Elon Musk envisions a self-sustaining city on Mars in 20 years

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday said that he hopes for a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet in 20 years' time, as his space company prepares Starship to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and beyond. Musk said in a tweet: "I hope there is a self-sustaining city on Mars in 20 years!" Last month, the world's richest man said he was optimistic that "humanity will reach Mars in your lifetime". "Without a common goal, humanity will fight itself. The Moon brought us together in 1969, Mars can do that in the future," Musk had said. The Tesla CEO had stated that making life multiplanetary will help back up the ecosystems on Earth and added that apart from humans no other species can transport life to Mars. Referring to Biblical patriarch Noah who built an Ark that survived the great flood on Earth, Musk said his Starship models will be "modern Noah's Arks", that can save "life from a calamity on Earth". SpaceX's Starship consists of a giant first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 metres) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. Both elements are designed to be fully reusable, and both will be powered by SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engines, 33 for Super Heavy and six for Starship. Last week, it was reported that the much-awaited first orbital test flight of the Starship vehicle will not lift off this month as it has not yet received the necessary launch clearance. Earlier, the launch was scheduled for July and was shifted to August later. On August 2, Musk said that a successful orbital flight is probably "between 1 and 12 months from now." According to a radio-spectrum licence application that the company filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX is targeting a six-month window that opens on September 1 for the highly anticipated mission.

(Except for the headline, the rest of this IANS article is un-edited)

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Uber Rewards to be discontinued soon: Know details here

Ride-hailing platform Uber is closing down its loyalty programme, Uber Rewards, with users being urged to sign up for the Uber One subscription to get regular Uber and Uber Eats discounts. Launched in 2018, Uber Rewards is a free programme that lets you rack points for every dollar you spend when hitching a ride or ordering food through Uber and Uber Eats, reports The Verge. You can then use these points to earn discounts on future rides or deliveries. The more points you earn, the better perks you get -- earning 7,500 points. However, Uber is not offering a replacement for the programme, and there is no another way to consistently earn perks and discounts unless you pay for an Uber One subscription, which Uber launched as a replacement for Eats Pass last year. A $9.99/month (or $49.99/year) subscription comes with perks like free food deliveries, up to 10 per cent off of "eligible" Uber Eats orders, and 5 per cent off on rides from top-rated drivers.

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YouTube Channel Store for streaming services reportedly in the works

Google-owned YouTube is working on to launch an online store like Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video to let users subscribe to other streaming services and the new platform could be available as early as this fall. According to a report in Wall Street Journal, the YouTube 'Channel Store' will allow consumers to choose streaming services through the main YouTube app. The company is already in talks with entertainment companies about participating in the YouTube marketplace. The YouTube online store "has been in the works for at least 18 months". YouTube TV already has this capability for HBO, AMC+, Showtime, and many others. "YouTube is discussing splitting subscription revenue with streaming partners, although the terms may vary widely for each partner," the report mentioned. The pitch is that the new YouTube channel store would offer great marketing for streaming services because "consumers could watch trailers of shows or movies free on YouTube and then easily pay to subscribe to the service". YouTube in 2020 for the first time discussed launching an online streaming video store. Walmart is also planning to add streaming services as a new perk to its membership programme. Netflix and other streaming services will be part of Verizon's new Plus Play subscription manager.

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Hogwarts Legacy finally seems to have a definite release date

After waiting for about two years, the launch date for Hogwarts Legacy has been rescheduled to February 10, 2023. Avalanche Software revealed the launch date on its official Twitter handle.  The game will hit PC, Xbox One, X/S, and PlayStation 5/4 at launch. 

Hogwarts Legacy finally coming next year

Hogwarts Legacy will launch on February 10, 2023, for PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, and PC. A launch date for Nintendo Switch is not yet decided and will be revealed soon. “Our team is excited for you to play, but we need more time to give you the best gaming experience”, reads the tweet from the Hogwarts Legacy Twitter handle. The first time it was announced that the game would be launched in the year 2020, that was delayed by Warner Bros and rescheduled to be launched around Christmas 2022, but it is now again revised to February 2023

Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world action game in which your job is to define your character, explore various magical locales, learn and cast spells, discover beasts and continue the journey to become the wizard you were destined to be. It's a single-player game, and there is no word on any multiplayer elements either.  

After a long delay, fans are excited and are hoping that the game will be launched on the given date, this time. 

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VLC player has been banned by the Indian Government since February 2022

It seems that VLC media player has actually been banned in India since February of this year. In a surprising turn of events, India Today reported that the media player will still work for users who’ve downloaded the player but newer users might have problems acquiring a new version of the software. There has been no reason given for the ban, as the government nor VLC have made any official statements. The official VLC player Twitter account did reply to India Today and stated that the ban had indeed started on 13 February this year. 

Since the 13 of February, according to our stats.

— VideoLAN (@videolan) August 12, 2022 VLC Player banned in India since February 2022

Excuses such as a hacking scam and such have already hit the web but there seems to be no logical explanation of why the ban took place. Security experts stated that a Chinese-based hacking software was bundled with the player but there are no official endorsements of this theory. In any case, if that were true then VLC player should have been banned in a lot of countries other than India but there seems to be no real news on that front. The Indian government has also banned TikTok, Streamable, BGMI and many more. 

As mentioned above, if you’ve already downloaded the software, it should still continue to work on your system. But, for users looking to download the player, you’ll be directed to a page that says it’s been banned as per an order from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the IT Act of 2000. 

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Zoom installer flaw can give attackers root access to Mac: Report

San Francisco, Aug 13 (IANS) A security researcher has found a way that an attacker could leverage the macOS version of Zoom to gain access over the entire operating system.

According to The Verge, details of the exploit were released in a presentation by Mac security specialist Patrick Wardle at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas this week.

Zoom has already fixed some of the bugs involved, but the researcher also presented one unpatched vulnerability that still affects systems now.

The exploit works by targeting the installer for the Zoom application, which needs to run with special user permissions to install or remove the main Zoom application from a computer.

Though the installer requires a user to enter their password on first adding the application to the system, Wardle found that an auto-update function then continually ran in the background with superuser privileges.

When Zoom issued an update, the updater function would install the new package after checking that it had been cryptographically signed by Zoom.

But a bug in how the checking method was implemented meant that giving the updater any file with the same name as Zoom's signing certificate would be enough to pass the test -- so an attacker could substitute any malware program and have it be run by the updater with elevated privilege, the report said.

The result is a privilege escalation attack, which assumes an attacker has already gained initial access to the target system and then employs an exploit to gain a higher level of access.

In this case, the attacker begins with a restricted user account but escalates into the most powerful user type -- known as a "superuser" or "root" -- allowing them to add, remove, or modify any files on the machine.

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NASA asks students to design metal production pipeline on the Moon

Washington, Aug 13 (IANS) The US space agency has asked university students to design a metal production pipeline on the Moon -- from extracting metal from lunar minerals to creating structures and tools.

The ability to extract metal and build needed infrastructure on the Moon advances the Artemis Programme goal of a sustained human presence on the lunar surface, NASA said in a statement.

"Here at home, forging metal has long been a key part of building our homes and infrastructure, and the same holds true as we work towards a sustained presence on the Moon," said Niki Werkheiser, director of technology maturation within the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).

"This challenge gives students the opportunity to help develop the future technology that will help us find, process, and manufacture with metal on the lunar surface," Werkheiser added.

The 2023 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge invites university students to tackle some of the most critical needs facing space exploration and help create the mission capabilities that could make new discoveries possible.

Student teams will develop innovative ways to extract and convert metals from minerals found on the Moon, such as ilmenite and anorthite, to enable metal manufacturing on the Moon.

The NASA-funded challenge provides development awards of up to $180,000 to up to eight selected teams to build and demonstrate their concept designs and share the results of their research and testing at the culminating forum in November 2023.

The availability of derived metals on the Moon would allow infrastructure needed for a lunar base -- including pipes, power cables, landing pads, transport rails, and pressure vessels to contain volatiles like fuel -- to be made locally using additive manufacturing, or 3D printing.

"NASA is already thinking about supporting longer-term missions to the Moon. This BIG Idea Challenge theme links university teams to the push toward sustained human presence on the Moon and on other planets," said Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, Space Grant project manager in NASA's Office of STEM Engagement.

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