Month: July 2024

Enlarge / Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on final approach to the International Space Station last month. (credit: NASA)

Before clearing Boeing's Starliner crew capsule to depart the International Space Station and head for Earth, NASA managers want to ensure the spacecraft's problematic control thrusters can help guide the ship's two-person crew home.

The two astronauts who launched June 5 on the Starliner spacecraft's first crew test flight agree, although they said Wednesday that they're comfortable with flying the capsule back to Earth if there's any emergency that might require evacuation of the space station.

Five of the 28 reaction control system thrusters on Starliner's service module dropped offline as the spacecraft approached the space station last month. Starliner's flight software disabled the five control jets when they started overheating and losing thrust. Four of the thrusters were later recovered, although some couldn't reach their full power levels as Starliner came in for docking. In mid-June, the Starliner astronauts hot-fired the thrusters again, and their thrust levels were closer to normal.

Enlarge / Vampire Survivors on the iPhone. It doesn't look like much, but it sure is addictive. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple recently announced new games coming to Apple Arcade, its gaming subscription service for iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, and Vision Pro headsets. The headlining title is Vampire Survivors, an indie hit that combined the gameplay of bullet hell shooters and the addictive quality of clickers to become a mega sensation two years ago. Also coming is Temple Run: Legends, an updated take on the popular game from 2011.

Vampire Survivors was already available on the App Store, but it was ad-supported, with the option to spend money in-app to get additional content. The Apple Arcade version, dubbed Vampire Survivors+, is more akin to the PC or Xbox versions that don't have ads. Both paid expansions will be included at no additional charge.

Meanwhile, Temple Run: Legends is a completely new game (not just a remake of the original Temple Run) that bucks the "endless runner" genre label by breaking its gameplay into individual levels—though there will be some kind of optional endless mode, too.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Threat actors carried out zero-day attacks that targeted Windows users with malware for more than a year before Microsoft fixed the vulnerability that made them possible, researchers said Tuesday.

The vulnerability, present in both Windows 10 and 11, causes devices to open Internet Explorer, a legacy browser that Microsoft decommissioned in 2022 after its aging code base made it increasingly susceptible to exploits. Following the move, Windows made it difficult, if not impossible, for normal actions to open the browser, which was first introduced in the mid-1990s.

Tricks old and new

Malicious code that exploits the vulnerability dates back to at least January 2023 and was circulating as recently as May this year, according to the researchers who discovered the vulnerability and reported it to Microsoft. The company fixed the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-CVE-38112, on Tuesday as part of its monthly patch release program. The vulnerability, which resided in the MSHTML engine of Windows, carried a severity rating of 7.0 out of 10.

Enlarge (credit: master1305 | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

A Spanish youth court has sentenced 15 minors to one year of probation after spreading AI-generated nude images of female classmates in two WhatsApp groups.

The minors were charged with 20 counts of creating child sex abuse images and 20 counts of offenses against their victims’ moral integrity. In addition to probation, the teens will also be required to attend classes on gender and equality, as well as on the "responsible use of information and communication technologies," a press release from the Juvenile Court of Badajoz said.

Many of the victims were too ashamed to speak up when the inappropriate fake images began spreading last year. Prior to the sentencing, a mother of one of the victims told The Guardian that girls like her daughter "were completely terrified and had tremendous anxiety attacks because they were suffering this in silence."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Matt Anderson Photography)

Republican lawmakers are fighting a Biden administration attempt to bring cheap broadband service to low-income people, claiming it is an illegal form of rate regulation. GOP leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced an investigation into the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is administering the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program that was approved by Congress in November 2021.

"States have reported that the NTIA is directing them to set rates and conditioning approval of initial proposals on doing so. This undoubtedly constitutes rate regulation by the NTIA," states a letter to the NTIA from Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Chair Bob Latta (R-Ohio), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-Va.).

As evidence, the letter points to a statement by Virginia that described feedback received from the NTIA. The federal agency told Virginia that "the low-cost option must be established in the Initial proposal as an exact price or formula."