Since 1955 the U.S./Canadian operation that monitors North American airspace with radars and satellite to maintain air sovereignty has also, at Christmas time, been tracking Santa.

And this year their trackers received additional support from the U.S. Space Command, a joint-military command drawing its units from five military service branches (including the U.S. Space Force). That command "launched a new reindeer tracker to pinpoint the exact location of Santa's sleigh at any given time during the night," according to NPR's Morning Edition, with General James Dickinson telling them the equipment's official name: Rudolph Infrared Tracking System. "We made some upgrades this year."

And that was just the beginning, reports The Hill: Santa knows astronauts need presents, too, and made his first known visit to the International Space Station to deliver them this year.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which tracks Santa's Christmas Eve journey every year, depicted in a tweet Santa arriving at the International Space Station on Christmas Eve...

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared Santa for the flight to space on Wednesday, providing him "for the first time ever" with a special commercial space license.
The astronauts aboard the ISS recorded a special Christmas video this year. (And a new article in Business Insider expores how astronauts on the space station have celebrated Christmas over the years.)

And NORAD is even maintaining a special web site at NORADSanta.org which not only let visitors track Santa, but through December 31st will also offer an arcade with Christmas-themed videogames, a selection of music by the U.S. Air Force Academy Band, and even a gift shop where you can buy "Santa and NORAD gear," including NORAD hoodies and tote bags.

Though a pop-up window warns visitors that "Clicking through to this next website does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the United States Department of Defense or NORAD of any product or service."

KFC unveiled what they're calling the KFConsole -- a VR-ready high-end gaming PC that comes with a built-in chicken warmer. GamesRadar reports: Back in June, just after the PS5 reveal, KFC released a ridiculous trailer for the KFConsole, but everyone just figured they were joking. Turns out, they were dead serious. KFC, the chicken place, has teamed up with Cooler Master and launched a gaming console capable of 4K and 240FPS. The joint press release doesn't mention a price or release date, but I've reached out for clarification and will update this article if I hear back.

The complete specs haven't been revealed, but we know it's got an Intel Nuc 9 CPU, Seagate BarraCuda 1TB SSD, and judging from the prominence of "ray tracing" in the marketing from Cooler Master, an Nvidia GPU. Cooler Master also says the KFConsole has "a first of its kind hot swappable GPU slot" for easy upgrades. But who really cares about all that when it's got a chamber to keep your fried chicken warm?

Ammalgam shares a report from The Redmond Cloud: Starting this month, Microsoft will begin forcing some users to upgrade to Windows 10 version 1909 or version 2004 if they don't update their PC manually. This is coming after Microsoft announced that it's ending support for Windows 10 version 1903, including Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. If you're on Windows 10 version 1903, you'll be force upgraded to version 1909 later this month. If you're on Windows 10 version 1909, you'll be forcefully upgraded to Windows 10 version 2004 (May 2020 Update) by the spring of next year. If you're still using last year's Windows 10 versions, it's better to attempt the upgrade manually. [...] The process is expected to start this week and expand over the course of the next month before Windows 10 version 21H1 update is ready for production channels.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst calls Qualcomm "a little too unbothered by Apple's M1 Macs" Qualcomm executives brushed off a question about Apple's new M1-based Macs during a question-and-answer session at the company's Snapdragon Summit today, where Qualcomm announced a new flagship smartphone chipset but no upgrades to its year-old chips for PCs... In general, reviews of Qualcomm-powered laptops such as the Microsoft Surface Pro X have celebrated the devices' long battery life, but lamented problems with third-party apps that were originally coded for Intel processors. That stands in stark contrast to Apple's new M1-based Macs, which don't seem to be slowed down as badly by older software...

"It's a great validation of what we've been doing for the past few years and [Qualcomm's product line] is just going to get stronger and stronger as we broaden our scope," said Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm SVP for mobile. Katouzian made sure to subtly call out ways in which Qualcomm's always-connected PCs are superior to Apple's newest Macs. The Macs lack 4G connectivity and still have poor-quality, 720p front-facing cameras... Katouzian also pointed out that (presumably unlike Apple) Qualcomm addresses "many tiers...and many price points" with its 7c, 8c, and 8cx laptop chipsets, letting Windows laptop makers drive prices well below the MacBook Air's $999 list price.

The core problem with Qualcomm's always-connected PC strategy is one that Qualcomm itself can't fix. While Qualcomm could, and probably will, soon announce a laptop chip that's based on the new Snapdragon 888 and has a level of raw power closer to Apple's M1, it's really down to Microsoft, as well as peripheral and app makers to solve the platform incompatibilities that have frustrated PC reviewers.
Hot Hardware cites Microsoft's promises of changes come in future updates to Windows 10, arguing that "with the arrival of x64 emulation and a growing library of native Arm64 apps, Windows 10 on Arm is going to be an even more powerful platform." From a performance perspective, while running Windows 10 on Arm, these [Snapdragon 8cx] chips may currently be at a disadvantage to the Apple M1, but some day in the not so distant future that might not be the case. We have no doubt that Qualcomm is likely working on a new Windows PC-centric SoC that is based on Snapdragon 888 or similar architecture. Qualcomm has promised a 25 percent uplift in CPU and a 35% lift in GPU performance over the Snapdragon 865, with the Snapdragon 888, which already offers a big boost over the previous gen Snapdragon 855/8cx. So, Qualcomm has the potential to put up a strong showing against the Apple M1, whenever its next-generation Snapdragon PC chip launches.
That may be, but John Gruber at Daring Fireball argues that currently "M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux." Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Well, that just doesn't happen, your instincts tell you. One company, even a company like Apple, doesn't just embarrass the entire rest of a highly-competitive longstanding industry. But just because something hasn't happened — or hasn't happened in a very long while — doesn't mean it can't happen. And in this case, it just happened... M1 Macs completely upend what we can and should expect from PCs. It's a breakthrough along the lines of the iPhone itself in 2007.

Amazon is laying the groundwork for a quantum computer, deepening efforts to harness technology that can crunch in seconds vast amounts of data that take even the most powerful supercomputers hours or days to process. From a report: Amazon has been hiring for a Quantum Hardware Team within its Amazon Web Services Center for Quantum Computing, according to internal job postings and information on LinkedIn. Marc Runyan, a former engineer with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lists his title on the professional social network as senior quantum research scientist at Amazon and describes his role as "helping to design and build a quantum computer for Amazon Web Services." [...] Among Amazon's recent hires are research scientists focusing on designing a new superconducting quantum device as well as device fabrication. Developing its own quantum computer would let Amazon more closely mirror the approach taken by its major cloud rivals. International Business Machines first made a quantum computer available to the public in 2016 and has rolled out regular upgrades.

Worldwide smartphone sales to end-users totaled 366 million units in the third quarter of 2020, down 5.7% from the third quarter of 2019, according to Gartner. Overall global mobile phone sales to end users totaled 401 million units, a decline of 8.7% year-over-year. From the report: After two consecutive quarters of a decline of 20%, quarterly smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery sequentially. However, smartphone sales continued to remain weaker compared to the same time period in in 2019, even with vendors introducing multiple 5G smartphones and governments relaxing shelter-in-place instructions in some geographies. "Consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even as some lockdown conditions have started to improve," said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. "Global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from the second quarter of 2020 to the third quarter. This was due to pent-up demand from previous quarters."

Economic uncertainties and continued fear of the next wave of the pandemic continue to put pressure on nonessential spending through the end of 2020. The delay in 5G network upgrades has also limited the opportunity for smartphone vendors. Among the top five smartphone manufacturers, Samsung held the No. 1 position with 22% market share. Xiaomi moved ahead of Apple into the No. 3 position for the first time ever with sales of 44.4 million units compared to Apple's sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020.

Slashdot reader Charlotte Web quote The Street: Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that he has "fully" recovered from his bout with a mild fever or cold about a week after he took to Twitter to say he tested positive for coronavirus... [T]his week, Musk took a more reliable PCR test that he said showed "unequivocal" evidence that he had Covid...

On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley raised Tesla to overweight for the first time in more than three years, predicting that the electric carmaker is on the verge of a "profound model shift" from selling cars to generating high-margin software and services revenue. "To only value Tesla on car sales alone ignores the multiple businesses embedded within the company," Adam Jones said in a research note to clients as he upgraded the shares from equal-weight and raised his price target by 50% to $540 from $360, suggesting 22% additional upside for the stock.
The analyst believes Tesla's electric vehicle business is Tesla's "entry ticket" for "unlocking much larger" potential markets, according to an earlier article in The Street: To better gauge Tesla's future earnings potential, Jones said his team was now including software/connected vehicle services revenue in their earnings and valuation forecasts. With the total number of Tesla's out in the world expected to reach 2.1 million next year, "a more in-depth understanding of the revenue streams derived from each car is warranted right now," he wrote.

chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: Millions of Android smart television sets from the Chinese vendor TCL Technology Group Corporation contained gaping software security holes that researchers say could have allowed remote attackers to take control of the devices, steal data or even control cameras and microphones to surveil the set's owners. The security holes appear to have been patched by the manufacturer in early November. However the manner in which the holes were closed is raising further alarm among the researchers about whether the China-based firm is able to access and control deployed television sets without the owner's knowledge or permission, according to a report published on Monday by two security researchers.

The report describes two serious software security holes affecting TCL brand television sets. First, a vulnerability in the software that runs TCL Android Smart TVs allowed an attacker on the adjacent network to browse and download sensitive files over an insecure web server running on port 7989. That flaw, CVE-2020-27403, would allow an unprivileged remote attacker on the adjacent network to download most system files from the TV set up to and including images, personal data and security tokens for connected applications. The flaw could lead to serious critical information disclosure, the researchers warned. Second, the researchers found a vulnerability in the TCL software that allowed a local unprivileged attacker to read from and write to critical vendor resource directories within the TV's Android file system, including the vendor upgrades folder. That flaw was assigned the identifier CVE-2020-28055.

The researchers, John Jackson, an application security engineer for Shutter Stock, and the independent researcher known by the handle "Sick Codes," said the flaws amount to a "back door" on any TCL Android smart television. "Anybody on an adjacent network can browse the TV's file system and download any file they want," said Sick Codes in an interview via the Signal platform. That would include everything from image files to small databases associated with installed applications, location data or security tokens for smart TV apps like Gmail. If the TCL TV set was exposed to the public Internet, anyone on the Internet could connect to it remotely, he said, noting that he had located a handful of such TCL Android smart TVs using the Shodan search engine.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Voyager 2 probe, one of NASA's most well-traveled spacecraft, has been unable to communicate with Earth for the past eight months. Voyager 2 has been wandering alone at the edge of interstellar space, gathering data some 11.6 billion miles from Earth and sending it back to us. But we haven't been able to pick up the phone and call back. The only radio antenna that can communicate with the probe, Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) in Australia, has been offline while NASA completes a series of hardware upgrades. Some of the transmitters on DSS43 haven't been replaced for over 47 years, according to NASA. To test new hardware, the dish pinged Voyager 2 on Oct. 29 with a few commands. It was the first time since mid-March that a signal was beamed to the spacecraft. And because the probe is so far away, the communication team had to wait over 34 hours for a reply. Sure enough, Voyager 2 received the commands with no problems and sent back a "hello."

Apple's "System Status" page indicates 14 current issues, some of which began nearly five hours ago.

CNET reports the services affected "include Find My, iCloud Account & Sign In, iCloud Backup, iCloud Bookmarks & Tabs, iCloud Calendar, iCloud Contacts, iCloud Drive, iCloud Keychain, iCloud Mail, iCloud Storage Upgrades, Photos and Screen Time."

Engadget writes "the timing is less than ideal, even if this is likely to be a small interruption in the grander scheme of things." The issue comes weeks after an outage that affected both iCloud and Apple's media services. It also follows mere days after the debut of Apple One, where iCloud storage (also affected by the outage) plays an important role.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In recent years, the cost of solar and wind energy has declined precipitously, which has accelerated the growth of these renewable energy technologies. Increasingly, utilities are now planning for a future grid dominated by solar and wind. That will require changes in grid management and transmission upgrades as well as the addition of storage to smooth out the supply from variable generators. Grid storage is still pretty early days, but we're already seeing huge cost reductions as the industry matures. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted this recently, showing that grid-scale battery-project costs in the United States dropped 70 percent in just a few years.

Between 2015 and 2018, average project costs decreased from $2,152 per kilowatt-hour of storage to $625. Costs will need to drop much more for grid batteries to scale, but that's a huge improvement in a short period of time. By the end of 2018, the US had 869 megawatts of battery power capacity and 1,236 megawatt-hours of energy capacity. (Power is the rate at which the batteries can supply electricity, while energy is the total amount it can supply when going from full charge to empty.) EIA also has installation data for 2019, which saw the addition of another 150 megawatts/450 megawatt-hours. And in just the first seven months of 2020, yet another 300 megawatts of power capacity were installed. EIA doesn't see this slowing down. It expects installed battery storage to increase by 6,900 megawatts "in the next few years" -- a figure ambiguous enough to allow for a rapid spike in planned projects.

Apple has confirmed several problems including "increased battery drain" for some users who upgraded their iPhone to iOS 14. But ZDNet warns Apple's proposed solution "sounds pretty drastic."

Forbes reports: In an official post, Apple reveals seven significant data and battery-related problems with iOS 14 and watchOS 7, and the company states the only fix is to "erase all content and settings from your iPhone".

Breaking these down, Apple classifies six as related to its Activity, Health and Fitness apps as well as the broader problem of "Increased battery drain on your iPhone or Apple Watch." The latter will not be a surprise to anyone who has seen the growing number of complaints directed at the company's @AppleSupport Twitter account since iOS 14 was released...

On the plus side, Apple's belief that these problems can be fixed without an iOS update is good news. That said, a complete data wipe is also the nuclear option, so Apple is not messing around... I would also be amazed if iOS 14.0.2 is not being fast tracked as we speak.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For the better part of the last decade, Google's Chromecast dongles were the company's primary homegrown solution for streaming video to your TV. But with the recent explosion in streaming services, even the most sophisticated Chromecast wasn't really cutting it anymore, which is something the new Chromecast with Google TV is hoping to change in a big way, but bringing an actual streaming device OS to a Chromecast dongle. The big change for this new $50 Chromecast is that it's not your typical Chromecast at all. Sure, it still plugs in via HDMI and you can still use it to stream videos and content to your TV from your phone. However, instead of being based around the very basic Chromecast interface, this new Chromecast runs on Android TV platform which Google has improved with an enhanced UI and a few new features, which is where the Google TV part of Chromecast with Google TV comes in.

And when you factor in the Chromecast with Google TV's new dedicated remote these upgrades could completely change how you watch and interact with content. Starting with the hardware, the Chromecast with Google TV consists of two parts: there's the dongle that plugs into your TV and Google's included remote. For the Chromecast with Google TV, Google is going with a simple ovular puck that comes in three different colors (Snow, Sunrise, and Sky) and features an attached HDMI cable that plugs into your TV along with a USB-C port and bundled cable that you'll need to plug in for power. The Chromecast with Google TV comes with support for 4K video at 60 fps with HDR via Dolby Vision, which ticks all the major boxes when it comes to streaming video quality.

Google plans to push harder for developers to give the company a cut of in-app purchases through its Play app store, according to people with knowledge of the move. From a report: The Alphabet unit plans to issue updated guidelines as early as next week that clarify a requirement for most apps to use Google's billing service for in-app content downloads, game upgrades and subscriptions. This system gives the company a 30% cut of purchases inside of apps on Android. While this requirement has existed for years, some major developers including Netflix, Spotify, Match Group and Epic Games, have circumvented the rule. Netflix and Spotify apps prompt consumers to pay using a credit card, rather than their Play app store account, bypassing Google's fee. Last year, Match Group's Tinder dating app launched a similar payment process. More recently, Epic Games started letting players buy in-game upgrades for its Fortnite video game via a method that paid Epic directly. In response, Google and Apple pulled Fortnite from their app stores and Epic sued both tech giants.

The Fairphone 3+ is a $550 phone with modular parts that can easily be swapped out by users themselves. "In many ways, a Fairphone is the antithesis of the iPhone," writes Catie Keck via Gizmodo. "It doesn't benefit most retailers to allow you to easily repair your own stuff, meaning that a lot of gizmos these days -- particularly higher-end electronics -- are packed with proprietary parts and sometimes even software locks to dissuade consumers from attempting to perform repairs themselves." While it is a "repairable dream" and features two big camera upgrades over the Fairphone 3 (which does support the new upgraded camera modules), it's, sadly, only available overseas. Keck writes: Fairphone 3+ has 64GB of memory but can be upgraded to 400GB with a MicroSD card. It has a Qualcomm 632 processor, a 5.65-inch display, Bluetooth 5, a 3000mAh battery that supports Qualcomm QuickCharge, and six total modules to swap out for easy repair. A thing I didn't expect to love as much as I did was fingerprint ID on the backside of the phone -- particularly as Face ID on my iPhone 11 has become a massive pain in the butt in these mask-on times. At present, Fairphone doesn't support 4G connectivity in the U.S., my biggest gripe with the phone second only to the fact that the phones only ship within Europe. [...] Fairphone runs on Android -- the Fairphone 3+ comes with Android 10 pre-installed and ready to go.

As for its camera, I was happy enough with the photograph with the newer lens. Photo nerds may be more sensitive to the trade-offs when compared with, say, the iPhone 11 Pro, but for the average person, I think Fairphone's cameras would work beautifully. I especially loved the portrait mode on the front camera, which worked in even exceptionally low-light environments for me. Software likely isn't the primary reason that anyone is looking at getting a Fairphone device, but shipping pre-installed with a lot of familiar apps means making the switch will likely be relatively painless, though so far my iPhone is a bit snappier overall in terms of performance. Again, the tradeoff is a commitment to repairability that you simply won't get with an Apple device unless the company radically overhauls its entire business model or unless it's forced, neither of which seems remotely likely for the foreseeable future.

Epic Games says Fortnite: Save the World will no longer be playable on macOS beginning on September 23rd because Apple is preventing the game from receiving new updates. The Verge reports: The co-op action shooter was initially released as a paid early access title in 2017. Epic's far more popular free-to-play battle royale will still be playable on Mac, the company says. Epic says Apple is blocking new updates and patches for the macOS version of Save the World, and an upcoming update going out to other platforms will cause bugs and "a very poor experience" for players stuck on the current version.

In late August, Apple terminated Epic's developer account, meaning users cannot download or reinstall games developed by Epic, including Fortnite, and Epic can no longer validate updates for distribution. The studio said that it will issue refunds to "all players who purchased any Save the World Founder's or Starter Packs (including Upgrades) and played Save the World on macOS between September 17, 2019, and September 17, 2020." Epic Games says it may take until October 2nd for players to receive refunds.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last year, repair guide site iFixit tore down the Fairphone 3 and gave the modular-designed phone a rare perfect 10/10 repairability score. Today, Fairphone demonstrated just how far its philosophy of modular phone design can take its users by offering the massively upgraded cameras from its newly released Fairphone 3+ model to owners of the earlier Fairphone 3. Fairphone designs are noticeably bulkier than typical smartphone designs -- but they have a reason to be. Its components have been split into seven replaceable modules in order to extend the service life of each Fairphone. Battery getting weak? It's replaceable. Dropped your phone and broke the screen? Not only replaceable, but guaranteed replaceable -- and for reasonably technical end users, user-replaceable -- with easily purchased parts from the factory. The original Fairphone 3 launched with a 12 megapixel rear camera and an 8 megapixel front camera. The newly released Fairphone 3+ is essentially the same phone, but it offers a refresh on the camera modules, bringing the rear camera to 48 megapixels and the front to 16 megapixels. Owners of the original Fairphone 3 can upgrade by simply purchasing replacement modules from the Fairphone store and replacing them.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NewAtlas: After an almost two-year shutdown for repairs and upgrades, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is beginning to fire back up for its next phase of probing the mysteries of physics. Its newest particle accelerator, Linac 4, completed its first test run over the past few weeks, with the potential to provide much more energetic beams than ever before. The LHC paused operations in December 2018, beginning a massive overhaul called the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). When it's fully finished and finally fired up in 2026, the upgraded facility will be seven times more powerful and will collect around 10 times more data in the following decade than it did during the previous run.

And now, the first incremental stage of this upgrade is coming online. The new linear accelerator, called Linac 4, has been installed and tested over the last few weeks. This device is the starting point for accelerating protons, which are then injected into the Proton Synchrotron (PS) Booster and onto the rest of the accelerator complex. Linac 4 replaces Linac 2, which was in operation at CERN for 40 years. As you might expect the new model is significantly more powerful, injecting particles into the PS Booster at energies up to 160 MeV -- much higher than Linac 2's 50 MeV. By the time these beams are boosted, they'll reach energies of 2 GeV, compared to the 1.4 GeV that Linac 2 was capable of. This extra energy is thanks to the fact that scientists can tweak Linac 4's beams in much more detail than its predecessor.

In the three weeks up to mid-August, Linac 4 was tested with low-energy beams of negative hydrogen ions, running only through the first part of the accelerator. On August 20, it was finally cranked right up to maximum energy, with beams accelerated through the whole machine. These were then sent into a "beam dump" at the end, a device that catches and absorbs the particles.

Voyager 2 has been traveling through space for 43 years, and is now more than 11 billion miles from Earth. But every so often, something goes wrong. From a report: At the end of January, for instance, the robotic probe executed a routine somersault to beam scientific data back to Earth when an error triggered a shutdown of some of its functions. "Everybody was extremely worried about recovering the spacecraft," said Suzanne Dodd, who is the Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The mission's managers on our planet know what to do when such a fault occurs. Although it takes about a day and a half to talk to Voyager 2 at its current distance, they sent commands to restore its normal operations.

But starting on Monday for the next 11 months, they won't be able to get word to the spry spacecraft in case something again goes wrong (although the probe can still stream data back to Earth). Upgrades and repairs are prompting NASA to take offline a key piece of space age equipment used to beam messages all around the solar system. The downtime is necessary because of a flood of new missions to Mars scheduled to leave Earth this summer. But the temporary shutdown also highlights that the Deep Space Network, essential infrastructure relied upon by NASA and other space agencies, is aging and in need of expensive upgrades.

Type a query into the Google search bar on a smartphone and there's a good chance the results will be dominated by advertising. From a report: That stems from a decision in 2015 to test a fourth ad, rather than three, at the top of search results. Some employees opposed the move at the time, saying it could reduce the quality of Google's responses, according to people familiar with the deliberations. But the company brushed aside those concerns because it was under pressure to meet Wall Street growth expectations, one of the people said. By 2016, the extra marketing slot was a regular feature. It's one of the many ways the search leader has altered how it presents results since its early days. Another example is the pre-packaged information Google often displays in a box at the top of a page, rather than sending users to other websites.

Phased in gradually over years, changes like these have gone largely unnoticed by legions of consumers who regularly turn to Google to call up information and hunt for bargains. The company says these changes support its mission to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to everyone. But to many web publishers and other businesses that have historically relied on the internet giant to send users to their sites, Google's subtle tweaks have siphoned off vital traffic and made it harder -- and costlier -- to reach customers online.