NASA has tweeted a video showing the arrival of four astronauts from three countries on the International Space Station early Satuday morning.

CNN describes the significance to their arrival — and what the astronauts will do during their six-month stay in space: This mission, dubbed Crew-2, marks the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company and the first to make use of a previously flown, privately-owned rocket booster and spacecraft... On Saturday morning, the capsule slowly aligned itself and moved in to dock directly with one of the space station's ports.

The crew consists of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide with Japan's JAXA space agency.

A prime focus of the astronauts' mission will be research with "tissue chips," or "small models of human organs containing multiple cell types that behave much the same as they do in the body" and that NASA hopes will advance the development of drugs and vaccines, according to the space agency. That work will build on years of studying biological and other scientific phenomena aboard the ISS, where the microgravity environment can give scientists a better fundamental understanding of how something works.

Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet, and Hoshide joined seven astronauts already on board the station, four of whom arrived on a different SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in November. That brings the space station's current total of personnel to 11 — one of the largest crews the ISS has ever hosted. But that number will quickly drop back down to seven when four of the astronauts who'd been on board hitch a ride home from the station on April 28.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A series of senior European MPs have been approached in recent days by individuals who appear to be using deepfake filters to imitate Russian opposition figures during video calls. Those tricked include Rihards Kols, who chairs the foreign affairs committee of Latvia's parliament, as well as MPs from Estonia and Lithuania. Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, has also said he was targeted.

"Putin's Kremlin is so weak and frightened of the strength of @navalny they're conducting fake meetings to discredit the Navalny team," Tugendhat posted in a tweet, referring to the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "They got through to me today. They won't broadcast the bits where I call Putin a murderer and thief, so I'll put it here." Kols uploaded a photograph of Leonid Volkov, an ally of Navalny, and a screenshot of his doppelganger taken from the video call. Volkov said the two looked virtually identical. "Looks like my real face -- but how did they manage to put it on the Zoom call? Welcome to the deepfake era " he wrote.

Kols said he had been approached by email by a person claiming to be Volkov and had held a short video-conference call with him, where they discussed support for Russian political prisoners and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Only later did he realise he may have been the victim of a hi-tech prank, he said. "Quite a painful lesson, but perhaps we can also say thanks to this fake Volkov for this lesson for us and Lithuanian and Estonian colleagues," he wrote. "It is clear that the so-called truth decay or post-truth and post-fact era has the potential to seriously threaten the safety and stability of local and international countries, governments and societies." Volkov accused a Russian duo named Vovan and Lexus, who regularly target western officials, of being behind the call.

What do you call a collection of black holes? The question has taken on an urgency among astronomers inspired by the recent news of dozens of black holes buzzing around the center of a nearby cluster of stars. The New York Times: In the last few years, instruments like the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have recorded space-time vibrations from the collisions of black holes, making it clear beyond doubt that these monstrous concentrations of nothingness not only exist but are ubiquitous. Astronomers anticipate spotting a great number of these Einsteinian creatures when the next generation of gravitational-wave antennas are deployed. What will they call them? There are gaggles of geese, pods of whales and murders of crows. What term would do justice to the special nature of black holes? A mass? A colander? A scream?

Jocelyn Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University, and colleagues are developing an international project called the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, that will be able to detect collisions between all sizes of black holes throughout the universe. She was trying to run a Zoom meeting of the group recently "when one of the members said his daughter was wondering what you call a collective of black holes -- and then the meeting fell apart, with everyone trying to up one another," she said in an email. "Each time I saw a suggestion, I had to stop and giggle like a loon, which egged us all on more." The question was crowdsourced on Twitter recently as part of what NASA has begun calling black hole week (April 12-16). Among the many candidates so far: A crush. A mosh pit. A silence. A speckle. A hive. An enigma. Or a favorite of mine for of its connection to my youth: an Albert Hall of black holes.

chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: Websites for customers of agricultural equipment maker John Deere contained vulnerabilities that could have allowed a remote attacker to harvest sensitive information on the company's customers including their names, physical addresses and information on the Deere equipment they own and operate, The Security Ledger reported. The researcher known as "Sick Codes" published two advisories on Thursday warning about the flaws in the myjohndeere.com website and the John Deere Operations Center website and mobile applications. In a conversation with Security Ledger, the researcher said that a he was able to use VINs (vehicle identification numbers) taken from a farm equipment auction site to identify the name and physical address of the owner. Furthermore, a flaw in the myjohndeere.com website could allow an unauthenticated user to carry out automated attacks against the site, possibly revealing all the user accounts for that site.

Sick Codes disclosed both flaws to John Deere and also to the U.S. Government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which monitors food and agriculture as a critical infrastructure sector. The information obtained from the John Deere websites, including customer names and addresses, could put the company afoul of data security laws like California's CCPA or the Personal Information Protection Act in Deere's home state of Illinois. However, the national security consequences of the company's leaky website could be far greater. Details on what model combines and other equipment is in use on what farm could be of very high value to an attacker, including nation-states interested in disrupting U.S. agricultural production at key junctures, such as during planting or harvest time.

The consolidated nature of U.S. farming means that an attacker with knowledge of specific, Internet connected machinery in use by a small number of large-scale farming operations in the midwestern United States could launch targeted attacks on that equipment that could disrupt the entire U.S. food supply chain, researchers warn. The Agriculture sector and firms that supply it, like Deere, lag other industries in cyber security preparedness and resilience. A 2019 report (PDF) released by Department of Homeland Security concluded that the "adoption of advanced precision agriculture technology and farm information management systems in the crop and livestock sectors is introducing new vulnerabilities" (and that) "potential threats to precision agriculture were often not fully understood or were not being treated seriously enough by the front-line agriculture producers."

theodp writes: Code.org on Wednesday announced that dozens of industry, education, and state leaders are supporting a new Code.org AP CS A Java-focused curriculum for high school students, which will be available at no charge to all schools starting in the 2022-23 school year. "We are proud to have the following companies on our Industry Advisory Panel: Adobe, Amazon, Atlassian, Disney, Epic Games, Goldman Sachs, Google, IBM, Instagram, Microsoft, Riot Games, Roblox, Snapchat, Spotify, Tesla, Unity, Vista Equity," Code.org tweeted. "A big thank you to the following colleges and universities on our Education Advisory Panel: @BowieState @UBuffalo @CarnegieMellon @Harvard @montgomerycoll @NCWIT @thisisUIC @Illinois_Alma @unlv @UNOmaha @SpelmanCollege @UT_Dallas @UW @westminsterpa." In an accompanying Medium post, Code.org explained: "This work is all made possible through a generous [$15 million] gift from Amazon Future Engineer."

Despite having the support of some of the world's richest corporations and individuals whose goals the nonprofit helps advance, recently-released SBA records show that Code.org applied for and was approved for its second forgivable Federal Paycheck Protection Program loan in the amount of $1.9 million dollars on March 25, a month after Amazon and Code.org issued a joint press release announcing their $15 million plan to work on a new AP CS A curriculum and other initiatives. Amazon certainly has ambitious plans for influencing K-12 CS education. Last week, the company announced a 2021 goal to "reach 1.6 million underrepresented students globally through Amazon Future Engineer with real world-inspired virtual and hands-on computer science project learning." And an Amazon Future Engineer job listing for a U.S. Country Senior Manager notes the job will require working "with national and local educational non-profits and governmental entities such as BootUp, Project STEM, Code.org, and the US and State Departments of Education," as well as positioning Amazon "as subject matter experts on US computer science education, as well as the local education systems of our headquarter regions."

A university student is suing exam proctoring software maker Proctorio to "quash a campaign of harassment" against critics of the company, including an accusation that the company misused copyright laws to remove his tweets that were critical of the software. From a report: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the lawsuit this week on behalf of Miami University student Erik Johnson, who also does security research on the side, accused Proctorio of having "exploited the DMCA to undermine Johnson's commentary." Twitter hid three of Johnson's tweets after Proctorio filed a copyright takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, alleging that three of Johnson's tweets violated the company's copyright. Schools and universities have increasingly leaned on proctoring software during the pandemic to invigilate student exams, albeit virtually. Further reading: Proctorio Is Using Racist Algorithms To Detect Faces; Cheating-Detection Software Provokes 'School-Surveillance Revolt'; and Students Are Easily Cheating 'State-of-the-Art' Test Proctoring Tech.

After Google forgot to renew its Argentina domain, a user beat the firm into buying it for about $3.85. A report adds: However, minutes later after the manoeuvre, it was confirmed that Google has already recovered the domain. Users complained about the failure of the website for at least three hours, but when everyone suspected that the server had crashed, as is often the case, Kurona's (the protagonist in the story) posting on Twitter revealed the truth.

The CEOs of Uber and Just Eat Takeaway on Wednesday became engaged in a public spat after Uber announced it is planning to launch in Germany -- a market that is currently dominated by Just Eat Takeaway. From a report: Uber Eats will launch in Berlin in the next few weeks and potentially expand into other German cities in the coming months. The news was first reported by The Financial Times and confirmed to CNBC. Just Eat Takeaway CEO Jitse Groen accused Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi of trying to "depress" his firm's share price on Twitter on Wednesday. Shares of Just Eat Takeaway closed down almost 3%. Khosrowshahi responded: "Advice: pay a little less attention to your short term stock price and more attention to your Tech and Ops." Shortly thereafter, Groen replied: "If I may ... start paying taxes, minimum wage and social security premiums before giving a founder advice on how he should run his business."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Newsweek: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki received a "Free Expression" award from the Freedom Forum Institute in a virtual ceremony sponsored by YouTube, an online video platform owned by Google. On Thursday, YouTube creator Molly Burke presented Wojcicki with the accolade in a video shared to the platform. "I'm so excited to be here tonight to present Susan Wojcicki with the Free Expression award. As the CEO of YouTube, Susan is facing some of the most critical issues around free expression today," Burke said.

Following the ceremony, some Twitter users mocked Wojcicki for receiving an award that was sponsored by her own platform. "YouTube CEO won a Free Speech award...sponsored by YouTube. Hahahahhhaahhhahhahahahaaaaaaa," one user wrote. Another wrote, "Lol, youtube receiving an award for free expression/pro first amendment is Orwellian s***. What's next, Facebook getting an award for respecting privacy?"

Rei writes: After a Tesla crash in The Woodlands killed two people last Saturday night, news reports were quick to jump to the conclusion that Autopilot (or even FSD) was being used and led to the strange crash, in which investigators reported nobody in the driver's seat, one victim buckled in in the front passenger seat, and the other buckled in behind them. On Twitter, however, Autopilot users were quick to question this account, noting that Autopilot can't be enabled on a road lacking lane lines; the speed and acceleration were far higher than Autopilot allows; and numerous other problems. Now Elon Musk has weighed in with the first official statement since the crash. Responding to a user questioning the reporting, Musk said: "Your research as a private individual is better than professionals @WSJ! Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD. Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have." What actually caused the crash and why nobody was found in the driver's seat remains unclear at this point; analysis of the logs and investigation of the crash site remains ongoing.

Reddit unveiled its take on a Clubhouse-like social audio product on Monday, called Reddit Talk. The Verge reports: The company is billing Monday's announcement as a "sneak preview," since the feature isn't widely available yet. Moderators that want to try the feature out in their subreddit can add themselves to a waitlist for access. Based on Reddit's description and images shared by the company, Reddit Talk appears to look a lot like Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, and other social audio products. Talks will "live" within subreddits, according to Reddit.

During the initial tests, only subreddit moderators will be able to initiate a Talk, and Talk hosts will have the ability to invite, mute, and remove speakers. While only mods can kick off Talks in the beginning, anyone on iOS and Android can listen to one. Moderation has been an issue for Clubhouse, so it's notable that Reddit is starting small and giving access only to moderators first. At some point in the future, mods will be able to bring on trusted community members as co-hosts. The company says it is "testing ways" for hosts to customize how Talks look with emojis and different background colors, and users will be able to change their avatar, too. Earlier today, Facebook also announced that the company is working on a Clubhouse clone.

April 20th or 4/20 is the unofficial marijuana holiday where thousands of cannabis smokers celebrate the smoking of marijuana with marijuana. But this year, it could also be the day the meme-based cryptocurrency Dogecoin shatters new record highs. According to Fortune, "advocates are hoping to see Dogecoin hit $1 on April 20 -- one week after it was valued at just 9 cents. From the report: Dogecoin has already hit some financial landmarks that didn't seem possible at the start of the year. Its market value has topped $50 billion, making it bigger than Ford or Marriott. And if it comes close to hitting its target Tuesday, it could outpace some blue-chip companies. For once (for now), Elon Musk has nothing to do with the furor surrounding Dogecoin. This time, the credit goes, in part, to... Slim Jim. Really.

The packaged meat product latched on to Dogecoin-mania on its Twitter account last Wednesday (saying "RT to send Doge to the moon!!" -- the rallying cry among the r/WallStreetBets crowd for GameStop stock). The cry worked. Doge fans -- and even other brands -- jumped on the bandwagon quickly.

NASA's first attempt to fly its "Ingenuity" helicopter on Mars was a success, marking what the space agency says is the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world. The BBC reports: The space agency is promising more adventurous flights in the days ahead. Ingenuity will be commanded to fly higher and further as engineers seek to test the limits of the technology. The rotorcraft was carried to Mars in the belly of Nasa's Perseverance Rover, which touched down in Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February.

The demonstration saw the Mars-copter rise to just over 3m, hover, swivel 96 degrees, hover some more, and then set down. In all, it managed almost 40 seconds of flight, from take-off to landing. Getting airborne on the Red Planet is not easy. The atmosphere is very thin, just 1% of the density here at Earth. This gives the blades on a rotorcraft very little to bite into to gain lift. There's help from the lower gravity at Mars, but still -- it takes a lot of work to get up off the ground. Ingenuity was therefore made extremely light and given the power (a peak power of 350 watts) to turn those blades extremely fast - at over 2,500 revolutions per minute for this particular flight. Control was autonomous. The distance to Mars - currently just under 300 million km -- means radio signals take minutes to traverse the intervening space. Flying by joystick is simply out of the question.

Ingenuity has two cameras onboard. A black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, which is used for navigation, and a high-resolution colour camera that looks out to the horizon. Sample navigation images sent back to Earth revealed the helicopter's shadow on the floor of the crater as it came back in to land. Satellites will send home more pictures of the flight over the next day. There was only sufficient bandwidth in the orbiters' first overflight to return a short snatch of video from Perseverance, which was watching and snapping away from a distance of 65m. Longer sequences should become available in due course.

Apple has approved Parler's return to the iOS app store following improvements the social media company made to better detect and moderate hate speech and incitement, according to a letter the iPhone maker sent to Congress on Monday. From a report: The decision clears the way for Parler, an app popular with conservatives including some members of the far right, to be downloaded once again on Apple devices. The letter -- addressed to Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Ken Buck and obtained by CNN -- explained that since the app was removed from Apple's platform in January for violations of its policies, Parler "has proposed updates to its app and the app's content moderation practices." On April 14, Apple's app review team told Parler that its proposed changes were sufficient, the letter continued. Now, all Parler needs to do is to flip the switch. "Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become available immediately upon Parler releasing it," Apple's letter said. Parler, an alternative to Facebook and Twitter that bills itself as a haven for free speech, was removed from major tech platforms in early January following the US Capitol riots of Jan. 6.

Slashdot reader quonset reminds us that NASA's Mars helicopter "is officially 'go' for flight!," according to the Twitter feed of the Perserverance Rover, which notes that its cameras are ready to film the historic event.

"Watch with the team as they receive data and find out if they were successful," adds NASA's official feed. "Meet us in mission control April 19 at 6:15am ET (10:15am UTC): Data from the first flight will return to Earth a few hours following the autonomous flight. A livestream will begin at 6:15 a.m. EDT (3:15 a.m. PDT), as the helicopter team prepares to receive the data downlink in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Watch on NASA Television, the agency app, website, and social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.

If the flight takes place April 19, a postflight briefing will be held at 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT)...

The public and media also may ask questions on social media during the livestream and briefing using #MarsHelicopter. Find the latest schedule updates here.

The Perseverance rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.
Update: And it's a success! "We've been talking for so long about our Wright Brothers moment on Mars, and here it is," said NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager MiMi Aung. The Perserverance rover has already tweeted out a choppy video.

A Facebook content moderator (contracted through Accenture) quit their position in Austin, Texas — but also left a critical internal note which was later leaked by a senior tech reporter at BuzzFeed who described it as "blistering."

SFGate also calls it "a harrowing account of what it's like to work as a Facebook content moderator." The message describes content moderation as a job that takes a significant toll mentally and physically and has led some coworkers to go on psychiatric medication for the first time or self-medicate with alcohol and drugs... "Content analysts are paid to look at the worst of humanity for eight hours a day..." The employee in question allegedly acknowledges that Facebook has made improvements to their wellness program, but still claims it to be inadequate, stating that managers view their employees' brains "as machines," rather than taking into account the consequences of workplace stress.
But the note also points out that "Those who spend the most time in the queues have the least input as to policy... It can take months for issues to be addressed, if they are addressed at all..." Content analysts should be able to communicate directly with those responsible for designing policy... The fact that content analysts are hired by outside agencies makes these things impossible. There are no established avenues for communication with Facebook full-time employees, and we can face penalties if we attempt to contact them.
The last line of the note offers this benediction for Facebook. "I hope you figure out a way to stop constantly starting PR fires and traumatize people en masse."

EW reports: Felix Silla's friend and former Buck Rogers in the 25th Century costar Gil Gerard reported on Twitter that Silla died Friday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Coming in at just under 4 feet tall and only 70 pounds, Silla was the perfect choice for the mumbling Cousin Itt on The Addams Family. For years, audiences didn't see his face, the character covered in a full-length hairpiece, sporting sunglasses and a bowler hat... Silla did not provide the distinct mumbling voice of Cousin Itt. That was added by sound engineer Tony Magro in production...

He first came to the United States in 1955 and began his career touring with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for seven years. He worked as a trapeze artist, tumbler, and bareback horse rider. Eventually, he settled in Hollywood in 1962, where he became a stuntman. He went on to work in movies like A Ticklish Fair, TV shows like Bonanza, and appeared in the first pilot for Star Trek, "The Cage." His small stature often helped him find work, including as Cousin Itt, robot sidekick Twiki on the NBC series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and even as a hang-gliding Ewok in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi...

He also excelled as a stand in, double, and stuntman working on projects such as Planet of the Apes, Demon Seed, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Towering Inferno, The Hindenburg, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, The Golden Child, Howard the Duck, and Batman Returns.
In 2018 one Las Vegas blog spotted Silla with Gil Gerard, posting a picture of the two side by side -- just as they'd posed decades earlier on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

While for that show Mel Blanc had provided the voice for Twiki the robot, the blog notes that Silla himself supplied the voice of Mortimer Goth in the Sims 2 videogame.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IGN: In its first five months on the market, The PlayStation 5 has become the fastest-selling console in U.S. history in both unit and dollar sales. As revealed by The NPD Group's Mat Piscatella, this news arrives one month after the PS5 became the fastest-selling console in U.S. history in dollar sales. Despite that new record, the Nintendo Switch has continued its reign as the best selling hardware platform in both units and dollars during March 2021. However, the PS5 did rank first in hardware dollar sales in Q1 2021.

According to app developer Kosta Eleftheriou, Apple's App Store hosted a kid's game that's actually a front for gambling websites. "The secret password isn't one you'd be likely to guess: you have to be in the right country -- or pretend to be in the right country using a VPN," writes Sean Hollister via The Verge. "But then, instead of launching an ugly monkey-flipping endless runner game filled with typos and bugs, the very same app launches a casino experience." From the report: The app, "Jungle Runner 2k21," has already disappeared from the App Store, presumably thanks to publicity from Gizmodo and Daring Fireball, who each wrote about Eleftheriou's finding earlier today. It's not the only one, though: the same developer, "Colin Malachi," had another incredibly basic game on the App Store called "Magical Forest - Puzzle" that was also a front for gambling. [...] I accessed them from a VPN server in Turkey; While Daring Fireball notes that users in other non-US countries like Italy also seem to have been able to access the gambling sites, I tried them with a number of other locations including Italy without success.

Unlike the multi-million dollar App Store scams that Eleftheriou uncovered earlier this year, it's not hard to see why Apple's App Store review program might have missed these -- they largely look like your typical shovelware if you don't know the trick, with only a handful of tells... like the fact that Jungle Runner uses a Pastebin for its privacy policies. It's not necessarily clear to me that they'd be violating very many of Apple's App Store policies, either. Gambling apps are permitted by Apple, as long as they're geo-restricted to regions where that gambling is permitted by law, and you could maybe argue that's exactly what this developer did by checking your IP address.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Unless something changes, an issue lurking in older PlayStations' internal timing systems threatens to eventually make every PS4 game and all downloaded PS3 games unplayable on current hardware. Right now, it's not a matter of if but when this problem will occur. [...] The root of the coming issue has to do with the CMOS battery inside every PS3 and PS4, which the systems use to keep track of the current time (even when they're unplugged). If that battery dies or is removed for any reason, it raises an internal flag in the system's firmware indicating the clock may be out of sync with reality. After that flag is raised, the system in question has to check in with PSN the next time it needs to confirm the correct time. On the PS3, this online check happens when you play a game downloaded from the PlayStation Store. On the PS4, this also happens when you try to play retail games installed from a disc. This check has to be performed at least once even if the CMOS battery is replaced with a fresh one so the system can reconfirm clock consistency.

Why does the PlayStation firmware care so much about having the correct time? On the PS3, the timer check is used to enforce any "time limits" that might have been placed on your digital purchase (as confirmed by the error message: "This content has a time limit. To perform this operation go to settings date and time settings set via internet"). That check seems to be required even for downloads that don't have any actual set expiration date, adding a de facto one-time online check-in requirement for systems after their internal batteries fail. On the PS4, though, the timing check is apparently intended to make sure PSN trophy data is registered accurately and to prevent players from pretending to get trophies earlier than they actually had. You'd think this check could be segregated from the ability to load the non-trophy portions of the game, but player testing has shown that this seems to be a requirement to get PS4 games to load at all. Last month, Sony shut down PlayStation Store access for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable. Sony will eventually shut off the PSN servers that power the timing check for hardware it no longer considers important. "After that, it's only a matter of time before failing CMOS batteries slowly reduce all PS3 and PS4 hardware to semi-functional curios," adds Ars.

Sony could release a firmware update that limits the system functions tied to this timing check, but Sony hasn't publicly indicated it has any such plans.