Month: February 2022

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A whistleblower has accused Pegasus spyware-maker NSO Group of offering “bags of cash” to security company Mobileum in exchange for access to cellular networks in 2017. According to reports yesterday by The Guardian and The Washington Post, former Mobileum VP Gary Miller made his allegations in a complaint to the US Department of Justice and in an interview with news organizations that are part of the “Pegasus Project” consortium.

Miller alleged that during the Mobileum/NSO Group meeting, “a member of his own company’s leadership at Mobileum asked what NSO believed the ‘business model’ was of working with Mobileum, since Mobileum did not sell access to the global signalling networks as a product,” The Guardian wrote. “According to Miller, and a written disclosure he later made to federal authorities, the response allegedly made by [NSO co-founder Omri] Lavie was ‘we drop bags of cash at your office.'”

NSO Group, an Israeli company that was recently blacklisted by the US government, was allegedly seeking access to the SS7 network. Mobileum’s various security products include an SS7 firewall, and the company’s website warns that “modestly priced access to the SS7 network is now available to hackers on a modest budget.”

Enlarge / The Space Launch System main engines are seen in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 10, 2022. (credit: NASA)

NASA officials on Wednesday said the agency would conduct an initial rollout of the massive Space Launch System rocket sometime in March, a multi-week delay attributed to “close-out” tasks that must be completed on the vehicle.

Until this week, NASA had been publicly targeting a February 15 rollout date, when a mobile tower would ferry the SLS rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to its launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Tom Whitmeyer, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA Headquarters, said the agency is now targeting “mid-March” for the rollout, but he did not want to set a specific date.

Whitmeyer and other officials on a teleconference with reporters said they wanted to let the teams of NASA employees and contractors in Florida complete their work meticulously rather than being rushed.

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The European Union says it wants to “prevent greenwashing” among investors, but a new proposal may end up encouraging the behavior it wants to banish.

The European Commission put forward a plan today that defines what counts as a “sustainable investment,” something that’s all but required to manage a transition to clean energy. But to the chagrin of several EU countries, environmental groups, and asset managers, the proposal would allow both natural gas and nuclear to qualify as “contributing substantially to climate change mitigation.”

The split-the-baby approach came about because some countries, including Germany and Poland, lobbied for the inclusion of natural gas, while others, notably France, lobbied for nuclear power. Germany, which is in the process of shuttering its nuclear power plants, remains heavily dependent on coal and has been boosting its use of natural gas to “transition” away from coal. France, on the other hand, uses relatively little natural gas and gets nearly all of its electricity from nuclear power plants.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Welcome back to another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes a notable discount on Apple’s iPad Air, which is currently down to $500 at Best Buy. We’ve also seen this price at Amazon, but stock there appears to be going in and out as of this writing. Either way, this is only $10 more than the lowest price we’ve tracked for Apple’s 10.9-inch tablet, about $65 off the average street price we’ve seen online in recent months and $100 off Apple’s MSRP. The deal applies to the 64GB model; if you need more storage, note that the 256GB variant is on sale for $650, which is also $10 off the best price we’ve seen.

We gave the iPad Air high marks back when the tablet launched in late 2020. We praised the device for its high-quality design, crisp and accurate display, and speedy performance, all of which have become typical of the iPad lineup. iPadOS isn’t robust enough to make an iPad a full laptop replacement for most people, but its app support remains extensive, and it’s still excellent for casual media consumption and lighter work tasks like word processing. This model also supports the latest Pencil stylus and the great-if-wildly-expensive Magic Keyboard, plus it has a USB-C port for further accessory support and faster charging.

The Air still sits in the middle of Apple’s tablet offerings, providing more premium hardware and performance than the lower-cost iPad but fewer high-end features than the pricier iPad Pro. As we’ve noted before, the latter gets you Apple’s more powerful M1 chip (though that doesn’t make the Air slow for most tasks), a brighter display with a noticeably smoother 120 Hz refresh rate, more base storage at 128GB, Thunderbolt connectivity with its USB-C port, and slightly better mics, cameras, and speakers. But all of those upgrades come at a premium: the 11-inch iPad Pro is typically available for between $750 and $799 online. For those who want something better than the base iPad but can’t pay that much, the Air is likely a better value.