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Thud457 shares a report from USA Today: The race for a coronavirus vaccine to help end the pandemic has consumed the scientific community and created an escalating demand for an essential resource: monkeys. Before drug companies call on human volunteers, monkeys are used in preclinical trials to test a vaccine's safety and effectiveness. But with more than 100 vaccines in development around the world, there aren't enough monkeys to go around. "There is a shortage," said Dr. Skip Bohm, associate director and chief veterinary medical officer of the Tulane National Primate Research Center. Like other aspects of society, the pandemic has underscored an already existing problem. Nonhuman primate research centers have been strained in recent years because of restrictions on imported monkeys from countries like China and India, and a lack of funding to support domestic breeding. "We've always been in a state where we were always very close to the level of production to meeting the demand for research, and that has been the status for several years," Bohm said. "When the COVID pandemic came about, that just pressed us even further." According to a 2018 analysis by the National Institutes of Health, the national primate centers' projected demand for monkeys would increase by 20% to 50%. Most centers were not equipped to accommodate that kind of increase -- then the pandemic hit. Tulane's primate research center has about 5,000 monkeys but only about 500 are used for research in a normal year because of age, health and colony dynamics. This year, Bohm estimates the same number of primates might be needed across the centers just for COVID-19 research alone. To satisfy the demand, NIH and research centers have had to collaborate more closely than ever. NIH created a committee to prioritize COVID-19 research while centers developed master protocols to optimize research, including sharing control groups.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Automaker Daimler AG and subsidiary Mercedes-Benz USA have agreed to pay $1.5 billion to resolve allegations they cheated on emissions tests, officials said Monday. The U.S. Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency and the California attorney general's office said Daimler violated environmental laws by using so-called "defeat device software" to circumvent emissions testing. In doing so, the companies sold roughly 250,000 cars and vans between 2009 and 2016 with diesel engines that didn't meet state and federal standards. The settlement, which includes civil penalties and still awaits court approval in Washington, will require Daimler to fix the already sold vehicles. Daimler AG must repair at least 85% of the affected cars within two years and at least 85% of the affected vans within three years, justice department officials said. The company must also offer extended warranties to drivers on certain vehicle parts and conduct emissions tests on the repaired vehicles each year for the next five years. A separate class action civil settlement will bring a one-off charge of about $700 million, Daimler AG said. In a statement, the company also said settling the emissions allegations means Daimler does not admit any liability nor will the company have to buy back any of the vehicles in question. As part of Daimler AG's settlement, officials in California will receive $17.5 million for future environmental enforcement.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: At 94 years old and with over 60 years of wildlife documentary-making under his belt, Sir David Attenborough is well-placed to share his thoughts about the future of our planet. And on Sunday, in the new BBC documentary Extinction: The Facts, the legendary presenter had a warning for all humans about the creatures we share the Earth with. "Over the course of my life, I've encountered some of the world's most remarkable species of animals," Attenborough says at the start of the hour-long film. "Only now do I realize just how lucky I've been. Many of these wonders seem set to disappear forever. We're facing a crisis, and one that has consequences for us all. It threatens our ability to feed ourselves, to control our climate -- it even puts us at greater risk of pandemic diseases such as COVID-19." With the help of a number of academics and experts, Attenborough goes on to explain that extinction is now happening much faster than it used to -- with 570 plant species and 700 animal species disappearing since the year 1500. "Studies suggest that extinction is now happening a hundred times faster than the natural evolutionary rate," Attenborough says. "And it's accelerating." A follow-up to Attenborough's 2019 explainer documentary, Climate Change: The Facts, Extinction: The Facts delves into some of the main causes of extinction and disastrous biodiversity loss today, including habitat destruction (either caused by land use or human-induced climate change or both), unsustainable agricultural and fishing practices, and poaching. The documentary examines a number of species across the world that are at risk, from the two remaining northern white rhinos in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy to the 25 percent of assessed plant species currently at risk of disappearing forever. Although the documentary is a heavy and often bleak watch, it does end with a message of hope. "One thing we do know, is that if nature is given the chance, it can bounce back," concludes Attenborough.

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On Tuesday, Apple will hold its annual September event called "Time Flies." Unlike in previous years, the company is not expected to announce new iPhones as they have reportedly been delayed "a few weeks" due to the pandemic. Macworld reports on what we can expect to see announced instead: Apple's invitation was light on details, as always, but it's hard to look at its "Time Flies" tagline and think that this won't mean showing off new models of the Apple Watch. Presumably that means a Series 6, but rumors have also circulated around an additional lower cost model to replace the aging Series 3. [...] While the iPad Pro received a minor update this past spring, the midrange iPad Air has remained unchanged since March 2019. Eighteen months is about the refresh cycle for iPads these days, so a revamped Air seems like a pretty good bet for this week's event. [...] There also remains the question of the iPad mini, last updated at the same time as the Air. It could very well see a similar update to stay in step with the Air, but given that Apple has often let the smaller tablet lie unchanged for years at a time -- which it seems to do with many products with the "mini" moniker -- it's hardly a sure thing. With new hardware naturally comes new software. The release of a new Apple Watch will certainly require watchOS 7, which in turn will need iOS 14. Likewise, new iPads are unlikely to ship without iPadOS 14. That gibes with a recent Bloomberg report that iOS 14 would be released in mid-September, following the usual schedule for Apple's mobile operating system updates. And given our brave new world where Apple events are not subject to the typical restrictions of time and scheduling, that might be all we have to look forward to this time around. That said, there are plenty of other things that Apple could talk about at this event, assuming they're ready to go -- everything from over-the-head AirPods to Apple silicon-powered Macs.

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Alphabet's Google faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit in the U.K. over claims that YouTube routinely breaks privacy laws by tracking children online. Bloomberg reports: The suit, filed on behalf of more than 5 million British children under 13 and their parents, is being brought by privacy campaigner Duncan McCann and being supported by Foxglove, a tech justice group. The claimants estimate that if they're successful, there would be as much as 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) in compensation, worth between 100 to 500 pounds per child. The filing alleges that YouTube's methods of targeting underage audiences constitute "major breaches" of U.K. and European privacy and data rules designed to protect citizens' control over their own private information. YouTube has "systematically broken these laws by harvesting children's data without obtaining prior parental consent," it alleges. A spokesperson for YouTube declined to comment on the lawsuit Monday but added that the video streaming service isn't designed for users under the age of 13. It's the first class action suit in Europe brought against a tech firm on behalf of children, according to the claimants. The legal action is being backed by Vannin Capital, a global litigation funder. "Google's drive to profit from kids' attention has turned corners of YouTube into a weird technicolored nightmare," Foxglove Director Cori Crider said. "The real price of YouTube's 'free' services is kids addicted, influenced, and exploited by Google. It's already unlawful to data-mine children under 13. But Google won't clean up its act until forced by the courts."

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Verizon, the largest wireless network in the U.S., has acquired Tracfone, the largest mobile virtual network operator. The Verge reports: Tracfone is the largest reseller of wireless services in the US, with 21 million subscribers, around 850 employees, and a network of more than 90,000 retail locations. It's owned by Mexico-based America Movil, and along with the Tracfone brand, operates the Net10 and Straight Talk brands in the US. More than 13 million Tracfone customers already rely on Verizon's wireless network; Tracfone doesn't run its own physical network in the US and instead rides on other cellphone carriers' systems for a fee. The acquisition gives Verizon a bigger foothold in the value and low-income wireless segments. Verizon says it will continue to offer Tracfone's Lifeline service, which allows qualifying customers to receive free phones and free monthly minutes, and StraightTalk, which offers prepaid, no-contract service phone plans. The deal will include $3.125 billion of cash and $3.125 billion in Verizon common stock. Tracfone could also receive an additional $650 million cash payment tied to performance measures. It's expected to close in the second half of 2021.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat, written by Emil Protalinski: Founded in 1992, Boston Dynamics is arguably the best-known robot company around, in part because its demonstration videos tend to go viral. Now it is attempting to transform from an R&D company to a robotics business, with an eye on profitability for the first time. When we interviewed Boston Dynamics founder and former CEO Marc Raibert in November 2019, we discussed the company's customers, potential applications, AI, simulation, and those viral videos. But it turns out Raibert was transitioning out of the CEO role at the time -- current CEO Robert Playter told us in an interview this month that he took the helm in November. We sat down to discuss Playter's first year as CEO; profitability; Spot, Pick, Handle, and Atlas; and the company's broader roadmap, including which robots are next. [...] In June, Boston Dynamics started selling its quadruped robot Spot in the U.S. for $74,500. Last week, the company expanded Spot sales to Canada, the EU, and the U.K. at the same price point. Playter says Boston Dynamics has sold or leased about 250 robots to date and business is accelerating. [...] Compared to big manufacturing robotic companies, 250 robots is not a lot. But Playter points out it's a big achievement "for a novel robot like Spot." Other robotic startups would love to get that sort of market validation. "We're penetrating, we're establishing a market, and people are starting to see value. We're adapting Spot to be a solution for some of the industries we're targeting," Playter said. Spot's success means the company is beating its own internal targets. "We are meeting -- actually exceeding -- some of our sales goals for Spot," Playter said. "We had ambitious goals this year, but we met our Q1 goal. We're meeting our Q2 goal. We have ambitious Q3 and Q4 goals. I think we're probably going to meet or exceed them this year. To become profitable, these products do have to become successful. They have to scale. But right now, I think we're beating plan." The company now has a roadmap to profitability. "I think we'll be profitable in about two and a half years," Playter said. "2023-2024 is when I'm projecting that we are cash positive." To hit that milestone, Boston Dynamics is simultaneously developing robots for logistics (think production, packaging, inventory, transportation, and warehousing)...

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Ethnic violence set off by the assassination of a popular singer has been supercharged by hate speech and incitements shared widely on the platform. From a report: Throughout his life, Ethiopian singer Hachalu Hundessa sang about love, unity, and raising the marginalized voices of his Oromo ethnic group. He had always tried to keep his work and politics separate, saying, "Art should not be subject to political pressure." But it became increasingly difficult for him to keep these two worlds apart, thanks to a politically-motivated disinformation campaign orchestrated on Facebook through a network of newly created pages and designed to demonize Hundessa. The incendiary campaign claimed Hundessa abandoned his Oromo roots in siding with Prime Minister Ahmed Abiy. Abiy, Ethiopia's first Oromo leader, has been heavily criticized by hard-line Oromo nationalists who believe he has abandoned his heritage by appeasing other ethnic groups. The impact was devastating. Hundessa was assassinated on June 29 while driving through the capital Addis Ababa. The man police charged with Hundessa's killing told prosecutors that he was working as an assassin for the Oromo Liberation Front, an armed nationalist group linked to numerous violent attacks -- and who told the shooter that Oromia would benefit from the death of one of its most famous singers. Hundessa's death at age 34 set off a wave of violence in the capital and his home region of Oromia. Hundreds of people were killed, with minorities like Christian Amharas, Christian Oromos, and Gurage people suffering the biggest losses. This bloodshed was supercharged by the almost-instant and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook, which whipped up people's anger. Mobs destroyed and burned property. They lynched, beheaded, and dismembered their victims. The calls for violence against a variety of ethnic and religious groups happened despite the government shutting down the internet within hours of Hundessa's murder. Soon, the same people who'd been calling for genocide and attacks against specific religous or ethnic groups were openly posting photographs of burned-out cars, buildings, schools and houses, the Network Against Hate Speech, a volunteer group tracking hate speech in Ethiopia, told VICE News. These attacks reflect the volatile nature of ethnic politics in Ethiopia. Abiy's rise to power in 2018 led to a brief period of hope that Ethiopia could be unified under the first Oromo to lead the country. But that quickly evaporated, and the country has since been wracked by violence, coinciding with a rapid increase in access to the internet, where Facebook dominates. And rather than helping to unify the country, Facebook has simply amplified existing tensions on a massive scale.

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Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and obtained by BuzzFeed News. From the report: The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Bolivia, and Ecuador she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them. "In the three years I've spent at Facebook, I've found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions," wrote Zhang, who declined to talk to BuzzFeed News. Her Linkedin profile said she "worked as the data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team" and dealt with "bots influencing elections and the like." "I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I've lost count," she wrote. The memo is a damning account of Facebook's failures. It's the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It's also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed.

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In the battle for tech supremacy between the US and China, America has "dropped the ball" in funding for basic research, according to former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. From a report: And that's one of the key reasons why China has been able to catch up. Dr Schmidt, who is currently the Chair of the US Department of Defense's innovation board, said he thinks the US is still ahead of China in tech innovation, for now. But that the gap is narrowing fast. "There's a real focus in China around invention and new AI techniques," he told the BBC's Talking Business Asia programme. "In the race for publishing papers China has now caught up." [...] Dr Schmidt blames the narrowing of the innovation gap between the US and China on the lack of funding in the US. "For my whole life, the US has been the unquestioned leader of R&D," the former Google boss said. "Funding was the equivalent of 2% or so of GDP of the country. Recently R&D has fallen to a lower percentage number than was there before Sputnik." According to Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a US lobby group for technology, the US government now invests less in R&D compared to the size of the economy than it has in more than 60 years. This has resulted in "stagnant productivity growth, lagging competitiveness and reduced innovation". Dr Schmidt also said the US's tech supremacy has been built on the back of the international talent that's been allowed to work and study in the US - and warns the US risks falling further behind if this kind of talent isn't allowed into the country. "This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills."

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NPR reporter Shannon Bond reports of a little-known -- and now nearly entirely forgotten -- company called Simulmatics, which had technology that used vast amounts of data to profile voters and ultimately help John F. Kennedy win the 1960 election. From the report: The [...] company was called Simulmatics, the subject of Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore's timely new book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. Before Cambridge Analytica, before Facebook, before the Internet, there was Simulmatics' "People Machine," in Lepore's telling: "A computer program designed to predict and manipulate human behavior, all sorts of human behavior, from buying a dishwasher to countering an insurgency to casting a vote." Lepore unearths Simulmatics' story and makes the argument that, amid a broader proliferation of behavioral science research across academia and government in the 1960s, the company paved the way for our 21st-century obsession with data and prediction. Simulmatics, she argues, is "a missing link in the history of technology," the antecedent to Facebook, Google and Amazon and to algorithms that attempt to forecast who will commit crimes or get good grades. "It lurks behind the screen of every device," she writes. If Then presents Simulmatics as both ahead of its time and, more often than not, overpromising and under-delivering. The company was the brainchild of Ed Greenfield, an advertising executive straight out of Mad Men, who believed computers could help Democrats recapture the White House. He wanted to create a model of the voting population that could tell you how voters would respond to whatever a candidate did or said. The name Simulmatics was a contraction of "simulation" and "automation." As Greenfield explained it to investors, Lepore writes: "The Company proposes to engage principally in estimating probable human behavior by the use of computer technology." The People Machine was originally built to analyze huge amounts of data ahead of the 1960 election, in what Lepore describes as, at the time, "the largest political science research project in American history."

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In late 2016, Nikola Motor Company founder Trevor Milton unveiled a prototype of the Nikola One truck, claiming it "fully functions and works, which is really incredible." A couple years later, in January 2018, the company showed the Nikola One truck moving rapidly along a two-lane desert highway. But last week, the short-selling investment firm Hindenburg Research published a bombshell report, accusing Nikola Motors of massive fraud, having no proprietary technology and vastly overstating the capabilities of their prototypes to investors. Incredibly, "Hindenburg reported that the truck in the 'Nikola One in motion' video wasn't moving under its own power," reports Ars Technica. "Rather, Nikola had towed the truck to the top of a shallow hill and let it roll down. The company allegedly tilted the camera to make it look like the truck was traveling under its own power on a level roadway." From the report: On Monday morning, Nikola sent out a lengthy press release titled "Nikola Sets the Record Straight on False and Misleading Short Seller Report." While the statement nitpicks a number of claims in the Hindenburg report, it tacitly concedes Hindenburg's main claim about the Nikola One. Nikola now admits that the Nikola One prototype wasn't functional in December 2016 and still wasn't functional when the company released the "in motion" video 13 months later. Nikola claims that the gearbox, batteries, inverters, power steering, and some other components of the truck were functional at the time of the December 2016 show. But Nikola doesn't claim that the truck had a working hydrogen fuel cell or motors to drive the wheels -- the two key components Hindenburg stated were missing from the truck in December 2016. And Nikola now admits that it never got the truck to fully function. "As Nikola pivoted to the next generation of trucks, it ultimately decided not to invest additional resources into completing the process to make the Nikola One drive on its own propulsion," Nikola wrote in its Monday statement. Instead, Nikola pivoted to working on its next vehicle, the Nikola Two. So what about that video of the Nikola One driving across the desert? "Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video," Nikola wrote. "Nikola described this third-party video on the Company's social media as 'In Motion.' It was never described as 'under its own propulsion' or 'powertrain driven.' Nikola investors who invested during this period, in which the Company was privately held, knew the technical capability of the Nikola One at the time of their investment."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Arm Holdings, the U.K. semiconductor company, made history for the second time today, becoming the country's biggest tech exit when Nvidia announced over the weekend that it would buy it from SoftBank for $40 billion in an all-stock deal. (Arm's first appearance in the record books? When SoftBank announced in 2016 that it would acquire the company for $32 billion.) But before you can say advanced reduced instruction set computing machine, the deal has hit a minor hitch. One of Arm's co-founders has started a campaign to get the U.K. to interfere in the deal, or else call it off and opt for a public listing backed by the government. Hermann Hauser, who started the company in 1990 along with a host of others as a spin-out of Acorn Computers, has penned an open letter to the U.K.'s Prime Minister Boris Johnson in which he says that he is "extremely concerned" about the deal and how it will impact jobs in the country, Arm's business model and the future of the country's economic sovereignty independent of the U.S. and U.S. interests. Hauser has also created a site to gather public support -- savearm.co.uk -- and to that end has also started to collect signatures from business figures and others. He's calling on the government to intervene, or to at least create legally binding provisions, tied to passing the deal to guarantee jobs, create a way to enforce Nvidia not getting preferential treatment over other licensees and secure an exemption from CFIUS regulation "so that U.K. companies are guaranteed unfettered access to our own microprocessor technology." "This puts Britain in the invidious position that the decision about who ARM is allowed to sell to will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street," he writes. "Sovereignty used to be mainly a geographic issue, but now economic sovereignty is equally important. Surrendering UK's most powerful trade weapon to the US is making Britain a US vassal state." Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang said: "This will drive innovation for customers of both companies," adding that Nvidia "will maintain Arm's open licensing model and customer neutrality... We love Arm's business model. In fact, we intend to expand Arm's licensing portfolio with access to Nvidia's technology. Both our ecosystems will be enriched by this combination." Hauser responded by saying: "Do not believe any statements which are not legally binding."

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The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to permanently replace some humans with machines, according to a new study on Monday from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. From a report: Layoffs have been higher among workers in industries that can be automated, which increases the risk those jobs will become permanently obsolete, according to the study by economists Lei Ding and Julieth Saenz Molina. At the same time, the spread of Covid-19 has accelerated automation in industries that have been hit hard by the virus or that don't permit remote work. The longer the recession lasts, the deeper the impact of automation will be. "In case the COVID-19 crisis evolves into a prolonged economic crisis, many job losses in automatable occupations could become permanent in the post-pandemic economy, similar to what happened during the recovery from the Great Recession," Ding and Saenz Molina wrote. Industries that were already facing a high risk of automation lost 4.2 more jobs per 100 than jobs in sector facing fewer threats by technology, the study shows, which analyzes data through August.

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Google is planning to launch its Pixel 5 smartphone, a new Chromecast, and a new smart speaker later this month. From a report: Google has started inviting members of the media to a special event on September 30th, promising new hardware. "We invite you to learn all about our new Chromecast, our latest smart speaker, and our new Pixel phones," reads the invite. Google already confirmed its plans to launch a Pixel 5 later this year, complete with 5G connectivity. The Pixel maker revealed its launch plans alongside the introduction of the Pixel 4A last month, promising 5G versions of the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia.

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published a security advisory today warning of a wave of attacks carried out by hacking groups affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security (MSS). From a report: CISA says that over the past year, Chinese hackers have scanned US government networks for the presence of popular networking devices and then used exploits for recently disclosed vulnerabilities to gain a foothold on sensitive networks. The list of targeted devices includes F5 Big-IP load balancers, Citrix and Pulse Secure VPN appliances, and Microsoft Exchange email servers. For each of these devices, major vulnerabilities have been publicly disclosed over the past 12 months, such as CVE-2020-5902, CVE-2019-19781, CVE-2019-11510, and CVE-2020-0688, respectively. According to a table summarizing Chinese activity targeting these devices published by CISA today, some attacks have been successful and enabled Chinese hackers to gain a foothold on federal networks.

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Microsoft is looking to challenge Amazon in offering a service that connects satellites directly to the company's cloud computing network, according to documents the company filed with the Federal Communications Commission last month. From a report: The effort shows how the two largest providers of cloud infrastructure -- data centers in far-flung places that can host websites and run applications with a smorgasbord of computing and storage services -- regularly seek to one-up each other. That way, the companies can appear ready and willing to meet many of the needs of prospective customers. Microsoft plans to connect a Spanish imaging satellite to two ground stations -- both located in Microsoft's home state of Washington -- to show that it can directly download satellite "data to the Azure Cloud for immediate processing," the FCC documents said. A ground station, sometimes called an earth station, is the vital link for transmitting data to and from satellites in orbit. Microsoft notably proposed to construct one of the two ground stations itself at its data center in Quincy, Wash. The FCC on Sept. 2 authorized Microsoft to perform proof-of-concept demonstrations of the service. The authorization gives Microsoft a six month license that allows for communications and imagery data downloads. The Spanish satellite, called Deimos-2, was launched into orbit in June 2014. The satellite is operated by a subsidiary of Canadian satellite imagery company UrtheCast and, for the tests, the Deimos-2 satellite will only be in range of Microsoft's antennas for "just a few minutes."

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Two years ago, Microsoft sank a data centre off the coast of Orkney in a wild experiment. That data centre has now been retrieved from the ocean floor, and Microsoft researchers are assessing how it has performed, and what they can learn from it about energy efficiency. From a report: Their first conclusion is that the cylinder packed with servers had a lower failure rate than a conventional data centre. When the container was hauled off the seabed around half a mile offshore after being placed there in May 2018, just eight out of the 855 servers on board had failed. That compares very well with a conventional data centre. "Our failure rate in the water is one-eighth of what we see on land," says Ben Cutler, who has led what Microsoft calls Project Natick. The team is speculating that the greater reliability may be connected to the fact that there were no humans on board, and that nitrogen rather than oxygen was pumped into the capsule.

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LG is no stranger to two-screen smartphones in recent years, but the company has just officially announced its boldest foray into a dual-screen device in recent memory: the LG Wing. It's a wild-looking, swiveling-display smartphone that looks to -- quite literally -- offer a new spin on what a phone can do. From a report: The new phone is inspired by LG's current trends of dual-screen smartphones like the G8X ThinQ and the Velvet, along with the company's classic swiveling LG VX9400 feature phone released over a decade ago. The Wing is set to be the first device under LG's new "Explorer Project" branding, aimed at exploring ways to "breathe new life into what makes a smartphone." Wing's most interesting feature, of course, is the two OLED panels. The first is a standard 6.8-inch main screen without any bezels or notches (instead, LG has chosen to go with a pop-up lens, since apparently the Wing didn't have enough moving parts to worry about). But it's the second 3.9-inch panel that's underneath the main display that makes the Wing 2020's most unique-looking phone. Instead of folding out for two full-size (or one flexible) panels side by side, the Wing's main display twists around and up to reveal the second screen, in a shape that looks a lot like a Tetris T-block.

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There is something funky going on in the clouds of Venus. Telescopes have detected unusually high concentrations of the molecule phosphine -- a stinky, flammable chemical typically associated with feces, farts and rotting microbial activity -- in an atmospheric layer far above the planet's scorching surface. From a report: The finding is curious because here on Earth, phosphine is essentially always associated with living creatures, either as a by-product of metabolic processes or of human technology such as industrial fumigants and methamphetamine labs. Although toxic to many organisms, the molecule has been singled out as a potentially unambiguous signature of life because it is so difficult to make through ordinary geological or atmospheric action. Swathed in sulfuric acid clouds and possessing oppressive surface pressures and temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus is a hellish world. But the particular cloud layer where the phosphine is present happens to be relatively balmy, with ample sunlight and Earth-like atmospheric pressure and temperature. The results will have to be carefully vetted by the scientific community. Yet they seem likely to spark renewed interest in exploring our sister planet next door. "It's a really puzzling discovery because phosphine doesn't fit in our conception of what kinds of chemicals should be in Venus's atmosphere," says Michael Wong, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington. Planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison agrees. "The bottom line is we don't know what's going on," he says. (Neither Wong nor Sanjay were involved in the work.) After the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest object visible to the naked eye in Earth's sky. For thousands of years, people told stories about the glittering jewel that appeared around sunrise and sunset. Venus's brilliance is what made it attractive to Jane Greaves, a radio astronomer at Cardiff University in England. She typically focuses her attention on distant newborn planetary systems but wanted to test her molecular identification abilities on worlds within our cosmic backyard. In 2017 Greaves observed Venus with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, searching for bar code-like patterns of lines in the planet's spectrum that would indicate the presence of different chemicals. While doing so, she noticed a line associated with phosphine. The data suggested the molecule was present at around 20 parts per billion in the planet's atmosphere, a concentration between 1,000 and a million times greater than that in Earth's atmosphere. "I was stunned," Greaves says. Further reading: The original paper in the journal Nature Astronomy; and the case for life on Venus.

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