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South Korea Pushes Google, Apple To Pull Play-to-Earn Games From App Stores

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 23:43
South Korea's government wants Google and Apple to block new and existing play-to-earn (P2E) games, saying such games should not receive an age rating to get listed on their respective app stores. From a report: The country's Game Management Committee in the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism said in an official letter called its request "reasonable" as money gained from P2E games could be considered prizes. In Korea, prizes from gaming are allowed to be only around US$8.5 at a time. The ministry's move comes after game developer SkyPeople's P2E title, Five Stars for Klaytn, was blocked from getting a rating it required to get listed in April this year.

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Amazon Slips To 4th in Global Shopping App Installs Amid Rise of International Brands

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 23:20
Amazon's leading position in U.S. e-commerce is well-documented, but the latest global rankings for app installs show the potential for newer brands to upend the online shopping juggernaut. From a report: The tech giant ranked fourth globally in shopping app installations for 2021, according to new data from Apptopia. Amazon topped the worldwide ranking last year, as measured by the real-time competitive intelligence platform. Three e-commerce companies leapfrogged Amazon in the global rankings: Shopee, based in Singapore, which serves Southeast Asia and Latin America; Shein, based in China, a leader in "fast fashion;" and Meesho, based in India, which specializes in social e-commerce for categories including fashion and home products. Amazon is still first in Apptopia's U.S. rankings for shopping app installs in 2021. Responding to regulators in the U.S. and elsewhere, Amazon executives have repeatedly made the case that the company's small share of the global retail market, including online and offline sales, falls short of the market power that would warrant aggressive antitrust action. However, as of a few months ago, Amazon was expected to account for more than 40% of U.S. e-commerce sales in 2021, according to eMarketer.

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Data Centers Are Pushing Ireland's Electric Grid To the Brink

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 22:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Behind every TikTok, Zoom call, and cat meme is a data center that stores, processes, or reroutes that data around the world. The more we do online, the bigger these data centers and their energy footprint get. At full capacity, servers within a modern "hyperscale" (aka "massive") data center can use as much power as 80,000 households. Although the data center industry is global, places with the right combination of stable climate and friendly regulations attract outsized attention from data center developers. Ireland is one of these places. The island nation hosts 70 data centers and is now the fastest-growing data center market in Europe. Unfortunately, supplying the equivalent of several extra cities worth of electricity to servers that aid your doomscrolling is starting to take a toll on Ireland's power grid. Data centers already use around 900 megawatts of electricity in Ireland. According to Paul Deane, an energy researcher working with the MaREI Environmental Research Institute in Ireland, this adds up to at least 11% of Ireland's total electricity supply at present, a situation he described "as a serious energy systems problem." As Deane outlined, meeting this demand is making Ireland's current energy crisis worse and its target of halving greenhouse emissions by 2030 harder to reach. And things are only getting more challenging. A recent report from Eirgrid, Ireland's state-owned grid operator, shows that data centers will consume almost 30% (PDF) of Ireland's annual electricity supply by 2029. Although, as Deane pointed out, data centers are essential to modern life, a small country with little grid power to spare hosting so many of them puts the sustainability of Ireland's entire power supply at risk. Deane summed up Ireland's issue with data centers as being a mismatch in size. "Data centers are large power users, and our power system is small, so plugging more of them into a small grid will start to have an outsized impact," he said. In stark comparison, Germany, the EU's biggest data center market overall, will use less than 5% of its grid capacity to power data centers in the same period. As well as stoking fears that the industry's growth will create blackouts and power shortages for Irish consumers this winter, data centers may also derail Ireland's drive to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

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MIT Engineers Test an Idea For a New Hovering Rover

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 19:00
Hmmmmmm shares a report from MIT News: Aerospace engineers at MIT are testing a new concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon's natural charge. Because they lack an atmosphere, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can build up an electric field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma. On the moon, this surface charge is strong enough to levitate dust more than 1 meter above the ground, much the way static electricity can cause a person's hair to stand on end. Engineers at NASA and elsewhere have recently proposed harnessing this natural surface charge to levitate a glider with wings made of Mylar, a material that naturally holds the same charge as surfaces on airless bodies. They reasoned that the similarly charged surfaces should repel each other, with a force that lofts the glider off the ground. But such a design would likely be limited to small asteroids, as larger planetary bodies would have a stronger, counteracting gravitational pull. The MIT team's levitating rover could potentially get around this size limitation. The concept, which resembles a retro-style, disc-shaped flying saucer, uses tiny ion beams to both charge up the vehicle and boost the surface's natural charge. The overall effect is designed to generate a relatively large repulsive force between the vehicle and the ground, in a way that requires very little power. In an initial feasibility study, the researchers show that such an ion boost should be strong enough to levitate a small, 2-pound vehicle on the moon and large asteroids like Psyche. The team predicted that a small rover, weighing about two pounds, could achieve levitation of about one centimeter off the ground, on a large asteroid such as Psyche, using a 10-kilovolt ion source. To get a similar liftoff on the moon, the same rover would need a 50-kilovolt source. "This kind of ionic design uses very little power to generate a lot of voltage," [explains co-author Paulo Lozano]. "The power needed is so small, you could do this almost for free."

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With Its Single 'Eye,' NASA's DART Returns First Images From Space

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 16:00
Just two weeks after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has opened its "eye" and returned its first images from space -- a major operational milestone for the spacecraft and DART team. Phys.Org reports: After the violent vibrations of launch and the extreme temperature shift to minus 80 degrees C in space, scientists and engineers at the mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, held their breath in anticipation. Because components of the spacecraft's telescopic instrument are sensitive to movements as small as 5 millionths of a meter, even a tiny shift of something in the instrument could be very serious. On Tuesday, Dec. 7, the spacecraft popped open the circular door covering the aperture of its DRACO telescopic camera and, to everyone's glee, streamed back the first image of its surrounding environment. Taken about 2 million miles (11 light seconds) from Earth -- very close, astronomically speaking -- the image shows about a dozen stars, crystal-clear and sharp against the black backdrop of space, near where the constellations Perseus, Aries and Taurus intersect. The DART navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California used the stars in the image to determine precisely how DRACO was oriented, providing the first measurements of how the camera is pointed relative to the spacecraft. With those measurements in hand, the DART team could accurately move the spacecraft to point DRACO at objects of interest, such as Messier 38 (M38), also known as the Starfish Cluster, that DART captured in another image on Dec. 10. Located in the constellation Auriga, the cluster of stars lies some 4,200 light years from Earth. Intentionally capturing images with many stars like M38 helps the team characterize optical imperfections in the images as well as calibrate how absolutely bright an object is -- all important details for accurate measurements when DRACO starts imaging the spacecraft's destination, the binary asteroid system Didymos.

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How John Madden Became the 'Larger-Than-Life' Face of a Gaming Empire

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 12:30
"[John] Madden, who died Tuesday, helped bring to life a series of football video games that have generated $7 billion in revenue since 1988," reports the New York Times. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report, written by Kellen Browning and Kevin Draper: Trip Hawkins first met John Madden in the dining car of an Amtrak train traveling from Denver to Oakland, Calif., in 1984, after Madden had agreed to lend his name and football prowess to a football simulation video game. Madden, the legendary coach and broadcaster, quickly made it clear who would be calling the shots. Because of the limits of computer processing power, Hawkins, who had founded the gaming company Electronic Arts two years earlier, floated the idea of a video game with seven-on-seven football, rather than the 11-on-11 version used in the N.F.L. Madden just stared at him, and said "that isn't really football," Hawkins recalled. He had to agree. "If it was going to be me and going to be pro football, it had to have 22 guys on the screen," Madden once told ESPN. "If we couldn't have that, we couldn't have a game." The extra years spent developing a more realistic game, which was called John Madden Football and debuted in 1988 for the Apple II computer, paid off. Decades later, the Madden NFL series of video games continues to sell millions of copies annually, has helped turn E.A. into one of the world's most prominent gaming companies and has left a lasting mark on football fandom and the N.F.L. Although he coached the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl victory and was lauded for his work as a television analyst, Madden, who died Tuesday at age 85, is better known to legions of younger sports fans as the namesake of the iconic video game franchise that has generated more than $7 billion in revenue. "Every dorm room right now, every basement, every couch, there's people sitting down playing Madden," said Scott Cole, a longtime sports broadcaster who has called games for several years for the Madden Championship Series, the most competitive Madden NFL tournaments. Slashdot reader schwit1 first shared the news of Madden's passing.

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Microsoft Defender Log4j Scanner Triggers False Positive Alerts

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 11:02
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is currently showing "sensor tampering" alerts linked to the company's newly deployed Microsoft 365 Defender scanner for Log4j processes. BleepingComputer reports: The alerts are reportedly mainly shown on Windows Server 2016 systems and warn of "possible sensor tampering in memory was detected by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint" created by an OpenHandleCollector.exe process. Admins have been dealing with this issue since at least December 23, according to customer reports. While this Defender process' behavior is tagged as malicious, there's nothing to worry about since these are false positives, as revealed by Tomer Teller, Principal Group PM Manager at Microsoft, Enterprise Security Posture. Microsoft is currently looking into this Microsoft 365 Defender issue and working on a fix that the company should soon deliver to affected systems. "This is part of the work we did to detect Log4J instances on disk. The team is analyzing why it triggers the alert (it shouldn't of course)," Teller explained.

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US Hits Record Number of New Covid-19 Cases

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 10:25
The seven-day average of COVID-19 cases topped 280,000 this week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University's tracker. It's a record number of new cases in the country; the last time the number of cases hit a peak close to that was January. NPR reports: Public health officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky say the new variant appears to be less severe than ones in the past but still emphasize the need to follow public health protocols like getting vaccinated and wearing a mask to curb the spread of the virus. Data from the White House provided at a briefing Wednesday shows the seven-day average of hospitalizations is about 9,000 per day -- which is a 14% increase in hospitalizations from last week. However, there was a 60% rise in cases over the same time frame. The seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths is down from last week, at about 1,100 deaths per day. Officials say the difference is in part because omicron causes less severe symptoms for those who are vaccinated and especially for those who are boosted. Another reason for the wide gap between the increase in hospitalizations and cases, Fauci said, is that hospitalizations tend to lag behind recorded cases. Still, "all indications point to less severe illness with omicron than delta," he said. [...] Despite the seemingly lower severity of the omicron variant, Fauci emphasized the need for people to get vaccinated and boosted. On Monday, U.S. health officials from the CDC cut isolation restrictions for Americans who catch the coronavirus from 10 to five days, and similarly shortened the time that close contacts need to quarantine.

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China's New AI Policy Doesn't Prevent It From Building Autonomous Weapons

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 09:45
The Next Web's Tristan Greene combed through a recently published "position paper" detailing China's views on military AI regulation and found that it "makes absolutely no mention of restricting the use of machines capable of choosing and firing on targets autonomously." From the report: Per the paper: "In terms of law and ethics, countries need to uphold the common values of humanity, put people's well-being front and center, follow the principle of AI for good, and observe national or regional ethical norms in the development, deployment and use of relevant weapon systems." Neither the US or the PRC has any laws, rules, or regulations currently restricting the development or use of military LAWs. The paper's rhetoric may be empty, but there's still a lot we can glean from its contents. Research analyst Megha Pardhi, writing for the Asia Times, recently opined it was intended to signal that China's seeking to "be seen as a responsible state," and that it may be concerned over its progress in the field relative to other superpowers. According to Pardhi: "Beijing is likely talking about regulation out of fear either that it cannot catch up with others or that it is not confident of its capabilities. Meanwhile, formulating a few commonly agreeable rules on weaponization of AI would be prudent." "Despite the fact that neither the colonel's article nor the PRC's position paper mention LAWs directly, it's apparent that what they don't say is what's really at the heart of the issue," concludes Greene. "The global community has every reason to believe, and fear, that both China and the US are actively developing LAWS."

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Metaverse Property Mogul Touts 10-Fold Appreciation In Virtual Real Estate Portfolio

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 09:02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Markets Insider: Andrew Kiguel, CEO of crypto-asset investment firm Tokens.com, estimated his metaverse portfolio is valued at 10 times more than his purchase price, USA Today said in a report published Wednesday. "It's all about the location," he told the newspaper, saying that land in the core of a virtual downtown is key. "The more visitors who come, the more valuable the land, and the more a retailer and advertisers will be willing to spend to reach those people." Toronto-based Tokens.com acquired a 50% stake in Metaverse Group in October for $1.7 million, then completed an additional investment last week to give it a 67% ownership stock in the firm. The deal comes after Metaverse Group last month made a then-record $2.43 million purchase of parcels in the Decentraland metaverse platform. Kiguel has high hopes for that virtual plot of land. "I think we're going to see a quick appreciation and monetize renting that land and space very soon," he told USA Today, adding that the plan is to develop the virtual area into a destination for luxury brands. Metaverse Group CEO Lorne Sugarman told Insider in November that the Decentraland property purchase, which was in its Fashion District, provides an early foothold in upscale commercial opportunities in the metaverse. "We think the Fashion District purchase is like buying on Fifth Avenue back in the 1800s or the creation of Rodeo Drive," he said, referring to the high-end shopping areas in Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Earlier this month, someone by the name of P-Ape bought a plot of digital land in Snoop Dogg's new virtual world, Snoopverse, for $450,000. "The rapper announced that he would be building his own virtual world in the metaverse on the Sandbox platform this September," reports Fortune.

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Sweden's Northvolt Builds First Lithium-Ion Battery Cell In Europe

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 08:20
Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt announced that on December 28th, it successfully produced the first lithium-ion battery cell to be designed, developed, and built completely in Europe by a homegrown company. Teslarati reports: "Last night, the commissioning of the Northvolt Ett gigafactory in northern Sweden led to the assembly of the first battery cell," Northvolt wrote. The company's factory, located in Vasteras, Sweden, is the first factory in Europe to have a cell that has been "fully designed, developed and assembled at a gigafactory by a homegrown European battery company," the company added. The production of the cell is a massive milestone for Northvolt, which has been working to get its gigafactory up and running since 2017. The company said the cell is of a prismatic cell format, which consist of large sheets of anodes, cathodes, and separators sandwiched, rolled up, and pressed to fit into a metallic or hard-plastic housing in cubic form, according to AllAboutCircuits. Northvolt Labs in Vasteras has been in production since early 2020, the company said. Northvolt plans to expand the production capacity of the facility toward 60 GWh per year, which will fulfill over $30 billion worth of contracts the battery maker has already locked up with various automotive manufacturers, including BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo, Polestar, Fluence, and Scania. Northvolt Ett will commercially deliver various cell types in 2022. While the company is based in Europe and has various partnerships with European automotive and energy storage companies, it has no plans to only service entities that are only located on the same continent.

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BlackBerry OS Devices Will Stop Working On January 4, 2022

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 07:42
If you're still using an older BlackBerry phone running BlackBerry OS, it's time you upgrade devices. According to BlackBerry, it's ending support for legacy services for BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry PlayBook OS on January 4, 2022. Liliputing reports: Among other things, that means that if you have a phone running BlackBerry 10 or BlackBerry 7.1 OS or earlier, then as of January 4, 2022 it will no longer reliably support: Phone calls; SMS; and 9-1-1 emergency calls. BlackBerry says WiFi and mobile data might also become unreliable, and applications including BlackBerry Link, BlackBerry Desktop Manager, BlackBerry World, BlackBerry Protect, BlackBerry Messenger, and BlackBerry Blend "will also have limited functionality." The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is also reaching end-of-life status, which means that anyone hanging onto the 10-year-old tablet will also find it severely limited starting January 4th. But the fact that BlackBerry discontinued the tablet a year after launch suggests that there probably never were all that many PlayBook owners in the first place and that number has surely dwindled over the past decade. Folks who are still using a device with BlackBerry OS will want to check out the company's FAQ for tips on migrating their data to other platforms while they still can.

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Apple Ditched Intel, and It Paid Off

著者: BeauHD
2021年12月30日 07:06
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC, written by Todd Haselton: Apple's decision to ditch Intel paid off this year. The pivot allowed Apple to completely rethink the Mac, which had started to grow stale with an aging design and iterative annual upgrades. Following the divorce from Intel, Apple has launched far more exciting computers which, paired with an ongoing pandemic that has forced people to work and learn from home, have sent Apple's Mac business soaring. It wasn't always a given. When Apple announced its move away from Intel in 2020, it was fair to question just how well Apple could power laptops and desktop computers. Apple has used in-house chips for iPhones and iPads but had been selling Intel-powered computers for 15 years. It wasn't clear how well its macOS desktop software would work with apps designed to run on Intel chips, or whether its processors would offer any consumer benefits and keep up with intensive tasks that people turned to MacBooks to run. Those fears were quickly quelled. The first M1 Apple chip was launched in 2020 in a MacBook Air laptop. It was more powerful than Intel's chip while offering longer battery life and enabling a fanless design, which helped keep Apple's new MacBook Air even quieter. It proved to be an early success. In April 2021, CEO Tim Cook said during the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings call that the M1 chip helped fuel the 70.1% growth in Apple's Mac revenue, which hit $9.1 billion during that quarter. The growth continued in fiscal Q3, when Mac revenue was up 16% year over year. That quarter, it launched the all-new iMac, which offered a redesigned super-thin metal body that looks like a screen propped up on a stand. It's slimmer than the Intel models that came before it, while offering other benefits, like a much better webcam, great speakers and a much sharper display than the models it replaced. And Apple made the launch more exciting by offering an array of colors for the iMac, which it hadn't done since it shipped the 1999 iMac. There was a slowdown in fiscal Q4, when Mac revenue grew just 1.6%, as Apple, like all manufacturers, saw a slowdown from the burst of sales driven by the start of the pandemic and dealt with supply chain woes. But fiscal Q4 sales didn't include revenue from its most exciting new computer of the year. Apple's fiscal Q1 earnings in January will give an indication of how well all its new computers are selling. But it's clear the move from Intel has allowed Apple to move full speed ahead with its own chip development, much like it does for iPhones and iPads, the latter of which has yet to be matched by any other tablet on the market. It's no longer beholden to delays that plagued Intel, which started to lag behind AMD with its new 7nm chips. And Apple has full control over its "stack," which means it can design new computer hardware and software together, instead of letting the power of another company's chips dictate what its computers can and can't do.

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Federal Court Ruling Will Make Wifi 6E a Reality

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 06:25
Federal courts have opened the door for what may amount to the most substantial wifi upgrade in over twenty years. From a report: On Tuesday, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling where it supported the FCC's decision to divvy up 1,200MHz of spectrum in the 6GHz band for unlicensed use, a move that paves the way for the eagerly anticipated move to wifi 6E. Prior to the ruling, wifi was limited to broadcasting over 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. That new spectrum represents the single largest addition since wifi was first introduced in 1989, the Verge notes. To put that in perspective, prior to the FCC's additions, wifi operated with just 400MHz of the spectrum. With that in mind, this new ruling should essentially increase the space available to wifi by four times. When implemented, all this additional spectrum could provide enough capacity to allow seven maximum capacity wifi streams to broadcast in the same areas without interfering with one another, The Verge notes. Put more simply, this should translate to increased bandwidth with less interference for everyday users. Proponents of the FCC's decision, like agency Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, argue it will provide more wifi access in a greater number of places while simultaneously improving performance. All this extra space could also increase upload and download speeds as well.

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James Webb Space Telescope's Smooth Launch Extended Its Life Expectancy, NASA Says

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 05:45
The James Webb Space Telescope should be able to remain in orbit for more than 10 years, thanks to a fuel-efficient launch on Christmas Day, according to NASA. From a report: The telescope was carried aboard the Arianespace Ariane 5. Despite two brief midcourse corrections, its launch used less propellant than initially expected. That will allow the $10 billion observatory "science operations in orbit for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime," the US space agency said in a release on Wednesday The first midcourse correction was a relatively minor, 65-minute post-launch burn, which bumped up the telescope's speed by approximately 45 miles per hour. Another smaller correction on Dec. 27 added an additional 6.3 mph. That added boost also allowed the JWST's solar array to unfold about a minute and a half after it separated from the Ariane 5, just 29 minutes after launch. The array was coded to automatically deploy either when the observatory reached a certain altitude or 33 minutes after launch, whichever came first.

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Scientists Find Unexpected Trove of Life Forms Beneath Antarctic Ice Shelf

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 05:07
A team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany has discovered a whopping 77 seafloor-dwelling species beneath an Antarctica ice shelf -- a hint that this mysterious realm may be far more biologically rich than scientists realized. From a report: Little is known about the environment beneath Antarctica's floating ice shelves, the seaward extensions of the continent's glaciers that span 1.6 million square kilometers. It's a harsh, cold environment shrouded in continuous darkness, and previous studies of life beneath the ice have only documented a few dozen hardy life forms. The new research, published earlier this month in Current Biology, identified more species in a single spot than had previously been documented across all the ice shelves of the frozen continent. After drilling two holes through the Weddell Sea's Ekstrom Ice Shelf, the researchers collected seabed specimens in 2018. They found the biodiversity on this patch of seafloor to be "richer than many open water samples found on the continental shelf where there is light and food sources," according to a press release from the British Antarctic Survey. Four of the species studied experienced yearly growth rates "comparable with similar animals" in open water habitats.

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Attackers in China Using Open-source Log4j Flaw

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 04:39
A group of Chinese attackers has been using the massive vulnerability in Log4j, common piece of open-source code, to target a large academic institution, Crowdstrike says. From a report: Experts say hundreds of millions of systems are vulnerable and that attacks based on the flaw are continuing. CrowdStrike said its software observed an attack that exploited the Log4j flaw in software from VMware. The attack came from a China-based group dubbed Aquatic Panda that has been conducting intelligence gathering and industrial espionage, CrowdStrike said. Some security experts, including Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) head Jen Easterly, have called the flaw among the worst they have ever seen.

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SpaceX Will Take Humans To Mars Within 10 Years, Elon Musk Predicts

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 03:57
Elon Musk predicted this week that SpaceX will be able to fly humans to Mars within the next 10 years. From a report: Musk made the bold prediction during an appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast. The Tesla founder reiterated his view that humanity should become a "multi-planet species" and detailed SpaceX's plans to develop the necessary technology for the trip. "Best case is about five years. Worst case, 10 years," Musk said. He noted that "engineering the vehicle" required for the trip remains a key factor in establishing a timeframe. "Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by, I don't know, an order of magnitude or something like that," Musk added. "It's a lot. It's really next level." SpaceX has ramped up its operations in recent years as part of Musk's long-term goal to establish a colony on Mars. Earlier this month, Musk revealed SpaceX has begun building a launchpad in Florida that can accommodate Starship rockets. SpaceX has begun testing prototypes of the 400-foot rocket ahead of a planned orbital launch. During the podcast interview, Musk said his private aviation firm is still working to optimize its Starship design and cut down on the projected cost of a Mars trip.

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Biden Signs NDAA Relying on Voluntary Private-Sector Cybersecurity Collaboration

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 03:05
President Joe Biden has signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 which codifies an approach to cybersecurity that depends on the decisions of private-sector entities to protect the bulk of the nation's critical infrastructure. From a report: The NDAA has become the go-to legislative vehicle for efforts to manage the federal government at large, and to regulate the private sector on cybersecurity issues. On the government side, the law requires the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to biennially update an incident response plan and to consult with sector-specific agencies and the private sector in establishing an exercise program to assess its effectiveness. It seeks to "ensure that the National Guard can provide cyber support services to critical infrastructure entities -- including local governments and businesses," according to Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. It also establishes a grant program at the Homeland Security Department to foster collaboration on cybersecurity technologies between public and private-sector entities in the U.S. and Israel. Lawmakers also highlighted the inclusion of provisions codifying existing public-private partnerships at CISA which aim to offer continuous monitoring of industrial control systems -- an effort known as the CyberSentry program -- and to develop 'know your customer' guidelines for companies like cloud and other service providers comprising the "internet ecosystem." Such companies are described as the plank bearers of CISA's Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative. But provisions all rely on the voluntary participation by industry, which owns and operates the vast majority of the nation's critical infrastructure. Despite bipartisan calls after massive breaches at SolarWinds, Microsoft Exchange, Colonial Pipeline and other hacks, the NDAA made it through the House without mandatory incident reporting requirements for the private sector.

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LG Unveils OLED EX, the Next Generation of Its OLED TV Tech

著者: msmash
2021年12月30日 02:25
LG is having a busy CES 2022 and the show hasn't even started. The company already revealed two bizarre OLED concepts and a pair of odd TVs, but today it made its most significant announcement yet by debuting OLED EX, the next generation of its OLED display technology. From a report: OLED EX (the EX stands for Evolution and eXperience, unfortunately) promises to boost maximum brightness, enhance picture quality, and allow for smaller display bezels. The underlying technology -- millions of individual self-lit pixels -- hasn't changed, but the use of an isotope called deuterium combined with algorithmic image processing can increase brightness by up to 30% over conventional OLED displays, LG claims. As boring as that may sound, the science behind it is actually pretty fascinating. LG found a way to extract deuterium, a rather scarce isotope (there is one deuterium atom in 6,000 hydrogen atoms) that's twice as heavy as hydrogen from water, then applied it to its TV's OLED elements. LG says stabilized deuterium compounds let the display emit brighter light while improving efficiency over time. Moving to the second change, LG is using a "personalized" machine learning algorithm that predicts the usage of each light-emitting diode (on up to 8K TVs) based on your viewing habits, then "precisely controls the display's energy input to more accurately express the details and colors of the video content being played."

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