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El Reg reports

The US state of Oregon says it will charge Comcast tens of millions of dollars in taxes after revoking a tax break the cable giant had claimed on its broadband service.

The state's Department of Revenue (DOR) has denied a request by Comcast that it be granted an exemption reserved for companies that offer gigabit internet service in the state.

Written to lure Google's Fiber service to Portland after years of courtship, the tax break would give exemptions to reward the installation of high-speed fiber broadband.

Comcast [claimed] its "Gigabit Pro" service tops out at 2Gbit/s and thus made the cable giant eligible to claim the same breaks as Google.

The DOR, however, did not agree, and it ruled earlier this week that Comcast will have to pay the taxes.

[...] Critics of Comcast have previously argued that the Gigabit Pro service is prohibitively expensive (up to $4,600 a year) and only reaches a small number of Oregon residents.

[...] Both Google and Frontier also had their applications denied because neither has an active gigabit service in the state.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://lwn.net/Articles/688751/

"Worth a read: this paper [PDF][1][2] From Kaiyuan Yang et al. on how an analog back door can be placed into a hardware platform like a CPU. "In this paper, we show how a fabrication-time attacker can leverage analog circuits to create a hardware attack that is small (i.e., requires as little as one gate) and stealthy (i.e., requires an unlikely trigger sequence before effecting [sic] a chip's functionality). In the open spaces of an already placed and routed design, we construct a circuit that uses capacitors to siphon charge from nearby wires as they transition between digital values. When the capacitors fully charge, they deploy an attack that forces a victim flip-flop to a desired value. We weaponize this attack into a remotely-controllable privilege escalation by attaching the capacitor to a wire controllable and by selecting a victim flip-flop that holds the privilege bit for our processor.""

[1] Link to PDF in article: http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/543048/26931843/1464016046717/A2_SP_2016.pdf
[2] Read PDF online as images: (Large print) https://archive.is/n43DY
[3] Read PDF online as images: (Small print) https://archive.is/7vbNp

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ticho writes:

Securityweek has an article about a presentation at the Hack in the Box (HITB) conference this week, where Yuwei Zheng and Haoqi Shan of China-based security firm Qihoo360 showed how a remote attacker can shift time on a stratum 1 NTP server by wirelessly sending it forged radio time signals.

Shifting time on an NTP server can have serious consequences — it allows attackers not only to damage or disrupt systems, but also to authenticate to services using expired credentials, bypass HTTP STS and certificate pinning, and cause TLS clients to accept revoked or expired certificates.

Direct link to the presentation PDF.

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takyon writes:

Tom's Hardware reports on a crude method that may enable the production of vertical/3D NAND with more than 100 layers in the future:

Today's 3D NAND weighs in at 32 to 48 layers, but increasing the density beyond 100 layers appears to be an impossible challenge due to the limitations of high-aspect ratio etch tools, which etch the holes in the NAND (1.8 billion for Samsung 48-layer NAND). Today's tools have 30:1 to 40:1 aspect ratios for 32- and 48-layer NAND, respectively, but creating 64-layer NAND will require an aspect ratio of 60:1 to 70:1. The only problem? There are no tools that can achieve that aspect ratio.

Several NAND vendors are reportedly developing a new "string-stacking" method that will merely stack the 3D NAND devices on top of each other. For instance, three 48-layer stacks will be stacked upon each other to create a 144-layer chip. String stacking may allow for scaling up to 300 layers, but the challenge will be how to link the stacks and produce it in a cost-effective manner. Unfortunately, the NAND fabs have not even mastered that for standard 3D NAND as of yet.

In other NAND news, there may be a shortage of 3D NAND, indicated by Samsung using 16nm 2D TLC NAND in its new 750 EVO SSDs.

Original Submission

Python in Thai toilet gives man nasty shock:

A Thai man is recovering in hospital after a 3m (10ft) python emerged from a squat toilet and sank its teeth into his penis.
Attaporn Boonmakchuay said the python was "yanking very hard" as he and his wife tried to wrestle it off. The incident happened as Mr Attaporn, 38, went to the toilet at his home in Chachoengsao province, east of Bangkok, before leaving for work on Wednesday.

As he used the toilet he said he suddenly felt a sharp pain. "I felt as though my penis had been severed. The snake was yanking very hard," he said, according to the Bangkok Post. As the python tried to pull him down, he called for his wife and neighbours to help him, the post reported. Mr Attaporn told Thai TV that his wife tied a rope around the snake and he pried its jaws open before passing out.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Vampires are real, and they've been around for millions of years. At least, the amoebae variety has. So suggests new research from UC Santa Barbara paleobiologist Susannah Porter.

Using a scanning electron microscope to examine minute fossils, Porter found perfectly circular drill holes that may have been formed by an ancient relation of Vampyrellidae amoebae. These single-celled creatures perforate the walls of their prey and reach inside to consume its cell contents. Porter's findings appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"To my knowledge these holes are the earliest direct evidence of predation on eukaryotes," said Porter, an associate professor in UCSB's Department of Earth Science. Eukaryotes are organisms whose cells contain a nucleus and other organelles such as mitochondria.
...
Porter examined fossils from the Chuar Group in the Grand Canyon -- once an ancient seabed -- that are between 782 and 742 million years old. The holes are about one micrometer (one thousandth of a millimeter) in diameter and occur in seven of the species she identified. The holes are not common in any single one species; in fact, they appear in not more than 10 percent of the specimens.

"I also found evidence of specificity in hole sizes, so different species show different characteristic hole sizes, which is consistent with what we know about modern vampire amoebae and their food preferences," Porter said. "Different species of amoebae make differently sized holes. The Vampyrellid amoebae make a great modern analog, but because vampire-like feeding behavior is known in a number of different unrelated amoebae, it makes it difficult to pin down exactly who the predator was."

Tiny vampires in ancient seas: evidence for predation via perforation in fossils from the 780–740 million-year-old Chuar Group, Grand Canyon, USA (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.0221)

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Phoenix666 writes:

Using radar data collected by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a Southwest Research Institute-led team found evidence of an ice age recorded in the polar deposits of Mars. Ice ages on Mars are driven by processes similar to those responsible for ice ages on Earth, that is, long-term cyclical changes in the planet's orbit and tilt, which affect the amount of solar radiation it receives at each latitude.

"We found an accelerated accumulation rate of ice in the uppermost 100 to 300 meters of the polar cap," said Dr. Isaac Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at SwRI and lead author of a paper published in the May 27 issue of Science. "The volume and thickness of ice matches model predictions from the early 2000s. Radar observations of the ice cap provide a detailed history of ice accumulation and erosion associated with climate change."

Like Earth, modern-day Mars experiences annual rotation and seasonal cycles, as well as longer cycles, that influence the distribution of ice. However, these longer cycles might be more pronounced on Mars. This is because Mars' tilt changes substantially -- by as much as 60 degrees -- on timescales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. By comparison, the Earth's tilt varies by only about 2 degrees over the same period. On Mars, this greater variability determines the amount of sunlight reaching a given spot on the surface and thus the stability of ice at all latitudes.

An ice age recorded in the polar deposits of Mars (DOI: 10.1126/science.aad6968)

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

As a return to our topic of why business persons are not in charge of science, we have the most recent contribution of one Nathan Myhrvold:

Before joining Microsoft, Nathan was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University, and he worked with Professor Stephen Hawking. He earned a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics and a master's degree in mathematical economics from Princeton University, and he also has a master's degree in geophysics and space physics and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from UCLA. [ http://www.nathanmyhrvold.com/index.php/about ]

Sounds legit! But now, according to the Christian Science Monitor, he is going after the "NEOWISE results in a paper submitted to the journal Icarus and published online ahead of review, says that the WISE and NEOWISE research is filled with errors."

Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0524/Bad-science-Former-Microsoft-exec-criticizes-NASA-asteroid-data

Now this may be the case, I am not one to judge, since I am not a rocket scientist, I am only the Greek philosopher who came up with the Heliocentric model of the Universe, but there is a lot of criticism, especially about the release of the paper before peer-evaluation was done (better than National Review, but not much.) One actual scientist says:

Now the point of this submission is not so much that it is news, but that it represents a trend, a trend of wealthy non-experts feeling entitled to critique actual science. With Anthropogenic Global Warming, there are obvious conflicts of interest to be drawn. But in this, and other similar cases, we just have to wonder if it is not a case of "if I am so rich, I must be smart!" The usual retort is, "If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?". But I really think we need to start asking, "If you are so rich, why aren't you smart?"

Washington Post version here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/05/25/that-study-critiquing-nasas-bad-science-on-asteroids-is-pretty-bad-science/

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Phoenix666 writes:

For archaeologists and historians interested in the ancient politics, religion and language of the Indian subcontinent, two UCLA professors and their student researchers have creatively pinpointed sites that are likely to yield valuable transcriptions of the proclamations of Ashoka, the Buddhist king of northern India's Mauryan Dynasty who ruled from 304 B.C. to 232 B.C.

In a study published this week in Current Science, archaeologist Monica Smith and geographer Thomas Gillespie identified 121 possible locations of what are known as Ashoka's "edicts."

First they isolated shared features of 29 known locations of Ashokan edicts, which were found carved into natural rock formations in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They then harnessed species-distribution modeling tactics—which includes examining sophisticated geographic information systems datasets along with Google Earth images—to overlay those unique characteristics against a geological and population map of ancient India. They believe they have identified locations that hold the same characteristics as proven sites and are significantly accurate markers for future discovery.

Sounds like data-driven archaeology is the wave of the future.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A study of more than 6,000 marine fossils from the Antarctic shows that the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs was sudden and just as deadly to life in the polar regions.

Previously, scientists had thought that creatures living in the southernmost regions of the planet would have been in a less perilous position during the mass extinction event than those elsewhere on Earth.

The research, published today in the journal Nature Communications, involved a six-year process of identifying more than 6,000 marine fossils ranging in age from 69- to 65-million-years-old that were excavated by scientists from the University of Leeds and the British Antarctic Survey on Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula.

This is one of the largest collections of marine fossils of this age anywhere in the world. It includes a wide range of species, from small snails and clams that lived on the sea floor, to large and unusual creatures that swam in the surface waters of the ocean. These include the ammonite Diplomoceras, a distant relative of modern squid and octopus, with a paperclip-shaped shell that could grow as large as 2 metres, and giant marine reptiles such as Mosasaurus, as featured in the film Jurassic World.

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Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Federal scientists released partial findings Friday from a $25 million animal study that tested the possibility of links between cancer and chronic exposure to the type of radiation emitted from cell phones and wireless devices. The findings, which chronicle an unprecedented number of rodents subjected to a lifetime of electromagnetic radiation, present some of the strongest evidence to date that such exposure is associated with the formation of rare cancers in at least two cell types in the brains and hearts of rats.

There are some major caveats, though. The results were only observed in male rats; there weren't any significant effects seen in female rats. Exposure in utero didn't seem to affect cancer risk. And in male rats, the incidence of those two cancers was quite low. But even a small increase in the incidence of those cancers could have a major public health impact given how many people in the world regularly use cell phones.

Original Submission

Two Soylentils wrote in with an update on Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. After these stories were submitted, it appears to have been confirmed by The New York Times that Thiel paid $10 million to fund the lawsuit.

Peter Thiel Funded Hulk Hogan's Lawsuit Against Gawker

takyon writes:

Peter Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist and libertarian who we have reported on several times, reportedly bankrolled former wrestler Hulk Hogan's (real name: Terry Bollea) lawsuit against Gawker. After Gawker published a sex tape featuring Bollea, Bollea sued and was eventually awarded $140 million by a jury. That decision is being appealed.

Thiel has had several run-ins with Gawker's reporting on his political and financial decisions, but the most prominent incident was in 2007, when the website's then-running gossip vertical Valleywag outed Thiel's sexual orientation in a post titled, "Peter Thiel is totally gay, people."

Thiel, who is now open about being gay, later called Valleywag "the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda."

Although the exact details of the arrangement between Thiel and Bollea are unknown, if Thiel negotiated for a share of the lawsuit's proceeds, he may get to stick it to Gawker while earning millions of dollars.

[Continues...]

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

The fine folks over at torrentfreak have this to report:

Late last year it looked almost certain that a "three strikes" style scheme would be implemented, with pirates being monitored by copyright holders and notified of their behavior via escalating ISP warning notices, with legal action being the final step. But earlier this year it was revealed the whole project was in peril, entirely on the issue of costs.

Now it's been officially confirmed that the project has been shelved. In a joint letter to the Australian Media and Communications Authority, the Communications Alliance and Foxtel (on behalf of rightsholders) state that it had "not proved possible to reach agreement on how to apportion all of the costs" for the scheme.

And crutchy did rejoice.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Not all habits are bad. Some are even necessary. It's a good thing, for example, that we can find our way home on "autopilot" or wash our hands without having to ponder every step. But inability to switch from acting habitually to acting in a deliberate way can underlie addiction and obsessive compulsive disorders.
...
The study provides the strongest evidence to date, Gremel said, that the brain's circuits for habitual and goal-directed action compete for control -- in the orbitofrontal cortex, a decision-making area of the brain -- and that neurochemicals called endocannabinoids allow for habit to take over, by acting as a sort of brake on the goal-directed circuit.

Endocannabinoids are a class of chemicals produced naturally by humans and other animals. Receptors for endocannabinoids are found throughout the body and brain, and the endocannabinoid system is implicated in a variety of physiological processes -- including appetite, pain sensation, mood and memory. It is also the system that mediates the psychoactive effects of cannabis.
...
In the current study, since endocannabinoids are known to reduce the activity of neurons in general, the researchers hypothesized that endocannabinoids may be quieting or reducing activity in the OFC and, with it, the ability to shift to goal-directed action. They focused particularly on neurons projecting from the OFC into the dorsomedial striatum.

They trained mice to perform the same lever-pressing action for the same food reward but in two different environments that differentially bias the development of goal-directed versus habitual actions. Like humans who don't suffer from neuropsychiatric disorders, healthy mice will readily shift between performing the same action using a goal-directed versus habitual action strategy. To stick with the earlier example of getting home, we can switch the homing autopilot off and shift to goal-directed behavior when we need to get to a new or different location.

To test their hypothesis on the role played by endocannabinoids, the researchers then deleted a particular endocannabinoid receptor, called cannabinoid type 1, or CB1, in the OFC-to-striatum pathway. Mice missing these receptors did not form habits -- showing the critical role played by the neurochemicals as well as that particular pathway.

Presumably, suppressing the body's ability to form habits by blocking the body's endocannabinoid receptors would also neutralize the effects of external cannabinoids.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Microsoft is facing criticism from Chinese users about the way it is trying to persuade people to upgrade to its Windows 10 operating system.

Chinese microblog site Weibo said users had now made more than 1.2 million posts complaining about Windows 10.

The complaints in China follow criticism from IT experts who said Microsoft was using a "nasty trick" to make people upgrade.

Microsoft has not yet responded to the reports about Chinese complaints.

"The company has abused its dominant market position and broken the market order for fair play," Zhao Zhanling, a legal adviser for the Internet Society of China told the official Xinhua news agency.

He said by forcing the upgrade, Microsoft had not respected the users' right to choose what they install on their computers. This was important, he said, because eventually Microsoft might profit from the "unwanted" upgrades.

One Chinese man, Yang Shuo, who works at a Beijing-based PR firm, said the Windows 10 update interrupted him while he was working on a business plan. This meant he had to abandon the document which led to a meeting about a deal worth 3m yuan (£312,000) being cancelled.

How long can Microsoft stumble before it falls?

Original Submission