Associated Press: Researchers: Chinese-made GPS tracker highly vulnerable. “A popular Chinese-made automotive GPS tracker used in 169 countries has severe software vulnerabilities, posing a potential danger to highway safety, national security and supply chains, cybersecurity researchers have found.”
Ford Authority: Ford Heritage Vault Proves Incredibly Popular As Traffic Overloads Site. “…the response to this new site was so overwhelming that many had difficult accessing it as the Ford Heritage Vault has garnered a large amount of traffic, to the point where it’s been down quite a bit over that same time span, as Ford archivist Ted Ryan explained to the Detroit Free Press.”
National Museum of Industrial History: Museum Receives Grant To Digitize Bethlehem Steel Photo Collection. “Dozens of industrial photographers were employed by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation to capture iron and steelmaking activities in the plants, in the mines, on construction projects, in maritime and rail industries, and inside the largest steelmaking research and development facility in the world, at one time. This digitized collection is the result of a two year long process of identifying and selecting negatives, in an aim to represent the full extent of corporate operations during the first three quarters of the 20th century.”
Wall Street Journal: The Surprising Reason Your Amazon Searches Are Returning More Confusing Results than Ever. “If you want to be reminded just how tiny you are, you could travel to a remote part of the world and behold the night sky, or stand atop a mountain and contemplate its immensity, or you could try to find the best garlic press on Amazon… Granted, there are many more stars in the night sky than the 300 or so garlic presses visible on Amazon’s U.S. site. But wading through page after page of those listings, for items with tens of thousands of collective reviews, is, like many searches on Amazon, increasingly an exercise in frustration, despair and confusion.”
Coatings World: British Coatings Federation Launches Online History. “This year marks the 110th year since the inaugural meeting of The National Federation of Associated Paint, Colour and Varnish Manufacturers of the United Kingdom in 1912. As part of the celebrations, the British Coatings Federation (BCF) has created an online resource of the history archives of the many different associations that make up the BCF’s long history.”
Northeastern University: Has Your Food Been Chemically Altered? New Database Of 50,000 Products Provides Answers. “In a paper published Tuesday in Nature Food, Giulia Menichetti, senior research scientist at Northeastern’s Network Science Institute, demonstrates that the concentrations of different nutrients in food follow a fixed pattern, and that the amount of any given nutrient in a food follows a similar mathematical formula. Inspired by these findings, her team determined that 73% of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed, which they link to a higher risk of developing a variety of health issues. Their findings, which showed the level of processing for over 50,000 foods sold in the United States, were published in an online database for public use.”
New York Times: Emergent Hid Evidence of Covid Vaccine Problems at Plant, Report Says. ” Emergent BioSolutions, a longtime government contractor hired to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses, hid evidence of quality control problems from Food and Drug Administration inspectors in February 2021 — six weeks before it alerted federal officials that 15 million doses had been contaminated. The disclosure came in a report released Tuesday by House Democrats, who said that all told, nearly 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Emergent had to be destroyed ‘due to poor quality control.’”
Grit Daily: New Database Lists 1,100+ Suppliers of Recycled Paper and Next Gen Paper, Packaging Products. “The EcoPaper Database (EPD), created by international environmental non-profit Canopy, is a listing of over 1,100 paper and paper packaging options available to help businesses reduce their impact on Ancient and Endangered Forests.”
Bleeping Computer: Ukraine’s IT Army is disrupting Russia’s alcohol distribution. “Hacktivists operating on the side of Ukraine have focused their DDoS attacks on a portal that is considered crucial for the distribution of alcoholic beverages in Russia. DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks are collective efforts to overwhelm servers with large volumes of garbage traffic and bogus requests, rendering them unable to serve legitimate visitors.”
Washington State University: Disposable masks could be used to make more durable concrete. “With the pervasive single-use masks during the pandemic now presenting an environmental problem, researchers have demonstrated the idea of incorporating old masks into a cement mixture to create stronger, more durable concrete. In a paper published in the journal, Materials Letters, a Washington State University research team showed that the mixture using mask materials was 47% stronger than commonly used cement after a month of curing.”
Ars Technica: Shanghai’s plan to reboot the supply chain will hit workers the hardest. “…the central government in Beijing has made it a priority to restart Shanghai’s industrial sector. Liu He, the Chinese vice premier, announced this week that the government would aim to stabilize the country’s supply chain by helping 666 companies in COVID-ravaged Shanghai reboot their operations. Doing that while the city continues to battle China’s worst COVID outbreak since the pandemic began may prove an enormous challenge—and may not succeed in curbing the disruption that the global supply chain could feel for weeks or months to come.”
CNN: China’s COVID Lockdowns Could Mean Millions of Fewer iPhones, Per Analyst. “In response to a new COVID-19 wave in China, the country’s authorities have locked down affected areas like Shanghai and Kunshan. These areas include parts suppliers that could lead to a big shortfall of millions of iPhones, according to a new Reuters report.”
New York Times: Supply Chain Hurdles Will Outlast Pandemic, White House Says. “The coronavirus pandemic and its ripple effects have snarled supply chains around the world, contributing to shipping backlogs, product shortages and the fastest inflation in decades. But in a report released Thursday, White House economists argue that while the pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in the supply chain, it didn’t create them — and they warned that the problems won’t go away when the pandemic ends.”
Reuters: Moderna recalls thousands of COVID vaccine doses. “Moderna said on Friday it was recalling 764,900 doses of its COVID-19 vaccine after a vial, made by its contract manufacturer Rovi, was found contaminated by a foreign body. The doses were distributed in Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden in January.”
New York TImes: Lockdowns in China Block Truck Shipments and Close Factories. “China’s mounting Covid-19 restrictions are creating further disruptions to global supply chains for consumer electronics, car parts and other goods. A growing number of Chinese cities are requiring truck drivers to take daily Covid P.C.R. tests before allowing them to cross municipal borders or are quarantining drivers deemed to be at risk of infection. The measures have limited how quickly drivers can move components among factories and goods from plants to ports.”
