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dwilson writes:

The 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler was the first to muse about the structure of snowflakes. Why are they so symmetrical? How does one side know how long the opposite side has grown? Kepler thought it was all down to what we would now call a "morphogenic field" – that things want to have the form they have. Science has since discounted this idea. But the question of why snowflakes and similar structures are so symmetrical is nevertheless not entirely understood.

Modern science shows just how fundamental the question is: look at all the spiral galaxies out there. They can be half a million light years across, but they still preserve their symmetry. How? In our new study, published in Scientific Reports, we present an explanation.

We have shown that information and "entropy" – a measure of the disorder of a system – are linked together ("info-entropy") in a way exactly analogous to electric and magnetic fields ("electromagnetism"). Electric currents produce magnetic fields, while changing magnetic fields produce electric currents. Information and entropy influence each other in the same way.

[...] This means that we don't actually need dark matter after all. According to our model, the galactic entropy gives rise to such a large quantity of additional energy that it modifies the observed dynamics of the galaxy – making stars at the edge move faster than expected. This is exactly what dark matter was meant to explain. The energy isn't directly observable as mass, but its presence is certainly supported by the astronomical observations – explaining why dark matter searches have so far found nothing.

https://theconversation.com/keplers-forgotten-ideas-about-symmetry-help-explain-spiral-galaxies-without-the-need-for-dark-matter-new-research-121017

Original Submission

barbara hudson writes:

If you're into going to Canada for lower drug prices, things should get even better after the middle of next year. Canada is going to be changing the way it calculates the price of medication, which will lower costs. Canada can do this because, unlike the USA, Canadian regulators are allowed to determine when a patent monopoly is being abused and act accordingly.

Canada Promises to Save Billions with Tweaks to Patent Drug System:

Canadians can expect to pay less for prescription drugs as early as next summer

The federal government is making changes to the way it will evaluate new drug prices, a tweak it says will save Canadians billions over the next 10 years.

On Friday, the government released changes to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, first set up in 1987 as a shield against what the government calls "excessive prices," set to come into force next July.

"The [board] relies on outdated regulatory tools and information that foreign medicine pricing authorities updated years ago. As a result, list prices for patented medicines in Canada are now among the highest in the world," notes a release from Health Canada.

Under the new regulations, the board will no longer compare prices with the United States and Switzerland, which have some of the world's highest drug prices, when figuring out what companies are allowed to charge. It will still compare drug prices to France, Germany and Italy, and has added Japan, Spain, Norway, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands to the list.

The board will also now have to consider a drug's "value to and financial impact on consumers in the health system" when determining if a price is excessive.

"These bold reforms will both make prescription drugs more affordable and accessible for all Canadians saving them an estimated $13 billion in the next decade and lay the foundation for national pharmacare," the federal health agency said in a statement.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.redgamingtech.com/navi-20-series-is-known-internally-as-the-nvidia-killer-exclusive/

AMD currently have an answer to Nvidia’s mid-range offerings with their RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT graphics cards, and in the next few weeks, custom variants of those GPUs will be filtering onto store shelves from AIBs[*] such as PowerColor.

But, with the discontinuation of the Radeon VII graphics cards (although, Radeon VII wasn’t that much faster than RX 5700 XT when overclocked anyway), AMD doesn’t have a graphics card to compete with Nvidia’s higher performance model graphics cards, such as the RTX 2080 Super, and of course the RTX 2080 Ti.

Navi 10 (which is the GPU found inside the heart of the RX 5700 series) goes up to 2,560 shaders (40 Compute Units), and sports the first generation RDNA architecture. This architecture is significantly more efficient than say, Vega, when it comes to gaming tasks.

There has been no shortage of rumors that the company are working on a ‘bigger die’ variant of Navi, with up to 4,096 Shaders and even Lisa Su has teased that they are coming. This is on top of several benchmark leaks for what we believe is Navi 14, which sports 24 Compute Units, and would appear to be a GPU designed around competing with Nvidia’s GTX 16 cards.

So now I have set the stage, I’d like to bring in what I was told last night by a source who has been reliable in the past via a phone call. I have in the past leaked the 7/7 release date for Ryzen 3000 and Navi (I was original source of this leak), Leaked the existence of 7nm Vega for Gamers (then also the Radeon VII details and images prior to its launch), and also leaked several things for RDNA (including the second generation featuring Ray Tracing).

martyb writes:

'It's Crazy': Chase Bank Forgiving all Debt Owed by its Canadian Credit Card Customers:

Bank says this was the best way to exit Canada after folding its Amazon and Marriott Visa cards

Finally, a good-news story about credit card debt.

U.S.-based Chase Bank is forgiving all outstanding debt owed by users of its two Canadian credit cards: the Amazon.ca Rewards Visa and the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa. The bank retired both cards last year and said it's wiping out cardholders' debt to complete its exit from the Canadian credit card market.

[...]After 13 years in the Canadian market, Chase decided to fold its two Visa cards in March 2018.

The bank — which is part of global financial services firm JPMorgan Chase & Co. — wouldn't say how many Canadians had signed up for the cards or how much debt was outstanding.

[...]Credit card rewards expert Patrick Sojka said Chase likely concluded that debt forgiveness was ultimately cheaper than continuing to collect credit card payments in Canada.

"They're still probably paying taxes, paying accountants, and for them, they just probably worked it out and [said], 'Let's just forgive the debt and fully get out of the country.'"

But he's stumped as to why the bank didn't instead opt to sell the debt to a third-party debt collector, which would allow Chase to recoup some cash.

"It is definitely a head-scratcher, for sure," said Sojka, the founder of Rewards Canada, a site that tracks reward programs.

Chase told CBC News it chose the debt-forgiveness route so that everyone benefited.

"Ultimately, we felt it was a better decision for all parties, particularly our customers," spokesperson Maria Martinez said in an email.

The windfall is generally not considered taxable unless the credit card was used to purchase items for their business. As always, check with your tax advisor if you are at all unsure.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Huawei Unveils Harmony, Its Answer to Android, in Survival Bid

Huawei, the Chinese technology giant, on Friday unveiled its own mobile operating system, Harmony, in an effort to ensure that its fast-growing smartphone business can survive the United States government's clampdown on the firm.

Huawei has been at the mercy of the Trump administration for the past three months, ever since the Commerce Department began requiring that American companies apply for special permission to sell parts and technology to the Chinese firm, which Washington officials accuse of being a potential conduit for cyberspying by Beijing. The move effectively choked off Huawei's access to Google's Android software and American-made microchips and other hardware components, and put a big question mark over Huawei's future.

Although President Trump said in June that he would loosen some of the restrictions to allow American companies to continue working with Huawei, economic ties between the United States and China have grown more tense since then, and the prospect of immediate relief for Huawei seems more distant.

Unveiling Harmony at a Huawei developer conference in the southern city of Dongguan on Friday, Richard Yu, the head of the company's consumer business, said that the new operating system was designed to work not only on mobile phones, but on smart watches and other connected home devices as well. Indeed, the first Huawei products to run on Harmony will not be smartphones, but "smart screens" that the company plans to release later this year. Mr. Yu said that Harmony would gradually be incorporated into the company's other smart devices over the next three years. But there is no immediate plan, he said, to release Harmony-based phones.

Also at Bloomberg, XDA Developers, The Verge, TechCrunch, CNBC, CNN.

See also: Huawei's cross-platform HarmonyOS will ship in China in 2019, globally in 2020

Previously:
Google Pulls Huawei's Android License
The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google's Iron Grip On Android
Google Doesn't Want Huawei Ban Because It Would Result in an Android Competitor
Trump Administration Will Loosen Restrictions Against Huawei
Huawei's Android Alternative Lives on... for IoT

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Texas Amateur Detects Possible Impact on Jupiter:

As Texas amateur astronomer Ethan Chappel looked up at the sky for Perseid meteors on Wednesday night (August 7th), little did he know his Celestron 8 telescope was capturing the possible impact of a much larger "meteor" at Jupiter. After running the camera data through a program designed to alert the user to just such transient events, Chappel spotted a flash of light in the planet's South Equatorial Belt (SEB). It expanded from a pinpoint to a small dot before fading away — telltale signs of a possible impact based on previous events observed at Jupiter.

[...] The flash appeared just inside the southern edge of the SEB on the same face of the planet as the Great Red Spot, at a longitude of 21.8° (System II) / 298.4° (System I) and latitude –19.6°. Due to prevailing winds, any possible dark scar left in the wake of the impact will be slowly drifting westward, increasing in longitude by approximately 3.9° (System II) per day. The flash lasted between 0.88 and 1.55 seconds. Chappel favors the longer time frame.

[...] If confirmed this would be the 7th recorded impact at the solar system's biggest planet since July 1994, when 21 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into the planet in succession to create a rosary of dark impact boils visible in amateur telescopes. That event remains the single most impressive astronomical sight of my life. Additional crashes by either asteroids or comets were observed in 2009, 2010 (two events), 2016, and 2017.

Pics and a time-lapse of the impact are on the linked story's page.

Also at cnet which also notes:

Something remarkable to consider is that the apparent size of the flash is almost the size of Earth, which is tiny next to the giant gas planet. For reference, about three Earths could fit inside Jupiter's Great Red Spot, which is also visible.

Of course, this doesn't mean that whatever hit Jupiter was the size of a planet, just that the collision looks to have released a lot of explosive energy.

I wonder what things would be like if it had hit our Moon, instead?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Fruit flies could one day provide new avenues to discover additional genes that contribute to a person's ability to learn and remember. Scientists at the University of Missouri are studying genes of fruit flies to explore why an individual fly can be a better learner than another. Many of those genes in fruit flies are similar to those found in people.

Past experiments studying how fruit flies' ability to learn and remember have involved "turning off" a single gene and watching the response. In this study, the scientists took a different approach by placing fruit flies in a box equipped with heating elements. [...] A fly's ability to avoid the heat measured how well it learned, and a fly's ability to avoid the hotter side of the box, even when the heat was off, measured its capacity to remember.

Patricka Williams-Simon [said] "We repeated the experiment with over 40,000 individual fruit flies from over 700 different genes to establish variation in performance. Then, we focused on the high and the low learning and memory performers." The scientists then took these results and applied genetic sequencing technology to determine if specific genes were responsible for these observed changes in a fly's behavior. They found nine genes that show a change between high and low performing files when it comes to learning and memory.

"All of these genes are previously known to affect the nervous system or the brain in some way, but none of them had previously been implicated in learning and memory," said Elizabeth King, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Therefore, they represent novel areas to further investigate these behavioral traits."

While the study is considered basic research, Williams-Simon said their findings are important. "The better we can understand these traits in fruit flies, the more we can develop targeted studies in humans," Williams-Simon said.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Federal Court Rules Facebook Users Can Sue Company Over Unlawful use of Face Recognition Technology:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled today that Facebook users can sue the company over its use of face recognition technology. The ruling is the first decision of an American appellate court directly addressing the unique privacy harms posed by the face recognition technology being increasingly pushed on members of the public without their knowledge and consent.

The ruling in Patel v. Facebook affirms the district court's certification of a class of Facebook users in Illinois who have alleged that the company violated their rights under their state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The Illinois statute imposes protections against companies collecting and storing biometric information, including using face recognition technology, without the user's knowledge and consent. The suit alleges that Facebook's practice of using face recognition technology to identify users in digital images uploaded to the site without disclosing its use of face recognition or obtaining consent violates state law.

"This decision is a strong recognition of the dangers of unfettered use of face surveillance technology," said Nathan Freed Wessler, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "The capability to instantaneously identify and track people based on their faces raises chilling potential for privacy violations at an unprecedented scale. Both corporations and the government are now on notice that this technology poses unique risks to people's privacy and safety."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Transport for London's online Oyster travel smartcard system has been accessed by miscreants using stolen customer login credentials, The Reg can reveal, forcing IT bods to pull the website offline for a second day.

The UK capital's transport authority has blamed the intrusions on passengers who have used email address and password combinations for their Oyster accounts that were also used for one or more hacked websites: criminals who have nicked login details from other sites can use that information to get into the Oyster accounts of people who reuse the same usernames and passwords everywhere. This technique is known as credential stuffing.

A TfL spokesperson told us: "We believe that a small number of customers have had their Oyster online account accessed after their login credentials were compromised when using non-TfL websites. No customer payment details have been accessed, but as a precautionary measure and to protect our customers' data, we have temporarily closed online contactless and Oyster accounts while we put additional security measures in place."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

According to Ofcom, speeds of 24Mbps are currently available to 94 per cent of premises. Yet only 45 per cent have signed up, sticking with their poxy standard ADSL packages of around 11-12Mbps.

A survey of 3,000 customers by Which? suggests that the most common reason for not bothering to upgrade was because people felt happy with their current speeds.

So if people can't be arsed to upgrade from creaking ADSL services to the much-derided "superfast" fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) speeds, why on earth are they going to bother with the far more expensive full-fibre speeds?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Semiconductor-Manufacturing/

Hi everyone this is Matt H I am a college student studying Microelectronic Engineering (making computer chips). I wanted to apply what I learned and came up with the idea to make my own cleanroom to test experiments. This instructable covers how to build a cleanroom/cleanbox and preform photolithography, oxide growth, and etching at home. These steps are integral processes to how modern computer chips are made. Due to a limited budget instead of making a whole room into a cleanroom I had the idea of making a glovebox like design with modifications. Also due to limited budget the results are a whole lot larger then modern techniques and I followed a similar approach as did the early pioneers of transistors. This is to be assembled in a spare room or garage where it is dark. Building this should only be attempted if you have knowledge of semiconductor manufacturing and know the proper safety precautions.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Safety concerns at a prominent military germ lab have led the government to shut down research involving dangerous microbes like the Ebola virus.

"Research is currently on hold," the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in Fort Detrick, Md., said in a statement on Friday. The shutdown is likely to last months, Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman, said in an interview.

The statement said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to issue a "cease and desist order" last month to halt the research at Fort Detrick because the center did not have "sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater" from its highest-security labs.

[...] The suspended research involves certain toxins, along with germs called select agents, which the government has determined have "the potential to pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health or to animal or plant products." There are 67 select agents and toxins; examples include the organisms that cause Ebola, smallpox, anthrax and plague, and the poison ricin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick-biohazard.html

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Wal-Mart Signals Interest in Developing its Own Cryptocurrency

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT)[*] is planning on creating its own cryptocurrency, according to an application filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

In the patent filing, Wal-Mart explained that its proposed cryptocurrency will be a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and will be used to help low-income individuals that cannot qualify for traditional credit cards or other lines of credit get in-house financing from Wal-Mart:

"Using a digital currency, low-income households that find banking expensive, may have an alternative way to handle wealth at an institution that can supply the majority of their day-to-day financial and product needs. The digital currency may be pegged to the US dollar and available for use only at selected retailors or partners. In other embodiments, the digital currency is available for use anywhere. The digital currency can provide a fee-free, or fee-minimal place to store wealth that can be spent, for example, at retailers and, if needed, easily converted to cash."

Wal-Mart also suggested that the currency could be used to distribute welfare subsidies or other forms of aid, and highlighted the currency's ability to restrict or segment purchases:

"As an example of the set of rules, for example, in government assistance and dependent care, a government-assistance restricted currency may be good for food or even certain types of food but not alcohol or cigarettes."

[...] For its part, Wal-Mart says it doesn't have a timeline for development and rolling out its cryptocurrency. Likely the company is looking to see how Libra is received by the market — and regulators.

[*] The link given in the story: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:WMT is problematic for some people. It should redirect you to: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WMT/. --martyb]

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

At the hacking conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Ruben Santamarta, principal security consultant at pen-testing biz IOActive, told attendees he had found bugs in software used aboard the jetliners.

It is important to note that there are essentially three electronic networks on a 787: the first is home to non-critical stuff like the in-flight entertainment system; the second is used by slightly more important applications reserved for crew and maintenance teams; and the third is used by the vital avionics gear that controls the airplane's flight and reads its sensors.

The software Santamarta probed – a crew information service – lives on the second network. He suggested it may be possible to exploit holes in, say, the in-flight entertainment system on the first network to access the adjoining second network where one could abuse the flaws he found in the crew information software to then reach into the adjoining third network. Once there, one could tap into the avionics equipment to hijack the 787, in theory.

Boeing, however, insists the software on the second network cannot be exploited as IOActive described, nor can a miscreant direct the avionics from other networks, due to restrictions in place, such as hardware filters that only allow data to flow between networks rather than instructions or commands. El Reg quietly hopes the avionics can't be taken over by malformed data that triggers vulnerabilities within the flight control systems on the third network.

During his talk, Santamarta acknowledged he had no way of proving he could actually commandeer the flight control systems via the holes he found in the crew-facing software. For one thing, he couldn’t persuade Boeing to let him loose on a real passenger jet.

“We have confirmed the vulnerabilities, but not that they are exploitable, so we are presenting why we think they are,” he said. “We have got very limited data, so it’s impossible to say if the mitigation factors Boeing say they have work. We offer them our assistance.”

Original Submission

"upstart" writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow7671

CafePress Data Breach Exposes Personal Info of 23 Million Users

CafePress, a well-known custom T-Shirt and merchandise site, suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of 23 million of their customers.

Users became aware of the breach today, not through CafePress, but through notifications from Troy Hunt's Have I Been Pwned service. 

After hearing about a CafePress data breach being circulated, Hunt solicited the help of security researcher Jim Scott who had helped him with other data breaches in the past, such as Evite.

"Security researcher Jim Scott is just fine. About 2 weeks ago I got notified by Troy that CafePress.com data breach was circulating and if I had seen it. At that time, the only public source of this data breach was from the data breach search engine WeLeakInfo and was not being sold as far as I know. With the help of my colleagues, I started to search for the database more thoroughly until I found it," Scott told BleepingComputer via email.

Research by BleepingComputer shows that a dehashed CafePress database of approximately 493,000 accounts was being sold on  hacker forums. It is not known if this is related to the same breach.

According to HIBP, CafePress was hacked in February 2019 and exposed the personal information for 23,205,290 users. This exposed data includes Email addresses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, and Physical addresses.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

William Gerstenmaier may not have been not particularly well-known to the general public, but as the associate administrator for human spaceflight at NASA he carried considerable influence in the space community. So when he was effectively terminated from his position on July 10, it reverberated both throughout the domestic as well as the international spaceflight community.

NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, who moved Gerstenmaier aside because of ongoing delays with the Space Launch System rocket and a concern that the senior official was not moving ahead quickly enough with the Artemis Moon program, has said new leadership will be in place "soon."

This will be a critical hire for Bridenstine, as his new associate administrator for human spaceflight will have a number of important and difficult calls to make upon taking the job—and not just concerning the White House's efforts to return to the Moon by 2024. In particular, in the coming months, Gerstenmaier's replacement will be chairing meetings called "Flight Readiness Reviews" that will give a green light to the first crewed missions from US soil since 2011.