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An Anonymous Coward writes:

In this short article Let’s Encrypt lists challenges ahead, like service growth, new features and infrastructure and finances.

Let’s Encrypt had a great year in 2017. We more than doubled the number of active (unexpired) certificates we service to 46 million, we just about tripled the number of unique domains we service to 61 million, and we did it all while maintaining a stellar security and compliance track record. Most importantly though, the Web went from 46% encrypted page loads to 67% according to statistics from Mozilla - a gain of 21 percentage points in a single year - incredible. We’re proud to have contributed to that, and we’d like to thank all of the other people and organizations who also worked hard to create a more secure and privacy-respecting Web.

I think Let's Encrypt is a great service. Want to share your war story? Can you think of any downsides or threats related to all this?

[Ed note: SoylentNews uses Gandi for "soylentnews.org" and uses LetsEncrypt for all other domains and subdomains. --martyb]

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pTamok writes:

Electric clocks on continental Europe that are steered by the frequency of the power system are running slow by up to 5 minutes since mid-January according to a news release from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity ('entsoe'). The transmission system operators (TSOs) will set up a compensation program to correct the time in the future. ​

Many electric clocks rely on the transmission system frequency to provide a source that minimises long-term drift. Quartz crystals have good short term stability, but dreadful long term stability, so plant and machinery that requires power to be turned on or off at a specific time each day without maintenance over a long period historically used clocks slaved to the power-system frequency, which is kept long-term stable by the system operators to prevent problems in power generation and transmission across national and supra-national grids - for example, attempting to switch supplies to generators that are not synchronised to the grid frequency can severely damage the generator.

It is normal for transmission system operators to allow the frequency to drop slightly at periods of high demand, thus slowing clocks, but usually, the frequency is increased during periods of low demand to ensure the long-term average frequency remains stable.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

When Google agreed to buy Zagat for $151 million nearly seven years ago, the technology giant intended to bring the restaurant review empire into the digital age.

Now ownership of Zagat will change again — into the hands of an upstart restaurant review company that has harnessed smartphone apps, an Instagram hashtag and a texting recommendation service as parts of its path to growth.

That company, The Infatuation, announced on Monday that it would buy Zagat from Google. It did not disclose the amount.

"How often does an iconic brand like Zagat become available?" Chris Stang, a co-founder of The Infatuation and its chief executive, said in a telephone interview. "When you think about its history and what Zagat means to so many people, it's a huge opportunity."

Also at TechCrunch.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Naaman Zhou at The Guardian writes that Australia's free human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme in schools has been highly successful. The International Papillomavirus Society calculates that within 40 years, the number of new cases of cervical cancer will become nearly negligible.

HPV (human papillomavirus) is a sexually transmitted infection that causes 99.9% of cervical cancers. In 2007, the federal government began providing the vaccine for free to girls aged 12-13 years, and in 2013, it extended the program to boys.

Girls and boys outside those ages but under 19 can also access two doses of the vaccine for free. In 2016, 78.6% of 15-year old girls and 72.9% of 15-year old boys had been vaccinated.

As a result, the HPV rate among women aged 18 to 24 dropped from 22.7% to 1.1% between 2005 and 2015.

Eradication is still a few decades out but within reach. The vaccinations are backed up by more advanced cervical screening tests, which are themselves highly successful in detecting high-risk HPV infections before they turn really bad.

Source : Australia could become first country to eradicate cervical cancer. The Guardian

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takyon writes:

Qualcomm's board members, including several seats controlled by Broadcom, were set to vote on Broadcom's acquisition attempt on Tuesday. However, the annual shareholder meeting has been postponed for 30 days by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States:

Broadcom Ltd. is on course to win all six of the seats it's seeking on Qualcomm Inc.'s board, giving it a majority to push forward with its hostile takeover even as a U.S. government panel forced a delay of the final tally amid concerns about the deal's threats to national security.

Based on a count of more than half of the votes already cast, Broadcom would win a majority of Qualcomm's board seats, according to information obtained by Bloomberg. If that result holds up when the final vote takes place, Broadcom would have a mandate to overturn Qualcomm management's opposition to the $117 billion deal. Representatives for Broadcom and Qualcomm declined to comment.

The Committee is taking preemptive action this time:

The panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, typically works behind closed doors and reviews deals only after they are announced. In the case of Qualcomm, the panel, which includes representatives from multiple government agencies, is looking at the acquisition before it is complete. In practice, reviews by Cfius often lead to the demise of deals.

[...] Already, Cfius has taken a more proactive role, blocking several major deals by Chinese buyers in recent months. Among them were proposed acquisitions of MoneyGram, a money transfer company, and Lattice Semiconductor.

Previously: President Trump Blocks Acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor
Broadcom Raises Bid for Qualcomm to $121 Billion

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A group of American university researchers have broken key 4G LTE protocols to generate fake messages, snoop on users, and forge user location data.

Those working on the coming 5G protocols should take note: the vulnerabilities are most worrying because they're written into the LTE protocols, and could therefore have an industry-wide impact.

Identified by Purdue University's Syed Rafiul Hussain, Shagufta Mehnaz and Elisa Bertino with the University of Iowa's Omar Chowdhury, the protocol procedures affected are:

• Attach – the procedure that associates a subscriber device with the network (for example, when you switch the phone on);
• Detach – occurs when you switch your device off, or if the network disconnects from the device (for example because of poor signal quality, or because the phone can't authenticate to the network); and
• Paging – this protocol is part of call setup, to force the device to re-acquire system information, and in emergency warning applications.

The researchers' paper (PDF) describes an attack tool called LTEInspector, which the researchers said found exploitable vulnerabilities that resulted in "10 new attacks and nine prior attacks” (detecting old vulnerabilities helped the researchers validate that the new vulns were genuine).

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

An American upstart [sic] says it is the first company to implement the EU's vision of drone air traffic management – over the skies of Switzerland.

Airmap, one of many small companies around the world hoping to make a breakthrough in the elusive field of unmanned traffic management (UTM), has joined forces with Swiss air traffic control firm Skyguide to implement the EU's U-Space vision for UTM in the Alpine nation's skies.

Although Switzerland is not a member of the EU, it is a member of the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA); its skies are managed under the same rules as those of the EU countries surrounding it.

"After a year of successful collaboration with AirMap, we expect that the AirMap UTM platform meets the highest standards required for a Swiss U-space," said Klaus Meier, CIO of Skyguide, in a canned quote. The company's PR tentacle added that it "really puts US drone progress into perspective" in a not-so-veiled swipe at the American Federal Aviation Administration and its occasionally controversial AUVSI trade association-cum-rule-writing group.

The system will, the companies say, enable such things as dynamic geofencing, "instant digital airspace authorisation", real-time traffic alerts, live telemetry "for airspace managers" and unspecified "other services" to enable "simultaneous flights in shared airspace". All of these things were set out in the EU's Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU; this is about as catchy as EU acronyms ever get), which was established to write an EU-approved set of rules for drone flights across the bloc.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Rift now represents about 47 percent of all VR headset users on Steam, according to the survey, sneaking just past the Vive at about 45 percent. Microsoft's Windows Mixed Reality initiative, launched late last year, accounts for just over 5 percent of the VR users on the platform.

[...] The Valve hardware survey is a self-selected voluntary sample of all Steam users and only detects VR headsets that are actively plugged in to the computer when the survey tool is run. Still, the rough parity between the two headsets is noteworthy given the Vive's use of the SteamVR standard, which Valve continues to update.

While the Rift is relatively easy to set up and use through Steam, the HTC Vive isn't officially supported on the competing Oculus Home platform.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A retired Russian military intelligence officer has fallen ill in England after exposure to an unknown substance. Does that sound familiar?

A man identified by local news reports as a retired Russian military intelligence officer who once spied for Britain is critically ill at a British hospital, and the authorities were investigating his "exposure to an unknown substance."

According to several reports, the man, found unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury, is Sergei V. Skripal, 66. He was once jailed by Moscow, then settled in Britain after an exchange of spies between the United States and Russia in 2010.

The British police have not publicly identified the man in the hospital or a 33-year-old woman who fell sick with him at a shopping mall called the Maltings.

The authorities have, however, released enough detail about what they called a "major incident" to draw some comparisons, however premature, to the case of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who was poisoned in London in 2006.

Also at BBC and Reuters.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] For a long time scientists believed that an animal's venom was consistent over time: once a venomous creature, always a venomous creature. However, through a close study of sea anemones, Dr. Yehu Moran of Hebrew University's Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Science, found that animals change their venom several times over the course of a lifetime, adapting the potency and recipe of their venom to suit changing predators and aquatic environments.

[...] Dr. Moran found that while in the larvae stage, sea anemones produce uniquely potent venom that causes predators to immediately spit them out if swallowed. Later on, when the sea anemones grow big and become predators themselves, their venom adapts to their new lifestyle by producing a different kind of toxin, one best suited to catch small fish and shrimp. Over the course of a lifetime, as the Nematostella's diet changes and they move from one aquatic region to another, they adapt their venom to suit their new needs and environment.

"Until now, venom research focused mainly on toxins produced by adult animals. However, by studying sea anemones from birth to death, we discovered that animals have a much wider toxin arsenal than previously thought. Their venom evolves to best meet threats from predators and to cope with changing aquatic environments," explained Dr. Yehu Moran.

[...] Most fundamentally, Moran's study sheds more light on the basic mechanisms of Darwinism: How do animals adapt to their changing world and ecological habitats? The Nematostella, with its changing venom, provides us yet another clue.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Alibaba reckons the world needs another quantum computer in the cloud, so it's opened up access to an 11-qubit system.

The system landed almost exactly a year after IBM announced its five-qubit quantum offering. In November last year, Big Blue embiggened the system to 20 qubits.

So as well as being the second cloudy quantum computer on the market, Alibaba's offering is also the second-fastest, as the company correctly claimed in its announcement.

The Alibaba offering is a collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and is cooled to as low as 10 milli-Kelvin[sic] (-273 °C).

Alibaba's announcement did not, however, detail the tools or APIs customers will use to interact with the system.

[Update: "milli-Kelvin" is all kinds of wrong, but appeared in the original source and is quoted here verbatim -- hence the now-added "[sic]". For more information on the origins and use of the term, see the entry on Wikipedia. --martyb]

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists at Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University have found that the mineral vaterite, a form (polymorph) of calcium carbonate, is a dominant component of the protective silvery-white crust that forms on the leaves of a number of alpine plants, which are part of the Garden's national collection of European Saxifraga species.

Naturally occurring vaterite is rarely found on Earth. Small amounts of vaterite crystals have been found in some sea and freshwater crustaceans, bird eggs, the inner ears of salmon, meteorites and rocks. This is the first time that the rare and unstable mineral has been found in such a large quantity and the first time it has been found to be associated with plants.

[...] Other potential uses of vaterite include improving the cements used in orthopaedic surgery and as an industrial application improving the quality of papers for inkjet printing by reducing the lateral spread of ink.

Dr Wightman said vaterite was often associated with outer space and had been detected in planetary objects in the Solar System and meteorites: "Vaterite is not very stable in the Earth's humid atmosphere as it often reverts to more common forms of calcium carbonate, such as calcite. This makes it even more remarkable that we have found vaterite in such large quantities on the surface of plant leaves."

The microscopy research has also turned up some novel cell structures. Mr Aston added: "As well as producing vaterite, Saxifraga scardica has a special tissue surrounding the leaf edge that appears to deflect light from the edge into the leaf. The cells appear to be producing novel cell wall structures to achieve this deflection. This may be to help the plant to collect more light, particularly if it is growing in partly shaded environments."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] An anonymous source, identified as a former Dynex exec, told The Sunday Times that the acquisition of Dynex Semiconductor by Chinese railway firm Zhouzhou CRRC Times Electric in 2008 "could have helped the development" of the Chinese navy's new railguns.

Dynex produces, as its name suggests, semiconductors, in particular insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). These can be used as critical components in railguns and similar catapult-type technologies thanks to their very high voltage and current ratings.

"In these big electronic systems... you need to be able to turn on and off big power very, very quickly. And your standard power switches are too slow," the former Dynex exec told the newspaper.

The basic principle behind a railgun is that a current passed between two rails via a sliding armature generates an electromagnetic field that flings a projectile carried in the armature out into the great beyond. A little lateral thinking easily turns this into an electromagnetic catapult. To make it work you need seriously high currents and voltages – sufficient to generate 160MJ, if this paper is taken at face value.

[...] The national security implications of this tech transfer are obvious, and troubling. Britain's post-Brexit answer to maintaining national prosperity is to go full throttle into cutting-edge technologies, racing ahead of other countries to commercialise and license the technologies we develop. If that comes into conflict with our strategy of using Chinese capital to cover the upfront costs, and the result is that British advanced technologies find their way into Chinese weapon systems, that will not only make the world a less safe place, it will potentially harm Britain's standing with its allies – particularly the US, which is keen to confront Chinese challenges to its hegemony.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Western Digital has demonstrated an SD card that can hit up to 880 MB/s sequential read and 430 MB/s sequential write speeds.

Western Digital demonstrated an experimental SD card featuring a PCIe Gen 3 x1 interface at Mobile World Congress. Meanwhile, the SD Card Association is calling upon the industry to adopt PCIe as a standard interface and to support the development of a complete SD PCIe standard.

Western Digital is demonstrating a system featuring an M.2-to-SD adapter with an SD card that offers 880 MB/s sequential read speeds as well as up to 430 MB/s sequential write speeds, according to the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. The drive uses the existing UHS-II/III pins to construct a PCIe 3.0 x1 interface with the system (via a mechanical adapter) and probably standard PCIe voltage with a converter. The company is not disclosing the type of memory or the controller that power the SD PCIe card, but it is clear that we are dealing with a custom solution. Meanwhile, Western Digital claims that the implementation costs of a PCIe interface is not high as one might expect, as a PCIe x1 PHY is not all that large.

Western Digital further notes that the SD card with a PCIe interface is not standard and will not hit the market any time soon, but is showing off the concept anyhow as they have seen interest from certain parties for this kind of removable storage solutions.

This exceeds the 312-624 MB/s data rates and UHS-III bus specified by version 6.0 (February 2017) of the Secure Digital standard.

Related: Secure Digital 5.0 Standard: Memory Cards Intended for 8K and Virtual Reality Recording
SanDisk Announces a 400 GB MicroSD Card
Half a Terabyte in Your Smartphone? Yup. That's Possible Now

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Blending around 70% ground beef with 30% chopped mushrooms could reduce the environmental impact of beef:

The idea is that mixing chopped mushrooms into our burgers boosts the umami taste, adds more moisture and reduces the amount of beef required for a burger. And reducing the need for beef has a big impact on the environment. According to the World Resources Institute [WRI], if 30 percent of the beef in every burger in America were replaced by mushrooms, it would reduce greenhouse emissions by the same amount as taking 2.3 million vehicles off of our roads.

[...] Richard Waite, from the World Resources Institute, is thrilled. "I think it's great!" he says. WRI has been pushing the blended beef-mushroom burger as a candidate to become one of America's most-served menu items, which WRI calls "power meals." According to Waite, the list of the top 20 meals served by food service companies currently contains only one plant-based item, a veggie wrap. The rest are meat-centric, including four versions of the classic hamburger.

Many niche burger makers and school cafeterias have joined the blended burger bandwagon. In the dining rooms of Stanford University, Waite says, it's the only kind of burger you'll find. But Sonic's 3,500 drive-in restaurants represent a huge boost to the concept.

Here's a recipe for a roasted mushroom base and beef-mushroom burgers.

Original Submission

Update: Spaceflight Now reports successful Hispasat 30W-6 separation from the Falcon 9 rocket.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Falcon 9 satellite launches are big business for SpaceX.

SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida late Monday, Pacific time, for the 50th time since the first Falcon 9 mission less than eight years ago.

It's perhaps fitting the milestone mission will be a rather routine delivery of Hispasat 30W-6, a Spanish communications satellite, to a geostationary orbit high above the equator. Such commercial satellite missions, along with the occasional flight to resupply the International Space Station, have been the bread and butter of SpaceX's business for the past several years.

Along the way, the Falcon 9 has also pioneered the era of the reusable rocket. The company has successfully landed and recovered a Falcon 9 a total of 23 times (a pair of those landings included boosters that made up the Falcon Heavy launch last month). Six of the 23 landings involved rockets making their second flights.

The launch will be live-streamed on YouTube. Here is SpaceX's description of the mission:

Scheduled for Mar 5, 2018

SpaceX is targeting a Falcon 9 launch of the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) on Tuesday, March 6 from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The two-hour launch window opens at 12:33 a.m. EST, or 5:33 UTC. The Hispasat 30W-6 satellite will be deployed approximately 33 minutes after launch.

A two-hour backup launch window opens on Wednesday, March 7 at 12:33 a.m. EST, or 5:33 UTC. SpaceX will not attempt to land Falcon 9's first stage after launch due to unfavorable weather conditions in the recovery area off of Florida's Atlantic Coast.

Original Submission