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الجمعة، 10 مارس 2023

NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

(Credit: Backblaze) Cloud backup company Backblaze has become well-known for its hard drive and SSD failure rate reports. The interval of time it uses for its reports varies, as sometimes it’s quarterly, annual, or both. The company is using the longest reporting timeline we’ve ever seen this time. It’s shown the failure rates of all its SSDs since it began using them in 2018. It’s also offering insight into the SSDs’ operating temperatures over time. This answers the question of whether they run cooler than HDDs. Most of the SSDs fared quite well, with an annualized failure rate of less than 1%.

The report shows the lifetime failure rates of 2,906 SSDs in use as of the end of 2022. The company uses them as boot drives in its storage servers. Despite the “server” environment, Backblaze uses 13 different consumer SSDs. Also, the drives function like a consumer SSD as well. In addition to booting the OS, they read, write, and delete log files all day. The SSDs in its pods have the same workload too, making results directly comparable. One standout drive is an M.2 model mounted on a PCIe card, but the rest are SATA drives.

Lifetime failure rates for all 2,096 SSDs under Backblaze’s control. (Credit: Backblaze)

As you can see at the bottom of the chart in bold, the overall lifetime annualized failure rate (AFR) is 0.89%. That’s for all 2,096 drives since 2018, so pretty much what we expected in that they’re very reliable. For comparison, its lifetime AFR for hard drives is 1.39%. However, only three drives have seen enough usage to give Backblaze confidence in their failure rates. Of those three, the DellBOSS VD is the clear champion. For that drive, BOSS stands for Boot Optimized Storage Solution. With 411 running for over 230,000 days, the failure rate was 0.0%.

The runner-up is Seagate model ZA250CM10003, a 250GB SATA drive. It suffered an AFR of just 0.66% over 1,104 drives running for 724,240 days. The third place on the podium goes to the Seagate ZA250CM10002. This is also a meager 250GB SATA SSD with an AFR of 0.96% over 568,911 drive days. Both drive families showed failures over time. The Seagates suffered 13 and 15 failures over the four years, respectively. That directly correlates to how they were also the two drives with the most drive days. Most of the other drives with a 0.0% failure rate (Dell aside) either haven’t been running long enough, or there are not enough drives to give them confidence in their longevity rating.

(Credit: Backblaze)

Backblaze also looked at drive temps throughout 2022. As far as we can recall, this is a first for the company. Notably, the chart’s Y axis begins at 34C and ends at 36C. In other words, not much to see here, folks. The drives remain cool, and that barely changes. The report shows the drives changed by one degree Celsius all year, from 34.4 to 35.4. Interestingly Backblaze says the average temperature of its HDDs is just 29C. However, it thinks this is due to the placement of the drives in the system. Its pods full of hard drives receive the cool air first, so the SSDs are left to fend for themselves. It doesn’t mention if there’s any cooling directed at the SSDs, but given the temps, it seems like it doesn’t matter.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Our connected world makes it simple to send documents around the world in the blink of an eye, but heaven have mercy if you ever need to print one of them. Printers are perhaps even more frustrating than they were in the pre-internet era, thanks to the way companies like HP have chosen to increase profits. Despite customer backlash and a series of lawsuits, HP has stepped up the rollout of “Dynamic Security” features that block printing with third-party ink cartridges.

According to HP, Dynamic Security is all about “[protecting] the quality of our customer experience.” What it actually means is that an affected printer will check for an HP authentication chip in the cartridge, and if it’s not there, your printer will refuse to work. HP introduced Dynamic Security in 2016, and it has been forced to pay out several class action lawsuits in the intervening years. And yet, HP is still adding Dynamic Security to printers via firmware updates.

Reports of HP printers suddenly rejecting ink cartridges began increasing late last year as the company rolled out firmware updates. One Reddit user spurred a 1,000-comment discussion in recent days when they posted an image of an error message (see below) that appeared after a firmware upgrade. According to user /r/grhhull, their 3.5-year-old printer used to merely warn about potential quality issues with the cheaper third-party carts it was running. After the update, Dynamic Security refused to print without an authentic cartridge.

HP Dynamic Security error. Credit: /u/grhhull

The issue is all the more infuriating because it’s impossible to know which printers are affected. According to HP, its security updates may “block cartridges using a non-HP chip or modified or non-HP circuitry from working in the printer, including cartridges that work today.” Emphasis ours. This information is conveniently contained in a support article that no one is going to read before buying a printer. Although, HP slyly reminds Ars Technica that Dyanamic Security is mentioned on the printer box, implying that it’s on consumers to investigate this innocuous-sounding term.

Despite hints of a new approach, HP is still entrenched in the decades-old printer business model of losing money on the hardware to sell expensive ink cartridges, and it’s making its customers’ lives miserable as a result. For most machines that get a Dynamic Security update, you’re out of luck. The only way to continue using the printer you bought is to pay HP’s inflated price for ink or pay for a silly printing-as-a-service subscription. Some printers can circumvent the block, but only if they were manufactured before Dec 1, 2016. The overwhelming majority of replies in the Reddit thread suggest a different fix: stop buying HP printers.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

(Credit: Triyansh Gill/Unsplash) February 2023 was a good month for Sony. It smashed its PlayStation 5 sales total from February 2022 and kicked the Nintendo Switch out of its top-selling console spot in Japan, where Nintendo consoles have almost always dominated.

Japanese video game magazine Famitsu shared Wednesday that 366,982 PS5s sold in February 2023, up 457% from its comparatively measly 65,772 units sold in February 2022. This means Sony is well on its way to smashing FY2022’s sales to smithereens; February 2023 saw more unit sales than all of Q12023 saw, and FY2022 only sold 1,154,050 PS5s.

Why the contrast? Whether or not we wanted one, most of us remember how difficult it was to find a PS5 last year…or the year before that…or the year before that. The global chip shortage limited Sony’s ability to churn out its new console, and combined with high demand, that made retailers’ shelves barren. Sony even extended the PlayStation 4’s time on the assembly line to compensate for the PS5 shortage. It took until this year for Sony to declare the shortage over, and clearly, it wasn’t messing around.

(Credit: Alvaro Reyes/Unsplash)

The PS5’s success also means the Nintendo Switch may have finally met its match—at least in sales. Sony’s latest console has never beaten the Switch in Japan. It hasn’t even come close; despite landing in second place last year, the PS5 was miles behind the Switch at 942,798 and 5.3 million units, respectively. Sony fans got excited in early February after the PS5 stole the Switch’s leading spot in Japan, but few expected it to last as long as it did. Some think the PS5’s relative novelty, compared with the Switch’s age, might make it a more appealing console option for gamers who are choosing between one or the other.

It’s hard to say how long Sony’s victory over the Switch will last. In the meantime, Nintendo can wipe its tears because its software is still number one in Japan, at least for now. Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe topped 189,031 unit sales in Japan in February, while the controversial Hogwarts Legacy (only available on PS5 and Xbox) was the top-selling non-Nintendo title at 126,086 unit sales.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

(Credit: Sangharsh Lohakare/Unsplash) Same-sex reproduction has historically required donor cells, as is the case with egg implantation and some instances of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Thanks to genetic engineering, however, this might not always be the case. Scientists in Japan have successfully created eggs using male cells, resulting in the birth of several mice that were produced without mothers.

Renowned Kyushu University stem cell researcher Katshuhiko Hayashi presented his team’s achievement this week at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing in London. Hayashi had led his colleagues through “reprogramming” a male mouse’s skin cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, or former non-reproductive cells that can be engineered into various cell forms. Because male cells contain the XY chromosome combination, Hayashi had to remove the Y chromosome and replace it with an X chromosome from another cell. (Hayashi’s team attempted to devise a way to duplicate the first cell’s X chromosome but was unsuccessful, resulting in the need to pull from a donor.)

(Credit: Rama/Wikimedia Commons)

Hayashi implanted the makeshift eggs inside a mouse ovary organoid, a ball of tissues that function similarly to a natural ovary. After fertilizing the eggs with sperm, his team implanted the resulting 600 embryos into surrogate mice. Seven of these embryos became mouse pups, which grew into adults with normal lifespans and successful mating routines.

This research, which Hayashi has since submitted to scientific journals, is just the beginning. His team is now working to replicate their achievement using human cells, which they hope to turn into lab-created eggs. Scientists have made similar attempts before, but their cells have failed to advance past the meiosis stage, which is necessary for the development of eggs and sperm.

Should Hayashi and his colleagues successfully produce eggs in the lab, it could pave the way for novel infertility treatments and for same-sex procreation that incorporates both partners’ genes. Male couples who wish to produce children currently have to choose whose sperm will fertilize a donor egg, which is implanted in a surrogate mother for gestation. Developments like this one, however, could allow couples to use one person’s sperm to fertilize an egg made from the other person’s cells, or even allow a single person to produce a child using only their genes. Hayashi says this could be possible within a decade—but other scientists think that’s a bit optimistic.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Plasmonic paint applied to the wings of metal butterflies (Credit: University of Central Florida) Every paint in the world today takes on a specific color due to the presence of pigment molecules. They absorb some wavelengths of light and reflect others, but University of Central Florida researcher Debashis Chanda has devised an entirely new kind of paint inspired by butterfly wings. The so-called plasmonic paint uses nanoscale particles to create different colors without requiring multiple pigments.

Some pigments have been used for thousands of years, and others are more recent synthetic creations. The main drawback to this kind of coloration is that you need a new molecule for every color. In addition, some pigment molecules are rare or even toxic. For example, Cobalt Blue is one of the most popular shades of blue, but this mix of cobalt oxide and aluminum oxide is dangerous if ingested or inhaled.

Chanda based the plasmonic paint on butterfly wings, which have a property known as structural color. In butterflies, the geometric arrangement of colorless materials can reflect, scatter, and absorb light to produce different colors. The paint works in a similar way using aluminum and aluminum oxide nanoparticles. Chanda and his team created the starting material by coating a mirror with nanoparticles. The distance between the particles determines how it interacts with light and, therefore, the color we perceive when looking at it. To turn those surfaces into paint, the team chipped the nanoparticles off and mixed the flakes with a commercial binding agent.

Traditional paint fades over time due to the pigment molecules losing their ability to absorb photons. That’s not a problem with the nanotech paint described in the new study. The nanoparticles don’t change over time — they always refract light the same way. “Once we paint something with structural color, it should stay for centuries,” says Chanda.

Color flakes are mixed in a solution to create paint (Credit: University of Central Florida)

Photonic paint has some other useful qualities. Because it has a large area-to-thickness ratio, you need less paint to get the job done (a layer about 150 nanometers thick). Chanda estimates you’d need just three pounds of plasmonic paint to cover a Boeing 747, which usually requires more than 1,000 pounds of standard paint. That could mean major fuel savings. Plus, plasmonic paint reflects the entire infrared spectrum, keeping the material underneath 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit cooler compared with commercial paint, reducing energy usage on cooling.

Next, the team plans to conduct more research on the potential energy-saving properties of the paint and prove that it can be a viable commercial product. Currently, plasmonic paint can only be made in small batches with laboratory equipment, but commercial paint needs to be produced in much larger quantities.

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NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Scientists have learned a great deal about how our solar system was born, but there are some things you can’t discern from studying the sun and planets as they exist today. In those cases, astronomers can look for younger sun-like stars in the cosmos to test their hypotheses. That’s where the protostar V883 Orionis comes in. Data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows that the water around this young star predates the star itself, suggesting it could be the same for our solar system.

V883 Orionis sits roughly 1,305 light-years away in the constellation Orion. It only formed about 500,000 years ago, so it’s still accumulating material from the parent molecular cloud. Like all young stars of this type, it has pulled that material into a protoplanetary disk ripe for investigation with radio astronomy.

Usually, studying water in protoplanetary disks is difficult because most of it is frozen. Lucky for us, V883 Orionis is just warm enough to start turning the ice in that disk into gas. The team used ALMA’s Band 5 (1.6mm) and Band 6 (1.3mm) receivers to collect data from this “snow line,” where the signature of water was significant enough to measure.

The team found that the water in V883 Orionis matches the water in the surrounding region. Specifically, it has the same ratio of hydrogen and deuterium (a rare isotope of hydrogen). Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that the water was incorporated into the protoplanetary disk as-is — it was not formed or heavily altered within the infant solar system.

The Milky Way, behind the ALMA telescopes

The Milky Way, behind the ALMA radio telescopes

Crucially, the hydrogen-deuterium ratio also matches what we see in our solar system. V883 Orionis is relatively isolated, and we believe the sun formed in a dense cluster, but both coalesced from a molecular cloud. This research suggests a similar process happened with the water that today makes up 60% of your body. It existed in a molecular cloud before the sun formed and was then incorporated into the solar system. That means the water in our solar system could be billions of years older than the sun itself.

Understanding the origins of water before it becomes part of planets and comets is essential to accurately model the sun’s past, present, and future. V883 Orionis is just what we needed to move that research forward — the team describes it as a “missing link” in the chain of water development in our solar system.

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الخميس، 9 مارس 2023

NEWS TECHNOLOGIE

Scientists have been digging up the remains of ancient plants and animals since time immemorial, but viruses? Jean-Michel Claverie from the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine has spent the last 20 years searching deep permafrost deposits for preserved ancient viruses. His team recently revived a virus that had been dormant for almost 50,000 years. It might sound like the setup for a post-apocalyptic movie, but Claverie believes it’s in our best interest to know what’s lurking down there.

This isn’t the first time Claverie has awoken an ancient virus. He and his team first managed this in 2014 when they isolated a 30,000-year-old virus from permafrost and infected cultured cells. For safety, Claverie has focused on viruses that only infect single-celled amoebas. The following year, the team did the same with another viral strain. The most recent publication from Claverie’s team details 13 newly isolated viruses, including the oldest ever revived.

Most of the viruses in the study are extremely large by viral standards, some up to two micrometers in length (the same size range as an E. coli bacterium cell). They belong to genera, including Pandoravirus (like the one above), Megavirus, and Pacmanvirus. The oldest organism was Pandoravirus yedoma, which was frozen in permafrost for 48,500 years according to radiocarbon dating of the surrounding soil. The viruses infect even bigger amoeba cells, which the team provided to see if the particles were viable. The study describes how the thawed viruses happily invaded the cultured amoeba cells and, in hours, turned them into factories to produce more ancient viruses.

The researchers used Acanthamoeba cells like this one to incubate the viruses.

Claverie tells CNN he worries that people see his research on ancient viruses as a curiosity, but there’s a lesson here. This research focuses on viruses that only infect amoebas rather than plants or animals, but there are undoubtedly viruses preserved in permafrost that would love to set up shop in animal cells — possibly even humans. Claverie’s samples come from Siberian ice cores, many gathered at more than 50 feet (16 meters). However, permafrost is much less permanent in the face of climate change.

As Earth warms, we are losing permafrost across higher latitudes. It’s plausible that viruses preserved in permafrost could become active again without a scientist’s help — a so-called “spillover event.” The new study shows us that a 50,000-year-old virus is still viable. Perhaps even older viruses could awaken as permafrost thaws, which could have unknown consequences for an ecosystem that hasn’t seen these organisms in thousands of years. So, add that to the list of potentially catastrophic outcomes of climate change.

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