Monthly Archives: October 2022

Google prototypes, open sources an extra-long keyboard with one row of keys

Enlarge / Google Japan jokes that you can increase productivity by having two people type on the keyboard simultaneously. (credit: Google Japan) Google Japan has a history of joke keyboard concepts that challenge common notions of computing input. The latest concept, the Gboard Stick Version, places every key in the same row, so hunting and pecking…

Still can’t buy a Raspberry Pi board? Things aren’t getting better anytime soon

Enlarge (credit: Raspberry Pi Foundation) Shortages for lots of tech components, including things like DDR5 and GPUs, have eased quite a bit since the beginning of 2022, and prices have managed to go down as availability improves. But that reprieve hasn’t come for hobbyists hoping to get a Raspberry Pi, which remains as hard to…

SEC fines Kim Kardashian, warns people about buying crypto touted by celebrities

Enlarge / Kim Kardashian arrives to ABC’s “Good Morning America” on September 20, 2022, in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | James Devaney ) Kim Kardashian will pay a $1.26 million penalty for touting a crypto security without disclosing that she was paid $250,000 to promote the token, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced…

SCOTUS weighs first case testing Big Tech liability for recommending content

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto) A key protection shielding social media companies from liability for hosting third-party content—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—is set to face its first US Supreme Court challenge. The question before the court hinges on whether Google-owned YouTube is responsible for aiding and abetting ISIS terrorists by actively…

New PS5 exploit unlocks root privileges, read/write memory access

Enlarge / Hackers are getting closer to fully unlocking user control of the PS5 hardware. (credit: Sony) Long-time console hacker and exploit developer SpecterDev has released a PS5 exploit that can give users root privileges and read/write access to large chunks of system memory. While this exploit can’t be used to actually execute arbitrary code…

With orbital launch, Firefly takes an early lead in the 1-ton rocket race

Enlarge / Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket is seen on the pad ahead of the “To The Black” mission. (credit: Firefly) Since SpaceX reached orbit for the first time in 2008 with the Falcon 1 rocket, a handful of other companies such as Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit have developed and successfully launched small, liquid-fueled rockets….

Black holes can’t trash info about what they swallow—and that’s a problem

Enlarge (credit: Aaron Horowitz/Getty Images) Three numbers. Just three numbers—that’s all it takes to completely, unequivocally, 100 percent describe a black hole in general relativity. If I tell you the mass, electric charge, and spin (i.e., angular momentum) of a black hole, we’re done. That’s all we’ll ever know about it and all we’ll ever…

Nobel in Medicine goes to the man who brought us the Neanderthal genome

Enlarge (credit: Karsten Möbius) The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to a single recipient on Monday: Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Pääbo’s work will be familiar to regular readers of these pages, as he was the driving force behind the completion of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, and…

After an amazing run at Mars, India says its orbiter has no more fuel

Enlarge / Full-disk image of Mars captured by the Mars Orbiter Mission. (credit: ISRO) Despite its modest overall achievements, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is one of the more notable successes of the modern spaceflight era. Launched in 2013, it was the first Mars mission built by an Asian country to reach orbit around the red planet—only…