Major changes could be ahead for the International Space Station but there will always be an American astronaut in orbit, NASA’s new boss said Wednesday.
The space agency is talking with private companies about potentially taking over the space lab after 2025, but no decision will made without the other 21 countries that are partners in the project, NASA Administrator James Bridenstine said in his first briefing with reporters.
President Donald Trump’s recent budget requests have put discussions about the station’s future “on steroids,” he said. Under Trump’s 2019 proposed budget, U.S. funding for the space station would end by 2025. The U.S. has spent more than $75 billion on the space station.
Options include splitting the station into different segments or reducing its size by breaking it up and discarding one part.
Always a US astronaut in orbit
But no matter what happens, there won’t be any gap when Americans aren’t in space, Bridenstine vowed. It won’t be as it was after the Apollo moon program closed or even the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, which has forced NASA to pay Russia to ferry astronauts to the station.
“There are kids graduating from high school this month, that their entire lives, we’ve had an astronaut in space,” Bridenstine said. “And we want that to live on in perpetuity forever. No gaps.”
Companies are interested in running the station and “there’s a range of options” that are just now being examined, he said.
The first station piece was launched in 1998. The complex was essentially completed with the end of the shuttle program in 2011. It is about the size of a six-bedroom house, complete with two bathrooms, a gym and a 360-degree bay window. It usually has a crew of six.
Climate change
In wide-ranging remarks, the former Oklahoma Republican congressman said he generally supports NASA’s Earth science missions, including missions that monitor heat-trapping carbon dioxide. He said at least three climate science satellites that the Trump administration had tried to cancel earlier in budget proposals “could all end up in very good shape” and that he supported them in Congress, crossing party lines.
“We’re going forth with missions that are going to do carbon monitoring,” he said, ticking off a couple of projects. “We’re committed to that.”
When told that a Pew Research poll out Wednesday said that 63 percent of Americans said NASA’s top priority should be monitoring key parts of Earth’s climate, Bridenstine said “good” and reiterated his acceptance of human-caused climate change as a threat to national security and the globe.
Back to the moon
Bridenstine also said he hopes NASA will put some kind of small robotic landers on the moon next year, followed at some later date by humans. Astronauts should use the moon as a “proving ground” for future missions to Mars, especially checking out potential health issues for living far away from Earth for a long time. He said he worried about balance, vision, bone loss and heart issues that have been reported with space station astronauts.
“We do not want to go to Mars and have our astronauts to be marshmallows on the surface of Mars,” Bridenstine said. “The moon is our best opportunity to be successful when we go to Mars.”
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From: MeNeedIt
Passenger jets of the future will be safer, lighter, faster, more fuel-efficient and … windowless.
So predicts Emirates Airlines chief Tim Clark. The Dubai-based airline has already introduced virtual windows in the first-class suites of its newest planes.
Instead of being able to see out a conventional window, the passengers will be able to enjoy the view on a full display of windows that will project live camera feeds on a high-definition screen.
Clark said the images are “so good, it’s better than with the natural eye.”
Clark told the BBC that the ultimate goal was to have a completely windowless plane.
“Now you have a fuselage which has no structural weaknesses because of windows. The aircraft are lighter, the aircraft could fly faster, they’ll burn less fuel and fly higher,” he said.
But Emirates’ experiment has raised concerns that might not win it the votes of safety regulators. Some passengers have expressed concerns of possibly feeling claustrophobic on windowless planes.
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From: MeNeedIt
The last Munchkin has died.
Actor Jerry Maren was the last survivor of the group of little people known as Munchkins who greeted Judy Garland’s Dorothy when she landed in Munchkinland in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. He died May 24 at age 98 in a San Diego nursing home, but news of his death did not become widely known until Wednesday.
Maren immortalized himself as a member of the Lollipop Guild when he sang, shuffled his feet and presented Dorothy with a lollipop.
He appeared in countless television shows and commercials and in dozens of other movies, most notably the Marx Brothers’ At the Circus.
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From: MeNeedIt
The former head of Cambridge Analytica admitted on Wednesday his firm had received data from the researcher at the center of a scandal over Facebook users’ personal details, contradicting previous testimony to
lawmakers.
Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by Donald Trump in 2016, has denied its work on the U.S. president’s successful election campaign made use of data allegedly improperly harvested from around 87 million Facebook users.
Former chief Alexander Nix, in earlier testimony to parliament’s media committee, also denied the political consultancy had ever been given data by Aleksandr Kogan, the researcher linked to the scandal.
On Wednesday he said it had received data from Kogan.
“Of course, the answer to this question should have been ‘yes,’” Nix said, adding that he thought he was being asked if Cambridge Analytica still held data from the researcher.
He denied deliberately misleading British lawmakers and said the company had deleted the data, which had been of no use.
The committee is investigating fake news, and focusing on the role of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook in the 2016 Brexit vote as well as the Trump election.
In lengthy, and often testy, questioning by lawmakers, Nix apologized for an undercover film in which he said Cambridge Analytica’s online campaign played a decisive role in Trump’s election win.
But he defended the now-defunct consultancy’s reputation and said he felt victimized.
Cambridge Analytica said after the film was broadcast by Channel 4 television in March that the comments did not “represent the values or operations of the firm.”
Lawmakers asked Nix to return to face questions about inconsistencies in his evidence.
Kogan had told lawmakers he did give Cambridge Analytica the data.
Facebook says Kogan harvested it by creating an app on the platform that was downloaded by 270,000 people, providing access not only to their own but also their friends’ personal data.
Facebook said Kogan then violated its policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica.
Embarrassed but vindicated
Nix apologized for his comments in the film, saying he had been foolish and had made exaggerated claims in order to attract what he thought was a potential client.
“It’s not only deeply embarrassing, but it’s something I regret enormously,” he said.
Nix said that Channel 4 had heavily edited the footage to portray him in a worse light. “All Mr Nix’s comments carried in our reports were used in context, including any caveats,” the broadcaster said in a statement.
On other matters, Nix was less apologetic.
He said that he was vindicated in saying Cambridge Analytica had not been involved in the Brexit campaign by a report by the Electoral Commission, and that whistleblower Christopher Wylie had lied about the consultancy’s involvement in Brexit.
Wylie had told the committee that Cambridge Analytica played a pivotal role in the campaign.
On Wednesday he told Channel 4: “I actually backed up everything I said with documents. I am quite comfortable standing by the statements that I made.”
Nix denied a story in the Financial Times that he had withdrawn $8 million from Cambridge Analytica before its collapse last month.
Asked about a Guardian report that a Cambridge Analytica employee visited Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2017, he said he had been unaware of the meeting.
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From: MeNeedIt
A surge in participation by startup companies this week, at a highlight of Asia’s biggest annual tech event, shows an increased reliance on young entrepreneurs to come with the IT industry’s strongest ideas for connected devices and artificial intelligence.
The InnoVEX segment of Taipei Computex 2018 brought together 388 startups, a term usually defined as founder-owned firms of three to five years old. That number is a jump from 272 at the same event a year ago. Venture capitalists, including at least one with half a billion dollars in investment funds, evaluated them one-on-one and at formal pitching events.
Startups are catching attention as inventors of Internet-of-things technology because there’s no market leader yet, said Jamie Lin, founding partner of AppWorks Ventures, a startup accelerator in Taipei. That technology refers to software and hardware that let computers or phones communicate with everyday devices such as cameras and alarm systems.
Some connections run on artificial intelligence, which means computerized processing of the data collected from those devices. That can mean making human-like decisions.
“Computers continue to morph and there are no dominant players in IoT,” Lin said. “That’s why they need startups and that’s what makes the show relevant.”
In software, by contrast, Google and Microsoft dominate markets worldwide. Apple and Samsung, among others, lead in smartphones.
Coinciding with the tech show this week, Lin’s accelerator, another like it and a Japanese venture capital firm are all holding their own events in Taipei this week for startups.
Expanding market
More than 20 billion things will be connected to the internet by 2020, up from 8.4 billion connected last year, market research firm Gartner forecasts. The number will pick up especially as 5G wireless services speed up connections.
By next year, Gartner anticipates, startup firms working with artificial intelligence will overtake Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM in “driving the artificial intelligence economy” for businesses.
Artificial intelligence, also known by its abbreviation AI, will reach a market value of $1.2 trillion per year by 2020 as investment triples between now and then, Forrester Research said.
“There’s a process, which is experimental — error and trial, error and trial – so there’s no one with a ready solution, and AI is so broad that one that can do it all,” said Tracy Tsai, a Gartner research VP in Taipei.
“With AI startups, they say ‘I’m focused, I just do some part of it and I do it well, and I do it attentively,’” she said. “For companies looking for a full solution, if you can show your part works, then they use it.”
Venture capitalists watching
Venture capital firms at the three-day InnoVEX show Wednesday watched a spread of mostly Asian startups with software and hardware ideas focused largely on connected devices. Healthcare and the management of drones were among the fields that companies said they could help with AI.
The show offered chances for startups to pitch their ideas to venture capital firms and accelerators, which are programs that show young firms how to improve their businesses.
Startup promotion authorities from 13 countries, including France and the Netherlands, also scanned the exhibition hall for Asian firms that might complement their own.
“What we care about the most is whether these startups or smaller firms have technology, so if it’s a just a business model only, they aren’t suitable for us,” said Amanda Liu, CEO of the Taiwan government-backed business accelerator StarFab. Her accelerator takes 10 to 15 of every 100 applicants. “They need to have products and their core competence must come from technology.”
Taiwanese firms are good at altering hardware specs, Liu said, and for technology ideal for businesses rather than individual consumers, Liu said. Taiwan positioned itself decades ago as a high-tech hardware manufacturing hub for much of the world.
Qara was one AI-dependent startup at InnoVEX. The 4-year-old South Korean developer with $1 million in venture capital funding uses an AI algorithm to predict the movement of stock and cryptocurrency markets. It has earned revenues of $1.5 million and reports a profit.
“Anyone can see the predictions powered by AI,” said Qara’s global CEO Katie Bomi Son. In terms of accuracy, she said, “Some are from 70, or between 70 to 90. Most of our information [comes] from the machine.”
Qara counts mostly companies as clients but it’s looking for a way to monetize the free app for common users.
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From: MeNeedIt
Facebook has admitted that it had a data sharing agreement with four Chinese technology companies, including one considered a national security threat by the U.S. intelligence community, raising new concerns about the social media giant’s handling of its consumer’s personal information.
The admission by the U.S.-based social media giant Tuesday came two days after The New York Times revealed that Facebook had struck special data-sharing deals with as many as 60 device makers, including Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL, to make it easier for Facebook users to access their accounts on a wide array of devices.
U.S. intelligence officials have raised concerns for years about Huawei, fearing the Chinese government could demand access to data stored on their devices or servers. The concerns prompted the U.S. military to ban the sale of Huawei smartphones on its bases.
Francisco Varela, Facebook’s vice president of mobile partnerships, said Tuesday that the data sharing deals with Huawei and the other Chinese companies “were controlled from the get-go.”
Facebook has been under intense criticism after it was disclosed that tens of millions of users’ personal information was accessed by the British-based political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. The company has also been under fire after revealing in September that Russians, using fake names, used social media to try to influence voters ahead of the 2016 U.S. election.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent agreement over a previous ruling that found Facebook had misled consumers over its data-use policies.
From: MeNeedIt
In and around the Mekong Delta, school children will spend this summer moving rainbow-colored blocks and cartoon animals around a screen to get an early taste of computers in a program backed by Google.
The tech company is paying for Vietnamese students to learn some introductory programming, along the way perhaps earning some goodwill from Vietnamese officials who are taking an increasingly strict view toward global internet firms.
The Mekong Community Development Center will run the classes, which make use of Scratch, a very basic computer language that lets children create their own virtual games.
“To support Vietnam’s development in the direction of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 in the most effective and practical way, Google is focused on developing projects to build and raise awareness and capacity in information technology in Vietnam,” said Ha Lam Tu Quynh, who is the director of communications and public relations in charge of Vietnam at Google Asia Pacific. “We believe children in particular will be the best creators of the future.”
She was referring to a tech revolution that has been a buzz word around the Communist country, encompassing all kinds of new tech, from the internet of things, to big data analysis.
Google, which did not disclose how much it is spending, is far from alone in stressing its corporate social responsibility, allowing firms to do good or look good, or both. It would not hurt to earn some goodwill with Vietnam, which has been overhauling its legislative and regulatory system in a way that has not always gone over well with tech companies.
Last year the Southeast Asian country pressed local advertisers to boycott Facebook and Google’s YouTube because they had permitted content critical of the state. In a more recent example, the National Assembly is debating a draft law on cyber security that would require businesses to store data inside the borders and delete online information that is deemed objectionable.
The U.S. embassy in Hanoi expressed “concerns about Vietnam’s proposed cyber security law, including the impact of localization requirements and restrictions on cross-border services for the future development and growth of Vietnam’s economy.”
Also contributing to the child-friendly computer lessons, with laptops and technical support, is the Dariu Foundation, which focuses on micro-finance and education for low-income people in Vietnam, Myanmar, and India. Nguyen Van Hanh, the director of the Dariu Foundation, noted that roughly 65 percent of those now in primary school will be doing jobs someday that do not exist right now, citing data from the World Economic Forum.
“With all of the economic and social changes brought on by technology, we do not know exactly the kind of skills children will need in order to develop and become citizens who contribute positively to the world in the future through work,” he said in discussing his group’s participation in the Scratch classes. “However, we can be sure that today’s children need to be equipped with many skills to adapt to the challenges and the requirements of the digital era.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the simple Scratch language so that computer programming would be more widely accessible. First-time programmers do not type dense lines of code, but rather use logic to design things like animation and games, dragging colorful objects and command labels around the software interface. Even an 8-year-old can do it, and in fact they do.
So will 1,200 public school students in the Vietnamese metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City and the nearby delta provinces of Vinh Long and Tien Giang.
The initiative “Programming the Future with Google,” also includes digital training for 30 local school teachers, will run from now through August.
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From: MeNeedIt
A security breach at family networking and genealogy website MyHeritage leaked the data of over 92 million users, the company said in a blog posted on Monday.
The breach took place on Oct. 26 last year, and consisted of the email addresses and hashed passwords of users who signed up to the website up to the date of the breach, according to the blog post.
The company said it learned about the breach on Monday, when its chief information security officer was notified by a security researcher who found a file with the email addresses and hashed passwords on a private server outside of MyHeritage.
MyHeritage said no other data was found on the server, and that there was no evidence of data in the file being used.
Information about family trees and DNA data are stored on separate systems and were not a part of the breach, the blog said.
MyHeritage said it was investigating the breach and taking steps to engage an independent cybersecurity company to review the incident.
The company advised users to change their passwords.
Israel’s MyHeritage helps families around the world find their history with family tree tools, DNA tests, and a library of historical records.
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From: MeNeedIt
Marking World Environment Day, the United Nations on Tuesday named plastic one of the biggest environmental threats facing the world.
The report, Single-Use Plastics: A Roadmap for Sustainability, said while government regulation on the use of plastic has made some impact on reducing waste, it is not enough, and more urgent action is needed.
“Our world is swamped by harmful plastic waste,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech. “Microplastics in the seas now outnumber stars in our galaxy.”
“From remote islands to the Arctic, nowhere is untouched. If present trends continue, by 2050 our oceans will have more plastic than fish,” he said.
The report noted that by some estimates, as many as 5 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year.
While acknowledging that combating plastic waste is different for every country, the U.N. report suggested 10 universal steps that policymakers can follow, including use of more eco-friendly alternatives to plastics and the promotion of reusable products.
According to the Ocean Conservancy, 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the Earth’s oceans every year, which adds to the estimated 150 million metric tons already in the marine environment.
A 2017 report by the Ocean Conservancy said China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are dumping more plastic than the rest of the world combined.
But the advocacy group warned that the problem is not Asia’s alone. It noted the United States tosses out more than 33 million tons of plastic, of which less than 10 percent is recycled.
For years, environmentalists have warned of the deadly effect plastic trash has on marine wildlife. This week, a pilot whale died in Thailand after struggling for five days to stay alive. Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources announced that the whale had 80 plastic bags lodged in its stomach.
A Thai marine official said the whale, which normally feeds on squid, probably mistook the floating debris for food.
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From: MeNeedIt
For Apple users worried about how much time they and their children spend posting photos and videos to their devices, help is on the way.
Apple has announced new controls that will allow parents to remotely limit the amount of time their offspring spend on iPhones and iPads, as well as hold up a mirror to their own online habits. The feature will be available in the next software update.
The move comes as the tech industry faces criticism that it has successfully made its smartphones and apps addictive with little thought for how people’s lives may be negatively affected by the distraction of constantly checking their devices.
Smartphone addiction
Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke about his own habits at an Apple developers conference this week. After trying out Apple’s new controls, he saw his usage in a new light.
“I thought I was fairly disciplined about this, and I was wrong,” he told CNN.
Earlier this year, major Apple shareholders wrote the company asking that it do more to help parents by providing tools to limit children’s screen time, while looking at how being online constantly affects customers’ mental health.
Apple appears to have listened to some of these concerns. It is introducing “Screen Time,” an app that will give users a weekly report about how much time they spend on their devices and on specific apps, as well as new ways to curb the habit.
Parents can give their children screen time allowances — a specific amount of time they can play a video game or check in with friends on apps such as Snapchat. Once they hit the limit, children will have to ask parents to increase the time allotment.
“We’re empowering people with the facts that will allow them to decide for themselves how they want to cut back,” said Cook.
Apple’s changes will be part of a software update typically released in September.
Apple isn’t the only company creating a digital baby sitter of sorts. Last month, Google announced it, too, was giving parents more tools to monitor their and their children’s usage.
Customer privacy
In addition, Apple revealed new ways it would limit the sharing of customer information, perhaps in response to the firestorm directed at Facebook over how the social media giant mishandled customer data. It has long been part of Apple’s message that compared with fellow Silicon Valley companies, Apple cares the most about users’ privacy.
Apple customers might not notice some of the changes. They include limiting “fingerprinting,” which gives data collectors the ability to tell one Apple computer from another. Others will allow customers to actively decide whether to allow websites that track them on the Safari browser.
“We believe your private data should remain private,” said Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi.
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From: MeNeedIt
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports no new cases of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been confirmed since May 17. WHO finds of 56 reported cases, 37 are confirmed, 13 are probable and six are suspected. The death toll stands at 25.
The U.N. agency said not too much should be read into the fact that the number of confirmed Ebola cases has remained stable since mid-May. It said these numbers should be viewed with some caution.
WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said it is critical that all people who have had contact with an infected person are identified. He said even one person with Ebola could create a number of new cases by coming in contact with people at social events or religious ceremonies such as funerals.
Jasarevic told VOA it is premature to let down one’s guard. He says health care workers, responders and communities must remain vigilant.
“The Ebola outbreak in DR Congo is not over and we need to continue to work,” he added. “… There are lots of areas that are difficult to reach that we have to go to, that we need to make sure that we get to all the contacts. So, there still are contacts that have not been reached. So, it is really too early to say that the outbreak is contained.”
Jasarevic said good progress is being made in vaccinating people who have come in contact with infected individuals. He said a vaccination campaign in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people, is now over as all 577 known contacts of Ebola patients, health care workers and other vulnerable people there have been inoculated against the disease.
He said vaccinations are ongoing in the village of Bikoro, where Ebola was first detected and in Iboko a remote, difficult to reach area.
Ebola has broken out nine times in the DRC since the virus was discovered in that country in the 1970s. An outbreak in West Africa a few years ago left more than 11,000 people dead.
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From: MeNeedIt