SoylentNews

martyb writes:

According to a report in Phys.org, the Universe may be on the Brink of Collapse (on the Cosmological Timescale). From the article:

Physicists have proposed a mechanism for "cosmological collapse" that predicts that the universe will soon stop expanding and collapse in on itself, obliterating all matter as we know it. Their calculations suggest that the collapse is "imminent"—on the order of a few tens of billions of years or so—which may not keep most people up at night, but for the physicists it's still much too soon.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Nemanja Kaloper at the University of California, Davis; and Antonio Padilla at the University of Nottingham have proposed the cosmological collapse mechanism and analyzed its implications, which include an explanation of dark energy.

"The fact that we are seeing dark energy now could be taken as an indication of impending doom, and we are trying to look at the data to put some figures on the end date," Padilla told Phys.org. "Early indications suggest the collapse will kick in in a few tens of billions of years, but we have yet to properly verify this."

The main point of the paper is not so much when exactly the universe will end, but that the mechanism may help resolve some of the unanswered questions in physics. In particular, why is the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, and what is the dark energy causing this acceleration? These questions are related to the cosmological constant problem, which is that the predicted vacuum energy density of the universe causing the expansion is much larger than what is observed.

[...] The collapse time can be delayed by choosing an appropriate slope, which in this case, is a slope that has a very tiny positive value—about 10^-39 in the scientists' equation. The very gradual slope means that the universe evolves very slowly.

Importantly, the scientists did not choose a slope just to fit the observed expansion and support their mechanism. Instead, they explain that the slope is "technically natural," and takes on this value due to a symmetry in the theory.

As the physicists explain, the naturalness of the mechanism makes it one of the first ever models that predicts acceleration without any direct fine-tuning. In the mechanism, the slope alone controls the universe's evolution, including the scale of the accelerated expansion.

I was unable to find a non-paywalled copy of the full article, but did find an abstract.

I'm very curious about the 'slope' mentioned in the article — are there any cosmologists around who could explain this?

Phoenix666 writes:

Ars Technica used a public records request to obtain a large dataset of license plate scans from 33 License Plate Readers (LPRs) in Oakland, California:

OAKLAND, Calif.—If you have driven in Oakland any time in the last few years, chances are good that the cops know where you’ve been, thanks to their 33 automated license plate readers (LPRs).

Now Ars knows too.

In response to a public records request, we obtained the entire LPR dataset of the Oakland Police Department (OPD), including more than 4.6 million reads of over 1.1 million unique plates between December 23, 2010 and May 31, 2014. The dataset is likely one of the largest ever publicly released in the United States—perhaps in the world.

After analyzing this data with a custom-built visualization tool, Ars can definitively demonstrate the data's revelatory potential. Anyone in possession of enough data can often—but not always—make educated guesses about a target’s home or workplace, particularly when someone’s movements are consistent (as with a regular commute).

It seems the cars of police officers, politicians, and others doing the spying should have been captured by the LPRs too. A prize for the first person to separate out what they've been up to...

Phoenix666 writes:

Saw this project over on Instructables and thought it had the makings of a fun little practical joke:

This instructable was a LONG time coming. I had come up with this idea a while ago, after hearing about the details behind some basic "speech jamming" anomalies that occur when people use intercom systems. Basically, the intercom would introduce an ever so slight delay to the output of the speaker, so you would end up hearing an echo. I had planned on making this many months ago, as I previously stated but I was going to try and go discrete, aka, use a micro-controller and attempt to program some sort of delay code. But alas, I never could figure it out.

Then I found out about a very, very neat little IC, the PT2399. This thing is the heart of this circuit, and is actually pretty impressive considering the pricing.

This echo is typically within the range of 200 mS - 700 mS, and it varies a bit. But, what happens when this delayed speech hits your ears?

You have a tendency to start stumbling over your words, and you more or less, just lose your train of thought. I'm thinking this may be due to the way your brain processes your words; since there's an inherent "delay" that your mind creates, it somehow interferes with your speech processing center.

It's a pretty funny thing to play with and show people the effects of. However it's not foolproof; if you concentrate hard enough, and speak slowly you can overcome the effects of the jammer. It's still amusing to see your friends think "oh, this'll be easy!" and then proceed to have the speech capability of a 2-year-old.

Have any Soylentils done stuff like this? Share! April Fool's Day is right around the corner...

Phoenix666 writes:

The Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe's climate mild, is slowing down.

The gradual but accelerating melting of the Greenland ice-sheet, caused by human-made global warming, is a possible major contributor to the slowdown. Further weakening could impact marine ecosystems and sea level as well as weather systems in the US and Europe.

"It is conspicuous that one specific area in the North Atlantic has been cooling in the past hundred years while the rest of the world heats up," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study to be published in Nature Climate Change. Previous research had already indicated that a slowdown of the so-called Atlantic meridional overturning circulation might be to blame for this. "Now we have detected strong evidence that the global conveyor has indeed been weakening in the past hundred years, particularly since 1970," says Rahmstorf.

Because long-term direct ocean current measurements are lacking, the scientists mainly used sea-surface and atmospheric temperature data to derive information about the ocean currents, exploiting the fact that ocean currents are the leading cause of temperature variations in the subpolar north Atlantic. From so-called proxy data—gathered from ice-cores, tree-rings, coral, and ocean and lake sediments—temperatures can be reconstructed for more than a millennium back in time. The recent changes found by the team are unprecedented since the year 900 AD, strongly suggesting they are caused by human-made global warming.

Time to go long in wool futures?

"Technohat" writes:

Until now, getting the last bit of ketchup, glue, mayo or paint out of a bottle or container has been almost impossible. But a new non-stick coating invented by a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looks to change that.

Despite the fact that TFA has more than a hint of a 'slashvertisement', there are many potential applications for the technology. The coating in question makes the inside of a container permanently wet and slippery allowing glue or other similar substances to slide right out of the container instead of sticking to the sides. Reducing waste and saving people money by allowing them to use all of the contents of a container makes this a win-win solution.

Tests by Consumer Reports in 2009 found that much of what we buy never makes it out of the container and is instead thrown away—up to a quarter of skin lotion, 16 percent of laundry detergent and 15 percent of condiments like mustard and ketchup.

Ignacio Agulló writes:

Like every year at the end of March, the FSFE - Free Software Foundation Europe organizes the Document Freedom Day. Events all around the world are held to celebrate and learn Open Standards for data coding, allowing any programmer to create his or her own tools to work with data or to convert it to another format. This day is all about compatibility, because it's about avoiding the loss of data that is encoded in an undocumented way when the data format is left without support.

The Spanish Information and Communications Technology (ICT) professional association ATI maintains a Calendar of International Holidays for ICT - and now, it is also available in English.

Events coming up next month, according to this calendar, include 'Internet of Things Day', 'Girls in ICT Day', and 'World Intellectual Property Day'.

halcyon1234 writes:

Twitch.tv, a popular livestream service, confirmed on it's blog that there may have been "unauthorized access" to user information. The blog post on March 23rd was accompanied by a mass email to all Twitch users.

We are writing to let you know that there may have been unauthorized access to some Twitch user account information.

For your protection, we have expired passwords and stream keys and have disconnected accounts from Twitter and YouTube. As a result, you will be prompted to create a new password the next time you attempt to log into your Twitch account.

We also recommend that you change your password at any website where you use the same or a similar password. We will communicate directly with affected users with additional details.

TLA, a frequent submitter and commenter here on SN, has confirmed the breach. He has been contacted by twitch and it looks like they have purged their entire key database as a precaution.

microtodd writes:

A team of high schoolers won the 2015 Verizon Innovative App Challenge. This culminated in a visit to the White House for the 2015 Science Fair. The app is designed to help teenagers deal with the stress and depression of being a teenager.

I found this story interesting for a lot of reasons. That app development is considered STEM, that app development is so easy that a group of high-schoolers can do it, that app development is so powerful that anyone can make something that may change the world, that mobile apps continue to become all things to all people. It seems that, instead of books, essays, poetry, etc, a mobile app is now the way to connect and reach everyone.

Sometimes I am simply amazed at how in such a short time, the world has become so ubiquitously connected.

martyb writes:

According to an article by David DiSalvo in Forbes, New Study Shows that Your Brain's Powers Change as You Age -- Some Peaking in Your 70s — from the article:

The latest study’s result are based on data from a massive sampling of people, nearly 50,000, whose ages spanned from their teens to their 70s. It shows that mental ability is staggered across the years, with some abilities peaking early and others taking decades to mature.

For example, the study found that brain processing speed is quickest when we’re around 18 and slowly declines from that point forward. But that doesn’t change the fact that our vocabulary skills, written and verbal, require many more years before they peak in our 60s and 70s.

We’re most able to remember things we see (visual working memory) when we’re around 25, but our ability to remember numbers doesn’t peak for another 10 years. Short-term memory overall doesn’t take full shape until we approach middle age (generally around 35).

Additional coverage at Medical Daily. An abstract is available on PubMed: When Does Cognitive Functioning Peak? The Asynchronous Rise and Fall of Different Cognitive Abilities Across the Life Span. A very readable 11-page PDF is available on the web site of one of the researchers.

I find it especially interesting that Figure 2 in the PDF shows many peaks coinciding at approximately 50 years of age!

slash2phar writes:

Pixar Animation Studios today released its Academy Award-winning RenderMan software for non-commercial use. Free (as in beer) Non-Commercial RenderMan can be used for research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and any personal projects that do not generate commercial profits. It is fully featured, without watermark, time limits, or other user limitations. The EULA is here.

RenderMan is compatible with the following 64-bit operating systems: Mac OS 10.9, 10.8 and 10.7, Windows 8 and 7, and Linux glibc 2.12 or higher and gcc 4.4.5 and higher. RenderMan is compatible with versions 2013.5, 2014, and 2015 of Autodesk’s Maya, and with versions 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0 of The Foundry’s KATANA. Registration is required before download.

"gewg_" writes:

Long ago, a rock 6 miles across crashed into Earth and left a hole 12 miles deep and 240 miles wide.

El Reg reports

Australia has been identified as home to the largest asteroid impact crater ever found, more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico often attributed with wiping out the dinosaurs.

The new find in the Warburton Basin in Central Australia is a stunning 400 km-wide impact zone from a huge asteroid that broke into two pieces just before it hit. So big was the impact that it fractured the Earth's crust to a depth of around 20 km, according to a paper published in Tectonophysics .

The Australian National University says it's the largest impact crater ever discovered--the Chicxulub crater measures 180 km across. (108 mi) [... however, the] exact date of the impact remains unclear[...]

[Andrew Gilkson, PhD of the Australian National University says] "we can't find an extinction event that matches these collisions. I have a suspicion the impact could be older than 300 million years".

Shimitar writes:

According to this link: http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/23/8277945/samsung-microsoft-office-apps-android-tablets, and to a Microsoft blog here: http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/03/23/microsoft-expands-partnerships-with-leading-device-manufacturers/

Microsoft is using its patent portfolio to leverage its software onto the Android world, trying to push Skype and Office for android (and 365, for business users) outside the fairly limited Windows Phone garden to the real world. In order to do so, since the Android ecosystem already has tons of nice office-like apps and Skype clones, it seems Microsoft is trying to force manufacturers to bundle its non-removable (unless you root) apps on your next Android phone or tablet.

Is it back to the days where IE (Internet Explorer) was forced on us? Or is it a good idea to stick with Apple now (irony)?

Phoenix666 writes:

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Chicago Police Department is fighting a lawsuit to force them to reveal how they use Stingray cell tower-emulating devices:

Since 2005, the department has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on cell-site simulators manufactured by the Harris Corp. in Melbourne, Florida, records show. The devices — with names like StingRay and KingFish — capture cellphone signals.

Cops can use the technology, originally developed for the military, to locate cellphones. Police agencies in other states have revealed in court that StingRays and similar devices have been used to locate suspects, fugitives and victims in criminal investigations.

But privacy activists across the country have begun to question whether law enforcement agencies have used the devices to track people involved in demonstrations in violation of their constitutional rights. They also have concerns the technology scoops up the phone data of innocent citizens and police targets alike.

The Chicago Police Department has also been running a CIA-style black site, according to a recent report by the Guardian.

When the federal government began imprisoning people at Guantanamo in violation of the Constitution, some argued it was the only place, and that there were exceptional, extenuating circumstances. When the network of CIA black sites around the world and its practice of "extraordinary rendition," known to normal people as, "kidnapping," were revealed, some argued it was only for terrorists and other bad guys. When the NSA's mass violations of the Constitution were revealed by the Snowden leaks, some argued that it was for our own protection. Each time, they were justified as defense against the "Other."

Is this Chicago case a harbinger of things to come, that those tools and practices developed to violate the rights of the "Other" elsewhere, are now being applied to "Us", here?

martyb writes:

Ars Technica just published a story: Google warns of unauthorized TLS certificates trusted by almost all OSes. From the article:

The bogus transport layer security certificates are trusted by all major operating systems and browsers, although a fall-back mechanism known as public key pinning prevented the Chrome and Firefox browsers from accepting those that vouched for the authenticity of Google properties, Google security engineer Adam Langley wrote in a blog post published Monday. The certificates were issued by Egypt-based MCS Holdings, an intermediate certificate authority that operates under the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). The Chinese domain registrar and certificate authority, in turn, is included in root stores for virtually all OSes and browsers.

[...] In Monday's post, Langley held out certificate transparency as one potential antidote. Other possible remedies include a more streamlined form of certificate pinning and several proposals similarly aimed at mending the most serious holes.

I am just an average user on the internet and I do not pretend to fully understand all the ramifications and intricacies of internet security. Still, as I understand it, there are hundreds of Certificate Authorities (CAs) out there, each of whom could issue certs for any domain. When I set up a domain, why can I not list the CA or CAs that *I* have authorized to issue certs for *my* domain? A cert issued by anyone else should be rejected. Maybe use some extension to DNSSEC? If not, through DNSSEC, is there some other way to restrict which CA can issue certs for my domain?

frojack writes:

When working with old fossilized bones, palaeontologists appear to be in no particular hurry.

The EurekaAlert reports that bones discovered ten years ago had languished in the North Carolina Museum of Natural History until they finally garnered some attention last year. When finally examined, palaeontologists from North Carolina State University discovered that the collection of bone fragments belonged to an undocumented species.

Carnufex carolinensis, or the "Carolina Butcher," was a 9-foot long, land-dwelling crocodylomorph that walked on its hind legs and likely preyed upon smaller inhabitants of North Carolina ecosystems such as armored reptiles and early mammal relatives.

To get a fuller picture of Carnufex's skull the researchers scanned the individual bones with the latest imaging technology - a high-resolution surface scanner. Then they created a three-dimensional model of the reconstructed skull, using the more complete skulls of close relatives to fill in the missing pieces.

Walking nearly upright, the 9 foot creature filled a large predator role 231 million years ago in the beginning of the Late Triassic.

This was before dinosaurs had come to rule the predator world. Other than the novelty of a large "crock" walking upright, the key finding of this discovery is that there were many candidates for top predator in this era in the equatorial region. (Which is where North Carolina was in those days). Dinosaurs won out in the southern areas, but in the northern portions of Pangaea that would eventually become North America, it wasn't the dinosaurs at the top of the food chain.

Artist's rendering of the Carolina Butcher found at first link. Full text of descriptive paper in pdf form is available.