Month: September 2022

Enlarge / What's this? An "Engine Type" option? (credit: Google)

Google Maps has pointed out "eco-friendly" routes for a while now. If you have a gas-powered car, the logic is something like the "smoothest" ride with the least stops and starts will have the best fuel efficiency. But what if you don't have a gas guzzler? Electric vehicles use the least power in basically the opposite situation: low-speed stop-and-go traffic.

Google Maps' newest feature will let you pick your car's engine type, with "Gas," "Diesel," "Electric," and "Hybrid" available as options for the eco-route planning to consider. Google says "in the coming weeks," the feature will roll out to the US, Europe, and Canada. Europe is also getting its first taste of Google Maps eco-routing, starting today.

Efficient routes get this green leaf on the routing preview screen. (credit: Google)

Google says picking an engine type will allow it to "get the best route and most accurate fuel or energy efficiency estimates." The company says that "this technology is made possible thanks to insights from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and data from the European Environment Agency. By pairing this information with Google Maps driving trends, we were able to develop advanced machine learning models trained on the most popular engine types in a given region."

Enlarge / SEM Micrograph of a tardigrade, more commonly known as a water bear or "moss piglet." (credit: Cultura RM Exclusive/Gregory S. Paulson/Getty Images)

Tardigrades are micro-animals that can survive in the harshest conditions: extreme pressure, extreme temperature, radiation, dehydration, starvation—even exposure to the vacuum of outer space. Scientists at the University of Tokyo have now identified the mechanism to explain how tardigrades can survive extreme dehydration in particular, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS Biology—a protein that forms a protective gel-like network to protect dried-out cells.

As we've reported previously, the creatures were first described by German zoologist Johann Goeze in 1773. They were dubbed tardigrada ("slow steppers" or "slow walkers") four years later by Lazzaro Spallanzani, an Italian biologist. That's because tardigrades tend to lumber along like a bear. Since they can survive almost anywhere, they can be found in lots of places: deep-sea trenches, salt and freshwater sediments, tropical rain forests, the Antarctic, mud volcanoes, sand dunes, beaches, and lichen and moss. (Another name for them is "moss piglets.")

When their moist habitat dries up, however, tardigrades go into a state known as "tun"—a kind of suspended animation, which the animals can remain in for as long as 10 years. When water begins to flow again, water bears absorb it to rehydrate and return to life. They're not technically members of the extremophile class of organisms since they don't so much thrive in extreme conditions as endure; technically, they belong to the class of extremotolerant organisms. But their hardiness makes tardigrades a favorite research subject for scientists.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Network hardware-maker QNAP is urging customers to update their network-attached storage devices immediately to protect them from a new wave of ongoing ransomware attacks that can destroy terabytes of data in a single stroke.

Singapore-based QNAP said recently that it has identified a new campaign from a ransomware group known as DeadBolt. The attacks take aim at QNAP NAS devices that use a proprietary feature known as Photo Station. The advisory instructs customers to update their firmware, suggesting there is a vulnerability that’s under exploit, but the company makes no explicit mention of a CVE designation that security professionals use to track such security flaws.

“To protect your NAS from the DeadBolt ransomware, QNAP strongly recommends securing your QNAP NAS devices and routers by following these instructions,” company officials wrote:

Enlarge (credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Contributor | AFP)

Since 2009, the anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers has grown more extreme, preparing for civil war by recruiting law enforcement and military into local chapters nationwide.

As reports tracked a string of violent events leading up to Oath Keepers' involvement in the Capitol riots, it remained difficult for outsiders to discern just how effective the nonprofit group's recruitment really was at targeting people with real power. Then in fall 2021, the Distributed Denial of Secrets published a massive data leak, revealing names and addresses of 38,000 Oath Keepers and donors. Sorting through the data, the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism (COE) saw an opportunity to cross-reference public data on listed members and map out approximately how far Oath Keepers has come in furthering its mission to establish a secure "foothold in mainstream seats of power" throughout the US.

In a report published this week, COE identified 373 people in the Oath Keepers database believed to be active law enforcement officers, 117 people who seem to be currently serving in the military, and 81 public officials who either currently hold or are running for public office in 2022.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—iOS 16, the next major annual software update for the iPhone, arrives for supported devices on September 12, Apple announced today. The update didn't get a release date during Apple's big keynote, but shortly afterward, the iOS 16 website was updated with release information. The iPhone 8 and newer devices will be supported.

The biggest change in iOS 16 is arguably a total overhaul of the lock screen, which is now much more customizable than it was in iOS 15 and before. Users will be able to add animated wallpapers and custom interactive widgets to several swappable, custom lock screens. Lock screens will also be able to change based on the current Focus mode on the iPhone, building on another recent iOS feature.

The list of supported devices. (credit: Apple)

Further, the lock screen will get a new feature called Live Activities, which will let you see updates on currently unfolding events like sports games or the news without swiping past the lock screen to interact with apps or widgets.

Enlarge / The iPhone 14 Pro includes a pill-shaped cutout that resizes dynamically as you use the phone. (credit: Apple)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple's new flagship phones have been revealed, and critics of the iPhone's design since 2017 will be happy to see that the company has taken a new approach to the camera and sensor notch at the top of the screen.

Instead of a notch descending from the top of the display, the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max use a pill-shaped cutout several pixels below the bottom to house the selfie camera, 3D sensor, and more. Called the "dynamic island," it takes up less of the screen than the notch by default, but it can resize itself to show different status indicators and other UI elements, blurring the line between the cutout and the rest of the screen. Tapping the dynamic island can also expand it to show more controls, or take you to a music or calling apps.

The "Dynamic Island" resizes itself based on how you're using the phone. (credit: Apple)

The new iPhone's screen sizes are staying the same, at 6.1 and 6.7-inches, but they have a few all-new features (in addition to returning ones, like the 120Hz Pro Motion feature). The screens have a maximum brightness of 2000 nits, twice the peak brightness of the iPhone 13 Pro display. And Apple has also added an Apple Watch-esque "always-on" display features that can display the clock, iOS 16's new widgets, and a few other things when your phone isn't being actively used. The display's refresh rate can drop as low as 1Hz when you're not interacting with it, to save battery life.