Nobody wants flappy bits during an engine burn of Trojan asteroid explorer
Engineers are to double down on efforts to get Lucy’s solar array fully deployed amid worries regarding potential damage during a main engine burn of the Trojan asteroid explorer.
Problems were noted shortly after launch last year, when one of the probe’s 7.3 meter (23.9 feet) solar arrays failed to latch into place after deployment. Enough of the fan-like array had opened to generate plenty of power for the spacecraft, but not enough to latch securely into place. Engineers reckon that the array got to approximately 345 out of 360 degrees before stalling.
The issue did not present an immediate threat to the mission. Engineers pondered if they might simply leave things as is; after all, the array was generating ample power. However, as investigations have proceeded, particularly with regard to what might happen during an engine firing, a decision has been taken to try and latch the array in place.
As of now, Lucy is approximately 105.1 million km (65.33 million miles) from Earth. It will have its first Earth flyby and gravity assist in October this year, another in December 2024 and reach the Trojan asteroid Eurybates and its satellite Queta in 2027. The Trojan asteroids orbit the sun “in front of” and “behind” Jupiter, and scientists reckon they represent leftovers of the material that formed the outer planets.
- NASA installs a new and improved algorithm to better track near-Earth asteroids
- NASA boffins seem to think we’re worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they’re shooting a spaceship at one
- Juno what? Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is much deeper than originally thought
- Engineers investigating iffy solar array latch on NASA’s Lucy as probe begins long journey to Trojan asteroids
To deal with the array issue, engineers plan to use both primary and backup motors to give the lanyard attached to the end of the solar array a hefty tug (or, in NASA-speak, use “both motors simultaneously to generate higher torque.”) There is only 20 to 40 inches of lanyard left (out of approximately 290 inches in total) to retract to latch the array in place.
The primary motor reeled in the lanyard after launch to open the array. A backup motor was included for purposes of redundancy.
Engineers plan a two step process. The first, expected to occur next month, will pull in most of the remaining lanyard and check that what happens in flight matches ground testing. The array is unlikely to latch at that point – that will come a month later, if all goes well, when engineers will have enough data to give the snarled lanyard a final pull and latch the array in place ahead of October’s Earth flyby. ®
Other stories you might like
-
Microsoft exposes glue-free guts of the Surface Laptop Studio
Broken your headphone jack? No problem. Want some more RAM? Er, about that…
Microsoft has reminded us once again of a time when enthusiasts could get into the guts of their hardware with a teardown of its Surface Laptop Studio, all in the name of repairability.
Continue reading
-
Oracle to release on-prem software usage tools to prep cloud switch
Experts advise caution in sharing data with Big Red – it could be used in license audits
Experts in software licensing are warning users against wholly adopting new tools Oracle promises will help map and size on-prem installations in preparation for a move to the cloud.
Adviors at Palisade Compliance said data from the tools, which an Oracle executive said were months away from launch, could be used by Big Red to sell more cloud instances than customers want or need, launch a software audit, and be used against customers in an audit process.
Last month, Felicia Parilo, senior manager with Oracle Global Partner Advisory, told a webinar hosted by the International Business Software Managers Association (IBSMA) – attended by The Reg – that Oracle is working with third-party tool vendors and developing its own tools “to be able to capture the actual usage” of on-premises software in preparation for its customers’ move to the cloud.
Continue reading
-
Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters
Convenience or purity? You can only choose one
A painful issue for Linux distros that are built on free software is firmware. This especially affects Debian, as outlined by former project head Steve Mcintyre here, and it’s getting worse with time.
Firmware is only called that for historical reasons now, which we’ll go into below. It’s no longer “firm” at all, it’s just files on a disk, like the rest of the OS – but it’s unlike OS code in two important ways.
Firstly, it doesn’t execute on the CPU. It’s uploaded into a peripheral device’s RAM, and there it runs on the processors inside the graphics card, or network controller, or radio controller, or whatever.
Continue reading
-
Timetable for industrial action ballot against BT imminent
CWU deputy secretary demands better pay for staff amid cost-of-living crisis
The Communication and Workers Union (CWU) will this week publish the timetable to run an industrial action ballot over the pay rise BT gave to members recently, with the telco’s subsidiaries to vote separately.
Earlier this month, BT paid its 58,000 frontline workers a flat rate increase of £1,500 ($1,930) for the year, upping it from the £1,200 ($1,545) initially offered. BT hadn’t cleared this increase with the CWU, and the union branded the offer as unacceptable at a time when inflation in Britain is expected to soar by 10 percent this year.
In a public town hall meeting last week, the CWU said it will take an “emergency motion” to the Annual Conference this week to “set out the exact ballot timetable,” said Karen Rose, vice president at CWU.
Continue reading
-
Your AI can’t tell you it’s lying if it thinks it’s telling the truth. That’s a problem
Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of ML? Er, nobody
Opinion Machine learning’s abiding weakness is verification. Is your AI telling the truth? How can you tell?
This problem isn’t unique to ML. It plagues chip design, bathroom scales, and prime ministers. Still, with so many new business models depending on AI’s promise to bring the holy grail of scale to real-world data analysis, this lack of testability has new economic consequences.
The basic mechanisms of machine learning are sound, or at least statistically reliable. Within the parameters of its training data, an ML process will deliver what the underlying mathematics promise. If you understand the limits, you can trust it.
Continue reading
-
In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished
When being helpful can mean being shown the door
Who, Me? Going above and beyond in IT can sometimes lead to also going directly out of the door, as one Register reader found when discovering that sometimes efficiencies can be less than rewarding.
A reader Regomised as “Will” told of us his days working at a now-defunct company that produced large telephone switches. In those days whenever a major software revision occurred, customers were expected to send in their configurations and Will’s group would merge them into the latest and greatest. A new load would then be returned to the customers.
It was not a fun process, not least because of constant hardware and software failures during the merge process. “When I first started, there was a constant grumble about how unreliable the machine used for the merging was,” Will told us.
Continue reading
-
Google Docs’ AI-powered inclusive writing auto-correct now under fire
Plus: IBM’s CEO says we have to tackle ML ethics or intelligent systems will become monsters
In brief The AI algorithms used by Google Docs to suggest edits to make writing more inclusive have been blasted for being annoying.
Language models are used in Google Docs for features like Smart Compose; it suggests words to autocomplete sentences as a user types. The Chocolate Factory now wants to go further than that, and is rolling out “assistive writing,” another AI-powered system designed to help people write punchier documents more quickly.
Assistive writing is being introduced to enterprise users, and the feature is turned on by default. Not everyone is a fan of being guided by the algorithm, and some people find its “inclusive language” ability irritating, Vice reported.
Continue reading
-
FBI: BlackCat ransomware scratched 60-plus orgs
Plus: Cisco Umbrella flaw patched, lid blown off TeamTNT, and ICS security folks join JCDC party
In brief The BlackCat ransomware gang, said to be the first-known ransomware group to successfully break into networks with Rust-written malware, has attacked at least 60 organizations globally as of March, according to the FBI.
BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, is a relatively new group of cybercriminals that operates a Windows ransomware-as-a-service. But while it only appeared on the ransomware crime scene in November 2021, security researchers and federal law enforcement have linked its developers and money launderers to the notorious Darkside/Blackmatter crime rings, “indicating they have extensive networks and experience with ransomware operations,” the FBI said in a security alert [PDF] this week.
In earlier analysis, security researchers at Cisco Talos and Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 also noted BlackCat’s preference for Rust, with Unit 42 saying the gang was “one of the first, if not the first” of its kind to use this programming language.
Continue reading
-
Now Mandiant says 2021 was a record year for exploited zero-day security bugs
Now that’s a race condition
The number of zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild reached an all-time high last year, according to Mandiant.
The security shop identified 80 such actively abused flaws in 2021, which Mandiant researcher James Sadowski noted is more than double the previous zero-day record from 2019.
This echoes another zero-day report also published this week by Google. However, the cloud giant’s bug hunters spotted 58, compared to Mandiant’s 80 recorded instances.
Continue reading
-
US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit
Team America: Solar System Police
The US Space Force has created a unit, the 19th Space Defense Squadron, to monitor activity in the region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit, all the way out to the Moon and yonder.
Commander of the 18th SDS, Lt. Col. Matt Lintker, confirmed the launch of the task force during a panel discussion at the intelligence and defense-focused C4ISRNet conference held virtually this week.
Lintker said the 19th SDS will be in charge of monitoring the area of space further out than our planet’s geosynchronous equatorial orbit, a region officials called “xGEO” space. Space Force is mostly concerned with the operation and defense of its satellites for communications and navigation purposes, but it also keeps an eye on space for any military activity from foreign adversaries and also tracks space junk that could cause a risk to American interests.
Continue reading
-
Take this $15m and make us some ultra-energy-efficient superconductor chips, scientists told
A fair price to get everyone to stop talking about Moore’s Law for good
Researchers in the US have received a $15 million National Science Foundation (NSF) award to develop superconductor chips that ought to be much faster and use significantly less energy than the hardware the world today relies on for computing.
A team at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering is leading the effort, and it goes by the name DISCoVER, a rather fun acronym that stands for Design and Integration of Superconductive Computation for Ventures beyond Exascale Realization.
As the name suggests, the scientists are looking to use superconducting materials as an alternative to today’s semiconductors to develop new kinds of superfast and highly energy efficient integrated circuits that can enable sustainable and large-scale exascale computing.
Continue reading
Nobody wants flappy bits during an engine burn of Trojan asteroid explorer
Engineers are to double down on efforts to get Lucy’s solar array fully deployed amid worries regarding potential damage during a main engine burn of the Trojan asteroid explorer.
Problems were noted shortly after launch last year, when one of the probe’s 7.3 meter (23.9 feet) solar arrays failed to latch into place after deployment. Enough of the fan-like array had opened to generate plenty of power for the spacecraft, but not enough to latch securely into place. Engineers reckon that the array got to approximately 345 out of 360 degrees before stalling.
The issue did not present an immediate threat to the mission. Engineers pondered if they might simply leave things as is; after all, the array was generating ample power. However, as investigations have proceeded, particularly with regard to what might happen during an engine firing, a decision has been taken to try and latch the array in place.
As of now, Lucy is approximately 105.1 million km (65.33 million miles) from Earth. It will have its first Earth flyby and gravity assist in October this year, another in December 2024 and reach the Trojan asteroid Eurybates and its satellite Queta in 2027. The Trojan asteroids orbit the sun “in front of” and “behind” Jupiter, and scientists reckon they represent leftovers of the material that formed the outer planets.
- NASA installs a new and improved algorithm to better track near-Earth asteroids
- NASA boffins seem to think we’re worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they’re shooting a spaceship at one
- Juno what? Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is much deeper than originally thought
- Engineers investigating iffy solar array latch on NASA’s Lucy as probe begins long journey to Trojan asteroids
To deal with the array issue, engineers plan to use both primary and backup motors to give the lanyard attached to the end of the solar array a hefty tug (or, in NASA-speak, use “both motors simultaneously to generate higher torque.”) There is only 20 to 40 inches of lanyard left (out of approximately 290 inches in total) to retract to latch the array in place.
The primary motor reeled in the lanyard after launch to open the array. A backup motor was included for purposes of redundancy.
Engineers plan a two step process. The first, expected to occur next month, will pull in most of the remaining lanyard and check that what happens in flight matches ground testing. The array is unlikely to latch at that point – that will come a month later, if all goes well, when engineers will have enough data to give the snarled lanyard a final pull and latch the array in place ahead of October’s Earth flyby. ®
Other stories you might like
-
Microsoft exposes glue-free guts of the Surface Laptop Studio
Broken your headphone jack? No problem. Want some more RAM? Er, about that…
Microsoft has reminded us once again of a time when enthusiasts could get into the guts of their hardware with a teardown of its Surface Laptop Studio, all in the name of repairability.
Continue reading
-
Oracle to release on-prem software usage tools to prep cloud switch
Experts advise caution in sharing data with Big Red – it could be used in license audits
Experts in software licensing are warning users against wholly adopting new tools Oracle promises will help map and size on-prem installations in preparation for a move to the cloud.
Adviors at Palisade Compliance said data from the tools, which an Oracle executive said were months away from launch, could be used by Big Red to sell more cloud instances than customers want or need, launch a software audit, and be used against customers in an audit process.
Last month, Felicia Parilo, senior manager with Oracle Global Partner Advisory, told a webinar hosted by the International Business Software Managers Association (IBSMA) – attended by The Reg – that Oracle is working with third-party tool vendors and developing its own tools “to be able to capture the actual usage” of on-premises software in preparation for its customers’ move to the cloud.
Continue reading
-
Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters
Convenience or purity? You can only choose one
A painful issue for Linux distros that are built on free software is firmware. This especially affects Debian, as outlined by former project head Steve Mcintyre here, and it’s getting worse with time.
Firmware is only called that for historical reasons now, which we’ll go into below. It’s no longer “firm” at all, it’s just files on a disk, like the rest of the OS – but it’s unlike OS code in two important ways.
Firstly, it doesn’t execute on the CPU. It’s uploaded into a peripheral device’s RAM, and there it runs on the processors inside the graphics card, or network controller, or radio controller, or whatever.
Continue reading
-
Timetable for industrial action ballot against BT imminent
CWU deputy secretary demands better pay for staff amid cost-of-living crisis
The Communication and Workers Union (CWU) will this week publish the timetable to run an industrial action ballot over the pay rise BT gave to members recently, with the telco’s subsidiaries to vote separately.
Earlier this month, BT paid its 58,000 frontline workers a flat rate increase of £1,500 ($1,930) for the year, upping it from the £1,200 ($1,545) initially offered. BT hadn’t cleared this increase with the CWU, and the union branded the offer as unacceptable at a time when inflation in Britain is expected to soar by 10 percent this year.
In a public town hall meeting last week, the CWU said it will take an “emergency motion” to the Annual Conference this week to “set out the exact ballot timetable,” said Karen Rose, vice president at CWU.
Continue reading
-
Your AI can’t tell you it’s lying if it thinks it’s telling the truth. That’s a problem
Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of ML? Er, nobody
Opinion Machine learning’s abiding weakness is verification. Is your AI telling the truth? How can you tell?
This problem isn’t unique to ML. It plagues chip design, bathroom scales, and prime ministers. Still, with so many new business models depending on AI’s promise to bring the holy grail of scale to real-world data analysis, this lack of testability has new economic consequences.
The basic mechanisms of machine learning are sound, or at least statistically reliable. Within the parameters of its training data, an ML process will deliver what the underlying mathematics promise. If you understand the limits, you can trust it.
Continue reading
-
In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished
When being helpful can mean being shown the door
Who, Me? Going above and beyond in IT can sometimes lead to also going directly out of the door, as one Register reader found when discovering that sometimes efficiencies can be less than rewarding.
A reader Regomised as “Will” told of us his days working at a now-defunct company that produced large telephone switches. In those days whenever a major software revision occurred, customers were expected to send in their configurations and Will’s group would merge them into the latest and greatest. A new load would then be returned to the customers.
It was not a fun process, not least because of constant hardware and software failures during the merge process. “When I first started, there was a constant grumble about how unreliable the machine used for the merging was,” Will told us.
Continue reading
-
Google Docs’ AI-powered inclusive writing auto-correct now under fire
Plus: IBM’s CEO says we have to tackle ML ethics or intelligent systems will become monsters
In brief The AI algorithms used by Google Docs to suggest edits to make writing more inclusive have been blasted for being annoying.
Language models are used in Google Docs for features like Smart Compose; it suggests words to autocomplete sentences as a user types. The Chocolate Factory now wants to go further than that, and is rolling out “assistive writing,” another AI-powered system designed to help people write punchier documents more quickly.
Assistive writing is being introduced to enterprise users, and the feature is turned on by default. Not everyone is a fan of being guided by the algorithm, and some people find its “inclusive language” ability irritating, Vice reported.
Continue reading
-
FBI: BlackCat ransomware scratched 60-plus orgs
Plus: Cisco Umbrella flaw patched, lid blown off TeamTNT, and ICS security folks join JCDC party
In brief The BlackCat ransomware gang, said to be the first-known ransomware group to successfully break into networks with Rust-written malware, has attacked at least 60 organizations globally as of March, according to the FBI.
BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, is a relatively new group of cybercriminals that operates a Windows ransomware-as-a-service. But while it only appeared on the ransomware crime scene in November 2021, security researchers and federal law enforcement have linked its developers and money launderers to the notorious Darkside/Blackmatter crime rings, “indicating they have extensive networks and experience with ransomware operations,” the FBI said in a security alert [PDF] this week.
In earlier analysis, security researchers at Cisco Talos and Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 also noted BlackCat’s preference for Rust, with Unit 42 saying the gang was “one of the first, if not the first” of its kind to use this programming language.
Continue reading
-
Now Mandiant says 2021 was a record year for exploited zero-day security bugs
Now that’s a race condition
The number of zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild reached an all-time high last year, according to Mandiant.
The security shop identified 80 such actively abused flaws in 2021, which Mandiant researcher James Sadowski noted is more than double the previous zero-day record from 2019.
This echoes another zero-day report also published this week by Google. However, the cloud giant’s bug hunters spotted 58, compared to Mandiant’s 80 recorded instances.
Continue reading
-
US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit
Team America: Solar System Police
The US Space Force has created a unit, the 19th Space Defense Squadron, to monitor activity in the region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit, all the way out to the Moon and yonder.
Commander of the 18th SDS, Lt. Col. Matt Lintker, confirmed the launch of the task force during a panel discussion at the intelligence and defense-focused C4ISRNet conference held virtually this week.
Lintker said the 19th SDS will be in charge of monitoring the area of space further out than our planet’s geosynchronous equatorial orbit, a region officials called “xGEO” space. Space Force is mostly concerned with the operation and defense of its satellites for communications and navigation purposes, but it also keeps an eye on space for any military activity from foreign adversaries and also tracks space junk that could cause a risk to American interests.
Continue reading
-
Take this $15m and make us some ultra-energy-efficient superconductor chips, scientists told
A fair price to get everyone to stop talking about Moore’s Law for good
Researchers in the US have received a $15 million National Science Foundation (NSF) award to develop superconductor chips that ought to be much faster and use significantly less energy than the hardware the world today relies on for computing.
A team at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering is leading the effort, and it goes by the name DISCoVER, a rather fun acronym that stands for Design and Integration of Superconductive Computation for Ventures beyond Exascale Realization.
As the name suggests, the scientists are looking to use superconducting materials as an alternative to today’s semiconductors to develop new kinds of superfast and highly energy efficient integrated circuits that can enable sustainable and large-scale exascale computing.
Continue reading
Nobody wants flappy bits during an engine burn of Trojan asteroid explorer
Engineers are to double down on efforts to get Lucy’s solar array fully deployed amid worries regarding potential damage during a main engine burn of the Trojan asteroid explorer.
Problems were noted shortly after launch last year, when one of the probe’s 7.3 meter (23.9 feet) solar arrays failed to latch into place after deployment. Enough of the fan-like array had opened to generate plenty of power for the spacecraft, but not enough to latch securely into place. Engineers reckon that the array got to approximately 345 out of 360 degrees before stalling.
The issue did not present an immediate threat to the mission. Engineers pondered if they might simply leave things as is; after all, the array was generating ample power. However, as investigations have proceeded, particularly with regard to what might happen during an engine firing, a decision has been taken to try and latch the array in place.
As of now, Lucy is approximately 105.1 million km (65.33 million miles) from Earth. It will have its first Earth flyby and gravity assist in October this year, another in December 2024 and reach the Trojan asteroid Eurybates and its satellite Queta in 2027. The Trojan asteroids orbit the sun “in front of” and “behind” Jupiter, and scientists reckon they represent leftovers of the material that formed the outer planets.
- NASA installs a new and improved algorithm to better track near-Earth asteroids
- NASA boffins seem to think we’re worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they’re shooting a spaceship at one
- Juno what? Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is much deeper than originally thought
- Engineers investigating iffy solar array latch on NASA’s Lucy as probe begins long journey to Trojan asteroids
To deal with the array issue, engineers plan to use both primary and backup motors to give the lanyard attached to the end of the solar array a hefty tug (or, in NASA-speak, use “both motors simultaneously to generate higher torque.”) There is only 20 to 40 inches of lanyard left (out of approximately 290 inches in total) to retract to latch the array in place.
The primary motor reeled in the lanyard after launch to open the array. A backup motor was included for purposes of redundancy.
Engineers plan a two step process. The first, expected to occur next month, will pull in most of the remaining lanyard and check that what happens in flight matches ground testing. The array is unlikely to latch at that point – that will come a month later, if all goes well, when engineers will have enough data to give the snarled lanyard a final pull and latch the array in place ahead of October’s Earth flyby. ®
Other stories you might like
-
Microsoft exposes glue-free guts of the Surface Laptop Studio
Broken your headphone jack? No problem. Want some more RAM? Er, about that…
Microsoft has reminded us once again of a time when enthusiasts could get into the guts of their hardware with a teardown of its Surface Laptop Studio, all in the name of repairability.
Continue reading
-
Oracle to release on-prem software usage tools to prep cloud switch
Experts advise caution in sharing data with Big Red – it could be used in license audits
Experts in software licensing are warning users against wholly adopting new tools Oracle promises will help map and size on-prem installations in preparation for a move to the cloud.
Adviors at Palisade Compliance said data from the tools, which an Oracle executive said were months away from launch, could be used by Big Red to sell more cloud instances than customers want or need, launch a software audit, and be used against customers in an audit process.
Last month, Felicia Parilo, senior manager with Oracle Global Partner Advisory, told a webinar hosted by the International Business Software Managers Association (IBSMA) – attended by The Reg – that Oracle is working with third-party tool vendors and developing its own tools “to be able to capture the actual usage” of on-premises software in preparation for its customers’ move to the cloud.
Continue reading
-
Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters
Convenience or purity? You can only choose one
A painful issue for Linux distros that are built on free software is firmware. This especially affects Debian, as outlined by former project head Steve Mcintyre here, and it’s getting worse with time.
Firmware is only called that for historical reasons now, which we’ll go into below. It’s no longer “firm” at all, it’s just files on a disk, like the rest of the OS – but it’s unlike OS code in two important ways.
Firstly, it doesn’t execute on the CPU. It’s uploaded into a peripheral device’s RAM, and there it runs on the processors inside the graphics card, or network controller, or radio controller, or whatever.
Continue reading
-
Timetable for industrial action ballot against BT imminent
CWU deputy secretary demands better pay for staff amid cost-of-living crisis
The Communication and Workers Union (CWU) will this week publish the timetable to run an industrial action ballot over the pay rise BT gave to members recently, with the telco’s subsidiaries to vote separately.
Earlier this month, BT paid its 58,000 frontline workers a flat rate increase of £1,500 ($1,930) for the year, upping it from the £1,200 ($1,545) initially offered. BT hadn’t cleared this increase with the CWU, and the union branded the offer as unacceptable at a time when inflation in Britain is expected to soar by 10 percent this year.
In a public town hall meeting last week, the CWU said it will take an “emergency motion” to the Annual Conference this week to “set out the exact ballot timetable,” said Karen Rose, vice president at CWU.
Continue reading
-
Your AI can’t tell you it’s lying if it thinks it’s telling the truth. That’s a problem
Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of ML? Er, nobody
Opinion Machine learning’s abiding weakness is verification. Is your AI telling the truth? How can you tell?
This problem isn’t unique to ML. It plagues chip design, bathroom scales, and prime ministers. Still, with so many new business models depending on AI’s promise to bring the holy grail of scale to real-world data analysis, this lack of testability has new economic consequences.
The basic mechanisms of machine learning are sound, or at least statistically reliable. Within the parameters of its training data, an ML process will deliver what the underlying mathematics promise. If you understand the limits, you can trust it.
Continue reading
-
In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished
When being helpful can mean being shown the door
Who, Me? Going above and beyond in IT can sometimes lead to also going directly out of the door, as one Register reader found when discovering that sometimes efficiencies can be less than rewarding.
A reader Regomised as “Will” told of us his days working at a now-defunct company that produced large telephone switches. In those days whenever a major software revision occurred, customers were expected to send in their configurations and Will’s group would merge them into the latest and greatest. A new load would then be returned to the customers.
It was not a fun process, not least because of constant hardware and software failures during the merge process. “When I first started, there was a constant grumble about how unreliable the machine used for the merging was,” Will told us.
Continue reading
-
Google Docs’ AI-powered inclusive writing auto-correct now under fire
Plus: IBM’s CEO says we have to tackle ML ethics or intelligent systems will become monsters
In brief The AI algorithms used by Google Docs to suggest edits to make writing more inclusive have been blasted for being annoying.
Language models are used in Google Docs for features like Smart Compose; it suggests words to autocomplete sentences as a user types. The Chocolate Factory now wants to go further than that, and is rolling out “assistive writing,” another AI-powered system designed to help people write punchier documents more quickly.
Assistive writing is being introduced to enterprise users, and the feature is turned on by default. Not everyone is a fan of being guided by the algorithm, and some people find its “inclusive language” ability irritating, Vice reported.
Continue reading
-
FBI: BlackCat ransomware scratched 60-plus orgs
Plus: Cisco Umbrella flaw patched, lid blown off TeamTNT, and ICS security folks join JCDC party
In brief The BlackCat ransomware gang, said to be the first-known ransomware group to successfully break into networks with Rust-written malware, has attacked at least 60 organizations globally as of March, according to the FBI.
BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, is a relatively new group of cybercriminals that operates a Windows ransomware-as-a-service. But while it only appeared on the ransomware crime scene in November 2021, security researchers and federal law enforcement have linked its developers and money launderers to the notorious Darkside/Blackmatter crime rings, “indicating they have extensive networks and experience with ransomware operations,” the FBI said in a security alert [PDF] this week.
In earlier analysis, security researchers at Cisco Talos and Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 also noted BlackCat’s preference for Rust, with Unit 42 saying the gang was “one of the first, if not the first” of its kind to use this programming language.
Continue reading
-
Now Mandiant says 2021 was a record year for exploited zero-day security bugs
Now that’s a race condition
The number of zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild reached an all-time high last year, according to Mandiant.
The security shop identified 80 such actively abused flaws in 2021, which Mandiant researcher James Sadowski noted is more than double the previous zero-day record from 2019.
This echoes another zero-day report also published this week by Google. However, the cloud giant’s bug hunters spotted 58, compared to Mandiant’s 80 recorded instances.
Continue reading
-
US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit
Team America: Solar System Police
The US Space Force has created a unit, the 19th Space Defense Squadron, to monitor activity in the region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit, all the way out to the Moon and yonder.
Commander of the 18th SDS, Lt. Col. Matt Lintker, confirmed the launch of the task force during a panel discussion at the intelligence and defense-focused C4ISRNet conference held virtually this week.
Lintker said the 19th SDS will be in charge of monitoring the area of space further out than our planet’s geosynchronous equatorial orbit, a region officials called “xGEO” space. Space Force is mostly concerned with the operation and defense of its satellites for communications and navigation purposes, but it also keeps an eye on space for any military activity from foreign adversaries and also tracks space junk that could cause a risk to American interests.
Continue reading
-
Take this $15m and make us some ultra-energy-efficient superconductor chips, scientists told
A fair price to get everyone to stop talking about Moore’s Law for good
Researchers in the US have received a $15 million National Science Foundation (NSF) award to develop superconductor chips that ought to be much faster and use significantly less energy than the hardware the world today relies on for computing.
A team at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering is leading the effort, and it goes by the name DISCoVER, a rather fun acronym that stands for Design and Integration of Superconductive Computation for Ventures beyond Exascale Realization.
As the name suggests, the scientists are looking to use superconducting materials as an alternative to today’s semiconductors to develop new kinds of superfast and highly energy efficient integrated circuits that can enable sustainable and large-scale exascale computing.
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Nobody wants flappy bits during an engine burn of Trojan asteroid explorer
Engineers are to double down on efforts to get Lucy’s solar array fully deployed amid worries regarding potential damage during a main engine burn of the Trojan asteroid explorer.
Problems were noted shortly after launch last year, when one of the probe’s 7.3 meter (23.9 feet) solar arrays failed to latch into place after deployment. Enough of the fan-like array had opened to generate plenty of power for the spacecraft, but not enough to latch securely into place. Engineers reckon that the array got to approximately 345 out of 360 degrees before stalling.
The issue did not present an immediate threat to the mission. Engineers pondered if they might simply leave things as is; after all, the array was generating ample power. However, as investigations have proceeded, particularly with regard to what might happen during an engine firing, a decision has been taken to try and latch the array in place.
As of now, Lucy is approximately 105.1 million km (65.33 million miles) from Earth. It will have its first Earth flyby and gravity assist in October this year, another in December 2024 and reach the Trojan asteroid Eurybates and its satellite Queta in 2027. The Trojan asteroids orbit the sun “in front of” and “behind” Jupiter, and scientists reckon they represent leftovers of the material that formed the outer planets.
- NASA installs a new and improved algorithm to better track near-Earth asteroids
- NASA boffins seem to think we’re worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they’re shooting a spaceship at one
- Juno what? Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is much deeper than originally thought
- Engineers investigating iffy solar array latch on NASA’s Lucy as probe begins long journey to Trojan asteroids
To deal with the array issue, engineers plan to use both primary and backup motors to give the lanyard attached to the end of the solar array a hefty tug (or, in NASA-speak, use “both motors simultaneously to generate higher torque.”) There is only 20 to 40 inches of lanyard left (out of approximately 290 inches in total) to retract to latch the array in place.
The primary motor reeled in the lanyard after launch to open the array. A backup motor was included for purposes of redundancy.
Engineers plan a two step process. The first, expected to occur next month, will pull in most of the remaining lanyard and check that what happens in flight matches ground testing. The array is unlikely to latch at that point – that will come a month later, if all goes well, when engineers will have enough data to give the snarled lanyard a final pull and latch the array in place ahead of October’s Earth flyby. ®
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Microsoft exposes glue-free guts of the Surface Laptop Studio
Broken your headphone jack? No problem. Want some more RAM? Er, about that…
Microsoft has reminded us once again of a time when enthusiasts could get into the guts of their hardware with a teardown of its Surface Laptop Studio, all in the name of repairability.
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Oracle to release on-prem software usage tools to prep cloud switch
Experts advise caution in sharing data with Big Red – it could be used in license audits
Experts in software licensing are warning users against wholly adopting new tools Oracle promises will help map and size on-prem installations in preparation for a move to the cloud.
Adviors at Palisade Compliance said data from the tools, which an Oracle executive said were months away from launch, could be used by Big Red to sell more cloud instances than customers want or need, launch a software audit, and be used against customers in an audit process.
Last month, Felicia Parilo, senior manager with Oracle Global Partner Advisory, told a webinar hosted by the International Business Software Managers Association (IBSMA) – attended by The Reg – that Oracle is working with third-party tool vendors and developing its own tools “to be able to capture the actual usage” of on-premises software in preparation for its customers’ move to the cloud.
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Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters
Convenience or purity? You can only choose one
A painful issue for Linux distros that are built on free software is firmware. This especially affects Debian, as outlined by former project head Steve Mcintyre here, and it’s getting worse with time.
Firmware is only called that for historical reasons now, which we’ll go into below. It’s no longer “firm” at all, it’s just files on a disk, like the rest of the OS – but it’s unlike OS code in two important ways.
Firstly, it doesn’t execute on the CPU. It’s uploaded into a peripheral device’s RAM, and there it runs on the processors inside the graphics card, or network controller, or radio controller, or whatever.
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Timetable for industrial action ballot against BT imminent
CWU deputy secretary demands better pay for staff amid cost-of-living crisis
The Communication and Workers Union (CWU) will this week publish the timetable to run an industrial action ballot over the pay rise BT gave to members recently, with the telco’s subsidiaries to vote separately.
Earlier this month, BT paid its 58,000 frontline workers a flat rate increase of £1,500 ($1,930) for the year, upping it from the £1,200 ($1,545) initially offered. BT hadn’t cleared this increase with the CWU, and the union branded the offer as unacceptable at a time when inflation in Britain is expected to soar by 10 percent this year.
In a public town hall meeting last week, the CWU said it will take an “emergency motion” to the Annual Conference this week to “set out the exact ballot timetable,” said Karen Rose, vice president at CWU.
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Your AI can’t tell you it’s lying if it thinks it’s telling the truth. That’s a problem
Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of ML? Er, nobody
Opinion Machine learning’s abiding weakness is verification. Is your AI telling the truth? How can you tell?
This problem isn’t unique to ML. It plagues chip design, bathroom scales, and prime ministers. Still, with so many new business models depending on AI’s promise to bring the holy grail of scale to real-world data analysis, this lack of testability has new economic consequences.
The basic mechanisms of machine learning are sound, or at least statistically reliable. Within the parameters of its training data, an ML process will deliver what the underlying mathematics promise. If you understand the limits, you can trust it.
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In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished
When being helpful can mean being shown the door
Who, Me? Going above and beyond in IT can sometimes lead to also going directly out of the door, as one Register reader found when discovering that sometimes efficiencies can be less than rewarding.
A reader Regomised as “Will” told of us his days working at a now-defunct company that produced large telephone switches. In those days whenever a major software revision occurred, customers were expected to send in their configurations and Will’s group would merge them into the latest and greatest. A new load would then be returned to the customers.
It was not a fun process, not least because of constant hardware and software failures during the merge process. “When I first started, there was a constant grumble about how unreliable the machine used for the merging was,” Will told us.
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Google Docs’ AI-powered inclusive writing auto-correct now under fire
Plus: IBM’s CEO says we have to tackle ML ethics or intelligent systems will become monsters
In brief The AI algorithms used by Google Docs to suggest edits to make writing more inclusive have been blasted for being annoying.
Language models are used in Google Docs for features like Smart Compose; it suggests words to autocomplete sentences as a user types. The Chocolate Factory now wants to go further than that, and is rolling out “assistive writing,” another AI-powered system designed to help people write punchier documents more quickly.
Assistive writing is being introduced to enterprise users, and the feature is turned on by default. Not everyone is a fan of being guided by the algorithm, and some people find its “inclusive language” ability irritating, Vice reported.
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FBI: BlackCat ransomware scratched 60-plus orgs
Plus: Cisco Umbrella flaw patched, lid blown off TeamTNT, and ICS security folks join JCDC party
In brief The BlackCat ransomware gang, said to be the first-known ransomware group to successfully break into networks with Rust-written malware, has attacked at least 60 organizations globally as of March, according to the FBI.
BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, is a relatively new group of cybercriminals that operates a Windows ransomware-as-a-service. But while it only appeared on the ransomware crime scene in November 2021, security researchers and federal law enforcement have linked its developers and money launderers to the notorious Darkside/Blackmatter crime rings, “indicating they have extensive networks and experience with ransomware operations,” the FBI said in a security alert [PDF] this week.
In earlier analysis, security researchers at Cisco Talos and Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 also noted BlackCat’s preference for Rust, with Unit 42 saying the gang was “one of the first, if not the first” of its kind to use this programming language.
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Now Mandiant says 2021 was a record year for exploited zero-day security bugs
Now that’s a race condition
The number of zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild reached an all-time high last year, according to Mandiant.
The security shop identified 80 such actively abused flaws in 2021, which Mandiant researcher James Sadowski noted is more than double the previous zero-day record from 2019.
This echoes another zero-day report also published this week by Google. However, the cloud giant’s bug hunters spotted 58, compared to Mandiant’s 80 recorded instances.
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US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit
Team America: Solar System Police
The US Space Force has created a unit, the 19th Space Defense Squadron, to monitor activity in the region beyond Earth’s geosynchronous orbit, all the way out to the Moon and yonder.
Commander of the 18th SDS, Lt. Col. Matt Lintker, confirmed the launch of the task force during a panel discussion at the intelligence and defense-focused C4ISRNet conference held virtually this week.
Lintker said the 19th SDS will be in charge of monitoring the area of space further out than our planet’s geosynchronous equatorial orbit, a region officials called “xGEO” space. Space Force is mostly concerned with the operation and defense of its satellites for communications and navigation purposes, but it also keeps an eye on space for any military activity from foreign adversaries and also tracks space junk that could cause a risk to American interests.
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Take this $15m and make us some ultra-energy-efficient superconductor chips, scientists told
A fair price to get everyone to stop talking about Moore’s Law for good
Researchers in the US have received a $15 million National Science Foundation (NSF) award to develop superconductor chips that ought to be much faster and use significantly less energy than the hardware the world today relies on for computing.
A team at the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering is leading the effort, and it goes by the name DISCoVER, a rather fun acronym that stands for Design and Integration of Superconductive Computation for Ventures beyond Exascale Realization.
As the name suggests, the scientists are looking to use superconducting materials as an alternative to today’s semiconductors to develop new kinds of superfast and highly energy efficient integrated circuits that can enable sustainable and large-scale exascale computing.
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