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gman003 writes:

Main link: Skylake Overclocking: Regular CPU BCLK overclocking is being removed

Intel has, for many years now, disabled overclocking on all but a select few, highly-priced CPUs, by fixing the maximum clock multiplier. (A practice not limited to Intel, as AMD has also done so on some series). The base clock was technically modifiable, but since it drove not just the CPU, but also RAM and PCIe clocks, you were lucky to get even a few megahertz out of it.

With their newest generation of chips, codenamed "Skylake", the PCIe domain is on a separate clock generator. While Intel officially only supported overclocking on their designated CPUs, and only on their highest-end chipset, SuperMicro, ASRock, and several other motherboard vendors produced motherboards using low-end chipsets that allowed base clock overclocking on any processor. Since this could allow extremely cheap systems to be performance-competitive with much higher-cost systems, albeit with higher cooling requirements and greater risk of failure, Intel was obviously upset.

The story is still developing (no parties have yet been willing to talk on the record, least of all Intel), but the latest BIOS update for several ASRock motherboards includes a firmware update and disabling the BCLK overclocking (the two are believed to be connected - the latest firmware prevents BCLK modification). Additionally, all marketing surrounding this unofficial-official overclocking support has been pulled. SuperMicro and other vendors have not yet done so, but unnamed sources are indicating that they will.

While it may be tempting to put the blame solely on Intel, this was clearly not a feature they intended to support, and the motherboard vendors should have been more cautious about making a feature out of bypassing a limitation on the CPUs, regardless of whether it was an artificial limitation or not. That said, I for one hope AMD's next line of CPUs is both fully competitive with Intel, and fully overclockable across the entire range. Maybe that is what is needed to force Intel to compete on price/performance again.

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Anonymous Coward writes:

French data protection regulator CNIL, has flagged Facebook with a formal notice to comply with European data privacy laws within the next three months, or face possible sanctions. Facebook is said to now be reviewing the CNIL's demands. The CNIL has argued that the social network is violating multiple data protection laws, including the collection of non-member browsing activities. It also added that the platform is gathering data regarding the sexual orientation, religious and political preferences 'without the explicit consent of account holders.' It noted too that Facebook does not notify users at sign-up of their rights concerning their personal data. The CNIL further accused Facebook of setting advertising cookies 'without properly informing and obtaining the consent of internet users.'

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GungnirSniper writes:

The LA Times reports despite having a cell phone that was owned by one of the two San Bernardino terrorist attackers, the FBI has been unable to decrypt the device. The head of the FBI James B. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that after more than two months FBI technicians were unable to read the data. The brand and OS of the device has not been released.

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takyon writes:

Nothing to see here, just a galaxy or three... hundred:

Hundreds of hidden nearby galaxies have been studied for the first time, shedding light on a mysterious gravitational anomaly dubbed the Great Attractor. Despite being just 250 million light-years from Earth — very close in astronomical terms — the new galaxies had been hidden from view until now by our Milky Way Galaxy.

Using CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope equipped with an innovative receiver, an international team of scientists was able to see through the stars and dust of the Milky Way into a previously unexplored region of space. The discovery may help to explain the Great Attractor region, which appears to be drawing the Milky Way and hundreds of thousands of other galaxies towards it with a gravitational force equivalent to a million billion Suns.

Lister Staveley-Smith, from The University of Western Australia node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research, said the team found 883 galaxies, a third of which had never been seen before. "The Milky Way is very beautiful of course, and it's very interesting to study our own galaxy, but it completely blocks out the view of the more distant galaxies behind it," he said.

Statement at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, and another article at Space.com.

The Parkes HI Zone of Avoidance Survey (DOI 10.3847/0004-6256/151/3/52): article is also available here.

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takyon writes:

Portions of the U.S. government appear to have been hacked once again:

US authorities have acknowledged a data breach affecting the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security - but downplayed its severity. A hacker, or hacking group, published via Twitter what they said were records of 9,000 DHS employees.

According to technology news site Motherboard, the hacker has said he will soon share the personal information of 20,000 DoJ employees, including staff at the FBI. The news site said it had verified small portions of the breach, but also noted that some of the details listed appeared to be incorrect or possibly outdated.

In a statement, the DHS told journalists: "We take these reports very seriously, however there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive or personally identifiable information." The Department of Justice also downplayed the breach's significance.

The hacker is understood to have used simple human engineering to bypass one stage of the authorities' security systems.

Motherboard quoted the hacker, who explained: "So I called up, told them I was new and I didn't understand how to get past [the portal]. They asked if I had a token code, I said no, they said that's fine - just use our one."

The hackers claims to have downloaded 200 gigabytes of data, which have not been released yet.

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takyon writes:

Leon Bellan and his colleagues have repurposed cotton candy machines to help create capillary systems for lab-grown organs:

Cotton candy machines may hold the key for making life-sized artificial livers, kidneys, bones and other essential organs. For several years, Leon Bellan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University, has been tinkering with cotton candy machines, getting them to spin out networks of tiny threads comparable in size, density and complexity to the patterns formed by capillaries – the tiny, thin-walled vessels that deliver oxygen and nutrients to cells and carry away waste. His goal has been to make fiber networks that can be used as templates to produce the capillary systems required to create full-scale artificial organs."

In an article published online on Feb. 4 by the Advanced Healthcare Materials journal, Bellan and colleagues report that they have succeeded in using this unorthodox technique to produce a three-dimensional artificial capillary system that can keep living cells viable and functional for more than a week, which is a dramatic improvement over current methods.

"Some people in the field think this approach is a little crazy," said Bellan, "But now we've shown we can use this simple technique to make microfluidic networks that mimic the three-dimensional capillary system in the human body in a cell-friendly fashion. Generally, it's not that difficult to make two-dimensional networks, but adding the third dimension is much harder; with this approach, we can make our system as three-dimensional as we like."

[...] Bellan is using a top-down approach. He reports that his cotton-candy spinning method can produce channels ranging from three to 55 microns, with a mean diameter of 35 microns. "So far the other top-down approaches have only managed to create networks with microchannels larger than 100 microns, about ten times the size of capillaries," he said. In addition, many of these other techniques are not able to form networks as complex as the cotton candy approach.

Development of 3D Microvascular Networks Within Gelatin Hydrogels Using Thermoresponsive Sacrificial Microfibers (DOI: 10.1002/adhm.201500792)

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takyon writes:

Requirements by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for states to reduce power plant emissions have been put on hold by the Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Obama administration's effort to combat climate change by regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants. The brief order was not the last word on the case, which is most likely to return to the Supreme Court after an appeals court considers an expedited challenge from 29 states and dozens of corporations and industry groups.

But the Supreme Court's willingness to issue a stay while the case proceeds was an early hint that the program could face a skeptical reception from the justices. The vote was 5 to 4.

The challenged regulation, which was issued last summer by the Environmental Protection Agency, requires states to make major cuts to greenhouse gas pollution created by electric power plants, the nation's largest source of such emissions. The plan could transform the nation's electricity system, cutting emissions from existing power plants by a third by 2030, from a 2005 baseline, by closing hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired plants and increasing production of wind and solar power. [...] The regulation calls for states to submit plans to comply with the regulation by September, though they may seek a two-year extension. The first deadline for power plants to reduce their emissions is in 2022, with full compliance not required until 2030.

Also at NPR, Nature, Bloomberg, BBC.

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Phoenix666 writes:

For the first time, investigators in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have determined how antiretroviral therapy (ART) affects the way HIV disseminates and establishes infection in the female reproductive tract. These observations have significant implications for future HIV prevention, vaccine and cure studies. A recent HIV prevention clinical trial demonstrated 93 percent protection against secondary heterosexual transmission when infected partners received early ART. Vaginal transmission accounts for the majority of new HIV infections worldwide. Globally, 35 million people are living with HIV and 2.1 million are newly infected each year. These findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

"Surprisingly, it does not matter how a woman is exposed to HIV -- vaginally, rectally, etc. -- the virus goes very quickly to the female reproductive tract," said J. Victor Garcia, PhD, study co-author, and a professor of medicine in the Center for AIDS Research, the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, and the Division of Infectious Diseases at UNC. "Your body's CD4 T cells, which are the cells HIV infects, also migrate to the female reproductive tract shortly after exposure. It is like putting more kindling on a smoldering fire."

Using humanized mouse models, Garcia and his team also noticed that CD8 T cells, the cells in the body that fight infection, are delayed in getting to the female reproductive tract. This delay allows HIV to establish itself not only in the female reproductive tract, but also in cervicovaginal secretions.

"Your CD8 T cells, which are supposed to protect you, are not arriving in the female reproductive tract in time," said Garcia. "When we think about potential vaccines against HIV, this is important information to have."

The original study (DOI: 10.1172/JCI64212) is available for free from The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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takyon writes:

The recently-launched North Korean satellite was reported to have been "tumbling in orbit", however the satellite's orbit has reportedly stabilized:

A satellite launched by North Korea at the weekend has now stabilized in its orbit around the Earth in a step forward from a launch in 2012, a U.S. official and a second source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. However, the satellite is not believed to be transmitting any data back to Earth, the second source said.

The satellite was initially tumbling in orbit but has now stabilized, making it more successful than a launch in 2012, which failed to achieve a stable orbit, said the first source, a U.S. official who did not want to be identified by name. "It's in a stable orbit now. They got the tumbling under control," the official said.

Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman with the U.S. Strategic Command, said the satellite had been in roughly the same orbit since its launch on Sunday. "If we see a dramatic change in altitude that could mean (the orbit) is going to decay," he said.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has warned that North Korea will soon have enough plutonium to build additional nuclear weapons following a resumption of reactor operations back in September.

Previously:
North Korea Reportedly Detonates Hydrogen Bomb, Following Submarine Missile Test
The Hunt for Secret Nuclear Tests Digs Up Scientific Gold

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Phoenix666 writes:

Schedlowski is steadfastly optimistic that the benefits of conditioning are too great to ignore. "Ten years ago, nobody believed us," he says. "Now, journals are much more open-minded to this kind of approach." He believes that within a decade or two we'll see a revolution in which learning regimes will become a routine component of drug treatment for a wide range of conditions. Drug companies might not see the advantages now, but in future, he argues, they could use the reduced side-effects of lower doses as a selling point.

For now, though, there's a long way to go before the potential for conditioned immune responses is widely accepted, let alone used in the clinic. It's hard enough for people to entertain the idea of using placebos to treat pain, or psychiatric disorders, and using them to influence immune responses sounds even crazier.

Brain–immune interactions are a "blind spot" for immunologists, admits Ferguson, with funding and interest for this type of work practically non-existent. Researchers are "vaguely" aware that the two systems communicate, he says, "but there's this traditionality whereby people describe the immune system as everything going on from the neck downwards, and the central nervous system is everything from the neck upwards, and the two things haven't been linked very much."

Pavlov won a Nobel Prize for showing that the digestive system, previously thought to function independently, is in fact tightly controlled by the brain. Despite showing that the same is true for the immune system, Ader and Felten are barely known, even among immunologists. Schedlowski, supported by the DFG (the German Research Foundation), leads one of the only teams researching conditioned immune responses. "I like to say we're the best in the world," he jokes. "Because there is nobody else!"

The article's worth reading in full. It covers scientists who are trying to harness the placebo effect to reduce the dosages of drugs with toxic side effects for patients with serious diseases like lupus.

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takyon writes:

The Crypto War continues with U.S. Senator from Arizona John McCain calling for a ban on any encryption that can't be decrypted by government request:

McCain called for new legislation that would not regulate a backdoor into technology services, but instead would prevent companies from adopting end-to-end encryption. Companies would have to always keep the key that would decrypt the users' data anytime the government requests it.

This could stifle some innovations, not just in messaging platforms, but also in industries such as healthcare, where new technologies have appeared that would either allow patients to be the only ones that can decrypt their medical records, or it would allow companies to encrypt the data in a way that they could still use the data in aggregate, but they wouldn't be able to look at individual records.

Such systems could ensure that the data is essentially unhackable. This type of technology could prevent many of the large data breaches we've seen over the past two years, where hundreds of millions of people had their information stolen.

Senator McCain dismissed this as a concern, and actually seems to believe that such encryption is harmful to security, not helpful:

"We have to encourage companies and individuals who rely on encryption to recognize that our security is threatened, not encouraged, by technologies that place vital information outside the reach of law enforcement. Developing technologies that aid terrorists like Islamic State is not only harmful to our security, but it is ultimately an unwise business model."

The Senator didn't explain why exactly strong encryption would be an "unwise" business model for companies. So far, strong encryption seems to have worked quite well for companies such as Apple, who have pushed forward on the technology despite calls from FBI's chief, James Comey, to remove that type of encryption from iPhones and iPads.

Senator McCain also warned that we shouldn't allow "safe spaces" for terrorists online. This is a message that has also been mirrored by Comey, as well as the UK's Home Secretary, Theresa May, who has been promoting the Investigatory Powers bill that tries to force companies to "remove encryption" when asked by the government.

Previously:
California Lawmaker Tries Hand at Banning Encryption
Theresa May's Internet Spy Powers Bill 'Confusing', Say MPs

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A group in Washington is promoting an initiative to reduce gun crime by using laser-etched bullets to track shooters. According to their website, the data will only be used for legitimate investigations (no datamining) and secured with "recursive verification" features (sounds like a blockchain). Washington state already requires ammunition purchasers to produce valid ID when making purchases. Googling reveals that previous efforts by state legislatures to enact similar legislation have been torpedoed by the gun lobby. Initiatives are not subject to lobbying, so it should be interesting to see how the opposition tackles this campaign.

http://dosomethingwa.org
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-ammunition-idUSBRE90J02K20130120
http://igg.me/at/dosomethingwa

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takyon writes:

Researchers at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich have created an optical switch (modulator) orders of magnitude smaller than those currently in use:

Six months ago, a working group led by Jürg Leuthold, Professor of Photonics and Communications already succeeded in proving that the technology could be made smaller and more energy-efficient. As part of that work, the researchers presented a micromodulator measuring just 10 micrometres across – or 10,000 times smaller than modulators in commercial use (see ETH News).

Leuthold and his colleagues have now taken this to the next level by developing the world's smallest optical modulator. And this is probably as small as it can get: the component operates at the level of individual atoms. The footprint has therefore been further reduced by a factor of 1,000 if you include the switch together with the light guides. However, the switch itself is even smaller, with a size measured on the atomic scale. The team's latest development was recently presented in the journal Nano Letters.

In fact, the modulator is significantly smaller than the wavelength of light used in the system. In telecommunications, optical signals are transmitted using laser light with a wavelength of 1.55 micrometres. Normally, an optical device can not be smaller than the wavelength it should process. "Until recently, even I thought it was impossible for us to undercut this limit," stresses Leuthold.

Atomic Scale Plasmonic Switch (DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b04537)

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Robotron writes:

Portentous changes to the work economies of India and the USA due to job automation by machines and robots continue to make headlines. Varieties of hardware and software automation are seeing implementation burgeon in both countries, as companies seek efficiency by replacing humans with machines. Wage erosion in areas previously unaffected by automation - including varieties of programming - is getting commoner while new, albeit highly specialized, engineering jobs are created. Both articles encourage educational changes mindful of these realities, though how colleges either side of the world can adapt to the blistering pace of automation is unclear.

The latest tranche of job automation news comes hot on the heels of Davos' prediction that machine automation will result in a net loss globally of over 5 million jobs prior to 2020.

Original Submission

Anonymous Coward writes:

Twitter has announced a new trust and safety council to stamp out bullying and trolling on the microblogging site. The Twitter Trust & Safety Council will initially be formed of around 40 bodies, including the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, ICT Watch, NetSafe, and Samaritans. These organisations, along with safety experts, academics and security researchers, will work to ensure a safe and secure platform for users to express themselves freely and safely. The Council's main focus will be to protect minors, encourage 'greater compassion and empathy on the internet,' and promote efforts in media literacy and digital citizenship. Community groups will also participate to help prevent online 'abuse, harassment, and bullying,' as well as mental health problems and suicide.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

When would-be terrorists go to Google to find violent propaganda or information about bomb-making, they may instead find a counter-narrative of moderation and non-aggression.

A new Google program outlined at a committee hearing in the British Parliament aims to counteract extremist material online by increasing the visibility of anti-radical organizations in search results.

"When people put potentially damaging search terms into our search engine they [will] also find these counter narratives," Anthony House, Google's Head of Policy Strategy for the EU, told members of Parliament.

The pilot program would give up to $10,000 per month in advertising credits to non-governmental organizations that promote anti-radicalization. It would be a part of the existing Google AdWords Grants program, which gives credit to charities to help promote their mission and recruit volunteers. The credits will allow organizations fighting radicalization to purchase ad placement at the top of Google search results pages, making their message the first one people see when they search for terms related to terrorism or violent extremism.

Returning gentle results for aggressive search terms could spawn a whole new internet meme. Search terms: "Best practices decapitate infidels." Search results: "Wouldn't you rather buy this aroma therapy kit?"

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MrPlow writes (Submitted via IRC for qkontinuum):

Source: http://www.newnownext.com/michigan-senate-passes-bill-making-anal-sex-punishable-by-15-years-in-prison/02/2016/

The Michigan Senate just passed a bill that makes sodomy a felony, despite the U.S. Supreme Court declaring such a law unconstitutional. The state's law, which makes anal sex punishable by up to 15 years in prison, is not specifically targeted at gay people, as it's illegal regardless of whether a couple is same-sex or different-sex. Instead, the sodomy ban is directly linked to a law against bestiality, essentially saying the two are equal.

The law states that it is a felony for anyone to commit "the abominable and detestable crime against nature with mankind or with any animal." It's the "with mankind" wording that creates the loophole to keep the sodomy ban intact, even though the 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas declared it unconstitutional.

Now that the bill has passed through the Senate, it is headed to the House for approval, which means there is still time to change the wording and keep "mankind" out of it entirely. But GOP Senator Rick Jones says an attempt like that could put the entire bill, created to protect animals, in jeopardy. "The minute I cross that line and I start talking about the other stuff, I won't even get another hearing. It'll be done," said Jones. "Nobody wants to touch it. I would rather not even bring up the topic, because I know what would happen. You'd get both sides screaming and you end up with a big fight that's not needed because it's unconstitutional."

Note: Contrary to the headline of the first article, the definition would include oral sex.

Also at Boing Boing, Mic.com, RT.

Senate Bill 0219 (2015)

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