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takyon writes:

Magnitude 7.0 Earthquake Shakes Alaska, Damaging Roads, Buildings

In Anchorage, Alaska, people took refuge under tables and fled outdoors on Friday morning, as a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck just north of the city.

Some roads, bridges and buildings have been damaged, and schools and some businesses are shuttered for the day. Gov. Bill Walker has issued a declaration of disaster.

Anchorage police report "major infrastructure damage" across the city. "Many homes and buildings are damaged," the police department says. "Many roads and bridges are closed."

A tsunami warning was temporarily issued for coastal regions of Cook Inlet and the Southern Kenai Peninsula, but it has since been canceled.

The earthquake struck just before 8:30 a.m. local time (12:29 p.m. ET). The epicenter was about 8 miles north of Anchorage, at a depth of some 25 miles.

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Phoenix666 writes in with a story from ScienceDaily:

[...] academics from the Sydney Centre in Geomechanics and Mining Materials (SciGEM) including Professor of Civil Engineering, Itai Einav and Postdoctoral Research Associate, Dr James Baker have developed a new X-ray method which allows scientists to see inside granular flows. Named X-ray rheography, or "writing flow," their approach gathers information using 3-point high-speed radiography, and then assembles this information by solving a Sudoku-style puzzle.

[...] The new X-ray rheography technique has the ability to form a three dimensional image of moving grains, which has helped the researchers better understand how particles flow and behave in various circumstances. In many examples they have found that granular media tends to flow in unique patterns and waves.

"Unlike fluids, we discovered that confined, three-dimensional steady granular flows arise through cycles of contraction and expansion, à la 'granular lungs'. Again, unlike fluids, we also found that grains tend to travel along parallel lines, even near curved boundaries.

[...] Journal Reference:
James Baker, François Guillard, Benjy Marks, Itai Einav. X-ray rheography uncovers planar granular flows despite non-planar walls. Nature Communications, 2018; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07628-6

At last we can know exactly how the Days of our Lives move.

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Phoenix666 writes:

BBCTech:

Free charging for electric cars will be available for customers at some Tesco stores from next year.

Tesco, in partnership with Volkswagen, plans to install almost 2,500 charging bays at up to 600 stores by 2020.

A standard 7 kW charger will be available for free, but drivers will have to pay for a faster service.

Customers will be able to leave their cars to charge while doing their shopping, which should give time for a "substantial" free charge, VW said.

Adding chargers to the supermarket parking lots will offer convenience for EV driving shoppers, and normalize EV use for others by increasing their visibility.

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Phoenix666 writes:

ArsTechnica:

The hits just keep coming for the various Defenders series. Per Deadline Hollywood, Netflix announced this evening that it has canceled Daredevil, just weeks after the show concluded its critically acclaimed third season. This news shouldn't be too surprising, but this one is a particularly tough blow for fans.

Clearly Netflix is cleaning house, since this follows surprise cancellations in October of Iron Fist and Luke Cage. That just leaves Jessica Jones and The Punisher on Netflex's[sic] roster of Defenders. Both have new seasons in the pipeline that are currently slated to air on Netflix as planned, according to Deadline's sources. But they will, in all likelihood, be on the chopping block eventually as well.

Marvel/Disney may be planning to revive the Defender series on its upcoming streaming service.

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takyon writes:

Nine people charged with selling Samsung's curved display tech

Prosecutors in South Korea have indicted nine people and two companies for allegedly selling Samsung's curved-edge OLED display tech (which it uses in its flagship Galaxy phones) to a company in China. The CEO of Samsung supplier Toptec Co Ltd was among three people arrested over the scheme. Prosecutors say he and eight employees received about $13.8 million for the intellectual property.

The group allegedly formed a shell company that received documents related to display panels from Samsung subsidiary Samsung Display, and sold them and "3D lamination" technology to the unidentified Chinese company. Toptec sells automated equipment to make display panels for phones and the company has denied any wrongdoing, according to Reuters.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

How a phone app detected Sprint's alleged throttling of Skype

The US government killed off its net neutrality rules in June of this year, but that doesn't mean no one is monitoring whether carriers are blocking or throttling online services. Northeastern University researchers led by computer science professor David Choffnes recently determined that Sprint was throttling Skype. Their finding was based on an analysis of user-initiated tests conducted with Wehe, an app for Android and iPhone that the researchers developed to detect throttling. About one-third of the tests detected Sprint's throttling of Skype, Choffnes said.

If the findings are correct, Sprint would be violating a Federal Communications Commission rule requiring Internet providers to disclose throttling. Even though the FCC no longer bans throttling itself, the agency requires ISPs to publicly disclose any blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization. But was Sprint really throttling Skype? Sprint denies it and points out that researchers haven't released the data underlying their conclusions. Choffnes acknowledges that his research has limitations and that he couldn't detect the throttling in the lab. But he's still confident that Skype was getting a raw deal on Sprint's network, and he explained why in an interview with Ars.

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takyon writes:

NASA selects nine companies for commercial lunar lander program

NASA has picked nine companies, ranging from startups to aerospace giants, to be eligible for future contracts to deliver payloads to the surface of the moon, but with no guarantee of business for any of them. NASA announced Nov. 29 the selections as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, where the agency will buy space on future commercial lunar landers to carry science instruments and other payloads. The winning companies are:

• Astrobotic Technology, Inc.: Pittsburgh[, Pennsylvania]
• Deep Space Systems: Littleton, Colorado
• Draper: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Firefly Aerospace, Inc.: Cedar Park, Texas
• Intuitive Machines, LLC: Houston[, Texas]
• Lockheed Martin Space: Littleton, Colorado
• Masten Space Systems, Inc.: Mojave, California
• Moon Express: Cape Canaveral, Florida
• Orbit Beyond: Edison, New Jersey

The companies selected range from a major aerospace corporation, Lockheed Martin, to little-known startups, and from companies that were longtime competitors in the now-expired Google Lunar X Prize for commercial lunar landers to those that had not previously publicly expressed plans for such landers.

[...] In the press release announcing the winning companies, NASA said the companies are eligible for up to $2.6 billion in awards over the next ten years. The agency didn't disclose the maximum contract amounts for each company. The awards are all indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts, and it's not unusual for the actual value of such awards to be far less than the maximum value. For now, each company will receive a small, unspecified amount of funding to develop a payload users' guide. NASA will later compete individual task orders among the companies to fly specific payloads to the moon.

[...] NASA is providing no development money for any of the CLPS companies, who will have to raise the funding needed for their landers from other sources. Both Bridenstine and Zurbuchen acknowledged that some of the winners might not be able to deliver on their landers, while new companies may emerge that could be eligible to join the program through future "on-ramps."

Also at Space.com and Ars Technica.

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canopic jug writes:

The NewScientist has an update on the work to interpret the Inca khipus, or chains of knots, which are known to have been used for accounting. Now it is looking likely that the khipus were a full writing system containing narratives, but that they must be read through sense of touch not just vision.

Under strict supervision, Hyland set about photographing the cords, reviewing the manuscripts and taking notes. Each khipu had hundreds of pendant cords, and they were more colourful and complex than anything she had ever seen. It was clear the various animal fibres used could only be identified by touch. The villagers told her the khipus were the "language of animals" and insisted that the different fibres have significance.

Her analysis eventually revealed that the pendants came in 95 different combinations of colour, fibre type and direction of ply. That is within the range of symbols typically found in syllabic writing systems, where a set of signs (say, the letters C-A-T) aligns with the sound of speech (the word "cat"). "I thought 'Woah, could this be a syllabic writing system?'," says Hyland. She has since hypothesised that the khipus contain a combination of phonetic symbols and ideographic ones, where a symbol represents a whole word.

Earlier this year, Hyland even managed to read a little of the khipus. When deciphering anything, one of the most important steps is to work out what information might be repeated in different places, she says. Because the Collata khipus were thought to be letters, they probably encoded senders and recipients. That is where Hyland started. She knew from the villagers that the primary cord of one of the khipus contained ribbons representing the insignia of one of two clan leaders.

Earlier in SN:
Harvard Student Helps Crack Mystery of Inca Code (2018)
Twisted Textile Cords May Contain Clues to Inca Messages (2017)

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Whoever writes:

As a former H1 visa holder, this article interested me and shows the value that immigrants bring to the USA.

According to this opinion piece, the USA and specifically Santa Clara county is only the leader in tech because of immigrants.

In 1965, the Immigration Act of 1924 was repealed, opening the gates to immigrants and allowing a critical mass of technology companies to develop in clusters around Boston and Santa Clara County. A significant proportion of all the best graduates from the best schools in India (IIT) came to the USA -- in effect, the USA siphoned off India's best talent and used it to develop leadership in technology and to grow the economy.

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martyb writes:

Anna and the Apocalypse: A Christmas Zombie Movie, with Singing

Anna and the Apocalypse is a Christmas musical featuring zombies and high school drama. Yes, you read that right. A movie about the undead, with song and dance. If that premise isn't weird to you, I don't know [what] would be.

I couldn't help but tilt my head when I first saw the synopsis of the film, which hits theaters Friday. Is it like Krampus, or are they going to slay zombies with jazz hands? (If you haven't seen Krampus, it's a 2015 genuinely scary film about a horned beast that punishes naughty children during Christmas time.)

Anna and the Apocalypse, on the other hand, is rather cheesy.

The film, directed by John McPhail and written by Alan McDonald and Ryan McHenry, sets the scene in a small town called Little Haven. As Christmas approaches, high school senior Anna and her friends are trying to sort out their own life problems when zombies overrun their neighborhood overnight.

Like many high school movies, this one has bullies, outcasts, supportive parents, a mean principal and, of course, romance. The main characters' feelings play out in dance numbers as the undead threaten their lives.

Sounds like an extended version of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA?

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hellcat writes:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It's not everyday an issue of Science contains articles about newly discovered "fresh" impact craters (Hiawatha) or fingers the source of the worst year to be alive (534 in case you're time traveling).

But the same issue has these open (no paywall) articles summarizing what we do know about eating and living long healthy lives.

Quick takeaways:

• The 1977 guidelines that we all grew up with were written by politicians, not scientists.
• Trans-fats are bad, no matter what.
• Intermittent fasting can help your brain, kidneys, chemotherapy effectiveness and recovery, AND encourage weight loss.
• Refined sugars and carbs are generally bad for you.

There's way more than any summary can contain. In fact, almost every section of these four meta-articles could be their own discussion topic.

Since I care for all of you, I want you all to be as healthy and live as long as you want. These articles contain the state of-the-art on how to do that through proper eating habits.

Optimizing the diet.
Dietary fat: From foe to friend?
A time to fast
The gut microbiota at the intersection of diet and human health
Swifter, higher, stronger: What’s on the menu?

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Venmo lost a lot of cash due to payment fraud

Venmo apparently had a good reason for disabling web payments and temporarily shutting off instant money transfers -- it was losing money hand over fist. The Wall Street Journal has obtained documents indicating that the PayPal-owned service took a 40 percent larger than expected operating loss ($40 million) in the first quarter of 2018, and payment fraud played a major factor in that financial blow. Where Venmo had expected dodgy transactions to represent 0.24 percent of its activity, the numbers shot up to 0.4 percent in March.

[...] If the scoop is accurate, though, it illustrates the challenges Venmo is facing. While the company might be synonymous with mobile payments for some, it's also expensive for PayPal. Venmo doesn't charge for most transactions and only recently started charging for instant transfers. If it's going to have a healthy long-term future, it might need to keep a very close eye on fraud and find more ways to generate cash.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

For more than 30 years, Intel Corp. has dominated chipmaking, producing the most important component in the bulk of the world’s computers. That run is now under threat from a company many Americans have never heard of.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. [TSMC] was created in 1987 to churn out chips for companies that lacked the money to build their own facilities. The approach was famously dismissed at the time by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. founder Jerry Sanders. "Real men have fabs,"[*] he quipped at a conference, using industry lingo for factories.

These days, ridicule has given way to envy as TSMC plants have risen to challenge Intel at the pinnacle of the $400 billion industry. AMD recently chose TSMC to make its most advanced processors, having spun off its own struggling factories years before.

[*] "fab" is shorthand for Semiconductor fabrication plant.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/intel-s-chipmaking-throne-is-challenged-by-a-taiwanese-upstart

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

After donating to SoylentNews, my next favorite online charity is archive.org — I use the Wayback Machine to fix old broken links, check books out of their huge online library and listen to the live music archive.

Since I've donated before, I got the once-a-year reminder from them today and this time they have an unnamed donor that is matching donations (don't know for how long). So I sent them twenty-five bucks for a job well done.

Brewster Kahle's pitch is here, https://archive.org/donate/

...
We need a Web that’s reliable. That sets the record straight. We need a Web that’s on our side. A Web that’s not creepy, that doesn’t spy on us. So let’s fix the frickin’ Web!

When I started this nonprofit 22 years ago, people called me crazy. Collect web pages? Why? Who would want to read a book on a screen?

Did you know, this past year we’ve:

        We’ve fixed 1.5 million broken links in Wikipedia using the Wayback Machine?
        Journalists have cited the Internet Archive 1200+ times to set the record straight?
        Readers have borrowed 4 million books and downloaded 900 million texts with complete reader privacy?

Nearly all of the archive.org pages I visit show 0 trackers with EFF Privacy Badger. Oddly the donation page shows a half dozen, perhaps tied to the various payment options (like credit card logos)? I blocked them all and the page still displayed OK.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

DOJ made secret arguments to break crypto, now ACLU wants to make them public

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Fresno, California, denied prosecutors' efforts to compel Facebook to help it wiretap Messenger voice calls. But the precise legal arguments that the government made, and that the judge ultimately rejected, are still sealed.

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union formally asked the judge to unseal court dockets and related rulings associated with this ongoing case involving alleged MS-13 gang members. ACLU lawyers argue that such a little-charted area of the law must be made public so that tech companies and the public can fully know what's going on. This element of the case began in August 2018, when an FBI special agent told the court in an affidavit that "there is no practical method available by which law enforcement can monitor these calls" between suspected MS-13 gangsters. Authorities already had traditional wiretaps and were able to intercept written messages between the defendants, who are now in custody.

While traditional telecom companies must give access to police under a 1990s-era law known as CALEA, Internet-based calls are exempt, despite the government's previous efforts to change the law. Prosecutors seemingly argued that Facebook nevertheless had to comply with the government's request. The judge reportedly denied the government's efforts during an August 14, 2018 hearing. In their new filing, ACLU lawyers pointed out that "neither the government's legal arguments nor the judge's legal basis for rejecting the government motion has ever been made public."

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