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An Anonymous Coward writes:

This afternoon, Catalonia declared independence. At the same time, Spain invoked article 155, to strip Catalonia from its governing powers putting it under direct rule from the federal government. A vote for independence was raised in Catalonian parliament, with part of parliament leaving before the vote on independence started. The motion declaring independence was approved with 70 in favor, 10 against, and two abstentions of the normal 135 total.

From RT: https://www.rt.com/news/407956-catalan-parliament-votes-independence/
From Aljazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/catalan-parliament-begins-vote-independence-171027115908493.html
From BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41780116

It will be interesting to see how things unfold. In my opinion, Madrid using violence to stop a referendum gave it the legality they later claim the referendum didn't have. The lack of dialogue paved the way into the only possible outcome, Catalonia declaring independence and Madrid denying it. Whatever happens next, I hope will be peaceful. As to how the EU reacts, I'm hoping they ask for an official referendum, and whatever the outcome, pledges that both Catalonia and Spain will be able to remain in the EU if they desire. That may release tensions a bit.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Snap's take on smartglasses has reportedly failed to live up to expectations:

A year ago, Snapchat was so excited about its first hardware product that it renamed itself Snap Inc. With the launch of Spectacles, CEO Evan Spiegel decided, the company would no longer be defined solely by the Snapchat app. It was not a social media company, he told the Wall Street Journal, but a camera company. Internet-connected photography, he philosophized, necessitated a "a reinvention of the camera."

Yeah, not so much. Citing "two people close to the company," the Information reported Monday that Snap had "badly overestimated demand" and now has "hundreds of thousands of unsold units sitting in warehouses, either fully assembled or in parts." This comes just weeks after Spiegel said at a Vanity Fair summit that Spectacles sales had "exceeded our expectations," topping 150,000. If the Information's reporting is accurate, then Spiegel's claim, well ... isn't. (A Snap spokesperson declined my request for comment.)

Regardless of who's telling the truth, it already seemed clear from Snap's first two earnings reports that Spectacles were fizzling. As Business Insider pointed out in August, the company reported just $5.4 million in "other" revenue in its second quarter, down from $8.3 million in its first quarter. Spectacles are presumed to make up the bulk of revenue in this category. It's one thing to only sell 150,000 of a product in its first year, as long as sales are growing. If they're already tailing off, that suggests the product might be doomed.

The devices let users record 10-30 seconds of video at a time. They are transferred to a smartphone wirelessly and can then be uploaded to Snapchat.

takyon writes:

Facebook has released guidelines for publishers who want to appear in the "news feed":

Facebook has released new guidelines that outline how publishers can adapt to the company's efforts to fight back against fake/false news and other low-quality content.

Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri unveiled the guidelines at an event this morning at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where he said they don't represent any changes to Facebook's approach — they're just a way for publishers to understand the strategy.

He added that Facebook's efforts in this area are "targeted at bad actors." But for legitimate publishers, the guidelines can still be important to "make sure you don't get caught up in the crosshairs."

Publishers have panicked at recent news feed changes:

The new feature Facebook is trying out is called Explore. It offers all sorts of stories it thinks might interest you, a separate news feed encouraging you to look further afield than just at what your friends are sharing. Meanwhile, for most people, the standard News Feed remains the usual mixture of baby photos and posts from companies or media organisations whose pages you have liked.

Sounds fine, doesn't it? Except that in six countries - Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia - the experiment went further. For users there, the main News Feed was cleared of everything but the usual stuff from your friends and sponsored posts - in other words, if you wanted to have your material seen in the place most users spend their time you had to pay for the privilege.

In a Medium post entitled "Biggest drop in organic reach we've ever seen", a Slovakian journalist Filip Struharik documented the impact. Publishers in his country were seeing just a quarter of the interactions they used to get before the change, he said. What had become a vital and vibrant platform for them was emptying out fast. Other journalists around the world have looked into the future and hate what they see. Their organisations have become addicted to Facebook as the one true way of reaching audiences and going cold turkey would be very painful.

Previously: The Tentacles of Facebook
Facebook is Going to Let Publishers Start Charging Readers to View Stories this Autumn
Google, Facebook Algorithms Promote 4chan Threads Identifying Wrong Man as Vegas Shooter

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takyon writes:

Shrews have been found to shrink and regenerate tissue in their heads in response to seasonal variations:

Common shrews shrink their heads — including their skulls — in winter, researchers have found. They believe that this dramatic example of downsizing may help the animals to survive when food is scarce.

Individual wild common shrews (Sorex araneus) captured and tagged in Germany showed large reductions in skull size and body mass over the winter. Their spines also got shorter, and major organs, including the heart, lungs and spleen, shrank. Even their brain mass dropped by 20–30%, according to Javier Lázaro, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany. In spring, the animals started to regrow.

"We hypothesize that these seasonal changes could have adaptive value," says Lázaro, who led the work. Shrews have an extremely fast metabolism, he points out, and reducing their body mass during winter might increase their chances of survival, because they wouldn't need so much food. In particular, he adds, "reducing brain size might save energy, as the brain is energetically so expensive".

Also at The Guardian.

Profound reversible seasonal changes of individual skull size in a mammal (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.08.055) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A feminine robot has apparently been granted "citizenship" in Saudi Arabia, sparking a heated discussion over a lack of rights for women and foreign workers:

A robot woman in Saudi Arabia was granted citizenship this week, sparking a backlash that said the robot appeared to have more rights than millions of human women and foreigners living in the Gulf nation. Sophia, a robot with human female features that can make facial expressions and hold conversations, wooed the crowd when it debuted at a economic summit in the country's capital, Riyadh, this week.

As it stood on stage during a panel Wednesday, the robot learned from the moderator, CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin, that Saudi Arabia had granted it what Sorkin called "the first Saudi citizenship for a robot." "I'm very honored and proud for this unique distinction," Sophia said, to applause. "This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship."

[...] Soon after, though, social media users pointed out that Sophia had quickly achieved more rights than millions of women and foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, which has been criticized globally for repressing women's and civil rights.

For one, Sophia appeared on stage alone, without the modest dress required of Saudi women; she donned no hijab, or headscarf, nor abaya, or cloak. She also did not appear to have a male guardian, as required by Saudi law for women in the country. Male guardians, often a male relative, must give permission before women can travel abroad, open bank accounts or carry out a host of other tasks -- and they accompany women in public. Sophia also seems to have leapfrogged foreign workers in the Saudi kingdom, many of whom have fled poor working conditions but are prevented by law from leaving the country.

The robot also trolled Elon Musk:

takyon writes:

Astronomer Rob Weryk has identified what appears to be the first interstellar object to enter (and soon exit) the solar system. The object, provisionally designated A/2017 U1, is estimated to be 400 meters in diameter:

A/2017 U1 was discovered Oct. 19 by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, during the course of its nightly search for near-Earth objects for NASA. Rob Weryk, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), was first to identify the moving object and submit it to the Minor Planet Center. Weryk subsequently searched the Pan-STARRS image archive and found it also was in images taken the previous night, but was not initially identified by the moving object processing.

[...] "This is the most extreme orbit I have ever seen," said Davide Farnocchia, a scientist at NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "It is going extremely fast and on such a trajectory that we can say with confidence that this object is on its way out of the solar system and not coming back."

The CNEOS team plotted the object's current trajectory and even looked into its future. A/2017 U1 came from the direction of the constellation Lyra, cruising through interstellar space at a brisk clip of 15.8 miles (25.5 kilometers) per second.

The object approached our solar system from almost directly "above" the ecliptic, the approximate plane in space where the planets and most asteroids orbit the Sun, so it did not have any close encounters with the eight major planets during its plunge toward the Sun. On Sept. 2, the small body crossed under the ecliptic plane just inside of Mercury's orbit and then made its closest approach to the Sun on Sept. 9. Pulled by the Sun's gravity, the object made a hairpin turn under our solar system, passing under Earth's orbit on Oct. 14 at a distance of about 15 million miles (24 million kilometers) -- about 60 times the distance to the Moon. It has now shot back up above the plane of the planets and, travelling at 27 miles per second (44 kilometers per second) with respect to the Sun, the object is speeding toward the constellation Pegasus.

"We have long suspected that these objects should exist, because during the process of planet formation a lot of material should be ejected from planetary systems. What's most surprising is that we've never seen interstellar objects pass through before," said Karen Meech, an astronomer at the IfA specializing in small bodies and their connection to solar system formation.

Here is a direct link to an animation of the object's passage.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Some Amazon customers in Orlando got a surprise when they opened the package that arrived on their doorstep. They ordered plastic storage bins, but the bins came with 65 pounds of marijuana.

"We love Amazon and do a lot of shopping on Amazon," said the customer, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons.

When she and her fiancé needed to put some things in storage, they placed an order for 27 gallon storage totes. But when the packages arrived, they knew something didn't feel right. "They were extremely heavy, heavier than you would think from ordering four empty bins," she said.

[...] Police seized the drugs and launched an investigation.

It had been shipped by Amazon's Warehouse Deals via UPS from a facility in Massachusetts.

[...] Orlando police said there have been no arrests, but they are still actively investigating the case.

Amazon sent a statement saying its customer service team worked directly with the customer to address concerns and will work with law enforcement to investigate the case.

I guess getting accidentally sent over half a million bucks worth of weed is when you find out if you're really serious about your anti-drugs stance.

Source: http://www.wftv.com/news/local/police-investigate-after-63-pounds-of-weed-included-with-orlando-couples-amazon-order/627653301

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Mars colonists could create a carbon dioxide plasma in order to supply oxygen to their settlement(s):

The atmosphere on Mars is 96 per cent carbon dioxide, says Vasco Guerra at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. This can be split to extract breathable oxygen and carbon monoxide, a fuel that could give us a "gas station on the Red Planet", he says. He and his team calculate that creating a carbon dioxide plasma — a mush of ions made by passing an electric current through a gas — could split carbon dioxide from oxygen more easily on Mars than on Earth.

The lower atmospheric pressure on Mars would allow us to create plasmas without the vacuum pumps or compressors necessary on Earth. Also, the temperature of around -60°C is just right to let the plasma more easily break one of the chemical bonds that keeps carbon and oxygen tightly bound, while preventing the carbon dioxide from re-forming.

For now, this is largely theoretical, but they say such a system needing only 150 to 200 Watts for 4 hours each 25-hour Mars day could produce 8 to 16 kilograms of oxygen. "The International Space Station currently consumes oxygen in the range of 2 to 5 kilograms per day, so this would be enough to support a small settlement," says Guerra.

The case for in situ resource utilisation for oxygen production on Mars by nonequilibrium plasmas (open, DOI: 10.1088/1361-6595) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed has joined a growing group of Bitcoin skeptics:

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed is joining the long line of skeptics saying bitcoin is a bubble as the digital currency continues to set record highs. "I just don't believe in this bitcoin thing. I think it's just going to implode one day. I think this is Enron in the making," Alwaleed told CNBC in an interview. "It just doesn't make sense. This thing is not regulated, it's not under control, it's not under the supervision" of any central bank, he said.

In his interview with CNBC, he said that the high price of Uber made Lyft a more attractive investment:

"We were in discussions with both Uber and Lyft, but when we evaluated both companies, we thought that Lyft is a better entry point for us. Because at that time, Uber's price was at a plateau of its highest height. So we invested in Lyft, and we have a very good relationship with .... the management," Alwaleed said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box. "But Uber still is a great company, obviously, and Uber is the company that began with this whole idea of shared rides. Our choice was to go with Lyft but it doesn't mean that Uber is not good."

Alwaleed, who runs Kingdom Holding, made his comments on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that another Saudi fund, state-owned Public Investment Fund, was struggling to deal with a disappointing investment in Uber.

takyon writes:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has confirmed that he received an email from the chief executive of data firm Cambridge Analytica inquiring about Hillary Clinton's deleted emails:

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Wednesday that he had rebuffed a request for help last year from the head of a data firm that worked for Donald J. Trump and is now facing congressional scrutiny.

On Twitter, Mr. Assange said he had been approached before the 2016 election by Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Mr. Trump during the final months of the campaign. Mr. Assange did not disclose what kind of help Mr. Nix sought, only that he had declined the request. "I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica," Mr. Assange wrote, "and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks."

But The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Mr. Nix had emailed Mr. Assange looking for copies of more than 30,000 emails that were deleted from Hillary Clinton's private server and never publicly released. Mrs. Clinton has said that the emails were personal in nature.

[...] It is also unclear why Mr. Nix would have believed that Mr. Assange had copies of the missing emails. Earlier last year, WikiLeaks had posted a searchable database of more than 50,000 emails from Mrs. Clinton's private server, all of them previously released by the State Department. But Mr. Trump himself seemed eager to find the missing emails: At a campaign rally in July, Mr. Trump publicly asked Russia to obtain the deleted emails.

"There's no such thing as a dumb question." :-) 😂😂😂

Also at The Guardian, CNN, The Hill, and Politico.

Previously: Assange Thanks USA for Forcing Him to Invest in Booming Bitcoin

Original Submission

takyon writes:

'More valuable than a regular tip': Einstein's handwritten note to courier sells for $1.5m

A note that Albert Einstein gave to a courier in Tokyo briefly describing his theory on happy living has sold at auction in Jerusalem for $1.56m (€1.33m), according to auctioneers.

The winning bid for the note far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of between $5,000 and $8,000, according to Winner's auctions.

"It was an all-time record for an auction of a document in Israel," said Winner's spokesman Meni Chadad, adding that the buyer was a European who wished to remain anonymous.

The note, on Imperial Hotel Tokyo stationery, says in German[1] that "a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest".

[1] The original German text was: "Stilles bescheidenes Leben gibt mehr Glück als erfolgreiches Streben, verbunden mit beständiger Unruhe."

I hope you're happy with your purchase.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The world's first trees grew by splitting their guts:

Scientists have discovered some of the best preserved specimens of the world's first trees in a remote region of China. At up to 12 meters tall, these spindly species were topped by a clump of erect branches vaguely resembling modern palm trees and lived a whopping 393 million to 372 million years ago. But the biggest surprise is how they got so big in the first place.

[...] The fossils reveal that, unlike modern trees with a single shaft, cladoxylopsids had multiple xylem columns spaced around the perimeter of a hollow trunk. A network of crisscrossing strands connected the vertical xylem—much like a chain-link fence spreads from pole to pole—and soft tissue filled the spaces between all these strands. New growth formed in rings around each of the xylem columns while an increasing volume of soft tissue forced the strands to spread out.

All of this expanded the girth of the trunk, allowing for a taller tree. But it also split apart the tree's xylem skeleton, which required the tree to continually repair itself, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The weight of the tree squeezed tissue at the base of the trunk outward.

Also at Newsweek.

Unique growth strategy in the Earth's first trees revealed in silicified fossil trunks from China (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1708241114) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New Zealand's ruling National Party must pay $600,000 for a copyright-infringing campaign advertisement that used Eminem's track "Lose Yourself" (YT):

New Zealand's ruling National Party must pay $600,000 for infringing the copyrights of Eminem's track "Lose Yourself" in a 2014 election spot. The ruling is significant, not least because the party's political leader at the time was Kim Dotcom's nemesis John Key.

[...] In 2012, the country's law enforcement officials helped to bring down the file-sharing site [Megaupload], including a military-style raid on its founder, Kim Dotcom.

While the Megaupload case is still ongoing, a separate copyright battle in New Zealand came to a conclusion this week. In this case, the country's leading National Party was the accused.

In 2014 the party of former Prime Minister and Kim Dotcom nemesis John Key was sued for copyright infringement by Eminem's publisher Eight Mile Style. In an advertising spot for the General Election campaign, the party used a song heavily inspired by the track "Lose Yourself." A blatant copyright infringement, they argued.

This week the High Court agreed with the publisher ruling that the ad indeed infringed on their copyright. The National Party must now pay a total of $600,000 (415,000 USD) including damages and interest, NZ Herald reports.

Related: NSA Unlawfully Surveiled Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom in New Zealand
Entire Kim Dotcom Spying Operation Was Illegal, New Zealand High Court Rules

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Purdue University researchers have come close to hitting a 1,000 W/cm² target for cooling computer chips specified by DARPA. The technique uses microchannel heat sinks built into chips with a liquid coolant (HFE-7100) flowing through them, but the width and length of the channels has been greatly reduced compared to previous designs. Better cooling performance is needed to enable stacked/3D chips:

Use of small microchannels is the key but doing so also complicates the process. "It's been known for a long time that the smaller the channel the higher the heat-transfer performance," said Kevin Drummond, one of the paper's lead authors and doctoral student. "We are going down to 15 or 10 microns in channel width, which is about 10 times smaller than what is typical for microchannel cooling technologies."

Although using ultra-small channels increases the cooling performance, it is difficult to pump the required rates of liquid flow through the tiny microchannels. The Purdue team overcame this problem by designing a system of short, parallel channels instead of long channels stretching across the entire length of the chip. A special "hierarchical" manifold distributes the flow of coolant through these channels.

"So, instead of a channel being 5,000 microns in length, we shorten it to 250 microns long," said Suresh Garimella, PI on the project, "The total length of the channel is the same, but it is now fed in discrete segments, and this prevents major pressure drops. So this represents a different paradigm." The channels were etched in silicon with a width of about 15 microns but a depth of up to 300 microns.

The team dissipated up to 910 W/cm², not 1 kW/cm² as specified by DARPA in its Intrachip/Interchip Enhanced Cooling (ICECool) program. W/m² is the SI unit for irradiance, or radiant flux.

This 2004 article mentions a Carnegie Mellon University team that managed to get to 300-400 W/cm² using "chip-scale squirt guns". In 2016, Lockheed Martin also hit the 1 kW/cm² target as well as 30 kW/cm² in "multiple local hot spots".

Also at Purdue University.

A hierarchical manifold microchannel heat sink array for high-heat-flux two-phase cooling of electronics (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.10.015) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Project Blue aims to send a telescope with a coronagraph into low-Earth orbit to capture direct images of potentially habitable exoplanets orbiting Alpha Centauri A or B. Proxima Centauri is not a target due to the closeness of the red dwarf star and its habitable zone.

The BoldlyGo Institute has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $175,000 for initial planning and design. The project's first attempt at crowdfunding used Kickstarter to try and raise $1 million, but only $335,597 was raised. They are using flexible funding this time but have reached 70% of their goal with 10 days left . A donor has also pledged to match contributions dollar-for-dollar until the campaign reaches $175k.

BoldlyGo Institute has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA that will allow NASA employees to assist the Project Blue team during its mission development phases, and also allows Project Blue to test their designs at NASA facilities. More such public-private partnerships should be expected in the coming years.

Also at Popular Mechanics, Space.com, and SpaceRef.

Previously: Scientists Say They Have a $25 Million Plan to Image Alpha Centauri's Planets

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition has won big in the recent elections and may eventually push for changes in Japan's constitution, although such plans are tentative:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling bloc scored a big win in Sunday's election, bolstering his chance of becoming the nation's longest-serving premier and re-energizing his push to revise the pacifist constitution. Abe's Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition won a combined 312 seats, keeping its two-thirds "super majority" in the 465-member lower house, local media said.

A hefty win raises the likelihood that Abe, who took office in December 2012, will secure a third three-year term as LDP leader next September and go on to become Japan's longest-serving premier. It also means his "Abenomics" growth strategy centered on the hyper-easy monetary policy will likely continue.

[...] The U.S.-drafted constitution's Article 9, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. But Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defense. Backers of Abe's proposal to clarify the military's ambiguous status say it would codify the status quo. Critics fear it would allow an expanded role overseas for the military. Abe said he would not stick to a target he had floated of making the changes by 2020. "First, I want to deepen debate and have as many people as possible agree," he told a TV broadcaster. "We should put priority on that."

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly benefited from tensions with North Korea and is likely to serve as Prime Minister until 2021:

The elections were a result of a risky move on Abe's part. He dissolved the lower house of parliament last month and called for fresh elections a year earlier than scheduled to "face a national crisis" in North Korea. It was a gamble, considering Abe's approval ratings over the past year have ranged from iffy to dismal. One Washington Post headline from the summer read "Japanese prime minister's poll numbers are so low they make Trump's look good." "Abe is personally not that popular of a guy," Hu said. "But after North Korean missiles flew over Japan two times this year, Abe's popularity shot back up."

Also at The Diplomat and Bloomberg. Japanese general election, 2017.