SoylentNews

DannyB writes:

The Raspberry Pi Blog announces:

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is now on sale now for $35, featuring:

• 1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU
• Dual-band 802.11ac wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.2
• Faster Ethernet (Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0)
• Power-over-Ethernet support (with separate PoE HAT)
• Improved PXE network and USB mass-storage booting
• Improved thermal management

Alongside a 200MHz increase in peak CPU clock frequency we have roughly three times the wired and wireless network throughput, and the ability to sustain high performance for much longer periods.

Video announcement here.

FAQs:

• Not discontinuing earlier Raspberry Pi models
• Raspberry Pi 1A+ continues to be the $20 entry-level "big" Raspberry Pi
• Considering possibility of introducing a Raspberry Pi 3A+
• CM!, CM3 and CM#L compute modules continue to be available.
• Still using VideoCore

Now I am left to wonder how many amps the power supply wall wart needs to be.

Original Submission

GeriatricGentleman writes:

The following story comes up with this interesting piece from Canterbury, New Zealand about 'flying taxis':

Aviation company Zephyr has unveiled Cora, which is designed to be a pilotless air-taxi.

In a quiet corner of Canterbury, a new type of autonomous, electric "flying car" has been secretly tested since October. Its creators hope a flying taxi service could take to the skies in New Zealand within six years.

[...] The vehicle, which has been in development for eight years, can take off and land vertically, much like a helicopter. It is electric-powered and will be flown by self-piloting software – with human oversight from the ground. It has a range of about 100 kilometres and can hit speeds of 150kmh. The prototype can carry two passengers.

The New Zealand trial is seen as an opportunity for the country and Canterbury to establish itself as a hotbed for the research and development of cutting-edge technology, which the Government sees as a key area for growth.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the programme was about "sending the message to the world that our doors are open for people with great ideas who want to turn them into reality". Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel said the project was "a great example of our commitment to be prepared for the future".

[...] Cora is being developed by California-based Kitty Hawk Corporation, which is reportedly funded by Google co-founder Larry Page. The New Zealand operator is called Zephyr Airworks.

[...] Both [Kitty Hawk chief executive Sebastian Thrun and Zephyr Airworks boss Fred Reid] are convinced this new type of vehicle is the future of transport. Reid said the concept would be commonplace "10 or 20 years from now".

[...] Reid said there was "a really good shot of doing this in the relatively short future", and was striving to have limited services operating in New Zealand in the next three to six years.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Researchers have seen signs of "domestication syndrome", including patches of white fur and shorter snouts, in mice that had some contact with humans but were not subject to "intense and directed selection regimes":

The accident began in 2002 when scientists studying mouse behavior and disease transmission trapped a dozen wild mice in a barn in Illnau, Switzerland. The animals were free to come and go and nest and mate as they pleased. Their new digs were also safe from predators—the mouse doorways were too small to allow domestic cats, owls, and martens to enter. The barn also contained plenty of free food and water, provided by the researchers every few weeks. The mice that didn't mind the visits stuck around and eventually blossomed to a steady population of 250–430 animals. Some even began to run over the researchers' shoes instead of scurrying away. That's a sign that these animals had lost their fear of humans, even without the researchers deliberately breeding the most human-friendly mice, as scientists had done with the foxes.

Four years later, Anna Lindholm, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, began to notice white patches of fur on a few of the russet-colored mice. "It was really rare," she says—in some mice, the white splotches made up of as few as eight hairs. From 2010 to 2016, the proportion of adult mice with white fur patches more than doubled [open, DOI: 10.1098/rsos.172099] [DX], the team reports today in Royal Society Open Science.

Serendipitously, Lindholm had also been measuring the mice's heads for another project. And, just like the Siberian foxes, the mice became smaller and their heads shrank—about 3.5% on average. That's an "exciting" change that suggests self-domestication can occur as a result of natural selection, says Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the work.

Original Submission

frojack writes:

Newser has a story that ties heart disease to lead exposure at at frequency ratios 10 times than all previous studies.

Scientists kept tabs on more than 14,000 adults who took a national health survey between 1988 and 1994, then again in 2011. After looking at how many people died during this period—about 4,400 in total, 1,800 of those from cardiovascular disease—the study in the Lancet Public Health journal found about 256,000 deaths each year could be tied to lead exposure. The effects of lead on heart health had previously been thought to be much lower, especially at low levels of lead exposure, study lead author Bruce Lanphear said.

The study also evaluated several other causes of deaths that were correlated to lead exposure at low levels. The suggest over 400,000 deaths per year in the US may be associated with lead exposure.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

John Palevich wrote several programs which were published by Atari Program Exchange: the Chameleon CRT Terminal Emulator; Mantis Boot Tape Development System; Deep Blue C Compiler and its source code on a product called Deep Blue Secrets; and Dandy, a graphical dungeon crawl game that is famously the inspiration for the arcade classic, Gauntlet.

The source code for Dandy (aka Dandy Dungeon) by Jack Palevich, for Atari 8-bit computers, shared with his permission.

https://archive.org/details/Dandy_source

Original Submission

takyon writes:

SpaceX will attempt to launch five Falcon 9 rockets in April. This includes an International Space Station (ISS) resupply mission and a mission to launch Bangabandhu-1, Bangladesh's first satellite. The Bangabandhu-1 launch is planned to be the first to use SpaceX's Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, which may be the final major iteration of Falcon 9 before replacement by BFR.

At a South by Southwest (SXSW) panel, Elon Musk said that SpaceX could test the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) "spaceship" as soon as the first half of 2019. The spaceship is the second stage of the complete BFR rocket, would be capable of reaching orbit without the first stage booster, and alone has over 50% more thrust than an entire Falcon 9.

The initial tests would likely be similar to the Grasshopper vertical takeoff and landing tests.

Also at USA Today, MarketWatch, and SpaceNews.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Arstechnica reports

In July of 2017, the nonprofit certificate authority Let's Encrypt promised to deliver something that would put secure websites and Web applications within reach of any Internet user: free "wildcard" certificates to enable secure HTTP connections for entire domains. Today, Let's Encrypt took that promised service live, in addition to a new version of the Automated Certificate Management Environment (ACME) protocol, an interface that can be used by a variety of client software packages to automate verification of certificate requests.

[....]Many hosting providers already support the registration of Let's Encrypt certificates to varying degrees. But Let's Encrypt's free certificate offering hasn't been snapped up by some larger hosting providers—such as GoDaddy—who also sell SSL certificates to their customers.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Security Researchers Publish Ryzen Flaws, Gave AMD 24 hours Prior Notice

Through the advent of Meltdown and Spectre, there is a heightened element of nervousness around potential security flaws in modern high-performance processors, especially those that deal with the core and critical components of company business and international infrastructure. Today, CTS-Labs, a security company based in Israel, has published a whitepaper identifying four classes of potential vulnerabilities of the Ryzen, EPYC, Ryzen Pro, and Ryzen Mobile processor lines. AMD is in the process of responding to the claims, but was only given 24 hours of notice rather than the typical 90 days for standard vulnerability disclosure. No official reason was given for the shortened time.

[...] At this point AMD has not confirmed any of the issues brought forth in the CTS-Labs whitepaper, so we cannot confirm in the findings are accurate. It has been brought to our attention that some press were pre-briefed on the issue, perhaps before AMD was notified, and that the website that CTS-Labs has setup for the issue was registered on February 22nd, several weeks ago. Given the level of graphics on the site, it does look like a planned 'announcement' has been in the works for a little while, seemingly with little regard for AMD's response on the issue. This is compared to Meltdown and Spectre, which was shared among the affected companies several months before a planned public disclosure. CTS-Labs has also hired a PR firm to deal with incoming requests for information, which is also an interesting avenue to the story, as this is normally not the route these security companies take. CTS-Labs is a security focused research firm, but does not disclose its customers or research leading to this disclosure. CTS-Labs was started in 2017, and this is their first public report.

CTS-Labs' claims revolve around AMD's Secure Processor and Promontory Chipset, and fall into four main categories, which CTS-Labs has named for maximum effect. Each category has sub-sections within.

Severe Security Advisory on AMD Processors from CTS.

Also at Tom's Hardware, Motherboard, BGR, Reuters, and Ars Technica.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Maciej Ceglowski, proprietor of the Pinboard bookmarking site, spoke back on October 29, 2015, at the Web Directions conference in Sydney, Australia about the problem of increasingly bloated web pages. His talk describes the nature of the bloat problem, fake attempts at pretending to fix it, the bloat that advertisements contribute, mishandling of images, unreasonable crufty javascript frameworks, time wasting layouts, sluggish backends, and why it is important to address these issues. The reasons to do so go well beyond just aesthetics and efficiency.

Here's the hortatory part of the talk:

Let’s preserve the web as the hypertext medium it is, the only thing of its kind in the world, and not turn it into another medium for consumption, like we have so many examples of already.

Let’s commit to the idea that as computers get faster, and as networks get faster, the web should also get faster.

Let’s not allow the panicked dinosaurs of online publishing to trample us as they stampede away from the meteor. Instead, let's hide in our holes and watch nature take its beautiful course.

Most importantly, let’s break the back of the online surveillance establishment that threatens not just our livelihood, but our liberty. Not only here in Australia, but in America, Europe, the UK—in every free country where the idea of permanent, total surveillance sounded like bad science fiction even ten years ago.

He closes with an appeal to address these concerns in order to improve general accessibility of the WWW, which correlates with its general awesomeness.

From The Website Obesity Crisis (transcript)
The Website Obesity Crisis (video)

[Ed note: Though some of the admin functions for SoylentNews use Javascript, the user-facing side is entirely Javascript-free; everything is done with straight HTML and CSS. --martyb]

[TMB note: I wish. We never could figure out a way to do collapsible comment trees how we wanted to entirely without Javascript and it's also required for subscriptions paid through Stripe.]

Original Submission

Trump Meets With Video Game Industry, Watchdog Groups to Talk Gun Violence

chromas writes:

President Donald Trump met with video game executives and watchdog groups on Thursday at the White House to talk about gun violence, one of a series of meetings planned by the White House in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shootings.

The meeting started with the showing of a series of particularly violent video clips, according to two participants who were there, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center and Melissa Henson, program director of the Parents Television Council. Both are media watchdog groups.

[...] "This is not a simple thing," Bozell told Variety. "This is not to say that the video game industry is the alpha and omega of the problem, but they have to be part of the discussion."

[...] The White House released a statement afterward. "The conversation centered on whether violent video games, including games that graphically simulate killing, desensitize our community to violence." They also released the video that was shown.

The White House posted the video to YouTube. As of this submission, it's got 53 kilodislikes.

After industry meeting, Trump highlights alleged game violence effects

DeathMonkey writes:

If game industry representatives hoped their meeting with President Trump today would help change his mind after recent statements of concern over violence in video games, they came away sorely disappointed. In a statement following that meeting, the White House said that President Trump "acknowledged some studies have indicated there is a correlation between video game violence and real violence."

"During today's meeting, the group spoke with the president about the effect that violent video games have on our youth, especially young males," the White House statement reads. "The conversation centered on whether violent video games, including games that graphically simulate killing, desensitize our community to violence. This meeting is part of ongoing discussions with local leaders and Congress on issues concerning school and public safety and protecting America's youth."

The White House statement goes against the overwhelming consensus of the research community, which has shown wide agreement that exposure to violent games in youth has little to no relationship with violent outcomes later in life.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/03/trump-acknowledged-some-studies-linking-game-violence-and-real-violence/

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

VanessaE and An Anonymous Coward write:

Stephen Hawking, a widely known physicist, sometimes mistaken as cosmetician, died Wednesday after complications due to ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a progressive neurodegenerative disease. He was 76.

Coverage at BBC (obituary), The Guardian, Reuters, NPR, and The Huffington Post.

janrinok writes:

It is with sadness that we hear the news this morning in the UK that Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76. Diagnosed with a type of motor neuron disease disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) in 1964, he was told that he would have only a few years to live. But he confounded many experts and led life to the fullest within his personal limitations.

While he undoubtedly suffered as a result of his physical disabilities, it was his mental powers that set him apart from most of the human race. His book - A Brief History of Time - sold over 16 million copies, but it is said that it was probably read by a much smaller number of people, and understood by even fewer.

I hope that others here will contribute their own memories of the man and his achievements as the following days progress.

Rest in Peace - Stephen Hawking.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2  Original Submission #3 

An Anonymous Coward writes:

For the ACs and security conscious among us, TAILS Linux v.3.6 is planned for release today (13 Mar) - here's the download prior to any announcements:

http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/stable/tails-amd64-3.6/
http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/stable/tails-amd64-3.6/tails-amd64-3.6.iso
http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/stable/tails-amd64-3.6/tails-amd64-3.6.iso.sig

Edit: Tails 3.6 fixes several security holes and adds some new features.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Broadcom's quest to acquire Qualcomm has come to a screeching halt:

President Trump on Monday blocked Broadcom's $117 billion bid for the chip maker Qualcomm, citing national security concerns and sending a clear signal that he was willing to take extraordinary measures to punctuate his administration's increasingly protectionist stance. In a presidential order, Mr. Trump said there was "credible evidence" that led him to believe that if Singapore-based Broadcom were to acquire control of Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, it "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States."

[...] The move follows one by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which typically works behind closed doors and reviews deals only after they are announced, earlier this month to stall Broadcom's bid because of national security concerns. [...] The president said his decision had been based on the review by the committee, which focused on how Broadcom's purchase of Qualcomm might affect next-generation high-speed mobile networks known as 5G. The panel said that the leadership of Qualcomm, which makes wireless chips and also licenses key wireless patents, was too important to put into hands of a company with links to China. The committee argued that economic leadership in 5G was also a national security interest.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has just put a lot of companies on notice.

Also at CNN and LA Times.

Previously: Broadcom's Hostile Takeover Attempt of Qualcomm Delayed by U.S. Government Panel
Broadcom Pleads its Qualcomm Case to Congress

Related: President Trump Blocks Acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor
U.S. Lawmakers Urge AT&T to Cut Ties With Huawei
U.S. Government Reportedly Wants to Build a 5G Network to Thwart Chinese Spying
U.S. Rejects Chinese Takeover of the Chicago Stock Exchange

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

[...] "When I heard about it, I thought it was a joke. Vatican, hackathon—it didn’t add up," says John Franklin, a senior at Northwestern University who found out about VHacks, the event's official name, while participating in another hackathon in 2017. It wasn’t until he saw the event’s themes—creating technological solutions for encouraging social inclusion, promoting interfaith dialogue, and providing resources to migrants and refugees—that he realized it was not only real, but something he wanted to take part in. "I thought, ‘This is unique,’" he says.

And, apart from the unusual experience of hacking inside a room that dates back to 1490, it did prove to be special for Franklin. “At other hackathons, I’m creating, like, a shopping API or something for social media,” he says. “Here, I felt like my pitch means something to people.” Holy See, Holy Do

The Vatican's first-ever codefest came together last year after Jakub Florkiewicz, an MBA student at Harvard Business School, met the Reverend Eric Salobir, a founder of Optic, the first Vatican-affiliated think tank on technology, during a Harvard leadership summit in Rome. He and Salobir, who had already organized hackathons through Optic, began talking about putting one together in Vatican City.

Inside the Vatican's First-Ever Hackathon

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) evaluated around 120 dogs from three large breeds from Europe and Asia bred to be gentle around sheep and children but vicious when confronting wolves. The four-year study was carried out by the USDA's National Wildlife Research Center and tested how these dogs did guarding livestock against wolves and coyotes in the western US.

[...] Young and her colleagues zeroed in on areas where dogs had been bred to protect livestock from wolves and brown bears. They selected three breeds for the study: Cao de Gado Transmontanos, originally from the mountains of Portugal; Karakachans, bred by nomadic shepherds in Bulgaria; and Kangals, developed to guard livestock in Turkey. The dogs were gathered as puppies and sent to the U.S., where they were used to guard 65 herds of sheep in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, and Oregon.

Another finding was that when the owner and the dogs had a closer bond, the dogs performed their jobs much better. Something that might not be commonly realized in areas where they are kept exclusively for companionship or entertainment is that the different breeds of dogs are bred to gravitate to and specialize in particular activities: they have jobs they like doing.

From The Scientist : The Breeds of Guard Dogs that Best Protect Livestock: Study (2018)
and The Associated Press : Imported guard dogs deployed as part of US wolf-sheep study (2018)
and Agri-Pulse : Got wolves? USDA brings on the big dogs (2014).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Japan PM, finance minister under fire over suspected cover-up of cronyism

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his close ally, Finance Minister Taro Aso, faced growing pressure on Monday over a suspected cover-up of a cronyism scandal that has dogged the premier for more than a year.

Copies of documents seen by Reuters showed that references to Abe, his wife and Aso were removed from finance ministry records of the discounted sale of state-owned land to a school operator with ties to Abe's wife, Akie.

Abe, now in his sixth year in office, has denied that he or his wife did favors for the school operator, Moritomo Gakuen, and has said he would resign if evidence was found that they had. Excised references seen by Reuters did not appear to show that Abe or his wife intervened directly in the deal.

Suspicion of a cover-up could slash Abe's ratings and dash his hopes for a third term as leader of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Victory in the LDP September leadership vote would put him on track to become Japan's longest-serving premier. The doubts are also putting pressure on Aso to resign.

Moritomo Gakuen is the school at the center of the scandal.

Previously: Land Deal for Nationalist School Linked to Japanese Prime Minister Abe by Critics

Related: Japan's Liberal Democratic Party Wins Election, Could Revise Pacifist Constitution

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Fate of Exomoons when Planets Scatter

Planet interactions are thought to be common as solar systems are first forming and settling down. A new study suggests that these close encounters could have a significant impact on the moons of giant exoplanets — and they may generate a large population of free-floating exomoons.

[...] Led by Yu-Cian Hong (Cornell University), a team of scientists has now explored the fate of exomoons in planet–planet scattering situations using a suite of N-body numerical simulations. Hong and collaborators find that the vast majority — roughly 80 to 90% — of exomoons around giant planets are destabilized during scattering and don't survive in their original place in the solar system. Fates of these destabilized exomoons include:

• moon collision with the star or a planet,
• moon capture by the perturbing planet,
• moon ejection from the solar system,
• ejection of the entire planet–moon system from the solar system, and
• moon perturbation onto a new heliocentric orbit as a "planet".

[...] An intriguing consequence of Hong and collaborators' results is the prediction of a population of free-floating exomoons that were ejected from solar systems during planet–planet scattering and now wander through the universe alone. According to the authors' models, there may be as many of these free-floating exomoons as there are stars in the universe!

There are no confirmed exomoons yet. Rogue planets may have their own satellites as well.

Innocent Bystanders: Orbital Dynamics of Exomoons During Planet–Planet Scattering (DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aaa0db) (DX)

Original Submission