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takyon writes:

Elon Musk went on firing spree over slow satellite broadband progress

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently "fired at least seven" managers in order to speed up development and testing of satellites that could provide broadband around the world, Reuters reported today.

SpaceX denied parts of the story, saying that some of those managers left of their own accord and that the firings happened over a longer period of time than Reuters claimed.

[...] Among the fired employees were SpaceX VP of Satellites Rajeev Badyal and top designer Mark Krebs, Reuters wrote. "Rajeev wanted three more iterations of test satellites," Reuters quoted one of its sources as saying. "Elon thinks we can do the job with cheaper and simpler satellites, sooner."

Reuters described a culture clash between Musk and employees hired from Microsoft, "where workers were more accustomed to longer development schedules than Musk's famously short deadlines." Badyal is a former Microsoft employee, while Krebs previously worked for Google."

Apparently, the test satellites work:

"We're using the Tintins to explore that modification," one of the SpaceX employee sources said. "They're happy and healthy and we're talking with them every time they pass a ground station, dozens of times a day."

SpaceX engineers have used the two test satellites to play online video games at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California and the Redmond office, the source said. "We were streaming 4k YouTube and playing 'Counter-Strike: Global Offensive' from Hawthorne to Redmond in the first week," the person added.

Also at SpaceNews and TechCrunch.

Related: SpaceX Deploys Broadband Test Satellites, Fails to Catch Entire Fairing
FCC Authorizes SpaceX to Provide Broadband Satellite Services
SpaceX Valued at $25 Billion... and More
SpaceX Starlink Satellite Prototypes Include Packed, Flexible Solar Arrays

Original Submission

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Sweet discovery: New study pushes back the origins of chocolate

As Halloween revelers prepare to feast on chocolate, a new study from an international team of researchers, including the University of British Columbia, is pushing back the origins of the delicious sweet treat.

The study, published online today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that cacao—the plant from which chocolate is made—was domesticated, or grown by people for food, around 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. In addition, the researchers found cacao was originally domesticated in South America, rather than in Central America.

Archaeological evidence of cacao's use, dating back to 3,900 years ago, previously planted the idea that the cacao tree was first domesticated in Central America. But genetic evidence showing that the highest diversity of the cacao tree and related species is actually found in equatorial South America-where cacao is important to contemporary Indigenous groups-led the UBC team and their colleagues to search for evidence of the plant at an archaeological site in the region.

"This new study shows us that people in the upper reaches of the Amazon basin, extending up into the foothills of the Andes in southeastern Ecuador, were harvesting and consuming cacao that appears to be a close relative of the type of cacao later used in Mexico—and they were doing this 1,500 years earlier," said Michael Blake, study co-author and professor in the UBC department of anthropology. "They were also doing so using elaborate pottery that pre-dates the pottery found in Central America and Mexico. This suggests that the use of cacao, probably as a drink, was something that caught on and very likely spread northwards by farmers growing cacao in what is now Colombia and eventually Panama and other parts of Central America and southern Mexico."

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Submitted via IRC for chromas

First FDA approved cannabis-based drug now available by prescription

The first cannabis-derived medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration is now available by prescription in every state, according to its manufacturer.

Epidiolex, manufactured by GW Pharmaceuticals, is intended to treat seizures associated with two rare and severe forms of epilepsy that begin in childhood. The drug is made of cannabidiol (CBD), a component of marijuana that doesn't give users a high.

"Because these patients have historically not responded well to available seizure medications, there has been a dire need for new therapies that aim to reduce the frequency and impact of seizures," Justin Gover, CEO of GW Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement.

From the DEA website:

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote

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an Anonymous Coward writes:

The Atlantic reports:

Immigrants' gut bacteria "westernize" soon after they move to the U.S.

[...] In their new homeland-Minneapolis-they began to eat more protein, sugar, and fat. They indulged, like most Americans do, in processed food. Within a generation, the Hmong women went from having an obesity rate of 5 percent to one of more than 30 percent.

[...] The researchers compared the gut microbiota of Hmong and Karen women still living in Thailand with the gut microbiota of three groups: Hmong and Karen women who had immigrated to the U.S., these immigrants' American-born children, and white American controls. The researchers also followed one group of 19 Karen refugees from their time in Thailand through their move to the U.S., tracking the components of their microbiota during their first year in America. (They limited the study to women because substantially more Hmong women than men were immigrating to the U.S.)

After about nine months in the U.S., the researchers found, the immigrants' gut microbiomes had began to "westernize." The microbiomes became less diverse—teeming with fewer types of bacteria—which is often associated with obesity. "Having low diversity in your microbiome is almost universally a sign of bad health, across almost every disease that has been studied," says Dan Knights, a computational microbiologist at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Cell.

The study: US Immigration Westernizes the Human Gut Microbiome (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.10.029)
Immigrant Microbiome Project

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This story from 9to5Google submitted via IRC for chromas

Enable JS for maximum security:

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Google is announcing a slew of new features related to the sign-in process and account usage. New Google Account security protections include requiring JavaScript to be enabled when logging in and removing harmful apps during Security Checkup with Play Protect.

On the Account login page, Google runs a risk assessment that only allows the "sign-in if nothing looks suspicious." This analysis to protect against phishing requires that JavaScript be enabled, with Google noting that only .1% of users have it disabled. If that is the case, you will be prompted to enable it before signing in.

Chances are, JavaScript is already enabled in your browser; it helps power lots of the websites people use everyday. But, because it may save bandwidth or help pages load more quickly, a tiny minority of our users (0.1%) choose to keep it off. This might make sense if you are reading static content, but we recommend that you keep Javascript on while signing into your Google Account so we can better protect you

Once users are signed in, the Security Checkup feature now takes into account nefarious applications installed on Android devices, with Google Play Protect leveraged. You might be prompted to uninstall any harmful apps found on your phone, while Google recently beginning to recommend that users removed unused, but logged in devices.

Also at VentureBeat, ZDNet

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What Happens When Telecom Companies Search Your Home for Piracy

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Canadian citizen has house raided, all electronic devices copied, compelled to divulge accounts and passwords, is interrogated for 16 hours, and it is a *civil* complaint... he's already on the hook for a $50,000 payment to the plaintiffs, and he has not even been to trial yet.

When 30-year-old web developer Adam Lackman heard loud knocking on his Montreal apartment door around 8 AM, he thought he was about to be robbed.

When the police showed up after about 20 minutes, according to Lackman, he opened the door and was met by lawyers, a bailiff, and, rather ominously, a locksmith. Seeing that he wasn't about to be mugged, the police left.

One of the lawyers represented some of Canada's most powerful telecommunications and media companies: Bell, Rogers, Vidéotron, and TVA. The other was there to be an independent observer on behalf of the court. Lackman was told that he was being sued for copyright infringement for operating TVAddons, a website that hosted user-created apps for streaming video over the internet. The crew was there with a civil court order allowing them to search the place.

The search was only supposed to go from 8 AM to 8 PM but it ended at midnight. The team copied laptops, hard drives, and any other devices they found, and demanded logins and passwords. Lackman, who called a lawyer in to represent him, was questioned for nine hours by the opposing counsel. They presented him with a list of names of people suspected of being digital pirates in Canada and asked him to snitch. He didn't recognize the names, he told me, and said nothing.

[...] Now, Lackman is embroiled in expensive legal proceedings for a case that pits him against several telecom corporations and media companies, ultimately to answer: Was TVAddons a platform for innovative streaming apps, or was it designed to enable piracy?

[...] Lackman ran TVAddons, a website that hosted unofficial apps (referred to as "addons") for Kodi, a popular open-source media center that allows users to stream media from their devices and over the internet.

[...] The lawyers obtained an injunction that prevented Lackman from operating TVAddons and ordered him to hand over login credentials so that a court-authorized technician could shut down the site and social media accounts.

[...More]

martyb writes:

Three Types of Depression Identified:

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression and these rates are on the rise. Yet, doctors and scientists have a poor understanding of what causes this debilitating condition and for some who experience it, medicines don't help.

Scientists from the Neural Computational Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), in collaboration with their colleagues at Nara Institute of Science and Technology and clinicians at Hiroshima University, have for the first time identified three sub-types of depression. They found that one out of these sub-types seems to be untreatable by Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed medicines for the condition. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

[...] The three distinct sub-types of depression were characterized by two main factors: functional connectivity patterns synchronized between different regions of the brain and childhood trauma experience. They found that the brain's functional connectivity in regions that involved the angular gyrus -- a brain region associated with processing language and numbers, spatial cognition, attention, and other aspects of cognition -- played a large role in determining whether SSRIs were effective in treating depression.

Patients with increased functional connectivity between the brain's different regions who had also experienced childhood trauma had a sub-type of depression that is unresponsive to treatment by SSRIs drugs, the researchers found. On the other hand, the other two subtypes -- where the participants' brains did not show increased connectivity among its different regions or where participants had not experienced childhood trauma -- tended to respond positively to treatments using SSRIs drugs.

Journal Reference:
Tomoki Tokuda, Junichiro Yoshimoto, Yu Shimizu, Go Okada, Masahiro Takamura, Yasumasa Okamoto, Shigeto Yamawaki, Kenji Doya. Identification of depression subtypes and relevant brain regions using a data-driven approach. Scientific Reports, 2018; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-32521-z

Original Submission

New Ghost Particle may Have Manifested at Large Hadron Collider:

'Something terribly new' goes bump in data yet to be confirmed by Atlas detector.

Scientists at the Cern nuclear physics lab near Geneva are investigating whether a bizarre and unexpected new particle popped into existence during experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.

Researchers on the machine's multipurpose Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector have spotted curious bumps in their data that may be the calling card of an unknown particle that has more than twice the mass of a carbon atom.

The prospect of such a mysterious particle has baffled physicists as much as it has excited them. At the moment, none of their favoured theories of reality include the particle, though many theorists are now hard at work on models that do.

"I'd say theorists are excited and experimentalists are very sceptical," said Alexandre Nikitenko, a theorist on the CMS team who worked on the data. "As a physicist I must be very critical, but as the author of this analysis I must have some optimism too."

[...] In two separate analyses, the CMS team found data that pointed to a build-up of muons, or heavy electrons, in their detector. If real, the data indicates a new particle with a mass of 28GeV or 1[sic] billion electron volts, slightly less than a quarter of the mass of a Higgs boson. Whatever it is, it is not the particle Nikitenko and his colleagues were looking for.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Secrets of Mighty Cancer Killing Virus Unlocked by Otago Researchers:

University of Otago researchers have used high-resolution electron microscopy images to reveal how an anti-cancer virus interacts with tumor cells, increasing its potential to save lives.

Seneca Valley Virus (SVV), a newly discovered virus which infects cancer cells but not normal tissue, has become a main research project in the New Zealand laboratory of Dr Mihnea Bostina, Academic Director of Otago's OMNI Electron Microscopy unit and senior lecturer in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

[...] The virus is a strong contender for effective virotherapy because it selectively targets a receptor found only in tumor cells in more than 60 per cent of human cancers.

The receptor, a protein called ANTXR1, is expressed on tumors, but it has a cousin, ANTXR2, that only appears on healthy tissues. SVV doesn't bind with the similar receptor on healthy cells -- it only shows strong affinity for ANTXR1.

Journal Reference:
Nadishka Jayawardena, Laura Burga, Richard Easingwood, Yoshimasa Takizawa, Matthias Wolf, and Mihnea Bostina. Structural basis for Anthrax Toxin Receptor 1 recognition by Seneca Valley Virus. PNAS, 2018 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1810664115

Very welcome news.

Original Submission

Sulla writes:

tl;dr: Directing the wind is not possible, being compelled to adjust my sails. How can I transition to Windows 10 and not suffer extreme loss in productivity.

Windows Classic Theme: How do I get something like this. I assume other Soylentils are like me and the first thing they do when logging onto a Windows XP/7 computer is change the theme to classic. Has anyone done this yet on Windows 10? In my very brief experience dealing with 10 I was unable to find a way to do this, I presume that they removed this because they are awful people.

Specifications: How powerful of a computer do I need to do the same thing I am currently able to do without any lag. I was compelled to do testing using an i7 laptop with 8gb of ram from a couple of years ago, I found I was unable to do any testing because it was bogged down at 95% CPU capacity just running the base OS. What should I be running to make this thing bearable. My job function is to review, build, maintain reports which can involve files large enough to bog me down on my current system (i7-5600U with 8gb), what hardware should I have, how much ram should I have.

Experience: What lessons did others here learn the hard way as they went though this process. I am aware of the updates causing data to be non exist and things of that nature. What are things that I need to know about in this new age of 10.

I am sure there are some other things I should ask, just can't remember ATM.

Just run Linux XD: I am not allowed to withdraw consent from Windows 10, but I am pushing off implementation as long as possible.

[For information about issues with Windows' updates, see Ask Woody. --Ed]

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

System76:

A completely open computer includes every part and component. The computer case, the motherboard, the drives, the memory, the cabling, the buttons, the ports, etc. The strictest definition of an open computer is that every single part of the product has openly licensed design files, schematics, and code. No one is there yet. We all understand that it's not practical to start at the end. So we're chipping away at the proprietary bits. There's a lot of work to do. Those of us working to build open computers are taking different approaches and in doing so we all contribute toward this end. The important thing is that we're all on the same trajectory. There's a massive market out there that's dominated by companies that don't care about making open source hardware. We must make better products than they do if we are to turn that tide.

So, what makes Thelio open hardware? The Thelio design we've worked on for three years is open source. That means anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design. You can send the design files to a metal shop to make your own Thelio. You can adapt the design for your needs. Open source hardware is the physical version of open source software. We believe it's important to apply the same passion we have about software freedom to the hardware itself. The open hardware community is young and small compared to open source software. We hope adding Thelio and Thelio Io to the ranks of open hardware will encourage others to join the movement and make their designs free as well. We're very excited to see what people will do with free hardware designs. This is relatively new territory.

FLOSS is discussed often, open source hardware less so.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Antarctica is owned by no one, but there are plenty of countries^[pdf] interested in this frozen island continent at the bottom of the Earth.

While there are some regulations on who can do what there, scientific research has no definition in Antarctic law. So any research by a country conducted in or about Antarctica can be interpreted as legitimate Antarctic science.

There are 30 countries – including Australia – operating bases and ships, and flying aircraft to and from runways across the continent.

Russia and China have increased their presence in Antarctica over the past decade, with China now reportedly interested in building its first permanent airfield.

It is not surprising there is significant interest in who is doing what, where – especially if countries ramp up their investment in Antarctic infrastructure with new stations, ships or runways.

Their actions might raise eyebrows and fuel speculation. But the freedom of countries to behave autonomously is guided by the laws that apply to this sovereign-neutral continent.

Is a reprise of the Great Game heating up in the deep freeze?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Move over, Hubble: Discovery of expanding cosmos assigned to little-known Belgian astronomer-priest

Hubble's Law, a cornerstone of cosmology that describes the expanding universe, should now be called the Hubble-Lemaître Law, following a vote by the members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the same organization that revoked Pluto's status as a planet. The change is designed to redress the historical neglect of Georges Lemaître, a Belgian astronomer and priest who in 1927 discovered the expanding universe—which also suggests a big bang. Lemaître published his ideas 2 years before U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble described his observations that galaxies farther from the Milky Way recede faster.

The final tally of the 4060 cast votes, announced today by IAU, was 78% in favor of the name change, 20% against, and 2% abstaining. But the vote was not without controversy, both in its execution and the historical facts it was based on. Helge Kragh, a historian of science at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, calls the background notes presented to IAU members "bad history." Others argue it is not IAU's job to rename physical laws. "It's bad practice to retroactively change history," says Matthias Steinmetz of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, Germany. "It never works."

[...] In 1927 Lemaître calculated a solution to Albert Einstein's general relativity equations that indicated the universe could not be static but was instead expanding. He backed up that claim with a limited set of previously published measurements of the distances of galaxies and their velocities, calculated from their Doppler shifts. However, he published his results in French, in an obscure Belgian journal, and so they went largely unnoticed.

takyon writes:

RED Hydrogen One Review of Reviews: A Spectacular Failure

RED is most well-known for making very high-end camera equipment. The Hydrogen One was announced over a year ago and was supposed to launch this past summer. It was delayed several times, but it will soon be available for the lofty price of $1,300. That's why the review embargo lifted this morning with almost unanimous negativity.

Red Hydrogen One Review: Red, dead, no redemption

The Hydrogen One is defined by its ambition. It's meant to revolutionize not just phones, but all of media with a "holographic" display and a camera system capable of recording into this 3D format. The phone is also expandable, and RED — one of the most esteemed names in digital imaging — plans to release an add-on camera sensor that's capable of transforming the phone into a full-on cinema camera.

It's an exciting prospect, but it all comes crashing down because of one immense flaw: the holographic display just isn't very good. It's a novelty. And while you can occasionally see glimmers of the potential that RED might have seen in this tech, it's certainly not present in this generation of the phone, and it's hard to imagine that potential being realized any time soon.

• The Red Hydrogen One Fails to Ignite Reviewer Passions
• RED Hydrogen One review: Buy now, enjoy later? Red's Hydrogen One lacks its most anticipated feature
• Review: RED Hydrogen One holographic phone has potential, but it's far from ready
• RED Hydrogen One review: A defining gimmick can't save this overpriced experiment
• RED Hydrogen One review: It's really cool

Previously: RED Pitches a $1,200 Holographic Android Smartphone

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nintendo's Switch just outsold the GameCube

The Switch's lifetime sales, as of this writing, have reached over 22 million units, which surpasses not only the Wii U's 13.6 million units, but the GameCube's 21.7 million units. For reference, the next most successful Nintendo console was the Nintendo 64 at 33 million units and the most successful (in non-handhelds) is the Wii at 101 million units.

Before crucial holiday season, Nintendo struggles as Sony shines

As 2017 came to a close, Nintendo was busy reveling in Switch sales that were exceeding expectations while Sony's PlayStation 4 was showing signs that its strong sales had peaked. Leading into the all important 2018 holiday season, the companies' comparative console war outlooks seem to have changed a bit.

Let's start with Nintendo, which recently announced worldwide shipments of 3.2 million Switch systems in the July through September quarter. The good news is, that's up slightly from the 2.93 million sold in the same period a year ago. The bad news is that slight increase doesn't put Nintendo on track to meet its long-standing projection for 20 million Switch units sold during the fiscal year (which ends in March 2019). Overall, Nintendo's quarterly profits and revenues both came in significantly below analyst estimates as well, though both were up from a year prior.

[...] Sony, meanwhile, is seeing surprising resilience for the PS4 during its fifth full year on the market. The console shipped 3.9 million units in the last quarter, down slightly from 4.2 million a year ago, but not down nearly as much as might be expected for a platform that launched in late 2013. Overall, the PlayStation division's quarterly profits were up 65 percent year over year, with sales up 22 percent; both figures exceeded analyst expectations.

See also: Nintendo chief says beefing up Switch sales is the main task in his strategy

Previously: Nintendo Sells at Least 10 Million Switch Consoles in 2017, 64 GB Game Cards Delayed to 2019

Related: Video Game Consoles are Doing Better than Ever
Hidden "VrMode" Found in Nintendo Switch Firmware

Original Submission