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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:46 | Votes:103

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-to-be-taken-lightly dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Physicists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) have accomplished a quantum leap in light research. They have managed to capture the behaviour of extremely short laser pulses during focusing by means of very high spatial and temporal resolution. The results are of fundamental relevance to understanding the interactions between light and matter and will make it possible to control electron movements and chemical reactions to an extent that was previously not feasible. These insights into fundamental physics will particularly profit further research into new radiation sources and in the field of light wave electronics. The researchers recently published their findings in the leading specialist journal 'Nature Physics'.*

Ultrashort light pulses with such a wide optical spectrum range that the beams appear white are in common use nowadays. Among other things they are used to examine the retina of the eye while in physics they are employed to control processes at the atomic level and analyse them in slow motion. In almost all these applications, the white laser pulses need to be focused. As it is the specific form of the light wave that determines how electrons, for example, will move within it, it is essential to know what the focused laser beam actually looks like in detail.

In order to better understand why, think of a ship in stormy seas. The helmsman not only has to know how high and how long the waves are but also has to keep an eye on incoming waves in order to know when they will hit the ship in order to find a safe path up to the crest of the wave on one side and down on the other. In the same way, it is important for researchers to know how and where the maximum of a light wave will strike electrons in an experiment or application in order to have a targeted influence on them. The changes to and propagation of light waves in an electrical field take place on a time scale of a few hundred attoseconds -- in other words, within one billionth of a billionth of a second. Until recently, it was not possible to measure the exact distribution of the wave troughs and peaks at the focus of a laser beam on this time scale.

-- submitted from IRC

Journal Reference: Dominik Hoff, Michael Krüger, Lothar Maisenbacher, A. M. Sayler, Gerhard G. Paulus, Peter Hommelhoff. Tracing the phase of focused broadband laser pulses. Nature Physics, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nphys4185


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @08:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the an-"Epyc"-battle dept.

AnandTech compared Intel's Skylake-SP chips to AMD's Epyc chips:

We can continue to talk about Intel's excellent mesh topology and AMD strong new Zen architecture, but at the end of the day, the "how" will not matter to infrastructure professionals. Depending on your situation, performance, performance-per-watt, and/or performance-per-dollar are what matters.

The current Intel pricing draws the first line. If performance-per-dollar matters to you, AMD's EPYC pricing is very competitive for a wide range of software applications. With the exception of database software and vectorizable HPC code, AMD's EPYC 7601 ($4200) offers slightly less or slightly better performance than Intel's Xeon 8176 ($8000+). However the real competitor is probably the Xeon 8160, which has 4 (-14%) fewer cores and slightly lower turbo clocks (-100 or -200 MHz). We expect that this CPU will likely offer 15% lower performance, and yet it still costs about $500 more ($4700) than the best EPYC. Of course, everything will depend on the final server system price, but it looks like AMD's new EPYC will put some serious performance-per-dollar pressure on the Intel line.

The Intel chip is indeed able to scale up in 8 sockets systems, but frankly that market is shrinking fast, and dual socket buyers could not care less.

Meanwhile, although we have yet to test it, AMD's single socket offering looks even more attractive. We estimate that a single EPYC 7551P would indeed outperform many of the dual Silver Xeon solutions. Overall the single-socket EPYC gives you about 8 cores more at similar clockspeeds than the 2P Intel, and AMD doesn't require explicit cross socket communication - the server board gets simpler and thus cheaper. For price conscious server buyers, this is an excellent option.

However, if your software is expensive, everything changes. In that case, you care less about the heavy price tags of the Platinum Xeons. For those scenarios, Intel's Skylake-EP Xeons deliver the highest single threaded performance (courtesy of the 3.8 GHz turbo clock), high throughput without much (hardware) tuning, and server managers get the reassurance of Intel's reliable track record. And if you use expensive HPC software, you will probably get the benefits of Intel's beefy AVX 2.0 and/or AVX-512 implementations.

AMD's flagship Epyc CPU has 32 cores, while the largest Skylake-EP Xeon CPU has 28 cores.

Quoted text is from page 23, "Closing Thoughts".

[Ed. note: Article is multiple pages with no single page version in sight.]

Previously: Google Gets its Hands on Skylake-Based Intel Xeons
Intel Announces 4 to 18-Core Skylake-X CPUs
AMD Epyc 7000-Series Launched With Up to 32 Cores
Intel's Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs Have Nasty Microcode Bug
AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-rocky-endeavor dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

After several years of secrecy, a company called Moon Express revealed the scope of its ambitions on Wednesday. And they are considerable. The privately held company released plans for a single, modular spacecraft that can be combined to form successively larger and more capable vehicles. Ultimately the company plans to establish a lunar outpost in 2020 and set up commercial operations on the Moon.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Moon Express says it is self-funded to begin bringing kilograms of lunar rocks back to Earth within about three years. "We absolutely intend to make these samples available globally for scientific research, and make them available to collectors as well," said Bob Richards, one of the company's founders, in an interview with Ars.

Moon Express was founded in 2010 to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which offered $20 million to the first privately funded team that lands a vehicle on the Moon, has it travel at least 500 meters, and transmits back high-definition images and video. The deadline for that prize is the end of 2017. While Moon Express says it has an outside chance to still claim the prize, its commercial ambitions now far exceed a simple, one-off lander.

At the center of the company's architecture is the the single stage MX-1 spacecraft that can deliver up to 30kg to the lunar surface. This vehicle is similar in size and shape to the R2-D2 droid from Star Wars, but a little bigger, Richards said. Launched inside a conventional rocket payload fairing, the MX-1 is powered by a single PECO rocket engine.

[...] The proposed hardware opens up a suite of missions on the lunar surface, three of which Moon Express said it has funding to support. The company's initial mission is "Lunar Scout," which seeks to become the first commercial voyage to the Moon. This will carry several payloads, including the International Lunar Observatory, "MoonLight" by the INFN National Laboratories of Frascati and the University of Maryland, and a Celestis memorial flight. This mission will also attempt to win the lunar XPRIZE.

The company's second proposed flight, the "Lunar Outpost" expedition, will seek to establish a lunar research outpost at the South Pole of the Moon. NASA and others are highly interested in the potential to turn water ice in shadowed lunar craters into rocket propellant. This lander will prospect for water and useful minerals, Richards said.

The third flight, "Harvest Moon", would take place by 2020 and will attempt to return a few kilograms of material from the surface of the Moon. In this scenario, a single MX spacecraft would serve as an ascent vehicle from the lunar surface, and re-enter Earth's atmosphere to land in the ocean or on land. "The sample return mission is justifiable for commercial purposes, we are expecting to self fund that," Richards said.

How much are lunar rocks worth? Quite a lot. NASA has never sold any of the 842 pounds of lunar material its six Apollo missions returned from the Moon. However, in 1970, the Soviet Union launched the robotic Luna 16 mission, which succeeded in returning 101 grams of material from the surface of the Moon. A fraction of this material made it to the open market.

In 1993, Sotheby's auctioned off 0.2 grams of these Soviet rocks in three holders (each with a magnifying glass to see the specks of lunar dust). This auction raised $442,500 in total, and is the only data point we have for the value of material returned directly to Earth from the Moon, said Robert Pearlman editor of the space history site CollectSpace.com.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the twice-as-bright dept.

Exoplanets that orbit a star that is part of a multiple star system may have lower densities than previously estimated:

In the search for planets similar to our own, an important point of comparison is the planet's density. A low density tells scientists a planet is more likely to be gaseous like Jupiter, and a high density is associated with rocky planets like Earth. But a new study suggests some are less dense than previously thought because of a second, hidden star in their systems.

As telescopes stare at particular patches of sky, they can't always differentiate between one star and two. A system of two closely orbiting stars may appear in images as a single point of light, even from sophisticated observatories such as NASA's Kepler space telescope. This can have significant consequences for determining the sizes of planets that orbit just one of these stars, says a forthcoming study in the Astronomical Journal by Elise Furlan of Caltech/IPAC-NExScI in Pasadena, California, and Steve Howell at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

[...] Previous studies determined that roughly half of all the sun-like stars in our sun's neighborhood have a companion within 10,000 astronomical units (an astronomical unit is equal to the average distance between the sun and Earth, 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers). Based on this, about 15 percent of stars in the Kepler field could have a bright, close companion -- meaning planets around these stars may be less dense than previously thought.

[...] In the new study, Furlan and Howell focused on 50 planets in the Kepler observatory's field of view whose masses and radii were previously estimated. These planets all orbit stars that have stellar companions within about 1,700 astronomical units. For 43 of the 50 planets, previous reports of their sizes did not take into account the contribution of light from a second star. That means a revision to their reported sizes is necessary.

At least 5 of the 50 studied exoplanets could have a substantially lower density than previously reported. NASA cartoon explaining the problem.

This study examined exoplanets that orbit one star, but there are also circumbinary planets that orbit two stars.


Original Submission

posted by CoolHand on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the backup-jar dept.

For some reason the state of Nevada underestimated the demand that would be generated by recreationally legal weed. Alcohol distributors appear to be at fault rather than it being an issue of cultivator supply. There are hundreds of growers with crops ready to go but due to an agreement with the state's alcohol distributors, for the first 18 months of legalization only they are allowed to transport weed from cultivation centers to stores. Since the law went into effect on July 1st the state has only received about half a dozen applications for a transport license.

Nevada officials have declared a state of emergency over marijuana: There's not enough of it.

Since recreational pot became legal two weeks ago, retail dispensaries have struggled to keep their shelves stocked and say they will soon run out if nothing is done to fix a broken supply chain.

"We didn't know the demand would be this intense," Al Fasano, cofounder of Las Vegas ReLeaf, said Tuesday. "All of a sudden you have like a thousand people at the door....We have to tell people we're limited in our products."

In declaring a state of emergency late last week, the state Department of Taxation warned that "this nascent industry could grind to a halt."

As bad as that would be for marijuana consumers and the pot shops, the state has another concern: tax revenue. A 10% tax on sales of recreational pot — along with a 15% tax on growers — is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for schools and the state's general fund reserves.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the nobody-reads-the-fine-print dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Exposure to a common visual illusion may enhance your ability to read fine print, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"We discovered that visual acuity -- the ability to see fine detail -- can be enhanced by an illusion known as the 'expanding motion aftereffect' -- while under its spell, viewers can read letters that are too small for them to read normally," says psychological scientist Martin Lages of the University of Glasgow.

Visual acuity is normally thought to be dictated by the shape and condition of the eye but these new findings suggest that it may also be influenced by perceptual processes in the brain.

Interest in the intersection between perception and reality led Lages and co-authors Stephanie C. Boyle (University of Glasgow) and Rob Jenkins (University of York) to wonder about visual illusions and how they might affect visual acuity.

"The expanding motion aftereffect can make objects appear larger than they really are and our question was whether this apparent increase in size could bring about the visual benefits associated with actual increases in size," Boyle explains. "In particular, could it make small letters easier to read?"

Journal Reference: Martin Lages, Stephanie C. Boyle, Rob Jenkins. Illusory Increases in Font Size Improve Letter Recognition. Psychological Science, 2017; 095679761770539 DOI: 10.1177/0956797617705391

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the queue-the-lawyer-jokes-in-3-2-1 dept.

A chatbot-"ai"-lawyer keeps filing appeals against parking tickets and similar minor offenses. The author claims it has defeated an estimated 375,000 parking tickets by now -- defeated or appealed? Is every appeal a sure win with this bot-created-paperwork? Do people even contact lawyers to fight parking tickets? Isn't the lawyer fee almost always going to be higher than the fine? Sure, it might be about the good fight and standing up for what is right, etc. but still.

After reading the story I'm still unsure what the actual AI part of the chatbot is, it seems to just be one big decision-tree. But I guess that doesn't get as much press as claiming you have invented a lawyer-AI.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal-donotpay-us-uk


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @11:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the semi-news dept.

Tesla has been in the news a lot in the last week, with their Model 3 going into production, and their announcement of the world's largest lithium-ion battery storage project in South Australia.

The latest news is unofficial, but from generally reliable sources. A website called Teslarati has published screenshots from Kim of the Like Tesla YouTube channel, which seem to indicate that she and other top referrers are now being offered discounts on "a Founder's Series next gen Roadster" as part of Tesla's referral program. If true this would seem to indicate Tesla formally taking a step forward in the level of their commitment to actually going ahead with this vehicle. They stopped producing their original Roadster in 2012, the same year they started delivering their Model S to customers.

There is also speculation online that the Next Gen Roadster will be one of the "few other things" to be mentioned at the unveiling of the Tesla Semi in late September, as alluded to by Elon Musk (Tesla's CEO) at a shareholder meeting last month.


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Thursday July 13 2017, @09:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the national-prison dept.

According to the Associated Press, which first reported[1] the plan on Wednesday, facial-scanning pilot programs are already underway at six American airports—Boston, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, New York City, and Washington DC. More are set to expand next year.

In a recent privacy assessment, DHS noted that the "only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling."

In recent years, facial recognition has become more common amongst federal and local law enforcement: a 2016 Georgetown study found that half of adult Americans are already in such biometric databases.

[1] The Associated Press article is reprinted at ABC News. Articles at hosted.ap.org can mysteriously break.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the Little-Jack-Horner-Approved dept.

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Dani Clode is a grad student at London's Royal College of Art (RCA) and her latest creation is something called The Third Thumb: a 3D-printed prosthetic that does exactly what its name suggests....

Dani Clode is a grad student at London's Royal College of Art (RCA) and her latest creation is something called The Third Thumb: a 3D-printed prosthetic that does exactly what its name suggests. "The origin of the word 'prosthesis' meant 'to add, put on to,' so not to fix or replace, but to extend," Clode told Dezeen. "The Third Thumb is inspired by this word origin, exploring human augmentation and aiming to reframe prosthetics as extensions of the body."

It's absolutely unnecessary stuff, and I love it.

The thumb straps on to the side of your hand, and connects to a bracelet containing wires and servos. The wearer controls it using pressure sensors that sit under the soles of their feet. If they press down with one foot the thumb will make a grasping movement, with these instructions sent to the wrist unit via Bluetooth. It sounds a bit fiddly, but Clode says people pick it up pretty quickly. It's no more complex than, say, steering a car and operating the brake and accelerator at the same time.

I doubt it will catch on, but I think it's interesting. Human augmentation of any type may be fraught with perils (and not generally condoned by society) but I still think the topic is fascinating fodder for both science and science fiction.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/6/15927362/3d-printed-prosthetic-third-thumb-dani-clode


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the shipshape dept.

China has sent two warships to the Republic of Djibouti in Africa, where it will open its first overseas naval base:

China has dispatched troops to Djibouti in advance of formally establishing the country's first overseas military base. Two Chinese Navy warships left the port of Zhanjiang on Tuesday, taking an undisclosed number of military personnel on the journey across the Indian Ocean.

An editorial Wednesday in the state-run Global Times stressed the importance of the new Djibouti facility -- in the strategically located Horn of Africa -- to the Chinese military. "Certainly this is the People's Liberation Army's first overseas base and we will base troops there. It's not a commercial resupply point... This base can support Chinese Navy to go farther, so it means a lot," said the paper.

The Global Times said the main role of the base would be to support Chinese warships operating in the region in anti-piracy and humanitarian operations. "It's not about seeking to control the world," said the editorial.

Also at The Atlantic and Xinhua (newer article).

Related: A Small Secret Airstrip in Africa is the Future of America's Way of War


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:00AM   Printer-friendly

New Natural Selection: How Scientists Are Altering DNA to Genetically Engineer New Forms of Life

Before human beings wrote books or did math or composed music, we made leather. There is evidence hunter-gatherers were wearing clothes crafted from animal skins hundreds of thousands of years ago, while in 2010 archaeologists digging in Armenia found what they believed to be the world's oldest leather shoe, dating back to 3,500 B.C. (It was about a women's size 7.) For a species sadly bereft of protective fur, being able to turn the skin of cows or sheep or pigs into clothing with the help of curing and tanning would have been a lifesaving advance, just like other vital discoveries Homo sapiens made over the course of history: the development of grain crops like wheat, the domestication of food animals like chickens, even the all-important art of fermentation. In each case, human beings took something raw from the natural world—a plant, an animal, a microbe—and with the ingenuity that has enabled us to dominate this planet, turned it into a product.

[...] Modern Meadow's microbes can produce collagen much faster than it would take to raise a cow or sheep from birth, and the company can work with brands to design entirely new materials from the cell level up. "It's biology meets engineering," says Andras Forgacs, the co-founder and CEO of Modern Meadow. "We diverge from what nature does, and we can design it and engineer it to be anything we want."\

That is the promise of synthetic biology, a technology that is poised to change how we feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, fuel ourselves—and possibly even change our very selves. While scientists have for decades been able to practice basic genetic engineering—knocking out a gene or moving one between species—and more recently have learned to rapidly read and sequence genes, now researchers can edit genomes and even write entirely original DNA. That gives scientists incredible control over the fundamental code that drives all life on Earth, from the most basic bacterium to, well, us. "Genetic engineering was like replacing a red light bulb with a green light bulb," says James Collins, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of synthetic biology's early pioneers. "Synthetic biology is introducing novel circuitry that can control how the bulbs turn off and on."

The article discusses a number of topics, including microbe-grown collagen for leather, Genome Project-write, synthetic cells, a company using yeast to make perfumes and other products, and the falling (but still high) cost of DNA synthesis.

Related: Project to Synthesise Genes Mooted
Scientists Engineer First Semisynthetic Organism With Three-base-pair DNA
Scientists Create Independent Synthetic Cell With Smallest Known Genome


Original Submission

posted by NCommander on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the bit-late-to-the-party dept.

We're a bit late to the party, but for those who haven't seen on the Internet, today is a protest day for Net Neutrality, where sites across the internet are disrupting their normal operations to get the word out and get people to send a message. Ars Technica already has a fairly decent summary of who's doing what, and we stand with them and the rest of the Internet.

Due to real life issues, I was late on getting this together, but for the rest of the day, this article will remain on the top of the page and we will be blacking the theme of the site in protest [Technical issues among others precluded our doing so today --martyb].

If you're a US citizen, and want to get the word out, check Battle for the Net, and get the word out. In addition, there are long discussions going on reddit and other sites throughout the internet

Let's get the word out!

~ NCommander

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 12 2017, @09:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the switching-to-mac dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called on Europe to stop demonstrating generosity towards asylum seekers to avoid an overwhelming migrant influx. He also advises European states to make Africans' way to the continent much more difficult.

During an interview Germany's Welt am Sonntag, Gates, one of the richest people on the planet, warned of the grave consequences of exceeding generosity towards refugees coming to Europe, whose numbers would only rise unless something is done.

"On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees, but the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this – which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa," Gates said.

While Germany has been one of the pioneers of the open door policy, it cannot "take in the huge, massive number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe." Thus Gates advised European nations to take action in order to make it "more difficult for Africans to reach the continent via the current transit routes."

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/395356-migrants-overwhelm-europe-gates/


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 12 2017, @07:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the rocky-way-to-start-research dept.

Remember when we discussed Rocks Request Rejection issue back in May? The discussion was nothing if not spirited.

Andrew Snelling, who got a PhD in geology before joining Answers in Genesis, continues working to interpret the canyon in a way that is consistent with his views. In 2013, he requested permission from the National Park Service to collect some rock samples in the canyon for a new project to that end.
...
The National Park Service sent Snelling's proposal out for review, having three academic geologists who study the canyon look at it. Those reviews were not kind. Snelling didn't get his permit. Snelling sued.

Well It turns out the guy gets to harvest his bag-o-rocks because the the National Park Service has decided its easier to give a few rocks than take the religious flack.

That lawsuit was withdrawn by Snelling on June 28. According to a story in The Australian, Snelling withdrew his suit because the National Park Service has relented and granted him his permit. He will be able to collect about 40 fist-sized samples, provided that he makes the data from any analyses freely available.

Further he promises to publish his findings in a peer reviewed journal. Perhaps even his own journal. Perhaps even his own peers.


Original Submission