Month: March 2022

Enlarge / Boxes of Starlink terminals in Ukraine seen in a picture posted by Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. (credit: Mykhailo Fedorov)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk yesterday warned that Starlink user terminals in Ukraine could be targeted by Russia and advised users to take precautions. "Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution," Musk tweeted.

When asked for specific advice, Musk said people in Ukraine should turn Starlink on only when it's needed, place the antenna "as far away from people as possible," and "place light camouflage over [the] antenna to avoid visual detection." A thin layer of spray paint would work if there are no metal particles in the paint, he wrote.

One Twitter user asked Musk if Starlink could face a cyberattack from Russia similar to the one that affected Viasat satellite service. Musk responded, "Almost all Viasat Ukraine user terminals were rendered permanently unusable by a Russian cyberattack on day of invasion, so... yes."

Enlarge (credit: Pramote Polyamate)

Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center announced the results of polling that asked the US public its thoughts on how to address climate change. While the usual partisan split was apparent, the survey highlights an even larger challenge that policymakers will face: the US public supports contradictory things when it comes to climate policy.

Nearly 70 percent of the public favored taking steps toward the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. Yet less than a third support transitioning off fossil fuels.

What we want vs. how we get there

The survey was very large, having reached over 10,000 US adults at the end of January. That's enough to ensure that different groups within the population are well represented. For most questions, Pew divides up the US populace into conservative Republicans, moderate Republicans, moderate Democrats, and liberal Democrats.

All screens in this article were captured from a GZDoom instance running "One Humanity," currently on sale for €5 with all proceeds going to charity. (Yes, I opted for IDDQD. You'll have to wait for another day to see my Nightmare difficulty speedrun without cheats.) (credit: John Romero)

In a surprise treat for '90s first-person shooter fans, Doom series co-creator John Romero emerged this week with a brand-new map for the 1994 classic Doom II. While it's priced somewhat high for this kind of content—€5 for a single old-school map—there's a good reason.

Romero makes clear in the release's template file that this WAD's sale is intended to "raise funds to support the Ukrainian people." It can be purchased at his personal shop site, where he says all proceeds will go toward two humanitarian organizations: the Ukrainian Red Cross and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund. (On the non-charity front, Romero's store also sells a bunch of Doom-era goodies.)

Romero makes clear pretty early on that we're in Doom II territory, not Doom 1. (credit: John Romero)

One day after its Wednesday launch, the download was updated to add much of the same ReadMe information found in his 2019 Doom 1 map pack, Sigil, that explains to newcomers how to easily get the new map working in either Windows or MacOS. (As I found in my own casual testing, the same instructions do not work on Steam Deck, whose semi-closed Arch Linux implementation currently requires a dive into its command line.) To play Romero's new map, "One Humanity," you'll need an original retail Doom II installation (which comes as part of the newest Doom II version on Steam and GOG), on top of which you can apply a source port like GZDoom.

Enlarge / The Galaxy S22 Ultra. It has a pen. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung has responded to reports that it is throttling thousands of apps on the Galaxy line of smartphones.

With the launch of the Galaxy S22, users found the packed-in "Game Optimizing Service" contained a list of approximately 10,000 apps that were being throttled. This list is basically every popular, well-known app you can think of, covering everything from games to core Samsung apps like the home screen. The only apps the service seemingly didn't target were benchmark apps, which means benchmark ratings are inaccurately reporting how much power the most-used apps have access to. Modifying a benchmark app like Geekbench to be disguised as a normal app leads to CPU scores dropping as much as 46 percent. The new Galaxy S22 isn't the only smartphone with this throttling feature; it goes back as far as the Galaxy S10.

Samsung gave a statement to The Verge today, saying, "We value the feedback we receive about our products and after careful consideration, we plan to roll out a software update soon so users can control the performance while running game apps." The spokesperson continued, “The Game Optimizing Service (GOS) has been designed to help game apps achieve a great performance while managing device temperature effectively. GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps."

Enlarge / A rat drinks water in a back alley in the Park View neighborhood near a construction site on Saturday, September 10, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post)

Many people might already think of the nation's capital as a political rat's nest, teeming with rat-related features, like underground networks and crowded backrooms where any faint smell of betrayal could send lawmakers scurrying. But Washington, DC, is also a den of literal rats. And it's creating a concerning risk of viral spillover for residents.

In a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DC health officials ratted out the first two known cases of hantavirus spillover in the city. The virus festers quietly in rats and other rodent populations, but in humans it can cause potentially deadly respiratory and hemorrhagic diseases. Humans pick up the infection by direct contact with rodent urine or nest dust or by breathing in aerosolized viral particles from urine, droppings, or saliva. There's also the possibility that the virus can spread from rat bites, but this is less common. Once in a human, the virus almost never jumps from human to human.

Fortunately for DC residents, the type of hantavirus found in the city is one of the milder types: an "Old World" hantavirus called the Seoul virus. Old World hantaviruses cause a disease called Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome. HFRS can start out like a generic infection with fever, chills, nausea, and headache. But it can progress to low blood pressure, acute shock, vascular leakage, and acute kidney failure, the CDC notes. The severity of HFRS varies by which hantavirus you catch, but fatality rates can reach up to 15 percent. The Seoul virus is one of the milder forms, with a fatality rate of only about 1 percent. As such, in both of the cases reported by DC health officials, the infected individuals recovered.

Enlarge / University of Toledo physicist Scott Lee came up with the exercise to inspire undergrads in his introductory physics course. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

The early Jurassic dinosaurs known as Dilophosaurus proved to be scene stealers in the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park, taking out a full-grown man who thought they were just cute, harmless critters—right until they disabled him by spitting venom into his eyes. But how would Dilophosaurus fare in a different kind of contest: racing the 100-meter dash against eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt? It wouldn't be much of a fight—Bolt would easily beat the 900-pound beast by a good two seconds.

That's the conclusion of physicist Scott Lee of the University of Toledo, based on a physics exercise he developed for his undergraduate students in introductory physics. Lee has loved dinosaurs ever since he was a kid, when he would hunt for fossils with his family, and he has brought that love into the classroom. "One big issue in physics education is to generate student enthusiasm for the course material," he said. "These dinosaur problems really spark a lot of interest among the students." He described his pedagogical process in a new paper published in The Physics Teacher.

Bolt made his mark on history in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, when he broke his own world record in the 100-meter final, blazing past the competition to win the gold with a time of 9.69 seconds. He was so far ahead of the pack—the silver medalist finished in 9.89 seconds—that Bolt visibly slowed down in celebration right at the finish. Had he kept running at full speed, Bolt would have finished in 9.52 seconds, his coach estimated. This conclusion was borne out by an analysis by physicists at the University of Oslo, whose calculations predicted a finish in about 9.55 seconds.