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takyon writes:

Marvell Announces First PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD Controllers: Up To 14 GB/s

Today Marvell is announcing the first NVMe SSD controllers to support PCIe 5.0, and a new branding strategy for Marvell's storage controllers. The new SSD controllers are the first under the umbrella of Marvell's Bravera brand, which will also encompass HDD controllers and other storage accelerator products. The Bravera SC5 family of PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers will consist of two controller models: the 8-channel MV-SS1331 and the 16-channel MV-SS1333.

These new SSD controllers roughly double the performance available from PCIe 4.0 SSDs, meaning sequential read throughput hits 14 GB/s and random read performance of around 2M IOPS. To reach this level of performance while staying within the power and thermal limits of common enterprise SSD form factors, Marvell has had to improve power efficiency by 40% over their previous generation SSD controllers. That goes beyond the improvement that can be gained simply from smaller fab process nodes, so Marvell has had to significantly alter the architecture of their controllers. The Bravera SC5 controllers still include a mix of Arm cores (Cortex-R8, Cortex-M7 and a Cortex-M3), but now includes much more fixed-function hardware to handle the basic tasks of the controller with high throughput and consistently low latency.

Top-of-the-line PCIe 4.0 controllers from Phison and Silicon Motion are capable of 7.4 GB/s of sequential reads.

Related: Marvell Looking to Integrate Machine Learning Engines Onto SSD Controllers
Marvell Announces ThunderX3, an ARM Server CPU With 96 Cores, 384 Threads
Marvell ThunderX3 ARM Server CPU Will Have Up to 60 Cores Per Die, with 96-Core Dual-Die Option
Silicon Motion Launches PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Controllers

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Ex-official who revealed UFO project accuses Pentagon of 'disinformation' campaign

The former Pentagon official who went public about reports of UFOs has filed a complaint with the agency's inspector general claiming a coordinated campaign to discredit him for speaking out — including accusing a top official of threatening to tell people he was "crazy," according to documents reviewed by POLITICO.

Lue Elizondo, a career counterintelligence specialist who was assigned in 2008 to work for a Pentagon program that investigated reports of "unmanned aerial phenomena," filed the 64-page complaint to the independent watchdog on May 3 and has met several times with investigators, according to his legal team.

The claim that the government is trying to discredit him comes weeks before the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon are expected to deliver an unclassified report to Congress about UFOs and the government's strategy for investigating such encounters. The report is expected to include a detailed accounting of the agencies, personnel and surveillance systems that gather and analyze the data.

"What he is saying is there are certain individuals in the Defense Department who in fact were attacking him and lying about him publicly, using the color of authority of their offices to disparage him and discredit him and were interfering in his ability to seek and obtain gainful employment out in the world," said Daniel Sheehan, Elizondo's attorney. "And also threatening his security clearance."

Pentagon UFO videos.

Previously:

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

Pentagon's UFO Investigation Program Revealed
UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program
Newly-Released Video Shows 2015 U.S. Navy Sighting of UFO
The US Navy is Drafting New Rules to Report UFO Sightings
US Navy Spokesman Acknowledges UFO Videos
The Pentagon Releases Official Footage of UFOs. No, Seriously!
The Pentagon Has Continued to Investigate UFOs Under Renamed Program
You Can Now Easily Download All CIA UFO Documents to Date

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Giant tortoise thought extinct 100 years ago is living in Galapagos, Ecuador says:

The Galapagos National Park is preparing an expedition to search for more of the giant tortoises in an attempt to save the species.

The turtle was found two years ago on Fernandina Island, one of the youngest and most pristine in the archipelago, during a joint expedition between the Galapagos National Park and the Galapagos Conservancy.

Scientists from Yale University then identified it as the Chelonoidis phantasticus species, which had been considered extinct more than a century ago.

"Yale University revealed the results of genetic studies and the respective DNA comparison that was made with a specimen extracted in 1906," the Galapagos Park said in a statement.

Previously: Ecuador Releases 201 Tortoises on Galápagos Island of Santa Fe.

Also see the Wikipedia entry on Lonesome George.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Vulnerability in VMware product has severity rating of 9.8 out of 10:

Data centers around the world have a new concern to contend with—a remote code vulnerability in a widely used VMware product.

The security flaw, which VMware disclosed and patched on Tuesday, resides in the vCenter Server, a tool used for managing virtualization in large data centers. vCenter Server is used to administer VMware's vSphere and ESXi host products, which by some rankings are the first and second most popular virtualization solutions on the market. Enlyft, a site that provides business intelligence, shows that more than 43,000 organizations use vSphere.

[...] "The vSphere Client (HTML5) contains a remote code execution vulnerability due to lack of input validation in the Virtual SAN Health Check plug-in, which is enabled by default in vCenter Server," Tuesday's advisory stated. "VMware has evaluated the severity of this issue to be in the Critical severity range with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 9.8... A malicious actor with network access to port 443 may exploit this issue to execute commands with unrestricted privileges on the underlying operating system that hosts vCenter Server."

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Court orders Royal Dutch Shell to cut net emissions by 45%:

A Dutch court has ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its carbon emissions by net 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels in a landmark case brought by climate activist groups.

[...] The Hague District Court ruled that the Anglo-Dutch energy giant has a duty of care to reduce emissions and that its current reduction plans were not concrete enough.

The decision could set a precedent for similar cases against polluting multinationals around the world. Activists gathered outside the courtroom erupted into cheers as the decision was read out loud.

"The climate won today," said Roger Cox, a lawyer for the Dutch arm of Friends of the Earth, which was one of the organizations behind the case.

Also at Ars Technica.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Tired of Boring CAPTCHAs, This Developer Created a Doom-Themed One:

Not all CAPTCHA tests need to be boring. A web developer in Spain has decided to create one revolving around the classic PC game Doom.

The developer, Miquel Camps Orteza, uploaded his creation to his GitHub page. To prove you're a human, and not a bot, the test asks you to shoot four "imps" from Doom using a handgun.

What ensues is a simple, but fun mini-game. There are no moving sprites; the monsters and background are rendered in static 2D images. Nevertheless, the CAPTCHA test is loaded with the game's music and gunshot sound effects to help recreate the feel of playing the original Doom.

If you gun down all four imps in the time allotted, you'll pass the test. If not, play again.  Try it below. (Note: The music is loud, but it will stop once you solve the puzzle.)

[...] "My CAPTCHA about Doom only validates from user-side (client). There is no backend to a server to validate the user request," he added. "For [someone] who can code, they can see how easy it is to validate the CAPTCHA."

[...] Anyone can also freely incorporate his Doom-themed CAPTCHA test into a website form.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

TorrentFreak, is reporting on a thread at the orange site discussing Comcast allegedly having invoked the DMCA against a customer for having downloaded Ubuntu, a very popular GNU/Linux distro made by Canonical, Ltd. Just to be clear, the license for Ubuntu and its components allow not just downloading, but also even redistribution, modification, and redistribution of the modifications. The DMCA complaint was filed by a German company named OpSec Security. No comment was provided to TorrentFreak by either Canonical or OpSec.

Detail of the Allegedly-Infringing Content and DMCA Notice

The allegedly infringing content is the 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS release but the first big question is whether the file is actually the official release from Canonical. Given that the listed hash value is 4ba4fbf7231a3a660e86892707d25c135533a16a and that matches the hash of the official release, mislabeled or misidentified content (wrong hash, mislabeled file etc) appears to be ruled out.

Indeed, the same hash value is listed on Ubuntu’s very own BitTorrent tracker and according to NateNate60, this is where he downloaded the torrent that led to the DMCA notice. It doesn’t get much more official than that.

According to the DMCA notice sent by Comcast, the complainant wasn’t Ubuntu/Canonical but an anti-piracy company called OpSec Security, which according to its imprint is based in Germany. TorrentFreak has contacted OpSec for a comment on the DMCA notice but at the time of writing the company is yet to respond.

Because the customer in question will probably not contest the false accusations there will be serious legal repercussions since guilt is assumed unless successfully contested. For that matter, the DMCA from 1998 is the law which also makes watching DVDs on GNU/Linux illegal in the US.

Previously:
A great many stories on either Ubuntu or the DMCA.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Biden asks intel community to 'redouble' efforts probing COVID-19 origins

President Biden on Wednesday announced a ramped-up effort to determine the origins of COVID-19, reflecting a new acceptance in U.S. political and public health circles that the virus might have emerged naturally or from a Chinese lab in the city of Wuhan.

Biden asked the U.S. intelligence community to "redouble their efforts" to come to a definitive conclusion on the disease's origins, calling on them to report back to him within 90 days.

"As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China," Biden said in a statement. "I have also asked that this effort include work by our National Labs and other agencies of our government to augment the Intelligence Community's efforts. And I have asked the Intelligence Community to keep Congress fully apprised of its work."

"The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence," Biden added.

Top intelligence officials including Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines acknowledged at a hearing in April that a laboratory accident was a plausible scenario that the intelligence community was investigating.

Also at The Guardian, CNBC, and Politico.

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

The USB-C Release 2.1 spec more than doubles the output of the all-in-one cable

Soon, the majority of portable PCs won't need to be equipped with an ugly barrel jack and a proprietary power brick to charge. The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) has just announced (via CNET) that it's more than doubling the amount of power you can send over a USB-C cable to 240 watts, which means you'll eventually be able to plug in the same kind of multipurpose USB-C cable you currently use on lightweight laptops, tablets, and phones to charge all but the beefiest gaming laptops.

Previously, the USB-C Power Delivery spec tops out at 100 watts, and it's definitely held the industry back a tad — for example, while my own Dell XPS 15 can technically charge over USB-C, it needs 130W of power to charge and run at full bore simultaneously. Some manufacturers have sold off-spec USB-C adapters (I have a Dell dock that outputs 130W), but they don't always come bundled with machines and generally have a fixed, non-detachable cable to prevent against misuse.

But with 240W of power — something that the USB-IF is calling "Extended Power Range" or EPR for short — you could theoretically charge an full-fat Alienware m17 gaming laptop over USB-C.

How about 640 Watts? That ought to be enough for anyone!

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Nearly the Speed of Light in One Millimeter: Presenting a New Type of Particle Accelerator:

In conventional particle accelerators, strong radio waves are guided into specially shaped metal tubes called resonators. The particles to be accelerated — which are often electrons — can ride these radio waves like surfers ride an ocean wave. But the potential of the technology is limited: Feeding too much radio wave power into the resonators creates a risk of electrical charges that can damage the component. This means that in order to bring particles to high energy levels, many resonators have to be connected in series, which makes today's accelerators in many cases kilometers long.

That is why experts are eagerly working on an alternative: plasma acceleration. In principle, short and extremely powerful laser flashes fire into a plasma — an ionized state of matter consisting of negatively charged electrons and positively charged atomic cores. In this plasma, the laser pulse generates a strong alternating electric field, similar to the wake of a ship, which can accelerate electrons enormously over a very short distance. In theory, this means facilities can be built far more compact, shrinking an accelerator that is a hundred meters long today down to just a few meters. "This miniaturization is what makes the concept so attractive," explains Arie Irman, a researcher at the HZDR Institute of Radiation Physics. "And we hope it will allow even small university laboratories to afford a powerful accelerator in the future."

But there is yet another variant of plasma acceleration where the plasma is driven by near-light-speed electron bunches instead of powerful laser flashes. This method offers two advantages over laser-driven plasma acceleration: "In principle, it should be possible to achieve higher particle energies, and the accelerated electron beams should be easier to control," explains HZDR physicist and primary author Thomas Kurz. "The drawback is that at the moment, we rely on large conventional accelerators to produce the electron bunches that are needed to drive the plasma." FLASH at DESY in Hamburg, for instance, where such experiments take place, measures a good one hundred meters.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Not Graphene: New Type of Atomically Thin Carbon Material Discovered:

Carbon exists in various forms. In addition to diamond and graphite, there are recently discovered forms with astonishing properties. For example graphene, with a thickness of just one atomic layer, is the thinnest known material, and its unusual properties make it an extremely exciting candidate for applications like future electronics and high-tech engineering. In graphene, each carbon atom is linked to three neighbors, forming hexagons arranged in a honeycomb network. Theoretical studies have shown that carbon atoms can also arrange in other flat network patterns, while still binding to three neighbors, but none of these predicted networks had been realized until now.

Researchers at the University of Marburg in Germany and Aalto University in Finland have now discovered a new carbon network, which is atomically thin like graphene, but is made up of squares, hexagons, and octagons forming an ordered lattice. They confirmed the unique structure of the network using high-resolution scanning probe microscopy and interestingly found that its electronic properties are very different from those of graphene.

In contrast to graphene and other forms of carbon, the new Biphenylene network — as the new material is named — has metallic properties. Narrow stripes of the network, only 21 atoms wide, already behave like a metal, while graphene is a semiconductor at this size. "These stripes could be used as conducting wires in future carbon-based electronic devices." said professor Michael Gottfried, at University of Marburg, who leads the team who developed the idea. The lead author of the study, Qitang Fan from Marburg continues, "This novel carbon network may also serve as a superior anode material in lithium-ion batteries, with a larger lithium storage capacity compared to that of the current graphene-based materials."

Journal Reference:
Qitang Fan, Linghao Yan, Matthias W. Tripp, et al. Biphenylene network: A nonbenzenoid carbon allotrope [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abg4509)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Exclusive: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

Video game and hardware studio Valve has been secretly building a Switch-like portable PC designed to run a large number of games on the Steam PC platform via Linux—and it could launch, supply chain willing, by year's end.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter have confirmed that the hardware has been in development for some time, and this week, Valve itself pointed to the device by slipping new hardware-related code into the latest version of Steam, the company's popular PC gaming storefront and ecosystem.

[...] In recent years, the "Switch-like PC" category has exploded. In early 2020, Alienware revealed its first Switch-like gaming PC, but the "concept" device has not yet turned into a commercial product. If you want to buy a similar device today, you're largely looking at products from Chinese OEMs like GPD, One-Netbook, and Aya, who have slapped ultramobile PC processors and parts into a Switch-like chassis.

Rumors point to an AMD "Van Gogh" APU (Zen 2 quad-core with RDNA 2 graphics and support for LPDDR5 RAM), 7/8-inch screen, at a $400 price point for a Q4 2021 release.

Also at Wccftech.

Original Submission

New 12.9-inch iPad Pro already has a display problem:

Apple has begun shipping its 2021 M1-equipped iPad Pro tablets, and the larger 12.9-inch version has earned special acclaim for its beautiful mini-LED display. We praised its brightness and stellar picture quality in our own iPad Pro 2021 (12.9-inch) review, but now some owners are reporting some distracting bloom effects appearing on the screen while viewing their tablet in a dark room.

Notably, 2021 iPad Pro users like Josh Teder and Teoh Yi Chie have taken to Twitter to post images showcasing a slight bloom effect that can be seen around bright areas of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro's screen when using it in total darkness.

[...] This is significant because, as MacRumors points out, Apple's for the new iPad Pro specifically spell out how the larger iPad Pro's Liquid Retina XDR display is designed to minimize bloom by handling local dimming better than typical LED LCD displays.

[...] Some users are now posting images which show a noticeable light bloom around bright areas of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro's screen in total darkness, even when they aren't scrolling. Many are quick to point out that this is a very subtle effect that's barely noticeable unless you're using the iPad in a dark room, but it's still a notable example of how Apple's new mini-LED display falls short of what can be achieved with a high-quality OLED screen like that found on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

There are still a few months to fix this, but for now the US Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Acting Commissioner for Patents, Andrew Faile, and Chief Information Officer, Jamie Holcombe, have announced that starting January 1^st, 2022, the USPTO will institute a surcharge for applicants that are not locked into Microsoft products via the proprietary DOCX format. From that date onwards, the USPTO will move away from PDF and require all filers to use that proprietary format or face an arbitrary surcharge when filing.

First, we delayed the effective date for the non-DOCX surcharge fee to January 1, 2022, to provide more time for applicants to transition to this new process, and for the USPTO to continue our outreach efforts and address customer concerns. We've also made office actions available in DOCX and XML formats and further enhanced DOCX features, including accepting DOCX for drawings in addition to the specification, claims, and abstract for certain applications.

One out of several major problems with the plans is that DOCX is a proprietary format. There are several variants of DOCX and each of them are really only supported by a single company's products. Some other products have had progress in beginning to reverse engineering it, but are hindered by the lack of documentation. DOCX is a competitor to the fully-documented, open standard OpenDocument Format, also known as ISO/IEC 26300.

DOCX is not to be confused with OOXML, though it often is. While OOXML, also known as ISO/IEC 29500, is technically standardized, it is incompletely documented and only vaguely related to DOCX. The DOCX format itself is neither fully documented nor standard. So the USPTO is also engaged in spreading disinformation by asserting that it is.

Previously:
(2015) Microsoft Threatened the UK Over Open Standards

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Toyota gives hydrogen car successful debut in Fuji 24 Hours:

[...] "The goal is simply to become carbon neutral," said [Toyota president Akio] Toyoda. "Since we made this statement, I, as the chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, have been asking the government to take the correct steps and increase the number of carbon-neutral options.

"This is because, if all cars become battery-electric, one million jobs will be lost in Japan.

"I believe we have an opportunity to demonstrate one of these [alternative] options here in motorsports. I want to tell the world there is also this option to become carbon neutral."

Original Submission