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tt0102181 writes:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the nonprofit body that maintains the Web's core standards, made a terrible mistake in 2013: they decided to add DRM—the digital locks that train your computer to say "I can't let you do that, Dave"; rather than "Yes, boss"—to the Web's standards.

So the EFF came back with a new proposal: the W3C could have its cake and eat it too. It could adopt a rule that requires members who help make DRM standards to promise not to sue people who report bugs in tools that conform to those standards, nor could they sue people just for making a standards-based tool that connected to theirs. They could make DRM, but only if they made sure that they took steps to stop that DRM from being used to attack the open Web.

The EFF asked the W3C to make this into their policy. The only W3C group presently engaged in DRM standardization is due to have its charter renewed in early 2016. The W3C called a poll over that charter during the Christmas month, ending on December 30th.

Despite the tight timeline and the number of members who were unavailable over the holidays, a global, diverse coalition of commercial firms, nonprofits and educational institutions came together to endorse this proposal. More than three quarters of those who weighed in on the proposal supported it.

This isn't the first collision between proprietary rights and the W3C. In 1999, the W3C had to decide what to do about software patents. These patents were and are hugely controversial, and the W3C was looking for a way to be neutral on the question of whether patents were good or bad, while still protecting the Web's openness to anyone who wanted to develop for it.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Tiny flakes of graphene may hold the key to building computer chips that can processes information similar to the way the human brain does—only far faster—potentially leading to everything from better image recognition to control systems for hypersonic aircraft.

Researchers are developing so-called neuromorphic chips consisting of networks of transistors that interact the way human neurons do, allowing them to process analog input, such as visual information, more quickly and accurately than traditional chips can.

One way of building such transistors is to construct them of lasers that rely on an encoding approach called "spiking." Depending on the input, the laser will either provide a brief spike in its output of photons or not respond at all. Instead of using the on or off state of the transistor to represent the 1s and 0s of digital data, these neural transistors rely on the time intervals between spikes.

"We're essentially using time as a way of encoding information," says Bhavin Shastri, a postdoctoral fellow in electrical engineering at Princeton University. Computation is based on the spatial and temporal positions of the pulses. "This is sort of the fundamental way neurons communicate with other neurons," he says.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Most of us have tried to sneak a quick game of Minesweeper in during our computer classes at school, but for students at Garnes High School in Norway, playing games won't be something they'll have to hide. Garnes Vidaregåande Skole, a public high school in the city of Bergen, Norway, is to start teaching e-sports to its students (story is in Norwegian) starting in August. The elective class puts e-sports on the same footing as traditional sports such as soccer and handball at the school. 30 or so students enrolled in the program will study five hours a week during the three-year program.

Folk High Schools—boarding schools that offer one year of non-examined training and education—have already offered some e-sports training, but this will be the first time that e-sports find a place in a regular high school.

Students on the program will not simply spend five hours a week playing games at school. While gaming skills are important, the classes will include 90 minutes of physical training optimized for the games in question, with work on reflexes, strength, and endurance. Each class will be split; 15 students will play while the other 15 perform physical exercise. In an interview with Dotablast, Petter Grahl Johnstad, head of the school's science department, says that the students will have their performance graded, with game knowledge and skills, communication, co-operation, and tactical ability all being assessed.

Ender shall be Norwegian...

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Tesla's owner, Elon Musk, has said it is an "open secret" that Apple is making a rival electric car.

He also predicted vehicles that could not drive themselves would become a "strange anachronism" before too long.

The tech entrepreneur's comments were made during an exclusive interview with the BBC at his design studio near Los Angeles.

Tesla vies with Nissan and BMW to be the world's bestselling electric-car brand, but currently runs at a loss.

An added challenge is that over recent months several of its engineers have been hired by rivals, including China-backed Faraday Future and Apple.

Apple has not formally announced it is working on a vehicle, although it did recently register several automobile-related internet domains, including apple.car and apple.auto.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A new study by researchers at insurer The Hartford and MIT's Age Lab found that 96 percent of drivers 50 to 69 would consider buying a car that included safety features such as a rear backup camera or blind spot warnings, but were less interested in buying a fully autonomous car.

[...] The researchers also examined self-driving cars, showing a video of the technology to participants. But, they found, some drivers were skeptical about the potential of fully autonomous cars, mirroring similar concerns about partially automated systems such as parking assistance and the adaptive cruise control technology.

"I think they were concerned that you could become too reliant on them," Ms. Olshevski says. "It's almost like a rite of passage that you learn to parallel park, and I think the idea that you don't learn those skills, and you don't use those skills, they were a little worried about that, particularly in urban areas."

While 70 percent said they would consider test-driving a self-driving car, only 31 percent said they would consider purchasing one, even if it was the same price as a regular car. There was also a gender divide, with men more likely than women to both test-drive and purchase a self-driving car.

Features aimed mostly at improving safety – such as back-up cameras, blind spot warning systems, and smart headlights – received more praise overall.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers in China have positively identified a block of ancient vegetable matter as tiny tea buds that were lovingly tucked away in Han Yangling Mausoleum, a sumptuous tomb north of Xi'an. The city Xi'an was once known as Chang'an, seat of power for the Han Dynasty, and stood as the easternmost stop on the vast trade routes known today as the Silk Road. Previously, the oldest physical evidence of tea came from roughly 1,000 years ago. Coupled with another ancient block of tea found in western Tibet's Gurgyam Cemetery, this new discovery reveals that the Han Chinese were already trading with Tibetans in 200 BCE, trekking across the Tibetan Plateau to deliver the luxurious, tasty drink.

Tea has been found to have many health benefits, and it's also been documented to be the source of the strength of the British.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

An adaptive material invented at Rice University combines self-healing and reversible self-stiffening properties.

The Rice material called SAC (for self-adaptive composite) consists of what amounts to sticky, micron-scale rubber balls that form a solid matrix. The researchers made SAC by mixing two polymers and a solvent that evaporates when heated, leaving a porous mass of gooey spheres. When cracked, the matrix quickly heals, over and over. And like a sponge, it returns to its original form after compression.

The labs of Rice materials scientists Pulickel Ajayan and Jun Lou led the study that appears in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces . They suggested SAC may be a useful biocompatible material for tissue engineering or a lightweight, defect-tolerant structural component.

Other "self-healing" materials encapsulate liquid in solid shells that leak their healing contents when cracked. "Those are very cool, but we wanted to introduce more flexibility," said Pei Dong, a postdoctoral researcher who co-led the study with Rice graduate student Alin Cristian Chipara. "We wanted a biomimetic material that could change itself, or its inner structure, to adapt to external stimulation and thought introducing more liquid would be a way. But we wanted the liquid to be stable instead of flowing everywhere."

In SAC, tiny spheres of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) encapsulate much of the liquid. The viscous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) further coats the entire surface. The spheres are extremely resilient, Lou said, as their thin shells deform easily. Their liquid contents enhance their viscoelasticity, a measure of their ability to absorb the strain and return to their original state, while the coatings keep the spheres together. The spheres also have the freedom to slide past each other when compressed, but remain attached.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The average American watches more than five hours of TV per day, but pretty soon that leisure time may be dominated by YouTube and other online video services.

In an address at CES 2016, YouTube's chief business officer Robert Kyncl argued that digital video will be the single biggest way that Americans spend their free time by 2020 – more than watching TV, listening to music, playing video games, or reading.

The amount of time people spend watching TV each day has been pretty steady for a few years now, Mr. Kyncl pointed out, while time spent watching online videos has grown by more than 50 percent each year. Data from media research firm Nielsen shows that it's not just young people watching online videos, either: adults aged 35 to 49 spent 80 percent more time on video sites in 2014 than in 2013, and adults aged 50 to 64 spent 60 percent more time on video sites over the same time period.

Why the shift?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

11,700 years ago, the Earth suffered a catastrophic climate change. As the ice age ended, sea levels rose by 120 meters, the days grew warmer, and many kinds of plant and animal life died out. But one animal began to thrive more than ever before. Homo sapiens, which had already spread to every continent except Antarctica, came up with a new survival strategy. Today, we call it farming.

Thanks in part to that innovation, humans survived to witness the dramatic transition from the Pleistocene epoch to the Holocene—it was the first such geological transition in almost 2 million years. But now geologists say we're witnessing another transition, as we move from the Holocene into an epoch called the Anthropocene. Here's what that means.

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Hackaday reports:

One barrier for those wanting to switch over from EAGLE [software for producing printed circuit boards] to KiCAD has been the lack of a way to convert existing projects from one [file format] to the other. An Eagle to KiCad ULP [User Language Program] exists, but it only converts the schematic--albeit with errors and hence not too helpful. And, for quite some time, KiCad has been able to open Eagle .brd layout files. But without a netlist to read and check for errors, that's not too useful either.

[Lachlan] has written a comprehensive set of Eagle to KiCad ULP scripts to convert schematics, symbols, and footprints. Board conversion is still done using KiCad's built in converter, since it works quite well.

Overall, the process works pretty well, and we were able to successfully convert two projects from Eagle. The entire process took only about 10 to 15 minutes of clean up after running the scripts.

The five scripts and one include file run sequentially once the first one is run. [Lachlan]'s scripts will convert Eagle multi-sheet .sch to KiCad multi-sheets, place global and local net labels for multi sheets, convert multi part symbols, build KiCad footprint modules and symbol libraries from Eagle libraries, create a project directory to store all the converted files, and perform basic error checking.

The Eagle 6.xx PCB files can be directly imported to KiCad. The scripts also convert [Vias] to Pads, which helps with KiCad's flood fill when [Vias] have no connections. This part requires some manual intervention and post processing. There are detailed instructions on [Lachlan]'s GitHub repository and he also walks through the process in the video.

Previous KiCAD-related stories

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Hookah smokers may be inhaling far more toxicants than they think.

Researchers reviewed 542 scientific articles potentially relevant to cigarette and hookah smoking and ultimately narrowed them down to 17 studies that included sufficient data to extract reliable estimates on toxicants inhaled when smoking cigarettes or hookahs.

The findings, published in the journal Public Health Reports, show that, compared with a single cigarette, one hookah session delivers approximately 125 times the smoke, 25 times the tar, 2.5 times the nicotine, and 10 times the carbon monoxide.

"Our results show that hookah tobacco smoking poses real health concerns and that it should be monitored more closely than it is currently," says lead author Brian A. Primack, assistant vice chancellor for health and society at the University of Pittsburgh's Schools of the Health Sciences. "For example, hookah smoking was not included in the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey System questionnaire, which assesses cigarette smoking, chewing tobacco, electronic cigarettes, and many other forms of substance abuse."

Researchers note that comparing a hookah smoking session to smoking a single cigarette is a complex comparison to make because of the differences in smoking patterns. A frequent cigarette smoker may smoke 20 cigarettes per day, while a frequent hookah smoker may only participate in a few hookah sessions each day.

"It's not a perfect comparison because people smoke cigarettes and hookahs in very different ways," Primack says. "We had to conduct the analysis this way—comparing a single hookah session to a single cigarette—because that's the way the underlying studies tend to report findings. So, the estimates we found cannot tell us exactly what is 'worse.' But what they do suggest is that hookah smokers are exposed to a lot more toxicants than they probably realize. After we have more fine-grained data about usage frequencies and patterns, we will be able to combine those data with these findings and get a better sense of relative overall toxicant load."

The findings may be helpful in providing estimates for various official purposes.

Phoenix666: Has hookah smoking become a thing? takyon: Yes. Hookah Use Among US High School Seniors (DOI: 10.1542/peds.2014-0538)

The research is entitled "Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Inhaled Toxicants from Waterpipe and Cigarette Smoking".

Original Submission

Two Soylentils submitted stories auguring improved efficiency of incandescent light bulbs:

Incandescent Bulbs Improved by Nanotechnology

dublet writes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35284112

Tailoring high-temperature radiation and the resurrection of the incandescent source (paywalled, DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2015.309)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The New York based activist investor Clinton Group is on a roll this week. First, they have steered former 3M magnetic/optical media spinoff Imation into selling its Oakdale, Minnesota headquarters for $11.5 million, along with selling the Memorex trademark for $9.4 million. Additionally, Clinton Group has set up a "Strategic Alternatives Committee" within Imation, a committee which "has been tasked with examining opportunities to deploy Imation's excess cash and developing initiatives for strategic value creation."

Meanwhile, Clinton Group has also been hounding flash storage vendor Violin, threatening to recommend candidates for the Board of Directors, and this week, they have announced their candidates: two "turnaround specialists" from the storage industry (Ralph Schmitt, who sold OCZ to Toshiba, and Michael Wall, who sold Amplidata to Western Digital), and Alex Spiro, who is "an attorney at Brafman and Associates, faculty member of Harvard Law School, and member of the board of directors of Imation." Later on January 11, Violin CEO Kevin DeNuccio issued a statement to counter the board candidates, asserting that "Violin's management team and board collectively own six percent of the company," and "Our Board of Directors currently consist of 6 current or former CEO/COOs and senior executives from storage industry legacy leaders." Since both sides have fired shots, we now have a proxy war, and with Violin's financial history, this likely won't end with a Dell-esque billion-dollar savior swooping in to save the day. Violin's stock opened at $7.41 in IPO in September 2013 (after an offer price of $9), but stands at an all-time low of $0.73 today.

Editor's Note: The Clinton Group is a New York hedge fund that claims to manage $1.5 billion in assets, and is unrelated to the former U.S. President or Presidential candidate. The Presidential Clintons do have a connection to the Eaglevale Partners hedge fund.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A team of University of Oregon scientists is home after a month-long cruise in the eastern Mediterranean, but this was no vacation. The focus was the plumbing system of magma underneath the island of Santorini, formed by the largest supervolcanic eruption in the past 10,000 years.

The expedition -- led by UO geologists Emilie Hooft and Doug Toomey under a National Science Foundation grant -- included British, Greek and U.S. researchers on board the U.S. Research Vessel Marcus G. Langseth. Five UO graduate students and one undergraduate student were on board, and another UO graduate student helped install seismometers on the nearby island of Anafi.

Data collected with seismometers will now be analyzed using large parallel computers to build maps and understand the structure of the magma plumbing system that lies 10 to 20 kilometers, or six to 12 miles, under the seafloor. Little is known about magmatic systems at deep depths.

"The goal is to understand the deep roots, or magma plumbing system, of an arc volcano," Hooft said. "We have some idea of how shallow magma bodies are shaped, but the magmatic system that lies in the deep crust remains poorly understood and difficult to study. It is in this region that magmas from the mantle undergo chemical processes to form the rock compositions that presumably dominate the continental lower crust."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A year after CEO Ginni Rometty announced a sweeping reorganization at IBM, three top executives have left, including Steve Mills, the IBM lifer who had led the Software Group since 2000. Mills played a major role in IBM's acquisition of dozens of companies while building up the company's portfolio of server middleware and data center management software; starting in 2007, he led the company's move into the now-crowded fields of cloud computing and analytics.

Also departing are Danny Sabbah, CTO for cloud computing; and Brendan Hannigan, GM of IBM's security group. Mills and Sabbah are both well into their sixties and may well retire, but Hannigan is younger.

IT Jungle (a neat little site that specializes in the business of IBM and other big iron vendors) notes that the Mills' old Software Group is now basically gone, its pieces shifted into the IBM Systems group and the Cloud group, or into vertical industry stacks such as IBM Healthcare. Mills has spent the past year as the Executive VP nominally in charge of all of IBM's various software assets, an impressive title to be sure; but that reminded me of John Z. Delorean reminiscing not so fondly of his final, brass ring job as Group VP at General Motors.

Original Submission