Ars Technica's Eric Berger reports: In a wide-ranging interview with a Russian television station, the chief executive of Russia's main space corporation said the country is now planning to participate in the International Space Station project all the way to NASA's desired goal of 2030. "In coordination with our American colleagues, we plan to de-orbit the station sometime around the beginning of 2030," the country's chief space official, Yuri Borisov, said during the interview. "The final scenario will probably be specified after the transition to a new NASA administration."

While the documents for such an extension have not been signed, these comments appear to represent a change in tone from Russia. When he first became head of Roscosmos in 2022, Borisov said Russia would leave the station partnership "after" 2024, which was interpreted as shortly thereafter. Later, Russia committed to working with NASA to keep the orbital outpost flying only through 2028. The US space agency has expressed a consistent desire to keep flying the station until 2030, after which point it hopes that private space station operators can provide one or more replacement facilities.
Borisov said the aging station, elements of which have now been in space for more than a quarter of a century, are becoming difficult to maintain. "Today our cosmonauts have to spend more time repairing equipment and less and less time conducting experiments," he said. Borisov also discussed Russia's challenges of getting private investment in space-related activities, saying: "In the West, particularly in America, 70 percent of space services are provided by satellite constellations created by private companies. This process has only just begun with us. This is a very risky business for potential investors."

"Right now, the dynamic growth of private space is being influenced by the general economic situation (likely referring to Russia's costly war in Ukraine), high inflation and interest rates, which leads to expensive money for private investors. We can hope that this will be a temporary period and more favorable times will come soon."

SpaceX has partnered with telecommunications company One NZ to offer satellite-to-cell Starlink texting service to customers in New Zealand. It marks the first time a nationwide satellite text messaging service has been powered by Starlink. Engadget reports: Now onto the caveats, and there are a couple of big ones. Starlink texting is incredibly slow when compared to traditional methods. One NZ says that most messages should be sent and received within three minutes during the initial rollout, but admits that timeframe could increase to "10 minutes or longer." It is for this reason that the company continues to urge folks to carry a personal locator beacon when traveling to a remote area.

The service is also only supported by four smartphone models, which includes the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and OPPO Find X8 Pro. This list of eligible devices is expected to grow next year. The company also intends to eventually expand the service to include voice calling and data. The satellite service is free for existing One NZ customers on paid-monthly plans, but we don't know the pricing scheme for new customers or for those signed up for other types of contracts. Starlink is working with T-Mobile to do something similar in the U.S. Last month, the FCC approved a license for T-Mobile and SpaceX's Starlink to provide supplemental telecommunications coverage from space.

NASA has delayed the launch of SpaceX Crew-10 to late March 2025 to allow time for processing a new Dragon spacecraft, extending the stay of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the ISS to about nine months. CNN reports: Williams and Wilmore launched to space in June, piloting the first crewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. Their trip, expected to last about a week, ballooned into a monthslong assignment after their vehicle experienced technical issues en route to the space station and NASA determined it would be too risky to bring them home aboard the Starliner.

The astronauts have since joined Crew-9, a routine space station mission originally slated to return to Earth no earlier than February after a handoff period with Crew-10. Now, Crew-10 will get off the ground at least a month later than expected because NASA and SpaceX teams need "time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission," according to the space agency. "NASA and SpaceX assessed various options for managing the next crewed handover, including using another Dragon spacecraft," NASA noted in a blog post on Tuesday. "After careful consideration, the team determined that launching Crew-10 in late March, following completion of the new Dragon spacecraft, was the best option for meeting NASA's requirements and achieving space station objectives for 2025."

Scripps Research scientists sent stem-cell-derived brain organoids to the ISS to study the effects of microgravity on brain cells, finding that the organoids matured faster and showed signs of specialization compared to Earth-grown controls. The findings have been published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine. Phys.Org reports: To examine how the space environment impacts cellular functions, the team compared the cells' RNA expression patterns -- a measure of gene activity -- to identical "ground control" organoids that had remained on Earth. Surprisingly, they found that the organoids grown in microgravity had higher levels of genes associated with maturity and lower levels of genes associated with proliferation compared to the ground controls, meaning that the cells exposed to microgravity developed faster and replicated less than those on Earth. "We discovered that in both types of organoids, the gene expression profile was characteristic of an older stage of development than the ones that were on the ground," [says co-senior author Jeanne Loring, Ph.D., professor emeritus in the Department of Molecular Medicine and founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Scripps Research]. "In microgravity, they developed faster, but it's really important to know these were not adult neurons, so this doesn't tell us anything about aging."

The team also noted that contrary to their hypothesis, there was less inflammation and lower expression of stress-related genes in organoids grown in microgravity, but more research is needed to determine why. Loring speculates that microgravity conditions may more closely mirror the conditions experienced by cells within the brain compared to organoids grown under conventional lab conditions and in the presence of gravity. "The characteristics of microgravity are probably also at work in people's brains, because there's no convection in microgravity -- in other words, things don't move," says Loring. "I think that in space, these organoids are more like the brain because they're not getting flushed with a whole bunch of culture medium or oxygen. They're very independent; they form something like a brainlet, a microcosm of the brain." "The next thing we plan to do is to study the part of the brain that's most affected by Alzheimer's disease," says Loring. "We also want to know whether there are differences in the way neurons connect with each other in space. With these kinds of studies, you can't rely on earlier work to predict what the result would be because there is no earlier work. We're on the ground floor, so to speak; in the sky, but on the ground floor."

SpaceX has filed a petition to incorporate its Starbase facility in South Texas as a new city, aiming to streamline infrastructure development and support the growing workforce needed for Starship production and testing. Space.com reports: "To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community," SpaceX said in the petition, which was shared in a post on X (formally Twitter). "That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley."

The petition was addressed to Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr., the county's top elected official. The next step will be for officials to review the petition to determine if it complies with statutory requirements. Then, an election would be held to incorporate Starbase. [...] With Starship expected to "fundamentally alter humanity's access to space," SpaceX aims to make the area of the Starbase launch site the "Gateway to Mars," the company wrote in the petition. [...] "Incorporating Starbase will streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world class place to live -- for hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity's future in space," SpaceX officials said in the petition.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The European Union is forging ahead with plans for a constellation of internet satellites to rival Elon Musk-owned Starlink, after signing a $11.1 billion deal to launch nearly 300 satellites into low- and medium-Earth orbits by 2030. The bloc wants the space tech to boost its digital sovereignty by providing secure comms to governments.

First announced in 2022, Iris^2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) is a public-private partnership whose initial cost estimate (6 billion euros) leapt 76% through a fraught negotiation process. In the end, the program will be 61% funded from the public purse; an industry consortium called SpaceRise, selected in October, is making up the difference. This grouping includes French satellite giant Eutelsat, which merged with European rival OneWeb back in 2022.

Does space need environmentalists, asks the headline from a new article in Noema magazine. "As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson notes, the first trillionaire will be made in space.

"But amid such promising developments are worries among some scientists and environmentalists who fear humans will repeat the errors that resource extraction has wrought on Earth..." If we have mining in space, do we need a preemptive anti-mining campaign to protect our solar system from rampant exploitation before it is too late? Earth-bound environmental advocates and astrobiologists alike have concluded that, indeed, we need an environmental movement in space... [Daniel Capper, an adjunct professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan State University of Denver] is part of a small but growing chorus of intellectuals who argue that we must carve out protections sooner rather than later — backed by a concrete theoretical and legal framework — for certain areas of the solar system. The United Nations has convened a working group on the use of space resources, and the International Astronomical Union has set up a different working group to delineate places of special scientific value on the moon.

Some researchers have proposed creating a planetary park system in space, while others advocate for a circular space economy that minimizes the need for additional resources. The nonprofit For All Moonkind is advocating for the protection of space sites of cultural importance, like the Apollo 11 landing site. And the Astra Carta, backed by Britain's King Charles, advocates for making sustainability a key component of space activities... [Martin Elvis, an astronomer with the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution] proposed setting aside 7/8ths of the solar system as wilderness, in a paper published in 2019 in Acta Astronautica that he coauthored with King's College London philosopher Tony Milligan...

[T]he lack of norms — clear rules and regulations around space — is one of the most pressing threats to the space environment, advocates say. What might happen, for example, if the United States simply began scooping up asteroids for platinum, or if Blue Origin established a mine at the lunar South Pole without securing consensus from others? "We do not have good answers to those questions right now," Hanlon said. "This is something that I'm really concerned about." Much of the legal basis for the space environmentalism movement is currently contained in just one article of the Outer Space Treaty (OST), said Christopher Johnson, the director of legal affairs and space law at the Secure World Foundation. Article 9 of the OST contains the harmful contamination language and says actors must pay "due regard" to the interests of others. It also stipulates that "harmful interference" with the activities of others must be avoided. Those phrases could be interpreted in multiple ways and have yet to be meaningfully tested.
The article cites two concrete proposals moving forward:

• "The Artemis Accords, a set of principles for exploring and using resources in outer space established by the U.S. in 2020, argues that resource extraction does not constitute national appropriation, and is therefore allowed by the OST. It's an initial step toward securing a consensus on space regulations, and one that's to date received the signatures of 47 nations including Japan, the United Kingdom, France and Germany (though China and Russia are notably absent). Signing the Artemis Accords allows nations to participate in the Artemis program, and also play a role in shaping future norms in space, Johnson said, a potentially lucrative incentive... "

• "The UN's COPUOS, the same one responsible for the OST and the Moon Agreement, published a working paper in 2019 that laid out voluntary guidelines for the long-term sustainability of outer space activities. Recommendations from the committee's working group on principles for the use of space resources are due in 2027, and Johnson said draft guidelines are likely to emerge in early 2025."

"One day, our descendants might live among the stars," the article concludes. "But we must ask ourselves, what kind of place will they inherit?"

Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes: Scientist have unlocked the secret to a bacteria dubbed 'Conan the Bacterium' which is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most radiant-resistant life-form. Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than that which would kill a human [and every other organism]. In addition, this bacteria can survive on the outside of the International Space Station for three years. It can also withstand acid, cold, and dehydration (a D&D player's worst nightmare). All of this protection comes down to a unique antioxidant.

The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.
CNN reports: The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids. Together, this powerful trilogy is more effective in protecting against radiation than manganese combined with just one of the other components, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings could be used to protect astronauts from high doses of cosmic radiation on future deep-space missions across our solar system, according to the study authors.

"We've long known that manganese ions and phosphate together make a strong antioxidant, but discovering and understanding the 'magic' potency provided by the addition of the third component is a breakthrough," said study coauthor Brian Hoffman, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry and professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in a statement...

On Earth, the antioxidant could be used for protection against accidents that release radiation.

The Washington Post reports: Years before the internet was created and the first smartphones buzzed to life, an educational platform called PLATO offered a glimpse of the digital world to come. Launched in 1960 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [UIUC], it was the first generalized, computer-based instructional system, and grew into a home for early message boards, emails, chatrooms, instant messaging and multiplayer video games.

The platform's developer, Donald Bitzer, was a handball-playing, magic-loving electrical engineer who opened his computer lab to practically everyone, welcoming contributions from Illinois undergrads as well as teenagers who were still in high school. Dr. Bitzer, who died Dec. 10 at age 90, spent more than two decades working on PLATO, managing its growth and development while also pioneering digital technologies that included the plasma display panel, a forerunner of the ultrathin screens used on today's TVs and tablets. "All of the features you see kids using now, like discussion boards or forums and blogs, started with PLATO," he said during a 2014 return to Illinois, his alma mater. "All of the social networking we take for granted actually started as an educational tool."
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp found another remembrance online. "Ray Ozzie, whose LinkedIn profile dedicates more space to describing his work as a PLATO developer as a UIUC undergrad than it does to his later successes as a creator of Lotus Notes and as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, offers his own heartfelt mini-obit." Ozzie writes: It's difficult to adequately convey how much impact he had on so many, and I implore you to take a few minutes to honor him by reading a bit about him and his contributions. Links below. As an insecure young CS student at UIUC in 1974, Paul Tenczar, working for/with Don, graciously gave me a chance as a jr. systems programmer on the mind-bogglingly forward thinking system known as PLATO. A global, interactive system for learning, collaboration, and community like no other at the time. We were young and in awe of how Don led, inspired, and managed to keep the project alive. I was introverted; shaking; stage fright. Yeah I could code. But how could such a deeply technical engineer assemble such a strong team to execute on such a totally novel and inspirational vision, secure government funding, and yet also demo the product on the Phil Donahue show?

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules." You touched so many of us and shaped who we became and the risks we would take, having an impact well beyond that which you created. You made us think and you made us laugh. I hope we made you proud."

BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: As we close out 2024, we Linux enthusiasts are once again looking ahead to what the future holds. While Linux has long been the unsung hero of technology, powering servers, supercomputers, and the cloud, it's also a dominant force in the consumer space, even if many don't realize it. With Android leading the way as the most widely used Linux-based operating system, 2025 is shaping up to be another landmark year for the open source world Here are the predictions mentioned in the article:

- Linux will continue to dominate the enterprise sector
- Linux will further solidify its role in powering cloud infrastructure, with major providers like AWS and Google Cloud relying on it.
- Gaming on Linux is set to grow in 2025
- Linux will play a major role in AI development
- Linux's appeal to developers and tech enthusiasts will remain strong
- The open source movement will grow stronger

What additional predictions do you have for Linux in 2025?

25 years ago today, the late, great Suck.com played a prank on Slashdot. Their daily column of pop-culture criticism was replaced by... Suckdot, a parody site satirically filled with Slashdot-style headlines like "Linux Possibly Defamed Somewhere." RabidZelot was one of a bunch to report: "In Richmond, California, this afternoon, this dude said something bad about Linux at the Hilltop Mall near the fountains right after the first showing of Phantom Menace let out. He was last seen heading towards Sears and has a 'Where Do You Want to Go Today?' T-shirt and brown hair. Let us know when you spot him."

( Read More... | 0 of 72873 comments)
There's more Slashdot-style news blurbs like "Red Hat Reports Income". (In which Red Hat founder Bob Young finds a quarter on the way to the conference room, and adds it to the company's balance sheet...) Its list of user-submitted "Ask Suckdot" questions include geek-mocking topics like "Is Overclocking Worth That Burning Smell?" and "HOW DO I TURN OFF SHIFT_LOCK?" And somewhere there's even a parody of Jon Katz (an early contributor to Slashdot's content) — though clicking "Read More" on the essay leads to a surprising message from the parodist admitting defeat. "Slashdot has roughly 60 million links on its front page. I'm simply not going to waste any more of my life making fun of each and every one of them. Half the time you can't tell the real Slashdot from the parody anyway."

Suck.com was a fixture in the early days of the web, launched in 1995 (and pre-dating the launch of Slashdot by two years). It normally published link-heavy commentary every weekday for nearly six years. Contributing writer Greg Knauss was apparently behind much of the Suckdot parody — even taking a jab at Slashdot's early online podcast, "Geeks in Space" (1999-2001). [Suckdot informs its readers in 1999 that "The latest installment of Geeks Jabbering at a Mic is up..."] Other Suckdot headlines?

• Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune Uses Words "Red" and "Hat" in Article
• BSD Repeatedly Ignored
• DVD Encryption Cracked: Godzilla for Everybody!
• Linus Ascends Bodily Into Heaven
• iMac: Ha Ha Ha Ha Wimp

There were no hard feelings. Seven months later Slashdot was even linking to Greg Knauss's Suck.com essay proclaiming that "Mozilla is dead, or might as well be..."

So whatever happened to Suck.com? Though it stopped publishing in 2001, an outpouring of nostalgia in 2005 apparently prompted its owners at Lycos.com to continue hosting its content through 2018. (This unofficial history notes that one fan scrambling to archive the site was Aaron Swartz.) Though it's not clear what happened next, here in 2024 its original domain is now up for sale — at an asking price of $1 million.

But all of Suck.com's original content is still available online — including its Suckdot parody — at archive.org. Which, mercifully, is still here a full 28 years after launching in 1996...

The U.S. military has begun openly discussing offensive capabilities in space, reports ArsTechnica, a significant shift from previous policies that avoided mentioning space-based weapons to prevent an arms race. U.S. Space Command recently listed "integrated space fires" -- military terminology for offensive or defensive actions against adversaries -- among its priorities.

The move follows increasing concerns about China and Russia's space warfare capabilities, including satellite-disabling weapons and potential nuclear anti-satellite systems. "Space is a war-fighting domain," Space Force Chief Gen. Chance Saltzman said at a conference in Orlando. "Ten years ago, I couldn't say that." Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, identified "integrated space fires" as his organization's most urgent requirement. The capabilities under consideration range from cyberattacks and directed energy weapons to satellite-capture systems, though specific details remain classified.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Copilot has gone native for Windows Insiders and commandeered a popular keyboard shortcut in the process. The move from a Progressive Web App (PWA) to a native binary -- although most of it appears to still be a website, just not running as a PWA -- will be welcomed. Microsoft noted that once the app update has been installed, Copilot will appear in the system tray.

However, the assistant's quick view feature has been given the Alt+Space keyboard shortcut. This is already used by many other applications, including Microsoft's own PowerToys. PowerToys Run, for example, uses Alt+Space to open a launcher into which users can type in the name of the service they are seeking. Alt+Space is also used to show the context menu of the active window. Therefore, Microsoft's decision to hand the shortcut over to Copilot is unlikely to please keyboard warriors who are used to their shortcuts working in a particular way.

The Windows vendor acknowledged that the shortcut was already in use by many apps, saying: "For any apps installed on your PC that might utilize this keyboard shortcut, Windows will register whichever app is launched first on your PC and running in the background as the app that is invoked when using Alt+Space."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Scientific advisers to the European Commission are calling for a moratorium across the EU on efforts to artificially cool Earth through solar geoengineering. That includes controversial technologies used to reflect sunlight back into space, primarily by sending reflective particles into the atmosphere or by brightening clouds.

Proponents argue that this can help in the fight against climate change, especially as planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb. But small-scale experiments have triggered backlash over concerns that these technologies could do more harm than good. The European Commission asked its Group of Chief Scientific Advisors (GCSA) and European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) to write up their opinions on solar geoengineering, which were published today alongside a report synthesizing what little we know about how these technologies might work.

There's "insufficient scientific evidence" to show that solar geoengineering can actually prevent climate change, says the opinion written by the GCSA. "Given the currently very high levels of scientific and technical uncertainty ... as well as the potential harmful uses, we advocate for a moratorium on all large-scale [solar geoengineering] experimentation and deployment," writes the EGE in the second highly anticipated opinion.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman predicts conversational AI will become the primary way people interact with technology, replacing traditional web browsers and search engines within the next few years. In an interview with The Verge, Suleyman, who oversees Microsoft's consumer AI products including Bing and Copilot, called current search interfaces "completely broken" and "a total pain," arguing that voice-based AI interactions will prove "100 times easier" for users. He said: The UI that you experience is going to be automagically produced by an LLM in three or five years, and that is going to be the default. And they'll be representing the brands, businesses, influencers, celebrities, academics, activists, and organizations, just as each one of those stakeholders in society ended up getting a podcast, getting a website, writing a blog, maybe building an app, or using the telephone back in the day.

The technological revolution produces a new interface, which completely shuffles the way that things are distributed. And some organizations adapt really fast and they jump on board and it kind of transforms their businesses and their organizations, and some don't. There will be an adjustment. We'll look back by 2030 and be like, "Oh, that really was the kind of moment when there was this true inflection point because these conversational AIs really are the primary way that we have these interactions." And so, you're absolutely right. A brand and a business are going to use that AI to talk to your personal companion AI because I don't really like doing that kind of shopping. And some people do, and they'll do that kind of direct-to-consumer browsing experience. Many people don't like it, and it's actually super frustrating, hard, and slow.

And so, increasingly you'll come to work with your personal AI companion to go and be that interface, to go and negotiate, find great opportunities, and adapt them to your specific context. That'll just be a much more efficient protocol because AIs can talk to AIs in super real-time. And by the way, let's not fool ourselves. We already have this on the open web today. We have behind-the-scenes, real-time negotiation between buyers and sellers of ad space, or between search ranking algorithms. So, there's already that kind of marketplace of AIs. It's just not explicitly manifested in language. It's operating in vector space.

This week a Florida-based Bitcoin-tech company named MARA Holdings announced it had bought a 114-megawatt Texas wind farm, reports Chron.com, "and will subsequently take it off the power grid and use it to energize its mining operations."

MARA's CEO tells the site they're "leveraging renewable resources that would have otherwise been curtailed" while "reducing our bitcoin production costs through vertical integration, and demonstrating MARA's commitment to environmental stewardship." The wind farms were not a part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, but instead they were located within the Southwest Power Pool, which manages the market for the central U.S., including but not limited to most or parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota... A 114-MW facility could power somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 homes, depending on who you ask...

Historically, the facilities use up a lot of power and have generated backlash from neighbors who have complained about the noise of the machines inside. Texas has been a haven for cryptocurrency tech companies, primarily because of the state's space, deregulated power market and friendly business climate. Two weeks ago, the Public Utilities Commission adopted a rule requiring crypto and other virtual currency miners within the ERCOT grid to register their locations, ownership information and electricity demands, to further ensure that they could be watchful of this emerging source of energy consumption.
"Crypto mining operations currently consume around 2.3 percent of US electricity, and it requires roughly 155,000kWh to mine one Bitcoin," notes the site Data Centre Dynamics. This is the second off-grid power deal MARA has signed over the last few months. In October, it launched a 25MW micro data center operation across oil wellheads in Texas and North Dakota. The data center will be powered exclusively by excess natural gas from oilfield production that would have otherwise been flared. The operation will be distributed across wellheads in Texas and North Dakota, with operational status expected by January 2025.
Some context from Bloomberg: A few years ago Bitcoin miners took part in a global scramble for electricity to power their specialized computers... But the rise of AI, with its insatiable demand for electricity, dwarfed the needs of crypto and upended energy markets worldwide. Miners must now compete with much-larger tech firms for connections to electrical grids and power contracts. "Bitcoin miners are being forced to go look at marginal generation," said [MARA CEO Fred] Thiel. "The AI guys can afford to pay a much higher amount for energy than a Bitcoin miner"... MARA's plan to mine only when the wind is blowing makes economic sense because its mine will house last-generation computers that would otherwise have been retired, Thiel said.
"Thiel said he'd be interested to potentially buy more wind farms over time."

Not every tech "advent calendar" involves programming puzzles. Instead the geek tradition of programming-language advent calendars "seems to have started way back in 2000," according to one history, "when London-based programmer Mark Fowler launched a calendar highlighting a different Perl module each day."

So the tradition continues...

• Nearly a quarter of a century later, there's still a Perl Advent Calendar, celebrating tips and tricks like "a few special packages waiting under the tree that can give your web applications a little extra pep in their step."

• And of course there's a separate advent calendar for Raku programmers.

• Since 2009 web performance consultant (and former Yahoo and Facebook engineer) Stoyan Stefanov has been pulling together an annual Web Performance calendar with helpful blog posts.

• There's also a JVM Advent calendar with daily helpful hints for Java programmers.

• Another advent calendar promises daily posts about C#.

• The HTMHell site — which bills itself as "a collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites" — is celebrating the season with the "HTMHell Advent Calendar," promising daily articles on security, accessibility, UX, and performance.

• There's even an advent calendar with tips for the reverse-engineering framework Radar.

• There's still a lovely web-design themed calendar at Designcember.com.

And meanwhile developers at the Svelte frontend framework are actually promising to release something new each day, "whether it's a new feature in Svelte or SvelteKit or an improvement to the website!"

But not every tech advent calendar is about programming...

• Adafruit's managing director is publishing a Retrocomputing Advent Calendar — daily looks at the ghosts of computers past.

• The Atlantic continues its 17-year tradition of a Space Telescope advent calendar, featuring daily images from both NASA's Hubble telescope and James Webb Space Telescope

• The gaming blog Rock Paper Shotgun has been counting down their favorite games of 2024...

"In September 2024, U.S. scientists made key advances towards building a nuclear clock — a step beyond an atomic clock," according to ScienceAlert: In contrast to the atomic clock, the transition measured by this new device happens in the nucleus, or core, of the atom (hence the name), which gives it an even higher frequency. Thorium-229, the atom used for this study, offers a nuclear transition that can be excited by ultraviolet light. The team working on the nuclear clock overcame the technological challenge of building a frequency comb that works at the relatively high frequency range of ultraviolet light. This was a big step forward because nuclear transitions usually only become visible at much higher frequencies — like those of gamma radiation. But we are not able to accurately measure transitions in the gamma range yet.

The thorium atom transition has a frequency roughly one million times higher than the caesium atom's. This means that, although it has been measured with a lower accuracy than the current state-of-the-art strontium clock, it promises a new generation of clocks with much more precise definitions of the second. Measuring time to the nineteenth decimal place, as nuclear clocks could do, would allow scientists to study very fast processes... [G]eneral relativity is used to study high speed processes that could lead to overlaps with quantum mechanics. A nuclear clock will give us the technology necessary for proving these theories. [The clocks "will enable the study of the union of general relativity and quantum mechanics once they become sensitive to the finite wavefunction of quantum objects oscillating in curved space-time," according to the abstract of the researchers' paper.]

On a technological level, precise positioning systems such as GPS are based on complex calculations that require fine measurements of the time required by a signal to jump from one device to a satellite and onto another device. A better definition of the second will translate to much more accurate GPS. Time might be up for the caesium second, but a whole new world awaits beyond it.
As the researchers explain their paper's abstract,

Space.com calls it "the once-in-a-lifetime reignition of a long-dead star in an explosion powerful enough to briefly match the brilliance of Polaris, the North Star." In March CNN promised this once-every-79-years event would happen "anytime between now and September."

But it didn't...

Space.com has a spectacular animation showing what this "recurring nova" was supposed to look like (described by CNN as a "sudden, brief explosion" from a collapsed/"white dwarf" star). "The highly-anticipated 'guest star' of the night sky has yet to deliver its grand performance," adds Space.com, "but we have an update." For a quick recap... T Coronae Borealis — often called T Cor Bor or T CrB — is home to a white dwarf, a dense, burnt-out star siphoning material from its companion star, which is a massive red giant close to the end of its life. This material spirals into an accretion disk around the white dwarf, where it slowly coats the star's surface. Every 80 years or so, the white dwarf manages to accumulate enough mass to trigger a nuclear explosion, sparking an outburst that boosts its typically dim magnitude of 10 to a bright 2.0 — that should look like a "new star" in the night sky to us...

[T]he elusive system continues to show signs that an outburst is still imminent. So, what gives? "We know it has to happen," astrophysicist Elizabeth Hays, who is watching T CrB every day using NASA's Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, told Space.com in a recent interview. "We just can't pin it down to the month."

The unpredictability stems partly from limited historical records of T CrB's outbursts. Only two such eruptions have been definitively observed in recent history: on May 12, 1866, when a star's outburst briefly outshined all the stars in its constellation, reaching magnitude 2.0, and again on February 9, 1946, when it peaked at magnitude 3.0. These events appear to follow the star's roughly 80-year cycle, suggesting that the next outburst may not occur until 2026. However, in February 2015, the system brightened in a manner reminiscent of its behavior in 1938, eight years before its 1946 eruption. This rise in brightness suggested T CrB's outburst was accelerated to 2023. The system also endured a "unique and mysterious" dimming about a year before its 1946 outburst, and a similar dip started in March last year, prompting astronomers to adjust their predictions to 2024.

Yet, the cause of this pre-eruption dip in brightness remains unclear, making it only a coincidental predictor. "We got really excited when it looked like it was doing similar things," said Hays. "Now we're learning, 'Oh, there's another piece we can't see.'" Moreover, the rate at which the red giant's material is being drawn toward the white dwarf may fluctuate over the years, making it trickier to put a date on the calendar for the outburst, Edward Sion, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, told Space.com... "There's a lot of uncertainty about the actual average accretion rate," said Sion.
The article points out that last time there was an eruption, "there were no X-ray or gamma-ray telescopes in space, so there is no data from wavelengths other than optical to shed light on what happened before the outburst." But this time astrophysicist Hays says "We're getting the best dataset we've ever had on what does nova look like before it goes off".

Space.com says "this wealth of data will allow them to better predict future outbursts, and will eventually benefit models of how stars work."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Okian Warrior for sharing the article.

"SpaceX has launched 20 of its Starlink satellites up into Earth's orbit, enabling direct-to-cellphone connectivity for subscribers anywhere on the planet," reports the tech blog New Atlas. That completes the constellation's first orbital shell, following a launch of an initial batch of six satellites for testing back in January. The satellites were launched with a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base on December 5 at 10 PM EST; they were then deployed in low Earth orbit. SpaceX founder Elon Musk noted on X that the effort will "enable unmodified cellphones to have internet connectivity in remote areas." He added a caveat for the first orbital shell — "Bandwidth per beam is only ~10 Mb, but future constellations will be much more capable...."

The big deal with this new venture is that unlike previous attempts at providing satellite-to-phone service, you don't need a special handset or even a specific app to get access anywhere in the world. Starlink uses standard LTE/4G protocols that most phones are compatible with, partners with mobile operators like T-Mobile in the U.S. and Rogers in Canada, and has devised a system to make its service work seamlessly with your phone when it's connecting to satellites 340 miles (540 km) above the Earth's surface. The SpaceX division noted it's also worked out latency constraints, ideal altitudes and elevation angles for its satellites, along with several other parameters, to achieve reliable connectivity. Each satellite has an LTE modem on board, and these satellites plug into the massive constellation of 6,799 existing Starlink spacecraft, according to Space.com.

Connecting to that larger constellation happens via laser backhaul, where laser-based optical communication systems transmit data between satellites. This method leverages the advantages of lasers over traditional radio frequency communications, enabling data rates up to 100 times faster, increased bandwidth, and improved security.
The direct-to-cell program was approved last month, the article points out — but it's ready to ramp up. "You'll currently get only text service through the end of 2024; voice and data will become available sometime next year, as will support for IoT devices (such as smart home gadgets). The company hasn't said how much its service will cost. " (They also note there's already competing services from Lynk, "which has satellites in orbit and launched in the island nation of Palau back in 2023, and AST SpaceMobile, which also has commercial satellites in orbit and contracts with the U.S. government, Europe, and Japan.")

Elon Musk's announcement on X.com prompted this interesting exchange:

X.com User: You've stated that purchasing Starlink goes toward funding the journey to Mars, yes?

Elon Musk: Yes.