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Fnord666 writes:

A team at Caltech has figured out a way to encode more than one holographic image in a single surface without any loss of resolution. The engineering feat overturns a long-held assumption that a single surface could only project a single image regardless of the angle of illumination.

The technology hinges on the ability of a carefully engineered surface to reflect light differently depending on the angle at which incoming light strikes that surface.

[...] Led by Andrei Faraon, assistant professor of applied physics and materials science in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, the team developed silicon oxide and aluminum surfaces studded with tens of millions of tiny silicon posts, each just hundreds of nanometers tall. (For scale, a strand of human hair is 100,000 nanometers wide.) Each nanopost reflects light differently due to variations in its shape and size, and based on the angle of incoming light.

That last property allows each post to act as a pixel in more than one image: for example, acting as a black pixel if incoming light strikes the surface at 0 degrees and a white pixel if incoming light strikes the surface at 30 degrees.

"Each post can do double duty. This is how we're able to have more than one image encoded in the same surface with no loss of resolution," says Faraon (BS '04), senior author of a paper on the new material published by Physical Review X on December 7.

Seyedeh Mahsa Kamali et al, Angle-Multiplexed Metasurfaces: Encoding Independent Wavefronts in a Single Metasurface under Different Illumination Angles, Physical Review X (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.7.041056

Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-12-holograms-surface.html

Original Submission

takyon writes:

What happens when you stuff millennial online celebrities into an apartment complex? Let's peep this out:

Inside the Hollywood Home of Social Media's Stars. (Don't Be Shy.)

On any given day, something crazy is likely to be happening at 1600 Vine Street, a 550-unit apartment complex in Hollywood. A scary-looking clown might be shimmying across a narrow ledge eight floors above the sidewalk, or a young woman dangling from a balcony while a masked man wields a knife. A husky dog with pink ears, a pony, a baby monkey and other exotic animals also call it home.

But you don't need to live there to experience the high jinks, because they are available for anyone to watch on YouTube, Instagram and whatever social media platform comes next. The building at 1600 Vine functions as dormitory and studio lot for some of the internet's biggest stars. Videos shot there have been watched billions of times. The common spaces — a spacious gym, walkways lined with beige blocks and a courtyard surrounded by lush plants — are so recognizable that it's like walking onto the set of a popular TV show.

The list of current and former residents is a who's who of social media celebrities: the brothers Logan Paul and Jake Paul, Amanda Cerny, Juanpa Zurita, Lele Pons and Andrew Bachelor, known as King Bach. Some are comedians, some are models, and some are famous for being famous. But all are so-called influencers, social media speak for people with a huge digital audience.

takyon writes:

State Dept. posts Clinton aide's documents found on Weiner's laptop

The State Department on Friday released portions of 2,800 emails and other documents belonging to former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were recovered by the FBI last year on Abedin's estranged husband Anthony Weiner's computer last year.

While the newly released emails have been seized on by conservative activists who have long been critical of Clinton's treatment of classified emails as secretary of State, the FBI already said in 2016 that a review of the emails didn't change the bureau's opinion that Clinton shouldn't face charges over email handling.

The Friday release came after a 2015 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch against the State Department seeking the release of emails containing "official State Department business" sent or received from Abedin from January 2009 to February 2013 using a non-State Department email address.

Also at Judicial Watch and CNN.

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takyon writes:

Nintendo Switch Kernel exploit 34c3 presentation: "Nvidia Backdoored themselves"

Yesterday, hackers Plutoo, Derrek, and Naehrwert were at the 34C3 hacking conference in Germany to give a presentation on their kernel hacks on the Nintendo Switch (video below). Hacker Yellows8 wasn't there but was also credited for some of the work that led to this presentation.

[...] They detail in particular the sm:hax exploit (which consists in skipping an initialization step for a service, which results in the service manager thinking the service has pid 0, making it root giving it additional privileges*), as well as the hardware glitching process that was used to get the Kernel decryption keys. Naehrwert also presents how he bypassed ARM's Trustzone on the Switch, a stunt he insists "is not useful for homebrew, but fun".

One of the highlights of the presentation is how the hackers leveraged the fact that the Nintendo Switch uses an "off the shelf" Nivdia Tegra X1. A GPU that is well documented, and for which debugging hardware can also be officially be acquired at reasonable prices. The X1 documentation in particular gave the hackers detailed information on how to bypass some security of the SMMU (system Memory Management Unit). "Just search for 'bypass the SMMU' in the documentation", Plutoo says. He concludes: "Nvidia Backdoored themselves".

Nintendo Switch Homebrew Launcher Could Allow Custom Software Via NVIDIA Backdoor

The one caveat to this new homebrew experience is that it is only currently validated for Nintendo Switch 3.0.0 firmware. So, if you want to take part in the festivities, you will need to stay on that firmware and resist the urge to update to a newer build.

Also at HackRead, TechRadar.

Related: The Ghost in Nintendo's Switch - Game Unlocks on the Date of Satoru Iwata's Death
Nintendo to More Than Double Production of Switch; Success Rooted in Wii U's Failure
Nintendo Sells at Least 10 Million Switch Consoles in 2017, 64 GB Game Cards Delayed to 2019
34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3) Presentations Online

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takyon writes:

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an infrared space observatory with an $8.8 billion budget, will be transported to South America to launch atop an Ariane 5 rocket, presumably in Spring 2019. The JWST was not intended to be serviceable at the Earth-Sun L₂ point. Will there still be a "Golden Age of astronomy" even if the JWST fails?

[Due] to its steadily escalating cost and continually delayed send-off (which recently slipped from 2018 to 2019), this telescopic time machine is now under increasingly intense congressional scrutiny. To help satisfy any doubts about JWST's status, the project is headed for an independent review as soon as January 2018, advised NASA's science chief Thomas Zurbuchen during an early December congressional hearing. Pressed by legislators about whether JWST will actually launch as presently planned in spring of 2019, he said, "at this moment in time, with the information that I have, I believe it's achievable."

[...] Simply launching JWST is fraught with peril, not to mention unfurling its delicate sunshield and vast, segmented mirror in deep space. Just waving goodbye to JWST atop its booster will be a nail-biter. "The truth is, every single rocket launch off of planet Earth is risky. The good news is that the Ariane 5 has a spectacular record," says former astronaut John Grunsfeld, a repeat "Hubble hugger" who made three space-shuttle visits to low-Earth orbit to renovate that iconic facility. Now scientist emeritus at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, he sees an on-duty JWST as cranking out science "beyond all of our expectations."

"Assuming we make it to the injection trajectory to Earth-Sun L2, of course the next most risky thing is deploying the telescope. And unlike Hubble we can't go out and fix it. Not even a robot can go out and fix it. So we're taking a great risk, but for great reward," Grunsfeld says.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666_

On September 21, 2017, just as dusk fell, Vyacheslav Tantashov launched his DJI Phantom 4 drone from a spot near Dyker Beach Park in Brooklyn, just southeast of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Tantashov wanted to see some spectacular views, he said, and he flew the drone nearly 280 feet up in the air and well out of his line of sight. The drone hovered over the shipping channel near Hoffman Island, some 2.5 miles from the launch site. Tantashov maneuvered the craft a bit, watching the images displayed on his Samsung tablet, and then punched the "return to home" button. The drone, which had a rapidly dying battery, made a beeline back toward the launch site.

But it never arrived. After waiting 30 minutes, Tantashov assumed there had been a mechanical malfunction and that the drone had fallen into the water. He returned home. On September 28, Tantashov received a call at work. It was an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), calling to asking if Tantashov was the owner of a Phantom 4 drone. He was, he said, though he had lost it recently near the Verrazano Bridge.

Would Tantashov be surprised to learn, the investigator asked, that his drone had not crashed into the water? And that it had instead slammed into the main rotor of a US Army-operated Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter that was patrolling for the UN General Assembly in Manhattan? And that it had put a 1.5-inch dent in said rotor and led to the helicopter diverting back to its New Jersey base? Tantashov was surprised, and he agreed to a one-hour interview the next day, during which the full story came out.

[...] Tantashov didn't know about more detailed flight restrictions, such as the [temporary flight restrictions (TFRs)] around Manhattan and Bedminster, New Jersey, where the president had been staying. "He said that he relied on 'the app' to tell him if it was OK to fly," the investigator noted. "When asked about TFRs, he said he did not know about them; he would rely on the app, and it did not give any warnings on the evening of the collision. He said he was not familiar with the TFRs for the United Nations meeting and Presidential movement." (Both TFRs were apparently violated by the drone flight.)

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/drone-collides-with-us-army-helicopter-puts-1-5-dent-in-rotor/

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takyon writes:

In a milestone year, gene therapy is finding a place in medicine

After decades of hope and high promise, this was the year scientists really showed they could doctor DNA to successfully treat diseases. Gene therapies to treat cancer and even pull off the biblical-sounding feat of helping the blind to see were approved by U.S. regulators, establishing gene manipulation as a new mode of medicine.

Almost 20 years ago, a teen's death in a gene experiment put a chill on what had been a field full of outsized expectations. Now, a series of jaw-dropping successes have renewed hopes that some one-time fixes of DNA, the chemical code that governs life, might turn out to be cures. "I am totally willing to use the 'C' word," said the National Institutes of Health's director, Dr. Francis Collins.

[...] The advent of gene editing — a more precise and long-lasting way to do gene therapy — may expand the number and types of diseases that can be treated. In November, California scientists tried editing a gene inside someone's body for the first time using a tool called zinc finger nucleases for a man with a metabolic disease. It's like a cut-and-paste operation to place a new gene in a specific spot. Tests of another editing tool called CRISPR to genetically alter human cells in the lab may start next year. "There are a few times in our lives when science astonishes us. This is one of those times," Dr. Matthew Porteus, a Stanford University gene editing expert, told a Senate panel discussing this technology last month.

Previously: Gene Therapy Cure for Sickle-Cell Disease
Gene Therapy to Kill Cancer Moves a Step Closer to Market
U.S. Human Embryo Editing Study Published
FDA Approves a Gene Therapy for the First Time
Gene Editing Without CRISPR -- Private Equity Raises $127 Million
FDA Committee Endorses Gene Therapy for a Form of Childhood Blindness
FDA Approves Gene Therapy for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma
Gene Therapy and Skin Grafting for Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa
Gene Therapy for Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 1
Biohackers Disregard FDA Warning on DIY Gene Therapy
CRISPR Used to Epigenetically Treat Diseases in Mice
Gene Therapy Showing Promise for Hemophilia B
Gene Therapy for Retinal Dystrophy Approved by the FDA
CRISPR Treatment for Some Inherited Forms of Lou Gehrig's Disease Tested in Mice

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canopic jug writes:

The presentations from the 34^th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3) are online now that the conference has concluded. The 34C3 took place from December 27 through December 30, this time in Leipzig. The presentations were in English or German, with translations available from one to the other.

Some presentations are more technical, others not so much. One of the more popular non-technical presentations was author Charlie Stross on Dude, you broke the Future!

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

One married couple was responsible for the foundations of modern code breaking, and the principles that gave the NSA a head start in cryptanalysis. Though the husband, William Friedman, is usually apportioned the lion's share of the credit, his wife Elizebeth Friedman was in every way his equal. During World War II, both worked under total secrecy, and only now are we learning about Elizebeth's critical work uncovering the secrets of Nazi spies—and cracking the codes of the notorious "Doll Lady" suspected of working for the Japanese.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/world-war-2-codebreakers-elizebeth-smith-friedman/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Child porn law goes nuts: 14-year-old girl charged for nude selfie

A 14-year-old girl is facing charges in Minnesota juvenile courts that could lead to her being placed on a sex offender registry—all for taking a nude selfie and sending it to a boy at her school. Prosecutors say that she violated Minnesota's child pornography statute, which bans distributing sexually explicit pictures of underaged subjects. But a legal brief filed this week by the ACLU of Minnesota says that this is ridiculous. Charging a teenager for taking a nude selfie means the state is charging the supposed victim—an absurd result that the legislature can't have intended when it passed Minnesota's child pornography statute, the ACLU argues.

The case is being heard by a juvenile court in Rice County—about an hour south of the Twin Cities. Because this is juvenile court, there's a lot we don't know including the name of the teenager. We don't even know if the selfie in question was a photo or a video. What we do know comes from the ACLU's legal brief, which includes a brief description of the case. According to the ACLU, the anonymous teen sent a nude selfie to a classmate over Snapchat. The recipient apparently took a screenshot of the message and shared it with others at school without the girl's consent. One of the classmates alerted the police in Faribault, Minnesota, which is presumably where the girl goes to school.

Officials decided to charge the girl with the "felony sex offense of knowingly disseminating pornographic work involving a minor to another person." An adult convicted of this crime can face up to seven years in prison. As a 14-year-old, the girl in this case isn't facing a criminal prosecution in adult court and won't face the harsh sentence an adult might face. The problem, the ACLU notes, is that if she's found guilty she is likely to be placed on a sex offender registry, where she would face the same stigmas as someone who commits violent sex crimes. That could lead to difficulties finding a job or obtaining housing. The ACLU's brief doesn't mention whether the boy was charged for distributing the girl's photo to other classmates.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New quick-learning neural network powered by memristors

A new type of neural network made with memristors can dramatically improve the efficiency of teaching machines to think like humans. The network, called a reservoir computing system, could predict words before they are said during conversation, and help predict future outcomes based on the present.

The research team that created the reservoir computing system, led by Wei Lu, U-M professor of electrical engineering and computer science, recently published their work [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02337-y] [DX] in Nature Communications.

Reservoir computing systems, which improve on a typical neural network's capacity and reduce the required training time, have been created in the past with larger optical components. However, the U-M group created their system using memristors, which require less space and can be integrated more easily into existing silicon-based electronics. [...] When a set of data is inputted into the reservoir, the reservoir identifies important time-related features of the data, and hands it off in a simpler format to a second network. This second network then only needs training like simpler neural networks, changing weights of the features and outputs that the first network passed on until it achieves an acceptable level of error. "The beauty of reservoir computing is that while we design it, we don't have to train it," says Lu.

[...] Using only 88 memristors as nodes to identify handwritten versions of numerals, compared to a conventional network that would require thousands of nodes for the task, the reservoir achieved 91% accuracy.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Teacher, parents weigh in on nude-artwork incident

Lincoln Elementary School art teacher Mateo Rueda had no idea what was in store for his career when he wrapped up a lesson Dec. 4 by telling students to look through some art postcards in the classroom library for examples of color usage in notable paintings. The cards, which were part of an educational package called "The Art Box" produced by Phaidon publishing, were placed in the library before Rueda began working at the Hyrum school. He knew the set portrayed a wide variety of classic artworks, but he has since said he was not aware that three or four of the 100 pieces featured in the box showed nudity.

Before the week was out, Rueda would find himself at the center of a controversy at the school, would be contacted by police after someone filed a classroom pornography complaint against him, and would eventually be out of a job.

The situation came to light Wednesday when The Herald Journal published a letter from the mother of one of Rueda's students complaining about the art teacher's dismissal and praising his work with students. She also let her feelings be known on Facebook, where her posts gained wide circulation among local school parents and educators.

takyon writes:

Russia Restores Contact With AngoSat-1 Satellite

Russia has stated that it has restored contact with Angola's first satellite, AngoSat-1, that was launched by a Zenit rocket on Tuesday, December 26, 2017.

According to RSC Energia, which manufactured the satellite and controls its operations in space, its operators worked on the issue and on Thursday, Dec. 28, telemetry data indicated that the spacecraft's systems are operating normally.

"Experts from the Energia Corporation have received telemetry data from the AngoSat satellite launched by the Zenit-3SLBF space rocket from the Baikonur spaceport on December 26. The satellite has provided telemetry data showing that all its systems settings are in order," RSC Energia said in a statement.

Also at Satellite Today.

Previously: Angola's First Communications Satellite Lifts Off from Kazakhstan
Russia Blames Human Error for Loss of Angolan Satellite

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Making an unconventional computer using conventional technology

In their quest to build a quantum computer, researchers from RIKEN are turning to well-established, silicon-based manufacturing techniques currently used in the electronics industry. [...] Making a fully functional quantum computer will require connecting huge numbers of qubits—of the order of a 100 million or more.

[...] Keiji Ono and colleagues from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the Toshiba Corporation in Japan, in collaboration with researchers from the United States, are investigating the properties of qubits produced by imperfections or defects in silicon MOSFETs. In particular, they are exploring their potential for developing quantum computing devices that are compatible with current manufacturing technologies.

"Companies like IBM and Google are developing quantum computers that use superconductors," explains Ono. "In contrast, we are attempting to develop a quantum computer based on the silicon manufacturing techniques currently used to make computers and smart phones. The advantage of this approach is that it can leverage existing industrial knowledge and technology."

After cooling a silicon MOSFET to 1.6 kelvin (−271.6 degrees Celsius), the researchers measured its electrical properties while applying a magnetic field and a microwave field. They found that when the silicon MOSFET was neither fully turned on nor off, a pair of defects in the silicon MOSFET formed two quantum dots in close vicinity to each other. This 'double quantum dot' generated qubits from the spin of electrons in the dots. It also produced quantum effects that can be used to control these qubits.

Hole Spin Resonance and Spin-Orbit Coupling in a Silicon Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.156802) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Iranian cities hit by anti-government protests

Anti-government demonstrations that began in Iran on Thursday have now spread to several major cities. Large numbers reportedly turned out in Rasht, in the north, and Kermanshah, in the west, with smaller protests in Isfahan, Hamadan and elsewhere. The protests began against rising prices but have spiralled into a general outcry against clerical rule and government policies.

A small number of people have been arrested in Tehran, the capital. They were among a group of 50 people who gathered in a city square, Tehran's deputy governor-general for security affairs told the Iranian Labour News Agency.

The US State Department condemned the arrests and urged "all nations to publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption".

Also at Bloomberg and Reuters.

Update: Street protests hit Iran for third straight day as pro-government rallies held
Iran Confronts 3rd Day of Protests, With Calls for Khamenei to Quit

Update 2: Iran blocks Instagram, Telegram apps as government protesters will 'pay the price' for unrest (archive)
CEO says Iran blocking (Telegram) messaging app after issuing warning to protesters
Iran protests: 'Iron fist' threatened if unrest continues

Original Submission