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takyon writes:

The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch a comet interception mission that does not target any particular comet. Instead, the spacecraft will hang out at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L₂, and move to target an incoming yet undiscovered object that could be found by observatories such as the LSST:

The concept is a three-in-one probe: a mothership and two smaller daughter craft. They will separate near the comet to conduct different but complementary studies. The cost for Esa is expected to be about €150m. As is customary, individual member states will provide the instrumentation and cover that tab.

Interceptor was selected on Wednesday by the agency's Science Programme Committee as part of the new F-Class series - "F" standing for fast. The call for ideas only went out a year ago. There will now be a period of feasibility assessment with industry before the committee reconvenes to formally "adopt" the concept. At that point, the mission becomes the real deal.

The intention is to launch the probe on the same rocket as Esa's Ariel space telescope when it goes up at the end of the next decade. This observatory won't use the full performance of its launch vehicle, and so spare mass and volume is available to do something additional.

And it's Ariel's destination that makes Interceptor a compelling prospect. The telescope is to be positioned at a "gravitational sweetspot" about 1.5 million km from Earth. This is an ideal position from which to study distant stars and their planets - but it also represents a fast-response "parking bay" for any new mission seeking a target of opportunity.

The type of comets being sought by Interceptor tend to give little notice of their impending arrival in the inner Solar System - perhaps only a few months. That's insufficient time to plan, build and launch a spacecraft. You need to be out there already, waiting for the call. This is what Interceptor will do. It will be sitting at the sweetspot, relying on sky surveys to find it a suitable target. When that object is identified, the probe will then set off to meet it.

ARIEL:

The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL), is a space telescope planned for launch in 2028 as the fourth medium-class mission of the European Space Agency's Cosmic Vision programme. The mission is aimed at observing at least 1,000 known exoplanets using the transit method, studying and characterising the planets' chemical composition and thermal structures.

Also at Discover Magazine.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

We're one step closer to atomic radio

Scientists at the National Institute for Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, have brought us one step closer to "atomic radio" by using an atom-based receiver to make a stereo recording of music streamed into the laboratory—namely, Queen's "Under Pressure." They described their work in a new paper in AIP Advances.

So-called "Rydberg atoms" are atoms that are in an especially excited state well above their ground (lowest-energy) state. This makes them extra-sensitive to passing electric fields, like the alternating fields of radio waves. All you need is a means of detecting those interactions to turn them into quantum sensors—like a laser. That means, in principle, that Rydberg atoms could receive and play back radio signals.

[...] The recordings aren't going to challenge the dominance of digital recording any time soon, since they are of much lower sound quality, more akin to an old vinyl record. That said, "My vision is to cut a CD in the lab—our studio—at some point and have the first CD recorded with Rydberg atoms," said Holloway—if only as a fun scientific curiosity. But one day, the researcher believes this type of atomic sensing could help improve secure communications. "Atom-based antennas might give us a better way of picking up audio data in the presence of noise, potentially even the very weak signals transmitted in deep space communications," he said.

DOI: AIP Advances, 2019. 10.1063/1.5099036  (About DOIs).

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takyon writes:

Huawei Clarifies Android Update Situation, Commits to Android Q for Last 2 Generations

Huawei last night launched an information campaign about the status of software updates on existing devices in the face of the company's troubles with the U.S. Commerce Department.

The important news is that Huawei is confirming to and committing to continues[sic] security and Android platform updates, specifically the upcoming release of Android Q.

In general the news is no surprise as certification and approval happens several months before the actual software update. With Huawei receiving a reprieve on updates, it means in general business continues as usual for the moment being.

Huawei Announces Nova 5 & Nova Pro in China: Introduces New Kirin 810 Chipset

Today Huawei announced the brand new Nova 5 series of smartphones. The company released the new Nova 5, Nova 5 Pro and Nova 5i in China with availability later this month. The new Nova 5 and 5 Pro are particularly interesting because they now represent Huawei's lowest priced devices with OLED displays, also featuring high-end cameras and SoC options.

The new Nova 5 and Nova 5 Pro are interesting phones because they are essentially the same device, with the peculiarity of having different SoC options: The Nova 5 in particular is the first phone to now introduce the new Kirin 810 chipset. The new chip features a combination of 2x Cortex A76 CPUs at up to 2.23GHz and 6x Cortex A55's at 1.88GHz. In terms of GPU, Huawei has opted for a Mali-G52MP6 running at 820MHz. It looks like the Kirin 810 is extremely well positioned to compete against Qualcomm's Snapdragon 730 SoC which was announced just back in April.

Previously: Huawei Working on its Own OS to Prepare for "Worst-Case Scenario" of Being Deprived of Android
Google Pulls Huawei's Android License
The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google's Iron Grip On Android
Huawei Calls on U.S. to Adjust its Approach to Tackle Cybersecurity Effectively
Google Doesn't Want Huawei Ban Because It Would Result in an Android Competitor

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Narwhals and belugas can interbreed

For nearly thirty years, a strange-looking whale skull has gathered dust in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark. Now, a team of researchers has determined the reason for the skull's unique characteristics: it belongs to a narwhal-beluga hybrid.

A Greenlandic hunter shot the whale in the 1980's and was puzzled by its odd appearance. He therefore kept the skull and placed it on the roof of his toolshed. Several years later, Professor Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources visited the settlement and also immediately recognized the skull's strange characteristics. He interviewed the hunter about the anomalous whale he had shot, and sent the skull to Copenhagen. Since then, it has been stored at the Zoological Museum, a part of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

"As far as we know, this is the first and only evidence in the world that these two Arctic whale species can interbreed. Based on the intermediate shape of the skull and teeth, it was suggested that the specimen might be a narwhal-beluga hybrid, but this could not be confirmed. Now we provide the data that confirm that yes -- it is indeed a hybrid," says Eline Lorenzen, evolutionary biologist and curator at the University of Copenhagen's Natural History Museum of Denmark. Lorenzen led the study, which was published today in Scientific Reports.

Using DNA and stable isotope analysis, the scientists determined that the skull belonged to a male, first-generation hybrid between a female narwhal and male beluga.

Mikkel Skovrind, Jose Alfredo Samaniego Castruita, James Haile, Eve C. Treadaway, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Michael V. Westbury, Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, Paul Szpak, Eline D. Lorenzen. Hybridization between two high Arctic cetaceans confirmed by genomic analysis. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44038-0

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

A tale of two cities: Why ransomware will just get worse

Earlier this week, the city of Riviera Beach, Florida, faced a $600,000 demand from ransomware operators in order to regain access to the city's data. The ransom was an order of magnitude larger than the ransom demanded by the attackers that struck Baltimore's city government in May. Against the advice of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, the Riviera Beach city council voted to pay the ransom—more than $300,000 of it covered by the city's insurance policy.

Baltimore had refused to pay $76,000 worth of Bitcoin despite facing an estimated ransomware cost of more than $18 million, of which $8 million was from lost or deferred revenue. Baltimore lacked cyber insurance to cover those costs.

Riviera Beach is much smaller than Baltimore—with an IT department of 10 people, according to the city's most recent budget, and an annual budget of $2.5 million to support a total city government of 550 employees. (Baltimore has about 50 IT staffers supporting more than 13,000 employees by comparison.) It's not a surprise that Riviera Beach's leadership decided to pay, given that a full incident response and recovery would have likely cost two to three times what they've agreed to pay the ransomware operators, and half of that price tag is covered by insurance. So, Riviera Beach's decision to pay looks like the easiest way out. It's a decision that has been made by many local governmental organizations and businesses alike over the past few years.

Except, it probably isn't an easy way forward. Riviera Beach will still face the costs of fixing the security issues exploited by a phishing email opened by a police department employee. There's no guarantee that data was not stolen from the network, as apparently happened in Baltimore. And the paying of the ransom indicates the city doesn't have an effective disaster recovery plan. Without major upgrades, Riviera Beach could soon end up in the crosshairs of another ransomware attack—especially now that they've shown they'll pay.

Both the Riviera Beach and Baltimore ransomware attacks, along with the half-dozen known recent ransomware attacks against local governments, are indicative of just how unprepared many governments (and businesses) are for ransomware. Over the past few years, ransomware has exploded: data from the FBI shows that another organization is hit by ransomware every 14 seconds, on average. And this trend shows no signs of slowing—in fact, a new trend of targeted ransomware, seeking even bigger payouts, is emerging, in which more sophisticated organizations go specifically after businesses and other organizations more likely to pay out.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Bitcoin rises above $10,000 for the first time in a year

Bitcoin's price has soared above $10,000 for the first time since early 2018, a new milestone in the virtual currency's latest comeback.

The price has more than tripled since hitting rock-bottom last December around $3,200. That was after crashing from an all-time high around $19,500 in December 2017.

As always, it's difficult to be sure what drives changes in Bitcoin's price. But one obvious candidate is Facebook's announcement of its own cryptocurrency, called Libra, earlier this week. Libra is a potential Bitcoin competitor, but the announcement also brings added legitimacy to the overall cryptocurrency market.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4463

The City of Burlington, Ontario, revealed Thursday that it fell prey to "a complex phishing email" that cost the City CAD $503,000 (around USD $375,000). Few details have yet been released. "To maintain the integrity of ongoing investigations, the City will not be commenting further at this time," it announced.

Although the City describes the incident as a phishing fraud, it bears all the hallmarks of the business email compromise (BEC) genre of phishing.

"On Thursday, May 23, the City of Burlington discovered it was a victim of fraud. A single transaction was made to a falsified bank account as a result of a complex phishing email to City staff requesting to change banking information for an established City vendor," the announcement reads. "The transaction was in the form of an electronic transfer of funds made to the vendor in the amount of approximately $503,000 and was processed on May 16."

Neither the name of the member of staff nor the department he or she worked in has been revealed, although it is clear his position is of enough seniority to authorize large payments on behalf of the City.

Burlington mayor Marianne Meed Ward commented, "This was a case of online fraud with falsified documents at a level of sophistication not typically seen and we are taking the necessary steps to prevent it from happening in the future. This stresses just how important it is that we are all vigilant and recognize the signs of online fraud, phishing and other scams, and report them to the proper authorities -- so that no one becomes a victim of this type of criminal activity."

Source: https://www.securityweek.com/canadian-city-loses-500000-phishing-attack

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Capt. 'Sully' Sullenberger Slams Boeing for Inadequate Pilot Training on the Troubled 737 Max

Airline union leaders and a famed former pilot said Wednesday that Boeing made mistakes while developing the 737 Max, and the biggest was not telling anybody about new flight-control software so pilots could train for it.

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed a crippled airliner safely on the Hudson River in 2009, said he doubted that any U.S. pilots practiced handling a specific malfunction until it happened on two Max jets that crashed, killing 346 people. Max pilots should train for such emergencies in simulators—not just on computers, as Boeing proposes, he said.

"We should all want pilots to experience these challenging situations for the first time in a simulator, not in flight, with passengers and crew on board," Sullenberger said, adding that "reading about it on an iPad is not even close to sufficient."

Sullenberger's comments to the House aviation subcommittee came during the third congressional hearing on Boeing's troubled plane, which has been grounded for three months.

Daniel Carey, the president of the pilots' union at American Airlines, said Boeing's zeal to minimize pilot-training costs for airlines buying the 737 Max jet contributed to design errors and inadequate training. That has left a "crisis of trust" around aviation safety, he said.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

'Sully' Sullenberger blasts U.S. aircraft certification process, says 737 MAX pilots need new simulator training

Sullenberger, who has blasted Boeing Co and the Federal Aviation Administration for their roles in the two 737 MAX crashes since October that killed 346 people, also said the U.S. system of certifying new aircraft is not working.

"Our current system of aircraft design and certification has failed us," he said.

Freeman writes:

Perhaps the most striking problems are that the study makes no mention of horns and does not include any data whatsoever on mobile device usage by its participants who, according to the Post, are growing alleged horns. Also troubling is that the study authors don't report much of the data, and some of the results blatantly conflict with each other.

[...] The bone spurs jut off of what's called the external occipital protuberance (EOP) of the skull. This is the point at the back of the head where important ligaments that run along the spine attach, as do neck muscles.

[...] For their second leap, Shahar and Sayers note that many young people today use smartphones and tablets, and recent studies have suggested that when people look at their devices, they bend their necks at angles that add more weight to the spine. Hypothetically, this can create stress that could spur bone growth and other problems.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/debunked-the-absurd-story-about-smartphones-causing-kids-to-sprout-horns/

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RandomFactor writes:

Neven's Law is an observation of the growth of the quantum computing, somewhat akin to Moore's famous law, and describes how quickly quantum computers are gaining on classical ones. It is faster than you might think.

In December 2018, scientists at Google AI ran a calculation on Google's best quantum processor. They were able to reproduce the computation using a regular laptop. Then in January, they ran the same test on an improved version of the quantum chip. This time they had to use a powerful desktop computer to simulate the result. By February, there were no longer any classical computers in the building that could simulate their quantum counterparts. The researchers had to request time on Google's enormous server network to do that.

Neven's law suggests that following current trending, quantum supremacy—that point where an efficient quantum calculation cannot be simulated in any reasonable time frame on the most powerful classical computer—could happen within one year.

The rule began as an in-house observation before [Hartmut Neven, director of Google's Quantum Artificial Intelligence lab] mentioned it in May at the Google Quantum Spring Symposium. There, he said that quantum computers are gaining computational power relative to classical ones at a "doubly exponential" rate—a staggeringly fast clip.

With double exponential growth, "it looks like nothing is happening, nothing is happening, and then whoops, suddenly you're in a different world," Neven said. "That's what we're experiencing here."

Even exponential growth is pretty fast. It means that some quantity grows by powers of 2[.]

The first few increases might not be that noticeable, but subsequent jumps are massive. Moore's law, the famous guideline stating (roughly) that computing power doubles every two years, is exponential.

Doubly exponential growth is far more dramatic. Instead of increasing by powers of 2, quantities grow by powers of powers of 2[.]

Not all are convinced; classical computers are still improving subject to Moore's law (more or less), and quasi-quantum algorithms on classical computers continue to improve, pushing the goal-posts out further as well.

Still, even though the rate at which quantum computers are gaining on classical ones is debatable, there's no doubt quantum technology is racing towards an inflection point and the writing is, or is not, on the wall.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Nvidia has just announced their new supercomputer that will be used to train AI networks for self-driving cars. See https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/news/computing/nvidia-supercomputer-to-handle-ai-data-from-autonomous-vehicles.html

Full text of the press release is below. There is a photo of the installation at the link:

Computing technology developer Nvidia has built the world’s 22nd fastest supercomputer – DGX SuperPOD – to provide the AI infrastructure needed to meet the demands of the company’s autonomous vehicle deployment program.

DGX SuperPOD was built in just three weeks using 96 Nvidia DGX-2H supercomputers and Mellanox interconnect technology. Delivering 9.4 petaflops of processing capability, it has the power needed for training the vast number of deep neural networks required for safe self-driving vehicles.

A single data-collection vehicle generates 1TB of data per hour. Multiply that by years of driving over an entire fleet, and you quickly get to petabytes of data. That data is used to train algorithms on the rules of the road — and to find potential failures in the deep neural networks operating in the vehicle, which are then re-trained in a continuous loop.

“Few AI challenges are as demanding as training autonomous vehicles, which requires retraining neural networks tens of thousands of times to meet extreme accuracy needs,” said Clement Farabet, vice president of AI infrastructure at Nvidia. “There’s no substitute for massive processing capability like that of the DGX SuperPOD.”

Powered by 1,536 Nvidia V100 Tensor Core GPUs interconnected with Nvidia NVSwitch and Mellanox network fabric, the DGX SuperPOD hardware and software platform takes less than two minutes to train ResNet-50. When this AI model came out in 2015, it took 25 days to train on the then state-of-the-art system, a single Nvidia K80 GPU. DGX SuperPOD delivers results that are 18,000 times faster.

While other TOP500 systems with similar performance levels are built from thousands of servers, DGX SuperPOD takes a fraction of the space and is roughly 400 times smaller than its ranked neighbors.

Will this be enough computrons? It seems every time another announcement is made in this field, it includes yet more compute power to train AIs on ever larger data sets. From what your AC has seen, there is still a good way to go before these network attached cars can match the competence of a good driver (not impaired, not distracted)--which might be, imo, one reasonable target before wide release of the technology.

Alternatively, will someone come up with better AI algorithms (more like people?) that will vastly change/reduce the amount of training required?

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The USA state of Florida has just opened up their highways to autonomous vehicle testing, https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/news/testing/unmanned-autonomous-vehicles-cleared-to-operate-in-florida.html

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has signed a new item of legislation in a bid to make Florida “the most autonomous vehicle-friendly state in the country”.

‘CS/HB 311: Autonomous Vehicles’ looks to remove some of the biggest barriers facing the advancement of autonomous vehicles, including allowing autonomous vehicles to operate without a human presence on board, providing all insurance parameters have been met.

“Signing this legislation paves the way for Florida to continue as a national leader in transportation innovation and technological advancement,” said DeSantis. “I would like to thank the bill sponsors, Senator Jeff Brandes and Representative Jason Fischer, for their work in making Florida the most autonomous vehicle-friendly state in the country.”
...

AC (sarc) comment -- I guess Florida is the next state to be bought by the big AV companies. My prediction for the next fatality is an elderly person in a wheelchair. If the victim's family has some money, a big settlement will be made (unlike the homeless person pushing their bicycle in Arizona).

As someone noted here earlier, how many fatalities are acceptable before the technology is developed?

[How many fatalities and injuries are acceptable for non-autonomous vehicles? -Ed.]

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Early and regular cannabis use by youth is associated with alteration in brain circuits that support cognitive control

The development of neural circuits in youth, at a particularly important time in their lives, can be heavily influenced by external factors -- specifically the frequent and regular use of cannabis. A new study [...] reports that alterations in cognitive control -- an ensemble of processes by which the mind governs, regulates and guides behaviors, impulses, and decision-making based on goals are directly affected.

[...] The findings are based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquired from 28 adolescents and young adults (aged 14-23 years) with significant cannabis use and 32 age and sex-matched non-using healthy controls. Participants were scanned during their performance of a Simon Spatial Incompatibility Task, a cognitive control task that requires resolving cognitive conflict to respond accurately.

Compared to their healthy counterparts, the adolescents and young adults with significant cannabis use showed reduced activation in the frontostriatal circuits that support cognitive control and conflict resolution.

The authors also examined the degree to which fluctuations in activity in relation to conflict resolution is synchronized across the different regions comprised in this frontostriatal circuit (that is, to what extent are regions functionally connected with each other). Although circuit connectivity did not differ between cannabis-using and non-using youth, the research team found an association between how early individuals began regularly using cannabis and the extent to which frontostriatal regions were disrupted, suggesting that earlier chronic use may have a larger impact on circuit development than use of later onset.

Deficient Functioning of Frontostriatal Circuits During the Resolution of Cognitive Conflict in Cannabis-Using Youth (DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2018.09.436)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The launch of Facebook's Coin whitepaper happened yesterday, the same thing with that of Calibra, the wallet designated for Libra coin.

Although Libra follows some of the nitty-gritty of cryptocurrency as enshrined by Satoshi Nakamoto, the absconded creator of Bitcoin.

However, it is lacking in trust and falls short of the democratic principles envisioned by the faceless Bitcoin creator which makes cryptographic projects tow a different root from conventional currencies like US Dollars, Euro, and other fiats under government monitor and regulations.

[...] There is a new fork of the Facebook's newly launched cryptocurrency, Libra. The project branded as Libra Classic questioned the trust issues faced by Libra, a digital currency said to require no KYC since Facebook already has necessary information of its customers.

There are many questions posed to Facebook on Libra, one is the undemocratic issues faced by the digital asset since the reason Nakamoto invented cryptocurrency is to remove government's hands from currency.

The fork of Libra was announced few hours after Facebook's GlobalCoin unveiled its website, whitepaper and Testnet yesterday. Libra Classic, now has its commit page on Github.

The forked cryptocurrency is referenced as a privacy oriented, democratic version, of the Libra blockchain.

The Libra Classic was announced yesterday by Mikko Ohtamaa, CTO at TokenMarket, Europe leading investment platform.

https://todaysgazette.com/someone-just-hard-forked-facebooks-libra-coin-over-democratic-issues/

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takyon writes:

Secretive Magic Leap Says Ex-Engineer Copied Headset for China

Magic Leap Inc., a U.S. startup that makes a headset to project digital objects onto the real world, accused one of its former engineers of stealing its technology to create his own augmented reality device for China.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, Magic Leap alleges that Chi Xu, who left in 2016, exploited its confidential information to "quickly develop a prototype of lightweight, ergonomically designed, mixed reality glasses for use with smart phones and other devices that are strikingly similar" to the Florida-based startup's designs.

The lawsuit marks the latest accusation from an American firm of intellectual property theft by Chinese companies, a perennial sore point that's helped escalate tensions between the world's two largest economies. With more than $2 billion in financing, Magic Leap is one of the better-funded startups delving into so-called augmented or mixed reality, a technology that gives users the illusion that fantastical, three-dimensional digital objects exist in the physical world.

Many have accused Magic Leap of being vaporware. But now its precious vapors have been collected by people who could actually make something out of it.

Also at The Verge.

Previously: Magic Leap Bashed for Being Vaporware
Magic Leap Finally Announces a Product, But is It Still Vaporware?

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