SoylentNews

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Microsoft discovers new Russian cyber attack on 150 government, NGO sites:

The group behind the SolarWinds cyber attack identified late last year is now targeting some 150 [US] government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organisations, Microsoft Corp said.

“This week we observed cyber attacks by the threat actor Nobelium targeting government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organisations”, Microsoft said in a blog post published late Thursday night Los Angeles time (Friday AEST).

The attackers, dubbed Nobelium by Microsoft after the radioactive element, originated from Russia, the company said, and is the same actor behind the attacks on SolarWinds customers in 2020.

“This wave of attacks targeted approximately 3000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations,” Microsoft said.

While organisations in the United States received the largest share of attacks, Microsoft said targeted victims came from at least 24 countries.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Non-hallucinogenic Psychedelic Analog Rapidly Reverses Effects of Stress on the Brain:

A novel compound similar in structure to the psychedelic drug ibogaine, but lacking its toxic and hallucinogenic effects, has been found to rapidly reverse the effects of stress in mice.

Researchers found that a single dose of tabernanthalog (TBG) can correct stress-induced behavioral deficits, including anxiety and cognitive inflexibility, and also promotes the regrowth of neuronal connections and restores neural circuits in the brain that are disrupted by stress.

"It was very surprising that a single treatment with a low dose had such dramatic effects within a day," said corresponding author Yi Zuo, professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz. "I had a hard time believing it even when I saw the initial data."

[...] Ibogaine has shown promise for treating addiction, but it causes dangerous heart arrhythmias in addition to being a powerful hallucinogen. TBG has not yet been tested in humans, but it lacks ibogaine's toxicity in animal tests, and it doesn't induce the head-twitch behavior in mice caused by known hallucinogens.

Initial studies of TBG found that it had antidepressant effects and reduced addictive behaviors in rodents. [...] The researchers conducted a range of tests to evaluate behavioral responses to stress and the effects of treatment with TBG. They also performed imaging studies to assess changes in the brains of the mice at the neuronal level.

Journal Reference:
Ju Lu, Michelle Tjia, David Olson, et al. An analog of psychedelics restores functional neural circuits disrupted by unpredictable stress [open], Molecular Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1038/s41380-021-01159-1)

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Intermittent Fasting in mice demonstrably more effective at promoting long term memory retention:

A new study from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London has established that Intermittent Fasting (IF) is an effective means of improving long term memory retention and generating new adult hippocampal neurons in mice, in what the researchers hope has the potential to slow the advance of cognitive decline in older people.

The study [...] found that a calorie restricted diet via every other day fasting was an effective means of promoting Klotho[*] gene expression in mice. Klotho, which is often referred to as the "longevity gene" has now been shown in this study to play a central role in the production of hippocampal adult-born new neurons or neurogenesis.

Adult-born hippocampal neurons are important for memory formation and their production declines with age, explaining in part cognitive decline in older people.

The researchers split female mice into three groups; a control group that received a standard diet of daily feeding, a daily Calorie Restricted (CR) diet, and Intermittent Fasting (IF) in which the mice were fed every other day. The latter two groups were fed 10% less calories than the control.

Over the course of three months, the mice in the IF group demonstrated improved long-term memory retention compared to the other groups. When the brains of these mice were studied, it was apparent that the Klotho gene was upregulated, and neurogenesis increased compared to those that were on the CR diet.

[*] Klotho at Wikipedia.

Journal Reference:
Gisele Pereira Dias, Tytus Murphy, Doris Stangl, et al. Intermittent fasting enhances long-term memory consolidation, adult hippocampal neurogenesis, and expression of longevity gene Klotho [open], Molecular Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1038/s41380-021-01102-4)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Sabrent Unveils The Ultra-High Endurance Plotripper & Plotripper Pro SSDs Specifically Designed For Mining The Chia Coin

Chia is a relatively new cryptocurrency that is based on a proof of storage model which differs from the more traditional cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Chia is advertised as a greener, more environmentally-friendly cryptocurrency because the plotting process on the storage devices doesn't consume much energy when compared to traditional mining. However, the plotting process for Chia is very taxing on SSDs. Some of the best consumer SSDs can only last a few weeks before dying. Chia is best mined on an enterprise-level SSD or a hard drive. The two most important qualities in a storage device for mining Chia [are] write speed and endurance. Hard drives have great endurance, but not so great write speeds so people resort to using consumer SSDs.

With the Sabrent Plotripper and Plotripper Pro SSDs built specifically for mining the Chia coin, you can have all the advantages of using an SSD without the fear of your drive failing. Both the Plotripper features a capacity of Pro while the Plotripper Pro comes in 1TB and 2TB offerings, but the Pro features a greater endurance at 54,000 TBW for the 2TB model and 27,000 TBW for the 1TB model while the regular Plotripper has an endurance of 10,000 TBW. Compared to the popular Corsair MP600 PRO 2TB which has an endurance of 1,400 TBW, the Plotripper has 7.1 times more endurance and the Plotripper Pro 1TB has 19.2 times more endurance while the 2TB model has 38.6 times more endurance. The controller and read/write speeds, but should be rocking the Phison E18 controller which allows users to take advantage of the PCIe 4.0.

Do they use SLC NAND?

Ch-ch-ch-chia green paper.

See also: Chia Coin Hits Over 1 Exabyte Storage Capacity, Storage Makers Witness Huge Increase In Sales But Fear of Global HDD & SSD Shortage Looms
Storage-based cryptocurrency Chia grows 6x in April to 1 Exabyte as SSD makers register a major bump to sales
Bittorrent Creator Bram Cohen's Crypto Project Chia Sparks Hard Drive and SSD Shortages

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Tesla Will Have to Ship Its Texas-Built Cars Out of State to Sell Back to Residents:

Texas, the state that was once a country, has some unique features in its governance. One is that its state legislature meets only every other year for a maximum of 140 days, starting from “noon on the second Tuesday in January.” This year, the Legislature convened Jan. 12 and will wrap up its work on May 31 before breaking until 2023. And it will do so without making a widely expected change to Texas’ auto dealer franchise laws that would finally allow Tesla to sell its cars—many of which will be built at its new Austin factory next year—directly to the public in the nation’s second-largest state.

Teslas haven’t been completely unavailable to Texans this whole time; instead, buyers have had to use various inconvenient loopholes to take home their new electric cars. Now, Tesla is on the verge of having to jump through the most ridiculous one yet: having to ship its Texas-built vehicles out of the state before it can sell (and ship) them back to Lone Star buyers.

[Ed note: This is highly summarized; it is well-worth reading the entire article.]

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people:

Marianne Bellotti

[...] As I focus on becoming a better manager of engineers, I have been reflecting more and more on the advice that produced a 10X boost in my abilities at that same stage. More often than not the best advice, the things that stuck with me, came from people who had no background at all in software.

[...] These are five of my favorites.

1. "People like us make our money in the seams of things"

[...] Security and reliability are more likely to go wrong in the seams between components. That means literal integrations, but it also means organization seams. Places where no one is sure who owns what, or who is responsible for what are unlikely to have proper monitoring and much more likely to be two or three upgrades behind. The seams are where things get lost, sometimes for years. So if your mandate is security or availability the seams are your best bet of finding a big pay off.

[...] Often I find it useful to just acknowledge the situation up front: I tend to think in edge cases, but edge cases by definition are unlikely. As a result I tend to bring up a lot of irrelevant things. When you're discussing a problem or situation there are basically three buckets of information: things that are true, things that are false, and things that are true but irrelevant. Having a culture where people are not optimizing to avoid mentioning something true but irrelevant means we make better technical decisions overall because we get the benefit of every teammate's complete perspective.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

Chinese cargo craft docks with future space station in orbit:

A Chinese cargo spacecraft carrying equipment and supplies has successfully docked with the core module of the country’s future space station, according to state media.

A Long March 7 rocket carrying the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft – loaded with essentials such as food, equipment and fuel – blasted off late on Saturday from the Wenchang launch site on the tropical southern island of Hainan, the Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The docking with the space station’s Tianhe core module was completed at 5.01am Sunday Beijing time, the agency said, citing the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

China will need to carry out about 10 missions in total to complete assembly of the space station – named Tiangong, meaning “heavenly palace” – in orbit.

The station is expected to become fully operational in 2022. Once completed, it is expected to remain in low Earth orbit for up to 15 years.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

US Soldiers Accidentally Reveal Nuclear Weapon Secrets:

For years, US soldiers stationed at military bases in Europe armed with nuclear weapons were unknowingly sharing secret protocols and details on the bases themselves online.

It turns out that the military personnel were relying on flashcard apps to study and memorize the details of the nuclear weapon systems without realizing that the flashcards of highly confidential information would be available online for anyone to look up, according to a Bellingcat investigation. And the flashcards were shockingly detailed, even going as far as helping soldiers remember which specific vaults within a base contained nuclear weapons and which ones were empty — a shocking oversight for information that’s otherwise kept under lock and key.

“This is yet one more warning that these weapons are not secure,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told Bellingcat.

[...] These flashcard apps appear to reveal a great deal of information. By simply looking up the names of specific bases thought to contain nukes, Bellingcat was able to find details not available elsewhere, including about passwords, security procedures, and even the locations of security cameras and information on the duress signals that soldiers are supposed to say when compromised.

[...] Some of the flashcards dated back to 2013 and as recently as April 2021.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:

1947 'alien autopsy' film frame is up for auction as an NFT:

A picture is worth a thousand words, but is a single frame of 16-mm film worth $1 million? That's the opening bid for a negative frame of black-and-white movie footage from 1947, allegedly showing an extraterrestrial corpse on a medical examiner's table.

The frame comes from an infamous and very implausible "alien autopsy" said to have been captured on film in 1947, following reports of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico. Lore surrounding the crash claimed that the made-for-a-movie creature was aboard the UFO and died in the crash; it was then dissected in secrecy by the U.S. government, the tale goes, according to a statement about the auction.

And now, one frame of the autopsy film is up for auction as a non-fungible token, or NFT, which means that the highest bidder will acquire a string of unique code that verifies the film frame's authenticity. The winner will also receive an actual physical frame of the autopsy film, according to the auction listing.

takyon writes:

NASA requests $24.8 billion in 2022, proposes to cancel SOFIA again

NASA released its fiscal year 2022 budget request May 28, asking for $24.8 billion to support a number of new and existing science and exploration programs but also proposing once again to cancel an airborne astronomical observatory.

[...] The $7.93 billion for NASA's science programs is the largest ever, Nelson said, eclipsing the $7.3 billion the agency received in 2021. "The Biden administration is proving that science is back," he said. "The record funding in the science area will help NASA address the climate crisis and advance robotic missions that will pave the way for astronauts to explore the moon and Mars."

[...] NASA's planetary science program, though, would see a larger increase of $500 million to $3.2 billion in 2022. That additional funding would primarily go to a new Mars Sample Return program, with $653.2 million requested for it in the budget. It would also ramp up funding for the development of the Near Earth Object Surveyor mission, a small space telescope to search for potentially hazardous asteroids.

Unlike budget requests during the Trump administration, the fiscal year 2022 budget proposal includes funding for several science missions frequently targeted for cancellation, such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the PACE and CLARREO Pathfinder Earth science missions.

However, as with the 2021 budget request, NASA is proposing to cancel the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a modified Boeing 747 that carries a 2.5-meter telescope to perform observations above much of infrared-absorbing water vapor in the lower atmosphere.

See also: NASA budget goes all-in on science, stays the course on Moon lander

Original Submission

takyon writes:

U.S. Bill Allocates $30 Million To Help Hong Kong Bypass China's Great Firewall Internet Restrictions

In a piece of legislation currently being considered by the United States Senate, the U.S. government will allocate $30 million to enable Hong Kong residents to bypass China's Great Firewall. While residents of one of the most densely populated and developed cities in the world are not directly surveilled by the firewall, a controversial National Security Law which was enforced last year bred fears that the region's internet regulation policies would come to mirror those in Mainland China, where the Great Firewall restricts access to internet platforms such as Google and Facebook.

[...] The bill, officially dubbed the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 (USICA), allocates $30 million in funds starting from the next fiscal year. Its Section 3309 aims to aid in developing technologies and programs for an "open, interoperable, reliable and secure internet" for Hong Kong residents.

It then lists down the objectives that this funding will have to achieve. These objectives include diversifying the portfolio of technologies at the disposal of the U.S. government for combating internet censorship.

AnonTechie writes:

Humans probably can't live longer than 150 years, new research finds:

Science is once again casting doubt on the idea that we could live to be nearly as old as the biblical Methuselah or Mel Brooks' famous 2,000-year-old man.

New research from Singapore-base biotech company Gero looks at how well the human body bounces back from disease, accidents or just about anything else that puts stress on its systems. This basic resilience declines as people age, with an 80-year-old requiring three times as long to recover from stresses as a 40-year-old on average.

[...] Extrapolate this decline further, and human body resilience is completely gone at some age between 120 and 150, according to new analysis performed by the researchers. In other words, at some point your body loses all ability to recover from pretty much any potential stressor. The study's conclusion that the body loses all ability to cope -- or at least to recover -- from stress before age 150 is line with the conclusions of similar studies, including one from last year that pegged the maximum possible human age at 138 years.

The full study [PDF] is published and available to the public in the open journal Nature Communications.

I think that quality of life is much more important than number of years. Would you like to live longer?

Journal References:
1.) Dmitriy I. Podolskiy, Andrei Avanesov, Alexander Tyshkovskiy, et al. The landscape of longevity across phylogeny [$], bioRxiv (DOI: 10.1101/2020.03.17.995993)
2.) Aleksandr Zenin, Yakov Tsepilov, Sodbo Sharapov, et al. Identification of 12 genetic loci associated with human healthspan [open], Communications Biology (DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-0290-0)
3.) Timothy V. Pyrkov, Ilya S. Sokolov, Peter O. Fedichev. Deep longitudinal phenotyping of wearable sensor data reveals independent markers of longevity, stress, and resilience [$], medRxiv (DOI: 10.1101/2020.12.24.20248672)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

A two-year old from California is the youngest American to become a member of Mensa:

Kashe Quest may be a two-year-old but her skills include naming all of the elements on the periodic table, identifying all 50 states by shape and location, learning Spanish and deciphering patterns, according to her parents.

"She has always shown us, more than anything, the propensity to explore her surroundings and to ask the question 'Why,'" Kashe's father Devon Athwal told CNN. "If she doesn't know something, she wants to know what it is and how does it function, and once she learns it, she applies it."

The Athwals said that as soon as Kashe said her first word, her skills developed rapidly. Soon she was speaking in sentences that contained five or more words.

Through their daily observations, it struck the family that their daughter might be advanced for her age.

A 4m15s video on YouTube shows her in action.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Three years younger in just eight weeks? A new study suggests yes!:

A groundbreaking clinical trial shows we can reduce biological age (as measured by the Horvath 2013 DNAmAge clock) by more than three years in only eight weeks with diet and lifestyle through balancing DNA methylation.

A first-of-its-kind, peer-reviewed study provides scientific evidence that lifestyle and diet changes can deliver immediate and rapid reduction of our biological age. Since aging is the primary driver of chronic disease, this reduction has the power to help us live better, longer.

The study, released on April 12, utilized a randomized controlled clinical trial conducted among 43 healthy adult males between the ages of 50-72. The 8-week treatment program included diet, sleep, exercise and relaxation guidance, and supplemental probiotics and phytonutrients, resulting in a statistically significant reduction of biological age--over three years younger, compared to controls.

The study was independently conducted by the Helfgott Research Institute, with laboratory assistance from Yale University Center for Genome Analysis, and the results independently analyzed at McGill University and the National University of Natural Medicine.

Journal Reference:
Kara N. Fitzgerald, Romilly Hodges, Douglas Hanes, et al. Potential reversal of epigenetic age using a diet and lifestyle intervention: a pilot randomized clinical trial. Aging, 2021; 13 (7): 9419 DOI: 10.18632/aging.202913

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google's 80-acre megacampus will take over a chunk of San Jose - Google does not yet know the cost of the 10- to 30-year construction project

Google has gotten approval to build a "multi-billion dollar megacampus" in San Jose, California, just 10 miles away from the other giant campus the company is building in Mountain View. CNBC reports that city officials approved Google's "Downtown West" project on Tuesday night.

Google's sales pitch describes the development as a "mixed-use urban destination" built around the Diridon Station transit hub. When the project is completed, Google will own an 80-acre chunk of land that will have 7.3 million square feet of office space, 4,000 housing units, 15 acres of "parks, plazas, and green space," and 500,000 square feet dedicated to "retail, cultural, arts, education, hotels and more." One thousand of the 4,000 houses will be designated as "affordable" housing. Google's San Jose development director, Alexa Aren, described the project as "much less the corporate campus" and more like "a resilient neighborhood." It sounds like it's essentially going to be a Google Town that employees can live and work in.

Original Submission