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takyon writes:

Intel has teased* plans to return to the discrete graphics market in 2020. Now, some of those plans have leaked. Intel's X^e branded GPUs will apparently use an architecture capable of scaling to "any number" of GPUs that are connected by a multi-chip module (MCM). The "e" in X^e is meant to represent the number of GPU dies, with one of the first products being called X²/X2:

Developers won't need to worry about optimizing their code for multi-GPU, the OneAPI will take care of all that. This will also allow the company to beat the foundry's usual lithographic limit of dies that is currently in the range of ~800mm². Why have one 800mm² die when you can have two 600mm² dies (the lower the size of the die, the higher the yield) or four 400mm² ones? Armed with One API and the Xe macroarchitecture Intel plans to ramp all the way up to Octa GPUs by 2024. From this roadmap, it seems like the first Xe class of GPUs will be X2.

The tentative timeline for the first X2 class of GPUs was also revealed: June 31st, 2020. This will be followed by the X4 class sometime in 2021. It looks like Intel plans to add two more cores [dies] every year so we should have the X8 class by 2024. Assuming Intel has the scaling solution down pat, it should actually be very easy to scale these up. The only concern here would be the packaging yield – which Intel should be more than capable of handling and binning should take care of any wastage issues quite easily. Neither NVIDIA nor AMD have yet gone down the MCM path and if Intel can truly deliver on this design then the sky's the limit.

AMD has made extensive use of MCMs in its Zen CPUs, but will reportedly not use an MCM-based design for its upcoming Navi GPUs. Nvidia has published research into MCM GPUs but has yet to introduce products using such a design.

Intel will use an MCM for its upcoming 48-core "Cascade Lake" Xeon CPUs. They are also planning on using "chiplets" in other CPUs and mixing big and small CPU cores and/or cores made on different process nodes.

*Previously: Intel Planning a Return to the Discrete GPU Market, Nvidia CEO Responds
Intel Discrete GPU Planned to be Released in 2020
Intel Announces "Sunny Cove", Gen11 Graphics, Discrete Graphics Brand Name, 3D Packaging, and More

Related: Intel Integrates LTE Modem Into Custom Multi-Chip Module for New HP Laptop
Intel Promises "10nm" Chips by the End of 2019, and More

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Dead People And Pets Are Being Forged Into Pretty Blue Diamonds - Here's How It Works

When a person dies, cremation is an increasingly popular option. The practice eclipsed burials in the US in 2015 and is expected to make up more than half of all body disposals by 2020, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

[...] While at least five companies offer a "memorial diamond" service, Algordanza in Switzerland is one of the industry leaders — its services are available in 33 countries, and the company told Business Insider it sold nearly 1,000 corporeal gems in 2016.

Algordanza also claims to be the only company of its kind that operates its own diamond-growing lab for cremains — one of two in the world. (The other is in Russia.)

"It allows someone to keep their loved one with them forever," Christina Martoia, a spokesperson for Algordanza US, told Business Insider. "We're bringing joy out of something that is, for a lot of people, a lot of pain."

[...] Making a diamond from a dead person begins with cremation. The process typically leaves behind about 2.2kgs to 4.5kgs of ashes, much of which is carbon. Martoia said Algordanza requires a minimum of 500g of cremains. 'That's kind of the magic number, where our engineers can guarantee there will be enough carbon to make a memorial diamond,' she said.

[...] 'The diamonds can range from clear to very deep blue,' Martoia said. 'The more boron, the deeper the blue.' [...] Natural diamonds form out of carbon that gets stuck in lava tubes about a mile deep in the Earth's crust. To emulate that environment, Algordanza inserts the cell (now packed with graphite) into a platter and slides it into a high-temperature high-pressure (HPHT) growing machine. That machine can heat a growth cell to nearly 1,370 degrees celcius. It also squeezes the cell under 394,625kgs-per-square-inch of pressure.

[...] Depending on how big a customer wants their diamond to be, it can take six to eight weeks in an HPHT machine to coax graphite to crystallize into a gem. 'The larger the diamond, the longer it takes to grow,' Martoia said. When enough time has passed, technicians remove the puck of graphite and crack it open. Inside awaits a rough, uncut, and unpolished diamond.

Some customers take the rough gem, but many opt to have their memorial diamonds cut, faceted, and polished by a jeweller in Switzerland. Algordanza's prices start at $3,000 for a 0.3 carat diamond. Martoia said the average order is about 0.4 to 0.5 carat, though US customers usually request bigger, 0.8-carat diamonds.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Facebook calls for government regulation

Mark Zuckerberg says regulators and governments should play a more active role in controlling internet content.

In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Facebook's chief says the responsibility for monitoring harmful content is too great for firms alone. He calls for new laws in four areas: "Harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability."

It comes two weeks after a gunman used the site to livestream his attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.

"Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Mr Zuckerberg writes, adding that Facebook was "creating an independent body so people can appeal our decisions" about what is posted and what is taken down.

He also describes a new set of rules he would like to see enforced on tech companies. These new regulations should be the same for all websites, he says, so that it's easier to stop "harmful content" from spreading quickly across platforms.

Also at The Telegraph, CNBC, CNET

Original Submission

martyb writes:

At 71, She's Never Felt Pain or Anxiety. Now Scientists Know Why.

She'd been told that childbirth was going to be painful. But as the hours wore on, nothing bothered her — even without an epidural.

"I could feel that my body was changing, but it didn't hurt me," recalled the woman, Jo Cameron, who is now 71. She likened it to "a tickle." Later, she would tell prospective mothers, "Don't worry, it's not as bad as people say it is."

It was only recently — more than four decades later — that she learned her friends were not exaggerating.

Rather, there was something different about the way her body experienced pain: For the most part, it didn't.

Scientists believe they now understand why. In a paper published Thursday in The British Journal of Anaesthesia, researchers attributed Ms. Cameron's virtually pain-free life to a mutation in a previously unidentified gene. The hope, they say, is that the finding could eventually contribute to the development of a novel pain treatment. They believe this mutation may also be connected to why Ms. Cameron has felt little anxiety or fear throughout her life and why her body heals quickly.

"We've never come across a patient like this," said John Wood, the head of the Molecular Nociception Group at University College London.

[...] Dr. Srivastava referred her to University College London's Molecular Nociception Group, a team focused on genetic approaches to understanding the biology of pain and touch. They had some clues for her. In recent decades, scientists have identified dozens of other people who process pain in unusual ways. But when Dr. James Cox, a senior lecturer with that group and another author of the new paper, inspected her genetic profile, it did not resemble that of others known to live without pain.

Eventually he found what he was looking for on a gene the scientists call FAAH-OUT. All of us have this gene. But in Ms. Cameron's, "the patient has a deletion that removes the front of the gene," he said. Additional blood work confirmed this hypothesis, he said.

No pain, no gain?

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Matter Waves and Quantum Splinters:

Physicists shatter Bose-Einstein condensate, get different pieces every time

Physicists in the United States, Austria and Brazil have shown that shaking ultracold Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) can cause them to either divide into uniform segments or shatter into unpredictable splinters, depending on the frequency of the shaking.

"It's remarkable that the same quantum system can give rise to such different phenomena," said Rice University physicist Randy Hulet, co-author of a study about the work published online today in the journal Physical Review X. Hulet's lab conducted the study's experiments using  lithium BECs, tiny clouds of ultracold atoms that march in lockstep as if they are a single entity, or matter wave. "The relationship between these states can teach us a great deal about complex quantum many-body phenomena."

The research was conducted in collaboration with physicists at Austria's Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) and Brazil's University of São Paulo at São Carlos.

[...]To investigate Faraday waves[*], the team confined BECs to a linear one-dimensional waveguide, resulting in a cigar-shaped BEC. The researchers then shook the BECs using a weak, slowly oscillating magnetic field to modulate the strength of interactions between atoms in the 1D waveguide. The Faraday pattern emerged when the frequency of modulation was tuned near a collective mode resonance. But the team also noticed something unexpected: When the modulation was strong and the frequency was far below a Faraday resonance, the BEC broke into "grains" of varying size. Rice research scientist Jason Nguyen, lead co-author of the study, found the grain sizes were broadly distributed and persisted for times even longer than the modulation time. "Granulation is usually a random process that is observed in solids such as breaking glass, or the pulverizing of a stone into grains of different sizes," said study co-author Axel Lode, who holds joint appointments at both TU Wien and the Wolfgang Pauli Institute at the University of Vienna. Images of the quantum state of the BEC were identical in each Faraday wave experiment. But in the granulation experiments the pictures looked completely different each time, even though the experiments were performed under identical conditions.

[*] Faraday wave on Wikipedia.

Going to need some very small tweezers to get out those splinters.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchanges' Karpeles Appeals Conviction:

Mark Karpeles, who headed Mt. Gox, a Japan-based bitcoin exchange that went bankrupt after a massive hacking, is appealing his conviction on charges of manipulating electronic data.

Karpeles' lawyer Nobuyasu Ogata said Friday his client was just trying to reduce risks for Mt. Gox users.

The Tokyo District Court cleared Karpeles earlier this month of embezzlement and breach of trust charges, handing him a suspended sentence, meaning he wouldn't have to serve jail time.

But he was found guilty of the dubious data charges. The court said he had manipulated data to harm his clients, betraying their trust and abusing his engineering skills. Prosecutors had demanded 10 years in prison.

Karpeles, a 33-year-old Frenchman and longtime resident of Japan, was arrested in August 2015.

[...] Karpeles said he decided to appeal because the judge had not fully looked at the defense arguments.

[...] "I believe appealing to the judgment is appropriate so that I can be judged again in full consideration of all the facts."

Maybe he believes in Magic?

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Florida Utility to Close Natural gas Plants, Build Massive Solar-Powered Battery:

On Thursday, Florida Power and Light (FPL) announced that it would retire two natural gas plants and replace those plants with what is likely to be the world's largest solar-powered battery bank when it's completed in 2021.

FPL, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, serves approximately 10 million customers in Florida. The utility says its plan, including additional efficiency upgrades and smaller battery installations throughout its service area, will save customers more than $100 million in aggregate through avoided fuel costs. FPL also says its battery and upgrade plan will help avoid 1 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

The plan calls for the construction of a 409 megawatt (MW) / 900 megawatt-hour battery installation at what will be called the FPL Manatee Energy Storage Center. For context, the largest battery installation in the world was built by Tesla at a Hornsdale wind farm in South Australia; that has a capacity and power rating of 100 MW / 129 MWh.

The batteries will be charged by an existing solar plant in Manatee County, FPL said. Being able to store solar power in batteries is a huge advantage to the utility. Solar photovoltaic panels are intermittent sources of energy, because they only produce power when the sun is shining. Generally, that happens in the morning and toward the middle of the day, when power demand tends to be low. If a utility can store excess power in a bank of batteries, it can deploy that electricity later in the afternoon when people return home from work and turn on their air conditioners, running up electricity demand.

FPL made no announcement as to the supplier, price, or even the battery chemistry. Maybe they can arrange to have one of these patrolling the grounds?

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Tech Layoffs to Top 1,000 in Bay Area by Late May, State Reports Show:

Tech and web-based companies intend to cut well over 1,000 jobs in the Bay Area between now and Memorial Day, according to new official filings with [California] state labor officials.

SAP, Oracle America, PayPal, Instacart and Thin Film Electronics are among the technology companies that have alerted the state's Employment Development Department of their intentions to reduce staffing levels.

All told, about 1,100 jobs will be lost through the employment reductions being planned by the five companies, WARN notices filed with the state EDD show.

According to the filing, SAP will eliminate 446 jobs — 179 in Palo Alto, 173 in San Ramon and 94 in South San Francisco.

Oracle intends to cut 352 positions: 255 in Redwood City and 97 in Santa Clara.

PayPal plans to reduce staffing levels by 183 jobs: 160 in San Jose and 23 in San Francisco. The South Bay job cuts are slated to occur at the e-commerce titan's offices on North First Street in San Jose.

Thin Film Electronics has issued an alert of 54 upcoming job cuts in San Jose.

Given the high cost of living in the area, let's hope none of them end up homeless.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

World first as living HIV patient donates kidney in US

In a world first, US doctors have transplanted a kidney from one HIV-positive patient to another. The operation took place at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, with both patients said to be doing well.

"This is the first time someone living with HIV has been allowed to donate a kidney, ever, in the world," Dr Dorry Segev said in a release.

It was previously thought that HIV carried too great a risk factor for kidney disease in the donor. But new types of anti-retroviral drugs used to treat the disease are seen as safe for the kidney.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://fossforce.com/2019/03/foss-on-the-road-to-nowhere/

The FSF and Linux Foundation are not the only organizations that could assume the moral leadership of FOSS. practices the same ideals that existed in FOSS twenty years ago. Similarly, after years of inactivity, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has been struggling recently to again be relevant. However, both have a long way to ago before they can speak for the majority of FOSS, assuming they would care to.

Maybe the loss of a single direction is a sign of the success of FOSS. Maybe shared ideals can only exist at a certain point in a movement's development, and to wish otherwise is only meaningless nostalgia. Yet, despite the success of FOSS, today it has only partly transformed technology and business, and much remains to do. Unless we decide to content ourselves with what has already been done, I think that a sense of meaning — of making a difference — is more useful than seeing FOSS as nothing more than a shorter time to market.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/exclusive-more-than-1-million-acres-of-us-cropland-ravaged-by-floods/ar-BBVoRKX:

At least 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of U.S. farmland were flooded after the "bomb cyclone" storm left wide swaths of nine major grain producing states under water this month, satellite data analyzed by Gro Intelligence for Reuters showed.

Farms from the Dakotas to Missouri and beyond have been under water for a week or more, possibly impeding planting and damaging soil. The floods, which came just weeks before planting season starts in the Midwest, will likely reduce corn, wheat and soy production this year.

"There's thousands of acres that won't be able to be planted," Ryan Sonderup, 36, of Fullerton, Nebraska, who has been farming for 18 years, said in a recent interview.

"If we had straight sunshine now until May and June, maybe it can be done, but I don't see how that soil gets back with expected rainfall."

Spring floods could yet impact an even bigger area of cropland. The U.S. government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has warned of what could be an "unprecedented flood season" as it forecasts heavy spring rains. Rivers may swell further as a deep snow pack in northern growing areas melts.

[...] The flooded acreage represents less than 1 percent of U.S. land used to grow corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cotton, sorghum and barley. In 2018, some 240 million total acres of these crops were planted in the United States, USDA data shows.

[...] In Wisconsin more than 1,000 dairy and beef animals were lost during winter storms and 480 agricultural structures collapsed or damaged, according to an email from Sandy Chalmers, executive director of the Wisconsin state office of the USDA's Farm Service Agency.

martyb writes:

Initial Findings Put Boeing's Software at Center of Ethiopian 737 Crash:

At a high-level briefing at the Federal Aviation Administration on March 28, officials revealed "black box" data from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 indicated that the Boeing 737 MAX's flight software had activated an anti-stall feature that pushed the nose of the plane down just moments after takeoff. The preliminary finding officially links Boeing's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) to a second crash within a five-month period. The finding was based on data provided to FAA officials by Ethiopian investigators.

The MCAS was partly blamed for the crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX off Indonesia last October. The software, intended to adjust the aircraft's handling because of aerodynamic changes caused by the 737 MAX's larger turbofan engines and their proximity to the wing, was designed to take input from one of two angle-of-attack (AOA) sensors on the aircraft's nose to determine if the aircraft was in danger of stalling. Faulty sensor data caused the MCAS systems on both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights to react as if the aircraft was entering a stall and to push the nose of the aircraft down to gain airspeed.

On March 27, acting FAA Administrator Daniel Ewell told the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee that there had been no flight tests of the 737 MAX prior to its certification to determine how pilots would react in the event of an MCAS malfunction. He said that a panel of pilots had reviewed the software in a simulator and determined no additional training was required for 737-rated pilots to fly the 737 MAX.

What follows is from memory from what I've gleaned from reading several news accounts over the past few weeks. I am not a pilot, so take this with the proverbial $unit of salt.

martyb writes:

Man Gets 20 Years for Deadly "Swatting" Hoax:

Tyler Barriss has shown little remorse for the death of Andrew Finch.

Tyler Barriss, whose hoax call to Wichita police led to the shooting death of an innocent man, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the Associated Press reports. The sentence in Kansas federal court is a stark reminder of the serious consequences of the deadly prank called "swatting."

The December 2017 death of Andrew Finch began with an online feud over a Call of Duty game. Casey Viner, then around 18 years old, allegedly recruited Barriss to "swat" the Wichita home of Shane Gaskill, who was about 19. Barriss called Wichita police pretending to be a deranged man with a gun holding members of his family hostage, giving what he believed was the target's address.

As Barriss expected, the police responded by dispatching a SWAT team. But Gaskill lied to Barriss about where he lived. As a result, police surrounded a home occupied by the Finch family, which had nothing to do with the online dispute.

When 28-year-old Andrew Finch opened his front door, a police officer shot him. The officer later said he saw Finch reaching for his waist and feared he had a gun. In reality, Finch was unarmed.

[...] In April, the incarcerated Barriss briefly gained access to the Internet—and he took the opportunity to demonstrate that he had learned nothing from his time behind bars.

"All right, now who was talking shit?" he tweeted on April 6, 2018. "Your ass is about to get swatted."

[...] Prosecutors decided not to charge the police officer who shot Finch.

With good behavior, he could get something like 30 months off his sentence. Something tells me he might have difficulty with that "good behavior" part.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Icelandic Airline Wow Air Collapses and Cancels all Flights:

Iceland's low cost carrier Wow Air has canceled all flights and told passengers to book with other airlines.

Its website has a travel alert that begins: "Wow Air has ceased operation. All Wow Air flights have been canceled."

The alert said people who wanted to travel should now look for "so-called rescue fares" which may now be offered by rival airlines.

Wow added that those who made bookings by credit card or via a European travel agent should try to get their money back through those businesses. It said some passengers may be entitled to compensation from the airline itself.

[...] The company's model was to entice passengers with ultra-low prices before slapping on extra charges for seat selection, baggage, leg room and expensive refreshments. A typical base fare for a Wow flight from the U.S. to Europe could come in at less than $200.

A fall in tourist visits to Iceland and rising fuel costs had been cited as headwinds to profitability.

The airline had also suffered poor customer reviews and was particularly criticized over recurring delays.

You don't always get what you pay for, but you generally do not get what you do not pay for.

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump wrote in with a story suggestion which became:

Quarter of Sharks and Rays Threatened with Extinction:

A quarter of the world's sharks and rays are threatened with extinction according to The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, with ray species found to be at a higher risk than sharks. The findings are part of the first ever global analysis of these species carried out by the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG).

The study, which comes at the start of the year marking the 50th anniversary of The IUCN Red List, was published today in the journal eLIFE. It includes the analysis of the conservation status of 1,041 shark, ray and closely related chimaera species.

According to the findings, sharks, rays and chimaeras are at a substantially higher risk than most other groups of animals and have the lowest percentage of species considered safe – with only 23% categorized as Least Concern.

"Our analysis shows that sharks and their relatives are facing an alarmingly elevated risk of extinction," says Dr Nick Dulvy, IUCN SSG Co-Chair and Canada Research Chair at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. "In greatest peril are the largest species of rays and sharks, especially those living in shallow water that is accessible to fisheries."

You can browse The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species online.

Original Submission