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takyon writes:

Charter tries to convince FCC that broadband customers want data caps

Charter Communications has claimed to the Federal Communications Commission that broadband users enjoy having Internet plans with data caps, in a filing arguing that Charter should be allowed to impose caps on its Spectrum Internet service starting next year.

Charter isn't currently allowed to impose data caps because of conditions the FCC placed on its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable. The data-cap condition is scheduled to expire on May 18, 2023, but Charter in June petitioned the FCC to let the condition expire two years early, in May 2021.

With consumer-advocacy groups and Internet users opposing the petition, Charter filed a response with the FCC last week, saying that plans with data caps are "popular."

"Contrary to Stop The Cap's assertion [in an FCC filing] that consumers 'hate' data caps, the marketplace currently shows that broadband service plans incorporating data caps or other usage-based pricing mechanisms are often popular when the limits are sufficiently high to satisfy the vast majority of users," Charter told the FCC.

Or you could offer some kind of software that shows which users are hogging the network.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for carny:

Highly efficient process makes seawater drinkable in 30 minutes:

A new study has used a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF) to filter pollutants out of seawater, generating large amounts of fresh water per day while using much less energy than other methods.

MOFs are extremely porous materials with high surface areas – theoretically, if one teaspoon of the stuff was unpacked it could cover a football field. That much surface area makes it great for grabbing hold of molecules and particles.

In this case, the team developed a new type of MOF dubbed PSP-MIL-53, and put it to work trapping salt and impurities in brackish water and seawater. When the material is placed in the water, it selectively pulls ions out of the liquid and holds them on its surface. Within 30 minutes, the MOF was able to reduce the total dissolved solids (TDS) in the water from 2,233 parts per million (ppm) to under 500 ppm. That's well below the threshold of 600 ppm that the World Health Organization recommends for safe drinking water.

Using this technique, the material was able to produce as much as 139.5 L (36.9 gal) of fresh water per kg of MOF per day. And once the MOF is "full" of particles, it can be quickly and easily cleaned for reuse. To do so, it's placed in sunlight, which causes it to release the captured salts in as little as four minutes.

Journal Reference:
Ranwen Ou, Huacheng Zhang, Vinh X. Truong, et al. A sunlight-responsive metal–organic framework system for sustainable water desalination, Nature Sustainability (DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0590-x)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Pen Test Partners: Boeing 747s receive critical software updates over 3.5" floppy disks:

The eye-catching factoid emerged during a DEF CON video interview of PTP's [Pen Test Partners] Alex Lomas, where the man himself gave a walkthrough of a 747-400, its avionics bay and the flight deck.

Although airliners are not normally available to curious infosec researchers, a certain UK-based Big Airline's decision to scrap its B747 fleet gave Pen Test Partners a unique opportunity to get aboard one and have a poke about before the scrap merchants set about their grim task.

"Aircraft themselves are really expensive beasts, you know," said Lomas as he filmed inside the big Boeing. "Even if you had all the will in the world, airlines and manufacturers won't just let you pentest an aircraft because [they] don't know what state you're going to leave it in."

While giving a tour of the aircraft on video (full embed below), Lomas pointed out the navigation database loader. To readers of a certain vintage it'll look very familiar indeed.

"This database has to be updated every 28 days, so you can see how much of a chore this has to be for an engineer to visit," Lomas said, pointing out the floppy drive – which in normal operations is tucked away behind a locked panel.

Youtube Video

[...] The key question everyone wants to know the answer to, though, is whether you can hack an airliner from the cheap seats, using the in-flight entertainment (IFE) as an attack vector. Lomas observed: "Where we've gone deliberately looking, we've not found, at this point, any two-way communication between passenger domain systems like the IFE and the control domain. There is the DMZ of the information services domain that sits between the two; to jump between two layers of segregation would be tricky in my view."

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c0lo writes:

It's time to implement a 4-day workweek

In May, Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur and former Democratic presidential candidate, floated the idea of implementing a four-day workweek to better accommodate working Americans in a time of uncertainty, saying a shorter workweek could have mental-health benefits for employees.

There's not one overarching definition of a four-day workweek. "There are different models for the shortened week, some of which envision the same output condensed into fewer hours while others simply imagine longer hours spread over fewer days," a Washington Post report said.

Some involve a three-day weekend, while others mean a day off midweek.

[...] "It would help get us off of this hamster wheel that we're on right now, where we're all sort of racing against the clock in service of this giant capital-efficiency machine," Yang said. "And the race is driving us all crazy."

In a Harris poll conducted in late May, 82% of employed US respondents said they would prefer to have a shorter workweek, even if it meant longer workdays.

The idea of a shorter workweek has become so popular in Finland that Prime Minister Sanna Marin has called for employers to allow employees to work only six hours a day, four days a week. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern proposed the policy as part of a coronavirus economic recovery effort.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

HS that suspended teen who tweeted photo of hallway has 9 COVID-19 cases:

North Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia, sent a letter to parents Saturday, saying, "At this time, we know there were six students and three staff members who were in school for at least some time last week who have since reported to us that they have tested positive." The letter was published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Most or even all of the six students and three staff members who tested positive could have had the virus before the school reopened on Monday, August 3. As Harvard Medical School explains, "The time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) is thought to be three to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure," and "a person with COVID-19 may be contagious 48 to 72 hours before starting to experience symptoms."

[...] As we reported Friday, the school issued a five-day suspension to student Hannah Watters after she posted a photo to Twitter, noting the "jammed" hallways and "10 percent mask rate." The school lifted her suspension after extensive media coverage. One other unnamed student who was suspended for a similar reason also had the suspension reversed, the Journal-Constitution said.

Students attended class in person only on Monday through Wednesday, as the district said it conducted a short first week "so that all of our schools can step back and assess how things are going so far."

Update at 6:50pm ET: North Paulding High School announced Sunday that it has canceled in-person instruction for Monday and Tuesday, August 10 and 11, because of the nine positive cases and "the possibility that number could increase if there are currently pending tests that prove positive." The school said that on Tuesday evening, parents and students will be notified about whether in-person instruction will resume on Wednesday. Remote learning will continue while the school is closed.

Previously:
(2020-08-08) Pupils Who Shared Photos of Packed Corridor of Maskless Georgia Students Suspended

Original Submission

inertnet writes:

'Bullying' Apple fights couple over pear logo

When Natalie Monson started her food blog 11 years ago, she didn't expect to end up embroiled in a fight with the world's most valuable company.

But the US small business owner is now battling Apple for the right to use a pear in the logo on her recipe app.

In a patent filing, Apple said the image was too similar to its own logo and would hurt its brand.

Ms Monson says the tech giant is simply "bullying" and she feels a "moral obligation" to fight back.

More than 43,000 people have already signed the petition she and her husband Russ, owners of the Super Healthy Kids website, created last week to try to pressure the company to back down.

Also At:
Apple wants this recipe app to stop using a pear in its logo
Apple object to Prepear logo trademark, 'terrifying' small business owners
Apple vs Prepear: Besides Pear, There are Atleast 10 Other Companies Using Fruit Logos, Will Apple Come After Them Too?
Apple objects to trademark registration application of a recipe app; Here's why

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RandomFactor writes:

Phys.org has the story on new research demonstrating an extremely small particle accelerator that uses lasers to generate terahertz frequency pulses of light to accelerate electrons.

Scientists have successfully developed a pocket-sized particle accelerator capable of projecting ultra-short electron beams with laser light at more than 99.99% of the speed of light.

To achieve this result, the researchers have had to slow down light to match the speed of the electrons using a specially designed metallic structure lined with quartz layers thinner than a human hair.

This huge leap forward simultaneously offers the ability to both measure and manipulate particle bunches on time scales of less than 10 femtoseconds (0.000 000 000 000 01 seconds, or the time is takes light to travel 1/100th of a millimeter). This will enable them to create strobe photographs of atomic motion.

Particle accelerators are widespread with applications in basic research in particle physics, materials characterisation, radiotherapy in hospitals, where they are used to treat cancer patients, radioisotope production for medical imaging, and security screening of cargo. The basic technology (radio-frequency oscillators) underpinning these machines however, was developed for radar during the Second World War.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

The pandemic has changed how criminals hide their cash:

The pandemic has forced criminal gangs to come up with new ways to move money around. In turn, this has upped the stakes for anti-money laundering (AML) teams tasked with detecting suspicious financial transactions and following them back to their source.

Key to their strategies are new AI tools. While some larger, older financial institutions have been slower to adapt their rule-based legacy systems, smaller, newer firms are using machine learning to look out for anomalous activity, whatever it might be.

It is hard to assess the exact scale of the problem. But according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, between 2% and 5% of global GDP—between $800 billion and $2 trillion at current figures—is laundered every year. Most goes undetected. Estimates suggest that only around 1% of profits earned by criminals is seized.

And that was before covid-19 hit. Fraud is up, with fears around covid-19 creating a lucrative market for counterfeit protective gear or medication. More people spending time online also creates a bigger pool for phishing attacks and other scams. And, of course, drugs are still being bought and sold.

Lockdown made it harder to hide the proceeds—at least to begin with. The problem for criminals is that many of the best businesses for laundering money were also those hit hardest by the pandemic. Small shops, restaurants, bars, and clubs are favored because they are cash-heavy, which makes it easier to mix up ill-gotten gains with legal income.

With bank branches closed, it has been harder to make large cash deposits. Wire transfer services like Western Union—which usually allow anyone to walk in off the street and send money overseas—shut their premises, too.

But criminals are nothing if not opportunistic. As the normal channels for money laundering closed, new ones opened up. Vast sums of money have started flowing into small businesses again thanks to government bailouts. This creates a flurry of financial activity that provides cover for money laundering.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward write:

With the latest long range Tesla rated at 402 miles, newcomer Lucid Air demos one of their cars going 450 miles in real-world driving. An additional 40 miles were driven after the Motor Trend witness called it a day.

2021 Lucid Air First Ride Review: 450 Miles on One Charge!:

Lucid engineering is located close to Tesla in the Bay Area and the article claims they employ 1200 people at this point--not a small effort. A clipping from the end of the story:

Back on the road and heading north, we pass a milestone: 402 miles, or the highest rated range for which a Tesla model is certified. At this point, the Air's battery reads 16 percent remaining, and the range prediction has now dipped to 478 miles. An hour and a half later, we roll into Lucid HQ for a coffee, a stretch, and a shake of our foggy heads, then crawl back in and head out again. We cut west across the Dumbarton Bridge to lap up and down the 101 as it arteries along San Francisco Bay's east side, increasingly reddening on the traffic map. The day is starting its reverse transition to twilight, and we're experiencing range anxiety of the opposite type: Instead of worrying about running out of juice, we're getting anxious that we'll never stop driving.

At 6:20 p.m., 450 miles and almost 12 hours after we started, we pull back up to HQ. A stubborn 7 percent of energy is displayed on the screen, predicting a range of 484 miles—that's now probably very close to reality for this trip—and we sit silently for several seconds before I concede the battery has beaten us. That's enough; we're calling it a day. I slowly climb out of the car and straighten up. Later that evening, a fresh Lucid driver took out the car again, finally ending the experiment at 490 miles. Not the FEV laboratory's 517, but 95 percent of it, every mile demonstrated in the hills and heat of the real world.

Also noted in the article is that Lucid have developed their system in-house, not using available parts from suppliers. They make their own 900V battery pack which allows motors to be smaller, and charging (with the right charger) to be faster.

Getting closer, but still not enough range for this AC--I'm headed out for a 730 mile road trip tomorrow, it took about 12 hours when I did the same trip last month (didn't want to fly for viral reasons). I stopped to pee a few times and twice for gas, never pushed the ~400 mile range of the gas tank of my Impreza. Yes, it's a bit noisy, that's what ear plugs are for!

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

The Perseid meteor shower of 2020 peaks tonight! Here's how to watch live.:

The Perseids are back! This week, you can catch the 2020 Perseid meteor shower, a favorite of many skywatchers, as it peaks thanks to four different webcasts over the next two days from the Virtual Telescope Project, NASA, Lowell Observatory and the online astronomy learning platform Slooh.

The Perseids meteor shower appears when Earth passes through the rubble left by Comet Swift-Tuttle and peaks this week in the early morning hours on Wednesday (Aug. 12), according to NASA. But you should still be able to enjoy great views of the Perseids on Aug. 11 and Aug. 13 as well if you can find your way to some dark skies.

Perseid meteor shower 2020: When, where & how to see it:

Spectators can expect to see the greatest number of meteors during the shower's peak on the morning of August 12, according to NASA. Years without moonlight see higher rates of meteors per hour, and in outburst years (such as in 2016) the rate can be between 150-200 meteors an hour.

[...] To best see the Perseids, go to the darkest possible location and lean back to observe as much sky as possible directly above you.

takyon writes:

Russia's space leader blusters about Mars in the face of stiff budget cuts

The leader of Russia's civil space program appears to be increasingly disengaged from reality. In recent months Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Roscosmos, has given a series of interviews in which he has made all manner of big promises about the supposedly bright future of Russia's space program.

For example, in an interview published just today, Rogozin made the fantastical claim that his country's space program has the technical means to reach Mars and land cosmonauts there within eight to 10 years. If Russia is ready to finance such a plan, Rogozin guaranteed that Roscosmos stands ready to deliver.

Russia, Rogozin also recently said, is ready to do reuse better than SpaceX and the United States. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, he said, is only "semi-reusable," and Russia aspires to build a 21st-century rocket capable of 100 flights. He then reiterated that Russia would like to develop a version of its Soyuz rocket that has a methane-fueled engine.

SpaceX has flown its Falcon 9 first-stage rockets five times, and it plans to push toward reusing each booster 10 times. It is not clear what, if any, steps Russia has taken toward reuse. The reality is that Russia depends on reliable but decades-old technology to get into space. And while Rogozin talks a good game about sending his cosmonauts to the Moon or to Mars, and about competing with SpaceX on reusable rockets, this appears to be mostly bluster.

If you are still under any illusions about the state of Russia's space program, now is the time to dispel them.

Previously: Russian Space Agency Abolished and Replaced Following Financial Violations
Price War Between SpaceX and Russia
Russian Rocket Builder May Have Replaced Special Alloys With Cheap Metals
NASA and Roscosmos Release Joint Statement on ISS Leak Amid Rumors
Head of Russian Space Agency Roscosmos Wavers on Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway
Russia Space Chief Spars with Elon Musk Over Launch Pricing

Original Submission

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."

Original Submission

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."

Original Submission

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.

Original Submission