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MrPlow writes with a story submitted via IRC for takyon:

​Ever since the Concorde was put out to pasture, supersonic travel has remained out of reach for commercial air passengers. And while SpaceX and Blue Origin are showing re-usable rocket boosters are possible, actually putting anything in orbit still remains a very, very expensive proposition.

But all that could change, thanks to a small team of engineers in Huntsville, Alabama, who have revealed a vision for a new type of engine that combines the speed of rockets with the gas mileage of jets in a single package. Led by aerospace and mechanical engineer John Bossard at BSRD LLC, the team has built and tested a rocket engine of Bossard's design that he calls a "turborocket."

The engine does away with the separate turbopump, combustion chamber, and nozzle of a conventional pump-fed, liquid-fuel rocket engine. Instead, all three are combined in a single structure that Bossard says makes the engine both simpler and more compact. It is the compact nature of the design that Bossard says ideally suits it for so-called combined cycle engines—that is engines that can be toggled between multiple modes of operation.

Bossard's combined cycle design, which incorporates a turborocket and a turbojet, and which he calls the RTR turborocket or just RTR, could allow an aircraft to take off as a jet and switch to rocket power to fly faster than a jet could alone—and potentially right out of the atmosphere. "Simple also means lightweight, and we think the RTR could have an excellent thrust-to-weight ratio," says Bossard. "Maybe really excellent."

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a19229/how-a-new-engine-could-revolutionize-air-and-space-travel/

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

There's an article on The Spectator about the impact and causes of unreliable public health advice from the government using the example of recent UK advice on alcohol consumption.

Therefore in order to trust this latest piece of health advice from our Chief Medical Officer, we must believe not only that every previous Chief Medical Officer got it wrong but that every other country in the world has got it wrong. That requires a degree of patriotism that I am unable to summon up, particularly since the current advice bears no relationship whatsoever to the scientific evidence.

This is part of an article which discusses a recent debate on the subject run by The Spectator and the Institute of Economic Affairs (EIA).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Very few carbon-based lifeforms are inhabiting the United Arab Emirates' revolutionary yet unrealized zero-carbon city:

Years from now passing travellers may marvel at the grandeur and the folly of the futuristic landscape on the edges of Abu Dhabi: the barely occupied office block, the deserted streets, the vast tracts of undeveloped land and – most of all – the abandoned dream of a zero-carbon city. Masdar City, when it was first conceived a decade ago, was intended to revolutionise thinking about cities and the built environment.

Now the world's first planned sustainable city – the marquee project of the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) plan to diversify the economy from fossil fuels - could well be the world's first green ghost town. As of this year - when Masdar was originally scheduled for completion - managers have given up on the original goal of building the world's first planned zero-carbon city.

Masdar City is nowhere close to zeroing out its greenhouse gas emissions now, even at a fraction of its planned footprint. And it will not reach that goal even if the development ever gets fully built, the authorities admitted. "We are not going to try to shoehorn renewable energy into the city just to justify a definition created within a boundary," said Chris Wan, the design manager for Masdar City. "As of today, it's not a net zero future," he said. "It's about 50%."

When Masdar City began, in 2006, the project was touted as a model for a green mixed-use urban landscape: a global hub for the cleantech industry, with 50,000 residents and 40,000 commuters. Foster + Partners designed a car-free city scape, with Jetson-style driverless electric cars shuttling passengers between buildings incorporating built-in shades and kitted out with smart technologies to resist the scorching desert heat, and keep cooling costs down. Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's state-owned investment company, pledged financial support to the estimated $22bn experiment in urban design.

Ten years on, however, only a fraction of the town has been built - less than 5% of the original six square km "greenprint", as Wan called it. The completion date has been pushed back to 2030. [...] The pioneering autonomous transport system - which was originally supposed to stretch to 100 stations - was scrapped after the first two stops. There is a bike-sharing station – though it's a good 10 miles away from Abu Dhabi, and there are no bike paths. [...] [Chris Wan] maintained it was important to look at Masdar City within the context of the other renewable energy holdings of the parent company. Among Mubadala's other holdings, Masdar Clean Energy is developing the Shams solar farm.

Some more background on Masdar City (مدينة مصدر).

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

It's a slow news day so far, so it's time to talk about user to user messaging. There are two main questions I see here that we need to answer as a community:

1. Do we even want user to user messaging?
2. Should we use the existing messaging system or fire up an xmpp server or what?

The first is pretty self-explanatory. I've heard arguments for both sides. Yeah, it's convenient but it could also cut down on comment participation if you can just message someone directly.

The second is a little more open. The pros for web-based messaging on the site are it will take almost zero work since we already have a system in place for sending messages. The cons include it could take up to five minutes for a message to be delivered (this can be tweaked but not really made instant) because we only process the message queue that often and not being able to use your instant messenger of choice. I know AJAX is likely to come up for this in particular but we'll be needing a proper AJAX dev before we go down that road.

For XMPP the cons include not being able to have spaces in names so we'd have to keep a mapping of usernames in the db and check that there are no nick collisions before allowing creation of that XMPP account. The pros being instant delivery plus you could use any XMPP-friendly instant messenger and do voice/video chat as well if you like.

I know we're going to get a lot of tangents going here but please do try to answer both questions as well.

takyon: How does IRC (which includes private messages) stack up against these options?

Original Submission

Arthur T. Knackerbracket writes in with this story from IT World:

Apple has requested a court in New York to rule finally whether it can be compelled to assist investigators to break the passcode of an iPhone 5s belonging to a defendant in a criminal case.

The Department of Justice, citing a statute called the All Writs Act, tried to get help from Apple to bypass the security of the phone in government possession.

Apple's lawyer said in a letter to U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York that the company would like an order as it has received additional requests similar to the one underlying the case before the court.

The company "has also been advised that the government intends to continue to invoke the All Writs Act in this and other districts in an attempt to require Apple to assist in bypassing the security of other Apple devices in the government's possession," wrote Apple's counsel Marc J. Zwillinger in a letter Friday.

[...]

Apple now also argues that the matter is not moot because "it is capable of repetition, yet evading review." The question of whether a third party like Apple can be compelled to assist law enforcement in its investigative efforts by bypassing the security mechanisms on its device has been fully briefed and argued, according to the letter. "The Court is thus already in a position to render a decision on that question," Apple said.

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

Scientists have created human-scale tissue using 3D-printing, cell-laden hydrogels, and biodegradable polymers:

Custom-made, living body parts have been 3D-printed in a significant advance for regenerative medicine, say scientists. The sections of bone, muscle and cartilage all functioned normally when implanted into animals.

The breakthrough, published in Nature Biotechnology [Abstract only.] [DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3413], raises the hope of using living tissues to repair the body. Experts described the technology, developed in the US, as a "goose that really does lay golden eggs". The idea of placing individual human cells in a precise pattern to replace a damaged jaw, missing ear or scarred heart muscle holds much promise.

[...] The team at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre developed a new technique that 3D-prints a tissue riddled with micro-channels, rather like a sponge, to allow nutrients to penetrate the tissue. The Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing System - or Itop - combines a bio-degradeable plastic which gives the structure and a water-based gel which contains the cells and encourages them to grow. When the structures were implanted into animals, the plastic broke down as it was replaced by a natural, structural "matrix" of proteins produced by the cells. Meanwhile, blood vessels and nerves grew into the implants.

Prof Anthony Atala, the lead researcher, said tissues could now be printed on a human scale. While the implants have the same strength as human tissues, the researchers are now waiting to see how durable they are.

[...] Similar techniques in which the biodegradable scaffolding is built first and then soaked in cells are already being used in patients. Women were given lab-grown vaginas at the Wake Forest centre two years ago, but the range of treatments is again limited by keeping the cells alive. Prof Atala added: "In this study we printed a wide range of tissue strengths - from muscles as a soft tissue to cartilage and bone as a hard tissue showing a whole range of tissue strengths is possible. "The hope is to continue work on these technologies to target other humans tissues as well." And ultimately they aim to print directly into a patient.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have discovered a complete flower of a previously unknown species fossilized in amber:

Biologists have described a new species of extinct plant, based on two fossil flowers that were trapped in chunks of amber for at least 15 million years. Strychnos electri belongs to the genus whose tropical shrubs, trees and vines are famous for producing the deadly toxin strychnine.

The US researchers named it after the Greek word for amber ("elektron") - the fossilised resin of long-dead trees. Their discovery appears in the journal Nature Plants [DOI: 10.1038/nplants.2016.5]. The two flowers were among 500 fossils collected on a 1986 field trip by Professor George Poinar of Oregon State University.

Also covered at Rutgers University.

Original Submission

Arthur T. Knackerbracket writes in with this tidbit from The Register:

GitHub has promised to pay better attention to the concerns of users.

In January, more than 1,100 project maintainers complained the popular code-host was ignoring them.

Now, GitHub's Brandon Keepers has taken the first tentative step to try and soothe the seething masses.

Here's his letter in full:

We hear you and we're sorry. We've been slow to respond to your letter and slow to respond to your frustrations.

We're working hard to fix this. Over the next few weeks we'll begin releasing a number of improvements to Issues, many of which will address the specific concerns raised in the letter. But we're not going to stop there. We'll continue to focus on Issues moving forward by adding new features, responding to feedback, and iterating on the core experience. We've also got a few surprises in store.

Issues haven't gotten much attention from GitHub these past few years and that was a mistake, but we've never stopped thinking about or caring about you and your communities. However, we know we haven't communicated that. So in addition to improving Issues, we're also going to kick off a few initiatives that will help give you more insight into what's on our radar. We want to make sharing feedback with GitHub less of a black box experience and we want to hear your ideas and concerns regularly.

We'll be in touch next week. Sorry it's taken so long, and thank you for everything.

—GitHub

The behaviour of Issues on GitHub was the first item on the insurrectionists' list.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Softpedia reports

A phone that is powered by Android and magically transforms into a Linux desktop when connected to an external display has been tried before. It was called Ubuntu for Android and it was one of Canonical's earliest attempts at some sort of convergence between the mobile and PC worlds.

It never succeeded and it was never launched. [The idea, however,] was working and they had a preliminary version of it in a sort of functional state. It's not clear why Canonical dropped the project but it probably had something to do with the hardware which wasn't all that powerful three or four years ago.

Maru is trying to do a similar thing. [...] [Now that] the team behind this project has better hardware, [....] it should work--at least in theory.

For the moment, Maru only works for Nexus 5 and it's in a closed beta. This means that if you subscribe, maybe you'll be given access. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the kind of project that can work on anything and support needs to be added to each individual phone model.

[From the project site [1]]

Maru Mobile is built on the latest Android Lollipop. It ships with zero bloatware, so your phone runs snappy and has lots of free space for all your apps. Maru Desktop brings you true multitasking and desktop productivity in a lightweight package.

[Update: Maru is being open sourced!]

[1] The site's content is behind scripts; the archive.is link bypasses it.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

An exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago brings together all three versions of Vincent van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles for only the second time since they were painted. One version of the painting is part of the museum's permanent collection, and the other two are on loan from the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Researchers at the Art Institute have also created a digital visualization of what the painting may have looked like before over 127 years of hue degradation:

The artist painted three versions of this famous scene, using broadly the same colour scheme. But time and light degradation have taken their toll on the pigments. Using a variety of techniques, the researchers have digitally restored the light blue walls and door to their original lilac and purple.

The computer visualisation is part of a major new exhibition at the The Art Institute of Chicago, which brings together all three versions for only the second time since van Gogh produced them. It is hoped visitors to the exhibition will get a deeper sense of the emotions the 19th Century artist was trying to convey in the works.

"Science is vital in identifying the pigments that have faded, but then there is a lot of interpretation that we rely on from conservators and art historians who really know the hand of the artist, and know how to dial that virtual knob more or less," explained Dr Francesca Casadio, Mellon Senior Conservation Scientist at the Chicago institute. "This is just a visualisation of what we think the faded colours looked like, but barring the invention of a time machine it will always still be an approximation." Dr Casadio was speaking here in Washington at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The exhibition is open through May 10, 2016.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Two teenagers have been arrested this week in connection to high-profile online crimes. First up is a hacker alleged to have accessed CIA Director John Brennan's AOL email account:

A 16-year-old Brit has been arrested for allegedly hacking the email account of CIA director John Brennan. The teenager is accused of hacking Brennan's personal email account and releasing some 40 sensitive documents that were contained within including a 47-page security clearance application for the director's current role. CNN reports the boy was arrested on counts of suspicion of conspiracy to commit unauthorised access to access[sic] computer material and was released on bail.

The hacker used public information on Brennan to con AOL into resetting the director's email account.

Vincent Lauton, the operator of an anonymous XMPP server that was allegedly used to make multiple school bomb threats in recent weeks, was arrested by French police:

[Continues.]

Arthur T. Knackerbracket writes in with this story from Ars Technica :

Hackers have siphoned about $103,000 out of Bitcoin accounts that were protected with an alternative security measure, according to research that tracked six years' worth of transactions. Account-holders used easy-to-remember passwords to protect their accounts instead of the long cryptographic keys normally required.

The heists were carried out against almost 900 accounts where the owners used passwords to generate the private encryption keys required to withdraw funds. In many cases, the vulnerable accounts were drained within minutes or seconds of going live. The electronic wallets were popularly known as "brain wallets" because, the thinking went, Bitcoin funds were stored in users' minds through memorization of a password rather than a 64-character private key that had to be written on paper or stored digitally. For years, brain wallets were promoted as a safer and more user-friendly way to secure Bitcoins and other digital currencies, although Gregory Maxwell, Gavin Andresen, and many other Bitcoin experts had long warned that they were a bad idea.

The security concerns were finally proven once and for all last August when Ryan Castellucci, a researcher with security firm White Ops, presented research at the Defcon hacker convention (pdf) that showed how easy it was to attack brain wallets at scale. Brain wallets used no cryptographic salt and passed plaintext passwords through a single hash iteration (in this case, the SHA256 function), a shortcoming that made it possible for attackers to crack large numbers of brain wallet passwords at once. Worse, a form of the insecurely hashed passwords are stored in the Bitcoin blockchain, providing all the material needed to compromise the accounts.

By contrast, Google, Facebook, and virtually all other security-conscious services protect passwords by storing them in cryptographic form that's been passed through a hash function, typically tens of thousands of times or more, a process known as key stretching that greatly increases the time and resources required by crackers. The services also use cryptographic salt, a measure that requires each hash to be processed separately to prevent the kind of mass cracking Castellucci did. Security-conscious services also go to great lengths to keep password hashes confidential, a secrecy that's not possible with Bitcoin because of the transparency provided by the blockchain.

According to a recently published research paper, the brain wallet vulnerability was known widely enough to have been regularly exploited by real attackers going after real accounts. Over a six-year span that ended last August, attackers used the cracking technique to drain 884 brain wallet accounts of 1,806 bitcoins. Based on the value of each coin at the time the theft took place, the value of the purloined coins was $103,000.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A CERN engineer has leaked a few details of an unreleased 32-core AMD "Zen" processor featuring support for 8 channels of DDR4 memory. The processor connects two 16-core CPUs with an on-die interconnect, and could be a replacement for older AMD Opteron chips and competitor to Intel's Xeon chips. Zen is the name of AMD's upcoming 14nm architecture:

AMD is long overdue for a major architecture update, though one is coming later this year. Featuring the codename "Zen," AMD's already provided a few details, such as that it will be built using a 14nm FinFET process technology and will have high core counts. In time, AMD will reveal all there is to know but Zen, but in the meantime, we now have a few additional details to share thanks to a computer engineer at CERN.

CERN engineer Liviu Valsan recently gave a presentation on technology and market trends for the data center. At around 2 minutes into the discussion, he brought up AMD's Zen architecture with a slide that contained some previously undisclosed details (along with a few things we already knew). One of the more interesting revelations was that upcoming x86 processors based on Zen will feature up to 32 physical cores.

Before you get too excited about the high core count, there are two things to note. The first is that AMD is employing a "bit of a trick," to use Valsan's words. To achieve a 32-core design, Valsan says AMD will use two 16-core CPUs on a single die with a next-generation interconnect, presumably one that would reduce or be void of bottlenecks.

The second thing to consider is that it's highly unlikely AMD would release a 32-core processor into the consumer market. Zen-based Opterons aren't out of the question—servers and workstations could take real advantage of the additional cores—but as far as FX processors go, it's more realistic to expect offerings to boast up to 8 cores, maybe even 16 at some point.

Previously: AMD's Upcoming "Zen" APU - 16 Cores, 32 Threads

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The U.S. Department of Defense is attempting to sell eight F-16s to Pakistan in a deal disputed by U.S. lawmakers as well as India:

On Friday evening, the United States decided to push ahead with the sale and delivery of eight U.S.-made F-16 Block-52 fighters to Pakistan in a deal valued at $699 million. The U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified U.S. lawmakers about the deal. The DSCA's approval comes days after Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed concern to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that the Obama administration should withhold such a deal due to concerns that Pakistan was insufficiently targeting militant groups hostile to the United States, specifically the Haqqani Network*. U.S. legislators have a 30 day period to review and potentially block the sale. Corker's hold on the funding could end the deal unless Pakistan manages to find an alternate way to finance the purchase.

"We support the proposed sale of eight F-16s to Pakistan, which we view as the right platform to in support of Pakistan's counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations," a DSCA official told Defense News . In addition to eight F-16 Block 52 fighters, the deal will include increased performance engines, advanced radars, electronic warfare equipment, and spare and repair parts. In its official notice, the DSCA noted that the "proposed sale contributes to U.S. foreign policy objectives and national security goals by helping to improve the security of a strategic partner in South Asia." Between 2002 and 2014, the United States sold $5.4 billion in defense equipment to Pakistan.

[...] Progress on this deal has thrust the U.S.-Pakistan relationship back into the limelight, highlighting concerns of Pakistan's complicated status as a U.S. ally. Additionally, the deal has drawn concern and criticism from the Indian government, which is increasingly partnering with the United States itself on defense cooperation. [...] New Delhi's concern is that the F-16 aircraft will be diverted away from counter-terrorism purposes and toward striking India in any future skirmish between the two countries. The DSCA, in its notification to Congress, assess that "The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region."

*The Haqqani network were the militants holding Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl captive. The group has close ties to Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI).

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The darknet is where you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. An article by Kaveh Waddell over at The Atlantic describes how you can not only access illegal drugs, weapons, and other nefarious materials, but this now includes scientific research papers. Following Elsevier's successful crackdown and dissolution of Sci-Hub, the site owner, Alexandra Elbakyan, has moved it to the darknet.

There will always be techniques for accessing paywalled research for free, even without services like Sci-Hub. Some of them are much less complex than Elbakyan's website: Researchers and scholars often use the hashtag #icanhazpdf on Twitter to ask fellow academics for paywalled articles. (There's even been scholarly work published that analyzes the phenomenon—appropriately, the research is free online.)

But Sci-Hub's ingenious methods automate the process, cut out middle men on Twitter, and don't advertise the request for, essentially, pirated research. And Elbakyan says her website's presence on the dark web will help keep it accessible even if legal action dismantles Sci-Hub's new home on the easily accessible surface web.

Original Submission