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jas writes:

Windows Server on ARM was announced to much fanfare in March 2017, with servers powered by Qualcomm Centriq 2400 and Cavium ThunderX2 processors co-developed with Microsoft showcased at the OCP US Summit. At the time, Azure vice president Jason Zander told Bloomberg that "this is a significant commitment on behalf of Microsoft. We wouldn't even bring something to a conference if we didn't think this was a committed project and something that's part of our road map."

That road map has quite clearly hit a dead end—a lack of updates from Microsoft of the subject, and the absence of any partners involved with the project (or companies in the ARM-for-servers market generally) at this year's Microsoft Inspire conference strongly indicates the initiative is dead.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/2-years-later-theres-still-no-windows-server-arm-in-microsoft-azure/

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takyon writes:

Samsung Commences Mass Production of First Ever 12Gb LPDDR5 DRAM for Premium Handsets

After the LPDDR4X standard, Samsung is ready to take mobile computing to the next plateau, as the Korean giant has announced that mass production of the industry's first 12-gigabit (Gb) LPDDR5 mobile DRAM, a component that has been optimized for 5G and AI features for future smartphones.

Additionally, Samsung plans on mass producing 12-gigabyte (GB) LPDDR5 packages later this month, which each package combining eight of the 12Gb chips. This reveals that future premium devices will demand the best when it comes to faster, more efficient memory, and Samsung wants to be ahead of the curve in both supply and demand.

Data rate will be 5,500 MT/s, compared to 4,266 MT/s for LPDDR4X, with up to 30% less power consumption than LPDDR4X. Future LPDDR5 chips could hit 6,400 MT/s.

Samsung plans to start producing 16Gb LPDDR5 chips next year. Smartphones with 16 GB of DRAM are sure to follow.

Samsung press release. Also at AnandTech.

Previously: Samsung Announces LPDDR5 DRAM Prototype Before Specification is Finalized
Samsung Begins Mass Producing 12 GB DRAM Packages for Smartphones

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takyon writes:

Intel says it was too aggressive pursuing 10nm, will have 7nm chips in 2021

[Intel's CEO Bob] Swan made a public appearance at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, on Tuesday and explained to the audience in attendance that Intel essentially set the bar too high for itself in pursuing 10nm. More specifically, he pointed to Intel's overly "aggressive goal" of going after a 2.7x transistor density improvement over 14nm.

[...] Needless to say, the 10nm delays have caused Intel to fall well behind that transistor density doubling. Many have proclaimed Moore's Law as dead, but as far as Swan is concerned, Moore's Law is not dead. It apparently just needed to undergo an unexpected surgery.

"The challenges of being late on this latest [10nm] node of Moore's Law was somewhat a function of what we've been able to do in the past, which in essence was define the odds on scaling the infrastructure," Swan explains. Bumping up to a 2.7x scaling factor proved to be "very complicated," more so than Intel anticipated. He also says that Intel erred when it "prioritized performance at a time when predictability was really important."

"The short story is we learned from it, we'll get our 10nm node out this year. Our 7nm node will be out in two years and it will be a 2.0X scaling so back to the historical Moore's Law curve," Swan added.

Also at Fortune and Tom's Hardware.

Related:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Intel's "Tick-Tock" Strategy Stalls, 10nm Chips Delayed
Intel's "Tick-Tock" is Now More Like "Process-Architecture-Optimization"
Moore's Law: Not Dead? Intel Says its 10nm Chips Will Beat Samsung's
Intel Releases Open Letter in Attempt to Address Shortage of "14nm" Processors and "10nm" Delays
Intel Says "7nm" Node Using Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography is on Track
Intel Promises "10nm" Chips by the End of 2019, and More
Intel Launches Coffee Lake Refresh, Roadmap Leaks Showing No "10nm" Desktop Parts Until 2022
Intel Shares "10nm" Ice Lake Processor Details
HP Boss: Intel Shortages are Steering Our Suited Customers to Buy AMD
Intel's Jim Keller Promises That "Moore's Law" is Not Dead, Outlines 50x Improvement Plan

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takyon writes:

The Zwicky Transient Facility has done it again:

A massive asteroid has eluded astronomers because of its unusual orbit -- until now. Astronomers have spotted 2019 LF6, which is about a kilometer wide and boasts the shortest "year" of any known asteroid, circling the sun about every 151 days, according to the California Institute of Technology.

This rare rocky body is one of only 20 known Atira asteroids, those whose orbits fall entirely within that of the Earth. "You don't find kilometer-size asteroids very often these days," said Quanzhi Ye, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who discovered 2019 LF6 via the Zwicky Transient Facility, a camera at the school's Palomar Observatory that scans the sky for objects. "Thirty years ago, people started organizing methodical asteroid searches, finding larger objects first, but now that most of them have been found, the bigger ones are rare birds."

Venus completes one orbit around the Sun in just under 225 days. Maybe we'll find a "large" asteroid confined entirely within Mercury's ~88-day orbit some day.

2019 LF₆ (151 day orbital period, 0.3167 AU perihelion, 0.7938 AU aphelion, ~1 km diameter).
2019 AQ₃ (165 day orbital period, 0.4036 AU perihelion, 0.7737 AU aphelion, ~1.4 km diameter).

Previously: Newly Discovered Asteroid Orbits Between Mercury and Venus, With Shortest Year of Any Known Asteroid

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Huawei, the Chinese manufacturer targeted by a Trump administration trade ban, is expected to dismiss a substantial number of people in the US in the coming weeks.

The number of individuals affected remains unclear but the layoffs, at the telecoms kit maker's US R&D subsidiary, Futurewei Technologies, could affect hundreds of workers in California, Texas, and Washington, according to The Wall Street Journal. Futurewei currently employs more than 800 people in the US.

On May 16, the beleaguered manufacturer, along with 68 of its affiliates, was placed on the US Commerce Department's Entity List, which forbids companies subject to US law from doing business with the firm without special permission from the US government.

Four days later, Huawei was given a 90-day General License so that its customers have time to make deals with new suppliers. When the General License expires on August 19, the ban will go into effect unless circumstances change.

US officials believe Huawei cannot be trusted because the company cannot resist demands by the Chinese government to compromise its equipment to assist with state-sponsored spying. No public evidence of this has been presented.

[...] Layoffs would be consistent with the broader financial impact of the pending Huawei trade ban. In June, at an event at Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen, China, company founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, predicted the telecom firm's revenue will reach only about $100bn in 2019 and 2020, about $30bn less than previously anticipated in the next two years. But he said the company will emerge stronger by 2021.

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Ebola Outbreak Declared Global Health Emergency

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Ebola outbreak declared global health emergency

The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo a "public health emergency of international concern". The move may encourage wealthy donor countries to provide more cash.

But the WHO stopped short of saying borders should be closed, saying the risk of the disease spreading outside the region was not high.

The outbreak in DR Congo has killed more than 1,600 people. This week, the first case was detected in Goma, home to more than a million. The PHEIC emergency provision is the highest level of alarm the WHO can sound and has only been used four times previously. This includes the Ebola epidemic that devastated parts of West Africa from 2014 to 2016, and killed more than 11,000 people.

"It is time for the world to take notice," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday at which the emergency was declared. He said he accepted recommendations there should be no restrictions on travel or trade, and no entry screening of passengers at ports or airports outside the immediate region.

"While it does not change the reality on the ground for victims or partners engaged in the response, we hope it will bring the international attention that this crisis deserves," it said in a statement.

WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak an International Emergency

From WHO declares Ebola outbreak an international emergency

The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the nearly year-long Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

The outbreak was declared on August 1, 2018 and has tallied 2,512 cases and 1,676 deaths. So far, it's centered in the DRC's North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which are on the eastern side of the country bordering South Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda.

The declaration Wednesday follows the spread of Ebola to Goma, a DRC city of nearly 2 million people at the border with Rwanda that acts as hub of regional transportation. On Sunday, health workers there confirmed the city's first case in a 47-year-old pastor who had just arrived from Butembo, a DRC city that has struggled with the outbreak since last December.

• Ebola outbreak in five graphics
• 'A gruesome game of whack-a-mole'

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies welcomed the move.

Previously: Measles is Killing More People in the DRC than Ebola-and Faster

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takyon writes:

Several dead after suspected arson attack on Kyoto Animation in Japan

Several people have died and dozens have been injured in a suspected arson attack at a renowned animation production company in Japan.

Police in Kyoto said the fire broke out on Thursday morning at a three-storey building belonging to Kyoto Animation after a man burst in and spread unidentified liquid that set off the blaze.

The 41-year-old suspect was among the injured and has been taken to a hospital, Kyodo news agency reported.

Kyoto Animation ("KyoAni").

Also at The Hollywood Reporter and The Japan Times.

inertnet writes:

Kyoto Animation Fire: At Least 26 Dead after Suspected Arson Attack:

At least 26 people are dead and dozens injured after a suspected arson attack at an animation studio in Kyoto, Japan, local emergency officials have said.

Local media quoted police as saying a man broke into the Kyoto Animation Co studio on Thursday morning. Police say the suspect, a 41-year-old, sprayed petrol before igniting it. [...] NHK said the man had been heard saying "drop dead" as he set fire to the building.

[...] Kyoto Animation, known as KyoAni, was founded in 1981 and has produced popular animation shows including "K-On" and "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya".

According to Japanese news sites he allegedly shouted "パクりやがって", which could mean that he accused them of stealing or of feeling "ripped off".

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A new collaborative study, led by the Natural History Museum and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, has extracted ancient DNA from the Neanderthal fossils of Gibraltar for the first time. The new study has confirmed the sex of the skulls and in the case of the fossil discovered in Forbes' Quarry, has related it to Neanderthals beyond Gibraltar.

The Neanderthal fossils of Gibraltar are among the most prominent finds in palaeontology. The fossils are some of the most historic of their kind, having been discovered at Forbes' Quarry in 1848 and Devil's Tower in 1926. The authors of the new study used a DNA preparation method that reduces modern contamination prior to sequencing, to isolate the Neanderthal DNA component.

The Natural History Museum's Professor Chris Stringer said: "The analyses confirmed that the Devil's Tower child was male, and the Forbes' Quarry adult was female and genetically more similar to earlier (60,000-120,000 year-old) Neanderthals in Europe and western Asia than to younger Neanderthal remains from Spain. Although Gibraltar is often considered as one of the last refuges for the Neanderthals before their extinction, it seems that Forbes' Quarry is not a late Neanderthal."

[...] The paper was published in PNAS on 15 July.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Sprint customer accounts were breached via a Samsung web page.

The hack occurred June 22, Sprint told its customers in a letter, and included details like first and last name, billing address, phone number, subscriber ID, account number, device type, device ID, monthly charges, account creation date, upgrade eligibility and any add-on services. It occurred via the Samsung "add a line" website. 

"No other information that could create a substantial risk of fraud or identity theft was acquired," Sprint said. The carrier added it has "taken appropriate action" to secure all accounts, and hasn't found any fraudulent activity resulting from the breach.

Sprint said it notified customers on June 25 of a PIN reset "just in case" their PIN had been compromised. In,[sic] Sprint was also breached via its Boost Mobile prepaid subsidiary -- it said hackers used Boost phone numbers and Boost.com PIN codes to gain access to Sprint accounts.

"Information such as customers' account Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) may have been compromised, however credit card and social security numbers are encrypted and were not compromised," Sprint told CNET in an emailed statement.

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upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for Bytram.

Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Expect.

Dangerously hot temperatures are expected to spread across the Central and Eastern United States on Wednesday through the weekend, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the hardest-hit places, the National Weather Service has warned.

And even when the sun dips below the horizon, temperatures in many places are expected to remain in the 80s.

The hottest part of the country? Smack dab in the middle.

Everyone living in the region stretching from northern Oklahoma and central Nebraska through Iowa, Missouri and western Illinois should brace for a “prolonged period of dangerously hot temperatures and high humidity,” the warnings say. People in central and south central Kansas should expect to endure highs of about 102 degrees; the temperature in Des Moines was expected to hover around 100.

Excessive heat warnings have also been posted farther east, for parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

All told, at least 15 million people across the United States are currently being warned of dangerously high temperatures that could affect human health between Wednesday and Friday.

By the weekend, what meteorologists are calling a “heat dome” in the middle part of the country is expected to spread into the Great Lakes and the East Coast.

Extreme heat can kill. Here’s what you can do to stay safe.

“The combination of heat and humidity can take its toll on someone who is outside and overdoing it,” said Richard Bann, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. “It can be life-threatening.”

Last year, 108 people died from extreme heat, compared to just 30 who died from cold, according to statistics on weather-related fatalities released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Here are four safety recommendations from the National Weather Service:

• Drink plenty of fluids.

• Stay in an air-conditioned room.

• Stay out of the sun.

• Check on relatives and neighbors, especially the elderly.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A pair of vulnerabilities in BMC firmware used in servers built by Lenovo – and in Acer and Penguin Computing boxes using Gigabyte server motherboards – can be exploited to hide malware deep below the operating system, hypervisor, and antivirus.

Said spyware could lurk out of sight and undetected by the OS, security tools, administrators, and users; could potentially snoop on and tamper with software and data on the machine; and persist in the motherboard's flash chips allowing it to survive wipes or replacements of storage drives.

Researchers at US-based Eclypsium on Tuesday detailed the flaws: they can be exploited by a malicious logged-in user, or malware, with admin credentials to inject surveillanceware into the system's firmware.

Obviously, if someone or something awful has admin or root-level access to your server kit, it's already pretty much game over for you, though that's not the point here: these bugs can be abused by someone who has already owned your kit to bury deeper, potentially avoiding detection and persisting across reboots and drive wipes.

To hear Eclypsium tell it, the vulnerabilities specifically lie within Vertiv's MergePoint EMS baseboard management controller (BMC) firmware, which is sold to Lenovo for use in its server products, and Gigabyte to use in motherboards sold to Acer, Ciara, Penguin Computing, sysGen, Bigtera, and AMAX, again for use in server products.

The flaws were discovered in Vertiv's code by Eclypsium, reported to Lenovo in July 2018, and first patched in November that year. The holes were found again in BMC firmware on Gigabyte server mobos in March of this year, and traced back to Vertiv, formerly known as Avocent, in April. Now, with the vendors having had ample time to address the coding blunders, Eclypsium is going public.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Justice John Paul Stevens, dead at 99, promoted the Internet revolution

Former Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens died Tuesday at the age of 99. During Stevens' tenure on the high court, which stretched from 1975 to 2010, Stevens had a huge impact on legal issues affecting the technology sector. Tonight we're republishing a lightly edited version of our 2010 story that originally marked his retirement from the Supreme Court.

In April 2010, the Supreme Court's most senior justice, John Paul Stevens, announced his retirement. In the weeks that followed, hundreds of articles were written about his career and his legacy. While most articles focus on "hot button" issues such as flag burning, terrorism, and affirmative action, Stevens' tech policy record has largely been ignored.

When Justice Stevens joined the court, many of the technologies we now take for granted—the PC, packet-switched networks, home video recording—were in their infancy. During his 35-year tenure on the bench, Stevens penned decisions that laid the foundation for the tremendous innovations that followed in each of these areas.

For example, Stevens penned the 1978 decision that shielded the software industry from the patent system in its formative years. In 1984, Hollywood's effort to ban the VCR failed by just one Supreme Court vote; Stevens wrote the majority opinion. And in 1997, he wrote the majority opinion striking down the worst provisions of the Communications Decency Act and ensuring that the Internet would have robust First Amendment protections.

Indeed, Justice Stevens probably deserves more credit than any other justice for the innovations that occurred under his watch. And given how central those technologies have become to the American economy, Stevens' tech policy work may prove one of his most enduring legacies. In this feature, we review Justice Stevens' tech policy decisions and salute the justice who helped make possible DRM-free media devices, uncensored Internet connections, free software, and much more.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

The first all-new Lotus in years will be a 1,971hp electric car

Depending how old you are, the name "Lotus Cars" will mean different things. For some, it's fast-but-fragile F1 cars in the 1960s and 1970s. Or perhaps it's James Bond's submarine car. Or it's the lightweight, nimble Elise, variations of which have made up the bulk of its range since 1996. Regardless of which era you identify with, throughout those decades a common thread has always been the company's precarious financial situation. But that changed in 2017, when Geely became Lotus' new corporate parent.

Geely is the Chinese company that has been responsible for Volvo's renaissance since it purchased the Swedish automaker from Ford in 2010. And ever since news of the Lotus purchase broke, we've been wondering what the boutique British brand might be able to achieve. After all, the company has never lacked ideas, particularly those involving making cars lighter or making cars handle better (often the two are related). Many industry watchers have worried that we'd be faced with a souped-up SUV, something derived from Volvo's SPA or CMA platforms. That may still come to pass; just ask Porsche whether the Cayenne was a bad idea if you're unsure.

But before that happens—and before the Elise gets redesigned for a third generation—there will be the Evija. That's the name for its new all-electric hypercar, which is to be a low-volume halo car for the rest of the brand. Its specs are eye-opening, even among this rarefied class of vehicles.

The Evija will get a carbon fiber chassis (supplied by CPC), which together with subframes weighs just 284lbs (129kg), and Lotus is aiming for an overall weight of 3,703lbs (1,680kg). The battery pack will come from Williams Advanced Engineering, a spinoff from the Formula 1 team that was responsible for the batteries that powered the first generation of Formula E racers and the batteries that will power the new Extreme E electric off-road racers. At 70kWh, you can be forgiven for thinking it's nothing special. But Lotus says the Evija's battery will have a power output of 2,000kW.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

OneWeb’s low-Earth satellites hit 400Mbps and 32ms latency in new test

OneWeb says a test of its low-Earth orbit satellites has delivered broadband speeds of more than 400Mbps with average latency of 32ms.

"The tests, which took place in Seoul, South Korea, represent the most significant demonstration of the OneWeb constellation to date, proving its ability to provide superior broadband connectivity anywhere on the planet," OneWeb said in an announcement yesterday.

The company said it's on track toward creating "a fully functioning global constellation in 2021 and delivering partial service beginning as early as 2020." The test described yesterday involved six OneWeb satellites that were launched in February. OneWeb says its commercial network "will start with an initial 650 satellites and grow up to 1,980 satellites."

While the 32ms latency figure is an average, the 400Mbps result seems to be the peak speed delivered during the test. OneWeb said its test also demonstrated "seamless beam and satellite handovers; accurate antenna pointing and tracking; [and] live-streamed video at resolutions up to 1080p."

OneWeb originally promised service in Alaska "as early as 2019," but by February 2019 the company said it would only be able to provide customer demos by 2020.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

DEA tracked every opioid pill sold in the US. The data is out

Between 2006 and 2012, opioid drug makers and distributors flooded the country with 76 billion pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone—highly addictive opioid pain medications that sparked the epidemic of abuse and overdoses that killed nearly 100,000 people in that time period.

As the epidemic surged over the seven-year period, so did the supply. The companies increased distribution from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012, a jump of roughly 50%. In all, the deluge of pills was enough to supply every adult and child in the country with around 36 opioid pills per year. Just a 10-day supply can hook 1 in 5 people into being long-term users, researchers have determined.

The stunning supply figures were first reported by the Washington Post and come from part of a database compiled by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracked the fate of every opioid pill sold in America, from manufacturers to individual pharmacies. A federal court in Ohio released the data this week as part of a massive consolidated court case against nearly two-dozen opioid makers and distributors, brought by nearly 2,000 cities, towns, and counties. The local governments allege that the opioid companies conspired to saturate the country with the potent painkillers to soak up billions in profits. The companies deny the allegations, arguing generally that they were serving the needs of patients.

According to an analysis of the data by the Post, just three companies made 88% of the opioid pills: SpecGx, Actavis Pharma, and Par Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Endo Pharmaceuticals. Purdue Pharma ranked fourth, making 3% of the pills. Just six companies distributed 75% of the pills: McKesson Corp., Walgreens, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, CVS, and Walmart.

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upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for AnonymousLuser.

Angry mob burns down home of suspected Bitcoin swindler:

A man thought to have been behind an alleged Bitcoin Ponzi scheme has had his house looted and burned to the ground in South Africa, reports Times Live. Sphelele "Sgumza" Mbatha was reportedly the operator of "Bitcoin Wallets," a scheme which promised investors a 100 percent return on their investment after 15 days.

The arson came a week after Mbatha admitted to the Ladysmith Gazettethat he didn't have any more cash to pay out, and said that investors would need to submit their details online to receive their payouts. He also claimed to not be the owner of the company, despite having registered the business "Bitcoin Wallets Achievers" the previous week. The following week he then said that hackers had infiltrated the website and had stolen investor's money, according to Times Live.

Mbatha's whereabouts are currently unknown

The arson came after angry crowds had previously gathered outside Bitcoin Wallets' headquarters as well as the local police station. Mbatha was reportedly offered assistance by the authorities to relocate the company on the condition that he provided a business plan to prove it was legitimate. However, the documents had not been produced as of last week. A spokesperson from South Africa's National Credit Regulator had previously raised doubts about the company's official documentation.

Original Submission