SoylentNews

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Center for American Progress reports

Last month, the NFL announced a new policy for its players during the national anthem: Players are permitted to stay in the locker room during the anthem, but if they go out onto the field during it, they must stand. If any of the players takes a knee, the team will be fined.

Soon afterwards, a Wall Street Journal report confirmed what most have long suspected: That President Donald Trump's public outrage about NFL players protesting police brutality and systemic racism during the national anthem at football games heavily influenced NFL owners to change the rule, and discouraged them from signing players who would protest.

It's all terrible news for those in favor of free speech and peaceful protest, and for those against white nationalism and police brutality.

However, Mark Geragos, the lawyer representing Kaepernick in his collusion lawsuit against the NFL, [...] believes [...] that Trump's direct influence over NFL owners on this issue violates federal law. U.S. Code 227 [which] says that members of Congress or the executive branch cannot "wrongfully influence a private entity's employment decision ... solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation".

A few revelations from the last couple of weeks strongly support Geragos' case here, and it's important to remember that Geragos knows much more about the case than we do--he has taken the depositions of more than a dozen NFL owners, while the public only knows about the depositions that have leaked.

[...] Of course, influencing the private hiring decisions of a company isn't the only part of U.S. Code [227] that needs to be proved; it would also have to be shown that Trump did it for partisan political purposes.

That sounds trickier to prove, but in this case, that's not necessarily true. First of all, Trump's comments were made at a political rally supporting an Alabama Republican candidate for US Senate--an expressly partisan environment. And according to the WSJ, Trump told Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in private conversations that the issue was a "winning" one for him.

Previous: NFL: New National Anthem Rule; NY Jets CEO: Break the Rule and I'll Pay the Fine

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8093

Although ARM-based PCs are now available, apps that utilize native 64-bit architectures on Microsoft's Windows 10 on ARM have been relegated to legacy support for 32-bit apps. Microsoft introduced the proper frameworks for 64-bit apps at its recent BUILD conference, allowing developers to port their apps and begin native app integration. After a small wait, apps are starting to appear; VLC -- the swiss army knife of multimedia players -- is one of the first to launch a dedicated ARM64 app.

Unlike traditional Intel and AMD processors, ARM's architecture has largely been synonymous with mobile devices and tablets, which are often powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors. Microsoft's more recent developments have paved the way for proper ARM architecture within PCs, and promise a whole host of benefits including better affordability, permanent online connection and improved battery preservation.

With a popular free app like VLC making the first move, it's highly probable that other app developers will be encouraged to follow in its footsteps. You can download VLC as you normally would -- via the official website -- just ensure you select the ARM 64 version from the drop down menu.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/01/vlc-one-of-first-arm64-windows-apps/

Original Submission

We have recently covered the fact that some Google employees had resigned because of the company's involvement in an AI-related weapons project called Maven. Many thought that the resignations, whilst being a noble gesture, would amount to nothing - but we were wrong...

Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Lucrative Military Drone AI Work To Grow Exponentially

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Google has sought to quash the internal dissent in conversations with employees. Diane Greene, the chief executive of Google’s cloud business unit, speaking at a company town hall meeting following the revelations, claimed that the contract was “only” for $9 million, according to the New York Times, a relatively minor project for such a large company.

Internal company emails obtained by The Intercept tell a different story. The September emails show that Google’s business development arm expected the military drone artificial intelligence revenue to ramp up from an initial $15 million to an eventual $250 million per year.

In fact, one month after news of the contract broke, the Pentagon allocated an additional $100 million to Project Maven.

The internal Google email chain also notes that several big tech players competed to win the Project Maven contract. Other tech firms such as Amazon were in the running, one Google executive involved in negotiations wrote. (Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.) Rather than serving solely as a minor experiment for the military, Google executives on the thread stated that Project Maven was “directly related” to a major cloud computing contract worth billions of dollars that other Silicon Valley firms are competing to win.

However, Google has had a major rethink.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In your body, blood stem cells produce approximately 10 billion new white blood cells, which are also known as immune cells, each and every day. Even more remarkably, if some of these blood stem cells fail to do their part, then other blood stem cells pick up their slack and overproduce whichever specific type of immune cell is lacking, according to a new USC Stem Cell study published in the journal EMBO Reports.

USC PhD student Lisa Nguyen and colleagues in the laboratory of Rong Lu observed this phenomenon by tracking the individual blood stem cells that reside in the bone marrow of mice. To create the tracking labels, the scientists attached a unique piece of genetic code to each blood stem cell. During blood production, each blood stem cell passes its unique genetic label onto its progeny -- which include two types of immune cells, known as B cells and T cells.

[...] The scientists found that the normal blood stem cells compensated for the B and T cell deficiencies. When co-transplanted with B-deficient stem cells, the normal stem cells overproduced B cells to keep the immune system in balance. And when co-transplanted with B- and T-deficient stem cells, the normal stem cells compensated by overproducing both B and T cells to maintain a balanced immune system.

Furthermore, the scientists found that a few specific blood stem cells were doing most of the work. These key blood stem cells proliferated dramatically to compensate for the immune cell deficiencies in the recipient mice, and these cells continued to proliferate when they were transplanted into different recipient mice. Furthermore, these highly productive blood stem cells showed changes in gene activity that enhanced their ability to oversupply deficient types of immune cells.

Original Submission

cafebabe writes:

On Fri 20 Apr 2018, SoylentNews published four criteria for analog currency and four criteria for digital currency.

On Mon 18 May 2018, Bank of England Staff Working Paper Number 725 by Michael Kumhof [former Stanford University economics professor] and Clare Noone [former Reserve Bank of Australia staffer] published four criteria for a Central Bank Digital Currency [CBDC]:

The core principles are: (i) CBDC pays an adjustable interest rate. (ii) CBDC and reserves are distinct, and not convertible into each other. (iii) No guaranteed, on-demand convertibility of bank deposits into CBDC at commercial banks (and therefore by implication at the central bank). (iv) The central bank issues CBDC only against eligible securities (principally government securities).

I'm not sure these count as four distinct criteria or that they are strong enough to be useful.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

[Update: as of 20180603_135454 UTC, all 4 server upgrades have completed and all servers should be running normally. --martyb]

Our server provider, Linode, has made available a free upgrade for our servers. Generally, it's a storage upgrade and sometimes a bandwidth upgrade, too. We use only the tiniest fraction of our bandwidth allocation each month (something like < 1%), but the extra storage IS useful.

We (read: The Mighty Buzzard) have already taken 4 of our servers out of rotation this morning. We anticipate no community-visible interruptions of service as a result of these upgrades.

So far, migrations of sodium, hydrogen, and lithium have completed. Migration of neon has started and should complete within the next 10 minutes or so.

Migrations of the remaining servers may cause some community-visible effects. We will provide advance notice before we perform those upgrades. Very tentatively planned for Thursday.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/science-environment-44317367

Scientists say they have found evidence of dunes of frozen methane on Pluto.

The research, which is published in the journal Science, suggests that the distant world is more dynamic than previously thought.

Pluto's atmosphere was believed to be too thin to create the features familiar in deserts on Earth.

The findings come from analysis of the startling images sent back by Nasa's New Horizons mission, which flew close to Pluto in July 2015.

The Register has a story with additional details:

Dunes of methane ice grains have been discovered on Pluto after scientists studied snaps taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. That's according to a paper published in the journal Science today.

[...] “We knew that every solar system body with an atmosphere and a solid rocky surface has dunes on it, but we didn't know what we'd find on Pluto. It turns out that even though there is so little atmosphere, and the surface temperature is around -230 degrees Celsius (-382 Fahrenheit), we still get dunes forming,” said Matt Telfer, lead author of the paper and a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Plymouth.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ugandu has reached rock bottom and yet has started to dig even deeper with the recent announcement that a daily fee of 200 shillings will be levied to use social media. This is not the first time a country has attempted to have ISPs charge a separate fee for social network access.

Today, Uganda's parliament passed a controversial "social media tax." It will consist of a daily fee of about 200 shillings (5 US cents) levied on anyone who uses social networking and messaging apps and platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter. According to Trading Economics, in 2016, Uganda had a per-capita income of $666.10, so this isn't an insubstantial tax.

President Yoweri Museveni was a vocal supporter of and advocate the bill. He believes that social media encourages "gossip," according to BBC News. The law will go into effect as of July 1st, but it's not clear how the government will monitor its citizens or collect the tax.

Also at the BBC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] Enamel, located on the outer part of our teeth, is the hardest tissue in the body and enables our teeth to function for a large part of our lifetime despite biting forces, exposure to acidic foods and drinks and extreme temperatures. This remarkable performance results from its highly organised structure.

However, unlike other tissues of the body, enamel cannot regenerate once it is lost, which can lead to pain and tooth loss. These problems affect more than 50 per cent of the world's population and so finding ways to recreate enamel has long been a major need in dentistry.

[...] Dr. Sherif Elsharkawy, a dentist and first author of the study from Queen Mary's School of Engineering and Materials Science, said: "This is exciting because the simplicity and versatility of the mineralisation platform opens up opportunities to treat and regenerate dental tissues. For example, we could develop acid resistant bandages that can infiltrate, mineralise, and shield exposed dentinal tubules of human teeth for the treatment of dentin hypersensitivity."

The mechanism that has been developed is based on a specific protein material that is able to trigger and guide the growth of apatite nanocrystals at multiple scales—similarly to how these crystals grow when dental enamel develops in our body. This structural organisation is critical for the outstanding physical properties exhibited by natural dental enamel.

Original Submission

Anonymous Coward writes:

New policy pushes for open source in California agencies

[...] The California Department of Technology released a letter this week announcing a new policy — called the Open Source and Code Reuse Policy — elevating the use of open source software across state government. Agencies and state entities are asked to develop, purchase or reuse open source software — anything with source code that is publicly available to view, adapt, or reuse — for new IT projects as a first option where it is financially viable. (There are a few exceptions, such as cases that would threaten national or state security.)

The policy is also applied retroactively to existing state-built software, requiring agencies to make such code "broadly available for reuse across state government in a consistent manner." The policy notes that reusing custom-developed code across state agencies "can have significant benefits for taxpayers, including decreasing duplicative costs" and is intended to "promote innovation and collaboration across state government."

Non-open-source software will still be permitted — an official from the California Department of Technology assured StateScoop that the state wants to keep the door open for its vendor partners, but emphasized that open source has value that warrants strong consideration by agencies.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Australian government gave notice to online retailers that they must collect tax on behalf of the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and submit the tax collected to the ATO for purchases made by Australians overseas. Surprisingly, online retailers objected to this and at the time threatened to block Australian shoppers. Now Amazon has taken the step of preventing Australians from purchasing from their US site and sending parcels to Australia. Amazon have stated that Australians can now purchase products from the Australian Amazon site, which while true comes with a significant markup of, in some cases, 160 per cent or more over the price of the product in the US Amazon site. This does not prevent Australians from working around this technicality by engaging with a shipping company in America to bounce products through their warehouse and having the parcels forwarded on to an Australia address. In the mean time, from July 1st 2018 onward, Amazon will no longer ship products to an Australian address.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

YouTube deletes half of 'violent' music videos

YouTube says it has deleted more than half of the "violent" music videos that the country's most senior police officer asked it to take down. More than 30 clips have been removed so far.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has blamed some videos for fuelling a surge in murders and violent crime in London - and singled out drill music. She asked YouTube to delete content which glamorises violence.

Drill originated in Chicago. Its biggest breakout star is arguably Chief Keef, famous for his 2012 track I Don't Like.

[...] In the past two years police have asked YouTube to take down between 50 and 60 music videos, because they were deemed to incite violence. The video-sharing site has now removed more than 30 of them.

"The gangs try to outrival each other with the filming and content - what looks like a music video can actually contain explicit language with gangs threatening each other," the Metropolitan Police's Mike West said.

That's that shit I don't like.

Drill music.

Also at Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.

Related: Spotify Removes Two Artists From Playlists Due to "Hate Content and Hateful Conduct"

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google quits selling tablets

Google has quietly crept out of the tablet business, removing the "tablets" heading from its Android page. Perhaps it hoped no one would notice on a Friday and by Monday it would be old news, but Android Police caught them in the act. It was there yesterday, but it's gone today.

[...] Google in particular has struggled to make Android a convincing alternative to iOS in the tablet realm, and with this move has clearly indicated its preference for the Chrome OS side of things, where it has inherited the questionable (but lucrative) legacy of netbooks. They've also been working on broadening Android compatibility with that OS. So it shouldn't come as much surprise that the company is bowing out.

[...] Google's exit doesn't mean Android tablets are done for, of course. They'll still get made, primarily by Samsung, Amazon and a couple of others, and there will probably even be some nice ones. But if Google isn't selling them, it probably isn't prioritizing them as far as features and support.

Also at 9to5Google.

Related: All New Chromebooks to Support Android Apps
The first Chrome OS tablet is here
Apple Expected to Compete Against Chromebooks With Cheaper Education-Focused iPads
ChromeOS Gains the Ability to Run Linux Applications
Ask the Community: In the Market for a Modern Tablet

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8093

California's efforts to restrict Elon Musk's flamethrowers go down in flames

A California state bill that would have more heavily regulated the use of flamethrowers has now effectively fizzled out in a legislative committee.

In light of this development, there's nothing to stop Boring Company customers in California from receiving the company's sold-out flamethrowers.

On May 26, the day after the bill died in committee, CEO Elon Musk tweeted:

About to ship. @BoringCompany holding flamethrower pickup parties in a week or so, then deliveries begin. Check https://t.co/WTl3TOTOkt for details.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 26, 2018

Previously: Elon Musk's Boring Company Sells Flamethrowers

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8093

An artificial nerve system developed at Stanford gives prosthetic devices and robots a sense of touch

Stanford and Seoul National University researchers have developed an artificial sensory nerve system that can activate the twitch reflex in a cockroach and identify letters in the Braille alphabet.

The work, reported May 31 in Science, is a step toward creating artificial skin for prosthetic limbs, to restore sensation to amputees and, perhaps, one day give robots some type of reflex capability.

"We take skin for granted but it's a complex sensing, signaling and decision-making system," said Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering and one of the senior authors. "This artificial sensory nerve system is a step toward making skin-like sensory neural networks for all sorts of applications."

This milestone is part of Bao's quest to mimic how skin can stretch, repair itself and, most remarkably, act like a smart sensory network that knows not only how to transmit pleasant sensations to the brain, but also when to order the muscles to react reflexively to make prompt decisions.

A bioinspired flexible organic artificial afferent nerve (DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0098) (DX)

Original Submission