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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

FCC Approves 988 as Suicide Prevention, Mental Health Crisis Number:

Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unanimously approved [(pdf)] 988 as a nationwide, three-digit phone number that people in crisis can call to speak with suicide prevention and mental health crisis counselors. All phone service providers are required to direct all 988 calls to the existing National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK) by July 16, 2022. This includes all telecommunications carriers and interconnected and one-way Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline will remain operational during and after the two-year transition to 988.

During the transition to 988, Americans who need help should continue to contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 1-800-273-8255 (1-800-273-TALK) and through online chats. Veterans and service members may reach the Veterans Crisis Line by pressing 1 after dialing, chatting online at http://www.veteranscrisisline.net, or texting 838255. A transcript of the vote is posted here.

Activation of new 988 number will take a while. In the meantime, try calling "911" or:

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at: 1-800-273-8255 (1-800-273-TALK)
• Online chat with National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Active and former US service members can:

• Call the above phone number and then press "1",
• Chat at http://www.veteranscrisisline.net
• Send a text to 838255.

If nothing else, talk to somebody. It's really important to remember that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary situation. Help is available; ask for it and don't give up.

NOTE: The above are US-centric. For those who are aware of resources in other countries, please mention them in the comments.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

DOJ: Chinese hackers stole "hundreds of millions of dollars" of secrets

Two state-sponsored hackers in China targeted US businesses in a "sophisticated and prolific threat" for more than 10 years, both for financial gain and to steal trade secrets, the Department of Justice said today.

The 11-count indictment (PDF), which was made public today, alleges Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi worked with China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) and other agencies to hack into "hundreds of victim companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual dissidents, clergy, and democratic and human rights activists in the United States and abroad."

Li and Dong were allegedly infiltrating networks of businesses in a wide array of sectors, including "high tech manufacturing; civil, industrial, and medical device engineering; business, educational, and gaming software development; solar energy; and pharmaceuticals," as well as defense contractors, since at least September 2009. In recent months, prosecutors allege, the two were seeking ways in to "the networks of biotech and other firms publicly known for work on COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and testing technology" in at least 11 countries, including the US.

The indictment does not name the firms in question, only saying that "on or about January 25 and 27," Li was trying to break into networks at a Maryland biotech firm and a Massachusetts biotech firm, both of which were publicly known by that point to be working on COVID-19 vaccines. Matching up the timelines, the targets seem to have been Novavax, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

U.S. Orders China to Close Its Houston Consulate in 72 Hours (archive)

The United States ordered China to close its diplomatic consulate in Houston, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Wednesday, dealing another blow to the rapidly deteriorating relations between the two countries.

In the hours after the Trump administration notified the Chinese of its decision, smoke was seen billowing from a courtyard inside the consulate as employees dumped what appeared to be documents into flaming barrels, according to a video posted by KPRC-TV, a local television station.

The Houston police and fire departments responded to reports of a fire on Tuesday evening but did not enter the building, over which the Chinese have sovereignty.

Also at BBC and CNBC.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

who am I rooting for again?

Microsoft Tells Congress That iOS App Store Is Anticompetitive:

US regulators are taking aim at big tech firms like Google, Apple, and Amazon, with the potential for antitrust cases later this year. A House committee is gearing up to question the CEOs of major technology companies, but Microsoft President Brad Smith has already chatted with the committee. Smith reportedly expressed concerns about Apple in particular, specifically when it comes to its handling of the App Store.

[...] According to Smith, the recent disagreement over the Basecamp Hey email app on iOS exemplifies the problem. The app needs a $99 annual subscription, but there was no way to purchase it in the app — users had to go to the web. That didn't please Apple, as it circumvented the 30 percent revenue charge. Apple resisted approving the app, only doing so when public pressure ramped up, and the developers added a 14-day free trial for iOS users.

[...] And that's at the heart of the antitrust probe: Is Apple harming competition with its policies now that iOS is one of two dominant mobile platforms? It might take a few years for the government to decide that one.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Plato was right: Earth is made, on average, of cubes: The ancient Greek philosopher was on to something, researchers found:

Plato, the Greek philosopher who lived in the 5th century B.C.E., believed that the universe was made of five types of matter: earth, air, fire, water, and cosmos. Each was described with a particular geometry, a platonic shape. For earth, that shape was the cube.

Science has steadily moved beyond Plato's conjectures, looking instead to the atom as the building block of the universe. Yet Plato seems to have been onto something, researchers have found.

In a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from the University of Pennsylvania, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and University of Debrecen uses math, geology, and physics to demonstrate that the average shape of rocks on Earth is a cube.

"Plato is widely recognized as the first person to develop the concept of an atom, the idea that matter is composed of some indivisible component at the smallest scale," says Douglas Jerolmack, a geophysicist in Penn's School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Earth and Environmental Science and the School of Engineering and Applied Science's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. "But that understanding was only conceptual; nothing about our modern understanding of atoms derives from what Plato told us.

"The interesting thing here is that what we find with rock, or earth, is that there is more than a conceptual lineage back to Plato. It turns out that Plato's conception about the element earth being made up of cubes is, literally, the statistical average model for real earth. And that is just mind-blowing."

Journal Reference:
Gábor Domokos, Douglas J. Jerolmack, Ferenc Kun, et al. Plato's cube and the natural geometry of fragmentation [$], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2001037117)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Hackers Tell the Story of the Twitter Attack From the Inside:

A Twitter hacking scheme that targeted political, corporate and cultural elites this week began with a teasing message between two hackers late Tuesday on the online messaging platform Discord.

"yoo bro," wrote a user named "Kirk," according to a screenshot of the conversation shared with The New York Times. "i work at twitter / don't show this to anyone / seriously."

He then demonstrated that he could take control of valuable Twitter accounts — the sort of thing that would require insider access to the company's computer network.

[...] Despite global attention on the intrusion, which has shaken confidence in Twitter and the security provided by other technology companies, the basic details of who were responsible, and how they did it, have been a mystery. Officials are still in the early stages of their investigation.

But four people who participated in the scheme spoke with The Times and shared numerous logs and screen shots of the conversations they had on Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrating their involvement both before and after the hack became public.

The interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers. Instead, it was done by a group of young people — one of whom says he lives at home with his mother — who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6.

The Times verified that the four people were connected to the hack by matching their social media and cryptocurrency accounts to accounts that were involved with the events on Wednesday. They also presented corroborating evidence of their involvement, like the logs from their conversations on Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers and hackers, and Twitter.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

The real reason dogs always find their way home - breakthrough study:

Earth's magnetic field may be harnessed by dogs to help them navigate, researchers have revealed. A group of researchers from the Czech University of Life Sciences and Virginia Tech tracked the navigation abilities of 27 different dogs from 10 breeds over three years.

The scientists attached a GPS collar and camera mount to each dog and periodically released them from their leash during walks in a forested area.

After being released, each dog ran deeper into the woods, and after a certain distance they were called back to their owners.

At this point they all conducted what researchers described as a 'compass run.'

This entailed a short dash of approximately 65ft (20m) that closely tracked with the Earth's north-south geomagnetic axis.

[...] Researchers are now convinced this helped the dogs orient themselves for the return trip.

The researchers wrote in a summary of their findings in the online journal eLife: "It is unlikely that the direct involvement of visual, olfactory or celestial cues can explain the highly stereotyped and consistent ~north south alignment of the compass run.

"For example, the forested habitat and dense vegetation of the study sites make visual piloting unreliable and, in many cases, not possible."

Journal Reference:
Hrag Pailian, Susan E. Carey, Justin Halberda, et al. Age and Species Comparisons of Visual Mental Manipulation Ability as Evidence for its Development and Evolution [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-64666-1)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Quadruple-stranded DNA seen in healthy human cells for the first time:

The world’s most famous molecule – the DNA double helix – sometimes doubles up again. Researchers have now found this quadruple-stranded form in healthy human cells for the first time.

Four-stranded DNA has been seen before in some cancer cells and in lab-based chemistry experiments, but this is the first time the molecule has been visualised in healthy, living human cells, as a stable structure created by normal cellular processes.

[...] Zoë Waller at the University of East Anglia, UK, says the work adds to the evidence that the quadruplex structures form part of normal DNA regulation and function, and that our view of the DNA double helix may be out of date. “We presume that this is the normal, native state of DNA, but this work is another exceptional example of mounting evidence that DNA is not a fixed structure or shape,” she says.

Journal Reference:
Marco Di Antonio, Aleks Ponjavic, Antanas Radzevičius, et al. Single-molecule visualization of DNA G-quadruplex formation in live cells, Nature Chemistry (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-020-0506-4)

Original Submission

chromas writes:

Drop in Global Travel May Have Hurt Weather Forecasts:

In normal times, hundreds of thousands of planes and ships crisscross the planet daily, ferrying passengers or transporting cargo.

Many of these vessels are equipped with sensitive instruments that can collect a variety of scientific information about their surroundings—everything from air or ocean temperatures to wind speeds and humidity. Scientists often use the data to feed the models they use for weather forecasts and climate projections.

But the slowdown in global travel has triggered concern among researchers, who are worried their forecasts may be suffering.

One new study, published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggests the decline in global air travel has taken a toll.

[...] The findings suggest that forecasts across much of the world became less accurate after the pandemic struck.

[...] It's not just aircraft data that's taken a hit.

A recent survey from the Global Ocean Observing System, a United Nations ocean monitoring initiative, suggests that a number of ocean-observing programs have suffered during the pandemic.

Data from the Ship of Opportunity Programme—an initiative that collects ocean measurements from commercial and other nonscientific vessels around the world—has decreased by about 90%, the report suggests. Meteorological data from a similar program, known as the Automated Shipboard Aerological Programme, has declined by 10%-15%.

The decline in ship-based observations isn't catastrophic on its own. Scientists collect a great deal of ocean data from networks of buoys they've set up across the seas, rigged with instruments that continuously send information back to land.

But even these autonomous systems require updates and maintenance. And with fewer ships crossing the ocean, they may not be getting the attention they need.

The Argo network—one of the world's largest and most important systems of autonomous ocean sensors—recently reported a 10% reduction in data, the Global Ocean Observing System report notes. It's not clear yet how much pandemic-related disruptions are to blame. But it's an issue to watch, the report suggests.

Journal Reference:
Ying Chen. COVID‐19 Pandemic Imperils Weather Forecast, Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1029/2020GL088613)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Experts Predict Record 20,000 CVEs for 2020:

This year could see a record breaking 20,000 vulnerabilities reported, with major increases in mobile bugs already in 2020, according to Skybox Security.

The security vendor's midyear update to its 2020 Vulnerability and Threat Trends Report contains some concerning findings for organizations as they struggle to manage cyber-risk at a time of mass remote working.

With 9000 vulnerabilities reported in the first half of the year, the firm is predicting the final total for 2020 could top twice as much as that. The figure for new CVEs in 2019 was 17,304. Without risk-based automated patch management systems, organizations struggle to mitigate these issues, leaving them exposed to attacks.

Part of this increase is due to a surge in Android OS flaws: these increased 50% year-on-year, according to Skybox.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

The team designed a large-area active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display with an MoS2 backplane via a sequence of processes. They first formed a thin-film-transistor (TFT) array on a thin MoS2 film, then deposited an RGB OLED on the drain electrode of the TFTs and peeled the display from the carrier to transfer it to the human hand (the target). During the process, they synthesized a bilayer MoS2 film on a 4-inch SiO2/Si wafer via metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Then they coated a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate with aluminium oxide using atomic layer deposition and transferred the MoS2 film from the SiO2/Si wafer to this PET substrate to produce an MoS2 transistor array with a driving backplane configuration. The resulting structure was unique and encapsulated with aluminium oxide for improved metal contacts and carrier mobility. The full-color AMOLED display uniformly controlled the RGB OLED pixels, where each pixel connected to a data and a scanning line and the entire display circuit functioned in an active-matrix design. Choi et al. controlled the pixel current based on the drain and gate signals of the transistor to change the brightness of the OLED. They could then transform the ultrathin display from the carrier glass substrate to a curved surface without device degradation.

Chameleon skin, coming soon.

Journal Reference:
Minwoo Choi, Sa-Rang Bae, Luhing Hu, et al. Full-color active-matrix organic light-emitting diode display on human skin based on a large-area MoS2 backplane [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb5898)
Tsuyoshi Sekitani, Hiroyoshi Nakajima, Hiroki Maeda, et al. Stretchable active-matrix organic light-emitting diode display using printable elastic conductors, Nature Materials (DOI: 10.1038/nmat2459)
Kibum Kang, Saien Xie, Lujie Huang, et al. High-mobility three-atom-thick semiconducting films with wafer-scale homogeneity, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature14417)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Light shaken and stirred to help autonomous vehicles better scan for nearby fast-moving objects:

A self-driving car has a hard time recognizing the difference between a toddler and a brown bag that suddenly appears into view because of limitations in how it senses objects using lidar.

The autonomous vehicle industry is exploring “frequency modulated continuous wave” (FMCW) lidar to solve this problem.

[...] FMCW lidar detects objects by scanning laser light from the top of an autonomous vehicle. A single laser beam splits into a comb of other wavelengths, called a microcomb, to scan an area. Light bounces off of an object and goes to the detector through an optical isolator or circulator, which ensures all reflected light ends up at the detector array.

[...] The technology integrates microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transducers made of aluminum nitride to modulate the microcomb at high frequencies ranging from megahertz to gigahertz. The optical isolator that the team developed as part of this process is further described in a paper published in Nature Communications.

[...] “The stirring motion modulates light such that it can only travel in one direction,” said Sunil Bhave, a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering.

[...] Other transducers in the same technology excite an acoustic wave that shakes the chip at megahertz frequencies, demonstrating sub-microsecond control and tuning of the laser pulse microcomb or soliton.

Journal Reference:
Junqiu Liu, Hao Tian, Erwan Lucas, et al. Monolithic piezoelectric control of soliton microcombs, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2465-8)
Hao Tian, Junqiu Liu, Bin Dong, et al. Hybrid integrated photonics using bulk acoustic resonators [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16812-6)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AMD Launches 12 Desktop Renoir Ryzen 4000G Series APUs: But You Can't Buy Them

Today AMD is finally lifting the lid on its long-awaited desktop Zen2 based APU family. Using the same silicon as in the Ryzen Mobile 4000 family, AMD is pumping it up into 35 W and 65 models in the same AM4 platform that is in use today. There has been strong demand from PC builders to release these chips, which were on the topics of forum conversation all the way back at CES. There's only one downside to these new processors: you can't buy them on their own. AMD states that the initial release of Ryzen 4000G hardware is for OEMs like Dell and HP only for their pre-built systems.

The new processors use the same 8-core Zen2 plus 8 compute unit Vega that we saw in Ryzen Mobile 4000 at the beginning of the year, but as with previous APU launches, the frequency and power thermals have been pushed up into more manageable desktop environments. To that end, AMD will be launching hardware in the Ryzen 7, Ryzen 5, and Ryzen 3 product lines at both 65 W and 35 W, all on the AM4 platform.

[...] Just to be clear, AMD specified OEM and not system integrators (SIs). On our call, AMD clarified that the market for its APUs is skewed very heavily towards the big mass-market prebuilt customers like HP and Dell, rather than custom home builds. The numbers quoted were around 80% of all APU sales end up in these systems, and by working with OEMs only, AMD can also help manage stock levels of the Renoir silicon coming out of the fabs between desktops and notebooks.

[...] AMD says that they are planning a consumer-grade release of APUs 'soon'. It was stated in our briefing call that there will be a launch of a future Zen2 APU for the consumer market compatible with 500-series motherboards. The company specifically did not say 400-series, but did clarify that the 4000G series announced today was for 400 and 500 series.

Also at Tom's Hardware, TechRadar, Guru3D, and Ars Technica.

See also: AMD Ryzen 4000 Renoir APUs Have Started Invading AIO PCs
AMD Ryzen 7 4700G Renoir APU With Vega 8 GPU Is Almost As Fast As Entry-Level Discrete Graphics When Overclocked
AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G Renoir 8 Core CPU Benchmarks Leak Out, On Par With Ryzen 7 3800X & Core i7-10700K
AMD Ryzen 7 4700G APU Overclocked To 4.8 GHz Across All 8 Cores, DDR4-4400 & 2200 MHz FCLK Achieved Too – Blows Away The Ryzen 7 3700X

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

It's FOSS has an overview of 13 Raspberry Pi-like single board computers.

The Raspberry Pi Zero and the Raspberry Pi Zero W were added to the line up of Raspberry Pi's in the last few years. These ultra-small form-factor SBC's have been a big hit and continue to be a part of Raspberry Pi projects from the maker and DIY communities.

Due to the smaller form factor and the prices these boards are targeting, they have had to cut down on many features like a dedicated Ethernet port, slower processor (compared to their full-fledged cousins).

In an earlier article, we listed the best alternatives to Raspberry Pi. In this one, I'll list some alternatives to Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W.

Original Submission

chromas writes:

GitHub buries 21 TB of open source data in an Arctic archive:

While it might seem like the internet is leaving a detailed record of history, the world's knowledge is all surprisingly vulnerable to being lost in a disaster. To help keep a backup, GitHub has now archived 21 TB of public open source data and buried it in a vault in the Arctic designed to preserve it for a thousand years.

[...] The Arctic World Archive is located in a decommissioned coal mine on an island in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.

On July 8, 2020, GitHub deposited 21 TB of data into the Archive, beneath 250 m (820 ft) of permafrost. This data drop consisted of a snapshot of all active public repositories on GitHub as of February 2, 2020, encoded in the form of tiny QR codes imprinted on 186 archival film reels.

These specially-designed film reels are developed by a company called Piql. They're made of silver halides on polyester and, according to simulated aging tests conducted by Piql, this material can last for up to 1,000 years.

GitHub's promotional YouTube video.

Original Submission