geek

15 Jul 2026

Slashdot

Astronauts Take First X-Rays In Space

Astronauts on SpaceX's Fram2 mission successfully captured diagnostic X-ray images in orbit for the first time. The milestone gives space medicine a second imaging option beyond ultrasound and could help future crews diagnose injuries, inspect equipment, and support longer missions to the moon or beyond. Popular Science reports: Commercial off-the-shelf X-ray machines like the ice cooler-sized MinXray TR90BH now allow users to perform scans on subjects far away from traditional facilities. In 2022, [Mayo Clinic researcher Sheyna Gifford] assisted in preparing a crew to successfully generate digital X-rays while experiencing microgravity during a parabolic flight. Gifford's team then spent years collaborating with SpaceX to plan another feasibility study. This time, they didn't want to operate an X-ray machine aboard an aircraft simulating the conditions in space -- they intended to use the equipment during an orbital mission. The process was detailed in a recently published study in the journal Radiology, and focuses on last year's Fram2 mission. Instead of days of medical training, astronauts spent only four hours learning how to use their portable radiography device. They then took preflight X-rays of a hand, forearm, chest, abdomen, and pelvis ahead of their SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch on March 31, 2025. Once in orbit, the team calibrated the system before testing their MinXray on the same body parts as well as a smartwatch. Once the crew returned, a trio of independent radiologists reviewed the orbital X-ray images based on their positioning, spatial and contrast resolutions, and general scan quality. Although positioning scores were slightly decreased for the central body images, every other scan held up to similar examples created on Earth. Meanwhile, the astronauts reported that using the machine was easy despite minimal prior coaching. Looking ahead, researchers hope to conduct further X-ray tests during orbital missions, while continuing to reduce the overall size of equipment.

House Votes For Permanent Daylight Saving Time

The House voted 308-117 to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide and end the twice-yearly clock change. The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, "where one G.O.P. leader said it was unclear whether it could move ahead and at least one Republican appears inclined to try to block it," reports The New York Times. Some sleep experts oppose permanent daylight saving time, arguing that year-round standard time better aligns with circadian rhythms and winter morning safety. The New York Times reports: President Trump has championed the effort to save an extra hour of daylight before nightfall and make the time zone permanent, describing the ritual of moving clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall a "ridiculous, twice yearly production." "We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day," Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post in May. "And who can be against that." A sizable bloc of Florida Republicans in Congress is leading the charge on legislation that would do just that, mandating daylight saving time nationwide for the entire year. Representative Vern Buchanan of the Tampa Bay area is backing the bill, and Representative Anna Paulina Luna, another Tampa Bay-area Republican, cosponsored it. House leaders agreed to allow a vote on the measure this week as a sweetener for Ms. Luna in their efforts to persuade her to lift a legislative blockade she had maintained as she sought to force Senate action on a voting restriction bill Mr. Trump has championed.

Iran Abused Mobile Networks' Vulnerabilities To Locate US Military In Middle East

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Iranian government abused well-known vulnerabilities in the global telecoms infrastructure to locate U.S. military personnel in the build-up to the Iran War, as well as in the early days of the conflict, according to Financial Times. The Iranian government exploited Signaling System 7, or SS7, a set of protocols for 2G and 3G networks that has long been the backbone of how cellular networks connect to each other to route subscribers' calls and texts around the world, the newspaper reported, citing research by the Mobile Surveillance Monitor, as well as anonymous government officials with knowledge of the spy campaign. Intelligence agencies have long abused SS7 to track cellphones abroad, which is what happened in this campaign. Using this technique, Iran was reportedly able to locate U.S. military forces stationed in military bases as well as hotels in Iraq, Bahrain, and other countries in the Middle East, which allowed the regime to strike them. These attacks resulted in several injuries. Apart from SS7, Iran also abused advertising technology used to serve tailored ads to cellphone users, another well-known surveillance technique that relies on everyday technology.

14 Jul 2026

OSnews

Haiku gets NetBSD’s NVMM, beta 6 release planned for August

Haiku has another buy month of development activity to detail, and there's a big ticket item this time, even if the developers themselves don't consider it so. The thing that should be the biggest news item this month is that the GSoC 2024 work to port "NVMM", the NetBSD Virtual Machine Monitor (which runs on more than just NetBSD, despite the name), providing hardware-accelerated virtualization support for QEMU, was finally merged. Unfortunately it still doesn't fully work, so it's still disabled by default: hence, it's only a minor news item, unfortunately. ↫ waddlesplash on Haiku's website It may not work due to - so far - not well-understood problems causing any complex virtualised operating system to crash in a variety of ways, but since these problems seem related not to NVMM but Haiku itself, I still think this is a big piece of news. If the problems can be addressed, Haiku will have proper virtualisation, which is crazy to think about. There's a forum thread in case you wish to help out with this effort. Other than this major news, there's the usual list of small fixes and changes, including preliminary work on USB Ethernet support, which, when working, could be very welcome news for people whose onboard Ethernet doesn't work with Haiku. The team also believes a beta 6 might actually be released this August, but once again I'd like to underline that Haiku's nightlies work just fine, and you really don't need to wait for a beta.

14 Jul 2026 11:09pm GMT

People are starting to think twice about buying Facebook’s pervert glasses

I have yet to see any of these creepy camera glasses Facebook (and a few other companies) are selling. One of the many benefits of living in Arctic Sweden, where people are reserved, keep their their distance, and try not to draw attention to themselves, is that new technology fads don't really permeate society here. The odds of me spotting one of these creepy predator glasses in my remote town are incredibly slim, and to me, that's a feature, not a bug. Meanwhile, in places where these creepy things can actually be found in the wild, a backlash is thankfully growing. Will Kujawa, a freelance video producer, said that he has been thinking about buying a pair of Meta glasses with prescription lenses to film behind the scenes content during his shoots, but the online backlash has given him second thoughts. He says he was "blown away by how mean some of the people were" in response to his social media posts about considering buying a pair. "I saw all these comments about if you wear those glasses you're basically a predator or a creep, and I was like, 'oh, maybe it's not a good idea to have those,'" he told Engadget. But he says he understands why people have concerns. "I didn't really think that through all the way … there are a lot of times where it's not appropriate to wear cameras on your face. And even though I would have no intention of do anything creepy with them, it didn't even occur to me other people just assume that automatically." ↫ Karissa Bell at Engadget I can maybe see a use for these things in specific professional environments, but even then, obviously not ones made by Facebook, one of the, if not the creepiest companies in technology history. If I were to see anyone out here in the real world using one these things, I, too, would automatically assume that the guy (statistically speaking) wearing them is a creep. I can only imagine what the people most often targeted by creepy men would think encountering some rando wearing these. Clearly, these things should be made illegal outside of specific professional environments where they could potentially be useful. While it's impossible to stop tools like these from making their way into the hands of creeps, it at least provides the justice system with a clear method of nailing them to the wall. They didn't get Al Capone for any of his violent crimes - they nailed him for tax evasion.

14 Jul 2026 10:57pm GMT

The GDID really isn’t the only way Microsoft can track Windows users

In what should be a surprise to absolutely nobody, Microsoft assigns a persistent identifier to every Windows installation, tying it to its user, and the company has no issues handing it over to law enforcement. Abhijith M B at windows Latest dove into the details, and it's just as bad as you would expect. Am I glad Stokes got caught? Yes, without hesitation. Thirty-five pages of a teenager bragging about diamond chains spelling out "HACK THE PLANET" while extorting a jewelry store don't leave much room for sympathy, whatever role Microsoft's telemetry played in building the case. But that doesn't make the GDID okay. Every company selling you software has some version of this, and a persistent device identity is a reasonable thing to build into activation and fraud systems. What gets me is that most people had never come across the term GDID before a federal court filing such as this. Microsoft wrote one sentence about it in an Azure Monitor reference table meant for enterprise IT admins pulling update reports, not for the 1.6 billion or so regular people whose PCs are generating this data. You might be tech savvy enough to turn off Activity History, pick a local account, and strip out every scrap of optional telemetry, but none of it changes the fact that the identifier exists, and that it answers to your Microsoft Account instead of you. Microsoft only told the public about it once a court forced the issue. ↫ Abhijith M B at windows Latest The thing is, even without this GDID, I can't imagine Microsoft would have much trouble tying a Windows installation to a specific user. Consequently, I'm afraid the following is going to happen: this story gains even more traction, Microsoft removes the GDID, and everyone thinks the problem is resolved. Of course, in reality, any one of the hundreds of other metrics and data Microsoft collects can and will still be used in the exact same way as this GDID thing in this case. If my experiences with Windows 11 weren't clear enough - don't use Windows. Just don't.

14 Jul 2026 10:31pm GMT