NASA has deliberately set a fire inside a Cygnus spacecraft, after detaching from the International Space Station (ISS) for safety reasons.The capsule is carrying the Spacecraft Fire Experiment, which has ignited a variety of materials to study how they burn and spread in microgravity. The purpose is to help protect future missions from the possibility of burning up while the nearest fire department is millions of miles away.NASA reports that the experiment is burning nicely and has traveled 1,000 miles in space so far. When NASA is sure it's received all the data it can from the tests the whole lot will be pushed earthward for fiery disposal. It is with incredible sadness that El Reg must report that Lester Haines, one of our finest story-tellers and an all-round good bloke, passed away on Monday. We have published his obituary, The Life and Times of Lester Haines.Lester, who was 55, died of a heart attack at his home in Spain. He will be cremated on Friday 17 June.Readers will know Lester for his biting wit, his piloting of the Special Projects Bureau – including the PARIS and LOHAN projects – and his wonderful recreations of real-world events through the medium of PlayMobil.
Lester joined The Register in 2000 to manage merchandising and photography but grabbed the nearest laptop and wrote his first article in September that year, about one of our own defecting to the dark side – or PR, as it is otherwise known.Among the 7,300 stories Lester produced for El Reg were regular features including Logo Watch, Strategy Boutique, Rise of the Machines, and Flame of the Week.It didn't get any airtime at the big opening day of the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), but excitement is building around Apple's next-generation file system.Early specs show the system will bring your hard drive into the modern era, most notably by supporting native encryption. It will also time-stamp files by nanoseconds (rather than seconds), making it better for modern databases, and take snapshots of the file system, massively reducing the time needed to make backups.Other interesting features include crash protection, space sharing – which will enable much more flexible partitioning – optimization for solid-state hard drives, and a better system for cleaning up deleted files.In short, the new Apple File System (APFS) can be expected to bring significant advances in speed and efficiency, and the updating of Apple's file sharing technology, which hasn't changed in nearly 20 years (others, of course, have developed more modern systems that are now 10 years old).
APFS' preliminary information has been released to developers, and sessions on it will take place this week at WWDC. It is scheduled to ship sometime in 2017, meaning that the company may be able to boast big performance improvements in its products toward the end of that year. It is designed to work with all of Apple's operating systems – iOS, watchOS, tvOS and macOS.There is still a lot of work to be done, however. It is not currently possible to start your computer directly with the file system, and it doesn't work with Apple's current encryption and archiving systems – presumably because it is intended to replace them.The file system is also case-sensitive and that apparently cannot be disabled, which will lead to all sorts of knock-on compatibility issues. Yep, you will have to buy more Apple gear: a new watch to go with your new phone to sync with your new laptop. Apple is always looking after that bottom line.Support documents published by 9to5Mac indicated the platform will be rebranded macOS, the name of the Mac’s original OS when it launched in 1984, one of four Apple platforms. The others are watchOS, tvOS and iOS.
9to5Mac later updated its story to say Apple had changed its pages back to read Mac OS X.The workstation NeXTSTEP 1.0 was originally unveiled in 1988, before going cross platform.Apple acquired NeXT in a reverse takeover that brought Steve Jobs back to the company he founded, and the platform was revamped extensively before launching as Mac OS X in 2001. Presumably, Apple now reckons it's so long (15 years) since the last release of the original MacOS, no confusion will be created.USB-C and Thunderbolt are the last mainstream connections devices will need to the outside world, according to analyst firm ABI Research.The company's new Device Connectivity Report predicts that by the year 2020 “Almost half of the smartphones and 93% of laptops will include USB Type-C connectivity.” In coming years we'll also see gadget-makers will offer “fewer connectivity types and ports per device as the industry steadily transitions toward wireless solutions and cable-free devices.”ABI analyst Andrew Zigani opines that “USB-Type C and Thunderbolt 3.0 will be the last major physical ports to gain major significance and mainstream traction.”Next up? Wi-Gig, aka 802.11ad, which has already made it on to some business laptop vendors' feature lists for 2016 and is expected to become more common in coming years. WiGig can handle video traffic to displays or general purpose data. WiGig Docks are starting to emerge, but before long it's expected the standard will appear in devices like televisions, projectors and monitors.
Of course there are untold millions of such devices out there, most of which are good for years more use. Further, nobody is suggesting wireless charging pads are going to become so ubiquitous that we can all do without mains connections. So chances are gadgets will need at least one physical port for the foreseeable future.But Zignani reckons there's no need for the industry to consider mainstream connectors beyond USB-C and Thunderbolt 3.0. And seeing as Intel last year decided it's happy for the USB-C port to handle Thunderbolt traffic, rather than its own physical port design, we're on track for a single standard hole for most portable devices any year now.Special report In Australia and New Zealand, hackers are doing it for themselves by creating vibrant security conferences that run on their own terms and actively avoid the corporate-speak and fear-mongering that characterises so many vendor-led events.These conferences, or cons, are booming and showcase security skills that rival the best the global security industry can offer.The hacker-run conferences are nothing like commercial technology confabs: vendor pitches are universally banned, so are trade show booths. Bars replace bain maries full of conference casseroles and black metal-inspired custom shirts are the de facto uniform.At these events hackers reveal holes in the world's most popular technology and public transport systems to a soundtrack of sweeping moans of derision, laughter, and, for some cons, bursts of on-stage pyrotechnics.Most hacker presenters follow the modern line and push the companies they hack to fix holes ahead of their on-stage disclosures, yet blasé promises to fix earn retribution as zero-days are still dropped.