Tech billionaire and CEO Tesla Elon Musk’s company rejected a report by the Federal Aviation Administration highlighting dangers posed by the Starlink satellite constellation to humans on Earth, calling it “inaccurate” while urging the regulators to “improvise”.
Elon Musk’s company said in a letter Tuesday that the report relied “on a deeply flawed analysis that falsely characterises reentry disposal risks associated with Starlink.”
The letter read: “To be clear, SpaceX’s satellites are designed and built to fully demise during atmospheric reentry during disposal at end of life, and they do so.”
The Aerospace Corporation — the non-profit group that contributed to the report — was also accused of not accounting for the analysis of SpaceX pertaining to the satellite disposal.
The report was submitted to the members of Congress on October 5 by the FAA, painting a bleak picture of the dangers posed by the constellation of Musk’s Starlink satellite.
It suggested: “By 2035 if the expected large constellation growth is realised and debris from Starlink satellites survive reentry … one person on the planet would be expected to be injured or killed every two years.”
According to the report’s estimation, the probability of an aircraft suffering an accident with falling space debris could be 0.0007 per year by 2035.
SpaceX explained in its report that 325 satellites were deorbited since February 2020, and no debris has been found.
In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, the Aerospace Corporation said, “Our technical team is in communication with SpaceX and others to review and update the data.”
“It was approached by the FAA more than two years ago to do an independent assessment of collective risks associated with satellite re-entry, based upon the projection of all planned operators under US regulation in 2021,” it stated in a statement.
“The data included existing and planned constellations through 2035. The greatest percentage of satellites were those in Low Earth Orbit.”
Starlink risks
It was acknowledged by the FAA that Starlink satellites fully burn up in the atmosphere when they fall back to Earth at the end of service, posing no risk.
However, the Aerospace Corporation noted that “with the thousands of satellites expected to reenter, even a small amount of debris can impose a significant risk over time.”
SpaceX while rejecting the report regarded the assessment based on “egregious errors, omissions and incorrect assumptions.”
SpaceX also criticised the report for focusing “only on Starlink, disregarding other satellite systems like Amazon’s Project Kuiper, OneWeb, or any of the LEO systems being developed and deployed by China.”
The report noted that by 2035, Elon Musk’s satellites will account for “85% of the expected risk to people on the ground and aviation.”
The New York-based cybersecurity firm Wiz has discovered a cache of sensitive data from the Chinese artificial intelligence business DeepSeek that was mistakenly exposed to the public internet.
In a blog post released on Wednesday, Wiz reported that examinations of DeepSeek’s infrastructure revealed that the company had inadvertently exposed over a million lines of unencrypted data. The materials were digital software keys and chat logs that seemingly documented prompts transmitted from consumers to the company’s complimentary AI assistant.
The chief technical officer of Wiz stated that DeepSeek promptly safeguarded the data following the notice from his organisation.
“It was removed in under an hour,” stated Ami Luttwak. “However, this was exceedingly easy to locate, leading us to believe we are not the sole discoverers.”
DeepSeek did not promptly respond to a request for comment.
DeepSeek’s rapid success after the introduction of its AI helper has exhilarated China and incited concern in America. The Chinese company’s evident capacity to rival OpenAI’s skills at a significantly reduced cost has raised concerns regarding the viability of the business models and profit margins of U.S. AI behemoths like Nvidia and Microsoft.
By Monday, it surpassed the U.S. competitor ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s App Store, prompting a worldwide decline in technology stocks.
WhatsApp has initiated testing of a bulk channel administration feature on iOS for select beta users, enabling the simultaneous selection of many channels, hence enhancing the efficiency of managing following channels.
This essential update enables users to perform bulk activities, including muting many channels simultaneously, designating them as read, and altering notifications. If the chosen channels are muted, users will now have the option to activate notifications. Users can swiftly silence unmuted channels in one action.
Additionally, this feature enables users to unfollow many channels simultaneously, thereby optimizing the process of decluttering their channel list. This change is particularly beneficial for users that oversee numerous subscriptions, as reported by WABetaInfo.
Previously, users were required to manage each channel individually, rendering tasks such as muting or designating channels as read laborious and time-consuming.
The functionality provides enhanced flexibility and control over channel subscriptions, enabling users to efficiently manage notifications. The solution streamlines laborious operations for consumers who subscribe to numerous channels, hence enhancing their entire experience.
Accessibility The bulk management feature is presently accessible exclusively to a limited number of beta testers who installed the latest WhatsApp beta for iOS using the TestFlight application. WhatsApp, owned by Meta, plans to expand the feature’s availability to a larger user base in the next weeks.
This update demonstrates WhatsApp’s dedication to enhancing user experience by offering a clear and efficient method for managing channels and notifications.
Even after two weeks, the global submarine cable AAA-1 problem that was discovered on January 2 near Qatar has not been fixed, causing sluggish internet connection in several Pakistani towns.
According to a representative for Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the issue has affected customers’ capacity to effectively access social media applications and browse the online. Even with initiatives to fix the problem, social networking sites still lag during busy times.
Internet traffic has been redirected via alternate channels to lessen the impact, and more capacity has been set up to stabilize the service.
The PTCL representative promised that “Internet service across the country is operating normally, and there will be no issues with web browsing,” noting that social media applications’ lag is common during