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K_benzoate writes:

From Nature.com:

Hawaii's supreme court has ruled that the construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on top of the mountain Mauna Kea is invalid. The 2 December decision is a major blow to the international consortium backing the US$1.5-billion telescope, and a win for the Native Hawaiians who have protested against its construction on what they regard as a sacred summit.

And the top reddit comment on the article, which I found neatly summed up the situation.

I spent time in Hawaii and talked to locals that were born and raised there about this issue. Its polarizing.

People against it brought up the need for spirituality and respect for the Hawaiian culture lost over hundred of years of Western influence.

Argument for the telescope, however, claimed that building it would do nothing but respect their history. How did the ancient Hawaiians get to the island? They used the stars. It was "in their blood" to understand the heavens. Most of the those complaining are young disenfranchised people struggling in one of the crappiest economies in America.

Of course this could be a generalization based on second hand observation.

As for me, as big as these telescopes are, they look like ants on top of these massive volcanoes. Ruining the scenery is nonsense.

We covered the Groundbreaking for World's Largest Telescope nearly a month ago.

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takyon writes:

U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed up to $275 billion in infrastructure investment, including investment in broadband:

Hillary Clinton has announced a $250bn plan to build out the United States' broadband infrastructure and ensure that everyone has fast internet access at an affordable price by 2020.

That's the headline figure anyway in her new policy position called "Building Tomorrow's Economy Today." In reality, the presidential candidate has pledged to fund a $25 billion dollar "national infrastructure bank" over five years that will cover all infrastructure improvements for roads, bridges, pipes, and internet network.

That bank will provide "up to an additional $225 billion in federally supported investment," according to the policy paper, by leveraging "the $25 billion in direct loans, loan guarantees, and other forms of credit enhancement."

[...] Interestingly however, even Clinton's $25 billion infrastructure bank idea doesn't appear to have been her own. Democratic rival Bernie Sanders has been talking about the US' lackluster networks for some time, noting that the US comes 16th globally in terms of broadband access, and 12th in terms of average speed, according to the OECD. "Today, businesses, schools, and families in Bucharest, Romania, have access to much faster internet than most of the United States. That is unacceptable and has got to change," Sanders says in his policy position on "rebuilding America."

Interestingly, Sanders pledged the exact same figure as Clinton – $5 billion a year – but solely for internet rollout, rather than all infrastructure needs, through an Act of Congress. "The Rebuild America Act will invest $5 billion a year to expand high-speed broadband networks in under-served and unserved areas, and to boost speeds and capacity all across the country. Internet access is no longer a luxury: it is essential for 21st century commerce, education, telemedicine, and public safety," he said.

DSLReports calls the promises "painfully ambiguous". Other outlets have gravitated to the promises of "smart cities", "free Wi-Fi", "5G networks", and supporting "tomorrow's Internet of Things".

Billions in broadband investment? Hmm, where have I heard that one before?

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takyon writes:

China has arrested hackers that it claims were connected to the breach of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the exposure of the records of millions of current and former federal employees. China's official Xinhua news agency disclaimed Chinese responsibility for the attack again on Wednesday.

The Washington Post previously reported that China arrested hackers in October for targeting U.S. firms to steal commercial secrets. This was portrayed as a conciliatory gesture amid joint cybersecurity discussions and ahead of a state visit to the U.S. by President Xi Jinping. Instead of corporate espionage, those yet-to-be-identified hackers have now been blamed for the OPM breach:

[More after the break.]

Swift Is Open Source

ghost writes:

Swift, Apple's hot new programming language, is now open source. It is available (or will be once the web site isn't so overwhelmed!) for Mac and Linux under an Apache 2.0 license.

"Swift is now open source! We are excited by this new chapter in the story of Swift. After Apple unveiled the Swift programming language, it quickly became one of the fastest growing languages in history. Swift makes it easy to write software that is incredibly fast and safe by design. Now that Swift is open source, you can help make the best general purpose programming language available everywhere. "

Apple Open-Sources Swift and Releases Linux port, as Promised

theluggage writes:

Apple's Swift programming language may eventually replace the respected but arcane Objective C as the native language for OS X and iOS development, but if you don't have a Mac you might be forgiven for not having taken an interest so far.

However, as MacRumors now reports, Apple have now delivered on their promise to open-source Swift and release a Linux port. It doesn't sound as if the Linux port is quite ready for production use just yet, but the source is out there. Does this mean that Swift is now a contender for general purpose programming?

(Note: at the time of writing, the servers at Swift.org are failing to live up to their name.)

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Phoenix666 writes:

In my experience, one of the highest-impact upgrades you can perform to increase Raspberry Pi performance is to buy the fastest possible microSD card—especially for applications where you need to do a lot of random reads and writes.

There is an order-of-magnitude difference between most cheap cards and the slightly-more-expensive ones (even if both are rated as being in the same class)—especially in small-block random I/O performance. As an example, if you use a normal, cheap microSD card for your database server, normal database operations can literally be 100x slower than if you used a standard microSD card.

Because of this, I went and purchased over a dozen different cards and have been putting them through their paces. Here are the results of those efforts...

Visit TFA for the full table. The overall winner seems to be OWC Envoy SSD (USB), with hdparm buffered: 34.13 MB/s; dd write: 34.4 MB/s; 4K rand read: 7.06 MB/s; 4K rand write: 8.20 MB/s

takyon: The value winner in the article is the Samsung Evo+ 32 GB (purchased for $9.99 from Best Buy) with decent/passable speeds.

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kurenai.tsubasa writes:

Multiple sources report that on Thursday, December 3rd, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the US military will open all combat jobs to women. From The Wall Street Journal:

[Much more after the break.]

HughPickens.com writes:

Jesse Eisinger writes in the NYT that if you heard that Mark Zuckerberg donated $45 billion to charity, you are wrong. Here's what really happened: Zuckerberg did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. Instead Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle called a limited liability company (LLC) that can invest in for-profit companies, make political donations, and lobby for changes in the law. What's more an LLC can donate appreciated shares to charity, which will generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax. "He remains completely free to do as he wishes with his money," writes Eisinger. "That's what America is all about. But as a society, we don't generally call these types of activities "charity.""

A charitable foundation is subject to rules and oversight. It has to allocate a certain percentage of its assets every year. The new Zuckerberg LLC won't be subject to those rules and won't have any transparency requirements. According to Eisinger what this means is that Zuckerberg has amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. "Instead of lavishing praise on Mr. Zuckerberg for having issued a news release with a promise, this should be an occasion to mull what kind of society we want to live in," concludes Eisinger. "The point is that we are turning into a society of oligarchs. And I am not as excited as some to welcome the new Silicon Valley overlords."

Previously: Mark Zuckerberg to Donate $45 Billion Facebook Fortune to Charity

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takyon writes:

Ride-hailing company Uber has changed its application programming interface (API) to allow iOS and Android developers to integrate a "Ride Request Button" into their apps:

Uber's latest growth strategy is to colonize the mobile app landscape with its new Ride Request Button. Launching today, iOS and Android app developers can more easily plug in an SDK with a few lines of code to add a Ride Request Button to their apps that deep-links into Uber's app. In exchange for the literal traffic, Uber will pay US developers $5 for each first-time rider they refer. Previously, developers had to hassle with building custom deep-linked integrations.

TechCrunch initially reported that Uber's policy banned app developers from adding similar hooks to competing services such as Lyft. The article has been updated to state the following:

What developers can't do is put the Uber button next to links or buttons for other car services, according to Uber's API terms, which say:

"You may not use the Uber API, Uber API Materials, or Uber Data in any manner that is competitive to Uber or the Uber Services, including, without limitation, in connection with any application, website or other product or service that also includes, features, endorses, or otherwise supports in any way a third party that provides services competitive to Uber's products and services, in our sole discretion."

The company confirmed to me that this policy stands for the Ride Request Button. It claims that this is because it wants to offer a consistent Uber experience in other apps, but it's a thinly veiled attack on competitors. Some services like Slack offer ways to instantly book a Lyft, and brands like Starbucks have built loyalty programs with the pink mustache cars. Uber's policy incentivizes it racing to sign up partners for its API as a way to block Lyft from getting integrated too if it launches an official API.

The latest version of Google Maps on iOS and Android adds an advertisment showing an Uber(X) fare estimate below public transportation options (a combination of bus and rail). Previously this had been introduced in 2014 for users in select cities.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A team from Newcastle University, UK, has shown that Type 2 diabetes is caused by fat accumulating in the pancreas -- and that losing less than one gram of that fat through weight loss reverses the diabetes.

Affecting two and a half million people in the UK -- and on the increase -- Type 2 diabetes is a long-term condition caused by too much glucose, a type of sugar, in the blood.
...
In a trial, 18 people with Type 2 diabetes and 9 people who did not have diabetes were measured for weight, fat levels in the pancreas and insulin response before and after bariatric surgery. The patients with Type 2 diabetes had been diagnosed for an average of 6.9 years, and all for less than 15 years.

The people with Type 2 diabetes were found to have increased levels of fat in the pancreas.

The participants in the study had all been selected to have gastric bypass surgery for obesity and were measured before the operation then again eight weeks later. After the operation, those with Type 2 diabetes were immediately taken off their medication.

Both groups lost the same amount of weight, around 13% of their initial body weight. Critically, the pool of fat in the pancreas did not change in the non-diabetics but decreased to a normal level in those with Type 2 diabetes.

Good news for people with Type 2 diabetes and puts more importance on sticking to New Year's resolutions to lose weight.

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"gewg_" writes:

Sky News reports

It was one of the world's early adopters of high-tech electronic voting. [Now, however, Brazil will] revert to using paper [ballots] because it cannot afford to run the electoral computer systems.

The Superior Electoral Court has had its funding cut by the equivalent of £75M--in the middle of a tender for computer systems for next year's elections.

The process was due to be finalised this month but has been thwarted by the government cuts and voters will now cast their ballots using paper instead.

The court says the move will cause "irreversible and irreparable damage" and says the public interest is at threat.

A statement read: "The biggest impact of the budget cuts is around the purchasing of electronic voting equipment, as bidding and essential contracting is already under way and to be concluded by end of December."

El Reg notes

Brazil has had electronic voting in some form since 1996, when it first trialled systems in the state of Santa Catarina. The system was subject to criticism in 2014, when ZDNet Brazil reported on university tests that suggested the system wasn't sufficiently secure against fraud.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Blurred boundaries between advertising and public relations professions due to new roles in social media raise the question of whether educators can adequately prepare their students for a career in those growing fields, according to a Baylor study.

"Educators need to address the deficiencies identified in this study and find ways to build these skills and competencies in their courses," said Marlene S. Neill, Ph.D., assistant professor of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.

The study—"Gaps in Advertising and Public Relations Education: Perspectives of Agency Leaders "—is published in the Journal of Advertising Education.

"In the study, we have provided some specific and practical recommendations for advertising and public relations educators," Neill said.

Recommendations include:

        --Business literacy: Have advertising and public relations students read and analyze investment reports and financial statements, as well as take current events quizzes from business and trade publications.
        --Math: Require advertising and public relations students to take a statistics course.
        --Online community management: Have advertising and public relations students conduct social listening/social media audit and develop evaluation reports using social media analytics; advertising students should consider taking electives in public relations to learn about crisis and issues management.
        --Media planning/buying: PR students should consider taking advertising electives to learn about paid media strategies.

The reaction of people polled on this issue is this?

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Phoenix666 writes:

The European Space Agency launched a rocket Thursday carrying two cubes of gold and platinum almost a million miles from Earth so scientists can see how they'll behave in a freefall—at a cost of more than $450 million.

What may sound like a frivolous enterprise is actually the prelude to a far more ambitious mission that hopes to measure ripples in space time caused by black holes and other massive objects lurking unseen in dark corners of the galaxy.

Also known as gravitational waves, these ripples were predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago but have never been directly detected.

In order for that mission—tentatively scheduled for launch in 2034—to succeed, the European Space Agency first has to test whether it can shield objects from external influences well enough to measure the minute effects of gravitational waves.

"We want to see whether we can create an environment in orbit that's free of interference, and where we can conduct these high-precision measurements," said Michael Menking, senior vice president for Earth observation, navigation and science at Airbus Defense and Space. The company is the main technology contractor on the LISA Pathfinder mission.
...
By mid-January, the probe will have reached an orbit about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth, where the pull from the planet's gravity is balanced by that of the sun. The cubes—made from gold and platinum to reduce their susceptibility to magnetic fields—are then carefully released inside a box that shields them from cosmic particles and other interference that might affect the measurements performed by a sensitive laser. The laser is capable of detecting movements of less than 10 millionths of a millionth of a meter.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Whenever a new tower starts muscling its way toward the sky, it drains a bit more light from the streets and parks below, so walking along a sidewalk can sometimes feel like pacing the bottom of a deep well. But what if, even in the densest thickets of Manhattan, skyscrapers could be designed to shrink, or even bleach out, the shadows they cast? Imagine a structure that bends like a rubbery dancer to dodge as many rays as possible and let them fall on a park instead. That’s what Jeanne Gang’s Solar Carve tower will do for the High Line. Or think of a high-rise fitted out with angled mirrors that make its shadow glow. Jean Nouvel’s One Central Park in Sydney, Australia, does that. New Yorkers who fear that a 1,500-foot-high wall of deluxe condos will one day cast Sheep Meadow in permanent shadow could start demanding designs that cast soft, glare-free pools of light instead.

Software and high-tech glass offer precise ways of managing shadows, but the idea of maximizing solar access has a long pedigree. In the 1970s, the Los Angeles–based architect Ralph Knowles observed that the Acoma people of New Mexico had always oriented their terraced pueblos to the south, ensuring that every house would get maximum exposure to the low winter sun. Knowles proposed enshrining a right to sunshine in a legal concept he called the “solar envelope.” In New York, resistance to darkened streets is already baked into law. We’re approaching the centennial of the 1916 zoning code, which obliges buildings to retreat as they rise, opening up cones of sunshine that touch the ground. The pursuit of light created the classic New York skyscraper.

Attractive concept, but one to be used with care.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at the Federal University of ABC, in Brazil, have made a major breakthrough: they've confirmed that thermodynamic processes cannot be reversed, even in a quantum system. This revelation not only explains a fundamental aspect of our universe but could also influence how quantum computing systems are designed.

[...] The microscopic and macroscopic worlds currently operate using two different standards -- general relativity governs the macroscopic world while quantum physics rules the microscopic. In our macro world view, thermodynamic (entropic) processes only move in one direction. That is, using an egg analogy, you can't uncook an egg much less get it to hop back into its shell and seal the crack. But in the subatomic world, many of these processes are "time-symmetric" -- essentially, they're reversible.

However, what Tiago Batalhão and his team at the UFABC discovered actually runs counter to our expectations. Their experiment sought to measure the entropy change within a closed system of carbon-13 atoms submerged in liquid chloroform while they're subjected to an oscillating magnetic field. The idea is that polarizing the field should cause the atoms' nuclear spins to all rotate one direction, while reversing the field's polarity would make their spins flip and rotate the opposite direction.

Now, if this process were time-symmetric as our current understanding of physics dictates, the atoms' spins should flip back and forth without issue and return to their initial states once the magnet was turned off. But the UFABC team found that the atoms' spins couldn't keep up with the magnet's oscillation rate and some would eventually fall out of sync with their neighbors. This means that entropy within the closed system was actually increasing -- precisely the opposite effect from what should be happening. It effectively proves that thermodynamic processes are not reversible at the quantum level. What's more, it reveals a disconnect between the current laws of physics and what we're actually observing.

Yet, earlier this year scientists did figure out how to unboil eggs...

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Phoenix666 writes:

Months after its July fly-by, New Horizons is still squeezing its images down pipe measured in bits-per-second – and that's a problem space boffins would like to solve in the future.

As we know from NASA's successful LADEE test, lasers are a viable and truly broadband space comms medium – but firing a laser from (say) Mars and receiving it on Earth would need a Bloody Big Telescope.

That's what boffins from Japan and Madrid reckon the world will have, once the proposed Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is built, so in this ArXiv paper, they propose using that instrument for deep-space optical communications.

The CTA is going to have dozens of instruments of varying size (from 6m up to 24m) in both hemispheres, a requirement for deep space communications, and as Alberto Carrasco-Casado (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Tokyo) and collaborators José Manuel Sánchez-Pena and Ricardo Vergaz (University of Madrid) note, the instruments should be good enough to do double-service as communications receivers.

That's because handfuls of photons are exactly what the CTA receivers are designed to detect – the tiny flashes of light that cosmic rays and gamma rays produce when they collide with the upper atmosphere.

Note: "Boffin" == "Egghead" == Scientist.

[See DSN Now (Deep Space Network - Now) to follow which satellites NASA is currently communicating with. -Ed.]

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takyon writes:

Over half of the gas giant "exoplanets" spotted by the Kepler telescope may actually be explained by other astrophysical phenomena, such as binary stars and brown dwarf stars:

It's always exciting when Kepler discovers a new exoplanet, and it's generally assumed that there is a relatively low chance of a false positive. But according to a new study, there may be a much higher rate of false positives than we thought with regard to gas giants, possibly up to 55%.

In the study, astronomers from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço examined a sample of 129 gas planets detected by Kepler through the transit method. The transit method involves extrapolating the existence of a planet from the periodic dimming of a star's light emission that is presumably caused by an exoplanet's orbit. They found that approximately half of them weren't planets at all; rather, the light's dimming was caused by some other astrophysical phenomenon.

Gas giants are particularly vulnerable to false positives, as they can easily be imitated by eclipsing binaries. Eclipsing binaries are binary star systems aligned with the observer's (in this case, Kepler's) line of sight, which causes the larger star to block the light from the smaller. The researchers found that 52.3% of the gas giants were actually eclipsing binaries, while 2.3% were brown dwarfs, or a "failed star" between gas giants that doesn't have enough mass to fuse hydrogen to its core.

Also at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences.

SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates XVII. The physical properties of giant exoplanets within 400 days of period

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