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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

More than many other auto parts, brake discs are subject to repeated mechanical loads. As a result of this continual abrasion, they produce fine particulate matter, which pose a substantial environmental burden. Now, however, a new coating process developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT and RWTH Aachen University can significantly reduce this impact. By using "Extreme High-speed Laser Material Deposition", known by its German acronym EHLA, it has proved possible to provide brake discs with an effective protection against wear and corrosion in a procedure that is both fast and economic.

Traditional coating processes such as electroplating or thermal spraying. The problem with such processes is that they do not produce a metallurgical bond between the cast iron and the protective coating; moreover, they are expensive and use a lot of materials.

Now, however, a new process avoids these drawbacks. Developed by Fraunhofer ILT in Aachen, together with the Chair for Digital Additive Production DAP at RWTH Aachen University, it is known as Extreme High-speed Laser Material Deposition (EHLA).

[...] Coatings produced with conventional processes have pores and cracks. With the EHLA process, the coating remains intact and therefore provides longer and more effective protection for the component. This increases service life and prevents early failure as a result of damage to the surface of the brake disc. Moreover, the process is suitable for a wide range of materials. Therefore, it is possible to select an environmentally friendly coating for each specific application.

The EHLA process is a new process variant on the well-known laser material deposition, which has proved highly successful in areas such as the repair of turbine blades. EHLA does, however, have a number of decisive advantages. With the EHLA process, the powder particles of the coating material are melted directly in the laser beam, rather than in a melt pool on the surface of the component. Since the melt pool now is fed by liquid drops of material rather than solid particles of powder, the coating process is much faster, rising from the 0.5–2 meters per minute with conventional laser material deposition to as much as 500 meters per minute.

This also substantially reduces the exposure to heat of the material being coated. Unlike conventional laser material deposition, where the heat affected zone can have a depth of one or more millimeters, thermal exposure with the EHLA process remains in the micrometer range. This enables the use of entirely new material combinations such as coatings for aluminum or—as with the brake discs—cast-iron alloys.

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takyon writes:

MIT Engineers Build 15,000-Transistor Carbon Nanotube RISC-V Chip

Engineers from the MIT and Analog Devices have created the most complex chip design yet that uses transistors made of carbon nanotubes instead of silicon. The chip was manufactured using new technologies proven to work in a commercial chip-manufacturing facility.

The researchers seem to have chosen the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) for the design of the chip, presumably due to the open source nature that didn't require hassling with licensing restrictions and costs. The RISC-V processor handles 32-bit instructions and does 16-bit memory addressing. The chip is not meant to be used in mainstream devices quite yet, but it's a strong proof of concept that can already run "hello world"-type applications.

One advantage transistors made out of carbon nanotubes have over silicon transistors is that they can be manufactured in multiple layers, allowing for very dense 3D chip designs. DARPA also believes that carbon nanotubes may allow for the manufacturing of future 3D chips that have performance similar or better than silicon chips, but they can also be manufactured for much lower costs.

Also at IEEE.

Modern microprocessor built from complementary carbon nanotube transistors (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1493-8) (DX)

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martyb writes:

An accusation has been made that a Journal Entry made by a member of the community was deleted.

tl;dr No "smoking gun" has been found so far and no conclusion has been made one way or another. The investigation will continue. I have the next two days (Wed. and Thurs.) off from work and intend to dig further into this, then.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

SpaceX Starship potential Mars landing sites uncovered in NASA images

SpaceX isn't kidding around about its Mars plans. Elon Musk's space company seems to have requested images of potential Mars landing sites from NASA.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRise camera database includes a small group of images labeled as "Candidate landing site for SpaceX Starship."

Starship is SpaceX's next-generation spaceship. It's meant to service Earth orbit as well as the moon and eventually Mars. Starship is moving through a fairly rapid development process. SpaceX is currently building two orbital prototypes and just completed a successful short jump of its Starhopper prototype as a test of its Raptor engine.

Robert Zimmerman from the Behind the Black blog seems to be the first person to call attention to the NASA images. Mars-focused site humanMars.net picked it up with a post of its own on Sunday.

The HiRise image database is searchable by anyone. These SpaceX-related images likely came out in a recent August update. The MRO captured the images in June and July.

While SpaceX may be years away from launching an actual Mars mission, it doesn't hurt to start scoping out possible landing sites. NASA begins its own evaluations way in advance before sending a lander or rover to the Red Planet.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Facebook has insisted that losing control of the private key used to sign its Facebook Basics app is no biggie despite totally unrelated apps from other vendors, signed with the same key, popping up in unofficial repositories.

Targeted mainly at third-world countries, Facebook Basics is the latest incarnation of Internet.org and Free Basics. The idea was to offer free access to Facebook-owned internet properties (and only Facebook-owned ones) with the intention of getting the great unconnected hooked on The Social Network, WhatsApp and Instagram.

So it was that last week the Android Police website, something between an online souk and an occasional tech blog, informed the world that "random APKs" were being uploaded to its Android app mirror site – with Facebook's key signature. The site maintains its own APK repository, parallel to the Google Play store.

"In the last month, we've spotted third-party apps using a debug signing key which matched the key used by Facebook for its Free Basics Android app," wrote Android Police. The site's owner, Artem Russakovskii, said he reported the key compromise to Facebook after spotting unrelated APKs with the same key signature. He also claimed that because he tweeted about it publicly after reporting it, Facebook had refused to pay out a bug bounty.

For its part, Facebook quietly released a new version of Facebook Basics in mid-August, signed with a new key, which at the time of writing has had just over 100,000 downloads.

A Facebook spokesbeing told The Register: "We were notified of a potential security issue that could have tricked people into installing a malicious update to their Free Basics app for Android if they chose to use untrusted sources. We have seen no evidence of abuse and have fixed the issue in the latest release of the app."

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Boeing readies 'astronaut' for likely October test launch

Earlier this week, Boeing welcomed its newest astronaut to the Starliner team. Unlike other crew members, he doesn't have advanced degrees in aerospace or much experience at all. In fact, he's pretty dumb.

Meet the Boeing Starliner's anthropometric test device, also known as a crash-test dummy. Its name and gender have not yet been revealed, but a group of engineers and technicians suited up the dummy, which will fly on the inaugural flight of the Starliner spacecraft now slated to launch late September or early October from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

It took a team of five people to wrestle the rigid plastic dummy into the space suit. Melanie Weber, a Starliner design engineer, joked: "It's like trying to get a bride in a wedding dress when's she's gained 10 pounds."

The procedure brings Boeing one step closer to launching humans to orbit, something that hasn't happened from U.S. soil since the end of the shuttle program in 2011.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It started with a relatively simple goal: create a prototype for a new kind of device to monitor the motion of underground structures at CERN. But the project—the result of a collaboration between CERN and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia—quickly evolved. The prototype turned into several full-blown devices that can potentially serve as early warning systems for earthquakes and can be used to monitor other seismic vibrations. What's more, the devices, called precision laser inclinometers, can be used at CERN and beyond. The researchers behind the project are now testing one device at the Advanced Virgo detector, which recently detected gravitational waves—tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time that were predicted by Einstein a century ago. If all goes to plan, this device could help gravitational-wave hunters minimize the noise that seismic events have on the waves' signal.

Unlike traditional seismometers, which detect ground motions through their effect on weights hanging from springs, the precision laser inclinometer (PLI) measures their effect on the surface of a liquid. The measurement is done by pointing laser light at a liquid and seeing how it is reflected. Compared to weight–spring seismometers, the PLI can detect angular motion in addition to translational motion (up-and-down and side-to-side), and it can pick up low-frequency motion with a very high precision.

"The PLI is extremely sensitive, it can even detect the waves on Lake Geneva on windy days," says principal investigator Beniamino Di Girolamo from CERN. "It can pick up seismic motion that has a frequency between 1 mHz and 12.4 Hz with a sensitivity of 2.4 × 10⁻⁵ μrad/Hz^½," explains co-principal investigator Julian Budagov from JINR. "This is equivalent to measuring a vertical displacement of 24 picometers (24 trillionth of a meter) over a distance of 1 meter," adds co-principal investigator Mikhail Lyablin, also from JINR.

[...] The results from the first tests are encouraging. With just 15 minutes of data taken on 6 August, the PLI picked up the same signals as devices already installed at Virgo, and from that day onwards it started running continuously and detected several small-magnitude earthquakes. The Virgo and PLI teams are now setting up the flow of data from the PLI to the Virgo data system. This will make it easier to compare data from different seismic devices and to assess the PLI's potential impact on Virgo's operation and detection of gravitational waves. "Virgo and the two LIGO detectors in the US have recently began another search for gravitational waves, one that will reach deeper into the universe than previous searches," says former Virgo spokesperson Fulvio Ricci from La Sapienza University, Rome. "We're confident that the PLI can play a part in this important search," he added.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Carbon-heavy development in countries part of China's Belt and Road Initiative could render the Paris climate goals unreachable, according to a new analysis on the gargantuan global infrastructure project released Monday.

The massive network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe will see trillions invested in new infrastructure across 126 countries.

While the Chinese state is putting up a significant part of the cash, the project will also see other national and private-sector investment, and opponents warn of its devastating environmental impact.

An analysis of the possible carbon footprint of infrastructure development in Belt and Road (BRI) countries said there was a significant risk of the initiative alone producing enough greenhouse gas emissions to derail the Paris climate goals.

The 2015 accord enjoins nations to cap temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Toshiba Memory picks up Lite-On SSD business in $165 million deal

The company soon to be known as Kioxia, currently still referred to as Toshiba Memory Holdings, has announced it will purchase the SSD business of Lite-On for $165 million.

In a statement, Toshiba Memory said the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2020, however local media were more specific and said the deal would close in April. In the 2018 fiscal year, Lite-On reported revenue of NT$207 billion, approximately $6.6 billion.

"Lite-On's solid state drive business is a natural and strategic fit with Toshiba Memory and expands our focus in the SSD industry," Nobuo Hayasaka, acting President and CEO of Toshiba Memory Holding Corporation said.

"This is an exciting acquisition for us, as it positions us to meet the projected growth in demand for SSDs in PCs and data centers being driven by the increased use of cloud services."

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

The postie who went off like a rocket

A British inventor has taken up the challenge to deliver a letter across open water through donning a jet engine-powered suit, 85 years after the idea of rocket post failed.

Richard Browning has followed in the footsteps of German entrepreneur Gerhard Zucker, who tried to send mail by rocket to the Isle of Wight, in 1934.

The distance from Hurst Castle in Lymington to Fort Albert in Freshwater is 1.3 km, and is the furthest Richard has ever flown.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

When it comes to the vital statistics of a modern hypercar, surely none have as little relevance as its top speed. You can make use of a sub three-second 0-60mph time in most parts of the world without causing a ruckus—just find the nearest toll booth on a highway. Pin the throttle flat and for a brief moment, until respect for one's fellow humans or fear of the speeding ticket takes over, and it's possible to experience all of the torque and power. But reaching the Vmax for most of these hand-built exotics remains an abstract idea, even on Germany's derestricted Autobahns.

Fast forward another nine years and Bugatti replaced the Veyron with the Chiron, another scarab-like hypercar but this time with even more powerful 8L W16 engine, packing almost 1,500hp (1,103kW). But when the new car arrived, Bugatti revealed that its top speed was actually electronically limited to a maximum of 261mph (420km/h). It could theoretically go faster than that but its specially designed Michelin tires would fail under the extreme forces. [...]

Bugatti and Wallace spent four days at Ehra-Lessien, and eventually found enough confidence in the car to keep it flat over "the jump", a resurfaced section of track that would unsettle the Chiron as it crossed it at warp speed. "After it landed and had a bit of a weave about I thought it was the best it's been, the cross wind was a little bit less and I just kept it pinned," he told Autocar.

The result was a scarcely believable 304.773mph (490.484km/h), giving Bugatti hypercar bragging rights that will probably be difficult to beat. (Particularly since Bugatti, like Ehra-Lessien, is owned by Volkswagen.) At the same time, Bugatti is a European company, and therefore works in metric, as do most of its global customers. You have to wonder if discussions have already begun about trying to find an extra 10km/h so it can break the 500km/h barrier as well…

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takyon writes:

"Legal Options Are a Better Way to Beat Piracy Than Enforcement"

A new article, published in the American University International Law Review, suggests that affordability and availability are the key drivers to decrease piracy. Focusing on the supply-side is more effective than enforcement options such as lawsuits, infringement notices, and website blocking, the researchers conclude.

[...] One recent article, published by University of Amsterdam researchers João Pedro Quintais and Joost Poort, suggests that affordability and availability are key drivers.

The researchers analyzed a wealth of data and conducted surveys among 35,000 respondents, in thirteen countries. What they found was that, between 2014 and 2017, self-reported piracy rates have dropped in all the European countries that were surveyed, except Germany.

In a 70-page paper, published in American University International Law Review, the researchers try to pinpoint the most likely explanation for this decline, starting with enforcement. [...] This article doesn't have space for a full review of all the literature, but the conclusion from the report's authors is clear. Enforcement is not the silver bullet that will stop piracy. [...] Instead, the researchers believe that other factors are likely responsible for the decline in piracy rates. Specifically, they point to affordability and availability of legal content.

The Decline of Online Piracy: How Markets – Not Enforcement – Drive Down Copyright Infringement (open, no DOI)

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martyb writes:

At the time of this writing, the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center reports Eye of category 5 Dorian moving little while over Grand Bahama island. That page also contains several other views and forecasts of the storm.

Though it no longer looks like Florida will get a "direct hit", the storm's currently-predicted run up the US Atlantic coast promises storm surges, very heavy rain with potential flooding, and of course high winds.

For those who lie in the path of this beast, please accept my personal best wishes for you and your loved ones making it through safely.

What sites have you found to be the most informative, timely, and useful? Special credit for those which are minimally sensationalistic. Any webcams to recommend? How are things in your area? What preparations are you making?

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

China's Chang'e-4 lunar rover has discovered an unusually colored, "gel-like" substance during its exploration activities on the far side of the moon.

The mission's rover, Yutu-2, stumbled on that surprise during lunar day 8. The discovery prompted scientists on the mission to postpone other driving plans for the rover, and instead focus its instruments on trying to figure out what the strange material is.

[...] So far, mission scientists haven't offered any indication as to the nature of the colored substance and have said only that it is "gel-like" and has an "unusual color." One possible explanation, outside researchers suggested, is that the substance is melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon.

Yutu-2's discovery isn't scientists' first lunar surprise, however. Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt discovered orange-colored soil near the mission's Taurus-Littrow landing site in 1972, prompting excitement from both Schmitt and his moonwalk colleague, Gene Cernan. Lunar geologists eventually concluded that the orange soil was created during an explosive volcanic eruption 3.64 billion years ago.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/china-s-lunar-rover-has-found-something-weird-moon-s-ncna1048416?cid=public-rss_20190831

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The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Michael Larabel over at Phoronix got his journalism on to produce this interesting story:

We were tipped off today that AMD's Head of Platform Firmware, Edward Benyukhis, publicly posted on LinkedIn that he is "looking to hire someone with solid Coreboot and UEFI background." If you have Coreboot experience or know someone who is, see LinkedIn for contacting Benyukhis.

Oh, and they're also one of the sponsors for the Open-Source Firmware Conference next week. Does this mean I may actually get to use a computer that isn't about to hit a decade old and without a functional hardware rootkit sometime soon?

Original Submission