SoylentNews

NotSanguine writes:

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) secretary David Shulkin announced a major overhaul of the department's Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems.

The department will scrap its in-house developed EHR systems, known as VistA in favor of MHS GENESIS, the EHR system in use by the U.S. Department of Defense.

MHS GENESIS is based on the Cerner Millenium API. For those of you who will ask, no, Cerner Millenium is *not* open source.

VistA, the current DVA system was originally conceived as a "paperless" health records management system in the early 1970s, developed and implemented by DVA and other government agencies, both in the United States and in a number of other countries including Finland, Egypt and Germany. VistA is in the public domain

So what say you, Soylentils? Does it make sense to throw out decades of development on a platform both widely used and in the public domain? Should the government be doing its own software development?

Are you a government contractor doing software development? If so, how might this and/or similar actions affect you?

Other Coverage:
White House press briefing/announcement from Secretary Shulkin
Healthcare IT News
Defense One [behind script wall]
Kansas City Star
FCW

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Ever since our ancestors mastered fire, humans have been able to warm themselves. Cooling down when it's hot has been more challenging.

The eccentric Roman emperor Elagabulus sent slaves to bring snow down from the mountains and pile it in his garden, where breezes would carry the cooler air inside.

[...] Needless to say, this was not a scalable solution. At least, not until the 19th century, when Boston entrepreneur Frederic Tudor amassed an unlikely fortune doing something similar.

He took blocks of ice from frozen New England lakes in winter, insulated them in sawdust, and shipped them to warmer climes for summer.

Until artificial ice-making took off, mild New England winters caused panic about an "ice famine".

Air conditioning as we know it began in 1902, but it had nothing to do with human comfort.

New York's Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Company became frustrated with varying humidity levels when trying to print in colour.

The same paper had to be printed four times in four colours, and if the humidity changed between print runs, the paper would slightly expand or contract. Even a millimetre's misalignment looked awful.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The rift in the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica has grown by 17km in the last few days and is now only 13km from the ice front, indicating that calving of an iceberg is probably very close, Swansea University researchers revealed after studying the latest satellite data.

The rift in Larsen C is likely to lead to one of the largest icebergs ever recorded. It is being monitored by researchers from the UK's Project Midas, led by Swansea University.

Professor Adrian Luckman of Swansea University College of Science, head of Project Midas, described the latest findings:

"In the largest jump since January, the rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf has grown an additional 17 km (11 miles) between May 25 and May 31 2017. This has moved the rift tip to within 13 km (8 miles) of breaking all the way through to the ice front, producing one of the largest ever recorded icebergs.

The rift tip appears also to have turned significantly towards the ice front, indicating that the time of calving is probably very close.

The rift has now fully breached the zone of soft 'suture' ice originating at the Cole Peninsula and there appears to be very little to prevent the iceberg from breaking away completely."

Researchers say the loss of a piece a quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up.

Larsen C is approximately 350m thick and floats on the seas at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it.

Professor Luckman added, "When it calves, the Larsen C Ice Shelf will lose more than 10% of its area to leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever recorded; this event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula.

We have previously shown that the new configuration will be less stable than it was prior to the rift, and that Larsen C may eventually follow the example of its neighbour Larsen B, which disintegrated in 2002 following a similar rift-induced calving event.

The MIDAS Project will continue to monitor the development of the rift and assess its ongoing impact on the ice shelf. Further updates will be available on our blog (projectmidas.org),and on our Twitter feed"

The team say they have no evidence to link the growth of this rift, and the eventual calving, to climate change. However, it is widely accepted that warming ocean and atmospheric temperatures have been a factor in earlier disintegrations of ice shelves elsewhere on the Antarctic Peninsula, most notably Larsen A (1995) and Larsen B (2002).

They point out that this is one of the fastest warming places on Earth, a feature which will certainly not have hindered the development of the rift in Larsen C.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon and n1 wrote in with stories on the British Prime Minister Theresa May wanting to crack down on the internet:

Some things in life are very predictable... the Earth continues to orbit around the Sun and Theresa May is trying to crack down on the Internet and ban/break encryption:

In the wake of Saturday's terrorist attack in London, the Prime Minister Theresa May has again called for new laws to regulate the internet, demanding that internet companies do more to stamp out spaces where terrorists can communicate freely. "We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed," she said. "Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide."

Her comments echo those made in March by the home secretary, Amber Rudd. Speaking after the previous terrorist attack in London, Rudd said that end-to-end encryption in apps like WhatsApp is "completely unacceptable" and that there should be "no hiding place for terrorists".

[...] "Theresa May's response is predictable but disappointing," says Paul Bernal at the University of East Anglia, UK. "If you stop 'safe places' for terrorists, you stop safe places for everyone, and we rely on those safe places for a great deal of our lives."

Last month New Scientist called for a greater understanding of technology among politicians. Until that happens, having a reasonable conversation about how best to tackle extremism online will remain out of reach.

End-to-end encryption is completely unacceptable? Now that's what I call an endorsement.

[more...]

AnonTechie writes:

Modern-day inventors—even those in the league of Steve Jobs—will have a tough time measuring up to the productivity of the Thomas Edisons of the past.
That's because big ideas are getting harder and harder to find, and innovations have become increasingly massive and costly endeavors, according to new research from economists at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. As a result, tremendous continual increases in research and development will be needed to sustain even today's low rate of economic growth.

Nicholas Bloom, a SIEPR senior fellow and co-author of the forthcoming paper, contends that so many game-changing inventions have appeared since World War II that it's become increasingly difficult to come up with the next big idea.

[...] Turning its focus to publicly traded companies, the study found a fraction of firms where research productivity—as measured by growth in sales, market capitalization, employment and revenue-per-worker productivity—grew decade-over-decade since 1980. But overall, more than 85 percent of the firms showed steady, rapid declines in productivity while their spending in R&D rose. The analysis found research productivity for firms fell, on average, about 10 percent per year, and it would take 15 times more researchers today than it did 30 years ago to produce the same rate of economic growth.

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-big-ideas-harder.html

[Source]: https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/productivity-ideas-hard-to-find
[Paper]: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

Do you think that innovative ideas are hard to find ??

Original Submission

AthanasiusKircher writes:

The New York Times reports:

As school reformers nationwide push to expand publicly funded prekindergarten and enact more stringent standards, more students are being exposed at ever younger ages to formal math and phonics lessons [...]. That has worried some education experts and frightened those parents who believe that children of that age should be playing with blocks, not sitting still as a teacher explains a shape's geometric characteristics.

But now a new national study suggests that preschools that do not mix enough fiber into their curriculum may be doing their young charges a disservice.

The study found that by the end of kindergarten, children who had attended one year of "academic-oriented preschool" outperformed peers who had attended less academic-focused preschools by, on average, the equivalent of two and a half months of learning in literacy and math.

"Simply dressing up like a firefighter or building an exquisite Lego edifice may not be enough," said Bruce Fuller, the lead author of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. "If you can combine creative play with rich language, formal conversations and math concepts, that's more likely to yield the cognitive gains we observed."

U.S. News published a related piece recently arguing for more attention to preschool curricula and specific content, in addition to other measures of preschool programs. In contrast, a story in the Atlantic last year pointed out new "academic" approaches to preschool may actually be doing more harm than good. And any immediate gains (as cited in the new study) frequently turn out to be temporary. One oft-cited alternative is Finland's approach, which delays formal schooling until age 7, after a year of relatively unstructured government-mandated kindergarten.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Those of you yearning for the experience of running a 1990s-vintage graphics workstation are about to have a good day: a developer named Eric Masson has resurrected the IRIX Interactive Desktop that shipped on Silicon Graphics Workstations and now offers it as a Linux desktop alternative.

Silicon Graphics (SGI) had a crack at the workstation business in the early 1990s, when it dominated the then-rather-limited world of computer graphics and decided it would try to parlay that experience into the CAD and desktop publishing markets. Apple's early Macintoshes led those market, but their 68xxx CPUs had obvious limits. SGI threw MIPS silicon at the problem, brought IRIX out of servers onto the desktop and cooked up a nice windowing system to match the Mac and hit the market.

SGI did okay for a while but proprietary workstations became an oddity once Windows came along and Microsoft encouraged makers of graphics-centric apps to bring their wares to Win32. SGI added a Wintel workstation line, but then had to compete with PCs-at-scale outfits like Compaq and Dell. The company kept making MIPS-powered workstation well into the 2000s, but eventually succumbed.

Masson has tried to bring back some of that heritage in the form of the Maxx Interactive Desktop, which aims to offer "an evolution of SGI's IRIX Interactive Desktop."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Hiroshima University and Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited (MIFS) today announced the development of a low-power millimeter-wave amplifier that feeds on 0.5 V power supply and covers the frequency range from 80 GHz to 106 GHz. It was fabricated using MIFS's Deeply Depleted Channel (DDC) technology. This is the first W-band (75−110 GHz) amplifier that can operate even with such a low power-supply voltage. Details of the technology will be presented at the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC) 2017, running from June 4th to 6th in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The W-band covers the frequencies used by automotive radars. Sophisticated driver-assistance and self-driving will require radars with millimeter-wave beam scanning capability that can "see" in day and night conditions and even in adverse weather conditions. Such a phased array will consist of up to hundreds of transmitters and receivers. As battery-powered cars become more common, it is imperative that these circuits be low power. Lowering the power-supply voltage is the most effective means of accomplishing that. However, transistor performance drops with voltage and no W-band amplifier has so far operated at as low as 0.5 V . The team of researchers successfully demonstrated a W-band amplifier at 0.5 V by bringing together MIFS's DDC technology and design techniques developed by Hiroshima University. The DDC technology offers high-performance silicon MOS transistors even at low voltages and is currently available from MIFS as a 55-nm CMOS process. The design techniques further improve transistor and circuit performance at millimeter-wave frequencies.

"Now that seriously low-power W-band circuits really seem possible, we should think about what we can do with them. Applications aren't limited to automotive radars and high-speed communications between base stations. What if you have a radar on your smartphone? Today's smartphones can already sense things like acceleration, audible sound, visible light, and Earth's magnetic field. But the only active probing device is that tiny LED (light-emitting diode) that can illuminate at most a few meters. Add a millimeter-wave radar on a smartphone, and it doesn't have to be a so-called primary radar, which only detects waves reflected back. Your smartphone could respond to waves from your friend's radar and send some signal back. A whole lot of new applications could be created, including games," said Professor Minoru Fujishima, Graduate School of Advanced Sciences of Matter, Hiroshima University.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

AMD Radeon RX 500 series graphics cards, particularly the RX 580 and 570, have been out of stock for weeks now owing to the cryptocurrency mining craze. The market had shifted away from GPU mining a couple of years back after several China based companies launched specialized ASICs that were much faster and more power efficient at resolving the block chain equations necessary to mine Bitcoin and Litecoin, the Gold and Silver of cryptocurrencies.

However GPU mining has seen a massive resurgence over the past little while due to the rising popularity of ASIC resistent coins. Chief among which is Etherium which has seen its price more than triple in a matter of months. AMD's Add-In-Board partners have caught on to this and have already started directly advertising to miners.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Regal Princess will set sail this November with a new "Medallion Class" experience. Take a look inside.

[...] Start by imagining a smart home, decked out with sophisticated tech and sensors. But instead of a residence for a few people, it can handle 3,560 guests at any time.

That's exactly what Carnival has done with the Regal Princess, the first ship in its Princess Cruises' fleet to get a massive technological overhaul as part of the Ocean Medallion project, first glimpsed back in January at CES.

Carnival's decision is yet another example of a company investing in cutting-edge tech designed to better serve customers and cater to their more sophisticated needs. From theme parks embracing virtual reality to airlines offering more advanced in-flight entertainment, vacations are increasingly going high tech. Now, Carnival is stepping up its game.

[...] "In theory, this technology will enhance the guest's experience," [The Sunday Times' Sue] Bryant said. "It makes it easier for crew members to recognize a guest and address them by name, for example, which is something that wouldn't normally happen on a big ship with a couple of thousand guests."

Each medallion and a related smartphone app will also streamline the boarding process, open your room's door, remember your wine preferences, let you book reservations for activities, send you invitations to events and allow you to make purchases from anywhere on the ship. It's like a digital concierge and planning guide. There is also an opt-in location service that lets you keep tabs on everyone in your group and shows you where they are at any time.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Two years after a 35-year plan to save Australia's Great Barrier Reef was released, the country is being told that it is failing to meet the targets:

The United Nations cultural heritage body UNESCO urged Australia on Saturday to accelerate efforts to save the Great Barrier Reef, saying long term targets to improve its health were unlikely to be met.

Progress towards achieving water quality targets has been slow, and Australia was at risk of falling short of its 2050 goals, UNESCO warned in a draft assessment of world heritage sites prepared ahead of a meeting in Krakow, Poland, in July.

"The World Heritage Centre and IUCN consider that the implementation of the Plan will need to accelerate to ensure that the intermediate and long-term targets of 2050 LTSP (Long-Term Sustainability Plan) are being met, in particular regarding water quality," the report said.

Australia's Reef 2050 Plan was released in 2015 and is a key part of the government's bid to prevent the World Heritage Site being placed on the United Nation's "in danger" list.

Also at The Guardian.

Meanwhile, experts have called for a new approach to coral reef conservation in the "Anthropocene":

In a paper [DOI: 10.1038/nature22901] [DX] out Wednesday in the journal Nature, more than a dozen experts from around the world say that coral reefs are likely to undergo major changes as a result of continued climate change and other human activities, like fishing. But while future coral ecosystems might look a lot different than they do today, from the species they contain to the places they live, they aren't necessarily doomed. In fact, accepting this transition and helping them through it might be the best — and even only way — to save them.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

In what could be a severe case of irony overload, anti-piracy company Denuvo is being accused of using unlicensed software to protect its infamous anti-piracy tool. A developer of VMProtect, software which itself protects against reverse engineering and cracking, says that Denuvo has been using the product without obtaining the necessary permission.

[...] According to a post on Russian forum RSDN, Denuvo is accused of engaging in a little piracy of its own. The information comes from a user called drVanо, who is a developer at VMProtect Software, a company whose tools protect against reverse engineering and cracking.

[...] drVano says that around three years ago, VMProtect Software and Denuvo entered into correspondence about the possibility of Denuvo using VMProtect in their system. VMProtect says they were absolutely clear that would not be possible under a standard $500 license, since the cost to Denuvo of producing something similar for themselves would be several hundred thousand dollars.

However, with no proper deal set up, drVano says that Denuvo went ahead anyway, purchasing a cheap license for VMProtect and going on to “mow loot” (a Russian term for making bank) with their successful Denuvo software.

Source: TorrentFreak

Original Submission

takyon writes:

IBM, which demonstrated the world's first 7nm process silicon chip in 2015, has followed up at the 5nm node. Extreme ultraviolet lithography was required:

IBM, working with Samsung and GlobalFoundries, has unveiled the world's first 5nm silicon chip. Beyond the usual power, performance, and density improvement from moving to smaller transistors, the 5nm IBM chip is notable for being one of the first to use horizontal gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, and the first real use of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.

GAAFETs are the next evolution of tri-gate finFETs: finFETs, which are currently used for most 22nm-and-below chip designs, will probably run out of steam at around 7nm; GAAFETs may go all the way down to 3nm, especially when combined with EUV. No one really knows what comes after 3nm.

[...] One major advantage of IBM's 5nm GAAFETs is a significant reduction in patterning complexity. Ever since we crossed the 28nm node, chips have become increasingly expensive to manufacture, due to the added complexity of fabricating ever-smaller features at ever-increasing densities. Patterning is the multi-stage process where the layout of the chip—defining where the nanosheets and other components will eventually be built—is etched using a lithographic process. As features get smaller and more complex, more patterning stages are required, which drives up the cost and time of producing each wafer.

[...] IBM says that, compared to commercial 10nm chips (presumably Samsung's 10nm process), the new 5nm tech offers a 40 percent performance boost at the same power, or a 75 percent drop in power consumption at the same performance. Density is also through the roof, with IBM claiming it can squeeze up to 30 billion transistors onto a 50-square-millimetre chip (roughly the size of a fingernail), up from 20 billion transistors on a similarly-sized 7nm chip.

Press release. Also at The Verge, TechCrunch, EE Times, PCMag, and CNET.

Related:
Samsung Plans a "4nm" Process

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Casual dining is in danger — and millennials are to blame. 

Brands such as TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesday, and Applebee's have faced sales slumps and dozens of restaurant closures, as casual dining chains have struggled to attract customers and grow sales.

"Casual-dining restaurants face a uniquely challenging market today," Buffalo Wild Wings CEO Sally Smith recently wrote in a letter to shareholders.

According to Smith, these sit-down restaurants' struggles can blamed on the most-frequently besmirched generation: millennials.

"Millennial consumers are more attracted than their elders to cooking at home, ordering delivery from restaurants and eating quickly, in fast-casual or quick-serve restaurants," Smith wrote.

Millenials are too focused on food ordering apps and healthy cuisine.

Original Submission

takyon and butthurt write:

Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations have severed diplomatic and transport ties with the Gulf state of Qatar, claiming Doha's regional policies fuel extremism and terrorism.

The synchronised attempt to isolate Qatar also includes Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, escalating a simmering dispute over Qatar's support for political Islam and perceptions that Doha is open to closer ties with Saudi Arabia's arch-rival, Iran.

Source: Financial Times

Two weeks ago, the same four countries blocked Qatari news sites, including Al Jazeera. Controversial comments purportedly by Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani criticising Saudi Arabia appeared on Qatari state media.

Source: BBC News

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates severed diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5, Al Arabiya reported, citing state media outlets from the Gulf countries. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt said they will suspend air and sea travel to Qatar, while Riyadh said it would close overland border crossings with its Gulf neighbor as well. Bahrain gave Qatari diplomats 48 hours to leave, while Saudi Arabia gave Qatari citizens two weeks to leave. Qatar has also reportedly been cut out of the coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. The breakdown of diplomatic ties stems from tensions over Doha's relationship with Tehran and its alleged support for the Muslim Brotherhood. With a small population and a unitary state centralized around Doha, Qatar lacks the internal ethno-religious tensions and political insecurities of its neighbors.

Source: Stratfor

A group claims it will begin publishing the private emails of the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States this weekend, according to a report from The Daily Beast.

"GlobalLeaks" - which does not appear to be related to the WikiLeaks-type website sharing the same name - sent 55 pages of Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba's emails to the news outlet along with a message saying the group would publish the entire cache this Saturday.

According to the message, the leaked emails will demonstrate "how a small rich country/company used lobbyists to hurt American interests and those of it allies."

Source: The Hill

[update: "Qatar's government categorically denied that comments in which the country's leader expressed support for Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel - while suggesting that US President Donald Trump may not last in power - were ever made."]

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2