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http://store.steampowered.com/ has been taken offline because a DDOS attack was allowing users to see random other users account profiles.

There are reports of seeing pages displayed in different languages (Russian, English, German, etc.) as well as the display of other people's account details such as email address, account balance, friends, etc.

Other coverage:

• Gaming souk Steam spews credit cards, personal info in Xmas Day security meltdown
• Steam Goes Nuts, Offers Access To Other People's Accounts [UPDATE]
• Is something wrong with Steam?
• Steam Is Randomly Logging Users Into Other People's Accounts And Exposing Their Information [Update]
• Steam Is Going Haywire, People Can Access Others' Accounts [Updated]

UPDATE [2015/12/26-00:03:00]: There are reports that the Steam store was taken offline. Further, I have seen reports that the Steam store is now back up, but some people report still being unable to login.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

From The Register's Gundam desk:

Rise of the machines The robotic exoskeleton market is set to score 39.6 per cent compound annual growth between now and 2025, emerging as a US$1.8bn industry.

So says analyst outfit ABI Research, which reckons $68 million of exoskeletal kit shipped in 2014.

"Lower body exoskeletons, employed as rehabilitation tools or quality of life enablers, currently lead the sector," the firm says.

But the future is "commercial systems that augment or amplify capabilities". Vendors will target "industrial tasks requiring heavy lifting, extended standing, squatting, bending or walking in manufacturing facilities, particularly within construction and agriculture industries."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

John Muir declared the sugar pine to be "king of the conifers" more than a century ago. Now scientists have sequenced its genome.

At 10 times the size of the human genome, the sugar pine genome is the largest ever sequenced for any organism. The findings are expected to provide valuable information that may help preserve the iconic but endangered tree.

"Having the genome sequence allows us to discover the underlying genetic determinants of disease resistance, which will greatly facilitate reforestation efforts," says David Neale, a forest tree geneticist at the University of California, Davis. "We can now give forest managers modern, rapid genetic tools to identify resistant trees."

The genome has been publicly released and is available through open access at the Pine Reference Sequences website.

Strange that the tree's genome should be so much larger than the human's.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

'Tis the season to celebrate with good friends:

The night before Congress passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act [CISA], a broad expansion of surveillance power in America, legislators attended a party with the chief lobbyists for the bill.

Last Thursday, Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), along with a number of other lawmakers, went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's famously lavish Christmas party.

The next morning, on December 18, the senators voted to pass the omnibus spending bill that included a version of CISA that guts privacy protections and creates new channels for both government agencies and private businesses to share information with the National Security Agency and law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents dozens of Fortune 500 companies and serves as the biggest lobby group in Washington, acted as the chief private sector advocate for CISA. Congressional records show the group's lobbyists testified in both the House and Senate on behalf of the bill, and helped corral a number of other trade associations to build support for its passage.

[...] At a summit to help pass CISA last year, Ann Beauchesne, the Chamber's lead CISA lobbyist, got up and asked NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers how the Chamber of Commerce could "be helpful to you?" She pledged a renewed lobbying effort even — as The Intercept previously noted — suggesting a viral marketing campaign to build public support akin to the "ALS ice bucket challenge."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A note's fundamental frequency is the primary element of sound from which our brains derive pitch—the highness or lowness of a note. Harmonics give a note its timbre, the quality that makes instruments sound distinct from one another.

Many sounds in the world are made up of these tones, whether you strike a key on a keyboard, play a note on a clarinet, or say a letter, says [researcher Elizabeth Petitti], who graduated from Boston University's Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences with a master's in speech-language pathology.

Our brains expect the fundamental and the harmonics to be present in any given note. But when some of this information drops out, "the way you perceive the note can change in surprising ways," says Petitti's mentor, Tyler Perrachione, a professor at Sargent and director of the Communication Neuroscience Research Laboratory.

[...] Petitti explains that when she removes the fundamental from a tone (using signal processing software), and then plays that note, the listener's brain automatically supplies the pitch. People's brains deliver this information in different ways: They either fill in the missing fundamental frequency—similar to the way the brain would compensate for a blind spot in our eye—or they determine the pitch from the harmonics.

Here's where it gets interesting: When two different tones that have been stripped of their fundamentals are played in succession, some listeners hear their pitch rising, and some hear it falling. Who's right?

"There's no right answer," Perrachione says. "Pitch only exists in our minds. It's a perceptual quality." So, how exactly do we determine pitch? It turns out the language we speak plays a role.

Original Submission

Bobs writes:

The US Department of Energy announced that 50 grams of Plutonium-238 had been made by researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. This is the first time the substance has been made in the country since the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina stopped making it in the late 1980s.

"Right now, NASA only has access to 35 kilograms, about 77 pounds, of Pu-238 to power space exploration missions. That's just enough to last into the middle 2020s, powering just two or three proposed missions."

"Two years ago, NASA began funding efforts to make Pu-238 again in ernest. The agency has put about $15 million each year toward the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy's efforts." The next step is to automate and scale up the process.

I didn't know we had lost the capability to produce it and am glad we are starting up again. So how much Pu-238 could we make for the cost of one F-35?

Source:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1223/Department-of-Energy-begins-making-plutonium-destined-for-deep-space

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

American household Christmas lights, a favourite holiday tradition, use up more electricity than some poorer countries—such as El Salvador or Ethiopia—do in a year. Bright lights strung on American trees, rooftops and lawns account for 6.63 billion kilowatt hours of electricity consumption every year, according to a recent blog post by the Center for Global Development.

That's more than the national electricity consumption of many developing countries. El Salvador for one, uses 5.35 billion kilowatt hours, while Ethiopia consumes 5.30 billion and Tanzania 4.81 billion. The researchers, Todd Moss and Priscilla Agyapong, used data from a 2008 US Department of Energy report and the World Bank to carry out their research. They added that the 6.63 billion kilowatt hours used by US Christmas lights represents only 0.2 percent of yearly US energy consumption, or enough power to run 14 million refrigerators.

http://phys.org/news/2015-12-christmas-energy-entire-countries.html

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the music industry predicting the future is all-important, and this operates on all scales – from deciding what an individual user of a streaming service wants next in their playlist, to discovering the next Gangnam Style. And recently it has been shown that Big Data has the ability to do just that. Researchers at the University of Antwerp showed that they were able to create an algorithm that was able to predict, relatively accurately, the position that dance records would chart at in the Billboard Dance Singles chart. By analyzing all of the records which made the chart from 1985 to 2014, it was able to predict that every record which made the 2015 top 10 had at least a 65% chance of doing so. In the case of seven of the top 10, it was 70% certain that they would make the grade.

The Internet of Things could be finding its place in pop music, too. This year, attendees at Taylor Swift's world tour concerts were provided with LED bracelets controlled through RFID technology that change color and pulse in time with the music. With the music industry relying on live music performances for a growing chunk of its revenue we can expect increasingly creative ways to create new experiences for live audiences.

It's true that there are ongoing concerns about the streaming model of music distribution – both in terms of royalties paid to artists and whether they will generate money in the long term. However by doubling its subscriber base in the last two years from 10 million to 20 million Spotify has proven the popularity of the model, if not yet the profitability. If it doesn't, then perhaps rival Apple, who this year launched their own streaming music service (heavily featuring Taylor Swift), will.

The music industry has undoubtedly changed to the point it is barely recognizable from that of just 20 or so years ago. The internet has made it easier for unknown artists to gather a fanbase and get their music heard, with many even taking advantage of crowdfunding platforms such as Indiegogo or Patreon to make their money. It is likely to change even more in the next 20, and data analytics is likely to continue to be a driving force behind that change.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

As a person ages, their circadian clock begins to slow down. But a study of nearly 150 human brains suggests that's also when a new biological clock kicks in.

A 24-hour circadian rhythm controls nearly all brain and body processes, such as the sleep/wake cycle, metabolism, alertness, and cognition. These daily activity patterns are regulated by certain genes that are found in almost all cells, but have rarely been studied in the human brain.

"Studies have reported that older adults tend to perform complex cognitive tasks better in the morning and get worse through the day," says Colleen McClung, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "We know also that the circadian rhythm changes with aging, leading to awakening earlier in the morning, fewer hours of sleep, and less robust body temperature rhythms."

[...] To their surprise, the team also found a set of genes that gained rhythmicity in older individuals.

This information could ultimately be useful in the development of treatments for cognitive and sleep problems that can occur with aging, as well as a possible treatment for "sundowning," a condition in which older individuals with dementia become agitated, confused, and anxious in the evening.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

In 2011, political uprisings were rampant throughout the world — from the Arab Spring that started in Tunisia and swept through more than 15 other Arab countries — to Occupy Wall Street protesters huddled in New York's Zuccotti Park.

During that time, activists that were separated by oceans, religions and reasons for rioting stayed connected through social media networks. Oded Marom, a Ph.D. student in sociology, examines the links between social movements and digital technology.

Online activism — which can be as simple as changing one's Facebook profile photo to a rainbow flag or signing a petition to support gun control measures — has earned a reputation for being "slacktivist," or offering a lazy way for people to feel as if they are taking part in a greater movement while never doing more than clicking a "thumbs-up" icon.

Marom, along with other political theorists at USC Dornsife, believes that while the Internet does have the potential to lower the bar for what constitutes "activism," we should not discredit its power to incite meaningful change.

[Also Covered By]: PHYS.ORG

Have Soylentils engaged in online activism and if yes, do they think it is lazy activism?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Fathers are able to adjust to increasing temperatures within their own lifetime and do transmit this information to their offspring. This has now been shown for the first time in a wild animal. The findings were the result of a project within the Joint Initiative for Research and Innovation and have been published in the scientific journal Molecular Ecology.

Male wild guinea pigs respond to increasing temperatures with biochemical modifications attached to their genome and pass this "epigenetic" information to the next generation, and most likely even the following one.

In order to study their response to changing environmental conditions, male wild guinea pigs were kept for two months at an ambient temperature raised by ten degrees. It was subsequently examined whether any biochemical changes had occurred in the genome (DNA) of their liver in result of that heat treatment sons sired by the males before and after the rise in temperature were also examined for such possible biochemical changes of the genome of their liver and also in the genomes of their testicles. The joint scientists team from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), the Berlin Center for Genomics in Biodiversity Research (BeGenDiv) and the Californian company Zymo Research detected significant differences in the methylation of the DNA (a biochemical modification of the genome) of the wild guinea pigs when comparing the genomes prior to and after exposure to increased temperatures. These differences were especially found in genes encoding proteins responsible for protection against heat damage. The magic word which describes this process is "epigenetics" (Greek: epi = upon, over, above; genetics = study of heredity) – a molecular mechanism which regulates the switching-on of genes in response to environmental changes without changing the sequence of the DNA's building blocks.

"We believe that the transfer of epigenetic information from father to sons prepares the latter for changes in environmental conditions such as a rise in temperature. This is particularly important with regards to a possible adaptive response to climate change. Epigenetic mechanisms could therefore be crucial for the fitness and survival of the offspring," says Alexandra Weyrich, researcher at the IZW.

The epigenetic responses seem to bring a lot more flexibility to an organism's evolutionary response to changing conditions.

Original Submission

stormwyrm writes:

PC Gamer and the Russian Times report that a 28-year old man from Krasnoyarsk has sued Bethesda Softworks for addiction to Fallout 4:

A Siberian gamer is suing the makers of Fallout-4 after he lost his job and broke up with his wife because of the video game. He wants 500,000 roubles (US$7,000) in compensation from the company, saying he did not know the game would "become so addictive."

The 28-year-old man from Krasnoyarsk found out about the game in an advert and subsequently downloaded it onto his computer. That was when his problems began in earnest. He only intended to play it for a couple of evenings, but instead became addicted and the next three weeks flew by.

Such was his 'dedication' to the game, which sees the player emerge from a bunker following a devastating nuclear holocaust in a post-apocalyptic world, that his own apocalypse unfolded right before his eyes.

He regularly skipped work, which resulted in his employers firing him. He stopped meeting up and speaking with friends, and his wife left him. His health also started to deteriorate as he was not sleeping or eating.

"If I knew that this game could have become so addictive, I would have become a lot more wary of it. I would not have bought it, or I would have left it until I was on holiday or until the New Year holidays," a statement from the man read.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Wind power in the country recently passed some impressive milestones: As of November, there were 50,000 operating wind turbines at more than 980 utility-scale wind farms across 40 states and Puerto Rico, and 70 gigawatts of capacity! If you do the math, that's about 1.4 megawatt per turbine. And the year isn't over, so 2015 will end well over 70 GW of cumulative capacity.

American wind power began this year with a capacity of 65,877 MW, with 956 utility-scale wind projects.

U.S. wind power has had lots of ups and downs in the past few years, mostly because of uncertainty surrounding the renewal of tax credits. The previous milestones of 50 GW and 60 GW were crossed all the way back in 2012, as everyone rushed to finish projects before the credits were set to expire. Then in 2013, there was a big crash, with new wind installations declining by over 90%... Now we're back to a healthy clip, and with the renewal of the credits for 5 more years (for both wind and solar), we see over 13,250 MW of new wind capacity under construction with 4,100 MW of additional projects getting close to construction.

Wind power has been one of the best things to happen to the Great Plains in the last 50 years.

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

(Newser) – Scientists feared the last of Australia's short-nosed sea snakes died about 15 years ago, which makes this new sighting doubly auspicious: A wildlife official snapped a photo of not one but two of the snakes swimming off the western coast—and they were making googly eyes at each other. "What is even more exciting is that they were courting, suggesting that they are members of a breeding population," says researcher Blanche D'Anastasi of James Cook University in a press release. No such snake had been spotted since the species disappeared from its habitat at Ashmore Reef in the Timor Sea more than a decade ago. Scientists at JCU confirmed that the photos, taken at Ningaloo Reef, captured images of the sea snakes in the journal Biological Conservation.

"We were blown away, these potentially extinct snakes were there in plain sight, living on one of Australia's natural icons," says D'Anastasi. The journal article had another piece of good news: A decent population of another species, called the rare leaf-scaled sea snake, was spotted in Shark Bay, more than 1,000 miles from the snakes' only previously known habitat, notes Gizmodo. Both species are officially listed as critically endangered. The good news, however, was tempered with the bad. Generally speaking, sea snakes are on the decline in Western Australia, and the reason "remains unexplained." (Scientists, do however, have a pretty good idea about why snakes lost their legs.)

http://www.newser.com/story/217860/2-extinct-snakes-found-swimming-happily.html

All I could find were some sucky small images, but I found a somewhat sucky video on Youtube. There's no real "video" but if you go full screen, you get a pretty good picture of the snakes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-o_AHjMvKM

Original Submission

Sarasani writes:

Facebook's effort to provide Indians with free access to a limited number of internet services has run into trouble. India's telecoms regulator has asked the mobile network that partnered with the US firm to put their Free Basics offer on hold. Critics of the Free Basics service say it runs contrary to net neutrality principles.

India's telecoms regulator has asked the mobile network that partnered with the US firm to put their Free Basics offer on hold.

Data fees are relatively expensive in India, and the initiative aims to prevent this being a deterrent.

But critics of the Free Basics service say it runs contrary to net neutrality principles.

They suggest data providers should not favour some online services over others by offering cheaper or faster access.

A spokesman for Reliance Communications - the mobile network that had supported the scheme - confirmed it would comply with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's demand.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35169226

Original Submission