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takyon writes:

Samsung and Amazon have announced the HDR10+ open standard:

HDR10+ elevates the HDR10 open standard with the addition of Dynamic Tone Mapping. The current HDR10 standard utilizes static metadata that does not change during playback despite scene specific brightness levels. As a result, image quality may not be optimal in some scenes. For example, when a movie's overall color scheme is very bright but has a few scenes filmed in relatively dim lighting, those scenes will appear significantly darker than what was originally envisioned by the director.

HDR10+ incorporates dynamic metadata that allows a high dynamic range (HDR) TV to adjust brightness levels on a scene-by-scene or even frame-by-frame basis. With the ability to display outstanding contrast with detailed highlights and a richer range of colors, HDR10+ produces images that are much closer to the director's intent.

All of Samsung's 2017 UHD TVs, including its premium QLED TV lineup, support HDR10+. In the second half of this year, Samsung's 2016 UHD TVs will gain HDR10+ support through a firmware update.

This is in contrast to the closed Dolby Vision standard:

Dynamic metadata is a particularly important addition in HDR10+ as it closes the gap between the open HDR standard and the closed Dolby Vision spec, which had previously touted dynamic metadata as one of its main differentiators over the original HDR10 standard. (Although Dolby still leads the pack when it comes to the highest color and brightness requirements, at least for now.) And of course, I'd be remiss in noting that unfortunately, the addition of HDR10+ now marks the fifth major HDR standard vying for industry support, along with the original HDR10, Dolby Vision, HLG, and Advanced HDR, because clearly four different versions were not quite enough for anyone yet.

Also at 4k.com, CNET, Digital Trends, and PC Magazine.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Researchers have checked 64,000+ GitHub projects, and found 117 vulnerabilities introduced through the use of code from popular programming tutorials.

Things like this are why I would never hire a professional programmer without an online portfolio of source code to check for Blatant Stupidity.

Source: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2017/04/21/programming-tutorials-vulnerabilities/

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

KTLA TV in Los Angeles reports Video Shows American Airlines Flight Attendant Telling Passenger "Hit Me" After Taking Stroller From Mother

Video of an altercation on an American Airlines flight [April 21] shows an airline employee challenging a passenger to hit him after a flight attendant violently grabbed a woman's stroller [(pram)], according to eyewitnesses.

It's unclear what happened before passengers on flight 591 from San Francisco to Dallas/Ft. Worth started recording, but video shared on Facebook shows a sobbing mother clutching a young child toward the front of the plane, asking employees to give back her stroller.

According to multiple witnesses, the woman, who is from Argentina and was flying internationally, brought her stroller on the plane. When the flight attendant attempted to remove the stroller from the plane, there was an altercation which resulted in the stroller striking the woman and nearly hitting her child.

[...][Passenger and witness Olivia] Morgan said she talked to the woman about the incident. The woman said a female flight attendant told her she could look for space to store the stroller because it folds up very small, but if there was no available space, she would need to check it at the gate.

"She was looking for space when the male attendant tried to take it away from her... and she said she told him the other attendant had told her it was okay to look", [Morgan] said.

c0lo writes:

The Guardian reports on the Tianzhou-1's, China's first automated cargo spacecraft, first mission to the station:

China's first cargo spacecraft docked successfully with the Tiangong-2 space lab on Saturday, the official Xinhua news agency reported, marking a major step towards Beijing's goal of establishing a permanently manned space station by 2022. ...

The Tianzhou-1 cargo resupply spacecraft made the automated docking process with the orbiting space lab after it had taken off on Thursday evening from the Wenchang satellite launch centre in the southern island province of Hainan....

The cargo spacecraft mission provides an "important technological basis" to build a Chinese space station, state media have said. It can reportedly carry six tonnes of goods, two tonnes of fuel and can fly unmanned for three months.

Seems like Cold War era again:

President Xi Jinping has prioritised advancing China's space programme to strengthen national security.,,,

The US Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations from using space-based assets in a crisis.

China insists it has only peaceful ambitions in space, but has tested anti-satellite missiles.

2007 - Chinese anti-satellite missile test
1985 - American anti-satellite missile test
Chinese exclusion policy of NASA

Related: China Launched its Second "Heavenly Palace" Thursday Morning [Updated]
China's Shenzhou 11 Docks at Tiangong 2 Space Station
Space Race 2.0: China May Already be Testing an EmDrive in Orbit

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

AlterNet reports

Twenty years ago [1997-04-21], one of the most memorable ads of all time was launched, when Rachael Leigh Cook and her frying pan starting smashing up eggs in her infamous "This is Your Brain on Drugs" ad.

Today, Rachael Leigh Cook, her frying pan, and eggs are back but this time in a new ad that slams the drug war and its racist enforcement.

The new video, made by Green Point Creative, opens with Cook and her frying pan. She holds up a white egg and explains that it represents one of the millions of Americans who uses drugs but never gets arrested. She then picks up a brown egg and says, "This American is several times more likely to be charged with a drug crime." [Screenshot]

The animated ad, narrated by Cook, then shows what happens to the brown egg that is arrested and funneled through the criminal justice system. The ad highlights a range of harmful collateral consequences that result from drug arrest, including the loss of student financial aid, hindered job prospects and broken up families. The add[sic] contrasts the white egg's family that was never arrested, despite also using drugs.

The ad ends with Cook looking into the camera, holding her pan and [...] a smashed egg, and saying, "The war on drugs is ruining peoples' lives. It fuels mass incarceration, it targets people of color in greater numbers than their white counter parts. It cripples communities, it costs billions, and it doesn't work. Any questions?"

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Phoenix666 writes:

Invited speakers at neuroimmunology conferences in 2016 were disproportionately male, and not because male scientists were producing higher quality work, according to a new study. Instead, qualified female scientists were overlooked by organizing committees. Robyn Klein, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, of neuroscience, and of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, discussed the findings, published online April 18 in Nature Immunology.

[...] There's a growing body of research showing that female scientists' contributions to their fields are often not reflected in the number of speaker invitations they receive, and that this under-recognition hurts their careers and slows the pace of scientific progress. While this bias may be unconscious, data from sources such as BiasWatchNeuro -- founded in 2015 to track the proportion of female conference speakers relative to the proportion of female faculty in the relevant field -- show that it is widespread. Encouragingly, the data also show that bringing such biases to light helps to reduce their impact.

Robyn S Klein, et al. Speaking out about gender imbalance in invited speakers improves diversity. Nature Immunology, 2017; 18 (5): 475 DOI: 10.1038/ni.3707

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takyon writes:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-108&rn=news.xml&rst=6814

A new NASA- and Department of Energy-funded study finds that recent increases in global methane levels observed since 2007 are not necessarily due to increasing emissions, but instead may be due to changes in how long methane remains in the atmosphere after it is emitted.

The second most important human-produced greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, methane is colorless, odorless and can be hard to track. The gas has a wide range of sources, from decomposing biological material to leaks in natural gas pipelines. In the early 2000s, atmospheric scientists studying methane found that its global concentration -- which had increased for decades, driven by methane emissions from fossil fuels and agriculture -- leveled off as the sources of methane reached a balance with its destruction mechanisms. The methane levels remained stable for a few years, then unexpectedly started rising again in 2007, a trend that is still continuing.

Previous studies of the renewed increase have focused on high-latitude wetlands or fossil fuels, Asian agricultural growth, or tropical wetlands as potential sources of the increased emissions. But in a study published today in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Caltech in Pasadena, California; and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, suggest that methane emissions might not have increased dramatically in 2007 after all.

Ambiguity in the causes for decadal trends in atmospheric methane and hydroxyl (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1616020114) (DX)

Additional reading:
http://www.caltech.edu/news/detergent-molecules-may-be-driving-fluctuations-atmospheric-methane-concentrations-54742

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julian writes:

From Motherboard (Vice.com),

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Anonymous Coward writes:

Devuan Jessie Announces Stable Release:

Our April 2017 gift to you is the long-awaited release of Devuan Jessie stable release candidate (1.0.0-RC). If all goes as planned, this will be our first Devuan stable release and our first long term support (LTS) release as well.

Two and a half years have passed since our initial Debianfork declaration (https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/) and not even one year since our first beta release (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/devuan-beta-release).

This Devuan Jessie release candidate is as close as we can get to a "long term support" universal base distribution free from systemd, in the original spirit of Debian.

The final Devuan Jessie release will follow shortly and then we will turn our attention to "Ascii", the current testing branch.

We wish to thank all of you for the incredible support given to this development effort, and for engaging in the process of making Devuan a useful and reliable base distro, as well as a pleasant, cooperative community.

Happy hacking ;^)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

FossaMail ( https://www.fossamail.org/ ) announced that they will be shutting down next month, and I must search for a replacement email program again. So far, my research for replacements found Claws Mail, and Slypheed, but are there any other stand alone email programs that are being updated? One other requirement is PGP support for encrypted messages.

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AnonTechie writes:

During the cold war, there was a clear narrative: an ideological opposition between the US and the Soviet Union. Moments of great tension were understood as episodes within that narrative. The closest we came to nuclear confrontation was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the two countries seemed on the edge of war. But the crisis itself was finished inside a fortnight, and there was a wider framework to fall back on. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty calmed the waters.

Then, in the early 1980s the tough-talking but critically derided , Ronald Reagan was elected US president. He reignited the cold war rhetoric and began escalating the arms race, and there was an assumption – particularly in Europe – that nuclear destruction was creeping closer. But it was still within a recognisable context. That ended with the collapse of communism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. For a while the world felt a much safer place than it had been.

But the cold war was replaced by uncertainty. And now the uncertainty is combined with the unpredictability of Donald Trump. The recent bombing raids in Syria and Afghanistan were isolated moments, without any sense of programme or continuity. Nor does there seem any logic to why North Korea should have suddenly become a pressing issue. Incidents that seem to arrive out of the blue can be much more frightening. We're probably not on the verge of nuclear war, but it's destabilising if we can't make sense of events.

Is the world more dangerous now than during the cold war?

[Related]: Nuclear war will ignite in May 2017, mystic Horacio Villegas says

What do you think ?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Some PCs are assembled in the U.S., but not many. This includes those from Lenovo, the China-based firm that runs a factory in North Carolina. Apple operates a Mac Pro assembly plant in Austin, but makes many of its other products overseas.

Lenovo and Apple may have an edge in selling PCs to the U.S., under President Donald Trump's recently signed "Hire American, Buy American" executive order signed this week, say analysts.

All PCs are made with components sourced globally, but vendors that assemble products in the U.S. may gain preference. Trump's executive order doesn't spell out how "buying American" will work for IT suppliers -- if it happens at all.

[...] "Think about the prevalence of open source software like Linux across all federal agencies," said Thielemann. "How do you really carve out the piece [of code] that is 'American' -- it's impossible to do."

"The government has information technology that it frankly cannot source from the United States alone," said Thielemann.

How do you "Buy American" in tech when the tech is made all over the world?

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takyon writes:

Elon Musk's latest venture aims to bring a product to market within four years, but it could be additional decade before healthy people get "neural lace" brain implants:

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.

Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.

"If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy," Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

Reuters links to an incredibly long piece with some possibly informative stick figure drawings.

Previously: Elon Musk Launches Company to Link Your Brain to a Computer

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-ultralight-pcs-based-on-arm-smartphone-chips-set-for-q4-says-qualcomm/

The ARM partnership between Microsoft and Qualcomm is notable as it expands Windows 10's existing support of x86 chips from Intel and AMD. It also looks set to overcome the constraints of Microsoft's previous ARM effort with Windows RT.

The Snapdragon 835 PCs will run full Windows 10 desktop, which has been compiled natively for Qualcomm's SoCs. They'll also run Win32 apps via an emulator, as well as universal Windows apps. Microsoft billed the forthcoming devices as a "truly mobile, power-efficient, always-connected cellular PC".

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The article is a bit old, but still interesting.

Linux has an elegant and beautiful design when it comes to threads: threads are nothing more than processes that share a virtual address space and file descriptor table. Threads spawned by a process are additional child processes of the main "thread's" parent process. They're manipulated through the same process management system calls, eliminating the need for a separate set of thread-related system calls. It's elegant in the same way file descriptors are elegant.

Normally on Unix-like systems, processes are created with fork(). The new process gets its own address space and file descriptor table that starts as a copy of the original. (Linux uses copy-on-write to do this part efficiently.) However, this is too high level for creating threads, so Linux has a separate clone() system call. It works just like fork() except that it accepts a number of flags to adjust its behavior, primarily to share parts of the parent's execution context with the child.

It's so simple that it takes less than 15 instructions to spawn a thread with its own stack, no libraries needed, and no need to call Pthreads! In this article I'll demonstrate how to do this on x86-64. All of the code with be written in NASM syntax since, IMHO, it's by far the best (see: nasm-mode).

I've put the complete demo here if you want to see it all at once:

• Pure assembly, library-free Linux threading demo

Original Submission