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takyon writes:

US steel and aluminium imports face big tariffs, Trump says

President Donald Trump has said he will sign off on steep tariffs on steel and aluminium imports next week, hitting producers like Canada and China.

Flanked by US metals executives at the White House, he said a 25% tariff would be slapped on steel products, and a 10% tariff would be imposed on aluminium.

Mr Trump tweeted that the US was suffering from "unfair trade".

The US imports four times more steel than it exports, and is reliant on steel from more than 100 nations.

Related: U.S. Quintuples Taxes on Chinese Cold-Rolled Flat Steel
China to Cut Steel and Coal Production
Trump Administration Finalizes 300% Import Tariff on Bombardier Jets From Canada
US Government Puts Tariffs on Imported Solar Cells, Solar Modules, and Washing Machines

Original Submission

takyon writes:

This smartwatch can project a tiny dancing man onto your hand

The nice thing about smartwatches is that they put information right on your wrist so it's easy to check. But what if that information was even more visible? What if that information was right on the back of your hand?

That question, I can only assume, is what led to the creation of Haier's Asu watch, an enormous smartwatch with a built-in projector. The projector allows the watch to display information on the back of your hand, essentially serving as a second screen.

Haier uses the projection to provide additional information. So when you're running, the projection will display distance, time, and progress toward fitness goals, while the watch screen will have controls to pause and finish your workout. The projection actually supports gesture controls, too: you can double tap on your hand to change what's on the screen. It didn't work very well when I tried it, but Haier says the whole watch is still in development.

BUT WHAT FOR?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google has banned items containing the string "gun" in the name on its e-commerce search platform, accidentally targeting many innocuous items:

Google Shopping, which allows users to compare product prices from thousands of online retailers, has removed all 'gun' search results - even if the product is not gun-related.

Online shoppers have complained about being unable to browse dozens of products such as Burgundy wine, water guns and music by American rock band Guns N' Roses. Searches for products including nail guns, glue guns and Arsenal Football Club's Gunnersaurus dinosaur mascot also returns the message: "Your search did not match any shopping results."

Google has banned weapons listings since 2012, however online shoppers have highlighted certain product unavailability since the Florida school shooting on Valentine's Day which left 17 dead.

The block could be circumvented using alternate terms such as "handgnu" or "fully automatic firearm".

Also at Engadget.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

IBM Is Sending a Floating Robot Head to Space

[HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey] hasn't deterred Airbus and IBM from teaming up to develop CIMON (Crew Interactive MObile CompanioN), a floating robot the size of a medicine ball that is equipped with Watson AI technology.

Later this year, CIMON is set to become the first "flying brain" in space when it is deployed to the International Space Station (ISS) to work alongside astronauts.

CIMON will use its neural AI network, combined with its face and voice recognition technology, to assist astronauts during the European Space Agency's Horizons mission between June and October 2018.

What will CIMON be doing?

Once the functional testing of the system has been completed, Gerst will work in Space with CIMON a total of three times: They will experiment with crystals, work together to solve the Rubik's cube and perform a complex medical experiment using CIMON as an 'intelligent' flying camera.

I → H
B → A
M → L

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Samsung Preps to Build Another Multi-Billion Dollar Memory Fab Near Pyeongtaek

Samsung has begun preparations to build another semiconductor production facility near Pyeongtaek, South Korea. The fab will produce various types of memory as the market demands, and if unofficial information is correct, the new fab may be larger than the adjacent fab that began operations last year.

At present the upcoming fab is called the P2 Project and it will be located adjacent to the existing fab near Pyeongtaek. Samsung has already started to establish infrastructure for the production facility — it ordered the construction of gas pipes for the new production facility in January and is expected to start other works shortly. ETNews reports that Samsung is looking at investing ₩30 trillion ($27.8 billion) in the new P2 Project facility, but does not elaborate whether the number represents total investments, or initial investments. ₩30 trillion is the total amount of money that Samsung has already invested and plans to invest in its existing fab near Pyeongtaek by 2021. Considering the fact that the P2 is in an early stage of planning, it is unlikely that the company has finalized its investments plans.

Related: Samsung Set to Outpace Intel in Semiconductor Revenues
Samsung Could Boost NAND Production Capacity, WD Intervenes in Toshiba Memory Sale
Samsung Plans a "4nm" Process
GlobalFoundries to Spend $10-12 Billion on a 7nm Fab, Possibly $14-18 Billion for 5nm
Samsung's Second Generation 10nm-Class DRAM in Production
TSMC Holds Groundbreaking Ceremony for "5nm" Fab, Production to Begin in 2020

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Does this selfie make my nose look big? Yes:

Taking selfies at a distance of about 12 inches from the face increases perceived nose size by nearly 30%, according to a report published Thursday in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery [DOI: 10.1001/jamafacial.2018.0009] [DX].

Researchers now are cautioning that patients interested in cosmetic procedures should not turn to self-photographs as guidance when considering making changes to their faces. "Patients, people, even my family have to be aware that if you're taking a selfie, it's not really how you look," said Dr. Boris Paskhover, a facial plastics and reconstructive surgeon at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and a leading author on the study. "Selfies make your nose look wider and thicker when it really isn't, and people like a smaller nose," Paskhover added. "My fear is that the generation out there now doesn't know. All they know is the selfie."

Also at EurekAlert and The Verge.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

GitHub has been hit with the largest-ever DDoS attack, and it was only down for a few minutes:

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 GitHub.com was unavailable from 17:21 to 17:26 UTC and intermittently unavailable from 17:26 to 17:30 UTC due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

[...] Cloudflare described an amplification vector using memcached over UDP in their blog post this week, "Memcrashed - Major amplification attacks from UDP port 11211". The attack works by abusing memcached instances that are inadvertently accessible on the public internet with UDP support enabled. Spoofing of IP addresses allows memcached's responses to be targeted against another address, like ones used to serve GitHub.com, and send more data toward the target than needs to be sent by the unspoofed source. The vulnerability via misconfiguration described in the post is somewhat unique amongst that class of attacks because the amplification factor is up to 51,000, meaning that for each byte sent by the attacker, up to 51KB is sent toward the target.

[...] Between 17:21 and 17:30 UTC on February 28th we identified and mitigated a significant volumetric DDoS attack. The attack originated from over a thousand different autonomous systems (ASNs) across tens of thousands of unique endpoints. It was an amplification attack using the memcached-based approach described above that peaked at 1.35Tbps via 126.9 million packets per second.

Also at Wired and The Register.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Moon may have formed from the same synestia (spinning donut shape) as Earth rather than through a collision between the early Earth and the hypothetical protoplanet Theia:

Making the moon: Study details new story for how the moon formed

A graduate student in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, [Simon] Lock is the lead author of a study that suggests the Moon - rather than being spun out of the aftermath of a collision - emerged from a massive, donut-shaped cloud of vaporized rock called a synestia. Along with Lock, the study, published February 28 in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, is co-authored by Sarah Stewart (UC Davis), Michail Petaev (Harvard), Zoë Leinhardt (Bristol), Mia Mace (Bristol), Stein Jacobsen (Harvard), and Matija Ćuk (SETI).

"The commonly accepted theory as to how the Moon was formed is that a Mars sized body collided with the proto-Earth and spun material into orbit," Lock said. "That mass settled into a disk and later accreted to form the moon. The body that was left after the impact was the Earth. This has been the canonical model for about 20 years." It's a compelling story, Lock said, and it's also probably not correct. "Getting enough mass into orbit in the canonical scenario is actually very difficult, and there's a very narrow range of collisions that might be able to do it," he said. "There's only a couple of degree window of impact angles and a very narrow range of sizes...and even then some impacts still don't work."

"This new work explains features of the Moon that are hard to resolve with current ideas," said Stewart, a professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Davis. "This is the first model that can match the pattern of the Moon's composition."

The origin of the Moon within a terrestrial synestia (DOI: 10.1002/2017JE005333) (DX)

Previously: "Synestia" Phase of Planetary Formation Simulated

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A plane being developed by Paul Allen could lower the cost of launching to low-Earth orbit:

Rockets have been the way to get satellites into orbit since the dawn of the space age. But Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen hopes to shake that up with help from the world's biggest airplane.

"Stratolaunch" is a 500,000-pound beast with twin fuselages and a wingspan of 385 feet. Allen's Seattle-based company is developing it as a platform for lifting rockets into the stratosphere before launching them into space. It's seen as a cheaper, more reliable route to low-Earth orbit (LEO) — the sweet spot for many kinds of satellites.

The plane is still in development and has yet to fly, but last December it taxied out onto the runway at the Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave, California. In another test last Sunday, it hit a new top taxi speed of 46 miles per hour [40 knots]. If all goes according to plan, the plane will take its first test flight next year. As to when Stratolaunch might begin commercial operations, no date has been given.

Twitter video of rollout.

Also at Flying Magazine.

Previously: Stratolaunch: The World's Largest Plane Rolls Out

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Imec and Cadence Tape Out Industry's First 3nm Test Chip

The world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, imec, and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. today announced that its extensive, long-standing collaboration has resulted in the industry's first 3nm test chip tapeout. The tapeout project, geared toward advancing 3nm chip design, was completed using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and 193 immersion (193i) lithography-oriented design rules and the Cadence® Innovus™ Implementation System and Genus™ Synthesis Solution. Imec utilized a common industry 64-bit CPU for the test chip with a custom 3nm standard cell library and a TRIM metal flow, where the routing pitch was reduced to 21nm. Together, Cadence and imec have enabled the 3nm implementation flow to be fully validated in preparation for next-generation design innovation.

A tape-out is the final step before the design is sent to be fabricated.

Meanwhile, Imec is looking towards nodes smaller than "3nm":

[...] industry is pinpointing and narrowing down the transistor options for the next major nodes after 3nm. Those two nodes, called 2.5nm and 1.5nm, are slated to appear in 2027 and 2030, respectively, according to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) version 2.0. Another organization, Imec, is more aggressive with the timetable, saying that 2.5nm or thereabouts will arrive by 2024.

Also at EE Times.

Related: TSMC Plans New Fab for 3nm
Samsung Plans a "4nm" Process
IBM Demonstrates 5nm Chip With Horizontal Gate-All-Around Transistors
GlobalFoundries to Spend $10-12 Billion on a 7nm Fab, Possibly $14-18 Billion for 5nm
TSMC Holds Groundbreaking Ceremony for "5nm" Fab, Production to Begin in 2020

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Western Digital is beginning to use in-house controllers in its new NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) SSDs, but has confirmed that they do not contain RISC-V cores just yet:

Western Digital has announced their first client NVMe SSDs with their SanDisk 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. These drives are also the first to feature Western Digital's new in-house NVMe SSD controllers. This is a major shift in strategy away from third-party controllers (mostly Marvell) toward complete vertical integration.

The new SSDs are called the Western Digital SN720 and Western Digital SN520. Branding for these is a bit of a mess with the drives bearing the Western Digital name and model numbers that almost fit in with the HGST Ultrastar SN200 and SN260 enterprise NVMe SSDs, but the product information is on the SanDisk website and the target market is similar to that of SanDisk's business/OEM drives like the X400 and X600 SATA SSDs. Western Digital may be trying to unify and simplify their several brands, but it's a work in progress.

[...] Western Digital hasn't disclosed what kind of processor cores are used in their NVMe controllers, but they did confirm that these aren't using the RISC-V architecture—those products won't be arriving until next year at the earliest. The Western Digital NVMe controllers are probably using ARM Cortex-R cores like most SSD controllers.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Putin, before vote, unveils 'invincible' nuclear weapons to counter West

President Vladimir Putin unveiled an array of new nuclear weapons on Thursday, in one of his most bellicose speeches in years, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield. [...] His remarks were greeted with scepticism in Washington, where officials cast doubt on whether Russia has added any new capabilities to its nuclear arsenal beyond those already known to the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.

[...] Among weapons that Putin said were either in development or ready was a new intercontinental ballistic missile "with a practically unlimited range" able to attack via the North and South Poles and bypass any missile defense systems.

Putin also spoke of a small nuclear-powered engine that could be fitted to what he said were low-flying, highly maneuverable cruise missiles, giving them a practically unlimited range. The new engine meant Russia was able to make a new type of weapon - nuclear missiles powered by nuclear rather than conventional fuel. "Nothing like it in the world exists," Putin told the audience. "At some point it will probably appear (elsewhere) but by that time our guys will have devised something else."

Other new super weapons he listed included underwater nuclear drones, a supersonic weapon and a laser weapon. In one of his video clip demos, a weapon appeared to be hovering over what looked like a map of the state of Florida.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

UK watchdog Ofcom tells broadband firms: '30 days to sort your speeds'

Ofcom is tightening the screws – sort of – on broadband providers that play fast and loose with speed promises by imposing a deadline to fix problems or allow customers’ to end their contract early and without a penalty.

Punters are able to exit a deal if velocity slips below a minimum guaranteed level and the provider can’t rectify it, but providers currently have an unlimited resolution time before letting customers leave.

The major update to the code of practice, to be implemented in a year from now, will mean that providers must promote “realistic” speed estimates and “minimum” speed guarantees at the point of sale.

[...] Average download speeds for residential punters in peak hours (8pm to 10pm) are 34.6Mbit/s, and average maximum speeds are 39.1Mbit/s, according to the regulator.

[...] All of the major broadband players have signed up to Ofcom’s code of practice - it covers around 90 per cent of customers in the UK. But there is no legal imperative for these companies to comply with the code.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Research shows that longstanding depression alters the brain -- treatment may require different approaches depending on not just the severity of the depression but also on its longevity:

Is clinical depression always the same illness, or does it change over time?

New brain imaging research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows that the brain alters after years of persistent depression, suggesting the need to change how we think about depression as it progresses.

The study, led by senior author Dr. Jeff Meyer of CAMH's Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

The research shows that people with longer periods of untreated depression, lasting more than a decade, had significantly more brain inflammation compared to those who had less than 10 years of untreated depression. In an earlier study, Dr. Meyer's team discovered the first definitive evidence of inflammation in the brain in clinical depression.

This study provides the first biological evidence for large brain changes in long-lasting depression, suggesting that it is a different stage of illness that needs different therapeutics - the same perspective taken for early and later stages of Alzheimer's disease, he says.

"Greater inflammation in the brain is a common response with degenerative brain diseases as they progress, such as with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson´s disease," says Dr. Meyer, who also holds Canada Research Chair in the Neurochemistry of Major Depression. While depression is not considered a degenerative brain disease, the change in inflammation shows that, for those in whom depression persists, it may be progressive and not a static condition.

Over years, depression changes the brain, new study shows
Depression Can Actually Leave Long-Term Changes in Your Brain, Study Shows

More information: Elaine Setiawan et al, Association of translocator protein total distribution volume with duration of untreated major depressive disorder: a cross-sectional study, The Lancet Psychiatry (2018). DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(18)30048-8

Original Submission

[Ed note: After this story was submitted, it became known that there was a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability on the Trustico web site which allowed malicious users to run arbitrary code as root on the server. Story at Ars Technica: Trustico website goes dark after someone drops critical flaw on Twitter. Link to the tweet. As of the time of this writing, the Trustico web site is unavailable. --martyb]

mrpg writes:

23,000 HTTPS certs will be axed in next 24 hours after private keys leak

Customers of HTTPS certificate reseller Trustico are reeling after being told their website security certs – as many as 23,000 – will be rendered useless within the next 24 hours.

This is allegedly due to a security blunder in which the private keys for said certificates ended up in an email sent by Trustico. Those keys are supposed to be secret, and only held by the cert owners, and certainly not to be disclosed in messages. In the wrong hands, they can be used by malicious websites to masquerade as legit operations.

Unless the affected certificates are replaced in time, visitors to websites using Trustico-sold HTTPS certs will be turned away by their browsers, due to the digital certificates being revoked.