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takyon writes:

Over a year after signalling its intentions to dump the robotics demonstration company Boston Dynamics, Alphabet/Google has finally found a buyer: SoftBank. SoftBank acquired ARM Holdings for around $32 billion in 2016. Google also offloaded another robotics company, Schaft:

Google's ambitions for Boston Dynamics were never really clear. Before being acquired, the robotics company was mostly funded by DARPA—the US military's research division—with the express purpose of creating militarised robots. Within a year of being picked up, though, Google announced that it would no longer pursue any DARPA contracts, presumably to focus on possible commercial uses for the bots. No commercial robots ever emerged.

SoftBank, however, has had success with commercialising robots—specifically the small humanoid robot Pepper.

Also at The Verge, The Guardian, TNW, CNN, CNBC, and TechCrunch.

Previously: Pentagon Scientists Show Off Robot And Prosthetics
Google's Noisy "BigDog" Robot Fails to Impress U.S. Marine Corps
Google's Latest Boston Dynamics Robot Takes a Stand
Boston Dynamics Produces a Wheeled Terror as Google Watches Nervously

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

lowRISC is a project to create a "fully open-sourced, Linux-capable, system-on-a-chip"; it is based around RISC-V, the "Free and Open RISC Instruction Set Architecture", which is meant to provide an extensible platform that scales from low-level microcontrollers up to highly parallel, high-bandwidth general-purpose supercomputers.

Here is the release announcement:

The lowRISC 0.4 milestone release is now available. The various changes are best described in our accompanying documentation, but in summary this release:

• Moves forward our support for tagged memory by re-integrating the tag cache, reducing overhead with a hierarchical scheme. This will significantly reduce caches misses caused by tagged memory accesses where tags are distributed sparsely.

• Integrates support for specifying and configuring tag propagation and exception behaviour.

• A PULPino based "minion core" has been integrated, and is used to provide peripherals such as the SD card interface, keyboard, and VGA tex display (when using the Nexys4 DDR FPGA development board).

Please report any issues on our GitHub repository, or discuss on our mailing list. As always, thank you to everyone who has contributed in any way - whether it's advice and feedback, bug reports, code, or ideas.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In August, Milwaukee's Lake Park saw swarms of Pokémon Go players, some of whom trampled and trashed the area, making a general nuisance of themselves. Not everyone behaved badly, as John Dargle, Jr, director of the Milwaukee County Department of Parks, Recreation & Culture, acknowledged in a letter [PDF] at the time. But a subset of thoughtless gamers created enough of a burden that Milwaukee County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman proposed an ordinance [PDF] to require augmented reality game makers to obtain a permit to use county parks in their apps.

The ordinance was approved and took effect in January. It has become a solution waiting for a problem – according to a spokesperson for Milwaukee County, no game maker has bothered to apply for a permit since then.

[...] Nonetheless, in April, Candy Lab, a maker of augmented reality games based in Nevada, filed a lawsuit "out of genuine fear and apprehension that this ordinance, conceptually and as written, poses a mortal threat not only to Candy Lab AR's new location-based augmented reality game, but also to its entire business model, and, indeed, to the emerging medium of augmented reality as a whole."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Following Winner's arrest and subsequent charging, the security researcher has submitted a pull request to the PDF Redact Tools, a project for securely redacting and stripping metadata from documents before publishing.

[...] "The black and white conversion will convert colors like the faded yellow dots to white," Szathmari told Bleeping Computer in an interview.

—Bleeping Computer

related stories:
Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document
North Korea's Red Star Linux Inserts Sneaky Serial Content Tracker
Doctor Who Season 8 Scripts Leak Online

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel may be planning to sue Microsoft for its plans to include x86 emulation in Windows 10 for ARM machines:

In celebrating the x86 architecture's 39th birthday yesterday—the 8086 processor first came to market on June 8, 1978—Intel took the rather uncelebratory step of threatening any company working on x86 emulator technology.

[...] The post doesn't name any names, but it's not too hard to figure out who it's likely to be aimed at: Microsoft, perhaps with a hint of Qualcomm. Later in the year, companies including Asus, HP, and Lenovo will be releasing Windows laptops using Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 processor. This is not the first time that Windows has been released on ARM processors—Microsoft's first attempt to bring Windows to ARM was the ill-fated Windows 8-era Windows RT in 2012—but this time around there's a key difference. Windows RT systems could not run any x86 applications. Windows 10 for ARM machines, however, will include a software-based x86 emulator that will provide compatibility with most or all 32-bit x86 applications.

This compatibility makes these ARM-based machines a threat to Intel in a way that Windows RT never was; if WinARM can run Wintel software but still offer lower prices, better battery life, lower weight, or similar, Intel's dominance of the laptop space is no longer assured. The implication of Intel's post is that the chip giant isn't just going to be relying on technology to secure its position in this space, but the legal system, too.

Also at ZDNet and CRN.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Apple is making its recently-released iMacs more easily upgradeable, with retailer OWC confirming the base specification 27-inch 5K iMac can be fitted with up to 64GB of RAM, while an iFixit teardown reveals both the memory and the processor used in the 21.5-inch 4K iMac can be removed and replaced.

—Apple Insider

[...] an upgradeable iMac is a big shift in direction from Apple. The last 21.5-inch iMac with expandable memory was the 2013 model, while the last to include a modular CPU came in 2012.

—Mac Rumors

related stories:
Microsoft Releases an All-in-One Desktop PC
You Can't Upgrade the New Mac Mini's RAM

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It sounds fantastical enough to have been created by Terry Pratchett or J.K. Rowling, but the Conjuring Arts Research Center is very much real, and one of the world's greatest collections of books dedicated to the deceptive arts.

Conjuring Arts may be hard to find, but it is located in the heart of New York's magic community. A few blocks northeast is Tannen's, the oldest operating magic shop in the city, and a few blocks to the west is Fantasma, a magic store home to the largest Houdini museum in the world. One of the people on the Center's Board of Directors is Brooklyn-born magician David Blaine.

The not-for-profit organization was established in 2003, "dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of magic and its allied arts." It was started by William Kalush, who developed a love of magic from the card tricks shown to him by his father, a Marine wounded in World War II. This love of card magic turned to a love of collecting magic books, which now form a wondrous collection of over 15,000 books—some dating to over 600 years old—housed in this hidden location.

[...] But these magic books aren't just secreted away. Above all, the Conjuring Arts Research Center was set up to be a practical resource. "I wanted a place that was available for anyone with an appointment, to be able to come in and find some of the rarest material," says Kalush. A large part of the organization's work is sourcing these forgotten treasures, preserving them, and making them available to magicians and scholars.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

charon writes:

Software engineers go crazy for the most ridiculous things. We like to think that we're hyper-rational, but when we have to choose a technology, we end up in a kind of frenzy — bouncing from one person's Hacker News comment to another's blog post until, in a stupor, we float helplessly toward the brightest light and lay prone in front of it, oblivious to what we were looking for in the first place.

This is not how rational people make decisions, but it is how software engineers decide to use MapReduce.

As Joe Hellerstein sideranted to his undergrad databases class (54 min in):

The thing is there's like 5 companies in the world that run jobs that big. For everybody else... you're doing all this I/O for fault tolerance that you didn't really need. People got kinda Google mania in the 2000s: "we'll do everything the way Google does because we also run the world's largest internet data service" [tilts head sideways and waits for laughter]

Having more fault tolerance than you need might sound fine, but consider the cost: not only would you be doing much more I/O, you might be switching from a mature system—with stuff like transactions, indexes, and query optimizers—to something relatively threadbare. What a major step backwards. How many Hadoop users make these tradeoffs consciously? How many of those users make these tradeoffs wisely?

Source: https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

"I bet you that cost me my job," West Virginia Senate president, Republican Mitch Carmichael, jokingly told colleagues in April when he voted for a new measure that would expand broadband competition in his state.

Just over a month later it turned out to be true, when he was fired from his job as a sales manager at Frontier Internet, despite having recently been given a significant raise.

Frontier Internet is the state's largest high-speed internet provider and it was implacably opposed to the measure that Carmichael voted in favor of: one that allows up to 20 families or businesses to form a co-op to provide broadband in areas that are currently poorly served. It also lets cities and counties band together to build municipal networks.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microsoft's security team has come across a malware family that uses Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) interface as a file transfer tool.

Because of the way the Intel AMT SOL technology works, SOL traffic bypasses the local computer's networking stack, so local firewalls or security products won't be able to detect or block the malware while it's exfiltrating data from infected hosts.

This is because Intel AMT SOL is part of the Intel ME (Management Engine), a separate processor embedded with Intel CPUs, which runs its own operating system.

Intel ME runs even when the main processor is powered off, and while this feature looks pretty shady, Intel built ME to provide remote administration capabilities to companies that manage large networks of thousands of computers.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, is a monument to the Navy’s and defense industry’s ability to justify spending billions on unproven technologies that often deliver worse performance at a higher cost.

[...] The Navy had expected to have the ship delivered in 2014 at a cost of $10.5 billion.

Instead, because the Navy tried to develop more than a dozen new and risky technologies at the same time it was building the ship, the schedule has slipped by more than three years. And, the cost has increased to $12.9 billion -- nearly 25 percent over budget.

For all this time and money, a 2015 Defense Department operational testing report concluded that “poor or unknown reliability” of the newly designed catapults, arresting gear, weapons elevators and radar could affect the Ford’s ability to generate sorties, make the ship more vulnerable to attack, or create limitations during routine operations.

The problems with the ship’s systems, including the catapult, are well-known.

But President Donald Trump still caught virtually every Pentagon watcher off guard when he told Time magazine in May that he had directed the Navy to abandon the new “digital” aircraft catapult on future Ford-class carriers. Instead he wants the Navy to revert to the proven steam catapults, which have been in use for decades. The president is correct when he says there are significant problems with the Ford’s “digital” catapult, but abandoning it in future ships will pose significant problems.

The Ford’s “digital” catapult is, in fact, the Electromagnetic Launch System, or EMALS. In the long run, it is intended to be lighter, more reliable, and less expensive than the steam system. Unfortunately, EMALS is immature technology. So far, the program has not lived up to the promises made.

Steam-powered catapults, though said to be maintenance-intensive, are proven technology. They have been in service with continuous upgrades and satisfactory reliability for more than half a century.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Alcohol consumption, even at moderate levels, is associated with increased risk of adverse brain outcomes and steeper decline in cognitive (mental) skills, finds a study published by The BMJ today.

These results support the recent reduction in alcohol guidance in the UK and raise questions about the current limits recommended in the US, say the authors.

[...] Several factors that could have influenced the results (known as confounding) were taken into account, such as age, sex, education, social class, physical and social activity, smoking, stroke risk and medical history.

After adjusting for these confounders, the researchers found that higher alcohol consumption over the 30 year study period was associated with increased risk of hippocampal atrophy -- a form of brain damage that affects memory and spatial navigation.

-- submitted from IRC

Anya Topiwala, Charlotte L Allan, et al. Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study. BMJ, 2017; j2353 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.j2353

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The US Air Force has two X-37B space planes, and since 2010 each of them has flown two missions into outer space. Those flights have ranged in length from 224 to 717 days. The X-37B, which is autonomous and looks something like a miniature version of NASA's space shuttle, launches on top of a rocket and orbits the Earth before returning and landing on a runway.

For the first four missions, the Boeing-developed space plane has launched on top of an Atlas V rocket, the military's go-to vehicle manufactured by United Launch Alliance. However, on Tuesday during a meeting of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson revealed that the upcoming fifth mission of the X-37B will be launched into space by a Falcon 9 rocket. That SpaceX launch is tentatively scheduled for August.

Wilson testified that the emergence of the commercial space industry has proven a boon for the US military. "The benefit we're seeing now is competition," she said. "There are some very exciting things happening in commercial space that bring the opportunity for assured access to space at a very competitive price."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for charon_

"Causes of pollinator decline are complex and include diminishing flower resources, habitat loss, climate change, increased disease incidence and exposure to pesticides, so pinpointing the driving forces remains a challenge," said Candace Galen, professor of biological science in the MU College of Arts and Science. "For more than 100 years, scientists have used sonic vibrations to monitor birds, bats, frogs and insects. We wanted to test the potential for remote monitoring programs that use acoustics to track bee flight activities."

First, the team analyzed the characteristic frequencies -- what musicians call the pitch -- of bee buzzes in the lab. Then, they placed small microphones attached to data storage devices in the field and collected the acoustic survey data from three locations on Pennsylvania Mountain, Colorado, to estimate bumble bee activity.

Using the data, they developed algorithms that identified and quantified the number of bee buzzes in each location and compared that data to visual surveys the team made in the field. In almost every instance, the acoustic surveys were more sensitive, picking up more buzzing bees.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170607163022.htm

Nicole E. Miller-Struttmann, David Heise, Johannes Schul, Jennifer C. Geib, Candace Galen. Flight of the bumble bee: Buzzes predict pollination services. PLOS ONE, 2017; 12 (6): e0179273 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179273

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Adding abiraterone to hormone therapy at the start of treatment for prostate cancer improves survival by 37 per cent, according to the results of one of the largest ever clinical trials for prostate cancer presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The results from the Cancer Research UK-funded STAMPEDE trial could change the standard of care for men with prostate cancer, making abiraterone a first-line treatment alongside hormone therapy.

This part of the STAMPEDE trial recruited around 1,900 patients. Half the men were treated with hormone therapy while the other half received hormone therapy and abiraterone. In men who were given abiraterone there was a 70 per cent reduction in disease progression. The drug is usually given to men with advanced prostate cancer that has spread and has stopped responding to standard to hormone therapy, but this study shows the added benefit to patients who are about to start long-term hormone therapy.

Professor Nicholas James, chief investigator of the Cancer Research UK-funded STAMPEDE trial from the University of Birmingham, said: "These are the most powerful results I've seen from a prostate cancer trial -- it's a once in a career feeling. This is one of the biggest reductions in death I've seen in any clinical trial for adult cancers.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission