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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

For over the past year there has been work on the new "Maple Tree" data structure led by Oracle for the Linux kernel and this week marked the patches being sent out in "request for comments" (RFC) form with the aim still on helping the kernel performance.

Maple Tree amounts to a data structure that works well on modern CPUs and in an RCU-safe[*]manner for storing index ranges that map to a single pointer. Oracle's Liam Howlett sums up the Maple Tree data structure as "an RCU-safe range based B-tree designed to use modern processor cache efficiently. There are a number of places in the kernel that a non-overlapping range-based tree would be beneficial, especially one with a simple interface. The first user that is covered in this patch set is the vm_area_struct rbtree in the mm_struct with the long term goal of reducing the contention of the mmap_sem. The tree has a branching factor of 10 for non-leaf nodes and 16 for leaf nodes. With the increased branching factor, it is significantly short[er] than the rbtree so it has fewer cache misses."

This code is still a work-in-progress with some known regressions and not yet supporting 32-bit or MMU-less kernel builds. But even as it stands now there are scaling benchmarks where the Maple Tree usage can help by 1~17% or in the malloc1-threads micro-benchmark where it can help the performance by 29~71%.

Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Maple-Tree-Linux-RFC

[*] RCU: Read-Copy-Update.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Water futures set to join likes of gold and oil and trade on Wall Street for first time ever:

The CME Group is set to launch futures contracts tied to the spot price of water for the first time ever this week.

The contracts will allow investors and farmers alike to bet on the future price of water. The contracts are tied to the $1.1 billion California spot water market.

While water will officially join the likes of gold, oil, and other commodities in being traded on Wall Street, the contracts will be financially settled. This means buyers of the contracts who hold on through expiration won't be greeted by a delivery of millions of gallons of water like they would for other commodity based futures like oil and grain.

The water contracts are tied to the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index which was launched two years ago. The index is driven by the volume-weighted average of the transaction prices in California's five largest and most actively traded water markets.

[...] "With nearly two-thirds of the world's population expected to face water shortages by 2025, water scarcity presents a growing risk for businesses and communities around the world, and particularly for the $1.1 billion California water market," said Tim McCourt, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Tech Hidden In Plain Sight: The Ballpoint Pen:

On a crisp fall morning in late October 1945, approximately 5,000 shoppers rushed the 32nd street Gimbel's department store in New York City like it was Black Friday at Walmart. Things got so out of hand that fifty additional NYPD officers were dispatched to the scene. Everyone was clamoring for the hottest new technology – the ballpoint pen.

This new pen cost $12.50, which is about $180 today. For many people, the improved experience that the ballpoint promised over the fountain pen was well worth the price. You might laugh, but if you've ever used a fountain pen, you can understand the need for something more rugged and portable.

Ballpoint pens are everywhere these days, especially cheap ones. They're so ubiquitous that we don't have to carry one around or really think about them at all. Unless you're into pens, you've probably never marveled at the sheer abundance of long-lasting, affordable, permanent writing instruments that are around today. Before the ballpoint, pens were a messy nuisance.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

An AI Co-Pilot Called 'ARTUµ' Just Took Command of A U-2's Sensor Systems On A Recon Mission:

During a test flight from Beale Air Force Base, California on Monday, an artificial intelligence agent named ARTUµ assumed control and direction of a radar on a U.S. Air Force U-2S Dragon Lady spy plane and assumed responsibility for tactical navigation while a USAF pilot flew the aircraft and coordinated with the AI agent.

According to the Air Force, the test sortie was a reconnaissance mission during a simulated missile strike. ARTUµ was tasked with finding enemy launchers (surface to air missiles) while the U-2 pilot scanned for adversary aircraft, sharing the U-2's radar with the AI co-pilot.

The Air Force characterized the test flight as a "major leap forward for national defense in the digital age" referring to ARTUµ as a "working aircrew member." The service claims that this test is the first time that artificial intelligence has been "safely" put in charge of any U.S. military system.

Live flight experiments by other militaries with indirect AI command-control haven't been acknowledged publicly but have likely taken place. Israel has acknowledged AI-enabled target identification capabilities for weapons like its Spice 250 bombs which can be carried on its F-16s.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Battery prices have fallen 88 percent over the last decade:

The average cost of a lithium-ion battery pack fell to $137 per kWh in 2020, according to a new industry survey from BloombergNEF. That's an inflation-adjusted decline of 13 percent since 2019. The latest figures continue the astonishing progress in battery technology over the last decade, with pack prices declining 88 percent since 2010.

[...] BloombergNEF estimates that battery-pack prices will fall to $100 per kWh by 2024. That's roughly the level necessary for BEVs to be price-competitive with conventional cars without subsidies. Given that electric vehicles are cheap to charge and will likely require less maintenance than a conventional car, they will be an increasingly compelling option over the next decade.

[...] Economists define the "learning rate" as the percentage decrease in price for every doubling of output. BloombergNEF estimates that the learning rate for batteries is about 18 percent: every time global battery output doubles, prices fall by 18 percent.

Battery prices declined 13 percent between 2018 and 2019 and another 13 percent by 2020. These are certainly significant improvements, but the rate of progress seems to be slowing. Battery prices declined at an average annual rate of 19 percent between 2010 and 2018.

BloombergNEF attributes the slowing pace of progress to slowing growth of volume in the battery industry. In absolute terms, battery shipments are growing faster than ever. But now that the industry is much bigger—BloombergNEF estimates it grew by a factor of 264 between 2010 and 2020—it will be difficult for the industry to match earlier growth rates in percentage terms. And that's likely to translate to a slower—but still significant—percentage decline in battery prices.

Sadly, this has not translated to cheaper AA batteries, rechargeable batteries or otherwise.

Original Submission

coolgopher writes:

China recovers Chang'e-5 moon samples after complex 23-day mission:

China has recovered precious lunar samples after a successful reentry and landing of the Chang'e-5 return capsule.

The roughly 300-kilogram Chang'e-5 return capsule performed a ballistic skip reentry at 12:33 p.m. Eastern Dec. 16, effectively bouncing off the atmosphere over the Arabian Sea before reentry.

The capsule containing around 2 kilograms of drilled and scooped lunar material landed in the grasslands of Siziwang Banner at 12:59 p.m. Recovery vehicles located the capsule shortly after.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

States say federal government cutting COVID-19 vaccine allocations"

Officials in several states have said the federal government told them to expect fewer doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine next week than originally anticipated.

[...] Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) tweeted Thursday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "has informed us that WA's vaccine allocation will be cut by 40 percent next week — and that all states are seeing similar cuts."

[...] Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said Wednesday that per "the direction of Operation Warp Speed's General Perna, that estimate was tightened significantly down to 4.3 million doses shipped nationally next week. The following week, originally projected for another 8.8 million, is also now also scheduled to be 4.3 million," NBC 5Chicago reported.

[...] A spokesperson for Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services told Axios that the state is expected to received fewer doses next week than it originally anticipated. "We were not provided an explanation," Lynn Sutfin said in an emailed statement.

[...] [and the list goes on]

Meanwhile Pfizer Says It Has Millions Of Vaccine Doses 'Sitting In Our Warehouse'—But Hasn't Been Told Where To Send Them

In a press release issued Thursday, Pfizer said that the company has millions of doses of its Covid-19 vaccines sitting in warehouses that have not been delivered because the company has not received shipping instructions from the federal government.

Somebody may have taken some stock market bets on Moderna, ummm?

Original Submission

The year is winding to a close so I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up on a few things:

1. Milestones
2. Community questions answered
3. Background on site operations
4. Story Cadence
5. Site finances

For details, read on below the fold.

hendrikboom writes:

It seems that the language processing areas of the brain aren't much involved in reading computer code:

There are two schools of thought regarding how the brain learns to code, [Anna Ivanova, an MIT graduate student and the lead author of the study] says. One holds that in order to be good at programming, you must be good at math. The other suggests that because of the parallels between coding and language, language skills might be more relevant. To shed light on this issue, the researchers set out to study whether brain activity patterns while reading computer code would overlap with language-related brain activity.

The two programming languages that the researchers focused on in this study are known for their readability — Python and ScratchJr, a visual programming language designed for children age 5 and older. The subjects in the study were all young adults proficient in the language they were being tested on. While the programmers lay in a functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) scanner, the researchers showed them snippets of code and asked them to predict what action the code would produce.

The researchers saw little to no response to code in the language regions of the brain. Instead, they found that the coding task mainly activated the so-called multiple demand network. This network, whose activity is spread throughout the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain, is typically recruited for tasks that require holding many pieces of information in mind at once, and is responsible for our ability to perform a wide variety of mental tasks.

[...] Previous studies have shown that math and logic problems seem to rely mainly on the multiple demand regions in the left hemisphere, while tasks that involve spatial navigation activate the right hemisphere more than the left. The MIT team found that reading computer code appears to activate both the left and right sides of the multiple demand network, and ScratchJr activated the right side slightly more than the left. This finding goes against the hypothesis that math and coding rely on the same brain mechanisms.

Maybe learning C shouldn't be accepted for a foreign-language requirement in university.

-- hendrik

Journal Reference:
Anna A Ivanova, Shashank Srikant, Yotaro Sueoka, et al. Comprehension of computer code relies primarily on domain-general executive brain regions, (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58906)

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Google staff demand exec step aside after ethicist's firing:

Staff on Google's Ethical AI research team on Wednesday demanded the company sideline a vice president and commit to greater academic freedom, escalating a confrontation with management following this month's termination of scientist Timnit Gebru.

The personnel called on Vice President Megan Kacholia to be removed from the team's management chain after she allegedly excluded Gebru's boss from the decision to fire her, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.

[...] The document also demanded an explanation of the dismissal, transparency into reviews of staff papers, and an investigation into how Google handles employee complaints about working conditions, like those Gebru raised while at the company.

Separately, U.S. Representative Yvette Clarke, Senator Elizabeth Warren and seven other members of Congress wrote a public letter on Wednesday to Google-parent Alphabet Inc Chief Executive Sundar Pichai asking about plans to review Gebru's firing and policies for publishing research.

[...] It was unclear how many people authored the demands, which followed a prior petition for academic freedom that garnered signatures from more than 2,600 people at the company.

fliptop writes:

Over at ACM.org Yegor Bugayenko reviews how companies benefit from open source:

'Tis the season to be jolly, and many people around the world are getting those warm, fuzzy holiday feels. One of the things that makes us programmers feel warm and fuzzy is open source software. With open source, you can easily see the code and documentation, and better yet, you can use it too. A lot of companies support open source as well, providing funding, labor power, and code for free.

Why give something away for free? A lot of individuals contribute open source code out of a genuine sense of altruism. Yet when it comes to companies, it's often a strategic choice, and one they expect to benefit from.

[...] Why go through all the trouble? Let's take a look at the tangible benefits of supporting open source, especially from the perspective of tech giants like Google. Let's start by looking at how companies support open source.

The author goes on to list benefits for companies that support open source, citing Google, Microsoft, IBM and Adobe as examples. He also mentions how Red Hat benefited from its acquisition by IBM. He concludes:

So what's the take away for all of this? Open source is a great resource for the community, sure, but it's also a valuable resource for companies. Open source provides sales, influence, branding, retaining and training opportunities, among others, for companies. And for individual programmers, open source projects offer a way to build skills, increase knowledge, and make connections.

Previously:
CentOS Linux 8 Will End in 2021
Open Source's Eric Raymond: Windows 10 Will Soon be Just an Emulation Layer on Linux Kernel
Microsoft Releases Open-Source Process Monitor for Linux
Google Takes Down Repositories that Circumvent its Widevine DRM

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

Russian government hackers are believed to be responsible for infiltrating computer systems at multiple U.S. agencies in recent months, including the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of the Treasury, according to government agencies and media reports. Russia has denied the accusations.

The hack hinged on a vulnerability on a software monitoring product from SolarWinds, a company based in Austin, Texas. The company works widely with the federal government and hundreds of large U.S. companies. Many use SolarWinds' Orion software to monitor their computer networks.

SolarWinds has some 300,000 customers but says "fewer than 18,000" installed the version of its Orion products earlier this year that now appears to have been compromised.

So far, the list of affected U.S. government entities includes the Commerce Department, Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department, the U.S. Postal Service and the National Institutes of Health.

The incident is the latest in what has become a long list of suspected Russian electronic incursions into other nations – particularly the U.S. – under President Vladimir Putin. Multiple countries say Russia was previously found to have used hackers, bots and other means in attempts to influence elections in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Also at Krebs on Security, BBC, Mashable, and cnet.

What We Know About Russia's Latest Alleged Hack Of The U.S. Government

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Scientists demonstrate an innovative e-skin with touch and proximity-sensing capabilities without using dedicated touch sensors:

Replicating the human sense of touch is complicated—electronic skins need to be flexible, stretchable, and sensitive to temperature, pressure and texture; they need to be able to read biological data and provide electronic readouts. Therefore, how to power electronic skin for continuous, real-time use is a big challenge.

To address this, researchers from Glasgow University have developed an energy-generating e-skin made out of miniaturized solar cells, without dedicated touch sensors. The solar cells not only generate their own power—and some surplus—but also provide tactile capabilities for touch and proximity sensing. An early-view paper of their findings was published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

When exposed to a light source, the solar cells on the s-skin generate energy. If a cell is shadowed by an approaching object, the intensity of the light, and therefore the energy generated, reduces, dropping to zero when the cell makes contact with the object, confirming touch. In proximity mode, the light intensity tells you how far the object is with respect to the cell. "In real time, you can then compare the light intensity...and after calibration find out the distances," says Ravinder Dahiya of the Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) Group, James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, where the study was carried out. The team used infra-red LEDs with the solar cells for proximity sensing for better results.

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956_:

Google reportedly could be hit with second antitrust lawsuit this week:

A group of states is preparing to file a second antitrust lawsuit against Google this week — setting the tech titan up for a tough court battle, according to new reports.

The coalition of states, led by Colorado and Nebraska, is putting the finishing touches on the antitrust complaint against Google that could be filed as soon as Thursday, Politico reported, citing two people close to the investigation.

The suit is expected to focus on Google's dominance in the online search market, particularly changes it has made to the designs of its signature search engine that put rivals at a disadvantage, according to the outlet.

[...] The states will bring their lawsuit in the same Washington, DC federal court where the feds filed theirs, according to Politico. The state attorneys general hope to eventually consolidate their case with the Justice Department's, Reuters reported.

Also at:
Google Hit With 2nd Lawsuit Testing Its Monopoly Power — This One Over Digital Ads
The latest multistate antitrust lawsuit targets Google's ad business
Ten States Sue Google, Alleging Deal With Facebook to Rig Online Ad Market

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

In a press release, security firm Avast has said around 3 million people are affected worldwide:

Threat Intelligence researchers from Avast (LSE:AVST), a global leader in digital security and privacy products, have identified malware hidden in at least 28 third party Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge extensions associated with some of the world's most popular platforms. The malware has the functionality to redirect user's traffic to ads or phishing sites and to steal people's personal data, such as birth dates, email addresses, and active devices. According to the app stores' download numbers, around three million people may be affected worldwide.

The extensions which aid users in downloading videos from these platforms include Video Downloader for Facebook, Vimeo Video Downloader, Instagram Story Downloader, VK Unblock, and other browser extensions on the Google Chrome Browser, and some on Microsoft Edge Browser. The researchers have identified malicious code in the Javascript-based extensions that allows the extensions to download further malware onto a user's PC.

[...] The Avast Threat Intelligence team started monitoring this threat in November 2020, but believe that it could have been active for years without anyone noticing. There are reviews on the Chrome Web Store mentioning link hijacking from as far back as December 2018. Rubín added, "The extensions' backdoors are well-hidden and the extensions only start to exhibit malicious behavior days after installation, which made it hard for any security software to discover."

[...] At this moment, the infected extensions are still available for download. Avast has contacted the Microsoft and Google Chrome teams to report them. Both Microsoft and Google confirmed they are currently looking into the issue. In the meantime, Avast recommends users disable or uninstall the extensions for now until the problem is resolved and then scan for and remove the malware.

Original Submission