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Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests a story from Phys.org:

An ambitious European mission is being planned to answer fundamental questions about how planetary systems form and evolve. ARIEL will investigate the atmospheres of several hundred planets orbiting distant stars. It is one of three candidate missions selected last month by the European Space Agency (ESA) for its next medium class science mission, due for launch in 2026. The ARIEL mission concept has been developed by a consortium of more than 50 institutes from 12 countries, including UK, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Portugal. The mission will be presented today at the Pathways 2015 conference in Bern, Switzerland, by ARIEL's Principal Investigator, Prof Giovanna Tinetti of University College London.

"The essential nature of exoplanets is still something of a mystery to us: despite finding nearly 2000 exoplanets we haven't yet found any discernible pattern linking the presence, size or orbital parameters of a planet to what its parent star is like," said Tinetti. "If we are going to answer questions, such as how is the chemistry of a planet linked to the environment in which it forms, or is its birth and evolution driven by its host star, we need to study a statistically large sample of exoplanets. This is what ARIEL is designed to do."

During its 3.5-year mission, ARIEL will observe over 500 exoplanets ranging from Jupiter- and Neptune-size down to super-Earths in a wide variety of environments. While some of the planets known by the time of ARIEL's launch may be habitable, the main focus of the mission will be on exotic, hot planets in orbits very close to their star.

Phoenix666 writes:

One of the leading thinkers in the new computing sector known as the internet of Things (IoT) can't help but look at all the flashy, expensive, feature-packed gadgets on the market today – things like Google Glass or the Apple Watch – and keep coming away with the same thought: too many device makers keep getting it wrong.

Given the nature of his chosen field, serial entrepreneur David Rose – who's also a researcher with the MIT Media Lab, where he's taught for six years – might be expected to want the next generation of connected devices to pick up where smartphones leave off. Indeed, that seems to be the nature of the race to figure out what the next dominant computing platform looks like, whether it's Facebook snatching up Oculus or Microsoft working to bring its HoloLens to fruition.
...
In a book he published last year, Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things, Rose sums up his hope for the future of technology: he wants it be dominated less by glass slabs and more by tools and artefacts, just like his grandfather's space was filled with.

His grandfather, for example, never hunted for the one tool to serve as an all-purpose tool hub or for a tool that would eliminate the need for other tools. His shop was filled with hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, clamps and more – and they all enchanted the young Rose because even in their simplicity, those tools could lead to a multiplicity of imaginative creations.

The Internet of Things could also, beyond proving a privacy debacle, be a walled garden whose walls reach to infinity.

basstard writes:

Digitoday reports that Jolla has found the first manufacturer to licence their operating system. Company in question is Indian smartphone vendor Intex Technologies. Phones are expected to launch later this year. Jolla is aiming find more partners mainly in BRICS (Brazil, China, South Africa and Russia) countries to use their SailFish.

Original article is in Finnish and can be found: http://www.digitoday.fi/mobiili/2015/07/16/jolla-loysi-sailfishille-ottajan--kannykoitakin-luvassa/20158989/66. Google translator may result a bit funny, but Jolla's press release here has more information.

[Ed: UPDATE] Link to article from ITWorld in English]

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests a story from The Register:

The second round of negotiations on the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) saw real movement on Tuesday, according to negotiators.

Sources familiar with the discussions told El Reg that a tentative political agreement has been reached already on Chapter 5 and Article 3. These two elements focus specifically on territorial scope and international data transfers.

According to the text, any company processing data of a European citizen in the European Union is subject to EU law and any transfer of data outside the EU must meet certain adequacy standards. This is more or less what is already enshrined in the current 1995 data protection laws, so it is a logical place to start the so-called trialogue talks. Broad political agreement means that "all we really need to do now is nail down the exact wording," said a source.

Getting consensus between the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council of national justice ministers often proves difficult. But against the external backdrop of the Snowden revelations, reform of the EU-US safe harbour agreement and challenges to jurisdiction by Microsoft and Facebook, there has been a notable push to get the GDPR onto the law books as soon as possible. Negotiators have set themselves an ambitious deadline - the Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting in October.

A Data Protection Directive, which covers law enforcement agencies (as opposed to the regulation which applies to companies), is also on the table and Parliamentary representatives have said they want the two laws to be treated as a package.

Phoenix666 writes:

Gizmag has published a 2015 smartwatch comparison guide for those planning to acquire another NSA-tracking collar mobile device:

Before we jump in, these are the six watches we chose as the best available right now, which you'll see lined up (in two rows) throughout this comparison:

• Motorola Moto 360
         
• Apple Watch
         
• LG Watch Urbane
         
• Samsung Gear S
         
• Pebble Time
       
• Asus ZenWatch

During my recent visit to an Apple Store in Long Island, a grand total of 1 person was looking at the long row of Apple Watches while the iPhone table was mobbed.

takyon writes a follow up from our story here:

The Platform reports that CPU export restrictions to Chinese supercomputing centers may have backfired. Tianhe-2 has remained the world's top supercomputer for the last five iterations of the TOP500 list using a heterogeneous architecture that mixes Intel's Xeon and Xeon Phi chips. Tianhe-2 will likely be upgraded to Tianhe-2A within the next year (rather than by the end of 2015 as originally planned), nearly doubling its peak performance from 54.9 petaflops to around 100 petaflops, while barely raising peak power usage. However, instead of using a new Intel Xeon Phi chip, a homegrown "China Accelerator" and novel architecture will be used.

A few details about the accelerator are known:

Unlike other [digital signal processor (DSP)] efforts that were aimed at snapping into supercomputing systems, this one is not a 32-bit part, but is capable of supporting 64-bit and further, it can also support both single (as others do) and double-precision. As seen below, the performance for both single and double precision is worth remarking upon (around 2.4 single, 4.8 double teraflops for one card) in a rather tiny power envelope. It will support high bandwidth memory as well as PCIe 3.0. In other words, it gives GPUs and Xeon Phi a run for the money—but the big question has far less to do with hardware capability and more to do with how the team at NUDT will be able to build out the required software stack to support applications that can gobble millions of cores on what is already by far the most core-dense machine on the planet.

Phoenix666 writes in with an update on Solar Impulse 2, which we previously covered here:

The plane, called Solar Impulse 2, recently completed the longest leg of its global flight -- a five-day, five-night journey from Nagoya, Japan, to Hawaii. During that trip, the plane's batteries overheated and sustained "irreversible" damage, according to a statement from the team.

The next leg of the journey, which would have taken the plane to Phoenix, was set for as early as this week.

The team said the temperature of the batteries during quick ascents and descents in a tropical climate was "not properly anticipated."

"The damage to the batteries is not a technical failure or a weakness in the technology," the team said. "Setbacks are part of the challenges of a project which is pushing technological boundaries to the limits."

I'm looking forward to the next flight record being set by an ornithopter.

Phoenix666 writes:

Brown lawns, fallow fields and higher water bills are all the predictable outcomes of the California drought.

The Golden State is in the midst of its driest period on record. But all that warm, dry weather affects more than just lake levels and snowpack — it has some downright weird effects, too. From pipe-eating poop to more roadkill, here are some of the strangest results of the California drought.
...
1. Pipe-eating poop

People are still pooping as much, so each flush contains more waste with less water to flush it through the system. The waste that is broken down creates hydrogen sulfide, which eats through the concrete in the pipes

2. More roadkill

Since the drought means less greenery and animal food, animals must take bigger risks to reach food and water sources — even when that means crossing dangerous roads and highways. As a result, roadkill incidence may be increasing in the Golden State

3. Send in the snakes

With fewer water sources away from homes, rodents are likelier to venture into peoples' homes. Rattlesnakes then follow, lured by their main prey

4. Kitten bonanza!

cats react to warm weather just as people on a Hawaii vacation might — by getting busy

5. Pest growth

pests such as scorpions and spiders reproduce like crazy in the dry, warm conditions

What's the weirdest thing about the drought for you, ye Californian Soylentils?

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests three stories on the same topic:

Qualcomm is under investigation by the European Union's antitrust authority, which suspects the company of abusing its dominant position in the market for 3G and 4G chipsets used in smartphones and tablets.

The European Commission has initiated proceedings against Qualcomm in two investigations, it said Thursday. The first concerns whether Qualcomm breached EU antitrust rules by offering financial incentives to phone manufacturers on condition that they buy chipsets exclusively, or mostly, from the company; the second, whether Qualcomm engaged in predatory pricing, selling below cost to force competitors out of the market.

Mobile processors and baseband chipsets, which handle the communications protocols used in wireless networks, form a significant proportion of the cost of a mobile phone and, at least at the low end of the market, margins are getting thinner, leaving phonemakers more vulnerable to pricing pressures from their suppliers.

The EU Commissioner in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said "We are launching these investigations because we want to be sure that high tech suppliers can compete on the merits of their products. Many customers use electronic devices such as a mobile phone or a tablet and we want to ensure that they ultimately get value for money. Effective competition is the best way to stimulate innovation."

Qualcomm's business practices have come under antitrust authorities' scrutiny before. Earlier this year, Chinese regulators fined Qualcomm $975 million for overcharging device makers there.

[...]

Qualcomm said it had been notified that the Commission had initiated proceedings against it in the two ongoing investigations. It will continue to cooperate with the Commission, but believes the concerns are without merit, it said.

More coverage of this story can be found at The Register and ITWorld.

Phoenix666 writes:

A researcher at the defense company Boeing has filed a patent for a sci-fi-esque cloaking device that would protect soldiers from intense shock waves generated by explosions.

The just-issued patent (No. 8,981,261) to Boeing envisions stopping shock waves using a veil of heated, ionized air. Such a "shield" would damp the force of explosions. It doesn't build an invisible wall of force, but rather makes shock waves bend around objects, just as some high-tech materials bend light and make things invisible.
...
  That arc heats and ionizes, or charges, particles of air. The heated air would work as a shield by changing the speed at which shock waves travel, and therefore bending them around a protected soldier, Tillotson said.

Sound waves (and other wave types) propagate faster in hot air, Tillotson said. For that reason, the shock wave would speed up when it hits the heated air around the electrical discharge. As the shock wave speeds up, it would change direction slightly, or refract, away from the person or object behind the arc. That bending occurs because of the change in speed of the wave, and the shape of the area of hot air the shock wave hits determines the exact direction.

Military considerations aside, it's an interesting idea that fits conceptually within the topic of metamaterials that are being explored to bend light and sound around objects.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes in with an article from The Register:

Windows XP holdouts are even more danger than ever after Microsoft abandoned anti-malware support for the ancient platform.

Redmond overnight stopped providing XP support for new and existing installs of its Security Essentials package.

The run-as-needed Malicious Software Removal Tool has also been axed, while support for patching ended in April last year for those who aren't paying large wads of cash to stave off an upgrade.

"Please note that since the above real-time protection products have limited effectiveness on PCs that do not have the latest security updates, your PC will still be at risk for infection," Redmond says.

"We strongly recommend that you complete your migration to a supported operating system as soon as possible so that you can receive regular security updates to help protect your computer from malicious attacks."

Netmarketshare.com data shows XP is alive and kicking

Windows XP's market share still beats its loathed successor Windows Vista, MacOS and Linux on the desktop.

The operating has a 12 percent market share or 180 million users, according to netmarketshare.com , putting it in third spot just behind version 8.1 representing 13 percent of installs, and version 7 with a whopping 61 percent of installs.

Are you still running Windows XP? What about your company?

takyon writes:

Microsoft Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology have created WearDrive, a system that uses Bluetooth Low Energy or Wi-Fi to offload processing tasks from wearables to more powerful smartphones.

The researchers tested an Android 4.4 reference smartwatch using 512 MB of RAM and were able to obtain "up to" 8.85x better performance while stretching battery life "up to" 3.69x (i.e. 27% as much energy was used). Large, energy-intensive tasks are performed on the smartphone while small, energy-efficient tasks are performed locally using battery-backed RAM (referred to as BB-RAM throughout the paper). The WearCache system can hold data in RAM until your smartphone is in range, writing to NAND only when RAM fills up.

AnonTechie writes:

Application of ultrasound has been shown to speed broken bone regeneration by one third, and even restore memory to mice with Alzheimer's. Now researchers have found that ultrasound can accelerate healing time of skin wounds too.

The elderly and those with diabetes can often develop chronic healing defects such as skin ulcers and bedsores. Chronic wounds like foot ulcers lead to major limb amputation if not healed properly. In a recent animal study published in the Journal of Investigative of Dermatology, researchers at the University of Bristol found that low-intensity ultrasound helped increase the healing time of wounds in diabetic and aged mice by 30 percent. This accelerated healing may not be as fast Wolverine's, but it could be the difference between keeping or losing a foot.

The equipment was not much different from what is used to monitor a foetus during pregnancy. However, the vibration of the sound waves activated a protein pathway that helped fibroblast cells, which are important to healing, migrate to the wound.

http://www.popsci.com/sound-waves-accelerate-healing

[Press Release]: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2015/july/skin-healing.html

AnonTechie writes:

Active problem-solving confers a deeper understanding of science than does a standard lecture. But some university lecturers are reluctant to change tack.

Outbreak alert: six students at the Chicago State Polytechnic University in Illinois have been hospitalized with severe vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain, as well as wheezing and difficulty in breathing. Some are in a critical condition. And the university's health centre is fielding dozens of calls from students with similar symptoms.

This was the scenario that 17 third- and fourth-year undergraduates dealt with as part of an innovative virology course led by biologist Tammy Tobin at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. The students took on the role of federal public-health officials, and were tasked with identifying the pathogen, tracking how it spreads and figuring out how to contain and treat it — all by the end of the semester.

In the end, the students pinpointed the virus, but they also made mistakes: six people died, for example, in part because the students did not pay enough attention to treatment. However, says Tobin, "that doesn't affect their grade so long as they present what they did, how it worked or didn't work, and how they'd do it differently". What matters is that the students got totally wrapped up in the problem, remembered what they learned and got a handle on a range of disciplines. "We looked at the intersection of politics, sociology, biology, even some economics," she says.

Tobin's approach is just one of a diverse range of methods that have been sweeping through the world's undergraduate science classes. Some are complex, immersive exercises similar to Tobin's. But there are also team-based exercises on smaller problems, as well as simple, carefully tailored questions that students in a crowded lecture hall might respond to through hand-held 'clicker' devices. What the methods share is an outcome confirmed in hundreds of empirical studies: students gain a much deeper understanding of science when they actively grapple with questions than when they passively listen to answers.

http://www.nature.com/news/why-we-are-teaching-science-wrong-and-how-to-make-it-right-1.17963

Freeman writes:

From Engadget:

Japan's first robot-staffed hotel opens this week and we just got the full tour. While the main attraction may be the bordering-on-human receptionist (left) and the English-speaking dinosaur (er, right), the hotel has a whole family of robots performing varying degrees of useful work. Think: room service and a luggage porter, with one familiar face taking up duties as a bilingual concierge.

No HAL or Red Queen, but there is a Dinosaur that speaks English. I'm not too keen on the whole fake human as robot. I wouldn't mind a Wall-E or even the Dinosaur robot, but that female robot worker gives me the creeps. It all looks to be very much a tourist trap, but could actually be saving a lot of money in the long run. I'm sure maintenance on a robot is cheaper than having to pay a worker, provide insurance, a retirement plan, and a number of other inconveniences that flesh bags impose on their employers. You could even have a spare robot in a closet, in case one breaks down.

takyon writes:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has shut down a "major computer hacking forum" called Darkode. The Darkode site now displays a banner with a message from the FBI, Department of Justice, and many foreign police agencies.

U.S. authorities working with law enforcement partners abroad have shut down the Darkode online forum used by cybercriminals around the world and charged 12 people linked to the site, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

U.S. Attorney David Hickton announced the charges in Pittsburgh and called Darkode "a cyber hornet's nest of criminal hackers."

"Of the roughly 800 criminal Internet forums worldwide, Darkode represented one of the gravest threats to the integrity of data on computers in the United States," he said.

The Justice Department said the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Pittsburgh led the investigation, known as Operation Shrouded Horizon. It included authorities from Europol and 20 countries in Europe and Latin America and included Israel, Nigeria and Australia.

12 individuals have been charged:

• Johan Anders Gudmunds, aka Mafi aka Crim aka Synthet!c, 27, of Sollebrunn, Sweden.
• Morgan C. Culbertson, aka Android, 20, of Pittsburgh.
• Eric L. Crocker, aka Phastman, 39, of Binghamton, New York.
• Naveed Ahmed, aka Nav aka semaph0re, 27, of Tampa, Florida.
• Phillip R. Fleitz, aka Strife, 31, of Indianapolis.
• Dewayne Watts, aka m3t4lh34d aka metal, 28, of Hernando, Florida.
• Murtaza Saifuddin, aka rzor, 29, of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan.
• Daniel Placek, aka Nocen aka Loki aka Juggernaut aka M1rr0r, 27, of Glendale, Wisconsin.
• Matjaz Skorjanc, aka iserdo aka serdo, 28, of Maribor, Slovenia.
• Florencio Carro Ruiz, aka NeTK aka Netkairo, 36, of Vizcaya, Spain.
• Mentor Leniqi, aka Iceman, 34, of Gurisnica, Slovenia.
• Rory Stephen Guidry, aka k@exploit.im, of Opelousas, Louisiana.