SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Samsung targets 2025 for human-eye-beating 576 MP camera sensor

A confidential slide shown during a recent Samsung presentation has revealed that the company is targeting a 2025 timeframe for producing a 576 MP camera sensor. Samsung has already announced its plans to eventually release a sensor that can beat out the human eye resolution perception of 500 MP.

[...] Back in 2020, Samsung discussed how producing a 600 MP camera sensor was one of its aims, with an official editorial opining that this would go beyond the 500 MP resolution at which human eyes view the world. This recent information refines that 600 MP goal to 576 MP and even puts a target date of 2025 on it. However, don't expect a 576 MP main camera to make an appearance on a Galaxy S25 smartphone, as the giant sensors are more likely planned for use in future self-driving cars.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory (LSST) uses a 3.2 gigapixel camera.

Related: Hasselblad's New 400-Megapixel Multi-Shot Camera Captures 2.4GB Stills
Xiaomi Smartphone Will Use Samsung Camera Sensor to Take Up to 108 Megapixel Images
How Camera Companies can Survive the Smartphone

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Do you hate seeing people fidget? New UBC research says you’re not alone:

Do you get anxious, annoyed or frustrated when you see someone fidgeting? If so, you may suffer from misokinesia–or the “hatred of movements.”

According to new UBC research, approximately one-third of the population suffer from the psychological phenomenon, which is defined by a strong negative emotional response to the sight of someone else’s small and repetitive movements.

The study, led by UBC psychology PhD student Sumeet Jaswal (she/her) and UBC psychology professor Dr. Todd Handy (he/him), is the first of its kind on the condition.

In this Q&A, Jaswal and Dr. Handy discuss the research findings as well as some good advice for people who may be silently suffering from misokinesia.

Journal Reference:
Jaswal, Sumeet M., De Bleser, Andreas K. F., Handy, Todd C.. Misokinesia is a sensitivity to seeing others fidget that is prevalent in the general population [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-96430-4)

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

WhatsApp assures users that no one can see their messages — but the company has an extensive monitoring operation and regularly shares personal information with prosecutors.

WHEN MARK ZUCKERBERG unveiled a new "privacy-focused vision" for Facebook in March 2019, he cited the company's global messaging service, WhatsApp, as a model.

Zuckerberg's vision centered on WhatsApp's signature feature, which he said the company was planning to apply to Instagram and Facebook Messenger: end-to-end encryption, which converts all messages into an unreadable format that is only unlocked when they reach their intended destinations. WhatsApp messages are so secure, he said, that nobody else — not even the company — can read a word. As Zuckerberg had put it earlier, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2018, "We don't see any of the content in WhatsApp."

[...] Those assurances are not true. WhatsApp has more than 1,000 contract workers filling floors of office buildings in Austin, Texas, Dublin and Singapore, where they examine millions of pieces of users' content. Seated at computers in pods organized by work assignments, these hourly workers use special Facebook software to sift through streams of private messages, images and videos that have been reported by WhatsApp users as improper and then screened by the company's artificial intelligence systems. These contractors pass judgment on whatever flashes on their screen — claims of everything from fraud or spam to child porn and potential terrorist plotting — typically in less than a minute.

[...] A ProPublica investigation, drawing on data, documents and dozens of interviews with current and former employees and contractors, reveals how, since purchasing WhatsApp in 2014, Facebook has quietly undermined its sweeping security assurances in multiple ways. (Two articles this summer noted the existence of WhatsApp's moderators but focused on their working conditions and pay rather than their effect on users' privacy. This article is the first to reveal the details and extent of the company's ability to scrutinize messages and user data — and to examine what the company does with that information.)

The reference article gives a detailed account of how privacy is compromised ...

ProPublica

[ProPublica has added this clarification. - Fnord]

Clarification, Sept. 8, 2021: A previous version of this story caused unintended confusion about the extent to which WhatsApp examines its users' messages and whether it breaks the encryption that keeps the exchanges secret. We've altered language in the story to make clear that the company examines only messages from threads that have been reported by users as possibly abusive. It does not break end-to-end encryption.

[Also Covered By]: Gizmodo

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Asteroid Traveling Through Space at 21,000 MPH Classified As Potentially Hazardous, Will Pass Earth This Month:

Somewhere out there amongst the stars is 2021 NY1, another asteroid actively hurtling towards Earth at insane speeds. While it's on track to pass the planet, it's still close enough for NASA to classify it as a potentially hazardous "Near-Earth Object" (NEO), allowing the outfit to keep an extra eye on its future trajectory.

As of now, experts believe 2021 NY1 is moving through space at nearly 21,000 miles per hour despite its size, somewhere between 427 and 984 feet wide. The asteroid is expected to pass Earth on September 22nd with its closest point coming within 930,487 miles of the planet. While that may seem like a significant amount, NASA defines NEOs as "an asteroid or comet that approaches our planet less than 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Sun[*]."

In comparison, from Earth to the moon is roughly 240,000 miles, hence the NEO status.

"Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighborhood," NASA's official NEO website says of the cosmic objects. "Composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process some 4.6 billion years ago."

[*] 1 AU is the average distance of the Earth to the Sun. So 1.3 AU would be ~120 million miles (195 million kilometers).

Also at Gadgets 360

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In their search for pink river dolphins, researchers in the Peruvian Amazon scooped up river water sloshing with genetic material that they hoped could trace the elusive creatures.

They found what they were looking for. And then some. The environmental DNA collected yielded information on 675 species, including dozens of land-based mammals like deer, jaguar, giant anteaters, monkeys and 25 species of bat.

"It's kind of mind blowing," said Kat Bruce, founder of the eDNA firm NatureMetrics, which carried out the study for the wildlife charity WWF.

The technology is increasingly used to track rare species. Bruce hopes eDNA will help revolutionise the way the world measures and monitors nature.

It is now at the heart of a $15 million dollar project with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to collect and analyse 30,000 freshwater samples over three years from major river systems—including the Amazon, Ganges and Mekong Delta.

With species in precipitous decline and growing calls for international targets on biodiversity protection, organisers say this "eBioAtlas" can help inform policy and focus scarce conservation resources.

"What the eBioAtlas will do in the middle of this mass extinction, is hopefully start to fill those gaps in in a way that is scalable," said Mike Morris, who heads the project for NatureMetrics, at an event showcasing the project at the IUCN conference in Marseille this week.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

ProtonMail deletes 'we don't log your IP' boast from website after French climate activist reportedly arrested:

Encrypted email service ProtonMail has become embroiled in a minor scandal after responding to a legal request to hand over a user's IP address and details of the devices he used to access his mailbox to Swiss police – resulting in the user's arrest.

Police were executing a warrant obtained by French authorities and served on their Swiss counterparts through Interpol, according to social media rumours that ProtonMail chief exec Andy Yen acknowledged to The Register.

[...] At the time of writing, the company's website said: "We believe privacy and security are universal values which cross borders."

After data from ProtonMail was handed to the Swiss and then French police, the author of a left-wing political activists' blog in France wrote (en français) that a group called Youth for Climate had been targeted:

The police also noticed that the collective communicated via a ProtonMail email address. They therefore sent a requisition (via EUROPOL) to the Swiss company managing the messaging system in order to find out the identity of the creator of the address. ProtonMail responded to this request by providing the IP address and the fingerprint of the browser used by the collective. It is therefore imperative to go through the tor network (or at least a VPN) when using a ProtonMail mailbox (or another secure mailbox) if you want to guarantee sufficient security.

Also at The Verge.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Student collaboration provides new insights into high-quality drinking water at lower cost:

Extensive purification is required to produce reliable and tasty drinking water. Purification consists of a series of processes, and water softening is an important step in water treatment. Currently, most water softening processes use a specific type of softening reactor, known as liquid-solid fluidised (LSF) bed reactors. It is estimated that millions of cubic meters of water per year are softened using this approach.

The recent study, published in the journal Chemical Engineering Science: X, used state-of-the-art computer simulations as well as experimental data to examine the fluid dynamics within these softening reactors.

Traditionally, it has been thought that these reactors show homogeneous behavior, where grains within the reactor are uniformly dispersed throughout the fluid without observable gaps.

However, the research team, which included researchers from Eindhoven University, Delft University, Queen Mary, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences and water cycle company Waternet, found that these softening reactor granular beds instead had a heterogeneous structure with local voids and instabilities.

It is expected that these findings will enable the optimisation and improvement of current drinking water softening processes, as the observed heterogeneity affects crystallization and chemical reactions associated with the softening process in unexpected ways. In turn, this could lead to the production of high quality softened drinking water at a lower cost, and with reduced CO2 emissions.

[...] [Students Jamila Rahman and Phoebe Berhanu, co-authors on the paper, said] "This research explicitly shows that heterogenous mixing is the usual case, not homogeneous. This will open up for more productive calculations for quantity and tailored processes for industrial use, meaning it will be both cost effective and lead to less potential waste."

Journal Reference:
Experimental and numerical insights into heterogeneous liquid-solid behaviour in drinking water softening reactors [open], Chemical Engineering Science: X (DOI: 10.1016/j.cesx.2021.100100)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Some robots were made to be your best friend. Some to unload 1600 boxes an hour. Some to do backflips, paint masterpieces. Some to inspect crime scenes. Others will tell you to quit smoking in prohibited areas and stop riding your motorbike on the footpath.

Singapore has started testing patrol robots that survey pedestrian areas in the city-state, where surveillance is a top and often controversial priority.

Named Xavier, the mall-cop robots will be autonomously rolling through the Toa Payoh Central district for three weeks from Sept. 5, scanning for "undesirable social behaviours" according to a press release (via Engadget) from the government's Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX).

[...] The "undesirable social behaviours" Xavier will be on the lookout for include congregation of more than five people (as per the government's COVID-19 measures), smoking in prohibited areas, illegal hawking, improperly parked bicycles within the Housing and Development Board's Hub, and riding motorised active mobility devices and motorcycles on footpaths.

If you're partaking in any of these activities while a Xavier rolls past, the robot will alert the project's command centre and display a message corresponding to your offence.

[...] Security robots are an unsettling and impending reality across the globe, including the U.S. where companies like Knightscope have been offering up their K5 security robots for years (yes, it's the company whose robot drowned itself; yes, the robot humans built an actual shrine for). As recently as 2020, Spot the robot dog from Boston Dynamics was used by NYPD at a crime scene. China has had police robots for years, equipped with facial recognition software.

Also at Engadget and Stuff.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Air Force rescue crews ready in case of SpaceX, Boeing launch malfunctions:

U.S. Air Force rescue teams have completed training in preparation for possible emergency bailouts of space launches by SpaceX and Boeing.

The training took place [in] the Atlantic Ocean and the Banana River near the Florida-based Patrick Space Force Base, the Air Force [said] in a press release.

[...] As part of the training, members of the 38th Rescue Squadron Blue Team performed free fall jumps and equipment drops into the water.

Rescue teams need to be proficient in safely landing in the ocean with gear, including with inflatable boats that […] can be loaded with medical supplies, paddles and other supplies.

The Air Force said routine exercises like these keep teams ready for other rescue operations in other settings.

"It reassures them that if they do have an emergency, they know there's a team who is highly trained in these types of rescues," Tech. Sgt. Michael Galindo, 38th pararescueman and Blue Team section chief, said in the press release.

"It's important for us to constantly keep current on this type of jump because there's a lot that goes into it," Galindo said.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Automated hiring software is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable job candidates:

Automated resume-scanning software is contributing to a "broken" hiring system in the US, says a new report from Harvard Business School [PDF]. Such software is used by employers to filter job applicants, but is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable candidates, say the study's authors. It's contributing to the problem of "hidden workers" — individuals who are able and willing to work, but remain locked out of jobs by structural problems in the labor market.

The study's authors identify a number of factors blocking people from employment, but say automated hiring software is one of the biggest. These programs are used by 75 percent of US employers (rising to 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies), and were adopted in response to a rise in digital job applications from the '90s onwards. Technology has made it easier for people to apply for jobs, but also easier for companies to reject them.

[...] Over-reliance on software in the hiring world seems to have created a vicious cycle. Digital technology was supposed to make it easier for companies to find suitable job candidates, but instead it's contributed to a surfeit of applicants. In the early 2010s, the average corporate job posting attracted 120 applicants, says the study, but by the end of the decade this figure had risen to 250 applicants per job. Companies have responded to this deluge by deploying brutally rigid filters in their automated filtering software.

[...] Fixing these problems will require "overhauling many aspects of the hiring system," from where companies look for candidates in the first place to how they deploy software in the process.

What suggestion(s) can experts here provide, to solve this issue? Or, is this yet another case of "If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail."

Original Submission

Mockingbird writes:

Video from HubbleESA that gives a zoom in on the Globular Cluster Messier 13. Also at the non-YT site: ESAHubble.org.

(Related story on a study comparing Messier 3 and 13 at Phys.org.)

The prevalent view of white dwarfs as inert, slowly cooling stars has been challenged by observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. An international group of astronomers have discovered the first evidence that white dwarfs can slow down their rate of aging by burning hydrogen on their surface.

"We have found the first observational evidence that white dwarfs can still undergo stable thermonuclear activity," explained Jianxing Chen of the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, who led this research. "This was quite a surprise, as it is at odds with what is commonly believed."

White dwarfs are the slowly cooling stars which have cast off their outer layers during the last stages of their lives. They are common objects in the cosmos; roughly 98% of all the stars in the Universe will ultimately end up as white dwarfs, including our own Sun. Studying these cooling stages helps astronomers understand not only white dwarfs, but also their earlier stages as well.

To investigate the physics underpinning white dwarf evolution, astronomers compared cooling white dwarfs in two massive collections of stars: the globular clusters M3 and M13 . These two clusters share many physical properties such as age and metallicity but the populations of stars which will eventually give rise to white dwarfs are different. In particular, the overall color of stars at an evolutionary stage known as the Horizontal Branch are bluer in M13, indicating a population of hotter stars. This makes M3 and M13 together a perfect natural laboratory in which to test how different populations of white dwarfs cool.

Original Submission

owl writes:

WaPo link: Nearly 1 In 3 Americans Experienced A Climate Disaster This Summer, From Hurricane Ida To The Caldor Fire:

(archive link: https://archive.is/GhZTP)

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past three months, according to a new Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations. On top of that, 64 percent live in places that experienced a multiday heat wave — phenomena that are not officially deemed disasters but are considered the most dangerous form of extreme weather.

The expanding reach of climate-fueled disasters, a trend that has been increasing at least since 2018, shows the extent to which a warming planet has already transformed Americans' lives. At least 388 people in the United States have died due to hurricanes, floods, heat waves and wildfires since June, according to media reports and government records.

Record-shattering temperatures in the Pacific Northwest cooked hundreds of people to death in their own homes. Flash floods turned basement apartments into death traps and in one instance ripped twin babies from their father's arms. Wildfires raged through 5 million acres of tinder-dry forest. Chronic drought pushed federal officials to impose mandatory cuts to Colorado River water for the first time.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Plant-based diets cause men to fart more and have larger stools, researchers have found – but that seems to be a good thing, because it means these foods are promoting healthy gut bacteria.

Claudia Barber at the Liver and Digestive Diseases Networking Biomedical Research Centre in Barcelona, Spain, and her colleagues compared the effects of a Mediterranean-style diet mostly comprised of plants with a Western-style diet containing fewer fruit and vegetables on the guts of 18 healthy men aged between 18 and 38. Each participant was randomly assigned to follow one of the diets for two weeks, then after a break, they switched to the other diet for two weeks.

The men did a similar number of poos per day on the two diets, but each one was about double the size while they were on the plant diet. The men collected and weighed their own stools using digital scales and found they produced about 200 grams per day on the plant diet, compared with 100 grams on the Western diet.

This is because eating plants promotes certain types of bacteria in our guts that make food for themselves by fermenting plant fibre, says Rosemary Stanton at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

[...] The findings suggest that flatulence associated with eating more plants should be welcomed, says Stanton. "Our Western idea that farting is a sign of something being wrong is totally false," she says. In most cases, "farting is a sign of a healthy diet and a healthy colon", she says.

NEW SCIENTIST

[Journal Reference]: Differential Effects of Western and Mediterranean-Type Diets on Gut Microbiota:

Original Submission

upstart writes:

U.S. traffic deaths up during pandemic even though mileage down -data:

New data shows a sustained increase in U.S. traffic deaths that regulators ascribe to impaired driving, speeding, a failure to wear seats beats and other unsafe behavior since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Thursday estimated 8,730 people died in car crashes in the first three months of 2021, compared with 7,900 deaths during the same period last year.

That's a year-on-year increase of 10.5% despite a 2.1% drop in the number of miles driven, the preliminary data shows.

For all of 2020, U.S. traffic deaths rose 7.2% to 38,680, hitting the highest yearly total since 2007 - even though Americans drove 13% fewer miles. The early 2021 deaths were also the highest in a first quarter since 2007.

China Steps in to Regulate Brutal '996' Work Culture

upstart writes:

China steps in to regulate brutal '996' work culture:

Chinese tech tycoon Jack Ma famously said it was a "blessing" for anyone to be part of the so-called "996 work culture"- where people work 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

Now, China's authorities have issued a stern reminder to companies that such punishing work schedules are in fact, illegal.

In a joint statement published last Thursday, China's top court and labour ministry detailed 10 court decisions related to labour disputes, many involving workers being forced to work overtime.

The cases covered various scenarios across a wide range of sectors, from tech to the media and construction. The one thing they had in common? The employers had lost.

"Legally, workers have the right to corresponding compensation and rest times or holidays. Complying with national working hours is the obligation of employers," the notice warned, adding that further guidelines will be developed to resolve future labour disputes.

[...] According to China's labour laws, a standard work day is eight hours-long, with a maximum of 44 hours a week. Any work beyond that requires extra pay for overtime.

But this has not been well enforced. In many of the country's biggest firms - particularly in the thriving tech sector - employees often work far longer hours and are not always compensated.

Employers Can't Require People to Work 72 Hours a Week, China's High Court Says

upstart writes:

Employers Can't Require People To Work 72 Hours A Week, China's High Court Says: