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bitstream writes:

Google has kept its data center designs to itself. But some will now be opened up as they join the Open Compute Project (OCP), set up by Facebook to share low cost, no frills data center hardware specifications. Google will donate a rack specification that they designed for their own data centers. Google's first contribution is a "a new rack specification that includes 48V power distribution and a new form factor to allow OCP racks to fit into our data centers," the company said. "We kicked off the development of 48V rack power distribution in 2010, as we found it was at least 30 percent more energy-efficient and more cost-effective in supporting these higher-performance systems." The company said it hopes to help others "adopt this next generation power architecture, and realize the same power efficiency and cost benefits as Google." Google hasn't submitted a proposed specification to the OCP yet, but is working with Facebook on that.

In many countries, installations which use 48 volt DC don't require a formal qualification permit to setup.

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[Update:] A new report identifies the source and states that the detected radiation level, though much higher than background level and now since subsided, posed no health risk:

The radioactive cesium 137 detected by the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) on the 3rd and 4th of March has now been traced back to the garage and parts of the basement of the building in which STUK operates. The same property complex also houses a company that treats small radioactive waste. The premises in question have been isolated and the measurements continue. Areas in the immediate vicinity of the property will be examined on Wednesday morning by STUK’s own measurements.

“The investigation concerning the source of the radiation is still ongoing. The concentrations measured have been very low and do not pose a threat to health. The staff and people who’ve visited STUK’s premises are not in any danger,” says STUK’s director Tarja K. Ikäheimonen.

bitstream writes:

Caesium-137 ^[1] levels in the air of Helsinki, Finland has reached 1000 times normal the normal level The measured value in the air is 4000 μBq / m³. STUK.fi the Finish radiation emergency authority says that it can't yet explain the result, but that it may be an indication that something has happened. They are quick to add it's NOT believed the Cesium came from a nuclear reactor like the Leningrad nuclear plant.

The levels are 10 times higher in Helsinki then what they measured after the Fukushima disaster. However, the levels are just one millionth compared to when people would need to protect themselves. The winds were eastern and southeastern when the measurement was made in Finland.

Also reported by Liveuamap.com and hbl.fi. The site allegedlyapparent.wordpress.com has more data.

^[1] [Ed #2. addition] Yes, "Caesium". According to Wikipedia:

Caesium is the spelling recommended by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). The American Chemical Society (ACS) has used the spelling cesium since 1921, following Webster's New International Dictionary. The element was named after the Latin word caesius , meaning "bluish grey". In medieval and early modern writings caesius was spelled with the ligature æ as cæsius; hence, an alternative but now old-fashioned orthography is cæsium. More spelling explanation at ae/oe vs e.

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butthurt writes:

A year ago, the Department of Defense Inspector General prepared a report (Javascript required; paywalled) regarding the agency's use of unmanned aerial vehicles over its home country. Now made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the report noted that the Pentagon first developed a policy about such flights in 2006. Under the policy, such missions may take place with the approval of the Secretary of Defense, or of someone designated by the Secretary of Defense. As of the time of the report, the authority to approve the missions had never been delegated. The policy allows Department of Defense drones carrying weapons to fly above the U.S. only for training or testing purposes.

Between 2006 and 2015, civil authorities asked for the use of military drones on "less than twenty" occasions. One mayor requested flights to survey pot-holes; that request was denied.

USA Today carried a story about the report.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Will our future sustainable cities grow like coral reefs, using bone?

Like bone, eggshell is a composite material, but it is around 95% mineral and only 5% hydrated protein. Yet even that small amount of protein is enough to make eggshell very tough, considering its thinness – as most breakfast cooks will have noticed. The next challenge is to turn this knowledge into something solid.

There are two ways to mimic natural materials. Either you can mimic the composition of the material itself, or you can copy the process by which the material was made. Since natural materials are made by living creatures, there are no high temperatures involved in either of these methods. As such, biomimetic materials – let's call them "neo-bone" and "neo-eggshell" – take much less energy to produce than steel or concrete.

In the laboratory, we have succeeded in making centimetre-scale samples of neo-bone. We do this by preparing different solutions of protein with the components that make bone mineral. A composite neo-bone material is then deposited from these solutions in a biomimetic manner at body temperature. There is no reason that this process – or an improved, faster version of it – couldn't be scaled up to an industrial level.

Of course, steel and concrete are everywhere, so the way we design and construct buildings is optimised for these materials. To begin using biomimetic materials on a large scale, we'd need to completely rethink our building codes and standards for construction materials. But then, if we want to build future cities in a sustainable way, perhaps a major rethink is exactly what's needed. The science is still in its infancy, but that doesn't mean we can't dream big about the future.

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butthurt writes:

Smithsonian magazine has an article (clicking through advertisement required) about living things found deep underground. In 2011, several species of nematode, including the previously unknown Halicephalobus mephisto were found (paywalled) living in water seeping into a mine in South Africa. The nematodes feed on bacteria, which are thought to be sustained by hydrogen, methane, sulfate, sulfur and nitrate. Monhystrella parvella, a nematode which can live only in salt water, was found in or on stalactites, leading to speculation that the species went underground at least 200 million years ago when the area was under a sea. Multicellular life belonging to the phyla: Protozoa, Fungi, Platyhelminthes, Rotifera, Annelida, and Arthropoda was discovered in biofilms from a mine.

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AnonTechie writes:

Though they may come as a surprise, heart attacks don't just happen at random—chances are, years of poor diet and not enough exercise set the stage for a heart attack to occur. Over the past few years, researchers have learned that genetics also play a role, discovering variations that increase a person's chances of having a heart attack.

Now scientists have discovered another mutation that does the opposite: people who have it run a 50 percent lower risk of having a heart attack. They also had lower levels of triglycerides in the blood, both of which might provide a new target for medications intended to prevent heart attacks. The research was published last week (open, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1507652) in the New England Journal of Medicine.

http://www.popsci.com/genetic-mutation-could-save-you-from-heart-attack

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Max Hyre writes:

The Register has a story about Microsoft adding a Debian-based networking distro named Sonic (aka Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) to its release of SQL Server for Linux.

El Reg says MS wants to have a white-box networking offering, one that will run on pretty much any switching hardware you’ve got that answers to the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) they gave to the Open Computer Project last year. To show how official, Azure’s CTO has blogged about it.

Would someone please check the current weather in Hades?

Related:
Microsoft Announces: Bringing SQL Server to Linux

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takyon writes:

NASA's InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Mars mission has been rescheduled for May 2018. The mission was planned for launch in March 2016, but was delayed after a leak was found in the vacuum enclosure of a French-made seismometer. Repairs to the instrument will cost the French manufacturers $150 million.

The lander will drill up to 5 meters into Mars's crust and measure temperature as well as seismic activity:

The seismometer instrument's main sensors need to operate within a vacuum chamber to provide the exquisite sensitivity needed for measuring ground movements as small as half the radius of a hydrogen atom. The rework of the seismometer's vacuum container will result in a finished, thoroughly tested instrument in 2017 that will maintain a high degree of vacuum around the sensors through rigors of launch, landing, deployment and a two-year prime mission on the surface of Mars.

$525 million of the mission's capped $675 million budget had been spent by December 2015, and a reassessment of the mission's cost taking into account the two-year delay will occur by August once arrangements are made with the launch vehicle provider.

Also at NPR, NYT, Reuters, NASASpaceflight.

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takyon writes:

A court has loosened French transportation regulations by overturning a ban on a key feature used by the Uber ridesharing app:

Car-hailing firm Uber Technologies Inc. won a loosening of France's strict transport rules Wednesday when a court overturned a decree banning car services from showing the locations of available vehicles, a well-known feature of Uber's app.

France's Conseil d'Etat, the country's highest administrative court, struck down the part of a government decree that banned the showing of locations of available cars. The court said providing the locations represents an "information society service." Under European Union law, countries must notify the EU before regulating such services.

Two Uber managers were arrested in Paris back in June.

Previously: French Taxi Drivers Vandalize France to Protest Uber
Uber Leaves France

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HughPickens.com writes:

U.S. military spending is out of control. The Defense Department budget for 2016 is $573 billion. President Barack Obama's 2017 proposal ups it to $582 billion. By comparison, China spent around $145 billion and Russia around $40 billion in 2015. Now Matthew Gault writes at Reuters that in speech after speech, Donald Trump has called out politicians and defense contractors for colluding to build costly weapons systems at the price of national security. As Trump has pointed out many times, Washington can build and maintain an amazing military arsenal for a fraction of what it's paying now. He's also right about one of the causes of the bloated budget: expensive prestige weapons systems such as the Littoral Combat Ship, beset by significant flaws and questions of reliability, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. "I hear stories," says Trump, "like they're ordering missiles they don't want because of politics, because of special interests, because the company that makes the missiles is a contributor."

The much-maligned F-35 will cost at least $1.5 trillion during the 55 years that its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, expects it to be flying. That number is up $500 billion from the original high estimate. But with a long list of problems plaguing the stealth fighter, that price will most likely grow. Trump has called out the trouble-ridden F-35. "[Test pilots are] saying it doesn't perform as well as our existing equipment, which is much less expensive," says Trump. "So when I hear that, immediately I say we have to do something, because you know, they're spending billions." Like so many Trump plans, the specifics are hazy. But according to Gault on this issue, Trump's got the right idea. "Donald Trump could be the only presidential candidate talking sense about for the American military's budget. That should scare everyone."

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takyon writes:

North Korea claims to have miniaturized a nuclear weapon so that it could be fitted onto a ballistic missile:

Kim Jong-un has claimed North Korean scientists have developed nuclear warheads small enough to fit on ballistic missiles. State media published images showing the North's leader standing next to what it said was a miniaturised weapon. The claim is impossible to verify from the images alone and experts have long cast doubt on such assertions.

The North has stepped up its bellicose rhetoric in response to the UN imposing some of its toughest sanctions. The move by the Security Council came after the North conducted its fourth nuclear test and launched a satellite, both of which broke existing sanctions.

In recent days, Pyongyang has threatened to launch an "indiscriminate" nuclear strike on the US and South Korea, as they began their largest ever round of annual military exercises. The drills, known as Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, routinely generate tension.

Previously: UN Security Council Unanimously Imposes Sanctions on North Korea

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Boston Globe reports:

[...] Gilmore, the former Virginia governor [and current GOP presidential candidate], ran a near-nonexistent campaign, hovered at zero percent in the polls, repeatedly failed to qualify for the undercard debates, and finally dropped out of the race in mid-February. You'd be forgiven if you didn't know he even ran for president.

Yet, according to city tallies in Chelsea, Massachusetts, Gilmore received 366 votes, good for 47.2 percent of the total. Donald Trump came in second with 18.8 percent of the vote, followed by Chris Christie and Jeb Bush, who both dropped out of the race in the last few weeks.

Alas, Chelsea did not prove to be an indicator of Gilmore's success. He received just 1,080 votes in the entire state of Massachusetts.

Advocate for clean, verifiable elections, Brad Friedman blogs:

[Today, in our daily Bradcast,] we also look at a few more of the more than 2,000 reports of voting problems that came into the non-partisan Election Protection coalition yesterday; More touch-screen trouble, this time in TN; And what the hell happened in Chelsea, MA, where former VA Gov. Jim Gilmore(!?!), who dropped out of the race weeks ago, crushed the Republican Primary competition, at least according to the paper-ballot optical-scan computers that tallied the results last night?...

The paper ballots in Chelsea were initially tabulated by the same type of op-scan systems used in states all over the country and shown to be capable of flipping elections without notice in the jaw-dropping finale of HBO's Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary Hacking Democracy . Today, the numbers have now been "corrected" [PDF] by the clerk's office [Update: The link to the document at the Chelsea government site is now broken, so here's a copy of the PDF that had been linked there] and, apparently, chalked up to "the computer system that reported the results". Ya don't say. Was it anything like this similar failure from Stoughton, WI in 2014?

Does it make any sense to keep machines in the loop? They seem to be just one more source of miscounts (and, perhaps, mischief).

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Go is an ancient board game with simple rules but vastly more game play possibilities than chess.

Google's AlphaGo takes on South Korean Go champion

One of many links, http://www.zdnet.com/article/alphago-match-a-win-for-humanity-eric-schmidt/

Google bought Deep Mind and AlphaGo software in 2014. After beating a European Go champion, they are now taking on the Asian champion -- predicted to be a much harder challenge.

Google's AlphaGo prevails in the first game against the Go champion

An Anonymous Coward writes with a summary from NBC News:

Lee Sedol conceded defeat in the first game of Go against Google's AlphaGo. AlphaGo is Google's AI engine trained to play Go, an ancient board game. Lee Sedol, of South Korea, is considered the best Go player in the world. This was the first in the series of five games to be played between them.

The New York Times reports:

"I am very surprised because I have never thought I would lose," Mr. Lee said at a news conference. "I didn't know that AlphaGo would play such a perfect Go."

...To researchers who have been using games as platforms for testing artificial intelligence, Go has remained the great challenge since the I.B.M.-developed supercomputer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Mr. Lee is "one of the world's most accomplished players with 18 international titles under his belt" and at one time prior to his first match predicted he would win 5-0 or 4-1 but after his first match rates his chances at winning to be 50-50.

devlux writes:

It appears that the good Doctor's famous quote, "Time is a bit wibbly wobbly..." may be correct.

In a paper published in the prestigious journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Associate Professor Joan Vaccaro challenges the long-held presumption that time evolution — the incessant unfolding of the universe over time – is an elemental part of Nature.

In Quantum asymmetry between time and space, she suggests there may be a deeper origin due to a difference between the two directions of time: to the future and to the past.

The original article is here http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/472/2185/20150670

The implication here is that time resonates at least at the smallest levels. This is similar to quantum superpositioning, wherein an object can be said to be in multiple states at once. Put another way, it appears that at least at the smallest levels that the future affects the past.

What do you guys think? Does the future really leak into the past? Or is this just some strange artifact of the math used to describe the problem?

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takyon writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is not impressed with a new U.S. legislative commission that would examine encryption issues:

Senator Mark Warner and Representative Mike McCaul are calling on Congress to create an "Encryption Commission" composed of business, tech, and law enforcement and intelligence agency leaders that will investigate and report on encryption issues. The commission is set to ask questions already answered in the 1990s like whether or not the government should mandate backdoors or otherwise change current law. The answer is no. At the end of the day, the commission shows Congress still hasn't learned that math is not something you can convince to compromise.

The Warner-McCaul Commission tasks Senate and House leaders with appointing 16 representatives from private industry, law enforcement, academia, the privacy and civil liberties community, and the intelligence community to publish two reports within a year. Each report will investigate (among other topics) how encryption is used, if current law or warrant procedures should change, the value of encryption, the effects of encryption on law enforcement, and the costs of weakening encryption standards.

Many of these questions have been repeatedly asked—and answered—since the Crypto Wars of the 1990s. During that period, the Clinton administration tried to keep strong crypto out of consumer devices and services by proposing things like the now-infamous "Clipper Chip," which sought to compel companies to insert backdoors into commercial encryption technologies, and by enforcing export regulations that effectively prevented the development and distribution of strong encryption.

[...] The makeup of the commission is also an issue. The law enforcement and intelligence community is overrepresented with 6 out of 16 seats. Because 12 of the 16 commission's members are required to issue subpoenas or approve any conclusions, those 6 members have tremendous influence over the commission's investigations and the content of any report.

In other Crypto War news, Craig Federighi, a senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, has published an op-ed in the Washington Post about the FBI iPhone unlock battle.

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