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AndyTheAbsurd writes:

http://blog.timesunion.com/business/after-ny-oks-merger-time-warner-cable-raising-rates/72121/

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Phoenix666 writes:

It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognize emotions conveyed by vocal sounds—no matter if the sounds are growls of anger, peals of laughter, or cries of sadness.

Further, we pay more attention when an emotion is expressed through vocalizations than we do when the same emotion is expressed in speech.

The speed with which the brain "tags" vocal sounds and the preference given to them compared to language is due to the potentially crucial role that decoding vocal sounds has played in human survival, researchers say.

"The identification of emotional vocalizations depends on systems in the brain that are older in evolutionary terms," says Marc Pell, Director of the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at McGill University. "Understanding emotions expressed in spoken language, on the other hand, involves more recent brain systems that have evolved as human language developed."

[...] The researchers found that the participants were able to detect vocalizations of happiness (i.e., laughter) more quickly than vocal sounds conveying either anger or sadness. But, interestingly, they found that angry sounds and angry speech both produced ongoing brain activity that lasted longer than either of the other emotions, suggesting that the brain pays special attention to the importance of anger signals.

Preferential decoding of emotion from human non-linguistic vocalizations versus speech prosody (DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.08.008)

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takyon writes:

An off-duty New Jersey law enforcement officer picked up a political sign to replace one stolen from the yard of his elderly mother. Now, retaliation following that simple act has led to a case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court:

Heffernan promised he would get the sign, and while he was off-duty, he went to the challenger's campaign office; there the police officer was seen holding the sign and chatting with campaign workers. When he got back home, he says, "my phone rang, and I was told that I was ... being demoted and I was gonna go on a walking squad for 12 hours a day."

Heffernan says he tried in vain to explain that he was just picking up the sign for his bedridden mother, and that he was not active in the campaign, nor could he even vote in Paterson since he didn't live there. "They said to me that 'the mayor wants you out of the office; the mayor calls the shots, and you're out,' " he says. The police chief later admitted he simply assumed that since Heffernan was seen holding the sign, he supported the candidate running against the mayor.

For Heffernan, who eventually retired, the demotion was a huge blow. He made more money as a detective, he says, and working in the chief's office meant fewer hours, and weekends and holidays off — not to mention the pension consequences of being busted down to walking patrol.

He sued, contending his First Amendment rights were violated, and a jury awarded him a total of $105,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. But the trial judge subsequently recused himself, and the verdict was set aside. On a second go-round, the newly assigned judge threw the case out, declaring that since Heffernan was not in fact campaigning for the mayor's opponent, he was not exercising his right of free speech and association. Therefore, no constitutional right had been violated. A federal appeals court agreed, and Heffernan appealed to the Supreme Court, where his case is to be argued on Tuesday.

Heffernan's lawyer, Mark Frost, will argue, "You have the right to be involved or not be involved. That's part of your First Amendment right, and the fact that here they were mistaken as to what he was actually doing, doesn't matter." In evaluating retaliation cases, Frost says, courts should look at motive, and here the motive was to punish Heffernan's perceived speech.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Samsung has announced the mass production of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) packages using the second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) interface.

AMD was the first and only company to introduce products using HBM1. AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X GPUs featured 4 gigabytes of HBM1 using four 1 GB packages. Both AMD and Nvidia will introduce GPUs equipped with HBM2 memory this year. Samsung's first HBM2 packages will contain 4 GB of memory each, and the press release states that Samsung intends to manufacture 8 GB HBM2 packages within the year. GPUs could include 8 GB of HBM2 using half of the die space used by AMD's Fury X, or just one-quarter of the die space if 8 GB HBM2 packages are used next year. Correction: HBM2 packages may be slightly physically larger than HBM1 packages. For example, SK Hynix will produce a 7.75 mm × 11.87 mm (91.99 mm²) HBM2 package, compared to 5.48 mm × 7.29 mm (39.94 mm²) HBM1 packages.

The 4GB HBM2 package is created by stacking a buffer die at the bottom and four 8-gigabit (Gb) core dies on top. These are then vertically interconnected by TSV holes and microbumps. A single 8Gb HBM2 die contains over 5,000 TSV holes, which is more than 36 times that of a 8Gb TSV DDR4 die, offering a dramatic improvement in data transmission performance compared to typical wire-bonding based packages.

Samsung's new DRAM package features 256GBps of bandwidth, which is double that of a HBM1 DRAM package. This is equivalent to a more than seven-fold increase over the 36GBps bandwidth of a 4Gb GDDR5 DRAM chip, which has the fastest data speed per pin (9Gbps) among currently manufactured DRAM chips. Samsung's 4GB HBM2 also enables enhanced power efficiency by doubling the bandwidth per watt over a 4Gb-GDDR5-based solution, and embeds ECC (error-correcting code) functionality to offer high reliability.

TSV refers to through-silicon via, a vertical electrical connection used to build 3D chip packages such as High Bandwidth Memory.

Update: HBM2 has been formalized in JEDEC's JESD235A standard, and Anandtech has an article with additional technical details.

Previously:
AMD Teases x86 Improvements, High Bandwidth Memory GPUs
AMD Shares More Details on High Bandwidth Memory
Samsung Mass Produces 128 GB DDR4 Server Memory

Original Submission

Bobs writes:

"The star KIC 8462852 (aka 'Tabby's Star') got a lot of press late last year because it was acting funny. It was undergoing a series of apparently random dips in brightness. Some of these dips were serious, with the amount of starlight dropping a staggering 22 percent.

That's a lot. It couldn't be a planet passing in front of the star, because the dips weren't periodic, and the amount of starlight blocked is different every time. Plus, even a planet as big as Jupiter (which is about as big as planets can get) would block less than one percent of the star's light at best.

[...] That left some speculation about, um, aliens. While it's incredibly unlikely, it does kinda fit what we're seeing.

[...] But still, the star is weird. We just found out it's even weirder than we thought.

Bradley Schaefer is an astronomer at Lousiana State University... [who] found that Tabby's Star has been photographed over 1,200 times as part of a repeated all-sky survey between the years 1890 – 1989.

What he found is rather astonishing: The star has been fading in brightness over that period, dropping by about 20 percent!

That's... bizarre. Tabby's Star is, by all appearances, a normal F-type star: hotter, slightly more massive, and bigger than our Sun. These stars basically just sit there and steadily turn hydrogen into helium. There have been times where the star has dimmed quite a bit, then brightened up again in the following years. On average, the star is fading about 16 percent per century, but that's hardly steady.

So it appears Tabby's Star dims and brightens again on all kinds of timescales: hours, days, weeks, even decades and centuries.

Again. That's bizarre. Nothing like this has ever been seen."

Above excerpted from Article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/01/18/tabby_s_star_faded_substantially_over_past_century.html

They say it can't be caused by large dust cloud because they would see a known and detectable IR signature. So, aliens? Are they blinking at us in their 'morse code'? Building a hyperspace bypass? Got a better idea?

Schaefer's paper: KIC8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165±0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.03256v1.pdf

F-type stars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-type_main-sequence_star

Original about oddness in Oct 2015: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/10/14/weird_star_strange_dips_in_brightness_are_a_bit_baffling.html

FYI: The dimming is not caused by rapid rotation of star: https://twitter.com/Astro_Wright/status/689163586749333504

Original Submission

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/linux-bug-imperils-tens-of-millions-of-pcs-servers-and-android-phones/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

MI5 has been named the UK's most gay-friendly employer, according to a survey by Stonewall. The runners-up were Lloyds Banking Group, National Assembly for Wales, B3Living, and Pinsent Masons:

The security service MI5 has been named as the UK's most gay-friendly employer, following a survey by a leading gay rights charity. It beat some 400 organisations to top Stonewall's 2016 list of best employers for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) staff. The survey assessed staff engagement, career development and other factors.

MI5 director general Andrew Parker said it was "a great acknowledgement of the continued progress we have made". Stonewall said MI5 had demonstrated its equality in 10 areas of employment policy and practice, including networking groups, training and community engagement. More than 60,000 staff from across the 400 organisations also took part in an anonymous survey about their employers' attitudes.

MI5's Mr Parker said: "Diversity is vital for MI5, not just because it's right that we represent the communities we serve, but because we rely on the skills of the most talented people whoever they are, and wherever they may be."

PDF of the Stonewall Top 100 Employers report.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A company that creates genetically-modified mosquitoes will open a new factory in Brazil as it expands operations:

Small-scale studies in parts of Brazil, Panama and the Cayman Islands suggest engineered sterile mosquitoes can reduce wild insect populations by more than 90% when released into the wild. Intrexon said the facility in Piraciciba, São Paulo, will be able to protect 300,000 people.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carry three viruses - Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya.

The studies were carried out by the only company currently trialling GM insects, Oxitec, based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Oxitec, which was spun out from the University of Oxford, was bought by US company Intrexon for $160m (£106m) in August last year. Oxitec CEO Hadyn Parry said: "As the principal source for the fastest growing vector-borne infection in the world in Dengue fever, as well as the increasingly challenging Zika virus, controlling the Aedes aegypti population provides the best defence against these serious diseases for which there are no cures."

Also at The Guardian.

Related: CDC issues interim travel guidance related to Zika virus for 14 Countries and Territories in Central and South America and the Caribbean

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers are testing a way to control a single microbot that operates as part of a group. The robots are too small for batteries, so instead magnetic fields allow them to move independently while collaborating with a team.

The robots tested are magnetic disks about 2 millimeters in diameter—about twice the size of a pinhead—that slide across a surface. The goal is to create microbots that are around 250 microns in diameter, or roughly the size of a dust mite.

"The reason we want independent movement of each robot is so they can do cooperative manipulation tasks," says David Cappelleri, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. "Think of ants. They can independently move, yet all work together to perform tasks such as lifting and moving things.

"We want to be able to control them individually so we can have some robots here doing one thing, and some robots there doing something else at the same time."

Original study (open, DOI: 10.3390/mi7010003).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Russian President Vladimir Putin's key Internet adviser owns a torrent site serving pirated content and isn't afraid to admit it:

The man appointed last week as Vladimir Putin's key adviser on Internet related affairs recommended that copyright holders should stop being so demanding on piracy until the local economic situation improves. Surprisingly, it now transpires that Herman Klimenko has a secret life as the owner of a torrent site offering pirate content.

As chairman of The Institute for Development of the Internet, Herman Klimenko already had a prominent role in Internet related affairs. But when Russian president Vladimir Putin eyed the 49-year-old to become his personal adviser on the Internet, Klimenko really struck gold.

Last week Putin signed a decree that officially enlisted Klimenko and it didn't take long for him to address the issue of Internet piracy. However, instead of tough talk, Klimenko criticized web-blocking and suggested that copyright holders should wait for a better economic situation before "terrorizing" on the issue of piracy.

"Consumption of copyright content increases with economic growth, and when the situation is very serious, I think people do not have to unnecessarily terrorize these issues," Putin's adviser said. "Pushing hard now on this topic, I think, is not worth it. When the economy improves, you should return to this issue."

While Klimenko's comments at least in part sound reasonable, copyright holders would've been disappointed by his lack of support. What they will be even more disappointed over is the allegations now surfacing about Klimenko's links to online piracy. Sources close to Russia's Vedomosti have informed the publication that Klimenko is the owner of Torrnado.ru, a locally operated torrent site. As can be seen from the image below the site has a familiar feel and unless hell has frozen over the studios behind Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Terminator Genesis aren't in agreement with their content appearing for free.

The end of the article includes Klimenko's interesting reactions to this news as well as criticisms of Russian Internet policies.

Original Submission

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/amazon-prime-air-drones-to-carry-5lb-packages-over-10-miles-in-30-minutes/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Court of Appeal in London has ruled David Miranda's detention at Heathrow Airport lawful, but has delivered Miranda a partial victory by ruling that the Terrorism Act violates the rights of the free press:

The police detention of the partner of a former Guardian journalist at Heathrow Airport in 2013 was lawful, the Court of Appeal has decided.

David Miranda was carrying material from whistleblower Edward Snowden about security services' surveillance. He argued the stop had been a disproportionate use of anti-terrorism powers and breached human rights law. Judges did not agree with his claim, but did say existing laws did not offer enough safeguards for reporters.

They said the use of legislation under the Terrorism Act 2000 at ports and airports, "in respect of journalistic information or material", is incompatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights - freedom of expression - and should be examined by Parliament.

The Intercept's coverage of this story was written by Ryan Gallagher (rather than Glenn Greenwald). It emphasizes that the Terrorism Act has been found to be incompatible with press rights:

The ruling finds that the police followed the law when detaining Miranda under a controversial section of the Terrorism Act, Schedule 7. However, crucially, it asserts that the statute itself "is not subject to adequate safeguards against its arbitrary exercise" and is "incompatible" with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides the right to "receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

The Court of Appeal's most senior judge, Lord Dyson MR, stated in the ruling that he accepted there were already some "constraints on the exercise of the power" but he believed that these "do not afford effective protection of journalists' Article 10 rights."

[...] Responding to the news Tuesday, Miranda tweeted that he was "Thrilled with the court ruling!" He added: "My purpose was to show U.K.'s terrorism law violates press freedoms. And journalism isn't 'terrorism.' We won!"

The British government could attempt to launch a challenge against the court of appeal's ruling with the U.K.'s supreme court. However, it was not immediately clear whether it intends to pursue the case further.

Previously: David Miranda Appeals Heathrow Detention Decision

Original Submission

VanderDecken writes:

The Register reports that Advantech EKI series of Modbus-to-TCP gateways have been shipping with a modified SSH daemon that will accept any username and password for authentication. The devices, which are commonly used in SCADA applications for connecting remote devices to supervisory computers, were previously reported for other vulnerabilities Shellshock and Heartbleed.

In addition to the above problem, a hardcoded debugging username/password was also apparently left in the firmware and active.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes with a report from Aalto University in Finland:

The very first experimental observations of knots in quantum matter have just been reported in Nature Physics by scientists at Aalto University (Finland) and Amherst College (USA). The scientists created knotted solitary waves, or knot solitons, in the quantum-mechanical field describing a gas of superfluid atoms, also known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.

In contrast to knotted ropes, the created quantum knots exist in a field that assumes a certain direction at every point of space. The field segregates into an infinite number of linked rings, each with its own field direction. The resulting structure is topologically stable as it cannot be separated without breaking the rings. In other words, one cannot untie the knot within the superfluid unless one destroys the state of the quantum matter.

- To make this discovery we exposed a Rubidium condensate to rapid changes of a specifically tailored magnetic field, tying the knot in less than a thousandth of a second. After we learned how to tie the first quantum knot, we have become rather good at it. Thus far, we have tied several hundred such knots, says Professor David Hall, Amherst College.

The scientists tied the knot by squeezing the structure into the condensate from its outskirts. This required them to initialize the quantum field to point in a particular direction, after which they suddenly changed the applied magnetic field to bring an isolated null point, at which the magnetic field vanishes, into the center of the cloud. Then they just waited for less than a millisecond for the magnetic field to do its trick and tie the knot.

The knot only stays tied if you don't look at it.

Tying quantum knots (DOI: 10.1038/nphys3624)

Original Submission

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/fcc-had-productive-net-neutrality-talks-with-comcast-att-t-mobile/

Original Submission