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steveha writes:

The SemiAccurate web site reports that AMD is putting large solid-state drives directly onto workstation-class graphics processing cards, and calling the result "SSG". Charlie Demerjian wrote in the story that this will be a revolutionary new technology:

The first demo AMD is said to be showing is a use case for movie editing and cleanup on the GPU. What is the issue here you may ask, this is old hat and has been done on the CPU for years. Some GPUs can even assist it without slowing things down in the process, so what does SSG add? How about 8K movie streaming and cleanup in realtime. At 96FPS. Sure you can do this with traditional methods but the best of them will run the same task at 17FPS.

AMD is happy to point out this is a 5.6x speedup or so for the cost of two consumer SSDs. Before SSG, possible but slow. After SSG, fast enough for most users. The impossible, realtime 8K cleanup, is now possible.

[...] It really is the technology of the year and the impossible tasks made possible already are just the tip of the iceberg. SemiAccurate is not joking when we say this is a fundamental game changer for graphics, nothing like this has happened in years.

takyon: It is a proof of concept and is being pitched for Hollywood editing/rendering, the oil & gas industry, and medical imaging.

Original Submission

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Edition Will Have Some Group Policy Settings Removed

number6 writes:

For their forthcoming Anniversary update, Microsoft have decided to remove some Group Policy settings from all editions of the operating system except for Windows 10 Enterprise. These Policies affect your ability to control "Cloud Content", "Personalization", and "Windows Store".

The corresponding Registry keys for these policies will also be removed. Manually adding those keys back into non-Enterprise editions of Win10 will have no effect.

Looking at the list of Policies to be removed, many home/power users of this operating system will almost certainly be up in arms and annoyed at this move, but it seems they are just innocent bystanders in a bigger game/pressure-tactic Microsoft is playing out with the corporate and business world.

Unfortunately for home/power users, purchasing a license to use the Windows 10 Enterprise edition is all but impossible. Divorcing from the MS Windows ecosystem may end up being the only palatable option for many such users.

Here is the list of Policies to be removed:

• Cloud Content  >  "Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences"  --  personalized recommendations from Microsoft ...notifications about your Microsoft account.
• Cloud Content  >  "Do not show Windows tips"  --  may see contextual popups ...Microsoft uses diagnostic, telemetry and usage data to determine which tips to show.
• Personalization  >  "Force a specific default lock screen and logon image"
• Personalization  >  "Prevent changing lock screen and logon image"
• Personalization  >  "Do not display the lock screen"  --  before signing in, users will see their selected tile and must dismiss the lock screen using touch, keyboard or mouse drag.
• Store  >  "Disable all apps from Windows Store"  --  turns off launch of all apps from Windows Store that came pre-installed or were downloaded; also will turn off Windows Store.

[Continues...]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/zika-has-gained-foothold-florida-unlikely-become-widespread-united-states

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Ottawa data center housing Phoenix – the Canadian government's bungled payroll system for federal workers – was shut down on Wednesday after smoke was detected inside.

The Shared Services Canada server warehouse also housed computers handling government email, as well as some government websites, which were switched off, too. No fire was reported at the facility.

This embarrassing failure happened just before Canada's parliament was set to probe the botched rollout of the Phoenix pay system that has left tens of thousands of public servants unable to properly collect their wages. This has left employees unable to pay their bills.

Launched in February after a joint development project with IBM, the Phoenix system has been beset by a number of technical issues. By late July, the total number of backlogged payments had reached nearly 80,000.

The government of Canada is still working through claims of missing money filed by workers, but warns that the pay mess may not be sorted out in full until the end of October of this year.

Two separate IT security errors with Phoenix have already been reported. Hearings are to be held in Parliament in Ottawa this week.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

They may be slimy, but they are a perfect environment for microorganisms: biofilms. Protected against external influences, here bacteria can grow undisturbed, and trigger diseases. Scientists at Kiel University, in cooperation with colleagues at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) in Hamburg-Harburg, are researching how it can be possible to prevent the formation of biofilms from the beginning. On this basis, alternatives to antibiotics could be developed, as many pathogens are already resistant to most commercially used antibiotics. The biologists have published their findings in the scientific journal Frontiers in Microbiology. Their study shows that strategies from nature are particularly effective at inhibiting biofilms.

A thin layer floating on water, dental plaque, or slimy black coatings in the washing machine detergent drawer: biofilms originate when cells attach to surfaces, and organise themselves into coordinated three-dimensional consortia, embedded in an extracellular matrix. It becomes problematic when biofilms form on medical devices or implants. Pathogenic bacteria, which trigger deseases, pose a particularly serious threat, as they cannot be treated with normal antibiotics when growing within a biofilm. Therefore: "One way to prevent illnesses is to stop biofilms forming in the first place," according to Professor Ruth Schmitz-Streit from the Institute of General Microbiology at Kiel University.

In order to coordinate themselves and establish consortia on surfaces, the bacteria must communicate with each other via signal molecules (so-called "autoinducers"). If this communication is disrupted, no biofilm can be formed. This cell-to-cell communication, known as "quorum sensing" (QS), can be influenced by disruptive biomolecules ("quorum quenching" or QQ proteins). "Proteins can break down these signal molecules, or modify them in such a way that they are no longer functional," explained Schmitz-Streit. Therefore, the goal of the study, financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), was to find QQ proteins which disrupt this communication between bacteria as effectively as possible.

[...] The research group discovered even more: the communication-disrupting protein QQ-2 proved itself to be particularly effective during the investigations. "This protein is very robust and can prevent many different types of biofilms," explained Weiland-Bräuer. Previous studies focused more on disrupting a particular language of bacteria. "In contrast, the QQ-2 protein is orientated towards a 'universal language', and can disrupt the communication of different bacteria. This makes it a 'general troublemaker'."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

To increase public security, the EU SAVELEC project has demonstrated a prototype device that can stop non-cooperative vehicles, both safely and at distance.

In its endeavour to keep the public safe, one of the key challenges facing European security services is the ability to control and stop, at distance, non-cooperative vehicles posing a threat. However, this ability presents more than a technical challenge. To comply with EU legislation, as well as adhere to ethical concerns, the technology would also have to be safe for the user, the driver (and passengers), as well as members of the public and the material infrastructure of the surrounding environment.

The SAVELEC (Safe control of non cooperative vehicles through electromagnetic means) project developed a prototype device, after testing signals (magnetic pulses and microwave), which interfered with key car components, forcing it to slow down and stop. With the contribution of security forces as the ultimate end users, the researchers were able to simulate the technology's use in realistic scenarios.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A combined team of researchers from Boston University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, also in Boston, has published a paper in the journal Angewandte Chemie describing a new type of hydrogel they have developed for use as a bandage for burn patients—one that can be removed by applying another liquid rather than by cutting, as is done with conventional bandages.

Everyone knows that it hurts when your skin is burned, but few people ever have to undergo the excruciatingly painful experience of having bandages replaced after a serious burn—a process called debridement because it involves cutting healthy skin around the burn site—and worse, it must be done over and over while the skin heals. Doctors and patients agree that bandage removal is almost as painful as the initial burn …

A hydrogel, as its name implies, is a gel that has water as its liquid component. … They report that the hydrogel is also able to remove excess fluid from the wound and maintains a highly humid environment that is conducive to healing.

Thus far, the researchers have only tested their hydrogel on rats with skin burns—such tests so far have proven to be successful, they report—the gel has remained in place and protected the wound and has proven to be easily removable. More tests will have to be done, of course, to ensure that the gel is safe for humans, but the team is optimistic—they hope to launch clinical trials within the next two years.

An abstract is available: DOI: 10.1002/anie.201604827

Original Submission

n1 writes:

Homeowners on a street in Germany have been told they must foot the bill for their road's construction - even though it's been there for nearly 80 years.

[...] The bills included a conversion from the Nazi-era Reichsmark currency into euros for the original road surface, first laid in 1937, which is being dubbed "Hitler asphalt" by the German media. The figures were also adjusted for inflation.

While homeowners were perplexed, a court has now confirmed that they must cough up the cash. It determined that while construction began in the 1930s, the road was only officially completed in 2009 when pavements were added. For the intervening period it was considered to be under development.

[...] According to Die Welt, the council says people weren't required to contribute towards road construction under the Third Reich, so the costs are simply being billed now. The court agreed, saying that the length of time involved doesn't matter. "There is no statute of limitations in relation to the construction work," says Franziska Hoette, a judge at Dusseldorf's Administrative Court.

Source: BBC News

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Six Michigan state employees are being charged with crimes related to the coverup of unsafe drinking water conditions in Flint:

Six Michigan state workers have been charged with hiding data that showed that drinking water was unsafe in the city of Flint. Flint's drinking water became contaminated with lead in 2014 after the city changed its water supply. The lead investigator said that they "effectively buried" data showing that elevated levels of lead in children's' blood was tied to the water supply. The six people are all health and environmental workers. Investigators said they put "children in the cross-hairs of drinking poison".

Also at NPR, Reuters, and Detroit Free Press .

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Amid Dell's looming takeover of EMC, an edict has been issued insisting that Dell customers must only ever see Dell laptops during meetings and consulting engagements, EMC insiders have told The Register. Thus, any Macs in EMC staffers' hands will be confined to quarters.

After Dell and EMC combine, those office-bound Apple computers should be safe from company-wide rollouts of Dell Windows PCs. EMC has in the past revealed it has a bring-your-own-device policy that lets people use personal devices to access email, in-house messaging and private cloud storage.

At least EMC staff after being offered nice replacement kit, in the form of the gaming-bred XPS machines, that another insider told us have been promised to incoming Dell employees.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

At the request of Congress, the nonpartisan US Government Accountability Office reviews the finances and management of federal programs, and this week it released a study critical of NASA’s crew capsule, Orion. Most worryingly, the 56-page report (PDF) regularly draws parallels between the Orion program and another large NASA project, the James Webb Space Telescope. The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is notorious for ballooning from a 10-year, $500 million project to a 20-year, $8.8 billion (£6.7 billion) instrument that may finally launch in 2018.

Although Orion has not yet experienced such dramatic increases in costs, the spacecraft is now into its second decade of development. NASA estimates that it will spend a total of $16 billion (£12 billion) to ready Orion for its first crewed flight in April 2023. However, the GAO review, signed by Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management Cristina T. Chaplain, did not find these numbers to be reliable.

The federal auditing agency based this conclusion on the fact that only a handful of NASA’s methods for estimating costs and schedule were consistent with “best practices.” Moreover, the GAO found, in making a number of its estimates, NASA appears to be relying too heavily on data analysis from the primary contractor for Orion, Lockheed Martin. In regard to Orion’s cost and schedule estimates, then, the GAO report concludes, “They do not fully reflect the characteristics of quality cost or schedule estimates and neither estimate can be considered reliable.”

[...] Few blame the NASA engineers themselves for these difficulties, but rather changing requirements and bloated government procurement processes for a program that formally began in 2006. The 5-meter capsule has seen significant modifications during that time, first envisioned as a means to transport astronauts to the space station and now more focused on deep space exploration.

[...] It's nevertheless striking that it will probably take NASA about 17 years to design and develop Orion before finally flying its first crewed mission in 2023. During the same amount of time, from 1964 to 1981, the space program flew the Gemini spacecraft; designed, developed, and flew the Apollo capsule; and designed, developed, and flew the much more complex space shuttle.

Source: ArsTechnica

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been on Olympic form recently. In just two months, the accelerator delivered almost five times as much data as in the whole of 2015, smashing one record after another for luminosity, i.e. the number of collisions. The counter for integrated luminosity, which indicates the cumulative number of collisions delivered to the experiments, is approaching 20 inverse femtobarns (fb^-1), not far from the 25 fb^-1 target for 2016 as a whole! This is great news for the experiments, which have been able to add data to their analyses ahead of presenting their latest results at the ICHEP 2016 conference (International Conference on High-Energy Physics), which begins in a week's time in Chicago in the United States.

The LHC operators have been clocking up long periods of operation, during which the beams have been circulating and colliding without a single hiccup along the way. You might think that the operators just sit there twiddling their thumbs while the beams circulate, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The LHC is operating so well thanks to their constant checks and adjustments, which improve the operation of the accelerator and its thousands of components. And sometimes they stop the collisions altogether to carry out detailed studies of the accelerator, as is the case this week. Twenty days each year are devoted to these so-called machine development periods.

After six days of studies, the LHC will resume its collision marathon next Monday.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nvidia was sued over incorrect specifications published for its GeForce GTX 970 GPU. The cards had less render output units than originally stated, and instead of 4 GB of VRAM, they had 3.5 GB and an additional 512 MB in a separate partition, (theoretically) leading to performance issues. Nvidia has agreed to a proposed settlement that would allow U.S. owners of the GTX 970 to claim $30. The settlement has not been approved by the court yet:

Word comes from Top Class Actions (via The Tech Report) that NVIDIA will soon be settling a series of proposed class action lawsuits brought against the company regarding the GeForce GTX 970. Under the preliminary settlement, United States residents who purchased GeForce GTX 970 cards would be able to claim a $30 settlement in return for dropping further litigation against the company. With the GTX 970 having launched at $329, this amounts to a de facto 9% rebate on the card.

The class action suits in question were brought against the company almost immediately after NVIDIA made the important (and more than a bit painful) disclosure that the initially published specifications for the GTX 970 were wrong. Specifically, that the card had an unusual memory crossbar organization where one ROP/L2 partition was disabled, giving the card only 56 ROPs instead of 64. Furthermore, this meant that the last 512MB of the standard 4GB of VRAM could not be accessed in a contiguous manner, impacting how it could be used.

Never Settle!

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

[Australia] is shifting its longitude and latitude to fix a discrepancy with global satellite navigation systems. Government body Geoscience Australia is updating the Geocentric Datum of Australia, the country's national coordinate system, to bring it in line with international data.

The reason Australia is slightly out of whack with global systems is that the country moves about 7 centimetres (2.75 inches) per year due to the shifting of tectonic plates.

Since 1994, when the data was last recorded, that's added up to a misalignment of about a metre and a half.

Source: CNet

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] The National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. is looking to hire a beer expert to conduct research for a new project called the American Brewing History Initiative.

[...] The museum is searching for someone who can write, and conduct interviews at a scholarly level, and not just have deep love for downing cold ones.

"The job will involve developing a plan and conducting research, doing a lot of writing for various digital and print media, doing a lot of public speaking, collecting of objects and documents, working with staff to develop public programs, and a lot of other museum-related duties," curator Paula Johnson told The Huffington Post .

[...] the three-year position pays $64,650 a year, plus benefits, according to the official job listing (PDF). You have until August 10 to apply.

The museum already has several collections of objects and documents related to brewing and beer consumption dating from the 1870s to the 1960s. Over the next three years, the goal is to explore "how beer and beer history connect to larger themes in American history," the museum says on its website.

Original Submission