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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Microsoft is dropping PHP support from Windows:

PHP 8.0 is due for release in November, but when this major new version appears Windows will not support it.

The company says that bug fixes and security patches will continue to be released for the lifecycles of PHP versions 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4. But when the latest version is released later this year, Microsoft will "not [...] be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond".

[...] No reason has been given for the decision, but it is likely to be down to number of users.

Also At:
Microsoft will not support PHP 8.0 for Windows in 'any capacity'
Microsoft: We're pulling the plug on Windows builds of programming language PHP

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Damaged Human Lungs Can Be Repaired by Attaching Them to Pigs, Experiment Shows:

The sad reality of terminal lung illnesses is that there are simply far more patients than there are donor lungs available. This isn't just because of the low number of donors, which would be problem enough, but many donor lungs are significantly damaged, rendering them unusable.

By using a new experimental technique, though, such a damaged lung has now been restored to function - by sharing its circulatory system with that of a living pig. This leverages the body's self-repair mechanisms to exceed the capabilities of current donor lung restoration techniques.

"It is the provision of intrinsic biological repair mechanisms over long-enough periods of time that enabled us to recover severely damaged lungs that cannot otherwise be saved," say the lead researchers, surgeon Ahmed Hozain and biomedical engineer John O'Neill of Columbia University.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

NASA signs agreement with Japan on lunar exploration - SpaceNews:

NASA has signed an agreement with the Japanese government that brings the agencies closer to finalizing Japan's roles in the Artemis program.

The agreement, called a Joint Exploration Declaration of Intent, was signed late July 9 in a virtual meeting between NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, in the United States, and Koichi Hagiuda, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in the Japanese government, in Japan.

"Today's signing of this declaration of intent builds on the long history of successful cooperation between the U.S. and Japan in space," Bridenstine said in a brief statement about the agreement. "We appreciate Japan's strong support for Artemis and look forward to extending the robust partnership that we have enjoyed on the International Space Station to cislunar space, the lunar surface, and beyond."

Neither government released the text of the declaration, but they described the document as outlining roles for Japan in both human and robotic exploration. That would include contributions to the lunar Gateway and lunar surface exploration.

Previously: Japan Planning to Put a Man on the Moon Around 2030
Project Artemis: NASA Administrator Reportedly Proposed Joint U.S.-Japan Moon Landing

Related: India and Japan to Collaborate on Lunar Lander and Sample Return Mission
JAXA Approves Phobos Sample Return Mission, Set for 2024 Launch

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Original 'Rosie the Riveter' makes masks to fight COVID-19:

At age 94, Mae Krier is back on the front lines — hard at work, helping her country.

One of the nation's original "Rosie the Riveters" employed by Boeing in Seattle during World War II, she built B-17 and B-29 bombers to help support the war effort decades ago.

Now she's fighting a different war, as her still nimble fingers turn out face masks to prevent spread of the deadly coronavirus.

"People say to me, "You helped win WWII and now you are helping our country win this battle over this virus. These are nice things to hear," Krier said.

She makes the mask like the red polka dot bandanas she also makes to remind people of the Rosies, those women who toiled in manufacturing plants with their heads wrapped in bandanas so their hair wouldn't get tangled in the machinery they used to make supplies for the military serving overseas.

They were depicted by a World War II era poster of "Rosie the Riveter" created by J. Howard Miller in 1943.

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takyon writes:

Analog Devices To Buy Maxim Integrated

Today Analog Devices has announced that it will be acquiring Maxim Integrated in a transaction estimated at $21bn. The combined company value is said to end up being valued at $68bn, creating a significant player in the analog IC market.

Analog Devices are most popularly known by their signal processing discrete ICs, such as amplifiers, ADCs and DACs, although their product portfolio extends to a very wide range of other designs.

Maxim Integrated is most popularly known by their power management ICs as well as sensors. For example, they have been the main battery PMIC (And until recent years, a lot of other phone-centric PMICs) provider for Samsung mobile devices for the better part of the last decade.

Also at EE Times.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

The Long-Lost Computation Dissertation of Unix Pioneer Dennis Ritchie:

Dennis Ritchie [...] is a revered figure in the history of computing. But before he became a legend for his contributions to the world of operating systems and programming languages, Ritchie was a humble graduate student in applied mathematics at Harvard University, spending his share of time playing videogames and arguing with the university library about the cost of binding an academic paper.

Recently the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley caught a glimpse of this forgotten moment in time, rediscovering a copy of Ritchie’s final dissertation which had been presumed lost for over half a century. Written in 1968, when he was just 27 years old, the paper is a chance to peek at the earliest days of computer science, to understand the challenges faced by pioneers who came before us, and appreciate an intellect that left behind a legacy we’re still building on today. But maybe it’s also a reminder of just how far we’ve come — and how much technology itself can change over the course of a single lifetime.

The news came in an announcement on the blog of Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum by technology historian David C. Brock, the director of the museum’s Software History Center. Though they emphasize source code, the group “seeks to put history to work today in gauging where we are, where we have been, and where we are heading.”

In a blog post, Brock notes the museum’s Dennis Ritchie collection, which includes some of the earliest Unix source code dating from 1970 to 1971 — and points out their collection now also includes “a fading and stained photocopy” of Ritchie’s doctoral dissertation, “Program Structure and Computational Complexity.”

It also includes a cleaner digital scan of a copy of the manuscript owned by Ritchie’s graduate school friend, Albert Meyer.

The paper’s 28 footnotes include one citing Alan Turing’s 1936 paper “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.”

“Recovering a copy of Ritchie’s lost dissertation and making it available is one thing,” jokes the museum’s blog post, “understanding it is another.”

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

120,000-year-old necklace tells of the origin of string:

People living on the Israeli coast 120,000 years ago strung ocher-painted seashells on flax string, according to a recent study in which archaeologists examined microscopic traces of wear inside naturally occurring holes in the shells. That may shed some light on when people first invented string—which hints at the invention of things like clothes, fishing nets, and maybe even seafaring.

[...] Shell collectors at Misliya seemed to like mostly intact shells, and there’s no sign that they decorated or modified their finds. But 40,000 years later and 40km (25 miles) away, people at Qafzeh Cave seemed to prefer collecting clam shells with little holes near their tops. The holes were natural damage from scraping along the seafloor, but people used them to string the shells together to make jewelry or decorations. Tel-Aviv University archaeologist Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer and her colleagues examined five shells from Qafzeh and found microscopic striations around the edges of the holes—marks that suggest the shells once hung on a string.

Archaeologists even have a good idea of what that 120,000-year-old jewelry looked like. Wear marks around the holes suggest hanging on a string, and other wear marks on the edges of the shells suggest that the shells rubbed against each other, so they probably hung close together. And four of the shells still carried traces of red ocher pigment. The only thing missing is also the most interesting piece: the string.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

How Venus flytraps snap:

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is perhaps the most well-known carnivorous plant. It catches its prey, mostly spiders and insects, using a sophisticated trapping mechanism. Its distinct leaves have three highly sensitive trigger hairs on each lobe. These hairs react to even the slightest touches -- e.g. when a fly crawls along the leaf -- by sending out an electrical signal, which quickly spreads across the entire leaf. If two signals are triggered in a short time, the trap snaps within milliseconds.

The physiological reactions on which this trapping mechanism is based have been studied for over 200 years. The consensus has been that every sufficiently strong touch of a trigger hair causes an electrical signal, and that two signals within 30 seconds result in the closing of the trap. A new study from the University of Zurich (UZH) and ETH Zurich has now found another triggering mechanism. "Contrary to popular belief, slowly touching a trigger hair only once can also cause two signals and thus lead to the snapping of the trap," says co-last author Ueli Grossniklaus, director of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at UZH.

Journal Reference:
Jan T. Burri, Eashan Saikia, Nino F. Läubli, et al. A single touch can provide sufficient mechanical stimulation to trigger Venus flytrap closure, PLOS Biology (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000740)

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/google-bans-ads-for-stalkerware-apps-with-some-exceptions/

Google is trying to make it a little harder for a determined stalker to spy remotely on their spouse, partner, or ex by prohibiting advertising for stalkerware apps on its services—with one giant loophole.

The search giant updated its advertising policy to say that effective August 11, the company will no longer allow "the promotion of products or services that are marketed or targeted with the express purpose of tracking or monitoring another person or their activities without their authorization." Notably, the ban does not include private investigation services or apps and services designed for parents to track or monitor their minor children.

[...] The popularity of "dual use" apps, as described by the study, also effectively makes Google's ban on stalkerware ads toothless, as many tracking apps already claim to have a legitimate use for parents or investigators.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Simulation Shows Potential for Glowing Gravitons:

Where there is energy, there is gravity. And photons—massless packets of light energy—can, in exceedingly rare cases, spontaneously transform into gravity particles, according to Douglas Singleton, a physicist at California State University, who was not involved with the new study. The reverse happens, too, he says: gravitons can become photons. The new analysis considers a mechanism by which gravitons could unleash many billions of times more photons than earlier research suggested—making it easier to confirm their existence.

“A primitive estimate based on intensities [of gravitons] in the vicinity of black hole mergers came close” to numbers that would produce detectable light, says Raymond Sawyer, the study's author and a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

[...] Events such as black hole mergers should create the necessary conditions to send out photons in the form of radio waves with wavelengths many kilometers long. This signal would be extremely faint but perhaps possible to pick up from Earth. Events somewhat more violent than previously observed mergers could do it, Sawyer says. Scientists would have to tease the glow of the resulting radio waves from that of interfering gases.

First, though, theorists must check if the model holds up. Sawyer hopes future simulations will prove that photon bursts also occur in more realistic models of intense gravitational events, where many gravitons swirl in intricate patterns. Singleton agrees that the problem needs more computational firepower: current analyses are “gross simplifications,” he says. “The idea is to get people interested enough to do the heavy calculations.”

Journal Reference:
Raymond Sawyer. Seeing Gravitons in Colliding Gravitational Waves, Physics (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.101301)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2020/07/10/muzak-parent-mood-media-bankruptcy/

Mood Media (formerly Fluid Music Canada) noted its intention to move forward with the Chapter 11 filing in a recently published release [pdf]. Along with the bankruptcy plans, the announcement shed light upon a restructuring support agreement (RSA) with lenders, designed to reduce Mood Media’s debt by over $400 million, and $240 million in new financing to maintain liquidity amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Moreover, Mood Media relayed that it (like most other companies that seek Chapter 11 protection) plans to continue operating throughout the bankruptcy process, as it did while restructuring some $650 million in debt through a Chapter 15 filing in 2007. To be sure, Muzak itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009, emerged from the corresponding proceedings in 2010, and was purchased by Mood Media for a reported $345 million in 2011.

In addition to Muzak, Mood Music has acquired several background music providers, including Trusonic, Technomedia, and its sister company, GoConvergence, during the last decade or so. The company also possesses Somerset Entertainment, a kiosk-based music distributor, Austin branding agency DMX, European audio-visual installation provider BIS Group, and former Muzak independent affiliate South Central A\V.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 pandemic has been with us for over six months. A recent check of https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ reveals just over 13 million cases, with over a half million deaths, and 4.9 million of which are listed as active. On a positive note, 7.6 million are listed as recovered.

Unfortunately, recovered does not necessarily mean being back to the same shape someone was in pre-infection (see below).

Statistically, there are bound to be some Soylentils who have been infected (or had friends or family members who were).

I'd like to offer an opportunity for us to pull together and share our collective experiences. If you've made it through, telling others of how it went can be helpful both for the one who shares, and also for those who were recently diagnosed. Fears, doubts, and worries act to drain energy better directed to recovery.

NB: Please be mindful that "the internet never forgets". I encourage all who respond to make use of posting anonymously.

With that caution, what has been your experience? How long between time of infection and onset of symptoms? How bad was it? How are things now? What do you know now that you wish you knew earlier? What did you hear about earlier but didn't realize they meant that?

Penultimately, I realize words are inadequate, but I sincerely wish and hope that all can be spared from this malady, and those who have been afflicted may have a speedy and full recovery.

Unfortunately, it looks like that may not be as likely as we would all hope and wish for...

takyon writes:

Linus Torvalds' Initial Comment On Rust Code Prospects Within The Linux Kernel

Kernel developers appear to be eager to debate the merits of potentially allowing Rust code within the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds himself has made some initial remarks on the topic ahead of the Linux Plumbers 2020 conference where the matter will be discussed at length.

[...] Linus Torvalds chimed in though with his own opinion on the matter. Linus commented that he would like it to be effectively enabled by default to ensure there is widespread testing and not any isolated usage where developers then may do "crazy" things. He isn't calling for Rust to be a requirement for the kernel but rather if the Rust compiler is detected on the system, Kconfig would enable the Rust support and go ahead in building any hypothetical Rust kernel code in order to see it's properly built at least.

Linus Torvalds Wishes Intel's AVX-512 A Painful Death

According to a mailing list post spotted by Phoronix, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has shared his strong views on the AVX-512 instruction set. The discussion arose as a result of recent news that Intel's upcoming Alder Lake processors reportedly lack support for AVX-512.

Torvalds' advice to Intel is to focus on things that matter instead of wasting resources on new instruction sets, like AVX-512, that he feels aren't beneficial outside the HPC market.

Related: Rust 1.0 Finally Released!
Results of Rust Survey 2016
AVX-512: A "Hidden Gem"?
Linus Torvalds Rejects "Beyond Stupid" Intel Security Patch From Amazon Web Services

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for GrandFireWizard:

Proof virus tracking app doesn't work:

A Melbourne web app developer claims failings in the Government's COVID-19 tracking app have "dangerously exposed" him and his 15 staff to the wildly infectious disease.

Anushka Banbara said he and all of his workers were forced to get tested for coronavirus immediately when one of his employees came into close contact with a positive case on June 25.

Mr Banbara said his staff member was out for dinner with two others at a Caulfield restaurant for more than an hour.

"The next day my worker was told by one of his dinner guests there had been a positive case at his gym and he needed to be tested for COVID-19. That person and then my staff member tested positive," he said.

In that time, Mr Banbara's team had worked together in their Clayton office, but no one else tested positive.

[...] But Mr Banbara said he and none of his staff had been contacted by any health authorities.

"We have all been together for longer than 15 minutes and all had the tracking app, but still to this day we have had no communication from the government or the contact tracking team," he said.

"We work in a tech space so we trust the technology will work but instead we've been put at risk by this app, which was promised to work, but clearly doesn't."

[...] A government official admitted in May that the app doesn't work properly for iPhone users and its effectiveness "progressively deteriorates" the longer it is not open.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Absurdity of the Electoral College:

Here's one nice thing we can now say about the Electoral College: it's slightly less harmful to our democracy than it was just days ago. In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to "bind" their electors, requiring them to support whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote in their state. Justice Elena Kagan's opinion was a blow to so-called "faithless electors," but a win for self-government. "Here," she wrote, "the People rule."

Yet while we can all breathe a sigh of relief that rogue electors won't choose (or be coerced) into derailing the 2020 presidential contest, the Court's unanimous ruling is a helpful reminder that our two-step electoral process provides America with no tangible benefits and near-limitless possibilities for disaster. To put it more bluntly, the Electoral College is a terrible idea. And thanks to the Justices' decision, getting rid of it has never been easier.

[...] The Electoral College, in other words, serves no useful purpose, other than to intermittently and randomly override the people's will. It's the appendix of our body politic. Most of the time we don't notice it, and then every so often it flares up and nearly kills us.

[...] Justice Kagan's words – "Here, the People rule" – are stirring. But today, they are still more aspiration than declaration. By declining to make the Electoral College an even great threat to our democracy, the Court did its job. Now it's up to us. If you live in a state that hasn't joined the interstate compact, you can urge your state legislators and your governor to sign on. And no matter where you're from, you can dispel the myths about the Electoral College and who it really helps, myths that still lead some people to support it despite its total lack of redeeming qualities.

More than 215 years after the Electoral College was last reformed with the 12th Amendment, we once again have the opportunity to protect our presidential-election process and reassert the people's will. Regardless of who wins the White House in 2020, it's a chance we should take.

Would you get rid of the Electoral College? Why or why not?

Also at:
Supremes Signal a Brave New World of Popular Presidential Elections
Supreme Court Rules State 'Faithless Elector' Laws Constitutional
U.S. Supreme Court curbs 'faithless electors' in presidential voting
Supreme Court rules states can remove 'faithless electors'

Original Submission