Month: July 2022

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Mercenary spyware is one of the hardest threats to combat. It targets an infinitesimally small percentage of the world, making it statistically unlikely for most of us to ever see. And yet, because it selects only the most influential individuals (think diplomats, political dissidents, and lawyers) sophisticated malware private companies sell to nation-state governments—many with documented human-rights abuses—has a devastating effect that’s far out of proportion to the small number of people infected.

This puts device and software makers in a bind. How do you build something to protect what’s likely well below 1 percent of your user base against malware built by companies like NSO Group, maker of clickless exploits that instantly convert fully updated iOS and Android devices into sophisticated bugging devices.

No security snake oil here

On Wednesday, Apple previewed an ingenious option it plans to add to its flagship OSes in the coming months to counter the mercenary spyware menace. The company is upfront—almost in your face—that Lockdown mode is an option that will degrade the user experience and is intended for only a small number of users.

Enlarge / Mary Yong Cong, a Florida Department of Agriculture scientist, holds a giant African snail in her Miami lab on July 17, 2015. (credit: Getty | Kerry Sheridan)

Officials in Florida are again battling a highly invasive, extraordinarily destructive giant snail species that also happens to be capable of spreading parasitic worms that invade human brains.

The giant African land snail (GALS)—aka Lissachatina fulica—can grow up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) long and is considered "one of the most invasive pests on the planet," according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. It ravenously feasts on over 500 plant species—including many valuable fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals—while prolifically spawning, pushing out several thousand eggs in its multiyear life span.

In late June, Florida state officials confirmed the presence of GALS on a property in Pasco County, on the west-central coast of the state, just north of Tampa. They have since set up a quarantine zone around the property and began snail-killing pesticide treatments last week.

Enlarge / Virgin Spaceship Unity and Virgin Mothership Eve take to the skies on their first captive carry flight on September 8, 2016. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

Nearly a full year has passed since Virgin Galactic last flew its SpaceShipTwo vehicle into space, but the company says it is progressing toward a more rapid cadence of flights.

On Wednesday, Virgin Galactic announced a deal with Boeing-owned Aurora Flight Sciences to design and manufacture two next-generation motherships. A mothership carries the Virgin Galactic spaceship to an altitude of about 15 km before releasing it, after which the spaceship fires its rocket engine and flies above 90 km.

In a news release, Virgin Galactic said it expects to take delivery of the first of the two new motherships in 2025. The company presently has a single carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, that made its first flight in 2008. Virgin has not said how long this vehicle will be able to fly missions, nor how much refurbishment it will need as it begins flying more frequently.

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  The screen on Apple's new MacBook Air. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

According to a new blog post by the company, Apple will begin taking orders for its newly redesigned 13.6-inch MacBook Air this Friday, July 8, at 5am PDT. The laptop will arrive at buyers' doorsteps and become available for same-day retail purchase one week later on Friday, July 15.

It will be the second Mac to launch with Apple's second-generation M2 system-on-a-chip, which follows 2020's M1 with substantially faster memory bandwidth and graphics and moderately improved CPU performance.

It's the same chip as that found in the 2022 13-inch MacBook Pro, which we recently reviewed. We found that the M2 offered 10 to 15 percent improved CPU performance compared to the M1 and as much as 40 percent faster GPU performance with the 10-core GPU configuration. Unlike the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air defaults to an eight-core GPU configuration with an optional 10-core upgrade.

Enlarge / Sodium metal will react with something in just about any environment it encounters on Earth. Here, a fresh cut shows how extensive its reactions with air are. (credit: Getty Images)

Lithium-based batteries are great, with different electrode chemistries allowing them to be slotted into a variety of use cases. The problem with them has nothing to do with their performance. The challenge we face is that we want to make a lot of batteries; if all of them use lithium, we're undoubtedly going to face supply crunches.

One potential solution to that is to simply replace the lithium with a different ion. Alternative batteries may not be as good as lithium variants in all the different places we currently use them. They just have to be good enough at one task to take away some of the need to stick lithium everywhere.

That's the reasoning behind some interest in sodium-based batteries. Sodium is very plentiful and correspondingly cheap and can be made to behave a bit like lithium when used in a battery. But sodium batteries always carry risks associated with sodium's tendency to react explosively. But a recently developed solid electrolyte suggests that at least some of the challenges associated with sodium could be overcome.