The Guardian reports Sunday, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, highlighted that Russian forces appeared to have started a fire in one of the cooling towers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that it has occupied since the early days of the war. "Radiation levels are within norm," Zelenskiy said before accusing Russia of using its control of the site, whose six reactors are in shutdown mode, "to blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world". A Ukrainian official in Nikopol, the nearest town across the river Dnipro from the nuclear plant, added that according to "unofficial information", the fire was caused by setting fire to "a large number of automobile tyres" in a cooling tower. Video and pictures showed smoke dramatically billowing from one of the towers, although experts said they are not in use while the reactor is in shutdown mode, prompting some to question whether it was a way of trying raise the stakes over Ukraine's incursion into Russia.
From the CBC: The Russian management of the facility said emergency workers had contained the fire and that there was no threat of it spreading further. "The fire did not affect the operation of the station," it said. The six reactors at the plant located close to the front line of the war in Ukraine are not in operation but the facility relies on external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a catastrophic accident. Moscow and Kyiv have routinely accused each other of endangering safety around it.

"Not many Americans have August 6 circled on their calendars," writes the New York Times, "but it's a day that the Japanese can't forget."

79 years after an atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, the Times visits a hospital that "continues to treat, on average, 180 survivors — known as hibakusha — of the blasts each day." The bombs killed an estimated 200,000 men, women and children and maimed countless more. In Hiroshima 50,000 of the city's 76,000 buildings were completely destroyed. In Nagasaki nearly all homes within a mile and a half of the blast were wiped out. In both cities the bombs wrecked hospitals and schools. Urban infrastructure collapsed...

[T]he hibakusha and their offspring have formed the backbone of atomic memory. Many see their life's work as informing the wider world about what it's like to carry the trauma, stigma and survivor's guilt caused by the bombs, so that nuclear weapons may never be used again. Their urgency to do so has only increased in recent years. With an average age of 85, the hibakusha are dying by the hundreds each month — just as the world is entering a new nuclear age. Countries like the United States, China and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles. Many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling, and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening. The threat of another blast can't be relegated to history...

Kunihiko Sakuma [who was 9 months old the day of the attack]: "People died or got sick not just right after the bombing. The reality is, their symptoms are emerging even today, 79 years later. I thought all this was in the past. But as I started talking to survivors, I realized their suffering was ongoing. The atomic bomb is such an inhumane weapon, and the effects of radiation stay with survivors for a very long time. That's why they need our continued support."
The article includes this quote from Keiko Ogura, who was 8 years old at the time of the attack — and still worries she hasn't done enough to abolish the use of nuclear weapons: "As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story. 'For we shall not repeat the evil' — this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it's difficult to imagine."

Many of the stories are horrifying. But I'll note this one by Seiichiro Mise — who on the day of the atomic bomb attack was 10 years old: "I got married in 1964. At the time, people would say that if you married an atomic bomb survivor, any kids you had would be deformed.

"Two years later, I got a call from the hospital saying my baby had been born. But on my way, my heart was troubled. I'm an atomic bomb victim. I experienced that black rain. So I felt anguished. Usually new parents simply ask the doctor, 'Is it a boy or girl?' I didn't even ask that. Instead, I asked, 'Does my baby have 10 fingers and 10 toes?'

"The doctor looked unsettled. But then he smiled and said it was a healthy boy. I was relieved."
The first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima was Barack Obama in 2016. The article notes he did not issue the official apology many Japanese had hoped for. But he did say "we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again...

"Someday the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade."

FBI agent Rick Smith remembered seeing that Austrian-born Silicon Valley entrepreneur one year earlier — walking into San Francisco's Soviet Consulate in the early 1980s. Their chance reunion at a bar "would sow the seeds for a major counterintelligence campaign," writes a national security journalist in Politico, describing the collaboration as "an FBI-led operation that sold the Soviet Bloc millions in secretly sabotaged U.S. hi-tech."

The Austrian was already selling American tech goods to European countries, and "By the early 1980s, the FBI knew the Soviet Union was desperate for cutting-edge American technology, like the U.S.-produced microchips then revolutionizing a vast array of digital devices, including military systems..." Moscow's spies worked assiduously to steal such dual use tech or purchase it covertly. The Soviet Union's ballistic missile programs, air defense systems, electronic spying platforms, and even space shuttles, depended on it.... But such tech-focused sanctions-evasion schemes by America's foes offer opportunities for U.S. intelligence, too — including the opportunity to launch ultra-secret sabotage campaigns to alter sensitive technologies before they reach their final destination... Working under the FBI's direction, the Austrian agreed to pose as a crook, a man willing to sell prohibited technology to the communist Eastern Bloc... [T]he FBI and the Austrian would seed faulty tech to Moscow and its allies; drain the Soviet Bloc's coffers; expose its intelligence officers and secret American conspirators; and reveal to American counterspies exactly what tech the Soviets were after...

[T]he Soviet Bloc would unknowingly purchase millions of dollars' worth of sabotaged U.S. goods. Communist spies, ignorant that they were being played, would be feted with a literal parade in a Warsaw Pact capital for their success in purchasing this forbidden technology from the West... The Austrian's connections now presented a major opportunity. The Bulgarians, and their East German and Russia allies, were going to get that forbidden tech. But not before the FBI tampered with it first...

Some of the tech was subtly altered before the Bulgarians could get their hands on it. Some was rendered completely unusable. Some of it was shipped unadulterated to keep the operation humming — and allay any suspicions from the Eastern Bloc about what might be going on. And some of it never made its way to the Bulgarians at all. In one case, the bureau intercepted a $400,000 order of computer hardware from the San Jose-based firm Proquip and shipped out 6,000 pounds of sandbags instead.... Some suffered what appeared to be "accidental" wear-and-tear during the long journey to the Eastern Bloc, recalled Ed Appel [a former senior FBI official]. Other times, the FBI would tamper with the electronics so they would experience "chance" voltage overloads once Soviet Bloc operatives plugged them in. The sabotage could also be more subtle, designed to degrade machine parts or microchips over time, or to render hi-tech tools that required intense precision slightly, if imperceptibly, inaccurate.
The article concludes that "While the Soviet Union might have imploded over three decades ago... Russia's intelligence services are still scouring the globe for prohibited U.S. tech, particularly since Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine...

"Russia has reportedly even covertly imported household items like refrigerators and washing machines to rip out the microchips within them for use in military equipment."

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: The upper stage from a Chinese rocket that launched a batch of Internet satellites Tuesday has broken apart in space, creating a debris field of at least 700 objects in one of the most heavily-trafficked zones in low-Earth orbit. US Space Command, which tracks objects in orbit with a network of radars and optical sensors, confirmed the rocket breakup Thursday. Space Command initially said the event created more than 300 pieces of trackable debris. The military's ground-based radars are capable of tracking objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches). Later Thursday, LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket. The number of debris fragments could rise to more than 900, LeoLabs said. The culprit is the second stage of China's Long March 6A rocket, which lifted off Tuesday with the first batch of 18 satellites for a planned Chinese megaconstellation that could eventually number thousands of spacecraft. The Long March 6A's second stage apparently disintegrated after placing its payload of 18 satellites into a polar orbit.

Space Command said in a statement it has "observed no immediate threats" and "continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain." According to LeoLabs, radar data indicated the rocket broke apart at an altitude of 503 miles (810 kilometers) at approximately 4:10 pm EDT (20:10 UTC) on Tuesday, around 13-and-a-half hours after it lifted off from northern China. At this altitude, it will take decades or centuries for the wispy effect of aerodynamic drag to pull the debris back into the atmosphere. As the objects drift lower, their orbits will cross paths with SpaceX's Starlink Internet satellites, the International Space Station and other crew spacecraft, and thousands more pieces of orbital debris, putting commercial and government satellites at risk of collision.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is exploring the possibility of directly converting radiation from nuclear reactors into electricity using radiovoltaics, a technology that could potentially revolutionize nuclear power generation by moving beyond traditional steam turbine methods. The agency is requesting information and suggestions on this topic in an RFI released on August 1st. Nuclear News reports: There's got to be a better way": Methods to convert the energy of nuclear fission reactions and the decay of radioisotopes into electricity have not evolved since the invention of radioisotope power systems and fission reactors over 70 years ago and remain unoptimized," the RFI says. They rely on thermal heat transfer, and "in each step of this indirect conversion method neutrons, heat, and energy are lost to the shielding material, working fluid, and other system materials." Advanced reactor designs that use alternative coolants, including helium, sodium, and salts, would still use what DARPA calls "heritage nuclear power conversion technology" with water and steam as the working fluids, as would the fusion power plants being planned today.

Why now? Tabitha Dodson, the program manager for DARPA DSO, which is launching the RFI, told Nuclear News that "two big things" are driving the interest. "One is the extreme surge of investment in small and advanced nuclear technologies, such as in fusion and space reactors, which do not have a concurrent pairing of advanced power generation methods that doesn't involve liquid-based heat transfer," she said. "Next, there has been an order of magnitude improvement in radiation tolerance and efficiency for voltaics in recent years with encouraging performance that indicates radiovoltaics could scale up as an array usable in nuclear reactors." [...]

What is the ask?: The RFI asks: "Is it possible to achieve [a] direct energy conversion nuclear power system, ranging in power from 10s of watts electric (We) to 100s of kWe?" DARPA wants information "on the potential to improve specific power greater than 1 We/kg conversion from watts-thermal per radiation emission product," and information on the potential to improve damage tolerance of the voltaic to nuclear radiation to reach an operating lifetime comparable to the life of its nuclear source, on the scale of decades. "We will learn what our boundary conditions are when respondents tell us what technologies in the field of voltaics are possible, and we'll use that to see if there is sufficient scientific rationale make a case to present for further DARPA investment," Dodson said. "I also hope people are going to start thinking about nuclear systems that use electromagnetic versus thermal-kinetic methods to harvest nuclear energetic reactions."

Security researcher Grant Smith uncovered a large-scale smishing scam where scammers posing as the USPS tricked victims into providing their credit card details through fake websites. Smith hacked into the scammers' systems, gathered evidence, and collaborated with the USPS and a US bank to protect over 438,000 unique credit cards from fraudulent activity. Wired reports: The flood of text messages started arriving early this year. They carried a similar thrust: The United States Postal Service is trying to deliver a parcel but needs more details, including your credit card number. All the messages pointed to websites where the information could be entered. Like thousands of others, security researcher Grant Smith got a USPS package message. Many of his friends had received similar texts. A couple of days earlier, he says, his wife called him and said she'd inadvertently entered her credit card details. With little going on after the holidays, Smith began a mission: Hunt down the scammers. Over the course of a few weeks, Smith tracked down the Chinese-language group behind the mass-smishing campaign, hacked into their systems, collected evidence of their activities, and started a months-long process of gathering victim data and handing it to USPS investigators and a US bank, allowing people's cards to be protected from fraudulent activity.

In total, people entered 438,669 unique credit cards into 1,133 domains used by the scammers, says Smith, a red team engineer and the founder of offensive cybersecurity firm Phantom Security. Many people entered multiple cards each, he says. More than 50,000 email addresses were logged, including hundreds of university email addresses and 20 military or government email domains. The victims were spread across the United States -- California, the state with the most, had 141,000 entries -- with more than 1.2 million pieces of information being entered in total. "This shows the mass scale of the problem," says Smith, who is presenting his findings at the Defcon security conference this weekend and previously published some details of the work. But the scale of the scamming is likely to be much larger, Smith says, as he didn't manage to track down all of the fraudulent USPS websites, and the group behind the efforts have been linked to similar scams in at least half a dozen other countries.

Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar has called for faster defense spending, arguing the Pentagon should focus on rapid deployment over higher budgets. "The biggest challenge is speed," Sankar told Axios in an interview. "The Department of Defense would be better off spending half as much money twice as quickly."

The U.S. military has "lost our ability to value time," he said. The Denver-based software company, known for its work in areas ranging from vaccine logistics to Ukraine demining efforts, has positioned itself as a "software prime" in the defense sector.

North Korean hackers have conducted a global cyber espionage campaign to try to steal classified military secrets to support Pyongyang's banned nuclear weapons programme, the United States, Britain and South Korea said in a joint advisory on Thursday. From a report: The hackers, dubbed Anadriel or APT45 by cybersecurity researchers, have targeted or breached computer systems at a broad variety of defence or engineering firms, including manufacturers of tanks, submarines, naval vessels, fighter aircraft, and missile and radar systems, the advisory said. "The authoring agencies believe the group and the cyber techniques remain an ongoing threat to various industry sectors worldwide, including but not limited to entities in their respective countries, as well as in Japan and India," the advisory said.

It was co-authored by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and cyber agencies, Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS). "The global cyber espionage operation that we have exposed today shows the lengths that DPRK state-sponsored actors are willing to go to pursue their military and nuclear programmes," said Paul Chichester at the NCSC, a part of Britain's GCHQ spy agency. The FBI also issued an arrest warrant for one of the alleged North Korean hackers, and offered a reward of up to $10 million for information that would lead to his arrest. He was charged with hacking and money laundering, according to a poster uploaded to the FBI's Most Wanted website on Thursday.

"Despite its domestic space program faltering even before sanctions due to its invasion of Ukraine, and at least one very public failure on a less ambitious project, Russia has announced it will begin construction of a Russian-only replacement for the ISS and place it in a more difficult-to-access polar orbit," writes longtime Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. "Russia is motivated by military and political demands to achieve this, but whether it has the means or not seems uncertain at best." Reuters reports: Russia is aiming to create the four-module core of its planned new orbital space station by 2030, its Roscosmos space agency said on Tuesday. The head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, signed off on the timetable with the directors of 19 enterprises involved in creating the new station. The agency confirmed plans to launch an initial scientific and energy module in 2027. It said three more modules would be added by 2030 and a further two between 2031 and 2033. [...]

Apart from the design and manufacture of the modules, Roscomos said the schedule approved by Borisov includes flight-testing a new-generation crewed spacecraft and building rockets and ground-based infrastructure. The new station will enable Russia to "solve problems of scientific and technological development, national economy and national security that are not available on the Russian segment of the ISS due to technological limitations and the terms of international agreements," it said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Angry T-Mobile customers have filed a class action lawsuit over the carrier's decision to raise prices on plans that were advertised as having a lifetime price guarantee. "Based upon T-Mobile's representations that the rates offered with respect to certain plans were guaranteed to last for life or as long as the customer wanted to remain with that plan, each Plaintiff and the Class Members agreed to these plans for wireless cellphone service from T-Mobile," said the complaint (PDF) filed in US District Court for the District of New Jersey. "However, in May 2024, T-Mobile unilaterally did away with these legacy phone plans and switched Plaintiffs and the Class to more expensive plans without their consent."

The complaint, filed on July 12, has four named plaintiffs who live in New Jersey, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. They are seeking to represent a class of all US residents "who entered into a T-Mobile One Plan, Simple Choice plan, Magenta, Magenta Max, Magenta 55+, Magenta Amplified or Magenta Military Plan with T-Mobile which included a promised lifetime price guarantee but had their price increased without their consent and in violation of the promises made by T-Mobile and relied upon by Plaintiffs and the proposed class." The complaint seeks "restitution of all amounts obtained by Defendant as a result of its violation," plus interest. It also seeks statutory and punitive damages, and an injunction to prevent further "wrongful, unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair conduct." The report notes that the lawsuit centers around T-Mobile's broken "Un-contract" promise made in January 2017, which assured customers that their T-Mobile One plan prices would never increase unless they decided to change their plans. Despite the guarantee, T-Mobile included a significant caveat in a FAQ on its website, stating they would only cover the final month's bill if the price was raised and the customer decided to cancel. Many customers missed this caveat, leading to confusion and frustration when prices were later hiked.

The lawsuit also addresses the transition from the "Un-contract" to a new "Price Lock" guarantee, which initially offered more protection but was later weakened, causing further dissatisfaction. The FCC said it has received around 1,600 complaints regarding these price hikes by late June.

The US is warning homegrown tech startups and venture capital firms that some foreign investments may be fronts for hostile nations seeking data and technology for their governments or to undermine American businesses. From a report: Several US intelligence agencies are spotlighting the concern in a joint bulletin Wednesday to small businesses, trade associations and others associated with the venture capital community, according to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. "Unfortunately our adversaries continue to exploit early-stage investments in US startups to take their sensitive data," said Michael Casey, director of the NCSC. "These actions threaten US economic and national security and can directly lead to the failure of these companies."

Washington has ramped up scrutiny of investments related to countries it considers adversaries, most notably China, as advanced technologies with breakthrough commercial potential, such as artificial intelligence, can also be used to enhance military or espionage capabilities. [...] Small tech companies and venture capitalists "are not in a position to assess the national security implications of their investments," said Mark Montgomery, former executive director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which was assigned to develop a US cybersecurity strategy. "There are way too many examples where what appears to be, at best, potentially only dual-use or non-military-use technology is quickly twisted and used as a national security tool."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media's Jason Koebler: The Department of Homeland Security bought a dog-like robot that it has modified with an "antenna array" that gives law enforcement the ability to overload people's home networks in an attempt to disable any internet of things devices they have, according to the transcript of a speech given by a DHS official at a border security conference for cops obtained by 404 Media. The DHS has also built an "Internet of Things" house to train officers on how to raid homes that suspects may have "booby trapped" using smart home devices, the official said.

The robot, called "NEO," is a modified version of the "Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) sold to law enforcement by a company called Ghost Robotics. Benjamine Huffman, the director of DHS's Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), told police at the 2024 Border Security Expo in Texas that DHS is increasingly worried about criminals setting "booby traps" with internet of things and smart home devices, and that NEO allows DHS to remotely disable the home networks of a home or building law enforcement is raiding. The Border Security Expo is open only to law enforcement and defense contractors. A transcript of Huffman's speech was obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Dave Maass using a Freedom of Information Act request and was shared with 404 Media. [...]

The robot is a modified version of Ghost Robotics' Vision 60 Q-UGV, which the company says it has sold to "25+ National Security Customers" and which is marketed to both law enforcement and the military. "Our goal is to make our Q-UGVs an indispensable tool and continuously push the limits to improve its ability to walk, run, crawl, climb, and eventually swim in complex environments," the company notes on its website. "Ultimately, our robot is made to keep our warfighters, workers, and K9s out of harm's way." "NEO can enter a potentially dangerous environment to provide video and audio feedback to the officers before entry and allow them to communicate with those in that environment," Huffman said, according to the transcript. "NEO carries an onboard computer and antenna array that will allow officers the ability to create a 'denial-of-service' (DoS) event to disable 'Internet of Things' devices that could potentially cause harm while entry is made."

For decades, American and Chinese scientists collaborated on supercomputers. But Chinese scientists have become more secretive as the U.S. has tried to hinder China's technological progress, and they have stopped participating altogether in a prominent international supercomputing forum. From a report: The withdrawal marked the end of an era and created a divide that Western scientists say will slow the development of AI and other technologies as countries pursue separate projects. The new secrecy also makes it harder for the U.S. government to answer a question it deems essential to national security: Does the U.S. or China have faster supercomputers? Some academics have taken it upon themselves to hunt for clues about China's supercomputing progress, scrutinizing research papers and cornering Chinese peers at conferences.

Supercomputers have become central to the U.S.-China technological Cold War because the country with the faster supercomputers can also hold an advantage in developing nuclear weapons and other military technology. "If the other guy can use a supercomputer to simulate and develop a fighter jet or weapon 20% or even 1% better than yours in terms of range, speed and accuracy, it's going to target you first, and then it's checkmate," said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser for technology analysis at Rand, a think tank. The forum that China recently stopped participating in is called the Top500, which ranks the world's 500 fastest supercomputers. While the latest ranking, released in June, says the world's three fastest computers are in the U.S., the reality is probably different.

In April the U.S. Space Force began testing "a new ground-based satellite jamming weapon to help keep U.S. military personnel safe from potential 'space-enabled' attacks" (according to a report from Space.com). The weapon was "designed to deny, degrade, or disrupt communications with satellites overhead, typically through overloading specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum with interference," according to the article, with the miitary describing it as a small form-factor system "designed to be fielded in large numbers at low-cost and operated remotely" and "provide counterspace electronic warfare capability to all of the new Space Force components globally."

And now, Bloomberg reports that the U.S. is about to deploy them: The devices aren't meant to protect U.S. satellites from Chinese or Russian jamming but "to responsibly counter adversary satellite communications capabilities that enable attacks," the Space Force said in a statement to Bloomberg News. The Pentagon strives — on the rare occasions when it discusses such space capabilities — to distinguish its emerging satellite-jamming technology as purely defensive and narrowly focused. That's as opposed to a nuclear weapon the U.S. says Russia is developing that could create high-altitude electromagnetic pulses that would take out satellites and disrupt entire communications networks.

The first 11 of 24 Remote Modular Terminal jammers will be deployed in several months, and all of them could be in place by Dec. 31 at undisclosed locations, according to the Space Force statement... The new terminals augment a much larger jamming weapon called the Counter Communications System that's already deployed and a mid-sized one called Meadowlands "by providing the ability to have a proliferated, remotely controlled and relatively relocatable capability," the Space Force said. The Meadowlands system has encountered technical challenges that have delayed its delivery until at least October, about two years later than planned.

China has "hundreds and hundreds of satellites on orbit designed to find, fix, track, target and yes, potentially engage, US and allied forces across the Indo-Pacific," General Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, said Wednesday at the annual Aspen Security Forum. "So we've got to understand that and know what it means for our forces."
Bloomberg also got this comment from the chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation (which produces reports on counterspace weapons). The new U.S. Space Force jamming weapons are "reversible, temporary, non-escalatory and allow for plausible deniability in terms of who the instigator is."

Russian officials boasted on Friday that Moscow was spared the impact of the global IT systems outage because of its increased self-sufficiency after years of Western sanctions, though some experts said Russian systems could still be vulnerable. From a report: Microsoft and other IT firms have suspended sales of new products in Russia and have been scaling down their operations in line with sanctions imposed over Russia's war in Ukraine, which Moscow describes as a special military operation. The Kremlin, along with companies from state nuclear giant Rosatom, which operates all of Russia's nuclear plants, to major lenders and airlines, reported no glitches amid the outage that affected international companies across the globe. "The situation once again highlights the significance of foreign software substitution," Russia's digital development ministry said. Russian financial and currency markets also ran smoothly.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired, written by Chris Baraniuk: The buses struggling in China's muggy weather gave [Matt Jore, CEO of Montana Technologies] and his colleagues an idea. If they could make dehumidification more efficient somehow, then they could make air conditioning as a whole much more efficient, too. They headed back to the US wondering how to make this happen. [...] "I have here 50-gallon barrels of this stuff. It comes in a special powder," says Jore, referring to the moisture-loving material that coats components inside his firm's novel dehumidifier system, AirJoule. This is the result of years of research and development that followed his team's trip to China. The coating is a type of highly porous material called a metal-organic framework, and the pores are sized so that they fit around water molecules extremely well. It makes for a powerful desiccant, or drying device. "Just one kilogram can take up half or more than half -- in our case 55 percent -- of its own weight in water vapor," says Jore.

The AirJoule system consists of two chambers, each one containing surfaces coated with this special material. They take turns at dehumidifying a flow of air. One chamber is always drying air that is pushed through the system while the other gradually releases the moisture it previously collected. A little heat from the drying chamber gets applied to the moisture-saturated coating in the other, since that helps to encourage the water to drip away for removal. These two cavities swap roles every 10 minutes or so, says Jore. This process doesn't cool the air, but it does make it possible to feed dry air to a more traditional air conditioning device, drastically cutting how much energy that secondary device will use. And Jore claims that AirJoule consumes less than 100 watt-hours per liter of water vapor removed -- potentially cutting the energy required for dehumidification by as much as 90 percent compared to a traditional dehumidifier.

Montana Technologies wants to sell the components for its AirJoule system to established HVAC firms rather than attempt to build its own consumer products and compete with those firms directly -- it calls the approach AirJoule Inside. The firm is also working on a system for the US military, based on the same technology, that can harvest drinkable water from the air. Handy for troops stationed in the desert, one imagines. However, AirJoule is still at the prototype and testing stages. "We're building several of these pilot preproduction units for potential customers and partners," says Jore. "Think rooftops on big-box retailers." Montana Technologies isn't the only firm using cutting-edge technology to make air conditioning units more efficient. Rival firm Blue Frontier has developed a desiccant-based dehumidifying system using a liquid salt solution, with installations in various U.S. locations, that links to a secondary air-conditioning process and regenerates desiccant during off-peak hours to reduce peak electricity demand.

Then there's Nostromo Energy's IceBrick system, installed in California hotels, which freezes water capsules during off-peak hours and uses the stored coolth during peak times. This system can reduce cooling costs by up to 30 percent and emissions by up to 80 percent, according to Wired.

clovis (Slashdot reader #4,684) writes: Joe Engle received his astronaut wings in a ceremony on July 15, 1965, for his flight in the hypersonic aircraft, reaching an altitude of 50 miles above the Earth. At 32, he was the youngest man to become an astronaut.

Later, he entered the Apollo program and eventually commanded the STS-2 flight of the Space Shuttle.

Here is an interview from 2004. I thought it was interesting that they used the F-104 as the chase plane and for training because the flight characteristics were so similar, which says a lot about the F-104.

Anyway, the X-15 project was a big deal for us science/geek types back when I was a kid. I wonder if it's something today's generation is even aware of.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DefenseScoop: A group of NATO countries are set to begin implementing a new project aimed at improving the alliance's ability to quickly share intelligence gathered by space-based assets operated by both member nations and the commercial sector. Seventeen NATO members signed a memorandum of understanding for the Alliance Persistence Surveillance from Space (APSS) program as part of the annual NATO summit being held in Washington this week, the alliance announced Tuesday. Members will now move into a five-year implementation phase of the project, during which allies will contribute more than $1 billion "to leverage commercial and national space assets, and to expand advanced exploitation capacities," according to a press release.

The United States is one of the nations signed onto the initiative, as well as Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Turkey, according to a NATO source. The transatlantic organization created APSS last year with the intent to establish a "virtual constellation" -- dubbed Aquila -- comprising both national and commercial space systems, sensors and data that can be used by NATO's command structure and other allies. The project is considered "the largest multinational investment in space-based capabilities" in the alliance's history, and is set to increase NATO's ability "to monitor activities on the ground and at sea with unprecedented accuracy and timeliness," a press release stated.

Participating nations will be able to use their own space systems, provide tools for intelligence collection and analysis, or purchase space-based data gathered by commercial constellations. "Integrating and exploiting data from space effectively has been a growing challenge over time," a NATO press release stated. "By leveraging latest technologies from industry, APSS will help advance NATO's innovation agenda and offer a new platform to engage with the growing space industry." The APSS project is part of the larger implementation of NATO's overarching space policy adopted in 2019, which officially recognized space as a new operational domain. Since then, the alliance has worked to bolster its presence in space -- including the establishment of a NATO Space Centre in 2020 and approval of an official Space Branch within the Allied Command Transformation in June.

Mark Tyson reports via Tom's Hardware: The German Navy is searching for a new storage system to replace the aging 8-inch (20cm) floppy disks which are vital to the running of its Brandenburg class F123 frigates. According to an official tender document, the ideal answer to the German Navy's problems would be a drop-in floppy disk replacement based upon a storage emulation system, reports Golem.de. Germany's Brandenburg class F123 frigates were commissioned in the mid 1990s, so it is understandable that floppy disks were seen as a handy removable storage medium. These drives are part of the frigates' data acquisition system and, thus "central to controlling basic ship functions such as propulsion and power generation," according to the source report.

The F123s are specialized in submarine hunting, and they are also being upgraded in terms of the weapon systems and weapon control systems. Swedish company Saab is the general contractor for the F123 modernizations. It won't be trivial to replace three decades old computer hardware seamlessly, while retaining the full functionality of the existing floppies. However, we note that other companies have wrestled similar problems in recent years. Moreover, there are plenty of emulator enthusiasts using technologies for floppy emulation solutions like Gotek drives which can emulate a variety of floppy drive standards and formats. There are other workable solutions already out there, but it all depends on who the German Navy chooses to deliver the project.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A data breach at the phone surveillance operation mSpy has exposed millions of its customers who bought access to the phone spyware app over the past decade, as well as the Ukrainian company behind it. Unknown attackers stole millions of customer support tickets, including personal information, emails to support, and attachments, including personal documents, from mSpy in May 2024. While hacks of spyware purveyors are becoming increasingly common, they remain notable because of the highly sensitive personal information often included in the data, in this case about the customers who use the service. The hack encompassed customer service records dating back to 2014, which were stolen from the spyware maker's Zendesk-powered customer support system.

mSpy is a phone surveillance app that promotes itself as a way to track children or monitor employees. Like most spyware, it is also widely used to monitor people without their consent. These kinds of apps are also known as "stalkerware" because people in romantic relationships often use them to surveil their partner without consent or permission. The mSpy app allows whoever planted the spyware, typically someone who previously had physical access to a victim's phone, to remotely view the phone's contents in real-time. As is common with phone spyware, mSpy's customer records include emails from people seeking help to surreptitiously track the phones of their partners, relatives, or children, according to TechCrunch's review of the data, which we independently obtained. Some of those emails and messages include requests for customer support from several senior-ranking U.S. military personnel, a serving U.S. federal appeals court judge, a U.S. government department's watchdog, and an Arkansas county sheriff's office seeking a free license to trial the app. Even after amassing several million customer service tickets, the leaked Zendesk data is thought to represent only the portion of mSpy's overall customer base who reached out for customer support. The number of mSpy customers is likely to be far higher. mSpy's owners, a Ukraine-based company called Brainstack, have yet to publicly disclose the breach. You can visit Have I Been Pwned to see if your email address was involved in a breach.