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takyon writes:

PayPal to Buy iZettle for $2.2 Billion to Compete With Square

PayPal Holdings Inc. is buying Swedish small-business platform iZettle for $2.2 billion to expand in Europe and Latin America and increase its presence in brick and mortar stores.

"Small businesses increasingly want a full suite of capabilities across channels, a one-stop stop," Dan Schulman, chief executive officer of PayPal, said in an interview. "IZettle was the perfect fit in many ways."

The deal is the biggest ever for San Jose, California-based PayPal and will help it compete with Square Inc., which made a name for itself by helping small businesses and food-truck vendors conduct credit card and mobile transactions. Founded in 2010 by Jacob de Geer and Magnus Nilsson, iZettle also started out with a mobile-phone gadget for accepting credit card payments. It has since expanded into software and financing services to support small businesses.

All-cash deal = money in the (real) bank.

Also at TechCrunch.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow0245

Last year, AMD introduced Ryzen Pro, a range of processors aimed at corporate desktops rather than consumer systems. Though broadly identical to their consumer counterparts, the Pro chips offer additional guarantees around supply and availability so that corporate fleets can standardize on particular chips without risking a part being discontinued mid-way through their replacement cycle. The Pro chips also carry longer warranties and emphasize certain security and management features that may not be present or enabled in consumer systems.

The first Ryzen Pros had a major omission, however: they didn't include integrated GPUs. Corporate desktops and laptops, typically used for Office, Web browsing, and other low-intensity tasks, overwhelmingly use integrated GPUs rather than discrete ones; they simply don't need anything more powerful. The need for separate GPUs meant that the first-generation Ryzen Pros had only very limited appeal in their target corporate market.

The new processors, however, follow in the footsteps of the Ryzens with integrated Vega graphics launched in February, pairing a single core complex (CCX; a bundle of four cores/eight threads and a shared level 3 cache) with a Vega GPU. This makes them a complete solution for the corporate desktop.

Source: GPU-equipped Ryzen Pros give AMD what it needs to conquer the corporate desktop

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

[...] A landmark report published in 2009 by the National Academy of Sciences highlighted the lack of scientific foundation for fingerprint evidence, as well as other commonly used metrics in forensic science, like bite marks and bloodstain patterns. This isn't to say that fingerprints aren't useful in the justice system. But they aren't entirely reliable, and in the current practice of print analysis, there's no place to signal that uncertainty to an attorney, judge, or jury.

Using statistics and probabilities to help bolster fingerprint results and signal the weight of the evidence isn't a new idea, but this is the first time a tool has actually been put in the hands of fingerprint examiners. FRStat was developed by Henry Swofford, chief of the latent print branch at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory at the Department of Defense. "We're the first lab in the United States to report fingerprint evidence using a statistical foundation," Swofford said.

[...] Adding a element of quantitative analysis to fingerprint identification is positive progress for forensic science, which struggles, overall, to live up to the "science" side of its name. Implementing the program, though, requires a significant culture change for a field that's remained largely the same for decades, if not a century—posing additional challenges for people like Swofford who pushing for progress.

Source: Fingerprint Analysis Could Finally Get Scientific, Thanks to a New Tool

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel Discloses Plans to Spend $5 Billion on Fab 28 Expansion in Israel

Intel and two Israeli ministries this week announced that the chip giant plans to invest $5 billion in its Kiryat Gat fab complex – Fab 28 – through 2020. Under the plan, Intel is expected to buy various products from local suppliers and hire additional personnel. In return, Israel will provide the processor maker a tax rebate and a government grant. Furthermore, Intel will receive another grant if it upgrades its manufacturing in Israel further.

Under the terms of the investment plan, Intel will invest $5 billion (NIS 18 billion) in its Kiryat Gat ventures until 2020. The chip giant is expected to buy $838 million (NIS 3 billion) worth of local goods and add 250 people to its workforce, reports The Times of Israel citing the Finance Ministry. If the plan is approved by the Israeli authorities, Intel will get a 5% tax rebate till 2027, as well as a $195.5 million (NIS 700 million) government grant. Additionally, if Intel decides to "significantly upgrade" its fab "technologically", the company will get another $195.5 million grant.

Intel's first "10nm" CPU will be the i3-8121U, a dual-core part which will be featured in the Lenovo Ideapad 330. Due to low yields on the "10nm" process, a few Cannon Lake CPUs will be released in 2018 alongside "14nm" Whiskey Lake. Both microarchitectures are considered to be "8th-generation" (hence the '8' in "i3-8121U").

Also at CTech.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

What makes a man attractive? Hint: Look at his limbs

Women prefer a man with legs that are about half his height, according to previous research; scientists believe that is an evolutionary result of women wanting to choose only healthy men. Legs that are too short, for example, have been linked to type 2 diabetes. But other proportions, such as arm length to body height or whether the elbow and knee divide a limb in half, can also relate to a person's health. Do they influence women's views as well?

To answer this, researchers collected average body proportions from roughly 9000 men in the U.S. military and used them to create computer-generated images of male models (pictured). The scientists made the model's arms and legs slightly longer or shorter, and then asked more than 800 heterosexual U.S. women to rank each model's attractiveness.

How long the model's arms were relative to his height didn't seem to matter [open, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.171790] [DX], the team reports today in Royal Society Open Science. And women cared only a little about how the elbow or knee divided a limb. But as seen in previous work, women noticed if the legs made up more or less than half his height—and they didn't like it.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

In its latest effort to fend off cryptocurrency scams, the Securities and Exchange Commission launched its own fake initial coin offering website today called the Howey Coin to warn people against fraudulent cryptocurrencies. The name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Howey Test that the SEC uses to determine whether an investment is a security, which the Commission would therefore have legal jurisdiction over.

Click 'Buy Coins Now' on the Howey Coins site and you'll be redirected to an SEC page that states: "We created the bogus HoweyCoins.com site as an educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud involving digital assets like crypto-currencies and coin offerings." The SEC uses the page to highlight red flags that customers should watch out for, including a promise of high returns (which indicates high risks), celebrity endorsements, and even false claimes that an ICO is SEC-compliant.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/5/16/17361750/sec-cryptocurrency-ico-investors

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Astronomers at ANU have found the fastest-growing black hole known in the Universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our sun every two days.

The astronomers have looked back more than 12 billion years to the early dark ages of the Universe, when this supermassive black hole was estimated to be the size of about 20 billion suns with a one per cent growth rate every one million years.

"This black hole is growing so rapidly that it's shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy, due to all of the gases it sucks in daily that cause lots of friction and heat," said Dr Wolf from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"If we had this monster sitting at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, it would appear 10 times brighter than a full moon. It would appear as an incredibly bright pin-point star that would almost wash out all of the stars in the sky."

[...] The discovery of the new supermassive black hole was confirmed using the spectrograph on the ANU 2.3 metre telescope to split colours into spectral lines.

"We don't know how this one grew so large, so quickly in the early days of the Universe," Dr Wolf said.

Christian Wolf, Fuyan Bian, Christopher A. Onken, Brian P. Schmidt, Patrick Tisserand, Noura Alonzi, Wei Jeat Hon, John L. Tonry. Discovery of the most ultra-luminous QSO using Gaia, SkyMapper and WISE. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 2018

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Sleep is known to be important for creative thinking, but exactly how it helps and what role each sleep stage -- REM and non-REM -- plays remains unclear. A team of researchers have now developed a theory, outlined in an Opinion published May 15 in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, to explain how the interleaving of REM and non-REM sleep might facilitate creative problem solving in different but complementary ways.

"Suppose I give you a creativity puzzle where you have all the information you need to solve it, but you can't, because you're stuck," says first author Penny Lewis, a professor at the Cardiff University School of Psychology. "You could think of that as you've got all the memories that you need already, but you need to restructure them -- make links between memories that you weren't linking, integrate things that you weren't integrating."

Studies show that this kind of restructuring often happens while we are asleep, so Lewis and her co-authors drew on that literature, as well as physiological and behavioral data, to create a model of what might be happening during each stage. Their model proposes that non-REM sleep helps us organize information into useful categories, whereas REM helps us see beyond those categories to discover unexpected connections.

[...] "So, what we propose is that, if you're stuck on some kind of problem, that problem is salient, and we know that salient things are replayed," Lewis says. "The slightly hypothetical part is that, when something else is randomly activated in the cortex that has an element that's similar, you'll form a link." These surprising links may be the creative leaps required to solve a problem.

-- submitted from IRC

Penelope A. Lewis, Günther Knoblich, Gina Poe. How Memory Replay in Sleep Boosts Creative Problem-Solving. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2018; 22 (6): 491 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2018.03.009

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

On Tuesday, one of the largest LPR manufacturers, ELSAG, announced a major upgrade to "allow investigators to search by color, seven body types, 34 makes, and nine visual descriptors in addition to the standard plate number, location, and time."

Such a vast expansion of the tech now means that evading such scans will be even more difficult.

For years, Ars has been reporting on automated license plate readers (ALPRs, or simply LPRs)—a specialized camera often mounted on police cars that can scan at speeds of up to 60 plates per second.

Those scans are compared against what law enforcement usually dubs a "hot list" before alerting the officer to the presence of a potentially wanted or stolen vehicle. All scans are typically kept in a police database for weeks, months, or years on end.

These devices are now in common use by cities big and small across the United States, as well as many countries around the globe, including the United Kingdom. Police at the upcoming royal wedding in London will use LPRs to monitor unauthorized vehicles.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/forget-scanning-license-plates-cops-will-soon-id-you-via-your-roof-rack/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Update 5/17/2018: The FDA has now launched the website listing the names of brand name drugs and their makers who have stood in the way of generic drug companies trying to make more affordable alternatives. You can view the list here. It includes notable medications, such as Accutane (for acne), Methadone (used for opioid dependency), and Tracleer (to treat high blood pressure in the lungs). The brand name drug makers to be shamed includes big hitters such as Celgene Corp, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Gilead Sciences Inc, and Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd, now a Johnson & Johnson company. Our original story, published May 16, is unedited below.

The Food and Drug Administration plans this week to effectively begin publicly shaming brand-name drug companies that stand in the way of competitors trying to develop cheaper generic drugs.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told reporters on Monday and Tuesday that the agency will unveil a website on Thursday, May 17 that names names of such companies. More specifically, the website will publicly reveal the identity of 50 branded drugs and their makers that have blocked generic development. The website will also be updated "on a continuous basis" to list additional names.

In fielding questions from reporters, Gottlieb denied that the effort was a form of public shaming. "I don't think this is publicly shaming," Gottlieb said, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. "I think this is providing transparency in situations where we see certain obstacles to timely generic entry."

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/fda-to-start-naming-names-of-pharma-companies-blocking-cheaper-generics/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

Attackers are experimenting with a new method of avoiding some DDoS mitigation solutions by employing the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol to mask the source port of network packets sent during the DDoS flood.

In a report published on Monday, DDoS mitigation firm Imperva says it observed at least two DDoS attacks employing this technique.

By masking the origin port of incoming network packets, Imperva says that older DDoS mitigation systems that rely on reading this info to block attacks will need to be updated to more complex solutions that rely on deep packet inspection (DPI), a more costly and slower solution.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ddos-attacks-leverage-upnp-protocol-to-avoid-mitigation/

Related: New DDoS Attack Method Demands a Fresh Approach to Amplification Assault Mitigation

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Amsterdam unveiled far-reaching plans on Wednesday to rein in tourism, reflecting the dissatisfaction of many residents who feel the city's historic center has been overrun.

The leading Green-Left and other parties negotiating a new municipal government after March elections vowed to return "Balance to the City", in a document of that name seen by Reuters.

"The positive sides of tourism such as employment and city revenues are being more and more overshadowed by the negative consequences" including trash and noise pollution, the document said.

Changes the document outlines include curtailing "amusement transportation" such as multi-person "beer bikes"; cracking down on alcohol use in boats on the canals; further restricting AirBnB and other home rentals; and a large tax hike.

The plans announced on Wednesday also include creating an inventory of all commercial beds in the city to try to cap various sectors such as those on cruise ships and in hotels.

"I'm very happy that the city is now finally taking action, because residents have been asking for it for a very long time," said Bert Nap of neighborhood organization d'Oude Binnenstad, in the historic center.

"What I'm worried about is that this package of measures is so drastic that there will be a lot of lawsuits and political resistance, which will cost a lot of time."

Source: http://www.oann.com/bye-bye-beer-bike-amsterdam-determined-to-tame-tourism/

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump recently submitted a story which became:

Veteran spy Gina Haspel will become the first female director of the CIA after six Democrats joined Republicans in a Senate confirmation vote that overrode concerns about her role in the spy agency's harsh interrogation program after 9/11.

Thursday's 54-45 vote split both parties, and the margin was the closest for a CIA nominee in the nearly seven decades that a nod from the Senate has been required. Haspel, who has spent nearly all of her 33-year CIA career in undercover positions, is the first career operations officer to be confirmed since William Colby in 1973.

Haspel, 61, is a native of Kentucky but grew up around the world as the daughter of an Air Force serviceman. She worked in Africa, Europe and classified locations around the globe and was tapped as deputy director of the CIA last year.

Source: Fox News

Also at the New York Times, CNN[warning: autoplay video], and Vox among others.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Elon Musk pitches 150 MPH rides in Boring Company tunnels for $1

Earlier in the evening Musk retweeted an LA Metro tweet that said it's coordinating with The Boring Company on its test and said the two will be "partners" going forward. Much of what Musk discussed about how his concept in-city Loop would work has been answered in concept videos and the company's FAQ, but he specifically said that the plan is for rides that cost a $1, and carry up to 16 passengers through hundreds of tunnels to those small, parking space-size tunnels located throughout a city.

The big problem is digging those tunnels to start with, and while part of the session included video of a speedy test run through the tunnel Musk has already dug on SpaceX property, the plan is to pick up the pace. Davis said Musk has challenged his team to match the digging pace of a snail (0.03 MPH), and get up to 1/10th of the average walking speed of a human at about 0.3 MPH -- compared to its current top speed of about 0.003 MPH.

Previously: Elon Musk Wants to be Boring
Elon Musk's Boring Tunnel Near Los Angeles

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

If you’re ever stranded on a deserted island, knowing how to run the process of decentralized consensus — or in other words, operate a very simple blockchain by hand — can prove to be very useful. All you need is some fellow survivors, this post, a pen and a few pieces of paper.

If you’re not certain this skill is useful for your survival, be sure to read my last post on how blockchain can vastly improve island life.

Let’s go back to that original story and go through the process with our fearless heroes, who just crashed on a deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific — Hugo, Sawyer, Kate and Jack.

A short recap: the gang is trying to implement IslandCoin, a revolutionary new currency that will bring an end to the island’s crippled barter economy. The gang has agreed it’s fair if each of them starts with 100 coins. Since they don’t have metal to mint actual coins, they’ll have to make do with a few pieces of paper. Riddled with trust issues, the gang hasn’t been able to agree on one person to keep track of balances. Their only option is to maintain the balances together.

We’ll start with what is probably the simplest blockchain implementation for our island use case. In future posts we can explore other implementations and tie them to concepts like Proof of Work and Proof of Stake — this will help us see their benefits and drawbacks. But for now, let’s start as simple as it gets.

What are we trying to achieve? It’s very simple actually — all we’re trying to do is maintain a simple table of balances on a piece of paper. This table will show how many coins each of our heroes has. The trick is, because we can’t have one piece of paper that holds the only source of truth — we’re going to have to keep things equal and let each of the gang maintain their own version — this is the decentralized part. And naturally, we’re also going to hope that all 4 pieces of paper eventually show the same thing — this is the consensus part.

Original Submission