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Submission + - China Recovers Orbital Rocket with Net Capturing System (spacenews.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: The first Long March 10B rocket lifted off at 12:15 a.m. Eastern (0415 UTC) July 10 from Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site on the southern island province of Hainan. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed the successful recovery of the rocket’s first stage 11 minutes later, using a sea platform equipped with a net capture system, a world first. Videos emerging in the minutes following showed a controlled, powered descent with black smoke billowing from the top of the first stage, followed by capture by the Linghang Zhe (“navigator”) sea recovery vessel, with hooks deployed from the booster caught by a tensioned net. The recovery occurred six minutes after separation of the first and second stages. The full success of the flight with insertion of an unnamed satellite into orbit was confirmed by CASC more than 90 minutes after liftoff, representing a huge boost to both China’s desire to develop reusable rocket capabilities, and for its crewed lunar program. The five-meter-diameter, two-stage Long March 10B is 63 meters long, with a mass of 760,000 kilograms at liftoff and has a low Earth orbit payload capacity of 16,000 kg in reusable mode. The full, tri-core Long March 10 will be used to launch astronauts and a landing stack to the moon, with China committed to landing a pair of astronauts on the lunar surface before 2030.

Comment Registration is de-facto optional. (Score 2) 55

by couchslug (#66227034) Attached to: Microsoft Can Track Users Via a Windows Device ID

MSFT self-evidently prefers free market chumming to locking down registration thus driving away legitimate users.

That makes sense as exemplified by early Windows and Office 97 which killed off competition by the choice not to seriously control activation.

Now that Windows pwns the market Redmond had to change hardware requirements to coerce users away from Windows 10 which for the vast majority of users needed no major changes. No need to make registration onerous when the goal is data mining and sales are so easy to coerce by breaking what works.

Comment Quality CD/DVD can last decades. (Score 1) 67

I recently dug out my CD/DVD backups from the early oughts and they all read fine so far (about forty but I've a couple hundred remaining to inspect). I'll burn backups to the few that still matter of course.

Besides distro-sampling I used to burn many bootable live WinPE-ish CD in the BartPE era which booted much more reliably than discs written at higher RPM. I always burned at slowest available speed to reduce mechanically-induced errors, mostly using CDRWIN trial version as I had zero need for faster write speeds.
I mostly used Taiyo Yuden media which were the go-to for quality in those days.

I stored them in the same cool, dark room most were written in to keep them out of the sun which is not kind to plastic (see brittle auto interiors for what outgassing does over time). I keep a USB DVD writer handy to extract contents which I usually place on a server so no need for multiple drives (which of course I have anyway since being only one-deep on hardware is too close to no-deep on hardware.).

I also saved a few live BartPE and Linux discs in case I wanted to live boot a PC that doesn't reliably boot from USB. They were my go-to tool kit for troubleshooting and data rescue in that ancient era. I saved boot floppy images to live CD so I could rewrite or replace corrupted boot floppies. Today most use live USB fobs for similar tasks.
As with USB fobs you can connect more than one external CD/DVD drive to boot from one and write to the other.

Submission + - Nordstjernen Web Browser 1.0.18 released (nordstjernen.org)

Submitted by Andreas(R)
Andreas(R) writes: Today marks the release of Nordstjernen Web Browser version 1.0.18. Developed entirely from scratch in C, Nordstjernen is a lightweight browser focused strictly on conforming to modern HTML and CSS standards. Built in Norway, the project currently supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, with an active Android port currently underway.

Version 1.0.18 is a maintenance release that builds upon the stability of the 1.0.17 branch. In an era dominated by Chromium forks and Gecko-based engines, it's refreshing to see an independent, compiled-from-scratch layout engine entering the ecosystem. For those interested in minimal overhead or native C development, the full release details and binaries are available on their official site.

Submission + - Scientists Built Cancer Kill Switch That Turns On With Flash of Light (studyfinds.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Cancer has a dirty trick: it can put itself to sleep. When tumor cells slip into a kind of biological hibernation, they become hard to kill, shrugging off treatment and lying low until conditions improve, then waking up and bringing the disease back. For decades, researchers have struggled to shut down this hiding strategy without causing serious harm elsewhere in the body. A team in Switzerland has now built a molecule that flips on and off with flashes of light, giving scientists a precise new way to probe, and possibly disrupt, the way sleeping cancer cells hide.

Behind this cellular sleep state, at least in certain cancers, sits a protein called the glucocorticoid receptor, a sensor inside cells that reacts to stress hormones. When it switches on, it can push cancer cells, especially in some solid tumors such as lung cancer, into a drug-resistant, dormant state. The obvious fix would be to destroy the receptor outright, but there is a catch: the same receptor does important jobs all over the body, including calming inflammation. Removing it everywhere would cause real damage. What was needed was a way to hit the receptor inside a tumor and leave the rest of the body alone.

Submission + - Video Game History Foundation Says Piracy Remains the Only Preservation Method (techspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi recently supported claims that piracy is the only effective way to preserve video games. The comments lay the blame squarely on game companies' refusal to keep legacy content available or allow archivists to build legal repositories. Sony's announcement that all PlayStation games will be digital-only from 2028 onward has sparked concern that titles will become harder to preserve and more easily vanish, since the company's servers will become the sole point of distribution. In an official statement, Cifaldi noted that the end of physical PlayStation games has surprisingly little impact on the Foundation's efforts because the majority of games from the last two decades are already digital-only.

According to the Foundation, most games nowadays are not released for consoles, let alone on physical discs. Furthermore, many discs for major titles require downloading updates before they are playable, although the DoesItPlay database reveals that, even today, most are playable offline out of the box. Cifaldi claimed that the true reason piracy remains the best option for preservation is that the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies for game publishers, has closed off other routes. For example, in 2018, the Association opposed efforts to grant copyright exemptions for museums, libraries, and archives to retain copies of abandoned online games for research.

This is the same organization that recently helped defeat a proposed California bill to preserve premium-priced online-only games by falsely claiming that community servers are illegal. The Foundation accused the ESA of repeatedly blocking attempts by cultural heritage institutions to reform DRM legislation. Cifaldi also described the Library of Congress' outdated software preservation process, which currently only requires tiny snippets of source code. For example, Capcom once asked the Foundation to provide the LoC with "the first and last ten pages of code" for a Mega Man game. Unable to discern where digital records began and ended, the group simply chose random segments. Platform holders' habit of closing online storefronts and removing media from users' accounts is also unhelpful.

Submission + - First full synthetic cell created in Minnesota (biotic.org) 2

Submitted by AleRunner
AleRunner writes: The First fully synthetic cell has been created in the Department of Genetics at the University of Minnesota. Strictly it's described as a "cell-like system constructed entirely from known chemical components that can perform a complete cell cycle" and is able to replicate, but only for approximately five generations. The key advance is that the cell is "built entirely bottom-up from individually purified, non-living components" although the cell still contains material from an e-coli bacteria. "PURE is a defined mixture of 36 purified enzymes from E. coli bacteria" which includes ribosomes and provides the infrastructure for genetic replication. CNN has article on the advance including interview material with Professor Kate Adamala who lead the research and says “I know the full ingredient list of the cell, I know exactly what chemicals, what molecules at what concentrations,” she said. “It is fully defined, which means we can engineer it.”

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