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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Tiny Wireless Device Sheds Light On Combating Obesity:

Gastric bypass surgery is sometimes the last resort for those who struggle with obesity or have serious health-related issues due to their weight. Since this procedure involves making a small stomach pouch and rerouting the digestive tract, it is very invasive and prolongs the recovery period for patients. In a new study, researchers at Texas A&M University have described a medical device that might help with weight loss, and requires a simpler operative procedure for implantation.

Researchers said their centimeter-sized device provides the feeling of fullness by stimulating the endings of the vagus nerve with light. Unlike other devices that require a power cord, their device is wireless and can be controlled externally from a remote radio frequency source.

"We wanted to create a device that not only requires minimal surgery for implantation but also allows us to stimulate specific nerve endings in the stomach," said Sung II Park, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Our device has the potential to do both of these things in the harsh gastric conditions, which, in the future, can be hugely beneficial to people needing dramatic weight-loss surgeries."

Also at: New Atlas.

Journal Reference:
Woo Seok Kim, Sungcheol Hong, Milenka Gamero, et al. Organ-specific, multimodal, wireless optoelectronics for high-throughput phenotyping of peripheral neural pathways [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20421-8)

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

A lawyer at the Supreme Court of India, Mary Mitzy, asks in the Deccan Chronicle about who controls the right to actually speak in court during online trials: Specifically she asks, who controls the mute button in online court cases? Currently court does not meet in person and takes up only matters it deems urgent. The court is using a proprietary system for video conferencing, which would raise additional questions on SN, yet proprietary or not the matter of muting affects not only the outcomes of the trials but also the flow of justice.

Indian courts follow the system of an open court hearing. Everyone can watch the proceedings. But the Vidyo app has a limit in terms of the number of participants who can be admitted and the Supreme Court, too, came out with a notification restricting the advocates from sharing the link for appearance. It has affected mostly young advocates keen to learn court craft from watching the courts function.

But there's been worse happening. Many a time, during hearing a case, the advocate was logged out at the relevant moment and was unable to log in. This resulted in the case being decided in their absence. It is with great difficulty that one gets one's case listed for hearing and if it is decided in one's absence then one's entire effort becomes futile. On top of that, there is the pain of humiliation before one's client.

[...] Now, the cases heard by the Supreme Court have anywhere between two and 30 parties. Who decides who will be unmuted? A control room that has no idea about the proceedings of a case? Advocates keep sending requests to be unmated [sic] or for the senior advocate to be allowed to speak. But only if they are lucky will their request be granted before the case is over. Or else, you just count yourself to be on the "unlucky list".

[N.B. - This is from the opinion section of the site and pertains to the court system in India.]

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Increase in pleasurable effects of alcohol over time may predict alcohol use disorder:

During her training as a clinical psychologist, Andrea King, PhD, was taught the standard theory about alcoholism: Individuals who drink to excess develop tolerance to the substance, requiring them to drink more over time to achieve pleasurable feelings. This spiral has long been thought to lead to addiction.

But when she started working with patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD), King noticed that — contrary to what she’d been taught by prevailing research and clinical lore — addicted patients didn’t seem to have a tolerance to the pleasurable effects of alcohol, only to the sedating effects. “Their response to the positive effects of alcohol wasn’t diminished at all,” she said.

[...] In a new study, published on Jan. 5 [...] King and her team tested 190 non-alcoholic young adults in a laboratory-based binge-drinking scenario at three regular intervals over the course of 10 years.

The study showed that those individuals who reported the highest pleasurable and rewarding effects of alcohol at the start of the trial were more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder, or AUD (the current clinical term for alcoholism).

[...] “This could be an opportunity for early intervention, comparable to how someone may get their cholesterol tested and then may be more motivated to change their diet, exercise more or start a medication to rein it in,” King said. “Similarly, knowing one’s acute response to alcohol and how it may indicate a person’s future risk for drinking problems, one may decide to change their drinking on their own or seek help to avoid the progression to addiction.”

Journal Reference:
Subjective Responses to Alcohol in the Development and Maintenance of Alcohol Use Disorder, American Journal of Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20030247)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Nissan NA source code leaked due to default admin:admin credentials:

Multiple code repositories from Nissan North America became public this week after the company left an exposed Git server protected with default access credentials.

The entire collection is around 20 gigabytes large and contains source code for mobile apps and various tools used by Nissan internally for diagnostics, client acquisition, market research, or NissanConnect services.

It is unclear if Nissan learned about the leak by itself or received a tip, but the company took down the insecure server on Tuesday before media outlets started publishing news of the incident.

[...] Swiss developer and reverse engineer Tillie Kottmann, who maintains a repository of leaked source code from various sources and their scouting of misconfigured devops tools, posted a summary of the Nissan leak.

[Editor's Note: The Twitter links appear to be inaccessible at this time, but the mentioned leak summary is available in the article itself.]

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Scientists develop new approach to understanding massive volcanic eruptions:

A geosciences team led by the University of South Florida (USF) has developed a new way to reconstruct the sizes of volcanic eruptions that occurred thousands of years ago, creating a first-of-its kind tool that can aid scientists in understanding past explosive eruptions that shaped the earth and improve the way of estimating hazards of future eruptions.

The advanced numerical model the USF team developed allows scientists to reconstruct eruption rates through time by estimating the dimensions of the umbrella clouds that contribute to the accumulation of vast deposits of volcanic ash. The research is published in the new edition of the Nature journal, Communications, Earth and Environment.

[...] Current technology allows scientists to observe ash clouds. However, past eruptions are characterized based on the geological interpretation of their tephra deposits—the pieces and fragments of rock ejected into the air by an erupting volcano. [...] Until now, the most sought-after information is the eruption column height and the total erupted mass or volume, [USF doctoral candidate Robert] Constantinescu said.

But over time, deposits erode and can provide an uncertain picture of older eruptions. Also, current models have been limited in that they assume all volcanic eruptions created mostly vertical plumes, Constantinescu said, and don't account for large explosive eruptions that form laterally spreading umbrella ash clouds.

The USF team's work shows that it is the dimensions of the umbrella clouds that is the telling factor in reconstructing past large explosive eruptions.

[...] The researchers propose updating the VEI [Volcanic Explosivity Index] scale with the umbrella cloud dimensions, which can now be easily estimated using the mathematical models they've developed.

Journal Reference:
Robert Constantinescu, Aurelian Hopulele-Gligor, Charles B. Connor, et al. The radius of the umbrella cloud helps characterize large explosive volcanic eruptions [open], Communications Earth & Environment (DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-00078-3)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Phytium presents D2000 ARM-based octa-core desktop CPU for the Chinese market

The new Phytium D2000 processors use the same custom 64-bit ARMv8-compatible FTC663 cores integrated in last year's FeiTeng-2000/4 model, except now there are 4x 2-core clusters instead of 2. Each of these clusters shares a unified 2 MB L2 cache and 1 MB L3 cache (8 MB of L2 cache and 4 MB L3 cache in total). This architecture features a four-issue out-of-order pipeline combined with Phytium's latest dynamic branch predictor and INT / FP units supporting ARM's ASIMD instructions. There is also support for SM2 / SM3 / SM4 / SM9 cryptography algorithms and the proprietary PSPA 1.0 security platform.

As far as hardware specs go, the D2000 is not really a match for the latest Intel and AMD chips, as it is built on China's own 14 nm nodes. Still, it features all the standard features you would expect from an entry-level CPU, including 128-bit DDR4-3200 / LPDDR4 RAM support, 34 PCIe 3.0 lanes that can be split into four PCIe 3.0 x8 slots and two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots, plus 2x GbE NiCs, 32 GPIO lanes, and an integrated audio codec. There is no iGPU, however. Core clock speeds will be set between 2.3 - 2.6 GHz, with a 25 W TDP, and the processor scores 97.45 points in the SPECint test.

Phytium is currently rolling out the D2000 chips to Chinese PC OEMs, and the first systems featuring the new processors are expected to hit the market in late Q1 2021.

Many more details at Tom's Hardware.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

WhatsApp: Let us share your data with Facebook or else:

In a surprise move, WhatsApp recently gave many of its users a difficult choice: they could either accept a revised privacy policy that explicit[sic] allowed the service to share information with parent company Facebook by February 8th, or decline and risk not being able to use the service at all.

[...] Upon further inspection, the updated policy makes clear that data collected by WhatsApp — including user phone numbers, "transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others (including businesses) when using our Services , mobile device information, your IP address" and more are subject to be shared with other properties owned and controlled by Facebook.

"As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information (see here) with, the other Facebook Companies," the updated privacy policy reads. "We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings, including the Facebook Company Products."

[...] The shift appears to be a dramatic about-face for WhatsApp, a company that contends "respect for your privacy" is coded into its DNA and made end-to-end encryption standard across all chats as of 2016.

Additionally, Signal sees surge in new signups after boost from Elon Musk and WhatsApp controversy:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Twitter permanently suspends Trump's account:

US President Donald Trump has been permanently suspended from Twitter "due to the risk of further incitement of violence", the company says.

Twitter said the decision was made "after close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them".

Mr Trump had earlier been locked out of his account for 12 hours.

Twitter then said that it would ban Mr Trump "permanently" if he breached the platform's rules again.

Reacting to the permanent ban, Trump 2020 campaign adviser Jason Miller tweeted: "Disgusting... if you don't think they're coming for you next, you're wrong."

It comes after Mr Trump tweeted several messages on Wednesday, calling the people who stormed the US Capitol "patriots".

Hundreds of his supporters entered the Capitol building as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election. The ensuing violence led to the deaths of four civilians and a police officer.

The siege took place just hours after Trump addressed supporters and told them: "We will never give up; we will never concede."

[...] On Thursday, Facebook said it had suspended Mr Trump "indefinitely". The popular gaming platform Twitch also placed an indefinite ban on the outgoing president's channel, which he has used for rally broadcasts. So has Snapchat.

Two online Trump memorabilia stores were closed this week by e-commerce company Shopify. On Friday, Reddit banned its "donaldtrump" forum for the president's supporters.

[...] The big question now is, can Trumpism survive without the backing of mainstream media? Or will it simply slip into the shadows of the internet?

(Emphasis retained from original.)

Also at Ars Technica, CNET

Full Twitter explanation at: blog.twitter.com

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Google Chrome browser privacy plan investigated in UK:

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said Google's plan could have a "significant impact" on news websites and the digital advertising market.

It had already raised concerns that publishers' profits could sink if they were unable to run personalised ads.

But Google said digital advertising practices had to "evolve".

[...] But Google intends to go further by ending support for all cookies except first-party ones - those used by sites to track activity within their own pages.

It wants to replace them with new tools that give advertisers more limited, anonymised information such as how many users visited a promoted product's page after seeing a relevant ad - but not tie this information to individual users.

[...] "Google's Privacy Sandbox proposals will potentially have a very significant impact on publishers like newspapers, and the digital advertising market. But there are also privacy concerns to consider," said Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA.

At that point it acknowledged that while there were benefits to consumers from the kinds of privacy measures Google was proposing, they might be outweighed by other concerns.

It added that "many news publishers" had expressed concern that their news sites would become "unsustainable".

[...] Last November, the government announced it would create a new Digital Markets Unit within the CMA.

The organisation subsequently detailed how it would to govern the behaviour of Google, Facebook and other tech platforms "that currently dominate" online markets, and give consumers "more control over how their data is used".

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

NVIDIA fixes high severity flaws affecting Windows, Linux devices:

NVIDIA has released security updates to address six security vulnerabilities found in Windows and Linux GPU display drivers, as well as ten additional flaws affecting the NVIDIA Virtual GPU (vGPU) management software.

The vulnerabilities expose Windows and Linux machines to attacks leading to denial of service, escalation of privileges, data tampering, or information disclosure.

All these security bugs require local user access, which means that potential attackers will first have to gain access to vulnerable devices using an additional attack vector.

[...] The full list of security flaws addressed by NVIDIA this month is available in the January 2021 Security Bulletin.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Evidence mounts for effectiveness of rear autobrake:

Front automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems have greater potential to save lives, but rear AEB is saving drivers the hassle and expense of many a fender bender, an updated analysis from the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) shows.

Rear AEB was the standout feature in HLDI's annual compilation of its research on the impact of crash avoidance technologies.

The updated rear AEB analysis adds insurance data for model year 2015-18 Subaru vehicles with and without the feature to an earlier analysis of 2014-15 General Motors vehicles. The researchers found that vehicles equipped with rear AEB had 28 percent fewer property damage liability claims and 10 percent fewer collision claims across the two manufacturers.

Collision insurance covers damage to the insured driver's vehicle, while property damage liability insurance covers damage to the other vehicle involved in a crash when the insured driver is at fault.

"We haven't seen that kind of reduction in claims for vehicle and other property damage from any other advanced driver assistance system," says HLDI Senior Vice President Matt Moore.

The impact of rear AEB on injury crashes was relatively small, which makes sense based on the type of crashes the technology is designed to avoid.

"Backing crashes generally happen at lower speeds than front-to-rear crashes," Moore says. "That means they're less dangerous, but the costs from vehicle damage can add up."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

SpaceX launches Turksat 5A communications satellite for Turkey, lands rocket:

SpaceX kicked off what is expected to be another launch-packed year by delivering a Turkish communications satellite to orbit tonight (Jan. 7).

A 230-ft-tall (70 m) Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40 here at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 9:15 p.m. EST (0215 GMT on Jan. 8), about 45 minutes into a planned four-hour window, carrying the Turksat 5A satellite into space. The brief delay was due to a downrange tracking issue, SpaceX said during its live launch broadcast.

[...] Today's flight was the fourth launch for this particular Falcon 9 first stage. The booster, designated B1060, previously lofted an upgraded GPS III satellite for the U.S. Space Force in June 2020, followed by launches of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites in September and October.

[...] the Falcon 9 deposited the 7,700-lb. (3,500 kilograms) Turksat 5A satellite into orbit about 33 minutes after liftoff. The spacecraft is designed to operate for approximately 15 years, providing broadband coverage to Turkey, the Middle East, Europe and portions of Africa.

SpaceX will also launch the spacecraft's counterpart, Turksat 5B, later this year.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

GPU, Motherboard Prices Will Jump Thanks to US-China Trade War - ExtremeTech:

Up until now, the United States' ongoing trade war with China hasn't made much of an impact on tech enthusiasts' wallets. That's going to change from this point forward until the US and China settle their disputes or GPUs are specifically granted an exemption from the increased tariffs. Neither of these seems to be particularly likely at the moment.

Up until now, graphics cards and a number of other products have been shielded from the impact of tariffs by US-granted exemptions that shielded them from the price increases. Those laws, however, expired on December 31, 2020. Now that we're into the new year, companies like Asus are notifying consumers they can expect some unwelcome changes. Juan Jose Guerrero III, Asus' Technical Marketing Manager, has released a statement on the company's MSRP pricing expectations for 2021. This applies to both GPUs and motherboards:

We have an announcement in regards to MSRP price changes that are effective in early 2021 for our award-winning series of graphic cards and motherboards. Our new MSRP reflects increases in cost for components. operating costs, and logistical activities plus a continuation of import tariffs. We worked closely with our supply and logistic partners to minimize price increases. ASUS greatly appreciates your continued business and support as we navigate through this time of unprecedented market change.

Asus also notes that more than just GPUs and motherboards may be affected. Price increases are going to vary by GPU value, but the tariffs on Chinese goods ranged from 7.5 percent to 25 percent. This the very last thing PC enthusiasts will want to hear because it's going to additionally raise the price on GPUs at a time when the graphics cards market is running hot already.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

After decades of effort, scientists are finally seeing black holes:

While working on his doctorate in theoretical physics in the early 1970s, Saul Teukolsky solved a problem that seemed purely hypothetical. Imagine a black hole, the ghostly knot of gravity that forms when, say, a massive star burns out and collapses to an infinitesimal point. Suppose you perturb it, as you might strike a bell. How does the black hole respond?

Teukolsky, then a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), attacked the problem with pencil, paper, and Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity. Like a bell, the black hole would oscillate at one main frequency and multiple overtones, he found. The oscillations would quickly fade as the black hole radiated gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space itself. It was a sweet problem, says Teukolsky, now at Cornell University. And it was completely abstract—until 5 years ago.

In February 2016, experimenters with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of huge instruments in Louisiana and Washington, reported the first observation of fleeting gravitational ripples, which had emanated from two black holes, each about 30 times as massive as the Sun, spiraling into each other 1.3 billion light-years away. LIGO even sensed the "ring down": the shudder of the bigger black hole produced by the merger. Teukolsky's old thesis was suddenly cutting-edge physics.

"The thought that anything I did would ever have implications for anything measurable in my lifetime was so far-fetched that the last 5 years have seemed like living in a dream world," Teukolsky says. "I have to pinch myself, it doesn't feel real."

NOTE: As part of the editing process, we try to have two editors look at a story before it is released. I noticed a few stories in the Story Queue which had not been seconded. So, I jumped in and proceeded to do so. Unfortunately, the UI for editors has this button layout:

[preview] [update] [delete]

Yes, I accidentally clicked on [delete] instead of [update]. (These are especially close together on a phone.) Not only did the story get deleted, but so did the 17 comments which had already been been made. No, there is no confirmation dialog.

I hereby publicly apologize to AC, AC, Runaway1956, RS3, SomeGuy, AC, AC, epitaxial, SomeGuy, Runaway1956, AC, looorg, AC, Runaway1956, AC, Runaway1956, and Grishnakh as well as the rest of the community.

I will investigate moving the delete button to a safer location on the page and otherwise attempt to make it harder to hit by accident. I retyped re-created the story text; it appears below.

--martyb

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Honda cuts car production on massive chip shortage:

Honda Motor will reduce vehicle production due to a supply crunch in semiconductors, Nikkei has learned, a sign that a pandemic-spurred global shortage is threatening the auto industry.

[...] There are warnings that the cuts could be worse later in the year. "The period starting in February may be grim," said a source familiar with the matter. The shortage could "impact tens of thousands of vehicles during the January-March quarter on the domestic side alone," the source added.

Honda has apparently run short on semiconductors used in vehicle control systems. As people stay mainly indoors and work from home, demand has surged for chips used in smartphones and computers. As chipmakers focus on meeting that demand, semiconductor supplies to auto parts manufacturers have stalled.

[...] Honda will not halt factory operations this month, but the company is expected to limit the daily number of vehicles produced. A cutback of 4,000 autos represents less than 0.1% of the 4.77 million units produced globally in fiscal 2019.

Because the process of procuring material and turning it into semiconductors takes more than three months, adjusting production volume quickly based on demand is a tall order. The coronavirus pandemic caused demand for cars to drop during the first half of 2020. At the time, automakers temporarily cut orders for semiconductors, and the chip suppliers modified production plans accordingly.

[...] The market recovery from the coronavirus impact has kept Honda's factories busy. In November, global production shot up 11.4% from a year earlier to 457,671 vehicles. In Japan alone, production jumped 22.5% to 64,843 units.

But just as Honda pruned excess capacity and is enjoying the comeback in demand, an unexpected fallout from the pandemic is forcing Honda to hit the brakes on production.

"Demand from smartphones, 5G base stations, gaming and elsewhere are robust, so there is limited production capacity to devote to automotive semiconductors," said Kazuhiro Sugiyama at British market intelligence company Omdia. The surge in demand from Chinese electric vehicles have contributed to the supply crunch as well.