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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] But in the US and UK the rollout of 5G networks has been hampered by an international row over one of the most important suppliers of 5G equipment, China's Huawei.

Industry analysts like Edison Lee, an analyst from financial services group Jefferies, see the US pressure on Huawei as an attempt to break China's potential dominance of the global 5G market.

"The tech war is based on America's argument that China's technological advances have been built upon stolen intellectual property rights, and heavy government subsidies, and their belief that Chinese telecom equipment is not safe, and is a national security threat to the US and its allies," he says.

"As Huawei and [fellow Chinese firm] ZTE increasingly dominate the global telecom equipment market, the western world will be more vulnerable to Chinese spying," Lee adds.

Huawei has always strongly denied that its technology can be used for spying. While western nations worry about one of the key suppliers of 5G technology, China is racing ahead with its 5G rollout. On 31 October Chinese telecom companies launched 5G services in more than 50 Chinese cities, creating one of the world's largest 5G networks. Huawei has built an estimated 50% of the network.

Europe Police Agency Hits Islamic State Servers in Blow to Jihadist Publicity

upstart has submitted a story via IRC for Runaway1956

Europe police agency hits Islamic State servers in blow to jihadist publicity

Belgian prosecutors have knocked out several internet servers used by Islamic State, shutting a large number of accounts and websites run by its news arm, in an operation led by Europe’s police agency, the Belga press agency reported on Monday.

Europol, the European policy agency, said it would release details of the initiative at a news conference later on Monday.

“We were able to shut down a large number of accounts and a series of websites,” Belga quoted prosecution spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt as saying.

Europol said in a statement it has been working with nine of the largest Internet platforms to counter Islamic State propaganda operations, including with Google, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram.

Europol said on its website it had examined “propaganda videos, publications and social media accounts supporting terrorism and violent extremism” over the course of two days last week.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_2018_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html

Four years ago, I did a back of the envelope calculation on how much it would cost to store audio recordings of all the phone calls in Norway, and came up with NOK 2.1 million / EUR 250 000 for the year 2013. It is time to repeat the calculation using updated numbers. The calculation is based on how much data storage is needed for each minute of audio, how many minutes all the calls in Norway sums up to, multiplied by the cost of data storage.

[...] Both the cost of storage and the number of phone call minutes have dropped since the last time, bringing the cost down to a level where I guess even small organizations can afford to store the audio recording from every phone call taken in a year in Norway. Of course, this is just the cost of buying the storage equipment. Maintenance, need to be included as well, but the volume of a single year is about a single rack of hard drives, so it is not much more than I could fit in my own home.

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

CNBC reports,

Google has terminated four employees for allegedly sharing sensitive information after weeks of internal dissent related to the mistrust of leadership. At least two of the employees were at the center of recent worker protests in San Francisco.

In a memo sent to staffers on Monday, three members of Google's Security and Investigations Team wrote that the four workers were fired after investigations into their behavior concluded that they were engaged in wrongdoing.

"There's been some misinformation circulating about this investigation, both internally and externally," according to the memo, titled "Securing our data." "We want to be clear that none of these individuals were fired for simply looking at documents or calendars during the ordinary course of their work. To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees' materials and work."

Google confirmed the memo, which was first reported by Bloomberg. The company declined to comment further or confirm which individual employees were terminated. But Rebecca Rivers, who previously spoke out about Google's contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, tweeted she was one of them. Last week, a group of 20 Google employees in San Francisco protested the interrogation of Rivers and another employee, Laurence Berland, who had been placed on sudden and indefinite administrative leave for allegedly sharing sensitive information.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

MediaTek Dimensity 1000 octa-core SoC promises 5G for the masses when it launches in 2020

The 5G SoC will support 90 Hz QHD displays, up to 16 GB of quad-channel LPDDR4x RAM, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, hexa-core AI processor, download/upload speeds of up to 4.7/2.5 Gbps, and more with the promise of faster performance than the current Qualcomm Snapdragon 855.

While a handful of 5G smartphones are already available today, they are all prohibitively expensive. The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, for example, currently retails for $1300 unlocked. MediaTek hopes to be the catalyst for 5G adoption next year by launching an all-in-one SoC solution that integrates an octa-core CPU, octa-core Mali-G77 MC9 GPU, hexa-core AI APU, and a 5G modem for more affordable smartphones.

Called the Dimensity 1000, the SoC will be the first in a series of SoCs with integrated support for 2G, 3G, 4G, and sub-6 GHz 5G networks. MediaTek is also claiming it to be the world's first SoC to support 5G dual-SIM for better worldwide appeal and versatility. While single-SIM smartphones are still prevalent in the U.S., most smartphones overseas tend to carry two SIM slots.

MediaTek's presentation shows that the SoC will support AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) hardware decoding at up to 4K60:

In addition to hardware video encoding and decoding at 4K 60FPS, the MediaTek Dimensity 1000 is the world's 1st mobile SoC with AV1 format support.

Also at AnandTech.

Related: MediaTek Announces 10-Core SoC for Phones and Tablets
MediaTek Helio X30: 10 Cores on a 10nm Process
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 SoC Will Optionally Enable 5G Connections with Added X50 Modem
Realtek RTD2983 SoC for 8K TVs: Supports AV1 Codec
Huawei: ARM Cortex-A77 Cores Would Shorten Battery Life (Dimensity 1000 includes 4x Arm Cortex-A77 cores)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Review: 24 and 32 Cores on 7nm

Today's launch covers two products: the 24-core TR 3960X and the 32-core TR 3970X. Both of these processors are built from four Zen 2 chiplets paired with a single I/O die, with each chiplet having 6 cores or 8 cores respectively. Both CPUs support 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes, four DDR4-3200 memory channels, and are built on a new sTRX4 socket with a new all-AMD TRX40 chipset.

[...] I have never used the word 'bloodbath' in a review before. It seems messy, violent, and a little bit gruesome. But when we look at the results from the new AMD Threadripper processors, it seems more than appropriate.

[...] AMD has scored wins across almost all of our benchmark suite. In anything embarrassingly parallel it rules the roost by a large margin (except for our one AVX-512 benchmark). Single threaded performance trails the high-frequency mainstream parts, but it is still very close. Even in memory sensitive workloads, an issue for the previous generation Threadripper parts, the new chiplet design has pushed performance to the next level. These new Threadripper processors win on core count, on high IPC, on high frequency, and on fast memory.

AMD Pre-Announces 64-core Threadripper 3990X: Time To Open Your Wallet

Ever since AMD announced its latest enterprise platform, Rome, and the EPYC 7002 series, one question that high-end desktop users have been wondering is when the 64-core hardware will filter down into more mainstream markets. White today AMD is announcing their Threadripper 3000 platform with 24-core and 32-core processors, the other part of AMD's announcement today is that yes, they will be selling 64-core hardware to the masses, in the form of the Threadripper 3990X.

AMD isn't giving too many details away just yet. As we predicted, there was room at the top of AMD's naming strategy to expose more Threadripper hardware: one does not simply stop as the 3970X being the most powerful processor, and the 3990X will certainly take the mantle. AMD is announcing today that the 3990X will have 64 cores, 128 threads, and will have the full 256 MB of L3 cache.

Previously: 64-Core AMD Threadripper CPUs Suggested by Release of Cooler
AMD Announces 3rd-Generation Threadripper CPUs, Ryzen 9 3950X available on November 25th, and More

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

U.S.-based chip-tech group moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

A U.S.-based foundation overseeing promising semiconductor technology developed with Pentagon support will soon move to Switzerland after several of the group’s foreign members raised concerns about potential U.S. trade curbs.

The nonprofit RISC-V Foundation (pronounced risk-five) wants to ensure that universities, governments and companies outside the United States can help develop its open-source technology, its Chief Executive Calista Redmond said in an interview with Reuters.

She said the foundation’s global collaboration has faced no restrictions to date but members are “concerned about possible geopolitical disruption.”

“From around the world, we’ve heard that ‘If the incorporation was not in the U.S., we would be a lot more comfortable’,” she said. Redmond said the foundation’s board of directors approved the move unanimously but declined to disclose which members prompted it.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/nov/20/humans-put-into-suspended-animation-for-first-time

Doctors have put humans into a state of suspended animation for the first time in a groundbreaking trial that aims to buy more time for surgeons to save seriously injured patients.

The process involves rapidly cooling the brain to less than 10C by replacing the patient’s blood with ice-cold saline solution. Typically the solution is pumped directly into the aorta, the main artery that carries blood away from the heart to the rest of the body.

Known formally as emergency preservation and resuscitation, or EPR, the procedure is being trialled on people who sustain such catastrophic injuries that they are in danger of bleeding to death and who suffer a heart attack shortly before they can be treated. The patients, who are often victims of stabbings or shootings, would normally have less than a 5% chance of survival.

[...] Rapid cooling of trauma victims is designed to reduce brain activity to a near standstill and to slow the patient’s physiology enough to give surgeons precious extra minutes, perhaps more than an hour, to operate. Once the patient’s injuries have been attended to, they are warmed up and resuscitated.

One aim of the US trial is to reduce the brain damage that patients are often left with if they survive such serious injuries. When the heart stops and blood stops circulating, the brain quickly becomes starved of oxygen, suffering irreparable damage within about five minutes.

The trial will compare the outcomes of 20 men and women who receive standard emergency care or EPR. The trial is due to run until the end of the year, and full results are not expected until late 2020.

One complication of the procedure is that patients’ cells can become damaged as they are warmed up after surgery.

Also reported at:

• https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/20/human-patient-put-in-suspended-animation-for-the-first-time/
• https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-11-medical-trauma-patient-state-animation.html

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

According to current prevailing theories, planets are believed to be be formed by rotating disks of gas and dust surrounding stars dubbed Protoplanetary Disks. Researchers have now calculated that similar disks around black holes can form planets as well. The researchers applied planetary formation theory to the heavy circumnuclear disks surrounding supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.

According to Keiichi Wada, a professor at Kagoshima University in Japan, planets could form under the right conditions — even around black holes — within a few hundred million years.

Some supermassive black holes have large amounts of matter around them in the form of a heavy, dense disk. A disk can contain as much as a hundred thousand times the mass of the Sun worth of dust. This is a billion times the dust mass of a protoplanetary disk.

That's plenty of mass to form a typical solar system and then some, but they aren't talking about anything so small.

"Our calculations show that tens of thousands of planets with 10 times the mass of the Earth could be formed around 10 light-years from a black hole," says Eiichiro Kokubo, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan who studies planet formation. "Around black holes there might exist planetary systems of astonishing scale."

Neither wobble watching nor dimming discernment have any chance of detecting these potentially gargantuan planetary systems. Do Soylentils have any ideas?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel and MediaTek Announce Partnership To Bring 5G Modems to PCs

Today Intel has announced they've entered a partnership with MediaTek with the goal of "development, certification and support of 5G modem solutions" for next generation PC platforms. The announcement comes 5 months after the announcement that Intel is selling off its own modem and[sic] division to Apple for $1B.

The partnership with MediaTek clears up Intel's plans for the future of connectivity on PC platforms, and how the company is planning to go forward with supporting cellular connectivity in the next generations of devices.

"5G is poised to unleash a new level of computing and connectivity that will transform the way we interact with the world. This partnership with MediaTek brings together industry leaders with deep engineering, system integration and connectivity expertise to deliver 5G experiences on the next generation of the world's best PCs."

-- Gregory Bryant, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing

[...] The first products of the partnership are said to be targeting availability in early 2021.

2021: Did you buy the 5G spy motherboard or just a chip with a management engine?

Previously: Apple in Billion-Dollar Bid to Gobble Intel's 5G Modem Blueprints and Staff

Related: Big Changes Planned by Microsoft - Windows 10 on ARM, Laptops to Behave More Like Phones
Intel Integrates LTE Modem Into Custom Multi-Chip Module for New HP Laptop
Intel and Qualcomm Announce 5G Modem Modules for M.2 Slots

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Tim Berners-Lee's plan to 'save the web' has been formally launched today and is backed by more than 150 organizations, including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

The inventor of the World Wide Web explained back in March his reasons for wanting a 'contract for the web'...

It's 30 years today since Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal for what would become the World Wide Web [and] said that the 30th anniversary was a time to reflect on both the positives and negatives [...]

"I think it's been a force for good for the first 15 [years], and right now it's really in the balance. I'm very concerned about nastiness and misinformation spreading. I think with a mid-course correction, the 'contract for the web' is about: let's all stop this downward plunge to a dysfunctional future."

Source: https://9to5mac.com/2019/11/25/save-the-web/

Original Submission

pjbgravely writes:

I need to install a new Linux/Gnu OS soon. The present one, Linux Mint (Mate) Debian edition no longer fills my needs. I run 4 screens with 3 X sessions. Mate worked great for this, then an update broke it to one screen. I tried Cinnamon but it won't even start on multiple X sessions. XFCE works but with some serious drawbacks although that may be caused by my current system. Enlightenment actually worked well until it started crashing and I had to restore the settings file. When it finally crashed so nothing got it to run again I gave up on it.

I need a OS with multimedia support, the ability to install programs that may not be in the repositories ( Mythtv ), and multi X screen support. I am also looking for a file manager that has something like Gnome scripts. I have fair command line skills. I presently have Nvidia cards but I will go shopping if I have to. I might try Xinerama but I usually watch one screen while switching the other 2's desktops. Also not having a menu on all screens would be a pain.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

How often do you find Easter eggs in old vinyl records?

It sure was a surprise for [Robin Harbron] when he learned about a Commodore 64 program hidden on one of the sides of a record from the 1985 album of Christian rock band Prodigal. The host of the YouTube channel 8-Bit Show and Tell shows the “C-64” etching on one side of the vinyl, which he picked up after finding out online that the record contained the hidden program.

[...] Recording the audio onto a cassette and loading it onto a dataset reveals a short C64 program. The process is a little more troublesome that that, but after a few tries [Harbron] reveals a secret message, courtesy of Albert Einstein and Jesus Christ. It’s not the most impressive program ever written, but it’s pretty cool that programmers 35 years ago were able to fit it into only a few seconds of audio.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for fnord666_

FBI Warns of Cyber Attacks Targeting US Automotive Industry

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Cyber Division warned private industry partners of incoming cyberattacks against the US automotive industry targeting sensitive corporate and enterprise data.

The Private Industry Notification (PIN) detailing this alert was seen by BleepingComputer after it was issued to partners by the FBI on November 19, 2019.

"The FBI has observed incidents since late 2018 in which unidentified cyber actors have increasingly targeted the automotive industry with cyberattacks to obtain sensitive customer data, network account passwords, and internal enterprise network details," the agency says in the PIN.

"The FBI assesses the automotive industry likely will face a wide-range of cyber threats and malicious activity in the near future as the vast amount of data collected by Internet-connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles become a highly valued target for nation-state and financially-motivated actors."

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

DOD joins fight against 5G spectrum proposal, citing risks to GPS

The Department of Defense has weighed in against a proposal before the Federal Communications Commission to open the 1 to 2 Gigahertz frequency range—the L band—for use in 5G cellular networks. The reason: segments of that range of radio spectrum are already used by Global Positioning System signals and other military systems.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper pressed for the rejection of the proposal by Ligado Networks (formerly known as LightSquared), saying, "There are too many unknowns and the risks are far too great to federal operations to allow Ligado's proposed system to proceed... This could have a significant negative impact on military operations, both in peacetime and war."

The FCC has already largely brushed aside similar opposition from NASA, the US Navy, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, among others, over another spectrum block in the 24GHz range—which is used by weather satellites for remote monitoring of water vapor. But comments are still being collected on the Ligado plan for sharing the 1675 to 1680MHz block of the L Band. Pai has been supportive of the plan because that range is adjacent to the existing 1670 to 1675MHz block already in use for wireless services.

GPS signals use several blocks of the L band, including a primary channel centered on 1575.42MHz. GPS uses L band signals because of their ability to penetrate cloud cover, rain, and vegetation. The L band is also used by the DOD for a number of other purposes, including tactical air navigation, landing assistance telemetry, Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) signals, and missile range and aircraft telemetry—though the DOD has already had to move some of these applications further up the spectrum range to make room for previous "commercial reallocation."

Original Submission

upstart has submitted a story from IRC for Runaway1956

Uber loses license in London over safety, vows to appeal

London's transit authority on Monday refused to renew Uber's license to operate, with the ride-hailing company vowing to appeal the decision as it struggles to secure its future in the British capital.

It's the latest chapter in Uber's rocky history with London transport officials, who have subjected the San Francisco-based tech company to ever tighter scrutiny over concerns about passenger safety and security.

Uber called the decision "extraordinary and wrong," and has 21 days to file an appeal, which it said it would do. It can continue operating while the appeals process is under way.

Transport for London cited "several breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk" in its decision not to extend Uber's license, which expires at midnight Monday. Among other things, unauthorized drivers carried out thousands of rides, the regulator said. [...] This let them pick up passengers as though they were the booked Uber driver on at least 14,000 trips, which means all those journeys were uninsured, TFL said. The change also resulted in some passengers traveling with unlicensed drivers, including one whose license was previously revoked by TFL.