Short Takes – 7-30-24

Hikers are infecting Virginia wildlife with COVID-19, study finds. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: “The method of infection seemed to be discarded food from infected hikers, researchers said.”

Air Defense: High Speed Drone Interceptors. StrategyPage.com article. Pull quote: “So far the Ukrainians have not demonstrated they can mass produce enough of these attack drones to become a major problem for the Russians. Ukraine does have access to large manufacturing facilities in NATO countries. The problem is whether or not NATO countries move quickly enough to provide more manufacturing for new drone designs Ukraine needs. The Ukrainians have become accustomed to innovating and then manufacturing new drones quickly. Manufacturers in the United States, Europe, and Russia are not accustomed to going that way. They might be if, like Ukraine, they were fighting for survival.”

Boeing says Starliner hot fire test on ISS went well with return date decision coming up. Phys.org article. Pull quote: “Boeing is on contract to provide six trips to the ISS, but NASA on Friday revealed the earliest that the first mission, Starliner-1, would take place would be August 2025, which would allow Boeing time to put in corrective fixes to the service module based on this mission's findings.”

For the ISS, to be or not to be? TheSpaceReview.com article. Not well written, but an interesting idea none-the-less. Pull quote: “Another scenario maybe to have government and commercial entities share the cost of maintaining it at 800 kilometers, perhaps as a waystation to the Moon, sort of like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and maybe as fuel depot. At $10,000 per pound to LEO, the 450-ton ISS's value is in its position and velocity. It would be asinine to lose that. The cost of $9–10 billion is perhaps a bean-counter argument, but it’s much worse to lose an incredible historic treasure that should not be measured in dollars and cents. Civilizations are not always built on bean counting. There has to be other considerations or we would not have any national parks, just a takeover by salivating land developers showing large bottom lines.”

Is Russia Trying to Poison Finland’s Water? ForeignPolicy.com article. Bit of click-bait headline, but interesting discussion. Pull quote: “Authorities are also asking: Who would have an interest in breaking into Finnish water plants? So far, they haven’t apprehended anyone or publicly identified a suspect. The intruders, though, are unlikely to have been ordinary criminals. “These are not the sort of break-ins criminals would commit,” said retired Maj. Gen. Pekka Toveri, a former chief of Finnish military intelligence who is now a member of the European Parliament.”

The CDC’s Test for Bird Flu Works, but It Has Issues. ScientificAmerican.com article. Pull quote: “As the CDC came under fire at the July 23 congressional hearing, Daniel Jernigan, director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, noted that testing is just one tool. The agency needs money for another promising area — looking for the virus in wastewater. Its current program uses supplemental funds, he said: “It is not in the current budget and will go away without additional funding.””

Cybersecurity Labeling for Internet of Things. Federal Register FCC final rule. Summary: “In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) establishes a voluntary cybersecurity labeling program [emphasis added] for wireless consumer Internet of Things, or IoT, products. The program will provide consumers with an easy-to-understand and quickly recognizable FCC IoT Label that includes the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark and a QR code linked to a dynamic, decentralized, publicly available registry of more detailed cybersecurity information. This program will help consumers make safer purchasing decisions, raise consumer confidence regarding the cybersecurity of the IoT products they buy, and encourage manufacturers to develop IoT products with security-by-design principles in mind.” Effective date: August 29^th, 2024.