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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:45 | Votes:100

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 20 2019, @11:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the eat-lots-of-liver-and-spinach dept.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/people-can-sense-earth-magnetic-field-brain-waves-suggest
http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2019/03/18/ENEURO.0483-18.2019
doi:10.1523/ENEURO.0483-18.2019

Birds, fish and some other creatures can sense Earth’s magnetic field and use it for navigation (SN: 6/14/14, p. 10). Scientists have long wondered whether humans, too, boast this kind of magnetoreception. Now, by exposing people to an Earth-strength magnetic field pointed in different directions in the lab, researchers from the United States and Japan have discovered distinct brain wave patterns that occur in response to rotating the field in a certain way.

These findings, reported in a study published online March 18 in eNeuro, offer evidence that people do subconsciously respond to Earth’s magnetic field — although it’s not yet clear exactly why or how our brains use this information.

[...]During the experiment, 26 participants each sat with their eyes closed in a dark, quiet chamber lined with electrical coils. These coils manipulated the magnetic field inside the chamber such that it remained the same strength as Earth’s natural field but could be pointed in any direction. Participants wore an EEG cap that recorded the electrical activity of their brains while the surrounding magnetic field rotated in various directions.

This setup simulated the effect of someone turning in different directions in Earth’s natural, unchanging field without requiring a participant to actually move. (Complete stillness prevented motor-control thoughts from tainting brain waves due to the magnetic field.) The researchers compared these EEG readouts with those from control trials where the magnetic field inside the chamber didn’t move.

Joseph Kirschvink, a neurobiologist and geophysicist at Caltech, and colleagues studied alpha waves to determine whether the brain reacts to changes in magnetic field direction. Alpha waves generally dominate EEG readings while a person is sitting idle but fade when someone receives sensory input, like a sound or touch.

Sure enough, changes in the magnetic field triggered changes in people’s alpha waves. Specifically, when the magnetic field pointed toward the floor in front of a participant facing north — the direction that Earth’s magnetic field points in the Northern Hemisphere — swiveling the field counterclockwise from northeast to northwest triggered an average 25 percent dip in the amplitude of alpha waves. That change was about three times as strong as natural alpha wave fluctuations seen in control trials.

[...]Even accounting for which magnetic changes the brain picks up, researchers still don’t know what our minds might use that information for, Kirschvink says. Another lingering mystery is how, exactly, our brains detect Earth’s magnetic field. According to the researchers, the brain wave patterns uncovered in this study may be explained by sensory cells containing a magnetic mineral called magnetite, which has been found in magnetoreceptive trout as well as in the human brain (SN: 8/11/12, p. 13). Future experiments could confirm or eliminate that possibility.

With this first compelling evidence that humans are subconsciously processing magnetic signals, “we can [try to] identify the brain region it originates from and try to identify the nature of the cells” responsible, says Michael Winklhofer, a magnetoreception researcher at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. “This is really the first step.”


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Wednesday March 20 2019, @09:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the Shiver-me-timbers! dept.

Evidence Rogue Waves are Getting More Extreme:

Research led by the University of Southampton (UK) suggests that 'rogue' waves are occurring less often, but becoming more extreme.

Scientists have, for the first time, used long-term data from a wide expanse of ocean to investigate how these rare, unexpected and hazardous ocean phenomena behave. Their findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Waves are classed as 'rogue' when they are over twice the height of the average sea state around them. From trough to peak, past observations have put some at over 30 metres high. The fiercest are capable of damaging or sinking ships, can wound or kill crew members and on occasions have swept people off the shoreline and out to sea.

A team of engineers and oceanographers from the University of Southampton, together with researchers from The National Oceanography Centre (NOC), examined over 20 years of information (sourced between 1994-2016) from 15 buoys which provide surface data along the US western seaboard – stretching from Seattle in the north, to San Diego in the south.

The data showed instances of rogue waves vary greatly, depending on the area of sea and time period focused on. On average though, the team found instances of rogue waves (across the two decade window) fell slightly, but that rogue wave size, relative to the background sea, increased.

[...] Around the world, rogue waves occur many times each day and are a major issue globally for the shipping industry. For example, a study in 2004 (ESA MaxWave), with a three week window, identified more than ten individual giant waves above 25 metres in height.

Imagine what it would be like to be on a ship and see a wall of water 25 meters (about 80 feet) tall coming at you.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 20 2019, @07:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the What-about-[Microsoft]-Bob? dept.

Microsoft Office users in the 1990s likely have less-than-kind memories of "Clippit," also known as "Clippy," one of the assistants introduced in Microsoft Office 1997. The assistant concept was the result of a "tragic misunderstanding of a truly profound bit of scientific research" into how humans interact with computers, prompting Microsoft to attempt anthropomorphizing the experience of computing, to prevent users from-among other things-reacting violently by hitting a computer when it does not perform as expected.

[...]Now, the Microsoft Office team has revived Clippy as an app to provide animated Clippy stickers in chats in Microsoft Teams, the Slack competitor bundled with Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft Teams absorbed Microsoft's previous workplace collaboration software, Skype for Business, in 2017. Skype for Business was introduced in 2015 as a rebranded version of Lync, which was introduced in 2010 as a rebranded Office Communicator.

[...]The Clippy app is thankfully not included by default. It is available on GitHub, available for Office 365 tenant administrators to deploy for their organization. Clippy is depicted in various situations, including "Happy Hour," as well as holding a coffee cup in front of its face(?), reminiscent of 2000-era Paul Thurott aesthetic.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-reanimates-corpse-of-maligned-office-assistant-clippy-to-help-teams-compete-with-slack/


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 20 2019, @06:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the absence-of-proof-is-not-proof-of-absence dept.

Despite U.S. Pressure, Germany Refuses To Exclude Huawei's 5G Technology

The Trump administration insists that Chinese firm Huawei, which makes 5G technology, could hand over data to the Chinese government. The U.S. has warned European allies, including Germany, Hungary and Poland, to ban Huawei from its 5G network or risk losing access to intelligence-sharing.

Germany has refused to ban any company, despite pressure from the U.S. Instead, Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated that her country would instead tighten security rules. "Our approach is not to simply exclude one company or one actor," she told a conference in Berlin on Tuesday, "but rather we have requirements of the competitors for this 5G technology."

Did The U.S. Just Lose Its War With Huawei?

"There are two things I don't believe in," Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday, referring to Germany's standoff with the United States over Huawei's inclusion in her country's 5G rollout. "First, to discuss these very sensitive security questions publicly, and, second, to exclude a company simply because it's from a certain country."

Europe now seems likely to settle on 'careful and considered' inclusion of Huawei instead of any blanket bans. Chancellor Merkel stressed this week that a joined-up EU response would be "desirable", and Italy and the U.K. are also backing away from Washington's prohibition on Huawei's 5G technology. If they fold, it is likely the broader European Union will follow suit. And if those key European allies can't be carried, what chance Asia-Pacific, Africa, the Middle East?

There comes a tipping point in any battle, and with this one, we may be just about there. Even as the head of the U.S. European Command told the Armed Services Committee "we're concerned about [Germany's] telecommunications' backbone being compromised... If [Huawei] is inside of their defense communications, then we're not going to communicate with them," the industry was delivering a very different message. "We've not seen any evidence of backdoors into the network," said Vodafone's most senior lawyer in the U.K. "If the Americans have evidence, please put it out on the table."

Clearest sign yet of diminished U.S. influence?

Also at Bloomberg and Reuters.

Previously: U.S. Lawmakers Urge AT&T to Cut Ties With Huawei
The U.S. Intelligence Community's Demonization of Huawei Remains Highly Hypocritical
New Law Bans U.S. Government from Buying Equipment from Chinese Telecom Giants ZTE and Huawei
Australia Bans China's Huawei (and maybe ZTE) from 5G Mobile Network Project
Washington Asks Allies to Drop Huawei
Huawei's Equipment Removed from UK Telecom BT's Network for Emergency Services
Australian Residents Reject Huawei Small Cell Boxes

Related: Arrest of Huawei Executive Causing Discontent Among Chinese Elites
Huawei Under Investigation by DoJ for Theft of T-Mobile Trade Secrets
The FBI Conducted a Sting Operation on Huawei During CES
The US Cannot Crush us, Says Huawei Founder


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 20 2019, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the blunt-message dept.

Daily Marijuana Use And Highly Potent Weed Linked To Psychosis

Weed use is taking off as more states move to legalize it. And with all the buzz over medical marijuana, it's starting to gain an aura of healthfulness. But there are some serious health risks associated with frequent use. One of the more troubling ones is the risk of having a psychotic episode.

Several past studies have found that more frequent use of pot is associated with a higher risk of psychosis, that is, when someone loses touch with reality. Now a new study published Tuesday [open, DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30048-3] [DX] in the The Lancet Psychiatry shows that consuming pot on a daily basis and especially using high potency cannabis increases the odds of having a psychotic episode later.

[...] The study also shows that three European cities — London, Paris and Amsterdam — where high potency weed is most commonly available actually have higher rates of new cases of psychosis than the other cities in the study. [...] The researchers identified 901 people aged 18 to 64 who were diagnosed with their first episode of psychosis between May 2010 and April 2015, at a mental health facility anywhere in 11 cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, other cities across Europe, and one site in Brazil.

The researchers then asked these individuals and a control group of 1,200-plus other healthy people about their habits, including their use of weed. "We asked people if they used cannabis, when did they start using it and what kind of cannabis," explains study author Marta Di Forti, a psychiatrist and clinician scientist at King's College London. People reported the names of weed strains they used, like skunk in the U.K., or the Dutch Nederwiet, which allowed the researchers to identify the THC content in each product through data gathered by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction and national data from the different countries.

The study found that those who used pot daily were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode compared to someone who never used the drug.

Related: Media Leaps to Questionable Conclusions from Study on the Effects of Marijuana on the Brain
Marijuana - Both Sides of the Story
Study Finds That Legalized Medical Cannabis Led to a Decline in Medicare Prescriptions
New Attorney General Claims Legal Weed Drives Violent Crime; Statistics be Damned
World Health Organization Clashes With DEA on CBD; CBD May be an Effective Treatment for Psychosis


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Wednesday March 20 2019, @03:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the march-in-march dept.

The European Copyright Directive: What Is It, and Why Has It Drawn More Controversy Than Any Other Directive In EU History?

During the week of March 25, the European Parliament will hold the final vote on the Copyright Directive, the first update to EU copyright rules since 2001; normally this would be a technical affair watched only by a handful of copyright wonks and industry figures, but the Directive has become the most controversial issue in EU history, literally, with the petition opposing it attracting more signatures than any other petition in change.org's history.

[...] And on March 23, people from across Europe are marching against the Copyright Directive.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 20 2019, @01:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-real-player dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The Guinness Book of World Records has certified a Texas man as the lucky fellow who has the largest video game collection in the world. Antonio Romero Monteiro has even the biggest of bundle fanatics beat with his collection of disks and cartridges dating back decades. In total, Mr. Monteiro owns 20,193 video games. That’s a little under one-fifth of the total number of games that are currently on Steam, except this madman actually owns physical copies for most of these titles.

Texas news station WTVY reports that Mr. Monteiro found out the good news this past Monday from The Guinness Book of World Records. The longstanding collection of strange world records sent two people out to count Mr. Monteiro’s video game collection by hand. There were so many titles that it took the two Guinness representatives an entire week to get an accurate count. The record page states that he officially earned his place in history on February 2, 2019.

Mr. Monteiro estimates that he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his collection with some individual titles costing several hundred dollars

A goodly portion of the collection is in still-wrapped and unopened condition.

Source: https://techraptor.net/content/guinness-video-game-collection


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Wednesday March 20 2019, @10:24AM   Printer-friendly

The European Court of Human Rights published a preliminary judgement in the case Høiness v. Norway, deciding that Internet (Web) forums are not liable for what visitors write (warning for PDF). This means that European web sites are currently under no obligation to delete visitor postings even if someone else visiting the forum dislikes what is written.

The domestic courts’ refusal to impose liability on an Internet forum for anonymously posted comments was not in breach of Article 8

In today’s Chamber judgment1in the case of Høiness v. Norway (application no. 43624/14) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

no violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned the domestic courts’ refusal to impose civil liability on an Internet forum host after vulgar comments about Ms Høiness had been posted on the forum.

The Court found in particular that the national courts had acted within their discretion (“margin of appreciation”) when seeking to establish a balance between Ms Høiness’s rights under Article 8 and the opposing right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the news portal and host of the debate forums. Moreover, the domestic court

However, the decision is not yet final and during the next three months any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If the Court recieves such a request and a panel of judges kicks it upwards, then the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. Otherwise the decision becomes final by default.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 20 2019, @08:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the Asphalt-or-Tile? dept.

Western Digital: Over Half of Data Center HDDs Will Use SMR by 2023

Western Digital said at OCP Global Summit last week that over half of hard drives for data centers will use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology in 2023. At present Western Digital is the only supplier of SMR HDDs managed by hosts, but the technology is gaining support by hardware, software, and applications.

[...] High-capacity hard drives are not going to be replaced by high-capacity SSDs any time soon, according to Western Digital. HDDs will continue to cost significantly less than SSDs on per-TB basis. Therefore, they will be used to store 6.5 times more data than datacenter SSDs in 2023.


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Wednesday March 20 2019, @07:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the dept.

Corporations, not consumers, drive demand for HP's new VR headset

Today, HP is launching the Reverb Virtual Reality Headset Professional Edition. As the name might imply, the audience for this isn't the consumer space, it's the commercial space. The headset will have a near-identical consumer version, but HP's focus is very much on the pro unit because that's where the company has seen the most solid uptake of VR tech. The big VR win isn't gaming or any other consumer applications: it's visualization, for fields such as engineering, architecture, education, and entertainment, combining VR headsets with motion-actuated seating to build virtual rides. The company has also found that novelty items such as its VR backpack have also found a role in the corporate space, with companies using them to allow free movement around virtual worlds and objects.

Accordingly, HP's second-gen headset is built for these enterprise customers in mind. Their demands were pretty uniform and in many ways consistent with consumer demands, with the big ones being more resolution and more comfort. To that end, it now has a resolution of 2160×2160 per eye, using an LCD with a 90Hz refresh rate. The optics have also been improved through the use of aspherical lenses, for a 114-degree (diagonal) field of view. AMOLED screens are common in this space, but HP said that it preferred LCD because LCD panels use full red, green, and blue subpixels rather than the pentile arrangement that remains common for AMOLED.

Also at The Verge.


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Wednesday March 20 2019, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly

Cyclone Idai: more than 1,000 feared dead in Mozambique:

More than 1,000 people are feared dead in a devastating cyclone that hit Mozambique on Friday, the country's president has said.

Filipe Nyusi told Mozambican radio he had seen "many bodies" floating in the overflowing Pungwe and Busi rivers. "It appears that we can register more than 1,000 deaths," he said, adding that more than 100,000 people were at risk because of severe flooding.

At least 215 people have been confirmed dead and hundreds are missing across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe from Tropical Cyclone Idai, according to government agencies and the Red Cross, which said 1.5 million people had been affected.

A more precise death toll and the true scale of the damage is not likely to be known soon, as many areas are cut off.

"I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed," Celso Correia, the environment minister, said. "Our priority now is to save human lives."

A British doctor who was in Beira when the cyclone hit and managed to get on a plane to Maputo on Sunday said he saw widespread damage to buildings, trees and power lines in the city. He said the poorest seemed to be the hardest hit.

"All those who were in reasonably built houses/ hotels during the storm who I heard about seemed to come through unscathed," Mark Ellul wrote from Johannesburg. "I did hear of casualties and fatalities from those I talked to, who were all in poorly built accommodation in the centre of the city. My thoughts were constantly with those people (the majority) who have poorly built houses and had to endure this horrific storm with very little shelter."

In images taken by the South African broadcaster eNCA , people were seen climbing trees and wading through waist-high water as ripped-off roofs and debris lay scattered across the city.

Also at Aljazeera and CNN.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 20 2019, @01:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the stadium+stadium=stadia? dept.

Google jumps into gaming with Google Stadia streaming service, coming "in 2019"

At the Game Developers Conference, Google announced its biggest play yet in the gaming space: a streaming game service named Google Stadia, designed to run on everything from PCs and Android phones to Google's own Chromecast devices.

As of press time, the service's release window is simply "2019." No pricing information was announced at the event.

Google Stadia will run a selection of existing PC games on Google's centralized servers, taking in controller inputs and sending back video and audio using Google's network of low-latency data centers. The company revealed a new Google-produced controller, along with a game-streaming interface that revolves around a "play now" button. Press this on any Web browser and gameplay will begin "in as quick as five seconds... with no download, no patch, no update, and no install."

"With Stadia, this waiting game will be a thing of the past," Google's Phil Harrison said. He then demonstrated Stadia gameplay on a Pixel 3 XL, followed by "the least-powerful PC we could find." The following gameplay was advertised as "1080p, 60 frames per second." Harrison confirmed that existing "USB controllers and mouse-and-keyboard" will function with Stadia games as well.

Also at The Verge and NYT.

See also: The 9 biggest questions about Google's Stadia game streaming service

Previously: Google and Microsoft Eyeing Streaming Game Services


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Wednesday March 20 2019, @12:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the upscale dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

While the popular Original Series and The Next Generation were mostly shot on film, the mid 90s DS9 had its visual effects shots (space battles and such) shot on video.

While you can rescan analog film at a higher resolution, video is digital and can't be rescanned. This makes it much costlier to remaster this TV show, which is one of the reasons why it hasn't happened.

This is where neural networks could come in, I thought. With tools like AI Gigapixel, I knew it might be possible the low definition frames of DS9 can be scaled up to a higher definition such as 1080p or 4K. It would never be the same as proper remastering, but it would a step in the good direction.

So I tried my hand at frame or two, to see what it could do. The results were great. AI Gigapixel uses neural networks trained on real photos. So while it did okay with upscaling the video game renders of Final Fantasy, it did amazing upscaling real-life footage and the bigger budget CGI effects of DS9.

Source: https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2019/03/remastering-star-trek-deep-space-nine.html


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Tuesday March 19 2019, @10:23PM   Printer-friendly

Nvidia AI turns sketches into photorealistic landscapes in seconds

Today at Nvidia GTC 2019, the company unveiled a stunning image creator. Using generative adversarial networks, users of the software are with just a few clicks able to sketch images that are nearly photorealistic. The software will instantly turn a couple of lines into a gorgeous mountaintop sunset. This is MS Paint for the AI age.

Called GauGAN, the software is just a demonstration of what's possible with Nvidia's neural network platforms. It's designed to compile an image how a human would paint, with the goal being to take a sketch and turn it into a photorealistic photo in seconds. In an early demo, it seems to work as advertised.

YouTube video (1m59s).


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Tuesday March 19 2019, @08:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the lesion-of-doom dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Lowering blood pressure prevents worsening brain damage in elderly: Study suggests more aggressive hypertension treatment could help preserve brain function as well as reduce cardiovascular events

Elderly people with high blood pressure, or hypertension, who took medicine to keep their 24-hour systolic blood pressure around 130 mm Hg for three years showed significantly less accumulation of harmful brain lesions compared with those taking medicine to maintain a systolic blood pressure around 145 mm Hg, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 68th Annual Scientific Session. However, the reduction in brain lesions, visible as bright white spots on a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, did not translate to a significant improvement in mobility and cognitive function. Researchers said it is likely that three years was too short a time for such benefits to become apparent.

The study, called INFINITY, is the first to demonstrate an effective way to slow the progression of cerebrovascular disease, a condition common in older adults that restricts the flow of blood to the brain. The study is also unique in its use of around-the-clock ambulatory blood pressure monitors, which measured participants' blood pressure during all activities of daily living, rather than only in the medical care environment. In addition to seeing beneficial effects in the brain, those who kept their blood pressure lower also were less likely to suffer major cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke.


Original Submission