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butthurt writes:

BBC News reports:

Security software designed to prevent bank fraud has been fooled by a BBC reporter and his twin. BBC Click reporter Dan Simmons set up an HSBC account and signed up to the bank's voice ID authentication service.

HSBC says the system is secure because each person's voice is "unique". But the bank let Dan Simmons' non-identical twin, Joe, access the account via the telephone after he mimicked his brother's voice. The bank said it would "review" ways to make the ID system more sensitive following the BBC investigation.

[...] Although the breach did not allow Joe Simmons to withdraw money, he was able to access balances and recent transactions, and was offered the chance to transfer money between accounts.

Additional coverage: The Inquirer

Related story: Automated Voice Imitation Can Fool Humans and Machines

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Guardian reports that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a seed bank near Longyearbyen on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, has flooded due to "melting and heavy rain." The seeds remain safe, according to the article.

coverage:

• Quartz
• The Verge
• Popular Science
• ABC

previous stories:
Researchers Identify Remains of 14,000-Year-Old Seeds: Fava Bean
Syrian Seed Bank Gets New Home Away From War
Bayer AG Offers to Buy Monsanto
30,000-Year-Old Giant Virus 'Comes Back to Life'
An Isolated Vault Could Store Our Data on DNA for 2 Million Years .
Giant Crater in Russia's Far North Sparks Mystery
30,000 Year Old Virus Revived

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

John M. Donnelly, a senior writer at CQ Roll Call, said he was trying to talk with FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly one-on-one after a news conference when two plainclothes guards pinned him against a wall with the backs of their bodies.

—Washington Post

“Not only did they get in between me and O’Rielly but they put their shoulders together and simultaneously backed me up into the wall and pinned me to the wall for about 10 seconds just as I started to say, “Commissioner O’Rielly, I have a question,” Donnelly said Friday.

Donnelly said he was stopped long enough to allow O’Rielly to walk away.

—Los Angeles Times

Donnelly, who also happens to be chair of the National Press Club Press Freedom team, said he was then forced out of the building after being asked why he had not posed his question during the news conference.

O'Rielly apologized to Donnelly on Twitter, saying he didn't recognize Donnelly in the hallway. "I saw security put themselves between you, me and my staff. I didn't see anyone put a hand on you. I'm sorry this occurred."

—Politico

According to the publication for which the reporter works (archived copy),

Senators, including Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley, are warning the Federal Communications Commission about its treatment of reporters after a CQ Roll Call reporter was manhandled Thursday.

“The Federal Communications Commission needs to take a hard look at why this happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. As The Washington Post pointed out, it’s standard operating procedure for reporters to ask questions of public officials after meetings and news conferences,” the Iowa Republican said. “It happens all day, every day. There’s no good reason to put hands on a reporter who’s doing his or her job.”

Phoenix666 writes:

Once India's global claim to fame, the country's information technology (IT) sector is seeing a spate of layoffs by IT majors like Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Infosys and Cognizant.

The churn in the IT sector — which is moving towards increasing automation, use of artificial intelligence and is beset by tightening visa regulations — is likely to affect mid-level employees with 10-15 years of experience the most, as many are averse to learning new skills, industry experts have said.

Further, Indian IT firms are witnessing their slowest growth in a decade, while global firms are shifting their budgets from traditional IT services to newer areas such as digital and cloud, which require engineers to engage with clients instead of working remotely. Even as this shift takes hold of the sector, automation is increasingly taking over low-end maintenance work, forcing companies to shift workers to other projects and reduce hiring from campuses.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microsoft never sleeps. Even before the Windows 10 Creative Update was rolled out, the company began work on the next major update to Windows 10, code-named Redstone 3.

As it did with the Creators Update, Microsoft has been releasing public preview builds to members of Microsoft's Insider Program via a series of public preview builds.

What follows is a list of every preview build of Redstone 3, starting with the most recent. (Note: This covers only previews for the PC version of Windows 10, not the phone version.) For each build, we've included the date of its release and a link to Microsoft's announcement about it.

Note that we've kept the list of all the preview builds that let up to Creators Update, which are below the builds of Redstone 3.

Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16199

Release date: May 17, 2017

This minor build includes several new features for the My People app. You can pin your favorite contacts to the taskbar and see emoji from your pinned contacts. Pinned contacts also display counters for messages you haven't yet read from them. And you can now share files with contacts by dragging and dropping files onto pinned contacts, which creates an email message to the contact with the file attached.

The build also includes several minor changes to settings, notably the addition of a health section that pulls information from the Windows Defender Security Center, making it easier to see the overall health of your PC in a quick glance.

Beyond that are the usual assortment of minor changes, improvements and bug fixes, such as Windows Defender Security Center not flagging disabled drivers as issues.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The dwarf planet 2007 OR₁₀, estimated to be the fourth largest known Kuiper Belt object, has a companion:

2007 OR10 is the largest body in the solar system with no common name. And now, the no-name dwarf planet with a diameter between 800 and 950 miles (1,290–1,528km) has been discovered to have a moon.

[...] OR10 has a very slow rotation rate, which hid the moon in plain sight from Hubble for quite some time. It's a large moon for OR10's size, estimated at 150 to 250 miles (240–400km) in diameter.

The satellite was found in 2016 after astronomers analyzed Hubble images from 2010.

Many KBOs/TNOs appear to have satellites. Here's a list.

Discovery of a Satellite of the Large Trans-Neptunian Object (225088) 2007 OR₁₀ (open, DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa6484) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google is partnering with HTC and Lenovo to produce standalone (no smartphone or tether) virtual reality headsets. The headsets could cost around $500-$700, comparable to the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. As they will have less computational/graphics power than flagship smartphones or desktops, Google has developed a rendering system that they claim can compensate by decreasing the amount of polygons needed to render a scene (related video):

Meanwhile, a rendering system called Seurat — named after the pointillist painter Georges Seurat — is supposed to offer image quality that rivals what you'd get on a high-end PC. Andrey Doronichev, Google's director of product management, describes Seurat as "computational magic." It takes a rendered three-dimensional scene and samples shots of it from many different angles. As seen [here], Seurat uses these images to assemble a facade that drastically reduces the number of polygons the headset needs to render, without a visible loss of quality.

Google can also use the same Daydream user interface it's been fine-tuning for the past year on phones. A software update codenamed Euphrates will add the features you need for devices that users can't just pop apart and use as a phone, like a full-featured web browser and a dashboard for accessing settings and other non-VR parts of Android.

Google envisions VR and AR converging into mixed reality headsets, building on the augmented reality technologies developed under Project Tango as well as Daydream VR:

To make VR more transporting, and AR more convincing and useful, everything behind these experiences must improve: displays, optics, tracking, input, GPUs, sensors, and more. As one benchmark, to achieve "retina" resolution in VR — that is, to give a person 20/20 vision across their full field of view — we'll need roughly 30 times more pixels than we have in today's displays. To make more refined forms of AR possible, smartphones will need more advanced sensing capabilities. Our devices will need to understand motion, space, and very precise location. We'll need precision not in meters, but in centimeters or even millimeters.

Both the Rift and Vive have 2160×1200 displays. Roughly 30 times more pixels would mean a resolution of around 11880×6600, or 16704×4698 (32:9 aspect ratio).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Like a drone falling out of the sky:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/drone-pilots-dont-have-to-register-under-faas-controversial-rule-court-rules-2017-05-19

The Federal Aviation Administration's requirement that hobby drone users register their devices was struck down in an appeals court Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of John Taylor, a drone hobbyist who had challenged the legality of the FAA's drone-registration program.

The program, which was instituted in December 2015, required hobby drone owners to register through an FAA website for a $5 fee. Drone hobbyists were then issued a unique identification, which they were required to mark on their drones. Within the first month, nearly 300,000 drone owners had registered.

Previously:
All Drones in U.S. to Require Federal Registration
FAA Drone Registry to be Publicly Searchable
Drones and RC Models Must be Registered by February 16[, 2016]
Nearly 300,000 Recreational Drone Owners in U.S. Database

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

In the past 50 years the quantity and rate of plant growth has shot up, says study, suggesting further warming could lead to rapid ecosystem changes.

Antarctica may conjure up an image of a pristine white landscape, but researchers say climate change is turning the continent green.

Scientists studying banks of moss in Antarctica have found that the quantity of moss, and the rate of plant growth, has shot up in the past 50 years, suggesting the continent may have a verdant future.

"Antarctica is not going to become entirely green, but it will become more green than it currently is," said Matt Amesbury, co-author of the research from the University of Exeter.

"This is linking into other processes that are happening on the Antarctic Peninsula at the moment, particularly things like glacier retreat which are freeing up new areas of ice-free land – and the mosses particularly are very effective colonisers of those new areas," he added.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/may/18/climate-change-is-turning-antarctica-green-say-reseatchers

The study in question: Widespread Biological Response to Rapid Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

India has approved the construction of ten indigenously designed pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR). India approved the construction of ten 700 MWe units in a “significant decision to fast-track India’s domestic nuclear power program”.

The Cabinet’s announcement did not give any timeline or locations for the new plants, but said the project would result in a “significant augmentation” of the country’s nuclear generation capacity.

India has 6780 MWe of installed nuclear capacity from 22 operational reactors with another 6700 MWe expected to come on stream over the next five years, the cabinet noted. It said the ten new units would be a “fully homegrown initiative”, with likely manufacturing orders to Indian industry of about INR 700 billion ($11 billion).

China is to supply Argentina with two nuclear power reactors – one a Candu pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR), the other a Hualong One pressurised water reactor (PWR). The contract was among 19 agreements signed yesterday in Beijing during a meeting of Chinese president Xi Jinping and Argentinean president Mauricio Macri.

Source: NextBigFuture.com

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Chicago Tribune reports that Oscar López Rivera has been freed and has returned to Chicago:

The National Review reports that he is to lead the Puerto Rican Day parade in June in New York City, and that

additional coverage:

• TeleSUR
• Chicago Reporter
• New York Post
• WLS-TV (ABC)
• HuffPost

related stories:
Chelsea Manning Released from Prison, Remains on Active Duty Pending Appeal
Puerto Rico Files for Biggest Ever U.S. Local Government Bankruptcy
Chelsea Manning Reportedly on Obama's Short List for Commutation; Assange Offers Himself in Trade
Puerto Rico: 1 Substation Fire; All 3.5 Million People Lose Power

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Register (aka El Reg) reports:

Many [who installed the latest Dell BIOS update] now cannot boot up their machines. One typical explanation posted was: "Add me to the list Dell Inspiron 20 model 3052, updated on the weekend, woke up to a solid amber/orange light and a dead computer. Contacted Dell on facebook and this is what I was told "The updates Dell releases don't affect the system. But it would enhance the performance of the system" ummmm no....if they broke they need to fix it."

[...] Some users complained screens cycled through red, green, blue and white while others saw nothing but an amber or red power light and a dead screen.

The main model affected by the allegedly dodgy update is the Inspiron 20 3052, although a few users reported similar problems with Inspiron 3252s.

[...] Dell's initial reaction was to tell customers they needed to buy new motherboards.

[...] Although complaints in the forum date back to May 12, Dell took four days to offer up a possible solution... which users subsequently said didn't work. Dell has yet to send [El Reg] a statement.

Have we saved anyone from a big headache?

The relevant Dell forum thread can be found here.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A surgeon who moved to Russia after being fired from a Swedish hospital has lost his Russian Science Foundation grant, following the retraction of a Nature Communications paper:

After Paolo Macchiarini's star fell in Sweden, the Italian surgeon still had a place to shine: Russia. The Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm fired him in March 2016 for multiple ethical violations, including "breach of KI's fundamental values" and "scientific negligence." But Russia had long showered Macchiarini with funding and opportunities to perform his experimental surgeries to implant artificial tracheas, and it allowed him to stay. Now, a year later, his Russian refuge has ended as well.

On 30 March, it became clear that the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) would not renew its funding for Macchiarini's work, which now focuses on the esophagus rather than the trachea. The decision came 9 days after Nature Communications retracted a paper by Macchiarini [open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15077] [DX] that documented successful esophagus transplantations in rats. Minutes of a meeting made public last week show that Kazan Federal University (KFU), Macchiarini's current employer, decided to end his research project there on 20 April, effectively firing him.

[...] Once considered a pioneer of regenerative surgery, Macchiarini aimed to give patients whose tracheas had been damaged a new windpipe. "Seeded" with stem cells, it was supposed to grow into a new, fully functional organ. (He initially used donor tracheas as a basis, but later switched to an artificial scaffold.) But he has been accused of painting a false picture of his patients in scientific papers, several of which have been retracted; operating without ethical approval; and lying on his CV. At least six of the eight artificial trachea recipients have died. In Sweden, where the case has plunged science into a crisis, investigations continue into allegations including involuntary manslaughter.

This isn't our first encounter with Dr. Macchiarini.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In a rare show of unity in the Middle East, an advanced research centre to be shared by the troubled region has opened in Jordan.

Despite political tensions and rows, countries usually hostile to each other are jointly supporting the venture. Its name is Sesame - Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East. The facility hosts a synchrotron, a particle accelerator that acts as a powerful microscope.

Researchers including Iranians, Israelis and Palestinians - who would never normally meet - will now use the machine together.

Sesame is a play on the famous phrase "Open Sesame" and is meant to signal a new era of collaborative science.

Best wishes to Sesame!

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/human-activity-changing-space-too-180963369/

There's hardly anything on Earth that has escaped human influence—from the oceans to the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that human activity is also influencing the space around our planet; this is on top of the space junk already swirling around out there. Very Low Frequency (VLF) broadcasts have created a planetary cocoon, shielding the planet from high energy particle radiation, according to a NASA press release.

[...] This ephemeral bubble adds to the already protective magnetosphere, encompassing our planet. Researchers report the find this week in the journal Space Science Review.

The discovery was made using the Van Allen Probes, spacecraft launched in 2012 to monitor the bands of charged particles surrounding the Earth.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasas-van-allen-probes-spot-man-made-barrier-shrouding-earth/

Original Submission