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Phoenix666 writes:

To estimate the risk presented by plastics when they accumulate in the environment instead of in the garbage bin, the team of chemists led by Frederik Wurm are working on the PlastX project with social scientists from Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research. The researchers are seeking to present potential alternatives to the customary polymer materials and to put forward proposals on how environmental pollution by plastics can be reduced, not just in Germany but primarily in developing and emerging countries. The North-Rhine Westphalia consumer advice centre, the "Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit" and various companies – such as the supermarket chain Tegut – are also taking part in the project being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The researchers working on the PlastX project soon realized that there were no straightforward solutions to the issues they were seeking to resolve. First of all, there is the danger that plastics in the environment pose to animals and humans. The materials are today perceived as a threat for this reason alone because they are so durable and accumulate on a large scale in the environment unless they are properly disposed of. The figures in themselves are alarming: A US study conducted by, among others, researchers from the University of Georgia revealed that the volume of plastic waste is increasing by 4.8 to 12.7 million tons a year – mainly because packaging and unwanted devices are carelessly thrown away. According to a study by IUCN, an international nature conservation organization, between 0.8 and 2.5 million tons of plastic micro-particles are pumped into the oceans each year.

"It is not yet clear to what extent plastics – particularly in the form of micro-particles – are hazardous to animals and humans," says Frederik Wurm. "For example, we do not yet know whether they produce nanoparticles that are much more easily absorbed by the body than micro-particles." There is also uncertainty over whether harmful substances find their way into animal or human organisms through the plastic particles or whether they are then detached from the plastic particles there.

Not enough ozone, too much carbon dioxide, and seas of plastic. What is to be done?

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Phoenix666 writes:

It seems obvious. You arrive at the checkouts and see one queue is much longer than the other, so you join the shorter one. But, before long, the people in the bigger line zoom past you and you've barely moved towards the exit.

When it comes to queuing, the intuitive choice is often not the fastest one. Why do queues feel like they slow down as soon as you join them? And is there a way to decide beforehand which line is really the best one to join? Mathematicians have been studying these questions for years. So can they help us spend less time waiting in line?

The intuitive strategy seems to be to join the shortest queue. After all, a short queue could indicate it has an efficient server, and a long queue could imply it has an inexperienced server or customers who need a lot of time. But generally this isn't true.

[...] Once you're in the queue, you'll want to know whether you made the right choice. For example, is your server the fastest? It is easy to observe the actual queue length and you can try to compare it to the average. This is directly related to the mean and standard deviation of the service time via something called the Pollaczek-Khinchine formula, first established in 1930. This also uses the mean inter-arrival time between customers.

Unfortunately, if you try to measure the time the first person in the queue takes to get served, you'll likely end up feeling like you chose the wrong line. This is known as Feller's paradox or the inspection paradox. Technically, this isn't an actual logical paradox but it does go against our intuition. If you start measuring the time between customers when you join a queue, it is more likely that the first customer you see will take longer than average to be served. This will make you feel like you were unlucky and chose the wrong queue.

So, before you choose a queue to join, put the screaming kids down and carefully note the average serving time in each queue, measure the queue length, and then project which will get you through to a completed transaction quickest.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A soda company sponsoring nutrition research. An oil conglomerate helping fund a climate-related research meeting. Does the public care who's paying for science?

In a word, yes. When industry funds science, credibility suffers. And this does not bode well for the types of public-private research partnerships that appear to be becoming more prevalent as government funding for research and development lags.

The recurring topic of conflict of interest has made headlines in recent weeks. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has revised its conflict of interest guidelines following questions about whether members of a recent expert panel on GMOs had industry ties or other financial conflicts that were not disclosed in the panel's final report.

Our own recent research speaks to how hard it may be for the public to see research as useful when produced with an industry partner, even when that company is just one of several collaborators.

The study found that participants distrusted any research coming from companies, even when produced by a diverse array of companies or in partnership with the government or non-corporate parties. Is this a real threat to science, as government funding of research declines?

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Google has long been focused on artificial intelligence. Its Google Now and voice assistance projects have used AI to better the lives of users. The Google Home voice-based hardware unit brings its assistant to life, making traditional inputs and displays unnecessary. With just the power of your voice, you can interact with the device -- nothing else is needed.

The search giant has decided to take artificial intelligence to the maker community with a new initiative called AIY. This initiative (found here) will introduce open source AI projects to the public that makers can leverage in a simple way. Today, Google announces the first-ever AIY project. Called "Voice Kit," it is designed to work with a Raspberry Pi to create a voice-based virtual assistant. Please keep in mind that the Pi itself is not included, so you must bring your own. For this project, you can use a Pi 3 Model B, Pi 2, or Pi Zero. Want a Voice Kit? Here's how to get it. Heck, you might be getting one for free and you don't even know it.

Source: https://betanews.com/2017/05/04/google-open-source-raspberry-pi-diy-voice-kit/

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The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Last week, Phoronix broke a story about the kernel DRM group over at FreeDesktop.org submitting a pull request for their code of conduct to be included in the kernel docs for the DRM subsystem. The next day it was merged.

I'm particularly interested in if they think this will keep Linus from saying hurtful things to them over lousy code. Discuss.

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The Global Positioning System consists of 31 Earth-orbiting satellites, each carrying an atomic clock that sends a highly accurate timing signal to the ground. Anybody with an appropriate receiver can work out their position to within a few meters by comparing the arrival time of signals from three or more satellites.

And this system can easily be improved. The accuracy of GPS signals can be made much higher by combining the signals with ones produced on the ground. Geophysicists, for example, use this technique to determine the position of ground stations to within a few millimeters. In this way, they can measure the tiny movements of entire continents.

This is an impressive endeavor. Geophysicists routinely measure the difference between GPS signals and clocks on the ground with an accuracy of less than 0.1 nanoseconds. They also archive this data providing a detailed record of how GPS signals have changed over time. This archival storage opens the possibility of using the data for other exotic studies.

Today Benjamin Roberts at the University of Nevada and a few pals say they have used this data to find out whether GPS satellites may have been influenced by dark matter, the mysterious invisible stuff that astrophysicists think fills our galaxy. In effect, these guys have turned the Global Positioning System into an astrophysical observatory of truly planetary proportion.

The theory behind dark matter is based in observations of the way galaxies rotate. This spinning motion is so fast that it should send stars flying off into extra-galactic space.

But this doesn't happen. Instead, a mysterious force must somehow hold the stars in place. The theory is that this force is gravity generated by invisible stuff that doesn't show up in astronomical observations. In other words, dark matter.

-- submitted from IRC

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julian writes:

Youtuber Ben Eater is uploading a series of instructional videos on building a programmable 8-bit computer from digital logic circuits on breadboards. No soldering required. The series is ongoing, updated weekly.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that his company will start a $1 billion fund to promote advanced manufacturing jobs in the United States.

"We're announcing it today. So you're the first person I'm telling," Cook told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on Wednesday. "Well, not the first person because we've talked to a company that we're going to invest in already," he said, adding that Apple will announce the first investment later in May.

[...] As advanced manufacturing jobs are in high demand in the U.S., the sector was already high on Apple's list of priorities, and Cook hopes the investment will spur even more job creation.

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/03/exclusive-apple-just-promised-to-give-us-manufacturing-a-1-billion-boost.html

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Just after 06:00 GMT, the first C919 rolled down and off a runway at Shanghai Pudong airport, to the sounds of applause of onlookers and plenty of senior officials who showed up to celebrate a milestone for Chinese industry.It touched down 75 minutes later after a successful flight.

The C919 is a competitor for Airbus' A320 and Boeing's 737 and will offer configurations of between 158 and 172 seats. The single-aisle twin jet will have a range of up to 5,500 km.

Built by the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), the plane has taken nine years to get off the drawing board and into the air. COMAC's secured 99 firm orders for the plane, which is expected to enter service in the year 2020.

[...] There's nothing revolutionary about the C919 that you won't find in other airliners. But China's always keen to show it can match anyone when it comes to high technology, if only because politics and national pride demands that the nation be able to show it can meet its own needs.

[...] Plenty of nations worry that China's state-owned enterprises don't have to worry about little things like making a profit, which is felt to give them an unfair advantage. A story today in state-owned organ Xinhua headlined "China-made C919 no challenge to Boeing, Airbus dominance" therefore looks like a deliberate attempt to douse such worries.

But plane-makers everywhere will know that if the C919 proves a worthy rival, it will win orders because demand for this class of plane is high. Boeing and Airbus each have backlogs of thousands of their own single-aisle planes and struggle to increase production. Demand for C919-class planes is also expected to just keep climbing as flying becomes more affordable and more people around the world become prosperous enough to afford air travel, so a new entrant has a chance to cash in.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microsoft's Edge browser is the subject of an amusing new bug report, alleging it somehow manages to screw up printing strings of numbers.

The report on Microsoft's developer portal describes the issue where PDF files printed through Edge will display numbers and text incorrectly when exported.

"Edge displays PDF correctly but printed content differs notably," the bug notice reads. "Printed content depends on selected printer, on printer settings, and on used computer (please try a different setup if first result looks correct)."

[...] In the meantime, it might be a good idea to use another application to export your PDFs, especially if you're filling out an expense report or making math assignment.

-- submitted from IRC

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pnkwarhall writes:

I read a couple of good books recently, and wanted to share them and do some writing to collect my thoughts on a subject that is currently of news-worthy relevance and of particular interest to "Soylentils". Enjoy, and I look forward to the discussion!

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a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- writes:

CNN's Amanda Jackson reports:

The Air Force's unmanned aircraft, X-37B, landed successfully Sunday morning at NASA's Kennedy Space Center -- but it didn't come down quietly.

The space plane sent a sonic boom that rattled east-central Florida before 8 a.m., waking residents from their weekend slumber.

[...] The X-37B, which looks like a small plane, made history by landing for the first time in Florida instead of California. It also set the on-orbit endurance record at 718 days, or almost two years.

Speculation on it's role or mission includes: "whether the U.S. has deployed a space-trotting spy vehicle or weapons platform for taking down satellites." http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413046,00.asp

Additional coverage:
* "Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Lands in Florida After Record-Breaking Secret Mission" http://www.space.com/36420-x-37b-space-plane-secret-mission-florida-landing.html

Background:

* Secret Missions of the X-37B https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7qgZKh5X0U
* US Air Force's Secretive X-37B Space Plane (Infographic) http://www.space.com/75-x-37b-spaceplane.html
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
* Shenlong Space Plane: China's Answer To U.S. X-37B Drone? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/10/shenlong-space-plane-china_n_2110084.html
* X-37B Likely Spying on China's Space Station https://www.defensetech.org/2012/01/06/x-37b-likely-spying-on-chinas-space-station/

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Qubes is once again regretting how long it's taken to abandon Xen's PV hypervisor, disclosing another three bugs including host escape vulnerabilities.

The most serious bugs are in PV (paravirtualization) memory handling, XSA-213 and XSA-214.

"An attacker who exploits either of these bugs can break Qubes-provided isolation. This means that if an attacker has already exploited another vulnerability, e.g. in a Web browser or networking or USB stack, then the attacker would be able to compromise a whole Qubes system" Qubes says in this note.

The bug in XSA-213 only affects 64 bit x86 systems and relates to how root and user mode page tables are handled by 64-bit PV guests. The IRET hypercall, which stands in for identically-named CPU instructions, transfers control from user mode to kernel mode.

"If such an IRET hypercall is placed in the middle of a multicall batch, subsequent operations invoked by the same multicall batch may wrongly assume the guest to still be in kernel mode", Xen explains, with the result that the guest could get writable access to the wrong root page table.

This means a buggy or malicious PV guest "may be able to access all of system memory, allowing for all of privilege escalation, host crashes, and information leaks."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- writes:

Oneangrygamer.net notes:

"Tech journalist, male feminist, and anti-#GamerGate critic, Matt Hickey has been fined $332,000 for his fake porn agency recruitment scam that he used as a front in order to have sex with young women and take nude pictures of the women."

"Hickey had been running the porn agency scam since 2006."

"All during this time Hickey had been advocating for sex-negativity on behalf of third-wave feminists. Hickey adopted the activism of a male feminist, attacking companies and the tech industry for its alleged "sexism", including chastising Microsoft for hiring gogo dancers for an after party at the Game Developers Conference.. Hickey previously wrote for The Stranger, Forbes and Gizmodo."

Read the whole story here: http://www.oneangrygamer.net/2017/04/matt-hickey-anti-gamergate-journalist-fined-332000-for-porn-agency-scam/28169/

Also: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/03/16/25023243/matt-hickey-has-to-pay-332000-for-his-fake-porn-scam-judge-rules

And the website he's accused of operating [NSFW] : https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20110208064017/http://www.newseattletalent.com/

Related legal docs: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3517893-DEFAULTJUDGMENT.html

Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy

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takyon writes:

Emmanuel Macron has been declared the President of France after early vote counts:

France has a new president. Emmanuel Macron – an independent centrist who has never held elected office – has won a resounding victory over far-right, nationalist Marine Le Pen in the most important French presidential race in decades, according to early vote counts by the French Interior Ministry.

In early returns, Macron had won an estimated 65 percent of the vote to Le Pen's nearly 35 percent, according to the French Interior Ministry. Le Pen has already called to congratulate Macron and conceded defeat to a gathering of her supporters in Paris.

Also at The Guardian (live), Washington Post, NYT, Reuters, and The Local.

From CNBC: Euro hits six-month high on Macron victory

CNN editorial: Why Macron's victory is reassuring ... and yet not

BBC has an article about Macron's potential choice of Prime Minister.

Original Submission