Author name: Mike M.

diablo-ii-streamer-finds-1-in-3-million-item-drop,-instantly-sells-it-for-laughs

Diablo II streamer finds 1-in-3-million item drop, instantly sells it for laughs

Gold digger —

Many players have never even seen a Zod rune drop over decades of play.

Mere seconds before an epic livestreamed troll moment.

Enlarge / Mere seconds before an epic livestreamed troll moment.

The Zod rune has a mythical place in Diablo II lore. The incredibly rare socketed item, which can make other in-game gear indestructible, has just a 1 in 2,987,183 chance of dropping from the game’s highest class of enemy, according to one calculation.

To this day, it’s not hard to find dedicated players admitting online that they’ve never seen a legitimate copy of the rune despite years of play (though duplicated versions made using glitches can be less rare).

So when Diablo streamer and speedrunner Kano saw a Zod rune drop during a livestreamed Diablo II: Resurrected run Wednesday (as noticed by GamesRadar), it was something of a legendary moment. And when Kano sold that rune for a relatively unimportant 35,000 in-game gold mere moments later, it was something of a legendary troll.

“Please, for the love of all that is holy…”

“Yo, that’s my highest speedrun rune—here we go,” Kano said calmly on-stream when the rune dropped, projecting a cool detachment that belied the import of the moment. “That’s the first-ever Zod I’ve found, by the way. Like, ever.”

Viewers seeing the moment live on Twitch chat were not nearly so detached. “That’s easily the rarest thing ever dropped in a speed run, lol,” Twitch user R__A__C__E stated, probably accurately. “I just opened the stream WHAT THE F hahahha” Twitch user creatingmadness added.

The chat’s mood changed mere moments later, though, when Kano left the dungeon, walked to an in-game vendor, and quickly sold the incredibly rare item. “Do not vendor that!!! Please for the love of all that is holy,” YouTube viewer Ragnar begged, to no avail. “YOU ASSHOLE,” Twitch user R__A__C__E added in all-caps outrage.

Kano just chuckled a bit to himself at the reactions he was getting from his viewers. “What, dude, it’s 35K, it’s good… it’s good money,” he deadpanned. Later in the same stream, he feigned ignorance over why the sale would even generate controversy. “Why would they be angry at me for selling a Zod, dude? It’s 35K gold. I don’t get it. What’s the problem? I think I should be more angry at people who keep a Zod rune, to be honest.”

Kano’s full stream. The Zod rune drops at around the 8: 15: 30 mark.

Elsewhere in the stream, though, Kano dropped the act and fully appreciated what had just happened. “I can’t believe it, like, that’s so sick,” he said. “Hello, it’s my first ever Zod rune, dude. Now, whenever people ask me the question ‘What’s the highest Rune you’ve ever seen in a speedrun?’ I can finally say it’s a Zod, man.”

Diablo II streamer finds 1-in-3-million item drop, instantly sells it for laughs Read More »

alternate-qubit-design-does-error-correction-in-hardware

Alternate qubit design does error correction in hardware

We can fix that —

Early-stage technology has the potential to cut qubits needed for useful computers.

Image of a complicated set of wires and cables hooked up to copper colored metal hardware.

Nord Quantique

There’s a general consensus that performing any sort of complex algorithm on quantum hardware will have to wait for the arrival of error-corrected qubits. Individual qubits are too error-prone to be trusted for complex calculations, so quantum information will need to be distributed across multiple qubits, allowing monitoring for errors and intervention when they occur.

But most ways of making these “logical qubits” needed for error correction require anywhere from dozens to over a hundred individual hardware qubits. This means we’ll need anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of hardware qubits to do calculations. Existing hardware has only cleared the 1,000-qubit mark within the last month, so that future appears to be several years off at best.

But on Thursday, a company called Nord Quantique announced that it had demonstrated error correction using a single qubit with a distinct hardware design. While this has the potential to greatly reduce the number of hardware qubits needed for useful error correction, the demonstration involved a single qubit—the company doesn’t even expect to demonstrate operations on pairs of qubits until later this year.

Meet the bosonic qubit

The technology underlying this work is termed a bosonic qubit, and they’re not anything new; an optical instrument company even has a product listing for them that notes their potential for use in error correction. But while the concepts behind using them in this manner were well established, demonstrations were lagging. Nord Quantique has now posted a paper in the arXiv that details a demonstration of them actually lowering error rates.

The devices are structured much like a transmon, the form of qubit favored by tech heavyweights like IBM and Google. There, the quantum information is stored in a loop of superconducting wire and is controlled by what’s called a microwave resonator—a small bit of material where microwave photons will reflect back and forth for a while before being lost.

A bosonic qubit turns that situation on its head. In this hardware, the quantum information is held in the photons, while the superconducting wire and resonator control the system. These are both hooked up to a coaxial cavity (think of a structure that, while microscopic, looks a bit like the end of a cable connector).

Massively simplified, the quantum information is stored in the manner in which the photons in the cavity interact. The state of the photons can be monitored by the linked resonator/superconducting wire. If something appears to be off, the resonator/superconducting wire allows interventions to be made to restore the original state. Additional qubits are not needed. “A very simple and basic idea behind quantum error correction is redundancy,” co-founder and CTO Julien Camirand Lemyre told Ars. “One thing about resonators and oscillators in superconducting circuits is that you can put a lot of photons inside the resonators. And for us, the redundancy comes from there.”

This process doesn’t correct all possible errors, so it doesn’t eliminate the need for logical qubits made from multiple underlying hardware qubits. In theory, though, you can catch the two most common forms of errors that qubits are prone to (bit flips and changes in phase).

In the arXiv preprint, the team at Nord Quantique demonstrated that the system works. Using a single qubit and simply measuring whether it holds onto its original state, the error correction system can reduce problems by 14 percent. Unfortunately, overall fidelity is also low, starting at about 85 percent, which is significantly below what’s seen in other systems that have been through years of development work. Some qubits have been demonstrated with a fidelity of over 99 percent.

Getting competitive

So there’s no question that Nord Quantique is well behind a number of the leaders in quantum computing that can perform (error-prone) calculations with dozens of qubits and have far lower error rates. Again, Nord Quantique’s work was done using a single qubit—and without doing any of the operations needed to perform a calculation.

Lemyre told Ars that while the company is small, it benefits from being a spin-out of the Institut Quantique at Canada’s Sherbrooke University, one of Canada’s leading quantum research centers. In addition to having access to the expertise there, Nord Quantique uses a fabrication facility at Sherbrooke to make its hardware.

Over the next year, the company expects to demonstrate that the error correction scheme can function while pairs of qubits are used to perform gate operations, the fundamental units of calculations. Another high priority is to combine this hardware-based error correction with more traditional logical qubit schemes, which would allow additional types of errors to be caught and corrected. This would involve operations with a dozen or more of these bosonic qubits at a time.

But the real challenge will be in the longer term. The company is counting on its hardware’s ability to handle error correction to reduce the number of qubits needed for useful calculations. But if its competitors can scale up the number of qubits fast enough while maintaining the control and error rates needed, that may not ultimately matter. Put differently, if Nord Quantique is still in the hundreds of qubit range by the time other companies are in the hundreds of thousands, its technology might not succeed even if it has some inherent advantages.

But that’s the fun part about the field as things stand: We don’t really know. A handful of very different technologies are already well into development and show some promise. And there are other sets that are still early in the development process but are thought to have a smoother path to scaling to useful numbers of qubits. All of them will have to scale to a minimum of tens of thousands of qubits while enabling the ability to perform quantum manipulations that were cutting-edge science just a few decades ago.

Looming in the background is the simple fact that we’ve never tried to scale anything like this to the extent that will be needed. Unforeseen technical hurdles might limit progress at some point in the future.

Despite all this, there are people backing each of these technologies who know far more about quantum mechanics than I ever will. It’s a fun time.

Alternate qubit design does error correction in hardware Read More »

us-funds-$5b-chip-effort-after-lagging-on-semiconductor-innovation

US funds $5B chip effort after lagging on semiconductor innovation

Now hiring? —

US had failed to fund the “science half” of CHIPS and Science Act, critic said.

US President Joe Biden speaks before signing the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden speaks before signing the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.

The Biden administration announced investments Friday totaling more than $5 billion in semiconductor research and development intended to re-establish the US as a global leader manufacturing the “next generation of semiconductor technologies.”

Through sizeable investments, the US will “advance US leadership in semiconductor R&D, cut down on the time and cost of commercializing new technologies, bolster US national security, and connect and support workers in securing good semiconductor jobs,” a White House press release said.

Currently, the US produces “less than 10 percent” of the global chips supply and “none of the most advanced chips,” the White House said. But investing in programs like the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC)—considered the “centerpiece” of the CHIPS and Science Act’s four R&D programs—and training a talented workforce could significantly increase US production of semiconductors that the Biden administration described as the “backbone of the modern economy.”

The White House projected that the NSTC’s workforce activities would launch in the summer of 2024. The Center’s prime directive will be developing new semiconductor technologies by “supporting design, prototyping, and piloting and through ensuring innovators have access to critical capabilities.”

Moving forward, the NSTC will operate as a public-private consortium, involving both government and private sector institutions, the White House confirmed. It will be run by a recently established nonprofit called the National Center for the Advancement of Semiconductor Technology (Natcast), which will coordinate with the secretaries of Commerce, Defense, and Energy, as well as the National Science Foundation’s director. Any additional stakeholders can provide input on the NSTC’s goals by joining the NSTC Community of Interest at no cost.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has explained why achieving the NSTC’s mission to develop cutting-edge semiconductor technology in the US will not be easy:

The smallest dimensions of leading-edge semiconductor devices have reached the atomic scale and the complexity of the circuit architecture is increasing exponentially with the use of three-dimensional structures, the incorporation of new materials, and improvements in the thousands of process steps needed to make advanced chips. Into the future, as new applications demand higher-performance semiconductors, their design and production will become even more complex. This complexity makes it increasingly difficult and costly to implement innovations because of the dependencies between design and manufacturing, between manufacturing steps, and between front-end and back-end processes.

The complexity of keeping up with semiconductor tech is why it’s critical for the US to create clear pathways for skilled workers to break into this burgeoning industry. The Biden administration said it plans to invest “at least hundreds of millions of dollars in the NSTC’s workforce efforts,” creating a Workforce Center of Excellence with locations throughout the US and piloting new training programs, including initiatives engaging underserved communities. The Workforce Center will start by surveying best practices in semiconductor education programs, then establish a baseline program to attract workers seeking dependable paths to break into the industry.

Last year, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) released a study showing that the US was not adequately preparing a highly skilled workforce. Between “67,000, or 58 percent, of projected new jobs, may remain unfulfilled at the current trajectory,” SIA estimated.

A skilled workforce is just part of the equation, though. The US also needs facilities where workers can experiment with new technologies without breaking the bank. To that end, the Department of Commerce announced it would be investing “at least $200 million” in a first-of-its-kind CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute. That institute will “allow innovators to replicate and experiment with physical manufacturing processes at low cost.”

Other Commerce Department investments announced include “up to $300 million” for advanced packaging R&D necessary for discovering new applications for semiconductor technologies and over $100 million in funding for dozens of projects to help inventors “more easily scale innovations into commercial products.”

A Commerce Department spokesperson told Ars that “the location of the NSTC headquarters has not yet been determined” but will “directly support the NSTC research strategy and give engineers, academics, researchers, engineers at startups, small and large companies, and workforce developers the capabilities they need to innovate.” In 2024, NSTC’s efforts to kick off research appear modest, with the center expecting to prioritize engaging community members and stakeholders, launching workforce programs, and identifying early start research programs.

So far, Biden’s efforts to ramp up semiconductor manufacturing in the US have not gone smoothly. Earlier this year, TSMC predicted further delays at chips plants under construction in Arizona and confirmed that the second plant would not be able to manufacture the most advanced chips, as previously expected.

That news followed criticism from private entities last year. In November, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted that the US was “somewhere between a decade and two decades away” from semiconductor supply chain independence. The US Chamber of Commerce said last August that the reason why the US remained so far behind was because the US had so far failed to prioritize funding in the “science half” of the CHIPS and Science Act.

In 2024, the Biden administration appears to be attempting to finally start funding a promised $11 billion total in research and development efforts. Once NSTC kicks off research, the pressure will be on to chase the Center’s highest ambition of turning the US into a consistent birthplace of life-changing semiconductor technologies once again.

US funds $5B chip effort after lagging on semiconductor innovation Read More »

can-a-$3,500-headset-replace-your-tv?-we-tried-vision-pro-to-find-out

Can a $3,500 headset replace your TV? We tried Vision Pro to find out

Apple Vision Pro Review —

We kick off our multi-part Vision Pro review by testing it for entertainment.

  • The Apple Vision Pro with AirPods Pro, Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and an Xbox Series X|S controller.

    Samuel Axon

  • You can see the front-facing cameras that handle passthrough video just above the down-facing cameras that read your hand gestures here.

    Samuel Axon

  • There are two buttons for Vision Pro, both on the top.

    Samuel Axon

  • This is the infamous battery pack. It’s about the size of an iPhone (but a little thicker) and has a USB-C port for external power sources.

    Samuel Axon

  • There are two displays inside the Vision Pro, one for each eye. Each offers just under 4K resolution.

    Samuel Axon

  • Apple offers several variations of the light seal to fit different face shapes.

    Samuel Axon

  • A close-up look at the Vision Pro from the front.

    Samuel Axon

The Vision Pro is the strangest product Apple has introduced in the time I’ve been covering the company. By now, it’s well established that the headset is both impressively cutting-edge and ludicrously expensive.

You could certainly argue that its price means it’s only for Silicon Valley techno-optimists with too much money to burn or for developers looking to get in on the ground floor on the chance that this is the next gold rush for apps. But the platform will need more than those users to succeed.

Part of Apple’s pitch behind the price tag seems to be that the Vision Pro could replace several devices, just like the iPhone did back in the late 2000s. It could replace your laptop, your tablet, your 4K TV, your video game console, your phone or other communications device, your VR headset, and so on. If it truly replaced all of those things, the price wouldn’t seem quite so outrageous to some.

And those are just the use cases Apple has put a lot of effort into facilitating for the launch. Many of the most important uses of the company’s prior new product categories didn’t become totally clear until a couple of years and generations in. The iPhone wasn’t originally intended as a meditation aid, a flashlight, and a number of other common uses until third-party developers invented apps to make it do those things. And Apple’s approach with the Apple Watch seemed to be to just throw it out there with a number of possible uses to see what stuck with users. (The answer seemed to be health and fitness, but the device’s distinct emphasis on that took a bit of time to come into focus.)

So while I could write a dense review meandering through all the possibilities based on my week with the Vision Pro, that doesn’t seem as helpful as drilling in on each specific possibility. This is the first in a series of articles that will do that, so consider it part one of a lengthy, multi-step review. By the end, we’ll have considered several possible applications of the device, and we might be able to make some recommendations or predictions about its potential.

So far, I believe there’s one use case that’s a slam dunk, closer to clarity during launch week than any of the others: entertainment. For certain situations, The Vision Pro is a better device for consuming TV shows and movies (among other things) away from a dedicated theater than we’ve ever seen before. So let’s start there.

My (perhaps too) exacting standards

I know I’m not the usual TV consumer. It’s important to note that before we get too deep.

I bought my first OLED television (a 55-inch LG B6) in 2016. I previously had a 50-inch plasma TV I liked, but it only supported 1080p and SDR (standard dynamic range), and Sony had announced the PlayStation 4 Pro, which would support 4K games (sort of) and HDR (high dynamic range). Game consoles had always driven TV purchases in the past, so I sprung for the best I could afford.

I always cared about picture quality before I bought an OLED, but that interest turned into something more obsessive at that point. I was stunned at the difference, and I began to find it hard to accept the imperfections of LCD monitors and TVs after that. Granted, I’d always disliked LCDs, going straight from CRT to plasma to avoid that grayish backlight glow. But the comparison was even harsher once I went to OLED.

My fellow Ars Technica writers and editors often talk about their robust, multi-monitor PC setups, their expensive in-home server racks, and other Ars-y stuff. I have some of that stuff, too, but I put most of my time and energy into my home theater. I’ve invested a lot into it, and that has the unfortunate side effect of making most other screens I use feel inadequate by comparison.

All that said, some have argued that the Vision Pro is a solution in search of a problem, but there is one pre-existing problem I have that it has the potential to solve.

I travel a lot, so I spend a total of at least two months out of every year in hotel or Airbnb rooms. Whenever I’m in one of those places, I’m always irritated at how its TV compares to the one I have at home. It’s too small for the space, it’s not 4K, it doesn’t support HDR, it’s mounted way too high to comfortably watch, or it’s a cheap LCD with washed-out black levels and terrible contrast. Often, it’s all of the above. And even when I’m home, my wife might want to watch her shows on the big TV tonight.

I end up not watching movies or shows I want to watch because I feel like I’d be doing those shows a disservice by ruining the picture with such terrible hardware. “Better to hold off until I’m home,” I tell myself.

The Vision Pro could be the answer I’ve been waiting for. Those two displays in front of my eyes are capable of displaying an image that stands up to that of a mid-range OLED TV in most situations, and I can use it absolutely anywhere.

Can a $3,500 headset replace your TV? We tried Vision Pro to find out Read More »

rocket-report:-us-military-still-wants-point-to-point;-india’s-big-2024-ambitions

Rocket Report: US military still wants point-to-point; India’s big 2024 ambitions

A Falcon 9 rocket launched NASA's PACE spacecraft this week.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launched NASA’s PACE spacecraft this week.

SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 6.30 of the Rocket Report! Looking ahead, there are some interesting launches coming up in the middle of this month. Here are some we have our eyes on: Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on a Falcon 9 and a re-flight of Japan’s big H3 rocket next week; then there’s an Electron launch of an intriguing Astroscale mission and NASA’s Crew-8 the following week. Good luck to all.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

Was Transporter created to ‘kill’ small launch? SpaceX’s Transporter missions, which regularly fly 100 or more small satellites into low-Earth orbit on Falcon 9 rideshare missions, have unquestionably harmed small satellite launch companies. While companies like Rocket Lab or Virgin Orbit could offer smallsat operators a precise orbit, there was no way to compete on price. “The Transporter program was created a few years ago with, in my opinion, the sole purpose of trying to kill new entrants like us,” said Sandy Tirtey, director of global commercial launch services at Rocket Lab, during a panel at the SmallSat Symposium on Wednesday.

Low-price guarantee … The panel was covered by Space News, and the rest of the article includes a lot of comments from small launch providers about how they provide value with dedicated services and so forth—pretty typical fare. However, the story does not really explore Tirtley’s statement. So, was Transporter created to kill small launch companies? As someone who has reported a lot on SpaceX over the years, I’ll offer my two cents. I don’t think the program was created with this intent; rather, it filled a market need (only Electron and India’s PSLV were meeting commercial smallsat demand in any volume at the time). It also gave Falcon 9 more commercial missions. However, I do believe it was ultimately priced with the intent of cutting small launch off at the knees.

FAA investigating Virgin Galactic’s dropped pin. Virgin Galactic reported an anomaly on its most recent flight, Galactic 06, which took place two weeks ago from a spaceport in New Mexico. The company said it discovered a dropped pin during a post-flight review of the mission, which carried two pilots and four passengers to an altitude of 55.1 miles (88.7 km). This alignment pin, according to Virgin Galactic, helps ensure the VSS Unity spaceship is aligned to its carrier aircraft when mating the vehicles, Ars reports.

Corrective actions to be required … Virgin Galactic said it reported the anomaly to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on January 31. On Tuesday, the FAA confirmed that there was no public property or injuries that resulted from the mishap. “The FAA is overseeing the Virgin Galactic-led mishap investigation to ensure the company complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements,” the federal agency said in a statement. Before VSS Unity can return to flight, the FAA must approve Virgin Galactic’s final report, including corrective actions to prevent a similar problem in the future. (submitted by 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.

HyImpulse ships suborbital rocket to launch site. German launch startup HyImpulse has confirmed that its SR75 rocket and all related support systems have been boxed up and have embarked on the long journey to Australia, European Spaceflight reports. SR75 is a single-stage suborbital launch vehicle that is designed to be capable of delivering up to 250 kilograms to a maximum altitude of around 200 kilometers.

Testing a pathfinder … The debut flight of SR75 had initially been slated to occur from SaxaVord in the United Kingdom. In fact, HyImpulse had received approval for the flight from the UK Civil Aviation Authority in mid-2023. However, with financial issues forcing work on the site to be temporarily slowed, HyImpulse was forced to look elsewhere. The launch will now take place from the South Launch Koonibba Test Range in Australia, possibly as soon as March. The test will certify several critical elements of the company’s larger orbital SL1 rocket. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: US military still wants point-to-point; India’s big 2024 ambitions Read More »

canada-declares-flipper-zero-public-enemy-no.-1-in-car-theft-crackdown

Canada declares Flipper Zero public enemy No. 1 in car-theft crackdown

FLIPPING YOUR LID —

How do you ban a device built with open source hardware and software anyway?

A Flipper Zero device

Enlarge / A Flipper Zero device

https://flipperzero.one/

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has identified an unlikely public enemy No. 1 in his new crackdown on car theft: the Flipper Zero, a $200 piece of open source hardware used to capture, analyze and interact with simple radio communications.

On Thursday, the Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada agency said it will “pursue all avenues to ban devices used to steal vehicles by copying the wireless signals for remote keyless entry, such as the Flipper Zero, which would allow for the removal of those devices from the Canadian marketplace through collaboration with law enforcement agencies.” A social media post by François-Philippe Champagne, the minister of that agency, said that as part of the push “we are banning the importation, sale and use of consumer hacking devices, like flippers, used to commit these crimes.”

In remarks made the same day, Trudeau said the push will target similar tools that he said can be used to defeat anti-theft protections built into virtually all new cars.

“In reality, it has become too easy for criminals to obtain sophisticated electronic devices that make their jobs easier,” he said. “For example, to copy car keys. It is unacceptable that it is possible to buy tools that help car theft on major online shopping platforms.”

Presumably, such tools subject to the ban would include HackRF One and LimeSDR, which have become crucial for analyzing and testing the security of all kinds of electronic devices to find vulnerabilities before they’re exploited. None of the government officials identified any of these tools, but in an email, a representative of the Canadian government reiterated the use of the phrase “pursuing all avenues to ban devices used to steal vehicles by copying the wireless signals for remote keyless entry.”

A humble hobbyist device

The push to ban any of these tools has been met with fierce criticism from hobbyists and security professionals. Their case has only been strengthened by Trudeau’s focus on Flipper Zero. This slim, lightweight device bearing the logo of an adorable dolphin acts as a Swiss Army knife for sending, receiving, and analyzing all kinds of wireless communications. It can interact with radio signals, including RFID, NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or standard radio. People can use them to change the channels of a TV at a bar covertly, clone simple hotel key cards, read the RFID chip implanted in pets, open and close some garage doors, and, until Apple issued a patch, send iPhones into a never-ending DoS loop.

The price and ease of use make Flipper Zero ideal for beginners and hobbyists who want to understand how increasingly ubiquitous communications protocols such as NFC and Wi-Fi work. It bundles various open source hardware and software into a portable form factor that sells for an affordable price. Lost on the Canadian government, the device isn’t especially useful in stealing cars because it lacks the more advanced capabilities required to bypass anti-theft protections introduced in more than two decades.

One thing the Flipper Zero is exceedingly ill-equipped for is defeating modern antihack protections built into cars, smartcards, phones, and other electronic devices.

The most prevalent form of electronics-assisted car theft these days, for instance, uses what are known as signal amplification relay devices against keyless ignition and entry systems. This form of hack works by holding one device near a key fob and a second device near the vehicle the fob works with. In the most typical scenario, the fob is located on a shelf near a locked front door, and the car is several dozen feet away in a driveway. By placing one device near the front door and another one next to the car, the hack beams the radio signals necessary to unlock and start the device.

Canada declares Flipper Zero public enemy No. 1 in car-theft crackdown Read More »

a-sleuthing-enthusiast-says-he-found-the-us-military’s-x-37b-spaceplane

A sleuthing enthusiast says he found the US military’s X-37B spaceplane

Found —

Officials didn’t disclose details about the X-37B’s orbit after its December launch.

File photo of an X-37B spaceplane.

Enlarge / File photo of an X-37B spaceplane.

Boeing

It turns out some of the informed speculation about the US military’s latest X-37B spaceplane mission was pretty much spot-on.

When the semi-classified winged spacecraft launched on December 28, it flew into orbit on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, which is much larger than the Atlas V and Falcon 9 rockets used to launch the X-37B on its previous missions.

This immediately sparked speculation that the X-37B would reach higher altitudes than its past flights, which remained in low-Earth orbit at altitudes of a few hundred miles. A discovery from Tomi Simola, a satellite tracking hobbyist living near Helsinki, Finland, appears to confirm this suspicion.

On Friday, Simola reported on social media and on SeeSat-L, a long-running online forum of satellite tracking enthusiasts, that he detected an unidentified object using a sky-watching camera. The camera is designed to continuously observe a portion of the sky to detect moving objects in space. A special software program helps identify known and unknown objects.

“Exciting news!” Simola posted on social media. “Orbital Test Vehicle 7 (OTV-7), which was launched to classified orbit last December, was seen by my SatCam! Here are images from the last two nights!”

Exciting news!

Orbital Test Vehicle 7 (OTV-7), which was launched to classified orbit last December, was seen by my SatCam!

Here are images from the last two nights! pic.twitter.com/3twOVdovVc

— Tomppa 🇺🇦 (@tomppa77) February 9, 2024

Mike McCants, one of the more experienced satellite observers and co-administrator of the SeeSat-L forum, agreed with Simola’s conclusion that he found the X-37B spaceplane.

“Congrats to Tomi Simola for locating the secret X-37B spaceplane,” posted Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and widely respected expert in spaceflight activity.

Higher than ever

Amateur observations of the spaceplane indicate it is flying in a highly elliptical orbit ranging between 201 and 24,133 miles in altitude (323 and 38,838 kilometers). The orbit is inclined 59.1 degrees to the equator.

This is not far off the predictions from the hobbyist tracking community before the launch in December. At that time, enthusiasts used information about the Falcon Heavy’s launch trajectory and drop zones for the rocket’s core booster and upper stage to estimate the orbit it would reach with the X-37B spaceplane.

The Space Force has not released any information about the orbit of the X-37B. While it took hobbyists about six weeks to find the X-37B on this mission, it typically took less time for amateur trackers to locate it when it orbited at lower altitudes on its previous missions. Despite the secrecy, it’s difficult to imagine the US military’s adversaries in China and Russia didn’t already know where the spaceplane was flying.

Military officials usually don’t disclose details about the X-37B’s missions while they are in space, providing updates only before each launch and then after each landing.

This is the seventh flight of an X-3B spaceplane since the first one launched in 2010. In a statement before the launch in December, the Space Force said this flight of the X-37B is focused on “a wide range of test and experimentation objectives.” Flying in “new orbital regimes” is among the test objectives, military officials said.

The military has two Boeing-built X-37B spaceplanes, or Orbital Test Vehicles, in its inventory. They are reusable and designed to launch inside the payload fairing of a conventional rocket, spend multiple years in space with the use of solar power, and then return to Earth for a landing on a three-mile-long runway, either at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California or at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It resembles a miniature version of NASA’s retired space shuttle orbiter, with wings, deployable landing gear, and black thermal protection tiles to shield its belly from the scorching heat of reentry. It measures 29 feet (about 9 meters) long, roughly a quarter of the length of NASA’s space shuttle, and it doesn’t carry astronauts.

The X-37B has a cargo bay inside the fuselage for payloads, with doors that open after launch and close before landing. There is also a service module mounted to the back end of the spaceplane to accommodate additional experiments, payloads, and small satellites that can deploy in orbit to perform their own missions.

All the Space Force has said about the payloads on the current X-37B flight is that its experiment package includes investigations into new “space domain awareness technologies.” NASA is flying an experiment on the X-37B to measure how plant seeds respond to sustained exposure to space radiation. The spaceplane’s orbit on this flight takes it through the Van Allen radiation belts.

The secrecy surrounding the X-37B has sparked much speculation about its purpose, some of which centers on ideas that the spaceplane is part of a classified weapons platform in orbit. More likely, analysts say, the X-37B is a testbed for new space technologies. The unusual elliptical orbit for this mission is similar to the orbit used for some of the Space Force’s satellites designed to detect and warn of ballistic missile launches.

McDowell said this could mean the X-37B is testing out an infrared sensor for future early warning satellites, but then he cautioned this would be “just a wild speculation.”

Speculation is about all we have to go on regarding the X-37B. But it seems we no longer need to speculate about where the X-37B is flying.

A sleuthing enthusiast says he found the US military’s X-37B spaceplane Read More »

big-pharma-spends-billions-more-on-executives-and-stockholders-than-on-r&d

Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on R&D

Greed —

Senate report points to greed and “patent thickets” as key reasons for high prices.

Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on R&D

When big pharmaceutical companies are confronted over their exorbitant pricing of prescription drugs in the US, they often retreat to two well-worn arguments: One, that the high drug prices cover costs of researching and developing new drugs, a risky and expensive endeavor, and two, that middle managers—pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), to be specific—are actually the ones price gouging Americans.

Both of these arguments faced substantial blows in a hearing Thursday held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In fact, pharmaceutical companies are spending billions of dollars more on lavish executive compensation, dividends, and stock buyouts than they spend on research and development (R&D) for new drugs, Sanders pointed out. “In other words, these companies are spending more to enrich their own stockholders and CEOs than they are in finding new cures and new treatments,” he said.

And, while PBMs certainly contribute to America’s uniquely astronomical drug pricing, their profiteering accounts for a small fraction of the massive drug market, Sanders and an expert panelist noted. PBMs work as shadowy middle managers between drugmakers, insurers, and pharmacies, setting drug formularies and consumer prices, and negotiating rebates and discounts behind the scenes. Though PBMs practices contribute to overall costs, they pale compared to pharmaceutical profits.

Rather, the heart of the problem, according to a Senate report released earlier this week, is pharmaceutical greed, patent gaming that allows drug makers to stretch out monopolies, and powerful lobbying.

On Thursday, the Senate committee gathered the CEOs of three behemoth pharmaceutical companies to question them on the drug pricing practices: Robert Davis of Merck, Joaquin Duato of Johnson & Johnson, and Chris Boerner of Bristol Myers Squibb.

“We are aware of the many important lifesaving drugs that your companies have produced, and that’s extraordinarily important,” Sanders said before questioning the CEOs. “But, I think, as all of you know, those drugs mean nothing to anybody who cannot afford it.”

America’s uniquely high prices

Sanders called drug pricing in the US “outrageous,” noting that Americans spend by far the most for prescription drugs in the world. A report this month by the US Department of Health and Human Services found that in 2022, US prices across all brand-name and generic drugs were nearly three times as high as prices in 33 other wealthy countries. That means that for every dollar paid in other countries for prescription drugs, Americans paid $2.78. And that gap is widening over time.

Focusing on drugs from the three companies represented at the hearing (J&J, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb), the Senate report looked at how initial prices for new drugs entering the US market have skyrocketed over the past two decades. The analysis found that from 2004 to 2008, the median launch price of innovative prescription drugs sold by J&J, Merck, and Bristol Myers Squibb was over $14,000. But, over the past five years, the median launch price was over $238,000. Those numbers account for inflation.

The report focused on high-profit drugs from each of the drug makers. Merck’s Keytruda, a cancer drug, costs $191,000 a year in the US, but is just $91,000 in France and $44,000 in Japan. J&J’s HIV drug, Symtuza, is $56,000 in the US, but only $14,000 in Canada. And Bristol Myers Squibb’s Eliquis, used to prevent strokes, costs $7,100 in the US, but $760 in the UK and $900 in Canada.

Sanders asked Bristol Myers Squibb’s CEO Boerner if the company would “reduce the list price of Eliquis in the United States to the price that you charge in Canada, where you make a profit?” Boerner replied that “we can’t make that commitment primarily because the prices in these two countries have very different systems.”

The powerful pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA, published a blog post before the hearing saying that comparing US drug prices to prices in other countries “hurts patients.” The group argued that Americans have broader, faster access to drugs than people in other countries.

Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on R&D Read More »

female-ex-exec-told-she-lacked-“docility-and-meekness”-sues-tiktok

Female ex-exec told she lacked “docility and meekness” sues TikTok

Female ex-exec told she lacked “docility and meekness” sues TikTok

One of TikTok’s senior-most female executives, Katie Ellen Puris, is suing TikTok and its owner ByteDance, alleging wrongful termination based on age and sex discrimination.

In her complaint filed Thursday, Puris accused ByteDance chairman Lidong Zhang of aggressively forcing her out of the company because she “lacked the docility and meekness specifically required of female employees.” She also alleged experiencing retaliation after reporting sexual harassment to the company.

Puris joined TikTok in December 2019 as managing director and US head of business marketing. Previously, she’d led global marketing initiatives for Google and Facebook. TikTok appeared to value this experience and promoted her within two months to lead its global business marketing team. In this role, she launched TikTok for Business and meaningfully shaped how businesses interact with the platform.

Amid this success, Puris allegedly discovered that she had a target on her back.

According to her complaint, by early 2021, Beijing-based ByteDance executives, including Zhang, “began reasserting more control over TikTok’s day-to-day operations.” These executives, Puris said, required bi-monthly meetings with senior executives to report on their teams’ progress in hitting company targets.

“Despite its attempts to appear independent, TikTok’s day-to-day management and business decisions came directly from ByteDance’s top-level management in China,” Puris’ complaint alleged.

During one of these bi-monthly meetings, Puris met Zhang for the first time during a presentation where she “celebrated her team’s successes and achievements.” Allegedly, Zhang was put off by Puris’ presentation because “women should always remain humble and express modesty.”

“Essentially, Lidong Zhang believes women should be quiet,” Puris’ complaint alleged.

Puris believes that because she “did not fit that stereotypical gender mold,” Zhang refused to ever meet with her again and placed her on a “kill list” of employees who he wanted terminated.

According to Puris, Zhang began pressuring her supervisors to review her performance negatively. He allegedly cast a wide net and sought negative comments from employees whom Puris rarely worked with. His alleged “animosity” was so evident that one of Puris’ supervisors allegedly sought to protect her by removing her from Zhang’s oversight.

At the same time, Puris, who was approaching 50, alleged that other executives “made it clear” that they would prefer to hire “hungry” younger, less experienced workers “believed to be more innovative and pliable” and “desperate for approval” than older workers like Puris. She claimed that a supervisor regularly referenced her age during performance reviews that became increasingly negative and without clear feedback or comments substantiating her poor reviews. Requests for feedback were repeatedly rejected.

Puris’ efforts to report alleged age and sex discrimination did not result in corrective action, her complaint said. Even when a TikTok advertising partner allegedly drunkenly sexually harassed her at an off-site event, Puris alleged that her complaints were not taken seriously. Puris said that TikTok continued inviting the advertising partner to events, causing her to withdraw from attending.

Rather than sincerely investigate her complaints, Puris’ complaint said that “after Ms. Puris made protected complaints, her team was substantially reduced, she received a devastatingly low-performance review, she was denied her annual bonus, she was moved out of her position, and she was ultimately unlawfully terminated.”

Female ex-exec told she lacked “docility and meekness” sues TikTok Read More »

200-foot-am-radio-tower-disappears,-halting-alabama-station-broadcast

200-foot AM radio tower disappears, halting Alabama station broadcast

Tower theft —

“There’s wires everywhere, and it’s gone.”

radio, tuner, dial, station, FM, AM, music, sound, numbers, 700, 800, 94, 96

A 200-foot AM radio tower has been missing for at least a week, leaving an Alabama radio station in a financial crisis and on a desperate hunt.

As first reported by Memphis’ Action News 5, Jasper, Alabama, radio station WJLX 101.5 FM/1240 AM, sent a bush hog crew to maintain the area around the tower on February 2. The tower is behind a poultry plant in a forested area, per The Guardian. Once there, a crew member called station manager Brett Elmore, informing him that the 200-foot structure that CNN says has been there since the ’50s had disappeared.

“He said, ‘The tower is gone. There’s wires [sic] everywhere, and it’s gone,’” Elmore told Action News 5.

The total value of all the equipment reported stolen is nearly $200,000, Alabama’s ABC 33/40 News said.

Now the radio station says it has to get a new tower, as well as a new transmitter and additional equipment for tasks like processing and engineering. Replacement costs are an estimated $60,000 or more, per WJLX.

Even if the tower were somehow recovered, the station would still be “in a jam,” Elmore told CNN, saying that the equipment would probably “be in pieces.”

“This has affected the operation of our AM, which needs a complete rebuild, and our FM, which is currently off the air,” the radio station said Thursday via its Facebook page.

The radio station manager has told outlets that he’s hopeful that community tips and surveillance footage from the poultry plant near the tower’s former location may eventually help police find the tower-taker(s).

“It is a federal crime, and it absolutely will not be worth it to them,” Elmore told Action 5 News.

Federal law says one who “willfully or maliciously injures or destroys any of the works, property, or material of any radio, telegraph, telephone or cable, line, station, or system, or other means of communication, operated or controlled by the United States” can face up to 10 years of imprisonment and fines.

While the tower remains MIA, WJLX remains off the air. The radio station asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow it to keep broadcasting its FM station even though its AM station is off the air, but the FCC denied the request on Thursday, the station said, since the FCC doesn’t allow FM translators to run without the AM station also being on air. The FM station is now only available online.

In the meantime, some are concerned about how emergency communications could be disrupted by the tower disappearing.

“What if there were a crisis going on right now that that community needs to hear information from local sources [about] on a local radio station, and they can’t?” Sharon Tinsley, president of the Alabama Broadcasters Association, told ABC 33/40 News.

Tinsley told the news station that she has reached out to people to identify media outlets that might be willing to help WJLX get new equipment. There’s also a GoFundMe for the radio station.

It remains to be discovered how a radio tower heist was pulled off without causing a stir or leaving an obvious trail. As one could imagine, there aren’t a lot of past, similar incidences to try to draw clues from.

One recent case of a radio tower suddenly vanishing occurred in Nigeria last year. Nigerian newspaper publisher The Media Trust Group reported that it was supposed to get a decommissioned radio tower for its new radio station in Abuja from a Niger State village. Media Trust said it never received the tower delivery and was told by the company it contracted to decommission, transport, and set up the tower that it was “snatched away” by people they thought were from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). It was eventually revealed that two NSCDC officials “were approached by a scrap metal dealer to provide him security cover to transport the items,” per Media Trust-owned Daily Trust. The newspaper publisher was still trying to get its money back for the tower as of January.

If WJLX’s case is anything like the Nigerian heist, someone likely knows more than they’re letting on, and the financial burden to the media outlet could be hard to resolve quickly.

“Surely, someone saw something or heard something,” Elmore told The Guardian.

200-foot AM radio tower disappears, halting Alabama station broadcast Read More »

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Android’s infamous January 2024 update is fixed and rolling out again

Taking another swing at it —

The Google Play System update was pulled for breaking device storage, crashing apps.

Google HQ.

Enlarge / Google HQ.

We’re a third of the way through February, but Android’s January 2024 Google Play System update is just now rolling out. The now-infamous update originally rolled out at the beginning of January but was pulled after it started locking users out of their phone’s local storage. Apparently, the update has been fixed and is rolling back out to devices. We were able to get it to install this morning.

The first time this update went out, some devices with multiple user accounts or work profiles experienced what Google described as “multiple apps crashing, screenshots not saving, and external storage working inconsistently.” Users described phones affected by the issue as “unusable.” Google eventually posted instructions for a manual fix on February 1, about two weeks after the update first started rolling out. These instructions were complicated, though, involving a manual process where you had to enable developer mode, download the developer tools, plug in your phone, and type in the right command prompts to delete buggy packages manually. As part of that February 1 post, Google seemed to promise to release an automated fix someday, but it has been nine days now.

Google skipped the December Play System update due to the holiday break, so this “January” update in February is the first Play System update since November. Play System updates, if you aren’t aware, are a fairly new Android update format that is separate from the OS-level system and security updates. Google created a new, super-privileged code package called an APEX Module that can house core system components like the Android RunTime or media subsystem. Google distributes these through the Play Store, allowing it to update core Android components directly without needing third-party manufacturers to do any work. It sounds great on paper, provided the updates work.

The update was the second time in four months that an automatic Android update broke some Pixel phones (for the record, one was a full OS update, the other was a Play System update). Both issues resulted in downtimes measured in weeks and “fixes” that demanded either developer-level command line work from novice users or caused data loss. Google’s track record these last four months suggests 1) it doesn’t have a reliable rollback method for buggy updates, 2) it doesn’t have adequate testing for its updates, and 3) it can’t quickly stop or repair damage caused by buggy updates. Those issues all make updating a Pixel phone a scary proposition lately.

Android’s infamous January 2024 update is fixed and rolling out again Read More »

over-a-decade-later,-climate-scientist-prevails-in-libel-case

Over a decade later, climate scientist prevails in libel case

What a long, strange trip it’s been —

But the case is not entirely over, as he plans to go after the publishers again.

Image of a middle-aged male speaking into a microphone against a dark backdrop.

Enlarge / Climate scientist Michael Mann.

This is a story I had sporadically wondered whether I’d ever have the chance to write. Over a decade ago, I covered a lawsuit filed by climate scientist Michael Mann, who finally had enough of being dragged through the mud online. When two authors accused him of fraud and compared his academic position to that of a convicted child molester, he sued for defamation.

Mann was considered a public figure, which makes winning defamation cases extremely challenging. But his case was based on the fact that multiple institutions on two different continents had scrutinized his work and found no hint of scientific malpractice—thus, he argued, that anyone who accused him of fraud was acting with reckless disregard for the truth.

Over the ensuing decade, the case was narrowed, decisions were appealed, and long periods went by without any apparent movement. But recently, amazingly, the case finally went to trial, and a jury rendered a verdict yesterday: Mann is entitled to damages from the writers. Even if you don’t care about the case, it’s worth reflecting on how much has changed since it was first filed.

The suit

The piece that started the whole mess was posted on the blog of a free market think tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In it, Rand Simberg accused Mann of manipulating data and compared the investigations at Penn State (where he was faculty at the time) to the university’s lack of interest in pursuing investigations of one of its football coaches who was convicted of molesting children. A few days later, a second author, Mark Steyn, echoed those accusations at the publication National Review.

Mann’s case was based on the accusations of fraud in those pieces. He had been a target for years after he published work showing that the recent warming was unprecedented in the last few thousand years. This graph, known as the “hockey stick” due to its sudden swerve upwards, later graced the cover of an IPCC climate report. The pieces were also published just a few years after a large trove of emails from climate scientists were obtained illicitly from the servers of a research institution, leading to widespread accusations of misconduct against climate scientists.

Out of the public eye were a large number of investigations, both by the schools involved and the governments that funded the researchers, all of which cleared those involved, including Mann. But Simberg and Steyn were part of a large collection of writers and bloggers who were convinced that Mann (and by extension, all of modern climate science) had to be wrong. So they assumed—and in Simberg and Steyn’s case, wrote—that the investigations were simply whitewashes.

Mann’s suit alleged the exact opposite: that, by accusing him of fraud despite these investigations, the two authors showed a reckless disregard for truth. That would be enough to hold them responsible for defamation despite the fact that Mann was a public figure. The authors’ defense was largely focused on the fact that they genuinely believed their own opinions and so should be free to express them under the First Amendment.

In essence, the case came down to whether people who appear to be incapable of incorporating evidence into their opinions should still be able to voice those opinions without consequences, even if doing so has consequences for others.

Victory at last-ish

In the end, the jury decided they did not. And their damage awards suggest that they understood the present circumstances quite well. For starters, the compensatory damages awarded to Mann for the defamation itself were minimal: one dollar each from Simberg and Steyn. While Mann alleged he lost grants and suffered public scorn due to the columns, he’s since become a successful book author and received a tenured chair at the University of Pennsylvania, where he now heads its Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.

But the suit also sought punitive damages to discourage future behavior of the sort. Here, there was a dramatic split. Simberg, who now tends to write about politics rather than science and presents himself as a space policy expert, was placed on the hook for just $1,000. Steyn, who is still actively fighting the climate wars and hosts a continued attack on Mann on his website, was told to pay Mann $1 million.

That said, the suit’s not over yet. Steyn has suggested that there are grounds to appeal the monetary award, while Mann has indicated that he will appeal the decision that had terminated his case against the Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review. So, check back in another decade and we may have another decision.

Over a decade later, climate scientist prevails in libel case Read More »