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takyon writes:

Tesla whistleblower's lawyer: My client may have been effectively swatted

A lawyer representing Martin Tripp has released a 10-page police report that he says raises new questions concerning a purported June 20 shooting threat to the Tesla Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada, where the technician worked until he was fired on June 15. The document was first reported by Bloomberg. A month ago, Tesla sued Tripp for alleged trade secrets violations, and he has recently countersued, claiming that he has been defamed.

The report shows that a call expressing vague concern over what Tripp apparently might do was somehow translated to law enforcement as a direct violent attack against the Nevada facility.

"How did it go from the call center to a very serious terrorist threat?" Stuart Meissner, one of Tripp's attorneys, told Ars late Wednesday evening. "I think that's a question that Tesla is going to have to answer in this litigation," Will Fischbach, another one of Tripp's lawyers, told Ars. Meissner, who obtained the report from the Storey County Sheriff's Office under a state public records request, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that Tripp may have even been set up.

I present the "GigaGate" Police Reports Re the Tesla Giga Factory Terrorist Threat Incident & what may turn out to B the "SWATing" of our client.
We have asked to reopen the investigation as to the source of the reported "threat." Judge for yourself https://t.co/SYKpcQfjcl

Previously: Musk Alleges Tesla Model 3 Production Has Been Sabotaged, According To CNBC
Tesla Sues Former Employee it Accuses of Sabotage

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

As part of its move to Free and Open Source Software, the city of Rome, in Italy, has begun to phase in LibreOffice as the only available suite of office productivity tools on its desktops. Those city employees who currently use productivity software one hour per month or less are in the first group to migrate. Heavier users will follow in the near future. Eventually around 14,000 desktops in all will be addressed.

In April, Rome completed the installation of LibreOffice alongside the proprietary alternative on all of its 14,000 PC workstations. This means that city staff can try out LibreOffice and gradually get familiar with the office suite. Staff members who use the proprietary office suite intensively will not be forced to switch.

As part of the change management approach, the city is partly relying on 112 staff members who are in favour of free and open source. This means that, on average, the city has two such innovation champions per department. They help explain the reasons for the change to LibreOffice, and encourage their colleagues to find out more by pointing them to a Moodle-based eLearning portal. Last month, the champions received a two-day training course to boost their LibreOffice expertise and prepare them to help train their colleagues.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

OpenWrt has released stable 18.06 version, its first release since merging with its spin-off, LEDE (Linux Embedded Development Environment).

OpenWrt is a Linux-based operating sytem targeted at replacing the firmware for low-end consumer-grade router hardware. For a while, OpenWRT had started to drift outside the router market and into a more general single-board computer market causing a split in 2016 which resulted in the LEDE project. LEDE focussed more on the routers as well as worked to increase transparency of operations. At the beginning of 2018, LEDE merged back into OpenWRT and the combined project operates under LEDE's guidelines.

The OpenWrt project released a stable version 18.06 of the venerable OpenWrt Linux distribution for networking and low-end hardware. Users of OpenWrt 15.05 or LEDE 17.01 can upgrade without requiring an entirely new install.

This is the first release since OpenWrt 15.05.1 in March 2016 and the first since the LEDE project split off from OpenWrt a few months later in an attempt create an open source community with greater transparency and inclusiveness. The two groups reunited in January of this year under the OpenWrt name. OpenWrt has long been used in Linksys routers such as the circa 2015 WRT1900ACS, among many others.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Planet Nine: 'Insensitive' Term Riles Scientists

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) famously reclassified Pluto as a "dwarf planet" in 2006. That decision remains highly controversial today, as made clear by the new note, which appeared in the July 29 issue of the Planetary Exploration Newsletter.

The note:

ON THE INSENSITIVE USE OF THE TERM "PLANET 9" FOR OBJECTS BEYOND PLUTO

We the undersigned wish to remind our colleagues that the IAU planet definition adopted in 2006 has been controversial and is far from universally accepted. Given this, and given the incredible accomplishment of the discovery of Pluto, the harbinger of the solar system's third zone — the Kuiper Belt — by planetary astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1930, we the undersigned believe the use of the term 'Planet 9' for objects beyond Pluto is insensitive to Professor Tombaugh's legacy.

We further believe the use of this term should be discontinued in favor of culturally and taxonomically neutral terms for such planets, such as Planet X, Planet Next, or Giant Planet Five.

35 researchers signed the note, including Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission.

Of more interest may be this proposal concerning future exploration of Uranus and Neptune:

Outer Solar System Exploration: A Compelling and Unified Dual Mission Decadal Strategy for Exploring Uranus, Neptune, Triton, Dwarf Planets, and Small KBOs and Centaurs

Related: Uranus and Neptune Are Potential Targets for 2030s Missions
Another Trans-Neptunian Object With a High Orbital Inclination Points to Planet Nine
CU Boulder Researchers Say Collective Gravity, Not Planet Nine, Explains Orbits of Detached Objects
Planet Nine Search Turns Up 10 More Moons of Jupiter

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

"A software error, not a cyberattack, caused a problem that resulted in nearly 120,000 voters being left off the printed voter rosters at Los Angeles County polling places in California's June primary, county officials said Wednesday.

An independent review by IBM Security Services concluded that the county's software to keep track of voters didn't recognize a change in the format for voter data provided by the state. As a result, the software discarded the birthdays for 118,509 voters, determined they were too young to vote and did not include them on the printed rosters used at polling places."

miamiherald.com/news/business/article215944525.html

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In December 2014, Max Brown was picking through an Incline Village dumpster for a community service project when a collection of 1980s cassettes caught his eye. Fancying himself a collector, he pulled them out and inspected them.

Then he noticed the substantial pile of worn books buried beneath them.

Then it started raining.

Quickly, Brown grabbed about 15, all he could carry, and left, narrowly avoiding the snowstorm that was to blanket the area that night and ruin the books remaining in the dumpster.

It wasn't until six months had passed that Brown offhandedly bent back the cover of one of the books and saw "from the library of Thomas Jefferson" inscribed on the open page.

Upon reading those six words, Brown became a detective, beginning an archival search for answers that would span three years of his life, 220 years of the country's, and connect the hands of an American founding father to his own.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Fluffeh writes:

Observations made with ESO's Very Large Telescope have for the first time revealed the effects predicted by Einstein's general relativity on the motion of a star passing through the extreme gravitational field near the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. This long-sought result represents the climax of a 26-year-long observation campaign using ESO's telescopes in Chile.

[...] The new measurements clearly reveal an effect called gravitational redshift. Light from the star is stretched to longer wavelengths by the very strong gravitational field of the black hole. And the change in the wavelength of light from S2 agrees precisely with that predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. This is the first time that this deviation from the predictions of the simpler Newtonian theory of gravity has been observed in the motion of a star around a supermassive black hole.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Experts say full survival rates in air crashes grow more common

An Aeromexico flight carrying 103 people crashed just after taking off from an airport in northwestern Mexico, forcing passengers to escape via emergency slides before the aircraft went up in flames. No one died. And although that might be surprising to many people, it's in line with recent developments in aviation safety, CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo said Wednesday.

"It's actually getting to be more typical, more the rule than the exception," Schiavo said, noting that no one dies in 87% of air crashes, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization. "It's the science of crashworthiness that has really improved over the last 20 years to help people survive a crash," Schiavo said. "Before then, you used to think a plane crash (meant) everyone would die. Not so anymore."

For example, she said, all aboard survived when an Air France jetliner overran a runway in Toronto in 2005, and when a Singapore Airlines plane burst into flames in the city-state in June 2016. Just three passengers died when an Asiana Airlines flight crashed at San Francisco's airport in July 2013.

A bionic priest and a web designer were on the Aeromexico flight.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Sulla

The Transportation Security Administration is considering eliminating passenger screening at more than 150 small and medium-sized airports across the US, according to senior agency officials and internal documents obtained by CNN.

The proposal, if implemented, would mark a major change for air travel in the US, following nearly two decades of TSA presence since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and comes as the Trump administration has stepped up screening measures for items such as laptops and tablets.

Internal documents from a TSA working group say the proposal to cut screening at small and some medium-sized airports serving aircraft with 60 seats or fewer could bring a "small (non-zero) undesirable increase in risk related to additional adversary opportunity."

The internal documents from June and July suggest the move could save $115 million annually, money that could be used to bolster security at larger airports.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/01/politics/tsa-considering-eliminating-screening-at-smaller-airports/index.html

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A new study led by a team of Western University neuroscientists has debunked claims that getting better at a brain training game can translate to improved performance in other, untrained cognitive tasks.

This study, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, set out to test whether hours of 'brain training' in one game could give someone an edge in a second game that uses the same area of the brain. If that result was found, it would lend credence to claims that 'brain-training' apps can improve working memory, which is vital for learning and retaining information and in staving off memory loss.

But researchers found such transference simply didn't happen: participants' high scores in the first game (the one they trained on) didn't improve performance in the second game, and were equivalent to scores attained by the 'untrained' control group.

Journal Reference:
Bobby Stojanoski, Kathleen M. Lyons, Alexandra A.A. Pearce, Adrian M. Owen. Targeted training: Converging evidence against the transferable benefits of online brain training on cognitive function. Neuropsychologia, 2018; 117: 541 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.07.013

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Study links depression to low blood levels of acetyl-L-carnitine

Investigators at Stanford and elsewhere have shown, for the first time in humans, that low blood levels of acetyl-L-carnitine track with the severity and duration of depression.

People with depression have low blood levels of a substance called acetyl-L-carnitine, according to a Stanford University School of Medicine scientist and her collaborators in a multicenter study.

Naturally produced in the body, acetyl-L-carnitine is also widely available in drugstores, supermarkets and health food catalogs as a nutritional supplement. People with severe or treatment-resistant depression, or whose bouts of depression began earlier in life, have particularly low blood levels of the substance.

The findings, published online July 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, build on extensive animal research. They mark the first rigorous indication that the link between acetyl-L-carnitine levels and depression may apply to people, too. And they point the way to a new class of antidepressants that could be freer of side effects and faster-acting than those in use today, and that may help patients for whom existing treatments don't work or have stopped working.

Acetylcarnitine.

Also at The Rockefeller University.

Acetyl-l-carnitine deficiency in patients with major depressive disorder (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1801609115) (DX)

Original Submission

chromas writes:

Computerworld:

[...] Microsoft is getting ready to replace Windows 10 with the Microsoft Managed Desktop. This will be a "desktop-as-a-service" (DaaS) offering. Instead of owning Windows, you'll "rent" it by the month.

DaaS for Windows isn't new. Citrix and VMware have made a living from it for years. Microsoft has offered Remote Desktop Services, formerly Terminal Services, for ages.

Microsoft Managed Desktop is a new take. It avoids the latency problem of the older Windows DaaS offerings by keeping the bulk of the operating system on your PC.

But you'll no longer be in charge of your Windows PC. Instead, it will be automatically provisioned and patched for you by Microsoft. Maybe you'll be OK with that.

ZDNet:

January 14, 2020 is the last day Microsoft will provide security updates for Windows 7. According to Microsoft's estimates, there are 184 million commercial devices out there (as of April 2018 and excluding China) still on Windows 7. And 64 percent of those devices are more than five years old.

For Microsoft's reseller partners, that's a huge potential opportunity, as they heard repeatedly during Microsoft's Inspire partner show last week. Traditionally, end of Microsoft support for an operating system means more chances for partners to sell customers on migration, provisioning and other services.

At the same time, the way business customers are purchasing PCs is changing. By 2020 -- the same time Windows 7 hits end of support -- 30 percent of all PCs will be acquired via DaaS, or device-as-a-service, plans, Microsoft officials told partners last week.

[...] During the Inspire show, Microsoft execs worked to hammer home the idea that resellers shouldn't simply be selling Windows 7 users a new device running Windows 10. Instead, they should take the DaaS approach and set up a whole platform to lease new Windows 10 PCs to customers.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Sure, the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 boasts 755 horsepower, but is that really enough power to keep you happy? If your answer is "no," look no further than Specialty Vehicle Engineering's Yenko/SC Stage II Corvette upgrade. It takes a standard 460-horsepower 2019 Corvette Grand Sport and cranks it up to 1,000 horsepower.

While plenty of aftermarket companies can offer ludicrously powerful cars, what's interesting about this Yenko upgrade is that it can be ordered directly through any Chevrolet dealership when you order your new Corvette. The car goes from Chevy to Specialty Vehicle Engineering, and then back to the dealership for you to pick it up completed. Specialty Vehicle Engineering, which was formerly known as SLP, has a 25-year history doing this type of "Second Stage Vehicle Manufacturer" business with General Motors dealerships. It also offers supercharging packages for the Camaro, Tahoe/Suburban and Escalade.

Source: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/yenko-supercharged-chevrolet-corvette-1000-horsepower/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Facebook and Instagram introduce time limit tool

Facebook and Instagram are releasing a new tool to limit how much time people spend on their apps. The announcement follows concerns that excessive social media use can have a negative impact on mental health.

Users will now be able to check how much time they've spent scrolling, set a reminder for when they've reach their allotted time, and mute notifications for a period of time.

But some people say it doesn't go far enough. "I wouldn't say it's a radical change or that it's going to really change a lot about the way that most people use Facebook or Instagram," Grant Blank, from the Oxford Internet Institute, tells Newsbeat. "It strikes me as a way to balance their corporate interest of keeping people spending as much time as possible on Facebook, while still being responsive to people who find the continual notifications to be disturbing or distracting."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Black hole hologram appears in a graphene flake

Much research on black holes is theoretical since it is difficult to make actual measurements on real black holes. Such experiments also need to be undertaken over decades or longer. Physicists are therefore keen to create laboratory systems that are analogous to these cosmic entities. New theoretical calculations by a team in Canada, the US, UK and Israel have now revealed that a material as simple as a graphene flake with an irregular boundary subjected to an intense external magnetic field can be used to create a quantum hologram that faithfully reproduces some of the signature characteristics of a black hole. This is because the electrons in the carbon material behave according to the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model.

[...] [Marcel Franz:] "This model is an illustration of a type of 'holographic duality' in which a lower-dimensional system can be represented by a higher dimensional one. In our calculations, the former is N graphene electrons in (0+1) dimensions and the latter the dilation gravity of a black hole in (1+1) dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS₂) space."

Remarkably, this model accurately describes the physical characteristics of black holes for large values of N (larger than 100 ideally). These characteristics include non-zero residual entropy, and fast scrambling of quantum information at the black hole singularity (the region beyond which not even light can escape the tug of its gravity).

Quantum Holography in a Graphene Flake with an Irregular Boundary (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.036403) (DX)

Original Submission