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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

A growing number of big U.S. credit-card issuers are deciding they don't want to finance a falling knife.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. said they're halting purchases of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on their credit cards. JPMorgan, enacting the ban Saturday, doesn't want the credit risk associated with the transactions, company spokeswoman Mary Jane Rogers said.

Bank of America started declining credit card transactions with known crypto exchanges on Friday. The policy applies to all personal and business credit cards, according to a memo. It doesn't affect debit cards, said company spokeswoman Betty Riess.

And late Friday, Citigroup said it too will halt purchases of cryptocurrencies on its credit cards. "We will continue to review our policy as this market evolves," company spokeswoman Jennifer Bombardier said.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-02/bofa-to-decline-all-cryptocurrency-transactions-on-credit-cards

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" has found the following story:

Openreach, the BT-owned firm that manages the UK's broadband infrastructure, has vowed to introduce "ultrafast" internet connections to three million premises by 2020. The company said it was accelerating its plan to run fibre connections directly to homes and businesses. It will increase internet speeds from 24 megabits a second under superfast broadband to 100 megabits. The first phase will begin this year, targeting eight cities across the UK.

[...] Too little, too late. That is how BT's many critics will characterise the plan to bring full fibre connections into as many as 10 million homes by 2025. They have always argued that the UK should have opted long ago for a national future-proof fibre-to-the-home network. Instead, BT's approach has been to lay fibre to cabinets on the street and then rely on good old copper cables to take broadband into the home.

[...] with the government switching tack and insisting "full fibre" is now the answer, BT has seen the light - though as its statement makes clear the speed of the rollout will depend on an "acceptable" return on its investment.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Plumbing the depths of women's bladders may shower researchers with viral gold.

In a wee survey, Loyola University Chicago researchers found the sac-like organ brimming with never-before-seen viruses that can kill and manipulate bacteria. Their findings, published this week in the Journal of Bacteriology, offer a first-pass catalogue of the rich diversity of bacteria-infecting viruses—aka "phages" or "bacteriophages"—in the bladder microbiome. The researchers suggest that further studies into the streaming viral content could one day lead to phage-based methods to void bacterial infections and identify disorders.

"The thought that there's not bacteria in urine is false," Catherine Putonti told Ars straight away. Putonti, a bioinformatics researcher and microbiologist at Loyola, is the leading author of the study. "The big picture is that there are a lot of viruses that are part of these bacterial communities as well."

With an early hold on what viruses are present in the bladder, the researchers are excited for more urinary deep dives to see if there's a core "bladder phageome" and what those viruses might be doing—or be able to do. "Now we can start asking questions," Putonti said.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/streaming-viral-content-womens-bladders-gush-with-cryptic-killer-viruses/

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

In 1993, physicist Lucien Hardy proposed an experiment showing that there is a small probability (around 6-9%) of observing a particle and its antiparticle interacting with each other without annihilating—something that is impossible in classical physics. The way to explain this result is to require quantum theory to be nonlocal: that is, to allow for the existence of long-range quantum correlations, such as entanglement, so that particles can influence each other across long distances.

So far, Hardy's paradox has been experimentally demonstrated with two particles, and a few special cases with more than two particles have been proposed but not experimentally demonstrated. Now in a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists have presented a generalized Hardy's paradox that extends to any number of particles. Further, they show that any version of Hardy's paradox that involves three or more particles conflicts with local (classical) theory even more strongly than any of the previous versions of the paradox do. To illustrate, the physicists proposed an experiment with three particles in which the probability of observing the paradoxical event reaches an estimated 25%.

"In this paper, we show a family of generalized Hardy's paradox to the most degree, in that by adjusting certain parameters they not only include previously known extensions as special cases, but also give sharper conflicts between quantum and classical theories in general," coauthor Jing-Ling Chen at Nankai University and the National University of Singapore told Phys.org. "What's more, based on the paradoxes, we are able to write down novel Bell's inequalities, which enable us to detect more quantum entangled states."

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-hardy-paradox-stronger-conflict-quantum.html

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Norway rats trade different commodities

Researchers of the University of Bern have shown for the first time in an experiment that also non-human animals exchange different kind of favours. Humans commonly trade different commodities, which is considered a core competence of our species. However, this capacity is not exclusively human as Norway rats exchange different commodities, too. They strictly follow the principle "tit for tat" – even when paying with different currencies, such as grooming or food provisioning.

[...] In an experimental study, Manon Schweinfurth and Michael Taborsky from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the University of Bern tested whether common Norway rats engage in reciprocal trading of two different forms of help, i.e. allogrooming and food provisioning. Their test rats experienced a partner either cooperating or non-cooperating in one of the two commodities. To induce allogrooming, the researchers applied saltwater on the test rats' neck, which is hardly accessible to self-grooming, so help by a partner is needed. To induce food provisioning, partner rats could pull food items towards the test rats. Afterwards, test rats had the opportunity to reciprocate favours by the alternative service, i.e. allogrooming the partner after receiving food from it, or donating food after having been allogroomed. The test rats groomed more often cooperating than non-cooperating food providers, and they donated food more often to partners that had heavily groomed them before. Apparently, they traded these two services among another according to the decision rules of direct reciprocity. «This result indicates that reciprocal trading among non-human animals may be much more widespread than currently assumed. It is not limited to large-brained species with advanced cognitive abilities», says Manon Schweinfurth.

Experimental evidence for reciprocity in allogrooming among wild-type Norway rats (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-03841-3) (DX)

Reciprocal allogrooming among unrelated Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) is affected by previously received cooperative, affiliative and aggressive behaviours (DOI: 10.1007/s00265-017-2406-1) (DX)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists have grown a perfectly compatible ear in a lab and grafted it onto a patient, in what they said was a world first in regenerative medicine.

The groundbreaking technique saw them use the patient's own ear cartilage cells to form a new one.

Five children suffering from a condition known as microtia, in which the external ear is underdeveloped, have undergone the experimental surgery.

The first child to have the procedure two-and-a-half years ago was showing no signs the body has rejected or accidentally absorbed the new cells, the Chinese team who developed the procedure wrote when they published their findings in the journal EBioMedicine.

Currently the widely used treatments for microtia include the use of silicone prosthetic ears, or rib-cartilage reconstruction, which has mixed results.

The new technique involves taking a scan of the child's unaffected ear, reversing the dimensions and 3D-printing a biodegradable mould punctuated with tiny holes.

Cartilage cells taken from the recipient's other, unaffected ear are then used to fill the holes while the new ear is still in the lab.

Over three months the cartilage cells begin to grow in the shape of the mould, and the mould itself begins to break down.

While this process is underway, the ear is grafted onto the recipient.

"It's a very exciting approach," Tessa Hadlock, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, told New Scientist, which first reported on the research.

Guangdong Zhou, et. al. In Vitro Regeneration of Patient-specific Ear-shaped Cartilage and Its First Clinical Application for Auricular Reconstruction, EBioMedicine, DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2018.01.011

Original Submission

Cowardly Anon writes:

The Guardian writes how tech insiders give their own products a wide berth. The reason is in the design of these services.

I am a compulsive social media user. I have sent about 140,000 tweets since I joined Twitter in April 2007 – six Jacks' worth. I use Instagram, Snapchat and Reddit daily. I have accounts on Ello, Peach and Mastodon (remember them? No? Don't worry). Three years ago, I managed to quit Facebook. I went cold turkey, deleting my account in a moment of lucidity about how it made me feel and act. I have never regretted it, but I haven't been able to pull the same stunt twice.

I used to look at the heads of the social networks and get annoyed that they didn't understand their own sites. Regular users encounter bugs, abuse or bad design decisions that the executives could never understand without using the sites themselves. How, I would wonder, could they build the best service possible if they didn't use their networks like normal people?

Now, I wonder something else: what do they know that we don't?

Apparently what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Over at the Open Source Initiative, Simon Phipps writes about the past, present, and future of Open Source Software as it turns 20 this year. Thought of in a strategy session on how to make Free Software more palatable to certain business interests, the orignal idea was for it to be a stepping stone from proprietary to Free Software by focusing first on the advantages of the developmental model.

Thirty-five years ago when Richard Stallman decided that he could no longer tolerate proprietary software, and started the free software movement, software freedom was misunderstood and dismissed. Twenty years ago a group of free software advocates gathered in California and decided that software freedom needed to be brought to the business world. The result was a marketing program called "open source". That same month, February 1998, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) was founded as a general educational and advocacy organization to raise awareness and adoption for the superiority of an open development process.

Of course, old-timers will remind us that originally software was source and binaries did not count. Up until the late 1970s or early 1980s, when you bought software, it was source.

Source : Happy Anniversary—The Next 20 Years of Open Source Begins Today

Related:
https://perens.com/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-open-source/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker has ruled that Florida's system for restoration of voting and other civil rights to convicted felons is unconstitutional. Florida is likely to appeal the ruling:

A federal judge has declared unconstitutional Florida's procedure for restoring voting rights to felons who have served their time. In a strongly worded ruling seen as a rebuke of Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who is the lead defendant in the case, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said the disenfranchisement of felons who have served their time is "nonsensical" and a violation of the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Although nearly every state bars incarcerated criminals from voting, only Florida and three others — Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — do not automatically restore voting rights at the completion of a criminal sentence.

Walker, an Obama administration appointee, decried the state's requirement that someone with a felony conviction must "kowtow" to a partisan panel, the Office of Executive Clemency, "over which Florida's governor has absolute veto authority" to regain their right to vote. "[Elected], partisan officials have extraordinary authority to grant or withhold the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of people without any constraints, guidelines, or standards," the judge said. [...] The judge cited one clemency hearing where Scott announced the panel "can do whatever we want" as evidence of its arbitrary nature.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Yeah, so life has managed to delay our December Update until February. Things happen. The only change to what's in it is that I wrote up a simple plugin to syndicate content to Twitter, which is very much preferable to our current situation since we're pushing stories from a hacky little script on my desktop at the moment and I'd like to be able to boot Windows 7 for some vidya once in a while.

Downtime should be five minutes or less starting around 2:00AM UTC (an hour and forty minutes from now).

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://gizmodo.com/uber-and-lyft-have-a-hot-new-idea-for-screwing-over-cit-1822661060

The arrival of autonomous vehicles is an inevitability, so it makes sense that before mass adoption hits, companies like Lyft and Uber would want to band together to determine what our self-driving future will look like. Sounds pretty harmless, right?

Well, not so fast, because a new pledge by 15 big-name transportation companies seems designed to screw over city-dwellers who want to ride in their own self-driving cars. Item #10 of the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities, co-signed yesterday by Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, and Didi Chuxing (China's largest ride-sharing service), reads as follows:

10. WE SUPPORT THAT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES (AVS) IN DENSE URBAN AREAS SHOULD BE OPERATED ONLY IN SHARED FLEETS.

Due to the transformational potential of autonomous vehicle technology, it is critical that all AVs are part of shared fleets, well-regulated, and zero emission. Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals, and actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas.

Translation: These companies want to make it illegal for individuals to use privately owned self-driving cars in big cities, effectively giving the signatories control of our autonomous streets.

See the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities site for details on their principles, which are enumerated here:

takyon writes:

Saudi Aramco and Alphabet/Google may cooperate on a "technology hub" within Saudi Arabia, or at least build some data centers:

Saudi Aramco, the world's largest energy company, and Google parent Alphabet have entered discussions to create a technology hub in Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The kingdom is embarking upon an ambitious plan, led by the 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to diversify the nation's oil-dependent economy. The foundation of the effort is a plan to create a huge sovereign wealth fund, underwritten by selling shares in the state-owned Aramco.

The initial public offering, which could happen this year, is expected to be the world's biggest-ever share sale. Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser recently told CNBC his company is ready for the IPO this year, but is waiting on the government to choose an international list venue.

Alphabet and Aramco have discussed forming a joint venture that would build data centers around the kingdom, sources familiar with the matter tell the Journal. It remains to be seen which customers the data centers would serve and how large the joint venture would be, but it could be listed in the Saudi stock exchange, the sources said.

Data centers are just a "tangible" area of cooperation, not necessarily the entire purpose of the joint venture. Saudi Arabia has talked about building a $500+ billion "megacity" that would be technology-focused.

Meanwhile, slightly-less-of-a-billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has been put back to work:

Fnord666 writes:

Backblaze has released its hard drive statistics for 2017.

Beginning in April 2013, Backblaze has recorded and saved daily hard drive statistics from the drives in our data centers. Each entry consists of the date, manufacturer, model, serial number, status (operational or failed), and all of the SMART attributes reported by that drive. As of the end of 2017, there are about 88 million entries totaling 23 GB of data. You can download this data from our website if you want to do your own research, but for starters here's what we found.

[...] For 2017 we added 25,746 new drives, and lost 6,442 drives to retirement for a net of 19,304 drives. When you look at storage space, we added 230 petabytes and retired 19 petabytes, netting us an additional 211 petabytes of storage in our data center in 2017.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

These Tools Upend Our View of Stone-Age Humans in Asia

Long ago in what's now southern India, early humans showed a knack for disruption that would've made Silicon Valley tech wizards envious. Over time, the ancient innovators rejected bulky hand-axes and cleavers, instead opting for sleek flakes of stone meant for cutting and tipping spears.

Similar disruptions occurred in Africa among the forebears of modern humans around the same time. But the timing of the Indian transition, spotted in the soil layers of a site called Attirampakkam, is eye-popping. At 250,000 years old—and possibly up to 385,000 years old—this tool transition occurred far earlier than it did at other sites in India.

The discovery, described in Nature on Wednesday [DOI: 10.1038/nature25444] [DX], pushes back the start of what's called the Middle Paleolithic culture in the region by more than a hundred thousand years. That, in turn, could reshape how scientists view the global spread of hominins—humans and their ancient relatives—before modern humans migrated out of Africa some 60,000 years ago.

Also at The Verge.

Related: Earliest Human Remains Outside of Africa Discovered

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

From a fine publication, The Modern Farmer, an intriguing exposé!

Twitter, specifically, has been a source of contention. It all started when the official National Park Service account was asked to stop tweeting after it shared photos that compared the crowd size of Trump's inauguration to the crowd size of Obama's inauguration in 2009. Then the official Badlands National Park Twitter went rogue and started tweeting facts about climate change. The tweets were later removed and blamed on "a former employee who was not authorized to use the park's account."

Since those tweets were removed, over 40 "alt" or "rogue" Twitter accounts have sprouted up to fill in for many agencies and National Parks. Some of them already have a pretty big following—currently, AltUSNatParkService has more than 1.27 million followers. So far we're seeing climate facts, inspirational quotes about the environment, cute photos of animals, and a lot of snark (this is Twitter, after all).

TFA includes the a few of the more interesting ones, including:

• AltEPA: He can take our official Twitter but he'll never take our FREEDOM. Unofficial EPA #resistance. #factsmatter. If loving science is wrong, we don't wanna be right. #factsmatter
• AltUSForestService: The unofficial, and unsanctioned, #Resistance team for the U.S. Forest Service. Not an official Forest Service account, not publicly funded, citizen run. Read it while you can! https://t.co/rTbMl0n3Zc
• AltUSDA: Resisting the censorship of facts and science. Truth wins in the end. Read the USDA Climate Change Solutions page while you still can: https://t.co/99G1M2zuYG #resist #science #climatechange.
• AltFDA: Uncensored FDA
• AltUSFWS: The Alt U.S. Fish Wildlife Service (AltUSFWS) is dedicated to the conservation, protection and enhancement of fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats

Being Twitter, some of these seem to have difficulty staying on-topic and seem to think that anything is fair game.

Original Submission