Month: November 2022

Enlarge / The mummified corpse of Ötzi the Iceman, discovered in 1991. (credit: Leopold Nekula/Sygma/Getty Images)

In 1991, a group of hikers found the mummified remains of Ötzi the Iceman emerging from a melting glacier. The popular interpretation—given the extraordinary preservation of the body—is that Ötzi fled from the valley after being attacked and froze to death in the gully where his mummified remains were found. His body and the tools he brought with him were quickly buried beneath the ice and remained frozen under a moving glacier for the next 5,300 years. The gully served as a kind of time capsule, protecting the remains from damage by the glacier.

But a new paper published in the journal The Holocene challenges that interpretation, suggesting that the Ötzi died elsewhere on the mountain and that normal environmental changes gradually moved his remains down into the gully. Further, for the first 1,500 years after his death, Ötzi's remains likely thawed and refroze at least once and quite possibly several times. That means it's much more likely that another ice mummy will be discovered, since no extraordinary circumstances are required to explain Ötzi's preservation.

Archaeologists have spent the last 30 years studying the wealth of information about Copper Age life that Ötzi brought with him into the present. Studies have examined his genome, hskeleton, last meals, tattoos, and the microbes that lived in his gut. For instance, in 2016, scientists used DNA sequencing to identify how Ötzi's clothing was made and found that most of it was made from domesticated cattle, goats, and sheep, although his hat was made from brown bear hide and his quiver from a wild roe deer.

Enlarge / Simone Gold speaking with attendees at the 2020 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. (credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0))

Scandal has reached a full boil at America's Frontline Doctors—the right-wing pseudo-medical group notorious for peddling bogus COVID-19 treatments and fear mongering over vaccines and other safe, effective health measures.

The scandal has split the group—aka AFLDS—into warring factions, with its prominent founder, Simone Gold, accused of a slew of wrongdoing, including using the charity group's funds to buy a $3.6 million mansion for herself and her boyfriend. She's also accused of staging a hostile coup of the organization in the weeks since her release from federal prison for her role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, which the group has defended.

The coup has left employees locked out of email accounts and other resources, according to a lawsuit filed by AFLDS against Gold on November 4. The lawsuit also claims Gold seized control of the group's bank accounts, which reportedly contain at least $7.3 million. For now, it appears Gold also has control over the AFLDS website, which has been pumping out fawning and indignant press releases on her behalf. It's in an extraordinarily sordid state, even for the ignoble group.

• 

  You'll be prompted to consider this option if you try to contact emergency services but are unable to. [credit: Apple ]

As previously promised, Apple's Emergency SOS-via-satellite service launched in the US and Canada on Tuesday. The service allows owners of Apple's newest iPhones to contact emergency services or share their location and status with emergency contacts via satellite when they are in a place where standard cellular services are not available.

Emergency SOS via satellite works on all of Apple's most recent flagship iPhone models: iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max. Support for it was added in a recent iOS update, so no additional downloads are necessary.

When you initiate Emergency SOS via satellite, you'll be presented with a multiple-choice questionnaire that attempts to glean critical information about your situation.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Nation-state hackers based in China recently infected a certificate authority and several government and defense agencies with a potent malware cocktail for burrowing inside a network and stealing sensitive information, researchers said on Tuesday.

The successful compromise of the unnamed certificate authority is potentially serious, because these entities are trusted by browsers and operating systems to certify the identities responsible for a particular server or app. In the event the hackers obtained control of the organization’s infrastructure, they could use it to digitally sign their malware to make it more easily slip past endpoint protections. They might also be able to cryptographically impersonate trusted websites or intercept encrypted data.

While the researchers who discovered the breach found no evidence the certificate infrastructure had been compromised, they said that this campaign was only the latest by a group they call Billbug, which has a documented history of noteworthy hacks dating back to at least 2009.

Enlarge / NASA's rocket has been rolled out to the launch pad in Florida four times now this year. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—After writing about NASA's Space Launch System rocket for a dozen years—certainly well into the hundreds of thousands of words—I've run out of things to say about the big, orange booster.

Well, almost. What I would like to say is that it is time, beyond time really, for this mission to fly.

As NASA has sought to build public interest in the Artemis program and spur momentum for the Artemis I launch of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, the space agency has increasingly used the slogan, "We are going."

Enlarge / NASA's rocket has been rolled out to the launch pad in Florida four times now this year. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—After writing about NASA's Space Launch System rocket for a dozen years—certainly well into the hundreds of thousands of words—I've run out of things to say about the big, orange booster.

Well, almost. What I would like to say is that it is time, beyond time really, for this mission to fly.

As NASA has sought to build public interest in the Artemis program and spur momentum for the Artemis I launch of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, the space agency has increasingly used the slogan, "We are going."