SoylentNews

coolgopher writes:

A story notes that

[...] according to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

[...] The report paints a frightening portrait of a country falling apart over the next 20 years due to the impacts of climate change on "natural systems such as oceans, lakes, rivers, ground water, reefs, and forests.

Current infrastructure in the US, the report says, is woefully underprepared: "Most of the critical infrastructures identified by the Department of Homeland Security are not built to withstand these altered conditions."

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has announced that the space agency is planning to send a rover to the moon in 2022 to search for water ice.

In a speech at the 70th International Astronautical Congress, Bridenstine said the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission would look for ice on or below the surface of the moon at its south pole, a key resource for future human missions.

"We actually have a mission right now that I'm very pleased to announce, it's called VIPER," he said. VIPER would fly to a moon on a commercial lander through the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

"VIPER is going to rover on the south pole of the moon and VIPER is going to assess where the water ice is," he continued. "We're going to characterize the water ice, and ultimately drill and find out just how the water ice is embedded in the regolith on the moon."

The mission will take advantage of the extended sunlight of the lunar day at the pole to last for 100 days as the rover drills (up to one meter) looking for ice.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

"Intel today announced its board of directors has approved a $20 billion increase in its stock repurchase program authorization. In the third quarter, the company generated approximately $10.7 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $1.4 billion, and used $4.5 billion to repurchase 92 million shares of stock".

https://www.intc.com/files/doc_financials/2019/Q3/Q3-2019-Earnings-Release.pdf

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel's new Atom Microarchitecture: The Tremont Core in Lakefield

While Intel has been discussing a lot about its mainstream Core microarchitecture, it can become easy to forget that its lower power Atom designs are still prevalent in many commercial verticals. Last year at Intel's Architecture Summit, the company unveiled an extended roadmap showing the next three generations of Atom following Goldmont Plus: Tremont, Gracemont, and 'Future Mont'. Tremont is set to be launched this year, coming first in a low powered hybrid x86 design called Lakefield for notebooks, and using a new stacking technology called Foveros built on 10+ nm. At the Linley Processor Conference today, Intel unveiled more about the microarchitecture behind Tremont.

[...] The Atom core within a given family is usually identical (L2 [cache] configuration might change), and because of the SoC in play, it might get a different name based on the market where it was headed. Intel scrapped the smartphone program back with Broxton in 2016, and the tablet type of SoC has also gone away. With Lakefield, combining Core and Atom, it could be used in Tablets again for 2019/2020, but we will see it in Notebooks with the Surface Pro Neo and in networking/embedded markets as Snow Ridge.

[...] The interesting thing here in our briefing with Intel is that they specifically stated that Tremont was built with performance in mind, and the aim was for a sizeable uptick in the raw clock-for-clock throughput compared to the previous generation Atom, Goldmont Plus. Based on Intel's own metrics, namely using SPEC, Intel is going to claim an average 30% iso-frequency performance uplift in core performance for Tremont over Goldmont Plus. It's worth noting here that this data is from an early Tremont design we were told, and should represent minimum uplifts.

[...] A 30% average jump in performance is a sizeable jump for any generation-to-generation cadence. Just taking it as-is feels premature: aside from microarchitectural advancements and a jump to 10nm, there has to be something at play here – either the power budget of Atom has ballooned, or the die area. With Intel explicitly out of the gate stating that their focusing on performance, a cynic is going to suggested that something else has paid that price, and to that end Intel wasn't prepared to talk about power windows or die area, though they did point to the already announced Lakefield CPU, which has a 1 x Core + 4 x Tremont design

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers at Cranfield University are using blowflies and other insects to develop a database which will provide a complementary method of estimating time since death in forensic investigations. The database—thought to be the first of its kind in the world—uses chemical profiles from the waxy coating on the outside of insects and will provide a library for forensic entomologists to refer to when investigating cases.

Forensic pathologists can give an accurate postmortem interval estimate up to 72 hours after death. After this, forensic entomologists are often called to crime scenes and use the age of insects that inhabit decomposing remains to give a more accurate indication of how long the person has been deceased.

Dr. Hannah Moore, Lecturer at Cranfield Forensic Institute (CFI), said: "Knowing how long someone has been dead, particularly in the case of murder, is vital in proving the innocence or guilt of suspects. Insects can also tell us if the person consumed drugs, if their body was moved or whether it has been frozen—they're the most reliable witnesses in many cases."

The most established way to estimate the age of insects is to use their length, as well as other variables, but these are highly influenced by the temperature of an environment.

The database at Cranfield—which uses cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC), a class of compounds found in the epicuticular layer which covers insects—will offer a chemical profile reference.

"These compounds act like a fingerprint and are species-specific. This provides a complementary method of identifying and aging insects which has proved extremely accurate. The robustness of this method may be useful in court cases for presenting reliable and clear-cut evidence in the future," said Dr. Moore.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

How to spot a wormhole (if they exist): Physicists propose that perturbations in the orbit of stars near supermassive black holes could be used to detect wormholes

Such pathways could connect one area of our universe to a different time and/or place within our universe, or to a different universe altogether.

Whether wormholes exist is up for debate. But in a paper published on Oct. 10 in Physical Review D, physicists describe a technique for detecting these bridges.

The method focuses on spotting a wormhole around Sagittarius A*, an object that's thought to be a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. While there's no evidence of a wormhole there, it's a good place to look for one because wormholes are expected to require extreme gravitational conditions, such as those present at supermassive black holes.

In the new paper, scientists write that if a wormhole does exist at Sagittarius A*, nearby stars would be influenced by the gravity of stars at the other end of the passage. As a result, it would be possible to detect the presence of a wormhole by searching for small deviations in the expected orbit of stars near Sagittarius A*.

"If you have two stars, one on each side of the wormhole, the star on our side should feel the gravitational influence of the star that's on the other side. The gravitational flux will go through the wormhole," says Dejan Stojkovic, PhD, cosmologist and professor of physics in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. "So if you map the expected orbit of a star around Sagittarius A*, you should see deviations from that orbit if there is a wormhole there with a star on the other side."

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

US lawmakers want streaming services like Netflix to issue emergency alerts

A bipartisan bill reintroduced in the Senate by US Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i) and John Thune (R-S.D.) could lead to emergency alerts issued through online video and audio streaming services like Netflix and Spotify. The Senators originally introduced the bill last year after that infamous false missile alert text went out across Hawai'i. Called the Reliable Emergency Alert Distribution Improvement (READI) Act, it would prevent the same thing from happening while making sure that more people receive real and relevant alerts.

In addition to exploring ways on how alerts can be issued through streaming services, READI Act would eliminate the ability to opt out of receiving certain federal alerts, including ones for incoming missiles. Alerts issued by the President or by FEMA would also have to be repeated -- at the moment, it can only be played once on TV and radio stations. It would compel FEMA to prevent false alarms and would establish a reporting system for false alerts that the FCC can track, as well.

Senator Schatz said in a statement:

"When a missile alert went out across Hawai'i last year, some people never got the message on their phones, while others missed it on their TVs and radios. Even though it was a false alarm, the missile alert exposed real flaws in the way people receive emergency alerts. Our bill fixes a number of important problems with the system responsible for delivering emergency alerts. In a real emergency, these alerts can save lives so we have to do everything we can to get it right."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

SpaceX wants to land Starship on the Moon before 2022, then do cargo runs for 2024 human landing – TechCrunch

Speaking at a quick series of interviews with commercial space company’s at this year’s annual International Astronautical Congress, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell shed a little more light on her company’s current thinking with regards to the mission timelines for its forthcoming Starship spacefaring vehicle. Starship, currently in parallel development at SpaceX’s South Texas and Florida facilities, is intended to be an all-purpose successor to, and replacement for, both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, with a higher payload capacity and the ability to reach the Moon and eventually Mars.

“Aspirationally, we want to get Starship to orbit within a year,” Shotwell said. “We definitely want to land it on the Moon before 2022. We want to […] stage cargo there to make sure that there are resources for the folks that ultimately land on the moon by 2024, if things go well, so that’s the aspirational timeframe.”

That’s an ambitious timeline, and as Shotwell herself repeatedly stated, these are “aspirational” timelines. In the space industry, as well as in tech, it’s not uncommon for leadership to set aggressive schedules in order to drive the teams working on projects to work at the limits of what’s actually possible. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is also known for working to timelines that often don’t match up with reality, and Shotwell alluded to Musk’s ambitious goal setting as a virtue in another part of her on-stage interview at IAC.

“Elon puts out these incredibly audacious goals and people say ‘You’re not going to do it, you’ll never get to orbit, you’ll never get a real rocket to orbit, […] you’ll never get Heavy to orbit, you’ll never get Dragon to the station, you’ll never get Dragon back, and you’ll never land a rocket,'” she said. “So, frankly, I love when people say we can’t do it, because it motivates my fantastic 6,500 employees to go do that thing.”

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

A few months ago, back in August, the Web passed a milestone in that less than half of Google searches result in even a single click onwards. In other words, the majority of searchers never left Google after seeing the results. That could be a warning that Google is transitioning from a search engine to more of a walled-garden. Or it could mean that the results aren't good any more and people move on to other engines after only a quick glance. If the former, where searches are no longer resulting in click through, then what should be the proper response from the Web at large?

From: Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click:

On desktop, things haven’t changed all that much in the last three years. Organic is down a few percent, paid and zero-click are up a bit, but June of 2019 isn’t far off January of 2016.

On mobile, where more than half of all searches take place, it’s a different story. Organic has fallen by almost 20%, while paid has nearly tripled and zero-click searches are up significantly. Even way back in January 2016, more than half of mobile searches ended without a click. Today’s, it’s almost 2/3rds.

Three trends are made clear by these numbers:

1. The percent of searches available as organic traffic from Google is steadily declining, especially on mobile.
2. Paid clicks tend to increase whenever Google makes changes to how those results are displayed, then slowly decline as searchers get more familiar with spotting and avoiding them.
3. Google’s ongoing attempts to answer more searches without a click to any results OR a click to Google’s own properties are both proving successful. As a result, zero-click searches, and clicks that bring searchers to a Google-owned site keep rising.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

Lawmakers ask US intelligence to assess if TikTok is a security threat – TechCrunch

Two lawmakers have asked the government’s most senior U.S. intelligence official to assess if video-sharing app TikTok could pose “national security risks” to the United States.

In a letter by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), the lawmakers asked the acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire if the app maker could be compelled to turn Americans’ data over to the Chinese authorities.

TikTok has some 110 million downloads to date and has spiked in popularity for its ability to record short, snappy videos that are sharable across social media networks. But the lawmakers say because TikTok is owned by a Beijing-based company, it could be compelled by the Chinese government to turn over user data — such as location data, cookies, metadata and more — even if it’s stored on servers it owns in the United States.

Both Schumer and Cotton warn that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is “still required to adhere” to Chinese law.

“Security experts have voiced concerns that China’s vague patchwork of intelligence, national security, and cybersecurity laws compel Chinese companies to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party,” the letter, dated Wednesday, said. “Without an independent judiciary to review requests made by the Chinese government for data or other actions, there is no legal mechanism for Chinese companies to appeal if they disagree with a request.”

That same legal principle works both ways. U.S. companies have been shut out, or had their access limited, in some nation states — including China — over fears that they could be compelled to spy on behalf of the U.S. government.

See also: TikTok explains its ban on political advertising

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Putting the 'bang' in the Big Bang: Physicists simulate critical 'reheating' period that kickstarted the Big Bang in the universe's first fractions of a second

As the Big Bang theory goes, somewhere around 13.8 billion years ago the universe exploded into being, as an infinitely small, compact fireball of matter that cooled as it expanded, triggering reactions that cooked up the first stars and galaxies, and all the forms of matter that we see (and are) today.

Just before the Big Bang launched the universe onto its ever-expanding course, physicists believe, there was another, more explosive phase of the early universe at play: cosmic inflation, which lasted less than a trillionth of a second. During this period, matter -- a cold, homogeneous goop -- inflated exponentially quickly before processes of the Big Bang took over to more slowly expand and diversify the infant universe.

Recent observations have independently supported theories for both the Big Bang and cosmic inflation. But the two processes are so radically different from each other that scientists have struggled to conceive of how one followed the other.

Now physicists at MIT, Kenyon College, and elsewhere have simulated in detail an intermediary phase of the early universe that may have bridged cosmic inflation with the Big Bang. This phase, known as "reheating," occurred at the end of cosmic inflation and involved processes that wrestled inflation's cold, uniform matter into the ultrahot, complex soup that was in place at the start of the Big Bang.

"The postinflation reheating period sets up the conditions for the Big Bang, and in some sense puts the 'bang' in the Big Bang," says David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics at MIT. "It's this bridge period where all hell breaks loose and matter behaves in anything but a simple way."

Journal Reference:
Rachel Nguyen, Jorinde van de Vis, Evangelos I. Sfakianakis, John T. Giblin, David I. Kaiser. Nonlinear Dynamics of Preheating after Multifield Inflation with Nonminimal Couplings. Physical Review Letters, 2019; 123 (17) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.171301

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

Hackers are now selling 'Raccoon' data-stealing malware as a $200 monthly service

A new kind of trojan malware is fast gaining currency among cybercriminals for its capability to steal sensitive information, such as credit card data, cryptocurrency wallets, and email credentials.

Dubbed Raccoon Stealer, the malware first emerged in April 2019 and has since infected hundreds of thousands of Windows devices around the world, Boston-based endpoint security solutions provider Cybereason said.

"Its popularity, even with a limited feature set, signals the continuation of a growing trend of the commoditization of malware as they follow a MaaS (Malware-as-a-Service) model and evolve their efforts," the researchers stated.

Costing $200 per month to use, Raccoon is suspected to be of Russian origin and has been found to be aggressively marketed in underground forums, offering prompt 24×7 customer support to community questions and comments on Telegram under the handle "glad0ff."

This "gladoff" actor has been linked previously to a variety of malware like the Decrux and Acrux cryptominers, the Mimosa RAT and the ProtonBot loader, Cybereason said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Here's what the people who claimed Google's quantum supremacy have to say about it

SANTA BARBARA, California—Early this autumn, a paper leaked on a NASA site indicating Google engineers had built and tested hardware that achieved what's termed "quantum supremacy," completing calculations that would be impossible on a traditional computer. The paper was quickly pulled offline, and Google remained silent, leaving the rest of us to speculate about their plans for this device and any follow-ons the company might be preparing.

That speculation ended today, as Google released the final version of the paper that had leaked. But perhaps more significantly, the company invited the press to its quantum computing lab, talked about its plans, and gave us time to chat with the researchers behind the work.

"I'm not going to bother explaining the quantum supremacy paper—if you were invited to come here, you probably all read the leaked paper," quipped Hartmut Neven, the head of Google's Quantum AI lab. But he found it hard to resist the topic entirely, and the other people who talked with reporters were more than happy to expand on Neven's discussion.

Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1666-5) (DX)

Previously: Google: We've achieved quantum supremacy! IBM: Nope. And stop using that word, please

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

Disney Plus is stopping theaters screening Fox movies – and viewers will lose out

Disney Plus will no doubt be the talk of the town when it launches in November, with a host of films and franchises from across Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and even 21st Century Fox. But it seems that Disney’s acquisition of Fox – welcomed by many for the hit series and IP it brought to Disney’s streaming service – may have some unfavorable consequences for viewers.

Vulture has reported on various cinema owners and film festival programmers who are being refused the rights to show certain Fox movies, now under new ownership at Disney.

Titles such as The Omen, The Fly, Moulin Rouge, and various Alien films are now increasingly difficult to show, with Disney reportedly denying requests by establishments that had previously shown the films without trouble.

While Disney has yet to make a public declaration of its intention here, Vulture quotes a film distributor who says the restrictions won’t apply to not-for-profit businesses or public art institutions. 

What’s even more worrying is that the new law for Fox movies doesn’t seem to be enforced consistently, with different distributors finding they had rights to show certain films revoked for different reasons, without explanation, or even if they fit Disney’s criteria.

With Disney Plus set to launch in mid-November in its first few territories, a world of Disney is about to get opened wide – but at the same time, it looks like that world is getting a lot smaller.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Man kept getting drunk without drinking. Docs found brewer's yeast in his guts

After years of inexplicably getting drunk without drinking alcohol, having mood swings and bouts of aggression, landing a DWI charge on the way to work one morning, and suffering a head injury in a drunken fall, an otherwise healthy 46-year-old North Carolina man finally got confirmation of having alcohol-fermenting yeasts overrunning his innards, getting him sloshed any time he ate carbohydrate-laden meals.

Through the years, medical professionals and police officers refused to believe he hadn't been drinking. They assumed the man was lying to hide an alcohol problem. Meanwhile, he went to an untold number of psychiatrists, internists, neurologists, and gastroenterologists searching for answers.

Those answers only came after he sought help from a support group online and then contacted a group of researchers at Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island, New York.

By then, it was September of 2017—more than seven years after his saga began. The New York researchers finally confirmed that he had a rarely diagnosed condition called "auto-brewery syndrome."

Original Submission