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stormwyrm writes:

In 1936, Werner Heisenberg and Hans Euler predicted that thanks to the Uncertainty Principle that bears Heisenberg's name, what we think of as 'empty' space must be really be filled with virtual particle-antiparticle pairs that pop in and out of existence so rapidly that they can't be directly observed. They predicted, however, that because of these virtual particles, a very strong magnetic field should affect the way light propagates through otherwise empty space. This phenomenon, known as vacuum birefringence, was long theorised but was only recently observed directly from the faint neutron star RX J1856.5-3754, which exhibits an extremely powerful magnetic field in the gigatesla range but also lacks the dense plasma-filled magnetosphere that typically surrounds most other neutron stars, which make observing the effect impossible. A team of scientists led by Roberto Mignani, using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, was able to measure the polarisation of the light from the neutron star and confirm the predictions of Heisenberg and Euler. From the abstract:

The "Magnificent Seven" (M7) are a group of radio-quiet Isolated Neutron Stars (INSs) discovered in the soft X-rays through their purely thermal surface emission. Owing to the large inferred magnetic fields (B ≈ 10¹³ G), radiation from these sources is expected to be substantially polarised, independently on the mechanism actually responsible for the thermal emission. A large observed polarisation degree is, however, expected only if quantum-electrodynamics (QED) polarisation effects are present in the magnetised vacuum around the star. The detection of a strongly linearly polarised signal would therefore provide the first observational evidence of QED effects in the strong-field regime[...]The [polarisation degree] that we derive is large enough to support the presence of vacuum birefringence, as predicted by QED.

Evidence for vacuum birefringence from the first optical polarimetry measurement of the isolated neutron star RX J1856.5−3754. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 465, 492 (2016); DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw2798.

Further comment from astrophysicist Ethan Siegel.

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Phoenix666 writes:

An attempt to drill into the heart of a volcano in the south-west of Iceland is now complete.

Geologists have penetrated 4,659m down, creating the deepest-ever volcanic borehole.

Their aim is to tap into the steam at the bottom of the well to provide a source of geothermal energy.

They recorded temperatures of 427C, but believe the hole will get hotter when they widen it in the coming months.

If it works, maybe the Japanese could do likewise and avoid nuclear and fossil fuel power alike.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Not that long ago you could buy a prepaid cell phone with cash, an unlocked cell phone with cash, and a sim card with cash, without having to show any ID, in the USA. As far as I know this is now impossible. Every store now requires ID when purchasing these things. Is there any way to obtain a cell phone that respects my privacy and therefore security in the US any longer? Are these rules about showing ID state-specific? I'm curious if anyone else has recent experience trying to do what used to be the norm. Obviously any sim card or phone tied to an id, credit card, etc., offers no privacy. Thanks!

takyon: People IRL and on IRC are telling me that no, you do not necessarily need an ID to obtain a prepaid cell phone. You might want to get it months in advance of doing anything with it so that store CCTV footage is erased, and you might want to put it in a faraday cage (several layers of foil can also be used) before it is anywhere near your house or primary identity-tracked phone(s). In fact, you could do that in the parking lot of the place you buy it. Here are some related stories:

How Two Escaped Killers Could Completely Disappear Off the Grid
Bill Aims to Identify U.S. Prepaid Cellular Users
Thailand Plans to Track All SIM Cards Sold in the Country

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Buffalo News in upstate New York reports

Tesla Motors is changing its name, as the SolarCity owner branches out into solar energy.

The California-based company will become Tesla Inc., according to a regulatory filing on [February 1].

The name change reflects Tesla's evolution from a company that makes electric cars to one that now seeks to be a renewable energy powerhouse, with products ranging from electric vehicles to battery storage and solar energy. The business includes the sprawling SolarCity solar panel factory in South Buffalo that is set to open this summer.

Some additional details are available in a story at Inc :

Tesla Motors isn't just a car company.

That's been true for some time, as Elon Musk's firm has pushed its way into the energy sectorover the past two years.

But now the company is making it official. A new SEC filing on Wednesday revealed that the company will change its name from Tesla Motors to Tesla Inc. The filing was first spotted by Business Insider.

The move is indicative of Tesla's changing business model since Musk co-founded it in 2006. Initially a maker of high-end electric sports cars, Tesla has shifted into energy products like solar panels and home batteries. It also agreed to acquire SolarCity, which Musk co-founded, in November for $2.3 billion.

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takyon writes:

Apple, which makes its own ARM SoCs for its mobile products such as iPhones and iPads, is planning to include ARM chips in Mac laptops alongside Intel CPUs. The ARM chips will handle various tasks during power conservation modes:

Apple Inc. is designing a new chip for future Mac laptops that would take on more of the functionality currently handled by Intel Corp. processors, according to people familiar with the matter. The chip, which went into development last year, is similar to one already used in the latest MacBook Pro to power the keyboard's Touch Bar feature, the people said. The updated part, internally codenamed T310, would handle some of the computer's low-power mode functionality, they said. The people asked not to be identified talking about private product development. It's built using ARM Holdings Plc. technology and will work alongside an Intel processor.

Although Apple only accounted for 7.5 percent of worldwide computer shipments in the fourth quarter, according to data from IDC, the Mac line has long set the standard for design and component improvements. Its feature additions often start new technology trends that other manufacturers rush to follow. Apple and Intel declined to comment. [...] Apple engineers are planning to offload the Mac's low-power mode, a feature marketed as "Power Nap," to the next-generation ARM-based chip. This function allows Mac laptops to retrieve e-mails, install software updates, and synchronize calendar appointments with the display shut and not in use. The feature currently uses little battery life while run on the Intel chip, but the move to ARM would conserve even more power, according to one of the people.

Do you think we will see Dell, Acer, ASUS, et al. produce mainstream dual-processor laptops? How about big.LITTLE clusters in Chromebooks?

Also at Ars Technica, TechCrunch, and Computerworld.

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Celestial writes:

Robert Meyer Burnett, the producer and editor of the bonus features found on the Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Enterprise Blu-ray sets and long time Star Trek fan, explains why Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager are not available in HD or 4K Ultra HD and may never be in a lengthy interview.

Unfortunately, this meant, unlike TOS and The Animated Series, there would be no 35mm finished negative of TNG... and the series would only ever exist on videotape at NTSC resolution. The same would hold true of DS9 and Voyager. Enterprise though, shot in 2001, would be future-proofed, shot on 35MM and finished in HD, with the VFX created in CG at 720p, until the fourth season, which abandoned film altogether.

[...] TNG, DS9 and Voyager could not be rescanned and released in Full HD, as the original edited programs only existed on tape at NTSC resolution. With worldwide markets rapidly converting to HD, modern Trek, with the exception of Enterprise, would simply no longer be shown anywhere. With TNG still the most successful Trek series by a wide margin, Paramount and CBS desperately wanted to figure out a way to not let their crown jewel get thrown onto the scrapheap of history. Something had to be done.

So a radical notion was proposed...why not go back to the original negative and REBUILD the entire show, from the ground up, in High Definition? In the history of television, this had never been done before. Essentially, all 178 episodes of TNG (176 if you're watching the original versions of "Encounter at Farpoint" and "All Good Things") would have to go through the entire post-production process AGAIN. The original edits would be adhered to exactly, but all the original negative would have to be rescanned, the VFX re-composed, the footage re-color-timed, certain VFX, such as phaser blasts and energy fields, recreated in CG, and the entire soundtrack, originally only finished in 2 channel stereo, would be remastered into thunderous, 7.1 DTS.

[...] From 2012 through 2014, the seven seasons of TNG, along with 5 single discs (two-part episodes cut into feature presentations) were released on Blu-Ray, with over 50 hours of newly-produced special features. The restoration remains an absolutely astonishing achievement in the annals of television and anyone watching the new versions of the episodes, can only marvel at the vast difference from the originals. Everyone involved at CBS Digital and the various other Post Houses who participated in the project deserve a hearty round of applause from fans the world over. At least the fans who appreciate and understand just how much work was done.

Unfortunately, during this same time, the popularity of streaming services skyrocketed, and popularity of physical media began to diminish. Sales of physical discs dropped 10% a year across the board, the younger generation thought putting discs in machines was too 20th Century and even the loyal Trek fan base asked themselves, "why do I have to buy TNG YET AGAIN?" I bought the VHS tapes, the Laserdiscs and the DVDs, so do I really need the Blu-rays...? I don't even have a Blu-ray player. Won't it all be on Netflix anyway?" The absolutely justified high price-point of the initial Blu-ray seasons also didn't help sales.

Ultimately, the final result of all the effort put into the restoration itself and the newly-created special features were ultimately disappointing. The disc sales didn't match projections and continued to suffer as more and more people turned to streaming, where Star Trek was already widely available. Sure, the newly-remastered episodes of TNG have quietly replaced the original versions, but nowadays, very few people even notice, as they expect HD to look great.

Both Deep Space Nine and Voyager would require at least the same amount of time, manpower and money, but neither show was ever as popular as TNG or TOS. So, how can CBS be expected to shell out probably 20-million dollars per series to remaster them into HD?

It's a lengthy but good read that applies to all pre-HD television shows from the '80s and '90s. It also sadly explains why we'll likely never see Babylon 5 in HD or 4K Ultra HD.

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takyon writes:

Google's self-driving vehicles are "disengaging" less frequently on California roads:

California's Department of Motor Vehicles released its annual autonomous vehicle disengagement report today, in which all the companies that are actively testing self-driving cars on public roads in the Golden State disclose the number of times that human drivers were forced to take control of their driverless vehicles. The biggest news to come out of this report is from Waymo, Google's new self-driving car company, which reported a huge drop in disengagements in 2016 despite an almost equally huge increase in the number of miles driven. In other words, Waymo's self-driving cars are failing at a much lower rate, even as they are driving a whole lot more miles. The company says that since 2015, its rate of safety-related disengages has fallen from 0.8 per thousand miles to 0.2 per thousand miles in 2016. So while Waymo increased its driving by 50 percent in the state — racking up a total of 635,868 miles — the company's total number of reportable disengages fell from 341 in 2015 to 124.

"This four-fold improvement reflects the significant work we've been doing to make our software and hardware more capable and mature," Dmitri Dolgov, head of self-driving technology for Waymo, wrote in a blog post. "And because we're creating a self-driving car that can take you from door to door, almost all our time has been spent on complex urban or suburban streets. This has given us valuable experience sharing the road safely with pedestrians and cyclists, and practicing advanced maneuvers such as making unprotected left turns and traversing multi-lane intersections."

The majority of Waymo's disengagements were the result of "software glitches," the company says. "Unwanted maneuvers," "perception discrepancies," and "recklessly behaving road user" also accounted for dozens of disengagements. There were no reports of crashes or accidents.

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n1 writes:

Apple is selling $10 billion of notes in its first trip to the bond market in six months, becoming the second cash-rich technology company to sell debt this week despite prospects of a U.S. repatriation-tax holiday.

The iPhone maker may sell debt in as many as nine parts with up to six different maturities, according to a regulatory filing. The longest portion may be a 30-year bond. Apple (AAPL) will use proceeds for general corporate purposes, which can include share buybacks and capital spending. Microsoft sold $17 billion of bonds earlier in the week, capping the busiest month for U.S. investment-grade corporate issuance ever.

Apple has become a bond market regular in recent years, selling debt at least annually since 2013. Though its debt load has grown, its $246 billion cash pile means the company can maintain credit ratings that are just one step below the top grade.

[...] The $1 billion, 30-year bond may yield about 1.15 percentage points more than Treasuries with similar maturities, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the deal is private. That's down from initial discussions of around 1.4 percentage points. Goldman Sachs (GS), Deutsche Bank (DB) and JPMorgan (JPM) are managing the sale.

Source: Investor's Business Daily

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An attack has occurred this morning when an individual carrying 2 backpacks and possibly weapons approached the Louvre in Paris and was engaged by a soldier who fired 5 shots. The assailant was wounded, as was a soldier during the attack. One report claims that the attacker shouted Islamic slogans during the attack.

1111GMT: A second possible assailant has been arrested. The French Govt have confirmed it is a terrorist attack.

1117GMT: It is confirmed that the first assailant attacked a soldier with a machete before being engaged and wounded.

1215GMT: Latest TV statements. The first assailant attacked a security officer and/or soldier with a machete causing wounds to his arm and face, while shouting "Allahu Akbar". A second soldier then engaged the assailant with rifle fire resulting in the assailant being seriously wounded in the stomach. The first assailant was carrying 2 backpacks but no explosives have been found in them. A search of the area is continuing. A second assailant has been arrested within the last hour a short distance away from the scene of the attack.

The Louvre Museum and the area around it is in lock-down, and the public and local workers are been evacuated from the area. The French Govt are releasing only statements that they can verify and are refusing to speculate any further during media questioning.

takyon: French soldier shoots attacker outside Louvre
Assailant Near Louvre Is Shot by French Soldier
Machete attack on soldier near Louvre was of 'terrorist nature'

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Cory Doctorow reports via Boing Boing

Ross Compton, a 59-year-old homeowner in Middletown, Ohio called 911 in September 2016 to say that his house was on fire; there were many irregularities to the blaze that investigators found suspicious, such as contradictory statements from Compton and the way that the fire had started.

In the ensuing investigation, the police secured a warrant for the logs from his pacemaker, specifically, "Compton's heart rate, pacer demand, and cardiac rhythms before, during, and after the fire".

[...] The data from the pacemaker didn't correspond with Compton's version of what happened.

[...] [The cops] subsequently filed charges of felony aggravated arson and insurance fraud.

Cory links to coverage by Network World.

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FakeBeldin writes:

The Dutch satirical news show Zondag met Lubach (literally, Sunday with Lubach) is a show in the same vein as Last Week Tonight . The week after Trump's inauguration, it made a short clip to introduce the Netherlands to the new US administration. The clip is irreverent, but, to those with a suitable sense of humour, hilarious - see for yourself on youtube.

This went viral, leading even to a White House petition to make the Netherlands second.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Doomsday prepping is not a usual Soylent subject, but apocalypses are a staple of geek culture. Do Peter Thiel's preparations make sense?

You know things are getting risky when billionaires start making plans to flee to New Zealand on the off chance civilization might collapse. This week's New Yorker details the doomsday survival plans of Peter Thiel, and other notable Silicon Valley tech moguls.

The thing is, despite their virtually unlimited budgets, none of these guys is doing it right.

[...] In more realistic circumstances, there are 21.8 million veterans in the U.S., with various levels of professional expertise in solving problems like bunker busting. Hell, there's more guns than people in this country. Fixed locations are inherently vulnerable by their very nature, subject to siege, and allowing attackers to patiently plan ways to penetrate them. Any billionaire's hoard of survival supplies will be a natural target following the breakdown of society. Keeping them secret will be a challenge too, when contractors have been paid to construct them, delivery men have carried the supplies in, and even the armed guards may decide their friends and families could use all those tins of spam a little more desperately than their paranoid employer.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Ruby Paulson at BlogVault reports

GitLab, the online tech hub, is facing issues as a result of an accidental database deletion that happened in the wee hours of last night. A tired, frustrated system administrator thought that deleting a database would solve the lag-related issues that had cropped up... only to discover too late that he'd executed the command for the wrong database.

[...] It's certainly freaky that all the five backup solutions that GitLab had were ineffective, but this incident demonstrates that a number of things can go wrong with backups. The real aim for any backup solution, is to be able to restore data with ease... but simple oversights could render backup solutions useless.

Computer Business Review adds

The data loss took place when a system administrator accidentally deleted a directory on the wrong server during a database replication process. A folder containing 300GB of live production data was completely wiped.

[...] The last potentially useful backup was taken six hours before the issue occurred.

However, this is not seen to be of any help as snapshots are normally taken every 24 hours and the data loss occurred six hours after the previous snapshot which [resulted in] six hours of data loss.

David Mytton, founder and CEO [of] Server Density, said: "This unfortunate incident at GitLab highlights the urgent need for businesses to review and refresh their backup and incident handling processes to ensure data loss is recoverable, and teams know how to handle the procedure.

GitLab has been updating a Google Doc with info on the ongoing incident.

Additional coverage at:
TechCrunch
The Register

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butthurt writes:

The AAP via the Herald Sun (News Corp) reports on a deal between the Australian government and the former U.S. administration. Under the arrangement, people seeking asylum in Australia—who have, controversially, been detained in centres on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea—would have been resettled in the United States. However, according to the story, the plan is now in question due to the change in leadership there.

According to The Guardian , "the U.S. could resettle zero refugees from Manus Island and Nauru and still be 'honouring' the deal."

related story:
Manus Island Centre Deemed Illegal; Detainees Seek Compensation

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takyon writes:

Boston Dynamics has produced a hybrid wheeled-legged robot called "Handle":

The company's new wheeled, upright robot is named Handle ("because it's supposed to handle objects") and looks like a cross between a Segway and the two-legged Atlas bot. Handle hasn't been officially unveiled, but was shown off by company founder Marc Raibert in a presentation to investors. Footage of the presentation was uploaded to YouTube by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson.

Raibert describes Handle as an "experiment in combining wheels with legs, with a very dynamic system that is balancing itself all the time and has a lot of knowledge of how to throw its weight around." He adds that using wheels is more efficient than legs, although there's obviously a trade-off in terms of maneuvering over uneven ground. "This is the debut presentation of what I think will be a nightmare-inducing robot," says Raibert

Boston Dynamics has yet to become profitable, and the Alphabet/Google complex looks to distance itself from "terrifying" and "nightmare-inducing" robots that may ultimately end up being sold to military customers (as long as they forget past disappointments):

While the robot's extreme sports skills were impressive, it's unlikely that Raibert's "nightmare-inducing" comment will be well-received at Alphabet. The company has been looking for a buyer for Boston Dynamics for months, reportedly after its last robot launch video went viral, and amid what Alphabet perceived to be "some negative threads about it being terrifying." The company was apparently in talks with Toyota about a takeover, but that has not as of yet materialized. Boston Dynamics is reportedly struggling to make money, especially after the US Navy said it would not be purchasing its robots.

So this is what Ethanol-fueled has been up to. Also at TechCrunch.

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takyon writes:

Charter Communications is being sued by the State of New York for providing Internet speeds much slower than advertised:

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today filed a lawsuit against Charter and its Time Warner Cable (TWC) subsidiary, claiming that the Internet provider "allegedly conduct[ed] a deliberate scheme to defraud and mislead New Yorkers by promising Internet service that they knew they could not deliver."

State officials said they conducted a 16-month investigation that reviewed internal corporate communications "and hundreds of thousands of subscriber speed tests," concluding that Spectrum-TWC customers were "dramatically short-changed on both speed and reliability," the attorney general's announcement said. The 87-page summons and complaint filed in the New York State Supreme Court is available here.

"The suit alleges that subscribers' wired Internet speeds for the premium plan (100, 200, and 300 Mbps) were up to 70 percent slower than promised; Wi-Fi speeds were even slower, with some subscribers getting speeds that were more than 80 percent slower than what they had paid for," the announcement said. "As alleged in the complaint, Spectrum-TWC charged New Yorkers as much as $109.99 per month for premium plans [that] could not achieve speeds promised in their slower plans."

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jIyajbe writes:

Why is there a Universe, and why is it filled with matter, and not equal amounts of matter and antimatter? The last question is a puzzle that has gainfully occupied the minds of and employed physicists for many years. The time spent pondering such questions has not been wasted, as it turns out, as researchers from the Large Hadron Collider b detector report that one of the theoretical paths that allows matter to outnumber antimatter is open for business....Researchers at the LHCb have shown that baryons (along with mesons) also violate Charge-Parity (CP) symmetry, thus making it statistically possible for more matter to be created than antimatter.

(Caveat: Dataset currently provides "only" a 3.3 sigma confidence level.)

The full article, Measurement of matter–antimatter differences in beauty baryon decays which appears in the journal Nature Physics is available at: http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys4021.html

Other coverage:
Ars Technica
phys.org

http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys4021.html

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