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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Remember the days of buying disks to play games on a console? Right. Like, yesterday. Sony is upping its game for digital delivery with the introduction of PS5 Digital Edition which is currently available to be pre-ordered by PSN members in good standing. This sets the PS5 apart from the other consoles from the last generation making it one step closer to having all games delivered by and available only from The Cloud.

Interested? Register on-line to get your chance to pre-order. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Does this mean rootkits will be distributed from The Cloud instead of by disk in the future?

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Spit test promises to diagnose heart attacks in just 10 minutes:

New preliminary research is suggesting a simple saliva test can detect the presence of a protein biomarker known to signal the occurrence of a heart attack in just 10 minutes. If this prototype test is validated in future studies it could dramatically accelerate the speed at which patients with cardiovascular problems can be diagnosed and treated.

During a myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack, levels of a protein called troponin rapidly rise in a patient's blood stream. Not every heart attack is immediately apparent. Symptoms such as chest pain, nausea and fatigue can be frustratingly non-specific, so when a patient presents to an emergency room with these signs doctors will quickly perform a blood test to measure troponin levels. The blood test generally takes around an hour to return a result.

[...] Saliva samples were taken from 32 heart attack patients with confirmed blood troponin results. Control saliva samples were also taken from 13 healthy subjects.

The initial results proved promising, with the processed saliva samples from the heart attack patients testing positive for troponin 84 percent of the time. Only six percent of the unprocessed saliva samples tested positive for troponin, suggesting the processing procedure is vital in concentrating the saliva samples for effective results. It is unclear at this stage what the "processing" procedure entails, or how easy and affordable it is.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Apple won't let Facebook tell users about 30-percent Apple tax on events:

Facebook announced a new feature for paid online events earlier this month. It allows small businesses to host virtual cooking classes, workout sessions, happy hours, and other events and charge people to participate.

In its announcement, Facebook said it was not taking a cut of customers' payments. That means that on Android, "small businesses will keep 100% of the revenue they generate," Facebook says. But the story was different on iOS thanks to Apple's 30-percent cut of in-app purchases.

[...] the social media giant wanted to alert users to the 30-percent charge.

[...] But Facebook says Apple forced the company to delete the notice, dubbing it a violation of the App Store's policy against showing "irrelevant" information to users.

Apple's rules state that an app developer shouldn't "include irrelevant information, including but not limited to information about Apple or the development process."

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

A coffee and catnap keep you sharp on the nightshift, study suggests:

Lead researcher, Dr Stephanie Centofanti from UniSA Online and the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at UniSA says the finding could help counteract the kind of sleep inertia that is experienced by many shiftworkers.

[...] "A 'caffeine-nap' (or 'caff-nap') could be a viable alternative -- by drinking a coffee before taking a nap, shiftworkers can gain the benefits of a 20-30-minute nap then the perk of the caffeine when they wake. It's a win-win."

The small pilot study tested the impact of 200 mg of caffeine (equivalent to 1-2 regular cups of coffee) consumed by participants just before a 3.30am 30-minute nap, comparing results with a group that took a placebo.

Participants taking a 'caffeine-nap' showed marked improvements in both performance and alertness, indicating the potential of a 'caffeine-nap' to counteract sleep grogginess.

Journal Reference:
Stephanie Centofanti, Siobhan Banks, et al.A pilot study investigating the impact of a caffeine-nap on alertness during a simulated night shift, Chronobiology International (DOI: 10.1080/07420528.2020.1804922)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow69:

US Laptop Shortage Could Derail Remote Learning:

As students and teachers prepare for a return to in-person learning for at least some of the time this fall, many of the nation's schools are facing shortages and delays for laptops and tablets needed for online learning, an Associated Press investigation revealed.

Lenovo, HP and Dell, the nation's largest computer companies, have informed school districts that they are short nearly five million laptops.

[...] Last month, at the request of President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed sanctions on 11 Chinese companies, including Lenovo, AP reported. School administrators have asked the Trump administration to devise a solution because remote learning without laptops is impossible.

Lenovo has informed school districts of the supply chain delays and the trade controls set by the Commerce Department, which would cause another slowdown. Lenovo declined to respond to an inquiry from AP.

Have any Soylentils run into this?

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takyon writes:

This AI Creates Detailed 3D Renderings from Thousands of Tourist Photos

A team of researchers at Google have come up with a technique that can combine thousands of tourist photos into detailed 3D renderings that take you inside a scene... even if the original photos used vary wildly in terms of lighting or include other problematic elements like people or cars.

The tech is called "NeRF in the Wild" or "NeRF-W" because it takes Google Brain's Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) technology and applies it to "unstructured and uncontrolled photo collections" like the thousands of tourist photos used to create the demo you see below^[1][2], and the samples in the video above^[3].

It's basically an advanced, neural network-driven interpolation that manages to include geometric info about the scene while removing 'transient occluders' like people or cars and smoothing out changes in lighting.

^[1] demo1.gif (36.75 MiB)
^[2] demo2.gif (35.66 MiB)
^[3] YouTube video (3m42s).

NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections (arXiv:2008.02268v2 [cs.CV])

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Photonics researchers report breakthrough in miniaturizing light-based chips:

Photonic integrated circuits that use light instead of electricity for computing and signal processing promise greater speed, increased bandwidth, and greater energy efficiency than traditional circuits using electricity.

[...] Using a material widely adopted by photonics researchers, the [University of] Rochester team has created the smallest electro-optical modulator yet. The modulator is a key component of a photonics-based chip, controlling how light moves through its circuits.

In Nature Communications, the lab of Qiang Lin, professor of electrical and computer engineering, describes using a thin film of lithium niobate (LN) bonded on a silicon dioxide layer to create not only the smallest LN modulator yet, but also one that operates at high speed and is energy efficient.

Journal Reference:
Mingxiao Li, Jingwei Ling, Yang He, et al. Lithium niobate photonic-crystal electro-optic modulator [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17950-7)

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RandomFactor writes:

Bayreuth researchers develop new biomaterials from spider silk

New biomaterials developed at the University of Bayreuth eliminate risk of infection and facilitate healing processes. A research team led by Prof. Dr. Thomas Scheibel has succeeded in combining these material properties which are highly relevant to biomedicine. These nanostructured materials are based on spider silk proteins. They prevent colonization by bacteria and fungi, but at the same time proactively assist in the regeneration of human tissue. They are therefore ideal for implants, wound dressings, prostheses, contact lenses, and other everyday aids. The scientists have presented their innovation in the journal "Materials Today".

Journal Reference:
Sushma Kumari, Gregor Lang, Elise DeSimone, et al. Engineered spider silk-based 2D and 3D materials prevent microbialinfestation [open], Materials Today (DOI: 10.1016/j.mattod.202 0.06.009)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Google Says It Just Ran The First-Ever Quantum Simulation of a Chemical Reaction:

Of the many high expectations we have of quantum technology, one of the most exciting has to be the ability to simulate chemistry on an unprecedented level. Now we have our first glimpse of what that might look like.

Together with a team of collaborators, the Google AI Quantum team has used their 54 qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, to simulate changes in the configuration of a molecule called diazene.

As far as chemical reactions go, it's one of the simplest ones we know of. Diazene is little more than a couple of nitrogens linked in a double bond, each towing a hydrogen atom.

However, the quantum computer accurately described changes in the positions of hydrogen to form different diazene isomers. The team also used their system to arrive at an accurate description of the binding energy of hydrogen in increasingly bigger chains.

Also at New Scientist.

Hartree-Fock on a superconducting qubit quantum computer (DOI: 10.1126/science.abb9811) (DX)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Tools behind Belarus internet censorship potentially revealed:

According to a Bloomberg report, the technology used to block much of the internet access during the recent presidential elections in Belarus has come from a US-based company.

The report states that Sandvine Inc., had supplied the necessary equipment to the Lukashenko government a few months earlier through an intermediary.

On August 9, Belarus held the presidential elections where Alexander Lukashenko was elected for the sixth consecutive time. However, the Election Day was marked by irregularities that cast doubt on the transparency of the elections.

In addition to the barricades built by security forces that prevented the passage of civilians to Minsk, Belarus' capital, the internet services in the country had a major disruption that affected access to websites such as social networks, news pages, and messaging applications.

The disruption lasted for up to three days, and there are still websites that are inaccessible in a normal way, so citizens need to use tools such as VPNs or specialized browsers.

[...] This would not be the first time the technology has been accused of being used to repress a nation. Citizen Lab, a Toronto security firm, had indicated that in 2018 equipment from this manufacturer was used in internet blocks that occurred in Egypt and Turkey. Sandvine Inc. said this investigation was false.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Brave takes brave stand against Google's plan to turn websites into ad-blocker-thwarting Web Bundles:

A proposed Google web specification threatens to turn websites into inscrutable digital blobs that resist content blocking and code scrutiny, according to Peter Snyder, senior privacy researcher at Brave Software.

On Tuesday, Snyder published a memo warning that Web Bundles threaten user agency and web code observability. He raised this issue back in February, noting that Web Bundles would prevent ad blockers from blocking unwanted subresources. He said at the time he was trying to work with the spec's authors to address concerns but evidently not much progress has been made.

His company makes the Brave web browser, which is based on Google's open-source Chromium project though implements privacy protections, by addition or omission, not available in Google's commercial incarnation of Chromium, known as Chrome.

[...] The Web Bundles API is a Google-backed web specification for bundling the multitude of files that make up a website into a single .wbn file, which can then be shared or delivered from a content delivery network node rather than a more distant server. It's one of several related specifications for packaging websites.

The problem, as Snyder sees it, is that Web Bundles takes away the very essence of the web, the URL.

"At root, what makes the web different, more open, more user-centric than other application systems, is the URL," he wrote. "Because URLs (generally) point to one thing, researchers and activists can measure, analyze and reason about those URLs in advance; other users can then use this information to make decisions about whether, and in what way, they'd like to load the thing the URL points to."

An individual concerned about security or privacy, for example, can examine a JavaScript file associated with a particular URL and take action if it looks abusive. That becomes difficult when the file isn't easily teased out of a larger whole. Web Bundles set up private namespaces for URLs, so privacy tools that rely on URLs don't work.

"The concern is that by making URLs not meaningful, like just these arbitrary indexes into a package, the websites will become things like .SWF files or PDF files, just a big blob that you can't reason about independently, and it'll become an all or nothing deal," Snyder explained in a phone interview with The Register.

Separately, Google has been working to hide full URLs in the Chrome omnibox.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Take a closer look at Elon Musk's Neuralink surgical robot – TechCrunch:

While the science was front-and-center in Elon Musk's presentation about Neuralink, his human brain computer inference company, the surgical robot the company debuted made a splash of its own. The rounded polycarbonate sci-fi design of the brain surgeon bot looks like something out of the Portal franchise, but it's actually the creation of Vancouver-based industrial design firm Woke Studio. To be clear, Musk's engineers and scientists have created the underlying technology, but Woke built the robot's look and user experience, as well as the behind-the-ear communication end piece that Neuralink has shown in prior presentations.

[...] "While the patient may not be awake to see the machine in action, it was still important to design a non-intimidating robot that can aesthetically live alongside the iconic machines in Musk's portfolio," the company explains in a press release. "It also needed to meet a long list of medical requirements in terms of sterility and maintenance, and provide safe and seamless utilization for its operators."

Previously:
Elon Musk to Show Off Working Brain-Hacking Device

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Researchers develop a fast, accurate, low-cost COVID-19 test:

A new low-cost diagnostic test for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) quickly delivers accurate results without the need for sophisticated equipment, according to a study published August 27 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Teng Xu of the Vision Medicals Center for Infectious Diseases, Tieying Hou of the Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Bing Gu of the Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University, Jianwei Wang of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, and colleagues.

[...] In the new study, the researchers developed an alternative COVID-19 test by leveraging CRISPR-based technology, which has been widely used in recent years for gene editing. The assay, named CRISPR-COVID, enables high-throughput detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) -- the virus that causes COVID-19. CRISPR-COVID delivers comparable sensitivity and specificity as mNGS within as short as 40 minutes. When produced at a large scale, the material cost of a CRISPR-COVID test could be less than 70 cents, suggesting that CRISPR-COVID is a competitive alternative not only technologically but also financially.

Journal Reference:
Tieying Hou, Weiqi Zeng, Minling Yang, et al. Development and evaluation of a rapid CRISPR-based diagnostic for COVID-19, PLOS Pathogens (DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1008705)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Mother transmitted COVID-19 to baby during pregnancy, UTSW physicians report:

A pregnant mother who tested positive for COVID-19 transmitted the virus causing the disease to her prematurely born baby, UT Southwestern physicians report. Both were treated and recovered.

The case, detailed in an article published last month in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, adds to a growing body of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be transmitted in utero. It also underscores the importance of limiting COVID-19 exposure for pregnant women.

[...] In the case described in the paper, a woman who was 34 weeks pregnant visited the emergency room with signs of premature labor and was admitted to the COVID unit at Parkland Memorial Hospital when she tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While she did not have the typical respiratory symptoms associated with COVID-19, she did have a fever and diarrhea, which suggested possible viral infection.

[...] The woman, who did not know how she acquired the virus, remained hospitalized because of her COVID-19 diagnosis. Three days after admission, her water broke. Following an eight-hour labor in early May, she gave birth to a healthy 7-pound, 3-ounce girl.

[...] About 24 hours after birth, the newborn developed a fever that spiked, and she also showed signs of respiratory distress, including an abnormally high breathing rate and lower levels of oxygen in her blood. Sisman and her colleagues ran tests for viruses and bacteria. While other tests came back negative, a COVID-19 test was positive at both 24 and 48 hours after birth.

"At that time, the knowledge we had was that transmission doesn't occur in utero, so we really weren't expecting that at all," says Sisman.

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Freeman writes:

SpaceX satellites' effect on night sky can't be eliminated, astronomers say:

Broadband satellites being launched by SpaceX and other companies will inevitably have a negative impact on astronomers' ability to observe the night sky, according to a new report by astronomers. There are no mitigation strategies that can completely eliminate the satellites' impact on astronomical observations—other than not launching satellites at all—but the report includes recommendations for how satellite operators can minimize disruption and how observatories can adjust to the changes.

The report released this week is titled, "Impact of Satellite Constellations on Optical Astronomy and Recommendations Toward Mitigations."

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