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Raymond Chen recently posted a ten-part introduction to the ia64 architecture. Rapidly teaching me that while I might be able to write a brainfuck to perl compiler in a few minutes, there's no way in a million years that I'll ever be able to write a good compiler that targets ia64.

• Part 1: Warming up
• Part 2: Instruction encoding, templates, and stops
• Part 3: The Windows calling convention, how parameters are passed
• Part 3b: How does spilling actually work?
• Part 4: The Windows calling convention, leaf functions
• Part 5: The GP register, calling functions, and function pointers
• Part 6: Calculating conditionals
• Part 7: Speculative loads
• Part 8: Advanced loads
• Part 9: Counted loops and loop pipelining
• Part 10: Register rotation

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket takes a very close look at the following:

Microtubules, hollow fibers of tubulin protein only a few nanometers in diameter, form the cytoskeletons of living cells and play a crucial role in cell division (mitosis) through their ability to undergo rapid growth and shrinkage, a property called "dynamic instability." Through a combination of high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and a unique methodology for image analysis, a team of researchers with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has produced an atomic view of microtubules that enabled them to identify the crucial role played by a family of end-binding (EB) proteins in regulating microtubule dynamic instability.

During mitosis, microtubules disassemble and reform into spindles that are used by the dividing cell to move chromosomes. For chromosome migration to occur, the microtubules attached to them must disassemble, carrying the chromosomes in the process. The dynamic instability that makes it possible for microtubules to transition from a rigid polymerized or "assembled" nucleotide state to a flexible depolymerized or "disassembled" nucleotide state is driven by guanosine triphosphate (GTP) hydrolysis in the microtubule lattice.

"Our study shows how EB proteins can either facilitate microtubule assembly by binding to sub-units of the microtubule, essentially holding them together, or else cause a microtubule to disassemble by promoting GTP hydrolysis that destabilizes the microtubule lattice," says Eva Nogales, a biophysicist with Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division who led this research.

Nogales, who is also a professor of biophysics and structural biology at UC Berkeley and investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is a leading authority on the structure and dynamics of microtubules. In this latest study, she and her group used cryo-EM, in which protein samples are flash-frozen at liquid nitrogen temperatures to preserve their natural structure, to determine microtubule structures in different nucleotide states with and without EB3. With cryo-EM and their image analysis methodology, they achieved a resolution of 3.5 Angstroms, a record for microtubules. For perspective, the diameter of a hydrogen atom is about 1.0 Angstroms.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The granite rocks, called Precariously Balanced Rocks, or PBRs, form when tectonic processes allow a big chunk of rock, tattooed with patterns of fractures, to ascend from beneath the surface of the Earth. As the rock rises, wind, water and other natural processes erode bits and pieces of it away, eventually chiseling out the remaining delicately balanced rocks, said study co-author Julian Lozos, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.

PBRs typically develop over thousands or tens of thousands of years, and they can be found around the globe, including in other earthquake-prone spots in the United States and New Zealand, the researchers said. There are more than 1,200 PBRs just in California and western Nevada, they added.

In the new study, the researchers focused on PBRs that are approximately 10,000 years old, located in the middle of the San Bernardino Mountains, about 90 miles (145 km) east of Los Angeles.

Locating PBRs near active faults could help officials plan for future earthquakes. To prepare infrastructure — including the water supply, telecommunications and energy systems — in areas prone to shaking, "you would really like to have an idea of what to expect," said Lisa Grant Ludwig, lead author of the study and an expert on the San Andreas Fault at the University of California, Irvine.
...
  The researchers used 3D modeling to simulate how different kinds of shaking would affect various shapes and sizes of rock. Although some rocks are easily knocked over by fast, small shakes, other rocks topple to slow, big shakes, Lozos said.

The researchers in this Live Science article use PBRs to measure earthquakes. The submission title used PBRs to measure Soylent's Hipster Quotient...

Original Submission

tt0095647 writes:

In what is starting to look like COINTELPRO updated and outsourced for the 21st century, it was recently revealed that cybersecurity firm ZeroFox monitored at least two high-profile Black Lives Matter protest organizers and labeled them as 'physical threats' in secret reports to Baltimore city administrators and to an unnamed 'classified partner' organization at Fort Meade (headquarters of the NSA and other intelligence agencies).

McKesson and Elzie both tell Mother Jones they were "not surprised" that they were being watched. "It confirms that us telling the truth about police violence is seen as a threat," McKesson says. Both activists say they do not know why they were identified as physical threats. McKesson and Elzie live in Missouri, where they helped organize the Ferguson protests. They traveled together to Baltimore for a week and a half during the Freddie Gray protests.

This classification of non-violent political protesters as threats follows the nationwide, FBI-orchestrated purge of the Occupy movement that was legally enabled by labeling them a terrorist threat.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Traditional washing machines suck up a lot of water. An old-school top-loader can chug down 40 gallons of water for a full load, newer models still run through use 27 gallons per load, and even Energy Star washers can use up to 14 gallons per wash.

But there's a new washing machine that cleans clothes with 80 percent less water than most washers. It uses less detergent. And in the end, the clothes come out cleaner. It does this through the use of recyclable plastic beads.
...
The washing machine utilizes a cold water cycle and detergent mixture to activate the beads, which are charged to statically latch on to dirt as it works against the fibers, opening them up. At the end of the cycle, the beads are weighted to drop to the bottom of the washer, where the release their grime. The beads are good for about 500 to 1000 cycles, then are 100 percent recyclable. (Benjamin says they mostly become dashboards in new cars.)

Sounds good on the face of it. On the other hand, there has been recent press about pollution from plastic beads.

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

A gang armed with machetes has hacked a secular blogger to death at his home in Dhaka in the fourth such murder in Bangladesh since the start of the year, an activist group and police have said.

Niloy Chatterjee, who used the pen-name Niloy Neel, was murdered on Friday after the men broke into his flat in the capital's Goran neighbourhood, according to the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, which was alerted to the attack by a witness.

"They entered his room in the fifth floor and shoved his friend aside and then hacked him to death. He was a listed target of the Islamist militants," the network's head Imran H Sarker, told the AFP news agency.

Chatterjee, 40, was a critic of religious extremism that led to bombings in mosques and the killing of numerous civilians, Sarker said.

First found here: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/fourth-secular-bangladesh-blogger-hacked-death-150807102408712.html
Search led to these sites: http://www.itv.com/news/2015-08-07/machete-wielding-gang-kill-blogger-in-his-home/
http://www.firstpost.com/world/dhakas-secular-claims-get-increasingly-blood-soaked-as-another-bangladeshi-blogger-is-killed-2383420.html
http://www.nirapadnews.com/english/2015/08/07/news-id:29841/

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket discovers that he has more power in his pocket than he realised:

The same professor who received national attention for discovering that PlayStation 3 (PS3) technology could be configured into low-cost supercomputers has now demonstrated that the processor found in hundreds of millions of cell phones has enormous scientific computing potential. The impact of this discovery could have far-reaching impacts for scientists around the world, who have a wealth of curiosity and ingenuity but sometimes lack access to expensive standard supercomputing technology.

"It is about making supercomputing more accessible to scientists, mainly through offering very highly cost-effective alternatives," said UMass Dartmouth Associate Professor Dr. Gaurav Khanna, who serves as Associate Director of the fast emerging Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research (CSCVR). "Bottom-line, supercomputers need to be more power efficient and perform well using much less electricity. And that is an area where smartphones have done very well. Improving battery technology is hard, but improving the efficiency of chips found in most smart phones is much easier."

Global technology companies such as Qualcomm, Apple, and Nvidia have been making mobile phone chips more and more power-efficient according to Dr. Khanna and thus offering people a better experience on their phones even though they have the same battery technology.

"Consumer demand for better performance and longer lasting battery life have pushed technological innovation in the consumer mobile phone industry to the extreme," Dr. Khanna said. "Today's smartphones are extremely powerful, equivalent to supercomputers of the early '90s, and are the most power-efficient computer technology ever made.''

Phoenix666 writes:

Now, a new study by a team of Japanese researchers shows that, in certain situations, children are actually horrible little brats and may not be as empathetic towards robots as we'd previously thought, with gangs of unsupervised tykes repeatedly punching, kicking, and shaking a robot in a Japanese mall.

The researchers—from ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, Osaka University, Ryukoku University, and Tokai University, in Japan—patrolled a public shopping complex in Osaka with a remotely operated Robovie 2 (a robot that is, incidentally, no stranger to abuse). Whenever somebody obstructed the robot's path, it would politely ask the human to step aside. If the human didn't listen, the robot moved in the opposite direction. Over the course of the study, researchers found that children were sometimes all too eager to give the robot a hard time. Particularly when in packs and unsupervised, the youngsters would intentionally block Robovie's way.
...
In a second paper [PDF], "Why Do Children Abuse Robots?," based on the same Japanese mall experiment, the researchers interviewed the abusive children about their behavior. When questioned, 74 percent of the kids described the robot as "human-like" and only 13 percent as "machine-like." Half of them said that they believed that their behavior was "stressful or painful" for the robot.

So basically, most of these kids perceive the robot they're abusing as lifelike, and then just go ahead and abuse it anyway. While that's a little disturbing, it appears to be in line with some child psychology research on animal abuse. Empathy for other entities may be something we learn as we age. And as for grown ups? It looks like adults are reluctant to abuse robots that respond in a lifelike way, and empathic adults even more so.

The article describes strategies the researchers developed to help the robot escape. Wonder if they figured out a way for it to escape what packs of Japanese kids love the best, kancho?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

a drone carrying heroin, marijuana, and tobacco dropped its payload over a prison yard crowded with inmates, causing a brief melee before authorities stamped out the brawl with pepper spray, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC).

Local media reported Tuesday that the July 29 melee at the Mansfield Correctional Institution began moments after a drone let loose with the goods. At least nine inmates began fighting over the package while other inmates rushed toward the brawl.

Hmm, time for cryo prisons? Or should the drug delivery man switch to drones that can travel through the plumbing?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket finds that a Japanese Court has decided that BitCoins 'cannot be owned':

A man seeking repayment for Bitcoin lost in the Mt Gox incident has seen his lawsuit dismissed in a Tokyo District Court, with the judge ruling that the gumblecash is "not subject to ownership" claims.

A resident of Kyoto, the plaintiff has stated that he had 458 Bitcoin, contentiously valued at about ¥31m (£160,000), which were stored with the exchange and subsequently lost, reported the Japan Times.

Earlier this month, the Mt Gox CEO, Mark Karpeles, was arrested as part of a police investigation into the exchange's collapse, which led to the loss of "hundreds of millions of dollars" worth of Bitcoin.

The French-born CEO allegedly inflated his personal account by manipulating virtual currency data, according to the Japan Times.

Karpeles denied criminal doings in a statement delivered by his lawyer, the BBC reported.

Judge Masumi Kurachi – who presided over the plaintiff's self-represented claim – stated that the Japanese Civil Code only envisaged proprietorship for tangible entities.

According to the Japan Times, the judge's position is that "it is evident Bitcoins do not possess the properties of tangible entities and acknowledged that they also do not offer exclusive control, because transactions between users are structured in such a way that calls for the involvement of a third party". ®

Original Submission

mechanicjay writes:

I recently had a spirited discussion with someone about authenticating to various websites. I personally take the approach of making an explicit new identity for every service I sign up for — local logins only. I never user a "Social" login like twitter/facebook/google, etc to access a site.

My reasoning is:

1. It's a little harder to track my movements across the web; less data for the big players to crunch has to be beneficial in some way.
2. When a data breach occurs, it limits my exposure to the breached entity. With the thought that, if the place you use as your only Authenticator for all websites get's compromised, what kind of exposure does that entail?

For some background, I'm a ten year professional in Web Infrastructure, with Identity and Access Management making up a decent part of what I do. After pretty much being called an irresponsible professional and told that no identity information will leak due to the way OAUTH works, I thought I'd throw the question out to the community to get a feel for how you handle accounts to different websites, as well as the inherent tracking and security concerns thereof.

Bytram noted that we had a discussion on a similar topic a while back: Personal Privacy in a Surveillance World -- How Important is it? - SoylentNews

Original Submission

VanderDecken writes:

An experiment built in a vast slab of Antarctic ice recently doubled its count of "cosmic neutrinos" from outer space, by searching for arrivals passing through the planet from the north. The same team this week announced the highest-energy neutrino ever detected.

They have evidence for a neutrino arriving with at least 2,600 trillion electronvolts (teraelectronvolts, TeV) of energy - hundreds of times more than protons inside the Large Hadron Collider, even after its historic revamp.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have grown underwater chimney-like structures capable of generating enough electricity to power a light bulb. The team linked several of these chimneys to get the required electricity. Their findings indicate that the seafloor equivalents of these chemical gardens might just have contributed the electricity needed for the Earth's first organisms to develop.

One popular theory as to how life took root on Earth, called the alkaline vent hypothesis, supposes that life came into being underwater aided by warm, alkaline chimneys. Ranging in size from a few inches to tens of feet, these chimneys form naturally at bubbling hypothermal vents on the seafloor.

It's possible that, when the Earth was still young, chimneys like these generated electrical and proton gradients across the mineral membranes that distinguish their compartments. These gradients emulate vital life processes to generate energy which could have been used by early organisms. The chimney's special ability to transfer electrical currents is key to the whole process.

The research would seem to have implications for the prospect of life on Europa as well.

The original news release is available from NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory): Researchers Use 'Seafloor Gardens' to Switch on Light Bulb

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

While the pull to buy the latest and greatest device for yourself or your children may be strong, a far better choice, both for your wallet and the environment, might be to purchase an older model that's been refurbished, which can save you money and be a better use of resources.

The market for used previously owned electronics is quite large, and that may be good for consumers in some aspects, as there is a lot of choice, it can also be quite the minefield to navigate, because not only is there a big difference between a used device and a refurbished one, there is also quite a big gray area when it comes to the quality of the refurbishing. A used device sold directly by the original owner to another owner comes with no guarantees of any kind, and any assurances given by the seller that the device works great and has been well taken care of have to be taken with a grain of salt - after all, who's going to be able to sell you a gadget after telling you that it's basically been rode hard and put away wet?

One way to make sure you're buying a refurbished computer or mobile device that will work well and last long enough to pay for itself is to look for one that has been refurbished following the guidelines of the R2 Standard of Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI). Computers and mobile devices that have gone through this standardized process are labeled as "R2 Ready for Reuse," which means that they have been tested and refurbished by a certified company, and have had a fully licensed operating system installed on them. In order to retain this R2 certification, these companies must undergo annual inspections to verify that their work adheres to "the highest industry standards for testing, repair, and data security."

To find a refurbisher that meets the R2 standards, and that sells direct to consumers, a list of companies selling R2 refurbished desktops and laptops is available on the SERI site, as well as a listing of R2 recyclers that can responsibly recycle your old electronics.

Our kids get our old laptops, surplus RPis, tablets we got for free as promos, because the death of the device is only one spilled glass of juice away. Guessing many other Soylentils do the same. Has anyone had experience with R2 certified devices?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes with news that things are not a perfect 10 with Microsoft Windows. The Register is reporting that "Windows 10 is FORCING ITSELF onto domain happy Windows 7 PCs":

The problem is affecting domain-attached Windows 7 PCs not signed up to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) for patches and updates, but looking for a Microsoft update instead.

The upshot is PCs, ranging from 10s to hundreds at a time, simultaneously chowing down on the 3GB-plus Windows 10 load, killing business networks.

[...] And it’s all happening despite Microsoft promising – here – that it wouldn’t.

[...] Users have logged urgent enquiries with Microsoft’s helpdesk but in the meantime have resorted to triage to stop the problem.

That means blocking traffic at the firewall stage that would normally have gone to Microsoft Update. Another option is to switch settings to the WSUS server.

Any Soylentils run into this problem? What have you done to cope with it?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Building on a long history of research into TEMPEST emanations—the accidental radio signals given off by computing systems' electrical components—[Ang] Cui set out to create intentional radio signals that could be used as a carrier to broadcast data to an attacker even in situations where networks were "air-gapped" from the outside world. The result of the work of his research team is Funtenna, a software exploit he demonstrated at Black Hat today that can turn a device with embedded computing power into a radio-based backchannel to broadcast data to an attacker without using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or other known (and monitored) wireless communications channels.

Cui has previously demonstrated a number of ways to exploit embedded systems, including printers and voice-over-IP phones. In 2012, he demonstrated an exploit of Cisco phones that turned on the microphone and transformed phones into a remote listening device. Michael Ossmann of Great Scott Gadgets, a hardware hacker who has done some development of exploits based on concepts from the NSA's surveillance "playset," suggested to Cui that he could turn the handset cord of the phone into a "funtenna"—an improvised broadcast antenna generating radio frequency signals programmatically.

With just seven lines of code injected into the embedded computer of an otherwise unmodified laser printer, Cui was able to turn the printer into a radio transmitter by simply leveraging the electrical properties of existing input and output ports on the printer. By rapidly flipping the power state of general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) outputs, and UART (serial) outputs on a Pantum P2502W laser printer—"the cheapest laser printer we could find," Cui said—the Funtenna hack was able to create a modulated radio signal as a result of the magnetic fields created by the voltage and resulting electromagnetic waves.

Damn. Knew I should have bought that bigger roll of tinfoil.

Original Submission

GungnirSniper writes:

Mozilla Firefox's PDF Reader has a vulnerability that can "violate the same origin policy and inject script into a non-privileged part of the built-in PDF Viewer. This would allow an attacker to read and steal sensitive local files on the victim's computer."

Mozilla Security Blog has further details:

Yesterday morning, August 5, a Firefox user informed us that an advertisement on a news site in Russia was serving a Firefox exploit that searched for sensitive files and uploaded them to a server that appears to be in Ukraine. This morning Mozilla released security updates that fix the vulnerability. All Firefox users are urged to update to Firefox 39.0.3. The fix has also been shipped in Firefox ESR 38.1.1.

The vulnerability comes from the interaction of the mechanism that enforces JavaScript context separation (the "same origin policy") and Firefox's PDF Viewer. Mozilla products that don't contain the PDF Viewer, such as Firefox for Android, are not vulnerable. The vulnerability does not enable the execution of arbitrary code but the exploit was able to inject a JavaScript payload into the local file context. This allowed it to search for and upload potentially sensitive local files.

The files it was looking for were surprisingly developer focused for an exploit launched on a general audience news site, though of course we don't know where else the malicious ad might have been deployed. On Windows the exploit looked for subversion, s3browser, and Filezilla configurations files, .purple and Psi+ account information, and site configuration files from eight different popular FTP clients. On Linux the exploit goes after the usual global configuration files like /etc/passwd, and then in all the user directories it can access it looks for .bash_history, .mysql_history, .pgsql_history, .ssh configuration files and keys, configuration files for remina, Filezilla, and Psi+, text files with "pass" and "access" in the names, and any shell scripts. Mac users are not targeted by this particular exploit but would not be immune should someone create a different payload.

The exploit leaves no trace it has been run on the local machine. If you use Firefox on Windows or Linux it would be prudent to change any passwords and keys found in the above-mentioned files if you use the associated programs. People who use ad-blocking software may have been protected from this exploit depending on the software and specific filters being used.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

One for our orange-fingered brothers and sisters:

The first real cheese powder was developed in 1943 by George Sanders, a USDA dairy scientist. (Even before the war began, USDA's research facilities had been enlisted to work toward military goals, exhorted by Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace "to consider their possible contributions to national needs as the defense program approaches the stage of 'maximum effort'." This relationship continues to this day; the USDA has collaborated with the Quartermaster Corps and later the Natick Center on topics as varied as chemical testing, fungi collection and classification, potatoes, dairy, and, from 1980 on, operation of the army's radiation food sterilization program.)
...
In 1948 the Frito Company (it merged with H. W. Lay & Company in 1961 to become Frito‑Lay, Inc.) debuted the country's first cheesy snack food, made with the same Wisconsin cheddar the army used for its dehydrated products. Frito Company founder Charles Doolin had been a military supplier, even building a facility in San Diego, where there is a naval base, to service his contracts.

According to his daughter Kaleta Doolin, "During the war, tins of chips were sent overseas to be served in mess halls and sold in PXs. This venture helped put the company over the top as a nationwide business." Afterward, new plants were opened in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City, where soon cornmeal and water were being extruded, puffed, fried in oil, and coated with finger‑licking, orange dehydrated cheese. Cheetos!

The article is an interesting read for anyone who's ever wondered where American junk foods came from.

Original Submission

For a good portion of today, SoylentNews was generating 503 errors if you either logged in or tried to post a comment. While not 100% consistent, the underlying problem is that the design of MySQL cluster requires us to manually allocate space for indexes and data storage. Today, the index storage maxed out, and MySQL refused to insert new rows stating "Table 'name' is full".

We've doubled the size of the IndexMemory which should solve this issue in the short term. Longer term, we need to migrate some data to reside permanently on HDD storage. If anyone has experience with MySQL Cluster and can offer suggestions, we're all ears.

Here's our current memory usage on the cluster for those who are interested:

ndb_mgm> all report memoryusage
Node 2: Data usage is 81%(53650 32K pages of total 65536)
Node 2: Index usage is 46%(15407 8K pages of total 32800)
Node 3: Data usage is 81%(53648 32K pages of total 65536)
Node 3: Index usage is 46%(15407 8K pages of total 32800)

Sorry for any inconvenience