SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

Australian National University reports:

Astronomers from The Australian National University (ANU) are investigating four unknown objects that could be candidates for a new planet in our Solar System, following the launch of their planetary search on the BBC's Stargazing Live broadcast from the ANU Siding Spring Observatory.

Lead researcher Dr Brad Tucker said about 60,000 people from around the world had classified over four million objects in space as part of the ANU-led citizen search for the so-called Planet 9.

"We've detected minor planets Chiron and Comacina, which demonstrates the approach we're taking could find Planet 9 if it's there," said Dr Tucker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
...
"We've managed to rule out a planet about the size of Neptune being in about 90 per cent of the southern sky out to a depth of about 350 times the distance the Earth is from the Sun," he said.

takyon: Estimates of Planet Nine's size put it at as little as half the radius of Neptune. The likely colder temperature of such a planet could result in a higher density.

The article mentions 2060 Chiron and 489 Comacina.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The visitors were from the FBI, and after a 90-minute search of his house, they left with his computers, only to return two months later with handcuffs. Now free on bond, Huddleston, 26, is scheduled to appear in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia on Friday for arraignment on federal charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting computer intrusions.

Huddleston, though, isn’t a hacker. He’s the author of a remote administration tool, or RAT, called NanoCore that happens to be popular with hackers. NanoCore has been linked to intrusions in at least 10 countries, including an attack on Middle Eastern energy firms in 2015, and a massive phishing campaign last August in which the perpetrators posed as major oil and gas company. As Huddleston sees it, he’s a victim himself—hackers have been pirating his program for years and using it to commit crimes. But to the Justice Department, Huddleston is an accomplice to a spree of felonies.

Depending on whose view prevails, Huddleston could face prison time and lose his home, in a case that raises a novel question: when is a programmer criminally responsible for the actions of his users? “Everybody seems to acknowledge that this software product had a legitimate purpose,” says Travis Morrissey, a lawyer in Hot Springs who represented Huddleston at his bail hearing. “It’s like saying that if someone buys a handgun and uses it to rob a liquor store, that the handgun manufacturer is complicit.”

A conviction will set a sweeping legal precedent whereby car manufacturers can be sued if a car is used to kill, or a paper manufacturer can be sued if a scrap of paper is used to pass a ransom note.
.
.
.
Profit!

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Over at Ars Technica, Annalee Newitz has an interesting review of John Scalzi's latest novel, The Collapsing Empire:

In his new novel The Collapsing Empire, bestselling writer John Scalzi builds a fascinating new interstellar civilization in order to destroy it. The Interdependency is a thousand-year-old interplanetary trade partnership in humanity's distant future. Its member planets were once connected to Earth by the Flow, a natural feature of space-time that allows ships to enter a kind of subspace zone. Once there, they can circumvent the unbreakable speed of light to travel between stars that are dozens of light years apart. What could go wrong?

Unfortunately, nobody is asking that question. Humanity has created an entire civilization that relies on the Flow and its "shoals," where ships can enter and exit. Planets are colonized purely based on their proximity to the shoals, not on habitability. The result is not unlike a medieval trade guild society whose populace happens to live in domed cities, buried caves, and artificial habitats, completely dependent on trade for resources.

The problem is that the Flow, like most natural features, has a tendency to change shape over time. As the novel opens, our protagonist, Cardenia, recently crowned emperox of the Interdependency, has just made a nasty discovery. She learns that her late father has secretly been funding a Flow physicist who has determined that every planet in the Interdependency will be cut off from the Flow within the next decade.

Original Submission

Anonymous writes:

http://www.autodidacts.io/who-will-own-mars/

Everyone's excited about rockets to Mars, and each SpaceX launch brings that dream closer to reality. Musk and others are putting a lot of money and brainpower on the technical problem of getting people to Mars. Less sensational topics, such as surviving on Mars, receive less attention — but plenty of money and serious thought, because there's no way to get around them.

But there's another important question which isn't getting much attention:

Who will own Mars, and how will it be governed?

Does Mars belong to the people who get there first? To the highest bidder? To all the people of Earth?

Does Mars belong to Earth, or does Mars belong to Mars? Does it belong to the Sun? To the Martian microbiome, if there is one? (What are the indigenous rights of microbes, I wonder?)

Who will be in charge of Mars once the colonists arrive? If Mars turns out to have valuable resources, who gets them? And if a Mars colony is to govern itself, what kind of government would it have?

The Mars colonization project is driven by the ultra rich. And those who want to stake their claim on Mars may rather the rest of us didn't think too much about the little problem of who owns the planet next door, and why.

Original Submission

We had two story submissions on reactions to the US Congress deciding that one's ISP browsing history need not be private.

Protesters raise more than $200,000 to buy Congress’s browsing histories

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

After Congress voted Tuesday to dismantle landmark privacy protections for Internet users, pockets of the Web erupted in a mixture of fury and fear.

Among other changes, this legislation would make it easier, and legal, for Internet service providers (ISPs) to both gather and sell personal information including Web browsing history. In other words, AT&T could, in theory, sell to the highest bidder a list of the websites you've visited and the frequency with which you visited them.

Many Internet users aren't keen on the idea of companies selling their browsing data, so several independently came up with the same plan: They began crowdfunding campaigns to purchase the Web histories of the members who voted to wipe away those protections.

A few of these campaigns — there are at least four — are fairly small. Two, though, have raised more than a combined $200,000 as of early Thursday morning.

Fnord666 writes:

How to reliably transfer quantum information when the connecting channels are impacted by detrimental noise? Scientists at the University of Innsbruck and TU Wien (Vienna) have presented new solutions to this problem.

Nowadays we communicate via radio signals and send electrical pulses through long cables. This could change soon, however: Scientists have been working intensely on developing methods for quantum information transfer. This would enable tap-proof data transfer or, one day, even the linking of quantum computers.

Quantum information transfer requires reliable information transfer from one quantum system to the other, which is extremely difficult to achieve. Independently, two research teams – one at the University of Innsbruck and the other at TU Wien (Vienna) - have now developed a new quantum communication protocol. This protocol enables reliable quantum communication even under the presence of contaminating noise. Both research groups work with the same basic concept: To make the protocol immune to the noise, they add an additional element, a so-called quantum oscillator, at both ends of the quantum channel.

Scientists have conducted quantum communication experiments for a long time. "Researchers presented a quantum teleportation protocol already in the 1990s. It permits transferring the state of one quantum system to another by using optical photons," says Benoit Vermersch, Postdoc in Peter Zoller's group at the University of Innsbruck. This works also over great distances but one has to accept that a lot of the photons are lost and only a tiny fraction reaches the detector.

"Our goal was to find a way to reliably transfer a quantum state from one place to the other without having to do it several times to make it work," explains Peter Rabl from the Atominstitut, TU Wien.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has reportedly offered to testify about President Trump's campaign and Russia:

President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has reportedly told the FBI that he is willing to testify about the Trump campaign's potential ties to Russia, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Flynn resigned in February, after it was reported that he misled White House staff on his interactions with Russia and had discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak ahead of President Trump's inauguration. The Journal reported, citing officials familiar with the matter, that the FBI and the House and Senate Intelligence committees that are investigating Russia's attempts to interfere in the U.S. election have not taken his lawyers up on the offer.

Flynn's lawyer said in a statement that "General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit."

[...] In September, criticizing Hillary Clinton over former aides being given immunity deals as part of an investigation into her private email server, Flynn said, "When you're given immunity that means you've probably committed a crime."

Also at the LA Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, NYT, and Politico.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Scientists have discovered a new mechanism involved in the creation of paired light particles, which could have significant impact on the study of quantum physics.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have shown that when photons - the fundamental particles of light - are created in pairs, they can emerge from different, rather than the same, location.

The ground-breaking research could have significant implications for quantum physics, the theoretical basis of modern physics. Until now, the general assumption was that such photon pairs necessarily originate from single points in space.

Quantum entanglement - when particles are linked so closely that what affects one directly affects the other - is widely used in labs in numerous processes from quantum cryptography to quantum teleportation.

The UEA team were studying a process called spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), in which photon beams are passed through a crystal to generate entangled pairs of photons.

Prof David Andrews in UEA's School of Chemistry said: "When the emergent pairs equally share the energy of the input, this is known as degenerate down-conversion, or DDC.

"Until now, it has been assumed that such paired photons come from the same location. Now, the identification of a new delocalized mechanism shows that each photon pair can be emitted from spatially separated points, introducing a new positional uncertainty of a fundamental quantum origin."

An abstract is available; full article is paywalled. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.133602)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Palmer Luckey has left Facebook:

Palmer Luckey, a founder of the virtual-reality technology company Oculus, has left Facebook three years after the social network acquired his company for close to $3 billion. Mr. Luckey's departure was announced two months after a trial in federal court over allegations that he and several colleagues had stolen trade secrets from a video-game publisher, ZeniMax Media, to create the Oculus technology. A jury found Facebook liable for $500 million in damages, in part for Mr. Luckey's violation of a confidentiality agreement.

"Palmer will be dearly missed," Tera Randall, an Oculus spokeswoman, said in a statement. "His inventive spirit helped kick-start the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry." Ms. Randall declined to disclose the terms of Mr. Luckey's departure. [...] In January, Facebook appointed a new leader, Hugo Barra, to head up the company's virtual-reality efforts, including Oculus.

Will the first Palmer Luckey documentary be compatible with the next Oculus headset?

Also at TechCrunch, CNBC, and UploadVR.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Last night, at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance leadership dinner, Comey let slip that he has both a secret Twitter and an Instagram account in the course of relating a quick anecdote about one of his daughters.

An intrepid writer at Gizmodo took that the description in anecdote and combined it with public info about Comey's relatives, associates and personal history to uncover a twitter account that looks suspiciously like it belongs to Comey. Was it a years-long prank in the making, or did the head of the FBI fail at OpSec?

Update: Benjamin Wittes had this to say. The FBI also responded to the article:

Hello,

We don't have any comment.

Thank you.

FBI National Press Office

Original Submission

takyon and Fnord666 both sent in this story:

Westinghouse Electric Company has filed for bankruptcy:

Westinghouse Electric Co, a unit of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, hit by billions of dollars of cost overruns at four nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S. Southeast.

The bankruptcy casts doubt on the future of the first new U.S. nuclear power plants in three decades, which were scheduled to begin producing power as soon as this week, but are now years behind schedule.

The four reactors are part of two projects known as V.C. Summer in South Carolina, which is majority owned by SCANA Corp, and Vogtle in Georgia, which is owned by a group of utilities led by Southern Co.

Costs for the projects have soared due to increased safety demands by U.S. regulators, and also due to significantly higher-than-anticipated costs for labor, equipment and components.

Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse said it hopes to use bankruptcy to isolate and reorganize around its "very profitable" nuclear fuel and power plant servicing businesses from its money-losing construction operation.

Also at Ars Technica and Business Insider.

Toshiba's Westinghouse problems have caused the company to sell off other assets:
Toshiba in Trouble
Toshiba Shares Plunge Ahead of Nuclear Investment Writedown
Toshiba Considers NAND Business Split; Samsung Delays Release of 4 TB SSDs
Toshiba Nuked Half its Assets

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

takyon writes:

Supercomputers could do what meatbags can't do: label meatbags as depressed by analyzing thousands of voxels:

Depression affects more than 15 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, each year. It is the leading cause of disability for those between the ages of 15 and 44. Is it possible to detect who might be vulnerable to the illness before its onset using brain imaging? David Schnyer, a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, believes it may be. But identifying its tell-tale signs is no simpler[sic] matter. He is using the Stampede supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to train a machine learning algorithm that can identify commonalities among hundreds of patients using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) brain scans, genomics data and other relevant factors, to provide accurate predictions of risk for those with depression and anxiety.

[...] In the recent study, Schnyer analyzed brain data from 52 treatment-seeking participants with depression, and 45 heathy control participants. To compare the two, a subset of depressed participants was matched with healthy individuals based on age and gender, bringing the sample size to 50.

Evaluating the diagnostic utility of applying a machine learning algorithm to diffusion tensor MRI measures in individuals with major depressive disorder (open, DOI: 10.1101/061119) (DX) (alt)

Original Submission

ngarrang writes:

In an enterprise environment where I control the apps that I install for my users, what are the ramifications of removing the Windows store and all of its apps from my Windows 10 setups?

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A new class of carbon nanotubes could be the next-generation clean-up crew for toxic sludge and contaminated water, say researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Enhanced single-walled carbon nanotubes offer a more effective and sustainable approach to water treatment and remediation than the standard industry materials—silicon gels and activated carbon—according to a paper published in the March issue of Environmental Science Water: Research and Technology.

RIT researchers John-David Rocha and Reginald Rogers, authors of the study, demonstrate the potential of this emerging technology to clean polluted water. Their work applies carbon nanotubes to environmental problems in a specific new way that builds on a[sic] nearly two decades of nanomaterial research. Nanotubes are more commonly associated with fuel-cell research.

"This aspect is new—taking knowledge of carbon nanotubes and their properties and realizing, with new processing and characterization techniques, the advantages nanotubes can provide for removing contaminants for water," said Rocha, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science in RIT's College of Science.

Rocha and Rogers are advancing nanotube technology for environmental remediation and water filtration for home use.

"We have shown that we can regenerate these materials," said Rogers, assistant professor of chemical engineering in RIT's Kate Gleason College of Engineering. "In the future, when your water filter finally gets saturated, put it in the microwave for about five minutes and the impurities will get evaporated off."

Journal Article: John-David R. Rocha et al. Emerging investigators series: highly effective adsorption of organic aromatic molecules from aqueous environments by electronically sorted single-walled carbon nanotubes, Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. (2017). DOI: 10.1039/C6EW00284F

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Open source projects are by their nature intended to be welcoming, pulling in contributions from many different volunteers. But in reality, open source and the tech industry in general often lack diversity. Speaking at the Open Source Leadership Summit in February, Mozilla's Chief Innovation Officer Katharina Borchert told the crowd that working to bring ethnic, gender, and skill diversity to open source projects isn't just the right thing to do because of moral grounds, it's the right thing to do to make projects more successful.

Me, I beg to differ. Pretty sure success has to do with the diversity of thought/ideas rather than genetic diversity.

Source: https://www.linux.com/news/learn/chapter/open-source-management/2017/3/diverse-projects-more-successful

Original Submission