SoylentNews

SubiculumHammer writes:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/paizo-pathfinder-bundle

For those who like or would like to try table-top Gaming, Humble Bundle is offering a "mindblowing" pay-what-you-want offer for digital copies of the PathFinder roleplaying game, a fork of AD&D rule 3.5, I believe... and it also helps charity [takyon: the two charity options are Extra Life/Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and Camden's Concert via the Tides Foundation].

This was my first post for an advertisement, don't hate me, but I thought some might be interested.

---

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Psychologists Call Out the Study That Called Out the Field of Psychology

Remember that study that found that most psychology studies were wrong? Yeah, that study was wrong. That's the conclusion of four researchers who recently interrogated the methods of that study, which itself interrogated the methods of 100 psychology studies to find that very few could be replicated. (Whoa.) Their damning commentary will be published Friday in the journal Science. (The scientific body that publishes the journal sent Slate an early copy.)

In case you missed the hullabaloo: A key feature of the scientific method is that scientific results should be reproducible—that is, if you run an experiment again, you should get the same results. If you don't, you've got a problem. And a problem is exactly what 270 scientists found last August, when they decided to try to reproduce 100 peer-reviewed journal studies in the field of social psychology. Only around 39 percent of the reproduced studies, they found, came up with similar results to the originals.

That meta-analysis, published in Science by a group called the Open Science Collaboration, led to mass hand-wringing over the "replicability crisis" in psychology. (It wasn't the first time that the field has faced such criticism, as Michelle N. Meyer and Christopher Chabris have reported in Slate, but this particular study was a doozy.)

Now this new commentary, from Harvard's Gary King and Daniel Gilbert and the University of Virginia's Timothy Wilson, finds that the OSC study was bogus—for a dazzling array of reasons. I know you're busy, so let's examine just two.

The first—which is what tipped researchers off to the study being not-quite-right in the first place—was statistical. The whole scandal, after all, was over the fact that such a low number of the original 100 studies turned out to be reproducible. But when King, a social scientist and statistician, saw the study, he didn't think the number looked that low. Yeah, I know, 39 percent sounds really low—but it's about what social scientists should expect, given the fact that errors could occur either in the original studies or the replicas, says King.

takyon: Recycle or repudiate comments made back in August.

---

Original Submission

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

More here.

An epigenetic clock controls aging (DOI: 10.1007/s10522-015-9617-5)

---

Original Submission

Gaaark writes:

Faculty of Medicine researcher Rachel Harding will be the first known biomedical researcher to welcome the world to review her lab notes in real time.
The post-doctoral fellow with U of T's Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is also explaining her findings to the general public through her blog.
She hopes her open approach will accelerate research into Huntington's disease.

"This should drive the process faster than working alone," she says.

Article from University of Toronto: http://www.news.utoronto.ca/huntingtons-disease-university-toronto-researcher-first-share-lab-notes-real-time

Her 'blog' itself, for your critiquing! https://zenodo.org/record/45428#.VteOS-_R9qP (Zenodo. Research. Shared)

This, basically, was the way medicine used to be done: share, critique and collaborate. Here's hoping that she makes it so that all that is old is new again.
And how cool it would be if it was in the Stargate Command (SGC)

---

[Ed Note: Don't forget, that SoylentNews is contributing to the research efforts for Huntington's Disease as well. There is an official Folding@Home team for Soylentnews.org. Please take a look at the previous article and contribute some CPU cycles if you can.]

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Samsung announces the world's highest capacity SSD — 15TB of storage:

The 2.5-in SSD is based on a 12Gbps Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface for use in enterprise storage systems. The PM1633a has blazing fast performance, with random read and write speeds of up to 200,000 and 32,000 I/Os per second (IOPS), respectively. It delivers sequential read and write speeds of up to 1200MBps, the company said. A typical SATA SSD can peak at about 550MBps.

Because the PM1633a comes in a 2.5-in. form factor, IT managers can fit twice as many of the drives in a standard 19-in. 2U (3.5-in.) rack, compared to an equivalent 3.5-in. storage drive. The SSD also sets a new bar for sustainability, Samsung said. The 15.36TB PM1633a drive supports one full drive write per day, which means 15.36TB of data can be written every day on a single drive without failure over its five-year warranty.

[...] The performance of the PM1633a SSD is based on four factors: the 3D NAND (vertical NAND or V-NAND) chips; 16GB of DRAM; Samsung's proprietary controller chip; and the 12Gbps SAS interface.

Unfortunately, these drives are slated for enterprise use — you won't be able to order one for your home system. Also, though these are described as 2.5-inch drives, they are 15mm high instead of the typical 9/7/5mm you would find in your laptop.

I'm curious if there are any Soylentils who could actually make use of such a drive. What workloads do you have that could benefit from such capacity high and speed?

---

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

It's been almost a year now since Oculus announced that the consumer version of the Rift virtual reality headset would only support Windows PCs at launch—a turnaround from development kits that worked fine on Mac and Linux boxes. Now, according to Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, it "is up to Apple" to change that state of affairs. Specifically, "if they ever release a good computer, we will do it," he told Shacknews recently.

Basically, Luckey continued, even the highest-end Mac you can buy would not provide an enjoyable experience on the final Rift hardware, which is significantly more powerful than early development kits. "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn't prioritize high-end GPUs," he said. "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top-of-the-line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn't match our recommended specs."

"So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we'd love to support Mac. But right now, there's just not a single machine out there that supports it," he added. "Even if we can support on the software side, there's just no audience that could run the vast majority of software on it."

Source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/oculus-founder-rift-will-come-to-mac-if-apple-ever-release-a-good-computer/.
See also: Shacknews blog.

---

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

As it became clear on March 1 that Donald Trump had won 7 of a possible 11 contests, Google's data editor, Simon Rogers tweeted:

Searches for "how can I move to Canada" on Google have spiked +350% in the past four hours

Mashable reports

By midnight, the query rose 1150% [from prior rates] before settling back down somewhere around the 500% mark on the day. [...] By Wednesday morning, Google said searches for "Move to Canada" were "higher than at any time in Google history".

Better yet, the majority of the searches seemed to be coming from Massachusetts, where Trump won in a landslide with 49% of the vote.

Are any Soylentils considering relocating if the electoral process "goes off the rails"?

Do any non-USAian Soylentils have contingency plans that will be enacted due to an electoral outcome? (I know that Spain, for example, is having a hell of a time trying to form a majority.)

---

Original Submission

martyb writes:

When looking off into the distant reaches of the universe, the further away we look, the further back in time we are seeing. Though the speed of light is exceedingly fast, it is limited. When describing distances to distant objects in the universe, even the distance that light travels in one year (i.e. one light year: 9.46 * 10^15 meters) is woefully inadequate. Distances of billions of light years become necessary.

Now there is a report that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the most distant (and hence oldest) object yet: a galaxy named GN-z11:

By pushing the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to its limits astronomers have shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the distance to the most remote galaxy ever seen in the Universe. This galaxy existed just 400 million years after the Big Bang and provides new insights into the first generation of galaxies. This is the first time that the distance of an object so far away has been measured from its spectrum, which makes the measurement extremely reliable. The results will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

[...] Before astronomers determined the distance to GN-z11, the most distant measured galaxy, EGSY8p7, had a redshift [Wikipedia] of 8.68. Now, the team has confirmed GN-z11's distance to be at a redshift of 11.1, which corresponds to 400 million years after the Big Bang.

[Continues.]

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Google has a bit of a problem. YouTube is popular and getting even more so. More and more people are uploading more and more videos each day. At the end of 2015, people were uploading 400 hours of video every minute. That works out to 1 PB (Petabyte) of raw storage capacity being added each day. Additionally more videos are coming with higher resolution. Witness the progression from 360p, 720p, 1080p, and now 4K videos. Current projections are that by 2024, users will be uploading 50,000 hours of video per minute necessitating the installation of 125 PB of storage per day. That gets expensive!

What are they to do? Google is now investigating ways of letting up somewhat on error-free operations on single drives in exchange for combining a number of drives into a collection of disks.

[Continues.]

HughPickens.com writes:

Ben Popper writes at The Verge that bitcoin's nightmare scenario has come to pass as the bitcoin network reached its capacity, causing transactions around the world to be massively delayed, and in some cases to fail completely. The average time to confirm a transaction has ballooned from 10 minutes to 43 minutes. Users are left confused and shops that once accepted Bitcoin are dropping out. For those who want the Bitcoin system to continue to grow and thrive, this is troubling. Merchants can't rely on digital transactions that can take minutes or hours to validate.

A number of prominent voices in the Bitcoin community have been warning over the past year that the system needed to make fundamental changes to its core software code to avoid being overwhelmed by the continued growth of Bitcoin transactions. A schism has developed between the team in charge of the original codebase for Bitcoin, known as Core, and a rival faction pushing its own version of that open source code with a block size increase added in, known as Classic. "Many in the US Bitcoin community had hoped that hitting this crisis point — a network maxed out, transactions faltering — would result in closure, with miners quickly moving to adopt whichever chain proved more valuable to their economic interests," says Popper. "But so far the debate is dragging on without one side claiming a clear victory, leaving tens of thousands of consumer transactions stranded in limbo."

---

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence could be more successful if a smaller number of targets with a higher probability of success are observed. In a new paper, two astrophysicists propose looking at the thin region of space where aliens could observe the Earth transiting the Sun, the same technique that the Kepler space observatory uses:

In a paper to published in the journal Astrobiology, and available now online, Heller and Pudritz turn the telescope around to ask, what if extraterrestrial observers discover the Earth as it transits the sun?

If such observers are using the same search methods that scientists are using on Earth, the researchers propose that humanity should turn its collective ear to Earth's "transit zone", the thin slice of space from which our planet's passage in front of the sun can be detected. "It's impossible to predict whether extraterrestrials use the same observational techniques as we do," says Heller. "But they will have to deal with the same physical principles as we do, and Earth's solar transits are an obvious method to detect us."

The transit zone is rich in host stars for planetary systems, offering approximately 100,000 potential targets, each potentially orbited by habitable planets and moons, the scientists say – and that's just the number we can see with today's radio telescope technologies. "If any of these planets host intelligent observers, they could have identified Earth as a habitable, even as a living world long ago and we could be receiving their broadcasts today," write Heller and Pudritz.

[...] Heller and Pudritz propose that the Breakthrough Listen Initiative, part of the most comprehensive search for extraterrestrial life ever conducted, can maximize its chances of success by concentrating its search on Earth's transit zone.

From The Register .

[Continues.]

number6 writes:

The former employees of Slysoft have regrouped as a new entity named RedFox and have released a new version of AnyDVD. The new release adds support for the Redfox Online Protection Database and new Blu-ray discs. For existing AnyDVD license owners the software will work as usual. With this release AnyDVD and its development appear to be back to normal.

Here is the changelog for this new release (version 7.6.9.1):
  - AnyDVD reborn! SlySoft is dead, long live RedFox!
  - This is an intermediate release, so old customers can continue to use their existing AnyDVD license to watch their discs.
  - This version can access the new RedFox Online Protection Database
  - This version will only work, if you already own a valid AnyDVD license
  - For compatibility with 3rd party programs, AnyDVD will still use "SlySoft" for directories and registry paths
  - It will replace an existing SlySoft AnyDVD installation
  - New (Blu-ray): Support for new discs
  - Some minor fixes and improvements

The new official forum is here | The new official download page is here.

[Continues.]

HughPickens.com writes:

Dana Goldstein writes at Slate that political scientist Andrew Hacker proposes replacing algebra II and calculus in high school and college with a practical course in statistics for citizenship. According to Hacker, only mathematicians and some engineers actually use advanced math in their day-to-day work and even the doctors, accountants, and coders of the future shouldn't have to master abstract math that they'll never need.

For many, math is often an impenetrable barrier to academic success. Algebra II, which includes polynomials and logarithms, and is required by the new Common Core curriculum standards used by 47 US states and territories, drives dropouts at both the high school and college levels. Hacker's central argument is that advanced mathematics requirements, like algebra, trigonometry and calculus, are "a harsh and senseless hurdle" keeping far too many Americans from completing their educations and leading productive lives. "We are really destroying a tremendous amount of talent—people who could be talented in sports writing or being an emergency medical technician, but can't even get a community college degree," says Hacker. "I regard this math requirement as highly irrational."

According to Hacker many of those who struggled through a traditional math regimen feel that doing so annealed their character while critics say that mathematics is used as a hoop, a badge, a totem to impress outsiders and elevate a profession's status. "It's not hard to understand why Caltech and M.I.T. want everyone to be proficient in mathematics. But it's not easy to see why potential poets and philosophers face a lofty mathematics bar. Demanding algebra across the board actually skews a student body, not necessarily for the better."

---

Original Submission

takyon writes:

An unspecified €20,000 unmanned aerial vehicle used by Dutch police for surveillance can be hacked by sending commands using an 868 MHz link to the Xbee chip inside the drone:

A security researcher has reported finding a way to hijack a high-end drone, using parts costing as little as $40 (£29). The expert says it is possible to start the octocopter's engines, engage auto-takeoff, control its camera and, potentially, crash the machine. He will present his findings at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, and has published a thesis [auto-downloading PDF]. The drone's manufacturer has been informed. However, the researcher told Wired magazine there would be "no easy fix" to the problem, meaning units might have to be recalled for a hardware update.

Nils Rodday is currently a security consultant at IBM, but carried out his research at the Netherlands' University of Twente. His work focused on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used by the Dutch police force for surveillance. He said it cost about 20,000 euros ($21,700; £15,400).

[...] Mr Rodday focused on its use of a telemetry module fitted with an Xbee radio chip, made by the company Digi International.
The module converts wi-fi commands sent by a computer app into low frequency radio waves, which are then transmitted to another Xbee chip on the drone. This allows the operator to control it from a greater distance than would otherwise be possible. To achieve the hack, Mr Rodday required two Xbee chips of his own, among other low-cost components, as well as the use of a computer. The hack consisted of two parts:

• Intercepting the initial wi-fi connection and displacing the legitimate user. Since the link was only protected by an encryption protocol with known vulnerabilities, Mr Rodday said he could crack it in little time
• Transmitting his own commands to the drone's Xbee chip

The second step had been relatively easy, Mr Rodday said, because the drone-maker had opted not to make use of Xbee's built-in encryption features. The reason for this was that they would have extended the lag between the operator sending a command and the drone reacting.

---

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to impose sanctions on North Korea:

Diplomats said the resolution contained the most stringent measures yet to undermine the North's ability to raise money and secure technology and other resources for its nuclear weapons program. Much depends, however, on whether China — North Korea's leading trade partner and diplomatic shield — will enforce it.

Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, called the resolution "comprehensive, robust and unyielding," and said enforcement must be as well.

The Council has sought to hobble North Korea's nuclear weapons program before, but the country has repeatedly flouted those measures. In January, it conducted its fourth nuclear test and launched a rocket in February, even as diplomats were negotiating the current resolution.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the sanctions and said that the Security Council "sent a clear message that the DPRK must return to full compliance with its international obligations."

Otto Frederick Warmbier, a 21-year-old American student, recently gave a confession on North Korean state television for trying to steal a propaganda banner from a Pyongyang hotel.

Also at NPR, Reuters.

Update: North Korea 'fires projectiles' into sea hours after UN vote

---

Original Submission