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martyb writes:

Sea level rise quickens as Greenland ice sheet sheds record amount:

Greenland's massive ice sheet saw a record net loss of 532 billion tonnes last year, raising red flags about accelerating sea level rise, according to new findings.

That is equivalent to an additional three million tonnes of water streaming into global oceans every day, or six Olympic pools every second.

Crumbling glaciers and torrents of melt-water slicing through Greenland's ice block—as thick as ten Eiffel Towers end-to-end—were the single biggest source of global sea level rise in 2019 and accounted for 40 percent of the total, researchers reported in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

[...] "2019 and the four other record-loss years have all occurred in the last decade," lead author Ingo Sasgen, a glaciologist at the Helmholtze Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, told AFP.

The ice sheet is now tracking the worst-case global warming scenario of the UN's climate science advisory panel, the IPCC, noted Andrew Shepherd, director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.

[...] Until 2000, Greenland's [runoff ...] was compensated by fresh snowfall.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Did a journal retract your paper on homeopathy? Meet the journal that will publish your complaint:

A homeopathy journal that Elsevier dropped in the wake of concerns about excessive self-citation appears to have carved out a new niche for itself: self-pity.

In 2016, Homeopathy lost its slot on Thomson Reuters's (now Clarivate's)  influential journal rankings list after an analysis found that more than 70% of citations in the papers it published were of papers it published. That led Elsevier to cut the journal loose — although it remains in business under the umbrella of Thieme, and has since earned its impact factor back. (For more on why that's important to journals, see this story.)

Part of Homeopathy's mission under new ownership, it seems, is to criticize journals that have spurned its contributors. Well, one journal, anyway.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Major quantum computational breakthrough is shaking up physics and maths:

MIP* = RE is not a typo. It is a groundbreaking discovery and the catchy title of a recent paper in the field of quantum complexity theory. Complexity theory is a zoo of "complexity classes" – collections of computational problems – of which MIP* and RE are but two.

The 165-page paper shows that these two classes are the same. That may seem like an insignificant detail in an abstract theory without any real-world application. But physicists and mathematicians are flocking to visit the zoo, even though they probably don't understand it all. Because it turns out the discovery has astonishing consequences for their own disciplines.

[...] RE stands for problems that can be solved by a computer. It is the zoo. Let's have a look at some subclasses.

[...] Allowing the provers of MIP to share an entangled qubit leads to the class MIP*.

It seems obvious that communication between the provers can only serve to help the provers coordinate lies rather than assist the interrogator in discovering truth. For that reason, nobody expected that allowing more communication would make computational problems more reliable and solvable. Surprisingly, we now know that MIP* = RE. This means that quantum communication behaves wildly differently to normal communication.

IP = Interactive Polynomial time solvable using an interactive proof.
MIP = Multiple Interactive Provers that are not allowed to communicate between each other.
RE = Recursively Enumerable.

[Edited to add a definition for RE and to correct the definition of IP. - Ed]

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Microsoft Flight Simulator's Data Insanity Spawns Enormous Buildings And Anomalies From OpenStreetMap:

The OpenStreetMap project is an excellent example of how powerful crowdsourced data can be, but that's not to say the system is perfect. Invalid data, added intentionally or otherwise, can sometimes slip through the cracks and lead to some interesting problems. A fact that developers Asobo Studio are becoming keenly aware of as players explore their recently released Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

Like a Wiki, users can update OpenStreetMap and about a year ago, user nathanwright120 marked a 2 story building near Melbourne, Australia as having an incredible 212 floors[*] (we think it's this commit). The rest of his edits seem legitimate enough, so it's a safe bet that it was simply a typo made in haste. The sort of thing that could happen to anyone. Not long after, thanks to the beauty of open source, another user picked up on the error and got it fixed up.

But not before some script written by Asobo Studio went through [and] sucked up the OpenStreetMap data for Australia and implemented it into their virtual recreation of the planet. The result is that the hotly anticipated flight simulator now features a majestic structure in the Melbourne skyline [Tweet] that rises far above...everything.

The whole thing is great fun, and honestly, players probably wouldn't even mind if it got left in as a Easter egg. It's certainly providing them with some free publicity; in the video below you can see a player by the name of Conor O'Kane land his aircraft on the dizzying edifice, a feat which has earned him nearly 100,000 views in just a few days.

[*] By way of comparison, the tallest building in the world — the Burj Khalifa — has 163 floors. This "Tower of Melbourne" exceeds that record by nearly 50 floors!

There are links to a YouTube video: Landing on the Melbourne Citadel in Microsoft Flight Simulator (06:30) and also to a Redit thread Found the Wall in the North.

It's a great article that considers the challenges of validating user-sourced data — well worth the quick read!

Which leads me to ask: what glaring data errors have you encountered, user-sourced or otherwise?

Previously:
(2020-08-02) How Microsoft Flight Simulator Returned to the Skies

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Tesla stock reaches $2,000 amid soaring interest in EV companies:

Tesla's stock closed at a record high of $2,000 on Thursday, pushing the company's market capitalization to $370 billion. Tesla has been on a weeklong rally since announcing a five-for-one stock split. The split will be distributed to anyone who holds the stock tomorrow—Friday, August 21.

A little more than two months have passed since Tesla's stock first reached $1,000 per share. Last month, Tesla announced a solid second-quarter profit of $104 million. It was the fourth straight quarter of profits.

That could qualify Tesla for inclusion in the S&P 500 stock index. If Tesla wins a slot in the S&P 500, funds that track the index would need to buy Tesla shares. That could push the stock price up even further.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

An AI just embarrassed the US Air Force in a virtual dogfight:

We've already seen AI conquer masters of chess, Go, and StarCraft II. But could it defeat an Air Force pilot in a (virtual) dogfight?

[...] Heron [AI] quickly built up a 4-0 lead. Gunned down four times but somehow still alive, Banger [human] had no choice but to change up his gameplan.

"The standard things that we do as fighter pilots are not working, so for this last one, I'll try to change it up a little bit just to see if we can do something different," he said.

"That initial turn is where I lose a lot of life... I've just gotta look for opportunities to minimize that distance separation away from the adversary, try to get him back in so I press inside or stay outside his nose area."

Banger pulled up to 9Gs — nine times the force of gravity — and hit speeds over 500mph. He then dropped the jet down to 13,000 feet, trying to drag Heron close to the ground. The plan seemed to be working. Heron couldn't get its gun low enough to shoot.

But within a few seconds, the AI was back on Banger's tail. Lead commentator Chris "Disco" Demay called the action:

Just inside of 3,000 feet... Looks like Heron's saddling up — and with the kill.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Optical communications, transmitting data using infrared lasers, has the potential to help NASA return more data to Earth than ever. The benefits of this technology to exploration and Earth science missions are huge. In support of a mission to demonstrate this technology, NASA recently completed installing its newest optical ground station in Haleakala, Hawaii.

The state-of-the-art ground station, called Optical Ground Station 2 (OGS-2), is the second of two optical ground stations to be built that will collect data transmitted to Earth by NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). Launching in early 2021, this trailblazing mission will be the linchpin in NASA's first operational optical communications relay system. While other NASA efforts have used optical communications, this will be NASA's first relay system using optical entirely, giving NASA the opportunity to test this method of communications and learn valuable lessons from its implementation. Relay satellites create critical communications links between science and exploration missions and Earth, enabling these missions to transmit important data to scientists and mission managers back home.

Not as sexy as orbital death lasers, but still pretty neat.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

ArsTechnica:

With CFOs looking to trim down real estate costs, data centers may be the de facto gravitational center of organizations in terms of square footage (aside from manufacturing plants, that is). Companies may see a benefit in using short-term office space to handle planned surges in "on site" work, as they sublet out sections of their own offices or escape from leases in expensive office towers.

The strength of the office is collaboration, so offices will have to become collaboration-centric. That doesn't mean the open-plan office fad will continue, however. What it means is that technology is going to have to make the office more of a hub for remote collaboration—more video, more screen sharing, and more virtualization of physical collaboration tools like whiteboards. Conference rooms are going to have fewer chairs and more screens, with face-to-face collaboration via video becoming the de-facto way to do meetings.

Work that can only be done in the office—whether it be due to compliance issues, the computing or bandwidth required to do it, or the need for interaction with expensive physical objects—will also have to leverage collaboration with people who can't be there to put hands on. Tasks like rapid prototyping and product engineering and lab work, for example, require interaction with expensive gear that can't be dropped into a virtual collaboration space (yet) but can benefit from visiting and remote collaborators.

Can a mix of VR/AR substitute for a physical office for the purposes of collaboration?

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Phoenix666 writes:

CNet:

Prosthesis is a 9,000-pound quadruped, or four-legged machine, that can lift a car, climb over boulders and run in the snow. But the ultimate goal is to pioneer an entirely new sport of mech racing.

Imagine these giant mech suits racing around a parkour course with obstacles and heavy objects to push or drag, and you have an idea of where this sport is headed.

[...] Prosthesis has been in development for over 10 years, but now it's time for the mech suit to make its public debut. The first professional athlete to sit in the driver's seat was Cassie Hawrysh, a Canadian champion skeleton racer. During an intense three-day training session learning to control the mech, she managed to take a step in the quadruped. "That was like a monumental event for us," she says, "but I also fell flat on Prosthesis' face a couple times, which was hilarious and terrifying because you're falling from height."

Mech racing, coming to you soon on the Ocho.

Previously:
(2017-04-07) America Takes On Japan in Terrifying Giant Mech Battle This August
(2015-05-19) Giant Fighting Robots at Maker Faire

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Phoenix666 writes:

Al Jazeera:

Water levels at China's giant Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river are inching closer to their maximum after torrential rains raised inflows to a record high, official data showed on Friday.

With 75,000 cubic metres per second of water flowing in from the Yangtze River on Thursday, the reservoir's depth had reached 165.6 metres (543 feet) by Friday morning, up more than two metres (6.6 feet) overnight and almost 20 metres (65.6 feet) higher than the official warning level.

The maximum designed depth of China's largest reservoir is 175 metres (574 feet).

Authorities raised the discharge volume to a record 48,800 cubic metres per second on Thursday to try and lower water levels, and they might have to increase it again to avoid the possibility of a dangerous overflow.

Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai are all downstream...

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

New BlackBerry Phone Planned by Third Party:

It looks like BlackBerry hardware is back from the brink of extinction once again. Today, the security startup OnwardMobility announced plans to release a new 5G BlackBerry smartphone with a physical keyboard. It could arrive in North America and Europe as soon as the first half of 2021.

This may sound familiar. A few years ago, BlackBerry seemed to be a thing of the past. Then, TCL agreed to manufacture two BlackBerry-branded phones. In February, TCL decided not to renew the deal with BlackBerry, and this month, it stopped selling the devices. Thanks to OnwardMobility, BlackBerry may get one more chance.

Also at Arstechnica and CNet.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Super-dense lithium-sulfur battery gives electric plane a 230-mile range:

British company Oxis says it's developed safe, high-density lithium-sulfur battery chemistry and will supply Texas Aircraft Manufacturing with a 90-kWh, next-gen battery pack to power the eColt, an electric aircraft with a two hour, 230-mile range.

[...] In practice, they have had issues – notably with the old chestnut of dendrite formation, in which ion deposits on the anode grow into long spikes of conductive material that short circuit the cell and cause it to catch fire. The lithium-metal anodes also tend to degrade in less dangerous ways that eventually just make the batteries die.

In a piece written for IEEE Spectrum, Oxis head of battery development Mark Crittenden details how his team is addressing these problems with a thin layer of ceramic material at the anode, and it's resulting in high-energy cells with significantly longer lifespans than previous Li-S designs.

"Typical lithium-ion designs can hold from 100 to 265 Wh/kg, depending on the other performance characteristics for which it has been optimized, such as peak power or long life," writes Crittenden. "Oxis recently developed a prototype lithium-sulfur pouch cell that proved capable of 470 Wh/kg, and we expect to reach 500 Wh/kg within a year. And because the technology is still new and has room for improvement, it's not unreasonable to anticipate 600 Wh/kg by 2025."

Still needs work on the limited number of number of charge cycles.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Adobe Lightroom iOS update permanently deleted users' photos:

A recent update to the Adobe Lightroom app permanently deleted some iOS users' photos and presets, an Adobe rep confirmed on the Photoshop feedback forums. Adobe has since corrected the issue, which was first spotted by PetaPixel, but not before drawing the ire of many disappointed users.

[...] Needless to say, users who had just lost photos and presets were not happy. "Rikk, we understand the announcement, however this doesn't solve the problem," wrote Ewelina Wojtyczka. "People lost months/years of their work. Apologies will not bring it back."

Adobe hasn't further commented on the bug outside Flohr's post. [...] While Adobe shouldn't be let off the hook for this error, perhaps the importance of multiple backups is the hard lesson we can learn from this.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

3-D printing 'greener' buildings using local soil:

The construction industry is currently facing two major challenges: the demand for sustainable infrastructure and the need to repair deteriorating buildings, bridges and roads. While concrete is the material of choice for many construction projects, it has a large carbon footprint, resulting in high waste and energy expenditure. Today, researchers report progress toward a sustainable building material made from local soil, using a 3-D printer to create a load-bearing structure.

[...] The researchers began by collecting soil samples from a colleague's backyard and tailoring the material with a new environmentally friendly additive so that it would bind together and be easily extruded through the 3-D printer. Because soils vary greatly by location, their aim was to have a chemistry "toolkit" that could transform any type of soil into printable building material. From there Bajpayee built small-scale test structures, cubes measuring two inches on each side, to see how the material performed when extruded into stacked layers.

The next step was to ensure that the mixture is load bearing, meaning that it will stand up to the weight of the layers but also other materials used in construction such as rebar and insulation. To help with this, the researchers strengthened the clay mixture by "zippering" the microscopic layers on its surface to prevent it from absorbing water and expanding, which would compromise the printed structure. With this method, the researchers showed that the material could hold twice as much weight as the unmodified clay mixture.

Journal Reference:
Aayushi Bajpayee, Mehdi Farahbakhsh, Umme Zakira, et al. In situ Resource Utilization and Reconfiguration of Soils Into Construction Materials for the Additive Manufacturing of Buildings, frontiers in materials (2020) 7:52. DOI: 10.3389/fmats.2020.00052

The approach is thought to both lower the environmental footprint of construction on Earth and model how construction can be effected on the Moon or Mars.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

College contact-tracing app readily leaked personal data, report finds:

In an attempt to mitigate the potential spread of COVID-19, one Michigan college is requiring all students to install an app that will track their live locations at all times. Unfortunately, researchers have already found two major vulnerabilities in the app that can expose students' personal and health data.

Albion College informed students two weeks before the start of the fall term that they would be required to install and run the contact tracing app, called Aura.

[...] Aura, however, goes all in on real-time location-tracking instead, as TechCrunch reports. The app collects students' names, location, and COVID-19 status, then generates a QR code containing that information.

[...] TechCrunch used a network analysis tool to discover that the code was not generated on a device but rather on a hidden Aura website—and that TechCrunch could then easily change the account number in the URL to generate new QR codes for other accounts and receive access to other individuals' personal data.

A student at Albion, looking into the app's source code, also found hard-coded security keys for the app's backend servers. A researcher took a look and verified that those keys gave access to "patient data, including COVID-19 test results with names, addresses, and dates of birth," TechCrunch reports.

Original Submission