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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://themindunleashed.com/2019/10/ex-nasa-scientist-convinced-alien-life-was-found-on-mars-over-40-years-ago.html

A former NASA scientist has written that he is convinced that the U.S. space agency "found evidence of life" on Mars in the 1970s, but the data was largely ignored.

The stunning admission by Gilbert Levin—the former principal investigator for the Labeled Release (LR) experiment on NASA's Viking mission to Mars—came in an op-ed recently published in Scientific American.

In the article, the engineer and inventor is clear that he believes he found convincing proof of the existence of living microorganisms on Mars in 1976, but the agency has since been unwilling to acknowledge what he sees as a clear fact.

Levin is hardly a conspiracy theorist or fringe "UFOlogist," either—in addition to participating in that important 1976 NASA mission, he's a respected engineer and inventor who founded the successful research company Spherix.

In the op-ed titled "I'm Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

"On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars.

"Amazingly, they were positive. As the experiment progressed, a total of four positive results, supported by five varied controls, streamed down from the twin Viking spacecraft landed some 4,000 miles apart."

Continuing, he wrote:

"The data curves signaled the detection of microbial respiration on the Red Planet. The curves from Mars were similar to those produced by LR tests of soils on Earth.

"It seemed we had answered that ultimate question.

Sour grapes from a disgruntled investigator or something worth further investigation?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Oracle has patched 334 vulnerabilities across all of its product families in its January 2020 quarterly Critical Patch Update (CPU). Out of these, 43 are critical/severe flaws carrying CVSS scores of 9.1 and above. The CPU ties for Oracle's previous all-time high for number of patches issued, in July 2019. This overtook its previous record of 308 in July 2017.

The company said in a pre-release announcement that some of the vulnerabilities affect multiple products.

"Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update patches as soon as possible," it added.

The updates include fixes for Oracle's most widely deployed products, including the Oracle Database Server (12 patches total, three remotely exploitable without authentication); Oracle Communications Applications (25 patches, 23 remotely exploitable without authentication, six critical); Oracle Enterprise Manager (50 patches, 10 remotely exploitable without authentication, four critical); Oracle Fusion Middleware (38 patches, 30 remotely exploitable without authentication, three critical); 19 new security patches for Oracle MySQL (19 patches, six remotely exploitable without authentication); and the Oracle E-Business Suite (23 patches, 21 remotely exploitable without authentication, two critical).

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

martyb writes:

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-philippine-volcano-spews-lava-half-mile.html

A volcano near the Philippine capital spewed lava into the sky and trembled constantly Tuesday, possibly portending a bigger and more dangerous eruption, as tens of thousands of people fled villages darkened and blanketed by heavy ash.

Government work was suspended and schools were closed in a number of towns and cities, including Manila, because of the health risks from the ash. Hundreds of flights were canceled [or] delayed, affecting tens of thousands of passengers.

The restiveness of the Taal volcano and several new fissures cracking the ground nearby likely means magma is rising and may lead to further eruptive activity, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.

The volcano was spurting fountains of red-hot lava 800 meters (half a mile) into the sky, and the massive column of ash and volcanic debris at times lit up with streaks of lightning.

martyb writes:

An 'unknown' burst of gravitational waves just lit up Earth's detectors:

Earth's gravitational wave observatories -- which hunt for ripples in the fabric of space-time -- just picked up something weird. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo detectors recorded an unknown or unanticipated "burst" of gravitational waves on Jan. 14.

The gravitational waves we've detected so far usually relate to extreme cosmic events, like two black holes colliding or neutron stars finally merging after being caught in a death spiral. Burst gravitational waves have not been detected before and scientists hypothesize they may be linked to phenomena such as supernova or gamma ray bursts, producing a tiny "pop" when detected by the observatories.

This unanticipated burst has been dubbed, for now, S200114f, and was detected by the software that helped confirm the first detection of gravitational waves.

[...] Astronomers have already swung their telescopes to the interesting portion of the sky, listening in across different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum for a whisper of what might have occurred.

Previously:
LIGO Observes Lower Mass Black Hole Collision
First Joint Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO and Virgo
LIGO May Have Detected Merging Neutron Stars for the First Time
GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2
Europe's "Virgo" Gravitational Wave Detector Suffers From "Microcracks"
LIGO Black Hole Echoes Hint at General-Relativity Breakdown
LIGO Data Probes Where General Relativity Might Break Down
Did the LIGO Gravitational Wave Detector Find Dark Matter?
Second Detection of Gravitational Waves Announced by LIGO

Original Submission

martyb writes:

"Marshmallow Test" Redux: New Research Reveals Children Show Better Self-Control When They Depend on Each Other

For their study, researchers Rebecca Koomen, Sebastian Grueneisen, and Esther Herrmann, all affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, used a modified version of the "marshmallow test," a classic psychological experiment designed to examine young children's ability to delay gratification. In the classic experiment, preschool children were led into a room where a marshmallow or other treat was placed on a table. The children were told they could either eat the treat right away, or they could wait until the experimenter, who had to step out of the room, returned, in which case they'd receive a second treat. About a third of the children were able to wait for the second treat for up to 15 minutes.

In their new research, the researchers paired up more than 200 5- and 6-year-olds and had them play a brief balloon toss game to get comfortable in the testing environment. They then put the partners in separate rooms and placed a cookie in front of each of them. Some partners were assigned to a solo condition and only had to rely on their own self-control to earn a second cookie, much like the traditional experiment. Others were placed in a cooperative condition in which they received a second treat only if both they and their partner waited until the experimenter returned. Waiting in this condition was therefore risky and indeed less likely to result in a second cookie because children had to rely both on themselves and their partner to refrain from eating. The authors called this the interdependence condition. To identify any cultural differences in the responses, the researchers tested children at a laboratory in Germany and went to schools in Kenya to test children of the Kikuyu tribe.

Across both conditions, Kikuyu children were more likely to delay gratification compared to their German counterparts. But across the two cultures, significantly more children held off on eating the first cookie in the interdependence condition compared with the solo condition.

Journal Reference:

Rebecca Koomen, Sebastian Grueneisen, Esther Herrmann. Children Delay Gratification for Cooperative Ends, Psychological Science (DOI: 10.1177/0956797619894205)

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Galaxy S20 Ultra to come with a whopping 16GB of RAM

After the recent leak of live pictures of Samsung's next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S20, more details have started to trickle in about the upcoming device.

[...] we're getting three sizes: the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and the highest-end phone, the Galaxy S20 Ultra. In the US, they're all going to be 5G with Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoCs, and internationally you should be able to find 4G and 5G versions with Samsung Exynos chips.

[...] Max Weinbach, the XDA author who scored the live pictures of the Galaxy S20, has some spec info.

The S20 Ultra 5G is going to keep the SD Card slot. Support for up to 1TB.

It will also be available in 128GB/256GB/512GB and have a 12GB and 16GB RAM option.

108MP main, 48MP 10x optical, 12MP ultra wide.

5000 mAh battery with 45W option fast charge. 0 to 100% in 74 min.

— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) January 13, 2020

16GB of RAM would be a new high point for smartphones. That is an absolutely ridiculous amount of memory and would outclass many laptops out there, which typically start at 8GB of RAM. As for what you're supposed to do with all that memory, it might be useful for Samsung's DeX desktop mode, which lets you kick the phone over to a full windowed PC interface by hooking it up to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. A baseline of 12GB—the highest-end config for the Galaxy S10—would be a big increase, too. As connected Samsung leaker Ice Universe points out, this will most likely be LPDDR5, which Samsung has already put into production.

The Galaxy S10 came in storage tiers of 128GB, 512GB, and 1TB, so the listed S20 tiers of 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB would be a downgrade. The good news is that there's still a MicroSD slot—on the "Ultra" model, at least.

Also rumored are a 5000mAh battery and 120 Hz display.

Also at: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/14/samsung_galaxy_s20/

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/amazon-asks-court-to-block-microsofts-10b-contract-with-us-defense-dept/:

Amazon is seeking a court order that would prevent Microsoft from doing work for the US Department of Defense under a contract that Amazon says was awarded improperly.

[...] Amazon alleges that the president "launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI Contract away from AWS [Amazon Web Services] to harm his perceived political enemy—Jeffrey P. Bezos," the founder and CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post.

Amazon and the US have agreed to an expedited briefing schedule, in part to consider a motion for a restraining order or preliminary injunction that Amazon intends to file. A joint status report filed in court yesterday by Amazon, the US government, and Microsoft described what's happening next in the case:

AWS intends to file a motion for temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction to prevent the issuance of substantive task orders under the contract, which the United States has previously advised AWS and the Court will begin on February 11, 2020, given the United States' consistent position that the services to be procured under the Contract are urgently needed in support of national security. The parties have agreed to an expedited briefing schedule on the issue of preliminary injunctive relief, and respectfully request that the Court expedite consideration of the issue, as described below.

[...] both the US and Microsoft "intend to file partial motions to dismiss" the case, the status report said.

[...] The status report also says that the US government "does not intend to file an answer to AWS's complaint." Instead, "the parties will file cross-motions for judgment on the administrative record."

[...] Trump "escalated his intervention, jettisoning any appearance of impartiality by making clear to DoD (and to the world) that he did not want AWS to get the JEDI Contract," the lawsuit said.

Is it wrong to root for Microsoft to win?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Boeing: internal emails reveal chaos and incompetence at 737 Max factory

[On] Thursday hundreds of pages of internal messages were delivered to congressional investigators in which Boeing executives mocked their regulator, joked about safety and said the Max had been "designed by clowns".

Shocking as the emails are, they will come as no surprise to those following the Boeing story. Last month Edward Pierson, a former senior manager at Boeing's 737 factory in Renton, Washington, told Congress he had witnessed "chaos" at the factory where the Max was built and had warned management that "Boeing was prioritizing production speed over quality and safety". His warnings were ignored.

Boeing Mocked Lion Air Calls for More 737 Max Training Before Crash

Indonesia's Lion Air considered putting its pilots through simulator training before flying the Boeing Co. 737 Max but abandoned the idea after the planemaker convinced them in 2017 it was unnecessary, according to people familiar with the matter and internal company communications.

The next year, 189 people died when a Lion Air 737 Max plunged into the Java Sea, a disaster blamed in part on inadequate training and the crew's unfamiliarity with a new flight-control feature on the Max that malfunctioned.

[...] "Now friggin Lion Air might need a sim to fly the MAX, and maybe because of their own stupidity. I'm scrambling trying to figure out how to unscrew this now! idiots," one Boeing employee wrote in June 2017 text messages obtained by the company and released by the House committee.

In response, a Boeing colleague replied: "WHAT THE F%$&!!!! But their sister airline is already flying it!" That was an apparent reference to Malindo Air, the Malaysian-based carrier that was the first to fly the Max commercially.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/google-used-deep-learning-to-improve-short-term-weather-forecasts/:

A research team at Google has developed a deep neural network that can make fast, detailed rainfall forecasts.

The researchers say their results are a dramatic improvement over previous techniques in two key ways. One is speed. Google says that leading weather forecasting models today take one to three hours to run, making them useless if you want a weather forecast an hour in the future. By contrast, Google says its system can produce results in less than 10 minutes—including the time to collect data from sensors around the United States.

[...] A second advantage: higher spatial resolution. Google's system breaks the United States down into squares 1km on a side. Google notes that in conventional systems, by contrast, "computational demands limit the spatial resolution to about 5 kilometers."

[...] Google says that its forecasts are more accurate than conventional weather forecasts, at least for time periods under six hours.

[...] Interestingly, Google's model is "physics-free": it isn't based on any a priori knowledge of atmospheric physics. The software doesn't try to simulate atmospheric variables like pressure, temperature, or humidity. Instead, it treats precipitation maps as images and tries to predict the next few images in the series based on previous snapshots.

[...] Specifically, it uses a popular neural network architecture called a U-Net that was first developed for diagnosing medical images.

[...] To produce a weather forecast, the network takes an hour's worth of previous precipitation maps as inputs. Each map is a "channel" in the input image, just as a conventional image has red, blue, and green channels. The network then tries to output a series of precipitation maps reflecting the precipitation over the next hour.

Like any neural network, this one is trained with past real-world examples. Thousands of past real-world weather patterns are fed into the network, and the training software tweaks the network's many parameters to more closely approximate the correct results for each training example. After repeating this process millions of times, the network gets pretty good at approximating future precipitation patterns for data it hasn't seen before.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Windows 10: NSA reveals major flaw in Microsoft's code:

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has revealed a major flaw in Windows 10 that could have been used by hackers to create malicious software that looked legitimate.

Microsoft is expected to issue a patch later and to say that the bug has not been exploited by hackers.

The issue was revealed during an NSA press conference.

It was not clear how long it had known about it before revealing it to Microsoft.

Brian Krebs, the security expert who first reported the revelation[*], said the software giant had already sent the patch to branches of the US military and other high-level users. It was, he wrote, "extraordinarily scary".

The problem exists in a core component of Windows known as crypt32.dll, a program that allows software developers to access various functions, such as digital certificates which are used to sign software.

It could, in theory, have allowed a hacker to pass off a piece of malicious software as being entirely legitimate.

[*] Cryptic Rumblings Ahead of First 2020 Patch Tuesday.

Phoenix666 writes:

BBC:

The US has warned the British government it "would be madness" to use Huawei technology in the UK's 5G network.

A US delegation presented the UK with new evidence claiming to show security risks posed by using the Chinese firm.

[...]Senior US officials handed over a dossier of technical information which sources claim challenged British intelligence's own technical assessment that it would be possible to use Huawei in the 5G infrastructure without risks to national security.

[...]The move is being seen as the latest round in an intense lobbying effort by the Trump administration as the UK government prepares to makes its decision on the 5G network.

Last year, the US banned companies from selling components and technology to Huawei and 68 related companies, citing national security concerns.

Is the security concern real, or is it all about the Benjamins?

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Apple Denies FBI Request to Unlock Shooter's iPhone:

Apple once again is drawing the line at breaking into a password-protected iPhone for a criminal investigation, refusing a request by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to help unlock the iPhones of a shooter responsible for an attack in Florida.

The company late Monday said it won't help the FBI crack two iPhones belonging to Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a Saudi-born Air Force cadet and suspect in a shooting that killed three people in December at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.

The decision is reminiscent of a scenario that happened during the investigation of a 2015 California shooting, and could pit federal law enforcement against Apple in court once again to argue over data privacy in the case of criminal investigations.

While Apple said it's helping in the FBI's investigation of the Pensacola shooting—refuting criticism to the contrary—the company said it won't help the FBI unlock two phones the agency said belonged to Alshamrani.

"We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation," the company said in a statement emailed to Threatpost. "Our responses to their many requests since the attack have been timely, thorough and are ongoing."

[...] The FBI sent a letter to Apple's general counsel last week asking the company to help the agency crack the iPhones, as their attempts until that point to guess the "relevant passcodes" had been unsuccessful, according to the letter, which was obtained by NBC News.

Phoenix666 writes:

BBCTech:

Powered entirely by batteries, Ellen is something of a Tesla among ferries. Fully charged, the 60m vessel can sail 22 nautical miles with up to 200 passengers and 30 cars onboard.

[...] Totalling 4.3MWh this is the largest battery capacity at sea and equivalent to the average amount of electricity a UK household consumes each year.

[...] After a 70 minute voyage, Ellen arrives at the harbour in Søby and moors alongside the charging station.

A mechanical arm plugs in and recharges the batteries in less than 25 minutes with clean energy supplied by local wind turbines.

[...] "We are paying maybe 25% of what you would pay for running a similar diesel vessel." says Ms Heinemann. "So that's the significant saving."

Electric propulsion is beginning to spread from passenger cars to trucks and now ferries.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The Register:

Businesses upgrading to Windows 10 forced global PC sales into the black for the first time in seven years in 2019, but it could have been so much better if Intel's chip drought had eased.

Preliminary findings from Gartner pegged shipments at 261.23 million, up 0.6 per cent year-on-year, and rival analyst IDC reckons 266.69 million found their way on the shelves of distributors and resellers, itself up 2.7 per cent.

Forced upgrades from Microsoft still seem to outweigh jumps to Linux. Will that ever change?

Original Submission

MostCynical writes:

Jalopnik has a story about how the Norwegian capital, Oslo, recorded only one death on its roads in 2019.

Speed limit laws and reducing the very presence of cars in the city center and downtown areas have resulted in a very aggressive, downward trend of traffic-related fatalities in the Nordic country's capital city. There was only one traffic-related death in Oslo in all of 2019.

No children were killed in traffic in Norway last year, Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported.

There was only one road-related death of a pedestrian, cyclist or child in 2019 in Oslo. No children were killed in traffic in Norway last year, either.

Norway plans to reach "Vision Zero", and eliminate road-related deaths within four years and do more to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, serious injuries.

The only person who died last year, according to Aftenposten, was a man whose car crashed into a fence in June.

This sharp decline is due to the fact that Oslo heavily regulates places where people are allowed to drive and has set strict speed limits. The city is also very friendly towards cycling and walking.

Olso's road fatality rate for 2019 was 0.1 death per 100,000 people. American States vary between 12 and 26 per 100,000 people

Original Norwegian article.

Original Submission