SoylentNews

c0lo writes:

Stadia (Google's next gen gaming console) will use AI to achieve negative latency in games

Speaking with Alex Wiltshire in Edge magazine #338, Google's top streaming engineer claims the company is verging on gaming superiority with its cloud streaming service, Stadia, thanks to the advancements it's making in modelling and machine learning. It's even eyeing up the gaming performance crown in just a couple of years.

"Ultimately, we think in a year or two we'll have games that are running faster and feel more responsive in the cloud than they do locally," Bakar says to Edge, "regardless of how powerful the local machine is."

This would be achieved using Google's homegrown streaming tech, which it's been teasing ever since Stadia was first announced late last year with Project Stream. The company believes its tech is capable of overcoming the hurdles presented by over-the-web gaming, despite its extensive web of datacentres sitting potentially hundreds of miles away from a user.

Specifically Bakar notes Google's "negative latency" will act as a workaround for any potential lag between player and server. This term describes a buffer of predicted latency, inherent to a Stadia players setup or connection, in which the Stadia system will run lag mitigation. This can include increasing fps rapidly to reduce latency between player input and display, or even predicting user inputs.

Yes, you heard that correctly. Stadia might start predicting what action, button, or movement you're likely to do next and render it ready for you – which sounds rather frightening.

With enough latency, the game will play itself and the console will just stream the game-play movie. I have the feeling a Netflix subscription will be cheaper.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

New Tools & IP Accelerate Development of 5nm Arm 'Hercules' SoCs

Arm, Synopsys, and Samsung Foundry have developed a set of optimized tools and IP that will enable chip designers to build next-generation SoCs based on Arm’s Hercules processor cores on Samsung’s 5LPE (5 nm, Low Power Early) node faster. The three companies expect the tools and IP to be used by designers of SoCs for a wide variety of applications.

The set of Synopsys tools are certified by Samsung Foundry for its 5LPE manufacturing technology, and now includes the Fusion Design Platform as well as QuickStart Implementation Kit that are enabled to optimize power, performance, and area for 5LPE designs. Meanwhile, Arm will provide Artisan Physical IP and POP IP tailored for Samsung’s 5LPE process. The IP packages will enable Arm’s partners to quickly develop 5LPE-optimized SoCs based on the Arm Hercules general-purpose CPU cores.

[...] Considering that Arm’s Hercules are the company’s next-generation advanced CPU cores and 5LPE is a leading-edge process technology, Samsung expects the new tools and IP to be used for SoCs aimed at HPC, automotive, 5G, and AI applications.

Samsung expected to tape out the first 5LPE chips in the second half of 2019 and plans to start volume production using the node in the first half of 2020.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

American intelligence follows British lead in warning of serious VPN vulnerabilities

The US National Security Agency (NSA) is warning admins to patch a set of months-old security bugs that have recently come under active attack.

The NSA's bulletin, issued earlier this week, says that state-sponsored hacking groups are now actively targeting the remote takeover and connection hijacking flaws in VPNs that were first publicized in April of this year.

"These vulnerabilities allow for remote arbitrary file downloads and remote code execution on Pulse Connect Secure and Pulse Policy Secure gateways. Other vulnerabilities in the series allow for interception or hijacking of encrypted traffic sessions," the NSA warned.

"Exploit code is freely available online via the Metasploit framework, as well as GitHub. Malicious cyber actors are actively using this exploit code."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337

Get the popcorn.

New blockchain-based music streaming service Audius is a copyright nightmare

New startup Audius says its blockchain-based music streaming service is the solution that finally pays attention to indie artists' needs. It's also full of pirated material.

Audius' website says "music platforms were at their best when they listened to what artists and fans wanted - not corporations or major labels" and that uploaded tracks can "never be censored or removed." TechCrunch called Audius' blockchain move its "secret sauce," while Yahoo finance said it is "adequately addressing the most pressing needs within the industry." But one of the most pressing problems in music right now is copyright. Audius contains infringing material — such as an unlicensed version of Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea's "Problem" — that, if its promotional materials are right, the company cannot remove.

[...] "They say 'We don't have the ability to deplatform you or censor you.' What I hear when I read that is, 'It's going to be real difficult for us to take down anything that you put up,'" says Kevin Casini, a professor of entertainment law at the Quinnipiac School of Law in Connecticut. "They're trying to speak as if they're talking to people who are afraid of this bogeyman intermediary. And they're also saying, 'Hey, this is a new spot where you can, at least for a brief amount of time, upload something, and we're not going to look at it and see what it is.' It seems that they know this is something that is going to happen quickly for them, and they're signaling and advertising to the people that actually know what they're saying, which is: 'You can come here and do it.'"

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers from the Photonics Research Group, an imec research group at Ghent university and MIT announced that they have integrated single photon emitters in 2-D layered materials with a silicon nitride photonic chip. Even for moderate quantum yields, dielectric cavities could be designed such that the single photon extraction into the guided mode can reach unity. The results published in Nature Communications, provide a crucial step in fundamental quantum photonics and 2-D materials research.

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) enable the miniaturization of complex quantum optical circuits connecting large numbers of photonic devices with optimized insertion losses and phase stability. A central building block for such an integrated quantum circuit is a single photon emitter (SPE), and a variety of material systems have been investigated to create such on-chip SPEs. 2-D-based SPEs have some extraction efficiencies without the need of any additional processing, allowing efficient single photon transfer between the host and the underlying PIC. Third, 2-D materials grown with high wafer-scale uniformity are becoming more readily available.

[...] "These results provide a crucial step in scaling up quantum photonic devices using 2-D-based integrated single photon sources," stated Frédéric Peyskens, first author of the paper.

More information: Frédéric Peyskens et al. Integration of single photon emitters in 2-D layered materials with a silicon nitride photonic chip, Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12421-0

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Brain Protein Promotes Maintenance of Chronic Pain:

A protein called RGS4 (Regulator of G protein signaling 4) plays a prominent role in the maintenance of long-term pain states and may serve as a promising new target for the treatment of chronic pain conditions, according to research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published in print October 16, in The Journal of Neuroscience.

The discovery may help doctors stop acute pain from progressing into chronic pain, a condition in which patients experience not just pain, but a number of debilitating symptoms ranging from sensory deficits to depression and loss of motivation. The transition from acute to chronic (pathological) pain is accompanied by numerous adaptations in immune, glial, and neuronal cells, many of which are still not well understood. As a result, currently available medications for neuropathic or chronic inflammatory pain show limited efficacy and major side effects. Commonly administered opioids provide temporary alleviation of some pain symptoms, but carry serious risks like addiction in the context of long-term treatment for chronic pain. Therefore, there is an imminent need for novel approaches towards the treatment of chronic pain and for the development of medications that disrupt pain states instead of simply alleviating symptoms.

"Our research reveals that RGS4 actions contribute to the transition from acute and sub-acute pain to pathological pain states and to the maintenance of pain," says Venetia Zachariou, PhD, Professor in the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, the Department of Pharmacological Sciences and The Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Because chronic pain states affect numerous neurochemical processes and single-target drugs are unlikely to work, it's exciting to have discovered a multifunctional protein that can be targeted to disrupt the maintenance of pain."

Journal Reference:

Kleopatra Avrampou, et al.. RGS4 maintains chronic pain symptoms in rodent models. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2019; 3154-18 DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3154-18.2019

What possible survival benefit can there be for having a pathway to actively maintain chronic pain?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337

Unlike Blizzard, Epic Games says it won't ban players for political speech

Fortnite developer Epic Games said in a statement that it will not ban players or content creators for political speech. The message comes after Blizzard caught fire this week for banning a professional Hearthstone player for shouting a statement associated with Hong Kong protesters.

"Epic supports everyone's right to express their views on politics and human rights. We wouldn't ban or punish a Fortnite player or content creator for speaking on these topics," an Epic Games spokesperson told The Verge.

Over the weekend, Blizzard banned Hearthstone player Ng "Blitzchung" Wai Chung from participating in tournaments after he voiced support for the protesters in Hong Kong. In a post-game interview on Sunday, Blitzchung said, "Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!" Now, he cannot participate in any tournaments for an entire year (effective October 5th), and Blizzard is withholding any prize money he would have received in the Grandmasters tournament over the weekend. Those forfeited winnings have been reported to total around $10,000.

[...] Following Blizzard's decision, the company's own forums and subreddits dedicated to its games ballooned with messages from angry fans condemning the ban. The r/Blizzard subreddit went down for a few hours on Tuesday after the board was overrun with memes and posts calling for players to boycott Blizzard and its games like World of Warcraft,Overwatch, and Hearthstone.

Senators on both sides of the aisle have also taken notice, tweeting out statements criticizing Blizzard's move. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said, "Blizzard shows it is willing to humiliate itself to please the Chinese Communist Party." He continued, "No American company should censor calls for freedom to make a quick buck."

Original Submission

Elon Musk and NASA Chief Get on Same Page, Vow to Complete Crew Dragon

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Elon Musk and NASA chief get on same page, vow to complete Crew Dragon

[...] During the presentation, both Bridenstine and Musk provided information about the schedule for the first Crew Dragon mission that will send astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into orbit. If all goes well, Bridenstine said, the mission could happen during the first quarter of 2020.

Two main technical issues remain to be resolved: parachutes and the in-flight abort system. Regarding parachutes, Musk said the company is going to a more advanced parachute, dubbed Mark 3, that has more durable Zylon lines connecting to the parachute canopy. Zylon is stronger than Kevlar and about three times stronger than the previously used nylon lines. SpaceX has an aggressive test program during which it hopes to complete 10 tests of the new parachutes between now and the end of 2019. If all of those tests show good performance, there may be enough data to put to rest concerns about parachute performance when Dragon re-enters Earth's atmosphere.

The other issue is the Super Draco thruster system used during an abort. This thruster experienced a catastrophic failure during an April test, but since then SpaceX and NASA believe they have identified the problem and implemented a fix. A ground-based test of this system should occur within a couple of weeks, Musk said. That will be followed by an in-flight abort test in late November or early December.

After this point, if all the testing goes well, engineers from both SpaceX and NASA will review the data to ensure that every step to improve safety of the vehicle has been taken.

"Space is hard, obviously," Musk said. "Very few countries have created an orbital vehicle. I guess just three. This is a very hard thing. There are a lot of people working super hard at SpaceX and NASA and our suppliers. They're doing their best."

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Engineers solve 50-year-old puzzle in signal processing

Something called the fast Fourier transform is running on your cell phone right now. The FFT, as it is known, is a signal-processing algorithm that you use more than you realize. It is, according to the title of one research paper, "an algorithm the whole family can use."

Alexander Stoytchev—an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State University who's also affiliated with the university's Virtual Reality Applications Center, its Human Computer Interaction graduate program and the department of computer science—says the FFT algorithm and its inverse (known as the IFFT) are at the heart of signal processing.

And, as such, "These are algorithms that made the digital revolution possible," he said.

They're a part of streaming music, making a cell phone call, browsing the internet or taking a selfie.

The FFT algorithm was published in 1965. Four years later, researchers developed a more versatile, generalized version called the chirp z-transform (CZT). But a similar generalization of the inverse FFT algorithm has gone unsolved for 50 years.

Until, that is, Stoytchev and Vladimir Sukhoy—an Iowa State doctoral student co-majoring in electrical and computer engineering, and human computer interaction—worked together to come up with the long-sought algorithm, called the inverse chirp z-transform (ICZT).

Like all algorithms, it's a step-by-step process that solves a problem. In this case, it maps the output of the CZT algorithm back to its input. The two algorithms are a little like a series of two prisms—the first separates the wavelengths of white light into a spectrum of colors and the second reverses the process by combining the spectrum back into white light, Stoytchev explained.

Stoytchev and Sukhoy describe their new algorithm in a paper recently published online by Scientific Reports, a Nature Research journal. Their paper shows that the algorithm matches the computational complexity or speed of its counterpart, that it can be used with exponentially decaying or growing frequency components (unlike the IFFT) and that it has been tested for numerical accuracy.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

We Played Modern Games on a CRT Monitor - and the Results are Phenomenal :

It's true. Running modern games on a vintage CRT monitor produces absolutely outstanding results - subjectively superior to anything from the LCD era, up to and including the latest OLED displays. Best suited for PC players, getting an optimal CRT set-up isn't easy, and prices vary dramatically, but the results can be simply phenomenal.

The advantages of CRT technology over modern flat panels are well-documented. CRTs do not operate from a fixed pixel grid in the way an LCD does - instead three 'guns' beam light directly onto the tube. So there's no upscaling blur and no need to run at any specific native resolution as such. On lower resolutions, you may notice 'scan lines' more readily, but the fact is that even lower resolution game outputs like 1024x768 or 1280x960 can look wonderful. Of course, higher-end CRTs can input and process higher resolutions, but the main takeaway here is that liberation from a set native resolution is a gamechanger - why spend so many GPU resources on the amount of pixels drawn when you can concentrate on quality instead without having to worry about upscale blurring?

Are there any Soylentils here who still use a CRT for gaming? If I could just find a CRT with a 65-inch diagonal, and a table that could support the weight...

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337

After years of delays, NASA is finally poised to launch a satellite to better understand space weather

The mission is named ICON — for Ionospheric Connection Explorer — and it was originally supposed to launch in the summer of 2017. However, technical issues with the rocket, called Pegasus, forced the launch to be put on hold for the last two years. Now, Northrop Grumman, which operates the Pegasus system, says the rocket is ready to fly after making a few modifications to the vehicle and performing a variety of qualification tests.

If ICON finally gets off the ground this week, scientists are particularly eager about what the satellite might tell us about Earth's mysterious ionosphere — a huge layer of our planet's atmosphere that begins 30 miles up and spans all the way to 600 miles high. This part of our planet's atmosphere overlaps with the boundary of space and is responsible for what is known as space weather. It's here where charged particles streaming from the Sun interact with particles in our atmosphere, charging them up and creating strange phenomena such as the aurora and geomagnetic storms.

"What we know about the ionosphere is that it really changes from one day to the next quite a bit."

The challenge, though, is that scientists have a hard time forecasting how the ionosphere is going to behave. "What we know about the ionosphere is that it really changes from one day to the next quite a bit," Thomas Immel, the principal investigator for ICON at the University of California Berkeley, tells The Verge. "And the other thing we know is that those changes are hard to predict."

That's a problem since space weather events can have a very real impact on electronics and systems here on Earth. Various satellites fly through the ionosphere, as well as astronauts on the International Space Station. GPS signals also travel through this region. Disturbances in the ionosphere can muck up these signals and equipment and even disrupt our power grid on the surface below.

One way to help predict space weather is to image the Sun and understand its activity, which NASA is doing with various missions like the Parker Solar Probe. But right now, it's still difficult to know how the atmosphere will respond to solar events. And that makes it hard to plan for storms and other weird space weather behavior. "You would be sort of surprised at how poorly you could sort of plan your days if you didn't know the weather tomorrow," says Immel, "which is something of our situation with the ionosphere."

To better understand this enigmatic area of space, the ICON mission team is sending the satellite right into the thick of things. The vehicle is going to an altitude of about 360 miles, just above the peak of this atmospheric layer, which is about 120 to 200 miles high, according to Immel. ICON will also circulate Earth at a low latitude over the planet; that's where the ionosphere is densest. "We're focusing on that region because that's where all the action is," says Immel.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The rise, fall and rise again of businesses

What's the purpose of a business? For a long time, the textbook answer to that question has been purely "to make as much money as possible for its shareholders". But business leaders – who often themselves get huge payouts from this model – are beginning to challenge this orthodoxy.

Or so it seems. The influential Business Roundtable association of top US business leaders, which includes CEOs of Apple, Boeing, Walmart and JP Morgan, made a landmark statement in August. They committed "to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders". Maximising profits, they said, would no longer be their primary goal.

For many, it was seen as an historic moment for business. Markets, however, greeted the news with a yawn. Both the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 in the US increased marginally on the day of the announcement.

[...] This brief history has us lurching back and forth between the ideas of shareholder versus stakeholder primacy that have waxed and waned over the decades. Are we doomed to pontificate on this endlessly?

As a way forward, I would advocate for a modest approach to end this interminable debate. A Hippocratic oath for corporations, based on seven principles:

1. Do no evil.

2. Pay taxes and adhere to laws and regulations.

3. Avoid interfering in politics.

4. Do not deny science.

5. Focus on core competencies and embrace competition.

6. If invested in the stakeholder model, ensure that stakeholders are represented in your governance structures.

7. If concerned about inequality, start at home.

This approach can help restore faith in corporations, protect their brands and reputation, and avoid accusations of hypocrisy, while focusing their attention on what they truly do best – producing goods or services. To paraphrase the writer Anand Giridharadas: "Avoid virtue signalling and virtuous side projects; do your day jobs more honourably."

And to quote Milton Friedman, business "should engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud".

What do you guys think ??

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/azure-vs-moores-law-2020-65a6fe67e31b

As a result of undershooting their projected capacity by such a large margin, Microsoft was way off on their capacity projections with Azure and only built roughly 1/3 of the data center capacity that was actually necessary. Consequently, they had to over-provision their existing data centers to the point of tripping the breakers and rapidly fill the gaps with an excessive amount of leased space to meet the demand that they projected. All of which effectively doubled the amount of leased space in their portfolio from 25% to 50%, extended their break-even to nearly a decade, and killed their hopes of profitability any time soon.

While an honest mistake and not being able to foresee the future is forgivable, knowingly omitting a mistake of this magnitude is criminal when considering how much Microsoft is hedging its future on Azure. On top of supplying misleading revenue metrics in their quarterly 10K filings to fortify a position of strength and being second only to AWS, Microsoft seems to be wary about reporting Azure's individual performance metrics or news of these failings that would enable investors to conclude this for themselves. Instead, Microsoft appears to be averaging out Azure's losses with their legacy mainstays that are profitable by reporting its revenue within their Intelligent Cloud container instead of itemizing it.

Previously:

• Azure 'Running out of Internets' in UK South, Starts Rationing VMs
• Azure Stack Will Need Special Sysadmins, Says Microsoft

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Donald Trump joins Twitch, Amazon's game-streaming service

Donald Trump is spreading his social media wings with the launch of a channel on Twitch. Trump is at least the third candidate for president to create a presence on the video game streaming service.

Trump's account, which has a verification check mark, counts about 7,000 followers but hasn't posted any content as of this writing, but the move suggests the president will use the platform to livestream videos to his supporters as part of his 2020 re-election bid. Other candidates to launch Twitch accounts include Democrats Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang.

Although not a fan of social media, Trump is one of the industry's most prolific users, using his Twitter account to announce policy changes and criticize his opponents. His 65.5 million followers on Twitter put him just out of the top 10 most-followed Twitter accounts. He also has nearly 15 million followers on Instagram, although he posts on that account far less frequently than he does on Twitter.

Original Submission

Massive California Power Outage Triggers Chaos in Science Labs

martyb writes:

Massive California Power Outage Triggers Chaos in Science Labs:

Researchers without access to backup power scramble to save invaluable specimens and expensive reagents.

California's largest utility company shut off power to more than a million people across the northern part of the state on 9 and 10 October. The outage sent scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, scrambling to save specimens and experiments.

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), based in San Francisco, California, planned the outages to reduce the risk of wildfires. [...]The company has said that the power outage could last several days, frustrating residents — including some researchers.

[...] Many labs at UC Berkeley lack reliable back-up power. Some researchers are taking drastic measures to preserve samples and supplies that require refrigeration. James Olzmann, a metabolic researcher at Berkeley, loaded his lab's freezers onto trucks on 9 October and moved them to facilities at the nearby University of California, San Francisco, which still has power.

Jessica Lyons, a molecular biologist at UC Berkeley, says that each lab in her building has a single outlet that is connected to an emergency power system. The main freezer in Lyons' lab, which keeps specimens at -80 °C, is plugged into that outlet. Lyons and her colleagues stocked the other freezers in their lab with dry ice on 8 October after being warned of the impending outages, to keep things cool.

"For any scientist, the bottom line is are all of the freezers getting power right now, or are they not," she says. "I actually don't know the answer to that right now, and they keep telling us not to come in."

I'd not thought of interrupted research when I first learned of PG&E's planned outages. What other "unexpected" venues would be dramatically affected? Sperm banks are obvious now that I think of refrigeration issues. What light-sensitive activities would now be stymied with the power out? What about supporting research animals? There's a lot more than meets the eye.