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An Anonymous Coward writes:

A very clever (imo) artist has developed a simple trap for autonomous cars --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thuN2HD6m2s
Less than 90 seconds of video, no sound. If you get it right away it's only a minute.

Oh, and if you didn't get the title, there is this,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heffalump

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New California telescope aims to catch quickly moving celestial events

Astronomers in California have taken a telescope built before most of them were born and converted it into a new instrument dedicated to one of the newest and fastest-moving branches of astronomy: spotting objects in the sky that change from one day to the next.

The new Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), which today opened its eye to the sky, was created by retooling the 1.2-meter Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California, which, starting in 1948, took pictures of the night sky onto specially curved glass photographic plates. The ZTF, named in honor of Fritz Zwicky, the Bulgaria-born astronomer who worked for most of his career at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, has been fitted with a new camera made up of 16 charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors. That will enable it to snap single images covering an area more than 200 times the size of the full moon.

With such a wide field of view—the biggest of any telescope more than 0.5 meters wide—the ZTF can survey the whole northern sky visible from Palomar every night. By doing so, astronomers can spot anything that changes from the previous night's images, enabling them to identify quickly changing celestial phenomena, including supernovae, variable and binary stars, the active cores of distant galaxies, potentially Earth-threatening asteroids, and the flash of merging neutron stars that could also emit gravitational waves.

Although the scientific haul is expected to be high, the ZTF is also a testbed for a larger upcoming instrument, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will begin observing from Chile in 2022. The LSST is expected to be so prolific that researchers will have to automate the process of sifting through observed events to find ones worth following up, and then getting a more detailed spectrum. To build such automated systems, ZTF researchers are involved in efforts to create the necessary data processing systems and robotic follow-up telescopes. "The headline goal is to get [an automated system] working and implemented in a way that astronomers can interact with it and use it," says Adam Bolton of the National Science Foundation's National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, Arizona.

The LSST is expected to discover many objects in the Kuiper belt.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Dude, you're gettin' a Dell!

The whole juggernaut that is now Linux on Dell started as the brainchild of two core individuals, Barton George (Senior Principal Engineer) and Jared Dominguez (OS Architect and Linux Engineer).

It was their vision that began it all back in 2012. It was long hours, uncertain futures and sheer belief that people really did want Linux laptops that sustained them. Here is the untold story of how Dell gained the top spot in preinstalled Linux on laptops.

[...] This first attempt at Linux on laptops failed mainly because most non-technical users were blinded by the cheap price and didn't understand what they were actually buying.

[...] This time the duo had the right initial market. It was big, commercial web-scale operators and their developers who were crying out for a fully supported Linux laptop.

People who do technical work, like Linux. People who don't, don't.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Hydrogen!

At a car factory in this city named after Toyota, the usual robots with their swinging arms are missing. Instead, workers intently fit parts into place by hand with craftsmanship-like care.

The big moment on the assembly line comes when two bulbous yellow tanks of hydrogen are rolled over and delicately fitted into each car's underside.

While much of the world is going gung-ho for electric vehicles to help get rid of auto emissions and end reliance on fossil fuels, Japan's top automaker Toyota Motor Corp. is banking on hydrogen.

Toyota sells about 10 million vehicles a year around the world. It has sold only about 4,000 Mirai fuel cell vehicles since late 2014, roughly half of them outside Japan.

Is Toyota going to build the network of hydrogen-refueling stations to serve its hydrogen-powered cars?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

She Took On Colombia's Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.

It began with menacing phone calls, strange malfunctions of the office computers, and men in parked cars photographing the entrance to the small consumer advocacy group's offices. Then at dusk one day last December, Dr. Esperanza Cerón, the head of the organization, said she noticed two strange men on motorcycles trailing her Chevy sedan as she headed home from work. She tried to lose them in Bogotá's rush-hour traffic, but they edged up to her car and pounded on the windows. "If you don't keep your mouth shut," one man shouted, she recalled in a recent interview, "you know what the consequences will be."

The episode, which Dr. Cerón reported to federal investigators, was reminiscent of the intimidation often used against those who challenged the drug cartels that once dominated Colombia. But the narcotics trade was not the target of Dr. Cerón and her colleagues. Their work had upset a different multibillion-dollar industry: the makers of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

Their organization, Educar Consumidores, was the most visible proponent of a proposed 20 percent tax on sugary drinks that was heading for a vote that month in Colombia's Legislature. The group had raised money, rallied allies to the cause and produced a provocative television ad that warned consumers how sugar-laden beverages can lead to obesity and diet-related illnesses like diabetes. The backlash was fierce. A Colombian government agency, responding to a complaint by the nation's leading soda company that called the ad misleading, ordered it off the air. Then the agency went further: It prohibited Dr. Cerón and her colleagues from publicly discussing the health risks of sugar, under penalty of a $250,000 fine.

Related: Scientists Find Shorter Telomeres in Immune Cells of Soda Drinkers
US Army says Only 30% of Americans Qualified to Join
Obesity Surges to 13.6% in Ghana
America Gets Even Fatter From 2015-2016

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mrpg writes:

A Twitter rules update rolled out on Wednesday to address the site's "verification" system, and it attached a new set of standards to any user whose account receives a "blue check mark."

Twitter's "verification" system is used to confirm accounts of celebrities and other accounts of "public interest." However, the feature has long straddled a blurry line between identity confirmation and "elite" user status, especially since verified accounts receive heightened visibility and perks such as content filters. That issue returned to the headlines last week when Twitter gave a blue check mark to white nationalist Jason Kessler. Kessler is best known as an organizer of the Unite The Right white-supremacist rally, but before then, he had racked up a significant record of online hate propagation, particularly with anti-Semitic rhetoric about "cultural Marxism."

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/twitter-our-blue-check-marks-arent-just-about-verification/

realDonaldTrump writes:

"Twitter on Wednesday removed the 'verification' checkmarks from the accounts of a number of white nationalists and far-right activists -- in a move that critics say could have a chilling effect on free speech." http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/11/16/twitter-targets-white-nationalists-and-far-right-activists-in-de-verification-purge.html

Original Submission

takyon writes:

In a bid to make the iPhone an augmented reality device, Apple reportedly plans to add a rear-facing 3D sensor to the iPhone in the coming years, using a different technology than that used in the front-facing Face ID sensor:

Apple Inc. is working on a rear-facing 3-D sensor system for the iPhone in 2019, another step toward turning the handset into a leading augmented-reality device, according to people familiar with the plan.

Apple is evaluating a different technology from the one it currently uses in the TrueDepth sensor system on the front of the iPhone X, the people said. The existing system relies on a structured-light technique that projects a pattern of 30,000 laser dots onto a user's face and measures the distortion to generate an accurate 3-D image for authentication. The planned rear-facing sensor would instead use a time-of-flight approach that calculates the time it takes for a laser to bounce off surrounding objects to create a three-dimensional picture of the environment.

The company is expected to keep the TrueDepth system, so future iPhones will have both front and rear-facing 3-D sensing capabilities. Apple has started discussions with prospective suppliers of the new system, the people said. Companies manufacturing time-of-flight sensors include Infineon Technologies AG, Sony Corp., STMicroelectronics NV and Panasonic Corp. The testing of the technology is still in early stages and it could end up not being used in the final version of the phone, the people said. They asked not to be identified discussing unreleased features. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The Internet never forgets.

Google's general counsel has signalled the company intends to fight, hard, against broad interpretations of the European Union's right to be forgotten.

Kent Walker, the company's general counsel and senior veep, put his name to a strongly-worded post on Wednesday, US time. Titled "Defending access to lawful information at Europe's highest court", the post argued that forthcoming cases in the European Court of Justice "represent a serious assault on the public's right to access lawful information."

Walker wrote that French courts' request for a European Court of Justice ruling on personal data collection effectively seeks a regime under which "all mentions of criminality or political affiliation should automatically be purged from search results, without any consideration of public interest."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Amish Mutation Protects Against Diabetes and May Extend Life

Amish people living in a rural part of Indiana have a rare genetic mutation that protects them from Type 2 diabetes and appears to significantly extend their life spans, according to a new study.

The findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, shed light on the processes underlying cellular aging and could lead to new therapies for chronic diseases, some experts say. The researchers are planning at least one follow-up trial that will recreate the effects of the mutation so they can study its impact on obese people with insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.

The mutation described in the new paper affects a mysterious protein called plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, or PAI-1, that is known primarily for its role in promoting blood clotting. The mutation was first identified in 1991 in a secluded Amish farming community in Berne, Ind. An estimated 5 percent of the community carries the mutation, which causes them to produce unusually low levels of PAI-1.

Scientists have long suspected that PAI-1 has other functions outside of clotting that relate to aging. Dr. Douglas Vaughan, a cardiologist at Northwestern medical school, noticed, for example, that mice that had been genetically engineered to produce high levels of the protein age fairly quickly, going bald and dying of heart attacks at young ages. People who have higher levels of the protein in their bloodstreams also tend to have higher rates of diabetes and other metabolic problems and to die earlier of cardiovascular disease.

Also at Science Magazine, which notes a possible downside to the mutation:

The girl, who lived in an Indiana Amish community, nearly bled to death during what should have been routine scalp surgery. Now, more than 20 years later, scientists studying her and other Amish have discovered that the mutation that nearly killed her could have a good side. She harbors two mutant copies of a gene, and therefore lacks a protein that manages blood clotting, but researchers found that people with one inactivated gene copy outlive their peers by a decade and gain protection against diabetes.

A null mutation in SERPINE1 protects against biological aging in humans (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aao1617) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

'Leonardo da Vinci artwork' sells for record $450m

A 500-year-old painting of Christ believed to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci has been sold in New York for a record $450m (£341m). The painting is known as Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World).

It is the highest auction price for any work of art and brought cheers and applause at the packed Christie's auction room.

Leonardo da Vinci died in 1519 and there are fewer than 20 of his paintings in existence. Salvator Mundi, believed to have been painted sometime after 1505, is the only work thought to be in private hands.

Bidding began at $100m and the final bid for the work was $400m, with fees bringing the full price up to $450.3m. The unidentified buyer was involved in a bidding contest, via telephone, that lasted nearly 20 minutes.

Related: The Picture Under the "Mona Lisa"
"Masterpiece" Painting Sold for $165 Million to Help Fund Criminal Justice Reform

Original Submission

stretch611 writes:

Smoke from fires in the Pacific Northwest gets caught in a weather pattern and pulled all the way across the US and over to Europe. Hurricanes form off the coast of Africa and travel across the Atlantic to make landfall in the United States. Dust from the Sahara is blown into the Gulf of Mexico.

In this cool video created by NASA you visualize how dust, sand and other particulate matter moves with the wind from one continent to another. The video includes footage of 2017 hurricanes including Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Ophelia. (You too can create cool looking videos like this if you had the supercomputing resources like NASA.)

Brief story accompanying the video on NPR.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

This week, the clothing retailer Forever 21 disclosed to customers that it was hacked earlier in 2017. While the company has not yet offered many details about the intrusion, we know that it is looking into a portion of credit card transactions between March 2017 and October 2017 that were conducted over machines that appear to have been insecure.

[...] We have reached out to Forever 21 for more information about the unencrypted transactions, where the affected stores were located and the security firm it is working with to investigate the incident. The company has set up a customer portal about the incident that provides a contact number for anyone concerned that their credit card information may have been compromised.

The hack appears to have only impacted certain terminals which were not using encryption or tokenization on card numbers.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/forever-21-hack/

Also at ZDNet, USAToday, and the WSJ.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

According to The Verge, SpaceX set to launch mysterious Zuma payload tomorrow night.

Tomorrow night[11/16], SpaceX will launch perhaps its most secretive payload yet: a classified government satellite built by defense contractor Northrop Grumman. The purpose of the mission, codenamed Zuma, is essentially unknown. It's unclear what kind of spacecraft is going up, or which government agency the launch is for. All we really know is that Zuma is scheduled to go into lower Earth orbit on top of a Falcon 9 rocket out of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Zuma mission only became public in October, when NASASpaceflight.com reported on documents that SpaceX had filed with the Federal Communications Commission, requesting authorization for a mysterious "Mission 1390." A few days later, several news outlets confirmed that Zuma would launch a Northrop Grumman-made payload. The contractor had been assigned by the US government to find a rocket for the launch, and Northrop Grumman ultimately picked the Falcon 9.

Spaceflightnow.com will have live coverage Thursday evening.

The Falcon 9's two-hour launch window opens at 8 p.m. EST Thursday (0100 GMT Friday) from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX's live video webcast begins around 15 minutes prior to launch, and will be available on this page.

[...] There is a 90 percent chance of favorable weather Thursday night, according to an outlook issued by the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron earlier today.

The only slight concern is with cumulus clouds that might move over the launch pad.

A live webcast is available on YouTube starting approximately 15 minutes before scheduled launch time.

[Update - Apparently the launch has been postponed until a later date. SpaceX tweeted "Standing down on Zuma mission to take a closer look at data from recent fairing testing for another customer.". - Fnord666]

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Walmart is taking a bit of an nontraditional approach to boost sales ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events by raising prices for products sold online and discounting those same items in physical retail stores. According to The Wall Street Journal, the big-box store has quietly raised prices for household and food items such as toothbrushes, macaroni and cheese, and dog food on its website while the prices in stores remained the same. If there are price discrepancies between online and in-store purchases, Walmart will now highlight this on the product's web listing to encourage customers to buy them from their local stores.

It's all part of an effort to increase foot traffic as Walmart continues to compete with Amazon just about everywhere else.

[...] With the new pricing strategy, a twin-pack of Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper costs $3.30 on Walmart.com, but goes as low as $2.50 if purchased at a store in Illinois. The aim is to also help reduce processing costs and increase online sales margins, since driving customers to stores means less shipping costs for the retailer.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/15/16655840/walmart-raising-online-prices-sales-store-traffic-amazon-competition

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Good germs to fight bad germs.

Penn Medicine researchers have singled out a bacterial enzyme behind an imbalance in the gut microbiome linked to Crohn's disease. The new study, published online this week in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that wiping out a significant portion of the bacteria in the gut microbiome, and then re-introducing a certain type of "good" bacteria that lacks this enzyme, known as urease, may be an effective approach to better treat these diseases.

"Because it's a single enzyme that is involved in this process, it might be a targetable solution," said the study's senior author, Gary D. Wu, MD, associate chief for research in the division of Gastroenterology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "The idea would be that we could 'engineer' the composition of the microbiota in some way that lacks this particular one."

[...] In a series of human and mouse studies, the researchers discovered that a type of "bad" bacteria known as Proteobacteria feeding on urea, a waste product that can end up back in the colon, played an important role in the development of dysbiosis.

The "bad" bacteria, which harbor the urease enzyme, convert urea into ammonia (nitrogen metabolism), which is then reabsorbed by bacteria to make amino acids that are associated with dysbiosis in Crohn's disease. "Good" bacteria may not respond in a similar manner, and thus may serve as a potential therapeutic approach to engineer the microbiome into a healthier state and treat disease.

If the technique works, it could open the door to treating other conditions like obesity.

Josephine Ni, et al A role for bacterial urease in gut dysbiosis and Crohn's disease. Science Translational Medicine, 2017; 9 (416): eaah6888 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aah6888

Original Submission