For the first time in 50 years, humans will walk on the moon again. Currently planned for as soon as 2026, the Artemis III mission "will be one of the most complex undertakings of engineering and human ingenuity in the history of deep space exploration..." [1]writes NASA . "Two crew members will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the Moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit..."

And they'll be wearing Prada, according to [2]a Space News report from Milan :

> At a briefing at the International Astronautical Congress here October 16, Axiom and Prada revealed details about the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) suit that Axiom is creating for use by NASA on lunar landing missions starting with Artemis 3... Axiom emphasized the advanced capabilities in the suit, particularly when compared to the suits worn by the Apollo astronauts on moonwalks more than a half-century ago [including greater redundancy and healthy monitoring systems not available in Apollo-era suits]...

>

> The unveiling came just over a year after Axiom [3]announced it was working with luxury goods company Prada , an unconventional partnership intended to leverage Prada's expertise in materials and design... [Axiom's executive VP of extravehicular activity Russell Ralston] said Axiom has leveraged Prada's expertise in fabrics and garment design in helping create the outer layer of the suit, which reflects sunlight and keeps dust from getting into interior layers... "If you look across all the different technologies that are needed within the suit, the uniqueness of those technologies and their application, the supply chain has tended to be pretty unstable," he said. "So, one of the things that Prada has really helped us with is bringing stability to that base, especially on the fabric side...."

>

> Not surprisingly, Prada also contributed to the appearance of the suit. "One of the things that was important to us was the appeal of the suit, the look of the suit," Ralston said. "Something that Prada brought to the table was helping with the general aesthetic of the suit." One design aspect that brought the two companies together was a prominent red stripe on the suit. Ralston noted that was a nod to a NASA tradition where the mission commander's suit would have that red stripe to distinguish them from another spacewalker...

>

> While the current focus of the suit is for walking on the moon, Ralston said the suit can be easily adapted for applications in low Earth orbit, such as spacewalks from the International Space Station or Axiom's future commercial space station.

The article adds that 30 people worked on the suit (full- or part-time). "These suits will give the astronauts increased range of motion and flexibility to explore more of the landscape than on previous lunar missions," [4]according to NASA .

With "the ability to send high quality images and video to the ground with advanced communication technology, they will be sharing a unique new human experience with the world."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [5]schwit1 for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/

[2] https://spacenews.com/axiom-and-prada-unveil-design-of-artemis-spacesuit/

[3] https://spacenews.com/axiom-space-partners-with-prada-on-artemis-spacesuits/

[4] https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/artemis-iii/

[5] https://www.slashdot.org/~schwit1

"Six years after the Spectre transient execution processor design flaws were disclosed, efforts to patch the problem continue to fall short," [1]writes the Register :

> Johannes Wikner and Kaveh Razavi of Swiss University ETH Zurich [2]on Friday published details about a cross-process Spectre attack that derandomizes [3]Address Space Layout Randomization and leaks the hash of the root password from the Set User ID (suid) process on recent Intel processors. The researchers claim they successfully conducted such an attack.... [ [4]Read their upcomong paper here .] The indirect branch predictor barrier (IBPB) was intended as a defense against Spectre v2 (CVE-2017-5715) attacks on x86 Intel and AMD chips. IBPB is designed to prevent forwarding of previously learned indirect branch target predictions for speculative execution. Evidently, the barrier wasn't implemented properly.

>

> "We found a microcode bug in the recent Intel microarchitectures — like Golden Cove and Raptor Cove, found in the 12th, 13th and 14th generations of Intel Core processors, and the 5th and 6th generations of Xeon processors — which retains branch predictions such that they may still be used after IBPB should have invalidated them," [5]explained Wikner. "Such post-barrier speculation allows an attacker to bypass security boundaries imposed by process contexts and virtual machines." Wikner and Razavi also managed to leak arbitrary kernel memory from an unprivileged process on AMD silicon built with its Zen 2 architecture.

>

> Videos of the [6]Intel and [7]AMD attacks have been posted, with all the cinematic dynamism one might expect from command line interaction.

>

> Intel chips — including Intel Core 12th, 13th, and 14th generation and Xeon 5th and 6th — may be vulnerable. On AMD Zen 1(+) and Zen 2 hardware, the issue potentially affects Linux users. The relevant details were disclosed in June 2024, but Intel and AMD found the problem independently. Intel fixed the issue in a microcode patch ( [8]INTEL-SA-00982 ) released in March, 2024. Nonetheless, some Intel hardware may not have received that microcode update. In their technical summary, Wikner and Razavi observe: "This microcode update was, however, not available in Ubuntu repositories at the time of writing this paper." It appears Ubuntu has subsequently [9]dealt with the issue .

>

> AMD issued its own advisory in November 2022, in security bulletin AMD-SB-1040. The firm notes that hypervisor and/or operating system vendors have work to do on their own mitigations. "Because AMD's issue was previously known and tracked under [10]AMD-SB-1040 , AMD considers the issue a software bug," the researchers explain. "We are currently working with the Linux kernel maintainers to merge our proposed software patch."

[11] BleepingComputer adds that the ETH Zurich team "is working with Linux kernel maintainers to develop a patch for AMD processors, which [12]will be available here when ready."



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/18/spectre_problems_continue_amd_intel/

[2] https://comsec.ethz.ch/breaking-the-barrier

[3] https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/six-facts-about-address-space-layout-randomization-on-windows/

[4] https://comsec.ethz.ch/wp-content/files/ibpb_sp25.pdf

[5] https://gist.github.com/sktt/3245f1c0727e45584077f6702c291102

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYEVcj-vnbs

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eODoOyhqtaQ

[8] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-00982.html

[9] https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-38575

[10] https://www.amd.com/en/resources/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-1040.html

[11] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/intel-amd-cpus-on-linux-impacted-by-newly-disclosed-spectre-bypass/

[12] https://comsec.ethz.ch/breaking-the-barrier

"Getting sick feels bad in the moment," reports the Washington Post, " [1]and may affect your brain in the longer term ."

> A [2]new study published in Nature Aging adds to growing evidence that severe infections, including flu, herpes and respiratory tract infections, are linked to accelerated brain atrophy and increased risk of dementia years later. It also hints at the biological drivers that may contribute to neurodegenerative disease.

>

> The current research is a "leap beyond previous studies that had already associated infection with susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease" and provides a "useful dataset," said Rudy Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. Other recent studies have found that the [3]flu shot and the [4]shingles vaccine reduce the risk of subsequent dementia in those who get them. Severe infections have also been linked to subsequent [5]strokes and [6]heart attacks .

"Big infection, big immune response — not good for the brain," said one of the study's co-authors (Keenan Walker, a tenure-track investigator and the director of the Multimodal Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease Unit at the National Institute on Aging).

And the article also includes this quote from Kristen Funk, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (who studies neuroinflammation in neuroinfectious and neurodegenerative diseases). "They really found that there's a range of infections that are associated with this brain atrophy, associated with this cognitive decline."

> In turn, most of these infections associated with brain atrophy seem to be risk factors for dementia, according to the researchers' analyses of the UK Biobank data of 495,896 subjects and a Finnish dataset of 273,132 subjects. They found that having a history of infections was associated with an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease years later. The increased risk was even higher for vascular dementia, which is the second-most-common dementia diagnosis after Alzheimer's disease and caused by restriction of blood to the brain...

>

> More-minor infections are not cause for alarm since the data was drawn from patients who had a hospital record of their infections, indicating more-severe cases, experts say.

And speaking of infections, the Post also published an [7]interesting guest column by Dr. Mikkael A. Sekeres, division chief for hematology and medicine professor at the University of Miami's cancer center:

> A [8]recent report from the American Association for Cancer Research attributed 13 percent of cancer cases worldwide to infections. Some [9]estimates run as high as 20 percent, with particularly high rates of infection-related cancers in developing countries. Infectious agents linked to cancer include bacteria, such as Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), and viruses, such as human papillomavirus (HPV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and hepatitis B and C.

>

> But keep in mind that an exceedingly small percentage of infected people develop cancer...



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/serious-infections-linked-to-dementia-risk-study-shows/ar-AA1sv0hG

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00682-4

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/10/25/flu-shots-alzheimers-dementias-vaccinations-infectious-diseases/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/07/30/shingles-vaccine-lower-dementia-risk/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8

[5] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/STROKEAHA.120.030429

[6] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1808137?casa_token=qCHXCgag3XMAAAAA%3ArJQWdLcLMCBtgXYhE88XphEeIQuAksY-y0IsUUKM5ke0k8PjwvfgbEHx4N1qIlfX2nhNqg1JQmt84QWs

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/10/14/cancers-caused-by-infections/

[8] https://cancerprogressreport.aacr.org/progress/cpr24-contents/cpr24-reducing-the-risk-of-cancer-development/

[9] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/infections/infections-that-can-lead-to-cancer/intro.html

"The [1]Wayback Machine , [2]Archive-It , scanning, and national library crawls have resumed," [3]announced the Internet Archive Thursday , "as well as email, [4]blog , [5]helpdesk , and social media communications. Our team is working around the clock across time zones to bring other services back online."

Founder Brewster Kahle told The Washington Post it's the first time in its almost 30-year history that it's been down more than a few hours. But their article [6]says the Archive is "fighting back ."

> Kahle and his team see the mission of the Internet Archive as a noble one — to build a "library of everything" and ensure records are kept in an online environment where websites change and disappear by the day. "We're all dreamers," said Chris Freeland, the Internet Archive's director of library services. "We believe in the mission of the Internet Archive, and we believe in the promise of the internet." But the site has, at times, courted controversy. The Internet Archive faces [7]lawsuits from [8]book publishers and music labels brought in 2020 and 2023 for digitizing copyrighted books and music, which the organization has argued should be permissible for noncommercial, archival purposes. Kahle said the hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties from the lawsuits could sink the Internet Archive.

>

> Those lawsuits are ongoing. Now, the Internet Archive has also had to turn its attention to fending off cyberattacks. In May, the Internet Archive was [9]hit with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a fairly common type of internet warfare that involves flooding a target site with fake traffic. The archive experienced intermittent outages as a result. Kahle said it was the first time the site had been targeted in its history... [After another attack October 9th], Kahle and his team have spent the week since racing to identify and fix the vulnerabilities that left the Internet Archive open to attack. The organization has "industry standard" security systems, Kahle said, but he added that, until this year, the group had largely stayed out of the crosshairs of cybercriminals. Kahle said he'd opted not to prioritize additional investments in cybersecurity out of the Internet Archive's limited budget of around $20 million to $30 million a year...

>

> [N]o one has reliably claimed the defacement and data breach that forced the Internet Archive to sequester itself, said [cybersecurity researcher] Scott Helmef. He added that the hackers' decision to alert the Internet Archive of their intrusion and send the stolen data to Have I Been Pwned, the monitoring service, could imply they didn't have further intentions with it.... Helme said the episode demonstrates the vulnerability of nonprofit services like the Internet Archive — and of the larger ecosystem of information online that depends on them. "Perhaps they'll find some more funding now that all of these headlines have happened," Helme said. "And people suddenly realize how bad it would be if they were gone."

"Our priority is ensuring the Internet Archive comes online stronger and more secure," the archive said in [10]Thursday's statement . And they noted other recent-past instances of other libraries also being attacked online:

> As a library community, we are seeing other cyber attacks — for instance the [11]British Library , [12]Seattle Public Library , [13]Toronto Public Library , and now [14]Calgary Public Library . We hope these attacks are not indicative of a trend."

>

> For the latest updates, please check this blog and our official social media accounts: [15]X/Twitter , [16]Bluesky and [17]Mastodon .

>

> Thank you for your patience and ongoing support.



[1] https://web.archive.org/

[2] https://archive-it.org/

[3] https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/18/internet-archive-services-update-2024-10-17/

[4] https://blog.archive.org/

[5] mailto:info@archive.org

[6] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-world-s-largest-internet-archive-is-under-siege-and-fighting-back/ar-AA1suLAx

[7] https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-memory-wayback-machine-lawsuits/

[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/25/internet-archive-digital-lending-lawsuit/?itid=lk_inline_manual_18

[9] https://blog.archive.org/2024/05/28/internet-archive-and-the-wayback-machine-under-ddos-cyber-attack/

[10] https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/18/internet-archive-services-update-2024-10-17/

[11] https://www.bl.uk/cyber-incident/

[12] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-public-library-still-reeling-from-may-cyberattack/

[13] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-library-ransomware-recovery-1.7126412

[14] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-public-library-investigation-cyberattack-1.7353097

[15] https://twitter.com/internetarchive/

[16] https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:73dpznbu4wqwtcyurwbiulov

[17] https://mastodon.archive.org/deck/@internetarchive

That [1]massive geothermal energy project in Utah gets a closer look [2]from the Washington Post , which calls it "a significant advance for a climate-friendly technology that is gaining momentum in the United States."

> Once fully operational, the project could generate up to 2 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power more than 2 million homes. In addition, the BLM proposed Thursday to [3]speed up the permitting process for geothermal projects on public lands across the country. Earlier this month, the agency also hosted the biggest lease sale for geothermal developers in more than 15 years...

>

> White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said in an interview Thursday, "Enhanced geothermal technology has the opportunity to deliver something in the range of 65 million homes' worth of clean power — power that can be generated without putting any pollution in the sky. So we see it as a really meaningful contributor to our technology tool kit...."

>

> The developments Thursday come as [4]tech companies race to find new sources of zero-emission power for data centers that can use as much energy as entire cities. With major backing from Google parent Alphabet, Fervo recently got its first project up and running in the northern Nevada desert... The advanced geothermal technology that Fervo is trying to scale up is an attractive option for tech firms. Enhanced geothermal plants do not pose all the safety concerns that come with nuclear power, but they have the potential to provide the round-the-clock energy that data centers need. The challenge Fervo faces is whether it can bring this technology online quickly enough.

Fervo (a seven-year-old start-up) was co-founded by Tim Latimer, who previously worked as a drilling engineer, according to the article. But "Early in my career I got passionate about climate change. I started looking at where could a drilling engineer from the oil and gas industry make a difference," Latimer said during [5]a Washington Post Live event in September. "And I realized that geothermal had been so overlooked ... even though the primary technical challenge to making geothermal work is dropping drilling costs."



[1] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/10/15/2331231/petroleum-drilling-technology-is-now-making-carbon-free-power

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-approves-mega-geothermal-energy-project-in-utah/ar-AA1ssb0z

[3] https://www.blm.gov/press-release/biden-harris-administration-takes-major-steps-accelerate-clean-energy-geothermal

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/16/amazon-smr-nuclear/?itid=lk_inline_manual_14

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2024/09/23/transcript-this-is-climate-summit-global-stakes-north-america/?itid=lk_inline_manual_17

An anonymous readed shared [1]this report from CNN :

> [U.S. army boats] are poorly maintained and largely unprepared to meet the military's growing mission in the Pacific, a new government oversight report said this week. The Government Accountability Office [2]released a report on Wednesday that concluded there are "wide-ranging" issues facing Army watercraft, which limit the Army's ability "to meet mission requirements in the Indo-Pacific theater where the need for Army watercraft is most pronounced."

>

> Despite Army policy requiring the vessels to be at least at a 90% mission capable rate — meaning the vessels are ready to perform their mission — the boats currently have a less than 40% capable rate this year. Overall, the fleet of watercraft has dropped by nearly half since 2018, going from 134 vessels to 70 as of May this year, in part due to divestment of vessels in 2018 and 2019... "Army boats have not been ready, capable, or in a mindset they'll have to do something dangerous or in the real world ... for decades now," a retired warrant officer and former chief engineer on Army watercraft told CNN at the time...

>

> [Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith] said that the Army is "actively" working to address gaps in the watercraft's capability as a whole, and prioritizing improving the current fleet while also "investing in a modernized fleet to meet the needs of the 2040 force." Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, told CNN that the Army is also looking at possibly replacing the existing fleet of Army watercraft with autonomous vessels in the future. "What we see is the oil industry and other shipping industries are doing this already, we see that happening all around the world," Butler said. "There's no reason the Army shouldn't be thinking that way ... leaders from down at ship level all the way to the Pentagon are looking at this and determining the best way to deploy our forces...

>

> "Maybe the future fleet is all autonomous, we just don't know," he said. "This is all stuff we're looking at in terms of trying to modernize the way we move people, weapons, and equipment."

CNN notes that the report "also said the Army is considering leasing civilian watercraft to bolster its existing fleet and moving all of its watercraft to the Pacific."

The report also included a response from Army Secretary Wormuth, who said the Army is "actively pursuing a holistic approach to mitigate the gaps in Army watercraft capability and capacity."



[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/18/politics/watchdog-significant-issues-us-armys-boat-fleet/index.html

[2] https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-25-106387/index.html?_gl=1*10yunzo*_ga*MjA4MzI4NjcwNS4xNzI5MTg4ODc2*_ga_V393SNS3SR*MTcyOTE4ODg3NS4xLjAuMTcyOTE4ODg3NS4wLjAuMA..

"Biden forgives more student loans," read [1]Thursday's headline at CNBC .

While this time it was $4.5 billion in student debt for over 60,000 public service workers, "The Biden-Harris Administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers through various actions," according to [2]an announcement from the White House on Thursday. (So the average amount received by each of the 5 million students is $35,000.) CNN calculates this [3]eliminates roughly 11% of all outstanding U.S. federal student loan debt .

This latest round of forgiveness fixed a loophole in a bipartisan program (passed during the Bush administration in 2007) called Public Service Loan Forgiveness:

> "For too long, the government failed to live up to its commitments, and only 7,000 people had ever received forgiveness under Public Service Loan Forgiveness before Vice President (Kamala) Harris and I took office," Biden said in a statement. "We vowed to fix that," he added... Thursday's announcement impacts about 60,000 borrowers who are now approved for approximately $4.5 billion in student debt relief under PSLF.

CNN points out the total $175 billion in forgiven student debt is more than under any other president — though it's still "less than half of the $430 billion that would've been canceled under the president's one-time forgiveness plan, which was [4]struck down by the Supreme Court last year."

> The Biden administration has made it [5]easier for about 572,000 permanently disabled borrowers to receive the debt relief to which they are entitled. It also has granted student loan forgiveness to more than 1.6 million borrowers who were defrauded by their college... The Biden administration is conducting a one-time recount of borrowers' past payments and making adjustments if they had been counted incorrectly, bringing many people closer to debt relief.



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/17/student-loan-forgiveness-biden-public-service-debt.html

[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/10/17/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-over-1-million-public-service-workers-have-received-student-debt-cancellation-under-the-biden-harris-administration/

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/17/politics/biden-student-loan-forgiveness/index.html

[4] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/07/01/034201/us-supreme-court-rejects-us-student-loan-relief-president-biden-responds

[5] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/22/politics/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-supreme-court/index.html

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> If you dread the thought of calling to change an airline ticket or negotiate your internet bill, a new artificial intelligence tool may provide a solution. DoNotPay, which offers an assortment of consumer-friendly services like tracking subscriptions, generating burner phone numbers, and searching for unclaimed property, now features a bot that will [1]call customer service numbers for users , navigate through phone menus and sit through hold music, then politely but firmly advocate on users' behalf.

>

> The company shared examples of its AI calling a cellphone provider for help porting a phone number and talking with an airline to cancel a flight within the 24-hour cancellation window. Joshua Browder, CEO and founder of DoNotPay, says getting updates on lost luggage and seeking compensation for flight delays are also common use cases. DoNotPay already offered tools to connect to customer service agents via chat windows, and to draft and send emails, faxes, and even snail mail to companies on behalf of users.

>

> But while the service's artificial intelligence had enough smarts to wait on hold for users, then hand over a call when an agent was available, until recently AI models were not capable of carrying on a convincing voice conversation with a human operator in real time. Browder says that changed with Open AI's GPT-4o model, unveiled in May. "That has reduced the delay by about 70%, so instead of it taking three seconds to come up with a response, it now takes under a second, and that's finally fast enough to hold these phone conversations," he says. "So now we're doing thousands of these calls."



[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91210013/donotpay-will-now-call-customer-service-hotlines-for-you

The world's biggest trade publisher has changed the wording on its copyright pages to help protect authors' intellectual property [1]from being used to train large language models and other artificial intelligence tools, The Bookseller has reported. From the report:

> Penguin Random House has amended its copyright wording across all imprints globally, confirming it will appear "in imprint pages across our markets." The new wording states: "No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems," and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted.

>

> The statement also "expressly reserves [the titles] from the text and data mining exception," in accordance with a European Parliament directive. The move specifically to ban the use of its titles by AI firms for the development of chatbots and other digital tools comes amid a slew of copyright infringement cases in the US and reports that large tranches of pirated books have already been used by tech companies to train AI tools. In 2024, several academic publishers including Taylor & Francis, Wiley and Sage have announced partnerships to license content to AI firms.



[1] https://www.thebookseller.com/news/penguin-random-house-underscores-copyright-protection-in-ai-rebuff

Microsoft has notified customers that it's [1]missing more than two weeks of security logs for some of its cloud products, leaving network defenders without critical data for detecting possible intrusions. From a report:

> According to a notification sent to affected customers, Microsoft said that "a bug in one of Microsoft's internal monitoring agents resulted in a malfunction in some of the agents when uploading log data to our internal logging platform" between September 2 and September 19.

>

> The notification said that the logging outage was not caused by a security incident, and "only affected the collection of log events." Business Insider first reported the loss of log data earlier in October. Details of the notification have not been widely reported. As noted by security researcher Kevin Beaumont, the notifications that Microsoft sent to affected companies are likely accessible only to a handful of users with tenant admin rights. Logging helps to keep track of events within a product, such as information about users signing in and failed attempts, which can help network defenders identify suspected intrusions. Missing logs could make it more difficult to identify unauthorized access to the customers' networks during that two-week window.



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/17/microsoft-said-it-lost-weeks-of-security-logs-for-its-customers-cloud-products/

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space News:

> SpaceX has been [1]awarded contracts for eight launches under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program, the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command announced Oct. 18. The contracts worth $733.5 million span seven missions for the Space Development Agency (SDA) and one for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) projected to launch in 2026. These are part of the NSSL Phase 3 procurement of launch services for U.S. defense and intelligence agencies.

>

> The NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 program is structured as an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, a flexible procurement method often used in government contracting. The total value of the Lane 1 contract is estimated at $5.6 billion over five years, with Blue Origin, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) selected as the primary vendors to compete for individual task orders. The Space Development Agency is utilizing SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to launch small satellites into a low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellation, a network of satellites designed to enhance military communications and intelligence capabilities. SpaceX has already completed two successful launches for the Tranche 0 portion of SDA's constellation.

>

> "The Phase 3 Lane 1 construct allows us to execute launch services more quickly for risk-tolerant payloads, putting more capabilities in orbit faster to support national security," said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space at the Space Force. Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has yet to perform its first launch and will need to complete at least two successful flights to qualify for NSSL certification, while ULA's Vulcan Centaur, which has completed two flights, is still awaiting final certification for the program.



[1] https://spacenews.com/spacex-secures-new-contracts-worth-733-5-million-for-national-security-space-missions/

[1]sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine:

> From dumping iron into the ocean to launching mirrors into space, proposals to cool the planet through 'geoengineering' tend to be controversial -- and sometimes fantastical. A new idea isn't any less far-out, but it may avoid some of the usual pitfalls of strategies to fill the atmosphere with tiny, reflective particles. In a modeling study [2]published this month in Geophysical Research Letters , scientists report that shooting 5 million tons of diamond dust into the stratosphere each year [3]could cool the planet by 1.6C -- enough to stave off the worst consequences of global warming. The scheme wouldn't be cheap, however: experts estimate it would cost nearly $200 trillion over the remainder of this century -- far more than traditional proposals to use sulfur particles. [...]

>

> The researchers modeled the effects of seven compounds, including sulfur dioxide, as well as particles of diamond, aluminum, and calcite, the primary ingredient in limestone. They evaluated the effects of each particle across 45 years in the model, where each trial took more than a week in real-time on a supercomputer. The results showed diamond particles were best at reflecting radiation while also staying aloft and avoiding clumping. Diamond is also thought to be chemically inert, meaning it would not react to form acid rain, like sulfur. To achieve 1.6C of cooling, 5 million tons of diamond particles would need to be injected into the stratosphere each year. Such a large quantity would require a huge ramp up in synthetic diamond production before high-altitude aircraft could sprinkle the ground-up gems across the stratosphere. At roughly $500,000 per ton, synthetic diamond dust would be 2,400 times more expensive than sulfur and cost $175 trillion if deployed from 2035 to 2100, [4]one study estimates .



[1] https://slashdot.org/~sciencehabit

[2] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL110575

[3] https://www.science.org/content/article/are-diamonds-earth-s-best-friend-gem-dust-could-cool-planet-and-cost-trillions

[4] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aba7e7/pdf

Longtime Slashdot reader [1]schwit1 shares an op-ed written by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, and chair of the Defense Innovation Board:

> There are government boondoggles, and then there's NASA's Artemis program. More than a half century after Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind, Artemis was intended to land astronauts back on the moon. It has so far [2]spent nearly $100 billion without anyone getting off the ground , yet its complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward. The next US president should rethink the program in its entirety. As someone who greatly respects science and strongly supports space exploration, the more I have learned about Artemis, the more it has become apparent that it is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. [...]

>

> A celestial irony is that none of this is necessary. A reusable SpaceX Starship will very likely be able to carry cargo and robots directly to the moon -- no SLS, Orion, Gateway, Block 1B or ML-2 required -- at a small fraction of the cost. Its successful landing of the Starship booster was a breakthrough that demonstrated how far beyond NASA it is moving. Meanwhile, NASA is canceling or postponing promising scientific programs -- including the Veritas mission to Venus; the Viper lunar rover; and the NEO Surveyor telescope, intended to scan the solar system for hazardous asteroids -- as Artemis consumes ever more of its budget. Taxpayers and Congress should be asking: What on Earth are we doing? And the next president should be held accountable for answers.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-17/michael-bloomberg-nasa-s-artemis-moon-mission-is-a-colossal-waste

Analogue, a retro gaming company, is [1]releasing a hardware-emulated Nintendo 64 console that can play every N64 game in 4K resolution. TechCrunch reports:

> Analogue, as is its habit, spent years meticulously re-engineering the N64 in FPGA form -- basically, this means that the new 3D console is, in several important ways, indistinguishable from the original hardware. One hundred percent compatibility with the console's game library is the most obvious one, meaning every single N64 cartridge works with this thing. Perhaps the bigger challenge with the N64, as with many other consoles of that era, is how it produces an image.

>

> The N64 put out an analog video signal intended for display on interlaced CRT displays -- something that directly influenced the gameplay and art styles of countless games for the platform. Many retro games simply look bad on modern high-resolution displays not because they are dated or the art is insufficient, but because the display techs are fundamentally different.

>

> To that end, Analogue has built in a native upscaler that, rather than cleaning up and digitizing the analog video output of the original system (as some upscalers do, with varying degrees of success), produces a natively digital, 4K signal with imitation CRT artifacts and scanlines. This is something they pioneered early on and produced several versions of to reproduce accurate phosphors and display modes for the multi-system Analogue Pocket. [...] The result is simply that games ought to look how you remembered them, which is to say probably a sight better than they actually looked.

The Analogue 3D is [2]available for pre-order at 8am PDT on October 21. It's priced at $250.



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/16/the-analogue-3d-drags-the-fondly-remembered-n64-into-the-21st-century/

[2] https://store.analogue.co/products/analogue-3d-black

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post:

> Brandon Barrett arrived here two weeks ago, sick but hopeful, like dozens before him. Just a few years back, he could dead lift 660 pounds. After an injury while training to be a professional dirt-bike rider, he opened a motorcycle shop just north of Buffalo. When he wasn't working, he would cleanse his mind through rigorous meditation. In 2019, he began getting sick. And then sicker. Brain fog. Memory issues. Difficulty focusing. Depression. Anxiety. Fatigue. Brandon was pretty sure he knew why: the cell tower a quarter-mile behind his shop and all the electromagnetic radiation it produces, that cellphones produce, that WiFi routers produce, that Bluetooth produces, that the whole damn world produces. He thought about the invisible waves that zip through our airspace -- maybe they pollute our bodies, somehow? [...]

>

> Then Brandon read about Green Bank, an unincorporated speck on the West Virginia map, hidden in the Allegheny Mountains, about a four-hour drive southwest of D.C. There are no cell towers there, by design. He read that other sick people had moved here and gotten better, that [1]the area's electromagnetic quietude is protected by the federal government . Perhaps it could protect Brandon. It's quiet here so that scientists can listen to corners of the universe, billions of light-years away. In the 1950s, the federal government snatched up farmland to build the [2]Green Bank Observatory . It's now home to the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable telescope in the world at 7,600 metric tons and a height of 485 feet. Its 2.3-acre dish can study quasars and pulsars, map asteroids and planets, and search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

>

> The observatory's machines are so sensitive that terrestrial radio waves would interfere with their astronomical exploration, like a shout (a bunch of WiFi signals) drowning out a whisper (signals from the clouds of hydrogen hanging out between galaxies). So in 1958, the Federal Communications Commission created the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area encompassing wedges of both Virginia and West Virginia, where radio transmissions are restricted to varying degrees. At its center is a 10-mile zone around the observatory where WiFi, cellphones and cordless phones -- among many other types of wave-emitting equipment -- are outlawed. Wired internet is okay, as are televisions -- though you must have a cable or satellite provider. It's not a place out of 100 years ago. More like 30. If you want to make plans to meet someone, you make them in person. Some people move here to work at the observatory. Others come because they feel like they have to. These are the 'electrosensitives,' as they often refer to themselves. They are ill, and Green Bank is their Lourdes. The electrosensitives guess that they number at least 75 in Pocahontas County, which has a population of roughly 7,500.

[3]Literary Hub , the [4]BBC , [5]Slate , and the [6]Washingtonian have non-paywalled articles about Green Bank and the "wi-fi refugees" that shelter there.



[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2024/10/18/green-bank-west-virginia-wv-electrosensitive-cell-service/

[2] https://greenbankobservatory.org/

[3] https://lithub.com/seeking-sanctuary-from-electromagnetic-radiation-in-green-bank-west-virginia/

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-14887428

[5] https://slate.com/technology/2013/04/green-bank-w-v-where-the-electrosensitive-can-escape-the-modern-world.html

[6] https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/01/04/the-town-without-wi-fi/

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports:

> Germany's [1]Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) is today celebrating its second anniversary for "empowering public digital infrastructure." In the past two years it has [2]invested more than $24.9 million into sixty open technologies . This effort backed by the German government has provided nearly $25 million USD in open-source funding over the past two years. In this time there has been more than 500 submissions proposing over 114 million euros in work.

>

> This Sovereign Tech Funding has helped open-source projects provide much needed maintenance to their software, enhance the security posture of the software, and make other open-source improvements in the public interest.

You can learn more about the Sovereign Tech Fund [3]via their blog .



[1] https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/STF-Two-Years-24.9M-USD

[3] https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/news/celebrating-two-years-of-empowering-public-digital-infrastructure

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:

> A US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples [1]screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises questions about the ethics of genetic enhancement. The company, [2]Heliospect Genomics , has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing IVF, according to undercover video footage. The recordings show the company marketing its services at up to $50,000 for clients seeking to test 100 embryos, and claiming to have helped some parents select future children based on genetic predictions of intelligence. Managers boasted their methods could produce a gain of more than six IQ points. [...]

>

> The footage appears to show experimental genetic selection techniques being advertised to prospective parents. A Heliospect employee, who has been helping the company recruit clients, outlined how couples could rank up to 100 embryos based on "IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants," including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness. The startup says its prediction tools were built using data provided by UK Biobank, a taxpayer-funded store of genetic material donated by half a million British volunteers, which aims to only share data for projects that are "in the public interest".

>

> Selecting embryos on the basis of predicted high IQ is not permitted under UK law. While it is legal in the US, where embryology is more loosely regulated, IQ screening is not yet commercially available there. Asked for comment, managers at Heliospect said the company, which is incorporated in the US, operated within all applicable law and regulations. They said Heliospect was in "stealth mode" before a planned public launch and was still developing its service. They added that clients who screened fewer embryos were charged about $4,000, and that pricing on launch would be in line with competitors. Leading geneticists and bioethicists said the project raised a host of moral and medical issues.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-charging-couples-to-screen-embryos-for-iq

[2] https://heliospectgenomics.com/

Cuba's power grid failed on Friday, [1]leaving 10 million people without electricity . NPR reports:

> One of the country's largest power plants, the Antonio Guiteras power plant in the western province of Matanzas, failed shortly before midday on Friday. The failure prompted a total breakdown of Cuba's electrical system. The power outage comes after days of rolling blackouts. Cuba's prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, blamed the problem on deteriorating infrastructure and fuel shortages exacerbated by Hurricane Milton, which has made it difficult for fuel deliveries to reach the island.

>

> The prime minister made an address on state television on Thursday evening and said the government would prioritize providing electricity to residential areas and promised shipments of fuel would arrive on the island in the coming days. Cuban officials have not indicated a timeline for when the power grid will be operational again. The massive blackout is a new low in a country that has already been dealing with a deepening economic crisis and widespread food shortages.



[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/18/nx-s1-5157835/cuba-plunged-into-an-island-wide-blackout-as-power-grid-collapses

Netflix has [1]begun raising prices in several countries , including Japan, parts of Europe, and Africa, as it seeks to sustain growth following its [2]crackdown on password sharing . While its recent financial results show strong revenue growth, the company faces challenges in finding new subscribers and aims to boost future growth through advertising and fresh content. The BBC reports:

> In its latest results, Netflix [3]announced that it had added 5.1 million subscribers between July and September - ahead of forecasts but the smallest gain in more than a year. The company is under pressure to show investors what will power growth in the years ahead, as its already massive reach makes finding new subscribers more difficult. The last time Netflix saw signs of slowdown, in 2022, it launched measures to stop password sharing and said it would offer a new streaming option with advertisements.

>

> The crackdown unleashed a new wave of growth. The firm has added more than 45 million new members since last year and has 282 million subscribers globally. Analysts also expect advertisements to eventually become big business for Netflix. For now, however, Netflix has said it remains "early days" and warned it did not expect it to start driving growth until next year, despite many subscribers opting for the ad-supported plan. The plan, which is the company's least expensive option, accounted for 50% of new sign-ups in the places where it is offered in the most recent quarter, Netflix said. Even without a boost from advertising, Netflix said revenue in the July-September period was up 15% compared with the same period last year, to more than $9.8 billion. Profit also rose from $1.6 billion in the same period last year to $2.3 billion.



[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5exj06vg6o

[2] https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/23/06/09/170236/netflix-password-crackdown-drives-us-sign-ups-to-highest-levels-in-at-least-four-years

[3] https://ir.netflix.net/financials/quarterly-earnings/default.aspx

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is [1]investigating farm equipment maker Deere over its repair policies , focusing on whether the company's restrictions on repairs violate customers' "right to repair." Reuters reports:

> The investigation, authorized on Sept. 2, 2021, focuses on repair restrictions manufacturers place on hardware or software, often referred to by regulators as impeding customers' "right to repair" the goods they purchase. The probe was made public through a filing by data analytics company Hargrove & Associates Inc, which sought to quash an FTC subpoena seeking market data submitted to it by members of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. Neither HAI nor AEM is a target of the FTC probe [...].

>

> The FTC is probing whether Deere violated the Federal Trade Act's section 5, according to the filing. The law prohibits unfair or deceptive practices affecting commerce, and the FTC has recently used it in a broad array of cases, including against Amazon and pharmacy benefit managers.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/us-ftc-probing-deere-antitrust-consumer-protection-inquiry-filing-shows-2024-10-17/