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rylyeh writes:

From Quanta Magazine, A Brain Built From Atomic Switches Can Learn:

Now engineering researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA], are hoping to match some of the brain's computational and energy efficiency with systems that mirror the brain's structure. They are building a device, perhaps the first one, that is "inspired by the brain to generate the properties that enable the brain to do what it does," according to Adam Stieg, a research scientist and associate director of the institute, who leads the project with Jim Gimzewski, a professor of chemistry at UCLA.

The device is a far cry from conventional computers, which are based on minute wires imprinted on silicon chips in highly ordered patterns. The current pilot version is a 2-millimeter-by-2-millimeter mesh of silver nanowires connected by artificial synapses. Unlike silicon circuitry, with its geometric precision, this device is messy, like "a highly interconnected plate of noodles," Stieg said. And instead of being designed, the fine structure of the UCLA device essentially organized itself out of random chemical and electrical processes.

Reminds me of Mike from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress!

Original Submission

Editor's summary: BuzzFeed, a media outlet and Pulitzer Prize finalist, obtained leaked emails from Breitbart News, some of which were published in Buzzfeed's roughly 9,000-word exposé of the site's inner workings. The article chronicles the rise of Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart's tech editor, and his relationship with Steve Bannon, the recent White House Chief Strategist who left the Trump administration and resumed his position as executive chairman of Breitbart News in August. It also details exchanges between Yiannopoulos and people such as Peter Thiel, Devin Saucier, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. The article shows how Breitbart "smuggled white nationalist ideas into the mainstream" by using Yiannopoulos as a go-between for white nationalists and others in his following, who provided him with story tips and constructive (?) criticism.

Vice Media has fired Mitchell Sunderland, an editor and writer for Broadly, Vice's women-focused site. Sunderland emailed Yiannopoulos and encouraged him to mock the feminist writer Lindy West. He also sent a Broadly video about the Satanic Temple and abortion rights to Tim Gionet, Yiannopoulos's tour manager, resulting in this story. Dan Lyons, a writer for the TV series Silicon Valley and author of Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, and David Auerbach, a former technology writer for Slate, also passed along news tips to Breitbart. Auerbach has vociferously denied writing the emails.

Milo Yiannopoulos responded on Thursday, mainly taking issue with a video of him singing karaoke while Richard Spencer and others raised Nazi salutes. Yiannopoulos wrote, "I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about. Everyone who knows me has seen me make jokes about some awful things. But everyone who knows me also knows I'm not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have. I have severe myopia, due to a congenital eye defect, as has been widely reported and as many people know or have seen from my squinting during public speeches. In a dark bar, I did not see these hand gestures. If I'd have realized white nationalist losers were hailing me as their leader, I'd have immediately walked off stage. I stand for, as always, race-blind nationalism. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm enjoying my honeymoon with my black husband."

Broadening Brush: Alt-White, Buzzfeed Exposé!

aristarchus writes:

BuzzFeed has published documentation of the direct connection of Breitbart News, the alt-right movement, and Milo Yiannopoulos to white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups:

In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that "there's no room in American society" for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.

But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon's leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be "the platform for the alt-right."

The article is extensive, quoting from emails from the Breitbart organization itself.

In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted "we're not a hate site." Breitbart's media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to "computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand."

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.

Sometimes, it is good to know who you are lying down with, so you will know why you have fleas. And sometimes, journalists ought to "follow the money." I highly recommend reading the article, "Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream".

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Socionext Inc., Linaro and GIGABYTE have jointly built a software development environment that complies with Linaro's 96Boards open hardware specification. Under the collaboration, GIGABYTE manufactures the 96Boards-compliant hardware with Socionext's SC2A11 processor, and Linaro provides support through its 96Boards community. The companies expect the new development environment to help the expansion of ARM®-based software in a broad range of applications including IoT gateway, edge computing and servers. The environment will become available to customers starting December 2017.

The rapid growth of IoT (Internet of Things) has led to an increasing demand for processing large amounts of data at high speed, in each phase, from data collection at gateways to edge computing to large-scale cloud servers in data centers. With these applications, the ARM architecture becomes a promising option for improving energy efficiency and reducing costs. In order to address these requirements, Linaro, GIGABYTE and Socionext have built an environment with a power-efficient processor that enables easy development of highly-versatile software using the ARM-native instruction set.

Source: http://socionextus.com/pressreleases/linaro-gigabyte-and-socionext-jointly-offer-development-environment-compliant-with-96boards/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

After Puerto Rico was hit by two hurricanes back to back in just a few weeks, along with other islands in the Caribbean, most of their power grid was completely destroyed. Tesla quickly started quietly shipping Powerwalls there to try to get power back on to some houses with solar arrays.

Now CEO Elon Musk says that Tesla could rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid with batteries and solar on a bigger scale.

Puerto Rico's electricity rates were already quite high at around $0.20 per kWh and reliant on fossil fuels.

After it was pointed out that Puerto Rico's destroyed grid is an opportunity to build a better one, Musk wrote on Twitter:

"The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit so it can be done for Puerto Rico too. Such a decision would be in the hands of the Puerto Rico government, PUC (Public Utilities Commission), any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of Puerto Rico."

Source: https://electrek.co/2017/10/05/elon-musk-tesla-rebuild-puerto-ricos-power-grid-batteries-solar/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah has co-founded a cryptocurrency firm and hopes to raise $30 million during its initial coin offering, according to a CNBC report Wednesday.

Killah's firm, Cream Capital, apparently takes its name from Wu-Tang Clan's 1993 classic song "C.R.E.A.M." But instead of standing for "Cash rules everything around me," the acronym this time represents the trademarked Crypto Rules Everything Around Me, Cream Capital Chief Executive Brett Westbrook told CNBC.

The burgeoning market for cryptocurrencies, which has grown so quickly that one bitcoin was worth more than an ounce of gold in March, has seen digital currency entrepreneurs flocking to ICOs to create and sell digital tokens to investors, who include celebs such as Paris Hilton.

Still, regulators aren't taking to ICOs well. The practice, which Bloomberg said netted $1.6 billion in the last year, has prompted security concerns from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

I hear the Wu-Tang clan ain't nothing to &$@^%*[NO CARRIER]

Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/wu-tang-clans-ghostface-launches-cryptocurrency-firm/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

At this point we've pretty well documented how the "internet of things" is a privacy and security dumpster fire. Whether it's tea kettles that expose your WiFi credentials or smart fridges that leak your Gmail password, companies were so busy trying to make a buck by embedding network chipsets into everything, they couldn't be bothered to adhere to even the most modest security and privacy guidelines. As a result, billions upon billions of devices are now being connected to the internet with little to no meaningful security and a total disregard to user privacy -- posing a potentially fatal threat to us all.

Unsurprisingly, the sex toy division of the internet of broken things is no exception to this rule. One "smart dildo" manufacturer was recently forced to shell out $3.75 million after it was caught collecting, err, "usage habits" of the company's customers. According to the lawsuit, Standard Innovation's We-Vibe vibrator collected sensitive data about customer usage, including "selected vibration settings," the device's battery life, and even the vibrator's "temperature." At no point did the company apparently think it was a good idea to clearly inform users of this data collection.

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171003/13375238336/sex-toys-are-just-as-poorly-secured-as-rest-internet-broken-things.shtml

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

An international team of researchers has found evidence a supernova explosion that was first triggered by a helium detonation, reports a new study in Nature this week.

A Type Ia supernova is a type of white dwarf star explosion that occurs in a binary star system where two stars are circling one another. Because these supernovae shine 5 billion times brighter than the Sun they are used in astronomy as a reference point when calculating distances of objects in space. However, no one has been able to find solid evidence of what triggers these explosions. Moreover, these explosions only occur once every 100 years in any given galaxy, making them difficult to spot.

"Studying Type Ia supernovae is important because they are a valuable tool researchers use to measure the expansion of the universe. A more precise understanding of their history and behavior will help all researchers obtain more accurate results," said author and University of Tokyo School of science Professor Mamoru Doi.

-- submitted from IRC

Ji-an Jiang, et. al. A hybrid type Ia supernova with an early flash triggered by helium-shell detonation. Nature, 2017; 550 (7674): 80 DOI: 10.1038/nature23908

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

The proton might truly be smaller than was thought. Experiments on an exotic form of hydrogen first found a puzzling discrepancy with the accepted size in 2010. Now, evidence from a German and Russian team points to a smaller value for the size of the proton with ordinary hydrogen, too.

The results, which appeared on 5 October in Science, could be the first step towards resolving a puzzle that has made physicists doubt their most precise measurements, and even their most cherished theories.

[...] Pohl's team found the proton to be 4% smaller than the accepted value. Some researchers speculated that perhaps some previously unknown physics could make muons act differently than electrons. This would have required a revision of the standard model of particle physics, which predicts that muons and electrons should be identical in every way except for their masses — and might have pointed to the existence of yet-to-be-discovered elementary particles.

[...] But the German–Russian group is not quite ready to claim that the puzzle has been solved, Maisenbacher says. "We have not identified any conclusive reason why the other measurements should not be correct themselves," he says. "We would like to see more experiments from other people."

Source: Proton-size puzzle deepens

Original Submission

Appalbarry writes:

The Guardian (and likely everyone else) is reporting that AOL is killing off their instant messenger service. For those of us who never quite got the hang of IRC, AOL Messenger (not to mention MSN Messenger at the same time) was a truly fun way to chat with people we knew in an age before smart phones and SMS. And yes, my AOL screen name wound up becoming my default ID almost everywhere.

An article on AOL's website on Friday said AOL Instant Messenger will be discontinued on 15 December. The program will still function until then but after that, users won't be able to sign in and all data will be deleted. AOL says people with an aim.com email address will still be able to use it.

In a blogpost, a spokesman for AOL's parent company explained the platform's demise as the casualty of the evolving way people communicate.

"AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed," wrote Michael Albers, vice president of communications at Oath.

Launched in 1997, AOL Instant Messenger was at the forefront of what was called at the time the biggest trend in online communication since email.

I for one would happily trade in WhatsApp, Google Chat, and all of the others for a return to AOL Messenger.

Also at USA TODAY: RIP AIM: AOL Instant Messenger dies in December

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

the researchers have focused on risk preference or aversion, and the possibility that it might be measurable and compared to others, offering a scale of sorts.

To learn more about how eager people are to engage in risky behavior, the researchers enlisted the assistance of 1500 volunteer adults to take a series of tests (39 tests in all), which together were meant to gauge a person's desire to seek out risky behavior. The team then analyzed the data and found that 61 percent of the variation in risky behavior scores could be summed up with a single component—a person's risk preference quotient, if you will. The remaining factors could all be attributed to which particular type of risk was involved. The single component, which the team dubbed as R, is general, the team notes, which suggests it can be applied multiple to[sic] risk situations along with other factors attributable to a particular type of risk.

The top level in intelligence quotient is called, "genius." Should the top level in risk quotient be called, "Hey Y'all, hold my beer?"

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

NASA has successfully tested a parachute designed for low-density atmospheres like that found on Mars.

The test saw the NASA Wallops facility launch a Black Brant IX rocket, a 58-footer often used for tests and sub-orbital missions, as part of the agency's Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment (ASPIRE).

The 58 km (31.62 mile) flight ended with an Atlantic splashdown, and success for the ASPIRE payload that tests parachutes in a “low density, supersonic environment”.

Thin atmospheres are a challenge for parachutes, so projects like ASPIRE are one way humanity plans to end journeys across space without a too-hard landing on another planet or moon.

As well as inflating in a thin atmosphere, a Martian landing would also need to withstand – and decelerate from – much higher starting velocities than an Earth-bound parachutist (or even an uncrewed payload passing through Earth's dense atmosphere).

Let us hope these parachutes will not impact Mars.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In this study, 290 heterosexual Canadian students between the ages of 17 and 30 years old completed three questionnaires. One measured how competitive the participants are towards members of the same sex as their own, especially in terms of access to the attention of potential mates. The other questionnaires measured the tendency and likelihood of the participants to gossip about others, the perceived social value of gossip, and whether it is okay to talk about others behind their backs.

It was found that people who were competitive towards members of their own sex had a greater tendency to gossip. They were also more comfortable with the practice than others. Women had a greater tendency to gossip than men, and they also enjoyed it more, and saw more value in participating in such chit-chat. Men were more likely to gossip about the achievements of others. Such talk among women often targeted the physical appearance of another, and was used to share social information. Women also found gossip to have greater social value, which may allow them [to] gather more information about possible competitors in the game of finding a mate. It may also help to hone their ability to gossip in future.

There you have it--it's been scientifically proven.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Just like freight trucking, mining operations where trains haul heavy loads along the same route seem a high-potential application for autonomous vehicle technologies. Mining giant Rio Tinto has been busy exploring these possibilities in the Australian Outback and has now completed the nation's first autonomous heavy haul rail journey as it looks for more efficient ways to move iron ore around the country.

Rio Tinto's AutoHaul project has been underway since 2012 and is hoped to help the company expand its operations by allowing the trains hauling iron ore to largely control themselves. The company also has 69 autonomous haulage trucks in operation at its mine sites in the Pilbara, a remote region of north-western Australia.

Sounds unstoppable.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

To use DelivAir, clients would start by requesting a delivery via a smartphone app. Possible scenarios could include a hiker in need of a first aid kit, a stranded cyclist needing a spare inner tube, or even a remotely-located person requiring life-saving equipment such as an EpiPen or defibrillator.

At a store, depot, or other location, the required item would then be loaded onto a drone, which would autonomously fly out to the client's smartphone GPS coordinates. Using the app, the client could in turn check the GPS coordinates of the drone in real time, to see how close it was getting to them.

Now when you break your Ming vase, a drone can deliver another one to you on the spot.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

What do you get when you cross a plane with a blimp? A Plimp. That's not a joke, it's what the thing is actually called. Manufactured by Seattle-based Egan Airships, the 28-ft (8.5-m) unmanned aircraft has a helium-filled envelope allowing for blimp-like buoyancy, while its winged rigid body allows it to travel quick-ish like a conventional drone.

When the Plimp is taking off and landing – or just hovering on the spot – its two wings rotate so that the electric motors/propellers are facing straight up. This allows it to move vertically. Once it's time to get a move on, however, the wings rotate into a more airplane-like orientation, in which the props are facing forward. In this mode, it can achieve a maximum speed of 40 mph (64 km/h) with at least one hour of flight time depending on payload.

Should the motors conk out, the sub-55-lb (25-kg) Plimp won't just plummet from the sky. Thanks to the buoyancy of its envelope and the lift provided by its wings, it can reportedly glide down at a speed of 9 mph (14 km/h).

Original Submission