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Phoenix666 writes:

The global fleet of electric vehicles grew 60% last year, and while predictions vary, some people claim that we'll all be driving (or riding in) electric vehicles within just a few decades.

But in many cities, one major impediment could slow down adoption: Where the heck do you charge your car if you don't have a driveway or garage?

Hounslow Council in London has implemented an interesting—and aesthetically pleasing—solution to this problem. It has converted its streetlights to energy efficient LEDs and, in doing so, is integrating electric vehicle charging points in the base of those streetlamps. The charge points themselves come from German company Ubitricity, and they integrate with a custom charging cable—which is ordered by the EV owner/driver—that has an electricity meter built in.

So if you happen to live in Hounslow, you simply request a charging point from your council, they install three near your house (they are trying to avoid painting dedicated electric vehicle bays). You then order an Ubitricity cable, you plug in, and you start charging. Ubitricity then sends you a monthly bill, charged at a competitive rate of £0.13 per kWh. And that's it.

Who's liable when pedestrians trip on the charging cables?

[Ed note - As a side note, apparently the LED streetlamp replacement has some issues.] - Fnord666

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel has discontinued its Edison, Galileo, and Joule product lines. The hardware was intended to be adopted in the IoT, wearable, embedded computing and single-board computer markets:

Intel has discontinued three of its offerings for the Internet of Things and embedded device markets.

The chipmaker said in a series of low-key product updates that it would be killing off the Edison [PDF], Galileo [PDF] and Joule [PDF] compute modules and boards over the second half of the year.

The notices mark an ignoble end for three lines that were once seen as key to Chipzilla's IoT and connected appliance strategies.

First unveiled at the 2014 CES show as a "PC on a card," Edison's aim was to put x86 chips into both the wearables and "maker" markets with kits and hobbyist boards (like the Arduino).

Additional coverage on hackaday.io with one interesting note:

It's important to remember that this does not mark the end of the semiconductor giant's forray into the world of IoT development boards, there is no announcement of the demise of their Curie chip, as found in the Arduino 101. But it does mark an ignominious end to their efforts over the past few years in bringing the full power of their x86 platforms to this particular market, the Curie is an extremely limited device in comparison to those being discontinued.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Languages, like human bodies, come in a variety of shapes—but only to a point. Just as people don't sprout multiple heads, languages tend to veer away from certain forms that might spring from an imaginative mind. For example, one core property of human languages is known as duality of patterning: meaningful linguistic units (such as words) break down into smaller meaningless units (sounds), so that the words sap, pass, and asp involve different combinations of the same sounds, even though their meanings are completely unrelated.

It's not hard to imagine that things could have been otherwise. In principle, we could have a language in which sounds relate holistically to their meanings—a high-pitched yowl might mean "finger," a guttural purr might mean "dark," a yodel might mean "broccoli," and so on. But there are stark advantages to duality of patterning. Try inventing a lexicon of tens of thousands of distinct noises, all of which are easily distinguished, and you will probably find yourself wishing you could simply re-use a few snippets of sound in varying arrangements.

What to make, then, of the recent discovery of a language whose words are not made from smaller, meaningless units? Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a new sign language emerging in a village with high rates of inherited deafness in Israel's Negev Desert. According to a report led by Wendy Sandler of the University of Haifa, words in this language correspond to holistic gestures, much like the imaginary sound-based language described above, even though ABSL has a sizable vocabulary.

To linguists, this is akin to finding a planet on which matter is made up of molecules that don't decompose into atoms. ABSL contrasts sharply with other sign languages like American Sign Language (ASL), which creates words by re-combining a small collection of gestural elements such as hand shapes, movements, and hand positions.

Researchers theorize the sign language hasn't re-used simpler elements to create new words because gestures can accommodate a wider range of variation than sounds can, such that many more unique signifiers are possible.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Second-rate opsec remained pervasive at the United States' National Security Agency, according to an August 2016 review now released under Freedom of Information laws.

It's almost surprising that the agency was able to cuff Reality Winner, let alone prevent a wholesale Snowden-style leak. The Department of Defense Inspector General report, first obtained by the New York Times, finds everything from unsecured servers to a lack of two-factor authentication.

The formerly-classified review (PDF) was instigated after Snowden exfiltrated his million-and-a-half files from August 2012 to May 2013.

"NSA did not have guidance concerning key management and did not consistently secure server racks and other sensitive equipment in the data centers and machine rooms" under its "Secure-the-net" initiative, the report says.

Data centre access is supposed to be governed by two-person access controls, the report notes, and the rollout of 2FA to "all high-risk users" was incomplete at the time of writing.

The agency had too many users with admin privileges, the report continues, they're insufficiently monitored, and the NSA had not cut the number of agents authorised to carry out data transfers.

Giving the NSA more funding could probably fix it.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The combustion of oxygen in our cells takes place in the so-called respiratory chain, which carefully controls the process. Electrons, which come from digestion, are transferred to the oxygen we breathe. The oxygen molecules bind to an enzyme in our mitochondria, the cellular power plant. However, the bound oxygen is not immediately combusted to form water, as in an uncontrolled fire, but is converted to water gradually in a carefully controlled process. Up until now, we only had a very basic knowledge about the mechanism of this process, since the reaction is too rapid to be studied using available techniques. One possibility would be to follow the reactions at low temperatures, at about -50 degrees Celsius, where they would be sufficiently slow. However, this is not practically possible.

In this project, researchers Federica Poiana and Christoph von Ballmoos studied oxygen combustion in a bacterium that lives in hot springs – they thrive in nearly boiling water. When the research group performed their studies at 10 degrees, the bacteria found it extremely cold – comparable to human mitochondria exposed to -40 degrees. The reactions were sufficiently slow to allow studies using available instruments. By combining their experimental studies with theoretical calculations, the researchers could translate their observations to the equivalent processes in human cells.

Putting the extreme heat-loving micro-organisms in a temperature merely cool for humans slowed down the metabolic process enough to be observed.

Original Submission

Soylentbob writes:

A new list was published on top500.org. It might be noteworthy that the NSA, Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc. are not submitting information to this list. Currently, the top two places are occupied by China, with a comfortable 400% head-start in peak-performance and 370% Rmax performance to the 3rd place (Switzerland). US appears on rank 4, Japan on rank 7, and Germany is not in the top ten at all.

All operating systems in the top-10 are Linux and derivates. It seems obvious that, since it is highly optimized hardware, only operating systems are viable which can be fine-tune (so, either open source or with vendor-support for such customizations). Still I would have thought that, since a lot of effort needs to be invested anyway, maybe other systems (BSD?) could be equally suited to the task.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

A couple of Time Warner shareholders went after CNN CEO Jeff Bewkes Thursday in LA at a Time Warner shareholders meeting [...] David Almasi, the Veep of the National Center for Public Policy Research¹, a conservative communications and research foundation, is in LA to question Bewkes. Both Almasi and President David Ridenour are Time Warner shareholders.

[...] “Mr. Bewkes, we have urged you many times to make CNN more objective,” Almasi said in his statement. “You have admitted to us in 2014 the need for more balance. We praised you last year after CNN President Jeffrey Zucker also acknowledged this and acted on the need for more diverse views. But bias is apparently worse than ever. As shareholders, we are concerned about the repetitional risk to our investment in Time Warner as CNN appears to be a key player in the war against the Trump presidency.”

Almasi cited a Media Research Center² study of CNN programing for 14 hours and 27 minutes of news coverage back on May 12. The report concluded that all but 68 minutes were devoted to Trump with 96 guests out of 123 being negative.

[...] “I’m inquiring about CNN’s bias and our return on investment,” Almasi continued in his statement. “Half of the American public – which includes potential and current CNN viewers – voted for Trump last November and supports his agenda. CNN acts as if it is part of the anti-Trump resistance. Are you willing to lose viewers, possibly forever, because of the bias?”

Almasi even threatened Bewkes, saying that Media Research Center plans to alert advertisers about news programs that “peddle smear, hate and political extremism.”

He asked Bewkes, “Are you concerned about advertisers leaving CNN? Will you continue to ignore our appeals for objectivity at the risk to our investment in Time Warner?”

Source: The Daily Caller

¹The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a self-described conservative think tank in the United States. In February 2014, at Apple Inc.'s annual shareholder meeting, NCPPR proposed Apple "disclose the costs of its sustainability programs" was rejected by 97% vote. The NCPPR representative argued that Apple's decision to have all of its power come from greens sources would lower shareholders' profits.

²The Media Research Center (MRC) is a politically conservative content analysis organization based in Reston, Virginia, founded in 1987 by activist L. Brent Bozell III. Its stated mission is to "prove—through sound scientific research—that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values."

Original Submission

AthanasiusKircher writes:

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down two unanimous verdicts in favor of free speech. The first involved a dispute over "offensive" trademarks. Reason reports:

Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in favor of the Asian-American dance-rock band The Slants, holding that the First Amendment protects the rights of the band's members to register a trademark in their band's "offensive" name.

At issue in Matal v. Tam was a federal law prohibiting the registration of any trademark that may "disparage...or bring...into contemp[t] or disrepute" any "persons, living or dead." The Patent and Trademark Office cited this provision in 2011 when it refused to register a trademark in the name of The Slants, thereby denying the band the same protections that federal law extends to countless other musical acts. Justice Samuel Alito led the Court in striking down the censorious rule. "We now hold that this provision violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment," Alito wrote. "It offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend."

The Slants, a band composed of Asian performers, had sought to reclaim the slur against Asians by adopting the name themselves.

The other case involved sex offender Lester Packingham, originally convicted in 2001, who had been prosecuted for making a Facebook post in 2010 about being thankful for having a traffic ticket dismissed. A North Carolina law barred convicted sex offenders from a broad range of social media and web activities, leading Packingham to be arrested again. Again, the SCOTUS justices unanimously found the law to be an over-broad restriction of speech and overturned it 8-0.

In both cases, multiple concurring opinions were filed. The justices reached their conclusions for various legal reasons, but they all agreed that offensive speech should be protected and that even heinous acts like prior sex offenses do not deprive people of free speech.

SCOTUSblog has more detailed coverage:
Matal v. Tam: Court documents/commentary and opinion [PDF]
Packingham v. North Carolina: Court documents and analysis of the opinion [PDF]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Study group has proposed sending a mission to either Uranus or Neptune. Only one mission is likely to be approved due to a shortage of plutonium-238 for the radioisotope thermoelectric generators required for an outer solar system mission:

Uranus and Neptune have never got much attention from us – we've only passed each once and never hung around. But that could change. A NASA group has now outlined possible missions to make it to one of these outer worlds to gather data on their composition. This should teach us about them and similar planets in other solar systems.

"The preferred mission is an orbiter with an atmospheric probe to either Uranus or Neptune – this provides the highest science value, and allows in depth study of all aspects of either planet's system: rings, satellites, atmosphere, magnetosphere," says Amy Simon, co-chair of the Ice Giants Pre-Decadal Study group.

There are four proposed missions – three orbiters and a fly-by of Uranus, which would include a narrow angle camera to draw out details, especially of the ice giant's moons. It would also drop an atmospheric probe to take a dive into Uranus's atmosphere to measure the levels of gas and heavy elements there.

The three must-haves for each orbiter mission are a narrow-angle camera, a doppler imager and a magnetometer, while an orbiter containing 15 instruments would add plasma detectors, infrared and UV imaging, dust detection and microwave radar capability. The orbiter could be either a Neptune mission with an atmospheric probe, a Uranus probe of the same design, or a craft sent to a[sic] Uranus that ditches the atmospheric probe for the suite of 15 instruments.

Moon values: Neptune's Triton vs. Uranus's Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda (all rounded by gravity).

Obligatory grade school humor:

NASA wants to probe Uranus in search of gas
NASA wants to probe deeper into Uranus than ever before

Also at The Verge.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel's initial Skylake-X chips, including the 10-core i9-7900X, have been reviewed:

Core i9-7900X performs well in our productivity, workstation, and HPC tests. The mesh-imposed disparities aren't as pronounced in those benchmarks. But we also have re-run Ryzen 7 1800X benchmarks to think about. Pressure to size up has pushed AMD's flagship down to $460, less than half of what a Core i9-7900X would cost. While Intel may capture the top 1% of high-end enthusiasts with Skylake-X, everyone else has to consider whether Ryzen may be the smarter buy.

Moreover, AMD's upcoming Threadripper CPU has to have Intel worried. How do we know? The X299 motherboards we used needed firmware updates to address very serious performance issues right up until launch. Intel didn't seem nearly as ready for Skylake-X's introduction as we'd expect. A number of Core i9s with even more cores won't be ready until later this year. However, it looks like Intel couldn't get the four-, six-, eight-, and 10-core models out fast enough. They'll ship later this month.

Unfortunately, this story won't be ready to wrap up until we have Threadripper to compare against. Given Core i9-7900X's high price and performance caveats, enthusiasts should probably hold off on a purchase until we know more about the competition, even if Skylake-X looks like a bigger step forward than Intel's past HEDT designs.

VERDICT

Intel's Skylake-X-based Core i9-7900X weighs in with 10 Hyper-Threaded cores and architectural enhancements that benefit many workstation-class workloads, such as rendering and content creation. The processor struggles in some games compared to its predecessor, failing to match the [10-core] Core i7-6950X in several titles.

While the i9-7900X is generally an improvement over Intel's previous 10-core high end desktop (HEDT) chip, the i7-6950X, Skylake-X runs hotter and is significantly more expensive than its 8-core AMD Ryzen counterparts. Under full load, the i9-7900X used about 149 W, while the previous-gen i7-6950X uses just 111 W and AMD's Ryzen 1800 X is at 92 W. AMD's Threadripper chips will have more PCIe lanes than Intel's Skylake-X line. Ryzen also supports ECC RAM while Intel disables it to differentiate its HEDT chips from workstation/business Xeons. The TDPs of AMD's 10-16 core Threadripper and Intel's 12-18 core Skylake-X CPUs have not been confirmed.

For about a quarter of the price of the i9-7900X, you can get the Ryzen 5 1600X, which often holds its own against Intel's monster chip.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The genetic material of any two individuals can be clearly distinguished. Computational biologists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now determined that the impact of DNA variations has been greatly underestimated. The new insights could impact advances in personalized medicine.

Proteins are the machinery of life. Without them, no cell can function. About 20,000 proteins are responsible for metabolism, growth and regeneration in the human body. The building blocks of proteins are amino acids. These are assembled in the cell according to a defined blueprint contained in DNA.

An extensive study involving blood samples of 60,000 people has shown that surprisingly wide variations exist between the proteins of healthy individuals. In two non-related individuals, on average 20,000 building blocks—i.e. amino acids—have differences known as SAVs (single amino acid variants). The MacArthur Lab in the U.S. has assembled about 10 million of these SAVs.

[...] The computational biologists cannot determine the exact nature of the effects, however. The variations might, for example, affect our ability to detect smells or might result in differences in metabolism; they might lead to disease, or increase the immunity to pathogens. They can also affect an individual's response to environmental influences or medications. "None of these effects might be detected in everyday life," says Prof. Rost. "But under certain conditions, some of them could become significant—for example, when we are given a certain drug or are exposed to a certain influence for the first time."

In his view, the effects of the protein variations cannot be simply categorized as good or bad. "The comparison of the effects of the variations between individuals as well as between humans and related species suggests that every species tries out many variations." These may even be detrimental to individuals under today's conditions. But if the environmental conditions change, it is conceivable that the same variations might help the species to survive.

More information: Yannick Mahlich et al, Common sequence variants affect molecular function more than rare variants?, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-01054-2

Understanding how the protein variations work can make personalized medicine possible, such that drug side effects can be minimized or eliminated, diets can be customized, and the like.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

A terror attack near a London mosque is "every bit as sickening" as others in recent weeks, Theresa May says.

A man drove a van into worshippers close to Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park as they were gathered to help an elderly man who had collapsed. He later died, but it is not clear if this was a result of the attack. Nine other people were taken to hospital.

A 47-year-old man was held on suspicion of attempted murder and later further arrested over alleged terror offences. Scotland Yard said he was being held on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism including murder and attempted murder.

Source: BBC News

Darren Osborne, 47, was arrested in the early hours of Monday on suspicion of driving a van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers in north London. He is alleged to have shouted "kill all Muslims" and "this is for London Bridge" in the wake of the attack.

Muslim residents on the Cardiff estate where he lived with his partner and four children, claimed he had previously been friendly but said his attitude had changed in recent weeks.

He allegedly hurled insults at his Asian neighbour's 12-year-old son, in the wake of the Islamist attack in the capital earlier this month.

[...] After being dragged from the van by an angry mob, he was protected by the Imam of the mosque, Mohammed Mahmoud, who ordered people not to attack him, but hand him over to the police.

Source: The Telegraph

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Political data gathered on more than 198 million US citizens was exposed this month after a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee stored internal documents on a publicly accessible Amazon server.

The data leak contains a wealth of personal information on roughly 61 percent of the US population. Along with home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predict where individual voters fall on hot-button issues such as gun ownership, stem cell research, and the right to abortion, as well as suspected religious affiliation and ethnicity. The data was amassed from a variety of sources—from the banned subreddit r/fatpeoplehate to American Crossroads, the super PAC co-founded by former White House strategist Karl Rove.

Deep Root Analytics, a conservative data firm that identifies audiences for political ads, confirmed ownership of the data to Gizmodo on Friday.

[...] In a statement, Deep Root founder Alex Lundry told Gizmodo, “We take full responsibility for this situation.” He said the data included proprietary information as well as publicly available voter data provided by state government officials. “Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access,” Lundry said.

Source: Gizmodo

Additional coverage: BBC News, CNET, Mashable

Original Submission

kazzie writes:

UK-based food and clothing retailer Marks & Spencer have been working to improve the environmetal sustainability of the company for over a decade. In their latest step to become more eco-friendly, they're getting rid of the little stickers on their fresh produce. As of this week, their avocados will have relevant information (product code, county of origin, best-before date) etched into the skin by a laser.

M&S expect to save 10 tones of paper and 5 tonnes of glue a year by tattooing their avocados in this way. Stickers don't stick well to avocado skins in the first place, so this solves a practical problem as well as reducing sticker waste.

Apparently barcodes couldn't be read reliably on an avocado, due to the uneven reflective surface of the avocado skin, but it may be practical for other produce in the future.

Original Submission

McGruber writes:

Defense and spy-agency contractor Booz Allen Hamilton says the Justice Department is investigating its accounting and the way it charges the government. The disclosure in a regulatory filing sent shares of Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. tumbling almost 19 percent in Friday trading.

Booz Allen said its own auditing hasn't found any major erroneous costs or problems, and that it's cooperating with the Justice Department's civil and criminal investigations.

The company, based in McLean, Virginia, is one of the biggest U.S. defense and intelligence-agency contractors. Several of its executives either previously worked for the government or left the company to take high-level government positions.

Booz Allen received unwanted publicity in 2013 after revelations that its employee Edward Snowden took and shared documents about secret U.S. surveillance programs.

Source: Yahoo! News

Media Statement: BoozAllen.com

Original Submission