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takyon writes:

Amazon has made its biggest acquisition ever: Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. That number includes Whole Foods' net debt:

The deal, expected to close in the second half of this year, gives the e-commerce giant — which has been experimenting with various physical store concepts to make itself a name as a food purveyor — an instant expanse of 460 high-end brick-and-mortar stores across the U.S., in Canada and in the U.K.

Whole Foods, which made its name retailing organic and fresh products, had been struggling recently amid stepped-up competition from Costco Wholesale, Trader Joe's and other grocers.

Shares of Whole Foods rose ahead of the acquisition while analysts speculated that other grocery retailers would snap up Whole Foods to keep it away from Amazon, or at least drive up the price.

Groceries are low margin and high cost businesses. This acquisition may be seen as part of a long-running war between Amazon and Walmart.

Will the shelves of Whole Paycheck be stocked by Amazonk's mighty robotic Prometheans? I think I'll shop at ALDI instead.

Previously: Walmart Plays Catch-Up With Amazon
Walmart Kills Amazon Prime-like Service, Expands Free Shipping
Amazon Shuts Down Diapers.com as Founder Runs Walmart's E-Commerce Operations

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Phoenix666 writes:

People who oppose wind farms often claim wind turbine blades kill large numbers of birds, often referring to them as "bird choppers". And claims of dangers to iconic or rare birds, especially raptors, have attracted a lot of attention.

Wind turbine blades do indeed kill birds and bats, but their contribution to total bird deaths is extremely low, as these three studies show.

A 2009 study using US and European data on bird deaths estimated the number of birds killed per unit of power generated by wind, fossil fuel and nuclear power systems.

It concluded, "Wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil-fuelled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh."

That's nearly 15 times more. From this, the author estimated that wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006 but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fuelled power plants 14.5 million.

In other words, for every one bird killed by a wind turbine, nuclear and fossil fuel powered plants killed 2,118 birds.

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takyon writes:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will require all phones and other mobile devices to be sold unlocked. Existing devices must be unlocked for free upon request, starting December 1st:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that as of December 1, 2017, all individual and small business wireless service customers will have the right to have their cellphones and other mobile devices unlocked free of charge upon request. In addition, all newly purchased devices must be provided unlocked from that day forward.

As well, updates to the trial period will allow customers who are unhappy with their service to cancel their contract within 15 days and return their device in near-new condition at no costs, as long as they have used less than half their monthly usage limits.

Definition of SIM locking and regulations by country.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

President Trump has placed some restrictions on travel to Cuba, but has not entirely undone the changes that former President Obama made in his second term:

In an overhaul of one of his predecessor's signature legacies, President Donald Trump will redraw U.S. policy toward Cuba on Friday, tightening travel restrictions for Americans that had been loosened under President Barack Obama and banning U.S. business transactions with Cuba's vast military conglomerate.

Trump's changes are intended to sharply curtail cash flow to the Cuban government and pressure its communist leaders to let the island's fledgling private sector grow. Diplomatic relations reestablished by Obama, including reopened embassies in Washington and Havana, will remain. Travel and money sent by Cuban Americans will be unaffected, but Americans will be unable to spend money in state-run hotels or restaurants tied to the military, a significant prohibition.

Editorials for and against the rollback.

Previously: Deal Will Allow Up to 110 U.S. Flights to Cuba Daily
President Obama Visits Cuba
USA Ends "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" Policy for Cuban Migrants

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the biotechnology company NAICONS Srl., and elsewhere have discovered a new antibiotic effective against drug-resistant bacteria: pseudouridimycin. The new antibiotic is produced by a microbe found in a soil sample collected in Italy and was discovered by screening microbes from soil samples. The new antibiotic kills a broad spectrum of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant bacteria in a test tube and cures bacterial infections in mice.

In a paper published in Cell today, the researchers report the discovery and the new antibiotic's mechanism of action.

Pseudouridimycin inhibits bacterial RNA polymerase, the enzyme responsible for bacterial RNA synthesis, through a binding site and mechanism that differ from those of rifampin, a currently used antibacterial drug that inhibits the enzyme. Because pseudouridimycin inhibits through a different binding site and mechanism than rifampin, pseudouridimycin exhibits no cross-resistance with rifampin, functions additively when co-administered by rifampin and, most important, has a spontaneous resistance rate that is just one-tenth the spontaneous resistance rate of rifampin.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170615142842.htm

Journal reference: Sonia I. Maffioli, et. al. Antibacterial Nucleoside-Analog Inhibitor of Bacterial RNA Polymerase. Cell, 2017; 169 (7): 1240 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.042

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Phoenix666 writes:

Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to have been invented at the start of the eighteenth century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. But a study now shows that a kind of binary system was already in use 300 years earlier among the people of the tiny Pacific island of Mangareva in French Polynesia.

The discovery, made by analysing historical records of the now almost wholly assimilated Mangarevan culture and language and reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that some of the advantages of the binary system adduced by Leibniz might create a cognitive motivation for this system to arise spontaneously, even in a society without advanced science and technology.
...
Mangarevans combined base-10 representation with a binary system. They had number words for 1 to 10, and then for 10 multiplied by several powers of 2. The word takau (which Bender and Beller denote as K) means 10; paua (P) means 20; tataua (T) is 40; and varu (V) stands for 80. In this notation, for example, 70 is TPK and 57 is TK7.

Bender and Beller show that this system retains the key arithmetical simplifications of true binary, in that you don't need to memorize lots of number facts but follow only a few simple rules, such as 2 × K = P and 2 × P = T.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

According to Leichtman Research Group, the country's largest cable TV providers, representing around 95% of the cable market, had 48.6 million subscribers at the end of March, while Netflix had 50.9 million customers on its home turf.

While cable only represents around 50 percent of the U.S. pay-TV market as a whole, it is by far the most popular way of getting pay-TV in the country. For Netflix to surpass cable is a big step in becoming the number one source of home entertainment. Interestingly, Netflix reached that goal mainly by growing its own subscriber base rather than by having people "cut the cord". Major cable providers only lost 4 million subscribers since Q1 2012 – Netflix added 27 million.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Our society is in need of ammonia more than ever.

Chemical fertilizers, plastic, fibers, pharmaceuticals, refrigerants in heat pumps, and even explosives all use ammonia as raw material. Moreover, ammonia has been suggested as a hydrogen carrier recently because of its high hydrogen content.

In the Haber-Bosch process, which is the main method of ammonia synthesis, nitrogen reacts with hydrogen using a metal catalyst to produce ammonia. However, this industrial process is conducted at 200 atm and high reaction temperatures of nearly 500°C. Additionally, ammonia production requires using much natural gas, so scientists have been looking for alternative methods to sustainably synthesize ammonia at low temperature.

In a recent study, researchers from Waseda University and Nippon Shokubai Co. Ltd. achieved a highly efficient ammonia synthesis at low temperature, with the highest yield ever reported.

"By applying an electric field to the catalyst used in our experiment, we accomplished an efficient, small-scale process for ammonia synthesis under very mild conditions," says Professor Yasushi Sekine of Waseda University. "Using this new method, we can collect highly pure ammonia as compressed liquid and open doors to developing on-demand ammonia production plants that run on renewable energy."

[...] The new technique also addresses obstacles in conventional ammonia synthesis, such as hydrogen poisoning of Ru catalysts and delay in nitrogen dissociation. Furthermore, the research results suggest that smaller-scale, more dispersed ammonia production could be realized, and building highly-efficient ammonia plants that run on renewable energy will become possible. Such ammonia plants are expected to produce 10 to 100 tons of ammonia per day. Professor Sekine believes that their findings will be important for future energy and material sources.

DOI: 10.1039/c7sc00840f

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Apple's chief executive has confirmed it is developing a self-driving car system.

But Tim Cook indicated that it is too soon to say whether it would license the tech to other carmakers or try to build its own vehicles.

His interview with the Bloomberg news agency yielded his most detailed comments about the project to date.

Until now, Apple had avoided publicly discussing its plans, although it had confirmed the scheme in US filings.

There had also been leaked details of a change in leadership of the car team, with veteran hardware specialist Bob Mansfield reportedly put in charge last year, as well as images of test vehicles being published on rumour sites.

"We're focusing on autonomous systems and clearly one purpose of autonomous systems is self-driving cars - there are others," Mr Cook told Bloomberg.

"And we sort of see it as the the mother of all AI [artificial intelligence] projects.

"It's probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.

"We'll see where it takes us. We're not saying from a product point of view where it will take us, but we are being straightforward that it's a core technology that we view as very important."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Home routers from 10 manufacturers, including Linksys, DLink, and Belkin, can be turned into covert listening posts that allow the Central Intelligence Agency to monitor and manipulate incoming and outgoing traffic and infect connected devices. That's according to secret documents posted Thursday by WikiLeaks.

The 175-page CherryBlossom user guide describes a Linux-based operating system that can run on a broad range of routers. Once installed, CherryBlossom turns the device into a "FlyTrap" that beacons a CIA-controlled server known as a "CherryTree." The beacon includes device status and security information that the CherryTree logs to a database. In response, the CherryTree sends the infected device a "Mission" consisting of specific tasks tailored to the target. CIA operators can use a "CherryWeb" browser-based user interface to view Flytrap status and security information, plan new missions, view mission-related data, and perform system administration tasks.

[...] All the communications between the FlyTrap and the CIA-controlled CherryTree, with the exception of copied network data, is encrypted and cryptographically authenticated. For extra stealth, the encrypted data masquerades as a browser cookie in an HTTP GET request for an image file. The CherryTree server then responds to the request with a corresponding binary image file.

CherryBlossom is the latest release in WikiLeaks Vault7 series, which the site purports was made possible when the "CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal." CIA officials have declined to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents, but based on the number of pages and unique details exposed in the series, there is broad consensus among researchers that the documents are actual CIA materials.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Square Kilometer Array will use Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube, a high-bandwidth DRAM replacement:

Once combined with other sites, [the Square Kilometer Array] would be capable of peering back further in time than any other Earth-based observatory. As with most advanced science projects, SKA presents unprecedented data processing challenges. With daily data volumes reaching 1 exabyte, "The data volume is becoming overwhelming," astronomer Simon Ratcliffe noted during a webcast this week.

In response, Micron Technology Inc. has come up with a processing platform for handling the growing data bottleneck called the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC). The memory specialist combined its fast logic process technology with new DRAM designs to boost badly needed bandwidth in its high-density memory system.

[...] The radio telescope array uses a front-end processor to convert faint analog radio signals to digital. Those signals are then processed using FPGAs. Memory resources needed to make sense of all that data can be distributed using relatively simple algorithms, according to Francois Kapp, a systems engineer at SKA South Africa. The challenge, Kapp noted, is operating the array around the clock along with the "increasing depth and width of memory" requirements. "You can't just add more memory to increase the bandwidth, " he noted, especially as FPGAs move to faster interfaces.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Washington Post reports

It's not all that common, but the hottest weather in the nation lined up along the Interstate 95 corridor from the District [of Columbia] to Boston on Tuesday afternoon [June 13]. More than 15 locations set record highs.

[...] Temperatures into the mid-90s were widespread. Factor in the humidity, and it felt more like 95 to 100.

[...] In Boston, the heat wave was the second of the year, the earliest on record that the city posted two such events.

[...] Dulles International Airport climbed to 95 degrees, breaking the previous record of 94 set in 1994.

Baltimore soared to 97 degrees, tying the record set in 1956.

DeathMonkey writes:

Russia's cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump's election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

[...] The new details, buttressed by a classified National Security Agency document recently disclosed by The Intercept, show the scope of alleged hacking that federal investigators are scrutinizing as they look into whether Trump campaign officials may have colluded in the efforts. But they also paint a worrisome picture for future elections: The newest portrayal of potentially deep vulnerabilities in the U.S.'s patchwork of voting technologies comes less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey warned Congress that Moscow isn't done meddling.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-13/russian-breach-of-39-states-threatens-future-u-s-elections

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NASA will live stream a media briefing about Kepler space observatory results on June 19th:

NASA will hold a media briefing at 11 a.m. EDT Monday, June 19, to announce the latest planet candidate results from the agency's exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission. The briefing, taking place during the Kepler Science Conference, will be held at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

That will kick off the fourth Kepler Science Conference from June 19-23 at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Original Submission

kaszz writes:

Samsung computer phones used to have a stock app called S Suggest. Then Samsung didn't renew the domain that controls it, having made it possible for villains to register the domain and malware infest millions of computer phone users... had they spotted the opportunity.

Samsung, the most popular smartphone maker in the world, left millions of customers vulnerable to hackers after it let expire a domain that was used to control a stock app installed on older devices, security researchers say.

If you own an older Samsung smartphone, chances are you have a stock app designed to recommend other popular apps named S Suggest installed on it. The company says it discontinued S Suggest in 2014, and it recently let one of the domains used to control the app—ssuggest.com—expire, according to a security researcher who took over the domain.

By letting the domain expire, Samsung effectively gave anyone willing to register it a foothold inside millions of smartphones, and the power to push malicious apps on them, according to João Gouveia, the chief technology officer at Anubis Labs. Gouveia says he took over the domain Monday.

[...] Gouveia said that in just 24 hours, he saw 620 million "check ins," or connections, from around 2.1 million unique devices. S Suggests has a bunch of permissions, including rebooting the phone remotely and installing apps or packages.

This is on parity in severity with CVE-2015-2865 from 2015-06-17 when updates were not authenticated properly.

That is unless the phone goes into mission impossible flight mode and self destructs as in 2016-09-08.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The healthcare sector in the U.S. is in critical condition and in dire need of an overhaul to address widespread and systemic information security weakness that puts patient privacy and even safety at risk, Congressional Task Force has concluded.

The report, released to members of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on Friday concludes that the U.S. healthcare system is plagued by weaknesses, from the leadership and governance of information security within healthcare organizations, to the security of medical devices and medical laboratories to hiring and user awareness. Many of the risks directly affect patient safety, the group found. It comes amid growing threats to healthcare organizations, including a ransomware outbreak that affected scores of hospitals in the United Kingdom.

The final report by the Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force [PDF] is a call to arms for the healthcare sector, featuring more than 30 pages of recommendations and "imperatives," some of which are bound to be the source of controversy. Among other things, the report calls for the creation of a leader role within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) focused on cyber security.

[...] The report describes the U.S. healthcare system as a "mosaic" of large health systems, single physician practices, public and private payers, research institutions, medical device and software companies, the U.S. healthcare sector services a diverse and widespread patient population, often through small practices and rural hospitals. The complexity of the system introduces risk and complicates the job of establishing comprehensive cyber security standards.

[...] The report comes amidst a dawning recognition that the nation's biomedical infrastructure is highly connected and vulnerable, said Dale Nordenberg, the Executive Director of the Medical Device Innovation, Safety and Security Consortium.

[...] To tackle the problem, Congress needs to take a holistic approach, notes Fernando of Underwriters Laboratories. "We're not dealing with silo'd and vertical industries. There's a lot of cross cutting." Funding from the federal government won't solve the problem alone, but federal money can promote activities that, over time, will result in public sector and industry action to improve cyber security, he said.

Source: https://securityledger.com/2017/06/cash-for-medical-device-clunkers-task-force-calls-for-healthcare-security-overhaul/

Complete Report

Original Submission