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takyon writes:

One of Silicon Valley's most infamous recent startups is shutting down:

Juicero, the company that made its name by creating a proprietary juice-squeezing machine, is shutting down. The announcement comes from Juicero's website. In its post, the company writes that it is suspending the sale of both its juice packets and its Juicero Press device. The last juice packet delivery will occur next week. All customers have up to 90 days to request a refund for their purchase of the Juicero Press, regardless of when they bought it. Fortune reports that employees are being given 60 days notice.

Previously: Juicero Squeezed by Press and Internet

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

ArsTechnica has an interesting article about research being done into the waterworks of ancient Rome and how the amount of lead used seems to track with the rise and fall of Rome's fortunes.

The ancient Roman plumbing system was a legendary achievement in civil engineering, bringing fresh water to urbanites from hundreds of kilometers away. Wealthy Romans had hot and cold running water, as well as a sewage system that whisked waste away. Then, about 2200 years ago, the waterworks got an upgrade: the discovery of lead pipes (called fistulae in Latin) meant the entire system could be expanded dramatically. The city's infatuation with lead pipes led to the popular (and disputed) theory that Rome fell due to lead poisoning. Now, a new study reveals that the city's lead plumbing infrastructure was at its biggest and most complicated during the centuries leading up to the empire's peak.

Hugo Delile, an archaeologist with France's National Center for Scientific Research, worked with a team to analyze lead content in 12-meter soil cores taken from Rome's two harbors: the ancient Ostia (now 3km inland) and the artificially-created Portus. In a recent paper for Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the researchers explain how water gushing through Rome's pipes picked up lead particles. Runoff from Rome's plumbing system was dumped into the Tiber River, whose waters passed through both harbors. But the lead particles quickly sank in the less turbulent harbor waters, so Delile and his team hypothesized that depositional layers of lead in the soil cores would correlate to a more extensive network of lead pipes.

[...] Because it was so expensive, the city's plumbing system is a good proxy for Rome's fortunes. In their soil core from Ostia, Delile and his team even discovered evidence of the Roman Empire's horrific civil wars during the first century BCE. As war sucked gold from the state's coffers, there was no money to build new aqueducts nor to repair existing ones.

[...] Once the city had recovered from the hardships of the wars, the researchers saw a steady increase in lead over the years that span the Empire's height during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.

[...] Delile and his colleagues saw the slow decline of Rome in the Ostia soil core, too. There was a strong drop in lead after the mid-3rd century CE, when the researchers note "no more aqueducts were built, and maintenance was on a smaller scale." They add that this phase of "receding [lead] contamination corresponds to the apparent decline of [lead] and [silver] mining and of overall economic activity in the Roman Empire."

PNAS, 2017. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706334114

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The World Health Organization sets a list of medical conditions into well-used code called the "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems," or ICD for short. The official alphanumeric ciphers are used in medical records and insurance claims worldwide, noting the wide range of ailments and conditions a human may experience—everything from "tuberculosis" and "gastric ulcers" to "struck by orca" and "burn due to water skis on fire."

The latter categories of unusual and puzzlingly specific conditions even inspired the 2014 book Struck by Orca: ICD-10 Illustrated.

But how often are these peculiar codes actually used? An insurance data company did the work to find out. The most bizarre ICD codes listed in the 2014 book, such as the title "struck by orca," were not used in the US in the last 12 months, which is both good and disappointing. But codes just slightly less bizarre were used—some quite a lot, such as W503: "accidental bite by another person."

You'll have to read the fine article to enjoy the rest, but the author does close the article with this little bit:

Of course, codes with such few uses may suffer from just transcription error, Amino notes. Still, be careful out there, especially around cows, sword fights, power tools, and pedestrian obstacles.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Comcast has sued the state of Vermont to try to avoid a requirement to build 550 miles of new cable lines.

Comcast's lawsuit against the Vermont Public Utility Commission (VPUC) was filed Monday in US District Court in Vermont and challenges several provisions in the cable company's new 11-year permit to offer services in the state. One of the conditions in the permit says that "Comcast shall construct no less than 550 miles of line extensions into un-cabled areas during the [11-year] term."

Comcast would rather not do that. The company's court complaint says that Vermont is exceeding its authority under the federal Cable Act while also violating state law and Comcast's constitutional rights:

The VPUC claimed that it could impose the blanket 550-mile line extension mandate on Comcast because it is the "largest" cable operator in Vermont and can afford it. These discriminatory conditions contravene federal and state law, amount to undue speaker-based burdens on Comcast's protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution... and deprive Comcast and its subscribers of the benefits of Vermont law enjoyed by other cable operators and their subscribers without a just and rational basis, in violation of the Common Benefits Clause of the Vermont Constitution.

[...] Comcast previously asked the VPUC to reconsider the conditions, but the agency denied the request. (Vermont Public Radio posted the documents that we've linked to and published a story on the lawsuit yesterday.)

Comcast entered Vermont by purchasing Adelphia in 2005, despite already being aware of state procedures that ascribe great importance "to building out cable networks to unserved areas to meet community needs," the VPUC's denial said.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/comcast-sues-vermont-to-avoid-building-550-miles-of-new-cable-lines/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

One or more hackers have been stealing celebrities' e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information by exploiting a bug on Instagram's servers, the company said Thursday.

Researchers from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab said they recently spotted hackers in an underground forum advertising unnamed celebrities' personal details. In an e-mail, a Kaspersky Lab representative said the researchers privately reported a data-leaking bug to Instagram. The Kaspersky Lab researchers went on to say that exploiting the bug was "quite labor intensive" because each attack had to be done manually rather than using an automated script to bypass mathematical calculations Instagram performs to prevent abuse.

To exploit the bug, according to Kaspersky Lab, attackers used the outdated Instagram mobile app—specifically version 8.5.1, which was released last year—to select the password-reset option. To capture the request, the attackers sent it to a Web proxy rather than the real Instagram servers. The attackers then modified the captured request to substitute the username sent to the Web proxy with the username of targeted celebrities. The Instagram server would then send a JSON-formatted response that included the target's personal information. While the hackers used the outdated app to exploit the bug, the attack worked against all Instagram users, regardless of the app version they used.

A representative from the Facebook-owned photo-sharing service, meanwhile, said the exploited flaw resided in an Instagram programming interface. The representative said Instagram officials know of at least one person who actively exploited the bug.

According to Metro, this bug was also responsible for the hack into Selena Gomez's Instagram account earlier this week.

Instagram did note that no passwords were leaked as a result of this hack.

Sigh. Another day, another hack.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

This week, diesel truck engine company Cummins made an unusual announcement. In addition to several new high-efficiency diesel engines, it also showed off an all-electric truck called the Concept Class 7 Urban Hauler EV. The truck is just a concept at the moment, but it's coming in the nick of time—just as Tesla is about to announce its own semi EV.

The 18,000-pound tractor cab, built by Roush, comes with a 140kWh battery and is capable of hauling a 22-ton trailer. According to Forbes, Cummins hopes to be able to sell its battery to truck and bus manufacturers by 2019. Forbes says the truck can run for 100 miles and be recharged in an hour, although Cummins is allegedly working on improving the battery so that by 2020, that recharge time is reduced to 20 minutes.

In a press release, Cummins also said that its EV would come with a diesel-engine generator that could extend the range of the battery to 300 miles, which would offer 50-percent fuel savings compared to straight diesel trucks.

Cummins' news comes just after Reuters reported that Tesla's electric semis will likely have a range of 200 to 300 miles and come with autonomous functions. The trucking industry is a major polluter, and electrification is seen as an important component in reducing greenhouse gases from that sector, in addition to implementing fuel efficiency measures.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/08/ahead-of-tesla-semis-cummins-shows-off-all-electric-powertrain-concept/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Hubble Space Telescope observations suggest that the exoplanets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 in the habitable zone could have water on their surfaces, while the planets closer to the star have likely lost any surface water they may have had:

An international team of scientists, led by Swiss astronomer Vincent Bourrier of the Observatoire de l'Université de Genève, used the [Hubble] space telescope to study the amount of ultraviolet light hitting the planets and measure the amount of hydrogen these worlds are venting into space. The results suggest the innermost planets, TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c, could have lost as much as 20 Earth-oceans-worth of water in the last eight billion years. The outer planets, however, including e, f, and g, which orbit in the habitable zone, would have lost less water, and could still retain vast stores of liquid water on the surface.

[...] The researchers used Hubble to measure the amount of ambient hydrogen floating around the TRAPPIST-1 planets as well as the intensity of ultraviolet light coming from the host star, an ultracool dwarf star. The amount of ultraviolet radiation coming from TRAPPIST-1 suggests the inner planets could have lost an enormous amount of water over the eons, something that is supported by the abundant hydrogen surrounding the planets—a possible indicator of water vapor. Most importantly, the radiation hitting the outer planets and the amount of hydrogen surrounding them suggests these worlds, similar to Earth in many ways, might still retain atmospheric water vapor and even liquid water on the surface.

[...] Whether or not these planets could actually support life is still an open question. First of all, the observations from Hubble are not conclusive, and further observations from other observatories as well as computer simulations are required to support or dispute the possibility of water on the TRAPPIST-1 planets.

"While our results suggest that the outer planets are the best candidates to search for water with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, they also highlight the need for theoretical studies and complementary observations at all wavelengths to determine the nature of the TRAPPIST-1 planets and their potential habitability," says Bourrier.

Also at Hubble News and Space.com.

Temporal Evolution of the High-Energy Irradiation and Water Content of TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Thursday he has sent recommendations from his review of more than two dozen national monuments to President Donald Trump, indicating that some could be scaled back to allow for more hunting and fishing and economic development.

The recommendations follow a 120-day study of 27 national monuments across the country, created by presidents since 1996, that Trump ordered in April as part of his broader effort to increase development on federal lands.

The review has cheered energy, mining, ranching and timber advocates but has drawn widespread criticism and threats of lawsuits from conservation groups and the outdoor recreation industry.

There were fears that Zinke would recommend the outright elimination of some of the monuments on the list, but on Thursday, speaking to the Associated Press in Billings, Montana, he said he will not recommend eliminating any.

Zinke said in a statement that the recommendations would "provide a much needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands for hunting and fishing, economic development, traditional uses, and recreation." He did not specify which monuments he plans to recommend be scaled back.

The Associated Press reported that Zinke said he would recommend changing the boundaries for a "handful" of sites.

If you're taking millions of acres off the table for one site, you fail at knowing the definition of a monument.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-monuments-idUSKCN1B41YA

Also at RT, CNN, The Washington Post and The Hill.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Positive Technologies has posted an interesting article about disabling the Intel Management Engine 11 via an undocumented mode.

Our team of Positive Technologies researchers has delved deep into the internal architecture of Intel Management Engine (ME) 11, revealing a mechanism that can disable Intel ME after hardware is initialized and the main processor starts. In this article, we describe how we discovered this undocumented mode and how it is connected with the U.S. government's High Assurance Platform (HAP) program.

[...] Intel Management Engine is a proprietary technology that consists of a microcontroller integrated into the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) chip and a set of built-in peripherals. The PCH carries almost all communication between the processor and external devices; therefore Intel ME has access to almost all data on the computer. The ability to execute third-party code on Intel ME would allow for a complete compromise of the platform.

[...] Unfortunately, analysis of Intel ME 11 was previously impossible because the executable modules are compressed by Huffman codes with unknown tables. Nonetheless, our research team (Dmitry Sklyarov, Mark Ermolov, and Maxim Goryachy) managed to recover these tables and created a utility for unpacking images. The utility is available on our GitHub page.

Hey, the government isn't the only one who wants "high assurance" for their computers. We trolls and average peons would like to think our systems are secure as well.

But it gets better.

tonyPick writes:

Spotted at Andrew Plotkin's blog is an interesting article on the two word control panel in the original Apollo Guidance Computer, which talks about the use of "VERB" and "NOUN" controls on the original instrument panel.

This then links to a Discover Magazine Article How Verbs and Nouns Got Apollo to the Moon, which describes how the Apollo astronauts interacted with the guidance computer by:

[...] entering Noun-Verb combination commands in lieu of a string of written words. To keep it simple, the commands were written out in short hand. For example, V37N31E stood for Verb 37 Noun 31 and Enter to get the program running.

[...] It might not seem like it, but the Noun-Verb arrangement and verbiage comes from the fact that the computer engineers who built and used the Apollo guidance computer were also inventing it as they went along. They didn't have backgrounds in computer engineering because the field didn't exist then as it does today. But they all spoke English, so carrying over the same language structure simplified things for everyone. It's a perfect example of the brilliant simplicity that went into so much engineering of the Apollo era.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Wells Fargo previously admitted that employees opened around 2.1 million unauthorized bank accounts in customers' names. Now that number could rise to 3.5 million:

Nearly a year after Wells Fargo's fraudulent account scandal burst into public view, the bank said it had turned up more than a million additional accounts that customers may not have authorized.

The news set off a fresh wave of criticism from those frustrated by the bank's slow pace in coming clean about its misdeeds. "Every time we get one of these announcements, the pressure rises," said Nancy Bush, a banking industry analyst who runs NAB Research. "How many customers, and how many employees within Wells Fargo, are coming to the conclusion, 'I don't need to be associated with this'?"

The findings brought the number of potentially unauthorized accounts to 3.5 million — a nearly 70 percent increase over the bank's initial estimate.

Wells Fargo agreed last September to pay $185 million to settle three government lawsuits over the bank's creation of sham accounts. Thousands of employees, trying to meet aggressive sales goals, had created accounts in customers' names without their knowledge. Workers who met the bank's sales targets received bonuses — and those who did not risked losing their jobs. At the time, Wells Fargo said that 2.1 million suspect accounts had been opened from 2011 to mid-2015. But it also acknowledged at the time that the problems may have begun earlier, and said it would expand its review to include accounts opened from 2009 to 2016.

Also at NPR, Reuters, and Bloomberg.
Statement from Wells Fargo.

Previously: Wells Fargo Fined Over Unauthorized Accounts
Wells Fargo Likely Hurt Customers' Credit Scores; Labor Department Launches Review

Original Submission

takyon writes:

An Indian launch to replace a faulty IRNSS satellite (India's version of GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, et al.) has failed:

On Aug. 31, 2017, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched its latest navigation satellite. During the flight, however, the payload fairing did not separate several minutes after liftoff like it was supposed to, leaving the spacecraft trapped inside the clamshell-like aerodynamic nose cone.

With the payload fairing (sometimes called the heat shield) still attached, that meant unneeded weight continued to travel uphill with the rocket. This caused the rocket to reach a lower than planned orbit of about 103 miles (167 kilometers) by 4,073 miles (6,555 kilometers). But worse, because the spacecraft was still encapsulated, the satellite was unable to be deployed away from the launch vehicle.

"During the flight, the heat shield has not separated," the operations director said after the navigation satellite was supposed to have deployed. "Further analysis will be carried out subsequently."

This was the eighth satellite launched for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). The IRNSS-1H satellite was meant to be a replacement for another satellite, IRNSS-1A, that was launched with faulty equipment in 2013. It was in July 2016 when the first of IRNSS-1A's three Rubidium atomic clocks failed. The other two were followed shortly after rendering the spacecraft useless for navigation purposes.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports

A new WebExtension version of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin was [uploaded on August 31] to Mozilla's official add-ons repository for Firefox.

The new version is compatible with Firefox's new WebExtensions standard for extensions, and will as such continue to work when Firefox 57 gets released.

This first official release of the WebExtensions version of uBlock Origin works for the most part just like the legacy add-on version.

Users may experience issues however when they upgrade from the legacy version of the add-on to the new version.

Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin suggests that 32-bit users of Firefox stay on version 1.13.8 of the add-on until these issues are resolved.

[Workarounds for storage limit bug for extra filter lists and custom settings described]

[...] Additional information [is] available on uBlock Origin's Mozilla AMO page, and the GitHub project site.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/something-changing-sex-costa-rican-crocodiles

After probing and peering at the genitalia of nearly 500 crocodiles in Palo Verde, [Chris] Murray and his colleagues found something odd: The sex ratio was way out of whack, with males outnumbering females four to one among hatchling crocs. What's more, the animals' tissues were tainted with a synthetic steroid, which the researchers suspect was causing them to switch sex.

The hormone, 17α-methyltestosterone (MT), is sometimes prescribed for men with testosterone deficiencies and older women with breast cancer. Bodybuilders have been known to abuse it to bulk up. How could it end up in crocodiles from rural Costa Rica? A possible clue: Fish farms around the park raise tilapia on food laced with the hormone, which transforms females into faster-growing and more profitable males. Murray and his colleagues are now investigating whether MT from the farms has somehow contaminated the crocs.

The finding "has implications for the population and the broader ecological community," says physiologist Matthew Milnes of Mars Hill University in North Carolina, who was not connected to the research. Besides skewing the sex ratio, the hormone could be disrupting the animals' reproduction, a concern because American crocodiles are already listed as vulnerable, and this part of Costa Rica is a stronghold for the species. The contamination could also be altering the crocs' behavior, perhaps making them more belligerent. If so, conflict with humans—which Murray says is already a sore spot in Costa Rica—could increase. The substance could harm turtles, birds, fish, and other aquatic creatures as well. And because fish farms throughout the tropics are feeding chow that contains MT to their tilapia, the hormone may be causing problems elsewhere.

For more than 20 years, researchers have fretted about the effects of endocrine disruptors, molecules that meddle with the body's hormones. Crocodilians—the group that includes crocs and alligators—have furnished some of the most dramatic examples. In the 1990s, for instance, scientists reported that male alligators from Florida's Lake Apopka, which was fouled by a brew of hormone-mimicking chemicals, had shrunken genitalia and reduced testosterone levels.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-231&rn=news.xml&rst=6935

In its final week, Cassini will pass several milestones en route to its science-rich Saturn plunge. (Times below are predicted and may change slightly; see https://go.nasa.gov/2wbaCBT for updated times.)

• Sept. 9 Cassini will make the last of 22 passes between Saturn itself and its rings -- closest approach is 1,044 miles (1,680 kilometers) above the clouds tops.
• Sept. 11 -- Cassini will make a distant flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Even though the spacecraft will be at 73,974 miles (119,049 kilometers) away, the gravitational influence of the moon will slow down the spacecraft slightly as it speeds past. A few days later, instead of passing through the outermost fringes of Saturn's atmosphere, Cassini will dive in too deep to survive the friction and heating.
• Sept. 14 -- Cassini's imaging cameras take their last look around the Saturn system, sending back pictures of moons Titan and Enceladus, the hexagon-shaped jet stream around the planet's north pole, and features in the rings.
• Sept. 14 (5:45 p.m. EDT / 2:45 p.m. PDT / 9:45 p.m. UTC) -- Cassini turns its antenna to point at Earth, begins a communications link that will continue until end of mission, and sends back its final images and other data collected along the way.
• Sept. 15 (4:37 a.m. EDT / 1:37 a.m. PDT / 8:37 a.m. UTC) -- The "final plunge" begins. The spacecraft starts a 5-minute roll to position INMS for optimal sampling of the atmosphere, transmitting data in near real time from now to end of mission.
• Sept. 15 (7:53 a.m. EDT / 4:53 a.m. PDT / 11:53 a.m. UTC) -- Cassini enters Saturn's atmosphere. Its thrusters fire at 10 percent of their capacity to maintain directional stability, enabling the spacecraft's high-gain antenna to remain pointed at Earth and allowing continued transmission of data.
• Sept. 15 (7:54 a.m. EDT / 4:54 a.m. PDT / 11:54 a.m. UTC) -- Cassini's thrusters are at 100 percent of capacity. Atmospheric forces overwhelm the thrusters' capacity to maintain control of the spacecraft's orientation, and the high-gain antenna loses its lock on Earth. At this moment, expected to occur about 940 miles (1,510 kilometers) above Saturn's cloud tops, communication from the spacecraft will cease, and Cassini's mission of exploration will have concluded. The spacecraft will break up like a meteor moments later.

Original Submission