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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey

Internet Relay Chat turns 30—and we remember how it changed our lives

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) turned 30 this August.

The venerable text-only chat system was first developed in 1988 by a Finnish computer scientist named Jarkko Oikarinen. Oikarinen couldn't have known at the time just how his creation would affect the lives of people around the world, but it became one of the key early tools that kept Ars Technica running as a virtual workplace—it even lead to love and marriage.

To honor IRC's 30th birthday, we're foregoing the cake and flowers in favor of some memories. Three long-time Ars staffers share some of their earliest IRC interactions, which remind us that the Internet has always been simultaneously wonderful and kind of terrible.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Sears, the one-time titan of American retail, filed for bankruptcy ahead of a $134 million debt payment due Monday and announced that it will close 142 stores.

For years, Sears has contended with the threat that it would become the latest big-name retailer to fall to online competition and crushing debt. The icon once known for its pristine catalogs, and more recently known for decrepit showrooms and a controversial chief executive, saw its stock price plunge last week after reports that it had hired an advisory firm to prepare a bankruptcy filing ahead of the Oct. 15 payment.

Early Monday morning, Sears announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy -- which would allow it to reorganize and possibly reemerge from bankruptcy with some part of the business intact -- and received commitments for $300 million in debtor-in-possession financing to carry through the bankruptcy period while it restructures its debt and reorganizes its business.

[...] Sears will close 142 unprofitable stores near the end of this year, with liquidation sales at those stores expected to begin soon. It was not immediately clear where those stores are located or how many jobs would be affected. Those store closings are in addition to 46 others that were expected by next month.

[...] It has also already sold off many of its brands, including Craftsman tools, and hasn't turned a profit since 2010. Many of its most valuable properties have been sold off, with the other half leased and offering little cost savings from rent restructurings since Sears already pays below market rents.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Why gene editing could create so many jobs

As more treatments that rely on gene editing move from research laboratories into hospitals around the world, the demand for the skilled genetic engineers who make it possible is expected to soar. The UK government predicts there could be more than 18,000 new jobs created by gene and cell therapy in Britain alone by 2030, while the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates it will see a 7% increase in jobs for biomedical engineers and a 13% increase in medical scientists, together accounting for around 17,500 jobs.

But there will also be a need for people away from the laboratory bench, including those who can help make sense of the huge amounts of data that will be generated as medical treatment becomes increasingly personalised to patients' individual genomes.

"Gene therapy is rapidly becoming an accepted and growing part of the medical research and development industry," says Michele Calos, president of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy and a professor of genetics at Stanford University. "The growth of established and new gene therapy companies is expected to be accompanied by an increase in jobs, as these companies recruit scientists to staff their expanded operations.

"The gene therapy industry requires a range of graduates, with backgrounds in scientific fields like genetics, medicine, molecular biology, virology, bioengineering and chemical engineering, as well as business graduates."

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Hyperactive Comet Wirtanen to Show off During Historically Close Flyby:

The comet 46P/Wirtanen was discovered in 1948, but this could be the best year to get a good look at the small, hyperactive space ball of rock, ice and debris.

That's because when the comet passes nearest to Earth on Dec. 16 at a distance of 7.1 million miles (11.5 million kilometers), it'll be the 10th closest encounter with our planet since 1950. And it could be the brightest of the entire top 10.

It should become visible with the naked eye in the night sky as it approaches and could remain that way for weeks, according to the University of Maryland's astronomy department, which is leading an observation campaign of the comet.

[...] Astronomers are already busy tracking and observing Wirtanen, but expect it to become the subject of some excitement and numerous star parties as it becomes visible to the rest of us in December.

At closest approach, it would still be at 30 times the Earth-Moon distance; no risk of impact with the Earth. This time around, at least.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Even Ganymede is Showing Tectonic Activity. We're Going to Need Another Icy Moon Orbiter

Ganymede was shaped by pronounced periods of tectonic activity in the past, according to a new paper. It's no longer active and its surface is more-or-less frozen in place now. But this discovery opens the door to better planning for future missions to Jupiter's other frozen moon Europa. Unlike Ganymede, Europa is still tectonically active, and understanding past geological activity on Ganymede helps us understand present-day Europa.

Ganymede is one of Jupiter's moons, and it has a sub-surface ocean under a solid layer of frost and ice. The moon shows signs of strike-slip faulting, or strike-slip tectonism. On Earth, this type of tectonic activity created features like the San Andreas fault, a seismically-active region at the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate.

Europa is considered a prime target in the search for life in our Solar System because of its sub-surface ocean. Europa is exposed to Jupiter's intense radiation, but the icy sphere surrounding the sub-surface ocean may act as a radiation barrier, protecting life from its harmful effects. Not only is the sub-surface ocean protected from radiation, it's warm.

Ganymede will be visited by ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, which should launch in June 2022, reach Jupiter orbit in October 2029, and orbit Ganymede starting in 2033. The mission may include a Russian-built Ganymede lander.

Morphological mapping of Ganymede: Investigating the role of strike-slip tectonics in the evolution of terrain types (DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2018.06.024) (DX)

1982 paper: The tectonics of Ganymede (DOI: 10.1038/295290a0) (DX)

Related: NASA Analyzes Forgotten Galileo Data from Flyby of Ganymede

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

If you use Bing’s image search, you’re going to see the worst filth you can imagine.  Bing suggests racist terms and shows horrifying images. Bing will even suggest you search for exploited children if you have SafeSearch disabled.

We contacted Microsoft for comment, and Jeff Jones, Senior Director at Microsoft, gave us the following statement:

“We take matters of offensive content very seriously and continue to enhance our systems to identify and prevent such content from appearing as a suggested search. As soon as we become aware of an issue, we take action to address it.”

Update: Since publication, Microsoft has been working on cleaning up the offensive Bing suggestions that we mentioned. Based on our research, there are still many other offensive suggestions that have not yet been fixed, including a few that we’ve mentioned below. We are unsure if they are simply fixing the offensive items we pointed out, or if they are improving the algorithm.

Note: The screenshots here show what we saw when we wrote this piece testing the US version of Bing Image search in an Incognito private browsing session, but Bing’s results shift over time. Google didn’t have any of these problems, according to our tests. This is a Bing problem, not just a search engine problem. The same problem affects Bing’s video search.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

The vast majority of computing devices today are made from silicon, the second most abundant element on Earth, after oxygen. Silicon can be found in various forms in rocks, clay, sand, and soil. And while it is not the best semiconducting material that exists on the planet, it is by far the most readily available. As such, silicon is the dominant material used in most electronic devices, including sensors, solar cells, and the integrated circuits within our computers and smartphones.

Now MIT engineers have developed a technique to fabricate ultrathin semiconducting films made from a host of exotic materials other than silicon. To demonstrate their technique, the researchers fabricated flexible films made from gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, and lithium fluoride—materials that exhibit better performance than silicon but until now have been prohibitively expensive to produce in functional devices.

The new technique, researchers say, provides a cost-effective method to fabricate flexible electronics made from any combination of semiconducting elements, that could perform better than current silicon-based devices.

"We've opened up a way to make flexible electronics with so many different material systems, other than silicon," says Jeehwan Kim, the Class of 1947 Career Development Associate Professor in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. Kim envisions the technique can be used to manufacture low-cost, high-performance devices such as flexible solar cells, and wearable computers and sensors.

and see https://phys.org/news/2018-10-cost-effective-method-semiconducting-materials-outperform.html#nRlv for a more readable summary

Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0176-4

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Apple donates 1,000 watches to eating disorder study

The use of Apple Watches in medical studies now includes research into eating disorders. Apple is donating 1,000 smartwatches to a University of North Carolina study (the Binge Eating Genetics Initiative, or BEGIN) that will help understand bulimia nervosa patients and others with binge eating behavior. The wristwear will track heart rates over a month-long period to see if there are any spikes ahead of binging incidents. If there are, it might be possible to alert caregivers and patients before these acts take place.

They either have too many unwanted smartwatches laying around, or want doctors to prescribe the Apple Watch treatment.

Also at 9to5Mac and Fast Company.

Related: Apple's Watch Can Detect an Abnormal Heart Rhythm With 97% Accuracy, UCSF Study Says
Apple Watch Could be Used to Detect Hypertension and Sleep Apnea
FDA Approves First Medical Device Accessory for the Apple Watch
AliveCor Sensor for Apple Watch Could Detect Dangerous Levels of Potassium in the Blood
What Cardiologists Think About the Apple Watch's Heart-Tracking Feature

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Fake or real? New study finds consumers wary of manipulated photos

In the age of fake news and doctored photos, wary consumers are not nearly as gullible as one might presume—especially if they have knowledge of social media, experience with the internet and are familiar with online photo-imaging tools. But the source of the images does not matter much as people evaluate what is fake and what is real, a University of California, Davis, study suggests.

In an online experiment with 3,476 people ranging from 20 to 87 years in age, researchers found that most people were able to correctly identify fake images, rating image credibility fairly low on a 7-point scale (1 being not credible at all, 7 being extremely credible). This was true even when they were told they came from The New York Times or NPR, or other known news organizations.

"We found that participants' internet skills, photo-editing experience, and social media use were significant predictors of image credibility evaluation," said the study's lead author, Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, professor of communication at UC Davis. "The results show that participants, no matter how careless or distracted they may be, can still be discerning consumers of digital images."

The findings, published in the journal New Media & Society, surprised researchers. Credibility of the source, and acceptance by others (those who hit buttons to share, like, "favorite" or retweet images), swayed photo viewers in previous studies, but not so much in the current study.

More information: Cuihua Shen et al, Fake images: The effects of source, intermediary, and digital media literacy on contextual assessment of image credibility online, New Media & Society (2018). DOI: 10.1177/1461444818799526

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google AI can spot advanced breast cancer more effectively than humans

Google has delivered further evidence that AI could become a valuable ally in detecting cancer. The company's researchers have developed a deep learning tool that can spot metastatic (advanced) breast cancer with a greater accuracy than pathologists when looking at slides. The team trained its algorithm (Lymph Node Assistant, aka LYNA) to recognize the characteristics of tumors using two sets of pathological slides, giving it the ability to spot metastasis in a wide variety of conditions. The result was an AI system that could tell the difference between cancer and non-cancer slides 99 percent of the time, even when looking for extremely small metastases that humans might miss.

LYNA was even more effective when serving as a companion -- pathologists performing simulated diagnoses found that the deep learning tech made their work easier. It not only reduced the rate of missed micro-metastases by a "factor of two," it cut the inspection time in half to a single minute.

Artificial Intelligence–Based Breast Cancer Nodal Metastasis Detection (open, DOI: 10.5858/arpa.2018-0147-OA) (DX)

Impact of Deep Learning Assistance on the Histopathologic Review of Lymph Nodes for Metastatic Breast Cancer (open, DOI: 10.1097/PAS.0000000000001151) (DX)

Original Submission

black6host writes:

Paul Allen has died at age 65:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/15/paul-allen-co-founder-microsoft-dies

Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Bill Gates, has died. He was 65.

Allen's company Vulcan said in a statement that he died Monday. Earlier this month Allen said the cancer he was treated for in 2009, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, had returned.

Allen, who was an avid sports fan, owned the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle Seahawks.

Of course the article has more information. There was more to Paul Allen that just mentioned above. Bound to hit multiple sources with different takes so be on the lookout for something from a source you like.

takyon: Allen Institute bio and Vulcan Inc. statement.

Related: Billionaire Boater Destroys almost 14,000 square feet of Reef in Cayman Islands
Scientists Force Genetically Engineered Mouse to Watch Classic Film Noir
Stratolaunch: The World's Largest Plane Rolls Out
Paul Allen Finds Lost World War II Cruiser USS Indianapolis
Allen Brain Atlas Releases Data on Live Human Brain Cells
World's Largest Plane is Designed to Lift Rockets Into the Stratosphere

Original Submission

takyon writes:

After briefly going offline, NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope is back in action

After briefly going into safe mode last week, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory — which observes galaxies and nebulas from Earth's orbit — should be getting back to normal operations soon. The cause of the disruption was a small glitch in one of the spacecraft's instruments used for steering and pointing. But the space agency has since fixed the problem, and the telescope will be back to observing the Universe by the end of the week.

[...] The glitch resulted in the gyro measuring three seconds of "bad data," which led Chandra's onboard computer to come up with the wrong value for the vehicle's momentum, according to NASA. This apparently prompted the safe mode. Now, NASA has decided to use one of Chandra's other gyros in its place and put the glitchy one on reserve.

Also at Space.com.

Previously: NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory Enters Safe Mode; Investigation Underway

Related: Puzzling X-Ray Emissions From Pluto
A New Stellar X-Ray 'Reality' Show Debuts
Galaxy Collision Creates Ring of Black Holes and Neutron Stars

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Winamp 6, due out in 2019, aims to whip more llama ass

Rejoice, llama-whipping fans, a new version of Winamp is set to be released in 2019, according to a Monday report by TechCrunch. Alexandre Saboundjian, the CEO of Radionomy, said that the upgrade would bring a "complete listening experience."

[...] The Belgian company that bought Winamp from AOL in January 2014 hasn't really done much with it since buying the remnants of the property just months after AOL finally pulled the plug.

Winamp.

Related: "Whipping the Llama's Ass" with this Javascript WinAmp Emulator

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Following HP's announcement of new ZBook mobile workstations, Intel has confirmed that the memory controller in 9th generation Intel Core processors will support up to 128 GB of DRAM. AMD's memory controller should also support 128 GB of DRAM:

Normally mainstream processors only support 64GB, by virtue of two memory channels, two DIMMs per memory channel (2DPC), and the maximum size of a standard consumer UDIMM being 16GB of DDR4, meaning 4x16GB = 64GB. However the launch of two different technologies, both double height double capacity 32GB DDR4 modules from Zadak and G.Skill, as well as new 16Gb DDR4 chips coming from Samsung, means that technically in a consumer system with four memory slots, up to 128GB might be possible.

With AMD, the company has previously stated that its memory controller can support future memory that comes to market (with qualification), however Intel has been steadfast in limiting its memory support on its chips specifically within the specification. HP is now pre-empting the change it its latest launch with the following footnote:

1. 128GB memory planned to be available in December 2018

This has forced Intel into a statement, which reads as the following:

The new 9th Gen Intel Core processors memory controller is capable of supporting DDR4 16Gb die density DIMMs which will allow the processors to support a total system memory capacity of up to 128GB when populating both motherboard memory channels with 2 DIMMs per Channel (2DPC) using these DIMMs. As DDR4 16Gb die density DIMMs have only recently become available, we are now validating them, targeting an update in a few months' time.

Here's an example of double height, double capacity 32 GB memory modules from G.Skill, which uses 8 Gb DRAM chips.

These are the Samsung 32 GB SO-DIMM DDR4 modules for laptops mentioned in the article. They are of a normal size but use Samsung's latest 16 Gb chips instead of 8 Gb.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Elon Musk pegs SpaceX BFR program at $5B as NASA's rocket booster nears $5B in cost overruns

[Compared] to Boeing's first serious 2014 contract for the SLS Core Stages – $4.2B to complete Core Stages 1 and 2 and launch EM-1 in Nov. 2017 – the company will ultimately end up 215% over-budget ($4.2B to $8.9B) and ~40 months behind schedule (42 months to 80+ months from contract award to completion). Meanwhile, as OIG notes, NASA has continued to give Boeing impossibly effusive and glowing performance reviews to the tune of $323 million in "award fees", with grades that would – under the contracting book NASA itself wrote – imply that Boeing SLS Core Stage work has been reliably under budget and ahead of schedule (it's not).

[...] Boeing – recently brought to light as the likely source of a spate of egregiously counterfactual op-eds published with the intention of dirtying SpaceX's image – also took it upon itself to sponsor what could be described as responses to NASA OIG's scathing October 10th SLS audit. Hilariously, a Politico newsletter sponsored by Boeing managed to explicitly demean and belittle the Apollo-era Saturn V rocket as a "rickety metal bucket built with 1960s technology", of which Boeing was very tenuously involved thanks to its eventual acquisition of companies that actually built Saturn and sent humans to the Moon.

At the same time, that newsletter described SLS as a rocket that will be "light years ahead of thespacecraft [sic] that NASA astronauts used to get to the moon 50 years ago." At present, the only clear way SLS is or will be "light years" ahead – as much a measure of time as it is of distance – of Saturn V is by continuing the rocket's trend of endless delays. Perhaps NASA astronomers will soon be able to judge exactly how many "light years ahead" SLS is by measuring the program's redshift or blueshift with one of several ground- and space-based telescopes.

Here's a typical Boeing shill response (archive) to the NASA Inspector General report.

See also: Will the US waste $100+ billion on SLS, Orion and LOP-G by 2030?

Previously: Maiden Flight of the Space Launch System Delayed to 2019 (now delayed to June 2020, likely 2021)
First SLS Mission Will be Unmanned
After the Falcon Heavy Launch, Time to Defund the Space Launch System?
NASA's Chief of Human Spaceflight Rules Out Use of Falcon Heavy for Lunar Station
House Spending Bill Offers NASA More Money Than the Agency or Administration Wanted
NASA Administrator Ponders the Fate of SLS in Interview
There's a New Report on SLS Rocket Management, and It's Pretty Brutal

Original Submission