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Phoenix666 writes:

Senior citizens are shaping the way neighbourhoods evolve and grow, all in the name of maintaining deeper connections to their communities as they age, according to one Western researcher's work inside a pair of London neighbourhoods.

"We were looking at how the built-in social environment in London either supports or holds barriers to seniors being socially engaged and participating in activities," said School of Occupational Therapy professor Carri Hand, whose work looked at Westmount and Old South neighbourhoods in London. "We focused on social connections and activities, seeing how they interacted."

Through interviews with seniors, and the use of GPS tracking to follow their movements, Hand found older adults are creating our communities through casual social interactions, helping others and taking community action. From those three areas, Hand has revealed some common truths about these particular neighbourhoods.

Seniors expressed deep connections to physical places in neighbourhoods – restaurants, cafes, parks, libraries. Everyday neighbourhood activities, such as shopping or walking, appeared key to maintaining a sense of connection to the neighbourhood and in developing informal social ties.

It turns out old people are not worthless.

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Phoenix666 writes:

The mobile games developer behind Angry Birds expects to be worth about $1bn when it lists on the stock market.

Rovio has set a range for its share sale that would value the business at between 802m euros and 896m euros ($960m-$1.07bn; £710m-£795m).

The Finnish firm's boss, Kati Levoranta, said the listing would help the company expand further.

It is "more than just a gaming company", she said, with sales from film and merchandising as well.

The Finnish firm expects to list on the main part of the Helsinki Nasdaq on 3 October.

For the year to 30 June, Rovio reported revenues of 265.8m euros, of which 210.1m euros came from games and 55.7m euros from brand licensing.

"The mobile gaming market is expected to grow fast and Rovio has grown faster than the market in recent years," said Ms Levoranta.

"But Rovio is much more than just a gaming company. Angry Birds branded consumer products are already sold in some 120 counties and the first Angry Birds Movie, released in 2016, was an international box-office success.

Is it a good investment?

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martyb writes:

Over at Ars Technica is a story, SpaceX proves it's not afraid to fail by releasing a landing blooper reel:

SpaceX is famously not afraid to fail. "There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA," company founder Elon Musk has said in the past. "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

In recent years, others in the aerospace industry have come to see the sense of this ethos, as SpaceX has tinkered with its Falcon 9 rocket to make it a mostly reusable booster, finally achieving reuse of the rocket's first stage earlier this year. To go further in space, at a lower cost, new things must be tried.

Even Gene Kranz, who famously said that failure was not an option as a NASA flight director during the Apollo lunar missions, has recently enthused about SpaceX, saying, "Space involves risk, and I think that's the one thing about Elon Musk and all the various space entrepreneurs: they're willing to risk their future in order to accomplish the objective that they have decided on. I think we as a nation have to learn that, as an important part of this, to step forward and accept risk."

To that end, SpaceX has put its failure on display in a new video showing the company's (often explosive) attempts to first return the Falcon 9 first stage to the ocean, then to an ocean-based drone ship, and more. Along they way the engineers have clearly learned a lot about rockets, propellants, and the pitfalls of trying to return a very large rocket from space.

Note: the apocryphal saying was not from the actual Apollo 13 mission. It was a line from the movie based on the mission. See this section on the Wikipedia entry for Gene Kranz.

With that out of the way, I find it absolutely amazing that just a few short years ago, the concept of a rocket that could land upright was science fiction. Now, it happens so routinely for SpaceX that they feel comfortable releasing a "blooper reel"!

(I'm curious, though, how many millions of dollars does that video show going up in flames?)

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DeathMonkey writes:

The U.S. national debt reached $20 trillion for the first time ever last Friday after President Trump signed a bipartisan bill temporarily raising the nation's debt limit for three months.

While at Camp David, Mr. Trump, with the stroke of his presidential pen, increased the statutory debt last Friday by approximately $318 billion, according to the Treasury Department. Before the bill's completion, the U.S. debt was sitting around $19.84 trillion.

The legislation allowed the Treasury Department to start borrowing again immediately after several months of using "extraordinary measures" to avoid a financial default. The bill passed last Thursday 80-17 in the Senate and in the House 316-90 on Friday. Around $15 billion in emergency funding for Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts was attached to the borrowing measure.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-debt-hits-historic-20-trillion-mark/

[That works out to just shy of $62,000 per American. --Ed.]

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takyon writes:

At least two Motel 6 locations in Phoenix, Arizona reported guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It was also rumored that ICE paid out $200 for every undocumented immigrant caught. A PR director from Motel 6's parent company confirmed that staff members at the locations were working with ICE without the approval of senior management:

At least two Motel 6 locations in Arizona are reporting their guest lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, which has resulted in at least 20 arrests, according to local media.

Phoenix New Times reported on Wednesday that two franchise locations of the motel chain are sending their guest lists to ICE agents "every morning," and possibly receiving $200 per undocumented immigrant caught in the sting.

"We send a report every morning to ICE — all the names of everybody that comes in," one front-desk clerk told the Times. "Every morning at about 5 o'clock, we do the audit and we push a button and it sends it to ICE."

Immigration attorney Denise Aguilar wrote The New Times in an email that some of her clients "have heard (no telling how valid the info is) that ICE is paying $200 per person for the front-desk clerk to report."

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that law enforcement must obtain a warrant to search hotel/motel registries.

Also at The Washington Post, NY Mag, and Vice.

[Ed. Addition] A follow-on story at Phoenix New Times After New Times Story, Motel 6 Says It Will Stop Sharing Guest Lists With ICE raises many interesting questions about the situation, and then was itself updated:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The $999 iPhone X costs more than many laptops. Among the changes in store is the ability to project face movements onto emoji.

Apple's new iPhone X will allow users to do something we never dared dream would be possible with a handheld device.

It lets you take control of the poo emoji with your own face.

That's right, the animated pile of excrement, which is among the most popular methods of communication for millennials, can be controlled with the tech giant's new Face ID feature.

The fine article has an example of animoji demonstrated at an Apple conference.

Check YouTube for an example of the Face2Face algorithm — published on Mar 17, 2016 — where real-time face movement is projected onto George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.

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Phoenix666 writes:

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has begun the steep ascent of an iron-oxide-bearing ridge that's grabbed scientists' attention since before the car-sized rover's 2012 landing.

"We're on the climb now, driving up a route where we can access the layers we've studied from below," said Abigail Fraeman, a Curiosity science-team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"Vera Rubin Ridge" stands prominently on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, resisting erosion better than the less-steep portions of the mountain below and above it. The ridge, also called "Hematite Ridge," was informally named earlier this year in honor of pioneering astrophysicist Vera Rubin.

"As we skirted around the base of the ridge this summer, we had the opportunity to observe the large vertical exposure of rock layers that make up the bottom part of the ridge," said Fraeman, who organized the rover's ridge campaign. "But even though steep cliffs are great for exposing the stratifications, they're not so good for driving up."

The ascent to the top of the ridge from a transition in rock-layer appearance at the bottom of it will gain about 213 feet (65 meters) of elevation—about 20 stories. The climb requires a series of drives totaling a little more than a third of a mile (570 meters). Before starting this ascent in early September, Curiosity had gained a total of about 980 feet (about 300 meters) in elevation in drives totaling 10.76 miles (17.32 kilometers) from its landing site to the base of the ridge.

Will Curiosity find petroglyphs left by Martian Anasazi?

[The Planetary Society, as usual, has an excellent writeup. Contributor Emily Lakdawalla has an update on her blog about the ascent over the past three months, lots of pictures, and even includes a map of Curiosity's travels over that period. --Ed.]

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hellcat writes:

From the original article appearing in the journal frontiers in Microbiology, Phenotypic Changes Exhibited by E. coli Cultured in Space (https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2017.01598):

By default, bacteria will accompany humans in our exploration of space. The average healthy individual carries trillions of microorganisms in and on their body, outnumbering human cells (Sender et al., 2016). This human microbiome includes opportunistic pathogens, microbes that do not normally cause disease in a healthy person but can provoke an infection when the person's immune system is suppressed, a concern known to occur during spaceflight (Borchers et al., 2002; Mermel, 2013). It is therefore important to understand bacterial behavior in space in preparation for future long-term human space exploration missions. Numerous prior studies performed in space have shown increased bacterial virulence and decreased susceptibility to antibiotics for select in vitro cultures with respect to Earth controls ...

Turns out that E. coli grew better in space, even while bathed in an antibiotic.

The Gizmodo take is a bit alarmist, but the research suggests that poor diffusion of nutrients may be the biggest factor in why the bugs behave differently.

If you want to despoil another world, we have to worry about having more mouths to feed. Not just one mouth, maybe 10 trillion. They are coming along for the ride. Will our lunar and martian colonies fail due to indigestion?

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Geezer writes:

In a recent Reuters story http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-banks-conference-jpmorgan/jpmorgans-dimon-says-bitcoin-is-a-fraud-idUSKCN1BN2KP, JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon threw a bomb at the emerging cryptocurrency.

In the story he states, "The currency isn't going to work. You can't have a business where people can invent a currency out of thin air and think that people who are buying it are really smart."

He goes on to compare Bitcoin to the 17th-century Dutch tulip bulb situation.

Is he right, or is he just shilling for the present system of imaginary-value fiat currencies?

[Separately, according to Bloomberg, Bitcoin has been on a five-day decline: Bitcoin Crashes After Chinese Exchange Says It Will Halt Trading. --Ed.].

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martyb writes:

Renowned security researcher Bruce Schneier has a story up on his blog On the Equifax Data Breach:

Last Thursday, Equifax reported a data breach that affects 143 million US customers, about 44% of the population. It's an extremely serious breach; hackers got access to full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver's license numbers -- exactly the sort of information criminals can use to impersonate victims to banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, and other businesses vulnerable to fraud.

Many sites posted guides to protecting yourself now that it's happened. But if you want to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, your only solution is government regulation (as unlikely as that may be at the moment).

The market can't fix this. Markets work because buyers choose between sellers, and sellers compete for buyers. In case you didn't notice, you're not Equifax's customer. You're its product.

This happened because your personal information is valuable, and Equifax is in the business of selling it. The company is much more than a credit reporting agency. It's a data broker. It collects information about all of us, analyzes it all, and then sells those insights.

Its customers are people and organizations who want to buy information: banks looking to lend you money, landlords deciding whether to rent you an apartment, employers deciding whether to hire you, companies trying to figure out whether you'd be a profitable customer -- everyone who wants to sell you something, even governments.

It's not just Equifax. It might be one of the biggest, but there are 2,500 to 4,000 other data brokers that are collecting, storing, and selling information about you -- almost all of them companies you've never heard of and have no business relationship with.

Surveillance capitalism fuels the Internet, and sometimes it seems that everyone is spying on you. You're secretly tracked on pretty much every commercial website you visit.

Bruce continues with observations about the data gathering activities of such on-line behemoths as Google and Facebook, as well as companies as mundane as your cell phone provider. Sadly, massive data breaches such as what happened at Target, Home Depot, and Yahoo! gathered media attention for a while, but after a matter of time faded from public awareness and concern.

He suggests the only solution is government regulation. Maybe. But that also runs up against the problem of regulatory capture.

What, if anything, can be done? Mandate a minimum payment of, say, $100.00 to each person who had information disclosed? That would certainly boost a company's willingness to implement security best-practices.

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Phoenix666 writes:

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that utility-grade solar panels have hit cost targets set for 2020, three years ahead of schedule. Those targets reflect around $1 per watt and 6¢ per kilowatt-hour in Kansas City, the department's mid-range yardstick for solar panel cost per unit of energy produced (New York is considered the high-cost end, and Phoenix, Arizona, which has much more sunlight than most other major cities in the country, reflects the low-cost end).

Those prices don't include an Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which makes solar panels even cheaper. The Energy Department said that the cost per watt was assessed in terms of total installed system costs for developers. That means the number is based on "the sales price paid to the installer; therefore, it includes profit in the cost of the hardware," according to a department presentation (PDF).

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a DOE-funded lab that assesses solar panel cost, wrote that, compared to the first quarter in 2016, the first quarter in 2017 saw a 29-percent decline in installed cost for utility-scale solar, which was attributed to lower photovoltaic module and inverter prices, better panel efficiency, and reduced labor costs. Despite the plummeting costs for utility-scale solar, costs for commercial and residential solar panels have not fallen quite as quickly—just 15 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

It seems there are still big gains to be made in the installed costs of residential panels.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The BBC is reporting that North Korea has fired another missile:

North Korea has fired a missile eastwards from its capital, Pyongyang, towards Japan, media reports say.

Japan said that the missile likely passed over its territory and has warned residents to take shelter, local media report.

South Korea and the US are analysing the details of the launch, the South's military said.

Al Jazeera reports:

The projectile was launched at 6:57am (21:57GMT Thursday) and flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido before falling into the Pacific Ocean - 2,000km east of Cape Erimo, said Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

"Japan protests the latest launch in the strongest terms and will take appropriate and timely action at the United Nations and elsewhere, staying in close contact with the United States and South Korea," Suga told reporters.

South Korea's defence ministry said the missile travelled about 3,700km and reached a maximum altitude of 770km - both higher and further than previous tests.

Just more saber rattling? Another step in escalation? What's next?

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We had two Soylentils submit stories concerning the end of "non-conformist" dorms at MIT.

At MIT, Senior House is No More

Runaway1956 writes:

This was Senior House, the oldest dormitory on campus, built in 1916 by the architect William Welles Bosworth. For 101 years it welcomed freshman and returning students. Since the ’60s it was a proudly anarchic community of creative misfits and self-described outcasts—the special kind of brilliant oddballs who couldn’t or didn’t want to fit in with the mainstream eggheads at MIT. Some did drugs and dropped out. Some did drugs and graduated. Others were proudly “straight edge,” eschewing drugs and regarding their bodies and minds as pristine temples. Many went on to create startups, join huge tech firms, and change the technological world as we know it.

Senior House was the gravitational center of alternative culture at MIT, characterized by extremes. For example, since 1963 its courtyard was the site for an annual Dionysian festival that began with a whole steer being hauled atop a pit and roasted on an open flame. The bacchanal ended three days later when there was no more mud left to wrestle in or drinks to gulp. By the time the third dawn came, friendships had been forged, tire swings had been swung, meat had been devoured, some drugs had probably been snorted or smoked, jobs had been offered, and lives had been changed.

takyon writes:

President Trump has blocked Canyon Bridge Capital Partners LLC from acquiring Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, using the authority granted by the Exon–Florio Amendment. Lattice Semiconductor makes programmable logic devices including field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs):

President Trump on Wednesday blocked a China-backed investor from buying an American semiconductor maker over national security concerns, a rare move that could signal more aggressive scrutiny of China's deal-making ambitions. The deal for Lattice Semiconductor has provided a test of the president's economic and diplomatic relationship with China.

[...] The White House said on Wednesday that it prevented the acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor, in part because the United States government relies on the company's products. The integrity of the semiconductor industry, it said, was vital.

The White House also raised concerns over the buyer's close ties to Beijing. The investment group included China Venture Capital Fund Corporation, which is owned by state-backed entities, the White House said.

The decision could foretell trouble for other Chinese deals under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multiagency group that examines takeovers of American companies by foreign buyers and makes recommendations to the president. The group, which operates largely in secrecy, is also looking at the proposed purchase of MoneyGram International by Ant Financial, an affiliate of the Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group.

Also at Bloomberg and BBC.

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takyon writes:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/news/a28198/nasa-satellites-predict-malaria-outbreaks/

Malaria is one of the world's most deadly diseases, made even more deadly by the fact that it tends to affect mostly remote communities. This makes it difficult to track and control malaria outbreaks when they happen, resulting in more severe outbreaks and more victims. To solve this problem, a group of researchers have turned to an unlikely source: NASA satellites.

[...] NASA satellites can be used to track weather patterns, temperatures, and water levels in order to find the ponds and puddles where those mosquitoes breed. The researchers used NASA weather satellites, combined with a computer model called the Land Data Assimilation System (LDAS), in order to track and predict temperatures, rainfall levels, soil moisture content, and vegetation. This information can tell the researchers where most of the mosquitoes are going to be.

"It's an exercise in indirect reasoning," says investigator Ben Zaitchik. "These models let us predict where the soil moisture is going to be in a condition that will allow for breeding sites to form."

But mosquitoes are only half the equation. The researchers also need to know where the people are going to be, and for this they rely on a combination of census data and seasonal migration studies, informed by the same NASA data used to track mosquitoes.

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