Author name: Kris Guyer

rocket-report:-falcon-9-is-back;-starship-could-be-recovered-off-australia

Rocket Report: Falcon 9 is back; Starship could be recovered off Australia

atlas v, european space agency, falcon 9, launch, NASA, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship, united launch alliance / /

Starship down under —

Elon Musk doesn’t expect the next Starship test flight to occur before late August.

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Welcome to Edition 7.05 of the Rocket Report! The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket for 15 days after a rare failure of its upper stage earlier this month. The FAA gave the green light for Falcon 9 to return to flight July 25, and within a couple of days, SpaceX successfully launched three missions from three launch pads. There’s a lot on Falcon 9’s to-do list, so we expect SpaceX to quickly return to form with several flights per week.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Big delay for a reusable rocket testbed. The French space agency, CNES, has revealed that the inaugural test flight of its Callisto reusable rocket demonstrator will not take place until late 2025 or early 2026, European Spaceflight reports. CNES unveiled an updated website for the Callisto rocket program earlier this month, showing the test rocket has been delayed from a debut launch later this year to until late 2025 or early 2026. The Callisto rocket is designed to test techniques and technologies required for reusable rockets, such as vertical takeoff and vertical landing, with suborbital flights from the Guiana Space Center in South America.

Cooperative action … Callisto, which stands for Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations, is a joint project between CNES, German space agency DLR, and JAXA, the Japanese space agency. It will stand 14 meters (46 feet) tall and weigh about 4 metric tons (8,800 pounds), with an engine supplied by Japan. Callisto is one of several test projects in Europe aiming to pave the way for a future reusable rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Small step for Themis. Another European project established to demonstrate reusable rocket tech is making slow progress toward a first flight. The Themis project, funded by the European Space Agency, is similar in purpose to the Callisto testbed discussed above. This week, the German aerospace manufacturing company MT Aerospace announced it has begun testing a demonstrator of the landing legs that will be used aboard the Themis reusable booster, European Spaceflight reports. The landing legs for Themis are made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic composites, and the initial test demonstrated good deployment and showed it would withstand the impact energy of landing.

Also delayed … Like Callisto, Themis is facing delays in getting to the launch pad. ArianeGroup, the ESA-selected Themis prime contractor, had been expected to conduct an initial hop test of the demonstrator before the end of 2024. However, officials have announced the initial hop tests won’t happen until sometime next year. The Themis booster is intended to eventually become the first stage booster for an orbital-class partially reusable rocket being developed by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 is flying again. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket returned to flight on July 27, barely two weeks after an upper stage failure ended a streak of more than 300 consecutive successful launches, Ars reports. By some measures this was an extremely routine mission—it was, after all, SpaceX’s 73rd launch of this calendar year. And like many other Falcon 9 launches this year, the “Starlink 10-9” mission carried 23 of the broadband Internet satellites into orbit. However, after a rare failure earlier this month, this particular Falcon 9 rocket was making a return-to-flight for the company and attempting to get the world’s most active booster back into service.

Best part is no part … The Falcon 9 successfully deployed its payload of Starlink satellites about an hour after lifting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Later in the weekend, SpaceX launched two more Starlink missions on Falcon 9 rockets from Florida and California, notching three flights in less than 28 hours. The launch failure on the previous Falcon 9 launch was caused by a liquid oxygen leak on the upper stage, which led to a “hard start” on the upper stage engine when it attempted to reignite in flight. Engineers and technicians were quickly able to pinpoint the cause of the leak, a crack in a “sense line” for a pressure sensor attached to the vehicle’s liquid oxygen system.

Atlas V’s NSSL era is over. United Launch Alliance delivered a classified US military payload to orbit Tuesday for the last time with an Atlas V rocket, ending the Pentagon’s use of Russian rocket engines as national security missions transition to all-American launchers, Ars reports. This was the 101st launch of an Atlas V rocket since its debut in 2002, and the 58th and final Atlas V mission with a US national security payload since 2007. The Atlas V is powered by an RD-180 main engine made in Russia, and with a little prodding from SpaceX (via a lawsuit) and Congress, the Pentagon started making moves to end its reliance on the RD-180 a decade ago.

Other options available … The RD-180 never failed on a National Security Space Launch (NSSL) mission using the Atlas V rocket, but its use became politically untenable after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, which predated Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later. SpaceX began launching US military missions in 2018, and ULA debuted its new Vulcan rocket in January. Assuming a successful second test flight of Vulcan in September, ULA’s next-generation rocket has a good shot at launching its first national security mission by the end of the year. The Space Force’s policy is to maintain at least two independent launch vehicles capable of flying military payloads into orbit. Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon rocket family fulfill that requirement, so the military no longer needs the Atlas V. However, 15 more Atlas V rockets remain in ULA’s inventory for future commercial flights.

Crackdown at the Cape. While this week’s landmark launch of the Atlas V rocket is worthy of celebration, there’s a new ULA policy that deserves ridicule, Ars reports. Many of the spectacular photos of rocket launches shared on social media come from independent photographers, who often make little to no money working for an established media organization. Instead, they rely on sales of prints to recoup at least some of their expenses for gas, food, and camera equipment needed to capture these images, which often serve as free publicity for launch providers like ULA. Last month, ULA announced it will no longer permit these photographers to set up remote cameras at their launch pads if they sell their images independently. This new policy was in place for the Atlas V launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Tuesday morning.

But why? … “ULA will periodically confirm editorial publication for media participating in remote camera placement,” ULA stated in an email distributed to photographers last month. “If publication does not occur, or photos are sold outside of editorial purposes, privileges to place remote cameras may be revoked.” To the photographers who spend many hours preparing their equipment, waiting to set up and remove cameras, and persevering through scrubs and more, it seemed like a harsh judgment. And nobody knows why it happened. ULA has offered no public comment about the new policy, and the company did not respond to questions from Ars about the agreement.

Astroscale achieves a first in orbit. There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet, Ars reports. A Japanese company named Astroscale launched a small satellite in February to chase down the derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft arrived near the H-IIA upper stage in April, and the company announced this week that its satellite has now completed two 360-degree fly-arounds of the rocket. This is the first time a satellite has maneuvered around an actual piece of space junk, and it offers an unprecedented snapshot of how an abandoned rocket holds up to 15 years in the harsh environment of space.

Prepping for the future … Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission is partially funded by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Astroscale and JAXA also have a contract for a follow-up mission named ADRAS-J2, which will attempt to link up with the same H-IIA rocket and steer it on a trajectory to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. This would be the first demonstration of active debris removal, a concept pursued by Astroscale and other companies to help clear space junk out of low-Earth orbit.

An update on Ariane 6. The European Space Agency has released its first update on the results from the first flight of the Ariane 6 rocket since its launch July 9. Europe’s new flagship rocket had a mostly successful inaugural test flight. Its first stage, solid rocket boosters, and upper stage performed as expected for the first phase of the flight, delivering eight small satellites into an on-target orbit. The launch pad at the Guiana Space Center in South America also held up to the violent environment of launch, ESA said.

Still investigating … However, the final phase of the mission didn’t go according to plan. The upper stage’s Vinci engine was supposed to reignite for a third time on the test flight to deorbit the rocket, which would have released two small reentry capsules on technology demonstration missions to test heat shield technologies. This didn’t happen. An Auxiliary Propulsion Unit, which is a small engine to provide additional bursts of thrust and pressurize the upper stage’s propellant tanks, shut down shortly after startup ahead of the third burn of the primary Vinci engine. “This meant the Vinci engine’s third boost could not take place,” ESA said. “Analysis of the APU’s behavior is ongoing and further information will be made available as soon as possible, while the next task force update is expected in September.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Room to grow at Starbase. SpaceX has since launched Starship four times from its launch site in South Texas, known as Starbase, and is planning a fifth launch within the next two months, Ars reports. However, as it continues to test Starship and make plans for regular flights, SpaceX will need a higher flight rate. This is especially true as the company is unlikely to activate additional launch pads for Starship in Florida until at least 2026. To that end, SpaceX has asked the FAA for permission for up to 25 flights a year from South Texas, as well as the capability to land both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster stage back at the launch site.

The answer is probably yes … On Monday, the FAA signaled that it is inclined to grant this request. The agency released a draft assessment indicating that its extensive 2022 analysis of Starship launch activities on the environment, wildlife, local communities, and more was sufficient to account for SpaceX’s proposal for more launches. There is more to do for this conclusion to become official, including public meetings and a public comment period this month.

SpaceX eyes Australia. SpaceX is in talks with US and Australian officials to land and recover one of its Starship rockets off Australia’s coast, a possible first step toward a bigger presence for Elon Musk’s company in the region as the two countries bolster security ties, Reuters reports. At the end of SpaceX’s fourth Starship test flight in June, the rocket made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean hundreds of miles off the northwest coast of Australia. The discussions now underway are focused on the possibility of towing a future Starship vehicle from its splashdown point in the ocean to a port in Australia, where SpaceX engineers could inspect it and learn more about how it performed.

Eventually, it’ll come back to land … On the next Starship flight, currently planned for no earlier than late August, SpaceX plans to attempt to recover Starship’s giant Super Heavy booster using catch arms on the launch pad tower in Texas. On Sunday, Elon Musk told SpaceX and Tesla enthusiasts at an event called the “X Takeover” that it will take a few more flights for engineers to get comfortable returning the Starship itself to a landing onshore. “We want to be really confident that the ship heat shield is super robust and lands at the exact right location,” he said. “So before we try to bring the ship back to the launch site, we probably want to have at least three successful landings of the ship [at sea].” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

August 2: Electron | “Owl for One, One for Owl” | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 16: 39 UTC

August 3: Falcon 9 | NG-21 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 15: 28 UTC

August 4: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-1 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 07: 00 UTC

Listing image by SpaceX

Rocket Report: Falcon 9 is back; Starship could be recovered off Australia Read More »

troubling-bird-flu-study-suggests-human-cases-are-going-undetected

Troubling bird flu study suggests human cases are going undetected

bird flu, CDC, dairy, H5N1, health, human infections, Infectious disease, outbreak, poultry, Science, vaccine / /

Poor surveillance —

A small sample of farm workers is enough to confirm fears about H5N1 outbreak.

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Troubling bird flu study suggests human cases are going undetected

Tony C. French/Getty

A small study in Texas suggests that human bird flu cases are being missed on dairy farms where the H5N1 virus has taken off in cows, sparking an unprecedented nationwide outbreak.

The finding adds some data to what many experts have suspected amid the outbreak. But the authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, went further, stating bluntly why the US is failing to fully surveil, let alone contain, a virus with pandemic potential.

“Due to fears that research might damage dairy businesses, studies like this one have been few,” the authors write in the topline summary of their study, which was posted online as a pre-print and had not been peer-reviewed.

The study authors, led by Gregory Gray, were invited to two undisclosed dairy farms in Texas that experienced H5N1 outbreaks in their herds starting in early and late March, respectively. The researchers had a previously approved research protocol to study novel respiratory viruses on dairy farms, easing the ability to quickly begin the work.

Rare study

“Farm A” had 7,200 cows and 180 workers. Illnesses began on March 6, and nearly 5 percent of the herd was estimated to be affected during the outbreak. “Farm B” had 8,200 cows and 45 workers. After illnesses began on March 20, an estimated 14 percent of the herd was affected.

The researchers first visited Farm A on April 3 and Farm B on April 4, collecting swabs and samples at each. Based on the previously approved protocol, they were limited to taking nasal swabs and blood samples from no more than 10 workers per farm. On Farm A, 10 workers provided nasal swabs and blood samples. On Farm B, only seven agreed to give nasal swabs, and four gave blood samples.

While swabs from cows, milk, a dead bird, and a sample of fecal slurry showed signs of H5N1, all of the nasal swabs from the 14 humans were negative. However, when researchers looked for H5N1-targeting antibodies in their blood—an indicator that they were previously infected—two of the 14, about 14 percent, were positive.

Both of the workers with previous infections, a man and a woman, were from Farm A. And both reported having flu-like symptoms. The man worked inside cattle corrals, close to the animals, and he reported having a cough at the time the samples were taken. The woman, meanwhile, worked in the cafeteria on the farm and reported recently recovering from an illness that included fever, cough, and sore throat. She noted that other people on the farm had similar respiratory illnesses around when she did.

The finding suggests human cases of H5N1 are going undetected. Moreover, managing to find evidence of two undetected infections in a sample of just 14 workers suggests it may not be hard to find more. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that around 200,000 people work with livestock in the US.

A “compelling case”

To date, the virus has infected at least 175 dairy farms in 13 states. The official tally of human cases in the dairy outbreak is 14: four in dairy farm workers and 10 in workers on poultry farms with infections linked to the dairy outbreak.

“I am very confident there are more people being infected than we know about,” Gray told KFF, which first reported on the study. “Largely, that’s because our surveillance has been so poor.”

Known infections in humans have all been mild so far. But experts are anxious that with each new infection, the wily H5N1 virus is getting new opportunities to adapt further to humans. If the virus evolves to cause more severe disease and spread from human to human, it could spark another pandemic.

Federal officials are also worried about this potential threat. In a press briefing Tuesday, Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, announced a $5 million effort to vaccinate farm workers—but against seasonal flu.

Shah explained that the CDC is concerned that if farm workers are infected with H5N1 and the seasonal flu at the same time, the viruses could exchange genetic segments—a process called reassortment. This could give rise to the pandemic threat experts are worried about. By vaccinating the workers against the seasonal flu, it could potentially prevent the viruses from comingling in one person, Shah suggested.

The US does have a bird flu-specific vaccine available. But in the briefing, Shah said that the use of that vaccine in farm workers is not planned for now, though there’s still active discussion on the possibility. The lack of severe disease and no documented human-to-human transmission from H5N1 infections both argue against deploying a new vaccine, Shah said. “There has to be a strong and compelling case,” he added. Shah also suggested that the agency expects vaccine uptake to be low among farm workers.

Troubling bird flu study suggests human cases are going undetected Read More »

silicon-plus-perovskite-solar-reaches-34-percent-efficiency

Silicon plus perovskite solar reaches 34 percent efficiency

green, green energy, materials science, perovskites, photovoltaics, Science, solar power, Sustainability / /
Solar panels with green foliage behind them, and a diagram of a chemical's structure in the foreground.

Enlarge / Some solar panels, along with a diagram of a perovskite’s crystal structure.

As the price of silicon panels has continued to come down, we’ve reached the point where they’re a small and shrinking cost of building a solar farm. That means that it might be worth spending more to get a panel that converts more of the incoming sunlight to electricity, since it allows you to get more out of the price paid to get each panel installed. But silicon panels are already pushing up against physical limits on efficiency. Which means our best chance for a major boost in panel efficiency may be to combine silicon with an additional photovoltaic material.

Right now, most of the focus is on pairing silicon with a class of materials called perovskites. Perovskite crystals can be layered on top of silicon, creating a panel with two materials that absorb different areas of the spectrum—plus, perovskites can be made from relatively cheap raw materials. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to make perovskites that are both high-efficiency and last for the decades that the silicon portion will.

Lots of labs are attempting to change that, though. And two of them reported some progress this week, including a perovskite/silicon system that achieved 34 percent efficiency.

Boosting perovskite stability

Perovskites are an entire class of materials that all form the same crystal structure. So, there is plenty of flexibility when it comes to the raw materials being used. Perovskite-based photovoltaics are typically formed by what’s called solution processing, in which all the raw materials are dissolved in a liquid that’s then layered on top of the panel-to-be, allowing perovskite crystals to form across its entire surface. Which is great, except that this process tends to form multiple crystals with different orientations on a single surface, decreasing performance.

Adding to the problems, perovskites are also not especially stable. They’re usually made of a combination of positively and negatively charged ions, and these have to be present in the right ratios to form a perovskite. However, some of these individual ions can diffuse over time, disrupting the crystal structure. Harvesting solar energy, which involves the material absorbing lots of energy, makes matters worse by heating the material, which increases the rate of diffusion.

Combined, these factors sap the efficiency of perovskite solar cells and mean that none lasts nearly as long as a sheet of silicon. The new works tackle these issues from two very different directions.

The first of the new papers tackles stability by using the flexibility of perovskites to incorporate various ions. The researchers started by using a technique called density functional theory to model how different molecules would behave when placed into a spot normally occupied by a positively charged ion. And the modeling got them excited about a molecule called tetrahydrotriazinium, which has a six-atom ring composed of alternating carbon and nitrogen atoms. The regular placement of nitrogens around the ring allows it to form regular interactions with neighboring atoms in the crystal structure.

Tetrahydrotriazinium has a neutral charge when only two of the nitrogens have hydrogens attached to them. But it typically grabs a charged hydrogen (effectively, a proton) out of solution, giving it a net positive charge. This leaves each of its three nitrogens associated with a hydrogen and allows the positive charge to be distributed among them. That makes this interaction incredibly strong, meaning that the hydrogens are extremely unlikely to drift off, which also stabilizes the crystal structure.

So, this should make perovskites much, much more stable. The only problem? Tetrahydrotriazinium tends to react with lots of other chemicals, so it’s difficult to provide as a raw material for the perovskite-forming solution.

Silicon plus perovskite solar reaches 34 percent efficiency Read More »

flux:-this-new-ai-image-generator-is-eerily-good-at-creating-human-hands

FLUX: This new AI image generator is eerily good at creating human hands

AI, AI image generation, AI image generator, Andreas Blattman, Biz & IT, Black Forest Labs, Dominik Lorenz, FLUX.1, image synthesis, machine learning, Patrick Esser, Robin Rombach, Stability AI, Stable Diffusion, Stable Diffusion 3 / /

five-finger salute —

FLUX.1 is the open-weights heir apparent to Stable Diffusion, turning text into images.

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AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev:

Enlarge / AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “A beautiful queen of the universe holding up her hands, face in the background.”

FLUX.1

On Thursday, AI-startup Black Forest Labs announced the launch of its company and the release of its first suite of text-to-image AI models, called FLUX.1. The German-based company, founded by researchers who developed the technology behind Stable Diffusion and invented the latent diffusion technique, aims to create advanced generative AI for images and videos.

The launch of FLUX.1 comes about seven weeks after Stability AI’s troubled release of Stable Diffusion 3 Medium in mid-June. Stability AI’s offering faced widespread criticism among image-synthesis hobbyists for its poor performance in generating human anatomy, with users sharing examples of distorted limbs and bodies across social media. That problematic launch followed the earlier departure of three key engineers from Stability AI—Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, and Dominik Lorenz—who went on to found Black Forest Labs along with latent diffusion co-developer Patrick Esser and others.

Black Forest Labs launched with the release of three FLUX.1 text-to-image models: a high-end commercial “pro” version, a mid-range “dev” version with open weights for non-commercial use, and a faster open-weights “schnell” version (“schnell” means quick or fast in German). Black Forest Labs claims its models outperform existing options like Midjourney and DALL-E in areas such as image quality and adherence to text prompts.

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “A close-up photo of a pair of hands holding a plate full of pickles.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: A hand holding up five fingers with a starry background.

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “An Ars Technica reader sitting in front of a computer monitor. The screen shows the Ars Technica website.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “a boxer posing with fists raised, no gloves.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “An advertisement for ‘Frosted Prick’ cereal.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image of a happy woman in a bakery baking a cake by FLUX.1 dev.

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “An advertisement for ‘Marshmallow Menace’ cereal.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image of “A handsome Asian influencer on top of the Empire State Building, instagram” by FLUX.1 dev.

    FLUX.1

In our experience, the outputs of the two higher-end FLUX.1 models are generally comparable with OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 in prompt fidelity, with photorealism that seems close to Midjourney 6. They represent a significant improvement over Stable Diffusion XL, the team’s last major release under Stability (if you don’t count SDXL Turbo).

The FLUX.1 models use what the company calls a “hybrid architecture” combining transformer and diffusion techniques, scaled up to 12 billion parameters. Black Forest Labs said it improves on previous diffusion models by incorporating flow matching and other optimizations.

FLUX.1 seems competent at generating human hands, which was a weak spot in earlier image-synthesis models like Stable Diffusion 1.5 due to a lack of training images that focused on hands. Since those early days, other AI image generators like Midjourney have mastered hands as well, but it’s notable to see an open-weights model that renders hands relatively accurately in various poses.

We downloaded the weights file to the FLUX.1 dev model from GitHub, but at 23GB, it won’t fit in the 12GB VRAM of our RTX 3060 card, so it will need quantization to run locally (reducing its size), which reportedly (through chatter on Reddit) some people have already had success with.

Instead, we experimented with FLUX.1 models on AI cloud-hosting platforms Fal and Replicate, which cost money to use, though Fal offers some free credits to start.

Black Forest looks ahead

Black Forest Labs may be a new company, but it’s already attracting funding from investors. It recently closed a $31 million Series Seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional investments from General Catalyst and MätchVC. The company also brought on high-profile advisers, including entertainment executive and former Disney President Michael Ovitz and AI researcher Matthias Bethge.

“We believe that generative AI will be a fundamental building block of all future technologies,” the company stated in its announcement. “By making our models available to a wide audience, we want to bring its benefits to everyone, educate the public and enhance trust in the safety of these models.”

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: A cat in a car holding a can of beer that reads, ‘AI Slop.’

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man singing to each other.

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “a muscular barbarian with weapons beside a CRT television set, cinematic, 8K, studio lighting.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image of a flaming cheeseburger created by FLUX.1 dev.

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “Will Smith eating spaghetti.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “a muscular barbarian with weapons beside a CRT television set, cinematic, 8K, studio lighting. The screen reads ‘Ars Technica.'”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “An advertisement for ‘Burt’s Grenades’ cereal.”

    FLUX.1

  • AI-generated image by FLUX.1 dev: “A close-up photo of a pair of hands holding a plate that contains a portrait of the queen of the universe”

    FLUX.1

Speaking of “trust and safety,” the company did not mention where it obtained the training data that taught the FLUX.1 models how to generate images. Judging by the outputs we could produce with the model that included depictions of copyrighted characters, Black Forest Labs likely used a huge unauthorized image scrape of the Internet, possibly collected by LAION, an organization that collected the datasets that trained Stable Diffusion. This is speculation at this point. While the underlying technological achievement of FLUX.1 is notable, it feels likely that the team is playing fast and loose with the ethics of “fair use” image scraping much like Stability AI did. That practice may eventually attract lawsuits like those filed against Stability AI.

Though text-to-image generation is Black Forest’s current focus, the company plans to expand into video generation next, saying that FLUX.1 will serve as the foundation of a new text-to-video model in development, which will compete with OpenAI’s Sora, Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha, and Kuaishou’s Kling in a contest to warp media reality on demand. “Our video models will unlock precise creation and editing at high definition and unprecedented speed,” the Black Forest announcement claims.

FLUX: This new AI image generator is eerily good at creating human hands Read More »

ai’s-future-in-grave-danger-from-nvidia’s-chokehold-on-chips,-groups-warn

AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn

AI chips, ai industry, Antitrust law, Artificial Intelligence, department of justice, intel, Jensen Huang, monopoly, NVIDIA, Policy / /

Controlling “the world’s computing destiny” —

Anti-monopoly groups want DOJ to probe Nvidia’s AI chip bundling, alleged price-fixing.

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AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has joined progressive groups—including Demand Progress, Open Markets Institute, and the Tech Oversight Project—pressuring the US Department of Justice to investigate Nvidia’s dominance in the AI chip market due to alleged antitrust concerns, Reuters reported.

In a letter to the DOJ’s chief antitrust enforcer, Jonathan Kanter, groups demanding more Big Tech oversight raised alarms that Nvidia’s top rivals apparently “are struggling to gain traction” because “Nvidia’s near-absolute dominance of the market is difficult to counter” and “funders are wary of backing its rivals.”

Nvidia is currently “the world’s most valuable public company,” their letter said, worth more than $3 trillion after taking near-total control of the high-performance AI chip market. Particularly “astonishing,” the letter said, was Nvidia’s dominance in the market for GPU accelerator chips, which are at the heart of today’s leading AI. Groups urged Kanter to probe Nvidia’s business practices to ensure that rivals aren’t permanently blocked from competing.

According to the advocacy groups that strongly oppose Big Tech monopolies, Nvidia “now holds an 80 percent overall global market share in GPU chips and a 98 percent share in the data center market.” This “puts it in a position to crowd out competitors and set global pricing and the terms of trade,” the letter warned.

Earlier this year, inside sources reported that the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission reached a deal where the DOJ would probe Nvidia’s alleged anti-competitive behavior in the booming AI industry, and the FTC would probe OpenAI and Microsoft. But there has been no official Nvidia probe announced, prompting progressive groups to push harder for the DOJ to recognize what they view as a “dire danger to the open market” that “well deserves DOJ scrutiny.”

Ultimately, the advocacy groups told Kanter that they fear Nvidia wielding “control over the world’s computing destiny,” noting that Nvidia’s cloud computing data centers don’t just power “Big Tech’s consumer products” but also “underpin every aspect of contemporary society, including the financial system, logistics, healthcare, and defense.”

They claimed that Nvidia is “leveraging” its “scarce chips” to force customers to buy its “chips, networking, and programming software as a package.” Such bundling and “price-fixing,” their letter warned, appear to be “the same kinds of anti-competitive tactics that the courts, in response to actions brought by the Department of Justice against other companies, have found to be illegal” and could perhaps “stifle innovation.”

Although data from TechInsights suggested that Nvidia’s chip shortage and cost actually helped companies like AMD and Intel sell chips in 2023, both Nvidia rivals reported losses in market share earlier this year, Yahoo Finance reported.

Perhaps most closely monitoring Nvidia’s dominance, France antitrust authorities launched an investigation into Nvidia last month over antitrust concerns, the letter said, “making it the first enforcer to act against the computer chip maker,” Reuters reported.

Since then, the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as the US, have heightened scrutiny, but their seeming lag to follow through with an official investigation may only embolden Nvidia, as the company allegedly “believes its market behavior is above the law,” the progressive groups wrote. Suspicious behavior includes allegations that “Nvidia has continued to sell chips to Chinese customers and provide them computing access” despite a “Department of Commerce ban on trading with Chinese companies due to national security and human rights concerns.”

“Its chips have been confirmed to be reaching blacklisted Chinese entities,” their letter warned, citing a Wall Street Journal report.

Nvidia’s dominance apparently impacts everyone involved with AI. According to the letter, Nvidia seemingly “determining who receives inventory from a limited supply, setting premium pricing, and contractually blocking customers from doing business with competitors” is “alarming” the entire AI industry. That includes “both small companies (who find their supply choked off) and the Big Tech AI giants.”

Kanter will likely be receptive to the letter. In June, Fast Company reported that Kanter told an audience at an AI conference that there are “structures and trends in AI that should give us pause.” He further suggested that any technology that “relies on massive amounts of data and computing power” can “give already dominant firms a substantial advantage,” according to Fast Company’s summary of his remarks.

AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn Read More »

karaoke-reveals-why-we-blush

Karaoke reveals why we blush

Biology, embarrassment, karaoke, neurobiology, Science / /

Singing for science —

Volunteers watched their own performances as an MRI tracked brain activity.

–

A hand holding a microphone against a blurry backdrop, taken from an angle that implies the microphone is directly in front of your face.

Singing off-key in front of others is one way to get embarrassed. Regardless of how you get there, why does embarrassment almost inevitably come with burning cheeks that turn an obvious shade of red (which is possibly even more embarrassing)?

Blushing starts not in the face but in the brain, though exactly where has been debated. Previous thinking often reasoned that the blush reaction was associated with higher socio-cognitive processes, such as thinking of how one is perceived by others.

After studying subjects who watched videos of themselves singing karaoke, however, researchers led by Milica Nicolic of the University of Amsterdam have found that blushing is really the result of specific emotions being aroused.

Nicolic’s findings suggest that blushing “is a consequence of a high level of ambivalent emotional arousal that occurs when a person feels threatened and wants to flee but, at the same time, feels the urge not to give up,” as she and her colleagues put it in a study recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Taking the stage

The researchers sought out test subjects who were most likely to blush when watching themselves sing bad karaoke: adolescent girls. Adolescents tend to be much more self-aware and more sensitive to being judged by others than adults are.

The subjects couldn’t pick just any song. Nicolic and her team had made sure to give them a choice of four songs that music experts had deemed difficult, which is why they selected “Hello” by Adele, “Let it Go” from Frozen, “All I Want For Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey, and “All the Things You Said” by tATu. Videos of the subjects were recorded as they sang.

On their second visit to the lab, subjects were put in an MRI scanner and were shown videos of themselves and others singing karaoke. They watched 15 video clips of themselves singing and, as a control, 15 segments of someone who was thought to have similar singing ability, so secondhand embarrassment could be ruled out.

The other control factor was videos of professional singers disguised as participants. Because the professionals sang better overall, it was unlikely they would trigger secondhand embarrassment.

Enough to make you blush

The researchers checked for an increase in cheek temperature, as blood flow measurements had been used in past studies but are more prone to error. This was measured with a fast-response temperature transducer as the subjects watched karaoke videos.

It was only when the subjects watched themselves sing that cheek temperature went up. There was virtually no increase or decrease when watching others—meaning no secondhand embarrassment—and a slight decrease when watching a professional singer.

The MRI scans revealed which regions of the brain were activated as subjects watched videos of themselves. These include the anterior insular cortex, or anterior insula, which responds to a range of emotions, including fear, anxiety, and, of course, embarrassment. There was also the mid-cingulate cortex, which emotionally and cognitively manages pain—including embarrassment—by trying to anticipate that pain and reacting with aversion and avoidance. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which helps process fear and anxiety, also lit up.

There was also more activity detected in the cerebellum, which is responsible for much of the emotional processing in the brain, when subjects watched themselves sing. Those who blushed more while watching their own video clips showed the most cerebellum activity. This could mean they were feeling stronger emotions.

What surprised the researchers was that there was no additional activation in areas known for being involved in the process of understanding one’s mental state, meaning someone’s opinion of what others might think of them may not be necessary for blushing to happen.

So blushing is really more about the surge of emotions someone feels when being faced with things that pertain to the self and not so much about worrying what other people think. That can definitely happen if you’re watching a video of your own voice cracking at the high notes in an Adele song.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2024.  DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.0958

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nothing’s-new-ai-widget-is-trying-to-make-its-cfo-a-news-star

Nothing’s new AI widget is trying to make its CFO a news star

android phone, nothing phone, syndication, Tech / /

something out of nothing —

Its news app is available on all Nothing and CMF handsets, including the new Phone (2a) Plus.

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Nothing’s new AI widget is trying to make its CFO a news star

Nothing has a new smartphone—the Phone (2a) Plus—nearly identical to the Phone (2a) it released earlier this year, but with slightly beefed-up specs. It costs $399 and is available in the US through the same beta program. But it isn’t the new Android handset we find most interesting, it’s the company’s new widget.

The “News Reporter” widget, available by default on all Nothing and CMF smartphones plus other Android and iOS devices via the Nothing X app, lets you quickly play a news bulletin summarized by artificial intelligence. It is read out by the synthesized voice of Tim Holbrow, the company’s chief financial officer. (Nothing is using ElevenLabs’ tech for sound synthesis and output.) As soon as you tap the widget, you’re greeted by a soothing British voice:

“Welcome to Nothing News, where the only thing we take seriously is not taking anything seriously. I’m Tim, your CFO and reluctant news reader. Today, we’re making something out of nothing, because that’s literally our job.”

The widget will start cycling through a selection of news stories—you can press and hold the widget and tap Edit to add or remove categories you’re interested in, such as business, entertainment, tech, and sports. These news stories are pulled from “trusted English-language news sources” through News API, using Meta’s Llama large language models for the summary.

Nothing's News Reporter widget is available on all Nothing and CMF phones by default. If you download the Nothing X app, you can also access it on Android and iOS.

Enlarge / Nothing’s News Reporter widget is available on all Nothing and CMF phones by default. If you download the Nothing X app, you can also access it on Android and iOS.

You can swipe down the notification bar and press the next button on the media playback notification to skip a story, to which Holbrow will add a quip. “Not feeling that one? Let’s find another.” After I skipped quite a few in a row, AI Holbrow asked, “Do you even like news?”

The summaries are one minute each (roughly), and you get eight stories per day. Every morning, the widget will refresh with a fresh batch. Unfortunately, and frustratingly, the widget doesn’t give you much to go on if you want to read more. There’s no attribution to where it pulled the news from, and no links are provided to read directly from the source.

Every smartphone company has been touting some kind of generative AI feature in new devices this year. Samsung has Galaxy AI; Google has its Gemini chatbot and a bevy of AI features in Pixel phones; Motorola introduced Moto AI recently; and even OnePlus has been teasing a few AI features in its phones, like AI Eraser, which lets you remove unwanted objects from photos. Nothing introduced a ChatGPT integration in its earbuds earlier this year, and this widget is the latest generative AI feature to land.

That said, it’s hardly the first time we’ve seen a news summarization feature. Back when Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant were gaining popularity, one of the top features was to ask the voice assistant to play the news—you’d be able to hear short news clips from various sources, like NPR and CNN. That said, I like the implementation in Nothing’s widget, but I’d also like to see attribution and a way to dig deeper into a story if it’s interesting.

What about that phone?

As for the Nothing Phone (2a) Plus, I’ve been using it for several days and it’s … indiscernible from the Phone (2a) I reviewed positively in March. I love the new gray color option, which hides smudges on the rear better and makes the phone’s already fun design pop even more. You still get the same Glyph light functionality, allowing the LEDs to light up for notifications and calendar events, and even double as a visualizer when playing music.

Nothing Phone (2a) on the left, Nothing Phone (2a) Plus on the right.

Enlarge / Nothing Phone (2a) on the left, Nothing Phone (2a) Plus on the right.

The top change here is the processor. Inside is MediaTek’s Dimensity 7350 Pro 5G (as opposed to the Phone (2a)’s Dimensity 7200 Pro), which offers a 10 percent increase in CPU power, and a 30 percent jump in graphics performance. Honestly, I didn’t notice a huge bump in speed, and my benchmark scores show a very tiny boost.

The next upgrade is in the camera, namely, the selfie camera and its new 50-MP sensor that can shoot 4K at 30 frames per second (up from 32 megapixels). The company says it has issued seven updates since the launch of the Phone (2a) with 26 improvements to the camera, which include upgrades to loading speeds, color consistency, and blur accuracy in portrait mode. The Phone (2a) Plus launches with all of those improvements, and the 50-MP front and ultrawide cameras on the rear are the same.

Selfies indeed look much nicer, especially in low light, where my face appears sharper with better HDR and a more balanced exposure. The rear cameras produce nice results considering the price, and I found daytime renders to deliver natural-looking colors. It can still struggle with super high-contrast scenes, but this is a solid camera system.

Lastly, the wired charging on the phone now supports 50 watts (up from 45 watts), which supposedly gets you a 10 percent charging speed boost. Everything else is identical from the Phone (2a)’s specs, from the 6.7-inch AMOLED display to the 5,000-mAh battery.

Nothing new

I’ve enjoyed the phone over the past few days, but its launch is so peculiar, considering it doesn’t introduce any groundbreaking updates to the Phone (2a). So I asked the company why it decided to launch the (2a) Plus now. “We aren’t launching Phone (3) until next year, and we saw an opportunity to enhance the smartphone we launched in March with Phone (2a) Plus, a new smartphone—catered towards power users—at an accessible price point,” says Jane Nho, Nothing’s head of PR in the US. The company launched its last flagship phone, the Phone (2), in July 2023.

So there you have it: The Phone (2a) Plus is a seemingly painless way for Nothing to try and stay relevant amidst all the other smartphone launches, still have an AI story, boost sales, and oddly try and make some sort of digital celebrity out of its CFO.

Nothing says it’ll go on sale August 3 in London at Nothing’s store in Soho, in gray and black, with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. In the US, the device will follow the same beta program system as the Phone (2a) and CMF Phone 1. That means you’ll have to sign up for the beta, and once you’re accepted, you’ll be able to purchase the device for $399. It’ll be available on August 7 at 9 am ET.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Nothing’s new AI widget is trying to make its CFO a news star Read More »

7-million-pounds-of-meat-recalled-amid-deadly-outbreak

7 million pounds of meat recalled amid deadly outbreak

CDC, deaths, health, Infectious disease, listeria, Listeria monocytogenes, Meat, outbreak, recall, Science, USDA / /

7 million pounds across 71 products —

Authorities worry that the contaminated meats are still sitting in people’s fridges.

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Shelves sit empty where Boar's Head meats are usually displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Anselmo, California.

Enlarge / Shelves sit empty where Boar’s Head meats are usually displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Anselmo, California.

Over 7 million pounds of Boar’s Head brand deli meats are being recalled amid a bacterial outbreak that has killed two people. The outbreak, which began in late May, has sickened a total of 34 people across 13 states, leading to 33 hospitalizations, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

On June 26, Boar’s Head recalled 207,528 pounds of products, including liverwurst, beef bologna, ham, salami, and “heat and eat” bacon. On Tuesday, the Jarratt, Virginia-based company expanded the recall to include about 7 million additional pounds of meat, including 71 different products sold on the Boar’s Head and Old Country brand labels. The products were sold nationwide.

The meats may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a foodborne pathogen that is particularly dangerous to pregnant people, people over the age of 65, and people with compromised immune systems. Infections during pregnancy can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, or a life-threatening infection in newborns. For others who develop invasive illness, the fatality rate is nearly 16 percent. Symptoms of listeriosis can include fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions that are sometimes preceded by diarrhea or other gastrointestinal symptoms.

The problem was discovered when the Maryland Department of Health—working with the Baltimore City Health Department—collected an unopened liverwurst product from a retail store and found that it was positive for L. monocytogenes. In later testing, the strain in the liverwurst was linked to those isolated from people sickened in the outbreak.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, six of the 34 known cases were identified in Maryland, and 12 were identified in New York. The other 11 states have only reported one or two cases each. However, the CDC expects the true number of infections to be much higher, given that many people recover without medical care and, even if people did seek care, health care providers do not routinely test for L. monocytogenes in people with mild gastrointestinal illnesses.

In the outbreak so far, there has been one case in a pregnant person, who recovered and remained pregnant. The two deaths occurred in New Jersey and Illinois.

In a statement on the company’s website, Boar’s Head said that it learned from the USDA on Monday night that L. monocytogenes strain in the liverwurst linked to the multistate outbreak. “Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to immediately and voluntarily expand our recall to include all items produced at the Jarratt facility. We have also decided to pause ready-to-eat operations at this facility until further notice. As a company that prioritizes safety and quality, we believe it is the right thing to do.”

The USDA said it is “concerned that some product may be in consumers’ refrigerators and in retail deli cases.” The USDA, the company, and CDC warn people not to eat the recalled products. Instead, they should either be thrown away or returned to the store where they were purchased for a full refund. And if you’ve purchased one of the recalled products, the USDA also advises you to thoroughly clean your fridge to prevent cross-contamination.

7 million pounds of meat recalled amid deadly outbreak Read More »

how-kepler’s-400-year-old-sunspot-sketches-helped-solve-a-modern-mystery

How Kepler’s 400-year-old sunspot sketches helped solve a modern mystery

astronomy, astrophysics, Johannes Kepler, Physics, Science, solar physics, sun spots / /
A naked-eye sunspot group on 11 May 2024

Enlarge / A naked-eye sunspot group on May 11, 2024. There are typically 40,000 to 50,000 sunspots observed in ~11-year solar cycles.

E. T. H. Teague

A team of Japanese and Belgian astronomers has re-examined the sunspot drawings made by 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler with modern analytical techniques. By doing so, they resolved a long-standing mystery about solar cycles during that period, according to a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Precisely who first observed sunspots was a matter of heated debate in the early 17th century. We now know that ancient Chinese astronomers between 364 and 28 BCE observed these features and included them in their official records. A Benedictine monk in 807 thought he’d observed Mercury passing in front of the Sun when, in reality, he had witnessed a sunspot; similar mistaken interpretations were also common in the 12th century. (An English monk made the first known drawings of sunspots in December 1128.)

English astronomer Thomas Harriot made the first telescope observations of sunspots in late 1610 and recorded them in his notebooks, as did Galileo around the same time, although the latter did not publish a scientific paper on sunspots (accompanied by sketches) until 1613. Galileo also argued that the spots were not, as some believed, solar satellites but more like clouds in the atmosphere or the surface of the Sun. But he was not the first to suggest this; that credit belongs to Dutch astronomer Johannes Fabricus, who published his scientific treatise on sunspots in 1611.

Kepler read that particular treatise and admired it, having made his sunspot observations using a camera obscura in 1607 (published in a 1609 treatise), which he initially thought was a transit of Mercury. He retracted that report in 1618, concluding that he had actually seen a group of sunspots. Kepler made his solar drawings based on observations conducted both in his own house and in the workshop of court mechanic Justus Burgi in Prague.  In the first case, he reported “a small spot in the size of a small fly”; in the second, “a small spot of deep darkness toward the center… in size and appearance like a thin flea.”

The earliest datable sunspot drawings based on Kepler's solar observations with camera obscura in May 1607.

Enlarge / The earliest datable sunspot drawings based on Kepler’s solar observations with camera obscura in May 1607.

Public domain

The long-standing debate that is the subject of this latest paper concerns the period from around 1645 to 1715, during which there were very few recorded observations of sunspots despite the best efforts of astronomers. This was a unique event in astronomical history. Despite only observing some 59 sunspots during this time—compared to between 40,000 to 50,000 sunspots over a similar time span in our current age—astronomers were nonetheless able to determine that sunspots seemed to occur in 11-year cycles.

German astronomer Gustav Spörer noted the steep decline in 1887 and 1889 papers, and his British colleagues, Edward and Annie Maunder, expanded on that work to study how the latitudes of sunspots changed over time. That period became known as the “Maunder Minimum.” Spörer also came up with “Spörer’s law,” which holds that spots at the start of a cycle appear at higher latitudes in the Sun’s northern hemisphere, moving to successively lower latitudes in the southern hemisphere as the cycle runs its course until a new cycle of sunspots begins in the higher latitudes.

But precisely how the solar cycle transitioned to the Maunder Minimum has been far from clear. Reconstructions based on tree rings have produced conflicting data. For instance, one such reconstruction concluded that the gradual transition was preceded either by an extremely short solar cycle of about five years or an extremely long solar cycle of about 16 years. Another tree ring reconstruction concluded the solar cycle would have been of normal 11-year duration.

Independent observational records can help resolve the discrepancy. That’s why Hisashi Hayakawa of Nagoya University in Japan and co-authors turned to Kepler’s drawings of sunspots for additional insight, which predate existing telescopic observations by several years.

How Kepler’s 400-year-old sunspot sketches helped solve a modern mystery Read More »

webb-confirms:-big,-bright-galaxies-formed-shortly-after-the-big-bang

Webb confirms: Big, bright galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang

astronomy, cosmology, galaxies, galaxy formation, Science, Webb telescope / /

They grow up so fast —

Structure of galaxy rules out early, bright objects were supermassive black holes.

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Image of a field of stars and galaxies.

Enlarge / Some of the galaxies in the JADES images.

One of the things that the James Webb Space Telescope was designed to do was look at some of the earliest objects in the Universe. And it has already succeeded spectacularly, imaging galaxies as they existed just 250 million years after the Big Bang. But these galaxies were small, compact, and similar in scope to what we’d consider a dwarf galaxy today, which made it difficult to determine what was producing their light: stars or an actively feeding supermassive black hole at their core.

This week, Nature is publishing confirmation that some additional galaxies we’ve imaged also date back to just 300 million years after the Big Bang. Critically, one of them is bright and relatively large, allowing us to infer that most of its light was coming from a halo of stars surrounding its core, rather than originating in the same area as the central black hole. The finding implies that it formed through a continuing burst of star formation that started just 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Age checks

The galaxies at issue here were first imaged during the JADES (JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey) imaging program, which includes part of the area imaged for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Initially, old galaxies were identified by using a combination of filters on one of Webb’s infrared imaging cameras.

Most of the Universe is made of hydrogen, and figuring out the age of early galaxies involves looking for the most energetic transitions of hydrogen’s electron, called the Lyman series. These transitions produce photons that are in the UV area of the spectrum. But the redshift of light that’s traveled for billions of years will shift these photons into the infrared area of the spectrum, which is what Webb was designed to detect.

What this looks like in practice is that hydrogen-dominated material will emit a broad range of light right up to the highest energy Lyman transition. Above that energy, photons will be sparse (they may still be produced by things like processes that accelerate particles). This point in the energy spectrum is called the “Lyman break,” and its location on the spectrum will change based on how distant the source is—the greater the distance to the source, the deeper into the infrared the break will appear.

Initial surveys checked for the Lyman break using filters on Webb’s cameras that cut off different areas of the IR spectrum. Researchers looked for objects that showed up at low energies but disappeared when a filter that selected for higher-energy infrared photons was swapped in. The difference in energies between the photons allowed through by the two filters can provide a rough estimate of where the Lyman break must be.

Locating the Lyman break requires imaging with a spectrograph, which can sample the full spectrum of near-infrared light. Fortunately, Webb has one of those, too. The newly published study involved turning the NIRSpec onto three early galaxies found in the JADES images.

Too many, too soon

The researchers involved in the analysis only ended up with data from two of these galaxies. NIRSpec doesn’t gather as much light as one of Webb’s cameras can, and so the faintest of the three just didn’t produce enough data to enable analysis. The other two, however, produced very clear data that placed the galaxies at a redshift measure roughly z = 14, which means we’re seeing them as they looked 300 million years after the Big Bang. Both show sharp Lyman breaks, with the amount of light dropping gradually as you move further into the lower-energy part of the spectrum.

There’s a slight hint of emissions from heavily ionized carbon atoms in one of the galaxies, but no sign of any other specific elements beyond hydrogen.

One of the two galaxies was quite compact, so similar to the other galaxies of this age that we’d confirmed previously. But the other, JADES-GS-ZZ14-0, was quite distinct. For starters, it’s extremely bright, being the third most luminous distant galaxy out of hundreds we’ve imaged so far. And it’s big enough that it’s not possible for all its light to be originating from the core. That rules out the possibility that what we’re looking at is a blurred view of an active galactic nucleus powered by a supermassive black hole feeding on material.

Instead, much of the light we’re looking at seems to have originated in the stars of JADES-GS-ZZ14-0. Most of those stars are young, and there seems to be very little of the dust that characterizes modern galaxies. The researchers estimate that star formation started at least 100 million years earlier (meaning just 200 million years after the Big Bang) and continued at a rapid pace in the intervening time.

Combined with earlier data, the researchers write that this confirms that “bright and massive galaxies existed already only 300 [million years] after the Big Bang, and their number density is more than ten times higher than extrapolations based on pre-JWST observations.” In other words, there were a lot more galaxies around in the early Universe than we thought, which could pose some problems for our understanding of the Universe’s contents and their evolution.

Meanwhile, the early discovery of the extremely bright galaxy implies that there are a number of similar ones out there awaiting our discovery. This means there’s going to be a lot of demand for time on NIRSpec in the coming years.

Nature, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07860-9  (About DOIs).

Webb confirms: Big, bright galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang Read More »

charter-failed-to-notify-911-call-centers-and-fcc-about-voip-phone-outages

Charter failed to notify 911 call centers and FCC about VoIP phone outages

charter 911 outage, Policy / /

Charter admits violations —

Charter blames error with email notification and misunderstanding of FCC rules.

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A parked van used by a Spectrum cable technician. The van has the Spectrum logo on its side and a ladder stowed on the roof.

Charter Communications agreed to pay a $15 million fine after admitting that it failed to notify more than a thousand 911 call centers about an outage caused by a denial-of-service attack and separately failed to meet the Federal Communications Commission’s reporting deadlines for hundreds of planned maintenance outages.

“As part of the settlement, Charter admits to violating the agency’s rules regarding notifications to public safety officials and the Commission in connection with three unplanned network outages and hundreds of planned, maintenance-related network outages that occurred last year,” the FCC said in an announcement yesterday.

A consent decree said Charter admits that it “failed to timely notify more than 1,000 PSAPs [Public Safety Answering Points] of an outage on February 19, 2023.” The decree notes that failure to notify the PSAPs, or 911 call centers, “impedes the ability of public safety officials to mediate the effects of an outage by notifying the public of alternate ways to contact emergency services.”

Phone providers like Charter must also provide required outage notifications to the FCC through the Network Outage Reporting System (NORS). However, Charter admits that it “failed to meet reporting deadlines for reports in the NORS associated with the [February 2023] Outage, and separate outages on March 31 and April 26, 2023; and failed to meet other NORS reporting deadlines associated with hundreds of planned maintenance outages, all in violation of the Commission’s rules.”

Error with email notification

With the February 2023 outage, “Charter was required to notify all of the impacted PSAPs ‘as soon as possible,’ but due to a clerical error associated with the sending of an email notification, over 1,000 PSAPs were not contacted,” the consent decree said. Charter also “failed to file the required NORS notification until almost six hours after it was due.”

Failure to meet NORS deadlines “impairs the Commission’s ability to assess the magnitude of major outages, identify trends, and promote network reliability best practices that can prevent or mitigate future disruptions. Therefore, it is imperative for the Commission to hold providers, like Charter, accountable for fulfilling these essential obligations,” the consent decree said.

In addition to paying a $15 million civil penalty to the US Treasury, “Charter has agreed to implement a robust compliance plan, including cybersecurity provisions related to compliance with the Commission’s 911 rules,” the FCC said. Charter reported revenue of $13.7 billion and net income of $1.2 billion in the most recent quarter.

The February 2023 outage was caused by what the FCC described as “a minor, low and slow Denial of Service (DoS) attack.” The resulting outage in Charter’s VoIP service affected about 400,000 “residential and commercial interconnected VoIP customers in portions of 41 states and the District of Columbia.” Charter restored service in less than four hours.

The FCC said its rules require VoIP providers like Charter “to notify 911 call centers as soon as possible of outages longer than 30 minutes that potentially affect such call centers. Providers are also required to file by set deadlines in the FCC’s Network Outage Reporting System when outages reach a certain severity threshold.”

The FCC investigation into the February 2023 outage led to Charter admitting violations related to hundreds of other outages:

Charter indicated that based on a misunderstanding of the Commission’s rules, hundreds of planned maintenance events may have met the criteria for filing a NORS report but were never submitted. Thereafter, Charter also identified two additional, unplanned outages—which occurred on March 31, 2023, and April 26, 2023—that each met the NORS reporting threshold but Charter failed to report.

Charter downplays violations

In a statement provided to Ars, Charter said, “We’re glad to have resolved these issues, which will primarily result in Charter reporting certain planned maintenance to the FCC.” Charter downplayed the outage reporting violations, saying that “the fine has nothing to do with cybersecurity violations and is attributable solely to administrative notifications.”

Charter’s statement emphasized that the company did not violate cybersecurity rules. “No provision within either the CISA Cybersecurity Best Practices or the NIST Cybersecurity Framework would have prevented this attack, and no flaws were identified by the FCC regarding Charter’s cybersecurity practices. We agreed with the FCC that we should continue doing what we’re already doing,” the company said.

Although Charter said the settlement “will primarily result in Charter reporting certain planned maintenance to the FCC,” the consent decree also requires changes to ensure that the company promptly notifies 911 call centers. It says that Charter must create “an automated PSAP notification system to automatically contact PSAPs after a network outage that meets the reporting thresholds in the 911 Rules.”

The FCC said the “compliance plan includes the first-of-its-kind application of certain cybersecurity measures—including network segmentation and vulnerability mitigation management—related to 911 communications services and network outage reporting. Charter has agreed to maintain and evolve its overall cybersecurity risk management program in accordance with the voluntary National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cyber Security Framework, and other applicable industry standards and best practices, and applicable state and/or federal laws covering cybersecurity risk management and governance practices.”

The compliance plan requirements are set to remain in effect for three years.

Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns 12.4 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications, which also owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast.

Charter failed to notify 911 call centers and FCC about VoIP phone outages Read More »

spacex-moving-dragon-splashdowns-to-pacific-to-solve-falling-debris-problem

SpaceX moving Dragon splashdowns to Pacific to solve falling debris problem

commercial crew, dragon, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / /
A Crew Dragon spacecraft is seen docked at the International Space Station in 2022. The section of the spacecraft on the left is the pressurized capsule, while the rear section, at right, is the trunk.

Enlarge / A Crew Dragon spacecraft is seen docked at the International Space Station in 2022. The section of the spacecraft on the left is the pressurized capsule, while the rear section, at right, is the trunk.

NASA

Sometime next year, SpaceX will begin returning its Dragon crew and cargo capsules to splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean and end recoveries of the spacecraft off the coast of Florida.

This will allow SpaceX to make changes to the way it brings Dragons back to Earth and eliminate the risk, however tiny, that a piece of debris from the ship’s trunk section might fall on someone and cause damage, injury, or death.

“After five years of splashing down off the coast of Florida, we’ve decided to shift Dragon recovery operations back to the West Coast,” said Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management.

Public safety

In the past couple of years, landowners have discovered debris from several Dragon missions on their property, and the fragments all came from the spacecraft’s trunk, an unpressurized section mounted behind the capsule as it carries astronauts or cargo on flights to and from the International Space Station.

SpaceX returned its first 21 Dragon cargo missions to splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Los Angeles. When an upgraded human-rated version of Dragon started flying in 2019, SpaceX moved splashdowns to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to be closer to the company’s refurbishment and launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The benefits of landing near Florida included a faster handover of astronauts and time-sensitive cargo back to NASA and shorter turnaround times between missions.

The old version of Dragon, known as Dragon 1, separated its trunk after the deorbit burn, allowing the trunk to fall into the Pacific. With the new version of Dragon, called Dragon 2, SpaceX changed the reentry profile to jettison the trunk before the deorbit burn. This meant that the trunk remained in orbit after each Dragon mission, while the capsule reentered the atmosphere on a guided trajectory. The trunk, which is made of composite materials and lacks a propulsion system, usually takes a few weeks or a few months to fall back into the atmosphere and doesn’t have control of where or when it reenters.

Air resistance from the rarefied upper atmosphere gradually slows the trunk’s velocity enough to drop it out of orbit, and the amount of aerodynamic drag the trunk sees is largely determined by fluctuations in solar activity.

SpaceX and NASA, which funded a large portion of the Dragon spacecraft’s development, initially determined the trunk would entirely burn up when it reentered the atmosphere and would pose no threat of surviving reentry and causing injuries or damaging property. However, that turned out to not be the case.

In May, a 90-pound chunk of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that departed the International Space Station fell on the property of a “glamping” resort in North Carolina. At the same time, a homeowner in a nearby town found a smaller piece of material that also appeared to be from the same Dragon mission.

These events followed the discovery in April of another nearly 90-pound piece of debris from a Dragon capsule on a farm in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. SpaceX and NASA later determined the debris fell from orbit in February, and earlier this month, SpaceX employees came to the farm to retrieve the wreckage, according to CBC.

Pieces of a Dragon spacecraft also fell over Colorado last year, and a farmer in Australia found debris from a Dragon capsule on his land in 2022.

SpaceX moving Dragon splashdowns to Pacific to solve falling debris problem Read More »