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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Membrane inspired by bone and cartilage efficiently produces electricity from saltwater:

Inspired by membranes in the body tissues of living organisms, scientists have combined aramid nanofibers used in Kevlar with boron nitride to construct a membrane for harvesting ocean energy that is both strong like bone and suited for ion transport like cartilage. The research, published December 18 in the journal Joule, overcomes major design challenges for technologies that harness osmotic energy (pressure and salinity gradient differences between freshwater and ocean water) to generate an eco-friendly and widely available form of renewable energy.

Osmotic energy generators vary less from one day to the next than solar and wind energy farms, making them more reliable than these green energy staples. However, the clay, graphene oxide, MXene, and molybdenum disulfide nanomaterials commonly used in membranes tend to collapse and disintegrate in water.

While nanosheets made from boron nitride have recently shown promise, remaining stable as temperatures rise and not easily reacting with other substances, membranes made from boron nitride alone are not hardy enough to withstand water for a long time either, rapidly beginning to leak ions as they develop microscopic cracks.

"New advanced boron nitride composite membranes with novel and robust properties will solve this problem, which is in high demand now," says Weiwei Lei, the lead scientist of this project in Australia, a Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University's Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM).

"Osmotic energy represents an enormous resource for humankind, but its implementation is severely limited by the availability of the high-performance ion-selective membranes," says Nicholas Kotov (@kotov_group), the lead scientist in the US, a professor of engineering at the University of Michigan.

Lei, Kotov, and their colleagues set out to solve this problem by turning to the tissues of living creatures as a blueprint, observing that many different varieties of high-performance ion-selective membranes are needed to facilitate the biological reactions in their bodies. They noted that while soft tissues, such as cartilage, kidney membranes, and basement membranes, allow ions to pass through with ease, they are weak and flimsy. In contrast, bones are exceptionally strong and stiff, but without the benefit of efficient ion transport.

"We found a way to 'marry' these two types of materials to obtain both properties at the same time, using aramid nanofibers that make flexible fibrous materials similar to cartilage and boron nitride that makes platelets similar to bone," Kotov says.

Journal Reference:

Cheng Chen, Dan Liu, Li He, Si Qin, Jiemin Wang, Joselito M. Razal, Nicholas A. Kotov, Weiwei Lei. Bio-inspired Nanocomposite Membranes for Osmotic Energy Harvesting. Joule, 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2019.11.010

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

In leap for quantum computing, silicon quantum bits establish a long-distance relationship:

Imagine a world where people could only talk to their next-door neighbor, and messages must be passed house to house to reach far destinations.

Until now, this has been the situation for the bits of hardware that make up a silicon quantum computer, a type of quantum computer with the potential to be cheaper and more versatile than today's versions.

Now a team based at Princeton University has overcome this limitation and demonstrated that two quantum-computing components, known as silicon "spin" qubits, can interact even when spaced relatively far apart on a computer chip. The study was published in the journal Nature.

"The ability to transmit messages across this distance on a silicon chip unlocks new capabilities for our quantum hardware," said Jason Petta, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton and leader of the study. "The eventual goal is to have multiple quantum bits arranged in a two-dimensional grid that can perform even more complex calculations. The study should help in the long term to improve communication of qubits on a chip as well as from one chip to another."

Quantum computers have the potential to tackle challenges beyond the capabilities of everyday computers, such as factoring large numbers. A quantum bit, or qubit, can process far more information than an everyday computer bit because, whereas each classical computer bit can have a value of 0 or 1, a quantum bit can represent a range of values between 0 and 1 simultaneously.

To realize quantum computing's promise, these futuristic computers will require tens of thousands of qubits that can communicate with each other. Today's prototype quantum computers from Google, IBM and other companies contain tens of qubits made from a technology involving superconducting circuits, but many technologists view silicon-based qubits as more promising in the long run.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

A Strange Black Hole Is Shooting Out Wobbly Jets Because It's Dragging Spacetime:

Some 7,800 light-years away, in the constellation of Cygnus, lies a most peculiar black hole. It's called V404 Cygni, and in 2015, telescopes around the world stared in wonder as it woke from dormancy to devour material from a star over the course of a week.

That one event provided such a wealth of information that astronomers are still analysing it. And they have just discovered an amazing occurrence: relativistic jets wobbling so fast their change in direction can be seen in mere minutes.

[...] V404 Cygni is a binary microquasar system consisting of a black hole about nine times the mass of the Sun and a companion star, an early red giant slightly smaller than the Sun.

The black hole is slowly devouring the red giant; the material siphoned away from the star is orbiting the black hole in the form of an accretion disc, a bit like water circling a drain. The closest regions of the disc are incredibly dense and hot, and extremely radiant; and, as the black hole feeds, it shoots out powerful jets of plasma, presumably from its poles.

[...] "We think the disc of material and the black hole are misaligned," [astrophysicist James] Miller-Jones said. "This appears to be causing the inner part of the disc to wobble like a spinning top and fire jets out in different directions as it changes orientation."

[...] It's a bit like a spinning top that starts to wobble as it's slowing down, the researchers said. This change in the rotational axis of a spinning body is called precession. In this particular instance, we have a handy explanation for it courtesy of Albert Einstein.

In his theory of general relativity, Einstein predicted an effect called frame-dragging. As it spins, a rotating black hole's gravitational field is so intense that it essentially drags spacetime with it. (This is one of the effects scientists hoped to observe when they took a picture of Pōwehi.)

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Anonymous_Coward:

Critical Vulnerability In Citrix Could Affect Numerous Enterprises:

A security researcher from Positive Technologies, Mikhail Klyuchnikov, discovered a serious security bug in Citrix products. Specifically, he found the vulnerability affecting the Citrix Application Delivery Controller (NetScaler ADC) and Citrix Gateway (NetScaler Gateway).

As stated in a post, exploiting the flaw could allow an attacker to directly access the target firm's local network without the need to compromise other accounts.

Upon finding the flaw, the researchers informed Citrix of the matter who also acknowledged their findings. Elaborating the vulnerability CVE-2019-19781 in an advisory, they stated,

A vulnerability has been identified in Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) formerly known as NetScaler ADC and Citrix Gateway formerly known as NetScaler Gateway that, if exploited, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to perform arbitrary code execution.

The bug affected all supported builds of Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway versions 11.1, 12.0, 12.1, and 13.0. Furthermore, it also affected all supported builds for Citrix NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway version 10.5.

[...] For now, Citrix has advised mitigation steps for users to avoid potential exploit. Addressing the vulnerability in a separate post, vendors have detailed the configurations to address the bug.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03938-x

Astronomy is inextricably associated with spectacular images and visualizations of the cosmos. But Wanda Diaz Merced says that by neglecting senses other than sight, astronomers are missing out on discoveries.

For 15 years, Diaz Merced, an astronomer at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Office for Astronomy Outreach in Mitaka, Japan, has pioneered a technique called sonification. The approach converts aspects of data, such as the brightness or frequency of electromagnetic radiation, into audible elements including pitch, volume and rhythm. It could help astronomers to avoid methodological biases that come with interpreting data only visually, argues Diaz Merced, who lost her sight in her twenties.

Last month, she co-organized the IAU's first symposium dedicated to diversity and inclusion. The event, in Mitaka from 12 to 15 November, showcased, among other topics, efforts aimed at presenting cosmic data in formats that are accessible through senses other than vision.

Diaz spoke to Nature about how bringing these efforts to mainstream science would boost accessibility — and discoveries.

How one astronomer hears the Universe, (DOI: doi:10.1038/d41586-019-03938-x)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Bushfires Are Raging Outside Every Major City in Australia. They're Only Going to Get Worse:

Australia has deployed military planes and ships to provide aid as hundreds of wildfires rage across Australia, forcing residents to flee and destroying homes.

The Australian Defense Force is sending ships to the Victoria town of Mallacoota on a two-week supply mission and using helicopters to bring in more firefighters since roads were inaccessible, according to the Associated Press (AP).

On Tuesday, thousands of people from the town on Australia's southeastern coast fled towards the water as a fire ripped through the area.

Photos of residents taking shelter on boats circulated on social media.

[...] In New South Wales, where Sydney is located, firefighters are battling more than 100 fires, according to the state's Rural Fire Service.

Sydney's famed New Years Eve fireworks went ahead despite the fires. A petition calling on the government to cancel the display and give the funds to firefighters and farmers instead got more than 280,000 signatures.

[...] New South Wales' Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said this wildfire season is the worst on record.

"We've seen extraordinary fire behavior," he said Tuesday, according to the AP. "What we really need is meaningful rain, and we haven't got anything in the forecast at the moment that says we're going to get drought-breaking or fire-quenching rainfall."

More than 900 homes have been destroyed in the state, according to New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

A fire tracker map maintained by researchers in Western Australia shows that they are also threatening areas around every major city in the country.

Additional coverage:

• Australia fires live: two dead in Cobargo as NSW and Victoria face bushfires threat – latest updates - interactive map too
• 9news live feed
• Large parts of the NSW South Coast are expected to lose all telecommunications in coming hours
• Tens of thousands of lightning strikes spark dozens of fires across South Australia
• More than 30,000 tourists in Australia who defied orders to leave area east of Melbourne amid raging bushfires are 'TRAPPED' as roads are cut off, after locals warned staying would be 'suicide' - have the pinch of salt ready
• 4000+ blocked on Mallacoota beach as forest fire approaches
• The Navy joins fleet of military helicopters called in to help evacuate south-eastern Victoria
• A total of 33 fires are still burning across Victoria as of 7pm Tuesday, with the majority of those blazes in East Gippsland.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Cascade:

More drugmakers hike U.S. prices as new year begins:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Drugmakers including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N), Gilead Sciences Inc (GILD.O), and Biogen Inc (BIIB.O) hiked U.S. list prices on more than 50 drugs on Wednesday, bringing total New Year’s Day drug price increases to more than 250, according to data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that drugmakers including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK.L) and Sanofi SA (SASY.PA) were planning to increase prices on more than 200 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1.

Nearly all of the price increases are below 10% and the median price increase is around 5%, according to 3 Axis.

More early year price increases could still be announced.

Soaring U.S. prescription drug prices are expected to again be a central issue in the presidential election. President Donald Trump, who made bringing them down a core pledge of his 2016 campaign, is running for re-election in 2020.

[...] The United States, which leaves drug pricing to market competition, has higher prices than in other countries where governments directly or indirectly control the costs, making it the world’s most lucrative market for manufacturers.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Cascade:

FDA expected to ban most flavored e-cigarette pods:

All flavored e-cigarette pods except menthol and tobacco are expected to be banned by the Food and Drug Administration, which could announce the plans this week, according to the Wall Street Journal and [The] New York Times.

The flavored pod ban would be a step back from the nearly complete flavored vape ban the Trump administration initially floated back in September, as lung injuries from vaping were on the rise. There are two notable changes: menthol flavoring would be allowed, in addition to tobacco; and the flavor ban would only be applied to pods — flavored nicotine liquids could still be sold for open tank systems, according to the reports.

The ban is meant to curb the rise in teenage vaping. Because open systems are seen as less popular among teens, the administration is focusing on pods — like those used by Juul — which are believed to be driving teen usage. The exemption is also a response to some odd political pushback: after the initial call for a broad flavor ban, vaping groups claimed that such a ban would hurt President Trump electorally in 2020. The messaging apparently worked.

[...]   Juul has already stopped selling all flavored pods except menthol and tobacco in anticipation of the ban, but the ban would still cut out flavored pods from competitors, like Njoy, which offers watermelon and blueberry nicotine pods.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), India's national space agency, has announced plans for a Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon. One of at least 25 missions ISRO plans for 2020.

The chairman of India's space agency, K Sivan, said work was going "smoothly" on the Chandrayaan-3 unmanned mission.

He said the country was aiming to launch the mission in 2020 but that it "may spill over" to 2021.

If successful, it would make India the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, and boost its credentials as a low-cost space power.

Chandrayaan-2 was India's last attempt at a moon landing, but crashed during its September attempt to land on the lunar south pole.

Mr Sivan said the new mission would land in the same area, and would "have a lander, rover and propulsion module like its predecessor". The new equipment is set to cost some $35m (£26m), while the full cost of the mission is set to be significantly more.

Jitendra Singh, junior minister for the department of space, has said the new mission will be "quite economical".

The mission will cut costs by leveraging the Chandrayan 2 Orbiter India already has in place that communicates with the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN).

Previous (Chandrayaan-2) Coverage

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Apple is pushing ahead with a lawsuit against Corellium, in what is being labelled as a move to end jailbreaking.

The tech giant began its legal battle in August, claiming the firm profits from "perfect replicas" of iOS.

Apple has now amended its lawsuit, alleging copyright infringement.

Corellium's CEO responded in an open letter, insisting developers and jailbreakers should be "concerned" by the move.

[...] Corellium's chief executive, Amanda Gorton, issued a statement on Sunday in response to Apple's latest claims of copyright infringement.

She criticised Apple's targeting of the jailbreaking community, and suggested the company has failed to acknowledge that it has directly benefited from users of its platform in the past.

"Apple is asserting that anyone who provides a tool that allows other people to jailbreak, and anyone who assists in creating such a tool, is violating the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)," said Ms Gorton.

"They have directly benefited from the jailbreak community in a number of ways. Many of the features of iOS originally appeared as jailbreak tweaks and were copied by Apple."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Mirrors have been an integral part of motor vehicles for over a century. The low tech solution has solved the major visibility issues involved with driving and now car makers think they can do one better using cameras instead of mirrors. This may be an improvement in large trucks where visibility using mirrors can be poor to the point that obstacles directly in front and behind the vehicle cannot be seen but for cars it may prove to be a theft opportunity.

Best not to mount a mirror, or indeed a camera, directly in the line of fire of a neighboring car door in the parking lot. Maybe someone should tell them about the practicalities of life?

Original Submission

szopin writes:

People got used to pre-determined games where you had an easy-to-discern win condition; this is no longer the case. AI is all the rage now and you can play with your machine forever and ever on your phone:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/infinite-text-adventure-ai-dungeon-is-now-available-on-ios-and-android/ar-BBY5Br2

Earlier this month we told you about AI Dungeon, an AI-powered text adventure with near infinite possibilities. You can type what you want into the game, and the AI will generate a response on the fly, creating a freewheeling experience that encourages cooperation and imagination. Now, AI Dungeon is available on iOS and Android as well, making it much easier to explore fantasy and sci-fi realms with an AI game master.

For PC users, there is an even better port that uses "half precision floating point using significantly less GPU memory" (you can run it on 4GB cards instead of 16+): https://github.com/cloveranon/Clover-Edition

Also includes coloured text, suggested actions and a ton of pre-defined scenarios missing from the original.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2020/

Here are some of the works that will be entering the public domain in 2020. (To find more material from 1924, you can visit the Catalogue of Copyright Entries.)

[...] Unfortunately, the fact that works from 1924 are legally available does not mean they are actually available. After 95 years, many of these works are already lost or literally disintegrating (as with old films and recordings), evidence of what long copyright terms do to the conservation of cultural artifacts. In fact, one of the items we feature below, Clark Gable's debut in White Man, apparently no longer exists. For the works that have survived, however, their long-awaited entry into the public domain is still something to celebrate. (Under the 56-year copyright term that existed until 1978, we would really have something to celebrate – works from 1963 would be entering the public domain in 2020!)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Anonymous_Coward:

Wyze Exposes User Data via Unsecured ElasticSearch Cluster:

Smart home tech maker Wyze Labs confirmed that the user data of over 2.4 million of its users were exposed by an unsecured database connected to an Elasticsearch cluster for over three weeks, from December 4 to December 26.

The company discovered the incident after receiving an inquiry from an IPVM reporter via a "support ticket at 9:21 a.m. on December 26," immediately followed by IPVM publishing a piece "at 9:35 a.m" covering the exposed database discovered by security consulting firm Twelve Security.

However, as Dongsheng Song, Wyze's Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer said in a blog post, some of the reported information wasn't accurate.

"We do not send data to Alibaba Cloud. We don’t collect information about bone density and daily protein intake even from the products that are currently in beta testing," he said in response to Twelve Security's disclosure and IPVM's story. "We did not have a similar breach 6 months ago."

This one impacting @WyzeCam looks pretty serious. Original public disclosure (which looks like it may have been made prematurely) is here: https://t.co/2WKp7siSSihttps://t.co/cnfixxFuTP

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) December 27, 2019

[...] Regarding the impact of this security incident, Wyze advises its customers to be wary of future phishing attempts since one ore [sic] more third-parties could have their email addresses.

As a precautionary measure Wyze logged out all users by pushing a token refresh and "added another level of protection to our system databases (adjusted several permission rules and added a precaution to only allow certain whitelisted IPs access databases)."

As a direct result of these measures, all Wyze customers will have to log back in the next time they need to access their accounts and relink their Alexa, Google Assistant, or IFTTT integrations.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

University of Cambridge researchers are hoping to launch technology that blocks online "hate speech" similar to how an antivirus program stops malicious code.

Thanks to researchers at the University of Cambridge, the largest social media companies in the world may soon have the ability to preemptively quarantine content classified by an algorithm as "hate speech"." On October 14, 2019, researcher Stephanie Ullmann and professor Marcus Tomalin published a proposal in the Ethics and Information Technology journal promoting an invention that they claim could accomplish this goal without infringing on individual rights of free speech. Their proposal involves software that uses an algorithm to identify "hate speech" in much the same way an antivirus program detects malware. It would then be up to the viewer of such content to either leave it in quarantine or view it.

The basic premise is that online "hate speech" is as harmful in its way as other forms of harm (physical, emotional, financial...), and social media companies should intercept it before it can do that harm, rather than post-facto by review.

Tomalin's proposal would use a sophisticated algorithm which would evaluate not just the content itself, but also all content posted by the user to determine if a post might be classifiable as "hate speech". If not classified as potential "hate speech", the post occupies the social media feed like any regular post. If the algorithm flags it as possible "hate speech", it will then flag the post as potential hate speech, making it so that readers must opt-in to view the post. A graph from the proposal illustrates this process.

The alert to the reader will identify the type of "hate speech" potentially classified in the content as well as a "Hate O'Meter" to show how offensive the post is likely to be.

The goal of the researchers is to have a working prototype available in early 2020 and, assuming success and subsequent social media company adoptions, intercepting traffic in time for the 2020 elections.

Original Submission