Month: July 2023

Enlarge / An artist's illustration of NASA's two Janus spacecraft as they would have appeared in space. (credit: Lockheed Martin)

Two small spacecraft should have now been cruising through the Solar System on the way to study unexplored asteroids, but after several years of development and nearly $50 million in expenditures, NASA announced Tuesday the probes will remain locked inside a Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado.

That’s because the mission, called Janus, was supposed to launch last year as a piggyback payload on the same rocket with NASA’s much larger Psyche spacecraft, which will fly to a 140-mile-wide (225-kilometer) metal-rich asteroid—also named Psyche—for more than two years of close-up observations. Problems with software testing on the Psyche spacecraft prompted NASA managers to delay the launch by more than a year.

An independent review board set up to analyze the reasons for the Psyche launch delay identified issues with the spacecraft’s software and weaknesses in the plan to test the software before Psyche’s launch. Digging deeper, the review panel determined that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Psyche mission, was encumbered by staffing and workforce problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enlarge / Ukrainian medics of the battalion "Da Vinci Wolves" and "Ulf" paramedical unit transfer a wounded Ukrainian soldier to a stabilization point on the Bakhmut front as the Russia-Ukraine war continues on April 6, 2023. (credit: Getty | Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency)

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is fueling a dangerous rise in bacterial drug resistance—an alarming reality made clear by a recent case report of an injured Ukrainian soldier who became infected with six different extensively drug-resistant bacteria, one of which was resistant to every antibiotic tested.

Health experts are sounding the alarm that the nearly unbeatable germs will likely spread beyond the war-torn country's borders. "Given the forced migration of the population, multidrug resistance of wound pathogens is now a problem not only for Ukraine but also for healthcare systems around the world, especially in the EU," Ukrainian scientists and doctors wrote in a recent letter in the Irish Journal of Medical Scientists.

The rise of antibiotic resistance is a long-standing, critical threat to global public health. In 2019, antimicrobial resistance was directly responsible for an estimated 1.27 million deaths worldwide and linked to an estimated 4.95 million total, according to an analysis published last year in the Lancet.

In April, we got our first look at the new Disney+ series Star Wars: Ahsoka with the release of a teaser during Star Wars Celebration Day in London. It was tantalizing but a bit light on details. Now we've got a full-length trailer that reunites several fan favorites and also gives us our first peek at the live-action version of Grand Admiral Thrawn, whose rumored return will fuel much of the plot for Ahsoka.

(Some spoilers for Star Wars: Rebels below.)

As previously reported, the Jedi Padawan of Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka, was introduced as a supporting character in 2008's animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the subsequent animated series (voiced by Ashley Eckstein). The character returned in the sequel series Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018) as a member of the Rebel Alliance, operating under the codename Fulcrum, and made numerous other cameo appearances in the extended Star Wars universe. Rosario Dawson's live-action version made her debut in The Mandalorian's second season. We last saw Ahsoka briefly in The Book of Boba Fett when she passed on a gift of chain mail to Grogu after warning Mando/Din Djarin that his presence would distract from Grogu's Jedi training. We all know how that turned out: Din and Grogu reunited and went on to share even more adventures in The Mandalorian S3.

Enlarge / A stack of Intel's NUC mini PCs. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Since 2012, Intel has designed and sold its own lineup of mini PCs. The Next Unit of Computing series (NUC— rhymes with yuck—was always a weird name) was always most closely associated with a series of Mac mini-like desktops, but over the years, it grew to encompass compact workstations and gaming systems as well as mini servers with multiple Ethernet ports.

But Intel is apparently throwing in the towel on the NUC, according to a statement given to The Verge earlier today.

Intel spokesperson Mark Walton said that Intel had "decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth." This statement leaves some wiggle room—Intel could still work with partners to bring NUCs or NUC-like products to market—but it seems like the days of Intel designing its own desktop computers are over.

Enlarge / Product photography of the Google Glass wearable. (credit: Google)

Google's head of operating system and software platforms for augmented and mixed reality devices, Mark Lucovsky, has left the company after months of turmoil for the company's mixed reality projects and staff. He publicly announced his departure in a tweet on Monday:

I have decided to step away from my role at Google, where I was Senior Director of Engineering, responsible for OS and Software Platform for AR and XR devices. The recent changes in AR leadership and Google’s unstable commitment and vision have weighed heavily on my decision.

It's unclear exactly which leadership changes he's referring to, but it seems possible or even likely that he's talking about the recent departure of Clay Bavor, who had led Google's XR work since 2015. Bavor left the company in March of this year.

Google was one of the pioneers of mass-market AR when it piloted Google Glass with developers in 2013, but things have been rocky of late. The company killed Glass, brought it back as an enterprise-only product, then killed it again. Rumors swirled that the tech giant was working on a new AR product called Project Iris, but it was reportedly canceled this year amidst a wave of company layoffs.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Hackers are using open source software that’s popular with video game cheaters to allow their Windows-based malware to bypass restrictions Microsoft put in place to prevent such infections from occurring.

The software comes in the form of two software tools that are available on GitHub. Cheaters use them to digitally sign malicious system drivers so they can modify video games in ways that give the player an unfair advantage. The drivers clear the considerable hurdle required for the cheat code to run inside the Windows kernel, the fortified layer of the operating system reserved for the most critical and sensitive functions.

Researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team said Tuesday that multiple Chinese-speaking threat groups have repurposed the tools—one called HookSignTool and the other FuckCertVerifyTimeValidity. Instead of using the kernel access for cheating, the threat actors use it to give their malware capabilities it wouldn’t otherwise have.

Enlarge (credit: Anthropic)

On Tuesday, Anthropic introduced Claude 2, a large language model (LLM) similar to ChatGPT that can craft code, analyze text, and write compositions. Unlike the original version of Claude launched in March, users can try Claude 2 for free on a new beta website. It's also available as a commercial API for developers.

Anthropic says that Claude is designed to simulate a conversation with a helpful colleague or personal assistant and that the new version addresses feedback from users of the previous model: "We have heard from our users that Claude is easy to converse with, clearly explains its thinking, is less likely to produce harmful outputs, and has a longer memory."

Anthropic claims that Claude 2 demonstrates advancements in three key areas: coding, math, and reasoning. "Our latest model scored 76.5% on the multiple choice section of the Bar exam, up from 73.0% with Claude 1.3," they write. "When compared to college students applying to graduate school, Claude 2 scores above the 90th percentile on the GRE reading and writing exams, and similarly to the median applicant on quantitative reasoning."