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takyon writes:

Two months after mishap, Russian Soyuz rockets back into space with crew

Less than two months after a booster separation issue with a Soyuz rocket caused a dramatic, high-gravity landing, the Russian vehicle soared back into space on Monday at 6:31 ET (11:31 UTC). The launch from Kazakhstan, under mostly clear, blue skies, was nominal as each of the rocket's first, second, and third stages fired normally.

The launch sent NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian David Saint-Jacques, and Russian Oleg Kononenko into space aboard their Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft. After making four orbits around the Earth, their Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the Russian segment of the International Space Station at 12:35pm ET (17:35 UTC) Monday.

According to SpaceFlightNow.com the docking was successful.

Previously: Soyuz Crew Vehicle Fails Mid-Flight, Astronauts OK
Soyuz Failure Narrowed Down to Collision Between Booster and Core Stage
NASA Confident in Soyuz, Ready for Crewed Launch in December
Roscosmos Completes Investigation into October Soyuz Failure, Finds Assembly Issue

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takyon writes:

Qatar Will Pull Out Of OPEC, As Rift With Saudi Arabia Deepens

Qatar plans to leave OPEC in January, shaking up the alliance of oil-producing nations and furthering its dispute with Saudi Arabia. Qatar made the announcement on Monday — the same day it informed OPEC.

Qatar's Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said the small Persian Gulf country will leave OPEC because it wants to focus on natural gas — a sector in which Qatar is a world leader. But the move also draws another line of division with Saudi Arabia, the only country with which Qatar shares a land border.

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in June of 2017, in a dramatic move that was matched by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and others. Since then, Saudi Arabia has maintained a boycott against Qatar, a country that has sometimes pursued its own foreign policy goals against the will of its fellow Sunni states.

[...] Qatar's exit from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will become official on Jan. 1, 2019, Kaabi said at a news conference in Doha Monday. The country will still attend the group's winter meeting in Vienna, which is scheduled to begin on Thursday.

See also: Qatar to quit OPEC after more than 57 years, denies decision related to Saudi-led boycott

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takyon writes:

Nvidia has announced its $2,500 Turing-based Titan RTX GPU. It is said to have a single precision performance of 16.3 teraflops and "tensor performance" of 130 teraflops. Double precision performance has been neutered down to 0.51 teraflops, down from 6.9 teraflops for last year's Volta-based Titan V.

The card includes 24 gigabytes of GDDR6 VRAM clocked at 14 Gbps, for a total memory bandwidth of 672 GB/s.

Drilling a bit deeper, there are really three legs to Titan RTX that sets it apart from NVIDIA's other cards, particularly the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Raw performance is certainly once of those; we're looking at about 15% better performance in shading, texturing, and compute, and around a 9% bump in memory bandwidth and pixel throughput.

However arguably the lynchpin to NVIDIA's true desired market of data scientists and other compute users is the tensor cores. Present on all NVIDIA's Turing cards and the heart and soul of NVIIDA's success in the AI/neural networking field, NVIDIA gave the GeForce cards a singular limitation that is none the less very important to the professional market. In their highest-precision FP16 mode, Turing is capable of accumulating at FP32 for greater precision; however on the GeForce cards this operation is limited to half-speed throughput. This limitation has been removed for the Titan RTX, and as a result it's capable of full-speed FP32 accumulation throughput on its tensor cores.

Given that NVIDIA's tensor cores have nearly a dozen modes, this may seem like an odd distinction to make between the GeForce and the Titan. However for data scientists it's quite important; FP32 accumulate is frequently necessary for neural network training – FP16 accumulate doesn't have enough precision – especially in the big money fields that will shell out for cards like the Titan and the Tesla. So this small change is a big part of the value proposition to data scientists, as NVIDIA does not offer a cheaper card with the chart-topping 130 TFLOPS of tensor performance that Titan RTX can hit.

Previously: More Extreme in Every Way: The New Titan Is Here – NVIDIA TITAN Xp
Nvidia Announces Titan V
Nvidia Announces Turing Architecture With Focus on Ray-Tracing and Lower-Precision Operations
Nvidia Announces RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070 GPUs, Claims 25x Increase in Ray-Tracing Performance
Nvidia's Turing GPU Pricing and Performance "Poorly Received"

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takyon writes:

Robot Janitors Are Coming to Mop Floors at a Walmart Near You

The world's largest retailer is rolling out 360 autonomous floor-scrubbing robots in some of its stores in the U.S. by the end of the[sic] January, it said in a joint statement with Brain Corp., which makes the machines. The autonomous janitors can clean floors on their own even when customers are around, according to the San Diego-based startup.

Walmart has already been experimenting with automating the scanning of shelves for out-of-stock items and hauling products from storage for online orders. Advances in computer vision are also making it possible to use retail floor data to better understand consumer behavior, improve inventory tracking and even do away with checkout counters, as Amazon.com Inc. is trying to do with its cashierless stores. Brain's robots are equipped with an array of sensors that let them to[sic] gather and upload data.

"We can take anything that has wheels and turn it into a fully autonomous robot, provided that it can go slow and stopping is never a safety concern," said Brain Chief Executive Office Eugene Izhikevich. "And it's more than just navigation. It is to robots what Android operating system is to smartphones."

Amazon wants to sell booze at one of its Chicago retail stores

Amazon.com Inc. wants to sell alcohol at its planned new Amazon Go retail store in the Illinois Center. Seattle-based Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) applied for a liquor license from the city of Chicago this month, with "Amazon Retail LLC" applying for package goods liquor license at 111 E. Wacker Drive, floor 1, according to the city.

Amazon announced its fourth Chicago-area Amazon Go retail store earlier this month, planned for Illinois Center, with an opening set for early 2019. None of the current Chicago Amazon Go stores currently sell alcohol.

Previously: Walmart to Deploy Shelf-Scanning Robots at 50 Stores
Amazon Plans to Open as Many as Six More Cashierless Amazon Go Stores This Year
Amazon Considering Opening Up to 3,000 New Cashierless "Amazon Go" Stores

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takyon writes:

AMD's EPYC CPUs have already snatched server market share away from Intel

Intel has enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the server CPU arena for some time. However, AMD's EPYC series of processors, based on the latest iteration of Zen architecture, may change that. The first generation of these chipsets, Naples, managed to reduce Intel's market share to 99% shortly after its launch. This may sound less than impressive, but in a billion-dollar industry, it was possibly quite valuable to AMD.

The latest report on the server market by DRAMeXchange indicates that Intel's share is down to 98% by now. This represents a 100% improvement for AMD. Furthermore, the analysts estimate that the release of EPYC Rome-based silicon will result in further gains. They will ultimately result in a total market share of 5% for these CPUs by the end of 2019.

Intel is keeping AMD under 15%. For now:

Now it's easy to tell that Intel will still remain the dominant player in the market, retaining a 90-95% market share lead over AMD but Intel's Ex-CEO, Brian Krzanich, stated that his company wouldn't want AMD capturing 15-20% server market share. In fact, at the pace at which AMD is gaining their server market share, 15% doesn't really feel like a far cry from now.

[...] Looking at the market penetration rate, Intel's Purley platform has been adopted by 60% users in the server space and is expected to reach 65% in the coming year. On the other hand, AMD's EPYC Naples platform has been adopted by 70% and considering that AMD is keeping socket longevity intact with Rome, we can see the adoption rate further expanding after 7nm chips launch.

Previously: AMD Misses Q1 Earnings Target; Withdraws from High-Density Server Market
AMD Ratcheting Up the Pressure on Intel
More on AMD's Licensing of Epyc Server Chips to Chinese Companies
AMD's server marketshare hits 1% for the first time in 4 years

Related: TSMC Will Make AMD's "7nm" Epyc Server CPUs
Intel Announces 48-core Xeons Using Multiple Dies, Ahead of AMD Announcement

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upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for takyon:

The Boring Company won’t pursue LA tunnel under 405 freeway anymore

Back in August, The Boring Company was already distancing itself from a plan it pitched earlier in the year to build a test tunnel under Sepulveda Boulevard and the 405 freeway in Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, The Boring Company and a group of Westside residents issued a joint statement that they had "amicably settled" a lawsuit brought by the residents against The Boring Company in May of this year, according to the Los Angeles Times. The company, founded by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, said it would drop plans to build the 405 test tunnel and focus instead on building the so-called "Dugout Loop" that will run between a downtown LA Metro station and Dodger Stadium, if all goes as planned.

Elon Musk talks proof-of-concept tunnel parallel to the 405 in Los Angeles Musk announced the 405-parallel tunnel in an evening talk back in May, describing it as a 2.7 mile north-south test tunnel that wouldn't carry the general public—at first. Musk added at the time that The Boring Company would eventually do test rides to get user feedback. The City of Los Angeles appeared poised to fast-track Musk's idea, with LA Metro announcing: "We'll be partners moving forward."

[...] Now, The Boring Company intends to focus on the Dugout Loop, for which it has begun the CEQA permitting process (although it's unclear if a full permit will be acquired before construction starts). Critics have charged that The Boring Company has taken advantage of poorer neighborhoods, like the Hawthorne neighborhood under which Musk's first tunnel is being completed. Meanwhile, richer neighborhoods represented by the coalition of Westside neighborhoods have the resources to fight back. Others might see the opposition from wealthy LA neighborhoods as a form of NIMBYism that stops innovation from coming to impacted LA transit.

For now, Musk's first Hawthorne tunnel is almost complete. The Boring company intends to open the tunnel to the public in December.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Scientists in the U.S. and Japan Get Serious About Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions

It's been a big year for low-energy nuclear reactions. LENRs, as they're known, are a fringe research topic that some physicists think could explain the results of an infamous experiment nearly 30 years ago that formed the basis for the idea of cold fusion. That idea didn't hold up, and only a handful of researchers around the world have continued trying to understand the mysterious nature of the inconsistent, heat-generating reactions that had spurred those claims.

Their determination may finally pay off, as researchers in Japan have recently managed to generate heat more consistently from these reactions, and the U.S. Navy is now paying close attention to the field.

takyon writes:

Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive'

Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

[...] At a workshop at Harvard this week, [a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono] reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.

Alpine ice-core evidence for the transformation of the European monetary system, AD 640–670 (open, DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2018.110) (DX)

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martyb writes:

On Monday, December 3 at 18:31:47 UTC (1:31pm EST) or about 10 hours after the time this story goes live. With this launch, SpaceX would mark 3 milestones:

First, it will be the first time that one of their boosters will have flown 3 times. The first launch of this booster was on May 11 (from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida) and the second was on August 7 (from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station). This launch will be from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California. (Attentive readers will notice that this booster will have been launched from three different launch pads. Another first.)

Second, it will be the most satellites deployed in a single launch by a U.S. company: 64 (15 microsats and 49 cubesats). Note the qualification, though; India's ISRO launched 88 cubesats using their PSLV into a 500 km altitude SSO on Feb 15, 2017.

Third, this would be SpaceX's 19th launch of the year — its most ever.

This flight has been rescheduled from Dec 1 (for weather) and Dec 2 (to check out the second stage). The launch will be live-streamed on YouTube with coverage expected to begin approximately 15 minutes before launch.

Next up is an ISS resupply mission on December 4, scheduled at 18:38 UTC (1:38pm EST). This would be SpaceX's 20th flight of the year and is scheduled 24 hours and 7 minutes after the Dec 3 launch. This launch is from pad SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

But wait, there's more! On Dec 18th, SpaceX plans a GPS satellite launch on December 18 @ 14:24 UTC (9:24am EST) from the same pad (SLC-40) as was used on Dec 4 That would mark a two-week turnaround time for that launch pad.

And, to wrap up the year, SpaceX plans an Iridium Next launch on Dec 30 @ 16:38 UTC (11:38am EDT) from pad SLC-4E at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

Should all these flights go off as planned, this would make for a very Happy New Year for SpaceX as it would mark 22 launches in a single year, just under 2 flights per month!

Sources: Ars Technica and SpaceflightNow.com.

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upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for SoyCow1984:

Revealing hidden information in sound waves

“Acoustic fields are unexpectedly richer in information than is typically thought,” said David Dowling, a professor in U-M’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

[...] Sonar arrays are typically designed to record sounds in specific frequency ranges. Sounds with frequencies higher than an array’s intended range may confuse the system; it might be able to detect the presence of an important contact but still be unable to locate it.

Any time sound is recorded, a microphone takes the role of the human ear, sensing sound amplitude as it in varies in time. Through a mathematical calculation known as a Fourier transform, sound amplitude versus time can be converted to sound amplitude versus frequency.

With the recorded sound translated into frequencies, Dowling puts his technique to use. He mathematically combines any two frequencies within the signal’s recorded frequency range, to reveal information outside that range at a new, third frequency that is the sum or difference of the two input frequencies.

“This information at the third frequency is something that we haven’t traditionally had before,” he said.

In the case of a Navy vessel’s sonar array, that additional information could allow an adversary’s ship or underwater asset to be reliably located from farther away or with recording equipment that was not designed to receive the recorded signal. In particular, tracking the distance and depth of an adversary from hundreds of miles away—far beyond the horizon—might be possible.

And what’s good for the Navy may also be good for medical professionals investigating areas of the body that are hardest to reach, such as inside the skull. Similarly, remote seismic surveys that parse through the earth seeking oil or mineral deposits could also be improved.

[...] More information:

• Study: Revealing hidden information with quadratic products of acoustic field amplitudes

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RandomFactor writes:

Thousands of "gilets jaunes" (yellow vest) protesters, often masked, riot in the streets of Paris and other major French cities for a third weekend. Hundreds have been arrested and injured (including police) in the often violent protests. Reuters documents the activities in some detail. This video shows a mob of protesters surround and attack a policeman (it's ok, he gets away, with help from one or more of the protesters).

The protests are over fuel taxes imposed to discourage fossil fuel use and help France meet its carbon emission goals under the Paris Climate Accord (which the U.S. is not party to.)

With the usual nod to common sense:

The U.S. embassy issued a statement urging citizens to be careful, saying that "violent clashes between police and protesters" continued in at least three of Paris's 20 districts, known as arrondissements. "Avoid all demonstrations, seek shelter in the vicinity of clashes, follow instructions of security personnel"

Chants and graffiti sprayed during the protests sometimes expresses frustration with the administration:

[Some] targeted the Arc de Triomphe, chanting "Macron Resign" and scrawling on the facade of the towering 19th-century arch: "The yellow vests will triumph."

cubancigar11 writes:

Bitcoin just ended its worst-performing month in seven years in terms of month-over-month price declines. While this is comparing rate of fall and not absolute values, the world of economics is run on rate.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency began November at an average price across exchanges of $6,341, but as of 0:00 UTC on December 1 is trading at just $3,964, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.

As it stands, the near $2,400 drop in bitcoin’s price has created a -37.4 percent monthly performance, which is its worst on record since August 2011, when it fell from roughly $8 to $4.80 to print a -40 percent monthly loss.

This may have some good impact for PC gamers:

Bitcoin miners hit hard by the cryptocurrency’s crash may be throwing in the towel.

The Bitcoin network’s hash rate, one way of gauging the computing power dedicated to mining the digital currency, dropped about 24 percent from an all-time high at the end of August through Nov. 24, according to Blockchain.com. While the decline may have partially resulted from miners switching to other cryptocurrencies, JPMorgan Chase & Co. says some in the industry are losing money after Bitcoin’s price tumbled.

A big miner shakeout could be bad news for chipmakers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Nvidia Corp. who supply the industry, along with mining-rig designers like Bitmain Technologies Ltd. that are pursuing initial public offerings.

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RandomFactor writes:

New Metal-Air Transistor Replaces Semiconductors

[Researchers] at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, believe a metal-based field emission air channel transistor (ACT) they have developed could maintain transistor doubling for another two decades.

The team has developed a functional proof of concept and is currently working to improve stability and efficiency.

"Unlike conventional transistors that have to sit in silicon bulk, our device is a bottom-to-top fabrication approach starting with a substrate. This enables us to build fully 3D transistor networks, if we can define optimum air gaps," says Shruti Nirantar, lead author of a paper on the new transistor published this month in Nano Letters [DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b02849] [DX]. "This means we can stop pursuing miniaturization, and instead focus on compact 3D architecture, allowing more transistors per unit volume."

[...] Looking further ahead, she points out that the theoretical speed of an ACT is in the terahertz range, some 10 thousand times as fast as the speed at which current semiconductor devices work.

The approach also has a number of compelling advantages over traditional silicon semiconductors including far fewer processing steps, simpler fabrication on any dielectric surface, and better resistance to radiation.

Narantir concludes:

"With [industry] help and sufficient research funding, there is the potential to develop commercial-grade field emission air-channel transistors within the next decade—and that's a generous timeline. With the right partners, this could happen more quickly."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Satellite data business is Amazon’s next disruption target - SpaceNews.com

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos 18 years ago founded Blue Origin to make space travel cheaper and more accessible. The company on Tuesday announced a new foray into the space business by partnering with defense industry giant Lockheed Martin to provide low-cost ground infrastructure to satellite startups.

The new business venture — called AWS Ground Station — brings to bear the cloud-computing capabilities of Amazon Web Services in ground stations where satellite data is uploaded. Lockheed Martin’s contribution to the partnership is a network of distributed antennas that would supplement traditional dish antennas.

“This partnership is designed to be disruptive and lower the barrier of the cost of entry,” Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space, told SpaceNews. “Startups don’t have to buy computing power or parabolic dishes. You buy what you need, services on demand.”

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The research co-led by Drs. Christelle Not and Benoit Thibodeau from the Department of Earth Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science, The University of Hong Kong, highlights a dramatic weakening of the circulation during the 20th century that is interpreted to be a direct consequence of global warming and associated melt of the Greenland Ice-Sheet. This is important for near-future climate as slower circulation in the North Atlantic can yield profound change on both the North American and European climate but also on the African and Asian summer monsoon rainfall. The findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Geophysical Research Letters.

[...] Interestingly, the research team also found a weak signal during a period called the Little Ice Age (a cold spell observed between about 1600 and 1850 AD). While not as pronounced as the 20th century trend, the signal might confirm that this period was also characterized by a weaker circulation in the North Atlantic, which implies a decrease in the transfer of heat toward Europe, contributing to the cold temperature of this period. However, more work is needed to validate this hypothesis.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/tuoh-oci112318.php

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