Month: April 2021

NASA has flown a helicopter on Mars, and it went brilliantly [Updated]

This is all experimental, but Ingenuity pulled it off.

An image from <em>Ingenuity</em>, looking down at the surface of Mars. That's its shadow.

Enlarge / An image from Ingenuity, looking down at the surface of Mars. That's its shadow. (credit: NASA/JPL)

Monday morning update: NASA and its engineers have done it! They have flown a powered aircraft on another world for the first time.

Shortly before 7 am ET (11:00 UTC), data came streaming to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory via a circuitous route: from the Ingenuity helicopter to the Perseverance rover, from there to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter above the red planet, across space to a large satellite dish in Madrid, Spain, and finally to the California-based facility.

And the data was good. It indicated the helicopter spun up its rotors to 2,500 revolutions per minute, the vehicle then rose to a little more than 3 meters above the surface, hovered, and then descended safely to the surface.

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Novel hydrogels can safely remove graffiti from vandalized street art

Italian chemists successfully tested their hydrogels on actual street art in Florence.

A psychedelic mural.

Enlarge / A five-year-old boy with boxing gloves poses in front of a huge mural of himself in Denver, Colorado. (credit: Blaine Harrington III/Image Bank/Getty Images)

Mention the word "graffiti," and many people's thoughts immediately turn to vandalism in the form of defacement of property. But there is also graffiti that rises above such negative connotations and qualifies as bona fide street art. Think of the commemorative murals created after the death of NBA All-Star Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna; the Black Lives Matter logos painted on the streets in New York City, and along 16th Street in Washington, DC, last year amid ongoing protests; and the works of Banksy, Eduardo Kobra, and the countless other less well-known artists around the world, who embellish our streets with their work.

Street art, in turn, is vulnerable to vandalism, posing unique challenges to those seeking to preserve these rather ephemeral creations. This week, a team of Italian scientists described its novel, environmentally friendly new method to safely remove defacing over-paintings on street art at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"For decades, we have focused on cleaning or restoring classical artworks that used paints designed to last centuries," said co-author Piero Baglioni, a chemist at the University of Florence and principal investigator on the project. "In contrast, modern art and street art, as well as the coatings and graffiti applied on top, use materials that were never intended to stand the test of time."

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Purism Librem 14 Linux laptop is now shipping

The Purism Librem 14 is a notebook with a 14 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel matte display, an Intel Core i7-10710U hexa-core processor, support for up to 64GB of RAM and two M.2 slots for solid state storage. It also ships with Purism’s custom Linux di…

The Purism Librem 14 is a notebook with a 14 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel matte display, an Intel Core i7-10710U hexa-core processor, support for up to 64GB of RAM and two M.2 slots for solid state storage. It also ships with Purism’s custom Linux distribution called PureOS as well as the open source Coreboot […]

The post Purism Librem 14 Linux laptop is now shipping appeared first on Liliputing.

SpaceX: Nasa trifft mutige Entscheidung in der Mondlanderfrage

Eigentlich ist die Sache einfach. Das Starship von SpaceX war das technisch beste Angebot und hatte den mit Abstand niedrigsten Preis. Dennoch wurde die Wahl zur politischen Mutprobe. Eine Analyse von Frank Wunderlich-Pfeiffer (Nasa, Raumfahrt)

Eigentlich ist die Sache einfach. Das Starship von SpaceX war das technisch beste Angebot und hatte den mit Abstand niedrigsten Preis. Dennoch wurde die Wahl zur politischen Mutprobe. Eine Analyse von Frank Wunderlich-Pfeiffer (Nasa, Raumfahrt)

Protestantismus und Erster Weltkrieg

Ein Lesebuch zur deutschen Religionsgeschichte – Impulse für ein Umlernen heute, “Kirche & Weltkrieg” (Teil 3)

Ein Lesebuch zur deutschen Religionsgeschichte - Impulse für ein Umlernen heute, "Kirche & Weltkrieg" (Teil 3)

At 38.5% vaccinated, US may be running low on people eager for a shot

Some worry the country can’t keep up the current pace of vaccination.

Residents wear protective masks while waiting to be vaccinated at a West Virginia United Health System Covid-19 vaccine clinic in Morgantown, West Virginia, U.S., on Thursday, March 11, 2021.

Enlarge / Residents wear protective masks while waiting to be vaccinated at a West Virginia United Health System Covid-19 vaccine clinic in Morgantown, West Virginia, U.S., on Thursday, March 11, 2021. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

The US logged another 4 million or so vaccinations Friday, bringing the total doses administered in the country over 200 million at the time of writing. Over 127 million adults—38.5 percent of the US population—have received at least one shot. Over 80 million adults—24 percent of the US population—are now fully vaccinated.

The seven-day rolling average of US vaccinations per day is now around 3.35 million and the Biden administration is on track to make its latest goal of 200 million vaccinations within the first 100 days in office.

Even with a current pause in use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, Biden officials expect availability of vaccine to remain strong.

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Reckless DMCA Takedown Purges Legitimate Websites from Google Search

The homepages of several legitimate organizations, including Live Nation Asia and Living Map, have been removed from Google search results. This is the result of an extremely reckless DMCA takedown notice that also targeted NASA, the BBC, and the UK Government.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Over the past few years, copyright holders have asked Google to remove billions of links to allegedly pirated content.

Most of these DMCA notices are pretty accurate but occasionally mistakes are made as well, which can do serious harm.

This week our eye was drawn to a request that RightsHero filed on behalf of the company Vuclip Middle East, which offers on-demand entertainment to emerging markets.

The DMCA notice identifies more than 7,000 URLs that allegedly infringe the copyrights of several movies, including the United Arab Emirates series عود حي, which translates to “Live Oud.”

Error After Error

When we took a closer look, we soon noticed that the takedown notice is nothing short of a trainwreck that involves some high-profile names.

For example, NASA’s live streaming and multimedia pages are targeted. The same is true for Al Jazeera’s live streaming site, as well as the BBC’s page that allows people to stream Radio One.

NASA down

None of these pages are infringing. In fact, the only thing that ties them to the “Live Oud” series is the word ‘live’, which comes back in other reported URLs as well.

BBC and other takedowns

In fact, the takedown notice is filled with these ‘live’ errors. It lists a page from the UK Government which gives advice on living in Austria, a page where Apple provides information on Live Photos, and the ‘Live’ entry in the Cambridge dictionary.

We can go on for a while but the point is clear. This DMCA notice should have never been sent. The good news is that Google caught all the errors we pointed out above. This means that these were not removed from search results.

Homepages Removed

Unfortunately, not all targeted sites were that lucky. We spotted several legitimate websites that had their homepages removed from Google simply because they somehow reference the word “live” or “living.”

This includes the homepage of Live Nation Asia, the Living Architecture website, as well as the homepage of the UK technology company Living Map.

living takedowns

All have been purged from Google, which shows the following message at the bottom of the search results. “In response to a complaint that we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 12 result(s) from this page.”

removed

Needless to say, these are all obvious errors that should have been avoided if there was some human oversight. It also shows how risky replying on ‘automated filters’ and ‘takedown bots’ can be.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.