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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Soycow_Lover:

Unique Bronze Age hoard found near Peebles by metal detector enthusiast:

A complete horse harness and sword dating back to between 900BC and 1,000BC were uncovered in a field near Peebles.

That discovery is said to be only the second of its kind ever found in Scotland and it's also the first, thanks to how well preserved it is, allowing archaeologists to see how harnesses were assembled at that time.

The hoard was discovered by Mariusz Stepien, 44, while scanning the field with friends on Sunday, June 21.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

New York Times CEO Mark Thompson says he expects the end of the physical newspaper in 20 years:

The New York Times was founded in 1851, but it would surprise outgoing CEO Mark Thompson if the physical paper made it to 2040.

"I believe the Times will definitely be printed for another 10 years and quite possibly another 15 years — maybe even slightly more than that," Thompson told CNBC's A View from the Top. "I would be very surprised if it's printed in 20 years' time."

More than 900,000 people subscribe to the print version of the newspaper, said Thompson. At its current subscriber levels, the paper could be printed seven days a week at a profit without a single advertisement, he said.

But as readers become more accustomed to reading the Times on smartphones, tablets and computers each year, a printed paper is clearly a dying form. The New York Times Company reported last quarter that total digital revenue exceeded print revenue for the first time ever. Print advertising fell more than 50% year over year from last quarter, driven by both secular declines and the pandemic. Thompson told CNBC he doubts that advertising will ever come back.

"I'm skeptical about whether it will recover to where it was during 2019 levels," Thompson said. "It was already in year-over-year decline for many years. I think that decline is probably inexorable."

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

California Judge Rules Uber and Lyft to Immediately Classify Drivers as Employees:

A California court issued a preliminary injuction on Monday, ordering Uber and Lyft to immediately reclassify Uber and Lyft ride-share drivers as employees, in a highly anticipated decision that follows a months-long battle between the state of California and the gig economy companies.

The San Francisco Superior Court judge said the companies must begin complying within 10 days.

In May, California's attorney general Xavier Becerra, alongside the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, sued Uber and Lyft, arguing that the companies have been violating law by misclassifying Uber and Lyft drivers as independent contractors since January 1 when a state law known as AB5 went into effect.

In June, Becerra filed a request for a preliminary injunction, arguing that drivers are currently enduring such significant damages that waiting until the end of litigation would cause irreparable harm.

Responding to news of the preliminary injunction, attorney general Becerra said, "The court has weighed in and agreed: Uber and Lyft need to put a stop to unlawful misclassification of their drivers while our litigation continues. While this fight still has a long way to go, we're pushing ahead to make sure the people of California get the workplace protections they deserve."

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Forgotten Ones: HP Nanoprocessor:

Back in the 1970's the Loveland Instrument Division (LID) of HP in Colorado, USA was the forefront of much of HP's computing innovation. HP was a leader, and often THE leader in computerized instrumentation in the early 1970's. From things like calculators, to O-scopes to desktop computers like the 9825 and 9845 series. HP made their own processors for most all of these products. The early computers were based on the 16-bit Hybrid processor we talked about before. At around the same time, in 1974, the HP LID realized they needed another processor, a control oriented processor that was programmable, and could be used to control the various hardware systems they were building. This didn't need to be a beast like the 16-bit Hybrids, but something simpler, inexpensive, and very fast, it would interface and control things like HPIB cards, printers, and the like. The task of designing such a processor fell to Larry Bower.

The result was a Control Oriented Processor called the HP nanoprocessor. Internally it was given the identifier 94332 (or 9-4332), not the most elegant name, but its[sic] what was on the original prototypes and die. The goal was to use HP's original 7-micron NMOS process (rather then the new 5-micron NMOS-II process) to help save costs and get it into production quickly.

The story has several pictures of the early DIP chips as well as handwritten block diagrams and hand-corrected data sheets.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

The quest to liberate $300,000 of bitcoin from an old ZIP file:

In October, Michael Stay got a weird message on LinkedIn. A total stranger had lost access to his bitcoin private keys—and wanted Stay's help getting his $300,000 back.

It wasn't a total surprise that The Guy, as Stay calls him, had found the former Google security engineer. Nineteen years ago, Stay published a paper detailing a technique for breaking into encrypted zip files. The Guy had bought around $10,000 worth of bitcoin in January 2016, well before the boom. He had encrypted the private keys in a zip file and had forgotten the password. He was hoping Stay could help him break in.

In a talk at the Defcon security conference this week, Stay details the epic attempt that ensued.

[...] "If we find the password successfully, I will thank you," The Guy wrote with a smiley face. After an initial analysis, Stay estimated that he would need to charge $100,000 to break into the file. The Guy took the deal. After all, he'd still be turning quite the profit.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

DoubleVerify says public domain apps used for CTV ad fraud – TechCrunch:

The team at DoubleVerify, a company that helps advertisers eliminate fraud and ensure brand safety, said that it's recently identified a new tactic used by ad fraudsters seeking to make money on internet-connected TVs.

Senior Vice President of Product Management Roy Rosenfeld said that it's harder for those fraudsters to create a legitimate-looking TV app — at least compared to the web and mobile, where "you can just put up a site [or app] to generate content." For a connected TV app, you need lots of video, which can be costly and time-consuming to produce.

"What these guys have started to do is take old content that's in the public domain and package that in fancy-looking CTV apps that they submit to the platform," Rosenfeld said. "But at the end of the day, no one is really watching the old westerns or anything like that. This is just a vehicle to get into the app stores."

As noted in a new report from the company (which will soon be available online), DoubleVerify said it has identified more than 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps in the past 18 months, with more than half of that coming in 2020.

CTV - A generic term for a Connected TeleVision(TV)

[Ed Note - Updated to remove a stray quote and add a definition for CTV]

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Soycow_Lover:

Nasa reveals findings from journey to mysterious world at the edge of solar system:

Nasa has revealed its observations from a trip to Ceres[*], the mysterious world hovering at the edge of our solar system.

Ceres is a dwarf planet, and the largest of the huge number of objects that are found in the asteroid belt at the far reaches of our planetary neighbourhood.

Now scientists using data from Nasa observations of the world have revealed a host of new information about that distant dwarf planet.

[...] "Long believed to be a primitive body, Ceres is now an ocean world with deep brines at a regional and potentially global scale," wrote Nasa's Julie Castillo-Rogez, a planetary scientist who did not work on the study. She urged more research and a follow-up mission that could study the evolution of the planet – and its "potential habitability".

[...] The research shows that Ceres is an ocean world, and that it may have been geologically active in the recent past.

And it also adds yet more wonder to the planet, suggesting that the various glowing parts of the surface were formed from different sources.

The findings are discussed in seven new papers published in Nature journals, offering a variety of new information about the dwarf planet.

[*] From the Ceres entry on Wikipedia:

Ceres (/ˈsɪəriːz/;[16] minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is the largest object in the main asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. With a diameter of 940 km (580 mi), Ceres is both the largest of the asteroids and the only dwarf planet inside Neptune's orbit. It is the 25th-largest body in the Solar System within the orbit of Neptune.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Soycow_Lover:

Popular Pesticides are Killing Birds, Too:

Neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides chemically related to nicotine, were first introduced to agriculture in the 1980s. They’re most commonly applied to seeds themselves and spread through the plants as they germinate and grow to protect against insects. But they’ve proven to be so harmful to bees and other insect populations that the EU banned their use in 2018. But in the U.S., thanks at least in part to a misinformation campaign on the part of the pesticide industry, there’s been a shift to use more and more of the dangerous chemicals even as the overall use of insecticides has been declining.

[...] Grassland birds (which rely on grassland habitats for nesting) and insectivorous birds (which eat insects, worms, and other invertebrates) saw the steepest impacts. The authors found that an increase of 220 pounds (100 kilograms) in neonicotinoid usage per county was associated with a 2.2% decline in populations of grassland birds and 1.6% in insectivorous birds. Khanna said this was due to birds feeding on both seeds treated with the pesticide as well as eating insects themselves who may have ingested it.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Subsentient:

Federal Reserve announces details of new 24x7x365 interbank settlement service with clearing functionality to support instant payments in the United States:

The features and functionality described in the accompanying Federal Register notice represent a key milestone in the FedNow Service's development and are based on input received from the public in response to the Board's 2019 request for comment. The Federal Reserve will take a phased approach to service implementation. The first release of the FedNow Service will provide core clearing and settlement features that will support market needs and help banks manage the transition to a 24x7x365 service. Based on ongoing stakeholder engagement, additional features and service enhancements will be introduced over time. The target launch date for the service remains 2023 or 2024, with a more specific time frame to be announced after additional work is completed.

[...] "The rapid expenditure of COVID emergency relief payments highlighted the critical importance of having a resilient instant payments infrastructure with nationwide reach, especially for households and small businesses with cash flow constraints," said Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard. "Since we initiated FedNow one year ago, we have been hitting our project milestones, and today I am pleased to announce the Federal Reserve Board has approved the core features and functionality based on extensive input from stakeholders."

The Board's Federal Register notice is attached.

For media inquiries, call 202-452-2955

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Phoenix666 writes:

The Conversation:

The love of all things English begins at a young age in non-English-speaking countries, promoted by pop culture, Hollywood movies, fast-food brands, sports events and TV shows.

Later, with English skills and international education qualifications from high school, the path is laid to prestigious international universities in the English-speaking world and employment opportunities at home and abroad.

But those opportunities aren't distributed equally across socioeconomic groups. Global education in English is largely reserved for middle-class students.

This is creating a divide between those inside the global English proficiency ecosystem and those relegated to parts of the education system where such opportunities don't exist.

[...] It's unfortunate so many schools view an English-speaking model as the gold standard and overlook their own local or regional wisdoms. We need to remember that encouraging young people to join a privileged English-speaking élite educated in foreign universities is only one of many possible educational options.

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Phoenix666 writes:

BBC:

The Japanese giant Toshiba has sold its final stake in the personal computer maker Dynabook.

It means the firm no longer has a connection with making PCs or laptops.

Sharp bought 80% of Toshiba's personal computing arm in 2018 for $36m (£27m), and has now bought the remaining shares, Toshiba said in a statement.

Toshiba's first laptop, the T1100, launched in 1985. It weighed 4kg (8.8 pounds) and worked with 3.5 inch (8.8cm) floppy disks.

How much will Toshiba's departure from the laptop market be mourned?

Additional Coverage:
Toshiba is officially out of the laptop business
Goodbye Toshiba Laptops. It's Been Good Knowing Ya

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takyon writes:

Recycling Electronic Waste to Make Hybrid Materials

Electronic waste could get recycled into strong, protective coatings for steel, a new study finds.

Recycling typically converts large quantities of items made of a single material, such as aluminum cans or glass bottles, into more of the same. However, this approach is not feasible for complex garbage such as electronic waste, or e-waste, because it contains many different materials that cannot be easily separated.

[...] In the new study, researchers investigated the properties of copper and silica compounds often found in old printed circuit boards and computer monitors. They suspected that after these substances were extracted from e-waste, they could get combined to create a durable new hybrid material potentially useful for protecting metal surfaces against corrosion and wear.

First the researchers heated glass and plastic powder from old computer monitor screens and shells to 1,500 degrees C, generating silicon carbide wires 10 to 50 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in diameter. They next combined these ceramic nanowires with copper recovered from ground-up circuit boards, placed the mix on a steel surface, and then heated it up to 1,000 degrees C. This melted the copper to form a thin film 1 micron thick atop the steel. (The scientists noted this width could get adjusted to range from a few nanometers to a few hundred microns.)

This structural bonding of different elements creates new properties that are superior to the parent materials. "Say, for example, the metal structure has a good toughness but a poor hardness. In contrast, a ceramic has a high hardness but it's very brittle," Sahajwalla says. "Combining these two structures together successfully by the judicious choice of temperature after understanding the the raw material can create a completely new hybrid material that has a ceramic-like hardness and metal-like toughness. And surprisingly, all this could be done from waste sources, which can prevent these resources going to a landfill."

The scientists found the micron-thick hybrid layer increased the surface hardness of the steel by about 125%. In addition, microscope images revealed that when this hybrid layer was struck with a nano-sized indenter, it remained firmly bonded to the steel without cracking or chipping.

Material Microsurgery: Selective Synthesis of Materials via High-Temperature Chemistry for Microrecycling of Electronic Waste (open, DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.0c00485) (DX)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Mass hijacking spree takes over subreddits to promote Donald Trump:

Dozens of discussion groups on Reddit—including those dedicated to the National Football League, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Gorillaz—were hit in a Friday morning mass takeover spree that used the subreddits to spread messages promoting President Trump.

The hijacked accounts had tens of millions of combined members. The 148,000-member subreddit Supernatural, dedicated to the TV show by the same name, was emblazoned with pro-Trump images and slogans. Reddit personnel have since restored the moderator account to its rightful owner. The image above is how the subreddit appeared when the takeover was still active. The takeovers came five weeks after Reddit banned /r/The_Donald, a leading forum for fans of the president, and hundreds of other unrelated subreddits for violating recently rewritten content rules.

Reddit personnel published this post captioned, "Ongoing incident with compromised mod accounts." Reddit personnel then warned that moderator accounts were being compromised and used to vandalize subreddits. It asked moderators of affected subreddits to report them in responses.

A larger list of subreddits reported as compromised is available at the incident report linked above.

[...] Reddit officials issued the following statement: "An investigation is underway related to a series of vandalized communities. It appears the source of the attacks were compromised moderator accounts. We are working to lock down those accounts and restore impacted communities."

[...] At the time this post went live, most or all of the affected accounts appeared to have been either restored and reverted back to their previous condition or banned for terms of service violations.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Coronavirus clobbers Uber, leading to $1.8 billion quarterly loss:

The coronavirus pandemic hammered Uber's finances in the second quarter of 2020, the company announced on Thursday. Gross bookings for Uber's core ride-hailing business plunged by 75 percent compared with a year earlier—from $12.2 billion to $3 billion.

That was offset somewhat by rapid growth in Uber's delivery business. Delivery bookings more than doubled from $3.4 billion to $7 billion.

The company lost $1.8 billion in the second quarter on a GAAP basis. Ignoring one-time charges, Uber has been losing around $1 billion per quarter for the last couple of years.

[...] In May, Uber laid off 3,700 people in an effort to contain mounting losses.

Demand for rides cratered, while demand for deliveries soared. In his Thursday statement, Khosrowshahi argued that Uber's product portfolio had a "natural hedge" since people ordered more takeout even as they cut back on going out.

Still, Uber says that its rides business earned a $50 million profit on an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) basis. The problem is that this figure is nowhere close to offsetting losses and overhead elsewhere—including the delivery business and Uber's expensive self-driving project.

Fortunately, Uber is in no danger of running out of money; it has almost $8 billion in cash and short-term investments. It could easily burn cash at this rate for another year.

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takyon writes:

The U.S. Air Force Space Force has awarded National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contracts to the United Launch Alliance (ULA) and SpaceX:

During a video call with reporters, William Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said that United Launch Alliance will receive approximately 60 percent of the launch orders and SpaceX will receive the other 40 percent. Two other bidders, Northrop Grumman with its Omega rocket, and Blue Origin with its New Glenn vehicle, will not receive awards.

"The ability to meet our technical factors to do the mission is the most important thing," Roper said, in response to a question on the Air Force criteria. Secondary factors included past performance, the ability to work with small businesses, and total evaluated price. The military has nine reference orbits for large and complex payloads that these rockets must meet.

A tertiary factor: bidding a launch vehicle that has already been flown.

From 2022 to 2026, Roper said the Air Force expects to award a total of 30 to 34 contracts for missions. Assuming the 60-40 split in total contracts, this likely will result in contract values of about $3.5 billion for United Launch Alliance and $2.5 billion for SpaceX—but these are rough estimates and the US Air Force has not released specific amounts. These awards ensure that ULA and SpaceX will continue a long-running rivalry.

As part of Friday's announcement, the Air Force said ULA has been assigned the USSF-51 and USSF-106 missions scheduled for launch in second quarter fiscal year 2022 and fourth quarter fiscal year 2022, respectively. SpaceX has been assigned USSF-67, scheduled for launch in fourth quarter fiscal year 2022. Task orders for the launch service support and launch service contracts will be issued to ULA for $337M and SpaceX for $316M for launch services to meet fiscal year 2022 launch dates. (This latter value suggests the SpaceX mission will likely fly on the Falcon Heavy rocket.)

The large initial award to SpaceX could also include funding for an extended payload fairing and vertical integration.

See also: News Analysis | With Pentagon award, SpaceX joins the establishment

Also at Space News and Teslarati.

Previously: SpaceX BFR vs. ULA Vulcan Showdown in the 2020s
Blue Origin Urges U.S. Air Force to Delay Launch Provider Decision

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