Month: September 2023

Enlarge / Varda's reentry capsule measures nearly 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter, and will jettison from its Rocket Lab-built carrier spacecraft when the mission is ready to return to Earth. (credit: Varda Space Industries)

A first-of-its-kind commercial spacecraft owned by an in-space manufacturing startup called Varda Space Industries has been in orbit two months longer than originally planned, waiting for government approval to return to Earth with a cache of pharmaceutical specimens.

Varda's satellite launched on June 12 for what was originally supposed to be a month-long mission to demonstrate the company's technology for producing commercial materials, mainly pharmaceuticals, inside a recoverable capsule designed to return the products to Earth for laboratory analysis and eventual commercial exploitation.

However, the recovery of Varda's capsule is on hold after the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force recently declined to give Varda approval to land its spacecraft in a remote part of Utah. TechCrunch first reported the FAA turned down Varda's application for a commercial reentry license.

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On Wednesday, OpenAI announced DALL-E 3, the latest version of its AI image synthesis model that features full integration with ChatGPT. DALL-E 3 renders images by closely following complex descriptions and handling in-image text generation (such as labels and signs), which challenged earlier models. Currently in research preview, it will be available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers in early October.

Like its predecessor, DALLE-3 is a text-to-image generator that creates novel images based on written descriptions called prompts. Although OpenAI released no technical details about DALL-E 3, the AI model at the heart of previous versions of DALL-E was trained on millions of images created by human artists and photographers, some of them licensed from stock websites like Shutterstock. It's likely DALL-E 3 follows this same formula, but with new training techniques and more computational training time.

Judging by the samples provided by OpenAI on its promotional blog, DALL-E 3 appears to be a radically more capable image synthesis model than anything else available in terms of following prompts. While OpenAI's examples have been cherry-picked for their effectiveness, they appear to follow the prompt instructions faithfully and convincingly render objects with minimal deformations. Compared to DALL-E 2, OpenAI says that DALL-E 3 refines small details like hands more effectively, creating engaging images by default with "no hacks or prompt engineering required."

(credit: Sean Nguyen)

The LTS (long-term support) period for the Linux kernel is being cut down. In 2017, the kernel jumped from two years of support to six. Now, six years later, it turns out that's a lot of work. ZDNet reports that at the Open Source Summit Europe this week (videos will be out in a few weeks), Linux Weekly News executive editor Jonathan Corbet announced the Linux kernel will return to two years of LTS support.

The plan to cut back down to two years isn't instant. The Linux community is still honoring the current end-of-life timelines, so 6.1, 5.15, 5.10, 5.4, 4.19, and 4.14 are still six years, but new kernels will only get two years. Even this six-year window was supposed to be an optional thing when it started, with the release page FAQ saying, "Each new longterm kernel usually starts with only a 2-year projected EOL that can be extended further if there is enough interest from the industry at large to help support it for a longer period of time." The reality was that everything received a six-year life span, and now that will no longer be the case.

Corbet cited a mix of lack of use and a lack of support for why Linux is cutting back on LTS kernels. Corbet says, "There's really no point to maintaining [old kernels] for that long because people are not using them." The other big problem is the burnout from maintainers, which are often unpaid and could use a lot more support from the billion-dollar companies that benefit from using Linux.

Enlarge / An ant infected by the lancet liver fluke climbs up and clamps its powerful jaws onto the top of a blade of grass, making it more likely to be eaten by grazers such as cattle and deer. (credit: University of Copenhagen)

Parasites that control and alter the behavior of their hosts are well-known in nature. Most notably, there is a family of zombifying parasitic fungi called Cordyceps—more than 400 different species, each targeting a particular insect species, whether it be ants, dragonflies, cockroaches, aphids, or beetles. In fact, Cordyceps inspired the premise of The Last of Us game and subsequent TV series. And earlier this month we reported on a study of how a parasitic worm (trematode) targets a particular species of marsh-dwelling brown shrimp (amphipod), turning the shrimp an orange hue and altering the host shrimp's behavior.

Then there's the lancet liver fluke, whose complicated life cycle relies on successfully invading successive hosts: snails, ants, and grazing mammals. (Some liver flukes have also been known to infect the occasional unfortunate human.) Scientists at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark have discovered that the way the liver fluke "zombifies" ants to alter their behavior incorporates a kind of "on/off" switch that, in turn, is dependent on temperature. The researcherse described their findings in a recent paper published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

"Historically, parasites have never really been focused on that much, despite there being scientific sources which say that parasitism is the most widespread life form," said co-author Brian Lund Fredensborg. "This is in part due to the fact that parasites are quite difficult to study. Nevertheless, the hidden world of parasites forms a significant part of biodiversity, and by changing the host's behavior, they can help determine who eats what in nature. That's why they're important for us to understand."

Enlarge / A T-Mobile sign on a storefront on August 24, 2023 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Anna Moneymaker )

A T-Mobile mistake during an overnight technology update resulted in some customers seeing the private information of other users today. T-Mobile users posting on social media said they saw other customers' billing details instead of their own during the incident that reportedly lasted for three hours or so this morning.

When contacted by Ars today, T-Mobile confirmed the problem and said it was caused by a faulty update. "There was no cyberattack or breach at T-Mobile," a company spokesperson said. "This was a temporary system glitch related to a planned overnight technology update involving limited account information for fewer than 100 customers, which was quickly resolved."

As The Verge wrote, T-Mobile customers "reported that they're able to see other users' account data—including their current credit balance, purchase history, credit card information, and home address—when signing into their own T-Mobile accounts."