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takyon writes:

ASUS has demonstrated the first 300 Hz laptops, after ASUS and others debuted 240 Hz laptops earlier in the year:

Designed specifically for hardcore gamers and esports professionals on the go, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX701 will be the world's first notebook with a display supporting up to 300 Hz refresh rate and a 3 ms GtG response time. This machine will be available already in October, 2019. In addition, similar LCDs with a 300 Hz refresh rate and a 3 ms GtG response time will be featured on a prototype ROG Zephyrus S GX502 as well as on the 15-inch and 17-inch models of the ROG Strix Scar III.

ASUS does not disclose the maker of its 300 Hz/3 ms display panels, though it is highly likely that the company uses panels with a 240 Hz native refresh rate in overdrive mode. What is noteworthy is that production 240 Hz ROG Zephyrus S GX701 and ROG Zephyrus S GX502 will feature factory-calibrated displays with Pantone Validation, so in addition to gamers, these machines will also be appreciated by professionals who use color-critical applications.

See also: Blur Busters Law: The Amazing Journey To Future 1000Hz Displays

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

But, while sales pitches may anthropomorphize "The Cloud" into a sentient and unstoppable being, the reality of "everything as a service" offerings is not quite as tidy as that—yet. And, while a few brave companies with greenfield IT projects may be grabbing onto "almost everything as a service," not everyone is ready to follow them. As many of you told us, all of these new options increase the scope and complexity of a cloud migration. While moving email from local hosting to the cloud may have been obvious (yes, it really is past time to migrate off of Lotus Notes), the vote isn't nearly as automatic with each new level of "as a service" abstraction.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/everything-as-a-service-is-coming-but-were-no

Personally, I was relieved this was mostly about Enterprise infrastructure. Still, things like Stadia https://www.stadia.com/ and Office 365 https://www.office.com/ don't give me a vote of confidence for the future. I don't know about you, but I try to reduce my monthly bills, not increase how many I have.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

This Bizarre 5-Core Chip Could Be Intel's New Lakefield 3D Foveros CPU

Intel's upcoming 3D-stacked processor, codename Lakefield, has recently popped up in the 3DMark database. Chip detective TUM_APISAK managed to take a screenshot of the 3DMark entry.

Intel Lakefield will be the first processors to feature the chipmaker's 3D Foveros packaging. Foveros is a technology that essentially allows Intel to stack chips one on top of the other, equivalent to what storage manufacturers are doing with some new types of 3D NAND (string stacking).

According to 3DMark's report, the unidentified processor is equipped with five cores, which concurs with the core configuration for Intel's Lakefield chips. As you recall, Lakefield utilizes a design that's similar to ARM's big.LITTLE architecture. Intel complements the powerful core with other slower and more energy-efficient cores.

In Lakefield's case, Intel plans to endow the processor with one Sunny Cove core and four accompanying Atom Tremont cores. The chipmaker will cook up Lakefield chips with a combination of manufacturing process. Intel uses the 10nm node for the compute die and the 22nm node for the base die.

I'd like to see configurations with 1 small core for every 4 big cores, with the small cores handling low-level and background tasks.

Previously: Intel Details Lakefield CPU SoC With 3D Packaging and Big/Small Core Configuration
AMD Plans to Stack DRAM and SRAM on Top of its Future Processors
Intel Reveals Three New Packaging Technologies for Stitching Multiple Dies Into One Processor

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

New Scientist:

Sometimes when you travel, you still betray where you came from when you open your mouth. The same thing seems to apply to humpback whales: features of their songs can reveal where they originally came from. What's more, when whales travel their songs change as they pick up new tunes from whales they meet that have come from different regions.

"Our best analogy is hit human fashion and pop songs," says Ellen Garland at the University of St Andrews in the UK. The sharing of whale song is a kind of cultural transmission that can give clues about where a whale has travelled along its migration, and where it started out. "We can pinpoint a population a whale has likely come from by what they are singing," she says.

Please, whales, don't swim next to Seoul. I can't take any more k-pop.

See also: phys.org.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Forbes:

The future is not looking bright for oil, according to a new report that claims the commodity would have to be priced at $10-$20 a barrel to remain competitive as a transport fuel.

The new research, from BNP Paribas, says that the economics of renewable energy make it impossible for oil to compete at current prices. The author of the report, global head of sustainability Mark Lewis, says that "renewable electricity has a short-run marginal cost of zero, is cleaner environmentally, much easier to transport and could readily replace up to 40% of global oil demand".

[...] The report, Wells, Wires, And Wheels... Eroci And The Tough Road Ahead For Oil, introduces the concept of the Energy Return on Capital Invested (EROCI), focusing on the energy return on a $100bn outlay on oil and renewables where the energy is being used to power cars and other light-duty vehicles (LDVs).

"For a given capital outlay on oil and renewables, how much useful energy at the wheel do we get? Our analysis indicates that for the same capital outlay today, new wind and solar-energy projects in tandem with battery electric vehicles will produce six to seven times more useful energy at the wheels than will oil at $60 per barrel for gasoline powered light-duty vehicles, and three to four times more than will oil at $60 per barrel for light-duty vehicles running on diesel," says Lewis.

As fossil fuels phase out, will battery technology improve quickly enough to support the transition to renewables?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-state-university-oldest-human-artifacts-idaho-north-america/

Ancient human artifacts found in a remote corner of Northwestern Idaho could deliver a major blow to a long-held theory that North America's first humans arrived by crossing a land bridge connected to Asia before moving south through the center of the continent.

The artifacts have been dated to as far back as 16,500 years ago, making them the oldest radiocarbon dated evidence of humans in North America, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.

The artifacts are part of a trove discovered where Cooper's Ferry, Idaho, now stands. They are a thousand years older than what has previously been considered North America's most ancient known human remains. Together with dozens of other archaeological sites stretched across the continent, it helps decipher the story of when, and how, humans first arrived.

[...] The site at Cooper's Ferry doesn't fit with [the land Bering Strait land bridge] model. For one, the ice-free corridor probably didn't exist when humans first arrived at Cooper's Ferry — scientists think it didn't open up until about 15,000 years ago, which means these early people had to find a different route south. Other early sites challenged this theory, but none were this old, and the oldest were dated with a method considered less precise than radiocarbon dating.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

After resting for decades in the storerooms of the Natural History Museum in London, a fragmentary fossil from the Late Triassic (200 million years ago) has been named as a new species by a Masters' student at the University of Bristol.

Erin Patrick studied this creature for her MSc Palaeobiology dissertation research under the supervision of Professor Mike Benton and Dr. David Whiteside from Bristol's School of Earth Sciences.

The fossil is one of several novel species named from Pant-y-ffynnon Quarry in Wales. It was found in the 1950s but has been ignored since then because it was so tiny and hard to study. Most of the specimen is in two blocks of rock that fit together to form a lump that would sit on a child's hand. On the surface are small bones, but it revealed its treasures when it was scanned. While no skull is present, these blocks contain a number of vertebrae, ribs, one scapula, and tiny armor plates from its back.

Using CT scanning, these tiny bones (some mere millimeters wide and long) could be studied in three-dimensional detail, allowing Erin to examine fossils otherwise hidden in the rock.

When the fossil was found, its discoverers dubbed it "Edgar," but as a new species it has now been given the formal name Aenigmaspina pantyffynnonensis. The first part of the name refers to its enigmatic spine table, a feature of the vertebrae that supported the armor plates on the back. The second part of the name refers to Pant-y-ffynnon quarry in South Wales where it was found.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Company behind Foxit PDF Reader announces security breach

Foxit Software, the company behind the Foxit PDF reader app, said today that hackers breached its servers and have made off with some user information.

ZDNet learned of the breach from a Foxit customer who shared a copy of the email the company is sending out to affected users, asking them to choose new passwords when logging in the next time.

According to this email, the security breach impacted the company's website, and, namely, information stored in the My Account section.

Foxit web accounts are how the company manages its existing customers and is where users can access trial software, download purchased products, and access order histories.

Foxit said hackers managed to access MyAccount data such as email addresses, passwords, real names, phone numbers, company names, and IP addresses from which users logged into their accounts.

Due to the presence of IP addresses in the data hackers managed to access, this is believed to be a breach of Foxit's backend infrastructure, rather than a credential stuffing attack.

A Foxit spokesperson could not be reached for additional clarification.

The biggest mystery is if Foxit had protected customer passwords through a process called hashing and salting. Hashing and salting a password string prevents an attacker from being able to read it in plaintext.

The email sent to customers and a security advisory posted on the Foxit Software website did not mention if passwords were either hashed and salted.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Collector unearths long-lost 8-bit Konami games, dumps them for emulation

At this point, you might think the entire history of a major gaming company like Konami would be well and fully documented. But you'd be wrong in the case of Space School, a series of game-like educational Famicom cartridges Konami designed for Japanese elementary school children in the '80s.

Designed in partnership with Japanese broadcaster NHK, the Space School series was never available in stores, and it could only be ordered directly by the schools themselves. The games also made use of a special "QTa" adapter that fitted Konami's specially designed 40-pin cartridges into the 60-pin slot of the Famicom.

Both of those factors made these games some of the rarest and most expensive in the Famicom collector's market. It also made reliable information about the titles hard to find—while a few Space School ROM files were floating around, their unique memory mapper configuration made them practically unplayable on modern emulators.

Enter a collector and YouTuber going by "Russian Geek," who managed to track down both a Space School cartridge (Part 1 of the "5th Grade" set, specifically) and an even rarer QTa adapter by scouring multiple Japanese auction sites (and spending hundreds of Patreon-provided dollars). In a lengthy video (Russian with English subtitles), Russian Geek lays out how he got access to these rarities and provides the Internet's first real glimpse into how these games look, sound, and play.

The video also features well-known NES hacker CaH4e3 (pronounced "Sanchez"), who took a deep dive into the QTa adapter and cart to decipher its unique memory mapper. While the cart itself just contains simple ROM files, the adapter apparently contains a unique Konami VRC5 microchip that isn't found in any other Nintendo cartridges (though other VRC chips are well-documented). This chip gave the Space School games capabilities similar to an MMC5 game like Castlevania 3, including more on-screen tiles and graphics that appear to "overlay" on top of backgrounds.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

For the first time, Northwestern Medicine scientists have pinpointed the location of dysfunctional brain networks that lead to impaired sentence production and word finding in primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a form of dementia in which patients often lose their language rather than their memory or thought process.

With this discovery, the scientists have drawn a map that illustrates three regions in the brain that fail to talk to each another, inhibiting a person's speech production, word finding and word comprehension. For example, some people can't connect words to form sentences, others can't name objects or understand single words like "cow" or "table."

The map can be used to target those brain regions with therapies, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), to potentially improve an affected person's speech.

"Now we know where to target people's brains to attempt to improve their speech," said lead author Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer Disease Center and a Northwestern Medicine neurologist.

PPA occurs in patients with neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal degeneration.

Interactions among three main regions in the brain is responsible for how people process words and sentences. PPA occurs when there is a lack of connectivity among these areas. Different patterns of connectivity failure among these regions can cause different subtypes of PPA.

The findings will be published Sept. 1 in the journal Cortex. The large study (73 patients) recruited from the extensive pool of patients with PPA at Northwestern's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer Disease Center, one of the largest centers in the world.

Original Submission

quietus writes:

About a week ago, the 18th Space Control Squadron, US Air Force, relayed warning data to the European Space Agency.

The data indicated that there was a non-negligible collision risk between ESA's Aeolus satellite and Starlink44, an active SpaceX satellite, at 11:02 UTC on Monday, 2 September.

As days passed, the probability of collision continued to increase, and by Wednesday, August 28, ESA's Ops team decided to reach out to Starlink to discuss their options. Within a day, the Starlink team informed ESA that they had no plan to take action at that point. By Thursday evening, ESA's probability threshold for conducting an avoidance manoeuvre had been reached, and preparations were made to lift Aeolus 350 meter in orbit. By Sunday evening, chances of a collision had risen to 1 in 1000, and commands were sent to the Aeolus satellite, which triggered a total of 3 thruster burns on Monday morning, half an orbit before the potential collision. About half an hour after the collision prediction time, Aeolus contacted base, and normal measurement operations could continue.

What the SpaceX satellite was doing in ESA's Aeolus orbit is not clear.

ESA has taken the opportunity to point out that, given SpaceX plans to put up 20,000 of those things, handling monitoring and avoidance semi-manually, and by mail, is no longer practical.

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

As reported at C|net, USB4 is ready to go.

USB4 is done, the group developing the next version of the immensely successful USB connector technology said Tuesday. USB4 doubles speeds compared to today's fastest USB 3.2 by incorporating Intel's speedy Thunderbolt technology that you already see on high-end laptops and peripherals. The USB Implementers Forum announced the completion of the technical specification Tuesday, a move that frees hardware and software engineers to get cracking building the actual products to support it.

Today's USB 3.2, which enables data transfer speeds up to 20 gigabits per second, is still something of a rarity; most of us have earlier versions of the technology that works at 5Gbps or 10Gbps. USB4 promises a speed boost to 40Gbps, helpful for things like using multiple external displays or fetching files from external hard drives.

What is the Serial Bus equivalent of, "Looks like I'm going to have to buy the White Album again."?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Boris Johnson loses Parliamentary majority, faces Brexit showdown

Britain's Parliament returns from its summer recess and is facing a titanic showdown over Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plans to leave the European Union. Here's what we know:

● Johnson has lost his majority in Parliament, with the defection of Conservative Phillip Lee to the Liberal Democrats.

● The opposition, including members of Johnson's party, is seeking to pass legislation to delay Brexit.

● Johnson has said that if his foes succeed he will call early elections.

Live coverage.

List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure

#54: George Canning, 119 days (1827)
#55: Boris Johnson, 40 days (Incumbent) (2019)

See also: Brexit: Tory MP defects ahead of crucial no-deal vote
How Brexit Blew Up Britain's Constitution

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

From Cyprus to Ukraine, Israel to the Balkans, conflicts over land have long turned bloody. But on Monday, the Netherlands and Belgium managed to settle a festering territorial problem, without firing a single bullet and with an unlikely spur: a headless corpse.

In a signing ceremony attended by their respective royals, Belgium agreed to cede about 35 acres of scenic land by the Meuse River in exchange for about seven acres of land from the Netherlands. The two countries had formalized their border in the Treaty of Maastricht in 1843.

In a region that has long known geopolitical and linguistic squabbles, and where Belgium has lived in the shadow of its neighbor, the land swap was anything but inevitable. That apparently is where the headless body comes in.

Survey Says Many Ryzen 3900X CPUs Can't Hit Rated Boost Clock Speeds

takyon writes:

Survey: Only 5.6 Percent of Ryzen 9 3900X Hit Advertised Speeds, Most Other Models Suffer, Too

Overclocker and hardware reviewer De8auer, widely known for his Intel delidding tools and overclocking videos, has released the results of a survey he conducted late last month concerning Ryzen 3000's ability to reach its advertised boost clocks. Only 5.6% of respondents reported that their Ryzen 9 3900X is reaching its rated boost speed. The results are somewhat better with other SKUs, but still indicate that the majority of Ryzen 3000 series processors are not hitting their rated boost speeds.

Users and reviewers alike have been questioning whether or not AMD's new CPUs are always able to boost to the advertised clock speeds. We recently published an analysis on the 3600X detailing Ryzen 3000's new boosting behavior, and AMD confirmed that only one core on any given CPU is guaranteed to hit the rated boost clock. However, according to the survey, more users aren't even reaching the advertised frequency on any core.