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takyon writes:

UNISOC Unveils T7520 SoC for 5G Smartphones: Octa-Core, 6nm EUV

UNISOC, formerly Spreadtrum Semiconductor, has announced its first mobile application processor with an integrated 5G modem. Dubbed the T7520, the SoC also happens to be one of the world's first chips to be made using TSMC's 6 nm process technology, which uses extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for several layers.

The UNISOC T7520 application processor packs four high-performance Arm Cortex-A76 cores, four energy-efficient Arm Cortex-A55 cores, as well as an Arm Mali-G57 GPU with a display engine that supports multiple screens with a 4K resolution and HDR10+. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a new NPU that is said to offer a 50% higher TOPS-per-Watt rate than the company's previous-generation NPU. In addition, the chip features a four-core ISP that supports up to 100 MP sensors and multi-camera processing capability. Finally, the AP also features the company's latest Secure Element processor that supports 'most of crypto algorithms' and can handle compute-intensive security scenarios, such as encrypted video calls.

Unisoc processors have been used in cheaper smartphones.

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takyon writes:

Intel Says Process Tech to Lag Competitors Until Late 2021, Will Regain Lead with 5nm (archive)

It appears that 2020 and 2021 are going to be long years for Intel. CFO George Davis presented at the Morgan Stanley conference yesterday covering a wide range of topics, but noted that despite being "undoubtedly in the 10nm era," the company felt that it would not reach process parity with competitors until it produces the 7nm node at the tail end of 2021. Davis also said that Intel wouldn't regain process leadership until it produces the 5nm node at an unspecified date.

Davis commented that the company was "definitely in the 10nm era" with Ice Lake client chips and networking ASICs already shipping, along with the pending release of discrete GPUs and Ice Lake Xeons. Intel is also moving well along the path of inter-node development, which consists of "+" revisions to existing processes. Davis said the 10nm inter-node step provides a "step-function move" with the Tiger Lake chips based on the 10nm+ process as the company awaits its 7nm process.

However, Davis noted that in spite of the shipping products and pending "+" revisions to the 10nm process, its process node still lags behind competitors, stating:

"So we bring a lot of capability to the table for our customers, in addition to the CPU, and we feel like we're starting to see the acceleration on the process side that we have been talking about to get back to parity in the 7nm generation and regain leadership in the 5nm generation."

Previously:
Intel Launches Coffee Lake Refresh, Roadmap Leaks Showing No "10nm" Desktop Parts Until 2022
Intel's Jim Keller Promises That "Moore's Law" is Not Dead, Outlines 50x Improvement Plan
Intel Roadmap Shows Plans for "5nm", "3nm", "2nm", and "1.4nm" Process Nodes by 2029

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Unstable rock pillars near reservoirs can produce dangerous water waves:

In many coastal zones and gorges, unstable cliffs often fail when the foundation rock beneath them is crushed. Large water waves can be created, threatening human safety.

In this week's Physics of Fluids scientists in China reveal the mechanism by which these cliffs collapse, and how large, tsunami-like waves, known as impulse waves, are created. Few experimental studies of this phenomenon have been carried out, so this work represents valuable new data that can be used to protect from impending disaster.

The experiments were carried out in a transparent, rectangular box. A large body of water was placed at one end of the box and a granular pile at the other. The pile is separated from the water by a movable gate. When the gate is brought upward quickly, the pile collapses and slides into the water, inducing wave action.

The shape of the granular particles was chosen to resemble the shapes of samples from the Three Gorges Reservoir area in China. Motion of the body of water was observed with additional floating and suspended particles. Movements of this second group of particles was detected by a camera outside the box at 100 frames per second. The investigators varied the width and height of the granular pile and, separately, the height of the body of water. The pile height-to-width ratio was found to be critical, determining how the pile collapses as well as the types of impulse waves produced.

The pile collapsed in four stages, eventually pushing water away. The resulting water movements were transferred back to the pile under certain conditions, creating vortices. Three types of water waves were generated: transition waves, solitary waves and bores.

Transition waves decay gradually as they propagate. Solitary waves, though, consist of a single water crest that moves rapidly, without decreasing its amplitude. In a bore, the top of the wave breaks and spills forward. By fitting the observed experimental data to a formula, the investigators developed a way to predict which type of wave would be produced.

"These formulas are highly suitable for the collapse of partially submerged granular piles," said co-author Huang Bolin.

More information: "Experimental study on impulse waves generated by gravitational collapse of rectangular granular piles," Physics of Fluids (2020). DOI: 10.1063/1.5138709

Journal information: Physics of Fluids Provided by American Institute of Physics

Citation: Unstable rock pillars near reservoirs can produce dangerous water waves (2020, March 3) retrieved 3 March 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-03-unstable-pillars-reservoirs-dangerous.html

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aristarchus writes:

According to reporting at Common Dreams:

Environmental advocates cheered a federal judge's ruling Thursday that voided oil and gas leases on roughly one million acres of public lands and rejected a Trump administration policy that accelerated extraction of the fossil fuels.

"The judge confirmed that it's illegal to silence the public to expand fossil-fuel extraction," said Taylor McKinnon, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The lawsuit centered on a 2018 memoradum, "No. 2018-034," issued by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the Interior Department. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is a former oil and gas lobbyist.

Also key was that the areas in question are habitat for the greater sage grouse, whose numbers are in decline.

[...]Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald E. Bush said BLM was "arbitrary and capricious" in issuing the new policy, and said the agency clearly sought to mute public input.

The "BLM jettisoned prior processes, practices, and norms in favor of changes that emphasized economic maximization—to the detriment, if not outright exclusion, of pre-decisional opportunities for the public to contribute to the decision-making process affecting the management of public lands," he wrote.

"The agency's administrative record," Bush continued, "reveals no analysis that would explain or justify the transition" from the Obama-era policy to the new one "and the resulting curtailment of the public's involvement in oil and gas leasing decisions on public land."

The administration's shift appears to be "a mechanism for unharnessing prior constraints upon oil and gas leasing by specifically reducing or eliminating public involvement in the oil and gas leasing process because such public involvement hindered the oil and gas production industry," he added.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

New Zealand birds show humanlike ability to make predictions:

Whether it's calculating your risk of catching the new coronavirus or gauging the chance of rain on your upcoming beach vacation, you use a mix of statistical, physical, and social information to make a decision. So do New Zealand parrots known as keas, scientists report today. It's the first time this cognitive ability has been demonstrated outside of apes, and it may have implications for understanding how intelligence evolved.

"It's a neat study," says Karl Berg, an ornithologist and parrot expert at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, who was not involved with this research.

[...] The findings indicate that keas, like humans, have something known as "domain general intelligence"—the mental ability to integrate several kinds of information, the researchers argue. That's despite the fact that birds and humans last shared a common ancestor some 312 million years ago and have markedly different brain anatomies. Previously, cognitive researchers have argued that domain general intelligence requires language.

Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist and expert on parrot cognition at Harvard University, is skeptical. Pepperberg, who worked with the famed parrot Alex for 31 years, says the kea showed "some intuitive understanding, but not ... real statistical knowledge." In her view, the study could not prove the birds understand in detail how the proportions of tokens in a jar influence the probability of a reward.

If kea really do have the abilities the study suggests, there's a good reason they evolved it, Berg says. Animals with even basic statistical and predictive skills should be able to estimate amounts of food or the availability of mates, and so end up with more offspring and evolutionary success, he says. In other words, if you've mastered Statistics 101, you're likely to succeed in the game of life.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Expanding, And Eventually Replacing, The International Space Station:

Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), humanity has managed to maintain an uninterrupted foothold in low Earth orbit for just shy of 20 years. There are people reading these words who have had the ISS orbiting overhead for their entire lives, the first generation born into a truly spacefaring civilization.

But as the saying goes, what goes up must eventually come down. The ISS is at too low of an altitude to remain in orbit indefinitely, and core modules of the structure are already operating years beyond their original design lifetimes. As difficult a decision as it might be for the countries involved, in the not too distant future the $150 billion orbiting outpost will have to be abandoned.

Naturally there's some debate as to how far off that day is. NASA officially plans to support the Station until at least 2024, and an extension to 2028 or 2030 is considered very likely. Political tensions have made it difficult to get a similar commitment out of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, but its expected they'll continue crewing and maintaining their segment as long as NASA does the same. Afterwards, it's possible Roscosmos will attempt to salvage some of their modules from the ISS so they can be used on a future station.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

This marsupial is the only animal that's always pregnant

Most mammals can become pregnant several times during adulthood, but for the vast majority, there is a healthy pause after each birth, while mothers nurse their babies. For some, of course, it's normal to only have one or a couple offspring in a lifetime.

But swamp wallabies, small hopping marsupials found throughout eastern Australia, are far outside the norm: New research suggests that most adult females are always pregnant. As described in a paper published March 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the animals typically conceive one to two days before giving birth.

Like all marsupials, swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor) give birth to tiny, immature babies that crawl to a special pouch where they nurse on their mother's milk. Some marsupials, like kangaroos, can mate and conceive about a day after birth, but not before, says Brandon Menzies, a study co-author and researcher with the University of Melbourne.

These wallabies are the only animal, besides the European brown hare, that can become pregnant while already pregnant. But the hares have distinct breeding seasons and are not continuously pregnant most or all of their adult lives, as female swamp wallabies are.

The study is important because "understanding the biology and endocrinology of reproduction in any species may have valuable lessons for human reproduction too," says David Gardner, at the same university, who wasn't involved in the paper.

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takyon writes:

Alphabet's Tidal moonshot tracks individual fish to help sustainably feed humanity

Today Alphabet is announcing Tidal, an X division moonshot project with the goal of preserving the ocean's ability to support life and help feed humanity sustainably. Tidal's initial goal is to develop technologies that will give us a better understanding of what's happening under water, with a focus on helping fish farmers to run and grow their operations in environmentally friendly ways.

[...] To achieve its early goal, Tidal has developed an underwater camera system coupled with computer vision and other AI techniques to track and monitor thousands of individual fish as they develop. The electrical components had to be developed to withstand the extreme cold and crushing pressures of the ocean's unforgiving salt water environment. The system can also interpret behaviors not visible to farmers.

By logging eating behavior and environmental data like temperature and oxygen levels, the farmers can make smarter decisions about how to manage their pens, according to Davé. And healthy fish require fewer antibiotics, a concern amongst environmentalists.

Blog post. Also at Financial Times.

Related: No water? No soil? No problem: Aquaponics Provides Fresh, Organic Produce
Mapping the Global Potential for Marine Aquaculture

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takyon writes:

3 Billion Years Ago, the World Might Have Been a Waterworld, With No Continents At All

Evidence from an ancient section of the Earth's crust suggest that Earth was once a water-world, some three billion years ago. If true, it'll mean scientists need to reconsider some thinking around exoplanets and habitability. They'll also need to reconsider their understanding of how life began on our planet.

[...] The work is focused on an area in the Australian Outback called the Panorama district. In that region in northwestern Australia there's a slab of ocean floor 3.2 billion years old, that's been turned on its side. The chunk of crust holds chemical clues about ancient Earth's seawater.

[...] Marine sediments have been well-studied over time, but the authors of this study looked at the ancient crust instead. The ancient oceans held different types of oxygen that were then deposited into the crust. The scientists gathered over 100 samples of the ancient rock and analyzed it for two oxygen isotopes: oxygen-16 and oxygen 18. They wanted to find the relative amount of each isotope in the ancient crust, to compare it to the amounts in the sediment.

Their results showed more oxygen-18 in the crust when it was formed 3.2 billion years ago, meaning the ocean at that time had more oxygen-18. The pair of researchers say that means that when that crust formed, there were no continents. This is because when continents form, they contain clays, and those clays would have absorbed the heavier oxygen-18. So if there had been continents 3.2 billion years ago, their crust samples would have held less oxygen-18. The over-arching conclusion of their work is that the Earth's oceans went through two distinct states: one prior to continents forming, and one after continents formed.

Also at University of Colorado Boulder and Popular Mechanics.

Limited Archaean continental emergence reflected in an early Archaean ¹⁸O-enriched ocean (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0538-9) (DX)

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takyon writes:

New programming language rankings: Python now as popular as Java, as TypeScript climbs

Python is tying with Java as the second most popular programming language behind JavaScript, according to developer analyst RedMonk's latest ranking.

The second spot for Python is the highest position it's ever attained in RedMonk's list of top programming languages, which is based on an analysis of GitHub and Stack Overflow data. Historically, Python has been steady in fourth position but it rose to third spot three years ago in RedMonk's tables.

[...] Microsoft-maintained TypeScript for large-scale JavaScript projects has also risen one place to ninth position along with C. TypeScript could have slipped back to 15th but it continues to win developers because of its "ability to intermingle with a large existing codebase in JavaScript" and its ability to make code safer, according to O'Grady.

Rust is a popular language among developers who discuss technical challenges on StackOverflow, but it hasn't moved from its spot at 21. As O'Grady notes, Rust has the potential for core infrastructure projects but, like Google-created Go, it seems to be stuck on its current ranking. Go meanwhile has risen one place to 14.

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DannyB writes:

The growth of command line options, 1979-Present

The first of McIlroy's dicta is often paraphrased as "do one thing and do it well", which is shortened from "Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new 'features.'" [ . . . ]

If you open up a manpage for ls on mac, you'll see that it starts with

ls [-ABCFGHLOPRSTUW@abcdefghiklmnopqrstuwx1] [file ...]

That is, the one-letter flags to ls include every lowercase letter except for {jvyz}, 14 uppercase letters, plus @ and 1. That's 22 + 14 + 2 = 38 single-character options alone.

On ubuntu 17, if you read the manpage for coreutils ls, you don't get a nice summary of options, but you'll see that ls has 58 options (including --help and --version).

To see if ls is an aberration or if it's normal to have commands that do this much stuff, we can look at some common commands, sorted by frequency of use.

(see article for interesting table.)

RandomFactor writes:

A clinical trial designed to test safety has been successful in stopping, and even reversing, visual degeneration associated with mutations in the gene RPGR (Retinitis Pigmentosa GTPase Regulator).

This month, K.L. became one of the first patients to receive a new experimental gene therapy for children with a severe form of inherited vision loss. The treatment, currently not yet named, targets young men who are susceptible to a particularly vicious genetic disorder that gradually destroys the light-sensing portion of their eyes.

Within a month following a single injection, “my vision was beginning to return in the treated eye. The sharpness and depth of colors I was slowly beginning to see were so clear and attractive,” said K.L.

The treatment targets the difficult condition which leaves most affected legally blind by the age of 20, and yielded improvements in participant vision in as little as two weeks following treatment.

It is based on the gene therapy 'Luxturna' introduced in 2017, but which is only able to help one out of 80 afflicted with inherited RP (Retinitis Pigmentosa) related vision degradation.

Unfortunately, the RPGR gene also happens to be quite temperamental and prone to genetic shifts that cause disease. It makes the gene a terrible test subject in the lab, where it tends to be unstable and difficult to work with.

After years of wrangling in animal models, however, the Oxford team was able to increase its “stability and fidelity,” so much so that when given to animal models with retinal disease, the stabilized, healthy version was able to restore visual properties.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

The Case for Limiting Your Browser Extensions:

The health insurance site was compromised after an employee at the company edited content on the site while using a Web browser equipped with a once-benign but now-compromised extension which quietly injected code into the page.

The extension in question was Page Ruler, a Chrome addition with some 400,000 downloads. Page Ruler lets users measure the inch/pixel width of images and other objects on a Web page. But the extension was sold by the original developer a few years back, and for some reason it's still available from the Google Chrome store despite multiple recent reports from people blaming it for spreading malicious code.

How did a browser extension lead to a malicious link being added to the health insurance company Web site? This compromised extension tries to determine if the person using it is typing content into specific Web forms, such as a blog post editing system like WordPress or Joomla.

In that case, the extension silently adds a request for a javascript link to the end of whatever the user types and saves on the page. When that altered HTML content is saved and published to the Web, the hidden javascript code causes a visitor's browser to display ads under certain conditions.

[...] Contacted by KrebsOnSecurity, Page Ruler's original developer Peter Newnham confirmed he sold his extension to MonetizUs in 2017.

"They didn't say what they were going to do with it but I assumed they were going to try to monetize it somehow, probably with the scripts their website mentions," Newnham said.

"I could have probably made a lot more running ad code myself but I didn't want the hassle of managing all of that and Google seemed to be making noises at the time about cracking down on that kind of behaviour so the one off payment suited me fine," Newnham said. "Especially as I hadn't updated the extension for about 3 years and work and family life meant I was unlikely to do anything with it in the future as well."

Monetizus did not respond to requests for comment.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Overcharged by a tech company? New service could help get your money back:

When a major company overbills you, doesn't honor a sales promise or wrongly damages your credit, it can be difficult and discouraging to seek out ways to make a consumer claim. The online platform FairShake -- formerly known as Radvocate -- relaunched on Tuesday with a rebuilt product that aims to help people take on big companies such as Verizon, Wells Fargo and Equinox and win compensation.

FairShake automates the claims process of legal research, document creation and delivery to help customers negotiate a resolution to their claim against a company. Any disputes that aren't resolved in negotiation can be escalated to the private consumer arbitration court system, and the platform will automate the process of filing with the American Arbitration Association.

Around 80 million people per year in the US have some sort of unresolved dispute with a company, mostly in big industries like telecom, banking and online services, Max Kornblith, co-founder of FairShake, told CNET. As such, FairShake has expanded from focusing on the telecom industry to others including financial services, home security, fitness and ride-hailing services.

[...] FairShake takes a 20% commission of any refunds or other cash payments that customers receive in their disputes, and 10% of any adjustments to their debt or account balances, along with a $20 minimum for any successfully resolved claim. If you don't get paid, FairShake doesn't either, Kornblith said. The company also offers discounted or free help to low-income customers, he added.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Have I Been Pwned No Longer For Sale:

After announcing last year that he was looking to sell Have I Been Pwned (HIPB), Troy Hunt said this week that the popular service has been pulled off the market and will instead continue to be run independently.

HIBP offers a free service for consumers to check if their usernames and passwords have been compromised in a data breach. Since it was founded seven years ago, the platform has skyrocketed to offer commercial services for companies (including its Pwned Passwords tool and more) and to include more large-scale breaches (including the massive 2019 Collection #1 data dump, totaling 773 million unique addresses and 87GB in size).

These increased capabilities are part of the reason why Hunt said in June 2019 he was listing the service for sale – In a posting at the time, he said the sheer amount of breached data that needed to be loaded into database has increased beyond the capability of one person.

However after a strenuous M&A process resulting in an "infeasible" deal with an exclusive bidder, Hunt said that he will instead continue to run the service independently. "After 11 months of a very intensive process, culminating in many months of exclusivity with a party I believed would ultimately be the purchaser of the service, unexpected changes to their business model made the deal infeasible," Hunt said in a Monday post. "It wasn't something I could have seen coming nor was it anything to do with HIBP itself, but it introduced a range of new and insurmountable barriers."

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