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Phoenix666 writes:

Auto manufacturers today are scratching their heads, trying to figure out why the millennial generation has little-to-no interest in owning a car. What car makers are failing to see is that this generation's interests and priorities have been redefined in the last two decades, pushing cars to the side while must-have personal technology products take up the fast lane.

It's no secret the percentage of new vehicles sold to 18- to 34-year-olds has significantly dropped over the past few years. Many argue this is the result of a weak economy, that the idea of making a large car investment and getting into more debt on top of college loans is too daunting for them. But that's not the "driving" factor, especially considering that owning a smartphone or other mobile device, with its monthly fees of network access, data plan, insurance, and app services, is almost comparable to the monthly payments required when leasing a Honda Civic.
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With recent studies showing a huge decline in auto sales among the millennial marketplace, it's no wonder auto manufacturers are in a mild state of panic, realizing they're missing out on a generation that wields $200 billion in purchasing power. Numbers don't lie, and over the last few years statistics have shown a significant drop in young people who own cars, as well as those with driver's licenses—and that decline continues among the youngest millennials, meaning this is not a trend that's going away anytime soon. From 2007 to 2011, the number of cars purchased by people aged 18 to 34, fell almost 30%, and according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, only 44% of teens obtain a driver's license within the first year of becoming eligible and just half, 54% are licensed before turning 18. This is a major break with the past, considering how most teens of the two previous generations would race to the DMV for their license or permit on the day of their 16th birthday.

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Phoenix666 and takyon wrote in with stories from Statnews and Arstechnica about some shady dealings with sugar research:

Conspiracies aren't real, are they?

The Sugar Research Foundation paid Harvard researchers $6,500 (2016 equivalent: $48,900) to write a literature review, published in 1967, that downplayed sugar's links to heart disease. One of the researchers went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture:

Back in the 1960s, a sugar industry executive wrote fat checks to a group of Harvard researchers so that they'd downplay the links between sugar and heart disease in a prominent medical journal—and the researchers did it, according to historical documents reported Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine [open, DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5394].

One of those Harvard researchers went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture, where he set the stage for the federal government's current dietary guidelines. All in all, the corrupted researchers and skewed scientific literature successfully helped draw attention away from the health risks of sweets and shift the blame solely to fats—for nearly five decades. The low-fat, high-sugar diets that health experts subsequently encouraged are now seen as a main driver of the current obesity epidemic.

The bitter revelations come from archived documents from the Sugar Research Foundation (now the Sugar Association), dug up by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. Their dive into the old, sour affair highlights both the perils of trusting industry-sponsored research to inform policy and the importance of requiring scientists to disclose conflicts of interest—something that didn't become the norm until years later. Perhaps most strikingly, it spotlights the concerning power of the sugar industry.

See the accompanying editorial: Food Industry Funding of Nutrition Research: The Relevance of History for Current Debates (open, DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.5400) (DX)

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Phoenix666 writes:

Are time crystals just a mathematical curiosity, or could they actually physically exist? Physicists have been debating this question since 2012, when Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek first proposed the idea of time crystals. He argued that these hypothetical objects can exhibit periodic motion, such as moving in a circular orbit, in their state of lowest energy, or their "ground state." Theoretically, objects in their ground states don't have enough energy to move at all.

In the years since, other physicists have proposed various arguments for why the physical existence of time crystals is impossible—and most physicists do seem to think that time crystals are physically impossible because of their odd properties. Even though time crystals couldn't be used to generate useful energy (since disturbing them makes them stop moving), and don't violate the second law of thermodynamics, they do violate a fundamental symmetry of the laws of physics.

However, now in a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Microsoft Station Q (a Microsoft research lab located on the UCSB campus) have demonstrated that it may be possible for time crystals to physically exist.
...
According to the physicists, it should be possible to perform an experiment to observe time-translation symmetry breaking by using a large system of trapped atoms, trapped ions, or superconducting qubits to fabricate a time crystal, and then measure how these systems evolve over time. The scientists predict that the systems will exhibit the periodic, oscillating motion that is characteristic of time crystals and indicative of spontaneously broken time-translation symmetry.

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AnonTechie writes:

In today's computer chips, memory management is based on what computer scientists call the principle of locality: If a program needs a chunk of data stored at some memory location, it probably needs the neighboring chunks as well. But that assumption breaks down in the age of big data, now that computer programs more frequently act on just a few data items scattered arbitrarily across huge data sets. Since fetching data from their main memory banks is the major performance bottleneck in today's chips, having to fetch it more frequently can dramatically slow program execution.

This week, at the International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) are presenting a new programming language, called Milk, that lets application developers manage memory more efficiently in programs that deal with scattered data points in large data sets. In tests on several common algorithms, programs written in the new language were four times as fast as those written in existing languages. But the researchers believe that further work will yield even larger gains.

http://phys.org/news/2016-09-language-fourfold-speedups-problems-common.html

[Source]: Faster parallel computing

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takyon writes:

Vyacheslav Ryabov claims to have recorded a conversation between two dolphins demonstrating the use of "words" and "sentences":

A conversation between dolphins may have been recorded by scientists for the first time, a Russian researcher claims. Two adult Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, named Yasha and Yana, didn't interrupt each other during an interaction taped by scientists and may have formed words and sentences with a series of pulses, Vyacheslav Ryabov says in a new paper. "Essentially, this exchange resembles a conversation between two people," Ryabov said.

[...] Using new recording techniques, Ryabov separated the individual "non coherent pulses" the two dolphins made and theorized each pulse was a word in the dolphins' language, while a collection of pulses is a sentence. "As this language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins," he said in the paper, which was published in the St. Petersburg Polytechnical University Journal: Physics and Mathematics last month. "Their language can be ostensibly considered a high developed spoken language."

click

In his paper, Ryabov calls for humans to create a device by which human beings can communicate with dolphins. "Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of ... communications between dolphins and people," he said.

The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.spjpm.2016.08.004) (DX)

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

Former engineer James Robert Liang took a plea deal with the US federal government to cooperate with its ongoing investigation of how the German car maker cheated American emissions tests and passed off its "clean diesel" engines as meeting state and government clean air standards.

While VW executives have claimed that the use of a defeat device to artificially limit emissions during tests was the work of a "couple of software engineers", Liang's plea deal shows that the conspiracy dates back roughly a decade and has roots in the team that designed the engines.

In other words, Liang claims the design team was in on it, not just a couple of bad apples.

Liang told the government that in 2006, engineers knew the EA 189 diesel engine would not be able to meet clean air emission standards on its own. Rather than attempt to redesign the engine, he and other members of the design team deliberately cheated the testing system.

[...] He said that the device was used to get the clean air certification on VW's "clean diesel" models from 2009 to 2016, and that the group continued to lie about the emissions output of the engines even after the US government began its investigation.

Previous: VW Engineer Pleads Guilty in Diesel Cheating Scandal

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A link provided by an Anonymous Coward has provided a story that we have heard several times recently - hyperlinks being removed after being claimed as a DMCA violation when it is patently clear to everyone that the claim is simply not true.

The takedown request seeks to remove links to a number of torrent URLS that are alleged to infringe on Paramount movie 'Transformers: Age of Extinction'. The link is actually to an Ubuntu 12.04 iso disk image. I am amazed that anyone with even a modicum of reading skills can imagine a link between the Ubuntu software and the film in question.

Cited in a DMCA takedown request filed against Google on behalf of Paramount Pictures, and spotted by TorrentFreak (and tipped to us by reader ~nonanonymous) is an innocuous link to a 32-bit alternate install image Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS.

The takedown request seeks to remove links to a number of torrent URLS that are alleged to infringe on Paramount movie 'Transformers: Age of Extinction'.

Ubuntu clearly doesn't. All it takes is a quick glance at the URL in question to see that. It's very much a stock iso of an old Ubuntu release.

And yet Google has complied with the request and scrubbed the link to the page in question from its search index.

But don't hate on Google for this. The sheer volume of DMCA requests Google is made to process by copyright holders is gargantuan: over three million 'pirate' URLs per day, say TorrentFreak.

Being a European, I am also amazed that there is little or no penalty for making incorrect claims, which probably explains why Google are receiving over 300 million claims a day. Why should anyone stop? There is simply no cost to those who make the claims regardless as to whether they are accurate or not. Why aren't US businesses, indeed any business worldwide, up in arms about this practice which could adversely affect their own ability to trade and ultimately, reduce their profits? I realise that this doesn't necessarily apply to Ubuntu, but with such a large number of DMCA claims I imagine that there must have been many false claims that have affected legitimate businesses.

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MichaelDavidCrawford writes:

I'm nearing feature completion of a command-line tool that I hope will enable me to pay my rent myself. There are many services that provide online stores; which would be the best for me?

I expect to provide installers for .deb and .rpm Linuxes (Linuces?), *BSD, Mac OS X and Windows. The user will select the platform, pay then download the installer.

I expect I'll provide a time-limited demo.

It won't have DRM as I'm convinced someone would just crack it. And really DRM sounds like a PITA from my perspective. The product will be inexpensive; I have the hope that most people would rather pay than have to figure out how to download a "liberated" product.

The eCommerce services I've checked out so far enable the sale of physical products as well as Software as a Service.

I am less concerned with the cost of my store provided I can still make a profit.

I'm not going to sell it through Apple's App Store because I don't want to deal with the sandbox. I expect most of my users will be comfortable with command-lines; I don't forsee them wanting to shop at the App Store.

I hope to go Alpha in a week.

[In consideration of other Soylentils who may have a product with a GUI, or even this submitter should they decide to add one, what other store(s) would you recommend? -Ed.]

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.nature.com/news/virus-pumps-up-male-muscles-in-mice-1.20574

Genetic Evidence That Captured Retroviral Envelope syncytins Contribute to Myoblast Fusion and Muscle Sexual Dimorphism in Mice (open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006289) (DX)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERVW-1#Function

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takyon writes:

President Obama plans to veto a bipartisan bill that would create an exception to the sovereign immunity doctrine, allowing victims of state-sponsored terrorism to sue foreign governments:

President Barack Obama will veto a bill that would allow terror victims of the attacks on September 11, 2001, to sue Saudi Arabia, the White House said Monday. "That's still the plan," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said when asked if the President planned to veto the bill. The White House had previously suggested Obama would not sign the bill when it first passed the Senate in May saying it would complicate diplomatic relations. [...] Lawmakers are expected to attempt to override the veto, and if successful, would mark the first time in Obama's presidency.

The bill passed in the House and Senate unanimously.

Also at The New York Times , Reuters.

S.2040 - Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act

Previously: Saudi Arabia Threatens to Sell $750 Billion in US Assets If 9/11 Bill Passes

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An anonymous poster 'The ABKCO Thieves' writes in about new hire paperwork.

I recently started work at a well-known e-commerce business, which is a great opportunity for me. Only after I started did I find out the full inventions, NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), non-poaching, and work-for-hire agreement is onerous. It treats any work of authorship during my employment as their property, even if done on my own time and equipment. I can't post the agreement because it would identify the company, and potentially me as well.

Earlier this year I began contributing code to a GPL v2 project that has existed for more than a decade. I want to continue to do so, but how can I without risking "contamination" of it thanks to this agreement? Part of my goal in contributing is to have real live code I can point to, so going under the radar defeats that purpose.

Are these sorts of intellectual property agreements common?

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takyon writes:

Travis Rieder has defended his assertion that families should consider having less children to lessen the impacts and suffering caused by climate change:

Earlier this summer, I found myself in the middle of a lively debate because of my work on climate change and the ethics of having children. NPR correspondent Jennifer Ludden profiled some of my work in procreative ethics with an article entitled, "Should we be having kids in the age of climate change?," which summarized my published views that we ought to consider adopting a "small family ethic" and even pursuing fertility reduction efforts in response to the threat from climate change. Although environmentalists for decades have worried about overpopulation for many good reasons, I suggest the fast-upcoming thresholds in climate change provide uniquely powerful reasons to consider taking real action to slow population growth.

Clearly, this idea struck a nerve: I was overwhelmed by the response in my personal email inbox as well as op-eds in other media outlets and over 70,000 shares on Facebook. I am gratified that so many people took the time to read and reflect on the piece. Having read and digested that discussion, I want to continue it by responding to some of the most vocal criticisms of my own work, which includes research on "population engineering" – the intentional manipulation of human population size and structure – I've done with my colleagues, Jake Earl and Colin Hickey. In short, the varied arguments against my views – that I'm overreacting, that the economy will tank and others – haven't changed my conviction that we need to discuss the ethics of having children in this era of climate change.

Consider reading the article before commenting, or turning off your computer to conserve energy.

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Dork Dynasty writes:

From Google, a plugin that detects when you type your google.com password into a non-Google web page.

https://jigsaw.google.com/products/password-alert/

So it is somewhat analogous to cert-pinning for passwords. It would be nice if they expanded it to all website/password combos instead of just google.com

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takyon writes:

A new camera can distinguish layers of ink hidden by several layers of ink and paper, and could also be used to analyze paintings:

MIT researchers and their colleagues are designing an imaging system that can read closed books. In the latest issue of Nature Communications, the researchers describe a prototype of the system, which they tested on a stack of papers, each with one letter printed on it. The system was able to correctly identify the letters on the top nine sheets. "The Metropolitan Museum in New York showed a lot of interest in this, because they want to, for example, look into some antique books that they don't even want to touch," says Barmak Heshmat, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab and corresponding author on the new paper. He adds that the system could be used to analyze any materials organized in thin layers, such as coatings on machine parts or pharmaceuticals.

Also at TechCrunch.

Terahertz time-gated spectral imaging for content extraction through layered structures (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12665) (DX)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.nature.com/news/reactor-shutdown-threatens-world-s-medical-isotope-supply-1.20577
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-photon_emission_computed_tomography

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Tesla's Autopilot software is being upgraded to version 8.0, which will increase reliance on radar data:

The update focuses primarily on the radar component of the Autopilot sensor system, turning it from a supplementary part of the overall tech, designed to complement the cameras, into a primary control sensor that, according to Elon Musk himself, should prevent accidents like the one that resulted in Josh Brown's death.

"We're making much more effective use of radar," Musk explained on a press call regarding the updates. "We weren't confident that we could resolve false positives where the radar would think that it should brake, but it shouldn't."

But after getting upgraded components from Tesla's suppliers, they found they could combine that with their real-time fleet learning system and almost entirely eliminate false positives. That means radar alone can initiate a braking event, rather than requiring the camera component to also provide a positive image recognition result of a potential object.

Musk said that the new system should detect "any thing that's metallic, anything that's large and dense," and then brake the vehicle, "as long as it's not large and fluffy." If Autopilot is active, the system will be better able to predict the car's path and then produce a gradual brake that Musk said should be "much more comfortable" and able to "brake entirely" in most cases, but even if Autosteer is not engaged, it should also result in a emergency brake that will "mitigate" rather than completely avoid collisions in most cases.

The update comes with release notes.

Ars Technica's coverage of this upgrade points out a shortcoming:

Musk spoke about the kinds of targets the radar could detect, including "an alien spaceship" or "truck turning across the road," the latter a reference to the fatal Model S crash earlier this year that has seen much scrutiny focused on Tesla's Autopilot system. However Musk said that "large and fluffy" objects could be more of a problem; large moose should be detected but small deer, he told us, wouldn't. While this sounds trivial, there are more than 1,000,000 moose, deer, and elk strikes by cars in North America each year.

Original Submission