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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Another major investmnet in AI ecosystem?:

Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, according to The Information, citing a person familiar with the deal. If the report is accurate and Nvidia indeed buys Hugging Face, the purchase could strengthen Nvidia's open-model strategy, provide another route to sell AI hardware, and help defend its hardware business as Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and other major hyperscalers develop their own accelerators.

Nvidia sells hundreds of billions worth of AI hardware every year. Although the ubiquity of its CUDA software stack and leading performance of its hardware are the primary reasons why Nvidia's AI platforms are sold like hot cakes, another important factor is that many AI models were trained on Nvidia hardware and are optimized to run on it. Therefore, the more models trained on Nvidia hardware, the more products the company is going to sell eventually.

Hugging Face is an AI development platform best known for the Hugging Face Hub, a GitHub-like repository where researchers and developers publish, discover, download, and collaborate on AI models, datasets, and applications. Hugging Face also develops widely used software such as the Transformers library and provides tools and cloud services for training, optimizing, and deploying models on different types of AI hardware.

[...] OpenAI models, datasets, popular applications, and abilities to optimize and deploy AI models on different hardware make Hugging Face strategically important to Nvidia. On the one hand, the company can make the platform exclusively rely on its hardware, though this may face a backlash from the community, so this is something unlikely to happen in the short term (even assuming Nvidia is indeed set to buy Hugging Face). On the other hand, Nvidia wants open models to remain competitive with proprietary offerings from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI that may eventually get optimized for proprietary non-Nvidia hardware. Nvidia has been building its own Nemotron open models and has committed tens of billions of dollars to the effort. Furthermore, as Hugging Face grows, so is adoption of AI hardware in general and Nvidia hardware in particular.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Standardized driver interface aims to let devices talk to AI and each other:

For all the interest in and uptake of agentic AI systems over the past year or so, the world of automated AI has thus far been primarily limited to text, images, code, and other data and actions that take place inside a computer. Anthropic is now aiming to change that somewhat with what it's calling the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), a set of standardized drivers designed to let AI agents easily interface with and control arbitrary devices.

For now, the "research preview" of the MHS effort is being sold mainly as a way to help scientists streamline the arduous process of creating the custom software integrations that are often needed to get disparate components of an experiment working in concert. MHS can provide a common interface and common format for data sharing between these devices, Anthropic says, allowing them to talk to each other across a network "without needing a bespoke 'translator' program in between." The standardized system could reduce weeks or months of exacting experimental setup down to "hours or minutes," Anthropic writes.

In a video posted alongside the announcement, Anthropic Technical Staffer Alek Kemeny says the MHS effort was inspired by observing neuroscientist Arco Bast work through an experiment on memory formation in the brain at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. Kemeny said Bast had worked out an interface to get the rotating laser beams, microscopes, cameras, and myriad other components of the experiment to coordinate through a common interface. "This idea could be used to have AI run any science experiment in the world," Kemeny recalls thinking at the time.

There's nothing about a common machine interface language that requires the use of AI models, of course. And Anthropic says MHS devices can be controlled directly in real time via command-line prompts and API code files. But integrating an MHS system with an AI model through the Model Context Protocol lets scientists interact with devices using natural language, and lets models "reason through each step in an experiment, update parameters in real time, and, in some cases, recover from hardware errors without intervention," Anthropic writes.

Anthropic gave the example of a model like Claude adjusting a laser, checking the results via a separate camera, then repeating the process to automatically calibrate the whole system. MHS could also allow an AI model to focus a microscope, analyze the results, decide what part needs more observation, then automatically move the microscope to the relevant section to continue the experiment.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

'These are test runs for a larger-scale attack':

The US government disclosed that crims targeted more than 100 internet-exposed water systems during July cyberattacks. That's the first time the feds have put a number on the digital intrusions, but they have yet to attribute the campaign, widely suspected to be linked to Iran, to a particular group.

"In July 2026, CISA observed malicious cyber activity targeting over 100 internet-exposed systems in the Water and Wastewater Systems (WWS) Sector, commonly via programmable logic controllers (PLCs) connected directly to a cellular modem," America's lead cyber-defense agency said, adding that connecting PLCs directly to the internet "can create significant security risks."

Suspected Iranian attackers targeted water and wastewater facilities across at least a dozen states in July, including internet-exposed PLCs. While neither federal nor state officials have identified all 12, we know that the cyberattacks occurred at mostly small, rural utilities in Minnesota, Michigan, Georgia, South Dakota, and New Jersey.

"This is very serious. What stands out isn't any single incident. It's the scale," Matt Hartman, chief strategy officer at the Merlin Group and CISA's former acting head of cyber, told The Register.

"More than 100 water systems with internet-exposed assets were hit in a single month, which points to a systemic vulnerability across the sector, not a run of isolated, unlucky targets," Hartman said. "Much of this infrastructure runs on operational technology that was built for closed, physical environments. It was never designed with the assumption that it would be reachable from the open internet."

John Gallagher, VP at Viakoo, an OT and IoT cybersecurity provider, told us that while 100 systems represent a small fraction - only about 0.5 percent - of water utilities in the US, the "real threat is that these are test runs for a larger-scale attack."

Arthur T Kanckerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-lawmakers-unanimously-pass-linux-exemption-from-age-verification-law-software-distributed-under-the-gpl-mit-bsd-and-apache-licenses-are-exempt

Software Distributed Under The GPL, MIT, BSD, And Apache Licenses Are Exempt

These amendments redefine the term “operating system provider” to exclude any person or entity that distributes an OS or application “under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.” Any software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses satisfies that test, which removes the likes of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, and the BSD family from AB 1856’s scope.

The amendments to AB 1856 also remove the original definition of “user,” which read, “a child that is the primary user of a device,” and technically classified every device owner in California as a child. The law’s signaling framework depends on adults declaring their age on account setup, so their devices get flagged as 18 and over, but under that definition nobody could ever be flagged as an adult.

In addition, lawmakers inserted a new provision prohibiting anyone from requesting an age signal from an OS provider or app store unless required by law. That closes off potential abuse of the age API that could have led to it being used as a general-purpose data collection channel even when age verification wasn’t required. Platforms and developers also gain a good-faith safe harbor against erroneous signals, protecting them from liability when age-gating signals are inaccurate.

Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android remain fully in scope, with age collection required at account setup from January 1, 2027. A later July 1, 2027, deadline applies to devices set up before January 1. Whether SteamOS is in scope isn’t yet clear: its Arch-based system components are open source, but Valve distributes the image alongside the proprietary Steam client. GrapheneOS, which in March said it would refuse to comply with age-verification mandates, is distributed under open-source MIT and Apache licenses and now falls outside the law’s scope entirely, though Brazil’s Digital ECA still applies to it.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who wrote both the Digital Age Assurance Act and the AB 1856 amendment, introduced the exemption back in February following criticism from Linux developers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/virtualization/2026/08/31/the-balkanization-of-virtualization-will-de-throne-vmware-which-doesnt-mind-a-bit/5292488

VMware is about to lose its status as the undoubted leader of the virtualization market after a 20-year reign – a result it doesn't mind one bit, but which also signals an industry-wide end to significant innovation for traditional server virtualization.

The end of VMware's reign will come slowly, then suddenly, between now and October 2027, a period that includes three dates that tens of thousands of VMware customers will have circled on their calendars to remind them of ideal deadlines by which they should change virtualization platforms or reduce their use of VMware. And at VMware's annual user conference, which kicks off today, the Broadcom business unit probably won't make a new pitch for them to stay.

The VMware users thinking about an exit mostly relied on the virtualization pioneer for the vSphere and vCenter products that together let them virtualize and manage a modest fleet of servers. Broadcom doesn't sell those products anymore, other than as components in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), a bundle of compute, storage, and networking virtualization tools that together assemble a private cloud.

Broadcom insists it sells VCF for less than pre-acquisition VMware did, but the bundle is nearly always considerably more expensive than a VMware user's last bill – and for many that means paying for VCF even when they don't plan to use all of its components. Many VMware users are therefore looking to reduce their VMware footprint so that if they acquire VCF, they can shift VMs that don't need it to other platforms.

Before acquisition, VMware had about 350,000 customers, and more than half of the server virtualization market. Broadcom has all-but-said it is only interested in 10,000 to 30,000 of those customers who need VCF and will go all-in on it as their future infrastructure and DevOps platform.

In case any VMware users haven't got the message, Broadcom's position will become abundantly clear on three imminent dates.

The first is November 22, 2026 – the third anniversary of Broadcom's acquisition of VMware. Because Broadcom has a reputation for making big and hard-to-digest changes after buying software companies, smart VMware customers rushed to acquire multi-year subscriptions before the acquisition closed. Many of those deals will expire soon.

The second date is March 31, 2027, on which VMware's contracts with many members of its Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program expire, leaving them unable to provide cloudy VMs powered by VCF. Customers who rely on VMware-powered clouds therefore need to find a new home, almost always after buying a VCF license direct from Broadcom. Plenty of former partners are trying to bring their clients with them to another platform.

The last date is October 11, 2027, the last day of support for version 8 of VMware Cloud Foundation. Again, this is a moment that will force VMware users to make a decision about their virtual estates – do they upgrade to VCF 9, or look elsewhere?

That many users are either considering a move or trying to avoid a new VMware purchase is not in dispute. Third party support outfit Rimini Street tells me its VMware support offering is currently its fastest-growing service, albeit off a low base.

owl writes:

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-the-story-of-qantas-flight-32-bdaa62dc98e7

On the 4th of November 2010, a Qantas Airbus A380 was rocked by a catastrophic engine failure minutes after takeoff from Singapore, hurling fragments of a turbine disk through its wings and fuselage in multiple locations. The explosion damaged almost every major system on the airplane, from the flight controls and fuel tanks to hydraulics and pneumatics. Faced with a barrage of diverse failure warnings and an airplane of uncertain integrity, the flight crew worked together to make a series of critical decisions that would get their enormous airplane back on the ground. And in the end, despite one curveball after another — including landing gear problems, loss of braking power, and an engine that refused to shut down — they not only landed the plane, but did so without putting a scratch on any of the 469 passengers and crew.

The cause of the incident would ultimately be traced deep inside the number two engine to a single oil pipe that had been manufactured with a wall that was slightly too thin. How this seemingly tiny defect came about, and how it nearly brought down the world's largest passenger plane, represent a story equally as fascinating as that of the flight itself, tracing back years to encompass questionable drawing board decisions, hidden flaws in the machining logic, and faulty assumptions about engine behavior. Time and time again, the problem slipped through the gaps in the system, tumbling down the long slope toward disaster — only to be stopped at the last moment, not only by the pilots themselves, but by a number of explicit protections built into the design of the A380, each of which played a crucial role in containing the fallout from a failure that exceeded the manufacturer's worst expectations. The story of Qantas flight 32, as told herein, is therefore not only the tale of a dramatic emergency, but a testament to the safety of aviation today — a story that should make every reader feel a little less fearful of flight.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic pollution are created each year. One option may be to turn the pollution into food, but critics voice concerns :

Hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic pollution are created each year. One option may be to turn the pollution into food, but critics voice concerns

        Plastic bottles and agricultural waste can be converted into consumable cookies via genetically engineered yeast. The team members behind the initiative are currently awaiting institutional approval so they can taste the product.

        Plastic pollution and food scarcity are two of society's thorniest problems. Sandhya Jayasekara and her colleagues from Southern Illinois University Carbondale hope to use the former to solve the latter – potentially eliminating both in the process.

        The first stage of the process is to take used plastic bottles – sourced from a supermarket – and discarded sweetcorn plant stalks and leaves, and put them through a process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution. This uses heat to break down the materials into components that microbes can digest.

        Those components are then fed to yeast that has been genetically altered using CRISPR gene-editing technology. This allows the yeast to convert the components into a variety of useful ingredients, including proteins, fats and acids, as well as vanilla flavouring and beta-carotene, which the body can convert into vitamin A.

        Finally, fibre, starch and sweetener are added to the mix, and the paste is extruded through a 3D printer into any desired shape. The resulting cookies have been dubbed µBites, pronounced microbites.

        The researchers, who are presenting the work at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Chicago on Friday, are eager to try µBites for themselves as soon as their university approves the experiment. But they are confident that the cookies are both safe and tasty.

        "I think it has a pleasant, appealing aroma," says Jayasekara. "And it will taste good, too. We've not tasted it, but it smells good – that's for sure – like a real cookie."

        Team member Lahiru Jayakody, also at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, says it will take 20 years of additional research before plastic waste can be pulled from oceans or landfills and converted to safe and appetising food, but that he hopes the process alone can inspire others to tackle the problem of plastic waste in innovative ways, leading to "a social shift" in the way we think about the problem.

canopic jug writes:

Christine Hall of FOSS Force has interviewed Richard Stallman with a series of seven questions. The interview wraps up with a question about LLMs and a question about service as a software substitute which leads to a discussion about digital surveillance.

Let’s contrast this with traditional systems of age verification to see how much worse this is. When you buy alcoholic beverages, a store clerk will ask to see your ID, but won’t record your identity, only take note of your age. That practice respects your privacy; its surveillance impact is null. But digital age verification systems record who you are, and precisely everything you do.

At 73 years old, I am sure all the sites that do age verification would rule I am old enough. But doing the age verification would give them my name or an ID number, and I refuse to give them that.

Because of my age, I am entitled to a discount card for the Boston trains and buses. But the card would record my identity every time I board a subway train or bus. I would rather pay full fare than submit to that.

I don’t own a car, or want to, but we need to stop cars from reporting where people go. I hope to find a mechanic who will work out how to convert connected cars into “disconnected cars.” I think it could be done by wrapping some sort of metal sheets around the antennas that transmit privacy-violating data, or receive GPS. Or perhaps just unscrewing them. To do navigation, use a stand-alone GPS receiver that isn’t connected to the car’s surveillance system.

One of the dangers of tech companies storing your personal data — and personal data about you — in their servers is that agents of repression can get that data from the company without even informing you.

For more about digital surveillance, see
https://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html.

One long-running theme which RMS emphasizes is that software freedom remains a moral issue.

Previously:
(2023) The Four Freedoms and The One Obligation of Free Software
(2018) Happy 35th Birthday GNU!
(2018) RMS on a Radical Proposal to Keep Your Personal Data Safe
(2017) The Free Software Movement is Barking Up the Wrong Tree
(2017) US Court Upholds Enforceability of GNU GPL as Both a License and a Contract
(2015) GNU Prophet Richard Stallman Calls Windows and MacOS Malware

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Meta to impose daily limit on child social media use in deal with nearly every state:

Meta agreed to impose daily limits on children's social media use and pay nearly $18 billion in settlements with nearly every US state today, cutting short a trial in which Meta said several of the states were demanding over $1.4 trillion. The settlement requires court approval.

Meta is facing claims that it designed its products to foster compulsive use by children and failed to warn users of addiction and mental health risks. Meta, which already uses ID checks and face analysis to verify user ages, said it agreed to impose on people under 18 a "default two-hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent's permission," a default block between midnight and 6 am, and a school mode in which notifications are muted by default from 8 am to 3 pm.

The two-hour daily "limit is cumulative across Facebook and Instagram, and time spent scrolling on both apps counts toward the total, including if we detect that someone has multiple accounts," Meta said. Teens will "receive prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Facebook or Instagram," and "prompts when their total daily usage hits 60 minutes and 90 minutes."

The primary settlement provides up to $16.7 billion for 47 states and the District of Columbia, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico. The settlement has a clause that would reduce Meta's payment by $5 billion if other top social media firms don't agree to similar terms.

The states and Meta urged a judge to approve the 10-year settlement in a filing today in US District Court for the Northern District of California. Texas said it struck a separate deal for $1 billion, raising the potential payments to states to nearly $18 billion.

California Attorney General Bonta said today that "Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms—and will do it within months. We are talking about time limits, stopping notifications during school, a block on the app during critical overnight hours, bans on plastic surgery filters, and so much more."

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Disclosure optional, quality mandatory:

The Debian community has voted to allow members to use generative AI when creating their contributions, with the caveat that developers remain responsible for code quality.

The Linux distro's community recently decided to develop a policy on use of AI-assisted coding tools, and asked participants to vote on one of eight proposals that included an outright ban, cautious use, or just avoiding LLMs because of their impact on Earth's environment.

The rules of the vote saw community members asked to rank each of the eight proposals. Just under 600 people voted, but Debian's election team rejected many for unspecified reasons, leaving almost 450 valid votes to count.

When the tallying was done, proposal E – "Responsible Use of Generative AI" – won the day.

The proposal means "Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools in the development, maintenance, or documentation of software, packaging, documentation, and other media published within the Debian Project."

The proposal advocates that approach because "such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration."

The proposal also spells out that the Debian community doesn't believe "AI made a mistake" is an excuse for sloppy contributions.

"The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance," the proposal states. "The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian."

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Biz describes its act of automated irresponsibility as 'a warning shot':

OpenAI has published its technical report detailing "the Hugging Face incident," the compromise of the eponymous LLM repository by unreleased, ill-supervised AI models.

The incident, widely reported, has prompted concern among technical types, the public, and lawmakers about how automated software was able to escape containment and hack an external organization, and about what can be done to prevent similar incidents.

OpenAI's explanation addresses what happened, but its call for keeping a closer watch on AI activities won't elicit much enthusiasm.

"The incident occurred during cybersecurity evaluations of several OpenAI models, and was primarily driven by a highly capable, internal-only research model comparable in scale to GPT‑5.6 Sol," the company said in a blog post. 

"The models, operating under reduced safeguards, took actions that were misaligned with the goals of their assigned tasks – they communicated through unauthorized channels, exploited vulnerabilities in shared infrastructure, gained internet access, and accessed third-party systems."

The incident became the subject of discussion at the Black Hat security conference and elsewhere.

The basic storyline begins with a notionally sandboxed AI agent trying to solve an impossible task in ExploitGym, a security benchmark test. Unable to complete the challenge, the agent explored its environment to find ways to make progress toward its goal. It figured out that it could communicate with other AI agents by using Artifactory, an internal package management system, as a message board. The agents then collaborated with each other to cheat on various ExploitGym tasks.

The machine learning models eventually identified a server-side request forgery (SSRF) zero-day vulnerability in Artifactory's code and used that to gain internet access. They subsequently found exposed Hugging Face credentials. The agents then used those credentials to find and chain several security exploits that gave them full code execution on several Hugging Face servers, all in the hope of finding information to solve the ExploitGym task.

"Ultimately, agents powered either by the internal-only research model, or by GPT-5.6, executed code on 41 Hugging Face production dataset server workers, obtained root access on at least one production node, accessed Hugging Face production credentials and limited internal data, and downloaded four private Hugging Face code repositories," OpenAI's technical report [PDF] explains.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The saying "cleared for takeoff" has a whole different meaning in space:

Historically, humankind has sent only one thing to the moon at a time so that it has the whole metaphorical highway to itself. But NASA's planned moon base is expected to have a lot more concurrent traffic in the future, which means it's time to start writing rules for a busier road. Engineers from Texas A&M, Purdue and NASA's Johnson Space Center joined forces to help write some of those rules.

The system is outlined in a recent study, and it's a lot more complex than one would think. Gateway and other spacecraft orbiting the moon are expected to use the near-rectilinear halo orbit, which takes spacecraft around both poles of the moon.

This is pretty simple for a single space station like the now-defunct Gateway space station, for which this control system was designed, but it gets complicated quickly when you have the Orion crew capsule, uncrewed cargo ships and lunar landers all sharing the same orbit, thereby necessitating the need for an air traffic control system similar to an airport on Earth. 

"Collisions and serious damages could happen. To ensure crew safety and mission success, effective traffic management in the NRHO is crucial," Diane Davis, associate professor of space engineering at Texas A&M and an author of the study, said in a statement. "The future of lunar explorations depends as much on the traffic management as it does on the rocket science."

[...] There isn’t anything tangible that you can see with this traffic control system, but if you've ever flown in an airplane before, you have experienced it. Air traffic control on Earth is an intricate dance that helps airplane pilots know where to fly and where to land without colliding into other aircraft. That means managing holding patterns so airplanes don't collide midair, assigning runways and making sure the sky is clear for aircraft taking off.

The control system for the moon isn't much different in terms of basic functionality. Spacecraft coming and going might be headed for the surface or loitering around waiting for their chance to head back to Earth. These spacecraft have to be managed just like aircraft or they'll eventually crash into each other, which is about as devastating as you can imagine. They also have to conserve fuel to keep costs low.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/27/fbi-seizes-hacking-tools-it-says-china-used-to-attack-nasa-doe-us-senate-and-other-critical-networks/5292742

UPDATE After publication, the US Justice Department walked back its earlier claims that multiple US government agencies were hacked by Beijing's cyberspies. In an updated press release, the feds removed "victims," and now says NASA, the Federal Reserve, departments of Energy, Justice, and Health and Human Services, along with the National Institutes of Health, and the US Senate were "targets."

The FBI on Wednesday said it disrupted a botnet and seized two platforms that Chinese-government cyberoperatives used to hack NASA, the US Senate, the Department of Energy, and several other government agencies and critical networks.

The Federal Reserve, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institutes of Health were also among those victimized by the two now-seized hacking tools: a vulnerability scanning and exploitation malware named QScan, and an obfuscation network named QTRouter.

The FBI says a People's Republic (PRC) of China-backed group called QTFY created and operated the two platforms, plus botnets of compromised IoT devices. The Bureau says QTFY's hackers work for a private PRC company called Nanjing Xinjiuwei.

[...] QScan scans and automatically infects thousands of IoT devices worldwide, and then adds them to the QTRouter network of QTFY-controlled devices. 

The QTRouter botnet – consisting of these compromised IoT devices, plus commercial proxy service devices, and leased virtual private servers – then serves as an obfuscation network, allowing QTFY and other criminals who pay for the service to conceal the origin of their digital intrusion activities, making these communications appear to originate from local computers.

On Monday, a US federal court granted seizure warrants for three domains linked to QTFY: qtproxy.xyz, qt-proxy.org, and qt-team.com. All three domains were hardcoded into both the QScan and QTRouter malware, and the court-authorized seizures made both hacking services inoperable, the Justice Department said.

The hacking services and malware have been in use since at least 2018, and as recently as this year when QTFY infrastructure compromised the US Senate, according to court documents.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/spy-to-space-the-science-behind-nasas-roman-space-telescope

As NASA prepares to launch its new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope this weekend, Rochester Institute of Technology's Prof Don Figer examines the telescope's purpose and its origins in US spycraft.

NASA plans to soon launch a new space telescope that will survey a billion galaxies to trace how the universe evolved over time, all courtesy of America’s spy programme and decades of research into detector technology.

The telescope, known as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, was first developed by the National Reconnaissance Office, before being transferred to NASA in 2012. The intelligence agency  no longer needed the hardware [PDF]  for its future missions, so it sent the unused telescope to NASA. The space agency spent over a decade making modifications and aims to launch the telescope into space as early as 30 August 2026.

Once in position, the telescope will take data that astronomers like me hope will help answer some of the field’s most puzzling questions.

You can expect a slew of exciting discoveries from the new telescope because it was built to look across the universe and study the three-dimensional distribution of dark matter. While scientists haven’t directly observed it before, dark matter produces unseen effects on objects in the universe, similar to those produced by visible matter.

Likewise, Roman will see exploding stars called supernovas that allow astronomers to measure how fast the universe has been expanding. Those measurements will help astronomers measure the varying expansion rate of the universe. Dark matter and dark energy, also not yet directly observed, together are the source of the vast majority of energy in the universe, but their physical natures are unknown.

Closer to home, Roman will monitor small variations in light from stars near the centre of the Milky Way galaxy in order to infer the presence of rogue planets drifting between the stars. As a planet passes in front of a star, it briefly perturbs and magnifies the light from the star behind it, confirming its presence.

Finally, Roman has a coronagraph instrument that will test the technology for future missions that plan to detect Earth-like planets around other stars. A coronagraph blocks most of the light from a star so astronomers can detect the much fainter planets orbiting it. For an Earth-like planet around a sun-like star, the host star can be 10bn times brighter than the planet.

The Roman telescope’s coronagraph will help it study distant planets as they pass in front of a star.

When NASA received Roman, it turned one challenge about the telescope’s spy design into an opportunity. The telescope has a wide field of view, at least compared with most space telescopes made for astronomy. This means it can see a large swath of the sky at once. There lies an opportunity – while telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope see narrow fields very deeply, Roman will be able to see much larger fields.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

*** Note that Proton has a commercial interest in VPNs. This may be biased reporting ***

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/proton-vpn-report-location-tracking-privacy/

With a fast VPN, your speed loss will be virtually unnoticeable.

Using a virtual private network is a surefire way to keep your information private when browsing the internet. But a new report from Proton, released on Wednesday, exposes some major holes in that concept.

A VPN is a tool that encrypts your internet behavior and hides your IP address and physical location, with the goal of keeping your identity and identifying information secure. But 64 of the VPN apps downloaded in the US, Proton found, are owned by Chinese companies and contain trackers that collect all sorts of user information, including device IDs, network information, device models and mobile carrier data.

And 25% of the apps in question were found to actively track your location.

In June alone, these apps were downloaded over 13 million times.

Narrowing down the numbers further, Proton found that 31 of those Chinese-owned VPNs use shell companies registered in jurisdictions such as Singapore, Hong Kong and the UK to further hide their identities.

An authoritarian government like China’s could use this information to track a person’s location. So if a public official, someone in law enforcement, a journalist or even someone attending a protest was using one of these VPNs for safety, this flaw would expose them to potential threats.

It should be clear that China isn’t the only country where companies harvest the data these apps collect, but it’s near the top of the list. Israel, Russia and the Five Eyes countries — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US — all have companies collecting tracking data from millions of people.

Transparency is a big issue here, with a load of bad VPN apps being readily available for download through Apple and Google. Proton’s report points out that both companies require developers to submit their own paperwork to verify their apps, with little verification (and no independent audits) being done on Apple’s or Google’s part. Apple and Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

This lack of guardrails in the verification process makes it hard to decipher which virtual private network apps protect your privacy and do what their policies promise and which are virtually doing the opposite.

“Proton's report is yet another example of why it's so important to know who's behind your VPN and what data they're collecting,” CNET Senior Writer Attila Tomaschek said. “It's also another reminder that just because a VPN app is popular in Apple's or Google's app marketplaces, it doesn't necessarily mean that the VPN app is safe to use.”

If you’re looking for a VPN, Tomaschek points to VPNs like Proton and ExpressVPN, which regularly rank near the top of CNET’s VPN recommendations. Each virtual private network is put through a rigorous testing process that includes a thorough examination of the app’s privacy policy, transparency reports, audits, corporate structure and legal jurisdiction.

When all else fails, avoid any VPN that is murky about any of those key principles. “Instead, opt for a trustworthy VPN that is crystal clear about where it’s based, who’s behind it and how it protects user privacy,” Tomaschek said.

Original Submission

Original Submission