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Daily Archives: September 8, 2020

TCL’s new paper-like display can also play videos

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NXTPAPER today — a new type of display that’s meant to offer better eye protection by reducing flicker, blue light and light output. The company said the effect is similar to E Ink, calling it a “combination of screen and paper.” TCL also said it has received eye protection certifications from the German Rhine laboratory, and has 11 different patents for eye protection.

Don’t expect to see NXTPAPER appear on a smartphone, though. TCL said it’s meant for larger devices like tablets or e-readers. The new screen tech will support Full HD definition and allow for smooth video playback on a paper-like experience. Compared to E Ink, TCL said its version will offer 25 percent higher contrast. It uses a “highly reflective screen” to “reuse natural light,” doing away with backlighting in the process. TCL said NXTPAPER will be 36 percent thinner than typical LCD while offering higher contrast. Because it doesn’t require its own lights, the company said the new screen tech is also 65 percent more power efficient. This way, devices won’t need large unwieldy batteries for prolonged use.

Source: TCL’s new paper-like display can also play videos | Engadget

Rocket Lab secretly launched its own satellite that may one day go to the Moon

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Rocket Lab recently made a successful return to flight and launched a client satellite from its Electron Rocket, but that’s not all that happened on the mission. The company also secretly launched its own satellite, called Photon, that could one day fly ambitious deep space missions.

Photon is based on Rocket Lab’s “Kick Stage,” which is a mini rocket designed to boost satellite payloads into their final circular orbit once Electron has brought them to space. However, rather than just packing a propulsion system, Photon will carry additional electronics, orientation sensors, power generation units and instruments like cameras. That means that Photon can act as a satellite itself so that clients don’t need to contract third-party providers to design and build them.

Normally, once the Kick Stage does its job, Rocket Lab de-orbits it to burn up in the atmosphere. However, this time it sent a command that switched it into Photon satellite mode to continue on a standalone mission called “First Light.” Intended as a demonstration, it’s equipped with solar panels and a camera that can snap images of itself and the Earth.

Eventually, customers will be able to choose a “launch-plus-spacecraft” mission with the Electron Rocket and Photon satellite, which “eliminate[s] the complexity, risk and delays associated with having to build their own satellite hardware and procure a separate launch,” said Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck in a statement.

During a press conference, Beck said that the company launched Photon in secret to “make sure it’s all good and it works before announcing it.” Rocket Lab said that a high-energy version of Photon will eventually fly “lunar and interplanetary missions,” including NASA’s Capstone mission in early 2021. In that mission, Photon will fly as a “pathfinder” that will help the Artemis program’s Gateway spacecraft safely approach the Moon.

Source: Rocket Lab secretly launched its own satellite that may one day go to the Moon | Engadget

Harvard created a wool-like 3D-printable material that can shape shift

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The team, from the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), created a 3D-printable material that can be “pre-programmed with reversible shape memory.” The wool-like material can remember old forms and morph back into those, or transform into different shapes when a certain stimulus is applied.

It’s made using keratin extracted from recycled wool. Keratin is a fibrous protein that’s found in hair, which, of course, has a habit of returning to its natural form.

The researchers shaped a single chain of keratin into a spring-like structure. They twisted two of those together and used many such “coiled coils” to assemble large fibers. When a stimulus is applied to the material or it’s stretched out, those structures uncoil and the bonds realign. The material stays that way until it’s triggered to return to its original state, which is programmed with a solution of hydrogen peroxide and monosodium phosphate.

In one test, researchers programmed a sheet of keratin to have an origami star as its permanent shape. They dunked the sheet in water to make it malleable and rolled it into a tube. But when the team put that tube in the water again, it unrolled and reformed as the origami star.

The researchers believe the material could help reduce waste in the fashion industry. They suggested it could be used for truly one-size-fits-all clothing that stretches to fit the wearer, or bras “whose cup size and shape can be customized every day.” Consumers could save as well if they don’t have to replace stretched-out clothes quite so often.

“This two-step process of 3D printing the material and then setting its permanent shapes allows for the fabrication of really complex shapes with structural features down to the micron level,” Luca Cera, a SEAS postdoctoral fellow and first author of a paper on the material, said in a press release. “This makes the material suitable for a vast range of applications from textile to tissue engineering.”

Source: Harvard created a wool-like 3D-printable material that can shape shift | Engadget

Italy is investigating Apple, Google and Dropbox cloud storage services

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Italy’s competition watchdog is investing Apple, Google and Dropbox, TechCrunch reports. In a press release, the AGCM announced that it opened six investigations into the companies’ cloud storage services: Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox.

The authority is concerned that the services fail to adequately explain how user data will be collected and used for commercial purposes. It’s also investigating unfair clauses in the services’ contracts, terms that exempt the services from some liability and the prevalence of English versions of contracts over Italian versions.

In July, Italy launched an antitrust investigation into Amazon and Apple over Beats headphones. Authorities want to know whether the two companies agreed to prevent retailers outside of Apple’s official program from selling Beats and other Apple products.

Big tech companies are facing increased pressure from antitrust regulators in the US and Europe. The US Department of Justice may present its case against Google later this month. Apple is in a battle with Epic over its App Store rules, and the antitrust case against Amazon keeps getting stronger. It’s hard to say how effective any of these investigations will be at changing the industry’s behavior.

Source: Italy is investigating Apple, Google and Dropbox cloud storage services | Engadget

This is why monopolies are bad

China Just Launched and Landed a Secret Reusable Spacecraft

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In recent days, China has quietly launched a secret reusable spacecraft, left it in orbit for two days and safely landed it back on Earth. And although the spacecraft is top secret—we’re not even privy to its design—there are some things that China apparently wants the world to know about it.

According to Xinhua, China’s official news agency, the launch took place on Friday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia. The spacecraft was launched with a Long March-2F rocket, per the South China Morning Post, and successfully returned to its scheduled landing site on Sunday.

A Chinese military source confirmed to the Post that staff and visitors to the launch site had been warned not to film the lift-off or talk about it online.

“There are many firsts in this launch. The spacecraft is new, the launch method is also different. That’s why we need to make sure there is extra security,” the military source said.

The Post, citing Xinhua, reported that during its two-day flight, the spacecraft would test reusable technologies with the aim of “providing technological support for the peaceful use of space.”

And although details of the mission were scarce, the Chinese military source told the Post that it should “take a look at the US X-37B,” a reference to the U.S. Department of Defense’s top-secret space plane developed by Boeing. According to the U.S. Air Force, the X-37B is an experimental test program that aims to demonstrate “reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments, which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth.”

The X-37B is a reusable vehicle that doesn’t require an onboard crew. It enters space on top of a rocket, stays in low Earth orbit and then re-enters the atmosphere. It even lands like a normal plane.

Source: China Just Launched and Landed a Secret Reusable Spacecraft

India flies Mach 6 scramjet for 20 seconds

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India claims it flew a perfect scramjet test at Mach 6 on Monday.

A government announcement says the vehicle hitched a ride on a rocket that ascended to an altitude of 30km before launching the “Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle

“The cruise vehicle separated from the launch vehicle and the air intake opened as planned. The hypersonic combustion sustained and the cruise vehicle continued on its desired flight path at a velocity of six times the speed of sound i.e., nearly 02 km/second for more than 20 seconds,” the announcement added. “The critical events like fuel injection and auto ignition of scramjet demonstrated technological maturity. The scramjet engine performed in a text book manner.”

Telemetry from the craft and observations led Indian authorities to state: “All the performance parameters have indicated a resounding success of the mission.” India hasn’t released details or images of the vehicle, but did publish the launch video below.

India’s prime minister chipped in with a canned quote about the test being a fine moment in the nation’s drive for self-sufficiency in defense hardware.

Reg readers may recall that India’s done this sort of thing before, notably in a 2016 test flight that saw a scramjet ignite for five seconds. Yesterday’s test lasted rather longer, suggesting India is on the way to developing vehicles with longer ranges.

Which is where things get interesting because China, Russia and the USA are all developing hypersonic weapons. Such craft are strategically significant because they’re so fast that detecting an incoming strike is horrendously hard and developing countermeasures harder still. It’s also vastly difficult to build hypersonic craft because anything moving at 7,000km/h has all sorts of challenges with heat and vibration.

India already has a substantial and capable military and is one of few nations to possess nuclear weapons, operate a blue-water navy and run a space program.

Source: India flies Mach 6 scramjet for 20 whole seconds • The Register

No, Kubernetes doesn’t make applications portable, say analysts. Good luck avoiding lock-in, too

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Do not make application portability your primary driver for adopting Kubernetes, say Gartner analysts Marco Meinardi, Richard Watson and Alan Waite, because while the tool theoretically improves portability in practice it also locks you in while potentially denying you access to the best bits of the cloud.

The three advance that theory in a recent “Technical Professional Advice” document that was last week summarised in a blog post.

The Register has accessed the full document and its central idea is that adopting Kubernetes can’t be done without also adopting a vendor of your preferred Kubernetes management tools.

“By using Kubernetes, you simply swap one form of lock-in for another, specifically for one that can lower switching cost should the need arise,” the trio write. “Using Kubernetes to minimize provider lock-in is an attractive idea, but such abstraction layer simply becomes an alternative point of lock-in. Instead of being locked into the underlying infrastructure environment, you are now locked into the abstraction layer.”

“If you adopt Kubernetes only to enable application portability, then you are trying to solve one problem, by taking on three new problems you didn’t already have.”

And that matters because “Although abstraction layers may be attractive for portability, they do not surface completely identical functionality from the underlying services — they often mask or distort them. In general, the use of abstraction layers on top of public cloud services is hardly justified when organizations prioritize time to value and time to market due to their overhead and service incongruence.”

The trio also worry that shooting for portability can cut users off from the best bits of the cloud.

“Implementing portability with Kubernetes also requires avoiding any dependency that ties the application to the infrastructure provider, such as the use of cloud provider’s native services. Often, these services provide the capabilities that drove us to the cloud in the first place,” they write.

And then there’s the infrastructure used to run Kubernetes, which the three point out will have variable qualities that make easy portability less likely.

“The more specific to a provider a compute instance is, the less likely it is to be portable in any way,” the analysts wrote. “For example, using EKS on [AWS] Fargate is not CNCF-certified and arguably not even standard Kubernetes. The same is true for virtual nodes on Azure as implemented by ACIs.”

The document also points out that adopting Kubernetes will almost certainly mean acquiring third-party storage and networking tools, which means more elements that have to be reproduced to make applications portable and therefore more lock-in.

Source: No, Kubernetes doesn’t make applications portable, say analysts. Good luck avoiding lock-in, too • The Register

Australia starts second fight with Google and Apple, this time over whether app stores leak data, gouge devs, steal ideas and warp markets

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Australia, already embroiled in a nasty fight with Google and Facebook over its plan to make them pay for news links, has opened an inquiry into whether Apple and Google’s app stores offer transparent pricing and see consumers’ data used in worrying ways.

The issues paper [PDF] outlining the scope of the inquiry names only Apple and Google as of interest. The paper also mentions the recent Apple/Epic spat over developer fees to access the app store and proposes to ponder sideloading as a means of bypassing curated stores.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which will conduct the inquiry, has set out the following matters it wishes to probe:

  1. The ability and incentive for Apple and Google to link or bundle their other goods and services with their app marketplaces, and any effect this has on consumers and businesses.
  2. How Apple and Google’s various roles as the key suppliers of app marketplaces, but also as app developers, operators of the mobile licensing operating system and device manufacturers affect the ability of third party app providers to compete, including the impact of app marketplace fee structures on rivals’ costs.
  3. Terms, conditions and fees (including in-app purchases) imposed on businesses to place apps on app marketplaces.
  4. The effect of app marketplace fee structures on innovation.
  5. How app marketplaces determine whether an app is allowed on their marketplace, and the effect of this on app providers, developers and consumers;
  6. How where an app is ranked in an app marketplace is determined.
  7. The collection and use of consumer data by app marketplaces, and whether consumers are sufficiently informed about and have control over the extent of data that is collected.
  8. Whether processes put in place by app marketplaces to protect consumers from harmful apps are working.The document also reveals an intention to probe whether app store operators “identify which product development ideas are successful and emulate these ideas in their own apps” and seeks “views on the data sharing arrangements between apps and app marketplaces, and any views on the potential for app marketplaces to use data to identify, and respond to, potential competitors to the marketplace’s own apps.”

The Commission has created a survey for consumers and another for developers . The latter asks for comment on “adequacy of communications from the app store during the review process” and the experience of appealing decisions. Which should make for some tasty reading once the inquiry reports in March 2021.

The ACCC lists “legislative reform to address systemic issues” as one possible outcome from the inquiry. Which would be tastier still, given the furor over Australia’s current proposed laws.

Source: Australia starts second fight with Google, this time over whether app stores leak data, gouge devs, steal ideas and warp markets • The Register

I spoke of this in Zagreb at Dors/Cluc 2019 – it’s interesting to see how this is being picked up all over the world

Angry 123-Reg customers in the UK wake up to another day where hosted mail doesn’t get through to users on Microsoft email accounts

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Users of UK web hosting firm 123-Reg’s email service told The Reg this morning that 96 hours after clocking the issue, they are still having trouble sending emails to users with Microsoft’s Live, Outlook or Hotmail accounts.

For its part, 123-Reg has confirmed “delays in delivering emails to Hotmail/Outlook/Live email addresses,” but provided no ETA for a fix. According to the issue ticket on its status page, filed on Saturday, September 5, the firm claimed to have identified the root cause – which it has yet to explain – and said it was “working with Microsoft” to resolve it. The issue is not believed to affect the delivery of emails being sent by customers on 123-Reg’s Microsoft 365 “platform”.

Several users have claimed the mail-forwarding issues actually began on Friday morning.

Predictably, punters are irate, with many complaining the outage is causing lost business and reputational damage.

Source: Angry 123-Reg customers in the UK wake up to another day where hosted mail doesn’t get through to users on Microsoft email accounts • The Register

As a private host with email, I feel the frustration. MS and Google are good at this.

Security Risks Revolving the 2020 US Presidential Elections | Techwarn.com

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The coronavirus pandemic has forced people around the globe to temporarily modify the ways they go about activities. Activities like these include political elections and campaigning.

Since the virus hit in an election year, it’s highly likely new measures will be taken to prevent mass gatherings during voting. Infection rates aren’t likely to drop any time soon, and even if they did, queues for voting could lead to huge bursts of cases everywhere. At least 15 states in the US postponed presidential election primaries.

Suggestions have been made by election administrators to utilize an analog method of voting known as mail voting. It involves the mailing in of ballots by voters. If this technique is used, it would be highly likely that the results of the election would be decided in weeks or months.

Because of the pandemic, new voter registrations have dropped tremendously, with a 70% decrease experienced in twelve states. This year’s election was expected to break previous voting turnout records. However, with lockdowns still in place, voting participation will seemingly be reduced.

There have also been calls for online voting in some states like New Jersey, Delaware, and West Virginia. Currently, election administrators are holding discussions on the best method to use that would combine voting efficiency, safe health practices, and a speedy turnout of results.

Omnibox – Security Vulnerabilities

The most viable method which has been touted by speculators is the use of Omnibox – an online-based voting and ballot system primarily for the disabled, military and overseas voters. This system has however come under scrutiny from several quarters regarding its credibility.

In a paper released by Michael Specter and J. Alex Halderman, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Michigan, they highlighted several security vulnerabilities inherent in the system and labelled it insecure on so many levels. Their study was based on three main branches of the system namely:

  • Online Ballot Return: One of these issues stemmed from the fact that the system was reliant on several third-party services which could deliver altered results, robbing the system of its independence and reliability. The risks associated with online ballot return are considered grave and can be influenced by malware and database compromise.
  • Blank Ballot Delivery: Although considered a moderate risk since rigorous electoral screening can check this, blank ballot delivery is still regarded as a risk. The system runs the risk of having voters’ ballots returned as blank or some candidates omitted from the ballot box.
  • Online Ballot Marking Manipulation: Here, attackers discover the voters’ choices and then either alter them or get their votes scanned in a different candidate’s box. This is tagged as high-risk vulnerability and ultimately, one of the reasons why this system is not recommended for use.

Mitigating Online Risks when “going to the polls”

Despite these vulnerabilities which seem like they should be handled by the government – which ordinarily should be, below are ways by which voters themselves can protect their votes from alteration.

  • Use Encryption Software: Encryption software helps add an extra layer of security to the data being sent over the Internet. Many times, public WiFis which we all make use of, have malicious elements waiting somewhere on the network to steal user data. To mitigate against this risk, download and use a VPN app when connecting to an unsure network in order to prevent data theft or alteration.
  • Educate Yourself: The government often releases guidelines on best practices to apply when making use of the online voting system. Engage in voter education and also educate people around you. For example, make sure you enter the official voting website, instead of any unapproved system that was established to mislead voters.
  • Use Antivirus Software: Viruses and malwares are one of the many ways by which cyber criminals also perpetuate their acts when it comes to online voting. Getting one of the best antivirus software on the Internet can help detect, scan and remove any suspicious or corrupted program that might be existing on the system.