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isj writes:

It is time for a quiz slightly biased toward older, larger systems giving old farts an unfair advantage.
Remember: googling the answers is cheating but we have no way of enforcing it. But it is less fun.

1. What is the advantage of unidirectional printing on a dot-matrix printer?
2. What is the distance between the black marks on a thick yellow ethernet cable (10BASE5)?
3. Which CPU did the SuperMAX from DDE have? (trick question)
4. How do you exit from a DOS program (interrupt number + subfunction)
5. Which interactive game from 1986 had the settings tame..lewd, and a scratch'n'sniff card was in the box?
6. Why is a memory dump called a "core" dump?
7. Which CPU did the Siemens PC-D have?
8. Which new features were in the file system in DOS 2.x when compared to DOS 1.x ?
9. What is the visual administration tool in AIX called?
10. Name the file server in the Amoeba OS.
11. What is the biggest difference between C64 joysticks and PC-joysticks (we are talking about the original ones that had to connect to a game port)?
12. What is the maximum line length in COBOL? (trick question)
13. Where is the main office of the Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Department located?
14. "eioio" instruction on Power. What does it do?
15. Before Borland introduced their TurboVision, which toolkit was widespread for implementing windows/ISAM-files in Turbo Pascal?
16. Why is the Unix function for creating a file called "creat" and not "create"?
17. When was SMP supported by Windows? And OS/2?
18. Which number did the Fidonet nets have in your country? (bonus point if you remember your matrix address)
19. How do you mark a block in Wordstar?
20. Which came first: Amiga, Norton Commander, or HP Laserjet?

[20200306_005148 UTC; Updated to add:

Please, when posting a reply, bracket your answer in spoiler tags, like so:

<p>My answer to question #n is:</p>
<spoiler>
Write your answer here.
</spoiler>

Which, when presented on the site, will look like:

My answer to question #n is:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Write your answer here.

Thank You! --martyb]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

WFIRST, proposed for cancellation, is approved for development

NASA has approved a major astrophysics mission to go into the next phase of its development even as the administration seeks once again to cancel it.

NASA announced March 2 that the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) has passed a review known as Key Decision Point C, which confirms development plans for the mission and allows it to move into full-scale hardware production and testing.

That milestone is when the agency also sets a baseline cost and schedule commitment for the mission. NASA said in its statement about the review that the mission would cost $3.2 billion through its launch, a cost cap previously set by NASA. The cost when including five years of science operations, as well as a coronagraph instrument deemed a technology demonstration by NASA, increases to $3.934 billion.

However, NASA did not announce a launch date for the mission because its fiscal year 2021 budget request proposes to cancel WFIRST. "The Administration is not ready to proceed with another multi-billion-dollar telescope until Webb has been successfully launched and deployed," NASA said in its statement, a reference to the James Webb Space Telescope scheduled for launch in March 2021. NASA used the same statement in its 2021 budget request to explain why it sought no funding for the mission.

Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

Previously:
WFIRST Space Observatory Could be Scaled Back Due to Costs
Trump Administration Budget Proposal Would Cancel WFIRST
NASA Gets Money it Didn't Ask for to Fund Second SLS Mobile Launcher; WFIRST Mission Receives Funds
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Delayed Again, This Time to March 2021, Cost at $9.66 Billion
NASA Administrator at House Hearing: WFIRST Could be Delayed to Help Pay for JWST

Original Submission

takyon writes:

El Capitan Supercomputer Detailed: AMD CPUs & GPUs To Drive 2 Exaflops of Compute

This afternoon the DOE and HPE are announcing the architectural details of the [El Capitan] supercomputer, revealing that AMD will be providing both the CPUs and accelerators (GPUs), as well as revising the performance estimate for the supercomputer. Already expected to be the fastest of the US's exascale systems, El Capitan was originally commissioned as a 1.5 exaflop system seven months ago. However thanks to some late configuration changes, the DOE now expects the system to reach 2 exaflops once it's fully installed, which would cement its place at the top of the US's supercomputer inventory.

Overall, El Capitan is the second (and apparently final) system being built as part of the US DOE's CORAL-2 program for supercomputers. Like the similar Frontier system, El Capitan comes with a $600 million price tag and is intended to ensure the US's leadership in supercomputers in the exascale era. LLNL will be using the system to replace Sierra, their current IBM Power 9 + NVIDIA Volta supercomputer. All told, El Capitan will be 16 times more powerful than the system it replaces. LLNL will be using it primary for nuclear weapons modeling – substituting for actual weapon testing – while the system will also see secondary use as a research system in other fields, particularly those where machine learning can be applied.

[...] On the CPU side of matters, AMD will be supplying a standard version of their Zen 4-based "Genoa" EPYC processor. As it's still two generations out from AMD's current wares, the amount of information on Zen 4/Genoa is limited, but AMD is promising support for next-generation memory, Infinity Fabric 3, as well as broad promises of both single and multi-threaded performance leadership. Notably, this is a greater level of detail on the CPU than we currently have for Frontier, which is using an unspecified and customized next-generation EPYC CPU.

See also: AMD's CPU-to-GPU Infinity Fabric Detailed

Also at Wccftech.

Previously:
Cray and AMD Will Build a 1.5 Exaflops Supercomputer by 2021

June 2019 TOP500 List: All 500 Systems Above 1 Petaflops

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Let’s Encrypt said it will give users of its Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates more time to replace 1 million certificates that are still active and potentially affected by a Certificate Authority Authorization (CAA) bug before it revokes them.

The popular free certificate authority had given users until Wednesday, March 4, 9:00 p.m. EST to replace 3 million certificates because the bug in its Boulder software—discovered and patched this past Sunday–impacted the way its software checked domain ownership before issuing certificates. However, users grumbled that this was not enough time to correct the problem.

Users and major integrators of Let’s Encrypt managed to replace more than 1.7 million of the affected certificates by the original deadline; however, more than 1 million were left that would have been revoked, causing the company to rethink its plan, a Let’s Encrypt spokeswoman told Threatpost late Wednesday.

“Rather than potentially break so many sites and cause concern for their visitors, we have determined that it is in the best interest of the health of the Internet for us to not revoke those certificates by the deadline,” Josh Aas, executive director for Let’s Encrypt said in a blog post updating users of the situation Wednesday.

The company’s plan now is to revoke 1,706,505 certificates that the company is confident were already replaced as well as “445 certificates that we treated as highest priority for revocation because, at the time we found the bug, they had CAA records that forbid issuance by Let’s Encrypt,” Aas wrote in the post.

“We plan to revoke more certificates as we become confident that doing so will not be needlessly disruptive to Web users,” he wrote.

Disclaimer: SoylentNews uses Let's Encrypt certificates.

Previously:
HTTPS for All: Let's Encrypt Reaches One Billion Certificates Issued [Updated]
Let's Encrypt: An Automated Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

According to popular theory, men live shorter lives than women because they take bigger risks, have more dangerous jobs, drink and smoke more, and are poor at seeking advice from doctors.

But research by scientists at UNSW Sydney suggests the real reason may be less related to human behaviour and more to do with the type of sex chromosomes we share with most animal species.

In a study published today in Biology Letters, researchers from UNSW Science's School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences analysed all available academic literature on sex chromosomes and lifespan—and they tried to establish whether there was a pattern of one sex outliving the other that was repeated across the animal kingdom.

Specifically, they wanted to test the 'unguarded X hypothesis' which suggests that the Y chromosome in heterogametic sexes—those with XY (male) sex chromosomes rather than XX (female) sex chromosomes—is less able to protect an individual from harmful genes expressed on the X chromosome. The hypothesis suggests that, as the Y chromosome is smaller than the X chromosome, and in some cases absent, it is unable to 'hide' an X chromosome that carries harmful mutations, which may later expose the individual to health threats.

Conversely, there is no such problem in a pair of homogametic chromosomes (XX), where a healthy X chromosome can stand in for another X that has deleterious genes to ensure those harmful genes aren't expressed, thus maximising the length of life for the organism.

First author on the paper and Ph.D. student Zoe Xirocostas says that after examining the lifespan data available on a wide range of animal species, it appears that the unguarded X hypothesis stacks up. This is the first time that scientists have tested the hypothesis across the board in animal taxonomy; previously it was tested only within a few groups of animals.

Zoe A. Xirocostas et al. The sex with the reduced sex chromosome dies earlier: a comparison across the tree of life, Biology Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0867

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

'Surfing attack' hacks Siri, Google with ultrasonic waves: Researchers use ultrasound waves vibrating through tables to access cellphones:

Attacks on cell phones aren't new, and researchers have previously shown that ultrasonic waves can be used to deliver a single command through the air.

However, new research from Washington University in St. Louis expands the scope of vulnerability that ultrasonic waves pose to cellphone security. These waves, the researchers found, can propagate through many solid surfaces to activate voice recognition systems and -- with the addition of some cheap hardware -- the person initiating the attack can also hear the phone's response.

The results were presented Feb. 24 at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego.

"We want to raise awareness of such a threat," said Ning Zhang, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering. "I want everybody in the public to know this."

Zhang and his co-authors were able to send "voice" commands to cellphones as they sat inconspicuously on a table, next to the owner. With the addition of a stealthily placed microphone, the researchers were able to communicate back and forth with the phone, ultimately controlling it from afar.

[...] Zhang said the success of the "surfing attack," as it's called in the paper, highlights the less-often discussed link between the cyber and the physical. Often, media outlets report on ways in which our devices are affecting the world we live in: Are our cellphones ruining our eyesight? Do headphones or earbuds damage our ears? Who is to blame if a self-driving car causes an accident?

"I feel like not enough attention is being given to the physics of our computing systems," he said. "This is going to be one of the keys in understanding attacks that propagate between these two worlds."

The team suggested some defense mechanisms that could protect against such an attack. One idea would be the development of phone software that analyzes the received signal to discriminate between ultrasonic waves and genuine human voices, Zhang said. Changing the layout of mobile phones, such as the placement of the microphone, to dampen or suppress ultrasound waves could also stop a surfing attack.

But Zhang said there's a simple way to keep a phone out of harm's way of ultrasonic waves: the interlayer-based defense, which uses a soft, woven fabric to increase the "impedance mismatch."

In other words, put the phone on a tablecloth.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Add yet another use for cornstarch to the list, which already includes thickening soups and gravies, making adhesives, soothing skin and removing stains.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Peoria, Illinois, are now using the versatile commodity to make products that can fight insect pests, prevent disease and decay and impart water resistance to surfaces. Underpinning that effort is the team's use of patented procedures for converting cornstarch into a new class of material known as amylose inclusion complex (AIC)—an advance aimed at increasing the commodity's value even more.

Products created from the AIC include emulsions using essential oils from garlic, asafoetida (a type of spice) and other plants to control mosquito larvae in aquatic habitats. The emulsions are toxic to mosquito larvae but not the environment, which makes them promising botanical alternatives to synthetic insecticides, noted one of the ARS scientists, Ephantus Muturi, who is with the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) in Peoria.

Muturi said the emulsions envelope droplets of the oils, stabilizing them and protecting them from extremes of heat or oxidation that can reduce their potency when applied to mosquito larvae habitats, like storm water catch basins and old tires. The emulsions also allow the oil droplets to disperse in water, contrary to their natural tendency. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of their contacting and killing the larvae, improving control of the young pests.

In laboratory trials, exposure to the essential oil emulsions killed the larvae of yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) in 24 hours. The number that died upon exposure was dependent on the type of oil and formulation used, noted Muturi, who reported the findings in the October 2019 issue of the journal Insects together with NCAUR colleagues William Hay, Robert Behle and Gordon Selling.

Ultimately, the team envisions using the essential oil emulsions as part of an integrated approach to controlling mosquitoes and preventing the diseases they can spread, such as West Nile virus, yellow fever, dengue and Zika.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Ring logs every doorbell press and app action:

Amazon keeps records of every motion detected by its Ring doorbells, as well as the exact time they are logged down to the millisecond.

The details were revealed via a data request submitted by the BBC.

It also disclosed that every interaction with Ring's app is also stored, including the model of phone or tablet and mobile network used.

One expert said it gave Amazon the potential for even broader insight into its customers' lives.

"What's most interesting is not just the data itself, but all the patterns and insights that can be learned from it," commented independent privacy expert Frederike Kaltheuner.

"Knowing when someone rings your door, how often, and for how long, can indicate when someone is at home.

"If nobody ever rang your door, that would probably say something about your social life as well."

She added that it remained unclear how much further "anonymised" data was also being collected.

"This isn't just about privacy, but about the power and monetary value that is attached to this data."

Amazon says it uses the information to evaluate, manage and improve its products and services.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The start of spring isn't advancing at the same rate across the United States. In a recent study with climatologist Michael Crimmins, I evaluated changes in the arrival of springtime warmth over the past 70 years.

We found that in the Northeast, warmth associated with the leading edge of springtime activity has advanced by about six days over the past 70 years. In the Southwest, the advancement has been approximately 19 days. Spring is also arriving significantly earlier in the Southern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. In contrast, in the Southeast the timing of spring has changed little.

Although the trend over decades toward earlier springs is clear, weather patterns unfolding across the continent can vary the start of the season dramatically from year to year at any one spot. The U.S. National Phenology Network produces maps that document the onset of biological activity over the course of the spring season.

The network also maintains a live map showing where spring has arrived. In some parts of the Southeast, spring 2020 has been the earliest in decades.

While numerous studies have documented clear changes in the timing of activity in certain plants and animals, scientists have little to no information on the cycles of most of the millions of species on Earth. Nor do they know the consequences of such changes yet.

One important way to fill knowledge gaps is documenting what's happening on the ground. The U.S. National Phenology Network runs a program called Nature's Notebook suited for people of nearly all ages and skill levels to track seasonal activity in plants and animals. Since the program's inception in 2009, participants have contributed more than 20 million records.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Handed light throws electronic curve balls in quantum flatland:

In the new work, Michael Schüler, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and now based at SLAC and Stanford University, USA, together with Umberto De Giovannini from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg and colleagues suggest adding a twist to conventional photoelectron spectroscopy. The laser light has an additional property, namely polarization.

Circularly polarized light has a handedness -- right-handed or left-handed -- also known as chirality, which means that the electromagnetic field of the light wave rotates clockwise or counter-clockwise as the light moves through space. In their numerical simulations, the researchers showed that the photoelectron signal looks different for right-handed versus left-handed light. Moreover, they showed that this difference is directly tied to the Berry curvature of the electronic wavefunctions inside the material.

"We show that one can tease out more information about the electrons than merely their energy and momentum, which are usually mapped out", explains Schüler. "We have calculated the expected signals for some typical and important atomically flat materials, which are now at the forefront of quantum materials science and seen as potential candidates for quantum technologies", adds De Giovannini.

"It is surprising how well this method works and we expect that experimental advances in these imaging techniques will enhance our knowledge about topological properties in the very near future." This proposal could lead to high-precision imaging diagnostics of novel materials and pave the way for future quantum technologies employing the Berry curvature of matter.

Originalpublikation:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/9/eaay2730.full

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Indonesia's space agency, the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (Indonesian: Lembaga Penerbangan dan Antariksa Nasional or LAPAN) is dwarfed by those in nearby Japan, China, and India, but the country is testing and planning for its own launch capability.

In November, Indonesia finally confirmed plans to construct its first spaceport off the coast of Papua, acknowledging that its existing launch site is too risky for large rocket launches because it is too small and in a densely populated area.

The new location on the equator is also ideal as it cuts fuel costs and could potentially draw interest from other countries keen to launch satellites, experts said.

Other sites such as Brazil's Alcântara Launch Center, the ESA's Guiana Space Center and Sriharikota in India already take advantage of their location to provide cheaper launch services.

Indonesia had once planned to have one of its own astronauts flown into orbit on the space shuttle, but those hopes were dashed after the Challenger crash in 1986.

now Lapan is talking to its Russian counterpart about sending one of its astronauts on a future mission - though there are few concrete details so far.

Indonesia has cooperated on technology with counterparts in the US, Germany, Japan and the Ukraine among others over the years.

Of note - in 1976, Indonesia became the first country in the developing world to operate its own domestic satellite system.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

CIA Hackers Targeted China in Decade-Long Campaign: Chinese Security Firm (archive):

A report published on Monday by Chinese cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360 claims that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted an 11-year-long cyberespionage operation aimed at China's critical industries.

Qihoo's research revolves around the Vault 7 files published in 2017 by WikiLeaks. The Vault 7 files include exploits and tools used by the CIA to target computers, routers, mobile devices, and IoT systems.

Other cybersecurity firms previously linked these tools and exploits to attacks launched by a threat group tracked as "Longhorn" and "The Lamberts" against entities in Europe, Asia and Africa. Qihoo said its own analysis revealed that many of the Vault 7 tools had been used to target Chinese organizations, even before the files were made public by WikiLeaks.

The targeted Chinese entities are said to include government agencies, scientific research institutions, internet companies, the petroleum sector, and aviation-related organizations, particularly in Beijing, Guangdong and Zhejiang. The Chinese company claims it's aware of attacks launched by the CIA between September 2008 and June 2019.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Researchers at Soluble today said they worked with Verisign to thwart the registration of domain names that use homoglyphs – non-Latin characters that look just like letters of the Latin alphabet – to masquerade as legit domains.

[...] There have been a number of efforts over the years, most recently in 2017, we reckon, to rid the internet of homograph abuse once and for all.

In the most recent case, it was found that the Unicode Latin IPA Extension characters could and were being exploited to setup lookalike domains.

"Between 2017 and today, more than a dozen homograph domains have had active HTTPS certificates," noted Soluble researcher Matt Hamilton. "This included prominent financial, internet shopping, technology, and other Fortune 100 sites. There is no legitimate or non-fraudulent justification for this activity."

Normally, it would not be possible to register domains with mixed scripts, as Verisign put protections in place years ago. However, the researchers found that those protections did not extend to Unicode Latin IPA, meaning that prior to Verisign updating its filters after being tipped off by Soluble, the characters could be used to set up lookalike URLs.

[...] "While it is unlikely that you, the reader, were attacked with this technique," Hamilton notes, "it is likely that this technique was used in highly targeted social-engineering campaigns."

-- submitted from IRC

The most notable of these confusables are:

It is much easier to tell them apart when the confusables are shown adjacent to each other. In the spoiler below, only one of the entries is correct... how long does it take you to figure out which one it is?

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

1. google.ɑpis
    
2. ɡoogle.ɑpis
    
3. ɡoogle.apis
    
4. gooɡle.apis
    
5. google.apis
    
6. ɡooɡle.ɑpis
    
7. ɡooɡle.apis
    
8. gooɡle.ɑpis
    

Are you sure? This is the number of the correct entry:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Are you really sure?

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Did you pick number 6?

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

That was wrong. It was number 5.

Original Submission

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.

Original Submission

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

Original Submission