Last June, Harvard professor Avi Loeb said he may have found fragments of alien technology from a meteor that landed in the waters off of Papua, New Guinea in 2014. "Since then, several researchers unrelated to the expedition have pushed back on his analysis," reports Boston Public Radio. "One October 2023 paper deemed the spherules were made by human-produced coal ash." Now, Loeb has published new findings that he claims debunk that theory. "What we did is compare 55 elements from the periodic table in coal ash to those special spherules that we found," Loeb said. "And it's clearly very different." From the report: He said his work follows the scientific method: collecting materials, analyzing them and following the evidence. "It's not based on opinions," Loeb said. "And, of course, if you're not part of this scientific process and you are jealous of the attention that it gets, then you can raise a lot of criticism." When asked how he deals with that criticism, he said that, "by now, my skin turned into titanium." [...] He believes more observatories should be built to expand on research of what's passing through closer to Earth, since astronomers are often fixated on faraway objects. "The best approach to figure it out is actually to do the scientific work of building observatories that look out and check what these objects are," Loeb said. "And if they happen to be birds, or airplanes, or Chinese balloons, so be it. We can move on after that. But we need to figure it out, it's our civil duty as scientists. "The universe is so vast that, rather than keep telling ourselves that there is nothing like us, we should search for it," he added.

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Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set a world record for total time spent in space, "surpassing his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit," reports Reuters. From the report: At 0830 GMT Kononenko broke the record, Roscosmos said. Kononenko is expected to reach a total of 1,000 days in space on June 5 and by late September he will have clocked 1,110 days. "I fly into space to do my favourite thing, not to set records," Kononenko told TASS in an interview from the International Space Station (ISS) where he is orbiting about 263 miles (423 km) from the earth. "I am proud of all my achievements, but I am more proud that the record for the total duration of human stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut." The 59-year-old took the top spot from Padalka, who accumulated a total of 878 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes and 48 seconds, Roscosmos said. Kononenko said that he worked out regularly to counter the physical effects of "insidious" weightlessness, but that it was on returning to earth that the realisation came of how much life he had missed out on. "I do not feel deprived or isolated," he said. "It is only upon returning home that the realisation comes that for hundreds of days in my absence the children have been growing up without a papa. No one will return this time to me." He said cosmonauts could now use video calls and messaging to keep in touch with relatives but getting ready for each new space flight became more difficult due to technological advances. "The profession of a cosmonaut is becoming more complicated. The systems and experiments are becoming more complicated. I repeat, the preparation has not become easier," he said. Kononenko dreamed of going to space as a child and enrolled in an engineering institute, before undergoing cosmonaut training. His first space flight was in 2008. His current trip to the ISS launched last year on a Soyuz MS-24.

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Let's say you have a database table containing a list of countries. Given the primary key of a country in that table- an arbitrary ID field- you need to look up the name of that country.

Curtis's predecessor dropped this solution:

function return_country($id) { $sql = "SELECT * FROM countries"; $qry = db_query($sql); if(mysql_num_rows($qry)>0){ while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($qry)){ $a[$row['id']] = $row['name']; } }else{ return array(); } return $a[$id]; }

I guess they got the memo about not doing SQL injection flaws, but missed the "because you use query parameters". Instead, this queries the entire list of countries, iterates across them to build a mapping of ID to country name, and then uses that map to return the correct result.

This code really "shines" in its details. Sure, we could solve this with a query, but even if we opt to iterate across the table, we could just return from inside the loop. But no, we build an associative array.

And while it'd be better to return an error when the ID can't be found, we could return an empty string, but no- we return an empty array.

Return country? I'd rather return this code.

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Julia Simon reports via NPR: In a D.C. courtroom, a trial is wrapping up this week with big stakes for climate science. One of the world's most prominent climate scientists is suing a right-wing author and a policy analyst for defamation. The case comes at a time when attacks on scientists are proliferating, says Peter Hotez, professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. Even as misinformation about scientists and their work keeps growing, Hotez says scientists haven't yet found a good way to respond. "The reason we're sort of fumbling at this is it's unprecedented. And there is no roadmap," he says. The climate scientist at the center of this trial is Michael Mann. The professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania gained prominence for helping make one of the most accessible, consequential graphs in the history of climate science. First published in the late 1990s, the graph shows thousands of years of relatively stable global temperatures. Then, when humans start burning lots of coal and oil, it shows a spike upward. Mann's graph looks like a hockey stick lying on its side, with the blade sticking straight up. The so-called "hockey stick graph" was successful in helping the public understand the urgency of global warming, and that made it a target, says Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity, a climate accountability nonprofit. "Because it became such a powerful image, it was under attack from the beginning," he says. The attacks came from groups that reject climate science, some funded by the fossil fuel industry. In the midst of these types of attacks -- including the hacking of Mann's and other scientists' emails by unknown hackers -- Penn State, where Mann was then working, opened an investigation into his research. Penn State, as well as the National Science Foundation, found no evidence of scientific misconduct. But a policy analyst and an author wrote that they were not convinced. The trial in D.C. Superior Court involves posts from right-wing author Mark Steyn and policy analyst Rand Simberg. In an online post, Simberg compared Mann to former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, a convicted child sex abuser. Simberg wrote that Mann was the "Sandusky of climate science," writing that Mann "molested and tortured data (PDF)." Steyn called Mann's research fraudulent. Mann sued the two men for defamation. Mann also sued the publishers of the posts, National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but in 2021, the court ruled they couldn't be held liable. In court, Mann has argued that he lost funding and research opportunities. Steyn said in court that if Penn State's president, Graham Spanier, covered up child sexual assault, why wouldn't he cover up for Mann's science. The science in question used ice cores and tree rings to estimate Earth's past temperatures. "If Graham Spanier is prepared to cover up child rape, week in, week out, year in, year out, why would he be the least bit squeamish about covering up a bit of hanky panky with the tree rings and the ice cores?" Steyn asked the court. Mann and Steyn declined to speak to NPR during the ongoing trial. One of Simberg's lawyers, Victoria Weatherford, said "inflammatory does not equal defamatory" and that her client is allowed to express his opinion, even if it were wrong. "No matter how offensive or distasteful or heated it is," Weatherford tells NPR, "that speech is absolutely protected under the First Amendment when it's said against a public figure, if the person saying it believed that what they said was true."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After almost a year as an invite-only app, Bluesky is now open to the public. Funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bluesky is one of the more promising micro-blogging platforms that could provide an alternative to Elon Musk's X. Before opening to the public, the platform had about 3 million sign-ups. Now that anyone can join, the young platform faces a challenge: How can it meaningfully stand up to Threads' 130 million monthly active users, or even Mastodon's 1.8 million? Bluesky looks and functions like Twitter at the outset, but the platform stands out because of what lies under the hood. The company began as a project inside of Twitter that sought to build a decentralized infrastructure called the AT Protocol for social networking. As a decentralized platform, Bluesky's code is completely open source, which gives people outside of the company transparency into what is being built and how. Developers can even write their own code on top of the AT Protocol, so they can create anything from a custom algorithm to an entirely new social platform. "What decentralization gets you is the ability to try multiple things in parallel, and so you're not bottlenecking change on one organization," Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told TechCrunch. "The way we built Bluesky actually lets anyone insert a change into the product." This setup gives users more agency to control and curate their social media experience. On a centralized platform like Instagram, for example, users have revolted against algorithm changes that they dislike, but there's not much they can do to revert or improve upon an undesired app update.

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A new report from German data recovery company CBL found that devices using NAND chips from reputable brands are declining in quality, with reduced capacity and their manufacturers' logo removed. Furthermore, some USB sticks use the old trick of soldiering a microSD card onto the board. TechSpot reports: Most of the janky USB sticks CBL examined were promotional gifts, the kind given away free with products or by companies at conferences. However, there were some "branded" products that fell into the same inferior-quality category, though CBL didn't say if these were well-known mainstream brands or the kind of brands you've probably never heard of. Technological advancements have also affected these NAND chips, but not in a good way. The chips originally used single-level cell (SLC) memory cells that only stored one bit each, offering less data density but better performance and reliability. In order to increase the amount of storage the chips offered, manufacturers started moving to four bits per cell (QLC), decreasing the endurance and retention. Combined with the questionable components, it's why CBL warns that "You shouldn't rely too much on the reliability of flash memory." The report illustrates how some of the components found in the devices had their manufactures' names removed or obscured. One simply printed text over the top of the company name, while another had been scrubbed off completely. There's also a photo of a microSD card found inside a USB stick that had all of its identifying markings removed. It's always wise to be careful when choosing your storage device and beware of offers that seem too good to be true.

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In a new video released today, Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot is shown performing "kinetically challenging" work, like moving some medium-weight car parts and precisely picking stuff up. Ars Technica reports: In the latest video, we're on to what looks like "phase 2" of picking stuff up -- being more precise about it. The old clamp hands had a single pivot at the palm and seemed to just apply the maximum grip strength to anything the robot picked up. The most delicate thing Atlas picked up in the last video was a wooden plank, and it was absolutely destroying the wood. Atlas' new hands look a lot more gentle than The Clamps, with each sporting a set of three fingers with two joints. All the fingers share one big pivot point at the palm of the hand, and there's a knuckle joint halfway up the finger. The fingers are all very long and have 360 degrees of motion, so they can flex in both directions, which is probably effective but very creepy. Put two fingers on one side of an item and the "thumb" on the other, and Atlas can wrap its hands around objects instead of just crushing them. Atlas is picking up a set of car struts -- an object with extremely complicated topography that weighs around 30 pounds -- so there's a lot to calculate. Atlas does a heavy two-handed lift of a strut from a vertical position on a pallet, walks the strut over to a shelf, and carefully slides it into place. This is all in Boston Dynamics' lab, but it's close to repetitive factory or shipping work. Everything here seems designed to give the robot a manipulation challenge. The complicated shape of the strut means there are a million ways you could grip it incorrectly. The strut box has tall metal poles around it, so the robot needs to not bang the strut into the obstacle. The shelf is a tight fit, so the strut has to be placed on the edge of the shelf and slid into place, all while making sure the strut's many protrusions won't crash into the shelf.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: According to a recent report published by the Aargauer Zeitung (h/t Golem.de), around three million smart toothbrushes have been infected by hackers and enslaved into botnets. The source report says this sizable army of connected dental cleansing tools was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company's website. The firm's site collapsed under the strain of the attack, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of Euros of business. In this particular case, the toothbrush botnet was thought to have been vulnerable due to its Java-based OS. No particular toothbrush brand was mentioned in the source report. Normally, the toothbrushes would have used their connectivity for tracking and improving user oral hygiene habits, but after a malware infection, these toothbrushes were press-ganged into a botnet. Stefan Zuger from the Swiss branch of the global cybersecurity firm Fortinet provided the publication with a few tips on what people could do to protect their own toothbrushes -- or other connected gadgetry like routers, set-top boxes, surveillance cameras, doorbells, baby monitors, washing machines, and so on. "Every device that is connected to the Internet is a potential target -- or can be misused for an attack," Zuger told the Swiss newspaper. The security expert also explained that every connected device was being continually probed for vulnerabilities by hackers, so there is a real arms race between device software/firmware makers and cyber criminals. Fortinet recently connected an 'unprotected' PC to the internet and found it took only 20 minutes before it became malware-ridden.

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Meta will start detecting and labeling images generated by artificial intelligence from Google and OpenAI's services, among others. According to Reuters, the company will use a set of invisible markers built into the files to help with the identification process. From the report: Meta will apply the labels to any content carrying the markers that is posted to its Facebook, Instagram and Threads services, in an effort to signal to users that the images -- which in many cases resemble real photos -- are actually digital creations, the company's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, wrote in a blog post. The company already labels any content generated using its own AI tools. Once the new system is up and running, Meta will do the same for images created on services run by OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe , Midjourney, Shutterstock and Alphabet's Google, Clegg said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vancouver Sun: A cryptocurrency firm has lost a bid to force B.C. Hydro to provide the vast amounts of power needed for its operations, in a court ruling that upholds the provincial government's right to pause power connections for new crypto miners. Conifex Timber Inc., a forestry firm that branched out into cryptocurrency "mining," had gone to the B.C. Supreme Court to have the policy declared invalid. But Justice Michael Tammen ruled Friday that the government's move in December 2022 to pause new connections for cryptocurrency mining for 18 months was reasonable and not unduly discriminatory. B.C. Hydro CEO Christopher O'Riley had told the court in an affidavit that the data centers proposed by Conifex would have consumed 2.5 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That's enough to power and heat more than 570,000 apartments, according to data on the power provider's website. Energy Minister Josie Osborne said when the policy was introduced that cryptocurrency mining consumes "massive amounts of electricity" by running banks of high-powered computers around the clock, but adds "very few jobs" to the local economy. In a statement released Monday, the company said it's "disappointed" with the court's ruling and is considering an appeal. "Conifex continues to believe that the provincial government is missing out on several opportunities available to it to improve energy affordability, accelerate technological innovation, strengthen the reliability and resiliency of the power distribution grid in British Columbia, and achieve more inclusive economic growth," said Conifex in a statement.

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Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney are planning to launch a new streaming joint venture that will combine all their sports programming "under a single broadband roof," reports Variety. The move "will put content from ESPN, TNT and Fox Sports on a new standalone app and, in the process, likely shake up the world of TV sports." From the report: The three media giants are slated to launch the new service in the fall. Subscribers would get access to linear sports networks including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV and ESPN+, as well as hundreds of hours from the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL and many top college divisions. Pricing will be announced at a later date. Each company would own one third of the new outlet and license their sports content to it on a non-exclusive basis. The service would have a new brand and an independent management team. The concept surfaces as traditional media companies are grappling with the migration of sports -- the last TV format that generates steady crowds and sustained ratings -- to streaming venues. The concentration of top sports under one roof would be significant. Between them, ESPN and Warner have most rights to the NHL and the NBA, while Fox, Warner and ESPN control at present the majority of rights to Major League Baseball. Only the NFL would enjoy a large presence with entities that are not a part of the joint venture, with "Sunday Night Football" at NBCUniversal, "Thursday Night Football" at Amazon and a Sunday afternoon game at CBS.

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The United Kingdom, France and allied countries on Tuesday called for international guidelines for the responsible use of spyware, in an effort to stop the hacking tools from running rampant. From a report: At a conference at London's Lancaster House co-hosted by the British and French government, more than a dozen countries and technology companies signed a declaration saying that "uncontrolled dissemination" of cyber intrusive tools could lead to "unintentional escalation in cyberspace." A 2021 investigation called the Pegasus Project highlighted how spyware tools like the Israeli-made Pegasus software had spread across the world and are being abused in political and corporate hacking campaigns. Despite widespread condemnation, governments' efforts to crack down on malicious hacking software have largely failed -- in part because the tools are popular with many intelligence and security services, including in democratic countries. Among the countries that have signed up to the pledge for international rules guidelines EU members Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy and Poland, as well as the United States, United Kingdom and the African Union. On the industry side, Apple, defense firm BAE Systems, Google, Meta and Microsoft signed up. The group of countries and firms hopes to curb the proliferation and unabated use of intrusive cybertools. They called for principles and policy options to balance human rights and security interests, including policies to use spyware in a âoelegal and responsible manner," in line with international law and under strict oversight by authorities.

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The European Commission today recommended reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels by 90 percent by 2040 compared to 1990 levels. From a report: At face value, it's an ambitious target for transforming the European Union's energy system. As always, though, the devil is in the details. And the proposed plan is already garnering a range of strong reactions. A formal proposal still needs to be issued, but it has already faced pushback on how much of those pollution cuts should come from risky tactics aimed at capturing rather than preventing pollution. Some environmental groups are also criticizing a glaring omission in the draft: while it mentions phasing out coal, there's no strategy to phase out oil and gas. "You can set targets to cut greenhouse gases as high as you like, but without a clear plan to phase-out the fossil fuels that are producing them they simply aren't credible. It's like building a bike without pedals, how are you going to power it?" Dominic Eagleton, senior fossil fuels campaigner at the nonprofit Global Witness, said in a statement today. The world actually came tantalizingly close to a deal to phase out fossil fuels during a United Nations climate conference in Dubai last December. Despite dozens of countries pushing for that kind of commitment, the agreement ultimately calls for "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner." It also carves out room for controversial technologies for capturing carbon dioxide pollution.

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Google has been trying to break into TV for close to two decades. It's here now: Its YouTube TV offering has become one of the biggest pay-TV services in the US. Business Insider: YouTube TV -- which, like conventional pay TV, sells a bundle of dozens of channels -- now has "more than 8 million" subscribers, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced Tuesday morning. That makes YouTube the fourth-largest pay TV service in the country, behind Charter and Comcast (14.1 million each) and DirecTV, at around 11 million. YouTube last disclosed subscriber numbers in 2022, when YouTube TV had 5 million customers. It likely got a meaningful boost last fall when it started selling the NFL's Sunday Ticket service as an add-on to its basic package of TV channels. YouTube's ascent into the mainstream of pay TV represents a couple of things. For starters, it shows you that YouTube and its owner Google have been persistent and patient about trying to crack TV, and its enormous twin revenue streams: subscriptions and ads.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: With progress in the battle against cancer progressing slowly on Earth, California researchers have teamed up with astronauts to take the battle to the stars. In space, the weak pull of gravity, also known as microgravity, places cells under incredible stress, causing them to age more rapidly. This phenomenon allows scientists to witness the progression of cancer growth -- and the effect of cancer treatments -- much more rapidly than they could on Earth. When the Axiom 3 spaceflight launched from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 18, bound for the International Space Station, it took with it four crewmembers and some other unusual passengers -- miniature tumor organoids produced from the cells of cancer patients, grown in the lab by scientists at the University of California San Diego. Axiom 3 was slated for splashdown on Saturday but has been delayed until Tuesday, at the earliest, due to weather, according to SpaceX, which manufactured the Crew Dragon spacecraft used for the mission. It wasn't the first time the team -- led by Dr. Catriona H.M. Jamieson, a hematologist and medical professor at the college -- sent such samples into space. It previously launched stem cells on multiple Space X flights and noticed that pre-leukemic changes occurred, unseen during the same timeframe in controls on the ground. "We said, 'Wait, what if you send cancer up?'" Jamieson tells Fortune. "'Will the cancer go from bad to worse?' And the answer is yes, under conditions of stress" caused by microgravity.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Most people know that Microsoft really wants everyone to move onto Windows 11. But just in case there are some Windows 10 users still unaware of this fact, the company is once again nagging them to upgrade with full-screen, multi-slide popups. The lengthy advertisement for Windows 11 was highlighted by Windows Latest after it installed the optional January update (in preview) on a Windows 10 machine. The nagging Windows 11 upgrade promo consists of an excruciating number of screens (i.e., more than one): The first informs users that they can switch to Windows 11 for free and that they can still use their PC while the newer OS is set up in the background; another is Microsoft recommending the move and noting that users can revert to Windows 10 within the first ten days of upgrading; the last is for those who decide to stay on Windows 10, with a reminder that Windows 11 remains a free upgrade option. There is another panel that lists some of Windows 11 features, but this only appears for those who select the 'See what's inside' button.

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The U.S. has announced new visa restrictions for individuals and companies misusing commercial spyware to surveil, harass or intimidate journalists, activists and other dissidents. Citing a senior Biden administration official, Reuters adds that the new policy will also apply to investors and operators of the commercial spyware believed to be misused. At least 50 U.S. officials have been targeted by private hacking tools in recent years.

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Apple is making changes to iOS in Europe to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act cracking down on Big Tech gatekeepers. The act demands interoperability, fairness and privacy measures including allowing competing browser engines on iOS. Despite better browser choice, Google and Mozilla are unhappy with Apple's proposed changes. Mozilla says restricting browser engine integration to EU apps burdens rivals to build separate implementations. Mozilla's comment: "We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple's proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps. The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations -- a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear. Apple's proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari. This is another example of Apple creating barriers to prevent true browser competition on iOS." Google's VP of engineering for Chrome, Parisa Tabriz, commented on DeMonte's statement, saying, "Strong agree with Mozilla. Apple isn't serious about supporting web browser or engine choice on iOS. Their strategy is overly restrictive, and won't meaningfully lead to real choice for browser developers."

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"Tapestry." "Beacon." "Comprehensive curriculum." "Esteemed faculty." "Vibrant academic community." They're among the laundry list of colorful words, flowery phrases and stale syntax that are likely to tip off admissions committees to applicants who've used AI to help write their college or graduate school essays this year, according to essay consultants who students are hiring en masse to un-ChatGPT, and add a "human touch" to, their submissions. Forbes: "Tapestry" in particular is a major red flag in this year's pool, several essay consultants on the platform Fiverr told Forbes. Mike, an Ivy League alum and former editor-in-chief of the Cornell Business Journal who now edits hundreds of grad school applications each cycle through Capitol Editors, said it's appeared repeatedly in drafts from at least 20 of his clients in recent months. "I no longer believe there's a way to innocently use the word 'tapestry' in an essay; if the word 'tapestry' appears, it was generated by ChatGPT," he told Forbes. Though many such words, on their own, could have come from a human, when a trained eye sees them used over and over again in the same cadence across multiple essays, "it's just a real telltale sign."

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DocuSign will cut 6% of its workforce, it said Tuesday, as part of a restructuring plan that aims to improve the company's "financial and operational efficiency." CNBC: The online signature provider said the majority of the employees impacted by the layoffs will be within its sales and marketing organizations. DocuSign employs 7,336 workers, according to its most recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which means the cuts will affect around 440 jobs. DocuSign said the restructuring plan will be largely complete by the end of its second fiscal quarter of 2025, according to the release. The company added that it expects to "meet or exceed" its fourth-quarter and fiscal-2024 guidance that it outlined in a release in December.

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