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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/21/us-plastic-recycling-landfills

A Guardian investigation reveals that cities around the [US] are no longer recycling many types of plastic dropped into recycling bins. Instead, they are being landfilled, burned or stockpiled. From Los Angeles to Florida to the Arizona desert, officials say, vast quantities of plastic are now no better than garbage.

The "market conditions" on the sign [Pearl] Pai saw referred to the situation caused by China. Once the largest buyer of US plastic waste, the country shut its doors to all but highest-quality plastics in 2017. The move sent shockwaves through the American industry as recyclers scrambled, and often failed, to find new buyers. Now the turmoil besetting a global trade network, which is normally hidden from view, is hitting home.

"All these years I have been feeling like I'm doing something responsible," said Pai, clearly dumbstruck as she walked away with a full bag. "The truth hurts."

[...] [Cobe] Skye and [Habib] Kharrat emphasized that the situation was not unique to Los Angeles. "From what we're hearing from our colleagues, what's happening in Los Angeles county is representative of what is happening all over the US and all over the state as a result of these international policies," said Skye.

The China ban revealed an uncomfortable truth about plastic recycling, Skye said: much of this plastic was never possible to recycle at all.

"[China] would just pull out the items that were actually recyclable and burn or throw away the rest," he said. "China has subsidized the recycling industry for many years in a way that distorted our views."

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takyon writes:

SK Hynix Starts Production of 128-Layer 4D NAND, 176-Layer Being Developed

SK Hynix has announced it has finished development of its 128-layer 1 terabit 3D TLC NAND flash. The new memory features the company's charge trap flash (CTF) design, along with the peripheral under cells (PUC) architecture that the company calls '4D' NAND, announced some time ago. The new 128-layer TLC NAND flash devices will ship to interested parties in the second half of this year, and SK Hynix intends to offer products based on the new chips in 2020.

[...] In the first half of next year SK Hynix promises to roll out its UFS 3.1 storage products based on the new 1 Tb devices. The company plans to offer 1 TB UFS 3.1 chips that will consume up to 20% less [power] when compared to similar products that use 512 Gb ICs.

[...] String stacking technology, as well as the multi-stacked design, will enable SK Hynix to keep increasing the number of layers. SK Hynix says that it is currently developing 176-layer 4D NAND flash, but does not disclose when it is expected to become available.

Previously: "String-Stacking" Being Developed to Enable 3D NAND With More Than 100 Layers
SK Hynix Developing 96 and 128-Layer TLC 3D NAND

Related: Expect 20-30% Cheaper NAND in Late 2018
Micron: 96-Layer 3D NAND Coming, 3D XPoint Sales Disappoint
Western Digital Samples 96-Layer 3D QLC NAND with 1.33 Tb Per Die
Samsung Shares Plans for 96-Layer TLC NAND, QLC NAND, and 2nd-Generation "Z-NAND"

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1944

In a bizarre investigation, Belgium police have identified a member of the Anonymous Belgium hacker collective while investigating an arson case at a local bank. The perpetrator, a 35-year-old man from the Belgian city of Roeselare, was initially arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the Crelan Bank office in Rumbeke, a suburb of Roeselare, back in 2014.

Police tracked down the suspect because he dropped a USB thumb drive on the ground while/after throwing the Molotov cocktail. Data on the thumb drive led police to a local man identified in court documents only by Brecht S.. A subsequent house search and investigation into the man's background and computer devices revealed a long history of cyber-crimes.

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/anonymous-hacker-exposed-after-dropping-usb-drive-while-throwing-molotov-cocktail/

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

There's More To Look Forward To After Peaking Professionally

When it comes to our working lives, there's a point when we're no longer in our prime. But science shows that we hit our peak professionally far sooner than we think we do.

That's the conclusion social scientist Arthur Brooks draws in a new essay in The Atlantic.

His research began after eavesdropping on a conversation on an airplane in 2015. At the time, Brooks felt at the top of his game as the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, and writing bestselling books. "Things couldn't have gone better," he tells NPR.

On the plane, he sat in front of a man and a woman. The man — who Brooks writes was in his mid-80s — told the woman that he wished he was dead.

"I thought it was somebody who must have been really disappointed about his life," he says. "But then at the end of the flight he stood up and I recognized him as somebody who's really quite prominent and who'd done a lot with his life."

He wondered what the man must have been doing wrong to feel this way.

"I decided to figure out how, after 50, life can get better and more fulfilling," he says. He tells NPR he thinks he found some answers.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

FTC cracks down on robocalls with new initiative

The Federal Trade Commission and law enforcement partners unveiled on Tuesday a new initiative to combat robocalls. "Operation Call it Quits" is a partnership at the local, state and federal level that includes 94 actions targeting illegal robocall operations, including shutting down robocall companies and issuing fines in the millions.

"Nearly all robocalls are illegal unless you've given consent in writing," Andrew Smith, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said during a press briefing.

The initiative comes at a time when illegal robocalls have permeated not just household and business landlines but also hospital phone lines. These calls run the gamut from services that promise to reduce your credit card's interest rate to operations that say they'll help you earn money from home. Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill mentioned during the briefing that last year alone $10.5 billion was lost to phone scams in the United States.

[...] Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission gave wireless carriers the green light to block robocalls for customers by default.

Similarly, the FTC hopes that in the upcoming months Congress will give it greater jurisdiction over telecommunications carriers to trace calls back to their source, according to Smith.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Israel's SpaceIL says it won't try second moonshot

SpaceIL, the Israeli company that attempted but failed to put an unmanned craft on the moon earlier this year, says it will not try a second moonshot.

The company issued a statement Tuesday saying its lunar mission in April has been widely hailed as "an exceptional success," despite crash landing on the moon. It says that "an attempt to repeat a trip to the moon is not enough of a challenge" and will instead search for a different mission.

Previously: Private Spacecraft Failed Moon Landing Today [UPDATED]
Israel Will Build Another Lunar Lander
Israeli Spacecraft Beresheet Crash Site Spotted on Moon

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Divisive giant telescope cleared for construction on Hawaiian peak

Last week, the state of Hawaii gave astronomers a green light to begin to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which would rise on the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea as one of the largest telescopes in the world. Project leaders say they are set to begin construction after a 4-year delay caused by sit-down protests and court challenges from Native Hawaiians opposed to structures on a site they consider sacred. But some astronomers worry the threat of disruptions and even violence will persist.

"These are passionate people," says Richard Ellis, an astronomer at University College London who helped develop the TMT concept. "They know that once it gets going their case is weaker." Others say the project should do more to engage with the protesters. "We need to talk with people who disagree with us," says Thayne Currie, an astrophysicist the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, who works on Japan's Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.

Although legal barriers are now removed, opponents say they can still try to block access to the road that leads up to the 4200-meter-high summit. "What other tools do we have, apart from having people arrested in large numbers?" asks Kealoha Pisciotta, founder of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, one of the main opposition organizations. In 2015, 1000 protesters gathered on the mountain, but "there are way, way more people involved now," she says. The astronomers "may have won in the courts, but they haven't won the moral high ground."

Previously: Protests Temporarily Halt Thirty-Meter Telescope's Construction in Hawaii
Hawaiian Court Revokes Permit for Construction of Thirty-Meter-Telescope
Thirty Meter Telescope Considering Move as Hawaii Officials Open Hearing
Canary Islands Chosen as Backup Site for the Thirty-Meter Telescope

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upstart writes for Bytram_

US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries

The US military's carbon bootprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ships, trucks and cargo planes to supply its operations with everything from bombs to humanitarian aid and hydrocarbon fuels. Our new study calculated the contribution of this vast infrastructure to climate change.

Greenhouse gas emission accounting usually focuses on how much energy and fuel civilians use. But recent work, including our own, shows that the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal.

In 2017, the US military bought about 269,230 barrels of oil a day and emitted more than 25,000 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide by burning those fuels. The US Air Force purchased US$4.9 billion worth of fuel, and the navy US$2.8 billion, followed by the army at US$947m and the Marines at US$36m.

It's no coincidence that US military emissions tend to be overlooked in climate change studies. It's very difficult to get consistent data from the Pentagon and across US government departments. In fact, the United States insisted on an exemption for reporting military emissions in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This loophole was closed by the Paris Accord, but with the Trump administration due to withdraw from the accord in 2020, this gap will will return.

Our study is based on data retrieved from multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to the US Defense Logistics Agency, the massive bureaucratic agency tasked with managing the US military's supply chains, including its hydrocarbon fuel purchases and distribution.

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RandomFactor writes:

According to new research in the journal Fungal Ecology, cicadas infected with the fungus massopora are infused with reality distorting compounds similar to those found in hallucinogenic mushrooms.

The fungus causes cicadas to lose their limbs and eccentric behavior sets in: Males try to mate with everything they encounter, although the fungus has consumed their genitals and butts.

Despite the horrid physical state of infected cicadas, they continue to roam around freely as if nothing's wrong, dousing other cicadas with a dose of their disease.

You've heard of "The Walking Dead." This is "The Flying Dead."

This behavior led to one of the researchers dubbing the decaying droners "Flying Salt Shakers of Death"

"[Infected cicadas] are only zombies in the sense that the fungus is in control of their bodies," said Matt Kasson, assistant professor of forest pathology and one of the study's authors.

Naturally one of the first considerations of researchers was whether people would try to get high from the hopped up hypersexual horrors.

"maybe, if you're motivated enough."

"Here is the thing," [Kasson] said. "These psychoactive compounds were just two of less than 1,000 compounds found in these cicadas. Yes, they are notable but there are other compounds that might be harmful to humans. I wouldn't take that risk."

Possibly an area for further research.

Journal Reference
Greg R. Boyce et al, Psychoactive plant- and mushroom-associated alkaloids from two behavior modifying cicada pathogens, Fungal Ecology (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.funeco.2019.06.002

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upstart writes for Bytram:

Stop us if you've heard this one: US government staff wildly oblivious to basic computer, info security safeguards

A US Senate probe has once again outlined the woeful state of computer and information security within Uncle Sam's civil service.

A committee report (PDF) examining a decade of internal audits this week concluded that outdated systems, unpatched software, and weak data protection are so widespread that it's clear American bureaucrats fail to meet even basic security requirements.

To produce this damning dossiers[sic], the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations pored over a decade of findings from inspector-general-led probes into information security practices within the Department of Homeland Security, State Department, Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Agriculture, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, and the Social Security Administration.

Of those eight organizations, seven were found to be unable to adequately protect personally identifiable information stored on their systems, six were unable to properly patch their systems against security threats, five were in violation of IT asset inventory-keeping requirements, and all eight were using either hardware or software that had been retired by the vendor and was no longer supported.

"Despite major data breaches like OPM, the federal government remains unprepared to confront the dynamic cyber threats of today," the report noted.

"The longstanding cyber vulnerabilities consistently highlighted by Inspectors General illustrate the federal government's failure to meet basic cybersecurity standards to protect sensitive data."

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upstart writes for Bytram:

RIP Dyn Dynamic DNS :'( Oracle to end Dyn-asty by axing freshly gobbled services, shoving customers into its cloud

Oracle is sharpening its ax for the Dyn networking biz it acquired in 2016, with plans to slash jobs and switch off services.

Big Red on Tuesday confirmed it will tempt its commercial Dyn customers onto its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) service, where possible, and pull the plug on Dyn enterprise services on May 31, 2020.

[...] "Enterprises can now leverage the best-in-class DNS, Web Application Security, and Email Delivery services within OCI and extend their applications across a comprehensive platform to build, scale, and operate their cloud infrastructure," Oracle told its customers.

"As a result, Dyn legacy Enterprise services (i.e. purchased via written order and not online shopping cart) are targeted to be retired on May 31, 2020 with the exception of Internet Intelligence."

The move will mark the very end of a popular once-free Dyn service: Dyn's Dynamic DNS, aka DynDNS aka DDNS, which will cease to operate by the end of next May. This service has been running for nearly two decades, allowing people to point customized hostnames like mykickassserver.dyndns.org or myfirewall.doesntexist.org at the public IP address of their home gateway or box on the internet. Dyn switched off its last-remaining free service in 2014, two years before Oracle bought it, leaving just its paid-for offerings.

[...] Dyn's Remote Access service, which is basically a paid-for version of DynDNS, will "remain as is," said Oracle, which provided instructions on what DDNS users can do next.

Meanwhile, Dyn's Standard, Managed, and Express DNS will be shut down, with users nudged where possible onto OCI. The same goes for the paid-for Dyn Email Delivery service. Dyn's Webhop and DNSSEC systems will be axed, along with DynDNS, with no migration path as there's no matching supported service on OCI, we're told. Dyn's Internet Intelligence will be spared, as noted above.

Anon writes:

Emails to customers list an EOL date of May 31, 2020. The Oracle solution is not a feature-complete replacement (http redirect for example), and the migration process is to export all your zones and re-import them. Soylents have any suggestions for replacements? I am a Dyn customer.

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takyon writes:

Alien Crystals Unlike Any Found on Earth Might Encrust The Edges of Titan's Lakes

Scientists have recreated Titan-like conditions in a lab, and found that organic molecules from Titan's atmosphere could be forming rings of alien crystals around the methane lakes that dot the Saturn moon's surface.

Previously, the team led by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had discovered two of these 'molecular minerals'. Now they've discovered a third, made of acetylene and butane, and believe it could be the most abundant one yet.

"We have demonstrated previously that some organic molecules readily form co-crystals in Titan-relevant conditions, including acetylene," they write in a conference abstract presented this week.

"We report here preliminary evidence for a third co-crystal between acetylene and butane, which could be the most common molecular mineral discovered so far."

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takyon writes:

New approaches may help solve the Lyme disease diagnosis dilemma

Lyme disease [is] one of the most charged and controversial of all infections. It's not hard to find tick-bitten patients who live for years with undiagnosed and unexplained symptoms that defy repeated treatment attempts. Patient advocates point to people who agonize for years, drifting from doctor to doctor in search of relief. Battles with insurers who won't pay for therapy without a definitive diagnosis have played out in courthouses and statehouses. Desperate patients sometimes turn to solutions that may pose their own risks. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently described people who had developed serious complications, or even died, after unproven treatments for Lyme disease.

Many, if not most, of these problems are caused by the lack of a reliable test for the infection. "This deficiency in Lyme disease diagnosis is probably the most prevalent thing that is responsible for the controversies of this disease," says Paul Arnaboldi, an immunologist at New York Medical College in Valhalla.

That's why Arnaboldi and other researchers are trying to devise better diagnostics (SN: 9/16/17, p. 8). The standard two-part test that's used now, which has changed little in concept since the 1990s, may miss about half of infected people in the early weeks of illness. The test relies on finding markers that show the immune system is actively engaged. For some people, it takes up to six weeks for those signs to reach detectable levels.

To find better ways to diagnose the disease more reliably and maybe sooner, scientists are trying to identify genetic changes that occur in the body even before the immune system rallies. Other researchers are measuring immune responses that may prove more accurate than existing tests.

The science has advanced enough, according to a review in the March 15 Clinical Infectious Diseases, that within the next few years, tests may finally be able to measure infections directly [DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciy614] [DX]. The aim is to amplify traces of the Lyme bacteria's genetic material in the bloodstream. Enough approaches are in various stages of research that some patient advocates have renewed optimism that the problems with testing may finally become a thing of the past.

Lyme Disease Cases Are Exploding. And It's Only Going to Get Worse.

takyon writes:

Intel beats AMD and Nvidia to crowd-pleasing graphics feature: integer scaling

Intel Gen11 and next-gen graphics will support integer scaling following requests by the community. Intel's Lisa Pearce confirmed that a patch will roll out sometime in August for Gen11 chips, adding support for the highly-requested functionality in the Intel Graphics Command Center, with future Intel Xe graphics expected to follow suit in 2020.

Enthusiasts have been calling out for the functionality for quite some time, even petitioning AMD and Nvidia for driver support. Why, you ask? Essentially integer scaling is an upscaling technique that takes each pixel at, let's say, 1080p, and times it by four – a whole number. The resulting 4K pixel values are identical to their 1080p original values, however, the user retains clarity and sharpness in the final image.

Current upscaling techniques, such as bicubic or bilinear, interpolate colour values for pixels, which often renders lines, details, and text blurry in games. This is particularly noticeable in pixel art games, whose art style relies on that sharp, blocky image. Other upscaling techniques, such as nearest-neighbour interpolation, carry out a similar task to integer scaling but on a more precise scale, which can similarly cause image quality loss.

April AMD thread.

It's baffling that this feature hasn't been available for years.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

San Francisco bans e-cigarette sales

San Francisco has become the first US city to ban e-cigarette sales until their health effects are clearer. Officials on Tuesday voted to ban stores selling the vaporisers and made it illegal for online retailers to deliver to addresses in the city.

The California city is home to Juul Labs, the most popular e-cigarette producer in the US. Juul said the move would drive smokers back to cigarettes and "create a thriving black market".

San Francisco's mayor, London Breed, has 10 days to sign off the legislation, but has indicated that she would. The law would begin to be enforced seven months from that date, although there have been reports firms could mount a legal challenge.

Anti-vaping activists say firms deliberately target young people by offering flavoured products. Critics say that not only is more scientific investigation into the health impact needed, vaping can encourage young people to switch to cigarettes.

Also at CNET.

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upstart writes for Bytram_

Ex-chair of FCC broadband committee gets five years in prison for fraud

The former head of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) was sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding investors.

Elizabeth Ann Pierce was CEO of Quintillion, an Alaskan telecom company, when she lied to two investment firms in New York in order to raise $270 million to build a fiber network. She also defrauded two individual investors out of $365,000 and used a large chunk of that money for personal expenses.

Pierce, 55, pleaded guilty and last week was given the five-year prison sentence in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, US Attorney Geoffrey Berman announced. Pierce was also "ordered to forfeit $896,698.00 and all of her interests in Quintillion and a property in Texas." She will also be subject to a restitution order to compensate her victims "at a later date."

Pierce's industry experience helped her land the top spot on Pai's broadband advisory committee in April 2017. But she left Quintillion in July 2017 as her scheme unraveled, and she resigned from the FCC advisory panel. Pai appointed a new chair for his committee two months later; he thanked Pierce for her service, saying she did "an excellent job" chairing the committee and "wish[ed] her all the best in her future endeavors."

[...] The FCC committee that Pierce used to lead has repeatedly been criticized for favoring the interests of industry over the public at large. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo quit the group in January 2018 out of frustration that its recommendations favor the interests of private industry over municipalities.

The committee has also pushed policy that would benefit telecom companies at the expense of other tech companies. In December 2018, the committee urged states to impose new taxes on Netflix, Google, Facebook, and many other businesses that require Internet access to operate. The resulting funding would have been transferred to ISPs via grants that subsidize private broadband providers' network construction. (Pai didn't back the tax proposal.)

The BDAC is continuing its work, with the FCC saying it will "craft recommendations for the Commission on ways to accelerate the deployment of high-speed Internet access... by reducing and/or removing regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment and strengthening existing broadband networks in communities across the country."

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