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Phoenix666 writes:

Titan, the largest of Saturn's more than 60 moons, has surprisingly intense rainstorms, according to research by a team of UCLA planetary scientists and geologists. Although the storms are relatively rare—they occur less than once per Titan year, which is 29 and a half Earth years—they occur much more frequently than the scientists expected.

"I would have thought these would be once-a-millennium events, if even that," said Jonathan Mitchell, UCLA associate professor of planetary science and a senior author of the research, which was published Oct. 9 in the journal Nature Geoscience. "So this is quite a surprise."

The storms create massive floods in terrain that are otherwise deserts. Titan's surface is strikingly similar to Earth's, with flowing rivers that spill into great lakes and seas, and the moon has storm clouds that bring seasonal, monsoon-like downpours, Mitchell said. But Titan's precipitation is liquid methane, not water.

"The most intense methane storms in our climate model dump at least a foot of rain a day, which comes close to what we saw in Houston from Hurricane Harvey this summer," said Mitchell, the principal investigator of UCLA's Titan climate modeling research group.

[...] On Earth, intense storms can trigger large flows of sediment that spread into low lands and form cone-shaped features called alluvial fans. In the new study, the UCLA scientists found that regional patterns of extreme rainfall on Titan are correlated with recent detections of alluvial fans, suggesting that they were formed by intense rainstorms.

The finding demonstrates the role of extreme precipitation in shaping Titan's surface, said Seulgi Moon, UCLA assistant professor of geomorphology and a co-senior author of the paper. Moon said the principle likely applies to Mars, which has large alluvial fans of its own, and to other planetary bodies. Greater understanding of the relationship between precipitation and the planetary surfaces could lead to new insights about the impact of climate change on Earth and other planets.

Methane hurricanes. Smoking not advised.

S. P. Faulk et al. Regional patterns of extreme precipitation on Titan consistent with observed alluvial fan distribution, Nature Geoscience (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ngeo3043

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/news/dutch-dpa-microsoft-breaches-data-protection-law-windows-10

Microsoft breaches the Dutch data protection law by processing personal data of people that use the Windows 10 operating system on their computers. This is the conclusion of the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) after its investigation of Windows 10 Home and Pro. Microsoft does not clearly inform users about the type of data it uses, and for which purpose. Also, people cannot provide valid consent for the processing of their personal data, because of the approach used by Microsoft. The company does not clearly inform users that it continuously collects personal data about the usage of apps and web surfing behaviour through its web browser Edge, when the default settings are used. Microsoft has indicated that it wants to end all violations. If this is not the case, the Dutch DPA can decide to impose a sanction on Microsoft.

[...] Due to Microsoft's approach users lack control of their data. They are not informed which data are being used for what purpose, neither that based on these data, personalised advertisements and recommendations can be presented, if those users have not opted out from these default settings on installation or afterwards.

[...] Microsoft can use the collected data for the various purposes, described in a very general way. Through this combination of purposes and the lack of transparency Microsoft cannot obtain a legal ground, such as consent, for the processing of data.

also at RT

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A federal judge has approved a warrant for web hosting company DreamHost's records for DisruptJ20.org, a site that was used to plan anti-Trump protests on Inauguration Day. However, the scope of the warrant has been significantly narrowed:

"[W]hile the government has the right to execute its Warrant," D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Morin wrote in his order, "it does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost's website and discover the identity of, or access communications by, individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity, particularly those persons who were engaging in protected First Amendment activities."

The government sought the warrant as it gathers evidence for its cases against nearly 200 people charged with rioting on Jan. 20.

The judge's new order instructs DreamHost to redact identifying information of "innocent persons" who visited the website before providing the records to the government. It also dictates a protocol for incorporating procedural safeguards to comply with "First Amendment and Fourth Amendment considerations." Among other stipulations, the government must submit to the court its plan for permanently deleting from its possession all information not within the scope of the warrant.

DreamHost considered the judge's ruling a significant victory. "The new order is a far cry from the original warrant we received in July," DreamHost General Counsel Christopher Ghazarian wrote in a statement to NPR. "Absent a finding by the Court that probable cause of criminal activity exists, the government will not be able to uncover the identities of these users. There are also quite a few modifications that further reduce the government's ability to review unrelated data. This is another huge win not just for DreamHost, but for internet users around the world."

Also at Reason, The Register, Engadget, and Infosecurity Magazine.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

High Performance Computing (HPC) Chips – A Veritable Smorgasbord?

No this isn't about the song from Charlotte's Web or the Scandinavian predilection for open sandwiches; it's about the apparent newfound choice in the HPC CPU market.

For the first time since AMD's ill-fated launch of Bulldozer the answer to the question, 'Which CPU will be in my next HPC system?' doesn't have to be 'Whichever variety of Intel Xeon E5 they are selling when we procure'.

In fact, it's not just in the x86 market where there is now a genuine choice. Soon we will have at least two credible ARM v8 ISA CPUs (from Cavium and Qualcomm respectively) and IBM have gone all in on the Power architecture (having at one point in the last ten years had four competing HPC CPU lines – x86, Blue Gene, Power and Cell).

In fact, it may even be Intel that is left wondering which horse to back in the HPC CPU race with both Xeon lines looking insufficiently differentiated going forward. A symptom of this dilemma is the recent restructuring of the Xeon line along with associated pricing and feature segmentation.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://heavy.com/news/2017/10/michael-christopher-estes-asheville-airport-bomber-suspect/

A 46-year-old man is facing federal charges accusing him of leaving a jar filled with explosives at a North Carolina airport as part of a war he pledged to fight on U.S. soil.

Michael Christopher Estes was arrested October 7 and charged with attempted malicious use of explosive materials and unlawful possession of explosive materials in an airport, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.

The improvised explosive device, or IED, was found inside a jar at the Asheville Regional Airport about 7 a.m. on October 6, the FBI said in the complaint. Bomb technicians from the Asheville Police Department rendered the device safe. The baggage claim and lobby area of the airport were evacuated and shut down for about 2 hours. No one was injured.

also at USA Today and The Independent

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

During the municipal elections in spring 2017, a group of researchers and practitioners specialising in computer science, media and communication implemented a hate speech identification campaign with the help of an algorithm based on machine learning.

At the beginning of the campaign, the algorithm was taught to identify hate speech as diversely as possible, for example, based on the big data obtained from open chat groups. The algorithm learned to compare computationally what distinguishes a text that includes hate speech from a text that is not hate speech and to develop a categorisation system for hate speech. The algorithm was then used daily to screen all openly available content the candidates standing in the municipal elections had produced on Facebook and Twitter. The candidates' account information were gathered using the material in the election machine of the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle.

All parties committed themselves to not accepting hate speech in their election campaigns. On the other hand, if the candidate used a personal Facebook profile instead of the page created and reported for the campaign, it was not included in the monitoring. Finnish word forms and the limited capability of the algorithm to interpret the context the same way humans do also proved to be challenging. The Perspective classifier developed by Google for the identification of hate speech has also suffered from the same problems in recognising the context and, for example, spelling mistakes.

Who wants to play, "Trigger the Algorithm" with false positives? "This mosaic is too dark. Let's use more white tiles here, and here."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

On Friday, the fact-checking website PolitiFact was found to hog its visitors' CPU cycles by using maliciously added JavaScript to mine the cryptocurrency Monero:

A fact-checking website was hacked to mine cryptocurrency over the internet browsers of its unsuspecting visitors. The Pulitzer Prize-winning website, PolitiFact, is devoted to sorting out the truth in US politics. But on Friday, it was found secretly hogging the computer resources of those who visited the site.

Independent security researcher Troy Mursch tweeted about the issue after noticing signs of a cryptocurrency miner in the website's code.

[...] Mursch said the code comes from a company called Coinhive, which developed a controversial cryptocurrency miner to help businesses find a new way to generate online revenue.

However, the Coinhive miner tends to be used in sketchy websites that pirate content or offer porn, according to AdGuard, an ad-blocking service. These sites often struggle to make money from online advertising, so they have to experiment with new ways to make money. AdGuard found 220 websites using a cryptocurrency mining code in a study it released on Thursday.

Does this count as good or bad press for a small-time cryptocurrency?

Also at TechCrunch, The Register, and Cryptovest. Coinhive blog statement from September regarding malicious use.

Previously: Showtime Streaming Service Included JavaScript to Mine Cryptocurrency Using Web Browsers

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Disney/ABC TV has begun making long-feared layoffs as part of a broader restructuring of its broadcast business, with rumors swirling that bigger moves—including a possible sale of ABC—are coming.

Deadline first reported the staff reductions on Thursday, saying they could impact up to 200 employees across Disney and ABC properties. An ABC source with knowledge of the situation said that the cuts will hit upward of 40 of its employees on the East Coast and still more out west.

Multiple people at ABC told Splinter that there is a widespread belief at the network that the belt-tightening could be tied to a prospective sale by its corporate parent.

Disney's broadcast division, which includes ABC and its local TV stations, is suffering from slumping ad rates and new competition from streaming services. The network's top producer, Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder, decamped from ABC for Netflix in August.

Will pride goeth before the fall?

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Attention anyone using Microsoft Outlook to encrypt emails. Researchers at security outfit SEC Consult have found a bug in Redmond's software that causes encrypted messages to be sent out with their unencrypted versions attached.

You read that right: if you can intercept a network connection transferring an encrypted email, you can just read off the unencrypted copy stapled to it, if the programming blunder is triggered.

The bug is activated when Outlook users use S/MIME to encrypt messages and format their emails as plain text. When sent, the software reports the memo was delivered in an encrypted form, and it appears that way in the Sent folder – but attached to the ciphered text is an easily human-readable cleartext version of the same email. This somewhat derails the use of encryption.

"This has been a rather unusual vulnerability discovery," the SEC team said in an advisory on Tuesday.

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/11/outlook_smime_bug/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A team of researchers in the GIPSA-Lab (CNRS/Université Grenoble Alpes/Grenoble INP) and at INRIA Grenoble Rhône-Alpes has developed a system that can display the movements of tongues in real time. Captured using an ultrasound probe placed under the jaw, these movements are processed by a machine-learning algorithm that controls an "articulatory talking head." As well as the face and lips, this avatar shows the tongue, palate and teeth, which are usually hidden inside the vocal tract. This "visual biofeedback" system, which ought to be easier to understand and therefore should produce better correction of pronunciation, could be used for speech therapy and for learning foreign languages. This work is published in the October 2017 issue of Speech Communication.

For a person with an articulation disorder, speech therapy partly uses repetition exercises: the practitioner qualitatively analyzes the patient's pronunciations and orally explains, using drawings, how to place articulators, particularly the tongue: something patients are generally unaware of. How effective therapy is depends on how well the patient can integrate what they are told. It is at this stage that "visual biofeedback" systems can help. They let patients see their articulatory movements in real time, and in particular how their tongues move, so that they are aware of these movements and can correct pronunciation problems faster.

This would be really helpful for learning tonal languages.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Tesla has fired several hundred of its employees following performance evaluations. Tesla recently conducted the biggest expansion of its workforce in the company's history, and is struggling to increase production of its Model 3 sedan:

Tesla Inc. has fired an undetermined number of employees following a series of performance evaluations after the company significantly boosted its workforce with the purchase of solar panel maker SolarCity Corp.

The departures are part of an annual review, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in an email, without providing a number of people affected. The maker of the Model S this week dismissed between 400 and 700 employees, including engineers, managers and factory workers, the San Jose Mercury News reported on Oct. 13, citing unidentified current and former workers.

"As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures," the company said in the statement. "Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world."

The company has more than 2,000 job openings on its careers website.

The dismissals come after Tesla said it built just 260 Model 3 sedans during the third quarter, less than a fifth of its 1,500-unit forecast. The company has offered scant detail about the problems it's having producing the car. The vehicle's entry price starts at $35,000, roughly half the cost of Tesla's least-expensive Model S sedan.

Also at NYT, Reuters, and The Mercury News.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

An fMRI study has found evidence of a reduction in depressive symptoms after treatment with psilocybin:

A hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms can "reset" the brains of people with untreatable depression, raising hopes of a future treatment, scans suggest.

The small study gave 19 patients a single dose of the psychedelic ingredient psilocybin. Half of patients ceased to be depressed and experienced changes in their brain activity that lasted about five weeks.

However, the team at Imperial College London says people should not self-medicate.

There has been a series of small studies suggesting psilocybin could have a role in depression by acting as a "lubricant for the mind" that allows people to escape a cycle of depressive symptoms. But the precise impact it might be having on brain activity was not known.

Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13282-7) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Woz U is coming:

Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, is launching a new online tech education platform he's calling Woz U, which is designed to promote technology jobs and the skills required to enter the industry. Over time, Wozniak hopes to expand the initiative to include as many as 30 physical locations around the world and courses on everything from software engineering and information technology to mobile app development and cybersecurity, among others. It's unclear whether courses will be offered for free, or whether Woz U plans on charging for any element of the online education platform. The website does not say.

Woz U also offers access to tech companies interested in using the tools and resources provided to recruit and train employees. The platform will be available to students K-12 through partnerships with school districts too. Down the line, Woz U wants to offer one-on-one instruction to students and, later on, to offer its own accelerator program for prospective startup founders. The overall goal is to increase interest in what Woz U calls STEAM careers, or science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, with the addition of arts presumably a nod to Wozniak's role at Apple and fellow co-founder Steve Jobs' lifelong mission to blend technology with the humanities.

Also at TechCrunch, MacRumors, and Engadget.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Western Digital is planning to use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) instead of Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) to produce hard drives with capacities of up to 40 terabytes by 2025:

WD has selected MAMR (Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording) as its new HDD recording technology, which the company claims can enable up to 40TB HDDs by 2025. WD's rapid transition to MAMR is somewhat surprising, but the technology has been in development for nearly a decade. It certainly stands in contrast to Seagate's plans for using the laser-assisted HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) as the route to higher storage density.

The transition to the new recording process isn't immediate, but WD plans to have initial products shipping by 2019, and it had working demo models this week at its event in San Jose. The improved recording technology is needed to keep HDDs cost-competitive with the surging SSDs, but economics dictate that SSDs will never replace HDDs entirely, especially as the volume of data continues to grow exponentially; WD predicts that HDDs will account for ~90% of data center storage in 2020.

The technology announcement reportedly took the storage industry by surprise and MAMR doesn't have the same issues that have delayed HAMR:

WD pointed out that MAMR requires absolutely no external heating of the media that could lead to reliability issues. The temperature profiles of MAMR HDDs (both platters and drive temperature itself) are expected to be similar to those of the current generation HDDs. It was indicated that the MAMR drives would meet all current data center reliability requirements.

Based on the description of the operation of MAMR, it is a no-brainer that HAMR has no future in its current form. Almost all hard drive industry players have a lot more patents on HAMR compared to MAMR. It remains to be seen if the intellectual property created on the HAMR side is put to use elsewhere.

Will we have 100 TB by 2032?

Also at BBC, PetaPixel, and Engadget. WD Technology Brief.

Previously: AnandTech Interview With Seagate's CTO: New HDD Technologies Coming
Seagate HAMR Hard Drives Coming in a Year and a Half
Glass Substrate Could Enable Hard Drives With 12 Platters

Original Submission

takyon writes:

IGN, a game and entertainment media company, has acquired Humble Bundle, a distributor of video games that raises money for charities:

Media giant IGN announced today that it has acquired Humble Bundle, the company best known for selling packs of indie games at pay-what-you-want prices. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is potentially a big deal for game developers, since Humble has expanded beyond its bundling business to publish games, pay devs to make games for its subscription-based monthly game club, maintain a subscription-based online game trove, and operate an online game storefront.

However, a press release confirming the deal also noted that Humble will continue to operate independently in the wake of the acquisition, with no significant business or staffing changes. It will have some degree of support from IGN (which is itself owned by digital media giant J2 Global), specifically in terms of accelerating growth and raising more money for charity.

I think I stopped using Humble Bundle when they started removing the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a charity option for some bundles.

Also at VentureBeat and Humble Mumble (official blog).

Original Submission