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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Galactic flash points to long-sought source for enigmatic radio bursts:

On 28 April, as Earth's rotation swept a Canadian radio telescope across the sky, it watched for mysterious milliseconds long flashes called fast radio bursts (FRBs). At 7:34 a.m. local time an enormous one appeared, but awkwardly, in the peripheral vision of the scope. "It was way off the edge of the telescope," says Paul Scholz, an astronomer at the University of Toronto and a member of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). Because of its brightness, the team knew its source was nearby. All other FRBs seen so far have erupted in distant galaxies—too far and too fast to figure out what produced them.

The team had a hunch about this one. In previous days, orbiting telescopes had witnessed a Milky Way magnetar—a neutron star with a powerful magnetic field—flinging out bursts of x-rays and gamma rays. The turmoil suggested it might be pulsing with radio waves, too. After some extra data processing, the team determined the FRB was "definitely colocated" with the magnetar, Scholz says. "We were really excited."

The find, announced in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server on 20 May, could be the missing link in a problem that has puzzled astronomers for more than a decade. It's only a single event and many questions remain, including why this burst was 30 times less energetic than the weakest FRB traced to another galaxy. Yet astronomers are increasingly confident that some, if not all, of these laserlike radio flashes originate from magnetars, collapsed stars with magnetic fields 100 million times stronger than any magnet made on Earth. A magnetar origin would rule out more exotic sources such as supermassive black holes and merging neutron stars. "The game of alternative theories is becoming more and more difficult," says theorist Maxim Lyutikov of Purdue University. "For the majority, it's a decided question: It's magnetars."

The first FRB was detected in 2007, and astronomers have tallied a little over 100 since then. Their brevity makes them hard to study or trace to a particular celestial object. But several FRBs have been found to repeat, giving astronomers a chance to identify their host galaxy. And in the past year or two, wide-field telescopes such as CHIME, designed to survey large swaths of the sky, have begun to boost the number of detections substantially.

More: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.06223 [PDF]

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The arrival of the novel coronavirus and subsequent shutdowns of economies across the globe have caused hardships not seen in generations. But for business professors, it's also a once-in-a-generation research opportunity.

USC Marshall Assistant Professor of Marketing and Kenneth King Stonier Assistant Professor of Business Administration Davide Proserpio was one of the first academics to study the sharing economy as he completed his Ph.D. Today he is considered a leading expert in the so-called "gig" economy. We asked him five questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant shutdown are affecting the sector.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The APT known as TA410 has added a modular remote-access trojan (RAT) to its espionage arsenal, deployed against Windows targets in the United States’ utilities sector.

According to researchers at Proofpoint, the RAT, called FlowCloud, can access installed applications and control the keyboard, mouse, screen, files, services and processes of an infected computer, with the ability to exfiltrate information to a command-and-control (C2) provider. It appears to be related to previous attacks delivering the LookBack malware.

The RAT first scurried onto the scene last summer as part of a spear-phishing campaign. Utility providers received training- and certification-related emails with subject lines such as “PowerSafe energy educational courses (30-days trial),” containing portable executable (PE) attachments, according to a Monday Proofpoint analysis.

To make the effort more convincing, the threat actor-controlled domains that delivered the emails impersonated energy-sector training services, and used subdomains which contained the word “engineer.”

[APT - Advanced Persistent Threat]

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Senator fears Clearview AI facial recognition could be used on protesters:

Sen. Edward Markey has raised concerns that police and law enforcement agencies have access to controversial facial recognition app Clearview AI in cities where people are protesting the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died two weeks ago while in the custody of Minneapolis police.

[...] "As demonstrators across the country exercise their First Amendment rights by protesting racial injustice, it is important that law enforcement does not use technological tools to stifle free speech or endanger the public," Markey said in a letter to Clearview AI CEO and co-founder Hoan Ton-That.

The threat of surveillance could also deter people from "speaking out against injustice for fear of being permanently included in law enforcement databases," he said.

Markey, who has previously hammered Clearview AI over its sales to foreign governments, use by domestic law enforcement and use in the COVID-19 pandemic, is now asking the company for a list of law enforcement agencies that have signed new contracts since May 25, 2020.

It's also being asked if search traffic on its database has increased during the past two weeks; whether it considers a law enforcement agency's "history of unlawful or discriminatory policing practices" before selling the technology to them; what process it takes to give away free trials; and whether it will prohibit its technology from being used to identify peaceful protestors.

[...] Ton-That said he will respond to the letter from Markey. "Clearview AI's technology is intended only for after-the-crime investigations, and not as a surveillance tool relating to protests or under any other circumstances," he said in an emailed statement.

Previously:

kc99 wrote in with a story which inspired:

FreeBSD has announced a new LLVM-derived code of conduct.

According to a 2018 survey "35% were dissatisfied with the code of conduct adopted in 2018, 34% were neutral, and 30% were satisfied." So, they held another survey at the start start of June:

Which code of conduct should FreeBSD adopt?

An LLVM-derived code of conduct:
https://github.com/freebsd/core.10-public-docs/blob/master/CoC/llvm-based.md

A Go-Derived code of conduct:
https://github.com/freebsd/core.10-public-docs/blob/master/CoC/golang-based.md

Retain the current code of conduct:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200108075747/https://www.freebsd.org/internal/code-of-conduct.html

RESULTS

• 4% favoured keeping the current code of conduct
• 33% favoured the Go-derived code of conduct
• 63% favoured the LLVM-derived code of conduct.

Thus, the Core Team, following the preference of a majority of active
FreeBSD developers, adopted the LLVM-derived code of conduct.

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martyb writes:

Why ‘playing hard to get’ may actually work:

We tend to like people who like us—a basic human trait that psychologists have termed “reciprocity of attraction.” This principle generally works well to start relationships because it reduces the likelihood of rejection. Yet, making the chase harder also has its advantages. So which one is the better strategy?

[...] But in a new study published this spring in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the team now examined the effects playing hard to get, a mating strategy that is likely to instill a certain degree of uncertainty.

The researchers discovered that making the chase harder increased a potential mate’s desirability.

“Playing hard to get makes it seem as if you are more in demand—we call that having higher mate value,” says Harry Reis, a professor of psychology and Dean’s Professor in Arts, Sciences & Engineering at Rochester.

“People who are too easy to attract may be perceived as more desperate,” says coauthor Gurit Birnbaum, a social psychologist and associate professor of psychology at the IDC Herzliya. “That makes them seem less valuable and appealing—than those who do not make their romantic interest apparent right away.”

[...] Birnbaum advises to show initial interest in potential partners so as not to alienate them. At the same time, don’t reveal too much about yourself. People are “less likely to desire what they already have,” she explains. Instead, build a connection with a potential partner gradually, thereby creating “a sense of anticipation and a desire to learn more about the other person.”

Playing hard to get may work as long as potential partners feel that their efforts are likely to be successful—eventually.

Journal Reference:
Gurit E. Birnbaum, Kobi Zholtack, Harry T. Reis. No pain, no gain: Perceived partner mate value mediates the desire-inducing effect of being hard to get during online and face-to-face encounters, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (DOI: 10.1177/0265407520927469)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

COVID vaccine execs hyped vague data to cash in $90M in stock, watchdog says:

Moderna is considered a front-runner in the race for a vaccine against the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2. The company is testing a vaccine involving mRNA, an unproven vaccine platform that is not used for any existing vaccines. However, Moderna became prominent in the pandemic after partnering with the National Institutes of Health to design and test its vaccine. It was the very first vaccine to go into clinical trials, which began March 16.

On May 18, the company sent out a press release saying that eight trial participants had developed neutralizing antibodies at levels that mimicked those seen in people who recover from a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Moderna painted the results as “positive,” but experts were quick to note that the press release didn’t contain any data and that the scant information provided is uninterpretable in terms of assessing the efficacy of the vaccine. Some also questioned why Moderna chose to release such incomplete data from a very small number of participants instead of waiting to publish a larger dataset in a peer-reviewed scientific journal—which is standard practice.

Still, the press release set off a frenzy of "encouraging" coverage, and Moderna’s stock surged 30 percent, raising it to an all-time high of $87 a share. Amid the surge, Moderna’s CEO, several executives, and funds controlled by the chairman of the board sold about $90 million worth of stock, according to CBS Moneywatch.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Climate crisis notwithstanding, governments subsidised fossil fuels in 2019 to the tune of nearly half-a-trillion dollars, two intergovernmental agencies have jointly reported.

Subsidies for fossil fuel consumption alone declined $120 billion, or 27 percent, compared to 2018 due mainly to lower oil and gas prices, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) figures.

Governments that heavily support the use of oil and gas include Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, India and Venezuela.

At the same time, subsidies for fossil fuel production—in the form of cash, tax breaks and other credits—increased across 44 rich and emerging economies in 2019 by 38 percent to $55 billion, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported.

Combined subsidies for both consumption and production last year totalled $478 billion in 77 economies, an 18 percent drop compared to the year before, the IEA and OECD said in a joint statement, released at the end of last week.

"The fiscal burden of subsidies means that fewer resources can be potentially devoted to other public funding, be it for clean-energy research, innovation or to strengthen social safety nets," Nathalie Girouard, head of the OECD's environmental performance and information division, told AFP.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

High definition scans and image recognition are combined to produce a unique signature for any part:

Everything needed to trace, track or certify any individual manufactured part is already present on the part itself, according to Brian Crowley, CEO of Alitheon, a startup company focused on object traceability. The surface detail of a manufactured part is unique in the same way fingerprints are, he says. And, importantly, off-the-shelf imaging technology — notably including the cameras in our phones — is now capable of accurately capturing this distinctive surface-level detail. The result is a new possibility for identifying parts, arguably better and more reliable than serial numbers. Alitheon’s technology for using this surface detail for part ID is called “FeaturePrint.”

Sorry if this seems like a soylvertizement--I don't have any connection to the company, it just seemed like an interesting new technology, with wide-ranging consequences. While initially this might be used internal to factories that need to track every part of an assembly and avoid bad parts or counterfeits slipping into production, other applications seem possible. For example, there is no point in filing the serial number off that gun, unless you also deface all the surfaces on *all* the external and internal parts.

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Teckla writes:

It appears the leadership of Collapse OS have decided to switch from Z-80 to Forth. In this article, they explain their reasoning.

Collapse OS' first incarnation was written in Z80 assembler. One of the first feedbacks I had after it went viral was "why not Forth?". I briefly looked at it and it didn't seem such a great choice at first, so I first dismissed it. Then, I had what alcoholics refer to as a "Moment of clarity".

[...] The Z80 asm version of Collapse OS self-hosts on a RC2014 with a 5K shell on ROM, a 5K assembler binary loaded in RAM from SD card (but that could be in ROM, that's why I count it as ROM in my project's feature highlights) and 8K of RAM. That is, it can assemble itself from source within those resources.

[...] If I wanted to re-implement that assembler feature-for-feature in Forth, it would probably require much more resources to build. Even though higher level words are more compact, the base of the pyramid to get there couldn't compete with the straight assembler version. This was under this reasoning that I first dismissed Forth.

So, again, what makes Forth more compact than assembler? Simplicity. The particularity of Forth is that it begins "walking by itself", that is, implementing its own words from its base set, very, very early. This means that only a tiny part of it needs to be assembled into native code. This tiny part of native code requires much less tooling, and thus an assembler with much less features. This assembler requires less RAM.

What is more compact than something that doesn't exist? Even Z80 assembler can't beat the void.

That's how although Forth is not more compact that native code (duh!), a Forth Collapse OS achieves self-hosting with as much resources than its Z80 counterpart.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

The treasure trove hidden in discarded computers:

Four years ago at the University of Birmingham, Prof Walton and his mentor, Prof Rex Harris, discovered that running hydrogen gas through old hard-disk drives turns the magnets into powder which can be harvested, re-packed and coated, to become new magnets.

Not only will the project offer a greener solution to the rare earths market, the global demand for these minerals means there is a business case to be built.

"We are missing a trick. There is no trouble finding rare earths, it's the processing them into a useful material, like a magnet," says Prof Walton.

This year, Hypromag expects to announce a deal with the UK car company Bentley.

It has received a £2.6m grant from Innovate UK and a half a million pounds of investment and further partnership from an African junior mine, Mkango.

However, the Hypromag solution will only meet a fraction of the growing demand for rare earths, which analysts estimate will double by 2025.

Prof Walton believes that if Britain acts now and creates a scaled-up rare earths recycling industry, it could become a world leader.

The opportunity is huge, with many emerging technologies such as 5G demanding rare earths, on top of the growing need for established technologies such as phone handsets, microprocessors and wind turbines.

However, the main reason rare earths have been compared to oil, is government policies that will fuel the demand for electric vehicles.

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

Jon Brodkin over at Ars Technica is reporting on Cox Cable's heavy-handed tactics in limiting upload speeds for entire neighborhoods, claiming network overuse by those who pay extra for "unlimited" access.

From the article:

Cox, a cable company with about 5.2 million broadband customers in the United States, has been sending notices to some heavy Internet users warning them to use less data and notifying them of neighborhood-wide speed decreases. In the case we will describe in this article, a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month.

Cox responded by lowering the upload speeds on the gigabit-download plan from 35Mbps to 10Mbps for the customer's whole neighborhood. Cox confirmed to Ars that it has imposed neighborhood-wide slowdowns in multiple neighborhoods in cases like this one but didn't say how many excessive users are enough to trigger a speed decrease.

[...] Comments in a Reddit thread last month confirm that Mike isn't the only Cox customer being warned to cut upload speeds in order to avoid being kicked off the network. Cox didn't tell Mike exactly how much data he'd have to shave off his monthly usage. There was "no magic number or threshold, just an arbitrary amount of decrease, a Cox-deemed 'good effort,'" or his service would be cut off, he said.

martyb writes:

A recent story on the BBC posed a question to its readers. If it ain't broke: You share your oldest working gadgets. Folks wrote in with their favorite, longest-lasting devices.

Besides being curious about the latest tech devices and advancements, I've noticed our community also seems to have a number of thrifty folk who thrive on getting the most out of their gadgets.

I'll count myself among those in that category. I'll start with a Sharp EL-510S solar-powered, scientific calculator from the early 1980s. I also have a JVC stereo receiver from the mid 1980s that is still going strong. The computer I am currently using is a Dell Latitude Core 2 Duo from about 2009.

So how well has your stuff held up? What was been your best acquisition for long-term durability?

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

IBM will no longer offer, develop, or research facial recognition technology:

IBM will no longer offer general purpose facial recognition or analysis software, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a letter to Congress today. The company will also no longer develop or research the technology, IBM tells The Verge. Krishna addressed the letter to Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Reps. Karen Bass (D-CA), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).

"IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any [facial recognition] technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency," Krishna said in the letter. "We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Sweden welcomes its first wooden wind turbine tower:

The wheels have begun to turn on an interesting new form of wind turbine in Sweden, with the country's first wooden power-generation tower now complete. Built from sustainably sourced materials and said to offer comparable performance to traditional wind turbines, it's hoped the wooden power tower will be a harbinger of cheaper and greener solutions for renewable energy in the Nordic country, with commercial versions planned for a couple of years down the track.

Following in the footsteps of a similar creation in Germany, the new wooden wind tower is the brainchild of Swedish engineering firm Modvion, which is out to improve on what it sees as significant drawbacks when it comes to typical wind towers. These tall, steel towers demand thick bases to support their upper sections, which not only makes them very expensive to produce, but very expensive to transport to site, with rules around load size on public roads often proving problematic.

Modvion is instead working on a modular version that can be made out of cheaper and greener materials than steel, which requires huge amounts of energy to produce. The company's wooden wind towers are designed to reach heights of more than 120 m (393 ft), at significantly lower cost than those made out of steel, with the modular approach allowing for stackable sections to be transported on public roads without issue. They are also claimed to be carbon neutral from the day construction begins.

The 30-meter (100-ft) proof-of-concept tower was built together with wood construction company Moelven at its facility in Töreboda. The wooden sections of the turbine were then transported to Björkö, an island outside Gothenburg around 200 km (124 mi) away, with the final piece put into place in late April.

Original Submission