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takyon writes:

Lyft buys the biggest bike-sharing company in the US

Lyft has acquired Motivate, the bike-sharing company that operates Citi Bike in New York City and Ford's GoBike program in San Francisco. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though it was reported in June to be around $250 million.

Motivate, which Lyft says accounts for about 80 percent of bike-share trips in the US, also operates networks in Chicago; Boston; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; Columbus; and Minneapolis. Lyft says it "will invest to establish bike offerings in our major markets and pursue growth and innovation in the markets where Motivate currently operates," but it's unclear where or when it might expand beyond the cities Motivate is currently in. The company also did not share when Motivate's bikes will be available in the Lyft app.

Also at NYT and TechCrunch.

Previously: Uber May Try to Buy Citi Bike Parent Company Motivate

Related: New Electric Bikes, Scooters, and Dockless Bicycles Hitting U.S. Streets
Uber Buys Electric Bicycle-Sharing Startup JUMP Bikes

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Electrical brain stimulation may help reduce violent crime in future – study

It could be a shocking way to treat future criminals. Scientists have found that a session of electrical brain stimulation can reduce people's intentions to commit assaults, and raise their moral awareness.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore explored the potential for brain stimulation to combat crime after noting that impairment in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex has been linked to violent acts.

They recruited 86 healthy adults and gave half of them 20 minutes of brain stimulation before asking the whole group to read two hypothetical scenarios, one describing a physical assault, the other a sexual assault. Immediately afterwards, the participants were asked to rate the likelihood that they might behave as the protagonist had in the stories.

For those who had their brains zapped, the expressed likelihood of carrying out the physical and sexual assaults was 47% and 70% lower respectively than those who did not have brain stimulation. In the first scenario, Chris smashes a bottle over Joe's head for chatting up his girlfriend, and in the second, a night of intimate foreplay leads to date rape.

[...] Using a procedure called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, [Prof. Olivia] Choy and her colleagues Adrian Raine and Roy Hamilton at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered a 2 milliAmp current to the prefrontal cortex of volunteers to boost the region's activity.

Stimulation of the Prefrontal Cortex Reduces Intentions to Commit Aggression: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Stratified, Parallel-Group Trial (DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3317-17.2018) (DX)

Related: How Brain Implants (and Other Technology) Could Make the Death Penalty Obsolete
Study Uses Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Improve Piloting Abilities
Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation Could Speed Learning by 40%
Stanford Scientists Use Electric Jolts to Prevent Impulsive Behavior
Washington State Fusion Center Accidentally Releases Records on Remote Mind Control

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyGuest52256

According to the patent, spotted by Metro, the system would use 'a non-human hearable digital sound' to activate your phone's microphone.

This noise, which could be a sound so high-pitched that humans cannot hear it, would contain a 'machine recognisable' set of Morse code-style beeps

Once your phone hears the trigger, it would begin to record 'ambient noise' in your home, such as the sound of your air conditioning unit, plumbing noises from your pipes and even your movements from one room to another.

Your phone would even listen in on 'distant human speech' and 'creaks from thermal contraction', according to the patent.

TV advertisers would use this data to determine whether you had muted your TV or moved to a different room when their promotional clip played.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5882587/Facebook-wants-hide-secret-inaudible-messages-TV-ads-force-phone-record-audio.html

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Browser maker Opera has filed to go public

Norway-based company Opera Ltd. has filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. According to its F-1 document, the company plans to raise up to $115 million.

In 2017, Opera generated $128.9 million in operating revenue, which led to a net income of $6.1 million.

While many people are already familiar with the web browser Opera, the company itself has had a tumultuous history. Opera shareholders separated the company into two different entities — the browser maker and the adtech operations.

The advertising company is now called Otello. And a consortium of Chinese companies acquired the web browser, the consumer products and the Opera brand. That second part is the one that is going public in the U.S.

They offer an innovative, WebKit/Blink-based product.

Also at Android Police.

Related: Opera Browser Sold to a Chinese Consortium for $600 Million
Opera Discontinues its Mobile VPN App

Original Submission

Nuke writes:

A Californian company proposes using weighted electrically-driven rail vehicles on inclines to store energy. At times when the capacity of electricity supply exceeds demand the vehicles would be driven up inclined tracks, and when demand exceeds generation they are allowed to run down, generating electricity as they fall.

This link includes a video that shows a prototype vehicle (which appears to be built on a conventional locomotive chassis), an interview with a promoter, and an animation of a "farm" of these devices. There is a shortage of hard data, such as how much energy could be stored, for how long, and how steep the tracks are, etc., but a quick calculation shows that some thousands of these vehicles would be required for them to be useful. The control panel for this prototype has a power dial that appears to go up to only 20 kW. The promoter in the interview focuses instead on how the construction material can be recycled at end of life.

An Anonymous Coward adds:

Motherboard story from 2016 when Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) got approval to build a 50 MW facility in Nevada.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A new therapeutic may help reverse chemical imbalances made to the brain by habitual drug use and could one day help recovering drug addicts avoid future drug use.

Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston developed and tested a treatment on rats and found it effective in reducing the animals' cravings. Their findings are in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

When someone habitually misuses drugs, their brain chemistry is changed in ways that make it harder for them to quit taking drugs despite negative consequences. Once someone has developed this brain disorder, their mind pays sharper attention to cues that encourage drug use, making it harder for them to abstain.

Serotonin, a brain chemical that transmits information between neural regions, is a key player in these changes. There are currently no medications available to correct this chemical imbalance.

UTMB pharmacology and toxicology professors Jia Zhou, Kathryn Cunningham and their colleagues found that the serotonin 2C receptors in drug addicts do not work as well as they should. They designed, synthesized and pharmacologically evaluated a series of small molecule therapeutics designed to restore the weakened signaling.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] While it has been possible to get Alpine on the Pi for some time – Raspberry Pi 2 owners have been able to get it working since version 3.2.0 – this is the first version to add support for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and also offer an arm64 (aarch64) image to ease deployment.

The Pi 3 Model B+ packs a surprising amount of power into a small package, rocking a 64 bit 1.4GHz processor and gigabit ethernet (over USB 2.0). The 1GB RAM (unchanged from the previous Model B) should give the slimline Alpine incarnation of Linux more than enough headroom, depending what else you decide to run.

[...] Alpine's frugal nature makes it appealing as an alternative to some of the more resource intensive distributions available for the Pi, with optimisations such as OpenRC replacing systemd as the init system. A minimal disk installation will only consume around 130MB and the maintainers claim a container only needs 8MB.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

gHacks reports

The Linux Mint team has released Linux Mint 19 final, codename Tara, in [editions using] the desktop [environments] Cinnamon, Mate, [or] Xfce.

Linux Mint users who run Linux Mint 18.3 or a beta version of Linux Mint 19 will be able to upgrade to the new [release] directly. Those who don't need to upgrade to Mint 18.3 first or install the new version of Linux Mint manually instead.

[...] One of the big new features of Linux Mint 19 is Timeshift. It is part of all [three editions of Mint 19]. Timeshift creates snapshots of the system so that users may restore a previous version of the system using the functionality.

Thanks to Timeshift, you can go back in time and restore your computer to the last functional system snapshot. If anything breaks, you can go back to the previous snapshot and it's as if the problem never happened.

It works similarly to [MSFT] Windows' System Restore feature.

Along with support for Timeshift comes a change in the Update Manager. The Linux Mint 19 update manager suggests [that you] install all updates in the new [release] of the operating system instead of a selection of updates.

The main idea behind the change is that users and admins may restore a previous system snapshot using Timeshift if the installation of updates causes issues. It is still possible, however, to deselect updates so that they are not installed.

Linux Mint 19 comes with one additional update-related [change]. Any user may enable automatic updates in the update preferences now. [In the past,] Linux Mint did not offer a switch to turn on automatic updates [...] because it required advanced knowledge of the distribution to restore broken systems.

English isn't Martin Brinkmann's first language and he's still becoming familiar with Linux and Mint and their terminologies.

To avoid some confusion, note that comments from their Mint 19 Beta article, earlier in June, have been folded into their new article.

In the comments there, AnorKnee Merce notes

[A} Timeshift [snapshot] will take up about 6GB of disk space in the Root or / partition. If this partition is [smaller than] 20GB, [an] "out of disk space" condition will likely occur = a borked system

Additionally, Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is, in turn, based on Debian. All of those use systemd as "an init".

Original Submission

Apparition writes:

Microsoft has quietly killed off Windows 7 support for older Intel PCs.

If your PC doesn't run Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2, you apparently won't be getting any more Win7 patches. At least, that's what I infer from some clandestine Knowledge Base documentation changes made in the past few days.

Even though Microsoft says it's supporting Win7 until January 14, 2020, if you have an older machine — including any Pentium III — you've been blocked, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Here's how it happened. Back in March, the Win7 Monthly Rollup, KB 4088875, included a warning about SSE2 problems:

A Stop error occurs on computers that don't support Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2 (SSE2).

I talked about the bugs in KB 4088875 — one of the buggiest Win7 patches in recent memory — shortly after it was released. At the time, the KB article said:

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release.

[...] To recap: Up until June 15, Microsoft was promising that it would fix the bug that prevented Win7 Monthly Rollups and Security-only updates from installing on older pre-SSE2 machines. After June 15, Microsoft wrote off the pre-SSE2 population, without notice or fanfare, and retroactively changed the documentation to cover its tracks.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

E-cig startup Juul plans to go global by raising $1.2 billion

"Juuling" might be a thing around the world in the future, because the e-cig-maker has big plans to go global. According to Bloomberg, Juul is raising $1.2 billion in a financing round, which would put the startup's value at a whopping $15 or $16 billion. If you need something to compare that to, Lyft recently reached a $15 billion valuation after raising $600 million. The publication says the company is hoping to use the money it raises from investors to make its USB vape pens available outside the US and Israel. Currently, if you want to buy its trendy pens and nicotine pods outside those two countries, you'd have to find resellers.

Does this story make you want to sell drugs flavored water to children?

Related: Tobacco Roundup (U.S. to Crack Down on Tobacco, Electronic Cigarettes)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Trump administration has crafted a draft bill — ordered by the president — that would declare America's abandonment of World Trade Organization rules, according to Axios. The bill essentially provides President Donald Trump — who has argued for a better position for the U.S. in big trade pacts — a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and largely outside of the international rules governed by the WTO. The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Australian government has planned to undertake a trial for facial recognition for MyGov, its online portal for accessing government services including Medicare, PBS and welfare. Reports indicate that in the future people may have to provide facial biometric information to access the MyGov system. The Australian government is battling to bring its services online with the majority of the public resisting the move away from traditional services. Given the hundreds of millions of accounts hacked in recent years it is no surprise that the public may be hesitant to have their private information made available on the internet.

With the Australian government looking to upload millions of records to its failing MyHealth system later this year perhaps any attempt to improve the security of its failed central logon system will improve trust in government agency services, but do users want their biometric data linked to their government online ID? With tens of thousands of people taking to online forums voicing their unhappiness with MyGov and in particular troubles with connectivity at tax time using the substandard replacement for eTax, now rebranded as myTax and forcing users to go through MyGov to connect, how much longer can the Australian government continue this? How long until their honeypot is cracked open like the Indian system was resulting in fingerprints, retina scans, names, addresses, and phone numbers being sold online like candy?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

FDA approves Dermira's wipe for excessive armpit sweating

Dermira Inc said on Friday its topical cloth for excessive armpit sweating was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, providing patients with an easy-to-use option for an often embarrassing condition.

[...] The treatment, Qbrexza, works by blocking receptors responsible for sweat gland activation and can be used once a day, the company said in a statement.

[...] Currently, Allergan's Botox injection is used to treat the condition. Other treatments include antiperspirants and costlier alternatives such as laser therapy, as well as localized surgery like liposuction to remove sweat glands.

Also at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

China has big plans for its massive new rocket

Researchers are developing a rocket that would be more powerful than any U.S. spacecraft, Chinese state media reported Monday. Phys.org reports that the Long March-9 rocket, set to be complete by 2030, would be capable of delivering 140 tons into low orbit.

NASA's upcoming Space Launch System, meanwhile, aims to deliver 130 tons, and the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX launched 64 tons toward Mars earlier this year. China is reportedly hoping to surpass its American and European competitors, planning to spend billions of dollars developing its space programs.

Full reusability for the Long March-9 is not mentioned.

Long March rocket family.

As a point of comparison, the Saturn V rocket:

The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload. As of 2018, the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful (highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational status, and holds records for the heaviest payload launched and largest payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) of 140,000 kg (310,000 lb), which included the third stage and unburned propellant needed to send the Apollo Command/Service Module and Lunar Module to the Moon.[5][6]

Related: China Launches Long March-6 Rocket
Chinese Long March-5 Rocket Launch Fails
China Will Open its New Space Station to International Partners

Original Submission

takyon writes:

NSA deletes hundreds of millions of call records over privacy violations

The NSA unfortunately has a long history of violating privacy rules, although this time the agency might not be entirely to blame. The NSA is deleting hundreds of millions of call and text message data records (collected since 2015) after learning of "technical irregularities" that led to receiving records it wasn't supposed to obtain under the USA Freedom Act. General counsel Glenn Gerstell told the New York Times in an interview that "one or more" unnamed telecoms had responded to data requests for targets by sending logs that included not just the relevant data, but records for people who hadn't been in contact with the targets. As it was "infeasible" to comb through all the data and find just the authorized data, the NSA decided to wipe everything.

[...] The companies involved have "addressed" the cause of the problem for data going forward, the NSA said.

Original Submission