SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

Microsoft has announced a new "Premium Assurance" plan for Windows Server and SQL Server.

Redmond currently offers five years of Mainstream Support on the aforementioned products, during which new features are added and updates are made for reasons of security or just to fix things up. Next comes five years of extended support, during which the security fixes and functionality tweaks keep flowing.

The new support offering will see bugs rated "critical" or "important" patched for the six-year duration of the Premium Assurance plan.

The outcome of the new plan is that operating systems like Windows Server 2008 R2 will now be supported until the year 2026. SQL Server 2008 can now be supported until 2025.

Microsoft's billing Premium Assurance as a comfort to those running applications that may not be easy to evaporate into a cloud. By offering extended support, Redmond reckons, you can just keep them running without worrying about migration.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A study led by Assistant Professor Darren Chian Siau Chen from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Engineering has found that when a projectile is fired at a sand block at high speed, it absorbs more than 85 per cent of the energy exerted against it. This ability to resist the impact increases with the speed of the projectile, even at high velocities.

While sand has been used traditionally for military fortification, very little is known about the unique energy absorption capability of the material. In a recent study, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Faculty of Engineering found that sand can absorb more than 85 per cent of the energy exerted against it, and its ability to resist the impact increases with the speed of the projectile, even at high velocities. In contrast, steel plates have poorer energy absorption capacity against high speed projectiles. This novel finding suggests that sand can potentially be used as a cheaper, lighter and more environmentally friendly alternative to enhance protection of critical infrastructure as well as armour systems.

[Editor's note: We've previously discussed an impending shortage of sand..]

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Let's say you're an acting student with your eyes on a Broadway revival of "Oliver!" Maybe you're a restaurant critic who needs a Southern drawl to match your updo when you eat incognito. Whatever your role-playing dreams, acquiring an accent can be a difficult, but rewarding, task.

Nobody knows her way around a patois or a flat A quite like Sarah Jones. In "Sell/Buy/Date," her new solo show about the lives of sex workers, Ms. Jones transforms into several characters — from a feisty elderly Jewish woman to a seasoned black rapper — with the kind of dialectal veracity that would make any linguist swoon.
...
Let's say you want to sound like a Trinidadian woman, as Ms. Jones does in her show. She recommends you watch YouTube clips of speakers at council meetings in Trinidad until you find the person you most want to sound like. If you can meet your subject in person, it will help make your goal much easier to reach.

"I ask them to speak something very slowly three times in a row and then I have them say it at normal speed the way they'd say it three times in a row," she said. "I have them say it the way they'd say it in school as compared to how they'd say it to a friend."

Ms. Jones said an important step in her development of a character is writing out how someone speaks. The written version of a word or phrase may often look nothing like its spoken companion. The word "girls," when spoken by a native Arabic speaker, might look on the page like "gez." Write it down to better understand how the word forms in your mouth.

"Phonetically break it down so you can let it go," she said. "It helps to get out of your own speech patterns and how you understand words to appear and sound on a page — and in your head — so you can get into how it sounds coming out of that person's mouth."

Other ways to acquire accents: A) Learn from the political masters, or B) watch Russell Peters sketches every day for a month.

Original Submission

charon writes:

This fascinating article tells us what it's like to inhabit a telepresence robot at a busy convention, both positive and negative.

I logged into my telepresence unit and discovered myself in a small booth filled with technicians. A gentleman was there who asked me some questions. Who was I? Did I know how to use the software? Was I logged in to the Skype chat, and did I need any help?

After a brief orientation, I left my charging platform and trundled out into the world. I moved cautiously at first – I needed to get my bearings – but was soon on my way. A few turns and I found the Micron booth. This is a great start; I have friends there.

The Micron folks are great people and all of my nervousness about this new mode of interaction faded away as I talked to them. There was some oohing and aahing about the novelty of the telepresence unit, but after a few seconds the robot, the UI, my computer screen... it all just disappeared. I was there, talking to my friends, and it felt as real to me as being there in person.

Later:

Watching her navigate between people I began to notice a distinct difference in how she was treated versus how I was treated. When Phoummala wanted to go somewhere she simply went there. People got out of her way. When I wanted to go somewhere, people did not move to let me through.

People rarely deliberately stepped in front of Phoummala. If they saw she was headed in a given direction, they'd generally let her pass before continuing on. The opposite was true of me; as a telepresence unit, they expected that I would stop to let them pass. I wasn't human, you see, so it was perfectly OK to throw one's self into my path and expect me to react in time.

As this technology is used more often, will we treat the 'bots as we would the humans riding them?

[Editor's note: This link is at the bottom of the article and I believe is the unit they were using]

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Beth Mole at ArsTechnica has written an interesting article about a recent discovery that the oldest sample of smallpox is younger than we thought.

From the pockmarked mummified pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the epic triumph of complete global eradication, smallpox had a remarkable history. But that lengthy history may be in for a massive revision, thanks to a little mummy found in the crypt of a Lithuanian church.

The mummy, thought to be of a child between the ages of two and four who died sometime between 1643 and 1665, teemed with the genetic remains of the bygone virus. That smallpox DNA was the oldest ever found—yet it was quite young, evolutionarily speaking. In fact, genetic analysis of the preserved smallpox blueprints, published Thursday in Current Biology[open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.10.061], suggests that smallpox is just hundreds of years old, not millennia as many had thought. The finding stands to rewrite the virus' storied past.

Reports of blistering, puss-packed rashes have speckled historical records for thousands of years. The dimpled pharaohs and spotted plagues in China during the 4th century were considered proof that the smallpox virus—aka Variola—plagued humankind for a long, long time. Smallpox caused massive outbreaks throughout Europe in the 17th century and devastated populations in the New World. But, in 1796, it became the first disease for which there was a vaccine. And in 1979, smallpox was declared the first—and still only—infectious disease of humans to be globally eradicated. (Rinderpest, an infectious disease of cattle and some other animals, has also been eradicated.)

The latter part of smallpox's history is still solid, thankfully. But the ancient past may crumble to dust.

Original Submission

charon writes:

Bad Astronomy has an article about an astronomer who had observational data to suggest he had discovered a planet around another star and published his findings in a peer-reviewed journal. In 1855.

We now know, with further, more accurate observations, that no such planet exists there, and the offsets are the product of uncertainty in the telescopic observations that were, to be fair, done by eye.

But still, despite that, I must tip my hat to Jacob. He did his homework, made the best observations and calculations he could, expressed skepticism in his writing, and came up with what he thought was the best explanation. Mind you, again to be fair, this took a great deal of cleverness to dream up. Perhaps he had been influenced by the recent discovery of Neptune.

If anything, he was guilty of overconfidence in his own measurements. Still, technology eventually caught up with his imagination and we did start to find alien worlds. The field of exoplanet research is now a thriving one, which has moved beyond the simple discovery stage to one where we are beginning to physically categorize and model them.

Not so incidentally, we have since found planets orbiting other stars using the method Jacob pioneered in 1855. He may have been the first person ever to publish this idea, and for that he deserves acknowledgment.

This short video gives some more information and context of the man and his (unfortunately erroneous) discovery. The original paper is also freely available.

Original Submission

charon writes:

The Atlantic has an article about people with a type of synesthesia which causes them to see time around them.

The English polymath Francis Galton first described calendar forms in 1880, and the phenomenon has been rarely studied since. But Vilayanur Ramachandran, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego who has been studying synesthesia for a long time, has been slowly amassing and studying people with this odd perceptual quirk.

He met one such person, a 25-year-old woman named Emma, a year ago. Her calendar is a hula hoop, which stretches horizontally in front of her and touches her chest at one point—always December 31st, no matter the actual time of year. Emma uses her calendar to organize her life, attaching events to the various months and zooming around the hoop to access them.

The hoop is anchored to her body; it doesn't move if she tilts or rotates her head. "Obviously, this is a construct in her head, not a real hula hoop stuck to her chest," says Ramachandran. But if she turns her head to the right, the left side of the calendar became fuzzier, as it would be if it was an actual physical object. More bizarrely, the memories that she had appended to those months also became indistinct and harder to recall.

Original Submission

"charon" writes:

NewAtlas has a story about a new thermoelectric paint which can turn any surface into an electricity generator.

Thermoelectric generators convert heat or cold to electricity (and vice-versa). Normally solid-state devices, they can be used in such things as power plants to convert waste heat into additional electrical power, or in small cooling systems that do not need compressors or liquid coolant. However the rigid construction of these devices generally limits their use to flat, even surfaces. In an effort to apply thermal generation capabilities to almost any shape, scientists at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea claim to have created a thermoelectric coating that can be directly painted onto most surfaces.

Variously known as the Peltier, Seebeck, or Thomson effect, the thermoelectric effect is seen in semiconductor devices that create a voltage when a different temperature is present on each side or, when a voltage is applied to the device, it creates a temperature difference between the two sides. In this instance, the new paint created by the UNIST researchers is used specifically to heat a surface when a voltage is applied.

The specially-formulated inorganic thermoelectric paint was created using Bi2Te3 (bismuth telluride) and Sb2Te3 (antimony telluride) particles to create two types of semiconducting material. To test the resultant mixture, the researchers applied alternate p-type (positive) and n-type (negative) layers of the thermoelectric semiconductor paint on a metal dome with electrodes at the top and the base of the dome.

Applying a voltage across the electrodes, the researchers were able to measure a temperature gradient from the hot top of the dome to the cooler bottom. According to the researchers, the entire device generated an average power output of 4 mW per square centimeter.

Original Paper (Complete text)

Original Submission

Appalbarry writes:

Most people have wondered how censors can watch so much horrible, degrading stuff without be affected by it, especially the stuff that's so bad that ordinary people need to be protected from ever seeing it.

In what might be the first of its kind, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is claiming damages for the Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) he is suffering after years of exposure to child pornography.

Const. Michael Wardrope says he was exposed to disturbing videos, photographs, interviews and interrogations as a member of the child abuse and sexual offence unit in Surrey, B.C.

"His mental health was impacted by unescapable images and memories from the files he had worked on," says the lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court.

Wardrope says in the court document he was "flattered" when he was recruited to the unit in 2009. But he says he told his bosses he had three young children, had to commute hours per day and didn't think viewing child porn would be healthy.

He alleges his supervisor assured him that overtime was uncommon and that the amount of child pornography that needed to be viewed was "very minimal and almost non-existent," as the work was, for the most part, interviewing children.

Eventually Wardrope suffered a mental breakdown, and the Mounties dragged their feet for ten months before transferring him to another unit.

Original Submission

srobert writes:

Many Windows 10 users are suffering from a bug which causes wi-fi connections to disconnect.

Recently, some users have noticed (probably abruptly) that their Wi-Fi dropped out, with Windows complaining about an invalid IP configuration. Microsoft released a patch just the other day (who enjoyed a good ol' fashioned forced reboot from it?) that could have fixed the issue, but didn't.

Infoworld says:

Speculation at this point says the disconnect results when a machine performs a fast startup, setting the machine's IP address to 169.x.x.x. It's an old problem, but somehow it's come back in spades in the past two days. I have no idea what triggered the sudden outbreak, as there were no Win10 1607 patches issued on Dec. 6, 7 or 8.

This scoop was sent from my ArchLinux laptop connected through wifi. It's hard not to be a little smug about it. ;-)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Science magazine reports:

Full paper: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6549e1.htm

WHO report (pdf) http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/251905/1/zikasitrep8Dec2016-eng.pdf?ua=1

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story concerning Google's enforcement of search privacy laws across international borders:

What if links to stories about someone's past—stories about defrauding an international business or about medical tourism malpractice—were removed from Google search in your country, not because of your local laws but because someone was able to use the laws of another country. How would you feel about that?

That question may seem simplistic.  But it goes to the heart of a very important debate that is taking place now in Europe, initially between some Data Protection Authorities and, next year, in court. At stake: whether Europe's right to be forgotten—which allows people in EU countries to request removal of certain links from name search results—should reach beyond the borders of Europe and into countries which have different laws.

Google believes it should not. That's why, for much of the last year, we've been  defending the idea that each country should be able to balance freedom of expression and privacy in the way that it chooses, not in the way that another country chooses.

Can the requirements of different countries be balanced at all?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A paywalled story by The Information — The Reality Behind Magic Leap — criticized Magic Leap for the company's $4.5 billion valuation and lack of shipping products. The company is working on an augmented reality product that may prove to be inferior to competing designs such as Microsoft's HoloLens:

In The Information article, Magic Leap is said to use cumbersome equipment in its demonstrations that is at odds with the elegant design of the sunglasses-like product the company said it intends to build. Instead of a sleek pair of shades and low-impact tethering to a small battery pack, the demonstration required a helmet-sized device called "WD3," or "wearable device three," leashed to a desktop computer that the reviewer described as displaying "jittery and blurry" imagery.

This is apparently the same gear that Magic Leap execs showed investors, such as Alibaba and Google, in the lead-up to its $793 million Series C round of funding earlier this year. Previously, the company had used a refrigerator-sized device known internally as "the Beast" in demonstrations, a piece of hardware offering visuals that may prove unattainable in smaller appliances, at least anytime soon.

The headset that The Information previewed, the WD3, is not the latest prototype, which is dubbed PEQ, or "product equivalent," as The Information notes. Though former employees told the tech news site that the PEQ spectacles use similar technology to Microsoft's HoloLens, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz disputed the claim in the article and said it "already produced images with more depth that look better" than the $3,000 competitor.

The article also claims that a promotional video implied to be demonstrating the company's technologies was produced by a special effects studio instead.

Not to be confused with Leap Motion. Also at The Verge, CNBC, PC Magazine , and MIT.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found an interesting story over at The Register about regulating the security of IoT devices:

Washington DC think tank the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology is calling for regulation on "negligence" in the design of internet-of-things (IoT) devices.

Researchers James Scott and Drew Spaniel point out in their report Rise of the Machines: The Dyn Attack Was Just a Practice Run [PDF] that IoT represents a threat that is only beginning to be understood.

The pair say the risk that regulation could stifle market-making IoT innovation (like the WiFi cheater-detection mattress) is outweighed by the need to stop feeding Shodan.

"National IoT regulation and economic incentives that mandate security-by-design are worthwhile as best practices, but regulation development faces the challenge of ... security-by-design without stifling innovation, and remaining actionable, implementable and binding," Scott and Spaniel say.

[...] State level regulation would be "disastrous" to markets and consumers alike.

Does the ability of a company to make money now outweigh the security of our digital homes and devices?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

After years of development, the standalone modification of Xonotic known as ChaosEsque Anthology has reached version 100.

The project has expanded Xonotic's original cast of 18 weapons to over 130 weapons, has added new textures and maps, as well as a list of other features including: city generation subsystem (with interiors), building subsystem (build buildings, furnishings, doors, blocks, the buildings have interiors and function similar to RTS buildables), marshaling subsystem, foliage subsystem, as well as mounted weapons and more vehicles. Hand-to-hand combat was added for those wishing for a Mortal Kombat feel in a free 3d video game.

More information can be found on the project's Linux Game Database page including the change log and download link of the ISO: https://lgdb.org/game/chaosesque-anthology

Source code can be found on SourceForge.

(Note: The ChaosEsque Anthology name was decided upon after input from the lead developer of Xonotic, many moons ago)

Original Submission