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The Verge just keeps putting out articles on Peter Thiel. Seems now like Thiel might be teaching a seminar at the Berkeley Institute:

IMITATIO is a website dedicated to the ideas of René Girard, and his theory of memetic desire.

The Verge continues:

Interesting, heterodox is also the root for "heretic"! And it appears that some have gotten the ear of the president elect? But it may ultimately be that "heterodox science" is just like "alternative medicine" according to the old joke: "Do you know what they call alternative medicine that actually works? Medicine."

Original Submission

jdavidb writes:

Hackers have stolen the online accounts of the family of Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht is in jail for life pending appeal on the charge of founding and operating the Silk Road dark web marketplace. His mother Lyn Ulbricht has worked tirelessly raising funds to pay for his legal defense and to raise awareness of how the legal issues facing her son affect the rights of everyone. Now hackers have compromised the Free Ross email addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts, paypal account, and bitcoin account.

There are few details available at this time but obviously do not donate to the Free Ross effort at this time until new accounts are established and the whole story is available.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Graduate student volunteers and staff from the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA recently showed more than 300 high school students from Bell Gardens High School that there's a fun side to science at "Ask a Scientist," an event that the high school hosts annually.

High school students flocked to the school auditorium to participate in hands-on demonstrations and pose questions about science, nanotechnology, research and available opportunities for internships and programs.

The school partnered with CNSI to bring concepts of nanotechnology and science to students from this underserved, predominantly Latino community who typically do not have access to science or scientists outside the classroom, said high school officials. "This event is special because it allows our students to see what's out there in the science world," said Juan Herrera, school principal. "These types of opportunities give our students the background, the knowledge, and the motivation to want to become scientists."

Original Submission

Obama Details Actions in Response to Russian Malicious Cyber Activity

An Anonymous Coward writes:

U.S. President Obama writes:

Press release. Text of Executive Order. Annex to Executive Order.

Russia Calls for Expulsion of U.S. Diplomats

takyon writes:

Although Russia's foreign minister has asked President Vladimir Putin to expel 35 U.S. diplomats from the country in response to President Obama's actions, President Putin has so far declined to do so.

Dispute on Russia's Involvement with DNC Hacking

takyon writes:

A WikiLeaks associate has disputed the Russian hacking narrative, saying that he was handed the documents in Washington, D.C.:

On 15 December 2016, the British tabloid Daily Mail quoted Craig Murray, a former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan and "close associate" of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as saying that the Democratic National Committee's e-mails were not obtained by WikiLeaks due to the efforts of Russian hackers but were instead leaked by a disgruntled DNC operative who had legal access to them [...]

Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary.

Of course, it could be completely untrue. At the moment we have only his account to work with.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A computer scientist who saw congressional decision-making up close in 1980 found it insufficient to the task of solving big problems.

"I've heard many times that although democracy is an imperfect system, we somehow always muddle through. The message I want to give you, after long and hard reflection, is that I'm very much afraid it is no longer possible to muddle through. The issues we deal with do not lend themselves to that kind of treatment. Therefore, I conclude that our democracy must grow up. I'm not going to give you a magic recipe on how that will happen—I wish I had one—but I offer some thoughts that I hope will stimulate your thinking.

What's principally lacking on the federal scene, it seems to me, is the existence of respected, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary teams that could at least tell us what is possible and something about the pluses and minuses of different solutions. Take energy, for instance. What I would love to see established, with the National Academies or any other mechanism to confer respectability, is a team that will ... say, 'Okay, there are lots of suggestions around, and most of them won't work. But here are six different plans, any one of which is possible. We'll tell you what each one costs, what's good about it, what's bad about it, how dangerous it is, and what its uncertainties are.' At least each option would be a well-integrated, clearly thought-out plan. I do not trust democracy to try to put together such a plan by having each committee of Congress choose one piece of it. Suppose Congress designed an airplane, with each committee designing one component and an eleventh-hour conference committee deciding how the pieces should be put together. Would you fly on that airplane? I am telling you we are flying on an energy plan, an inflation plan, and so on that are being put together in exactly that way.

Unfortunately the original 1980 article that this was excerpted from is paywalled.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Mining companies are rolling out autonomous trucks, drills, and trains, which will boost efficiency but also reduce the need for human employees.

Each of these trucks is the size of a small two-story house. None has a driver or anyone else on board.

Mining company Rio Tinto has 73 of these titans hauling iron ore 24 hours a day at four mines in Australia's Mars-red northwest corner. At this one, known as West Angelas, the vehicles work alongside robotic rock drilling rigs. The company is also upgrading the locomotives that haul ore hundreds of miles to port—the upgrades will allow the trains to drive themselves, and be loaded and unloaded automatically.

Rio Tinto intends its automated operations in Australia to preview a more efficient future for all of its mines—one that will also reduce the need for human miners. The rising capabilities and falling costs of robotics technology are allowing mining and oil companies to reimagine the dirty, dangerous business of getting resources out of the ground.

BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company, is also deploying driverless trucks and drills on iron ore mines in Australia. Suncor, Canada's largest oil company, has begun testing driverless trucks on oil sands fields in Alberta.

The article notes that Caterpillar has autonomous machines in production, as well.

Now all they need are siege tanks and the Zerg are done for.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-38466409

Pan Pan, the world's oldest male panda has died in China aged 31, six months after being diagnosed with cancer.

His more than 130 descendants account for a quarter of the world's captive-bred panda population.

Born in the wild in Sichuan in China, he was taken into captivity when he was just a few months old.

The world's oldest female panda is currently 36-year-old Basi, who also lives in China, after Jia Jia died aged 38 in Hong Kong in October.

Wild pandas usually live to about 20.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

... if you ask actual manufacturing executives, they're far more bullish on America's future than many of its political leaders. On Thursday, professional services firm Deloitte teamed up with the Council on Competitiveness to release its 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index, showing that the United States is the second most competitive manufacturing economy after China. What's more, global manufacturing executives predict that by 2020, the United States will be the most competitive manufacturing economy in the world.

So why has the United States been shooting up the ranks? Long gone are the days when cheap labor was the most important input for manufacturers. Total manufacturing employment in China peaked during the 1990s and has been falling ever since. And as manufacturing continues to reduce the number of workers needed, the important ingredients to success in the sector are whether advanced technologies and materials are available, and whether or not intellectual property protections are strong. The United States beats out China on both of these scores.

This is not to say that anxiety over the decline of manufacturing employment is misguided. While it's good that manufacturing firms think that the United States is a great place to do business, their success in America will not have the same impact, in terms of providing a huge number of well-paying jobs, as they did a half-century ago.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

An international team of researchers reports the discovery of a series of concentric rings in the debris disk around a young nearby star known as HIP 73145. These unusual substructures could provide new details about the evolution of circumstellar disks around young stars. The findings were presented in a paper published Dec. 22 on arXiv.org.

Located some 400 light years away, HIP 73145 (also known as HD 131835) is a 15-million-year-old star with a spectral type of A2IV. It belongs to the Upper Centaurus Lupus (UCL) moving group, which is part of the Scorpius–Centaurus association. The star is about 70 percent more massive than the sun and has a radius of 1.38 solar radii. Importantly, HIP 73145 is known to host a debris disk with a radius of approximately 96 AU.

HIP 73145's disk was first detected in scattered light in the near-infrared, and at far-infrared wavelengths in 2015. However, no substructures were spotted during these observations. This year also, a team of astronomers led by Markus Feldt of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, has conducted a multi-wavelength observational campaign which allowed them to distinguish concentric rings in the star's debris disk.

These observations were carried out in May 2015 using the European Southern Observatory's extreme adaptive optics coronagraphic instrument, known as the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE). They were part of the SpHere INfrared survey for Exoplanets (SHINE) campaign aimed at the detection and characterization of extrasolar planets.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the half-century since the Miranda decision, a lot has changed. For one, many of us carry smartphones containing a rich trove of personal data in our pockets that might interest law enforcement. In fact, it wasn't until 2014 that police officers nationwide were specifically ordered not to search people's phones without a warrant during an arrest.

In 1966, no one envisioned a world where we carried powerful computers in our pockets, so it's time for an update to the Miranda warning. A modernized version would need to make clear not only that anyone can refuse to speak, but that speaking might involve inputting a passcode to open up a phone. After speaking with several legal experts, here's our "digital Miranda," based on our best understanding of current law.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The University Medical Centre (UMC) in Utrecht, Netherlands is investigating the possibility that an error has led to 26 women's eggs being fertilized by the "wrong" sperm:

A Dutch medical institution has launched an investigation after discovering that up to 26 women's eggs may have been fertilised by the wrong sperm at its IVF laboratory.

A "procedural error" between mid-April 2015 and mid-November 2016 during the in-vitro fertilisation was to blame, the University Medical Centre in Utrecht said. "During fertilisation, sperm cells from one treatment couple may have ended up with the egg cells of 26 other couples," said a statement. "Therefore there's a chance that the egg cells have been fertilised by sperm other than that of the intended father."

Although the chance of that happening was small the possibility "could not be excluded", said the centre.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Most people don't buy a jar of relish every week. But when they decide to buy one from Ocado—the world's largest online-only grocery retailer—they don't have to scrabble at the back of the store. Instead, they call on robots and artificial intelligence to have it delivered to their door.

Ocado claims that its 350,000-square-foot warehouse in Dorden, near the U.K.'s second [most populous] city of Birmingham, is more heavily automated than Amazon's warehouse facilities. The company's task is certainly more challenging in many respects: most of the 48,000 lines of goods that it sells are perishable, and many must be chilled or frozen. Some, such as sushi, must be delivered on the same day they arrive in the warehouse.

What if the produce is buggy?

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

From Electrek.co:

Just a few weeks ago, we published a report about how Tesla's new radar technology for the Autopilot is already proving useful in some potentially dangerous situations. We now have a new piece of evidence that is so spectacularly clear that it's worth updating that report.

The video of an accident on the highway in the Netherlands caught on the dashcam of a Tesla Model X shows the Autopilot's forward collision warning predicting an accident before it could be detected by the driver.

[...] In the video embedded below, we can hear the Tesla Autopilot's Forward Collision Warning sending out an alert for seemingly no reason, but a fraction of a second later we understand why when the vehicle in front of the Tesla crashes into an SUV that wasn't visible from the standpoint of the Tesla driver, but apparently it was for the Autopilot's radar.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Tufts University engineers have created a new format of solids made from silk protein that can be preprogrammed with biological, chemical, or optical functions, such as mechanical components that change color with strain, deliver drugs, or respond to light, according to a paper published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Using a water-based fabrication method based on protein self-assembly, the researchers generated three-dimensional bulk materials out of silk fibroin, the protein that gives silk its durability. Then they manipulated the bulk materials with water-soluble molecules to create multiple solid forms, from the nano- to the micro-scale, that have embedded, pre-designed functions.

For example, the researchers created a surgical pin that changes color as it nears its mechanical limits and is about to fail, functional screws that can be heated on demand in response to infrared light, and a biocompatible component that enables the sustained release of bioactive agents, such as enzymes.

Although more research is needed, additional applications could include new mechanical components for orthopedics that can be embedded with growth factors or enzymes, a surgical screw that changes color as it reaches its torque limits, hardware such as nuts and bolts that sense and report on the environmental conditions of their surroundings, or household goods that can be remolded or reshaped.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission