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bootsy writes:

Ron Gilbert's newest game, "Thimbleweed Park", has been out for a few months now but the latest patch is pretty neat.

https://forums.thimbleweedpark.com/t/thimbleweed-park-update-917-is-live/833

The most interesting parts are allowing the playable characters to talk to each other and recognition of each other when they walk past.

In a sign of the changing nature of gamers the game now includes a phone helpline but the helpline is called from phones within the game itself and it has an awareness of your progress so can give more tailored hints.

It is discussed in more detail here
http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/hints_and_dialogs

Original Submission

kaszz submitted a story which became:

At least 1 million homes in the USA have solar systems on their rooftops and their use — together with local batteries — is increasing, enabling homeowners the ability to collect energy and store it for later usage on-site. This enables homeowners to cut their dependence on the electrical grid — and their bills. This could be economically painful for utilities. A new McKinsey study predicts two outcomes 1) electrical grid cut off completely 2) primarily local energy collection with the electrical grid as a backup.

The cost of collecting solar energy and storing it on-site makes the incentive too small even for residents of sunny Arizona to cut the electrical grid off. But partial defection from the grid with 80-90% of the demand supplied on-site makes economic sense in 2020 and total defection makes sense around 2028

The prediction by McKinsey is that the electrical grid will be repurposed as an enormous, sophisticated backup. One, where utilities only add energy at those times when the on-site systems aren't collecting enough energy.

My comment: So far good enough. But then why not simple connect to neighbors directly for electrical power transfer and cutting the utilities out of the loop even for electrical fallback needs? A electrical power mesh grid might need some interesting mathematical modeling though.

(As a side note, maybe this will soon make UPS for home use obsolete?)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/06/29/ai-end-game-automation-work/

This week, we're reporting on a startling, scholarly white paper recently issued by researchers from Yale, the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford and the AI Impacts think tank that adumbrates the AI world to come.

The white paper – "When Will AI Exceed Human Performance?", based on a global survey of 352 AI experts – reinforces the truism that technology is always at a primitive stage. Impressive as current Big Data and machine learning innovations are, they are embryonic compared with Advanced AI in the decades to come.

High-Level Machine Intelligence (HLMI) will transform the life we know. According to study, it's not just conceivable but likely that all human work will be automated within 120 years, many specific jobs much sooner.

[...] The study asked respondents to forecast automation milestones for 32 tasks and occupations, 20 of which, they predict, will happen within 10 years. Some of the more interesting findings: language translator: seven years: retail salesperson: 12 years; writing a New York Times bestseller and performing surgery: approximately 35 years; conducting math research: 45 years.

The researchers point to two watersheds in AI revolution that will have profound impact. The first is the attainment of HLMI, "achieved when unaided machines can accomplish every task better and more cheaply than human workers."

The researchers reported that the "aggregate forecast" gave a 50 percent chance for HLMI to occur within 45 years (and a 10 percent chance within eight years). Interestingly, respondents from Asia are more sanguine about the HLMI timeframe than those from other regions – Asian respondents expect HLMI within about 30 years, whereas North Americans expect it in 75 years.

AI research will come under the power of HLMI within 90 years, and this in turn could contribute to the second major watershed, what the AI community calls an "intelligence explosion." This is defined as AI performing "vastly better than humans in all tasks," a rapid acceleration in AI machine capabilities.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The German Parliament has passed the "Network Enforcement Act" or "NetzDG":

The German Parliament passed a new social media law¹, called the "Network Enforcement Act" ("NetzDG" in German), that punishes social media companies with fines ranging from 5 million to 50 million euro if they don't immediately remove "obviously illegal" content. Human rights groups have called the law rushed and harmful to free expression.

According to the German Federal Criminal Police Office, hate crime has grown by 300% in the past two years alone. In a speech¹ today, Germany's Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection, Heiko Maas, said that freedom of expression is a great asset to have in an open society, but it ends where criminal law begins.

[...] At a recent hearing, of the 10 experts who were invited to testify, eight criticized the law that was still in draft stage at the time. Five of them said the law would be incompatible with the German Constitution. The Network Enforcement Act was slightly modified since then and, for instance, the mention of companies having to implement automatic content filters has been removed. However, a new "self-regulatory" body will have to be created, whose operation costs will be paid by the private industry. The companies will be able to send some content for evaluation if they are uncertain of its legality. It's not clear how transparent or accountable this body will be, according to the European Digital Rights (EDRi) non-profit organization.

A recent post on ProPublica has shown that Facebook's own censorship policies are inconsistent at best. For instance, the company would censor hate speech against white people, but not against certain Muslim groups that were considered radicalized by Facebook's low-paid contractors. It's also not the first time Facebook's inconsistent censorship rules have attracted the public's attention, whether it was about old and popular war pictures or blocking competitors' links.

¹ Linked page is in German. --Ed.

Previously:
Germany Raids Homes of 36 People Accused of Hateful Postings Over Social Media

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Upcoming Intel processors will support scalable AVX-512 instructions, which one former Intel employee calls a "hidden gem":

Imagine if we could use vector processing on something other than just floating point problems. Today, GPUs and CPUs work tirelessly to accelerate algorithms based on floating point (FP) numbers. Algorithms can definitely benefit from basing their mathematics on bits and integers (bytes, words) if we could just accelerate them too. FPGAs can do this, but the hardware and software costs remain very high. GPUs aren't designed to operate on non-FP data. Intel AVX introduced some support, and now Intel AVX-512 is bringing a great deal of flexibility to processors. I will share why I'm convinced that the "AVX512VL" capability in particular is a hidden gem that will let AVX-512 be much more useful for compilers and developers alike.

Fortunately for software developers, Intel has done a poor job keeping the "secret" that AVX-512 is coming to Intel's recently announced Xeon Scalable processor line very soon. Amazon Web Services has publically touted AVX-512 on Skylake as coming soon!

It is timely to examine the new AVX-512 capabilities and their ability to impact beyond the more regular HPC needs for floating point only workloads. The hidden gem in all this, which enables shifting to AVX-512 more easily, is the "VL" (vector length) extensions which allow AVX-512 instructions to behave like SSE or AVX/AVX2 instructions when that suits us. This is a clever and powerful addition to enable its adoption in a wider assortment of software more quickly. The VL extensions mean that programmers (and compilers) do not need to shift immediately from 256-bits (AVX/AVX2) to 512-bits to use the new bit/byte/word manipulations. This transitional benefit is useful not only for an interim, but also for applications which find 256-bits more natural (perhaps a small, but important, subset of problems).

Will it be enough to stave off "Epyc"?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/let-s-encrypt-100-million-certificates,34908.html

Let's Encrypt, a Certificate Authority (CA) managed by a non-profit organization whose members include Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others, reached a milestone of 100 million issued certificates.

[...] When Let's Encrypt's service was first made available, less than 40% of the web was using HTTPS encryption, a milestone that took 20 years to reach, according to the nonprofit. Let's Encrypt has been available for less than two years, and due largely to its free service, 58% of the web now uses HTTPS encryption.

Previously: "Let's Encrypt" Has Issued 1 Million Certificates

[Ed. Note: SoylentNews uses Let's Encrypt certs for its development and Wiki pages, among others.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security unveiled a fact sheet on Wednesday partially detailing new security measures for commercial flights to the U.S. from overseas:

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Wednesday unveiled enhanced security measures for foreign flights arriving in the United States in what officials said was a move that aims to end a limited in-cabin ban on laptops and other large electronic devices and prevent its expansion to additional airports.

The new security measures, which European and U.S. officials said would begin taking effect within three weeks, could prompt additional screening time for the 325,000 airline passengers arriving in the United States daily.

"Inaction is not an option," Kelly told a news briefing, adding that he believes airlines will comply with the new screening. But he said the measures are not the last step to tighten security.

The decision not to impose new restrictions on laptops is a boost to U.S. and European airlines, which have worried that an expansion of the ban to Europe or other locations could cause significant logistical problems and deter some travel.

Also at NBC and The Washington Post.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

This Independence Day weekend, Nevadans aged 21 and older will be able to purchase cannabis for recreational purposes at most existing medical dispensaries:

Marijuana sales in Nevada's newly minted legal recreational market will begin on Saturday. Starting at 12:01 a.m. July 1, adults age 21 and older will be able to buy up to an ounce of marijuana, or one-eighth of an ounce in marijuana-infused edibles and concentrates.

Retail sales will be subject to a 10% sales tax, which Nevada officials expect to generate more than $60 million in the first two years.

[...] Nevada joins Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington in regulating legal marijuana sales, and California, Maine and Massachusetts are expected to join next year.

However, medical dispensaries can only sell the cannabis they have on hand on July 1st, 2017 as recreational with no chance to get more (recreational and medical must also be sold in separate rooms). Alcohol wholesalers appear to have control over the distribution licenses for cannabis for the first 18 months:

When the recreational marijuana statue was approved by voters, it gave alcohol wholesalers exclusive rights to the distribution licenses for the first 18 months it was enacted. Letters were mailed to eligible license holders in the state, but Chris Thompson, the executive director for the Las Vegas chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) said with few responses, tax commissioners approved a temporary regulation that would allow the department to make exceptions for non-wholesalers.

In May, the Independent Alcohol Distributors of Nevada filed a complaint saying the booze wholesalers should have exclusive rights to the licenses and that a May 31 license deadline for the wholesalers should not be enforced, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. At the end of May, a judge ruled in the alcohol wholesalers favor. But state officials have said they intend to appeal this ruling. "So basically, according to text of [the statue], the alcohol distributors get to set up regulated distribution methods," Thompson said. "We're the only state that does that."

That said, individual Nevada counties will be able to vote against allowing recreational cannabis dispensaries, and 12 of 16 currently ban medical cannabis dispensaries.

jelizondo writes:

A team consisting of people from the University of Tübingen, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the University of Cambridge, the Museum and Institute of Zoology (Polish Academy of Sciences), the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory and the University of Adelaide has recently published a very interesting genetic study of ancient Egyptian mummies in Nature.

According to the authors, previous studies suffered from possible contamination due to the type of method used: direct PCR and it was generally believed that the climate and mode of mummification destroyed any chance of finding good human DNA.

The authors studied 150 mummified individuals using a high-throughput DNA sequencing method and selecting 90 individuals for further study. The samples obtained span around 1,300 years of Ancient Egypt, namely the Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman periods.

The authors’ conclusion was:

We find that all three ancient Egyptian groups cluster together, supporting genetic continuity across our 1,300-year transect. Both analyses reveal higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians.

One interesting note is: While this result by itself does not exclude the possibility of much older and continuous gene flow from African sources, the substantially lower African component in our ∼2,000-year-old ancient samples suggests that African gene flow in modern Egyptians occurred indeed predominantly within the last 2,000 years.

Basically, if the population studied is representative of the all of the people in Ancient Egypt, the conclusion is that they were not Africans and that modern Egyptians share more genes with African populations than their ancestors.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Qualcomm's 14nm Snapdragon 450 SoC has been announced. It is a successor to the Snapdragon 435, a 28nm part:

Starting things off for everyone is Qualcomm, who is at the show to announce their latest mainstream Snapdragon 400 series SoC: the Snapdragon 450. The successor to Qualcomm's 2016 Snapdragon 435, the Snapdragon 450's biggest claim to fame is also its smallest: it will be the first Snapdragon 400 series SoC to be fabbed at 14nm, finally moving Qualcomm's mainstream SoC lineup off of 28nm LP and on to a more recent and more power efficient manufacturing node.

At a high level, the Snapdragon 450 is a very straightforward successor to the 435. Qualcomm has taken most of the 435's design principles and brought them forward for the smaller Snapdragon 450. For example, we're still looking at an octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 implementation, however thanks to the 14nm process Qualcomm has been able to bump up the maximum clockspeed from 1.4GHz to 1.8GHz. Similarly, Qualcomm has updated the GPU from an Adreno 505 on the Snapdragon 435 to an Adreno 506 on the Snapdragon 450, with the more powerful GPU said to offer 25% better performance.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40382086

The most extensive study to date on neonicotinoid pesticides concludes that they harm both honeybees and wild bees. Researchers said that exposure to the chemicals left honeybee hives less likely to survive over winter, while bumblebees and solitary bees produced fewer queens.

The study spanned 2,000 hectares across the UK, Germany and Hungary and was set up to establish the "real-world" impacts of the pesticides. The results are published in Science [open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa1190] [DX]. Neonicotinoids were placed under a temporary ban in Europe in 2013 after concerns about their impact on bees. The European Commission told the BBC that it intends to put forward a new proposal to further restrict the use of the chemicals.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Toshiba wants to sell off its memory business, but not to Western Digital (just yet):

Toshiba was hoping to complete a deal with the winning bidder at a shareholder meeting yesterday. In the weeks leading up to that meeting, Toshiba had to issue several reminders of how desperate their financial state is: disclosing new legal actions against them by investors seeking damages pertaining to Toshiba's accounting scandals, announcing that the Tokyo and Nagoya stock exchanges are moving toward delisting Toshiba, and revising their outlook for fiscal year 2016 to reflect a negative shareholder equity of (¥581.6B). Meanwhile, Western Digital reiterated their objection to Toshiba selling the memory business to a third party and warned several third parties that they would view participation in the sale as tortious interference. Most recently, Western Digital also reportedly resubmitted its bid for Toshiba's memory business with an offer around ¥2 trillion, close to the amount offered by the consortium Toshiba had previously selected as the preferred bidder. Toshiba for their part has made no mention of Western Digital's offer.

In the aftermath of yesterday's shareholder meeting, Toshiba made several announcements. As expected, Toshiba was not able to finalize a sale of the Toshiba Memory Corporation subsidiary they have consolidated the memory-related assets under, but they are continuing to negotiate with the consortium. Toshiba announced plans for further investment in the joint venture's Fab 6 in Yokkaichi, Japan, and questioned whether SanDisk would jointly invest in the 3D NAND fab. Toshiba also announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Western Digital alleging unfair competition and seeking an injunction and damages. Toshiba claims that Western Digital is exaggerating their consent rights and also alleges that Western Digital has improperly obtained Toshiba trade secrets by transferring some employees from SanDisk to Western Digital whom have access to Toshiba confidential information through the joint ventures.

Previously:
Western Digital Announces 96-Layer 3D NAND, Including Both TLC and QLC
Toshiba Considers NAND Business Split; Samsung Delays Release of 4 TB SSDs
Broadcom and Japanese Government Considering Bid for Toshiba's Semiconductor Unit
Samsung Could Boost NAND Production Capacity, WD Intervenes in Toshiba Memory Sale

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Western Digital has announced that it will begin production of 96-layer 3D NAND in 2018. It will make triple-level cell and quad-level cell NAND with die capacities ranging from 256 Gb to 1 Tb. QLC NAND is predicted to have 100-150 program/erase cycles (endurance) compared to about 1000 for TLC:

Given such endurance, it is logical to expect 3D QLC NAND to be used for primarily removable storage as well as for ultra-high capacity datacenter drives for the so-called near-WORM (write once read many) storage applications. For example, Toshiba last year discussed a QLC-based datacenter SSD with 100 TB capacity for WORM apps.

Western Digital plans to begin sampling of select 96-layer BiCS4 3D NAND configurations in the second half of this year, but the manufacturer does not specify which dies will sample when. As for mass production, Western Digital intends to start volume manufacturing of their 96-layer 256 Gb 3D NAND in 2018, with other dies to follow later. Based on Western Digital's announcements made earlier, the company will gradually introduce more sophisticated BiCS4 96-layer configurations in 2018 and 2019, before moving to BiCS5 sometimes in 2020. That said, it makes sense to expect the highest capacity BiCS4 ICs to ship later rather than sooner.

[BiCS = "Bit-Cost Scaling". Yes, it does not make sense to me, either. --Ed.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/29/asia/japan-moon-landing-jaxa/index.html

Japan plans to put a man on the moon around 2030, according to a new proposal by the government's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). It is the first time JAXA has revealed an intention to send Japanese astronauts beyond the International Space Station, and it will mostly likely be part of an international mission, the agency said.

[...] A spokesman for JAXA told CNN the new plan wasn't to send an exclusively Japanese rocket to the Moon, which would be extremely costly, but rather to contribute to a multinational manned lunar probe. By contributing technology, JAXA would hope to be allotted a space on the mission, which would begin preparation in 2025.

Also at Space News.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Washington Post reports:

The headlines sound thrilling. One might say they bait a click.

"ANONYMOUS SAYS NASA HAS EVIDENCE OF ALIEN LIFE. DOES IT?" — Newsweek

"The world's biggest hacking group thinks NASA is about to announce alien life." — The Independent

Maybe you know of Anonymous as a band of socially enlightened hackers: liberators of knowledge from elites who want to hide it from the public. You certainly know what NASA is. So you click. And what you get, if you follow the articles to the amateur YouTube channel that is their source, is video of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask — "Anonymous Global," he calls himself — reading out old quotes from NASA spokespeople in a spooky, synthesized voice.

The man in the anarchist mask quotes a NASA science director's testimony from a congressional hearing in April, all totally public: "We are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history."

That quote — taken out of context and adorned with Anonymous Global's wild conspiracy theorizing — became the basis for millions of views and countless news articles, forcing the science director in question and NASA officials to explicitly deny the claims of a shoddily produced YouTube video this week. "There's no pending announcement regarding extraterrestrial life," a NASA spokesman wrote to The Washington Post, in case you were still in doubt.

Also at Space.com, MassLive, the The San Diego Union-Tribune, and The Guardian (editorial).

Update: (in response to a June 29th episode of The Alex Jones Show) NASA Denies That It's Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars

Recently:
UFO researcher says new documentary exposes 'what the secret agenda has been'
NASA Disputes Origins of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop "Healing Stickers"

Original Submission