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takyon writes:

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/08/gentle-touch-nist-scientists-push-us-closer-flash-memory-successor

[Resistive random access memory (RRAM)] could form the basis of a better kind of nonvolatile computer memory, where data is retained even when the power is off. Nonvolatile memory is already familiar as the basis for flash memory in thumb drives, but flash technology has essentially reached its size and performance limits. For several years, the industry has been hunting for a replacement.

[...] One hurdle is its variability. A practical memory switch needs two distinct states, representing either a one or a zero, and component designers need a predictable way to make the switch flip. Conventional memory switches flip reliably when they receive a pulse of electricity, but we're not there yet with RRAM switches, which are still flighty.

[...] This randomness cuts into the technology's advantages, but in two recent papers, the research team has found a potential solution. The key lies in controlling the energy delivered to the switch by using multiple, short pulses instead of one long pulse.
Typically, chip designers have used relatively strong pulses of about a nanosecond in duration. The NIST team, however, decided to try a lighter touch—using less energetic pulses of 100 picoseconds, about a tenth as long. They found that sending a few of these gentler signals was useful for exploring the behavior of RRAM switches as well as for flipping them.

"Shorter pulses reduce the variability," Nminibapiel said. "The issue still exists, but if you tap the switch a few times with a lighter 'hammer,' you can move it gradually, while simultaneously giving you a way to check it each time to see if it flipped successfully."

Characteristics of Resistive Memory Read Fluctuations in Endurance Cycling (DOI: 10.1109/LED.2017.2656818) (DX)

Impact of RRAM Read Fluctuations on the Program-Verify Approach (DOI: 10.1109/LED.2017.2696002) (DX)

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

During the month of November 2017, approximately 90 days after the activation of Segregated Witnesses in the Bitcoin blockchain, a block between 1MB and 2MB in size will be generated by Bitcoin miners in a move to increase network capacity. At this point it is expected that more than 90% of the computational capacity that secures the Bitcoin network will carry on mining on top of this large block.

The upgrade to 2MB blocks has been agreed first during the Bitcoin Roundtable Consensus in Hong-Kong on February 2016, and then ratified by the Bitcoin Scaling Agreement in New York on May 2017. These agreements stipulate the activation of Segregated Witness support and an increase of the maximum base block size from 1MB to 2MB.

Segregated Witness support has been locked-in as a soft fork expected to activate around August 23 2017 (block height 481,824). Bitcoin clients that are not currently SegWit-compatible and wish to benefit from the new type of transaction must perform extensive upgrades to various subsystems, including changes to transaction serialization, signature hash computation, block weight calculation, scripting engine, block validation, a new address scheme, and P2P protocol upgrades. Fortunately Segregated Witness compatibility is opt-in, and existing Simplifed Payment Verification (SPV) wallets and full nodes are expected to continue working without changes after SegWit activates.

Be prepared.

Source: https://segwit2x.github.io/segwit2x-announce.html

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martyb writes:

Researchers at Linnaeus University report Why whisky tastes better when diluted with water:

Whisky is a chemically complicated beverage. After malting, mashing, fermentation, distillation and maturing, for at least three years in oak barrels, the whisky is bottled. However, first it is usually diluted to around 40% of alcohol by volume by the addition of water, which changes the taste significantly. For that same reason, whisky enthusiasts often add a little water in their glasses.

But why and how does water enhance the taste of whisky? Up until recently, no one had been able to answer this question, but now Björn Karlsson and Ran Friedman, researchers in chemistry at Linnaeus University, have solved a piece of the puzzle that will help us better understand the chemical qualities of whisky.

"The taste of whisky is primarily linked to so-called amphipathic molecules, which are made up of hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts. One such molecule is guaiacol, a substance that develops when the grain is dried over peat smoke when making malt whisky, providing the smoky flavour to the whisky", Karlsson explains.

Karlsson and Friedman carried out computer simulations of water/ethanol mixtures in the presence of guaiacol to study its interactions. They found that guaiacol was preferentially associated with ethanol molecules and that in mixtures with concentrations of ethanol up to 45% guaiacol was more likely to be present at the liquid-air interface than in the bulk of the liquid.

"This suggests that, in a glass of whisky, guaiacol will therefore be found near the surface of the liquid, where it contributes to both the smell and taste of the spirit. Interestingly, a continued dilution down to 27% resulted in an increase of guaiacol at the liquid-air interface. An increased percentage, over 59%, had the opposite effect, that is to say, the ethanol interacted more strongly with the guaiacol, driving the molecule into the solution away from the surface", Friedman continues.

Wikipedia: guaiacol.

The full-length, open-access report: http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41598-017-06423-5

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tonyPick writes:

Over at the excellent 99% Invisible is an article on the often lethal Victorian era defences against grave robbers:

Sometimes known as "resurrectionists," corpse thieves would exhume and sell bodies to doctors, medical instructors and students for anatomical study.

In response, an arsenal of grave-protecting devices began to hit the market, including the "cemetery gun." Locked, loaded and located near the foot of a grave, this device was essentially a conventional firearm on a swiveling based[sic]. Triggered by tripwires, it would spin and shoot would-be robbers approaching under cover of darkness.

The article links to a similar piece on Atlas Obscura.

"Sleep well sweet angel, let no fears of ghouls disturb thy rest, for above thy shrouded form lies a torpedo, ready to make minced meat of anyone who attempts to convey you to the pickling vat," read an advertisement for the Howell torpedo.

As the article notes these devices were oddities, which were probably not commercially successful or widely used, however:

these inventions provide a peculiar window into the curiosity, horror, and unease anatomical practice inspired among 19th-century society.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward has forwarded the following story:

The President of the University of Texas at Austin released a letter regarding the removal of statues on the campus.

[...] The University of Texas at Austin is a public educational and research institution, first and foremost. The historical and cultural significance of the Confederate statues on our campus — and the connections that individuals have with them — are severely compromised by what they symbolize. Erected during the period of Jim Crow laws and segregation, the statues represent the subjugation of African Americans. That remains true today for white supremacists who use them to symbolize hatred and bigotry.

The University of Texas at Austin has a duty to preserve and study history. But our duty also compels us to acknowledge that those parts of our history that run counter to the university's core values, the values of our state and the enduring values of our nation do not belong on pedestals in the heart of the Forty Acres.

The issue isn't a new one, they first looked into the issue in 2015, and had a wide range of options including effectively turning the mall into an open air museum, which they eventually decided against. Should the statues be relocated from their historical context just because of the attitudes and behaviour of noisy minorities? (Your humble editor cannot forget the local riots when a historical but hostile-themed statue was relocated.)

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

The Register has a story on a new technique which turns commodity devices with microphones and speakers into active sonar systems

The technique, called CovertBand, looks beyond the obvious possibility of using a microphone-equipped device for eavesdropping. It explores how devices with audio inputs and outputs can be turned into echo-location devices capable of calculating the positions and activities of people in a room.

In a paper [PDF] titled "CovertBand: Activity Information Leakage using Music," Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Alex Takakuwa, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Shyamnath Gollakota describe a way to transmit acoustic pulses in the 18‑20 kHz range, masked by music, from the speaker and tracking sound reflected by the human body using microphones

The project home page includes further details, and the paper details proof of concept implementations on an Android and Smart TV device, which demonstrate both accurate tracking, and the ability to infer information about what the target is doing.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

"Although today high levels of inequality in the United States remain a pressing concern for a large swath of the population, monetary policy and credit expansion are rarely mentioned as a likely source of rising wealth and income inequality. [...]

The rise in income inequality over the past 30 years has to a significant extent been the product of monetary policies fueling a series of asset price bubbles. Whenever the market booms, the share of income going to those at the very top increases.[...]

[F]inancial institutions benefit disproportionately from money creation, since they can purchase more goods, services, and assets for still relatively low prices. This conclusion is backed by numerous empirical illustrations. For instance, the financial sector contributed massively to the growth of billionaire's wealth"

Source: https://mises.org/library/how-central-banking-increased-inequality

I'll leave my comments as comments, but note that The Mises Institute is proudly, one might say almost by definition, Austrian School. Both the Institute and the School have had their fair share of criticism. Which of course doesn't mean that individual author is wrong on this particular matter. -- Ed.(FP)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story about Dota 2:

In the past hour or so, an AI bot crushed a noted professional video games player at Dota 2 in a series of one-on-one showdowns.

The computer player was built, trained and optimized by OpenAI, Elon Musk's AI boffinry squad based in San Francisco, California. In a shock move on Friday evening, the software agent squared up to top Dota 2 pro gamer Dendi, a Ukrainian 27-year-old, at the Dota 2 world championships dubbed The International.

The OpenAI agent beat Dendi in less than 10 minutes in the first round, and trounced him again in a second round, securing victory in a best-of-three match. "This guy is scary," a shocked Dendi told the huge crowd watching the battle at the event. Musk was jubilant.

OpenAI first ever to defeat world's best players in competitive eSports. Vastly more complex than traditional board games like chess & Go.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

According to OpenAI, its machine-learning bot was also able to pwn two other top human players this week: SumaiL and Arteezy. Although it's an impressive breakthrough, it's important to note this popular strategy game is usually played as a five-versus-five team game – a rather difficult environment for bots to handle.

[...] It's unclear exactly how OpenAI's bot was trained as the research outfit has not yet published any technical details. But a short blog post today describes a technique called "self-play" in which the agent started from scratch with no knowledge and was trained using supervised learning over a two-week period, repeatedly playing against itself. Its performance gets better over time as it continues to play the strategy game. It learns to predict its opponent's movements and pick which strategies are best in unfamiliar scenarios.

OpenAI said the next step is to create a team of Dota 2 bots that can compete or collaborate with human players in five-on-five matches. ®

Youtube Video

Also covered here (with more vids, including the bout in question):
Ars Technica: Elon Musk's Dota 2 AI beats the professionals at their own game
Technology Review: AI Crushed a Human at Dota 2 (But That Was the Easy Bit)
TechCrunch: OpenAI bot remains undefeated against world's greatest Dota 2 players

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

Over at FYFD is an interesting note on what those billowing clouds from rocket launches actually are :

If you've ever watched a rocket launch, you've probably noticed the billowing clouds around the launch pad during lift-off. What you're seeing is not actually the rocket's exhaust but the result of a launch pad and vehicle protection system known in NASA parlance as the Sound Suppression Water System. Exhaust gases from a rocket typically exit at a pressure higher than the ambient atmosphere, which generates shock waves and lots of turbulent mixing between the exhaust and the air. Put differently, launch ignition is incredibly loud, loud enough to cause structural damage to the launchpad and, via reflection, the vehicle and its contents.

To mitigate this problem, launch operators use a massive water injection system that pours about 3.5 times as much water as rocket propellant per second. This significantly reduces the noise levels on the launchpad and vehicle and also helps protect the infrastructure from heat damage. The exact physical processes involved – details of the interaction of acoustic noise and turbulence with water droplets – are still murky because this problem is incredibly difficult to study experimentally or in simulation. But, at these high water flow rates, there's enough water to significantly affect the temperature and size of the rocket's jet exhaust. Effectively, energy that would have gone into gas motion and acoustic vibration is instead expended on moving and heating water droplets. In the case of the Space Shuttle, this reduced noise levels in the payload bay to 142 dB – about as loud as standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

There's also more detail at Interesting Engineering and NASA.

[Update: corrected broken links.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-221&rn=news.xml&rst=6925

[Researchers] have a new model for explaining how clouds move and change shape in brown dwarfs, using insights from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Giant waves cause large-scale movement of particles in brown dwarfs' atmospheres, changing the thickness of the silicate clouds, researchers report in the journal Science. The study also suggests these clouds are organized in bands confined to different latitudes, traveling with different speeds in different bands.

"This is the first time we have seen atmospheric bands and waves in brown dwarfs," said lead author Daniel Apai, associate professor of astronomy and planetary sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

[...] "The atmospheric winds of brown dwarfs seem to be more like Jupiter's familiar regular pattern of belts and zones than the chaotic atmospheric boiling seen on the Sun and many other stars," said study co-author Mark Marley at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

Zones, spots, and planetary-scale waves beating in brown dwarf atmospheres (DOI: 10.1126/science.aam9848) (DX)

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

People with cracked touch screens or similar smartphone maladies have a new headache to consider: the possibility the replacement parts installed by repair shops contain secret hardware that completely hijacks the security of the device.

The concern arises from research that shows how replacement screens—one put into a Huawei Nexus 6P and the other into an LG G Pad 7.0—can be used to surreptitiously log keyboard input and patterns, install malicious apps, and take pictures and e-mail them to the attacker. The booby-trapped screens also exploited operating system vulnerabilities that bypassed key security protections built into the phones. The malicious parts cost less than $10 and could easily be mass-produced. Most chilling of all, to most people, the booby-trapped parts could be indistinguishable from legitimate ones, a trait that could leave many service technicians unaware of the maliciousness. There would be no sign of tampering unless someone with a background in hardware disassembled the repaired phone and inspected it.

The research, in a paper presented this week at the 2017 Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technologies, highlights an often overlooked disparity in smartphone security. The software drivers included in both the iOS and Android operating systems are closely guarded by the device manufacturers, and therefore exist within a "trust boundary." The factory-installed hardware that communicates with the drivers is similarly assumed to be trustworthy, as long as the manufacturer safeguards its supply chain. The security model breaks down as soon as a phone is serviced in a third-party repair shop, where there's no reliable way to certify replacement parts haven't been modified.

The researchers, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, wrote:

The threat of a malicious peripheral existing inside consumer electronics should not be taken lightly. As this paper shows, attacks by malicious peripherals are feasible, scalable, and invisible to most detection techniques. A well motivated adversary may be fully capable of mounting such attacks in a large scale or against specific targets. System designers should consider replacement components to be outside the phone's trust boundary, and design their defenses accordingly

Source: Ars Technica

Also covered at: Engadget.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Doctor Otto Octavius may have been a power-mad scientist bent on world domination and the utter ruin of his nemesis, Spider-Man, but the guy had some surprisingly cogent thoughts on prosthetics development. And although mind-controlled supernumerary robotic limbs like Doc Oc's still only exist in the realm of the Marvel Universe, researchers here in reality are getting pretty darn close to creating their own. And in the near future, we'll be strapping on extra appendages whenever we need a helping hand -- or supplemental third thumb.

Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) are not prosthetics. They are designed to supplement a person's existing full complement of limbs as opposed to replacing the lost functionality of a missing one. That's not to say that an amputee couldn't use one of these devices, simply that they're meant to be used as add-ons to human protuberances instead of stand-ins for them.

Don't expect to toss cars around like throw pillows while wearing an SRL rig. Well, not initially at least (keep those fingers crossed, though). Rather, they're built to help people perform tasks that would otherwise be irritating, difficult or outright impossible without them -- like twisting a doorknob while carrying armfuls of moving boxes or holding a ceiling panel in place while you nail it in. So, rather than get yourself a helper, you could soon instead get a pair of MIT's shoulder-mounted SRLs.

Source: EnGadget

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Anybody who hoped the troubled Bioware game Mass Effect: Andromeda would get some more single-player content should probably sit down. The game developer chose to deliver bad news to fans on Saturday evening via its official blog, confirming that it would not create any more "single-player or in-game story content" for the game.

If you're anxious to see the game's loose plot threads receive any resolution, you'll have to turn to other means. The game's existing 1.1 patch, which went live nearly three weeks ago, marked the end of any single-player changes, updates, or patches. Multiplayer modes will receive more "story-based APEX missions," Bioware says, and other stories, including those of the fate of the quarian ark, will be shuffled into "our upcoming comics and novels."

This confirms a DLC cancellation rumor dug up by Kotaku back in June. According to Kotaku's sources, EA had already bailed on plans for either add-on DLC or a full-fledged Andromeda 2 sequel after the game's lukewarm critical and commercial performance.

Source: Ars Technica

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers have improved the design of Cylindrical shaped Hall thrusters (CHTs), a type of ion drive used in spacecraft:

Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have created a new inlet design for Cylindrical shaped Hall thrusters (CHTs) that may significantly increase the thrust and allows spaceships to travel greater distances.

[...] The researchers injected the propellant into the cylindrical chamber of the thruster by a number of nozzles that usually point straight in, toward the center of the cylinder. The angle of the inlet nozzles changed slightly, sending the propellant into a rapid circular motion and creating a vortex in the channel.

They then simulated the motion of the plasma in the channel for both nozzle angles using modeling and analysis software called COMSOL that uses a finite element approach to modeling molecular flow.

This resulted in a gas density near the periphery of the channel is higher when the nozzles are tilted and the thruster is run in vortex mode.

According to the study, the vortex inlet increases the propellant utilization of the thruster by 3.12 percent to 8.81 percent, thrust by 1.1 percent to 53.5 percent, specific impulse by 1.1 percent to 53.5 percent, thrust-to-power ratio by 10 percent to 63 percent and anode efficiency by 1.6 percent to 7.3 percent, greatly improving the thruster performance.

More likely to be deployed than EmDrive.

Effect of vortex inlet mode on low-power cylindrical Hall thruster (open, DOI: 10.1063/1.4986007) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NASA site. Eclipse2017.org.

[Ed. addition] Please join in the comments with links to other sites that you have found. Also, what plans do you have, if any, for viewing the eclipse? Ignoring it? Getting together with friends? Traveling to get a better view? Would love to see comments with people's experiences of seeing the eclipse.

Also, I forgot where I'd seen it, but there was a suggestion to keep pets inside and away from windows, especially if you are where there is [nearly] total obscuration, as they may become confused and accidentally view the eclipse. I don't know about that. There seems to be quite a bit of wildlife that cannot go indoors during an eclipse and I'd never heard of large die-offs following an eclipse.

Maps for each of the United States showing the amount of obscuration at various points across the state and time of maximum obscuration.

Ars Technica story about what happens when you view an eclipse without protection.

The American Astronomical Society has a variety of resources at: https://eclipse.aas.org/

JAMA Ophthalmol journal article http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/2648904 (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2017.2936) explains damage that can come from viewing the sun directly:

Damage to the fovea in solar retinopathy (sometimes called photic retinopathy or solar retinitis) occurs in 2 ways and by 2 distinct physical mechanisms. The spectrum of sunlight contains a significant fraction of near-infrared radiation (700-1500 nm), which can cause direct thermal injury (burns) via heat. Because we cannot see this light, and the retina lacks nociceptive receptors to signal pain, damage can occur without our knowledge. However, the more pressing concern when viewing a solar eclipse is for visible light, which in excess causes photochemical toxicity through rapid accumulation of reactive oxygen species and free radicals. This is especially damaging to the retinal pigment epithelium and choroid, which contain an abundance of photoactive materials rife for oxidation: heme proteins, melanosomes, lipofuscin, and the like.

Sky & Telescope article http://www.skyandtelescope.com/2017-total-solar-eclipse/solar-partial-eclipse-rest/ general information on eclipses and some viewing suggestions.

Pinhole Astrophotography http://users.erols.com/njastro/barry/pages/pinhole.htm has a somewhat technical explanation of how you can design a device for projecting an image of the eclipsing sun. An example is provided where the author projected an image 24.1 cm in diameter at a distance of 25.9 meters from the tripod-mounted 5.9mm mirror 'pinhole'. (That's a BIG pin.)

[TMB Note]: One of the perks of living in Tennessee now is I'll be less than an hour's drive from the path of totality. The Roomie and I will be hauling some viewing glasses, five cameras, two phones, a cooler of water, and a pair of huge sammiches up to it to look for a good viewing/photographing spot in an hour or so. Expect at least a few good quality shots either this evening or by the morning, depending on how much offline life decides to keep me otherwise busy.

Any of you who beat me to the punch and can spare the bandwidth, feel free to post links to your own shots here. If you include a copyright release for us to do so, we may use them either in an update to this story or in a latter dedicated images story.

Enjoy the show and make sure not to burn your retinas out.

[Update]: Excuse the quality. My camera was confirmed to be a cheap piece of crap whilst The Roomie's was confirmed to be smarter than him. At least the auto-focus setting is smarter than him. And, lastly, excuse the lack of embedded video. It's been a long day and I can't be arsed to figure out how to get rehash to quit stripping the video tag out at the moment. Have a link to the video and be happy with it.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

USA Today has a story about a New Jersey couple who allegedly used a glitch in Lowes website to steal merchandise.

A New Jersey couple used a website glitch to try and get more than $258,000 worth of goods — everything from a gazebo to an air conditioner to a stainless steel grill — for free from a home improvement store, authorities said.

Ultimately, the couple was only able to secure nearly $13,000 worth of merchandise from Lowe's after exploiting "weaknesses" in the company's website to have the items shipped to their home in Brick for free, according to a release from the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.

Romela Velazquez, 24, was arrested and charged with theft by deception and computer criminal activity for accessing a computer system with the purpose to defraud. She attempted to get about $258,068 worth of unpaid merchandise from Lowe's, according to the release.

She actually received about $12,971 in stolen products, according to the release.

Her husband, Kimy Velazquez, 40, was charged with third-degree receipt of stolen property and fencing for his role in the alleged scheme.

The couple tried to sell some of the products on a local Facebook "buy and sell" group for half of the original sale price, listing the products as "new in box," authorities said.

According to an article on NJ.com, an attorney for the couple has stated that Velazquez is just an expert shopper, not a criminal hacker.

Jef Henninger, an attorney for Romela Velazquez, said his client is "the farthest thing from a computer hacker."

"Like many young mothers, she needs to stretch every dollar she can," Henninger said in a statement. "As a result, she has learned to spot good deals. These are the same deals that any of us can take advantage of, but most of us are too busy to learn how to spot them.

"Buying things at a big discount and selling them is not illegal. As a result, she maintains her innocence (and) looks forward to her day in court."

As far as I have been able to find, no technical details about the hack have been released.

One of the more interesting details that I did see was

Lowe's, makers of Ugg shoes and Victoria's Secret have been identified as victims so far – but many more retailers were also ripped off and will eventually be identified, officials said.

Who knew?

Additional coverage at the New York Post and BleepingComputer.

Original Submission