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mrpg writes:

Smart Device Breaks Up Domestic Dispute By Calling the Police

According to ABC News, officers were called to a home outside Albuquerque, New Mexico this week when a smart device called 911 and the operator heard a confrontation in the background. Police say that Eduardo Barros was house-sitting at the residence with his girlfriend and their daughter. Barros allegedly pulled a gun on his girlfriend when they got into an argument and asked her: "Did you call the sheriffs?" A smart device in the home apparently heard "call the sheriffs," and proceeded to call the sheriffs.

takyon: A version of the story incorrectly named Google Home as the smart device. Police say that Amazon's Alexa called 911, which it can't do:

It appears the finer points of the amazing technology were lost on the sheriff's detective who filed the warrant, describing himself as the affiant. "Alexis which Affiant knows to be a Google Smart Radio, heard 'call Sheriff's,' Det. Cameron Carroll wrote. "Alexis the radio then called 911.'"

The department's grasp of technology was further called into question when Amazon told Buzzfeed that Alexa can't call 911. "Alexa calling and messaging does not support 911 calls," a company representative told the news site. The words 'call the sheriff' would not lead Alexa to call the cops, the representative said.

Also at ABC News and CNET.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A public interest group wants the Federal Communications Commission to hold off on its proposal to kill net neutrality regulations.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a motion on Friday to delay the FCC's proceeding to undo its net neutrality rules, pending the release of documents the group has requested from the agency.

The NHMC says it filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for consumer complaints about the open internet since the net neutrality rules went into place in 2015.

Carmen Scurato, the group's director of legal affairs, said that the requested documents will affect the public's view of the rules.
"The information that NHMC urges the FCC to release would provide essential insight into the value of maintaining the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order," Scurato said in a statement.

"Millions of consumers have voiced their concerns about eliminating net neutrality protections and the agency should release all complaints that members of the public have submitted showing how the Open Internet Order has served as a tool in protecting our consumer rights."

Source: The Hill

Original Submission

McGruber writes:

The Hollywood Reporter has the sad news that Joan Lee, the wife of Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, died Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 95.

In an earlier story (), Stan described meeting Joan: "When I was young, there was one girl I drew; one body and face and hair. It was my idea of what a girl should be. The perfect woman. And when I got out of the Army, somebody, a cousin of mine, knew a model, a hat model at a place called Laden Hats. He said, 'Stan, there's this really pretty girl named Betty. I think you'd like her. She might like you. Why don't you go over and ask her to lunch.' Blah, blah, blah.

"So I went up to this place. Betty didn't answer the door. But Joan answered, and she was the head model. I took one look at her — and she was the girl I had been drawing all my life. And then I heard the English accent. And I'm a nut for English accents! She said, 'May I help you?' And I took a look at her, and I think I said something crazy like, 'I love you.' I don't remember exactly. But anyway, I took her to lunch. I never met Betty, the other girl. I think I proposed to [Joan] at lunch."

[...] After marrying, the couple returned to New York, where Lee worked at Marvel Comics forerunner Timely/Atlas Comics, a job he initially landed because his cousin Martin Goodman owned the company. Comics were a middling enterprise until Lee and Jack Kirby co-created the Fantastic Four in 1961 (followed by the Hulk, Avengers, Iron Man, X-Men and other characters) and turned the company, renamed Marvel Comics, into a pop culture powerhouse.

In some versions of the origin of the Fantastic Four, Lee credits Joan with inspiring him. He was depressed about his career (Lee had dreams of becoming a serious novelist) and the state of comics (the industry in the 1950s was dominated by stories of war, science fiction and romance, genres he didn't like) and contemplated leaving the business.

"Before you quit," Joan told him, "why don't you write one comic you are proud of?" And thus was born the Fantastic Four.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

An Oklahoma City man was arrested last Saturday after police responded to a domestic disturbance in the force (or perhaps a rip in space-time): two roommates were arguing over whether Star Wars or Star Trek was the better movie, and things got too intense.

A police report provided to Ars does not specify precisely which of the myriad movies and/or shows the men were griping about. However, it does say that during the argument, the victim, Bradley Warren Burk, went back to his room in the same building. (The two men, who Burk said were not friends, but merely acquaintances, live at a " transitional living program and emergency shelter for homeless young men.")

As he did so, Burk told his neighbor, 23-year-old Jerome Dewayne Whyte, that Whyte was "just a trick."

This angered Whyte, who next shouted back at him, "you wanna replay that?!?!" as he shoved Burk to the ground. Whyte began choking Burk, which resulted in Burk falling in and out of consciousness. In the scuffle, Burk reached for a nearby pocket knife to "defend himself." Whyte seemingly tried to grab it away and managed to cut himself, at which point he retreated.

Whyte was charged with assault and battery and possession of marijuana. He was taken to county jail.

Source: Ars Technica

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/07/08/533118638/mexico-and-u-s-team-up-to-create-low-cost-wheelchairs

Political tension between the United States and Mexico is making headlines with talk of disrupting longstanding trade deals and constructing a border wall. And then there's the story of Antonio Garcia. A mechanic from southern Sonora, he had been limping around on crutches for three years. His right leg was amputated below the knee after a motorcycle accident and buying a prosthetic leg was beyond his financial reach.

But he got the prosthesis just this January from a nonprofit that's a collaboration between Mexico and the U.S. It's called ARSOBO and it's working to transform the lives of low-income Mexicans with disabilities. The organization, whose name is an acronym that stands for Arizona/Sonora border, provides affordable prosthetics, specialized wheelchairs and hearing aids. "It's changing people's lives," said Duke Duncan, an 84-year-old American pediatrician who grew impatient with retirement after just three days. He co-founded ARSOBO seven years ago. [...] ARSOBO provides disabled people who were once isolated, depressed or begging on the streets the possibility of getting a job or going to school. Their signature product is an all-terrain wheelchair, originally developed by a nonprofit in California, that can navigate uneven sidewalks and rough roads.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

German retailer MindFactory has removed many AMD and Nvidia graphics cards from sale because the products have a delivery time of 3 months. According to them, the GPU shortage affects "the whole of Germany" or even the "whole Europe".

The demand for GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies, particularly Ethereum, has led to OEMs creating products specifically tailored to cryptocurrency mining. For example, new cards that are smaller, have fewer display ports, with cooling systems:

While the GPU shortage continues, there are some signs of improvement. There are now several models of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 in stock from various OEMs, but prices remain high and relatively close to the price of the GTX 1080. There are also a few more GTX 1060 6GB graphics cards available, and the price on the least expensive one has dropped significantly, down from $484.80 to $259.99.

At the same time, however, the price on the least expensive GTX 1050 Ti has climbed by about $10, and several models now cost around $200. The price on the least expensive Geforce GTX 1060 3GB has also climbed by roughly $20, as well. This likely indicates that sales of these cards have increased somewhat, pushing prices up accordingly.

Meanwhile, several OEMs, including Asus, Biostar, Sapphire, and Zotac, have announced new mining graphics cards that are tailored for cryptocurrency mining. We have also seen a new motherboard from Asrock that can support up to 13 GPUs for mining. Biostar has a similar board for AM4 CPUs that can support six GPUs. Although we haven't seen them yet, EVGA and MSI also have mining GPUs coming soon, and MSI will also have a motherboard designed for mining. Although these may be attractive to cryptocurrency miners, one source told us that they use the same GPU cores as traditional graphics cards, and thus don't address the underlying supply problem.

The shortages go all the way to the source. OEMs are reportedly having trouble getting GPU cores from Nvidia, and Nvidia can't get enough from TSMC. This is presumably the same situation for AMD and GlobalFoundries.

Previously: BitCoin, Ethereum and Gold
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40492978

Researchers have described new fossils belonging to an extinct crocodile-like creature that had a set of serrated teeth like those of a T. rex.

The animal was a top predator in Madagascar 170 million years ago, around the time dinosaurs roamed Earth. Its huge jaw and serrated teeth suggest that, like T. rex, it fed on hard animal tissue such as bone and tendon. It appears to be the earliest and biggest representative of a group of croc-like animals called Notosuchians.

The animal's scientific name is Razanandrongobe sakalavae, which means "giant lizard ancestor from Sakalava region".

Razanandrongobe sakalavae, a gigantic mesoeucrocodylian from the Middle Jurassic of Madagascar, is the oldest known notosuchian (open, DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3481) (DX)

Original Submission

martyb writes:

A story in WIRED, Researchers Found They Could Hack Entire Wind Farms, described authorized researchers' efforts and successes in infiltrating and manipulating not just a single wind turbine, but all others linked to it over an internal network.

On a sunny day last summer, in a vast cornfield somewhere in the large, windy middle of America, two researchers from the University of Tulsa stepped into an oven-hot, elevator-sized chamber within the base of a 300-foot-tall wind turbine. They'd picked the simple pin-and-tumbler lock on the turbine's metal door in less than a minute and opened the unsecured server closet inside.

Jason Staggs, a tall 28-year-old Oklahoman, quickly unplugged a network cable and inserted it into a Raspberry Pi minicomputer, the size of a deck of cards, that had been fitted with a Wi-Fi antenna. He switched on the Pi and attached another Ethernet cable from the minicomputer into an open port on a programmable automation controller, a microwave-sized computer that controlled the turbine. The two men then closed the door behind them and walked back to the white van they'd driven down a gravel path that ran through the field.

Staggs sat in the front seat and opened a MacBook Pro while the researchers looked up at the towering machine. Like the dozens of other turbines in the field, its white blades—each longer than a wing of a Boeing 747—turned hypnotically. Staggs typed into his laptop's command line and soon saw a list of IP addresses representing every networked turbine in the field. A few minutes later he typed another command, and the hackers watched as the single turbine above them emitted a muted screech like the brakes of an aging 18-wheel truck, slowed, and came to a stop.

[...] "They don't take into consideration that someone can just pick a lock and plug in a Raspberry Pi," Staggs says. The turbines they broke into were protected only by easily picked standard five-pin locks, or by padlocks that took seconds to remove with a pair of bolt cutters. And while the Tulsa researchers tested connecting to their minicomputers via Wi-Fi from as far as fifty feet away, they note they could have just as easily used another radio protocol, like GSM, to launch attacks from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11611/razer-files-for-ipo-in-hong-kong-to-raise-600-million

This week Razer has made a preliminary filing for IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company plans to raise $600 million for future growth, particularly in Asia. In addition, the funding is supposed to improve the company's overall march with investments in R&D as well as the brand. Razer's recent financial filings indicate Razer operated at a $20m profit in 2012-2013, but ran a loss of ~$70m in 2015-2016 because of multiple acquisitions as well as a tripling in R&D activities with a small uptick in revenue.

Razer started as a subsidiary of a computer peripheral maker Kärna in 1998 and quickly became famous for its Boomslang mouse designed specifically for FPS gamers and launched in 1999. Kärna ceased to exist in 2000 because of financial issues, but the Boomslang was so popular despite its price tag (which was high by the standards of the year 2000) that Terratec brought the Razer Boomslang back to market in 2003. Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff (who used to be the GM of Kärna back in the day) acquired rights to the IP and the brand sometime in 2005 and established Razer Inc., as we know it today. Initially, Razer focused on mice, but the company gradually expanded its product portfolio with keyboards, headsets and other peripherals. Sometime in 2009-2010, Razer began to hire engineers from PC companies like Dell and HP with an aim to develop actual systems and go beyond peripherals. Today, the company offers various gaming gear, laptops, co-developed Razer Edition PC systems, and licenses its designs to others. Meanwhile, Razer is always in pursuit to expand its lineup of products and their distribution.

Previously: Razer Acquires Ouya Software Assets, Ditches Hardware
Razer's New Blade Pro: Desktop Performance in 0.9 Inches and 8 Lbs
Razer Prototypes Stolen at CES

Original Submission

cafebabe writes:

The Associated Press newswire reports:

After three defendants fatally overdosed in a single week last year, it became clear that Buffalo's ordinary drug treatment court was no match for the heroin and painkiller crisis.

Now the city is experimenting with the nation's first opioid crisis intervention court, which can get users into treatment within hours of their arrest instead of days, requires them to check in with a judge every day for a month instead of once a week, and puts them on strict curfews. Administering justice takes a back seat to the overarching goal of simply keeping defendants alive.

[...] Buffalo-area health officials blamed 300 deaths on opioid overdoses in 2016, up from 127 two years earlier. That includes a young couple who did not make it to their second drug court appearance last spring. The woman's father arrived instead to tell the judge his daughter and her boyfriend had died the night before.

[...] "This 30-day thing is like being beat up and being asked to get in the ring again, and you're required to," 36-year-old Ron Woods said after one of his daily face-to-face meetings with City Court Judge Craig Hannah, who presides over the program.

Woods said his heroin use started with an addiction to painkillers prescribed after cancer treatments that began when he was 21. He was arrested on drug charges in mid-May and agreed to intervention with the dual hope of kicking the opioids that have killed two dozen friends and seeing the felony charges against him reduced or dismissed.

[...] "I don't want to die in the streets, especially with the fentanyl out there," Sammy Delgado, one of the handcuffed defendants, said.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/tesla-build-titanic-battery-facility

Tesla announced today that it will build the world's largest lithium-ion battery system to store electricity in Australia. The 100-megawatt installation—more than three times as powerful as the biggest existing battery system—will be paired with the Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, operated by the French renewable energy company Neoen, in a deal with the state of South Australia. The Tesla battery should smooth out the variability inherent in sustainable power generation schemes.

"Cost-effective storage of electrical energy is the only problem holding us back from getting all of our power from wind and solar," says Ian Lowe, an energy policy specialist at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, near Brisbane. The Tesla system, he says, will "demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale storage." It might also win over skeptics who doubt that renewables can match the dependability of conventional fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, says Geoffrey James, a renewable energy engineer at University of Technology Sydney.

[...] The battery installation will be a key feature of the state's aggressive move toward reliably generating half of its electricity from renewables by 2025. That drive suffered an image problem last September and again in February, when power blackouts hobbled the state. Conservative politicians were quick to blame South Australia's shift away from fossil fuels. "It's very easy to use a blackout to attack renewable energy," James says. Investigations concluded that the failures were not due to the reliance on renewables but rather to the collapse of transmission towers in one case and unexpected power demands in another. In addition to helping match renewable energy generation and use, James says, the battery facility's "high power capacity will be available in quick bursts" to keep the electricity's frequency in the right range in the event of grid disruptions and demand surges.

Also at BusinessInsider, The Washington Post, and Tesla.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11608/nokia-smartphones-to-exclusively-use-zeiss-optics

HMD Global and Zeiss on Thursday announced that they had signed an agreement under which upcoming Nokia-branded smartphones will use Zeiss-branded optics exclusively. The companies said that they would co-develop imaging capabilities of future handsets, but did not elaborate when to expect actual devices on the market.

The collaboration announcement between HMD and Zeiss has a number of layers, all of which seem to be significant. First off, Nokia's future phones will use optics co-developed with a renowned designer of lenses. The important upshot here is that HMD is actually investing in the development of custom capabilities for its Nokia phones. Second, the two companies are talking about "advancing the quality of the total imaging experience", involving optics, display quality, software, and services, but do not elaborate. From the announcement, it looks like HMD will put R&D efforts not only into optics but will design its own software enhancements to improve imaging capabilities beyond those offered by vanilla Android. A good news here is that certain future phones carrying the Nokia brand are not going to rely completely on off-the-shelf hardware, software, and reference designs. Third, HMD announced that imaging is one of the areas that it considers important for its future smartphones. Finally, Zeiss will be used on Nokia-branded devices exclusively, which means that future halo smartphones from Microsoft (if the company decides to launch them) will have to rely on other optics.

Previously: Nokia Smartphones to Return in 2017
Nokia (HMD Global) Attempting U.S. Comeback With Midrange Android Smartphones

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Privacy... when it comes to AT&T, it may once again come at a cost:

AT&T plans to reinstate their GigaPower pay-for-privacy scheme, as revealed by AT&T VP Robert Quinn in a recent interview with C-SPAN. In 2014, AT&T started offering GigaPower 300 Mbps fiber internet in cities around the United States. Users signing up had the option of paying $29 more per month to guarantee that AT&T doesn't snoop on your internet traffic and serve you advertisements and offers from their MITM position on your internet. Yes, they actually put a price on privacy and it's coming back. GigaOM discovered that $29 a month ($348 per year) isn't even the real price of buying your privacy back from AT&T – the total bill could run up to $800 per year.

How well would a VPN protect you from this, and at what cost in [in]convenience?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Here's an achievement that will have bioethicists reaching for their banhammers: the recreation of the horsepox virus using DNA ordered in the mail (from a German company):

Eradicating smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases in history, took humanity decades and cost billions of dollars. Bringing the scourge back would probably take a small scientific team with little specialized knowledge half a year and cost about $100,000.

That's one conclusion from an unusual and as-yet unpublished experiment performed last year by Canadian researchers. A group led by virologist David Evans of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says it has synthesized the horsepox virus, a relative of smallpox, from genetic pieces ordered in the mail. Horsepox is not known to harm humans—and like smallpox, researchers believe it no longer exists in nature; nor is it seen as a major agricultural threat. But the technique Evans used could be used to recreate smallpox, a horrific disease that was declared eradicated in 1980. "No question. If it's possible with horsepox, it's possible with smallpox," says virologist Gerd Sutter of Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.

Evans hopes the research—most of which was done by research associate Ryan Noyce—will help unravel the origins of a centuries-old smallpox vaccine and lead to new, better vaccines or even cancer therapeutics. Scientifically, the achievement isn't a big surprise. Researchers had assumed it would one day be possible to synthesize poxviruses since virologists assembled the much smaller poliovirus from scratch in 2002. But the new work—like the poliovirus reconstitutions before it—is raising troubling questions about how terrorists or rogue states could use modern biotechnology. Given that backdrop, the study marks "an important milestone, a proof of concept of what can be done with viral synthesis," says bioethicist Nicholas Evans—who's not related to David Evans—of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A federal judge has ruled that Utah's ban on secretly filming farm and slaughterhouse operations is unconstitutional:

[U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby] rejected the state's defense of the law, saying Utah had failed to show the ban was intended to ensure the safety of animals and farm workers from disease or injury.

In his ruling, Shelby noted that one of the bill's sponsors in the state legislature, Rep. John Mathis, said the ban was a response to "a trend nationally of some propaganda groups ... with a stated objective of undoing animal agriculture in the United States." The judge noted that another sponsor, Sen. David Hinkins said it targeted "vegetarian people that [are] trying to kill the animal industry."

Ag-gag is a term used to describe a class of anti-whistleblower laws that apply within the agriculture industry.

Previously: Dairy Lobbyist Crafted Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Legislation
Federal Judge Strikes Down Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Law

Original Submission