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Phoenix666 writes:

Holy lockdown! The Batman and Dune movies’ releases delayed:

US-based entertainment giant Warner Bros says it is delaying the release of Dune and The Batman movies, another setback for an industry hit by coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and physical distancing measures that have closed theatres worldwide.

Dune, a science-fiction movie directed by Canadian director Dennis Villeneuve, is now scheduled to open in October 2021, instead of December. The release of The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson, has been moved to 2022 from October 2021.

Movie releases have been getting delayed even after restrictions were eased, with people still wary of stepping into cinema halls, and many theatres still not operational.

On Monday, the world’s second-biggest cinema chain, Cineworld, decided to temporarily close its UK and US movie theatres in an attempt to survive a collapse in filmmaking and cinema-going.

Can the theater industry survive?

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Phoenix666 writes:

Cisco Ordered to Pay $1.9 Billion in Cybersecurity Patent Infringement Case:

A US district judge has ordered Cisco to pay $1.9 billion to Centripetal Networks, Inc., for infringing on four patents related to cybersecurity.

Founded in 2009, Centripetal focuses on cyber threat intelligence, providing solutions that help organizations defeat cyber-attacks. The company has developed technology for operationalizing and automating threat intelligence and has been awarded various patents in the United States and abroad.

In a lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia in March 2018, the company claimed that numerous Cisco product series have been infringing on five of its patents for years.

Cisco vows to appeal the decision. Will the deeper pockets prevail?

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takyon writes:

DDR5 is Coming: First 64GB DDR5-4800 Modules from SK Hynix

DDR5 is the next stage of platform memory for use in the majority of major compute platforms. The specification (as released in July 2020) brings the main voltage down from 1.2 V to 1.1 V, increases the maximum silicon die density by a factor 4, doubles the maximum data rate, doubles the burst length, and doubles the number of bank groups. Simply put, the JEDEC DDR specifications allows for a 128 GB unbuffered module running at DDR5-6400. RDIMMs and LRDIMMs should be able to go much higher, power permitting.

[...] SK Hynix's announcement today is that they are ready to start shipping DDR5 ECC memory to module manufacturers – specifically 16 gigabit dies built on its 1Ynm process that support DDR5-4800 to DDR5-5600 at 1.1 volts. With the right packaging technology (such as 3D TSV), SK Hynix says that partners can build 256 GB LRDIMMs. Additional binning of the chips for better-than-JEDEC speeds will have to be done by the module manufacturers themselves. SK Hynix also appears to have its own modules, specifically 32GB and 64GB RDIMMs at DDR5-4800, and has previously promised to offer memory up to DDR5-8400.

[...] As part of the announcement, it was interesting to see Intel as one of the lead partners for these modules. Intel has committed to enabling DDR5 on its Sapphire Rapids Xeon processor platform, due for initial launch in late 2021/2022. AMD was not mentioned with the announcement, and neither were any Arm partners.

SK Hynix quotes that DDR5 is expected to be 10% of the global market in 2021, increasing to 43% in 2024. The intersection point for consumer platforms is somewhat blurred at this point, as we're probably only half-way through (or less than half) of the DDR4 cycle. Traditionally we expect a cost interception between old and new technology when they are equal in market share, however the additional costs in voltage regulation that DDR5 requires is likely to drive up module costs – scaling from standard power delivery on JEDEC modules up to a beefier solution on the overclocked modules. It should however make motherboards cheaper in that regard.

See also: Insights into DDR5 Sub-timings and Latencies

Previously: DDR5 Standard to be Finalized by JEDEC in 2018
DDR5-4400 Test Chip Demonstrated
Cadence and Micron Plan Production of 16 Gb DDR5 Chips in 2019
SK Hynix Announces Plans for DDR5-8400 Memory, and More
JEDEC Releases DDR5 Memory Specification

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AnonTechie writes:

Black hole breakthroughs win Nobel physics prize:

Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for work to understand black holes. Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez were announced as this year's winners at a news conference in Stockholm. The winners will share the prize money of 10 million kronor (£864,200). Swedish industrialist and chemist Alfred Nobel founded the prizes in his will, written in 1895 - a year before his death.

David Haviland, chair of the physics prize committee, said this year's award "celebrates one of the most exotic objects in the Universe".

UK-born physicist Roger Penrose demonstrated that black holes were an inevitable consequence of Albert's Einstein's theory of general relativity. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez provided the most convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy - the Milky Way.

Also at: ABC News, phys.org, Nobel Foundation, and c|net.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow639:

Apple sues recycler for allegedly reselling 100,000 devices it was hired to scrap

Apple alleges in a lawsuit that Geep Canada sold approximately 100,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches, which the recycler had received to be stripped down and recycled.

Apple has long been working to increase how much it recycles, and even as it attempts to move more of that process in house, it still continues to rely on certain partner companies. Since 2014, that's included Geep Canada, the electronics recycling firm which Apple is reportedly now suing.

According to The Logic, Apple estimates that Geep Canada stole around 100,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches that it had been hired to recycle.

Geep does not deny the thefts, but has filed a counter suit claiming that they were conducted by three "rogue" employees without the knowledge of the company. Apple argues that these employees were in fact senior management at the firm.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Gemini South's high-def version of 'A Star is Born':

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is still more than a year from launching, but the Gemini South telescope in Chile has provided astronomers a glimpse of what the orbiting observatory should deliver.

Using a wide-field adaptive optics camera that corrects for distortion from Earth's atmosphere, Rice University's Patrick Hartigan and Andrea Isella and Dublin City University's Turlough Downes used the 8.1-meter telescope to capture near-infrared images of the Carina Nebula with the same resolution that's expected of the Webb Telescope.

Hartigan, Isella and Downes describe their work in a study published online this week in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Their images, gathered over 10 hours in January 2018 at the international Gemini Observatory, a program of the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, show part of a molecular cloud about 7,500 light years from Earth. All stars, including Earth's sun, are thought to form within molecular clouds.

"The results are stunning," Hartigan said. "We see a wealth of detail never observed before along the edge of the cloud, including a long series of parallel ridges that may be produced by a magnetic field, a remarkable almost perfectly smooth sine wave and fragments at the top that appear to be in the process of being sheared off the cloud by a strong wind."

The images show a cloud of dust and gas in the Carina Nebula known as the Western Wall. The cloud's surface is slowly evaporating in the intense glow of radiation from a nearby cluster of massive young stars. The radiation causes hydrogen to glow with near-infrared light, and specially designed filters allowed the astronomers to capture separate images of hydrogen at the cloud's surface and hydrogen that was evaporating.

An additional filter captured starlight reflected from dust, and combining the images allowed Hartigan, Isella and Downes to visualize how the cloud and cluster are interacting. Hartigan has previously observed the Western Wall with other NOIRLab telescopes and said it was a prime choice to follow up with Gemini's adaptive optics system.

Journal Reference:
Patrick Hartigan, Turlough Downes, and Andrea Isella, A JWST Preview: Adaptive-optics Images of H2, Br-γ, and K-continuum in Carina's Western Wall - IOPscience, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/abac08)

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Custom-made UEFI bootkit found lurking in the wild:

For only the second time in the annals of cybersecurity, researchers have found real-world malware lurking in the UEFI, the low-level and highly opaque firmware required to boot up nearly every modern computer.

As software that bridges a PC's device firmware with its operating system, the UEFI—short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface—is an operating system in its own right. It's located in a SPI-connected flash storage chip soldered onto the computer motherboard, making it difficult to inspect or patch the code. And it's the first thing to be run when a computer is turned on, allowing it influence or even control the OS, security apps, and all other software that follows.

Those characteristics make the UEFI the perfect place to stash malware, and that's just what an unknown attack group has done, according to new research presented on Monday by security firm Kaspersky Lab.

Last year, after the Moscow-based company integrated a new firmware scanner in its antivirus products, researchers recovered a suspicious UEFI image from one of its users. After further research, Kaspersky Lab discovered that a separate user had been infected by the same UEFI image in 2018. Both infected users were diplomatic figures located in Asia.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for FatPhil:

John McAfee Indicted for Tax Evasion:

An indictment was unsealed today charging John David McAfee with tax evasion and willful failure to file tax returns, announced Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard E. Zuckerman of the Justice Department's Tax Division and U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant for the Western District of Tennessee. The June 15, 2020 indictment was unsealed following McAfee's arrest in Spain where he is pending extradition.

According to the indictment, John McAfee earned millions in income from promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements, and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary. From 2014 to 2018, McAfee allegedly failed to file tax returns, despite receiving considerable income from these sources. The indictment does not allege that during these years McAfee received any income or had any connection with the anti-virus company bearing his name.

According to the indictment, McAfee allegedly evaded his tax liability by directing his income to be paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees. The indictment further alleges McAfee attempted to evade the IRS by concealing assets, including real property, a vehicle, and a yacht, in the names of others.

If convicted, McAfee faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison on each count of tax evasion and a maximum sentence of one year in prison on each count of willful failure to file a tax return. McAfee also faces a period of supervised release, restitution, and monetary penalties.

Coverage at:
ArsTechnica, AP News, Reuters, TechCrunch, and others.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Over the years, scientists have noted that those living in industrialized societies have a notably different microbiome compared to hunter-gatherer communities around the world. From this, a growing body of evidence has linked changes in our microbiome to many of the diseases of the modern industrialized world, such as inflammatory bowel disease, allergies, and obesity. The current study helps to characterize the change in gut microbiomes and highlights the value of ancient latrines as sources of bio-molecular information.

Piers Mitchell of Cambridge University specializes in the gut contents of past people through analysis of unusual substrates. By looking at the contents of archaeological latrines and desiccated feces under the microscope, he and his team have learned volumes about the intestinal parasites that plagued our ancestors.

[...] The team analyzed sediment from medieval latrines in Jerusalem and Riga, Latvia dating from the 14th-15th century CE. The first challenge was distinguishing bacteria that once formed the ancient gut from those that are normally found in the soil, an unavoidable consequence of working with archaeological material.

The researchers identified a wide range of bacteria, archaea, protozoa, parasitic worms, fungi and other organisms, including many taxa known to inhabit the intestines of modern humans.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow0495:

Clinical Trials Hit by Ransomware Attack on Health Tech Firm:

A Philadelphia company that sells software used in hundreds of clinical trials, including the crash effort to develop tests, treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, was hit by a ransomware attack that has slowed some of those trials over the past two weeks.

The attack on eResearchTechnology, which has not previously been reported, began two weeks ago when employees discovered that they were locked out of their data by ransomware, an attack that holds victims' data hostage until they pay to unlock it. ERT said clinical trial patients were never at risk, but customers said the attack forced trial researchers to track their patients with pen and paper.

Among those hit were IQVIA, the contract research organization helping manage AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine trial, and Bristol Myers Squibb, the drugmaker leading a consortium of companies to develop a quick test for the virus.

ERT has not said how many clinical trials were affected, but its software is used in drug trials across Europe, Asia and North America. It was used in three-quarters of trials that led to drug approvals by the Food and Drug Administration last year, according to its website.

On Friday, Drew Bustos, ERT's vice president of marketing, confirmed that ransomware had seized its systems on Sept. 20. As a precaution, Mr. Bustos said, the company took its systems offline that day, called in outside cybersecurity experts and notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Unreliable home broadband connectivity is the primary technical challenge businesses are having to deal with as remote working continues during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That's one takeaway from a survey of 100 C-level executives and IT professionals in the US by Navisite designed to highlight the biggest headaches for organizations providing IT services to workers since offices began to close in March.

Around half (51%) of those surveyed said they experienced some “IT pains” during the rapid shift to support home workers, while almost a third (29%) continue to face technical challenges.

At the same time, the majority (83%) now expect to continue with remote work policies when pandemic restrictions are lifted.

[...] “Businesses that initially engaged their cloud or managed service provider and said, ‘Give me whatever solution will get me up and running' in the beginning of the pandemic are now taking a more thoughtful approach, much as enterprises are doing with cloud in general,” [Karyn Price] said.

“They are being more strategic about how they deploy remote work technology solutions, as well as to how they manage corporate digital transformation as a whole.”

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RandomFactor writes:

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Notre Dame, University of Florida, and Ohio State Universities have identified genes that regulate the process of neuron regeneration in some animals.

[Researchers] mapped the genes of animals that have the ability to regenerate retinal neurons. For example, when the retina of a zebrafish is damaged, cells called the Müller glia go through a process known as reprogramming. During reprogramming, the Müller glia cells will change their gene expression to become like progenitor cells, or cells that are used during early development of an organism. Therefore, these now progenitor-like cells can become any cell necessary to fix the damaged retina.

Like zebrafish, people also have Müller glia cells. However, when the human retina is damaged, the Müller glia cells respond with gliosis, a process that does not allow them to reprogram.

"After determining the varying animal processes for retina damage recovery, we had to decipher if the process for reprogramming and gliosis were similar. Would the Müller glia follow the same path in regenerating and non-regenerating animals or would the paths be completely different?" said [David Hyde, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Notre Dame and co-author on the study], who also serves as the Kenna Director of the Zebrafish Research Center at Notre Dame. "This was really important, because if we want to be able to use Müller glia cells to regenerate retinal neurons in people, we need to understand if it would be a matter of redirecting the current Müller glia path or if it would require an entirely different process."

The research could eventually lead to therapies for a variety of neurodegenerative brain and eye disorders that would someday cure, rather than just slow progression of diseases like Parkinson's

Journal Reference:
Thanh Hoang, Jie Wang, Patrick Boyd, et al. Gene regulatory networks controlling vertebrate retinal regeneration [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abb8598)

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takyon writes:

Nvidia has announced a cheaper version of its $99 Jetson Nano developer kit. The Jetson Nano pairs a quad-core Cortex-A57 ARM CPU with 128 Maxwell GPU cores. The new model has 2 GiB of RAM instead of 4 GiB, drops one of the four USB ports (which may be USB 2.0 instead of 3.0), and drops DisplayPort output.

Elsewhere at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference 2020:

NVIDIA Online GTC 2020 Kicks Off Today But No Open-Source Linux Announcement Expected
Quadro No More? NVIDIA Announces Ampere-based RTX A6000 & A40 Video Cards For Pro Visualization
NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs Set to Ship In 2021, Roadmaps BlueField-3&4 By 2023

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MrPlow wrote in with a submission, via IRC, for nutherguy.

US Senate to issue subpoenas for Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai:

The US Senate's Commerce committee on Thursday voted unanimously on a bipartisan basis to issue subpoenas to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Google's Sundar Pichai, as Congress considers changes to liability protections granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The three tech CEOs would appear before the committee as witnesses, but the date of the hearing hasn't been determined.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, from Washington and the leading Democrat on the committee, initially opposed the subpoena, which had been introduced by Chairman Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi. But Cantwell changed her position after Republicans included language in the subpoena regarding privacy and "media domination."

"There is a lot we want to talk to tech platforms about, like privacy and anti-competitive media practices," she said in a statement. "I thank the Chairman for broadening the subpoena to cover these issues."

She went on to say that "Section 230 deserves a serious thoughtful discussion. But the hearing should not be used to try to have a chilling effect on social media platforms who are taking down false COVID information or hate speech."

AnonTechie writes:

The 2020 NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to Harvey J Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M Rice "for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus" or HCV, which causes hepatitis C infection - a disease that causes inflammation and infection of the liver. The announcement was made on Monday, 5 October 2020 at 11.30 am cest (3:00 pm in India) at the Nobel Forum at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

This year's Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to three scientists who have made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world, said a press release by the Nobel Committee.

Nobel Prize in Medicine - NY TIMES

Dr. Alter, an American, is a medical researcher for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

Dr. Houghton, born in Britain, is the Li Ka Shing professor of virology at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is also director of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute at the university.

Dr. Rice, born in Sacramento, is a professor at Rockefeller University in New York. From 2001 to 2018, he was the scientific and executive director at the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C at the university.

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