SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Altice USA, a cable television provider, is entering into a strategic agreement with Sprint:

Altice USA struck a deal with Sprint Corp. that will allow the cable operator to sell wireless service using Sprint's network.

As part of the agreement, Sprint will use Altice's broadband infrastructure to strengthen its nationwide wireless network, according to a statement from both companies that didn't disclose financial terms. Talks between Sprint's majority owner, SoftBank Group Corp., to combine the carrier with T-Mobile US Inc. collapsed over the weekend after months of negotiations.

The deal between Altice and Sprint marks the latest example of a U.S. cable operator entering the wireless business to compete with giants like Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable operator, recently started selling cellular service using Verizon's network. Charter Communications Inc., the No. 2 cable operator, plans to enter the wireless business next year.

What's up with Google's Project Fi lately?

Also at FierceCable and FierceWireless (wow, so fierce!).

Related: T-Mobile and Sprint Merger Called Off After Months of Talks

Original Submission

takyon writes:

An unusually large gas giant has been found orbiting a red dwarf star. The exoplanet is the first one found by the Next-Generation Transit Survey:

New research, led by Dr Daniel Bayliss and Professor Peter Wheatley from the University of Warwick's Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, has identified the unusual planet NGTS-1b - the largest planet compared to the size of its companion star ever discovered in the universe.

NGTS-1b is a gas giant six hundred light years away, the size of Jupiter, and orbits a small star with a radius and mass half that of our sun. Its existence challenges theories of planet formation which state that a planet of this size could not be formed by such a small star. According to these theories, small stars can readily form rocky planets but do not gather enough material together to form Jupiter-sized planets.

The planet is a hot Jupiter, at least as large as the Jupiter in our solar system, but with around 20% less mass. It is very close to its star – just 3% of the distance between Earth and the Sun – and orbits the star every 2.6 days

[...] "The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us - such massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars. This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form. Our challenge is to now find out how common these types of planets are in the Galaxy, and with the new [Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)] facility we are well-placed to do just that."

What about brown dwarf pairs?

Also at the German Aerospace Center and Space.com.

NGTS-1b: A hot Jupiter transiting an M-dwarf (can't find arxiv abstract link for some reason)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Following a meeting between Apple's CEO Tim Cook and Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, Varadkar said that Apple is not committed to going forward with a planned $1 billion datacenter:

A planned $1 billion Apple data center is in doubt after Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the U.S. company's Chief Executive Tim Cook would no longer commit to it, adding that Dublin would do whatever necessary to get it built.

Apple announced plans in February 2015 to build the facility in a rural location in the west of Ireland to take advantage of green energy sources nearby, but the project has faced a two-year delay due to planning objections.

In a meeting on Thursday, Cook did not commit to going ahead with it, Varadkar told state broadcaster RTE. "We didn't get a start date, or a definite commitment or anything like that," said Varadkar, who is on a tour of the United States to meet investors, adding he had told Cook that the government would do "anything within our power" to facilitate the resumption of the project.

Also at City A.M.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

TorMoil, as the flaw has been dubbed by its discoverer, is triggered when users click on links that begin with file:// rather than the more common https:// and http:// address prefixes. When the Tor browser for macOS and Linux is in the process of opening such an address, "the operating system may directly connect to the remote host, bypassing Tor Browser," according to a brief blog post published Tuesday by We Are Segment, the security firm that privately reported the bug to Tor developers.

On Friday, members of the Tor Project issued a temporary work-around that plugs that IP leak. Until the final fix is in place, updated versions of the browser may not behave properly when navigating to file:// addresses. They said both the Windows versions of Tor, Tails, and the sandboxed Tor browser that's in alpha testing aren't vulnerable.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/critical-tor-flaw-leaks-users-real-ip-address-update-now/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) has reported the detection of a dust belt around 1-4 astronomical units (AU) from Proxima Centauri, as well as a possible outer belt 30 AU away and an "unknown source" (possible exoplanet) about 1.6 AU away from the star. The data also show "a hint of warmer dust closer to the star".

Proxima b is 0.05 AU from Proxima Centauri, and is considered to be in the star's "habitable zone". The 1-4 AU belt on the other hand has a characteristic temperature of about 40 K, while the 30 AU outer belt would have a temperature of about 10 K. Neptune's moon Triton is roughly 30 AU from the Sun with a temperature of 38 K.

The 1-4 AU belt is estimated to contain 0.01 Earth masses of asteroids (primarily?) up to 50 km in diameter. By comparison, our main asteroid belt (including Ceres) is estimated to contain 4% of the Moon's mass, or about 0.000492 Earth masses (Ceres is about 0.00015 Earth masses, roughly a third of the main asteroid belt). A minimum estimate for the Kuiper belt's mass is 20x that of the main asteroid belt, or the equivalent of this newly detected dust belt around Proxima Centauri.

Astronomy Magazine has an interview with one of the co-authors, who noted another possible exoplanet at 0.5 AU:

Phoenix666 writes:

Lancelot Braithwaite cannot get through my visit without bursting forth a mantra that once served him and thousands of consumers well: “Read the frickin’ instruction manual!” he bellows. “And don’t throw it out unless you’re pretty good at memorizing it!” Never mind that products—from iPhones to Facebook—have made manuals into curious artifacts of a distant era. That era is alive if not well in Braithwaite’s smokey, cramped one-bedroom on West 14th Street.

Before tech product reviewers were brand names, there was Braithwaite, thundering his wisdom and geekery from publications that now exist only in yellowing copies. It was a time when the best critics were so familiar with technical specifications that their knowledge rivaled the engineers who built the products. And none were as omnipresent or as savvy as Braithwaite, who even served on industry standards committees.

Manuals are for sissies.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

For those wanting to be more charismatic, there is evidence that it is not such a magical, or imperceptible quality as it might first seem.

Most of it stems from the way we use words and how points are conveyed. For example, in one set of studies, Antonakis trained middle managers at a German company and MBA students to be perceived as more charismatic by using what he calls charismatic leadership tactics.

These are made up of nine core verbal tactics including metaphors, stories and anecdotes, contrasts, lists and rhetorical questions. Speakers should demonstrate moral conviction, share the sentiments of the audience they are targeting, set high expectations for themselves, and communicate confidence. Managers trained to use these tactics were rated as more competent, more trusted and able to influence others. MBA students who analysed recordings of themselves giving speeches, with these tactics in mind, ultimately gave new speeches that were rated as more charismatic.

“Margaret Thatcher was unbelievably charismatic because of her rhetoric and use of these tactics,” Antonakis says. Analysis of a speech the UK Prime Minister delivered to the Conservative Party Conference in 1980, known as ‘The lady’s not for turning’, highlighted her extensive use of many of these verbal tricks. Her speech was packed with metaphors, rhetorical questions, stories, contrasts, lists, and references to ambitious goals.

But it’s not just how you use words that is important. Body language, gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice contribute to emotional signalling too and should match the message you want to convey. “What you need to convey [is] the appropriate emotion to what you’re saying. You need to look credible so people will trust you, ” says Antonakis.

Top tips: shower, and ditch the Atari T-shirt.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A practically useless form of quark fusion releases more energy than deuterium-tritium fusion:

A pair of physicists discovered a new kind of fusion that occurs between quarks – and they were so concerned with its power they almost didn't publish the results. [...] "I must admit that when I first realised that such a reaction was possible, I was scared," Marek Karliner of Tel Aviv University told Rafi Letzter at Live Science. "But, luckily, it is a one-trick pony."

[...] If we take deuterium (proton plus a neutron) and add energy to squish it against some tritium (proton plus two neutrons), it will scramble to make helium (two protons and two neutrons). That last neutron runs from the scene of the crime. For your effort, you get 17.6 megaelectron volts and an H-bomb.

Karliner and Letzter calculated the fusing of the charm quarks in the recent LHC discovery would release 12 megaelectron volts. Not bad for two itty-bitty particles. But if we were using another pair of heavy quarks? Bottom quarks, for example? That becomes an astonishing 138 megaelectron volts.

[...] Unlike atoms, bottom quarks can't be shoved into a flask and packed into a shell. They exist for something in the order of a picosecond following atomic wrecks inside particle accelerators, before transforming into the much lighter up quark. That leaves quark bombs and quark fusion drives to science fiction authors, and, thankfully, well out of the hands of rogue nations and terrorist cells.

Just what I needed for my pure fusion weapon design.

Quark-level analogue of nuclear fusion with doubly heavy baryons (DOI: 10.1038/nature24289) (DX)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Board gamers take note:

Every October, the German city of Essen becomes the epicenter of tabletop gaming geekdom. Tens of thousands of visitors descend on the International Spieltage fair, where publishers from around the world debut their up-and-coming releases over four frantic days of dice chucking, card shuffling, and cube pushing.

For gamers, it’s an enthralling, bewildering, almost intimidating spectacle. Where gaming events in other countries, like Gen Con in the US or the UK Games Expo, incorporate celebrity guests, panel discussions, and side attractions, Essen is focused squarely on the games—everything from light and fluffy family favourites to impenetrable brain-melters.

Given that it’s the highlight of the global gaming calendar, I headed along for a barrage of board games and bratwurst. Here are the best new games I saw.

A Pandemic sequel is among the reviewer's favorites.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

How can an employer make sure its remote workers aren’t slacking off on the job? In the case of talent management company Crossover, the answer is to take photos of them every 10 minutes through their webcam.

The pictures are taken by Crossover’s productivity tool, WorkSmart, and combined with screenshots of their workstations along with other data including app use and keystrokes to come up with a “focus score” and an “intensity score” that can be used to assess the value of freelancers.

Today’s workplace surveillance software is a digital panopticon that began with email and phone monitoring but now includes keeping track of web-browsing patterns, text messages, screenshots, keystrokes, social media posts, private messaging apps like WhatsApp and even face-to-face interactions with co-workers.

Good luck with that, Big Brother. My webcam's covered by duct tape.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The first-ever fiber optic cable with a route between the U.S. And India via Brazil and South Africa will soon be a reality. This is according to a joint provisioning agreement entered into by Seaborn Networks ("Seaborn") and IOX Cable Ltd ("IOX").

The cable is a "first" given its unique path connecting the U.S. with three BRICS countries.
...
Seaborn is the developer-owner-operator of: Seabras-1, a direct subsea system between New York - São Paulo; ARBR, the only new direct subsea system planned to be built between Brazil - Argentina (RFS Q4 2018); and SABR, a new subsea system between Cape Town, South Africa and Seabras-1 (RFS 2019).

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

How to store information in your clothes invisibly, without electronics

A new type of smart fabric developed at the University of Washington could pave the way for jackets that store invisible passcodes and open the door to your apartment or office.

The UW computer scientists have created fabrics and fashion accessories that can store data -- from security codes to identification tags -- without needing any on-board electronics or sensors.

As described in a paper presented Oct. 25 at the Association for Computing Machinery's User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST 2017), they leveraged previously unexplored magnetic properties of off-the-shelf conductive thread. The data can be read using an instrument embedded in existing smartphones to enable navigation apps.

"This is a completely electronic-free design, which means you can iron the smart fabric or put it in the washer and dryer," said senior author Shyam Gollakota, associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. "You can think of the fabric as a hard disk -- you're actually doing this data storage on the clothes you're wearing."

You could embroider a QR code into your clothing, too, though.

Original Submission

Intel squeezed an AMD graphics chip, RAM and CPU into one module

the new processor integrates a "semi-custom" AMD graphics chip and the second generation of Intel's "High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2)", which is comparable to GDDR5 in a traditional laptop.

Intel CPU and AMD GPU, together at last

richtopia writes:

Summary of Intel's news:

The new product, which will be part of our 8th Gen Intel Core family, brings together our high-performing Intel Core H-series processor, second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) and a custom-to-Intel third-party discrete graphics chip from AMD's Radeon Technologies Group* – all in a single processor package.

[...] At the heart of this new design is EMIB (Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge), a small intelligent bridge that allows heterogeneous silicon to quickly pass information in extremely close proximity. EMIB eliminates height impact as well as manufacturing and design complexities, enabling faster, more powerful and more efficient products in smaller sizes. This is the first consumer product that takes advantage of EMIB.

[...] Additionally, this solution is the first mobile PC to use HBM2, which consumes much less power and takes up less space compared to traditional discrete graphics-based designs using dedicated graphics memory, like GDDR5 memory.

takyon: This is more like an "integrated discrete GPU" than standard integrated graphics. It also avoids the need for Intel to license AMD's IP. AMD also needs to make a lot of parts since its wafer supply agreement with GlobalFoundries penalizes AMD if they buy less than a target number of wafers each year.

Also at AnandTech and Ars Technica.

Previously: AMD Stock Surges on Report of Intel Graphics Licensing Deal, 16-Core Ryzen Confirmed

Related: Samsung Increases Production of 8 GB High Bandwidth Memory 2.0 Stacks

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Phoenix666 writes:

The Mediterranean black truffle, one of the world's most expensive ingredients, has been successfully cultivated in the UK, as climate change threatens its native habitat.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Mycorrhizal Systems Ltd (MSL) have confirmed that a black truffle has been successfully cultivated in the UK for the first time: the farthest north that the species has ever been found. It was grown as part of a programme in Monmouthshire, South Wales, run by MSL in collaboration with local farmers. The results of the programme, reported in the journal Climate Research, suggest that truffle cultivation may be possible in many parts of the UK.

After nine years of waiting, the truffle was harvested in March 2017 by a trained dog named Bella. The aromatic fungus was growing within the root system of a Mediterranean oak tree that had been treated to encourage truffle production. Further microscopic and genetic analysis confirmed that Bella's find was indeed a Périgord black truffle (Tuber melanosporum).

Gourmands rejoice.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The kilogram doesn't weigh a kilogram any more. This sad news was announced during a seminar at CERN on Thursday, 26 October by Professor Klaus von Klitzing, who was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the quantised Hall effect. "We are about to witness a revolutionary change in the way the kilogram is defined," he declared.

Together with six other units – metre, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela – the kilogram, a unit of mass, is part of the International System of Units (SI) that is used as a basis to express every measurable object or phenomenon in nature in numbers. This unit's current definition is based on a small platinum and iridium cylinder, known as "le grand K", whose mass is exactly one kilogram. The cylinder was crafted in 1889 and, since then, has been kept safe under three glass bell jars in a high-security vault on the outskirts of Paris. There is one problem: the current standard kilogram is losing weight. About 50 micrograms, at the latest check. Enough to be different from its once-identical copies stored in laboratories around the world.

To solve this weight(y) problem, scientists have been looking for a new definition of the kilogram.

Dang. That throws the easily memorable conversion of 1kg=2.2lbs right out the window.

Original Submission