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Daily Archives: October 27, 2020

Researchers develop new atomic layer deposition process

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A new way to deposit thin layers of atoms as a coating onto a substrate material at near room temperatures has been invented at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System.

UAH postdoctoral research associate Dr. Moonhyung Jang got the idea to use an ultrasonic atomization technology to evaporate chemicals used in (ALD) while shopping for a home humidifier.

Dr. Jang works in the laboratory of Dr. Yu Lei, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. The pair have published a paper on their invention that has been selected as an editor’s pick in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A.

“ALD is a three-dimensional thin film deposition technique that plays an important role in microelectronics manufacturing, in producing items such as central processing units, memory and hard drives,” says Dr. Lei.

Each ALD cycle deposits a layer a few atoms deep. An ALD process repeats the deposition cycle hundreds or thousands of times. The uniformity of the thin films relies on a surface self-limiting reaction between the chemical vapor and the substrates.

“ALD offers exceptional control of nanometer features while depositing materials uniformly on large silicon wafers for high volume manufacturing,” Dr. Lei says. “It is a key technique to produce powerful and small smart devices.”

[…]

“In the past, many reactive chemicals were considered not suitable for ALD because of their low vapor pressure and because they are thermally unstable,” says Dr. Lei. “Our research found that the ultrasonic atomizer technique enabled evaporating the reactive chemicals at as low as room temperature.”

The UAH scientists’ ultrasound invention makes it possible to use a wide range of reactive chemicals that are thermally unstable and not suitable for direct heating.

“Ultrasonic atomization, as developed by our research group, supplies low vapor pressure precursors because the evaporation of precursors was made through ultrasonic vibrating of the module,” Dr. Lei says.

“Like the household humidifier, ultrasonic atomization generates a mist consisting of saturated vapor and micro-sized droplets,” he says. “The micro-sized droplets continuously evaporate when the mist is delivered to the substrates by a carrier gas.”

The process uses a piezo-electric ultrasonic transducer placed in a liquid chemical precursor. Once started, the transducer starts to vibrate a few hundred thousand times per second and generates a mist of the chemical precursor. The small liquid droplets in the mist are quickly evaporated in the gas manifold under vacuum and mild heat treatment, leaving behind an even coat of the deposition material.

Source: Researchers develop new atomic layer deposition process

Water on the Moon: Research unveils its type and abundance – boosting exploration plans

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“Water” has since been detected inside the minerals in lunar rocks. Water ice has also been discovered to be mixed in with lunar dust grains in cold, permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles.

But scientists haven’t been sure how much of this water is present as “molecular water”—made up of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (H2O). Now two new studies published in Nature Astronomy provide an answer, while also giving an idea of how and where to extract it.

Source: Water on the Moon: Research unveils its type and abundance – boosting exploration plans

Palo Alto Networks threatens to sue security startup for comparison review, says it breaks software EULA. 1 EULA? 2 WTF?

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Palo Alto Networks has threatened a startup with legal action after the smaller biz published a comparison review of one of its products.

Israel-based Orca Security received a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer representing Palo Alto after Orca uploaded a series of online videos reviewing of one of Palo Alto’s products and compared it to its own. Orca sees itself as a competitor of Palo Alto Networks (PAN).

“What we expected is that others will also create such materials … but instead we received a letter from Palo Alto’s lawyers claiming we were not allowed to do that,” Orca chief exec Avi Shua told The Register this week. “We believe these are empty legal threats.”

In a note on its website, Orca lamented at length the “outrageous” behavior of PAN, as well as posting a copy of the lawyer’s letter for world-plus-dog to read. That letter claimed Orca infringed PAN’s trademarks by using its name and logo in the review as well as breaching non-review clauses in the End-User License Agreement (EULA) of PAN’s product.

As such, the lawyer demanded the removal of the comparison material, and that the startup stop using PAN’s logo and name. We note the videos are still online, hosted by YouTube.

“It’s outrageous that the world’s largest cybersecurity vendor, its products being used by over 65,000 organizations according to its website, believes that its users aren’t entitled to share any benchmark or performance comparison of its products,” said Orca.

The lawyer’s letter [PDF] claimed Orca violated PAN’s EULA fine-print, something deputy general counsel Melinda Thompson described in her missive as “a clear breach” of terms “prohibiting an end user from disclosing, publishing or otherwise making publicly available any benchmark, performance or comparison tests… run on Palo Alto Networks products, in whole or in part.”

Shua told The Register Orca tried to give its rival a fair crack of the whip: “Even if we tried to be objective, we would have some biases. But we did try to do it as objectively as possible, by showing it to users: creating labs, screenshots, and showing how it looks like.” The fairness of the review, we note, is not what is at issue here: PAN forbids any kind of benchmarking and comparison of its gear.

Palo Alto networks declined to comment when contacted by The Register.

Source: Palo Alto Networks threatens to sue security startup for comparison review, says it breaks software EULA • The Register

1 Who reads EULAs anyway? Are they in any way, shape or form defensible apart from maybe some ant fucker friendless lawyers?

2 Is PAN so very worried about the poor quality of their product that they feel they want to kill any and all benchmarks / comparisons?

Twitch Suddenly Mass-Deletes Thousands of Videos, Citing Music Copyright Claims – yes, copyright really doesn’t provide for  innovation at all

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“It’s finally happening: Twitch is taking action against copyrighted music — long a norm among streamers — in response to music industry pressure,” reports Kotaku.

But the Verge reports “there’s some funny stuff going on here.” First, Twitch is telling streamers that some of their content has been identified as violating copyright and that instead of letting streamers file counterclaims, it’s deleting the content; second, the company is telling streamers it’s giving them warnings, as opposed to outright copyright strikes…

Weirdly Twitch decided to bulk delete infringing material instead of allowing streamers to archive their content or submit counterclaims. To me, that suggests that there are tons of infringements, and that Twitch needed to act very quickly and/or face a lawsuit it wouldn’t be able to win over its adherence to the safe harbor provision of the DMCA.
The email Twitch sent to their users “encourages them to delete additional content — up to and including using a new tool to unilaterally delete all previous clips,” reports Kotaku. One business streamer complains that it’s “insane” that Twitch basically informs them “that there is more content in violation despite having no identification system to find out what it is. Their solution to DMCA is for creators to delete their life’s work. This is pure, gross negligence.”

Or, as esports consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau puts it, “It is absolutely insane that record labels have put Twitch in a position to force streamers to delete their entire life’s work, for some 10+ years of memories, and that Twitch has been incapable of preventing or aiding streamers for this situation. a total failure all around.”

Twitch’s response? It is crucial that we protect the rights of songwriters, artists and other music industry partners. We continue to develop tools and resources to further educate our creators and empower them with more control over their content while partnering with industry-recognized vendors in the copyright space to help us achieve these goals.

Source: Twitch Suddenly Mass-Deletes Thousands of Videos, Citing Music Copyright Claims – Slashdot

Of course, the money raised by these music companies doesn’t really go to the artists much – it’s basically swallowed up by the music companies themselves.

Samsung, Stanford make a 10,000PPI display that could lead to ‘flawless’ VR

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Ask VR fans about their gripes and they’ll likely mention the “screen door” effect, or the gaps between pixels that you notice when looking at a display so close to your eyes. That annoyance might disappear entirely if Samsung and Stanford University have their way. They’ve developed (via IEEE Spectrum) OLED technology that supports resolutions up to 10,000 pixels per inch — well above what you see in virtually any existing display, let alone what you’d find in a modern VR headset like the Oculus Quest 2.

The newOLED tech uses films to emit white light between reflective layers, one silver and another made of reflective metal with nano-sized corrugations. This “optical metasurface” changes the reflective properties and allows specific colors to resonate through pixels. The design allows for much higher pixel densities than you see in the RGB OLEDs on phones, but doesn’t hurt brightness to the degree you see with white OLEDs in some TVs.

This would be ideal for VR and AR, creating a virtually ‘flawless’ image where you can’t see the screen door effect or even individual pixels. This might take years to arrive when it would require much more computing power, but OLED tech would no longer be an obstacle.

It’s also more practical than you might think. Samsung is already working on a “full-size” display using the 10,000PPI tech, and the design of the corrugations makes large-scale manufacturing viable. It may just be a question of when and where you see this OLED rather than “if.”

Source: Samsung, Stanford make a 10,000PPI display that could lead to ‘flawless’ VR | Engadget

About 3% of Starlink satellites have failed so far – that’s 360 potential collisions now and 1,260 once SL is up

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To date, the company has launched over 800 satellites and (as of this summer) is producing them at a rate of about 120 a month. There are even plans to have a constellation of 42,000 satellites in orbit before the decade is out.

However, there have been some problems along the way, as well. Aside from the usual concerns about and radio frequency interference (RFI), there is also the rate of failure these satellites have experienced. Specifically, about 3% of its satellites have proven to be unresponsive and are no longer maneuvering in , which could prove hazardous to other satellites and spacecraft in orbit.

In order to prevent collisions in orbit, SpaceX equips its satellites with krypton Hall-effect thrusters (ion engines) to raise their orbit, maneuver in space and deorbit at the end of their lives. However, according to two recent notices SpaceX issued to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the summer (mid-May and late June), several of their satellites have lost maneuvering capability since they were deployed.

Unfortunately, the company did not provide enough information to indicate which of their satellites were affected. For this reason, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Chandra X-ray Center presented his own analysis of the satellites’ orbital behavior to suggest which satellites have failed.

The analysis was posted on McDowell’s website (Jonathan’s Space Report), where he combined SpaceX’s own data with U.S. government sources. From this, he determined that about 3% of satellites in the constellation have failed because they are no longer responding to commands. Naturally, some level of attrition is inevitable, and 3% is relatively low as failure rates go.

But every that is incapable of maneuvering due to problems with its communications or its propulsion system creates a collision hazard for other satellites and spacecraft. As McDowell told Business Insider:

Artist’s impression of the orbital debris problem. Credit: UC3M

“I would say their failure rate is not egregious. It’s not worse than anybody else’s failure rates. The concern is that even a normal failure rate in such a huge constellation is going to end up with a lot of bad space junk.”

Kessler syndrome

Named after NASA scientists Donald J. Kessler, who first proposed it in 1978, Kessler syndrome refers to the threat posed by collisions in orbit. These lead to catastrophic breakups that create more debris that will lead to further collisions and breakups, and so on. When one takes into account rates of failure and SpaceX’s long-term plans for a “megaconstellation,” this syndrome naturally rears its ugly head.

Not long ago, SpaceX secured permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy about 12,000 Starlink satellites to orbits ranging from 328 km to 580 km (200 to 360 mi). However, more recent filings with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) show that the company hopes to create a megaconstellation of as many as 42,000 satellites.

In this case, a 3% failure rate works out to 360 and 1,260 (respectively) 250 kg (550 lbs) satellites becoming defunct over time. As of February of 2020, according to the ESA’s Space Debris Office (SDO), there are currently 5,500 satellites in orbit of Earth—around 2,300 of which are still operational. That means (employing naked math) that a full Starlink megaconstellation would increase the number of non-functioning satellites in orbit by 11% to 40%.

The problem of debris and collisions looks even more threatening when you consider the amount of debris in orbit. Beyond non-functioning satellites, the SDO also estimates that there are currently 34,000 objects in orbit measuring more than 10 cm (~4 inches) in diameter, 900,000 objects between 1 cm to 10 cm (0.4 to 4 in), and 128 million objects between 1 mm to 1 cm.

Source: About 3% of Starlink satellites have failed so far

Well done yet again mr Elon Musk

Oculus owners forced on Facebook accounts, will have purchases be wiped, device bricked, if they ever leave FB. Who would have guessed?

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Oculus users, already fuming at Facebook chaining their VR headsets to their Facebook accounts, have been warned they could lose all their Oculus purchases and account information in future if they ever delete their profile on the social network.

The rule is a further binding of the gaming company that Facebook bought in 2014 to the mothership, and comes just two months after Facebook decided all new Oculus users require Facebook accounts to use their VR gizmos, and all current Oculus users will need a Facebook account by 2023. Failure to do so may cause apps installed on the headsets to no longer work as expected.

The decision to cement together what many users see as largely unrelated activities – playing video games and social media posts – has led to a wave of anger among Oculus users, and a renewed online effort to jailbreak new Oculus headgear to bypass Facebook’s growing restrictions.

That outrage was fueled when Facebook initially said that if people attempted to connect more than one Oculus headset to a single Facebook account, something families in particular want to do as it avoids having to install the same app over and over, it would ban them from the service.

Facebook has since dropped that threat, and said it is working on allowing multiple devices and accounts to connect. But the control-freak instincts of the internet giant were yet again on full display, something that was noted by the man who first drew attention to Oculus’s new terms and conditions, CEO of fitness gaming company Yur, Cix Liv.

“My favorite line is ‘While I do completely understand your concerns, we do need to have you comply with the Facebook terms of service’ like Facebook thinks they are some authoritarian government,” he tweeted.

[,,,]

Source: Oculus owners told not only to get Facebook accounts, purchases will be wiped if they ever leave social network • The Register