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takyon writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/ea-shuts-down-fan-run-servers-for-older-battlefield-games/

Since 2014, a group of volunteers going by the name Revive Network have been working to keep online game servers running for Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and Battlefield Heroes. As of this week, the team is shutting down that effort thanks to a legal request from publisher Electronic Arts.

"We will get right to the point: Electronic Arts Inc.' legal team has contacted us and nicely asked us to stop distributing and using their intellectual property," the Revive Network team writes in a note on their site. "As diehard fans of the franchise, we will respect these stipulations."

EA's older Battlefield titles were a victim of the 2014 GameSpy shutdown, which disabled the online infrastructure for plenty of classic PC and console games. To get around that, Revive was distributing modified versions of the older Battlefield titles along with a launcher that allowed access to its own, rewritten server infrastructure. The process started with Battlefield 2 in 2014 and expanded to Battlefield 2142 last year, and Battlefield Heroes a few month ago.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

If you think technologies from Star Trek seem far-fetched, think again. Many of the devices from the acclaimed television series are slowly becoming a reality. While we may not be teleporting people from starships to a planet's surface anytime soon, we are getting closer to developing other tools essential for future space travel endeavours.

I am a lifelong Star Trek fan, but I am also a researcher that specializes in creating new magnetic materials. The field of condensed-matter physics encompasses all new solid and liquid phases of matter, and its study has led to nearly every technological advance of the last century, from computers to cellphones to solar cells.

My approach to looking for new phenomena in materials comes from a chemistry perspective: How can we create materials that have new properties that can change our world, and eventually be used to explore "strange, new worlds"? I believe an understanding of so-called "quantum materials" in particular is essential to make science-fiction science fact.

Quantum materials, magnetic fields and shields, superconductors on spaceships, quantum computers, societal revolution? Get your Trek on.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

"The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place. If they don't start, they won't have a problem." – President Donald J. Trump

President Trump has declared the "Opioid Crisis" a nationwide public health emergency. This action will allow for "expanded access to telemedicine services" to remotely prescribe medicines for substance abuse, allow the Department of Health and Human Services to "more quickly make temporary appointments of specialists with the tools and talent needed to respond effectively to our Nation's ongoing public health emergency", allow the Department of Labor to issue dislocated worker grants for those "displaced from the workforce" due to the Opioid Crisis, and will help people with HIV/AIDS to receive substance abuse treatment. The press release lists several actions that the Trump Administration has taken to respond to the Opioid Crisis, including the July 2017 law enforcement action against AlphaBay.

The declaration has been criticized for not requesting any funds to respond to the Crisis. The "nationwide public health emergency" declaration is also distinct from a promised "national emergency declaration", which would have freed up money from the Disaster Relief Fund to be spent on the Crisis. 14 Senate Democrats have introduced a bill that would authorize $45 billion to address the Opioid Crisis. The Obama Administration called on Congress last year to pass just over $1 billion in funding for opioid treatment programs nationwide. This funding was included in the 21st Century Cures Act.

The Department of Justice has arrested and charged the founder and majority owner of Insys Therapeutics Inc., John Kapoor, along with other executives from his company. Kapoor is accused with leading a nationwide conspiracy to bribe doctors and illegally distribute the company's fentanyl spray, intended for cancer patients, so that it could be prescribed for non-cancer patients. Kapoor stepped down as CEO of Insys in January. Acting U.S. Attorney William D. Weinreb said, "Mr. Kapoor and his company stand accused of bribing doctors to overprescribe a potent opioid and committing fraud on insurance companies solely for profit. Today's arrest and charges reflect our ongoing efforts to attack the opioid crisis from all angles. We must hold the industry and its leadership accountable - just as we would the cartels or a street-level drug dealer." Six former Insys executives and managers were charged in December.

[takyon: a262 would like you to know that Insys Therapeutics donated $500,000 to help defeat Arizona's 2016 ballot initiative that would have legalized recreational use of cannabis.]

takyon writes:

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all seen massive growth in their cloud computing businesses:

Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Corp's Google and Intel Corp are all putting their chips on the cloud computing business, and it is booming. All four companies posted stellar quarterly earnings on Thursday, showing the strength of the shift in corporate computing away from company-owned data centers and to the cloud.

Microsoft's Azure business nearly doubled, with year-over-year growth of 90 percent. The company does not break out revenue figures for Azure, but research firm Canalys estimates it generated $2 billion for Microsoft.

[...] Amazon Web Services is still delivering far more revenue than any of its peers. For the quarter, AWS raked in nearly $4.6 billion -- a year-over-year increase of 42 percent. AWS may have missed out on Costco, but the company secured deals with Hulu, Toyota Racing Development, and most notably, General Electric.

Google Cloud Platform landed deals with the likes of department store retailer Kohl's and payments processor PayPal. Like Microsoft, Alphabet does not break out revenue for Google Cloud Platform, but Canalys estimates the business generated $870 million in the quarter, up 76 percent year-over-year.

Also at NYT, BBC, and Seeking Alpha.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

What do you want to happen to your remains after you die?

For the past century, most Americans have accepted a limited set of options without question. And discussions of death and funeral plans have been taboo.

That is changing. As a scholar of funeral and cemetery law, I've discovered that Americans are becoming more willing to have a conversation about their own mortality and what comes next and embrace new funeral and burial practices.

Baby boomers are insisting upon more control over their funeral and disposition so that their choices after death match their values in life. And businesses are following suit, offering new ways to memorialize and dispose of the dead.

While some options such as Tibetan sky burial – leaving human remains to be picked clean by vultures – and "Viking" burial via flaming boat – familiar to "Game of Thrones" fans – remain off limits in the U.S., laws are changing to allow a growing variety of practices.

Hmm, vitrification with a motion sensor-activated coffin such that passersby trigger my corpse to sit up and ask, "Is it time to make the donuts?"

Previously: "Water Cremation" (Alkaline Hydrolysis): Environmentally Friendly Disposal of Dead Bodies

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A scale-up of tidal energy projects aims to expand capacity, improve reliability and prove their worth to investors as a renewable energy source.

It's clean, doesn't spoil the landscape and is totally predictable, yet tidal power is one of the least exploited forms of renewable energy.

The challenge of building out at sea, the toll the salt water can take on equipment and the huge strain the currents can put on components has meant that it is seen as an expensive endeavour.

'The sea is one of the world's most challenging environments,' said Simon Forrest, chief executive of Nova Innovation, a tidal power company based in Edinburgh, UK. 'However, technical innovation and learnings from the wind sector are being used to make the dream of harnessing energy from the tide a reality.'

Last year, Nova Innovation deployed the world's first array of tidal turbines, which were connected to the electricity grid in Shetland, UK.

Predictability and the theoretical energy that can be captured are both attractive, but fouling and wear-and-tear remain barriers.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Airships may indeed be well-suited to tasks like cargo transport, surveying and surveillance, but what really captures peoples' imaginations is the thought of travelling aboard one as a tourist. Well, according to Britain's Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), such a scenario could soon be a reality.

HAV is the developer of the Airlander 10, which is currently the world's largest aircraft. It's powered by four 325-hp (242-kW) turbocharged diesel engines and uses aerodynamic lift like a conventional fixed-wing aircraft to take off, with helium keeping it aloft once it's in the air. Additionally, it can carry payloads of up to 10,000 kg (22,050 lb), stay in the air for five days at a time with a crew, and doesn't require a purpose-built runway.
...
the company revealed that next year, UK-based Henry Cookson Adventures (HCA) will become the first private excursion company to trial the Airlander 10. HCA will be taking the aircraft on its first international flight – an "expeditionary journey" – with an eye towards ultimately using a type-certified version of it for transporting paying customers to remote and exotic locations around the world.

Fancy a sight-seeing flight to Kamchatka?

Previously:
World's Largest Aircraft Repaired and Ready to Fly Again
World's Largest Aircraft Takes Off for the First Time
Airlander 10 - Test Flight Delayed
World's Largest Aircraft "Weeks" Away From First UK Test Flight
Hybrid Air Vehicles Seeking Investors for Airlander 10 Hybrid Airship
World's Longest Aircraft

Original Submission

We had submissions by two Soylentils about the wiping of drives on a voting server in Georgia (USA).

Georgia Election Server Wiped after Lawsuit Filed

DeathMonkey writes:

A computer server crucial to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials was quietly wiped clean by its custodians just after the suit was filed, The Associated Press has learned.

The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system. The data wipe was revealed in an email — sent last week from an assistant state attorney general to plaintiffs in the case — that was obtained by the AP. More emails obtained in a public records request confirmed the wipe.

The lawsuit, filed by a diverse group of election reform advocates, aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily criticized election technology. The server in question, which served as a statewide staging location for key election-related data, made national headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed six months after he reported it to election authorities.

[...] It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.

The Kennesaw election center answers to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, a Republican who is running for governor in 2018 and is the main defendant in the suit. A spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office said Wednesday that “we did not have anything to do with this decision,” adding that the office also had no advance warning of the move.

[...] Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, mostly Georgia voters, want to scrap the state's 15-year-old vote-management system — particularly its 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines, hackable devices that don't use paper ballots or keep hardcopy proof of voter intent. The plaintiffs were counting on an independent security review of the Kennesaw server, which held elections staging data for counties, to demonstrate the system's unreliability.

Wiping the server "forestalls any forensic investigation at all," said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist following the case. "People who have nothing to hide don't behave this way."

[...] It could still be possible to recover relevant information from the server.

takyon writes:

CVS, one of the largest pharmacies in the U.S., has made an offer to acquire the health insurer Aetna Inc.:

U.S. pharmacy operator CVS Health Corp has made an offer to acquire No. 3 U.S. health insurer Aetna Inc for more than $200 per share, or over $66 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. A deal would merge one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefits managers and pharmacy operators with one of its oldest health insurers, whose far-reaching business ranges from employer healthcare to government plans nationwide.

[...] A tie-up with Aetna could give CVS more leverage in its price negotiations with drug makers. But it would also subject it to more antitrust scrutiny. The deal could also help counter pressure on CVS's stock following speculation that Amazon.com Inc is preparing to enter the drug prescription market, using its vast e-commerce platform to take market share from traditional pharmacies.

[...] The sources did not specify how much of CVS' bid is cash versus stock, but given CVS's and Aetna's market capitalizations of $77 billion and $54 billion, respectively, a substantial stock component is likely in any deal.

• A CVS-Aetna Deal Is Logical But Also a Stretch
• Wall Street Sees a CVS, Aetna Deal as a Revolutionary Defense

Also at NYT.

Related: Judge Finds That Aetna Misled the Public About its Reasons for Quitting Obamacare
$54 Billion Anthem-Cigna Health Insurer Merger Rejected by U.S. Judge
Health Insurer Aetna Accidentally Exposes Customers' HIV Statuses With Transparent Envelope Windows

Original Submission

takyon writes:

64% of Americans now support the legalization of cannabis, an all-time high since Gallup first asked the question in 1969. Also for the first time, a majority of Republicans (51%) support legalization, up from 42% last year:

As efforts to legalize marijuana at the state level continue to yield successes, public opinion, too, has shifted toward greater support. The Department of Justice under the current Republican administration has been perceived as hostile to state-level legalization. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions could find himself out of step with his own party if the current trends continue. Rank-and-file Republicans' views on the issue have evolved just as Democrats' and independents' have, though Republicans remain least likely to support legalizing pot.

Also at NPR, The Hill, NORML, and Reason.

Related: New Attorney General Claims Legal Weed Drives Violent Crime; Statistics be Damned
4/20: The Third Time's Not the Charm

Original Submission

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

Original Submission

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: