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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RunawayXXXX:

The only total solar eclipse of 2020 is happening this week. Here's how to watch it from anywhere.:

The only total solar eclipse of the year arrives this week. On Monday, December 14, lucky skywatchers will have the chance to spot the spectacular celestial event, when the new moon fully blocks the sun, creating temporary darkness during what NASA calls "one of nature's most awe-inspiring sights."

[...] Unfortunately, this solar eclipse will only track over parts of South America, so relatively few people will be able to watch it live. However, several live streams of the event will ensure eager amateur astronomers have a chance to see the eclipse, no matter where in the world you are located.

[...] The eclipse will be visible in South America, specifically in certain regions of Chile and Argentina. According to NASA, the path will stretch from Saavedra, Chile to Salina del Eje, Argentina.

[...] For those viewing the eclipse in person, there are several safety precautions to follow. Never look directly at the sun, and make sure to wear solar eclipse glasses to protect your eyes — regular sunglasses are not sufficient.

For those located elsewhere in the world, NASA TV will live stream the eclipse from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile via telescopes at the Observatorio Docente. The show starts at 9:40 a.m. ET, with a narrated program in Spanish at 10:30 a.m. ET and the total eclipse set for 11:02 a.m. ET. Watch it here.

[...] Time and Date is also hosting a live stream, from the Villarrica volcano in Chile starting at 9:30 a.m. ET.

Original Submission

cosurgi writes:

More precision measurements are planned at LHC (Large Hadron Collider) [1]. Short extract below:

When ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) discovered the Higgs boson [2] and confirmed the validity of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, physicists were hungry for more. But the Higgs was a giant tree hiding a meadow full of well-known flowers. No exotic plants were to be found in these high-energy plains. Month after month, the Standard Model has revealed itself to be more solid than ever. Previously when higher energy at LHC was possible scientists were looking for spectacular phenomena that have now mostly been ruled out. The approach now is to carry out precision measurements.

In reality, the Standard Model is built on two quantum theories: the electroweak theory [3], which describes the electromagnetic and the weak forces, and quantum chromodynamics, which describes the strong force. So, here we have the basics. One advantage of the Standard Model is that it is predictive: it predicts all possible interactions between particles with a precise probability (which physicists call the "cross section"). However, it doesn't predict the masses of the fundamental particles: these are among the parameters measured by the experiments. These masses vary greatly e.g. the heaviest top quark, is almost 90 000 times heavier than the up quark, the lightest. In total, there are 19 free parameters which determine the inner workings of the standard model (aside from the parameters relating to neutrinos). Measuring them precisely is crucial to be able to calculate the interaction cross sections and test the consistency of the Standard Model. Although the Standard Model doesn't predict their values, it ties some parameters together. "By [more precisely] measuring all of these parameters independently, we test the relationships predicted by the Standard Model and impose constraints on physics beyond the Standard Model." explains Andrew Pilkington, a physicist with the ATLAS experiment.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Bandwidth Limits at NWS (National Weather Service) Could Hobble Our Weather Apps:

The National Weather Service's data budget is hitting a ceiling, and it apparently doesn't have the money to fix the situation. Now, the agency is considering throttling users who access its essential forecast data.

In a notice dated Nov. 18, 2020, the NWS said that it is seeking public comment on a proposal to impose data limits on users who access its wide range of public web services. "As demand for data continues to grow across NCEP websites, we are proposing to put new limits into place to safeguard our web services," the memo says. "The frequency of how often these websites are accessed by the public has created limitations and infrastructure constraints."

[...] If nothing else, the data limits could cause services that rely on NWS data, like many smartphone weather apps, to be hours behind the real-time measurements they've been accustomed to accessing. Another possibility is that services switch to gathering information from competing agencies around the globe like the UK Met Office and ECMWF. But services that aggregate data from multiple agencies would be losing out. What's more, it seems that this issue would be really cheap to fix.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RunawayXXXX:

Virgin Galactic Aborts First Powered Spaceflight From New Mexico Spaceport :

On December 12th, Virgin Galactic aborted its first powered test flight of its tourist spaceplane, VSS Unity, from the company's home at Spaceport America in New Mexico. The vehicle's engine cut out after briefly igniting.

The vehicle's engine cut out early, forcing the spaceplane to glide home

This morning, Richard Branson's space tourism company Virgin Galactic had to abort its first powered test flight of its spaceplane from the company's home in New Mexico, bringing the vehicle home before it could reach space. During the flight, the spaceplane's engine cut out too early and the vehicle's two pilots had to glide back down to the ground early.

The aborted engine ignition was caught live by a Twitch livestream provided by the outlet NASASpaceflight. The video showed the spaceplane, called VSS Unity, dropping away from its carrier aircraft in mid-air as planned. The vehicle then briefly ignited its main engine, according to the video, but the ignition cut out after just a moment. On a typical flight, the spaceplane's engine will stay ignited for a full minute, propelling the vehicle to the edge of space.

Zodiac killer's "340 cipher" cracked after 51 years

MadTinfoilHatter writes:

In November 1969 a 340 character long encrypted message was sent in a letter to the San Fransisco Chronicle. It appeared to have been sent by an already-infamous serial killer, popularly going by the name Zodiac killer. The cipher proved to be a very hard nut to crack, and the solution eluded cryptanalysts for over 50 years. On December 3rd three code breakers finally solved the mystery and here they tell us how.

Cryptographers Solve Zodiac Killer's "340 Cipher"

takyon writes:

Zodiac '340 Cipher' cracked by code experts 51 years after it was sent to the S.F. Chronicle

The solution to what's known as the 340 Cipher, one of the most vexing mysteries of the Zodiac Killer's murderous saga, has been found by a code-breaking team from the United States, Australia and Belgium.

The cipher, sent in a letter to The Chronicle in November 1969, has been puzzling authorities and amateur sleuths since it arrived 51 years ago. Investigators hoped the Zodiac, who killed five people in the Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, would reveal his name in one of his many ciphers, but there is no such name in the 340.

[...] The solution to the 340 Cipher, according to Oranchak's team:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

To see a video about cracking the code, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1oQLPRE21o [13m2s]

Oranchak's findings started leaking out on some of the many Zodiac amateur sleuth forums, such as zodiackillersite.com, over the past couple of days, causing much excitement in that widespread world of true-crime buffs.

In most ciphers, like the 408, the solution consists mainly of figuring out which letters are represented by certain symbols. In the 340 Cipher, it turned out the alignment of the words runs diagonally down the page, and occasionally they get shifted over a column.

It's a complicated bit of code creation, Oranchak said, but a basic scheme for it can be found in at least one U.S. Army code manual from the 1950s.

Also at CBS News.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Space Station Spiders Found A Hack To Build Webs Without Gravity:

Under normal gravity conditions, orb web spiders tend to build asymmetrical webs with the center, or hub, positioned toward the upper edge. When resting and waiting for prey, spiders sit in their hub with their heads facing downward, allowing them to quickly pounce on their prey in the direction of gravity.

[...] The chosen species for the 2011 spider experiment is the golden silk orb weaver, or Trichonephila clavipes. [...] two spiders would build their webs in separate testing chambers on the ISS, while two spiders were kept in identical habitats on the ground to serve as the control group.

[...] It turns out that the spiders, when working in microgravity, tend to weave webs that are discernibly more symmetrical than those built on Earth. Also, the hubs were positioned closer to the center of the webs, and the spiders didn't always keep their heads in a downward position.

But this wasn't the case across the board. Some webs exhibited a surprising degree of asymmetry, especially for those "whose building had started when the lights were on, suggesting that light replaced gravity as an orientation guide during web building," according to the paper. Moreover, the light also provided a reference for the spider in terms of positioning themselves atop the web (by top, the researchers are referring to the top of the habitat ).

Funny thing is, access to a light source was not even considered as a factor going into the experiment.

Journal Reference:
Samuel Zschokke, Stefanie Countryman, Paula E. Cushing. Spiders in space—orb-web-related behaviour in zero gravity [open], The Science of Nature (DOI: 10.1007/s00114-020-01708-8)

Original Submission

chromas writes:

U.S. Schools Are Buying Phone-Hacking Tech That the FBI Uses to Investigate Terrorists:

In May 2016, a student enrolled in a high-school in Shelbyville, Texas, consented to having his phone searched by one of the district's school resource officers. Looking for evidence of a romantic relationship between the student and a teacher, the officer plugged the phone into a Cellebrite UFED to recover deleted messages from the phone. According to the arrest affidavit, investigators discovered the student and teacher frequently messaged each other, "I love you." Two days later, the teacher was booked into the county jail for sexual assault of a child.

The Cellebrite used to gather evidence in that case was owned and operated by the Shelby County Sheriff's Office. But these invasive phone-cracking tools are not only being purchased by police departments. Public documents reviewed by Gizmodo indicate that school districts have been quietly purchasing these surveillance tools of their own for years.

[...] Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas, showing that administrators paid as much $11,582 for the controversial surveillance technology. Known as mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs), this type of tech is able to siphon text messages, photos, and application data from student's devices. Together, the districts encompass hundreds of schools, potentially exposing hundreds of thousands of students to invasive cell phone searches.

[...] The Fourth Amendment protects people in the United States from unreasonable government searches and seizures, including their cell phones. While a search without a warrant is generally considered unreasonable, the situation in schools is a little different.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

High-end SATA SSD shootout: Samsung 860 Pro vs. Kingston DC500M:

Today, we're going to put to good use some of what we covered last year in our Storage Fundamentals series—specifically, we'll use fio to test two competing high-end SATA SSDs.

Each disk has its high points and its low points, and we'll cover both in detail as well as giving you some handy charts to compare the two directly.

[...] I'm not going to beat around the bush—when it comes to raw performance on simple workloads, the Samsung Pro is a faster drive than the Kingston, and there aren't any two ways about it. In almost every throughput test I threw at the pair, the Samsung 860 Pro ran about 50 to 75 percent faster than the DC500M did.

[...] The DC500M offers significantly better write latency than the 860 Pro, even all the way at the left end of the chart—the fastest 1 percent of all 4K writes complete in 775 microseconds on the Samsung, versus only 375 microseconds on the Kingston. But the real story doesn't happen until around the 30th percentile, where the 860 Pro's latencies start increasing dramatically—but the DC500M's latencies do not.

[...] The Samsung 860 Pro does not have PLP [(Power Loss Protection)] and therefore can't guarantee the safety of blocks in its DRAM cache—so sync writes must actually get all the way to the metal before the sync() call can return. That means the Samsung ends up with less than a 10th the sync throughput of the truly data center-grade DC500M.

[...] It probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the much more consumer-oriented Samsung 860 Pro is likely the best choice for most consumers. What might come as a surprise to many Ars readers is just how affordable a true data center SSD—like the DC500M—can be, even when bought in single units.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Google breaks SMS on many Android phones, is rolling back changes now:

If the text messages on your Android phone have suddenly stopped working, you're not alone. Google pushed out a bad copy of the Carrier Services app, and the result was broken SMS on many Android phones. It also sounds like the company is rolling back the update and fixing the problem.

[...] Google pushed out version 50 of Carrier Services, and afterward, many users—including Samsung, OnePlus, LG, Motorola, and TCL customers—have reported sending-and-receiving issues for SMS.

[...] If you want to check your version of Carrier Services, the easiest way is to open the system settings, hit the search button in the top right, type in "Carrier Services," and press the app info result for the Carrier Services app (it has a multi-colored puzzle piece next to it).[...] If you're on version 50 and having problems, uninstalling app updates (available via the three-dot button in the top right) is a temporary fix.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

French army gets ethical go-ahead for bionic soldiers

The French armed forces now have permission to develop "augmented soldiers" following a report from a military ethics committee. The report, released to the public on Tuesday, considers medical treatments, prosthetics and implants that improve "physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities," and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers.

[...] The committee said that France needs to maintain "operational superiority of its armed forces in a challenging strategic context" while respecting the rules governing the military, humanitarian law and the "fundamental values of our society." As a result, it has forbidden any modification that would affect a soldier's ability to manage the use of force or affect their sense of "humanity." Further examples of banned modifications include cognitive implants that would affect the exercise of a soldier's free will, or changes that would affect their reintegration into civilian life.

Armed forces minister Florence Parly said "invasive" augmentations such as implants are not currently part of military plans. "But we have to be clear, not everyone has the same scruples as us and we have to prepare ourselves for such a future," she said in a press release published Tuesday.

PDF here (8.1 MB, in French). Round table discussion (1h18m35s, also in French).

Also at BBC, IFLScience, and The Defense Post.

Related: U.S. Director of National Intelligence Claims China is Testing on Humans to Create Super Soldiers

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

US House passes bill to tear down judiciary's paywall:

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Open Courts Act. The bill aims to modernize PACER, the website that provides public access to federal court records. It also aims to eliminate PACER's paywall by 2025.

The PACER system represented a big advance for judicial transparency when it went online in the 1990s. But the system hasn't kept up with the times, with a user interface that has changed little since the days of dial-up Internet.

Each federal trial and bankruptcy court—around 200 courts in total—has its own distinct PACER website, with limited capabilities to search across multiple sites. Not only is this inconvenient for users, but maintaining dozens of separate websites is an administrative headache.

[...] The Open Courts Act aims to modernize the system in two phases. In the first phase, scheduled for completion by 2025, the courts would replace the current patchwork system with a national, searchable PACER website.

[...] After the House vote, the legislation must pass the Senate before it can go to President Trump for his signature. On Wednesday, a bipartisan pair of US senators—Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—introduced a Senate version of the Open Courts Act. It's not clear if advocates can get the bill through the Senate in the three weeks before the current session of Congress expires. But even if they fail, the successful House vote will give the proposal momentum in 2021.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Uber wants drivers and delivery workers to get priority access to COVID-19 vaccine:

Given how reliant many people have become on rideshare drivers and especially delivery workers during the pandemic, Uber is pushing for them to get priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine. Today, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent a letter to all 50 governors asking them to prioritize giving drivers and delivery workers the vaccine as essential workers.

[...] In the letter, Khosrowshahi argues that the work of drivers and delivery people has become essential. That's why Uber wants them to get the vaccine "quickly, easily and for free," he wrote in the letter. Additionally, Uber has offered to help share information about the vaccine and encourage those who are eligible to get vaccinated.

"After nine months on the frontlines keeping their communities running, we are asking governors in all 50 states to prioritize drivers and delivery people for early vaccine access," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement to TechCrunch. "Uber stands ready to do everything we can—leveraging our technology, our logistical expertise and our resources—to help protect the people working on our platform and bring vaccines to the public as quickly and efficiently as possible."

See also: Uber's letter to the US CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Hyundai takes control of Boston Dynamics in $1.1B deal

Hyundai is officially purchasing a controlling stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in a deal that values the company at $1.1 billion, the company announced today. The deal has been in the works for a while, according to recent a report from Bloomberg, and marks a major step into consumer robotics for Hyundai. Hyundai is taking approximately an 80 percent stake in the company while its previous owner, Softbank, will retain around 20 percent through an affiliate.

Hyundai says its investment will help its development of service and logistics robots, but that over time it hopes to build more humanoid robots for jobs like "caregiving for patients at hospitals." Other areas of interest include autonomous driving and smart factories.

EF could not be reached for comment.

Also at Bloomberg and CNBC.

Previously: Google to Sell Robotics Group Boston Dynamics
Boston Dynamics Produces a Wheeled Terror as Google Watches Nervously
SoftBank Acquires Boston Dynamics and Schaft From Google
Boston Dynamics Will Now Sell Any US Business its Own Spot Robot for $74,500
Boston Dynamics' Dog-Like Robot Spotted in Chernobyl
Boston Dynamics' Spot Is Helping Chernobyl Move Towards Safe Decommissioning

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Spotify resets passwords after a security bug exposed users’ private account information – TechCrunch:

Spotify said it has reset an undisclosed number of user passwords after blaming a software vulnerability in its systems for exposing private account information to its business partners.

In a data breach notification filed with the California attorney general’s office, the music streaming giant said the data exposed “may have included email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth only to certain business partners of Spotify.” The company did not name the business partners, but added that Spotify “did not make this information publicly accessible.”

Spotify said the vulnerability existed as far back as April 9 but wasn’t discovered until November 12. But like most data breach notices, Spotify did not say what the vulnerability was or how user account data became exposed.

From the announcement:

We have conducted an internal investigation and have contacted all of our business partners that may have had access to your account information to ensure that any personal information that may have been inadvertently disclosed to them has been deleted. We also rest your Spotify password to help keep your account secure.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1957:

Fragments of energy – not waves or particles – may be the fundamental building blocks of the universe:

Matter is what makes up the universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for those who think about it – especially for the physicists. Reflecting recent trends in physics, my colleague Jeffrey Eischen and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of particles or waves, as was long thought, but – more fundamentally – that matter is made of fragments of energy.