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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Waiting for Betelgeuse: what's up with the tempestuous star?:

Have you noticed that Orion the Hunter—one of the most iconic and familiar of the wintertime constellations—is looking a little... different as of late? The culprit is its upper shoulder star Alpha Orionis, aka Betelgeuse, which is looking markedly faint, the faintest it has been for the 21st century.

When will this nearby supernova candidate pop, and what would look like if it did?

[...] Fortunately for us, we're safely out of the 50 light-year 'kill zone' for receiving any inbound lethal radiation from Betelgeuse: A supernova would simply be a scientifically interesting event, and put on a good show. Ancient supernovae may have had a hand in the evolution of life on Earth, and a recent study suggests that one might even have forced early humans to walk upright.

What would a supernova in Orion look like? Well, using the last supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud (also a Type IIb event) as a guide, we calculate that when it does blow, Betelgeuse would shine at magnitude -10. That's 16 times fainter than a full moon, but 100 times brighter than Venus, making it easily visible in the daytime sky. A Betelgeuse-gone-supernova would also easily cast noticeable nighttime shadows.

[...] For now though, we're in a wait-and-see-mode for any New Year's Eve fireworks from Betelgeuse. Such an occurrence would be bittersweet: We would be extraordinarily lucky to see Betelgeuse go supernova in our lifetime... but familiar Orion the Hunter would never look the same again.

Also at CNET

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A Miami lawyer's pants caught on fire during an arson trial. He's about to be suspended

The Florida Supreme Court wants to suspend the Miami lawyer who drew worldwide notoriety after his pants burst into flames during an arson trial.

[...] In March 2017, Gutierrez was representing a Miami man accused of torching his own car for insurance money. In a story first reported by the Miami Herald, Gutierrez was arguing to jurors that the blaze might have been caused by spontaneous combustion when flames and smoke began billowing from his pants.

[...] Prosecutors launched a criminal investigation. In a memo on the case, Assistant State Attorney Michael Filteau said "it seems obvious" the fire was a "a stunt or demonstration ... meant to illustrate the feasibility of his spontaneous combustion theory of defense."

But under Florida law, prosecutors said they could not prove Gutierrez acted with "criminal intent" — such a demonstration, while misleading and unethical, could technically be legal.

The Florida Bar too launched a probe. The investigation found that Gutierrez, after the guilty verdict, filed a bogus insurance claim with GEICO, which had insured the car. For his handling of the case, a referee ruled that Gutierrez should be found guilty of ethical breaches involving dishonesty and sham claims. He pleaded guilty to the violations.

Stephen Gutierrez was suspended on November 14:

Administrative Order 2019-89 Order of Suspension of Attorney Stephen Gutierrez Florida Bar 117515

Previously: Lawyer's Pants Catch on Fire During Arson Trial

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

The spectacle of Earth suspended in space was so overwhelming for Edgar Mitchell that the Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon wanted to grab politicians by the scruff of the neck and drag them into space to witness the view.

Such drastic measures may not be necessary, however. Scientists are about to welcome the first participants on an unprecedented clinical trial that aims to reproduce the intense emotional experience, known as the "Overview effect", from the comfort of a health spa.

If the trial goes well, what led Mitchell to develop "an instant global consciousness" and a profound connection to Earth and its people could be recreated with nothing more than a flotation tank, a half tonne of Epsom salts, and a waterproof virtual reality (VR) headset.

"There's a lot of division and polarisation and disconnection between people," said Steven Pratscher, a psychologist and principal investigator on the trial at the University of Missouri. "We'd like to see if we can recreate the Overview effect on Earth to have an impact on those issues."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/26/scientists-attempt-to-recreate-overview-effect-from-earth

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Micro-angelo? This 3D-printed 'David' is just one millimeter tall – TechCrunch:

3D printing has proven itself useful in so many industries that it’s no longer necessary to show off, but some people just can’t help themselves. Case in point: this millimeter-tall rendition of Michelangelo’s famous “David” printed with copper using a newly developed technique.

The aptly named “Tiny David” was created by Exaddon, a spin-off company from another spin-off company, Cytosurge, spun off from Swiss research university ETH Zurich. It’s only a fraction of a millimeter wide and weighs two micrograms.

It was created using Exaddon’s “CERES” 3D printer, which lays down a stream of ionized liquid copper at a rate of as little as femtoliters per second, forming a rigid structure with features as small as a micrometer across. The Tiny David took about 12 hours to print, though something a little simpler in structure could probably be done much quicker.

As it is, the level of detail is pretty amazing. Although, obviously, you can’t recreate every nuance of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, even small textures like the hair and muscle tone are reproduced quite well. No finishing buff or support struts required.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

UK Digital TV Platform Freeview blames weather for TV problems:

Digital TV platform Freeview says that people around the UK are experiencing reception problems because of high-pressure weather conditions.

Freeview's free-to-air channels include those from the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV.

The website Downdetector has nearly 5,000 comments from viewers reporting that they can't access channels at all, or that the picture is distorting.

[...] it isn't the high pressure itself which causes interference with TV signals. It's the presence of what is known as an atmospheric temperature inversion. A temperature inversion is when a layer of warm air overlays cooler air at the surface. Temperature usually decreases with height above the earth's surface, but when there is an area of high pressure, the air aloft sinks down towards the earth's surface and it warms up as it does so.

This creates a sharp thermal contrast in the atmosphere which TV and radio waves see as a physical boundary. There are many TV and radio waves travelling through the lower atmosphere and in such atmospheric conditions, these waves can be refracted or bounce off the inversion overhead and this enables them to travel much further than they would otherwise be able to.

In this way, the usually strong Freeview signals can experience significant interference with other, normally distant, signals from other sources.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Tesla delivers its first 'Made in China' cars:

During a ceremony at the company's multi-billion dollar plant in Shanghai, 15 of its employees received cars they had purchased.

The event means deliveries of cars have started a little over a year after construction of the factory got underway.

[...] The Chinese-made Model 3, priced at $50,000 (£38,000) before subsidies, will compete with local electric car makers, including NIO and Xpeng Motors, as well as global brands such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

[...] Previously Tesla was exporting all of the cars it sold in China from the US, which meant they were hit with tariffs in China.

Previously:
Tesla Will Build a "Gigafactory" Near Berlin, Germany
China Gives Tesla Green Light for Production

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Ubisoft uses AI to teach a car to drive itself in a racing game:

Reinforcement learning, an AI training technique that employs rewards to drive software policies toward goals, has been applied successfully to domains from industrial robotics to drug discovery. But while firms including OpenAI and Alphabet's DeepMind have investigated its efficacy in video games like Dota 2, Quake III Arena, and StarCraft 2, few to date have studied its use under constraints like those encountered in the game industry.

That's presumably why Ubisoft La Forge, game developer Ubisoft's eponymous prototyping space, proposed in a recent paper an algorithm that's able to handle discrete, continuous video game actions in a "principled" and predictable way. They set it loose on a "commercial game" (likely The Crew or The Crew 2, though neither is explicitly mentioned) and report that it's competitive with state-of-the-art benchmark tasks.

"Reinforcement Learning applications in video games have recently seen massive advances coming from the research community, with agents trained to play Atari games from pixels or to be competitive with the best players in the world in complicated imperfect information games," wrote the coauthors of a paper describing the work. "These systems have comparatively seen little use within the video game industry, and we believe lack of accessibility to be a major reason behind this. Indeed, really impressive results ... are produced by large research groups with computational resources well beyond what is typically available within video game studios."

The Ubisoft team, then, sought to devise a reinforcement learning approach that'd address common challenges in video game development. They note that data sample collection tends to be a lot slower generally, and that there exist time budget constraints over the runtime performance of agents.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

Study helps explain why previous attempts to develop a staph vaccine have failed:

Staph bacteria, the leading cause of potentially dangerous skin infections, are most feared for the drug-resistant strains that have become a serious threat to public health. Attempts to develop a vaccine against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have failed to outsmart the superbug's ubiquity and adaptability to antibiotics.

Now, a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may help explain why previous attempts to develop a staph vaccine have failed, while also suggesting a new approach to vaccine design. This approach focuses on activating an untapped set of immune cells, as well as immunizing against staph in utero or within the first few days after birth.

The research, in mice, found that T cells -- one of the body's major types of highly specific immune cells -- play a critical role in protecting against staph bacteria. Most vaccines rely solely on stimulating the other main type of immune cells, the B cells, which produce antibodies to attack disease-causing microorganisms such as bacteria.

The findings are published online Dec. 24 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Across the globe, staph infections have become a pervasive health threat because of increasing antibiotic resistance. Despite the medical community's best efforts, the superbug has shown a consistent ability to elude treatment. Our findings indicate that a robust T cell response is absolutely essential for protection against staph infections."

Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg, MD, PhD, senior author, director of the University's Division of Pediatric Critical Care

Lee B, Olaniyi R, Kwiecinski J, Bubeck Wardenburg J. Staphylococcus aureus a-toxin suppresses antigen-specific T cell response. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Online Dec. 24, 2019.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Cascade:

Have Your Science And Eat It: Scientific Research As Cakes:

Before she became a sous-chef at McMurdo research station in Antarctica, Rose McAdoo was a pastry chef in New York City. But even on the other side of the world, surrounded by polar research staff, she couldn't stop thinking about cake.

During the summer season, more than a thousand people work at McMurdo. They're not all scientists. The majority of residents at the station are there in support roles, to keep the place running like a little village. But the research is never far away, and while working in the 24-hour kitchen, McAdoo learned about the scientific studies happening around her.

"Everything I learned, my brain instantly processes into cake format," says McAdoo. "Ascending and descending data sets or systems become different sized stacked tiers. The ever-changing ice break patterns that I watched morph every day looked like massive sheets of fondant. I saw NASA Operation IceBridge data as future time-lapsed cake decor videos."

There was no opportunity to put these elaborate cake ideas into practice right away, but as soon as she left Antarctica during the off-season, McAdoo started work on the cakes. She stayed in touch with some of the researchers she met, who provided feedback and resources to help her get the science just right.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

With 2019 almost over, we turn our sights to a new decade with 2020. Soon we will celebrate the new year by partying, eating good food, and watching the Times Square Ball drop on TV. Sadly, Dick Clark is dead, but his legacy lives on through Ryan Seacrest.

Calculate Linux 20 is based on Gentoo 17.1 and comes with several desktop environment choices, such as Cinnamon, KDE, Xfce, MATE, and more. Unfortunately for some users, the operating system is now 64-bit only. Yes, with version 20, the developers have chosen to kill the 32-bit variants. While some people will be upset, it is definitely the correct choice -- 32-bit only processors are very old at this point. You can likely get a better 64-bit machine for a steal at a thrift store these days.

All the Gentoo goodness, precious little of the headaches.

Source: https://betanews.com/2019/12/27/gentoo-calculate-linux-20-twenty/

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Ryuk Ransomware Stops Encrypting Linux Folders:

A new version of the Ryuk Ransomware was released that will purposely avoid encrypting folders commonly seen in *NIX operating systems.

After the City of New Orleans was infected by ransomware, BleepingComputer confirmed that the city was infected by the Ryuk Ransomware using an executable named v2.exe.

After analyzing the v2.exe sample, security researcher Vitali Kremez shared with BleepingComputer an interesting change in the ransomware; it would no longer encrypt folders that are associated with *NIX operating systems.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Rwanda makes its own morphine while U.S. awash with opioids:

It was something, the silence. Nothing but the puff of her breath and the scuff of her slip-on shoes as Madeleine Mukantagara walked through the fields to her first patient of the day. Piercing cries once echoed down the hill to the road below. What she carried in her bag had calmed them.

For 15 years, her patient Vestine Uwizeyimana had been in unrelenting pain as disease wore away at her spine. She could no longer walk and could barely turn over in bed. Her life narrowed to a small, dark room with a dirt-floor in rural Rwanda, prayer beads hanging on the wall by her side.

A year ago, relief came in the form of liquid morphine, locally produced as part of Rwanda's groundbreaking effort to address one of the world's great inequities: As thousands die from addiction in rich countries awash with prescription painkillers, millions of people writhe in agony in the poorest nations with no access to opioids at all.

Companies don't make money selling cheap, generic morphine to the poor and dying, and most people in sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford the expensive formulations like oxycodone and fentanyl, prescribed so abundantly in richer nations that thousands became addicted to them.

Rwanda's answer: plastic bottles of morphine, produced for pennies and delivered to homes across the country by community health workers like Mukantagara. It is proof, advocates say, that the opioid trade doesn't have to be guided by how much money can be made.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

SpaceX has launched both a real car (Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster), and what Wired refers to as the rocketry equivalent of a clown car into space.

It was about a year ago that SpaceX launched

A rocket crowded with more than 60 small satellites. Inside one of them, Excite, were even more. It was actually a satellite made of other satellites, all clones of each other, all capable of joining together and working together. It was one of the first in-space tests of such a contraption—but in the coming years, this modular approach is likely to show up on more and more missions.

Excite (made by the company NovaWurks) consists of 14 Lego-like 'satlets' (or 'HiSats') that are smaller than a sheet of paper and only a few inches thick.

The great promise of satlets is that they are agnostic about what instruments they support and about what function they fulfill. They can be mass-produced, which both slashes costs and dents the idea that each new instrument to be sent into orbit requires a whole new satellite. Instead, you can buy a satlet (or 15) that will provide everything your camera, radar device, radio detector, infrared sensor, or data processor will need. In theory, the set can also fix itself after launch by reallocating resources: A group of linked satlets can share functions among themselves and adjust their effort based on changing needs. If a battery in one gets a bad cell, for instance, its partners can help out.

Other government agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) are also investigating the use of small standardized satellites that instruments can be attached to based on the mission.

[T]he NRO established a new "Greenlighting" program in 2017, to provide developers with a quick, cheap way to test technology in space. The NRO has created a standard interface, the size of a deck of cards, that people can stick their experiments into. Multiple interfaces can be stacked together, and experiments swapped in or out, before launch.

The promised reductions in cost and time to orbit will potentially allow for the massive risk averse missions of yesterday to slowly morph into nimble risk accepting missionlets in the future.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://thenewstack.io/donald-knuths-2019-christmas-tree-lecture-explores-pi-in-the-art-of-computer-programming/

For a quarter of a century, Stanford's great computer science professor emeritus has been delivering a special "Christmas Tree" lecture each December.

[...] But for this year's lecture, Knuth did something special. He showed the audience how, throughout the last half of a century, he's whimsically worked the digits of pi into various exercises in his book — again, and again, and again. Knuth tells the audience that he's searched the entire text of his own book, The Art of Computer Programming, using the Linux tool egrep, and he's found a whopping 1,700 occurrences of the word pi, "which mean pi occurs maybe twice every five pages in the book so far." He feels that using pi in his examples assures readers that the algorithms really will work, even on an arbitrarily chosen cluster of digits.

But before long his talk had turned into a kind of intellectual funhouse, sharing other pi-related miscellanies that are often surprising — and occasionally even mind-boggling.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Huawei denies receiving billions in financial aid from Chinese government:

Huawei may not be as much of a self-made success story as founder Ren Zhengfei has consistently made the company out to be. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese government has granted as much as $75 billion worth of financial assistance to Huawei, allowing the company to spend more freely than it would have otherwise been able to.

Using a combination of publicly-available records, the WSJ estimates Huawei received $46 billion in loans and lines of credit from state-controlled lenders, as well as $1.6 billion in grants. The company was also able to save as much as $25 billion in taxes between 2008 and 2018 thanks to incentives aimed at China's tech companies, and $2 billion on land purchases.

Chinese diplomats may have also helped the company. According to court documents obtained by the WSJ, the Chinese government helped Huawei close a deal in Pakistan by offering the country's government a $124.7 million loan through the Export-Import Bank of China. The state-controlled bank waived most of the three percent annual interest on the 20-year loan. The catch, however, was that Pakistan's government had to skip its usual competitive bidding process and award the contract to Huawei.

Huawei responded to the article in a series of tweets and a lengthy statement posted earlier today. "Once again, the WSJ has published untruths about Huawei based on false information. This time, wild accusations about Huawei's finances ignore our 30 years of dedicated investments in R&D that have driven innovation and the tech industry as a whole," the company said. Huawei also said that it reserved the right to take legal action against the WSJ for "a number of disingenuous and irresponsible articles."

Original Submission