SoylentNews

takyon writes:

A liquid ocean under the crust of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, may have led to the formation of its cryovolcano, Ahuna Mons:

Ahuna Mons is a giant mountain with a[n] icy volcanic dome, a so-called cryovolcano. All volcanic activity for cryovolcanoes happens at low temperatures; they spew icy magma which can consist of freezing water, ammonia or methane instead of hot bubbling lava. The lack of craters on the volcano's surface meant it was probably formed quite recently – a couple of hundred million years at most. Ottaviano Ruesch, lead author of the paper and a NASA scientist working on the Dawn mission, said: "This is the only known example of a cryovolcano that potentially formed from a salty mud mix, and which formed in the geologically recent past."

The possibility of cryovolcanism on Ceres has important implications. Not only does this confirm the dwarf planet's surface temperature of minus 40°C, but it also suggests that its interior has kept warm enough for a sea of salty liquid water to exist below the planet's surface for a relatively long time. "Ceres appears differentiated internally, with a core and a complex crust made of 30 to 40 per cent water ice mixed with silicate rock and salts," said Williams.

The geomorphology of Ceres (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4332) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

When customers want a longer-lasting high, heroin dealers respond by augmenting their products with drugs like carfentanil:

A powerful drug that's normally used to tranquilize elephants is being blamed for a record spike in drug overdoses in the Midwest. Officials in Ohio have declared a public health emergency, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says communities everywhere should be on alert for carfentanil. The synthetic opioid is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, the prescription painkiller that led to the death earlier this year of the pop star Prince. Fentanyl itself can be up to 50 times more deadly than heroin.

In the past few years, traffickers in illegal drugs increasingly have substituted fentanyl for heroin and other opioids. Now carfentanil [alt link] is being sold on American streets, either mixed with heroin or pressed into pills that look like prescription drugs. Many users don't realize that they're buying carfentanil. And that has deadly consequences.

"Instead of having four or five overdoses in a day, you're having these 20, 30, 40, maybe even 50 overdoses in a day," says Tom Synan, who directs the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition Task Force in Southwest Ohio. He's also the police chief in Newtown, Ohio. Synan says carfentanil turned up in Cincinnati in July. At times, the number of overdoses has overwhelmed first responders. "Their efforts are truly heroic, to be going from call to call to call," he says. "One district alone had seen 14 in one shift, so they were nonstop."

First responders and emergency room workers are being told to wear protective gloves and masks. That's because carfentanil is so potent, it can be dangerous to someone who simply touches or inhales it. This was devastatingly clear back in 2002, after a hostage rescue operation in Moscow that went wrong. To overpower Chechen terrorists who'd seized control of a theater, Russian Special Forces sprayed a chemical aerosol into the building. More than 100 hostages were overcome and died. Laboratory tests by British investigators later revealed [open, DOI: 10.1093/jat/bks078] [DX] that the aerosol included carfentanil.

In the article about the DEA adding kratom to Schedule I, I mentioned an "unprecedented" amount of "heroin" overdoses in Cincinnati. The carfentanil-cut heroin boosted the overdose tally to 174 in 6 days (225 in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and New Jersey):

Deaths have not spiked along with the overdose reports because police officers or emergency medical technicians are immediately administering naloxone, sometimes in more than one dose, to bring heroin users back to consciousness and start them breathing.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/how-bitcoin-users-reclaim-their-privacy-through-its-anonymous-sibling-monero-cm673770

Bitcoin right now is not really anonymous. While Bitcoin addresses aren't necessarily linked to real-world identities, they can be. Monitoring the unencrypted peer-to-peer network, analyses of the public blockchain and Know Your Customer (KYC) policy or Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations can reveal a lot about who's using Bitcoin and for what.

This is not great from a privacy perspective. For example, Bitcoin users might not necessarily want the world to know where they spend their money, what they earn or how much they own; similarly, businesses may not want to leak transaction details to competitors.

Additionally, the fact that the transaction history of each bitcoin is traceable puts the fungibility of all bitcoins at risk. "Tainted" bitcoins, for example, may be valued less than other bitcoins, possibly even calling into question Bitcoin's value proposition as money.

There are potential solutions that may increase privacy and improve fungibility in Bitcoin. But most of these solutions are either partial, works-in-progress or just largely theoretical.

To reclaim their privacy right now, therefore, have begun to utilize one of its competitors: the altcoin Monero.

The article continues with an explanation of how Monero works differently from Bitcoin. Monero is based on the CryptoNote reference implementation, which is an altcoin that was designed from scratch. It uses XMR as its native currency which is one of the top altcoins by market capitalization It has implementation details that greatly reduce the ability of someone to follow the chain of inputs and outputs of transactions and trace back someone's identity. The real trick is Monero's use of "Ring Signatures":

The actual magic comes from a cryptographic signature scheme called "ring signatures," based on the older concept of "group signatures." Ring signatures exist as several iterations and variations, but all share the property of obfuscating which cryptographic key signed "which" message, while still proving "that" a cryptographic key signed "a" message. The version used by Monero is called "Traceable Ring Signatures (pdf)," invented by Eiichiro Fujisaki and Koutarou Suzuki.

Lastly, a Bitcoin holder can exchange Bitcoin for Monero, perform a transaction, and then (if desired) convert any change from the transaction back to Bitcoin (with suitable delays to allow other transactions to occur on the Monero blockchain.)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Politico reports:

Hillary Clinton never received training on how to handle classified information. By her own admission, she had little ability to discern whether a document included sensitive information. And when she did handle sensitive materials, she relied on her subordinates to ensure that nothing important was compromised.

Taken together, her responses to questions from FBI [US' Federal Bureau of Investigation] investigators reveal a high-level government executive who apparently had little grasp of the nuances and complexities around the nation's classification system — a blind spot that helped allow classified communications to pass through her private email server.

While Clinton is clear that she never had any intention to mishandle classified documents, a fact that FBI Director James Comey noted as a factor in his decision not to recommend any charges against the former secretary of state, answers she gave to FBI agents during a July 2 interview are likely to reinforce the Republican characterization of her as having been reckless with government secrets.

Bloomberg reports that Clinton Used Eight BlackBerrys, but [the] FBI Couldn't Get Them:

In addition to the eight devices she used as secretary of state, the FBI said there were at least five additional mobile devices they sought as part of their inquiry. Clinton's lawyers said they could not provide any of the mobile devices she used. One person interviewed by the FBI said he recalled two instances in which Clinton's devices were destroyed by "breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer." The FBI released the summary Friday to provide context on its decision not to recommend prosecution of Clinton or her aides for using the private system. The Democratic presidential nominee was interviewed about her use of private e-mail by FBI agents and federal prosecutors for 3 1/2 hours on July 2. The bureau then recommended that the Justice Department not pursue criminal charges.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Juno has sent back more data from its close encounter with Jupiter, including the first images of the chaotic storms near Jupiter's north pole and infrared imagery of an aurora at the south pole:

NASA's Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter's north pole, taken during the spacecraft's first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system's gas-giant planets.

Juno successfully executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on Aug. 27 when the spacecraft came about 2,500 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. The download of six megabytes of data collected during the six-hour transit, from above Jupiter's north pole to below its south pole, took one-and-a-half days. While analysis of this first data collection is ongoing, some unique discoveries have already made themselves visible.

"First glimpse of Jupiter's north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms. There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to -- this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We're seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features."

One of the most notable findings of these first-ever pictures of Jupiter's north and south poles is something that the JunoCam imager did not see. "Saturn has a hexagon at the north pole," said Bolton. "There is nothing on Jupiter that anywhere near resembles that. The largest planet in our solar system is truly unique. We have 36 more flybys to study just how unique it really is."

Also at BBC, The Washington Post .

Original Submission

Tokolosh writes:

It's not often that a YouTube video on a technical topic gives one goosebumps. And it's not often that someone unpacking a computer makes history.

Francois Rautenbach a computer hardware and software engineer from South Africa achieves both with a series of videos he has quietly posted on YouTube.

It shows the "unboxing" of a batch of computer modules that had been found in a pile of scrap metal 40 years ago and kept in storage ever since. Painstaking gathering of a wide range of evidence from documents to archived films had convinced Rautenbach he had tracked down the very first Guidance and Navigation Control computer used on a test flight of the Saturn 1B rocket and the Apollo Command and Service Modules.

Apollo-Saturn 202 or Flight AS-202 as it was officially called was the first to use an onboard computer – the same model that would eventually take Apollo 11 to the moon. Rautenbach argues that the computer on AS-202 was also the world's first microcomputer. That title has been claimed for several computers made in later years from the Datapoint 2200 built by CTC in 1970 to the Altair 8800 designed in 1974.

The AS-202 flight computer goes back to the middle of the previous decade.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2016/09/01/How-a-Tshwane-engineer-stumbled-upon-a-great-treasure-of-the-computer-age
https://youtu.be/WquhaobDqLU
https://youtu.be/OkFy30kxfh4

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Brazil's ex-President Dilma Rousseff has been impeached:

"I don't have political plans for office, but I do have political plans. I'm going to oppose this government," Rouseff told the foreign media Friday, two days after she was impeached by a Senate vote for breaking budget responsibility rules. The 68-year-old leftist leader said although she has been given 30 days to vacate the presidential palace, she will move back to her southern hometown of Porto Alegre next week.

Rousseff also had sharp words for Michel Temer, who was her vice president before taking over as interim president when she was initially suspended from office in May. She warned Temer against straying from the platform the two ran on in 2010 and 2014, adding that if he does, the public would see his government as illegitimate. She also vowed to speak up if his administration tried to crackdown on protests. The pair were initially allies, but Rousseff now accuses him of leading a "coup" in having her impeached.

Also at Bloomberg , BBC, Washington Post .

Original Submission

Two Soylentils wanted to fill us in on Samsung's Note 7.

takyon writes:

Every shipped Galaxy Note 7 is subject to a battery-related recall:

Looks like Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 can give you some bang for your buck after all—Samsung will be issuing a global recall for all 2.5 million of the phones it has shipped so far, says Reuters. Some of the phones shipped with faulty batteries that could catch on fire. Details of the recall program will be available as soon as Samsung works out the details with different carriers in different countries, and customers will be able to exchange their phones for models with non-faulty batteries or get their money back entirely.

Samsung provided the following statement to Ars and other publications:

"In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note 7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue. To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers' safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7. For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks."

AssCork writes:

As reported by CNN Samsung has decided to pull a Dell and ship batteries in the latest addtion to their flagship lineup - The Note 7. (A shame - I was going to buy two). Samsung has issued this statement, which could have been shortened to "We're sorry we set some shit on fire. Here, have a new one on the house". All prompted by this video.

Original Submission #1
Original Submission #2

takyon writes:

The dream of upgrading the CPU/RAM/sensors in your smartphone using Lego-like components is dead:

It sounds like Project Ara, the ambitious modular smartphone concept birthed in Google's ATAP division, is finally dead. A report from Reuters says that Google has "suspended" Project Ara in an effort to "streamline the company's hardware efforts."

Project Ara never seemed like a particularly viable product, and after the announcement in 2013, progress came slowly. The device was delayed past its 2015 commercialization deadline when plans for a Puerto Rican "food truck" pilot launch fell through. Earlier this year, the device was delayed again to 2017, and the Ara team announced that Ara would pivot from fully modular to having a fixed CPU, GPU, antennas, sensors, battery, and display. After that announcement, Ara was watered down so much it barely had a reason to exist.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A new polyethylene-based textile can be woven into clothing to keep people cooler:

Stanford engineers have developed a low-cost, plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could cool your body far more efficiently than is possible with the natural or synthetic fabrics in clothes we wear today. Describing their work [open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf5471] [DX] in Science, the researchers suggest that this new family of fabrics could become the basis for garments that keep people cool in hot climates without air conditioning.

[...] This new material works by allowing the body to discharge heat in two ways that would make the wearer feel nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than if they wore cotton clothing. The material cools by letting perspiration evaporate through the material, something ordinary fabrics already do. But the Stanford material provides a second, revolutionary cooling mechanism: allowing heat that the body emits as infrared radiation to pass through the plastic textile. [...] "Forty to 60 percent of our body heat is dissipated as infrared radiation when we are sitting in an office," said Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering who specializes in photonics, which is the study of visible and invisible light. "But until now there has been little or no research on designing the thermal radiation characteristics of textiles."

To develop their cooling textile, the Stanford researchers blended nanotechnology, photonics and chemistry to give polyethylene – the clear, clingy plastic we use as kitchen wrap – a number of characteristics desirable in clothing material: It allows thermal radiation, air and water vapor to pass right through, and it is opaque to visible light. The easiest attribute was allowing infrared radiation to pass through the material, because this is a characteristic of ordinary polyethylene food wrap. Of course, kitchen plastic is impervious to water and is see-through as well, rendering it useless as clothing.

Wait, being impervious to water and see-through renders it useless as clothing?

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

In a final ruling announced Friday, the Food and Drug Administration is pulling from the market a wide range of antimicrobial soaps after manufacturers failed to show that the soaps are both safe and more effective than plain soap. The federal flushing applies to any hand soap or antiseptic wash product that has one or more of 19 specific chemicals in them, including the common triclosan (found in antibacterial hand soap) and triclocarbon (found in bar soaps). Manufacturers will have one year to either reformulate their products or pull them from the market entirely.

[...] The ruling does not affect alcohol-based hand sanitizers or wipes, which the agency is reviewing separately. It also does not affect antiseptic products used in healthcare settings.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/fda-bans-antibacterial-soaps-no-scientific-evidence-theyre-safe-effective/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Even a starlet can't defeat the First Amendment:

Hellraiser Lindsay Lohan has had her case against Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar Games, for allegedly basing a character on her image, thrown out by a New York court. The actress claimed that her image was used as the basis of one of the game's characters, Lacey Jonas. The Jonas character allowed players to rescue her from swarms of paparazzi and take her home and the cover art for the game featured a woman holding a mobile who, it was argued, looked remarkably like Lohan.

Lohan's lawsuit, filed two years ago, said that the places and events in both characters' storylines were "substantially similar" to her own life and there could be no doubt about who the game was sending up.

[...] However, the court threw out the case on Thursday. The court ruled that because her name was never used, and the character doesn't look exactly like her, Lohan had no case. The ruling said: "This video game's unique story, characters, dialogue, and environment, combined with the player's ability to choose how to proceed in the game, render it a work of fiction and satire."

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Several sites have articles about Sony Electronics's forthcoming "Signature Series" of audio equipment. It is to consist of the MDR-Z1R headphones, the TA-ZH1ES headphone amplifier, and two Walkman portable audio players.

The NW-WM1A player will have an aluminium casing and a recommended selling price of $1,200. The NW-WM1Z will have a casing of gold-plated "oxygen-free" (according to the press release) copper and is to sell for $3,200 (according to the press release). They will weigh 267 grams and 454 grams (0.589 pounds and 1.00 pounds). They will be capable of playing Direct Stream Digital and pulse code modulated audio files. They will have touch screens, buttons and dual headphone jacks.

The headphones, at a suggested retail price of $2300, will have balanced cabling, a 4.4 mm connector, a titanium head band, and 120 kHz response.

The amplifier, at $2200, will have balanced and unbalanced outputs.

Links:

• PC World
• IDG Connect via ITNews
• Gizmodo
• TechHive
• Infoworld (video)
• company press release

Original Submission

takyon writes:

OpenOffice may not last much longer as many of its former developers have jumped ship to LibreOffice:

OpenOffice, once the premier open source alternative to Microsoft Office, could be shut down because there aren't enough developers to update the office suite. Project leaders are particularly worried about their ability to fix security problems.

An e-mail thread titled, "What would OpenOffice retirement involve?" was started yesterday by Dennis Hamilton, vice president of Apache OpenOffice, a volunteer position that reports to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) board. "It is my considered opinion that there is no ready supply of developers who have the capacity, capability, and will to supplement the roughly half-dozen volunteers holding the project together," Hamilton wrote.

No decisions have been made yet, but Hamilton noted that "retirement of the project is a serious possibility," as the Apache board "wants to know what the project's considerations are with respect to retirement."

Original Submission

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3061519/evidence/the-ux-secret-that-will-ruin-apps-for-you

companies introduce what Kowitz calls an "artificial waiting" pattern into their interfaces. These are status bars, maybe a few update messages, to construct a facade of slow, hard, thoughtful work, even though the computer is done calculating your query.

[...] "My guys built this tool—it took single digit milliseconds to get the results back. And it was giving [accurate] results, not just some plan we wanted to sell them," Hoober says. "But when we tested with people, they assumed it was all marketing bullshit because it was instantaneous. They'd say, 'This was obviously a canned result, I'm just gonna shop myself.'"

http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2010/12/16/adding-delays-to-increase-perceived-value-does-it-work/

"Coinstar is a great example of this. The machine is able to calculate the total change deposited almost instantly. Yet, during testing the company learned that consumers did not trust the machines. Customers though it was impossible for a machine to count change accurately at such a high rate. Faced with the issues of trust and preconceived expectations of necessary effort, the company began to rework the user experience. The solution was fairly simple. The machine still counted at the same pace but displayed the results at a significantly slower rate. In fact, the sound of change working the way through the machine is just a recording that is played through a speaker. Altering the user experience to match expectations created trust and met the customers expectation of the necessary effort to complete the task."

Not long ago I removed a delay in some old software that didn't seem to do anything (it still works and works faster). Perhaps I should add the delay back...

Original Submission