NASA is "reconsidering how we talk about space," reports CNET: NASA gave two examples of cosmic objects it'll no longer use nicknames for. Planetary nebula NGC 2392 has been called the "Eskimo Nebula." "'Eskimo' is widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history, imposed on the indigenous people of Arctic regions," NASA explained. NASA already added a note to a 2008 image release showing NGC 2392 that explains the decision to retire the nickname. The agency will also use only the official designations of NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 to refer to a pair of spiral galaxies that were known as the "Siamese Twins Galaxy." This reexamination of cosmic names is ongoing. CNN explains NASA's rationale: "Nicknames are often more approachable and public-friendly than official names for cosmic objects, such as Barnard 33, whose nickname 'the Horsehead Nebula' invokes its appearance," NASA said in a release this week. "But often seemingly innocuous nicknames can be harmful and detract from the science...." The space agency says it "will use only the official, International Astronomical Union designations in cases where nicknames are inappropriate." Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC, said, "Science is for everyone, and every facet of our work needs to reflect that value."

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People enhancing their gardens during lockdown may not realise some plants have insecticides.

Bill Gates gave a wide-ranging new interview to Wired's Steven Levy (also republished at Ars Technica.) The interview's first question: as a man who'd been warning about a pandemic for years, are you disappointed with the response of the United States? Bill Gates: Yeah. There's three time periods, all of which have disappointments. There is 2015 until this particular pandemic hit. If we had built up the diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccine platforms, and if we'd done the simulations to understand what the key steps were, we'd be dramatically better off. Then there's the time period of the first few months of the pandemic, when the U.S. actually made it harder for the commercial testing companies to get their tests approved, the CDC had this very low volume test that didn't work at first, and they weren't letting people test. The travel ban came too late, and it was too narrow to do anything. Then, after the first few months, eventually we figured out about masks, and that leadership is important... [America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] have basically been muzzled since the beginning. We called the CDC, but they told us we had to talk to the White House a bunch of times. Now they say, "Look, we're doing a great job on testing, we don't want to talk to you." Even the simplest things, which would greatly improve this system, they feel would be admitting there is some imperfection and so they are not interested. Wired: Do you think it's the agencies that fell down or just the leadership at the top, the White House? Bill Gates: We can do the postmortem at some point. We still have a pandemic going on, and we should focus on that.... Wired: At this point, are you optimistic? Bill Gates: Yes. You have to admit there's been trillions of dollars of economic damage done and a lot of debts, but the innovation pipeline on scaling up diagnostics, on new therapeutics, on vaccines is actually quite impressive. And that makes me feel like, for the rich world, we should largely be able to end this thing by the end of 2021, and for the world at large by the end of 2022. That is only because of the scale of the innovation that's taking place... This disease, from both the animal data and the phase 1 data, seems to be very vaccine preventable. Gates also believes the government shouldn't allow encryption to hide "lies or fraud or child pornography" on apps like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp -- prompting the interviewer to ask whether he's talked to his friend Mark Zuckerberg about it. "After I said this publicly, he sent me mail. I like Mark, I think he's got very good values, but he and I do disagree on the trade-offs involved there..." Gates also thought today's tech executives got off easy with five hours of testifying before a Congressional subcommittee as a group of four. "Jesus Christ, what's the Congress coming to? If you want to give a guy a hard time, give him at least a whole day that he has to sit there on the hot seat by himself! And they didn't even have to get on a plane...!" Gates added later that "there are a lot of valid issues, and if you're super-successful, the pleasure of going in front of the Congress comes with the territory."

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Slashdot reader quonset shares CNN's report on "zombie cicadas" under the influence of "a psychedelic fungus" called Massospora containing the chemicals found in hallucinogenic mushrooms (citing a new study published in PLOS Pathogens). After infecting its host, the fungus results in "a disturbing display of B-horror movie proportions," West Virginia University said in a press release. First Massospora spores eat away at the cicada's genitals, butt, and abdomen. They are then replaced with fungal spores used to transmit the fungus to other cicadas. From there, this new, fungal abdomen will slowly "wear away like an eraser on a pencil," said study co-author Brian Lovett in the release... While almost a third, if not more, of their bodies are replaced with fungal tissue, infected cicadas continue to move around oblivious of their sickness. This is because the fungus manipulates the insects' behavior to keep the host alive rather than killing them to maximize spore dispersal... Even though infected cicadas lose their ability to mate when their backsides become fungal plugs, they will still attempt to mate to sexually transmit the fungus to healthy cicadas. The parasitic fungus even manipulates male cicadas into flicking their wings to imitate the females' mating invitation so they can also infect unsuspecting male cicadas to rapidly transmit the disease. While researchers believe sexual transmission of the fungus is the easiest way for Massospora to spread, cicadas can also come into contact with the pathogen in other ways. "When they fly around or walk on branches, they spread spores that way too," Kasson said. "We call them flying saltshakers of death, because they basically spread the fungus the way salt would come out of a shaker that's tipped upside down." While a zombie army of cicadas sounds terrifying, Kasson reassures that infected cicadas are not a danger to humans. At this time, researchers believe the fungus does not pose a serious risk to the overall cicada population. "When these pathogens infect cicadas, it's very clear that the pathogen is pulling the behavioral levers of the cicada," says one of the study's co-authors, "to cause it to do things which are not in the interest of the cicada but is very much in the interest of the pathogen." A doctoral student involved in the research even suggests these discoveries might one day be used for pest control.

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"Researchers have found that Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip, one of the most widely used in Android phones, has hundreds of bits of vulnerable code that leaves millions of Android users at risk," reports Gizmodo: To back up a bit, Qualcomm is a major chip supplier to several well-known tech companies. In 2019, its Snapdragon series of processors could be found on nearly 40% of all Android smartphones, including high-profile flagship phones from Google, Samsung, Xiaomi, LG, and OnePlus. Researchers from Check Point, a cybersecurity firm, found the digital signal processor (DSP) in Qualcomm Snapdragon chips had over 400 pieces of vulnerable code. The vulnerabilities, altogether dubbed "Achilles," can impact phones in three major ways. Attackers would only have to convince someone to install a seemingly benign app that bypasses usual security measures. Once that's done, an attacker could turn the affected phone into a spying tool. They'd be able to access a phone's photos, videos, GPS, and location data. Hackers could potentially also record calls and turn on the phone's microphones without the owner ever knowing. Alternatively, an attacker could choose to render the smartphone completely unusable by locking all the data stored on it in what researchers described as a "targeted denial-of-service attack." Lastly, bad actors could also exploit the vulnerabilities to hide malware in a way that would be unknown to the victim, and unremovable. Part of why so many vulnerabilities were found is that the DSP is a sort of "black box." It's difficult for anyone other than the manufacturer of the DSP to review what makes them work... The article notes that Qualcomm has no evidence of the vulnerability being exploited in the wild, adding that the company has "reportedly since fixed the issue." But they also note that it's still up to individual phone makers to push out the relavant security paches, "which could take some time."

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As I work my way through Schitt's Creek, the characters are so fascinating and Moira may be the most, since we already knew the actor as Delia Deetz from Beetlejuice. It's hard for me to see the connection between the two. In one episode in Season 2 Moira is frantically looking for nude pictures of herself taken when she was younger. For most of the show you think she wants to find them so she can take them down, but no. She wants to be sure they're there. She wants to still be, in some sense, the actress we knew as Delia Deetz (Moira plays a former actress, btw). Her advice to Stevie, a super cute young supporting character, is to make sure to take lots of pictures of herself now when she's young. No matter how you think you're not very beautiful, when you're older you will see all the beauty you can't see now. I'm about the same age as Catherine O'Hara, the actress, and I want to say I totally concur. I can't believe how beautiful I was when I was younger, but of course I didn't see it then.

The BBC reports: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he wants a "clean" internet. What he means by that is he wants to remove Chinese influence, and Chinese companies, from the internet in the U.S. But critics believe this will bolster a worrying movement towards the breaking up of the global internet. The so called "splinternet" is generally used when talking about China, and more recently Russia. The idea is that there's nothing inherent or pre-ordained about the internet being global. For governments that want to control what people see on the internet, it makes sense to take ownership of it. The Great Firewall of China is the best example of a nation putting up the internet equivalent of a wall around itself. You won't find a Google search engine or Facebook in China. What people didn't expect was that the U.S. might follow China's lead. They're reacting to U.S. president Trump's executive order to block all transactions with TikTok's parent company (starting September 20) to "address the national emergency with respect to the information and communication technology supply chain." An opinion piece in the New York Times calls the move a "foolish and dangerous edict" that's "deeply misguided and unproductive" which suggests that "the United States, like China, no longer believes in a global internet." In the BBC's article Alan Woodward, a security expert at the University of Surrey, calls the U.S. decision "shocking." "The U.S. government has for a long time criticised other countries for controlling access to the internet⦠and now we see the Americans doing the same thing."

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The international R&D hub Imec has made a millimetre-wave motion detection radar integrated in a standard 28nm CMOS chip, reports Electronics Weekly, adding that it consumes just 62 mW,"making the sensor integrable into small, battery-powered devices..." The radar operates in the frequency band around 60 GHz, a license-free ISM band that can be used for new IoT applications for industrial and medical purposes... "Being extremely compact and energy efficient, the 60 GHz radar system can be integrated in smart health devices such as smartphones, health monitoring systems or wearables", says Barend van Liempd, program manager radar at imec. "The radar enables such devices to sense their surroundings, which will shape the way in which we control and use these devices. For instance, a phone with integrated radar on your bedside table can monitor sleep quality by contactless tracking of breathing rate and heart rate variability. The radar is as well suited for classification of other physical activities, which will open a new range of smart applications in the context of personalized health, baby monitoring, sports, elderly care, patient monitoring, nurse efficiency or worker safety." "Our prototype shows that radar technology is becoming ready for the next big step: the use in battery-powered devices. Now, we are looking for companies that want to exploit these ideas to enter the market by realizing new radar solutions", says Kathleen Philips, Director IoT at imec. "It is thought to be useful for detecting finger and hand motion, heartbeat and a person's speed and position..." writes Joe2020, "but I'm sure Slashdot readers can think of a variety of other uses for it."

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Long-time Slashdot reader philml writes: Popular Mac developer Charlie Monroe woke up to find that none of his users could run his software. Instead, Mac OS was giving a message saying that it "will damage your computer". Monroe described the ensuing hassle in a blog post titled "A day without business." In a later update he added that Apple "has called and apologized for the complications. The issue was caused by my account being erroneously flagged by automated processes." But 9 to 5 Mac describes how Apple's mistake affected Monroe's apps: Users were unable to open them, and a message flagged them as malware, advising users to delete the apps to avoid damaging their Macs. Developer Charlie Monroe, creator of the Downie video downloader, among other apps, said that Apple didn't even send him a message saying it had happened, and for several hours he didn't know whether he still had a business or not⦠He said that it took Apple 24 hours to partly fix the problem, removing the flags, though that still left him having to recompile, re-sign, and redistribute everything... Most app users will never know the story behind this, only that they bought an app, Apple told them it was malware, and they deleted it as instructed. It also seems unlikely to help Apple's antitrust battles, where many are arguing that the company holds too much power over users and developers alike.

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I bought a Pixel 4A with Google Fi.

Briefly discussed WordPress on Twitter last night with Don Park, long-time friend, ex-Automattician. I said I don't think they understand blogging there. Don says "members of WordPress community and employees of the company behind it use blogs all the time." I don't doubt it, yet I could never do what I do with Wordpress. Far too clumsy. Not fluid. Not designed for writers. Really weak product.

Today's album: Eat A Peach.

BTW one of the problems with the name Clubhouse is that it's impossible to remember. At least for me. I never had a problem like that with Twitter, and I was a very early user, as I am with CH.

Trump's failure of a "border wall" didn't protect the US from the virus or tunnels.

I heard yesterday on Clubhouse that people stopped reading my blog because of RSS. Interesting story. They subscribed in Google Reader. Stopped reading on the web. Then they shut down Google Reader. The people who were reading my blog and others before RSS, lost track of the feeds they were reading in Google Reader. There were other choices, but that doesn't change what happened. We are rebuilding slowly, because blogging is still a useful form of communication. My nightly email is the best way to get it, probably always was, even in the heyday of RSS. I have to admit reading this blog in RSS was never a great deal. I write one day at a time. I'd prefer if you read what was on the home page at midnight. That's how I write it. Since RSS is something I'm well-known for developing, I didn't want to say this too loudly. But RSS should have had a chance to grow, and it didn't. So it got stuck. Not really a surprise.