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martyb writes:

Computerworld:

A bug in Microsoft's activation server has led to pandemonium among people trying to activate or re-activate their Windows 10 Pro licenses. No need to panic. Microsoft will fix it "within one to two business days." (Try telling your boss that.)

If you see a bogus report about an invalid Win10 Pro license, relax. It's just Microsoft's servers screwing up, again, and everything should be copacetic in a couple of days.

On Twitter, Windows leaker emeritus Faikee posted this screenshot:

[...] There's also a lengthy diatribe on Reddit.

[...] The only breath of hope that I've found comes from the Microsoft Answers Forum, where Daniel Randy quotes a Live Agent response as saying:

Thank you for sharing, Daniel. Microsoft has just released an Emerging issue announcement about current activation issue related to Pro edition recently. This happens in Japan, Korea, American and many other countries. I am very sorry to inform you that there is a temporary issue with Microsoft's activation server at the moment and some customers might experience this issue where Windows is displayed as not activated.

Our engineers are working tirelessly to resolve this issue and it is expected to be corrected within one to two business days, Daniel.

But Ask Woody says it's fixed now:

I followed the updated troubleshooting steps posted by João Carrasqueira on Neowin and, bada-boom bada-bang, it’s all activated now. The Steps:

1. Click Start > Settings > Update & Security
2. On the left choose Activation
3. Under the top section, click Troubleshoot

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

CNBC:

Disney's new streaming service will be called Disney+ and launch in late 2019, CEO Bob Iger announced on the company's earnings call Thursday.

The company announced in August 2017 it would pull all its movies from Netflix in 2019, and start its own streaming offering for its past titles. Disney also purchased Fox for $71.3 billion in cash and stock, further bolstering its library.

The service will also feature new, original shows and movies, including original Marvel and Star Wars series. Marvel fan favorite character Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, will get an original series on the Disney+ service. A prequel series to Star Wars movie "Rogue One" about the character Cassian Andor, portrayed by Diego Luna, will also call the service home.

Are these streaming services the second coming of Cable?

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Phoenix666 writes in with a story from ScienceNews:

People from North America moved into South America in at least three migration waves, researchers report online November 8 in Cell. The first migrants, who reached South America by at least 11,000 years ago, were genetically related to a 12,600-year-old toddler from Montana known as Anzick-1 (SN: 3/22/14, p. 6). The child's skeleton was found with artifacts from the Clovis people, who researchers used to think were the first people in the Americas, although that idea has fallen out of favor. Scientists also previously thought these were the only ancient migrants to South America.

But DNA analysis of samples from 49 ancient people suggests a second wave of settlers replaced the Clovis group in South America about 9,000 years ago. And a third group related to ancient people from California's Channel Islands spread over the Central Andes about 4,200 years ago, geneticist Nathan Nakatsuka of Harvard University and colleagues found.

One mystery produced by the research was genetic markers were found in remains in Brazil that are shared with Australian Aborigines, but by no remains found between them in the Americas.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

ArsTechnica:

It's superheroes and not their super-villain counterparts that we should really be afraid of. This idea has been explored in a number of superhero movies, including such diverse fare as The Incredibles, Watchmen, and the post-Sokovia adventures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In each, lawmakers shackle our protagonists in response to the collateral damage caused when they step in to save the day.

But perhaps collateral damage is not what we should be worried about. According to a new study, the "good guys" are actually significantly more violent than the antagonists they're trying to stop. These findings were presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Pennsylvania pediatrician Robert Olympia and his colleagues sat through 10 superhero movies released in 2015 and 2016, cataloging each specific act of violence and noting whether it was committed by a protagonist or villain.

As anyone who has sat through a recent summer superhero tentpole can attest, there is a lot of violence to catalogue—on the order of 23 acts per hour for the good guys, with just 18 violent acts per hour for the bad guys. And it is mostly guys—male characters were five times more likely to engage in violence than female characters.

Well, it's edgier that way.

[For the sake of discussion, here's a 3-minute clip on YouTube: Incredibles 2 Fight Scene in Full: Jack-Jack vs. Raccoon (Exclusive). How many violent acts do you count? --Ed.]

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Reuters:

Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) intends to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros ($22,836) and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla (TSLA.O) rivals, a source familiar with the plans said.

VW and other carmakers are struggling to adapt quickly enough to stringent rules introduced after the carmaker was found to have cheated diesel emissions tests, with its chief executive Herbert Diess warning last month that Germany's auto industry faces extinction.

Plans for VW's electric car, known as "MEB entry" and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said.

Fallout from cheating on diesel emissions tests continues. If German automakers, of which VW is the largest, switch to electric vehicles (EVs), will other car companies have to follow suit?

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canopic jug writes:

Bloomberg has an article about how big tech sets up a ‘Kill Zone’ for industry start ups. They do it three ways, either alone or in combination. One is by spotting and copying novel ideas and then beating the startups to market though massive investments. Another is to hire up the best engineers and developers, starving the industry for talent. A third is by just plain buying the startups out, either to run with the product or to set it on ice. Regardless, the net effect appears to be detriment of innovation (however that may be measured). There aren't any clear solutions to the situation yet.

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AnonTechie writes:

How predictable is evolution? The answer has long been debated by biologists grappling with the extent to which history affects the repeatability of evolution.

A review published in the Nov. 9 issue of Science explores the complexity of evolution's predictability in extraordinary detail. In it, researchers at Kenyon College, Michigan State University and Washington University in St. Louis closely examine evidence from a number of empirical studies of evolutionary repeatability and contingency in an effort to fully interrogate ideas about contingency's role in evolution.

The question of evolution's predictability was notably raised by the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who advocated the view that evolution is contingent and unrepeatable in his 1989 book Wonderful Life. "Replay the tape a million times ... and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again," Gould mused, noting that being able to "replay the tape" and give history a do-over would be impossible. Yet since the publication of Wonderful Life, many evolutionary biologists have taken up this challenge and conducted their own versions of Gould's experiment, albeit on smaller scales. In doing so, they have reached different conclusions about the interplay between randomness of mutations, chance historical events, and directionality imparted by natural selection.

[...] Their review of comparative studies of "natural experiments" further illuminated evidence of evolution's predictability. Similar features can independently evolve in multiple species—for example, anole lizards of the Caribbean, which separately evolved traits such as the length of their legs and tails to ease their life in their specific habitats. Yet convergence in evolution does not always occur, as their review shows; contingency can play a strong role in divergent evolution of various traits.

Replaying the tape of life: Is it possible?

[Abstract]: Contingency and determinism in evolution: Replaying life’s tape

[Source]: IS IT POSSIBLE TO REPLAY THE TAPE OF LIFE?

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

As part of a Free Software Foundation internship, developer Alyssa Rosenzweig has released a python3 script intended to allow users to make PayPal payments without using the proprietary ECMAScript normally associated with its usage. From the FSF's blog:

My third and final project was still more ambitious. As you may know from my work with Panfrost, the free software driver for modern Mali GPUs, I enjoy liberating critical proprietary software by decoding its internal protocols and reimplementing them in freedom. So, we looked around for latent proprietary software involved with FSF operations. Although we eat our own dog food, there was one proprietary system that could not be ignored: PayPal, which recently began requiring nonfree JavaScript. Pah. Enter Pagamigo. (In Calculus, this is formally known as a p-series.)

Pagamigo liberates the proprietary software required to donate to organizations like the FSF or the Debian Project via PayPal. Soon, the FSF Web pages that take online payments will include instructions for using Pagamigo.

Usage is straightforward, however your password may be stored in cleartext in your command history:

takyon writes:

After Goldman Balks, Musk Turns to BofA to Handle SpaceX Loan

Elon Musk frequently makes outrageous requests of his staff in his quest to remake global transportation and colonize Mars. But the terms he wanted on a loan for SpaceX were too much even for his closest ally on Wall Street. As recently as last week, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had been canvassing investors for interest in $500 million of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. debt. By the time interested parties showed up Wednesday at the Four Seasons hotel in midtown Manhattan for a breakfast meeting, Bank of America Corp. was running the show for a $750 million deal.

The switch surprised bankers and investors, as Goldman is widely viewed as the Wall Street firm with the closest relationship to Musk. It helped take Tesla Inc. public in 2010, led a $1.8 billion bond sale last year and advised on his short-lived attempt to take the electric carmaker private for $420 a share. While Bank of America has a lending relationship with SpaceX, it has been shying away from some of the riskiest corners of the corporate-debt market.

Goldman balked when SpaceX, a first-time issuer, wanted wide latitude to raise additional debt in the future, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. The hesitation highlights uneasiness among banks that have been challenged by regulators over the risks they're taking in the $1.3 trillion leveraged-loan market. Insatiable investor appetite for floating-rate debt has allowed heavily indebted companies to extract more concessions from lenders.

Also at Reuters and Axios.

SpaceX plans to build a "mini-BFR ship" to replace the usual second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, ahead of late 2019 testing of the actual BFR/BFS. For now, this is intended only to test technologies for the BFR, such as the heat shield and "mach control surfaces". The new second stage will not be able to land propulsively, may not carry any payloads, and may only be used for a single test:

The goal for the modification is June 2019, Musk said in a follow up tweet. [...] [In September], SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said she expected the BFS to begin short, unmanned "hopping" tests in late 2019. This new timeline for a mini-BFR would fit perfectly with these tests.

In a follow up tweet, Musk said the tests would specifically look at how the mini-BFR's heat shield and mach control surfaces will hold up under the duress of launch and flight, elements that are difficult to test without actually escaping the Earth's orbit.

Also at Space News.

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takyon writes:

Northern white rhino: New hopes for IVF rescue

A new study raises hopes of saving one of the last animals of its kind. A victim of poaching, the northern white rhino population has been reduced to just two females, which are both unable to breed.

DNA evidence shows the rhino is more closely related than previously thought to its southern white cousin. Creating rhino hybrids using IVF is likely to have a positive outcome, say scientists, although this option is considered a last resort.

The white rhino split into two divided populations living in the north and south of Africa around one million years ago. But an extensive analysis of DNA from living rhinos and museum specimens shows the northern and southern populations mixed and bred at times after this date, perhaps as recently as 14,000 years ago.

[...] In July, one team took eggs from female southern rhinos - which number around 20,000 in the wild - and fertilised them with frozen sperm from a male northern white rhino, to create hybrid embryos.

The new study suggests this sort of approach might pay off, given that the two rhinos are closer genetically than once thought. "We think it improves the chances," said Prof Bruford. "It is difficult to predict what might happen if we cross the two subspecies but given the current options for the northern white rhino it becomes a more viable option, should other approaches fail."

Other options include using frozen tissue from a wider pool of northern white rhinos to generate stem cells that have the capacity to develop into eggs and sperm. This would avoid diluting the gene pool, but is more challenging to achieve.

Previously: Saving the Northern White Rhinoceros with Science
Last Male Northern White Rhino 'Sudan' Falls Ill as Species Edges Closer to Extinction
Last Male Northern White Rhino Dies
Genetic Intervention Could Save the Northern White Rhino From Extinction

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takyon writes:

Penn Engineers Develop Ultrathin, Ultralight 'Nanocardboard'

[A] team of Penn Engineers has demonstrated a new material they call "nanocardboard," an ultrathin equivalent of corrugated paper cardboard. A square centimeter of nanocardboard weighs less than a thousandth of a gram and can spring back into shape after being bent in half.

Nanocardboard is made out of an aluminum oxide film with a thickness of tens of nanometers, forming a hollow plate with a height of tens of microns. Its sandwich structure, similar to that of corrugated cardboard, makes it more than ten thousand times as stiff as a solid plate of the same mass.

Nanocardboard's stiffness-to-weight ratio makes it ideal for aerospace and microrobotic applications, where every gram counts. In addition to unprecedented mechanical properties, nanocardboard is a supreme thermal insulator, as it mostly consists of empty space.

Future work will explore an intriguing phenomenon that results from a combination of properties: shining a light on a piece of nanocardboard allows it to levitate. Heat from the light creates a difference in temperatures between the two sides of the plate, which pushes a current of air molecules out through the bottom.

Nanocardboard as a nanoscale analog of hollow sandwich plates (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06818-6) (DX)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Washington Post:

In the quixotic battle against old age, some people use skin care and spin class.

That’s not enough for Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old who feels like he’s in his 40s. The Dutch pensioner is asking a court in his hometown of Arnhem, southeast of Amsterdam, to change his birth certificate so that it says he took his first breath on March 11, 1969, rather than on March 11, 1949. The judges heard his case Monday and promised they would render a verdict in the next several weeks.

Ratelband sees his request as no different from a petition to change his name or the gender he was assigned at birth — and isn’t bothered that this comparison might offend transgender people, whose medical needs have been recognized by the American Medical Association. It comes down to free will, he maintains.

I want to be recognized as an alien trapped in an Earthling's body.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

AWI [Alfred Wegener Institute] researchers recently assessed subglacial lakes detected by satellite, and found very little water. But if that's the case, what is the source of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet's massive ice streams?

In the course of an extensive Antarctic expedition, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) investigated several lakes beneath Recovery Glacier that had been previously detected by satellite remote sensing. The experts found very few substantial bodies of water, which is a surprising result: up to that point, the scientific community had assumed that overflowing lakes below the East Antarctic Ice Sheet were the reason that ice masses began sliding and forming ice streams to begin with. This new study has just been released in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Recovery Glacier, located in the Coats Land region of Antarctica, has always been a slumbering giant, transporting ice from the high plateau of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet down toward the Weddell Sea at a snail's pace of only 10 to 400 metres per year. Its drainage area stretches nearly 1000 kilometres inland from the Filchner Ice Shelf on the coast, and is nearly three times the size of Germany. These two aspects could make the glacier into a potential threat, in the event that climate change accelerates its tempo some time in the future. According to forecasts, if this comes to pass, Recovery may also be the stream through which East Antarctica loses the most ice. A global sea-level rise would be the direct result.

The ice sheet had been presumed to be hydroplaning on sub-glacial meltwater.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Family tree of 400 million people shows genetics has limited influence on longevity

Although long life tends to run in families, genetics has far less influence on life span than previously thought, according to a new analysis of an aggregated set of family trees of more than 400 million people. The results suggest that the heritability of life span is well below past estimates, which failed to account for our tendency to select partners with similar traits to our own. The research, from Calico Life Sciences and Ancestry, was published in GENETICS, a journal of the Genetics Society of America.

"We can potentially learn many things about the biology of aging from human genetics, but if the heritability of life span is low, it tempers our expectations about what types of things we can learn and how easy it will be," says lead author Graham Ruby. "It helps contextualize the questions that scientists studying aging can effectively ask."

Ruby's employer, Calico Life Sciences, is a research and development company whose mission is to understand the biology of aging. They teamed up with scientists from the online genealogy resource Ancestry, led by Chief Scientific Officer Catherine Ball, to use publicly available pedigree data from Ancestry.com to estimate the heritability of human life span. [...] Previous estimates of human life span heritability have ranged from around 15 to 30 percent.

takyon writes:

Gab cries foul as Pennsylvania attorney general subpoenas DNS provider

Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro is probing Gab's relationship with its new domain name provider, Epik. A subpoena sent to Epik, dated Wednesday, seeks "any and all documents which are related in any way to Gab." In a statement to Ars, Gab described the investigation as a "baseless, political, and emotionally-driven witch hunt."

[...] Eric Goldman, a legal scholar at Santa Clara University, told us that the law is clear that Gab would not be liable for hosting content from the Pittsburgh shooter. Not only are the posts likely protected by the First Amendment, but a law called Section 230 gives service providers like Gab—not to mention upstream service providers like GoDaddy and Epik—an extra layer of protection against liability for user-submitted content.

So then what is Pennsylvania's attorney general investigating? Shapiro's office hasn't returned emails and a phone call asking about that. But two legal scholars I talked to for this story couldn't think of a legitimate reason for seeking these kinds of documents. "I struggle to see a legit basis for this," said Ken White, a First Amendment attorney and the proprietor of the popular Popehat blog. Seeking information about Gab's DNS provider "doesn't make any sense at all," legal scholar Eric Goldman told us. In another now-deleted tweet, Gab described the subpoena as a form of harassment. Could this be an attempt to punish Epik for doing business with Gab? Goldman described this as plausible and said that this kind of tactic could raise First Amendment issues. [...] Goldman doubted that an attorney general sending out subpoenas would be enough, on its own, to violate the First Amendment. But if it were part of a broader campaign to discourage providers from doing business with Gab, that could raise significant free speech concerns.

Previously: Social Media and the Pittsburgh Shooter: Gab.com Going Down
Gab's Plan To Use Blockchain To Make Itself Indestructible
Gab is Back

Original Submission