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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

What ancient poop reveals about the rise and fall of civilizations

The pre-Columbian city of Cahokia was once among the most populous and bustling settlements north of Mexico. Nestled along the Mississippi River in what is now southern Illinois, its tens of thousands of inhabitants fished, farmed, traded and thrived. But by 1400 A.D., Cahokia's population had dwindled to virtually nothing.

While theories abound about what happened to the indigenous people of Cahokia, AJ White, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at UC Berkeley, has studied ancient poop samples to connect the city's 13th century population plunge – at least in part – to climate change.

The findings were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1809400116] [DX].

"We might think that poop just sort of mysteriously goes away because we have the luxury of plumbing, but to people in the past, it really didn't. It was present in the landscape," White says. "We used microscopic amounts of human poop and built a reconstruction of population changes," he adds. "The idea is that the more people who were pooping in an area around Cahokia, the more of these molecules they left behind."

[...] "When you don't have census or historical records, it's hard archaeologically to understand ancient demographics," White says. "That's when we can turn to ancient poop."

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for soysheep9857

There are many reasons to be critical of Google. But on Thursday, General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stopped just short of accusing the tech giant of treason.

Dunford's incendiary comments came during a budgetary hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee this afternoon. During his time for questioning, freshman Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, turned to the subject of Google's decision to back away from projects with the Pentagon. Hawley asked the panel if he understood the situation correctly and that the men were saying, "that Google, an American company, supposedly, is refusing to work with the Department of Defense, but is doing work with China, in China, in a way that at least indirectly benefits the Chinese government."

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan tempered that assertion, explaining that he hasn't heard anyone use the word "refuse," but that Google has shown "a lack of willingness to support DOD programs."

But General Dunford was more open to going on the attack. When given the chance to elaborate on his concerns, he told Senator Hawley:

You know, senator, I'm nodding my head on exactly the point that you made: that the work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefitting the Chinese military. And I've been very public on this issue as well; in fact, the way I described it to our industry partners is, 'look we're the good guys in the values that we represent and the system that we represent is the one that will allow and has allowed you to thrive,' and that's the way I've characterized it. I was just nodding that what the secretary was articulating is the general sense of all of us as leaders. We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing there is that indirect benefit, and frankly 'indirect' may be not a full characterization of the way it really is. It's more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.

Source: https://gizmodo.com/pentagon-brass-bafflingly-accuses-google-of-providing-d-1833302885

Related: Google Employees on Pentagon AI Algorithms: "Google Should Not be in the Business of War"
About a Dozen Google Employees Have Resigned Over Project Maven
Google Drafting Ethics Policy for its Involvement in Military Projects
Google Will Not Continue Project Maven After Contract Expires in 2019
Microsoft Misrepresented HoloLens 2 Field of View, Faces Backlash for Military Contract

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realDonaldTrump writes:

oann.com/top-gamer-ninja-made-1-million-to-promote-eas-apex-legends-launch-source

BENGALURU (Reuters) – What are a few hours playing videogames and a handful of tweets worth? $1 million if you are Tyler Blevins, known to millions as “Ninja,” the world’s most-followed computer gamer.

Blevins was one of a few select professionals with huge followings pulled in by videogame giant Electronic Arts Inc to play and promote its latest title, “Apex Legends,” in the first hours of the launch last month, generating a buzz that notched 10 million signups in the first three days.

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realDonaldTrump writes:

oann.com/tel-aviv-tries-out-new-crosswalk-lights-for-cellular-addicts

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel’s bustling business capital wants to stop “smartphone zombies” in their tracks.

Tel Aviv has placed ground-level LED lightstrips, which turn red and green, at a central crosswalk, hoping to catch the attention of pedestrians so engrossed in their mobile devices that they don’t look up before stepping into the road.

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canopic jug writes:

Security researcher Brian Krebs has posted an interview with Allison Nixon on why phone numbers are unsuitable for authentication and identification.

Phone numbers stink for security and authentication. They stink because most of us have so much invested in these digits that they’ve become de facto identities. At the same time, when you lose control over a phone number — maybe it’s hijacked by fraudsters, you got separated or divorced, or you were way late on your phone bill payments — whoever inherits that number can then be you in a lot of places online.

How exactly did we get to the point where a single, semi-public and occasionally transient data point like a phone number can unlock access to such a large part of our online experience? KrebsOnSecurity spoke about this at length with Allison Nixon, director of security research at New York City-based cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AzumaHazuki

Why Is Customer Service So Bad? Because It’s Profitable.

American consumers spend, on average, 13 hours per year in calling queue with an estimated monetary cost of $38 billion. A third of complaining customers must make two or more calls to resolve their complaint. And that ignores the portion who simply give up out of exasperation after the first call. So why is customer service still so bad? Part of the answer is that a subset of companies purposely make callers jump through hoops with the hope that they’ll simply give up. When this happens, the company saves money on redress costs. At first glance, this may seem problematic: what about customer retention and brand reputation? Research shows that companies with a large market share — think airlines, cable, and internet services — can get away with bad practices because customers have nowhere else to go. This may help us understand why some of the most hated companies in America are so profitable.

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martyb writes:

Elon Musk Shows off Fiery SpaceX Starship Heatshield Test:

[...] After successfully sending the first commercial crew capsule to the International Space Station in early March, Elon Musk's spaceflight company is on a hot streak and it's looking to continue that with an upcoming test launch of its much-discussed Starship.

But before Starship gets off the ground, Musk has given spacefaring fans a glimpse of the hexagonal heatshield tiles that will eventually protect the craft from searing heat.

Testing Starship heatshield hex tiles pic.twitter.com/PycE9VthxQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2019

Musk explained that the hottest parts of the heatshield, glowing white in the short video above, reached a maximum temperature of around 1650 Kelvin (approx. 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, approx. 1,375 degrees Celsius). He suggested this could withstand the extreme temperatures associated with returning to Earth, but it is slightly lower than the temperatures NASA's Space Shuttles were built to withstand (approx. 1,500 degrees Celsius).

Also at Teslarati.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2019/03/15/high-quality-bespoke-nanocrystals/

Tiny, easy-to-produce particles, called quantum dots, may soon take the place of more expensive single crystal semiconductors in advanced electronics found in solar panels, camera sensors and medical imaging tools. Although quantum dots have begun to break into the consumer market – in the form of quantum dot TVs – they have been hampered by long-standing uncertainties about their quality. Now, a new measurement technique developed by researchers at Stanford University may finally dissolve those doubts.

[...] The researchers focused on how efficiently quantum dots reemit the light they absorb, one telltale measure of semiconductor quality. While previous attempts to figure out quantum dot efficiency hinted at high performance, this is the first measurement method to confidently show they could compete with single crystals.

[...] “These materials are so efficient that existing measurements were not capable of quantifying just how good they are. This is a giant leap forward,” said Alivisatos. “It may someday enable applications that require materials with luminescence efficiency well above 99 percent, most of which haven’t been invented yet.”

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martyb writes:

ATLAS Observes Light Scattering off Light — New result studies photons interacting at high energies:

[...] Today, at the Rencontres de Moriond conference (La Thuile, Italy), the ATLAS Collaboration reported the observation of light-by-light scattering with a significance of 8.2 standard deviations. The result utilises data from the most recent heavy-ion operation of the LHC, which took place in November 2018. About 3.6 times more events (1.73 nb⁻¹) were collected compared to 2015. The increased dataset, in combination with improved analysis techniques, allowed the measurement of the scattering of light-by-light with greatly improved precision. A total of 59 candidate events were observed (see Figure 2), for 12 events expected from background processes. From these numbers, the cross section of this process, restricted to the kinematic region considered in the analysis, was calculated as 78 ± 15 nb.

Curiously, the signature of this process – two photons in an otherwise empty detector (see the event display in Figure 1) – is almost the opposite of the tremendously rich and complex events typically observed in high-energy collisions of two lead nuclei. Observing it required the development of improved trigger algorithms for fast online event selection, as well as a specifically-adjusted photon-identification algorithm using a neural network, as the studied photons have about ten times less energy than the lowest energetic photons usually measured with the ATLAS detector. Being able to record these events demonstrates the power and flexibility of the ATLAS detector and its event reconstruction, which was designed for very different event topologies.

This new measurement opens the door to further study the light-by-light scattering process, which is not only interesting in itself as a manifestation of an extremely rare QED phenomenon, but may be sensitive to contributions from particles beyond the Standard Model. It allows for a new generation of searches for hypothetical light and neutral particles.

[...]Links:

• Observation of light-by-light scattering in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions with the ATLAS detector (ATLAS-CONF-2019-002, see figures)
• Moriond EW presentation by Mateusz Dyndal: Light-by-light scattering in ATLAS and CMS in Run 2
• Evidence for light-by-light scattering in heavy-ion collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC (Nature Physics 13 (2017) 852, see figures)
• Press Statement: ATLAS sees first direct evidence of light-by-light scattering at high energy
• ALP paper: Searching for axion-like particles with ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions (arXiv: 1607.06083)
• See also the full lists of ATLAS Conference Notes and ATLAS Physics Papers.

So how does this fit in with the wave/particle duality of light?

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Physicists reverse time using quantum computer

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated the probability that an electron in empty interstellar space will spontaneously travel back into its recent past. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

"This is one in a series of papers on the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. That law is closely related to the notion of the arrow of time that posits the one-way direction of time from the past to the future," said the study's lead author Gordey Lesovik, who heads the Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information Technology at MIPT.

"We began by describing a so-called local perpetual motion machine of the second kind. Then, in December, we published a paper that discusses the violation of the second law via a device called a Maxwell's demon," Lesovik said. "The most recent paper approaches the same problem from a third angle: We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time."

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martyb writes:

Myspace Lost all the Music its Users Uploaded Between 2003 and 2015:

It's been a year since the music links on Myspace stopped working; at first the company insisted that they were working on it, but now they've admitted that all those files are lost: "As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Dr. Jana Jentzsch at DPO@myspace.com."

Yeah, apparently they don't have a backup.

Just another reminder that "cloud" means: someone else's computer(s).

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RandomFactor writes:

The Goog posted a teaser video clip about its vision for the future of gaming to be revealed on Tuesday at an annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The clip cycles through an accelerating collage of scenes one might find in video games, but says nothing about what Google will announce at the event, which will be live-streamed on YouTube.

In a potentially related bit of prospecting someone uncovered a recent patent

that Google filed for a video game controller [which] hinted that the tech firm might be planning to release its own console and controller to go along with a streaming service.

Microsoft appears to share this vision,

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said late last year that a keenly anticipated "xCloud" streaming service was in "early days."

Amazon also has a related pre-existing entry into this same space with it's popular Twitch game play-streaming service, and I can't imagine they are sitting still.

The US video game industry generated a record $43.4 billion in revenue in 2018, up 18 percent from the prior year, according to data released by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and NPD Group.

I suppose that's just too attractive a pie to leave in the hands of customer-centric game developers like Activision, Sony, and EA.

Are you ready for the 800lb streaming gorillas?

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

We are aware of the report of a new security exploit called SPOILER[*] which can gain access to partial address information during load operations. We believe that our products are not susceptible to this issue because of our unique processor architecture. The SPOILER exploit can gain access to partial address information above address bit 11 during load operations. We believe that our products are not susceptible to this issue because AMD processors do not use partial address matches above address bit 11 when resolving load conflicts.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-240

[*] The SPOILER speculation flaw is described in this research paper on ArXiv. We covered the report previously.

So is this yet another "trick" used by Intel to increase performance at the expense of good security practice?

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Uber's self driving car program in AZ isn't out of the woods yet. The Phoenix New Times https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/claim-ducey-state-blamed-uber-self-driving-death-unsafe-policy-11205678 reported last month that lawyers representing family of Uber victim Herzberg have sued the state of AZ for $10M, fingering Governor Ducey for failing to protect the people of his state.

After quoting legal precedent about the state's responsibility to keep roadways "reasonably safe" for travelers, the claim says the state has "failed to make roadways safe, allowing autonomous vehicles to operate on public roadways in an unsafe manner."

The state's oversight of autonomous vehicles was negligent, it states, adding that Ducey's 2015 executive order facilitating the testing of self-driving vehicles was created "negligently and without sufficient investigation into the safety of Uber's autonomous vehicles. Any oversight provided by a committed, ADOT, or DPS, was wholly insufficient, and placed an unreasonably high risk of harm to the citizens of Arizona."

The claim goes on to quote Ducey's 2016 invitation to Uber, in which the governor quipped that "California put the brakes on innovation and change," but he wouldn't. "This rush to be first in the 'tech boom' era made Arizona's roadways unreasonably dangerous," the claim states.

New Times made a similar argument that Ducey was at least partially responsible for Herzberg's death in the April 12 cover story, "Ducey's Drive-By: How Arizona Governor Helped Cause Uber's Fatal Self-Driving Car Crash."

Last time Gov. Ducey appeared here on SN was back on December 03 2016, https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/12/02/2341241 He announced that Lucid would start making cars in a new plant in AZ...in 2018. Looks like he missed that prediction --

Officials from electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors, which broke cover from stealth mode in October [cnet.com], made a joint appearance today with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Sonora, Mexico's Governor Claudia Pavlovich Arellano, to announce a manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Arizona. The plant will begin production of Lucid's first car, an electric luxury sedan, in 2018, with parts being supplied from across the border in Sonora, Mexico.

        Governor Ducey said the new plant will create 2,000 jobs by 2022 [cnet.com], and that Lucid Motors has promised to prioritize hiring among Arizona veterans.

        Lucid Motors has shown a very sophisticated operation for its entry as a new automaker, with its Chief Technology Officer, Peter Rawlinson, an alumni of Tesla and Lotus, and Vice President of Design Derek Jenkins having spent time at Mazda and Volkswagen. The as-yet unnamed first model will compete with the Tesla Model S as a luxury sedan, and should boast over 300 miles of range. Lucid has also designed connected features and self-driving capability into this car.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Tens of Thousands of Heart Patients May Not Need Open-Heart Surgery:

The operation is a daring one: To replace a failing heart valve, cardiologists insert a replacement through a patient’s groin and thread it all the way to the heart, maneuvering it into the site of the old valve.

The procedure, called transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), has been reserved mostly for patients so old and sick they might not survive open-heart surgery. Now, two large clinical trials show that TAVR is just as useful in younger, healthier patients.

It might even be better, offering lower risks of disabling strokes and death, compared to open-heart surgery. Cardiologists say it will likely change the standard of care for most patients with failing aortic valves.

[...]In open-heart surgery, a patient’s ribs are cracked apart and the heart is stopped to insert the new aortic valve.

With TAVR, the only incision is a small hole in the groin where the catheter is inserted. Most patients are sedated, but awake through the procedure, and recovery takes just days, not months, as is often the case following the usual surgery.

The results “shift our thinking from asking who should get TAVR to why should anyone get surgery,” said Dr. Howard Herrmann, director of interventional cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania.

When every sneeze following open-heart surgery feels like the rib cage is going to break open... I'd certainly opt for TAVR!

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