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Phoenix666 writes:

Thanks in part to Argentina's volatile financial markets, bitcoins are helping people there cut out the banks and government entirely in their financial transactions:

That afternoon, a plump 48-year-old musician was one of several customers to drop by the rented room. A German customer had paid the musician in Bitcoin for some freelance compositions, and the musician needed to turn them into dollars. Castiglione [the bitcoin moneychanger] joked about the corruption of Argentine politics as he peeled off five $100 bills, which he was trading for a little more than 1.5 Bitcoins, and gave them to his client. The musician did not hand over anything in return; before showing up, he had transferred the Bitcoins — in essence, digital tokens that exist only as entries in a digital ledger — from his Bitcoin address to Castiglione’s. Had the German client instead sent euros to a bank in Argentina, the musician would have been required to fill out a form to receive payment and, as a result of the country’s currency controls, sacrificed roughly 30 percent of his earnings to change his euros into pesos. Bitcoin makes it easier to move money the other way too. The day before, the owner of a small manufacturing company bought $20,000 worth of Bitcoin from Castiglione in order to get his money to the United States, where he needed to pay a vendor, a transaction far easier and less expensive than moving funds through Argentine banks.

Do any Solentils manage their transactions in bitcoin? What are your experiences?

AnonTechie writes:

Ars Technica reports about a case in Missouri that may have been dropped to law enforcement's use of Stingray:

A woman accused of being a getaway driver in a series of robberies in St. Louis has changed her plea from guilty to not guilty after finding out that a stingray was used in her case.

Wilqueda Lillard was originally set to testify against her three other co-defendants, whose charges were also dropped earlier this month. As a result of changing her plea, the local prosecutor dropped the charges against her on Monday.

Terence Niehoff, Lillard’s attorney, explained to Ars that she pleaded guilty before learning about the use of the stingray. When her co-defendants’ attorneys challenged a police detective during a deposition, and that officer refused to provide further information, the case was eventually dropped.

However, Lauren Trager, the spokeswoman for the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office denied to Ars that the dropping was related:

I am unable to provide the information you requested. Despite the opinion of the defense attorney in this matter, the dismissal of the cases was not related in any way to any technology used in the investigation."

Immerman writes:

An article at NasaSpaceFlight.com is claiming that the superficially reactionless EmDrive has again been tested at NASA Eagleworks, this time in hard vacuum, and the anomalous thrust is still being detected:

A group at NASA's Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics' expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.

With the popular explanations of thermal convection or atmospheric ionization being ruled out by operation in vacuum, and thrust thousands of times greater than expected from a photon rocket, is it time to start taking the EM Drive seriously as a fundamentally new form of propulsion, and possibly a door to new physics?

CoolHand, microtodd, and mattwrock write:

Tesla has announced a consumer-grade home battery named "Powerwall" that will be available in 2 sizes. The battery can recharge at night when electricity rates are low, and then run your house during the day. It is designed for solar charging, and can return power back to the grid or enable autonomous, off-the-grid living.

Some think that this Tesla technology may be the saving grace for the power grid due to home generation and back-flow issues. There have been previous anouncements from other companies of microgrids which seem to aim for close to the same market, and it is not yet clear how the Powerwall might stack up against these competitors.

The first Tesla Energy product is 'Powerwall Home Battery,' a stationary battery that can power a household without requiring the grid. The battery is rechargeable lithium-ion — it uses Tesla's existing battery tech — and can be fixed to a wall, removing much of the existing complexity around using a local power source.

"The issue with existing batteries is that they suck," Musk said in a press conference announcing Tesla Energy. "They are expensive, unreliable and bad in every way."

Tesla's solution, he said, is different.

For one thing, the company's batteries cost $3,500 for 10kWh and $3,000 for 7kWh — add your snarky Apple Watch price comparison here. They are open for pre-orders in the U.S. now; the first orders will be dispatched "in late summer."

Like regular batteries, they can be used together — up to nine can be stacked up together to create a strong and reliable power source. Musk said he believes they can help people in emerging markets or remote locations 'leapfrog' the need for existing power systems, in a similar way that mobile phones have become more important than landlines in remote parts of the world.

microtodd says: Hook it up to some solar panels and you could be 100% off the grid. I know products like this already exist but maybe this is the step from a hobbyist market to a Home Depot consumerist market. I bet some Soylenters out there have already DIYd this themselves at home. Does this look feasible and interesting?

Too bad it's basically illegal to live off the grid.

CoolHand says: Obviously, modern civilization is not yet fully prepared for the post-fossil fuel era, but news like this can at least give some hope that there are people out there working to prepare us, and in that way, we may be just a little bit closer to being ready.

AnonTechie writes with a link from MIT Technology Review:

A superconducting chip developed at IBM demonstrates an important step needed for the creation of computer processors that crunch numbers by exploiting the weirdness of quantum physics. If successfully developed, quantum computers could effectively take shortcuts through many calculations that are difficult for today's computers.

IBM's new chip is the first to integrate the basic devices needed to build a quantum computer, known as qubits, into a 2-D grid. Researchers think one of the best routes to making a practical quantum computer would involve creating grids of hundreds or thousands of qubits working together. The circuits of IBM's chip are made from metals that become superconducting when cooled to extremely low temperatures. The chip operates at only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

IBM's chip contains only the simplest grid possible, four qubits in a two-by-two array. But previously researchers had only shown they could operate qubits together when arranged in a line. Unlike conventional binary bits, a qubit can enter a "superposition state" where it is effectively both 0 and 1 at the same time. When qubits in this state work together, they can cut through complex calculations in ways impossible for conventional hardware. Google, NASA, Microsoft, IBM, and the U.S. government are all working on the technology.

Nature Communications: Demonstration of a quantum error detection code using a square lattice of four superconducting qubits

AnonTechie writes in with this article:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/04/30/vaccine-campaign-leads-to-elimination-of-rubella-in-the-americas/

Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) got together with the Pan American Health Organization to announce some promising news: there have been no new transmissions of the rubella virus in the entire Western Hemisphere since 2009. As a result, the virus has been declared eliminated in this region, joining smallpox and polio on that elite list.

Rubella, commonly called the German measles, doesn't cause severe symptoms in the vast majority of infected individuals. If a pregnant woman is infected, however, the disease can cause miscarriages or a suite of birth defects. Before the advent of an effective vaccine, the WHO says that up to 20,000 children a year in Latin America and the Caribbean were born with rubella-related birth defects; that's also the number that occurred during the last major outbreak in the US.

The widespread use of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) is partly to thank for the virus' elimination. Caribbean countries also used an adult vaccination program to help cut transmission in their populations. As a result, the last infection with a local origin occurred in 2009. Since then, several cases have been reported within the hemisphere, but all have traced back to infections overseas.

AnonTechie writes:

Scientists at Munchen Technical University new technology that will allow soft tissue such as tumors to be easily visible at long last:

Soft tissue disorders like tumors are very difficult to recognize using normal X-ray machines. There is hardly any distinction between healthy tissue and tumors. Researchers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have now developed a technology using a compact synchrotron source that measures not only X-ray absorption, but also phase shifts and scattering. Tissue that is hardly recognizable using traditional X-ray machines is now visible.

Now a group of scientists headed by Franz Pfeiffer, Professor of Biomedical Physics in the Physics Department Department and the Faculty of Medicine at TU München, have for the first time succeeded in making such soft tissue visible. The scientists used a new kind of X-ray source that was developed only a few years ago.

Unlike classical X-ray tubes, a synchrotron generates highly focused, monochromatic X-rays. The individual rays all have the same energy and wavelength. In the past, X-rays with these properties could only be generated in large particle accelerators, which have a circumference of at least one kilometer. The compact synchrotron, in contrast, has merely the size of a car and fits into a normal laboratory.

"Monochromatic radiation is much better suited for measuring other parameters, in addition to absorption," explains Elena Eggl, doctoral candidate at the Chair of Biomedical Physics. "This is because it does not lead to artifacts that deteriorate the image quality."

[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/16/1500938112

janrinok writes:

Killifish are true survivors. These colorful little fish are perfectly adapted to the demands of their ephemeral habitats. They spend their short lives in temporary freshwater pools that form during the rainy season, and owe their long-term survival to the fact that their eggs are resistant to desiccation. Although they are a species-rich group, and are widely distributed in the tropics and subtropics, their fossil record is sparse. But now LMU palaeontologists Professor Bettina Reichenbacher and Melanie Altner have identified the first fossil representatives of one of the two extant suborders of killifish. "The specimens are exceptionally well preserved, date from about 6 million years ago, and were discovered in Kenya by French palaeoanthropologists," says Reichenbacher. "Our studies have now shown that they are members of a previously unknown genus that is now extinct, which we have named Kenyaichthys -- the fish from Kenya."

The fossils originate from a site located in the Tugen Hills, which lie in the Eastern arm of the East African Rift Valley. During the Late Miocene -- about six million years ago -- the site formed part of a lake, and the newly described specimens, each 2 to 4 cm long, were preserved in the sediment beds that accumulated on the lake bottom. "The sample comprises a total of 169 individuals, and 77 of these are complete," says Altner. The anatomical details discernible in the impressions left in the sediments enabled the two researchers to conclusively identify all of these individuals as killifishes. "Analysis of the structures of the tailfin, the pelvic fins and the bones in the skull, in particular, yielded crucial information that convinced us that this material constituted the first fossils attributable to the killifish Suborder Aplocheiloidei. This group also encompasses modern African killifishes, such as Pachypanchax from Madagascar, the striped panchaxes of Southeast Asia and the rivulids of South America," Altner explains.

scruffybeard writes:

Apple is paying close attention to the app offerings for its new watch. If your iOS app advertises support for any watch, other than the Apple Watch, prepare for trouble. Apple recently rejected an update to an established iPhone and iPad app because it mentioned support for a non-Apple Smartwatch:

We noticed that your app or its metadata contains irrelevant platform information in the app. Providing future platform compatibility plans, or other platform references, is not appropriate for the App Store. Specifically, your app and app description declare support for the Pebble Smartwatch.

Additionally, Apple has established criteria for Apple Watch developers that reject applications where the primary function is to tell the time.

Phoenix666 writes:

NASA's New Horizons probe has returned images of Pluto that hint at the presence of polar ice caps:

The images were captured in early to mid-April from within 70 million miles (113 million kilometers), using the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera on New Horizons. A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed images beamed back to Earth. New Horizons scientists interpreted the data to reveal the dwarf planet has broad surface markings - some bright, some dark - including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap.

"As we approach the Pluto system we are starting to see intriguing features such as a bright region near Pluto's visible pole, starting the great scientific adventure to understand this enigmatic celestial object," says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "As we get closer, the excitement is building in our quest to unravel the mysteries of Pluto using data from New Horizons."

Since it was discovered in 1930, Pluto has remained an enigma. It orbits our sun more than 3 billion miles (about 5 billion kilometers) from Earth, and researchers have struggled to discern any details about its surface. These latest New Horizons images allow the mission science team to detect clear differences in brightness across Pluto's surface as it rotates.

Would you still call it a polar ice cap if the whole planet is ice?

AnonTechie writes:

If they succeed in doing this, it would be very useful in times of crisis, especially, during natural disasters like the earthquake in Nepal.

At some point in your life, you've probably been asked to donate blood. If your blood is type O, you may have been asked to donate even more, because your blood type is the most useful and is less common. The difference between blood types may seem small--people with blood types A and B have an extra sugar molecule bound to the surface of their red blood cells--but a transfusion of the wrong blood type can be fatal. For example, the immune system of a type O individual will launch a massive attack on the "invading cells" of a type A individual, all because it detects that sugar molecule.

Now researchers from the University of British Columbia have figured out a way to change the type of blood donated by volunteers, by using an enzyme that simply snips off that extra sugar, called an antigen. The result: The blood is more like type O, the universal donor.

This isn't the first time that researchers have produced blood with fewer antigens in the lab, but this attempt has worked better than any other. The researchers used a technique called directed evolution; they used bacteria to create the enzyme and inserted particular mutations in the bacteria's DNA to make the enzyme even more powerful. After cultivating the bacteria over five generations, the enzyme became 170 times more effective.

http://www.popsci.com/scientists-figure-out-how-change-blood-types

[Abstract]: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja5116088

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore have achieved greater energy storage density by 3-D printing structures with graphene-based aerogels to

In research published in Nature Communications , the LLNL research team were able to produce a predetermined architecture for a graphene-based aerogel, which previously had always been random, by using 3-D printing. By being able to define the architecture, the researchers were able to improve the material’s performance.

The 3-D printing process used for fabricating these aeorgels [sic] is called direct ink writing. In the process, graphene oxide (GO) inks are combined with an aqueous GO suspension and a silica filler to create the ink. This ink is then extruded through a micronozzle to layer up the structure. The final structure is then put into hydrofluoric acid where the silica is burned off.

Awesome work with an amazing material, but I'd hate to be the guy that has to handle the hydrofluoric acid.

AnonTechie writes:

The Register covers the difficulty of putting SHA-1 crypto algorithm to bed:

The road towards phasing out the ageing SHA-1 crypto hash function is likely to be littered with potholes, security experts warn.

SHA-1 is a hashing (one-way) function that converts information into a shortened "message digest", from which it is impossible to recover the original information. This hashing technique is used in digital signatures, verifying that the contents of software downloads have not been tampered with, and many other cryptographic applications.

The ageing SHA-1 protocol – published in 1995 – is showing its age and is no longer safe from Collision Attacks, a situation where two different blocks of input data throw up the same output hash. This is terminal for a hashing protocol, because it paves the way for hackers to offer manipulated content that carries the same hash value as pukka packets of data.

Certificate bodies and others are beginning to move on from SHA-1 to its replacement, SHA-2. Microsoft announced its intent to deprecate SHA-1 in Nov 2013. More recently, Google joined the push with a decision to make changes in he latest version of its browser, Chrome version 42, so that SHA-1 certificates are flagged up as potentially insecure.

Just updating to SHA-2 is not as simple as it might seem, because of compatibility issues with Android and Windows XP. More specifically, Android before 2.3 and XP before SP3 are incompatible with the change (a fuller compatibility matrix maintained by digital certificate firm GlobalSign can be found here).

MS Releases "Visual Studio Code" - a Slim Cross Platform Code Editor

CoolHand writes:

Microsoft appears like they may actually be starting to get serious about cross platform support. Their new slim code editor for developing cloud applications supports both OS X and Linux, as well as Windows.

At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced the launch of Visual Studio Code, a lightweight cross-platform code editor for writing modern web and cloud applications that will run on OS X, Linux and Windows. The application is still officially in preview, but you can now download it here (if this link isn’t live yet, give it a few more minutes and then try again).

This marks the first time that Microsoft offers developers a true cross-platform code editor. The full Visual Studio is still Windows-only, but today’s announcement shows the company’s commitment to supporting other platforms.

From the Techcrunch article:

Today’s announcement will surely come as a surprise to many. It does, however, fit in well with the direction the company’s developer group has been on for quite a while now, be that the open sourcing of .NET Core (and taking that platform cross-platform) or the launch of the free Visual Studio Community edition.

Another Publicity Stunt from MSFT: "Visual Studio Code"

"gewg_" writes however, with an entirely opposite take:

Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports "Visual Studio Code": Not News, Not Free, Not Open Source

Another publicity stunt from Microsoft, this time going under the name "Visual Studio Code", which is basically proprietary lock-in

Despite an openwashing campaign and an effort to deceive the public (as chronicled here before), Visual Studio is (and will remain) proprietary. There is currently yet another PR blitz from Microsoft, which at the moment is trying to openwash it and pretend that it's "news" (it's not, it goes back to last year).

Sadly, some FOSS proponents have already fallen for it and Phoronix is doing marketing for Microsoft. This is not really news and it's not even a surprise. It's just some publicity stunt which got Microsoft boosters and Microsoft-friendly sites on board.

Hugh Pickens writes:

The Telegraph reports that as the Vatican forges an alliance with the UN to tackle climate change, skeptics accuse Pope Francis of being deeply ill-informed about global warming. The Pope discussed climate change with Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, who then opened a one-day Vatican conference called "The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development". Organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, SDSN and Religions for Peace, the goal of the conference is to help strengthen the global consensus on the importance of climate change in the context of sustainable development.

But a group of British and American skeptics say the Pope is being fed “mistaken” advice from the UN and that he should stick to speaking out on matters of morality and theology rather than getting involved in the climate change debate. "The Pope has great moral authority but he’s not an authority on climate science. He’s a learned man but the IPCC has got it wrong,” says Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute, a conservative American pressure group partly funded by billionaire industrialists who question climate change. "The Pope would make a grave mistake if he put his moral authority behind scientists saying that climate change is a threat to the world. Many scientists have concluded that human activity is a minor player. The Earth has been warming since the end of the last Ice Age.”

It was the first time the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago and has been described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism," has traveled to Rome to try to influence a pope. "The sideshow envisioned by these organizations will not detract from the deep concern that Pope Francis has for the truth and how it relates to the environment," says Dr. Bernard Brady, Professor and Chair of the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas. "Pope Francis will probably follow his predecessor, Benedict XVI, recognizing the interrelatedness of climate change with other moral issues and calling for persons, organizations, communities, nations, and indeed the global community, to reconsider established patterns of behavior."