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Phoenix666 writes:

Imgur:

Finished project first!

I decided sometime last year that I wanted to make a smart watch from scratch. I am an electrical engineer and product designer by day, so this was a fun side project that had been rolling around in my head for a while now.

Also, this project is full open sourced, the below repo has all of the build files you would need to make your own:

- Circuit board files
- Schematics
- Bill of Materials
- All the code
- STL files for all the prints

github.com/S-March/smarchWatch_PUBLIC

Looks fun. Maybe I'll print my next watch.

Original Submission

jas writes:

Fedora 30, the newest release of the venerable Linux distribution that serves (in part) as the staging environment for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, was released Tuesday, bringing with it a number of improvements and performance optimizations. Fedora 30 uses GCC 9.0, bringing modest performance improvements across all applications that have been recompiled using the new version, as noted by Linux benchmarking website Phoronix.

The new version includes some quality-of-life improvements, for which work began in previous versions. These include the new flicker-free boot process, which hides the GRUB loader/kernel select screen by default, and relies on some creative theming to incorporate the bootsplash image from your hardware into the loading process. This also makes updating software through the Software Center a more seamless process.

If it has been some time since you've taken a look at Fedora, the release of Fedora 30 is a great opportunity to become re-acquainted with the long-running Linux distribution. Improvements to GNOME have redeemed the usability of Fedora well after the initial release of the GNOME 3.x series, while greater attention to usability for users who are not necessarily IT professionals puts it on the same level for ease-of-use as Ubuntu.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/fedora-30-brings-immense-quality-of-life-improvements-to-linux-on-the-desktop/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Microsoft is gearing up to release the next version of the XBox with the key feature of the latest release is that the new XBox won't have a disc drive. While this may reduce the cost of each unit for Microsoft some buyers may regret the absence of the disc player given that many homes no longer have a standalone disc player relying on the games console for playing DVDs.

Perhaps this is a gift from Microsoft to Netflix introducing a new raft of customers looking for online content delivery.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Bloomberg:

For months, Huawei Technologies Co. has faced U.S. allegations that it flouted sanctions on Iran, attempted to steal trade secrets from a business partner and has threatened to enable Chinese spying through the telecom networks it's built across the West.

Now Vodafone Group Plc has acknowledged to Bloomberg that it found vulnerabilities going back years with equipment supplied by Shenzhen-based Huawei for the carrier's Italian business. While Vodafone says the issues were resolved, the revelation may further damage the reputation of a major symbol of China's global technology prowess.

Europe's biggest phone company identified hidden backdoors in the software that could have given Huawei unauthorized access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy, a system that provides internet service to millions of homes and businesses, according to Vodafone's security briefing documents from 2009 and 2011 seen by Bloomberg, as well as people involved in the situation.

Only the Five Eyes, Google, Facebook, and Amazon are allowed to spy.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Bloomberg:

Alphabet Inc. reported first-quarter revenue that missed analysts' estimates and sparked fears that advertisers are shifting some spending to digital rivals.

Shares of Google's parent company were down 7.8 percent during pre-market trading in New York Tuesday. The stock closed at a record $1,296.20 on Monday shortly before its earnings were published.

Sales came in at $29.5 billion, excluding payments to distribution partners, Alphabet said in a statement on Monday. Wall Street was looking for $30.04 billion, according to the average of analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Lookout, Google, there are many other peeping toms who want a turn looking at our data.

See also: Alphabet had more than $70 billion in market cap wiped out, and it's blaming YouTube

Original Submission

upstart writes:

10,000 evacuated in Canada floods as rescuers search for pets

More than 10,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in eastern Canada in recent days as spring floods broke record levels set in 2017, officials said Monday, warning that it could take weeks for the waters to recede.

Meanwhile an operation is underway to rescue pets from homes in the area that had to be abandoned during evacuations.

[...] In the rush to flee the rising water scores of pets were abandoned.

Eric Dussault, whose Animal Rescue Network is spearheading the effort to find the marooned pets, said an emergency shelter has been set up and people with training in animal rescues and expertise in cat and dog behaviors have been sent door to door.

"We have a huge number of animals we need to evacuate. We're working with a list of hundreds of animals supplied by their owners," he said.

About 40 animals were rescued since late Sunday, but the group was too late to save a dog, a guinea pig and another unspecified animal believed to have drowned or died of hypothermia.

"Flooding is incredibly stressful on animals," Dussault told AFP.

Quebec province had about 9,000 people displaced; New Brunswick had about 1,000.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A cryptographic puzzle proposed two decades ago that involves roughly 80 trillion squarings has been cracked much earlier than expected – in just three and a half years.

We say cryptographic because it involves a verifiable delay function [PDF], a moderately hard cryptographic function.

The conundrum was set by Ronald Rivest in 1999, the R in RSA and a computer science professor at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL). Here's how he described the problem:

To solve the puzzle, first compute w = 2^(2^t) (mod n). Then exclusive-or the result with z. (Right-justify the two strings first.) The result is the secret message (8 bits per character), including information that will allow you to factor n. (The extra information is a seed value b, such that 5^b (mod 2^1024) is just below a prime factor of n.)

And t, n, and z are given, and are very large numbers: t is 79685186856218, and the other two have 616 digits each.

In announcing his challenge, Rivest promised to reveal the contents of a time capsule around 2033 – some 70 years after the opening of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which has been revamped to MIT CSAIL, or when the puzzle has been solved, whichever is sooner.

[...] On Monday, the puzzle was solved by Bernard Fabrot, a self-taught independent Java developer from Belgium. The time capsule will, thus, be cracked open by Rivest for the world to see on May 15, and the secret message revealed.

The puzzle involves computing 2^2t (mod n), where n is a 2048-bit product of two prime numbers. You can try to solve the equation directly, but that would take too long. The mathematical enigma is also designed in a way that prevents the use of parallel computing to brute force the solution, since it’s impossible to compute it quickly without knowing the factorization of n. And it's a given you can't factorize n.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[CEO Dennis] Muilenburg said Boeing is making "steady progress" on a fix to the MCAS flight control system that's at the center of crash investigations in Ethiopia and Indonesia, but he stopped short of faulting the software's basic design.

"We've confirmed that it was designed for our standards, certified for our standards and we're confident in that process," he said. "It operated according to those design and certification standards. We haven't seen a technical slip or gap."

Preliminary reports from both crashes suggest that the MCAS system, which is designed to push the Max's nose down under certain flight conditions, was receiving erroneous data from faulty sensors. In both accidents, flight crews struggled unsuccessfully to take control as the airplanes continually dove just after takeoff.

In his remarks, Muilenburg said the incorrect data was a common link in a chain of events that led to both crashes. It's a link Boeing owns and that the software update will fix.

"[The update] will make the aircraft safer going forward," he said. "I'm confident with that change it will be one of the safest airplanes ever to fly."

Without elaborating Muilenburg also said that in some cases pilots did not "completely" follow the procedures that Boeing had outlined to prevent a crash in the case of a MCAS malfunction.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] After a cabinet meeting on Monday, planning minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said President Joko Widodo has decided to move the capital out of Indonesia's main island, Java. [...] "The idea to move the capital city appeared long ago. ... But it has never been decided or discussed in a planned and mature manner," Widodo said before the meeting, according to The Associated Press. Jakarta is plagued by massive challenges. As the BBC has reported, it's the fastest-sinking city in the world, with almost half of its area below sea level. "If we look at our models, by 2050 about 95% of North Jakarta will be submerged," Heri Andreas, an expert in Jakarta's land subsidence at the Bandung Institute of Technology, told the broadcaster.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Kami Altenberg Schaal has been a professional nurse for 22 years. She is pro-vaccine. She gets the flu shot every year as a requirement for her employment, and she vaccinates her family.

[...] Her entire family has been vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, and yet 4 out of 5 members of her family came down with the mumps. Her daughter is a freshman in college, and got the mumps from school.

[...] She isolated her daughter for 5 days ("I know how to isolate a patient, I'm a nurse"), and reported her case to the department of health.

All the members of her family also got booster shots of the MMR vaccine.

17 days after her daughter's exposure, her husband and son woke up with mumps.

After notifying the health department, Kami notified her son's school district as well.

What happened next was apparently something she had not anticipated. Even though her family was fully vaccinated and she followed all the proper medical protocols for dealing with the mumps, many people in her community began to blame her, including some of her medical colleagues, for not vaccinating their children (even though she had!)

takyon writes:

Anki is closing the doors on its toy robot business

Anki, the startup responsible for adorable robotics, is closing its doors and will terminate nearly 200 employees Wednesday. CEO Boris Sofman broke the news to staff today, Recode reports. In a statement provided to Engadget, the company said, "A significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement."

The news comes as a surprise, given that things seemed to be going well for Anki. Since its launch in 2010, the startup has raised more than $200 million in venture capital. Its main products Cozmo and Vector seemed to be successes. Vector launched last fall after a $2 million Kickstarter campaign, and most recently, it received Alexa integration. And Cozmo has been credited with teaching kids to code. The only shadow of a doubt seemed to be that the devices appeared more like toys than the advanced, AI-based robots that they were. Still, Microsoft, Amazon and Comcast had reportedly expressed interest in acquiring the company.

Learn to code job-killing robots.

Also at Recode.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Hubble Space Telescope Has Just Found Solid Evidence of Interstellar Buckyballs

In the bewildering quagmire that is the gas between the stars, the Hubble Space Telescope has identified evidence of ionised buckminsterfullerene, the carbon molecule known colloquially as "buckyballs".

Containing 60 carbon atoms arranged in a soccer ball shape, buckminsterfullerene (C₆₀) occurs naturally here on Earth - in soot. But in 2010, it was also detected in a nebula; in 2012 [open, DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-3933.2012.01213.x] [DX], it was found in gas orbiting a star. Now we have the strongest evidence yet that it's also floating in the interstellar medium - the sparse, tenuous gas between the stars.

"Combined with prior, ground-based observations .. our Hubble Space Telescope spectra place the detection of interstellar [buckminsterfullerene] beyond reasonable doubt," the researchers wrote in their paper [open, DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab14e5] [DX].

Buckminsterfullerene.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

This gaming phone has a built-in cooling fan and can record 8K video

We've already seen the likes of ASUS and Black Shark offering external cooling fans for their gaming smartphones, but the folks over at Nubia reckon it's about time to stuff a fan inside a phone (I mean, what else would you expect from a company that brought back the wearable phone?). Today, the Chinese brand unveiled the Red Magic 3 which not only packs a "liquid cooling" copper heat pipe, but also an internal cooling fan.

This small fan is said to run quietly but can spin up to 14,000 rpm, and it has an IP55 rating plus its own isolated chamber, so you won't have to worry about liquids and dust getting in. It's apparently good for over 30,000 hours of continuous use, though Nubia didn't specify the speed used for the test. Regardless, combining this fan with the heat pipe, the phone's heat transfer performance is apparently five times better than conventional passive cooling methods, thus ensuring a smooth gaming experience for a longer period.

Also at Android Authority.

Related: Mobile Gaming is Dominant in the Marketplace / Blame Loot Boxes
Nubia's Wearable Smartphone is a Preview of our Flexible OLED Future
Xiaomi Announces Smartphones with 10 GB of RAM
Nubia X Smartphone Ditches Front-Facing Camera, Adds Rear Display

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

The authors are calling on national and local governments to set targets for the proportion of trips made on foot, by bicycle and by public transport, including national targets of:

• Doubling the proportion of trips walked to 25 per cent by 2050.
• Doubling the proportion of cycling trips in each of the next decades, with the ultimate goal of 15 per cent of all trips being on bicycles by 2050.
• Increasing the proportion of all trips by public transport to 15 per cent by 2050.

The report's authors further recommend:

• The government develop a national promotion and education campaign to persuade people to walk or cycle to schools and work-places
• That investment is made in liveable cities and creating urban environments designed for people, rather than cars
• That new regulations are introduced to make walking and cycling safer

The report prominently cites health concerns as a key reason to not drive, because people need to exercise more. Is it a tacit acknowledgement of electric vehicles' (EVs) imminent takeover of global car fleets?

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for ErnestTBass

When railroad tracks were first laid across the western U.S., there were eight different gauges all competing to dominate the industry – making a nationwide, unified rail system impossible; it took an act of Congress in 1863 to force the adoption of an industry standard gauge of 4-ft., 8-1⁄2 inches.

FedEx CIO Rob Carter believes the same kind of thing needs to happen for blockchain to achieve widespread enterprise adoption.

While the promise of blockchain to create a more efficient, secure and open platform for ecommerce can be realized using a proprietary platform, it won't be a global solution for whole industries now hampered by a myriad of technical and regulatory hurdles. Instead, a platform based on open-source software and industry standards will be needed to ensure process transparency and no one entity profits from the technology over others.

"I think we're in the state where we're duking it out for the dominant design," Carter said during a CIO panel discussion at the Blockchain Global Revolution Conference here. "We're not an organization that pushes for more regulatory control, but there are times regulatory mandates and pushes can be incredibly helpful."

Source: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3391070/fedex-cio-its-time-to-mandate-blockchain-for-international-shipping.html

Original Submission