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Fnord666 writes:

If I mistakenly write "NBC Nitely News," you can probably still tell what program I'm talking about. Nielsen's automated system can't, however, and a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal details how networks are taking advantage of that fact to disguise airings that underperform with viewers.

It's described as a common practice in the world of TV ratings, where programs with higher ratings can charge advertisers more to run commercials. When an episode performs poorly with viewers, the networks often intentionally misspell the show title in their report to Nielsen, according to the Journal. This fools the system into separating that airing out as a different show and keeping it from affecting the correctly-spelled show's average overall rating.

The report says the practice was initially used sparingly -- for instance, when a broadcast would go up against a major sporting event. But it has now grown fairly common, with NBC misspelling the title of "NBC Nightly News" 14 times since the current TV season began last fall. At one point, that reportedly included an entire week of broadcasts.

[...] Such a practice might be largely for the sake of marketing, with networks typically looking to boast publicly about show performance however possible. Still, it seems odd that Nielsen would allow them to do so with any sort of regularity, given that it ultimately calls the accuracy of its numbers into question.

Source: CNet

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Fnord666 writes:

OneDrive users around the world have been upset to discover that with its latest update, Microsoft's cloud file syncing and storage system no longer works with anything other than disks formatted with the NTFS file system. Both older file systems, such as FAT32 and exFAT, and newer ones, such as ReFS, will now provoke an error message when OneDrive starts up.

To continue to use the software, files will have to be stored on an NTFS volume. While FAT disks can be converted, ReFS volumes must be reformatted and wiped. This has left various OneDrive users unhappy. While NTFS is the default file system in Windows, people using SD cards to extend the storage on small laptops and tablets will typically use exFAT. Similarly, people using Storage Spaces to manage large, redundant storage volumes will often use ReFS. The new policy doesn't change anything for most Windows users, but those at the margins will feel hard done by.

In a rather odd statement made to OnMSFT, Microsoft said that it "discovered a warning message that should have existed was missing when a user attempted to store their OneDrive folder on a non-NTFS filesystem—which was immediately remedied." The company's position, apparently, is that OneDrive should always have warned about these usage scenarios and that it's only a bug or an oversight that allowed non-NTFS volumes to work.

Source: Ars Technica

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Satellite phone communications encrypted with the GMR-2 cipher can be decrypted in mere fractions of a second, two Chinese researchers have proved.

The GMR-2 is a stream cipher with 64-bit key-length.

"Generally speaking, stream ciphers firstly generate keystreams by implementing a series of complex cryptographic transformation on the initial vectors and the encryption-key, and then XOR the keystreams with plaintexts to obtain the ciphertexts. Therefore, to resist known plaintext attack, a vital requirement of stream ciphers is the one-way property, i.e., it must be difficult for the adversary to derive the encryption-key from the keystream through inversion procedure," the researchers explained.

Currently, the phones of British satellite telecom Inmarsat use the GMR-2 standard, and those of United Arab Emirates-based satellite phone provider Thuraya use the (competing) GMR-1 standard.

[...] "With respect to the GMR-2 cipher, in a known-plaintext setting where approximately 50–65 bytes plaintext are known to the attacker, it is possible to recover a session key with a moderate computational complexity, allowing the attack to be easily performed with a current PC," they demonstrated at the time.

Source: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2017/07/07/satellite-phone-communications-decrypted/

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takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40518293

France is set to ban the sale of any car that uses petrol or diesel fuel by 2040, in what the ecology minister called a "revolution".

Nicolas Hulot announced the planned ban on fossil fuel vehicles as part of a renewed commitment to the Paris climate deal.

He said France planned to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Hybrid cars make up about 3.5% of the French market, with pure electric vehicles accounting for just 1.2%.

It is not yet clear what will happen to existing fossil fuel vehicles still in use in 2040.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

An underground tunnel that archaeologists believe was meant to imitate the underworld has been found under a pyramid at Teotihuacan in Mexico. Electrical scans taken at the ancient city revealed the extent of the mysterious tunnel.

"The finding confirms that Teotihuacans reproduced the same pattern of tunnels associated with their great monuments, whose function had to be the emulation of the underworld," archaeologist Veronica Ortega, who was involved in the discovery, said in a statement¹.

[...] " The function of the tunnel may have been to reproduce the underworld, a world where life, animals and plants originated. It's possible that it was used purely for rituals, as part of ceremonies to celebrate the agricultural cycles," Ortega said.

¹ In Spanish.

Source: https://www.rt.com/viral/395523-mexican-pyramid-underworld-tunnel/

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Fnord666 writes:

Director Christopher Nolan has made no secret of his preference for film over digital capture and projection, but his latest project Dunkirk is going to represent something of a high-water mark. According to Variety, the World War II drama will be projected on 70mm film in 125 theaters, topping the 100 theaters that showed Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight back in 2015. That makes it the widest 70mm release in 25 years.

The film, which chronicles the evacuation of Allied soldiers from Dunkirk, France, represents Nolan's most ambitious use of film formats to date. While he's utilized IMAX film cameras for sequences in films like The Dark Knight and Interstellar, with Dunkirk Nolan shot the entire film on a combination of IMAX 65mm and traditional 65mm film. The latter format has seen a bit of a mini-renaissance lately, with Paul Thomas Anderson also using it for The Master.

[...] Which format is the one, true Dunkirk? Nolan is known for relentlessly checking the quality of his films across the different distribution mediums, but in this case we're talking about a film that was shot natively on two different 65mm formats. The ultimate expression of Nolan's vision is no doubt the IMAX 70mm, with the traditional 70mm presentation running right behind.

Source: The Verge

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Fnord666 writes:

Google was hit with a record-breaking $2.7 billion fine last month by the European Commission for breaking antitrust laws. The EU says Google demoted rivals and unfairly promoted its own services in search results related to shopping. While the fine is the largest antitrust judgement ever, an even bigger fine could be on the way for Google.

Reuters reports that EU regulators are considering another record-breaking fine for Google over its Android operating system. The European Commission has been investigating Android after rivals complained that Google has been abusing its market dominance. Google has been accused of limiting access to the Google Play Store unless phone makers also bundle Google search and Chrome apps. Google has also reportedly blocked phone makers from creating devices that run forked versions of Android, as part of an anti-fragmentation agreement.

While Reuters suggests the potential Android fine could top the $2.7 billion penalty, a bigger concern for Google will be whether it's forced to dramatically alter Android and unbundle key parts. Android has long been considered as open source software, but Google has slowly been adding key components into its Google Play Services software and associated agreements.

Source: The Verge

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takyon writes:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hobby-lobby-hands-over-5500-illegally-imported-artifacts-180963969/

Big-box arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby will surrender some 5,500 artifacts it purchased illegally and pay $3 million after federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint in New York yesterday, reports Dan Whitcomb at Reuters.

The objects are believed to come from Iraq, where they were smuggled into other Middle Eastern countries. In 2010, they were sent to the United States falsely labeled as clay tiles.

[...] The items include 144 cylinder seals, used to roll decorative images onto clay, as well as clay bullae, which were used to create wax tokens to authenticate documents. The majority of the items are cuneiform tablets. Cuneiform is a type of writing developed about 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Iraq, Smithsonian.com's Anne Trubek reports. Over time, the writing, which looks like a series of lines and triangles impressed into palm-size pieces of wet clay, was used for over a dozen ancient languages, much like the Roman alphabet for most European and Romance languages.

So, why was a craft chain buying ancient Iraqi artifacts in the first place? Whitcomb reports that company president Steve Green is the founder of the Museum of the Bible, now under construction in Washington, D.C. He began acquiring artifacts for the museum, including the forfeited items, in 2009.

Also at NYT. DoJ and Hobby Lobby statements.

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takyon writes:

LHC double heavy particle to shine light on strong force

Scientists have detected a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern.

The discovery will help researchers learn more about the so-called "strong force" which holds the centres of atoms together.

The existence of the new particle was theoretically predicted but this is the first time it has been identified.

The details of the Xi-cc++ particle were presented at a high-energy physics conference in Venice.

[...] This is the first time that researchers have confirmed the existence of [a particle] with two heavy quarks. According to Prof Guy Wilkinson of Oxford University, there is an intriguing difference between the new particle and the ones that have been discovered before.

"In contrast to other particles of this type, in which the three quarks perform an elaborate dance around each other, a particle with two heavy quarks is expected to act like a planetary system, where the heavy quarks are like two stars orbiting one around the other, with the lighter quark orbiting around this binary system."

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Fnord666 writes:

Forbes reports on Tesla's reaction to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's crash test safety rating for the Tesla Model S:

Tesla does not take criticism well. Tesla has long had an attitude that anything said about the company, its products or CEO that isn't absolutely hagiographic is tantamount to heresy and anyone who disagrees hates humanity and the planet. Thus I was disappointed but not at all surprised to see the company's official, dismissive response this morning to the latest batch of crash test results from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which didn't reinforce the company line that everything it does is the best ever.

The Tesla Model S received only an "acceptable" rating from IIHS on its small overlap frontal crash test, a notch below the top rating of "good," with slack in the seat belt allowing a crash test dummy's head to hit the steering wheel despite the cushioning of the airbag. The less than optimal result comes after Tesla had said it had corrected the problem in the wake of a similar result in an earlier test.

A Tesla spokesperson's response was to besmirch IIHS. "IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes." Yes they do. IIHS's purpose is to protect drivers and of course, in turn, reduce the payouts for insurance companies.

Also at CNET and Business Insider.

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Fnord666 writes:

SoundCloud is cutting over 40 percent of its staff, the company announced on its blog. The streaming service will let go 173 of its 420 employees in order to "ensure our path to long-term, independent success," SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung wrote. The news was first reported by Bloomberg.

As part of the reduction, the company will shutter its offices in San Francisco and London, leaving only its New York and Berlin offices operational. It's been a trying year for SoundCloud to say the least. The company announced it may possibly run out of money before the end of 2017 back in January, before landing a $70 million credit line from investors to stave off certain collapse.

Source: The Verge

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takyon writes:

Camera maker Red has announced a smartphone with a "holographic" display. But it won't come cheap:

It all sounds like some sort of mix between the gimmicky visual trickery Amazon offered with the Fire Phone and the glasses-less 3D displays like the ones found on the Nintendo 3DS. But in a forum post written shortly after the announcement, RED founder Jim Jannard says "there is no good way to describe it until you see it." He also writes that "our display is technology you haven't seen before. It is not lenticular, which is inferior tech in every way, has been tried many times before and failed for good reason. (see Amazon 3D Fire, LG Optimus, etc)."

RED says that it will also use an algorithm to convert stereo sound into "multi-dimensional audio" to add to the immersive experience — or, as RED puts it, to "ASSAULT YOUR SENSES." The phone will allow for modular attachments, similar to those found on the Moto Z line or the Essential Phone, but with a special focus on image capture. And the phone will work (somehow) with RED's extensive lineup of digital cinema cameras.

Red's Hydrogen One PDF conveniently guarantees that orders will be delayed after an initial release.

Red is known for making cameras that can shoot in 6K and 8K resolutions, intended for film production.

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takyon writes:

An experiment using simulated Martian conditions has found that perchlorates bathed in UV light would quickly kill many potential Martian bacteria:

The hope for Martian life took another blow today. As Ian Sample at The Guardian reports, a new study suggests that in the presence of ultraviolet light, perchlorates, a class of chemical compounds widespread on Mars' surface, turn deadly for bacteria.

The presence of perchlorates isn't new. Viking 1 and 2 spacecraft detected perchlorates when they landed on the Martian surface in 1976, Jeffrey Kluger reports for Time. Since then, other spacecraft have confirmed the presence of the compounds. The 2009 Phoenix lander found that perchlorates make up between 0.4 and 0.6 percent of the soil sample it collected.

While perchlorates, which are composed of chlorine and oxygen, are toxic to humans, microbes typically love the stuff. And researchers have been optimistic that their presence could support bacterial life on Mars. As Kluger reports, some bacteria on Earth use naturally occurring perchlorate as an energy source. The compound also lowers the melting point of water, which could improve the chance of liquid water existing on the Red Planet.

But the latest study, published in the journal Scientific Reports [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-04910-3] [DX], suggests that in the presence of ultraviolet light perchlorate is not so microbe-friendly. Mars has a thin atmosphere, which often leaves its surface bathed in UV rays. And when heated, chlorine-based molecules like perchlorates cause heavy damage to living cells, reports Sarah Fecht at Popular Science.

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Fnord666 writes:

In a bid to make its armed forces look even more intimidating, Russia has taken inspiration from science-fiction to create some futuristic-looking new combat suits. Developed by the state-owned Central Research Institute for Precision Machine Building, this very Star Wars-esque combat armor features a powered exoskeleton, ballistic protection from bullets and shrapnel and a heads-up display. While just a concept at the moment, the suit's designers hope it will enter full production in the next few years.

While they haven't detailed what the heads-up display would be used for, the combat armor's powered exoskeleton helps the wearer carry heavy loads, bearing some of the brunt to lower the soldiers' fatigue

Source: Engadget

Story has a video on YouTube.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

An ongoing excavation in the heart of Mexico City, once the great Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, has revealed a legendary tower inlaid with hundreds of skulls. This tower was first described by Europeans in the early 16th century, when a Spanish soldier named Andres de Tapia came to the city with Hernan Cortez' invading force. In his memoirs, de Tapia described an "edifice" covered in tens of thousands of skulls. Now his account is corroborated by this historic find.

According to a report from Reuters, the tower is 6 meters in diameter, and once stood at the corner of a massive temple to Huitzilopochtli, an Aztec god associated with human sacrifice, war, and the sun. It's likely the tower was part of a structure known as the Huey Tzompantli, which many of de Tapia's contemporaries also described.

Tzompantli were ceremonial wooden scaffolds used in many ancient cultures of the Americas to display the skulls of human sacrifices. Priests would prepare each skull by drilling two holes in it, then stringing it like a bead on a long cord. Once a set of skulls had been strung together, the cord would be stretched between two wooden posts, to form one row of skulls among many. The sight was designed to terrify the Aztec's enemies, and it certainly worked in the case of Spanish soldiers. Many recorded their terror upon seeing tzompantli in Tenochtitlan.

National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH [Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia]) archaeologist Raul Barrera told Reuters that "the skulls would have been set in the tower after they had stood on public display on the tzompantli." It appears that the skulls were coated in lime and sunk into the wall of the tower in tidy rows.

Source: Ars Technica

Additional Coverage:
Reuters

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