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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Most internet service providers are gone. Sonic has survived - and thrived

There was a teenager cursing on the internet. That wouldn’t be unusual, except it was 1993.

Dane Jasper and Scott Doty were students at Santa Rosa Junior College, and one of their jobs was setting up dial-up internet service at the college. In the early 1990s, internet access was becoming available on college campuses, but not everyone had it at home.

That’s when they got a call about Max posting profanity using his college account — and that’s what led them down the path of starting Sonoma Interconnect, now known as Sonic, the largest independent internet service provider in Northern California.

Jasper and Doty couldn’t find a student by that name when they looked him up. The student ID number on the account belonged to a 78-year-old woman named Mildred — someone who seemed unlikely to be spending her time using foul language online.

The pair eventually figured out the scheme. Students working in registration were stealing the student ID numbers of older adults signing up for noncomputer classes — the credentials needed to get online — and selling them to high schoolers eager to get on the internet.

“I said, ‘Scott, people are stealing this from us. We should set up a private service that provides access to the internet,’” Jasper said.

But where would they get the money to start Sonic? Doty had an answer: He opened up a drawer with paychecks from his campus job and remarked that payroll had been asking him to cash them.

The very notion of internet service providers and dial-up may seem like a legacy of the 1990s, which makes Sonic’s survival and growth all the more remarkable. The internet company marked its 25th anniversary Friday — a quarter-century after Jasper and Doty registered the domain Sonic.net.

What started in the back room of Jasper’s mother’s house has grown to 500 employees serving more than 100,000 customers in California.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Humans Will Never Colonize Mars

The suggestion that humans will soon set up bustling, long-lasting colonies on Mars is something many of us take for granted. What this lofty vision fails to appreciate, however, are the monumental—if not intractable—challenges awaiting colonists who want to permanently live on Mars. Unless we radically adapt our brains and bodies to the harsh Martian environment, the Red Planet will forever remain off limits to humans.

Mars is the closest thing we have to Earth in the entire solar system, and that's not saying much.

The Red Planet is a cold, dead place, with an atmosphere about 100 times thinner than Earth's. The paltry amount of air that does exist on Mars is primarily composed of noxious carbon dioxide, which does little to protect the surface from the Sun's harmful rays. Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it's only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. You might as well be exposed to the vacuum of space, resulting in a severe form of the bends—including ruptured lungs, dangerously swollen skin and body tissue, and ultimately death. The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. The average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit (-63 degrees Celsius), with temperatures dropping as low as -195 degrees F (-126 degrees C). By contrast, the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was at Vostok Station in Antarctica, at -128 degrees F (-89 degrees C) on June 23, 1982. Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren't properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The new research in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres finds chemicals used in pesticides that have been accumulating in glaciers and ice sheets around the world since the 1940s are being released as Himalayan glaciers melt as a result of climate change.

These pollutants are winding up in Himalayan lakes, potentially impacting aquatic life and bioaccumulating in fish at levels that may be toxic for human consumption.

The new study shows that even the most remote areas of the planet can be repositories for pollutants and sheds light on how pollutants travel around the globe, according to the study's authors.

The Himalayan glaciers contain even higher levels of atmospheric pollutants than glaciers in other parts of the world "because of their proximity to south Asian countries that are some of the most polluted regions of the world," said Xiaoping Wang, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and an author on the new study.

[...] The study adds important data to the bigger picture of how pollutants cycle around the globe, Miner said. Similar studies have been conducted at the poles and in Europe, but not as much is known about pollutants in the Himalaya. Each mountain range has its own characteristics that influence how chemicals move through the environment, she added.

"The Earth is a closed system. Everything released on the Earth, stays somewhere on the Earth," Miner said.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Senate Judiciary Committee intends to vote on the CASE Act, legislation that would create a brand new quasi-court for copyright infringement claims. We have expressed numerous concerns with the legislation, and serious problems inherent with the bill have not been remedied by Congress before moving it forward. In short, the bill would supercharge a “copyright troll” industry dedicated to filing as many “small claims” on as many Internet users as possible in order to make money through the bill’s statutory damages provisions. Every single person who uses the Internet and regularly interacts with copyrighted works (that’s everyone) should contact their Senators to oppose this bill.

Making it so easy to sue Internet users for allegedly infringing a copyrighted work that an infringement claim comes to resemble a traffic ticket is a terrible idea. This bill creates a situation where Internet users could easily be on the hook for multiple $5,000 copyright infringement judgments without many of the traditional legal safeguards or rights of appeal our justice system provides.

The legislation would allow the Copyright Office to create a “determination” process for claims seeking up to $5,000 in damages:

Regulations For Smaller Claims.—The Register of Copyrights shall establish regulations to provide for the consideration and determination, by at least one Copyright Claims Officer, of any claim under this chapter in which total damages sought do not exceed $5,000 (exclusive of attorneys’ fees and costs). A determination issued under this subsection shall have the same effect as a determination issued by the entire Copyright Claims Board.

This could be read as permission for the Copyright Office to dispense with even the meager procedural protections provided elsewhere in the bill when a rightsholder asks for $5000 or less. In essence, what this means is any Internet user who uploads a copyrighted work could find themselves subject to a largely unappealable $5,000 penalty without anything resembling a trial or evidentiary hearing. Ever share a meme, share a photo that isn’t yours, or download a photo you didn’t create? Under this legislation, you could easily find yourself stuck with a $5,000 judgment debt following the most trivial nod towards due process.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The European Space Agency (ESA) unveiled an experiment it hopes will overcome the problems that prevent encrypted communications between the Earth and orbiting spacecraft.

The Cryptographic ICE Cube, launched into orbit in April as part of the NG-11 mission, has been installed on the ISS' Columbus laboratory and is currently being controlled from the ground by researchers in the Netherlands.

ESA says the experiment has recently begun to return data that will be analyzed and shared with CERN. Full testing will begin later in August and is scheduled to run for at least a year.

The aim of the mission, says ESA software product assurance engineer Emmanuel Lesser, is to overcome the hurdles that solar radiation presents for encrypted communications. Specifically, the way encryption keys can be scrambled when radiation hits the memory chips doing the communicating while on orbital spacecraft.

"In orbit the problem has been that space radiation effects can compromise the key within computer memory causing ‘bit-flips’," he explained .

"This disrupts the communication, as the key on ground and the one in space no longer match. Up to now this had been a problem that requires dedicated, and expensive, rad-hardened devices to overcome."

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takyon writes:

NASA has announced 19 non-reimbursable Space Act Agreements (SAAs) with 13 U.S. companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Aerogel Technologies of Boston, and others. No money will be exchanged, but NASA employees will offer their knowledge and expertise for a variety of projects.

SpaceX's SAAs concern landing Starship on the Moon and refueling Starship in-orbit:

SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, will work with NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to advance their technology to vertically land large rockets on the Moon. This includes advancing models to assess engine plume interaction with lunar regolith.

[...] SpaceX will work with Glenn and Marshall to advance technology needed to transfer propellant in orbit, an important step in the development of the company's Starship space vehicle.

Following its 20-meter hop test, SpaceX's Starhopper is scheduled to conduct a 200-meter hop no earlier than August 12, with backup dates on the 13th and 14th.

Blue Origin will work on a navigation system and technologies for the company's planned lunar lander:

Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, will collaborate with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and Goddard to mature a navigation and guidance system for safe and precise landing at a range of locations on the Moon.

[...] Blue Origin will partner with Glenn and Johnson to mature a fuel cell power system for the company's Blue Moon lander. The system could provide uninterrupted power during the lunar night, which lasts for about two weeks in most locations.

[...] Blue Origin, Marshall and Langley will evaluate and mature high-temperature materials for liquid rocket engine nozzles that could be used on lunar landers.

Other technologies being collaborated on include a CubeSat radio transponder for the Space Network, flexible aerogels for rocket soundproofing, and Hall-effect thrusters with extended operating range.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A team of engineers from the University of Minho in Portugal have developed two ways to modify cotton fabric so that it lets off a citronella aroma when it comes in contact with sweat. Their methods for using sweat against itself are outlined in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

The scientists used a protein found in pigs' noses (yes, hog snouts could be the key to sweet-smelling sweat) that binds to scent molecules. They also attached what's known as a carbohydrate-binding module, which binds to cotton. They used a second method involving fat-like liposomes rather than proteins to bind the pleasant scent to the fabric.

The tweaked cottons released the citronella scent when they came in contact with an acidic sweat solution. The pig nose protein-treated fabric emitted a "quick burst of scent," while the liposomes cleared the air with a slower, more controlled release.

[...] As a bonus, citronella is also a popular insect repellent. Keeping both the mosquitoes and bad body odor away could soon be as simple as reeling off 50 quick jumping jacks.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Sulla

On a bright fall morning at Stanford, Tom Mullaney is telling me what's wrong with QWERTY keyboards. Mullaney is not a technologist, nor is he one of those Dvorak keyboard enthusiasts. He's a historian of modern China and we're perusing his exhibit of Chinese typewriters and keyboards, the curation of which has led Mullaney to the conclusion that China is rising ahead technologically while the West falls behind, clinging to its QWERTY keyboard.

Now this was and still is an unusual view because Chinese—with its 75,000 individual characters rather than an alphabet—had historically been the language considered incompatible with modern technology. How do you send a telegram or use a typewriter with all those characters? How do you even communicate with the modern world? If you're a Cambridge-educated classicist enamored with the Greeks, you might just conclude Chinese script is "archaic." Long live the alphabet.

But, Mullaney argues, the invention of the computer could turn China's enormous catalog of characters into an advantage.

His argument is [...] about our relationship to computers, not just as physical objects but as conduits to intangible software. Typing English on a QWERTY computer keyboard, he says, "is about the most basic rudimentary way you can use a keyboard." You press the "a" key and "a" appears on your screen. "It doesn't make use of a computer's processing power and memory and the cheapening thereof." Type "a" on a QWERTY keyboard hooked up to a Chinese computer, on the other hand, and the computer is off anticipating the next characters. Typing in Chinese requires mediation from a layer of software that is obvious to the user.

[...] The Chinese way of inputting text—the software-mediated way—will win out, says Mullaney. Actually, it's already won out. Our mobile phones now have predictive text and autocomplete. It took the constraint of mobile to get Westerners to realize the limits of the simple what-you-type-is-what-you-get keyboard. But even then, you could only get Americans to go so far.

Read more at The Atlantic.

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upstart writes for Bytram:

What the brains of people with excellent general knowledge look like: Some people seem to have an answer to every general knowledge question; why?

The brains of people with excellent general knowledge are particularly efficiently wired.

[...] The researchers examined the brains of 324 men and women with a special form of magnetic resonance imaging called diffusion tensor imaging. This makes it possible to reconstruct the pathways of nerve fibres and thus gain an insight into the structural network properties of the brain. By means of mathematical algorithms, the researchers assigned an individual value to the brain of each participant, which reflected the efficiency of his or her structural fibre network.

The participants also completed a general knowledge test called the Bochum Knowledge Test, which was developed in Bochum by Dr. Rüdiger Hossiep. It is comprised of over 300 questions from various fields of knowledge such as art and architecture or biology and chemistry. The team led by Erhan Genç finally investigated whether the efficiency of structural networking is associated with the amount of general knowledge stored.

The result: People with a very efficient fibre network had more general knowledge than those with less efficient structural networking.

The Neural Architecture of General Knowledge. European Journal of Personality, 2019; DOI: 10.1002/per.2217

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martyb writes:

LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light:

Years of computer simulations. Countless ground tests. They've all led up to now. The Planetary Society's crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight.

Since unfurling the spacecraft's silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbit around the Earth. In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers. The perigee, or low point of its orbit, has dropped by a similar amount, which is consistent with pre-flight expectations for the effects of atmospheric drag on the spacecraft. The mission team has confirmed the apogee increase can only be attributed to solar sailing, meaning LightSail 2 has successfully completed its primary goal of demonstrating flight by light for CubeSats.

"We're thrilled to announce mission success for LightSail 2," said LightSail program manager and Planetary Society chief scientist Bruce Betts. "Our criteria was to demonstrate controlled solar sailing in a CubeSat by changing the spacecraft's orbit using only the light pressure of the Sun, something that's never been done before. I'm enormously proud of this team. It's been a long road and we did it."

[...] After LightSail 2's month-long orbit raising phase, the spacecraft will begin to deorbit, eventually reentering the atmosphere in roughly a year. The aluminized Mylar sail, about the size of a boxing ring, may currently be visible for some observers at dusk and dawn. The Planetary Society's mission control dashboard shows upcoming passes based on user location, and includes a link to a page that highlights passes when the sail is more likely to be visible.

Roughly 50,000 Planetary Society members and private citizens from more than 100 countries, as well as foundations and corporate partners, donated to the LightSail 2 mission, which cost $7 million from 2009 through March 2019.

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martyb writes:

A cursory reading of the 14-page Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology bill suggests that it may apply to SoylentNews.

What do you think?

US Could ban 'Addictive' Autoplay Videos and Infinite Scrolling Online:

The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (Smart) Act takes aim at techniques and features that, according to its author, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, are created to encourage and deepen addictive behaviours.

The bill targets "practices that exploit human psychology or brain physiology to substantially impede freedom of choice" and specifically prohibits four general practices:

• Infinite scroll or auto refill, such as the Facebook newsfeed or a Twitter timeline, which automatically loads in new content when the user nears the end of the existing content, without requiring any specific request from readers.

• Autoplay, when a site automatically plays music or video "without an express, separate prompt by the user", as on YouTube and Facebook. Curiously, the bill explicitly excludes autoplaying advertisements from its coverage, despite the general unpopularity of that content. It also provides exceptions for autoplaying music on music streaming services, and autoplaying from a pre-built playlist.

• Badges and other awards linked to engagement with the platform. These are most notably used by Snapchat in the form of the Snapstreak badges, which mark how long two friends have exchanged daily messages. Parents have complained that the Snapstreak mechanic leads to problematic behaviour from children, who fear their friendship is at risk if the streak ends.

• "Elimination of natural stopping points", a catch-all category for any website that loads more content than a typical user scrolls through in three minutes without the user expressly requesting that additional content.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666:

Soon you’ll be able to watch PBS on YouTube

PBS and YouTube have announced that PBS and PBS Kids will join YouTube TV’s channel roster. The two partners made the announcement this week at the summer Television Critics Association’s (TCA) press tour. Three hundred and thirty member stations will be available to users, based on their markets.

PBS already offers a robust on-demand streaming service of its own at video.pbs.org, with content tailored to individual markets. And PBS launched a channel on Amazon Prime Video with special on-demand content earlier this year. But this will be the first time viewers will be able to stream live programming from PBS through a digital service, excepting some anomalies over the years like the now-defunct Aero service and the like.

[...] Given the PBS goal of reaching "as many Americans as possible," it makes sense to bring the stations to a platform like this. That said, though, YouTube TV pricing starts at $49.99, and a key part of the PBS pitch has always been to make quality content freely available to users regardless of their location or socioeconomic status.

We're in a strange limbo period where live PBS is still free on broadcast TV, but broadcast TV is declining. So that means PBS is coming to Web streaming, but not for free. That might change in the future, but this is an awkward position for PBS to be in right now.

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chromas writes:

"Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games."

If you had previously taken a look at Blender, but were put off by its nonconformist UI and right-click-select paradigm, well, that's all gone now:

The longest-awaited – and, arguably, the most significant – release in Blender’s history has finally been released. Blender 2.80 is now available for download, bringing with it a new interface, a new core architecture for the software, a new render engine, a complete new 2D animation system, and scores of new features affecting everything from modeling to simulation.

[...] The Blender 2.80 documentation lists seven major areas of development, each comprising scores of changes, plus over 30 smaller new features.

[...] The 2.80 release makes Blender look and act much more like other DCC software, adopting industry conventions like a dark UI theme, flat icon design, and left-click being the default way to select objects.

[...] Blender 2.80 replaces the software’s old system of 3D layers and layer groups with Collections, used to organise objects in a scene, instance groups of objects, and link groups across .blend files. The old system of render layers has also been expanded into a new system of View Layers, making it possible to create multiple versions of a scene during look development or shot layout, as well as to split a render into multiple layers for compositing.

[...] It’s also worth noting that Blender 2.80 is an API-breaking release, meaning that add-ons need to be updated before they will work with it. Many have already been updated: you can find community-compiled lists of compatible tools on BlenderArtists.org and Blender Addons.

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

Capital One target of massive data breach:

A hacker gained access to personal information from more than 100 million Capital One credit applications, the bank said Monday as federal authorities arrested a suspect in the case .

Paige A. Thompson — who also goes by the handle "erratic" — was charged with a single count of computer fraud and abuse in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Thompson made an initial appearance in court and was ordered to remain in custody pending a detention hearing Thursday.

The hacker got information including credit scores and balances plus the Social Security numbers of about 140,000 customers, the bank said. It will offer free credit monitoring services to those affected.

The FBI raided Thompson's residence Monday and seized digital devices. An initial search turned up files that referenced Capital One and "other entities that may have been targets of attempted or actual network intrusions."

[...] Capital One, based in McLean, Virginia, said Monday it found out about the vulnerability in its system July 19 and immediately sought help from law enforcement to catch the perpetrator.

According to the FBI complaint, someone emailed the bank two days before that notifying it that leaked data had appeared on the code-hosting site GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft.

And a month before that, the FBI said, a Twitter user who went by "erratic" sent Capital One direct messages warning about distributing the bank's data, including names, birthdates and Social Security numbers.

"Ive basically strapped myself with a bomb vest, (expletive) dropping capitol ones dox and admitting it," one [direct message] said. "I wanna distribute those buckets i think first."

Capital One said it believes it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud, but it will continue to investigate. The data breach affected about 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada.

The bank said the bulk of the hacked data consisted of information supplied by consumers and small businesses who applied for credit cards between 2005 and early 2019. In addition to data such as phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth and self-reported income, the hacker was also able to access credit scores, credit limits and balances, as well as fragments of transaction information from a total of 23 days in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

"While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened," said Capital One CEO Richard D. Fairbank. "I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right."

By way of comparison, the United States population on July 30, 2019 was: 329,342,191.

Also at SiliconANGLE, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, The Verge

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DannyB writes:

Advertising is a cancer on society

I know it's a blog post, but you're not going to get this kind of thing in a news article. Hopefully SoylentNews' many advertisers won't be offended.

[...] Advertising as currently practiced shares these characteristics. It's a malignant mutation of an idea that efficient markets need a way to connect goods and services with people wanting to buy them. Limited to honestly informing people about what's available on the market, it can serve a crucial function in enabling trade. In the real world however, it's moved way past that role.

Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing. Over time, it became increasingly manipulative and dishonest. It also became more effective. In the process, it grew to consume a significant amount of resources of every company on the planet. It infected every communication medium in existence, both digital and analog. It shapes every product and service you touch, and it affects your interactions with everyone who isn't your close friend or family member. Through all that, it actively destroys trust in people and institutions alike, and corrupts the decision-making process in any market transaction. It became a legitimized form of industrial-scale psychological abuse, and there's no way you can resist its impact.

The growth of advertising is fueled by the enormous waste it creates. In any somewhat saturated market - which, today, is most of them - any effort you spent on advertising serves primarily to counteract the combined advertising efforts of your competitors. The same results could be achieved if every market player limited themselves to just informing customers about their goods and services. This, unfortunately, is impossible for humanity, and so we end up with a zero-sum game instead (or really negative-sum, if you count the externalities). If you have competitors, you can't not participate.

The blog/article goes on to describe Robocalls, telemarketing, Spam, Leaflets, snail mail spam, SEO, and much, much more, all for the same low price! (Now how much would you pay?)

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Freeman writes:

"I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me,” reads the Latin inscription on the 2,000-year-old iron stylus. “I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able [to give] as generously as the way is long [and] as my purse is empty." The “City" almost certainly refers to Rome, and the souvenir stylus essentially boasts a more flowery version of today’s “I went to Rome, and all I brought you was this pen.”

The stylus dates to around 70 CE—about 20 years after the founding of Roman Londinium, a decade after a Celtic uprising burned it to the ground and about 50 years before the first stones were laid for Hadrian’s Wall. It’s among 14,000 artifacts unearthed during the construction of Bloomberg’s European headquarters starting in 2013, and conservators are finally ready to put it on display.

The site where the stylus was found stands on the banks of the ancient River Walbrook, a tributary of the Thames that now flows beneath the city’s streets. Before London officials culverted and covered the river during the 1400s, it flowed through the center of London, and before that, it bisected Roman Londinium.

[...]Archaeologists unearthed about 200 styluses from the site, but this corny little souvenir from Rome is the only one with an inscription. In fact, it’s one of just a handful of inscribed styluses from anywhere in the ancient world.

Yes, indeed, it's always been hard to find the right gift. Best to go with: "all I got you was this lousy ..."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/a-2000-year-old-stylus-makes-a-point-about-ancient-roman-humor/

Original Submission