Category: Technica Aquarius

Enlarge / Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with head of Russian space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin during a flight to the Vostochny Cosmodrome on September 4, 2021. (credit: ALEXEY DRUZHININ/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

The fate of the International Space Station hangs in the balance as tensions between Russia and the West escalate following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, given that the conflict is now nearly a month old and the old laboratory is still flying high, it appears that the partnership among Russia, the United States, and 13 other nations will continue to hold. This article will consider the future of the partnership from three different dimensions: technical, legal, and political. It starts with the solid premise, repeated over and over by NASA officials, that the United States wants to continue flying the International Space Station through at least 2024.

The real question about the near-term future of the International Space Station, therefore, is whether Russia wants to continue flying it. The answer is “probably yes.”

Enlarge / Portal 2 is one of the games Google recommends trying. (credit: Google)

After prematurely announcing that Steam on Chromebooks was ready for testing last week, Google is making the release official today. The alpha version of Steam on Chrome OS is currently available in the Chrome OS 14583.0.0 Dev channel, as announced via a post in Google’s Chrome Developers Community.

Not all Chromebooks will be able to run Steam, however. Google said only the following machines can try the alpha:

• Acer Chromebook 514 (CB514-1W)
• Acer Chromebook 515 (CB515-1W)
• Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (CP713-3W)
• Asus Chromebook Flip CX5 (CX5500)
• Asus Chromebook CX9 (CX9400)
• HP Pro c640 G2 Chromebook
• Lenovo 5i-14 Chromebook

“Because many games have high performance demands, we’ve focused our efforts thus far on a set of devices where more games can run well,” Google said.

Enlarge / Repairing an Apple iPhone. (credit: Patrick Pleul/picture alliance)

Under CEO Tim Cook’s watchful eye, Apple has become famous for its tightly managed supply chain. Yet even the most finely tuned machines run into problems from time to time. The case of Dhirendra Prasad appears to be one of those times. 

Prasad’s time at Apple coincided with the company’s meteoric rise. He joined in 2008, just after the iPhone was released, and spent the next decade there as a buyer in the company’s Global Service Supply Chain group, which sources repair parts from a range of vendors.

During that time, Prasad devised a scheme with two other men, Robert Gary Hansen and Don M. Baker, who owned vendors that Apple worked with, the Department of Justice says.

Enlarge / Windows 11 running on an old Windows 7-era HP laptop. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Windows 11 has stricter system requirements than any Windows version before it, dropping support for a wide range of pre-2018 PCs in the name of improving the Windows platform’s security baseline. You can work around these requirements to install Windows 11 on unsupported PCs relatively easily, but Microsoft added warnings to its installer and threatened to withhold updates from these systems. So far, the company hasn’t followed through on that threat. But using Windows 11 on these somewhat older computers is about to get more annoying.

A new Windows 11 update adds a “system requirements not met” watermark to the desktop of unsupported PCs, similar to the watermark you might see if you were running an early beta or unactivated version of Windows. The screenshot below is from a PC that supports TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot but uses an unsupported 6th-generation Intel Core CPU.

The watermark you’ll begin seeing on unsupported PCs. A similar “requirements not met” message will also appear in the Settings app. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

This message will presumably appear when your PC doesn’t meet one or more of the operating system’s core security requirements: a supported Intel, AMD, or ARM processor; Secure Boot support; and TPM 2.0 hardware or firmware. This means it may also appear for users of PCs that are fully capable of meeting Windows 11’s requirements, but they have Secure Boot or their TPM turned off either by accident or on purpose (many motherboard BIOSes came with one or both disabled by default for years, though recent updates have changed those settings).

Enlarge / Don’t bother me, I’m busy evolving. (credit: Indrek Lainjärv / EyeEm)

When we think of evolution, we often think of slow, gradual changes made over millions of years. However, new research suggests that the process could be happening quite quickly, driving major changes over the course of a single year in response to seasonal changes.

The paper describing that research was released last week and studies evolution in fruit flies over around 10 generations, with each generation of flies spanning less than a dozen days. While fruit flies are notoriously short-lived, and the distance between their generations is tiny, evolution could be happening quicker than previously anticipated even in longer-lived organisms, according to Seth Rudman, assistant professor in the school of biological sciences at Washington State University and one of the authors of the paper.

“Over the last few decades there has been a growing appreciation that evolution can occur fairly rapidly,” he told Ars.

Enlarge / US Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology Anne Neuberger speaking during a March 21 White House daily press briefing. (credit: Getty Images)

The Biden administration on Monday warned that it believes Russian state hackers may step up a cyber offensive that targets US organizations, particularly organizations in the private sector providing critical infrastructure.

Administration officials stressed that they have yet to unearth any evidence of specific cyberattack plans. But in recent weeks, officials have said Kremlin-sponsored strikes on US-based computers and networks was a distinct possibility that security defenders should prepare for. As the US and its allies have ratcheted up sanctions on Russia and the US receives new intelligence assessments, the White House is once again urging vigilance.

Part of Russia’s playbook

“Today, we are reiterating those warnings, and we’re doing so based on evolving threat intelligence, that the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyber attacks on critical infrastructure in the United States,” Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said during a daily press briefing on Monday.

Enlarge / It can be tough to run a business when your loading dock is under water. (credit: Getty Images)

On Monday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced new rules about disclosing climate risks for companies listed on US-based stock exchanges. The rules are meant to give investors a clearer sense of how companies manage present and future challenges posed by climate change and by attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The rules will be published in the Federal Register for public comment shortly. A final version is expected later this year, and the lawsuits are likely to begin afterward.

In the announcement, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said the new rules adhere to the organization’s mission. “Our core bargain from the 1930s is that investors get to decide which risks to take,” he said, “as long as public companies provide full and fair disclosure and are truthful in those disclosures.” Typically, risk disclosure occurs in required formal filings that companies make with the SEC, like quarterly financial statements.

Some companies disclose their risks voluntarily, but the absence of standards allows them significant leeway over what to reveal. And many other companies choose not to disclose anything related to climate.