The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that has been floating around for a few years now, but what does it actually mean? The best way to describe the IoT is to think of it as the network of physical objects that are interconnected and can communicate with
npm Uninstall – How to Remove a Package
The Node Package Manager (NPM) provides various commands that let you work with packages. And just as you can install a package from the npm library, you can uninstall it. To uninstall a package, you can use the command provided by npm for the purpose – npm uninstall. The way
The React useEffect Hook for Absolute Beginners
If you have trouble understanding the useEffect hook, you’re not alone. Beginners and experienced developers alike find it to be one of the trickiest hooks to understand, because it requires understanding a few unfamiliar programming concepts. In this quick guide, we’re going to cover why this hook exists, how to
Python .pop() – How to Pop from a List or an Array in Python
In this article, you’ll learn how to use Python’s built-in pop() list method. By the end, you’ll know how to use pop() to remove an item from a list in Python. Here is what we will cover: 1. An overview of lists in Python 2. How to
Finally, we know production costs for SLS and Orion, and they’re wild
Enlarge / A technician works on the Orion spacecraft, atop the SLS rocket, in January 2022. (credit: NASA)
NASA Inspector General Paul Martin serves as an independent watchdog for the space agency’s myriad activities. For nearly the entirety of his time as inspector general, since his appointment in 2009, Martin has tracked NASA’s development of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.
Although his office has issued a dozen reports or so on various aspects of these programs, he has never succinctly stated his thoughts about the programs—until Tuesday.
Appearing before a House Science Committee hearing on NASA’s Artemis program, Martin revealed the operational costs of the big rocket and spacecraft for the first time. Moreover, he took aim at NASA and particularly its large aerospace contractors for their “very poor” performance in developing these vehicles.
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Researchers may have ID’ed first deer-to-human SARS-CoV-2 transmission
(credit: Photograph by imelda)
One of the more disturbing aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is its ability to readily hop between a variety of species, ranging from domesticated animals like cats and mink to wild deer. This creates a potential risk. While spreading in other animals, the virus can pick up mutations that make it look unfamiliar to the human immune system or evolve to cause a different collection of symptoms.
These risks, however, depend on the virus being able to move back to humans after evolving in a different host. And, so far, the only cases where that’s known to have happened all involve people who have worked on mink farms. But a pre-peer-review manuscript is now indicating that Canadian health authorities have identified an instance where a SARS-CoV-2 variant circulating in deer ended up back in a human patient.
Deer season
In response to findings in the US, where SARS-CoV-2 appears to be widespread in both wild and farmed deer populations, Canadian health authorities decided to initiate screening of their own deer population. During the last two months of 2021, which overlapped with deer hunting season, samples were collected from nearly 300 deer killed by hunters; those were all screened for the presence of SARS-CoV-2.
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Report: 85% of companies experience at least one ransomware attack per year
There’s a discrepancy between a company’s confidence in preventing or mitigating ransomware attacks and its actual ability to do so.Read More
Oppo demos 240 W smartphone charging, takes a phone to full in 9 minutes
Exactly how quickly do you need your smartphone to charge? Oppo is setting new records for smartphone charging speeds, both for commercial smartphones and in a lab setting.
The headline-grabber today is the company’s unbelievably fast 240 W “SUPERVOOC” charging prototype, which can power a 4500 mAh smartphone battery to 100 percent in nine minutes, hitting 50 percent in just three and a half minutes. That’s one percent about every four or five seconds of charging time. The prototype Oppo brought to Mobile World Congress has a battery percentage readout that goes to two decimal places, so you can watch those numbers really fly upward.
240 W is just for a prototype phone, though, and there’s no telling what these kinds of charging speeds would do to your battery after a few charging cycles. For a speed that Oppo is ready to commercialize while still balancing battery longevity, it’s also announcing a 150 W charging scheme that will make it into phones this year, including a phone from Oppo’s BBK sibling company, OnePlus. (The OnePlus 10 Pro, which launched earlier this year in China, is up to 80 W.)
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Microsoft identifies and mitigates new malware targeting Ukraine “within 3 hours”
Enlarge (credit: Drew Angerer | Getty Images)
Microsoft has been pushing harder to increase the baseline security features of Windows PCs for a couple of years now—the “secured-core PC” initiative launched back in 2019 was meant to guard against firmware-level attacks, and Windows 11’s system requirements mandate support for many supported-but-optional security features from Windows 10. Microsoft justified these new requirements in part by pointing to the NotPetya data-wiping malware, which has widely been attributed to Russian hackers.
Regarding similar cyberattacks, a recent post from Microsoft President & Vice Chair Brad Smith details more about how the company is responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to the post, Microsoft was able to identify new wiper malware (dubbed “FoxBlade”) and provided both mitigation strategies and updated Microsoft Defender definitions to the Ukrainian government “within three hours” of discovering it.
Reporting from The New York Times provides additional details of how Microsoft worked with US government agencies to distribute the FoxBlade fixes with other European countries to limit or prevent its potential spread.
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Xbox Game Pass gets Guardians of the Galaxy in March
Guardians of the Galaxy, Kentucky Route Zero, and Young Souls join Xbox Game Pass in the first half of March.Read More