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chromas writes:

Twitter terminates DDoSecrets, falsely claims it may infect visitors

Four days after leak publisher DDoSecrets circulated private documents from more than 200 law enforcement agencies across the United States, Twitter has permanently suspended its account and falsely claimed that the site may infect users with malware.

[...] A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the company had permanently suspended the DDoSecrets account for violating the social media site's rules barring hacked materials. The spokesperson said the material (1) contained unredacted information that could put people at risk of real-world harm and (2) ran afoul of a policy that forbids the distribution of material that is obtained through technical breaches and hacks, as publishers of DDoSecrets claimed had been done.

DDoSecrets co-founder Emma Best criticized the suspension and noted that the Twitter account for WikiLeaks remains active despite its publishing vast troves of private information resulting from the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee and members of the Hillary Clinton campaign. WikiLeaks has also tweeted links to its Vault 7 series, which published details about closely guarded CIA hacking programs.

[...] Twitter users who clicked on tweeted links to the DDoSecrets.com site received a message from Twitter warning, with no evidence, that the site may install malware, steal passwords or other sensitive data, or collect personal data for purposes of sending spam.

This security check from Web security firm Sucuri found no malware on the site, although the firm did note that it was blocked by fellow security firm McAfee.

Previously: "BlueLeaks" Exposes 269 GB of Data from Hundreds of Police Departments and "Fusion Centers"

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takyon writes:

Evidence supports 'hot start' scenario and early ocean formation on Pluto (SD)

The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet's orbit far from the sun in the cold outer reaches of the solar system.

This "hot start" scenario, presented in a paper published June 22 in Nature Geoscience [DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0595-0] [DX], contrasts with the traditional view of Pluto's origins as a ball of frozen ice and rock in which radioactive decay could have eventually generated enough heat to melt the ice and form a subsurface ocean.

[...] The researchers calculated that if Pluto formed over a period of less that 30,000 years, then it would have started out hot. If, instead, accretion took place over a few million years, a hot start would only be possible if large impactors buried their energy deep beneath the surface.

The new findings imply that other large Kuiper belt objects probably also started out hot and could have had early oceans. These oceans could persist to the present day in the largest objects, such as the dwarf planets Eris and Makemake.

Previously:
Pluto's 'Heart' Sheds Light On Possible Buried Ocean
Subsurface Ocean Could Explain Pluto's "Heart" Feature Aligning with Charon
Pluto Has an Underground Ocean Kept Warm by a Layer of Gassy Ice

Original Submission

chromas writes:

The Original Segway Is Officially Being Retired On July 15:

When first revealed to the world back in December of 2001 Dean Kamen’s Segway promised to revolutionize urban mobility. But sticker shock, and cities quickly banning the self-balancing standing scooter, meant the Segway never came to close to realizing that dream. Nineteen years later, on July 15, the original Segway will officially roll off into the sunset.

[...] Dean Kamen, its creator, eventually sold Segway to a Beijing-based robotics startup called Ninebot back in 2015, who has continued to create and sell self-balancing ride-ons under the Segway brand, as well as scooters and other electric-powered car alternatives for getting around a crowded city where streets are often jammed with traffic.

[...] Ninebot has decided to retire the Segway PT, as well as the Segway SE-3 Patroller (a larger three-wheeled version often used by security in airports), and the Segway Robotics Mobility Platform (RMP).

The decision also results in 21 people being laid off from the company’s Bedford, New Hampshire plant, and it marks the end of one of the more ambitious and promising approaches to finally replacing gas-guzzling cars crowding big cities.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Role of Expectation in What We See Is Stronger Than Previously Thought, Study Finds:

In the visual cortex, where the brain first begins building a picture of what your eyes are seeing, incoming information from the eyes merges with feedback signals containing contextual information originating from deeper in the brain. These feedback signals have long been considered merely “modulatory” – helping shift focus of attention to different parts of the visual field, for instance.

But in a new study in which [Andreas] Keller, fellow postdoc Morgane Roth, PhD, and Scanziani investigated what enables neurons in the visual system to respond to context when a stimulus is not available, they found that feedback from higher-order visual centers in the brain has much more influence over our fundamental visual processing than scientists had ever realized.

[...] “In other words – when there is nothing to see, the brain sees what it expects to see based on the context,” Keller said. “This work adds to a growing recognition of the brain as a ‘prediction machine.’ The simplest neurons of the visual cortex don’t just robotically process whatever data is coming in from the eye, but at the same time are comparing it to perhaps your whole visual life history to anticipate what you expect to see.”

Journal Reference:
Andreas J. Keller, Morgane M. Roth, Massimo Scanziani. Feedback generates a second receptive field in neurons of the visual cortex, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2319-4)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

CERN Council endorses building larger supercollider:

The CERN Council has unanimously endorsed the idea of building a newer, larger circular supercollider, dubbed the Future Circular Collider (FCC). The group made the announcement on June 19. The move is the first step toward building a 100 TeV 100-kilometer circumference collider around Geneva. As part of the vote, the group approved the launch of a technical and financial feasibility study for the new collider.

[...] The approval by the CERN council was not an official go-ahead for the project—it was a go-ahead to look into its feasibility. The next step will involve figuring out where to dig the new tunnel and whether it will be possible to do so in the area near the LHC. If the feasibility study and financial estimates work out as hoped, the next step would be actual approval for the project to move forward. Once that happens, the funds for the project would have to be made available by participating countries in Europe and the U.K.—and this time, perhaps, from other countries such as the U.S., China or Japan. Also, research efforts would have to be developed and launched to design and build the hardware needed for the project.

More at CERN : https://home.cern/science/accelerators/future-circular-collider

At this point the only construction CERN has endorsed is for the creation of a powerpoint and maybe a spreadsheet.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Leonardo's 'quick eye' may be key to Mona Lisa's magnetism:

Scientists believe Leonardo da Vinci's super-fast eye may have helped him catch the enigmatic magic of Mona Lisa's smile.

This superhuman trait, which top tennis and baseball players may also share, allowed the Renaissance master to capture accurately minute, fleeting expressions and even birds and dragonflies in flight.

Art historians have long talked of Leonardo's "quick eye", but David S Thaler of Switzerland's University of Basel has tried to gauge it in a new study published Thursday alongside another paper showing how he gave his drawings and paintings uncanny emotional depth.

Professor Thaler's research turns on how Leonardo's eye was so keen he managed to spot that the front and back wings of a dragonfly are out of synch—a discovery which took slow-motion photography to prove four centuries later.

The artist, who lived from 1452 to 1519, sketched how when a dragonfly's front wings are raised, the hind ones are lowered, something that was a blur to Thaler and to his colleagues when they tried to observe the difference themselves.

Thaler told AFP that this gift to see what few humans can may be the secret of Leonardo's most famous painting.

"Mona Lisa's smile is so enigmatic because it represents the moment of breaking into a smile. And Leonardo's quick eye captured that and held it," he said.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Guinness reverses decision to strip Billy Mitchell's Pac-Man and Donkey Kong records:

Guinness World Records has reversed a 2018 decision to strip notorious arcade game figure Billy Mitchell's Pac-Man and Donkey Kong records. Mitchell, who was at the center of revered documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, says it's "a long time coming."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Apple gives thumbs up to Hey email app after update rejection:

Apple approved an update for subscription-based emailing app Hey over the weekend, after rejecting one last week, developer Basecamp said on Monday. It came as Apple prepared for its Worldwide Developer Conference event on Monday.

Basecamp tweeted that updates had been rejected multiple times, as noted by TechCrunch, apparently because it didn't offer an in-app purchase for the full $99-a-year service. The app also lacked functionality when downloaded -- you have to visit the company's website to sign up.

It's not like Apple doesn't publish the do's and don'ts for applications submitted to the app store. As a developer you ignore them at your own peril. On the other hand, Apple does pretty much have a monopoly on applications for iOS devices and if you want to play, you have to give them a slice.

Original Submission

chromas writes:

Apple caters to China by pulling thousands of "unlicensed" iPhone games:

Apple has told iPhone app developers that it "will start removing thousands of mobile games lacking government approval from its App Store in China next month," Bloomberg reported today, citing anonymous sources. "The decision ends the unofficial practice of allowing games to be published while awaiting authorization from the country's slow-moving regulators."

As Bloomberg notes, "China's regulators require all games that are either paid or offer in-app purchases to submit for review and obtain a license before publication, and major Android app stores have enforced such rules since 2016. But unapproved games have flourished on Apple's iPhone platform." The Apple policy change "clos[es] a loophole" that "allowed games such as Grand Theft Auto, whose gory depictions of violence are unlikely to ever pass muster with Chinese censors," to be available in China.

Original Submission

chromas writes:

Oracle's BlueKai tracks you across the web. That data spilled online

Tech giant Oracle is one of a few companies in Silicon Valley that has near-perfected the art of tracking people across the internet. The company has spent a decade and billions of dollars buying startups to build its very own panopticon of users' web browsing data.

One of those startups, BlueKai, which Oracle bought for a little over $400 million in 2014, is barely known outside marketing circles, but it amassed one of the largest banks of web tracking data outside of the federal government.

[...] But for a time, [the BlueKai] web tracking data was spilling out onto the open internet because a server was left unsecured and without a password, exposing billions of records for anyone to find.

Security researcher Anurag Sen found the database and reported his finding to Oracle through an intermediary — Roi Carthy, chief executive at cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock and former TechCrunch reporter.

TechCrunch reviewed the data shared by Sen and found names, home addresses, email addresses and other identifiable data in the database. The data also revealed sensitive users' web browsing activity — from purchases to newsletter unsubscribes.

[...] "Oracle is aware of the report made by Roi Carthy of Hudson Rock related to certain BlueKai records potentially exposed on the Internet," said Oracle spokesperson Deborah Hellinger. "While the initial information provided by the researcher did not contain enough information to identify an affected system, Oracle's investigation has subsequently determined that two companies did not properly configure their services. Oracle has taken additional measures to avoid a reoccurrence of this issue."

Oracle did not name the companies or say what those additional measures were, and declined to answer our questions or comment further.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Trump Freezes Green Cards, Many Work Visas Until End Of Year:

President Trump on Monday extended a freeze on green cards for new immigrants and signed an executive order to suspend new H-1B, L-1, J and other temporary work visas for skilled workers, managers and au pairs through the end of the year.

The goal of the move is to protect 525,000 jobs as part of the White House response to job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic, said a senior administration official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity. NPR first reported the impending order on Saturday.

"Americans have been hurt through no fault of their own due to the coronavirus," the official said. "And the president is prioritizing getting them back into the labor supply and getting them to work and standing on their own two feet again."

[...] But other workers will also be affected, including foreign au pairs who provide child care. Professors and scholars are not to be included in the order, the official said. There will be a provision to request exemptions. The order is not expected to affect immigrants and visa holders already in the United States.

[...] The order did not apply to H-2A agriculture workers, who Trump says are necessary to ensure grocery store shelves remain stocked with fruits and vegetables. Health care workers involved in treating coronavirus patients will also be exempt.

Also at CNET, NYTimes, WSJ

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/toxic-methanol-that-causes-blindness-found-in-hand-sanitizers-fda-warns

The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday advised consumers to avoid nine types of hand sanitizers that may contain methanol, a toxic alcohol that can cause blindness if swallowed and systemic effects if absorbed through the skin.

All nine hand sanitizers are made by Eskbiochem SA de CV in Mexico. The agency said in its advisory that it discovered methanol while testing two of the company's products. One, called Lavar Gel, was 81-percent methanol—and no ethanol, a safe alcohol meant to be used in hand sanitizers. Another, CleanCare No Germ, was 2-percent methanol.

From the FDA advisory, the Eskbiochem SA de CV products are:

• All-Clean Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-002-01)
• Esk Biochem Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-007-01)
• CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 75% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-008-04)
• Lavar 70 Gel Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-006-01)
• The Good Gel Antibacterial Gel Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-010-10)
• CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 80% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-005-03)
• CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 75% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-009-01)
• CleanCare NoGerm Advanced Hand Sanitizer 80% Alcohol (NDC: 74589-003-01)
• Saniderm Advanced Hand Sanitizer (NDC: 74589-001-01)

Original Submission

chromas writes:

Strainoptronics: A New Way To Control Photons:

Researchers discovered a new way to engineer optoelectronic devices by stretching a two-dimensional material on top of a silicon photonic platform. Using this method, coined strainoptronics by a team led by George Washington University professor Volker Sorger, the researchers demonstrated for the first time that a 2-D material wrapped around a nanoscale silicon photonic waveguide creates a novel photodetector that can operate with high efficiency at the technology-critical wavelength of 1550 nanometers.

[...] 2-D materials have scientific and technologically relevant properties for photodetectors. Because of their strong optical absorption, designing a 2-D material-based photodetector would enable an improved photo-conversion, and hence more efficient data transmission and telecommunications. However, 2-D semiconducting materials, such as those from the family of transition metal dichalcogenides, have, so far, been unable to operate efficiently at telecommunication wavelengths because of their large optical bandgap and low absorption.

[...] Realizing the potential of strainoptronics, the researchers stretched an ultrathin layer of molybdenum telluride, a 2-D material semiconductor, on top of a silicon photonic waveguide to assemble a novel photodetector. They then used their newly created strainoptronics "control knob" to alter its physical properties to shrink the electronic bandgap, allowing the device to operate at near infrared wavelengths, namely at the telecommunication (C-band) relevant wavelength around 1550 nm.

Journal Reference:
R. Maiti, C. Patil, M. A. S. R. Saadi, et al. Strain-engineered high-responsivity MoTe 2 photodetector for silicon photonic integrated circuits, Nature Photonics (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-020-0647-4)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Ampere's Product List: 80 Cores, up to 3.3 GHz at 250 W; 128 Core in Q4

The Ampere Altra range, as part of today's release, will offer parts from 32 cores up to 80 cores, up to 3.3 GHz, with a variety of TDPs up to 250 W. As we've described in our previous news items on the chip, this is an Arm v8.2 core with a few 8.3+8.5 features, offers support for FP16 and INT8, supports 8 channels of DDR4-3200 ECC at 2 DIMMs per channel, and up to 4 TiB of memory per socket in a 1P or 2P configuration. Each CPU will offer 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, 32 of which can be used for socket-to-socket communications implemented with the CCIX protocol over PCIe. This means 50 GB/s in each direction, and 192 PCIe 4.0 lanes in a dual socket system for add-in cards. Each of the PCIe lanes can bifurcate down to x2.

[...] Previously Ampere had stated they were going for 80 cores at 3.0 GHz at 210 W, however the Q80-33 is pushing that frequency another 300 MHz for another 40 W, and we understand that the tapeout of silicon from TSMC performed better than expected, hence this new top processor.

[...] If that wasn't enough, Ampere dropped a sizeable nugget into our pre-announcement briefing. The company is set to launch a 128-core version of Altra later this year.

This will be a new silicon design, beyond Ampere's initial layout of 80 cores for Altra, however Ampere states that while they are using the same platform as the regular Altra, they have done extensive tweaking and optimizations within the mesh interconnect for Altra Max to hide the additional contention that might occur when using the same main memory speeds.

Altra Max will be socket and pin-compatible with Altra, also support dual socket deployments, and Ampere states that the silicon will be ready for early sampling with partners in Q4, and is looking to move into high volume in mid-2021.

Previously: Ampere Launches its First ARM-Based Server Processors in Challenge to Intel
80-Core Arm CPU To Bring Lower Power, Higher Density To A Rack Near You

Related: Amazon Announces 64-core Graviton2 Arm CPU
Marvell Announces ThunderX3, an ARM Server CPU With 96 Cores, 384 Threads
AMD and Intel Have a Formidable New Foe (Amazon)

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

New #1 Supercomputer: Fujitsu's Fugaku

High performance computing is now at a point in its existence where to be the number one, you need very powerful, very efficient hardware, lots of it, and lots of capability to deploy it. Deploying a single rack of servers to total a couple of thousand cores isn't going to cut it. The former #1 supercomputer, Summit, is built from 22-core IBM Power9 CPUs paired with NVIDIA GV100 accelerators, totaling 2.4 million cores and consuming 10 MegaWatts of power. The new Fugaku supercomputer, built at Riken in partnership with Fujitsu, takes the top spot on the June 2020 #1 list, with 7.3 million cores and consuming 28 MegaWatts of power.

The new Fugaku supercomputer is bigger than Summit in practically every way. It has 3.05x cores, it has 2.8x the score in the official LINPACK tests, and consumes 2.8x the power. It also marks the first time that an Arm based system sits at number one on the top 500 list.

Also at NYT.