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takyon writes:

Telescope array will spy on spy satellites, star surfaces and black holes

At a time when astronomers are building billion-dollar telescopes with mirrors 30 meters across, the 1.4-meter instrument being installed this month atop South Baldy Mountain in New Mexico may seem like a bit player. But over the next few years, nine more identical telescopes will join it on the grassy, 3200-meter summit, forming a Y-shaped array that will surpass any other optical telescope in its eye for detail. When it's complete around 2025, the $200 million Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer (MROI) will have the equivalent resolution of a gigantic telescope 347 meters across.

MROI's small telescopes can't match the light-gathering power of its giant cousins, so it will be limited to bright targets. But by combining light from the spread-out telescopes, it is expected to make out small structures on stellar surfaces, image dust around newborn stars, and peer at supermassive black holes at the center of some galaxies. It will even be able to make out details as small as a centimeter across on satellites in geosynchronous orbit, 36,000 kilometers above Earth, enabling it to spy on spy satellites.

That's one reason why the U.S. Air Force, which wants to monitor its own orbital assets and presumably those of others, is funding MROI. "They want to know: Did the boom break or did some part of the photovoltaic panels collapse?" says Michelle Creech-Eakman, an astronomer at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and project scientist on MROI. But if the facility succeeds, its biggest impact could be on the field of astronomy, by drawing new attention to the promise of optical interferometry, a powerful but challenging strategy for extracting exquisitely sharp images from relatively small, cheap telescopes.

Wikipedia article on Astronomical Optical Interferometry.

Related: Very Large Telescope's MUSE Instrument Studies the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
Very Large Telescope's ESPRESSO Combines Light From All Four Unit Telescopes for the First Time
Very Large Telescope Captures First Direct Image of a Planet Being Formed

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Ubisoft is finished with 'finite experiences'

Your experience with Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege never has to end, and Ubisoft is looking to bring that ongoing, long-lasting relationship to all of its games going forward. In an interview posted to its news blog, Ubisoft vice president Lionel Raynaud explained how the company wants to give players lots of smaller stories instead of one contained narrative that you finish and then forget.

This is part of the company's move toward games-as-a-service, where it constantly updates its releases to keep players coming back for months if not years. But Raynaud explained exactly how a number of smaller stories better serve both Ubisoft and its players.

"What drove this is the will to not give finite experiences," said Raynaud. "The idea was that you have this conflict, and the resolution, and then it's finished – you've killed the bad guy, for instance. We build a strong nemesis, and the goal of the game is to kill him or free the country, we've done that a few times in our games. But when you succeed, you have to leave the game, because there is nothing else to do. So the goal was to break this, and say that you will be the hero of a region or population many times, not just once. And if you get rid of a dictator or an oppressor, something else is going to happen in the world, and you will have a new goal."

Opening your wallet doesn't have to be a finite experience.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Last week, an incomplete scene featuring Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor surreptitiously hit the web, giving fans eager for leaks and spoilers a taste of what to expect from the next season of Doctor Who. But while in the entertainment business leaks and spoilers are part and parcel of the industry, in this case, the BBC is none too pleased about it.

In fact, the corporation has filed an application in a California court this week in an effort to expose the person who put the leaked footage online—hoping California’s Federal Court would put pressure on Tapatalk, whose messaging service was used to upload and disseminate a non-final, 53-second clip of Whittaker’s Doctor in action. The BBC isn’t accusing Tapatalk of any wrongdoing; rather, it just wants details on the user that uploaded the clip, so it can attempt to isolate just where in Doctor Who’s long line of production the clip got leaked.

Source: https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-bbc-is-heading-to-court-to-hunt-down-a-doctor-who-l-1827319614

Original Submission

takyon writes:

China Claims to Have a Laser Assault Rifle That Can Set Clothes on Fire

China allegedly has a "laser assault rifle" that can fire a thousand shots at a time, "carbonizing" human skin and tissue.

The ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle, profiled in the South China Morning Post, is described as a laser wonder weapon. The article raises more questions than it answers, though Beijing's research into laser weapons is particularly pertinent given recent allegations that Chinese military personnel have injured U.S. military personnel with high-powered lasers.

According to the report, the ZKZM-500 is a handheld laser assault rifle. Unlike ordinary sleek assault rifles, this weapon is a clunky rectangular shape with a pistol grip, foregrip, and a telescopic sight. The weapon is powered by a lithium battery capable of supplying power for up to a thousand two-second shots.

[...] [It's] difficult to believe this weapon is as powerful as advertised. Although the article discusses the weapon's burning effects in detail, the ZKZM-500's wattage is conveniently left out. [...] Power storage is another problem. The ZKZM-500 can reportedly fire a thousand two-second shots, the equivalent of 33 minutes of laser power, from a "lithium battery." There's no way a weapon the size of a rifle can store that much energy internally given today's technology, even if it were stuffed with batteries. To store the equivalent of 33 minutes of laser power would require a considerable power supply outside the rifle itself.

Original Submission

jmorris writes:

Next Big Future reports:

Liquid Piston gets more DARPA funding for 30KW engine 30 times smaller than todays engines

DARPA has awarded LiquidPiston an additional $2.5 million to continue development of its 30kW X4 rotary diesel engine prototype, bringing DARPA's total funding of the engine technology to $6 million.

When development of the fully packaged engine is complete, the 30kW X4 engine is expected to weigh just 30lbs and fit into a 10" box, while achieving 45% brake thermal efficiency – approximately an order of magnitude smaller and lighter than traditional piston diesel engines, and also 30% more efficient. The efficient, lightweight, and powerful rotary Diesel/JP-8 X4 engine offers a disruptive power solution for direct as well as hybrid electric propulsion and power generation.

Seems we get a story about a wonderous alt-energy breakthrough every week that never pans out, can the humble Diesel engine be reinvented to become the "next big thing?"

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

Your company has suffered a data breach. The law requires you to fall on your sword, and—at considerable time and expense—provide a government-scripted breach disclosure notice to your customers, including the facts and circumstances surrounding the breach, how it happened, what data was breached and, more importantly, what you are doing about it.

Irrespective of the costs of the breach itself, the government-compelled disclosure may cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in disclosure costs alone, not to mention the reputational and other costs associated with this compelled speech. To make matters worse, the government-ordered speech does little in and of itself to make consumers safer or better protected against hackers.

[...] The data breach disclosure laws are clearly government-compelled speech. The government has a good reason for wanting companies to make such disclosures, but such reasons may not be "compelling" and the disclosure may not be the least intrusive means of achieving the government's objectives. Under the EU's GDPR regulations, the disclosure is made to the government privacy entity, and only where that entity believes it necessary is a public disclosure made.

In essence, the Supreme Court has found a right of commercial entities not to be required to make notifications and disclosures because they have a first amendment right not to be forced to do so.

Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2018/07/are-breach-disclosure-laws-unconstitutional-in-the-wake-of-supreme-court-abortion-case/

Original Submission

The problems of gerrymandering are manifold, often debated and lamented. Now, a group of computational geometers from Tufts, MIT and others are working the problem from different fronts. From https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/

The Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group (MGGG) is a small Boston-based team of mathematicians launched by Moon Duchin of Tufts University. Our mission is to study applications of geometry and computing to U.S. redistricting. We believe that gerrymandering of all kinds is a fundamental threat to our democracy.

Our goals are:

• to pursue cutting-edge research in the practically relevant applications of geometry, topology, and computing to the redistricting problem;
• to foster collaboration with researchers in statistics, supercomputing, law, political science, and other fields;
• to facilitate direct civic engagement by training scholars from a variety of quantitative backgrounds to serve as expert witnesses and consultants in redistricting cases;
• to educate the public, both through direct outreach and by helping college and high school teachers incorporate units on voting, gerrymandering, and civil rights into the mathematics curriculum;
• to build a diverse community of mathematically inclined people around the country and give them the knowledge and the tools to hold map-drawers accountable when 2020 comes around.

And from https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/get-involved/

We are assembling a team of mathematicians, lawyers, statisticians, and active citizens of all stripes to work on practical metrics and solutions for gerrymandering in advance of the 2020 U.S. Census. If you're interested in joining our community, please fill out our Skills and Interest Inventory form.

For anyone that wants to get up to speed on this complex and important topic, https://sites.tufts.edu/gerrymandr/resources/ is a page of links to a variety of related papers and articles.

SN discussed the math of the gerrymander back in 2014,
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/12/27/1148245

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

In a 2017 report that went widely unnoticed, a female captain in the Australian Army recommended a novel solution to combat stress: sex. More specifically, she wondered whether making sexual options, potentially including prostitution, available to soldiers in combat would help troops deal with downrange stress. You can read the report yourself here.

My understanding is that the original source of the article was in the Australian Army's official blog, but was pulled after it became, for reasons that are clear if you read the piece, extremely controversial.

Here's the thing: the author is not wrong. Well, not entirely, anyway.

As the article states, science shows that "sex helps satisfy personal, social and physical needs, reduces stress and is inextricably linked to physical and mental wellbeing." The thing is, the military brass doesn't see it that way.

Capitalism, is there anything it can't solve?

Source: http://havokjournal.com/culture/military/female-australian-army-officers-solution-to-downrange-stress-is-prostitution/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

The fast-food chain PDQ is telling its customers their payment card information may have been compromised for up to a year due to a point-of-sale data breach.

The Tampa-based chicken restaurant chain reported that between April 20, 2017 and May 19, 2018 payment card information was vulnerable due to malware being inserted into PDQ's system, possibly through a third-party vendor. The information exposed includes some or all of the following: names, credit card numbers, expiration dates, and cardholder verification value.

On June 8 it was discovered that some of the exposed information had in fact been taken and used by an unauthorized party. The company does not know how many customers were affected, but it is suggesting that anyone who used a payment card at a PDQ should keep an eye on the account to ensure it is not being used illegally.

Source: https://www.scmagazine.com/hackers-get-into-pdqs-hen-house-swipe-credit-card-data/article/775798/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

Computer boffins have devised a potential hardware-based Trojan attack on neural network models that could be used to alter system output without detection.

Adversarial attacks on neural networks and related deep learning systems have received considerable attention in recent years due to the growing use of AI-oriented systems.

The researchers – doctoral student Joseph Clements and assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Yingjie Lao at Clemson University in the US – say that they've come up with a novel threat model by which an attacker could maliciously modify hardware in the supply chain to interfere with the output of machine learning models run on the device.

[...] "Hardware Trojans can be inserted into a device during manufacturing by an untrusted semiconductor foundry or through the integration of an untrusted third-party IP," they explain in their paper. "Furthermore, a foundry or even a designer may possibly be pressured by the government to maliciously manipulate the design for overseas products, which can then be weaponized."

The purpose of such deception, the researchers explain, would be to introduce hidden functionality – a Trojan – in chip circuitry. The malicious code would direct a neural network to classify a selected input trigger in a specific way while remaining undetectable in test data.

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/19/hardware_trojans_ai/

Original Submission

Apparition writes:

Barnes & Noble just fired CEO Demos Parneros after fourteen months on the job.

Barnes & Noble said Tuesday that it has fired CEO Demos Parneros for violating company policies.

The company did not specify exactly which policies were violated. It did say, however, that Parneros' termination "is not due to any disagreement with the Company regarding its financial reporting, policies or practices or any potential fraud relating thereto."

Parneros will not receive any severance and is no longer a director on its board, the company said in its statement. Barnes & Noble said it fired Parneros under the advice of its law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Barnes & Noble said it will begin its search for a new CEO and that it has tapped a group of leaders to run the company in the interim. That group includes chief financial officer Allen Lindstrom, chief merchandising officer Tim Mantel and vice president of stores Carl Hauch.

Parneros joined the company in 2016 and was named CEO in 2017. He was previously president of Staples' North American stores and online.

Barnes & Noble's prior CEO was Ronald Boire, who lasted eight months on the job before being fired.

Previously: Barnes & Noble's "Bloody Monday"
Barnes & Noble Reports Holiday Revenues Down"
Barnes & Noble Pivots to Books

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

New chemical analysis of Aztec turquoise artifacts suggests the stone didn’t come from the Southwestern US as archaeologists have long thought, which raises questions about the scale of long-distance trade between the Aztecs and their northern neighbors.

For thousands of years, societies from Central America to the Southwestern US have prized turquoise for its unique blue-green color. Archaeologists and historians have assumed the Mesoamerican states got their turquoise via long-distance trade with people in the American Southwest. It made sense, because archaeologists have found macaw bones, cacao, and copper bells at sites around the Southwestern US—not in large quantities, but enough to show that at least some trade happened after 900 CE.

And there are still turquoise mines in the American Southwest in areas that have been mined since pre-Columbian times. Meanwhile, there are no turquoise mines in Mesoamerica, but there is an abundance of the stuff in Aztec artifacts. At the height of Aztec imperial power, known as the Late Postclassic period from 1430 to 1519, the stone was a favored ornament for ceremonial shields and sacrificial weapon hilts, mirrors, and jewelry. That includes items such as armbands, necklaces, earrings, and nose plugs worn by Aztec rulers, priests, and nobles. Turquoise—which the Aztecs called xihuitl—was so important that it had a role in Aztec cosmology and was often mentioned in poems.

A 16th-century Aztec document called the Codex Mendoza records tribute paid by conquered provinces to the Aztec capital. It mentions shipments of turquoise from three provinces: one in parts of the modern Mexican states of Guerrero and Puebla and one in the western part of modern-day Oaxaca, along with a third province in northern Veracruz, which at the time was the far northeastern corner of the Aztec Empire.

The logical assumption is that the Hohokam, Mogollon, and Puebloan peoples of the Southwestern US traded their local turquoise for goods from Mexico and farther south, so the provinces in the Codex Mendoza were importing the turquoise they sent as tribute. But it turns out that the chemical signatures in Aztec and Mixtec turquoise tiles don't match that of Southwestern US rocks; they actually match Mesoamerican rocks.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

For a long time in Australia when you purchased property you had to visit the local Land Titles office or local equivalent to pay your stamp duty and get paperwork done. Recently several state governments decided to outsource this critical function to a private company, the Property Exchange Australia - PEXA. It was seen as a win-win with a private company taking over storing and maintaining land titles and the State Governments getting a kick back for it. Until it all went wrong recently when $250,000 was stolen from a PEXA conveyancer's account.

The victim of the hack was Dani Venn, who is well known for being on the local version of Masterchef. PEXA has claimed no responsibility for the loss and with the PEXA system soon to be made mandatory in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, many people are concerned that the system is not secure and should not be used for title or money transfers. While the Commonwealth Bank was able to freeze and recover 138K of the funds, 110K is still missing leaving Ms Venn in the lurch. PEXA has claimed to be taking action to secure the service.

While PEXA has claimed that their online system will be of benefit to lawyers, sellers, buyers and real estate agents, the reality of moving data out of offline systems to internet based servers may very well have just created the sweetest honeypot ever seen online in Australia.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The web browser extension "Stylish" steals all your browsing history. The change happened after the project had been sold several times and the latest set of owners have supplemented the otherwise very useful code with surveillance capabilities start around January 2017. Currently it aggregates profiles on its users based on their complete browsing activities. The extension's user base had been about 2 million prior to this news.

Before it became a covert surveillance tool disguised as an outstanding browser extension, Stylish really was an outstanding browser extension.

[...] Unfortunately, since January 2017, Stylish has been augmented with bonus spyware that records every single website that I and its 2 million other users visit.

Related: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1472948
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/2-million-users-impacted-by-new-data-collection-policy-in-stylish-browser-add-on/

[Both Google and Mozilla have blocked Stylish as an extension at this point. An alternative extension Stylus was created from the last known version of the extension from the original author. -Ed]

[Update: 20180706_115313 UTC] Per a comment to this story, there is a replacement for stylish available for Pale Moon:

Stylus fork mentioned in TFS is a WebExtension, and old versions of Stylish were also taken down, so finding and installing it would require manual intervention, and searching for last-known-good version.

Luckily, one of the Pale Moon developers created a compatible XUL-based fork, Stylem [palemoon.org] (release thread [palemoon.org]). It directly imports all Stylish userstyles, so just disable Stylish, enable Stylem, restart browser, and that's it. Worked without a hitch.

Earlier on SN: Stylish and Userstyles.org Having Corruption Issues (2016)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Many asteroids might be remnants of 5 destroyed worlds, scientists say

For years, asteroids were thought of as the leftovers of planet formation - chunks of material that never quite made it to planet size and that were drawn into the crowded belt of rocky remnants that circles the sun between Mars and Jupiter.

But according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, these were once pieces of worlds, too. A vast majority of the half-million bodies in the inner asteroid belt may in fact be shrapnel from as few as five parent bodies called "planetesimals," scientists say. But the tangled orbits of those lost worlds meant they were doomed to collide, producing fragments that also collided, producing still more fragments in a cataclysmic cascade that's been going on for more than 4 billion years.

The finding doesn't only illuminate a "mystery" of the asteroid belt, said Katherine Kretke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who was not involved in the study. It could also help resolve a debate about the formation of the eight planets - including Earth. "I find it really exciting that we can look back in time and potentially see evidence of what were the building blocks that built up our solar system," she said. "If we can turn back the clock and see the asteroid belt was made by these big planetesimals, that really is telling us something quite definitive about the circumstances that formed our own planet."

[...] Scientists have previously known that roughly half of inner-belt asteroids belong to five "families." But Dermott and his colleagues say their analysis suggests that number is as high as 85 percent.