SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Groundbreaking Experiment Will Test The Limits Of Quantum Theory

[A] consortium has devised an ambitious experiment to test the so-called quantum superposition principle (QSP) – the law that allows microscopic systems to appear in two different, perfectly distinguishable, configurations at the same time. [...] Unproven theories advanced since the 1980s suggest the existence of a universal background 'noise' that destroys QSP of larger objects, such as particles that can be seen using an optical microscope.

The 'Project TEQ' consortium, led by the University of Trieste, in Italy, will test the existence of this noise thanks to a €4.4M (£3.9M) award from the European Commission.

Its experiment will involve a tiny particle of glass, one-thousandth of the width of a human hair, being levitated by an electric field in a vacuum at a temperature close to absolute zero (-273C). A laser will be shot at the particle, and the scattering of the laser's light measured for signs of movement of the particle.

If there is no movement, it means that quantum mechanics still apply at this scale and there is no universal background noise. However, if movement is detected, it indicates the existence of a noise that prevents QSP applying at this scale. This would represent the first observed failure of quantum theory, setting a limit on the scale at which quantum mechanics apply and having implications for large-scale applications of any physical system based on quantum principles.

Quantum superposition.

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

Jonathan Grant Thompson, the man behind the popular science-focused YouTube channel King of Random has been charged with two counts of second-degree felony possession of an explosive device.

Thompson, 37, runs the King of Random YouTube channel, boasting about 200 videos and 8.9 million subscribers. His videos are of science experiments and are in the vein of science-based shows on networks such as the Discovery Channel.

Thompson has been making videos and putting them on YouTube since 2010. His videos have garnered more than 1.6 billion combined views.

According to the article the first complaint "resulted from a citizen complaint via Facebook Messenger on June 15 about Thompson exploding a dry ice bomb", and for the second:

Thompson said a friend had left him a bag of powder, which he believed to be from a deconstructed firework.

After lighting a couple of small "control fires" Thompson and Timothy Burgess, 20, of Ontario, Canada, ignited a larger pile which exploded, the police report states. According to the report, firefighters heard the explosion from the nearby fire station.

Google Maps shows there is a South Jordan fire station 0.2 miles from Thompson's home.

The explosion left Burgess with small particles of burned material embedded in his arms, charges say.

Burgess was charged with one count of second-degree felony possession of an explosive device. Court records show prosecutors have asked a judge to issue a $15,000 warrant for his arrest

Originally spotted via AvE's channel.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Don't want to join the growing ranks of virtual reality fatalities? In-headset room tracking may be for you:

Occipital, a company based in Boulder, Colorado, focuses on 3D scanning hardware and depth-sensing cameras: One of its Structure camera sensor arrays works with both an iPhone mixed-reality headset and an upcoming home robot. Occipital's team put an HTC Vive VR headset on me, outfitted with an in-development feature that let me see the room even with my headset on. The technology is called Occipital Tracking. Its aim is to replace external room-sensing hardware completely, like the Oculus Rift's cumbersome stands or the Vive's light-emitting Lighthouse system, in favor of all in-headset tech.

Inside-out tracking, as in-headset room-tracking tech is called, has been in place on Microsoft's VR headsets and upcoming hardware like the Lenovo Mirage Solo with Daydream as well as AR devices like the Microsoft HoloLens, but Occipital Tracking aims to make that tech even better for VR with far more room-aware scanning.

Much as Apple's ARKit or Google's ARCore can scan a room and sense edges and surfaces using a camera and the phone's motion sensor, Occipital's tech pinged my demo space and found glowing points in space that formed a map. The test demo alternated between the real world via pass-through cameras and a fully closed-off VR world with edges of the room overlaid. The VR hardware I tried had stereo cameras, but Occipital says the tracking will work with a single camera, too. It really does seem like ARKit/ARCore for VR.

A game could show a partial overlay only when you are in imminent danger of colliding with something, or even create a virtual environment that incorporates real life obstacles (walls, tables, etc.).

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Continuing Linode's efforts to mitigate the Meltdown/Spectre issues, we have learned that the last of our servers has been scheduled for its first reboot. This time it is hydrogen which, among other things, hosts a copy of our database is one of our web frontends. The reboot is scheduled for tonight, 2018-01-19 @ 05:00 AM UTC (Midnight EST) or approximately 9 hours from the time this story is posted. Our plans are to move hydrogen's workload over to fluorine to cover the load during the hiatus and expect there to be no interruption of service on the site.

Please be aware that Linode considers these reboots to be "Phase 1" of their remediation efforts. We will keep you posted when we learn of other phase(s) being scheduled.

We appreciate your understanding and patience as we deal with this situation.

I recently came upon an article on Ars Technica which revealed that Linode (amongst many, many others) learned of these vulnerabilities at the same time as the rest of us -- when the news hit the press. They had no advance notice with which they could have performed mitigation planning of any kind. That has to count as one of their worst days, ever.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

[Update: Corrected title per first comment. Also, should you find any kind of vulnerability with SoylentNews, please send a description to "dev" at "soylentnews.org" and we'll address it as soon as possible. --martyb]

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Almost a quarter of hackers have not reported a vulnerability that they found because the company didn't have a channel to disclose it, according to a survey of the ethical hacking community.

With 1,698 respondents, the 2018 Hacker Report, conducted by the cybersecurity platform HackerOne, is the largest documented survey ever conducted of the ethical hacking community.

In the survey, HackerOne reports that nearly 1 in 4 hackers have not reported a vulnerability because the company in question lacks a vulnerability disclosure policy (VDP) or a formal method for receiving vulnerability submissions from the outside world.

Without a VDP, ethical, white-hat hackers are forced to go through other channels like social media or emailing personnel in the company, but, as the survey states, they are "frequently ignored or misunderstood".

But that means that three-quarters DO, which I guess is good news. Or at least not bad news.

Source: http://factor-tech.com/connected-world/27830-a-quarter-of-ethical-hackers-dont-report-cybersecurity-concerns-because-its-not-clear-who-they-should-be-reporting-them-to/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

5 shuttle buses chartered by Google, Apple apparently vandalized on I-280, possibly with pellet gun

Shuttle buses carrying Apple and Google employees were apparently vandalized Tuesday while traveling to and from the South Bay, officials said. No injuries were reported.

Five buses driving in the northbound and southbound directions of Interstate 280 between Highway 84 and Highway 85 were damaged during the Tuesday morning and evening commute, said California Highway Patrol Officer Art Montiel. Four buses were chartered by Apple and one by Google, the officer said. The Apple campus is located off I-280 in Cupertino. Google headquarters is in Mountain View off Highway 101.

According to Montiel, several bus windows were damaged and cracked, possibly by pellet guns, BB guns or rocks.

According to an article on TechCrunch

In response, we've learned that Apple has rerouted the bus routes for employees living in San Francisco, adding 30-45 minutes of commute time each way, as the company works with authorities to see what exactly is going on.

Also at The Guardian.

Original Submission

thewalkindude writes:

As some one who is very interested in the subject of honey bees, and several decades ago had a bee hive, I've been very concerned about colony collapse disorder. Today I came across this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-19137-5

Excerpt from the Nature abstract:
"Recent reports of the weakening and periodical high losses of managed honey bee colonies have alarmed beekeeper, farmers and scientists. Infestations with the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor in combination with its associated viruses have been identified as a crucial driver of these health problems. Although yearly treatments are required to prevent collapses of honey bee colonies, the number of effective acaricides is small and no new active compounds have been registered in the past 25 years. RNAi-based methods were proposed recently as a promising new tool. However, the application of these methods according to published protocols has led to a surprising discovery. Here, we show that the lithium chloride that was used to precipitate RNA and other lithium compounds is highly effective at killing Varroa mites when fed to host bees at low millimolar concentrations."

I am in no way, shape or form a biologist, but as I read through the article there was mention of gene targeting and so started to get way out of my knowledge area..which is electronics...and quickly lost me.

Is there any truth to this path or is it another way for insecticide makers to push their wares?

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Over at the Meshed Insights blog, Simon Phipps writes about why the public domain falls short and more detailed licensing is needed in order to extend rights to a software community.

Yes, public domain may give you the rights you need. But in an open source project, it's not enough for you to determine you personally have the rights you need. In order to function, every user and contributor of the project needs prior confidence they can use, improve and share the code, regardless of their location or the use to which they put it. That confidence also has to extend to their colleagues, customers and community as well.

Source : The Universal Donor

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Engineers worldwide have been developing alternative ways to provide greater memory storage capacity on even smaller computer chips. Previous research into two-dimensional atomic sheets for memory storage has failed to uncover their potential -- until now.

A team of electrical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Peking University scientists, has developed the thinnest memory storage device with dense memory capacity, paving the way for faster, smaller and smarter computer chips for everything from consumer electronics to big data to brain-inspired computing.

"For a long time, the consensus was that it wasn't possible to make memory devices from materials that were only one atomic layer thick," said Deji Akinwande, associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "With our new 'atomristors,' we have shown it is indeed possible."

Made from 2-D nanomaterials, the "atomristors" -- a term Akinwande coined -- improve upon memristors, an emerging memory storage technology with lower memory scalability. He and his team published their findings in the January issue of Nano Letters.

"Atomristors will allow for the advancement of Moore's Law at the system level by enabling the 3-D integration of nanoscale memory with nanoscale transistors on the same chip for advanced computing systems," Akinwande said.

Source:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180117114918.htm

Journal Reference:

Ruijing Ge, Xiaohan Wu, Myungsoo Kim, Jianping Shi, Sushant Sonde, Li Tao, Yanfeng Zhang, Jack C. Lee, Deji Akinwande. Atomristor: Nonvolatile Resistance Switching in Atomic Sheets of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides. Nano Letters, 2017; 18 (1): 434 DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b04342

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A couple years ago, Hasselblad released a 200-megapixel, Multi-Shot version of its H5D medium format camera. Now it's back with a bonkers, 400-megapixel version of the H6D: the H6D-400c.

Hasselblad's Multi-Shot technology is pretty straightforward: it takes four 100-megapixel images, shifting the sensor by one pixel for each capture, and then two more shots that shift the sensor by half a pixel. By combining all six stills, the resulting file is a single 400-megapixel (23200 x 17400 pixel) 16-bit TIFF file that weighs in at 2.4GB. In fact, the images are large enough that the camera needs to be tethered to a computer to capture them.

[...] The camera will go for $47,995 when it launches in March, compared to the H6D-100c's relatively modest $27,000 price tag.

Story at The Verge.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Because of their high precision and speed, Delta robots are deployed in many industrial processes, including pick-and-place assemblies, machining, welding and food packaging. [...] Over time, roboticists have designed smaller and smaller Delta robots for tasks in limited workspaces, yet shrinking them further to the millimeter scale with conventional manufacturing techniques and components has proven fruitless.

Reported in Science Robotics, a new design, the milliDelta robot, developed by Robert Wood's team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) overcomes this miniaturization challenge. By integrating their microfabrication technique with high-performance composite materials that can incorporate flexural joints and bending actuators, the milliDelta can operate with high speed, force, and micrometer precision, which make it compatible with a range of micromanipulation tasks in manufacturing and medicine.

In 2011, inspired by pop-up books and origami, Wood's team developed a micro-fabrication approach that enables the assembly of robots from flat sheets of composite materials. Pop-up MEMS (short for "microelectromechanical systems") manufacturing has since been used for the construction of dynamic centimeter-scale machines that can simply walk away, or, as in the case of the RoboBee, can fly. In their new study, the researchers applied their approach to develop a Delta robot measuring a mere 15 mm-by-15 mm-by-20 mm.

Source: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard..

Journal Reference:

Hayley Mcclintock, Fatma Zeynep Temel, Neel Doshi, Je-Sung Koh, and Robert J. Wood. The milliDelta: A high-bandwidth, high-precision, millimeter-scale Delta robot. Science Robotics, 2018 DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aar3018

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for boru

ICEYE, the leader in synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) technology for microsatellites providing expanded access to reliable and timely earth observation data, today published the first radar image obtained with the ICEYE-X1 SAR satellite. The image depicts Noatak National Preserve, Alaska, on Monday Jan. 15, at 21:47 UTC. ICEYE-X1 is the world’s first SAR satellite under 100 kg, launched less than a week ago on Jan. 12, 2018 on ISRO’s PSLV-C40 from Satish Dhawan Space Center in India.

A synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) instrument sends its own radio waves to the ground, creating an image from the energy that scatters back to the instrument. Given this, SAR sensors can provide imaging of the Earth during both day and night, regardless of cloud cover and weather condition.

[...] The full image transmitted to the ground from ICEYE-X1 exceeded 1.2GB of raw data and spans an area of roughly 80 x 40 km on the ground. ICEYE-X1 obtained the image in the span of ten seconds, traveling at a speed of more than 7.5 km/s and at an altitude exceeding 500 km. Matching what ICEYE simulated prior to the launch, the final data resolution from the first satellite reaches 10 x 10 meters.

Source: ICEYE press release

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Those who start to scratch the surface, such as Julia Reda – German Member of the European Parliament for the Greens/EFA Group – and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), are uncovering how the EC carefully cherry-picked the evidence that supports their ideological policy choices, whilst withholding evidence going against them. The EC officials must have confused policy-based evidence making with evidence-based policy making.

Just before the 2017 Winter break, MEP Reda uncovered another attempt of the EC to swipe evidence under the carpet. Officials from the EC's Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) where caught in the act, when they 'kindly' reminded a researcher of the EC's Joint Research Centre (JRC) to not publish a study, contradicting the EC's policy choice, on the highly debated press publishers' right (Article 11) at the request of their hierarchy.

Source : European Commission Hides Copyright Evidence Again

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New C-BRIC Center Will Tackle Brain-Inspired Computing

Purdue University will lead a new national center to develop brain-inspired computing for intelligent autonomous systems such as drones and personal robots capable of operating without human intervention.

The Center for Brain-inspired Computing Enabling Autonomous Intelligence, or C-BRIC, is a five-year project supported by $27 million in funding from the Semiconductor Research Corp (SRC) via their Joint University Microelectronics Program, which provides funding from a consortium of industrial sponsors as well as from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The SRC operates research programs in the United States and globally that connect industry to university researchers, deliver early results to enable technological advances, and prepare a highly-trained workforce for the semiconductor industry. Additional funds include $3.96 million from Purdue and as well as support from other participating universities. At the state level, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation will be providing funds, pending board approval, to establish an intelligent autonomous systems laboratory at Purdue.

[...] Autonomous intelligent systems will require real-time closed-loop control, leading to new challenges in neural algorithms, software and hardware," said Venkataramanan (Ragu) Balakrishnan, Purdue's Michael and Katherine Birck Head and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Purdue's long history of preeminence in related research areas such as neuromorphic computing and energy-efficient electronics positions us well to lead this effort."

It's neuro-inspired.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

YouTube is shaving off more of the smaller channels from its monetization program:

YouTube is tightening the rules around its partner program and raising the requirements that a channel/creator must meet in order to monetize videos. Effective immediately, to apply for monetization (and have ads attached to videos), creators must have tallied 4,000 hours of overall watch time on their channel within the past 12 months and have at least 1,000 subscribers. YouTube will enforce the new eligibility policy for all existing channels as of February 20th, meaning that channels that fail to meet the threshold will no longer be able to make income from ads.

Previously, the standard for joining YouTube's Partner Program was 10,000 public views — without any specific requirement for annual viewing hours. This change will no doubt make it harder for new, smaller channels to reach monetization, but YouTube says it's an important way of buying itself more time to see who's following the company's guidelines and disqualify "bad actors."

[...] The new, stricter policy comes after Logan Paul, one of YouTube's star creators and influencers, published a video that showed a dead body in Japan's Aokigahara forest. Last week, YouTube kicked Paul off its Google Preferred ad program and placed his YouTube Red original programming efforts on hold.

Anyone under 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 total hours watched annually would probably be making a pittance anyway. This change could allow YouTube to put more human eyes on the unruly but popular channels, so it can censor suicide forest vlogs (NSFW) in record time.

takyon writes:

Ex-CIA officer arrested for retaining classified information

A former Central Intelligence Agency officer was arrested at a U.S. airport on Monday night in connection with charges that he illegally retained highly classified information, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a U.S. citizen who now lives in Hong Kong, used to maintain a top secret clearance and began working for the CIA in 1994.

The Justice Department said that in 2012, FBI agents searched his hotel rooms during trips to Virginia and Hawaii. They discovered he had two small books containing handwritten information on details such as the true names and numbers of spy recruits and covert CIA employees.

Ex-C.I.A. Officer Suspected of Compromising Chinese Informants Is Arrested

A former C.I.A. officer suspected by investigators of helping China dismantle United States spying operations and identify informants has been arrested, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The collapse of the spy network was one of the American government's worst intelligence failures in recent years.

You may remember this story: CIA Informants Imprisoned and Killed in China From 2010 to 2012

Also at BBC, SCMP, and Washington Post (archive).

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Linode (our server provider) is continuing with their server reboots to mitigate Meltdown/Spectre. This time, three of our servers are scheduled to be rebooted at the same time: lithium, sodium, and boron.

From TMB's update to our earlier story System Reboots: beryllium reboot successful; lithium, sodium, and boron soon to come [updated]:

[TMB Note]: Sodium is our currently-configured load balancer and we weren't given enough notice to switch to Magnesium (DNS propagation can take a while), so expect ten minutes or less of site downtime. Or temporarily add 23.239.29.31 to your hosts file if ten minutes is more than you can wait.

This reboot is scheduled for: 2018-01-18 at 0900 UTC (0400 EST). That is about 7 hours from the time this story goes 'live'. We anticipate no problems... that the site should resume operations on its own.

A workaround is to temporarily update your hosts file to include:

23.239.29.31  soylentnews.org

Upcoming: We just learned that hydrogen is scheduled for a reboot on 2018-01-19 at 05:00 AM UTC. Since we can get by just fine for a few hours on one web frontend though, no service interruption is anticipated.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Mozilla is asking for feedback about Thunderbird and threatening a redesign. Thunderbird is the most feature-rich of the GUI mail clients, but as a result also has a lot of cruft. The goal of the survey is to learn what Thunderbird users think about the current design, what are the biggest drawbacks, what potential changes should there be, and so on. The claim is that the information will be considered before any actual changes are made to the program itself.

See also Bryan Lunduke's interview with newly fledged Thunderbird developer Ryan Sypes about future directions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BQugHIccTI

So if you rely on Thunderbird for any part of your work flow, speak up now before it ends up unusable trash like M$ Outlook or Apple Mail.

Original Submission