NASA Scores Wright Brothers Moment With First Helicopter Flight on Mars
NASA’s miniature robot helicopter Ingenuity performed a successful takeoff and landing on Mars early on Monday.
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UAE selects first Arab woman for astronaut training
DUBAI – The United Arab Emirates has selected the first Arab woman to train as an astronaut, as the Gulf country rapidly expands into the space sector to diversify its economy. Emirati national Nora al-Matrooshi, a 27-year-old mechanical engineering graduate currently working at Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company, will join NASA’s 2021 Astronaut Candidate…
NASA has selected SpaceX’s Starship as the lander to take astronauts to the moon
Later this decade, NASA astronauts are expected to touch down on the lunar surface for the first time in decades. When they do, according to an announcement made by the agency, they’ll be riding inside SpaceX’s Starship vehicle.
NASA’s award of a $2.9 billion contract to build Starship, first reported by the Washington Post on April 16 and later confirmed by NASA, is a huge achievement for the space company founded and run by billionaire Elon Musk, as well as a massive blow to the hopes of its rivals.
The lander: SpaceX bills Starship as a next-generation spacecraft meant to take humans to the moon and, one day, Mars. Measuring around 160 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter, Starship is a reusable vehicle that’s designed to take off and land on the ground vertically. The plan is for it to launch separately and station itself in lunar orbit until NASA astronauts arrive aboard the agency’s Orion crew capsule. Starship would simply ferry astronauts to the moon’s surface and back.
Surprising selection: Last year, NASA awarded three different groups contracts to further develop their own proposals for lunar landers: $135 million to SpaceX, $253 million to defense company Dynetics (which was working with Sierra Nevada Corporation), and $579 million to a four-company team led by Blue Origin (working with Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Draper).
SpaceX didn’t just receive the least amount of money—its proposal also earned the worst technical and management ratings. NASA’s associate administrator (now acting administrator) Steve Jurczyk wrote (pdf) that Starship’s propulsion system was “notably complex and comprised of likewise complex individual subsystems that have yet to be developed, tested, and certified with very little schedule margin to accommodate delays.” The uncertainties were only exacerbated by SpaceX’s notoriously poor track record with meeting deadlines.
What changed: Since then, SpaceX has gone through a number of different flight tests of several full-scale Starship prototypes, including a 10-kilometer high-altitude flight and safe landing in March. (It also exploded a few times.) According to the Washington Post, documents suggest NASA was enamored with Starship’s ability to ferry a lot of cargo to the moon (up to 100 tons), not to mention its $2.9 billion bid for the contract, which was far lower than its rivals’.
“This innovative human landing system will be a hallmark in spaceflight history,” says Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s program manager for the lunar lander system. “We’re confident in NASA’s partnership with SpaceX.”
Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe Sues Twitter for Defamation After Permanent Ban
Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe filed a lawsuit on April 19 alleging that Twitter had defamed him by claiming that he operated fake accounts on the platform. The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of New York in Westchester County, claims that Twitter knowingly defamed O’Keefe in a statement the company issued explaining his permanent suspension from the platform. “The false accusation that Mr. O’Keefe operated ‘fake accounts’ is particularly damaging for Mr. O’Keefe because Mr. O’Keefe is a journalist. As such, his reputation for transparency and accurate reporting is fundamental to his profession,” the lawsuit states. Twitter permanently banned O’Keefe on April 15 without advance notice or an explanation. Shortly after, the social media giant had disseminated a statement to journalists accusing O’Keefe of “operating fake [Twitter] accounts.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At the time of his suspension from the platform, O’Keefe had …
SolarWinds hack got emails of top DHS officials, AP sources say
Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration’s head of the Department of Homeland Security and members of the department’s cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats from foreign countries, The Associated Press has learned.
The intelligence value of the hacking of then-acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his staff is not publicly known, but the symbolism is stark. Their accounts were accessed as part of what’s known as the SolarWinds intrusion and it throws into question how the U.S. government can protect individuals, companies and institutions across the country if it can’t protect itself.
The short answer for many security experts and federal officials is that it can’t — at least not without some significant changes.
“The SolarWinds hack was a victory for our foreign adversaries, and a failure for DHS,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, top Republican on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “We are talking about DHS’s crown jewels.”
The Biden administration has tried to keep a tight lid on the scope of the SolarWinds attack as it weighs retaliatory measures against Russia. But an inquiry by the AP found new details about the breach at DHS and other agencies, including the Energy Department, where hackers accessed top officials’ private schedules.
The AP interviewed more than a dozen current and former U.S. government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the ongoing investigation into the hack.
The vulnerabilities at Homeland Security in particular intensify the worries following the SolarWinds attack and an even more widespread hack affecting Microsoft Exchange’s email program, especially because in both cases the hackers were detected not by the government but by a private company.
In December, officials discovered what they describe as a sprawling, monthslong cyberespionage effort done largely through a hack of a widely used software from Texas-based SolarWinds Inc. At least nine federal agencies were hacked, along with dozens of private-sector companies.
U.S. authorities have said the breach appeared to be the work of Russian hackers. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads the Pentagon’s cyber force, said last week the Biden administration is considering a “range of options” in response. Russia has denied any role in the hack.
Since then, a series of headline-grabbing hacks has further highlighted vulnerabilities in the U.S. public and private sectors. A hacker tried unsuccessfully to poison the water supply of a small town in Florida in February, and this month a new breach was announced involving untold thousands of Microsoft Exchange email servers the company says was carried out by Chinese state hackers. China has denied involvement in the Microsoft breach.
Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the government’s initial response to the discovery of the SolarWinds hack was disjointed.
(CENSORED) James O’Keefe of Project Veritas
James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, was suspended from Twitter after Project Veritas released surreptitiously recorded videos of a CNN technical director criticizing the network’s overhyped Covid-19 coverage. According to the New York Post: “The CNN staffer who was secretly recorded admitting the network used “propaganda” to help get Joe Biden elected president also said they played […]
Fox News hires high-profile defense team in Dominion defamation lawsuit
Fox News has hired two high-profile defense attorneys to combat a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against it by voting technology company Dominion.
The media outlet disclosed in a court filing that it had hired Charles Babcock and Scott Keller for its defense. Fox News confirmed the hirings to The Hill.
Babcock currently works at the Texas law firm Jackson Walker. He “has tried over 100 cases to a jury and argued over 50 appeals” and has “represented individuals such as Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil McGraw, George W. Bush, and Reggie Love,” according to his online biography.
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His corporate clients have included Orix USA, Celanese Corp., Fox News Network, CNN, Google, CBS Television Studios, Vantage Drilling International, Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, 3M Corp. and the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Keller, of the Texas law firm Lehotsky Keller LLP, has argued several cases in front of the Supreme Court and served as Texas’s solicitor general.
Babcock and Keller are joining Valerie Caras, Blake Rohrbacher and Katharine Mowery, who are all currently listed in court filings as Fox News’s defense attorneys.
The hirings come after Dominion Voting Systems filed the lawsuit in March that accuses Fox News of peddling “baseless conspiracy theories” that the election was stolen from former President Trump in an effort to boost its ratings.
Facebook Faces Formal Irish Privacy Probe Into Data Leak
Facebook Inc. faces a formal probe by its main privacy regulator in the European Union following the leak of the personal data of more than half a billion users of the social media service.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission on Wednesday opened an inquiry following media reports earlier this month showing “that a collated dataset” of Facebook users’ personal data “had been made available on the internet,” the authority said in a statement.
Personal information on 533 million Facebook users reemerged on a hacker website in early April. The information included phone numbers and email addresses of users, the Irish regulator said in a statement earlier this month. Facebook has said the data is old and was already reported on in 2019.
Mike Lindell: Free, Clean Speech Social Media Site Set to Launch Monday
MyPillow’s Mike Lindell announced on April 15 that his new social media platform called “Frank,” with the mission of providing a place for free speech as laid out in the U.S. Constitution, will launch on April 19. In a video statement, Lindell said he’s taken steps to make sure the site is most secure, with his own servers, and will not be subject to censorship on the whims of big tech companies such as Amazon and Google. “And we are going to get our voice of free speech out there,” Lindell said. “On Monday morning at 9 a.m., we’re going to have the biggest launch. … I call it a Frank-a-thon.” “I’m going to be on there live all day long. … It’s like a YouTube Twitter combination; you’ve never seen anything like it,” Lindell said of his new project. “You’re not going to have to worry about what you’re saying …
YouTube Suspends Rebel News over ‘Election Misinformation’
The Rebel News, a leading source of conservative news and commentary in Canada, was suspended for one week on Google-owned YouTube, its primary platform, over a three-month-old video about social media censorship of President Donald Trump.
Below Is Foundational Information On Some Of The Issues With Big Tech
'Google’s China rapproachment has been spearheaded by Pichai, Google’s current CEO, a 46-year-old Indian-American who took the helm in October 2015. At a June 2016 conference in southern California, Pichai made his intentions clear. “I care about servicing users globally in every corner. Google is for everyone,” he said. “We want to be in China serving Chinese users.”' Google Employees have been warning us about China and Google under Pichai, for years. The censorship chickens have been coming home to roost ever since. Say hello to Dragonfly.
DRAGONFLY HAS COME TO AMERICA
Wondering Why Censorship Has Increased In America? Dragonfly, Censorship Through Algorithms and Human Surveillance, Has Landed Across All Platforms. “Many of us accepted employment at Google with the company’s values in mind, including its previous position on Chinese censorship and surveillance, and an understanding that Google was a company willing to place its values above its profits. After a year of disappointments including Project Maven, Dragonfly, and Google’s support for abusers, we no longer believe this is the case. This is why we’re taking a stand.”
FACEBOOK USERS ARE 'DUMB FUCKS'
~ Mark Zuckerberg
'In another exchange leaked to Silicon Alley Insider, Zuckerberg explained to a friend that his control of Facebook gave him access to any information he wanted on any Harvard student:
Zuck: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
Zuck: just ask
Zuck: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
Friend: what!? how’d you manage that one?
Zuck: people just submitted it
Zuck: i don’t know why
Zuck: they “trust me”
Zuck: dumb fucks'
Defense Department Technology used by ex-general against a sitting U.S. President.
