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Which musical instrument can you play, or which would you like to learn to play?

  • piano or other keyboard
  • guitar
  • violin or fiddle
  • brass or wind instrument
  • drum or other percussion
  • er, yes, I am a professional one-man band
  • I usually play mp3 or OSS equivalents, you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in the comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:48 | Votes:155

posted by janrinok on Saturday November 06 2021, @11:50PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Tooting Crater was named after a London suburb.

Let's deal with this name issue right away. "Tooting Crater" on Mars is a large and fairly young impact site. Mars craters expert Peter Mouginis-Mark identified the landmark and named it Tooting after his birthplace in the London suburb. It's OK to giggle about it, especially when thinking about the crater ejecting material out into space that ended up reaching Earth.

Planetary scientist Anthony Lagain of Australia's Curtin University led a study published in Nature Communications this week that traced the origin of some Martian meteorites found on Earth.

According to Curtin, 166 Martian rocks are known to have landed on our planet over the past 20 million years, but it's been tough to trace their precise origin points on Mars. It takes a lot of energy to blast a bit of Mars out into space, so the researchers looked at craters that might be responsible.

The team created a database of 90 million impact craters on Mars and used a machine learning algorithm to narrow down potential meteorite launch sites. Tooting was a match for a certain group of the Martian meteorites (categorized as "shergottites") found on Earth.  

"By observing the secondary crater fields -- or the small craters formed by the ejecta that was thrown out of the larger crater formed recently on the planet -- we found that the Tooting Crater is the most likely source of these meteorites ejected from Mars 1.1 million years ago," Lagain said in a statement on Wednesday.

This close-up shows a slice of Martian meteorite that was found on Earth. Analysis of the rock's chemistry, mineralogy and the gasses trapped within it showed it came from Mars.

Journal Reference:
Lagain, A., Benedix, G. K., Servis, K., et al. The Tharsis mantle source of depleted shergottites revealed by 90 million impact craters [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26648-3)


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posted by martyb on Saturday November 06 2021, @07:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the because-newer-is-always-better? dept.

Microsoft's Surface laptop business ran a survey with YouGov in the UK and found that 66% of workers with company-owned laptops or tablets are still using the same device they had when the COVID-19 lockdowns started last March.

[...] "More than a third (35%) of employees who received new devices since the onset of COVID-19 reported a resulting increase in their productivity. Meanwhile, most employees have "made do" with the same device while working remotely," Microsoft said in a statement.

"Employees want upgrades that better suit their individual needs -- as-remote working arrangements that started as temporary measures have become the norm. Their company's IT teams, which initially purchased devices to help staff work from home during the pandemic but then shelved routine upgrades, now feel the same way."

The survey found that employees feel they are not being listened to when it comes to new devices. Half of them believe devices are provided based on job role alone – with individual requirements not considered as standard. Only one in three feel their individual needs and accessibility requirements are taken into consideration, a number that drops to 17% for frontline workers.

[...] There are several factors at play here in Microsoft's pitch to business. Companies are moving to hybrid work after a year of largely remote work, which means some sectors have stalled hardware purchases after a splurging on devices last year. And of course, Windows 11 has just arrived.

[...] Windows 11 has been out for mainstream users since October 5, but it hasn't been widely adopted yet. Windows 10 reaches end of life on October 14, 2025.


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posted by janrinok on Saturday November 06 2021, @02:13PM   Printer-friendly

https://venturebeat.com/2021/11/01/world-of-warcraft-director-ion-hazzikostas-talks-the-games-future-and-current-soul-searching/

As we said in, I think, a brief blog, a forum post, this has been a process that has been ongoing as a result of an internal period of self-reflection over the last few months. These are changes that are coming from the team as a whole. In the discussions we began internally in the aftermath of the lawsuit and everything surrounding that, on many levels, trying to understand how we as the current leadership of the team could do better — better for our team, better for our community. One thing that came up is that there are pieces of our game that, over the course of 17-plus years now, that were not necessarily the products of a diverse or inclusive range of voices, that did not necessarily reflect the perspective of the current team and of many of our players. There are things that people on our team were not proud to have in our game. These are many things that people, over the years, have pointed out in the community, but we didn't necessarily listen in the way we should have at the time.

What we did was we just set up a process internally for folks across the team, as well as sourcing some feedback from the community as a whole, to flag pieces of the game for review, whether it's old quests or specific lines. As a random example, there were a number of jokes and references made a dozen years ago about how feminine male blood elves were, mistaking male blood elves for women, just poking fun at that in a not necessarily good-spirited way. That doesn't sit right in 2021. That's the sort of thing that was reviewed by a broad group that reflects the diversity of our team today. We made decisions on whether to leave some things standing, because they're borderline, but we're not looking to reinvent everything, turn over every single stone and rewrite 17 years of WoW. It might be a little bit juvenile. It might be off-color. But this isn't something that is really making our game feel less welcoming for people, which is what we're aiming to change. Those things we left. Others were removed, others were rewritten or changed accordingly.


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posted by takyon on Saturday November 06 2021, @09:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the wings-clipped dept.

The U.S. Blacklists Makers of Cops' Favorite iPhone Hacking Tool:

NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance firm whose spyware has been peddled to authoritarian governments around the world, has been sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce Department. The new restrictions, which the agency announced in a press release Wednesday, will limit the degree to which American companies can provide parts or services to NSO—a decision that could seriously hobble the vendor's business.

NSO is best known for its commercial malware "Pegasus," a product that can infiltrate smartphones and silently pilfer their contents—from text messages to voice calls to photos. The company also sells a creepy "zero-click" exploit, the likes of which apparently requires no phishing and is said to take advantage of security flaws inherent in iPhones and Android devices to compromise them. In September, it was reported that some 1.65 billion Apple devices had been vulnerable to NSO's malware for a period of several months.

See also: US Cuts Off Pegasus Developer: What You Need To Know About This Spyware

Previously: Israeli Firm NSO Linked to WhatsApp Hack, Faces Lawsuit Backed by Amnesty International
Saudi Crown Prince's WhatsApp Account Reportedly Used to Hack Jeff Bezos
The Great iPwn -- Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage 'Zero-Click' Exploit
Israeli Spyware Maker Is in Spotlight Amid Reports of Wide Abuses


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posted by martyb on Saturday November 06 2021, @05:16AM   Printer-friendly

Children who don't eat eggs before first birthday more likely to develop egg allergy:

Researchers with the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology say an intolerance to eggs is the second most common food allergy worldwide. Egg allergies often result in rashes, eczema, occasional vomiting, and even anaphylaxis. Being allergic to eggs can also lead to the development of asthma in older patients.

Study authors are now advising parents to start introducing their children to eggs at six months to ensure they do not develop an egg allergy. Health officials generally recommend babies eat small portions of egg when they start to have solid food. Specifically, experts recommend starting with pieces of the yolk from a hard-boiled egg.

[...] “We examined infant feeding and food allergy data from birth to 6 years, collected by 2237 parent surveys in the Infant Feeding Practices Study II conducted by the CDC and US-FDA,” says lead author Dr. Guilia Martone in a media release.

“We found that children who hadn’t had egg introduced by 12 months were more likely to have egg allergy at 6 years.”

They also advised introducing peanut products to infants when they start solid food to avoid developing peanut allergies later in life.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Saturday November 06 2021, @12:27AM   Printer-friendly

Drinking alcohol won't help you live longer:

Prior work had reported an increased mortality risk among non-drinkers in comparison to those who drink moderately. However, the new study finds that other factors among non-drinkers such as previous alcohol or drug problems, daily smoking habits, and overall poor health may partially explain their shorter lives.

This new work is based on a dataset of 4,038 Germans who had taken part in a standardized interview between 1996 and 1997. At that time, all subjects were between the ages of 18 and 64 years-old. Researchers also had access to baseline information on each person’s alcohol and lifestyle habits in the 12 months prior to the interview, and the team tracked mortality outcomes over the next 20 years.

[...] Just over 11 percent (447) participants had completely abstained from alcohol during the 12 months prior to the interviews. Among those non-drinkers, 405 (90.60%) were former alcohol drinkers and 322 (72.04%) exhibited at least one or more additional risk factor for higher mortality rates. Examples of such extra risk factors include a former alcohol use disorder or risky alcohol consumption patterns (35.40%), smoking every day (50%), or fair to poor self-rated health scores (10.51%).

Meanwhile, the other 125 non-drinkers who did not display any additional risk factors didn’t actually show any statistically significant differences in regards to total, cardiovascular or cancer mortality rates in comparison to low to moderate alcohol consumers.

[...] “The results support the view that people in the general population who currently are abstinent from alcohol do not necessarily have a shorter survival time than the population with low to moderate alcohol consumption,” study authors write in a media release. “The findings speak against recommendations to drink alcohol for health reasons.”

Journal Reference:
Ulrich John, Hans-Juergen Rumpf, Monika Hanke, et al. Alcohol abstinence and mortality in a general population sample of adults in Germany: A cohort study, PLOS Medicine (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003819)


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posted by martyb on Friday November 05 2021, @09:16PM   Printer-friendly

Many people are doubtful world leaders will suddenly jump into action to head off ‘catastrophic’ warming after decades of dragging feet. 

Critics of decades of inaction on global warming voiced deep scepticism as world leaders gathered in Glasgow to hammer out crucial deals to urgently reverse the intensifying climate crisis.

Many activists question whether developed countries will finally move to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and the major corporations responsible for them, and if rich nations – solely responsible for the crisis – will financially support poorer ones in the transformation away from fossil fuels.

Scientists say the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, is likely the last chance to take serious measures to prevent the most catastrophic scenarios facing the planet, as temperatures continue to rise and extreme weather events become the norm.

Bangladesh, a South Asian nation of 165 million people, is ranked the seventh-most affected country in the world by climate disasters, and spiking temperatures will only make the situation worse.

Mass migration from coastal areas to urban centres inland is already under way as rising seas envelop the low-elevation nation, with as many as 30 million people becoming “climate refugees” in the coming decades.

Developed nations agreed in 2009 that they would contribute $100bn annually to help developing ones deal with the effects of climate change and transform their energy systems. Rich countries, however, have failed on their promises so far with pledges expected to fall short by about $75bn between 2020-25.

Fariha Aumi, deputy coordinator for Fridays For Future-Bangladesh from Jamalpur in the country’s north, told Al Jazeera decades of feet-dragging by world leaders has left her sceptical about the outcome of COP26.

“We will be looking forward to the excuses the developed countries will make, and are hoping to throw some good questions about the [climate] mitigation of our country,” Aumi, a 22-year-old medical student, said.

“If they [G20 leaders] had a sense of responsibility about their deeds or decisions, they would have kept the Global South in mind and provided compensation money properly. Neither of these is visible.”

She added previous climate summits were declared “successful” yet promises went unfulfilled.

[...] Experts say global emissions need to be cut now to limit the release of potent greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 05 2021, @06:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the Very-Interesting-Arrangement dept.

VIA To Offload Parts of x86 Subsidiary Centaur to Intel For $125 Million

As part of their third quarter earnings release, VIA Technologies has announced this morning that the company is entering into an unusual agreement with Intel to offload parts of VIA's x86 R&D subsidiary, Centaur Technology. Under the terms of the murky deal, Intel will be paying Centaur $125 million to pick up part of the engineering staff – or, as the announcement from VIA more peculiarly puts it "recruit some of Centaur's employees to join Intel," Despite the hefty 9-digit price tag, the deal makes no mention of Centaur's business, designs, or patents, nor has an expected closing date been announced.

A subsidiary of VIA since 1999, the Austin-based Centaur is responsible for developing x86 core designs for other parts of VIA, as well as developing their own ancillary IP such as deep learning accelerators. Via Centaur, VIA Technologies is the largely aloof third member of the x86 triumvirate, joining Intel and AMD as the three x86 license holders. Centaur's designs have never seen widescale adoption to the extent that AMD or Intel's have, but the company has remained a presence in the x86 market since the 90s, spending the vast majority of that time under VIA.

Centaur's most recent development was the CNS x86 core, which the company announced in late 2019. Aimed at server-class workloads, the processor design is said to offer Haswell-like general CPU performance, which is combined with AVX-512 support (executed over 2 rounds via a 256-bit SIMD). CNS, in turn, would be combined into a product Centaur called CHA, which added fabric and I/O, as well as an integrated proprietary deep learning accelerator. The first silicon based on CHA was originally expected in the second half of 2020, but at this point we haven't heard anything (though that's not unusual for VIA).

VIA on Wikipedia.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday November 05 2021, @03:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the shift-the-camels.,-we're-moving-in dept.

Making Aircraft Fuel From Sunlight and Air:

Carbon-neutral fuels are crucial for making aviation and maritime transport sustainable. The plant developed in Zurich can be used to produce synthetic liquid fuels that release as much CO2 during their combustion as was previously extracted from the air for their production. CO2 and water are extracted directly from ambient air and split using solar energy. This process yields syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which is then processed into kerosene, methanol, or other hydrocarbons.

[...] Analyses of the entire process show that the fuel would cost 1.20 to 2 euros per litre if it were produced on an industrial scale. Desert regions with high solar resources are particularly suitable as production sites. "Unlike with biofuels, whose potential is limited due to the scarcity of agricultural land, this technology enables us to meet global demand for jet fuel by using less than one percent of the world's arid land and would not compete with the production of food or livestock feed," explains Johan Lilliestam, a research group leader at the IASS and professor of energy policy at the University of Potsdam. If the materials used to build the production facilities, such as glass and steel, are manufactured using renewable energy and carbon-neutral methods, emissions can be further reduced to close to zero.

Journal Reference:
Remo Schäppi, David Rutz, Fabian Dähler, et al. Drop-in Fuels from Sunlight and Air, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04174-y)


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posted by janrinok on Friday November 05 2021, @12:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-my-internet-is-quite-a-bit-slower-than-the-speed-of-light dept.

Revolutionary identity verification technique offers robust solution to hacking:

A team of computer scientists, including Claude Crépeau of McGill University and physicist colleagues from the University of Geneva, have developed an extremely secure identity verification method based on the fundamental principle that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. The breakthrough has the potential to greatly improve the security of financial transactions and other applications requiring proof of identity online.

"Current identification schemes that use personal identification numbers (PINs) are incredibly insecure faced with a fake teller machine that stores the PINs of users," says Crépeau, a professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill. "Our research found and implemented a secure mechanism to prove someone's identity that cannot be replicated by the verifier of this identity."

The new method, published in Nature, is an advance on a concept known as zero-knowledge proof, whereby one party (a 'prover') can demonstrate to another (the 'verifier') that they possess a certain piece of information without actually revealing that information.

The idea of zero-knowledge proof began to take hold in the field of data encryption in the 1980s. Today, many encryption systems rely on mathematical statements which the prover can show to be valid without giving away clues to the verifier as to how to prove the validity of the statement. Underlying the effectiveness of these systems is an assumption that there is no practical way for the verifier to work backwards from the information they do receive from the prover to figure out a general solution to the problem. The theory goes that there is a certain class of mathematical problem, known as one-way functions, that are easy for computers to evaluate but not easy for them to solve. However, with the development of quantum computing, scientists are beginning to question this assumption and are growing wary of the possibility that the supposed one-way functions underlying today's encryption systems may be undone by an emerging generation of quantum computers.

The McGill-Geneva research team have reframed the zero-knowledge proof idea by creating a system involving two physically separated prover-verifier pairs. To confirm their bona fides, the two provers must demonstrate to the verifiers that they have a shared knowledge of a solution to a notoriously difficult mathematical problem: how to use only three colours to colour in an image made up of thousands of interconnected shapes such that no two adjacent shapes are of the same colour.

Journal References:
1.) Pouriya Alikhani, Nicolas Brunner, Claude Crépeau, et al. Experimental relativistic zero-knowledge proofs, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03998-y)
2.) Gilles Brassard. Relativity could ensure security for cash machines, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-02950-4)


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posted by janrinok on Friday November 05 2021, @10:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the big-brother dept.

Apple’s Federighi delivers dramatic speech on dangers of sideloading:

Apple executive Craig Federighi, who is responsible for the company's iOS software for iPhones, delivered a lengthy speech intended to alarm listeners about what might happen if Apple is forced to allow users to sideload apps. The speech was given at Web Summit 2021 in Lisbon, Portugal, and it follows similar, earlier statements from Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The European Commission is actively discussing the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is intended to regulate big tech platforms to ensure a fair playing ground. Companies like Apple could face fines of up to 10 percent of their global revenue.

[...] "Our goal has never been to sell the most," he said. "Instead, our mission is to provide people with the choice of what we view as the best."

Too bad their version of "the best" includes microtransactions.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 05 2021, @05:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the gonna-need-more-power-plants dept.

New York City mayor-elect says he'll take his first three paychecks in Bitcoin:

Spurred by a tweet from the mayor of Miami, New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams told followers Thursday that he plans to take his first three mayoral paychecks in Bitcoin.

"NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries," Adams tweeted. "Just wait!

It's a high-profile embrace of digital currency at a time when regulators in the US, including in New York City, are heightening scrutiny of cryptocurrency exchanges. Last month, New York state Attorney General Letitia James asked two lending platforms to cease activities after winning a court order forcing the closure of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinseed.

NYC Mayor-elect vows to take first salary payments in Bitcoin:

“NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries,” he said on Twitter on Thursday.

In New York we always go big, so I’m going to take my first THREE paychecks in Bitcoin when I become mayor. NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries! Just wait!

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) November 4, 2021

Adams, a Democrat, has said he wanted to turn New York into a crypto-friendly city and that he wants to explore a NYC Coin similar to Miami’s. In an interview on Bloomberg Radio after being elected mayor on Nov. 2, he wagered a “friendly competition” with the mayor of Miami, who was the first to set up a so-called CityCoin cryptocurrency.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 05 2021, @02:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-focused-on-sub-orbital-joyrides dept.

Bezos’ Blue Origin loses NASA lawsuit over SpaceX $2.9 billion lunar lander contract:

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled against Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin on Thursday in the company’s lawsuit versus NASA over a lucrative astronaut lunar lander contract awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX earlier this year.

Federal Judge Richard Hertling sided with the defense in his ruling, completing a monthslong battle after Blue Origin sued NASA in August.

NASA said in a statement that work with SpaceX will resume “as soon as possible” now that the ruling has been issued.

[...] A Blue Origin spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC that the company’s lawsuit “highlighted the important safety issues with the Human Landing System procurement process that must still be addressed.”

Judge rules against Blue Origin in standoff with SpaceX, NASA

Details about the lawsuit, which was filed in federal claims court in August, have been sparse, as the companies asked the judge to keep much of the proceedings secret. A Thursday filing said lawyers will meet on November 18 so they can come to an agreement on releasing a redacted version of the judge's opinion.

Also at Ars Technica and The Verge.

Even though they lost, I'm sure everyone will join me in applauding Blue Origin for filing this lawsuit due to its concerns about money safety.


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posted by martyb on Thursday November 04 2021, @11:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the pill-ar-of-hope? dept.

Merck’s molnupiravir to be given to recently-infected COVID-19 patients twice a day, for five days.

The United Kingdom has become the first country in the world to approve a potentially game-changing COVID-19 antiviral pill jointly developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recommended on Thursday that the drug, molnupiravir, be used as soon as possible following a positive COVID-19 test and within five days of the onset of symptoms, citing clinical data.

This is the first oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19 to be approved, marking a boost to the fight against the pandemic, with the green light coming before potential regulatory clearance in the United States. US advisers will meet this month to vote on whether molnupiravir should be authorised.

[...] Merck’s molnupiravir has been closely watched since data last month showed it could halve the chances of dying or being hospitalised for those most at risk of developing severe COVID-19 when given early in the illness.


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posted by martyb on Thursday November 04 2021, @08:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the hot-and-toasty dept.

Intel's Alder Lake big.LITTLE CPU design, tested: It's a barn burner:

After spending several days with Intel's newest consumer CPU designs, we have some surprising news: they're faster than AMD's latest Ryzens on both single-threaded and most multithreaded benchmarks.

We suspect this will be especially surprising to some, since Intel's newest desktop CPUs feature a hybrid "big.little[sic]" design similar to those found in ARM CPUs. AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 5950x is a traditional 16 core, 32 thread design, with all cores being "big" high-performance types with symmetric multithreading (SMT, also known as "hyperthreading"). By contrast, the i9-12900K offers 16 cores and only 24 threads—with eight "performance" cores featuring SMT and eight lower-performance "efficiency" cores with no SMT.

As pointed out in the Ars Technica comments, the Cinebench multi-threaded benchmark saw Intel's best CPU with a less than 2.5% lead, but the caption reads "Intel trounces AMD". While the Passmark multi-threaded benchmark saw AMD's best CPU with a more than 18% lead, but the caption reads "outperform i9-12900k-but even here, by a much, much, lower margin than we're accustomed to seeing".

Also at Phoronix, AnandTech, and Tom's Hardware.

See also: More Linux Performance Benchmark Data For Alder Lake, Comparison Data Points
Intel UHD Graphics 770 / Alder Lake GT1 Linux Graphics Performance

Previously: Intel Alder Lake CPUs Launch November 4th, with Up to 8 Big and 8 Small Cores


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