Month: September 2022

Enlarge / Artist's impression of low Earth-orbit satellites like those launched by SpaceX and OneWeb. (credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld)

The Federal Communications Commission has a plan to minimize space junk by requiring low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to be disposed no more than five years after being taken out of service.

A proposal released yesterday by FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel would adopt "a first-ever rule requiring non-geostationary satellite operators to deorbit their satellites after the end of their operations to minimize the risk of collisions that would create debris." It's scheduled for an FCC vote on September 29.

The five-year rule would be legally binding, unlike the current 25-year standard that's based on a NASA recommendation proposed in the 1990s.

Enlarge / Corsair K100 Air. (credit: Corsair)

There are people who prefer a more compact keyboard, be it for portability, a preferred aesthetic, or saving space. There are also those who prefer keyboards with as many keys as possible. We're not just talking about full-size keyboards with numpads. We're talking about the kind of extra programmable keys that can store macros, launch a favored app, or input a complex string of characters with a press. Corsair's K100 Air, in a way, seeks to address both groups. The mechanical keyboard has a small bank of macro keys inside an incredibly thin 0.4-inch (11 mm) thick frame.

The K100 Air manages to be just 0.4 inches at its thinnest point, according to Corsair's announcement Thursday, with Cherry's MX Ultra Low Profile mechanical switches. The keyboard will use the clicky version of the switch, which has 1.8 mm of travel and actuates at 0.8 mm with 65 g of force.

A profile view. (credit: Corsair)

Even by low-profile standards, that is some shallow typing. For comparison, the MX Low Profile Red switches in keyboards like the Das KeyBoard MacTigr we recently reviewed and Razer's DeathStalker V2 Pro have 3.2 mm total travel, 1.2 mm pretravel, and actuate at 45 g of force. Those keyboards are thicker, naturally, at 1.06 inches and 1 inch tall, respectively. And full-height Cherry MX Blue switches are specced at 4 mm/2.2 mm/60.

Enlarge (credit: JOSH EDELSON / Contributor | AFP)

After the Federal Trade Commission began investigating a massive Uber data breach in 2016, the tech company was hit with another breach that was seemingly just as concerning. Rather than report the second data breach to the FTC and risk further public embarrassment, then-Uber security chief Joe Sullivan consulted with lawyers and then negotiated with the hackers. He allegedly set up a deal under which Uber paid the hackers a $100,000 "bug bounty" to delete the data, then pretended the data breach was part of a planned test of Uber's security and had the hackers sign a nondisclosure agreement.

Now, Sullivan faces criminal obstruction charges, and The Wall Street Journal reports that his case has raised alarms for tech company security chiefs everywhere, who think Sullivan shouldn't be taking the fall for Uber. One former security chief from AT&T, Edward Amoroso, told the Journal that "many top security officers believe" that Sullivan "did nothing wrong."

Amoroso argued that by criminalizing reporting decisions of security chiefs like Sullivan, the US Department of Justice risks setting back the entire security profession. He said the debate was best left up to security communities, not a court, to decide who is responsible. Ars couldn't immediately reach Amoroso for additional comment.

Enlarge / An Android Go phone, though it should be noted that YouTube Go is dead as of last month. (credit: Google)

Android 13 has recently hit the streets, and with it, Google is raising the minimum requirements for Android phones. Google's latest blog post announced that the minimum amount of RAM for Android Go, the low-end version of Android, is now 2GB for Android 13, whereas previously, it was 1GB. Esper's Mishaal Rahman and Google Product Expert Jason Bayton also claim the minimum storage requirements have been bumped up to 16GB, though Google doesn't seem to have publicly documented this anywhere.

The increase in system requirements means any phone that doesn't meet the minimum specs won't be able to update to Android 13. New phones launching with Android 13 will need to meet the minimum requirements to be eligible for Play Store licensing, though launching with an older version of Android (with lower requirements) will still be an option for a while. Technically, anyone can grab the Android source code and build anything with it, but if you want to license the Google apps and have access to the Google-trademarked brand "Android," you'll need to comply with Google's rules.

Android system requirements over the years. (credit: Google)

Android Go is a stripped-down version of Android that has some of the more RAM-intensive features turned off, and it comes with a suite of specially made, lightweight "Go" apps. Google's requirements won't affect the US market much—even devices like this dirt cheap $30 Walmart phone have 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Android Go's requirements are mostly about keeping OEMs in the developing world in line, where it's still possible to find devices with 1GB of RAM. Google says that today, more than 250 million people are running Android Go.

Enlarge / A console fit for a queen? (credit: Console Variations)

The 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II, which ended yesterday with her death, will be remembered for the many historical events and world figures with which it intersected. Among fans of video game marginalia, it will also be remembered for a marketing stunt from a now-defunct video game publisher that sent a gold-plated Wii to Her Majesty.

The story of the queen's connection to the Nintendo console begins in early 2008, when the UK tabloid Sunday People published a lightly sourced story alleging that "the gadget-loving Queen has become hooked on Prince William's new Nintendo Wii games console."

An unnamed "palace source" supposedly told the paper that the queen "begged to join in" after seeing the then-25-year-old William play with his Christmas gift (from then-girlfriend Kate Middleton) at Sandringham House. The then-81-year-old monarch reportedly had "hand-eye coordination [that] was as good as somebody half her age" (we wonder what her Wii Fit age would have been) and "showed all the signs of becoming a Nintendo addict."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

It's long been a mystery why one of the most basic human experiences—feeling physical pain—fluctuates in intensity throughout the day. Since the early days of medicine, doctors and patients have noticed that many types of pain tend to get worse at night. Most research so far has tried to link mounting nighttime pain to sleep deprivation or disrupted sleep, but with limited success.

In a recently published study, scientists led by Claude Gronfier at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre in France have finally shed light on changing pain sensitivity, suggesting that our circadian clock strongly shapes these shifts, with a characteristic peak and trough of intensity at different times of day.

Even people who can't dance have internal rhythms thrumming through every system in their body. Known as circadian rhythms, these biological processes tune their activity to rise and fall at precise times across the day, driven by the body's internal clock. They influence pretty much every bodily system, exerting control over "almost all aspects of our physiology and behavior," says Lance Kriegsfeld, a circadian biologist at the University of California, Berkeley.