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Freeman writes:

Cyberpunk 2077 could trigger seizures in photosensitive players [Updated]:

Epileptic gamers who are sensitive to flashing lights and strobing effects may need to take special care when playing Cyberpunk 2077 after its release later this week.

Game Informer Associate Editor Liana Ruppert wrote yesterday about her experience with a grand mal seizure while playing a pre-release version of the game. The seizure was triggered by the game's short introductory cutscene for the "braindance" interface. That scene features a device flashing bright, screen-filling red and white lights at the player in an increasing cadence before sending them into a virtual world to explore another character's memories.
[...]
Update 12:56pm EST: CD Projekt Red does include a seizure warning in Cyberpunk 2077's End User License Agreement, telling players the game "may contain flashing lights and images, which may induce epileptic seizures." No similar warning appears on screen at any point during the game.

Update 3pm EST: CD Projekt Red has since directly responded to Game Informer's report in the form of a Twitter post: "We're working on adding a separate warning in the game, aside from the one that exists in the EULA. Regarding a more permanent solution, Dev team is currently exploring that and will be implementing it as soon as possible."

TimeShift also had a nice sequence near the end of the game with lots of flashing lightning arcs in a very dark scene. It's not a new concept or problem. It just affects such a small percentage of people, let alone players, that there's not been a good solution to the problem. Other than including a warning. A prominent notice is desirable for games that have especially troublesome scenes.

Original Submission

2020-12-09 23:23:24 UTC: Launch went smoothly as did ascent to altitude and leanover to "bellyflop" orientation. Was able to right itself back to vertical but had too much speed at time of reaching earth. Got big boom on impact. SN9 has been waiting patiently in the wings (as well as SN10 through SN15, in different degrees of completion). Which one will be next and how soon will it be? Can't wait to find out! --martyb

2020-12-09 21:25:12 UTC: Tentative T-0 now at 4:40 PM CST / 2240 UTC.

2020-12-09 21:03:13 UTC at T-02:06: "Clock paused. Standing by for new T-0."

2020-12-09 20:44:45 UTC: SpaceX has put up a new live feed for their SN8 (Serial Number 8) Starship test flight. The feed is currently active; launch is expected in the next few minutes. --martyb

Original story follows.

Freeman writes:

Tesla plans to raise another $5 billion as value soars above $600 billion:

Tesla is planning to raise another $5 billion from Wall Street, the company announced in a Tuesday morning filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It will be the company's third round of fundraising this year and will bring its 2020 fundraising to $12 billion.

It's a good time for Tesla to raise money because Tesla's stock price hit a record high of $640 on Tuesday—a more than seven-fold increase since the start of 2020. Tesla's market capitalization is now around $600 billion, which means that Tesla's existing shareholders will give up less than 1 percent of their stake from the stock sale.

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Freeman writes:

Grand theft GPU: $340,000 worth of RTX 3090s "fell off a truck" in China:

Some time last week, thieves stole a large number of Nvidia-based RTX 3090 graphics cards from MSI's factory in mainland China. The news comes from Twitter user @GoFlying8, who posted what appears to be an official MSI internal document about the theft this morning, along with commentary from a Chinese language website.

Roughly translated—in other words, OCR scanned, run through Google Translate, and with the nastiest edges sawn off by yours truly—the MSI document reads something like this:

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

CentOS Linux 8 will end in 2021 and shifts focus to CentOS Stream:

CentOS is an acronym for Community Enterprise Operating System, and it is a 100% rebuild of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). While RHEL costs money, CentOS offered as a free community-supported enterprise Linux distro. Developers and companies who are good at Linux and don’t want to pay RHEL support fees always selected CentOS to save money and get enterprise-class software. However, the free ride is over. Red Hat announced that CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

CentOS' blog announcement:

The future of the CentOS Project is CentOS Stream, and over the next year we’ll be shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, which tracks just ahead of a current RHEL release. CentOS Linux 8, as a rebuild of RHEL 8, will end at the end of 2021. CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as the upstream (development) branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Meanwhile, we understand many of you are deeply invested in CentOS Linux 7, and we’ll continue to produce that version through the remainder of the RHEL 7 life cycle.

Also at Phoronix.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Cloudflare, Apple, and others back a new way to make the Internet more private:

For more than three decades, the Internet's most key underpinning has posed privacy and security threats to the billion-plus people who use it every day. Now, Cloudflare, Apple, and content-delivery network Fastly have introduced a novel way to fix that using a technique that prevents service providers and network snoops from seeing the addresses end users visit or send email to.

Engineers from all three companies have devised Oblivious DNS, a major change to the current domain name system that translates human-friendly domain names into the IP addresses computers need to find other computers over the Internet. The companies are working with the Internet Engineering Task Force in hopes it will become an industry-wide standard. Abbreviated as ODoH, Oblivious DNS builds off a separate DNS improvement called DNS over HTTPS, which remains in the very early stages of adoption.

For details, see the blog post introducing Oblivious DoH, by Cloudflare researchers Tanya Verma and Sudheesh Singanamalla.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Let's Encrypt Will Stop Working For Older Android Devices:

Let's Encrypt was founded in 2012, going public in 2014, with the aim to improve security on the web. The goal was to be achieved by providing free, automated access to SSL and TLS certificates that would allow websites to make the switch over to HTTPS without having to spend any money.

The project has just announced that, come September 1, 2021, some older software will stop trusting their certificates. Let's look at why this has come to pass, and what it means going forward.

When Let's Encrypt first went public in early 2016, they issued their own root certificate, by the name ISRG Root X1. However, it takes time for companies to include updated root certificates in their software, so until recently, all Let's Encrypt certificates were cross-signed by an IdenTrust certificate, DST Root X3. [...]

The problem looming on the horizon is the expiration of DST Root X3, on September 1, 2021. Of course, for those running up-to-date operating systems and browsers, there's no major issue. But for those on platforms that haven't been updated since 2016 or so, and don't support the ISRG Root X1 certificate, things will break. [...]

Basically it's the same old issue that we see over and over again. Older handsets are not receiving OS updates from the vendors so security issues are not fixed, certificates expire, and newer algorithms are not implemented. As the article mentions, the vendors have little incentive to spend money supporting older handsets that they have already sold. They would rather you jump right back on the merry go round and buy a new one. Lather, rinse and repeat as needed.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

How do we separate the factual from the possible? New research shows how our brain responds to both:

"At a time of voluminous fake news and disinformation, it is more important than ever to separate the factual from the possible or merely speculative in how we communicate," explains Liina Pylkkanen, a professor in NYU's Department of Linguistics and Department of Psychology and the senior author of the paper, which appears in the journal eNeuro.

"Our study makes clear that information presented as fact evokes special responses in our brains, distinct from when we process the same content with clear markers of uncertainty, like 'may' or 'might'," adds Pylkkanen, also part of the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute.

"Language is a powerful device to effectively transmit information, and the way in which information is presented has direct consequences for how our brains process it," adds Maxime Tulling, a doctoral candidate in NYU's Department of Linguistics and the paper's lead author. "Our brains seem to be particularly sensitive to information that is presented as fact, underlining the power of factual language."

[...] The results showed that factual language led to a rapid increase in neural activity, with the brain responding more powerfully and showing more engagement with fact-based phrases and scenarios compared to those communicating possibility.

"Facts rule when it comes to the brain," observes Pylkkanen. "Brain regions involved in processing discourse rapidly differentiated facts from possibilities, responding much more robustly to factual statements than to non-factual ones. These findings suggest that the human brain has a powerful, perspective-adjusted neural representation of factual information and, interestingly, much weaker, more elusive cortical signals reflecting the computation of mere possibilities."

Journal Reference:
Maxime Tulling, Ryan Law, Ailís Cournane, et al. Neural Correlates of Modal Displacement and Discourse-Updating under (un)Certainty [open], eNeuro (DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0290-20.2020)

Original Submission

Uber Sells Off Self-Driving and Flying Taxi Units

takyon writes:

Uber sells its self-driving unit to Aurora

Uber's self-driving unit, Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), is being acquired by its start-up competitor Aurora Innovation, the companies announced Monday.

The deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2021, values ATG at approximately $4 billion. The unit was valued at $7.25 billion in Apr. 2019 when Softbank, Denso and Toyota took a stake.

[...] Uber's co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick had viewed self-driving as an essential investment, saying in 2016 he believed the world would shift to autonomous vehicles. ATG had been a long-term play for Uber, but the unit brought high costs and safety challenges. Throughout the course of a pandemic-stricken year, Uber has made efforts to stem losses in its ride hailing business, control business costs -- including with major layoffs in the spring -- and to grow its delivery business.

Uber is also reportedly selling its flying taxi division to Joby Aviation, presumably putting an end to its involvement with the U.S. Army.

Uber has been scaling back its driverless car efforts since it caused the death of a pedestrian in 2018. Uber has never had a profitable quarter.

Also at NYT, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, and The Verge.

Previously: The Fall of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick
Uber Pulls Self-Driving Cars After First Fatal Crash of Autonomous Vehicle
Uber Shutting Down Self-Driving Truck Division
Uber Allegedly Ignored Safety Warnings Before Self-Driving Fatality
Will Car Ownership Soon Become "Quaint"?
Uber Freezes Engineering Hires Amid Mounting Losses

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Ransomware operators have adopted a dastardly new strategy:

A number of different ransomware groups have adopted a new strategy designed to further intimidate victims: harassment over the phone.

Reports from multiple cybersecurity firms suggest the trend emerged in late summer and is targeted primarily at businesses suspected of using data backups to restore systems after an attack.

Ransomware operators known to have contacted victims via telephone include Sekhmet, Maze, Conti and Ryuk. According to security company Coveware, recurring call scripts suggest these groups may have outsourced the task to the same call center.

"We are aware of a 3rd party IT company working on your network. We continue to monitor and know that you are installing SentinelOne antivirus on all your computers. But you should know that it will not help," one victim was told over the phone.

"If you want to stop wasting your time and recover your data this week, we recommend that you discuss this situation with us in the chat or the problems on your network will never end."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Armed police raid home of Florida scientist fired over Covid-19 data

Rebekah Jones, the Florida data scientist embroiled in a dispute with the state's Republican governor over the handling of coronavirus figures, had her home raided on Monday by armed police who confiscated her computers.

In a stream of posts on Twitter, Jones posted a video of the raid that showed state police carrying handguns escorting her out of her Tallahassee home. She can be heard saying: "He just pointed a gun at my children," with her husband and two children apparently upstairs at the time.

Jones claimed in her tweets that the raid was the work of Ron DeSantis, the governor with whom she has clashed repeatedly since she was fired by the state's department of health in May in a row over Covid-19 data. She compared the incident to sending "the gestapo", adding: "This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly. This is what happens to people who speak truth to power."

The Florida department of law enforcement confirmed they had entered Jones's house on a search warrant. But in a statement the department said the action was related to a recent computer hack of the health department website, in which emergency response coordinators were sent an unauthorised message.

Also at CNN, The Verge, and The Hill.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New report reveals Apple's roadmap for when each Mac will move to Apple Silicon

Citing sources close to Apple, a new report in Bloomberg outlines Apple's roadmap for moving the entire Mac lineup to the company's own custom-designed silicon, including both planned release windows for specific products and estimations as to how many performance CPU cores those products will have.

[...] New chips for the high-end MacBook Pro and iMac computers could have as many as 16 performance cores (the M1 has four). And the planned Mac Pro replacement could have as many as 32. The report is careful to clarify that Apple could, for one reason or another, choose to only release Macs with 8 or 12 cores at first but that the company is working on chip variants with the higher core count, in any case.

The report reveals two other tidbits. First, a direct relative to the M1 will power new iPad Pro models due to be introduced next year, and second, the faster M1 successors for the MacBook Pro and desktop computers will also feature more GPU cores for graphics processing—specifically, 16 or 32 cores. Further, Apple is working on "pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest-end machines" for 2022 or late 2021.

New Mac models could have additional efficiency cores alongside 8/12/16/32 performance cores. Bloomberg claimed the existence of a 12-core (8 performance "Firestorm" cores, 4 efficiency "Icestorm" cores) back in April which has not materialized yet.

The Apple M1 SoC has 8 GPU cores.

Previously: Apple Announces 2-Year Transition to ARM SoCs in Mac Desktops and Laptops
Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
Linus Torvalds Doubts Linux will Get Ported to Apple M1 Hardware

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Christopher Nolan Rips HBO Max as "Worst Streaming Service," Denounces Warner Bros.' Plan

To many insiders, WarnerMedia's blindsiding of talent and their reps with news that it would send 17 films directly to HBO Max in 2021 felt like an insult.

For many in the movie business — producers, directors, stars and their representatives — Dec. 3, 2020, is a day that will live in infamy.

"Some of our industry's biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service," filmmaker Christopher Nolan, whose relationship with Warners dates back to Insomnia in 2002, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

[...] According to a source, [Warner Bros. film studio chairman Toby] Emmerich tried to soothe In the Heights director Jon M. Chu by pointing out that the movie was still getting a "global theatrical release." But industry insiders say the studio is pretending that pirates won't pounce as soon as these films are streaming on HBO Max. As soon as one does, there's an "excellent version of the movie everywhere immediately," notes one industry veteran.

[...] Many think Legendary [Entertainment] will be the first to file a legal challenge. The company fired off a previous lawyer letter after Netflix offered something north of $225 million for the rights to Godzilla vs. Kong, which has seen its release date moved from March 2020 to November to May 2021. Though Legendary financed 75 percent of the movie, Warners had the power to block the sale and did. Legendary asked whether the studio would then give it a deal to stream the movie on HBO Max — and got no clear answer until its executives woke up one December morning to find that the movie was going day-and-date on the service without the benefit of a negotiation. Legendary's even more expensive picture, Dune, is getting the same treatment. The other companies that finance Warners movies, Village Roadshow and Bron, are also said to be aggrieved parties that might end up going to court.

Related: AT&T Exempts HBO Max From Data Caps but Still Limits Your Netflix Use
"Gone With the Wind" -- Gone from HBO Max

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Famed pilot Chuck Yeager dies at age 97:

Gen. Chuck Yeager, an Air Force test pilot who became the first human to break the sound barrier, died Monday at the age of 97. His death was announced in a message on his official Twitter account attributed to Yeager's wife, actress Victoria Scott D'Angelo.

"It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET," she tweeted. "An incredible life well lived, America's greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever."

[...] Yeager's exploits were chronicled in Tom Wolfe's 1979 book and the 1983 film The Right Stuff, which followed the early days of the US space program. Yeager is portrayed in the film by actor Sam Shepard but makes a cameo appearance as Fred, a bartender at the legendary Poncho's Happy Bottom Riding Club.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Why Covid may mean more facial recognition tech:

Like many people who began to wear a face mask during the pandemic, Hassan Ugail quickly noticed one or two technical niggles.

His iPhone started having trouble recognising his face, which is how he preferred to unlock the device when out and about.

"I kind of have to take my mask off," says Prof Ugail, an expert in facial recognition at the University of Bradford. "I would rather it let me in by just looking at my eyes."

Coincidentally, research he conducted with one of his PhD students that was published last year had shown that half a face was enough for a specially trained facial recognition algorithm to work.

But out in the wild, some commercial systems that authenticate people via their faces were now stuttering thanks to the rise of masks.

The problem was highlighted in a July report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US. Researchers found the error rates of 89 different facial recognition systems they tested increased when the mouth and nose or bottom half of an individual's face was obscured - in some cases from less than 1% to as much as 50%.

[...] An updated report from NIST has now found that several algorithms, reconfigured since the pandemic began, make far fewer mistakes when analysing masked faces. In some cases, error rates were ten times better than before.

"Developers are indeed adapting their algorithms to handle face masks." says Mei Ngan, a computer scientist at NIST.

[...] The progress means facial recognition could now become even more widespread than before with companies marketing it as a contactless, potentially more hygienic, means of verifying identities in public places.

Original Submission