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butthurt writes:

USA Today has an article about Amazon.com's new Seattle headquarters, which consist of "three gigantic glass spheres," and about other unusual buildings in the city.

Americans tend to think of brown shipping boxes when it comes to Amazon. But in Seattle, the company is increasingly known as a real-estate owner. That's especially true downtown, where Amazon employs more than 24,000 — some of whom will soon hold meetings and take lunch breaks inside three gigantic glass spheres that add a geodesic flare to the urban grid.

The tallest of the glass and metal Spheres rises 90 feet and is more than 130 feet in diameter, with two smaller spheres to each side. In a city that gets 152 days of rain a year, they will provide a warm, dry, plant-filled space for meetings, meals and mingling for up to 800 Amazon employees at a time.

"It's kind of fantastic," said Thaisa Way, an urban landscape historian at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists gathered at the New York Genome Center on Tuesday to discuss the initiation of Genome Project-write (GP-write), which would create a synthetic human genome:

[Proponents] suggest that they could design a synthetic genome to make human cells resistant to viral infections, radiation, and cancer. Those cells could be used immediately for industrial drug production. With additional genome tinkering to avoid rejection by the immune system, they could be used clinically as a universal stem cell therapy.

The project got off to a bumpy start last year and despite the central rallying cry of a synthetic human genome, many of those attending the conference will bring in different expectations and ambitions. Some resent the unwanted attention and criticism that the project's public objective has brought, saying it distracts from the goal of improving DNA synthesis technologies, because cheaper and faster methods to write DNA have many applications in applied and basic research. Others say that a made-to-order human genome is inevitable anyway, hoping to seize the publicity and controversy it creates as an opportunity to educate the public about synthetic biology.

"If you put humans as the target, even though you are not going to make a human baby, it will be provocative, it will be misinterpreted, but people will engage," says Andrew Hessel, a self-described futurist and biotechnology catalyst at Autodesk in San Francisco, California, a successful software company that specializes in 3D design programs for architecture and other fields that has been exploring synthetic biology applications in recent years. Hessel is one of the four founders of GP-write, along with lawyer Nancy Kelley and geneticists Jef Boeke of New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City and George Church of Harvard University.

Previously: Genome Project-Write To Attempt Synthesis of Human Genomes

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Buzz Aldrin has said that NASA should stop spending $3.5 billion per year on the International Space Station and relinquish low Earth orbit activities to private companies, such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK, Boeing, Bigelow Aerospace, and Axiom Space. This would allow for the funding of "cyclers" to enable a base on the moon and eventually a permanent presence on Mars:

http://www.space.com/36787-buzz-aldrin-retire-international-space-station-for-mars.html

Establishing private outposts in LEO is just the first step in Aldrin's plan for Mars colonization, which depends heavily on "cyclers" — spacecraft that move continuously between two cosmic destinations, efficiently delivering people and cargo back and forth. "The foundation of human transportation is the cycler," the 87-year-old former astronaut said. "Very rugged, so it'll last 30 years or so; no external moving parts."

Step two involves the international spaceflight community coming together to build cyclers that ply cislunar space, taking people on trips to the moon and back. Such spacecraft, and the activities they enable, would allow the construction of a crewed lunar base, where humanity could learn and test the techniques required for Mars colonization, such as how to manufacture propellant from local resources, Aldrin said. Then would come Earth-Mars cyclers, which Aldrin described as "an evolutionary development" of the prior cyclers.

[...] NASA officials have repeatedly said that the ISS is a key part of the agency's "Journey to Mars" vision, which aims to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s.

Is the ISS a key part of the "Journey to Mars" or a key roadblock?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Ross Mounce knows that when he shares his research papers online, he may be doing something illegal — if he uploads the final version of a paper that has appeared in a subscription-based journal. Publishers who own copyright on such papers frown on their unauthorized appearance online. Yet when Mounce has uploaded his paywalled articles to ResearchGate, a scholarly social network likened to Facebook for scientists, publishers haven't asked him to take them down. "I'm aware that I might be breaching copyright," says Mounce, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, UK. "But I don't really care."

Mounce isn't alone in his insouciance. The unauthorized sharing of copyrighted research papers is on the rise, say analysts who track the publishing industry. Faced with this problem, science publishers seem to be changing tack in their approach to researchers who breach copyright. Instead of demanding that scientists or network operators take their papers down, some publishers are clubbing together to create systems for legal sharing of articles — called fair sharing — which could also help them to track the extent to which scientists share paywalled articles online.

Sharing information is antithetical to scientific progress.

Original Submission

McGruber writes:

[Public News Service of West Virginia Reporter Daniel Ralph Heyman] has been arrested and charged with "disruption of government services" in the state capitol for "yelling questions" at visiting Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price and White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway.

[...] "The above defendant was aggressively breaching the secret service agents to the point where the agents were forced to remove him a couple of times from the area walking up the hallway in the main building of the Capitol," the complaint states. It adds Heyman caused a disturbance by "yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price."

The misdemeanor carries a possible fine of $100 and up to six months in jail.

[...] The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia called the charges "outrageous" and said the arrest was "a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press."

"Freedom of the press is being eroded every day, " it said in a statement. "We have a president who calls the media 'fake news' and resists transparency at every turn."

The statement said this is a "dangerous time in the country."

Price and Conway were in West Virginia to discuss opioid addiction in the state, which has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation.

LINK: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/05/10/w-virginia-reporter-arrested-yelling-questions-visiting-hhs-secretary-tom-price/101503242/#

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The open source Git project has just released Git 2.13.0, with features and bugfixes from over 65 contributors. Before we dig into the new features, we have a brief security announcement.

For those running their own Git hosting server, Git 2.13 fixes a vulnerability in the git shell program in which an untrusted Git user can potentially run shell commands on a remote host. This only affects you if you're running a hosting server and have specifically configured git shell. If none of that makes sense to you, you're probably fine. See this announcement for more details. As neither GitHub.com nor GitHub Enterprise uses git shell, both are unaffected.

Phew. With that out of the way, let's get on to the fun stuff.

[...] You may have heard that researchers recently found the first collision in SHA-1, the hash function Git uses to identify objects. Their techniques may eventually be used to conduct collision-based attacks against Git users. Fortunately those same researchers also provided a way to detect content that is trying to exploit this technique to create collisions. In March, GitHub.com began using that implementation to prevent it being used as a potential platform for conducting collision attacks.

Git 2.13 ships with similar changes, and will detect and reject any objects that show signs of being part of a collision attack. The collision-detecting SHA-1 implementation is now the default. The code is included with Git, so there's no need to install any additional dependencies. Note that this implementation is slower than the alternatives, but in practice this has a negligible effect on the overall time of most Git operations (because Git spends only a small portion of its time computing SHA-1 hashes in the first place).

In other collision detection news, efforts have continued to develop a transition plan and to prepare the code base for handling new hash functions, which will eventually allow the use of stronger hash algorithms in Git.

What version of git, if any, are you running?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

More evidence that IBM is cutting costs in multiple ways: the company's Australian tentacle is making it very, very hard to hire contractors.

The Register has viewed emails sent among organisations seeking to place contractors with IBM Australia. The thread explains that IBM has not replied to offers of new contractors because of a freeze that means it can only hire temporary workers under limited circumstances, and even then after signoff by senior bean-counters.

We understand the freeze even applies to gigs at which IBM teams are relying on contractors to help the company meet looming deadlines.

IBM would not confirm or deny the freeze, but The Register has been led to understand that Big Blue is always "optimising" its workforce to ensure they're fully occupied and that no resources are wasted. We understand that optimisation process means the IT giant is ensuring its full-timers are kept busy.

The story continues:

Updated to add

Multiple sources now tell The Reg that the contractor freeze is global, with many finishing assignments last week and being told their services will not be required for the foreseeable future. We understand that the contractor freeze is a cost-saving measure and that projects that need extra hands will draw on internal resources to hit deadlines.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Microsoft's only choice to move forward is to throw the Win32 baby out with the bathwater. And that brings us to the introduction of Windows 10 S.

Windows 10 S is just like the Windows 10 you use now, but the main difference is it can only run apps that have been whitelisted to run in the Windows Store. That means, by and large, existing Win32-based stuff cannot run in Windows 10 S for security reasons.

To bridge the app gap, Microsoft is allowing certain kinds of desktop apps to be "packaged" for use in the Windows Store through a tooling process known as Desktop Bridge or Project Centennial.

The good news is that with Project Centennial, many Desktop Win32 apps can be re-purposed and packaged to take advantage of Windows 10's improved security. However, there are apps that will inevitably be left behind because they violate the sandboxing rules that are needed to make the technology work in a secure fashion.

"A casualty of those sandboxing rules is Google's Chrome browser. For security reasons, Microsoft is not permitting desktop browsers to be ported to the Store."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

John Cioffi, known as the "father of DSL", reckons we're nowhere near the limit of copper transmission speed, delivering a presentation claiming Terabit performance is feasible.

Feasible with a bunch of caveats, that is, the two most important of which are "if research delivers on theory", and "if it can be standardised".

The basis of Cioffi's proposal in this PDF presentation is that at high enough frequencies, signals in copper behave differently to at low frequencies.

At the kinds of frequencies we use for today's DSL, the signal is carried by the movement of electrons in the wires. If, however, the carrier frequency is high enough, the waves propagate in a "waveguide" mode – radio waves following the edge of the copper, rather than electrons oscillating inside it.

So far, so good: none of this is science fiction, and in fact, AT&T's fooling around with using wires as waveguides in its AirGig demonstration.

[...] If – and the more slides of the presentation you read, the more "ifs" there are – the carrier frequency in those waveguides is 300 GHz, and if those channels can carry 4096 tones, and if you can encode 2.5 bits per tone – then you get to a Terabit system that Cioffi reckons can operate at 100 metres; 100 Gbps at 300 metres; and 10 Gbps at 500 metres.

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

A bot is thought to be behind the posting of thousands of messages to the FCC's website, in an apparent attempt to influence the results of a public solicitation for feedback on net neutrality.

Late last month, FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced his agency's plans to roll back an Obama-era framework for net neutrality, which rule that internet providers must treat all internet content equally.

Since then, the FCC's public comments system has been flooded with a barrage of comments -- well over half-a-million responses at the time of writing -- in part thanks to comedian John Oliver raising the issue on his weekly show on Sunday.

[...] But a sizable portion of those comments are fake, and are repeating the same manufactured response again and again:

[...] "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation," the comment says. "I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the internet known as Title II and restore the bipartisan light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the internet to flourish for more than 20 years."

NotSanguine called it! https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=19421&cid=506966

http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-bot-is-flooding-the-fccs-website-with-fake-anti-net-neutrality-comments/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

By using highly advanced brain imaging technology to observe modern humans crafting ancient tools, an Indiana University neuroarchaeologist has found evidence that human-like ways of thinking may have emerged as early as 1.8 million years ago.

The results, reported May 8 in the journal Nature Human Behavior, place the appearance of human-like cognition at the emergence of Homo erectus, an early apelike species of human first found in Africa whose evolution predates Neanderthals by nearly 600,000 years.

"This is a significant result because it's commonly thought our most modern forms of cognition only appeared very recently in terms of human evolutionary history," said Shelby S. Putt, a postdoctoral researcher with The Stone Age Institute at Indiana University, who is first author on the study. "But these results suggest the transition from apelike to humanlike ways of thinking and behaving arose surprisingly early."

The study's conclusions are based upon brain activity in modern individuals taught to create two types of ancient tools: simple Oldowan-era "flake tools" -- little more than broken rocks with a jagged edge -- and more complicated Acheulian-era hand axes, which resemble a large arrowhead. Both are formed by smashing rocks together using a process known as "flintknapping."

"'Humanlike' Ways of Thinking Evolved 1.8 Million Years Ago," but ape-like thinking remains.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Skydiving is one of those pursuits that fills us with adrenaline. Hey, you can even skydive and play video games at the same time.

It's still dangerous, as one Danish skydiver discovered. The Local reports that as he jumped from the plane, his foot got caught in a cable.

This left the 45-year-old man dangling beneath the plane at 2,500 meters (around 8,200 feet), with no obvious means of escape.

Worse, the pilot didn't know he was there. Until, that is, the diving instructor -- who had jumped before the dangling man -- looked up and saw what had happened. The Local says police told the news agency Ritzau that the instructor radioed the pilot, who suddenly realized the magnitude of the problem.

[...] The pilot said that as he landed, he wondered whether he was about to kill a man. As it turns out, the Local said the skydiver had no more than a scratch and a groin strain.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Only 36% of software engineers in India can write compilable code based on measurements by an automated tool that is used across the world, the Indian skills assessment company Aspiring Minds says in a report.

The report [PDF] is based on a sample of 36,800 from more than 500 colleges across India.

Aspiring Minds said it used the automated tool Automata which is a 60-minute test taken in a compiler integrated environment and rates candidates on programming ability, programming practices, run-time complexity and test case coverage.

It uses advanced artificial intelligence technology to automatically grade programming skills.

"We find that out of the two problems given per candidate, only 14% engineers are able to write compilable codes for both and only 22% write compilable code for exactly one problem," the study said.

It further found that of the test subjects only 14.67% were employable by an IT services company.

When it came to writing fully functional code using the best practices for efficiency and writing, only 2.21% of the engineers studied made the grade.

The study, conducted in India by an Indian firm, had no comparisons with other populations.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The United States Air Force has successfully networked its F-22 Raptor and F-15 Eagle aircraft under the "Talon HATE" program.

The F-15 first flew in 1972 and has been in service since the late 1970s, while the F-22 entered service two decades later. The latter aircraft had some data networking capabilities, but the F-15's vintage means it lacked that ability and some of the sensors that are standard kit on the F-22.

Both aircraft are still flying and it's assumed that will be the case for decades to come. But tactics have moved on and it's now assumed that military aircraft will be able to exchange data in real time to allow better battlefield management.

Hence the Talon HATE program, which adds new sensors to the F-15 plus the ability to send data from those devices, and the plane's other systems, to facilities on Earth's surface. The new kit resides in a pod carried beneath the craft.

How many times do we have to re-learn this same lesson? Stick with the Viper Mark VII's.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

KING-TV reports that "a tunnel full of highly contaminated materials collapsed" in a reprocessing facility at the Hanford nuclear site. An official said "The facility does have radiological contamination right now but there is no indication of a radiological release." The U.S. Department of Energy released statements (archived copy) saying that employees were "told to shelter in place" and that non-essential employees were sent home.

additional coverage:

• Susannah Frame of KING-TV via Twitter (photo)
• Tri-City Herald (video)
• Western Journalism
• Yakima Herald-Republic
• Washington Post
• Seattle Times
• Popular Mechanics
• USA Today
• Fox News

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

TechDirt reports

Taser Inc.'s quiet takeover of evidence generation and storage--through extensive body camera offerings--was put on public display when the company rebranded as Axon. The company was willing to give away cameras in exchange for something far more lucrative: software licensing and footage access fees in perpetuity.

Axon even nailed down a choice URL: Evidence.com. This is the portal to law enforcement body camera footage stored in Axon's cloud--the real moneymaker for Axon. The cameras are just the gateway drug.

But much of what's stored at Evidence.com could be considered public records. Much of what's stored there could also be subject to discovery by defense attorneys during criminal proceedings. But no one asked defense attorneys if this arrangement worked for them. It was enough that it worked for cops.

Defense attorney Rick Horowitz has a problem with contractual agreements he's being asked to sign when attempting to gain access to records regarding his client. Instead of handing out files, prosecutors are handing out URLs. To obtain the records he needs, Horowitz is forced to use Axon's portal... and sign agreements with Axon before he's allowed to access anything. (via Simple Justice)

[...] But it's even worse in this case, which involves a juvenile. California law provides extensive protections for the privacy of juveniles--even those accused of crimes. But these appear to have been ignored by every law enforcement agency that agreed to do business with Axon. These are also being ignored by Axon, which treats all uploaded footage equally. It doesn't meet California's privacy standards--a problem that only seems to concern those defending juvenile arrestees.

Original Submission