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takyon writes:

On April Fool's Day and Easter Sunday, Cloudflare launched a new "privacy-oriented" domain name system (DNS) service with two IP addresses: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. These addresses were offered by the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) in exchange for allowing APNIC to study the "garbage traffic" often sent to them. The service supports both DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS, and DNSPerf currently ranks 1.1.1.1 as the fastest consumer DNS resolver:

Cloudflare is launching its own consumer DNS service today, on April Fools' Day, that promises to speed up your internet connection and help keep it private. The service is using https://1.1.1.1, and it's not a joke but an actual DNS resolver that anyone can use. Cloudflare claims it will be "the Internet's fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service." While OpenDNS and Google DNS both exist, Cloudflare is focusing heavily on the privacy aspect of its own DNS service with a promise to wipe all logs of DNS queries within 24 hours.

DNS services are typically provided by internet service providers to resolve a domain name like Google.com into a real IP address that routers and switches understand. It's an essential part of the internet, but DNS servers provided by ISPs are often slow and unreliable. ISPs or any Wi-Fi network you connect to can also use DNS servers to identify all sites that are visited, which presents privacy problems. DNS also played an important role in helping Turkish citizens avoid a Twitter ban.

Also at VentureBeat and Engadget.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Stanley Kubrick's science fiction epic, "2001: A Space Odyssey", was released 50 years ago this month. The film festival, Cannes Classic, will commemorate the occasion by showing an unrestored 70mm print of the 1968 masterpiece next month.

See also:
The Hollywood Reporter : Christopher Nolan to Present '2001: A Space Odyssey' in Cannes for Film's 50th Anniversary
Entertainment Weekly : 2001: A Space Odyssey star says sets 'made Disneyland look like a country fair'
Variety : Christopher Nolan to Present '2001: A Space Odyssey' at Cannes

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

PhoneArena notes

[Android Go is] a lighter version [of Android Oreo software] that's been specifically optimized to work on smartphones with 1GB RAM or lower.

Specs-wise, ZTE Tempo Go is far from being impressive. The phone is equipped with a 1.1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor, 1GB RAM, and 8GB expandable storage. Also, it sports a 5-inch display with FWVGA (480 x 854 pixels) resolution, a 5-megapixel rear camera and a secondary 2-megapixel camera in the front for selfies.

ZTE's entry-level phone is powered by a 2,200 mAh battery that promises to offer up to 12 hours of talk time or 220 hours of standby time. It also offers decent connectivity features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and even LTE support. If you plan on getting one and use it on a certain network, you should check with your carrier since the ZTE Tempo Go supports both GSM and CDMA bands.

SlashGear reports

[...] Android Go is a significant release from Google because it requires a certain set of optimized apps to be onboard each officially licensed phone. These devices are also (hopefully) devoid of unnecessary bloatware present in smartphones of years past.

[...] There the phone is out in one color [black] with free shipping for $80 USD.

The ZTE Tempo Go with Android Go has an OS and app sizes that are approximately half the size they'd have been with a non-Go version of Android. Android Go provides a set of "Go" versions of essential Google apps that are far smaller and less data-intensive than their full-fledged standard relatives. The entire suite of Android Go apps can also be used on standard versions of Android, and all can be downloaded from Google Play. The ZTE Tempo Go will be set up with these apps and the optimized version of Android (Android Go) right out the box.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

It has puzzled scientists for over 100 years but now they appear to have cracked it: what, exactly, is it that causes that wince-inducing sound when you pop your knuckles?

And "popping", it turns out, is exactly what it is, researchers said on Thursday after finding that the distinctive cracking sound was caused by the collapse of microscopic bubbles of joint fluid in the hand.

Using a mathematical model alongside a geometrical representation of the joint, experts from Paris' Ecole Polytechnique and Stanford University in the United States simulated the events leading up to the crack.

"The sound that is generated when one cracks his or her knuckles is due to the partial collapse of a cavitation bubble that's in the fluid in the joint," explained Abdul Barakat, a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique. "It could be multiple bubbles, but we showed that the collapse of a single bubble is sufficient to give you the signature sound you get," he told AFP by phone.

Although experts had initially linked the sound to the collapse of knuckle bubbles back in 1971, their findings were thrown into question after further studies showed there were still bubbles left in the fluid after the knuckles had been cracked.

But the mathematical model appears to resolve this apparent contradiction by showing the sound can be produced by partial collapse, the researchers said.

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-experts-knuckle-popping-puzzle.html

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program is funding another round of studies of space technology concepts, including shapeshifting robots that can adapt to multiple terrains, a small rover that can carry the bulky life equipment that an astronaut would normally carry on their back, a combined particle and laser beam for accelerating small payloads, space habitats constructed using fungal mycelium, a modular self-assembling space telescope with a large aperture, and a radioisotope positron propulsion system.

Some of the Phase 2 concepts that were selected for further study include a space telescope with a 1 kilometer aperture, a Triton "hopper", a harvester that can manufacture propellant from ice in order to launch a sample return, and a Mach Effect thruster.

Several of the proposals mention the goal of getting a space telescope to at least 548.7 AU away from the Sun to perform astronomy using the Sun as a gravitational lens. For example, the Breakthrough Propulsion Architecture for Interstellar Precursor Missions could get a payload out to 550 AU in 15 years, although it would require a multi-hundred-megawatt phased-array laser.

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Projects in Phase 1:

Shapeshifters from Science Fiction to Science Fact: Globetrotting from Titan's Rugged Cliffs to its Deep Seafloors
Aliakbar Aghamohammadi, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California

Biobot: Innovative Offloading of Astronauts for More Effective Exploration
David Akin, University of Maryland, College Park

Lofted Environmental and Atmospheric Venus Sensors (LEAVES)
Jeffrey Balcerski, Ohio Aerospace Institute, Cleveland

Meteoroid Impact Detection for Exploration of Asteroids (MIDEA)
Sigrid Close, Stanford University, California

On-Orbit, Collision-Free Mapping of Small Orbital Debris
Christine Hartzell, University of Maryland, College Park

Marsbee – Swarm of Flapping Wing Flyers for Enhanced Mars Exploration
Chang-kwon Kang, University of Alabama, Huntsville

Rotary Motion Extended Array Synthesis (R-MXAS)
John Kendra, Leidos, Inc., Reston, Virginia

PROCSIMA: Diffractionless Beamed Propulsion for Breakthrough Interstellar Missions
Chris Limbach, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station

SPARROW: Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robot for Ocean Worlds
Gareth Meirion-Griffith, JPL

BALLET: Balloon Locomotion for Extreme Terrain
Hari Nayar, JPL

Myco-Architecture off Planet: Growing Surface Structures at Destination
Lynn Rothscild, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California

Modular Active Self-Assembling Space Telescope Swarms
Dmitry Savransky, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Astrophysics and Technical Study of a Solar Neutrino Spacecraft
Nickolas Solomey, Wichita State University, Kansas

Advanced Diffractive MetaFilm Sailcraft
Grover Swartzlander, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York

Spectrally-Resolved Synthetic Imaging Interferometer
Jordan Wachs, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colorado

Radioisotope Positron Propulsion
Ryan Weed, Positron Dynamics, Livermore, California

Phase 2 projects that were previously in Phase 1:

Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF) Propulsion Concept
Robert Adams, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

A Breakthrough Propulsion Architecture for Interstellar Precursor Missions
John Brophy, JPL

Kilometer Space Telescope (KST)
Devon Crowe, Raytheon, El Segundo, California

Dismantling Rubble Pile Asteroids with AoES (Area-of-Effect Soft-bots)
Jay McMahon, University of Colorado, Boulder

Triton Hopper: Exploring Neptune's Captured Kuiper Belt Object
Steven Oleson, NASA's Glenn Research Center, Cleveland

Spacecraft Scale Magnetospheric Protection from Galactic Cosmic Radiation
John Slough, MSNW, LLC, Redmond, Washington

Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravity Lens Mission
Slava Turyshev, JPL

NIMPH: Nano Icy Moons Propellant Harvester
Michael VanWoerkom, ExoTerra Resource, Littleton, Colorado

Mach Effect for in space propulsion: Interstellar mission
James Woodward, Space Studies Institute, Inc., Mojave, California

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

According to Facebook employees who spoke with the New York Times, staffers are also urging the company to hunt down the leakers who released the Bosworth memo.

If the report is accurate, the deletion of internal communications could have legal implications, including in an ongoing Federal Trade Commission investigation into the company’s data-handling practices. Destruction of internal documents was a partial focus of the FTC’s recent investigation of Volkswagen.

Bosworth’s memo continued catastrophic PR fallout following findings that the Facebook data of as many as 50 million users was wrongly harvested by the election consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. In the memo leaked Thursday, Bosworth wrote that “connecting people” should be the company’s driving goal, even if “it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies” or “someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”

Original Submission

Tesla Model X driver dies in Mountain View crash

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

The driver of a Tesla Model X has died following a highway crash in Mountain View, leaving a number of safety questions.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/24/tesla-model-x-driver-dies-in-mountain-view-crash/

Tesla Crash: Model X Was In Autopilot Mode, Firm Says

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In a post on its website, the electric-car maker said computer logs retrieved from the wrecked SUV show that Tesla's driver-assisting Autopilot technology was engaged and that the driver doesn't appear to have grabbed the steering wheel in the seconds before the crash.

The car's 38-year-old driver died after the vehicle hit a concrete lane divider on a Northern California freeway and caught fire. The accident happened March 23.

[...] In its Friday post, Tesla said the crashed Model X's computer logs show that the driver's hands weren't detected on the steering wheel for 6 seconds prior to the accident. It said they also show the driver had "about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider" before the crash but that "no action was taken."

The company cited various statistics in defending Autopilot in the post and said there's no doubt the technology makes vehicles safer than traditional cars.

"Over a year ago," the post said, "our first iteration of Autopilot was found by the US government to reduce crash rates by as much as 40 percent. Internal data confirms that recent updates to Autopilot have improved system reliability."

"Tesla Autopilot does not prevent all accidents -- such a standard would be impossible -- but it makes them much less likely to occur," the post reads. "It unequivocally makes the world safer for the vehicle occupants, pedestrians and cyclists."

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Poor mental health is an issue for many of our readers. That fact is underscored by the response to a tweet sent by @NatureNews earlier this week, which highlighted that rates of depression and anxiety reported by postgraduate students are six times higher than in the general population (T. M. Evans et al. Nature Biotechnol. 36, 282–284; 2018), and asked what should be done to help. The figures are a shock, but it was the reaction that blew us away: more than 1,200 retweets and around 170 replies.

“This is not one dimensional problem. Financial burden, hostile academia, red tape, tough job market, no proper career guidance. Take your pick,” read one. “Maybe being told day in, day out that the work you spend 10+ hrs a day, 6–7 days a week on isn’t good enough,” said another.

The feedback emphasizes something that Nature has highlighted often in recent years: there is a problem among young scientists. Too many have mental-health difficulties, and too many say that the demands of the role are partly to blame. Neither issue gets the attention it deserves. “I’d love to see some of the comments under this thread published,” wrote one responder. “There needs to be real conversation about this, not just observation.”

We agree — which is why we are publishing some of the responses. (You can read the full thread here.)

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a compatibility layer that allows some application programs written for Microsoft Windows to run under other operating systems.

Phoronix reports

Following [the March 30] debut of Wine 3.5, a new Wine-Staging release is now available that continues to carry close to one thousand patches on top of the upstream Wine code.

Wine-Staging 3.5 was able to drop some of the patches now that the BCrypt patches have been upstreamed, but they still are dealing with around 950 experimental/testing patches for code not yet in Wine trunk.

There are new patches to Wine-Staging 3.5 to support Implicit MTA, stubbing out some more functions that are needed for the BattlEye game anti-cheat software, adding in a function needed to make Rise of the Tomb Raider happy, fixed 1D texture support, and other fixes and code additions.

Wine-Staging 3.5 binaries for popular Linux distributions are available here.

Phoronix earlier noted

Wine 3.5 continues the recent theme of enabling Vulkan support. Wine 3.5 most notably on this front introduces their new basic Vulkan loader. This means Wine users no longer need to manually install the LunarG SDK for Windows in order to have Vulkan support but rather this custom-developed loader library is shipped by default. This implementation though doesn't support multiple drivers and notably doesn't include support for Vulkan layers, so those needing such features will still want to manually install LunarG's SDK.

The Vulkan library in its current form paired with the recent of Wine's ongoing Vulkan support is good enough for handling Wolfenstein, Doom, and the various Windows VK demos, etc.

Wine 3.5 also includes support for RSA and ECDSA crypto keys, improves its manifest file parser, and supports the Places toolbar within file dialogs.

In its announcement, WINE Headquarters has a list of fixes.

Bugs fixed in 3.5 (total 58)

Some keywords: Empire Earth; Age of Mythology; Mega Man Unlimited; Need for Speed; Rush for Berlin Gold; Battlefield 3 (Origin); Galactic Civilizations III; Starcraft 2; Doom (2016); Grand Theft Auto V; Titanfall2; Wolfenstein 2: The new Colossus; The Witcher 3; Divinity: Original Sin 2.
The list also includes some productivity apps.

See anything in their list that makes you say "That's worth a try"?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Taliban Have Gone High-Tech. That Poses a Dilemma for the U.S.

Once described as an ill-equipped band of insurgents, the Taliban are increasingly attacking security forces across Afghanistan using night-vision goggles and lasers that United States military officials said were either stolen from Afghan and international troops or bought on the black market.

The devices allow the Taliban to maneuver on forces under the cover of darkness as they track the whirling blades of coalition helicopters, the infrared lasers on American rifles, or even the bedtime movements of local police officers.

With this new battlefield visibility, the Taliban more than doubled nighttime attacks from 2014 to 2017, according to one United States military official who described internal Pentagon data on the condition of anonymity. The number of Afghans who were wounded or killed during nighttime attacks during that period nearly tripled.

That has forced American commanders to rethink the limited access they give Afghan security forces to the night-vision devices. Commanders now worry that denying the expensive equipment to those forces puts them at a technological disadvantage, with potentially lethal consequences.

See also: Taliban ramps up attacks to send message that no one is safe

Original Submission

"ninex" writes:

EFnet announced that the server (eris.Berkeley.EDU) that caused the original IRC network to split back in 1990 ("The Great Split") has rejoined the network. Because of this EFnet (Eris-Free Network) changed its name to "Eris Network", or ErisNet.

eris.Berkeley.EDU is once again serving IRC clients (on ports 6667, 6668 or 6697, 9999 for SSL), thanks to UC Berkeley OCF.

See the news post about this change on http://www.erisnet.org/erisnet_pressrelease.pdf

[Ed. note: For those who may not be aware, SoylentNews hosts its own IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server. For quick-and-dirty access, use a web client via the IRC link in the "SoylentNews" slashbox on the left-hand side of the main page. For other means of access, see the SoylentNews:IRC page on our Wiki.]

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The sanctions are part of a crackdown on smuggling of North Korean commodities in violation of UN sanctions resolutions.

The UN Security Council has blacklisted 27 ships, 21 companies and a businessman for helping North Korea breach sanctions, as the United States keeps up pressure on Pyongyang despite its recent overtures towards talks.

The sanctions were passed on a request from the US and they are part of a global crackdown on the smuggling of North Korean commodities in violation of UN sanctions resolutions, which were adopted in response to Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The sanctions designations were approved as the US moves to open talks with North Korea on its nuclear drive, with a summit possible between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un by the end of May.

Despite the diplomatic opening, the US has made clear they will keep the pressure on Pyongyang to shift course by pressing on with sanctions.

"We want to thank the members of the Security Council, as well as Japan and South Korea, for working with us to keep up the pressure and for their commitment to implementing UN Security Council resolutions and holding violators accountable," Haley added on Friday. 

Twenty-one shipping and trading firms were hit by an assets freeze. Three of them are based in Hong Kong including Huaxin Shipping, which delivered shipments of North Korean coal to Vietnam in October.

Twelve North Korean firms were blacklisted for running ships involved in illegal transfers of oil and fuel, according to the document.

Two other companies, Shanghai Dongfeng Shipping and Weihai World Shipping Freight, also based in China, were blacklisted for carrying North Korean coal on their vessels.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Zello rose to fame in August 2017 when the 'walkie-talkie' app was used by relief effort volunteers and those stranded in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The Russian government, however, wants to take the app down and this week it was revealed that the country's telecoms regulator told ISPs to prepare to block 15 million IP addresses, most belonging to Amazon, in order to do so.

If reports coming out this week hold true, extremely far indeed.

The controversy centers around an app called Zello, which acts as a kind of ‘walkie-talkie’, assisting communication between close friends or in groups of up to a thousand people.

[...] But while the app clearly has some fantastic uses, Zello seems to represent a challenge to the authority of the Russian government.

Under the so-called ‘Yarovaya law‘, services like Zello, ISPs, and other telecoms companies, are required to register with Russian telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor. Amendments to come into force this year also require them to store the actual content of user communications for six months and metadata (such as who communicated with who, when, and for how long) for three years.

Encrypted services are also required to share keys which allow law enforcement bodies so that they can decrypt messages sent and received by users, something which has communications and VPN companies extremely concerned.

[...] Neither Rozkomnadzor nor Amazon have commented publicly on the news and Russia’s Ministry of Communications has refused to comment. Fortunately, at the time of writing there have been no reports of ISPs mass-blocking IP addresses connected to Zello.

Whether Russia would really flex its muscles so broadly and aggressively just to prove a point is unknown but with the growing war on privacy the way it is, almost anything seems possible.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Astronomers ponder possible life adrift in Venus' clouds

[...] Neighboring Venus is a hostile world. Heat trapped by its dense atmosphere makes it hot enough on its surface to melt lead. But a series of space probes – launched between 1962 and 1978 – showed that temperatures and pressures at comparable heights in Venus' atmosphere (25 miles or 40 km up) don't preclude the possibility of microbial life. Now an international team of researchers has laid out a case for the atmosphere of Venus as a possible niche for extraterrestrial microbial life.

The paper [open, DOI: 10.1089/ast.2017.1783] [DX] was published online March 30, 2018, in the peer-reviewed journal Astrobiology.

From the abstract:

The lower cloud layer of Venus (47.5–50.5 km) is an exceptional target for exploration due to the favorable conditions for microbial life, including moderate temperatures and pressures (∼60°C and 1 atm), and the presence of micron-sized sulfuric acid aerosols. Nearly a century after the ultraviolet (UV) contrasts of Venus' cloud layer were discovered with Earth-based photographs, the substances and mechanisms responsible for the changes in Venus' contrasts and albedo are still unknown. While current models include sulfur dioxide and iron chloride as the UV absorbers, the temporal and spatial changes in contrasts, and albedo, between 330 and 500 nm, remain to be fully explained. Within this context, we present a discussion regarding the potential for microorganisms to survive in Venus' lower clouds and contribute to the observed bulk spectra. In this article, we provide an overview of relevant Venus observations, compare the spectral and physical properties of Venus' clouds to terrestrial biological materials, review the potential for an iron- and sulfur-centered metabolism in the clouds, discuss conceivable mechanisms of transport from the surface toward a more habitable zone in the clouds, and identify spectral and biological experiments that could measure the habitability of Venus' clouds and terrestrial analogues. Together, our lines of reasoning suggest that particles in Venus' lower clouds contain sufficient mass balance to harbor microorganisms, water, and solutes, and potentially sufficient biomass to be detected by optical methods. As such, the comparisons presented in this article warrant further investigations into the prospect of biosignatures in Venus' clouds.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

We love Festo because every year they invest an entirely appropriate amount of time and money into bio-inspired robots that are totally cool and very functional but have limited usefulness. More often than not, it seems like Festo is able to take some of what it learns from designing and constructing these things and create practical new revenue-generating products. Which is good for them, and means they'll keep making cool stuff. Over the last few years, we've met ants, butterflies, flying jellyfish and penguins, kangaroos, seagulls, and much more.

Festo has just announced its two newest bionic learning network robots—one is a very convincing flying fox, and the other is a walking, tumbling robot inspired by a Saharan spider.

The rolling spider robot video is very cool, definitely worth watching.

Source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/festo-bionic-learning-network-rolling-spider-flying-fox

Original Submission