...] Klein says MCCTv certainly doesn’t set out to hurt copyright holders. However, there’s always a balance between preserving “rare pieces of video ephemera” and the likelihood that nobody needs to enforce any rights, versus unusual circumstances like these where unexpected complaints need to be resolved with impossible-to-reach parties. Klein says the team is happy to comply with Sony’s wishes and they hope that given a little leeway, the project won’t be consigned to history. Perhaps Sony will recall the importance of time-shifting while understanding that time itself is running out for The Museum of Classic Chicago Television.

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