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JoeMerchant writes:

Blizzard has handed Diablo I to Good Old Games.com for DRM free distribution in its original form, and also with some Direct X video mode freshening courtesy of the GOG development staff.

The Diablo code is original, 1996 vintage, doesn't require internet connection for single player, and does allow multi-player via vintage Battle.Net servers.

My question: does it run (well) in a VirtualBox VM? If so, perhaps opening up full Admin privileges to 23 year old network code isn't such a bad thing - just take a snapshot of your uninfected image before starting online play, and if you get PWNed outside the game, you can restore from your save point.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

[Update (2019-03-08_12:00:00 UTC): Apparently, the NASA channel is rebroadcast on YouTube; no word yet on a separate live stream. --martyb]

Dragon has Docked-But the Real Pucker Moment for SpaceX's Capsule Awaits :

[...] This week after undocking from the station early Friday morning, the spacecraft will burn its thrusters to perform a deorbit burn, essentially slowing its velocity enough to nudge itself out of orbit and begin the process of falling back to Earth. This will occur at around 7:50am ET. Splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean should come at about 8:45am ET.

As the vehicle descends, its speed must slow from a starting point of about 27,000km/hour (~16,777mph) as it steadily encounters thicker atmosphere. Temperatures outside the capsule will exceed those on the surface of the Sun, testing Dragon's heat shield. Rather than breathing fire, Dragon will attempt to survive it.

The two most critical moments will come during entry to Earth's atmosphere and near the end of the descent when Dragon's four main parachutes deploy. At the top of the atmosphere, there is a small chance the vehicle will begin to roll uncontrollably due to Dragon's design, since the capsule is not symmetrical to the placement of engine thrusters. And with Dragon's parachutes—the last critical step to arresting its fall—everything just has to work.

[...] "There's a high pucker factor with re-entry," said Garrett Reisman, a veteran of two space shuttle landings. Still a consultant for SpaceX, Reisman helped lead the design of Dragon for the company from 2011 to 2018. "I'm not saying that I'll be really, really nervous coming home on Friday, but when it finally happens I'll feel really good about it."

Besides great pictures from the launch and through to the docking of Demo-1, there is in-depth discussion of the challenges of using parachutes for the landing as well as the Demo-2 mission's testing of the new emergency escape system.

takyon writes:

Xiaomi Teams Up with Light for Multi-Module Smartphone Cameras

Xiaomi and Light, a computational imaging firm, have announced at Mobile World Congress that the two companies will be working together to develop new multi-module cameras for smartphones. The two companies promised that the jointly-developed cameras will feature DSLR-level capabilities, but did not disclose when the first product from the joint project is expected to come to fruition.

Light specializes on computational imaging solutions using multiple camera arrays. The company has gone so far as to develop their own chip that can work with 6, 12, or 18-camera arrays. And while Xiaomi and Light aren't specifying just how big of a camera array they're looking to develop, we're likely looking at something in the lower-bounds of those number, if only due to the limited size of smartphones. For reference's sake, a 6-module camera would be very similar to what Nokia has done for their Nokia 9 PureView.

Cover the entire back of a smartphone with cameras, then gingerly hold it using the corners.

Related: Meta-Lens Works in the Visible Spectrum, Sees Smaller Than a Wavelength of Light
A Pocket Camera with Many Eyes - Inside the Development of Light
Caltech Replaces Lenses With Ultra-Thin Optical Phased Array
Nokia (HMD Global) Partners with Zeiss for Optics Capabilities
Google Reportedly Acquires Lytro, Which Made Refocusable Light Field Cameras
LG's V40 Smartphone Could Include Five Cameras
Leaked Image Shows Nokia-Branded Smartphone With Five Rear Cameras

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takyon writes:

Samsung Ships First Commercial Embedded MRAM (eMRAM) Product

Samsung today announced that it has started mass production of its first commercial embedded Magnetic Random Access Memory (eMRAM). Made using its 28FDS (28nm FD-SOI[*]) process technology, the eMRAM module promises to offer higher performance and endurance when compared to eFlash. Furthermore it can be integrated into existing chips, according to the manufacturer.

[...] MRAM is one of the highest-performing and most durable non-volatile memory technologies [that] currently exists. Because its eMRAM does not require an erase cycle before writing data, it is 1,000 times faster than eFlash, Samsung says. It also uses lower voltages when compared to eFlash, and therefore consumes around 1/400th the energy during writing process, according to the maker.

On the flip side, however, MRAM's density and capacity both fall far short of 3D XPoint, DRAM, and NAND flash, which greatly reduces its addressable markets. Samsung is not formally disclosing the capacity of its new eMRAM module; the company is only saying that it yet has to tape out a 1 Gb eMRAM chip in 2019, which strongly suggests that the current offering has a lower capacity.

[*] FD-SOI: Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator.

Related: Everspin Announces New MRAM Products

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Valve says it won't publish game about raping women, after 'significant discussion'

Valve has at last responded to a mounting controversy concerning an indie game designed entirely around the violent sexual assault of women. The statement, posted to the Steam Blog earlier today, makes clear that Valve will in fact not distribute the visual novel, which was called Rape Day and scheduled for release in April through the company's Steam Direct distribution channel. The declaration marks a quizzical few days of silence from the video game developer and marketplace owner, which has taken varying, occasionally radical stances to moderation on Steam in the past few years.

In a policy change announced last year, Valve said it would let basically anything onto the platform so long as it was not illegal or very obviously trolling to illicit negative reactions from the general public. So far, the only category to meet that definition included visual novels and other games featuring the sexual exploitation of children, which Valve banned last December. In this case, Valve says Rape Day posed "unknown costs and risks," without clarifying which rule it broke.

Developer's website. Also at Ars Technica, Business Insider, and Kotaku.

Previously: "Active Shooter" Game on Steam Sparks Uproar
Valve Still Lives in the Waking Nightmare of Web 2.0
Valve Attempts to Define "Troll Games" in Order to Ban Them on Steam

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The largest of the great lakes in the United States, Lake Superior

Lake Superior’s ice coverage has greatly surpassed expectations this year.

Earlier in the season, forecasters predicted the lake would reach a little more than 50 percent ice coverage this winter. But as of Friday, Lake Superior was over 85 percent covered, far exceeding the prediction and the lake’s long-term average of 55 percent, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, or GLERL.

This year’s frigid conditions triggered the rapid expansion of the ice that exceeded predictions, said Jia Wang, a research ice climatologist and physical oceanographer at GLERL.

[...] Earlier this week, ice coverage increased about 10 percent within 12 hours, rising from around 75 percent at 2 p.m. Wednesday to nearly 85 percent by 2 a.m. Thursday.

[...] The last time the lake ice reached 100 percent coverage was 1996, which is the only time 100 percent coverage on Lake Superior has been noted since records started in 1973, according to GLERL data.

http://www.ironmountaindailynews.com/news/local-news/2019/03/lake-superior-ice-coverage-nears-90-percent-exceeding-predictions/

[Updated to fix title; changed "Exceeds 90 Percent" to be "Exceeds 85 Percent". --martyb]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Corn and other important crops can now be gene edited by pollen carrying CRISPR

The genome editor CRISPR has transformed many areas of biology, but using this tool to enhance certain varieties of crops such as wheat and corn remains difficult because of the plants' tough cell walls. Now, a major agricultural company has creatively solved that problem by using pollen from one genetically modified plant to carry CRISPR's components into another plant's cells. The solution promises to speed the creation of better and more versatile crops, scientists say.

In its initial experiments, the company has edited varieties of corn to have more or heavier kernels, which could make them higher yielding [DOI: 10.1038/s41587-019-0038-x] [DX]. "Nice!" says Daniel Voytas, a plant biologist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul who helped invent a different genome editor and co-founded another company to exploit it. "It's exciting that an increasing number of research groups—both in academia and industry—are thinking of new ways to deliver gene-editing [components] and to efficiently recover gene-edited plants."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

All the bad press about Facebook might be catching up to the company. New numbers from Edison Research show an an estimated 15 million fewer users in the United States compared to 2017. The biggest drop is in the very desirable 12- to 34-year-old group. Marketplace Tech got a first look at Edison's latest social media research. It revealed almost 80 percent of people in the U.S. are posting, tweeting or snapping, but fewer are going to Facebook. Marketplace's Kimberly Adams talked with Larry Rosin, president of Edison Research.

[...] Adams: But if we look at Facebook's earnings report, they are still reporting an increasing number of active users. What's behind the difference between what the company is saying and what your survey found?

Rosin: When they're producing those numbers, they're typically talking about their global platform. This is a survey just of the USA. Furthermore, we're asking about usage. We're saying, "Do you currently use Facebook?" Facebook is probably measuring it on, "Do you ever open the app, or do you ever use it on any level?"

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The World's Last Blockbuster Has No Plans to Close:

The second-to-last Blockbuster, a squat blue-and-yellow slab wedged next to a real estate agency in Western Australia, will stop renting videos on Thursday and shut down for good at the end of the month. Two stores in Alaska, part of the final group of Blockbuster outlets in the United States, closed in July.

That will make the Blockbuster in Bend, Ore., one of a kind: a corporate remnant, just off the highway, near a cannabis retailer and a pet cremation service.

[...] But when Sandi Harding, the general manager of Bend's Blockbuster store, heard that she would be running what is effectively the Lonesome George of video-rental chains, she posted a giddy message on Facebook: "Holy Cow it's exciting"

[...] The Bend store became a Blockbuster franchise in 2000. It has about 4,000 active accounts and signs up a few fresh ones each day, Ms. Harding said. Some of the new customers are tourists who have traveled hours out of their way to stop in.

[...] One possible explanation for the store's long life: Bend is in a region that the city's mayor, Sally Russell, describes as having "huge expanses with really small communities" that often do not have easy access to the high-speed internet necessary for content streaming.

Many residents of outlying areas stop at Blockbuster during their weekly trips to town to run errands, drawn in part by the store's seven-day rental policy, Ms. Russell said, adding that the store's last-in-the-world status could even give it a lift.

And who could ever forget Carl and Ray?

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Capturing bacteria that eat and breathe electricity

[...] Voila! They had succeeded in capturing their prey – heat-loving bacteria that "breathe" electricity through the solid carbon surface of the electrodes.

The WSU team, in collaboration with colleagues from Montana State University, published their research detailing the multiple bacterial communities they found in the Journal of Power Sources.

"This was the first time such bacteria were collected in situ in an extreme environment like an alkaline hot spring," said Mohamed, adding that temperatures in the springs ranged from about 110 to nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

These tiny creatures are not merely of academic interest.

They may hold a key to solving some of the biggest challenges facing humanity – environmental pollution and sustainable energy. Such bacteria can “eat” pollution by converting toxic pollutants into less harmful substances and generating electricity in the process.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Google tool lets any AI app learn without taking all your data

A new computing tool developed by Google will let developers build AI-powered apps. The upside is it's doing so without sucking up all of your information.

Google on Wednesday released TensorFlow Federated, open-source software that incorporates federated learning, an AI training system. It works by using data that's spread out across a lot of devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to teach itself new tricks. But rather than send the data back to a central server for study, it learns on your phone or tablet itself and sends only the lesson back to the app maker.

Federated learning runs "part of the machine learning algorithm right next to where the data is on the device," Alex Ingerman, a product manager at Google Research, said in an interview. The algorithm applies what it already knows to the data on your phone, such as suggesting replies to emails, and creates a summary of what it learned in the process to send back.

TensorFlow Federated: Machine Learning on Decentralized Data

TensorFlow Federated (TFF) is an open-source framework for machine learning and other computations on decentralized data. TFF has been developed to facilitate open research and experimentation with Federated Learning (FL), an approach to machine learning where a shared global model is trained across many participating clients that keep their training data locally. For example, FL has been used to train prediction models for mobile keyboards without uploading sensitive typing data to servers.

I wonder. If the mother ship no longer gets the raw data to train, what if there is an improved learning algorithm they would like to use?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In a presentation at this year's RSA Conference, taking place in San Francisco this week, Dr L Jean Camp, a professor at Indiana University Bloomington in the US, and her doctoral candidate Sanchari Das, detailed their research into why people aren't using Yubico security keys or Google’s hardware tokens for multi-factor authentication (MFA).

For those who don't know: typically, you use these gadgets to provide an extra layer of security when logging into systems. You enter your username and password as usual, then plug the USB-based key into your computer and tap a button to activate it. The thing you're trying to log into checks the username and password are correct, and that the physical key is valid and tied to your account, before letting you in.

That means a crook has to know your username and password, and have your physical key to log in as you. We highly recommend you investigate activating MFA on your online accounts, particularly important ones such as your webmail.

What the pair found during their research work derails any previous assumptions that the lack of MFA uptake is because people are stupid, or can't use the technology. What it comes down to is education and communicating risk.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Google is rolling out Speed Limit information, and more importantly, Speed Camera alerts to Google Maps widely this week.

Google Maps is also rolling out the ability to see speed cameras on a much larger basis too. For users in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, India, and Indonesia, speed cameras will be marked on the map. An audible alert also plays when users approach these cameras as noted in a smaller rollout earlier this week.

Interestingly, in Alberta this is actually being looked on favorably by government officials

"That camera is only facing one way," Sgt. Gottschling said. "Let's say it's only facing northbound, but you can approach southbound or eastbound ... you are still going to get Google telling you caution.

"So you're going to go slowly and cautiously through there which, lo and behold, is actually what we want."

Sergeant Kerry Bates with the Edmonton Police traffic division agrees.

"If it slows people down and they know it's there, that's good," he said. "It's fine. It does the trick."

Anyone else trying to figure the evil angle?

Original Submission

Mykl writes:

Following on from an earlier story about the Canadian Crypto exchange whose owner died under suspicious circumstances with the keys to $137m of customers' assets, Business Insider Australia reports that some progress has been made[*] Spoiler alert: the funds are all gone.

The case has sparked numerous theories, including that he faked his own death and ran off with the cash. However, court-appointed auditor Ernst & Young was able to crack Cotten's laptop. What they found, according to an EY report dated March 1, the accounts had been emptied in April 2018, eight months before his death.[*]

[* Ed.'s Update/Correction -- FP]

[...] A court-appointed auditor, Ernst & Young, has secured Cotten’s laptop, home computer, USB keys and home computer. Using public blockchain records, it determined the digital wallets thought to contain millions were emptied in April, eight months before his death [...]

I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Apple supplier Corning is working on flexible glass for foldable displays

Corning, the glass manufacturer that currently provides Apple, and many other smartphone makers, with Gorilla Glass for its phones, is working on a bendable version of the glass that could be with us in less than two years. In an interview with Wired (via MacRumors), Corning general manager John Bayne said that the challenge was creating a glass that's thin enough to bend without sacrificing the resilience needed to protect a display.

In 2017 Apple said it was investing $200 million in the company to "support Corning's R&D, capital equipment needs, and state-of-the-art glass processing." Patents filed by Apple suggest that it's already investigating the area, while a report published last year claimed Apple could release a foldable device as early as 2020.

[...] Bayne notes that the company is targeting a "3- to 5-millimeter bend radii" for its 0.1mm thick glass, which could allow a foldable phone to be as thin as 6mm to 10mm with the folding screen wrapped around the outside. For reference, the iPhone XS is 7.7mm thick.

[...] The company already produces the bendable Willow Glass, which can be rolled up like a sheet of paper. Unfortunately, its current manufacturing process makes it impossible for use in phone screens, since it has to be dipped into a salt solution. This would corrode the transistors that would need to be in the glass if it was meant for a display, according to Bayne.

We'll call it... Glastic.

Also at Ars Technica, Engadget, CNBC, and Notebookcheck.

Original Submission